"The captain stood on the carronade: 'First Lieutenant,' says he,
'Send all my merry men after here, for they must list to me.
I haven't the gift of the gab, my sons, because I'm bred to the sea.
That ship there is a Frenchman, who means to fight with we.
And odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, long as I've been to sea,
I've fought 'gainst every odds--but I've gained the victory!
* * * * * * * *
That ship there is a Frenchman, and if we don't take she,
'Tis a thousand bullets to one, that she will capture we.
I haven't the gift of the gab, my boys; so each man to his gun;
If she's not mine in half-an-hour, I'll flog each mother's son.
For odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, long as I've been to sea,
I've fought 'gainst every odds--and I've gained the victory!'"
--MARRYAT.
British naval history is rich in the records of what may be called
great sea-duels--combats, that is, of single ship against single ship,
waged often with extraordinary fierceness and daring. They resemble
the combat of knight against knight, with flash of cannon instead of
thrust of lance, and the floor of the lonely sea for the trampled lists.
He must have a very slow-beating imagination who cannot realise the
picturesqueness of these ancient sea-duels. Two frigates cruising for
prey catch the far-off gleam of each other's topsails over the rim of
the horizon. They approach each other warily, two high-sniffing
sea-mastiffs. A glimpse of fluttering colour--the red flag and the
_drapeau blanc_, or the Union Jack and the tricolour--reveals to each
ship its foe. The men stand grimly at quarters; the captain, with
perhaps a solitary lieutenant, and a middy as aide-de-camp, is on his
quarter-deck. There is the manoeuvring for the weather-gage, the
thunder of the sudden broadside, the hurtle and crash of the shot, the
stern, quick word of command as the clumsy guns are run in to be
reloaded and fired again and again with furious haste. The ships drift
into closer wrestle. Masts and yards come tumbling on to the
blood-splashed decks. There is the grinding shock of the great wooden
hulls as they meet, the wild leap of the boarders, the clash of cutlass
on cutlass, the shout of victory, the sight of the fluttering flag as
it sinks reluctantly from the mizzen of the beaten ship. Then the
smoke drifts away, and on the tossing sea-floor lie, little better than
dismantled wrecks, victor and vanquished.
No great issue, perhaps, ever hung upon these lonely sea-combats; but
as object-lessons in the qualities by which the empire has been won,
and by which it must be maintained, these ancient sea-fights have real
and permanent value. What better examples of cool hardihood, of
chivalrous loyalty to the flag, of self-reliant energy, need be
imagined or desired? The generation that carries the heavy burden of
the empire to-day cannot afford to forget the tale of such exploits.
One of the most famous frigate fights in British history is that
between the _Arethusa_ and _La Belle Poule_, fought off Brest on June
17, 1778. Who is not familiar with the name and fame of "the saucy
_Arethusa_"? Yet there is a curious absence of detail as to the fight.
The combat, indeed, owes its enduring fame to two somewhat irrelevant
circumstances--first, that it was fought when France and England were
not actually at war, but were trembling on the verge of it. The sound
of the _Arethusa's_ guns, indeed, was the signal of war between the two
nations. The other fact is that an ingenious rhymester--scarcely a
poet--crystallised the fight into a set of verses in which there is
something of the true smack of the sea, and an echo, if not of the
cannon's roar, yet of the rough-voiced mirth of the forecastle; and the
sea-fight lies embalmed, so to speak, and made immortal in the sea-song.
The _Arethusa_ was a stumpy little frigate, scanty in crew, light in
guns, attached to the fleet of Admiral Keppel, then cruising off Brest.
Keppel had as perplexed and delicate a charge as was ever entrusted to
a British admiral. Great Britain was at war with her American
colonies, and there was every sign that France intended to add herself
to the fight. No fewer than thirty-two sail of the line and twelve
frigates were gathered in Brest roads, and another fleet of almost
equal strength in Toulon. Spain, too, was slowly collecting a mighty
armament. What would happen to England if the Toulon and Brest fleets
united, were joined by a third fleet from Spain, and the mighty array
of ships thus collected swept up the British Channel? On June 13,
1778, Keppel, with twenty-one ships of the line and three frigates, was
despatched to keep watch over the Brest fleet. War had not been
proclaimed, but Keppel was to prevent a junction of the Brest and
Toulon fleets, by persuasion if he could, but by gunpowder in the last
resort.
