As he readjusted to married life, Phillip must have followed the newspaper accounts of the progress of the war with a keen eye. On the continent, the French mobilised huge armies, supported by mass conscription, and rapidly achieved military success, taking San Sebastian from Spain in 1794, occupying all of Belgium and the Rhineland, and in the following year seizing the Netherlands. By late 1795 Prussia and Spain had ceded substantial territories to France in return for peace. At sea, however, Great Britain prevailed. On 1 June 1794, a few weeks after Phillip’s wedding, the first and largest naval action of the war took place. It became known as ‘The Glorious First of June’. The playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan even wrote a play by the same name. Although the battle was only a partial success, it stimulated British patriotism and must have made Phillip’s blood quicken. In the following months, his desire to return to active service could only have increased as newspapers reported that squadrons of the Royal Navy had progressively captured Martinique, Guadeloupe and St Lucia in the West Indies. Then in 1795 other British squadrons captured the strategic ports of Cape Town, Trincomalee and Malacca along the route to the East Indies. Phillip, in the meantime, like every other half-pay Officer, waited to be called.
CHAPTER 13
INSPECTOR
Phillip’s war service at sea and on shore during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars
The opportunity for which Phillip had been waiting finally arrived in early 1796. There was no sign now of the ill-health that had plagued him in New South Wales. In February the Admiralty recalled him to active service to take command of the Atlas, a 98-gun ship of the line moored at Portsmouth. Phillip had not had command of a fighting ship for twelve years – not since he took the Europe to the India Squadron and back in 1783–84. He was now 57 years old and in the twilight of his active service career. The path that his professional life had taken – Portuguese service, espionage and colonial governor – had kept him out of sight and removed him from those opportunities for distinction at sea that were usually essential for a senior naval appointment in an active post. The command of the Atlas was a last chance, but it was a false start. In one of those mix-ups and miscommunications that are a by-product of war, he arrived in Portsmouth to be informed by Admiral Parker that another captain was already in command of the Atlas. Phillip had no choice but to return disconsolately to Bath in Somerset, duly claiming and receiving the expenses of his futile journey – all £12.18s.
It was not long before Phillip received another command. In March he was directed to Plymouth to take command of the Alexander. This was a twist of fate. For in 1778, just as the Alexander was launched at Deptford, Phillip had returned from his Portuguese service in South America. The circumstances at that time combined to ensure that he was appointed as the ship’s first lieutenant and for eleven months in 1778–79 he sailed with her as part of the Channel Fleet. He was now about to do so again, this time as her captain. The Alexander was a 74-gun ship of the line with a complement of approximately 650 men. Her two gun decks each had 28 gun ports. The heaviest guns were always on the lower gun deck. The upper gun deck carried eighteen-pound cannon. Some lighter guns and carronades were situated on the quarterdeck and the forecastle. Nothing much had changed in the intervening years since Phillip had been her first lieutenant – except the ship’s ownership. For a short time at the beginning of the war, after being captured near the Scilly Isles, the Alexander became French property, serving under the name Alexandré. On board at the time of her capture was Watkin Tench, the same marine captain who served with Phillip in New South Wales. His adventurous life took a turn for the worse when he became a French prisoner of war. As for the Alexander herself, her role as a French warship was only brief and within seven months she was recaptured and soon once again flew the red ensign of the Royal Navy.
Phillip’s command of the Alexander was uneventful, and it concluded with disappointment. For three months she undertook coastal patrol duties along the southern coast between Plymouth and Portsmouth. Then in July she escorted nineteen vessels bound for the East Indies as far as Madeira, followed by more patrolling in the Channel. In October Phillip’s tenure came to a sudden and unexpected end. He was superseded, required to relinquish the Alexander’s command and briefly returned to half pay. His successor was Captain Alexander John Ball, a youthful and charismatic officer who was destined for a baronetcy. Ball’s time as the Alexander’s captain marked the beginning of an illustrious period of service for the ship and indeed for Ball – something that Phillip must have watched with chagrin. The ship served with distinction at the Battle of the Nile and throughout the Mediterranean. Nelson called Ball ‘My dear, invaluable friend’.
