Edward Fraser

“ It was Napoleon with all the resources of his Empire in its full vigour at his back, Napoleon at the zenith of his intellect and genius for war, Napoleon in the year before Austerlitz—baffled and held at arm's length by the British Navy. One has only to glance at the daily newspapers of 1804 to realise the superb self-confidence with which Great Britain braced herself to meet the threatening peril. ”

“ All that month of May the Téméraire and her consorts off Brest held themselves ready to clear for action at the shortest notice, daily expecting the sails of Admiral Villeneuve's fleet to appear on the horizon to the south-west. As if awaiting Villeneuve's arrival, also, the whole of the Brest fleet had come out of harbour and was riding at single anchor, twenty-one sail of the line completely equipped for sea, under the cliff batteries of Bertheaume Bay. The British fleet off Brest for the moment could only muster seventeen sail. ”

“ Those who were to fall in the coming fight were to be [Pg 70] envied, rather, in their ending. It was better, surely, to go down there and then, to be dropped overboard in the clear, deep water alongside, eight hundred and fifty fathoms down, to sleep the last sleep beneath the lapping wavelets of the blue Caribbean, dead on the field of honour, than to survive for what was yet to come for France, to experience the fate that was to befall so many a gallant French officer who outlived the cannon thunders of Rodney's day. ”

“ Amid the clash and ring of hostile steel, in the heat of a hard-fought fight, with shells bursting round, and grape-shot hurtling through the powder smoke, with bullets flying thick, while men closed hand to hand with cutlass and bayonet and boarding pike, came the first idea of the name Undaunted, and the scene of its first appointment, of its first bestowal on a British man-of-war, was the quarter-deck of a British flagship, as the last echoes of battle were dying down. ”

“ Her topmasts had gone, her foreyard was gone, her foremast was tottering, all her rigging was torn and tangled, her sails hung down in rags. Her ensign, too, had been shot away, or at least was down owing to the fall of the gaff; very few men were to be seen alive on her upper deck; not a shot came from her guns on the broadside facing the Fougueux.
Captain Baudoin, the captain of the Fougueux, seemed at first uncertain whether he would lie off to leeward, and with the Neptune's help rake and cannonade the Téméraire into submission, or come to close quarters at once and board. ”

“ Is worth an age without a name.
Scott.
There is no incident quite like it in all the annals of the Royal Navy. There is hardly a finer tale, all said and done, hardly a more stirring story, than that which tells how we came by our first Undaunted—why there is an Undaunted to-day on the roll of the British fleet. Better name for British fighting ship there could be none; none, assuredly, of happier omen. In a sense, indeed, it is, so to speak, a self-made name. No Admiralty Lord of high degree in the comfortable surroundings of a sanctum at Whitehall first made choice of or appointed it. ”

“ Then fastening with a bulldog's grip on her big opponent, the Monmouth set to and blazed away fiercely into the French ship as fast as the guns could be loaded and run out.
Nothing could be more masterly than the way the British captain handled his ship. Captain Gardiner knew his business. He meant to settle his personal score with the Foudroyant once for all; but he had no idea of sacrificing needlessly the life of a single man. There was to be no reckless clapping of the little Monmouth side by side with the Foudroyant. Gardiner was well aware of the weight of his opponent's metal. ”

“ Towards nine o'clock, all of a sudden, a burst of roaring flame shot up from one of the French prizes, illuminating the sky and sea for many miles all round. De Vaudreuil and his fugitive fifteen, far away to northward by now, below the horizon, could see the reflection and guessed what it was. Bougainville, in the other direction, flying towards Curaçao, saw it too. The victim was the captured César. One of her own disorderly crew, it came out later, did the mischief. They had been as usual clapped under hatchways after the surrender, but had the hold to themselves. ”

“ Each ship had been packed with troops for the Jamaica expedition. Every seventy-four that morning, including the hundred and fifty or two hundred soldiers on board, had carried not fewer than nine hundred men at least. Some ships had had still more on board. The Ville de Paris, for one, carried thirteen hundred. Awful indeed had been the slaughter as the English broadsides, aimed at the French port-holes at point-blank range, swept the decks and tore lanes through the closely-packed masses of men as they stood helplessly at quarters. It was the dreadful sequel that interested the sharks. ”