Keppel's force was much inferior to that of the Brest fleet, and as
soon as the topsails of the British ships were visible from the French
coast, two French frigates, the _Licorne_ and _La Belle Poule_, with
two lighter craft, bore down upon them to reconnoitre. But Keppel
could not afford to let the French admiral know his exact force, and
signalled to his own outlying ships to bring the French frigates under
his lee.
At nine o'clock at night the _Licorne_ was overtaken by the _Milford_,
and with some rough sailorly persuasion, and a hint of broadsides, her
head was turned towards the British fleet. The next morning, in the
grey dawn, the Frenchman, having meditated on affairs during the night,
made a wild dash for freedom. The _America_, an English 64--double,
that is, the _Licorne's_ size--overtook her, and fired a shot across
her bow to bring her to. Longford, the captain of the _America_, stood
on the gunwale of his own ship politely urging the captain of the
_Licorne_ to return with him. With a burst of Celtic passion the
French captain fired his whole broadside into the big Englishman, and
then instantly hauled down his flag so as to escape any answering
broadside!
Meanwhile the _Arethusa_ was in eager pursuit of the _Belle Poule_; a
fox-terrier chasing a mastiff! The _Belle Poule_ was a splendid ship,
with heavy metal, and a crew more than twice as numerous as that of the
tiny _Arethusa_. But Marshall, its captain, was a singularly gallant
sailor, and not the man to count odds. The song tells the story of the
fight in an amusing fashion:--
"Come all ye jolly sailors bold,
Whose hearts are cast in honour's mould,
While England's glory I unfold.
Huzza to the _Arethusa_!
She is a frigate tight and brave
As ever stemmed the dashing wave;
Her men are staunch
To their fav'rite launch,
And when the foe shall meet our fire,
Sooner than strike we'll all expire
On board the _Arethusa_.
On deck five hundred men did dance,
The stoutest they could find in France;
We, with two hundred, did advance
On board the _Arethusa_.
Our captain hailed the Frenchman, 'Ho!'
The Frenchman then cried out, 'Hallo!'
'Bear down, d'ye see,
To our Admiral's lee.'
'No, no,' says the Frenchman, 'that can't be.
'Then I must lug you along with me,'
Says the saucy _Arethusa_!"
As a matter of fact Marshall hung doggedly on the Frenchman's quarter
for two long hours, fighting a ship twice as big as his own. The
_Belle Poule_ was eager to escape; Marshall was resolute that it should
not escape; and, try as he might, the Frenchman, during that fierce two
hours' wrestle, failed to shake off his tiny but dogged antagonist.
The _Arethusa's_ masts were shot away, its jib-boom hung a tangled
wreck over its bows, its bulwarks were shattered, its decks were
splashed red with blood, half its guns were dismounted, and nearly
every third man in its crew struck down. But still it hung, with
quenchless and obstinate courage, on the _Belle Poule's_ quarter, and
by its perfect seamanship and the quickness and the deadly precision
with which its lighter guns worked, reduced its towering foe to a
condition of wreck almost as complete as its own. The terrier, in
fact, was proving too much for the mastiff.