Phillip was not long on half pay. Within days he was given command of the Swiftsure, to which he brought Isabella’s brother as his third lieutenant. She was another 74-gun ship of the line and his third ship in the space of eight months. He was proud of the Swiftsure and later said that she was ‘one of the best ships in His Majesty’s Service’. She was also destined to achieve distinction at the Battle of the Nile – but not with Phillip as her captain. Phillip took over the Swiftsure’s command in October 1796 while she was fitting out in Portsmouth Harbour in readiness for sea service. While in port, captains frequently entertained aboard their ship, bringing on wives, friends and relations. In Phillip’s case, we have just a glimpse of one such occasion when he made an unsuccessful attempt to entertain aboard the Swiftsure at Cawsand Bay. Phillip invited on board Isabella, his old friend Isaac Landmann and Landmann’s son George. The ship could only be reached by going out into the sound in a small lugger. However, a southwest wind and waves that were ‘exceedingly high and everywhere washing over us’ thwarted the planned adventure. After a short and miserable sail, they reached the stern of the Swiftsure but it was evident that they would have difficulty getting on board in the conditions. Phillip took the decision to return to shore, gave some orders to the first lieutenant who was standing at the gangway, and turned the boat about with sails close-reefed. Everyone was extremely discomfited but to George Landmann’s surprise, Phillip’s suffering was the worst. He recorded the following unflattering but very human picture of Phillip:
Well I remember his little figure smothered up in his brown camlet cloak lined with green baize, his face shrivelled, and thin aquiline nose under a large cocked hat, gathered up in a heap, his chin between his knees, sitting under the lee of the main mast; his sharp and powerful voice exclaiming: ‘I cannot bear this, I am as sick as a dog!’
Phillip’s discomfiture was only temporary and he would not have been the first captain of a ship of the line who had trouble finding his sea legs in a small boat in choppy waters close to shore. Back on the Swiftsure, he patrolled with the Western Squadron at the entrance to the Channel throughout the winter of 1796–97. In the early spring, after a Spanish fleet was defeated at the great battle off Cape St Vincent, the Swiftsure and several other warships were ordered to escort a convoy being sent to resupply the strategic British port of Gibraltar at the entrance to the Mediterranean. By 9 April the Swiftsure was off Cape Finisterre and a week later off Cape St Vincent, the southwestern point of Portugal. In these waters, an encounter with a French or Spanish warship was more likely, but to Phillip’s disappointment no action eventuated. He then took his ship out into the Atlantic as far as Madeira before returning in June to join Nelson’s blockading squadron at Cadiz, the Spanish Atlantic port 60 miles west of Gibraltar.
For the next four months Phillip remained on the Swiftsure, maintaining her station at the entrance to Cadiz harbour, blockading the Spanish ships inside, some of which had survived the battle off Cape St Vincent. In June Nelson himself came on board and inspected Phillip’s ship. He reported to the Commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, who was now known as Earl St Vincent after the battle of the same name, that the Swiftsure was ‘in most excellent order and fit for any service’. That was more than could be said for many other ships of the Roya
l Navy at the time. Insubordination was always a daily part of life at sea but never more so than in 1797 when perceived class interests united lower deck and quarterdeck against each other. In April of that year the crews of the Channel Fleet mutinied over pay and conditions. Murmurings and discontent soon spread throughout all the fleets of the Royal Navy. In the Mediterranean fleet, severe measures were necessary on St Vincent’s flagship but Phillip kept any disaffection on the Swiftsure firmly under control without excessive belligerence. His captain’s log and journal records no shortage of punishments, even for relatively minor offences, but they were usually limited to one or two dozen lashes. The mutiny did not spread to his ship.
