Jack Tar
Page 29
In 1807 Seaman George Watson likewise commented on the monotony of a convoy when he was on a three-month voyage in a transport ship with troops sailing from Spithead to attempt to rescue the disastrous military expedition to South America:
in the fleet were about 10,000 men, there were about fifty sail of us in all … Little occurred the first two or three weeks of our voyage worth relating, as there is so much sameness at sea in a fleet, the same ships appear every day, and seem so stationary around you, that if you did not feel the change by your approach to the sun, or the want of some useful commodity you would imagine yourself still where you were when you started.5
In February 1812 Seaman Henry Walsh was with HMS Ulysses when they received orders to accompany a merchant convoy from the Downs to the Baltic, a potentially dangerous destination owing to the changeable weather and narrow sea channels. They remained in the Baltic so as to escort convoys into and out of the narrow waterway called the Belt. Although the Danish fleet was destroyed at Copenhagen in 1807, smaller vessels still posed a threat, and so British warships were needed to maintain trade to and from Britain. By July Walsh was at Rostock in northern Germany, where, he said,
our admiral immediately ordered us to unmast and sail with the convoy through the Belt and protect them from Danish gun boats and privateers which is very numerous in this place. This is a very difficult place to preserve a convoy in calm weather from these privateers and gun boats for they can row those large gun boats and privateers any place they wish, and our large ships cannot get at them. This Belt is only 4 miles in breadth and narrower in many places and the enemy’s shore on each side, as the belt runs right through Denmark. They made many attempts to take some of our convoy but never could complete the design.6
It was not always enemy ships but weather that played havoc with convoys. Walsh related that towards the end of October they were at Carlscrona, where
our admiral ordered our captain to take charge of 120 sail of merchant ships in company with H.M. ship Antelope, along with other manawar brigs, and sail immediately for Gothenburg … The weather became very stormy and daily increased, which gave us wonderful trouble with our convoy, but after repeated trouble we brought them safe through the Belt. After we got clear of the Belt we stood our course for Gothenburg. But the tempest increased almost beyond expression so we were unable to carry any sail whatever. Our convoy was greatly scattered and all appeared to be in great distress. Many had suffered very much on their masts and sails … We were obliged to make more sail and haul our wind so as to lay into Wingo Sound. I then saw many merchant ships in great distress, and particularly one which drove upon a rock and was instantly dashed to pieces and all her crew perished before my eyes. I was informed that 12 sail of merchant ships was wrecked in this cruel harbour the day before we came in.7
It was much more popular among the crew for a ship to be sent on a cruise to intercept enemy shipping, particularly to places where many merchant ships might be captured, thereby earning large amounts of prize-money. Nowadays the term ‘patrol’ would be employed, as ‘cruising’ has become associated with the holiday trade. For naval officers a tension existed between their desire for promotion, honour and glory and their need for spoils of war – a tension that, in most cases, was not shared by the seamen and marines who they commanded. Although merchant ships, privateers and naval ships were legitimate targets, sailors hoped above all to capture merchant vessels with expensive cargoes that offered the prospect of reasonable prize-money, preferably in return for minimal risk and few casualties. In various parts of the world, because of the volume of traffic, this was easily achieved, and the seas around the West Indian islands were renowned for the opportunity of capturing prizes. In April 1799 the frigate Lapwing, off the coast of Barbuda, saw a ship and gave chase, as Aaron Thomas recorded in his journal:
Continued the chase until night, and then lost sight of the chase. At a ¼ past 10pm saw the chase about a mile distant, on our lee bow. Set all sail and at 11pm found ourselves alongside the chase. Hailed her; said she was a French Letter of Marque [privateer] schooner from St Bartholomews, bound to Guadaloupe. Out boats, and got prisoners on board. Sent Mr Tildersley and ten men into the prize, which is laden with flour, rice, hams, hats, ten tons of salt fish, dry goods, ladies shoes, beef, pork and sundry other articles. The name of the schooner is La Amiable, and had 30 men in her when we took her.8
