CHAMPIONS OF THE FLEET


_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

    FAMOUS FIGHTERS OF THE FLEET.
    THE ENEMY AT TRAFALGAR.
    THE ROMANCE OF THE KING’S NAVY.
          ETC. ETC.




[Illustration: CHAMPIONS THEN AND NOW: THE _VICTORY_ AND THE _DREADNOUGHT_

_Both ships, and the submarine alongside the “Victory,” are shown on
the same scale. The picture is reproduced by kind permission of the
Proprietors of the “Illustrated London News.” Photos by Stephen Cribb,
Southsea._]




                                CHAMPIONS
                              OF THE FLEET

                         CAPTAINS AND MEN-OF-WAR
                         AND DAYS THAT HELPED TO
                             MAKE THE EMPIRE

                            BY EDWARD FRASER

                          WITH 19 ILLUSTRATIONS

                    LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
                   NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMVIII

              WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH




PREFACE


These tales of the navy of the fighting days of old are to some extent,
it may seem, cruises in rather out-of-the-way waters. At the same time,
they may claim present-day associations that should render them not out
of place just now. How and why, for instance, the world-famous name
_Dreadnought_ came into the Royal Navy is a story of interest on its
own account that ought to be timely. With that also is told something
of what our _Dreadnoughts_ of old did under fire in the fighting days
of history: with Drake; against the Armada; with Sir Walter Raleigh;
against De Ruyter and the Dutchmen; at La Hogue; how one gave the
_sobriquet_ “Old Dreadnought” to the famous Boscawen; how Nelson’s
uncle and patron Maurice Suckling captained the same ship in battle; of
Collingwood in the _Dreadnought_; and of the _Dreadnought_ at Trafalgar.
We get, too, a passing glance at certain of the “points” of our mighty
battleship the _Dreadnought_ of the present hour. Again, in the year
that has seen the name of Clive recalled to the memory of his countrymen
by an ex-Viceroy of India in connection with the hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of Plassey, what the navy did for Clive at the most critical
moment of his fortunes, how without its active support on the field of
battle Clive would have been powerless, the forgotten, or certainly
little appreciated, part that the navy took in the founding of our
Indian empire—should be of interest to English readers. This year again
sees a new _Téméraire_, one of our “improved _Dreadnoughts_,” added to
the Royal Navy. The fine story of how the never-to-be-forgotten name
_Téméraire_—immortalized alike by Turner and by Trafalgar—first came
to appear on the roll of the British fleet is told here. And it should
be of interest to recall certain incidental matters concerning the old
_Victory_ herself: among others the circumstances in which she came to
be built and was safely sent afloat in spite of expected incendiarism;
where too those who fought on board at Trafalgar came from, and how
many representatives each of our counties had with Nelson in his last
fight. Such are some of the matters dealt with in these pages, which of
themselves should afford entertainment and help also to make this book
useful.

                                                                    E. F.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                             PAGE

       I. OUR _DREADNOUGHTS_:—THEIR NAME AND BATTLE RECORD               1

      II. “KENT CLAIMS THE FIRST BLOW”                                  52

     III. THE AVENGERS OF THE BLACK HOLE:—WHAT THE NAVY DID FOR CLIVE   77

      IV. BOSCAWEN’S BATTLE:—THE TAKING OF THE _TÉMÉRAIRE_             126

       V. HAWKE’S FINEST PRIZE:—HOW THE _FORMIDABLE_ CHANGED HER FLAG  141

      VI. WHEN THE _VICTORY_ FIRST JOINED THE FLEET:—HOW THEY BUILT
            THE _VICTORY_ AT CHATHAM                                   160

     VII. ON VALENTINE’S NIGHT IN FRIGATE BAY                          191

    VIII. THE PAGEANT OF THE _DONEGAL_:—A MEMORY OF ’98                208

      IX. ON BOARD OUR FLAGSHIPS AT TRAFALGAR:—CAPTAIN HARDY AND
            THOSE WHO MANNED THE _VICTORY_—UNDER FIRE WITH
            COLLINGWOOD—“OLD IRONSIDES” AND THE THIRD IN COMMAND       222




ILLUSTRATIONS


    CHAMPIONS THEN AND NOW: THE _VICTORY_ AND THE
      _DREADNOUGHT_                                          _Frontispiece_

        Both ships, and the submarine alongside the _Victory_, are
        shown on the same scale. The picture is reproduced by kind
        permission of the proprietors of the _Illustrated London
        News_. Photos by Stephen Cribb, Southsea.

                                                              _Facing page_

    OUR FIRST _DREADNOUGHT_                                             10

        From a contemporary print kindly lent by Mr. Wentworth
        Huyshe. The _Dreadnought_ is shown as she appeared
        when serving in the “Ship Money” Fleet of Charles the
        First—_circ._ 1637.

    “OLD DREADNOUGHT’S” _DREADNOUGHT_                                   28

        From the original drawing made in 1740 for the official
        dockyard model. Now in the Author’s collection.

    THE RED-LETTER DAY OF NELSON’S CALENDAR. HOW THE _DREADNOUGHT_
      LED THE ATTACK ON THE 21ST OF OCTOBER, 1757                       34

        Painted by Swaine. Engraved and Published in 1760.

    WHEN GEORGE THE THIRD WAS KING. OFFICERS AT AFTERNOON TEA ASHORE    38

        Thomas Rowlandson. 1786.

    MANNING THE FLEET IN 1779. A WARM CORNER FOR THE PRESS GANG         38

        James Gillray. October 15th, 1779.

    THE COUNTY AND ITS SHIP. THE _KENT_ TROPHY CHALLENGE SHIELD         54

        From a photograph kindly lent by the designers and
        manufacturers of the trophy, Messrs. George Kenning & Son,
        Goldsmiths, Little Britain and Aldersgate Street, London.

    THE SCENE OF THE OPERATIONS UNDER ADMIRAL WATSON AND CLIVE          76

        From Major James Rennell’s “Bengal Atlas,” published in
        1781. Reproduced by the courtesy of the Royal Geographical
        Society.

    ADMIRAL BOSCAWEN’S VICTORY                                         136

        In the foreground to the right is seen the _Warspite_
        attacking the _Téméraire_. Boscawen’s flagship, the
        _Namur_, is in the centre flying the Admiral’s Blue Flag at
        the main, and at the fore the red battle-flag, the “Bloody
        Flag” of the Old Navy. Painted by Swaine. Engraved and
        published in 1760.

    HAWKE’S VICTORY IN QUIBERON BAY                                    152

        The picture shows the _Royal George_ (in the centre)
        sinking the _Superbe_, and the _Formidable_ (immediately
        beyond the _Superbe_ and in the background) lowering her
        colours to the _Resolution_ (the ship coming up astern
        of the _Royal George_). Painted by Swaine. Engraved and
        published in 1760.

    THE EXECUTION OF ADMIRAL BYNG                                      164

        From a contemporary print.

    PORTSMOUTH IN THE YEAR THAT THE _VICTORY_ JOINED THE FLEET         170

        From a contemporary print.

    AT PORTSMOUTH POINT                                                176

        Thomas Rowlandson.

    IN PORTSMOUTH HARBOUR                                              176

        Thomas Rowlandson.

    THE _VICTORY_ ON HER FIRST CRUISE                                  186

        Drawn by Captain Robert Elliot, R.N. Engraved and Published
        in 1780.

    THE FIRST FIGHT IN FRIGATE BAY, ST. KITTS                          198

        Admiral Sir Samuel Hood’s squadron of 22 ships (at anchor)
        beating off De Grasse’s opening attack with 28 ships (shown
        coming into the bay under full sail) at 2.30 p.m. on
        January 25th, 1782. Drawn by N. Pocock, “from a sketch made
        by a gentleman who happened at the time to be on a visit at
        a friend’s, on a height between Basse Terre and Old Road.”

    OUR FIRST _DONEGAL_                                                212

        The captured French line-of-battle ship _Hoche_, being
        towed by the _Doris_, 36, Lord Ranelagh, into Lough Swilly.
        Drawn by N. Pocock, from a sketch made from the _Robust_ by
        Captain R. Williams of the Marines.

    REPRODUCTION OF THE OFFICIAL DRAWING OF THE _VICTORY’S_
      FORETOPSAIL AFTER TRAFALGAR AS RETURNED INTO STORE AT
      CHATHAM DOCKYARD IN MARCH, 1806                                  228

    TRAFALGAR—12 NOON: AS SKETCHED ON THE SPOT BY A FRENCH OFFICER     252

        From a photograph of the original sepia drawing now in
        the possession of a descendant of Captain Lucas of the
        _Redoutable_.




CHAMPIONS OF THE FLEET

    To the fame of your name
    When the storm has ceased to blow;
    When the fiery fight is heard no more,
    And the storm has ceased to blow.




I

OUR _DREADNOUGHTS_:—THEIR NAME AND BATTLE RECORD

    A name through all the world renown’d,
    A name that rouses as a trumpet sound.


The “Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day”—on the 24th of August,
1572—was directly the cause of the coming into existence of our first
_Dreadnought_.

Startled and horrified at the terrible news, as the details of the
ghastly story crossed the channel, Queen Elizabeth replied by instantly
calling the forces of England to arms. John Hawkins, at the head of
twenty ships of war, was sent to cruise off the Azores. The rest of the
fleet was ordered to mobilize and be ready to concentrate in the Downs.
Instructions were issued for the beacons to be watched. The militia were
ordered to muster and march to the coast. A subsidy was sent over to the
Protestants in Holland, and a rush of volunteers followed to join those
from England already in the field. Huguenot refugees in this country
were given leave to fit out vessels to help their co-religionists at La
Rochelle. Four men-of-war for the Royal Navy were ordered to be laid down
forthwith. They comprised the most important effort in shipbuilding that
England had made for ten years.

To facilitate rapidity of building, the work on the four vessels was
divided between the two chief master-shipwrights—or, as we should say,
naval constructors—of the day: two ships to Matthew Baker, two ships to
Peter Pett. Both men were at the top of their profession. Peter Pett was
a distinguished member of the great family of naval shipwrights, whose
fame has come down to our own times. Baker, who was also of a family of
naval shipwrights of repute, was considered by many of the naval officers
of the day as the better man. “Mr. Baker,” wrote one, “for his skill and
surpassing grounded knowledge in the building of the ships advantageable
to all purposes hath not in any nation his equal.” Pett and Baker were
keen business rivals, and their rivalry came into play on the present
occasion.

The names of the new ships were announced in due course, and represented
Her Majesty’s mood on the occasion. She herself selected and appointed
them with intention. It was Queen Elizabeth’s way to give her ships
“telling” names. “The choice of energetic names for the ships of her
Royal Navy,” it has been said, “was one of the means employed by the
heroic and politic Elizabeth to infuse her own dauntless spirit into
the hearts of her subjects, and to show to Europe at large how little
she dreaded the mightiest armaments of her enemies.” More than that,
however, needs to be said. As a rule, in the cases of her bigger ships,
the Queen chose names that carried, in addition, an underlying meaning,
that bore direct allusion to some national event of the hour. According
to one who lived at the time, writing about the first ship launched by
the Queen, to which, in accordance with old custom, the sovereign’s name
was given: “The great Shipp called the _Elizabeth Jonas_ was so named by
Her Grace in remembrance of her owne delyverance from the furye of her
Enemys, from which in one respect she was no less myraculously preserved
than was the prophet Jonas from the Belly of the whale.” In like manner
our first _Victory_ and our first _Triumph_ were given those ever famous
names, in the first place, of set intention to commemorate the historic
double-event of the year in which they both joined the Queen’s fleet.
The _Aid_, or _Ayde_, another Elizabethan man-of-war, was so called
to commemorate Elizabeth’s first expedition to help the Huguenots of
Normandy in their forlorn hope struggle for liberty of conscience,
which was just setting out when the _Aid_ went off the stocks. Our
first _Revenge_, of immortal renown, did not receive that name at
haphazard in the year of Don John of Austria’s insolent threat to invade
England and depose Elizabeth by force of arms. Our first _Repulse_ was
appointed that name—extant to this day in the Royal Navy for one of our
older battleships—in memory of the defeat of the Spanish Armada:—_Dieu
Repulse_ was the earlier form of the name as the Queen gave it. And to
take at random two other names from the list, it was to commemorate the
same overthrow of the arch-enemy of England in those times that Queen
Elizabeth chose the names _Defiance_ and _Warspite_—in curious reference,
this latter name, to an incident during the fighting with the Armada—for
two others of her men-of-war.

It was of set purpose that Queen Elizabeth, in the year of the Massacre
of Saint Bartholomew, chose the name _Dreadnought_ for one of her ships
of war. The intentions of the Catholic League towards England were
an open secret in every council chamber of Europe. The papal Bull,
excommunicating and deposing Elizabeth, had been nailed on the doors
of Lambeth Palace. It was at their disposal. Alva’s butcheries in the
Netherlands were fresh in the recollection of the world, and the memory
of other dark doings came still more closely home to our own people;
how Englishmen had been “seized in Spain and the New World to linger
amidst the tortures of the Inquisition or to die by its fires.” Burghley
and Walsingham, and others as well, had fully understood the menace for
England and the warning of Lepanto only two years before. Their secret
agents had supplied them with a copy of De Spes’ confidential report to
Alva and King Philip to the effect that the ports of England were poorly
fortified, and that only eleven at most of Queen Elizabeth’s twenty ships
of war were worth taking into account. They had not forgotten what had
happened three years before, when, under the guise of an escort for the
new Queen of Spain from Flanders to the Tagus, an extremely formidable
Spanish fleet, fully equipped for war, had come north and lain for
some weeks in the Scheldt, acting throughout in a very suspicious way.
That was a twelvemonth before Lepanto. Now the situation seemed even
more menacing for England. The Queen’s so-called Agreement with Spain,
lately come to, for practical purposes was hardly worth the paper it was
drafted on. There was Mary Stuart and her partizans to be reckoned with
also; the restless intriguing of the Roman Catholics all over England;
open rebellion in Ireland. What might not the consequences of the Paris
massacre involve in the near future? It was at such a moment that the
name _Dreadnought_ was first appointed to an English man-of-war, and the
Queen’s choice in the circumstances partook of the nature almost of an
Act of State, specially designed to express the temper of the nation.
In the same spirit of exalted patriotism in which, at a later day,
Elizabeth, from Tilbury camp, with proud scorn bade King Philip and the
Prince of Parma and all other enemies of the realm do their worst, the
great Queen, of her own royal will and pleasure, named for the Royal Navy
its first _Dreadnought_.

_Swiftsure_ was the name given to the second ship of the set.
“Swift-suer” was the way the Queen Elizabeth spelled it—“Swift-pursuer,”
that is—not an inappropriate name for the sister ship of a _Dreadnought_.
The pair were intended as ships of the line, to use a later day term.
The other two ships of the group were smaller vessels of the light
cruiser class of the period, intended for service as scouts, as the “eyes
and ears of the fleet” at sea. Their names were the _Achates_ and the
_Handmaid_, expressive names both in their way.

Matthew Baker’s men had the _Dreadnought_ and _Handmaid_ to build; Pett’s
men the _Swiftsure_ and the _Achates_. They all started work within three
weeks, and Pett’s men won the race by just a month. The _Swiftsure_ and
the _Achates_ were both sent afloat on the 11th of October, 1573; the
_Dreadnought_ and the _Handmaid_ on the 10th of the following month.

An Arctic explorer of those times, whose name lives on our maps—the man,
indeed, who named the North Cape for us, Captain Stephen Borough (or
Borogh, as he himself usually wrote it), one of “ye foure Principall
Masters in Ordinarye of ye Queene’s Maᵗⁱᵉˢ Navye Royall,” by special
appointment also the Master of the _Victory_, and a son of North Devon in
her proudest day—had naval charge and supervision over the building of
the _Dreadnought_ and the other ships at Deptford. He lodged meanwhile
at Ratcliffe, across the river, and his “traveylinge chardges,” with the
waterman’s receipt for rowing him to and fro on his weekly visits of
inspection, signed “Richard Williams of Ratcliff, Whyrryman,” is still
in existence.

The marshmen and labourers at the dockyard began their digging, “working
upon ye opening of ye dockhedde for ye launchynge,” during the first days
of November. That was the first of the preliminaries, necessitated by the
primitive arrangements of those times. The dock at Deptford in which the
timbers of the _Dreadnought_ were put together was of the crudest type:
practically an oblong excavation in the river bank, the sides and inner
end of which were shored up and kept from falling in by wooden planks.
The outer end, or river end, was closed and sealed when a ship was inside
by a water-tight dam of brushwood-faggots, clay, and stones filled in and
rammed down between the overlapping double gates of the dock. An “ingyn
to drawe water owte of ye dokke,” worked by relays of labourers, pumped
out the water inside the dock after it was closed. Before the dock could
be re-opened the stones, faggots, etc. of the “tamping” or stopping had
to be dug up and removed. Then at low water the gates would be swung
back, and the water from the river flow in as the tide rose for the
launch or float-out of the ship into the river.

On board the _Dreadnought_, meanwhile, the finishing touches were being
put by the contractors’ workmen—Thomas Hodges, of “Parris Garden,” and
Thomas Wells, of Chatham, and their men seeing to the ironwork fittings,
“ye workmanshipp and making of lockes and boltes, keyes and haidges
[_sic_] for ij newe cabbons, as also for hookes, and stockelockes,
porthaidges [_sic_], revetts and countre-revetts, shuttynges with
rings, greate dufftayles and divers other necessaries”; joiners sent by
“Jullyan Richards of London, widdow,” who had a contract for certain
other fittings; other joiners from Lewys Stocker, also of London, seeing
to “ye sellynges [_sic_] and formysling ye cabbins and makyng casements
for windows, seelings, awmeryes [_sic_], cupboards, settes, bedsteddes,
formes, stools, trisstelles, tables,” etc. “for her Grace’s newe shippe
ye _Dreadnaughte_.” Hard by, alongside Deptford creek, were lying the
masts for the ship, ready to be put in place after she was afloat; with
“toppes greate and small, mayne-tops, ffore-toppe, mizzen-toppe, and
toppe-galantes;” besides barge loads from Richard Pope, of “Ereth,”
of “gravaille for ye ballistynge of hur highness Shipe called ye
_Dreadnaughte_ at iiijᵈ every time.” Prest-master Thomas Woodcot was
meanwhile hard at work elsewhere, “travailling about the presting of
marynnars within the River of Theames for ye Launchynge and Rigging of
Hur highnes’ ij newe shippes at Deptfordstraund [_sic_] by the space of
viii daies at iijs iiijd per diem.”

The future “nucleus crew” of the _Dreadnought_, who were to act as
ship-keepers on board when the ship went round to moor with the rest of
the fleet laid up in the Medway, had been warned to be at Deptford by
the morning of the 10th of November. They were drawn apparently from
the ships lying off Gillingham, just below Chatham, or “Jillingham
Ordinarie”—the “Fleet Reserve,” as we say nowadays—and numbered,
all told, ten men and a boy. These were the names of our original
“Dreadnoughts” of three hundred and thirty-three years ago, and
their quarterly pay, according to “The Accompte as well Ordinarie as
Extraordinarie of Benjamin Gonson, Treasurer of ye Quene’s Majestie’s
Maryn cawses,” 1574, a quaint, bulky, ponderous, parchment covered
volume, of massive proportions, laced with faded green silk, and bound
with leather straps, now well worn and in parts frayed nearly away:

    THE “DREADNAUGHTE.”

    MARYNERS.

    Robarte Baxster, boteson:—xij wekes vj daies   xxxvijˢ vjᵈ
    Richard Boureman, cooke: xij wekes vj daies      xxixˢ  vᵈ
    John Awsten: xij wekes vj daies                   xxjˢ  vᵈ
    Nicholas Francton: xij wekes vj daies             xxjˢ  vᵈ
    Christofer Parr, gromett: xij wekes vj daies      xxjˢ  jᵈ
    Henry Osbourne: xij wekes vj daies                xxjˢ  vᵈ
    James Laske: xij wekes vj daies                   xxjˢ  vᵈ
    Richard Shutt: xij wekes vj daies                 xxjˢ  vᵈ
    Robartt Woodnaughtt: xij wekes vj daies           xxjˢ  vᵈ
    William Appleford: xij wekes vj daies             xxjˢ  vᵈ
    John Huntt, master gonner: xij wekes vj daies   xxxijˢ ijᵈ

This is what the _Dreadnought_ looked like as she lay in the dock on the
Tuesday morning that saw the ship take the water. Imagine a solid-looking
heavily-timbered hull, round bowed, with long, raking forward prow
or beak, reaching out some ten or twelve yards ahead of the actual
vessel, and with at the after-end a lofty towering poop with shallow
overhanging balustraded gallery. Amidships the vessel is of a width
equal to nearly a third of her length. From the “greate beaste,” the
figure-head—a dragon—“gilded and laid with fine gold,” representing one
of the supporters of the Queen’s arms, set up on the tip of the beak,
away aft to the stern gallery is a distance of, over all, about a hundred
and twenty feet. The body of the hull itself has a keel length of some
eighty feet—from rudder post to fore-foot. Along the water-line the
bends are all tarred over, with varnished side planking above, tough oak
timber from the Crown lands of the Sussex Weald by Horsham. The topsides
above are varnished to the bulwarks, where a touch of colour shows;
ornamental carved and painted work in royal Tudor green and white, laid
on in “colours of oil” and garnished with Her Majesty’s family badges in
gold, and with here and there, on the balustrades of the quarter-rails
and stern gallery, an additional touch of red. On the stern, “painted in
oils,” are the arms of England, with the Lion and the Dragon, the Queen’s
royal supporters, and below, on a scroll, Her Majesty’s motto, _Semper
Eadem_.

[Illustration: OUR FIRST _DREADNOUGHT_

_From a Contemporary Print kindly lent by Mr. Wentworth Huyshe. (The
“Dreadnought” is shown as she appeared when serving in the “Ship Money”
Fleet of Charles the First:—circ. 1637)._]

These are other things about the ship that would strike the Deptford
visitor of that day. The square-headed forecastle is low and squat in
appearance, compared with the piled-up, narrow poop right aft, looking
over from which a foreign visitor to the Queen’s fleet once declared
that “it made one shudder to look downwards.” The bottom of the ship is
coated with “tallow and rosin mingled with pitch.” The square-cut, wide
portholes, out of which the guns will point when they are on board—the
Tower lighters will bring them down for mounting in a week or two—were
the idea, they say in the yard, of Master Shipwright Baker’s father, old
James Baker, many years ago King Harry’s shipwright, improving on the
original French style. It was old Baker too, they say, who “first adapted
English ships to carry heavy guns.” The Reformers wanted to send the old
man to the stake for “being in the possession of some forbidden books”;
but King Harry could not afford to let them burn England’s best naval
architect even for the benefit of Protestantism.

The _Dreadnought’s_ gun-ports should open some four feet clear of the
water. People have not forgotten the horror of the _Mary Rose_; what
happened to her; how she came to go down one summer’s day at Spithead.
The waist bulwarks of the _Dreadnought_, if she swims as she ought, will
be some twenty feet above the water-line. Nearly four hundred tons in
burden is our new man-of-war—five tons heavier than the _Swiftsure_, than
which ship too she is six feet longer, though the pair reckon as sister
ships. Upwards of six thousand pounds out of Queen Elizabeth’s treasury
(about £30,000 at present day value) will have been the cost of the
_Dreadnought_ when she leaves Deptford dockyard.

We will go on board for a brief look round the _Dreadnought_ within. As
we enter the ship we note how both the half-deck and the fore and aft
castles are loopholed for both arrow-fire and musketry, so as to sweep
the waist should an enemy board and get a footing amidships. Some of
the lighter guns would be able to help. The heavier guns are mostly on
the broadside, and are mounted on the decks below in a double tier. The
_Dreadnought_ altogether carries forty-two guns. Sixteen of them are
heavy guns: two “cannon-periers” of six-inch bore, hard hitters, firing
twenty-four pounder stone shot; four “culverins,” seventeen and a half
pounders, twelve feet long and five and half inches in the bore, firing
iron shot, and able to throw a ball upwards of three miles—“random shot.”
There are also ten “demi-culverins,” nine-pounders, firing four and a
half inch iron shot. The lighter guns are six “sakers,” pieces nine feet
long (five-pounders, of three and a half inch bore) and two “fawcons”
(three-pounders). The heavier guns are all muzzle-loaders. Distributed
over the upper decks are eighteen breech-loading guns, for fighting at
close quarters and rapid firing: “port-pieces,” “fowlers,” and “bases,”
as they are called. They are on swivel mountings, and fire stone and iron
shot.

All told, the _Dreadnought’s_ armament weighs thirty-two tons. The guns
are from Master Ralphe Hogge, “the Queen’s gunstone maker, and gunfounder
to the Council.” They are of Sussex iron, from Master Hogge’s own foundry
at Buxted. At this moment they are waiting at the Tower, together with
the _Dreadnought’s_ supplies of iron shot and cannon balls of Kentish
ragstone from Her Majesty’s quarries at Maidstone, stacked “in ye Bynns
upon ye Tower Wharfe each side Traitor’s Gate.” When the _Dreadnought_
goes into battle she will carry some two hundred officers and men all
told: a hundred and thirty “maryners”—“Able men for topyard, helme and
lead,” and “gromets,” or boys and “Fresh men”; with twenty gunners and
fifty soldiers. To keep her at sea will cost the Queen £303. 6s. 8d. a
month for sea-wages and victualling. Three weeks provisions and water
is the most that the ship can stow, owing to the space wanted for the
ballast, the cables for the four anchors, and the ammunition and sea
stores. That is why victualling ships have to attend Her Majesty’s fleets
on service outside the Narrow Seas. The “cook room,” of bricks and iron
and paving stones, is in the hold over the ballast. Two more notes may
be made as we return on deck and quit the ship. The captain’s cabin,
opening on the gallery aft, is neatly wainscoted and garnished with
green and white chintz, and with curtains of darnix hung at the latticed
cabin windows. There are three boats for the _Dreadnought_: the “great
boat,” which tows astern at all times, the cock-boat and the skiff, both
of which stow inboard. John Clerk, “of Redryffe, Shipwrighte,” built
the “great boat,” being paid £24, in the terms of his bill, “For the
Workmanshipp and makeinge of a new Boate for her Highness’ Shipp, the
_Dreadnought_; conteyninge xi foote Di. in lengthe; ix foote Di. in
Breadthe; and iij foote ij inches in Depthe.—By agrement.”

A brave show should our gallant _Dreadnought_ make when she goes forth
to war, with her varnished sides and rows of frowning guns and painted
top-armours (the handiwork, according to his bill, of Master Coteley, of
Deptford), and all her wide spreading sails set (“John Hawkins, Esquire,
of London,” supplied these), and at the masthead, high above all, her
flag of St. George of white Dowlas canvas with a blood-red cross of cloth
sewn on.

       *       *       *       *       *

The appointed day has come, and the time for the sending afloat and
formal naming of the _Dreadnought_: Tuesday afternoon, the 10th of
November, 1573.

The ship lies ready for launching at the appointed moment, having been
duly “struck” upon the launching ways a day or two before, under the
supervision of Master Baker himself, in the dock where she has been
building; shored up on either side, and with the lifting screws and
“crabs” prepared to heave her off. The dockhead has been dug out and
finally cleared at low tide on Monday, leaving the double gates free and
in order, ready to be swung back and opened as soon as the tide begins to
make on Tuesday morning.

We will imagine ourselves on the spot at the time and looking on at what
took place. It is possible to do so, thanks to a manuscript left by
Phineas Pett, Peter’s son and successor at Deptford royal yard.

All is ready for the day’s proceedings by a little after noon, when the
important personages taking part at the launch, “by commandement of
ye officers of Her Grace’s Maryn Causys,” and the invited guests and
superior officials of the dockyard assemble for a light refection of
cake and wine in the Master Shipwright’s “lodging,” preliminary to the
ceremony.

Who named the _Dreadnought_ on that day? Unfortunately that one detail
is not mentioned in any existing record, and the Navy Office book for
the year, where the name would certainly have been found, together
with the honorarium or fee, paid according to custom, is missing. Most
probably it was Captain Stephen Borough himself, and we may imagine him
there, apparelled for the day in crimson velvet and gold lace, in the
full uniform of one entitled to wear “Her Maᵗⁱᵉˢ cote of ordinarie.”
His rank and standing as one of the “Principall Masters of the Queen’s
Maᵗⁱᵉˢ Navie in Ordinarie” qualified him for performance of so dignified
a duty. The Principal Masters were often deputed by the Lord High Admiral
to preside on his behalf at the launches of men-of-war and perform the
name-giving ceremony.

While the high officers are having their refreshments in Master
Shipwright Baker’s lodging, Boatswain Baxster and the assistant
shipwrights are stationing the men on board and at the launching tackles.
The customary “musicke” then makes its appearance, “a noyse of trumpetts
and drums,” who post themselves on the poop and the forecastle of the
ship. Next, a “standing cup” of silver-gilt, filled to the brim with
Malmsey of the best, is set up on a pedestal fixed prominently on the
poop, and the Queen’s colours are hoisted on board, together with the
flag of St. George. At the same time pennons and streamers of Tudor green
and white, and decorated with royal emblems and badges, are ranged here
and there along the ship’s sides and on the forecastle.

All is ready ere long, and then, forthwith, word is sent to Master
Shipwright Baker and the gentlemen of the company. Forthwith the
procession forms itself and sets out in stately fashion to go on board.

    With his grey hair unbonneted
      The old sea-captain comes;
    Behind him march the halberdiers,
      Before him sound the drums.

So escorted and attended the personage of the hour paces his way forth
and proceeds on board the new ship, passing along the decks and ascending
to the poop where the company group themselves according to precedence,
near by the glittering silver-gilt wine cup. Master Shipwright Baker then
gives the signal, and Boatswain Baxster’s whistle shrills out. At once
the gangs of men standing ready at the crabs and windlasses heave taut,
and a moment later, as the ship begins her first movement outwards, the
trumpets and drums sound forth. So, at a leisurely rate at the outset,
gliding off foot by foot into deeper water, the new man-of-war hauls
gradually out and clears past the dock gates till well into the stream.
The anchor is then let go and she brings up. Now it is for Captain
Borough—allowing it to have been he—to do his part.

    Stans procul in prorâ, pateram tenet extaque salsos
    Porricit in fluctus ac vina liquentia fundit.

The trumpets and drums cease as the “Principall Master” steps forward
and takes up his position beside the standing cup. He raises the
gleaming cup on high so that all around may see. Then, amid universal
silence, he proclaims, in a clear resonant voice that every one may
hear: “By commandment of Her Grace, whom God preserve, I name this ship
the _Dreadnought_! God save the Queen!” As the Lord High Admiral’s
representative utters the last word, he drinks from the cup, and a moment
after ceremoniously pours out a portion of the wine upon the deck. The
next moment, with a wide sweep of the arm, he heaves the standing cup,
with a little wine left in it, into the river—a sacrifice, as it were,
on behalf of the bride newly-wedded to the sea, or that the Queen’s
cup might never be put to base uses—perhaps, indeed, as a sort of
propitiatory act. So it was done, says Master Phineas Pett, “according
to the ancient custom and ceremony performed at such times.” Again there
is a blare of trumpets and a ruffle from the drums, with cheers afloat
and ashore for Her Grace, and hearty congratulations to Master Matthew
Baker on the occasion. After that the _Dreadnought_ is formally inspected
between decks and below, and the crew’s health is drunk by the high
officers in ship’s beer—sure to be of a good brew on a launching day.

By the time that all is over the ship has been warped back alongside
the shore again, and the company adjourn thereupon to wind up the
day’s proceedings with a good old English dinner, given to the Master
Shipwright and the officials of the yard at the Lord High Admiral’s
expense.

Such is a passing glimpse of the memorable scene—as far as one may
venture to reconstruct it—on “Dreadnought Day” at Deptford Royal
Dockyard, that Tuesday afternoon, in Tudor times, three hundred and
thirty-three years ago. It is hard to fancy such doings, at Deptford
of all places, now. Oxen and sheep for the London meat market nowadays
stand penned in lairs on the site of the filled-in dock whence the
_Dreadnought_ was floated out—the same dock whence the Armada _Victory_
had preceded her, whence Grenville’s _Revenge_ followed her. Master
Shipwright Baker’s lodging is nowadays a cattle drovers’ drinking bar.
The old-time navy buildings—their origin even now easily recognisable, at
any rate externally—serve as slaughterhouses, and so forth, among which
rough butcher lads, reeking of the shambles, jostle daily to and fro. On
every side is bustle and clatter and hustling, the rumbling of Smithfield
meat vans over the old-time cobble stones, the jargon of Yankee
bullock-men, the bleating of sheep under sentence of death. Strange and
hard is the fate that in these material times of ours has overtaken what
was once the premier Royal Dockyard of England, this former temple, so to
speak, of the guardian deity of our sea-girt realm:

                      This ruined shrine
    Whence worship ne’er shall rise again:—
    The owl and bat inhabit here
    The snake nests in the altar stone,
    The sacred vessels moulder near—
    The image of the god is gone!

Fallen indeed from its high estate of former days is the ancient royal
establishment of “Navy-building town.” Where bluff King Hal used to walk
and talk with Matthew Baker’s father, “old honest Jem”; where our sixth
Edward paid a long-remembered visit, to be “banketted” (as the royal
spelling has it) and see two men-of-war go off the ways; where Elizabeth
knighted Francis Drake, and James and Charles rode down in state on many
a gala day; where Cromwell paid his second naval visit—his “grandees”
attending him, and escort of clanking Ironsides—to see the vindictively
named _Naseby_ take the water; where our second Charles liked to saunter
on occasion with Rupert at his side, and chattering Pepys and John
Evelyn in his train; where James the Second, dull and morose of mood,
for the sands of his monarchy were already running out, paid his last
historic visit one gloomy autumn afternoon of 1688; where brave old
Benbow liked best to spend the mornings of his half-pay life on shore,
and Captain Cook set out on his last voyage; where George the Third drove
down with Queen Charlotte to do honour to the naming of a _Prince of
Wales_ man-of-war; where, too, Royalty of our own time has more than
once visited—is now “a market for the landing, sale, and slaughtering of
foreign cattle.” The glory has departed—the image of the god is gone!

       *       *       *       *       *

The _Dreadnought_ and _Swiftsure_ and the two smaller ships were masted
and rigged and completed for service during November and the early days
of December, after which, with the help of a hundred and fifty extra
hands, “prested in ye river of Theames for ye transportyngs about,”
they set off on the twentieth of the month to join the fleet lying
“in ordinary” in the Medway—an eight days’ voyage as it proved, owing
to squally weather and an east wind. The Queen was to have seen the
_Dreadnought_ and her squadron pass the palace at Greenwich and salute
the royal standard with cannon and a display of masthead flags, as was
the Tudor naval usage when the sovereign was in residence, but there
had been a domestic misadventure at Placentia just a few days before.
While talking with her maids of honour one afternoon, one of the Queen’s
ladies—“the Mother of the Maids”—had suddenly dropped dead in the
royal presence, and the Court had hastily removed to Whitehall. So the
_Dreadnought_ had no royal standard to salute. Three days after Christmas
the Deptford squadron took up their moorings in “Jillingham water.”

“Powerful vessels ... with little tophamper and very light, which is a
great advantage for close quarters and with much artillery, the heavy
pieces being close to the water,” reported, in a confidential letter now
in the royal archives at Simancas, one of the King of Spain’s agents in
England who saw the _Dreadnought_ and _Swiftsure_ not long after they had
joined the Medway fleet. So too, indeed, some of King Philip’s sailors
were destined to find out for themselves.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Dons, indeed, were destined to taste something of the _Dreadnought’s_
quality more than once; beginning with the memorable event of the
“Singeing of the King of Spain’s Beard.” There, Drake’s right-hand man on
many a battle day, commanded the _Dreadnought_, Captain Thomas Fenner, a
sturdy son of Sussex and a seaman who knew his business.

How thoroughly Drake—“fiend incarnate; his name Tartarean, unfit for
Christian lips; Draco—a dragon, a serpent, emblem of Diabolus; Satanas
himself”—did his work among the Spaniards at Cadiz, burning eighteen
of their finest royal galleons, and carrying off six more in spite of
fireships and all the shooting of the Spanish batteries, is history.
The _Dreadnought_, after experiencing a narrow escape from shipwreck
off Cape Finisterre at the outset of her cruise, took her full share of
what fighting there was. She was present, too, at the second act of the
drama, which took place off the Tagus with so fatal a sequel for the
hapless Commander-in-Chief designate of the Armada, the Marquis de Santa
Cruz—the “Iron Marquis,” “Thunderbolt of War,” the real Hero of Lepanto,
by reputation the ablest sea-officer the world had yet seen. First,
the news that his flagship and the finest fighting galleons of his own
picked squadron—all named, too, after the most helpful among the Blessed
Saints of the Calendar—together with his best transports and victuallers,
had been boarded and taken and sacrilegiously set ablaze to, burned
to the water’s edge, one after the other, by those “accursed English
Lutheran dogs.” Worse still. To be then defied to his face, he, Spain’s
“Captain-General of the Ocean”; to be audaciously challenged to come out
and fight and have his revenge then and there—Drake and the _Dreadnought_
and the rest openly waiting for him—in the offing. The shame of the
disaster was enough to kill the haughty Hidalgo, to make him fall sick
and turn his face to the wall and die, without Philip’s espionage and
unworthy insults goading him to the grave. The _Dreadnought_ had a hand
in shaping the destinies of England, for, in the words of the Spanish
popular saying, “to the Iron Marquis succeeded the Golden Duke,” whose
hopeless incompetence gave England every chance in the next year’s
fighting.

In the opening encounter with the Spanish Armada that July Sunday
afternoon of 1588, no ship of all the Queen’s fleet bore herself better
than did the _Dreadnought_. Captain George Beeston, of an ancient Surrey
family, held command on board the _Dreadnought_. He was a veteran officer
of the Queen’s fleet—more than twenty-five years had gone by since he
first trod the quarter-deck as a captain. Leading in among the enemy,
after the first hour of long-range firing between the English van and the
Spanish rear had brought both sides to closer quarters, the _Dreadnought_
with the ships that followed Drake’s flagship the _Revenge_, for nearly
three hours fought first with one and then with another of the most
powerful of the Spanish rear-guard ships. After that, forcing their way
among the Spaniards as they gave back and began to crowd on their main
body, she had a sharp set-to with the big galleons, led by Juan Martinez
de Recalde, perhaps the best seaman in all King Philip’s navy, commander
of the rear-division of the Armada. On the _Santa Ana_ and her consorts
the _Revenge_ and _Dreadnought_ and the rest made a spirited attack,
pushing Recalde so hard that eventually Medina Sidonia himself, the
Spanish Admiral, had to turn back and come to the rescue with every ship
at his disposal. It was enough; Drake and his men had played their part.
Before Medina Sidonia’s advance in force, the _Revenge_ and _Dreadnought_
left the _Santa Ana_, and with the rest of the attacking English van drew
off. They had done an excellent day’s work.

There was harder work for the _Dreadnought_ in the great battle of
Tuesday off Portland Bill. First came the fierce brush in the morning,
when Drake and Lord Howard and the leaders of the English fleet, after a
daring attempt to work in between the Spanish fleet and the Dorset coast,
had to tack at the last moment, baffled for want of sea room, and were
closed with by the enemy in the act of going about. On came the galleons
exultantly, their crews shouting and cheering, amid a blare of trumpets
and ruffle of drums, in full confidence to run down and sink the lighter
built English vessels. It was a moment of extreme peril:—but at the very
last, suddenly, the fortune of the day changed. As the Spaniards seemed
to be upon them the wind shifted, the English sails filled, ship by
ship and all together, and then stretching out with bowsprits pointing
seaward, the _Revenge_, _Victory_, _Ark Royal_, _Dreadnought_, and the
others safely cleared the enemy, pouring in so fierce a fire as they
passed that the Spanish ships had to sheer off. This was the first fight
of the day. Later, when the wind, going round with the sun, shifted again
and gave Drake and Howard the weather gage, came on the most desperate
encounter with the Armada that our ships had yet seen. Lord Howard in
the _Ark Royal_ and Drake in the _Revenge_, with the _Dreadnought_, the
_Lion_, the _Victory_, and the _Mary Rose_ near at hand, driving ahead
before the wind, pushed into the thick of the Spanish main body, and
attacked the enemy, in a long and furious battle that lasted until the
afternoon sun was nearing the horizon.

A third day of battle was yet to come—Thursday’s hot fight off the back
of the Isle Wight, and here again the _Dreadnought_ took her full share
of what was done, until the long summer day drew to its close and the
Armada “gathered in a roundel,” sullenly stood off eastward, proposing to
fight no more until the coast of Flanders had been made.

Next morning the _Dreadnought’s_ captain was summoned on board Lord
Howard’s flagship, the _Ark Royal_. He returned “Sir George,” knighted by
the Lord High Admiral on the quarter-deck, in the presence of the enemy.

Sunday night saw the fireship attack, so disastrous to the Armada, and
next morning followed the crowning victory of the week’s campaign, the
great fight off Gravelines of Monday, the 29th of July, “the great battle
which, more distinctly perhaps than any battle of modern times, has
moulded the history of Europe—the battle which curbed the gigantic power
of Spain, which shattered the Spanish prestige and established the basis
of England’s empire.” Here the _Dreadnought_ distinguished herself again,
fighting in the thick of the fray from eight in the morning to four in
the afternoon, within pistol-shot of the enemy most of the time.

From six till nearly eight the ships of Drake’s squadron had to bear the
brunt of the fight, with, for antagonists, Medina Sidonia himself and his
chief captains, who had gathered to stand by their admiral. Trying to
rally the Armada after the panic of the night, this gallant band had at
first, from before daybreak, anchored in a group, to act as rear-guard
to the Spanish fleet, firing signal guns to stop their flying consorts,
and sending pinnaces to order the fugitives back. Then Hawkins in the
_Victory_, with the _Dreadnought_, the _Mary Rose_, and _Swallow_, and
other ships unnamed, came up and struck in. Now moving ahead through
her own smoke to plunge into the mêlée and come to the rescue of some
hard-pressed consort, now working tack for tack parallel with and firing
salvo after salvo at short range into some towering galleon or huge
water-centipede-like galleass—so the hours of that eventful forenoon
wore through on the _Dreadnought’s_ powder-begrimed decks. “Sir George
Beeston behaved himself valiantly,” records the official _Relation of
Proceedings_, drawn up for the Lord High Admiral. In vain did the most
formidable of the Spanish galleons try to close and board. Ship after
ship was forced back with shattered bulwarks and splintered sides, and
with their scuppers spouting blood, after each English broadside, as the
round shot crashed in among the masses of Spanish soldiery, packed on
board the galleons as closely almost as they could stand.

More Spaniards joined their admiral as Sidonia passed north, the Spanish
rear and centre squadrons forming together a long straggling array,
among the ships of which, from nine to after one o’clock, the _Revenge_,
_Victory_, _Dreadnought_, _Triumph_, _Ark Royal_, and the rest charged
through and through fighting both broadsides. Shortly after two o’clock,
the English ships passed on, pressing forward to overtake the Spanish
van group of galleons. By four o’clock the battle was won, but firing
went on till nearly six, “when every man was weary with labour, and our
cartridges spent and our ammunition wasted” (_i.e._ used up).

Once more the _Dreadnought_ followed the fortunes of Drake’s flag
to battle; again, too, as Captain Fenner’s ship. In the year after
the Armada she had her part in escorting the Corunna expedition, the
“counter-Armada,” designed to beat up the quarters of the enemy at home
and attempt the wresting of Portugal from the Spanish yoke. A landing
party of “Dreadnoughts” fought ashore. Led by Drake and the general of
the soldiers, Sir John Norris, they drove the Spaniards before them.
“Unto every volly flying round their ears,” says old Stow, “the generall,
turning his face towards the enemie would bow and vale his bonnet, saying
‘I thank you, Sir! I thank you, Sir!’ to the great admiration of all
his campe and of Generall Drake.” The wine vaults of Corunna, however,
interposed on behalf of Spain. Soldiers and sailors alike broke in and
got drunk, and all that could be done after that was to reship the men
and write the campaign down a failure.

In the attack on Brest in 1594, when Sir Martin Frobisher met his death,
the _Dreadnought_ had her share. Two years after that she fought with
Essex and Raleigh in the grand attack on Cadiz—this time as one of the
picked ships of Sir Walter Raleigh’s own “inshore squadron.” She sailed
with Sir Walter again after that in the celebrated “Islands Voyage”; and
then the curtain rings down on the memorable days of the story of the
_Dreadnought_ of the Great Queen’s fleet. The old ship lasted afloat
(after an expensive rebuild in James the First’s reign) until the time of
the Civil War. She figured in the interim in the Rochelle Expedition and
also in one of Charles the First’s Ship-money fleets. The _Dreadnought_
of St. Bartholomew’s Day and Matthew Baker made her last cruise of all in
the year of Marston Moor.

       *       *       *       *       *

Six _Dreadnoughts_ in all have flown the pennant since England’s Armada
_Dreadnought_ passed away.

[Illustration: “OLD DREADNOUGHT’S” _DREADNOUGHT_

_From the original drawing made in 1740 for the official dockyard model.
Now in the Author’s Collection._]

Charles the Second’s _Dreadnought_ was our second man-of-war of the name.
Originally the _Torrington_, one of Cromwell’s frigates, and named,
after the Puritan usage, to commemorate a Roundhead victory over the
hapless Cavaliers, Restoration Year saw the ship renamed _Dreadnought_,
under which style she rendered the State good service for many a long
year to come. In that time the _Dreadnought_ fought, always with credit,
in no fewer than seven fleet battles. She was with the Duke of York
when he beat Opdam off Lowestoft in 1665; with Monk, Duke of Albemarle,
and Prince Rupert in the “Four Days’ Fight” of 1666; at the defeat of
De Ruyter in the St. James’s Day Fight of the same year. Solebay, in
the Third Dutch War, was another of our second _Dreadnought’s_ notable
days, and also Prince Rupert’s three drawn battles with De Ruyter off
the Banks of Flanders in 1673. Worn out with thirty-six years’ service
(reckoning from the day that the _Torrington_ first took the water), the
_Dreadnought_ had set forth to meet the famous French corsair, Jean Bart,
in the North Sea, when, one stormy October night of 1690, she foundered
off the South Foreland. Happily, the boats of her squadron had time to
rescue those on board.

Our fourth _Dreadnought_, William the Third’s ship, fought the French at
Barfleur and La Hogue, and after that did good service down to the Peace
of Ryswick as a Channel cruiser and in charge of convoys. She served all
through “Queen Anne’s War,” by chance only missing Benbow’s last fight.
Later, the _Dreadnought_ was with the elder Byng—Lord Torrington—at the
battle off Cape Passaro, in the Straits of Messina, in 1718, where one,
if not two, Spaniards lowered their colours to her. The _Dreadnought_ on
that occasion formed one of Captain Walton’s detached squadron, whose
exploit history has kept on record, thanks to Captain Walton’s dispatch
to the admiral, as set forth in the popular version of it: “Sir, we have
taken all the ships on the coast, the number as per margin.” Of that
dispatch more will be said elsewhere.[1] The _Dreadnought_ ended her days
in George the Second’s reign, at the close of the war sometimes spoken of
as “The War of Jenkins’ Ear.”

Two _Dreadnought_ officers, Sir Edward Spragge, who captained our second
_Dreadnought_ in the “Four Days’ Fight,” and Sir Charles Wager, a very
famous admiral in his day, First Lieutenant of our third _Dreadnought_ in
the year before La Hogue, have monuments in Westminster Abbey.

Boscawen’s _Dreadnought_ comes next, a sixty-gun ship built in the year
1742. She was the first ship of the line that Boscawen had the command
of, and she gave him his _sobriquet_ in the Navy, “Old Dreadnought,”
the name of his ship just hitting off the tough old salt’s chief
characteristic—absolute fearlessness. An incident that occurred on board
the _Dreadnought_ while Boscawen commanded the ship gave the _sobriquet_
vogue. It is, too, a fine sample of what Carlyle calls “two o’clock in
the morning courage.”

It was in the year 1744, when we were at war with both France and
Spain, one night when the _Dreadnought_ was cruising in the channel.
The officer of the watch, the story goes, came down after midnight to
Captain Boscawen’s cabin and awoke him, saying, “Sir, there are two large
ships which look like Frenchmen bearing down on us; what are we to do?”
“Do?” answered Boscawen, turning out of his cot and going on deck in his
nightshirt, “Do? why, d⸺ ’em; fight ’em!” The fight did not come off,
however, as the suspicious strangers disappeared.

On board Boscawen’s _Dreadnought_ it was that, fourteen years later,
Nelson’s uncle, Maurice Suckling, who got Nelson his first appointment
in the Royal Navy, and under whose command the boy Nelson first went to
sea, made his mark as a post-captain. It was in the West Indies in 1757,
the year in which Byng was shot, and the day was the 21st of October.

The _Dreadnought_ with two consorts met seven French men-of-war, four of
them individually bigger and more heavily gunned ships than ours, and the
other three powerful frigates, and gave them a sound thrashing.

The news was received in England with exceptional gratification as the
first sign of the turn of the tide since Byng’s defeat off Minorca. That
was one thing about it that stamped the event in popular memory. A second
memorable thing was the incident, according to the popular story, of the
“Half Minute Council of War” that preceded the fight.

The three British ships were the _Augusta_, Captain Forrest; the
_Dreadnought_, Captain Maurice Suckling; and the _Edinburgh_, Captain
Langdon. The three had been sent by the admiral at Jamaica to cruise off
Cape François, in order to intercept a large French homeward merchant
convoy reported to be weakly guarded. The available French naval force on
the station was believed to be too weak to face our little squadron. But,
unknown to Admiral Cotes at Port Royal, fresh men-of-war had just arrived
from France purposely to see the convoy home. In the result, when our
three ships arrived off Cape François, seven French ships stood out to
meet them. In spite of the odds the British three held on their course.

These were the forces on either side, in ships and men:—

    BRITISH LINE OF BATTLE.

    _Dreadnought_                       60 guns  Capt. Suckling  375 men
    _Augusta_                           60  ”    Capt. Forrest   390  ”
    _Edinburgh_                         64  ”    Capt. Langdon   467  ”
                                       ---                      ----
                                       184 guns.                1232 men.
                                       ===                      ====

    FRENCH LINE OF BATTLE.

    _La Sauvage_                        30 guns                  206 men
    _L’Intrépide_ (Commodore)           74  ”                    900  ”
    _L’Opiniâtre_                       64  ”                    640  ”
    _Le Greenwich_ (formerly British)   50  ”                    400  ”
    _La Licorne_                        30  ”                    200  ”
    _Le Sceptre_                        74  ”                    750  ”
    _L’Outarde_                         44  ”                    350  ”
                                       ---                      ----
                                       366 guns.                3446 men.
                                       ===                      ====

Directly the French came in sight the senior officer, Captain Forrest of
the _Augusta_, signalled to the other two captains to come on board for
a council of war. They came, and, the story goes, arrived alongside the
_Augusta_ together and mounted the ship’s side together. As they stepped
on to the _Augusta’s_ gangway, Captain Forrest, it is related, addressed
the two officers in these terms: “Gentlemen, you see the enemy are out;
shall we engage them?” “By all means,” said Captain Suckling. “It would
be a pity to disappoint them,” said Captain Langdon. “Very well, then,”
replied Forrest; “will you gentlemen go back to your ships and clear for
action?” The two captains bowed, and turned and withdrew without having,
as it was said, actually set foot on the senior officer’s quarter-deck.

Within three-quarters of an hour they were in action, the _Dreadnought_
leading in and attacking the French headmost ship as the squadrons
closed. Captain Suckling opened the fight by throwing the _Dreadnought_
right across the bows of the _Intrépide_, a 74, and much the bigger ship,
forcing her to sheer off to port to avoid being raked.

