Britain Against Napoleon

by Roger Knight

  Only in summer was the Gothenburg route anything less than hazardous. The Prince of Wales packet, commanded by Captain Anthony Deane, sailed there first in 1804, and made fifteen such passages in the next three years, ten in summer, when the average time for the voyage was eighteen and a half days. In winter the average time taken was nearly doubled to thirty-two days. The longest round trip, in November and December 1805, took forty days, including nine days in port at Gothenburg delayed by bad weather.* Approaching the Swedish coast in February 1805 the Prince of Wales became trapped in the ice. The ship managed to get into clear water by dropping pigs of iron on to the ice, ‘suspended from ye Bowsprit by Ropes Led through Blocks’. Off Sweden again a month later, Deane had an even worse time of it and tried to reach Marstrand, some way to the north of Gothenburg:

  At 3pm tack’d from a great Quantity of Ice, At 7pm a large ship ran foul of us, in a very thick fog, & stove in our Larboard Bow, broke our best Bower Anchor &&, At Midnight ye Fog clear’d away. At Daylight bore away for Marstrand, could not get in for Ice extending from ye Paternosters to ye Main, proceeded to ye Winga, to try at Chelsea Sound or at Wergo, these were also block’d up, At last came a Pilot who took us into a small harbour Call’d Fueto Sound, & at Noon went on shore with ye Mails, hir’d guides & over ye Rocks and Ice. At 8pm arriv’d & deliver’d ye Mails to ye Agent at Gottenburg.30

  This wearying route, involving an eight-hour trek over the ice by a packet captain with a sack of mail, was the sole means by which the British government in winter could maintain direct contact with its diplomats and allies in the north of Europe, and merchants could conduct business with their Continental agents.†

  These new long routes soon began to cost the packet masters money in broken gear and unbudgeted expenses. In 1804 all twelve of the Harwich masters signed a letter to the postmasters-general at the same time as submitting their accounts, asking for greater remuneration, for they were now sailing far further than they were contracted, as they expressed it: ‘When no other vessels scarcely ever attempt it, our constant exposure at sea and consequent exorbitant Insurance which we are compell’d to pay as well as the demands of seven, eight and sometimes nine pounds each voyage at the Custom House at Husum.’ The postmasters-general secured the Treasury’s permission ‘to distribute One thousand Pounds in equal proportions among the twelve commanders on the Harwich Station’. Four years later the masters again applied for further remuneration; by this time the insurance charges were ‘enormous … six guineas per cent for six months from June to January against Sea Risque and nine guineas per cent for the same period against all risks’: each master had to pay £267.15s. This time the request went straight to William Huskisson, the junior financial secretary of the Treasury, but also the MP for Harwich.* He was assured by the packet captains of ‘our utter Impossibility to carry on the Public Duty unless some arrangement takes place to provide for the great losses we are daily suffering’. The twelve masters received a further payment of £3,000, to be split among them, though their request had to be considered on the basis of submitted detailed accounts and was granted only after some argument.31 The packets derived income from passengers and bullion freight, as well as from providing the mail service.32 It was clear, however, when the accounts were submitted, that they were losing money, and the Post Office’s decision to reimburse their captains demonstrated the importance of sound contractual arrangements. Both government and packet-ship owners were aware of how much each needed the other, and that they both benefited from the arrangement.†

  Though the Harwich packet masters and crew were considered privileged because of their long-held contract with government, in wartime they worked hard in sometimes terrible conditions. Captain Hearne, master of another Prince of Wales packet, took to the bottle in 1805 after long and exemplary service. Earlier in the year he, too, had sailed to Gothenburg and had been able to succeed in delivering the mail only after clambering fifteen miles over the ice. At one point, six masters were on shore, leaving their ships under the command of the mates, their seconds-in-command.33 The Admiralty was well aware of these freezing and tempestuous winter conditions in the Skaggerrak and the Kattegat. When the agent at Gothenburg suggested in December 1810 that a naval sloop should be stationed off the port ‘for the defence of the Packets’ against Danish privateers, his request was refused. Croker annotated the letter: ‘At this season of the year this appears highly dangerous.’34 As soon as possible after the French withdrawal from Hamburg in March 1813, the Post Office there wrote to Freeling asking that the normal route to Cuxhaven be re-established, although the situation became confused when the French counter-attacked in May and reoccupied the city.35 By the spring of 1814 the packets were ordered to try to land mail on the Dutch coast, but the Gothenburg route continued to be used until September that year.36

