In the Hour of Victory
Page 31
4TH NOVR 1805 WIND SE
Cæsar
Hero
Courageux
Namur
Bellona,
far to
Æolus
Leeward
Santa Margarita
in the SE
Sir
Being off Ferrol working to the Westward with the Wind Westerly, On the Evening of the 2nd we observed a Frigate in the NW making Signals, made all Sail to join her before Night, and followed by the Ships named in the Margin, we came up with her at 11 at night, and at the moment she joined us, we saw six large Ships near us, Captain Baker informed me he had been Chaced by the French Rochfort Squadron then close to Leeward of us, we were delighted.15 I desired him to tell the Captains of the Ships of the Line astern to follow me, as I meant to Engage them directly, and immediately bore away in the Cæsar for the purpose, making all the Signals I could, to indicate our movements to our Ships, the Moon enabled us to see the Enemy bear away in Line abreast closely form’d, but we lost sight of them when it set, and I was obliged to reduce our Sails, the Hero, Courageux and Æolus being the only Ships we could see. We continued steering to the ENE all Night, and in the morning observed the Santa Margarita near us, at 9 we discovered the Enemy of Four Sail of the Line in the NE under all Sail. We had also every thing set and came up with them fast, in the evening we observed three Sail astern, and the Phoenix spoke me at Night. I found that Active Officer Captain Baker had delivered my Orders, and I sent him on to assist the Santa Margarita in leading us up to the Enemy, at Day light we were near them and the Santa Margarita had began in a very Gallant manner to fire upon their Rear, and was soon joined by the Phoenix.
A little before Noon, the French finding an Action unavoidable, began to take in their small Sails and form in a Line of bearing on the Starboard Tack, We did the same, and I communicated my intentions by hailing to the Captains “that I should Attack the Centre and Rear”, and at Noon began the Battle, in a short time the Van Ship of the Enemy tack’d, which almost directly made the Action Close and General, the Namur joined soon after we tacked, which we did, as soon as would get the Ships round, and I directed her by Signal to Engage the Van, at half past 3 the Action ceased, the Enemy having fought to Admiration and did not Surrender ’till their Ships were unmanageable. I have returned thanks to the Captains of the Ships of the Line and the Frigates, and they speak in high terms of approbation of their respective Officers and Ships Companies. – if any thing could add to the good opinion I had already formed of the Officers and Crew of the Cæsar, it is their Gallant Conduct in this Day’s Battle. the Enemy have suffered much, but our Ships not more than is to be expected on these occasions. – You may judge of my Surprize, Sir, when I found the Ships we had taken were not the Rochfort Squadron but from Cadiz.
I have the honor to be
with sincere respect
Your very humble and
Obedient Servant
Rd Strachan
The captured ships, which were taken back to England, had a disproportionate effect on the way that Trafalgar was perceived by the public because so many of Collingwood’s prizes were sunk off the coast of Spain. Indeed, of the Allied ships captured at Trafalgar, only the French Swiftsure and the Spanish Bahama and San Ildefonso made it back to England, and they did so weeks after the battle. The very first physical evidence of the great confrontation that could be viewed and admired by the mob was therefore Strachan’s prizes. Not only did this victory complete Nelson’s dream of annihilation but it also provided the public with the physical proof of the might of British seapower that they craved.
One of Strachan’s prizes, Duguay-Trouin,37 went on to enjoy a particularly distinguished career. She served in the Royal Navy under her new name, Implacable, and became a training ship in her twilight years. Indeed, she lasted so long that she became famous as the second oldest ship in the Royal Navy, after Victory, and as the only surviving French or Spanish ship from Trafalgar. It was a particular shame, therefore, that she was deliberately sunk in 1949 because of excessive maintenance costs in the post-war economic slump, the French also having refused to maintain her as a museum. Parts of her do remain, however, notably the towering stern gallery that confronts visitors as soon as they enter the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, but her absence is a painful cross to bear for the heritage industries of both Britain and France. It is fitting that the motto of the World Ship Trust, an international organisation dedicated to the preservation of historic ships, is ‘Implacable, never again’, though the WST’s goals are constantly challenged by the logistical and political problems which conspire against the survival of such ships.