Backed up by the _Augusta_ and the _Edinburgh_, the _Dreadnought_ was
able to overwhelm the French commodore with her fire, and force the
crippled _Intrépide_ back on the next ship, the _Opiniâtre_. That vessel
in turn backed into the fourth French ship, and she into another, the
_Sceptre_. The four big ships of the enemy were accounted for. Our three
ships seized the opportunity. Well in hand themselves, they pounded
away, broadside after broadside, into the hapless Frenchmen, who were
too much occupied in trying to disentangle themselves to do more than
make a feeble and ineffective reply. By the time that they got clear the
British squadron had so far got the upper hand that the French drew off,
leaving the British squadron masters of the field. All of our three ships
suffered severely, the _Dreadnought_ most of all.

In Nelson’s lifetime the day was always observed by the family at Burnham
Thorpe with special festivities, and Nelson himself often called it, it
is on record, “the happiest day of the year.” More than that too, Nelson
himself more than once half playfully expressed his conviction that he
too might some time fight a battle on another 21st of October, and make
the day for the family even more of a red-letter day. As a fact, during
the last three weeks of his life on board the _Victory_ off Cadiz, in
October, 1805, Nelson, with a prescience that the event justified, used
these words both to Captain Hardy and to Dr. Beatty the surgeon of the
flagship: “The 21st of October will be our day!”

Captain Maurice Suckling’s “Dreadnought” sword was bequeathed to Nelson
and was ever kept by him as his most treasured possession. He always wore
it in battle, it is said; notably at St. Vincent, when he boarded and
took the two great Spanish ships the _San Nicolas_ and the _San Josef_;
and his right hand was grasping it when the grape shot shattered his arm
at Teneriffe.

The _Dreadnought_ of Boscawen and Maurice Suckling ended her days at
perhaps England’s darkest hour of national trial—at the time of the
American War. She was doing harbour duty at Portsmouth at the time, as a
guard and receiving ship.

At no period, perhaps in all our history did the future and the prospects
of the British Empire seem so absolutely hopeless. We were fighting for
existence against France and Spain, the two chief maritime Powers of
Europe; and at the same time the vitality of the nation was being sapped
by the never-ceasing struggle with the American colonists, now in its
seventh year. Holland had added herself to our foes; Russia and the
Baltic Powers were banded together in a league of “armed neutrality,” and
stood by sullen and menacing. That, however, was not the worst. The price
of naval impotence had to be paid. Great Britain was no longer mistress
of the sea. She had lost command of the sea, and was drinking the bitter
cup of consequent humiliation to the dregs.

[Illustration: THE RED-LETTER DAY OF NELSON’S CALENDAR. HOW THE
_DREADNOUGHT_ LED THE ATTACK ON THE 21st OF OCTOBER, 1757

_“Edinburgh.”_ _“Augusta.”_ _“Dreadnought.”_

_Painted by Swaine. Engraved and Published in 1760._]

It was the direct outcome of party politics and short sighted naval
retrenchments in time of peace, pandering to the clamour of ministerial
supporters in the House of Commons. The printed Debates and Journals of
the House between 1773 and 1781 are extant, as are also the summaries of
the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, for those who care to learn what passed.

Out-matched and out-classed at every point, the British fleet found
itself held in check all the world over. Colony after colony was wrested
from us, or had to be let go, while our squadrons in distant seas had
not strength enough to do better than fight drawn battles.[2] Gibraltar,
closely beset by sea and land, was still holding out, but no man dared
prophesy what news of the great fortress might not arrive next. Minorca,
England’s other Mediterranean possession, had to surrender. The enemy
were masters of the island, after driving the garrison into their last
defences at St. Philip’s Castle. Nearer home, Ireland, in the enjoyment
of Home Rule, was using the hour of Great Britain’s difficulty as her
opportunity for demanding practical independence, with eighty thousand
Irish volunteers under arms to back up the threats of the Dublin
Parliament.

The Channel Fleet, though reinforced with every ship it was possible
to find crews for, held the Channel practically on sufferance. Once it
had to retreat before the enemy and seek refuge at Spithead. On another
occasion the enemy were on the point of attacking it in Torbay with such
preponderance of force that overwhelming disaster must have befallen it.
Fortunately for England the French and Spanish admirals disagreed at the
last moment and turned back.

Hanging in a frame on the walls of the Musée de Marine at the Louvre
the English visitor to Paris to-day may see a draft original “State,”
giving the official details of the divisions and brigades and the ships
to escort them, of one of the French armies which was to be thrown across
into England. It was no empty menace, and for three years the beacons
along our south and east coasts had to be watched nightly; while camps
of soldiers, horse and foot and artillery—the few regulars that had not
been sent off to America—with all the militia regiments in the kingdom,
extended all the way round, at points, from Caithness to Cornwall. To
safeguard London there were camps of from eight to ten battalions each,
mostly militia, at Coxheath, near Maidstone, at Dartford, at Warley, at
Danbury in Essex, and at Tiptree Heath. To secure the colliery shipping
of the Tyne two militia battalions were under canvas near Gateshead. A
camp at Dunbar and Haddington watched over Edinburgh. The West Country
was guarded by a big camp of fifteen militia battalions at Roborough,
near Plymouth, with an outlying camp on Buckland Down, near Tavistock.
To prevent the enemy making use of Torbay, Berry Head was fortified,
the ruins of the old Roman camp of Vespasian’s legionaries there being
utilized to build two twenty-four pounder batteries overlooking the
passage into the bay. Every town almost throughout England had its “Armed
Association” or “Fencibles,” volunteers, the men of which, by special
permission from the Archbishop of Canterbury, drilled after church time
every Sunday.

The effect on the oversea commerce of the country, penalized by excessive
insurance rates, was calamitous. From 25 to 30 per cent premium was paid
at Lloyds on cargoes from Bristol, Liverpool, and Glasgow to New York
(still in British hands); and 20 per cent to the West Indies. As to the
reality of the risk. On one occasion the enemy captured an Indiaman fleet
bodily off Madeira, only eight vessels out of sixty-three escaping,
with a loss to Great Britain of a million and a half sterling, including
£300,000 in specie. We have, indeed, at this moment a daily reminder of
the disaster. One of the unfortunate underwriters was a Mr. John Walter.
His whole fortune swept away, he took to journalism, and the _Times_
newspaper was the result. Home waters were hardly more secure. Rather
than pay the excessive extra premium demanded for the voyage up Channel,
London merchants had their goods unladen at Bristol, and carried in light
flat-bottomed craft called “runners,” built specially for the traffic,
up the Severn to Gloucester, thence to be carted across to Lechlade
for conveyance to their destination by barge down the Thames. At the
same time the North Sea packets from Edinburgh (Grangemouth) to London
refused all passengers who would not undertake to assist in the defence
of the vessel in emergency. Printed notices were pasted up at the wharves
announcing that no Quakers would be carried.

To such a pass had the loss of her supremacy at sea reduced Great Britain
in the closing year of our fourth _Dreadnought’s_ career.

Our fifth _Dreadnought_ fought at Trafalgar. She was a 98-gun ship, one
of the same set as the famous “fighting” _Téméraire_. The newspapers of
the day made a good deal of her launch, which took place at Portsmouth
Dockyard, on Saturday, the 13th of June, 1801. Here is an extract from
one account:—

“At about twelve o’clock this fine ship, which has been thirteen years
upon the stocks, was launched from the dockyard with all the naval
splendour that could possibly be given to aid the grandeur and interest
of the spectacle. She was decorated with an Ensign, Jack, Union, and the
Imperial Standard, and had the marine band playing the distinguished
martial pieces of ‘God save the King,’ ‘Rule Britannia,’ etc. etc. A
prodigious concourse of persons, to the amount, as is supposed, of at
least 10,000, assembled, and were highly delighted by the magnificence
of the ship and the beautiful manner in which she entered the watery
element. But what afforded great satisfaction was, that, in the passage
of this immense fabric from the stocks, not a single accident happened.
She was christened by Commissioner Sir Charles Saxton, who, as usual,
broke a bottle of wine over her stem. Her complement of guns is to be 98,
and she has the following significant emblem at her head; viz.—a lion
couchant on a scroll containing the imperial arms as emblazoned on the
Standard. This is remarkably well timed and adapted to her as being the
first man-of-war launched since the Union of the British Isles.”

[Illustration: WHEN GEORGE THE THIRD WAS KING. OFFICERS AT AFTERNOON TEA
ASHORE.

_Thomas Rowlandson. 1786._]

[Illustration: MANNING THE FLEET IN 1779. A WARM CORNER FOR THE PRESS
GANG.

_James Gillray. Oct. 15, 1779._]

For twelve months before Trafalgar, the _Dreadnought_ was Collingwood’s
flagship in the Channel Fleet. Collingwood passed most of the time
cruising on blockade duty in the Bay of Biscay, where he used to spend
his nights pacing on deck to and fro restlessly, expecting the enemy at
any moment, and snatching intervals of sleep lying down on a gun-carriage
on the quarter-deck. Collingwood only changed from her into the bigger
_Royal Sovereign_ ten days before the battle. Under the eye of the former
captain of our first _Excellent_ man-of-war, the _Dreadnought’s_ men had
been trained to fire three broadsides in one minute and a half—a gunnery
record for that day.

At Trafalgar the _Dreadnought_ fought as one of the ships in
Collingwood’s line, and did the best with what opportunity came her way.

“This quiet old _Dreadnought_” wrote Dickens of his visit to the ship in
her last years, “whose fighting days are all over—_sans_ guns, _sans_
shot, _sans_ shells, _sans_ everything—did fight at Trafalgar under
Captain Conn—did figure as one of the hindmost ships in the column which
Collingwood led—went into action about two in the afternoon, and captured
the _San Juan_ in fifteen minutes.”

While fighting the _San Juan_—the _San Juan Nepomuceno_, a Spanish
seventy-four—the _Dreadnought_ had to keep off two other Spaniards and
a Frenchman at the same time; Admiral Gravina’s flagship, the _Principe
de Asturias_, of 112 guns, and the _San Justo_ and _Indomptable_, two
seventy-fours. The _San Juan_ in the end proved an easy prize, for she
had been already severely mauled by some of Collingwood’s leading ships.
On being run alongside of she gave in quickly. Without staying to take
possession, the _Dreadnought_ pushed on to close with the big _Principe
de Asturias_, and gave her several broadsides, one shot from which
mortally wounded Admiral Gravina. The Spanish three-decker, however,
managed to disengage, and made off, to lead the escaping ships in their
flight for Cadiz. Thus the _Dreadnought_ was baulked of her big prize.

It was the Trafalgar _Dreadnought_ that gave the name to that great
international institution, the _Dreadnought_ Seamen’s Hospital, at
Greenwich. This, of course, was long after Trafalgar, for the “wooden
whopper of the Thames,” as Dickens called the old three-decker in her
old age, did not make her appearance off Greenwich until a quarter of a
century later. The fine old veteran of “Eighteen Hundred and War Time,”
lasted until 1857, and to the end they preserved on board as the special
relic of interest, “a piece of glass from a cabin skylight scrawled over,
with somebody’s diamond ring, with the names of those officers who were
in her at Trafalgar.” Another old three-decker replaced the Trafalgar
ship until 1870, when the institution was removed on shore. At Chatham
to-day, in the dockyard museum, visitors may see the _Dreadnought’s_ bell
which was on board the old ship during the battle, and was removed from
her when the _Dreadnought_ was broken up. Yet another memento of the
Trafalgar _Dreadnought_ exists in the Eton eight-oar _Dreadnought_, one
of the “Lower Boats,” and so-called originally, together with the boat
that bears the name _Victory_, in honour of Nelson and Trafalgar.

Our sixth _Dreadnought_ is a still existing ironclad turret-ship,
mounting four 38-ton muzzle loaders, launched in 1875. She is a ship
of 10,820 tons, and cost to complete for sea £619,739. She served
for ten years—from 1884 to 1894—in the Mediterranean, and after that
as a coast-guard ship in Bantry Bay. Paid off finally in 1905, the
_Dreadnought_ now lies at her last moorings in the Kyles of Bute,
awaiting the final day of all for her naval career, and the auctioneer’s
hammer.

To conclude with a flying glance at our mighty battleship, the
_Dreadnought_ of to-day, the seventh bearer of the name until now, and
as all the world knows by far the most powerful man-of-war that has ever
sailed the seas. She is the biggest and the heaviest and the fastest and
the hardest-hitting vessel that any navy as yet has seen afloat. And
more than that. The _Dreadnought_ has been so built as to be practically
unsinkable by mine or torpedo; while at the same time her tremendous
battery of ten 12-in. guns—huge cannon, each forty-five feet long—makes
her absolutely irresistible in battle against all comers; a match for
any two—probably any three—of the biggest battleships in foreign navies
afloat at the present hour.

These are some of the “points”—some of the leading features—of this grim
_mastodonte de mer_ of ours, His Majesty’s battleship, the _Dreadnought_.
With her coal, ammunition, and sea stores on board, the _Dreadnought_
weighs—or displaces in equivalent bulk of sea water, according to the
present-day method of reckoning the size of men-of-war—17,800 tons.

Put the _Dreadnought_ bodily inside St. Paul’s and she would fill the
whole nave and chancel of the Cathedral from reredos to the Western
doors. Her length would take up the whole of one side of Trafalgar
Square. Her width would exactly fill Northumberland Avenue, leaving only
some half-dozen inches between the house fronts on either side and the
outside of the hull. Two _Victorys_ and a frigate of Nelson’s day, fully
manned and rigged, could be packed away within the _Dreadnought’s_ hull.

[Illustration: [Our _Dreadnought_ of to-day: deck-plan to scale; showing
the disposition of the 12-in. 58-ton turret-guns and their arcs of
training. (Bows to the right.)][3]]

Measured from end to end, from bows to stern, the ship’s hull extends 490
feet. From forecastle to keel, measuring vertically, is a matter of some
60 feet down, equivalent to about the normal height of a church tower.

What, however, above everything else, specially distinguishes the
_Dreadnought_ from all other warships afloat, is her terrific battery.
Hitherto four 12-inch guns have formed the standard main armament for
all battleships. The _Dreadnought_ carries ten 12-inch guns of a new and
more powerful type than any heretofore in existence. They are mounted in
pairs in “redoubts,” armoured with Krupp steel eleven inches thick, and
are so grouped on board that when fighting broadside-on with an enemy,
eight of the ten guns will bear on the enemy and be in action throughout.
In chase, or fighting end-on, six of the guns are available at all
times. The firing charge per gun of “modified” cordite weighs by itself
2 cwt.—the weight of a sack of coals on a street coal-cart. In the hour
of battle each discharge from the _Dreadnought’s_ broadside will hurl
into the enemy three tons of “metal”—bursting shells—each shell being
from three to four feet long, and weighing singly 7½ cwt. With each shot
also, bang goes £80, the cost of the cartridge and its projectile. Twelve
thousand yards will be the _Dreadnought’s_ chosen range for engaging—six
miles—about as far as clear vision is possible above the horizon.

[Illustration: [Curve of flight, or trajectory, of 850 lb. projectile
from a _Dreadnought_ 12-in. turret-gun fired with full service charge.]]

[Illustration: [The 12-in. gun is about the same weight as an ordinary
railway passenger train engine.]]

“Mark X” is the official style for the _Dreadnought_ class of 12-inch
gun. It is the most powerful piece of ordnance in the world. It weighs
upwards of fifty-eight tons, about the weight of a larger “tank” railway
engine of the kind that brings the suburban bread-winner up to London
every morning. Its muzzle velocity—the speed at which the shot flashes
forth from the gun—is 2900 feet (966⅔ yards, or well over half a mile) in
a second. The force with which the shot starts off is enough to send it
through a solid slab of wrought iron set close up in front of the muzzle
of the gun 4¼ feet thick. When fired with full charges, each gun develops
a force able to lift the _Dreadnought_ herself bodily nearly a yard up,
exerting a force equivalent to 47,697 “foot-tons,” in gunnery language.
The entire broadside of eight 12-inch guns, fired simultaneously, as at
the gun trial off the Isle of Wight, develops a force sufficient to
heave the huge vessel herself, 21 feet up—nearly out of the water, in
fact.

[Illustration: [Extreme range of the _Dreadnought’s_ turret-guns:—Fired
from in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral.]]

As an instance of the tremendous range of the _Dreadnought’s_ guns:
mounted on one of the Dover forts, they could easily drop shells on the
deck of a Channel packet in the act of leaving Calais harbour. Imagine
one of them mounted in front of St. Paul’s and firing with full charges
in any direction. Its shells would burst over Slough in one direction and
over Gravesend in the other. Hertford, St. Albans, Chertsey, Sevenoaks,
would all be within range. Twenty-five miles is the extreme estimated
range of a shot fired with a full service charge, and the trajectory of
the projectile would, at its culminating point, attain a height in the
air of nearly six miles, twice the height of Mont Blanc.

They are “wire guns,” as the term goes, constructed in each case by
winding coil on coil of steel ribbon or “tape” (a quarter of an inch
wide and ·06 of an inch thick), round and round on an inner steel tube,
the barrel of the piece; just as the string is wound round the handle of
a cricket bat. The tape or “wire” is then covered by outer “jackets,”
or tubes of steel. Upwards of 228,800 yards of wire—a length of 130
miles—weighing some 15 tons, are required for each of the _Dreadnought’s_
12-inch guns, and it takes from three to four weeks to wind on the wire.
The rifling of the barrel comprises forty-eight grooves, varying in
depth from ·08 of an inch at the muzzle to ·1 at the breech. Each of the
_Dreadnought’s_ guns, separately, employs in its manufacture from first
to last upwards of five hundred men in various capacities, and costs, as
turned out ready to send on board, but without sighting and other vital
appliances, between £10,000 and £11,000.

The _Dreadnought_ carries eleven inches of Krupp steel armour on her
sides, turrets, and conning tower, and rather thinner armour at the bows
and stern. Her speed of twenty-one knots makes her a full two knots
faster than any existing battleship. She is the first battleship in any
navy to be propelled by the Parsons turbine, to which her speed is due.
Lastly, the cost of the _Dreadnought_ is officially stated at £1,797,497.

Exceptional in themselves, and of exceptional historic interest as well,
are the honours that have fallen to the _Dreadnought’s_ lot within the
few months that our great naval masterpiece has been in existence.

At the outset the _Dreadnought_ had the good fortune to be named and
sent afloat by His Majesty King Edward personally. That in itself was an
exceptional honour, and one that has fallen to the lot of very few ships
of the Royal Navy—to be named and sent afloat by the reigning sovereign.
There have been just six instances in all, from the earliest times to
the present day. Queen Victoria launched four men-of-war during her long
reign; but no King of England ever launched a ship in the four hundred
years between King Edward and Henry the Eighth: King Edward with the
_Dreadnought_ and Henry the Eighth with the _Great Harry_ are the two
historic instances. Many of our sovereigns, of course—practically all
of them: Edward the Sixth, Queen Elizabeth, the Stuart kings, Cromwell
also, George the Third, and William the Fourth—attended in state on
various occasions to witness the launch of some notable man-of-war, but
they were present only as spectators, and took no part in the actual
proceedings. Charles the First was to have personally named the famous
_Sovereign of the Seas_, with the same ceremonial used at the launch of
our first _Dreadnought_, and rode down with his Court to Woolwich to
do so; but they could not get the ship out of dock, and the King rode
back to Whitehall disappointed, deputing the Lord High Admiral to name
the ship when she did get clear—not till between eight and nine in the
evening. Charles the Second, in like manner, was to have personally named
our first _Britannia_, but His Majesty was taken ill on the day before.
Again too, as it also happened, there was a hitch at the launch. The
_Britannia_ stuck fast for twelve hours, and then went off at midnight to
the flare of torches and cressets, after which a courier was hurried off
at gallop to Whitehall, to acquaint the King, “lest certain base reports
(i.e. that the _Britannia_ had fallen over in dock) may have reached your
Majesty.”

Yet another exceptional honour that befel the _Dreadnought_ was after
the great review of the Home Fleet off Cowes, on the first Monday of
August this year, when King Edward, with Queen Alexandra, the Prince of
Wales, and Prince Edward of Wales, with Sir John Fisher and members of
the Royal suite, went out on board the _Dreadnought_ to beyond Spithead
to witness target-practice with the _Dreadnought’s_ turret-guns; the
memorable occasion on which, at 2640 yards’ range, the four 12-in. guns
that fired, scored within two and a half minutes nine bull’s-eyes and
two “outers” out of twelve rounds discharged. Never to be forgotten
was the scene as the _Dreadnought_ passed down the double lines of the
Home Fleet in the brilliant sunshine; the ships all dressed with flags,
and with decks manned, and cheering, and firing salutes—the giant ship
herself flying the Royal Standard at the masthead and at either yard-arm
the Union Flag, symbol of His Majesty’s rank as Admiral of the Fleet,
and the Admiralty Anchor Flag, a combination not seen on board a British
man-of-war of the fighting-line, even in those historic waters, for
over a century—not, indeed, since that summer’s morning of 1794, when
the three flags flew together at the mastheads of the famous _Queen
Charlotte_, denoting King George the Third’s presence on board, with his
Queen, on his visit to present a diamond-hilted sword of honour to Lord
Howe, then just arrived with the prizes taken on the Glorious First of
June. That also was the last occasion, until the other day, on which a
King and Queen of England were together on board a British man-of-war at
sea.

The guns fired before the King and Queen were those in the two
after-turrets, and the targets used were the usual service ones, 16 ft.
by 20 ft., with a central bull’s-eye 14 ft. square. The range was about a
mile and a half, and six rounds were fired from each turret. Of the three
shots placed outside the bull’s-eye, two went through the target, whilst
the third, which missed, cut away the rope fastening the canvas of the
target to the framework. Two of the shots in the bull’s-eye went through
the very centre, through a small circle, about thirty inches in diameter,
marked in the middle of the target.

We will conclude this outline of our _Dreadnoughts’_ story with a brief
tabular statement of certain points in detail of comparison and contrast
between the _Dreadnought_ of to-day and the historic _Victory_.

  THE _DREADNOUGHT_ AND _VICTORY_ COMPARED

                                         _DREADNOUGHT._   _VICTORY._
  Time Building                               16 months   Five years
                                                          ten months
  Total Cost                                 £1,797,497   £89,000
  Displacement                              17,900 tons   3400 tons.
  Total Weight Broadside                        6800 lb.  1160 lb.
  Extreme Range of Guns                        25 miles   3 miles.
  Penetration of armour at six miles  9 in. Krupp Steel
  Penetration at all distances                            Nil.
  Heaviest Gun                                  12 inch   6 inch.
  Weight of Charge                               265 lb.  10½ lb.
                                         (M.D. cordite).  (gunpowder).
  Time to make Gun                      12 to 15 months   Four guns a week.
  Cost per Gun                                  £11,000   £57. 15s.
  Average Weight per Gun                        58 tons   56 cwt.
  Complement                                    780 men   850 men.
  Length                                         490 ft.  226 ft. 6 in.
  Breadth                                         82 ft.  52 ft.
  Mean Load Draught                         26 ft. 6 in.  25 ft.
  Number of Guns                                     37   104
  Speed                                       21½ knots   10 knots.




II

“KENT CLAIMS THE FIRST BLOW!”

    “The Kentishe Menne in Front!”


“Kent claims for itself the first blow in battle against alien enemies.”
The hand that penned these words has lain in the grave for over seven
centuries; but old William Fitz-Stephen of Canterbury knew what he meant,
and meant what he wrote. They are words that our fine “county cruiser”
the _Kent_ of to-day—to which the ladies of Kent have presented a silken
battle flag and the Men of Kent a silver shield and other gifts, to
incite the _Kent’s_ bluejackets to shoot straight—might well adopt and
make the ship’s motto. It was from the County of Kent that the initiative
came in the movement which has had such excellent results in inducing the
county people in other counties all over Great Britain and Ireland to
display a practical interest in the warships that bear the county names;
and the idea has since spread in other cases throughout the Empire.

The county “Association of Men of Kent and Kentish Men” of their own
accord took the initial step in the spring of 1899 by approaching the
late Lord Goschen, then First Lord of the Admiralty, with a request that
one of four cruisers of a new type, to be built under the supplemental
programme of the previous August, might be named after the County of
Kent. The request was heartily received, and in response the name _Kent_
was announced for the first of the new ships. A little later the Men
of Kent made a second proposal. They asked permission to establish
among themselves a “county memorial for the new county-cruiser _Kent_,”
expressing their “desire and intention to do something to keep up a
continual connection between the county and the good ship, and to cause
a sustained interest to be taken in her fortunes and the welfare of
those on board.” Lord Goschen acceded to that request, and a county
subscription was immediately set on foot by Lord Harris, the president of
the Association for the year, to form a Kent county trophy fund for the
cruiser _Kent_. It was proposed to present the ship, on commissioning,
with a challenge trophy in silver, to be competed for annually among the
gun crews of the ship, the champion gun team for each year to have their
names inscribed on the trophy and receive a special monetary reward from
a county fund established with the trophy. The trophy itself was to be
kept on board and to be displayed on special and festive occasions in the
mess of the winning team. Whenever the _Kent_ was out of commission the
trophy would be cared for by the Captain of the Royal Naval Barracks,
Chatham, or at Greenwich Naval College.[4] The movement received cordial
support from Lord Selborne, Lord Goschen’s successor at the Admiralty,
and from the late Earl Stanhope, the then Lord Lieutenant of Kent, and
the late Lord Salisbury, then Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. More than
that, indeed. Interested by the patriotic action taken by the County of
Kent on behalf of its cruiser namesake, His Majesty the King was himself
graciously pleased to command that in the cases of future ships bearing
the names of counties the Lords Lieutenant of the counties concerned
were to be requested by the Admiralty to nominate in each case some lady
connected with the county to perform the naming and launching ceremony.

[Illustration: THE COUNTY AND ITS SHIP. THE _KENT_ TROPHY CHALLENGE SHIELD

_From a photograph kindly lent by the Designers and Manufacturers of the
Trophy, Messrs. George Kenning & Son, Goldsmiths, Little Britain and
Aldersgate Street, London._]

The trophy-shield subscribed for by the Men of Kent, together with an
album for the names and scores of its winners from time to time, was
formally handed over to the captain and ship’s company of the _Kent_ at
Sheerness by representatives of the County Association, the gift being
received with every mark of regard and genuine welcome. Following on
that, a deputation of county ladies, headed by the Countess Stanhope,
the wife of the Lord Lieutenant, presented the favoured ship with two
flags, a beautiful silken ensign and a silken Union Jack, subscribed for
by the County Association of “Maids of Kent and Kentish Maids.” The flags
were brought on board in the beautiful box of Kentish Heart of Oak in
which they are now kept under the sentry before the captain’s cabin. The
ensign was bent on the halyards and ceremoniously hoisted to the peak by
Countess Stanhope in the presence of the assembled officers and crew of
the _Kent_, and the Jack was hoisted by the Hon. Secretary of the Ladies’
Committee, Mrs. Bills, the proceedings winding up with a luncheon to
the ladies on the after-deck by Captain Gamble and his officers, and an
afternoon dance on board.

       *       *       *       *       *

That the name of the ancient maritime county of England should be borne
in the fleet to-day by a modern British warship is in itself a matter
of historic interest. There are, indeed, very excellent reasons why the
County of Kent should receive distinguished treatment from the Admiralty,
why its name deserves to be honourably commemorated in the British fleet
of to-day.

Kent has a place of its own in regard to the naval annals of England,
old-time associations with the oversea defence of England and the
national navy, that stand quite by themselves. The associations indeed go
back across fifteen centuries, to the earliest days of our “rough island
story”; so far back, indeed, as the old old times of the “Counts of the
Saxon Shore.”

Dover and Reculver, the two principal Kentish ports of the days when
Britain was a Roman province, were central stations in the widespread
line of outposts along the coast whence watch and ward were kept for the
coming of the Norseland raiders oversea in the springtime year by year.

    Bared to the sun and soft, warm air,
    Streams back the Norseman’s yellow hair,
    I see the gleam of axe and spear,
    The sound of smitten shields I hear,
    Keeping a harsh, barbaric time
    To Saga’s chant and Runic rhyme.

From the pharos on the Foreland in those strenuous times of long ago
keen-sighted men of Kent kept look-out daily, scanning the horizon from
sunrise to sunset; ever on the alert to start the alarm and pass it on to
where the Roman coast defence galleys lay at their moorings off the mouth
of the Wantsum Channel by Richborough Castle.

Alike on land and sea theirs was the post of honour. At Hastings, led by
the stout Earl Leofwine, as we know—

    A standard made of sylke and jewells rare
    Was borne near Harold at the Kenters Head.

And centuries after that, whenever the King of England was in the field,
they claimed the right to lead the van—“The Kentishe Menne in front!”

The Kentish contingent—the “Eastern Ports” contingent—formed the bulk and
the backbone of the Cinque Ports fleets of the Middle Ages, both in ships
and men. Four of the five “Head Ports” in the famous confederation were
Kentish ports—Sandwich, Dover, Romney, and Hythe. The “Eastern Ports”
counted twenty-one limbs, “Members”; the “Western Ports”—Hastings with
the two “Ancient Towns” attached—ten “Members.” The old Cinque Ports
Navy, in these times of ours it may be, is little more than a name, a
faded memory of a dim and distant past, a perished institution of a dead
old time; yet it was once an actual fact, a living hot-blooded reality,
the chief guarantee of our national existence, a very real bulwark, the
foremost defence of England from foreign invasion. “The courage of those
sailors who manned the rude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the
flag of England terrible on the seas.” For all that we have to thank, in
the first place, the Men of Kent, that Kent of which old twelfth-century
Fitz-Stephen, monk of Canterbury and historian of his own times, was
thinking when he wrote, “Kent claims for itself the first blow in battle
against alien enemies.”

The Kentish ships of the Cinque Ports, “Ships of Kent” they are
explicitly called, took a leading part with the Crusaders’ fleet which
on its way to the Holy Land for the Second Crusade, in the year 1147,
captured Lisbon from the Moors. Kentish men fought with that fine
leader, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, “Warden of the Cinque,”
when he fell on the French King’s fleet at Damme—just three years before
King John put his mark to Magna Charta.

It was a squadron of the Kentish ships of the Ports’ federation that, in
the year after Magna Charta, under one of England’s finest heroes and
greatest men, that grand fellow, stout-hearted Hubert de Burgh, Earl of
Kent, Chief Justiciar of England and Constable of Dover Castle, Cœur de
Lion’s favourite pupil in arms, saved England from invasion by rounding
up the fleet with which the renegade leader Eustace the Monk—“pirata
nequissimus” one old chronicler calls him—was making for the Thames,
and dealing the French the first of the series of knock-down blows of
which Nelson struck the last at Trafalgar. The story of the “Battle
of Bartholomew’s Day,” the 24th of August, 1217, is one we ought not
willingly to let die. There is hardly a finer tale in all our history
than that which tells how De Burgh’s sixteen Cinque Port warships from
Dover, with nineteen or twenty small craft, stood out to meet the Monk’s
hundred and odd ships—eighty of them the largest vessels of the time—off
the North Foreland; swept round them astern, weathered them and closed,
grappled them fast, under cover of a stinging fire of archery and
crossbow bolts, cut down their sails, and then, flinging up in the air
handfuls of quicklime to blow into the faces of the Frenchmen, boarded
and overpowered the enemy in hand-to-hand fight with falchion and pike
and battle-axe. They fought it out from early morning until the afternoon
was spent, when fifty-five ships of the Monk’s fleet had been taken, and
the rest, except fifteen ships that ran away, all sent to the bottom.

Again, in the tremendous Midsummer Day’s battle in the harbour of Sluys,
the “Trafalgar of the Middle Ages,” although to most people the event
is barely a schoolbook memory—the great naval victory that made Creçy
possible—once more the Ship-and-Lion flag at the masthead of vessels from
the four Kent ports was to the fore, well up in the van of King Edward’s
attacking fleet and in the thickest of the fighting. And at the battle of
“Espagnols-sur-Mer,” off Winchelsea, where again Edward the Third fought
in person, together with the Black Prince; off St. Mahé; and at Harfleur,
covering Henry the Fifth’s landing for the march that ended at Agincourt,
and in many another hard-fought action in the Narrow Seas after that,
Kentish men in the Kentish ships of the Ports’ Navy full well played
their part.

It was oak from the Weald of Kent for the most part that built the
men-of-war of Queen Elizabeth’s fleet which drove the Spanish Armada
through the Channel and North Sea to its doom on the reefs of Stornaway
and the quicksands of Connemara—ships timbered and planked with oak from
the Kentish Weald, and shaped and framed and clamped together in the
Kentish Dockyards of Deptford and Woolwich. Phineas Pett, a Kentish man
by birth, designed and built the famous _Sovereign of the Seas_; and his
grandson, Sir Phineas Pett, designed and built our first _Britannia_. The
_Great Harry_ was mostly built of Kentish oak; as was, at a later day,
Sir Richard Grenville’s “little” _Revenge_, and, at a still later day,
Nelson’s _Victory_, launched at Chatham.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a Man of Kent who, as admiral in chief command, planned and gave
the order for the capture of Gibraltar. It was another Man of Kent who,
as admiral second in command, carried that order out. Sir George Rooke,
one of the Rookes of Monk’s Horton, Kent—by far the ablest sea-officer
in the British service in the hundred years between Blake and Hawke—was
the Commander-in-Chief before Gibraltar. Byng, Sir George Byng, was the
second in command—the elder of the two Byngs known to naval history,
“Mediterranean Byng,” as he was called in the Navy in connection with a
later exploit of his, and remembered nowadays as the Byng who beat the
enemy and was not shot. He became Lord Viscount Torrington, and may, in
like manner, be distinguished from the other Lord Torrington of naval
history (Arthur Herbert) as the Torrington who beat the enemy and was not
court-martialled and broke.

A famous family of old-time Kent were the Byngs, seated at Wrotham ever
since the fifteenth century, more than one member of which came to the
front in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and the Stuart kings. Such as,
for instance, the fine old Kentish cavalier of Browning’s rousing song:

    Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
    Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing,
    And, pressing a troop unable to stoop
    And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
            Marched them along,
            Fifty score strong,
    Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!

          Fifty score strong! Fifty score strong!
          Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!

Other Kentish men of note associated directly with the Old Navy were Sir
Thomas Spert, founder of Trinity House, and captain of the _Harry Grace
à Dieu_ when Henry the Eighth crossed the Straits of Dover in her to
the Field of the Cloth of Gold; Sir William Hervey, of Kidbrooke, “who
greatly distinguished himself in boarding one of the vessels composing
the Spanish Armada,” and was raised to the peerage as Lord Hervey; old
Captain Dick Fogg, of Repton, near Ashford, captain under Charles the
First of the tenth whelp and the _Victory_ and of other men-of-war of
note; Kit Fogg, his son, who fought for England in half a score of
sea-fights under Charles the Second and down to the time of Queen Anne;
Christopher Gunman, a bold fireship and frigate captain in the Dutch
wars, captain of the Duke of York’s flagship at Solebay, who later on
nearly drowned the future James the Second; George Legge, afterwards the
Earl of Dartmouth, whose valour in battle at Solebay made his fortune, a
member of a Kent county family of long descent; two notable Commodores,
two St. Lo’s of Northfleet; Commodore Boys of the _Luxborough_ galley;
Sir Piercey Brett, who as a lieutenant went round the world with Anson,
and lived to be one of the most distinguished officers of his day; Sir
Thomas Boulden Thompson, who fought under Nelson at Teneriffe, at the
Nile, and at Copenhagen. These are a few names taken at random.

Sir Sidney Smith, the “Hero of Acre,” the man who made Bonaparte, as the
Emperor himself put it, “miss his destiny,” was of Kentish birth and
family, and learned his “three R’s” at Tunbridge School; and it was to
Lord Barham, as First Lord of the Admiralty, that Nelson reported himself
in September, 1805, when he volunteered to shorten his leave at home and
go out at once to fight the enemy at Trafalgar.

It was Kent, too, that gave England Captain John Harvey—one of the
Harveys of Eastrey, a family that for generations had sent its sons
into the Navy—captain of the _Brunswick_ on Lord Howe’s famous day,
the “Glorious First of June,” 1794, who fell mortally wounded in close
action with the French _Vengeur_. When the two ships first collided, the
master of the _Brunswick_ proposed to cut the _Vengeur_ clear. “No,”
answered Captain Harvey; “we’ve got her, and we’ll keep her!” After he
received his mortal wound he refused to let himself be carried off the
quarter-deck. He dragged himself down to the cockpit, saying as he went
off the deck, “Remember my last words: the colours of the _Brunswick_
must never be struck!” A brother, Henry Harvey, was the admiral whose
name is still to be met with on old tavern signboards here and there
in East Kent. Henry Harvey, captain of the _Ramillies_, came to his
brother’s aid on the 1st of June, and with three terrific broadsides
finished off the _Vengeur_ for the _Brunswick_, amid resounding cheers
from the _Brunswick’s_ men, and giving occasion to an officer in another
ship who was looking on to improvise on King David: “Behold how good and
joyful a thing it is for brethren to fight together in unity!”

It was this same Henry Harvey who, as a rear-admiral, later in the Great
War (in 1797), took Trinidad. That the conquest proved an easy business
was not his fault. The Commander-in-Chief of the Spanish squadron at
Trinidad, Admiral Apodoca, when he saw Admiral Harvey coming, without
clearing for action or firing a shot set fire to his ships and escaped
ashore. He took horse and galloped off, and presented himself, excited
and panting with his exertions, before the Governor of the island,
General Chacon. “I have burnt my ships, sir,” he burst in with, “in case
they should fall into the power of the English.” “Burnt them?” exclaimed
the astonished Governor; “destroyed them! Have you saved nothing?” “Oh,
yes I have!” Apodoca replied. “Yes I have! I have! I have saved”—drawing
a carved and painted wooden image, some fifteen inches long, from under
his cloak as he spoke—“my flagship’s patron saint—I have saved San Juan
de Compostella!” That Apodoca’s flagship was the _San Vincente_, and that
there was no _San Juan de Compostella_ on the Spanish Navy List at the
time, are details the story does not concern itself with.

       *       *       *       *       *

Yet another interesting connection between Kent and the sea service of
bygone times is this. H.M.S. _Kent’s_ name is not the only man-of-war
name associated with the county that has figured in the fighting days
of old. No fewer than eighteen other man-of-war names connected with
the county of Kent have from time to time been borne on the roll of
the British fleet. It was on board a _Canterbury_ that a notable naval
officer of the earlier part of the eighteenth century, Captain George
Walton, penned words which have been quoted over and over again as a
masterpiece of conciseness. He had been in pursuit of a Spanish squadron,
and on his return, as most of us have read, reported as follows:—

         “_To Admiral Sir George Byng, Commander-in-Chief._

    “Sir,

    “We have taken and destroyed all the Spanish ships and vessels
    which were upon the coast, as per margin.

                           “I am, etc.,

                                                     “GEORGE WALTON.

                       “Canterbury, off Syracusa, _August 16, 1718_.

    “One of 60 guns, one of 54, one of 40, one of 24—taken; one of
    54, two of 40, one of 30 guns, with a fireship and two bomb
    vessels—burnt.”

As a fact, unfortunately, Captain Walton’s “dispatch” was written
in quite another way. The captain of the _Canterbury_ really sent
the admiral a letter of two pages. What is passed off as his whole
“dispatch,” is actually only the concluding sentence of the letter,
excerpted and dressed up. An unscrupulous admiralty official, for the
purposes of a book on the campaign, manipulated the letter and printed
its last paragraph by itself as the entire despatch. Historians following
one another have since then simply copied Secretary Corbett.

Our first _Sandwich_ broke the French line at the battle of La Hogue, and
lost her gallant captain in doing it. Another bore Rodney’s flag in five
battles—two with the Spaniards and three with the French—and was at the
first relief of Gibraltar during the Great Siege. Our first _Dover_ was
present at the taking of Jamaica. Another won fame as Captain Cloudesley
Shovell’s ship. Commodore Trunnion served on board another _Dover_, if
Smollett spoke by the card in making him express a wish to be buried “in
the red jacket which I wore when I boarded the _Renummy_.” Apart from
the taking of Louis the Fifteenth’s frigate _Renommée_, if we count in
other French and Spanish frigates and privateers taken, our various
_Dovers_, in their time, must have brought home captured flags enough
to deck the town out from end to end. All, of course, have long since
rotted out of existence. People in old times set little store by such
trophies. “What are you going to do with all these flags?” a friend once
asked of a frigate captain who, in his barge, gaily decorated from bows
to stern with the colours of ships taken during the commission, was being
pulled in from Spithead to land at the old Sally Port, Portsmouth. “Do
with them?” came the reply. “Why, take ’em home and hang ’em on the trees
round father’s garden.”

It was a _Chatham_ whose twenty-four pounders, one May morning, just a
hundred and forty-eight years ago, gave the Royal Navy our first, and the
original, “Saucy” _Arethusa_. One _Maidstone_ fought with Blake at Santa
Cruz de Teneriffe. Another, acting as “guide of the fleet,” led Hawke to
victory on that stormy November afternoon among the reefs of Quiberon
Bay, which the French Navy, pillorying the memory of its unfortunate
admiral, has ever since called “la journée de M. Conflans.”

A _Greenwich_ fought at La Hogue, and was one of Benbow’s squadron in his
last fight. One _Deptford_ was also at La Hogue, and another with Byng
off Minorca, where the _Deptford_, at any rate, did her duty. A _Romney_,
in Queen Anne’s war, after a career of distinction, went down with all on
board to westward of St. Agnes, Scilly, on the night of the catastrophe
to Sir Cloudesley Shovell. _Rochester_, and _Medway_, and _Sheerness_,
are also man-of-war names that have attaching to them interesting
memories of the fighting days of old, as have too, in one way or other,
in differing degrees, the remaining names of the group, _Woolwich_ and
_Faversham_, _Eltham_ and _Deal Castle_, _Margate_, _Queenborough_, and
_Folkestone_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Our modern-day cruiser the _Kent_ has her own story also as a man-of-war,
a notable and interesting historic reputation of her own, to uphold.
This summary will give its points, the “battle honours” which the _Kent_
would be entitled to bear on her ship’s flag were our ships authorized to
follow the practice of the army in regard to regimental flags.

    H.M.S. _KENT_.

    Blake’s victory over Tromp off Portland                 Feb.,  1653
    Blake and Monk’s victory off Lowestoft                  June,  1653
    Monk’s victory over Tromp off Camperdown                July,  1653
    Blake’s bombardment of Tunis                            April, 1655
    Duke of York’s victory off the North Foreland           June,  1665
    Rupert and Albemarle—“The Four Days’ Fight”             June,  1666
    Rupert and Albemarle—“The St. James’s Day Fight”        July,  1666
    Battle off Cape Barfleur and Attack at La Hogue         May,   1692
    Rooke’s battle in Vigo Bay                              Oct.,  1702
    Capture of a French convoy off Granville                July,  1703
    Battle of Malaga[5]                                     Aug.,  1704
    Siege of Barcelona                                      Sept., 1705
    Action with Duguay Trouin                               April, 1709
    Capture of the French 60-gun ship _Superbe_             July,  1710
    Sir George Byng’s victory off Messina                   July,  1718
    Relief of Gibraltar                                     Feb.,  1727
    Capture of the Spanish 74-gun ship _Princessa_          April, 1740
    Hawke’s victory off Finisterre                          Oct.,  1747
    Taking of Geriah                                        Feb.,  1756
    Recapture of Calcutta and bombardment of Chandernagore  Feb.,  1757
    Alexandria                                              Mar.,  1801
    Service with Nelson off Toulon                                 1803-4
    In the Mediterranean                                           1807-12

A peculiarly interesting memento of the _Kent_ in connection with one
of these battles is in existence. It refers to the part played by the
_Kent_ of Charles the Second’s navy just before the battle of June, 1666,
“The Four Days’ Fight,” in which Monk, Duke of Albemarle, during Prince
Rupert’s temporary absence with a third of the fleet in the Channel,
without waiting for Rupert to rejoin, rashly flung his weaker force on
De Ruyter with the whole of the Dutch fleet at hand and brought about a
general engagement.

The _Kent_ had been sent off on the 27th of May on a scouting cruise
between “Blackness” (the old name for Cape Grisnez) and Ostend. Late in
the evening of the 30th of May the following letter was handed to the
Duke of Albemarle from the captain of the _Kent_, sent across by a Dutch
ketch that the _Kent_ had taken:—

    “May it please yr Grace,

    “This morning being off Gravelines in chase of a small ship and
    a ketch belonging to Newport, as they pretend, whom I have sent
    into the Downs to your Grace, I mett with a Swede who came from
    Amsterdam on Sunday last in his ballast, bound for Bordeaux,
    who relates that 75 sayle of the Flemish Fleet sett sayle
    out of the Texel the 21st present, and 28 more from Zealand,
    leaving 6 ships behind them, whose men they tooke out to man
    the rest of the Fleet, & stoode away to the Northwest, which as
    my duty binds me I have thought fit to acquaint yr Grace with:
    & humbly kissing your hands I remain

          “Yr Grace’s most humble servant to be commanded,

                                                      “THOS. EWENS.

    “From aboard his Matⁱᵉˢ shipp _Kent_: this 30th May, 1666.”

The captain of the _Kent’s_ letter was considered so important that
Albemarle at once sent it off by express to the Admiralty. It is still
in existence; a stained sheet of yellowish paper with the writing crabbed
and not easily decipherable, and brown with age and faded. The letter,
with Albemarle’s covering note, was found many years afterwards among
some correspondence that had belonged to King James the Second, just as
the letter had been filed on its receipt at the Admiralty in 1666, when
James, Duke of York, was Lord High Admiral. It is endorsed:—

“For his Grace the Duke of Albemarle, aboard the _Royall Charles_ this ⸺
d.dd. In the Downes.”

Albemarle’s covering letter to the Admiralty bears the curiously scrawled
endorsements of the various postmasters on the Dover Road as they passed
the courier along on his hurried journey up to London:—“Received ye
packett at Canterbury, att past 5 in ye Morneing, by Mee, Edw Wheiston”;
“Sittingborne, past 8 in ye morning, by mee Wm Webb”; “Rochester, past
ten Before noon, Wm Brooker”; “Gravesend at nowne, Hen White.”

Albemarle was roughly handled and had to beat a retreat for the mouth
of the Thames—fighting a rear-guard action, skilfully conducted and
gallantly contested. Rupert joined him just in time to avert disaster,
but one of the English flagships, the _Prince_, grounded at the last
moment on the Galloper Shoal, and was taken by the Dutch and burned as
she lay. This was just as the _Kent_ rejoined the flag, in time for the
last day’s battle.

Cromwell, it is curious to note, first gave the name Kent to the
navy for a man-of-war; one November day of the year 1652. On that
day—Saturday, the 6th of November—an application from the Admiralty
Committee as to the names for four frigates, two of which were to be
launched in the following week, was laid before the Lord General Cromwell
and the Commonwealth Council of State. The reply was that the following
would be the names: _Kentish_, _Essex_, _Hampshire_, and _Sussex_. So
a State Paper, now among the national archives in the Record Office,
explicitly states. In their selection the Council made thereby a new
departure, and introduced a set of man-of-war names entirely different
from any before known at sea. The little group of four ships named in
November, 1652, leads the way at the head of the long series of British
men-of-war which have borne the names of our counties in battle on the
sea with distinction on so many historic days.

Why the form “Kentish” was preferred to “Kent” for the first of the
four ships, is a matter that is not quite obvious. The name, of course,
may have been appointed for no particular reason. The four names chosen
were names of four seaboard counties, locally interested in maritime
affairs, and it may well have been thought that to call one of the ships
the “Kentish” was much the same thing as calling her the “Kent.” On
the other hand, there may have been in addition something behind, in
regard to the name appointed. Everybody knows, _teste_ Lord Macaulay,
why the Puritan authorities put down bull-baiting; not because it hurt
the bull, but because it pleased the people. The Puritans rather liked,
it is to be feared, making themselves deliberately offensive to those
who saw otherwise to them. It is certainly curious, if not significant,
that at the Restoration the name “Kentish” disappears forthwith from
off the official Navy List, and “Kent” appears instead. This was just
at the time, too, that certain distinctly obnoxious names, bestowed
on men-of-war by the Puritan authorities, as, for instance, _Naseby_,
_Marston Moor_, _Worcester_, _Torrington_, _Newbury_, _Dunbar_, _Tredagh_
(the vernacular for _Drogheda_), were replaced by names such as _Royal
Charles_, _York_, _Dunkirk_, _Dreadnought_, _Revenge_, _Henry_, and
_Resolution_.

Was any reference intended in the form “Kentish,” as originally appointed
for the new ship of 1652, to the “Kentish Rising” of 1648, and its hard
fate under the sword blades of Fairfax’s troopers? Was the name designed
as a reminder to the Royalists of South-Eastern England? Was it meant as
a memento of the penalty that had been paid by so many who, only four
years before, had buckled on sword and ridden forth so blithely to the
county marching song:—

      Kentish men, keep your King,
      Long swords and brave hearts bring,
    Down with the rebels, and slit their crop ears!
      Hell now is wanting rogues,
      Send there the canting dogges,
    Ride to the scurry, my Kent cavaliers!
      God and our King for grace,
      Leave now your wives’ embrace,
    Up and avenge all their insults for years!
      Ironsides! Who’s afear?
      Pack ’em to Lucifer,
    Ride to the scurry, my Kent cavaliers!

The name “Kentish,” if introduced with such intention, would help in
serving to recall in the stately mansions of the squires of Kent, and in
many a humble yeoman’s home as well, why there were vacant places round
the family board.

       *       *       *       *       *

A brief comparison between Cromwell’s _Kentish_ and her lineal successor
of our own day, His Majesty’s ship the _Kent_, may be of interest in
conclusion.

The _Kentish_ was of 601 tons burthen, 187 feet in length of hull, 32½
feet beam, and 15 feet draught. Our modern _Kent_ is 440 feet between
perpendiculars (463½ feet over all), 66 feet beam, and 24½ feet depth.
The first _Kent_, under full sail, might perhaps do nine knots at her
best speed; the present _Kent_, with her engines of 22,000 horse power,
has done twenty-three knots an hour. The first _Kent’s_ guns, forty in
number, were identical with the guns that Queen Elizabeth’s fleet carried
when it fought the Spanish Armada; the same kind of guns, practically,
that Henry the Eighth’s _Mary Rose_ had on board when she capsized at
Spithead. The same quaint old mediæval style of nomenclature, indeed,
was still in vogue for the _Kentish’s_ guns. They were called culverins
(18-pounders), demi-culverins (9-pounders), and sakers (6-pounders). The
heaviest of them, the culverins, weighed 48 cwt. each, and were 5½ inches
in calibre. The _Kentish’s_ guns also were of brass, specially cast for
her; refounded, for the most part, according to an existing Ordnance
order, out of condemned pieces and captured Royalist cannon. According
to a curious manuscript list of the ship’s equipment, the _Kentish_ when
ready for sea had on board as her establishment of war stores—908 round
shot, 468 double-headed shot, 100 barrels of powder, 60 muskets; and for
close-quarter fighting, 7 blunderbusses, 60 pikes, and 40 hatchets. The
modern _Kent_ carries as her main armament 6-inch quick-firing steel
guns, each firing 100-pounder shot and shell, and able to discharge,
each piece in half a minute, heavier metal than the whole broadside (270
lb.) of the original _Kentish_. The old ship, of course, was built of
wood, oak timber; most of which, as a curious fact, seems to have been
cut on the confiscated estates of delinquent Royalists in the County of
Kent. The new _Kent_, built of steel, and with 4-inch Krupp armour along
her water line, cost to complete for sea upwards of three-quarters of a
million sterling; the _Kentish_ frigate, guns and all, cost £5000, or in
present-day money from £20,000 to £25,000.

That the gallant “Kents” of His Majesty’s navy at the present hour
are quite ready to give a satisfactory account of themselves before
the enemy, should occasion arise, may be judged from their firing
record in the “gunlayers competition” for 1907. With the 12-pounder,
the average per gun for the whole ship was 11·18 hits a minute. Petty
Officer Nash achieved fourteen hits in fourteen rounds, the run, during
which the score was made, being only of fifty-five seconds duration.
In his fifty-five seconds Able Seaman Ramsden fired fifteen rounds,
the time taken to load and fire each time being just over three and a
half seconds, and he hit the target thirteen times. During the light
quick-firing gunlayers’ test, the _Kent_ fired, in the short space of
fifty-five seconds, 107 rounds, scoring 83 hits, from her 12-pounders;
and 42 rounds, scoring 35 hits, from her 3-pounders. Some of the guns hit
the target with every shot they fired, and the loading was wonderfully
smart, averaging 15 rounds per gun for the fifty-five seconds.