Ultimately, everyone dreamed of fabulously rich treasure ships en route from South America to Spain, and sometimes their wildest dreams came true. The output of the silver mines in Peru was vast, and to save transport costs much of it was refined and turned into coins before being transported to Spain. To spread the risk, these coins were carried in both warships and merchant vessels, in convoy and sometimes alone, so that in the periods when Spain was at war with Britain the interception of any homeward-bound Spanish ship inevitably raised the seamen’s hopes. In 1799 the frigates Naiad, Ethalion, Triton and Alcmene captured the Thetis and Santa Brigida in the Bay of Biscay, and these two Spanish prize ships were taken to Plymouth. Because they were carrying coins and valuable merchandise, their capture was newsworthy, as one Plymouth historian chronicled:
The arrival of the Thetis and the San Brigida [in Plymouth], after their reduction in a running fight, created exceptional interest. Sixty-three waggons were required to transport the treasure from the Dockyard for temporary deposit in the Citadel dungeons; and, when it was removed to the Bank of England, it was escorted through the Pig Market ‘in great style’ … Great was the delight that ‘so much treasure, once the property of the enemy, was soon to be in the pockets of our jolly tars.’ As the ladies waved their handkerchiefs, the ‘honest seamen’ reciprocated by cheering. One gentleman, who wanted to know how the dollars were packed, was asked if he would like to smell them; and, upon his naive retort that he would rather taste them, the ready-witted salt pulled a small Spanish coin and a quid of tobacco from his mouth, and, placing both in the civilian’s palm, exclaimed: ‘By Davy Jones, tasting is better than smelling, so your honour’s welcome.’9
The treasure was sold to the Bank of England for just over £661,000 – the modern value would exceed £120 million. Even the lowest-ranking seaman’s share was more money than he would normally see in a lifetime.
Legally, a prize belonged to the Crown, which allowed it to be sold once it had been judged to be a legitimate (‘condemned’) prize in a prize court, with the proceeds distributed as a gift to the captors. Ships taken as prizes were supposed to be sent into a friendly port with their cargoes intact, where the value of the prize was officially determined and, eventually, prize-money distributed among the officers and men of the ship, or ships, involved in the capture. Inevitably, in such a system there was plenty of scope for fraud and delayed payments – because of the delays, naval officers frequently employed prize agents to handle the legalities on commission, which of course encouraged more delays and more fraud. Short cuts were often taken, and writing several decades later, Basil Hall looked back wistfully to the time when prizes were not always dealt with strictly according to regulations:
At some stages of the late war, and under particular circumstances, I believe many enemy’s vessels were taken, condemned, and their cargoes shared out, all in the same breath. If there happened to be money on board, it was straightway parcelled out on the capstan-head, and each officer and man got his whack, as they called it, without the tedious intervention of unintelligible legal forms, interminable proctor’s bills, and the doubly-cursed agent’s percentage.10
Such informal proceedings were very familiar to Aaron Thomas. A few days after a prize was sent into port to be valued, he noted that ‘This day served out to the ship’s company a great quantity of cutlery, such as knives, needles, scissors, buttons, spoons, snuff boxes &c., all of which came out of La Revanche, our prize schooner.’11 Such informality was certainly the experience of William Richardson when cruising off Cuba on board HMS Prompte in 1799. He mention
ed that they spotted a recently wrecked Spanish merchant ship, whose crew had evidently escaped in panic, leaving behind valuable cargo. The Prompte’s boats were rowed to the wreck:
We continued all the afternoon in sending away to our ship cordage, canvas etc and even unbent some of her best sails and sent [them], and when that was done liberty was given to plunder. In the Captain’s cabin we found a bag with a thousand dollars in it, several boxes of sugars, solid silver spoons and forks etc, with many other valuables, all of which were taken out and placed on the quarter [deck] as they were found, and left under charge until sent to our ship. The men who were searching below no doubt found many valuables in the officers’ cabins and people’s chests, but little was brought by them to the heap on the quarter deck; cocked hats and laced cloaths were laying about in all directions.12
