The Black Ship

by Dudley Pope

  Flogging, although a dreadful punishment, thus seems to have had little deterrent effect. One man who saw the last days of the cat-o’-nine-tails commented that after being flogged ‘a bad man was very little the better; a good man very much the worse. The good man felt the disgrace and was branded for life. His self-esteem was maimed, and he rarely held up his head or did his best again.’

  However, the striking thing about Pigot’s punishment—apart from the ominous frequency—is the complete lack of balance. For attempting to desert one man was given a dozen lashes while another received forty-eight; for actually deserting one man received twelve while another had thirty-six. Likewise Pigot gave twenty-four lashes for mutiny—which, apart from murder and treason, was one of the worst and rarest offences in the Navy—and twenty-four for drunkenness. It is curious that six out of fifteen floggings ordered by Captain Wilkinson in the Hermione were for fighting, quarrelling or rioting, while not one of Captain Pigot’s eighty-five floggings in the Success was for any of those three offences.

  6

  THE FAVOURITES

  * * *

  THE MAN described in official letters as ‘Sir Hyde Parker, Knight, Vice-Admiral of the Red and Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s ships… at and about Jamaica, etc., etc.’ was a widower of fifty-eight. As a commander-in-chief he was a competent administrator but (as events were to prove at the Battle of Copenhagen four years later) an indecisive and uninspired leader.

  Like his protégé Hugh Pigot, Sir Hyde when a youngster had powerful interest to help him get to windward in his career: at the time he was appointed Commander-in-Chief at Jamaica he had reached the same position as his father, whose Christian name he also bore.

  On the Jamaica Station Sir Hyde had little opportunity to distinguish himself in battle; but as we have seen, there were financial considerations which made up for any lack of martial glory. The mob’s cheers for a hero died as the sun set; but a few score thousands of pounds in the Funds continued to bear interest.…

  For any commander-in-chief, one of the most important men on his staff was his secretary, and when he came out to the West Indies Sir Hyde had been fortunate in persuading a young parson, the Reverend Alexander John Scott, to become his chaplain and confidential secretary. Scott, then twenty-eight years old, was a keen bibliophile and had a remarkable talent for languages, speaking fluent French, German, Spanish and Italian. (He later became Nelson’s secretary, and it was in his arms that the great admiral was to die at the close of the Battle of Trafalgar.)

  With only a tiny staff (Scott, some clerks and writers) Sir Hyde was always kept busy with a great deal of paperwork, particularly when a convoy or a packet was about to sail for England. There were always many official letters to write—to the Admiralty, Navy Board, Sick and Hurt Board, Pay Office and Victualling Office, among many others. Surveys and reports had to be made on sick ships and sick men; details of prizes captured, requisitions for shot, powder, provisions, masts and spars, rigging and paint—all these had to go through the Commander-in-Chief.

  We have seen how a commander-in-chief could enrich his favourite captains by sending them to patrol areas where there was the best chance of finding prizes. In Sir Hyde’s own command at this time the plums were going to three young captains, William Ricketts, Robert Waller Otway, and Hugh Pigot. Ricketts had powerful interest to back him up—he was the nephew and heir of Admiral Sir John Jervis who, within ten days of Wilkinson and Pigot agreeing to exchange ships, was to win a great victory off the Cape from which he took the name of the earldom a grateful King bestowed on him, St Vincent. Otway was the son of a rich Irishman, Cooke Otway, of Castle Otway in Tipperary. Both these young men had considerable ability as well as interest. Nevertheless, an example of the advantage conferred by interest is a comparison of the tasks allotted to Ricketts and to Philip Wilkinson for the last two months of 1796—Ricketts in the Magicienne captured an 18-gun French corvette on November 1, a couple of coasters on November 9, two laden schooners on December 1, and a large sloop on December 3. During that time the Hermione had been at anchor at Cape Nicolas Mole or patrolling off Port au Prince, and had captured nothing.