The _Kent_ of King Edward’s fleet was laid down at Portsmouth Dockyard
on the 12th of February, 1900, as a first-class armoured cruiser, and
launched on Wednesday, the 6th of March, 1901, Lady Hotham, the wife of
the Admiral Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, naming the ship in the
orthodox way, with wine grown and produced within the British Empire,
and specially presented for the ceremony by the Agent General of South
Australia. The _Kent_ was the first to be launched of our modern set of
County Cruisers. She was also the first to hoist the pennant and join the
fleet at sea.

[Illustration: THE SCENE OF THE OPERATIONS UNDER ADMIRAL WATSON AND CLIVE

[From Major James Rennell’s “Bengal Atlas,” published in 1781. Reproduced
by the courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society.]]




III

THE AVENGERS OF THE BLACK HOLE:—WHAT THE NAVY DID FOR CLIVE

    The fathers in glory do sleep
      That gathered with him to the fight,
    But the sons shall eternally keep
      The tablet of gratitude bright.


This year, 1907, has witnessed the coming round of the hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of British rule in India. It
has recalled to memory too, among some of us at any rate, the name of
one of the great Englishmen of history, Clive, and how he set his hand
to the work which, in its ultimate outcome, placed the realms of the
Great Mogul beneath the sovereignty of the British flag. The part that
the Royal Navy took side by side with Clive and his soldiers is perhaps
hardly as fully recognized as it should be, considering all that it
meant. For that reason, among others, the fine story of what took place,
of the help that our bluejackets of that time gave when the situation
was most critical, finds its place here. The navy had its own _rôle_ to
take in the stirring drama, and it fulfilled it—completely, faultlessly,
resistlessly. Without the navy—the squadron then on duty in Indian
waters—Clive would have been powerless, and the golden hour for England,
with its opportunities, would have had to be let go by.

In the summer of 1757 the British East Indies Squadron had not long
arrived in the Bay of Bengal. It had come out from England four or five
months previously in anticipation of the outbreak of a war with France.
After carrying out operations against the pirate strongholds of the
Malabar coast, it had gone round to take post off Madras, at that time
the most important of the British settlements in the East. It was in the
neighbourhood of Fort St. George when, absolutely as a bolt from the
blue, came the news of the catastrophe at Calcutta, which led to the
tragedy of the Black Hole.

At that moment news was expected by every ship from England that war had
been declared with France, and part of the British squadron was on the
watch down the coast, off St. David’s. It seemed quite possible, indeed,
that the first intelligence of war might be the appearance on the scene
of a French squadron from Mauritius, cleared for action. All were keenly
on the alert, almost from the first arrival of the British force on the
coast. There was no means of knowing whether the French were not already
on their way, and every precaution was taken against surprise. A daily
masthead look-out was kept for six weeks, the ships being maintained in
readiness every night to clear for action at short notice.

So little was trouble from the north expected, that month of July,
1757, that an expeditionary force under Clive to assist the Subahdar of
Hyderabad in his quarrel with M. Bussy was on the point of setting out.

To help the Subahdar a force of three hundred European soldiers and
fifteen hundred Sepoys of the Madras army was told off, and to counteract
the consequent weakening of the garrison of Madras, Admiral Watson, the
Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies Squadron, was requested to bring
his squadron higher up the coast so as to keep guard in the immediate
vicinity of Fort St. George.

The Admiral did as he was asked, after which, just as the Hyderabad
column was on the point of marching off, the blow from Bengal fell.

In the second week of July a letter came from Governor Drake at Calcutta
with the news that the new Nawab-Vizier of Bengal, Suraj-u-daulah,
had seized the Honourable East India Company’s factory at Cossimbazar
and made the officials there prisoners. There was great anxiety at
Madras, and Major Kilpatrick, of the East India Company’s service, with
three companies of European troops, was at once sent north, on board a
Company’s ship, to render what assistance he could. The Bengal military
establishment at that time comprised only five hundred men—two hundred
Europeans and three hundred Sepoys. The dispatch of the soldiers for
Calcutta delayed the start of the expedition for Hyderabad; and then,
just as marching orders were about to be given for the second time, on
the 5th of August, a second letter from Bengal arrived.

To the amazement and consternation of all, they learnt that Calcutta had
fallen. Suraj-u-daulah had swooped down on the settlement with seventy
thousand men, with cannon and four hundred elephants, and had captured
Fort William. Governor Drake sent the message from a place called Fulta,
a riverside village in the Sunderbunds, some forty miles below Calcutta.
The garrison of Fort William, he said, had made a defence for five days,
after which, ammunition failing, he and the higher officials had taken
refuge on board what ships there were in the Hooghly and retreated with
them to Fulta. The women were safe on board the ships, said the Governor,
but all were in the utmost distress and great danger. They appealed for
help at the earliest possible moment. Not a word was said of any one
being left behind in Fort William; not a syllable about the tragedy of
the Black Hole. News of that apparently had not yet reached Fulta. But
without the crowning tragedy, the news, as it reached Madras, was bad
enough. It came with stunning effect: “A blow as filled us all with
inexpressible consternation,” to use the words of Dr. Ives, the surgeon
of Admiral Watson’s flagship, the _Kent_.

To recover Calcutta and take vengeance on the Nawab were the thoughts
uppermost in every one’s mind at Madras. A sloop-of-war, the
_Kingfisher_, was hastily dispatched northward on the day after the
receipt of the news to render assistance to the ships with the refugees
on board, which would probably be found lying weather-bound in the
Hooghly. The troops for Hyderabad were ordered to stand fast. An urgent
message was sent to Fort St. David to summon Clive to the Presidency.
Clive hurried to Madras, and with Governor Pigott and the Council
discussed the situation.

Discussion, however, soon disclosed a difference of opinion as to what
should be done. Some of the leading people at Madras were nervous for
themselves. Certain members of the Council objected to any weakening of
the garrison. War with France, they said, was imminent. It was quite
possible indeed, according to late advices from Hyderabad, that the
Subahdar and M. Bussy might settle their quarrel and combine against
Madras. With that possibility before them, was it wise to strip Madras
entirely of its garrison, now that the worst had already happened in
Bengal? The Council met day after day, and adjourned without coming to
any decision. Fortunately in the end the bolder spirits prevailed. By
a majority the Council decided to equip an expedition and send help to
Bengal as soon as the weather—it was the monsoon season—would let the
expedition start.

It was agreed, after a consultation with Admiral Watson, that Colonel
Adlercron’s regiment (39th Foot) and 1500 Sepoys should be shipped on
board the men-of-war and some Indiamen then in the Roads, and proceed to
Balasore, at the mouth of the Hooghly. There the vessels then housing
the Calcutta refugees would transfer them on board the three larger
men-of-war, the flagship _Kent_, the _Cumberland_, and the _Tyger_, which
ships, it was held, drew too much water to cross the shoals at the mouth
of the Hooghly. The Indiamen and the Calcutta ships would then transport
the soldiers up the river and recapture Calcutta, escorted and assisted
by three smaller men-of-war, the _Salisbury_, the _Bridgewater_, and the
_Kingfisher_.

These arrangements had all been completed when something totally
unexpected happened. A Bombay runner arrived with dispatches from the
Admiralty, sent overland, recalling the whole of Admiral Watson’s
squadron to England at once. “It was,” as Dr. Ives describes, “a terrible
blow.” But the Admiral proved equal to the situation. He held an informal
consultation in his cabin with his second in command, Rear-Admiral
Pocock, and Flag-Captain Speke. Taking all responsibility on himself, the
Admiral decided to postpone his departure until after the expedition to
Bengal had been successfully carried through. An emergency had arisen,
he wrote in his reply to England, which the Admiralty could not have
foreseen, which imperatively required the continued presence of the
squadron on the station. Then Admiral Watson went ashore to communicate
his dispatches to the Governor in Council. His opening intimation that
the men-of-war had been recalled created, in the words of Dr. Ives,
“blank consternation.” It would mean, as the Council formally resolved,
“the total ruin of the Company’s affairs in the Indies.” They expressed
themselves as helpless without the Navy, and were overwhelmingly
grateful when they learned that the Admiral had decided, on his own
responsibility, to disobey his orders.

At the last moment, though, there was further delay; it was over a
question of military etiquette. Who should command the expedition—Colonel
Adlercron, a King’s officer, or Lieutenant-Colonel Clive, a Company’s
officer, who had local rank as colonel? There was further wrangling over
this matter, and valuable time was lost, until it was finally settled
that the supreme command of both sea and land forces should be vested
in Vice-Admiral Watson as senior commissioned officer in the East, with
Clive in charge of the troops—both King’s and Company’s.

The expedition finally set sail on the 16th of October, two months and
ten days after the news of the Black Hole first reached Madras. It
comprised five men-of-war—the _Kent_, _Cumberland_, _Tyger_, _Salisbury_,
_Bridgewater_, and the _Blaze_, a fireship; three Company’s Indiamen, and
two country ships. All the ships carried soldiers and army stores.

Vice-Admiral Charles Watson, the Commander-in-Chief in the East Indies,
was a capable and zealous leader. He was a naval officer of the very best
type, and in addition, it was admitted on all hands, a noble-hearted,
considerate English gentleman. He had been very seriously ill while on
the way out from England—so ill indeed that, on learning soon after his
first arrival at Bombay that there was a possibility of the expected
war with the French not breaking out for some time, he had applied to
go home again at once on sick leave. When he reached Madras he learnt
officially that war was imminent, and he wrote off at once cancelling
his application. If that were so there was no going home now for Admiral
Watson. Ill as he was, he would stay out to fight the French once more.
It was characteristic of the man—of the captain of the _Dragon_ in
1743—who, as the Navy of those days well remembered, when detached by
Admiral Mathews from off Toulon, as a special favour to a smart officer,
to cruise off Cadiz just when the treasure galleons from the Spanish Main
were expected to arrive, with additional instructions to go on afterwards
to Lisbon and carry the merchants’ treasure thence to England—the most
lucrative employment a naval man could possibly look for—deliberately, on
hearing at Gibraltar that a battle was likely to take place off Toulon,
turned his back on a sum of prize-money that would have made him wealthy
for life, saying, “He thought his ship would be wanted with the fleet.”
The old heroic spirit of a captain who had been specially mentioned in
dispatches for gallantry in every battle that he fought in—by Mathews off
Toulon, and in 1747 by both Anson and Hawke—overcame the bodily weakness
of an invalid.

It took six weeks to reach Balasore Roads, a distance of only seven
hundred miles on a direct course. Owing to the delay at Madras they had,
as the phrase went, “lost the passage.” With the south-west monsoon,
which held from May to the middle of September, it took ordinarily from
ten days to a fortnight to sail from Madras to Calcutta. Now they had
the north-east monsoon to face—head winds all the way. It was not until
the first week of December that the leading ships of the squadron were
able to reach Balasore. They had sailed, with the wind, according to
the flagship’s log, at west-north-west. Next day the wind shifted to
north-east, dead against them. The strong current in the Bay of Bengal,
which at that time of year sets down the Coromandel coast at one to five
knots an hour, swept the squadron down until they came within sight of
Point San Pedro, in Ceylon, thirteen leagues east of Trincomalee. On some
days there were dead calms, when they barely made from three to five
miles’ progress in twenty-four hours. Between the 28th of October and
the 5th of November only six leagues’ advance was made altogether. Rough
weather set in, during which the _Salisbury_ sprang a dangerous leak,
and the whole squadron had to shorten sail and stand by for a whole day
until the leak had been found and stopped. Finally, a storm scattered the
squadron far and wide. The _Kent_ and _Tyger_, the two leading ships,
arrived at Balasore Roads on the 3rd of December by themselves. The
rest of the squadron were at that time miles astern, trying to weather
Palmyras Point. Two of the ships, indeed, never got to Balasore at all;
they had to bear away until they drifted right round Ceylon and anchored
at Bombay.

At Balasore Admiral Watson got fresh news about what had been happening
in Bengal. He now heard, for the first time, details of the taking of
Fort William and of the grim tragedy of the Black Hole. Two English
pilots who boarded the flagship told the story. The attack, said the
men, opened on June 15th, Tuesday, and after a vain attempt to hold
the gaol and Court House and a small redoubt in front of the city, the
garrison had been driven into the fort. There it was found they had
only ammunition for three days’ fighting. The women and children were
thereupon sent on board the ships in the river, lying off the Maidan,
and in the confusion that followed their departure, Governor Drake and
most of the leading civilians—according to the pilots—deserted their
posts, and stole off on board ship to join the women, after which they
induced the skippers to weigh anchor and drop down the river, leaving the
garrison cut off and without means of escape. These under Mr. Holwell,
a member of the Council, had fought on gallantly, keeping the enemy
off until the afternoon of Sunday the 20th, when, being at their last
cartridge, they beat a parley. While they were talking from the walls,
the enemy by treachery got possession of one of the fort gates (that in
the rear), rushed the guard, and compelled the garrison to surrender
at discretion. That night the prisoners, a hundred and seventy-five
in number, were crammed all together into the Black Hole, whence next
morning only sixteen were left alive. Of the sixteen, Mr. Holwell and
Mr. Burdett, a writer, with two others, had been heavily ironed and sent
to the Nawab’s camp. Such was the tale told to Admiral Watson.

The refugees at Fulta, added the pilots, were in a deplorable state;
fever-stricken and short of food; in terror of their lives; living, some
in tents on shore, some on board the ships in the river. The Nawab, it
was reported, had withdrawn to Moorshedabad, but his general, Manikchand,
was at Calcutta with nearly four thousand men. He was busy throwing up
batteries at various points along the river bank to bar any approach by
ships.

Admiral Watson, on hearing that, made up his mind to try and get up the
Hooghly to Fulta with the _Kent_ at once, without waiting for the rest of
the squadron or the troops.

The pilots, however, made objection to carrying the flagship into the
river. It was impossible, they said, to get so big a ship over the
Braces, the belt of shoals across the mouth of the Hooghly on the
Balasore side, with the tides as they were. They doubted, indeed, if it
could be done at all, even at spring tides. On the usual “crossing track”
over the Western Brace, the deepest channel, they said, was only three
fathoms. But Admiral Watson had made up his mind to try. On the pilots
finally declining to assist in taking the flagship into the river Captain
Speke, the captain of the _Kent_, volunteered to make the attempt. He
had been up the Hooghly once before, and he could, he believed, find a
channel deep enough to carry the _Kent_ over the Braces. The _Tyger_ was
to remain behind to bring on the rest of the squadron on their arrival.

The flagship set out, after a week’s further detention at Balasore owing
to strong north easterly winds, her boats towing her. Captain Speke
navigated the ship, and with such success that a channel was found
through the Western Brace that gave four fathoms of water at half-tide.
It proved sufficient to float the ship over safely. On the 12th of
December, they were at anchor off Kedgeree (Khichri), sixty-seven miles
from Fort William by water. After this the wind changed to westerly and
the _Kent_ was able to work up the estuary under sail.

Fulta was reached on the 15th, and the rescue of the fugitives from
Calcutta effected. Major Kilpatrick and his men were found there, and the
_Kingfisher_. The flagship herself had on board two hundred and fifty
men of the 39th Foot under Captain Eyre Coote, afterwards the celebrated
General Sir Eyre Coote. There was also a detachment of Sepoys, who had
arrived two days before by the _Protector_, a Bombay cruiser, which had
touched at Madras just after the squadron left there, and had since got
ahead of them. At Fulta Governor Drake, the ex-Governor of Calcutta, came
on board to see the Admiral.

The _Tyger_ reached Fulta on the 16th, and the _Salisbury_ and the rest
of the men-of-war and the Indiamen with the troops on board, between
then and the 26th. The _Cumberland_ and the _Marlborough_ Indiaman were
still missing.

The tides, meanwhile, were too low to allow any of the ships to cross the
sand-bar above Fulta and proceed further up the Hooghly until after the
27th.

Admiral Watson used the interval to send a letter to Suraj-u-daulah. He
wrote courteously, but firmly, demanding the immediate restoration of
Calcutta and compensation for property looted and destroyed. The letter
was sent off on the 18th of December, but no reply came. None had arrived
ten days later, when the forward movement up the river began. The _Kent_,
_Tyger_, _Salisbury_, _Bridgewater_, and _Kingfisher_ comprised the ships
told off for the recovery of Calcutta. They carried up with them eight
hundred soldiers and twelve hundred Sepoys—all that were available in the
absence of the detachments on board the belated ships.

The first fight took place at Baj-Baj, or Budge-Budge, as the name was
spelled by the English, where a fort on the right bank of the Hooghly
threatened to bar their passage. Owing to the narrow and tortuous channel
the ships could only move up in line ahead. They sailed with the _Tyger_
leading, and the flagship next. The Nawab’s troops were reported to be in
force at Budge-Budge, which mounted eighteen 24-pounders, and was built
with bastions and curtains and a wet ditch.

Clive and his Sepoys were put ashore at Mayapore, ten miles below
Budge-Budge, to act against Manikchand, whose army had taken post in the
neighbourhood of the fort. Manikchand’s men, though, made only a poor
stand, and fell back, their position being turned by the steady advance
of the _Tyger_ and _Kent_.

The ships anchored that night, and proceeded next morning, the enemy on
shore at the same time falling back before them on Budge-Budge.

Between seven and eight o’clock, as the _Tyger_ and _Kent_ rounded into
the reach in front of the fort, the Nawab’s gunners opened a brisk
cannonade.

The two ships took no notice, beyond firing a few guns to cover their
approach and shroud themselves in smoke, until they had come abreast of
the ramparts. Then, at three minutes past eight by the _Kent’s_ log, both
ships let go anchor, and as the _Kent_ ran up the red flag at the fore,
the first broadside thundered out. The battle lasted for an hour and a
half before the nearest ships astern, the _Salisbury_ and _Bridgewater_
could join in. About the same time Clive’s Sepoys got again into action
with Manikchand’s troops on the further side of Budge-Budge. Captain
Coote and men of the 39th Foot on board the _Kent_ were now landed to
reinforce Clive, while the navy dealt with the fort, the key of the
position. The Nawab’s gunners for their part fought their pieces bravely,
and the tough chunam and brick of the walls of Budge-Budge stood four
hours more hard battering. By half-past one, however, the breastwork
rampart facing the river had been almost smashed down all along its
length, and the guns there all either dismounted or disabled.

The Nawab’s troops on shore had by this time begun to draw off, and
the action slackened down to a casual musketry fire here and there.
The fort, however, still held out, and a sharp fusillade came from its
walls. Apparently the garrison were looking for Manikchand’s return to
their relief. Admiral Watson on that sent for Clive, and a Council of
War was held on board the _Kent_. It was decided to storm Budge-Budge at
daybreak next morning. Clive’s soldiers were given the afternoon to rest
after their work of the past twenty-four hours. To assist in the storming
a naval battalion, made up of an officer, two midshipmen, and forty
men from each of the men-of-war, was landed, with two of the _Kent’s_
9-pounders which were to batter in the main gate.

As things turned out there was no need of the storming party. That
evening, while the troops were bivouacking before the fort, a sailor from
the _Kent_ took Budge-Budge all by himself. The story is best told in the
words of Dr. Ives, our correspondent on the spot:

“All was now quiet in the camp,” he begins, “and we on board the
ships, which lay at their anchors but a small distance from the shore,
had entertained thoughts of making use of this interval to refresh
ourselves with an hour or two of sleep, but suddenly a loud and universal
acclamation was heard from the shore, and soon afterwards an account was
brought to the Admiral that the place had been taken by storm.”

Great was the astonishment on board at the news, and “great joy” as Dr.
Ives relates, “the more so as it was quite unexpected.” Then, as it would
seem, when they heard what had actually taken place, everybody affected
to be scandalized rather than pleased. “When the particular circumstances
that ushered in this success were related,” continues the worthy surgeon
of the _Kent_, “our exultation was greatly abated, because we found that
the rules so indispensably necessary in all military exploits had been
disregarded in the present instance, and therefore could not help looking
upon the person who had the principal hand in this victory rather as an
object of chastisement than of applause.”

This, to resume with the Doctor, is how Budge-Budge fell:

“During the tranquil state of the camp, one Strahan, a common sailor,
belonging to the _Kent_, having been just served with grog (arrack mixed
with water), had his spirits too much elated to think of taking any rest:
he therefore strayed by himself towards the fort, and imperceptibly
got under the walls. Being advanced thus far without interruption, he
took it into his head to scale it at a breach that had been made by the
cannon of the ships, and having luckily gotten upon the bastion, he
there discovered several Moors[6] sitting upon the platform, at whom
he flourished his cutlass and fired his pistol, and then, after giving
three loud huzzas, cried out—“The place is mine.” The Moorish soldiers
immediately attacked him, and he defended himself with incomparable
resolution, but in the rencounter had the misfortune to have the blade
of his cutlass cut in two, about a foot from the hilt. This mischance,
however, did not happen until he was near being supported by two or
three other sailors who had accidentally straggled to the same part of
the fort on which the other had mounted. They, hearing Strahan’s huzzas,
immediately scaled the breach likewise, and echoing the triumphant
sound roused the whole army, who, taking the alarm, presently fell on
pell-mell, without orders and without discipline, following the example
of the sailors.”

Completely taken by surprise and scared out of their wits the garrison
bolted _en masse_, and Budge-Budge was ours. It was found to mount in all
eighteen guns, mostly 24-pounders—the average size of a siege piece of
the day—and to have a well stocked magazine.

Neither the Admiral’s official dispatch nor the flagship’s log, as it
happens, make any mention whatever of Strahan or his exploit. Admiral
Watson says: “At half-past eight the body of the fort was on fire, and
immediately after news was received that the Place was taken, but the few
people in it had all escaped.” The flagship’s log is briefer still. It
simply notes: “At forty-five minutes past eight Captain Bridge came on
board with an account of our being in possession of the Fort.”

Next morning, according to the etiquette of the time, the British
flag was hoisted on the ramparts of the fort and a seventeen-gun
salute to Admiral Watson, as commander-in-chief of the expedition, was
ceremoniously fired.

That being done, Strahan was brought before the Admiral by the
master-at-arms to explain matters. Admiral Watson, we are told, “thought
it necessary to show himself displeased with a measure in which the want
of all discipline so notoriously appeared. He therefore angrily accosted
this brave fellow with: ‘Strahan, what is this you have been doing?’
The untutored hero, after having made his bow, scratched his head and,
with one hand twirling his hat, replied: ‘Why, to be sure, sir, it was
I who took the fort, but I hope there was no harm in it.’ The Admiral
with difficulty suppressed a smile excited by the simplicity of the
answer, and the language and the manner which he used in recounting the
several particulars of his mad exploit. Admiral Watson then expatiated on
the fatal consequences that might have attended his irregular conduct,
and with a severe rebuke dismissed him, but not without dropping some
hints that at a proper opportunity he would certainly be punished for
his temerity. Strahan, amazed to find himself blamed for an action that
he thought deserved praise and for which he expected to have received
applause, in passing from the Admiral’s cabin muttered, ‘If I’m flogged
for this here action, I’ll never take another fort by myself as long as I
live!’”

Some of the _Kent’s_ officers, as we are told, afterwards interceded with
the Admiral for Strahan. They were prompted, according to Dr. Ives, by
Admiral Watson himself, who made that the excuse for openly pardoning
the man. The Admiral, it would seem, was also desirous of promoting
Strahan to boatswain’s mate, with the idea of advancing him later on to
full boatswain; but unfortunately Strahan was too fond of his grog. His
irregular ways in other respects were against him, and nothing could
be done to reclaim him. His own highest ambition, as Strahan himself
afterwards declared, was to get a cook’s berth on board a first rate.
Whether he ever got one history has not recorded. All that is known
of him for certain is that twenty years afterwards he was alive and a
Greenwich Hospital pensioner.

The troops were re-embarked on the evening of the 30th, all except the
Sepoys, who were ordered to keep advancing along the river bank. Then
next morning the squadron moved forward again, keeping the English
soldiers on board. On the 31st the whole day was spent in laboriously
working up the river, a difficult and intricate piece of navigation,
owing to cross currents and dangerous shoals.

New Year’s Day promised to be interesting, for they had Tanna just ahead
of them, where there was a fort on one side of the river and a battery on
the other. A stiff fight was looked for here, the position being a good
one to make a stand at. But news of what had happened at Budge-Budge had
gone in advance of them. As the _Tyger_ and _Kent_ drew near the works
the garrisons on both sides suddenly abandoned their guns and bolted.
Not a shot was fired. The boats of the squadron were promptly sent
ashore, and the fort and battery taken possession of. Forty pieces of
cannon in all, many of them heavy guns, were found mounted and all well
supplied with ammunition. In the afternoon the boats were again called
away and dispatched up the river, manned and armed. It was reported that
the enemy had had some half dozen native vessels prepared as fireships,
and were waiting with them a little higher up, all ready to float down
with the ebb of the tide that night on the squadron at its anchorage. The
fireships were boarded and destroyed without serious opposition being
offered.

Calcutta was in sight next morning. The squadron now comprised the
_Tyger_, _Kent_, _Bridgewater_, and _Kingfisher_. The _Salisbury_ had
been left behind at Tanna to demolish the fortifications there and
prevent their being re-occupied. Admiral Watson had also with him an
extra vessel, the _Thunder_, a bomb-vessel, one of the country-ships
found at Fulta and converted there for emergency purposes, in case
bombardment might be needed to drive the enemy out of Fort William.

As before the attack on Budge-Budge, Clive and the Company’s European
troops were put ashore early. They were to move on the place overland
while the ships attacked along the waterside.

Firing began at a quarter to ten from some batteries recently thrown up
a little below Fort William, but, cowed by the experiences of their
comrades at Budge-Budge, as the _Tyger_ and _Kent_ closed on them the
gunners in the outlying batteries cleared out and made off. Fort William
itself was within range at ten o’clock, and twenty minutes later the
_Tyger_ and _Kent_ let go anchor abreast of the ramparts and opened fire.
The fort replied briskly, and kept up a hot fire for an hour and fifty
minutes. Then suddenly the garrison, numbering some five hundred men
ceased firing and deserted their guns, streaming off to the rear out of
the fort. Clive’s soldiers on shore were beginning to work round on the
further side, and fearful at the idea of their retreat being cut off,
the garrison gave way and fled in confusion. With the recapture of Fort
William the main object of the expedition had been achieved. On board the
squadron the casualties from first to last had been nine seamen and three
soldiers killed and twenty-six seamen and five soldiers wounded.

Admiral Watson landed a party of seamen and the men of the 39th Foot
serving on board the squadron, all in charge of Captain Richard King
(afterwards Sir Richard), of the Royal Navy, a volunteer on board the
_Kent_, who took formal possession of Fort William in the King’s name.
Later in the day Clive took over the charge of the place until the next
morning, when he formally delivered the keys of Fort William over to the
Admiral, who in turn formally handed them to Governor Drake. The ceremony
of officially declaring war against the Nawab was at the same time
ceremoniously performed, Governor Drake proclaiming war in the name of
the Honourable East India Company, after Admiral Watson had declared it
in the name of His Majesty King George. Upwards of ninety guns were found
in Fort William and a large store of ammunition.

The Navy in the events of the six weeks campaign against Suraj-u-daulah
that followed, bore the brunt of the hard work and had their share in
the fighting. First, a week after the taking of Calcutta, an expedition
was sent up the Hooghly to attack the fort at the city of Hooghly,
thirty miles up the river, the Nawab’s capital of Lower Bengal. All the
boats of the squadron, manned and armed, with the _Bridgewater_ and the
_Kingfisher_ carrying two hundred European soldiers and two hundred and
fifty Sepoys formed the expeditionary force. The fort at Hooghly was
stormed, a midshipman of the _Kent_, Mr. William Hamilton, and two seamen
of the flagship being among the killed, and several men were wounded. The
Nawab’s treasury was looted and the town burned. After that the sailors,
under Captain Speke of the _Kent_, and with a small military detachment,
went three miles higher up and burned the immense storehouses and
granaries of the Nawab’s army at Goongee. Suraj-u-daulah’s advanced guard
of some five thousand men was encamped close by in force, and attacked
the little column, but the enemy were handsomely beaten off and the work
carried through with complete success.

Again we have from Dr. Ives, incidentally, a curious story of much the
same kind as that already told of Strahan at Budge-Budge. Three men
from the flagship, as it would seem, on the force returning to Hooghly,
were missed. There was no trace of them or their fate. Nobody had seen
them after the opening of the fight. Their disappearance could in no
way be accounted for, except that they had been shot and overlooked in
some extraordinary way. They were therefore entered as “killed.” Next
morning, to the general surprise, the three men made their appearance
safe and sound, with an extraordinary tale of adventure. “Early the next
morning,” to quote the doctor’s words, “a raft was observed floating down
the river, and on it sat with the greatest composure possible our three
missing sailors, who after they were taken off and brought on board their
ship, gave the following account of their adventure.” After the fighting
they had straggled and gone to sleep. “Awakening in the beginning of
the night, and perceiving their companions had left them, they judged
it expedient to set fire to all the villages in order to intimidate the
enemy and make them believe the whole detachment still continued on shore
which had done them so much mischief the previous day. As soon as the day
broke they repaired to the water’s edge to search for a boat, in which
they hoped to be conveyed on board their ship. No such thing, however,
could be found, but luckily for them this raft at length presented
itself, on which they resolved to trust themselves.”

The men’s story explained at the same time certain mysterious fires on
shore during the previous night which it had considerably puzzled those
on board the ships to account for.

For the remainder of the month the squadron lay quietly at its anchorage
off Fort William. Things meanwhile were shaping themselves elsewhere for
more fighting.

Incensed beyond measure at having Calcutta wrested back from him and
at the destruction of his State granaries at Hooghly, Suraj-u-daulah
vowed vengeance. He would not rest, he swore, until he had driven every
Englishman out of Bengal, and he promptly set to work to assemble his
soldiery and make good his words. While his forces were mustering, to
gain time the Nawab wrote to Admiral Watson, and expressed himself
desirous of coming to an arrangement on friendly terms. When his
preparations were completed he abruptly broke off the negotiations, and
marched with his whole force directly on Calcutta. The Nawab’s army was
estimated at between forty and fifty thousand horse and foot, with forty
guns.

Colonel Clive, on the first information of the enemy being on the move,
on the 4th of February took post near Dum-dum with all the available
troops—seven hundred Europeans, thirteen hundred Sepoys, and fourteen
6-pounders. He was outflanked though at the outset by the pushing forward
of the Nawab’s advanced guard, and had to send off to Admiral Watson for
help. It was at once afforded. Within less than an hour a strong naval
brigade of nearly six hundred men, had landed under arms. It was a
night march to get to the army, and the seamen reached Clive at two in
the morning, just as his little force was on the point of setting out
with the idea of surprising Suraj-u-daulah in his quarters. The sailors
joined the column, and they started. All promised well until they neared
the enemy’s lines. Then, at the critical moment, a dense fog, “thicker
than on the Banks of Newfoundland,” suddenly rolled up. The fog upset the
native guides. Instead of striking the Nawab’s camp they bore off to the
left. That brought Clive front to front with a long field work, behind
which the right wing of Suraj-u-daulah’s army lay entrenched. Almost at
the same moment the sun rose, and the fog thinned off and dispersed,
leaving the small English force in a position that at the first glance
looked well-nigh desperate.

It was not Clive’s way, however, to lose his head. He fell back quickly
and steadily, making a rear-guard fight of it for six hours, all the time
keeping the enemy off and dealing great slaughter among their pursuing
columns by the continuous cannonade from his 6-pounders, until at noon he
regained the camp. In the fighting two of the guns had to be abandoned
owing to their carriages breaking down. The loss on the English side
was: a lieutenant of the _Salisbury_ mortally wounded, twelve seamen and
twenty-nine soldiers and Sepoys killed, including two captains of the
Company’s troops, fifteen seamen and between forty and fifty soldiers and
Sepoys wounded. Suraj-u-daulah’s loss was reported by a spy as being
upwards of thirteen hundred, including some of his best officers. At any
rate, it staggered the Nawab. Startled at the audacity of Clive’s attempt
on his camp and its near approach to success, when the names of his
fallen captains were told him he lost what little nerve he possessed, and
in a state of abject fright sent a flag of truce to Calcutta declaring
his readiness to treat for peace. To prove his good faith, as he said,
he at the same time ordered his troops to break camp and withdraw
up-country. The Calcutta Council, for their part, were quite ready to
come to terms. Their demands included the restoration of their trading
rights and of the _status quo_ generally, together with the payment by
the Nawab of a lump sum as compensation for property seized at Calcutta
in the previous June. The terms were acceded to by Suraj-u-daulah, and
articles of peace were ratified on the 9th of February.

The Council had agreed with their adversary quickly. They had reason to
do so. A yet more threatening cloud was lowering on the horizon. The
settlement with the Nawab came almost as a God-send to the Company’s
politicians at Calcutta, for the long-expected war between England and
France had broken out.

       *       *       *       *       *

Official intimation of the declaration of war had been received at Fort
William five weeks before, but for very urgent reasons it had been
deemed advisable to keep the news secret if possible. The authorities
at Calcutta understood that the French garrison at Chandernagore—barely
twenty-five miles off up the Hooghly river—numbered some five hundred
Europeans and a thousand Sepoys, and the French also had another garrison
at Cossimbazaar (Kasim Bazar), within touch of Chandernagore. What if the
French should make common cause with Suraj-u-daulah, then on his march
down country, and reinforce his horde of armed men with their drilled
troops, officered by men who had seen service. The bare idea was a
nightmare to the Council of Calcutta.

As it happened, Governor Renault at Chandernagore had received the
news of war with England on the very day (the 6th of January) that the
officials at Fort William had their information. They, too, for their own
particular reasons, had decided for the time being to say nothing about
it. The French at Chandernagore were, as a fact, in a very different
position from what they were thought to be at Calcutta. The garrison
actually numbered only a hundred and forty-six European soldiers, many
of whom were invalids, and some three hundred Sepoys. In addition there
were between three and four hundred officials, traders, and sailors
belonging to ships from France in the river. What was to be done was a
very difficult question. There seemed to be two courses open. One was to
join with the Nawab in his campaign against Calcutta then—in January—just
about to open. Suraj-u-daulah had himself already pressed them to side
with him. He had heard rumours as to the relations between England and
France. The other course for the French was to temporize, and try to
form a private treaty of neutrality between Chandernagore and Calcutta.
This course the French adopted, and they sent an emissary to Calcutta to
make propositions for a treaty. The emissary arrived at Fort William in
the third week of January, and found the Calcutta Council not indisposed
to listen to the suggestion. A deputation was then sent to Calcutta and
negotiations begun. It took some little time, however, to settle on
terms; and then came the sudden collapse of the Nawab’s campaign and his
treaty with the English of the 9th of February.

That altered the situation entirely. The authorities at Calcutta now saw
matters in quite another light. With the Nawab out of the way, and with
Clive and the pick of the Madras army at their disposal on the spot, why
should they not take the opportunity of ridding themselves of their most
formidable trade rivals once for all?

It was considered politic, however, not to break off the negotiations
with the French for the moment. The Nawab’s sanction to the carrying
on of hostile operations within his territories ought to be obtained.
The negotiations with the French deputation were meanwhile protracted
on various pretexts. Again the unexpected happened. Suraj-u-daulah’s
reply was a peremptory refusal to permit operations of war in Bengal.
The Calcutta Council on that again took up the question of a treaty
with Chandernagore. It was duly drafted and made ready for signature,
when Admiral Watson himself, as representing the British Government,
intervened. The negotiations hitherto had been no concern of his. Now he
was asked to sign the treaty. The Admiral declined to assent to any terms
with the French. The French settlement at Chandernagore, he pointed out,
was legally a dependency of Pondicherry, where any arrangement come to
would have to be ratified.

At that moment, early in March, a fresh letter from Suraj-u-daulah came,
in the form of an appeal for assistance against Ahmed Shah, news of whose
capture of Delhi had reached Moorshedabad. In mortal dread of an Afghan
raid on the rich plains of Bengal, Suraj-u-daulah offered Clive a hundred
thousand rupees a month if he would march to his assistance. If Clive
would do so, the English might have a free hand with the French. Two
days after the receipt of the Nawab’s letter at Fort William, a message
came up the river that three ships, bringing a reinforcement of three
companies of infantry and one of artillery, sent round from Bombay on the
news of the Black Hole reaching there, had arrived in the Hooghly, and
that the long-delayed _Cumberland_, with two hundred European infantry
on board, which had had to put back to Vizagapatam, was at Balasore. Now
all thought of an accommodation with Chandernagore, or of neutrality, was
flung to the winds. The French envoys were packed off home with a curt
message that parleying was at an end. They might take it that war with
Chandernagore had already begun.

Preparations for an immediate advance on Chandernagore were taken in hand
forthwith, and pushed on apace. At the last moment yet another letter,
the third, came in from Suraj-u-daulah, who had got over his alarm about
the Afghans. The Nawab once more forbade interference with Chandernagore.
But it was too late.

The formal declaration of war with France was read on board the flagship
_Kent_, as the ship’s log records, on the 14th of March. Here is the
entry:—

“March 14—At an anchor off Calcutta. P.M. Cut up 373 Pounds of Fresh
Beef. Punish’d Joseph Vatier and Thomas Holderness with a Dozen lashes
each for Disorderly Behaviour on Shore and Read His Majesty’s Declaration
of War against the French King.”

Clive and his troops, numbering, with the reinforcement of three hundred
men of the Bombay army that had been hastened up to Fort William, seven
hundred Europeans and sixteen hundred “Blacks,” as Admiral Watson termed
the Sepoys, had already crossed the river. They had crossed some days
before—before, in fact, the French envoys had left Calcutta, it being
given out that the movement was with a view to be ready to march off
up-country and assist Suraj-u-daulah against the Afghans. Clive camped a
little distance up the river, with the _Bridgewater_ and the _Kingfisher_
sloop to keep him in easy touch with Calcutta.

On the 15th the squadron began to move forward. It comprised three
men-of-war in this order: the _Tyger_ ahead, then the _Kent_, lastly
the _Salisbury_. Following them came Clive’s heavy artillery in flats
towed by row-boats. The ships advanced towing and warping their way up
for three days, until they came within sight of Chandernagore. Then they
had to anchor two miles below Fort d’Orleans, as the entrenched work
forming the defence of the settlement was called. Until the tides became
higher it was impossible to make further progress with such big ships.
The artillery were now landed, together with a hundred and forty of the
seamen, who were to throw up the siege batteries and fight the guns.

These moved across and joined Clive, who, since the early morning of
the 14th, had been carrying on a skirmishing attack on the outworks of
Chandernagore on the western or landward side.

At Chandernagore itself, meanwhile, during the brief lull before the
bursting of the storm, the French were working night and day on their
defences. The news of the breaking off of the negotiations had come on
the settlement like a thunderbolt from an apparently clearing sky. Blank
dismay fell on all, from the Governor downwards, when they learned what
had happened. For days past they had been confidently looking forward
to see the envoys arrive from Calcutta with the signed treaty in their
hands. The envoys returned with the message: “Delenda est Carthago.” It
was a staggering set-back. But the Governor and his officers were men.
They set themselves to work with the energy of despair to make the best
fight for it they could. Messengers were sent galloping off to the Nawab
and to Cossimbazaar, where the French agent, M. Lawson, had a small
detachment of picked Europeans, imploring immediate help.

Field works and entrenched positions were thrown up at the most exposed
points outside the main fort, which constituted the stronghold of the
settlement, Fort d’Orleans. Six trading ships were sunk across the
fairway of the Hooghly, a hundred and fifty yards below the fort, to stop
the English men-of-war coming up, and a covering battery, heavily gunned,
was placed to enfilade the channel at close range and bring a punishing
fire on any ships trying to pass the sunken obstacles. A double boom,
moored fast with chains, was also laid across the river. Two bomb-vessels
were anchored broadside-on across the fairway, close to the sunken
vessels, and three fireships were made ready to let drift down stream on
the enemy. Chandernagore Fort itself was a four-sided brick-faced work,
two hundred yards each way, with walls fifteen feet high, constructed on
the regular Vauban system, with a dry ditch and bastions, and a curtain
between the bastions, and with a ravelin covering the main gate. It
mounted ten 32-pounders along each curtain, and eight 32-pounders on the
ravelin. Besides these there was a six-gun battery of lighter pieces
erected on the roof of the high-terraced church of St. Louis, inside the
fort.

To man his defences M. Renaud de St. Germain, the French Governor, had
in all a hundred and forty-six European soldiers and three hundred
Sepoys, with an auxiliary body of some three hundred Europeans, “men with
muskets,” raised from among the Chandernagore traders and the crews of
the French vessels.

Chandernagore in itself seemed capable of making a good defence, and
the Governor, indeed, as his arrangements drew towards completion, was
not without hope of being able to hold his own until help, of which
at an early date he received promise, should arrive from the Nawab.
Clive and his army gave him little anxiety—or comparatively little. The
preliminaries of the attack on the land side showed that the French heavy
guns on the ramparts had a command of fire that gave the defence the
mastery on that side. It was the broadsides of the men-of-war that M.
Renaud was anxious about. If only he could stand up against the sailors,
he thought it possible to hold out until the relief he anticipated should
arrive.

The British men-of-war in the river had to wait at anchor for four
days until the tides suited their further advance. Admiral Watson used
the opportunity to announce the declaration of war to the Governor of
Chandernagore, demanding at the same time the surrender of the fort.
Lieutenant Hey, of the flagship, carried the letter. The reply was
an offer to ransom the place. It was refused flatly. Unconditional
surrender, Admiral Watson sent back word, were his only terms, though
private property would be respected. To that the French made no reply,
but pressed on with their preparations.

The interval was profitably spent otherwise. It so happened that the
French officers responsible for blocking the fairway had either neglected
to remove the masts of the sunken vessels or were unable to do so before
the English squadron came in sight. Anyhow, they were left sticking up
out of the water—in the cases of five of the six vessels—and showed what
the enemy’s plans in that direction were. Admiral Watson’s first step was
to remove the boom and the two bomb-vessels behind the line of the sunken
vessels, together with the fireships. The boats of the men-of-war were
sent up with muffled oars after dark on the first night after the arrival
of the squadron and cleared these off, by cutting through the boom and
sending the bombs and fireships adrift, causing them to run ashore and
ground hard and fast. “Mr. Delamotte, the master of the _Kent_,” relates
Dr. Ives, “on the second day sounded between the sunken vessels, whose
masts were above water, under continuous cannon shot from the fort, and
found room for our ships to pass between.”

Treachery, as the French afterwards said, enabled him to do this. One of
their artillery officers, according to French accounts, had a quarrel
with the Governor, deserted and sold the secret of the passage for a
large sum to Admiral Watson. He sent the money, so the story proceeds,
to help his father in France, an aged and poor man, only, however, to
receive back again the price of his treason, together with a bitter
letter of reproach on the receipt of which the traitor hanged himself.
On the other hand, Dr. Ives, on board the flagship, says nothing of any
traitor. Admiral Watson in his dispatch simply says that he was delayed
“until ... I could further discover by sounding a proper channel to pass
through, which the pilots found out without being at the trouble of
weighing any of the vessels.” There was hardly need for a traitor, and no
need at all to pay for information with the masts of the sunken French
vessels in the river standing up in the air, right across the bed of the
Hooghly, for every man and boy in the English squadron to see. There was
a traitor at Chandernagore, De Terraneau, an artillery officer; but he
deserted to Clive’s camp, and, useful as his information proved to the
land attack, he knew nothing about the river defences.

By midday on the 22nd all was in order for the squadron to go forward
to the final fight. The tides now were running higher every day, and
the next tide would probably serve. That afternoon Rear-Admiral Pocock
(afterwards Sir George, and a very distinguished commander), the Second
in Command of the East Indies squadron, came up the Hooghly rowing up
from Calcutta in his barge. He had hurried up to join, in the hope
of being in time to see something of the fighting. He had left his
flagship, the _Cumberland_, at Balasore, unable to enter the river owing
to the same low tides that had during the past few days delayed the
_Kent_ and her two consorts in approaching Chandernagore. With Admiral
Watson’s sanction, Pocock hoisted his flag for the battle on board the
_Tyger_, to lead the line.

At dusk that evening, as soon as it could be done without observation by
the enemy, boats crept ahead quietly and lashed lanterns to the masts
of the sunken vessels, so screened as to show their light only in the
direction of the English ships. By means of these the ships were to be
guided before daybreak next morning between the obstacles and across the
danger zone where the French had marked the range, past the heavy battery
that overlooked the sunken ships.

The order to go forward was given at daybreak. Within five minutes they
were on the move.

Anchors were silently weighed between 5 and 6 a.m., and on the top of
the flood tide the three ships, the _Tyger_ leading, and the _Kent_ and
_Salisbury_ in her wake, glided ahead through the water with the least
possible noise. Apparently their getting under way was not observed.

Admiral Watson’s plan of battle was to bring-to directly opposite the
river face of Fort d’Orleans within pistol shot. The _Tyger_ was to lead
on until she came in front of the further bastion of the river face of
the fort, the north-east or “flagstaff bastion,” as it was called, and
then drop anchor. The _Kent_ was to anchor between the two river front
bastions at the north-west and south-east angles of the fort, directly
facing the curtain and the eight-gun ravelin covering the main gate. The
_Salisbury_ was to post herself opposite the south-east, or St. Joseph,
bastion.

As the _Tyger_, a few minutes before six o’clock, neared the battery
covering the sunken ships, the French ashore sounded the alarm.
Apparently they were surprised. The soldiers in the first battery merely
fired a few rounds at the leading ship as she passed by, a dim spectre in
the half-light, and then the men in the battery cleared out at a run, and
fell back to join the main garrison inside the fort. For their part the
three British men-of-war passed on for their appointed stations without
replying with a single shot.

The main garrison now were quickly on the _qui vive_, and the south-east
bastion took up the firing; but for the moment the light was too
uncertain for the gunners in Fort d’Orleans to shoot with much effect,
until the _Tyger_ and _Kent_ had nearly drawn up abreast of the fort.
Then, however, they got their chance.

The French gunners took advantage of it to the full before the men-of-war
were in position. As it were by signal, a tremendous burst of artillery
fire flashed out all along the ramparts from end to end, from bastions
and curtain and ravelin. The tornado of iron beat on the _Tyger_ heavily,
but she stood up to it, forging her way ahead stolidly, and then let
go anchor within her allotted station to a yard. The flagship was not
so lucky. She was following at a half cable’s length astern—a hundred
yards—when, almost at the moment that the _Tyger_ anchored, the tide
turned, and began to race back, swirling down the river. It checked the
_Kent’s_ way instantly, and she hung back at a dead standstill, unable to
breast her way against it. At the same moment a heavy concentrated fire
from the ramparts beat upon her, and the ship, reeling under the terrific
battering began to drift down, stern first. First one anchor was let go,
then another. Both anchors dragged, and the big seventy-gun ship drove
down astern right across the bowsprit of the smaller _Salisbury_.

The Frenchmen yelled and cheered and redoubled their efforts, and there
was for a space intense excitement. Would the two ships collide and get
foul? At the moment that the flagship first checked her way, Captain
Speke had fallen severely wounded, with, close to him, his little son, a
boy midshipman, acting as aide-de-camp to his father, who was struck down
by the same shot and mortally wounded.

In a few seconds the _Kent’s_ anchors held, and the ship was brought
up; but she had got into a bad position. The forward-half of the ship
lay partially opposite the south-east bastion, with the after-half
overlapping the southern face of the fort in such a way that some of
the guns of the further bastion on that side, the south-west bastion,
could play upon the quarters and stern. Most of the guns mounted on the
ravelin and along the curtain of the river front could at the same time
train on her bows with a raking fire, assisted by some of the guns on
the north-east or flagstaff bastion, facing the _Tyger_, some of which
could be brought to bear. More serious still was this. The _Salisbury_
had been pushed entirely out of the fight: had been placed practically
out of action for the day. The channel was not wide enough to let the
_Salisbury_ tow ahead and pass the flagship, and the _Salisbury_ had to
anchor at a spot whence only one or two of her guns could engage. Thus it
came about that the whole brunt of fighting Fort d’Orleans fell on two
ships, the _Tyger_ and the _Kent_, by themselves.

Not a shot, according to Dr. Ives, had so far been fired in reply to the
enemy’s “tremendous cannonade.” The _Tyger_ was waiting for the _Kent_ to
hoist the red flag. It went up as soon as the _Kent’s_ anchors held. “As
soon as the ships came properly to an anchor, they returned it with such
fury as astonished their adversaries.” “Our ships lay so near the fort,”
says the doctor also, that “the musket balls fired from their tops, by
striking against the chunam walls of the Governor’s palace, which was in
the very centre of the fort, were beaten as flat as a half-crown.”

Clive’s men were at work meanwhile on the land side. They had begun
pushing the enemy hard on the previous afternoon, and had opened a
brisk attack on the outworks before daylight that morning, under the
pressure of which the French outposts fell back, until they had abandoned
practically all their landward positions beyond the walls of Fort
d’Orleans. Clive’s soldiers after that occupied some bungalows that
stood not far from the walls, from under cover of which they plied the
enemy on the ramparts with a continuous fusillade of musketry, and with
six light guns they had pushed forward. The soldiers, however, could make
little further progress for the present.

“For three hours nothing was heard but an incessant roll of artillery and
musketry, the crashing of timbers and masonry, the shouts and cheers of
the combatants, and the shrieks and groans of the wounded.”

Describing the scene on board his own ship during the first two hours,
Dr. Ives says: “The fire was kept up with extraordinary spirit. The flank
guns of the south-west bastion galled the _Kent_ very much, and the
Admiral’s aides-de-camp being all wounded, Mr. Watson went down himself
to Lieutenant William Brereton, who commanded the lower-deck battery, and
ordered him particularly to direct his fire against those guns, and they
were accordingly soon afterwards silenced.”

Then he relates this incident, which occurred on board just afterwards.
“At eight in the morning,” says the doctor, “several of the enemy’s shot
struck the _Kent_ at the same time; one entered near the foremast, and
set fire to two or three 32-pound cartridges of gunpowder as the boys
held them in their hands ready to charge the guns. By the explosion the
wad-nets and other loose things took fire between decks, and the whole
ship was so filled with smoke that the men in their confusion cried out
she was on fire in the gunner’s store-room, imagining from the shock
they had felt from the balls that a shell had actually fallen into her.
This notion struck a panic into the greatest part of the crew, and
seventy or eighty jumped out of the portholes into the boats that were
alongside the ship. The French presently saw this confusion on board the
_Kent_, and resolving to take the advantage, kept up as hot a fire as
possible upon her during the whole time. Lieutenant Brereton, however,
with the assistance of some other brave men, soon extinguished the
fire. Then running to the ports he begged the seamen to come in again,
upbraiding them for deserting their quarters; but finding this had no
effect on them, he thought the more certain method of succeeding would be
to strike them with a sense of shame. He therefore loudly exclaimed, ‘Are
you Britons? You Englishmen! and fly from danger! For shame! For shame!’
This reproach had the desired effect; to a man they immediately returned
into the ship, repaired to their quarters, and renewed an inspirited fire
into the enemy.”

The end was in sight by nine o’clock, and it came within a very few
minutes of the hour.

“In about three hours from the commencement of the attack, the parapets
of the north and south bastions were almost beaten down, the guns were
mostly dismounted, and we could plainly see from the main-top of the
_Kent_ that the ruins from the parapet and merlons had entirely blocked
up those few guns which otherwise might have been fit for service. We
could easily discern, too, that there had been a great slaughter among
the enemy, who finding that our fire against them rather increased, hung
out the white flag, whereupon a cessation of hostilities took place, and
the Admiral sent Lieutenant Brereton (the only commissioned officer on
board the _Kent_ that was not killed or wounded) and Captain Coote of
the King’s regiment with a flag of truce to the fort, who soon returned,
accompanied by the French Governor’s son, with articles of capitulation.”

