War (in 1797), took Trinidad. That the conquest proved an easy business
was not his fault. The Commander-in-Chief of the Spanish squadron at
Trinidad, Admiral Apodoca, when he saw Admiral Harvey coming, without
clearing for action or firing a shot set fire to his ships and escaped
ashore. He took horse and galloped off, and presented himself, excited
and panting with his exertions, before the Governor of the island,
General Chacon. “I have burnt my ships, sir,” he burst in with, “in case
they should fall into the power of the English.” “Burnt them?” exclaimed
the astonished Governor; “destroyed them! Have you saved nothing?” “Oh,
yes I have!” Apodoca replied. “Yes I have! I have! I have saved”—drawing
a carved and painted wooden image, some fifteen inches long, from under
his cloak as he spoke—“my flagship’s patron saint—I have saved San Juan
de Compostella!” That Apodoca’s flagship was the _San Vincente_, and that
there was no _San Juan de Compostella_ on the Spanish Navy List at the
time, are details the story does not concern itself with.
* * * * *
Yet another interesting connection between Kent and the sea service of
bygone times is this. H.M.S. _Kent’s_ name is not the only man-of-war
name associated with the county that has figured in the fighting days
of old. No fewer than eighteen other man-of-war names connected with
the county of Kent have from time to time been borne on the roll of
the British fleet. It was on board a _Canterbury_ that a notable naval
officer of the earlier part of the eighteenth century, Captain George
Walton, penned words which have been quoted over and over again as a
masterpiece of conciseness. He had been in pursuit of a Spanish squadron,
and on his return, as most of us have read, reported as follows:—
“_To Admiral Sir George Byng, Commander-in-Chief._
“Sir,
“We have taken and destroyed all the Spanish ships and vessels
which were upon the coast, as per margin.
“I am, etc.,
“GEORGE WALTON.
“Canterbury, off Syracusa, _August 16, 1718_.
“One of 60 guns, one of 54, one of 40, one of 24—taken; one of
54, two of 40, one of 30 guns, with a fireship and two bomb
vessels—burnt.”
As a fact, unfortunately, Captain Walton’s “dispatch” was written
in quite another way. The captain of the _Canterbury_ really sent
the admiral a letter of two pages. What is passed off as his whole
“dispatch,” is actually only the concluding sentence of the letter,
excerpted and dressed up. An unscrupulous admiralty official, for the
purposes of a book on the campaign, manipulated the letter and printed
its last paragraph by itself as the entire despatch. Historians following
one another have since then simply copied Secretary Corbett.
Our first _Sandwich_ broke the French line at the battle of La Hogue, and
lost her gallant captain in doing it. Another bore Rodney’s flag in five
battles—two with the Spaniards and three with the French—and was at the
first relief of Gibraltar during the Great Siege. Our first _Dover_ was
present at the taking of Jamaica. Another won fame as Captain Cloudesley
Shovell’s ship. Commodore Trunnion served on board another _Dover_, if
Smollett spoke by the card in making him express a wish to be buried “in
the red jacket which I wore when I boarded the _Renummy_.” Apart from
the taking of Louis the Fifteenth’s frigate _Renommée_, if we count in
other French and Spanish frigates and privateers taken, our various
_Dovers_, in their time, must have brought home captured flags enough
to deck the town out from end to end. All, of course, have long since
rotted out of existence. People in old times set little store by such
trophies. “What are you going to do with all these flags?” a friend once
asked of a frigate captain who, in his barge, gaily decorated from bows
to stern with the colours of ships taken during the commission, was being
pulled in from Spithead to land at the old Sally Port, Portsmouth. “Do
with them?” came the reply. “Why, take ’em home and hang ’em on the trees
round father’s garden.”
It was a _Chatham_ whose twenty-four pounders, one May morning, just a
hundred and forty-eight years ago, gave the Royal Navy our first, and the
original, “Saucy” _Arethusa_. One _Maidstone_ fought with Blake at Santa
Cruz de Teneriffe. Another, acting as “guide of the fleet,” led Hawke to
victory on that stormy November afternoon among the reefs of Quiberon
Bay, which the French Navy, pillorying the memory of its unfortunate
admiral, has ever since called “la journée de M. Conflans.”
A _Greenwich_ fought at La Hogue, and was one of Benbow’s squadron in his
last fight. One _Deptford_ was also at La Hogue, and another with Byng
off Minorca, where the _Deptford_, at any rate, did her duty. A _Romney_,
in Queen Anne’s war, after a career of distinction, went down with all on
board to westward of St. Agnes, Scilly, on the night of the catastrophe
to Sir Cloudesley Shovell. _Rochester_, and _Medway_, and _Sheerness_,
are also man-of-war names that have attaching to them interesting
memories of the fighting days of old, as have too, in one way or other,
in differing degrees, the remaining names of the group, _Woolwich_ and
_Faversham_, _Eltham_ and _Deal Castle_, _Margate_, _Queenborough_, and
_Folkestone_.
