Rodney

by David Hannay

When the battle had lasted about an hour, and the English van had almost reached the French rear, their admiral thought it was time to turn to windward, and hoisted the order to do so twice. But the orders could not possibly be obeyed. The French ships were yard-arm to yard-arm with the English, and if they had tacked now would have been raked and rendered helpless. Many of the ships cannot even have seen the signals in the fog of smoke now hanging over both fleets. France had to “undergo her fate.” Grasse bore on to the south, and at about nine the English van had passed the last ship of his rear. On emerging from the rolling masses of smoke the captains looked eagerly back for the signals at the towering mast-head of the Formidable. As they looked they saw a great three-decker heading north out of the cloud and the flames. For a moment they thought the French admiral had doubled back on them, but as the three-decker cleared the smoke they saw the cross of St. George, and knew that the Formidable had burst through the French line to windward.

The movement had not been premeditated by Rodney, and the signal to engage to leeward was still flying when he passed to windward. The decision to depart from the old routine, according to which the English fleet would have passed along the French and then have tacked back on it—that decision which may be said to have affected the whole immediate future of England—was sudden, was taken on the spur of the moment, was equally unexpected by victor and vanquished. So much is certain; but the exact circumstances under which it was done, and what share of the credit ought to fall to whom, is the subject of the controversy spoken of in the note at the beginning of this chapter. The courteous reader is asked to remember that the incidents now about to be narrated have been most diversely told, and still more diversely interpreted.

A glance at the list of ships given above will show that the Formidable was exactly in the middle of the English line, being the eighteenth of the thirty-six men-of-war in it. As the French van bore in upon ours she was engaged with each of their ships in succession. The fleets were slipping slowly along, and it was well on for ten o’clock before the Formidable passed the eighteenth vessel in the French line. She had gone close to them all, firing as soon as her guns could be trained forward to meet, and as long as they could be trained aft to follow, each foe as she defiled past. Then between each bout of fire there would be a pause as the Formidable came opposite the vacant space between the ships in the French line, and having sent her last broadside after one was training it forward to meet the next comer. It must have been at a little before half-past nine that Rodney and Grasse, whose ship was the fifteenth in the French line, saluted each other with the cannon of their three-deckers. Up to now there had been nothing to distinguish this from the ordinary sea-fights of the eighteenth century save the number of the ships engaged and the closeness of the engagement.

A chair had been placed on the quarter-deck of the Formidable for the Admiral, and he rested on it except when he was walking through the cabins under the poop, to the gallery astern, from which he could watch the ships of his line behind him. On the quarter-deck with him were several whose names must not be passed over. Sir Charles Douglas was there with his aides—little middies—of whom one, Charles Dashwood, a boy of thirteen, is associated more closely than his seniors at the time would have thought possible with the memories of the victory. Near the wheel stood Frederick Thesiger, he who afterwards carried Nelson’s letter to the Regent of Denmark after the battle of the Baltic. Thesiger had completed his time as midshipman, and was waiting for his lieutenant’s commission. He had been chosen on the recommendation of Captain Symonds to stand by the wheel and see that the quartermasters executed orders punctually. Gilbert Blane, not being one of the medical staff of the ship, employed himself during the early stage in helping to provide work for the French doctors. He worked at a gun in the fore-cabin till he was tired.

It was thirsty work fighting in the thick pall of sulphurous smoke in which the gunpowder soon wrapped a ship. Rodney, in one of his turns through the cabins, called one of the middies and told him to mix a tumbler of lemonade. The middy went to work, and, having nothing more handy for the purpose, stirred the brew up with the hilt of his dirk. “Child, child,” said the Admiral, “that may do for the midshipmen’s mess. Drink that lemonade yourself, and send my steward here”—which order the middy obeyed with alacrity.

When eighteen of the Frenchmen had gone by, each carrying away marks of the Formidable’s broadside, the Admiral was standing on the quarter-deck, and with him was Gilbert Blane. The high bulwarks on either side, and the hammocks stacked across the front of the quarter-deck in a barricade, shut in the view. Rodney wished to take a look at the French line, and, accompanied by Blane, stepped out on the starboard gangway. They had just passed the Sceptre, and leaning over the rails of the gangway they saw the Glorieux, seventy-four, rolling down on them. She had just taken the fire of Captain Alan Gardner in the Duke, ninety-eight, a splendidly-efficient three-decker, and was reeling from the shock. Her captain, the Vicomte d’Escars (a name it is now thought correct to spell Des Cars), a gentleman of the house of Fitzjames, had been killed, and hurled overboard to the sharks. His lieutenant, Trogoff de Kerlessi, had nailed the white flag with the golden lilies to the stump of a mast. Rodney and Blane saw the Frenchmen on the upper-deck throwing away rammers and sponges, and running from the guns. A glance showed Rodney that the wind was forcing the Glorieux down on him, and that she was almost about to touch. His broadsides were being aimed low, but not sufficiently low for that. She had enough, but she must be crushed, and knocked out of the French line. “Now,” said Rodney to the doctor, “comes the fight for the body of Patroclus.” He looked round for a messenger. None was at hand, and he turned to Blane, saying, “Run down and tell them to elevate their metal.” The phrase was obscure to the doctor in spite of his experience as a gunner, but Hudibras came to his help. He remembered that it is the nature of guns that, “the higher are their pitches the lower they let down their breeches.” He ran down with the order—which meant that the muzzles of the guns were to be depressed to fire a sinking broadside—and so deprived posterity of an admirable witness of what happened on the Formidable’s quarter-deck during the next few minutes.

