The War for All the Oceans

by Roy Adkins

  The fact that the crew of a small British ship, outnumbered by over three to one, had captured a more heavily armed privateer, was remarkable enough, but the Windsor Castle was a Falmouth packet - a civilian ship, not a warship. These packet ships were only lightly armed, for self-defence, usually relying on speed to outrun any attackers, so the capture of a more powerful privateer was a significant achievement. Packet ships were run by the Post Office to carry mail, freight and passengers overseas, and although not part of the Royal Navy until 1823, the Packet Service had close connections with it. Much of the ordinary mail and less urgent dispatches were carried to and from naval vessels by packet ships, which were sometimes given a navy escort in particularly hostile waters, and they regularly operated over vast distances. Their main base was at Falmouth in Cornwall, from where they sailed to many transatlantic destinations as far off as Halifax in Canada and Buenos Aires in South America, as well as the important Mediterranean route to Corfu via Gibraltar and Malta. Other packet ships were stationed at Harwich and Dover for Continental destinations, Weymouth for the Channel Islands and Holyhead and Milford for Ireland. Falmouth was chosen as the main base because it was a good, sheltered anchorage giving easy access to the transatlantic routes, and was far enough west to be out of the way of most privateers from the Continent. The disadvantage of Falmouth was its distance from London, over 270 miles, but this was regularly covered by mail coaches in three to four days.

  In their role as transport for passengers, packet ships were the forerunners of the great ocean liners that were such a popular method of travel at the end of the nineteenth century. Soon after the Napoleonic Wars were over, several companies established rival packet services using steamships, and in 1839 the partnership of Samuel Cunard, George Burns and Davis MacIver established the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, which soon became widely known as the Cunard Line.

  In the weeks following the news of the capture of the Génie, a crisis emerged in Europe resulting from the Treaty of Tilsit, which had been signed between France and Russia in July. Admiral Seniavin’s Russian fleet, so recently successful against the Turks in the Dardanelles, now found itself virtually an enemy of the British and without a Mediterranean base. Unable to reach the Black Sea, it was attempting to reach the far-off, friendly waters of the Baltic when bad weather in mid-November forced it to take shelter in the mouth of the River Tagus at Lisbon. The timing was unfortunate as Napoleon was planning to invade Portugal, and Lisbon was soon to become the next brief focus of the struggle between the British and the French.

  Aware of the shadow of Napoleon looming over his country, the Prince Regent of Portugal had already expelled the British business community and later detained those British subjects still in the country, confiscating all remaining British property. This was not enough to appease his French ally, and while the Russians were sailing into the Tagus, General Jean

  Map of Lisbon and the mouth of the River Tagus

  Junot was marching through Spain at the head of a French army to capture Lisbon, marking the start of the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal. Rear-Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, meanwhile, had been dispatched from England with orders to ensure that the Portuguese fleet and Portuguese government should not fall into the hands of the French. Smith also had orders to prevent the Russian fleet from sailing into an enemy port, but he was too late to stop them slipping into the Tagus on 16 November, just as his own ships were approaching. Smith had a powerful fleet of eight battleships and two frigates, and he immediately set up a blockade of the Tagus where the bulk of the Portuguese fleet, and now a Russian fleet of nine battleships and a frigate, lay at anchor.

  The Prince Regent was reluctant to leave, despite intense diplomatic pressure from the British, but at a Council of State on 24 November the decision to flee to Brazil was taken - the deciding factor seems to have been news that the French had crossed the border into Portugal and were less than 75 miles from Lisbon. It was now a race to prepare the ships for the long voyage to South America and move out of the anchorage before General Junot and his army arrived. Five days later the Portuguese fleet set sail, but they were forced to leave behind four battleships and several smaller warships, most in poor condition. As the Portuguese ships crossed the bar of the Tagus into the open sea, the French took control of Lisbon.

