FLEET OF CONFLANS

The first report that he was approaching the enemy was given to Hawke by the signal of the Maidstone at about half-past eight. But it was not until a quarter to ten that Howe in the Magnanime, who had been sent on to make the land and guide the fleet, was able to signal that the French fleet was ahead, and to report its force. Meanwhile the French admiral, who was at first incredulous of the approach of his opponent, had been convinced at last that the British fleet was indeed upon him, and had begun to collect his ships, which had been scattered in pursuit of Duff. He endeavoured to form a line, and appeared resolved to give battle. When Howe’s signal was seen, Hawke gave the order to form the line abreast, and for the heavy sailers which were lagging behind to set more sail and come up to his flag. As the British ships rose above the horizon both fleets were much scattered, and the admirals were endeavouring to bring them together. It was not a rapid process with sailing-ships, which could not spread much canvas in stormy weather. The whole forenoon slipped away before a shot could be fired, and all the vessels were still to the west and south of Belleisle at midday. Duff joined Hawke at eleven o’clock. The French admiral was now able to measure the strength of the force about to fall on him. He estimated it at thirty sail of the line, which even when the 50-gun ships of Commodore Duff were counted in was an exaggeration, only to be accounted for by fear, or by a dishonest wish to excuse the weakness of his conduct to his superiors. Losing all confidence, Conflans decided not to give battle, but to make for Quiberon Bay. He therefore hoisted the signal for retreat, and set the example by leading the way in the Soleil Royal. He did not believe that Hawke would follow him into the narrow and broken waters of the bay, but he calculated that if the English admiral did take this bold course, he himself could work up towards the peninsula of Quiberon, and so gain the weather-gage and the advantage of position over an opponent embayed on a hostile and unfamiliar coast. This is what he said in his exculpatory dispatch, but it has much the look of an afterthought, and the probability is that Conflans really hoped to reach the enclosed waters of the Morbihan before being overtaken.

Had he been opposed to a commonplace officer, he would probably have succeeded. Hawke was too bold a man to turn his mind to considerations of superfluous prudence in the presence of an enemy who was manifestly seeking to avoid battle. The signal for the line abreast was hauled down and replaced by another, for the vessels nearest the French to pursue, to overtake, and to bring the enemy to action, and for all others to come on at their best speed, pressing into battle where and how they could. The two fleets swept on past Belleisle, rolling and pitching in the rising sea. It was shortly after two in the afternoon that the French admiral led his flying force round the Grands Cardinaux, and already the battle had begun with the ships behind him. The Warspight, Sir John Bentley, and the Dorsetshire, Captain P. Denis, were the first of the English ships to come up with and open fire on the enemy. They were soon joined by the Revenge, Magnanime, Torbay, Montagu, Resolution, Swiftsure, and Defiance. Thus, when the French ships ran between the Grands Cardinaux and Plateau du Four, all those at the end of their line were already mingled with their pursuers, and both the fleets came in together locked in a savage embrace of battle.

Never in the long history of war was the truth that the timid is also the dangerous course more convincingly shown than in this battle. As the English ships overtook the French, ranging up on both sides, they did not linger by the first they met, but pushed on ahead, leaving the work of destruction to be completed by their comrades coming on behind. Thus the French rear ships were successively assailed by superior numbers firing into them from right and left. It must also be remembered that when the ships turned round Les Grands Cardinaux and headed to the north and north-west, they turned their left sides to the wind and were pressed over to the right. The slope, or list, given to them was so great that it was impossible to open the ports of the lowest tier of guns on the lee side. When any English captain came up on the lee side of a Frenchman, he himself had the full use of his weather battery, while his opponent could not fire his heaviest and most effective tier of guns. Conflans, in fact, had so managed matters that he gave Hawke’s superiority of numbers an effect it could not have had if the French fleet had accepted battle outside Belleisle, in good order, and in a united body. The rear of his line was miserably crushed. The Formidable, 80, the flagship of the Chef d’Escadre Saint-André Duverger, was shattered to pieces by our fire. Duverger himself and 200 of his men were slain, and his ship surrendered. The Thésée, 74, filled and went down with all hands, unquestionably because her captain, M. de Kersaint, opened his lower deck ports to fire and allowed the water to rush in. Keppel on the Torbay all but incurred the same fate by running the same hazard, but his ship freed herself of the water in time.

