by Roger Knight
* Pichegru was involved in a later conspiracy, imprisoned and murdered in his cell in 1804 (Sparrow, Secret Service, p. 293).
* Between 1716 and 1844 seven members of the family held office in the Deciphering Department of the secretaries of state, and, after 1782, the Foreign Office. The most remarkable of this family, apparently blessed with mathematical genes, was Edward Willes, appointed in 1716, who managed to continue his duties after he had been appointed Bishop of St Davids in 1742, and of Bath and Wells in 1743 (Ellis, Post Office, pp. 129–31; Sainty, Secretaries of State, pp. 51–2, 116–17).
† The life of a King’s Messenger was hard and dangerous. One old Foreign Office hand recalled, ‘the many instances in which they lost their lives by shipwreck, or were murdered; the innumerable cases in which they suffered bodily injury by being thrown from their horses or carriages; their sufferings from frost-bite, exposure and so forth’ (Horn, Foreign Office, pp. 221–2, quoting Sir Edward Hertslet, Recollections of the Old Foreign Office (1901), p. 157).
* The generally jaundiced public view of the North Sea crossing can be discerned from popular doggerel:
Gravesend, Dover, Deal and Harwich
The Devil gave his daughter in marriage
And further to fulfil his will
He flung in Hellevoetsluis and Brill
(Trinder, Harwich Packets, p. 93)
* The bell of the Lutine hangs to this day in Lloyd’s of London, and is rung to announce a maritime disaster somewhere in the world. Only half the gold was eventually recovered.
* Lady Bessborough wrote to Leveson Gower of Grenville’s terrible journey: ‘The general anxiety about him and joy for his safety must be very flattering to him if he ever knows it. It was the highest of all honours, the homage paid to worth, for had either of his brothers [Lord Grenville and the Marquis of Buckingham] been in the same situation, neither their titles or their riches, or their places would have gained them half the interest that was shown for him’ (Thorne, History of Parliament, Vol. IV, p. 95, quoting Granville, Leveson Gower, Vol. I, p. 242).
* A further problem was handling the vastly increased intelligence correspondence. Michael Duffy estimates that Foreign Office files doubled between 1783 and 1792 and between 1793 and 1802. There were three quarters more files and those much thicker than in the previous period. In 1793 Grenville appointed Charles Arbuthnot, a friend from Christ Church, as a senior précis writer to deal with this problem (Collinge, Foreign Office, pp. 41, 58).
† The Secret Committee of the Court of Directors of the EIC had considerable influence on the government’s policy, and was the channel through which secret despatches passed between the Board of Control and the different centres of government in India (Philips, East India Company, p. 11).
* Etches took great pains to check the hydrographic details. ‘I know the beach well,’ he wrote to Nepean, ‘from having made a practice when at the Helder of bathing every morning … to convince myself, I am therefore confident that the troops might [be] landed from open Boats in safety’ (21 Nov. 1796, NMM, NEP/2).
* Continental states did not escape these shortages. For instance, the diplomat Sir Arthur Paget reported on the bread riots in Vienna in July 1805 (1 Aug. 1805, Paget, Paget Papers, Vol. II, p. 203).
* Parson Woodforde recorded in his diary on 6 Oct. 1799 that he received ‘a fine large Somerset cheese, a present from my nephew now with me, from a relation of his wife’s at Mew near Stowton by name James Jules, a great dealer in Cheese and employed for Government in that way and is getting a good fortune by it … The cheese was about a Qr. of a Hundred Wht. with the King’s Arms on the side of it’ (Beresford, Woodforde, p. 476).
* The United States Embargo Act, an early indication of worsening relations with Britain, prohibited American merchants from trading with Britain. See Chapter 15.
* Although the sea and inland waterways were the most economical way to move agricultural products, the roads were improving and by 1800 the average wagonload had increased from four to six tons. Their main business was with goods of small volume and high value (Barker and Gerhold, Road Transport, p. 33).
