 Although Queen Charlotte pressed on all sail , she was not the first through the enemy line . That distinction belonged to a ship of the van squadron under Admiral Graves : HMS Defence under Captain James Gambier , a notoriously dour officer nicknamed " Dismal Jimmy " by his contemporaries . Defence , the seventh ship of the British line , successfully cut the French line between its sixth and seventh ships ; Mucius and Tourville . Raking both opponents , Defence soon found herself in difficulty due to the failure of those ships behind her to properly follow up . This left her vulnerable to Mucius , Tourville and the ships following them , with which she began a furious fusillade . However , Defence was not the only ship of the van to break the French line ; minutes later George Cranfield @-@ Berkeley in HMS Marlborough executed Howe 's manoeuvre perfectly , raking and then entangling his ship with Impétueux . 