After setting the ship alight, they returned to the Prompte, and Richardson was amused at the scene: ‘Nothing could exceed the fun and laughs that there was when we got alongside, by the boats’ crew being dressed so fantastically; some had on a Spanish officer’s laced coat, some large cocked hats, some laced jackets and white frilled shirts and some booted and were metamorphosed that their own messmates hardly knew them.’13 Despite being able to share in the looting, he complained that they were cheated of their prize-money: ‘The plate was sold and with the dollars gave me seventeen for my share, but the sails and cordage were left with the agents for a public market and I never got a penny for them.’14
For many officers and men it was mainly the dream of capturing a very rich prize that made life bearable, and the letters of seamen and officers alike are littered with mentions of prize-money paid, or calculations of prize-money expected from recent captures. Few if any of the men saw a clash between the constant search for prizes and the need to maintain a warship as an effective fighting machine. When Midshipman George Allen first joined the navy, his ship HMS Imogene was cruising the North Sea, and from the outset he was absorbed by the prospect of prizes. Writing to his mother in August 1806 he informed her that ‘We have detained a Galliott under Danish colours, with Dutch papers on board, and the trial is now going on whether or no she will be condemned; we have great expectations that she will be a lawful prize – if she is I will get about £30 for her as my share.’15
In another letter written from the Mediterranean at the end of 1808, Allen happily reported that ‘we are destined I believe for a cruize off Corfu, a small island in the entrance of the Adriatic Ocean with a very good harbour, and the rendezvous of a vast number of French privateers and merchant vessels, so that we have every prospect of making prize money’.16 Two years later he expressed his concern to his brother William that he had not been allowed home for more than four years – during which time his father had died. A few months passed, and then on 3 July 1811 Captain William Stephens had the painful task of writing to Allen’s mother with news of the loss of her son:
On the 8th of Feby last we captured an enemy’s vessel, sixty tons laden with grain from Barletta to the Island of Corfu, in which he was sent a prize master with 5 good men and two prisoners to conduct to Malta. The vessel was in perfect condition in every respect. They kept company with another vessel which had been taken by one of the squadron three days; when a gale of wind coming on, they separated, from which time, sorry am I to say, we have never heard of them … There is prize money due to him, which you can recover from Greenwich Hospital, should you not be blessed by his return.17
Stephens did say there was a faint chance that George had been captured and made a prisoner-of-war – but it was not to be. Like so many others, his vessel had been overwhelmed by the weather and disappeared.
Apart from capturing or destroying enemy shipping, another vital function for the Royal Navy was to deny access to the sea by blockade – literally, the shutting up of an enemy’s harbour or line of coast. The purpose was to keep enemy naval and merchant shipping confined to port and also to employ economic warfare by preventing imports and exports. This was probably the most important work of the war that the Royal Navy did, yet it was generally hated, because it was usually more tiresome than convoy work, with even less chance of capturing rich prizes. Before the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805, when the British were blockading the Spanish port of Cadiz, Captain Thomas Fremantle of HMS Neptune told his wife that ‘here we have no news of any kind, and the very sad sameness makes all days like one day, and as the song says, only for prayer day we never know Sunday, the fact is a sea life under present circumstances, is really a life of misery and ennui’.18
Blockade work was also more dangerous than being in a battle, because always sailing close to shore, they were liable to be driven on to rocks in adverse weather. Midshipman Robert Bastard James explained that, ‘In former wars, the naval service used to follow the military system of retiring into winter quarters, but the skill of our modern commanders in chief have shown that in the winter season and the most dreadful weather, the blockade was strictly kept up, and braved the elements as well as the weather.’19
When Napoleon was exiled to St Helena at the end of the war, his surgeon Barry O’Meara talked to him about the blockades: ‘I ventured to say that I thought the French would never make good seamen on account of their impatience and volatility of temper. That especially they would never submit without complaining, as we had done at Toulon, to blockade ports for years together, suffering from the combined effects of bad weather, and of privations of every kind.’20 Napoleon inevitably disagreed, but had to admit that British seamen were better than French ones.
