A British officer who went on board the _Formidable_ on the morning after the battle, wrote down a description of the scene that met his eyes there. “A lieutenant and 80 men,” he says, “being ordered from our ship on board the _Formidable_ to assist in repairing her rigging, etc., I embraced the opportunity of seeing the havoc that had been made by the fire of so many large ships who had battered her. The destruction of her upper works was dreadful, and her starboard side was pierced like a cullender by the number of shots she received in the course of the action. The loss of men was prodigious in killed and wounded, amounting to more than 500; among the former the Admiral, M. St. André de Verger and his brother, the first captain, all the other officers either killed or wounded, except a lieutenant-colonel, who assured me that every man of his detachment, drawn up on the quarter-deck and forecastle, etc., had been either killed or wounded but himself; that he had served in the army for thirty years, had been present at the bloody field of Fontenoy, but had never before witnessed such a scene of carnage. The grand-chamber was filled with wounded officers, many of whom had suffered amputation.... Monsieur major invited me below to certify the number of his patients, and there a melancholy scene presented itself. The large gun-room and every space between the guns on the lower deck was crammed with wounded soldiers and sailors, besides three rows of cradles in the hold, containing 60 seamen, and many not yet dressed.... I am afraid that few of the wounded could recover, considering their very miserable situation and circumstances.” As soon as the weather would allow her to start the _Formidable_ was sent off to England under escort. She arrived at Plymouth “almost in a sinking state, from the shot-holes she had received, and only kept afloat with great difficulty.” She rolled away her jury masts, we are told, and the cook’s coppers were washed out of the ship. The prize crew, the officers and men from the wrecked _Essex_, and the prisoners, had to live for four days on the boatswain’s tallow. The _Formidable_ was taken into the British Navy, and the name was registered on the roll of King George’s fleet in its original form; but the ship had suffered too severe a mauling to be fit for sea service again. Some ten years after her capture Hawke, as First Lord of the Admiralty, signed the death warrant of his old prize—the order that delivered his old Quiberon trophy over to the shipbreaker. * * * * *