Rodney 17
Guichen was too wary to be so caught. No sooner did he see the move of
the English admiral than up went his signals, and the ships of his
centre and van came round on their heel together and swept on to fill up
the gap. Then the ships which had been nearly cut off spun round also.
Resolute, as Wellington himself at Salamanca, not to strike till he
could do it with effect, Rodney hauled his wind, and the two fleets
resumed their attitude of observation, heading now to the south with
the wind on their port or left side, sailing nearly parallel with one
another. So they continued for rather over an hour, the French, as
before, too much extended, the English in a fairly compact line. At last
Rodney decided to make an opportunity. Shortly after ten o’clock he
reversed his order of march and went back again towards the north.
Guichen perhaps thought the English admiral meant to avoid a battle, and
was content to let him do so. He did not alter his own course, and now
the two fleets ran past one another, the French to the south, the
English to the north, with the wind on the beam. These opposite courses
were continued for half an hour, when Rodney for the second time came
round to the port tack, and headed to the south. The result of this
movement had been to bring the whole of the English force opposite the
rear third or half of the French. Again the two fleets stood on together
to the south for another hour. The English fleet had been slightly
disordered in the course of these movements; this or that vessel was out
of her place, the rear had to be ordered to make more sail to close the
centre. By midday all was in order and Rodney hoisted the signal to bear
down all together, and each to engage the ship opposite her on the
enemy’s line.
The order was obeyed in a manner which threw Rodney into a paroxysm of
rage. To him what ought to have been done was as clear as day. All his
ships should have borne down together, so that the whole twenty-one
would have come into action with a dozen or fifteen Frenchmen with every
chance of crushing them before Guichen’s van could turn to his
assistance. By ship opposite he meant the ship opposite at the moment,
but what was self-evident to him was by no means so to his captains, nor
to Parker, whose division was now leading. Brought up in the pedantic
old school, and steeped in the orthodox faith that van should engage
van, centre centre, and rear rear, they understood opposite ship to mean
ship occupying the same relative position in the enemy’s line. The order
to attack the rear they supposed only to apply to the movement made at
nine o’clock. So when Rodney and the ships astern of him which followed
the movements of their admiral turned west to fall on the French rear,
the ships ahead of him, utterly forgetting the order to keep at a
distance of two cables’ length from one another, and mindful only of the
pedantic old theory, kept on along the French line, headed by the
_Stirling Castle_, which went blindly on to put herself alongside the
leading French ship miles off. Rodney’s careful formation fell utterly
to pieces, and his scientifically prepared plan of attack was ruined.
His force, instead of being concentrated on a part of the enemy, was
scattered all along his line. In vain were signals hoisted on the
flag-ship. They were not understood by men whose minds were clouded by
preconceived notions--were perhaps not seen in the smoke gathering from
the cannon.
To Rodney it was now only left to do his own duty as a brave man. He
placed his ship at about a pistol shot from the nearest Frenchman, and
by furious cannonade drove him from the line. Even now he was
exasperated by further bungling and by downright misconduct. The
_Cornwall_, the ship immediately ahead, went too far from him. The
_Yarmouth_, the next ahead of the _Cornwall_, did worse. She first
stopped at too great a distance from the French, and then actually drew
out of action and lay to windward of the Admiral. This last piece of
misconduct Rodney did amend. First a signal, and then when it was not
obeyed a cannon shot fired into her, brought the _Yarmouth_ down to the
flag-ship’s quarter. There by the voice of the signal lieutenant, who,
standing by Rodney in the stern walk--the gallery outside the
cabin--roared at her through his speaking-trumpet, she got the order to
come into action again under the Admiral’s stern. But the battle had
gone to pieces. Nothing was left of it but a furious cannonade between
the rear divisions of the two fleets. Fortunately the French made no use
of the opportunity presented them by the confusion in the English line.
Some of them were crippled, others misunderstood orders. By three
o’clock many of them had fallen to leeward. M. de Guichen called off the
ships engaged to form a new line. Rodney, seeing that nothing effectual
could now be done, hauled down the signal for battle. The two fleets
separated--the French standing to the north, the English to the
south--and by night they were out of sight of one another. Even now the
confusion in the English fleet did not end, for during the darkness some
of the vessels were separated, and did not rejoin their admiral till
late next day.
The bitterness of this disappointment remained with Rodney as long as he
lived. He told Gilbert Blane that he was prouder of the plan he laid to
beat Guichen than of the actual victory he won over Grasse two years
later. On this latter occasion he owed something to fortune and much to
the enemy’s blunders. Grasse too was the inferior man. Had his orders
been obeyed on April 17th, Rodney felt that he would have won by pure
good management, and against an adversary who was a master swordsman.
This was the feeling of a genuine artist, and one cannot but sympathise
with the anger he felt and expressed. Guichen even had a fellow-feeling
for him, and wrote condoling with him on the bad support he had
received. For himself, so he said, he thought eight of his ships were
gone when he saw the beginning of the English attack. This letter, it is
almost unnecessary to say, is not mentioned by French historians, but we
have Rodney’s word for it; and nothing could be more in keeping with the
gallant, courtly manners of a time which retained the old faith that the
noble cavaliers who follow the honourable profession of arms are not the
less brothers and fellow-artists because they fight on opposite sides.
