The Black Ship

by Dudley Pope

  In the nine years since the mutiny, thirty-two of the Hermione’s crew—excluding those who gave themselves up at La Guaira as prisoners of war—had been brought to trial, but several ringleaders were still free—Thomas Jay, Lawrence Cronin, William Turner, Robert McReady, John Smith and James Bell among them. Some had undoubtedly gone to America and settled down in a new life on shore. Others including Cronin, had stayed in Caracas and, in all probability, married Spanish girls.

  Yet despite the passage of time, the Royal Navy had not forgotten them, although several had felt themselves safe—David Forester, it will be remembered, had strode through the Point Gates at Portsmouth five years after the mutiny little thinking he would ever meet the much-despised Steward Jones. Another man who probably thought himself safe after nearly ten years was James Hayes, who had been the doctor’s servant in the Hermione, and, angry at having been caught stealing from him, had helped murder his master.

  At the time Hayes had been fourteen years old; but in October 1806, at the age of twenty-three, and still using his alias, Thomas Wood, he found himself a prisoner and about to be court-martialled on board the Salvador del Mundo at Plymouth. It has been impossible, at this stage, to discover how Hayes was caught; but the minutes of the trial show that among the captains forming the court were Pigot’s friend, Robert Otway and two others who had served with Pigot and later helped to try several other mutineers, Ross Donelly and John Loring.

  By this time all the men who had been kept at Portsmouth, always watching in case they saw a mutineer in the street, and always available as witnesses, had been dispersed; but it was easy to trace Lt Southcott who was, in this case, the person in the best position to give evidence about Hayes, since the youth’s activities had taken place outside Southcott’s cabin door. His testimony was damning. Hayes ‘appeared very active and boasted of having been the occasion of putting his master to death. And the rest of the mutineers said that the prisoner was the great cause of the Surgeon being put to death… Previous to the mutiny he had broke [sic] open a trunk or some article of his master’s property and had taken something from his master, and was punished for it. That was the occasion of his persuading the people to put his master to death—to be revenged, as he called it.’

  When Hayes was called on for his defence, he handed the Judge-Advocate a written statement and asked him to read it.

  ‘Mr President and gentleman of the honourable court,’ the statement began. ‘At the time when this detestable and horrid mutiny took place… I was a boy in my fourteenth year, with all the disadvantages of education and moral example. Necessity drove me to sea in my ninth year. Drove by the torrent of mutiny I took the oath administered to me on the occasion. The examples of death which were before my eyes drove me for shelter amongst the mutineers, dreading a similar fate with those who fell, if I sided with, [sic] or showed the smallest inclination to mercy.

  ‘If any amongst the many who have been tried for the same offence have not had mercy, tho’ guided by experience and having arrived at the age of maturity, who were abettors or actors at that dreadful time, most humbly and contritely let me solicit your humanity on a youth in his fourteenth year at the time, who has not enjoyed one hour’s repose of mind from jeopardy and compunction, which has led to the present trial.’

  The court—which included Captain Richard King who, commanding the Achille at Trafalgar, had seen fifty-nine of his men wounded and thirteen more killed in the battle—decided Hayes deserved no mercy, and he was sentenced to death. We can close the story of the trials—for Hayes was the last of the Hermiones ever to be brought to trial—with an extract from a contemporary description of his execution:

  ‘On Friday, October 17, a signal was fired on board the Salvador del Mundoy flagship in the Hamoaze, and the yellow flag hoisted as a signal for an execution. Woods [i.e. Hayes], the Hermione’s mutineer, after praying some time in his berth with the chaplain of the ship, at eleven o’clock was led forth for execution along the gangway, to a platform erected on the fo’c’sle. He persisted in his innocence of the crime for which he was going to suffer, but said he deserved death for his other crimes, which were numerous. He appeared very penitent, and declared he died in peace with all mankind.’

  Hayes’s execution meant that thirty-three Hermiones had been brought to trial, and he was the twenty-fourth to be executed. The way the men had been caught has made a series of strange and dramatic episodes; yet the most dramatic part of the Hermione’s story provides the final chapters of this narrative.

