by Max Adams
In the second week of June the army’s commanders (Gage had been joined by Major-Generals Howe, Clinton and Burgoyne) formed a plan of action, to break out of Boston before their situation became even more critical: to give themselves, in an infamous phrase, ‘elbow room’. They would force Boston Neck, take the rebel positions in nearby Dorchester and Roxbury Heights, establish control in Charlestown (as Graves had requested earlier), and advance on Cambridge. They expected the enemy to fall back and disperse, while they re-established control over Massachusetts. Very quickly though, the rebels got wind of their plans, and decided to act first.
Early on the morning of 16 June a council of war was held in Cambridge to formulate a response to the British plans. By that evening Colonel William Prescott had mobilised his militiamen and, joined by others with trenching tools but only emergency rations, they headed across the neck of the Charlestown peninsula, and in the darkness held a heated debate about whether to fortify Bunker’s Hill or Breed’s Hill. In the end Breed’s Hill was chosen, uncomfortably near the batteries across the water, but better placed for an appreciation of the enemy’s dispositions. All through the night the Americans dug, throwing up earth and turf ramparts on the edge of the hill. A British officer heard strange noises across the water, but reported nothing.
At four o’clock on the morning of 17 June lookouts on board the Lively, anchored in the narrows off Charlestown, saw and heard the Americans digging their redoubt on Breed’s Hill, and without waiting for orders Lively’s captain ordered her guns to open fire on the rebel positions. The frigate’s 9-pounder guns were too small and could not be elevated high enough to damage the earth rampart, however, and all she accomplished was to blow the head off one of the rebels. They were shocked, but they did not run away.
At seven that morning, the British held their own council of war, and their commanders, with Howe to the fore, decided – simply decided – to retake the peninsula by amphibious assault. Graves suggested taking the neck of the peninsula and cutting them off, but the army commanders favoured full frontal assault, grossly underestimating the strength of the enemy’s position and their determination. By the time the first troop transports set off from Long Wharf, the Americans had occupied abandoned buildings in Charlestown, and were frantically reinforcing their positions on the hill so that they held, albeit thinly, a line right across the peninsula. Graves’s battery on Copp’s Hill set to pounding the American positions, but with little effect.
At three o’clock Howe landed with a second wave of troops. His boats were under the command of master’s mate Collingwood who, setting the pattern for his later naval engagements, behaved with the utmost coolness and bravery, and spent the rest of that day ferrying wounded men from, and reinforcements and supplies to the army, in an action that, though it lasted no more than two hours, was extremely fierce.14 There was an additional danger of being hit by fire from British ships and the Copp’s Hill battery.
The first British attack, lines of smart redcoats marching up the hill, exposed and unable to penetrate the redoubt, was repulsed at half-past three, with Prescott allegedly ordering his men not to fire till they saw the whites of the enemy’s eyes: it led to heavy British casualties. A second wave fared no better, though the Americans were desperately short of ammunition and experienced officers, and were already exhausted from their night’s exertions. The British responded by setting light to Charlestown, and all the rest of that day and into the night it burned, watched by the fascinated and horrified population of Boston sitting on the roofs of their houses.
The third British assault succeeded in taking the American redoubts, but with shocking losses: one thousand casualties, as the defenders fell back, then finally panicked and ran. The Americans were driven off the peninsula with honour, and became heroes. The British, failing to exploit their hard-won victory, later abandoned their positions and fell back to Boston. Within months they would evacuate the city. The first great action of the war, which won Collingwood his promotion to lieutenant, had cost the British army its reputation of infallibility. It would eventually lead to the total loss of the American colonies.
