safety, and all question of starving the Revolution into surrender was
at an end. On that account the battle was reckoned as a victory by the
French as well as in England.[47]
Other naval events of this year (1794) were the capture of Corsica, by
Hood; and in the West Indies, the capture of Martinique and St. Lucia.
Guadaloupe was also taken, but quickly re-captured. Among the prizes
of the year was the French forty-gun frigate _Pomone_, which proved
infinitely faster than anything in the English fleet. This led to much
discussion in the House of Commons. A considerable party denied that
any such superiority existed; others alleged that even if so, British
ships were better and more strongly built. Others again attributed the
circumstance to the heavy premiums awarded by the French Government to
constructors who produced swift sailing ships.
Nothing of much moment came out of the discussion. Orders were issued
that ships were to be built a little longer in future, and with the
lower deck ports less near the water than heretofore, but the general
tendency to over-gun ships in relation to their size still remained.
For the year 1795, the _personnel_ of the fleet was increased to
100,000, and provision was made for a very considerable increase of
small craft. The Dutch declared war in January, but the year was not
marked by any operations of much moment so far as they were concerned.
The principal theatres of naval operations were in the Mediterranean
and the Channel. This year is marked by a curious indecisiveness, which
had much to do with the formation of Nelson’s (who was serving in the
Mediterranean as captain of the _Agamemnon_, sixty-four), subsequent
character as an admiral.
The British fleet consisted of fifteen ships of the line, under Hotham.
The French had got together fifteen sail at Toulon. These made for
Corsica, in March, and on the way captured one of Hotham’s ships, the
_Berwick_. With the remainder, Hotham put to sea, and on the 12th, off
Genoa, he was sighted by the French. His fleet was in considerable
disorder, and in the view of Professor Laughton, the incapacity of the
French alone averted a disaster. In the desultory operations of the
next two days, two prizes were taken and two English ships crippled.
Nelson, who was mainly responsible for the prizes, urged Hotham to
pursue and destroy the enemy, but the admiral refused.[48]
In July, Nelson, who was on detached service, was met and chased back
to Genoa by the whole French fleet, which, however, drew off when
Hotham’s fleet was sighted. Hotham, with a greatly superior fleet, came
out, and eventually found the enemy off Hyeres. Chase was ordered and
one French ship overhauled and captured; then, on the grounds that the
shore was too near, Hotham hauled off.
These operations (or lack of them) on the part of Hotham, are important
beyond most. In the view of Professor Laughton,[49] Hotham’s indecision
was mainly responsible for the rise and grandeur of Napoleon’s career.
Vigorous action on his part would have written differently the history
of the world. As like as not, in addition to no Napoleon, there would
also have been no Nelson, to go down as the leading figure in British
naval history. The survival of the French fleet rendered possible that
invasion of Italy which “made” Napoleon, and those sea battles which
made Nelson our most famous admiral.
Villaret-Joyeuse (who had commanded the French fleet in the battle of
the First of June) displayed considerable activity in 1795, capturing
a frigate and a good many merchant ships. The weather, however,
was against him, and he lost five ships of the line wrecked. He,
notwithstanding, kept the sea with twelve ships of the line, and with
these met Cornwallis with five, off Brest, on June 16th. Cornwallis
retired, but was overhauled the next day, and his tail ship the _Mars_,
(seventy-four) badly damaged, the French, as usual, firing at the
rigging. Cornwallis, in the _Royal Sovereign_, (100) fell back to
support the _Mars_, but was well on the way to be defeated when he
adopted the clever ruse of sending away a frigate to signal to him that
the Channel fleet was coming up. The code used was one known to have
been captured by the French, and they, reading the signals, hastily
abandoned the pursuit and made off.
Three days later, Villaret-Joyeuse did actually encounter the Channel
fleet, under Hood (now Lord Bridport). He made off south, chased by
Bridport, who had fourteen ships, mostly three-deckers, of which the
French had but one. After a four days’ chase, Bridport came up with
the tail of the enemy, off Lorient. A partial action ensued, in which
three French ships were captured, after which Bridport withdrew. He
gave as his reason the nearness to the French shore--exactly the reason
that Hotham gave for neglecting a possible victory. In both cases,
the reason was rather trivial. The practical assign it to the old
age of the admirals concerned. To the imaginative, these two almost
incomprehensible failures to take advantage of circumstances gave some
colour to Napoleon’s theory of “his destiny.”
