The Black Ship

by Dudley Pope

  The Surprise was waiting four miles offshore for His Most Christian Majesty’s former frigate Santa Cecilia, and Mr Made noted in his log: ‘Half past five [a.m.] the boats returned with the Hermione.’

  With the Surprise and the Hermione well clear of the coast, it was possible for Captain Hamilton to check the casualties that the British and Spanish had suffered. The difference between them was fantastic, and but for the Spanish corpses and prisoners in the Hermione to prove the figures, would have been almost unbelievable.

  In drawing up a list of the British casualties, Captain Hamilton dismissed his own wounds as ‘several contusions, but not dangerous’. Four men, including John Maxwell, the Gunner, had been dangerously wounded; and seven others slightly wounded—a total of twelve. Not one Briton had been killed, and the maximum number of them on board the Hermione at any one time, and then only for a few minutes, was eighty-six.

  Yet on board the Hermione were the bodies of 119 Spaniards who had been killed, while another 231 (ninety-seven of them dangerously wounded) remained as prisoners. Among them was Don Ramon de Eschales y Gaztelu who, until 2 a.m. that morning, had been commanding the ship.

  He gave Captain Hamilton some interesting information, both about the ship’s intended activities with the squadron from Havana, and the number of men on board. He explained that there should have been 392 in the ship, but seven officers were on leave, and twenty men were in the guard boats. Thus with 119 killed, 231 prisoners, twenty in the boat and seven on leave, a total of 377 were accounted for. The remaining fifteen must have jumped overboard.

  With 231 Spanish prisoners to guard—ninety-seven of whom needed urgent medical attention—Hamilton was thankful when a ship was sighted at 7 a.m. and, chased by one of the Surprise’s cutters, proved to be an American schooner bound for Puerto Cabello from La Guaira. Her captain agreed to take the prisoners and the wounded into Puerto Cabello (with the exception of Don Eschales and two other officers, whom Hamilton proposed keeping). The schooner hove to near the Hermione and the slow work of ferrying across the prisoners, including the wounded, began.

  By noon the new crew of the Hermione—who were, of course, men sent over from the Surprise—hoisted in the boats and both frigates got under way, heading for Port Royal, Jamaica.

  Arriving there with the two ships on November 1, Hamilton wrote his report to Sir Hyde Parker, beginning with the words, ‘Sir, the honour of my Country and the glory of the British Navy were strong inducements for me to make an attempt to cut out, by the boats of his Majesty’s ship under my command, his Majesty’s late Ship Hermione…’

  28

  THE RETRIBUTION

  * * *

  HAVING SUCCEEDED, Captain Hamilton needed no excuse for having virtually disobeyed Sir Hyde’s orders. He paid tribute to the cutting-out party: ‘Every officer and man on this expedition behaved with an uncommon degree of valour and exertion.’ He did not criticise Lt Wilson and the Boatswain for their stupid behaviour: instead he did not mention them by name (which in itself indicated they had failed in some way). He added, ‘I consider it particularly my duty to mention the very gallant conduct, as well as the aid and assistance, at a particular crisis, I received from Mr John M’Mullen, Surgeon and volunteer, and Mr Maxwell, Gunner, even after the latter had been dangerously wounded’.

  Three days later Sir Hyde Parker wrote to the Secretary of the Admiralty: ‘I have a peculiar satisfaction in communicating to you, for the information of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, that his Majesty’s late Ship Hermione is again restored to his Navy, by as daring and gallant enterprise as is to be found in our naval annals…

  ‘I find the Hermione has had a thorough repair, and is in complete order: I have therefore ordered her to be surveyed and valued, and shall commission her… by the name of Retaliation.’

  The path before Captain Edward Hamilton was strewn with honours—and with troubles. The people of Jamaica were stirred by his exploit, the fruits of which were clearly visible lying off Port Royal, and within four days of the Hermione’s arrival the House of Assembly voted him a sword, valued at 300 guineas, ‘in testimony of the high sense this House entertains of the extraordinary ability displayed by him…’

  On February 1, 1800, it was announced in London that ‘The King has been pleased, by letters patent under the Great Seal of Great Britain, to confer the dignity of a Knight of the said Kingdom unto Edward Hamilton, Esquire, Captain in the Royal Navy….’

