"They cleared the cruiser from end to end,
From conning-tower to hold;
They fought as they fought in Nelson's fleet--
They were stripped to the waist, they were bare to the feet,
As it was in the days of old."
--KIPLING.
The story of how the _Hermione_ was lost is one of the scandals and the
tragedies of British naval history; the tale of how it was re-won is
one of its glories. The _Hermione_ was a 32-gun frigate, cruising off
Porto Rico, in the West Indies. On the evening of September 21, 1797,
the men were on drill, reefing topsails. The captain, Pigot, was a
rough and daring sailor, a type of the brutal school of naval officer
long extinct. The traditions of the navy were harsh; the despotic
power over the lives and fortunes of his crew which the captain of a
man-of-war carried in the palm of his hand, when made the servant of a
ferocious temper, easily turned a ship into a floating hell. The
terrible mutinies which broke out in British fleets a hundred years ago
had some justification, at least, in the cruelties, as well as the
hardships, to which the sailors of that period were exposed.
Pigot was rough in speech, vehement in temper, cursed with a
semi-lunatic delight in cruelty, and he tormented his men to the verge
of desperation. On this fatal night, Pigot, standing at the break of
his quarter-deck, stormed at the men aloft, and swore with many oaths
he would flog the last man off the mizzentop yard; and the men knew how
well he would keep his word. The most active sailor, as the men lay
out on the yard, naturally takes the earing, and is, of course, the
last man off, as well as on, the yard. Pigot's method, that is, would
punish not the worst sailors, but the best! The two outermost men on
the mizzen-top yard of the _Hermione_ that night, determined to escape
the threatened flogging. They made a desperate spring to get over
their comrades crowding into the ratlines, missed their foothold, fell
on the quarter-deck beside their furious captain, and were instantly
killed. The captain's epitaph on the unfortunate sailors was, "Throw
the lubbers overboard!"
All the next day a sullen gloom lay on the ship. Mutiny was breeding.
It began, as night fell, in a childish fashion, by the men throwing
double-headed shot about the deck. The noise brought down the first
lieutenant to restore order. He was knocked down. In the jostle of
fierce tempers, murder awoke; knives gleamed. A sailor, as he bent
over the fallen officer, saw the naked undefended throat, and thrust
his knife into it. The sight kindled the men's passions to flame. The
unfortunate lieutenant was killed with a dozen stabs, and his body
thrown overboard. The men had now tasted blood. In the flame of
murderous temper suddenly let loose, all the bonds of discipline were
in a moment consumed. A wild rush was made for the officers' cabins.
The captain tried to break his way out, was wounded, and driven back;
the men swept in, and, to quote the realistic official account, "seated
in his cabin the captain was stabbed by his own coxswain and three
other mutineers, and, forced out of the cabin windows, was heard to
speak as he went astern." With mutiny comes anarchy. The men made no
distinction between their officers, cruel or gentle; not only the
captain, but the three lieutenants, the purser, the surgeon, the
lieutenant of marines, the boatswain, the captain's clerk were
murdered, and even one of the two midshipmen on board was hunted like a
rat through the ship, killed, and thrown overboard. The only officers
spared were the master, the gunner, and one midshipman.
Having captured the ship, the mutineers were puzzled how to proceed.
Every man-of-war on the station, they knew, would be swiftly on their
track. Every British port was sealed to them. They would be pursued
by a retribution which would neither loiter nor slumber. On the open
sea there was no safety for mutineers. They turned the head of the
_Hermione_ towards the nearest Spanish port, La Guayra, and, reaching
it, surrendered the ship to the Spanish authorities, saying they had
turned their officers adrift in the jolly-boat. The Spaniards were not
disposed to scrutinise too closely the story. A transaction which put
into their hands a fine British frigate was welcomed with rapture. The
British admiral in command of the station sent in a flag of truce with
the true account of the mutiny, and called upon the Spanish
authorities, as a matter of honour, to surrender the _Hermione_, and
hand over for punishment the murderers who had carried it off. The
appeal, however, was wasted.
