the condemned cell and a suicide’s grave. It came about in this way. The
_Hoche_ was towed into Lough Swilly and the prisoners were landed and
marched to Letterkenny. The Earl of Cavan invited the French officers
to breakfast. Tone was amongst the guests. He was in a French military
uniform. An old college companion at T.C.D., Sir George Hill, recognized
him. “How do you do, Mr. Tone?” said Hill pointedly. “I am very happy
to see you.” Tone greeted Hill cordially, and said, “How are you, Sir
George? How are Lady Hill and your family?” The police, who had had
information that Tone would be among the prisoners, lay in waiting in an
adjoining room. Hill went to them, pointed to Tone, and said, “There is
your man.” Tone was called from the table. He knew what it meant—that
his hour had come, but he went cheerfully to his doom. Entering the
next apartment, he was surrounded by police and soldiers, arrested,
loaded with irons, and hurried off to Dublin Castle. There he was tried
by court-martial and sentenced to be hanged within forty-eight hours.
His request for a firing party was curtly refused. Curran got a writ of
habeas corpus from Lord Chief Justice Kilwarden. But he was too late.
Tone anticipated the execution of the law, and died by his own hand—with
a penknife.
* * * * *
The _Donegal_ man-of-war served Great Britain for forty-seven years,
keeping up to the last her reputation of being one of the swiftest
two-deckers afloat.
Trafalgar should have been one of her battle honours. One of the very
smartest captains that ever trod a British quarter-deck, “a dear
Nelsonian” of exceptional ability and merit, the gallant and chivalrous
Sir Pulteney Malcolm, commanded the _Donegal_ at that time. The
_Donegal_ had been sent by Nelson to Gibraltar to shift the low tier
of water-casks just four days before the battle. While there, at two
o’clock on the morning of Trafalgar day, Monday, the 21st of October, the
_Weazle_ sloop-of-war came bustling into Gibraltar Bay, and firing alarm
guns. She brought the fateful news that the enemy had left Cadiz and were
at sea. Captain Blackwood, of the _Euryalus_, in command of Nelson’s
inshore frigate squadron, had packed the _Weazle_ off to Gibraltar to
call up the six ships of the line, recently detached from Nelson’s fleet,
that had gone in there to fill up water-casks and refit.
The _Donegal_ was lying with her sails unbent from the yards, her
bowsprit out, and her fore-topmast and foreyard struck. All her powder
had been landed, and the ship was fast alongside the Mole. The crew had
not turned in, as Captain Malcolm was keen to rejoin Nelson off Cadiz at
the earliest moment. When the _Weazle’s_ guns were first heard, they were
hard at work shifting the lower tier of casks in the hold.
Instantly the order was given to prepare for sea. With extraordinary
celerity the casks were got back into their tiers, and the powder was
hurried into the magazines. The foremast was set up and the bowsprit
replaced, the running rigging rove, and the sails were bent to the yards.
Every man of the seven hundred on board the _Donegal_ was working his
hardest in one way or another. It proved, though, a twenty-two hours’
job; it would have been a four days’ business in ordinary times. Before
one o’clock on the morning of the 22nd they were hauling out from the
Mole into the bay. Then sea-stores and provisions were taken on board.
Before noon the _Donegal_ was ready for battle; a performance on which
all concerned might justly pride themselves.
Not one of the other five ships was nearly so well advanced, although
they also had been striving their hardest. Gibraltar is distant from the
scene of the battle off Cape Trafalgar, as the crow flies, just fifty
miles; but no sound of the firing reached there as it would appear,
although at places further off, both in Spain and on the African coast,
they heard the cannonading plainly. All on board the ships at Gibraltar
still hoped to be in time for the expected battle, as it was to them.
A new spar had been ordered from the dockyard for the foreyard. It had
not arrived by noon on the 23rd. It was forthcoming only at the last
moment, just indeed as the _Donegal_ was in the act of weighing anchor.
