The War for All the Oceans

by Roy Adkins

  One after another the explosion vessels blew up, but the French, with plenty of warning, had prepared their defences well, and Crawford described how the explosions were spectacular but ineffective: ‘As they entered the [French] line, and at the time for which their machinery had been set, they exploded, and shot in columns of flame into the air, adding by the splendour of their meteor-flight to the brilliancy of a scene, which . . . proved nothing but a grand and expensive, though harmless feu de joie. In the morning we observed no change or alteration in the French line, and we counted precisely the same number but one, which composed it on the evening before.’43 Only one French gunboat was sunk, and Crawford was dismissive of the whole enterprise, ‘which had been concocted with much thought and ingenuity, and was preparing, with great labour and expense, during several weeks. If it ended in smoke, and served no other purpose, at least its previous show and parade kept our friends in the flotilla on the qui vive for several nights; and when at length it did come off treated many thousand spectators, both ashore and afloat, to one of the most splendid fire-works I ever beheld.’44

  In the days that followed the attack on Boulogne, much more momentous events were taking place off the coast of Spain. Intelligence had warned that a substantial quantity of treasure would soon reach Cadiz from South America, intended for the French. Spain was still theoretically neutral, but it was known that this neutrality was being bought by providing finance to Napoleon in return for immunity from invasion by the French. From Britain’s point of view, the Spanish ships could not be considered as strictly neutral. Captain Graham Moore was ordered to Cadiz with a squadron of four frigates, and on 5 October four Spanish frigates were spotted. They ignored his warning shots and advice that he had instructions to detain them. A battle ensued, and in less than ten minutes one ship, the Mercedes, blew up with the loss of most of the crew. The other ships surrendered, one of which was found to be carrying a huge quantity of silver dollars. The diplomatic repercussions were inevitable - neutral Spanish ships had been attacked, 240 Spaniards had been killed, including friends of the Spanish royal family who were civilian passengers, and an extremely valuable cargo had been seized. Midshipman Lovell commented on the battle many years later:I always did think, and my opinion has never changed, that it was a cruel thing to send only four frigates to detain four others, when by increasing the force by two or three line-of-battle ships, this might have been effected without loss of blood, or honour to the Spaniards. If it was necessary to detain these vessels and treasure from political motives, in order to make the king of Spain declare his equivocal conduct, it would have been humane to have sent such a force as would have put resistance out of the question; for what man, who was not a traitor, could yield without fighting (and with such a valuable cargo on board), to a force, in all appearance, not greater than his own.45

  In the next few months Napoleon was distracted from his invasion plans, although they were not abandoned but continued at a slower pace while he prepared to be crowned Emperor of the French. This event took place amid great pomp and ceremony on 2 December. As a direct result of Captain Moore intercepting the Spanish treasure ships two months before, Spain declared war on Britain on 12 December. With 1804 drawing to a close, the situation was at last clear. Napoleon was bent on invading Britain, and with Spain now openly an ally he was in a powerful position - the next few months would be critical.

  EIGHT

  TURNING POINT

  England expects that every man will do his duty.

  Nelson’s signal to the British fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar1

  The first days of 1805 saw a major breach in Britain’s defences - a snow-storm on 10 January forced the ‘wooden walls’ away from the French coast around Rochefort, and Rear-Admiral Édouard-Thomas de Burgues Missiessy led his fleet out through the disrupted blockade. Napoleon’s grand strategy was for Missiessy to take various islands in the West Indies, while a fleet led by Vice-Admiral Villeneuve would capture several others. They were then to harass the merchant shipping of the area, causing as much commercial damage as possible, before returning to support the invasion of Britain. At the very least, British interests in the West Indies would be severely disrupted, and if this diversion drew off enough British battleships from the Channel, it would be possible to mount the invasion. Like all Napoleon’s grand naval schemes it was too complicated and did not allow for any necessary deviations from the plan, so right from the start the strategy began to unravel.

