WHEN H. M. S. _PHOENIX_ DROVE ASHORE
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow!
While the battle rages loud and long
And the stormy winds do blow.
It was a British admiral, Sir Lewis Bayly, who told the officers of
the American destroyers operating out of Queenstown, “To work with
you is a pleasure, to know you is to know the best traits of the
Anglo-Saxon race.” In the same spirit it is generous to recall the
enduring traditions of the English Navy, which were welded through
many centuries of courageous conflict with the sea and the enemy. The
wooden frigates and the towering ships of the line gave place to the
steel-walled cruiser and the grim, squat dreadnought, but for the men
behind the guns the salty lineage was unbroken. As Beatty and his
squadrons kept watch and ward in the misty Orkneys, so had Nelson
maintained his uneasy vigil off Toulon.
Among the annals of the vanished days of the old navies, of the tarry,
pigtailed seamen with hearts of oak, the story of a shipwreck has
been preserved in a letter written to his mother by a lieutenant of
the frigate _Phoenix_ in the year 1780. He tells her about the tragic
episode as though he had actually enjoyed it, scribbling the details
with a boyish gusto which conveys to us, in a manner exceedingly vivid,
how ships and men lived and toiled in the age of boarding-pikes,
hammock-nettings, and single topsails. Few young men write such long
letters to their mothers nowadays, and even in that era of leisurely
and literary correspondence a friend who was permitted to read the
narrative was moved to comment:
“Every circumstance is detailed with feeling and powerful appeals are
continually made to the heart. It must likewise afford considerable
pleasure to observe the devout heart of a seaman frequently bursting
forth and imparting sublimity to the relation.”
This stilted admiration must not frighten the modern reader away, for
Lieutenant Archer held his old-fashioned piety well under control, and
was as brisk, slangy, and engaging a young officer as you could find
afloat in a skittish destroyer of the present day. The forty-four-gun
frigate _Phoenix_ was commanded by Captain Sir Hyde Parker, who later
became an admiral, and under whose orders Nelson served for a time. His
name has a flavor of interest for Americans because he took part in the
British naval attack on New York in 1776 and later joined in harassing
Savannah. With almost no naval strength in the War of the Revolution,
the United States had only its audacious privateers to molest the
enemy’s commerce and was helpless to convoy or protect its merchant
shipping, which was largely destroyed. The British squadron to which
the _Phoenix_ was attached, finding little American booty afloat in
1780, turned its attention to the Spanish foe and cruised in the waters
of the Caribbean.
On August 2d the frigate sailed from Port Royal, Jamaica, escorting
two store-ships to Pensacola, and then loafed about in the Gulf and
off the Cuban coast for six weeks in quest of Spanish prizes. It was
a hot, wretchedly uncomfortable business, this beating about in the
tropics in a ship of a hundred and forty years ago. The bluejackets
were frequently flogged by way of making them fond of the service, and
many of them had been hauled into this kind of maritime slavery by the
brutal press-gangs which raked the English ports. Somehow they managed
to survive the chronic hardships of life at sea and to keep their ardor
bright, so that in a gale of wind or against a hostile fleet they
stubbornly did their duty as long as two planks held together. The
bulldog strain made them heroic.
In the ward-room of the _Phoenix_, where the officers perspired and
grumbled and cursed their luck, they kept an ingenious lottery going to
vary the monotony of an empty sea. Every man put a Spanish dollar into
a canvas bag and set down his guess of the date of sighting a sail.
No two gamblers were to name the same date. Whenever a man lost, he
dropped another dollar into the bag. It was growing heavy, for one week
stretched into another without a gleam of royals or topgallant-sails
from Vera Cruz to Havana. Like a good sportsman, Captain Sir Hyde
Parker paid his stake into the dollar bag and squinted through his long
brass spy-glass as he grumpily trudged the quarterdeck.
It was off Cape San Antonio, at the western end of Cuba, that the man
at the masthead shouted down:
“A sail upon the weather bow.”
“Ha! ha! Mr. Spaniard, I think we have you at last,” jubilantly
exclaimed the captain. “Turn out all hands! Make sail! All hands give
chase!”
A midshipman scrambled aloft and blithely reported:
“A large ship standing athwart us and running right before the wind.”
“Larboard! Keep her away! Set the studding-sails!” was the order, and
two hundred nimble seamen raced to their stations on deck and in the
tops and swarmed out along the yards.
Up from below came the little doctor, rubbing his hands and crying:
“What, ho! I have won the dollar bag!”
