"You see," he remarked breezily to Cochrane, "that Lord Gambier will not take upon himself the responsibility of attack, and the Admiralty is not disposed to bear the onus of failure by means of an attack by fire-ships, however desirous they may be that such attack should be made."4
Portland's government was already in difficulty over the French escape from Brest and the other Biscay ports. If the entire enemy fleet were now to break out of the Basque Roads and fall upon the West India trade, the ministry might well not survive. By attacking with fire-ships, however, the ministers stood to gain popularity if the assault succeeded. If it failed, they could wish for no better scapegoat than Cochrane.
It was, of course, open to Cochrane to refuse to have anything to do with the venture. He had hardly been back a week from a long and arduous tour of duty in the Mediterranean and he was, in truth, exhausted. But he knew quite well that if he declined absolutely, he would be marked as the "hero" whose courage failed when he was offered the command of a desperate venture in the hour of his country's need. He handed back Gambier's despatch to Mulgrave and dismissed the idea of conventional fire-ships.
"If any such attempt were made," he told the First Lord, "the result would in all probability be, that the fire-ships would be boarded by the numerous row-boats on guard - the crews murdered, - and the vessels turned in a harmless direction."
In that case, it seemed to Lord Mulgrave, there was nothing to be done. He was astonished when Cochrane, having dismissed the idea of an attack by fire-ships, added with hardly a pause: "But if together with the fire-ships, a plan were combined which I will propose for your Lordship's consideration, it would not be difficult to sink or scatter the guard-boats, and afterwards destroy the enemy's squadron."
Such was the urgency of the situation that Cochrane was required at once to set down his plan, which called for an initial assault by some of his own specially-constructed "explosion vessels". Mulgrave took it to another room where the Board of Admiralty had been sitting waiting to receive it. He returned after a short while and informed Cochrane that the plan had been unanimously approved.
"Will you undertake to put it in execution?"
Cochrane had already prepared his refusal. He was exhausted to the point of sickness by his Mediterranean duties. Moreover, as he made clear to Mulgrave, he could imagine the jealousy and vindictive-ness of senior officers at the Basque Roads when they discovered that a junior captain had been put in charge of the attack on the French fleet. Mulgrave protested that most of these men had been given their chance and had refused it. But Cochrane remained firm and Mulgrave undertook to "reconsider the matter, and endeavour to find someone else to put it in execution".5
The next day, Cochrane was summoned to the First Lord's room at the Admiralty again. This time, all Mulgrave's joviality had gone.
"My Lord," he said coolly, "you must go. The Board cannot listen to further refusal or delay. Rejoin your frigate at once. I will make you all right with Lord Gambier."
At every objection to the attitude of his seniors, Mulgrave continued to soothe Cochrane's anxieties.
"Make yourself easy about the jealous feeling of senior officers," he repeated confidently, "I will so manage it with Lord Gambier that the amour propre of the fleet shall be satisfied."
Still under protest, Cochrane withdrew. As a matter of self protection he wrote the First Lord a letter, stating his reservations in obeying the Board's command. Almost at once he received a reply from Mulgrave, congratulating him on his patriotic spirit and then adding in a brisk and businesslike postscript, "I think the sooner you go to Plymouth the better."6
While the formalities of Admiralty etiquette were observed and Cochrane was manoeuvred into a position where he could no longer refuse the command, the situation in the Basque Roads was growing critical. It was not merely that the French fleet might break out before the fire-ships were prepared, but rather that Gambier was now beginning to have doubts as to whether an attack could be mounted. His despatch on n March spoke of the French shore defences as being no impediment, but by 26 March he was convinced that any warship coming close to the enemy fleet would be "raked by the hot shot" from the batteries which he had previously considered to be "no obstacle".7
The Imperieuse arrived in the Basque Roads, where Cochrane found that the captain of every other ship was his senior. He had with him a private letter from Wellesley-Pole, Wellington's brother and First Secretary to the Admiralty, to Lord Gambier. Circumspectly, Wellesley-Pole described Cochrane's command of the attack as "conducting" it "under your lordship's directions". Since Gambier and his ships were to be nine miles out to sea, his "direction" of the operation might seem problematical.8
When the Imperieuse anchored with the fleet and Cochrane went aboard the Caledonia to report to the commander-in-chief, he found that the British captains and admirals were already fighting one another with a belligerence beyond anything which they showed to the French. There was intense dislike of Gambier personally and jealousy of him professionally on the part of men like Admiral Sir Eliab Harvey, who was present on the flagship. Gambier was notorious for being better acquainted with a desk in Whitehall than with the quarterdeck of a ship of the line. During the first twenty-two years of his life as a Royal Navy officer he had contrived to spend seventeen of them ashore. On the other hand, he had commanded H.M.S. Defence at the Glorious First of June and had emerged with his ship scarred and smoke-blackened from the thick of the fight. Captain Pakenham of the Invincible had hailed him waggishly across the water, "I see you've been knocked about a good deal. Never mind, Jimmy, whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth!"