Sail was made at once, and they went out of Gibraltar Bay with the
foreyard towing in the water alongside the ship, not yet hoisted on board.
They had to beat out in the teeth of the wild storm, blowing a hard gale
from the south-west, that, up the coast beyond Tarifa, was wrecking
our Trafalgar prizes. Clawing out against the head wind, the _Donegal_
won her way foot by foot, and by nightfall had gained the mouth of the
Straits. Then they had to let go anchor, so as not to be swept back in
spite of themselves. Next morning they weighed anchor, and once more
went forward, forcing their way ahead against wind and storm and swamping
seas.
Damaged British ships began, one by one, to come in sight during the
forenoon. The _Belleisle_ was made out, totally dismasted, in tow of
a frigate. Then the _Victory_ was seen, partially dismasted and also
in tow. The _Donegal_ made her number to the flagship as she passed.
A little time afterwards a third British man-of-war, with her three
topmasts gone, came into view. It was the _Téméraire_. The _Donegal_
passed quite near, and hailed across: “What news?” The answer was shouted
back from the _Téméraire_ through a speaking trumpet: “Nineteen sail of
the line taken and Lord Nelson killed!”
On board the _Donegal_ all were listening with straining ears. As the
trumpet bawled the direful intelligence across, a shudder, we are told,
seemed to run through the whole ship, followed by a deep, long drawn-out
groan, plainly heard on board the _Téméraire_ as that ship swept past on
her way.
They reached Collingwood and the rest of the fleet off San Lucar a few
hours later. At once the _Donegal_ found work to do in finishing off and
taking possession of the stricken and dismasted Spanish three-decker _El
Rayo_, one of the forlorn-hope squadron that had made the sortie from
Cadiz on the 23rd, hoping to find the British fleet in serious distress
after the battle and the storm, and to be able to recapture some of the
prizes.
Most of _El Rayo’s_ men were taken on board the _Donegal_. In connection
with one of them, Captain Brenton tells this story. “A man fell overboard
from the _Donegal_ in a gale of wind on this occasion; the usual cry was
raised, when some one thoughtlessly called out, ”He is only a Spaniard.”
“Supposing he is only a Spaniard?” said a gallant English seaman, seizing
the end of a rope, and darting into the sea at the same time; “no reason
the poor ⸺ should be drowned!” Happy am I to say, from the information of
Sir P. Malcolm, both men were picked up.
Besides that, the _Donegal_ rendered invaluable assistance to several of
the badly-damaged British ships during the second gale between the 25th
and the 28th; and in rescuing men from some of the prizes that had been
driven ashore, or were in peril among the reefs here and there along the
rock-bound coast.
Wrote Collingwood a day or two afterwards: “Everybody was sorry that
Malcolm was not there, because everybody knows his spirit and skill would
have acquired him honour. He got out of Gibraltar when nobody else could,
and was of infinite service to us after the action.”
By way also of appreciation and acknowledgment of the magnificent
services rendered by the _Donegal_ after the battle, the officers and men
of the Trafalgar fleet, without one dissentient voice, agreed that the
_Donegal_ should be specially permitted to have a share, equally with
themselves, in the Nelson Monument, which the ship’s companies that
fought at Trafalgar immediately after the battle jointly subscribed for,
as their own personal tribute to their dead chief—the tall obelisk on
Portsdown Hill at the back of Portsmouth Harbour.
* * * * *
The _Donegal_, three months later, was in the thick of the fighting in
the brilliantly successful battle in the West Indies, when Vice-Admiral
Sir John Duckworth, with a squadron detached by Collingwood off Cadiz,
on special service, captured or destroyed an entire French squadron of
five ships of the line from Brest, including the finest three-decker
in the world, the great 110-gun ship _L’Impérial_, so named in honour
of Napoleon himself. It was in this battle that the British flagship
_Superb_ led down into the fight with a portrait of Nelson lashed to the
mizen stay, and her band playing “Nelson of the Nile.”
