Chapter IX: On Board Our Flagships at Trafalgar:—captain Hardy and (4)

The interval was profitably spent otherwise. It so happened that the French officers responsible for blocking the fairway had either neglected to remove the masts of the sunken vessels or were unable to do so before the English squadron came in sight. Anyhow, they were left sticking up out of the water—in the cases of five of the six vessels—and showed what the enemy’s plans in that direction were. Admiral Watson’s first step was to remove the boom and the two bomb-vessels behind the line of the sunken vessels, together with the fireships. The boats of the men-of-war were sent up with muffled oars after dark on the first night after the arrival of the squadron and cleared these off, by cutting through the boom and sending the bombs and fireships adrift, causing them to run ashore and ground hard and fast. “Mr. Delamotte, the master of the _Kent_,” relates Dr. Ives, “on the second day sounded between the sunken vessels, whose masts were above water, under continuous cannon shot from the fort, and found room for our ships to pass between.”

Treachery, as the French afterwards said, enabled him to do this. One of their artillery officers, according to French accounts, had a quarrel with the Governor, deserted and sold the secret of the passage for a large sum to Admiral Watson. He sent the money, so the story proceeds, to help his father in France, an aged and poor man, only, however, to receive back again the price of his treason, together with a bitter letter of reproach on the receipt of which the traitor hanged himself. On the other hand, Dr. Ives, on board the flagship, says nothing of any traitor. Admiral Watson in his dispatch simply says that he was delayed “until ... I could further discover by sounding a proper channel to pass through, which the pilots found out without being at the trouble of weighing any of the vessels.” There was hardly need for a traitor, and no need at all to pay for information with the masts of the sunken French vessels in the river standing up in the air, right across the bed of the Hooghly, for every man and boy in the English squadron to see. There was a traitor at Chandernagore, De Terraneau, an artillery officer; but he deserted to Clive’s camp, and, useful as his information proved to the land attack, he knew nothing about the river defences.

By midday on the 22nd all was in order for the squadron to go forward to the final fight. The tides now were running higher every day, and the next tide would probably serve. That afternoon Rear-Admiral Pocock (afterwards Sir George, and a very distinguished commander), the Second in Command of the East Indies squadron, came up the Hooghly rowing up from Calcutta in his barge. He had hurried up to join, in the hope of being in time to see something of the fighting. He had left his flagship, the _Cumberland_, at Balasore, unable to enter the river owing to the same low tides that had during the past few days delayed the _Kent_ and her two consorts in approaching Chandernagore. With Admiral Watson’s sanction, Pocock hoisted his flag for the battle on board the _Tyger_, to lead the line.

At dusk that evening, as soon as it could be done without observation by the enemy, boats crept ahead quietly and lashed lanterns to the masts of the sunken vessels, so screened as to show their light only in the direction of the English ships. By means of these the ships were to be guided before daybreak next morning between the obstacles and across the danger zone where the French had marked the range, past the heavy battery that overlooked the sunken ships.

The order to go forward was given at daybreak. Within five minutes they were on the move.

Anchors were silently weighed between 5 and 6 a.m., and on the top of the flood tide the three ships, the _Tyger_ leading, and the _Kent_ and _Salisbury_ in her wake, glided ahead through the water with the least possible noise. Apparently their getting under way was not observed.

Admiral Watson’s plan of battle was to bring-to directly opposite the river face of Fort d’Orleans within pistol shot. The _Tyger_ was to lead on until she came in front of the further bastion of the river face of the fort, the north-east or “flagstaff bastion,” as it was called, and then drop anchor. The _Kent_ was to anchor between the two river front bastions at the north-west and south-east angles of the fort, directly facing the curtain and the eight-gun ravelin covering the main gate. The _Salisbury_ was to post herself opposite the south-east, or St. Joseph, bastion.

As the _Tyger_, a few minutes before six o’clock, neared the battery covering the sunken ships, the French ashore sounded the alarm. Apparently they were surprised. The soldiers in the first battery merely fired a few rounds at the leading ship as she passed by, a dim spectre in the half-light, and then the men in the battery cleared out at a run, and fell back to join the main garrison inside the fort. For their part the three British men-of-war passed on for their appointed stations without replying with a single shot.

The main garrison now were quickly on the _qui vive_, and the south-east bastion took up the firing; but for the moment the light was too uncertain for the gunners in Fort d’Orleans to shoot with much effect, until the _Tyger_ and _Kent_ had nearly drawn up abreast of the fort. Then, however, they got their chance.

The French gunners took advantage of it to the full before the men-of-war were in position. As it were by signal, a tremendous burst of artillery fire flashed out all along the ramparts from end to end, from bastions and curtain and ravelin. The tornado of iron beat on the _Tyger_ heavily, but she stood up to it, forging her way ahead stolidly, and then let go anchor within her allotted station to a yard. The flagship was not so lucky. She was following at a half cable’s length astern—a hundred yards—when, almost at the moment that the _Tyger_ anchored, the tide turned, and began to race back, swirling down the river. It checked the _Kent’s_ way instantly, and she hung back at a dead standstill, unable to breast her way against it. At the same moment a heavy concentrated fire from the ramparts beat upon her, and the ship, reeling under the terrific battering began to drift down, stern first. First one anchor was let go, then another. Both anchors dragged, and the big seventy-gun ship drove down astern right across the bowsprit of the smaller _Salisbury_.

The Frenchmen yelled and cheered and redoubled their efforts, and there was for a space intense excitement. Would the two ships collide and get foul? At the moment that the flagship first checked her way, Captain Speke had fallen severely wounded, with, close to him, his little son, a boy midshipman, acting as aide-de-camp to his father, who was struck down by the same shot and mortally wounded.

