Once she had passed the _Ville de Paris_ there was no more holding back on board the _Hercules_. They fired as fast as the guns could be loaded and run out, using rammers that Captain Savage himself had invented for quick loading. 'Her side,' said the officers of the ship astern of the _Hercules_, 'was in a constant blaze.' Captain Savage, who had resumed his arm-chair, soon afterwards received a bad wound, and had to be taken to the cockpit. As he went below he told his officers 'to point between wind and water and sink the d----d rascals!' He returned on deck in a few minutes and sat the battle out bandaged up, fixed in his arm-chair, which was set by the ship's side in the gangway, and shouting out expletives as before. As the _Hercules_ cleared the rear of the French fleet, Captain Savage luffed up directly into the wake of the enemy, at right angles to their line, and by way of a parting kick sent a raking last broadside crash into the rearmost French ship's cabin windows as she disappeared in the smoke. Captain Buckner's _Prothee_, a 64, taken from the French two years before, followed the _Hercules_ in the line, and after her came the smart _Resolution_, 74. The captain of the _Resolution_, Lord Robert Manners, was the first on board her to fall. A round-shot struck him down, smashing his left leg and injuring the right badly, and at the same moment a heavy splinter fractured his right arm. Lord Robert was carried down to the cockpit, where it was found necessary to amputate his left leg, the heroic young officer--he was only twenty-four and chloroform or anaesthetics of any kind were as yet unknown--'making jocular remarks on the operation with a smiling countenance during its most painful steps.'[34] Captain Manners' injuries unfortunately proved mortal. He seemed to be getting better, and was on his way home in the frigate that carried Rodney's despatches, when mortification suddenly set in, and he was dead within twenty-four hours. 'I would rather have lost two seventy-fours than Lord Robert Manners,' King George is reported to have said when His Majesty received the news of the death. A monument to him, conjointly with Captains Bayne of the _Alfred_ (killed on the 9th) and Blair of the _Anson_, was erected by order of Parliament in Westminster Abbey. Another brave fellow on board the _Resolution_, as the ship's surgeon related, was a seaman whose name history has not preserved. He was standing by his gun as the ship sheered abreast of De Grasse's flagship. The gun was all ready and just going to fire when a shot came in at the port and took his leg off at the knee. As quick as thought the man pulled off his neckcloth and tied his leg above the stump. The next instant he seized his shot-off limb and thrust it into the muzzle of the gun, which went off two seconds later. '_My_ foot,' shouted the man exultantly, 'is the first to board the _Ville de Paris_!' Such was the spirit in which Rodney's tars went into the fight that day.