THE STORM-SWEPT FLEET OF ADMIRAL GRAVES
To observe what might be called shipwreck on a grand scale, it is
necessary to hark back to the days of fleets and convoys under sail,
when a hundred or two hundred merchant vessels and men-of-war made
a long voyage together. If such an argosy chanced to be caught in a
hurricane, the tragedy was apt to be tremendous, surpassing anything of
the kind in the hazards of modern seafaring. In April, 1782, Admiral
George Rodney, in a great sea-battle whose issue was vital to the
British Empire, whipped the French fleet of De Grasse off the island of
Dominica, in the West Indies. It was a victory which enabled Rodney to
write, “Within two little years, I have taken two Spanish, one French,
and one Dutch admirals.” The French ships which struck their flags to
him included the huge _Ville de Paris_ of 110 guns, which had flown
De Grasse’s pennant; the _Glorieux_ and _Hector_ of seventy-four guns
each; the _Ardent_, _Caton_, and _Jason_ of sixty-four guns each.
As soon as these prizes could be repaired, they were ordered to
sail for England, with several of the British ships of the line as
an escort, and with them went more than a hundred merchantmen from
the West Indies. In command was Admiral Graves of Rodney’s fleet,
a sailor who was to prove himself as noble in misfortune as he
had been illustrious in action. His ships were in no condition to
encounter heavy weather, for the battle had pounded and shattered both
antagonists, and refitting had to be done in makeshift fashion for lack
of dock-yards and material. British bluejackets and French prisoners
were blithely willing, however, to run the risk of keeping afloat so
long as they were homeward bound. The _Ardent_ and the _Jason_ came
so near to sinking, even in smooth seas, that they had to be ordered
back to Jamaica, but the rest of the fleet moved on until a few of
the merchant ships parted company to steer for New York, leaving
ninety-three sail in all to cross the Atlantic.
The season was September, and strong gales blew from the eastward,
which made it weary work thrashing into the head seas. Two more of the
crippled French men-of-war signaled that they were in distress, and
the admiral told them to bear away for Halifax. At length the wind
shifted suddenly to the northward and increased to a roaring storm.
Foul weather had been expected, and from his flagship, the _Ramillies_,
Admiral Graves warned the scattered fleet to close in and snug down.
They came straggling in from the cloudy horizon, upper sails furled,
decks streaming, until at sunset the anxious flock was within sight of
the shepherd, and the fluttering flags passed the word to make ready
for the worst.
The _Ramillies_, a majestic seventy-four-gun ship, was almost
overwhelmed before daylight, mainmast gone by the board, all her
upper spars splintered, rudder torn away, and the seas washing clean
over her. The admiral took it with unruffled courage, although he was
flooded out of his cabin, and arrived on deck with one leg in his
breeches and his boots in his hand. For all he knew, the ship was about
to go to the bottom,
but he ordered two of the lieutenants to examine into the state of
the affairs below, and to keep a sufficient number of people at the
pumps, while he himself and the captain kept the deck to encourage
the men to clear away the wreckage which, by beating against the
sides of the ship, had stripped off the copper sheathing and
exposed the seams so much to the sea that the decayed oakum washed
out and the whole frame became at once exceedingly porous and leaky.
The situation of the _Ramillies_ seemed bad enough, but dawn disclosed
other ships which were much worse off. Close to leeward was a large
vessel, the _Dutton_, which had been a famous East Indiaman. She was
lying flat upon her side, while the crew struggled to cut away the
masts. Presently the naval lieutenant in command was seen to jump into
the sea, which instantly obliterated him. A few of the crew slid one
of the boats off the deck, and were whirled away in the foam and spray
which soon engulfed them. Presently the ship dived under and was seen
no more, and the last glimpse, as she miserably foundered, was the
ensign hoisted union down, which gleamed like a bit of flame. Of the
ninety-odd ships which had been seen in the convoy only a dozen hours
earlier, no more than twenty could be counted. Some had been whirled
away like chips before the storm, while others had gone down during the
night and left no trace.
Hull down was descried the _Canada_; the _Centaur_ reeled far to
windward; and the _Glorieux_ was a distant hulk, all three of them
dismasted and apparently sinking. Of these stout British men-of-war
only the _Canada_ survived, and brought her people safely through.
The _Ville de Paris_ was still afloat and loomed lofty and almost
uninjured, but a few hours later she filled and sank, carrying eight
hundred men to the bottom with her. Of the merchantmen, not one within
sight of the _Ramillies_ had all her masts standing. They were almost
helpless survivors, still battling for very existence.