In a few seconds the _Kent’s_ anchors held, and the ship was brought up; but she had got into a bad position. The forward-half of the ship lay partially opposite the south-east bastion, with the after-half overlapping the southern face of the fort in such a way that some of the guns of the further bastion on that side, the south-west bastion, could play upon the quarters and stern. Most of the guns mounted on the ravelin and along the curtain of the river front could at the same time train on her bows with a raking fire, assisted by some of the guns on the north-east or flagstaff bastion, facing the _Tyger_, some of which could be brought to bear. More serious still was this. The _Salisbury_ had been pushed entirely out of the fight: had been placed practically out of action for the day. The channel was not wide enough to let the _Salisbury_ tow ahead and pass the flagship, and the _Salisbury_ had to anchor at a spot whence only one or two of her guns could engage. Thus it came about that the whole brunt of fighting Fort d’Orleans fell on two ships, the _Tyger_ and the _Kent_, by themselves.

Not a shot, according to Dr. Ives, had so far been fired in reply to the enemy’s “tremendous cannonade.” The _Tyger_ was waiting for the _Kent_ to hoist the red flag. It went up as soon as the _Kent’s_ anchors held. “As soon as the ships came properly to an anchor, they returned it with such fury as astonished their adversaries.” “Our ships lay so near the fort,” says the doctor also, that “the musket balls fired from their tops, by striking against the chunam walls of the Governor’s palace, which was in the very centre of the fort, were beaten as flat as a half-crown.”

Clive’s men were at work meanwhile on the land side. They had begun pushing the enemy hard on the previous afternoon, and had opened a brisk attack on the outworks before daylight that morning, under the pressure of which the French outposts fell back, until they had abandoned practically all their landward positions beyond the walls of Fort d’Orleans. Clive’s soldiers after that occupied some bungalows that stood not far from the walls, from under cover of which they plied the enemy on the ramparts with a continuous fusillade of musketry, and with six light guns they had pushed forward. The soldiers, however, could make little further progress for the present.

“For three hours nothing was heard but an incessant roll of artillery and musketry, the crashing of timbers and masonry, the shouts and cheers of the combatants, and the shrieks and groans of the wounded.”

Describing the scene on board his own ship during the first two hours, Dr. Ives says: “The fire was kept up with extraordinary spirit. The flank guns of the south-west bastion galled the _Kent_ very much, and the Admiral’s aides-de-camp being all wounded, Mr. Watson went down himself to Lieutenant William Brereton, who commanded the lower-deck battery, and ordered him particularly to direct his fire against those guns, and they were accordingly soon afterwards silenced.”

Then he relates this incident, which occurred on board just afterwards. “At eight in the morning,” says the doctor, “several of the enemy’s shot struck the _Kent_ at the same time; one entered near the foremast, and set fire to two or three 32-pound cartridges of gunpowder as the boys held them in their hands ready to charge the guns. By the explosion the wad-nets and other loose things took fire between decks, and the whole ship was so filled with smoke that the men in their confusion cried out she was on fire in the gunner’s store-room, imagining from the shock they had felt from the balls that a shell had actually fallen into her. This notion struck a panic into the greatest part of the crew, and seventy or eighty jumped out of the portholes into the boats that were alongside the ship. The French presently saw this confusion on board the _Kent_, and resolving to take the advantage, kept up as hot a fire as possible upon her during the whole time. Lieutenant Brereton, however, with the assistance of some other brave men, soon extinguished the fire. Then running to the ports he begged the seamen to come in again, upbraiding them for deserting their quarters; but finding this had no effect on them, he thought the more certain method of succeeding would be to strike them with a sense of shame. He therefore loudly exclaimed, ‘Are you Britons? You Englishmen! and fly from danger! For shame! For shame!’ This reproach had the desired effect; to a man they immediately returned into the ship, repaired to their quarters, and renewed an inspirited fire into the enemy.”

The end was in sight by nine o’clock, and it came within a very few minutes of the hour.

“In about three hours from the commencement of the attack, the parapets of the north and south bastions were almost beaten down, the guns were mostly dismounted, and we could plainly see from the main-top of the _Kent_ that the ruins from the parapet and merlons had entirely blocked up those few guns which otherwise might have been fit for service. We could easily discern, too, that there had been a great slaughter among the enemy, who finding that our fire against them rather increased, hung out the white flag, whereupon a cessation of hostilities took place, and the Admiral sent Lieutenant Brereton (the only commissioned officer on board the _Kent_ that was not killed or wounded) and Captain Coote of the King’s regiment with a flag of truce to the fort, who soon returned, accompanied by the French Governor’s son, with articles of capitulation.”

At the moment that the Governor hung out the flag of truce (“waved over their walls a flag of truce,” in the Admiral’s own words) the landward side of the fort was still holding Clive’s soldiers at bay. The firing from the ramparts there continued for some little time after the flag on the Governor’s palace had been lowered.

The formal surrender and giving up of the fort took place at three o’clock in the afternoon. Says Admiral Watson in his dispatch: “I sent Captain Latham of the _Tyger_ ashore to receive the keys and take possession of the fort. Col. Clive marched in with the King’s troops about five in the afternoon.” The _Kent’s_ log notes this: “5.30 p.m. The Fort at Chandernagore fired 21 guns as a salute to H.M. Colours, after being hoisted half an hour before.”