Suddenly the wind fell. With topmasts hanging over the side, and
canvas torn to ribbons, the _Arethusa_ lay shattered and moveless on
the sea. The shot-torn but loftier sails of the _Belle Poule_,
however, yet held wind enough to drift her out of the reach of the
_Arethusa's_ fire. Both ships were close under the French cliffs; but
the _Belle Poule_, like a broken-winged bird, struggled into a tiny
cove in the rocks, and nothing remained for the _Arethusa_ but to cut
away her wreckage, hoist what sail she could, and drag herself sullenly
back under jury-masts to the British fleet. But the story of that two
hours' heroic fight maintained against such odds sent a thrill of grim
exultation through Great Britain. Menaced by the combination of so
many mighty states, while her sea-dogs were of this fighting temper,
what had Great Britain to fear? In the streets of many a British
seaport, and in many a British forecastle, the story of how the
Arethusa fought was sung in deep-throated chorus:--
"The fight was off the Frenchman's land;
We forced them back upon their strand;
For we fought till not a stick would stand
Of the gallant _Arethusa_!"
A fight even more dramatic in its character is that fought on August
10, 1805, between the _Phoenix_ and the _Didon_. The _Didon_ was one
of the finest and fastest French frigates afloat, armed with guns of
special calibre and manned by a crew which formed, perhaps, the very
élite of the French navy. The men had been specially picked to form
the crew of the only French ship which was commanded by a Bonaparte,
the _Pomone_, selected for the command of Captain Jerome Bonaparte.
Captain Jerome Bonaparte, however, was not just now afloat, and the
_Didon_ had been selected, on account of its great speed and heavy
armament, for a service of great importance. She was manned by the
crew chosen for the _Pomone_, placed under an officer of special skill
and daring--Captain Milias--and despatched with orders for carrying out
one more of those naval "combinations" which Napoleon often attempted,
but never quite accomplished. The _Didon_, in a word, was to bring up
the Rochefort squadron to join the Franco-Spanish fleet under
Villeneuve.
On that fatal August 10, however, it seemed to Captain Milias that
fortune had thrust into his hands a golden opportunity of snapping up a
British sloop of war, and carrying her as a trophy into Rochefort. An
American merchantman fell in with him, and its master reported that he
had been brought-to on the previous day by a British man-of-war, and
compelled to produce his papers. The American told the French captain
that he had been allowed to go round the Englishman's decks and count
his guns--omitting, no doubt, to add that he was half-drunk while doing
it. Contemplated through an American's prejudices, inflamed with grog,
the British ship seemed a very poor thing indeed. She carried, the
American told the captain of the _Didon_, only twenty guns of light
calibre, and her captain and officers were "so cocky" that if they had
a chance they would probably lay themselves alongside even the _Didon_
and become an easy prey. The American pointed out to the eagerly
listening Frenchmen the topgallant sails of the ship he was describing
showing above the sky-line to windward. Captain Milias thought he saw
glory and cheap victory beckoning him, and he put his helm down, and
stood under easy sail towards the fast-rising topsails of the
Englishman.
Now, the _Phoenix_ was, perhaps, the smallest frigate in the British
navy; a stocky little craft, scarcely above the rating of a sloop; and
its captain, Baker, a man with something of Dundonald's gift for ruse,
had disguised his ship so as to look as much as possible like a sloop.
Baker, too, who believed that light guns quickly handled were capable
of more effective mischief than the slow fire of heavier guns, had
changed his heavier metal for 18-pounders. The two ships, therefore,
were very unequal in fighting force. The broadside of the _Didon_ was
nearly fifty per cent. heavier than that of the _Phoenix_; her crew was
nearly fifty per cent. more numerous, and she was splendidly equipped
at every point.
The yellow sides and royal yards rigged aloft told the "cocky"
_Phoenix_ that the big ship to leeward was a Frenchman, and, with all
sails spread, she bore down in the chase. Baker was eager to engage
his enemy to leeward, that she might not escape, and he held his fire
till he could reach the desired position. The _Didon_, however, a
quick and weatherly ship, was able to keep ahead of the _Phoenix_, and
thrice poured in a heavy broadside upon the grimly silent British ship
without receiving a shot in reply. Baker's men were falling fast at
their quarters, and, impatient at being both foiled and raked, he at
last ran fiercely at his enemy to windward. The heads of both ships
swung parallel, and at pistol-distance broadside furiously answered
broadside. In order to come up with her opponent, however, the
_Phoenix_ had all sail spread, and she gradually forged ahead. As soon
as the two ships were clear, the _Didon_, by a fine stroke of
seamanship, hauled up, crossed the stern of the _Phoenix_, and raked
her, and then repeated the pleasant operation. The rigging of the
_Phoenix_ was so shattered that for a few minutes she was out of hand.
