by Dudley Pope
At last the inevitable clash between the Intendant, the man who held the purse strings, and the Captain-General, who ruled the province, had occurred. It was inevitable, as we saw earlier, because of the overlapping roles assigned in the Royal ordinances to the intendants and the captains-general, which meant, in the case of the Santa Cecilia, that the Captain-General could order her to be refitted and to sail, but the Intendant could refuse to supply the money for the work and wages.
As soon as the Captain-General received Marmion’s outraged note enclosing Caperuchiqui’s order, he wrote a strongly-worded letter to Leone. ‘I acquaint Your Excellency that the frigate Santa Cecilia has been ordered to arm in the capacity of a privateer, and that she must carry out the orders of this Province [i.e. of the junta], like other privateers, that she might be useful to His Majesty’s government.’ He added that the junta had decided the Privateering Branch was to pay because the ship would fulfil two roles—dealing with enemy warships and preventing smuggling. But ‘the principal object of arming the ship was not, and is not, for stopping smuggling: it is for defending the coasts of the province. It is very obvious that if the frigate was only to be a privateer, Your Excellency would have control, and it would not be necessary to raise the matter in a junta.
‘The fact that the Privateering Branch is paying the expenses is not sufficient reason to put the frigate under the command of that Branch, since they pay only because of the lack of money in the Royal Treasury.
‘On a similar occasion, when expenses were paid by the Privateering Branch, the King decreed that ships armed for war with the object of defending the coasts came under the command of the Captain-General. In that way’, Carbonell wrote, ‘the Intendant only deals with the financial side of the affair.’
But for all that, Carbonell realized that the man who held the purse strings actually held the power, and he concluded, ‘In spite of all this, and the knowledge that the frigate Santa Cecilia must be under my orders—though the expense be paid by the Privateering Branch or anyone else—to avoid troubles so prejudicial to the King’s service, and so distasteful to me, Your Excellency can command the frigate with every facility, and I am also informing Caperuchiqui. All this,’ he concluded ominously, ‘I shall recount to His Majesty for his Royal information’.
The Santa Cecilia did not sail. The Captain-General, writing later a bitter letter of complaint to the Prince of Peace, said that ‘as he [Leone] could not argue with me face to face, he played a trick by giving orders to Don Caperuchiqui… the result has been not to arm the frigate, and to let her rot in harbour, while enemy corsairs attack our merchant ships and insolently protect the cattle and food smugglers along our coast. I do not have enough authority to remedy these disasters.’
However, having gained control of the Santa Cecilia, Leone did nothing further: the delay over fitting out, followed by the quarrel with the Captain-General, took them up to Christmas 1797, and by then the British ships had left the area and the coasts of Caracas were left in comparative peace.
The frigate stayed at Puerto Cabello while the blazing sun shrunk the deck and hull planking, opening up the seams. The alternate heat of the sun and wet of rain and dew began the slow process of rotting the cordage and mildewing the canvas of the sails. Rats bred in contentment, unworried by any rolling or pitching which would send sudden surges of bilge water into their secret nests down in the holds.
On March 16, Intendant Leone received some alarming news from the Dutch island of Curaçao, which he promptly passed on to the Captain-General: five Spaniards known to be revolutionaries were on the island and ‘intend to form an expedition to invade this province’.
Don Carbonell acted at once, telling the Intendant that ‘it has been decided to fit out with the utmost speed possible the frigate Santa Cecilia and the schooner Kitschean [sic], with the other two privateers under the command of Don Andreas Caperuchiqui. They are to sail from Puerto Cabello and cruise off the entrance of the port of Curaçao, not allowing any ship to leave there without checking her and making sure she is not helping these criminals.’ A sloop and a schooner should follow as soon as possible ‘to strengthen our forces’.
The Intendant replied that, ‘I have given on my part the most strict orders so that everything shall be done with speed and efficiency’. But the old quarrel over control of the ship was still close to the surface. The Captain-General wrote to Leone again the same day saying he had given command of the Santa Cecilia to Don Ambrocio Alvarez Pardinaz, who was captain of the Cadiz merchantman La Empresa, then lying in La Guaira, because of ‘his acknowledged ability and bravery’.
