The French, therefore, were divided from the beginning, and so remained. On the 17th Bouvet had with him the vessels which had followed him through the Raz du Sein, eight line-of-battle ships and eight frigates. The wind in drawing round to the S.E. had become milder, bringing with it a drizzle of rain and fog. He steered for Bantry, and on the 18th crossed the track of the Fraternité which was standing to the south to look for him. Thus the French naval and military commanders-in-chief went roaming out to the Atlantic, looking for their command, which was steering away from them. On the 19th, Bouvet was joined by Nielly and Richery with six sail of the line and two frigates. In variable and gusty winds they pushed on for Bantry. The wind was from the west when he sighted Mizen Head on the 21st, but it swung round to the east, and drove him to leeward of Bantry Bay, and to the point of Dursey Island. Only eight of the line-of-battle ships and six frigates succeeded in tacking into the bay with Bouvet, where they anchored between Bear Island and the southern side, instead of going into Beerhaven, between the island and the northern bank, where they would have been safe. The others remained beating to and fro outside. On the 24th the weather was fine, and there were 6000 soldiers in the ships with Bouvet. A landing could easily have been effected, and as there were few troops in the south of Ireland, the French might well have occupied Cork, where lay an immense mass of military and naval stores. But the command in the absence of Hoche was in the hands of Grouchy, whose name is associated with a still greater French disaster eighteen years later. He hesitated. No landing was made, and on the 25th the wind settled in the east, and blew with fury down the bay. Bouvet was forced to sea in his frigate, lost heart, and made for Brest, which he reached on the 1st January 1797. Bedout, of the Indomptable, 80, to whom the command now fell, held on till the 29th, when he too cut his cables and fled seaward before the easterly wind. All hope was not given up even yet, and some of the French vessels went to the mouth of the Shannon, which had been named as the alternative landing-place. They found nothing to do, and so turned home to France. Meanwhile the two commanders-in-chief had been groping for their commands. The Fraternité had been lost in fog and tossed in storm. She had sighted the lights of Bouvet, had mistaken them for those of an enemy; had turned away; had been chased, compelled to throw guns overboard to lighten herself for flight, and to alter her course again and again; had returned off Bantry Bay on the 29th, only to find the Révolution, 74, endeavouring to save the crew of the sinking Scévola frigate, and had finally steered for France. The wrecks of the French armament reached home between the 11th and 14th January. Afflavit Deus et dissipati sunt.
One of the line-of-battle ships carried into Bantry Bay by Bouvet was destined not to escape. The Droits de l’homme, 74, commanded by Captain Baron La Crosse, had been among the vessels which went to the mouth of the Shannon. While cruising there, she captured the Cumberland letter of marque—that is to say, trading-ship, which carried a commission authorising her to act as a privateer. The Cumberland had on board thirty soldiers on their way home from the West Indies. La Crosse took the English passengers and crew into his own ship, and sent the Cumberland to France with a prize crew. Then he headed for home, after looking once more into Bantry. He lost sight of the Irish coast on the 9th, and on the 13th, in strong westerly winds and thick hazy weather, calculated that he was seventy-five miles to the west of the Penmarchs. Early in the afternoon two vessels were seen to windward in the haze, and Captain La Crosse steered to the S.E. to avoid them. At about 3.30 two other vessels were seen to leeward cutting off his road to France. They were the Indefatigable, 44, Captain Sir Edward Pellew, and the Amazon, 36, Captain Reynolds. Captain La Crosse had to fight his way home between them. In conversation with an English army officer, taken prisoner in the Cumberland, Lieutenant Pipon, he had declared that he would sink rather than surrender. His conduct was to show that these were not words of idle boasting. The Droits de l’homme was indeed a 74 and her opponents were frigates, but though one 74 was adjudged more than a match for two frigates, she was at a disadvantage. She was so built that her lower deck ports were fourteen French inches—nearly sixteen English—nearer the water than in other vessels of her class. While under a press of sail to throw off the pursuit of the ships seen to windward, she lost her fore and maintop. Having no sufficient spread of sail aloft to steady her she rolled heavily, and the water poured on to her main-deck. It ran down the cables on the English prisoners who had been sent to the cable tier to escape the shot of their friends. So Captain La Crosse was not able to make use of the 36-pounders on his main deck but had to rely on the 18-pounders and smaller guns of his upper decks, firing from a high and most unstable platform. The Droits de l’homme had in fact the use of a lighter broadside than the Indefatigable, a very heavy frigate, armed with 24-pounders on her main deck. Her sole advantage was that she carried 700 soldiers in addition to her crew, and could replace the 250 casualties she suffered in the action.
