by Willis, Sam
Good God, Mr. Macpherson! Could I have expected this shameful conduct from you, whom I chose for my elephant in the hour of danger. And placed next myself in the line of battle, to be scratching your sides like a Highlander and pissing with this engine, when my signals for battle have been flying this half hour, and the enemy are actually caught off the point? Do you mean to engage them with this stream? A man ought to be crucified alive who can be guilty of this neglect.6
It was immediately clear that the French force was more powerful than the British and that it was advancing with ‘Confident Impetuosity’.7 One thousand five hundred British sailors were still ashore ‘watering, fishing and embarking live cattle’, while others were simply, in the words of Johnstone himself, ‘taking the recreation of the shore’. At least one British officer, Colonel Fullarton, had to swim to his ship.8
The British had been caught with their trousers down. In his official report Johnstone admitted, through wonderfully gritted teeth, that the action ‘bordered upon a surprise’.9 The scene was set for a dramatic French victory, the likes of which had never been seen.
Luckily for the British, however, the French were equally unprepared for battle, and they were unprepared in two significant ways. Like the British, they were unprepared for immediate action then and there – we know that the decks of at least one of the ships, the Annibal, were encumbered with all sorts of boxes10 – but they were also unprepared in terms of command and tactical expectation. Suffren was undoubtedly aggressive, but he was also divisive and an unwilling communicator. None of his fellow captains had any idea what their leader expected of them in such a situation. Suffren took his flagship boldly into the thick of the British fleet and attempted to anchor. A tricky manoeuvre even in one’s home port, the attempt failed under the British guns and Suffren drifted close to the British flagship, where he was utterly mauled. Just one other ship mimicked his bold charge while the others ranged around the outskirts of the action and picked off easy targets.
At this stage the battle was a French victory but it was precarious. Four British ships, three of them almost defenceless, had been captured, but the French gunnery had been extraordinarily bad and the British as cool and competent as ever. In one delightful exchange Pasley’s coxswain ‘brought me one of the Enemy’s Shot and requested my liberty to return it out of his Gun – so reasonable a request I could not refuse’.11 The French casualty rate was far higher than the British and several of the French ships were now disabled. The French flagship itself was hampered with a warship in tow. Reduced in complement even before the action, Suffren had few men to spare for prize crews.
The nature of the French ‘victory’ was also coloured by the strategic situation. The British had lost four ships but had gained intelligence of far greater value. So much trouble had been caused in this war by ignorance of the location and condition of enemy squadrons, but Johnstone now knew exactly where his enemy was and its condition. A well-executed counter-strike could have eradicated the French threat to the Cape before they even reached it. But Johnstone did nothing. He held a council of war in which it was agreed that the damage sustained by the British fleet, the rising of the sea and the onset of night made any chase dangerous and worthless – a decision that was considered then, and has been ever since, as spineless.12 The French escaped. ‘What a Glorious opportunity was lost of destroying this Squadron and immortalizing ourselves’, wrote a seething Pasley,13 a loss felt so severely because, in his words, ‘The French seem’d Damnably frightened’.14
It is often too easy to say that a naval battle was not what it could have been, but in this case the argument holds water. The British had been taken by surprise for sure, but they had savagely beaten the French warships that were bold enough to enter the harbour and they had received paltry damage in return.
All of the French prizes were almost immediately restored to British control. The crew of the fireship Infernal overcame their captors and the other prize crews abandoned their prizes. The intrigued and nosy British sailors returned full of juicy stories. Aboard the Hinchinbrooke Indiaman,
The French Rascals had Plunder’d, Rob’d, and used them most inhumanly, more particularly the Ladies who they used with every indignity but the last, and by their conduct they wanted only time to accomplish even that.15
One French officer had lined the ladies up on the quarterdeck as an audience for his personal demonstration of a galloping hornpipe, ‘which they confess he performed to a Miracle’ before, in true pirate style, ‘he pulled out a Pistol, presented it to Miss Johnstone’s Breast with the most horrid Threats if they resisted, and Rob’d them of every thing they posessed’. This tale was too much for Pasley: ‘I always detested a Frenchman, but now if possible more than ever. There were four ladies, one very Pritty.’16
One particularly interesting, though fleeting, observation of a marked difference between British and French sea power was made during this campaign – a difference that would actually go on to have a major impact on the outcome of the war.