  The storm that forced the blockading British ships to seek shelter hit Missiessy’s fleet with full force, causing serious damage to some of the ships. Several days later in southern France high winds swept the British blockade, which was under Nelson’s overall command, away from Toulon. This allowed Villeneuve to take his fleet out of port, but his ships were in turn battered by the storm, and so he decided to head back. Missiessy did not yet know it, but he was on his own. The French admiral managed to move unseen into the Atlantic, and the first the British in the West Indies knew of the danger was when the French were spotted off Barbados. Missiessy had five battleships, three frigates and two brigs and was also carrying a force of 3500 troops, and so was a much stronger fleet than the British one there, which was in any case dispersed over a wide area.

  The sight of the French caused a certain amount of panic and the news spread through the islands, so that the garrison of Diamond Rock knew what to expect even before they gained their first view of the enemy fleet on 20 February. Commander James Maurice prepared his guns, hoping that he might catch the French unawares, but they had been well briefed and kept out of range, sailing on to the port of Fort Royal on Martinique, where several hundred men were landed as they had already succumbed to illness, and Missiessy himself was unwell.

  Disease was the invisible scourge of sailors, killing far more seamen than were killed in battles, accidents or even shipwrecks, because virtually nothing was known about the real causes of sickness. Particular places were regarded as especially dangerous, though, and the West Indies were notoriously unhealthy. The most feared ailment there was yellow fever, often called ‘yellow jack’ because of the yellow quarantine flag flown on ships where men had contracted the disease. The yellow fever virus was spread by mosquitoes, and the disease was marked by fever, vomiting of dark blood and the skin turning yellow through jaundice caused by the breakdown of the liver. Midshipman George Jackson, who had visited Diamond Rock, caught the disease shortly afterwards at English Harbour in Antigua, where there was an epidemic. His ship was in port for repairs after running aground, and before these were complete he was taken ill and treated in the hospital. He left a detailed account of his progress:Next to confluent smallpox, I should imagine yellow fever to be the most malignant and incurable of the epidemic diseases. Its real nature can be conceived only by those who have witnessed its horrors. The Spaniards call it ‘vomits’ from the black vomit that nearly always ensues, after which there is little or no hope of the patient’s recovery. When attacked by this accursed retching, the sufferer frequently springs up in his bed and expels the dark thick fluid from his mouth several feet beyond him in a moment of intense agony; and at times the patient is suddenly seized with such violent convulsions that the force of several powerful men is hardly sufficient to hold him down. This singular malady is so deceptive that the patient will sink at intervals into a calm and apparently refreshing sleep, as still as a child’s slumber, and start suddenly thence without the slightest warning into one of those terrible fits.2

  Some precautions against the spread of disease, such as quarantine, were used on a basis of trial-and-error, because it was not understood how diseases were spread. Jackson thought that visiting the hospital and just seeing other patients had caused him to catch yellow fever:Before my attack I had been constantly to the hospital in charge of the sick, and the sights I there witnessed no doubt made an injurious impression upon me and accelerated my illness. On the last occasion I was greatly affected and depressed by a sce
ne in the wards. One unfortunate creature lay in the throes of death. From every orifice in his body a thin bloody serum was oozing, and the natural colour of his skin was changed to a ghastly muddy yellow. To add to the hideousness of the spectacle, his person was literally swarming with minute white ants, called by the natives, I believe, ‘walky-walky ants’; and where the secretion exuded these detestable insects were collected thickest, gathered round the margin of the fluid, and feasting upon their odious banquet. Wherever a dead body is they are certain to congregate, but in this instance they were too eager to wait until death had finished his work. I called the Doctor’s attention to the case, and he declared it impossible to remedy the evil. The legs of the bed were standing in pans of water, but no other resources were equal to the emergency, and the wretched victim lingered on under the additional affliction to his appointed hour.3

