The great importance of this battle seems to justify a survey of the strength of the two fleets which took part in it. As the result of that survey, common honesty extorts the confession that the English were distinctly the stronger of the two in ships and guns. Very legitimate national pride enables us to add that it was also much the better. On that day Rodney had under his command thirty-six sail of the line, including five three-deckers, carrying in all two thousand six hundred and seventy-four guns. In addition to these weapons, some at least of the English ships carried carronades—short guns with a large bore, very effective at close quarters—which, being mounted on hitherto vacant spaces on the upper-deck as an experiment, were not counted in the nominal armament, but did add materially to the weight of the fire. Grasse had thirty sail of the line, including one three-decker, carrying in all two thousand two hundred and forty-six guns. The carronade was not as yet in use in the French service. We had therefore a superiority of six ships and two hundred and fourteen guns in a broadside, without counting the carronades. On the other hand, the French ships were generally larger vessels rate for rate than ours, and the calibre of their guns heavier. Ingenious attempts have been made to show that by virtue of the size of their ships, and the weight of the individual guns, the French were really equal if not superior to us. Sir Charles Douglas even calculated that they were two seventy-fours to the good. But our guns were quite big enough for the work they had to do, and battles are won by a superiority of sufficient blows. That we were materially stronger than our enemy cannot, I think, be honestly denied.

In this calculation, too, Sir Charles was less than just to himself. The improvements which he had introduced into our gunnery were part of our effective strength. His locks and his carriages enabled such of our ships as had adopted them both to fire quicker and to train their guns farther fore and aft than the French, whereby an Englishman passing an enemy on opposite tacks could get him under fire sooner, and keep him under it longer than he could answer. This was a kind of superiority which may be quoted with pride, for it was the fruit of intelligent and zealous work. The spirit which animated Sir Charles was shared by other captains also. There had been a great development of professional zeal during the war, and in many ways the fittings of our ships had been improved—for which let thanks be once more given to the power enjoyed by our captains. The crews, too, collected early in the war by hook and by crook, in the fashion already described, had been brought into admirable discipline. Long cruising in fleets had given our officers a complete knowledge of the qualities of their vessels as compared with others—a very necessary kind of knowledge indeed when a number of ships were to manoeuvre together. Finally the spirit of the fleet was high. In spite of the little success gained in the war hitherto, our officers and men believed themselves to be better seamen and gunners than the French, and had been confirmed in that belief by the fighting near St. Kitts. They only wanted a chance. The disaster at Yorktown and the danger of England had roused the patriotism of our seamen, whether on quarter-deck or forecastle, and that emotion had swept the “spirit of faction” out of their hearts. In Sandwich’s words, they knew that the fate of the Empire was in their hands, and they did not intend that it should be lost for want of fierce fighting. Whatever Hood might think of Rodney, it was certain that he would obey punctually, and would do his utmost to damage the King’s enemies. In that respect he had a superiority over the French better than many ships and guns. There was no such spirit among the French officers and men. There was the gallantry of their race, there were knowledge and discipline; but there was no enthusiasm, and not much real aptitude for the work of sea-fighting. The jealousies which divided officers of all ranks were not controlled by a high patriotic spirit, and the qualities of the crews had sunk since the beginning of the war as the well-trained men were swept off and replaced by others drawn from a poorer maritime population than ours.

That every man may have his fair share of honour, the list of the two fleets is here given in the order in which they went into battle.

