Excerpt from Sir Waterloo: Fragments of the Autobiography of a Sussex Lad

Our father was that middy aboard the Formidable the record of whose act has come down to history. The French Admiral Grasse was a master tactician. Hood was opposed to him With an inferior force. Rodney's contingent brought the mettle of the two fleets nearer equality. The manoeuvres of the leaders resembled a game of hoodman blind. The game was played out on both sides to a finish in the true sporting spirit. The arena was the open water between Dominica and Guadeloupe. In this bullring of sea fighting, seamanship is the master test, for the mountains of Dominica break the force of the N orth-east Trades, causing patches of doldrum calm, and also channels here and there where the true breeze makes troubled water and strong rips. Grasse was en cumbered with a convoy of trade consorts. A see-saw pageant fight followed on the shifts and tactics of the contending leaders.

The Frenchman, early in the struggle, lost his one supreme chance of dealing us a deadly blow. Our father, using an inkstand to represent the island of Dominica, anything he could lay his hand on to indicate Guadeloupe and the other islands, and bits of paper or dominoes to show the movements of the ships on both sides, waxed eloquent in his sailor fashion over the master duel. We boys followed the story breathlessly intent. Check and countercheck, the shifting of the wind, the manoeuvres of each admiral to get the wind of his Opponent, the patches of bad seamanship of French commanders, which brought about collision and thus confusion, the hue and cry beating through the heart of events like tempestuous music, filled the nascent imagination of us boys with turbulent delight. I was little more than a baby when I caught the savour of it. We would ply our father with entreaties to go over the ground again and yet again.

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