The state of things on board was appalling, 'altogether terrible,' said Lord Cranstoun. The quarter-deck was 'covered with dead and wounded.... Between the foremast and main-mast, at every step he took,' Lord Cranstoun told Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, 'he was over his buckles in blood.'[47] Below, where the cattle (to provide the troops on board with meat) had been stalled between the guns, things were even more horrible, for 'they had suffered not less than the crew and troops from the effects of the cannon.' De Grasse himself, incidentally, gives an idea of the state to which the Ville de Paris had been reduced at the end. In his official report to Versailles on the battle he said, 'I was reduced to such a state that the enemy on the morning of the 13th, to strike the ship's pennant, were obliged to cut away the masts for fear, in sending a man to get at the pennant, all would go overboard or come down in a crash on deck.'
Immediately after the surrender of the Ville de Paris Rodney made the signal for the fleet to cease firing and bring-to. There was to be no pursuit. It was a decision for which Rodney has been bitterly criticised. He had, however, his reasons, and he put them in writing; but it was, all said and done, a very grave error of judgment on the part of the British leader. 'Come, come,' he is said to have exclaimed in reply to a suggestion that was made to him by Hood, that part of the fleet at any rate might follow up the enemy, 'we have done very handsomely!' It was not the old Rodney of the Eagle who said that, one must remember. Rodney in April 1782 was a man broken in health, racked with gout, a man grown prematurely old,—ten years, at least, older than his real age,—and utterly worn out after twelve anxious hours on deck under a burning sun. Before that, also, as Rodney himself said, he had had no proper rest for four nights. Most unfortunately, as it proved, Rodney underestimated the force of the smashing blow that he had dealt the enemy, and formed an entirely erroneous estimate of the condition of the ships that had escaped. He allowed himself to form a picture of their condition that was totally at variance with the facts, and did not think it wise to risk a pursuit in the dark. He made up his mind that the enemy had gone off 'in a collected body,' and that his own fleet had suffered more severe damage than was actually the case. There is no need here to press the matter further, or to recall Hood's bitter animadversions on his chief's breakdown, or what certain of the captains are said to have thought. Rodney was commander-in-chief and all responsibility for the safety of the British West Indies rested on his shoulders. Also his reasons for bringing-to commended themselves to him at the time.
The short tropical evening closed in, and darkness fell on the scene—the darkness of a sultry black night without moon or stars. Each ship, of course, had her poop lantern showing, and lights gleamed out through the ports of all as the working parties moved about between decks, busily engaged in cleaning up and taking temporary measures to clear away the marks of battle, as far as might be done in an hour or two, preparatory to turning-in for the night.
Yet before the wearied men could get to their hammocks one more event was to happen, to mark the dread closing of a tremendous day. Nor was it out of keeping with what had gone before. Towards nine o'clock, all of a sudden, a burst of roaring flame shot up from one of the French prizes, illuminating the sky and sea for many miles all round. De Vaudreuil and his fugitive fifteen, far away to northward by now, below the horizon, could see the reflection and guessed what it was. Bougainville, in the other direction, flying towards Curaçao, saw it too. The victim was the captured César. One of her own disorderly crew, it came out later, did the mischief. They had been as usual clapped under hatchways after the surrender, but had the hold to themselves. There the rabble—as on board the Ville de Paris, all bonds of discipline had ceased to exist with the striking of the flag—had broken into the spirit-room and held a wild orgy among themselves, regardless of consequences. A drunken French soldier, seeking for more drink with a pannikin in one hand and a naked light in the other, dropped the flaring candle into an open cask of ratafia. Who-o-o-f!!! Instantly the whole place was ablaze from end to end, and the flames leapt along in a flash from deck to deck throughout the ship. There was no checking them, and the splintered woodwork everywhere was in the best state to feed the fire. Out of mercy to the prisoners below the hatches were lifted off, and those who could escape given a chance. That, unfortunately, at the same time made things worse for the ship. The more sober of the Frenchmen joined the small British prize-crew of fifty-eight men and a lieutenant, and lent a hand to try and get the flames under. Half-a-dozen thought of their wounded captain, the Comte Bernard de Marigny, who was lying badly wounded in the cabin. These made their way into the cabin, and told De Marigny that the ship was expected every minute to blow up. 'So much the better,' was all the Captain replied, very quietly, according to French accounts, 'the English won't keep her! Shut my door, my friends, and leave me. Try and save yourselves!'[48] The British prize-crew—they were all from the Centaur—fought the fire heroically, and spared no efforts to beat the flames back, but in vain. The British lieutenant in command was seen at the last in the stern gallery giving his orders. All the César's boats had been knocked to pieces in the battle. Outside, all round, were the boats of the fleet lying on their oars, ready to save all they could, but, for various reasons, unable to get near the ship. One of the reasons has been specially recorded—the sharks. Again the sharks were on the spot, 'not yet glutted,' said Dr. Blane, 'with the carnage of the preceding day.' What the men on the boats saw and told the doctor, was, in Blane's words, 'too horrid to describe.' A solid belt of sharks surrounded the burning César, a closely packed mass of struggling, huge-girthed brutes, rolling and tumbling about all round, jostling one another and scraping their rough backs together as they plunged and wallowed about all over the surface. Attracted by the glare they had come crowding to the spot, 'every shark in those waters seemed to be there,' and swarmed thronging close round the vessel, surging up and snapping and tearing at the poor frenzied wretches who were clinging on alongside on fragments of spars and wreckage that had dropped overboard. One by one the sharks picked the poor fellows off. The boats meanwhile could not, dared not, force their way through. They could only look helplessly on and wait for the end:—
Watch the wild wreck; but not to save.
The end came between ten and eleven. The César, half burned to the water's edge, blew up with a dull heavy roar—'not a loud explosion,' notes an onlooker. Indeed there was not much powder left to blow up in the bravely defended ship's magazines. It was merely a belching up of flame and sparks, like the blowing out of the pinch of powder at the bottom of a squib or Roman candle; just enough to rend the remains of the hull apart and scatter its contents. Then all was black darkness. A few twinkling sparks high overhead caught the eye, as the burning fragments poised in mid-air and turned for the downward drop, followed by splashes in the sea all round, and here and there, out of sight,
A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony,
as some shark claimed its last victim, and then all was over. Silence and darkness fell once more on the heaving waters, and the boats pulled sadly and wearily back to their ships. Such was the tragedy of the César. A handful of survivors were picked up, though how they escaped is not stated. All were Frenchmen. Not one of the British prize-crew escaped.
Now at last Rodney's day was over: the 'Glorious Twelfth' reached its last hour in silence and passed away.