Thus for the present we close the record of this 'blustering adjective' from the point of view of naval history. Enough has been told. 'A nation,' says Guizot, 'is safe in the greatest crisis of its fate if it can remember its own history.' Those who on a future day may serve in our present _Formidable_ before an enemy, will be none the worse for remembering the associations of old-time victory that form part and parcel of their ship's famous name, in virtue of which, that name finds its place to-day on the roll of the Royal Navy for 'one of the best' among the battle-ships of the British Fleet.[59] 'No man,' wrote a young officer of the famous _Bellerophon_, in his last letter home on the evening before Trafalgar, 'can be a coward on board the _Billy Ruff'n_.' No man on board the _Formidable_, who knows the story of his ship, should be found wanting on the day of battle. It will rest as a point of honour with those who then man the _Formidable_ to remember Rodney and prove the _Formidable_ 'worthy of her name.' FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 13: _Admirals All, and Other Verses_, p. 15.] [Footnote 14: _Edward the Third_, Act III. Sc. 1.] [Footnote 15: Built at Chatham in 1777 as a 98-gun three-decker of 1945 tons. The _Formidable_ taken at Quiberon was broken up some ten years previously.] [Footnote 16: From Mr. Newbolt's verses on a memorial brass in Clifton College chapel.] [Footnote 17: He was captain of the French frigate _L'Arethuse_ on May 18, 1759, when she was cut off and captured, off the Brittany coast, by a British squadron; to become a British frigate, and later on the 'Saucy' _Arethusa_ of the celebrated ballad.] [Footnote 18: Hennequin's _Biographie Maritime_, art. 'Vaudreuil'; also L. Dussieux's _Generaux et Marins du XVIII. Siecle_, p. 260. The governorship of the island of Dominica was offered to De Vaudreuil after its capture from Great Britain through treachery. Some of the creole inhabitants of Dominica invited the French over from Martinique, and, on the night of their landing, made the garrison of the principal fort in the island drunk, plugged up the touch-holes of their cannon, and put sand in the locks of their muskets.] [Footnote 19: Bougainville was born in 1729. He was granted the _particle nobiliaire_ by order of the King as a special favour, escaped the guillotine during the Terror by the merest chance, and died a Senator of the Empire in 1811. Bougainville's name is commemorated in the French navy to-day in a corvette used as a training ship for cadets. The vessel is well known as a visitor to Dartmouth and Plymouth Sound every year.] [Footnote 20: It was the practice of the Comte de la Charette to blacken the sides of each ship that he commanded. Ordinarily, at this period, ships' sides were of a yellow colour--the planking simply varnished over.] [Footnote 21: Carlyle, _French Resolution_, vol. ii. bk. ii. chap. i.]