At the moment that the Governor hung out the flag of truce (“waved over
their walls a flag of truce,” in the Admiral’s own words) the landward
side of the fort was still holding Clive’s soldiers at bay. The firing
from the ramparts there continued for some little time after the flag on
the Governor’s palace had been lowered.

The formal surrender and giving up of the fort took place at three
o’clock in the afternoon. Says Admiral Watson in his dispatch: “I sent
Captain Latham of the _Tyger_ ashore to receive the keys and take
possession of the fort. Col. Clive marched in with the King’s troops
about five in the afternoon.” The _Kent’s_ log notes this: “5.30 p.m. The
Fort at Chandernagore fired 21 guns as a salute to H.M. Colours, after
being hoisted half an hour before.”

So Chandernagore fell. “It must be acknowledged,” to use the words of Dr.
Ives once more, “that the French made a gallant defence, as they stood
to their guns as long as they had any to fire. We never could learn
how many of their men were killed and wounded on the whole, though they
confessed they had forty dead carried from the south-east bastion. The
north-east bastion was also cleared of its defenders twice.”

“The fire of the ships,” says the Indian military historian Orme, “did as
much execution in three hours as the batteries on shore would have done
in several days.” “Few naval engagements have excited more admiration,”
says Sir John Malcolm, writing three-quarters of a century afterwards,
“and even at the present day, when the river is so much better known,
the success with which the largest vessels of the fleet were navigated
to Chandernagore and laid alongside the batteries of that settlement is
a subject of wonder.” Summing up results, Colonel Malleson says: “The
capture of Chandernagore was not less a seal to French dominion in Bengal
than it was the starting-point of British supremacy in that province.”

Admiral Watson in his dispatch states the enemy’s force thus: “They had
in the fort 1200 men, of which 500 were Europeans and 700 Blacks; 183
pieces of cannon, from 24-pounders and downwards; three small mortars,
and a considerable quantity of ammunition. Besides the ships and vessels
sunk below, to stop up the channel, they sank and ran ashore five large
ships above the fort, and we have taken four sloops and a snow.”

Dealing with the casualties on the British side, Admiral Watson proceeds
in these words: “The _Kent_ had 19 men killed and 49 wounded, the
_Tyger_ 13 killed and 50 wounded. Among the number killed, was my first
lieutenant, Mr. Samuel Perreau, and the master of the _Tyger_. Among the
wounded was, Mr. Pocock slightly hurt, Captain Speke and his son, by the
same cannon-ball, the latter had his leg shot off. Mr. Rawlins Hey, my
third lieutenant, had his thigh much shattered, and is in great danger.
Mr. Stanton, my fourth lieutenant, slightly wounded by splinters; but the
greatest part of the wounded have suffered much, being hurt chiefly by
cannon shot: Several of them cannot possibly recover.”

According to the _Kent’s_ log the flagship had three lower-deck guns
dismounted and three on the upper deck, and had 138 shot holes through
her engaged side, besides suffering severe damage aloft to masts and
rigging.

Next morning Chandernagore paid its formal salute to the victor. From the
_Kent’s_ log: “March 24th, 10 a.m., the Fort saluted the Admiral with 19
guns.” Then follows: “Fired 18 guns for the burial of the 1st Lieutenant
Perreau.” Lieutenant Rawlins Hey and Midshipman Speke died a few days
later.

After a ten days’ stay at Chandernagore, to rest the troops, arrange
for the occupation of the place and the disposal of the prisoners, the
men-of-war and the rest of the expedition returned to Fort William.

Further trouble with Suraj-u-daulah was looming ahead. The Nawab’s
troops that had started to intervene at Chandernagore had halted at
Plassey and gone into camp there. It was less than a hundred miles from
Calcutta, and the authorities strongly objected to their being so near.
There were no signs of any immediate withdrawal, although letters passed
continuously to and fro between the Council and Suraj-u-daulah. Each
side distrusted the other. Then began the series of intrigues between
certain members of the Council and Clive with Mir Jafier and disaffected
officials of the Nawab’s _entourage_, which led to the battle of Plassey
two months later. With the ramifications of the plot, the treachery of
the crafty Hindu go-between Omichand and how it was foiled, our narrative
does not concern itself, beyond the passing reference. Everybody knows
the ugly story of the “White” treaty and the “Red”; one genuine and the
other sham; one honestly signed at the Council table by Admiral Watson,
the other with the Admiral’s signature to it forged secretly, either by
the hand of Clive himself or by some underling at his instigation. The
battle of Plassey, from which the British _raj_ in the East, by common
consent, dates its rise, was the sequel, on the 23rd of the following
June.

To strengthen Clive’s small army the Royal Navy took over the garrisoning
of Chandernagore for the time being; occupying the place with a hundred
and forty of the flagship’s men, under Lieutenant Clarke of the _Kent_.
Communication between Clive’s army in the field and Calcutta was kept
open by way of Chandernagore and the _Bridgewater_, which ship was sent
some miles higher up the river and anchored there.

Fifty seaman from the East Indies Squadron with a lieutenant and
seven midshipmen in charge, accompanied Clive’s army, attached to the
artillery. Most of them were from the flagship, and one of the _Kent’s_
midshipmen, Mr. Shoreditch, was wounded in a hand-to-hand encounter with
one of the Nawab’s French officers.

More than that, however, the sailors had no small share in winning the
battle for England. At Plassey Clive, as he said, put his trust in God.
It was the sailors who kept his powder dry. It was their guns that
did the work in smashing up the dense masses of the Nawab’s levies in
the critical second stage of the battle, after the deluging monsoon
rain-storm that burst at noon, swamped the ammunition of Suraj-u-daulah’s
artillerymen. On such a detail as the smartness of Admiral Watson’s
handy-men with their tarpaulins and budge-skin powder-covers did the fate
of the epoch-making day of Plassey practically hinge. Only after it had
become plain with which side the fortune of the day rested did Mir Jafier
and his corps pass over and throw in their lot with Clive.

       *       *       *       *       *

Within two months of Plassey Admiral Watson was dead. The climate killed
him in the end. For more than four months past he had been ailing,
and for the past four months had had among his papers the Admiralty’s
permission to return home on sick leave. But, like Nelson during the
last eighteen months of his glorious life while watching the enemy off
Toulon, he would not leave his post while there was duty to be done. The
inactivity after Chandernagore, in the sultry, steamy heats of the rainy
season in Lower Bengal, killed Admiral Watson.

A plain obelisk on a heavy square base in the graveyard compound of
St. John’s Cathedral, Calcutta, marks the Admiral’s resting-place. It
was erected by Mr. Holwell, the survivor of the Black Hole, during his
governorship a few years later, and is thus inscribed:—

    Here lies interred the Body of
    CHARLES WATSON, ESQUIRE,
    Vice Admiral of the White,
    Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s
    Naval Forces in the East Indies,
    Who departed this life
    On the 16th day of August, 1757,
    In the 44th year of his age.
    _Geriah taken, February 13th, 1756.
    Calcutta freed, January 11th, 1757.
    Chandernagore taken, March 23rd, 1757._
    Exegit monumentum aere perennius.

Monumentum aere perennius? Hardly that. Modern India has no place for
naval memories. Clive—and Clive only—holds the field.

    Hos ego versiculos feci: tulit alter honores

—wrote Virgil once, in a moment of literary bitterness. If it be given
to those beyond the Veil to know of things on earth, and think, the Shade
of the gallant admiral might well express itself in terms hardly less
strong.

The East India Company erected a monument to the Admiral in Westminster
Abbey, and King George bestowed a baronetcy of the United Kingdom on his
only son—then a boy—in consideration of his father’s “great and eminent
services.”

    _Est procul hinc_—the legend’s writ,
      The frontier grave is far away,
    _Qui ante diem periit_
      _Sed miles, sed Prô Patriâ_.

Is it too extravagant to suggest that, with things as they then were,
with nearly five years of continuous war yet to come, and with enemies’
fleets in every sea, Admiral Watson, a man young in years for his high
position,[7] might, had he been spared, have well found opportunity for
achieving yet higher fame, even wider renown? His, too, in 1757, was
surely in a real sense a “frontier grave”—the grave of one

    Who might have caught and claspt Renown,
    And worn her chaplet here:—and there,
    In haunts of jungle-poisoned air,
    The flame of life went wavering down.

The flagship _Kent_, it so happened, did not long outlast her chief.
She had for some time past shown signs of being nearly worn out, and an
official survey of her, shortly after Admiral Watson’s death, resulted
in her condemnation as unfit for sea. She was “cast” and ordered to be
broken up, and on the 15th of September, a month all but a day from
the death of her Admiral, the pennant was hauled down on board the
_Kent_—still lying off Fort William—and the ship’s company were paid off
and drafted into the _Cumberland_, _Tyger_, and _Salisbury_.

So with the passing of the Admiral and his ship our story reaches its end.

Chandernagore, of course, is nowadays a French possession, a tiny
territory of three and a half square miles, with a railway station on the
line to Calcutta, where very few people ever get out. It was restored
to France six years after Admiral Watson took it, for no particular
reason it would appear, except that there had been a General Election in
England, and the new Ministry was desirous of reversing the policy of
its predecessors. Our beaten enemies got back almost everything that the
valour of our sailors and soldiers had won for England, in order that
the Treasury Bench might score a point in party politics. But we for our
part have no right to throw stones. We of the present day have seen much
the same thing happen elsewhere. Chandernagore has been twice retaken
since 1763, and twice given back. It was finally handed back to France
in 1816, after the Napoleonic War, the Foreign Office being under the
impression—so, at any rate, the story goes—that it was one of the West
India islands!




IV

BOSCAWEN’S BATTLE:—THE TAKING OF THE _TÉMÉRAIRE_

    Over the seas and far away
    “Old Dreadnought” steers to his fight to-day!


One of the best known of all our man-of-war names reappears on the roll
of the British fleet in the name _Téméraire_, now borne by one of our
new giant 18,000-ton battleships of the _Dreadnought_ type. This is the
story of how it came to be a British battleship name in the first place,
the story of the act of war which in the sequel led to that historic
man-of-war the “Fighting” _Téméraire_ figuring on another day among the
ships of Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar, to fight there as the _Victory’s_
chief supporter in the fiercest of the fray.

How we came to have a _Téméraire_ in the British Navy the name of
course bears on its face. It was originally borne by one of Louis the
Fourteenth’s men-of-war, and at the date of its adoption by capture into
the British service, in 1759—“The Wonderful Year”—had been honourably
known in the French Navy for upwards of ninety years. The first
_Téméraire_ to sail the seas was so named, it would appear, by the Grand
Monarque himself, the name being appointed to a man-of-war of fifty-two
guns, built by contract in Holland for the French service, in the year
1668, when a war with England seemed at hand. King Louis, it is said,
further appointed to the _Téméraire_ on her naming, as a special and
distinctive figure-head, an elaborately carved and gorgeously coloured
effigy of himself in his celebrated “Lion’s Mane” wig, sworded and
spurred and wearing a military _just-au-corps_ tunic of cloth of gold
over a scarlet vest with crimson breeches and crimson stockings—the
orthodox attire of a French sea officer of the _Grand Corps_.

This first French _Téméraire_ was a ship that the British Navy of her
time saw something of. She formed one of the men-of-war present with the
allied French squadron which played so very peculiar a part when attached
to the Duke of York’s fleet in the battle of Solebay in 1672, and in the
same way also she was present at Prince Rupert’s three drawn battles
with De Ruyter in the following year. As an enemy a few years later, the
first French _Téméraire_ fought against us both at Beachy Head and in the
battle off Cape Barfleur, after which the _Téméraire_ escaped and found
refuge under the harbour batteries of St. Malo.

“_The Rash_” is what an official return on the French Navy, presented
to Parliament on the 9th of February, 1698, calls the _Téméraire_,
in accordance with the custom then in vogue of translating foreign
men-of-war names appearing in British official documents. It seems
a curious disguise for the name _Téméraire_ perhaps, although even
then it is hardly so grotesque as the names under which some of the
_Téméraire’s_ consorts figure in various House of Commons returns: “_The
Without Danger_,” for instance, for _Le Sans Pareil_; “_The Undertaker_”
or “_The Understanding_” (as two different official lists give it) for
_L’Entreprenante_, another ship; “_The Jolly_” for _Le Joli_; “_The
Fire_” for _Le Fier_; “_The Fiddle_” for _La Fidelle_, a frigate; the
“_Turkish Lady_” for another frigate, _La Turquoise_, and so on.

Two years after Barfleur—on the 28th of November, 1694—a crippled French
man-of-war was met with, a few miles to the south of the Lizard, by the
British man-of-war _Montagu_. She had been dismasted in a storm out in
the Atlantic and was nearly waterlogged and sinking; and after a few
shots in reply to the _Montagu’s_ challenging gun hauled her colours
down. The enemy’s ship was the “_Timmeraire_, of fifty-six guns,” in the
words of the _Montagu’s_ log. They found it impossible to save the prize,
either to rig jury masts or to take her in tow, as the weather came on
thick and stormy, and in the end cleared the crew out, and on the 3rd of
December abandoned the ship and set her on fire. That was the end of the
first French _Téméraire_.

Two other _Téméraires_ followed in the French Navy, and then we come to
the ship that became our own first _Téméraire_. This was the _Téméraire_,
of seventy-four guns, built in 1748, which, after fighting against us in
the battle which cost Admiral Byng his life, became prize of war three
years later to the man whose hand signed the order for Byng’s firing
party, Admiral Boscawen, on the day of Boscawen’s defeat of the French
Toulon fleet in Lagos Bay, on Monday, the 19th of August, 1759.

The taking of our future first _Téméraire_ was one result of the
determined attempt at the invasion of England that the French made in
1759. They had prepared a large army, and transports were assembled to
carry it across the Channel as soon as their Toulon fleet, by coming
round and joining hands with their Brest fleet, had given France the
command of the Channel by providing a sufficient force, as the French
counted, to hold the British fleet in check, and see the expedition
safely over. To leave port, however, was what the French Toulon
fleet—among which was the _Téméraire_—could not do and would not try,
until the British force blockading Toulon under Admiral Boscawen was out
of the way. The Brest fleet, at the same time, watched closely by Hawke’s
powerful fleet, as a mouse in its hole is watched by a cat, could not put
to sea with hope of success unless the Toulon fleet evaded Boscawen and
joined hands with it.

Chance threw an opportunity of escape in the way of the _Téméraire_ and
her consorts. Various reasons—damage to three of his ships in a somewhat
venturesome attack on some outlying vessels of the French fleet anchored
under the batteries that guarded the entrance to Toulon Roads, and a
general want of water and provisions on board all his ships—induced
Boscawen, in the last week of July, to withdraw temporarily to Gibraltar.
De la Clue, the French Admiral, on learning by chance where Boscawen had
gone and why, snatched at the offered occasion to make his sally. He put
to sea on the 5th of August, determined to risk the passage round.

The fortune of war at the outset, and for nearly half-way, made a show
of favouring the French. They managed to escape being sighted by the
frigates that Boscawen had posted on the look-out between Malaga and the
Straits. Not an English sail was sighted; nothing to cause disquietude
happened, until just as de la Clue’s ships were in the act of passing
Gibraltar.

With a brisk Levanter blowing over their taffrails and a thick haze
on the sea, towards dusk on Saturday evening, the 17th of August, the
Toulon fleet, after standing well over to the Barbary shore so as to
give Boscawen’s ships at Gibraltar the go-by, was being carried rapidly
past where the British fleet was lying, when suddenly, just as the
elated Frenchmen were assuring themselves of good success for the rest
of their cruise, almost by accident, as it were, at the eleventh hour
they stumbled on the only one of Boscawen’s look-outs that they had yet
to pass. Just off Ceuta, a little to the eastward of that place, the
_Gibraltar_, a twenty-gun ship, quite unexpectedly to both sides, loomed
out of the mist close alongside the passing French fleet.

The mischief, from the French point of view, was done. The captain of the
_Gibraltar_ realized at once that the strange fleet he saw heading out of
the Mediterranean and close at hand could only be the enemy from Toulon.
He promptly went about and hauled in for the Spanish coast, firing signal
guns of alarm. The French for their part seemed to have been too much
taken aback to act. As much surprised at the meeting apparently as was
Captain McCleverty of the _Gibraltar_ himself, Admiral de la Clue made
no effort to stop or to silence the tell-tale British scout, although
he might have done so. He simply contented himself with putting out all
his lights, and then he continued to stand on with all sail set, heading
west-north-west, so as to get clear away and out into the Atlantic.

It was indeed the slip ’twixt the cup and the lip for the _Téméraire’s_
Admiral. When, at half-past seven that evening, the alarm guns of the
frigate _Gibraltar_ were heard, and the ship herself came into the bay to
report what she had seen, practically half Boscawen’s fleet of fourteen
ships were undergoing refit, lying with sails unbent and topmasts
struck. The energy of the British Admiral and his captains recovered
the situation for England. Taken at a disadvantage as Boscawen’s fleet
was, all hands turned to with such smartness that within two hours of
the alarm guns being first heard every ship in Boscawen’s command was
in sea-going trim, ready for the order to weigh anchor. Before ten that
night, within two and a half hours of the _Gibraltar_ coming in, every
line-of-battle ship of the British Fleet was at sea, together with two
frigates and a fireship, heading through the Straits in chase of the
French under all sail.

They had their reward before many hours had passed.

At seven next morning, when off Cape Trafalgar, Boscawen got
sight—although for the moment they were far ahead—of the French fleet:
what bad seamanship during the night had left of it. No fewer than five
ships of de la Clue’s original fleet of twelve had parted company with
their Admiral and gone astray in the night after getting out of the
Straits. They straggled and dropped astern, and found themselves in the
morning out of sight, some leagues distant from their flagship and only
off Cadiz.

This again led to a disastrous mistake on the part of the French Admiral.
De la Clue, when about seven o’clock he first sighted the leading ships
of Boscawen’s fleet in the distance, coming up astern, took them for
his own missing five, and hove-to his whole fleet to give them time
to join. Worse still: after waiting awhile for them he went about and
actually stood back slowly to meet them—seven French men-of-war in
war time bearing up for fourteen English! He refused to believe that
Boscawen could possibly have got out of Gibraltar so quickly. The French
Admiral, in fact, held on towards the advancing enemy until, when escape
had become impossible, on finding his private signals unanswered, the
horrifying truth of the situation dawned on the unfortunate de la Clue.

It was then too late.

He turned and ran for it. He would try and outsail his pursuers if
he could; if not he would seek a refuge and shelter in some neutral
Portuguese port. Boscawen followed promptly, clearing for action as he
neared, and catching up the enemy all the morning hand over hand.

At noon, a fresh gale helping Boscawen along, he was almost within
gunshot of the French. At two in the afternoon his headmost ships were
near enough to open a long-range fire.

All that Sunday afternoon a running fight went on, protracted by the
wind suddenly dying away to nearly a calm. The rearmost of the French
squadron, the _Centaure_, a ship of seventy-four guns, practically held
the leading pursuers in check during most of that time. Nothing could be
more courageous than the _Centaure’s_ defence, regardless of the odds
against her. Until nearly nightfall she kept Boscawen’s leading ships
from closing on her and her consorts. The _Centaure_, under orders to
cover the retreat, exchanged a never-ceasing cannonade with the ships of
the English van for five hours, the fight becoming hotter and ever closer
until just before sunset. Then at length, with her three topmasts and the
mizen-mast shot away, and the ship herself so shattered and holed between
wind and water that she was with difficulty kept afloat, the well-fought
_Centaure_ had to lower her colours. She had played her part. She had
gained time for her Admiral to seek the shelter of Lagos Bay. In so doing
the _Centaure_ had lost over two hundred men in killed alone, including
her gallant captain, de Sabran. Although he had received no fewer than
eleven wounds, he still kept the quarter-deck until he received his
twelfth, and death wound.

A little ahead of the _Centaure_ was Admiral de la Clue’s flagship
_L’Océan_, with the _Téméraire_, and the _Redoutable_ and the _Modeste_
near by, sailing in a cluster just ahead of her. All four had every now
and then been assisting the _Centaure_, as now one, now another, of the
English ships came within range of their guns. Away in the van of the
French squadron were two more ships, the _Souverain_ and the _Guerrière_,
which were pushing on at some distance ahead of all.

To escape into neutral waters was the only course practicable to the
French ships, and all they now aimed at, as they held on during the
afternoon, crowding canvas to make land—the coast of Portugal near
Cape St. Vincent—which soon began to rise ahead of them more and more
distinctly.

A few minutes before the _Centaure_ surrendered there was a sharp
interchange of broadsides between the two flagships, Boscawen’s _Namur_
and de la Clue’s _Océan_, both three-deckers. The _Namur_ pushed past
the _Centaure_, then plainly _in extremis_, within gunshot of his chief
antagonist. Boscawen fastened on his chosen opponent and engaged the
French Admiral hotly, until a series of mishaps for the _Namur_, lucky
hits on the part of the French gunners, temporarily disabled the British
flagship by shooting down her mizen-mast and main-topsail yard. That
forced the _Namur_ to drop back out of action.

Admiral Boscawen, the story goes, at once quitted his crippled ship to
go on board the _Newark_, a seventy-four, the nearest ship among the
leaders in the British van, and had a narrow escape from drowning in his
passage from ship to ship; through a cannon-ball which struck his barge
and smashed a hole in it. The Admiral saved his own life and those of the
men with him, as it is related, by his presence of mind. The barge began
to fill and would have sunk under them, had not Boscawen smartly whipped
off his wig and stuffing it into the hole stopped the inrush of water,
enabling them to keep afloat until they could get alongside the _Newark_.

There was little more firing that evening after the _Centaure_ had made
her submission, but the pursuit of the _Téméraire_ and the other French
ships coastwise went steadily on.

All that night Boscawen chased, keeping the enemy well in sight,
although, as on the night before, they showed no lights.

Early next morning only four French ships were to be seen. The
_Souverain_ and the _Guerrière_, the two headmost of the enemy, had
altered course after dark. Being far ahead already, they managed to slip
off unobserved and got clear away. The four ships still before Boscawen
were in themselves, however, sufficient prize. These were now heading
in directly for the land, and were only a short way ahead of the British
Fleet.

De la Clue was about to make his second mistake. Admiral Boscawen, he
apparently imagined, would think twice about following him into neutral
waters and attacking him there. But the neutrality of Portugal was of
little account at such a moment. Might was right that August day for “Old
Dreadnought.” International proprieties notwithstanding, the British
Admiral “in a very Roman style made free with the coast of Portugal,” as
Horace Walpole put it. Boscawen swept straight down after de la Clue,
with his men at quarters and his guns run out.

The final phase opened about eight o’clock on the 19th of August, Monday
morning, when the French flagship _L’Océan_ was seen to run heavily
aground. She brought up hard and fast, and the next moment her three
masts went crashing over the side. Boscawen instantly signalled to the
leading British ship, a seventy-four, the _America_, to deal with the
French flagship. The order was carried out promptly. The _America_
closed nearly alongside the wrecked three-decker and opened fire on her;
whereupon the doomed _L’Océan_ lowered her flag. In the brief interval
before the _America’s_ boats, sent off to take possession of the prize,
could board the French flagship, M. de la Clue himself, mortally wounded
and with one leg broken, was hastily got away and rowed ashore, to die
there a little later. Almost at the same time that _L’Océan_ wrecked
herself, the _Redoutable_ ran on shore close by, breaking her back.

[Illustration: ADMIRAL BOSCAWEN’S VICTORY

_Painted by Swaine. Engraved and Published in 1760._

_In the foreground to the right is seen the “Warspite” attacking the
“Téméraire.” Boscawen’s flagship the “Namur” is in the centre flying the
Admiral’s Blue Flag at the main; and at the fore the red battle-flag,—the
“Bloody Flag” of the Old Navy._]

There remained the _Téméraire_ and the _Modeste_, which two ships, for
their part, let go anchor close under the guns of a Portuguese fort on
shore. The _Warspite_, a seventy-four of equal strength with the bigger
French ship, was told off to deal with the _Téméraire_. She closed on
her antagonist forthwith, in spite of warning shots from the Portuguese
fort, and attacked at pistol-shot range. Hopeless as his case was, with
no possibility of escape open to him, for upwards of an hour M. de
Chastillon, the _Téméraire’s_ captain, made a fight of it. Then having
done all he could he gave up his ship. The _Modeste_ surrendered not long
afterwards, and so Boscawen’s battle ended.

It was Captain Bently, of the _Warspite_, who gave the Royal Navy its
first _Téméraire_. The story of that morning’s work is told in the
_Warspite’s_ log:

“August 19th: 4 a.m.—Saw 4 sail of the enemy about 4 or 5 leagues from
us, running inshore. The other two having altered their course in the
night were out of sight. Continued chase and before 8 a.m. the French
admiral ran ashore 6 leagues E. of St. Vincent. All his masts went by the
board. Soon after saw another ashore, 4 miles W. of the French admiral,
and his masts too went by the board. The other two anchored close inshore.

“9 a.m.—Little wind and fair weather. Admiral anchored 3 leagues from
shore and signalled for all captains. At the same time signalled to the
_Conqueror_ and _Jersey_ to chase N.W. _Warspite_ brought-to.

“Captain Bently returned from the Admiral and stood inshore for the
easternmost of the enemy’s ships at anchor. The _America_ stood for the
French admiral. Little wind, hazy. Great swell from S.E. 1 p.m. _America_
anchored to eastward of the Ocean.

“We continued standing for the other French ships at anchor 2 m. to W. of
the _Ocean_. Soon after a fort fired several shot at the _Warspite_, but
hoisted no colours. Several of the shots struck the ship and did us some
damage.

“We continued standing in near the French ship and fired a few shot at
her, imagining she would immediately strike her colours; but finding she
did not, stood on and tacked and came close under her stern, and ¼ before
3 we began to engage her: ¼ before 4 she struck.

“At that time the Vice-Admiral with the _Jersey_, _Guernsey_, and _St.
Albans_ stood in to westward of us after another ship on shore and fired
some guns, when she struck; after which they set her on fire and stood
in towards the Cape where another French ship was at anchor which they
brought off. On our beginning to fire, the _America_ fired some guns on
the _Ocean_: she instantly hauled down her colours.

“We sent a boat on board and took possession of our prize, which proved
to be the _Téméraire_, 74 guns, 716 men. At ¼ to 5 we cut her cables and
carried her down to the Admiral.

“In the evening the _Intrepid_ and _America_ set fire to the _Ocean_.”

Boscawen, with his work accomplished and the Toulon fleet accounted for,
sailed away for England, carrying the _Téméraire_ and the _Modeste_ with
him under British colours, to add both ships, in their original French
names, to the British Navy. His battle in Lagos Bay under the shadow of
the cliffs of Cape St. Vincent, if perhaps few people nowadays remember
it, perhaps have ever heard of it, yet, in the words of Captain Mahan,
“saved England from invasion,” and the _Téméraire’s_ name should always
stand for us as a memento of that fact.

At the time the event made a widespread impression throughout Europe.
It caused great enthusiasm, as we are told, in the camps of the allied
armies fighting the French beyond the Rhine, and was honoured by a cannon
salute. “We were entertained,” wrote a British officer in the army which
had just fought at Minden, “with a _feu de joie_ within hearing of the
French camp, in honour of Admiral Boscawen’s success against the Toulon
squadron.”

The little difficulty with Portugal that ensued was settled amicably. The
elder Pitt, then Prime Minister, had his own way of dealing with matters
that would upset the feebler nerved politicians of our modern House of
Commons. The Opposition in the House tried, of course, to make party
capital over Boscawen’s breach of Portuguese neutrality. “Very true,” was
all the answer Pitt deigned to make, “but the enemy’s ships were burned.”
He sent Lord Kinnoull to Lisbon with a polite expression of regret at
the unavoidable necessity of the case, and the incident was not heard of
again.

For many years after her capture by Boscawen the _Téméraire_ was reckoned
one of the finest seventy-fours in King George’s service, and among the
“crack” ships of the British Navy. She served England both in European
waters and across the Atlantic, with all the most notable admirals of the
time—with Hawke and Boscawen himself; in the Channel Fleet blockading
Brest; and under Keppel, Rodney, and Pocock in the West Indies. After
being for nearly twenty years in commission, the old war-prize in her
closing days—at the beginning of the war with France and Spain, when
the two nations combined against England to assist the rebel American
colonists—was converted into a floating-battery hulk for harbour defence,
on which duty our first _Téméraire_ ended her career. In June, 1784, she
was sold out of the service for breaking up.

That is the story of our first _Téméraire_, the immediate predecessor of
the famous “Fighting” _Téméraire_ of Trafalgar fame, which formed the
subject of Turner’s masterpiece.

One battleship of our ironclad fleet has borne the name. That was the
_Téméraire_ which was with Sir Geoffrey Hornby when he passed the
Dardanelles in 1878. She took part also at the bombardment of Alexandria
in 1882, and still exists, converted for use as a floating workshop at
Devonport, under the unrecognizable label of _Indus II_.

Our new “improved _Dreadnought_” _Téméraire_ of 1907 is the fourth bearer
of the name under the British flag.




V

HAWKE’S FINEST PRIZE:—HOW THE _FORMIDABLE_ CHANGED HER FLAG

    The guns that should have conquered us they rusted on the shore,
    The men that would have mastered us they drummed and marched no more,
    For England was England, and a mighty brood she bore—
    When Hawke came swooping from the West!


How the British Navy came by its first _Formidable_ man-of-war, the
predecessor in the direct line of the fine first-class battleship, the
_Formidable_ of our modern Navy, is one of the most exciting tales in
our naval annals. It serves too to commemorate one of the most brilliant
victories ever won at sea—the dashing encounter on that eventful winter’s
afternoon in the Bay of Biscay, “When Hawke came swooping from the West”:—

    ’Twas long past noon of a wild November day
      When Hawke came swooping from the West;
    He heard the breakers thundering in Quiberon Bay,
      But he flew the flag for battle, line abreast.
    Down upon the quicksands, roaring out of sight,
    Fiercely beat the storm-wind, darkly fell the night.
    But they took the foe for pilot and the cannon’s glare for light,
      When Hawke came swooping from the West.

How the _Formidable_ passed that day from France to England is, indeed,
something of which both England and France may be jointly proud. Never
fought men more heroically on both sides—the enemy to keep, we to
take—amid all the horrors of a furious storm and ever imminent shipwreck
and catastrophe.

This is the story of how, where, and when the Royal Navy won its first
_Formidable_, the first of a famous line.

It was the afternoon of the 20th of November, 1759, a Tuesday. The scene
was among the black-fanged reefs of granite rock, and the treacherous
quicksands that fringe the “sickle-shaped sweep” of Quiberon Bay on the
coast of the Morbihan, in Lower Brittany, in the north-eastern quarter of
the Bay of Biscay. The battle was fought in the height of a wild raging
storm from the Atlantic, a tremendous gale from the north-west, howling
blasts of wind, and torrents of hissing rain, and thick, dark weather,
with the sea lashed to fury all round, and gigantic breakers running “so
high that no boat could live for a moment among them,” as one who was
present described. “A network of shoals and sandbanks” is what a French
writer calls Quiberon Bay, “with heavy surf breaking along the shore on
the calmest days of summer, and ugly cross-currents swirling to and fro
with the strength and rush of a mill race”; a place “lined with reefs
that the navigator never sees without alarm, and never passes without
emotion.”

Hawke and his captains swept down on the French fleet, cornered between
the storm and the shore, in the midst of the rocks and quicksands;
without charts themselves, and for the most part without pilots, or, at
least, pilots that they could trust; flinging themselves on the enemy
heedless of gale and breakers, attacking ship after ship of the French as
each was met with, “to make,” in Hawke’s own expressive words, “downright
work of them.”

De Conflans, Maréchal de France, commanded the French Fleet. He was one
of a batch of eight marshals created, _honoris causa_, some two years
before; a boon companion of royalty, one of the “flying tables” set, a
fine figure of a man to look at, as his portrait at Versailles shows
him, handsome, tall, and well made, a hard rider to hounds at Compiègne
or Fontainebleau, with a pretty wit in the boudoir and over the card
table; also one of the Pompadour’s courtier friends, which was perhaps
the main reason why a man of de Conflans’ stamp as a naval officer found
himself in chief command at that place that day. There were marshals of
the French Navy as well as of the army under the _ancien régime_. The
rank was first instituted by Louis XIV when he solaced Admiral Tourville
with the _bâton_ and its consequences—a big salary, the title of
“Monseigneur,” and court precedence at the head of the Grand Officers of
State—to make up for his ill-fortune at La Hogue.

As an admiral Conflans proved an utter failure. That morning, when he
first, some forty miles to westward of Belleisle, saw Hawke approaching,
he formed line and brought-to. He would fight the English, he said, in
the open sea to the south of Belleisle. As Hawke came nearer, when it was
too late, he changed his mind and ran off pell-mell to take shelter among
the reefs and shoals of Quiberon. With Conflans were de Beauffrement,
Vice-Admiral, the second in command, and the Comte de Verger,
Rear-Admiral, the third in command, who had his flag in the _Formidable_.
De Verger’s squadron formed up astern, its place in the line of battle.

As Hawke’s leading ships began to overtake the French the gallant
Rear-Admiral shortened sail and dropped back. He would await his fate at
what in the circumstances was the post of honour, as rearmost ship of
all. There, practically single-handed, the _Formidable_ bore the brunt of
Hawke’s opening attack.

Hawke’s van ships caught up the rear of the French Fleet just to the
south-east of Belleisle, as it was in the act of heading to round the
Cardinals, a chain of dangerous rocks and outlying islets, and stand in
for Quiberon Bay, then still ahead of them some eighteen to twenty miles.
Conflans was that distance from his intended refuge when the first shots
went off. Both fleets began to fight as they overlapped, the British
coming up under every stitch of canvas which their masts could stand—“not
a topsail was reefed”—the ships now wallowing in the trough of the waves,
now plunging and rolling and staggering forward on the crest, while heavy
surging cross-seas burst and broke in deluges of seething foam over
the ships’ bows. So terrible was the weather that on board some of the
British ships men were flung down on deck or hurled helplessly about and
seriously injured and maimed. In one or two men were washed overboard and
never seen again. The guns were double-breeched; eight men were at the
wheel in every ship. So on that awful November afternoon did Hawke swoop
down to strike.

On the French side there were twenty-one ships—with Hawke, twenty-three;
but the French ships were on the average bigger vessels than ours, and
carried heavier guns. That for fighting purposes in such weather gave
Conflans the advantage. Another thing was this: all the fighting that
day was done by barely two-thirds of Hawke’s fleet. A full third of the
British Fleet were too far in rear—out-paced in the chase—and were unable
to come up in time to have any influence on the fortune of the fight.

Ship after ship of the advancing British Fleet as they reached the enemy
attacked the _Formidable_ hotly. First, the _Dorsetshire_, of seventy
guns, captained by Peter Denis, an Irishman (Anson’s dashing lieutenant
of the old _Centurion_ days), gave her a flying broadside as she swept
by to windward; passing on then and driving ahead, making for the French
van. Then the _Defiance_, another seventy-gun ship, following fast in the
_Dorsetshire’s_ wake, gave the _Formidable_ a second broadside.

Lord Howe, in the _Magnanime_, a powerful seventy-four and a prize from
the French on a former day, came next. Thierri, best of pilots for
that coast, was at the con. He had volunteered for the _Magnanime_,
as he explained, “parceque le capitaine ’Owe est jeune et brave!”
Howe as he came on meant merely to brush past the _Formidable_ with
as brisk interchange of fire as might be, and then push ahead like
the others to wing the flyers in the van; but a shot from the French,
as he came abreast de Verger, carried his foreyard away and checked
the _Magnanime_. “Black Dick”—Howe’s name in the Navy—closed with the
_Formidable_ instantly. He “bore down upon the Rear Admiral,” in the
words of an eye-witness, “and getting under his lee opened a most
tremendous fire from his thirty-twos and twenty-fours.” “Lord Howe, who
attacked the _Formidable_,” says Horace Walpole, “bore down upon her with
such violence that her prow forced in his lower tier of guns.” In the
collision, as we are told by some one else, the _Formidable’s_ port lids
“were wrenched clean away.”

Ten minutes later up came the _Warspite_, Sir John Bently, the captor of
the _Téméraire_ in Boscawen’s battle, who had recently joined the Channel
Fleet. Hauling up near at hand, she joined with the _Magnanime_ in the
attack. The two ships were two of the smartest in all the British Navy,
and under their terrific pounding the _Formidable_ was dismasted and
reduced almost to a wreck. “In half an hour,” says our eye-witness, “they
made a dreadful havoc in the _Formidable_, whose fire began to slack.”

De Verger’s flag, though, still flew defiantly, as did the French ensign
at the staff astern, although the gallant Admiral had already fallen,
as well as his first captain (de Verger’s younger brother), and most of
the other officers, with, in addition, upwards of two hundred men. The
Comte de Verger himself, we are told, was badly wounded at the outset
of the fighting. He was carried below, and had his wounds dressed, but
he refused to stay in the cockpit. He had himself brought up again in a
chair and set down on the quarter-deck. There a little later a second
shot struck him dead.

Standing up valiantly to Captain Bently and Lord Howe, the _Formidable_
was as yet to all appearances far from being subdued. She was still
gallantly resisting when a third British ship, the _Montagu_, arrived on
the scene. Her arrival gave the Frenchmen a breathing space. In trying
to cut in between the other two British ships and the _Formidable_ she
ran foul of both her two consorts and caused a serious collision. The
_Montagu_, “instead of pursuing ahead, must needs run between Lord Howe
and the French Admiral, and fell on board the _Magnanime_ and forced her
upon the _Warspite_; thus our three ships were entangled and totally
prevented from continuing the action, but lay all of a heap alongside
the _Formidable_, who might have torn them to pieces if she had not been
almost a wreck herself.” What made the _Formidable’s_ position much the
worse was that she was practically isolated, cut off from the rest of
her fleet. No fewer than seven French ships in her part of the line had
refused combat from the first. They had run off without firing a single
gun—“sans avoir,” in the words of the French naval historian Troude,
“reçu un seul coup de canon.”

It was now about three in the afternoon. By that time eight or nine of
Hawke’s ships had got into action, and were engaging the enemy as they
overhauled them all along their line.

       *       *       *       *       *

The pick of the French army meanwhile was looking on from the shore, as
big a crowd of spectators, from all accounts, as ever watched a naval
battle. Duplessis-Richelieu, Duc d’Aiguillon, Commander-in-Chief, watched
it from the windmill of St. Pierre, as did from another point the Second
in Command, De La Tour D’Auvergne, father of the “First Grenadier of
France,” then a schoolboy of fourteen. Along the beach forty regiments
of soldiers, horse and foot, were looking on. They formed the army
that the _Formidable_ and her consorts had come to escort across the
Channel, in the transports lying at anchor in Quiberon Bay, for that
projected invasion of England with which all Europe had been ringing
for months past. There they stood, drenched to the skin, all anxiously
looking out over the tumbling waste of waters to see what was to come
of it; motley masses of men crowding out of camp and massed along
the sand dunes and rock ledges of the Quiberon peninsula, or lining
the batteries and ramparts of the forts round the bay—a medley of
cocked-hatted, white-coated officers and men from every arm of the French
king’s service; come down to the shore to see the show. Sturdy linesmen
of Boulonnais and Contis, of Saint Chamond, and old d’Artois stood
there—marching regiments these, that had seen more than one battlefield
elsewhere, but never anything like this. Here were the red waistcoats of
de Bourbon and de Cossé and de Quercy; there the green collars and cuffs
of Beauvoisis, the blue of de Foix, the red coats with yellow facings
of the Irish regiment of Clare; all intermingled with Dragoons de la
Rochefoucauld and de Tessé; Dragoons de la Reine, in their queer-looking
“bonnets de guerre” of royal blue; Dragoons du Dauphin in green coats
with violet facings, silver buttons and silver lace, and helmets covered
with leopard’s skin; Dragoons de Mailly, and the long red cloaks of the
Penthièvre horsemen, adding a flower-bed touch of colour to the scene.
Coast militiamen were in the throng, garbed like the regulars in the
white coats of the line; heavy artillerymen, in sombre blue and dull
red—there were two brigades of them on shore at Quiberon, de Chabrie, and
de la Brosse—the whole mingled together in a motley crowd that stretched
for miles round the bay, gazing their hardest to seaward and facing the
gusts of blinding rain in their anxiety to see what they might of the
battle thundering out in the storm over yonder. Quite a third of the
“État Militaire de France,” of King Louis’ army list, formed the audience
for Hawke and Conflans on the day that saw the _Formidable’s_ name
entered on the roll of the British Fleet. The soldiers, indeed, too, had
a personal interest in the battle beyond the general issue. Some of their
comrades were on board the fleet with Conflans, doing duty as marines;
among them two whole battalions of Saintonge, and a draft or two of the
regiment de Guyenne. They had been shipped at Brest. Poor wretches!
If it was bad for the lookers-on to stand here in the open, drenched
to the skin and chilled to the marrow, what was it over there, out
yonder—heaving and pitching and rolling, at the mercy of a raging storm,
sea-sick and helpless and hopeless, and being shot at with English cannon
balls all the while!

       *       *       *       *       *

It was not until some little time after their collision that the
_Montagu_ and the two other British ships, the _Warspite_ and the
_Magnanime_, got clear of one another. By that time they had drifted to
leeward of the _Formidable_, and were too far off to reopen their attack.
But fresh foes for the brave de Verger’s ship were soon at hand.

First of these the _Torbay_, Commodore Keppel’s ship, a smart and
powerful seventy-four, ranged alongside. Setting-to briskly by himself,
Keppel gave the Frenchmen a cruelly trying quarter of an hour, after
which the _Resolution_ and the _Swiftsure_, both seventy-gun ships, drew
near to take their part. Keppel, according to his own log, “had silenced
her,” and without waiting to see her colours come down, as the new
arrivals neared the spot he moved off, intent on finding a single-handed
fight for himself further ahead.

Keppel did so immediately, and settled the fate of the hapless _Thesèe_,
a seventy-four, the same size as his own ship, which went to the bottom
with awful suddenness as they were fighting yard-arm to yard-arm, struck
by a fierce squall that burst on her and heeled her over just as she had
opened her lower-deck ports to leeward in order to give the _Torbay_ a
broadside. Swamped by a tremendous sea, the luckless _Thesèe_ filled
and sank like a stone. Out of eight hundred men on board, not twenty in
all were saved, picked up from floating wreckage. The _Torbay_ herself
narrowly escaped sharing the _Thesèe’s_ fate. Her lower-deck ports had
just been opened too. “Keppel’s,” relates Horace Walpole, “was full of
water, and he thought he was sinking; a sudden squall emptied his ship,
but he was informed all his powder was wet. ‘Then,’ said he, ‘I am sorry
I am safe.’ They came and told him a small quantity was undamaged. ‘Very
well,’ said he, ‘then attack again.’”

The _Resolution_ and _Swiftsure_ were in turn joined by the _Revenge_,
and then the _Essex_ added herself to the long suffering _Formidable’s_
foes. Still, though, the _Formidable_ kept her colours flying, while shot
after shot—at intervals—came sullenly from her tiers of ports. She was
practically silenced, but not as Keppel had thought, absolutely. There
was little satisfaction in such odds, and three of the British ships
moved away, leaving the _Resolution_ to finish the business off.

[Illustration: HAWKE’S VICTORY IN QUIBERON BAY

_Painted by Swaine. Engraved and Published in 1760._

_The picture shows the “Royal George” (in the centre) sinking the
“Superbe,” and the “Formidable” (immediately beyond the “Superbe” and in
the background) lowering her colours to the “Resolution” (the ship coming
up astern of the “Royal George”)_]

The _Formidable_ was plainly at her last gasp, as it were; a wreck above
and below, her masts down and her rigging lying in tangled heaps of torn
canvas and cordage over the side, the bulwarks shattered to the level of
the deck, the hull gashed with gaping holes from which streams of sea
water spouted in cascades at every roll of the ship. Still, with all
that, her gallant first lieutenant, the sole surviving naval officer on
board, would not give in. The _Formidable_ was a flagship, he declared,
and, as a point of honour, to a flagship only should she strike. Manning
what guns he could, he made his final effort to hold out just a little
longer. It was magnificent, but it was hardly war. It was heroic, but it
proved impossible. The gallant young Frenchman’s ambition was destined
not to be realized. There was no time for it. The big _Royal George_,
with Hawke’s blue flag flying out at the main, could be seen approaching,
but she was not yet quite alongside. Before the _Royal George_ could
challenge, the deadly fire of the _Resolution’s_ guns had done its
work, and all hope of further resistance was at an end. Yet another
British ship also, the _Burford_, was fast approaching the scene, intent
apparently on joining in with the _Resolution_. It was hopeless now to
wait for the _Royal George_, and the heroically defended ensign of the
_Formidable_ had to come down. The _Formidable_ lowered her colours to
the _Resolution_—exactly at five minutes to four o’clock.

Towards the end, Conflans himself in the _Soleil Royal_, with de
Beauffremont and one of his captains, tacked and doubled back as if to
the rescue of the _Formidable_, but they were too late.

       *       *       *       *       *

What took place elsewhere on the scene of battle, during the short
three-quarters of an hour that the waning daylight of the stormy winter’s
afternoon lasted, before the fighting had of necessity to cease, are
beyond our limits. How, for instance, the master of the _Royal George_,
getting anxious about the reefs and sandbanks that showed up amid the
breakers on either side as they surged ahead into the fight, declared
that he dared not take the big three-decker further inshore, and drew
from Hawke’s lips the heroic words, “You have done your duty in pointing
out the danger; now go on and lay me beside the French Admiral!”; how the
_Royal George_ herself after that came within an ace of shipwreck as she
fought; of the catastrophe to the French _Superbe_, sent to the bottom
in attempting to keep the _Royal George_ from closing with her flagship,
by one terrific broadside from the _Royal George_, to the horror of the
British flagship’s crew themselves as the smoke of the guns blew off and
they saw three topmasts disappear under water, “in a hideously sudden
manner,” where thirty seconds earlier had floated a noble man-of-war; how
finally Conflans himself sheered off before the _Royal George’s_ guns,
and ran away to wreck his flagship and burn her next morning:—to recount
in detail these and the many other dramatic incidents of that “thunderous
miscellany of cannon and tempest,” as Carlyle called the battle of
Quiberon Bay, are beyond our present scope.

All was over about five o’clock. As soon as might be after that, victors
and vanquished alike let go anchors where they lay, each ship where best
she could, as the guns gave over firing in the dark, to ride the fearful
night out as well as it was possible on both sides, each holding to
her anchor for dear life, and powerless to help others. “In the night
we heard many guns of distress fired, but, it blowing hard, want of
knowledge of the coast, and whether they were fired by a friend or an
enemy, prevented all means of relief.”

As the result to England of the afternoon’s work, two French ships were
sunk and one was burned; two surrendered (one stole away before the
weather would allow a boat from an English ship to take possession of
her), one—the _Formidable_—was taken and secured. Of the rest of the
enemy some scraped over the mud-flats at the mouth of the little river
Vilaine, a few miles off, and lay there with broken backs, unable ever
to put to sea again; a small remnant got into Rochfort, losing one of
their number by shipwreck on the way. In killed and wounded and drowned,
the total loss to France in the battle, it has been calculated, numbered
between four and five thousand men. It was probably nearer the higher
figure, for most of the French ships were crammed with men. There were
twelve hundred, it was said, sailors and soldiers, on board Conflans’
flagship, the _Soleil Royal_, alone. A thousand officers and men were
returned as on board the _Formidable_.

The French wounded, with a few men rescued from the ships that were sunk,
were sent on shore by cartel to the Duc D’Aiguillon, as soon as the
weather had moderated sufficiently. With them were sent also a hundred
and twenty French soldiers, the poor remnant of a half-battalion of the
regiment of Saintonge, and a company of militiamen gunners from Brest,
who had served on board the _Formidable_.

Two of our own ships were wrecked in Quiberon Bay, one on the night of
the battle. That was the _Resolution_, to which ship the _Formidable_
had hauled down her flag. The other was the _Essex_, which was cast away
early next morning while trying to secure Conflans’ flagship. The storm
continued to rage with unabated fury during the whole of the day after
the battle. To Hawke, though, their fate was only part of the price for
the risk incurred in bringing the French to battle.

This was the victor’s summing up on the day’s work. “When I consider the
season of the year,” wrote Hawke to the Admiralty, in his modestly worded
dispatch, “the hard gales on the day of action, the shortness of the day,
and the coast they were on, I can boldly affirm that all that could
possibly be done has been done. As to the loss we have sustained, let
it be placed to the account of the necessity I was under of running all
risks to break this strong force of the enemy. Had we had but two hours
more daylight the whole had been totally destroyed or taken, for we were
almost up with their van when night overtook us.” In this plain way did
the victor of Quiberon Bay render his account to the nation, this grand
old fighting seaman and leader to whom England has not yet found room for
a monument, either at the Abbey or in St. Paul’s.

The battle of Quiberon Bay sealed the fate of France at sea for the Seven
Years’ War. The building of “flat bottoms” stopped after that; there was
no more mustering of armies along the French coast, no more discussion in
the Pompadour’s boudoir of schemes for the invasion of England.

    The guns that should have conquered us they rusted on the shore,
    The men that would have mastered us they drummed and marched no more,
    For England was England, and a mighty brood she bore—
    When Hawke came swooping from the West!

“It seems as though France is never to have a navy,” said King Louis
morosely, while sitting at supper with the Pompadour on the night that
the Quiberon dispatches reached Versailles.

       *       *       *       *       *

A British officer who went on board the _Formidable_ on the morning after
the battle, wrote down a description of the scene that met his eyes
there. “A lieutenant and 80 men,” he says, “being ordered from our ship
on board the _Formidable_ to assist in repairing her rigging, etc., I
embraced the opportunity of seeing the havoc that had been made by the
fire of so many large ships who had battered her. The destruction of
her upper works was dreadful, and her starboard side was pierced like
a cullender by the number of shots she received in the course of the
action. The loss of men was prodigious in killed and wounded, amounting
to more than 500; among the former the Admiral, M. St. André de Verger
and his brother, the first captain, all the other officers either killed
or wounded, except a lieutenant-colonel, who assured me that every man of
his detachment, drawn up on the quarter-deck and forecastle, etc., had
been either killed or wounded but himself; that he had served in the army
for thirty years, had been present at the bloody field of Fontenoy, but
had never before witnessed such a scene of carnage. The grand-chamber was
filled with wounded officers, many of whom had suffered amputation....
Monsieur major invited me below to certify the number of his patients,
and there a melancholy scene presented itself. The large gun-room and
every space between the guns on the lower deck was crammed with wounded
soldiers and sailors, besides three rows of cradles in the hold,
containing 60 seamen, and many not yet dressed.... I am afraid that few
of the wounded could recover, considering their very miserable situation
and circumstances.”

As soon as the weather would allow her to start the _Formidable_ was sent
off to England under escort. She arrived at Plymouth “almost in a sinking
state, from the shot-holes she had received, and only kept afloat with
great difficulty.” She rolled away her jury masts, we are told, and the
cook’s coppers were washed out of the ship. The prize crew, the officers
and men from the wrecked _Essex_, and the prisoners, had to live for four
days on the boatswain’s tallow.

The _Formidable_ was taken into the British Navy, and the name was
registered on the roll of King George’s fleet in its original form; but
the ship had suffered too severe a mauling to be fit for sea service
again. Some ten years after her capture Hawke, as First Lord of the
Admiralty, signed the death warrant of his old prize—the order that
delivered his old Quiberon trophy over to the shipbreaker.

       *       *       *       *       *

One final word. The _Formidable’s_ magnificent defence was the redeeming
event for the other side of the “Journée de M. Conflans,” as the French
Navy, pillorying the memory of its unfortunate Admiral, has ever since
called the battle. So, too, France has recognized it. A new _Formidable_
was laid down in France at the first fitting opportunity, so named in
honour of the Comte de Verger’s gallant man-of-war. The French battleship
_Formidable_ of to-day—not so long since, with her armour plates of 44
tons weight each and 75-ton guns, the pride of her fleet, and still, as
reconstructed, a ship capable of striking a hard blow for the honour of
her flag—commemorates the heroism of de Verger and his gallant men for
the twentieth-century French Navy.