Admiral Graves had no intention of losing his flag-ship and his life
without fighting in the last ditch. Long lines of sailors passed
buckets to assist the laboring pumps, and storm-sails were rigged upon
the jagged stumps of the masts. The sturdy old _Ramillies_, with six
feet of water in the hold, was somehow brought around before the wind,
and ran as fast as the merchant vessels that fled on each side of her.
After spending all day in pumping and baling until they were ready to
drop in their tracks, the officers, through the captain as spokesman,
suggested to the admiral that some of the guns be thrown overboard in
order to lighten the ship. To this he vigorously objected on the ground
that a man-of-war was a sorry jest without her battery, but they argued
that a man-of-war in Davy Jones’ locker was of no use at all, wherefore
the admiral consented to heaving over the lighter guns and some of the
shot.
After another night of distress and increasing peril, the officers
raised the question again, and
the admiral was prevailed upon, by the renewed and pressing
remonstrances, to let six of the forward-most and four of the
aftermost guns of the main deck be thrown overboard, together with
the remainder of those on the quarterdeck; and the ship still
continuing to open very much, he ordered tarred canvas and hides
to be nailed fore and aft from under the sills of the ports on the
main deck under the fifth plank above, or within the waterways, and
the crew, without orders did the same on the lower deck.
The ship was sinking in spite of these endeavors, and the admiral now
let them throw all the guns over, which grieved him very much, “and
there being eight feet of water in the magazine, every gentleman was
compelled to take his turn at the whips or in handling the buckets.”
These six hundred British seamen and officers were making a very
gallant effort of it, and infusing them with his ardent spirit was
the cheery, resourceful Admiral Graves, whose chief virtue was never
to know when he was whipped. Under his direction the ship was now
_frapped_, and if you would know how ancient was this method of trying
to save a ship in the last extremity, please turn to St. Paul’s story
of his own shipwreck and read as follows:
And when the ship was caught and could not bear up into the wind,
we let her drive. And running under a certain island which is
called Clauda, we had much work to come by the boat;
Which when they had taken up, they used helps, under-girdling the
ship; and fearing lest they should fall into the quicksands, strake
sail and so were driven.
The souls of the jolly, jolly mariners in Kipling’s “Last Chantey,”
plucking at their harps and they plucked unhandily, listened with
professional approval when the stout Apostle Paul lifted his voice in
turn and sang to them:
Once we frapped a ship, and she labored woundily,
There were fourteen score of these,
And they blessed Thee on their knees,
When they learned Thy Grace and Glory under
Malta by the sea!
And so the _Ramillies_ was frapped, or under-girdled by passing hempen
hawsers under her keel and around the straining hull to hold her
timbers together before she literally fell apart. It was a fine feat of
seamanship, but unavailing. The admiral had nothing more to say about
the crime of tossing overboard his Majesty’s valuable guns, munitions,
and stores, and the crew fairly gutted the ship of everything weighty,
including both bower anchors. As the day wore on toward nightfall,
about twenty other ships were still visible, and the officers urged the
admiral to shift his pennant to one of them and so save himself; but
this he positively refused to do, deeming it, as he declared,
unpardonable of a commander-in-chief to desert his garrison in
distress; that his living a few years longer was of very little
consequence, but that, by leaving his ship at such a time, he
should discourage and slacken the exertions of the people by
setting them a very bad example.
When evening came, the spirits of the people began to fail, and
they openly expressed the utmost despair, together with the most
earnest desire of quitting the ship lest they should founder in
her. The admiral hereupon advanced and told them that he and
their officers had an equal regard for their own lives, that the
officers had no intention of deserting either them or the ship,
that, for his part, he was determined to try one more night in her;
he therefore hoped and intreated they would do so too, for there
was still room to imagine that one fair day, with a moderate sea,
might enable them by united exertion to clear and secure the well
against the incroaching ballast which washed into it; that if this
could be done they might be able to restore the chains to the pumps
and use them; and that then hands enough might be spared to raise
jury-masts with which they might carry the ship to Ireland; that
her appearance alone, while she could swim, would be sufficient
to protect the remaining part of her convoy; above all, that as
everything that could be thought of had now been done for her
relief, it would be but reasonable to wait the effect.
This temperate speech had the desired result. The firmness
and confidence with which he spoke, and their reliance on his
seamanship and judgment, as well as his constant presence and
attention to every accident, had a wonderful effect upon them.
Since the first disaster, the admiral had, in fact, scarcely ever
quitted the deck. This they had all observed, together with his
diligence in personally inspecting every circumstance of distress.
