"'Captain,' they cry, 'the fight is done,
They bid you send your sword!'
And he answered, 'Grapple her stern and bow.
They have asked for the steel. They shall have it now;
Out cutlasses, and board!'"
--KIPLING.
On the morning of July 3, 1801, a curious scene, which might almost be
described as a sea comedy, was being transacted off the coast of
Alicante. Three huge French line-of-battle ships were manoeuvring and
firing round a tiny little British brig-of-war. It was like three
mastiffs worrying a mouse. The brig was Lord Cochrane's famous little
_Speedy_, a craft so tiny that its commander could carry its entire
broadside in his own pockets, and when he shaved himself in his cabin,
had to put his head through the skylight and his shaving-box on the
quarter-deck, in order to stand upright.
Cochrane was caught by Admiral Linois' squadron, consisting of two
ships of eighty guns and one of seventy-four, on a lee shore, where
escape was impossible; but from four o'clock till nine o'clock Cochrane
evaded all the efforts of his big pursuers to capture him. The French
ships separated on different tacks, so as to keep the little _Speedy_
constantly under the fire of one or the other; and as the British brig
turned and dashed at one opening of the moving triangle or the other,
the great ships thundered their broadsides at her. Cochrane threw his
guns and stores overboard, and by the most ingenious seamanship evaded
capture for hours, surviving some scores of broadsides. He could tack
far more quickly than the gigantic ships that pursued him, and again
and again the _Speedy_ spun round on its heel and shot off on a new
course, leaving its particular pursuer with sheet shivering, and
nothing but space to fire into. Once, by a quick turn, he shot past
one of the 80-gun ships occupied in trying to tack, and got clear. The
_Desaix_, however, a seventy-four, was swiftly on the track of the
_Speedy_; its tall canvas under the growing breeze gave it an
advantage, and it ran down to within musket-shot of the _Speedy_, then
yawed, bringing its whole broadside to bear, intending to sink its tiny
foe with a single discharge. In yawing, however, the _Desaix_ shot a
little too far, and the weight of her broadside only smote the water,
but the scattered grape cut up the _Speedy's_ rigging and canvas so
terribly that nothing was left but surrender.
When Cochrane went on board his captor, its gallant captain refused to
take his sword, saying he "could not accept the sword of an officer who
had struggled for so many hours against impossibility." Cochrane and
his gallant crew were summarily packed into the Frenchman's hold, and
when the French in their turn were pursued by the British
line-of-battle ships, as every broadside crashed on the hull of the
ship that held them captive, Cochrane and his men gave a round of
exultant cheers, until the exasperated Frenchmen threatened to shoot
them unless they would hold their tongues--an announcement which only
made the British sailors cheer a little louder. The fight between
Saumarez and Linois ended with a tragedy; but it may be said to have
begun with a farce.
The presence of a French squadron in the Straits of Gibraltar at this
particular moment may be explained in a few sentences. Napoleon had
woven afresh the web of those naval "combinations" so often torn to
fragments by British seamanship and daring. He had persuaded or
bullied Spain into placing under the French flag a squadron of six
line-of-battle ships, including two leviathans of 112 guns each, lying
in the harbour of Cadiz. With haughty, it might almost be said with
insolent daring, a couple of British seventy-fours--sometimes, indeed,
only one--patrolled the entrance to Cadiz, and blockaded a squadron of
ten times their own force. Napoleon's plan was to draw a strong French
squadron, under Admiral Linois, from Toulon, a second Spanish squadron
from Ferrol, unite these with the ships lying in Cadiz, and thus form a
powerful fleet of at least fifteen ships of the line, with a garnishing
of frigates.
Once having got his fleet, Napoleon's imagination--which had a strong
predatory bias--hesitated betwixt two uses to which it could be turned.
One was to make a dash on Lisbon, and require, under threat of an
instant bombardment, the delivery of all British ships and goods lying
there. This ingenious plan, it was reckoned, would fill French pockets
with cash and adorn French brows with glory at one stroke. The amount
of British booty at Lisbon was computed--somewhat airily--at
200,000,000 pounds; its disappearance would send half the mercantile
houses of Great Britain into the insolvency court, and, to quote a
French state paper on the subject, "our fleet, without being buffeted
about the sea, would return to Brest loaded with riches and covered
with glory, and France would once more astonish Europe." The
alternative scheme was to transport some 32,000 new troops to Egypt and
restore French fortunes in that country.
