Years of Victory 1802 - 1812

by Arthur Bryant

  them in return " constant contest with the elements and with tempers c and dispositions as boisterous and untractable." At home their wives waited in comfortless lodgings in the fishermen's cottages of lonely Torbay, raised vegetables and flowers to send aboard in the rare, hurried hours of refitting when the Fleet was forced to stand over to its own coast, and daily made the dreary climb of Berry Head to strain their eyes for a glimpse of distant sails.1

  Yet the men who lived this life somehow contrived to keep cheerful and even merry. They grew mustard and cress and mignonette as Captain Markham did on the stern walk of the Centaur, kept ducks and pigs and enjoyed such occasional treats as little eleven-year-old Bernard Coleridge who, being invited to dinner in the wardroom, "dined upon green peas and mutton and other good things," washed down, since he did not relish grog, with two glasses of wine. Salt beef ten years in corn, biscuit, stinking water and brandy and maggots that tasted cold to the tooth was their more normal diet.2 The same lad—prototype of his race and Service— thrilled at his glimpse of the French shore and the distant, unmoving masts of Brest, played marbles on the poop with his fellow midshipmen—"good fellows but they swear rather"—and voted the ship's biscuits, though maggoty, very good. Even when he was on the yard-arm high above the rollers or on watch at night, with his hat crammed over his ears and his cravat round his neck, thinking he would give a fortune for a warm greatcoat, he remained merry and full of spirits. "I have got a good heart and a clear conscience, and, as the saying is', a clear heart and a light pair of breeches go through the world together." It was a moving thing to hear the rough seamen on their Saturday nights singing " Rule, Britannia!" or dancing on the moonlit deck with as much mirth and festivity as though they were in Wapping, even when, as sometimes happened, the rats had destroyed the bagpipes by eating the bellows.3 When they came-home on their rare leaves, they kept the sea ports in an uproar. Haydon as a boy loved to watch Jack with his pigtail and dashing girl making high carnival in Plymouth high street and hear the hoarse voice of the fore-top-man cracking his jokes on everything that came his way—man, woman or French prisoner.

  1 Blockade of Brest, I, 120, 223-4 et passim', Collingwood, 47, 80-1; Wheeler and Broadley, II, 164; Spencer Papers, II, 55; Cornwallis-West, 467; Wynne, III, 173-4, 182; Robinson, 315, 383; Creevey, I, 18; Codrington, 64, 48-9; Markham, 171.

  1 "O for a draught of fresh water I cry out, for our water stinks enough to poison a person, and we arc generally forced to drink two glasses of wine or brandy to one glass of water to take off the stink." Bernard Coleridge to his mother, 29th June, 1804. Coleridge, 97.

  3 Collingwood, 64.

  The station taken by the British blockading squadrons was dictated by the position not of invasion barges but of the French ships that could lie in the line of battle. The crucial strategic points were their bases—Brest, L'Orient and Rochefort in the Atlantic, Toulon in the Mediterranean, and the Texel which sheltered all that remained of the Dutch fleet after its defeats at Camperdown and the Helder. Cornwallis kept watch over the first three, Nelson over Toulon, and Keith over the Texel. During the first few weeks of the war the situation was complicated by the fact that half the few French battleships then ready for sea were in the West Indies. But Napoleon, in his impatience to stage an early invasion, "solved the dilemma by recalling them to Europe. The British were thus freed from any serious threat to their trade routes from across the Atlantic. They captured one of the French battleships and several smaller vessels before they left the Caribbean, though the rest, evading the squadron sent to intercept them, took refuge in the technically neutral ports of Spain, Here they were promptly blockaded by Alexander Cochrane and later by Sir Edward Pellew, who, more than five hundred miles from his nearest base at Berehaven and Plymouth and on the stormiest lee shore in Europe, maintained as iron a watch on Ferrol as Cornwallis on Brest and Collingwood on Rochefort. Being something of a diplomat as well as a great sailor, Pellew preserved friendly relations with the Spaniards and used their nominal neutrality and the shelter they gave the French to establish a British anchorage in Betanzos Bay. Here the rival look-outs frequently met on neutral ground, even sharing the same windmill, a British lieutenant watching Ferrol from one window and a French lieutenant the British squadron from the other.1

