The Black Ship

by Dudley Pope

  The news of the Maria Antoinette affair must have reached the warships at the Mole within a few hours of Sir Hyde receiving a report; and no doubt some men were envious of the freedom they imagined the Maria Antoinette’s crew had found. These men in the past years and months must have had read or related to them, by the usual hotheads found in any group in any age, the heady sentiments, catch-phrases and slogans of the leaders of Revolutionary France; when words like liberty and equality fell as thick and fast as a petty officer’s curses and—at the time—had about as much significance.

  The trouble had begun at Spithead when, after several of the men’s petitions had been ignored over a long period, the crews of sixteen line-of-battleships finally ordered their officers to go on shore. The Spithead men were simply asking for better conditions: their petition to the Admiralty made the following requests:

  1. That their pay should be increased.

  This was hardly unreasonable since it had been unchanged for nearly 150 years. In addition the men were always paid months and frequently years in arrears, and even then not in cash: they were given ‘Tickets’ which could only be cashed at the port where the ship commissioned. Wives and parents sent tickets by the men had to go to that port to get the money, unless the men sold their tickets to quayside sharks (often at less than half the face value) in order to send home cash.

  2. That the weight of their provisions ‘be raised to the weight of sixteen ounces to the pound, and of better quality; and that our measures may be the same as those used in the commercial trade of this country’.

  The first demand sounds ludicrous, but it was not: a purser’s pound weighed only fourteen ounces, and sometimes less. A purser was a curious mixture of clerk, retailer and ship’s ‘housekeeper’, and cases of honest pursers have been recorded. A purser had to deal with large quantities of money, and was responsible for all provisions—quantities of which often went bad. To allow for this and also ensure he was economical, the Admiralty allowed him an eighth commission on everything issued—equal to two ounces in every pound. On top of that, over the years it had become the tradition for him to issue provisions in pounds of fourteen ounces. Indeed, contemporary naval handbooks gave a scale of two weights, one ‘avoirdupois’ and the other ‘Pursers Establishment’, in which ‘one pound avoirdupois is fourteen ounces avoirdupois to the pound’. A combination in which a frugal Admiralty forced economies on a dishonest purser meant only one thing: the seamen suffered.

  3. That while in a British port (an example of the fairness of their reasoning) they should be given ‘a sufficient quantity of vegetables, and no flour should be served’.

  The dreadful scourge of scurvy was sufficient justification for the first request; and the reason for the second was that once a week in port flour was served instead of beef.

  4. That the sick men on board should be better attended and given ‘such necessaries as are allowed for them’, and these ‘be not on any account embezzled’.

  Like pursers, good and honest surgeons have been known; but if they were any good they were usually in private practice instead of in the Navy. They were notoriously fond of the extra items—wine, for instance—allowed sick men; hence the men’s wish for safeguards.

  5. That they should be given leave when possible in harbour—but at the same time suggesting ‘there shall be a boundary limited’, and any seaman going beyond it should be punished. They also requested leave when a ship was paid off.

  The claim was more than reasonable, particularly since they suggested sufficient safeguards.

  6. That a man wounded in action should have his pay continued until he was cured and discharged.

  In other words, after being sawn up and sewn by a possibly incompetent surgeon, he should not be discharged from the Navy while still with open wounds or unhealed amputations.

  By the standards of any day these were reasonable demands; but the Admiralty behaved with almost incredible foolishness. Faced with sixteen battleships taken over by mutineers at Spit-head in protest over conditions which should have been voluntarily remedied half a century before, the Board offered the men four shillings a month more for able seamen, and lower ratings in proportion. Every other plea—for fresh vegetables when available, better care of the sick, reasonable leave, continued pay for wounded men—was ignored. The men rejected the offer but on April 20, on the eve of writing to Parker, Lord Spencer agreed to make a purser’s pound weigh sixteen ounces.

