by Dudley Pope
‘It is hoped,’ added the newspaper (having no doubt received a suitable hint from the Admiralty) ‘that the characteristic honour of the Spanish nation will deliver up these detestable villains, that they may meet the reward due to their enormity…’
A few days later, on board his huge flagship the Ville de Paris, which was off the Portuguese coast, Admiral Lord St Vincent also wrote an urgent letter to Nepean at the Admiralty. Dated December 22, from off the Tagus, it said:
My dear Nepean,
The Spanish post is just come in, and Commissioner Coffin has sent me the enclosed, which I do not give entire credit to, because of the distance between Porto Bello and La Guayra (all in the wind’s eye), but so many of these disgraceful events have happened, that I shudder for the fate of Pigot, who is a very promising officer and a spirited fellow.
The enclosure was a letter to the Admiral which said: ‘… I have this instant received a letter from Cadiz wherein they [say] yesterday arrived a Spanish brig from La Guayra [sic] which brings the account that the English frigate the Hermione was carried in there by the crew—the mutiny was in consequence of a man being on board in confinement either under sentence of death, or to be tried for a crime which would have had that effect—and the crew wished to rescue him—in the scuffle the captain is said to have been killed—the people fearing consequences, landed the officers at Porto Bello and took the frigate into La Guayra.’
This letter was soon followed by a visitor to the Ville de Paris, who reported to Lord St Vincent in person. The visit is described by a second letter. ‘The young man who arrived from Cadiz… and had the honour to wait on Lord St Vincent yesterday morning, is the person who gave the information [the details of] which he confirms by saying that the account given by the master of the vessel arrived from the said place is very full and circumstantial…’
The young man’s report is interesting if only because it shows the captain of the Spanish brig from La Guaira knew Captain Pigot had been killed; but the dispatch he carried from the Captain-General to the Prince of Peace said, it will be recalled, that Pigot and the officers had been put off in a boat.
20
THE COST OF FREEDOM
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JUST TEN WEEKS after the Hermione appeared off the port a warning was sent to the Governor of La Guaira that two more British warships were in the offing, a frigate and a brig. This was followed by the news that a boat had left the brig flying a flag of truce, and soon Captain Robert Mends was explaining to the Governor that his senior officer, Captain Ricketts, had sent him to deliver a letter from Admiral Sir Hyde Parker.
The letter was handed over, and Mends was asked to wait while it was read and translated. When Mends was recalled, Don Vasquez made his apologies: the matter was outside his jurisdiction: the whole question of the Hermione was now in the hands of the Captain-General, to whom he would immediately forward Sir Hyde’s ‘reclamation’, and would Captain Mends—he pronounced and later wrote it ‘Menzs’—please return next day for the Captain-General’s answer?
The letter arrived in Caracas that evening, December 6, and the Captain-General called a junta for the next morning to consider the reply. Don Carbonell was in a quandary: when the mutineers first told him they had sent off all the officers in a boat he had believed them (he would have known of the famous precedent of Captain Bligh and the Bounty) and agreed to their condition that they should not be handed over to the British. But since then ugly rumours had reached his ears, supplemented by reports from La Guaira, that in fact the men had murdered the officers, with the exception of the four under guard at the port. Yet he could hardly go back on his word…
Next morning the junta met, and the minutes record that Carbonell told them how ‘a British frigate and a barquentine of war’ had arrived and sent on shore under a flag of truce a letter from ‘the Vice-Admiral of the Naval Forces of His Britannic Majesty at the Jamaica Station’. This letter, Carbonell said, ‘claimed the crew of the former British frigate Hermione, to punish them for the grave acts of piracy and assassination that he says they committed against the officers, and for seizing the ship’.
The minutes add that ‘Having read attentively and discussed the petition with the mature thought that the case required, it was agreed that the Captain-General… replies that having already sent an account to His Majesty, it is necessary to await his Royal decision; and without touching on the request to deliver up the crew, say that at the time the ship came into La Guaira the crew said they had sent the officers away in a boat’ because of the treatment they had received.
