by Dudley Pope
It was almost certainly a part of his sense of his own inadequacy that led to him becoming obsessed with the minutiae of discipline; so small-minded that he investigated the most trifling alleged failure of duty with an obsessive and terrifying thoroughness more usual in the Inquisition and the Star Chamber. The neglected reefpoint, for example, which had led to the flogging and (apparent) ruin of Casey. Forgetting the original trifling cause, Pigot became obsessed with the overriding need to humiliate Casey, and distorted and inflated the situation into a public trial of strength between himself and the youth. It is equally significant that he thought that such a demonstration of his power was necessary. But this was the ‘now’; he did not consider the ‘tomorrow’, when Casey’s career would be ruined over a trifle. (And it was a trifle: there were more than two dozen reefpoints per row in a topsail: leaving one untied would not damage the sail.)
By similar obsessive processes, Pigot had his favourites and his scapegoats, men against whom he had festering grudges. There is little doubt that Boatswain Harrington’s downfall began originally because Pigot disliked him. In any ship the boatswain was usually the most skilled all-round seaman on board. Did Pigot fear unspoken criticism or contempt from such a man because of his own lack of experience? Did he need to provoke, and then break two of them, to prove himself?
It seems certain that the departure of Lt Harris on June 17 removed the last restraint on Pigot. Up to then, Harris appears to have been a buffer between the men and Pigot. But after June 17 the events moved swiftly to their bloody climax, with Pigot utterly incapable of appreciating the dull anger and resentment, the bewilderment and fear that his ill-considered excesses and inconsistent punishments aroused.
The last vestige of discipline vanished in the Hermione as the three mizentopmen fell to their deaths: at that moment the crew seem to have realized that Pigot had no regrets or scruples in sacrificing men’s lives. And their reaction was the primitive ‘kill or be killed’ response of the jungle: a response which society had, by its taboos, laws and culture, managed to train most of its members to renounce by offering them other means of obtaining equity and fair play.
However, in the Hermione the months of brutal treatment and injustice were strengthening the men’s natural and deep-rooted instinct of self-preservation and, no doubt fed by revolutionary talk, it was becoming powerful and urgent; more than strong enough to submerge the tradition and habit of submissiveness to an apparently superior being.
On Pigot’s behalf it can be argued that many of the men serving in the Navy at this time were lazy, idle, truculent, resentful of unpleasant conditions afloat and bad food. Those who had been pressed hated their loss of liberty. Yet, unlike Otway when he joined the Ceres, Pigot never once complained of the quality of his ship’s company; and he inherited the ship from a captain who enforced a strict discipline. In any ship at that time a proportion of the men were thoroughly bad characters; but the vast majority of captains trained up highly efficient crews without constantly using the cat-o’-nine-tails. If other captains could handle their men without incessant flogging, why could not Pigot? There seems to be only one conclusion: the fault lay in Pigot, not in his crew.
However, we must not make the mistake of judging Pigot by today’s standards, but by those of his contemporaries. Since it was his methods of punishment which give grounds for criticism, we can take a brief look at what was happening across the Atlantic in England on September 20 and 21, 1797, the day the mizentopmen were killed and the day the maintopmen were flogged.
On the 20th at the Old Bailey in London, Robert Arnold was charged with ‘burglariously breaking and entering’ a house and stealing ‘a cloth cloak and other articles’, and was sentenced to death. Sarah Warwick, found guilty the same day of ‘privately stealing in the shop of Edward Evans a piece of printed calico’, was also sentenced to death. Although Britain was at that moment fighting to free the world of tyranny, few Britons would have been shocked at these two sentences (which were carried out), for they were typical of those passed nearly every day that courts were in session.
Naval law was in fact considerably more lenient in practice than civil law, although its liberality may have been due to the Admiralty knowing that a man hanging by his neck from the yardarm meant the ship lost a seaman. The crimes for which the Articles of War prescribed the maximum sentence of death fell mainly into the categories of treason, mutiny, desertion and cowardice in the face of the enemy. By comparison, on September 21 at the Old Bailey Samuel Philips was found guilty of stealing ‘a flock bed and several articles’, and was publicly hanged a few days later.