  Although the Admiralty were to make many more foolish mistakes, and the mutiny was to spread to the Nore (where more than thirty line-of-battleships entirely controlled by mutineers had London at their mercy), it is important, having seen the demands, to know whether the two great mutinies were inspired by revolutionaries or men genuinely feeling they had been badly treated.

  Two brief quotations give a fair idea of the answer. The first was written by a magistrate sent specially to Spithead to investigate and report to the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department: ‘I am persuaded from the conversation I have had with so many of the sailors that if any man on earth had dared openly to avow his intention of using them as instruments to distress the country his life would have paid forfeit. Nothing like want of loyalty to the King or attachment to the government can be traced in the business.’

  The second is from the official report by two magistrates after investigating the Nore mutiny. Writing to the Duke of Portland, they assured His Grace they ‘have unremittingly endeavoured to trace if there was any connexion or correspondence carried on between the mutineers and any private person or society on shore, and they think that they may with the greatest safety pronounce that no such connexion or correspondence ever did exist.… Neither do they believe that any club or society… have in the smallest degree been able to influence the proceedings of the mutineers.’

  The men knew what the Red Cap of Liberty was; and no doubt many of the Irishmen among them, bundled off by the authorities on shore to serve at sea, visualized it replacing the Crown on top of the Irish harp. But for most seamen it is clear liberty was not so much a lofty ideal as the chance of occasional leave and better conditions.

  In the Hermione, though, it was becoming to mean a great deal more: liberty was—perhaps at this stage only subconsciously—being seen as ceasing to live a precarious existence at the mercy of a wilful and capricious captain, whose smiles quickly became intemperate outbursts of uncontrollable rage.

  The Hermione now had a few days in which to prepare for her next cruise. The most important task was to careen the ship because the barnacles and weed growing on the copper sheathing covering her bottom were slowing up the ship, especially in light winds.

  Since there was virtually no rise and fall of tide at the Mole, and of course no dry dock, the only way to get at the barnacles and weed was to careen the ship, securing her to the quay and then hauling on the masts with tackles to heel her over. It was a thoroughly unpleasant business: hard work for the crew and uncomfortable for the officers.

  In the confusion Jacob Fulga, an able seaman, managed to slip away and desert. He had joined the ship in March, having come from a prize. Although he was not to know it, he had chosen a particularly dangerous moment to quit—he had not been reported to the Commander-in-Chief as having ‘Run’ before the Hermione sailed on her last voyage, with the result that officially he was still part of her crew when, two years later, he was put on trial for his life.

  On August 6, while the Hermione’s crew were busy scraping and scrubbing and Jacob Fulga was lying low, the 16-gun brig Diligence arrived at the Mole under the command of Robert Mends. The last person of any importance to be involved in the rapidly-approaching tragedy, Mends had just arrived from Charleston.

  The Diligence needed a certain amount of fitting out before sailing again. Getting new sails for old and bringing on board a quantity of stores kept Mends and his officers and men busy for several days. Finally on Tuesday, August 15, the Diligence was ready, but she was still short o
f sails. However an appeal to the Hermione resulted in one of the frigate’s spares being sent over as a makeshift.

  For the time being Sir Hyde Parker was flying his flag in the storeship Adventure, having sent the Queen away on a cruise. The previous Saturday, August 12, he had given Pigot instructions to take the Renommée under his command, but later decided to give him as well the Diligence.

  His orders were quite straightforward: Pigot’s squadron was to patrol the Mona Passage for seven weeks, and then return to the Mole. The orders could not have been better if Pigot had been allowed to write them himself—the land on both sides of the Passage was Spanish-held; the Passage itself was their main highway between the Spanish Main and the Atlantic, and therefore potentially rich in prizes.

  On Wednesday, August 16, the three ships were ‘in all respects ready for sea’: they had sufficient stores to last more than three months, and although the Diligence would not have water to last the whole patrol she would be able to replenish her casks from the other ships, or from streams on shore.