  Feeling unwell, Jackson consulted the doctor, who recommended that he should remain in the hospital, but he contrived to stay out for another day until he became so ill he was ordered back. He was still sufficiently alert to insist on better treatment, which may have saved him:On entering the hospital I flatly refused to take the room allotted to me, and asked to be put into the one at the other end of the building. The Doctor kindly humoured me. Then I objected to the bed; there was an ugly stain upon the pillow. ‘I will not go there,’ I cried, ‘a man has died in that bed!’ ‘Give him another bed,’ said the Doctor, and after a few more objections had been satisfied, I gave myself up entirely to the faculty and prepared to meet the enemy. What occurred during the next fortnight I do not recollect, but as soon as the virulence of the malady had subsided, I began to realise the mistake I had made in the choice of a room. The window next to my bed, and from which I could easily look, commanded an uninterrupted view of the dead-house outside, so that I could plainly see the bodies being carried there from the hospital.4

  Jackson was one of the lucky few who survived and was forever grateful to those who had nursed him: ‘The kindness and care bestowed upon us during the illness left an indelible impression on my mind and heart, and had I possessed the means I should certainly have requited, as far as it lay in my power, the services of the nurses who were in constant attendance upon myself and the other patients. But I was entirely without resources save those only of which a Midshipman could boast.’5

  At Martinique, Missiessy stayed only long enough to land his sick men and take on supplies before sailing north to carry out a successful raid on the British-held port of Roseau, the capital of the island of Dominica. Raids were also carried out on St Kitts, Nevis and Montserrat. The British had far too few resources to oppose Missiessy, but in the absence of Villeneuve’s fleet he himself did not have a large enough force to hold on to any of the places he captured - he could harass the islands, but not occupy them. On 14 March 1805 Missiessy received dispatches informing him that Villeneuve was still at Toulon and that there might now be a British fleet on its way to the West Indies. Subsequent dispatches ordering him to wait in the Caribbean until reinforcements arrived never reached Missiessy, and he set sail for Europe without capturing any British-held islands, nor achieving his specific objective, the recovery of Diamond Rock. When Napoleon heard what had happened he was furious: ‘I choked with indignation on reading that he had not taken the Diamond Rock . . . I would have preferred to lose a warship.’6

  While Missiessy was making his way back to France, Villeneuve finally managed to leave Toulon on 30 March, with yet another set of orders that were supposed to culminate in the invasion of Britain. Sailing south-west along the coast of Spain and through the Strait of Gibraltar, his fleet reached Cadiz on 9 April, and he sent a message to his Spanish ally, Admiral Federico Carlos Gravina, to warn that he thought a British fleet was already in pursuit. Gravina replied that he would set sail with his fleet immediately, but Villeneuve did not wait and pressed on to the West Indies. He arrived at Martinique six days before Missiessy reached France on 20 May, the two fleets having unknowingly passed each other in the Atlantic. Gravina’s ships rapidly caught up with Villeneuve, whose greatest fear was Nelson’s Mediterranean fleet. Nelson, though, had been misled by reports that the French ships were carrying troops and had initially assumed their destination was Egypt.

  It was only on 11 May, when Villeneuve was already in West Indian waters, that Nelson set sail across the Atlantic in pursuit - for the moment, Villeneuve had a free hand, and he took the opportunity to study Diamond Rock on his way into Fort Royal. Two days later, on 16 May, the San Rafael, a straggler from Gravina’s fleet, sailed too close, and Commander James Maurice reported:I saw a large ship rounding Point Saline, and from her appearance I plainly saw she was a ship of the line, and from the cut of her sails an enemy. At eight, she hoisted a Spanish ensign and pendant; I immediately directed French colours to be hoisted as a decoy, which fully answered my wishes, for at twenty minutes before nine she had got under the lee of the Rock, at the distance of three-quarters of a mile, when I shifted the colours, and opened a well-directed fire of round and grape from Fort Diamond35; the first shot striking her under the fore channels, she directly put her helm up, and in the act of wearing returned one feeble shot. From the little winds she did not get out of range of shot until nine, but continued running before the wind until twelve. At two, an enemy’s brig of war stood out of Fort Royal and beat to windward of the Rock, where she continued to cruise. I was now fully satisfied in my own mind of the intention of the enemy to attack the Rock.7

