The Black Ship

by Dudley Pope

  An example is the Protection held by a man who served in the Hermone and was discharged before the mutiny after being claimed by an American consul as an American citizen. He was Benjamin Brewster, the man who probably helped Thomas Nash choose Danbury, Connecticut, as a ‘birthplace’. Brewster was discharged from the Hermione in Port Royal after the consul’s intervention on April 7, 1797. But when he was arrested in October, 1800, on suspicion of being a mutineer, he produced a Protection dated February 15, 1800. Yet even if he did not have a Protection while in the Hermione in 1797, the consul would have given him one immediately he was freed, to avoid having him pressed again before he left Port Royal.

  Most British seamen visiting an American port, or able to get to an American consul, therefore took the precaution—if they had the opportunity—of obtaining a Protection: it was a good insurance. Nor was it difficult, even if he had no American friend: a small payment to a shady but bona fide American citizen, a declaration sworn before a notary public, a visit to a Customs collector, and he had established himself as an American subject: from then on he was in effect wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, not the Union Flag. Indeed, there was a flourishing trade in New York, where a certain Mr Riley at the turn of the century was reputed to have run such a business and gave the United States a dozen new ‘citizens’ a day, at three dollars a time.

  Since the Royal Navy knew the Protection system was abused, the lieutenant commanding the boarding party sent to an American ship usually relied on his own instinct rather than the possession of a Protection in deciding if a seaman was British; and no doubt his instinct was keener if his ship was critically short of men.

  With a century and a half of hindsight, during which time the United States herself has had to help overthrow men determined to rule the world, all but the most bigoted would agree that both Britain and America were doing what they thought necessary with the limited knowledge available and the particular prejudices then current. For Britain it was a question of strengthening herself in the battle to prevent France extending her domination from the Baltic to the Indian Ocean. To America it seemed she was defending her new and hard-won independence against what she considered to be the thin edge of the wedge of renewed British interference in American affairs.

  Sir Hyde Parker knew as well as any man the difficulties over Protections and, knowing the truth about Thomas Nash’s birthplace and that he had been on board the Hermione on the day he was supposed to have been issued the Protection in New York, was unmoved by the uproar in the American press. HMS Sprightly arrived at Port Royal on Sunday, August 11, and on Monday the Admiral ordered Captain E. T. Smith of the Hannibal to assemble a court martial to try Nash ‘for mutiny, piracy, desertion and murder’.

  The trial began the following Thursday and included, almost inevitably, Captain Man Dobson, who had not missed being a member of any of the eight Hermione courts martial held up to then at the Jamaica Station. The evidence produced against Nash was damning. John Brown, asked to describe the fate of Lt Foreshaw—which he had witnessed from the maintop—declared: ‘They asked him [Nash] what he was going to do with Lt Foreshaw, on which he told them to heave the bugger overboard, which they did, and hove him over the quarter.’ In the share-out of Captain Pigot’s and the officers’ effects, he added, he understood Nash received a watch.

  Nash himself asked Brown a curious question. ‘Did you save my life the day after the ship was taken possession of by the mutineers when they overheard me speaking to some others about retaking the ship?’

  Brown replied: ‘I heard a rope was rove to hang you, on account of your first being the head mutineer to take the ship from the officers; and then endeavouring to retake her.’ (This is the only reference made in any of the courts martial, confessions or depositions to the rope or to Nash’s alleged intention or conversation.)

  ‘What did he mean to do with the ship, if perchance he retook her from the other mutineers?’ the court asked.

  ‘I can’t say,’ replied Brown. No one asked any more questions about this episode.

  Holford described how, when Lt Foreshaw had climbed back on board after being hove over the side, Nash ran up to him saying ‘You bugger, Foreshaw, are you not overboard yet…?’ Holford said that Nash then led the lieutenant to the gangway and, with help from some others, threw him into the sea.