  Smith had been working closely with Viscount Strangford, the British Ambassador, and in persuading the royal family of Portugal to leave for Brazil and remove the Portuguese fleet from the grasp of Napoleon, they had achieved a strategic blow against the French at least equal to Nelson’s rescue of the Neapolitan royal family in 1798. The Admiralty’s appreciation was shown in a letter to Smith dated 28 December, signed by the Admiralty Secretary, William Wellesley Pole: ‘I am commanded by their lordships to express their high approbation of your judicious and able conduct in the management of the service entrusted to your charge . . . [and] the respectful attention which you appear to have shown to the illustrious house of Braganza . . . their lordships are satisfied of the necessity of your resuming, in person, the strict blockade of the Tagus, and they approve of your having detached from your squadron four sail of the line, under the command of Captain Moore, to escort the royal family of Portugal to Rio [de] Janeiro.’4

  Once clear of the coast, Smith ordered Captain Graham Moore, whose interception of Spanish treasure ships in October 1804 had led Spain to declare war on Britain, to escort the Portuguese to Brazil, while Smith himself returned to command the continuing blockade of Lisbon and the Portuguese coast. A few weeks later, in February 1808, Smith was relieved by Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Cotton and sailed to take up command of the squadron in Brazilian waters. The Russians had made no move to stop the Portuguese leaving, and continued to favour the British rather than the French, hoping that national alliances would soon shift back again. During the following months, while trapped in the Tagus, they maintained a discreet and friendly contact with the British ships on blockade duty, while at the same time resisting pressure from Junot for closer co-operation with the French.

  Blockade remained the most effective naval strategy against Napoleon and his allies, confining their warships to port and severely restricting their trade, and just as battles and other engagements took their toll in ships and men, blockade duty also continued to be hazardous. Often ships had to be at sea in the worst of the weather to maintain a blockade, and inevitably some were lost. On Christmas Eve 1807, the frigate Anson sailed from Falmouth to rejoin the blockade of Brest, but after being hit by a severe storm, generally described at the time as a hurricane, Captain Charles Lydiard decided to return to port. For several days the frigate fought against the weather, but visibility became so bad that they were uncertain of their exact position along the Cornish coast. When they found out, on the morning of 29 December, it was too late as the Anson was already trapped in Mount’s Bay, near Penzance. The wind was blowing the ship relentlessly towards the shore, and there was not enough room to sail out to open sea without striking the headlands at either end of the bay. One survivor described how the anchors failed:Captain Lydiard’s mind [was] made up to come to an anchor; for had we kept under weigh, the ship must have struck upon the rocks in a few hours. The top-gallant-masts were got upon deck, and she rode very well until four o’clock on Tuesday morning, when the cable parted. The other anchor immediately let go, and the lower yards and topmasts [were] struck. At daylight the other cable parted, and we were then so close to the land, that we had no alternative but to go on shore, when Captain L. desired the master to run the ship into the best situation for saving the lives of the people, and fortunately a fine beach presented, upon which the ship was run.5

  The ‘beach’ was actually a sand bar that divides Loe Pool from the open sea. Although deceptively soft and sandy in appearance, it is actually hard and stony, with a shelf just offshore where the depth drops abruptly by some 15 feet. On impact the wind and waves rolled the ship over towards the shore and the mainm
ast snapped. What happened next was reported in The Times several days later: ‘The sheet anchor was then let go, which also brought up the ship; but after riding end-on for a short time, this cable parted from the same cause, about eight in the morning, and the ship went plump on shore, upon the ridge of sand which separates the Loe-pool from the bay. Never did the sea run more tremendously high. It broke over the ships masts, which soon went by the board; the main-mast forming a floating raft from the ship to the shore, and the greater part of those who escaped, passed by this medium.’6