  27

  THE SURPRISE

  * * *

  THE MASS of documents and the evidence of the eyewitnesses, whether given for the prosecution or the defence, can leave little doubt at this stage that the main reason for the mutiny in the Hermione was the unrestrained and cruel behaviour of her captain. Any attempt to blame Irish revolutionaries or English malcontents can only be made by apologists who are unable to accept that cruel officers existed and fail to realize that we are dealing with the worst mutiny in a ship of the Royal Navy.

  There is one qualification: it was unfortunate for Pigot that among the Hermione’s crew there were men—like Nash, Elliott and Farrel—who had served for years without giving the slightest trouble but who were sufficiently spirited and ruthless when driven too far to plan a mutiny, and others—like Montell, Forester and Redman—who were good seamen but when subjected to the laws of the jungle became cold-blooded killers. Had there not been this element in the crew, and had the officers been more alert in the preceding days and made of sterner stuff, then the actual mutiny might have been avoided. There is no doubt the officers with the possible exception of Southcott, Casey and Foreshaw, do not emerge with much credit, although Pigot’s courage was never in question.

  However, the shameful part of the Hermione’s story has now been told: the extraordinary and stirring finale will show that other young frigate captains had the daring of a Nelson or a Peltew; that while some seamen were prepared to murder their officers in an orgy of senseless slaughter, others cheerfully followed their captain to fight against odds of more than seven to one—and win.

  The episode about to be described is little known, yet it is among the bravest, best-planned and most successful operations in British naval history. There were plenty of actions of a similar nature during the war against Revolutionary France. Most were gallant; few were so completely successful; none provided such vindication for the Royal Navy and its officers and men.

  By an unfortunate coincidence the third young frigate captain to play an important role in the brief history of the Hermione was a harsh man, but one can forgive him much for his bravery and leadership.

  In the autumn of 1799—at the time that Thomas Nash was being tried at Port Royal after being extradited from the United States—Edward Hamilton was twenty-seven years old. He was three years and 152 places lower on the post list than Wilkinson, and commanding the 28-gun Surprise. He came from a naval family—his father had been a captain in the Navy, receiving a baronetcy for his services, and the title had since passed to Edward’s elder brother, who was commanding the Melpomene.

  There is a frank description of Hamilton by Admiral George Vernon Jackson who, recording in the calm of his eighties the period when he served as a young midshipman in the Trent under Hamilton, wrote of the ship that ‘as regards discipline and the general efficiency of her company, she was equal, if not superior, to any other frigate afloat; but these qualities had all been promoted at no small sacrifice of humanity.

  ‘No sailor was allowed to walk from one place to another on deck, and woe betide the unfortunate fellow who halted in his run aloft, unless expressly bidden to do so… ‘The “cat” was incessantly at work,’ continued Admiral Jackson. ‘The man who approached at walk when called by a midshipman, instead of running for his life, the penalty he paid for this offence was a “starting” at the hands of the boatswain’s mate.’

  The Admiral added, ‘I should be loath to say what
my opinion of Sir Edward Hamilton might have become had I stopped much longer in the Trent. As each day passed, so did I conceive new terrors of this man. A more uncompromising disciplinarian did not exist, or one less scrupulous in exacting the due fulfilment of his orders, whatever they were’. Hamilton was ‘one of those men who allow nothing to escape them. He could see through a plank a little farther than most of his fellow-creatures, and seeing, would follow up his observations with a pertinacity that defied interruption’.

  Captain Hamilton had arrived in the West Indies in October 1798, thirteen months after the Hermione mutiny, in command of the Surprise. The next thirteen months provided him with a considerable amount of prize money and established him as one of Sir Hyde Parker’s favourite young captains, because in that period he captured, sank or burned more than eighty enemy ships.

  At Port Royal, Jamaica on Thursday, September 17, 1799, a few days short of two years after the mutiny, Sir Hyde Parker wrote a significant entry in his journal:

  ‘Strong breezes and squally. Ordered Captn Hamilton to proceed with the Surprise and cruise between the Aruba [sic] and Cape St Roman (taking care to prevent his station being known at Curaçao) and use his utmost endeavours to capture the Hermione frigate loading at Porto Cavallo [Puerto Cabello] and intended to sail early in October for the Havana’.