  Even though Hamilton had not then returned to England, the City of London paid its tribute on March 6 when the Court of Common Council voted unanimously that the City’s thanks be presented to Captain Hamilton and his crew ‘and that the Freedom of the City be presented to Sir Edward Hamilton in a gold box value fifty guineas’.

  The award of the Naval Gold Medal by the King completed the major honours—but of course Hamilton was also due for a share of the prize-money because at the time of her capture the Hermione was a Spanish warship, and this amounted to a considerable sum. According to the first valuation, Hamilton’s share of two-eighths would have been about £4,024, and Sir Hyde’s one-eighth, about £2,012. The rest would be split as follows—an eighth shared between the Lieutenants, Master and Surgeon; an eighth between the Lieutenant of Marines, the Commander-in-Chief’s secretary (the Rev A. J. Scott), the principal warrant officers and the Master’s Mates; the same amount for midshipmen, inferior warrant officers and their principal mates and the Marine Sergeant; and two-eighths, £4,024, shared between the rest of the crew. However, the first valuation was not the final one. (According to one contemporary account, Sir Edward Hamilton gave £500 from his own two-eighths to be shared among the seamen of the Surprise.)

  The total amount of prize money had depended in the first place on the report of the officers at the Port Royal yard, where the naval storekeeper, master shipwright, acting master attendant, and the carpenters from the two biggest ships there surveyed the ship and made an inventory which listed and valued everything on board—from sails to anchors, and watch glasses to copper kettles. (Watch glasses, for instance, were valued at 2d. each, while a large copper kettle at £11 8s. 2d. compared favourably with a new main-topgallant sail at £12 2s. zd. The ship’s equipment was valued at a total of £6,057 15s. 9d.).

  The surveyors then described the condition of the hull, masts, yards, booms, rigging and fitted furniture, and put a value on them. This was done by estimating the total tonnage—they worked on a figure of 717 tons—and allowing £14 a ton, giving a total of £10,038, ‘making in the whole sixteen thousand and ninety five pounds fifteen shillings and ninepence sterling, which we consider to be a fair and equitable valuation’.

  Sir Hyde enclosed their report in his letter to the Admiralty, When the Board received Sir Hyde’s dispatch they were delighted with the passage reporting the recapture of the Hermione but they thoroughly disapproved of the rest—that the ship ‘has been purchased by my order at the price she has been valued at’, and that he had ‘ordered her to be called the Retaliation’. Sir Hyde’s purchase was on behalf of the Admiralty, and of course the prize-money depended on the price he paid.

  A note on the corner of Sir Hyde’s letter gave Mr Nepean, the Secretary to the Board, instructions to tell Sir Hyde that ‘under the present circumstances Their Lordships will not disapprove of his having purchased the ship without first receiving Their Lordship’s authority for so doing’. They sent the commission of the new captain appointed by Sir Hyde to command ‘the Hermione which they have thought fit to name the Retribution’.

  Thus the Hermione, later the Santa Cecilia, and then the Retaliation received her final name. Sir Hyde’s choice seems in retrospect more appropriate, for the cutting out was indeed retaliation against the Spanish, whereas the Board’s choice seems to imply retribution against the mutineers—who did not suffer one iota from her recapture.

  However, inky fingers had not yet finished. The Admiralty, passing on the Jamaica yard’s survey and valuation to the
Navy Board—who were responsible for the construction, repair and fitting out of ships—soon received a stiff letter in reply: the Navy Board reported the ship was not worth nearly as much as the Jamaica yard’s valuation and gave facts and figures to prove it.

  Since the Jamaica yard was the Navy Board’s responsibility, the Admiralty replied to the Navy Board, giving their decision and also recapitulating the main points the Navy Board had made, which was that the figure of £14 a ton for the ship was much too high because she was eighteen years old, and a price of £10 15s. a ton was ‘a proper and sufficient valuation’.

  The yard officers at Jamaica, according to the Navy Board, had put nearly £200 on the valuation of every £100 of the stores and £254 on every £100 of cordage, making the total price for the equipment £1,526 4s. 9d. higher than ‘you pay in England for similar stores when perfectly new’. This, they added, included the extra £60 charge added to every £100 of stores bought from the Jamaica yard by merchant ships.

