No.129
The Trusty Servant
A Refit for Formidable
Richard Foster (History, since 2012, and
Fellows’ Librarian) writes:
On 20 th November 1759, at the
Battle of Quiberon Bay, the French
warship Formidable was captured by
HMS Resolution. Her crew were taken
prisoner and brought to Winchester,
where they were incarcerated in the
former royal palace known as the
‘King’s House’. There the prisoners
constructed a detailed and impressive
model of their former ship. An
inscription on the model’s hull records
that it was made in 1760 and presented
to the College by the Headmaster, Dr
John Burton (1690-1774). During its
lifetime, the model has been housed
in various places around the school,
suffering occasional damage and some
clumsy repairs. Through the generosity
of the Friends of Winchester College,
professional restoration work on
Formidable was undertaken in 2018-
19, and the model has now found a
permanent home in New Hall, on
public display for the first time.
Formidable was an 80-gun ship of the
line of the French navy, launched in
1751. She was one of several ships
built to strengthen the French fleet
after its embarrassing failure during
the War of Austrian Succession
(1740-48), when it was outnumbered
and outmanoeuvred by the British.
Formidable first saw action in the
Seven Years War (1756-63), a global
conflict fought over Austria’s attempt
to recover Silesia from Prussia, and
over European possessions in India
and North America. Britain and
Prussia formed an alliance against
France, Austria and Russia, the other
three Great Powers. In the early stages
of the war, Formidable fought off the
coast of America. In the summer
and autumn of 1759, she formed part
of the French Atlantic fleet at Brest
under the command of Marshal de
Quiberon Bay
Conflans. The fleet had gathered to
escort a planned invasion of Britain.
There were 17,000 troops stationed
nearby at Vannes and nearly a
hundred transport ships around the
Loire estuary. The Western Squadron
of the British navy, commanded
by Sir Edward Hawke, kept a close
blockade around Brest, restricting the
movements of the French.
On 14 th November, Conflans’ fleet
slipped out of Brest with orders to
collect the transport ships to the
south. They were sighted by the
British and Hawke’s ships gave chase,
catching them on the 20 th November
just as they reached Quiberon Bay
on the south coast of Brittany. 23
British ships engaged 21 French.
Formidable was stationed at the rear
of the French battle line, entrusted by
Conflans to his third in command,
André du Verger. Beginning at about
2.30pm, Formidable bore the brunt
of the initial attack as she turned
broadside to cover the retreat of the
other ships into the relative safety
of the bay, protected by shoals and
reefs unfamiliar to the British. The
surgeon of HMS Coventry wrote that
Formidable was ‘pierced like a cullender
by the number of shot she received in
the course of the action’. Two British
ships, Warspite and Resolution, battered
19
in her starboard side and she was
finished off by a broadside from the 74-
gun Torbay. The crew of the crippled
ship surrendered to the Resolution
and were taken captive. The painting
below, Richard Wright’s The Battle of
Quiberon Bay, 21 November 1759: the day
after (oil on canvas, 1760, National
Maritime Museum, Greenwich) depicts
Formidable on the far left, attended
by a British frigate. HMS Resolution is
shown on its side in the foreground,
having run aground.
By the time night fell, seven French
ships had been lost and 2,500 French
sailors killed. Two British ships ran
aground in the high seas, but none
was lost to enemy action. Quiberon
Bay was the most decisive naval battle
of the Seven Years War and it put an
end to French plans for an invasion of
Britain. Hawke was highly commended
for his skill and courage in pursuing
the French into the treacherous waters
of the bay. His funerary memorial at
St Nicholas, North Stoneham (near
Eastleigh), features a scene from the
battle in the form of a marble relief.
Immediately after the battle,
Formidable was brought back to Britain
with about 250 of her crew. Among
the prisoners was Jean-François de
Galup, comte de Lapérouse (1741-88),
a young midshipman who later led the