* Perhaps the most impressive demonstration of trust was the tradition of dogs being sent home to Scotland or Wales from London on their own. One story involved a Welsh dog named Carlo who journeyed all the way back to Wales from Kent. His owner sold the pony that he had ridden on the outward journey, intending to go home by coach. He fastened the pony’s harness to the dog’s back and attached a note to it, addressed to each of the inns on the route they had followed, to request food and shelter for the dog, to be repaid on a subsequent journey. Carlo reached home in Wales alone in a week (Bonser, Drovers, p. 37).
† The only other livestock to be driven long distances were large flocks of geese and turkeys, generally from Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to London, and usually in Aug. after the harvest had been taken in. The journey was about a hundred miles and took about three months. Daniel Defoe tells a story of two aristocrats who bet on the pace of the two kinds of bird, a race that resulted in a win for the geese by two days. These drives were still taking place at the end of the century, although it was more usual for poultry to be transported in specially designed carts (Fussell and Goodman, ‘Traffic in Livestock’, p. 235).
* Several schemes were put forward in the 1820s for a ‘Grand Imperial Ship Canal’ that would link the Thames at Deptford to Portsmouth, including one by George and John Rennie, big enough to take substantial warships as well as naval stores and provisions. In 1825 a committee to examine feasibility had among its members the secretary for war, the first lord of the Admiralty and the undersecretary of state for foreign affairs. A similar scheme to link London to Bristol with a ship canal also failed (Vine, London’s Lost Route, pp. 98–109). Steam-powered vessels were eventually to overcome the vagaries of coastal transport by sail.
* On the same voyage in mid-Atlantic Victory also purchased forty-one head of live cattle from an American merchant ship (Knight, Pursuit of Victory, p. 494). Mid-Atlantic provisioning was not without risk, as recounted on another occasion by Lieutenant Gardner, when cattle were again purchased from an American merchantman: ‘As the Yankee had plenty for sale, and it being a dead calm, I loaded our boat with live and dead stock until she was pretty deep in the water. On our return, the sharks began to muster and the livestock began to ride rusty … one of the boat’s crew said, “Please, your honour if we don’t cut the b—s’ throats [meaning the livestock] … their hoofs will be through the boat’s bottom, as they are kicking like blazes, and here’s a bloody shark close alongside us.” However, we got safe alongside after a long tug’ (Hamilton and Laughton, Gardner, p. 246).
* The lack of water for Abercromby’s troops at Gibraltar on their way to Egypt in 1801 gave rise to a more than usually waspish comment from the duke of Richmond, out of office and still bitter, against the secretary for war: ‘I suppose Mr Dundas drinks himself so little water that he does not consider it as at all necessary for an army’ (Mackesy, War without Victory, p. 157, quoting Richmond to Lord Holland, 8 Feb. 1801, BL, Add. MSS 51802).
* An indication of how much was required to maintain the garrisons of Minorca and Malta was their combined monthly consumption of 80 tons of flour (Treasury to Victualling Board, Motz letter, 15 Nov. 1800, TNA, ADM 109/106).
* Evidence of the stress in getting this fleet off can be found in the account of a quarrel between Christian and a current commissioner on the Transport Board, Captain John Schank, as related by Sir Charles Saxton, commissioner at Portsmouth Dockyard, to Lord Cornwallis: ‘the unfortunate & untimely dispute between Adm[ira]l Christian & Capt[ain] Schank, which (I am told) went to very indiscreet lengths (at this moment) on the part of the Admiral, Who Collar’d Schank, and then parted with a challenge from Schank, which they say the Adm[ira]l Accepted & promised to fulfil at his return from the Expedition’ (Cornwallis-West, Cornwallis, p. 306).
† Witness his advice to Thomas Grenville, first lord
of the Admiralty in the cost-conscious Ministry of All the Talents, when stating the estimate for transports in 1806 in Grenville’s first Naval Estimates: the sum could be reduced, ‘but perhaps it would be more convenient to Government, to have money in hand, than to run the risk of a deficiency, which might require a pre-mature calling of Parliament next year. I hope you will excuse the liberty I take in making these observations’ (11 Nov. 1806, HL, STG 146 (28)).
