A small army of soldiers was at Fort Royal, as well as De Grasse's fleet. There were between five and six thousand troops there, waiting under canvas for the order to embark on board the men-of-war. Bouillé commanded them,—the Marquis de Bouillé, the conqueror of St. Kitts and Nevis and Montserrat and Dominica and St. Eustatius, 'tiger-spring Bouillé,'[21] though better known to fame, perhaps, for his share in the events of a later day, as Commandant-General of Metz and the 'last refuge of royalty.' Varennes, however, was a name that De Bouillé, possibly, had as yet not heard of. Postmaster Drouet still rode in the ranks of the Condé dragoons. Some of the smartest corps in the French service were there: Regiment de Foix, dashing d'Armagnac, Artillerie de Metz, Regiments de Béarn, de Touraine, and de Monsieur, red-coated Irishmen of the Walsh and Dillon corps, half a battalion of Royal Contois, two battalions of Auxerrois, brought from York Town with De Grasse, after having witnessed the march out of the surrendered British army. One of the most striking of the great paintings on the walls of the Galerie des Batailles at Versailles shows an aide-de-camp, a cocked-hatted, high-gaitered young dandy, garbed in Bourbon white with the mauve facings and silver lace of Auxerrois receiving orders from Washington just before the last attack. De Bouillé's division had already its place on paper as one of the wings of the 'Army of Jamaica.'
Now we turn to Gros Islet Bay and the British fleet. Rodney's ships lay at anchor to the south of Pigeon Island, off the north-west of St. Lucia, in the roadstead in front of Gros Islet Bay, about half-a-mile off shore, a stretch of deep water extending a mile and a half. The Gros Islet, from which the bay takes its name, was the old French name for Pigeon Island. There was also a village of the name on the shore opposite the island. Seven miles along the coast to the south was the carénage, where ships could be hove down and repaired; now called Castries, and an important port and naval station, destined, with the opening of the Panama Canal, to become the Valetta of the West Indies. The watering place for the fleet was at Trou Gascon in the bay.
Rodney's thirty-six sail of the line in Gros Islet Bay were thus made up: five three-deckers (four of 98 guns, Formidable, Barfleur, Prince George, and Duke, and one of 90, the Namur), and thirty-one two-deckers (twenty of them 74's, one a 70-gun ship, and ten 64's). They were as a rule older and slower vessels than the French ships: nearly a third of them, in fact, had seen service in the Seven Years' War. In guns the British fleet mounted 2620 pieces all told, against 2526 on the French side, but the enemy's metal was considerably the heavier. Most of De Grasse's ships carried 36-pounders (French weight, equivalent to 42-pounders by British reckoning), as against the 32-pounders that were Rodney's heaviest guns. According to the British Flag Captain, Sir Charles Douglas, the difference between the fleets in weight of metal worked out at 4396 lbs. (nearly two tons) in favour of the enemy. It made the French stronger, Douglas held, by 'the weight of metal of four 84's.' That was the difference on paper. In point of fact, certain details of equipment reversed the disparity. Most of Rodney's ships had their guns fitted with locks and priming-tubes, in place of the old port-fires and powder-horns which the French still used. Also, they had been supplied with certain devices for quickening the service of the guns, increasing their rate of fire, and giving them a wider arc of training on the broadside. All that gave Rodney a very real advantage in hard-hitting power, without counting the carronades[22] or 'smashers' that most of the British ships mounted as extra to their regulation armaments.