Baker, however, was a fine seaman, and his crew were in a high state of
discipline; and when the _Didon_ once more bore up to rake her
antagonist, the British ship, with her sails thrown aback, evaded the
Frenchman's fire. But the stern of the _Didon_ smote with a crash on
the starboard quarter of the Phoenix; the ships were lying parallel;
the broadside of neither could be brought to bear. The Frenchmen,
immensely superior in numbers, made an impetuous rush across their
forecastle, and leaped on the quarter-deck of the Phoenix. The marines
of that ship, however, drawn up in a steady line across the deck,
resisted the whole rush of the French boarders; and the British
sailors, tumbling up from their guns, cutlass and boarding-pike in
hand, and wroth with the audacity of the "French lubbers" daring to
board the "cocky little _Phoenix_," with one rush, pushed fiercely
home, swept the Frenchmen back on to their own vessel.
On the French forecastle stood a brass 36-pounder carronade; this
commanded the whole of the British ship, and with it the French opened
a most destructive fire. The British ship, as it happened, could not
bring a single gun to bear in return. Baker, however, had fitted the
cabin window on either quarter of his ship to serve as a port, in
preparation for exactly such a contingency as this; and the aftermost
main-deck gun was dragged into the cabin, the improvised port thrown
open, and Baker himself, with a cluster of officers and men, was
eagerly employed in fitting tackles to enable the gun to be worked. As
the sides of the two ships were actually grinding together the
Frenchmen saw the preparations being made; a double squad of marines
was brought up at a run to the larboard gangway, and opened a swift and
deadly fire into the cabin, crowded with English sailors busy rigging
their gun. The men dropped in clusters; the floor of the cabin was
covered with the slain, its walls were splashed with blood. But Baker
and the few men not yet struck down kept coolly to their task. The gun
was loaded under the actual flash of the French muskets, its muzzle was
thrust through the port, and it was fired! Its charge of langrage
swept the French ship from her larboard bow to her starboard quarter,
and struck down in an instant twenty-four men. The deadly fire was
renewed again and again, the British marines on the quarter-deck
meanwhile keeping down with their musketry the fire of the great French
carronade.
That fierce and bloody wrestle lasted for nearly thirty minutes, then
the _Didon_ began to fore-reach. Her great bowsprit ground slowly
along the side of the _Phoenix_. It crossed the line of the second
aftermost gun on the British main-deck. Its flames on the instant
smote the Frenchman's head-rails to splinters, and destroyed the
gammoning of her bowsprit. Gun after gun of the two ships was brought
in succession to bear; but in this close and deadly contest the
_Phoenix_ had the advantage. Her guns were lighter, her men better
drilled, and their fierce energy overbore the Frenchmen. Presently the
_Didon_, with her foremast tottering, her maintopmast gone, her decks a
blood-stained wreck, passed out of gunshot ahead.
In the tangle between the two ships the fly of the British white ensign
at the gaff end dropped on the _Didon's_ forecastle. The Frenchmen
tore it off, and, as the ships moved apart, they waved it triumphantly
from the _Didon's_ stern. All the colours of the _Phoenix_, indeed, in
one way or another had vanished, and the only response the exasperated
British tars could make to the insult of the _Didon_ was to immediately
lash a boat's ensign to the larboard, and the Union Jack to the
starboard end of their cross jack yard-arm.
