The Fall of Toulon

by Bernard Ireland

  Although posts aboard sixth rates were eagerly sought by newly promoted commanders, the ships were not built in large numbers, not least because their usual duties would make them easy prey for enemy frigates. Commerce protection and patrol were their usual lot and, for these, sloops could usually perform equally well while having the advantage of being built more cheaply and in greater numbers.

  The term sloop was imprecise, embracing brig- and ship-rigged categories with two and three masts respectively, some with quarterdecks and/or forecastles, some without. For lieutenants-in-command they provided valuable experience in that the enemy employed large numbers of speedy corsair-style craft, commonly termed chasses-marée, to prey on commercial shipping. Often privately owned, they were strongly manned with large, highly motivated crews. Resulting duels, to prevent the taking of merchantmen, could be as bloody as anything between larger vessels.

  BRITISH SHIPBUILDERS preferred to build predominantly in British oak which, in conjunction with good design and adequate maintenance, was extremely durable. The wood’s qualities depended greatly, however, upon its slow rate of growth. Over the years, profligate use of oak had been matched by a lack of any national policy regarding the replenishment of plundered woods and hedgerows. This naturally resulted in shortages and a significant rise in price, for the transport of large timbers overland was prohibitively expensive. To be viable, timber needed to be sourced close to the water over which it could be transported. Indeed, shipyards still tended to be clustered close to extensive woodland, yet not too far from a major dockyard, whose resources were often required to complete the hulls produced by comparatively unsophisticated small yards.

  Shortages were felt most keenly in particular components which had to be cut from grown timber, notably knees (the brackets that supported transverse deck beams) and futtocks (sections which, scarfed end to end and doubled, formed a ship’s main frames). To alleviate the problem there was a large-scale shift to German oak, but this timber’s tendency to rot became apparent only after several ships had been built from it. Several classes of frigate were built of softwood while, at the opposite end of the scale of alternatives, some were built of teak in Bombay. The lifespan of ‘fir-built’ frigates was, typically, only ten to fifteen years, but teak construction was no guarantee of longevity, the Bombay-built Andromeda, for instance, being hulked after only twelve years’ service. It will be appreciated that not the least reason for the importance of the Baltic trade to Britain was that it was the source of many indispensable shipbuilding materials, the supply of which had to be maintained at all costs, even to the extent of hostilities.

  Chronic shortages of specific components persisted, however, leading directly to the general introduction of iron components, which had been used in minor applications by the British and other nationalities for at least seventy years already.

  PART TWO Hostilities

  chapter four

  The Process of War, January –August 1793

  INTOXICATED BY REVOLUTION, France at the beginning of 1793 none the less faced a daunting combination of threats. Engaged in a process that could no longer be checked, she was creating internal stresses that would soon erupt into civil war, that most savage of conflicts. Simultaneously, she was beset by enemies on whom, with a casual lack of diplomacy, she had declared war. Arrayed against her were Austria and Prussia, Spain and Portugal, the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the United Provinces and Great Britain.

  Britain lacked full commitment in that her prime minister, Pitt, believed that the nation’s interests were primarily extra-European. Growing concern that rabid Revolutionary ideas might successfully take root in Britain had led to a train of flawed logic. This postulated that insurrection thrived on general dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction could be allayed by spending public money on socially popular schemes. Extra taxation to raise this money would only increase dissatisfaction and funds, therefore, had to be diverted from an existing vote. As happens all too often, this proved to be the defence budget. The inevitable outcome was a considerable cut in the strength of the army.

  Perhaps fortunately, therefore, the military was in no state to be squandered in ambitious expeditions to Europe when France declared war. Defensively, its role would be to protect the home islands and foreign possessions against any enemy attempts at invasion. Offensively, it would be employed in raids and incursions against enemy shores, transported and supported by the Royal Navy.

  From the outset, the coalition exhibited its weakness in its inability to agree common war aims. Austria, in particular, sought to conquer such territory as would command maximum bartering power at the eventual peace. Several of the allied states were short of war funds and Britain found herself subsidising most of them. In return, she was able to extract an agreement that the restoration of the French monarchy was not to be a primary war objective. To have adopted it would have been to accept that France would have to be beaten into unconditional surrender, altogether too ambitious an outcome. A common aim, however, was to remain beyond the reach of what was described as the ‘general convulsion which appeared to threaten the total subversion of every social principle and every wise reputation of what is called government’.

  A first requirement for the British was manpower to boost the strength of the fighting services. The small standing army was speedily augmented by the usual course of hiring German mercenaries, initially 8,000 Hessians. Because most of the available regular troops were on standby for service abroad, militias were mobilized for home defence. As conscription was not yet a politically acceptable option, landed gentry were officially encouraged to raise companies of fencibles. These, by definition, were limited to home service but the system none the less proved to be the foundation of many a fine regular regiment.