Three of the five French ships lowered their colours to Captain
Malcolm and the _Donegal_. First she led off with a rattling exchange
of broadsides with the mighty French flagship _L’Impérial_. Then she
fastened on a second French ship, and after a sharp set to at close
quarters made her give in. Passing on, the _Donegal_ engaged another
French ship till her colours in turn came down. Then she ran on board
one more Frenchman, the _Jupiter_, a ship that had already been hotly
engaged. The _Jupiter_ surrendered to the _Donegal_ after next to no
defence. Such was the _Donegal’s_ work that day, in a battle that is
really unique in the completeness of its results, but which, owing to
its having taken place within three months of Trafalgar, the world paid
little heed to at the time, and we have since quite forgotten—lost sight
of in the dazzling lustre of the greater event near home.
Until after Waterloo had been won, the _Donegal_ helped to keep the seas
for England, and on more than one occasion with shotted guns in the face
of the enemy.
Our second _Donegal_, a wooden 91-gun two-decker, built in the Fifties of
the last century, was one of the very last sent afloat of our old “wooden
walls.” She still exists, under the name of the _Vernon_, torpedo school
ship at Portsmouth.
* * * * *
The direct association between the _Donegal_ of the Royal Navy and County
Donegal came into existence first of all in the case of the present
armour-clad cruiser, the _Donegal_ of King Edward’s fleet. She is a
sister ship of the _Kent_, and was launched and named by the Duchess
of Abercorn, as wife of the Lord Lieutenant of Donegal, and at express
desire of the King. The _Donegal_ of to-day was the second ship of our
county cruisers to receive the honour of a special county presentation in
commemoration of the name she bore. The presentation was made before the
assembled officers and men of the ship by the Marquess of Hamilton, as
M.P. for Derry City, and comprised a service of silver plate, inscribed
as the gift of “the King’s subjects in the County of Donegal and the City
of Derry.”[12]
IX
ON BOARD OUR FLAGSHIPS AT TRAFALGAR
CAPTAIN HARDY AND THOSE WHO MANNED THE _VICTORY_
Heard ye the thunder of battle,
Low in the South and afar?
Saw ye the flush of the death-cloud,
Crimson o’er Trafalgar?
Such another day, never,
England shall look on again,
When the battle fought was the hottest,
And the hero of heroes was slain!
This is a glance at Captain Hardy, the captain of the _Victory_ at
Trafalgar, his lieutenants and other quarter-deck officers of Nelson’s
flagship, and also something of the men who manned the _Victory_ and
where they came from.
Incidentally this should be said of Nelson’s own personal connection with
the _Victory_. Nelson’s first association with the _Victory_ dated back
to many years before Trafalgar—ever since, indeed, the year in which
he entered the Navy as a boy of twelve. At that time the _Victory_, in
her seventh year afloat, was lying up in reserve at Chatham, the pride
of the Medway, as the finest and biggest first-rate man-of-war in the
British Navy. The boy Nelson while at Chatham saw her day after day for
months, and must have gone on board her. Later on, during the four years
that Nelson served in the Mediterranean under Hood and Jervis, between
1793 and 1797, the _Victory_ was flagship of the fleet, and Nelson, as we
know, was constantly on board her on business with the Admiral. It was on
the _Victory’s_ quarter-deck also that Sir John Jervis, after the battle
of Cape St. Vincent, publicly embraced Nelson and congratulated him on
the magnificent display of heroic daring that he had made that day. In
October, 1805, Nelson had flown his flag on board the _Victory_ for two
and a quarter years, ever since the war began, having at the outset
gladly accepted the offer of her for his flagship from what he knew of
her as the fastest three-decker afloat.