  ‘We do hereby signify to you,’ Their Lordships told the Navy Board, ‘that we very highly disapprove the conduct of the yard officers at Jamaica, in not being properly mindful of the public interest… and desire and direct you… to allow that valuation only for the Hermione which you have stated to be proper’. This letter, written a year after the capture, shows how Their Lordships thus went back on their word. A year earlier they had ‘not disapproved’ of Sir Hyde’s purchasing the ship without their permission; but now they were cutting down the price. Only the Surprise’s crew suffered, particularly the hundred who had captured the Hermione against such odds.

  Sir Edward Hamilton had been too ill to return to England immediately: he had to spend several weeks recuperating from the effect of his wounds. In the meantime the officers of the Surprise had presented a sword to Mr John M’Mullen, their brave Surgeon. Incidentally one of the boarding party was later court-martialled as a deserter from the sloop Swallow and sentenced to 300 lashes. When it later transpired he was one of the men who saved Hamilton’s life when he was badly wounded on the Hermione’s quarterdeck, the court successfully applied to have the sentence remitted.

  Sir Edward finally sailed for England in April on board the Jamaica packet—but he was out of luck: three packets in succession were captured by the French—the Princess Charlotte on May 4, the Marquis of Kildare on May 6, and the Princess Amelia on May 11. Thus Sir Edward found himself a prisoner of war in French hands, but news of his exploit had already reached France, and as soon as he was landed at a French port he was, according to a contemporary account, ‘sent to Paris, where he was taken notice of by Bonaparte’, and after remaining there six weeks, was exchanged for four French midshipmen held prisoner in England.

  He was back in England in good time to attend a dinner in his honour given by the City of London on October 24, the first anniversary of the cutting-out expedition. Hamilton was later given command of the Trent—where, as mentioned earlier, he established a reputation as a martinet and filled Midshipman, later Admiral, Jackson with apprehension. It may well be that his behaviour then was, in part at least, due to the severe headwounds that he received. After being dismissed the service by a court martial trying him for tying an elderly gunner in the rigging, he was later reinstated by the King, and between 1806 and 1819 he commanded the Royal yacht.

  The rest of the Hermione’s story can be told briefly. On January 20, 1802, as the Retribution, she arrived back in Portsmouth, just two months before David Forester was caught by Steward Jones as he walked through the Point Gates, and two days before Sir Edward Hamilton was court-martialled in the Gladiator, moored nearby, and dismissed the service.

  Also in Portsmouth at this time was another ship which had been concerned in the Hermione’s story, the little Diligence. This brig sailed for the Thames on February 6 to be paid off—and, by a coincidence, the Hermione, under her new name, sailed for Woolwich the same day, also to be paid off.

  The Royal Navy had no further use for the Retribution since the Treaty of Amiens was about to be signed. She arrived at Woolwich on March 2, but Trinity House, responsible for the buoys and lightships round the coasts of Britain, wanted her. She was therefore fitted out for them, sailing on her first voyage under their flag on October 16, 1803. However, she had only a brief life left. She arrived at Deptford on June 8, 1804, docked the following August, had her copper sheathing taken off, and was broken up in June 1805.

  So the story of the ship Hermione ends. Of the thirty-three of the Hermione’s crew who had been caught or given themselves up and been tried as mutineers, twenty-four had been hanged and another transported. But apart from Nash, Forester, Elliott and Redman, the rest of the leaders were never captured—men like Thomas Jay, Lawrence Cronin, and William Turner. Midshipman Wiltshire was not heard of again; nor was Mrs Martin, the widow of the murdered Boatswain.