September 1797 brought another change of command. St Vincent thought well of Phillip and knew of his prior Portuguese service and the glowing reports he had received. He had plans for a joint Anglo– Portuguese naval force, which included Phillip. In May and June 1797 St Vincent was in negotiations for the Portuguese to provide four ‘wellmanned, commanded and appointed’ Portuguese warships to form ‘an Auxiliary Naval Force of Co-Operation’. His idea was to augment this force with three English ships. The combined squadron would, he anticipated, patrol the Atlantic between the entrance to the Tagus River at Lisbon and Cape St Vincent. Naturally, he thought that the squadron would be commanded by ‘a Native of Great Britain’. And St Vincent seems to have had Phillip in mind. However, the Portuguese resisted any notion of foreign authority and announced that the Marquis of Niza would command their ships. At the time St Vincent wrote regularly to Evan Nepean about his plans and proposals. Nepean then held the wartime post of Secretary to the Admiralty. When the appointment of the Marquis of Niza was announced, St Vincent informed Nepean that ‘the moment he appears, I will unite the Swiftsure, Bellerophon and Audacious to it, under the command of Captain Phillip who is an officer of merit, and temper, and I am informed gave great satisfaction to the Government of Portugal while he was employed in the Portuguese Service’. One may safely assume that Nepean supported Phillip’s credentials.
St Vincent’s aspirations for Phillip were not to be. The reason for the alteration was a bitter difference that did not involve Phillip but of which he was an unfortunate casualty. The two most senior admirals serving under St Vincent were Horatio Nelson and Charles Thompson. Rather astutely as it turned out, St Vincent tended to favour Nelson, something that Thompson bitterly resented. Matters came to a head when St Vincent had two mutinous sailors executed on a Sunday. Thompson launched a public attack on his commanding officer, accusing St Vincent of profaning the Sabbath. This of course would not do, however devout Thompson may have been. The Admiralty recalled him, rendering vacant the command of the Blenheim. St Vincent told Phillip to take it, intending it to be a compliment, for the Blenheim was a 90-gun three-decker and until recently the flagship of an admiral. But she turned out to be a poisoned chalice and would be Phillip’s last ship.
In September 1797 the Blenheim needed to go to Lisbon for repairs and St Vincent sent Phillip with her. The strategic landscape had begun to change and St Vincent and the administration wanted Phillip on the ground in Portugal so that he might be in a position to co-operate with General Stuart, who had been sent to command a military force in anticipation of an expected invasion by the French and Spanish armies. Whitehall feared that Portugal would not resist, or was incapable of resisting, any such invasion. Britain was therefore prepared to offer massive military and naval assistance to Portugal, hoping that doing so would justify it taking practical control of Portugal’s naval and military forces. If that occurred, Stuart would inevitably become commander of the troops and Phillip commander of the naval forces. For three months in Lisbon Phillip worked in readiness for the expected invasion, renewing acquaintances, fostering links with the Portuguese administration and carrying out orders transmitted to him by St Vincent.
It was all to no avail. By February 1798, the expected invasion by French and Spanish forces had not eventuated. Worse still, Phillip’s command of the Blenheim was abruptly taken from him when the newly arrived Rear-Admiral Frederick, accompanied by his own captain, insisted on hoisting his own flag on the recently repaired Blenheim. This was a perquisite of rank that St Vincent was unable to resist. Nor did he consider it appropriate to return Phillip to the Swiftsure, which was now ably commanded by the soon to be famous Benjamin Hallowell, another intimate of Nelson. Under Hallowell’s command, the Swiftsure achieved the glory that Phillip so keenly desired – no more so than at the Battle of the Nile in August later that same year, when she bombarded the French flagship L’Orient and played the major role in her destruction.
