"Ship after ship, the whole night long,
their high-built galleons came;
Ship after ship, the whole night long,
with her battle-thunder and flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long,
drew back with her dead and her shame.
For some were sunk and many were shattered,
and so could fight us no more--
God of battles, was ever a battle like this
in the world before?"
--TENNYSON.
On the night of April 11, 1809, Lord Cochrane steered his floating mine
against the gigantic boom that covered the French fleet lying in Aix
Roads. The story is one of the most picturesque and exciting in the
naval annals of Great Britain. Marryat has embalmed the great
adventure and its chief actor in the pages of "Frank Mildmay," and Lord
Cochrane himself--like the Earl of Peterborough in the seventeenth
century, who captured Barcelona with a handful of men, and Gordon in
the nineteenth century, who won great battles in China walking-stick in
hand--was a man who stamped himself, as with characters of fire, upon
the popular imagination.
To the courage of a knight-errant Cochrane added the shrewd and
humorous sagacity of a Scotchman. If he had commanded fleets he would
have rivalled the victories of Nelson, and perhaps even have outshone
the Nile and Trafalgar. And to warlike genius of the first order
Cochrane added a certain weird and impish ingenuity which his enemies
found simply resistless. Was there ever a cruise in naval history like
that of Cochrane in his brig misnamed the _Speedy_, a mere coasting tub
that would neither steer nor tack, and whose entire broadside Cochrane
himself could carry in his pockets! But in this wretched little brig,
with its four-pounders, Cochrane captured in one brief year more than
50 vessels carrying an aggregate of 122 guns, took 500 prisoners, kept
the whole Spanish coast, off which he cruised, in perpetual alarm, and
finished by attacking and capturing a Spanish frigate, the _Gamo_, of
32 heavy guns and 319 men. What we have called the impish daring and
resource of Cochrane is shown in this strange fight. He ran the little
_Speedy_ close under the guns of the huge _Gamo_, and the Spanish ship
was actually unable to depress its guns sufficiently to harm its tiny
antagonist. When the Spaniards tried to board, Cochrane simply shoved
his pigmy craft a few yards away from the side of his foe, and this
curious fight went on for an hour. Then, in his turn, Cochrane
boarded, leaving nobody but the doctor on board the Speedy. But he
played the Spaniards a characteristic trick. One half his men boarded
the Gamo by the head, with their faces elaborately blackened; and when,
out of the white smoke forward, some forty demons with black faces
broke upon the astonished Spaniards, they naturally regarded the whole
business as partaking of the black art, and incontinently fled below!
The number of Spaniards killed and wounded in this fight by the little
_Speedy_ exceeded the number of its own entire crew; and when the fight
was over, 45 British sailors had to keep guard over 263 Spanish
prisoners.
Afterwards, in command of the _Impérieuse_, a fine frigate, Cochrane
played a still more dashing part on the Spanish coast, destroying
batteries, cutting off supplies from the French ports, blowing up coast
roads, and keeping perspiring battalions of the enemy marching to and
fro to meet his descents. On the French coast, again, Cochrane held
large bodies of French troops paralysed by his single frigate. He
proposed to the English Government to take possession of the French
islands in the Bay of Biscay, and to allow him, with a small squadron
of frigates, to operate against the French seaboard. Had this request
been granted, he says, "neither the Peninsular war nor its enormous
cost to the nation from 1809 onwards would ever have been heard of!"
"It would have been easy," he adds, "as it always will be easy in case
of future wars, so to harass the French coasts as to find full
employment for their troops at home, and so to render operations in
foreign countries impossible." If England and France were once more
engaged in war--_absit omen_!--the story of Cochrane's exploits on the
Spanish and French coasts might prove a very valuable inspiration and
object-lesson. Cochrane's professional reward for his great services
in the _Impérieuse_ was an official rebuke for expending more sails,
stores, gunpowder and shot than any other captain afloat in the same
time!
