by Roy Adkins
On board navy ships smoking below decks was allowed only in the galley, and opportunities to smoke on desk were infrequent, especially in bad weather, so most sailors chewed tobacco rather than smoked it in clay pipes. The increased freedom to smoke on the rock would have been an added attraction to some sailors.
Once the garrison was self-supporting, bringing in supplies and water in its own boats, Hood was eager to reap the benefit of this permanent blockade post and took the Centaur to prey on French shipping among the other islands. Seeing the ship leave, the French put together a hasty plan to attack the rock before the Centaur should return, and four boats full of soldiers were launched. The sailors rowing these boats knew that the currents would make the attack all but impossible, and everyone involved viewed the whole plan as ill-conceived and suicidal. Exhausted by rowing out from the coast and into position for landing at the one accessible spot, the men found that they could not resist the strong current, which swept them past the rock and out to sea, though they did eventually get back to Martinique safely. Fortunately for them the attack was at night, and the garrison only heard about it several days later: in daylight they could easily have sunk the boats. After this ignominious failure the French on Martinique abandoned all thoughts of dislodging the British and appealed for assistance from France. With visibility of up to 40 miles from the summit, the garrison could intercept any shipping in the vicinity and fire on those passing close by - over the next few months this blockading rock would continue to be an irritation to the French on Martinique and a constant humiliation to the naval administration in France.
While Samuel Hood in the West Indies was making the best of limited resources, a great deal of effort was expended by the British Navy in blockading the enemy ports of Europe to prevent the terrifying prospect of Napoleon invading Britain. Most closely watched were those ports across the Channel, in easy reach of England’s shores. Before the peace Napoleon’s soldiers could not be spared for such an enterprise, but just as Britain welcomed the respite from financing allies on the Continent, so France was relieved of the burden of actively defending its borders. Gradually over one hundred thousand troops were moved to camps concentrated on the French coast around Calais and Boulogne, as little as 25 miles from the beaches of Kent. Although packed into a small area to minimise the time and effort of embarking the troops on transport ships, the military encampments nevertheless spread along 75 miles of coastline and were soon visible from the shores of Kent. While the French soldiers were kept occupied with training and drilling to defuse the general air of suspense, a huge flotilla of landing craft was also accumulating that seemed especially threatening. Midshipman Abraham Crawford of the British frigate Immortalité was patrolling the English Channel in the summer of 1803 and observed the situation:The flotilla meant for the invasion of England began to assemble at Boulogne - Bonaparte was loud and boastful in his threats of what he should perform - and the whole French nation seemed confident that at length the conquest and humiliation of their hated rival was about to be achieved; all seemed awakened and inspired by the energy and ever-active mind of their chief. From Brest to Boulogne he inspected all that was in progress, and
Map of the English Channel and the Downs anchorage
wherever he appeared, his presence inspired new life and animation. Boulogne was the grand rendezvous for the flotilla and army of invasion, and he stopped there a few days to trace the sites of the camps, and to give directions about enlarging and improving the contiguous harbours of Vimereux and Ambleteuse.10
Napoleon was hoping to amass two thousand boats to carry his invading army across to England, but the British Navy stood in the way, and only temporary dominance of the Channel by French warships could ensure that the invasion stood a chance. What was needed was French control of the sea between Britain and France for a few days - Napoleon boasted that all he needed was a few hours: ‘I know not, in truth, what kind of precaution will protect her [England] from the terrible chance she runs. A nation is very foolish when it has no fortifications and no army to lay itself open to seeing an army of 100,000 veteran troops land on its shores. This is the masterpiece of the [French invasion] flotilla! It costs a great deal of money, but it is necessary for us to be masters of the sea for six hours only, and England will have ceased to exist.’11 Now that the possibility of invasion was concrete, something close to hysteria gripped the British people and government.