It began at 5.30. The Droits de l’homme was steering to the west for the coast of France. The Indefatigable overtook her, and tried to rake her. The French captain baffled the attempt, and then Pellew shot ahead, risking and receiving a raking broadside, which did his frigate little harm, and placing himself on the Frenchman’s bow. At a quarter to seven the Amazon came up and took her station on the other bow. At 7.30 the two English frigates shot ahead, the Indefatigable to repair damage to her rigging, the Amazon, because the press of sail she carried to gain her station had given her so much way that she could not stop. Then the action was resumed, to be again suspended to repair damage at 10.30 and once more resumed. It lasted through the night. The English crews fought with fine manhood and skill, often up to their waists in water on the main decks. Guns broke from their fastenings and had to be made secure again—as often as four times. They were often filled with water after being loaded, and the charges had to be withdrawn before they could be reloaded and safely fired. Repairs had to be done in the rigging, and the Amazon used up every inch of spare rope. The Frenchman fought with a heroism which surmounted the loss of all hope of victory, or even of escape, manœuvring to board so long as his ship could answer her helm, and always baffled by the English frigates, which were under perfect control. At 4.30 the moon broke through the clouds for a moment, and Lieutenant George Bell, on the forecastle of the Indefatigable, saw the land. None of the three ships could know where they were. It was only certain that they were on a lee-shore, the wind blowing strong and the sea running high. The Indefatigable was turned to the north, and was followed by the Amazon. Just before daybreak breakers were seen on the lee-bow. The Indefatigable was brought round to the south, but not the Amazon which was unmanageable, and was driven on shore. As the Indefatigable stood southward in the first light of day, her crew saw they were in Audierne Bay, and Droits de l’homme lay on her side in front of Ploxevet with the sea breaking over her. Her mizen-mast, the lower foremast, and bowsprit had gone. The cable of the only anchor she had left was cut by English shot, and after a manful effort to reeve a new one had been made, and the anchor had failed to hold, she drove ashore. The position of the Indefatigable was terrible, for her one chance of escape was to round the Penmarchs at the south point of Audierne Bay, and she was damaged. But her crew and officers showed “their full value,” as their captain gratefully acknowledged. She cleared the rocks and gained the open sea.
The Droits de l’homme lay without possibility of help, for two days, in the breakers, and two more passed before the last survivors were taken from the wreck. The story may be read in the narrative of Lieutenant Pipon. The English prisoners were called up from the cable tier with the cry Pauvres anglais! Pauvres anglais! Montes Bien vite. Nous sommes tous perdus. When the boats were lowered some women and children, who were among the English prisoners, were given the first chance of escape. But the boats were shattered alongside, and they all perished. The Droits de l’homme lay breaking up, and the crew perished slowly, one brave man, the sailmaker, Lamende, nearly lost his life in an attempt to swim ashore with a line, and an army officer who followed him was drowned. The English worked manfully in the common cause, one of them, a merchant skipper, going over the side fourteen times to save the people in the boats. They could get neither food nor fresh water. The pangs of hunger can be outlived but not those of thirst. Many drank urine and salt water and went mad. Of the 380 who remained on the wreck on the fourth night half were dead in the morning. The French Government released the English prisoners freely, and gave several of them rewards in money. The shipwrecked crew of the Amazon were well treated. La Crosse survived and was promoted. The loss of the Droits de l’homme was an incident in a campaign, but skill and manhood, heroism, humanity, and devotion to duty are noble and immortal things. We cannot look at them too carefully or too long.
In all these events fortune had a great share, but excepting the activity of a few frigates, the Royal Navy had little part. When Admiral Colpoys heard from the captain of the Phœbe that the French were at sea, his fleet was in want of stores, and he knew not where the enemy was gone. So he bore up for Spithead, and, dropping part of his ships at the western ports on the way, reached it on the 31st December with six sail. Bridport, urged to get quickly to sea when the Government learnt that the French were out, had started on the 25th, four days after Bouvet reached Bantry. But he met difficulties. The Prince ran into the Sans-Pareil, and the Formidable into the Ville de Paris. The Atlas grounded. Then he was stopped in a gale, and he did not sail with his fourteen ships of the line till the 3rd January 1797. He cruised about, from Ushant to Cape Clear, chased the much chased Fraternité on the 9th, and intercepted nothing. He was fifty-seven miles west of Ushant when the last of the returning French ships entered Brest. Before he returned to Spithead on the 3rd February, he detached Rear-Admiral Sir W. Parker to join Jervis with the Prince George, Namur, Irresistible, Orion, Colossus, and Thalia frigate. They were to be usefully employed, for it was this reinforcement which enabled Jervis to fight the battle of Cape St. Vincent.
