A Continuing War_At Home and at Sea, 1803-1804

by John G. Cragg

Giles whispered that all his other boats were to stay where they were while he took the jolly boat* to explore. Transferring to the smaller boat, he instructed Mr. Stewart, the midshipman in charge, to stand off from the landing craft until they could hardly make them out, and then turn towards the lanterns. When they got near to the source of light, they realized that the illumination and the noise were coming from the waist of a sloop which must have been accompanying the group of landing craft. The sloop could hardly be considered a formidable foe. It probably had no more than six guns and only a small crew. It seemed that the crew of the sloop had assembled with the crews of the landing craft. Judging from the sort of noise that those in the jolly boat heard, the group must have broached a cask of spirits. The light was such that Giles could not make out the sloop’s name. Continuing on past the ship, Giles found more landing craft, again with no one on board.

  Giles turned back. When he reached the rest of his force, he ordered Lieutenant Miller and half his boats to join him in returning to the far side of the sloop. He instructed Lieutenants Macauley and Kirkpatrick to take the other half of his force across the intervening landing craft until they reached the one next to the sloop. They were to get ready to board the larger vessel and hopefully overwhelm the enemy crew without much trouble, but they were to wait to attack until they heard Giles’s forces making a loud noise as they attacked from the other side. If they were discovered by the people on the sloop before that, they should attack immediately.

  The jolly boat set off again, this time accompanied by several other boats. They skirted the stern of the sloop and came back to the raft of ships three craft beyond the gathering on the sloop. The voices they could hear had become louder as time passed and were now interrupted from time to time by snatches of song. Giles assembled his forces. He warned again of the need for silence rather than speed and then he led them across the intervening craft until they reached the side of the sloop. It was not so high that they could not easily climb onto the vessel from the gunwale* of the boat they were on. Just as Giles was about to order the attack, one of the men on the sloop came to the side of the sloop to relieve himself, apparently forgetting that it was closely moored to another vessel. Giles immediately yelled at the top of his voice and led the way aboard the sloop knocking the man, whose hands held no weapon, to one side. The sailors charged aboard and their belaying pins made short work of the startled crews of the landing craft and the sloop. Simultaneously, the force from the other side attacked, also with large noise. In only a minute all the enemy force were overwhelmed and taken prisoner, the only casualties being several who had received vicious knocks on the head from the belaying pins. They would be unconscious or groggy for some time.

  Giles wasted no time in examining the sloop’s papers. Now that he had captured the landing craft, he wanted to be away again as soon as possible. He did set some marines to guard the opened casks of liquor which had made the task of taking the sloop so much easier. A search was made of the ship to ensure that no hidden force was about to fall on the invaders. While it was being carried out, Giles had what was left in the casks emptied over the side together with two more that the search of the sloop found. Even with these steps taken, he noticed that several of the seamen, and possibly some of the marines, had succeeded in taking a very stiff drink from the guarded casks.

  The landing craft had sweeps as well as single gaff rigged sails so that even without wind they could be moved. He would take them over the sand bank and, when he had returned to Impetuous with them, he would evaluate fully just what he had captured. The sloop was a different matter. The obvious thing to do with the ship was to sink her on the spot. But she certainly had some value, indeed she was the sort of minor war- vessel that was invaluable. No admiral had as many of them as he wanted. But to save her, she would have to be sailed along the coast to one of the channels through the offshore banks, and those openings were guarded by shore batteries. It was worth trying, especially since she could sail under French colours and was likely to be familiar to the shore batteries as a friendly vessel.

  “Lieutenant Kirkwood. You will take command of the sloop. You may have Mr. Stewart with you.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. But how do I get her out of here? She cannot cross the bar, I believe.”

  “No. Of course not. You will have to wait for the fog to clear – or at least to be thin enough so that you can make out the coast. Then take her to one of the passes through the banks, whichever one is easiest to use at the time, based on wind and current.”

  “The passes, sir?”

  “Yes. You did study the chart that Mr Brooks laid out of this area, as I told you to, did you not?”