As soon as the eight men had signed the minutes Carbonell drafted a reply to Sir Hyde Parker and sent it by messenger to the Governor at La Guaira for him to deliver ‘to the subordinate officer awaiting my reply’.
In the meantime Carbonell’s answer to Sir Hyde was given to Captain Mends, who took it to Captain Ricketts in the Magicienne. The two ships then sailed, the Diligence to join the Commander-in-Chief off Monte Cristi and deliver the reply, and the frigate to resume her patrol in the Mona Passage.
While his letter to the Governor of La Guaira was being delivered, Sir Hyde was busy making plans to capture the mutineers should the Spaniards not hand them over, and which he described in a dispatch to the Admiralty. ‘Conceiving it impossible for the perpetrators of that horrid act to be at rest, and therefore most probably will ship themselves on board neutral vessels to America and these islands, I have sent narratives [of the mutiny] to all governors and to His Majesty’s Minister Plenipotentiary in America [Mr Liston, the envoy who had complained over the Jesup affair], and suggested to them the propriety of offering a reward and pardon to any (the principals excepted) who shall turn King’s Evidence for bringing the principal actors to justice—having found the plots of all these disobedient plans confined to a very few—the greater part being led away by fear, not knowing when the execution of the plan takes place, [or] who to put confidence in, more particularly in this case after the destruction of the whole of the officers. ‘It being of such importance to the salvation of the naval forces of Great Britian, that the cruel perpetrators of the piracy should be brought to condign punishment, and made most exemplary examples of, I trust his Majesty’s ministers will see it in the same point of view, and make it a particular object with the Court of Spain to have the villains delivered up, as neither sound politics nor religion can induce any state to keep oath with pirates and murderers.’
Although Sir Hyde had shown a shrewd insight into the workings of a mutiny—the situation of ‘the greater part’ of the men in the Hermione had, of course, been as he visualized—he was soon to be disappointed by the Spanish authorities. The Diligence arrived and Mends delivered the Captain-General’s letter, which Sir Hyde gave to his secretary, Mr Scott, to translate. That worthy linguist soon appeared with three sheets of paper covered with his neat writing, the last one inscribed at the bottom left hand corner, ‘Translated literally according to the sense, signed A. J. Scott’.
Don Carbonell’s letter, quoted earlier, described the circumstances of the Hermione’s arrival, and that ‘he who appeared to be its commander’ said that because of the conditions they had been living under, that they had been forced to send the officers off in a boat. ‘The said crew have ever since remained in this province, and an account of the matter has been transmitted to His Majesty in order that his sovereign will may decide therein.’ Don Carbonell concluded: ‘As soon as I receive it I shall punctually communicate it to Your Excellency… Everything that comes within my power Your Excellency may command. God preserve Your Excellency a thousand years.’
Sir Hyde was naturally far from pleased with the Spanish reply: his report to the Admiralty lamented ‘the false policy which has actuated the Government of that country in the protection of these atrocious villains who, I find, as I suspected, are dispersing themselves to different parts; and unless sound policy induces the United States of America to exert their power in apprehending these criminals,
I much fear they will escape the punishment which the heinousness of their crimes so justly merits’.
Yet if the men did escape, it would not be Sir Hyde’s fault. He soon heard from the Governor of Jamaica that proclamations offering rewards for the capture of the mutineers had been issued in the island and posters put in in Kingston, Port Royal, Port Morant and a dozen other places. At Cape Nicolas Mole notices were stuck wherever there was a suitable wall; in various other British-held ports in Santo Domingo walls and tree trunks broke out in a rash of posters. In addition the captains of all the ships in the squadron—and those of Rear-Admiral Harvey at the Leeward Island Station—had been warned to search neutral and British merchant ships.
Because of the difficulty of identifying the mutineers there seemed only a slight chance that even one would be caught; yet a few days after Sir Hyde received Don Carbonell’s reply the first of them fell into his hands and was only too anxious to write a full description of what happened on board the Hermione.