So Chandernagore fell. “It must be acknowledged,” to use the words of Dr. Ives once more, “that the French made a gallant defence, as they stood to their guns as long as they had any to fire. We never could learn how many of their men were killed and wounded on the whole, though they confessed they had forty dead carried from the south-east bastion. The north-east bastion was also cleared of its defenders twice.”

“The fire of the ships,” says the Indian military historian Orme, “did as much execution in three hours as the batteries on shore would have done in several days.” “Few naval engagements have excited more admiration,” says Sir John Malcolm, writing three-quarters of a century afterwards, “and even at the present day, when the river is so much better known, the success with which the largest vessels of the fleet were navigated to Chandernagore and laid alongside the batteries of that settlement is a subject of wonder.” Summing up results, Colonel Malleson says: “The capture of Chandernagore was not less a seal to French dominion in Bengal than it was the starting-point of British supremacy in that province.”

Admiral Watson in his dispatch states the enemy’s force thus: “They had in the fort 1200 men, of which 500 were Europeans and 700 Blacks; 183 pieces of cannon, from 24-pounders and downwards; three small mortars, and a considerable quantity of ammunition. Besides the ships and vessels sunk below, to stop up the channel, they sank and ran ashore five large ships above the fort, and we have taken four sloops and a snow.”

Dealing with the casualties on the British side, Admiral Watson proceeds in these words: “The _Kent_ had 19 men killed and 49 wounded, the _Tyger_ 13 killed and 50 wounded. Among the number killed, was my first lieutenant, Mr. Samuel Perreau, and the master of the _Tyger_. Among the wounded was, Mr. Pocock slightly hurt, Captain Speke and his son, by the same cannon-ball, the latter had his leg shot off. Mr. Rawlins Hey, my third lieutenant, had his thigh much shattered, and is in great danger. Mr. Stanton, my fourth lieutenant, slightly wounded by splinters; but the greatest part of the wounded have suffered much, being hurt chiefly by cannon shot: Several of them cannot possibly recover.”

According to the _Kent’s_ log the flagship had three lower-deck guns dismounted and three on the upper deck, and had 138 shot holes through her engaged side, besides suffering severe damage aloft to masts and rigging.

Next morning Chandernagore paid its formal salute to the victor. From the _Kent’s_ log: “March 24th, 10 a.m., the Fort saluted the Admiral with 19 guns.” Then follows: “Fired 18 guns for the burial of the 1st Lieutenant Perreau.” Lieutenant Rawlins Hey and Midshipman Speke died a few days later.

After a ten days’ stay at Chandernagore, to rest the troops, arrange for the occupation of the place and the disposal of the prisoners, the men-of-war and the rest of the expedition returned to Fort William.

Further trouble with Suraj-u-daulah was looming ahead. The Nawab’s troops that had started to intervene at Chandernagore had halted at Plassey and gone into camp there. It was less than a hundred miles from Calcutta, and the authorities strongly objected to their being so near. There were no signs of any immediate withdrawal, although letters passed continuously to and fro between the Council and Suraj-u-daulah. Each side distrusted the other. Then began the series of intrigues between certain members of the Council and Clive with Mir Jafier and disaffected officials of the Nawab’s _entourage_, which led to the battle of Plassey two months later. With the ramifications of the plot, the treachery of the crafty Hindu go-between Omichand and how it was foiled, our narrative does not concern itself, beyond the passing reference. Everybody knows the ugly story of the “White” treaty and the “Red”; one genuine and the other sham; one honestly signed at the Council table by Admiral Watson, the other with the Admiral’s signature to it forged secretly, either by the hand of Clive himself or by some underling at his instigation. The battle of Plassey, from which the British _raj_ in the East, by common consent, dates its rise, was the sequel, on the 23rd of the following June.

To strengthen Clive’s small army the Royal Navy took over the garrisoning of Chandernagore for the time being; occupying the place with a hundred and forty of the flagship’s men, under Lieutenant Clarke of the _Kent_. Communication between Clive’s army in the field and Calcutta was kept open by way of Chandernagore and the _Bridgewater_, which ship was sent some miles higher up the river and anchored there.

Fifty seaman from the East Indies Squadron with a lieutenant and seven midshipmen in charge, accompanied Clive’s army, attached to the artillery. Most of them were from the flagship, and one of the _Kent’s_ midshipmen, Mr. Shoreditch, was wounded in a hand-to-hand encounter with one of the Nawab’s French officers.

More than that, however, the sailors had no small share in winning the battle for England. At Plassey Clive, as he said, put his trust in God. It was the sailors who kept his powder dry. It was their guns that did the work in smashing up the dense masses of the Nawab’s levies in the critical second stage of the battle, after the deluging monsoon rain-storm that burst at noon, swamped the ammunition of Suraj-u-daulah’s artillerymen. On such a detail as the smartness of Admiral Watson’s handy-men with their tarpaulins and budge-skin powder-covers did the fate of the epoch-making day of Plassey practically hinge. Only after it had become plain with which side the fortune of the day rested did Mir Jafier and his corps pass over and throw in their lot with Clive.

* * * * *

Within two months of Plassey Admiral Watson was dead. The climate killed him in the end. For more than four months past he had been ailing, and for the past four months had had among his papers the Admiralty’s permission to return home on sick leave. But, like Nelson during the last eighteen months of his glorious life while watching the enemy off Toulon, he would not leave his post while there was duty to be done. The inactivity after Chandernagore, in the sultry, steamy heats of the rainy season in Lower Bengal, killed Admiral Watson.