“The devil take you and your bag!” roared Lieutenant Archer. “Look
yonder! That will fill all our money-bags.”
“Two more sail on the larboard beam,” came from aloft. “A whole fleet
of twenty sail coming before the wind.”
“Confound the luck of it!” growled the captain of the frigate, “this is
some convoy or other; but we must try to snap up two or three of them.
Haul in the studding-sails. Luff her. Let us see what we can make of
them.”
They were discovered to be twenty-five sail of Spanish merchantmen,
under convoy of three lofty line-of-battle ships, one of which set out
in chase of the agile _Phoenix_, which soon showed her heels. A frigate
had no business to linger too close to the hundred guns of a ponderous
three-decker. The huge Spanish man-of-war lumbered back to the convoy
and herded them watchfully while the British nosed about until dark,
but found no stray prizes that could be cut out from the flock. In the
starlight three ships seemed to be steering a course at some distance
from the Spanish fleet, so the frigate gave chase, and came up with a
heavy vessel mounting twenty-six guns.
“Archer, every man to his quarters,” said the captain. “Light the
battle-lanterns and open the gun-ports. Show this fellow our force, and
it may prevent his firing into us and killing a man or two.”
Across the intervening water rang the challenge from the _Phoenix_:
“Ho, the ship ahoy! Lower your sails and bring to instantly, or I will
sink you.”
Amid the clatter of blocks and creaking of spars the other ship laid
her mainyard aback and hung plunging in the wind while to the sharp
interrogation her skipper bawled through his trumpet:
“This is the British armed merchant ship _Polly_, from Jamaica to New
York. What ship are you?”
“His Majesty’s forty-four gun frigate _Phoenix_,” was the reply, at
which the honest sailors of the merchantman let go three rousing
cheers; but a glum old shell-back of the frigate’s crew was heard to
mutter:
“Oh, damn your huzzas! We took you to be something else.”
The _Polly_ had fallen in with the Spanish fleet that same morning, as
it turned out, and had been chased all day, wherefore the frigate stood
by her until they had run clear of danger. It was the courtesy of the
sea, but Lieutenant Archer was unconsoled and he fretfully jotted down
in writing to his mother:
“There I was, from being worth thousands in imagination, reduced to the
old four and sixpence a day. The little doctor won the most prize money
of us all, for the bag contained between thirty and forty dollars.”
After almost running ashore in a thick night and clawing off by good
seamanship, the _Phoenix_ ran over to Jamaica for fresh water, and then
sailed in company with two other frigates. The verdant mountains of
that lovely island were still visible when the sky became overcast. By
eleven o’clock that night, “it began to snuffle, with a monstrous heavy
appearance from the eastward.” Sir Hyde Parker sent for Lieutenant
Archer, who was his navigating officer, and exclaimed:
“What sort of weather have we? It blows a little and has a very ugly
look. If in any other quarter but this I should say we were going to
have a smart gale of wind.”
“Aye, sir,” replied the lieutenant, “it looks so very often here when
there is no wind at all. However, don’t hoist topsails until it clears
a little.”
Next morning it was dirty weather, blowing hard, with heavy squalls,
and the frigate laboring under close-reefed lower sails.
“I doubt whether it clears,” said the frowning captain. “I was once in
a hurricane in the East Indies, and the beginning of it had much the
same appearance as this. So be sure we have plenty of sea room.”
All day the wind steadily increased in violence, and the frigate,
spray-swept and streaming, rolled in the passage between Jamaica and
Cuba, in peril of foundering if she stayed at sea and of fetching up
on the rocks if she tried to run for shelter. There was nothing to do
but to fight it out. I shall let Lieutenant Archer describe something
of the struggle in his own words, old sea lingo and all, because he
depicts it with a spirit so high-hearted and adventurous, quite as you
would expect it of a true-blue young sailorman.
At eight o’clock a hurricane; the sea roaring but the wind still
steady to a point; did not ship a spoonful of water. However, got
the hatchways all secured, expecting what would be the consequence
should the wind shift; placed the carpenters by the mainmast with
broad-axes, knowing from experience that at the moment you may want
to cut it away to save the ship, an axe may not be found. Went to
supper; bread, cheese, and porter. The purser frightened out of
his wits about his bread bags, the two marine officers as white as
sheets, not understanding the ship’s working and groaning in every
timber, and the noise of the lower deck guns which by this time
made a pretty screeching and straining to people not used to it.
