up; but she had got into a bad position. The forward-half of the ship
lay partially opposite the south-east bastion, with the after-half
overlapping the southern face of the fort in such a way that some of
the guns of the further bastion on that side, the south-west bastion,
could play upon the quarters and stern. Most of the guns mounted on the
ravelin and along the curtain of the river front could at the same time
train on her bows with a raking fire, assisted by some of the guns on
the north-east or flagstaff bastion, facing the _Tyger_, some of which
could be brought to bear. More serious still was this. The _Salisbury_
had been pushed entirely out of the fight: had been placed practically
out of action for the day. The channel was not wide enough to let the
_Salisbury_ tow ahead and pass the flagship, and the _Salisbury_ had to
anchor at a spot whence only one or two of her guns could engage. Thus it
came about that the whole brunt of fighting Fort d’Orleans fell on two
ships, the _Tyger_ and the _Kent_, by themselves.
Not a shot, according to Dr. Ives, had so far been fired in reply to the
enemy’s “tremendous cannonade.” The _Tyger_ was waiting for the _Kent_ to
hoist the red flag. It went up as soon as the _Kent’s_ anchors held. “As
soon as the ships came properly to an anchor, they returned it with such
fury as astonished their adversaries.” “Our ships lay so near the fort,”
says the doctor also, that “the musket balls fired from their tops, by
striking against the chunam walls of the Governor’s palace, which was in
the very centre of the fort, were beaten as flat as a half-crown.”
Clive’s men were at work meanwhile on the land side. They had begun
pushing the enemy hard on the previous afternoon, and had opened a
brisk attack on the outworks before daylight that morning, under the
pressure of which the French outposts fell back, until they had abandoned
practically all their landward positions beyond the walls of Fort
d’Orleans. Clive’s soldiers after that occupied some bungalows that
stood not far from the walls, from under cover of which they plied the
enemy on the ramparts with a continuous fusillade of musketry, and with
six light guns they had pushed forward. The soldiers, however, could make
little further progress for the present.
“For three hours nothing was heard but an incessant roll of artillery and
musketry, the crashing of timbers and masonry, the shouts and cheers of
the combatants, and the shrieks and groans of the wounded.”
Describing the scene on board his own ship during the first two hours,
Dr. Ives says: “The fire was kept up with extraordinary spirit. The flank
guns of the south-west bastion galled the _Kent_ very much, and the
Admiral’s aides-de-camp being all wounded, Mr. Watson went down himself
to Lieutenant William Brereton, who commanded the lower-deck battery, and
ordered him particularly to direct his fire against those guns, and they
were accordingly soon afterwards silenced.”
Then he relates this incident, which occurred on board just afterwards.
“At eight in the morning,” says the doctor, “several of the enemy’s shot
struck the _Kent_ at the same time; one entered near the foremast, and
set fire to two or three 32-pound cartridges of gunpowder as the boys
held them in their hands ready to charge the guns. By the explosion the
wad-nets and other loose things took fire between decks, and the whole
ship was so filled with smoke that the men in their confusion cried out
she was on fire in the gunner’s store-room, imagining from the shock
they had felt from the balls that a shell had actually fallen into her.
This notion struck a panic into the greatest part of the crew, and
seventy or eighty jumped out of the portholes into the boats that were
alongside the ship. The French presently saw this confusion on board the
_Kent_, and resolving to take the advantage, kept up as hot a fire as
possible upon her during the whole time. Lieutenant Brereton, however,
with the assistance of some other brave men, soon extinguished the
fire. Then running to the ports he begged the seamen to come in again,
upbraiding them for deserting their quarters; but finding this had no
effect on them, he thought the more certain method of succeeding would be
to strike them with a sense of shame. He therefore loudly exclaimed, ‘Are
you Britons? You Englishmen! and fly from danger! For shame! For shame!’
This reproach had the desired effect; to a man they immediately returned
into the ship, repaired to their quarters, and renewed an inspirited fire
into the enemy.”
The end was in sight by nine o’clock, and it came within a very few
minutes of the hour.