When Rodney was summoned by his captain of the fleet at daybreak on the 12th, and came on deck to see with his eyes the proof that his calculation of the night before was correct, the French were straggling over a space variously estimated at nine or at fifteen miles from east to west to the north-east of him. The English were in a rough oval drawn from north to south. Hood had resumed his proper place in the van; Rodney was in the centre; Rear-Admiral Drake in the rear. A line carried out from the leading English ship would bisect the French. As the wind was from south of east, the trade wind of the West Indies, all the Frenchmen to the west of that line were on the Admiral’s lee-bow, which meant that he had every chance of forcing a battle on them before they could again get away to windward. To the west of the French was seen the crippled ZÉlÉ in tow of the AstrÉe going to Guadaloupe. Rodney at once decided to try whether he could not, by threatening these two vessels, draw the French admiral still farther to leeward. Orders were given to some of the best sailers in Hood’s division to chase. As soon as they had stood well out from among the English ships the effect of the measure was manifest. Signals fluttered up the mainmast of the Ville de Paris, and the French ships were seen to be coming down to cover the ZÉlÉ, and to be steering to take their places in the line of battle ahead, and astern of their admiral. This meant that Grasse had sacrificed what remained to him of the windward position, and the fleets were now equal as regards the wind. There was no time to be lost. At once—it was now about a quarter to seven—the chasing ships were recalled, but in order to avoid the delay which would be caused by waiting till they resumed their place, Rodney decided to order the rear to lead into action. Thus, while the chasing ships were returning to their post in the van, the ships farthest from the enemy hauled to the wind and stood to the north-east between the bulk of the fleet and the land of Dominica. Each ship fell into place as her turn came, the chasing ships from the van arriving in time to take their post in what had now become the rear. In Captain Matthews’ plans the ships of Admiral Drake’s division may be seen curling over the fleet, and pointing at the French like the tail of the scorpion. The line was formed with rapidity and without a hitch. It was, in technical language, a line ahead on the starboard tack at a cable’s length asunder—each ship was, that is to say, two hundred yards in front of or behind the other in a line. From the first ship to the last there was, when the formation was complete, a distance of more than five miles.

While the line was forming, the fleet went to breakfast. Every man not actually at work, or the wheel, hastened to get all the food he could. In the Admiral’s cabin a party sat down with the appetite of warriors whom death could not daunt, and the care of veterans who foresaw the extreme probability that no more victuals might be attainable for the rest of that day. Douglas, the captain of the fleet; Symonds, the captain of the Formidable; Paget, the Admiral’s secretary; Gilbert Blane, his doctor; and a few others who messed at the Admiral’s table, sat down with Rodney. Cranstoun remained on deck to watch the enemy. In the middle of breakfast he came down with the news that on the course they were then following the English would cut through the French. Grasse had formed on the port tack, and was standing to the south-east across the northerly course of the English. It was his natural object to place himself across the mouth of the passage, and to windward of the English if he could. The two fleets were now running along two lines which formed an obtuse angle, of which the apex pointed to the east. Whichever reached that apex first would weather the other. Cranstoun’s message showed that the French would win the race. They had (though there is some doubt on the point) been slightly favoured by a shift of the trade wind to the north. Rodney made no answer to Cranstoun, and doubtless thought the occasion called for none. He had always preferred to engage to leeward, as he did in his battle with Langara. The windward position was only valuable to him because it would enable him to force on an action. Now, when it was a case with the French of “fight they will, and fight they must,” he cared not a jot whether or no they weathered the head of his line. His position compelled the enemy’s admiral to give battle. As it turned out ill for him he has been severely criticised by his countrymen, who do not seem to understand that their complaints are in truth a confession of inferiority. The experience of the previous day had shown that Rodney could not be shaken off. On the morning of the 12th Grasse had to choose between running away to Guadaloupe with the English after him, or standing as he was now doing across their van. If he had endeavoured to get away on the opposite tack he would have been unable to clear the Saints, and he would have been taken in a trap. Not to have fought in these circumstances would have been to acknowledge that a French fleet could not hope to meet an English one on anything approaching to equal terms. The plan of Grasse was a good plan enough. He hoped to cross the English van, to cripple a few of the ships, then, when he had reached a convenient place for tacking, to turn to windward, and make off while Rodney was refitting his damaged ships.