A plain obelisk on a heavy square base in the graveyard compound of St. John’s Cathedral, Calcutta, marks the Admiral’s resting-place. It was erected by Mr. Holwell, the survivor of the Black Hole, during his governorship a few years later, and is thus inscribed:—

Here lies interred the Body of
CHARLES WATSON, ESQUIRE,
Vice Admiral of the White,
Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s
Naval Forces in the East Indies,
Who departed this life
On the 16th day of August, 1757,
In the 44th year of his age.
_Geriah taken, February 13th, 1756.
Calcutta freed, January 11th, 1757.
Chandernagore taken, March 23rd, 1757._
Exegit monumentum aere perennius.

Monumentum aere perennius? Hardly that. Modern India has no place for naval memories. Clive—and Clive only—holds the field.

Hos ego versiculos feci: tulit alter honores

—wrote Virgil once, in a moment of literary bitterness. If it be given to those beyond the Veil to know of things on earth, and think, the Shade of the gallant admiral might well express itself in terms hardly less strong.

The East India Company erected a monument to the Admiral in Westminster Abbey, and King George bestowed a baronetcy of the United Kingdom on his only son—then a boy—in consideration of his father’s “great and eminent services.”

_Est procul hinc_—the legend’s writ,
The frontier grave is far away,
_Qui ante diem periit_
_Sed miles, sed Prô Patriâ_.

Is it too extravagant to suggest that, with things as they then were, with nearly five years of continuous war yet to come, and with enemies’ fleets in every sea, Admiral Watson, a man young in years for his high position,[7] might, had he been spared, have well found opportunity for achieving yet higher fame, even wider renown? His, too, in 1757, was surely in a real sense a “frontier grave”—the grave of one

Who might have caught and claspt Renown,
And worn her chaplet here:—and there,
In haunts of jungle-poisoned air,
The flame of life went wavering down.

The flagship _Kent_, it so happened, did not long outlast her chief. She had for some time past shown signs of being nearly worn out, and an official survey of her, shortly after Admiral Watson’s death, resulted in her condemnation as unfit for sea. She was “cast” and ordered to be broken up, and on the 15th of September, a month all but a day from the death of her Admiral, the pennant was hauled down on board the _Kent_—still lying off Fort William—and the ship’s company were paid off and drafted into the _Cumberland_, _Tyger_, and _Salisbury_.

So with the passing of the Admiral and his ship our story reaches its end.

Chandernagore, of course, is nowadays a French possession, a tiny territory of three and a half square miles, with a railway station on the line to Calcutta, where very few people ever get out. It was restored to France six years after Admiral Watson took it, for no particular reason it would appear, except that there had been a General Election in England, and the new Ministry was desirous of reversing the policy of its predecessors. Our beaten enemies got back almost everything that the valour of our sailors and soldiers had won for England, in order that the Treasury Bench might score a point in party politics. But we for our part have no right to throw stones. We of the present day have seen much the same thing happen elsewhere. Chandernagore has been twice retaken since 1763, and twice given back. It was finally handed back to France in 1816, after the Napoleonic War, the Foreign Office being under the impression—so, at any rate, the story goes—that it was one of the West India islands!

IV

BOSCAWEN’S BATTLE:—THE TAKING OF THE _TÉMÉRAIRE_

Over the seas and far away
“Old Dreadnought” steers to his fight to-day!

One of the best known of all our man-of-war names reappears on the roll of the British fleet in the name _Téméraire_, now borne by one of our new giant 18,000-ton battleships of the _Dreadnought_ type. This is the story of how it came to be a British battleship name in the first place, the story of the act of war which in the sequel led to that historic man-of-war the “Fighting” _Téméraire_ figuring on another day among the ships of Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar, to fight there as the _Victory’s_ chief supporter in the fiercest of the fray.

How we came to have a _Téméraire_ in the British Navy the name of course bears on its face. It was originally borne by one of Louis the Fourteenth’s men-of-war, and at the date of its adoption by capture into the British service, in 1759—“The Wonderful Year”—had been honourably known in the French Navy for upwards of ninety years. The first _Téméraire_ to sail the seas was so named, it would appear, by the Grand Monarque himself, the name being appointed to a man-of-war of fifty-two guns, built by contract in Holland for the French service, in the year 1668, when a war with England seemed at hand. King Louis, it is said, further appointed to the _Téméraire_ on her naming, as a special and distinctive figure-head, an elaborately carved and gorgeously coloured effigy of himself in his celebrated “Lion’s Mane” wig, sworded and spurred and wearing a military _just-au-corps_ tunic of cloth of gold over a scarlet vest with crimson breeches and crimson stockings—the orthodox attire of a French sea officer of the _Grand Corps_.

This first French _Téméraire_ was a ship that the British Navy of her time saw something of. She formed one of the men-of-war present with the allied French squadron which played so very peculiar a part when attached to the Duke of York’s fleet in the battle of Solebay in 1672, and in the same way also she was present at Prince Rupert’s three drawn battles with De Ruyter in the following year. As an enemy a few years later, the first French _Téméraire_ fought against us both at Beachy Head and in the battle off Cape Barfleur, after which the _Téméraire_ escaped and found refuge under the harbour batteries of St. Malo.

“_The Rash_” is what an official return on the French Navy, presented to Parliament on the 9th of February, 1698, calls the _Téméraire_, in accordance with the custom then in vogue of translating foreign men-of-war names appearing in British official documents. It seems a curious disguise for the name _Téméraire_ perhaps, although even then it is hardly so grotesque as the names under which some of the _Téméraire’s_ consorts figure in various House of Commons returns: “_The Without Danger_,” for instance, for _Le Sans Pareil_; “_The Undertaker_” or “_The Understanding_” (as two different official lists give it) for _L’Entreprenante_, another ship; “_The Jolly_” for _Le Joli_; “_The Fire_” for _Le Fier_; “_The Fiddle_” for _La Fidelle_, a frigate; the “_Turkish Lady_” for another frigate, _La Turquoise_, and so on.

