f
Lieutenant Matthews, R.N., and the much later "Naval Researches" of
Capt. Thomas White, also of the British Navy, who were eye-witnesses,
both being checked by French and other English narratives. Matthews
and White are at variance with Rodney's official report as to the tack
on which the English were at daybreak; but the latter is explicitly
confirmed by private letters of Sir Charles Douglas, sent immediately
after the battle to prominent persons, and is followed in the text.

[207] Letter of Sir Charles Douglas, Rodney's chief-of-staff: "United
Service Journal," 1833, Part I. p. 515.

[208] De Grasse calls this distance three leagues, while some of his
captains estimated it to be as great as five.

[209] The French, in mid-channel, had the wind more to the eastward.

[210] The positions of the French ships captured are shown by a cross
in each of the three successive stages of the battle, B, C, D.

[211] The distance of the weathermost French ships from the "Ville de
Paris," when the signal to form line-of-battle was made, is variously
stated at from six to nine miles.

[212] The other two French ships taken were the "Ville de Paris,"
which, in her isolated condition, and bearing the flag of the
commander-in-chief, became the quarry around which the enemy's ships
naturally gathered, and the "Ardent," of sixty-four guns, which
appears to have been intercepted in a gallant attempt to pass from the
van to the side of her admiral in his extremity. The latter was the
solitary prize taken by the allied Great Armada in the English
Channel, in 1779.

[213] Official letter of the Marquis de Vaudreuil. Guerin: Histoire de
la Marine Francaise, vol. v. p. 513.

[214] See United Service Journal, 1834, Part II. pp. 109 and
following.

[215] See letter of Sir Howard Douglas in United Service Journal,
1834, Part II. p. 97; also "Naval Evolutions," by same author. The
letters of Sir Samuel Hood have not come under the author's eye.

[216] Rodney's Life, vol. ii. p. 248.

[217] There were only twenty-five in all.

[218] Guerin, vol. v. p. 511.

[219] Rodney's Life, vol. ii. p. 246.

[220] Annual Register, 1783, p. 151.

[221] Annual Register, 1783, p. 157; Life of Admiral Keppel, vol. ii.
p. 403.

[222] Naval Chronicle, vol. xxv. p. 404.

[223] Page 404. Yet here also the gossip of the day, as reflected in
the Naval Atalantis, imputed the chief credit to Young, the captain of
the flag-ship. Sir Gilbert Blane s