Acting-Lieutenant Collingwood had to return to England to have his promotion confirmed by Their Lordships at the Admiralty. Preston was to stay in Boston, so he was sent aboard Somerset under Captain Edward le Clas. Somerset sailed first to the Royal Naval base at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in December, probably with a number of loyalist Bostonians wishing to be repatriated to England. Her departure for home was delayed by the following order from Graves:
The present unpromising state of the King’s affairs in the province of Canada, the notoriety of the Disaffection of a Number of the inhabitants of Nova Scotia, and the Danger with which His Majesty’s Yard and Stores are threatened, will therefore not allow me to let the Somerset proceed to England at present.15
On 15 January 1776 Somerset did finally sail. It was not a propitious time of year for crossing the Atlantic. She arrived in Plymouth in February, ‘much shattered in the voyage, by the violence of the weather’.16 Collingwood might have thought he deserved a spell of leave after the horrors of Boston, and was keen to go north to see his family, especially since his father had died the previous year. But he was even more anxious to capitalise on his new promotion (duly confirmed) by keeping as close to the action, that is, to the Admiralty, as possible. He stayed, probably with aunts, in Castle Street, London. From here he wrote the first of his letters that survive, to his sister Betsy. He thanked her for sending him a warm winter coat, though it seems to have gone missing before it found him, and intimated that the Admiralty had offered him a provisional posting for the spring. The rest of the letter is a mix of family gossip and news from the Admiralty, written in a warm, open and witty style that sets a pattern for the four hundred or so of his private letters that survive.
By April he had indeed been offered a posting, though it was only in a sloop, the 14-gun Hornet under Commander Robert Haswell, bound for the West Indies. By chance, an order to Lieutenant Collingwood from the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, dated 1 April 1776, has survived: he must have thought it a poor April Fool’s joke, for it ordered him to form a press gang:
Whereas we intend that you shall be employed to raise Volunteer seamen and landsmen in and about London for the service of His Majesty’s sloop Hornet at Woolwich, you are hereby required and directed to observe the following instructions…17
These instructions give us a fascinating insight into the celebrated horrors of the press. First, Collingwood was to hire a room for a rendezvous, and cause bills to be printed and stuck up calling for volunteers: seamen aged eighteen to fifty, and landsmen aged eighteen to twenty-five. Then he was to send such volunteers as he had raised, with a list, to Hornet at her moorings. Thirdly, he was to send a daily account of his proceedings to Captain James Kirk, regulator for the raising of men in London. Lieutenant Collingwood was to feed and lodge these men, presumably confining them if necessary, until they went on board, at ninepence per man per day. He was to keep the first eight good seamen, the bigger the better, with him on a subsistence of one shilling and threepence per day per man, and to hire a boat for looking among the shipping on the river. He was himself to receive two shillings and ninepence a day for his own subsistence. No mention of cudgels or truncheons; the use of weaponry was implicit.
He was explicitly urged to use all possible frugality and husbandry (something that came very naturally to him, unless it was the press gang itself which taught him these habits) and not to spend more than one shilling and sixpence on lodgings per week, no more than a shilling a head ‘entry’ money (the King’s shilling), and no more than ten shillings for hiring a drummer and fifer and other charges. The cost of handbills was not to exceed £1 10s, and travelling expenses were not to exceed threepence per mile. He was to apply to the Navy Board for a cash float of £20, and deliver an account of his expenditure to Their Lordships. If Collingwood was the most economical officer of his time, he
was wonderfully in accord with the Admiralty Board.
The infamies of the press gang are notorious. Much was written and said about it at the time, especially in parliament, and no civilised person could ever justify it except on grounds of extreme necessity. Many alternatives were proposed, but none whose merits were superior. Collingwood was far from alone in hating its injustices and brutalities, but the fact was that when Britain was at war she had to expand her serving naval personnel by tens of thousands in a very short time. The idea of conscription was universally abhorred in Britain (it was often cited as one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s ‘crimes’). Regardless of much that was said by politicians unfamiliar with the service, and later written by careless Victorian historians, it was not common practice to tear working men from their wives and families indiscriminately. The press was only allowed to take men who had been seamen, and very often the presence of a tattoo or give-away rolling gait would serve as ample evidence of saltiness. No doubt there were instances of arbitrary imprisonment and assault, but courts were surprisingly (to modern eyes) responsive to accusations against the press gangs, so most officers in charge of gangs had one eye on their own skins, as well as on their manning problems.