VI

WHEN THE _VICTORY_ FIRST JOINED THE FLEET

    Thou great vessel, whose tremendous claim
    So well is proved to Victory’s famous name!


In stately guise, all smart and trim, rides the _Victory_ to-day at the
flagship’s moorings in Portsmouth Harbour, flying at her masthead the red
St. George’s Cross flag of the Admiral holding the chief command at the
principal naval port of the British Empire. To see her now, spick and
span and as smart as paint can make her, she looks at the first glance
barely a day older than the latest launched of the old style wooden
men-of-war that are yet left among us doing harbour duty in various
capacities. The old _St. Vincent_, which passed away only the other day,
a worn-out veteran, was launched ten years after the _Victory_ had fired
her last shotted gun. The still existing _Asia_, at Portsmouth, was
launched thirteen years after the _Victory_ had finally retired from the
sea. The _Victory_ as a fact had been some years afloat and had fought
her first battle long before the great-great-grandfathers of most of us
were old enough to trundle a hoop or spin a top. She forms in herself,
indeed, a direct and actual link between our own day and the times of
George the Second.

Two famous Admirals of the Seven Years’ War time, Anson and Boscawen,
were the Lords of the Admiralty who signed the order to lay the
_Victory’s_ keel. The names themselves take us back into history well
over a century and a half. And the difference between things then and now
is wider than the gap of years. It is difficult indeed, as we nowadays
see the _Victory_ in Portsmouth Harbour, amidst the stir and activity
of a modern naval port, to realize how wide a space her lifetime really
covers.

       *       *       *       *       *

Imagine yourself as a visitor at Portsmouth on any afternoon almost
of the present year of grace, and observing what takes place in the
harbour round the _Victory_. Here comes along, sliding swiftly past
between ship and shore, a long, low-built black torpedo-boat; or a yet
more grim-looking sleuthhound of the sea, a thirty-knot destroyer, with
squat funnels and high-raised forecastle, from which peers forward the
long barrel of a twelve-pounder, shearing its way ahead on business of
its own. Now a snub-nosed gunnery-school gunboat passes, returning from
a day’s target-practice out beyond the Warner lightship, with a weapon
that can fire from twelve to twenty aimed shots in a minute. Then, it
may be, a brand new twenty-three-knot cruiser passes, coming back
from a trial run, or a huge high-sided four to five hundred feet long
battleship of from fifteen to eighteen thousand tons, stern and resolute
of appearance, her giant barbette guns of massive bulk and enormous
length, weighing each from fifty to sixty tons, and able to send an
eight hundredweight twelve-inch shell from fifteen to twenty miles, and
with the certainty of being able to hit the mark with each shot at half
that range—the horizon limit from on board. It was not so long ago that
one of our battleships (the _Commonwealth_), firing at eight thousand
yards at a target representing an enemy’s battleship, dropped successive
twelve-inch shells into a space the size of a lawn-tennis court, and, at
the same distance at the third round, shot away a boat’s flagstaff that
topped the target. At all times, too, there is a passing and repassing
of Navy steam-launches and pinnaces, and now and again the busy forging
to and fro of puffing harbour tugs and yard craft of all sorts. Such are
every-day sights in Portsmouth Harbour in these times of ours.

Then carry your mind back to the year in which the _Victory_ first
figured on the Estimates of the Navy—1758. Imagine yourself standing
on the Hard as a sightseer in the Portsmouth of the Seven Years’ War
time—on, say, a day in October of the year when my Lords at Whitehall
were making their final decision about the ship’s dimensions.

At this same moment, by the way, there is lying in a far-off parsonage,
in an out-of-the-world locality on the Norfolk coast, a puny baby boy, a
fortnight or three weeks old, so sickly that he is not thought likely to
live. So weakly, indeed, is the child that his baptism—at which the name
Horatio was given to the small babe—has taken place privately, just six
days after his birth.

You would, in Portsmouth Harbour on that October afternoon of 1758, have
seen something very much like this.

First of all, almost opposite the Hard, and just where the _Victory_
herself now lies, there is moored a big yellow-sided two-decker of
foreign build flying the British flag. Just now, perhaps, there is no
man-of-war name all the world over of more unpleasant notoriety than
hers. She is the _Monarque_, a seventy-four, taken from the French, and
it was on her quarter-deck, some eighteen months ago, on a dull and
cloudy March day, that they shot Admiral Byng. The _Monarque_ has now
just returned from “Straits” service, and if you went on board her you
would see, still there, and part of the ship’s company, the men of the
platoon of marines who formed Byng’s firing party.

Near the _Monarque_ lies a big ninety-gun three-decker—a yellow-sided
vessel also, for all men-of-war are so painted. It is the _St. George_.
In her cabin Byng’s court martial sat some twenty months ago. The court,
by a grim coincidence, was held in the very cabin that had been Byng’s
own thirteen years before that, when Byng was captain of this same _St.
George_. There, on a snowy January day, as plenty of people at Portsmouth
can tell you, for they were looking on, Byng stood to hear his sentence
in his own old cabin, crowded almost to suffocation with spectators,
stuffy and close, and the walls “sweating down” with trickling beads of
water; the hapless, doomed British Admiral, standing there, firm and
erect, with squared shoulders, calmly facing his judges, with his own
sword lying on the table, its point turned towards himself.

To the very last, they say, Byng expected an acquittal. He had not
anticipated, at the worst, a sentence more severe than a reprimand. So
he himself said in the cabin of the _Monarque_, on the very morning of
the 27th January, when the Admiralty Marshal came to accompany him on
board the _St. George_ to hear the finding of the court. He learnt the
dread reality first as he came up the side of the _St. George_. At the
entering port a personal friend, instructed privately by the President of
the Court to do so, stood waiting to give the Admiral a word of warning.
As he met his friend, Byng saw instantly from his downcast countenance
and embarrassed manner that things had gone adversely and that the
sentence was a hard one. “What is the matter,” asked the Admiral, “have
they broke me?” The bearer of the news, convinced that Byng had no idea
of what was coming, hesitated and stammered. Byng stopped short. He
gazed fixedly at his friend for a few seconds, and then changed colour
as he seemed to take in the situation. A moment later he had recovered
himself. Exclaiming in a calm tone, “Well, well, I understand: if nothing
but my blood will satisfy them, let them take it,” he passed with set
countenance into the presence of the Court.

[Illustration: THE EXECUTION OF ADMIRAL BYNG

_From a Contemporary Print_]

Beyond the _St. George_ lies another “Mediterranean ship,” just returned
home—the _Revenge_, one of the ships in Byng’s battle. It was the damning
evidence of the _Revenge’s_ captain—Frederick Cornwall, now at home on
half-pay—as they all say in the fleet, that settled Byng’s fate. “If I
cannot disprove what you have said, Captain Cornwall,” exclaimed Byng, as
the one-armed captain of the _Revenge_ turned to leave the cabin, after a
futile attempt at cross-examination on the part of the Admiral, “may the
Lord have mercy on me.” There is no need to go further.

If you could look round to Spithead from the Hard, you would see the
old _Royal Sovereign_ on duty as the port flagship. On board her it was
that, on the morning of the execution, Admiral Boscawen put his signature
to Byng’s death warrant, and the order for the firing party. She is the
oldest ship in the King’s Navy, in which connection the _Sovereign_
has other memories of her own. The great Duke of Marlborough named her
at her launch in the year that William the Third died, and it was in
her great-cabin, during the _Sovereign’s_ first cruise, that Rooke’s
council of war planned the swoop on the Vigo treasure galleons, which
Vigo Street, in London, serves to commemorate. Some of the old ship’s
timbers, it is the fact, formed part of the frame of Charles the First’s
world-renowned _Sovereign of the Seas_, and were salved, by special
Admiralty order, out of the _débris_ when the _Sovereign of the Seas_
was burned at Chatham in January, 1696, by the carelessness of a sleepy
bos’un’s mate.

Out yonder at Spithead, too, at this moment, rides at anchor yet another
veteran of our old-time navy, the _Royal Anne_. They have a really
marvellous continuity of service, some of these ancient men-of-war. The
_Anne_ carries us back to the time of the Dutch raid up the Medway. She
was launched as the _Royal Charles_ to fill the place of the _Royal
Charles_ that the Dutchmen carried off. William the Third renamed her
the _Queen_, in honour of his consort, and the ship kept that name until
George the First came over. King George, having at that time his legal
consort under lock and key in Germany, promptly renamed the ship. He
called her after himself, _Royal George_—the first of the series. Three
kings, indeed, have been present at this ship’s various “christenings.”
Charles the Second was present at her first naming as the _Royal
Charles_; William the Third saw her renamed the _Queen_. George the
First paid a special visit to Woolwich when she received the name _Royal
George_, and gave £300 to be divided among the dockyard men employed at
the float-out, in honour of the occasion. The name _Royal Anne_ was given
to the ship only two years ago, when the present _Royal George_, Hawke’s
flagship in the Channel Fleet, was launched. She exchanged the name for
that borne on the stocks by the _Royal George_.

Within sight from the Hard is an 80-gun three-decker, the _Royal
William_, just back from the capture of Louisbourg, Cape Breton. She,
too, was launched as long ago as Charles the Second’s reign, under
the name _Royal Prince_, and she fought her first battle at Solebay,
eighty-six years ago. She carried James Duke of York’s flag during part
of the battle, and Prince Rupert in turn had his flag in her in a later
battle. William the Third gave the ship her present name, and under it
she fought at La Hogue as Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s flagship, not without
distinction.

If one might dip into the future and witness events just one year later,
the visitor to Portsmouth would then see the _Royal William_ there again,
and again just arrived from across the Atlantic. This time she would be
in other guise—a ship “in mourning,” all over funereal black, with yards
set to point in all directions—“a-cockbill,” as the old term went—and
colours at half-mast, firing minute guns, and with a funeral procession
of boats putting off from alongside to bear to the shore the body of
General Wolfe.

Off the dockyard, on this October afternoon of 1758, awaiting their turn
for repair, are two jury-rigged ships. One is a small, old-fashioned
sixty-four, firing a broadside of some 540 lb. weight of metal. The other
is a giant 80-gun ship of French build, and brand new. She is bigger than
the finest first-rate in King George’s service, a fair match for the new
_Royal George_, and fires the tremendous broadside of 1136 lb. weight of
metal. Yet the little ship took the big one in a midnight battle last
February. It was as fine a feat of arms as the Navy has seen. The two
are the _Monmouth_ and the _Foudroyant_. They have just come into port,
and both show plenty of marks by way of battle scars. If you were to row
round the _Foudroyant_ you would find her, on her larboard side, where
the _Monmouth_ made her attack, battered almost to splinters. The fight
lasted four and a half hours, from eight till after midnight, and went on
for most of the time within pistol-shot. The _Monmouth_ in that time used
up four tons of powder and about ten tons of cannon-balls. At Gibraltar,
where they repaired the _Foudroyant_ to bring her to England, they had
to plug over seventy shot-holes at the water-line—and two or three
cannon-balls had gone through some of the holes.

One more word of the _Foudroyant_. It would seem as though, in the
Portsmouth of these times, we cannot lay the shade of Admiral Byng. The
_Foudroyant_ was flagship of the fleet that Byng failed to beat, and
Arthur Gardiner, who later commanded the _Monmouth_ when she took the
_Foudroyant_, was Byng’s flag-captain. Captain Gardiner, after Byng’s
battle, it is said, swore that if ever he got another ship, however
small, and met the _Foudroyant_, he would attack her and take her, or
sink alongside. He got the _Monmouth_ and met the _Foudroyant_ and kept
his word; meeting himself a heroic death on his own quarter-deck in the
heat of the battle.

A second French man-of-war, taken on the same occasion and also badly
mauled—the _Orphèe_, a smart 70-gun ship, prize to the _Revenge_—lies
near the _Foudroyant_; also recently brought to England from up the
Straits.[8]

All the day long there keeps on a continuous passing up and down the
harbour of small war-vessels and dockyard craft of every sort. Here a
fireship goes by, a small two-masted vessel, readily distinguishable by
the heavy iron double hooks and grapnels that tip the yard-arms; and that
little boat towing astern. The hooks are meant to grip and hold fast the
fireship’s destined prey as she sheers alongside. The fireship’s crew set
the quick match-train leading to the stacks of pitch-barrels and other
combustibles all over the vessel, ablaze at several points just as they
are closing the enemy, and the little boat is for them to escape in at
the last moment. Now a bomb-ketch passes, a clumsy craft with masts set
well aft and two heavy 13-inch mortars, trained for firing over the bows
right ahead, set side by side in the fore part of the ship, where the
foremast would stand in an ordinary vessel. A rakish-looking Portsmouth
privateer, it may be, now comes by, towing a prize astern of her—some
captured French “sugar ship” from Martinique, snapped up off Ushant. Then
there passes, on the way to one of the guardships or “receiving” ships,
a press-gang tender, coming in from a run along the South Coast. She has
been out for some days to pick up hands for the fleet, and some of those
on board could tell more than one ugly story of high-handed doings among
the villages and farmsteads on the coast, within a night’s march from
the sea. In confinement under hatches on board, it is quite possible, is
also the unfortunate crew of some homeward-bound merchantman, waylaid and
boarded almost within sight of home, off the back of the Isle of Wight.
It is very sad, but this is war time, and the fleet must be manned.

All day long duty-boats keep going up and down. Now it is an admiral’s
twelve-oared barge with the flag at the bows; now a captain’s gig, or
a pinnace, pulling between ship and shore; now a midshipman’s boat
scurrying off to answer the flagship’s signal. Ships’ long-boats with
water-casks and pursers’ stores for various men-of-war in harbour, pass
and repass, and beer hoys and yard craft of all kinds. You can always
tell a dockyard boat by the heavy way in which the “maties” row, giving
their elbows a curious lift with each stroke. At intervals, also, ships’
launches and wherries go past, and lighters carrying cables or anchors,
spars and sailcloth, or gangs of shipwrights from the yard on their way
to Spithead to attend to pressing repairs to some Channel Fleet ship or
frigate just come in and impatient to be off again.

[Illustration: PORTSMOUTH IN THE YEAR THAT THE _VICTORY_ JOINED THE FLEET

    _1. North Dock._
    _2. Boat-Houses._
    _3. Officers’ Houses._
    _4. Dock Clock._
    _5. Commissioner’s House._
    _6. Sail and Mould Loft._
    _7. Rope House._
    _8. Royal Academy._
    _9. Landing Place at the Dock._
    _10. Rigging House._
    _11. The Common._
    _12. Officers’ Lodging in the Gun-Wharf._
    _13. Lamport Gate._
    _14. Portsmouth Church._
    _15. The Point._
    _16. Flag on the Platform._
    _17. Round Tower._
    _18. Spit-Head._

_From a Contemporary Print._]

Now and again, two or three times a month perhaps, a line of ships’
launches from newly arrived vessels from Spithead are to be seen
following one another up the harbour, crammed with men—swarthy
foreigners, poor, ragged, dejected-looking wretches for the most part.
Each boat has its guard of red-coated marines, standing under arms at
the head and stern, all with bayonets fixed. The boatloads comprise
prisoners of war, taken at sea and on their way to undergo confinement
in Porchester Castle,[9] going to join their two thousand compatriots
already there. A favoured few in due course may obtain exchange by
cartel, but the greater number must perforce endure their captivity to
the end of the war.

Such were some of the every-day scenes to be witnessed in Portsmouth
Harbour at the very time that the Admiralty order for the building of the
_Victory_ was being drafted.

Ashore in the streets of Portsea, old salts who had fought with Vernon
when he took Porto Bello, are to be met with any day of the week. You may
come across, indeed, an occasional old fellow who can remember Benbow,
and how the news first came to England of the taking of Gibraltar. And
sitting at his door on a sunny morning you may yet find an old Portsmouth
grandsire here and there who can carry his memory further back still, and
tell you how the bonfires blazed in High Street in honour of the battle
of La Hogue.

Turn away now from the harbour and the Hard and take a short walk through
the streets of Portsmouth town. Soldiers in the uniform that Corporal
John’s men wore at Blenheim and Ramillies, rub shoulders with you every
hour of the day. Some are for Canada, some for the West Indies, some
for Northern Germany. All are passing through Portsmouth on the way to
the great depôt camp in the Isle of Wight where the troops for oversea
service assemble. Most are men of the foot regiments, with long-skirted
red coats, red waistcoats, and red breeches with high white gaiters. Some
wear the big cocked hat that came in with George the First; others the
tall sugar-loaf grenadier cap of the Prussian pattern. Those with buff
facings are “Howard’s” men; those with yellow facings, “Kingsley’s”;
those with willow green, “Rufane’s”; those with blue, “Duroure’s.” For
six or seven years past our regiments have had numbers, but the men
still hold to the old way, and each regiment calls itself for preference
according to the custom of the army for these eighty years past. Now and
then a party of dragoons pass through the streets, red coated and wearing
black leather fur-crested helmets and long jack-boots. These come from
one of the cavalry camps at Chichester or Southampton. Occasionally, too,
cocked-hatted artillerymen are to be met with, in blue coats with red
waistcoats and breeches and white gaiters.

Batches of men of the standing garrison of the Fortress of Portsmouth,
the “Royal Invalids,” as the corps they belong to is called, are to
be seen about the streets at all hours; veterans drafted from off the
Chelsea Hospital out-pension list as being sufficiently able-bodied for
home-service fortress duty, old war-worn warriors bearing scars, many of
them got in action at Dettingen and Fontenoy.

A Portsmouth visitor would certainly, too, have seen in and about the
town a personage of some notoriety in those times: Governor Hawley,
Commandant of the Garrison, the Duke of Cumberland’s hard-riding,
hard-drinking friend. “Bloody Hawley” was what the soldiers called him,
taking the _sobriquet_ from the name that years before the hapless
clansmen of the north gave the man who led “Butcher” Cumberland’s
dragoons in the merciless chase after Culloden. In General Hawley you
would have seen perhaps as badly hated an officer as ever held a King
of England’s commission. “Chief Justice Hawley” the rank and file also
called him: and the reason for it any one would have seen for himself by
walking round Governor’s Green any day of the week, or passing beyond the
postern and strolling out across the Portsmouth ramparts to the glacis on
an execution morning.

       *       *       *       *       *

The talk of the place—and of all England too at the moment—is of a French
invasion.

England, in 1758, had not yet recovered from her last bad fit of nerves,
brought on by truculent vapourings from Versailles at the outset of the
Seven Years’ War. Government was urgently pushing on arrangements for
forming an efficient militia force to fill the place of the regular
battalions fighting abroad in Germany and in America, in view of the
invasion scare that was threatening in the near future. Already reports
had come to hand from France of the building of flat-bottomed beach-boats
and preparations for large encampments next summer in the vicinity of
the French Channel ports—at Dunkirk and Calais, Havre and St. Malo, and
in Lower Brittany on the shores of Quiberon Bay. In every county of
England and Wales the local authorities were getting ready for the early
muster of the new militia levies—now, for the first time in our history,
to be formed into regiments. Along the coasts of Sussex and Kent,
from Selsea to beyond Dungeness and Hythe, where the open coast-line
might seem to invite attack—at Littlehampton, Brighton, Blatchington,
Seaford, Hastings, Rye, Hythe, Folkestone—the sites for four- and six-gun
batteries were being pegged out by military engineers, to be thrown up
by local labourers under expert supervision. At every point along the
seashore from Spurn Head to the Lizard the beacons were being watched
night and day, while the local authorities of every seaboard district had
standing orders to be ready, on the first alarm of a hostile landing, to
transport the women and children in farm carts to the nearest towns, and
drive inland the horses and sheep and cattle.

We have to turn over many pages of the world’s history to get to the year
that saw the _Victory_ brought into the British Navy. The Seven Years’
War itself, the exigencies of which called the _Victory_ into existence,
is nowadays but a schoolbook term. Frederick the Great, in the year that
the _Victory_ first figures in the Navy Estimates, was the man of the
hour. Peter the Great’s daughter ruled in Russia. The “Old Pretender”—the
“warming-pan baby” of Whitehall, of the year 1688—was still alive,
dragging out his last years in Rome as a pensioner of the Pope. Captain
Cook was as yet an unknown master’s mate, serving on board a man-of-war
away across the Atlantic with Boscawen. Nelson, as has been said, was
a long-clothes baby; Napoleon and Wellington were not yet born. The
Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, Viscount Ligonier, was a French
Huguenot refugee, born a subject of the Grand Monarque, who first saw war
under Marlborough at Blenheim. Wolfe was an unheard of Major-General,
nearly at the bottom of the list. News of Clive’s victory at Plassey had
not long reached England. The elder Pitt, “the Great Commoner,” had only
been in power for little over a twelvemonth. William Pitt was not yet
born. Smeaton was building the Eddystone Lighthouse. James Watt was a
Glasgow mathematical instrument maker, his ideas about steam hardly yet
in embryo. Burke was a young Irishman in London, making a poor living out
of essays for Grub Street magazines. Lord Chesterfield was still writing
his letters. Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary was a new book, being advertised
in publishers’ announcements, in two bulky quarto volumes at £4. 10s.
Garrick was playing nightly at Drury Lane.

It was still the custom at Bath to announce the arrival of lords and
ladies and “nabobs” with peals on the Abbey bells and serenadings by
the Assembly band. Brighton was hardly on the map as yet; it was merely
Brighthelmstone, a Sussex fishing village, just beginning to be visited
for sea bathing by the handful of people who had heard of it through Dr.
Russell’s pamphlets. Old London Bridge still had houses on it. Traffic
in imported merchandise throughout the country was still carried on
by pack-horse. One coach—or “machine”—a month, ran between London and
Edinburgh, and took a fortnight on the road. A similar conveyance between
London and Portsmouth took, under the most favourable conditions, two
whole days. The mails went by postboy, and hardly a week passed without
people failing to get their letters, because the local postboy had been
stopped by a highwayman. Gibbets, indeed, with the bleached bones of
these gentry in chains, stood on every main road out of London. Pirates
were still from time to time publicly borne from the Old Bailey down the
Thames in boats, heavily chained, to be hanged at Execution Dock and
gibbeted at Galleons Point—on the average half a dozen a year. Just as
the Admiralty draughtsmen were outlining the plans of the _Victory_, the
news of the hour for nine people out of ten in England was the committal
of Eugene Aram to York Castle for the murder of Daniel Clark.

[Illustration: AT PORTSMOUTH POINT

_Thomas Rowlandson._]

[Illustration: IN PORTSMOUTH HARBOUR

_Thomas Rowlandson._]

On the day that the _Victory’s_ keel was laid two men were pilloried in
Cheapside for blackmailing a City merchant, and a bad egg accidentally
hitting the Sheriff’s officer in charge of the proceedings led to a riot
and fighting with drawn swords. On the day before the _Victory_ was
launched, one Mary Norwood, an unfaithful wife, condemned at Taunton
Assizes for poisoning her husband, was publicly strangled in the
market-place of Ilverston, her home, and her body tied to the stake and
burned before several hundred spectators.

So far back does the life-story of our “old” _Victory_ take us, touching
at either end the middle of the eighteenth century and the opening years
of the twentieth, directly linking King George the Second with King
Edward the Seventh.


HOW THEY BUILT THE _VICTORY_ AT CHATHAM

This is the story of the building of the _Victory_ at Chatham Dockyard,
and how, why, and when the order to set to work on this particular
first-rate man-of-war was given.

On the 20th of September, 1758, Lord Anson, First Lord of the Admiralty,
after commanding at sea on Special Service off the coast of France all
the summer, arrived in London to resume his duties on the Board. Nine
days later, in the old parsonage house of Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk, was
born into this world the infant boy to whom six days later was given the
name Horatio Nelson. The two dates are a coincidence of interest in our
story of the _Victory_.

Anson came back to town to hold conference with Mr. Secretary Pitt,
the War Minister. Pitt had laid his plans for the future, and was
ready. There were first of all to be no more half-military, half-naval
expeditions up and down the coast of France. They had done little real
harm to the enemy, and in two cases had ended in downright failure. The
wits of St. James’s were not to get a second chance for a sneer that
“the French were not to be conquered by every Duke of Marlborough” (an
allusion to the general commanding the troops employed—the second Duke).
The Channel Fleet was not to be received a second time on returning to
Spithead with a dumb peal on the bells of Portsmouth Church. That plan
of campaign had been to some extent a legacy to Pitt from the previous
Ministry; he was prepared now to set on foot his own scheme. Great
Britain would henceforward take the offensive vigorously and deal with
the enemy at all points. Pitt’s plan was to make it first and foremost
a naval war, to attack the oversea possessions of France all the world
over, utilizing every ship at the disposal of the nation. The striking
success achieved by Boscawen at Louisbourg had shown the way, and what
could be done.

The War Minister’s projects made known to him, Anson acted. On the 14th
of October the First Lord called on the Navy Board—the Department
charged with the general administration and dockyard business of the
Navy—for a detailed return of every seaworthy ship in the fleet, and
of every ship capable of being made seaworthy. On the 24th of October
he called for a Supplementary Return of the older ships, which, if for
the present available, would necessarily, through wear and tear, go
off the effective within three years and need replacing. Both returns,
from details specially supplied by each dockyard, were presented to the
Admiralty on the last day of November. They were considered forthwith,
and a decision in regard to them was come to on the 13th of December.
Five days later, as the result, a shipbuilding programme to add twelve
ships of the line to the fleet was laid, with the Navy Estimates for
the coming year, on the table of the House of Commons. Nine of the
twelve men-of-war proposed were to be put in hand at once—five in the
dockyards and four in merchants’ yards. At the head of the list was a
new first-rate of a hundred guns, as to the preparations for which the
Commissioner of Chatham Dockyard had already received instructions. That
ship was the future _Victory_.

       *       *       *       *       *

They were ready at Chatham. They had been expecting an order of the
kind for some years. Ever since, indeed, the autumn of 1746, when the
Admiralty had made inquiries at Chatham in regard to a new first-rate
that it was then proposed to build at Chatham, “in the room,” as the
official term went, of the three-decker _Victory_, old Admiral Balchen’s
ship, lost with nine hundred men and officers on board, on the Casquets
in the terrible shipwreck of October, 1744. The project for various
reasons had been shelved, but the dockyard authorities at Chatham had
not lost sight of it. To that fact, probably, we owe it that the next
_Victory_, when she at length did come into existence, lasted to fight at
Trafalgar, and also, in some degree, that the _Victory_ remains afloat at
the present hour.

Any summer’s day in the early Fifties of the eighteenth century the
wayfarer among the uplands of the Kent and Sussex Wealds would have met
processions of “tugs,” as the local timber conveyances were called, drawn
by teams of oxen, laboriously hauling along the rough oak trunks, lopped
and barked, stamped with King George’s broad arrow, and each numbered
with a smear of red paint, that were in the course of events to form the
frame and side timbers of the _Victory_. From Frant and Ashdown, Eridge
and Mabledon, over all the wooded country round Tunbridge Wells where
Kent and Sussex march, by Wadhurst, Buxted, and Mayfield, from Horsham
on the north to nearly as far south as Lewes, they might have been seen
working slowly along the clay-bound forest roads, two-and-twenty oxen
to one trunk in wet weather sometimes, in charge of smock-frocked,
leather-breeched Wealden peasants (“them leather-legged chaps o’ the
Weald”), toiling from cross-road to cross-road towards Maidstone,
where, alongside Messrs. Prentice’s wharves, the Medway timber hoys for
Chatham lay in waiting. Kent and Sussex oak was proverbial at that day
as being without equal in strength and toughness for the frame timbers
and sides and upper works of a man-of-war—the fighting parts of a ship.
And, at the same time, the wayfarer in another land, wandering where the
Vistula rolls its sluggish course northwards to the Baltic, would have
met a great part of the rest of the future _Victory_ in the long rafts
drifting downstream from the oak forests of Poland and East Prussia,
floating slowly along, to arrive at length at the Dantzic contractor’s
yard, and thence finally pass oversea to the saw-pits of Chatham. For
the under-water timbers and planking of our old-time men-of-war and
other parts of a ship exposed to salt water there was no timber in
the world, so it was generally considered at that time, to compare in
durability with “East Country” oak—“‘K’ brand, Dantzic,” in particular.
Also it was cheap. By the end of the year 1754 the pick of the best
shipbuilding timber in England and in all Europe had been placed in store
on the berths and racks at Chatham, available for the expected big ship,
thenceforward to season gradually and improve in keeping year by year.

The order to the Dockyard Commissioner at Chatham to get ready to take
the _Victory_ in hand was dated the 13th of December, 1758. It directed
Commissioner Cooper to “prepare to set up and build a new ship of
100-guns as soon as a dock shall be available for the purpose.” A sum
of £3200, it also informed the Commissioner, would be set aside in the
coming Navy Estimates for preliminaries. It was the custom at that time
to build first-rates in a dock; they were thought too big to build on a
slip.

The new ship—no name was as yet officially announced for her—was to be,
as we should nowadays say, an “improved” _Royal George_ (the _Royal
George_ was our latest completed big ship, the same _Royal George_
that came at a later day to so unfortunate an end), and for six months
the draughtsmen in the office of the Surveyor of the Navy, under the
supervision of Mr. Thomas Slade (afterwards Sir Thomas), Senior Surveyor
of the Navy, the designer of the _Victory_, were busy on the working
plans. These were completed by the first week of June, 1759, and laid
before the Admiralty. They were formally passed on the 14th of June, and
a few days later the Rochester stage-waggon from London stopped at the
dockyard gates to deliver the box with the duplicate plans, all ready to
be laid off and chalked down in detail, each part of the ship the actual
size, on the mould loft floor. Master-Shipwright Lock would then get
his mould-boards and have the saw-pits set going, in readiness for the
arrival of the regulation Navy Board Order to commence building. That
order came on the 7th of July.

The dock allotted for the building of the new ship at Chatham was that
then known as the “Old Single Dock,” the dock now called “No. 2 Dock,”
near the Admiral Superintendent’s Office and opposite the old yard clock
and bell turret. There, on a Monday morning, the 23rd of July, 1759—an
auspiciously bright and sunny morning as it befell—the keel of the
_Victory_ was laid.

The ship was to be afloat, according to Admiralty calculations, within
thirty-three months—by the 31st of March, 1762. That meant, in the
existing state of things at Chatham, working on her, at any rate during
the earlier stage of getting the vessel into frame, day and night. They
had two 90-gun three-deckers and two seventy-fours in various stages of
building, besides the _Victory_ to take in hand; and in addition they had
nearly every week extra refits or repairs to undertake for ships coming
in from the fleets at sea—a complication of tasks which involved the
keeping of every man and boy of the two thousand and odd hands then on
the muster-sheets of Chatham yard hard at work from Monday at daylight to
Saturday at dusk. Half the establishment alternately were on overtime,
working on Sundays and nightly through the week, for spells of three
or five hours after bell-ringing—in dockyard lingo, “double tides” and
“nights.” It was the same just then in all our dockyards; the day-gangs
as they worked having each man’s meals brought from home into the yard to
him, to eat in the half-hour allowed, near by his job; the night-gangs
all toiling on under the flaring light of cressets and links, without a
break, until past ten o’clock.

Amid such surroundings at Chatham they began building the _Victory_,
a hundred and fifty men being employed on the ship at first, to set up
and bolt together the various frames and floor timbers, and fit and fix
together in place the stem and stern pieces and brackets and the huge rib
timbers and beams, as fast as the converter and the sawyers could supply
them. So things went on from August to the following January (1760). Then
the gangs of shipwrights employed on the _Victory_ were reduced, and the
rate of working allowed to slacken down. With the French Mediterranean
Fleet broken up by Boscawen—one half taken or burned and the other half
cut off and shut up at Cadiz—and the French Channel Fleet shattered by
Hawke, and its refugee ships lying broken-backed and stranded up the
Vilaine, on the sandbanks above the bar, the stress of the war was past.
And there was little need to trouble for the immediate future with only
M. Berryer at the Ministry of Marine.

By August, 1760, the hull timber-work had been put together into the
outline of a ship, and was practically complete in frame, the skeleton of
the future man-of-war. The workmen were then almost all called off, and
the ship, according to custom, was left aside for a space, to “stand in
frame” and season. She had cost so far, according to the Navy Estimates,
upwards of £14,000 in materials and labour.

Two months later, on the 28th of October, the Admiralty officially named
the _Victory_. On that day their lordships signed an order that “the new
100-gun ship building at Chatham,” as the vessel had hitherto been styled
in all official documents, should take the name of the _Victory_. At the
same time a notification was sent to the Navy Board, directing them “to
cause the name appointed by my Lords to be so registered in the List of
His Majesty’s Navy,” and “communicated” to Chatham Dockyard.

The name, of course, from the first had been an open secret. There were
at that period seven British warship names which were tacitly accepted
as set apart for first-rate ships of war. They were: _Royal Sovereign_,
_Britannia_, _Royal William_, _Royal Anne_, _Royal George_, _London_, and
_Victory_. These seven had stood at the head of the Navy List as a group
by themselves, in successive ships, for some seventy years and more.
The name _Victory_, in 1760, was the only one not appropriated to any
existing ship. It had been wanting ever since the disaster of 1744, and
the new 100-gun ship, as a first-rate, had a right to it in accordance
with the custom of the service. Thus our present _Victory_ man-of-war is
linked directly with the old-time veterans of her name; thus, indeed,
from the Armada to Trafalgar, in a line of continuous succession—

    Victory to Victory ever
    Hands the torch of Glory on.

But that is not quite all. In a special sense no more appropriate name
could have been given to the British man-of-war laid down as the special
first-rate of the year 1759. In that sense the _Victory_ commemorates in
her name the most brilliant year of warlike achievement in our annals,
the most successful year for British arms that the world ever saw. In
her name, in this regard, our Nelson’s _Victory_ of to-day stands as an
abiding national memorial of England’s greatest year of victory; the
“Wonderful Year,” as our forefathers themselves called it, the year of
Minden and Lagos Bay and Quiberon and Quebec. “We are forced,” wrote
Horace Walpole, in October, 1759, “to ask every morning what victory
there is for fear of missing one.”

March 31st, 1762, came—the date by which the _Victory_ was to have been
afloat. She was, though, still in frame, hardly advanced beyond that; her
bottom planked over, but all above practically as yet only in skeleton,
little advanced, in fact, beyond the stage at which the shipwrights had
left her eighteen months before. The Admiralty’s change of plans after
the French collapse at sea at the end of 1759 had put her completion off
for two years. It was, however, not entirely lost time. An additional
£12,000 had been laid out meanwhile for the ship in preparing and working
up materials to be used in her, and seasoning them in readiness to push
on with the building when work on the vessel was resumed.

[Illustration: THE _VICTORY_ ON HER FIRST CRUISE

_Drawn by Captain Robert Elliot, R.N. Engraved and Published in 1780._]

The new date for completion, March, 1764, came in its turn, but again
the _Victory_ was not ready. Upwards of £50,000 had by now been spent on
her, and the ship was four-fifths finished, her sides planked to the
upper works and the decks laid. They had slackened off considerably in
regard to new construction at Chatham after the war ended. The dockyard
establishment had been reduced by two-thirds and overtime stopped.
General repairs were the order of the day, to make good the wear-and-tear
of war service at all the dockyards, and practically a third part of the
whole sea-going navy fell to Chatham’s share of mending.

Another six months was then officially granted for the finishing of
the _Victory_; but this time the Admiralty themselves, and the French
incidentally, caused fresh delay. My Lords did their share by coming down
to Chatham at the end of May, 1764, on a visit of inspection, walking
over the _Victory_ and leaving suggestions for alterations to be made
which would take at least four additional months to carry out. The French
hindered the intended progress by a display of aggressiveness towards
England over the Newfoundland fisheries question, as left arranged by
the recent Treaty of Paris. That trouble at the outset looked so serious
that the workmen at the dockyards were drawn off all ships building and
repairing in order to get part of the Ordinary, the ships in reserve,
into sea-going state at once. So the _Victory_ had her completion again
put off.

In the midst of this French “disturbance”—as our ancestors of that time
termed international unpleasantnesses of the kind—we may conveniently
take our leave of the _Victory_ on the stocks at Chatham, in the midst of
a series of strange scenes the like of which, happily, have not often
been witnessed in an English dockyard.

The Newfoundland difficulty was still unsettled, when, at the end of
October, 1764, secret information of a startling nature suddenly reached
the Admiralty from abroad. It was to the effect that a plot was on foot,
with the connivance of the French Government, to destroy the English
dockyards by incendiarism and fire the ships of war under construction.
There proved to be reason to consider the news in a most serious light,
and extraordinary measures of precaution were forthwith ordered at all
the yards.

At Chatham, the nightly guard-boats patrolling the line of ships laid
up at moorings in the Medway Ordinary, were doubled. Strict orders were
issued to those in charge of the ships in Ordinary to keep their gun-room
ports close shut all night, to send adrift before dark all shore boats
lying astern, to hoist in all the ship’s boats, to haul up on board at
night all the Jacob’s ladders over the stern used by the ship-keepers
for getting on board. All fishing boats and hoys passing up and down
the Medway were kept under observation. All doubtful or strange boats
of any kind on the river were to be challenged and reported. Special
dockyard guard-boats were told off to patrol from sunset to sunrise
along the river front of the yard. All persons landing at the yard from
the guardships after dark were to come alongside and disembark only at
certain specified points. Strangers visiting the yard on business during
the day were to be accompanied throughout their stay; no foreigner of
whatever quality or rank was to be allowed to pass the gates without a
written permit from the Commissioner. The yard-warders posted ashore
on look-out round the walls of the yard were doubled, and marines were
drafted into the yard to keep watch at night, “conformable to the
strictest rules of Garrison duty.” A captain’s guard was posted at the
dockyard gates, and a subaltern’s guard at the North-East Tower. A
special parole with countersign was given out by the Commissioner every
twenty-four hours. Constant patrols of marines were kept on the move
round and about the yard all night. Armed sentries were posted on the
river front, by the workshops and storehouses, the hemp and rope houses,
and the timber berths. No fewer than twenty-two of these sentry-posts
were appointed in and about Chatham dockyard, and each man going on duty
was supplied with three rounds of ball.

To safeguard the _Victory_, the pride of Chatham, “the finest man-of-war
ever built for the Royal Navy,” as they already spoke of her, a
cocked-hatted, high-gaitered marine sentry, loaded firelock on shoulder,
was kept pacing up and down with steady tramp alongside the dock where
the ship lay, all the night long. His orders were to challenge all
suspicious persons and loiterers, and all persons approaching the ship,
twice—“Halt, who comes there!” If not answered after that, he was to
fire. To prove himself on the alert, at every quarter of an hour, when
the warders on the wall look-out towers struck their bells, the sentry
had to call out the number of his post, passing it on to the next sentry,
and echoing back the hail “All’s well!” A fresh man came on duty every
two hours. To further ensure the safety of the _Victory_, once at least
during every night a “visiting rounds” patrol, comprising an officer
from the main guard and a corporal and file of marines with lantern and
jingling keys, boarded the ship to explore between-decks and below for
lurking evil-doers or any combustibles that might be secreted.

But Jack the Painter’s time had not yet come. Nothing in the way of
incendiarism happened at Chatham, or at any of the other dockyards in
1764, and after two or three months of unrest, things resumed their
normal state of tranquillity.

Nothing more happened after that to hinder or delay the completion of
the _Victory_, and by the following March her bulkheads and magazines
were fitted, the port-lids and the rudder hung, and the poop lanterns
in place, and the caulkers and painters were getting through with their
finishing touches.

On St. George’s day, April 23rd, 1765, the Commissioner at Chatham
reported the _Victory_ to the Admiralty as ready to be launched. The
requisite order in reply, dispatched through the Navy Board, arrived
on the 30th of April. It directed the launch to take place at the next
spring tides These were due on the 7th of May.




VII

ON VALENTINE’S NIGHT IN FRIGATE BAY

    If we go forward, we die;
    If we go backward, we die;
      Better go forward—and live!


The story of what happened once in Frigate Bay, St. Kitts, in the West
Indies, recalls one of our “forgotten glories”; a feat of arms that nine
out of ten people, one may be quite certain, have never heard of. Nor
do our general histories say much of it, even of those whose pages make
reference to it. Yet it is one of the very smartest, and neatest, and
cleverest displays that, it may be, any British Admiral ever made, and
it was managed, too, in the face of heroic odds. In every sense it was a
daring and dashing deed of arms, and its moral effect on the enemy at the
time was immense and widespread. It was in February of the year 1782, in
the closing year of England’s long war with France and Spain in alliance
with the rebel American Colonists. At that moment the French under the
Comte de Grasse were in overpowering force in the West Indies, and were
about, as they loudly vaunted, to make a sweeping attack on the five
remaining British Islands, which, they declared openly, would prove an
easy prey.

Rodney, the British Commander-in-Chief in the West Indies, had gone home
on sick leave for a short time at the end of the preceding season. He
was now on his way out again, with what reinforcements the sorely-tried
Admiralty, at their wits’ end for ships and the men to man them with,
could get together for him; but he had not yet arrived. Sir Samuel Hood
(the famous Lord Hood of a later day), Rodney’s second in command, was
in charge of the station in Rodney’s absence. It was by him that the
brilliant exploit which forms our story here was achieved in Frigate Bay,
St. Kitts.

Hearing in December, 1781, that the French Admiral, de Grasse, who had
been co-operating with Washington in the Chesapeake, had arrived with
his whole force at Martinique, and was on the point of sailing thence,
or had already sailed, with a large force of troops on board to attack
and capture Barbados, Hood at once followed; to try and hold the enemy in
check till Rodney joined. He had only twenty-two ships of the line to de
Grasse’s twenty-six, but he meant to make a fight of it in any event.

Six of Hood’s ships, it should be noted, were only 64-gun ships, the
smallest class of vessels placed in the line of battle; and two of the
fleet, also, the _Invincible_ and the _Prudent_, were old vessels, worn
out and crazy. Both, indeed, had been officially reported on as unfit for
sea. Hood’s biggest ship was his own flagship, the _Barfleur_, a 90-gun
ship. De Grasse’s ships, on the other hand, comprised the most powerful
man-of-war in the world—the gigantic _Ville de Paris_ of 112 guns; and
the French had as well twenty seventy-fours and three sixty-fours.

On his way to Barbados, Hood put into English Harbour, Antigua, the
naval head-quarters of the Leeward Islands Station. There he heard fresh
news. The blow had fallen elsewhere. De Grasse had been delayed on his
way to Barbados by bad weather. He had turned aside, and swooped down
on St. Kitts. He had already begun a fierce attack, it was reported,
and the small British garrison of regulars in the island were in a very
precarious position. They were, however, still holding out. They occupied
an impregnable position on Brimstone Hill, but their supplies were short
and there was treachery among the islanders.

Hood received details at Antigua of the attack on St. Kitts. Taking on
board the 28th and 69th Foot and two companies of the 13th, part of the
garrison of the island, and arranging also to form two battalions of
marines, made up from the marines serving on board his fleet, Hood sailed
at once to try and save the island. “He sailed,” to use the words of one
of Hood’s officers, “with the inadequate force of 1500 troops, which was
all he could get from the general commanding at Antigua, on the 23rd of
January, to relieve St. Christopher’s, attacked by 9000 Frenchmen under
the Marquis de Bouville” [_sic_] (i.e. de Bouillé).

Hood proposed to surprise de Grasse at anchor and attack him at daybreak
on the morning of the 24th of January. He knew that the enemy were lying
in Basseterre Roads, a few miles from Brimstone Hill. To counterbalance
the numerical superiority of the French fleet, Hood, in his plan of
attack, proposed to throw the entire British squadron on one portion of
the enemy, which he hoped to overwhelm before the rest could weigh and
come to the rescue. Then he would be able, he expected, to match himself
effectively against what would remain of the French. The plan was foiled
at the outset by the blundering of the officer of the watch on board
the _Nymphe_, a frigate, which, during the night of the 23rd, in the
dark got across the bows of the _Alfred_, a seventy-four, the leader of
the battle-line. She caused a collision that damaged the _Alfred_ very
seriously, and nearly cut the _Nymphe_ in two.

Owing to the collision Hood’s entire plan had to be altered. The repairs
to the _Alfred_ took all day on the 24th and until ten o’clock on the
morning of the 25th, before the ship was again fit for service, and
during that time the rest of the British fleet lay-to. They were already
in sight of St. Kitts, with the result that the news of Hood’s arrival in
the neighbourhood, up to then unsuspected, reached the French Admiral.
Now there was no longer a question of surprise. Before he actually
sighted the British fleet, de Grasse had got ready for Hood, and had had
time to get under way and stand out to meet him.

Hood, disappointed though he was, was not baffled. He had a second plan
of action in his mind. He next began to manœuvre as if he did not wish to
come to close quarters with de Grasse—as, indeed, might well be the case,
looking at the odds. He made a series of feints, as though he desired to
shirk a battle and slip away, on which the French Admiral, becoming more
and more confident, stood boldly out to sea after him. That was Hood’s
game. He drew de Grasse clear of St. Kitts and to leeward of the island,
manœuvring meanwhile so as to keep the weather-gage for himself. Then,
suddenly hauling his wind, Hood dashed in, making for the anchorage the
French had quitted in Basseterre Roads.

He swept in so close along the shores of Nevis—to prevent the enemy
getting within him—that one of his frigates, the _Solebay_, “was wrecked
from not having room to pass between the line-of-battle ship she was
abreast of and the western point of Nevis.”

Holding his way ahead, Hood slipped right past the French and raced de
Grasse for his own anchorage. Hood won the race on the post. After a
flying interchange of broadsides he brought in his whole fleet, well in
hand, right into Frigate Bay, Basseterre Roads, exactly where de Grasse
had been lying previously, and occupied the very moorings that the French
had originally had. In that way he placed the British fleet between the
French troops on shore and their supporting fleet It was a masterstroke.
Hood had turned the tables exactly. He completely cut off the French
troops on shore from receiving aid from their fleet.

       *       *       *       *       *

Completely surprised and outwitted by the British Admiral’s daring move,
all that de Grasse could do was to attempt to overpower Hood while he was
in the act of anchoring. What happened is described by the officer in the
British fleet who has already been quoted.

“When he perceived the whole fleet following their leader, he tacked
his fleet together ... and, in consequence, the French fleet approached
within gunshot at a little before three o’clock. De Grasse, who was in
the centre of his line, fetched in the _Ville de Paris_ nearly abreast
of the _Canada_, while the headmost ship of his fleet was drawing in
abreast of Sir Samuel Hood’s ship, the _Barfleur_. Their whole van boldly
advanced towards the _Barfleur_, which reserved her fire until the
brave Frenchman approached within musket shot, when she opened such a
well-directed and quickly repeated fire, that in a few minutes the French
ship had her jib-boom shot away, her sails nearly cut into ribbons, and
her rigging so cut up that she quickly put her helm a-weather, and bore
away from her redoubted antagonist. De Grasse perceiving an opening in
our line, boldly attempted to sever it; but Cornwallis placed himself
in the breach, which he so ably defended that his gigantic opponent was
glad to relinquish the hazardous enterprise. Hood looked on undismayed
at this attack upon his rear, knowing that he could confide in every
individual captain, and very coolly ordered the signal to be made for the
ships ahead to make more sail, in order to hasten their anchoring as soon
as possible. In the meantime, the _St. Albans_ (the leading British ship)
had taken up her station, and anchored at 3 p.m., and the other ships did
the same in succession, while the centre and rear were closely engaged
with the enemy, who pressed them close until every ship was anchored,
when the French wore in succession and stood out to sea.”

De Grasse made two fierce attacks on Hood next day.

“On the morning of the 26th, at half-past eight,” continues our officer
eye-witness, “the French fleet were seen coming round Nevis Point,
intending to force a passage, but so singularly felicitous was the
position taken up by the British Admiral, that when the enemy’s leading
ship approached, the wind headed her, so that she could not fetch
above the third ship in our line. The springs of our van ships were so
admirably attended to that the broadsides of four of them were brought
to bear at the same time upon the unfortunate Frenchmen, and were opened
with tremendous effect.

“The crash occasioned by their destructive broadsides was so tremendous
on board the ship (the _Pluton_), that whole pieces of plank were seen
flying from her off side ere she could escape. The French ships generally
approached the British van with more caution, with the exception of
some, among them being the _Ville de Paris_. De Grasse, in order to
prolong the individual encounter as much as possible, counterbraced his
after-yards to retard his ship’s way through the water along the British
line; and so the French flagship was detained a considerable time abreast
of the _Resolution_, _Prudent_, _Canada_, and _Alfred_ in succession, as
the _Ville de Paris_ slowly forged ahead and fired upon them.

“During this short but tremendous conflict between the respective
combatants, nothing whatever could be seen of them for upwards of twenty
minutes, save De Grasse’s white flag gracefully floating above the
immense volume of smoke, or the pendants of the other ships.

“In the afternoon the French made a second attack on our line. It
commenced at fifty minutes past two, and was principally directed against
the centre and rear, the morning attack having convinced them that the
British van was not to be assailed with impunity. Never, perhaps, was a
superior enemy so completely foiled as de Grasse was on this occasion.”

Hood used all the means in his power to make good the advantage that he
had gained, as we are further told:

“Sir Samuel Hood not only secured his fleet from any assault by sea, but
also took measures to prevent the enemy from molesting it from the land,
where it was infinitely more vulnerable: for could they have thrown up
any batteries on the hill situated above Green Point, his position would
have been no longer tenable. To prevent such an attempt on the part of
the enemy, he landed the troops that accompanied the fleet in Frigate
Bay, where they took post on the eminence that commanded the narrow neck,
which continues the southern point of St. Christopher’s with the main
island.”

[Illustration: THE FIRST FIGHT IN FRIGATE BAY, ST. KITTS

_Admiral Sir Samuel Hood’s squadron of 22 ships (at anchor) beating off
De Grasse’s opening attack, with 38 ships (shown coming into the bay
under full sail) at 2.30 p.m. on January 25th, 1782._

_Drawn by N. Pocock, “from a sketch made by a gentleman who happened at
the time to be on a visit at a friend’s, on a height between Basse Terre
and Old Road.”_]

The troops made an effort to join hands with the garrison on Brimstone
Hill as soon as possible after they had landed. They advanced rapidly,
and in their first fight with the French covering force met with some
success. Driving in the enemy’s outlying detachments, they advanced
some way towards the French main position. Then the situation altered.
De Bouillé himself, at the head of 4000 men, came on the scene. General
Prescott, the British army officer in charge of the relief operations,
had with him only 1,500 men, the soldiers from Antigua. He had refused
to take the two battalions of marines (each of 500 men) which Hood had
had prepared for service on shore and had urged him to take as well.
Hopelessly outnumbered General Prescott had to fall back. In the end he
was compelled to evacuate his camp near the sea and re-embark all his
soldiers on board the fleet. That meant the doom of Brimstone Hill, and
the colony of St. Kitts with it.

The garrison under Governor Shirley and Brigadier Fraser—comprising the
1st Battalion of the Royals, and the flank companies of the 15th Foot and
a detachment of Royal Artillery, with a handful of local militiamen—from
a thousand to twelve hundred men in all, still held out, doing their
best. As long as they held out Hood made up his mind to stay where he
was. Rodney was overdue now with his promised reinforcement from England,
a dozen ships of the line. If Rodney arrived while the British flag was
still flying in the island and could join hands with Hood, there was yet
a chance of checkmating the enemy and of saving St. Kitts. But could
Brimstone Hill hold out? It was more than doubtful.