At Trafalgar “Nelson’s Hardy,” Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy, was
captain of the _Victory_. He was not the “Captain of the Fleet,” that
post being officially vacant during Captain George Murray’s absence on
leave in England owing to urgent private affairs. Hardy’s charming manner
and tact, however, and his pleasant way of “getting on” with everybody
he had to do with in all circumstances, enabled Nelson to manage for
the time being without so invaluable an aid as “Friend Murray” had ever
proved himself. Hardy and Nelson had served together for nearly nine
years on and off, ever since they first met, when Hardy was a lieutenant
in the _Meleager_, a frigate in Nelson’s flying squadron off the Eastern
Riviera. When Nelson hoisted his broad pennant on board the _Minerve_,
towards the end of 1796, Hardy went with him, and he owed something to
Nelson during the cruise. Just before the battle off Cape St. Vincent,
when the _Minerve_ was passing the Straits off Gibraltar, with the
Spanish fleet in pursuit of her, Hardy, then first lieutenant, put off
in a boat to rescue a man who had fallen overboard. The man was picked
up, but the boat was swept by the current right across the bows of the
fast approaching enemy. On board the _Minerve_ they gave the boat up for
lost, when Nelson, risking the capture of the ship and all on board,
brought-to. “By God,” he called out, “I’ll not lose Hardy!” “Back the
mizen topsail!” They picked the boat up almost under the bowsprits of
the enemy, and got off scot-free. After that, the brilliant way in
which Hardy led the _Minerve’s_ boats at the cutting out of the French
brig-of-war _Mutine_ won him his post-captaincy and the command of his
prize, in which he served until after the battle of the Nile when Nelson
moved him into the _Vanguard_ in place of Flag-Captain Berry, sent home
with the dispatches.
Ever since the battle of the Nile Hardy had followed Nelson’s fortunes
as his flag-captain in the various ships on board which Nelson had his
flag—in the _Vanguard_ first of all, then in the _Foudroyant_, the _San
Josef_, and the _St. George_. It was Hardy also who, on the night before
the attack on Copenhagen, with cool daring, pulled with muffled oars
close alongside the ships of the Danish line and took the soundings
which practically enabled Nelson to win the battle.
“A bachelor of 35, rather stout in build, with light eyes, bushy
eyebrows, square broad face, plenty of chin, and a mouth whose corners
played between humour and grimness,” is the portrait that a contemporary
gives of Captain Hardy in 1805.
Hardy—he lived to be Sir Thomas and K.C.B.—now lies in the mausoleum of
the old pensioners’ burial ground at Greenwich Hospital—a veteran laid
to his rest among veterans. No more fitting last abode surely could have
been found for “Hardy of the _Victory_” than amongst those with whom he
had lived and fought and had his being.
And this be the verse that you grave for me,
Here he lies where he wished to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
He has his monument elsewhere: in his native Dorset, where there stands a
massive column of stone, which the men and women of his county in their
pride and affection subscribed for, and set up on a spur of Blackdown (or
Blagdon) Hill, overlooking the little village of Portisham where Hardy
lived as a boy, whence also he set out to accompany Nelson to Trafalgar.
It stands in sight of the house where the Captain of the _Victory_ was
born, on the one hand; while on the other it looks out across the vales
towards the sea, not many miles away: a lonesome, wind-swept spot; a
place to visit by oneself, say on some calm December afternoon, a little
before the shortening winter twilight closes round, and look out from,
seaward for choice—
... where afar
The grey sky pales to the dim horizon,
And the murm’ring Channel with its wand’ring sails,
Drifts down through the winter’s day.
Looking seaward from the top of the monument, standing there over nine
hundred feet above the sea—twice and a quarter the height of St. Paul’s
Cathedral—“the eye rests on an unbroken panorama of coast-line, extending
from the Isle of Wight and St. Katherine’s Point on the east, to Start
Point and the Tors of Dartmoor on the west.... Far down below lie,
clearly spread out as if on a map, Weymouth and the Backwater, as well as
Portland and the Chesil Beach, whilst St. Aldhelm’s Head and the Purbeck
Hills to the left, and Thorncombe Beacon with Golden Cap beyond it to the
right, stand out in prominent grandeur.”