It was in the interests of seamen in time of war to volunteer, because they received a bounty and better treatment. It was equally in the interests of the navy to recruit as many willing men as possible, and only to recruit landsmen when the supply of tars had run out, which happened all too quickly. The worst injustices occurred when merchant seamen were pressed off returning Indiamen, or when men who had been at sea when young, and who had settled to business or a trade at shore and were raising families, were swept up by recruiting officers keen to make up the numbers. Collingwood himself, many years later, deplored such iniquities:
I have got a nurseryman here from Wrighton [Ryton, in the Tyne Valley west of Newcastle]. It is a great pity that they should press such a man because when he was young he went to sea for a short time. They have broken up his good business at home, distressed his family, and sent him here, where he is of little or no service. I grieve for him poor man.18
Hornet sailed for Jamaica to support the expanded Windward Islands station against American privateers and smugglers. Since the start of the war many English supply ships for the army had been captured and, what was worse, France was acquiescing in, if not aiding, the supply of munitions to the Americans. The situation needed very delicate handling if Britain were to avoid a war with France while she was occupied with the rebels.
Hornet had acquired an unenviable reputation under previous commanders during the Seven Years’ War. Under four different captains she had rates of desertion that ranged from just over eight per cent to nearly thirty per cent, both in Home waters and in the West Indies.19 Such a high rate did not speak of a happy ship. Her present commander, Robert Haswell, had held the same rank for eighteen years and it seems to have embittered him, so Collingwood’s first commission did not hold great promise.
There were commanders in all wars who were just plain unlucky: without political influence or interest, and never seeing any meaningful action. Haswell was not one of these. He was simply a rotten officer. A year after joining Hornet Collingwood wrote to his brother John, in the second of his letters that survives:
MY DEAR JOHN, – Every opportunity of writing to you is but too few. The Lively brings this. Wou’d to god the Lively brought me also for believe me I am heartily tired of my situation, and cou’d a letter contain half the causes of my dissatisfaction you wou’d not wonder at it. What a country is this at present to make a fortune in; all kinds of people wallowing in their wealth acquired by prizes and so extraordinary an exception are we that to be as unfortunate as the Hornet is become a proverbial saying, and the Black girls sing our poverty in their ludicrous songs.20
Haswell, to begin with, had ‘taken all the pains he cou’d to make himself detested, and so far has he succeeded that I am convinced there is not a man or officer in the Ship that wou’d not consider a removal as a kind of promotion.’ The treatment he meted out to his new lieutenant, ‘a slave wou’d have shown resentment at’. Far worse than his tyranny, however, was his apparent shyness – the cause of the black girls’ ludicrous songs:
After leaving the convoy we passed the very track which the Americans sail in; for 12 days an enemy was in sight each day. We chased but two and always left off the pursuit before we came along side; it was evident he never meant to take them, however he afterwards left off even the ceremony of chasing them and allowed them to pass unmolested sometimes within 1/2 a gun shot. There’s a man to support the honours and interests of his country; wou’d to heaven I was clear of him.21
Apart from what Collingwood considered a stain upon his own honour and on that of the service, there was also the very important matter of potential prize money to be won on a station where everyone else seemed to be making a fortune from captured American merchant shipping. The lieutenant of the Glasgow, Collingwood noted, had already made £500 in prize money in the time that Hornet had been on the station. Apart from the hope of promotion, every sailor’s dream was to share in prize money. For a sailor a really successful cruise might mean the chance to settle down on shore, perhaps as the owner of a tavern. Rarely, very rarely, there were instances of such glorious prizes (Spanish treasure ships perhaps) that sailors might be seen conspicuously consuming their booty in an orgy of celebration: frying captured gold pocket watches on Portsmouth Hard.22 For officers, whose share was greater by far than that of a common seaman, it could mean real wealth, and Collingwood watched his chances of both promotion and wealth slipping through his hands day by day.