  When Nash was called to make his defence he had nothing to say: he made no claim that he was an American citizen, nor did he enlarge on his question about planning to retake the ship. The court sentenced him to be hanged and his body gibbeted, and Sir Hyde Parker noted in his journal on Monday, August 19, ‘This morning Thomas Nash was executed and afterwards hung in chains…’

  Nash’s death did not quieten the outcry in America, and it was so strong—particularly in Charleston—that Sir Hyde wrote to Mr Moodie, the Consul General, in answer to two letters from him, saying that Nash, before he was executed, ‘confessed himself to be an Irishman’. This fact was published in Timothy’s on Mr Moodie’s behalf, and a few weeks later Captain George Blake, of the Royal Navy, swore an affidavit that at the trial at Port Royal ‘Nash made no defence… On the scaffold, a few minutes before he was run up to the foreyardarm of the Acasto, he addressed the crew of that ship, advising them to take timely warning of his fate.’ This affidavit, too, was published in Timothy’s.

  A description of the outcry in America was given by Lord Mac-Donald who had just returned to his home in Great George Street, London, a month after Nash’s execution, following a visit to the United States. He wrote a long letter to the man responsible for Britain’s foreign affairs, the Secretary of State, Lord Grenville.

  ‘… The mutiny in our Fleet, and the horrible affair of the Hermione frigate, were subjects of exaltation with many people of all descriptions [in America]; and it was said with satisfaction that probably those and similar events were to be ascribed to the brave efforts of impressed American seamen, whose right to mutiny, and even murder British officers, was asserted and maintained in elaborate arguments, even in Congress; a circumstance which leads me to say that the number of our ablest seamen in American service or employment is incredible.’

  He added in another letter a few days later that ‘it was Mr Marshall, the present American Secretary of State, a Virginian lawyer of considerable abilities, who in Congress maintained the argument… namely, that American seamen had a right to do what had been done on board the Hermione… He had spoken with effect in vindication of the President’s conduct in giving up one of the mutineers, agreeable to the treaty, on the ground that he was in truth an Irishman, and a British subject; but,’ continued his Lordship, ‘he took occasion at the same time to proclaim and enlarge on the very humane and liberal principle I have stated.’

  26

  THROUGH THE GATES

  * * *

  WHILE THOMAS NASH had been in jail at Charleston, His Majesty’s sloop Kite had been convoying ‘the trade’ across the North Sea from Elsinore, in Denmark, to Scotland. As soon as she anchored in the Firth of Forth on June 1, 1799, her commanding officer, Charles Lydiard, wrote to the Admiralty reporting his arrival and adding: ‘Having been requested by Lord Robert Fitzgerald [Britain’s Envoy Extraordinary at Copenhagen] to take on board a British seaman, one of the mutineers of the Hermione, I beg Their Lordships’ orders what I am to do with him.’

  An unsigned note enclosed in Lydiard’s letter gave a brief history of the mutineer. He was the foretopman James Duncan, who had said the day after the mutiny that if the officers were still alive his bad toe would never have recovered. Duncan’s arrival in the Firth of Forth as a prisoner was due to a combination of bad luck and the punctiliousness of the Danish authorities.

  Part of Duncan’s story has already been told: how he and John Williams went to Cumaná and signed on in a Danish ship which was captured by a British privateer and sent into Tortola. At this point the stories told by the two men disagree. Williams went on shore and joined a British ship in which he ret
urned to Liverpool and gave himself up. Duncan, however, said that when the Danish ship was captured the British prizemaster ‘Asked me if I belonged to the Hermione. I told him I did and he made a prisoner of me.’ Duncan claimed he was then sent to the island of St Thomas and put on board a Danish frigate bound for Denmark.

  So much for Duncan’s claims. From then on official sources describe his movements. As soon as the frigate arrived in the Sound and anchored off Kronborg Castle at Elsinore, he was put on shore and imprisoned in the fortress. No doubt its dignified beauty, topped by the green coppered roof, and its romantic link with Hamlet, was lost on the seaman. In the meantime the Danish Government informed Lord Robert Fitzgerald of their prisoner and were asked that he should be put on board the Kite.