A detailed description of the battle is an impossibility. The wind shifted suddenly from W.N.W. to N.N.W., and increased in violence as it travelled round, adding to the already frightful confusion of the forty and odd great ships manœuvring in the confined triangle of water bounded by the coast and the islands. The sea was heaving underfoot, driven in great waves before the wind, and dragged seaward by the ebb. The storm howled through the rigging. The ships under reduced canvas made short tacks to avoid the rocks all around. Conflans, after stretching up to Quiberon Bay, turned back to the help of the ships behind him, and the two fleets were mingled in a wild whirl of storm and battle. Collisions were incessant between enemies and friends, but the English, as being the more practised seamen, avoided them better, and suffered from them less. To the French admiral it suggested itself as a possibility that he might fight his way out again, and get once more to windward of Belleisle. Signals followed one another rapidly from the Soleil Royal, but they were not, and they could not be obeyed. The rolling of the ships rendered their fire ineffective, and the danger of wreck compelled the captains to think constantly of the safety of their vessels. Sunset, too, came early, and the dark put a stop to all manœuvring. Thus there was neither time nor opportunity to take many prizes. One other French ship, the Superbe, shared the fate of the Thésée, and the Héros, dismasted and riddled by the English fire, hauled down her flag and dropped anchor. But the enemy was none the less completely beaten. Seven of his ships found refuge in the Vilaine by grovelling over the mud bar of the river. Others fled down the coast to the south, where one of them, the Juste, was stranded near St. Nazaire. Her first and second captains, the brothers Allouar, had both fallen. Conflans himself ran inside the Point du Four, and anchored off Croisic. When darkness came down, Hawke made the signal to anchor. It was, according to the code of the time, two guns fired to leeward, and was naturally not distinguished while cannon were being fired on all sides. Several of the English ships kept under way all night, but most anchored between the Grands Cardinaux and the little island of Dumet, which lies to north-east towards the mouth of the Vilaine. Two English ships, the Essex and the Resolution, were lost on the Four in the dark. The captain of the Héros finding that he was not boarded by an English prize crew, took advantage of the darkness to cut his cables and allow his vessel to drive ashore near Croisic, when Conflans had anchored in the Soleil Royal. In the morning the admiral found himself alone, with the bulk of Hawke’s fleet at anchor a few miles off. Hopeless of escape, he ran his flagship ashore to prevent her from falling into our hands.

Judged by the fighting alone, the battle of Quiberon was less arduous than many we have fought with the French and all we have fought with the Dutch. But the fighting was in this case the least of the battle. It stands in the first rank, if not at the head of all the heroisms of the fleet, because it was won over the storm, the sea, and the rocks, as well as over man. The boldness of Hawke in flying at his enemy before his own force was thoroughly united, and the magnificent seamanship of his captains in circumstances of unparalleled difficulty set this battle apart. Although the French had but one vessel taken and five destroyed, they were utterly routed. The seven ships which fled into the Vilaine were lost for all practical purposes, and the spirit of their navy was broken for the rest of the war. There is a legend which tells how the sailing master of the Royal George expostulated when ordered to take the ship among the rocks of Quiberon, and how Hawke answered that his subordinate had done his duty by pointing out the danger and was now to obey the order. If this story has not an actual, it has a mythical, truth. What gives its peculiar character to Hawke’s victory at Quiberon was its magnificent military quality. To the mere seaman there was something like madness in rushing just before dark into the most frightful of the possible perils of navigation. But the admiral, though a finished seaman, was also a great fighting leader, and to him the occasion seemed one on which to use his skill, not to avoid but to incur dangers, for a great purpose. Nothing equal in conduct will be met for twenty-two years, and until we come to Hood’s fine, though unsuccessful effort to save the island of St. Kitts from the Comte de Grasse. Indeed the whole passage of the blockade of Brest and the battle of Quiberon was without precedent in the history of the navy, and without an equal successor for forty years. The tenacity with which the fleet kept its watch into the stormy winter months would have appeared the excess of temerity to the naval officers of former times, who thought it dangerous to leave the great ships at sea after September. What also was without precedent was the success with which the crews were kept in health by the determination of the admiral that they should be regularly supplied with fresh meat and wholesome beer. After Quiberon the stormy weather made the service of the victuallers difficult, and there was a change for the worse which is recorded in the navy’s one contribution to epigrammatic literature—

It adds a grace to the heroic figure of Hawke that he was tender of the lives and of the health of his men. But his good sense taught him that sickly crews must needs make a crippled fleet.