  At 4.30 that afternoon the little squadron weighed anchor and made sail. The Hermione had begun her last voyage under her own name; but as far as anyone in the little squadron was concerned, another routine patrol had started. It was an uneventful night for the three ships as they made their way south-westwards towards Cape Dame Maria, and an entry in the Diligence’s log next morning described the first of many similar incidents: ‘At 40 minutes past 7 answered the general signal to chase, made all sail. At ½ past 9 hove to and spoke the English sloop Catherine, letter of marque from Kingston to Quibo with rum. At ½ past 10 filled and made sail in company with the frigates.’

  As they made their way to the Mona Passage the ships constantly chased unidentified vessels as they appeared over the horizon: there was a constant stream of signals from the Hermione detaching one or other of them in pursuit. Those which the Diligence alone intercepted give an idea of the scope of American trade in the Caribbean at this time—an American sloop bound for Baltimore with coffee on Sunday, August 20; another Jonathan on Tuesday which needed ‘a shotted gun’ to bring her to; and a third on Wednesday which also needed ‘a shotted gun’ before she would stop (a piece of cussedness on the part of her skipper, one suspects, since she was on a return trip to New York in ballast).

  Apart from the constant making sail and heaving to, there was the normal shipboard routine to be carried out. On the day he fired his first shotted gun, Captain Mends also had a more peaceful task: a large quantity of biscuit (officially called bread) was too rotten to eat, and he ordered the Master, Boatswain and Master’s Mate to carry out a survey. They wrote that 1344 lb was ‘Mouldy, rotten, stinking and unfit for men to eat’, and all of it ‘we have seen thrown overboard into the sea’.

  The surgeon reported to Captain Mends on Wednesday, August 30, that the Second Lieutenant, George Mallas, who had been ill for the past few days, was dying, and at 11.30 that night he returned to say that Mallas had died. Mends wasted no time over the funeral (Mallas had probably died of yellow fever) and the ship’s log recorded: ‘At ½ past 12 committed the deceased to the deep.’

  At daylight, after chasing another ship—a Jonathan which also needed a shot across the bows—Mends reported Mallas’s death to Captain Pigot, who sent over the Hermione’s Master’s Mate, John Forbes, to be the new acting Second Lieutenant. Whether Pigot sent him because he was a favourite (he had been brought to the Hermione from the Success) or to get rid of him after he gave such favourable evidence on Lt Harris’s behalf at the recent court martial, is not known; but it was a choice which saved Forbes’s life.

  On Friday, September I, the squadron arrived at the southern end of the Mona Passage and took their first prize. The day began with a series of stiff squalls sweeping down the Passage and at daylight the Diligence, sighting a ship, gave chase, followed by the two frigates. The brig soon caught up with her and sent across a boarding party, who reported that she was a Spanish schooner from Puerto Rico bound for Santo Domingo. Captain Pigot sent over a prize crew from the Hermione to take her into port, and signalled Captain Mends to send a midshipman from the Diligence to command her.

  So the cruise continued and the days slipped by. One would be calm, followed by another full of squalls. On Wednesday, September 6, a particularly heavy squall in the evening which sent the topmen aloft in a hurry to reef or furl suddenly cleared to show a vessel in sight to the eastward, and Captain Pigot ordered the Diligence to chase it. She returned next morning escorting the ship, which was a 6-gun Spanish packet with a crew of seventy-three, and which had surrendered after a spirited action against the brig.

  A week later the squadron sighted a cartel ship bound for the Mole, carrying former British prisoners whom the French were exchanging. Since all three ships in the squadron were now short of men, having sent off prize crews, Pigot decided to impress some of the Britons and share them out among the squadron. Thus the last new names ever to be entered were written down in the Hermione’s Muster Table.

  On Thursday a sudden squall caught the Renommée, damaging her masts and spars so badly that Pigot ordered her to return to the Mole, leaving the Hermione and the Diligence to complete the patrol alone.

  12

  MR CASEY’S CRISIS

  * * *

  EACH EVENING the Hermione and the Diligence reduced sail by furling the courses—the lowest and largest of the squaresails—and reefing the topsails, so that they sailed under easy canvas during the night. It was a snug rig and a safe one, because in the darkness it was usually impossible to see the notorious ‘white squalls’ approaching, but if they suddenly met an enemy ship it took only a few moments to set the courses and shake out the reefs in the topsails.