“In about three hours from the commencement of the attack, the parapets
of the north and south bastions were almost beaten down, the guns were
mostly dismounted, and we could plainly see from the main-top of the
_Kent_ that the ruins from the parapet and merlons had entirely blocked
up those few guns which otherwise might have been fit for service. We
could easily discern, too, that there had been a great slaughter among
the enemy, who finding that our fire against them rather increased, hung
out the white flag, whereupon a cessation of hostilities took place, and
the Admiral sent Lieutenant Brereton (the only commissioned officer on
board the _Kent_ that was not killed or wounded) and Captain Coote of
the King’s regiment with a flag of truce to the fort, who soon returned,
accompanied by the French Governor’s son, with articles of capitulation.”
At the moment that the Governor hung out the flag of truce (“waved over
their walls a flag of truce,” in the Admiral’s own words) the landward
side of the fort was still holding Clive’s soldiers at bay. The firing
from the ramparts there continued for some little time after the flag on
the Governor’s palace had been lowered.
The formal surrender and giving up of the fort took place at three
o’clock in the afternoon. Says Admiral Watson in his dispatch: “I sent
Captain Latham of the _Tyger_ ashore to receive the keys and take
possession of the fort. Col. Clive marched in with the King’s troops
about five in the afternoon.” The _Kent’s_ log notes this: “5.30 p.m. The
Fort at Chandernagore fired 21 guns as a salute to H.M. Colours, after
being hoisted half an hour before.”
So Chandernagore fell. “It must be acknowledged,” to use the words of Dr.
Ives once more, “that the French made a gallant defence, as they stood
to their guns as long as they had any to fire. We never could learn
how many of their men were killed and wounded on the whole, though they
confessed they had forty dead carried from the south-east bastion. The
north-east bastion was also cleared of its defenders twice.”
“The fire of the ships,” says the Indian military historian Orme, “did as
much execution in three hours as the batteries on shore would have done
in several days.” “Few naval engagements have excited more admiration,”
says Sir John Malcolm, writing three-quarters of a century afterwards,
“and even at the present day, when the river is so much better known,
the success with which the largest vessels of the fleet were navigated
to Chandernagore and laid alongside the batteries of that settlement is
a subject of wonder.” Summing up results, Colonel Malleson says: “The
capture of Chandernagore was not less a seal to French dominion in Bengal
than it was the starting-point of British supremacy in that province.”
Admiral Watson in his dispatch states the enemy’s force thus: “They had
in the fort 1200 men, of which 500 were Europeans and 700 Blacks; 183
pieces of cannon, from 24-pounders and downwards; three small mortars,
and a considerable quantity of ammunition. Besides the ships and vessels
sunk below, to stop up the channel, they sank and ran ashore five large
ships above the fort, and we have taken four sloops and a snow.”
Dealing with the casualties on the British side, Admiral Watson proceeds
in these words: “The _Kent_ had 19 men killed and 49 wounded, the
_Tyger_ 13 killed and 50 wounded. Among the number killed, was my first
lieutenant, Mr. Samuel Perreau, and the master of the _Tyger_. Among the
wounded was, Mr. Pocock slightly hurt, Captain Speke and his son, by the
same cannon-ball, the latter had his leg shot off. Mr. Rawlins Hey, my
third lieutenant, had his thigh much shattered, and is in great danger.
Mr. Stanton, my fourth lieutenant, slightly wounded by splinters; but the
greatest part of the wounded have suffered much, being hurt chiefly by
cannon shot: Several of them cannot possibly recover.”
According to the _Kent’s_ log the flagship had three lower-deck guns
dismounted and three on the upper deck, and had 138 shot holes through
her engaged side, besides suffering severe damage aloft to masts and
rigging.
Next morning Chandernagore paid its formal salute to the victor. From the
_Kent’s_ log: “March 24th, 10 a.m., the Fort saluted the Admiral with 19
guns.” Then follows: “Fired 18 guns for the burial of the 1st Lieutenant
Perreau.” Lieutenant Rawlins Hey and Midshipman Speke died a few days
later.
After a ten days’ stay at Chandernagore, to rest the troops, arrange
for the occupation of the place and the disposal of the prisoners, the
men-of-war and the rest of the expedition returned to Fort William.
Further trouble with Suraj-u-daulah was looming ahead. The Nawab’s
troops that had started to intervene at Chandernagore had halted at
Plassey and gone into camp there. It was less than a hundred miles from
Calcutta, and the authorities strongly objected to their being so near.