  Farther afield were the questing frigates, occasionally accompanied by a detached battleship, which, constantly coming and going, maintained communication between the blockading squadrons and the Admiralty, intercepted French and Dutch merchantmen on the high seas, harassed French coastwise communications and generally made the Channel, the Bay and the Atlantic a trap for anything coming out of or bound for France. "I beg leave to inform you," wrote Captain Williams of the Russell to the Commander-in-Chief on May 31st, "that I yesterday morning detained and sent into Plymouth a Dutch galliot laden with salt and a French brig named Rebeca from Lisbon bound to Havre de Grace; she has a valuable cargo consisting of wine, sugar, Spanish wool." On the same day Captain Prowse of the Sinus frigate reported capturing in latitude 45 53/N longitude 5 25'W the Maitre de Famille from Guadeloupe

  1 Cornwallis-West, 408-9.

  and the brig Zephir from Charleston; next day after a ten-hour chase he took the ship l’Aigle bound for Bordeaux. "You are to stretch to the northward across the Bay," Cornwallis wrote to Captain Fleming, "until you are nearly in the stream of the Channel, and in that direction you are to make your westing from twenty to twenty-four degrees, and latitude from forty-eight to fifty north, and, continuing in that direction, most diligently look out for and afford protection to the homeward bound trade, continuing upon that service for the space of two months from your arrival upon that station."1

  At the other extremity of the great hoop of ocean which encloses western Europe, Nelson kept guard in the Mediterranean, as effectively barring Napoleon's sea egress to the south and east as Keith and Cornwallis to the north and west. His instructions were couched in the broadest terms, for, once on his station, no orders from England could reach him under many weeks. He was to maintain watch over the French fleet at Toulon, prevent its junction with the Spaniards should the latter show signs of activity, and protect Malta, Naples, Sicily, the Ionian Islands and the Turkish Dominions in Europe, Asia and Africa. He was also to keep the Mediterranean and Aegean clear of French privateers and Algerian pirates. He had no ally—for the Two Sicilies and Sardinia, though secretly friendly, were far too terrified of France to offer him active help— and no base nearer than Malta and Gibraltar, respectively seven hundred and nine hundred miles from his station off Toulon. His task was complicated by the fact that his ships could not, like those of the Channel Fleet, put into Plymouth or Portsmouth to refit, but, however rotten, had to remain on the station till they could be replaced from England. "If I am to watch the French," he wrote in a Gulf of Lyons gale, " I must be at sea; and if at sea must have bad weather; and, if the ships are not .fit to stand bad weather, they are useless." For by discharging highly-skilled if over-leisurely workmen from the yards during the Peace, selling off surplus stores and discouraging, in the name of administrative purity, the allocation of contracts to private shipbuilders, St. Vincent had seriously handicapped the Navy he served with such fidelity. Collingwood reported at Christmas that his ship's company was worked to death to right defects in a vessel which proved unfit for sea; "we have been sailing for the last six months with only a sheet of copper between us and eternity." 2

  1 Blockade of Brest, I, 52-3.

  2 C.H. F. P., I, 329; Nicolas, V, 83, 144-5, 162-3, 174-5, 210-11, 239, 306, 319-20; Blockade of Brest, I, 222 et passim; Cornwallis-West, 389-90; Upcott, 171-2; Mahan, Nelson, II, 205-6; Wheeler and Broadley, II, 142, 155, 160-1. The respective cases for and against St. Vincent's purge of the Bockyards will be found in Tucker, James, III; Markham, Sherrard and JLSarham, III.

