by Dudley Pope
‘Did I live as clerk to the American Consul?’ Johnson asked. ‘Yes,’ said Raven.
The court then asked Raven: ‘How long had the ship been lying at Curaçao before Johnson came on board?’—‘We were lying off the harbour six or seven days. He was sent on board by the officer of Marines of the Néréide.’
The court then asked him about Poulson. ‘After we had been in quiet possession of the island he was sent on board by Governor Lawsor [Lausser], out of the Syren Dutch frigate…’
Johnson then made his written defence, and handed in the letter from Mr Phillips. His delay in reporting to the Néréide was because as cashier at the American Consul’s house he ‘had a great charge of cash’, he said: he was obliged to make up his accounts and therefore could not give himself up for several days.
Poulson, the other accused man, had nothing to say in his own defence, and the court announced their verdict: the Dane was guilty of both the charges—murdering or helping to murder the officers; and delivering the ship to the enemy. Johnson was not guilty on the first count, but he had helped take the ship into La Guaira and deliver her up to the enemy. Both men were sentenced to be hanged, but the court wrote to the Admiralty recommending Johnson to mercy. He was pardoned, but Poulson was executed on board the Puissant.
John Pearce, the Marine whom Mr Southcott had seen heaving his regimentals over the side shortly after the mutiny, was caught on board a ship at Malta and sent home for trial. This took place on board the Gladiator at Portsmouth in August 1801, and among the officers trying him was Captain Pigot’s old friend, Captain Robert Otway, formerly of the Ceres.
The most important of the prosecution witnesses was Pearce’s former superior, Sergeant Plaice, who told the court that ‘I saw him in the gunroom at the time our officer [Lt Mclntosh] was killed.’ He had no great opinion of Pearce: after the mutiny he ‘saw him about the decks frequently and very cheerful—he was a slothful man generally. I had a great deal of trouble with him in the Tartar frigate before.’
‘Did you see him at La Guaira?’ the court asked.
‘Yes,’ said Plaice, ‘he entered into the Spanish service, into the train of artillery: I saw him in their dress…’
Steward Jones noticed him drinking liquor with some other Marines, and added, with truth: ‘He seemed full of spirits and seemed to rejoice at what had happened.’ Pearce was sentenced to death and was hanged in August 31, the last Hermione to be caught in the year 1801.
We left William Bower, the seaman from Chesterfield, serving on board an American ship which called in at Charleston, where Bower—who had changed his name to William Miller—found posters stuck up in the port and notices in the newspapers offering rewards of a thousand dollars for anyone causing the arrest of a mutineer from the Hermione.
The captain of the American ship knew that Bower was a former Hermione—indeed, Bower said later, it was the captain that ‘showed him the paper’. However, the American had no intention of claiming the reward. Bower asked him what he should do—whether to give himself up to the British Consul or not. ‘He said I had better not; that it was so horrid an act none of us would be forgiven,’ and he assured Bower he would say nothing.
The American was as good as his word, and Bower continued to serve in the ship more than two years. Then, in the winter of 1801, she loaded a cargo for the Mediterranean, crossed the Atlantic, and called at Malta. While she was at anchor a lieutenant at the head of a press-gang from HMS Minerva came on board looking for men. Bower was one of those who had no Protection, and a short while afterwards he was being ‘read in’ on board the frigate, safe under his assumed name of William Miller.
So once again Bower was in the Royal Navy and, being a good seaman, he was soon made one of the captain’s bargemen. This subsequently proved unfortunate for him because within a few weeks the Minerva received orders to return to Portsmouth. While she was at anchor there in January, 1802, four and a half years after the mutiny, Bower was kept busy as one of the bargemen, since the captain frequently wanted to go ashore.
The result was described in a letter by Lt William Cathcart, of the Medusa, writing to his father, Lord Cathcart, on January 14, 1802: ‘A seaman belonging to the Minerva’s barge was arrested by one of the King’s Evidence (on shore for the purpose) and proved to be one of the mutineers of the Hermone.’ He went on to describe how one of the group of loyal former Hermiones, who were always at Portsmouth for the purpose, spotted Bower in the street.