* Senior naval officers were in two minds about the Transport Board arrangement, none more so than Lord St Vincent, who saw it differently when in power than he had when at sea. To Lord Spencer in 1797 he was of the opinion that the ‘Transport Board [was] of no use whatever’. When he was first lord of the Admiralty he boasted to Henry Addington of ‘having such a very efficient Transport Board’ (30 June 1797, Corbett, Spencer Papers, Vol. II, p. 212; 17 Sept. 1803, DHC, Addington Papers, 152M/C1803/OZ93).
† The Merchant Shipping Act of 1786 required all ships above fifteen tons to register with the Customs Department. The process of measuring a ship was complex, displacement tonnage being calculated by multiplying ‘the length of the keel by the breadth of the beam, and that product by half the breadth of the beam and divide the last product by 94’. However, there were many variations on this basic formula (Syrett, Shipping, pp. 111–12).
* Exactly how much shipping was available to the Transport Board varied from month to month and year to year. Of Britain’s merchant ships 85 per cent were under 200 tons, too small for military use. Of the rest, the state of the economy, seasonal patterns of trade and shortages of merchant seamen conspired to complicate availability. At the height of government demand, in late 1808, the Board had chartered 1,012 ships, totalling 250,000 tons (an average of 247 tons each), at a time when the British Registry contained 22,646 ships totalling 2.3 million tons (an average of 102 tons) (Sutcliffe, ‘Bringing Forward Merchant Shipping’, pp. iii, 90–96, 310).
* Warships were much faster than transports. One army officer recorded that he sailed in a transport across the Bay of Biscay with a following wind, ‘envying those who were fast running ahead of us. We were one of the sternmost vessels. Such is the superiority of the frigates over the best transports, that while the latter were going along with all sail set, the Frigates were running away from them under bare poles, obliged constantly to lie to, to enable the sternmost transports to come up’ (Verner, Reminiscences, p. 12).
* Small transports seemed always to have been overcrowded. One observer noted during the 1807 Copenhagen expedition that ‘Transport no. 196 passed us, playing my favourite air the Lorette: she was much crowded with artillery men … and had a large gun over her bow’ (Chambers, ‘Chronological Journal’, p. 378).
* Losses of merchant ships and seamen were considerable. Between 1803 and May 1810 over 120 transports were captured or lost, 1,900 seamen perished and 1,700 were taken prisoner (Melville’s speech, 21 May 1810, BL, Add. MSS 8807, fn. 6).
* Though the twenty-six EIC ships came free, they were indemnified against loss, and therefore needed valuing. Such was the hurry that they were ordered downriver immediately to Gravesend, and had to be surveyed and valued there by the Woolwich Dockyard officers: ‘this disagreeable job has fell upon me and the other officers of this yard – and we have been down the river this fortnight past surveying the said ships’ (John Tyson to Nelson, 26 Nov. 1803, NMM, CRK/13; Philips, East India Company, p. 113). John Tyson had been Nelson’s secretary after the Battle of the Nile before coming ashore in 1802, when he was appointed clerk of the survey at Woolwich Dockyard (Knight, Pursuit of Victory, p. 674).
* Small expeditions in 1797 included Abercromby’s to Trinidad and Puerto Rico; in May 1798 1,400 troops were involved in the raid on Ostend, while in November Duckworth and Stuart’s expedition took Minorca.
* The viewpoints of senior ministers in Nov. and Dec. 1799 survive in a letter-book, copied on the instructions, most likely, of Dundas. The letters are businesslike and precise, stripped of the usual polite flourishes, and give an unusually detailed insight into the process of reaching a major cabinet decision (Sim Comfort Collection).