Rather than sit idly by doing blockade duty, attempts were periodically made to go right into ports and harbours to capture and destroy shipping, as well as coastal defences. Such ‘cutting out’ operations were usually done at night in the ship’s boats in order to approach undetected, in shallow water, using both sails and oars, so they were not reliant solely on wind power. To midshipmen, though, as Archibald Sinclair revealed, the term ‘cutting out’ had two meanings, ‘one of which is a dashing, gallant attack by ships’ boats upon anything – forts, ships, nothing came amiss. The other meaning, if not so honorable, was more profitable.’21 This, he said, involved the two midshipmen’s messes relieving each other of special food such as hams, on the grounds that they should have taken better care of it.
True cutting-out operations using ships’ boats were risky and mainly relied on volunteers. In July 1809 the British fleet cruising in the Baltic spotted several Russian gunboats and merchant vessels at anchor off the coast of Finland, with guns mounted on the nearby cliffs. Because these gunboats were causing such a nuisance to British shipping, it was decided to undertake a daring night raid using boats from the Bellerophon, Implacable, Melpomene and Prometheus. There were seventeen in all, and George King was one of the volunteers from HMS Melpomene. He remembered that they had several miles to row before reaching the harbour, where the action began:
The commodore ordered every boat to lay upon their oars and every man received one gill of rum and a biscuit. At the same time we were cautioned not to hurrah until we saw the first gun boat fire and then five boats immediately to rush upon her. When we had finished our biscuits the commodore pulled into the mouth followed up close by the other boats. After passing about a mile we were hailed by a sentinel on shore but he received no answer. He immediately fired a musket to apprise the gun boats when they instantly fired a thirty two pounder, but not in the direction of the boats as they could not discern us in the dark. We then commenced hurrahing and boarded the firing gun boat and in less than ten minutes some [were] jumping overboard and the others slaughtered. Having no time to lose she was quickly manned and we thence proceeded towards the second.22
Unfortunately, boats became entangled in the darkness when approaching the second gunboat, with devastating results:
When pretty near to her our black cutter in the confusion of boats got jammed between the Melpomene’s launch and one of the Implacable’s boats right in front o
f the muzzle of the enemy’s gun about ten yards distant, when they let fly. Our loss by this fire was ten killed and wounded … The captain’s coxswain was close alongside of me. His head was blown clean off his shoulders, part of his head took my hat, and his brains flew all over me. At this boat the commodore was killed. We soon took possession of the second boat whilst the Bellerophon’s boat was on the opposite side of the harbour capturing two more boats, and by half past one we had six in our possession. Having sunk one we now got them out in the middle of the harbour … we took as many dead and wounded as we could stow and was ordered to pull out of the harbour while the rest of the boats secured the gun boats and manned the merchants which were laden with pork and brandy.23
In this operation, over fifty seamen and officers were killed on the British side, out of 270 volunteers. They then started to row out of the harbour and back to the ships, as King related:
Arriving outside the harbour we met with three gigs with the surgeons in them. They commenced using their tourniquets where it [was] required and dispatched us off to the Prometheus sloop of war, which ship we reached about seven o’clock [in the morning], but before we reached her one of the Implacable’s men having both his legs off close to his knees was laying down in the bottom of the boat. Being in such misery [he] had got his knife out of his pocket and opened it and was going to cut his belly right athwart but we took the knife from him. He then begged that we would heave him overboard. However, before we reached the sloop he had drawn his last [breath], and when coming alongside, the captain was looking overside and he directly ordered some of his crew to relieve the boat’s crew and began to hoist in the dead and wounded. He then called us aft, that was left, and ordered us down below to rest ourselves, sent for the purser’s steward, and ordered him to give us immediately, each man, half a pint of rum and as much bread and cheese as we could eat. When we soon commenced upon the grog and in less than an hour some of our chaps were singing one of Dibdin’s songs.24