Though men like Harvey swore that Gambier owed his promotion to kinship with Pitt and the Barham family, it was the air of suffocating piety exuded by their leader which they found so intolerable. Even as a junior officer, Cochrane was irritated by Gambler's insistence on having dozens of evangelical tracts delivered to the Imperieuse with orders for their distribution and perusal by officers and men alike.
While Gambier regarded Harvey as a heathen beyond the power of salvation, Harvey dismissed his commander's piety as canting humbug. Eliab Harvey was a man of courage and temper. As captain of the "Fighting Temiraire" at Trafalgar, he and Nelson had borne the main onslaught of the enemy battleships. At one point, the Temeraire had a French ship of the line grappled on one side and a Spaniard on the other, both trying to take her. When the smoke cleared at length, it was the men of the Temiraire, led by Harvey, who had captured the other two ships. At the gaming tables, Harvey was as courageous as in battle, according to Horace Walpole. His account occurs in a letter of 6 February 1780, when Harvey was a mere midshipman, written at Strawberry Hill to his friend Sir Thomas Mann.
Within this week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa Tree, the difference of which amounted to an hundred and fourscore thousand pounds. Mr. O'Birne, an Irish-gamester, had won £100,000 of a young Mr. Harvey of Chigwell, just started from a midshipman into an estate by his elder brother's death. O'Birne said "You can never pay me." "I can," said the youth; "my estate will sell for the debt." "No," said 0, "I will win ten thousand - you shall throw for the odd ninety." They did, and Harvey won.9
There was almost every reason for Harvey and Gambier to detest one another. While Cochrane was on board the Caledonia, discussing his plan of attack with Gambier, Harvey was shown in. He demanded that Gambier should now put him in charge of the operation, and he produced a list of officers and men who had volunteered to serve under him in that event. Blankly implacable, Gambier reminded him that the Board of Admiralty had chosen Cochrane.
"I do not care," Harvey announced. "If I am passed by, and Lord Cochrane or any other junior officer is appointed in preference, I will immediately strike my flag, and resign my commission."
"I should be very sorry to see you resort to such an extremity," Gambier replied, though his sorrow was generally doubted by those who knew him. Even Cochrane himself was astonished by the outburst from Harvey w
hich followed this.
"I never saw a man so unfit for the command of the fleet," he began, and then went on to accuse Gambier of wasting time with roll calls or musters instead of getting on with the attack. "If Lord Nelson had been here, he would not have anchored in Basque Roads at all, but would have dashed at the enemy at once."
Having delivered this final barb, Harvey stormed out. Cochrane found him in Sir Henry Neale's day cabin a little while later, still denouncing Gambier to anyone who would listen. However, he assured Cochrane that he had no personal quarrel with him. It was Gambier and his air of self-important piety which were Harvey's aversion.