Meanwhile Great Britain took energetic measures to wreck this new
combination. Sir James Saumarez, in the _Caesar_, of eighty guns, with
six seventy-fours, was despatched to keep guard over Cadiz; and he had
scarcely reached his station there when a boat, pulling furiously over
from Gibraltar, reported that Admiral Linois' squadron had made its
appearance off the Rock, beating up westward. The sails of the
_Caesar_ were instantly swung round, a many-coloured flutter of bunting
summoned the rest of the squadron to follow, and Saumarez began his
eager chase of the French, bearing away for the Gut under a light
north-west wind. But the breeze died down, and the current swept the
straggling ships westward. All day they drifted helplessly, and the
night only brought a breath of air sufficient to fan them through the
Straits.
Meanwhile Linois had taken refuge in the tiny curve of the Spanish
coast known as the roadstead of Algeciras. Linois was, perhaps, the
best French seaman of his day, having, it is true, very little French
dash, but endowed with a wealth of cool resolution, and a genius for
defensive warfare altogether admirable. Algeciras gave Linois exactly
what he wanted, an almost unassailable position. The roadstead is
open, shallow, and plentifully besprinkled with rocks, while powerful
shore batteries covered the whole anchorage with their zone of fire.
The French admiral anchored his ships at intervals of 500 yards from
each other, and so that the lines of fire from the batteries north and
south crossed in front of his ships. The French squadron carried some
3000 troops, and these were at once landed, and, manning the batteries,
raised them to a high degree of effectiveness. Some fourteen heavy
Spanish gunboats added enormously to the strength of the French
position.
The French never doubted that Saumarez would instantly attack; the
precedents of the Nile and of Copenhagen were too recent to make any
doubt possible. And Saumarez did exactly what his enemies expected.
Algeciras, in fact, is the battle of the Nile in miniature. But
Saumarez, though he had the swift daring of Nelson, lacked his warlike
genius. Nelson, in Aboukir Bay, leaped without an instant's pause on
the line of his enemy, but then he had his own ships perfectly in hand,
and so made the leap effective. Saumarez sent his ships into the fight
headlong, and without the least regard to mutual support. At 7.50 on
the morning of July 6, an uncertain gust of air carried the leading
British ship, the _Pompée_, round Cabrita; Hood, in the _Venerable_,
lay becalmed in the offing; the flagship, with the rest of the
squadron, were mere pyramids of idle canvas on the rim of the horizon.
The _Pompée_ drifted down the whole French line, scorched with the fire
of batteries and of gunboats, as well as by the broadsides of the great
French ships, and at 8.45 dropped her anchor so close to the
_Formidable_--a ship much bigger than itself--that the Frenchman's buoy
lay outside her. Then, deliberately clewing up her sails and tautening
her springs, the _Pompée_ opened a fire on her big antagonist so
fierce, sustained, and deadly, that the latter found it intolerable,
and began to warp closer to the shore. The _Audacious_ and _Venerable_
came slowly up into their assigned positions, and here was a spectacle
of three British ships fighting four French ships and fourteen Spanish
gunboats, with heavy shore batteries manned by 3000 troops thrown into
the scale! At this stage, too, the _Pompée's_ springs gave way, or
were shot away, the current swung her round till she lay head on to the
broadside of her huge antagonist, while the batteries smote her with a
deadly cross-fire. A little after ten o'clock the _Caesar_ dropped
anchor three cables' lengths from the _Indomptable_, and opened a fire
which the French themselves described as "tremendous" upon her
antagonist.
Linois found the British fire too destructive, and signalled his ships
to cut or slip their cables, calculating that a faint air from the sea,
which was beginning to blow, would drift them closer under the shelter
of the batteries. Saumarez, too, noticed that his topsails were
beginning to swell, and he instantly slipped his cable and endeavoured
to close with the _Indomptable_, signalling his ships to do the same.
The British cables rattled hoarsely through their hawse-holes along the
whole line, and the ships were adrift; but the breeze almost instantly
died away, and on the strong coast current the British ships floated
helplessly, while the fire from the great shore batteries, and from the
steady French decks, now anchored afresh, smote them heavily in turn.
The _Pompée_ lay for an hour under a concentrated fire without being
able to bring a gun to bear in return, and then summoned by signal the
boats of the squadron to tow her off.