* ‘Women only in the proportion of Six to every Hundred Men will be permitted to embark. They should be carefully selected, as being of good character and having the inclination and ability to render themselves useful’ (‘General Order for Troops Destined for Continental Service’, 15 Apr. 1807, quoted in Glover, Britain at Bay, p. 130). In Sept. 1799 Lady Bessborough witnessed the embarkation of troops to Den Helder from Margate Pier, describing the dramatic scene to Granville Leveson Gower.
You know only a certain number of women are allow’d to go, and they draw lots for it. One in particular wish’d very much to follow her Husband, but was told the number was completed and oblig’d to go on shore. She had an infant at her bosom, and another about a year old by her. She threw herself on the side of the Pier crying and sobbing almost to fits, and shewing every mark of agony while the remainder of the soldiers were embarking. As soon as they were all in, and the Anchor drawn up, she kept her eyes ste[a]dfastly fixed on the transport as it moved slowly up the Harbour. The soldiers were drawn up on the side waving their hands to their friends. Just as it turn’d round the Pier head she darted forward, threw the eldest child into the Arms of her Husband, and jump’d herself, with the other in her arms, amidst the shouts and acclamations of the Mob. The Soldiers received her and laid her gently on the deck, and the officer on board was so touch’d by her perseverance and despair that he permitted her to go. I cannot tell you how much this has struck my fancy; but we are in the midst of adventure here.
(Granville, Leveson Gower Correspondence, Vol. I, pp. 261–2)
* Colonel Bunbury described Abercromby as ‘Mild in manner, resolute in mind, frank, unassuming, just, inflexible in what he deemed to be right … An honest, fearless straightforward man; and withal sagacious and well-skilled in his business as a soldier. As he looked out from under his thick, shaggy eyebrows, he gave one the idea of a very good-natured lion.’ But Bunbury added, ‘The General was a little too old for hard service, and he was extremely near-sighted’ (Bunbury, Narratives, p. 45).
* The Bay of Marmaris was eventually surveyed in 1811 by Francis Beaufort.
* The capitulation specified that Britain had only six weeks to get the ships out of Copenhagen, a lengthy task, since almost all of the Danish warships had neither rigging nor guns fitted. As Gambier was unwilling to strip his fleet of men to sail the prizes back to Chatham and Sheerness, the government swiftly advertised for seamen from the Greenland fishery, promising them a bounty, and guaranteeing freedom from the press and travel expenses back to their home port. According to the Naval Chronicle, ‘upwards of 2,000 have already volunteered in the river, and in the eastern ports; and it is conjectured that many more will be collected for this purpose’ (Tracy, Naval Chronicle, Vol. IV, p. 49).
* The numbers involved overwhelmed the local postal services. The Deal postmaster claimed that he had 20,000 letters for men in the expedition and arrangements had to be made for a special coach to carry the mail (Austen, English Provincial Posts, p. 87).
* Sir Home Popham tripped up a final time in the House of Commons in the post-expedition enquiry, having assured the secretary of the Admiralty: ‘“Don’t be alarmed; depend upon it, when I get up to speak I shall be so intensely listened to that you may hear a pin drop.” He got up, carried the expedition triumphantly till it met with a gale of wind – and [said], “Sir, without the loss or damage of a single ship, I anchored the whole securely in the Room-Pot [the estuary to the north of the mouth of the Scheldt].” The security of a fleet of men-of-war afloat in the Cream-pot, raised such a general shout of laughter, that poor Sir Home’s speech shared very much the fate of the luckless expedition’ (Barrow, Autobiography, pp. 306–7).
* Public scorn resulted in an epigram still remembered:
Lord Chatham, with his sword undrawn,
Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan,
/> Sir Richard, longing to be at ’em,
Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham
† It was a period of high tension in the Army Medical Service (see Chapter 11). An army doctor and persistent critic of the Army Medical Board, Robert Jackson, thrashed the surgeon-general, Thomas Keate, with a cane, and received six months’ detention for the attack (Ackroyd et al., Advancing with the Army, p. 30).