With the French it was a settled thing that battles must not be decisive. They fought in a half-hearted way, not because they wanted courage, for braver men than Chadeau de la Clocheterie or D’Albert de Rions, or a hundred others, never walked a quarter-deck; nor because they wanted skill in tactics, for more ingenious manœuvrers than Aché or Guichen, or even Grasse, never hoisted a flag; but because they had always something other in view than the fighting of a battle. It was taken for granted among them that they must “fulfil their mission.” The phrase is incessantly turning up in their histories. What it meant was, that when an admiral was sent to take this island or relieve that town he must avoid getting his fleet crippled in a yard-arm to yard-arm fight. The Government habitually impressed on its admirals the necessity of keeping their fleets intact, and these officers very naturally so manœuvred as to avoid a really damaging action. Now this style of manœuvring, though it may be right in particular instances, is fatal as a general rule of strategy, because it overlooks the elementary fact that the most effectual of all ways of succeeding in an ultimate object is to smash the force which the enemy has collected to defeat you. Besides, it has this deadly moral consequence, that it induces a timid, passive state of mind, which leaves you at the mercy of the enterprising enemy who charges home.
The wish to charge home was strong with our men, and the effort incessant, but until Rodney showed the way on April 12th, 1782, it was never effectually done. The explanation of this failure is to be found in the enduring and almost pathetic devotion of the old admirals to the “line of battle.” When a ship carries her armament on her sides—in a broadside, that is to say—she must bring her side to bear on the enemy in order to use her guns. When several vessels so armed are acting together, they must follow one another in a line, otherwise they would be constantly liable to fire into friends. Therefore as early as the first Dutch war fleets were marshalled in a line, one ship following another, at a distance sufficient to allow room to manœuvre, and yet near enough to permit of mutual assistance. This is the line ahead or line of battle. But the object of all formations is to enable you to get most effectively at the enemy, to break him up, to throw the whole of your own force on part of his, or at least to be superior at the point of attack. To do that it is necessary to get right among his battalions or his ships. This had been well known to the admirals of the Commonwealth and of Charles the Second, and therefore their fighting was furious and effective. But from about the Revolution time till the very end of the American War it was forgotten. Men fell into the pedant frame of mind. As Molière’s immortal doctors thought much of doing the proper professional things and little of the patient, the British admiral thought first and last of his line. To keep that intact, to engage van to van, centre to centre, rear to rear, to go at it hammer and tongs ship to ship, till his gunnery had shattered the enemy and thrown him into confusion, then to order a general chase and pick up the prizes—this was what the British admiral dreamt of when he dreamt of battles. It was a manly vision, but it could only become a reality if the enemy was prepared to meet him half way—which the French, who did not want a smashing battle, would never do. So the history of our battles against equal forces for nearly a century was something like this:—The British admiral, who is longing to be at them, manœuvres for the advantage of the wind in order to force on a battle, and gets it. The French admiral, who wishes to keep his line of retreat open, accepts battle to leeward, so that he has only to put before the wind whenever he wants to be off. Under reduced sail he slips slowly along. The English line comes down at a more or less acute angle. Then when the van is within gunshot the helm is put down, and the English ships run along the enemy’s line, cannonading and cannonaded. Of course this means that they take the fire of every ship they pass, and as the French fire high, they get cut up in the rigging. When it appears to the French admiral that the leading English ships are sufficiently crippled, he puts before the wind and runs down to leeward. Then the British admiral has to rearrange his line, and make another shot at his slippery enemy. So it goes on till dark comes, and the fleets separate without loss of a ship to either. Sometimes they cross on opposite tacks, and the rest is as before with unimportant variations. The British admiral boasts he has made the enemy run. The French admiral boasts he has crippled three or four English ships and repulsed the attack. Each is quite sure he has won the battle, whereas in fact there has been no battle at all, but only an artillery duel, which in all war by sea and land is apt to mean mere noise and waste of powder and shot.