Saumarez, meanwhile, had ordered the _Hannibal_, under Captain Ferris,
to round the head of the French line and "rake the admiral's ship."
Ferris, by fine seamanship, partly sailed and partly drifted into the
post assigned to him, and then grounded hopelessly, under a plunging
fire from the shore batteries, within hail of the Frenchman, itself
also aground. A fire so dreadful soon reduced the unfortunate
_Hannibal_ to a state of wreck. Boats from the _Caesar_ and the
_Venerable_ came to her help, but Ferris sent them back again. They
could not help him, and should not share his fate. Saumarez, as a last
resource, prepared for a boat attack on the batteries, but in the whole
squadron there were not enough uninjured boats to carry the marines.
The British flagship itself was by this time well-nigh a wreck, and was
drifting on the reefs. A flaw of wind from the shore gave the ships
steerage-way, and Saumarez drew off, leaving the _Hannibal_ to its fate.
Ferris fought till his masts were gone, his guns dismounted, his
bulwarks riddled, his decks pierced, and one-third of his crew killed
or wounded. Then he ordered the survivors to the lower decks, and
still kept his flag flying for half-an-hour after the shot-torn sails
of the shattered British ships had disappeared round Cabrita. Then he
struck. Here was a French triumph, indeed! A British squadron beaten
off, a British seventy-four captured! It is said that when the news
reached Paris the city went half-mad with exultation. Napoleon read
the despatch to his ministers with eyes that danced, and almost wept,
with mere gladness!
The British squadron--officers and men in such a mood as may be
imagined--put into Gibraltar to refit; the _Caesar_, with her mainmast
shot through in five places, her boats destroyed, her hull pierced;
while of the sorely battered _Pompée_ it is recorded that she had "not
a mast, yard-spar, shroud, rope, or sail" which was not damaged by
hostile shot. Linois, meanwhile, got his grounded ships and his
solitary prize afloat, and summoned the Cadiz squadron to join him. On
the 9th these ships--six sail of the line, two of them giants of 112
guns each, with three frigates--went triumphantly, with widespread
canvas and many-coloured bunting, past Gibraltar, where the shattered
British squadron was lying, and cast anchor beside Admiral Linois in
Algeciras Bay.
The British were labouring, meanwhile, with fierce energy, to refit
their damaged ships under shelter of the guns of Gibraltar. The
_Pompée_ was practically destroyed, and her crew were distributed
amongst the other ships. Saumarez himself regarded the condition of
his flagship as hopeless, but his captain, Brenton, begged permission
to at least attempt to refit her. He summoned his crew aft, and told
the men the admiral proposed to leave the ship behind, and asked them
"what they thought about it." The men gave a wrathful roar,
punctuated, it is to be feared, with many sea-going expletives, and
shouted, "All hands to work day and night till she's ready!" The whole
crew, down to the very powder-boys, actually worked while daylight
lasted, kept it up, watch and watch, through the night, and did this
from the evening of the 6th to the noon of the 12th! Probably no ship
that ever floated was refitted in shorter time. In that brief period,
to quote the "Naval Register," she "shifted her mainmast; fished and
secured her foremast, shot through in several places; knotted and
spliced the rigging, which had been cut to pieces, and bent new sails;
plugged the shot-holes between wind and water; completed with stores of
all kinds, anchors and cables, powder and shot, and provisions for four
months."
On Sunday, July 12, 1801, the French and Spanish ships in Algeciras Bay
weighed anchor, formed their line of battle as they came out, off
Cabrita Point, and, stately and slow, with the two 112-gun Spaniards as
a rearguard, bore up for Cadiz. An hour later the British ships warped
out of the mole in pursuit. It was an amazing sight: a squadron of
five sail of the line, which had been completely disabled in an action
only five days before, was starting, fresh and refitted, in pursuit of
a fleet double its own number, and more than double its strength! All
Gibraltar crowded to watch the ships as, one by one, they cleared the
pier-head. The garrison band blew itself hoarse playing "Britons,
strike home," while the _Caesar's_ band answered in strains as shrill
with "Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis for glory we steer." Both tunes,
it may be added, were simply submerged beneath the cheers which rang up
from mole-head and batteries and dock-walls. Just as the _Caesar_
drifted, huge and stately, past the pier-head, a boat came eagerly
pulling up to her. It was crowded with jack-tars, with bandaged heads
and swathed arms. A cluster of the _Pompée's_ wounded, who escaped
from the hospital, bribed a boatman to pull them out to the flagship,
and clamoured to be taken on board!