  On Thursday evening, the day after the Renommée left, both the Hermione and Diligence were sailing with only their topsails set when the time came to reef down for the night.

  In the frigate, Captain Pigot and Reed were on the quarterdeck, and the First Lieutenant was soon shouting out the first of the orders. Most of the work would be carried out by the topmen, with the direct responsibility for its speedy execution falling first on the midshipman and then the captain of the top in each of the three masts.

  On deck the topmen waited expectantly: the Captain insisted that all sailhandling must be done as if the Commander-in-Chief was watching the Hermione: he demanded speed and smartness. No excuses were ever accepted for the slightest delay; Pigot’s voice, issuing strident and brassy from his bell-mouthed speaking trumpet, would pursue them aloft, often searing in its anger and terrifying in its threats.

  ‘Man the rigging,’ Reed shouted at the topmen—there were about a dozen at each mast—who leapt into the shrouds and waited for the next order, which would send them running aloft in an almost vertical climb of fifty feet.

  Waiting in the fore rigging were Midshipman Wiltshire and the new captain of the top, John Smith, a Yorkshireman born at Callingham, twenty-two years earlier, who had taken over from the errant Thomas Leech. Among those in the main rigging were Midshipman Casey and the captain of the maintop, John Innes, a Scot from Galloway, a former Success, and twenty-seven years old. The only mizentopmen worth noting were Midshipman Smith, who was thirteen years of age; William Johnson, aged fourteen, who had acted for a while as Captain Pigot’s writer; a Negro youth Peter Bascomb, from Barbados, who was sixteen years old and had been brought over from the Success; and Francis Staunton, who was seventeen and had been in the frigate for more than eighteen months.

  The topmen were not, of course, the only men concerned with reefing: there were the fo’c’slemen and the afterguard. The fo’c’slemen handling halyards, braces and headsails were usually prime seamen too old to act as topmen. The afterguard, who worked on the poop and quarterdeck, were less skilled: their task was to provide muscle to haul on sheets, braces and halyards.

  Of all these men, speaking in a variety of languages and accents, the topmen were the best seamen in the ship: they were hand-pi
cked, because theirs was the toughest and most dangerous work on board.

  ‘Away aloft,’ bellowed Reed.

  While the topmen scrambled up the rigging to the tops, Reed’s next series of orders were to the men on deck: the heavy topsail yards were hauled round until the wind ran along the edges of the sails, unable to exert any pressure on the canvas, and then lowered a few feet. Reed shouted to the topmen fifty feet above him and they scrambled out along the yards.

  The most experienced and expert went first because the men at the outer ends of each yard had the more dangerous and difficult job. After the men on deck hauled on the reef tackles, pulling the top part of the sail up to the yard like raising a Venetian blind, the topmen spaced themselves out along the yard, their feet on the horse, a thick rope strung beneath, and soon had the reefpoints tied. They waited for the next order.

  ‘Lay in!’

  The men scrambled back along the yards into the tops. The yards would then be hoisted up again to their original position.

  Captain Pigot was, as usual, watching the men closely and getting more and more angry. He had already shouted several times, telling the men to hurry. He could see most clearly the maintop, which was almost above him as he stood on the quarterdeck, and was the responsibility of Midshipman Casey.

  At the very moment that Lt Reed was about to shout ‘Down from aloft’, Casey saw that a reefpoint had not been tied—overlooked by one of the men in his haste—and a length of plaited rope called a gasket, used to secure the sail when furled, was hanging down untidily behind the yard, just where Captain Pigot would be able to see it.

  Casey promptly sent a man out to tie the reefpoint and clear the gasket; but Pigot was by this time in a rage. According to Casey, the Captain ‘appeared to be greatly excited [and] fancying I suppose that we were not as smart as usual (we were known and admitted to be a very smart ship) got into a violent passion’.