  Yet battered by storm the great ships clung to their stations. Sails were blown to pieces, masts sprung, chain-plates drawn, and pumps worked day and night till the cr
ews dropped asleep as they stood. One stately seventy-four was forced to jettison her guns; another struck an uncharted reef near the Black Rocks and sank in a few minutes. On the last day of December, 1803, for the first time in seven months even Cornwallis was forced to stand over to England for a few hours' shelter from that appalling buffeting; but scarcely had he dropped anchor than the Blue Peter again flew at his mast head. Next day he was seen off Ramhead with two other three-deckers, steering for his former station. A month later, after two more terrific gales, he was forced once more to run for shelter, only to resume immediately the same unremitting watch.

  Storm and tide only serve those who can master them. The same gale that failed to keep Cornwallis in port tore across the roadstead at Boulogne and smashed a dozen of Napoleon's moored barges. Others at Rochefort were dragged from their anchors, while an attempt in the first days of spring to form a line of a hundred and fifty gunboats outside Boulogne harbour ended in a tumultuous night of panic and disaster as a north-easter caught and swept them down Channel. By the beginning of May, though he told the Sultan of Turkey that he was only awaiting a favourable wind to plant his standard on the Tower of London, Napoleon had abandoned all idea of invasion without command of the narrow seas. The British cartoonists made fine game of his failure, showing defiant Volunteers barring the road to the capital and the King of Brobdingnag in familiar Windsor uniform with Queen Charlotte by his side looking down on little Gulliver trying to cross a tank in a small boat. But the truth of the matter was expressed by the Common Council of the City when with better hearts than grammar they voted thanks to the commanders, officers and men of the Royal Navy for " their great zeal and uncommon exertions by which our enemies have been kept in a constant state of alarm nor dared for a moment to show themselves upon that element which has so often been the scene of their defeat and disgrace."1 For, as Mahan said, it was those distant storm-beaten ships upon which the Grand Army never looked that stood between it and the dominion of the world.

  1 Blockade of Brest, I, 301-2.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Grand Design

  "Day by day, my dear friend, I am expecting the French to put to sea—every day, hour and moment; and you may rely that, if it is within the power of man to get at them, it shall be done; and I am sure that all my brethren look forward to that day as the finish of our laborious cruize."

  Nelson to Alexander Davison, 28th March, 1804.

  R

  AGE and contempt for elements beyond his ken had caused Napoleon to waste a year. For an invincible-battle fleet to destroy England behind a facade of peace he had substituted invasion without command of the sea. Instead of employing his shipyards to outbuild the British Navy he had used them to make barges. By a mistake, not of judgment but of temperament—most fatal of all mistakes in war—he had given his enemy time. His menace to invade had been, as Lord Auckland shrewdly saw, an act of weakness and short-sighted passion.

  Meanwhile Britain had increased her hold on the world's trade routes and ocean bases. Thanks to St. Vincent's steady hand, the Admiralty had kept its head; no panicking by the public, no pleas from his colleagues had been able to stampede the stout old sailor into subordinating his country's naval to her land defences. Beyond the close grip of her blockading squadrons, Britain's ocean tentacles were able to gather in the weaker French colonies while the conqueror lunged vainly at her heart.

  Napoleon's recall of his warships from San Domingo left the French West Indies at his enemy's mercy. Though unable to tackle the larger islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, a small amphibious force from Barbados under Major General Grinfield and Commodore Samuel Hood captured St. Lucia and Tobago, while the garrison of Newfoundland seized St. Pierre and Miquelon. Later Grinficld repecupied Demerara, Berbice and Essequibo—the Dutch settlements which had been restored to Holland at the Peace. Surinam followed in the spring of 1804, though a naval attempt on Curacao failed for lack of co-operation between the Services. Farther north the isolated remnant of the French army in San Domingo surrendered to the British as the only alternative to massacre at the hands of the negroes.