The history of the invasion year may be concluded with a brief notice of the fate of Thurot. He escaped from Dunkirk with five ships on the 17th October, and made his way to the coast of Norway. From thence he came down to the Hebrides early in 1760. Two of his vessels were disabled by weather at different times and left him. On the 20th February he appeared off Carrickfergus in the north of Ireland, and took the place. On the 28th of the same month Captain Elliot of the Eolus, with two other frigates, fell in with the three Frenchmen and took them after a sharp fight, in which Thurot, a brave humane man worthy of a better service and a better fate, lost his life. And so went out the last spark of the French scheme for the destruction of England.

When darkness closed down on the Bay of Quiberon on the 20th November, the great operations of naval warfare came to an end, for there was no longer any fleet to meet ours at sea. The navy had duty to do both during 1759 and afterwards in co-operating with the army in the conquest of French possessions. But its work, however indispensable, was ancillary, and a repetition of the same tale with the same moral would be tedious. I shall therefore, as in the case of the operations of the reigns of King William and Queen Anne, simply give a list of the expeditions.

While the campaigns of 1758 and 1759 were being fought out in Europe and America, the rivalry between France and England in the Eastern Seas was decided to our advantage. In this struggle the navy played a very essential part. The scene of its labours and final triumph, was on the eastern or Coromandel coast of the Indian Peninsula. Here the course of the war was dictated to a very large extent by certain physical conditions. From March to October is the season of the S.W. or rainy monsoon. Then the wind is favourable to all ships entering the Bay of Bengal. It blows away from the land and renders the coast safe. Immediately under the land, however, there is a belt of water subject to variable winds, which blow alternately on to the land from the S.E. and off it from the S. or W. When the wind is from the S.E. the sea becomes rough, and the coast, being very ill provided with harbours, is dangerous. All currents during this season flow strongly to the north. Thus the tendency of wind and water alike is to carry all ships into the Bay, and to make the Coromandel coast safe. After October and till the end of February comes the season of the N.E. monsoon, which, blowing on to the land, makes a rough sea and a dangerous coast, and also tends to blow all ships out of the Bay of Bengal. Thus in the ordinary course of trade vessels would come in with the S.W. monsoon, and arrange to start so as to get the help of the N.E. monsoon on their homeward voyage. Thus too the period of operation for fighting fleets would be during the S.W. monsoon, since at that time the coast was safe, and both sides would take the opportunity to send out reinforcements to its garrisons on shore, while its commerce would be coming in at the beginning and going out at the end of the period. With the N.E. monsoon all sails disappeared from the Bay of Bengal—those of commerce on their homeward voyage, those of war to their respective ports, which for the French meant the island of Mauritius, and for the English, Bombay on the western or Malabar coast. Here, as in Europe, we had an advantage of position. The Malabar coast is nearer the Coromandel than is the Mauritius, and therefore the British squadron, when directed with common energy, could always be at the scene of operations before its opponent, and could be placed so as to intercept all French forces on their way to Pondicherry.

Mention has already been made of the co-operation of Admiral Watson and Clive in the suppression of Geriah early in 1756. They reached Madras on the 20th June, one day before the taking of Calcutta by Suraj-ud-Daulah and the tragedy of the Black Hole. The vengeance for this outrage is one of the most famous stories in our history. But it belongs to the history of the East India Company rather than to that of the navy. Against an enemy who possessed no ships, the fleet could only act by providing for the transport of troops, covering their landing, attacking forts on the coast, and landing stores or naval brigades. Admiral Watson did his share in the work actively in the early months of 1757, and he was passively consenting to the fraud by which his name was forged for the purpose of cheating Omichand. A small naval brigade shared in the battle of Plassey. In any case the sudden extension of British power which came out of the overthrow of Suraj-ud-Daulah, would probably have led to a renewal of the conflict with the French Company, but hostilities were precipitated by the European and American quarrels of the two countries. In March 1757 the French fort at Chandernagore, just above Calcutta, was occupied after a sharp fight, in the midst of the complicated negotiations and conflicts with the Nabob of Bengal. Admiral Watson did not live to take part in the naval conflict with the French, but died in September of 1757. He was succeeded by Rear-Admiral George Pocock, to whom it fell to command at sea in the decisive struggle for supremacy in India.