Two years after Barfleur—on the 28th of November, 1694—a crippled French man-of-war was met with, a few miles to the south of the Lizard, by the British man-of-war _Montagu_. She had been dismasted in a storm out in the Atlantic and was nearly waterlogged and sinking; and after a few shots in reply to the _Montagu’s_ challenging gun hauled her colours down. The enemy’s ship was the “_Timmeraire_, of fifty-six guns,” in the words of the _Montagu’s_ log. They found it impossible to save the prize, either to rig jury masts or to take her in tow, as the weather came on thick and stormy, and in the end cleared the crew out, and on the 3rd of December abandoned the ship and set her on fire. That was the end of the first French _Téméraire_.

Two other _Téméraires_ followed in the French Navy, and then we come to the ship that became our own first _Téméraire_. This was the _Téméraire_, of seventy-four guns, built in 1748, which, after fighting against us in the battle which cost Admiral Byng his life, became prize of war three years later to the man whose hand signed the order for Byng’s firing party, Admiral Boscawen, on the day of Boscawen’s defeat of the French Toulon fleet in Lagos Bay, on Monday, the 19th of August, 1759.

The taking of our future first _Téméraire_ was one result of the determined attempt at the invasion of England that the French made in 1759. They had prepared a large army, and transports were assembled to carry it across the Channel as soon as their Toulon fleet, by coming round and joining hands with their Brest fleet, had given France the command of the Channel by providing a sufficient force, as the French counted, to hold the British fleet in check, and see the expedition safely over. To leave port, however, was what the French Toulon fleet—among which was the _Téméraire_—could not do and would not try, until the British force blockading Toulon under Admiral Boscawen was out of the way. The Brest fleet, at the same time, watched closely by Hawke’s powerful fleet, as a mouse in its hole is watched by a cat, could not put to sea with hope of success unless the Toulon fleet evaded Boscawen and joined hands with it.

Chance threw an opportunity of escape in the way of the _Téméraire_ and her consorts. Various reasons—damage to three of his ships in a somewhat venturesome attack on some outlying vessels of the French fleet anchored under the batteries that guarded the entrance to Toulon Roads, and a general want of water and provisions on board all his ships—induced Boscawen, in the last week of July, to withdraw temporarily to Gibraltar. De la Clue, the French Admiral, on learning by chance where Boscawen had gone and why, snatched at the offered occasion to make his sally. He put to sea on the 5th of August, determined to risk the passage round.

The fortune of war at the outset, and for nearly half-way, made a show of favouring the French. They managed to escape being sighted by the frigates that Boscawen had posted on the look-out between Malaga and the Straits. Not an English sail was sighted; nothing to cause disquietude happened, until just as de la Clue’s ships were in the act of passing Gibraltar.

With a brisk Levanter blowing over their taffrails and a thick haze on the sea, towards dusk on Saturday evening, the 17th of August, the Toulon fleet, after standing well over to the Barbary shore so as to give Boscawen’s ships at Gibraltar the go-by, was being carried rapidly past where the British fleet was lying, when suddenly, just as the elated Frenchmen were assuring themselves of good success for the rest of their cruise, almost by accident, as it were, at the eleventh hour they stumbled on the only one of Boscawen’s look-outs that they had yet to pass. Just off Ceuta, a little to the eastward of that place, the _Gibraltar_, a twenty-gun ship, quite unexpectedly to both sides, loomed out of the mist close alongside the passing French fleet.

The mischief, from the French point of view, was done. The captain of the _Gibraltar_ realized at once that the strange fleet he saw heading out of the Mediterranean and close at hand could only be the enemy from Toulon. He promptly went about and hauled in for the Spanish coast, firing signal guns of alarm. The French for their part seemed to have been too much taken aback to act. As much surprised at the meeting apparently as was Captain McCleverty of the _Gibraltar_ himself, Admiral de la Clue made no effort to stop or to silence the tell-tale British scout, although he might have done so. He simply contented himself with putting out all his lights, and then he continued to stand on with all sail set, heading west-north-west, so as to get clear away and out into the Atlantic.

It was indeed the slip ’twixt the cup and the lip for the _Téméraire’s_ Admiral. When, at half-past seven that evening, the alarm guns of the frigate _Gibraltar_ were heard, and the ship herself came into the bay to report what she had seen, practically half Boscawen’s fleet of fourteen ships were undergoing refit, lying with sails unbent and topmasts struck. The energy of the British Admiral and his captains recovered the situation for England. Taken at a disadvantage as Boscawen’s fleet was, all hands turned to with such smartness that within two hours of the alarm guns being first heard every ship in Boscawen’s command was in sea-going trim, ready for the order to weigh anchor. Before ten that night, within two and a half hours of the _Gibraltar_ coming in, every line-of-battle ship of the British Fleet was at sea, together with two frigates and a fireship, heading through the Straits in chase of the French under all sail.

They had their reward before many hours had passed.

At seven next morning, when off Cape Trafalgar, Boscawen got sight—although for the moment they were far ahead—of the French fleet: what bad seamanship during the night had left of it. No fewer than five ships of de la Clue’s original fleet of twelve had parted company with their Admiral and gone astray in the night after getting out of the Straits. They straggled and dropped astern, and found themselves in the morning out of sight, some leagues distant from their flagship and only off Cadiz.