In this year, a number of East Indiamen were purchased for naval use.
One of these, the _Glatton_, (fifty-six) was experimentally armed
with sixty-eight pounder carronades on her lower deck, and forty-two
pounders on the upper. On her way to join her squadron, she was
attacked by six French frigates, of which one was a fifty-gun, and
two were of thirty-six. She easily defeated the lot--another instance
of the “big ship’s” advantage in minor combats. Despite this instance
of what might be done, the heavy gun idea made no headway, and the
_Glatton_ remained a unique curiosity, till many years later the
Americans adopted it to our great disadvantage.
Towards the end of 1795 (December) Hotham was replaced in the
Mediterranean by Sir John Jervis--an admiral of unique personality, who
left upon the Navy a mark that easily endures to this day. Somewhat
hyperbolically it has been said of him that he was the saviour of the
Navy in his own day, and the main element towards its disruption in
these times!
Jervis had made his mark in the War of American Independence, as
captain of the _Foudroyant_. Discipline was his passion; and by means
of it, he had made an easy capture of a French ship. Thereafter, he
became a unique blend of martinet and genius.
He was the first openly to re-affirm Sir Walter Raleigh’s theory,
quoted in an earlier chapter, that fortifications were useless
against invasion, and that only on the water could an enemy be met
successfully, combatting Pitt himself on this point. When the Great
War broke out, his first employment was in the West Indies, where
he achieved St. Lucia, Martinique and Guadaloupe. He went to the
Mediterranean, at a time when France was numerically superior to us
in the Channel, and when Spain was daily expected to declare war. The
fleet to which he went was like all others, tending to a mutinous
spirit, and finally he had to go out in the frigate _Lively_. In those
days, for an admiral to take passage in anything less than a ship of
the line was considered a most undignified thing. It rankled so with
Jervis that he never forgot it, and years after harped upon it as
a grievance. Of such character was the man who took command in the
Mediterranean at the end of 1795.
In 1796, the _personnel_ of the Navy was increased to 110,000. Jervis,
in the Mediterranean, did little beyond blockading Toulon, and training
his fleet on his own ideas. Spain declared war in October; but her
intentions being known beforehand, Corsica was evacuated, and at the
end of the year the Mediterranean was abandoned also, Jervis with
his entire fleet lying under the guns of Gibraltar. Nothing else was
possible.
Elsewhere invasion ideas were uppermost in France, and 18,000 troops,
convoyed by seventeen ships of the line and thirteen frigates, sailed
from Brest for Bantry Bay, at the end of the year. Only eight ships of
the line reached there; a gale dispersed the transports and nothing
happened in the way of invasion. The only other event of the year was
the capture of a Dutch squadron at the Cape of Good Hope. Matters
generally were, however, so bad, that attempts were made to secure
terms of peace from France. These attempts failed.
The year 1792 saw 108 ships of the line and 293 lesser vessels in
commission. Something like sixty ships of the line were building or
ordered, also 168 lesser craft. The first incident was the Battle of
Cape St. Vincent (14th February, 1797). The Spaniards, having come out
of Cartagena, were making for Cadiz, when sighted by Jervis.
The rival fleets were:--
BRITISH. SPANISH.
2 of 100 guns. 1 of 130 guns.
3 of 98 guns. 6 of 112 guns.
1 of 90 guns. 2 of 80 guns.
8 of 74 guns. 18 of 74 guns.
1 of 64 guns. --
-- 27
15 --
--
The battle is mainly of interest on account of Nelson’s part in it.