The French troops were trained, experienced and inspired by their generals: they were of the same high standard as the men of the British Navy. The British Army at this time, though, was badly organised and inexperienced compared with Napoleon’s troops. Even with the impetus of fighting to save their homeland and backed by the volunteer militias drawn from the civilian population, the British troops were not likely to prove a match for the French. The British government still relied on the navy as the foremost protection against invasion, and serious plans for fortifying the coast against invasion were not put into effect until the autumn of 1804, most of which would take years to complete. In the short term, when the danger of invasion was greatest because Napoleon had no distractions elsewhere on the Continent, Britain was totally dependent on the ‘wooden walls’ of its navy.
Volunteers were needed for the local militias, but it was feared that many working-class men were sympathetic to Napoleon’s invasion plans. An address to ‘English Day Labourers’ tried to alarm them by claiming that Napoleon ‘gives his soldiers leave to ravish every woman or girl who comes in their way, and then - to cut her throat. The little children perish (of course) by hunger and cold, unless some compassionate soldier shortens their misery by his bayonet . . . If you will not hazard your lives to preserve your wives, daughters, boys, and sweethearts, from such a dreadful fate, then refuse to take up arms; grumble at the laws about Militia, Supplementary Militia, Army of Reserve, and Army in Mass; look out for the French gun-boats, and hail them to the shores of Britain.’12
The Admiralty was closely monitoring the effects of the measures it had already taken. The rapid blockade of European ports had won a breathing space that had been used to prepare more ships for sea and increase the effectiveness of the navy. Everything possible was being done to prevent the French gaining control of the Channel, and ships were deployed to continually harass the accumulation of the invasion fleet at Boulogne, with various plans put forward to achieve its destruction. On the French side, though, measures were being taken to protect their invasion vessels, as Midshipman Crawford detailed:
The whole line of coast from Calais to Havre being strengthened, all the old defences were augmented, and new ones sprang up wherever they were found to be useful or necessary. On our part we gave them all the interruption that we could, and, besides bombarding the towns of Tréport, Dieppe, St. Vallery en Caux, Fecamp, and Havre, in company with the Sulphur bomb [vessel], we were constantly engaged in harassing and annoying the men employed on the new works. These new batteries, or towers, they appeared particularly anxious to complete. They were intended for the further defence of the bay of Boulogne, and were situated, one at the eastern extremity of the bay, one in the centre immediately at the entrance to the harbour, and the third off Point D’Alpreck. On these a number of workmen were actively employed day and night, whilst we lost no opportunity of retarding their operations.13
The whole coastline around Boulogne was the scene of a constant war of attrition, as the British Navy did what they could to prevent the build-up of the French invasion flotilla. One incident that occurred around the same time as Hood’s capture of Diamond Rock was typical of hundreds of small actions in this area, and was described by Crawford:Some night in January, 1804, when the Immortalité was again off Boulogne, and at anchor, her barge, under the command of the first lieutenant, was sent in-shore, towed by the Archer, gunbrig. I am not sure that they had any definite object when they left the ship - most likely it was to observe whether anything was moving alongshore, and to pick up whatever they could. Th
ey had not been gone an hour when a brisk fire of musketry and the report of a few guns was heard inshore. The firing did not last many minutes, and we remained in darkness and uncertainty as to its cause for some time. In an hour, however, the brig and boat returned, bringing with them a French lugger, a small schuyt [Dutch flat-bottomed boat] laden with gin, and a dogger [two-masted fishing boat] in ballast. All three had sailed together from Calais early in the day, bound for Boulogne, and were met with farther off-shore than they calculated upon. After an exchange of musketry and a few shot, it being nearly calm, the barge shoved off from the brig, and, boarding the lugger, carried her after a slight resistance, two of her crew only having been wounded; the barge had not a man touched. The lugger was to have formed one of the flotilla, and was commanded by an enseigne de vaisseau30; she mounted two guns - a twenty-four pounder forward, and one of twelve pounds aft. Besides her crew, she had twenty-five soldiers on board; and there were also a few embarked in the schuyt and dogger; making the number of prisoners amount altogether to fifty.14