* * * * *
Our modern-day cruiser the _Kent_ has her own story also as a man-of-war,
a notable and interesting historic reputation of her own, to uphold.
This summary will give its points, the “battle honours” which the _Kent_
would be entitled to bear on her ship’s flag were our ships authorized to
follow the practice of the army in regard to regimental flags.
H.M.S. _KENT_.
Blake’s victory over Tromp off Portland Feb., 1653
Blake and Monk’s victory off Lowestoft June, 1653
Monk’s victory over Tromp off Camperdown July, 1653
Blake’s bombardment of Tunis April, 1655
Duke of York’s victory off the North Foreland June, 1665
Rupert and Albemarle—“The Four Days’ Fight” June, 1666
Rupert and Albemarle—“The St. James’s Day Fight” July, 1666
Battle off Cape Barfleur and Attack at La Hogue May, 1692
Rooke’s battle in Vigo Bay Oct., 1702
Capture of a French convoy off Granville July, 1703
Battle of Malaga[5] Aug., 1704
Siege of Barcelona Sept., 1705
Action with Duguay Trouin April, 1709
Capture of the French 60-gun ship _Superbe_ July, 1710
Sir George Byng’s victory off Messina July, 1718
Relief of Gibraltar Feb., 1727
Capture of the Spanish 74-gun ship _Princessa_ April, 1740
Hawke’s victory off Finisterre Oct., 1747
Taking of Geriah Feb., 1756
Recapture of Calcutta and bombardment of Chandernagore Feb., 1757
Alexandria Mar., 1801
Service with Nelson off Toulon 1803-4
In the Mediterranean 1807-12
A peculiarly interesting memento of the _Kent_ in connection with one
of these battles is in existence. It refers to the part played by the
_Kent_ of Charles the Second’s navy just before the battle of June, 1666,
“The Four Days’ Fight,” in which Monk, Duke of Albemarle, during Prince
Rupert’s temporary absence with a third of the fleet in the Channel,
without waiting for Rupert to rejoin, rashly flung his weaker force on
De Ruyter with the whole of the Dutch fleet at hand and brought about a
general engagement.
The _Kent_ had been sent off on the 27th of May on a scouting cruise
between “Blackness” (the old name for Cape Grisnez) and Ostend. Late in
the evening of the 30th of May the following letter was handed to the
Duke of Albemarle from the captain of the _Kent_, sent across by a Dutch
ketch that the _Kent_ had taken:—
“May it please yr Grace,
“This morning being off Gravelines in chase of a small ship and
a ketch belonging to Newport, as they pretend, whom I have sent
into the Downs to your Grace, I mett with a Swede who came from
Amsterdam on Sunday last in his ballast, bound for Bordeaux,
who relates that 75 sayle of the Flemish Fleet sett sayle
out of the Texel the 21st present, and 28 more from Zealand,
leaving 6 ships behind them, whose men they tooke out to man
the rest of the Fleet, & stoode away to the Northwest, which as
my duty binds me I have thought fit to acquaint yr Grace with:
& humbly kissing your hands I remain
“Yr Grace’s most humble servant to be commanded,
“THOS. EWENS.
“From aboard his Matⁱᵉˢ shipp _Kent_: this 30th May, 1666.”
The captain of the _Kent’s_ letter was considered so important that
Albemarle at once sent it off by express to the Admiralty. It is still
in existence; a stained sheet of yellowish paper with the writing crabbed
and not easily decipherable, and brown with age and faded. The letter,
with Albemarle’s covering note, was found many years afterwards among
some correspondence that had belonged to King James the Second, just as
the letter had been filed on its receipt at the Admiralty in 1666, when
James, Duke of York, was Lord High Admiral. It is endorsed:—
“For his Grace the Duke of Albemarle, aboard the _Royall Charles_ this ⸺
d.dd. In the Downes.”
Albemarle’s covering letter to the Admiralty bears the curiously scrawled
endorsements of the various postmasters on the Dover Road as they passed
the courier along on his hurried journey up to London:—“Received ye
packett at Canterbury, att past 5 in ye Morneing, by Mee, Edw Wheiston”;
“Sittingborne, past 8 in ye morning, by mee Wm Webb”; “Rochester, past
ten Before noon, Wm Brooker”; “Gravesend at nowne, Hen White.”