This simple picture of him portrays a fine figure of a man, of the
sort who have created and fostered the spirit and traditions both of
the British and the American naval services. In a sinking ship which
had lost all her guns, he was still mindful of his duty of guarding
the merchant convoy, or what was left of it, against any roving French
or Spanish war vessels or privateers, and every fiber of him rebelled
against deserting his ship as long as her flag flew above water. He was
a brother of the sea to Admiral Duncan who, as Stevenson describes it,
lying off the Texel with his own flagship, the _Venerable_, heard
that the whole Dutch fleet was putting to sea. He told Captain
Hotham to anchor alongside of him in the narrowest part of the
channel and fight his vessel until she sank. “I have taken the
depth of the water,” added he, “and when the _Venerable_ goes down,
my flag will still fly.” And you observe this is no naked Viking
in a prehistoric period; but a Scotch member of Parliament, with
a smattering of the classics, a telescope, a cocked hat of great
size, and flannel underclothing.
At three o’clock in the morning of the next night the pumps of the
_Ramillies_ were found to be hopelessly out of commission, the water
was rushing into the gaping wounds made by the sea, and it seemed as
though the timbers were pulling asunder from stern to bow. Sadly the
admiral admitted that the game was lost, and he told his captain to
abandon ship at daybreak, but there was to be no wild scramble for
the boats. The crew was to be informed that the sick and disabled were
to be removed, and that all the merchant vessels would be ordered to
send boats for this purpose. Confidentially, however, the officers were
instructed to fetch ample stores of bread, beef, pork, and flour to the
quarterdeck and to arrange for distributing the crew among the boats
that were to be called away from the other ships. Such boats of the
_Ramillies_ as had not been smashed by the storm were to be ready to
launch, and every officer would be held responsible for the men in his
own division. As soon as the invalids were safely out of the ship, the
whole crew would be embarked in an orderly and deliberate manner.
Accordingly at dawn, the signal was made for the boats of the
merchantmen, but nobody suspected what was to follow until the
bread was entirely removed and the sick gone. About six o’clock the
rest of the crew were permitted to go off, and between nine and
ten, there being nothing farther to direct or regulate, the admiral
himself, after shaking hands with every officer, and leaving his
barge for their better accommodation and transport, quitted forever
the _Ramillies_ which had then nine feet of water in her hold.
He went into a small leaky boat, loaded with bread, out of which
both himself and the surgeon who accompanied him had to bale the
water all the way. He was in his boots, with his surtout over his
uniform, and his countenance as calm and composed as ever. He
had, at going off left behind all his stock, wines, furniture,
books, charts, &c. which had cost him upwards of one thousand
pounds, being unwilling to employ even a single servant in saving
or packing up what belonged to himself alone, in a time of such
general calamity, or to appear to fare better in that respect than
any of the crew.
The admiral rowed for the _Belle_, Captain Foster, being the first
of the trading vessels that had borne up to the _Ramillies_ the
preceding night, and by his anxious humanity set such an example
to his brother traders as had a powerful influence upon them, an
influence which was generally followed by sixteen other ships.
Two hours after the six hundred men of the _Ramillies_ had been taken
off, the weather, which had moderated, became furious again, and
during a whole week after that it would have been impossible to handle
boats in the wicked seas. Admiral Graves had managed the weather
as handsomely as he did his ship and her men, getting them away at
precisely the right moment and making a record for efficiency and
resolution which must commend itself to every mariner, whether or not
he happens to be a Britisher. On October 10 the _Belle_ safely carried
the admiral into Cork Harbor, where he hoisted his pennant aboard the
frigate _Myrmidon_. The crew reached port in various ships, excepting a
few who were bagged by French privateers which swooped seaward at the
news that the great West India convoy had been dispersed by a storm.
Of the other British men-of-war which went to the bottom, the story of
the _Centaur_ was reported by her commander, Captain Inglefield, who
was one of the thirteen survivors of a crew of more than four hundred
men. Whether or not he should have stayed with his hapless people and
suffered the common fate is a difficult problem for a landsman to
weigh, but the facts speak for themselves, and they afford opportunity
to compare his behavior with that of Admiral Graves of the _Ramillies_.
Tried by an Admiralty court martial, Captain Inglefield was honorably
acquitted of all blame, and his official record is therefore without a
stain.
During the first night of the storm the _Centaur_ was thrown on her
beam-ends, and was to all appearances a capsized ship. The masts were
cut away, and she righted suddenly. Three guns broke adrift on the
main-deck, and the heavy round shot spilled out of the smashed lockers.