Saumarez had strengthened his squadron by the addition of the _Superb_,
with the _Thames_ frigate, and at twenty minutes to nine P.M., vainly
searching the black horizon for the lights of the enemy, he hailed the
_Superb_, and ordered its captain, Keats, to clap on all sail and
attack the enemy directly he overtook them. Saumarez, in a word,
launched a single seventy-four against a fleet! Keats was a daring
sailor; his ship was, perhaps, the fastest British seventy-four afloat,
and his men were instantly aloft spreading every inch of canvas. Then,
like a huge ghost, the _Superb_ glided ahead and vanished in the
darkness. The wind freshened; the blackness deepened; the lights of
the British squadron died out astern. But a wide sprinkle of lights
ahead became visible; it was the Spanish fleet! Eagerly the daring
_Superb_ pressed on, with slanting decks and men at quarters, but with
lights hidden. At midnight the rear ships of the Spanish squadron were
under the larboard bow of the _Superb_--two stupendous three-deckers,
with lights gleaming through a hundred port-holes--while a French
two-decker to larboard of both the Spanish giants completed the line.
Keats, unseen and unsuspected, edged down with his solitary
seventy-four, her heaviest guns only 18-pounders, on the quarter of the
nearest three-decker. He was about to fling himself, in the gloom of
the night, on three great ships, with an average of 100 guns each! Was
ever a more daring feat attempted? Silently through the darkness the
_Superb_ crept, her canvas glimmering ghostly white, till she was
within some 300 yards of the nearest Spaniard. Then out of the
darkness to windward there broke on the astonished and drowsy Spaniards
a tempest of flame, a whirlwind of shot. Thrice the _Superb_ poured
her broadside into the huge and staggering bulk of her antagonist.
With the second broadside the Spaniard's topmast came tumbling down;
with the third, so close was the flame of the _Superb's_ guns, the
Spanish sails--dry as touch-wood with lying for so many months in the
sunshine of Cadiz--took fire.
Meanwhile a dramatic incident occurred. The two great Spaniards
commenced to thunder their heavy broadsides into each other! Many of
the Superb's shots had struck the second and more distant three-decker.
Cochrane, indeed, says that the _Superb_ passed actually betwixt the
two gigantic Spaniards, fired a broadside, larboard and starboard, into
both, and then glided on and vanished in the darkness. It is certain
that the _San Hermenegildo_, finding her decks torn by a hurricane of
shot, commenced to fire furiously through the smoke and the night at
the nearest lights. They were the lights of her own consort! She, in
turn, fired at the flash of the guns tormenting her. So, under the
black midnight skies, the two great Spanish ships thundered at each
other, flame answering flame. They drifted ever closer. The fire of
the _Real Carlos_ kindled the sails of the sister ship; the flames
leaped and danced to the very mast-heads; and, still engaged in a fiery
wrestle, they blew up in succession, and out of their united crews of
2000 men only a little over 200 were picked up!
The _Superb_, meanwhile, had glided ahead, leaving the three-deckers to
destroy each other, and opened fire at pistol-shot distance on the
French two-decker, and in thirty minutes compelled her to strike. In
less than two hours of a night action, that is, this single English
seventy-four had destroyed two Spanish three-deckers of 112 guns each,
and captured a fine French battle-ship of 74 guns!
The British ships by this time were coming up in the rear, with every
inch of canvas spread. They swept past the amazing spectacle of the
two great Spaniards destroying each other, and pressed on in chase of
the enemy. The wind rose to a gale. In the grey dawn the _Caesar_
found herself, with all her sister ships, far astern, except the
_Venerable_, under Hood, which was hanging on the quarter of the
rearmost French ship, the _Formidable_, a magnificent ship of 80 guns,
with a gallant commander, and carrying quite too heavy metal for Hood.
Hood, however, the most daring of men, exchanged broadsides at
pistol-shot distance with his big antagonist, till his ship was
dismasted, and was drifted by the current on the rocky shoals off San
Pedro. The _Caesar_ came up in time to enable its disgusted crew to
see ship after ship of the flying enemy disappear safely within the
sheltering batteries of Cadiz.