Albemarle was roughly handled and had to beat a retreat for the mouth
of the Thames—fighting a rear-guard action, skilfully conducted and
gallantly contested. Rupert joined him just in time to avert disaster,
but one of the English flagships, the _Prince_, grounded at the last
moment on the Galloper Shoal, and was taken by the Dutch and burned as
she lay. This was just as the _Kent_ rejoined the flag, in time for the
last day’s battle.
Cromwell, it is curious to note, first gave the name Kent to the
navy for a man-of-war; one November day of the year 1652. On that
day—Saturday, the 6th of November—an application from the Admiralty
Committee as to the names for four frigates, two of which were to be
launched in the following week, was laid before the Lord General Cromwell
and the Commonwealth Council of State. The reply was that the following
would be the names: _Kentish_, _Essex_, _Hampshire_, and _Sussex_. So
a State Paper, now among the national archives in the Record Office,
explicitly states. In their selection the Council made thereby a new
departure, and introduced a set of man-of-war names entirely different
from any before known at sea. The little group of four ships named in
November, 1652, leads the way at the head of the long series of British
men-of-war which have borne the names of our counties in battle on the
sea with distinction on so many historic days.
Why the form “Kentish” was preferred to “Kent” for the first of the
four ships, is a matter that is not quite obvious. The name, of course,
may have been appointed for no particular reason. The four names chosen
were names of four seaboard counties, locally interested in maritime
affairs, and it may well have been thought that to call one of the ships
the “Kentish” was much the same thing as calling her the “Kent.” On
the other hand, there may have been in addition something behind, in
regard to the name appointed. Everybody knows, _teste_ Lord Macaulay,
why the Puritan authorities put down bull-baiting; not because it hurt
the bull, but because it pleased the people. The Puritans rather liked,
it is to be feared, making themselves deliberately offensive to those
who saw otherwise to them. It is certainly curious, if not significant,
that at the Restoration the name “Kentish” disappears forthwith from
off the official Navy List, and “Kent” appears instead. This was just
at the time, too, that certain distinctly obnoxious names, bestowed
on men-of-war by the Puritan authorities, as, for instance, _Naseby_,
_Marston Moor_, _Worcester_, _Torrington_, _Newbury_, _Dunbar_, _Tredagh_
(the vernacular for _Drogheda_), were replaced by names such as _Royal
Charles_, _York_, _Dunkirk_, _Dreadnought_, _Revenge_, _Henry_, and
_Resolution_.
Was any reference intended in the form “Kentish,” as originally appointed
for the new ship of 1652, to the “Kentish Rising” of 1648, and its hard
fate under the sword blades of Fairfax’s troopers? Was the name designed
as a reminder to the Royalists of South-Eastern England? Was it meant as
a memento of the penalty that had been paid by so many who, only four
years before, had buckled on sword and ridden forth so blithely to the
county marching song:—
Kentish men, keep your King,
Long swords and brave hearts bring,
Down with the rebels, and slit their crop ears!
Hell now is wanting rogues,
Send there the canting dogges,
Ride to the scurry, my Kent cavaliers!
God and our King for grace,
Leave now your wives’ embrace,
Up and avenge all their insults for years!
Ironsides! Who’s afear?
Pack ’em to Lucifer,
Ride to the scurry, my Kent cavaliers!
The name “Kentish,” if introduced with such intention, would help in
serving to recall in the stately mansions of the squires of Kent, and in
many a humble yeoman’s home as well, why there were vacant places round
the family board.
* * * * *
A brief comparison between Cromwell’s _Kentish_ and her lineal successor
of our own day, His Majesty’s ship the _Kent_, may be of interest in
conclusion.
The _Kentish_ was of 601 tons burthen, 187 feet in length of hull, 32½
feet beam, and 15 feet draught. Our modern _Kent_ is 440 feet between
perpendiculars (463½ feet over all), 66 feet beam, and 24½ feet depth.
