Horatio Nelson, the famous British admiral, served in the Mediterranean Sea in the late 1700s, before the French Revolution. From 1799 to 1801 his flagship was the HMS Foudroyant. British warships are often named for admirable qualities, like the “HMS Resolute” or “HMS Victory,” and the Foudroyant was no different, even though few people would now recognize “foudroyant” as a quality at all, good or bad.
The word “foudroyant” was borrowed from French, where it meant “struck by lightning.” In English it meant very loud and/or bright and flashy — both reasonable definitions of a lightning strike. Nelson’s ship wasn’t the only battleship to have the name, but it was one of only two from England. Eleven French warships have shared the name, starting in 1669 and continuing until the present; today’s Foudroyant is a submarine.
One of the reasons Nelson’s ship had a French name was that it was a copy of French ships of the period. British ships typically had three decks and 98 cannons, while the French navy preferred two decks and 80 cannons.
The first British Foudroyant started out as a French vessel; it was captured in 1758. Evidently the way that worked back then (at least in England) was that the captain and crew that captured a ship actually owned it, and if the navy wanted it they had to buy it—which they did, in the case of the Foudroyant, for over 16,000 pounds. They then spent another 14,000 on refitting, and in 1759 the ship entered Royal Navy service. That lasted until 1787 when she was sold for a mere 479 pounds. Ten years later a ship copying French designs was built in Plymouth. England — the first Foudroyant had been quite successful, and sailors are pretty superstitious, so the name was used again.
The word “foudroyant” is still in use in medicine — it means a severe illness that appears all of a sudden — as well as occasionally in music, where it means brilliant. It’s in this 1999 review from the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Heavy on elan and the damper pedal, pianists such as Simon, Earl Wild, Jorge Bolet and Byron Janis wow you with foudroyant playing.” The musical use of foudroyant is nothing new; in 1840 Thomas De Quincey wrote: “When..the ‘foudroyant’ style of the organist commenced the hailstone chorus.”
There used to be a related word: “fouldre” that meant lightning itself. It, too, was borrowed from French, but much earlier. Chaucer used it in “Hous of Fame” in the late 1300s: “That thing that men calle foudre That smoot somtyme a tour to powdre.” “Fouldre” died out sometime in the 1600s, leaving “foudroyant” behind. It might come back into use though — stranger things have happened. It wouldn’t even take a bolt of fouldre.