Captain R. Strachan to his squadron, 6 November 1805
Strachan’s dispatch is disappointingly bland for one who was known by his crew as ‘Mad Dick’ for his ungovernable temper and violent cursing. His men claimed that ‘when he swore he meant no harm, and when he prayed he meant no good’.38 Strachan in turn, and in good humour, knew his crew as ‘damned mutinous rascals’. They were extremely fond of him and he of them. He was always lenient when presiding over courts martial and was always a sought-after commander. This was still a time, remember, when sailors, within reason and given certain restrictions, could choose to follow a commander from ship to ship like a tribe. One contemporary claimed, ‘I do not believe he has his fellow among the Admirals, unless it be Pellew, for ability, and it is not possible to have more zeal and gallantry’.39 Nevertheless, this letter of thanks to his crews offers a glimpse, albeit a brief one, of the warmth that Strachan felt for his men who had fought for him so bravely.
GENERAL MEMD
Having returned thanks to Almighty God for the Victory obtained over the French Squadron, the Senior Captain begs to make his grateful Acknowledgements for the support he has received from the Ships of the Line and the Frigates. – And requests the Captains will do him the honor to accept his thanks, and communicate to their respective Officers and Ships Companies, how much he Admires their Zealous and Gallant Conduct –
Cæsar at Sea
6th Novr 1805
R. S. Strachan
TO
THE RESPECTIVE CAPTAINS
AND COMMANDERS
Although he was happy at sea with his naval family, Strachan’s career fell apart when, in 1809, he was placed in charge of the naval contribution to a vast amphibious operation aimed at the Dutch island of Walcheren. The volatile Strachan soon fell out with the commander of the army, John Pitt, the operation ended in failure and it was Strachan who was hung out to dry. It was a sorry end for a man so well liked and so grateful to those who reciprocated his love and trust.
The impact of Trafalgar on the war is not what one might expect from a battle with such a dominant position in British history. If one adds the ships taken by Strachan to those taken by Collingwood, only five of the original fleet of 33 Allied ships of the line were still in Allied hands and, of those that reached Cadiz, one was laid up as a hulk and the others kept in harbour until they were surrendered to the Spanish in June 1808. The Royal Navy had achieved its dream of destruction. But did the victory stop Napoleon in his tracks as Nelson had believed? Not at all.
The battle did not prevent an invasion of England because Napoleon had already changed his strategy and his GrandeArmée had marched inland. It soon won crushing victories at Ulm, in which the French captured an entire Austrian army under the command of the incompetent General Mack (pp. 170–1), and at Austerlitz, where a Russo-Austrian army, commanded by the Tsar, was routed, effectively ending the Third Coalition. In the immediate aftermath of Trafalgar, therefore, Austria was crushed, the Holy Roman Empire destroyed and Napoleon’s ambition only encouraged. The French dominated central Europe for another decade.
French naval strategy, however, changed significantly. British maritime dominance now made it too risky to launch ambitious trans-oceanic campaigns such as the invasion of Egypt in 1798 or Hispaniola in 1803. The French therefore tu
rned towards smaller raiding squadrons, cunningly located where they could cause the most disruption to British trade. This strategy was partnered by a direct economic assault on Britain via Napoleon’s Continental System, a structured embargo of British trade by a pro-Napoleonic alliance of European powers.
The Spanish navy, already in decline, was dealt a blow at Trafalgar from which it never recovered; between 1798 and 1853 not a single Spanish warship was launched. There was neither money nor political support for a maritime strategy. The unhappy Spanish alliance with Napoleon had been the death of its navy and Russia soon took Spain’s place as Europe’s third largest naval power. The Spanish naval threat had all but disappeared but now the Baltic, once again, became a theatre of naval war.
