Who won the Second Battle of Cape Finisterre?
The British. On 25 October 1747 (14 October, Old Style) Rear-Admiral Edward Hawke's fourteen ships caught eight French ships of the line escorting a great convoy for the West Indies and captured six of them. The French escort under the Marquis de l'Estenduère fought from late morning into the evening, and French and some British historians credit it with saving most of the convoy, though part of it was later taken in the Caribbean.1
Eight French ships of the line turned to face fourteen British ones so that more than two hundred merchant ships could escape. They fought until dark, and six of them ended the day dismasted prizes. The Second Battle of Cape Finisterre is remembered for one admiral's aggression and another's stubborn, self-sacrificing defense.2
Background: two battles off one cape
The battle was fought far out in the Atlantic, in the War of the Austrian Succession. It was the second fight off that coast in one year: in May 1747 Admiral George Anson had already beaten a French squadron in the same waters. In both battles the British were much stronger, and in both, Mahan observed, the right course was a general chase rather than a formal line of battle.3 › First Battle of Cape Finisterre, 1747
Britain still used the Julian, or Old Style, calendar in 1747, while France used the Gregorian calendar. British records therefore date the second battle to 14 October and French ones to 25 October. The National Archives in London records one of the captured ships as taken on 14/25 October 1747, giving both dates in one line.4
In the autumn of 1747 France gathered in the Basque Roads a great convoy for its colonies in the West Indies, and a squadron of warships came from Brest to escort it. British intelligence learned of it, and Hawke was sent from Plymouth to intercept it. The convoy sailed from the Île d'Aix on 6 October, New Style.5
Fleets and commanders
Hawke flew his flag in the Devonshire, 66, with fourteen ships: twelve of the line and two of 50 guns. Among his captains was George Brydges Rodney of the Eagle.6
L'Estenduère, Henri-François des Herbiers, flew his flag in the Tonnant, 80, with seven more ships of the line, among them the Intrépide, 74, under the Comte de Vaudreuil. A ninth ship, the Content, a 60-gun ship of the French East India Company, sailed with them. The French ships were on the whole larger than the British, Mahan noted; the British had the numbers.7
The convoy itself was huge: 252 merchant ships by Clowes's count, 250 by Troude's and Mahan's, and more than 200 sail in Nicolas Mioque's history of the French navy.8
The battle, phase one: the chase
The fleets sighted each other early on the morning of 14 October, Old Style. L'Estenduère at first took the British for part of his own convoy. When he saw his mistake he ordered the merchantmen to make off under the protection of the Content and formed his eight ships in line between the convoy and the enemy, waiting under topsails.9
Hawke first formed a line of battle, then, seeing that he faced only eight warships, hauled down the signal and ordered a general chase, followed by the signal to engage. The battle began a little before noon.10
Phase two: the French line overwhelmed
As the British ships came up one after another, they divided to pass on both sides of the French column, so that the rear French ships found themselves engaged from both sides at once, sometimes by two or three British ships. Each British captain fought the first enemy he reached until a fresh ship came up behind him, then moved on to the next.11
The French rear ships resisted for hours. Richmond writes that the Neptune fought from half past eleven until half past three; her captain, de Fromentières, was killed. One by one the Neptune, the Fougueux, the Severn, the Monarque, the Trident and the Terrible struck their colors, most of them dismasted.12
In the middle of the fighting, Hawke called on Captain Thomas Fox of the Kent to engage the Tonnant. Fox and his officers read the signal as an order to close the admiral, and the Kent left the French flagship. The misunderstanding would cost Fox his career.13
Turning point: the escape of the Tonnant
Toward evening the badly damaged Tonnant bore away before the wind, and the Intrépide, which had suffered least, came back through the British ships to cover her. The details are told differently. Troude writes that Vaudreuil took the flagship in tow; Richmond says the Intrépide covered her retreat; a British dispatch quoted by Hawke's biographer Montagu Burrows says the Tonnant escaped "by the assistance of the Intrépide", and the Rountree Tryon gallery notes that the sources do not clearly describe a tow.14
Rodney in the Eagle, with the Yarmouth and the Nottingham, chased the two French ships without orders and caught them at dusk. Captain Philip Saumarez of the Nottingham was killed. The pursuers were too damaged to go on, and the Tonnant and the Intrépide reached Brest.15
Aftermath: what happened to the convoy?
The French loss, by Clowes's figures, was about 800 killed and wounded, the British 154 killed and 558 wounded. Hawke's squadron was so mauled that a council of war next morning decided not to pursue the convoy. Hawke brought his prizes into Portsmouth, where the prize court condemned the Severn on 20 January 1748; Clowes notes that all the prizes but the Neptune were bought into the Royal Navy.16
The fate of the convoy is still argued. Troude and Mahan write that it was saved, all 250 ships secured to their owners. But Hawke had sent the sloop Weazel ahead to warn the British commander in the Leeward Islands, and Mahan and Clowes both note that part of the convoy was captured in the West Indies as a result. Mioque, writing today, judges that it was probably saved for the most part, and stresses that historians still disagree.17
Both the French and the English claimed the battle as a victory, the Rountree Tryon catalogue notes.18
Hawke's reward and Fox's court-martial
In Britain there was no doubt who had won. Hawke, still a junior rear-admiral, was made a Knight of the Bath for the victory. Twelve years later he won his most famous battle, at Quiberon Bay in November 1759.19
Not every captain was rewarded. Fox was court-martialed at Portsmouth, and the court, which sat until 22 December 1747, Old Style, acquitted him of cowardice but found him guilty of backing his mizzen topsail and leaving the Tonnant, and dismissed him from the command of the Kent. Clowes blames the misunderstanding largely on the faulty signal system of the day; Richmond records that Augustus Keppel later called Fox the victim of two of his officers.20
Legacy and memory
Historians on both sides of the Channel have honored the loser as much as the winner. Mahan wrote that if Hawke showed his usual judgment and dash, fortune gave l'Estenduère "the leading part in the drama, and that he filled it nobly". Troude wrote that l'Estenduère defended his convoy as a position is defended on land to save an army, and gave himself up to be crushed.21
For Richmond, the naval historian, the battle showed the limits of the French convoy system: the French escort, unlike the British one, was not reinforced through the dangerous waters off Brest, and once Britain kept a strong squadron cruising on the convoy routes, a catastrophe was inevitable. For Britain it made the name of the admiral who would win at Quiberon Bay in 1759.22 › 25 October in history: Agincourt, Balaclava, Cape Finisterre