The feasibility of this plan depended, for Grasse, on his power to keep at long bowls. If a close action could be forced on them his ships would be unable to tack under the English fire. A close action was forced. At some moment between seven and eight o’clock the leading English ship, the Marlborough, came within range. If the upper side of the obtuse angle spoken of above is prolonged we shall get the relative position of the fleets pretty accurately. The English formed the lower line and they impinged on the French at about the ninth ship—the Brave. Rodney had hoisted the signal to engage close to leeward. When, therefore, Captain Taylor Penny of the Marlborough found himself within musket-shot range of the Brave he put his helm up, and turning a little to port, led the English line close along the French. Our enemy was as yet barely in order. Bougainville, who commanded the van, had just taken his place. Their rear was still in confusion, and Vaudreuil, who commanded there, afterwards declared that he formed his line under small-arm fire. We have now to figure to ourselves the two fleets filing past one another, cannonading as they went. Both were going very slowly. The wind was light; it was necessary to go at something below the speed of the slowest ship, since all must retain the power to shoot ahead if required, and so they filed slowly along at about three and a half miles an hour. Their course would have carried the leading French ships away from the English, but Grasse ordered them to bear down, with the intention of putting our leading vessels under the utmost possible amount of fire before they reached his centre and rear. Each fleet was soon engaged from the leading ship, and the two lines hurtled past one another in opposite directions. The English, having a margin of wind to draw on, used it to hug the French close—so close that, as Thesiger, an officer of the Formidable, said, it would have been possible to throw a cold shot on board them as they went past. At that range the carronades of the English ships did great execution. On board the French, which were crowded with the soldiers who were to have conquered Jamaica, the slaughter was terrible, and the effect of it soon visible, first in the number of the dead, or sometimes only badly wounded, who were hurled overboard to the sharks, and then in the slackening fire of the French. Gilbert Blane has left it on record that although our enemy’s fire was effective at long ranges, it grew wild and irregular at close quarters. We could, he says, actually see the Frenchmen running from their guns in spite of the determined efforts of the officers to keep them steady. Captain Savage of the Hercules, who suffered as badly from the gout as his Admiral, had a chair placed for himself in the waist of his ship, and sat there leaning over the bulwarks ironically saluting the passing enemy.

When the battle had lasted about an hour, and the English van had almost reached the French rear, their admiral thought it was time to turn to windward, and hoisted the order to do so twice. But the orders could not possibly be obeyed. The French ships were yard-arm to yard-arm with the English, and if they had tacked now would have been raked and rendered helpless. Many of the ships cannot even have seen the signals in the fog of smoke now hanging over both fleets. France had to “undergo her fate.” Grasse bore on to the south, and at about nine the English van had passed the last ship of his rear. On emerging from the rolling masses of smoke the captains looked eagerly back for the signals at the towering mast-head of the Formidable. As they looked they saw a great three-decker heading north out of the cloud and the flames. For a moment they thought the French admiral had doubled back on them, but as the three-decker cleared the smoke they saw the cross of St. George, and knew that the Formidable had burst through the French line to windward.

The movement had not been premeditated by Rodney, and the signal to engage to leeward was still flying when he passed to windward. The decision to depart from the old routine, according to which the English fleet would have passed along the French and then have tacked back on it—that decision which may be said to have affected the whole immediate future of England—was sudden, was taken on the spur of the moment, was equally unexpected by victor and vanquished. So much is certain; but the exact circumstances under which it was done, and what share of the credit ought to fall to whom, is the subject of the controversy spoken of in the note at the beginning of this chapter. The courteous reader is asked to remember that the incidents now about to be narrated have been most diversely told, and still more diversely interpreted.

A glance at the list of ships given above will show that the Formidable was exactly in the middle of the English line, being the eighteenth of the thirty-six men-of-war in it. As the French van bore in upon ours she was engaged with each of their ships in succession. The fleets were slipping slowly along, and it was well on for ten o’clock before the Formidable passed the eighteenth vessel in the French line. She had gone close to them all, firing as soon as her guns could be trained forward to meet, and as long as they could be trained aft to follow, each foe as she defiled past. Then between each bout of fire there would be a pause as the Formidable came opposite the vacant space between the ships in the French line, and having sent her last broadside after one was training it forward to meet the next comer. It must have been at a little before half-past nine that Rodney and Grasse, whose ship was the fifteenth in the French line, saluted each other with the cannon of their three-deckers. Up to now there had been nothing to distinguish this from the ordinary sea-fights of the eighteenth century save the number of the ships engaged and the closeness of the engagement.

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 manoeuvre; 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 taken him into the dead calm under the high land of Dominica. The English had themselves broken into three in dividing the enemy, but they had streamed up to windward. They could unite, and had it in their power to select the point of attack. Between the two fleets lay the dismasted hulks of the CÉsar and the Glorieux, the vessels astern of which the French line had been cut, rolling helpless on the water.