This again led to a disastrous mistake on the part of the French Admiral. De la Clue, when about seven o’clock he first sighted the leading ships of Boscawen’s fleet in the distance, coming up astern, took them for his own missing five, and hove-to his whole fleet to give them time to join. Worse still: after waiting awhile for them he went about and actually stood back slowly to meet them—seven French men-of-war in war time bearing up for fourteen English! He refused to believe that Boscawen could possibly have got out of Gibraltar so quickly. The French Admiral, in fact, held on towards the advancing enemy until, when escape had become impossible, on finding his private signals unanswered, the horrifying truth of the situation dawned on the unfortunate de la Clue.

It was then too late.

He turned and ran for it. He would try and outsail his pursuers if he could; if not he would seek a refuge and shelter in some neutral Portuguese port. Boscawen followed promptly, clearing for action as he neared, and catching up the enemy all the morning hand over hand.

At noon, a fresh gale helping Boscawen along, he was almost within gunshot of the French. At two in the afternoon his headmost ships were near enough to open a long-range fire.

All that Sunday afternoon a running fight went on, protracted by the wind suddenly dying away to nearly a calm. The rearmost of the French squadron, the _Centaure_, a ship of seventy-four guns, practically held the leading pursuers in check during most of that time. Nothing could be more courageous than the _Centaure’s_ defence, regardless of the odds against her. Until nearly nightfall she kept Boscawen’s leading ships from closing on her and her consorts. The _Centaure_, under orders to cover the retreat, exchanged a never-ceasing cannonade with the ships of the English van for five hours, the fight becoming hotter and ever closer until just before sunset. Then at length, with her three topmasts and the mizen-mast shot away, and the ship herself so shattered and holed between wind and water that she was with difficulty kept afloat, the well-fought _Centaure_ had to lower her colours. She had played her part. She had gained time for her Admiral to seek the shelter of Lagos Bay. In so doing the _Centaure_ had lost over two hundred men in killed alone, including her gallant captain, de Sabran. Although he had received no fewer than eleven wounds, he still kept the quarter-deck until he received his twelfth, and death wound.

A little ahead of the _Centaure_ was Admiral de la Clue’s flagship _L’Océan_, with the _Téméraire_, and the _Redoutable_ and the _Modeste_ near by, sailing in a cluster just ahead of her. All four had every now and then been assisting the _Centaure_, as now one, now another, of the English ships came within range of their guns. Away in the van of the French squadron were two more ships, the _Souverain_ and the _Guerrière_, which were pushing on at some distance ahead of all.

To escape into neutral waters was the only course practicable to the French ships, and all they now aimed at, as they held on during the afternoon, crowding canvas to make land—the coast of Portugal near Cape St. Vincent—which soon began to rise ahead of them more and more distinctly.

A few minutes before the _Centaure_ surrendered there was a sharp interchange of broadsides between the two flagships, Boscawen’s _Namur_ and de la Clue’s _Océan_, both three-deckers. The _Namur_ pushed past the _Centaure_, then plainly _in extremis_, within gunshot of his chief antagonist. Boscawen fastened on his chosen opponent and engaged the French Admiral hotly, until a series of mishaps for the _Namur_, lucky hits on the part of the French gunners, temporarily disabled the British flagship by shooting down her mizen-mast and main-topsail yard. That forced the _Namur_ to drop back out of action.

Admiral Boscawen, the story goes, at once quitted his crippled ship to go on board the _Newark_, a seventy-four, the nearest ship among the leaders in the British van, and had a narrow escape from drowning in his passage from ship to ship; through a cannon-ball which struck his barge and smashed a hole in it. The Admiral saved his own life and those of the men with him, as it is related, by his presence of mind. The barge began to fill and would have sunk under them, had not Boscawen smartly whipped off his wig and stuffing it into the hole stopped the inrush of water, enabling them to keep afloat until they could get alongside the _Newark_.

There was little more firing that evening after the _Centaure_ had made her submission, but the pursuit of the _Téméraire_ and the other French ships coastwise went steadily on.

All that night Boscawen chased, keeping the enemy well in sight, although, as on the night before, they showed no lights.

Early next morning only four French ships were to be seen. The _Souverain_ and the _Guerrière_, the two headmost of the enemy, had altered course after dark. Being far ahead already, they managed to slip off unobserved and got clear away. The four ships still before Boscawen were in themselves, however, sufficient prize. These were now heading in directly for the land, and were only a short way ahead of the British Fleet.

De la Clue was about to make his second mistake. Admiral Boscawen, he apparently imagined, would think twice about following him into neutral waters and attacking him there. But the neutrality of Portugal was of little account at such a moment. Might was right that August day for “Old Dreadnought.” International proprieties notwithstanding, the British Admiral “in a very Roman style made free with the coast of Portugal,” as Horace Walpole put it. Boscawen swept straight down after de la Clue, with his men at quarters and his guns run out.

The final phase opened about eight o’clock on the 19th of August, Monday morning, when the French flagship _L’Océan_ was seen to run heavily aground. She brought up hard and fast, and the next moment her three masts went crashing over the side. Boscawen instantly signalled to the leading British ship, a seventy-four, the _America_, to deal with the French flagship. The order was carried out promptly. The _America_ closed nearly alongside the wrecked three-decker and opened fire on her; whereupon the doomed _L’Océan_ lowered her flag. In the brief interval before the _America’s_ boats, sent off to take possession of the prize, could board the French flagship, M. de la Clue himself, mortally wounded and with one leg broken, was hastily got away and rowed ashore, to die there a little later. Almost at the same time that _L’Océan_ wrecked herself, the _Redoutable_ ran on shore close by, breaking her back.

