A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217-1815. Volume II, 1689-1815

by David Hannay

At this moment the best course he could have followed might well have been to steer for Cadiz, whither it was probable that his lost vessels had gone, and where they were indeed waiting for him. The next best course might have been to keep on straight for Brest. But he remained where he was, looking about for the liners which had parted company. Some sail were seen on the horizon, and La Clue headed towards them in the hope that they were his friends. They turned out to be Swedish merchant-ships. Then other sails were seen behind, and for them also the Frenchman steered only to discover that they belonged to the fleet of Boscawen. Nothing now remained to be done but to flee for refuge, and in the circumstances the only cover La Clue had any chance of reaching was the neutral coast of Portugal, to the North.

When the French were seen on the forenoon of the 18th August, the British fleet was still in two divisions: Boscawen was leading with one, and Brodrick was some distance astern. The easterly breeze was stronger near the land than out at sea, and when the presence of the enemy was signalled, Brodrick crowded on sail, and rapidly reduced the space between himself and his admiral. It is a proof of the superiority of our officers and men in seamanship, the art by which the utmost is made of a ship, that although the French vessels were as a rule better built for speed than ours, and although those with La Clue were swift and their crews had every motive to make haste, yet the van of the British fleet forced on action early in the afternoon. The French would only make a running fight, as their pursuers overtook them, one by one, and ranged themselves on either side. Captain de Sabran-Grammont, of the Centaure, 74, the last ship in the French squadron, and the first to be overtaken, showed the virtue which redeemed the follies and vices of the nobles of his country, a flawless personal valour. He made a gallant effort to cover the flight of his brother-captains. Though Boscawen and two others attacked him at once, he made so fierce a resistance that the Centaure did not surrender till long after dark, when the captain was dead, 200 of her men had fallen, and she was so shattered that the prize crews had the utmost difficulty in keeping her afloat. Boscawen’s flagship the Namur lost her mizen-mast, and the admiral had to transfer his flag to the Newark. But for errors of management on the part of individual captains, the whole of the French squadron must have been taken. Some of our captains were awkward in handling their ships, and allowed other vessels of ours to get between them and the enemy. Others who came up on the lee side of the French did so at such a distance that they were never able to force a close action. These mistakes provoked Boscawen into declaring when all was over, that “It was well, but that it might have been a great deal better.” No French vessel was taken on the 18th except the Centaure. During the night two, the Guerrier and the Souverain, turned to the west, and escaped in the dark. Both reached Rochefort. The four remaining with the admiral took refuge in the waters of Portugal at Lagos. The flagship L’Océan and the Redoutable ran ashore, the Téméraire and the Modeste anchored some distance out, in reliance on Portuguese neutrality. But Boscawen would not allow that to be any protection. Both were taken, and the two which had been beached were burnt. La Clue, who had lost a leg by a cannon-shot in the action of the day before, died at Lagos. For the breach of Portuguese neutrality we afterwards apologised, but no rebuke was given to Boscawen.

The Toulon fleet’s share in the great invasion scheme had completely failed. Boscawen returned home with part of his fleet and a large convoy of merchant-ships. Admiral Brodrick remained to blockade the French, who had taken refuge in Cadiz. A storm drove him off in January 1760, and they were able to escape to Toulon.

Though a combined operation was no longer possible, after the disaster of the 18th and 19th August, the French still clung to the hope that an invasion might be carried out from Brest, where M. de Conflans lay with the main fleet. All through the fine-weather months he was keenly watched by Hawke. The French force was of twenty-one sail of the line, the English of twenty-five, and the difference was enough to convince the ministers of Louis XV. that it was useless to expect a victory from the use of open force. Yet they would not renounce the hope of carrying out an invasion by means of a fleet confessedly unequal to the hazard of giving battle on the way to our shores. The situation must have arisen in any case, for even if La Clue had escaped Boscawen’s pursuit, it was to be supposed that the English admiral would follow him, and thereby bring his own ships to reinforce Hawke. The two would have formed a very superior force to the combined fleets of Conflans and La Clue, even if the second, after evading Boscawen, had also avoided running into Sir Edward’s much stronger fleet outside of Brest. If he had steered for Rochefort, the French admirals would still have been divided. When this combination was ruined by the defeat of La Clue, by the capture and destruction of five of his best ships and the imprisonment of most of the others at Cadiz, all hope of invading England ought to have been resigned. But the French king and his ministers could not reconcile themselves to failure. So they hit upon a scheme of folly such as would be incredible in other than men too ignorant to understand the task they had undertaken, too vain to allow themselves to be taught, and so reckless in their selfish frivolity that rather than allow themselves to be blamed for doing nothing they would do what in all probability would bring ruin to the officers and men at their orders.