The _Hermione_, a handsome ship of 715 tons, when under the British
flag, was armed with thirty-two 12-pounders, and had a complement of
220 men. The Spaniards cut new ports in her, increased her broadsides
to forty-four guns, and gave her a complement, including a detachment
of soldiers and artillerymen, of nearly 400 men. She thus became the
most formidable ship carrying the Spanish flag in West Indian waters.
But the _Hermione_, under its new flag, had a very anxious existence.
It became a point of honour with every British vessel on the station to
look out for the ship which had become the symbol of mutiny, and make a
dash at her, no matter what the odds. The brutal murders which
attended the mutiny shocked even the forecastle imagination, while the
British officers were naturally eager to destroy the ship which
represented revolt against discipline. Both fore and aft, too, the
fact that what had been a British frigate was now carrying the flag of
Spain was resented with a degree of exasperation which assured to the
_Hermione_, under its new name and flag, a very warm time if it came
under the fire of a British ship. The Spaniards kept the _Hermione_
for just two years, but kept her principally in port, as the moment she
showed her nose in the open sea some British ship or other, sleeplessly
on the watch for her, bore down with disconcerting eagerness.
In September 1799 the _Hermione_ was lying in Puerto Cabello, while the
_Surprise_, a 28-gun frigate, under Captain Edward Hamilton, was
waiting outside, specially detailed by the admiral, Sir Hyde Parker, to
attack her the instant she put to sea. The _Surprise_ had less than
half the complement of the _Hermione_, and not much more than half her
weight of metal. But Hamilton was not only willing to fight the
Hermione in the open sea against such odds; he told the admiral that if
he would give him a barge and twenty men he would undertake to carry
the Hermione with his boats while lying in harbour. Parker pronounced
the scheme too desperate to be entertained, and refused Hamilton the
additional boat's crew for which he asked. Yet this was the very plan
which Hamilton actually carried out without the reinforcement for which
he had asked!
Hamilton, to tempt the _Hermione_ out, kept carefully out of sight of
Puerto Cabello to leeward, yet in such a position that if the Hermione
left the harbour her topsails must become visible to the look-outs on
the mastheads of the _Surprise_; and he kept that post until his
provisions failed. Then, as the _Hermione_ would not come out to him,
he determined to go into the _Hermione_. Hamilton was a silent,
much-meditating man, not apt to share his counsels with anybody. In
the cells of his brooding and solitary brain he prepared, down to the
minutest details, his plan for a dash at the _Hermione_--a ship, it
must be remembered, not only more than double his own in strength, but
lying moored head and stern in a strongly fortified port, under the
fire of batteries mounting nearly 200 guns, and protected, in addition,
by several gunboats. In a boat attack, too, Hamilton could carry only
part of his crew with him; he must leave enough hands on board his own
ship to work her. As a matter of fact, he put in his boats less than
100 men, and with them, in the blackness of night, rowed off to attack
a ship that carried 400 men, and was protected by the fire, including
her own broadsides, of nearly 300 guns! The odds were indeed so great
that the imagination of even British sailors, if allowed to meditate
long upon them, might become chilled. Hamilton therefore breathed not
a whisper of his plans, even to his officers, till he was ready to put
them into execution, and, when he did announce them, carried them out
with cool but unfaltering speed.
On the evening of October 24, Hamilton invited all the officers not on
actual duty to dine in his cabin. The scene may be easily pictured.
The captain at the head of his table, the merry officers on either
side, the jest, the laughter, the toasts; nobody there but the silent,
meditative captain dreaming of the daring deed to be that night
attempted. When dinner was over, and the officers alone, with a
gesture Hamilton arrested the attention of the party, and explained in
a few grim sentences his purpose. The little party of brave men about
him listened eagerly and with kindling eyes. "We'll stand by you,
captain," said one. "We'll all follow you," said another. Hamilton
bade his officers follow him at once to the quarter-deck. A roll of
the drum called the men instantly to quarters, and, when the officers
reported every man at his station, they were all sent aft to where, on
the break of the quarter-deck, the captain waited.