“ Hardly another man-of-war has so many 'battle honours' to its credit. No ship of the Old Navy perhaps ever won such distinction in battle for sheer hard fighting as did the six Monmouths, one after the other, from which our cruiser Monmouth of to-day takes her name. Were it possible for His Majesty's ships-of-war to have ship flags for display at reviews or on other ceremonial occasions, just as the regiments of the army use regimental colours, the Monmouth's flag would show a record of upwards of thirty fights, and even then the list would not be complete. ”

“ The commander of the Zebra was indeed a man in a thousand. Hardly a finer fellow in every respect than Robert Faulknor ever trod the quarter-deck of a British man-of-war in any age. He could not, perhaps, well help being so. If ever a British naval officer had the sea 'in his blood,' as the old saying went, Faulknor had it. Not many families ever did more for the Sea Service than the Faulknors of Hampshire in the eighteenth century. ”

“ No ship in the world should give the Victory a lead on the day of battle. As the Téméraire sheered alongside, the admiral stepped up briskly to the Victory's poop and from there hailed across in a curt tone to the quarter-deck of the Téméraire. Speaking with a strong nasal twang, in his Norfolk accent, as we are told, he called over: 'I'll thank you, Captain Harvey, to keep your proper station, which is astarn of the Victory!'
The Téméraire had to drop back, exactly as the Neptune had previously had to do, and content herself with following in the Victory's wake. ”

“ It was a daring resolution, for Fort Louis was a very formidable work, mounting heavy guns and strongly held. It crowned a rocky eminence that jutted out menacingly into Fort Royal Bay. The sea face rose abruptly from the water's edge, with a wall and parapet, 15 feet high, scored with embrasures for big guns all along that side. In rear of the parapet three lofty tiers of platforms, rising one above another, with the muzzles of guns showing at all points, frowned fiercely down on all who should venture to approach in hostile [Pg 182] guise. ”

“ The whole attack indeed was jeopardised. The Asia dropped back nearly outside the bay. The boats lay on their oars just within the bay. The Zebra, all by herself, entirely unsupported, was some distance ahead; all the time under fire from the enemy, stormed at by round-shot and shell and grape from every gun that the French could bring to bear on her.
Fortunately Commander Faulknor was not of the stamp of Captain Brown. He might well have anticipated a signal of recall and turned his little sloop away to retire out of range and wait for further orders. But he was not that sort of man. ”

“ The reply came instantly—two shotted guns in rapid succession, and a sharp crackle of musketry. M. le Marquis's honour was not satisfied yet. What followed was inevitable. The Swiftsure had now to administer the coup de grâce according to the rules of naval war. As the sound of the Foudroyant's defiance died away, the Swiftsure's double tier burst into flame, and the British seventy-four's broadside crashed into the French ship, sweeping her decks from stem to stern. It was enough. The next instant down came the Foudroyant's lights and she called for quarter. The battle was over. ”

“ Two 'turtle-back' decks of thin steel armour further help to keep out shot. Altogether, in dead-weight, the armour all over the ship—on the sides, decks, bulkheads, conning-tower, casemates, barbettes, ammunition-supply tubes—amounts to 1800 tons, a fifth of the ship's entire displacement weight in sea-going trim.
Then another detail, and the most important of all. Speed, for a cruiser, is, of course, the prime essential. It means the power of picking out a foe, of running down a foe, the command of the weather-gage, the choice of the range, the power of bringing on or refusing battle. ”

“ It was a glaring blunder, and his own fleet saw it. 'What evil genius,' exclaimed De Vaudreuil's flag-captain, Du Pavillon, who had the reputation of being one of the ablest officers in the French navy, as he read off the flags at the Ville de Paris's mast-head with his glass, 'What evil genius has inspired the admiral!'
When the French had come far enough to leeward to suit his purpose, Rodney recalled his chasing ships and went to breakfast. ”