  When Hamilton received these orders he went to Sir Hyde, according to one usually reliable source (although there is no other supporting documentary evidence) and proposed that he should send in boarding parties to cut out the Hermione, instead of capturing her on the high seas. For this purpose he requested an extra twenty seamen and another launch to carry them, but Sir Hyde ‘thought the service too desperate and refused the request’.

  During the previous few days the Surprise had been taking on stores in preparation for what would probably be a long cruise, and on September 18, just before the flagship hoisted the Surprise’s number and the signal for a lieutenant, another 485 pounds of fresh beef was brought on board. More casks of water were ferried out in the launch as the lieutenant collected Captain Hamilton’s written orders from Sir Hyde.

  Next morning the frigate sailed and as the pilot took her from the fairway out through the reefs scattered across the entrance to the harbour, the crew could see Gallows Point, where from the gibbets six skeletons hung in chains, the mortal remains of John Coe, Adam Lynham, Charlton, Croaker, Ladson and, put up only a month earlier, Thomas Nash. By 7 a.m. the pilot had left and the frigate steered south-eastwards, leaving the Blue Mountains on her port quarter: she would be more than fifty miles out to sea before she put the great range below the horizon. On board there was the usual day-to-day routine: a seaman, John Mitchell, was given a dozen lashes for being dirty; Mr Thomas Made, the acting Master, noted in his log at noon the ship’s course, her latitude, and the fact that they had 51⅔ tons of water left.

  Captain Hamilton planned to make a landfall on the Spanish Main at the Bay of Honda, 300 miles west of his patrol area. He would then follow the coast as it trended north-eastwards, thus putting himself in a good position to capture any Spanish merchantmen trading between local ports, and also to intercept the Hermione if she had already sailed from Puerto Cabello on her long voyage to Cuba.

  The Surprise arrived off the Spanish Main a few miles west of the Bay of Honda on October 1, eleven days out from Port Royal and, shortly after she had turned north-eastwards to follow the coast, her lookouts spotted a schooner at anchor in a large, shallow and almost land-locked lagoon called El Portete. The water was not deep enough for the frigate so Hamilton sent in his two cutters and the gig to cut her out.

  Within the hour they were back and by mid-afternoon the frigate was hoisting in the three boats again while the schooner (the Nancy of twenty-five tons, French and loaded with a cargo of coffee) was hove-to nearby, being inspected by the frigate’s Carpenter to see if she had been damaged in running aground. He reported she was quite seaworthy, and within the hour she was heading for Port Royal with a prize crew of a midshipman and a few seamen on board.

  The Surprise spent the next few days making her way along the coast under easy sail. On Sunday, October 13, the crew were mustered; finally on Monday at noon the frigate arrived at the western end of the fifteen-mile-wide channel she had been ordered to patrol. On the larboard bow the south-western tip of the island of Aruba was in sight, looking like a series of low hummocks, while to starboard the jagged ridge of hills forming the mainland came to an abrupt stop at Cape San Roman. Here, if Sir Hyde’s intelligence report had been correct, they would intercept the Hermione. They could afford to wait, for the Surprise still had thirty-six tons of water remaining in her casks: she had used sixteen tons in twenty days, so there was enough on board to last for at least another forty days, while watering from the shore, as demonstrated earlier by the Hermione and Diligence, presented no difficulties.

  The island of Aruba belonged to the Dutch: it is small and lies more than forty miles to the westward of the larger island of Curaçao, also Dutch owned and where (for this was before Governor Lausser had handed it over to the British frigate Néréide) the young Hermione William Johnson was working as a clerk to the American consul.

  Captain Hamilton, paying scant attention to Sir Hyde’s instructions that he was to take care ‘to prevent his station being known at Curaçao’, steered for Aruba, and on Monday, October 14, his lookouts reported that a sizeable schooner was at anchor in the Roads of Port Caballos, the main village on the island, Hamilton decided she would make a good prize and gave orders that as soon as darkness fell the Surprise would tack close in to the Roads and then send in the boats to cut her out.