  On July 3, 1800, just thirteen months after Lydiard’s letter to the Admiralty reporting the Kite’s arrival in the Forth, and nearly three years after the mutiny, James Duncan was brought to trial on board the Gladiator at Portsmouth on the usual charges. Southcott, having finally been made a lieutenant, Sergeant Plaice, John Williams, James Perrett and Steward John Jones, gave evidence against him. All these men, with the exception of Southcott, were being kept at Portsmouth, readily available as witnesses. But they had another task, which was simply to roam the streets of that great naval base, looking at the passing seamen, just in case they recognized a familiar face from the Hermione. The chances were not as remote as they would seem.

  Duncan’s defence concluded with the plea that ‘I hope the court will take into account I have been two years confined’. This, of course, included the time he had been in Danish custody. The court no doubt took it into account, but it made no difference to the verdict: Duncan was sentenced to be hanged. The sentence was carried out on July 10 on board the Puissant, and a contemporary account said, ‘About a quarter of an hour before he was turned off [sic], he addressed the ship’s company, and said how justly he was condemned for being concerned in one of the worst of crimes, and warned them from ever being concerned in such an act of atrocity’.

  A few days later a seaman from the Royal William, Thomas Nelson, was court-martialled for having ‘used reproachful and provoking speeches’ to one of the witnesses who had given evidence against Duncan. He was sentenced to two years in the Marshalsea Prison.

  At the end of July, three weeks after Duncan had been hanged, the Gladiator was the scene of yet another Hermione trial, where the evidence given was the most gruesome so far. Two men were accused—John Watson, the sailor who had pretended to be blind before the mutiny and danced and drank on the halfdeck after it was over; and young James Allen, Lt Douglas’s servant, who had behaved more like a jackal when the lieutenant was murdered.

  Both men had been taken out of a neutral ship in the West Indies and sent on board the flagship of Rear-Admiral Harvey, commanding in the Leeward Isles. Harvey had, as mentioned earlier, originally kept back some of the loyal Marines as witnesses should he capture any mutineers, but by then only Corporal Nicolas Doran remained. The Admiral sent for Doran and asked him if he recognized Allen. ‘I told him I knew him but had very little knowledge of the man,’ Doran said later. Admiral Harvey, having no one to use as a witness, sent both Watson and Allen to England, where the other witnesses were available.

  Rear-Admiral John Holloway was the president of the court, and as usual the first witness was Lt Southcott, who described how after the mutiny Watson had said that he was not then blind—he had previously been pretending. But it was against James Allen that Southcott’s evidence was more effective: telling how the mutineers had been hunting for Lt Douglas, Southcott said that he heard Allen call, ‘Here he is!’ two or three times. He also described how later he saw the boy wearing one of Lt Douglas’s rings and cutting down a pair of his boots to make into shoes.

  The former steward, John Jones, declared that he ‘saw Watson dancing with the people, very much in liquor, on the quarterdeck’. As for Allen, he saw him ‘showing the boys a ring he had on his finger which I supposed belonged to his master’.

  Then came the turn of the Hermione’s former butcher, James Perrett, to tell his story. He described how he saw Allen holding on to Lt Douglas, and ‘He sung out “Let me have a chop at him. He shall not make me jump about the gunroom anymore.”’ Lt Douglas cried out for mercy as they dragged him away, Perrett added.

  ‘Did you see him take a chop at him?’ the court asked.

  ‘Yes, he made a chop at him as they were dragging him up the ladder of the after hatchway. I do not know whether it was with a tomahawk or a cutlass.’ A contemporary account said that ‘on receiving this deposition from Perrett, a general groan of horror was heard in the court.’

  Sergeant Plaice gave a detailed description of how Lt Douglas had hidden under the dying Marine officer’s bed, and had later been found by the mutineers. ‘I suppose there were twenty tomahawks, axes and boarding pikes jagged into him immediately in the gunroom,’ he said.

  Allen’s defence was simple. He said it was very improbable, as he was such a youth at the time, being only sixteen years old the previous February, that he should have been guilty of such a crime, and ‘if I had, I should not have slept in my bed’.