The fight in the Basque Roads, however--or rather in the Aix Roads--has
great historical importance. It crowned the work of Trafalgar. It
finally destroyed French power on the sea, and gave England an absolute
supremacy. No fleet actions took place after its date between "the
meteor flag" and the tricolour, for the simple reason that no French
fleet remained in existence. Cochrane's fire-ships completed the work
of the Nile and Trafalgar.
Early in 1809 the French fleet in Brest, long blockaded by Lord
Gambier, caught the British napping, slipped out unobserved, raised the
blockades at L'Orient and Rochefort, added the squadrons lying in these
two places to its own strength, and, anchoring in the Aix Roads,
prepared for a dash on the West Indies. The success with which the
blockade at Brest had been evaded, and the menace offered to the West
Indian trade, alarmed the British Admiralty. Lord Gambier, with a
powerful fleet, kept guard outside the Aix Roads; but if the blockade
failed once, it might fail again. Eager to destroy the last fleet
France possessed, the Admiralty strongly urged Lord Gambier to attack
the enemy with fire-ships; but Gambier, grown old, had visibly lost
nerve, and he pronounced the use of fire-ships a "horrible and
unchristian mode of warfare." Lord Mulgrave, the first Lord of the
Admiralty, knowing Cochrane's ingenuity and daring, sent for him, and
proposed to send him to the Basque Roads to invent and execute some
plan for destroying the French fleet. The Scotchman was uppermost in
Cochrane in this interview, and he declined the adventure on the ground
that to send a young post-captain to execute such an enterprise would
be regarded as an insult by the whole fleet, and he would have every
man's hand against him. Lord Mulgrave, however, was peremptory, and
Cochrane yielded, but on reaching the blockading fleet was met by a
tempest of wrath from all his seniors. "Why," they asked, "was
Cochrane sent out? We could have done the business as well as he. Why
did not Lord Gambier let us do it?" Lord Gambier, who had fallen into
a sort of gentle and pious melancholy, was really more occupied in
distributing tracts among his crews than in trying to reach his
enemies; and Harvey, his second in command, an old Trafalgar sea-dog,
when Cochrane arrived with his commission, interviewed his admiral,
denounced him in a white-heat on his own quarter-deck, and ended by
telling him that "if Nelson had been there he would not have anchored
in the Basque Roads at all, but would have dashed at the enemy at
once." This outburst, no doubt, relieved Admiral Harvey's feelings,
but it cost him his flag, and he was court-martialled, and dismissed
from the service for the performance.
Cochrane, however, set himself with characteristic daring and coolness
to carry out his task. The French fleet consisted of one huge ship of
120 guns, two of 80 guns, eight seventy-fours, a 50-gun ship, and two
40-gun frigates--fourteen ships in all. It was drawn up in two lines
under the shelter of powerful shore batteries, with the frigates as
out-guards. As a protection against fire-ships, a gigantic boom had
been constructed half a mile in length, forming two sides of a
triangle, with the apex towards the British fleet. Over this huge
floating barrier powerful boat squadrons kept watch every night.
Cochrane's plan of attack was marked by real genius. He constructed
three explosion vessels, floating mines on the largest scale. Each of
these terrific vessels contained no less than _fifteen hundred_ barrels
of gunpowder, bound together with cables, with wedges and moistened
sand rammed down betwixt them; forming, in brief, one gigantic bomb,
with 1500 barrels of gunpowder for its charge. On the top of this huge
powder magazine was piled, as a sort of agreeable condiment, hundreds
of live shells and thousands of hand grenades; the whole, by every form
of marine ingenuity, compacted into a solid mass which, at the touch of
a fuse, could be turned into a sort of floating Vesuvius. These were
to be followed by a squadron of fire-ships. Cochrane who, better,
perhaps, than any soldier or sailor that ever lived, knew how to strike
at his foes through their own imagination, calculated that when these
three huge explosion vessels, with twenty fire-ships behind them, went
off in a sort of saltpetre earthquake, the astonished Frenchmen would
imagine _every_ fire-ship to be a floating mine, and, instead of trying
to board them and divert them from their fleet, would be simply anxious
to get out of their way with the utmost possible despatch. The French,
meanwhile, having watched their enemy lying inert for weeks, and
confident in the gigantic boom which acted as their shield to the
front, and the show of batteries which kept guard over them on either
flank and to the rear, awaited the coming attack in a spirit of
half-contemptuous gaiety. They had struck their topmasts and unbent
their sails, and by way of challenge dressed their fleet with flags.
