How things stood on board the Monmouth they knew before the night was out. Captain Gardiner was the only officer who had fallen. The four lieutenants of the ship had escaped without a scratch, as had the Monmouth's two marine officers and Lieutenant Campbell. It was otherwise, unfortunately, among the men. The casualties between decks amounted to upwards of 24 per cent of the entire ship's company. The figures as officially returned were—29 killed and 81 wounded—110 altogether. Not a boat was left that could swim; the mizen-mast had been shot right away, smashed through close above the deck; the main-mast, riddled with holes, was tottering; every one of the sails had to be stripped from its yard and new sails bent; most of the rigging was lying in tangled heaps about the decks.
In the Foudroyant, the prize-crew that was placed in charge had their work cut out for them in looking after prisoners below and stopping leaks and dangerous shot-holes. The deadly shooting of the Monmouth had in parts almost rent the Foudroyant open. More than seventy shot-holes through the hull were counted, low down, at or near the water-line. All over the hull, more than a hundred shot-holes were to be seen, gaping holes with jagged and splintered edges; and more shots than one had gone through some of the holes. Some of the Monmouth's shots had even gone right through from side to side, leaving enormous rents in the Foudroyant on the unengaged side of the ship where they had smashed their way out. To give an idea of the terrible hammering that the Foudroyant underwent, it may be stated that the repairs to the hull at Portsmouth took eight months to execute, at an expense of £7000, just half the total sum at which the Admiralty Prize Court valued the whole ship for purchase from her captors. As far as could be made out, the Foudroyant's casualties amounted to 190 officers and men killed and wounded; but the French practice of throwing the dead overboard in action as they fell, made it impossible to arrive at the exact figures.
As well as could be managed on the spot, the two ships were cleared of wreckage and put in sea-going trim, and at noon next day, the 1st of March, they set out to rejoin Admiral Osborn, the Swiftsure towing the Foudroyant, and the Monmouth under her own canvas, under jury-rig, with the Hampton Court close by in case of need.
They found the admiral with the rest of the fleet off Carthagena. With them was the French Orphée, which the Revenge and Berwick had run down and taken within two miles of Carthagena mole. M. de la Clue had missed his chance entirely. He had not stirred, although with the two men-of-war that had got in the night before he had had nine ships of the line, and the British admiral, with five of his ships detached in chase of Du Quesne's squadron, only seven. All that the French admiral had done the livelong day on the 28th had been to man and arm his boats and send them down to paddle about aimlessly at the mouth of the harbour.
The Monmouth and Revenge were ordered to Gibraltar to repair, accompanied by their two prizes. On the way the dead of the Monmouth and the remains of Captain Gardiner were committed to the deep, off Cape de Gata, at half-past three on Saturday afternoon, the 4th of March. All four ships hove-to and half-masted their ensigns during the funeral service, and the bodies were passed overboard to the booming of the Monmouth's minute-guns—his ship's last tribute to her dead captain. No tablet exists to Arthur Gardiner's memory in Westminster Abbey or elsewhere; but that, after all, matters little.
There is in the lone, lone sea
A spot unmark'd but holy,
For there the gallant and the free
In his ocean bed lies lowly.
Down, down beneath the deep,
That oft in triumph bore him,
He sleeps a sound and peaceful sleep,
With the salt waves dashing o'er him.
He sleeps serene and safe
From tempest and from billow,
Where storms that high above him chafe
Scarce rock his peaceful pillow.
The sea and him in death
They did not dare to sever;
It was his home when he had breath,
'Tis now his home for ever.
Sleep on, thou mighty dead,
A glorious tomb they've found thee,
The broad blue sky above thee spread,
The boundless ocean round thee.
No vulgar foot treads here,
No hand profane shall move thee,
But gallant hearts shall proudly steer
And warriors shout above thee.
And though no stone may tell thy name, thy worth, thy glory,
They rest in hearts that love thee well, they grace Britannia's story.[7]
At Gibraltar the Foudroyant was measured and found to be 12 feet longer than the Royal George. She was berthed alongside the mole with the Monmouth lying next her, and an officer present graphically describes the disparity of size between them in these terms: 'It was like the Monument overlooking a ninepin!'
The French prisoners were still on board the Foudroyant. They went to England in the ship, most of them to be shut up in Porchester Castle, the great war-prison of the South of England in those times. The visitor to the ruins of Porchester Castle to-day, if he explores in a certain part of the keep, will find at one spot, rudely cut in the wall, a string of French names, under a sort of scroll similarly carved roughly in the stonework, with the legend 'Vive le vaisseau le Foudroyant—1758,' the handiwork, it can hardly be doubted, of some of these very men. The Marquis du Quesne and his first and second captains came to England by themselves, in the Gibraltar frigate, and were interned on parole at Northampton. The other surviving officers of the ship were paroled at Maidstone.
All England rang with Arthur Gardiner's name when, in the first week in April, the Gibraltar arrived at Spithead with Admiral Osborn's despatches, and the London Gazette told the story of how Gardiner had died 'as he was encouraging his people and inquiring what damage they had sustained between decks.' Everywhere, we are told, the news of the taking of the 'mighty Foudroyant' and how it was done excited the liveliest enthusiasm. Inn signboards were repainted with pictures of the fight, a favourite way with our eighteenth-century forefathers of commemorating great events; and a ballad was composed about it which was set to a popular tune of the day and sung all over the country. One of the signboards so painted was in existence a very few years ago,—and may be so still,—at Lostwithiel in Cornwall, bearing a representation of two old-fashioned men-of-war in desperate combat, with the legend 'The memorable battle of the Monmouth and Foudroyant.'[8] Of the ballad and its music no trace is to be found, although some lines on the fight, apparently contemporary, are in print. One can, though, hardly fancy them being set to any sort of tune, still less anybody trying to sing them. Their shortcomings as verse too are obvious, but one must remember that it was the period when the Poet Laureate was Colley Cibber. There was no market in the days of George the Second for what our present Poet Laureate calls 'the higher kind of poetry.'
STANZAS