The feelings of all concerned had now been heated to an intensity which was to cause the court-martialling of two British admirals in the next few months. Harvey threw aside all restraint and according to Cochrane's evidence, said to the assembled witnesses in the day cabin:
This is not the first time I have been lightly treated and that my services have not been attended to in the way they deserved, because I am no canting Methodist, no hypocrite, no psalm-singer, and do not cheat old women out of their estates by hypocrisy and canting.
After this outburst, Harvey went up to the quarterdeck of the flagship and, in front of the flag-captain, William Bedford, listed the insults he had received from Gambier, which were a proof of the commander-in-chief's "methodistical, Jesuitical conduct, and of his vindictive disposition". Bedford prudently kept clear of the dispute but he was already qualified to be a witness at the subsequent court-martial. For good measure, Harvey added:
Lord Gambier's conduct, since he took command of the fleet is deserving of reprobation. His employing officers in mustering the ships' companies instead of in gaining information about the soundings, shows him to be unequal to the command of the fleet. You know you are of the same opinion.
But Bedford, once again, refused to be drawn into the argument. The next news of Sir Eliab Harvey was that he was on his way back to England to face a court-martial "for grossly insubordinate language on board the Caledonia, in consequence of not having been appointed to command the fire-ships". For his outbursts against Gambier he was sentenced to be dismissed the service. However, there were misgivings before long. He was, after all, the same Sir Eliab Harvey who had commanded the Temeraire at Trafalgar. In the following year, in recognition of his "long and meritorious services", he was reinstated in his rank and seniority. But it was only an act of grace, since the Admiralty never employed him again.10
Returning to the Imperieuse, Cochrane was alarmed to discover that Gambier ordered the frequent musters of ships' companies principally in order to examine them as to whether they had learnt the contents of the tracts distributed to them. He read through several of these, the work of Wilberforce, Hannah More and their associates. He found the contents "silly and injudicious". More disturbingly, the fleet was now divided into two irreconcilable factions. First there were the supporters of the tracts, "officers appointed by Tory influence or favour of the Admiral". Then there were those who
hated Gambier and his ostentatious piety. But because he was determinedly carrying out Admiralty instructions and allowing Cochrane to command the attack, this second group also disliked Cochrane himself quite as much as the first.11
While this diverting squabble was occupying the attention and energies of the Royal Navy, the French expeditionary force might well have made its escape. Fortunately for England, the French were busy with an unpleasant little dispute of their own. One of their captains, Jacques Bergeret, complained to the Minister of Marine that Willaumez had taken two days longer than was necessary to reach the Basque Roads. The Minister paid heed and replaced Willaumez by Vice-Admiral Allemand on 17 March.
Allemand anchored his fleet in two lines within the comparative safety of Aix Roads. The approach to the anchorage from the sea lay along the channel between the Ile d'Aix and the Boyart Shoal, a passage which was some two miles wide. Beyond it lay the mainland, the two arms of the Charente estuary. At low tide, some three miles of the Boyart Shoal were uncovered, as well as mud flats round the islands and the arms of the estuary. Allemand's ships were anchored inshore of the Aix-Boyart channel, just clear of the Palles Flat which was the extreme southern arm of the Charente estuary.
Even at low tide, the approach channel was still two miles wide and Cochrane knew that it was the inevitable route for an attacking force. There were soldiers and shore-batteries on the He d'Aix and, at a greater distance, on the Ile d'Oleron to the south and on the mainland. None of these would interfere with his plan.
He first sent back Lord Gambier's tracts, refusing to distribute them to his men. He included a few of them in a letter to his friend William Cobbett, merely in order that the world should see the deplorable "state of the fleet". He also sent a private despatch to Lord Mulgrave on 3 April. Though he had hardly arrived in the Basque Roads, Cochrane had already reconnoitred the Ile d'Aix and had found its walls and defences even more dilapidated than he had dared to hope. "At present the fort is quite open," he told Mulgrave, "and may be taken as soon as the French fleet is driven on shore or burned."