The Spaniards were sailing in no order whatever, the bulk of them
being in one irregular mass, the remainder in another. Jervis, in line
ahead, proposed to pass between the two divisions, and destroy the
larger before the smaller could beat up to assist them. The Spaniards,
however inefficient they may have been in other ways, saw through this
manœuvre, and their main body was preparing to join up astern of the
British, when Nelson, in the _Captain_, flung himself across them and
captured two ships by falling foul of them and boarding. Three other
ships were captured, the rest escaped. In this battle, as in those of
the year before, the same caution about following up the victory was
observed, and the age of the admiral concerned has again been produced
as the reason. But the thoughtful--taking the previous career of most
of those concerned into consideration--may suspect the existence of
some special secret orders about taking no risks, as yet unearthed
by any historian. The only really workable alternative is Napoleon’s
“destiny” theory already alluded to. Of the two, the secret order
hypothesis is the more practical. Into the whole of these victories not
properly followed up, it is also possible, though hardly probable, that
the mutinous state of the _personnel_ entered.
[Illustration: THE “FOUDROYANT” ONE OF NELSON’S OLD SHIPS.]
In the battle of Cape St. Vincent, the Spaniards had an enormous
four-decker, the _Santissima Trinidad_, of 130 guns. She was the first
ship engaged by Nelson, and was hammered by most of the others closely
engaged as well, but her size and power saved her from the fate of the
rest of the ships that were with her.
It is difficult even now to assess the exact situation of the mutineers
of 1797. The organised self-restraint of the Spithead Mutiny is hard
to understand, when we remember the heterogeneous origin of the crews.
“Jail or Navy” was an every-day offer to prisoners. Longshoremen,
riff-raff, pressed landsmen, thieves, murderers, smugglers, and a
few degraded officers, were the raw material of which the crews were
composed. They were stiffened with a proportion of professional
seamen, and it is these that must have leavened the mass, and kept the
jail-bird element in check.
Pay was bad, ship life close akin to prison life, discipline and
punishments alike brutal, and the food disgracefully bad. It was this
last that brought about the mutiny. There is an old saying to the
effect that you may ill-treat a sailor as you will, but if you ill-feed
him, trouble may be looked for! One or two isolated mutinies, like that
of the _Hermione_, were due to a captain’s brutality; but mainly and
mostly bad food and mutiny were closely linked.
Commander Robinson[50] draws attention to the fact that the pursers
themselves were hardly the unscrupulous rascals they were supposed to
be on shore, and that the system and regulations of victualling were
recognised by the seamen as at the bottom of the mischief.
The same authority quotes a contemporary:--
“The reason unto you I now will relate:
We resolved to refuse the purser’s short weight;
Our humble petition to Lord Howe we sent,
That he to the Admiralty write to present
Our provisions and wages that they might augment.”
Discontent had, of course, long been brewing, but the Admiralty seems
to have been without any suspicions. They dismissed the petition as
being in no way representative; later, having received reports to the
contrary, ordered Lord Bridport’s fleet at Spithead to proceed to sea.
On April 15th, when the signal to weigh anchor was made, the crews of
every ship manned the rigging and cheered. No violence was offered
to any officer; the men simply refused to work. Each ship supplied a
couple of delegates to explain matters, and after an enquiry, their
demands were granted and a free pardon given. Delays, however, ensued,
and on May 7th, the fleet again refused to put to sea.
On this occasion, the officers were disarmed, confined to their cabins,
and kept there, till a few days later a general pardon was proclaimed,
when this mutiny ended. A similar mutiny at Plymouth was equally mild.
Of a very different character was the mutiny at the Nore, which broke
out on May 13th, under the leadership of the notorious Richard Parker.
Parker was a man of considerable parts, said to have been an ex-officer
dismissed the service with disgrace, and to have entered as a seaman.
He possessed undoubted ability and considerable ambition. He very
clearly aimed at something more than the redress of grievances, since
his first act was to put a rope round his own neck by instigating the
crew of the _Inflexible_ to fire into a sister ship, on board which
a court-martial was being held. Subsequently, delegates were sent
to the Admiralty with extravagant claims, which--as Parker may have
anticipated--were ignored.
Eleven ships of Admiral Duncan’s fleet (then blockading the Texel) had
joined Parker by the first of June. Duncan was left with but two ships
in face of the enemy. By showing himself much and making imaginary
signals Duncan managed to conceal the facts from the Dutch: but he had
considerable trouble to keep his two ships from joining the mutineers
now blockading the Thames.
There is reason to believe that Parker was in touch with the
Revolutionists in France and the dissatisfied Irish, but the bulk
of the mutineers were altogether uninfluenced by political ideas.