  “Yes, sir.” In fact, Mr. Kirkpatrick had only glanced at the chart, being sure that the whole venture that the captain had planned was a fool’s errand and he would have no need of any special knowledge.

  “Those are the passages through the banks that are guarded by the more substantial shore batteries, are they not, sir?” Mr. Stewart piped up.

  “Quite right, Mr. Stewart.”

  Kirkwood for once was glad of the midshipman’s help, even though he regarded the remark as just another of the brown-noser’s irritating efforts to ingratiate himself with the Captain. Well, he would give the boy enough to keep him on his toes while he was commanding the midshipman!

  Giles proceeded to have the landing craft unrafted from each other. One of them, a miserable thing that had already half filled with water from not being bailed while its crew caroused, he loaded with the captured sailors and told them to make their way ashore. A bit of a wind had sprung up and the fog was starting to thin, but it was still too thick to navigate by anything but the compass and lead line. The moon had risen and some of its rays were making the fog about them glow, but it was still too thick even to tell exactly where the moon might be.

  Giles wanted to be across the bar before dawn, for he had no idea what other forces might be anchored near him or had ventured along the coast even in the fog. He did not have nearly enough officers to have one in charge of each of the craft, but he had plenty of experienced sailors who would have no trouble taking the boats over the bank and then to Impetuous. After telling the captives in the sinking craft to get ashore as best they could, Giles had his flotilla set off. They crossed the bar without any of the vessels grounding and turned to where they expected Impetuous to be. The wind strengthened and, by good fortune, it was such that Impetuous should be downwind from them, which eased the effort needed to propel the boats. Giles was just beginning to worry that they might have passed his frigate unseen when the fog lifted to reveal Impetuous only half a cable away.

  Giles wanted to get away from the coast as far and as fast as he could with the hope that the French would not be able to see just what he had captured. He had Impetuous raise her anchor and under a breeze that was increasing and becoming less fluky headed out to sea, trailed by his collection of landing craft. The fog bank remained between Impetuous and the coast and after a couple of hours, he reckoned that it was time to examine his catches. They turned out to be a miscellaneous collection. As if to confuse the orders the Admiral had given, all the craft had single guns, from small field pieces on some to mammoth twenty-four pounders on two of them. Similarly, they seemed to be designed for different tasks. The most lightly armed appeared to be either supply transports or infantry conveyances, the only difference being in how easy it might be to scramble over their bows to get ashore. A third type were clearly designed to carry horses, having crude stalls for the animals. Whether they were for cavalry horses or draft horses could not be determined from their design. The fourth type of craft seemed to be gun boats, whether they were designed to fire at shore defences or to engage ships that might interfere with an invasion was not clear from looking at them. All the boats were flat bottomed, and sailed poorly. And each of them leaked copiously even though the waves were minimal.

  Giles didn’t have the men to send all the captured boats back to Adm
iral Gardiner without leaving Impetuous badly under-manned. He resolved to take the two heavy gun-boats and select one each of the other three types. Since the only things of value on these craft were their guns, light-weight though they were, he resolved to transfer the guns arming the vessels he would not be keeping onto the ones he would take to the Admiral. Mr. Hughes helped immensely in that task, being much more knowledgeable than Giles on how to move guns in awkward circumstances. They were engaged in this task when the schooner under the command of Lieutenant Kirkpatrick appeared. She was limping along without her foremast, with a weird jury-rig on which not very appropriate sails were hung. She had obviously been under fire. Giles remembered hearing distant canon fire some time earlier, though he had not related it to his prize. He still didn’t know the name of the vessel.

  When the guns, together with their powder and shot, had all been transferred, Giles ordered Mr. Milton to sink the dozen extra landing craft that they were not going to take to Admiral Gardner. After that order was given, Giles could turn his attention to Mr. Kirkpatrick, who had just come aboard.

  “What happened to you, Mr. Kirkpatrick?” Giles greeted the lieutenant.