Cochrane repeatedly urged Mulgrave and the ministry to send a small force of troops so that the Biscay islands might be seized. French coastal trade and the main link between north and south on this side of the country would be at an end. The south would be starved of corn, the north of oil and wine. "No diversion which the whole force of Great Britain is capable of making in Portugal or Spain, would so much shake the French government as the capture of the islands on this coast. A few men would take Oteron."12
That Cochrane was right in supposing such an attack might tie down 100,000 French troops seems likely. That he had the capacity to lead an inventive and audacious attack had been proved. But perhaps the cavalier reference to Spain and Portugal was unfortunate. His despatch was bound to pass through the hands of the First Secretary at the Admiralty, William Wellesley-Pole, whose brother, in a few months more, was to be celebrated in verse by John Wilson Croker and in popular acclaim as Viscount Wellington of Talavera. All Cochrane's urging was greeted by a profound silence on the part of their Lordships.
Worse still, the days had passed and the fire-ships, which Mulgrave had promised, failed to arrive. Cochrane went to Gambier in desperation and demanded the use of some of the transports accompanying the fleet, which he proposed to transform into fire-ships and "explosion vessels" for the attack. Gambier agreed. Cochrane left the preparation of the fire-ships to the rest of the fleet and personally supervised the "explosion vessels".
Fire-ships were easily constructed. William Richardson was put to work on a brig from South Shields, which was anchored in the Basque Roads. He and his companions laid troughs of powder fore-and-aft on all the decks, crossing these with other troughs, and stacking wood and canvas between them. Tarred canvas was hung from the beams, and four large port-holes cut on each side of the deck, through which the draught would suck the fire with the effect of a furnace. The rigging was festooned with tarred ropes, the vessel was doused with resin and turpentine, and grappling chains fixed to it so that it would be more difficult for the French to dislodge it once it had drifted against any of their ships.13
Unlike the fire-ships, whose virtue was that they burnt long and slowly, the explosion vessels were designed to go up in a single devastating roar. Setting to work on a captured French coaster, Cochrane first had its decks and sides strengthened with logs and spars, to provide that resistance to the explosion which would in fact increase its destructive power. 1500 barrels of gunpowder were then packed into casks in the ship's hold. On each cask he placed a ten-inch shell and had the entire group of casks lashed together to resemble "a gigantic mortar". He packed 3000 hand grenades round this and laid a fuse to the stern of the vessel. The fuse would burn, he judged, for twelve to fifteen minutes, giving the volunteer crew of the explosion ship a chance to scramble into their little boat and row for safety.
Three explosion vessels were prepared a
s well as thirteen fire-ships. On 10 April the eight fire-ships promised by Lord Mulgrave arrived at last from England. Cochrane was to lead the attack in person but all those who went with him had to be volunteers. It was not only Gambier who regarded this as a horrible mode of warfare. In the French view, those who practised it and were captured must go before a firing squad.
It was later said that any British warships which had attempted to follow up the attack by these vessels would have been in great danger from the French batteries on the lie d'Aix. Cochrane had reconnoitred the island and he knew better. The ineffectiveness of the French guns could hardly be more cogently demonstrated than by the willingness of men to act as crew on the explosion vessels. Gambier swore that the French were prepared to fire red-hot shot at any ship which foolishly approached Allemand's fleet by way of the Aix-Boyart channel. He and his supporters when asked why they had remained far out to sea swore that the risk of any approach involved unacceptable danger to themselves and their ships. If this were so it seems extraordinary that Cochrane and his men were prepared to go in with a ship whose hold contained 1500 barrels of gunpowder, a hundred or more ten-inch shells and some 3000 hand grenades. A single hit from one of the batteries on the Ile d'Aix would have ended the career of every man on board in the most spectacular fashion. However, it has also to be conceded that unacceptable danger was not a concept by which Cochrane was greatly preoccupied.
Once the fire-ships had arrived from England it was imperative to make the attack as soon as possible. It was not only that delay would give the French fleet a further opportunity of escape, the newly-arrived ships from England were being surveyed with interest from the mainland. It would only be a short time before Allemand and his captains identified these ships and their purpose.
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