One ship, the _Calcutta_, had been captured from the English, and by
way of special insult they hung out the British ensign under that
ship's quarter-gallery, an affront whose deadly quality only a sailor
can understand.
The night of the 9th set in stormily. The tide ran fast, and the skies
were black and the sea heavy--so heavy, indeed, that the boats of the
English fleet which were intended to follow and cover the fire-ships
never left the side of the flagship. Cochrane, however, had called the
officers commanding the fire-ships on board his frigate, given them
their last instructions, and at half-past eight P.M. he himself,
accompanied only by a lieutenant and four sailors, cut the moorings of
the chief explosion vessel, and drifted off towards the French fleet.
Seated, that is, on top of 1500 barrels of gunpowder and a sort of
haystack of grenades, he calmly floated off, with a squadron of
fire-ships behind him, towards the French fleet, backed by great shore
batteries, with seventy-three armed boats as a line of skirmishers.
"It seemed to me," says Marryat, who was an actor in the scene, "like
entering the gates of hell!"
The great floating mine drifted on through blackness and storm till,
just as it struck the boom, Cochrane, who previously made his five
assistants get into the boat, with his own hand lit the fuse and in
turn jumped into the boat. How frantically the little crew pulled to
get clear of the ignited mine may be imagined; but wind and sea were
against them. The fuse, which was calculated to burn for twelve
minutes, lasted for only five. Then the 1500 barrels of gunpowder went
simultaneously off, peopling the black sky with a flaming torrent of
shells, grenades, and rockets, and raising a mountainous wave that
nearly swamped the unfortunate boat and its crew. The fault of the
fuse, however, saved the lives of the daring six, as the missiles from
the exploding vessel fell far _outside_ them. "The effect," says
Cochrane, who, like Caesar, could write history as well as make it,
"constituted one of the grandest artificial spectacles imaginable. For
a moment the sky was red with the lurid glare arising from the
simultaneous ignition of 1500 barrels of powder. On this gigantic
flash subsiding the air seemed alive with shells, grenades, rockets,
and masses of timber, the wreck of the shattered vessel." Then came
blackness, punctuated in flame by the explosion of the next floating
mine. Then, through sea-wrack and night, came the squadron of
fire-ships, each one a pyramid of kindling flame. But the first
explosion had achieved all that Cochrane expected. It dismissed the
huge boom into chips, and the French fleet lay open to attack. The
captain of the second explosion vessel was so determined to do his work
effectually that the entire crew was actually blown out of the vessel
and one member of the party killed, while the toil of the boats in
which, after the fire-ships had been abandoned, they and their crews
had to fight their way back in the teeth of the gale, was so severe
that several men died of mere fatigue. The physical effects of the
floating mines and the drifting fire-ships, as a matter of fact, were
not very great. The boom, indeed, was destroyed, but out of twenty
fire-ships only four actually reached the enemy's position, and not one
did any damage. Cochrane's explosion vessels, however, were addressed
not so much to the French ships as to the alarmed imagination of French
sailors, and the effect achieved was overwhelming. All the French
ships save one cut or slipped their cables, and ran ashore in wild
confusion. Cochrane cut the moorings of his explosion vessel at
half-past eight o'clock; by midnight, or in less than four hours, the
boom had been destroyed, and thirteen French ships--the solitary fleet
that remained to France--were lying helplessly ashore. Never, perhaps,
was a result so great achieved in a time so brief, in a fashion so
dramatic, or with a loss so trifling.
When the grey morning broke, with the exception of two vessels, the
whole French fleet was lying helplessly aground on the Palles shoal.