The wind had dropped; both ships were now lying a in a semi-wrecked
condition out of gunshot of each other, and it became a question of
which could soonest repair damages and get into fighting condition
again. Both ships, as it happened, had begun the fight with nearly all
canvas spread, and from their splintered masts the sails now hung one
wild network of rags. In each ship a desperate race to effect repairs
began. On the Frenchman's decks arose a babel of sounds, the shouts of
officers, the tumult of the men's voices. The British, on the other
hand, worked in grim and orderly silence, with no sound but the cool,
stern orders of the officers. In such a race the British were sure to
win, and fortune aided them. The two ships were rolling heavily in the
windless swell, and a little before noon the British saw the wounded
foremast of their enemy suddenly snap and tumble, with all its canvas,
upon the unfortunate _Didon's_ decks. This gave new and exultant
vigour to the British. Shot-holes were plugged, dismounted guns
refitted, fresh braces rove, the torn rigging spliced, new canvas
spread. The wind blew softly again, and a little after noon the
_Phoenix_, sorely battered indeed, but in fighting trim, with guns
loaded, and the survivors of her crew at quarters, bore down on the
_Didon_, and took her position on that ship's weather bow. Just when
the word "Fire!" was about to be given, the _Didon's_ flag fluttered
reluctantly down; she had struck!
The toils of the _Phoenix_, however, were not even yet ended. The ship
she had captured was practically a wreck, its mainmast tottering to its
fall, while the prisoners greatly exceeded in numbers their captors.
The little _Phoenix_ courageously took her big prize in tow, and laid
her course for Plymouth. Once the pair of crippled frigates were
chased by the whole of Villeneuve's fleet; once, by a few chance words
overheard, a plot amongst the French prisoners for seizing the
_Phoenix_ and then retaking the _Didon_ was detected--almost too
late--and thwarted. The _Phoenix_, and her prize too, reached
Gibraltar when a thick fog lay on the straits, a fog which, as the
sorely damaged ships crept through it, was full of the sound of signal
guns and the ringing of bells. The Franco-Spanish fleet, in a word, a
procession of giants, went slowly past the crippled ships in the fog,
and never saw them!
On September 3, however, the _Phoenix_ safely brought her hard-won and
stubborn-guarded prize safely into Plymouth Sound.
The fight between the two ships was marked by many heroic incidents.
During the action the very invalids in the sick-bay of the _Phoenix_
crept from their cots and tried to take some feeble part in the fight.
The purser is not usually part of the fighting staff of a ship, but the
acting purser of the _Phoenix_, while her captain was in the
smoke-filled cabin below, trying to rig up a gun to bear on the
_Didon_, took charge of the quarter-deck, kept his post right opposite
the brazen mouth of the great carronade we have described, and, with a
few marines, kept down the fire. A little middy had the distinction of
saving his captain's life. The _Didon's_ bowsprit was thrust, like the
shaft of a gigantic lance, over the quarter of the _Phoenix_, and a
Frenchman, lying along it, levelled his musket at Captain Baker, not
six paces distant, and took deliberate aim. A middy named Phillips,
armed with a musket as big as himself, saw the levelled piece of the
Frenchman; he gave his captain an unceremonious jostle aside just as
the Frenchman's musket flashed, and with almost the same movement
discharged his own piece at the enemy. The French bullet tore off the
rim of Captain Baker's hat, but the body of the man who fired it fell
with a splash betwixt the two ships into the water. Here was a story,
indeed, for a middy to tell, to the admiration of all the gun-rooms in
the fleet.
The middy of the period, however, was half imp, half hero. Another
youthful Nelson, aetat. sixteen, at the hottest stage of the
fight--probably at the moment the acting-purser was in command on the
quarter-deck--found an opportunity of getting at the purser's stores.
With jaws widely distended, he was in the act of sucking--in the
fashion so delightful to boys--a huge orange, when a musket ball, after
passing through the head of a seaman, went clean through both the
youth's distended cheeks, and this without touching a single tooth.
Whether this affected the flavour of the orange is not told, but the
historian gravely records that "when the wound in each cheek healed, a
pair of not unseemly dimples remained." Happy middy! He would
scarcely envy Nelson his peerage.
[Transcriber's note: The word "aetat." in the above paragraph is an
abbreviation of the Latin "aetatis", meaning "aged".]