It seemed as if the whole ship’s side was going at each roll. Old
“Wooden-head,” our carpenter, was all this time smoking his pipe
and laughing at the doctor; the second lieutenant upon deck, and
the third in his hammock.
At ten o’clock I thought to get a little sleep; came to look into
my cot; it was full of water, for every seam, by the straining of
the ship had begun to leak and the sea was also flooding through
the closed gun-ports. I stretched myself, therefore, upon the deck
between two chests and left orders to be called, should the least
thing happen. At twelve a midshipman came up to me:
“Mr. Archer, we are just going to wear ship, sir.”
“Oh, very well, I’ll be up directly. What sort of weather have you
got?”
“It blows a hurricane, sir, and I think we shall lose the ship.”
Went upon deck and found Sir Hyde there. Said he:
“It blows damned hard, Archer.”
“It does indeed, sir.”
“I don’t know that I ever remember it blowing so hard before,
Archer, but the ship makes a very good weather of it upon this
tack as she bows the sea; but we must wear her, as the wind has
shifted to the south-east and we are drawing right down upon Cuba.
So do you go forward and have some hands stand by; loose the lee
yard-arm of the foresail and when she is right before the wind,
whip the clew-garnet close up and roll up the sail.”
“Sir, there is no canvas that can stand against this a moment. If
we attempt to loose him he will fly into ribands in an instant, and
we lose three or four of our people. She will wear by manning the
fore shrouds.”
“No, I don’t think she will, Archer.”
“I’ll answer for it, sir. I have seen it tried several times on the
coast of America with success.”
The captain accepted the suggestion, and Archer considered it “a great
condescension from such a man as Sir Hyde.” Two hundred sailors were
ordered to climb into the fore-rigging and flatten themselves against
the shrouds and ratlines where the wind tore at them and almost plucked
them from their desperate station. Thus arranged, their bodies en masse
made a sort of human sail against which the hurricane exerted pressure
enough to swing the bow of the struggling ship, and she very slowly
wore, or changed direction until she stood on the other tack. It was
a feat of seamanship which was later displayed during the historic
hurricane in the harbor of Samoa when British, German, and American
men-of-war were smashed by the tremendous fury of wind and sea, and the
gallant old steam frigates _Vandalia_, _Trenton_, and _Nipsic_ faced
destruction of the Stars and Stripes gallantly streaming and the crews
cheering the luckier British ship that was able to fight its way out to
sea.
The hapless _Phoenix_ endured it tenaciously, but the odds were too
great for her. When she tried to rise and shake her decks free of the
gigantic combers, they smashed her with incessant blows. The stout
sails were flying out of the gaskets that bound them to the yards. The
staunch wooden hull was opening like a basket. The ship was literally
being pounded to pieces. Sir Hyde Parker, lashed near the kicking
wheel, where four brawny quartermasters sweated as they endeavored to
steer the dying frigate, was heard to shout:
“My God! To think that the wind could have such force!”
There was a terrific racket below decks, and fearing that one of the
guns might have broken adrift from its tackles, Lieutenant Archer
clambered into the gloomy depths, where a marine officer hailed him,
announcing:
“Mr. Archer, we are sinking. The water is up to the bottom of my cot.
All the cabins are awash and the people flooded out.”
“Pooh! pooh!” was the cheery answer, “as long as it is not over your
mouth you are well off. What the devil are you making all this noise
about?”
The unterrified Archer found much water between decks, “but nothing to
be alarmed at,” and he told the watch below to turn to at the pumps,
shouting at them:
“Come pump away, my lads! Will you twiddle your thumbs while she
drowns the lot of you? Carpenters, get the weather chain-pump
rigged.”
“Already, sir.”
“Then man it, and keep both pumps going. The ship is so distressed
that she merely comes up for air now and then. Everything is swept
clean but the quarterdeck.”
Presently one of the pumps choked, and the water gained in the hold,
but soon the bluejackets were swinging at the brakes again, while
Lieutenant Archer stood by and cheered them on. A carpenter’s mate came
running up to him with a face as long as his arm and shouted:
“Oh, sir, the ship has sprung a leak in the gunner’s room.”
“Go, then, and tell the carpenter to come to me, but don’t say a word
about it to any one else.”
When the carpenter came tumbling aft he was told:
“Mr. Goodenow, I am informed there is a leak in the gunner’s room.
Do you go and see what is the matter, but don’t alarm anybody and
come and make your report privately to me.”