In the Hermione on September 21 at 10.30 a.m., just half an hour before all hands were called aft to witness punishment, the Diligence hoisted the signal for a strange sail in sight to the north-west. It would have been better if her lookouts had not seen it. The wind was easterly and light, and Pigot at once ordered ‘general chase’. Both ships bore away in pursuit although, unless the wind increased, it would take several hours to catch up.
Promptly at 11 a.m. Thomas Jay and Thomas Nash went through the ship ordering the men aft to witness punishment, and McDonald, the Master-at-Arms, who had been given a list containing the names of more than a dozen maintopmen, marched his charges up on deck, where they were stripped and flogged at the capstan for their tardiness and murmurings the previous evening.
Midshipman Casey, recording the episode, wrote, ‘A very severe punishment [underlined in the original] of several men, I believe twelve or fourteen, took place in the usual way, at the public place of punishment’.
While the men were being flogged, the frigate and brig continued to chase the strange sail, which appeared to be a schooner privateer. As the wind went round to the north it put them farther to leeward, and they tacked at 2.30 p.m., and again at 6 p.m., by which time the privateer was still well up to windward, bearing north-east. With night coming on Pigot knew his chances of catching her were slender: she had the choice of working out northwards through the Mona Passage, or doubling back southwards, passing them in the darkness. But deciding he would be more likely to intercept her if he split his force, Pigot signalled to the Diligence that she was to stand away on a different tack at 8.30 p.m.
With their guns loaded and run out in readiness, the two warships worked their way to windward in the light breeze, and Thursday, September 21, drew to a close. In the Hermione as twilight gave way to darkness the officer of the watch ordered the lookouts down to the deck from the mastheads. At 8 p.m. the boatswain’s mates piped ‘Down hammocks’ and the men collected them from the nettings along the top of the bulwarks and took them below to sling in their allotted positions. Lanterns were issued by the purser’s steward’s assistant; the watch was changed, the bells rung and the hour and half-hour glasses turned. Soon afterwards the boatswain’s mates piped ‘Ship’s company’s fire and lights out’: the only lights allowed in the ship now were in the gunroom (they had to be doused at 10 p.m.), those beside each sentry, and the dim light in the binnacles illuminating the compass.
At 10.15 p.m., when all the off-watch men and the day workers should have been asleep, Captain Pigot went to see Southcott. The Master was still in charge of navigation, even though he had been in his cot all day after being badly bruised by the falling boy. The sentry stood to attention as Pigot walked into the gunroom—which was full of the sweet, nauseous yellow fever smell of Lt McIntosh—and entered Southcott’s cabin. He explained that the two ships were still chasing the privateer and he had told the Diligence, which had been four miles away to the west-north-west at 8 p.m., to stand away on the other tack at 8.30 p.m. She had done this and was now out of sight. Pigot then gave Southcott the usual routine night orders—he was to be called if the weather changed or if they sighted another ship, and in any case at daylight.
Pigot then walked back up to his cabin on the deck above and the sentry at the door, Private Andrew McNeil, stood to attention as he passed. In the cabin his steward, John Jones,
helped him undress and gave him his long nightshirt to put on. Jones slept in a hammock just outside the cabin door, within a few feet of where McNeil stood on guard.
On the deck below the Captain’s cook, John Holford, was already asleep on top of the armourer’s chest outside the gunroom door, and nearby his young son was also sleeping. In their cabins forward of the gunroom the Captain’s clerk, the Gunner, Carpenter, and Boatswain Martin and his wife, slept soundly. Near Martin’s cabin Midshipman Casey was in his hammock. Midshipman Smith was sleeping in the midshipmen’s berth, but if anyone had looked for Midshipman Wiltshire in his hammock—for that was where he was supposed to be—they would have found it empty.
Opening off the gunroom, the Surgeon and the First Lieutenant occupied two cabins on the starboard side, while the third was empty—its owner, Foreshaw, was on watch. On the larboard side, the Purser, Master and Second Lieutenant were sleeping, while in the fourth cabin Lt McIntosh was dying, with Sergeant Plaice still keeping vigil.