The Admiralty’s order for Bower’s trial told Vice-Admiral Sir Andrew Mitchell to assemble a court martial ‘as soon after the arrival of the evidence at Spithead as conveniently may be’. The ‘evidence’ causing the delay was Lt Southcott, now serving in the sloop Renard. A few days before Bower was spotted in Portsmouth, Southcott was at sea in the sloop and facing some very bad weather—a contemporary report dated Plymouth, January 3, spoke of snow and said ‘Came in from Bantry Bay [Ireland] the Renard, of 24 guns, Captain Spicer. She experienced dreadful gales of wind, and shipped several heavy seas’.
The Renard was sent to Portsmouth, where she arrived on January 12. At the trial, held a month later, Lt Southcott gave his usual evidence about the mutiny and said of Bower that ‘at the time he seemed to be rejoiced at what had happened, and was dancing, singing and drinking with the rest.’
Steward Jones told the court that after the mutiny Bower ‘appeared to be more rejoiced than sorry at what had happened.’ Bower had previously been on the sick-list, but after the mutiny appeared to be perfectly fit. Sergeant Plaice corroborated this—‘I did not consider him to be a sick man but one aiding and assisting the navigating the ship. Several who were said to be sick that night, over whom I had a sentry, were active in the mutiny.’ Bower, found guilty of having helped carry the ship to La Guaira and handing her over to the Spanish, was hanged.
Towards the end of March, 1802, after months of negotiation, Britain and France finally signed the Treaty of Amiens which had brought the war—which had started in 1793—to a halt. The realists—surprisingly few in Britain, unfortunately—knew the Treaty would only give each side a breathing space before war inevitably began once again. Both sides had reached a stalemate because although Britain was supreme at sea (thanks to the Battle of Cape St Vincent, followed by Nelson’s victories at the Nile and at Copenhagen), France was supreme on the Continent. Neither side could make a challenge on the other’s battleground—for the time being.
Inevitably the protracted negotiations with Napoleon and the final Treaty had their effect on the fate of some of the Hermiones: we have seen for example that the Minerva had returned to England from the Mediterranean, with the result that William Bower was caught and hanged. Many other ships were also brought home, often to be paid off and laid up. But peace did not mean that the Royal Navy slackened its watch…
With the Bower court martial over, the Renard sailed from Portsmouth on March 7 with Lt Southcott on board, bound for Plymouth, and by chance three days later the 16-gun sloop Bittern arrived at Portsmouth under the command of Captain Edward Kittoe. The Bittern had been in the West Indies for more than three years. One of the seamen serving in the ship was a certain Thomas Williams, who had been on board for more than four years. Captain Kittoe had long since been impressed by Williams’s ability and smartness, with the result that he had been made one of the bargemen. When the Bittern anchored at Portsmouth on the 10th, Williams was naturally one of the men who rowed Captain Kittoe to the shore so that he could report to the port admiral.
Captain Kittoe went on shore several times after that—there were always plenty of appointments, both social and service, to occupy his time; and since Britain was at peace and seamen were plentiful, his bargemen were often allowed to go into the town for short periods while waiting for the Captain to finish his business.
On March 22, while Captain Kittoe was busy on shore and the bargemen were enjoying a brief hour or two in the town, Thomas Williams went for a walk. Portsmouth was its usual bu
stling self: ships’ officers hurried to and fro; on most corners there was at least one comely Poll or Bess with her eye on the sailor who had just been paid off, or who still had a few shillings left in his pocket despite the earlier attentions of her sisters-in-trade.
Williams was just walking through the Point Gates when someone tapped him on the shoulder and spoke to him. The man was John Jones, Captain Pigot’s former steward in the Hermione, and he asked:
‘Isn’t your name David Forester?’
‘No,’ said the Bittern’s bargeman.
‘Yes, but it was in the Hermone!’ declared Jones, and seized him. Four and a half years had passed since Forester had come out of Captain Pigot’s cabin, tapped Jones on the shoulder and said: ‘I have just launched your bloody master overboard’.