There were no signs of any immediate withdrawal, although letters passed
continuously to and fro between the Council and Suraj-u-daulah. Each
side distrusted the other. Then began the series of intrigues between
certain members of the Council and Clive with Mir Jafier and disaffected
officials of the Nawab’s _entourage_, which led to the battle of Plassey
two months later. With the ramifications of the plot, the treachery of
the crafty Hindu go-between Omichand and how it was foiled, our narrative
does not concern itself, beyond the passing reference. Everybody knows
the ugly story of the “White” treaty and the “Red”; one genuine and the
other sham; one honestly signed at the Council table by Admiral Watson,
the other with the Admiral’s signature to it forged secretly, either by
the hand of Clive himself or by some underling at his instigation. The
battle of Plassey, from which the British _raj_ in the East, by common
consent, dates its rise, was the sequel, on the 23rd of the following
June.
To strengthen Clive’s small army the Royal Navy took over the garrisoning
of Chandernagore for the time being; occupying the place with a hundred
and forty of the flagship’s men, under Lieutenant Clarke of the _Kent_.
Communication between Clive’s army in the field and Calcutta was kept
open by way of Chandernagore and the _Bridgewater_, which ship was sent
some miles higher up the river and anchored there.
Fifty seaman from the East Indies Squadron with a lieutenant and
seven midshipmen in charge, accompanied Clive’s army, attached to the
artillery. Most of them were from the flagship, and one of the _Kent’s_
midshipmen, Mr. Shoreditch, was wounded in a hand-to-hand encounter with
one of the Nawab’s French officers.
More than that, however, the sailors had no small share in winning the
battle for England. At Plassey Clive, as he said, put his trust in God.
It was the sailors who kept his powder dry. It was their guns that
did the work in smashing up the dense masses of the Nawab’s levies in
the critical second stage of the battle, after the deluging monsoon
rain-storm that burst at noon, swamped the ammunition of Suraj-u-daulah’s
artillerymen. On such a detail as the smartness of Admiral Watson’s
handy-men with their tarpaulins and budge-skin powder-covers did the fate
of the epoch-making day of Plassey practically hinge. Only after it had
become plain with which side the fortune of the day rested did Mir Jafier
and his corps pass over and throw in their lot with Clive.
* * * * *
Within two months of Plassey Admiral Watson was dead. The climate killed
him in the end. For more than four months past he had been ailing,
and for the past four months had had among his papers the Admiralty’s
permission to return home on sick leave. But, like Nelson during the
last eighteen months of his glorious life while watching the enemy off
Toulon, he would not leave his post while there was duty to be done. The
inactivity after Chandernagore, in the sultry, steamy heats of the rainy
season in Lower Bengal, killed Admiral Watson.
A plain obelisk on a heavy square base in the graveyard compound of
St. John’s Cathedral, Calcutta, marks the Admiral’s resting-place. It
was erected by Mr. Holwell, the survivor of the Black Hole, during his
governorship a few years later, and is thus inscribed:—
Here lies interred the Body of
CHARLES WATSON, ESQUIRE,
Vice Admiral of the White,
Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s
Naval Forces in the East Indies,
Who departed this life
On the 16th day of August, 1757,
In the 44th year of his age.
_Geriah taken, February 13th, 1756.
Calcutta freed, January 11th, 1757.
Chandernagore taken, March 23rd, 1757._
Exegit monumentum aere perennius.
Monumentum aere perennius? Hardly that. Modern India has no place for
naval memories. Clive—and Clive only—holds the field.
Hos ego versiculos feci: tulit alter honores
—wrote Virgil once, in a moment of literary bitterness. If it be given
to those beyond the Veil to know of things on earth, and think, the Shade
of the gallant admiral might well express itself in terms hardly less
strong.
The East India Company erected a monument to the Admiral in Westminster
Abbey, and King George bestowed a baronetcy of the United Kingdom on his
only son—then a boy—in consideration of his father’s “great and eminent
services.”
_Est procul hinc_—the legend’s writ,
The frontier grave is far away,
_Qui ante diem periit_
_Sed miles, sed Prô Patriâ_.
Is it too extravagant to suggest that, with things as they then were,
with nearly five years of continuous war yet to come, and with enemies’
fleets in every sea, Admiral Watson, a man young in years for his high
position,[7] might, had he been spared, have well found opportunity for
achieving yet higher fame, even wider renown? His, too, in 1757, was
surely in a real sense a “frontier grave”—the grave of one
Who might have caught and claspt Renown,
And worn her chaplet here:—and there,
In haunts of jungle-poisoned air,
The flame of life went wavering down.