In the aftermath of the battle a Swedish boy was captured who had recently spent ‘five or six’ weeks on board one of the French warships, the Artésien. Upon his arrival aboard Pasley’s Jupiter, the boy was stunned by the cleanliness of the British ship. Pasley had his cleanliness regime expertly and rigorously maintained. His crew aired their bedding weekly and that of sick sailors daily. An ‘air pump’ operated constantly to ward off ‘foul air’ and windsails funnelled more fresh air down the hatches to boost circulation at night. Pasley toured the ship both above and below water every day, sometimes twice daily, to inspect for cleanliness.
The French, on the other hand, as reported by the Swedish boy, never once, in the six weeks he was with them, aired their hammocks, washed or cleaned the lower deck. ‘Dirty Dogs’, exclaimed Pasley, before wondering, ‘How can they be healthy, when so crouded?’17 The answer was that they couldn’t. The French had been buckling under the pressure to man their ships ever since an epidemic had struck their Channel fleet in 1779. The men were few and inexperienced, and those who were not sick were weak. With inadequate infrastructure, it was impossible that the French navy could get any stronger without months, perhaps years, of recuperation.
Johnstone stayed in Porto Praya for two full weeks. His inactivity during those weeks was roundly condemned at the time and has been ever since. Pasley was not surprised, however. We know that he suspected the competence of his commander and his fellow captains. ‘I have my doubts of some’, he wrote, ‘– others I know to be luke warm and void of all enthusiasm in the service.’18 Johnstone’s ire, perhaps in a bid to deflect attention from himself, fell, entirely unreasonably, on Captain Sutton of the Isis.19
Suffren was also furious with his captains and believed he had missed a major opportunity in a battle that ‘should have immortalized me’,20 but now he concentrated on the task in hand. He did all he could to race to the Cape with all his ships. He did not detach the damaged Annibal but drafted every carpenter in his command onto her, and in eight days she was ‘as completely new masted and rigged as if in Brest’.21 Other major repairs were conducted at sea in an impressive operation reminiscent of d’Estaing’s repair at sea off Rhode Island in 1778.* Running low on water, which he had planned to replenish in Porto Praya, he chose not to replenish in Brazil, the obvious choice given the prevailing north-easterly winds, but rationed what was left and raced for the Cape.22
By demonstrating exactly the type of determination that Johnstone lacked, Suffren made it to the Cape first and secured it for France, ending the ‘Golden Dreams’ of the British.23 Johnstone abandoned any idea of challenging Suffren at the Cape, though he did capture four Dutch East Indiamen at anchor in Saldanha Bay, this is around 65 miles to the north, in an action that was characterized by exceptional bravery from Johnstone and his sailors, who boarded the Dutch Indiamen even though they had been set on fire. ‘Some thing must be done, no matter what – a desperate game requires a desperate hazard’,
claimed Pasley.24 There is little in the entire history of the Royal Navy that stands out like this action for blind courage. Receiving fire at point-blank range from an enemy warship was one thing, but boarding one that was on fire and full of gunpowder was quite another. His pyrrhic victory complete, Johnstone skulked back to St Helena,* away from ‘this World [where] Poor Old England has not one friend. All hostile around us, no shore that will even yield us Water but at the point of our Guns.’25
The occupation of Good Hope was a great victory for the French. The British would now have to fight for their lives in India and feared greatly for their China trade. The poor Dutch, already immobilized in the north and destroyed in the Caribbean, were now gravely wounded in the east. The Cape of Good Hope, once the home of good, strict Dutch Protestants, became known as ‘Little Paris’ for its rapid conversion to French licentiousness. The statesman Jakob de Mist later complained that the French had
entirely corrupted the standard of living at the Cape, and extravagance and indulgence in an unbroken round of amusements and diversions have come to be regarded as necessities … It will be the work of years to transform the citizens of Cape Town once again into Netherlanders.26
Elsewhere the Dutch empire just fell away. All the West India Company’s forts in West Africa were taken by the British, with the single exception of Elmina, and in India Sir Edward Hughes captured the strategically critical bases of Negapatam and Trincomalee, the only port in European possession to face the Bay of Bengal and offer safe year-round anchorage.