The first _Kent_, under full sail, might perhaps do nine knots at her
best speed; the present _Kent_, with her engines of 22,000 horse power,
has done twenty-three knots an hour. The first _Kent’s_ guns, forty in
number, were identical with the guns that Queen Elizabeth’s fleet carried
when it fought the Spanish Armada; the same kind of guns, practically,
that Henry the Eighth’s _Mary Rose_ had on board when she capsized at
Spithead. The same quaint old mediæval style of nomenclature, indeed,
was still in vogue for the _Kentish’s_ guns. They were called culverins
(18-pounders), demi-culverins (9-pounders), and sakers (6-pounders). The
heaviest of them, the culverins, weighed 48 cwt. each, and were 5½ inches
in calibre. The _Kentish’s_ guns also were of brass, specially cast for
her; refounded, for the most part, according to an existing Ordnance
order, out of condemned pieces and captured Royalist cannon. According
to a curious manuscript list of the ship’s equipment, the _Kentish_ when
ready for sea had on board as her establishment of war stores—908 round
shot, 468 double-headed shot, 100 barrels of powder, 60 muskets; and for
close-quarter fighting, 7 blunderbusses, 60 pikes, and 40 hatchets. The
modern _Kent_ carries as her main armament 6-inch quick-firing steel
guns, each firing 100-pounder shot and shell, and able to discharge,
each piece in half a minute, heavier metal than the whole broadside (270
lb.) of the original _Kentish_. The old ship, of course, was built of
wood, oak timber; most of which, as a curious fact, seems to have been
cut on the confiscated estates of delinquent Royalists in the County of
Kent. The new _Kent_, built of steel, and with 4-inch Krupp armour along
her water line, cost to complete for sea upwards of three-quarters of a
million sterling; the _Kentish_ frigate, guns and all, cost £5000, or in
present-day money from £20,000 to £25,000.
That the gallant “Kents” of His Majesty’s navy at the present hour
are quite ready to give a satisfactory account of themselves before
the enemy, should occasion arise, may be judged from their firing
record in the “gunlayers competition” for 1907. With the 12-pounder,
the average per gun for the whole ship was 11·18 hits a minute. Petty
Officer Nash achieved fourteen hits in fourteen rounds, the run, during
which the score was made, being only of fifty-five seconds duration.
In his fifty-five seconds Able Seaman Ramsden fired fifteen rounds,
the time taken to load and fire each time being just over three and a
half seconds, and he hit the target thirteen times. During the light
quick-firing gunlayers’ test, the _Kent_ fired, in the short space of
fifty-five seconds, 107 rounds, scoring 83 hits, from her 12-pounders;
and 42 rounds, scoring 35 hits, from her 3-pounders. Some of the guns hit
the target with every shot they fired, and the loading was wonderfully
smart, averaging 15 rounds per gun for the fifty-five seconds.
The _Kent_ of King Edward’s fleet was laid down at Portsmouth Dockyard
on the 12th of February, 1900, as a first-class armoured cruiser, and
launched on Wednesday, the 6th of March, 1901, Lady Hotham, the wife of
the Admiral Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, naming the ship in the
orthodox way, with wine grown and produced within the British Empire,
and specially presented for the ceremony by the Agent General of South
Australia. The _Kent_ was the first to be launched of our modern set of
County Cruisers. She was also the first to hoist the pennant and join the
fleet at sea.
[Illustration: THE SCENE OF THE OPERATIONS UNDER ADMIRAL WATSON AND CLIVE
[From Major James Rennell’s “Bengal Atlas,” published in 1781. Reproduced
by the courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society.]]
III
THE AVENGERS OF THE BLACK HOLE:—WHAT THE NAVY DID FOR CLIVE
The fathers in glory do sleep
That gathered with him to the fight,
But the sons shall eternally keep
The tablet of gratitude bright.
This year, 1907, has witnessed the coming round of the hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of British rule in India. It
has recalled to memory too, among some of us at any rate, the name of
one of the great Englishmen of history, Clive, and how he set his hand
to the work which, in its ultimate outcome, placed the realms of the
Great Mogul beneath the sovereignty of the British flag. The part that
the Royal Navy took side by side with Clive and his soldiers is perhaps
hardly as fully recognized as it should be, considering all that it
meant. For that reason, among others, the fine story of what took place,
of the help that our bluejackets of that time gave when the situation
was most critical, finds its place here. The navy had its own _rôle_ to
take in the stirring drama, and it fulfilled it—completely, faultlessly,
resistlessly. Without the navy—the squadron then on duty in Indian
waters—Clive would have been powerless, and the golden hour for England,
with its opportunities, would have had to be let go by.
In the summer of 1757 the British East Indies Squadron had not long
arrived in the Bay of Bengal. It had come out from England four or five
months previously in anticipation of the outbreak of a war with France.
After carrying out operations against the pirate strongholds of the
Malabar coast, it had gone round to take post off Madras, at that time
the most important of the British settlements in the East. It was in the
neighbourhood of Fort St. George when, absolutely as a bolt from the
blue, came the news of the catastrophe at Calcutta, which led to the
tragedy of the Black Hole.