In substance it was that M. de Conflans was to wait till bad weather drove Sir Edward Hawke away from Brest. Then he was to slip out, pick up the transports and troops collected for the invasion at Vannes, and convoy them to some point on the coast of Great Britain. The calculation was that even if Conflans was intercepted by Hawke, he would be able to cover the transports, which could go on to their destination, or at the worst could come back safe. Yet the French ministers had the means of knowing that there was a British squadron in reserve behind Hawke in the Downs, and that the events at Lagos had set free Boscawen. We still hear of invasion schemes no wiser than this, and it is no waste of space or time to insist on the folly of this historical plan. Conflans, who was visibly unequal to the duty of giving Hawke battle, was to go to sea hampered by a convoy and there run the hazard of being brought to action. The convoy, notoriously incapable of defending itself, was to be supposed to go on even when its protecting ships were assailed, though there were other British ships than Hawke’s, and he could have spared part of his fleet for the purpose of pursuing the transports, and yet have left himself equal to Conflans. If Napoleon had not laid plans equally fantastic, if projects for the invasion of England every whit as absurd were not elaborated by soldiers of the kind called “scientific” to-day, we should be tempted to think that the plan of campaign drafted at Paris in 1759 could only have been the work of the feather-headed harlot who managed the languid debauchee on the French throne, and of the men who got office by her favour.

With most naval battles we can afford to treat the sea as an open plain needing no description. But this is not the case with the battle of Quiberon. The lie of the land is as necessary to be kept in mind as the shape of the country is for the proper understanding of Oudenarde or Salamanca. It has been said above that while Conflans lay blockaded at Brest, the troops for the invasion of England were collected at Vannes, in the Morbihan, on the south side of the Breton Peninsula. From the Pointe de Penmarch, the south-westerly headland of Finisterre, the coast runs to the east, but with a slope to the south, till it reaches the entry of the river Vilaine. Here it turns wholly to the south, and stretches down to the Pyrenees and the coast of Biscay. It is mostly foul on the southern side of Brittany, and fringed with islands. At two-thirds or so of the distance from the Pointe de Penmarch to the mouth of the Vilaine, the peninsula of Quiberon juts out to the south, in shape something like a lobster’s claw with its hook turned to the east. On the eastern side is the bay of Quiberon. The anchorage is fine where the bottom of sand mud and shells is free from rocks, but in many places it is foul, and of its total breadth of nine miles, only five or six are really safe for large vessels. Following the line of the mainland on the north side, we reach the entry to the tangle of islands, deep passages, shallows, and lagoons named the Morbihan, to the north of which is the town of Vannes. In this refuge the transports had been collected to wait till the fleet came round from Brest and secured them a safe passage to the sea. The Morbihan is closed on the south side by the peninsula of Rhuis. The coast goes eastward from Rhuis to the Vilaine, and then runs south in a rolling line to the Pointe de Croisic, at the northern side of the Loire, beyond which it need not now be followed. The peninsula of Quiberon, the entry to the Vilaine, and the Pointe de Croisic form roughly a right angle. Now draw a line from Croisic to the Pointe de Conguel on the north-west, which is the southern extremity of the peninsula of Quiberon. All along that line, with openings of clear water here and there, are piled the perils of the Breton coast, innumerable and thrown together in inextricable confusion. In front of Croisic and at low tide a number of black rocks at distances of from three and a half to five and a half miles show the position of the mass of sunken reef called the Plateau du Four. To the west of the Four there is an open passage closed on the outer side by the rocks called the Grands Cardinaux. From them stretches to the north-west an unbroken column of islands and rocks, separated from the Pointe de Conguel by the passage known as La Teignouse. The approach to this is made perilous on the west by the Plateau de Mirvideaux. To the south and west of the small islands between Les Grands Cardinaux and La Teignouse lies the Fair Island, Belleisle. The entry to Quiberon by La Teignouse being hazardous, the bay is approached from the south-east—that is to say, between Les Grands Cardinaux and Pointe de Saint Jacques on the peninsula of Rhuis, which is due north of them. This opening is ten miles across. When a fleet was coming in from the open sea, it would pass to the south of Belleisle and of Les Grands Cardinaux. Then it would turn first to the north, and afterwards bend to the north-west, till it reached the clean anchorage inside the peninsula of Quiberon. The triangle of perils and barriers here roughly described was the scene of the most heroic achievement in the long history of the Royal Navy.