In all respects Rodney's fleet was in the very highest order, and its discipline and general smartness left little to be desired. Thanks to the energy and skill of Dr. Blane, Rodney's Physician of the Fleet, no previous British fleet in time of war perhaps had ever been so free from sickness. In some ships there was not a man unfit to go to quarters. The Ajax, to name one ship, had no sick list. In the Formidable, out of 900 men on board, only two were unfit for duty. Before leaving Plymouth, Dr. Blane had had Teneriffe wine supplied to the flagship instead of rum, together with molasses and pickled cabbages, and the dietary had had a marvellous effect on the health of the men. For the first four months of the commission there was not a single death from sickness.[23]
As we glanced at De Grasse's captains, so we may glance at the gallant fellows in whose hands rested the fate of the British Empire. They were of another class than the captains of the enemy. There were no counts or viscounts with long pedigrees and high-sounding romantic names among Rodney's captains. Few of them were of 'the offspring of the sons and daughters of fashion,' though of course some were men of birth and breeding. Rodney himself, a baronet and K.B. (distinctions won on his own account), was a man of family. Sir Samuel Hood, also a self-made baronet, was a Somersetshire parson's son. Rear-Admiral Francis Samuel Drake, the third in command, a descendant of the great Sir Francis of Elizabethan days, belonged to the ordinary country gentleman class—man for man, no doubt, as good as any nobleman of France, but as denizens of another world to a Lord Chamberlain or a master of the ceremonies. Among the captains, Lord Robert Manners, of the Resolution, was the Marquis of Granby's second son; the Hon. William Cornwallis, of the Canada, was a younger son of Earl Cornwallis; Captain Reynolds, of the Monarch, was heir-presumptive to the Ducie peerage; Captain Lord Cranstoun, a volunteer on board the Formidable, was a baron of the Scottish peerage. These four, with Sir Charles Douglas, the Captain of the Fleet, another self-made baronet (for war service), and Sir James Wallace, a knight, constituted, with the admiral and Hood, the social élite of Rodney's fleet—a list that hardly comes into comparison with De Grasse's little Versailles. The bulk of the British captains were the sons of ordinary folk, sons of squires and country parsons, and old naval officers to some extent, drawn from all over the three kingdoms—the sort of men that had officered the Royal Navy for the past hundred years, the men to whom Great Britain to-day owes her place among the nations. That, indeed, is literally the case. Also, not a few of those who to-day serve His Majesty King Edward on the quarter-deck are lineal representatives of Rodney's officers who in that April week of the year 1782 were in Gros Islet Bay, watching hour by hour for the Formidable to hoist the sailing-flags. It is an interesting instance of hereditary inclination—of how the naval spirit runs in families. Two-thirds of Rodney's captains, practically, are represented at the present hour in the Royal Navy by direct descendants. One has only to turn over the pages of the current Navy List to find Hoods and Inglefields and Parrys, and Graveses and Gardners, Fanshawes and Dumaresqs, a Buckner, a Blur, a Burnett, a Balfour, a Savage, a Symons, a Charrington, an Inglis, a Wallace, a Byron, a Cornish, a Truscott, a Saumarez, Knights and Wilsons, and Williamses and Wilkinsons and Thomsons, besides others, who either trace their descent directly from Rodney's captains or come of the same stock.
All in Gros Islet Bay were burning with anxiety to meet the enemy, absolutely confident of the result. About that, from the highest to the lowest, there were no two opinions. 'Their fate,' wrote Rodney himself in a letter on the 4th of April, 'is only delayed a short time, for have it they must and shall.' That was the common sentiment with all. The fleet was prepared to sail at an hour's notice. All leave was stopped. Not an officer or man was allowed out of his ship except on duty. Rodney meant that the blow, when it fell, should come, in the language of the prize-ring, as a 'knock-out' blow. It should be, to use Rodney's own words, 'the great event that must restore the empire of the seas to Great Britain.'
De Grasse was closely watched from hour to hour. Every movement at Fort Royal was signalled to the Formidable practically as it was made. A chain of Rodney's frigates reported everything that De Grasse did—a line of ships that stretched across the thirty miles of sea between Gros Islet Bay and the fleet in Fort Royal. To and fro they tacked day and night, patrolling ceaselessly, observing all that passed and sending word of it along the chain. Two line-of-battle ships, the Magnificent and the fast-sailing Agamemnon, stiffened the frigate line at the end nearest the enemy. Captain George Anson Byron, of the Andromache, was in command of the look-out squadron—'an active, brisk, and intelligent officer,' Rodney calls him, the second son of old John Byron, 'Foul Weather Jack.' A signal-station on Pigeon Island, set up near the edge of a steep cliff 340 feet high (nearly the height of Beachy Head), kept touch with the frigates and linked them with the battle fleet. From the look-out post the men on duty could see not only the nearer frigates of the chain, but also right across to the mountains of Martinique, and in clear weather catch the white glint of the topgallant sails of the more distant vessels in front of Fort Royal, on the far horizon and hull down. The admiral himself, we are told, used to land on Pigeon Island nearly every day, and go up to the signal station, where, under an awning made from a sail, he would sit in an arm-chair with his telescope at his eye, scanning the frigate line. On the site of Rodney's signal-station there now stands a small fort, called 'Fort Rodney,' and visitors are shown what is said to be the actual slab of rock on which the admiral's chair was placed.
On the 3rd of April Captain Byron sent in the message that the enemy's preparations for sea appeared complete. On the 5th he signalled across that he could see the French soldiers being embarked on board the men-of-war. The fateful hour was on the point of striking. Then the news that Rodney wanted came. Just before eight on the morning of Sunday, the 8th of April, the signal was seen flying at the mast-head of the nearest of the frigates: 'THE ENEMY ARE COMING OUT OF PORT.'
The whole fleet was at sea, says Dr. Blane, 'in a little more than two hours.' In rapid succession the Formidable signalled, first to recall all boats and watering parties on board their ships at once, then for the fleet to 'Prepare to sail.' Following on that, at nine o'clock, according to the Formidable's log, the signal was made—'Prepare for battle!' Before half-past ten all was ready. The Formidable now loosed her main-topsail and fired a gun; to prepare to weigh anchor. That done, down dropped the foretopsail, and off went a second gun—'Weigh!' A quarter of an hour later—