He was followed by five other battle-ships, and Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse gave up the attempt and sailed to help his own crippled ships, and, taking five of them in tow, made off.
Six French battle-ships were captured, and the Vengeur, which had been engaged in a desperate fight with the Brunswick, went down ten minutes after she surrendered.
The British loss in the battle of the 1st of June, and in the preliminary skirmishes of the 28th and 29th of May, was eleven hundred and forty-eight, of whom two hundred and ninety were killed and eight hundred and fifty-eight wounded.
The French placed their loss in killed and mortally wounded at three thousand, so that their total loss could not have been much under seven thousand.
Decisive as the victory was, it was the general opinion in the fleet that more ought to have been done; that the five disabled ships should have been taken, and a hot chase instituted after the flying enemy. Indeed, the only explanation of this inactivity was that the admiral, who was now an old man, was so enfeebled and exhausted by the strain through which he had gone as to be incapable of coming to any decision or of giving any order.
One of the most desperate combats in this battle was that which took place between the Brunswick, seventy-four guns, under Captain John Harvey, and the Vengeur, also a seventy-four. The Brunswick had not been engaged in the battles of the 28th and 29th of May, but she played a brilliant part on the 1st of June. She was exposed to a heavy fire as the fleet bore down to attack, and she suffered some losses before she had fired a shot. She steered for the interval between the Achille and Vengeur. The former vessel at once took up a position closing the gap, and Captain Harvey then ran foul of the Vengeur, her anchors hooking in the port fore channels of the Frenchman.
The two ships now swung close alongside of each other, and, paying off before the wind, they ran out of the line, pouring their broadsides into each other furiously.
The upper-deck guns of the Vengeur got the better of those of the Brunswick, killing several officers and men, and wounding Captain Harvey so severely as to compel him to go below.
At this moment the Achille bore down on the Brunswick’s quarter, but was received by a tremendous broadside, which brought down her remaining mast, a foremast. The wreck prevented the Achille from firing, and she surrendered; but as the Brunswick was too busy to attend to her, she hoisted a sprit-sail—a sail put up under the bowsprit—and endeavoured to make off.
Meantime the Brunswick and Vengeur, fast locked, continued their desperate duel. The upper-deck guns of the former were almost silenced, but on the lower decks the advantage was the other way. Alternately depressing and elevating their guns to their utmost extent, the British sailors either fired through their enemy’s bottom or ripped up her decks.