At that moment news was expected by every ship from England that war had
been declared with France, and part of the British squadron was on the
watch down the coast, off St. David’s. It seemed quite possible, indeed,
that the first intelligence of war might be the appearance on the scene
of a French squadron from Mauritius, cleared for action. All were keenly
on the alert, almost from the first arrival of the British force on the
coast. There was no means of knowing whether the French were not already
on their way, and every precaution was taken against surprise. A daily
masthead look-out was kept for six weeks, the ships being maintained in
readiness every night to clear for action at short notice.
So little was trouble from the north expected, that month of July,
1757, that an expeditionary force under Clive to assist the Subahdar of
Hyderabad in his quarrel with M. Bussy was on the point of setting out.
To help the Subahdar a force of three hundred European soldiers and
fifteen hundred Sepoys of the Madras army was told off, and to counteract
the consequent weakening of the garrison of Madras, Admiral Watson, the
Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies Squadron, was requested to bring
his squadron higher up the coast so as to keep guard in the immediate
vicinity of Fort St. George.
The Admiral did as he was asked, after which, just as the Hyderabad
column was on the point of marching off, the blow from Bengal fell.
In the second week of July a letter came from Governor Drake at Calcutta
with the news that the new Nawab-Vizier of Bengal, Suraj-u-daulah,
had seized the Honourable East India Company’s factory at Cossimbazar
and made the officials there prisoners. There was great anxiety at
Madras, and Major Kilpatrick, of the East India Company’s service, with
three companies of European troops, was at once sent north, on board a
Company’s ship, to render what assistance he could. The Bengal military
establishment at that time comprised only five hundred men—two hundred
Europeans and three hundred Sepoys. The dispatch of the soldiers for
Calcutta delayed the start of the expedition for Hyderabad; and then,
just as marching orders were about to be given for the second time, on
the 5th of August, a second letter from Bengal arrived.
To the amazement and consternation of all, they learnt that Calcutta had
fallen. Suraj-u-daulah had swooped down on the settlement with seventy
thousand men, with cannon and four hundred elephants, and had captured
Fort William. Governor Drake sent the message from a place called Fulta,
a riverside village in the Sunderbunds, some forty miles below Calcutta.
The garrison of Fort William, he said, had made a defence for five days,
after which, ammunition failing, he and the higher officials had taken
refuge on board what ships there were in the Hooghly and retreated with
them to Fulta. The women were safe on board the ships, said the Governor,
but all were in the utmost distress and great danger. They appealed for
help at the earliest possible moment. Not a word was said of any one
being left behind in Fort William; not a syllable about the tragedy of
the Black Hole. News of that apparently had not yet reached Fulta. But
without the crowning tragedy, the news, as it reached Madras, was bad
enough. It came with stunning effect: “A blow as filled us all with
inexpressible consternation,” to use the words of Dr. Ives, the surgeon
of Admiral Watson’s flagship, the _Kent_.
To recover Calcutta and take vengeance on the Nawab were the thoughts
uppermost in every one’s mind at Madras. A sloop-of-war, the
_Kingfisher_, was hastily dispatched northward on the day after the
receipt of the news to render assistance to the ships with the refugees
on board, which would probably be found lying weather-bound in the
Hooghly. The troops for Hyderabad were ordered to stand fast. An urgent
message was sent to Fort St. David to summon Clive to the Presidency.
Clive hurried to Madras, and with Governor Pigott and the Council
discussed the situation.
Discussion, however, soon disclosed a difference of opinion as to what
should be done. Some of the leading people at Madras were nervous for
themselves. Certain members of the Council objected to any weakening of
the garrison. War with France, they said, was imminent. It was quite
possible indeed, according to late advices from Hyderabad, that the
Subahdar and M. Bussy might settle their quarrel and combine against
Madras. With that possibility before them, was it wise to strip Madras
entirely of its garrison, now that the worst had already happened in
Bengal? The Council met day after day, and adjourned without coming to
any decision. Fortunately in the end the bolder spirits prevailed. By
a majority the Council decided to equip an expedition and send help to
Bengal as soon as the weather—it was the monsoon season—would let the
expedition start.
It was agreed, after a consultation with Admiral Watson, that Colonel
Adlercron’s regiment (39th Foot) and 1500 Sepoys should be shipped on
board the men-of-war and some Indiamen then in the Roads, and proceed to
Balasore, at the mouth of the Hooghly. There the vessels then housing
the Calcutta refugees would transfer them on board the three larger
men-of-war, the flagship _Kent_, the _Cumberland_, and the _Tyger_, which
ships, it was held, drew too much water to cross the shoals at the mouth
of the Hooghly. The Indiamen and the Calcutta ships would then transport
the soldiers up the river and recapture Calcutta, escorted and assisted
by three smaller men-of-war, the _Salisbury_, the _Bridgewater_, and the
_Kingfisher_.