* * * * *
These were Captain Hardy’s officers on board Nelson’s flagship, a
complete list of the lieutenants and other quarter-deck officers serving
in the _Victory_ on the 21st of October, 1805:—
Lieutenants—John Pasco [Flag-Lieutenant] (wounded); John Quilliam; John
Yule; Edward Williams; Andrew King; George Miller Bligh (wounded); George
L. Brown; Alexander Hills; William Ram (killed).
Master—Thomas Atkinson.
Surgeon—William Beatty.
Purser—Walter Burke.
Chaplain—Rev. John A. Scott.
Secretary—John Scott (killed).
Gunner—William Rivers.
Boatswain—William Wilmet.
Carpenter—Wm. Bunce.
Marine Officers—Captain—Charles W. Adair (killed); Lieutenants—Lewis
Buckle Reeves (wounded); James G. Peake (wounded); Lewis Roteley.
Master’s Mates and Midshipmen—William Chaseman; J. R. Walker; Thomas L.
Robins; Samuel Spencer; Wm. H. Symons; Robt. C. Barton; James Green;
Richard Bulkeley (wounded); John Carslake; Henry Carey; John Felton;
Festing Grindall; Daniel Harrington; John Lyons; David Ogilvie; Alexander
Palmer (killed); John Pollard; James Poad; Oliver Picken; William Rivers
(wounded); James Robertson; Richard F. Roberts: Robert Smith (killed);
Philip Thovez; Thomas Thresher; James Sibbald; Daniel Salter; Francis E.
Collingwood; George A. Westphal (wounded).
Surgeon’s Mates—Neil Smith; William Westenburgh.
Clerk—Thomas Whipple (killed).
First Class Volunteers—Henry Lancaster; Charles Chapell; J. R. Walker.
Midshipman William Ward Perceval Johnson of the _Childers_ sloop-of-war,
a former first-class Volunteer in the _Victory_, was on board the
flagship at Trafalgar as the guest of his former messmates. He died in
December, 1880, at the age of ninety, one of the five last survivors of
Trafalgar, and the last surviving officer of those on board the _Victory_.
* * * * *
At Trafalgar the _Victory’s_ nominal complement as a first-rate,
comprising the “ship’s company,” numbered 837 officers and men, including
in the total as well, 40 boys, 145 marines, and 8 “widows’ men.” She
had actually on board on the 21st of October 804 of all ranks and
ratings, with, in addition, 26 “supernumeraries for victuals”—under
which category Nelson himself and his secretary and personal suite and
certain others were returned. There were 24 officers, including Captain
Hardy and 9 lieutenants, and the various warrant officers; and 31 mates,
midshipmen, and clerks. In action 50 men were at the quarter-deck guns;
20 were stationed on the forecastle; 150 on the main-deck; 180 on the
middle-deck; and 225 on the lower-deck, where the heaviest guns were.
These, it may be observed, had 15 men told off to each, as compared with
12 men each to the middle-deck guns, and 10 men each to the guns on the
main-deck, quarter-deck, and forecastle. The signal-staff, comprising
a lieutenant, with a mate, 3 midshipmen and 9 men, were on the poop,
where the marines had also their post. Forty-eight men and boys were
employed in and about the ship’s three magazines in handing and passing
cartridges, besides 19 more at the hatchways. All these were in addition
to the powder-men—one man to each gun—employed on the battery decks in
supplying the guns’ crews in action. Six men were told off to attend
to the wounded in the cockpit under the orders of the surgeon and his
mates—not a very large number in the circumstances; and there were also
the small-arm men, the carpenter’s gangs to stop shot-holes and attend
to leaks, men told off to see to the state of the rigging, and others in
the various storerooms, at the helm, and so on. This brief _résumé_ will
give an idea of the distribution of the _Victory’s_ ship’s company at
quarters.