In August came another nail in the Dutch coffin. They finally snapped under the pressure of the British blockade and sent a huge merchant fleet to sea under the protection of a naval squadron. A British fleet, under the command of the excellent Hyde Parker, spotted the Dutch and attacked in one of the closest, fiercest and yet least-known engagements in naval history, the battle of the Dogger Bank. Parker’s fleet was a mixture of relatively small ships described by one British sailor as ‘totally unfit for the Line of Battle’; it had been together for only a limited time, ‘and during that time but little attention was paid to make them expert in the forming of lines’.27 The Dutch, by contrast, were fully prepared for battle and turned out very well. ‘They appeared in great order; and their hammocks, quarter-cloths, &c., were spread in as nice order as if for show in harbour. Their marines also were well drawn up, and stood with their musquets shouldered, with the regularity and exactness of a review.’28
They met the British attack, resisting everything that was thrown at them. Casualties were high on both sides, though slightly higher on the Dutch. No ships were taken on either side but one Dutch ship sank. The difference, however, was that the Dutch fleet never left harbour again during the war because their naval infrastructure was unable to repair their broken ships and replace their dead men, and the Dutch politicians had no naval fight left. Nonetheless, the threat of their navy had severely affected the British war effort: with ships and men needed in the North Sea to confront the Dutch, too few had been available for North American waters.29
By the late summer of 1781, Dutch imperial and naval strength had entirely vanished.
* * *
The next French escape happened in the Caribbean. The scale of Rodney’s success at St Eustatius created some real problems. He was so caught up in the moment, and his personal success was so tied to the operation’s success, that he felt unable to pass its management on to a subordinate. So Rodney stayed in St Eustatius, and he stayed there for no less than three months, throughout the prime of the 1781 Caribbean campaigning season. He personally oversaw the cataloguing and sale of the loot and the gathering of a convoy that was, in his words, ‘extremely valuable, more so, I believe, than ever sailed to Great Britain’.30 Needless to say, the French did not stop to allow Rodney the leisure to complete his financial irregularities at his own pace.
Just like Johnstone in Porto Praya, Rodney knew that a French fleet was due to arrive. Unlike Johnstone, he did not know exactly where it would arrive, but it was a good bet that it would head for Martinique, the main French naval base in the Windward Islands. Rodney appointed his new second-in-command, Samuel Hood, to patrol to windward of Martinique to intercept them. His guess was correct – de Grasse was indeed headed for Martinique.
With no up-to-date intelligence of the French departure date from Brest, Hood lurked off Martinique for five entire weeks with no luck, long enough for his men to start to fall sick from scurvy. He spent much of his time grumbling about Rodney. It is ironic that Hood’s letters are so full of bile because he had been chosen by Sandwich on the basis that he was one of the few men that might actually get on with Rodney.31 But Sandwich seems to have failed to see the relationship from Hood’s point of view. Hood was opinionated and, in his eyes, Rodney was incompetent.