  On Wednesday, February 8, 1797, two days before Pigot and Wilkinson were due to exchange ships, the sun rising over the Black Mountains was hidden by low cloud and Cape Nicolas Mole was gloomy and humid. The crews of all the vessels in the harbour, both warships and merchantmen, were about to be treated to another public display of justice at work. Michael Supple, a seaman on board the 74-gun Valiant, had been found guilty of mutiny and Sir Hyde had directed that he should be hanged on board his own ship at 8 a.m. on the 8th.

  A few minutes before eight o’clock, Captain Pigot appeared on the quarter-deck of the Success, and tucked under one arm was the familiar slim volume containing the Articles of War. At the same time, on board the Valiant, Michael Supple was led up on to the fo’c’sle by the Provost Marshal with a guard of Marines, followed by the chaplain.

  Then the ship’s bell sounded the four double strokes for eight bells, 8 a.m. The ominous silence that had fallen over all the ships was suddenly shattered by the heavy thud of a gun firing on board the Valiant. The cloud of smoke which swirled up finally blew away in the wind, revealing Supple’s body hanging lifeless at the yard-arm.

  On board the Success Captain Pigot—as did every other captain, including Wilkinson in the Hermione—then read to his crew the 19th Article of War, the one that Supple had broken, followed by an ‘admonition’ written and signed by Sir Hyde explaining why Supple had been executed, and warning them to take heed, because such punishment was the inevitable sequel to mutiny.

  After half an hour Supple’s body was lowered from the Valiants yard-arm and the boats returned to their respective ships. In the Success the crew went back to their work and Captain Pigot walked below to his cabin, ordering that the Muster Book should be brought to him.

  The reason why Pigot sent for the Muster Book was that he was preparing to transfer to the Hermione, and under the Regulations and Instructions a captain exchanging ships in the same port was allowed to take a certain number of men with him. Pigot could have his own cook, steward, clerk and coxswain—who were in effect his personal entourage—and another fourteen men, of whom five could be petty officers.

  Pigot and Wilkinson no doubt made an agreement beforehand, because Pigot took more men from the Success than Wilkinson did from the Hermione: no doubt Wilkinson was prepared to help out Pigot, since seamen were so hard to find in the West Indies, while the Success would be paying off as soon as she arrived back in England.

  So Pigot sat at his desk and read through the names in the Muster Table to refresh his memory, and started drawing up a list in his large and characterless handwriting. He was not taking his steward, so the first name was that of his cook and then his coxswain. He added nearly two dozen adults and two boys—one the cook’s son—to the list, and then sent for the First Lieutenant.

  By this time every man in the Success knew from rumour that the ship was due to sail for England in a few days. For most of them England—the British Isles, at least: naturally meant home, and they must have been delighted at the prospect: many of them had been in the West Indies for two or three years. In reality it would make little change in their way of life: they were unlikely to be allowed leave—though women would be brought off to them by the boatload, and some of them might even be the legal, as well as self-proclaimed, wives of the men.

  However, more than a score of them soon received a rude shock: as soon as the First Lieutenant arrived, Pigot gave him the list he had just drawn up and told him to send all the men named in it down to the cabin.

  When they arrived—startled, no doubt, at this invitation to otherwise forbidden territory, for at the door to the captain’s quarters there was always a Marine sentry on guard—Pigot was affable. One of the men, describing the scene later, wrote (omitting all punctuation) that the Captain said: ‘My men I am going to inform you of my leaving thi
s ship but I should be glad to go home as well as you but I dare say you know the reason* I would wish to carry you along with me if you are agreeable not that I can force you against your inclination so I’ll leave you for a day or two to consider.’

  Pigot did not have to wait: all but two men agreed to go with him to the Hermione. But if Pigot was so cruel, why did these men, with two exceptions, agree? The answer is quite simple: Pigot had his favourites, in the same way he had his victims. In addition the men had prize-money owing to them, thanks to the Success’s previous good fortune, and if they went back to England under another captain they could say good-bye to the money.

  They knew, however, that if they stayed with Captain Pigot he would make sure that he wrung the money out of the prize-agents—apart from any other consideration, he wanted his own two-eighths, and there was Sir Hyde Parker, waiting for his eighth. When the rates of pay are borne in mind—they had not been changed for a century: since the days of Charles II—it is clear that the lure of even £10 in prize-money was a big one, since it was almost a year’s pay for an ordinary seaman, who received 19s. a month.