In the face of such provocation, and having a naturally self-righteous disposition, Collingwood, though ‘diffidence, humility and the idea I have of strict subordination caused me to retreat before the face of tyranny’, was finally unable to restrain his anger after one outburst of Haswell’s ‘virulence, rancour and animosity’. He confronted his commander:
I told him I was determined no longer to bear with his capricious humours, that I was not a mark to shoot his spleen at, and desired him did he disapprove of any part of my conduct to explain himself, nothing wou’d make me more happy than to correct what had given offence to him. Men who act without meaning, or who are ashamed to confess the passion that impels them, are always distressed when explanations are required of them. He had not a word to say and I had a respite from his malign broils, not that they ceased, but he kept out of my way.23
Whether Collingwood requested it or whether Haswell thought he could be rid of his turbulent lieutenant is not clear, but in September 1777 Collingwood was court-martialled at Port Royal, Jamaica for disobedience and neglect of orders. If he initiated these proceedings himself, as he had every right to do, he must have been very confident of his case, or of Haswell’s reputation on the station. Conviction would have ruined his career. As it was, he was acquitted, though the court admonished him for his apparent want of cheerfulness, and warned him to ‘conduct himself for the future with that alacrity which is essentially necessary to His Majesty’s Service’.24
He may have survived his first court-martial (he faced two in three years), but Collingwood’s relationship with Haswell effectively barred further advancement until such time as he could escape his tormentor. Haswell was most unlikely to recommend any promotion for Collingwood; but then, his recommendation would have been worthless. He was a superannuated lieutenant, either very lazy or cowardly or both, prone to tyrannise his officers and men, and almost certainly unable to count on their loyalty. If the local girls were singing songs about him, the gossip of the squadron’s wardrooms would have been more damning by far. He would never be made post.
In these circumstances, and with action against the enemy about as likely as it had been on the Portsmouth guard ship, the best Collingwood could hope for was a sickly season to carry Haswell off with the yellow jack (yellow fever). In the end, though he would have to wa
it another agonising year for it, salvation would eventually arrive in the shape of his old friend Horatio Nelson.
3
The bonds of our amity
1777–1786
In the summer of 1777 Horatio Nelson, aged nineteen, was promoted to second lieutenant in the 32-gun frigate Lowestoffe,1 and sailed to the West Indies where he renewed his friendship with Collingwood. He was much luckier with his commander, Captain William Locker, who encouraged zealous, intelligent young officers to develop their skills in the new war against American privateers. A year later, as the progress of the American war looked bleaker by the month, the Admiralty sent the 50-gun flagship Bristol and a squadron under Admiral Sir Peter Parker to Jamaica to reinforce the Windward Islands station. Britain’s military policies, so successful during the Seven Years’ War, were now failing. General Burgoyne, veteran of the ignominy of Bunker’s Hill, who at the beginning of 1777 was still confidently predicting victory against General Washington, had been humiliated by defeat at Saratoga. Having lost any remaining loyalist support in the colonies, the army had to be resupplied entirely by sea from Britain. In 1777 alone, American cruisers took 300 British merchantmen. Although between 1775 and 1778 the British in their turn took more than 230 American ships,2 it was not enough to prevent the Americans from operating out of friendly Caribbean bases belonging to France, Holland and Denmark.
The number of ships available to the commanders in America and the West Indies, specifically frigates and sloops, was limited by Britain’s normal peace-time policy of running the navy down, an indication of how unprepared the government was for the American war. This left the Home fleet, now down to something like forty ships of the line, to deal with a worsening situation with France, whose neutrality was strained to breaking point as she offered succour to increasing numbers of American privateers.3 By February of 1778 Britain had declared war on France. Within two months John Paul Jones, America’s first naval hero, was wreaking havoc with raids on the Solway Firth and Belfast Lough. In June Spain, with an eye on the recovery of her lost possessions in Gibraltar and Florida, declared war on Britain just as General Howe’s disastrous expedition was withdrawing from Philadelphia, the new American capital.