Rodney indicated his feelings sufficiently clearly in his public
letter--so clearly in fact that Sandwich thought it better to suppress a
paragraph. Even as it was published there could be no doubt what the
Admiral meant. He pointedly complimented Guichen on the support he had
received from his captains, and abstained severely from any praise of
his own subordinates. In private letters to Sandwich and to Lady Rodney
he was vehement in wrath and denunciation, declaring in so many words
that it was all a villainous plot to ruin him and discredit the
Administration. Something must be allowed here for natural heat and
something for gout. Rodney had already complained in bitter general
terms of the conduct of some of his captains in the fight with Don Juan
de Langara, when, if we are to judge by results, every man’s duty was
well done. We need not suppose there was any villainy or plot, but only
stupidity and routine. It is a fact which ought to be remembered that
the conduct of Parker and the captains in the van was partly justified
by the hidebound fighting orders. The fault of the failure rests more
with the neglect to form a proper code of signals, and the foolish
system which compelled an admiral to fight in chains imposed by standing
orders.
His sense of their conduct was not unknown to his captains, and one of
them actually complained to him and insisted on a court-martial. This
was Carkett of the _Stirling Castle_, the officer who led the van right
away from the centre. He drew upon himself an admirably worded and most
severe rebuke. No court-martial on him was ever held. Poor Carkett
perished in the dreadful hurricane which desolated the West Indies in
the following October. He was one of the officers from before the mast,
and had been the hero of a famous episode in the Seven Years’ War. At
that time he was first-lieutenant to Captain Gardiner in the _Monmouth_,
sixty-four, in Admiral Osborne’s squadron, which was blockading a French
force in Carthagena. One of the Frenchmen was the _Formidable_, eighty,
which had been the French flag-ship in the scandalous battle off
Minorca. Now Gardiner had been Byng’s flag-captain on that occasion, and
he had sworn to attack the big Frenchman whenever he met him, if it were
only in an open boat. The French squadron slipped to sea, were seen by
the English, and scattered in flight. Gardiner picked out the
_Formidable_ and followed her. Both sailed well, and had soon run the
other ships out of sight. Then the Frenchman, exasperated by the pursuit
of an enemy half his size, turned at bay. Gardiner was as good as his
word. He attacked in a masterly manner and with indomitable pertinacity.
Shortly after the action began he fell with a musket-shot in the head.
The wound was swiftly mortal, but while he could still speak he charged
Carkett to fight it out, to go down if he must with his colours flying,
but never to leave the Frenchman, or to strike. Carkett kept his charge
in the letter and the spirit. Metaphorically, or perhaps in heroic
reality, he nailed his colours to the mast, and fought till the
_Monmouth_ was a hulk, and the _Formidable_ was beaten to a standstill.
At last two of the slower sailing ships of the English squadron, guided
by the sound of the cannon, for the action had been carried on in the
night, came up, and the French captain struck. He insisted, however, on
surrendering his sword to Carkett; not to the senior captain of the two
new-comers. It is impossible to believe that such a man wanted courage
or loyalty. Indeed Rodney, even while rebuking him, fully recognised his
bravery and the quality of his former service.
The case of Bateman of the _Yarmouth_ was very different. He too had
risen from before the mast, but with no such record as Carkett. In the
action he had simply misbehaved, and it was not for the first time. The
_Yarmouth_ had been badly handled in Admiral Byron’s action off Grenada.
Bateman was court-martialed and dismissed the service at New York some
months later. In his case Rodney was implacable, and even allowed his
feelings to carry him into what the officers of the court-martial
thought undue interference and protested against with spirit. The
Admiral had to make something approaching an apology to the President
of the Court, Sir Chaloner Ogle. With this and one other exception there
were no courts-martial. Rodney knew that the Government was exceedingly
anxious to avoid any repetition of the scandals which had followed the
battle off Ushant. He did not himself wish to discredit the flag by
publishing details of misconduct. For the rest, though his teeth were
sharp, his bark was worse than his bite. In the course of these months
he tells his wife a story which shows that he was not implacable. A
certain Captain ---- had angered him by allowing his ship to get into a
bad condition. Rodney had resolved to suspend him, and had actually gone
on board with some hostile intentions. It happened that the captain’s
wife and daughters were staying on board. Now the girls were such nice
girls, and the mother was such an agreeable woman, and the whole family
was so amiable, that the Admiral’s heart bled at the thought of bringing
misery upon them. The old Adam of gallantry was too much for him. Rather
than bring tears into the eyes of those sweet girls he let the service
go for once, and contented himself with sending the ship home in charge
of a convoy. It was well for Captain ---- that his wife was above rubies,
and that he had such children to parley with the enemy at the gate. As a
rule, indeed, Rodney’s course was to get rid of captains whom he could
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기