During the hottest part of the engagement between the Marlborough and the Vengeur, the former ran the latter aboard to windward, her anchor hooking the French ship’s fore shrouds and channels. The master of the English ship wanted to cut her adrift, but Captain Harvey exclaimed, “No! we have got her, and we will keep her.” “The ships then swung broadside to broadside, and both paid off before the wind, locked together, dropped out of line, and engaged furiously. So close were these ships locked that the Marlborough was unable to open her midship lower-deck ports, which were consequently blown off by her eager crew, etc.”
The flag-ship, the Queen Charlotte, as in duty bound, set a brilliant example to the rest of the fleet. On the 29th of May, when she broke through the French line, she was followed, gallantly, by the Leviathan and Bellerophon, commanded by Captains Lord Seymour, Conway and Hope, and both these ships were most conspicuous in the whole engagement.
The foremast of the Leviathan was crippled, and in danger of falling, and Lord Howe, observing this, stood to her rescue. Lord Seymour, in his own journal, says, “quarter before four; being very near, and pointing into the body of the French fleet, which had then appeared, to succor their rear, the Queen Charlotte wearing, we did the same, but not without exposing ourselves for a long time to be raked by the French Admiral and three other ships, which had stood back to the relief of two of their ships that were in danger of being cut off by our fleet.
“On this occasion the gallant conduct of the Queen Charlotte, in coming down to draw the enemy’s fire from the Leviathan, has made too strong an impression upon my mind, and is too much the subject of general applause on board of her, for me to resist expressing my sense of it, and offering, in the name of all the officers, as well as my own, this feeble though grateful tribute of our admiration of our noble chief, Lord Howe.”
But the day most glorious for Howe was the 1st of June, when he broke through the French line again, brushing the ensign of Admiral Villaret Joyeuse’s flag-ship on the one side, and grazing, on the other, the Jacobin’s mizzen shrouds with her jib-boom.
Collingwood, eleven years after, in the battle of Trafalgar, did much the same thing, in the Sovereign, when he cut the line, and grazed the stern of the Santa Anna.
Had not the Queen Charlotte’s fore-top-mast been shot away, and the main-top-mast gone over the side just as the French Admiral’s fire had about ceased, there is little doubt he would have captured the French flag-ship; but she made off to leeward, and it was impossible for the Charlotte to follow her. The French flag-ship’s hull was completely knocked to pieces, and her battery rendered almost useless. The tremendous broadsides which the Charlotte poured into her stern, in passing through the line, made a hole large enough, the sailors said, to row the Admiral’s barge through.
As the Queen Charlotte was coming down on the French line, determined to pass through, it appeared so close and compact that Howe expressed a doubt as to whether there was room to pass between the Montagne, 120, and the Jacobin, 80, which had got partly under the lee of the former, as if afraid of the Charlotte’s broadside, thus occupying the place the Charlotte intended to take. Howe was determined either to go through, or to run the French flag-ship or the Jacobin on board. His Master, Bowen, in a blunt and resolute tone, called out, “That’s right, my Lord, the Charlotte will make room for herself.”
On his first appointment to the flag-ship this unpolished but shrewd and excellent seaman was in the habit, in addressing the commander-in-chief, of so constantly using the expression “My Lord,” that one day Howe said to him, “Bowen, pray, my good fellow, do give over that eternal ‘My Lord! My Lord;’ d’ont you know I am called Black Dick in the fleet?” This was his usual sobriquet among the sailors.
Just as the Queen Charlotte was closing with the Montagne, Lord Howe, who was himself conning the ship, called out to Bowen to starboard the helm. On this Bowen remarked that if they did they would be on board the next ship, the Jacobin. His lordship replied, sharply, “what is that to you, sir?” Bowen, much nettled, said, in an undertone, “D—n my very eyes if I care, if you d’ont. I’ll go near enough to singe some of our whiskers.”