  Relations between London and the Harwich packets contrasted with the ill-temper of the local packet commanders and crews at Falmouth, soured by attempts by the local Post Office agent to enforce regulations against smuggling. By long custom, every member of the crew of the Falmouth packets could earn money on his own account, returning from Lisbon or the West Indies with silks, wine and tobacco. From Falmouth, local women known as ‘troachers’ would pedal these wares around the countryside.37 Feelings also ran high over naval impressment, for the Falmouth men accused the navy of overruling their traditional press protections. In 1810 mutinous packet crews at Flushing (Cornwall), across the harbour from Falmouth, were dispersed only by the reading of the Riot Act. The Post Office reacted by moving the packet contracts to Plymouth, which brought the dissidents to heel and the service was restored to Falmouth on 15 February 1811.38 Significantly mail to the Mediterranean was disrupted by these difficulties. In October 1810 the first lord of the Admiralty, Charles Philip Yorke, remarked to Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood,then at Port Mahon, that ‘correspondence with the Mediterranean Fleet has been very uncertain & irregular for some months past.’39 The postal service to the south was also interrupted towards the end of the war in April 1815, where George Canning, as the envoy in Lisbon, did not receive any mail from England for six weeks, and had to rely upon the Madrid newspapers quoting letters from Paris.40 Yet, in general, as we have seen, the packet service worked well and its captains and crews kept going in often extremely hazardous circumstances. Without its efficiency, Britain would have found it very difficult to communicate and cooperate with its allies or to have kept trade flowing that was so necessary to the British effort against Napoleon.*

  Defensive security was also vital and systems were improved as both naval and merchant fleets expanded. The first requirement was the identification of British ships at sea by ‘private signal’. This numeral system was comprehensive, and included coastal signal stations, warships, revenue cutters, packet boats and every sort of merchant vessel. Every ship had a number that made early recognition possible from ship to shore and from ship to ship. Regular revisions incorporating the numbers allocated to new ships, and the cancellation of those captured or sunk, had to be distributed. Updating these numbers and private signals was a considerable and continuous administrative task undertaken by Admiralty clerks. On 10 November 1807, for instance, a full distribution of 740 copies of lists of the numbers allotted to additional ships were sent out by the secretary of the Admiralty; some were sent by the mail coach to Admiral Montagu, the port admiral at Portsmouth, who was to report to which ships he had given them; eighty went to Collingwood in the Mediterranean for distribution to the ships under his command.41 A full renewal of private signals was issued on John Barrow’s authority on 2 May 1809, to be distributed over the following six months to every warship worldwide: ‘to commence on the Home Stations, the Baltic, the Coast of Portugal and as far as the Straits of Gibraltar on the 1st of June, within the Mediterranean, on the coast of America, and the West Indies on 1st July, the Cape of Good Hope and South America stations on 1 September and on the East Indies on 1 November next’.42 Private signal
s were also distributed to the East India Company, and the signals for merchant ships clearing port were issued through ‘John Bennet Jnr, Lloyds Coffee House’.43

  Understandably, the Admiralty was concerned about security and it was always urging care on officers. If there was any reason to suspect that private signals had got into the wrong hands, a new signal book, or a part of it, would be issued through the port admirals and the lieutenants of signal stations. Those for ‘H.M. Brigs, Cutters and Luggers employed cruizing on the Coasts of the United Kingdom commanded by Lieutenants’ were renewed for this reason in July 1810.44 Warnings to the Admiralty came from any quarter: as late as the spring of 1812 Freeling of the Post Office passed word back to Croker at the Admiralty that the captain of the Sybille had told one of his packet captains ‘that the French are in possession of our Private Signals as he had a short time before chaced a French Brig of War with the Private Signal flying, which vessel escaped into the night’.45

  Private signals from ships were linked to the coastal signal stations, another system of defensive security, thus allowing them to identify friendly ships. If a ship did not identify herself satisfactorily, the station would send a signal to the senior naval officer at Portsmouth or Plymouth along the south coast, or to Deal or Yarmouth on the east coast. The coastal stations had been dismantled at the peace in 1802 and the pockets of land on which they had stood returned to their owners; when war recommenced at the end of 1803 the land had to be re-leased and the stations hurriedly rebuilt.46 Some clifftop stations were so exposed to the winds that during the months of peace they were ‘very much out of repair’.* They were rapidly re-established and remanned.

  By contrast, the French used the peace to develop their communications network: they introduced a three-armed semaphore, invented by a French artillery officer called Depillion. It was much more visible and capable of sending any message than the British system, which consisted merely of hoists of flags and balls, based on the naval tradition, and used only numbers to represent prearranged set messages. By 1803 the new French stations were installed along the whole of the French Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts and helped the French to evade the worst of the British navy’s close blockade of their ports. To counter this, British naval officers became adept at reading the French signal codes.47 In 1808, for instance, a paper was found on board a French merchant brig by a British sloop off Boulogne with ‘essential information for French vessels navigating without escort along the coast’. The document gave the sign of the semaphores for: ‘The enemy is in sight of the Port and may intercept the French vessels in the course which they are now keeping (÷) [a division sign]. Then set at (•) if safe.’ The Admiralty sent the information to Rear-Admiral D’Auvergne in Jersey, ordering him to make the signals known to the commanders of his ships, ‘with instructions to keep the same as secret as possible’.48 Occasionally, the navy landed on the French coast and destroyed the telegraphs, to gain at least a temporary advantage. In 1808 Captain Lord Cochrane, in his celebrated cruise in the Imperieuse in the Mediterranean under Collingwood, raided and blew up the line of stations along the French coast between Catalonia and Toulon.49