In the aftermath of Trafalgar the Royal Navy was thus faced with a new Baltic threat, with the continuing challenge of blockading French ports, with countering French raiding squadrons and with launching its own operations in support of the land campaigns against Napoleon. By no means could the Royal Navy stand down after Trafalgar. Her sailors were sent back to fight in the iron chill of the Baltic, the deep blue of the Atlantic, the silvery stillness of the Mediterranean and the turquoise waters of the Caribbean.
San Domingo
Santo Domingo
6 February 1806
‘ … it is impossible for Language to convey an adequate sense of my feelings … ’
Admiral John Duckworth, 7 February 1806
AT A GLANCE
DATE:
6 February 1806
NAVIES INVOLVED:
British and French
COMMANDING OFFICERS:
Vice-Admiral J. Duckworth and Contre-Admiral C. Leissègues
FLEET SIZES:
British, 7 ships of the line; French, 5 ships of the line
TIME OF DAY:
10.00 – 12.00
LOCATION:
Off Santo Domingo. 18°18'N 70°03'W
WEATHER:
Light north north-westerly breezes
RESULT:
3 French ships of the line captured, 2 destroyed
CASUALTIES:
British 338; French 1,510
BRITISH COURT MARTIALS:
None
DISPATCHES CARRIED HOME BY:
Commander Nathaniel Cochrane
The Sextant
Eighteenth-century sextants are not rare but one, in the collections of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, is unique. It is not an elaborate object; there are no engravings of an owner’s initials, dates or images; but it is a working piece, made of polished brass, with a plain, wooden handle. It has obviously seen some use. Its tangent screw, a critical piece of its mechanism, is bent. It has no accompanying box. Its three sunshades, two red and one green, are slightly marked. It used to belong to Vice-Admiral John Duckworth.
A sextant measures the angle between two objects, usually between the midday sun and the horizon to establish one’s latitude but, if near land, it can also be used horizontally to measure the angle between two landmarks. The sextant therefore partially answers one of the two principal questions that mariners are repeatedly posed: ‘Where am I?’ and ‘In which direction do I need to go?’
For a naval officer in 1806 the first problem was much simpler than the second. After the invention in the 1760s of the marine chronometer, which was used to help plot one’s longitude, an experienced navigator could discover his location with impressive precision given accurate instruments and helpful atmospheric conditions. The answer to the second question, however, was not necessarily so easy to discover.
Captains and admirals were issued with orders, but those orders all allowed for a certain degree of initiative, simply because they had to. Communication was excruciatingly slow, to the point that the verb ‘to communicate’, with its implication of a two-way exchange, is rather unhelpful. On some stations it could take months to send a message and receive a reply, by which time the immediate strategic situation would inevitably have changed. While a commander was at sea and out of touch, governments could fall, administrations could be restructured, politics could shift one way or another, and the course of wars could derail or suddenly assume an entirely new aspect. He therefore had to use his wits. ‘In which direction do I need to go?’ could effectively mean ‘Which direction would the Lords of the Admiralty expect me take, given the extant circumstances?’ for a sea officer would always be required to explain himself and the end did not always justify the means. The decisions of sea officers who were hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away were regularly used to make telling political or strategic blows at home.
All this is important to bear in mind when considering the Battle of San Domingo. It is particularly relevant because Duckworth’s sextant is one of the very few of his personal possessions to have survived and it reminds us never to take the location of a sea battle for granted. Yes, Duckworth won a great victory over the French at San Domingo in 1806, but what on earth was he doing in the Caribbean at all? What went through his mind when he peered through those charming red and green sunshades, shot the position of the sun and then plotted his course to the Leeward Islands where, quite by chance, he came across a French squadron? He was supposed to be blockading Cadiz.
