Rodney 26

Rodney 26

A chair had been placed on the quarter-deck of the _Formidable_ for the

Admiral, and he rested on it except when he was walking through the

cabins under the poop, to the gallery astern, from which he could watch

the ships of his line behind him. On the quarter-deck with him were

several whose names must not be passed over. Sir Charles Douglas was

there with his _aides_--little middies--of whom one, Charles Dashwood, a

boy of thirteen, is associated more closely than his seniors at the time

would have thought possible with the memories of the victory. Near the

wheel stood Frederick Thesiger, he who afterwards carried Nelson’s

letter to the Regent of Denmark after the battle of the Baltic. Thesiger

had completed his time as midshipman, and was waiting for his

lieutenant’s commission. He had been chosen on the recommendation of

Captain Symonds to stand by the wheel and see that the quartermasters

executed orders punctually. Gilbert Blane, not being one of the medical

staff of the ship, employed himself during the early stage in helping to

provide work for the French doctors. He worked at a gun in the

fore-cabin till he was tired.

 

It was thirsty work fighting in the thick pall of sulphurous smoke in

which the gunpowder soon wrapped a ship. Rodney, in one of his turns

through the cabins, called one of the middies and told him to mix a

tumbler of lemonade. The middy went to work, and, having nothing more

handy for the purpose, stirred the brew up with the hilt of his dirk.

“Child, child,” said the Admiral, “that may do for the midshipmen’s

mess. Drink that lemonade yourself, and send my steward here”--which

order the middy obeyed with alacrity.

 

When eighteen of the Frenchmen had gone by, each carrying away marks of

the _Formidable’s_ broadside, the Admiral was standing on the

quarter-deck, and with him was Gilbert Blane. The high bulwarks on

either side, and the hammocks stacked across the front of the

quarter-deck in a barricade, shut in the view. Rodney wished to take a

look at the French line, and, accompanied by Blane, stepped out on the

starboard gangway. They had just passed the _Sceptre_, and leaning over

the rails of the gangway they saw the _Glorieux_, seventy-four, rolling

down on them. She had just taken the fire of Captain Alan Gardner in the

_Duke_, ninety-eight, a splendidly-efficient three-decker, and was

reeling from the shock. Her captain, the Vicomte d’Escars (a name it is

now thought correct to spell Des Cars), a gentleman of the house of

Fitzjames, had been killed, and hurled overboard to the sharks. His

lieutenant, Trogoff de Kerlessi, had nailed the white flag with the

golden lilies to the stump of a mast. Rodney and Blane saw the Frenchmen

on the upper-deck throwing away rammers and sponges, and running from

the guns. A glance showed Rodney that the wind was forcing the

_Glorieux_ down on him, and that she was almost about to touch. His

broadsides were being aimed low, but not sufficiently low for that. She

had enough, but she must be crushed, and knocked out of the French line.

“Now,” said Rodney to the doctor, “comes the fight for the body of

Patroclus.” He looked round for a messenger. None was at hand, and he

turned to Blane, saying, “Run down and tell them to elevate their

metal.” The phrase was obscure to the doctor in spite of his experience

as a gunner, but Hudibras came to his help. He remembered that it is the

nature of guns that, “the higher are their pitches the lower they let

down their breeches.” He ran down with the order--which meant that the

muzzles of the guns were to be depressed to fire a sinking

broadside--and so deprived posterity of an admirable witness of what

happened on the _Formidable’s_ quarter-deck during the next few minutes.

 

In these minutes was taken the decision which gave its exceptional and

vital importance to the battle. While Rodney and Blane were speaking in

the gangway, or just before, there had come a shift in the wind which

affected the southern half of the two fleets simultaneously but

diversely. It was one of those currents of air common enough in the

neighbourhood of land, and it came from the south-east, striking on the

bows of the French and the sterns of the English. Our vessels going

before the wind had only to trim their sails a little to keep their

place. But it threatened to take the French aback, to blow right ahead

of them, and stop their way. To avoid this they were compelled to turn

to the right, which had the effect of throwing them into what the French

call a chequer, we a bow and quarter line--that is to say, that instead

of following one another in a line, they were suddenly spun round into

the position of the half-closed lathes of a venetian blind. The already

existing confusion in the French line was immensely increased, and a

great gap appeared just astern of the _Glorieux_, which was now right on

the starboard bow of the _Formidable_, caused probably by the fact that

the _Diadème_, the next succeeding Frenchman, was forced across the bows

of the English flag-ship.