But when Leone came to pass on these orders he made no mention of Pardinaz: instead Caperuchiqui was told ‘You are to carry out a mission in the Royal Service which I do not doubt you will execute with honour’. His ships were to provision for two months, and not for one; or for fifteen days if there was not sufficient. Other craft would be sent on later to reinforce him and bring more supplies. Meanwhile ‘the Royal Exchequer is authorized to give you all necessary assistance’.
Writing to his officials at Puerto Cabello, Leone sent a copy of his orders to Caperuchiqui, and told them, ‘I have arranged to forward to the Royal Treasury [at Puerto Cabello] the sum of sixty thousand pesos, which should arrive by next Monday at the latest’. And finally, in a letter to the Governor of La Guaira, Leone told him to send La Empresa’s crew to Puerto Cabello to help man the Santa Cecilia, along with any other seamen who were available.
Thus in four letters—including one to the Captain-General acknowledging the original order—Leone had not once mentioned Pardinaz: the officials at Puerto Cabello and La Guaira had no inkling that the Captain-General had intended he should command the frigate.
When Carbonell found that Leone was again playing tricks over the command of the frigate he did not write to him. Any arguments they had must have been oral and it is clear the Captain-General could get no satisfaction from Leone—nor could he get the ship, to sea. On March 23, nine days after he had ordered them to sails he wrote a long letter to the Prince of Peace—a letter at the top of which, when it arrived at the Spanish Court, was noted ‘The Captain-General of the Province of Caracas requests agreement from the Council on his dispute with the Intendant about the command of the English frigate Ermione [sic]’.
Don Carbonell enclosed copies of various relevant documents and began by describing the fiasco resulting from the decision to sail the Santa Cecilia the previous November to deal with the British warships off Cape Codera. He described how Leone had ‘played a trick’ to get control of the frigate, and that he finally left the ship to the Intendant in order to avoid disputes ‘so prejudicial to the King’s service’. The Captain-General also sent a copy of his recent correspondence with ‘Admiral Hider Parker’, asking for the King’s approval. (Five days after Carbonell wrote these letters, the Prince of Peace had fallen from power: the King dismissed him on March 28.)
At the time the Captain-General’s dispatches left La Guaira for Spain, Caperuchiqui was still busy trying to get the Santa Cecilia and Kitty Sean ready for sea. The last letter referring to them, dated April 4, was to the Intendant from his officials at Puerto Cabello. ‘On April 2,’ they wrote, ‘the frigate Santa Cecilia was inspected with the sloop Begoña because they were ready to sail. However they could not leave since there was no wind.’
It is certain that they never sailed: no report of a voyage to Curaçao was made to Carbonell or Leone, or by them to Madrid; and when defending himself later Leone said the frigate had been ready by April 2, whereas it would have strengthened his case if he had been able to say she had actually gone to sea.
The long delay in correspondence with the Ministers and the Court in Spain, caused by lethargy and the double crossing of the Atlantic in the teeth of the British blockade, meant that the problem and the control of the Santa Cecilia was never satisfactorily settled.
On August 4, 1798, nearly a year after the mutiny, the Captain-Ge
neral wrote to Admiral Don Juan de Langara, who had recently been made the Secretary of State for the Navy, saying he had received the King’s approval of the junta’s decision to admit the Hermione into the Royal Service, and that she was to operate under the Captain-General’s control. He told Langara that the naval officer the Court had appointed to command her, Don Ramon de Eschales, had just arrived in La Guaira with his officers, but without seamen or soldiers because none was available at Havana.
So nine months after the Hermione first arrived at La Guaira, Carbonell was able to show Leone the King’s decision that the ship was to be under the Captain-General’s control.