The mutiny began to waver. The ships at other home ports were
unsympathetic, and Parker and his friends found men cooling off. In
order to keep things together it was their custom to row round the
fleet[51] and inspect ships suspected of being “cool,”--the side being
piped for them. In one case, however, the boatswain’s mate refused to
do so, and flung his call at their heads. On coming on board, they
sentenced him to thirty-six lashes for “mutinous conduct!” On June
10th, despite this disciplinary system, two of the mutineer ships
sailed away under fire from the others, and on the 14th, Parker’s own
ship surrendered and handed him over to the authorities. He was hanged
on June 29th.
In the Mediterranean fleet, mutiny broke out in two ships off Cadiz,
but Jervis (now Earl St. Vincent), compelled the mutineers to hang
their own ringleaders. In connection with this, Nelson, who was now
rear admiral commanding the inshore squadron, wrote to St. Vincent--
“I congratulate you on the finish, as it ought, of the St. George’s
business, and I (if I may be permitted to say so) very much approve
of its being so speedily carried into execution, even although
it is Sunday. The particular situation of the service requires
extraordinary measures. I hope this will end all the disorders in
our fleet: had there been the same determined spirit at home, I do
not believe it would have been half so bad.”
It is noteworthy that in Nelson’s own ship there was no trouble
whatever. The ship had had a reputation for insubordination, but
shortly after Nelson joined her, a paper intimating that no mutiny need
be feared was dropped on the quarter-deck. Nelson brought with him a
reputation for taking a personal interest in his men. Then, as now,
hard work and a dog’s life were not objected to, provided the personal
equation were present.
St. Vincent proceeded to stamp out the embers of mutiny in his own
fashion. He set himself to invest his rank with every circumstance
of pomp, awe and ceremony. Every morning he appeared on the quarter
deck in full dress uniform, paraded the Marines, and had “God save the
King” played with all hats off. His regulations were catholic enough to
embrace lieutenants’ shoe-laces. In all the pomp that he created the
mutinous spirit was smothered.
To him is due the vast abyss between the quarter-deck and lower-deck
which marks the Navy of to-day. Whether this, advantageous as it was a
hundred odd years ago, is equally advantageous now, is another matter.
It makes a barrier altogether different from that existing between
officer and man in the Army--it is something closely akin to the racial
differences mark in India; and this sorts ill with the democratic ideas
of to-day, when class distinction is quite a different matter from what
it was a hundred years ago.
There are still possible two views of the question. One is embodied in
a letter I received some few years ago from a man from the lower-deck.
He wrote, “When I was a boy in a training ship, my captain seemed to me
something as far away and above me as God himself, and the impression
thus created I have carried with me towards all officers ever since.
Though in private life I might meet his brother with feeling of perfect
equality, I could never be other than ill at ease meeting an officer in
the same conditions.”
Here, at any rate, is the psychology of what St. Vincent aimed at.
To-day, however, one is far more likely to hear about “the side of
officers,” or that “officers, when cadets, are taught to regard the men
with contempt!” The conditions are such, that despite mixed cricket and
football teams, mutual sympathy between officers and men is well nigh
impossible.
Of “the great God Routine” which St. Vincent set up, it is beyond
question that it is to-day an irritating superfluity to both officers
and men alike.
To resume. As the Spaniards obstinately refused to come out from Cadiz,
St. Vincent sent Nelson in to bombard them with mortar boats; but this
attempt to force them out did not succeed. Following upon this, Nelson,
with three seventy-four’s, one fifty, three frigates and a cutter, was
despatched to Santa Cruz. On the night of July 24th, he led a boat
attack in person. Most of the boats missed the Mole and were stove
in. Such as reached the Mole were met by a withering fire. Nelson
was struck on the right elbow by a grape shot, and taken back to the
_Theseus_, where his arm was amputated. Troubridge took command of the
300 odd men who had got ashore, and being surrounded by the Spanish,
made terms, whereby the Spaniards found boats for his party to return
to their ships. The squadron rejoined St. Vincent, and Nelson sailed
for England to recover.
The blockade of the Texel had been vigorously maintained till October,
when Duncan returned to Spithead to refit. He had no sooner done so
than the Dutch, under De Winter, came out--presumably with a view to
reaching Brest. Duncan’s frigates, however, promptly reported them, and
sailing at once he met them off Camperdown, on October 11th.