The mutineers soon discovered their newly-won freedom was not the same freedom they had talked about when cooped up in the frigate under the autocratic rule of Captain Pigot. In the Hermione the conditions had been bad: the work was hard but they were paid for it, albeit little and late; the food was bad—but free—and what did not fatten at least filled. The twice-daily issue of grog was also free.
Now that they were at liberty on shore, however, nothing was free: on the contrary everything was very expensive. They had to pay for their food, and once they left the barracks to find work they had to pay for accommodation as well. Their twenty-five dollars ‘subsistence’ soon vanished, and far from being regarded as heroes, they found most people contemptuous.
After being marched to Caracas the mutineers were later allowed to return to La Guaira and given permission to go to other towns and villages nearby where there was any chance of finding employment. Work was the most immediate problem and one which soon became desperate, particularly since they were under orders not to leave the province until permission arrived from Spain.
For the majority of the men there were only two types of work available—carrying stones for a new fortress being built on a hill above La Guaira, or pounding salt at the little village of Macuta, three miles eastwards of the town, where there were salt pans. No wages were paid for either job—only a ration of food. Such work in the glaring sun just ten degrees north of the equator was little removed from slavery. The alternative was to join the Spanish army, but since the few that did were mostly Marines it seems the vacancies were few, and there was also the problem of language.
When the mutineers were brought back to La Guaira from Caracas several applied to the Governor for passes to go to America. In some special cases these were granted provisionally, but the men were told they would not be able to leave for some weeks: until, presumably, the Captain-General received approval from Spain.
With the exception of the twenty-five men working on board the Santa Cecilia at Puerto Cabello, and the others at the fortress and the Macuto saltpans, the rest stayed at La Guaira, wandering the streets searching for work. However, one day in November they were alarmed to find Spanish troops searching the town and arresting all the Hermione’s former seamen. As soon as the mutineers were locked up in jail they discovered one of the reasons: the embargo which had hitherto prevented American ships from leaving the port was to be lifted temporarily next day, and obviously the Governor was not going to risk the mutineers escaping.
Next morning a number of the men in jail—including James Irwin, John Holford and his young son, and James Barnett found out the second reason for the arrests: they were marched out of the prison and down to the quay, put on board a schooner and told they were being taken to Puerto Cabello. Barnett protested that he was ‘one of the salters at Macuto’ and was released. When the schooner arrived at Puerto Cabello the men were imprisoned in the local fortress, and three days later taken before the Governor, Don Miguel Marmion. He ordered them to work on board their former ship, now the Santa Cecilia.
According to John Holford, several of the men protested that they had been granted passes for America and were wrongly arrested in La Guaira, and when Holford himself flatly refused to work on board the ship the Governor ordered him and his son to be taken back to jail. Later in the day a second batch of Hermiones arrived from La Guaira in another schooner and were sent to work on board the frigate. Among them was James Barnett, who had been rounded up a second time and his protest that he was a salter ignored. Barnett, too, refused to work in the Santa Cecilia and was sent on board her as a prisoner at large. He later reported that he escaped from her within two hours, but he had neither money nor food.
Holford described how he met Barnett after his escape. ‘He was in distress, and I kept him near a fortnight at my own expense, having brought sixty-nine dollars prize-money out of the
Hermione; but thinking himself under too much an obligation to me, he went to work at Macatee [sic: Macuto] for his bread.’
This agreed with Barnett’s explanation. ‘Without money, which was taken from me during the night, I was driven to great distress, and had it not been for the kindness of Holford I must have starved. At length I was obliged to go back to La Guaira, and there was under the necessity of pounding salt for my victuals only.’
Holford said later that Barnett was weary in his mind about the mutiny, as he ‘could not venture with safety home, not knowing the consequences of what might happen if he was taken’.