The five line-of-battle ships and the frigate were sent to join Jervis at his rendezvous at Cape St. Vincent in fulfilment of a promise that the squadron carried off by Mann should be replaced, and his force brought up again to twenty sail. They served to bring him up to the fifteen he had had a few weeks before they joined him on the 6th February. The Courageux, 80, had been lost, and the Gibraltar, 80, driven on the Pearl Rock during the furious gale of the 10th December, in which Villeneuve escaped from the Mediterranean. Shortly after Jervis left Gibraltar for Lisbon on the 16th December, the Zealous, 74, struck on a rock in Tangier Bay, and was badly damaged. As he entered Lisbon on the 21st, the Bombay Castle, 74, ran ashore and was lost. When he left it on the 18th January to escort a Portuguese convoy out of danger and to observe the Spaniards, the St. George, 98, after running into and dismasting a Portuguese frigate, grounded heavily on the great Cachop. His command had therefore been brought down to ten by the 6th February. To complete the tale it may be added that the fifteen were nearly reduced to fourteen or even thirteen while it was still dark on the morning of the 12th, when the Culloden, 74, ran into the Colossus, 74, because the second, after holding her wind too long while the fleet was tacking in succession, suddenly bore up across the bows of the first, and tore her fore-rigging badly.[3] The energy of Captain Troubridge of the Culloden brought his ship quickly into trim, and she took a leading part in the coming battle.
Lángara had been superseded by Don José de Córdoba at Carthagena, and the Spanish fleet under its new admiral came on in pursuit of a wild scheme to sail to Brest, join the French ships there, now under the command of Villeneuve, then join a Dutch force in the Texel and renew the attempted invasion of England. The scheme was wild on many grounds, but particularly because of the utter want of quality in the Spanish fleet. It has already been said, when speaking of the American War, that the Spanish Government had endeavoured to form a great fleet by building more ships than it could afford, and had never had money to spend on training officers and men. Every evil it suffered from in 1779 had been intensified under the imbecile government of King Charles IV. A mass of fine ships was heaped up, but they were manned with crews which hardly included a tenth of seamen, and commanded by officers who had had little practice. Nothing had been done to improve it since the wars began in 1793. On the contrary, neglect, failure to pay or even feed the men, made the service odious, and it grew even worse. The best officer in the Spanish navy, Jose Mazaredo, had refused to take the command unless the Government bound itself to commission no more ships than it could man. He had been arrested, to punish him for questioning the wisdom of his superiors. Every officer in the Spanish fleet knew its unfitness to meet the English.
Every English officer knew its weaknesses too, and nobody better than Jervis. He was aware that the narrow failure of the invasion of Ireland had shaken the nerve of the country. The discontent in the fleet, which was just about to break into mutiny, was not unknown to him. A victory was very necessary to England. A weak man would have looked to numbers alone, and would have been cautious. Jervis looked to the quality of the enemy, and the greatness of the crisis. He saw how much better it would be that every one of his fifteen ships should go to the bottom if only she could take a Spaniard with her, than that Córdoba should reach Brest. Therefore as Hood sailed from Antigua resolved to fight Grasse, be his number what they might, so Jervis waited at Cape St. Vincent, resolute to give battle whatever numbers the Spaniards might bring against him.
On the morning of the 13th February he was joined by the Minerva, 36, which had just sighted the Spaniards, and had been chased by them. Nelson had been sent up the Mediterranean in her to bring away Sir Gilbert Elliot from Porto Ferrajo, whither he had retired after the evacuation of Corsica. He now hoisted his commodore’s pennant in the Captain, 74. At four in the afternoon the signal was made to clear for action, and during the night the fleet remained under reduced canvas, keeping its post of watch. The signal guns of the Spaniards were heard at half-past one on the morning of the 14th, and at half-past two, a Scotchman, Captain Campbell, in the Portuguese service, who commanded the Carlotta frigate, spoke the flagship, and informed Jervis that the Spaniards were fifteen miles to windward—that is, to the west of him. Daylight came on the 14th with fresh breezes from the west and a thick haze. At six, reefs were shaken out and the search for the enemy began. By seven, strange sails were seen in the haze to the S.S.W. stretching across our route to the S.E. The reconnoitring frigates and sloops reported their numbers, which were discovered to be greater as the air cleared. At 8.20 the signal was made to prepare for battle, and at 9.20 the Culloden, Blenheim, and Prince George were ordered to chase. When at 9.47 the Bonne Citoyenne sloop reported seeing more vessels to the S.W., the Irresistible and Colossus were ordered to join in the chase. The Orion joined without orders and was not recalled. About ten the air cleared, and the two fleets were fully revealed to one another.
The Spaniards were aware of the approach of Jervis, and two of their look-out frigates had actually seen part of his ships, but they underestimated his strength. Their national carelessness, intensified perhaps by the desperation of men who knew they were devoted to a hopeless task, was never more conspicuous. Their ships were wandering in two confused shoals, one of nineteen sail was to windward and westward of the English, another of six was to leeward and eastward. The two were trying to join, but there was a wide interval between them. A twenty-sixth Spaniard was seen outside the windward division, and a twenty-seventh was coming up from leeward. Jervis at once headed from the open space between the two divisions. At 10.57 the order was given to form in a line of battle ahead and astern of the flagship as most convenient.