About 1780, however, there were some both in France and England to whom it had begun to be clear that with such strategy and tactics as this nothing effectual would ever be done. Among the French officers Souffren had become disgusted with the feeble principles adopted in his service, and was longing for an opportunity to show his countrymen a more excellent way. That Rodney had thought the subject out, and come to conclusions of his own, he was to show in the first month of his command in the Leeward Islands. But that subject of King George to whom the folly of the old way and the need of a better was most clear was not a seaman at all, but a Scotch gentleman, who is supposed to have been one of the originals of Monkbarns. The name of Clerk of Eldin, the father of Sir Walter Scott’s friend, must needs be mentioned in a life of Rodney. A considerable controversy has raged over the question, whether he influenced the Admiral, and if so to what extent. Like most controversy, it has owed not a little of its vitality to a lax use of terms, and of its rancour to professional vanity. To this day naval officers hear the name of Clerk of Eldin with a certain irritation. It is an exasperation to them that a landsman should have the credit of discovering what remained hidden for so long to so many famous admirals. Yet that he did see what they had not seen is certain. His family had crossed his boyish longing to go to sea, and he consoled himself by making the sea his hobby. He made short voyages from Leith. He sailed toy fleets on his pond at Eldin. He carried little models of ships—wild ducks is the proper name of them—in his pocket, and manœuvred them on the mahogany whenever host or guest would allow him to mount his hobby. Like a true Scotchman, he could not be satisfied without worrying out the principles. At last it became clear to him that, until our admirals gave up running along the enemy’s line, and took to smashing into it, there would be no end of battles such as Pocock had fought in the East Indies and Keppel fought off Ushant. He collected the result of his inquiries and reflections in one of the most luminous books ever written. It was so clear, indeed, that Adam Smith, with a respect for the human intelligence somewhat startling in a philosopher, hesitated to accept it all because it seemed to him so self-evidently true that he thought the admirals must have seen it all long ago unless there had been something against it which was obvious to their professional knowledge. Their blindness was, however, due to other causes—to such causes as prevented men of business from seeing those economic truths which were thought out by Adam Smith himself. In 1780 this book existed only in fragments printed for private circulation. These fragments were given by Clerk to a Mr. Aitkinson, a friend of Rodney’s, in January of 1780, on a promise that they should be sent to the Admiral. Whether they ever reached him we do not know. There is no evidence that they did, and the evidence that they did not is purely negative. Clerk’s name and the claims made for him will come up again. For the present, it is enough to cite him as an example of what was working in men’s minds, and also because one likes to do a little justice to an ingenious gentleman who got firm hold of a truth, and has been carped at as a mere amateur by some members of a profession which had forgotten that same truth, and needed to be retaught.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1780
At the end of March Rodney was at Gros Islet Bay in Santa Lucia with a fleet of twenty-one sail of line-of-battle ships. His adversary Guichen was at Fort Royal Bay in Martinique, some thirty miles off to the north, with a force of twenty-three line-of-battle ships and two fifty-gun ships—a class of vessels which held an intermediate position between the liner and the frigate. Both admirals had their attendant swarm of small craft. In spite of the superior numbers of the French, the fleets were substantially equal. The French Government usually built its vessels bigger and better than ours, and the calibre of its guns was heavier. On the other hand Rodney had more three-deckers and seventy-fours than his opponent. What advantage there was—and there was some—was in favour of Guichen, but it was only just sufficient to enhance the glory of beating him. The superiority or even the equality of the Frenchman was somewhat of a surprise to Rodney, who expected to find himself in greater force. He complained that he had not been kept well informed by his Government of the movements of Guichen, who had sailed from Europe shortly after he himself left for the relief of Gibraltar, and had got to the West Indies first. There was doubtless some ground for the complaint, but Rodney, who was just then rather disposed to find fault, made the most of it. The position was certainly not one which an admiral who believed in himself, as Rodney did, and commanded an English fleet, need have considered unfavourable.