There was a devil’s game of bowls below, with these ponderous objects
madly charging to and fro to the violent motion of the ship, such a
scene as Victor Hugo painted in a famous chapter of his “Ninety-Three.”
The bluejackets scrambled after these infernal guns, which could be
subdued only by snaring them with ropes and tackles. They destroyed
everything in their path, maiming or slaying the sailors who were not
agile enough to dodge the onslaught, reducing bulkheads, stanchions,
deck-beams to kindling wood; but they were captured after a long
conflict and before they could batter the oaken sides out of the ship.
There was a glimpse of hope in the early morning when the _Ville de
Paris_ was sighted two miles to windward. The storm had subsided, a
sort of breathing-spell between the outbreaks of terrific weather. The
stately three-decker of a Frenchman lifted all her masts against the
foaming sky-line and was even setting a topsail. Plunging her long rows
of painted gun-ports under, she climbed buoyantly to meet the next
gray-backed comber, while the copper glinted almost to her keel as
she wildly rolled and staggered. This captured flag-ship in which De
Grasse, fresh from the triumph of Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown,
had confidently expected to crush Rodney and so sweep the seas of the
New World for France, seemed to have been vouchsafed some peculiar
respite by the god of storms. To those who beheld her from the drowning
_Centaur_ the impression conveyed was the same as that reported by
Admiral Graves, that she had miraculously come through unhurt, the only
ship of this great fleet whose lofty spars still stood.
Captain Inglefield began firing guns in token of distress, and the
_Ville de Paris_ bore straight toward him, responding to her helm and
handling like a ship which was under complete control. Two merchant
vessels passed close enough to hail the _Centaur_ and offer help, but
Captain Inglefield waved them on their courses, so confident was he
that the _Ville de Paris_, now flying the ensign of the British navy,
would stand by. Another merchantman passing close aboard, the _Centaur_
asked her to take word to Captain Wilkinson of the _Ville de Paris_
that he was urgently needed. A little while and, inexplicably, the
captured flag-ship passed without making a signal and held on the same
tack until she vanished in the mist, passed forever with her eight
hundred men just as she had disappeared from the sight of those who
gazed and wondered from the decks of the _Ramillies_. The sea holds
many an unfinished story, and the tall _Ville de Paris_ was one of them.
On board the _Centaur_ they pumped and they baled and gulped down
the stiff rations of grog and hoped to fetch her through, as is the
way of simple sailormen. Captain Inglefield noted that “the people
worked without a murmur and indeed with cheerfulness.” In 1782
men-of-war’s-men were singing Didbin’s hearty sea-songs, which held
sentiment enough to please a mariner’s heart, and possibly the
clattering beat of the chain pumps of the _Centaur_ were timed to the
chorus of “Blow High, Blow Low,” and the gloomy, reeking main-deck
echoed the verses:
“And on that night when all the crew,
The memory of their former lives
O’er flowing cans of flip renew,
And drink their sweethearts and their wives,
I’ll heave a sigh and think on thee:
And, as the ship rolls through the sea,
The burden of my song shall be
Blow high, blow low, let tempests tear
The mainmast by the board.”
The _Centaur_ was left on a lonely sea after the assistance of the
crippled merchantmen had been courteously declined and the _Ville de
Paris_ had so unaccountably sailed past. At night the flashes of guns
were seen, the farewell messages of foundering ships, but through the
long day there was never a sight of a sail. The _Centaur_ settled
deeper and deeper until her lower decks were awash and it was foolish
to pump and bale any longer. What was the use of trying to lift the
Atlantic Ocean out of a ship that refused to stay afloat? It was not so
much the fear of death as the realization of defeat that caused such a
scene as this:
“The people who, till this period, had labored as determined to conquer
their difficulties, without a murmur, or without a tear, seeing their
efforts useless, many of them burst into tears and wept like children.”
There were boats for only a few of the large company, and such rafts
as could be hastily put together would not have survived an hour in
the seas that still ran high and menacing. By way of doing something,
however, the carpenter’s gang swung out some spars and booms and began
to lash them together. Captain Inglefield made mention of the behavior
of the crew in this interesting reference,
Some appeared perfectly resigned, went to their hammocks and
desired their messmates to lash them in; others were securing
themselves to gratings and small rafts; but the most predominant
idea was that of putting on their best and cleanest clothes.