At the end of November, 1798, Carbonell received a reply from Spain to his complaint of March 23 about Leone. It said the King had been shown the Captain-General’s report that the frigate was ‘going downhill’. The King ‘has disapproved of the Intendant’s conduct on this point and declared that the ship is under the orders of the Captain-General for the time being, and for as long as she is not given orders from a higher command’.
In the meantime Leone had also been busy writing to the Minister of Finance in Spain. As soon as the King’s approval of Carbonell’s decisions over the Hermione had been read to the junta, Leone wrote a long justification of his conduct. Relating how the junta accepted the Hermione in the first instance, and that the Captain-General decided ‘on his own responsibility’ the ship’s role was to guard the coast against privateers, he declared: ‘The Captain-General afterwards ordered on different occasions that the frigate was to be armed and fitted out to go to sea, which I opposed, having in mind the excessive cost which is supposed to be paid by the Royal Treasury, and which at the present time has no funds.
‘In addition there are not sufficient officers and crew experienced enough to handle the ship of this size. Also, according to those who know about these things, these coasts are not suitable for large ships like frigates, which are difficult to sail against strong currents which frequently expose them to a lee shore and to the danger of going aground on the coasts. Besides this, the enemy smugglers and privateers are smaller and draw less water, so they can shelter and hide in anchorages and shallow coves where a frigate cannot enter, and as a result it is impossible to capture them.’
The Intendant, writing with all the assurance usual in someone so completely ignorant of a subject, forgot the panic caused by the appearance of a British frigate off Cape Codera; and it has been made clear in this narrative that a large percentage of prizes taken by British frigates were made in just the circumstances that Leone quoted ‘those who know about these things’ as saying were ‘impossible’.
The Intendant, commenting on the Royal order giving control to Carbonell, wrote: ‘I consider it necessary to notify Your Excellency that this alters the established system of maritime security for this coast.’ Paying for the ship as a privateer, he explained, meant that the commerce paid [i.e. from the tax levied on the merchants]; but in fact the Privateering Fund was not even sufficient to pay for the small ships of the Privateering Branch.
‘It is not possible to keep the frigate armed [i.e. in commission] either from the Privateering Fund or the Royal Treasury, which is exhausted with the heavy expenses of the present war, without being able to find eighty thousand pesos a year, which the officials of the Royal Treasury at Puerto Cabello have calculated to be necessary for the upkeep of the ship, including her operating expenses and careening, which are so costly.’
In view of all this, concluded Leone, he hoped a full explanation would be given to the King ‘for a speedy resolution’.
The Minister of Finance sent Leone’s letter to the King, whose reply was certainly speedy. The Minister was told ‘His Majesty disapproves the Intendant’s conduct and orders him to put it right with the Captain-General’. The Minister then sent the whole file of correspondence to Admiral Langara, and the Royal snub, conveyed in a letter from Langara, arrived at Caracas in July 1799, a year after Leone had written his original protest. When the Intendant read it he was indignant and replied at once—indeed, an indication of his haste is given in a note on his letter saying ‘written in the frigate Carlota, Captain Don Ramon Blanco, which is ready to sail from the port of La Guaira for Spain, July 27, 1799’.
Acknowledging Langara’s letter, he said: ‘For your information I must inform you that the report of the Captain-General—that I started the dispute, demanding that the ship should be under my orders, with the result that she is deteriorating—is entirely wrong.
‘Having examined the file of the Hermione from the time she came into our possession, I do not see how I could have caused such a dispute.… Your Excellency will see from the documents I enclose that the decisions and orders concerning the arming and command of the frigate have come from either the junta de guerra or the Captain-General… Far from opposing decisions) making difficulties or causing delays I passed on the necessary orders to those officers who in fact come under the jurisdiction of the Intendant without making the slightest criticism of the Captain-General for having himself made the decisions concerning the privateers, although they come under my command. On further consideration it seems to me that it demonstrates my moderation and wish to avoid disputes and misunderstandings.’
Leone asked Admiral Langara to refer the matter to the King for his decision and also ‘make good the embarrassment and injury done me by the complaint of Carbonell, damaging the honour and efficiency with which I have always tried to serve His Majesty’.
