by Dudley Pope
He had been more than surprised when he saw the Hermione arrive off La Guaira on September 26, and for the next couple of weeks he had heard a series of rumours—some of which had grown in the telling—about what had been happening on board her. Indeed, for some time he seems to have been better informed about what had actually happened to her British captain and several of her officers than the Captain-General, who apparently continued to believe Turner’s story about them being put off in a boat.
Finally with the San Antonio’s cargo stowed, the hatch covers put on, and the anchors weighed, she set off on her long and lonely voyage, her crew no doubt saying a few prayers that they would successfully run the gauntlet of British privateers and warships.
19
BAD NEWS FOR SIR HYDE
* * *
THE Hermione’s consort, the Diligence, had been steering to the northwards on the other tack while the mutiny had been taking place. Her officers had seen no definite sign of the frigate during the night after 8 p.m., when she had been four miles away to the east-south-east. Half an hour after midnight a sail was seen in the darkness on the same bearing and ‘supposed to be the Hermione’ by Charles White, the Master, who noted in his log that half an hour later they ‘lost sight of the sail’.
That was to be expected, since the Diligence and Hermione were to stand on different tacks at 8.30 p.m. However, when daylight came next morning there was no sign of the privateer they had been chasing, nor of the Hermione but, as Captain Mends noted in his log, to the south-east they ‘saw a strange sail’, and the Diligence ‘made sail in chase’.
By 8 a.m. the strange ship was six or seven miles to the south-east but drawing away fast. Mends continued the chase until noon but the stranger was gaining all the time, and with the wind becoming lighter he knew there was no chance of catching her. He tacked northwards once again and at 4 p.m. noted, ‘No sail in sight’. The ‘strange sail’ had almost certainly been the Hermione, though of course Captain Mends did not realize it at the time, and never approached close enough to recognize her as a British frigate. He continued the patrol, expecting to sight the Hermione a few hours later.
Hours merged into days and Mends became increasingly alarmed as they swiftly added up to a week. Should he leave the patrol area and search for her? That would risk the Hermione returning from another direction and finding him missing. He could be blamed whether he stayed where he was or went off on a search, since the Hermione might be stuck on a reef, badly damaged and waiting for his assistance, or chasing an enemy ship, confident that Mends would maintain the patrol.
By September 29 the frigate had been absent eight days and Mend’s luck had vanished. Until then he had been fortunate with prizes; but for this period, when any error of judgment would probably have been overlooked if he had a couple of prizes to his credit, he saw only a succession of British ships or Jonathans.
The last of the brig’s water was almost gone by the 29th, and Mends decided to take her into Ocoa Bay, on the south-west coast of Santo Domingo. It took three days—from September 29 until October 2—for the Diligence’s boats to bring off full water casks.
All that time Mends had the worrying thought that in the meantime the Hermione might have returned to the Mona Passage—which was some fifty miles away—and, not finding him there, left again in search. He was thankful to be under way again, and the Diligence was soon back on patrol. But his luck did not change: there was no sign of enemy ships; nor was there any sign of the Hermione. Pigot’s little squadron had reached its patrol area on September 4, and Sir Hyde’s orders told him to patrol the Mona Passage for seven weeks and then return to the Mole. The Hermione and Diligence should begin their voyage back to the Mole on October 16. It was by then October 3, with thirteen days left before the patrol was due to end.
By the evening of the 15th Mends was in a state bordering on desperation: the Diligence should sail for the Mole next morning; in the meantime he had sighted neither prize nor consort. Finally dawn came on the 16th, and it was time to set a course for the Mole. But, as Mr Charles White, the Master, noted in his log, at daylight the lookouts ‘saw a ship in the east quarter’. She was not far away and Mends hurriedly set more sail and started to chase. By 7 a.m. she had hoisted French colours; by 8 a.m. the Diligence had ‘fired a shotted gun at the ship, when she hauled down her colours’.
The brig’s boarding party reported that she was in fact an American ship, the Sally, of Norwich, captured by the French privateer Pandora while on her way from New London to Jérémie with a cargo of horses and naval stores, and that they had the French prize crew of a dozen men under guard. The prisoners were brought over to the Diligence and Mends left one of his officers in command of the schooner, with a crew of four seamen.