  “Sir, we raised anchor as soon as the fog thinned enough to see the shore line. We ran down the coast until the point at which we needed to turn to seaward. The shore battery was silent, so the officers there must have recognized us as one of the usual French vessels which they had seen before. We turned to seaward, but Mr. Stewart ran us aground. Hard aground. We were still in range of the battery and before we could get off, the enemy opened fire. One of their shots hit the foremast. There is also considerable damage to the larboard side, some between wind and water*. I was able to get the ship off the sandbank and arrange for the jury rigging.”

  “Arrange for it?”

  “Yes, sir. I gave the order, but left the implementation of the details to Mr. Stewart. I thought it would be good for him, sir.”

  “And the damage between wind and water?”

  “We did not have a carpenter, sir. Only a carpenter’s mate. And no supplies. I reckoned that it would be best to wait until we came up with Impetuous.”

  “You say that Mr. Stewart ran you aground.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How was that possible?”

  “He had the watch, sir. It is all in my log.”

  “I see. Where is Mr. Stewart now?”

  “He is still in the sloop, sir.”

  “What is her name?”

  “I didn’t have an opportunity to discover it, sir.”

  “Did you bring your log?”

  “Yes, sir. Here it is.”

  “Very good. Mr. Kirkpatrick. I need to see Mr. Stewart. What you tell me is very serious! Please return to the sloop and send Mr. Stewart here. You must remember that Mr. Stewart has only been at sea a few months. And anyway, it was your duty to make sure that the rigging was in good order. You cannot set a midshipman to a task for a lieutenant without providing adequate supervision. Remember that in future. I’ll send the carpenter with you to see what can be done to repair the damage quickly. And find out her name, Mr. Kirkpatrick. You can hardly command a vessel whose name you don’t know.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Mr. Kirkpatrick turned away from the Captain to return to the prize, but not before Giles was able to spot a smirk of self-satisfaction cross his face. If the lieutenant thought he had transferred the responsibility from himself to the midshipman, he was sorely mistaken.

  Mr. Stewart was soon in front of Giles. His story was quite different from Mr Kirkpatrick’s. He had indeed been given the order to direct the ship’s progress when they turned to seaward, Mr Kirkpatrick having said that the experience would do him good. The lieutenant had even relied on him to pick the appropriate spot to turn seaward. Yes, he had ordered the turn, when Mr. Kirkpatrick had made no indication of when to turn. The lieutenant had not overruled him at that point. It was only when Mr. Stewart said that they should turn to larboard for the dogleg in the channel that Mr. Kirkpatrick had overruled him. Mr Kirkpatrick said he knew of no dogleg, even though it had been clearly shown on the chart. Mr. Kirkpatrick said that he didn’t recall there being a dogleg and said that the depth soundings they were taking indicated no reason to turn and that turning would expose them more to the shore guns. They had run aground soon after that. While Mr. Kirkpatrick was railing against the midshipman for running them aground, Mr. Stewart had had their anchor taken out to starboard, and they were able to pull the sloop off. It was while they were doing that that the fort opened fire and hit their mast. On orders from the lieutenant, Mr. Stewart had arranged the jury rig. Looking at it from the deck of Impetuous, Mr. Stewart said, “It’s not very good, is it sir?”

  “No, it isn’t. But I am sure that you did your best. Now, Mr. Stewart, you mentioned that you were doing something to determine the depth of water.”

  “Yes, sir. I found a lead line in the commander’s cabin on board l’Avanture, and suggested to Mr. Kirkpatrick that we use it to get the depth. Mr. Kirkpatrick ordered an ordinary seaman into the chains to take soundings.”

  “Which seaman?”

  “Daly, sir.”

  “Daly. He is an ordinary seaman, only recently rated that highly. I don’t believe that he has ever taken soundings before. Did Mr. Kirkpatrick adjust for the fact that a French lead line may not be the same as one of ours?”

  “Isn’t it, sir? No, Mr. Kirkpatrick made no mention of that to Daly when he was sending him into the chains. Do the French not use fathoms in the same way that we do?”

  “No, they don’t. The knots are different distances from each other. What did Daly call out before you grounded?”