That opinion was then confirmed when Rodney ordered Hood to abandon his station and take up a new one to leeward of Martinique. It is a curious move and has traditionally been interpreted to Rodney’s detriment: that, with his treasure convoy now ready to sail, he was terrified it would be raided by French cruisers. He therefore wanted Hood at a station to leeward of Martinique, from where he could rush to Rodney’s help at short notice. A major and often overlooked factor, however, is that Hood’s fleet was desperate for provisions to the point that his men were dying, and one of his ships, the Russell, was in danger of sinking. A position to leeward of Martinique would, in theory, allow him to keep watch on the island and also to replenish his ships, one at a time, from St Lucia.32
This new position left the door open for de Grasse. Even if Hood was lucky enough to spot him, the prevailing current and wind would prevent him from attacking in a convincing manner. ‘I do not feel myself at all pleasant in being to leeward’, he wrote to Rodney, ‘… for would an enemy’s fleet attempt to get into Martinique, and the commander of it inclines to avoid battle, nothing but a skirmish will probably happen, which in its consequences may operate as a defeat to the British squadron.’33 He continued in a far more unguarded letter to the Deputy Secretary at the Admiralty, George Jackson: ‘doubtless there never was a squadron so unmeaningly stationed as the one under my command.’34 He was soon proven right.
De Grasse had finally taken his fleet to sea after months of frustration in the dockyards caused by poor administration and infrastructure. The men were unhappy, ‘screaming like eagles’ for pay, and he was forced to sail ‘unsupplied with most of the articles absolutely necessary for a long voyage’.35 Only half of his fleet was coppered, and the poor quality of his men immediately became apparent when several of his ships collided and two caught fire.36 All this was further proof of the rotten state of French sea power. Nonetheless, on 29 April, at the head of a fleet twenty strong and escorting no fewer than 150 merchantmen, de Grasse rounded the windward point of Martinique. The Frenchman fired a handful of broadsides at Hood, who was both surprised at the size of de Grasse’s fleet and immobilized to leeward by strong currents and light winds; his coppered ships were of no advantage against such natural forces. ‘Never was more powder and shot thrown away in one day before’, wrote Hood.37
However, the distant exchange of gunfire was enough to elevate this stand-off to the status of ‘battle’, and the fact that the French made it safely into Martinique transformed it into a ‘victory’. On hearing the news, fellow American diplomat Charles Dumas wrote a wonderful letter to John Adams in which he freely stuck pins into Rodney:
Je vous fais mon compliment, Monsieur, sur la victoire remportée par Mr. De Grasse près de la Martinique contre Hood. Voilà Rodney bien mortifié. Ce brigand le mérite.38
[‘My compliments, Sir, on Mr. Grasse’s victory against Hood near Martinique. How Rodney is shamed. That brigand deserves it.’]
* * *
This period was a total disaster for the British. In the Caribbean a newly arrived and powerful French fleet was now embedded in a well-protected French naval base. In South Africa, meanwhile, a French squadron had seiz
ed the Cape of Good Hope, from where it could threaten India and St Helena. It certainly had not helped that Johnstone had been incompetent at Porto Praya and Rodney preoccupied by treasure at St Eustatius, but all this could be traced back to the uncontested escape from Brest of the combined French fleet, caused by a British strategy that had prioritized the relief of Gibraltar over the containment of the French battle fleet in Brest. Thus the war turned, but there was still one more sting in the tail.
Darby had every available ship with him in Gibraltar, which meant that the Channel was undefended and British trade on the home stretch unprotected. On 25 April another French squadron, which had been operating unchallenged in the entrance of the Channel under the command of Rear-Admiral the comte de la Motte-Picquet, captured Rodney’s entire treasure convoy on its return from St Eustatius.
News of the disaster caused a dramatic fall in the London stock market and gloating in America. Ben Franklin immediately wrote to John Adams with the news, reporting gleefully how the British had run away: ‘The Men of War that were with them escaped; after making the Signal for every one to shift for himself.’39 Adams, who had already pointed out the foolishness of attacking St Eustatius, trumpeted once again, this time with his lawyer’s hat on:
But what completes the Jest is, that De la Motte Piquet has carried safe into Brest two and twenty of the Vessels loaded with the spoils of St. Eustatia, which Rodney had sent under Convoy of Commodore Hotham and four Ships of the Line: so that Rodney after having lost his booty is like to have lawsuits to defend and very probably the whole to repay to the Owners. Thus the Cards are once more turned against the Gambler; and the Nation has gained nothing but an addition to their Reputation for Iniquity. This is good Justice.40