For an hour or so our advantage of position was not available. The thunder of so many guns had beaten down the wind. Conquerors and conquered lay bound by the calm. A little after mid-day a gentle breeze arose, and the English streamed down on the enemy. The signal for the line of battle was hauled down, and we advanced in no order, as needing none against a foe already shattered. It has always been the weakness of the French to be enslaved by rules, and to become panic-stricken when these break down. There was panic among them now. Signal after signal was hoisted in vain by their admiral. Bougainville, tied by ill-will as much as by the calm, did nothing; Vaudreuil did little. The English as they felt the wind—all of them, that is, whose rigging had not been too severely cut up—pressed upon the enemy, steering, by a natural impulse and without express orders, to where the mighty bulk of the Ville de Paris and the flag of Grasse pointed out the great prize. The crippled Glorieux was the first of the enemy to surrender. A gallant attempt to save her was made by the French frigate Richmond, commanded by Captain Mortemart, a gentleman, as his name shows, of a good house. He offered to take the crippled liner in tow, but Trogoff de Kerlessi would not allow his gallant countryman to sacrifice himself and his ship in vain. The English were closing round. Trogoff cut the cable, telling Mortemart to save himself, and then surrendered his shattered vessel, as a brave man might, without dishonour. There was some honour in defeating enemies of that stamp. The CÉsar hauled down her colours soon after. The Hector and the Ardent fell next. This last was a most welcome prize. She had been taken from the English by the great combined fleet of Frenchmen and Spaniards which cruised at the mouth of the Channel in 1779. She alone had pushed out from among Bougainville’s squadron to the help of her admiral, and was close to him when she struck. Her captain’s name was Gouzillon. The last of the French prizes to be taken was the Ville de Paris. The light winds made our movements slow, and our ships only came up with her when the afternoon was wearing on. They tackled her to port and to starboard, but the admiral fought as a man fights who wishes to atone by heroism for all faults. His cartridges were used up, and it was necessary to hoist powder-barrels out of the hold, and serve out the powder with the ladle. The solid fog of smoke between decks choked the lanterns by which the men worked below. Still, until nearly six he had not surrendered. Then, with the feeling which caused Francis I. at Pavia to refuse to give up his sword till he could hand it to the Viceroy of Naples, the alter ego of a sovereign and in some sort his equal, he looked about for a flag-officer to whom to surrender. At that moment Samuel Hood bore down on him in the Barfleur. She had been long becalmed, and it had been necessary to get the boats out to tow her into the breeze. Now she was pressing on to lay alongside the Ville de Paris. Grasse turned towards her, firing a gun of salute. Hood concluded that his old friend of the fights off Martinique and St. Kitts wished to surrender to him. He returned the salute, ranged up alongside, and the two admirals fought a space for honour’s sake. There was no want of cartridges on board the Barfleur. Her guns were cold. Her men were fresh. Her terrible fire speedily overpowered the languid answer of the Ville de Paris, whose crew, diminished by a half, were fighting hopelessly in the dark of the smoke with guns which they could only slowly feed with powder. After a few minutes Grasse concluded that enough had been done. There were but three unwounded men on his upper-deck, of whom he was one. More men had been slain in his ship than in the whole British fleet. There were not two square feet of his upper works unshattered by shot. His rigging was a wreck. At six o’clock he hauled down the Fleur de Lys with his own hands. A few minutes later he stepped into the cutter which shot alongside him from the Barfleur, and was taken a prisoner to Hood. By Hood he was taken to Rodney, and so ended a career which might have finished with honour if he had not later disgraced himself by ignoble attempts to throw the blame of defeat on his captains.