Forward of the gunroom and only a few feet from Casey’s hammock, the sentry at the porter cask was James Duncan, the foretopman with a bad foot; and nearby James Perrett, the ship’s butcher, was snoring in his hammock.
Up on the quarterdeck, his eyes straining in the darkness for a sight of the privateer they were chasing, was Lt Foreshaw, the officer of the watch, and with him was William Turner, the Master’s Mate. At the wheel, watching the dimly-lit compass and the luffs of the sails, was Thomas Osborn. Between the aftermost carronades on the larboard side, acting as a lookout, was James Barnett, one of the maintopmen who had been flogged that morning; and the lookout on the other side was one of the afterguard, James Irwin from Limerick. At the forward end of the quarterdeck a Marine sentry, Private Robert Newbold, guarded the water cask—for water was strictly rationed, although a daily allowance was left in the scuttle butt so that the men could occasionally refresh themselves.
In each of the tops there were men on watch ready to reef or set more sail: John Brown, a young Scot, was in the maintop with George Walker, a former jailbird. In the foretop, in addition to the men on watch, was Midshipman Wiltshire, who was bent on keeping out of the way after hearing certain rumours.
To the casual onlooker—and to the officer of the watch, Lt Foreshaw—everything appeared in order: every twenty minutes the lookouts answered the Lieutenant’s hail by calling out that all was well. But they were wrong, or lying, for the inevitable hour of Hugh Pigot had at last arrived.
14
TIME FOR MURDER
* * *
AT 11 p.m. John Brown and George Walker were still on watch, perched in the Hermione’s maintop fifty feet above the deck, when suddenly they sensed in the darkness that someone was clambering up the mainstay towards them. The only reason for a man coming monkey-fashion up the massive rope—which ran at a steep angle from the fo’c’sle to the maintop—would be to avoid being seen from the quarterdeck.
A few moments later, breathless and perspiring, David Forester scrambled off the stay and into the top. Forester, born in Sheerness and not yet twenty years of age, who had been in the ship for three years, wasted no time: the mutiny had begun, he told the two men. ‘Go down to the fo’c’sle: they want you there’.
A startled Brown replied: ‘We can’t go down there: it’s our watch to take in the topgallants.’
‘If you don’t go down, it’ll be the worse for you,’ Forester said curtly, ‘and don’t go down by the rigging: use the stay.’
Brown already had an inkling of what was about to happen: he said afterwards that at noon that day Forester—who was, like himself, a maintopman—had asked the captain of the maintop, John Innes, ‘If he had heard anything of what was going on last night.… That Innes replied “No”, on which Forester said, “They were going to take the ship last night, but they would do it that night”.’
Reluctantly Brown and Walker swung out of the maintop and, followed by Forester, went hand over hand down the mainstay to the fo’c’sle. There an extraordinary sight met their eyes: a group of men round a bucket of rum, like natives at a cooking pot, were ‘drinking and fighting’. According to several witnesses some were half drunk. Among them were the captain of the foretop, John Smith, a Yorkshireman, and James Bell, a Scot, both former Successes; John Farrel, a fo’c’sleman from New York; and Joseph Montell, an Italian maintopman and one of the original Hermiones.
The bucket of rum from which they were gaining courage was not the result of hoarding their twice-daily tots: it belonged to the officers and had just been stolen from the gunroom by Lt Douglas’s servant, an Irish boy of fourteen named James Allen, and William Anderson, the gunroom steward, who was eleven years older and came from Canterbury.
Brown and Walker watched the group, and after listening to their chattering for a few minutes decided they did not sound like determined mutineers: Farrel and Smith, for instance, started wrangling and ‘making use of some oaths, that they were not fit to go through with the business,’ according to Brown, who was so unimpressed that he decided to return to his post in the maintop. He did not bother to go back up the mainstay; instead he went aloft by the main shrouds at the fore end of the quarterdeck, and no one asked him why he had left his post.
With Osborn at the wheel, the Hermione continued on her course, still chasing the privateer. As far as Lt Foreshaw on the quarterdeck was concerned all was well: the frigate’s masts and yards creaked in counterpoint to the working of the hull and the bubble of the bow wave, and blocks clattered as ropes tightened and slackened with the ship’s roll. Suddenly Brown, back at his lofty vantage point in the maintop, heard a shout of alarm—it seemed to be from a Marine on the maindeck standing at the foot of the ladderway to the quarterdeck.