The place was naturally an impregnable fortress, but the fortifications
had been badly placed. The garrison were not numerous enough to line the
walls. They had no heavy guns mounted, and the enemy were day after day
bombarding them with a pitiless fire that closed in on them more and
more, and became fiercer and more deadly and destructive every hour.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is an ugly story—the tale of the fortifications of Brimstone Hill.
Strong entrenchments had been planned a year before, and heavy guns sent
out from England to be mounted on the ramparts. But the local authorities
had not troubled to follow the plans, and what fortifications had been
built had been run up incompletely and carelessly. The guns specially
sent out from Woolwich for the works—brass 24-pounders and 13-inch
mortars—had never been mounted at all. They had, as a fact, been left
lying at the foot of the hill near the seashore, just as they had been
landed, together with their gun carriages and every kind of equipment
complete, besides tons of shot and shell. For over a year the local
authorities had paid no heed to the repeated requests of the governor,
and the general in command of the garrison in the island, to provide
the labour and appliances indispensable for transporting the guns and
material to the top of Brimstone Hill. Rodney himself during the previous
summer had repeatedly urged the island local authorities, as a matter of
public safety, to do their duty in the matter, but all had been in vain.
The result was that de Bouillé and his army had on landing seized the
guns and their ammunition, all lying there ready to hand. The French, in
fact, had formed out of them the very siege train by means of which they
were now able to batter down the weak fortifications on the hill above.
The garrison, on the other hand, had only the few light 3-pounder and
6-pounder field pieces belonging to the Royal Artillery, with which to
reply.

With the heavy guns provided from England in position, Brimstone Hill
might well have held out till Rodney and his reinforcements had arrived
and joined Hood, when the enemy must have paid dearly for their attempt.
And, at the same time, without the English garrison guns at his disposal,
de Bouillé would have been harmless. By an extraordinary coincidence the
ship carrying the French siege train for St. Kitts had been wrecked on
its way, and the second ship, carrying the French siege ammunition, had
been captured by Hood. The French had actually no other siege artillery
or ammunition nearer than in the gun park on shore at Martinique.

Rodney, indeed, on learning the facts of the case at St. Kitts after
his arrival, did not hesitate to write to England and to make other
serious imputations on the loyalty of the colonials all through the whole
business. “The inhabitants of Basseterre in St. Christopher’s,” he wrote,
“suffered the enemy to land without firing a single gun, though they had
three good batteries which might have done good service and destroyed
many of the enemy, and certainly prevented their landing at Basseterre.”
“Nor during all the time that Hood was lying off the capital, in Frigate
Bay,” added Rodney, “did a single inhabitant come on board or afford the
least intelligence.”

The disaffection at St. Kitts, unfortunately, was no isolated case, as
Rodney reported in the same dispatch. Actual treason, indeed, was rife
among the white populations throughout the British West Indies, except in
loyal Jamaica and at Antigua. The planter-militia forces in the various
islands were worse than useless. “Barbados,” wrote Rodney, “is in no
state of defence, and their legislature will not raise a penny to repair
the fortifications.... They wish to be taken, but the rogues shall be
disappointed while I remain here!” Dominica fell into the enemy’s hands
through the vilest treachery. There the garrison of the principal fort
defending the island, near Roseau, the capital, were made drunk by the
colonials, who at the same time plugged up the touch-holes of their
cannon and rendered the soldiers’ muskets useless by putting sand into
the gun locks; after which they signalled to a French expeditionary
column, which had secretly been assisted ashore that same night, to
advance and take possession.

       *       *       *       *       *

At sea, meanwhile, off Frigate Bay, de Grasse watched and waited,
contenting himself with “observing” Hood from just outside gunshot range
of the British fleet. During the three weeks between the 26th of January
and the 13th of February, Hood’s men were, as the Admiral described,
“under arms night and day,” but doing their duty all the time, as Hood
put it, “with a cheerfulness and good humour which charmed me.” This
was in spite of much privation. They were deficient in provisions and
stores, having had but little time to take in anything at Antigua—short
of water and “practically without bread, living on yams and country flour
to eke out their own.” Powder and shot, too, were short in some of the
ships. None of the fleet, indeed, had had an opportunity of replenishing
magazines since they arrived in the West Indies after the fighting in the
Chesapeake in the previous September.

“The enemy’s fleet made frequent demonstrations of attacking us, but
never came near enough to engage. On the 12th February their fleet
amounted to thirty-two ships of the line, a strong reinforcement from
France having joined, which not only supplied the place of their
disabled ships, but contributed to swell their numbers. On the 13th the
Comte de Grasse despaired of being able to assail with any prospect of
success our little fleet of twenty-two ships, and prudently anchored off
Nevis.”

The end came for the Brimstone Hill garrison on the 13th of February.
Further resistance was hopeless, and there seemed no prospect of relief
reaching them. The ramparts had been beaten down; their ammunition
was exhausted, most of their guns were disabled. De Bouillé summoned
the place, announcing his intention of storming the works. Unable to
offer more resistance the garrison surrendered, on terms that were
complimentary to the very gallant resistance that they had made.

Hood, at his anchorage in Frigate Bay, learned the unwelcome news by
a flag of truce from the French camp near Basseterre next morning,
Wednesday, the 14th of February. It meant that he must now look out for
himself. The situation had changed to one of very serious danger for
him. Not only was there de Grasse outside, with a fleet that was being
reinforced almost daily with fresh ships from Martinique, but there
was also the French army on shore. They had already begun throwing
up batteries in which they were mounting the same heavy long range
English guns by means of which they had reduced Brimstone Hill. The
shot and shell from these would speedily render further continuance at
the anchorage impossible. The enemy, moreover, had found an excellent
position for their purpose on a lofty bluff whence they could sweep the
anchorage from end to end.

De Grasse’s fleet numbered ten ships more than Hood had; and most of the
recent arrivals were 80-gun ships.

De Grasse’s withdrawal to Nevis for a few hours in order to refit his
fleet out of some storeships that had just arrived from France gave Hood
his chance. The French Admiral made sure that in the circumstances there
was no possibility of the British fleet escaping complete destruction.
Off Nevis he could keep the English fleet in sight, and only a couple
of hours sail from him. Hood seemed, as it were, between the upper and
nether millstones: between the French fleet in overpowering force on one
side, and the batteries on shore on the other, which also, as de Grasse
knew, were to be ready to open fire next day.

       *       *       *       *       *

Once more, though, it was to be the old story of the slip between the cup
and the lip. Hood essayed one desperate chance, and won it. He proved
himself a good deal more than a match for de Grasse and de Bouillé on
shore combined.

The British Admiral lost no time over his preparations. He had made up
his mind what to do within an hour of receiving the news of the fall of
Brimstone Hill. And then he acted forthwith.

At noon on the 14th Hood signalled for a lieutenant from every ship to
come on board the flagship _Barfleur_. Certain special instructions
were given out, and the officers were directed to come on board for
further orders after dark—at nine o’clock that night. In accordance
with the admiral’s instructions, at four in the afternoon every ship
ostentatiously lowered top-gallant yards, making things snug for the
night to all appearances, to spectators at a distance. Immediately it
was dark, as quickly as possible stream-anchors were got in, and every
preparation was rapidly made for putting to sea. These left every ship
riding with only one anchor down, the small bower. At nine o’clock,
as had been ordered also, top-gallant yards were quietly rehoisted
and crossed on board every ship. Then the officers told to return for
further orders, pulled silently off to the _Barfleur_ again and reported
everything ready.

Each officer on arriving was requested to go down to the _Barfleur’s_
cabin. Hood was there, and he saw each one set his watch exactly by
the flagship’s clock. Then all were ordered to return on board their
respective ships. As the hands of the officers’ watches pointed to
eleven, every ship was to cut her cable, come to sail at once, and
get under way in line of battle ahead, every ship moving out to sea
independently, steering to the westward, keeping on a given line of
bearing. On no account must there be any noise—no hailing, no signalling
whatever. Not a match must be struck on board, and all lights must be
screened.

Not a single mishap, not one mistake, from all accounts, marred the
execution of the bold manœuvre.

It was a black and moonless night. As six bells—eleven o’clock—clanged
out on board the _Barfleur_, the other ships each struck six bells. The
next moment a couple of heavy blows with an axe chopped the bower cable
through on board every ship. Then, simultaneously, sails were let fall
silently from the yards everywhere, and were swiftly and silently sheeted
home. At once now, in unison, the whole fleet began to forge ahead,
moving all together through the water. To aid in deceiving the enemy as
to what was happening, lighted ship’s lanterns were left behind, lashed
to poles set up on the casks that had served as cable buoys, making it
appear from a very short distance off as though the fleet were still
there, riding at anchor in the roads.

The masterly _ruse_ succeeded to the full. The watch on board the English
fleet could see the lights of some of de Grasse’s ships away to seaward.
They themselves, one and all, entirely unobserved, passed out in the
darkness. Not a trace of Hood’s twenty-two ships was visible when de
Grasse came on deck on board his flagship, the _Ville de Paris_, next
morning.

They met Rodney at sea a few days later;—and then, in due course Rodney
and Hood together smote the French once for all for that war, in the
great battle of “The Glorious Twelfth of April,” 1782.[10]




VIII

THE PAGEANT OF THE _DONEGAL_:—A MEMORY OF ’98

    Joy! joy! the day is come at last, the day of hope and pride—
    And see! our crackling bonfires light old Bann’s rejoicing tide,
    And gladsome bell and bugle-horn from Newry’s captured towers,
    Hark! how they tell the Saxon swine this land is ours—is OURS!

    Come, trample down their robber rule, and smite its venal spawn,
    Their foreign laws, their foreign Church, their ermine and their lawn,
    With all the specious fry of fraud that robbed us of our own;
    And plant our ancient laws again beneath our lineal throne!


The name Donegal has a significance to the Royal Navy that is all its
own. It was designated by the Admiralty as a county cruiser name, for one
of the ships of the _Kent_ and _Monmouth_ group; but there is more than
that behind the name. _Donegal_ lettered on the stern of a man-of-war
has its own traditions—associations of a yet wider interest to the
British fleet. The name, as a fact, owes its appearance on the Navy List
to a very special occasion. H.M.S. _Donegal_, in its origin, is only
incidentally connected with County Donegal. The cruiser through her name
stands, in fact, to remind the world that the Royal Navy does not “fear
to speak of ’98.”

It is quite a little drama how this particular man-of-war name first
came to make its appearance on the roll of the British fleet; and in
that form, perhaps, one may most effectively tell the story—as a sort
of pageant, bringing the details forward in, as it were, a series of
tableaux.

       *       *       *       *       *

First we have the opening scene, in bustling Paris, in the month of
August, 1798, something after this fashion:

    The Marseillaise is pealing! the crowds are mad with joy,
    With flags and failtë fêting the gallant Paris Boy,
    Who leads the bright procession of Frenchmen gay and bold?,
    The Students of the Quarter, the Latin Quarter Old;—
    They’re girt with dainty rapiers, they’re gloved with gloves of white,
    The knightly Gallic Swordsmen who love the People’s Right!
    They bear in bright procession a pledge from France’s shore,
    The busts of Hoche and Humbert beneath the Tricolour!

Then we have a September scene far away. We are now among the wild,
unkempt kerns and peasants of County Donegal, in their villages and rude
moorland huts of turf and boulders, dotted among the lonely valleys
far away amid the bare, desolate, wind-swept uplands and bleak, gaunt,
long-backed ridges, shrouded for half the year in rolling grey mists from
off the ocean, that range along the coasts of North-Western Ireland.
Everywhere the men are hard at work, seated in groups round their peat
fires, all actively engaged in pointing pikes and grinding axes, lashing
scythe-blades to short poles, and putting a fresh edge to ugly crooked
knives; crooning to themselves the while over their toil:—

    Oh, the Frinch are on the say,
      Says the Shan Van Voght—
    Oh, the Frinch are on the say,
      Says the Shan Van Voght—
    The Frinch are in the Bay,
      They’ll be here without delay,
    And the Orange will decay,
      Says the Shan Van Voght.

Again we are on the coast; by Donegal Bay. It is the morning of Friday,
the 12th of October, ’98, between seven and eight o’clock. Eager-faced,
excited watchers line the crags of Bloody Foreland. From the wide, flat
expanse of sea below comes up on the wind the dull, heavy, throbbing
sound of a distant cannonade. It has been getting nearer since daybreak.
It now comes nearer and nearer still; and by degrees, from the direction
of Tory Island, on the horizon over yonder, where a grey rolling cloud of
powder-smoke lies heavy over the sea, two squadrons of men-of-war, two
straggling lines of ships, most of them firing fiercely, come dimly into
view. One is assuredly the long-looked-for French—Commodore Bompart’s
squadron from Brest, bringing three thousand French soldiers and Wolfe
and Matthew Tone. They were to have landed at Lough Swilly yesterday
and raised the country-side. The other is the English fleet—a British
squadron that has followed round from Cawsand Bay under press of sail
to look after M. Bompart. They picked up news of him off the Fastnet
and Achill Island, and pushed on here. On the previous day at noon—as we
learn later on—off Malin Head in a stiff north-westerly gale, the British
look-outs sighted the French squadron; and they have been working to
bring Monsieur Bompart to battle ever since.

It looks likely to go hard with the French. At the last moment a mishap
checked their attempt to give the British the go-by. Their best ship, the
_Hoche_, a fine 80-gun two-decker, and M. Bompart’s own flagship, got
disabled in a squall last night. Her maintopmast carried away, bringing
down with it the main and mizen top-gallant masts and tearing a gaping
rent in the mainsail. So Sir John Borlase Warren, the British Commodore,
has been able to get level with his enemy, on whom he is now tacking
to bring the fight to close quarters, in conditions where his superior
force—three line-of-battle ships and five frigates to one line-of-battle
ship, eight frigates, and a schooner—ought to decide M. Bompart’s fate
before dinner-time.

Eleven o’clock. The inevitable has happened. The Frenchmen have been
overpowered at all points and broken up. The French Commodore is now only
holding out as long as possible _pour l’honneur du pavillon_. In the
centre of the battle, a dismantled wreck, with the scuppers running blood
at every heave of the vessel on the swell, lies M. Bompart’s flagship,
the hapless _Hoche_. Three British ships together—a sixty-four and two
frigates—are pouring broadside after broadside into her without ceasing
for a moment.

Wolfe Tone, the story goes, was on board the _Hoche_, and refused at
the outset a chance that was offered him to get away by a boat to the
_Biche_, a fast-sailing schooner then about to make off, or to one of
the French frigates, by which means alone it was possible for him to
escape. “The action is hopeless,” said the French officers to him on the
quarter-deck; “with the odds against us it can only have one end. We
shall be prisoners of war; but what will become of you?” “No!” replied
Tone. “Shall it be said that I fled when the French were fighting the
battle of my country? No; I shall stand by the ship.” He went below and
took charge of a division of guns in one of the batteries.

The end, as the watchers on land soon see, comes swiftly. Further
resistance would be murder. Beaten to a standstill, riddled like a sieve,
with twenty-five guns disabled, more than half her men put _hors de
combat_, her lower masts shot through and every moment threatening to go
over the side, her rudder smashed to splinters, with five feet of water
in the hold—down perforce has to come the _Hoche’s_ tricolor. So the
battle ends.

[Illustration: OUR FIRST _DONEGAL_

_The captured French line of battle ship “Hoche,” being towed by the
“Doris,” 36, Lord Ranelagh, into Lough Swilly. Drawn by N. Pocock, from a
sketch made from the “Robust” by Captain R. Williams of the Marines._]

It is just twenty minutes past eleven. Three other French ships,
overtaken at their first attempt at flight, have already surrendered. The
rest are making off, scattering over the horizon with British frigates
in pursuit, to be run down and taken in the end—all of them except
two.[11]

The fourth tableau rings down on the piece. The last scene closes some
weeks later in the quiet waters of the Hamoaze off Devonport Dockyard,
whither the _Hoche_ was taken round, with the arrival of an Admiralty
messenger at the Port Admiral’s office. He brings in his dispatch wallet
an official memorandum that “My Lords have been pleased to direct Sir J.
B. Warren’s prize to be registered in the List of the Navy by the name of
the _Donegal_.”

In this way it was that the name Donegal came originally into the Royal
Navy for a man-of-war, and the battle of October, ’98, off the coast of
Donegal is our present cruiser’s principal bond of connection with the
county.

       *       *       *       *       *

The luckless Wolfe Tone passed from the quarter-deck of the _Hoche_ to
the condemned cell and a suicide’s grave. It came about in this way. The
_Hoche_ was towed into Lough Swilly and the prisoners were landed and
marched to Letterkenny. The Earl of Cavan invited the French officers
to breakfast. Tone was amongst the guests. He was in a French military
uniform. An old college companion at T.C.D., Sir George Hill, recognized
him. “How do you do, Mr. Tone?” said Hill pointedly. “I am very happy
to see you.” Tone greeted Hill cordially, and said, “How are you, Sir
George? How are Lady Hill and your family?” The police, who had had
information that Tone would be among the prisoners, lay in waiting in an
adjoining room. Hill went to them, pointed to Tone, and said, “There is
your man.” Tone was called from the table. He knew what it meant—that
his hour had come, but he went cheerfully to his doom. Entering the
next apartment, he was surrounded by police and soldiers, arrested,
loaded with irons, and hurried off to Dublin Castle. There he was tried
by court-martial and sentenced to be hanged within forty-eight hours.
His request for a firing party was curtly refused. Curran got a writ of
habeas corpus from Lord Chief Justice Kilwarden. But he was too late.
Tone anticipated the execution of the law, and died by his own hand—with
a penknife.

       *       *       *       *       *

The _Donegal_ man-of-war served Great Britain for forty-seven years,
keeping up to the last her reputation of being one of the swiftest
two-deckers afloat.

Trafalgar should have been one of her battle honours. One of the very
smartest captains that ever trod a British quarter-deck, “a dear
Nelsonian” of exceptional ability and merit, the gallant and chivalrous
Sir Pulteney Malcolm, commanded the _Donegal_ at that time. The
_Donegal_ had been sent by Nelson to Gibraltar to shift the low tier
of water-casks just four days before the battle. While there, at two
o’clock on the morning of Trafalgar day, Monday, the 21st of October, the
_Weazle_ sloop-of-war came bustling into Gibraltar Bay, and firing alarm
guns. She brought the fateful news that the enemy had left Cadiz and were
at sea. Captain Blackwood, of the _Euryalus_, in command of Nelson’s
inshore frigate squadron, had packed the _Weazle_ off to Gibraltar to
call up the six ships of the line, recently detached from Nelson’s fleet,
that had gone in there to fill up water-casks and refit.

The _Donegal_ was lying with her sails unbent from the yards, her
bowsprit out, and her fore-topmast and foreyard struck. All her powder
had been landed, and the ship was fast alongside the Mole. The crew had
not turned in, as Captain Malcolm was keen to rejoin Nelson off Cadiz at
the earliest moment. When the _Weazle’s_ guns were first heard, they were
hard at work shifting the lower tier of casks in the hold.

Instantly the order was given to prepare for sea. With extraordinary
celerity the casks were got back into their tiers, and the powder was
hurried into the magazines. The foremast was set up and the bowsprit
replaced, the running rigging rove, and the sails were bent to the yards.
Every man of the seven hundred on board the _Donegal_ was working his
hardest in one way or another. It proved, though, a twenty-two hours’
job; it would have been a four days’ business in ordinary times. Before
one o’clock on the morning of the 22nd they were hauling out from the
Mole into the bay. Then sea-stores and provisions were taken on board.
Before noon the _Donegal_ was ready for battle; a performance on which
all concerned might justly pride themselves.

Not one of the other five ships was nearly so well advanced, although
they also had been striving their hardest. Gibraltar is distant from the
scene of the battle off Cape Trafalgar, as the crow flies, just fifty
miles; but no sound of the firing reached there as it would appear,
although at places further off, both in Spain and on the African coast,
they heard the cannonading plainly. All on board the ships at Gibraltar
still hoped to be in time for the expected battle, as it was to them.

A new spar had been ordered from the dockyard for the foreyard. It had
not arrived by noon on the 23rd. It was forthcoming only at the last
moment, just indeed as the _Donegal_ was in the act of weighing anchor.
Sail was made at once, and they went out of Gibraltar Bay with the
foreyard towing in the water alongside the ship, not yet hoisted on board.

They had to beat out in the teeth of the wild storm, blowing a hard gale
from the south-west, that, up the coast beyond Tarifa, was wrecking
our Trafalgar prizes. Clawing out against the head wind, the _Donegal_
won her way foot by foot, and by nightfall had gained the mouth of the
Straits. Then they had to let go anchor, so as not to be swept back in
spite of themselves. Next morning they weighed anchor, and once more
went forward, forcing their way ahead against wind and storm and swamping
seas.

Damaged British ships began, one by one, to come in sight during the
forenoon. The _Belleisle_ was made out, totally dismasted, in tow of
a frigate. Then the _Victory_ was seen, partially dismasted and also
in tow. The _Donegal_ made her number to the flagship as she passed.
A little time afterwards a third British man-of-war, with her three
topmasts gone, came into view. It was the _Téméraire_. The _Donegal_
passed quite near, and hailed across: “What news?” The answer was shouted
back from the _Téméraire_ through a speaking trumpet: “Nineteen sail of
the line taken and Lord Nelson killed!”

On board the _Donegal_ all were listening with straining ears. As the
trumpet bawled the direful intelligence across, a shudder, we are told,
seemed to run through the whole ship, followed by a deep, long drawn-out
groan, plainly heard on board the _Téméraire_ as that ship swept past on
her way.

They reached Collingwood and the rest of the fleet off San Lucar a few
hours later. At once the _Donegal_ found work to do in finishing off and
taking possession of the stricken and dismasted Spanish three-decker _El
Rayo_, one of the forlorn-hope squadron that had made the sortie from
Cadiz on the 23rd, hoping to find the British fleet in serious distress
after the battle and the storm, and to be able to recapture some of the
prizes.

Most of _El Rayo’s_ men were taken on board the _Donegal_. In connection
with one of them, Captain Brenton tells this story. “A man fell overboard
from the _Donegal_ in a gale of wind on this occasion; the usual cry was
raised, when some one thoughtlessly called out, ”He is only a Spaniard.”
“Supposing he is only a Spaniard?” said a gallant English seaman, seizing
the end of a rope, and darting into the sea at the same time; “no reason
the poor ⸺ should be drowned!” Happy am I to say, from the information of
Sir P. Malcolm, both men were picked up.

Besides that, the _Donegal_ rendered invaluable assistance to several of
the badly-damaged British ships during the second gale between the 25th
and the 28th; and in rescuing men from some of the prizes that had been
driven ashore, or were in peril among the reefs here and there along the
rock-bound coast.

Wrote Collingwood a day or two afterwards: “Everybody was sorry that
Malcolm was not there, because everybody knows his spirit and skill would
have acquired him honour. He got out of Gibraltar when nobody else could,
and was of infinite service to us after the action.”

By way also of appreciation and acknowledgment of the magnificent
services rendered by the _Donegal_ after the battle, the officers and men
of the Trafalgar fleet, without one dissentient voice, agreed that the
_Donegal_ should be specially permitted to have a share, equally with
themselves, in the Nelson Monument, which the ship’s companies that
fought at Trafalgar immediately after the battle jointly subscribed for,
as their own personal tribute to their dead chief—the tall obelisk on
Portsdown Hill at the back of Portsmouth Harbour.

       *       *       *       *       *

The _Donegal_, three months later, was in the thick of the fighting in
the brilliantly successful battle in the West Indies, when Vice-Admiral
Sir John Duckworth, with a squadron detached by Collingwood off Cadiz,
on special service, captured or destroyed an entire French squadron of
five ships of the line from Brest, including the finest three-decker
in the world, the great 110-gun ship _L’Impérial_, so named in honour
of Napoleon himself. It was in this battle that the British flagship
_Superb_ led down into the fight with a portrait of Nelson lashed to the
mizen stay, and her band playing “Nelson of the Nile.”

Three of the five French ships lowered their colours to Captain
Malcolm and the _Donegal_. First she led off with a rattling exchange
of broadsides with the mighty French flagship _L’Impérial_. Then she
fastened on a second French ship, and after a sharp set to at close
quarters made her give in. Passing on, the _Donegal_ engaged another
French ship till her colours in turn came down. Then she ran on board
one more Frenchman, the _Jupiter_, a ship that had already been hotly
engaged. The _Jupiter_ surrendered to the _Donegal_ after next to no
defence. Such was the _Donegal’s_ work that day, in a battle that is
really unique in the completeness of its results, but which, owing to
its having taken place within three months of Trafalgar, the world paid
little heed to at the time, and we have since quite forgotten—lost sight
of in the dazzling lustre of the greater event near home.

Until after Waterloo had been won, the _Donegal_ helped to keep the seas
for England, and on more than one occasion with shotted guns in the face
of the enemy.

Our second _Donegal_, a wooden 91-gun two-decker, built in the Fifties of
the last century, was one of the very last sent afloat of our old “wooden
walls.” She still exists, under the name of the _Vernon_, torpedo school
ship at Portsmouth.

       *       *       *       *       *

The direct association between the _Donegal_ of the Royal Navy and County
Donegal came into existence first of all in the case of the present
armour-clad cruiser, the _Donegal_ of King Edward’s fleet. She is a
sister ship of the _Kent_, and was launched and named by the Duchess
of Abercorn, as wife of the Lord Lieutenant of Donegal, and at express
desire of the King. The _Donegal_ of to-day was the second ship of our
county cruisers to receive the honour of a special county presentation in
commemoration of the name she bore. The presentation was made before the
assembled officers and men of the ship by the Marquess of Hamilton, as
M.P. for Derry City, and comprised a service of silver plate, inscribed
as the gift of “the King’s subjects in the County of Donegal and the City
of Derry.”[12]




IX

ON BOARD OUR FLAGSHIPS AT TRAFALGAR


CAPTAIN HARDY AND THOSE WHO MANNED THE _VICTORY_

    Heard ye the thunder of battle,
      Low in the South and afar?
    Saw ye the flush of the death-cloud,
      Crimson o’er Trafalgar?
          Such another day, never,
            England shall look on again,
          When the battle fought was the hottest,
            And the hero of heroes was slain!

This is a glance at Captain Hardy, the captain of the _Victory_ at
Trafalgar, his lieutenants and other quarter-deck officers of Nelson’s
flagship, and also something of the men who manned the _Victory_ and
where they came from.

Incidentally this should be said of Nelson’s own personal connection with
the _Victory_. Nelson’s first association with the _Victory_ dated back
to many years before Trafalgar—ever since, indeed, the year in which
he entered the Navy as a boy of twelve. At that time the _Victory_, in
her seventh year afloat, was lying up in reserve at Chatham, the pride
of the Medway, as the finest and biggest first-rate man-of-war in the
British Navy. The boy Nelson while at Chatham saw her day after day for
months, and must have gone on board her. Later on, during the four years
that Nelson served in the Mediterranean under Hood and Jervis, between
1793 and 1797, the _Victory_ was flagship of the fleet, and Nelson, as we
know, was constantly on board her on business with the Admiral. It was on
the _Victory’s_ quarter-deck also that Sir John Jervis, after the battle
of Cape St. Vincent, publicly embraced Nelson and congratulated him on
the magnificent display of heroic daring that he had made that day. In
October, 1805, Nelson had flown his flag on board the _Victory_ for two
and a quarter years, ever since the war began, having at the outset
gladly accepted the offer of her for his flagship from what he knew of
her as the fastest three-decker afloat.

At Trafalgar “Nelson’s Hardy,” Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy, was
captain of the _Victory_. He was not the “Captain of the Fleet,” that
post being officially vacant during Captain George Murray’s absence on
leave in England owing to urgent private affairs. Hardy’s charming manner
and tact, however, and his pleasant way of “getting on” with everybody
he had to do with in all circumstances, enabled Nelson to manage for
the time being without so invaluable an aid as “Friend Murray” had ever
proved himself. Hardy and Nelson had served together for nearly nine
years on and off, ever since they first met, when Hardy was a lieutenant
in the _Meleager_, a frigate in Nelson’s flying squadron off the Eastern
Riviera. When Nelson hoisted his broad pennant on board the _Minerve_,
towards the end of 1796, Hardy went with him, and he owed something to
Nelson during the cruise. Just before the battle off Cape St. Vincent,
when the _Minerve_ was passing the Straits off Gibraltar, with the
Spanish fleet in pursuit of her, Hardy, then first lieutenant, put off
in a boat to rescue a man who had fallen overboard. The man was picked
up, but the boat was swept by the current right across the bows of the
fast approaching enemy. On board the _Minerve_ they gave the boat up for
lost, when Nelson, risking the capture of the ship and all on board,
brought-to. “By God,” he called out, “I’ll not lose Hardy!” “Back the
mizen topsail!” They picked the boat up almost under the bowsprits of
the enemy, and got off scot-free. After that, the brilliant way in
which Hardy led the _Minerve’s_ boats at the cutting out of the French
brig-of-war _Mutine_ won him his post-captaincy and the command of his
prize, in which he served until after the battle of the Nile when Nelson
moved him into the _Vanguard_ in place of Flag-Captain Berry, sent home
with the dispatches.

Ever since the battle of the Nile Hardy had followed Nelson’s fortunes
as his flag-captain in the various ships on board which Nelson had his
flag—in the _Vanguard_ first of all, then in the _Foudroyant_, the _San
Josef_, and the _St. George_. It was Hardy also who, on the night before
the attack on Copenhagen, with cool daring, pulled with muffled oars
close alongside the ships of the Danish line and took the soundings
which practically enabled Nelson to win the battle.

“A bachelor of 35, rather stout in build, with light eyes, bushy
eyebrows, square broad face, plenty of chin, and a mouth whose corners
played between humour and grimness,” is the portrait that a contemporary
gives of Captain Hardy in 1805.

Hardy—he lived to be Sir Thomas and K.C.B.—now lies in the mausoleum of
the old pensioners’ burial ground at Greenwich Hospital—a veteran laid
to his rest among veterans. No more fitting last abode surely could have
been found for “Hardy of the _Victory_” than amongst those with whom he
had lived and fought and had his being.

    And this be the verse that you grave for me,
    Here he lies where he wished to be;
    Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
        And the hunter home from the hill.

He has his monument elsewhere: in his native Dorset, where there stands a
massive column of stone, which the men and women of his county in their
pride and affection subscribed for, and set up on a spur of Blackdown (or
Blagdon) Hill, overlooking the little village of Portisham where Hardy
lived as a boy, whence also he set out to accompany Nelson to Trafalgar.
It stands in sight of the house where the Captain of the _Victory_ was
born, on the one hand; while on the other it looks out across the vales
towards the sea, not many miles away: a lonesome, wind-swept spot; a
place to visit by oneself, say on some calm December afternoon, a little
before the shortening winter twilight closes round, and look out from,
seaward for choice—

                               ... where afar
    The grey sky pales to the dim horizon,
    And the murm’ring Channel with its wand’ring sails,
    Drifts down through the winter’s day.

Looking seaward from the top of the monument, standing there over nine
hundred feet above the sea—twice and a quarter the height of St. Paul’s
Cathedral—“the eye rests on an unbroken panorama of coast-line, extending
from the Isle of Wight and St. Katherine’s Point on the east, to Start
Point and the Tors of Dartmoor on the west.... Far down below lie,
clearly spread out as if on a map, Weymouth and the Backwater, as well as
Portland and the Chesil Beach, whilst St. Aldhelm’s Head and the Purbeck
Hills to the left, and Thorncombe Beacon with Golden Cap beyond it to the
right, stand out in prominent grandeur.”

       *       *       *       *       *

These were Captain Hardy’s officers on board Nelson’s flagship, a
complete list of the lieutenants and other quarter-deck officers serving
in the _Victory_ on the 21st of October, 1805:—

Lieutenants—John Pasco [Flag-Lieutenant] (wounded); John Quilliam; John
Yule; Edward Williams; Andrew King; George Miller Bligh (wounded); George
L. Brown; Alexander Hills; William Ram (killed).

Master—Thomas Atkinson.

Surgeon—William Beatty.

Purser—Walter Burke.

Chaplain—Rev. John A. Scott.

Secretary—John Scott (killed).

Gunner—William Rivers.

Boatswain—William Wilmet.

Carpenter—Wm. Bunce.

Marine Officers—Captain—Charles W. Adair (killed); Lieutenants—Lewis
Buckle Reeves (wounded); James G. Peake (wounded); Lewis Roteley.

Master’s Mates and Midshipmen—William Chaseman; J. R. Walker; Thomas L.
Robins; Samuel Spencer; Wm. H. Symons; Robt. C. Barton; James Green;
Richard Bulkeley (wounded); John Carslake; Henry Carey; John Felton;
Festing Grindall; Daniel Harrington; John Lyons; David Ogilvie; Alexander
Palmer (killed); John Pollard; James Poad; Oliver Picken; William Rivers
(wounded); James Robertson; Richard F. Roberts: Robert Smith (killed);
Philip Thovez; Thomas Thresher; James Sibbald; Daniel Salter; Francis E.
Collingwood; George A. Westphal (wounded).

Surgeon’s Mates—Neil Smith; William Westenburgh.

Clerk—Thomas Whipple (killed).

First Class Volunteers—Henry Lancaster; Charles Chapell; J. R. Walker.

Midshipman William Ward Perceval Johnson of the _Childers_ sloop-of-war,
a former first-class Volunteer in the _Victory_, was on board the
flagship at Trafalgar as the guest of his former messmates. He died in
December, 1880, at the age of ninety, one of the five last survivors of
Trafalgar, and the last surviving officer of those on board the _Victory_.

       *       *       *       *       *

At Trafalgar the _Victory’s_ nominal complement as a first-rate,
comprising the “ship’s company,” numbered 837 officers and men, including
in the total as well, 40 boys, 145 marines, and 8 “widows’ men.” She
had actually on board on the 21st of October 804 of all ranks and
ratings, with, in addition, 26 “supernumeraries for victuals”—under
which category Nelson himself and his secretary and personal suite and
certain others were returned. There were 24 officers, including Captain
Hardy and 9 lieutenants, and the various warrant officers; and 31 mates,
midshipmen, and clerks. In action 50 men were at the quarter-deck guns;
20 were stationed on the forecastle; 150 on the main-deck; 180 on the
middle-deck; and 225 on the lower-deck, where the heaviest guns were.
These, it may be observed, had 15 men told off to each, as compared with
12 men each to the middle-deck guns, and 10 men each to the guns on the
main-deck, quarter-deck, and forecastle. The signal-staff, comprising
a lieutenant, with a mate, 3 midshipmen and 9 men, were on the poop,
where the marines had also their post. Forty-eight men and boys were
employed in and about the ship’s three magazines in handing and passing
cartridges, besides 19 more at the hatchways. All these were in addition
to the powder-men—one man to each gun—employed on the battery decks in
supplying the guns’ crews in action. Six men were told off to attend
to the wounded in the cockpit under the orders of the surgeon and his
mates—not a very large number in the circumstances; and there were also
the small-arm men, the carpenter’s gangs to stop shot-holes and attend
to leaks, men told off to see to the state of the rigging, and others in
the various storerooms, at the helm, and so on. This brief _résumé_ will
give an idea of the distribution of the _Victory’s_ ship’s company at
quarters.

[Illustration: REPRODUCTION OF THE OFFICIAL DRAWING OF THE _VICTORY’S_
FORETOPSAIL AFTER TRAFALGAR AS RETURNED INTO STORE AT CHATHAM DOCKYARD IN
MARCH, 1806]

       *       *       *       *       *

The ship’s books account for the nationality, or place of birth, of
633 of the officers and men on board the _Victory_, as mustered on the
17th of October, the last muster day before the battle (the Thursday
before Trafalgar), not taking into reckoning the marines or the boys
and supernumeraries. Of the total, 411 were of English birth, 64 were
Scotsmen, 63 Irishmen, and 18 Welshmen. Three men were from Orkney
and Shetland, 2 from the Channel Islands and 1 (Lieutenant Quilliam)
from the Isle of Man. The remainder—71 men, were foreigners, from all
quarters of the known world almost, got together, for the most part, out
of merchant ships under impress warrants: 7 Dutchmen, 22 Americans, 2
Danes, 3 Frenchmen, 1 Russian, 3 Norwegians, 6 Swedes, 2 North Germans
from Hamburg and 1 Prussian, 9 from various islands in the West Indies,
2 Swiss, 2 Portuguese, 1 African, 1 from Bengal and 1 from Madras, 4
Italians, and 4 Maltese.[13]

Of the Englishmen on board: Kent, the old maritime county of England
in the day of the Cinque Ports, and the county of Admiral Rooke,
who won Gibraltar for the British Empire, contributed twenty-seven;
Devonshire, the county of Drake and Raleigh, twenty-four; Hampshire,
twenty; Somerset, the county of Blake and Rodney and the Hoods, four;
Hardy’s county, Dorset, sent fourteen, one of them from Captain Hardy’s
own native village of Portisham; Nelson’s county, Norfolk, contributed
fifteen; Suffolk, whence came Admiral Vernon and Broke of the _Shannon_,
twelve; Essex, nine; Sussex, five; Cornwall, the county of Grenville
of the _Revenge_, and “the great twin brethren” of the Seven Years’
War, Hawke and Boscawen, seven; Northumberland, Yorkshire (the county
of Martin Frobisher and Captain Cook), and Lancashire, eighteen each;
Durham, seventeen; Lincolnshire, seven; Herefordshire and Oxford, six
each. Wiltshire and Gloucester, five each. Old Benbow’s county of
Shropshire had one representative on board the _Victory_ at Trafalgar.
The other counties, men from which were in Nelson’s flagship that day,
represented by four men each, or fewer, were Berkshire and Bedford,
Worcestershire, Hereford and Cheshire, Surrey, Cambridgeshire, Notts,
Middlesex, Leicester, Staffordshire (the county of Anson and St.
Vincent), Derby, Northampton, Cumberland, and Westmoreland. London was
represented on the _Victory’s_ books by a hundred and fifteen men,
Liverpool and Shields by ten each, Newcastle by fourteen, Bristol by
five, Sunderland by four, Manchester by three. Birmingham, Leeds, Bury,
Winchester, Canterbury were among other places represented on board; and
nearly every coast town from Tweedmouth, Hull and Grimsby, and round
to Falmouth and St. Ives, had two or three men with Nelson. There were
Scotsmen there from nearly every Scottish county, from Caithness and
Banff, Ross, and Cromarty, Aberdeen and Inverness, Fife and Forfar,
Berwick, Renfrew, Galloway, Lanark, the county of that _preux chevalier_
among British naval officers, Cochrane, Lord Dundonald, “the daring in
war,” Ayr and Argyll. Eleven men from Edinburgh were on board; five from
Glasgow; seven from Dundee, the birthplace of Duncan of Camperdown; with
men from Leith, and Peterhead, Dumbarton, and Greenock. From Ireland, in
like manner, men from Donegal fought the _Victory’s_ guns side by side
with men from County Down and Roscommon, Meath and Carlow, Galway and
Sligo, Cavan, Wexford and Waterford, Tipperary and County Cork. Fourteen
men from Dublin were in the British flagship at Trafalgar; eleven from
Cork; ten from Waterford City and Belfast; Carrickfergus and Kinsale were
also represented on board.

There were men of all ages between twenty and fifty in the crew of the
_Victory_ at Trafalgar, and boys from ten years old—the age of little
Johnnie Doag, an Edinburgh boy, rated as a “First Class Boy,” and
probably the youngest person present on either side at Trafalgar—to lads
of eighteen or nineteen. Four others of the thirty-one in the flagship
(nine short of the complement) were just twelve years old, and six
others, thirteen. The great majority of the men on board were from twenty
to thirty years of age. About 10 per cent were over forty, the majority
of these being between forty-seven and fifty. One of the “powder-monkeys”
on board the _Victory_, it was discovered later, was a woman. Her
husband was also on board the ship. She was a native of Port Mahon, and
an officer who saw her there in 1841 described her as being then “a
sturdy woman of 70.” The last survivor of the seamen and marines on board
the _Victory_ at Trafalgar died at Dundee in November, 1876.

This interesting detail in regard to the _Victory’s_ crew should be
mentioned in addition. Practically 30 per cent of the seamen were
volunteers, so the ship’s muster-book states. It records in the column
headed “_Whence and whether Prest or not_,” the word “Vol” against 181 of
the names, out of a total of 628 able and ordinary seamen and landsmen.

       *       *       *       *       *

There were, of course, men of all callings in civil life among the
crew—as swept on board by the press-gang for the most part. According to
inquiries made by officers on their own account, almost every trade and
calling of every-day life contributed its quota in those times to the
assortment on board our men-of-war. Collingwood, it is on record, had
among the impressed men sent to one of his ships, a black San Domingo
general, who had somehow found his way across the Atlantic; and also
a Sussex market gardener, and a milkman, these last sent to him for
top-gallant-yard men—poor fellows!

On board the _Elizabeth_, a seventy-four, for instance, out of a ship’s
company 395 in number, only 177, it is on record, were seamen or of
callings connected with the sea: merchantman-sailors, fishermen,
watermen, and dockyard hands. The other 218 were stated thus: 108
labourers, 5 joiners, 6 tailors, 14 weavers, 5 coopers, 6 blacksmiths,
3 whitesmiths, 1 slater, 1 umbrella-maker, 1 butcher, 10 shoemakers, 1
poulterer, 2 stocking-makers, 1 dry-salter, 7 farmers, 1 coppersmith,
4 servants, 3 gardeners, 2 curriers, 1 mattress-maker, 1 tobacco
manufacturer, 1 fustian-cutter, 1 cotton manufacturer, 1 clockmaker,
1 watchmaker, 2 waiters, 1 brickmaker, 2 bricklayers, 1 soldier, 1
stonecutter, 2 sawyers, 7 painters, 1 corn-factor, 1 staymaker, 1
glassmaker, 2 hatters, 1 wiremaker, 1 potter, 1 miller, 1 mason, 1 miner,
1 chimney sweep. The same kind of mixture was found on board another
seventy-four, with these additional items: 1 linen draper, 1 artificial
flower-maker, 1 milliner, 1 hinge-maker, 6 more hatters, 5 more barbers,
and another umbrella-maker, 1 button-maker and 1 thimble-maker, 2 flax
and hemp dressers, 3 coach and harness makers, 4 dyers, 1 tanner, 1
maltster, 1 calendarman, 2 wool-combers, 1 pipe-borer, 1 warehouseman, 1
tallow-chandler, 1 sadler, 3 pedlars, 1 violin-maker, 1 schoolmaster, and
1 optician. All was fish that came to the press-gang’s net.

Again, too, to take another case. Captain T. Byam Martin (afterwards Sir
Thomas and Admiral of the Fleet), of the _Implacable_, in May, 1808,
checked the composition of his ship’s company man by man, and sent the
results of his investigation to his brother. “I have just now,” he wrote,
“been amusing myself in ascertaining the diversity of human beings which
compose the crew of a British ship of war, and as I think you will be
entertained with a statement of the ridiculous medley, it shall follow
precisely as their place of nativity is inserted in the ship’s books:
English 285, Irish 130, Welsh 25, Isle of Man 6, Scots 29, Shetland 3,
Orkneys 2, Guernsey 2, Canada 1, Jamaica 1, Trinidad 1, St. Domingo 2,
St. Kitts 1, Martinique 1, Santa Cruz 1, Bermuda 1, Swedes 8, Danes 7,
Prussians 8, Dutch 1, Germans 3, Corsica 1, Portuguese 5, Sicily 1,
Minorca 1, Ragusa 1, Brazils 1, Spanish 2, Madeira 1, Americans 28, West
Indies 2, Bengal 2. This statement does not include officers of any
description, and may be considered applicable to every British ship, with
the exception that _very few of them have so many native subjects_.”

Of those who fought on board the _Victory’s_ special companion-in-arms
at Trafalgar, the “Fighting” _Téméraire_, Ireland contributed just
two-fifths of the total ship’s company—220 men out of 550.[14] They
came from all parts, according to the ship’s books, mostly from
Waterford, Belfast, Limerick, and Wexford; and about a third from
Dublin, Newry, Kildare, Galway, Kilkenny, and Cork. Scotland supplied
the _Téméraire_ with 58 men; hailing, the greater number of them, from
Aberdeen, Inverness, Dundee, Greenock and Glasgow, Leith and Edinburgh.
Wales contributed 38 men all told; from Swansea, Cardiff, Pembroke,
and Milford, for the most part. Of all the Englishmen on board the
“Fighting” _Téméraire_ at Trafalgar, one county by itself contributed
practically a third of the number—Devonshire. They counted 52 men,
drawn from all over the county: Bideford and Barnstaple, Exeter,
Tavistock, Dorlish [_sic_], Ilfracoome [_sic_], Tiverton, and Dartmouth
and Paignton. From London came 30 men in all. Lancashire had as many
representatives in the ship as all Wales, 38—all except three hailing
from Liverpool or Manchester. Somerset had 24, Cornwall 20, Yorkshire
13, Northumberland and Durham 10 each. These are the numbers from the
other English counties: Norfolk 8 men, Hampshire 7, Kent 6, Cumberland
and Gloucestershire each 5; Essex, Dorset, Chester each 4; Middlesex 3;
Derbyshire, Warwick, Sussex, Cambridge, Worcester, and Suffolk each 2;
Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Shropshire, Leicester, Surrey, Hereford,
and The Isle of White [_sic_] 1 man each. There were 8 Manxmen at
Trafalgar on board the “Fighting” _Téméraire_; 2 Jerseymen, and 1 man
from Guernsey. Jamaica had 1 man on board, and Newfoundland 2 men. As
usual, a number of foreigners figure on the books—66 altogether. They
included: 28 Americans, 9 Germans (mostly from Hamburg and Emden),
6 Swedes, 5 Portuguese, 3 Frenchmen, 3 Spaniards, 1 Dutchman, 1
Cape-Dutchman, 1 from “Sclavonia” (Peter Valentine by name), 1 Viennese
(Emil Joaquim), 1 from Old Calabar (a negro named Ephraim) and the
remainder from Santa Cruz and other non-British islands in the West
Indies.

The log of the _Victory_ for the day after the battle accounts for all
who fell on board Nelson’s flagship, whether killed or wounded. It sets
out the full list in this form:—

“A return of men killed and wounded on board his Majesty’s ship
_Victory_, bearing the flag of the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Nelson,
K.B., Duke of Bronté, Vice-Admiral of the White and Commander-in-Chief,
on the 21st day of October, 1805, in an engagement with the combined
fleets of France and Spain off Cape Trafalgar. Thomas Masterman Hardy,
Esq., Captain.

                      KILLED
        _Names_                   _Quality_
    The Right Hon. Lord
    Viscount Nelson, K.B.,
    Duke of Bronté              Commander-in-Chief
    John Scott, Esq.            Secretary
    C. W. Adair                 Captain, Royal Marines
    William Ram                 9th lieutenant, R.N.
    Robert Smith                Midshipman
    Thomas Whipple              Captain’s clerk.
    James Mansel                Ab.[15]
    Thomas Daniels              L.M.
    Thomas Thomas (1st)         Ab.
    James North                 Ordinary
    Alfred Taylor               Do.
    James Parke                 Do.
    William Shaw                L.M.
    Richard Jewell              Ordinary
    Charles Davis (1st)         Do.
    John Bowlin                 L.M.
    William Brown (1st)         Ab.
    William Mark                Do.
    George Smith (1st)          L.M.
    John Wharton                Ordinary
    John King                   Quarter-gunner
    Robert Davison              Ab.
    Edward Waters               Do.
    John Cowarden               Ordinary
    William Thompson (3rd)      Ab.
    Thomas Johnson              Quartermaster
    Andrew Sack                 Yeoman of signals
    Alexander Walker            Ab.
    Arthur Hervin               Ordinary
    John Welch (2nd)            Ab.
    William Skinner             Ordinary
    Joseph Ward                 Do.
    James Skinner               Do.
    Stephen Sabine              3rd class (boy)
    George Welch                2nd class (boy)
    Collin Turner               3rd class (boy)

    _Royal Marines_

    George Cochran              Corporal
    James Berry                 Drummer
    James Green                 Private
    John Brown (1st)            Do.
    Lambert Myers               Do.
    Samuel Wilks                Do.
    George Kennedy              Do.
    Daniel Hillier              Do.
    John Brannon                Do.
    James Norgrove              Do.
    Jeremiah G. Lewis           Private
    George Wilmott              Do.
    Bernard McNamara            Do.
    John Ebbsworth              Do.
    William Coburne             Do.
    William Jones               Do.
    William Perry               Do.
    John Palmer                 Do.

    WOUNDED DANGEROUSLY

    John Pasco                  Signal-lieutenant, R.N.
    William Rivers (2nd)        Midshipman
    Alexander Palmer[16]        Do.
    John Bush                   Ordinary
    Daniel McPherson            L.M.
    John Bergen                 Ordinary
    Henry Cramwell[16]          L.M.
    William Jones (3rd)         Do.
    Hans Andersen               Ab.
    David Buchan                Do.
    Joseph Gordon[16]           Ordinary
    William Smith (2nd)[16]     Do.
    John Smith (2nd)            Do.
    John Saunders               3rd class (boy)

    _Marines_

    William Taft                Corporal
    Thomas Raynor               Private
    John Gregory                Do.
    William Knight              Do.
    James Bengass               Do.
    William Wells               Do.
    Benjamin Cook               Do.
    James Hines                 Do.
    Benjamin Matthews           Private
    Thomas Wilson               Do.
    Nicholas Dear               Do.

    BADLY WOUNDED

    George M. Bligh             6th lieutenant, R.N.
    Lewis B. Reeves             2nd lieutenant, R.M.
    William Honnor              Quarter-gunner
    Jeremiah Sullivan           Ab.
    Peter Hale                  L.M.
    Thomas Green (1st)          Ab.
    John Francois               Ordinary
    William Castle              Ab.
    George Burton               Ordinary
    James Parker                Do.
    Edward Dunn                 Do.
    Edward Padden               Private, R.M.

    SLIGHTLY WOUNDED

    J. G. Peake                 1st lieutenant, R.M.
    George A. Westphal          Midshipman
    Richard Bulkeley            Do.
    John Geoghegan              Clerk to agent victualler
    Josiah McPherson            L.M.
    Thomas Graham               Ordinary
    Thomas Collard              Ab.
    Robert Phillips             L.M.
    John Kinsale                Ordinary
    Charles Legge               L.M.
    David Conn                  Do.
    Daniel Leary                Ab.
    William Taylor              Ordinary
    John Simm                   Ab.
    Samuel Cooper               Do.
    William Gillett             Ordinary
    John Bornkworth             Do.
    Robert Gibson               Ab.
    Angus McDonald              Do.
    George Quinton              Quarter-gunner
    Edward Grey                 Ordinary
    Samuel Brown                Yeoman of powder-room
    William Butler              Ab.
    Samuel Lovett               Do.
    Daniel Munro                Do.
    James Curry                 Do.
    Michael McDonald            Ordinary
    William Fall                Ab.
    Michael Pennill             Do.
    Thomas Pain                 Do.
    John Knight                 Boatswain’s mate

    _Marines_

    Giovanni Giunti             Private
    Charles Chappele            Do.
    Samuel Green                Do.
    James Fagen                 Do.
    Isaac Harris                Do.
    John Dutton                 Do.
    George Graves               Do.
    James Rogers                Do.
    George Coulston             Do.
    Nicholas le Contre          Do.
    Thomas Crofton              Do.

    Killed                      54
    Dangerously wounded         25
    Badly wounded               12
    Slightly wounded            42”

One or two eye-witnesses’ accounts from on board the _Victory_, at and
immediately after Trafalgar, give interesting glimpses of what went
on in the ship during the fight. First of all, there is the formal,
matter-of-fact tale as set out in the log:—

“At 11.30 the enemy opened upon the _Royal Sovereign_. At 11.40 the
_Royal Sovereign_ commenced firing on the enemy. At 11.50, the enemy
began firing on us and the _Téméraire_.

“At noon, standing for the enemy’s tenth ship, with all possible (sail)
set. Light airs and cloudy. Standing towards the enemy’s van with all
sail set. At 4 minutes past 12, opened our fire on the enemy’s van in
keeping down their line. At 20 minutes past 12, in attempting to pass
through the enemy’s line, we fell on board of the 10th and 11th ships,
when the action became general. About 1.15, the Right Honourable Lord
Viscount Nelson, K.B., and Commander-in-Chief was wounded in the shoulder.