  Both Allen and Watson were found guilty, and executed on August 7. According to the Naval Chronicle, ‘At ten o’clock Watson was launched into Eternity; but, as the same Provost Marshal was obliged to attend both men, Allen was not executed until eleven o’clock… They both behaved very penitent, and acknowledged the justice of their sentence. Allen was born at Chatham and was but twenty years of age the day he was tried. His brother was on board the whole of the trial and was extremely affected; and, at the time of the execution, he was at the Dockyard, directly opposite his brother, and, on the gun’s firing, he fell down speechless in the yard, from whence he was taken home in a state of insensibility…’

  No more Hermiones were caught for nearly a year. Sir Hyde Parker had returned from the West Indies a rich man and then been sent to the Baltic with a squadron where his second-in-command, Nelson, fought and won the Battle of Copenhagen on Maundy Thursday, 1801. Sir Hyde was already back in his London house—having been ordered by the Admiralty to hand over command to Nelson and return home—by the time the next mutineers were put on trial.

  They were the young former clerk, William Johnson, and Hadrian Poulson, the Dane who had helped Thomas Nash throw Captain Pigot’s body out through one of the Hermione’s stern windows. Both had been caught at Curaçao.

  The court martial on board the Gladiator had Rear-Admiral John Holloway as its president. Johnson described how he had gone to Curaçao from La Guaira, finding a job there as clerk to the American Consul. ‘I remained in this employ,’ he said, ‘but hearing it was necessary for every person who was on board the Hermione at the unhappy period to be examined, I embraced the first opportunity to effect this, and on the 15th day of September [six days short of three years after the mutiny] I went on board His Majesty’s Ship Néréide, commanded by Frederick Watkins, Esquire, then off Curaçao, and surrendered myself for an examination of my conduct.’

  That sounded an adequate defence and an indication that Johnson’s conscience was clear; but the former clerk had omitted to tell the full circumstances. The British frigate Néréide had indeed been cruising off Curaçao, and on September 11, 1800 she was close to the port of Amsterdam when Captain Watkins was surprised to see a boat pulling towards the frigate from the shore. He was even more surprised when a deputation of Dutchmen who, ‘tired out with the enormities of the band of 1,500 Republican ruffians who were in possession of the west part of the island,’ claimed the protection of Britain. Two days later Governor Johan Rudolph Lausser signed the capitulation, surrendering the island to Britain. Thus Captain Watkins came into the possession of an island—and a couple of Hermiones.

  When Johnson went on board the Néréide he took with him a letter signed by Mr B. H. Phillips, of the firm of Bogle and Jopp (who were, among other things, agents for the sale of slave
s) and addressed to the Admiralty. In it Mr Phillips, who was the American Consul, recommended ‘to your kindness and protection an unfortunate young man’. It had always been Johnson’s wish, the letter said, ‘to give himself up, and while with me as [has] conducted himself not only to please, but to gain my full confidence. We therefore pray you will show him countenance [sic] and we shall be very grateful for any service to him.’

  The first prosecution witness at the trial was Lt Southcott, who said he could not remember seeing Johnson at the time of the mutiny, but he saw Poulson several times. Since Poulson was a Dane, a translator was sworn in to help him, and Poulson asked Southcott: ‘What was my character in the ship?’

  Southcott was frank in his reply: ‘He had a very good one before the mutiny—all the best men were the principals of the mutineers.’

  Earlier Southcott had been asked if either of the two accused men had expressed to him any contrition. ‘No, they did not,’ he said, ‘but Poulson, during the passage (I cannot say what day) when a great many of the mutineers were in the cabin and were boasting of what they had done in the murder of their officers, said that he assisted in killing the Captain and heaving him overboard, and that at the time he called out for his bargemen, and asked if everyone was against him, he [Poulson] said “Here are your bargemen, what do you want with them, you bugger?”’

  ‘Are you sure that [Poulson] was the wretch who made use of that infernal expression?’—‘Yes.’

  When Johnson was called on to make his defence, he called the former Master of the Néréide, Mr Samuel Raven, to try to prove that he had surrendered at Curaçao.

  ‘Did I give myself up to Captain Watkins?’ he asked.

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ was Raven’s uncompromising reply.