It was night, starless and black, but a couple of lanterns shed a few
broken rays on the massed seamen with their wondering, upturned faces,
and the tall figure of the silent captain. Hamilton explained in a
dozen curt sentences that they must run into port for supplies; that if
they left their station some more fortunate ship would have the glory
of taking the _Hermione_. "Our only chance, lads," he added, "is to
cut her out to-night!" As that sentence, with a keen ring on its last
word, swept over the attentive sailors, they made the natural response,
a sudden growling cheer. "I lead you myself," added Hamilton,
whereupon came another cheer; "and here are the orders for the six
boats to be employed, with the names of the officers and men."
Instantly the crews were mustered, while the officers, standing in a
cluster round the captain, heard the details of the expedition. Every
seaman was to be dressed in blue, without a patch of white visible; the
password was "Britannia," the answer "Ireland"--Hamilton himself being
an Irishman.
By half-past seven the boats were actually hoisted out and lowered, the
men armed and in their places, and each little crew instructed as to
the exact part it was to play in the exciting drama. The orders given
were curiously minute. The launch, for example, was to board on the
starboard bow, but three of its men, before boarding, were first to cut
the bower cable, for which purpose a little platform was rigged up on
the launch's quarter, and sharp axes provided. The jolly-boat was to
board on the starboard quarter, cut the stern cable, and send two men
aloft to loose the mizzen topsail. The gig, under the command of the
doctor, was to board on the larboard bow, and instantly send four men
aloft to loose the fore topsail. If the _Hermione_ was reached without
any alarm being given, only the boarders were to leap on board; the
ordinary crews of the boats were to take the frigate in tow. Thus, if
Hamilton's plans were carried out, the Spaniards would find themselves
suddenly boarded at six different points, their cables cut, their
topsails dropped, and their ship being towed out--and all this at the
same instant of time. "The rendezvous," said Hamilton to his officers,
as the little cluster of boats drew away from the _Surprise_, "is the
_Hermione's_ quarter-deck!"
Hamilton himself led, standing up in his pinnace, with his night-glass
fixed on the doomed ship, and the boats followed with stern almost
touching stern, and a rope passed from each boat to the one behind.
Can a more impressive picture of human daring be imagined than these
six boats pulling silently ever the black waters and through the black
night to fling themselves, under the fire of two hundred guns, on a foe
four times more numerous than themselves! The boats had stolen to
within less than a mile of the _Hermione_, when a Spanish challenge
rang out of the darkness before them. Two Spanish gunboats were on
guard within the harbour, and they at once opened fire on the chain of
boats gliding mysteriously through the gloom. There was no longer any
possibility of surprise, and Hamilton instantly threw off the rope that
connected him with the next boat and shouted to his men to pull. The
men, with a loud "Hurrah!" dashed their oars into the water, and the
boats leaped forward towards the _Hermione_. But Hamilton's boats--two
of them commanded by midshipmen--could not find themselves so close to
a couple of Spanish gunboats without "going" for them. Two of the six
boats swung aside and dashed at the gunboats; only three followed
Hamilton at the utmost speed towards the _Hermione_.
That ship, meanwhile, was awake. Lights flashed from every port; a
clamour of voices broke on the quiet of the night; the sound of the
drum rolled along the decks, the men ran to quarters. Hamilton, in the
pinnace, dashed past the bows of the _Hermione_ to reach his station,
but a rope, stretched from the _Hermione_ to her anchor-buoy, caught
the rudder of the pinnace and stopped her in full course, the coxswain
reporting the boat "aground." The pinnace had swung round till her
starboard oars touched the bend of the _Hermione_, and Hamilton gave
the word to "board." Hamilton himself led, and swung himself up till
his feet rested on the anchor hanging from the _Hermione's_ cat-head.
It was covered with mud, having been weighed that day, and his feet
slipping off it, Hamilton hung by the lanyard of the _Hermione's_
foreshroud. The crew of the pinnace meanwhile climbing with the
agility of cats and the eagerness of boys, had tumbled over their own
captain's shoulders as well as the bulwarks of the _Hermione_, and were
on that vessel's forecastle, where Hamilton in another moment joined
them. Here were sixteen men on board a vessel with a hostile crew four
hundred strong.