The seaman then admitted that he was indeed David Forester, and Jones took him to the main guard house, at the Dockyard, where he was put in irons. A message was sent to the Commander-in-Chief, who ordered Rear-Admiral John Holloway to question the man.
A contemporary description of this interview said that while Forester was in the guard house, ‘Admiral Holloway and several other officers went to interrogate him concerning the mutiny, when he confessed himself to have been the person who killed, and afterwards threw Captain Pigot overboard: it appears that in the scuffle he was wounded in the foot by the Captain, who defended himself with his dirk.
‘Admiral Holloway asked him if he had been easy in his conscience since the transaction. He replied, perfectly so, as he was ordered to do it by the Captain of the Forecastle, and that if he had not done it, he should have been killed himself.
‘On this the Admiral observed, “Suppose I was to order you to kill one of those soldiers, (who were standing near), would you do it?” He said, “Yes, if I thought you would kill me if I did not.”’
Word of Forester’s arrest was at once sent to the Admiralty in London, but since Lt Southcott had recently returned to Plymouth in the Renard, the court martial would have to wait until he could be brought back to Portsmouth. Finally on March 30, while the peace treaty between France and Britain was being ratified by His Majesty and by the First Consul, David Forester faced his trial on board the Gladiator.
There were three witnesses for the prosecution, Lt Southcott, Steward John Jones and James Perrett. The evidence they gave was brief and utterly damning. ‘… Soon after the mutiny commenced I saw him before my cabin door with arms in his hands: he was calling to take the officers out to put them to death,’ said Southcott. ‘He was as active in the mutiny as any in the ship. After that I saw him in the Captain’s cabin… They were boasting of what horrid deeds they had done in murdering the officers, and the prisoner said that he had assisted in murdering Captain Pigot; that he had cut him three or four times, that he had assisted in throwing him out of the stern window; that Captain Pigot spoke to him and said, “Forester, are you against me too?” He said, “Yes, you bugger.” He was also very active in carrying the ship to La Guaira.’
John Jones told the court that, ‘On the night of the mutiny, I was tying the sentinel at the cabin door’s head, which had been cut… David Forester, the prisoner, came out of the cabin with a cutlass or tomahawk in his hand—I cannot be positive which. He tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘I have just launched your bloody master overboard’.
Jones described how Forester said, ‘The bugger—I gave him his death wound, I think, before he went out of the window’. Later he saw Forester, when the Second Lieutenant or the Lieutenant of Marines was being dragged up the ladder, ‘chop at him several times with a cutlass or tomahawk; there were ten or a dozen round him chopping at him, and when the prisoner could not chop at him he stabbed him…’
Forester had little to say in his defence and he was sentenced to death. He was hanged on board the Gladiator on April 1, and a contemporary account said that ‘just before he was launched into eternity, he made the following confession: That he went into the cabin and forced Captain Pigot overboard through the port, while he was alive. He then got on the quarterdeck, and found the First [Third] Lieutenant begging for his life, saying he had a wife and three children totally depending upon him for support: he took hold of him and assisted in heaving him overboard, and declared he did not think the people would have taken his life had he first not took hold of him. A cry was then heard through the ship that Lt Douglas could not be found; he took a lanthorn and candle and went into the gunroom and found the Lieutenant under the Marine Officer’s cabin [sic]; he then called the rest of the people, when they dragged him on deck and threw him overboard. He next caught hold of Mr Smith, Midshipman, a scuffle ensued, and finding him likely to get away, he struck him with his tomahawk and threw him overboard. The general cry next was for putting all the officers to death, that they might not appear as evidence against them; he seized on the Captain’s Clerk [Manning] who was immediately put to death. These, he said, were the whole of his actions during the murdering of the officers. He called God to witness, hoped He would forgive him, and said his mind was easy after making the above confession.’
Occasionally the Royal Navy arrested the wrong man on suspicion that he was a former Hermione. Vice-Admiral Thomas Pasley—the same officer who, as a captain, had taken Vice-Admiral Hugh Pigot and his young son Hugh out to the West Indies in 1782—wrote to the Admiralty from Plymouth in May, 1800, about one of them.