“Sir, there is nothing there,” announced the trusty carpenter, a
few minutes later. “’Tis only the water washing up between the
timbers that this booby has taken for a leak.”
“Oh, very well, go up on deck and see if you can keep the water
from washing down below.”
“Sir, I have four people constantly keeping the hatchways secure,
but there is such a weight of water upon the deck that nobody can
stand it when the ship rolls.”
Just then the gunner appeared to add his bit of news.
“I thought some confounded thing was the matter, and ran directly,”
wrote Lieutenant Archer.
“Well, what is the trouble here?”
“The ground tier of powder is spoiled,” lamented the faithful
gunner, “and I want to show you, sir, that it is not because of
any carelessness of mine in stowing it, for no powder in the world
could be better stowed. Now, sir, what am I to do? If you don’t
speak to Sir Hyde in my behalf, he will be angry with me.”
Archer smiled to see how easily the gunner took the grave danger of the
ship and replied:
“Let us shake off this gale of wind first and talk of the damaged
powder later.”
[Illustration: PERILOUS SITUATION OF THE SHIP]
At the end of his watch below, Archer thought that the toiling gangs
at the pumps had gained on the water a little. When he returned to the
deck he was rather appalled by the situation, although his courage
was unshaken. When he later tried to convey a picture of it for the
entertainment of his mother, part of the letter read like this:
If I were to write forever, I could not give you an idea of it--a
total darkness all above; the sea on fire, running as it were in
Alps or Peaks of Teneriffe (mountains are too common an idea); the
wind roaring louder than thunder, the whole made more terrible,
if possible, by a very uncommon kind of blue lightning; the poor
ship very much pressed, yet doing what she could, shaking her sides
and groaning at every stroke. Sir Hyde was lashed upon the deck to
windward and I soon lashed myself alongside of him and told him
the state of affairs below, saying that the ship did not make more
water than might be expected in such infernal weather and that I
was only afraid of a gun breaking loose.
“I am not in the least afraid of that,” said the captain. “I have
commanded her for six years and have had many a gale of wind in
her, so that her iron work, which always gives way first, is pretty
well tried. Hold fast, Archer, that was an ugly sea. We must lower
the yards, for the ship is much pressed.”
“If we attempt it, sir, we shall lose them, for a man aloft can do
nothing; besides, their being down would ease the ship very little;
the mainmast is a sprung mast; I wish it were overboard without
carrying everything with it, but that can soon be done. The gale
cannot last forever. ’Twill soon be daylight now.”
Found by the master’s watch that it was five o’clock, glad it was
so near dawn and looked for it with much anxiety. Cuba, thou are
much in our way! Sent a midshipman to fetch news from the pumps.
The ship was filling with water despite all their labor. The sea
broke halfway up the quarterdeck, filled one of the cutters upon
the booms and tore her all to fragments. The ship lying almost upon
her beam ends and not attempting to right again. Word from below
that the water had gained so fast they could no longer stand to the
pumps. I said to Sir Hyde:
“This is no time, sir, to think of saving the masts. Shall we cut
away?”
“Aye, Archer, as fast as you can.”
I accordingly went into the chains with a pole-axe to cut away the
lanyards; the boatswain went to leeward, and the carpenters stood
by the mast. We were already when a very violent sea broke right on
board of us, carried away everything that was left on deck, filled
the ship with water, the main and mizzen-masts went, the ship
righted but was in the last struggle of sinking under us. As soon
as we could shake our heads above water Sir Hyde exclaimed:
“We are gone at last, Archer,--foundered at sea.”
“Yes, sir. And the Lord have mercy upon us.”
The unlucky crew of the _Phoenix_ frigate, more than three hundred
souls, had behaved with disciplined fortitude. The captain, who had
commanded her for six years, knew his ship and her people, and they had
stood the test. In this weltering chaos of wind and sea, which extended
far over the Caribbean, twelve other ships went down, all of them
flying the white ensign of the Royal Navy, and more than three thousand
seamen perished. Maritime disasters were apt to occur on a tremendous
scale in those olden days when ships sailed in fleets and convoys.
It was not ordained that the brave and dogged ship’s company of the
_Phoenix_ should be entirely swallowed by the sea. While they fought
the last fight for life in the broken, sinking hulk, the keel thumped
and ground along the back of a reef. Lieutenant Archer and Captain Sir
Hyde Parker were floundering about together and had given themselves
up for lost. The lieutenant was filled with reflections profoundly
religious, as well as with salt water, and he took pains to expound
them at length in writing to his mother, and these were a great solace,
no doubt, to the good woman who waited for infrequent tidings in a home
of green England. Sir Hyde Parker was swearing and spluttering at his
men who were crying, “Lord have mercy on us!”
