There is, though, another justification, and of the amplest kind, for the presence on the roll of the British fleet of the name Formidable. This 'merely blustering adjective' has a meaning there that is all its own—a raison d'être not only for the Royal Navy but for all the world in that connection that is sui generis. The British fleet does not owe the name to any whim or fancy of a modern Admiralty First Lord. Vixere fortes ante Agamemnon—there have been famous Formidables before the present ship. Formidable, indeed, is one of our best 'trophy names'—a name that came into the British service as spoil of war, won from the enemy in very exceptional circumstances. It stands in a special sense as a memento of one of the most brilliant exploits in our annals—of that tremendous November afternoon battle of 1759, fought in a wild Atlantic storm amid the reefs of Quiberon Bay, on that historic occasion, so happily described in Mr. Henry Newbolt's stirring verse,[13] 'when Hawke came swooping from the west.'
'Twas long past noon of a wild November day
When Hawke came swooping from the west;
He heard the breakers thundering in Quiberon Bay,
But he flew the flag for battle, line abreast.
Down upon the quicksands roaring out of sight
Fiercely beat the storm-wind, darkly fell the night,
But they took the foe for pilot and the cannon's glare for light
When Hawke came swooping from the west.
One result of Hawke's swoop was, of course, the stopping of all French invasion schemes for the rest of the Seven Years' War. Henceforward there was no need to watch the southward beacons night after night; no need of more shore batteries at Brighton and elsewhere along the Sussex coast; no further need to cover the South of England with standing camps for Pitt's new militiamen to learn their drill in; no more need to shock the good ladies of Hampshire with the sight of bare-legged Highlanders marching to and fro.
The guns that should have conquered us, they rusted on the shore,
The men that would have mastered us, they drummed and marched no more;
For England was England, and a mighty brood she bore
When Hawke came swooping from the west.
The other result of Hawke's swoop was the Formidable—the French flagship Formidable—the sole trophy that the stormy weather allowed Hawke to bring off from the fight. The Royal Navy took over the fine prize, a magnificent two-decker of eighty guns, enrolled her name as it stood on the list of the British fleet, and in due course handed the name on from one successor to another, until we come in the end to our own fine steel-clad battleship, the Formidable that to-day graces
The proud Armado of King Edward's ships,
in the words of poor Kit Marlowe's 'mighty'—and prophetic—line.[14]
Then we have another justification, the most notable of all. The Formidable's name has acquired a new significance since the days of Hawke. To-day it has to the Royal Navy a more recent meaning. It stands on the roll of the fleet as the special memorial of another achievement, as a memento of another admiral's 'stricken field,' in special honour of Rodney's most famous feat of arms, of the great victory that has given Rodney his place in the history of the British Empire. On that day a Formidable was Rodney's flagship; the second ship of the name, the immediate successor of Hawke's great prize, our first British-built man-of-war Formidable.[15] 'If ever,' wrote Froude, 'the naval exploits of this country are done into an epic poem—and since the Iliad there has been no subject better fitted for such treatment or better deserving it—the West Indies will be the scene of the most brilliant cantos.' In at least one of those cantos Rodney's Formidable would be a central figure.
We now come directly to the place, time, and circumstances of the event, taking up the tale a little before the fighting actually opens.
