Saumarez.  No signal following, the America again wore and followed her leaders, but the Russell continued as she was, now to windward of the French; by which course she was able to take a conspicuous share in the closing scenes.  At 11.33 Rodney signalled the van to tack, but the delay of an hour or more had given the Russell a start over the other ships of her division “towards the enemy” which could not be overcome.

The effect of these several occurrences had been to transfer the weather-gage, the position for attack, to the British from the French, and to divide the latter also into three groups, widely separated and disordered (Position 6).  In the centre was the flagship Ville de Paris with five ships (c).  To windward of her, and two miles distant, was the van, of some dozen vessels (v).  The rear was four miles away to leeward (r).  To restore the order, and to connect the fleet again, it was decided to re-form on the leewardmost ships; and several signals to this effect were made by de Grasse.  They received but imperfect execution.  The manageable vessels succeeded easily enough in running before the wind to leeward, but, when there, exactitude of position and of movement was unattainable to ships in various degrees of disability, with light and baffling side airs.  The French were never again in order after the wind shifted and the line was broken; but the movement to leeward left the dismasted Glorieux, (g), Hector, (h), and Cesar, (k), motionless between the hostile lines.

It has been remarked, disparagingly, that the British fleet also was divided into three by the manoeuvre of breaking the line.  This is true; but the advantage remained with it incontestably, in two respects.  By favor of the wind, each of the three groups had been able to maintain its general formation in line or column, instead of being thrown entirely out, as the French were; and passing thus in column along the Glorieux, Hector, and Cesar, they wrought upon these three ships a concentration of injury which had no parallel among the British vessels.  The French in fact had lost three ships, as well as the wind.  To these certain disadvantages is probably to be added a demoralisation among the French crews, from the much heavier losses resultant upon the British practice of firing at the hull.  An officer present in the action told Sir John Ross[121] afterwards that the French fired very high throughout; and he cited in illustration that the three trucks[122] of the British Princesa were shot away.  Sir Gilbert Blane, who, though Physician to the Fleet, obtained permission to be on deck throughout the action, wrote ten days after it, “I can aver from my own observation that the French fire slackens as we approach, and is totally silent when we are close alongside.”  It is needless to say that a marked superiority of fire will silence that of the bravest enemy; and the