Whatever ground of complaint he might feel he had, Rodney was resolved that there should be no shilly-shallying. On March 21st he turned into Gros Islet Bay with the four ships he brought from Europe and joined the seventeen already lying there under Sir Hyde Parker. One does not clearly understand why Guichen, who was already at sea with his twenty-three ships, allowed the junction to take place. He did, and then returned to Fort Royal Bay. After spending less than a week in watering his ships, and in settling matters of detail, Rodney got to sea on April 2nd, and paraded in defiance off the French harbour. It would have been utterly contrary to the usual practice of the French admirals if Guichen had come out for the mere purpose of fighting a battle. He would not stir till he had an “ulterior object,” and so lay tight under the protection of the shore batteries. Finding that his enemy would not stir, Rodney returned to Gros Islet Bay, leaving look-out frigates on the watch. By April 15th the French had settled a plan. There was a convoy of merchant ships to be seen safe to San Domingo for one thing, and for another it was decided to make a stroke at one of the English islands. In this work Guichen had the zealous assistance of the then Governor of Martinique, the famous Bouillé, that “quick, choleric, sharply discerning, stubbornly endeavouring man,” who afterwards played so great a part in the Revolution. The plan was to ship a body of troops under Bouillé himself on board the war vessels, to stand northward with the merchant ships in convoy, to see them off for San Domingo, and then, by turning to windward between Martinique and Dominica, to beat up to Barbadoes in the hope of mastering it before Rodney could come up from Santa Lucia. Barbadoes was then full of French prisoners and prizes. The scheme was most characteristic of French naval operations at that time. It depended for success not on the previous beating of the English fleet, but on luck in avoiding a battle at sea. Of course if the English admiral behaved with common sense and energy he would catch the French up before they got to Barbadoes, and then they must fight or run. In either case there was an end of the scheme.
As a matter of fact it hardly even began to be put into execution. No sooner were the French known to be under way than the English look-out frigates were signalling the news to one another all along the thirty miles of sea between Fort Royal and Gros Islet Bay. As soon as the signal of the nearest frigate was seen by the look-out on Pigeon Island, a great mass of rock which shuts in the anchorage, the order was given to the English fleet to get up anchor. Without delay it stood out to sea, stretching to the north along the coast of Martinique in pursuit of the enemy. The French had slipped out by night, but Rodney judged that they would endeavour to make for Barbadoes through the Dominica Channel, and followed them hot foot. In the course of the 16th M. de Guichen’s fleet was seen by the English to the north, endeavouring to turn to windward between Dominica and Martinique about twenty-four miles to westward of the Pearl Rock. In order to secure the power to force on a battle, and also in order to bar the road to Barbadoes, Rodney worked to windward. Before night he had succeeded in obtaining that commanding position. It was too late to force on a battle, but during the darkness the English fleet kept across the road of the French, whose movements were keenly watched and immediately signalled by guns. The Venus and Greyhound frigates patrolled the space dividing the enemies till daybreak.
At sunrise, shortly after five o’clock, the two fleets were drawn up in two lines of from six to seven miles long, heading both to the north. The French were at a distance of some seven miles to westward and leeward of the English. At a quarter to six the signal was given to form the line of battle on the starboard tack at two cables’ length. With the wind at east this would mean that the fleet was heading to the north. The cable as a measure of length being about two hundred yards, and the average length of a ship fifty-four, the line must have been something under six miles long. Before we go down with Rodney into the very inconclusive battle which was about to be fought, there are two facts which it will be necessary to note. The first is, that the system of signals then used in our fleet was most defective. There was no proper general code. Every admiral had to make his own on taking command of his squadron. It was not possible to do work requiring such minute finish of detail as the formation of a code of signals in such circumstances. Much was apt to be omitted. In Rodney’s own code, for instance, there was then no signal by which a captain could make known that he did not understand the admiral’s orders. One was supplied after the battle. The second fact is this: at that time there existed a body of laws for the fleet known as the Fighting Orders and the Additional Fighting Instructions. These were not statements of the principles on which battles should be fought, but recipes for fighting a battle. They bear an almost comic resemblance to those cut-and-dried rules for painting a picture to be found in old drawing-books, which tell men that grief is expressed by pulling down the corners of the mouth, and pain by wrinkling the forehead. Moreover, they were worded with the looseness of an Act of Parliament. Such as they were, however, they were binding on all captains unless direct orders to the contrary were given by the admiral, who disregarded them at his peril, as had been shown in the case of Rodney’s old chief, Mathews, who was broken by court-martial for an offence against them, though he only did it to get at the enemy and support the honour of the flag. With insufficient power to give orders, and hampered by a competing authority, a British admiral was very liable to find his fleet get out of hand. These same standing orders are responsible for much of the pedantry of our fighting during a century.
