Our second _Monmouth_ was with Rooke when he made his swoop on the Vigo galleons--which dashing affair is commemorated to this day in the name of Vigo Street, off Regent Street;--took a distinguished part in the capture of Gibraltar; fought the French off Malaga; and helped Byng--Sir George Byng, Viscount Torrington, the father of the other Byng known to English history, the Byng who beat the enemy and was not shot--to settle the Spanish fleet off Cape Passaro in the year 1718. The next _Monmouth_ had a hand in defeating two French fleets within six months--first with Anson and then with Hawke, in May and October 1747. This was the _Monmouth_ whose brilliant capture of the great French flagship the _Foudroyant_ in a desperate ship-to-ship duel at night forms our main story here. The fourth _Monmouth_, at the close of a hot and bloody day, after a drawn battle with the French in the West Indies, in July 1779, received the unique compliment of being toasted that same night at dinner by the officers of the enemy's flagship--'To the brave little black English ship!' Nor is it easy to match another story of how this same _Monmouth_, in battle in the East Indies in 1782, resisted the fiercest onsets of the mighty De Suffren and his best captains, holding her own at bay, and stubbornly standing up to five French seventy-fours at once. Her main and mizen masts were shot down; the wheel was cleared of the men at it three times; the colours were shot away twice. Still, though, the _Monmouth_ fought on--until help came. Only three men were left alive on the _Monmouth's_ quarter-deck when the fight was over; one being her captain, James Alms, a sturdy son of Sussex, who stood at his post dauntlessly to the end, though twice wounded by splinters, with his coat ripped half off by a shot, with two bullet-holes through his hat, and his wig set on fire. Yet another _Monmouth_ proved herself the bravest of the brave at Camperdown. The brief summary of the _Monmouths'_ deeds of valour here given is, of course, not nearly all. It would take a big book to do adequate justice to the _Monmouths'_ war record--and there need not be a dull page in the volume. So we pass on to what is by common consent accounted the brightest gem in the _Monmouth's_ coronet of fame, her fight with the _Foudroyant_, a French ship powerful enough to have sent the _Monmouth_ to the bottom at the first broadside, a set-to that lasted half through a February night, and ended the right way. Now clear the ring, for hand to hand The manly wrestlers take their stand.