Since the Diligence had to return to the Mole, Mends kept the schooner in company and the two ships turned back southwest-wards.
Next morning at daylight the Diligence’s lookouts spotted another schooner, and a boarding party discovered she was American and bound for Jacmel with a cargo of flour and provisions for the French from Boston. Instead of following the example of the French privateer Pandora and seizing the ship Mends contented himself with putting the French prisoners on board her: they were eating his stores and drinking his precious water: let the Jonathan feed them for the next day or two, until he arrived in Jacmel.
With the Sally in company, the Diligence sailed south-westwards for the next three days; but at daylight on October 20, after a squally night, the lookouts reported three ships in sight. Leaving the Sally, the Diligence chased the nearest one, which proved to be a Danish sloop bound for Santa Cruz, so the brig set off after the second ship, which was a schooner. Three hours passed before the Diligence was close enough to fire a shotted gun at her. She hoisted Spanish colours but held her course, and it took two more shots across her bows before, as Mr White noted in his log, ‘the chase hauled down her colours’.
He added, ‘Boarded and took possession of her. She proved [to be] the Spanish schooner San Antonio from Caracas to St Domingo with cheese, soap and cocoa, eight days out. Took her in tow.’ When the Spanish captain arrived on board the Diligence he was taken down to the cabin: he had some important news which he was anxious to pass on to Captain Mends in private.
The news was the most shattering that Mends had ever heard, for the San Antonio was of course the schooner which had sailed from La Guaira after the Hermione arrived there. But the Spanish captain, after solving the mystery of the frigate’s whereabouts, told him that from what he had heard, the Hermione’s mutineers had been in correspondence with the men in the Diligence (presumably while the brig took on water casks from the frigate), and that Mends had better watch out.
The report which Mends wrote for Sir Hyde Parker a week later related the story the San Antonio’s captain had told him. Part of the story was incorrect and exaggerated:
‘It is with inespressible [sic] pain I inform you of the fate of His Majesty’s ship Hermione,’ Mends wrote, ‘the uncertainty of which to me had long been a source of mortifying reflection, now ascertained beyond all doubt to have been such as mocks our warmest passions, and remained for these times to produce.
‘By the master of a Spanish schooner which I captured on the 20th… I am informed that the Hermione arrived at [La Guaira] on the 26th of last month at 3 p.m. having been run away with by her crew; who not content in such atrocity, added to it the last, the most horrible of all human actions, a general indiscriminate slaughter of their captain and officers, excepting the Surgeon, and one of the master’s mates, who concealed themselves, most of the Marines, six women, and in all some forty souls: it appears that Captain Pigot, about the time of going to bed, was murdered by his coxswain, who was nominated commander afterwards, and in that character delivered her up with all papers, signals and instructions to the Spanish Governor on conditions of arrears of wages being paid; to be considered as Spanish subjects; and not given up to the English when the war is over…’
From what the mutineers said at La Guaira, there had been a correspondence with the Diligence’s crew to involve them in the mutiny, said Mends, and ‘had we not separated they would have taken us along with them.
‘The Master of the schooner charged me to take care of myself when he related this. Having weighed this part of the information against the truly gallant, good-tempered disposition of my people, I called them together and fairly related the case in all its circumstances: never could any body of men be more shocked at hearing of such unexampled barbarism, nor was indignation marked stronger than when they were told of the intention of breeding mutiny in, or seizing the Diligence by force. To a man I was assured that had we been in company when this fatal catastrophe took place, that they would have retaken the Hermione or perished alongside her.
‘The Master of the Spanish schooner informs me that the mutineers are held in the utmost detestation at La Guira [sic]; the scorn and contempt of everyone; their offer of going to sea in the ship under Spanish colours being rejected by the Governor.’