The conflict off Boulogne was not as one-sided as would appear from this incident, because gradually the French found more effective - though very costly - ways of protecting ships and boats on their way to the rendezvous of the invasion fleet. Usually these vessels sailed close to the coast, which slowed their progress but allowed artillery batteries on the shore to protect them. This made attacks increasingly hazardous for the British, as Crawford recorded:In the month of February we were again off Boulogne, when we had several sharp bouts with the batteries and flotilla. On the 8th, I think it was, we were hotly engaged, with short intervals, from noon until half-past five. During the day’s work we had a marine killed, two midshipmen, the captain’s clerk, and three or four men wounded. A good many shot hulled the ship, the main-yard was shot through, and the sails and rigging a good deal cut. Several of the enemy’s vessels were on shore; but as they were all flat-bottomed, drawing very little water, and never ventured to move from port to port, except with a leading wind inclining off the land, they were in this, as in almost allother cases, enabled to stop the shot-holes when the tide ebbed sufficiently, and float them again at high water. In moving alongshore, the Flotilla was invariably accompanied by a brigade of horse-artillery specially organized for that purpose; and as they were all covered and protected by numerous batteries and musketry from the beach, any attempt by the [British] boats to destroy them, or bring them off, must have been attended with a wasteful sacrifice of life.15
The Admiralty began to consider more unusual methods of attack and turned to the inventor Robert Fulton, an American from Pennsylvania who had spent much of his youth in England. In 1798 he had been employed in France to build an experimental submarine, and this vessel, the Nautilus, was launched in May 1800. It underwent a number of trials, which were relatively successful, but the vessel was slow and difficult to manage when fully submerged. In 1802 Monsieur St Aubin, an official in Paris, published a letter giving an account of this bateau plongeur31, as the French called it:
In making his experiments at Havre, Mr. Fulton not only remained a whole hour under water with three of his companions, but held his boat parallel to the horizon at any given depth. He proved the compass-points as correctly under water as on the surface; and that while under water, the boat made way at the rate of half a league [1½ miles] an hour, by means contrived for that purpose . . . It is not twenty years since all Europe was astonished at the first ascension of men in balloons: perhaps in a few years they will not be less surprised to see a flotilla of Diving-boats, which, on a given signal, shall, to avoid the pursuit of an enemy, plunge under water, and rise again several leagues from the place where they descended! . . . What will become of maritime wars, and where will sailors be found to man ships of war, when it is a physical certainty, that they may every moment be blown into the air by means of a Diving-boat, against which no human foresight can guard them?16
St Aubin’s letter was as much propaganda as it was accurate reporting, because there were still serious problems with Fulton’s submarine that were mainly to do with its method of propulsion. This was by means of a propeller attached to a gearing mechanism turned by hand by the meninside, so speed and distance depended on their strength. Inevitably the speed of the Nautilus was slow and its underwater range was small, although on the surface it could hoist a sail and perform like a boat. These problems were a factor in the French rejection of the submarine in early 1804, but there was also a feeling that it was not a reputable invention. Like the British, French naval officers were used to standing on the deck and facing enemy fire - to lurk unseen beneath the waves was rather dishonourable. A general reluctance to embrace new technology also existed, which was found in Britain as well as France.