Hawke established the blockade of Brest early in June. No serious attempt to drive him off was made by the French. On the 2nd July Conflans tried to do by trick what he dared not venture to do by force. The bulk of Hawke’s fleet lay some distance off at sea, while an inshore, or advanced, squadron under Captain Hervey watched the French fleet at anchor in Camaret Bay, just outside the entrance to Brest. This was the Augustus John Hervey, afterwards third Earl of Bristol, who was the son of the Lord Hervey so savagely attacked by Pope, and of the beautiful Molly Lepel. He maintained the well-established reputation of his family for immoral ability. His marriage to, and collusive divorce from, the notorious Elizabeth Chudleigh, bigamous Duchess of Kingston, are conspicuous events in the scandalous chronicle of the time. But though his private life was always disorderly and occasionally ignominious, he was a very brave and skilful naval officer. All through the summer of 1759 he and Captain Keppel were the eyes and hands of the fleet. When on the 2nd July four French line-of-battle ships stood out of Camaret Bay to drive him off, Hervey did not hesitate to engage for a moment, though he had with him only two of the line and some frigates. He well knew that the sound of his guns would soon bring up Hawke’s fleet, and it did. The French drew back immediately under the protection of their batteries. Their intention had been, after driving off Hervey, to go round to Quiberon, chase away the small squadron under Captain Reynolds, of the Firm, and liberate the transports at Vannes—a proposal worthy of the intelligence they showed all through the year. The sub-blockade of Quiberon remained unbroken. When the Firm became foul, Reynolds was relieved by Captain Duff, of the Rochester, 50, who remained in possession of the waters of the French bay with four 50-gun ships and some frigates till he was swept into the great hurricane of wind and battle of the 20th November.

The fine weather and the energy shown by Pitt in supporting the fleets at sea made it possible to keep the crews well supplied with provisions. They enjoyed a good health of which there were few examples in the previous history of the navy. Yet the blockade was tedious work, relieved only by such events as this action of the 2nd July, by the cutting out of the Modeste from under the French batteries, a gallant feat of Hervey’s, or by the unsuccessful attempt of Captain Barrington of the Achilles to destroy some French ships in the Morbihan. Meanwhile there was growing impatience at Paris with the timidity of Conflans, who showed extreme reluctance to go to sea without an express order. Conflans had served with some credit, but he owed his command to court favour, and had no reputation as a manœuvrer in the French Navy, while all his words and actions show him to have been light and ostentatious, with no firmness of character. The instructions he issued to his captains when he did go out are full of a pretence of confidence which was ridiculous after the timidity of the summer, and more ridiculous when read by the light of the final disaster. He wrote as if he feared that Hawke would not give him a good chance to fight.

On the 9th November a gale, and the needs of the blockading fleet, did for the French what they could not do for themselves. Hawke was compelled to bear up for Torbay. Frigates were left to watch Brest. The westerly gale which had forced Hawke to draw off from the dangerous lee shore of Brest, brought home the French squadron of M. de Bompart, now coming back from the West Indies. To his surprise and relief, he found the way to port open. His safe arrival convinced Conflans that Hawke must be gone. Taking the crews out of Bompart’s ships to reinforce his own, the marshal put to sea on the 14th November, when the wind had moderated, and the last great effort of the French to carry out the invasion began.

On the same date Hawke left Torbay to resume the blockade of Brest. On the 16th he was met by the news that the French had been seen twenty-four leagues to the north-west of Belleisle, steering to the south-east. There could be no doubt in Hawke’s mind that they were bound for Quiberon, and he instantly headed in pursuit. The news that the French were at sea spread rapidly over England, and produced an outburst of popular anger against Hawke, which gives the exact value of the most sweet voices of the mob. It ought to have rejoiced to hear that the enemy was out, and had only to look at the measures taken by Government to see that there was no peril. The troops and militia were put to some disturbance, which was unnecessary, save for the purpose of quieting the national nerves. A more rational measure was the formation of a reserve squadron of six ships of the line under Rear-Admiral Geary to reinforce Hawke. In these days, too, Vice-Admiral Saunders reached the mouth of the Channel on his way back from the conquest of Quebec. He had but three liners with him, and they were much tried by service, yet without a moment’s hesitation he sailed to join the Channel Fleet. It is true that he did not arrive in time to be of service, but it was fine conduct, and an instance of the noble spirit now animating the navy which of itself was enough to calm all fears.