  By 1804 the Admiralty Board was pressing for a line of stations along the coast from Liverpool to Holyhead, and although this was not to happen until after the war for commercial reasons, a useful network of stations was built around Liverpool.50 During the wars, lines of these stations were extended over the coast, in the north-east from Edinburgh to the Tees, in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and along the north Norfolk coast, as well as in Ireland.51 More were constructed around the coast of Essex and the Thames Estuary. By 1814, 138 had been constructed, with a further ten in Ireland. In 1810 the Admiralty set in motion trials of a semaphore system similar to that of the French.52 Visibility was difficult on the flat coast of Essex for those who had to operate the coastal signal stations: it is sometimes impossible there to distinguish where sea and land begin or end, and hazy conditions often predominate in the spring and autumn. To shorten signalling distances, in 1811 a very leaky old ex-Danish gunboat, renamed H.M.S. Warning, was moored off Mersea Island with instructions to repeat signals over the estuaries of the rivers Colne and Blackwater between the Martello Tower at Frinton, East Mersea, and St Peter’s Chapel on the Foulness Marshes to the south. The log of this humble warship demonstrates the difficulties that the signallers faced. Soon after commissioning at Sheerness, the long-suffering captain, Lieutenant Thomas Gill, ‘found the vessel roll exceedingly heavy’: in fresh breezes he had to order his crew to haul down the top mast and signal yard. He received ‘2 glass lanthorns with twenty pounds of candles for the purpose of showing a light to distinguish the Warning during the night’. After an unrewarding year peering into haze, and often being unable to make out signals, Gill sent his topmast and yard ashore, and his crew to East Mersea, ‘as per Admiralty order’, to help construct the new semaphore.53

  Though this signalling experiment was clearly ineffectual, the need still existed to watch for invasion and look out for French privateers. The testimony of Lieutenant James Anthony Gardner illustrates the effort involved in trying to keep these channels of communication open. Gardner ended a modest naval career with eight years at the coastal signal station at Fairlight on the cliffs above Hastings between 1806 and 1814. Under him he had a midshipman, two signalmen and two dragoons who were to communicate with the nearest army commanding officer. He recalled:

  We had the strictest orders to be on the look-out by night and by day, in consequence of the threatened invasion … I have heard many say that a signal station was an easy berth, and only fit for old and worn-out officers. This I flatly deny: and, without fear of contradiction, can safely say that I suffered more from anxiety at this station than ever I did on board of a man of war.54

  The larger and more sophisticated shutter-telegraph stations, with London at the centre of their network, were designed as a speedy means of command and control rather than for defensive security like the coastal stations. But in this too Britain lagged behind France. The French quickly built up a remarkable European-wide semaphore system, through which Napoleon knew what was happening in his vast empire. The 350-mile line between Paris and Brest had been completed in 1798, and by 1800 Lille, Metz and Strasbourg were all also linked with the French capital. At the height of his power in 1807, the French government in Paris was in contact with Brussels, Amsterdam, Mainz, Turin and Venice. Napoleon was, however, unable to maintain such efficient communications with Spain in the Peninsular War, as the stations were vulnerable to attack by Spanish forces and the guerrillas.55

  Given reasonable visibility, the shutter telegraphs worked well. Orders were sent quickly to the naval bases, and the more important intelligence reports came through this means to Whitehall. As we saw in Chapter 5, the lines to Deal and Portsmouth had been built in the previous war and now further lines were constructed: London to Plymouth was ordered in 1805. As operations in the North Sea assumed more importance, this was followed by an order in 1807 for a line to Great Yarmouth. Both lines reached the coast by an inland route in order to avoid coastal fog, and were completed by 1806 and 1808 respectively.56 In Ireland they were more expensive to maintain because of the need to defend them: the Treasury was given an estimate of £40,000 in 1804 for a line from Dublin to Galway for ‘Signal stations with Defensible Guard Houses, Towers, etc.’57 A line was built in Canada from Halifax to Frederickstown, although the plans of the duke of Kent, commander-in-chief of the Maritime Provinces briefly in 1799 and 1800, to achieve direct communication between Halifax and Quebec were over-ambitious and never completed.58

  The effectiveness of visual telegraphs in Britain still remained susceptible to the reduced visibility caused by coastal mist and fog, especially in winter. A surviving telegraph journal for the inland London to Yarmouth line, for the periods December 1814 and January 1814, records that fog prevented transmission of messages for seventeen out of each month of thirty-one days, that is, 50 per cent o
f the time. On one occasion fog on the Plymouth line led to a spectacular misunderstanding. Many years later John Barrow, second secretary to the Admiralty, recalled the incident in 1812, after Wellington’s victory at Salamanca. Sir Robert Calder, commander-in-chief at Plymouth,

  once threw the Cabinet into a state of alarm by a telegraph message … Despatches had been received from Spain, and Calder, anxious to convey the intelligence to town, sent up the following portion of a message; the rest was stopped by a fog: – ‘Wellington defeated’; and thus it remained the whole day, to the dismay of those who knew only thus much of it. The arrival of Lord March (I think it was), in the course of the night, brought the account of a great victory over Marmont. The Admiral’s head, like the weather, was somewhat foggy.* He meant to say ‘The French defeated by Wellington’, but unfortunately began at the wrong end.59