But Intendant Leone was never to receive the King’s decision. At the time he wrote that letter on board the frigate Carlota, the Hermione had been in Spanish hands for nearly twenty-one months and despite their desperate shortage of ships, her only voyage under the red and gold flag had been from La Guaira to Puerto Cabello. For a year and a half she had been a subject for correspondence, not a warship; the only hostility involving her had been between the Intendant and the Captain-General.
24
‘SACK BLIGH OR…’
* * *
WHEN Mr Southcott and the rest of the loyal Hermiones arrived back in England in the Alfred, the five senior men had to face the customary court martial which was ordered to ‘inquire into the causes and circumstances of the loss of His Majesty’s ship Her-mione’, and try them ‘for their conduct respectively so far as may relate to the said ship’.
The trial was held on board the Director at Sheerness, and among the vice-admiral and nine captains forming the court was Captain William Bligh, a man who already had considerable experience of mutiny, both at the Nore the previous year, when his crew were among the first to order their officers to leave the ship, and in the Bounty ten years earlier.
The court heard the story of the mutiny and decided that the five men—Southcott, Searle, Price, Casey and Moncrieff—were acquitted ‘of all blame on the occasion of the loss of His Majesty’s late Ship Hermione, or of the murder of the said Captain and other officers…’
However, there were to be many more courts martial over the next ten years before the last of the Hermione’s mutineers could feel himself reasonably safe, and we will follow the fortunes of the rest of the men as they were caught in various parts of the world and brought to trial.
A fortnight after Benives, Hill and Herd were hanged at Cape Nicolas Mole, and six months after the mutiny, three more Hermiones were caught in the West Indies. They were Captain Pigot’s cook, John Holford, with his young son, and James Irwin, the Irishman from Limerick. After the two Holfords had sailed in the open boat from La Guaira to Cumaná, they signed on in a ship going to Jamaica. As soon as they landed both father and son went to the authorities and gave themselves up. The father was taken before Mr Algernon Warren, one of Kingston’s justices of the peace, where he made a long and detailed sworn statement. A copy was immediately sent to Sir Hyde Parker, who found it so interesting that, as he wrote to the Admiralty, ‘from its being full and circumstantial on this bloody tragedy’, he was enclosing a copy for Their Lor
dships.
James Irwin had signed on in an American ship bound for New York, but unfortunately for him she had not left the Caribbean before the British sloop La Tourterelle came in sight and ordered her to heave-to and wait for a boarding party. The lieutenant in charge was interested only to see if there were any British subjects on board to impress into His Majesty’s service—and he selected Irwin. According to Irwin, as he was being ‘read in’ La Tourterelle’s commanding officer asked him if he was ‘One of the Hermiones’, and ‘I told Captain West that I did belong to the Hermione in the time of the mutiny’. Captain West in his letter to Sir Hyde said, ‘I detected him’.
The two Holfords and Irwin were tried together at a court martial on May 23 on board the Brunswick. Presiding for the first time at an Hermione court martial was Sir Hyde’s second-in-command, Rear-Admiral Richard Rodney Bligh, who had presided at the trial of Lt Harris over the Ceres episode. Most of the captains forming the court had known Hugh Pigot well, and among them were Man Dobson and John Crawley sitting at their third Hermione trial, and John Loring at his second.
Three officers who had left the Hermione before the mutiny—John Forbes, Lt Harris, and the former boatswain, Thomas Harrington, who was by then second master of the Thunderer—gave evidence of identification; but the main prosecution witnesses were John Mason and John Brown.
The verdict the court reached was reasonable and just: that is quite clear from the minutes and was later confirmed by information from many other sources. Irwin, the court announced, was guilty of mutiny and deserting to the enemy in the Hermione, but the charge of murder was not proved. He was therefore sentenced to be hanged, but ‘it appearing he took no direct part in the mutiny,’ the court recommended him as ‘a proper object of mercy’. The Holfords, father and son, were found not guilty of any of the charges.