The rival fleets were:--
BRITISH. DUTCH.
7 of 74 guns. 4 of 74 guns.
7 of 64 guns. 7 of 64 guns.
2 of 50 guns. 4 of 50 guns.
-- --
16 15
-- --
Duncan’s original plan was the old fashioned ship-to-ship system,
but in the actual event, the Dutch line was broken. One of the Dutch
fifty-gun ships fell back to avoid the _Lancaster_ (sixty-four), five
others for some reason or other following her; the remaining nine
fought desperately, till further resistance was impossible.
The prizes were:--two seventy-four’s, five sixty-four’s, two fifties,
and a couple of frigates. Both the captured fifties were lost; the
other ships were with great difficulty got to England. All were found
to have been damaged beyond repair, and some of Duncan’s ships were in
little better condition. His losses in _personnel_ were over 1,000 in
killed and wounded. His crews, it is interesting to note, consisted
mostly of Parker’s erstwhile mutineers.
During 1797, a few frigates only were lost. These included the
_Hermione_, whose crew mutinied and handed her over to the enemy. The
brutality of her captain, Pigot, whose idea of efficiency was to flog
the last two men down from aloft, was the cause of this particular
outbreak.[52]
In 1797, a large ninety-eight gun ship, the _Neptune_, was added to the
Navy, also a seventy-four and a sixty-four. Private yards launched no
less than forty-six frigates and smaller craft, and the total number of
warships built, building and projected, was 696.[53]
For the year 1798, the _personnel_ voted was 100,000 seamen and 20,000
marines; and the total Naval Estimates amounted to £13,449,388.
In France, Buonaparte was forging to the front, and he threw himself
into those schemes for the invasion of England which so appealed to the
French mind and so terrified the British public. Ireland was selected
as the most suitable spot, and two expeditions were prepared, one at
Rochefort, the other at Brest. Of these, one, the Rochefort expedition,
materialised in August, reached Killala Bay, in Ireland, and soon
afterwards had to surrender to the English Army. The Brest expedition,
escorted by a line of battle ship and a number of frigates, was more
or less annihilated by Admiral Warren, on October 12th.
As already stated, the Mediterranean had become a species of
Franco-Spanish lake. St. Vincent was outside Gibraltar, and he was
still there when Nelson, in the _Vanguard_, arrived to join him as
rear-admiral, at the end of April.
Nelson, with a small squadron, was at once despatched to discover what
the French were doing at Toulon. Rumours of all kinds were current. He
found fifteen ships of the line and a great many transports, news of
which he sent to the Admiral. On the top of this came a gale, which
dismasted the _Vanguard_. She was, however, towed into San Pietro,
Sardinia, and hastily re-fitted, and four days later the ships were off
Toulon again, only to find that the French had sailed.
Reinforced by ten sail of the line, under Troubridge, Nelson now
sailed in search of the French fleet. Reaching Alexandria and finding
nothing known there of the French, he worked back to Syracuse, where
he revictualled in cheerful disregard of the neutrality remonstrances
of the Governor. Thence he returned eastward, and having received
information of where the French had last been seen, eventually found
them anchored in Aboukir Bay, where he attacked them on the evening of
August 1st, 1798.
The rival fleets were:--
BRITISH. FRENCH.
13 of 74 guns. 1 of 120 guns.
1 of 50 guns. 9 of 74 guns.
-- --
14 10, also 4 Frigates.
-- --
The French, under Brueys, were drawn across the Bay in a “defensive
position.” They were in no way a very efficient force, some of the
ships being old and short of guns, all of them rather short-handed, and
even so, manned with many new-raised raw men. On the other hand, they
were so sure of the safety of their position that their inshore guns
were not cleared for action. By all the naval theory of the day this
idea of impregnability was justified.
The battle itself was simple enough. Nelson came down with the wind on
the French van, approximately putting two of his ships one on either
side of each of the Frenchmen, and so on, the rear being unable to beat
up to support them. The result was the practical annihilation of the
French fleet. Of the thirteen ships of the line, only two escaped in
company with two frigates.