_Painted by Swaine. Engraved and Published in 1760._

_In the foreground to the right is seen the “Warspite” attacking the “Téméraire.” Boscawen’s flagship the “Namur” is in the centre flying the Admiral’s Blue Flag at the main; and at the fore the red battle-flag,—the “Bloody Flag” of the Old Navy._]

There remained the _Téméraire_ and the _Modeste_, which two ships, for their part, let go anchor close under the guns of a Portuguese fort on shore. The _Warspite_, a seventy-four of equal strength with the bigger French ship, was told off to deal with the _Téméraire_. She closed on her antagonist forthwith, in spite of warning shots from the Portuguese fort, and attacked at pistol-shot range. Hopeless as his case was, with no possibility of escape open to him, for upwards of an hour M. de Chastillon, the _Téméraire’s_ captain, made a fight of it. Then having done all he could he gave up his ship. The _Modeste_ surrendered not long afterwards, and so Boscawen’s battle ended.

It was Captain Bently, of the _Warspite_, who gave the Royal Navy its first _Téméraire_. The story of that morning’s work is told in the _Warspite’s_ log:

“August 19th: 4 a.m.—Saw 4 sail of the enemy about 4 or 5 leagues from us, running inshore. The other two having altered their course in the night were out of sight. Continued chase and before 8 a.m. the French admiral ran ashore 6 leagues E. of St. Vincent. All his masts went by the board. Soon after saw another ashore, 4 miles W. of the French admiral, and his masts too went by the board. The other two anchored close inshore.

“9 a.m.—Little wind and fair weather. Admiral anchored 3 leagues from shore and signalled for all captains. At the same time signalled to the _Conqueror_ and _Jersey_ to chase N.W. _Warspite_ brought-to.

“Captain Bently returned from the Admiral and stood inshore for the easternmost of the enemy’s ships at anchor. The _America_ stood for the French admiral. Little wind, hazy. Great swell from S.E. 1 p.m. _America_ anchored to eastward of the Ocean.

“We continued standing for the other French ships at anchor 2 m. to W. of the _Ocean_. Soon after a fort fired several shot at the _Warspite_, but hoisted no colours. Several of the shots struck the ship and did us some damage.

“We continued standing in near the French ship and fired a few shot at her, imagining she would immediately strike her colours; but finding she did not, stood on and tacked and came close under her stern, and ¼ before 3 we began to engage her: ¼ before 4 she struck.

“At that time the Vice-Admiral with the _Jersey_, _Guernsey_, and _St. Albans_ stood in to westward of us after another ship on shore and fired some guns, when she struck; after which they set her on fire and stood in towards the Cape where another French ship was at anchor which they brought off. On our beginning to fire, the _America_ fired some guns on the _Ocean_: she instantly hauled down her colours.

“We sent a boat on board and took possession of our prize, which proved to be the _Téméraire_, 74 guns, 716 men. At ¼ to 5 we cut her cables and carried her down to the Admiral.

“In the evening the _Intrepid_ and _America_ set fire to the _Ocean_.”

Boscawen, with his work accomplished and the Toulon fleet accounted for, sailed away for England, carrying the _Téméraire_ and the _Modeste_ with him under British colours, to add both ships, in their original French names, to the British Navy. His battle in Lagos Bay under the shadow of the cliffs of Cape St. Vincent, if perhaps few people nowadays remember it, perhaps have ever heard of it, yet, in the words of Captain Mahan, “saved England from invasion,” and the _Téméraire’s_ name should always stand for us as a memento of that fact.

At the time the event made a widespread impression throughout Europe. It caused great enthusiasm, as we are told, in the camps of the allied armies fighting the French beyond the Rhine, and was honoured by a cannon salute. “We were entertained,” wrote a British officer in the army which had just fought at Minden, “with a _feu de joie_ within hearing of the French camp, in honour of Admiral Boscawen’s success against the Toulon squadron.”

The little difficulty with Portugal that ensued was settled amicably. The elder Pitt, then Prime Minister, had his own way of dealing with matters that would upset the feebler nerved politicians of our modern House of Commons. The Opposition in the House tried, of course, to make party capital over Boscawen’s breach of Portuguese neutrality. “Very true,” was all the answer Pitt deigned to make, “but the enemy’s ships were burned.” He sent Lord Kinnoull to Lisbon with a polite expression of regret at the unavoidable necessity of the case, and the incident was not heard of again.

For many years after her capture by Boscawen the _Téméraire_ was reckoned one of the finest seventy-fours in King George’s service, and among the “crack” ships of the British Navy. She served England both in European waters and across the Atlantic, with all the most notable admirals of the time—with Hawke and Boscawen himself; in the Channel Fleet blockading Brest; and under Keppel, Rodney, and Pocock in the West Indies. After being for nearly twenty years in commission, the old war-prize in her closing days—at the beginning of the war with France and Spain, when the two nations combined against England to assist the rebel American colonists—was converted into a floating-battery hulk for harbour defence, on which duty our first _Téméraire_ ended her career. In June, 1784, she was sold out of the service for breaking up.

That is the story of our first _Téméraire_, the immediate predecessor of the famous “Fighting” _Téméraire_ of Trafalgar fame, which formed the subject of Turner’s masterpiece.

One battleship of our ironclad fleet has borne the name. That was the _Téméraire_ which was with Sir Geoffrey Hornby when he passed the Dardanelles in 1878. She took part also at the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882, and still exists, converted for use as a floating workshop at Devonport, under the unrecognizable label of _Indus II_.

Our new “improved _Dreadnought_” _Téméraire_ of 1907 is the fourth bearer of the name under the British flag.