  A written statement by one of the men, Richard Redman, confirms these conclusions. The relevant passage (without any punctuation) comes immediately after his description of Pigot’s appeal for volunteers, referred to earlier, and gives his response: ‘With gratitude I couldn’t deny him with any properity [propriety] for he behaved to me very kindly in several respect even in every port he whuld endeavour to get whatever prize-money be due to us.’

  Since Redman was one of the first to turn on Pigot a few months later, and a dozen more of the twenty-one adults were to be among the ringleaders in the Hermione plot, it would be fascinating to know exactly what made Pigot choose them from among the 175 men then serving in the Success. His list is another—and the most disastrous—example of his unerring instinct for picking the wrong men. Had the Devil been his advocate, Pigot could not have chosen his own executioners with more skill.

  Since such a high percentage of the men were subsequently to become murderers and traitors, and because the Irish have—quite wrongly—been blamed by some naval historians for being the ringleaders, it is worth noting that of the twenty-one men twelve were English, three Irish, three Scottish, one a Manxman, and two American.

  Among the more important men that Pigot took with him were his cook, John Holford, a mild-mannered, almost timid man of forty-four who came from Epsom in Surrey (Holford’s son, aged thirteen, was also in the ship, and usually helped wait on Captain Pigot at table); a boatswain’s mate, Thomas Jay, thirty-three years old and born in Plymouth; and his coxswain, Patrick Foster. Listed as ‘Foster’ in the Hermione’s Muster Table and ‘Forster’ in the Success’s, he was an Irishman—a ‘Patlander’ in the contemporary naval slang—born in Galway thirty years earlier. A captain’s coxswain held a curious position in a ship: a first-class seaman and responsible for the crew of the captain’s barge, which he always steered, he was also a personal and highly-trusted servant: a mixture of butler (though not valet—that was the steward’s job), bodyguard and major-domo.

  In addition to the twenty-one petty officers and seamen, Pigot had also arranged to take with him to the Hermione a lieutenant, a master’s mate and a midshipman. The lieutenant was Samuel Reed, who had joined the Success in the previous July, and from his rapid—and apparently unmerited—promotion in the Hermione, he seems to have been one of Pigot’s favourites. The Master’s Mate was John Forbes, and the midshipman John Wiltshire, a Londoner who was eighteen years old and had been in the Success for only nine weeks. A midshipman often had some link with his captain—one of his family, or the relative of a friend or patron—but there is no indication of any such connection in Wiltshire’s case.

  * If the seaman intended a full stop at this point it shows Pigot was implying they knew he was being kept in the West Indies as the result of unexpected orders, which would obviously have been the aftermath of the Jesup affair.

  7

  ‘AT YOUR PERIL…’

  * * *

  THE YOUNG First Lieutenant of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Hermione, John Harris, had said his farewells to his old commanding officer, Captain Philip Wilkinson, and now he was waiting at the after end of the starboard gangway on Friday, February 10, ready to welcome the new one. He was hot and sticky, because although the spotless canvas awnings stretched over the quarterdeck took the worst of the heat out of the scorching Caribbean sun, his uniform was not designed for such weather, and the cocked hat, worn athwartships, had no brim to protect his eyes from the glare.

  But the sun and the uniform were not the only reasons why he was perspiring freely: his present anxiety was focused on the boat which had left the Success and was being rowed briskly towards the Hermione, because it was bringing the frigate’s new captain on board. In a few moments he would appear at the break of the bulwarks, hot from his scramble up the ship’s side and—if gossip and rumour in the Fleet were anything to go by—ill-tempered and critical, and as safe to deal with as an overheated gun.

  Grouped round Harris were a motley collection of men: the one boatswain’s mate stood ready, his call in his hand waiting to pipe the new commanding officer on board; the Marines in red jackets, their cross-belts smoothly-coated with pipe-clay, stood as stiff as the ramrods in their muskets; and the sideboys stood at what everyone but the Marine sergeant would call attention. The commission officers were represented only by Harris himself: the second lieutenant had gone to the Success with Captain Wilkinson, and Captain Pigot was bringing his replacement. The Commander-in-Chief was due to appoint a new junior lieutenant and a Marine Lieutenant. The senior warrant officers were represented by the Master, Surgeon and Purser, and the junior by the Gunner, Carpenter and Boatswain.