The flagship _Kent_, it so happened, did not long outlast her chief.
She had for some time past shown signs of being nearly worn out, and an
official survey of her, shortly after Admiral Watson’s death, resulted
in her condemnation as unfit for sea. She was “cast” and ordered to be
broken up, and on the 15th of September, a month all but a day from
the death of her Admiral, the pennant was hauled down on board the
_Kent_—still lying off Fort William—and the ship’s company were paid off
and drafted into the _Cumberland_, _Tyger_, and _Salisbury_.
So with the passing of the Admiral and his ship our story reaches its end.
Chandernagore, of course, is nowadays a French possession, a tiny
territory of three and a half square miles, with a railway station on the
line to Calcutta, where very few people ever get out. It was restored
to France six years after Admiral Watson took it, for no particular
reason it would appear, except that there had been a General Election in
England, and the new Ministry was desirous of reversing the policy of
its predecessors. Our beaten enemies got back almost everything that the
valour of our sailors and soldiers had won for England, in order that
the Treasury Bench might score a point in party politics. But we for our
part have no right to throw stones. We of the present day have seen much
the same thing happen elsewhere. Chandernagore has been twice retaken
since 1763, and twice given back. It was finally handed back to France
in 1816, after the Napoleonic War, the Foreign Office being under the
impression—so, at any rate, the story goes—that it was one of the West
India islands!
IV
BOSCAWEN’S BATTLE:—THE TAKING OF THE _TÉMÉRAIRE_
Over the seas and far away
“Old Dreadnought” steers to his fight to-day!
One of the best known of all our man-of-war names reappears on the roll
of the British fleet in the name _Téméraire_, now borne by one of our
new giant 18,000-ton battleships of the _Dreadnought_ type. This is the
story of how it came to be a British battleship name in the first place,
the story of the act of war which in the sequel led to that historic
man-of-war the “Fighting” _Téméraire_ figuring on another day among the
ships of Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar, to fight there as the _Victory’s_
chief supporter in the fiercest of the fray.
How we came to have a _Téméraire_ in the British Navy the name of
course bears on its face. It was originally borne by one of Louis the
Fourteenth’s men-of-war, and at the date of its adoption by capture into
the British service, in 1759—“The Wonderful Year”—had been honourably
known in the French Navy for upwards of ninety years. The first
_Téméraire_ to sail the seas was so named, it would appear, by the Grand
Monarque himself, the name being appointed to a man-of-war of fifty-two
guns, built by contract in Holland for the French service, in the year
1668, when a war with England seemed at hand. King Louis, it is said,
further appointed to the _Téméraire_ on her naming, as a special and
distinctive figure-head, an elaborately carved and gorgeously coloured
effigy of himself in his celebrated “Lion’s Mane” wig, sworded and
spurred and wearing a military _just-au-corps_ tunic of cloth of gold
over a scarlet vest with crimson breeches and crimson stockings—the
orthodox attire of a French sea officer of the _Grand Corps_.
This first French _Téméraire_ was a ship that the British Navy of her
time saw something of. She formed one of the men-of-war present with the
allied French squadron which played so very peculiar a part when attached
to the Duke of York’s fleet in the battle of Solebay in 1672, and in the
same way also she was present at Prince Rupert’s three drawn battles
with De Ruyter in the following year. As an enemy a few years later, the
first French _Téméraire_ fought against us both at Beachy Head and in the
battle off Cape Barfleur, after which the _Téméraire_ escaped and found
refuge under the harbour batteries of St. Malo.
“_The Rash_” is what an official return on the French Navy, presented
to Parliament on the 9th of February, 1698, calls the _Téméraire_,
in accordance with the custom then in vogue of translating foreign
men-of-war names appearing in British official documents. It seems
a curious disguise for the name _Téméraire_ perhaps, although even
then it is hardly so grotesque as the names under which some of the
_Téméraire’s_ consorts figure in various House of Commons returns: “_The
Without Danger_,” for instance, for _Le Sans Pareil_; “_The Undertaker_”
or “_The Understanding_” (as two different official lists give it) for
_L’Entreprenante_, another ship; “_The Jolly_” for _Le Joli_; “_The
Fire_” for _Le Fier_; “_The Fiddle_” for _La Fidelle_, a frigate; the
“_Turkish Lady_” for another frigate, _La Turquoise_, and so on.