  In India, also, where Napoleon had designed a new empire, the war only increased British power. It gave the high-spirited Governor-General, Lord Wellesley, the opportunity, denied him by a timid home Government and a Board of parsimonious merchants, to root up the last vestiges of French influence. Even before news of the resumption of war reached him, he had refused to hand over Pondicherry to Decaen's expedition. Now, while their plans to attack him were incomplete, he struck at the French-trained armies of the restless Mahratta chiefs. In two campaigns, waged many hundreds of miles apart, his troops, during the autumn of 1803, captured with only a fraction of their force the Mogul capital of Delhi and overran Hindustan and the Deccan. On September 23rd his thirty-four-year-old brother, Arthur Wellesley," clashed with his fiery few" and won at Assaye a victory which, though little regarded in England at the time, was to help shape the future of the world for a century. Five weeks' later at Laswari the Commander-in-Chief, Gerard Lake, triumphed in one of the hardest-fought and bloodiest battles in Indian history. These exploits, which only became known at home in the ensuing spring, were achieved by a few thousand British infantry and Sepoy auxiliaries on malarial plains and in trackless jungles under a burning sun. "The English," wrote a Mahratta warrior after the storming of Ahmadnagar, " are a strange people and their General a wonderful man. They came here in-the morning, looked at the pettah-wall, walked over it, killed all the garrison and returned to breakfast!" Yet though their speed, boldness in striking, discipline and fierce tenacity astonished an India long used to war, their victories depended in the last resort on their country's control of remote oceans whose very existence was unknown to the myriads whose lives it transformed.1

  Yet Napoleon by his impatient fury achieved one thing. He had scared Addington on to the defensive. So long as Britain left Europe to its fate, the initiative remained with France. From the Pyrenees to the Vistula the cowed nations fawned on her. Germany, betrayed by Hapsburg fear and Prussian treachery, lay divided at her feet. South of the Alps, where only the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies retained a nominal independence, Italy was equally enslaved. Godoy's Spain was Bonaparte's lackey. A suspicious and equivocal Russia, having no hope of England, seemed ready to co-operate with France in the partition of the Turkish Empire. And everywhere the rising middle-classes, sickened by the frustration of corrupt

  1 For the effect of these conquests on the mind of a French observer, see Castlereagh,

  rulers, welcomed the dictator's virile New Order as the best hope for the future.

  For, though Addington's England might boast of her power to save herself, she could not save others. By first reducing the Army at the Peace to less than 150,000 men—a number barely sufficient to garrison Ireland and the Empire—and then enrolling vast numbers of Volunteers and Militiamen in preference to Regulars, the Government had deprived itself of its only offensive weapon. In its obsession with invasion it ignored what Pitt and Dundas had learnt from experience : that to a military striking force, ready for use whenever and wherever the foe should expose weakness, British sea-power could give a range and effect out of all proportion to its size.

  By the end of the earlier war a properly trained and mobile British army had captured the two chief fortified islands of the Mediterranean, overrun Egypt and compelled the surrender of a numerically superior French army: Used in conjunction with the Fleet, it had shown, as under Marlborough, how England might challenge a tyrant's hegemony of the Continent.

  But the Army, unable like the Navy to draw on the flower of a skilled profession, depended for recruitment on the poor man's craving for drink and a frugal Treasury's bounty. These sources the Administration had diverted to other purposes. Even the much-vaunted Army of Reserve Act of July, 1803 produced, after allowing for desertions, only 34,500 men of whom less than 8000 took the bounty and enlisted in the Line. Suffering 13,000 casualties—mostly
through sickness—the Regular Army during the first nine months of war dwindled rather than grew. Though the Secretary-for-War boasted that he could call on 700,000 men to defend the country, he failed to add how few were fit to contend with the victors of Rivoli. Forgetting every lesson of the past, Ministers had fallen into the most elementary of all the wartime errors of parliamentary politicians: that of imagining that soldiers could be made merely by putting men into uniform.

  It was therefore beside the point for little Spencer Perceval, the Attorney-General, to hold up Britain in the House of Commons as an example to the Continental Powers. If she was to offer them any incentive to shake off their chains, she had to do more than sit back and thank God she was not as they. When a great military Power has broken bounds on the Continent its neighbours have never taken kindly to insular exhortations to resist so long as, secure behind her moat, England has lacked means to assist them. Splendid isolation can never be the latter's final word to an enslaved world.