Captain Buckner's Prothée, a 64, taken from the French two years before, followed the Hercules in the line, and after her came the smart Resolution, 74. The captain of the Resolution, Lord Robert Manners, was the first on board her to fall. A round-shot struck him down, smashing his left leg and injuring the right badly, and at the same moment a heavy splinter fractured his right arm. Lord Robert was carried down to the cockpit, where it was found necessary to amputate his left leg, the heroic young officer—he was only twenty-four and chloroform or anæsthetics of any kind were as yet unknown—'making jocular remarks on the operation with a smiling countenance during its most painful steps.'[34] Captain Manners' injuries unfortunately proved mortal. He seemed to be getting better, and was on his way home in the frigate that carried Rodney's despatches, when mortification suddenly set in, and he was dead within twenty-four hours. 'I would rather have lost two seventy-fours than Lord Robert Manners,' King George is reported to have said when His Majesty received the news of the death. A monument to him, conjointly with Captains Bayne of the Alfred (killed on the 9th) and Blair of the Anson, was erected by order of Parliament in Westminster Abbey. Another brave fellow on board the Resolution, as the ship's surgeon related, was a seaman whose name history has not preserved. He was standing by his gun as the ship sheered abreast of De Grasse's flagship. The gun was all ready and just going to fire when a shot came in at the port and took his leg off at the knee. As quick as thought the man pulled off his neckcloth and tied his leg above the stump. The next instant he seized his shot-off limb and thrust it into the muzzle of the gun, which went off two seconds later. 'My foot,' shouted the man exultantly, 'is the first to board the Ville de Paris!' Such was the spirit in which Rodney's tars went into the fight that day.
MONUMENT OF THE THREE CAPTAINS—BLAIR, BAYNE, AND LORD ROBERT MANNERS—IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY
The big Duke, of 98 guns, 'a splendidly efficient three-decker,' with a large effigy of 'Butcher' Cumberland of Culloden fame, in the war-paint of a British general, at her bows for the ship's figure-head, came on in the wake of the Resolution.[35] Her captain was Alan Gardner, the Lord Gardner of later days, an officer and seaman worthy of such a ship. There was no more efficient man-of-war in Rodney's line than the Duke, nor one more perfectly equipped, not excepting the Formidable herself. And her men were worthy of their captain and their ship. Captain Gardner had the honour of leading Rodney himself into the battle as the flagship's 'second ahead.' The Formidable came into action next immediately astern of the Duke.
The Formidable fired her first gun, by the ship's log, exactly at eight minutes after eight o'clock: it was just as she was opposite the fifth ship from the French van. The enemy had already opened fire on the British flagship, 'in stemming towards them,' but without drawing Rodney's fire until he got closer, when the admiral returned it 'by giving some little elevation to his guns to good effect.' Rodney stood on in his place in line until he had come almost abreast of the ninth French ship. At that point, within pistol-shot of the enemy, the Formidable put up her helm and swung over to port to follow her consorts ahead. A smashing broadside of round-shot into the nearest of the Frenchmen announced that the British flagship had begun, and with that the Formidable's men settled to their morning's work, 'keeping up,' as Captain Douglas bore witness, 'a most unsupportable, quick, and well-directed fire.'
As they rounded-to alongside the French fleet, coming bows on towards them, they plunged abruptly into the dense fog-bank of smoke that hung heavily along the firing lines, clinging thickly over all, sluggish and inert and almost opaque, blurring everything out except quite close at hand. For those on board the Formidable it was like passing at a step from a sunny street into a cellar, a transition in the blinking of an eye from a radiant April morning to the gloom and darkness of November midnight. On deck, in the open, the dark haze that shrouded everything in was at times impenetrable. The ship had to grope her way forward blindfold, steering, actually, by the flashes of the Duke's guns, which kept up 'a most dreadful fire.' When now and then the smoke lifted or thinned a little, it became possible to catch a glimpse of the upper canvas of some approaching enemy in the act of nearing them, and fire at her as she came up, but for great part of the time they had to fire blindly or by guess work, unable to make out anything at all until an enemy suddenly loomed up close at hand, right abreast. Then a blaze of fire and the enemy had gone, disappeared, swallowed up in the smoke.
Below, between decks, for most of the time they were worse off. Not the faintest gleam of light came in through the ports—only smoke, pouring back into the ship with every discharge of the guns, thick and suffocating, blotting out everything from sight and filling every corner of the ship with hot sulphurous fumes. Except close underneath the horn battle-lanterns, that swung overhead above the guns and threw a weak glimmer on the white glistening shoulders of the seamen—as they fought their pieces, stripped to the buff and dripping with sweat, naked except for their breeches, tugging and swaying with bent backs at the training tackle, barefooted, for the decks, though sanded down, soon got slippery—all was impenetrable darkness, ink black. The din below was fearful, incessant, deafening, with the reverberating crashes from the firing; the continuous trundling roll and thumping to and fro of the heavy gun-carriages, flung about by main force backwards and forwards as the guns were run in and out; the rattle and clatter of gear; the hoarse shoutings of orders. Now and again a sudden terrific crash, mingled with the harsh rending noise of splintering timber, would shake the ship's frame from end to end and overpower every other sound for the moment, as an enemy's broadside beat furiously against the stout oak planking of the ship's sides, followed by yells of agony from somewhere in the dark within the ship, and the gruff abrupt 'Close up there! Close up!' from the captains of the guns, signifying that some poor fellows had gone down.