Phillip was left high and dry. In his letter to Nepean he said that he was ‘obliged to come on shore under the most mortifying circumstances’. Neither malice nor professional rivalry had been his undoing, just an unhappy combination of circumstances. And age was now also a factor. Nelson’s leading captains, his revered ‘band of brothers’ who fought alongside him at the Battle of the Nile, were much younger men. His flag-captain, Edward Berry, was 30 years younger than Phillip. Ball on the Alexander was almost twenty years younger. Hallowell on the Swiftsure was 22 years younger. And Nelson himself was twenty years younger. None of the others was remotely close to Phillip in age. He was old enough to be the father of each of them. It was a testament to St Vincent’s high estimation of Phillip that he had gone so close and progressed so far. But the command of a ship of the line in time of war was, for the most part, a young man’s game and Phillip was at a temporal disadvantage.
Once again Phillip took the packet service from Lisbon, coming ashore at Falmouth on 2 March 1798. He had written to Nepean from Portugal and again on his arrival in England. He knew there were always more officers than ships and he must have wondered what, if anything, the Admiralty could provide for him. As his post chaise clipped and jolted along the coaching road to London, it is reasonable to assume that he ruminated on the future. His situation was like that of Patrick O’Brian’s aging fictional captain Jack Aubrey, to whom the First Sea Lord said: ‘I can hold out no hope of a ship. However, there may be some slight possibility in the Sea-Fencibles or the Impress Service. We are extending both, and they call for active, enterprising men.’ Captain Aubrey, who was not enamoured of the First Lord’s proposal, thought to himself that the Sea Fencibles and the Impress Service ‘were landborne posts: [for] comfort-loving men, devoid of ambition or tired of the sea, willing to look after a kind of fishermen’s militia or to attend to the odious work of the press-gang’.
Phillip was not yet entirely devoid of ambition nor tired of the sea but the best that Nepean could do was to find him an appointment as commander of the Hampshire Sea Fencibles. The Sea Fencible service was not quite a fishermen’s militia. It was a form of naval home guard that fulfilled an important function at a time when there were realistic apprehensions of a French invasion of the south coast of England. The strategic thinking behind the service was that while the navy would seek to stop and destroy any invasion force off the French coastal ports, the Sea Fencibles would if necessary attack any French landing barges and hoys that reached the English beaches. The timing of Phillip’s return was fortuitous because the establishment of an organisation to be known as the Sea Fencibles was a current topic of discussion within the Admiralty at the very time that Phillip had written to Nepean.
Phillip was not alone in his appointment as a commander of Sea Fencibles. There were many post captains in a similar position – without a ship and willing to take a shore job. On 6 April 1798 the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty issued to the Navy Board ‘A list of Post Captains appointed to superintend the Enrolment of Sea Fencibles’. Phillip was one of a number on the list. By 1805 there were 70 captains commanding groups of Sea Fencibles along sections of the coastlines of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The service was attractive to unemployed officers because they became entitled to full pay rather than the half pay they would otherwise have received. And civilian recruits –
for whom the major incentive was an entitlement to immunity from militia service or the press gang – were easily found.
For most of the next six years Phillip was engaged, with his usual painstaking conscientiousness, on the business of the Sea Fencibles and the Impress Service. And in January 1799, when he had reached the top of the captains’ list, he was promoted to rear admiral of the blue. It was the final stage of his naval career – a career which he had officially commenced in 1755 as one of Captain Everitt’s servants on the Buckingham. His work in the administration of the Sea Fencibles was unglamorous but Phillip was well suited to it. He supervised the recruitment and training of the local volunteers who made up the fencibles, he inspected the men and their posts, and he attended to the inevitable administrative responsibilities that go with the position of commanding officer. The men were trained in the use of cannon and pike and expected to man the signal stations on the coast as well as the Martello towers then being built. One of the recurring burdens for the commander was the necessity from time to time to secure the release of Sea Fencibles men who had been wrongly pressed, notwithstanding the exemption to which they were entitled. And of course there were always reports to the Admiralty, in Phillip’s case invariably lengthy and careful.
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