“At 1.30 the _Redoutable_ having struck her colours we ceased firing
our starboard guns, but continued engaging the _Santisima Trinidad_ and
some of the enemy’s ships on the larboard side. Observed the _Téméraire_
between the _Redoutable_ and another French ship of the Line, both of
which had struck. Observed the _Royal Sovereign_ with the loss of her
main and mizen-masts, and some of the enemy’s ships around her dismasted.
At 3.10 observed four sail of the enemy’s van tack and stand along our
line to windward. Fired our larboard guns at those which could reach
them. At 3.40 made the signal for our ships to keep their wind and
engage the enemy’s van coming along our weather line. At 4.15 the Spanish
Rear-Admiral to windward struck to some of our ships which had tacked
after them. Observed one of the enemy’s ships blow up, and 14 sail of the
enemy standing towards Cadiz, and 3 sail of the enemy standing to the
southward. Partial firing continued until 4.30, when a victory having
been reported to the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Nelson, K.B., and
Commander-in-Chief, he then died of his wound.”

Then we have this personal narrative from one of the men on deck, as told
in a quaint letter which James Bagley, a marine of the _Victory_, wrote
home to his sister, while the ship was lying at Spithead with Nelson’s
body on board, awaiting orders to proceed round to the Nore:—

                              “_Victory_, SPITHEAD, _Dec. 5, 1805_.

    “DEAR SISTER,

    “Comes with my kind love to you are in good health so thank God
    I am; for I am very certain that it is by his mercy that me and
    my country is, and you and your religion is kept up; for it
    has pleased the Almighty God for to give us a complete victory
    of the combined fleets of France and Spain; for there was a
    signal for them being out of Cadiz the 19th of October, but we
    did not see them till the 21st, in the morning, and about 12
    o’clock we gave three cheers, and then the engagement began
    very hot on both sides, but about five o’clock the victory was
    ours, and twenty sail-of-the-line struck to us. They had 34
    sail-of-the-line and we had 27 of the line, but the worst of
    it was, the flower of the country, Lord Nelson, got wounded at
    twelve minutes past one o’clock, and closed his eyes in the
    midst of victory. Dear sister, it pleased the Lord to spare
    my life, and my brother Thomas his, for he was with the same
    gentleman. It was very sharp for us, I assure you, for we had
    not a moment’s time till it was over, and the 23rd of the same
    instant we got a most shocking gale of wind, and we expected
    to go to the bottom, but, thanks be to God, He had mercy on
    us, for every ship of ours got safe into harbour, and all the
    French but four got knocked to pieces on the rocks. So that is
    the most I can tell you of it, for the English is in a right
    cause you may depend on it, or else the Lord would not have had
    the mercy on us as He has had, for we made five ships strike to
    the ship has I am in. We had 125 killed and wounded, and 1500
    in the English fleet killed and wounded, and the enemy 12,000;
    so I shall leave you to judge how your country fight for the
    religion you enjoy, the laws you possess, and on the other hand
    how Bounaparte has trampt them causes down in the places he has
    had concern with, for nothing but torment is going forward. So
    never think it is disgrace to having brothers in service; but I
    have had pretty well on it, and when you write to our mother,
    give my love to my sister Betty and my poor mother, and send
    me word about her and you shall have your loving brother’s
    thanks. So must conclude with hoping this will bring you peace
    and love and unity. Then you and me and our dear mother will
    meet together to enjoy the fruits of the island as I have been
    fighting for. My dear, I shall just give you a description of
    Lord Nelson. He is a man about five feet seven, very slender,
    of an affable temper; but a rare man for his country, and has
    been in 123 actions and skrimmages, and got wounded with a
    small ball, but it was mortal. It was his last words, that it
    was his lot for me to go, but I am going to heaven, but never
    haul down your colours to France, for your men will stick to
    you. These words was to Captain Hardy, and so we did, for we
    came off victorious, and they have behaved well to us, for they
    wanted to take Lord Nelson from us, but we told Captain as we
    brought him out we would bring him home; so it was so, and he
    was put into a cask of spirits. So I must conclude. Your loving
    brother,

                                                “JAMES BAGLEY.”[17]

After her arrival in English waters with Nelson’s body on board, the
_Victory_, while on her way round to the Nore, was delayed for some days
by head winds in the Downs. A very interesting letter from a visitor to
her, dated from Dover, the 16th of December, 1805, is in existence.

“I am just come from on board the _Victory_,” says the writer. “She is
very much mauled, both in her hull and rigging, has upwards of 80 shot
between wind and water: the foremast is very badly wounded indeed, and
though strongly fished, has sunk about six inches: the mainmast also is
badly wounded, and very full of musket shots: she has a jury-mizen mast,
and fore and main top masts, and has a great many shot in her bowsprit
and bows; one of the figures which support the Arms has both the legs
shot off. I clearly ascertained that Lord Nelson was killed by a shot
from the main top of the _Redoutable_: he was standing on the starboard
side of the quarter-deck with his face to the stern when the shot struck
him, and was carried down into one of the wings: he lived about one hour,
and was perfectly sensible until within five minutes of his death. When
carrying down below, although in great pain, he observed the tiller ropes
were not sufficiently tight, and ordered tackles to be got on them, which
now remain. The ship he engaged was so close that they did not fire their
great guns on board the enemy, but only musketry; and manned the rigging
on board; but nearly the whole that left the deck were killed. The ship
had 25 guns dismounted by the _Victory’s_ fire. A shot carried away four
spokes from the wheel of the _Victory_, and never killed or wounded any
of the men steering. Temporary places have been fitted up between the
decks for the wounded men, which are warmed by stoves.”

We will take our leave of the _Victory_ for the present with a second
letter, dated “Sheerness, the 24th of December,” on the _Victory’s_
arrival in the Medway, bound for her home port, Chatham, to repair there
after the battle. It was just two days after Nelson’s remains had been
removed to Greenwich Hospital on the way to St. Paul’s.

“The inhabitants of this place had yesterday the satisfaction of
welcoming the old _Victory_ and her gallant crew to the River Medway: the
noble ship passed close to the Garrison Point, and was received with an
enthusiastic cheering from the shore, which was returned by her crew. The
civilities of the officers of the _Victory_ have been beyond belief in
satisfying the anxious curiosity of numbers who have been on board to see
the ship and the spot where our gallant Nelson fell and died. The fatal
bullet that deprived him of his valuable life is in the possession of the
surgeon of the _Victory_, just as he extracted it from the body, with
part of the epaulet and coat adhering to it. Many of the poor wounded
fellows are on board, nearly well and in good spirits. The bullets in the
lower part of the mainmast are so thick that it is surprising how anyone
on the quarter-deck could have escaped, especially the brave Captain
Hardy, whose amiable character seems to be the greatest alleviation the
officers and crew of the _Victory_ have for the loss of their Nelson.”

    UNDER FIRE WITH COLLINGWOOD

    And when the loving cup’s in hand,
      And Honour leads the cry,
    They know not old Northumberland
      Who’ll pass his memory by.

    When Nelson sailed from Trafalgàr
      With all his country’s best,
    He held them dear as brothers are,
      But one beyond the rest!

The splendid service that the _Royal Sovereign_ rendered on the 21st of
October, 1805, should appeal to every British man and boy. In the words
of Captain Blackwood—“Nelson’s Blackwood”—who watched the fight, written
immediately after the battle, “of the _Victory_ and the _Royal Sovereign_
it is impossible to say which achieved the most.” The _Royal Sovereign_
had been with Nelson off Toulon in 1804. She had gone home to refit when
Nelson went across the Atlantic in pursuit of Admiral Villeneuve. She
rejoined the British fleet off Cadiz just ten days before Trafalgar, when
Collingwood, who had hitherto had his flag in the _Dreadnought_, moved
into her.

Two interesting preliminary glimpses of Admiral Collingwood on board
the _Royal Sovereign_, on the morning of Trafalgar Day, are given us by
his biographer, Mr. G. L. Newnham Collingwood, who had access to the
Admiral’s papers and letters after his death, and took all possible pains
to get together everything that could be gathered about him from those
who served with Collingwood in the great battle.

Admiral Collingwood’s “personal conduct on that memorable day well
deserves to be recorded. It has been said that no man is a hero in the
eyes of his valet de chambre, but that this is not universally true
is proved by the account which was given ... by Mr. Smith, Admiral
Collingwood’s valued servant. ‘I entered the Admiral’s cabin,’ he
observed, ‘about daylight, and found him already up and dressing. He
asked if I had seen the French fleet, and on my replying that I had not,
he told me to look out at them, adding that in a very short time we
should see a great deal more of them. I then observed a crowd of ships to
leeward, but I could not help looking with still greater interest at the
Admiral, who, during all this time, was shaving himself with a composure
that quite astonished me.’”

This is what Collingwood said to his flag-lieutenant and the other
officers, on the Admiral’s first coming up on deck: “Admiral Collingwood
dressed himself that morning with peculiar care, and soon after, meeting
Lieutenant Clavell, advised him to pull off his boots. ‘You had better,’
he said, ‘put on silk stockings, as I have done; for if one should
get a shot in the legs, they would be so much more manageable for the
surgeon.’ He then proceeded to visit the decks, encouraged the men to
the discharge of their duty, and, addressing the officers, said to them,
‘Now, gentlemen, let us do something to-day which the world may talk of
hereafter.’”

Then we have this incident, which occurred in the forenoon, as the
British fleet was closing on the enemy:—

“Lord Nelson had been requested by Captain Blackwood (who was anxious for
the preservation of so invaluable a life) to allow some other vessel to
take the lead, and at last gave permission that the _Téméraire_ should
go ahead of him, but resolving to defeat the order which he had given,
he crowded more sail on the _Victory_ and maintained his place. The
_Royal Sovereign_ was far in advance when Lieutenant Clavell observed
that the _Victory_ was setting her studding-sails, and with that spirit
of honourable emulation which prevailed between the squadrons, and
particularly between these two ships, he pointed it out to Admiral
Collingwood, and requested his permission to do the same. ‘The ships
of our line,’ replied the Admiral, ‘are not yet sufficiently up for
us to do so now, but you may be getting ready.’ The studding-sail and
royal halliards were accordingly manned, and in about ten minutes the
Admiral, observing Lieutenant Clavell’s eyes fixed upon him with a look
of expectation, gave him a nod, on which that officer went to Captain
Rotherham and told him that the Admiral desired him to make all sail. The
order was then given to rig out and hoist away, and in one instant the
ship was under a crowd of sail, and went rapidly ahead. The Admiral then
directed the officers to see that all the men lay down on the decks and
were kept quiet.”

The _Royal Sovereign’s_ captain at Trafalgar, Collingwood’s
flag-captain, was, like his Admiral, a gallant Northumbrian, Edward
Rotherham, the son of a Hexham doctor. Of him that day the following
story is told. As the battle was about to open, it was pointed out to
Captain Rotherham that the unusually big cocked hat that he wore would
probably render him a special target for the marksmen in the enemy’s
tops. “Let me alone,” was all Rotherham’s reply, “Let me alone. I’ve
always fought in a cocked hat and I always will!”

       *       *       *       *       *

As pre-arranged by Nelson, the British lee column at Trafalgar, fifteen
ships strong, began the action before the weather column, by leading down
and breaking the enemy’s line near its centre. The manœuvre was begun a
few minutes before noon, when, at Collingwood’s order, the _Sovereign_,
with every sail set and every reef shaken out, dashed forward by
herself, sailing “like a frigate,” ahead of the whole British fleet.
Taking on herself the fire of the enemy’s line, centre and rear, as she
advanced, she swept resistlessly under the stern of the Spanish flagship
_Santa Anna_, a gigantic 112-gun three-decker, nearly a mile in front
of Collingwood’s second astern, the _Belleisle_—“the most remarkable
incident of the battle, a feat unparalleled in naval history,” as it has
been called. “See,” exclaimed Nelson with delight to Captain Hardy, as he
watched the _Sovereign’s_ advance; “see how that noble fellow Collingwood
carries his ship into action!” Just at the moment, as it happened, on
the _Royal Sovereign’s_ quarter-deck, Collingwood himself was saying to
his captain, “Rotherham, what would not Nelson give to be here!”

We know from what a French officer at Trafalgar wrote, that the confident
daring of the _Sovereign’s_ single-handed advance “positively appalled
Villeneuve!”[18]

       *       *       *       *       *

King George the Third, in effigy, led his own fleet that day. The _Royal
Sovereign’s_ figure-head was an immense full-length carving of the King,
represented in the battle-day panoply of a Roman Emperor, his sword at
his side and a sceptre in hand, his red war cloak (_paludamentum_) on his
shoulders, with two attendant winged figures, Fortune and Fame, blowing
trumpets on either side.

       *       *       *       *       *

As the _Sovereign_ closed on the enemy, a French ship, the _Fougueux_,
ranged up close under the stern of the _Santa Anna_, as though to bar
the passage through the line to Collingwood. Captain Rotherham noted
this, and pointed it out to the Admiral. Collingwood’s reply was: “Steer
straight for the Frenchman and take his bowsprit!” So they closed,
and then, driving through the line just under the towering Spanish’s
ship’s stern, the _Sovereign_ opened the fight with her full broadside
treble-shotted. The terrific discharge, at one blow, it has been related,
disabled fourteen guns, and put a large part of the crew _hors de
combat_. “El rompio todos” were the words of an officer of the _Santa
Anna_. After that the Sovereign ranged alongside the big Spaniard to
leeward to fight the battle out gun-muzzle to gun-muzzle.

[Illustration: TRAFALGAR—12 NOON: AS SKETCHED ON THE SPOT BY A FRENCH
OFFICER

_French flagship, “Bucentaure,” 80 guns._

_“Redoutable,” 74 guns, from which Nelson was shot._

_Collingwood in the “Royal Sovereign” opening the attack._

_The “Victory” (Nelson’s flag should be at the fore, not as here.)_

_From a photograph of the original sepia drawing now in the possession of
a descendant of Captain Lucas of the “Redoutable.”_]

“In passing the _Santa Anna_” relates Mr. Newnham Collingwood, “the
_Royal Sovereign_ gave her a broadside and a half into her stern, tearing
it down, and killing and wounding 400 of her men. Then, with her helm
hard a-starboard, she ranged up alongside so closely that the lower yards
of the two vessels were locked together. The Spanish Admiral, having seen
that it was the intention of the _Royal Sovereign_ to engage to leeward,
had collected all his strength on the starboard, and such was the weight
of the _Santa Anna’s_ metal, that her broadside made the _Sovereign_ heel
two strakes out of the water.”

Even a moment like that, though, did not in the least perturb
Collingwood. “Her studding-sails and halliards were now shot away, and
as well as a top-gallant studding-sail were hanging over the gangway
hammocks. Admiral Collingwood called out to Lieutenant Clavell to come
and help him to take it in, observing that they should want it again some
other day. These two officers accordingly rolled it carefully up and
placed it in a boat.”

No sooner was the _Sovereign_ alongside the _Santa Anna_ than four other
enemies—two French ships, the _Fougueux_ and the _Indomptable_, and two
Spanish, the _San Leandro_ and the _San Justo_—closed round and joined in
to help the _Santa Anna_.

So hot a cross fire did these four ships keep up on the single British
ship during her, at first, unsupported fight, that, in the words of those
on board the _Sovereign_, “We could see their shots meeting and smashing
together in mid-air round us.” The _Fougueux_, we are also told, “at
one time got so much on the quarter of the _Sovereign_ that she almost
touched.” It was indeed a battle of the giants—a heroic defiance of
heroic odds.

So magnificent, indeed, did the situation of the _Royal Sovereign_
appear, fighting single-handed in the thick of the enemy, that it drew
remarks from some of our captains, for the time being lookers-on, on
board the nearest ships that were then coming up astern. “The English
ships,” to quote Admiral Collingwood’s biographer again, “were pressing
forward with their utmost speed in support of their leader, but doubtful
at times of his fate, and rejoicing when, on the slackening of the _Santa
Anna’s_ fire, they discerned his flag still flying above the smoke. One
of his most gallant followers and friend, the captain of the _Tonnant_,
has often expressed the astonishment with which he regarded the _Royal
Sovereign_ as she opened her fire, which, as he declared, ‘so arrested
his attention, that he felt for a few moments as if he himself had
nothing to do but to look on and admire!’”

How Collingwood bore himself in the battle we hear from two sources. Both
accounts speak of Collingwood’s unmoved demeanour and cool courage under
fire.

“The Admiral,” says one, “directed Captain Vallack, of the Marines, an
officer of the greatest gallantry, to take his men from off the poop,
that they might not be unnecessarily exposed; but he remained there
himself much longer. At length, descending to the quarter-deck, he
visited the men, enjoining them not to fire a shot in waste; looking
himself along the guns to see that they were properly pointed, and
commending the sailors, particularly a black man, who was afterwards
killed, but who, while he stood beside him, fired ten times directly into
the portholes of the _Santa Anna_.”

“The Admiral spoke to me,” related Smith, Collingwood’s servant, “about
the middle of the action and again for five minutes immediately after
its close; and on neither occasion could I observe the slightest change
from his ordinary manner. This, at the moment, made an impression on me
which will never be effaced, for I wondered how a person whose mind was
occupied by such a variety of most important concerns could, with the
utmost ease and equanimity, inquire kindly after my welfare, and talk of
common matters as if nothing of any consequence were taking place.”

Twenty minutes after the _Sovereign_ had by herself beaten off the
_Fougueux_, the leading British ships following astern of the _Sovereign_
began to reach the spot, and to take off her enemies one by one, except
the _Santa Anna_. With Admiral Alava’s flagship the _Royal Sovereign_
continued in close encounter, until the _Santa Anna’s_ colours came down.
It was just at that moment that Collingwood received, by an officer of
the _Victory_, Captain Hardy’s first message that Lord Nelson had been
“dangerously wounded.”

The stubborn stand that the _Santa Anna_ made was a disappointment,
it would appear, to the _Sovereign’s_ men. Their terrible raking
broadside at the outset had plainly “sickened” the Spaniards—as our
men expressively put it—and many on board believed that the enemy must
surrender forthwith. Captain Rotheram, indeed, “came up to the Admiral,
and, shaking him by the hand, said: ‘I congratulate you, sir; she is
slackening her fire, and must soon strike!’” The gallant fellows who
were fighting at the _Royal Sovereign’s_ guns actually thought, it is on
record, that their ship would have the proud distinction of capturing an
enemy’s flagship in the midst of her own fleet before another British
ship had got into action. In the end, though, they had this consolation:
when at length the _Santa Anna_ did surrender; “No ship besides ourselves
fired a shot at her,” wrote one of the _Sovereign’s_ officers, “and you
can have no conception how completely she was ruined.” “Her side,” wrote
Collingwood himself, “was almost entirely beat in.”

“The _Santa Anna_,” to quote Mr. Newnham Collingwood, “struck at
half-past two o’clock, about the time when the news of Lord Nelson’s
wound was communicated to Admiral Collingwood, but the _Royal Sovereign_
had been so much injured in her masts and yards by the ships that lay on
her bow and quarter that she was unable to alter her position. Admiral
Collingwood accordingly called the _Euryalus_ to take her in tow, and
make the necessary signals. He dispatched Captain Blackwood to convey the
Spanish Admiral on board the _Euryalus_, but he was stated to be at the
point of death, and Captain Blackwood returned with the Spanish captain.
That officer had already been to the _Royal Sovereign_ to deliver his
sword, and on entering had asked one of the English sailors the name of
the ship. When he was told that it was the _Royal Sovereign_, he replied,
in broken English, while patting one of the guns with his hand, ‘I think
she should be called the _Royal Devil_!’”

The _Royal Sovereign_, on the _Santa Anna_ surrendering, pushed off from
her giant prize—so big a ship, indeed, that, in Collingwood’s own words,
she “towered over the _Sovereign_ like a castle.” She moved away to seek
another enemy. But the fall of her main and mizen-masts, cut through
and through by shot, prevented her from taking a further part in the
battle until after being taken in tow by the _Euryalus_ frigate, Captain
Blackwood’s ship. The _Sovereign_ was able after that, during the rest
of the action, to employ her broadsides here and there. Her last piece
of work was at the very close of the battle, when she formed one of the
group of ships that Captain Hardy summoned round the _Victory_ to support
the dying chief’s flagship against a threatened attack on the _Victory_
from the fresh ships of the French van squadron as they passed down the
line.

The _Royal Sovereign’s_ list of casualties, as officially reported on
the morning after Trafalgar, amounted to forty-seven men killed and
ninety-four wounded.

       *       *       *       *       *

How Collingwood first heard of Nelson’s fate he himself has told us:

“When my dear friend received his wound,” wrote the Admiral, “he
immediately sent an officer to tell me of it, and give his love to me.
Though the officer was directed to say the wound was not dangerous, I
read in his countenance what I had to fear, and before the action was
over Captain Hardy came to inform me of his death. I cannot tell you how
deeply I was affected; my friendship for him was unlike any thing that I
have left in the Navy—a brotherhood of more than thirty years.”

Writing to the Duke of Clarence, an old service friend of Collingwood’s
and of Nelson’s as well, he said this:

“He (Nelson) sent an officer to inform me that he was wounded. I asked
the officer if his wound was dangerous. He hesitated, then said he hoped
it was not; but I saw the fate of my friend in his eye, for his look told
what his tongue could not utter. About an hour after, when the action was
over, Captain Hardy brought me the melancholy account of his death.”

Another detail of Trafalgar that may be news to some of us is the fact
that Collingwood was wounded in the battle. He said nothing about himself
to any one in any of his letters at the time, nor did he include himself
in the return of wounded sent to the Admiralty. It was only in response
to an anxious inquiry from his wife, who, some months afterwards, heard
a rumour about it and wrote to inquire, that Collingwood, five months
after the battle, first made mention of the matter. His letter to Lady
Collingwood is dated March 29, 1806, and in it the Admiral says:

“Did I not tell you how my leg was hurt? It was by a splinter—a pretty
severe blow. I had a good many thumps, one way or the other: one on
the back, which I think was the wind of a great shot, for I never saw
anything that did it. You know nearly all were killed or wounded on the
quarter-deck or poop but myself, my Captain, and Secretary, Mr. Cosway,
who was of more use to me than any officer after Clavell.

“The first inquiry of the Spaniards was about my wound, and exceedingly
surprised they were when I made light of it, for when the captain of the
_Santa Anna_ was brought on board, it was bleeding and swelled, and tied
up with a handkerchief.”

What was really troubling the frugal north-country mind of Admiral
Collingwood at that moment, as far as he was individually concerned, far
more than his wound, was his out-of-pocket expenses owing to the damage
that the enemy’s shot had done in his steward’s store-room. Writing to
Lady Collingwood, he tells her this:—

“I have had a great destruction of my furniture and stock. I have hardly
a chair that has not a shot in it, and many have lost both legs and
arms, without hope of pension. My wine was broke in moving, and my pigs
were slain in battle, and these are heavy losses where they cannot be
replaced.”

One gets an idea of the kind of man Collingwood was also from the
characteristically sympathetic way in which he wrote in a private letter
about one of his officers (Mr. William Chalmers, the master of the _Royal
Sovereign_) who was killed near the Admiral, on the quarter-deck, at his
post by the wheel.

“I have written to Lloyd’s about Mr. Chalmers’ family. He left a mother
and several sisters, whose chief dependence was on what this worthy man
and valuable officer saved for them from his pay. He stood close to me
when he received his death. A great shot almost divided his body; he laid
his head upon my shoulder, and told me he was slain. I supported him till
two men carried him off. He could say nothing to me, but to bless me; but
as they carried him down, he wished he could but live to read the account
of the action in a newspaper. He lay in the cockpit, among the wounded,
until the _Santa Anna_ struck, and joining in the cheer which they gave
her, expired with it on his lips.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The only personal description of Collingwood’s appearance in existence
is from the pen of a young officer (Midshipman Crawford, of the _Royal
George_) who had an audience of him, to present a letter of introduction,
in October, 1806, just a year after Trafalgar:

“Being provided with a letter of recommendation to Lord Collingwood,
the Commander-in-Chief, I took an early opportunity to wait upon his
Lordship.... Lord Collingwood was between fifty and sixty, thin and
spare in person, which was then slightly bent, and in height about five
feet ten inches. His head was small, with a pale, smooth, round face,
the features of which would pass without notice, were it not for the
eyes, which were blue, clear, penetrating; and the mouth, the lips of
which were thin and compressed, indicating firmness and decision of
character. He wore his hair powdered, and tied in a _queue_, in the
style of officers of his age at that time; and his clothes were squared
and fashioned after the strictest rules of the good old sea school. To
his very ample coat, which had a stiff, stand-up collar, were appended
broad and very long skirts—the deep flaps of his single-breasted white
waistcoat, descending far below his middle, covered a portion of his
thighs; and blue knee-breeches, with white stockings, and buckles to his
shoes, completed his attire....

“On entering his presence, he took a rapid searching survey of me from
head to foot; then ... in a quiet tone, amounting almost to gentleness,
he put a few questions to me in nautics, which I believe I answered to
his satisfaction.”

Of Collingwood in lighter vein we also get a glimpse. How, a short time
after Trafalgar, he got one of his officers to write up his biography for
a pertinacious newspaper editor is a story that the Admiral himself tells
in a letter to his wife.

“The editors of the _Naval Chronicle_ have written to me for the history
of my life and progress, for which they are pleased to say the world is
very impatient. Now this rather embarrasses me, for I never could bear
the trumpeter of his own praise. So, to get rid of it as well as I can,
I have employed ⸺ to write a history for me. For my birth and parentage
he has selected two or three chapters of Bamfylde Moore Carew; for my
service in the West Indies and on the Spanish Main he has had good
assistance in the _History of the Buccaneers_; and for my shipwreck he
has copied a great deal out of _Robinson Crusoe_; all which, with a few
anecdotes from the _Lives of the Admirals_, a little distorted, will
make, I am inclined to think, a very respectable piece of biography.”

Collingwood’s dog, Bounce, was on board the _Royal Sovereign_ at
Trafalgar, tied up out of the way below, in comparative safety, on the
orlop deck. According to Collingwood himself, Bounce did not like cannon
firing. Wrote Collingwood about him, before the battle: “Bounce is my
only pet now, and he is indeed a good fellow; he sleeps by the side
of my cot, whenever I lie in one, until near the time of tacking, and
then marches off, to be out of the hearing of the guns, for he is not
reconciled to them yet.” After the battle, on his master being raised to
the peerage, Bounce—as Collingwood whimsically describes in one of his
home-letters—seemed to grasp the new situation and took to giving himself
airs. “I am out of all patience with Bounce. The consequential airs he
gives himself since he became a right honourable dog are insufferable.
He considers it beneath his dignity to play with commoners’ dogs, and
truly thinks that he does them grace when he condescends to lift up his
leg against them. This, I think, is carrying the insolence of rank to the
extreme, but he is a dog that does it!”[19]

       *       *       *       *       *

As all the world knows, Collingwood never set foot in England after
Trafalgar, doomed, poor homesick fellow, never more to see—

    The pleasant strand of Northumberland
    And the lordly towers thereby.

He wore out his life on duty, waiting and watching at sea for nearly five
long and weary years, for an enemy who did not dare to face him. The
Admiralty could not spare him to come home.

“He stepped into his boat from Plymouth Dock,” says the writer of a
biographical sketch of Collingwood published shortly after the Admiral’s
death, “on the last day of April, 1805, and returned, five years after,
a peer and a corpse.” Immediately before he embarked, Collingwood
had been conversing with a brother officer, who records an affecting
incident. “The last time I ever saw Lord Collingwood,” wrote Sir T.
Byam Martin, “he was on the point of stepping into his boat, never
again to touch the British shore. We walked together for half an hour,
and as long as I live I shall remember the words with which, in his
accustomed mildness of expression, he alluded to the sacrifices our
professional duties exact of us. He told me the number of years he had
been married, and the number of days he had been with his family since
the war commenced (then of many years duration). ‘My family are _actually
strangers to me_.’ He was greatly overcome by the feelings thus excited,
and, taking me by the hand, he said, ‘What a life of privation is
ours—what an abandonment of everything to our professional duty, _and how
little do the people of England know the sacrifices we make for them_!’
With this he turned from me to hide the tear which ran down his manly
cheek, and saying ‘Farewell!’ walked to his boat.”

Slowly killed, if ever man was, by downright hard work, Collingwood died
on the 7th of March, 1810, on board his flagship in the Mediterranean.
On the day before he died his old spirit flickered up once more, and he
murmured to his captain, who bent down over the brave old face, “I may
live to fight the French once more.” The end drew on apace after that,
and the soul of one of the grandest veterans of England at her best,
passed calmly away to the presence of the God in Whom throughout every
hour of his blameless life his trust had been as that of a little child
for its earthly father. “He met death,” said the surgeon who attended
Collingwood, “as became him, with composure and a fortitude which have
seldom been equalled and never surpassed.”

We know something of how his sailors loved “Old Cuddy,” as the whole
fleet called Collingwood, from what happened at Collingwood’s funeral on
that May day of 1810, when Nelson’s brother-in-arms was laid to his rest
beside his old messmate, friend, and companion in the crypt of St. Paul’s
Cathedral. Lord Chancellor Eldon, beside whom, as a little boy of nine,
the Admiral had sat in class at school, was a mourner at the funeral.
“It was very affecting,” he describes, “his sailors crowded so around,
all anxious to see the last of their commander. One sailor seized me by
the arm, and entreated that I would take him in with me that he might be
there to the end. I told him to stick fast to me, and I did take him in;
but when it came to throwing some earth on the coffin (you know the part
of the service ‘dust to dust’), he burst past me and threw himself into
the vault!”

No truer description of the man as a fact was ever penned than the words
that Thackeray years afterwards used of Collingwood: “Another true knight
of those days was Cuthbert Collingwood, and I think since heaven made
gentlemen, there is not record of a better one than that.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Collingwood’s officers at Trafalgar, those who served with him on board
the _Royal Sovereign_, were these. According to the muster book the ship
was two lieutenants short on the 21st of October.

Captain—Edward Rotherham.

Lieutenants—John Clavell, Joseph Simmons, James Bashford (wounded),
Edward Barker, Brice Gilliland (killed), Francis Blower Gibbes.

Master—William Chalmers (killed).

Surgeon—Richard Lloyd.

Purser—Brinsley S. Oliver.

Chaplain—Rev. John Rudall.

Secretary—W. R. Cosway.

Gunner—Nicholas Brown.

Boatswain—Isaac Wilkinson (wounded).

Carpenter—George Clines.

Marine officers:—

Captain—Joseph Vallack.

Lieutenants—Robert Green (killed), Armiger W. Hubbard, James Le Vescomte
(wounded).

Assistant Surgeons—Primrose Lyon, Henry Towsey.

Master’s Mates and Midshipmen—Thomas Altoft, Charles A. Antram, Richard
Davison Pritchard, William Sharp, William Watson (wounded), John
Aikenhead (killed), John Doling Morey, Sam Weddle, Thomas P. Robinson,
Charles Coucher, Joseph Del Carrotto, John Chaldecott, Henry Davis,
William Budd Boreham, Gilbert Kennicott (wounded), Thomas Currell,
Granville Thompson (wounded), George Castle, John Parr, Thomas Dickinson
(wounded), John Campbell (wounded), Thomas Braund (mortally wounded),
John Farrant (wounded), John Redwood, John Dobson, William Stock, James
Rudall.

First Class Volunteers—Meredith Milnekoff, Robert Julian, Archibald
Nagle, Robert Duke Hamilton, John Hill, Claudius Charles, William Lloyd,
Charles Lambert, Charles Chiswick.

       *       *       *       *       *

From the officers we proceed in natural sequence to the men, and with
regard to these, at the outset, there hangs a tale.

A very curious story is related of Collingwood on the morning of
Trafalgar Day which most of those who have written about him have
repeated. Collingwood, we are told, as the British fleet was approaching
the enemy, went round the decks of the _Royal Sovereign_ and bade the men
at the guns “show those fellows what the tars of the Tyne can do!” More
than that, there is an old print in existence (a copy of which is in the
possession of Earl Nelson) artistically depicting the story, and labelled
with the legend, “Tars of the Tyne.” The ship’s books unfortunately
give quite another version. There were fewer North countrymen on board
the _Royal Sovereign_ at Trafalgar, perhaps, than in any other ship
of the British fleet. Altogether, according to the muster book, there
were in the ship hardly thirty all told, including Collingwood himself
and Captain Rotherham and the youngsters, “the northern boys,” as
Collingwood called them. Of the seamen—A.B.’s, ordinary, and landmen—the
_Sovereign’s_ books name only four as coming from Newcastle, two as
coming from Shields, and one as coming from “Northumberland” at large.
Sunderland sent four men, and the rest were from Durham, three men, with
from Berwick-on-Tweed two, Whitehaven six, Westmorland one. That exhausts
the North-country contingent in the _Royal Sovereign_.

More than a third of the entire ship’s company on board were Irishmen—240
men and boys. Scotland, including Shetland and the Hebrides, contributed
forty men, and Wales twenty-one. The London contingent with Collingwood
at Trafalgar was the next largest after the Irishmen—seventy-five men
and boys altogether. Lancashire was represented by forty-six men, Devon
by thirty-four, Hampshire with thirty, Cornwall with twenty-four,
Gloucester (Bristol) and Somerset each by eighteen, Yorkshire and Kent by
ten men each; Lincolnshire, Cheshire, and Dorset each by eight; Norfolk
and Suffolk by seven men each; and so on down to Cambridge, Bedford,
Leicester, Hertfordshire, and Worcester with one man each.

Yet another interesting point is brought out by the muster book of the
_Royal Sovereign_. We have been told how Collingwood, in the middle
of the fighting, commended a “black man” for his straight shooting.
Apparently the man was a West Indian. There were no fewer than seventy
foreigners and aliens on board Collingwood’s flagship at Trafalgar,
according to the ship’s books, the list being thus made up: Twenty-four
Americans (hailing for the most part from New York, Boston, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and New Jersey); seven Dutchmen—Dirks and Franz’s and Hendriks
and Rutters—from Friesland, Delft, Maestricht, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam;
one Belgian, from Brussels; three Portuguese from the Azores and Lisbon;
four Prussians and one Pole from Dantzic; two Danes, two Frenchmen, one
Norwegian, one Venetian, one Neapolitan, one Maltese, seven Lascars—two
of them entered as “Jonan” and “Lowannah”—from the East Indies; two
Malays from Batavia, entered as “Soloman” and “Ballee”; one from Bengal,
one from Madras, a third Malay entered as “George”; fifteen West Indians,
from St. Kitts, Barbados, Jamaica, and from Berbice, in British Guiana.

       *       *       *       *       *

Two interesting letters from the _Royal Sovereign_ may serve to conclude
our narrative. One was from a Hampshire lad, one of those fighting below
at the guns. It runs thus:—

“Honoured Father,—This comes to tell you I am alive and hearty except
three fingers; but that’s not much, it might have been my head. I told
brother Tom I should like to see a greadly [_sic_] battle, and I have
seen one, and we have peppered the Combined rarely; and for the matter of
that, they fought us pretty tightish for French and Spanish. Three of our
mess are killed, and four more of us winged. But to tell you the truth of
it, when the game began, I wished myself at Warnborough with my plough
again; but when they had given us one duster, and I found myself snug
and tight, I ... set to in good earnest, and thought no more about being
killed than if I were at Murrell Green Fair, and I was presently as busy
and as black as a collier. How my fingers got knocked overboard I don’t
know, but off they are, and I never missed them till I wanted them. You
see, by my writing, it was my left hand, so I can write to you and fight
for my King yet. We have taken a rare parcel of ships, but the wind is so
rough we cannot bring them home, else I should roll in money, so we are
busy smashing ’em, and blowing ’em up wholesale.

“Our dear Admiral Nelson is killed! so we have paid pretty sharply for
licking ’em. I never sat eyes on him, for which I am both sorry and glad;
for, to be sure, I should like to have seen him—but then, all the men in
our ship who have seen him are such soft toads, they have done nothing
but blast their eyes, and cry, ever since he was killed. God bless you!
chaps that fought like the devil, sit down and cry like a wench. I am
still in the _Royal Sovereign_, but the Admiral has left her, for she is
like a horse without a bridle, so he is in a frigate that he may be here
and there and everywhere, for he’s as _cute_ as here and there one, and
as bold as a lion, for all he can cry!—I saw his tears with my own eyes,
when the boat hailed and said my lord was dead. So no more at present
from your dutiful son,—SAM.”

A pathetic interest attaches to the other letter. It was written on the
morning of the battle by a midshipman of the _Royal Sovereign_, Mr. John
Aikenhead, who was killed in the action. It was apparently meant for his
parents and family in general:—

“We have just piped to breakfast; thirty-five sail, besides smaller
vessels, are now on our beam, about three miles off. Should I, my dear
parents, fall in defence of my King, let that thought console you. I feel
not the least dread on my spirits. Oh my parents, sisters, brothers, dear
grandfather, grandmother, and aunt, believe me ever yours!

“Accept, perhaps for the last time, your brother’s love; be assured I
feel for my friends, should I die in this glorious action—glorious, no
doubt, it will be. Every British heart pants for glory. Our old Admiral
(Admiral Collingwood) is quite young with the thoughts of it. If I
survive, nothing will give me greater pleasure than embracing my dearest
relations. Do not, in case I fall, grieve—it will be to no purpose. Many
brave fellows will no doubt fall with me on both sides.”

The letter added that the writer had made his will and put it in his
desk. It gave also a statement of the property deposited in his chest,
with £10 savings, added since the will was made. “Do not be surprised,”
says the lad in his letter, “to find £10 more—it is mine.”


“OLD IRONSIDES” AND THE THIRD IN COMMAND

    “Britannia Victrix”

The 100-gun three-decker _Britannia_, was the flagship of the third in
command at Trafalgar, Rear-Admiral the Earl of Northesk. In honour of the
part that the _Britannia_ took in the battle Lord Northesk was created
a Knight of the Bath, and was granted by George the Third the right to
place the name “Trafalgar” on his coat-of-arms, with special heraldic
augmentations. Ever since 1805 the supporters of the heraldic shield of
the earls of Northesk have each borne a staff with a Rear-Admiral of the
White’s flag on it bearing the inscription, “Britannia Victrix.”

“Old Ironsides” was the _Britannia’s_ every-day name in Nelson’s fleet,
due to the fact, it is said, that the _Britannia_ was the oldest
man-of-war in the fighting line of the Navy. The veteran three-decker on
the 21st of October, 1805, had been afloat just forty-three years and two
days. She was our second _Britannia_, and the first three-decker launched
in George the Third’s reign, the launch taking place at Portsmouth
Dockyard on the 19th of October, 1762, in the presence of twenty thousand
spectators, “who all had the pleasure of seeing as fine a launch as ever
was seen.”

Trafalgar was the _Britannia’s_ fifth battle. She had had her first
meeting with the enemy as flagship of the Second in Command in the
“Grand Fleet” under Lord Howe, which achieved the relief of Gibraltar
in 1782—a feat that nowadays perhaps we think little of, but which
was thought enough of at the time for such a personage as Frederick
the Great to write an autograph letter of congratulation on it to the
British Admiral. After that she had taken part at Lord Hood’s occupation
of Toulon, in Admiral Hotham’s two actions off Genoa and off Hyères,
as commander-in-chief’s flagship, and on the 14th of February, 1797,
“Glorious Valentine’s Day,” as flagship of the second in command in the
battle off Cape St. Vincent.[20]

At Trafalgar the _Britannia_ went into action as the fifth or sixth ship
astern of the _Victory_. She had three of the enemy’s ships firing on
her as she ranged forward into the battle under full sail. She broke
the enemy’s line, firing both broadsides as she drove through, after
which she engaged an 80-gun ship and promptly dismasted her opponent. A
little later, we are told, a French officer “was seen to wave a white
handkerchief from the quarter-deck in token of surrender.” Leaving
another of our ships to take possession, the _Britannia_ passed on
forthwith to deal with others of the enemy, and was constantly engaged,
we are told, sometimes with two or three ships of the enemy at once and
fighting on both broadsides.

This is how the _Britannia’s_ log records her part at Trafalgar, in the
dry, matter-of-fact style usual with such documents:—

“12.50. We began to engage three of the enemy’s ships, having opened
their fire upon us while running down. 1.10. Observed the ship we were
engaging on our larboard quarter totally dismasted, continued our course
in order to break through the centre of the enemy’s line, engaging on
both sides in passing between their ships. At 3 passed through the line.
4.30. Hauled to the wind on the larboard tack per signal. 5.30. Ceased
firing. Observed the _Achille_, a French line-of-battle ship, on fire,
which soon after blew up.”

Fortunately the log is not all that we have to rely upon for the story
of the _Britannia’s_ doings at Trafalgar. Some of the officers wrote
down their experiences and impressions, from which we get a remarkably
interesting idea of how things fared on board during the battle. Says, to
begin with, Lieutenant John Barclay in his journal:—

“½ past 12. Vice-Admiral Collingwood, in the _Royal Sovereign_, commenced
the action, by an attack upon the whole of the enemy’s rear, in the most
gallant manner, and without any immediate prospect of support, from being
so far ahead of the lee division. Took in our studding sails. About ¼
before 1, Lord Nelson, after having sustained a most galling fire in
running down, opened both sides of the _Victory_ on the headmost ships
of their centre division. He was close followed up by the _Téméraire_,
_Neptune_, _Conqueror_, _Leviathan_, and this ship, and pushed through
their line about the 14th from the van. Several raking shot called forth
exertions about 10 minutes after our noble chief. Here began the din of
war. It became impossible to trace farther except at intervals, when
the smoke cleared away _a little_. At ¼ past 1 the masts of the ship
we were most particularly engaging (larboard side) fell by the board:
supposed to be the _Bucentaure_, but without any flag observed flying.
Continued edging on slowly, for there was very little wind, and our main
topsail in particular was shot almost entirely from the yard. At 3, got
to leeward of their line and hauled up a little on the larboard tack.
Until ¼ past 4 kept up a heavy fire occasionally on both sides on every
French or Spanish ensign flying near us, when we hauled to the wind on
the larboard tack per signal. ½ past 5, all firing ceased except from the
_Achille_, a very fine French ship—wrapt in flames. The cutters instantly
repaired to her assistance, and saved the crew, soon after which she blew
up with a tremendous explosion.”

Signal-Midshipman John Wells, in a letter home, written during the
week following the battle, has this to say of what he went through and
witnessed:

“I am very happy to say that the _Britannia_ was certainly a very
fortunate Ship during the whole time, as we had not above 10 killed and
41 wounded although we were the fourth Ship in Action and the last out
of it, and I doubt not that it will be found that she does honour to all
who belong to her, as our fire was not directed to One particular Ship,
but as soon as one had struck to us we immediately made to others and
at one time had five ships blazing away upon us, but we soon tired them
out. As I told you before, I was stationed at the Signals and Colours in
the time of Action and being on the Quarter Deck I had an opportunity
of seeing the whole of the Sport, which I must own rather daunted me
before the first or second broadside; but after then I think I never
should have been tired of drubing [_sic_] the Jokers, particulary [_sic_]
when my ship mates began to fall arround [_sic_] me, which in the room
of disheartening an Englishman only encourages him, as the sight of his
Country Man’s blood makes his heart burn for revenge.

“I am very sorry to inform you that my worthy friend our signal
Lieutenant was knocked down by a double-headed shot close by my side and
immediately expired, much lamented by his brother Officers and every one
in the Ship; I had several very narrow escapes from the Enemy’s Shot,
but thanks be to the Lord he [_sic_] has still spared me thro’ his great
goodness.

“Too much credit cannot be given to Lord Northesk and Captain Bullen for
their gallant Conduct during the Engagement, indeed it was the case with
every Officer and Man in the Ship. Immediately the Enemy had struck I
went on board one of the French prizes to take possession of her, and
when I got there I may well say I was shocked to see the sight as I
believe there was not less than 3 or 400 Bodies lying about the Decks,
cut and mangled all to pieces, some dying and others Dead. We took the
remainder of the men that were alive on board of our own Ships, at which
they seemed very glad. And from the Information that we can get from
them they really came out of Cadiz with an intention of fighting, not
thinking us to be above 17 sail of the line and them under the command of
Sir Robt. Calder (but he was not with us at all), and that Lord Nelson
was in England sick. So they thought they were an equal match for our 17
with there [_sic_] 37—and in fact made themselves so sure of taking us
into Cadiz that several Private Gentlemen came out of Cadiz as passengers
on purpose to see the Action and have the pleasure of towing us in, but
they were once more deceived in our Wooden Walls. Amongst the prisoners
in our Ship there are 5 or 6 of these Gentlemen of pleasure, and I think
they are in a fair way for seeing an English prison before they return to
Cadiz again.”

Another of the _Britannia’s_ officers, who made use of his opportunities
for seeing what was going on round him, was 2nd Lieutenant L.B. Halloran
of the Royal Marines. He noted this down in his private diary from his
own personal experiences and observations:

“We piped to breakfast at eight o’clock, and the ship being clear and
ready about nine o’clock, we went to quarters. The Fleet then formed in
two lines, standing slowly and steadily, with every sail set, before the
light breeze, with ensigns and colours flying. Our ship, the _Britannia_,
was the third from the _Victory_, which led the Larboard or Lee line;
we were next the _Neptune_, 98 guns. For some time after the men were
at quarters, before the firing began we heard many of them amusing
themselves with nautical jokes, or reciting scraps from a Prologue which
I had spoken at one of our last Dramatic performances. Among the lines
repeatedly quoted the following seemed the favourite:—

    We have great guns of Tragedy loaded so well,
    If they do but go off, they will certainly tell.

“About 11.30, the _Royal Sovereign_, Admiral Collingwood, which led the
Starboard or Weather line, after sustaining for nearly half an hour
severe firing from the enemy as she approached without returning a
shot, opened her tremendous Broadsides close alongside the _Sta. Anna_,
a Spanish Admiral’s ship. Our people were highly amused, and passed many
jokes on seeing the _Sta. Anna_, almost immediately dismasted and falling
out of line with her colours down. We had not much time to admire the
gallantry of the _Royal Sovereign_ and the ships succeeding her, for it
was our turn to commence, and in passing we poured a most destructive
fire (the guns being double-shotted) into the _Bucentaur_, which ship had
already received the first fire of the _Victory_ and _Neptune_. Her masts
were at once swept away, and her galleries and stern broken to pieces;
her Colours being shot away, some-one waved a white handkerchief from the
remains of the Larboard Gallery in token of Surrender.

“We then encountered the _Santisima Trinidada_, 240 guns [_sic_] on
four decks (the largest ship then known). We passed under stern of this
magnificent Ship, and gave her a Broadside which shattered the rich
display of sculpture, figures, ornaments, and inscriptions with which she
was adorned. I never saw so beautiful a ship. Luffing up alongside her
four-decked side, of a rich lake colour, she had an imposing effect.

“We proceeded, and now got into the middle of the Action, where the
denseness of the smoke, the noise and din of Battle, were so great as
to leave little time for observation. Nearly about this time, between
one and two o’clock, a shot struck the muzzle of the gun at which I was
stationed (the aftermost gun on the larboard side of the lower deck),
and killed or wounded every one there stationed, myself and Midshipman
Tompkins only excepted. The shot was a very large one, and split into a
number of pieces, each of which took its victim. We threw the mangled
body of John Jolley, a marine, out of the stern port, his stomach being
shot away; the other sufferers we left to be examined. The gun itself was
split, and our second lieutenant, Roskruge, who came down at that moment
with some orders, advised me to leave the Gun as useless. He had scarcely
left us, when he was brought down senseless with a severe wound in his
head: he breathed, but continued senseless until nine o’clock, when he
died.

“The Battle continued until five o’clock. Seeing no signal from the
_Victory_, and also missing Admiral Collingwood’s flag, we were in much
uneasiness on Board. The scene presented a strange contrast to the
morning; twenty-one or twenty-two sail of the Enemy’s Line, Prizes and
dismasted, one (_L’Achille_) burning furiously, which soon after blew up,
the sky lowering in the distance, a heavy sea rising, and an awful kind
of pause succeeding the crash of falling yards and masts and the roar of
the guns.

“Having sent a boat to the _Victory_, we ascertained the death of Lord
Nelson, our Commander-in-Chief.

“With hearts fraught with blended feelings of sorrow and of triumph, we
set about putting the ship to rights. The evening was fine, though a
storm seemed to be coming up, and around us as the darkness closed in
the scattered and forlorn wrecks lay floating in disorder, while the
conqueror’s ships were repairing damages, shifting prisoners, or making
sail. It was a scene of desolation, helpless prizes and dismantled
victors rolling heavily, as the sea began to roughen with the breeze....

“The whole night was occupied in receiving prisoners, and preparing for
stormy weather, which was coming on.”

This is from the letter that a seaman on board the _Britannia_, James
West, an A.B., wrote to his parents at Newhaven in Sussex:—

“I am sorry to inform you that I am wounded in the left shoulder, and
that William Hillman was killed at the same time: the shot that killed
him and three others wounded me and five more. Another of my messmates,
Thomas Crosby, was also killed; they both went to their guns like men,
and died close to me. Crosby was shot in three places. Pray inform their
poor friends of their death, and remind them that they died at the same
time as Nelson, and in the moment of glorious victory. Remember me to
all my relations and friends; tell them I am wounded at last, but that I
do not much mind it, for I had my satisfaction of my enemies, as I never
fired my gun in pain I was sure to hit them; I killed and wounded them
in plenty. Should have written you sooner, but the pain in my shoulder
would not let me.”

During the week following Trafalgar the _Britannia_ received 381 French
prisoners on board: 48 from _L’Aigle_, a captured seventy-four; 140 from
the recaptured _Berwick_, a former British seventy-four; the rest from
the captured _Intrépide_, another seventy-four. The names of all the
prisoners are carefully entered in the _Britannia’s_ books, and among
them appears the name of a Turk, mentioned also by Lieutenant Halloran as
being received on board—Abdalla Fadalla, a prisoner from the _Intrépide_.

       *       *       *       *       *

According to the ship’s books these were the officers, in addition to
Lord Northesk, serving on board the _Britannia_ at Trafalgar:—

Captain—Charles Bullen.

Lieutenants—Arthur Atchison; Francis Roskruge (killed); John Houlton
Marshall; Charles Anthony; Richard Lasham; William Blight; John Barclay;
James Lindsay.

Marine Officers.—Captain—Alexander Watson. Lieutenants—William Jackson;
L. B. J. Halloran; John Cooke.

Master—Stephen Trounce (wounded).

Surgeon—Allen Cornfoot.

Purser—James Hiatt.

Chaplain—Rev. Lawrence H. Halloran.

Gunner—Michael Aylward.

Boatswain—(not joined).

Carpenter—John Simpson.

Master’s Mates and Midshipmen—John Adamson; Thos. Goble; James Sudbury;
Silvester Austin; James Rattray; Henry Canham; Em. Blight; John Lang;
William Snell; John W. Pritchard; William Grant (wounded); Francis D.
Lauzun; William Geikie; Josh. Thorndyke; John Coulthred; Andrew Parry;
Charles Thornbury; James L. Peyton; John Brumfield; George Hurst;
George Morey; Charles Pitt; James Robinson; Radford G. Meech; Richard
Molesworth; Charles Wilson; John Bidgood; John Lawrence; William Pinet;
Richard B. Bowden; Benjamin Sheppard; William Pyne.

Surgeon’s Mates—John Evans; John Owen Martin.

Clerk—Richard Whichelo.

First-class Volunteers—James R. Sulivan; Bowkum Tomkyns; Josh. Bailey.

A glance at the composition of the ship’s company of the _Britannia_,
according to the muster book, shows that the foreigners among the seamen
on board numbered 53 in all. Of that total 18 were Americans, 11 Germans,
6 Danes, 4 Frenchmen, 1 Swede, 4 Dutchmen, 1 East Indian, 2 Africans,
2 Italians, and 4 from the West Indies. Ireland contributed 189 seamen
ratings (the total number of seamen on board the _Britannia_, as mustered
by the ship’s books on Sunday morning, the day before the battle, was
599); Scotland, 42; Wales, 25; the Isle of Man, 6; the Channel Islands,
5; and the Scilly Isles, Shetland, and Skye, 1 each. The full total of
all ranks and ratings on board the _Britannia_ at Trafalgar, as mustered
on the 20th of October, numbered 31 officers, 599 seamen ratings (petty
officers, able seamen, ordinary seamen, and landmen), 28 boys, 126
marines, 5 supernumeraries, and 8 “widows’ men,” making 797 in all.
The ship’s official complement as a first rate was 837, so that the
_Britannia_ was really 40 men short in the action.