The Survivors
In the aftermath of Trafalgar, the British squadrons off the coasts of France and Spain resumed their blockade. The combined fleet had been beaten at Trafalgar but Spain was still allied with France and there was still a powerful French fleet in Brest – which had missed the entire Trafalgar campaign – a smaller force in Rochefort and another combined force of French and Spanish ships in Cadiz. The French and Spanish still had a colonial presence in the Caribbean and the East Indies, and Napoleon still had ambitions for a significant campaign in the eastern Mediterranean which, in his eyes, had only been temporarily frustrated by Nelson’s great victory at the Nile. Moreover, British colonial possessions and the arteries of British trade remained isolated and vulnerable.
British economic security, therefore, still had to be maintained by preventing French and Spanish forces from making any threatening moves. Napoleon also had to shore up his own colonial possessions and that could only be done with, or via, the exercise of seapower. Guadeloupe and Martinique were now relatively secure but Saint Domingue was a problem. This once-thriving French colony had fallen to a slave revolt in 1791 and there had been fierce fighting ever since. The charismatic ex-slave leader Toussaint L’Ouverture had been defeated and shipped back to prison in France. However, his powerful position had been seized by another impressive leader, Jean Jacques Dessalines, who, after a successful campaign, proclaimed the new, free Republic of Haiti, the first post-colonial, black-led nation in the world. Then, mimicking Napoleon, Dessalines declared himself Emperor of Haiti with the power to anoint his successor and, among other innovative laws, banned white people from owning property. Napoleon was deeply unhappy with the loss of such a valuable colony and was determined to send troop reinforcements to strengthen the weak position of his forces on the island.
As the autumn of 1805 turned to winter, therefore, the British task of containing French seapower was a complex and demanding one. In the filthy winter weather it soon also became a grim one, particularly off Brest. The coastline of Brittany is plagued by fog at all times of year and its waters run with fierce and challenging currents over hidden rocks. The great fetch of Biscay allows Atlantic swells to rear up and toss ships mercilessly in the teeth of the prevailing south-westerly winds. Keeping the sea ceaselessly throughout the winter was all but impossible and, on 13 December 1805, the blockading British ships headed for home.
The cold and exhausted British sailors took their weather-beaten ships to Torbay in the belief that the weather would provide more than the level of discouragement needed to keep the demoralised French in port. It was a bad misjudgement. A powerful fleet, consisting of 11 ships of the line, four frigates, a corvette and two dispatch vessels in two separate squadrons under the com
bined command of Contre Admirals Jean-Baptiste Willaumez and Corentin de Leissègues, was waiting for just such an opportunity. They broke out and headed first west and then south. Initially Willaumez steered for the South Atlantic and Leissègues for San Domingo, but both had detailed orders to attack British trade once their primary tasks had been completed.
Almost immediately they stumbled into a British convoy, whose escort raced back to Britain with the shocking intelligence that a large French force was loose. The Admiralty quickly ordered two separate squadrons to sea to search them out, one under Rear-Admiral John Warren and the other under Rear-Admiral Richard Strachan. Duckworth, meanwhile, was off Cadiz and he heard from a separate source that the French were at sea. He wrongly assumed that it was the French squadron from Rochefort but their specific identity had little relevance to his next move. He had clear orders to blockade Cadiz but what should he do now? Should he pursue the enemy and negate those orders? If so, would his absence from Cadiz simply make it more likely that another enemy squadron would get to sea unnoticed, destination unknown?
It would have been wrong to assume that Duckworth would catch up with, or even find, the enemy squadron. Once past the familiar landfalls and regular traffic of the European Atlantic seaboard, it was far more likely that a French squadron, intent on escape, would disappear. It was not a matter, therefore, of weighing up the disadvantages of abandoning Cadiz with the advantages of finding and then catching an elusive enemy squadron. There was always a great deal of uncertainty in the finding, chasing and defeating of any enemy.