As the Sceptre went astern, Rodney, with Blane at his elbow, walked out from the quarter-deck on to the starboard gangway at the side of the ship to get a better view. As he got there he saw another French ship nearing them. It was the Glorieux, reeling under the terrific punishment she had just undergone from the Duke's guns. Her captain, D'Escars, had been struck down, and the ship wrecked from end to end; left lying a log on the water, 'shorn,' in Blane's words, 'of all her masts, bowsprit, and ensign staff, but with the white flag nailed to the stump of one of the masts, breathing defiance as it were in her last moments.' According to the French accounts they nailed their colours to the mast as the Glorieux was approaching the Formidable, the operation affording opportunity for a fine little bit of heroic by-play. While they were nailing up the flag a sergeant of the Auxerrois regiment (a company of which was on board), Choissat by name, fastened a white cloth to his halberd and sprang on the bulwark rail and held it up, waving it defiantly. A bullet from either the Formidable or the Duke broke Choissat's right arm, whereupon the brave fellow caught the halberd with his left hand and held it up until the ship's flag had been secured. He lived through the fight and was given a commission for his heroism.
Rodney marked the oncoming of the Glorieux as the stricken vessel dropped slowly down on them. Then, a second later, seeing that the French seventy-four was drifting in such a way that she would brush close past them and almost collide, he turned abruptly to Dr. Blane. Both the Admiral's aides-de-camp were out of the way. 'Run down,' he told the doctor, 'and tell them to elevate their metal.' Blane went. He guessed the Admiral's meaning, thanks to Hudibras, a couplet from which came opportunely into his mind.
Thus cannon shoot the higher pitches,
The lower you let down their breeches.
'If this holds true,' says Dr. Blane, telling the story for himself, 'so must the converse of it, that is the muzzles must be lower by the elevation of the breeches. The Admiral's meaning could be no other than that of taking the enemy between wind and water.'[37] Blane hurried down and gave the order. In the interests of historic truth, in view of what immediately followed, it would have been well if he had not left the deck.
At the very moment that Rodney was sending Blane below, the wind suddenly shifted. It veered to the southward and headed the French fleet off, taking them all aback and throwing them out of order all along their line. It checked their way, and cast every ship round with her head to starboard, half-right as it were, setting the whole line en échelon. For the British, on the other hand, the shift of wind made things more favourable than before. It sent Rodney's ships briskly forward. Its effect was instantly apparent in the immediate neighbourhood of the Formidable. The mastless hull of the Glorieux drove down steadily on the Formidable. The ship next astern of her in the French line, the Diadème, a seventy-four, hung back and then swung round sharply at right angles, paying off on the wrong tack. A wide gap was made at once in the enemy's line, and just opposite the Formidable. What was to be done?
Ink enough to float the Formidable herself has been spilled over the incidents of the next three minutes on board the British flagship, and we cannot even now say that we know the true story. According to one officer, who, as a quarter-deck midshipman, was an eye-witness of what took place, but did not put pen to paper about it until half a century after the event, a highly dramatic—and in the interests of discipline not very edifying—scene followed, between Rodney personally and Sir Charles Douglas his flag-captain.
HOW THE FRENCH LINE WAS BROKEN
[No. 19 C is the Formidable. The centre one of the three French flagships is the Ville de Paris. No. 13 is the Bedford. No. 6 D is the Barfleur.]