  The navy, of course, had its own methods of recruitment, although rapid expansion soon brought problems. In time of war, for instance, rates paid to merchant seamen, particularly to those engaged in risky trades, soon increased to levels that made the pay of the regular navy look grossly unattractive. To offset both this and some of the general perceptions of life in the service, the official bounty offered to volunteers was supplemented by many municipalities from public funds. Where this reflected a degree of patriotism, it had also the practical purpose of simplifying the meeting of manpower quotas, soon to be set by government.

  With so many officers languishing on half-pay there was, at the outset, no difficulty in mustering the required numbers. Despite this, inducements generally favoured officers over ratings.

  For the actual conduct of hostilities, there existed no real War Cabinet. In practice, the prime minister, together with the home and foreign secretaries, with irregular contributions from the king, comprised an ad hoc committee which drove the remainder of the Cabinet on policy matters. Not for a year was the post of secretary of state for war created, and even then it was considered so minor a task that the home secretary, Viscount Melville, assumed it as an addition to his other duties. These included serving as treasurer of the navy under the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Chatham. During the period covered by this narrative, therefore, the British contribution to the coalition had a distinctly amateurish air, with a tendency to dissipate available resources.

  The Royal Navy’s tasks were little different from those of earlier conflicts. As the French traditionally practised war on commerce, or guerre de course, the defence of trade loomed large, as did the capture of the overseas bases upon which enemy privateers depended. The West Indies were much prized as a market and source of wealth by both the British and the French and, again, it could be expected that the ownership of key islands would be hotly contested. Reinforcement of the West Indies stations was, therefore, an imperative.

  The disposition of the bulk of the Royal Navy was much influenced by that of the French, based in four major locations. The strength and disposition of the latter at this time are neatly summarized by William James, the first edition of whose Naval History was p
ublished some thirty years later. His assessment was as follows:

  Of these, at the start of hostilities, forty-six ships of the line, forty-six frigates and twenty-five corvettes were still ‘in ordinary’, i.e. laid up, or under repair and maintenance. Ten ships of the line and eight frigates were under construction.

  By some margin, the most powerful French squadron was that based on Brest. From this very secure location at the western tip of Brittany, it was nicely poised to operate in either the English Channel or the open Atlantic, for which forays it could conveniently be augmented by contingents from Lorient or Rochefort.

  Toulon, base to the Mediterranean squadron was, like Brest, protected by its geography against direct attack from the open sea. With Italy yet to be unified, and still comprising several states, only the navy of Spain could seriously challenge that of France in this theatre.

  At any particular time, the nature and extent of British naval activity in the Mediterranean fluctuated largely according to the state of relations with France and/or Spain and the threat that they posed to national interests or alliances. Gibraltar had already been developed as a fleet base, though while it was conveniently located for watching the Spanish fleet in its southern bases of Cadiz and Cartagena, it was a long distance from Toulon.

  The common procedure of ‘close’ blockade meant maintaining a battle squadron off an enemy’s base, thereby severely limiting his options. Imposing considerably less strain on either ships or men was the ‘distant’ blockade. This involved stationing only a frigate squadron in the enemy’s offing, supported by the odd 74. Their task was to summon the main strength of the battle fleet at the first hint of the enemy breaking out. Either option required the availability of basing, repair and maintenance facilities within practical sailing distance. At this time, therefore, the island of Minorca was strategically important to the British, its deep-water base of Port Mahon being only 250 miles from Toulon.

  Not surprisingly, Minorca had already seen two considerable periods of British occupation but, just ten years earlier, by the terms of the Peace of Versailles which had officially ended the American War of Independence, the island (together with Florida) had again been ceded to Spain. The presence of Spain in the First Coalition was thus essential to the Royal Navy’s ability to invest Toulon if the effort of again capturing the island was to be avoided.

  William James’ voluminous statistics allow us also to arrive at a brief summary of the strength of the Royal Navy in 1793. The table below permits a rough comparison with that for the French fleet.

  Rate

  FIRST

  SECOND

  THIRD

  FOURTH

  FIFTH

  SIXTH

  Guns

  100–120

  90–98

  64–80

  50–60

  32–44

  20–28

  Number

  5

  16

  92

  12

  79

  35

  At the beginning of the year, only one first rate was fully commissioned, the remainder being under repair or in ordinary. Of second rates, the corresponding figure was 4 out of 16; for third rates, 21 out of 92; for fourth rates, 7 out of 12; for fifth rates, 35 out of 79; for sixth rates, 15 out of 35.

  It will be noted that while the French had readily available over half their strength in the three major categories, the British had to hand less than a quarter, and under one half in lesser classes. It was fortunate that it was impracticable for the French to concentrate their strength.

  During 1793, therefore, as British yards strove to bring ships forward from reserve and recruiting services scoured the land for the crews to man them, the Royal Navy was numerically inferior and found itself severely stretched. It appears to indicate that it was not expected that the French would declare war. Indeed, just a year earlier the prime minister, noted for having less acumen for war than his father, had declared: ‘Unquestionably, there has never been a time in the history of this country when, from the situation in Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace than at the present moment.’