No attempt will be made here to describe the series of battles fought during 1758 and 1759. These actions present little more than a weary repetition of examples of the working of the pedantic Fighting Instructions. Though Pocock was unquestionably a man of great energy, strong mind, and the utmost zeal for the service, he wanted the originality and independence of intellect to break away from the traditional method. Thus action after action presents the same monotonous picture. The British squadron works to windward to secure the power to force on battle, and comes down in line to engage the enemy from end to end. The French wait for the attack, fire to cripple the rigging of those of our vessels which present themselves first to its blows, and then slip away, damaged more or less severely, but never so seriously that they cannot reach the port they are steering for, while our crews are knotting, splicing, and replacing ropes and spars. It was by no single well-delivered blow, by no telling victory that we finally forced our opponent out of the Indian Seas, but by persistence, by a better average of practical seamanship, by the possession of greater resources—by, as it were, slowly pushing him in front of us as by a steady application of weight.

The conflict on the sea blazed up in 1758. The French Government had realised the necessity for making an effort to preserve its East Indian possessions in 1757. A squadron was fitted out at Brest under M. D’Aché, and sailed on the 6th March. It was driven back by bad weather, and two of the vessels belonging to it were taken to serve in America with M. Dubois de Lamotte. On the 4th May M. D’Aché sailed again with one king’s ship and five belonging to the Company, carrying with him a body of troops under the headlong and passionate Lally, the most unhappy and one of the least wise of the Irishmen who have been the enemies to this country. The dates of D’Aché’s cruise illustrate the slow progress of fleets at that time. He reached Rio on the 23rd July, and remained there for two months to recruit the health of his crews—no unusual stoppage in the Indian voyages of the period. He reached the Île de France on the 28th December, and sailed for India on the 27th January 1758. On the 26th April he reached the coast of Coromandel—little less than a year after he had left Brest. While D’Aché was slowly sailing to the East, Pocock had been reinforced in March by Commodore Charles Stevens, and his squadrons had been raised to seven vessels of from fifty to sixty-four guns. He knew that a French force was on its way and must be now approaching the coast of Coromandel. On the 17th April he sailed from Madras and worked to the southward in search of the enemy, but did not succeed in meeting him. D’Aché had passed unseen and had anchored at Carical, a French post to the south of the English station of Cuddalore, which is to the south of Pondicherry. Pondicherry itself is well to the south of Madras. The French officer had with him eight vessels—for he had found some at the Île de France—one more than Pocock, but only his flagship the Zodiaque, 74, was a warship. The other seven were vessels belonging to the French East India Company, were built for trade as well as fighting, and even if they carried their full nominal armaments of forty-four, fifty, or fifty-four guns, inferior in solidity to Pocock’s. The one ship more of the French would barely put them on an equality with our squadron.

From Carical D’Aché sent on Lally to assume his government at Pondicherry, and he himself struck at the English station of Cuddalore. He had the good fortune to cut off two small vessels, the Triton and Bridgewater, which were driven ashore under the citadel of the place, Fort St. David. Meanwhile Pocock was coming back from his unsuccessful cruise to the South. On the 29th April the two fleets sighted one another, and a confused action ensued. The dull rules of the Fighting Instructions were badly executed by some of Pocock’s captains, and one of D’Aché’s officers showed downright cowardice. After the usual cannonade the two fleets separated in the customary respective conditions of British and French squadrons after an action fought according to rule. The French, whose ships were crowded with Lally’s soldiers, had a heavy list of killed and wounded, because we preferred to fire at our enemy’s hull. In the British squadron several vessels were so crippled in their rigging as to be unmanageable. D’Aché anchored at Alamparva, north of Pondicherry, where one of his vessels became a wreck in the surf. Pocock went on to Madras to refit and bring three of his captains to court martial. One was dismissed the service, and the other two sentenced to lesser penalties. The incident is an example of that wholesome severity which, by assigning to every man a definite responsibility and calling on him to answer for every failure, has established the magnificent discipline of the Royal Navy, and has been the austere parent of its splendid efficiency.

From Alamparva D’Aché went to Pondicherry and landed his soldiers and his numerous sick and wounded. At the close of May Pocock appeared off the port. The French Admiral, whose squadron was ill fitted, had recourse to every device to avoid action, and all the rabid driving of Lally could not make him incur risks. As the authorities at Madras were rendered nervous for their safety by the strength of the French military force they recalled Pocock, and thus enabled D’Aché to co-operate with Lally in the capture of Fort St. David in June. In July, however, the admiral was back off Pondicherry seeking battle. D’Aché would fain have avoided a meeting and have returned at once to the Île de France. Prayers and threats from the authorities and Lally induced him to stay, and to play a game of hide-and-seek in the calms and varying inshore winds of the coast. On the 3rd August, after infinite confusing movements and varying breezes, another barren cannonade took place off Negapatam. Again both admirals anchored, Pocock at Carical and D’Aché at Pondicherry. On the 3rd September the Frenchman sailed for the Île de France, and the sea being now clear of enemies, Pocock went round to Bombay to avoid the storms of the north-easterly monsoon.