In these minutes was taken the decision which gave its exceptional and vital importance to the battle. While Rodney and Blane were speaking in the gangway, or just before, there had come a shift in the wind which affected the southern half of the two fleets simultaneously but diversely. It was one of those currents of air common enough in the neighbourhood of land, and it came from the south-east, striking on the bows of the French and the sterns of the English. Our vessels going before the wind had only to trim their sails a little to keep their place. But it threatened to take the French aback, to blow right ahead of them, and stop their way. To avoid this they were compelled to turn to the right, which had the effect of throwing them into what the French call a chequer, we a bow and quarter line—that is to say, that instead of following one another in a line, they were suddenly spun round into the position of the half-closed lathes of a venetian blind. The already existing confusion in the French line was immensely increased, and a great gap appeared just astern of the Glorieux, which was now right on the starboard bow of the Formidable, caused probably by the fact that the Diadème, the next succeeding Frenchman, was forced across the bows of the English flag-ship.

Sir Charles Douglas was at this moment leaning on the hammocks in the front of the quarter-deck, and he saw the evidence of the existing confusion in the French line. That he realised the whole extent of it we need not believe, but he saw the gap, and he saw that by passing through it we might cut the French rear off from the centre and put it between two fires. He jumped down from the hammocks and (so Dashwood told the story in later years) asked his little aide, “Dash, where is Sir George?”—“I think he is in the cabin, sir,” was the answer. Both turned aft and came face to face with the Admiral, who was just stepping out of the gangway. Sir Charles went up to him, and, taking off his hat, pointed out the gap in the French line to Rodney, urging him to steer through it. For a moment the Admiral hesitated. He did not like to “have things sprung on him” at any time, and now it behoved him to think. It was very well for the captain of the fleet to recommend the manœuvre; he would be covered by the authority of his Admiral. For Rodney, who would have to bear the responsibility for the consequences, it was a very serious step indeed. He had served under Mathews, and had not forgotten the fate which overtook that officer for departing from the consecrated rules of battle. His first impulse was to say no, and he did. “I will not break my line, Sir Charles,” was his answer. In his eager conviction that he was right Douglas pressed the Admiral again, and even so far forgot himself as to actually give the order to port to the quartermasters. A fierce reminder of their respective positions from Rodney stopped him before the wheel had moved. Then, as we may well suppose, instinctively feeling the indecency of a wrangle, the two men turned from one another for a moment. The break in the dispute calmed both. They turned and faced one another near the wheel. Douglas respectfully implored Rodney to take his advice. Reflection had shown Rodney that his subordinate was right, and with a wisdom and magnanimity which have been strangely distorted, and a courtesy which has been wondrously misunderstood, he told Douglas to do as he pleased. At once the order to port was repeated. Dashwood was sent flying down with the needful directions to the lieutenants in the batteries. The Formidable swung round to starboard, and cut through the French line, pouring her broadside into the Glorieux to right and the Diadème to left as she went.

When he had given his consent to the change in the course of the Formidable, Rodney at once went aft to the stern-walk, to see whether the ships behind were following. There were then no means of signalling a new order suddenly, and the old order to engage to leeward was still flying. If his captains behaved as others had done in the fight with Guichen on April 17th two years before, if they stuck to the pedantic old rules, the Formidable might find herself alone to windward of the French. Happily a very different spirit prevailed now, and Captain Inglis of the Namur, the next ship astern to the Formidable, looking to the spirit and not the letter, followed his Admiral through the gap, though the signal to engage to leeward had not been hauled down. He was himself followed by Cornwallis in the Saint Albans, Dumaresq in the Canada, Charrington in the Repulse, and Fanshawe in the Ajax. These vessels filed past the Glorieux, reducing her to a wreck. Captain Inglis, looking after her as she dropped astern of him, saw her almost blown out of the water by the fire of the Saint Albans. By this movement all the eleven ships of Vaudreuil’s division were cut off from the other nineteen, and forced to turn off to the west. Captain Alan Gardner of the Duke, the ship next ahead of the Formidable, finding that the Diadème had stopped the way of the French ships astern of her, and was in a confused tangle with them, spontaneously did as his Admiral had just done—ported his helm and passed to windward, firing right and left into the bewildered enemy.

In the meantime the French line had been cut in a second place. The last ship of the English centre division was the Bedford, seventy-four, in which Commodore Affleck had his broad pennant flying. The Bedford had sailed along the French line close in the now dense smoke of battle, which would be particularly thick in the rear of the English line. As it was to leeward the smoke of both fleets would be rolled on our ships. Suddenly the Bedford found that there was no enemy to windward of her. She had, in fact, in the fog of gunpowder smoke passed through another gap in the enemy’s formation, caused by the shift of the wind to the south-east. Affleck stood on, followed by the twelve ships of Hood’s division. The Frenchman astern of which they passed was the César, the twelfth in the line. As the Glorieux was the nineteenth, it will be seen that seven French ships in the centre were cut off from their van and rear alike. These seven—the Dauphin Royal, seventy; Languedoc, eighty; Ville de Paris, one hundred and four; Couronne, eighty; Eveillé, sixty-four; Sceptre, seventy-four; and Glorieux, seventy-four—were huddled into a mass and torn to pieces by the fire of the Formidable, and the ships astern of her as far as the Ajax, which was poured into them from starboard, while thirteen of our ships, from the Bedford to the Royal Oak, were cannonading them from the port side. By eleven the last ship of the English rear had passed the César. Rodney had cleared the French line before. Our van under Drake had cleared the French rear, the sportive Captain Savage of the Hercules luffing to rake the last Frenchman—the Pluton, seventy-four, commanded by a very brave and skilful officer named D’Albert de Rions—as he cleared her. Then, all our ships being up to windward and out of the smoke, we could look back, as the wind scattered it and rolled it to the west—could look and see such a spectacle as no British seaman had seen in this war so far.