Rodney had decided to break away from the old tradition by which our admirals always endeavoured to fight van to van, centre to centre, and rear to rear. He had resolved to throw the whole of his ships on a part of the enemy. At a quarter to six he signalled that he meant to attack the enemy’s rear. The most northerly ships of his own line were under Rear-Admiral Rowley, one of the many of the name who have done much respectable sea-fighting. He himself was in the centre with his flag in the Sandwich. The rear, as the fleet was then sailing, was under the command of Sir Hyde Parker; the stern-most ship of all being the Stirling Castle, which was to be unenviably distinguished before the day was out. Until about nine o’clock no opportunity presented itself of making an attack, and the two fleets continued to stand to west of north watching one another—the French waiting for an attack, the English waiting for an opening. M. de Guichen had stretched his fleet well out, “as if,” as Rodney scornfully put it, “he thought I was going to run away.” At about nine Rodney saw a gap in the French line a few ships astern of the admiral, the leading English ship being then apparently about level with the leading Frenchman—and the last of the enemy, in the loose order they were in, a good bit behind the last Englishman. At once Rodney ordered the fleet to tack and steer for the enemy’s rear—which, if the Frenchman had held on his course, would have thrown the whole of the English ships on the last eight or nine of his line. Guichen was too wary to be so caught. No sooner did he see the move of the English admiral than up went his signals, and the ships of his centre and van came round on their heel together and swept on to fill up the gap. Then the ships which had been nearly cut off spun round also. Resolute, as Wellington himself at Salamanca, not to strike till he could do it with effect, Rodney hauled his wind, and the two fleets resumed their attitude of observation, heading now to the south with the wind on their port or left side, sailing nearly parallel with one another. So they continued for rather over an hour, the French, as before, too much extended, the English in a fairly compact line. At last Rodney decided to make an opportunity. Shortly after ten o’clock he reversed his order of march and went back again towards the north. Guichen perhaps thought the English admiral meant to avoid a battle, and was content to let him do so. He did not alter his own course, and now the two fleets ran past one another, the French to the south, the English to the north, with the wind on the beam. These opposite courses were continued for half an hour, when Rodney for the second time came round to the port tack, and headed to the south. The result of this movement had been to bring the whole of the English force opposite the rear third or half of the French. Again the two fleets stood on together to the south for another hour. The English fleet had been slightly disordered in the course of these movements; this or that vessel was out of her place, the rear had to be ordered to make more sail to close the centre. By midday all was in order and Rodney hoisted the signal to bear down all together, and each to engage the ship opposite her on the enemy’s line.
The order was obeyed in a manner which threw Rodney into a paroxysm of rage. To him what ought to have been done was as clear as day. All his ships should have borne down together, so that the whole twenty-one would have come into action with a dozen or fifteen Frenchmen with every chance of crushing them before Guichen’s van could turn to his assistance. By ship opposite he meant the ship opposite at the moment, but what was self-evident to him was by no means so to his captains, nor to Parker, whose division was now leading. Brought up in the pedantic old school, and steeped in the orthodox faith that van should engage van, centre centre, and rear rear, they understood opposite ship to mean ship occupying the same relative position in the enemy’s line. The order to attack the rear they supposed only to apply to the movement made at nine o’clock. So when Rodney and the ships astern of him which followed the movements of their admiral turned west to fall on the French rear, the ships ahead of him, utterly forgetting the order to keep at a distance of two cables’ length from one another, and mindful only of the pedantic old theory, kept on along the French line, headed by the Stirling Castle, which went blindly on to put herself alongside the leading French ship miles off. Rodney’s careful formation fell utterly to pieces, and his scientifically prepared plan of attack was ruined. His force, instead of being concentrated on a part of the enemy, was scattered all along his line. In vain were signals hoisted on the flag-ship. They were not understood by men whose minds were clouded by preconceived notions—were perhaps not seen in the smoke gathering from the cannon.