Some were lying on their bilge with the keel exposed, others were
frantically casting their guns overboard and trying to get afloat
again. Meanwhile Gambier and the British fleet were lying fourteen
miles distant in the Basque Roads, and Cochrane in the _Impérieuse_ was
watching, with powder-blackened face, the curious spectacle of the
entire fleet he had driven ashore, and the yet more amazing spectacle
of a British fleet declining to come in and finally destroy its enemy.
For here comes a chapter in the story on which Englishmen do not love
to dwell. Cochrane tried to whip the muddy-spirited Gambier into
enterprise by emphatic and quick-following signal. At six A.M. he
signalled, "_All the enemy's ships except two are on shore_," but this
extracted from drowsy Gambier no other response than the answering
pennant. Cochrane repeated his impatient signals at half-hour
intervals, and with emphasis ever more shrill--"_The enemy's ships can
be destroyed_"; "_Half the fleet can destroy the enemy_"; "_The
frigates alone can destroy the enemy_"; but still no response save the
indifferent pennant. As the tide flowed in, the French ships showed
signs of getting afloat, and Cochrane signalled, "_The enemy is
preparing to heave off_", even this brought no response from the
pensive Gambier. At eleven o'clock the British fleet weighed and stood
in, but then, to Cochrane's speechless wrath, re-anchored at a distance
of three and a half miles, and by this time two of the French
three-deckers were afloat.
Gambier finally despatched a single mortar-vessel in to bombard the
stranded ships, but by this time Cochrane had become desperate. He
adopted a device which recalls Nelson's use of his blind eye at
Copenhagen. At one o'clock he hove his anchor atrip and drifted, stern
foremost, towards the enemy. He dare not make sail lest his trick
should be detected and a signal of recall hoisted on the flagship.
Cochrane coolly determined, in a word, to force the hand of his
sluggish admiral. He drifted with his solitary frigate down to the
hostile fleet and batteries, which Gambier thought it scarcely safe to
attack with eleven ships of the line. When near the enemy's position
he suddenly made sail and ran up the signal, "_In want of assistance_";
next followed a yet more peremptory message, "_In distress_." Even
Gambier could not see an English frigate destroyed under the very guns
of an English fleet without moving to its help, and he sent some of his
ships in. But meanwhile, Cochrane, though technically "in distress,"
was enjoying what he must have felt to be a singularly good time. He
calmly took up a position which enabled him to engage an 80-gun ship,
one of 74 guns, and, in particular, that French ship which, on the
previous day, had hung the British flag under her quarter-gallery. For
half-an-hour he fought these three ships single-handed, and the
Calcutta actually struck to him, its captain afterwards being
court-martialled and shot by the French themselves for surrendering to
a frigate. Then the other British ships came up, and ship after ship
of the French fleet struck or was destroyed. Night fell before the
work was completed, and during the night Gambier, for some mysterious
reason, recalled his ships; but Cochrane, in the _Impérieuse_, clung to
his post. He persuaded Captain Seymour, in the _Pallas_, to remain
with him, with four brigs, and with this tiny force he proposed to
attack _L'Ocean_, the French flagship of 120 guns, which had just got
afloat; but Gambier peremptorily recalled him at dawn, before the fight
was renewed. Never before or since was a victory so complete and so
nearly bloodless. Five seamen were killed in the fire-ships, and five
in the attack on the French fleet and about twenty wounded; and with
this microscopic "butcher's bill" a great fleet, the last naval hope of
France, was practically destroyed. For so much does the genius and
daring of a single man count!
That the French fleet was not utterly destroyed was due solely to
Gambier's want of resolution. And yet, such is the irony of history,
that of the two chief actors in this drama, Gambier, who marred it, was
rewarded with the thanks of Parliament; Cochrane, who gave to it all
its unique splendour, had his professional career abruptly terminated!
That wild night in the Aix Roads, and the solitary and daring attack on
the French fleet which followed next day, were practically Cochrane's
last acts as a British sailor. He achieved dazzling exploits under the
flag of Chili [Transcriber's note: Chile?] and Brazil; but the most
original warlike genius the English navy has ever known, fought no more
battles for England.