       *       *       *       *       *

One incidental fact that we learn from the _Britannia_ may be added. It
throws a useful sidelight on life and ways at sea in the navy of Nelson’s
day, dealing as it does with the relations that existed between officers
and men on board while waiting off Cadiz for the expected battle. It
proves for one thing also that Lord Northesk’s flagship quite deserved
the designation of a “happy ship.” This was their favourite way of
passing the time off duty, according to Lieutenant Halloran’s journal.

“August 22nd. Heard that enemy had gone into Cadiz. We steered direct for
that port. Here we remained blockading the place until the arrival of
Lord Nelson in the _Victory_. During this time the officers and ship’s
company amused themselves with dramatic performances. Our first drama,
acted in the Admiral’s cabin, was as appears in the following playbill:—

    This evening, September 4th, 1805, will be performed a drama
    called

    ‘LORD HASTINGS.’

        DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, Mr. Hurst.
        EARL OF DERBY, Mr. Martin, assistant surgeon.
        RATCLIFFE, Mr. Rattray.
        CATESBY, Mr. Thorndyke, midshipman.
        HASTINGS, Lieut. Halloran.

    After which will be performed a drama called

    ‘THE TRIUMPH OF FRIENDSHIP; OR, DAMON AND PYTHIAS.’

        DIONYSIUS, Mr. Hurst.
        GELON, Lieut. Halloran.
        PALNURIUS, Mr. Austen.
        ARGUS, Mr. Rattray.
        DAMON, Mr. Martin.
        PYTHIAS, Mr. Thorndyke.

    Doors to be opened at 6.30. To begin at 7.

“Wednesday, September 4th. Off Cadiz. The ship’s company also performed
two or three plays on the main deck, one of them called ‘Miss in her
Teens’: very well done.

“Thursday, September 12th. We acted another play, called _The Siege
of Colchester_, in which Rattray, Wilson, Bowden, and I took part.
Between the acts I recited the romance of _Alonzo and Imogene_. On this
occasion, the Admiral’s fore-cabin being found too small to hold stage
and audience both, the fore bulk-head of the cabin was taken down, and
the cabin itself turned into a stage, leaving the two side doors for
the stage exits, and the cabin open to the main deck. The stage being
decorated with colours, festoons, wings, etc., with front lights, had a
very pretty effect. The main deck, fitted up with seats, made a capacious
theatre, and all the officers and ship’s company attended. All the future
performances will be represented in the same manner.

“September 27th. Another party of the officers, under Lieut. Blight’s
direction, performed (with the addition of some good scenery, painted
by Mr. Adams, master’s mate) _The Mock Doctor_. Characters taken by
Messrs. Pitt, Laurence, Johnstone, Geikie, Martin, and Peyton, with
Masters Lauzun and Snell as Dorcas and Charlotte. The ship’s company,
whose theatre was amidships, near the main mast on the main deck, also
performed _The Tragedy of Pizarro_ and at the end of the first act was
recited _The Soliloquy of Dick the Apprentice_.

“Wednesday, October 9th. We had the play of _Columbus; or, A World
Discovered_, and Rattray, Thorndyke, Wilson, Hurst, Pitt, Austin,
Bidgood, and myself acted, the character of the High Priest of the
Sun being taken by Wichelo, and ladies by Midshipmen Pinett and Pyne,
Priestessess by Masters Shepherd, Bowden, Lever, Jones, etc. On the
playbill it was announced, ‘In the course of the Performance will be two
splendid Processions—a view of the Interior of the Temple of the Sun,
with a Grand Altar burning Incense, etc. Grand Hymn of the Priestesses,
etc. Towards the close of the Play the Destruction of the Temple by an
Earthquake accompanied by Thunder, Lightning, and Hail-Storm! with the
rescue of Cora from the Ruins by Alonzo!!

“_Catherine and Petruchio_ was the last performance, a few days before
the action of Trafalgar, together with a Play called _The Village_, which
I wrote.

“It was on the evening of the 19th of October—Saturday—while I was with
some officers in my cabin in the Gunroom, where we were preparing for
another Play for the following Monday, and we were rehearsing, when one
of the Midshipmen came to inform us that a Frigate was joining the Fleet,
with signals flying ‘That the Enemy were at sea.’ We immediately broke up
our theatrical conference. That night was partly passed in the bustle of
preparation, while we stood under easy sail towards Cadiz.”[21]

       *       *       *       *       *

We have in addition the text of a prologue to one of the midshipmen’s
plays, presented before Lord Northesk and the officers. It gives one the
best possible idea of the magnificent self-confidence with which the
British Fleet anticipated the issue of Trafalgar.

    ADDRESS.

    [_Spoken on board his Majesty’s ship “Britannia,” off Cadiz._]

    My Lord and Gentlemen,—Alas! off Cadiz,
    How hard it is we can’t address the ladies,
    For “if the brave alone deserve the fair,”
    Britannia’s sons should surely have their share!
    But, since their valour, tho’ upon record,
    Like other merits, is its own reward,
    Tho’ female charms inspire us not—again
    We welcome you—my Lord and Gentlemen!
    You, too, brave fellows! who the background tread,
    Alike we welcome—jackets blue or red;
    And humbly hope that while we give our aid
    “To cheer the tedium of a dull blockade,”
    To banish _ennui_ for a few short hours,
    However feeble our theatric powers,
    Our well-meant efforts to amuse awhile,
    Will meet the wish’d reward—your fav’ring smile.

    For tho’, while thro’ our parts we swell and pant,
    We stun your ears with mock-heroic rant;
    We trust “to pay their suff’rings through your eyes,”
    By the bright splendours of the gay disguise
    In which our heroes (nor let critics grin),
    Bedight in robes of “bunting laced with tin,”
    As kings or emperors, with mimic rage,
    Strut their short hour upon this “floating stage.”
    In times of yore, as grave old authors write,
    Poets possess’d a kind of “second sight,”
    And could (tho’, _entre nous_, ’twas all a hum)
    Inform you clearly of “events to come.”
    Oh! could the Bard, who, to amuse your time,
    Has manufactur’d all this “doggerel rhyme,”
    From mortal mists clear his desiring eyes,
    And pry into your future destinies:
    He would foretell (nor ask you, as a charm,
    Like other soothsayers, “to cross his palm”)
    What—yes, he sees!—must on your courage wait,
    “An happy fortune, and a glorious fate!”
    Yes!—he foresees—confirm his prospects, Heav’n,
    “Yon coop’d up boasters,” to your wishes giv’n;
    Sees their proud ensigns from their standards torn,
    Their vanquish’d navies in glad triumph borne;
    Sees added laurels grace our Nelson’s brow,
    And Victory hovering o’er his glowing prow;
    His conqu’ring banners o’er the waves unfurl’d,
    And Britain’s thunder rule the wat’ry world.
    If aught of prescience to the Muse belong,
    Soon, soon, the scenes that animate her song,
    In glowing colours shall salute your eyes,
    And Heav’n shall bid th’ auspicious morn arise;
    When France and Spain shall be again subdued,
    And your “brave leader’s” victories renew’d.

    Then, to reward your persevering toils,
    With honours crown’d—enrich’d with hostile spoils—
    (Her bravest sons—her guardian sailors’ friend)
    “Your grateful country” shall her arms extend,
    To greet your glad return with conscious pride,
    And in her bosom bid your cares subside.
    And, while our fam’d “Britannia” shall resort,
    In awful grandeur to her wished-for port,
    Her loveliest daughters shall with pleasure meet,
    And bless “the heroes of the British fleet!”
    Your wives, your children, and your friends shall come,
    With tears of joy to bid you “welcome home.”
    Nor storms nor battle more your bliss shall mar,
    But “Peace and Plenty crown the toils of war!”

At this point we may fitly end the story of “Old Ironsides” at
Trafalgar—and this book.




FOOTNOTES


[1] See _post_; p. 65.

[2] Our West India possessions, except Jamaica, Barbados, and St. Lucia,
and Antigua were lost; and the four named were about to be attacked when
Rodney’s victory saved them. Demerara, our West African settlements,
Trincomalee and Ceylon, Minorca, and the American Colonies went also—all
because the Ministry of the day refused to keep the Fleet up to the “Two
Power standard” of those times, “superior to the combined forces of the
House of Bourbon,” _i.e._ France and Spain, who had the two next powerful
fleets after Great Britain. In cash, the war cost England £200,000,000.

[3] I am indebted to the courtesy of the proprietors of the _Graphic_ for
permission to reproduce the diagrams here given.

[4] The Kent Trophy Challenge Shield, of which an illustration is given,
is of silver. In the centre chief point appears a representation of
H.M.S. _Kent_, taken from a drawing supplied by the Admiralty. This is
embossed and oxydized. It is surmounted by an enamelled shield, bearing
the Arms of the Association of “Men of Kent and Kentish Men.” Underneath
the ship, entwined with branches of laurel, are scrolls to take the
names of the Officers Commanding. The lower part of shield shows the
arms and motto of the County of Kent, while turrets with protruding
guns form an artistic background. Below is a large ornamental tablet
displaying the presentation inscription, and round the edge of the
shield flows a beautifully modelled pattern of Kentish Hops, Cherries,
Oakleaves, and Cob-nuts, each spray of which is separately modelled and
bent into position, forming an excellent contrast with the white and
burnished groundwork shield. The whole is mounted on a stout polished-oak
shield, size 2 ft. 6 in. by 2 ft., and surrounded by thirty silver
wreath-medallions, to be inscribed each year with the name of the winning
gun-crew’s captain. The total weight of silver used is 146 ozs.

[5] A _Kent_ should have been with the two Kentish admirals Rooke and
Byng at the taking of Gibraltar. She was with the fleet, but during
the bombardment was stationed to keep watch off Cape de Gata, for the
possible appearance on the scene of the French Toulon Fleet, which
Rooke fought at Malaga, a month later. From on board the _Kent_, as
the officers’ journals describe, they heard the sound of Rooke’s guns
attacking Gibraltar, and uncertain whether the Toulon Fleet might not
have got round by hugging the African coast, and the firing be that of
the fleet in action with them, the _Kent_ turned back to Gibraltar,
arriving in time to witness the first hoisting of the British flag on the
fortress.

[6] The usual term with Europeans in the East at that time for the
“natives,” as we say nowadays.

[7] Nelson was forty-seven when he fell; three years older than Admiral
Watson was at his death. They were both also Vice-Admirals of the White.

[8] For a full account of the _Monmouth’s_ midnight battle and Captain
Gardiner’s fate, see “Famous Fighters of the Fleet,” pp. 16-35.

[9] Visitors to modern Southsea, going over what remains of the old keep
of Porchester Castle, will find scrawled all over the stonework of the
walls of the upper apartments many names of the French prisoners of this
time, with sometimes the names of their ships and the dates of their
capture added.

[10] A full narrative of the campaign and battle is given in “Famous
Fighters of the Fleet,” pp. 52-161.

[11] Mr. William Stuart, who died at Gortley, Letterkenny, in April,
1903, at the reputed age of one hundred and twenty, used often to relate
how he, as a boy, saw a British frigate arrive in Lough Swilly towing the
French captured flagship, and with Wolfe Tone among the prisoners.

[12] Incidentally, and to end the present story, it may be interesting
to recall to mind that the Marquess of Donegall is Hereditary Admiral
of Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the United Kingdom. The office had
a real significance formerly, for Lough Neagh in the past, well within
historic times, had a fleet of its own. Sir John Clotworthy, the ancestor
of Viscount Massereene, who lived at Antrim Castle, had a patent for
building as many vessels as might be needed for the King’s service on
Lough Neagh. His fleet set out from Antrim Castle in 1642 to attack the
Irish in their fort at Charlemont. The battle between the fleet on the
lake and the land forces resulted in the defeat of the men on shore, with
their fort, and important consequences. The second Viscount Massereene
was as strong a supporter of William of Orange as his ancestor had been
of the Stuarts. He was made captain of Lough Neagh, and received 6s. 8d.
a day, being bound to build and maintain a gunboat on the lake. The Lough
Neagh Navy has disappeared, but the lake has still its admiral in the
Marquess of Donegall.

[13] Having regard to the number of foreigners on board the _Victory_,
these facts are in point. For more than fifty years previous to 1794,
foreigners were permitted by Act of Parliament to enter on board British
merchantmen trading overseas to the extent of three-quarters of the
crew. After 1794, “for the encouragement of British seamen,” an Act
was passed reducing the proportion of foreigners to one-quarter of the
ships’ companies, which, however, still left a large number available at
various places for the purposes of impressment for the Navy. As to the
“Impress Service”: in 1805, to keep up the supplies of men, forty-three
permanent stations or “rendezvous” were maintained in Great Britain and
Ireland, with an establishment of twenty-seven captains and sixty-three
lieutenants, permanently on duty, established “in those parts of the
United Kingdom where seamen chiefly resort, at which stations volunteers
and impressed men are asked, and deserters from the Naval Service are
apprehended.” They were distributed as follows: London and Thames, two
captains and ten lieutenants; Deal and the Downs, Liverpool, and Dundee,
a captain and three lieutenants at each place; Falmouth, Hull, Cork,
Cowes, Poole, Waterford, Bristol, Londonderry, Leith, Shields, Dublin,
Portsmouth, and Gosport, a captain and two lieutenants at each place;
Newcastle, Sunderland, Yarmouth, Glasgow and Greenock, Dunbar, Limerick,
Southampton, Romsey, Exeter, Lynn, Swansea, Folkestone, Ramsgate,
Margate, Lerwick, and the Isle of Man, a captain and one lieutenant, or a
lieutenant independently, at each place.

[14] How the _Téméraire_ played her part at Trafalgar is fully related in
“Famous Fighters of the Fleet,” pp. 231-275.

[15] “Ab.” stands for Able Seaman; “Ordinary” for Ordinary Seaman; “L.M.”
for Landman or Landsmen, the lowest general rating on board a man-of-war,
comprising new and raw hands for the most part not yet worked up into
shape, though capable of deck duties and at the guns.

[16] Died of their wounds in the week following the battle.

[17] The letter was published in some of the newspapers in the last week
of December, 1805. According to the _Victory’s_ muster book there was a
“James Bagley” among the Marines.

[18] See “The Enemy at Trafalgar” for what they witnessed from the French
and Spanish fleet; also for a Spanish picture of Collingwood’s duel with
the Spanish admiral.

[19] Bounce remained Collingwood’s faithful companion to the end; all
through those five long, weary years of continuous cruising between Cadiz
and the Dardanelles and off Toulon, until just before, for the worn out,
prematurely-aged warrior himself, death came at length to close his
sufferings, poor Bounce one dark night fell overboard and was seen no
more.

[20] Trafalgar was also, as it happened, the _Victory’s_ fifth fight.
Collingwood’s _Royal Sovereign_ had been eighteen years launched, and
had been twice in battle. The _Sovereign_ also was actually the biggest
ship in the British fleet that day, 2175 tons burthen, as compared with
the 2162 tons of the _Victory_, and the 2091 tons of the _Britannia_. The
_Téméraire_, again, was the hardest hitter in the whole fleet, owing to
the exceptionally heavy ordnance that she carried on her upper deck. Of
other ships, the _Agamemnon_, the third oldest ship present at Trafalgar,
had fought her first two battles with Kempenfelt and Rodney—names
that already had passed into history. Other ships of Nelson’s fleet,
contemporaries mostly of the _Royal Sovereign_, had taken part in as many
as four fleet battles. Four of them had been in Lord Howe’s fleet on
the “Glorious First of June,” three at St. Vincent, five with Nelson at
the Nile, three at Copenhagen. Three of the _Britannia’s_ consorts—the
_Belleisle_, the _Tonnant_, and the _Spartiate_—were French-built ships,
prizes won in battle. Two of them, indeed, had been captured by Nelson
himself at the Nile. The average age of the ships of Nelson’s Trafalgar
fleet was seventeen years, an age at which in the case of our modern-day
battleships they are reckoned as off the active list and in sight of the
sale list. Only six were less than five years old. One ship only was, so
to speak, a new ship, the _Revenge_, in October, 1805, serving her first
commission within seven months of leaving the stocks at Chatham Dockyard.

[21] Of the names mentioned, Mr. Johnstone may possible have been John
Johnson, an ex-midshipman, rated an A.B. in July, 1805. Mr. Jones may
have been Mr. Charles S. Jones, the captain’s coxswain. There were
sixteen Jones’s altogether on the _Britannia’s_ books, but none were
among the officers, master’s mates, and midshipmen, or the first-class
volunteers. There was no Lever on board the _Britannia_ in any capacity.




INDEX


  “Able men,” 13

  Adlercron, Colonel, 81, 83

  Admiralty visit to Chatham 1764, 187

  Ages of the _Victory’s_ crew at Trafalgar, 232

  Ahmed Shah, 105

  Aikenhead, J., midshipman, 271

  Alarm at Chatham 1764, 188-90

  Albemarle (Monk), Duke of, 28, 68-70

  Anson, Lord, Admiral, 62, 161, 177, 178

  Antigua, 193, 199, 203

  Apodoca, Spanish Admiral, 63

  Armada, Spanish, 22-7, 59

  “Armed Associations,” 37

  Arrest of Wolfe Tone, 214


  Baker, Matthew, 2, 6, 16, 17, 28

  Baker, “Old Honest Jem,” 11, 19

  Balasore Roads, 81, 84, 85, 86, 105, 112

  Banks of Flanders, Battles of, 28, 127

  Barbados, 192, 193, 202

  Barclay, J., Lieut., 275

  Barfleur, Battle off Cape, 29, 67, 117, 127, 128, 143, 167, 171

  Barham, Lord, Admiral, 62

  Bart, Jean, 29

  Bartholomew’s Day, Battle of, 58

  “Bases,” 12

  Basseterre Roads, 194, 195, 202, 204

  Battle Honours of H.M.S. _Kent_, 67, 68

  Baxster, Boatswain, 9, 16

  Beatty, Dr., 34

  Beauffremont, de, French Admiral, 144, 153

  Beeston, Sir George, Captain, 22, 25, 26

  Belleisle, 143

  Benbow, Admiral, 19, 29, 60, 171

  Bengal Army, 79

  Bently, Captain, 137, 146, 147

  Berryer, M., Minister of Marine, 184

  “Black Dick,” 146

  Blackwood, Captain, 215, 248, 250, 257

  “Black Hole,” The, 78, 80, 83, 86, 105

  Blake, Admiral, 66

  “Bloody Foreland,” 210

  Bombay, 82, 86, 88, 105

  Bomb-ketch, 169

  Bompart, Commodore, 210-12

  Borough, Captain Stephen, 6, 7, 15

  Boscawen, Admiral, 30, 127, 129, 139, 161, 165, 184

  Boscawen’s wig, 135

  Bouillé, de, Marquis, 193, 199, 201, 204

  “Bounce,” Collingwood’s dog, 262, 263

  Boys, Commodore, 62

  Braces, The, 87, 88

  Brereton, W., Lieutenant, 116, 117, 118

  Brest, Attack on, 27

  Brest Fleet, 129

  Brett, Sir Piercey, 62

  Brighton, 176

  Brimstone Hill, 124, 199-204

  Bristol “runners,” 38

  “Britannia Victrix,” 272

  Budge-Budge, Attack on, 89, 93, 94, 95, 99

  Bullen, Captain, 277

  Bussy, M., 79, 81

  Byng, George, Lord Torrington, 29, 60

  Byng, Hon. John, Admiral, 31, 129, 163, 164, 165, 168


  Cadiz, 21, 27

  Calcutta, 78, 79, 80, 88, 96, 102

  Calcutta’s Council, 102, 104

  Cannon-periers, 12

  Cape Finisterre, 21

  Cape St. Vincent, 134

  Cape François, Battle off, 31, 34

  Cape Trafalgar, 132

  “Captain-General of the Ocean,” 22

  Career of the _Britannia_, 273, 289

  Carlyle, 30, 154

  Casualty List of the _Victory_, 237

  Celebration of Boscawen’s victory, 139

  Chacon, General, 63

  Chalmers, W., Master of the _Royal Sovereign_, 260

  Chandernagore, 103, 104, 105, 106, 112-120, 121, 125

  Charles I, King, 19, 48, 49

  Charles II, King, 19, 48, 49

  Charlotte, Queen, 19, 50

  Chastillon, de, Captain, 137

  Chatham Dockyard, 177, 179-85, 187-90

  Chesterfield, Lord, 175

  Cinque Ports Fleet, 57

  Clarke, Lieutenant, 121

  Clavell, Lieutenant, 194, 250, 253

  Clive, 77, 78, 81, 83, 96, 97, 100, 104, 105, 106, 109, 115, 116,
        118, 124

  Clue, de la, French Admiral, 130, 131, 134, 136

  Collingwood, 39, 40, 218, 248-71;
    biography, 262;
    G. L. Newnham, 248, 253;
    wounded, 259

  Commodore Trunnion, 65

  Comparison between the _Dreadnought_ and _Victory_, 51

  Conflans, de, French Admiral, 66, 143, 145, 153, 155, 158

  Conn, Captain, 40

  Cook, Captain, 19

  Cooper, Commissioner, 181

  Coote, Sir Eyre, 88, 90, 118

  Copenhagen, Bombardment of, 62

  Cornwall, Frederick, Captain, 165

  Cornwallis, Hon. W., Captain, 196

  Corbett, Secretary, 65

  Corunna Expedition, 27

  Cossimbazaar, 79, 103, 108

  Cotes, Admiral, 31

  “Counter-Armada,” 27

  Counties represented at Trafalgar, 229-32, 235, 236, 267, 268, 284

  “Counts of the Saxon shore,” 56

  Court-martial on Admiral Byng, 163-5

  Crew of the _Victory_ at Trafalgar, 228, 233

  Crew of the _Téméraire_, 235-6

  Crew of the _Royal Sovereign_, 268-9

  Crew of the _Britannia_, 283, 284

  Cromwell, 19, 48, 71

  Crusaders at Lisbon, 57

  Culverins, 12, 73


  D’Aiguillon, Duc de, 148, 155

  Death of Admiral Watson, 123

  Defence of the French _Centaure_, 133-4

  Delamotte, Mr., master of the _Kent_, 110

  “Demi-Culverins,” 12-73

  Deptford Dockyard, 6, 7, 11, 14, 18, 59

  Designing the _Victory_, 182

  De Spes, Spanish Ambassador, 4

  Don John of Austria, 3

  Donegal Bay, battle of, 210-12

  Donegal peasants, 209

  Dorset and Captain Hardy, 225-6

  Dover, 56

  Dover Road Postmasters, 70

  Drake, Sir Francis, 19, 21, 22-7

  Drake, Governor, 79, 80, 86, 88, 96

  “_Dreadnought_ Seamen’s Hospital,” 41

  Duckworth, Sir J., Admiral, 219

  Dumb peal on Portsmouth bells, 178

  Dum-Dum, 100

  Dutch raid in the Medway, 166


  “Eastern Parts,” 57

  Edward VI, King, 48

  Edward VII, King, 48

     ”    ”   and the _Dreadnought_, 48-50

  Elizabeth, Queen, 1-5, 19, 48

  England’s darkest hour, 34, 38

  “English Lutheran days,” 22

  “Espagnols-sur-Mer,” 59

  Essex, Earl of, 27

  Eton boat _Dreadnought_, 41

     ” _Victory_, 41

  Eugene Aram, 177

  Eustace, the Monk, 58

  Evelyn, John, 19

  Ewens, Captain, of the _Kent_, 69

  Execution Deck, 179


  “Fawcons,” 12

  Fenner, Thomas, Captain, 21, 27

  Figure head of the _Royal Sovereign_ at Trafalgar, 252

  Fireships, 169

  Fireships in the Hooghly, 96

  Fitz-Stephen, 2, 52, 57

  Fogg, Dick, Captain, 61

  Fogg, Kit, Captain, 61

  Forrest, Captain, 31, 32

  Foreign men-of-war names translated, 127, 128

  Foreigners in the British fleet at Trafalgar, 229-30, 235, 236, 269,
        283

  Fort d’Orleans, 107, 108, 112, 113, 115

  Fortifications of Chandernagore, 109

  Fort St. George, 78, 79

    ” St. David, 78, 81

    ” William, 80, 88, 97, 99, 102, 104, 105, 106

  “Four Days’ Fight,” 28, 67-70

  “Fowlers,” 12

  Fraser, Brigadier, 199

  Frederick the Great, 175

  “Fresh Men,” 13

  “Friend Murray,” 223

  French troops at Quiberon, 148, 150

  Frigate Bay, St. Kitts, 191, 193, 195, 203, 204, 207


  Gardiner, Arthur, Captain, 168

  Garrick, 176

  Garrison of Chandernagore, 103, 109, 119

  George I, King, 166

  George III, King, 19, 48, 50

  Gibraltar, 35, 65, 68, 130, 131, 168, 171, 215, 216

  Gillingham (or Jillingham), Ordinary, 9, 20

  “Golden Duke,” 22

  Gonson, B., Treasurer, “Accompte of,” 9

  Goongee, 98

  Goschen, Lord, 53, 54

  Grasse, de, French Admiral, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 198, 203,
        204, 205, 207

  Gravelines, Battle of, 27

  Gravina, Spanish Admiral, 40

  Green Point, St. Kitts, 198

  Greenwich Hospital Mausoleum, 225

  Greenwich Palace, 20

  “Gromets,” 13

  “Gunlayer’s test,” H.M.S. _Kent_, 75

  Gunman, C., Captain, 61

  Guns of the _Dreadnought_, 44-7


  “Half Minute Council of War,” 31

  Halloran, L. B., Lieutenant, Royal Navy, 278, etc.

  Hamilton, W., Midshipman, 98

  Hardy, Sir T. M., Captain, 34, 223-226

  Harvey, John, Captain, 62, 63

  Harvey, Henry, Captain, 63

  Hastings, Kentish flag at, 50

  Hawke, Lord, Admiral, 66, 141, 143, 144, 145, 153, 155, 158, 184

  Hawkins, Sir John, 1, 14, 28

  Hawley, General, 173

  Henry VIII, King, 11, 19, 48

  Herbert, Arthur (Lord Torrington), 61

  Hervey, Lord, Captain, 61

  Hey, Rawlins, Lieutenant, 109, 120

  Highwaymen in 1760, 167

  Hill, Sir G., 213, 214

  Hogge, Ralphe, 12

  Holwell, Mr. T., 86, 123

  Home Fleet Review, 49

  Hood, Sir Samuel, Admiral, 192-207

  Hooghly, City, 98

  Hooghly, River, 81, 82, 87, 88, 89

  Horsham, 10, 180

  Howard, Lord, Lord High Admiral, 24, 25, 26

  Howe, Lord, Admiral, 50, 145, 146, 147

  Huguenots, 2-3

  Hubert de Burgh, 58

  Hyderabad, 79, 81


  Invasion of England, 37, 129, 174

  “Iron Marquis,” The, 22

  “Islands Voyage,” 27

  Isle of Wight, 24

  Ives, surgeon of the _Kent_, 80, 91, 92, 93, 98, 110, 111, 115, 119


  “Jack the Painter,” 190

  Jamaica, 16

  James I, King, 19

  James II, King, 19

  James, Duke of York, 28, 70, 167

  Jervis, Sir John (Earl St. Vincent), Admiral, 223

  Johnson’s _Dictionary_, 175-6


  “K” Brand, Dantzic, 181

  “Kent claims the first blow,” 52, 57

  Kent County Shield, 52, 55

  “Kentish Menne in Front,” 52

  “Kentish Rising,” 62

  Kentish ragstone cannon-balls, 13

  Kedgeree, 89

  Keppel, Commodore, 150, 151

  Kilpatrick, Major, 79, 88

  Kinnoull, Lord, 139

  King, Sir Richard, Captain, 97


  Lagos Bay, Battle of, 136-9

  Langdon, Captain, 31, 32

  La Tour D’Auvergne, 148

  Launch of the _Britannia_, 272

  Launch of the first _Dreadnought_, 14-18

  Launch of Collingwood’s _Dreadnought_, 38-9

  Launch of H.M.S. _Kent_, 75

  Launches, royal, 48

  Lawson, M., 108

  Legge, George, Lord Dartmouth, 61

  Lepanto, Battle of, 4, 5

  Letter from H.M.S. _Kent_, 68

  Letter from a _Victory_ marine, 245-6

  Letter to Suraj-w-daulah, 89

  Letters from Collingwood’s flagship, 269-71

  Letters from the _Britannia_, 275-81

  Ligonier, Viscount, 175

  Lloyd’s Policies, 37

  Lock, Master-Shipwright, 182

  Log of the _Britannia_ at Trafalgar, 274

  Log of the _Victory_, 242-3

      ” _Warspite_, 137-8

  Longsword, William, 58

  Lord High Admiral, 15, 17, 18, 70

  Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, 54

  Louis XIV, 127

  Louis XV and Quiberon, 156

  Louisbourg, 167, 178


  McCleverty, Captain, 131

  Madras, 78, 81, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97, 100, 105, 106, 109, 110, 116,
        118, 119, 122, 123

  Mahan, 139

  Maidstone, 13, 181

  Maids of Kent, Flag from, 55

  Malcolm, Sir John, 119

  Malcolm, Sir Pulteney, Captain, 214-219

  Malleson, Colonel, 119

  Malmsey, 16

  Manikchand, 87, 89, 90, 91

  Marlborough, Duke of, 165, 178

  Marshals in the French Navy, 43

  Marshmen, 7

  Mary Norwood’s Execution, 177

  Mary Stuart, 5

  “Maryners,” 13

  Marston Moor, 28

  Martin, Sir T. B., Admiral of the Fleet, 234, 264

  Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1, 28

  Mathews, Admiral, 84

  Mayapore, 89

  Medina Sidonia, 21, 23, 25, 26

  “Mediterranean” Byng, 60

  Men and Manners in 1758, 175-7

  “Men of Kent and Kentish Men,” 52-5

  Militia Camps, 37

  Minden, 186

  Minorca, 21, 86, 165, 168

  Mir Jafier, 121, 122

  Monument to Admiral Watson, 123, 124

  “Moors,” 92

  Moorshedabad, 87, 105

  Morbihan, 142

  “Mother of the Maids,” 20

  Musée de Marine, 36

  Murray, Geo., Captain, 223


  Naming of the _Dreadnought_, 1, 4, 5, 14-18

  Naming of the _Kent_, 71

     ” ” _Victory_, 184-6

  Naval Estimates of 1759, 179, 182

  Nawab, Vizier of Bengal, 79, 80, 87, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, 106

  Nelson, 30, 33, 163, 177, 222-4, 245, 246, 247, 256, 258, 290

  Nelson and the _Victory_, 222-3

     ” Monument, Portsdown, 218

  Nelson’s “Dreadnought” sword, 34

  Nelson’s “happiest day,” 33, 34

  Nile, battle of, 62

  Newfoundland “disturbance,” 187, 188

  Nevis, 195, 204, 205

  North Cape, 6

  North Devon, 6

  North-East Monsoon, 85

  North Foreland, Battle off, 58, 67

  North Sea Packets, 38

  Northesk, Earl of, Admiral, 272


  Officers of the _Britannia_ at Trafalgar, 282-8

  Officers of the _Royal Sovereign_ at Trafalgar, 266, 267

  Officers of the _Victory_ at Trafalgar, 226, 228

  “Old Dreadnought,” 30, 127, 136

  “Old Ironsides,” 272

  Old London Bridge, 176

  “Old Pretender,” the, 175

  Old Single Dock, Chatham, 182

  Omichand, 121

  Opdam, Dutch Admiral, 28

  Order to build the _Victory_, 181-2

  Order naming the _Donegal_, 213

  Orme, Indian historian, 119


  Party Politics and the Navy, 35, 125

  Passaro, Cape, Battle of, 29

  Peasants of the Weald, 180

  Pepys, Samuel, 19

  Perreau, S., Lieut., 120

  Pett, Phineas, 17, 59, 60

  Pett, Peter, 2, 6

  Philip II, King of Spain, 22, 23

  Pigott, Governor, 81

  Pitt, Lord Chatham, 139, 178

  Plan of attack at Chandernagore, 112-13

  Plassey, the sailors’ part at, 121-2

  Pocock, Sir G., Admiral, 82, 111, 120

  Pompadour, Madame de, 143, 156

  Porchester Castle, 171

  Portisham, Hardy’s birthplace, 225

  Portland Bill, 23

  Porto Bello, 171

  Portsmouth in the Seven Years’ War, 161-77

  “Port-pieces,” 12

  Port Royal, 31

  Prescott, General, 199

  Presentation to H.M.S. _Kent_, 52-5

  Presentation to H.M.S. _Donegal_, 220-1

  Press-gang, working of, 169, 170, 233, 234

  “Prencipall Master,” 6, 15, 17

  Puritan method of naming the Navy, 28, 71-3


  Quebec, 186

  Quiberon Bay, 66, 142, 144, 148, 154, 156


  Raleigh, Sir Walter, 27

  Recalde, J. M. de, 23

  Refugees from Calcutta, 80, 81, 86, 88

  Regiments named—
    1st Royals, 199
    13th Foot, 193
    15th Foot, 199
    28th Foot, 193
    39th Foot, 81, 88, 90
    69th Foot, 193
    Royal Artillery, 199

  Relics of the Trafalgar _Dreadnought_, 41

  Renault de St. Germain (Governor of Chandernagore), 103

  Rescue of Spaniards after Trafalgar, 217, 218

  Rivalry between the _Victory_ and _Royal Sovereign_ at Trafalgar, 251

  Rochelle Expedition, 28

  Rochfort, 155

  Rodney, Sir G., Admiral, 65, 192, 200, 201, 202, 207

  Rodney’s report on the disaffection in the West Indies, 202-204

  Rooke, Sir George, Admiral, 60, 165

  Rotherham, E., Captain, 250, 251, 252

  Rupert, Prince, 28, 68, 70, 117, 167

  Ruyter de, Dutch Admiral, 28, 68, 117


  “St. James’s Day Fight,” 28, 67

  St. Vincent—Nelson in action, 34, 223

  St. Lo, Commodore, 62

  Sabran de, French Captain, 134

  Sailor’s devotion at Collingwood’s funeral, 265

  “Saker,” 17, 74

  Santa Cruz, Marquis de, 22

  Saxton, Sir C., Commissioner, 39

  Ships of Kent, 57

  Ships—
    _Achates_, 6
    _Achille_ (Fr.), 274, 276, 280
    _Aid_ or _Ayde_, 3
    _Aigle_ (Fr.), 282
    _Alfred_, 194, 198
    _America_, 136, 138
    _Arethusa_, 66
    _Ark Royal_, 24, 25, 26
    _Augusta_, 31, 32, 33
    _Asia_, 160
    _Barfleur_, 192, 196, 206, 207
    _Belleisle_, 251
    _Berwick_, 282
    _Blaze_, 83
    _Bridgewater_, 82, 83, 89, 90, 96, 98, 106, 121
    _Britannia_, 49, 60, 185, 272, 273, 274, 276, 278, 281, 282, 283,
        284
    _Brunswick_, 62, 63
    _Bucentaure_ (Fr.), 275, 279
    _Canada_, 196, 198
    _Canterbury_, 64, 65
    _Centaure_ (Fr.), 133, 134, 135
    _Centurion_, 145
    _Chatham_, 66
    _Childers_, 227
    _Commonwealth_, 162
    _Conqueror_, 137, 275
    _Cumberland_, 82, 83, 89, 105, 112, 125
    _Deal Castle_, 67
    _Defiance_, 4, 145
    _Deptford_, 66
    _Dieu Repulse_, 4
    _Donegal_, 208, 214-20
    _Dorsetshire_, 145
    _Dover_, 65, 66
    _Dragon_, 84
    _Dreadnought_, 1, 4-9, 11-51, 72, 126, 140, 248
    _Dunbar_, 72
    _Dunkirk_, 72
    _Edinburgh_, 31-33
    _El Rayo_ (Sp.), 217, 218
    _Elizabeth_, 233
    _Elizabeth Jonas_, 3
    _Eltham_, 67
    _Entreprenante_ (Fr.), 128
    _Essex_, 71, 151, 158
    _Euryalus_, 215, 257
    _Faversham_, 67
    _Fidelle_ (Fr.), 128
    _Fier_ (Fr.), 128
    _Folkestone_, 67
    _Formidable_, 141-3, 145, 148, 150, 151, 158
    _Foudroyant_, 168, 169, 224
    _Fougueux_ (Fr.), 252, 254, 255
    _Gibraltar_, 130, 131
    _Great Harry_, 60, 61
    _Greenwich_, 66
    _Greenwich_ (Fr.), 32
    _Guernsey_, 138
    _Guerrière_ (Fr.), 134, 135
    _Hampshire_, 71
    _Henry_, 72
    _Hoche_ (Fr.), 211, 212, 213
    _Impérial_ (Fr.), 218
    _Implacable_, 239
    _Indomptable_ (Fr.), 40, 254
    _Indus II_, 140
    _Intrépide_ (Fr.), 33, 82, 138, 282
    _Invincible_, 190
    _Jersey_, 137, 138
    _Joli_ (Fr.), 128
    _Jupiter_, 219
    _Kent_, 52, 53, 55, 67, 75, 80, 82, 83, 85, 87-92, 94, 95, 98, 106,
        107, 110, 112, 113-18, 120, 122, 124, 125, 128
    _Kentish_, 71, 73, 74
    _Kingfisher_, 80, 82, 88, 89, 96, 98, 106
    _Leviathan_, 275
    _Licorne_ (Fr.), 32
    _Lion_, 24
    _London_, 185
    _Luxborough_ galley, 62
    _Magnanime_, 145, 146, 147, 150
    _Maidstone_, 66
    _Margate_, 67
    _Marston Moor_, 72
    _Marlborough_, 89
    _Mary Rose_, 11, 24, 26, 73
    _Medway_, 67
    _Meleager_, 224
    _Minerve_, 224
    _Montagu_, 128, 147, 150
    _Modeste_ (Fr.), 134, 137, 139
    _Monarque_, 163, 164
    _Monmouth_, 168, 208
    _Mutine_, 224
    _Namur_, 134, 135
    _Naseby_, 19, 72
    _Neptune_, 275, 278, 279
    _Newbury_, 72
    _Nymphe_, 194
    _Ocean_ (Fr.), 134, 136, 138
    _Opiniâtre_ (Fr.), 32, 33
    _Orphèe_ (Fr.), 169
    _Outarde_ (Fr.), 32
    _Prince of Wales_, 20
    _Principe de Asturias_ (Sp.), 40
    _Protector_, 88
    _Prudent_, 192, 198
    _Pluton_ (Fr.), 197
    _Queen Charlotte_, 50
    _Queen_, 166
    _Queenborough_, 67
    _Ramillies_, 63
    _Redoutable_ (Fr.), 134, 136, 242, 246
    _Renommée_ (Fr.), 65
    _Resolution_, 72, 150, 151-3, 155, 198
    _Revenge_, 3, 18, 23, 24, 26, 60, 72, 151, 165, 169
    _Repulse_, 4
    _Royal Anne_, 166, 185
    _Royal Charles_, 70, 72, 166
    _Royal George_, 152-4, 166, 167, 182, 185
    _Royal Prince_, 167
    _Royal Sovereign_, 40, 165, 166, 185, 242, 248, 250, 251-8, 260,
        262, 266, 267-71, 275, 278, 279
    _Royal William_, 167, 185
    _Rochester_, 66
    _Romney_, 66
    _St. Albans_, 138, 197
    _St. George_, 163-5, 224
    _St. Vincent_, 160
    _Salisbury_, 82, 83, 85, 88, 89, 90, 96, 101, 107, 112, 113-15, 125
    _Sandwich_, 65
    _San Josef_ (Sp.), 34, 224
    _San Juan Nepomuceno_ (Sp.), 40
    _San Juan de Compostella_ (Sp.), 64
    _San Justo_ (Sp.), 254
    _San Leandro_ (Sp.), 254
    _San Nicolas_ (Sp.), 34
    _San Vincente_ (Sp.), 64
    _Sans Pareil_ (Fr.), 128
    _Santa Anna_ (Sp.), 23, 251-7, 259, 260, 279
    _Santisima Trinidad_ (Sp.), 242, 279
    _Sauvage_ (Fr.), 128
    _Sceptre_ (Fr.), 32, 33
    _Shannon_, 231
    _Sheerness_, 67
    _Soleil Royal_ (Fr.), 153, 155
    _Solebay_, 195
    _Souverain_ (Fr.), 134, 135
    _Sovereign of the Seas_, 48, 60
    _Superb_, 219
    _Sussex_, 71
    _Swallow_, 26
    _Swiftsure_, 6, 11, 20, 21, 150, 151
    _Téméraire_, 126-9, 131, 134, 135, 137, 139, 140, 146, 217, 235,
        236, 250, 275
    _Thesèe_ (Fr.), 151
    _Thunder_, 90
    _Torrington_, 28, 29, 72
    _Tredagh_, 72
    _Triumph_, 3, 36
    _Turquoise_ (Fr.), 128
    _Tyger_, 82, 83, 85, 88, 89, 90, 95-7, 107, 112, 113, 115, 118,
        120, 125
    _Vanguard_, 224
    _Vengeur_ (Fr.), 62, 63
    _Vernon_, 220
    _Victory_, 3, 6, 18, 24, 26, 34, 43, 50, 51, 60, 126, 160, 163,
        171, 175, 187, 189, 190, 217, 222, 223, 225, 226, 228, 229,
        231, 232, 233, 235, 237, 241, 243, 245, 248, 250, 256, 257,
        274, 275, 278, 279, 280, 284
    _Ville de Paris_ (Fr.), 193, 196, 199, 207
    _Warspite_, 137, 138, 146, 147, 150
    _Weazle_, 215
    _Woolwich_, 67
    _Worcester_, 72
    _York_, 92

  Shirley, Governor, 199

  Shoreditch, Midshipman, 122

  Shot, Sussex iron, 12

  Shovell, Sir Cloudesley, 65, 66, 167

  Slade, Sir T., 182

  Sluys, Battle of, 59

  Smith, Sir Sidney, Admiral, 62

  Smith, Collingwood’s valet, 249, 255

  Soldiers at Portsmouth, 172, 173

  Solebay, Battle of, 28, 29, 167

  Spert, Sir Thomas, 61

  Speke, Flag-Captain, 82, 87, 98, 114, 120

  Speke, Midshipman, 114, 120

  Spragge, Sir E., Admiral, 29

  Standard at the Main, 49, 50

  Standing Cup, 16

  Stanhope, Countess, 55

  Stanton, Lieutenant, 120

  Strahan, of the _Kent_, 91, 93, 94, 95

  Suckling, M., Captain, 30, 31, 32, 34

  Suraj-u-daulah, 79, 80, 87, 89, 98, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106


  Tagus, 5, 22

  Tanna, Fort at, 95, 96

  “Tars of the Tyne!” 267-8

  Teneriffe, St. Cruz, etc., 62, 66

  Terraneau, de, 111

  Theatricals on board the _Britannia_, 284-9

  Thackeray on Collingwood, 265-6

  “The Wonderful Year,” 128, 186

  Thierri, Pilot, 146

  Thompson, Sir T. B., Captain, 62

  Three sailors on a raft, 99

  “Thunderbolt of War,” 22

  Tilbury camp, 5

  Timber for the _Victory_, 180-1

  _Times_, origin of, 38

  Tone, Wolfe, 210, 212, 213-14

  Torbay, fortifications at, 37

  Toulon Fleet, 130, 192

  Toulon, 129, 130, 131

  Tourville, 143

  Tower Wharf “Bynns,” 13

  Trafalgar, Battle of, 39, 41, 215-19, 222, 289

  Treachery in the West Indies, 200-3

  Trincomalee, 85

  Trinidad, Capture of, 63

  Turner, 140


  Verger, Cte. de, French Admiral, 144, 146, 147, 157, 158

  Vernon, Admiral, 171

  Victoria, Queen, 49

  Vigo Street, London, 165

  Villeneuve, Admiral, 248, 252

  Visits to the _Victory_ after Trafalgar, 245-7

  Visit to the first _Dreadnought_, 9-14

  Vizagapatam, 105

  Volunteers on board the _Victory_, 233


  Wager, Sir Charles, 30

  Walpole, Horace, 136, 146, 151, 186

  Walter, Mr. John, 38

  Walton, Captain, 9, 30

  “War of Jenkins’ Ear,” 29

  Warren, Sir J. B., Admiral, 211-13

  Watson, Charles, Admiral, 79, 83, 84, 86

  Weald of Kent, 59

  Wells, John, Midshipman, 276

  “Western Ports,” 57

  William III, King, 165, 166, 167

  Wine Vaults of Corunna, 27

  Wolfe, General, 167, 175

  Woodcot, T., “Prest-master,” 8




A HISTORY OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE ROYAL NAVY AND OF MERCHANT
SHIPPING IN RELATION TO THE NAVY

From 1509 to 1660

BY M. OPPENHEIM

With an Introduction treating of the earlier period

_With Illustrations. Demy 8vo. =15s.= net_


=Times.=—“Full of historic detail of great interest and novelty derived
from a variety of documentary sources hitherto unexplored.”

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=Daily News.=—“This admirable first volume of an exhaustive work....
The subject has never been dealt with adequately by any previous
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=Pall Mall Gazette.=—“This is a wholly admirable book. It is based upon
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THE SPANISH CONQUEST IN AMERICA

BY SIR ARTHUR HELPS

Edited, with an Introduction, Maps, and Notes, by

M. OPPENHEIM

_In Four Volumes. Crown 8vo. =3s. 6d.= net each_


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aborigines.”

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JANE AUSTEN’S SAILOR BROTHERS

By J. H. and F. C. HUBBACK

Being the Life and Adventures of Sir Francis Austen, G.C.B., Admiral of
the Fleet, and Rear-Admiral Charles Austen.

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PRESS OPINIONS.

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_Illustrated. Price_ =16s.=


EXTRACTS FROM PRESS NOTICES

“The idea of the book is ‘to render tribute to the gallant men at
whose expense Nelson achieved fame,’ and this idea is admirably
realized.”—TIMES.

“Mr. Fraser has achieved the apparently impossible feat of presenting the
battle of Trafalgar to the British public from an entirely new point of
view.”—MORNING POST.

“Its dramatic pages cannot fail to be of absorbing interest.”—DAILY
TELEGRAPH.

“It indirectly adds to the glory of the victory.”—DAILY GRAPHIC.

“The tone and spirit of the book are worthy of the two nations
whose death-grip in 1805 has at last resulted in the embrace of
friendship.”—DAILY CHRONICLE.

“A notable and most fascinating addition to the literature of the grand
deliverance.”—GLOBE.

“The book has a strong and lively interest for general readers who like
to find in true stories things more sensational and strange than come
within the invention of romance.”—SCOTSMAN.

“This fascinating and useful book.”—SATURDAY REVIEW.

“Mr. Fraser has discovered a gap in our knowledge, and filled it in a
very interesting manner.”—ATHENÆUM.

“English history would gain if there were more books like Mr.
Fraser’s.”—MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.

“There is a manly ring about the honest enthusiasm that pervades the
pages of this bulky volume, and it is not possible to read them without
being carried away by it.”—GRAPHIC.

“A series of tableaux and portraits which are as vivid as they are
important.”—ROYAL NAVY LIST.

“To say that the work is interesting is to pay it a poor compliment.
It is interesting and instructive, and, above all, it breaks new
ground.”—IRISH TIMES.




BY EDWARD FRASER

FAMOUS FIGHTERS OF THE FLEET

_Illustrated. Price_ =6s.=


EXTRACTS FROM PRESS NOTICES

“A graphic and instructive book.”—TIMES.

“We heartily commend the book.”—STANDARD.

“Full of life and action.”—DAILY TELEGRAPH.

“Mr. Fraser has told the story clearly and vividly. His book is a good
book.”—MORNING POST.

“It is just such history as this that goes to make patriotism.”—DAILY
GRAPHIC.

“It will help all who read it to realise upon what a foundation of solid
glory our present Navy is built up.”—DAILY CHRONICLE.

“Full of rich narrative quality and the stuff that moves the blood to new
patriotism and new hopes.”—PALL MALL GAZETTE.

“A volume teeming with romance, adventure, excitement; the picturesque
detail of personal heroism.”—GLOBE.

“Admirably forcible and clear.”—SPECTATOR.

“Mr. Fraser’s book is one to live.”—ATHENÆUM.

“These are noble stories and Mr. Fraser tells them admirably.”—GUARDIAN.

“More attractive than any imaginary narrative.”—BRITISH WEEKLY.

“It stirs the blood to read.”—LITERARY WORLD.

“Brisk, strong, and spirited, full of the subtle flavour of the past,
and crammed from cover to cover with picturesque incident brilliantly
told.”—NAVY LEAGUE JOURNAL.

“It combines in admirable form matters of present-day interest and
historic renown.”—LEEDS MERCURY.

“It will be read with a keen zest by everyone.”—SCOTSMAN.

“The reader is made to feel like an actual spectator.”—DUNDEE ADVERTISER.

“Admirers of dashing bravery on the high seas will find delight in Mr.
Fraser’s volume.”—NEW YORK DAILY TRIBUNE.

“All capital yarns, chock-full of salt, sulphur, and saltpetre.”—THE
NATION (U.S.A.).

“Fraser’s Buch lässt nicht zu wünschen.”—ALLGEMEINE SPORT-ZEITUNG.




[Illustration]

THE LIBRARY OF GOLDEN THOUGHTS

_Pott 8vo (6 × 3¾ in.)_

_Bound in Cloth. Price 1s. net_

_Bound in Leather. Price 2s. net_


FIRST VOLUMES

    GOLDEN THOUGHTS FROM THE GOSPELS
    GOLDEN THOUGHTS FROM THOREAU
    GOLDEN THOUGHTS FROM SIR THOS. BROWNE

Printed upon a paper specially manufactured for the series, with end
papers and cover design by Charles Ricketts, and border designs by
Laurence Housman. Each volume has a frontispiece, and is bound in a
manner which will recommend the series specially appropriate for presents.

JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO ST., LONDON, W.




Flowers of Parnassus

_A Series of Famous Poems Illustrated_

UNDER THE GENERAL EDITORSHIP OF FRANCIS COUTTS

_Size 5½ × 4½ in., gilt top_

_Bound in Cloth. Price 1s. net_

_Bound in Leather. Price 1s. 6d. net_


LIST OF VOLUMES

    GRAY’S ELEGY AND ODE ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE
    BROWNING’S THE STATUE AND THE BUST
    STEPHEN PHILLIPS’ MARPESSA
    ROSSETTI’S THE BLESSED DAMOZEL
    THE NUT-BROWN MAID
    TENNYSON’S DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN
    TENNYSON’S DAY DREAM
    SUCKLING’S A BALLADE UPON A WEDDING
    FITZGERALD’S RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM
    POPE’S THE RAPE OF THE LOCK
    WATTS-DUNTON’S CHRISTMAS AT THE MERMAID
    BLAKE’S SONGS OF INNOCENCE
    SHELLEY’S THE SENSITIVE PLANT
    KEATS’S ISABELLA: OR THE POT OF BASIL
    WATSON’S WORDSWORTH’S GRAVE
    RELIQUES OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON
    MILTON’S LYCIDAS
    WORDSWORTH’S TINTERN ABBEY
    LONGFELLOW’S THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP
    WATSON’S THE TOMB OF BURNS
    A LITTLE CHILD’S WREATH
    MORRIS’S THE DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE
    HOGG’S KILMENY
    TENNYSON’S MAUD
    DAVIDSON’S THE BALLAD OF A NUN
    WORDSWORTH’S RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE
    THE SONG OF SONGS, WHICH IS SOLOMON’S

JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO ST., LONDON, W.