  “Three fathoms, sir.”

  “I see … Thank you, Mr. Stewart. You may return to l’Avanture.”

  Giles was not happy. In his previous command, he had been saddled with a first lieutenant who had more faults than virtues. Luckily, he had been able to trick that man into abandoning his commission. He couldn’t expect such luck with Mr. Kirkpatrick, but a feckless second lieutenant could do a great deal of damage. He would have to think about how to minimize it without destroying the respect – at least the nominal respect – that his crew must show to their officers. He suspected that the crew already knew about Mr. Kirkpatrick, though his behaviour had not come to be such an issue that Carstairs had felt compelled to inform him.

  Mr. Milton and Mr. Hughes had finished transferring the guns to the craft they would keep. Giles’s next worry was what to do about the fifteen boats he was not going to keep. They seemed to be flat bottomed craft with no keels. He suspected that even if they filled with water they would not sink. He could just chop large holes in their bottoms so that they would fill with water, but even if this meant that they could not be rescued and repaired by the French, he was reluctant to leave such hazardous flotsam. Especially not in an area where he could expect Impetuous to cruise again. Any of the craft, wretched though they were, could cause serious damage if a ship ran into one of them, especially if it had filled with water but not sunk.

  He mentioned his dilemma to Mr. Hughes when the artillery expert came to report the successful transfer of all the guns.

  “Why don’t you blow them up?” Mr. Hughes asked. “You can use some of the barrels of gunpowder we found with the guns. I can do it, if you would like me to. Since the gunpowder has not been entered into your stores, you won’t be charged for it. In any case, I cannot testify to its quality, so we might as well dispose of the barrels.”

  Giles told Mr. Hughes to proceed with his suggestion. If there was anything his crew enjoyed, it was seeing other ships blown up, and a series of fifteen explosions would be almost as much fun as an extra tot of rum.

  The breeze was freshening. Giles ordered Impetuous’s anchor to be raised and the little convoy set off to meet Admiral Gardener’s fleet. The flat-bottomed craft made almost as much leeway as headway, so the broad reach which Impetuous was maintaining bec
ame a close reach for the others. L’Avanture was sailing hardly better. Giles saw through his telescope that Mr. Stewart was trying to improve the jury rig, aided, Giles suspected, by suggestions from Humphries, while Mr. Kirkpatrick seemed to be strolling about the quarter deck giving the odd order to the helmsmen. The warning he had been given apparently had fallen on deaf ears.

  The wind veered so that the landing craft could no longer make their course. Giles decided to tow the small vessels instead of having them sail themselves. This also relieved somewhat the problem that their seams were starting to work as the waves increased and they began to leak more seriously. Even dragging the five craft behind her, Impetuous was in danger of out-sailing l’Avanture, whose jury rig looked better and stronger than it had been, but could not make up for the loss of her mast. Progress continued to be painfully slow, even as the wind increased. The craft being towed were leaking fast enough that their crews were kept busy pumping them. After another hour, the crews of the two large gunboats reported that they could not keep up with the water coming in and that they were afraid that their craft might break up.

  Impetuous hove to. Giles was annoyed that a signal to l’Avanture had to be followed by bellows through the speaking horn before she too backed a sail to hold her in place. What in the world did Kirkpatrick think he was doing?

  A quick survey by the bosun and Mr. Hughes established that they were most unlikely to bring the two gun boats safely to the fleet. With their guns on board, they would undoubtedly sink and even without them it was doubtful that they could be rescued. Both Giles and Hughes were reluctant to abandon the twenty-four pound cannon that each one carried. Each was hauled alongside Impetuous and the Ordnance expert demonstrated his skill in dealing with the monstrous twenty-four pounders by having them and their carriages lifted aboard Impetuous.

  “Now, where do you suggest that we stow* these guns?” Giles asked Mr. Milton when the first of the cannon was safely on board.

  “The aft hold would be best, sir, for the ship’s trim,” replied the First Lieutenant among whose tasks was ensuring that supplies were used and repositioned in the order that best kept the ship floating evenly.