This campaign has certain features of interest. Though Pocock’s arms were tied by the Fighting Instructions, he showed a vigour in attack and a persistency of effort which promised final victory over his timid opponent. But the working of those instructions is full of warning. It has been ingeniously argued by the late Admiral Colomb that the presence of an effective naval force, for which he invented—or to which he adapted—the name of “Fleet in Being,” on a given coast will of itself so act as to stop all operations against that coast on the part of an enemy. Yet in this case, though the British squadron was at least a full match for the French, and Pocock’s will to strike was of the best, we see that he failed both to prevent D’Aché from landing soldiers at Pondicherry and from co-operating in the taking of Cuddalore. He failed partly because of the timidity of the Council which called him back to Madras, but mainly because he was tied by formal rules of battle which did not allow him to develop freely the whole strength of his command. Had he been free to take his fleet always where he thought best, and to use it unbound by foolish laws, had he been one of those great and original captains who have the moral and intellectual courage to break away from worn-out traditions, there can be no doubt that his campaign of 1758 on the coast of Coromandel would have been marked by a decisive battle. It might well have been far more costly than the two engagements actually fought, but we may assert, without undue patriotic confidence in our own navy, that it would have broken the French naval forces in those seas to pieces. As it was, the balance of advantage was rather with the French than with us. The moral of the story is surely, that it is not enough for a fleet to be “in being” if it is not also in action, and that there is but little use in action which is not allowed to drive its blows home to the heart.

The operations of 1759 bear some likeness to those of the previous year, but with a marked difference. Our squadron well supplied, strictly disciplined, grew in strength, efficiency, and confidence. D’Aché was joined at the Île de France by ships of the navy from Europe commanded by Froger de l’Eguille, who had taken part in the action with Byng. But his very numbers were an embarrassment to him. The French islands were too poor to feed the crews of the squadron. They were only kept from starvation by sending some of the ships to buy food at a great cost from the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope, and others to live from hand to mouth on the coast of Madagascar. Stores were almost wholly wanting, and the work of refitting the vessels was either not done at all, or was done by sacrificing one necessary to serve as makeshift for another. It is therefore not surprising that whereas Pocock was back from the Malabar coast and was cruising in the Bay of Bengal in April, D’Aché was unable to leave the islands till the middle of July. He was near Batacaloa on the east coast of Ceylon at the end of August. He had eleven ships to Pocock’s eight, but many were weak, all were badly fitted, and there was little heart or confidence in officers or men. To a large extent his crews were natives. The utmost he felt able to do was to carry some reinforcements to Pondicherry, and his ambition did not reach beyond effecting this service without being brought to battle if he could. When then he was sighted by Pocock on the coast of Ceylon, he applied himself to slipping away and succeeded. The British admiral, having lost sight of him, hastened to cut his road at Pondicherry, and another scene of cannonading, of damaged rigging for us, and of final escape for the French, took place on the 10th September. D’Aché reached Pondicherry while our ropes and spars were being repaired at Negapatam. During the rest of the month the British admiral made successive attempts to provoke his opponent to battle. The furious Lally, whose one idea of government was to lay about him with a flail, strove hard to get service out of his naval colleague. But D’Aché, who was deep in the ruinous intrigues of the French settlement, would do nothing. He would not even stay on the coast though prayed to do so by his countrymen. His officers were as eager to be gone as himself. At the end of September he sailed for the islands, and the French flag disappeared from those seas. When his opponent was gone Pocock went round to Bombay. From thence he sailed for home with a great convoy, and arrived on the 22nd September. The naval war was at an end in the East Indies by the utter collapse of the French. Their possessions being cut off from help, fell before the superior forces of the English company.

Pocock was rewarded by the immensely lucrative command of the fleet which sailed in the combined expedition against Havana in 1762, when Spain, in a moment of Royal folly, was dragged into the war against us. On that enterprise and of the contemporaneous expedition which Pocock’s successor in the East Indies command, Cornish, led against Manila, no more will be said here than that they were marked by a loyalty of co-operation between sailor and soldier which was then a novelty.