  By 11.30 p.m. they were back alongside and the schooner was hove-to nearby with a prize-crew on board. She was an 80-ton Dutch vessel, the Lame Duck, armed with ten guns and loaded with a cargo of what Captain Hamilton listed as ‘sundries’. Her capture had not, however, been a bloodless victory—Lieutenant John Busey, the frigate’s acting First Lieutenant, who had led the expedition, had been very badly wounded. He was carried below for the Surgeon, Mr John M’Mullen, to tend him; but at midnight, despite all that M’Mullen could do, he died.

  Next day, Tuesday, October 15, the Surprise began the important part of her task of patrolling the wide channel, It was more difficult than it seemed, because Hamilton had a strong west-going current to contend with. The Hermione on leaving Puerto Cabello, which was to the eastwards, could make a very fast passage through the channel with a fair wind and the current under her, and she would be hard to spot at night. And since he had cut out the schooner, if he was to carry out the second part of his orders—not to allow the Dutch at Curaçao to know his station—Hamilton now had to ensure that no craft knowing the Surprise’s position left Aruba bound for Curaçao, which was forty-three miles to the eastwards. If the Spanish received the slightest hint that there was a British warship in the channel, there was nothing to stop the Hermione avoiding it by passing north of Aruba—the extra distance involved going north of the island made no difference since it was more than two thousand miles from Puerto Cabello to Havana in Cuba.

  The rest of the week passed without incident: the Surprise tacked back and forth across the channel. On Sunday she captured a io-ton Spanish schooner, La Manuela, which had a crew of six men and a cargo of plantains. Neither cargo nor craft had any value, so the men were taken off and La Manuela was sunk.

  Early on Monday, when the Surprise had been in the area a week, Hamilton was either becoming impatient or afraid the Hermione had passed north of Aruba. He therefore decided to make for Puerto Cabello to find out if she was still there. In the back of his mind, no doubt, was another plan for capturing her. The Surprise had been at sea for twenty-seven days. It has been suggested that she was getting short of water and supplies, and this was the reason for Hamilton steering for Puerto Cabello. However, her log shows that on Monday she had more than thirty tons remaining of the fifty-two tons she had taken on board at Port Royal. She
could stay at sea without watering for at least another month.

  By sunset Puerto Cabello was twelve to fifteen miles away to the south-east, and Hamilton tacked ship. For the moment he did not want to approach any closer: from his present position he could catch any vessel leaving the port, unless she was lucky enough to find a very favourable slant of wind. This became even more important next day when Mr Made, the Master, noted in his log that at noon there were ‘light airs inclinable to calm’. By midnight—and for the next seven hours—he was reporting ‘Calm, [ship’s] head all round the compass.’

  Daylight on Wednesday, October 23, soon brought hails from the lookouts: there was a sail to the south-west, heading for Puerto Cabello, and apparently she had her own private slant of wind. This was the one thing that Hamilton had feared—she was bound to spot the Surprise and warn the Spanish.

  With the Surprise wallowing in a slight swell, her sails hanging limp, there was only one way of intercepting the other vessel: ‘At 6 sent the boats manned and armed after her,’ said the log. It would be a long row, but there was no heat in the sun yet, and apart from the swell waves, which were long and low, the sea was calm.

  An hour later, when the boats were still just in sight, like tiny beetles in the distance, the Surprise’s lookouts spotted wind shadows on the water, coming from the south-west. The frigate’s yards were hurriedly trimmed round to catch the first puffs and soon the sails gave a half-hearted shake, then another, and quickly the ship had way on—just enough to leave behind any rubbish thrown over the side by the cook’s mate. The chase was now dead to windward and it took the frigate five hours of patient tacking to catch up with her boats, which were then called alongside and hoisted inboard. By that time, however, the wind had turned into a fresh breeze and the Surprise was soon up with the chase, from which a boarding party returned to report that she was a Danish schooner bound, as Wilkinson had suspected, to Puerto Cabello from Curaçao. Having given that much information, and being almost within sight of his destination, the Danish skipper was disinclined to obey Captain Hamilton’s request for him to steer away from Puerto Cabello for the time being, and he only obliged after, as Mr Made noted in the log, the Surprise ‘fired a shot to make her tack from the land’.