At the time Fulton’s ideas were finally rejected by the French, an old friend of his, Tom Johnson32, was in prison at Flushing in Holland. Often referred to as ‘Johnson the Smuggler’, he was already notorious, and many myths and legends were subsequently attached to his name, making it difficult to sift fact from fiction. Like many other smugglers, Johnson had been employed by the British Navy and Secret Service as a spy and as a pilot in the Channel, responsible for gathering information as well as guiding naval vessels and landing agents on the coast of France. While in France he was approached with an offer to work as a spy for the French, but was thrown into Flushing prison when he refused. In mid-1804 he escaped to America, where he called himself an unemployed Channel pilot and obtained work as a clerk with the British Consulate in New Orleans, but when Fulton arrived in England, after his rejection by the French, Johnson was invited back to Britain to assist him. Fulton, who began work in Britain under the cover name of Mr Francis, had also invented several types of ‘torpedo’ - bombs that could be attached to warships by a submarine and later exploded - and these were the Admiralty’s main interest. Fulton had been the first to adopt the term ‘torpedo’, taken from Torpedo nobiliana, a species of North Atlantic ray that was capable of producing a strong electric shock to stun its prey, but torpedoes were more often known by the term ‘carcasses’. These floating bombs could be weighted with ballast to lie just beneath the surface, so as to be almost invisible, and they could be attached to an enemy warship by stealth, even using a boat during darkness, manned by sailors dressed in black with blackened faces - there was no absolute need for a submarine.
The most obvious application of these carcasses was against the French invasion flotilla at Boulogne, so it was not long before they were put to use, as Midshipman Crawford witnessed:When the ship was at anchor off Boulogne, on dark nights and during calm weather, the first lieutenant and [Midshipman Thomas] Clarke frequently went in the gig to endeavour to blow to pieces, or, at least, to keep on the qui vive, the Flotilla, which lay in the Roads33. This was to be effected by means of coffers, or carcasses - a newly-invented engine of murderous contrivance and most destructive force. These engines were made of copper, and . . . spherical in form; hollow to receive their charge of powder, which by means of machinery, that worked interiorly, and so secured as to be perfectly watertight, exploded at the precise moment that you chose to set it to.17
The fuses for these submerged bombs were run by a clockwork mechanism that provided a time delay. Despite the technical aspects, the carcasses provided a relatively cheap means of attacking anchored ships and also risked fewer British casualties as they could be released offshore and allowed to drift to their targets on the incoming tide. Crawford noted how they were used against the French vessels at Boulogne:Two [carcasses], attached together by means of a line coiled carefully clear, were placed in the boat ready to be dropped over-board. The line was buoyed by corks, like the roping of a seine [fishing net], so as to allow the carcasses to sink to a certain depth, and no further. When you had approached near enough to the vessel or vessels against which you meant to direct the carcasses, and saw clearly that you were in such a position that the line could not fail to strike her cable, one carcass was firs
t dropped overboard, and when that had extended the full length of the line from the boat, then the other, both having been carefully primed and set to the time, which would allow of their floating to their destined object before they exploded. Of course it is presumed that wind and tide set in the direction, so as to ensure their not deviating from their course. These preliminaries being attended to, the carcasses drifted until the line which attached them together struck the cable of the vessel, when it was presumed that the carcasses, one on either side, would swing under her bilge, and, at the fated moment, explode and shatter her to pieces.18
As the darkest nights were used in order to give the best cover for the boats releasing the carcasses, it was generally only the explosions that could be seen, so it was difficult to assess the damage, as Crawford admitted:Often as this attempt was made we never could ascertain that it was completely successful, although the first lieutenant, with a determination to effect his object, approached so near the flotilla, and remained so long, in order to see everything in proper train, as to draw upon his boat a heavy fire of musketry from the nearest vessel, which not unfrequently killed or wounded some of his men. Sometimes, after an expedition of the kind, we saw a vessel in the morning with her jib-boom gone, but without any confusion appearing in their line; and if any one sustained greater damage, they took care that we should be none the wiser, by removing her whilst it was dark, and supplying her place with another, so that they always appeared in precisely the same order at daylight, and the same number was counted as had been at sunset on the previous evening.19
While the French did their best to conceal the effectiveness of the carcasses, their concern at the potential damage and their counter-measures were more difficult to disguise: ‘As a proof, however, that the enemy was kept on the alert, and had a just apprehension of the dangerous powers of those engines, whenever a division of the flotilla was at anchor outside the harbour, they always latterly moored a boat at the buoy right a-head of each vessel, so that she would be sure to bring up [intercept] anything that might be set adrift for the annoyance of the flotilla.’20