 

Sir Charles Douglas was at this moment leaning on the hammocks in the

front of the quarter-deck, and he saw the evidence of the existing

confusion in the French line. That he realised the whole extent of it we

need not believe, but he saw the gap, and he saw that by passing through

it we might cut the French rear off from the centre and put it between

two fires. He jumped down from the hammocks and (so Dashwood told the

story in later years) asked his little _aide_, “Dash, where is Sir

George?”--“I think he is in the cabin, sir,” was the answer. Both turned

aft and came face to face with the Admiral, who was just stepping out of

the gangway. Sir Charles went up to him, and, taking off his hat,

pointed out the gap in the French line to Rodney, urging him to steer

through it. For a moment the Admiral hesitated. He did not like to

“have things sprung on him” at any time, and now it behoved him to

think. It was very well for the captain of the fleet to recommend the

manœuvre; he would be covered by the authority of his Admiral. For

Rodney, who would have to bear the responsibility for the consequences,

it was a very serious step indeed. He had served under Mathews, and had

not forgotten the fate which overtook that officer for departing from

the consecrated rules of battle. His first impulse was to say no, and he

did. “I will not break my line, Sir Charles,” was his answer. In his

eager conviction that he was right Douglas pressed the Admiral again,

and even so far forgot himself as to actually give the order to port to

the quartermasters. A fierce reminder of their respective positions from

Rodney stopped him before the wheel had moved. Then, as we may well

suppose, instinctively feeling the indecency of a wrangle, the two men

turned from one another for a moment. The break in the dispute calmed

both. They turned and faced one another near the wheel. Douglas

respectfully implored Rodney to take his advice. Reflection had shown

Rodney that his subordinate was right, and with a wisdom and magnanimity

which have been strangely distorted, and a courtesy which has been

wondrously misunderstood, he told Douglas to do as he pleased. At once

the order to port was repeated. Dashwood was sent flying down with the

needful directions to the lieutenants in the batteries. The _Formidable_

swung round to starboard, and cut through the French line, pouring her

broadside into the _Glorieux_ to right and the _Diadème_ to left as she

went.

 

When he had given his consent to the change in the course of the

_Formidable_, Rodney at once went aft to the stern-walk, to see whether

the ships behind were following. There were then no means of signalling

a new order suddenly, and the old order to engage to leeward was still

flying. If his captains behaved as others had done in the fight with

Guichen on April 17th two years before, if they stuck to the pedantic

old rules, the _Formidable_ might find herself alone to windward of the

French. Happily a very different spirit prevailed now, and Captain

Inglis of the _Namur_, the next ship astern to the _Formidable_, looking

to the spirit and not the letter, followed his Admiral through the gap,

though the signal to engage to leeward had not been hauled down. He was

himself followed by Cornwallis in the _Saint Albans_, Dumaresq in the

_Canada_, Charrington in the _Repulse_, and Fanshawe in the _Ajax_.

These vessels filed past the _Glorieux_, reducing her to a wreck.

Captain Inglis, looking after her as she dropped astern of him, saw her

almost blown out of the water by the fire of the _Saint Albans_. By this

movement all the eleven ships of Vaudreuil’s division were cut off from

the other nineteen, and forced to turn off to the west. Captain Alan

Gardner of the _Duke_, the ship next ahead of the _Formidable_, finding

that the _Diadème_ had stopped the way of the French ships astern of

her, and was in a confused tangle with them, spontaneously did as his

Admiral had just done--ported his helm and passed to windward, firing

right and left into the bewildered enemy.

 

In the meantime the French line had been cut in a second place. The last

ship of the English centre division was the _Bedford_, seventy-four, in

which Commodore Affleck had his broad pennant flying. The _Bedford_ had

sailed along the French line close in the now dense smoke of battle,

which would be particularly thick in the rear of the English line. As it

was to leeward the smoke of both fleets would be rolled on our ships.

Suddenly the _Bedford_ found that there was no enemy to windward of her.

She had, in fact, in the fog of gunpowder smoke passed through another

gap in the enemy’s formation, caused by the shift of the wind to the

south-east. Affleck stood on, followed by the twelve ships of Hood’s

division. The Frenchman astern of which they passed was the _César_, the

twelfth in the line. As the _Glorieux_ was the nineteenth, it will be

seen that seven French ships in the centre were cut off from their van

and rear alike. These seven--the _Dauphin Royal_, seventy; _Languedoc_,

eighty; _Ville de Paris_, one hundred and four; _Couronne_, eighty;

_Eveillé_, sixty-four; _Sceptre_, seventy-four; and _Glorieux_,

seventy-four--were huddled into a mass and torn to pieces by the fire of

the _Formidable_, and the ships astern of her as far as the _Ajax_,

which was poured into them from starboard, while thirteen of our ships,

from the _Bedford_ to the _Royal Oak_, were cannonading them from the

port side. By eleven the last ship of the English rear had passed the

_César_. Rodney had cleared the French line before. Our van under Drake

had cleared the French rear, the sportive Captain Savage of the

_Hercules_ luffing to rake the last Frenchman--the _Pluton_,

seventy-four, commanded by a very brave and skilful officer named

D’Albert de Rions--as he cleared her. Then, all our ships being up to

windward and out of the smoke, we could look back, as the wind

scattered it and rolled it to the west--could look and see such a

spectacle as no British seaman had seen in this war so far.

 

There to westward and south-westward of us lay the French, broken into

three fragments. On the surface of the water there was something which

was pure horror to all whose eyes were compelled to see it. Shoals of

sharks--which alone among God’s creatures the sailor tortures without

remorse, the loathsome brute which loiters to profit by his

misfortune--had collected to feed on the corpses thrown overboard, or

the living who had fallen with fragments of rigging. They were leaping

over one another, and ravening at their prey. From them the eyes of our

men turned to the scattered fragments of the French fleet. They were

three in number. Vaudreuil with the rear had been turned to the west.

Two miles south of him seven ships were huddled round the flag. Four

miles to the south-east of him again was Bougainville. His course had