Chandernagore, of course, is nowadays a French possession, a tiny territory of three and a half square miles, with a railway station on the line to Calcutta, where very few people ever get out. It was restored to France six years after Admiral Watson took it, for no particular reason it would appear, except that there had been a General Election in England, and the new Ministry was desirous of reversing the policy of its predecessors. Our beaten enemies got back almost everything that the valour of our sailors and soldiers had won for England, in order that the Treasury Bench might score a point in party politics. But we for our part have no right to throw stones. We of the present day have seen much the same thing happen elsewhere. Chandernagore has been twice retaken since 1763, and twice given back. It was finally handed back to France in 1816, after the Napoleonic War, the Foreign Office being under the impression—so, at any rate, the story goes—that it was one of the West India islands!
IV
BOSCAWEN’S BATTLE:—
THE TAKING OF THE TÉMÉRAIRE
Over the seas and far away
“Old Dreadnought” steers to his fight to-day!
One of the best known of all our man-of-war names reappears on the roll of the British fleet in the name Téméraire, now borne by one of our new giant 18,000-ton battleships of the Dreadnought type. This is the story of how it came to be a British battleship name in the first place, the story of the act of war which in the sequel led to that historic man-of-war the “Fighting” Téméraire figuring on another day among the ships of Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar, to fight there as the Victory’s chief supporter in the fiercest of the fray.
How we came to have a Téméraire in the British Navy the name of course bears on its face. It was originally borne by one of Louis the Fourteenth’s men-of-war, and at the date of its adoption by capture into the British service, in 1759—“The Wonderful Year”—had been honourably known in the French Navy for upwards of ninety years. The first Téméraire to sail the seas was so named, it would appear, by the Grand Monarque himself, the name being appointed to a man-of-war of fifty-two guns, built by contract in Holland for the French service, in the year 1668, when a war with England seemed at hand. King Louis, it is said, further appointed to the Téméraire on her naming, as a special and distinctive figure-head, an elaborately carved and gorgeously coloured effigy of himself in his celebrated “Lion’s Mane” wig, sworded and spurred and wearing a military just-au-corps tunic of cloth of gold over a scarlet vest with crimson breeches and crimson stockings—the orthodox attire of a French sea officer of the Grand Corps.
This first French Téméraire was a ship that the British Navy of her time saw something of. She formed one of the men-of-war present with the allied French squadron which played so very peculiar a part when attached to the Duke of York’s fleet in the battle of Solebay in 1672, and in the same way also she was present at Prince Rupert’s three drawn battles with De Ruyter in the following year. As an enemy a few years later, the first French Téméraire fought against us both at Beachy Head and in the battle off Cape Barfleur, after which the Téméraire escaped and found refuge under the harbour batteries of St. Malo.
“The Rash” is what an official return on the French Navy, presented to Parliament on the 9th of February, 1698, calls the Téméraire, in accordance with the custom then in vogue of translating foreign men-of-war names appearing in British official documents. It seems a curious disguise for the name Téméraire perhaps, although even then it is hardly so grotesque as the names under which some of the Téméraire’s consorts figure in various House of Commons returns: “The Without Danger,” for instance, for Le Sans Pareil; “The Undertaker” or “The Understanding” (as two different official lists give it) for L’Entreprenante, another ship; “The Jolly” for Le Joli; “The Fire” for Le Fier; “The Fiddle” for La Fidelle, a frigate; the “Turkish Lady” for another frigate, La Turquoise, and so on.
Two years after Barfleur—on the 28th of November, 1694—a crippled French man-of-war was met with, a few miles to the south of the Lizard, by the British man-of-war Montagu. She had been dismasted in a storm out in the Atlantic and was nearly waterlogged and sinking; and after a few shots in reply to the Montagu’s challenging gun hauled her colours down. The enemy’s ship was the “Timmeraire, of fifty-six guns,” in the words of the Montagu’s log. They found it impossible to save the prize, either to rig jury masts or to take her in tow, as the weather came on thick and stormy, and in the end cleared the crew out, and on the 3rd of December abandoned the ship and set her on fire. That was the end of the first French Téméraire.