This desire of making a decent appearance when in the presence of death
is curiously frequent in the annals of the sea and may be called a
characteristic trait of the sailor. At random two instances recur to
mind. One of them happened aboard the United States frigate _Essex_
in the War of 1812, when Captain David Porter fought his great fight
against the _Phoebe_ and the _Cherub_ and won glory in defeat. The
decks of the _Essex_ were covered with dead and wounded, and more than
half her crew had fallen when the starry ensign was hauled down. Then,
as one of them told it when he returned home:
“After the engagement, Benjamin Hazen, having dressed himself in a
clean shirt and jerkin, told what messmates of his that were left that
he could never submit to be taken as a prisoner by the English and
leaped into the sea where he was drowned.”
More than a hundred years later, in the Great War against Germany, an
American yacht enrolled in the naval service was hunting submarines and
convoying transports in the Bay of Biscay when a hurricane almost tore
her to pieces. Deck-houses smashed, hold full of water, the yacht was
not expected to survive the night. Then it was that a boatswain’s mate
related:
A guy of my division appeared on deck all dressed up in his liberty
blues. The bos’n’s-mate asked him what he meant by turning out all
dolled up like that. “Why, Jack,” answered this cheerful gob, “I
have a date with a mermaid in Davy Jones’ locker.”
Captain Inglefield of the _Centaur_ was about to make one of those
momentous decisions which now and then confront a man as he stands at
the crossroads of destiny. When he prepared his own case and submitted
his defense, in the narrative written after his return to England, he
stated it with a certain unconscious art which deserves to be quoted as
follows:
As evening approached, the ship seemed little more than suspended
in the water. There was no certainty that she would swim from one
minute to another; and the love of life, now began to level all
distinctions. It was impossible, indeed, for any man to deceive
himself with the hopes of being saved on a raft on such a sea;
besides, it was probable that the ship in sinking would carry
everything down with her in a vortex.
It was near five o’clock, when coming from my cabin, I observed a
number of people gazing very anxiously over the side; and looking
myself, I saw that several men had forced the pinnace and that more
were attempting to get in. I had thoughts of securing this boat
before she might be sunk by numbers; there appeared not a moment
for consideration; to remain and perish with the ship’s company to
whom I could no longer be of any use, or seize the opportunity,
which seemed the only one of escaping and leave the people with
whom, on a variety of occasions I had been so well satisfied that I
thought I could give my life to preserve them. This was, indeed, a
painful conflict and of which, I believe, no man could form a just
idea who had not been placed in a similar situation.
The love of life prevailed. I called to Mr. Rainey, the master,
the only officer on deck, and desired him to follow me and we
immediately descended into the boat by the after part of the
chains. But it was not without great difficulty that we got her
clear of the ship, twice the number that she could carry pushing
in, and many leaping into the water. Mr. Baylis, a young gentleman
of fifteen years of age, leaped from the chains after the boat had
got off and was taken in.
Yes, the love of life had prevailed with Captain Inglefield of the
_Centaur_, and, no matter how painful his moral conflict, it is obvious
that his departure was attended with a kind of skulking ignominy. He
ran away from his comrades to save his own skin and left them in the
lurch. This is quixotic, perhaps, but are not all questions of honor
more or less irrational? The captain’s narrative makes no farther
mention of the sinking _Centaur_. At five o’clock of a September
afternoon in the North Atlantic, two hours of daylight remained even
in thick and cloudy weather. The four hundred men aboard the ship
could watch the pinnace as she scudded before the wind with a blanket
stretched for a sail and her course laid for the Azores. I imagine they
damned the soul of their captain in curses that were wrenched from the
bottom of their hearts instead of extenuating his conduct and wishing
him luck. And presumably Captain Inglefield turned to gaze at the
foundering man-of-war with her people clustered on deck or busied with
the pitifully futile rafts. Nobody knows how much longer the _Centaur_
floated. The time must have been mercifully brief. When she went under,
every man on board was drowned.
The captain expected sympathy, and you may offer him as much as you
like when he relates of his voyage in the small boat:
It was then that I became sensible how little, if anything, our
condition was better than that of those who remained in the ship.
At least, it seemed to be only the prolongation of a miserable
existence. We were altogether twelve in number, in a leaky boat,
with one of the gunwales stove, in nearly the middle of the Western
Ocean, without compass, quadrant, or sail; wanting great coat or
cloak, all very thinly clothed, in a gale of wind and with a great
sea running.... On examining what means we had of subsistence, I
found a bag of bread, a small ham, a single piece of pork, two
quart bottles of water, and a few French cordials.
They were thirteen days adrift and suffered exceedingly, but only one
man died of hunger and cold, and the others recovered their strength
in the hospitable port of Fayal. These were the captain, the master, a
young midshipman, a surgeon’s mate, a coxswain, a quartermaster, and
five seamen.