At a quarter-past one in the afternoon the Foudroyant ran a red flag up to the foretopgallant mast-head.[4] Apparently it was meant as a signal to her nearest consort, the ship that the Revenge and Berwick were in pursuit of, L'Orphée, to hoist her colours and commence firing. As the Monmouth as yet was out of gunshot, three or four miles distant, the Foudroyant had no need for the moment to hoist her own colours—nor did she show any until towards four o'clock, when the Monmouth had at length begun to come within range. Then, exactly at six minutes to the hour, as an eye-witness notes, the French flag was displayed on the Foudroyant's ensign staff, and a commodore's broad pennant at the main.
The Monmouth's men had not long to wait.
On the stroke of four o'clock a spurt of flame leapt from one of the stern-chase ports of the Foudroyant, and as the smoke blew away to leeward the boom of a heavy gun came over the waters towards the Monmouth. It was the first shot. The ball splashed in the water not far off, and then the Foudroyant fired a second shot—followed quickly by a third. The enemy had got the range. That, too, was enough for Captain Gardiner. His heavier guns could at least carry as far as the Foudroyant's guns, and without waiting longer the Monmouth's bow-chasers took up the game. 'Soon after being in gunshot of our chase,' says Lieutenant Carkett, the first lieutenant of the Monmouth, in his journal, 'she, having up French colours, began to fire her stern-chase at us, which we soon after returned with our bow-chase, and continued for about an hour, then ceased firing as she did, except a single gun now and then.'[5]
By this time, about five o'clock, the wind had fallen very light, but the Monmouth still continued to gain steadily on her opponent. She was single-handed. The Swiftsure and the Hampton Court were hull down on the horizon, though they were still following with all sail set. The rest of the fleet was quite out of sight.
Just before the Foudroyant began firing, Captain Gardiner, as we are told, called all hands aft. His address to them was brief, but what he said was to the point. 'That ship has to be taken, my lads, above our match though she looks. I shall fight her until the Monmouth sinks.' Then they piped down and returned to quarters.
A little before this, while pacing up and down the quarter-deck with Lieutenant Campbell, a young army officer from Gibraltar who was on board in charge of a small detachment of soldiers (600 men from the Gibraltar garrison had been lent to Admiral Osborn to assist on deck in ships that were short-handed), he had said to the young officer, pointing to the Foudroyant ahead of them: 'Whatever happens to you and me, that ship must go into Gibraltar.'
In that spirit Captain Gardiner took the Monmouth into action as the evening began to close in—
Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit,
And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap.
Captain Gardiner had a worthy antagonist. The Marquis du Quesne-Menneville, whose broad pennant flew at the Foudroyant's mast-head that day, had the reputation of being as able an officer as any in the French service. No braver man ever wore the bleu du Roi. And he commanded a man-of-war that was, by common consent, considered the finest ship in all King Louis's navy. Only a short time before this a French officer, a prisoner of war, in conversation with one of his captors, had said of the Foudroyant: 'No single ship in the world can take her, not even your new Royal George! She can fight all to-day, and to-morrow, and the next day, and still go on fighting!' The Foudroyant's weight of metal, indeed, was heavy enough to have sent the Monmouth to the bottom at a single discharge. M. du Quesne, however, did not think fit to let the Monmouth come up alongside. He would not venture to bring-to and accept the Monmouth's challenge because of the Swiftsure and the Hampton Court. They were a long way off, several hours distant, but they were to him, as far as the Foudroyant was concerned, an enemy 'in being,' and he kept on before the wind.