James Irwin, a young Irishman from Limerick, told a similar story: he worked in the Santa Cecilia because of ‘absolute necessity. I could get no other work then, for if I had not done it I must have starved’. This was also confirmed by John Mason, the carpenter’s mate. ‘There was no other employment to be had, except going to work at a fort on the top of a hill [at La Guaira] to carry stones.’ Those working in the Santa Cecilia were not given provisions by the Spaniards, but were paid. ‘It was called twelve dollars but some stoppages were taken out of it.’
But by no means all the former mutineers had been taken to Puerto Cabello: leaders like John Phillips, the murderous sail-maker from Hanover, had joined the Spanish army with some Marines, John Pearce, who Southcott had seen throw his uniform into the sea ‘entered into the Spanish service, into the train of artillery,’ reported Sergeant Plaice. ‘I saw him in their dress.’ Others, according to Mason, were ‘doing duty in the garrison at La Guaira and the environs by their own consent’.
Joe Montell, the Italian, said only eight or ten men received passes from the Spanish authorities to go to America. Lawrence Cronin, the glib Republican and former surgeon’s mate, did not bother to apply: according to Montell he had ‘settled in La Guaira in professional business, encouraged by the Spaniards’;.
Mrs Martin, the Boatswain’s widow, went to America—but not with Redman who, as soon as the men could leave Caracas, signed on in a ship. Many of the former Hermiones—as Sir Hyde Parker predicted—did this as soon as the Captain-General gave permission; and although it will take us ahead of the narrative, we can follow the fortunes of some of them. The step they took in signing on in Spanish, French and neutral ships was inevitable: seamanship was their only trade, and once the work on the Santa Cecilia was finished, the alternatives were carrying rocks or pounding salt.
John Holford and his son—who had only just passed his twelfth birthday—went back to La Guaira overland as soon as they were released from jail at Puerto Cabello, and again met Barnett, worn out and starving after his work as a salter. For three weeks the trio walked the streets looking for employment, but they were unlucky. Then they heard that a ship at Cumaná wanted seamen. ‘As we could get no passage from La Guaira’, said Holford, ‘six of our party… went to Commana [sic] in an open boat’. With them was James Bell, a former Success.
This voyage gives some indication of the men’s desperate plight: Cumaná was the capital and port of entry of the province which bore its name and was more than
150 miles east of La Guaira—a long voyage in an open boat solely on the strength of a rumour that jobs were available.
Once they arrived, said Holford, ‘we got employed on a Spanish xebec [small and fast three-masted vessels, often used as privateers] for our victuals, but no wages allowed’. Barnett and James Bell soon left the xebec. ‘From thence, after three weeks hard labour’, said Barnett, he went to Barcelona, a small port nearby, and boarded a Danish schooner bound for St Thomas, east of Puerto Rico. Staying there some time, he then went to St Vincent, one of the Windward Islands, and on to Halifax, Nova Scotia, ‘where I was to have delivered myself up, but dreaded the consequences’. From there he went overland to the Bay of Fundy and then sailed to Jamaica. After serving in other ships and sailing as far south again as Antigua, he ‘shipped on board the American schooner Polly out [of] which I was pressed by an officer of the Maidstone’. Thus Barnett’s freedom, which had in fact been nearly two years of fear, came to an end.
Several other former Hermiones managed eventually to get berths in ships going to Curaçao, the Dutch island 150 miles to the north-west of La Guaira. Among the first to go in one schooner were John Mason, John Elliott, the Kentish quartermaster who had helped kill Pigot and then guarded Southcott, and William Brigstock, the American from New York, all of whom had originally come from the Success; and John Evans.
At Curaçao the men heard that the French privateer La Magicienne wanted men, so Mason and Elliott signed on—for a twenty-four dollar advance and a share in the profits. The privateer then sailed for the port of Santo Domingo. Soon after arriving there she was joined by another French privateer, L’Espoir, which had some more former Hermiones on board, three of whom decided to quit her and join La Magicienne—the Italians Joe Montell and Antonio Marco, who had helped fit out the Santa Cecilia for the Spaniards, and the Frenchman Pierre D’Orlanie.