“Keep to the quarter-deck, my boys, when she goes to pieces,” he
yelled. “’Tis your best chance.”
The shattered remnants of the frigate were being flailed upon the Cuban
reef, but the boatswain and the carpenter rallied volunteers who cut
away the foremast, which dragged five men to their death when it fell.
All this was in the black, bewildering darkness just before the stormy
day began to break; but the crew held on until they were able to see
the cruel ledges and the mountainous coast which was only a few hundred
feet away. Lieutenant Archer was ready to undertake the perilous task
of trying to swim ashore with a line, but after he had kicked off his
coat and shoes he said to himself:
This won’t do, for me to be the first man out of the ship, and the
senior lieutenant at that. We may get to England again and people
may think I paid a great deal of attention to myself and not much
to anybody else. No, that won’t do; instead of being the first,
I’ll see every man, sick and well, out of her before me.
Two sailors managed to fetch the shore, and a hawser was rigged by
means of which all of the survivors succeeded in reaching the beach.
True to his word, Archer was the last man to quit the wreck. Sir Hyde
Parker was a man of more emotion than one might infer, and the scene is
appealing as the lieutenant describes it.
The captain came to me, and taking me by the hand was so affected
that he was scarcely able to speak. “Archer, I am happy beyond
expression, to see you on shore but look at our poor _Phoenix_.” I
turned about but could not say a single word; my mind had been too
intensely occupied before; but everything now rushed upon me at
once, so that I could not contain myself, and I indulged for a full
quarter of an hour in tears.
The resourceful bluejackets first entrenched themselves and saved
what arms they could find in the ship, for this was no friendly and
hospitable coast. They were on Spanish soil, and it was not their
desire to be marched off to the dungeons of Havana as prisoners of
war. Tents and huts were speedily contrived, provisions rafted from
the wreck, fires built, fish caught, and the camp was a going concern
in two or three days. Archer proposed that the handy carpenters mend
one of the boats and that he pick a crew to sail to Jamaica and find
rescue. This was promptly done and he says:
In two days she was ready and I embarked with four volunteers and a
fortnight’s provisions, hoisted English colors as we put off from
the shore and received three cheers from the lads left behind,
having not the least doubt that, with God’s assistance, we should
come and bring them all off. Had a very squally night and a very
leaky boat so as to keep two buckets constantly baling. Steered
her myself the whole night by the stars and in the morning saw the
coast of Jamaica distant twelve leagues. At eight in the evening
arrived at Montego Bay.
This dashing lieutenant was not one to let the grass grow under his
feet, and he sent a messenger to the British admiral, another to the
man-of-war, _Porcupine_, and hustled off to find vessels on his own
account. All the frigates of the station were at sea, but Archer
commandeered three fishing craft and a little trading brig and put
to sea with his squadron. Four days after he had left his shipwrecked
comrades he was back again, and they hoisted him upon their shoulders
and so lugged him up to Sir Hyde Parker’s tent as the hero of the
occasion. The _Porcupine_ arrived a little later, so there was plenty
of help for the marooned British tars. Two hundred and fifty of them
were carried to Jamaica. Of the others “some had died of the wounds
they received in getting on shore, some of drinking rum, and a few had
straggled off into the country.”
Lieutenant Archer was officially commended for the part he had played,
and was promoted to command the frigate _Tobago_ after a few months of
duty on the admiral’s staff. You will like to hear, I am sure, how he
wound up the long letter home which contained the story of the last
cruise of the _Phoenix_.
I must now begin to leave off, else my letter will lose its
passage, which I should not like, after being ten days at different
times writing it, beating up with a convoy to the northward,
which is a reason that this epistle will never read well, for I
never sat down with a proper disposition to go on with it. But
as I knew something of the kind would please you, I was resolved
to finish it; yet it will not bear an overhaul, so don’t expose
your son’s nonsense. You must promise that should any one see it
beside yourself, they must put this construction on it--that it was
originally intended for the eyes of a mother only--as upon that
supposition my feelings may be tolerated. You will also meet with
a number of sea terms which if you do not understand, why, I cannot
help you, as I am unable to give a sea description in any other
words. I remain His Majesty’s most true and faithful servant and my
dear mother’s most dutiful son.