V

HAWKE’S FINEST PRIZE:—HOW THE _FORMIDABLE_ CHANGED HER FLAG

The guns that should have conquered us they rusted on the shore,
The men that would have mastered us they drummed and marched no more,
For England was England, and a mighty brood she bore—
When Hawke came swooping from the West!

How the British Navy came by its first _Formidable_ man-of-war, the predecessor in the direct line of the fine first-class battleship, the _Formidable_ of our modern Navy, is one of the most exciting tales in our naval annals. It serves too to commemorate one of the most brilliant victories ever won at sea—the dashing encounter on that eventful winter’s afternoon in the Bay of Biscay, “When Hawke came swooping from the West”:—

’Twas long past noon of a wild November day
When Hawke came swooping from the West;
He heard the breakers thundering in Quiberon Bay,
But he flew the flag for battle, line abreast.
Down upon the quicksands, roaring out of sight,
Fiercely beat the storm-wind, darkly fell the night.
But they took the foe for pilot and the cannon’s glare for light,
When Hawke came swooping from the West.

How the _Formidable_ passed that day from France to England is, indeed, something of which both England and France may be jointly proud. Never fought men more heroically on both sides—the enemy to keep, we to take—amid all the horrors of a furious storm and ever imminent shipwreck and catastrophe.

This is the story of how, where, and when the Royal Navy won its first _Formidable_, the first of a famous line.

It was the afternoon of the 20th of November, 1759, a Tuesday. The scene was among the black-fanged reefs of granite rock, and the treacherous quicksands that fringe the “sickle-shaped sweep” of Quiberon Bay on the coast of the Morbihan, in Lower Brittany, in the north-eastern quarter of the Bay of Biscay. The battle was fought in the height of a wild raging storm from the Atlantic, a tremendous gale from the north-west, howling blasts of wind, and torrents of hissing rain, and thick, dark weather, with the sea lashed to fury all round, and gigantic breakers running “so high that no boat could live for a moment among them,” as one who was present described. “A network of shoals and sandbanks” is what a French writer calls Quiberon Bay, “with heavy surf breaking along the shore on the calmest days of summer, and ugly cross-currents swirling to and fro with the strength and rush of a mill race”; a place “lined with reefs that the navigator never sees without alarm, and never passes without emotion.”

Hawke and his captains swept down on the French fleet, cornered between the storm and the shore, in the midst of the rocks and quicksands; without charts themselves, and for the most part without pilots, or, at least, pilots that they could trust; flinging themselves on the enemy heedless of gale and breakers, attacking ship after ship of the French as each was met with, “to make,” in Hawke’s own expressive words, “downright work of them.”

De Conflans, Maréchal de France, commanded the French Fleet. He was one of a batch of eight marshals created, _honoris causa_, some two years before; a boon companion of royalty, one of the “flying tables” set, a fine figure of a man to look at, as his portrait at Versailles shows him, handsome, tall, and well made, a hard rider to hounds at Compiègne or Fontainebleau, with a pretty wit in the boudoir and over the card table; also one of the Pompadour’s courtier friends, which was perhaps the main reason why a man of de Conflans’ stamp as a naval officer found himself in chief command at that place that day. There were marshals of the French Navy as well as of the army under the _ancien régime_. The rank was first instituted by Louis XIV when he solaced Admiral Tourville with the _bâton_ and its consequences—a big salary, the title of “Monseigneur,” and court precedence at the head of the Grand Officers of State—to make up for his ill-fortune at La Hogue.

As an admiral Conflans proved an utter failure. That morning, when he first, some forty miles to westward of Belleisle, saw Hawke approaching, he formed line and brought-to. He would fight the English, he said, in the open sea to the south of Belleisle. As Hawke came nearer, when it was too late, he changed his mind and ran off pell-mell to take shelter among the reefs and shoals of Quiberon. With Conflans were de Beauffrement, Vice-Admiral, the second in command, and the Comte de Verger, Rear-Admiral, the third in command, who had his flag in the _Formidable_. De Verger’s squadron formed up astern, its place in the line of battle.

As Hawke’s leading ships began to overtake the French the gallant Rear-Admiral shortened sail and dropped back. He would await his fate at what in the circumstances was the post of honour, as rearmost ship of all. There, practically single-handed, the _Formidable_ bore the brunt of Hawke’s opening attack.

Hawke’s van ships caught up the rear of the French Fleet just to the south-east of Belleisle, as it was in the act of heading to round the Cardinals, a chain of dangerous rocks and outlying islets, and stand in for Quiberon Bay, then still ahead of them some eighteen to twenty miles. Conflans was that distance from his intended refuge when the first shots went off. Both fleets began to fight as they overlapped, the British coming up under every stitch of canvas which their masts could stand—“not a topsail was reefed”—the ships now wallowing in the trough of the waves, now plunging and rolling and staggering forward on the crest, while heavy surging cross-seas burst and broke in deluges of seething foam over the ships’ bows. So terrible was the weather that on board some of the British ships men were flung down on deck or hurled helplessly about and seriously injured and maimed. In one or two men were washed overboard and never seen again. The guns were double-breeched; eight men were at the wheel in every ship. So on that awful November afternoon did Hawke swoop down to strike.

On the French side there were twenty-one ships—with Hawke, twenty-three; but the French ships were on the average bigger vessels than ours, and carried heavier guns. That for fighting purposes in such weather gave Conflans the advantage. Another thing was this: all the fighting that day was done by barely two-thirds of Hawke’s fleet. A full third of the British Fleet were too far in rear—out-paced in the chase—and were unable to come up in time to have any influence on the fortune of the fight.