  Although Maurice’s guns had done no serious damage, they did cause the Spanish ship to run for cover. Maurice was satisfied with his defensive position, yet almost immediately everything changed. It was found that all the water had leaked out of the main storage tank, a month’s supply, leaving Diamond Rock short of water. A crack beneath the specially constructed concrete tank had been widened by earth tremors that had been common during the past eighteen months, and now the vibration from the guns had turned the trickle into a flood. Even with strict rationing, there was barely two weeks’ water left. If the British were to hold on to the Rock, fresh supplies were essential, but that was now impossible, as Maurice recorded: ‘From the 16th to the 29th the Rock wascompletely blockaded by frigates, brigs, schooners and small boats, sloop-rigged, which prevented any supplies being thrown in to me; for on the 25th a sloop from St. Lucia, with my second Lieutenant, who had carried dispatches to Barbadoes, and the Purser, who had gone over to complete the provisions to four months, were taken under my guns, endeavouring to throw in some barrels of powder, although we covered her with a spirited fire from Fort Diamond.’8

  The French did not know it, but they only had to maintain the blockade a little longer and Diamond Rock would be forced to surrender. Instead they continued their preparations for an all-out assault. On 31 May a force of French warships was visible near the Rock, and Maurice saw that the attack was imminent:From the number of their signals, and having cast off their boats, I was convinced the attack would be made soon. At seven the enemy bore up in a line for the Rock, the gun-boats &c. keeping within them, crowded with troops. Seeing the impossibility of defending the lower works against such a force, and the certainty of our being prevented from gaining the heights [later] without considerable loss, and which could not be defended for any time without us, with the greatest reluctance I ordered the whole [garrison] above the first lodgement, having a man at each gun to give the enemy their discharge, which they did, and joined me over the North Garden Pass, excepting the cook, who was made a prisoner. What powder was left below we drowned, and cut away the launch, that she might not be serviceable to the enemy.9

  Having retreated to the summit, it was not long before the wisdom of his decision was made very clear to Maurice:At ten minutes before eight we had every person up, and the ladders secured, when the [French ship] Berwick opened her fire within pistol shot, and at eight the whole of the enemy’s squadron of ships and gun-boats were in action, which was returned by Hood’s Battery36 and
Fort Diamond; the whole of the troops in the boats keeping up a heavy fire of musketry. It was a fortunate circumstance we quitted the lower works when we did, as our own stones hove down [from the cliff face] by the enemy’s shot would have killed and wounded the whole of us.10

  Such falls of rock were a hindrance to the French troops and added to the dangers of attacking up a cliff face through a hail of missiles from above. Major Boyer, who commanded part of the French assault force, later wrote an account for the Martinique Gazette, where he detailed the problems:The fortifications of the Rock, and the positions of the enemy, were exactly as I had conceived them to be . . . the scaling of it appeared to me to be perfectly easy, and I had made my dispositions accordingly; but the moment we had landed, this illusion ceased - I saw nothing but immense precipices, perpendicular rocks, a threatening enemy, whom it was impossible to reach, and insurmountable difficulties on all sides. We naturally enough concluded, that from the facility with which the enemy had suffered us to occupy the bottom of the Rock, they had reserved all their force, to destroy us more securely from the heights of their inaccessible retreat. Our troops suffered severely from a most galling volley of musketry, large fragments of the rock, cannon balls, and casks filled with stones, which they poured upon us.11

  The time the garrison had spent in musketry practice now bore fruit, and the French were forced to retreat or take shelter, as Boyer described:From the tremendous fire of the enemy, the boats had been obliged to retreat, without having landed any of the articles with which I had furnished myself for the attack; the ships also had drifted into the offing, and we remained without support or provisions: I saw we had no resource, but to retreat into two cavities in the Rock . . . where we should at least be under cover: I had all our wounded carried into them . . . In order to prevent as much as possible the effects of the enemy’s destructive fire, I made all the out-posts fall back into the two caverns, to wait for the approach of night.12