  With the ship starting to break up and huge waves washing over the hull, many tried scrambling to shore by means of the mainmast, but most were washed off and drowned. Ironically, many more of those who waited several hours, when the weather improved slightly, were saved. It was a gamble of life or death: stay on a ship that might break up at any moment, or risk being swept away and drowned while trying to cover the 60 yards that separated the ship from the shore. By the time the Anson ran aground, people had begun to gather along the shore from neighbouring settlements, but they were largely powerless to help. An account of the rescue attempts, by an anonymous eyewitness, was published in the Naval Chronicle:Now commenced a most heart-rending scene to some hundreds of spectators, who had been in anxious suspense, and who exerted themselves to the utmost, at the imminent risk of their lives, to save those of their drowning fellow men; many of those who were most forward in quitting the ship lost their lives, being swept away by the tremendous sea, which entirely went over the wreck . . .. One of the men [who was] saved reports that Capt. Lydiard was near him on the main mast; but he seemed to have lost the use of his faculties with the horror of the scene, and soon disappeared. At a time when no one appeared on the ship’s side, and it was supposed the work of death had ceased, a methodist preacher, venturing his life through the surf, got on board the wreck of the main mast, to see if any more remained; some honest hearts followed him. They found several persons still below, who could not get up; amongst whom were two women and two children. The worthy preacher and his party saved the two women, and some of the men, but the children were lost. About two P.M. the ship went to pieces; when a few more men emerged from the wreck. One of these was saved. By three o’clock no appearance of the vessel remained. The men who survived were conveyed to Helston, about two miles distant, where they were taken care of by the magistrates, and afterwards sent to Falmouth, in charge of the regulating captain at that port. Of the missing, we understand many are deserters, who scampered off as soon as they reached the shore.7

  It is not surprising that many of the surviving crew, presumably pressed men, took the opportunity to regain their freedom, but it made it impossible to calculate casualty figures with any accuracy. Over three hundred people had been on board. They came from all across the United Kingdom, including Tavistock, Weymouth, Portsmouth, Bristol, Dublin, Tipperary, Belfast, Cork, Liverpool, Manchester, Lancaster, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Norwich, Colchester and many from London. Quite a few were from much further afield such as Holland, Sweden, France and America. Estimates of those killed and missing varied from fifty to well over one hundred, with one witness claiming to have seen at least seventy bodies on shore, but later reports indicated that fewer than fifty people lost their lives. The fact that anyone was saved was due largely to Captain Lydiard’s decision to deliberately beach the ship.

  Accounts appeared in the press, very similar to that in the Naval Chronicle, implying that Lydiard had become unhinged and relinquished command, which provoked a furious reaction from Thomas Gill, a lieutenant on board the Anson who survived the wreck. In a letter to the Sun newspaper, Gill was at pains to clear the name of Captain Lydiard, who, he said, ‘never lost his faculties to the last, but was heard singing out, “don’t be in a hurry, my lads, watch a favourable opportunity, and get a rope to the shore.” Weakened (by want of rest, and the dreadful sea that was pouring over him) he certainly was - the Methodist Preacher who kindly lent him assistance was a Mr. Roberts, of Helston, a worthy industrious tradesman, but certainly no Methodist Preacher . . . a Seaman of the name of Robert Henly, who went on board, after he had saved himself . . . was the means of preserving a Midshipman, two women, and a young child.’8 Gill’s letter, reprinted in various newspapers, sparked a controversy over the disputed bravery of the captain that obscured the facts even more, but this was soon overtaken by another controversy - the burial of the dead - with far-reaching consequences.

  Only a few weeks earlier, on 6 November, the transport ship James and Rebecca, which was returning with troops from Buenos Aires, had also been wrecked in Mount’s Bay, less than 2 miles from where the Anson was beached. Many troops on board had their wives and children with them, and those sailors, soldiers, women and children who lost their lives were buried in a mass grave in unconsecrated ground, with little in the way of a burial service. The dead from the Anson were similarly buried in anonymous makeshift graves overlooking the bay, and yet great efforts were made to salvage as much as possible of the ship and its cargo. In law bodies cast ashore from wrecks were not required to be given a proper funeral or to be properly buried. No one was officially responsible for such bodies, and it was not uncommon for them to be moved from one part of the coast to another, so that they became someone else’s responsibility, but not before being stripped of clothing and possessions. This tradition of casual salvage and robbing of the dead was carried on all round the coast of Britain, giving rise to legends of gangs of wreckers deliberately luring ships on to rocks in order to plunder them. In fact, virtually no hard evidence exists that deliberate wrecking ever took place, and shipwrecks were so frequent that there would have been little incentive to risk the harsh retribution of English law to add to their numbers.