Two years after Barfleur—on the 28th of November, 1694—a crippled French
man-of-war was met with, a few miles to the south of the Lizard, by the
British man-of-war _Montagu_. She had been dismasted in a storm out in
the Atlantic and was nearly waterlogged and sinking; and after a few
shots in reply to the _Montagu’s_ challenging gun hauled her colours
down. The enemy’s ship was the “_Timmeraire_, of fifty-six guns,” in the
words of the _Montagu’s_ log. They found it impossible to save the prize,
either to rig jury masts or to take her in tow, as the weather came on
thick and stormy, and in the end cleared the crew out, and on the 3rd of
December abandoned the ship and set her on fire. That was the end of the
first French _Téméraire_.
Two other _Téméraires_ followed in the French Navy, and then we come to
the ship that became our own first _Téméraire_. This was the _Téméraire_,
of seventy-four guns, built in 1748, which, after fighting against us in
the battle which cost Admiral Byng his life, became prize of war three
years later to the man whose hand signed the order for Byng’s firing
party, Admiral Boscawen, on the day of Boscawen’s defeat of the French
Toulon fleet in Lagos Bay, on Monday, the 19th of August, 1759.
The taking of our future first _Téméraire_ was one result of the
determined attempt at the invasion of England that the French made in
1759. They had prepared a large army, and transports were assembled to
carry it across the Channel as soon as their Toulon fleet, by coming
round and joining hands with their Brest fleet, had given France the
command of the Channel by providing a sufficient force, as the French
counted, to hold the British fleet in check, and see the expedition
safely over. To leave port, however, was what the French Toulon
fleet—among which was the _Téméraire_—could not do and would not try,
until the British force blockading Toulon under Admiral Boscawen was out
of the way. The Brest fleet, at the same time, watched closely by Hawke’s
powerful fleet, as a mouse in its hole is watched by a cat, could not put
to sea with hope of success unless the Toulon fleet evaded Boscawen and
joined hands with it.
Chance threw an opportunity of escape in the way of the _Téméraire_ and
her consorts. Various reasons—damage to three of his ships in a somewhat
venturesome attack on some outlying vessels of the French fleet anchored
under the batteries that guarded the entrance to Toulon Roads, and a
general want of water and provisions on board all his ships—induced
Boscawen, in the last week of July, to withdraw temporarily to Gibraltar.
De la Clue, the French Admiral, on learning by chance where Boscawen had
gone and why, snatched at the offered occasion to make his sally. He put
to sea on the 5th of August, determined to risk the passage round.
The fortune of war at the outset, and for nearly half-way, made a show
of favouring the French. They managed to escape being sighted by the
frigates that Boscawen had posted on the look-out between Malaga and the
Straits. Not an English sail was sighted; nothing to cause disquietude
happened, until just as de la Clue’s ships were in the act of passing
Gibraltar.
With a brisk Levanter blowing over their taffrails and a thick haze
on the sea, towards dusk on Saturday evening, the 17th of August, the
Toulon fleet, after standing well over to the Barbary shore so as to
give Boscawen’s ships at Gibraltar the go-by, was being carried rapidly
past where the British fleet was lying, when suddenly, just as the
elated Frenchmen were assuring themselves of good success for the rest
of their cruise, almost by accident, as it were, at the eleventh hour
they stumbled on the only one of Boscawen’s look-outs that they had yet
to pass. Just off Ceuta, a little to the eastward of that place, the
_Gibraltar_, a twenty-gun ship, quite unexpectedly to both sides, loomed
out of the mist close alongside the passing French fleet.
The mischief, from the French point of view, was done. The captain of the
_Gibraltar_ realized at once that the strange fleet he saw heading out of
the Mediterranean and close at hand could only be the enemy from Toulon.
He promptly went about and hauled in for the Spanish coast, firing signal
guns of alarm. The French for their part seemed to have been too much
taken aback to act. As much surprised at the meeting apparently as was
Captain McCleverty of the _Gibraltar_ himself, Admiral de la Clue made
no effort to stop or to silence the tell-tale British scout, although
he might have done so. He simply contented himself with putting out all
his lights, and then he continued to stand on with all sail set, heading
west-north-west, so as to get clear away and out into the Atlantic.