The battle was over, and had been over for some time; but in the opinion of many officers the pursuit should have lasted longer. If we can believe Thesiger, who wrote a few months later to his brother, Douglas pressed Rodney to follow the French through the night. Having wedged ourselves between Vaudreuil and Bougainville, it would seem that we might have followed and crushed either. The French were certainly broken into two. Part of them fled in panic to CuraÇoa, six hundred miles off; others to San Domingo. But Rodney thought otherwise. He—so says Thesiger—silenced Douglas by telling him that he had already spoken too much. The captain of the fleet was beyond dispute so stung by this, or some similar, rebuke that he seriously thought of resigning his place to Fanshawe of the Ajax. He thought better of it, and was always afterwards perfectly loyal to his admiral when busybodies asked him if enough had been done. “We had a great deal to do, sir, and I think you will allow we did a great deal,” was his uniform reply. Rodney did answer the critics by giving his reasons for not pursuing. He alleged the crippled state of some of his ships, the probability that the French might reunite, the chance that the prizes might be lost, the necessity of going on to Jamaica and looking to its safety. These are, frankly, not reasons which would have satisfied Hawke, or Rodney himself twenty years before. But he was old, broken by disease, his hour of full triumph had come late, he had that day had thirteen hours of incessant strain of work and anxiety. Something must be allowed for human weakness. The pursuit was stopped and the fleet lay to for the night. The last incident of the battle was the loss of the CÉsar—a foreshadowing of what was to follow, for none of our prizes lived to reach England. After the surrender the French crew broke into disorder, and one of them, entering her spirit-room with a naked light, set fire to an unheaded cask of ratafia. The flames spread, and the CÉsar burned to the water’s edge. The English prize-crew perished in her, the lieutenant in command being seen in the stern-walk fighting the fire to the last. No boat dared approach: the sharks were swarming under the counter; and he stayed to die in the flames, at his post.

Such, as far as I have been able to realise it, was the great battle sometimes called by us “of the Saints,” but most commonly “of April 12th,” and by the French termed the battle off Dominica. The failure to pursue was a blot; but after all, as Sir Charles Douglas was wont to say, “a great deal had been done.” If we had not twenty prizes instead of five, we had destroyed at a blow the laboriously-built-up prestige of the French fleets in the New World, which was something. We had restored our own nerve and shaken the enemy’s. This result was fully shown some months later when Howe sailed on the final relief of Gibraltar. On that occasion the combined French and Spanish fleets shrank timidly from measuring themselves with a greatly inferior English force. The immediate effect of the battles was to break up the French fleet in the West Indies and to save Jamaica. Vaudreuil, who fled to San Domingo, waited only to collect as many ships as he could, and then sailed for the coast of North America. The French ships which had taken refuge at CuraÇoa made no further attempt to keep the sea. It is true that during the remainder of the war, which dragged on till the beginning of 1783, the allies collected considerable fleets and continued to talk of renewing the attack on the West Indies. English Ministers, when called upon to defend the peace then made, pointed to the size of these fleets as reasons why we should accept less good terms than the nation thought we had a right to demand. But in truth the allies made no real use of those forces, and they were only quoted by English Ministers as an excuse for doing what they felt to be made necessary by the financial burden imposed by the war, and the fatigue caused by five years of fighting. Essentially the peace was a good one. We were, indeed, compelled to acknowledge the independence of the United States, and we restored Minorca and Florida to Spain; but we kept Gibraltar, we fixed our grip for ever on India, and we settled on equal terms with France. Our position was in reality intact and our spirit unbroken. That this was so was largely due to the victory of April 12th. It is therefore right that this day, and the man who commanded on it, should be remembered among the great days and the great men of the Empire.

The battle has a place all its own in the history of our navy. It marked the beginning of that fierce and headlong yet well-calculated style of sea-fighting which led to Trafalgar, and made England undisputed mistress of the sea. Perhaps a little too much has been made of the manoeuvre of “breaking the line.” The value of a manoeuvre in war is apt to depend on the value of the men who make it. The history of our own navy contains a convincing example of that truth. In 1811 Sir William Hoste fought an action off Lissa with a squadron of frigates against a French frigate squadron under Dubourdieu. The Frenchman deliberately imitated Nelson’s plan of attack at Trafalgar. Yet he was completely beaten, and fell in the defeat. It would seem, therefore, that something more goes to the gaining of victories than manoeuvres. In truth, the English fleet won because it was infinitely superior to the French—a hundred years ahead of it, as the prisoners acknowledged. If it had not so won before, it was because it had been tied down by pedantic rules. When Rodney broke from them he gave the real superiority of our ships a chance to exert itself. That superiority he himself had helped to create. No Sir Charles Douglas, no Edmund Affleck, no Hood even, can take that glory away. For the rest, are we the poorer because we had a splendid force as well as a great commander?