[Illustration: REPRODUCTION OF THE OFFICIAL DRAWING OF THE _VICTORY’S_
FORETOPSAIL AFTER TRAFALGAR AS RETURNED INTO STORE AT CHATHAM DOCKYARD IN
MARCH, 1806]
* * * * *
The ship’s books account for the nationality, or place of birth, of
633 of the officers and men on board the _Victory_, as mustered on the
17th of October, the last muster day before the battle (the Thursday
before Trafalgar), not taking into reckoning the marines or the boys
and supernumeraries. Of the total, 411 were of English birth, 64 were
Scotsmen, 63 Irishmen, and 18 Welshmen. Three men were from Orkney
and Shetland, 2 from the Channel Islands and 1 (Lieutenant Quilliam)
from the Isle of Man. The remainder—71 men, were foreigners, from all
quarters of the known world almost, got together, for the most part, out
of merchant ships under impress warrants: 7 Dutchmen, 22 Americans, 2
Danes, 3 Frenchmen, 1 Russian, 3 Norwegians, 6 Swedes, 2 North Germans
from Hamburg and 1 Prussian, 9 from various islands in the West Indies,
2 Swiss, 2 Portuguese, 1 African, 1 from Bengal and 1 from Madras, 4
Italians, and 4 Maltese.[13]
Of the Englishmen on board: Kent, the old maritime county of England
in the day of the Cinque Ports, and the county of Admiral Rooke,
who won Gibraltar for the British Empire, contributed twenty-seven;
Devonshire, the county of Drake and Raleigh, twenty-four; Hampshire,
twenty; Somerset, the county of Blake and Rodney and the Hoods, four;
Hardy’s county, Dorset, sent fourteen, one of them from Captain Hardy’s
own native village of Portisham; Nelson’s county, Norfolk, contributed
fifteen; Suffolk, whence came Admiral Vernon and Broke of the _Shannon_,
twelve; Essex, nine; Sussex, five; Cornwall, the county of Grenville
of the _Revenge_, and “the great twin brethren” of the Seven Years’
War, Hawke and Boscawen, seven; Northumberland, Yorkshire (the county
of Martin Frobisher and Captain Cook), and Lancashire, eighteen each;
Durham, seventeen; Lincolnshire, seven; Herefordshire and Oxford, six
each. Wiltshire and Gloucester, five each. Old Benbow’s county of
Shropshire had one representative on board the _Victory_ at Trafalgar.
The other counties, men from which were in Nelson’s flagship that day,
represented by four men each, or fewer, were Berkshire and Bedford,
Worcestershire, Hereford and Cheshire, Surrey, Cambridgeshire, Notts,
Middlesex, Leicester, Staffordshire (the county of Anson and St.
Vincent), Derby, Northampton, Cumberland, and Westmoreland. London was
represented on the _Victory’s_ books by a hundred and fifteen men,
Liverpool and Shields by ten each, Newcastle by fourteen, Bristol by
five, Sunderland by four, Manchester by three. Birmingham, Leeds, Bury,
Winchester, Canterbury were among other places represented on board; and
nearly every coast town from Tweedmouth, Hull and Grimsby, and round
to Falmouth and St. Ives, had two or three men with Nelson. There were
Scotsmen there from nearly every Scottish county, from Caithness and
Banff, Ross, and Cromarty, Aberdeen and Inverness, Fife and Forfar,
Berwick, Renfrew, Galloway, Lanark, the county of that _preux chevalier_
among British naval officers, Cochrane, Lord Dundonald, “the daring in
war,” Ayr and Argyll. Eleven men from Edinburgh were on board; five from
Glasgow; seven from Dundee, the birthplace of Duncan of Camperdown; with
men from Leith, and Peterhead, Dumbarton, and Greenock. From Ireland, in
like manner, men from Donegal fought the _Victory’s_ guns side by side
with men from County Down and Roscommon, Meath and Carlow, Galway and
Sligo, Cavan, Wexford and Waterford, Tipperary and County Cork. Fourteen
men from Dublin were in the British flagship at Trafalgar; eleven from
Cork; ten from Waterford City and Belfast; Carrickfergus and Kinsale were
also represented on board.