Private Andrew McNeil, the Marine sentry guarding Captain Pigot’s cabin, stood in the small pool of light cast by the lantern hooked on to the bulkhead and was surrounded by the grotesque black shadows it threw. McNeil had more than an hour to wait, with his musket by his side, the bayonet fixed, before he would be relieved. Apart from Captain Pigot, the only other person sleeping on the half deck was Jones, the steward, who was in his hammock only a few feet away.
Suddenly out of the encircling darkness, several men leapt at McNeil. One of them swung a cutlass, the flat side of which flashed for a moment in the lantern light and then hit the Marine across the head before he had time to shout out. Dazed, McNeil collapsed to the deck, but as his mind slithered on the edge of unconsciousness he heard a voice which he recognized as that of a Negro, John Jackson, one of the Captain’s bargemen, who was saying, ‘Let the bugger alone—we’ll go in and murder the Captain’.
Joe Montell, the Italian, had in the meantime snatched up McNeil’s musket and bayonet and in a few moments the group smashed down Pigot’s door and vanished into the cabin.
The sound of splintering wood, punctuated by McNeil’s groans, roused Steward Jones, who sat up in his hammock and saw McNeil sprawled on the deck a few feet away, blood spattered on the deck round him. Jones had no idea what had happened but ran across and knelt down beside him. McNeil gasped out that he had been attacked, and at that moment they heard heavy blows and men grunting in the Captain’s cabin. Jones helped McNeil to his feet and they scrambled up the companionway to the quarterdeck to raise the alarm.
Captain Pigot had woken to the sound of his cabin door being kicked in. Leaping from his cot—this took a few seconds since it swung from the deckhead—he snatched up a short dirk: there was no time to get his white-handled cavalry sword, which was on a rack fixed to the bulkhead.
By the time Pigot was on his feet, dirk in hand, the door had crashed down. He then saw several men, silhouetted against the lantern light outside, streaming into the cabin, crouching to avoid hitting their heads on the beams overhead. All armed with cutlasses or tomahawks—except for Joe Montell, who had Private McNeil’s musket and bayonet—they included David Forester, two Boatswain’s Mates—the Irishman Thomas Nash and the Cornishman Thomas
Jay—Thomas Leech, the deserter Pigot had forgiven, Richard Redman, the quartermaster’s mate, and a young Dane, Hadrian Poulson.
As soon as they spotted Pigot in the darkness they began slashing at him with cutlasses and tomahawks. Pigot tried to ward them off with his dirk which, only two feet long, was little more than a large dagger. The men got in each other’s way in the darkness and were unfamiliar with the cabin so that, still dressed in his long nightshirt, Pigot managed to fight them off while shouting for help.
‘Where are my bargemen?’ he cried.
‘Here are your bargemen,’ yelled Poulson. ‘What do you want with them, you bugger?’
By now they were in a frenzy. Forester hit Pigot two or three times with his cutlass and Pigot, lunging back, managed to wound him in the foot with the dirk. Pigot’s cot was slashed to ribbons and chairs were smashed and flung out of the way. Pigot, wounded several times and becoming faint from loss of blood, still shouted for help. His attackers, cursing and screaming as they tried to finish him off, were then joined by John Phillips, the Hanover-born sailmaker, and the American John Farrel, who earlier had been drinking rum on the fo’c’sle. Pigot managed to slash Phillips’s hand with his dirk, but Phillips succeeded in stabbing him in the stomach with his cutlass.
Finally, gasping for mercy and bleeding from a dozen or more wounds, Pigot collapsed over the barrel of one of the 12-pounder cannons, his nightshirt torn and soaked with blood and perspiration.
In the meantime there was pandemonium on the quarterdeck above: Steward Jones and Marine McNeil had scrambled up the companionway, McNeil calling out, ‘Mr Foreshaw! Mr Foreshaw!’
The young Lieutenant demanded: ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Sir—some men have broken into the cabin—I think they are murdering the Captain!’