There were sixteen ships in the line between the Marlborough and the Formidable, each 200 yards apart (the length of a cable), and the men of Rodney's flagship had to wait some little time yet for their turn. Their eyes, though, had something to look at, for most of the ships ahead of them were full in their view meanwhile. What they saw was worth seeing.
The Arrogant, a veteran 74 of the Seven Years' War time, backed the Marlborough up; an exceptionally ugly customer for an enemy to tackle, for her guns were fitted with all the newest improvements,—locks, tubes, and sweep-pieces,—and her men knew how to make the best of them. Captain Douglas, watching the Arrogant from the Formidable, noted that he saw her firing three broadsides to the enemy's one—one broadside meeting the enemy as they came up; the second right into their ports as they passed; the third a slashing good-bye salute, training three-quarters aft into the Frenchmen's stern. Some of the enemy struck back savagely as the Arrogant went by, but the tough Suffolk oak of the old ship's timbers could take hard knocks, and the Harwich dockyard-men's work came through the hammering little the worse. The Alcide, Captain Charles Thomson, followed next, a British-built model of one of old 'Dreadnought' Boscawen's prizes, whose French name she had also taken; then the Nonsuch, Captain Truscott; and the Conqueror, Captain George Balfour, a gallant Scot who had won post-rank for an act of exceptional daring in battle five-and-twenty years before.
These five 74's headed the British fleet and 'broke the bowling.' They ranged forward alongside the French within pistol-shot, 'sliding down slowly,' as Captain Douglas, looking on from the Formidable's quarter-deck, described it. They passed parallel to the French and to leeward, on the opposite tack, from the ninth ship of the enemy to their rear ship, exchanging fire with every ship of the enemy, one after the other as each came by, until they had passed and overlapped the end of the French line. Forward they went, ship following ship, keeping exact station and each lashing out, broadside after broadside, into the enemy as they swept along, as fast as the powder could be brought to the guns.
Admiral Drake followed in the wake of the Conqueror, with the Princessa, an ex-Spanish two-decker, a 70-gun ship, but bigger than Hood's Barfleur, one of the prizes that Rodney had made in his moonlight battle with Langara off Cape St. Vincent that wild January midnight two years before when he was on his way to relieve Gibraltar. The big Prince George (Captain Williams), a giant 98-gun three-decker, the hardest hitter of the van squadron in weight of metal, seconded Drake.
Keppel's pet ship, the ever-ready old Torbay, came next in the line, with, astern of her, the Anson, a small 64, Captain William Blair—to-day, poor fellow, in his last fight. In the heat of the action a round-shot, sweeping some three feet above the deck, struck Captain Blair at the waist, smashing his body right in two and carrying half of it across the deck and up against the bulwarks on the farther side. The van squadron was completed by the Fame, 74, and the Russell, Captain James Saumarez, the famous admiral of later days, then a young post-captain twenty-five years old, whom a stroke of unexpected good luck a few weeks before had transferred from a small fireship to the quarter-deck of one of the best line-of-battle ships in Rodney's fleet.
Each ship as she reached the spot at which her immediate leader had turned put her helm up sharply and ranged along in the wake of the ship next ahead, firing into every Frenchman that she passed, keeping meanwhile her leader's three masts in one and checking her distance with the sextant. That was at the outset, as they came round and steadied into line alongside the enemy. As the firing became general the smoke, rolling heavily down from windward, smothered the British ships in a dense fog and blanketed them in, shutting out the view all round, except now and again as a glimpse ahead was caught in an occasional rift here and there.
Rodney's squadron followed Drake's without a break. The America, Captain Thompson, led them, a cable's length astern of the Russell. Her name is out of the Navy List now, but it had a meaning of its own in those days, commemorating as it did a former gift of a man-of-war to Great Britain by those colonists of North America who had become since then her deadliest foes.
The Hercules, 74, commanded by a 'character' of the day, Captain Henry Savage, came next. Her captain's doings that morning were of peculiar interest. Savage took his ship into action with two ensigns up, one nailed to the staff, the other at the peak, with the halyards so belayed that the flag could not easily be hauled down. Beyond a casual gun, he would not let a shot be fired until he had come right abreast of the French admiral. Then he opened with a full broadside into the Ville de Paris, every gun double-shotted, at less than 50 yards. Not thirty seconds elapsed between the first gun and the last, said the Hercules' first lieutenant. As the men reloaded, Captain Savage, who, a martyr to gout, had been sitting in an arm-chair on deck waving his hat and calling out uncomplimentary epithets to the Frenchmen as he passed each ship, forgetting his pain in his excitement, jumped on an arm chest and struck up a line of a song of the day—
Oh! what a charming thing's a battle!
Once she had passed the Ville de Paris there was no more holding back on board the Hercules. They fired as fast as the guns could be loaded and run out, using rammers that Captain Savage himself had invented for quick loading. 'Her side,' said the officers of the ship astern of the Hercules, 'was in a constant blaze.' Captain Savage, who had resumed his arm-chair, soon afterwards received a bad wound, and had to be taken to the cockpit. As he went below he told his officers 'to point between wind and water and sink the d—d rascals!' He returned on deck in a few minutes and sat the battle out bandaged up, fixed in his arm-chair, which was set by the ship's side in the gangway, and shouting out expletives as before. As the Hercules cleared the rear of the French fleet, Captain Savage luffed up directly into the wake of the enemy, at right angles to their line, and by way of a parting kick sent a raking last broadside crash into the rearmost French ship's cabin windows as she disappeared in the smoke.