  What happened to them, and to more than one hundred other Hermiones who evaded arrest? Cronin we know settled down in La Guaira, and no doubt married and had a family. Did Thomas Jay when the war ended eighteen years after the mutiny, ever return to his native Plymouth? Did William Anderson, who last saw his native Canterbury when he was twenty-one, dare return with the peace, when he was nearly forty? John Farrel, the murderous American, no doubt went back to New York with the watch he won in the quarterdeck lottery. Did John Innes, the captain of the maintop and a former Success, visit his native Galloway again, or John Phillips his birthplace in Hanover? Did Cranbrook, Ton-bridge, Liverpool, Belfast, Whitby, Colchester, Lambeth, and several score other towns and villages ever again see those men and boys who left in the 1790s to serve in the Hermione? It is obvious that the majority of the men must have eventually settled down somewhere and married. So many coincidences occurred in the story of the Hermione that it is perhaps not being fanciful to wonder how many people in various parts of Europe and America may be quite unaware of their forebears’ mutineering past, even if they read this narrative. Somewhere, perhaps, there is a silver teapot still in use on which is engraved Pigot’s name and Otway’s thanks.

  APPENDIX A

  The Effect of a Flogging

  ULTIMATELY any judgment on the physical effect of Captain Pigot’s cruelty to his crew depends on a knowledge of what a lash from a cat-o’-nine-tails did to a man. Present day pundits disagree and all base their arguments on the very few existing written descriptions by victims of a flogging. The author therefore made some experiments to determine the effect of a lash.

  The dimensions of one of the last cat-o’-nine-tails used in the Royal Navy—in 1867 on board the steam corvette Malacca—were taken. The handle, of wood covered in red baize, had been weakened by woodworm and could not be used for experiments, and in Pigot’s time the cat usually had a rope handle, but of the same length and diameter as the wooden handle. The author therefore made up a cat to the same specification—which is similar to several others described in contemporary documents—using a rope instead of a wooden handle. The rope was 1-in. diameter manilla, two feet long. One end was whipped and nine pieces of ¼-in. diameter (¾-in. circumference) line were spliced into the other end, leaving tails two feet long. A Turk’s head knot of the same line was placed over the splice and sailmaker’s whippings were put on the ends of the tails. The completed cat weighed thirteen ounces.

  Using a five-barred shipyard wooden trestle as a ‘grating’, the cat was then tested on pieces of wood of various sizes. The horizontal bars of the trestle were made of 5-in. by 2-in. wood spaced twenty inches apart measuring from centre to centre. A piece of ½-in. by 2-in. pitchpine, free of knots, three feet long, was lashed vertically to two bars of the trestle with an equal amount overlapping the bars top and bottom. The centre of this piece of wood was midway between the top and bottom bar and 4 ft. 6 in. from the ground (the height at which blows would fall on an average man’s shoulders when flogged), and was unsupported by the horizontal bars for fifteen inches.

  The person wielding the cat was 5 ft. 10 in. tall and weighed 1
52 pounds. He intended to strike the centre of the pitchpine and made a preliminary swing with the cat, using only about two-thirds of his strength, to test the distance and his stance. The piece of pitchpine broke in two pieces and it was estimated the nine tails had spread about three inches at their widest at the point of impact.

  A piece of ¾-in. by ¾-in. pitchpine of the same length and free of knots was substituted, and a blow delivered using the man’s full strength. The wood broke into three pieces. The middle piece, where the tails hit, was five inches long and landed seventeen feet from the trestle—the remaining two pieces were of course lashed to the bars.

  A piece of 1-in. by 1-in. pitchpine of the same length and also free of knots was then substituted. The first blow of the cat had no apparent effect and the tails appeared to spread about three inches. The second blow broke the wood into two pieces, the break being four and a half inches long.

  Each piece of wood, although unsupported for fifteen inches, was of course supported for five inches at the top and five inches at the bottom by the bars of the trestle.

  Pitchpine was chosen for the experiments because it has the highest modulus of elasticity of any readily available wood: 850, compared with 730 for larch, 730 for American elm and 450 for English oak. Its tensile strength is 2.1, compared with 1.9 for larch, 4.1 for American elm and 3.4 for English oak. Since one was trying to measure the impact of a lash, the most important factor was the modulus of elasticity.

  So much for the effect on wood. What about the effect on a man? It was clear that a man standing braced but unsupported would have been knocked down by one blow. The effect on a man lashed to a grating, unable to ‘give’ with the blow, can only be guessed, but from the above experiments it is certain that one lash would break the skin and severe bruising would result.