Hamilton ran to the break of the forecastle and looked down, and to his
amazement found the whole crew of the _Hermione_ at quarters on the
main-deck, with battle-lanterns lit, and firing with the utmost energy
at the darkness, in which their excited fancy saw the tall masts of at
least a squadron of frigates bearing down to attack them. Hamilton,
followed by his fifteen men, ran aft to the agreed rendezvous on the
_Hermione's_ quarter-deck. The doctor, with his crew, had meantime
boarded, and forgetting all about the rendezvous, and obeying only the
natural fighting impulse in their own blood, charged upon the Spaniards
in the gangway.
Hamilton sent his men down to assist in the fight, waiting alone on the
quarter-deck till his other boat boarded. Here four Spaniards rushed
suddenly upon him; one struck him over the head with a musket with a
force that broke the weapon itself, and knocked him semi-senseless upon
the combings of the hatchway. Two British sailors, who saw their
commander's peril, rescued him, and, with blood streaming down from his
battered head upon his uniform, Hamilton flung himself into the fight
at the gangway. At this juncture the black cutter, in command of the
first lieutenant, with the _Surprise's_ marines on board, dashed up to
the side of the _Hermione_, and the men came tumbling over the larboard
gangway. They had made previously two unsuccessful attempts to board.
They came up first by the steps of the larboard gangway, the lieutenant
leading. He was incontinently knocked down, and tumbled all his men
with him as he fell back into the boat. They then tried the starboard
of the _Hermione_, and were again beaten back, and only succeeded on a
third attempt.
Three boats' crews of the British were now together on the deck of the
Hermione. They did not number fifty men in all, but the marines were
instantly formed up and a volley was fired down the after hatchway.
Then, following the flash of their muskets, with the captain leading,
the whole party leaped down upon the maindeck, driving the Spaniards
before them. Some sixty Spaniards took refuge in the cabin, and
shouted they surrendered, whereupon they were ordered to throw down
their arms, and the doors were locked upon them, turning them into
prisoners. On the main-deck and under the forecastle, however, the
fighting was fierce and deadly; but by this time the other boats had
come up, and the cables fore and aft were cut, as had been arranged.
The men detailed for that task had raced up the Spaniard's rigging, and
while the desperate fight raged below, had cast loose the topsails of
the _Hermione_. Three of the boats, too, had taken her in tow. She
began to move seaward, and that movement, with the sound of the
rippling water along the ship's sides, appalled the Spaniards, and
persuaded them the ship was lost.
On the quarter-deck the gunner and two men--all three wounded--stood at
the wheel, and flung the head of the _Hermione_ seaward. They were
fiercely attacked, but while one man clung to the wheel and kept
control of the ship, the gunner and his mate kept off the Spaniards.
Presently the foretopsail filled with the land breeze, the water
rippled louder along the sides of the moving vessel, the ship swayed to
the wind. The batteries by this time were thundering from the shore,
but though they shot away many ropes, they fired with signal
ill-success. Only fifty British sailors and marines, it must be
remembered, were actually on the deck of the _Hermione_, and amongst
the crowd of sullen and exasperated Spaniards below, who had
surrendered, but were still furious with the astonishment of the attack
and the passion of the fight, there arose a shout to "blow up the
ship." The British had to fire down through the hatchway upon the
swaying crowd to enforce order. By two o'clock the struggle was over,
the _Hermione_ was beyond the fire of the batteries, and the crews of
the boats towing her came on board.
There is no more surprising fight in British history. The mere
swiftness with which the adventure was carried out is marvellous. It
was past six P.M. when Hamilton disclosed his plan to his officers, the
_Hermione_ at that moment lying some eight miles distant; by two
o'clock the captured ship, with the British flag flying from her peak,
was clear of the harbour. Only half a hundred men actually got on
board the _Hermione_, but what a resolute, hard-smiting, strong-fisted
band they were may be judged by the results. Of the Spaniards, 119
were killed, and 97 wounded, most of them dangerously. Hamilton's 50
men, that is, in those few minutes of fierce fighting, cut down four
times their own number! Not one of the British, as it happened, was
killed, and only 12 wounded, Captain Hamilton himself receiving no less
than five serious wounds. The _Hermione_ was restored to her place in
the British Navy List, but under a new name--the _Retribution_--and the
story of that heroic night attack will be for all time one of the most
stirring incidents in the long record of brave deeds performed by
British seamen.