Mends was courageous. One of his lieutenants was in the Sally, and another in the San Antonio; Spanish prisoners on board were occupying the attention of his few Marines, and the nearest enemy port was less than fifty miles away. Yet he did not hesitate to call his men together and tell them that the Hermione’s crew had mutinied and killed the officers. Had they been planning a mutiny, it would have only needed one man to shout ‘Come on boys, let’s do the same!’ for Mends to have been tossed over the side.
Now that he knew the Hermione’s fate, Mend’s immediate duty was to warn the Commander-in-Chief. He gave orders for the San Antonio to be taken in tow, and a signal was made to the Sally. At 11.30 a.m. the brig ‘filled and made sail’. The Mole was still more than 300 miles away.
At the Mole Sir Hyde Parker was flying his flag in the Queen once again after his few weeks’ stay in the cramped old storeship Adventure and planning to sail almost at once with the Carnatic and Valiant. However, for the moment he was worried because, as he related in a letter to the Admiralty, his original fears—heightened by the Maria Antoinette affair—had been justified: he had just discovered that ripples from the great mutinies at the Nore and Spithead had at last crossed the Atlantic and reached the West Indies.
One of the twenty-six ships whose crews had mutinied at the Nore was the storeship Grampus. She had not been badly affected, and of the 412 mutineers later court-martialled only six were from the Grampus. She had then been sent to the West Indies, but not before four mutineers from other ships had been put on board. The Grampus arrived at the Mole early in October, and the first sign of trouble on board was described by her captain, Charles Carne, in a letter to Sir Hyde written on October 19. Explaining how he returned on board one night to find the mainyard hanging by the main tackles, he said he ordered some men to secure it in case a swell came on, and while this was being done ‘Colin McKelly and Abraham Mason (seamen) behaved themselves in the most contemptuous manner to me, their captain, and endeavouring to stir up the ship’s company to mutiny; for which I have to request you will be pleased to order a court martial…’
Sir Hyde ordered the trial to be held next day, so that at the same time Captain Mends, 300 miles away in the Diligence, heard about the Hermione mutiny, five captains at the Mole heard the evidence against the two seamen from the Grampus, and sentenced them to death. When Sir Hyde read the minutes and sentence of the trial he decided to reprieve one of them.
Therefore on Monday, October 23, Colin McKelly was hanged from the yardarm of the Grampus and Abraham Mason received his reprieve. Earlier the same day Sir Hyde had written to all the captains telling them to ‘acquaint their respective ship’s crews with the execution of this day for mutiny, which I hope will be an awful lesson to them, to avoid, by their good conduct, a similar punishment’. The next sentence of Sir Hyde’s letter was a direct result of Admiralty concessions during the Spithead mutiny: the captains were to tell the men ‘that I have ordered a full allowance of all species of provisions to be issued to them on the first of next month, agreeable to His Majesty’s Order in Council of 18th May last’. From then onwards there would be sixteen ounces in a pound, officially anyway.
Only one other action by Sir Hyde on the particular Monday concerns this narrative. Some days earlier, knowing the Hermione and Diligence were due to complete their patrol and leave the Mona Passage on October 16, he had sent the Magicienne, under Captain William Ricketts, and the Severn, to take their place.
Now Sir Hyde drew up some special secret orders for Ricketts ‘to proceed upon a particular service’. They would be sent to Ricketts by the Regulas. The ‘particular service’ was a strange one. When reporting on the Grampus court martial later to the Admiralty, Sir Hyde said that ‘some proofs have appeared that the seeds of the late wicked mutiny [i.e. at Spithead and the Nore] were not wholly exterminated in that ship’, and that they had been ‘in a great measure revived’ by putting ‘four marked mutineers from other ships’ on board before she sailed from England. However, it was discovered after the incident which led to McKelly being hanged that ‘So strong was the spirit for mutiny in the Grampus that immediately on their arrival [at the Mole] they began tampering with the crews of the ships then in port, and, from information, the Valiants and Adventures were inclined to adopt their measures, the Queens and Carnatics positively refused to have anything to do with them.