  In response to what was seen as the inhumane treatment of the bodies of the dead from these shipwrecks, efforts were made to try to change the situation, and the local Member of Parliament took up the cause as his maiden speech on 27 April 1808. The Naval Chronicle reported:Mr. Tremaine obtained leave to bring in a bill to enforce the burial of dead bodies cast ashore from wrecks, &c. He had been induced to make this motion by strong representations from the county for which he was member (Cornwall), of the nuisance occasioned by a neglect on this head upon its coast. It often happened that bodies were cast ashore among poor people, who were prevented by the expence from burying them. He mentioned two cases in which this had happened; one on the loss of the Anson frigate, the other on the loss of a transport with troops from Buenos Ayres. The bodies were either left unburied, or buried in heaps. The provisions of the bill would be to encourage the giving notice of such cases to the nearest parish officers to bury the bodies in the parish church-yards, and to reimburse them, in certain instances, from the treasurer of the county.9

  John Hearle Tremayne’s Dead Bodies Interment Bill became ‘The Burial of Drowned Persons Act, 1808’, and proved a turning point in the way that bodies washed up by the sea were treated. Once the law stipulated proper burial, much greater efforts were made to identify bodies, and accurate records began to be compiled. For the first time it became clear just how many people lost their lives each year in the numerous shipwrecks around the coasts of Britain. From 1902, much of the remains of the Anson itself was salvaged, and one of the cannons from the ship, restored and mounted on a new gun carriage, stands outside the museum at Helston in Cornwall.

  In the spring of 1808, while Parliament debated how to deal with dead bodies from shipwrecks on the coast of Britain, Captain Thomas Cochrane was harassing the French and Spanish along the Mediterranean coast of Spain. Despite the disastrous attack on the Maltese privateer the previous October, Collingwood gave Cochrane the chance to do what he did best - use his own initiative against the enemy. In late February his ship the Imperieuse captured some Spanish gunboats near Cartagena, and learning of a French vessel nearby, Cochrane was determined to capture it. He later recorded the attempt in his autobiography: ‘Having received information from the prisoners t
aken in the gunboats that a large French ship, laden with lead and other munitions of war, was at anchor in the Bay of Almeria, I determined on cutting her out46, and the night being dark, it became necessary to bring to [stop]. At daylight on 21st [February], we found ourselves within a few miles of the town, and having hoisted American [neutral] colours, had the satisfaction to perceive that no alarm was excited on shore.’10

  In an audacious move the Imperieuse sailed down on the prey, and as soon as the ship anchored, the boats were deployed immediately to make the most of the element of surprise, as Cochrane recalled: ‘The boats having been previously got in readiness, were forthwith hoisted out, and the large pinnace, under the command of Lieutenant Caulfield, dashed at the French ship, which, as the pinnace approached, commenced a heavy fire, in the midst of which the ship was gallantly boarded, but with the loss of poor Caulfield, who was shot on entering the vessel. The other pinnace coming up almost at the same moment completed the capture, and the cable being cut, sail was made on the prize.’11 So far the operation had gone relatively smoothly, some smaller vessels had also been captured and all that was needed to seal Cochrane’s success was to sail out of the bay with his prizes before the shore batteries could do serious damage.Then the wind dropped, leaving the Imperieuse at the mercy of the guns on shore.

  Cochrane had the anchors dropped and springs put on them so that he could at least turn the ship in order to bring the guns to bear. Midshipman Marryat, later better known as the novelist Frederick Marryat, witnessed the gunnery duel from the quarterdeck: ‘The Imperieuse returned the fire, warping round and round with her springs, to silence the most galling [fire from the shore]. This continued for nearly an hour, by which time the captured vessels were under all sail, and then the Imperieuse hove up her anchor, and, with the English colours waving at her gaff, and still keeping up an undiminished fire, sailed slowly out the victor.’12 It had been a daring gamble to pluck the French ship out of the bay from under the protection of the shore batteries, and one that only just paid off, as Cochrane acknowledged:It was fortunate for us that a breeze sprang up, for had it continued calm, we could not have brought a vessel out in the face of such batteries, not more than half a mile distant. Neither, perhaps, should we ourselves have so easily escaped, on another account,- for about four o’clock in the afternoon a Spanish ship of the line suddenly appeared in the offing, no doubt with the intention of ascertaining the cause of the firing. We, however, kept close to the wind, and got clear off with the French ship, mounting 10 guns, and two brigs laden with cordage [ropes]. The scene must have been an interesting one to the people of Almeria, great numbers of the inhabitants lining the shore, though at some risk, as from our position many shots from the Imperieuse must have passed over them.13