“ Over mast and deck were scatter'd
Blood and brains of men.
Hour after hour, from half-past nine to twelve o'clock, the Monmouth hung doggedly on the quarter of the great Foudroyant and refused to be shaken off. She kept pace with the Frenchman steadily, not losing a foot, and not drawing nearer; mercilessly pounding away into the Foudroyant's hull at a short seventy-yards range, as fast as the shot could be brought to the guns. ”

“ Outmatched in the open, the French troops and local militiamen had in the end fallen back on Fort Royal, whither General Rochambeau, the French Commander-in-Chief in the West Indies, had called in all his forces and massed his battalions to make a final stand at bay. The fate of Martinique depended on their power of holding out until help from outside should reach them.
A large and powerful British fleet under Vice-Admiral Sir John Jervis, the future Earl St. Vincent, had escorted the troops across the Atlantic. ”

“ Many a poor fellow had gone overboard with the spars and rigging as they crashed over the side, shot away in action. Requin is, of course, the French for shark. As a fact, it is a popular corruption of the word 'requiem,' which was the old French name for the monster down to the seventeenth century. Littré explains why:—'à cause,' he says, 'qu'il n'y a plus à dire qu'un requiem pour celui qu'un requin saisit.'
The British were the first to feel the breeze as it came again after mid-day, and every captain began to cast his ship's head round to follow in the direction of the enemy. ”

“ Captain Gardiner had a worthy antagonist. The Marquis du Quesne-Menneville, whose broad pennant flew at the Foudroyant's mast-head that day, had the reputation of being as able an officer as any in the French service. No braver man ever wore the bleu du Roi. And he commanded a man-of-war that was, by common consent, considered the finest ship in all King Louis's navy. ”

“ The Asia, a 64-gun ship, Captain John Brown, with the Zebra, a 16-gun sloop of war, Commander Robert Faulknor, were to push on ahead of the boats. Having got as close in to the ramparts as the tide would allow, the Asia was to batter away at the fort and breach the sea-wall. The Zebra at the same time was to sweep the ramparts with grape and canister and cover the approach of the boats with the storming parties, which were to come up a little astern of her. ”

“ The bulk of the British captains were the sons of ordinary folk, sons of squires and country parsons, and old naval officers to some extent, drawn from all over the three kingdoms—the sort of men that had officered the Royal Navy for the past hundred years, the men to whom Great Britain to-day owes her place among the nations. ”

“ When all is said and done, it [Pg 44] may appear, perhaps, that some of us are not so unreasonable after all in taking pride in seeing this 'blustering adjective' inscribed as a man-of-war name on the roll of our modern British fleet. Handsome is, every nursery knows, that handsome does. It is more than highly probable that should the day for 'the real thing,' as Mr. Kipling calls it, come in our present Formidable's time, those to whose lot it may fall to face the Formidable from the enemy's side will think that, in regard to this particular ship at least, there is something in a name. ”

“ One cannot help feeling pity for the unhappy fellow; but it was no time for pity. Commander Faulknor could do only one thing, and he did it. Without for an instant losing his presence of mind, he replied to the man in a still lower tone:
'The fate of this expedition depends on the helm in your hand. Give it to me, and go and hide your head in whatever you fancy the safest part of the ship. But mind—fears are catching. If I hear you tell yours to one of your messmates, your life shall answer for it to-morrow!' [Pg 187] ”

“ Blane, Rodney's Physician of the Fleet, no previous British fleet in time of war perhaps had ever been so free from sickness. In some ships there was not a man unfit to go to quarters. The Ajax, to name one ship, had no sick list. In the Formidable, out of 900 men on board, only two were unfit for duty. Before leaving Plymouth, Dr. Blane had had Teneriffe wine supplied to the flagship instead of rum, together with molasses and pickled cabbages, and the dietary had had a marvellous effect on the health of the men. ”

“ In accordance with one of the old fighting instructions of the navy, the commander-in-chief's ship in action kept her Admiral's flag flying in all circumstances until the battle was over, whatever might have happened to the Admiral meantime. Whether he was disabled or whether he was killed, the flag must still fly to the end of the action in its accustomed [Pg 274] place. As a fact, at Trafalgar, Flag-Captain Hardy of the Victory had had the entire handling of the British fleet from the moment that Nelson was struck down until the last shot had been fired. ”