  Finally the barge was alongside, and Harris gave a quick signal to the boatswain’s mate as he glimpsed the top of a gold-braided cocked hat coming up the ship’s side. By the time Captain Pigot stepped on to the deck the call of the boatswain’s mate was shrilling and twittering, sounding more like the jittery outcry of an agitated bird than a salute. The Marine sergeant gave a signal and, as the drummer beat out a ruffle, the Marines presented arms.

  Pigot saluted the quarterdeck, and Harris stepped forward to introduce himself and welcome the new captain on board. Pigot told him he could present the officers. Since there were so few on board, it did not take long. The Master was due to leave the Hemione very soon; the Gunner, Richard Searle, had served in the ship for four months and a day; the Surgeon, H. T. Sansom, had been on board seven months. The Boatswain, Thomas Harrington, had served in the Hermione for four months and Wilkinson had found him satisfactory; but he and Pigot appear to have taken an instant dislike to each other. No doubt Harrington knew that Pigot had only a few weeks earlier arrested the Boatswain of the Success and brought him to a court martial, which had sentenced him to be dismissed the ship. Harrington probably felt resentment over this episode: a resentment which he took no pains to hide judging by his subsequent behaviour.

  The Carpenter, Richard Price, was a twenty-five-year-old Welshman and one of the four men who had served longest in the ship. The next man in seniority was the Master’s Mate, William Turner, who had been in the ship more than two years. He appears to have failed his examination for lieutenant and was later described by one who shared a cabin with him for eight months as a ‘clever, disappointed man’.

  Captain Pigot shook hands with each man, and before going below told Lt Harris to turn up the hands. Swiftly the boatswain’s mate hurried about the task of assembling the men on the quarterdeck, his shrill piping—which earned such men the nickname ‘Spithead Nightingales’—interspersed with shouts of ‘All hands! All hands!’ and followed by hoarse threats concerning the fate of the last men to appear on deck.

  Soon Pigot appeared like the leading actor in a play, a parchment scroll in his hand, and looked around him. Seamen in tattered shirts, with their faces deeply tanned, looked as if
they really belonged in the ship. The Marines, drawn up once again, neat but perspiring, muskets at their sides and bayonets fixed, looked smart but incongruous, as if their natural element was a smoothly-cobbled parade ground.

  Pigot then unrolled the scroll and began reading the large, copper-plate writing. It was the commission ‘from Sir Hyde Parker, Knight, Vice-Admiral of the Red,’ dated February 6, and addressed to ‘Hugh Pigot, Esquire,’ appointing him to the Hermione and ‘willing and requiring you forthwith to go on board and take upon you the charge and command of captain in her accordingly; strictly charging and commanding all the officers and company of the said frigate to behave themselves jointly and severally in their respective appointments, with all due respect and obedience unto you, their said captain’.

  Most of the men had heard such a commission read before: it was worded in the time-honoured way, and although it ordered officers and seamen alike to obey, it also contained a warning to the commanding officer. Pigot was to carry out the General Printed Instructions and any orders and instructions he received and, he read, ‘hereof, nor you nor any of you may fail as you will answer the contrary at your peril…’

  Pigot had now ‘read himself in’, thus lawfully establishing himself as the commanding officer of the Hermione: he was king of all he surveyed on board the frigate, with power of life, death, health and happiness over more than eight-score men. He would be, if he carried out the spirit as well as the letter of the Regulations and Instructions, counsellor to his crew, as well as captain; the man who helped them when they had personal troubles, as well as punishing them when they misbehaved. Embodied in him should have been all that real leadership entails: the knowledge that his men were human beings, with hopes and fears, problems and pride, and that if they had a leader they respected, whose discipline was just even if rather harsh, who displayed humanity and not vanity, then they would follow him anywhere.