When the frigate Stag stopped the brig Hope and sent a boarding party over to press some seamen, the lieutenant in charge brought back a man who gave his name as Frederick Stirke and who claimed he was born in Ostend. But as he had what appeared to be an Irish accent, the Stage’s commanding officer, Captain Robert Winthrop, was suspicious and questioned him closely.
Captain Winthrop wrote that Stirke, ‘on his first examination, says he was born at Ostend, again says he was born at Oldenburgh, and lastly at Flushing. On being asked how he came to speak English, said he belonged to a merchant ship called the Hermione, was taken by the St Amonisa [sic] and carried into Barbados, where he was imprisoned for nine months.
‘On being asked if it was not the Hermione frigate that he belonged to, he appeared very much confused and said he could not help the misfortune that happened [to] her, then said he was a prisoner at Barbados in the year 1783, went passenger in the Hermione to Plymouth, and there imprisoned’.
Apart from the way he contradicted himself, Stirke was hardly helping his own case by giving such facts: the frigate Hermione, for instance, did not make her first voyage until 1783. However, Admiral Pasley made inquiries among the ships at Plymouth—where he was the Port Admiral—and found that two lieutenants had served in the Hermione until September 1796. They were ordered to see if they recognized Stirke, and they reported that at the time they were in the Hermione ‘no such man was on board’. Stirke appears to have been a man who was mentally unbalanced.
Later in the same year in the Mediterranean there was another and more curious case. In Naples on October 2, two men—Cornelius Corton (or Coston), the cook on board the American ship Hero, and Edward Greenfield, a seaman from the British merchantman Princess Mary—called on the British Consul-General, Mr Charles Locke, with stories which they later repeated in depositions.
Corton told Mr Locke that while he was serving on board the American schooner Max Meon in Cuban waters, he saw the Hermione brought into a Cuban port by the mutineers ‘who, after disposing of her to the Spaniards, then came on shore’. That much was a lie, but the rest of the story had a percentage of truth in it.
Among the men, said Corton, he saw a certain Benjamin Brewster, who later left Cuba for Philadelphia. More than two years later, he continued, he met Brewster again when, joining the Hero as cook, he found that Brewster was the second mate, and had changed his first name from Benjamin to William, Corton said he never gave the slightest hint to Brewster that he recognized him ‘Because he was afraid of being ill-used, [Brewster] being a very violent man’.
He noticed that the
second mate had two ‘B’s’ tattooed on his arm, and that when he remarked that they were not Brewster’s initials, the man ‘smiled and answered that although his real name was Benjamin, yet he chose go to by the name of William’.
Corton declared that Brewster ‘has on more than one occasion confessed and bragged that he had been one of the mutineers on board His said Majesty’s Ship Hermione when she was taken by the rebellious crew, and that he had with another man knocked down the Boatswain… and thrown him overboard; that while he was swimming upon the waves they called upon him to whistle and ride and be damned.’
The other seaman, Greenfield, said in his deposition that he had been on board the Hero one day and was ‘in discourse with one Isaac Vanblarigan who, at that very time, was disputing with the mate of the ship, Mr Benjamin Brewster, when several words passed between them’. Vanblarigan turned to Greenfield and, touching him on the shoulder, said ‘Don’t mind what that damned rascal says… for he is one of the Bloody Hermiones’.
These two depositions were quite enough for the Consul-General who had Brewster seized and for good measure his main accuser, Corton, as well and sent them both on board a British warship in the Bay with a note to the captain asking him to take them in custody.
Benjamin Brewster had in his possession the Protection mentioned earlier, claiming that he was an American citizen, and which had been issued on February 15, 1800. Of course, Brewster was never brought to trial. He may well have boasted that he had been a mutineer, without realizing the danger in which he placed himself, because he had once served in the Hermione.
By October, 1806 the Hermione mutiny had been long forgotten by the British public: it had taken place nine years earlier, and since then Britain had faced many perils, lost many battles, and won many victories. Lord Nelson had been dead more than a year and his third and last great victory at Trafalgar had finally given Britain a mastery at sea which was to last more than a hundred years.