‘Two men having been pointed out by Captain Carne as great promoters of the mutiny, although sufficient proof could not be adduced to bring them to trial, I have put them on board the Magicienne and Regulas [i.e. sent them in the Regulus to the Magicienne], with orders to Captain Ricketts to put them on shore near some Spanish settlement… as characters unworthy of remaining in His Majesty’s service, with certificates annexed to their discharges of the crimes with which they are charged. These examples, I trust will damp the infection that appears to have been so near taking place, of the destructive licentiousness which threatens the very existence of the Navy…’
Two days after he wrote that dispatch, and a few hours before the packet Princess Royal sailed with it for England, the Admiral received an even greater shock—one which made the activities of the Grampus’s men look like children’s games. As he noted in his journal for Tuesday, October 31 ‘At 2 a.m. arrived the Diligence…’
Immediately the brig anchored Captain Mends had himself rowed across in the darkness to the Queen and within a few minutes was relating to the Commander-in-Chief the story of the Hermione’s fate as reported by the captain of the San Antonio. Sir Hyde acted promptly: he realized there was no chance of getting the Spanish to return the Hermione herself, since the two countries were at war; but he guessed that the Spanish authorities would have little sympathy with mutineers. They also had crew problems—pressgangs had to roam the streets of Spanish towns to man the ships of His Most Christian Majesty, The Spaniards would realize that large rewards given to British mutineers might well encourage their own men to desert to the British in the hope of similar treatment.
His strongest case lay in asking the Spanish authorities to hand over the mutineers because they were murderers, so he dictated a letter to the Governor of La Guaira ‘demanding the crew of the Hermione as he phrased it in his journal. Since the man who delivered the letter would probably have to negotiate with the Spaniards, he chose Captain William Ricketts, who was one of his favourites as well as being a nephew of Admiral Earl St Vincent, and his ship, the Magicienne, was well placed geographically. Orders would have to be sent quickly, since the Regulus had already sailed to deliver to him the two would-be mutineers from the Grampus and the Admiral’s order to maroon them.
Sir Hyde dictated instructions for Ricketts saying that he enclosed a letter for the Governor of La Guaira. Ricketts was ‘to proceed thither and use his best endeavours to procure the company of [the Hermione], and in the case of success, to distribute them on board his ships and join me off Monte Christe
[sic: Cristi] or, in case of failure, to dispatch the Diligence to me with an account of the proceedings’.
His instructions to Mends were simple enough: he was to sail at once in the Diligence to find the Magicienne, deliver the letters to Ricketts, ‘and follow his orders for your further proceedings’.
With Mends on his way Sir Hyde wrote to the Admiralty describing what had happened and what he had done. Fortunately the packet Princess Royal was ready to sail for England, so the dispatch was sent across to her, and the frigate Ambuscade ordered to escort her well out into the Atlantic.
Sir Hyde sailed later the same day with the Queen, Valiant and Carnatic for the north side of Santo Domingo, but his departure had nothing to do with mutiny or war: a few days earlier yellow fever had broken out on board each ship, and Sir Hyde believed that the best way of dealing with such outbreaks was to get to sea. A fortnight later he was writing to the Admiralty that in the Queen twenty-four men had died and fifty more were still on the sick list but he trusted ‘the violence of the disease has subsided; the other two ships have not suffered in proportion’.
The packet Princess Royal, under the able command of Captain John Skinner, which had left the Mole on October 31 with Sir Hyde’s dispatch reporting the Hermione mutiny, managed to avoid marauding French privateers, and arrived safely at Falmouth after a voyage of just over forty days—about a week longer than usual. Sir Hyde’s dispatch was soon in a coach rattling its way along the 266 miles to the Admiralty, where it was opened by Mr Evan Nepean, the Secretary of the Board. On December 15 the Admiralty made the news public. The Evening Mail, among other newspapers, had already reported on December 13 the safe arrival of the Princess Royal from the West Indies, and on the 15th announced that ‘It is with much regret we have to relate a circumstance of the most daring and sanguinary mutiny that the annals of the British Navy can record. The particulars, we believe, are not known; but a most melancholy event has happened on board His Majesty’s frigate the Hermione, of 32 guns, Captain Pigott [sic], son of the late Admiral, who with every officer of the ship except the surgeon, has been either killed or wounded, and the frigate carried into a Spanish port.