  It was in Britain’s favour that partial mobilizations against Spain in 1790 and against Russia in 1791 had been valuable exercises in proving the thoroughness of Lord Barham’s matériel preparations.

  In time of war, overseas possessions are both blessing and liability. Garrisons needed to be rapidly strengthened, causing a further drain on the already inadequate strength of the British army while requiring the services of warships to transport them. While some larger islands assisted through the raising of forces of local levies, the alliance of the Spanish was welcome, not least for removing a further threat.

  On paper, the Spanish fleet was a formidable force, the design and construction of its ships highly regarded. As with the French, however, its infrastructure had been badly run down, with dockyards under-resourced and ship maintenance skimped. As allies, the Spanish were regarded by the British as unreliable, while the Royal Navy held the fighting qualities of their fleet with scant respect. In the words of Nelson himself (then newly appointed to command the Agamemnon 64, having spent five years on half-pay): ‘I never saw finer men-of-war … very fine ships, but shockingly manned.’

  Spain at this time supported a fleet of over 200 ships, seventy-six of them ships of the line. Of these, fifty-six were in commission. Indeed, of the whole, about 80 per cent were ready for sea, an extraordinarily high proportion. In 1795 Spain would make her own peace with France but, for the period of this narrative, remained an ally of Britain.

  A further short-lived ally would be the Netherlands, fated to be quickly overrun by French forces. Their fleet, too, was of considerable size, being reckoned at 119 ships, forty-nine ships of the line. Where the British acknowledged the excellence of Dutch seamen, their ships were not rated so highly. Not only had their general condition been allowed to deteriorate but their design was found wanting. Due to the uniquely constricting feature of the shallowness of home waters, Dutch ships needed to be of limited draught. In order to displace a given amount, their designers inevitably produced beamy ships with little depth to their hulls. The first factor made them poor performers to windward while the latter meant that hulls lacked the longitudinal stiffness required to tolerate heavy armament, particularly near the extremities. It was thus no accident that the largest Dutch ships were their ten 74s. Their frigates were well constructed but, again due to weight restriction, they carried few guns above 12-pounders at a time when their foreign equivalents shipped an 18-pounder main battery.

  Of the minor allies in the Mediterranean region, Portugal possessed ten ships of the line, equivalent to third rates of between sixty and eighty guns. It also had fourteen frigates. Less than half of the total strength could be mustered at any one time.

  Often referred to simply as ‘Naples’, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies supported only a small fleet, but the king placed a valuable division of four good 74s and a brigade of troops at the disposal of the British commander-in-chief, Mediterranean fleet.

  Despite its name, the kingdom comprised the island of Sicily and the southern half of the Italian peninsula. It was thus of considerable strategic value to the British, although its main base at Naples was a considerable distance from Toulon and its workforce was badly affected by French-inspired republicanism.

  Although the Royal Navy’s Channel and Mediterranean fleets would bear the brunt of containing the French, their strength could not be boosted at the expense of other commands. Since the loss of the American colonies, the North American station had diminished in significance, but that of the Caribbean was as important, and as demanding, as ever. British interests stretched from Jamaica in the west to Trinidad (then Spanish), hard by the South American coast, a chain of islands some 1,500 miles in length and mostly in British or French possession.

  The constant wind pattern and the considerable sailing involved in adequately covering th
e theatre required the maintenance of two separate forces, one based on Jamaica, the other in the Leeward Islands. Owing to the presence of French bases and the wealth of British commercial traffic around the islands, the opportunities for the enemy to disrupt trade were considerable. British fleet dispositions reflected this, having their strength in frigates and minor warships, backed by a number of line ships that was steadily reduced as the actual threat from the enemy became more accurately gauged.

  Beyond protection of trade, the navy was endlessly involved in combined operations, moving troops from one garrison to another or against enemy-held islands. Such captures denied them bases for privateering while providing useful bargaining chips at the eventual peace talks. A separate problem lay in the islands’ workforce, mainly imported West African slaves. Understandably, these embraced French Revolutionary ideals wholeheartedly, and trouble, however sporadic, was easily fomented and widespread.

  Reports quickly reached Britain that francophone Haiti was of royalist sympathies, leading the poorly advised Pitt to initiate action from Jamaica. With an eye also to the acquisition of the rich adjoining territory of Santo Domingo, a campaign was launched that was to drag on fruitlessly for five years. Following a fearful toll in lives and expenditure, the whole enterprise ended in failure.

  Smaller but equally vital, the East Indies station covered the Indian Ocean from the Cape to the Indies, including the waters around the subcontinent, on which France still maintained commercial enclaves. To the east of the great island of Madagascar lay the two French possessions of Ile de France and Ile de Bourbon (now Mauritius and Réunion respectively) which were capable of supporting a French frigate squadron.