The War for All the Oceans

by Roy Adkins

  The Congress of Vienna had been finally brought to a close two days before, and Sir Sidney Smith and his family started the long overland journey to England. On 17 June they reached Brussels and learned that Napoleon and Wellington were about to confront each other just south of the city. Smith could not resist going to see what would obviously be a momentous battle, if not the decisive one, with the dictator he had fought and intrigued against for so many years. Leaving his family in Brussels he immediately headed for Waterloo. He seems only to have had an inscribed ceremonial sword with him and had to borrow a more serviceable one. He recorded how he arrived at the heart of the battle at the moment of Wellington’s triumph:Meeting Sir G. Berkeley returning from the field wounded, and thinking his sword a better one to meet my old antagonist on horseback, I borrowed it. Things went ill and looked worse at that time in the afternoon of the 18th June, 1815. I stemmed the torrent of the disabled and the givers-in the best way I could, was now and then jammed among broken waggons by a drove of disarmed Napoleonist janissaries, and finally reached the Duke of Wellington’s person and rode in with him from St Jean to Waterloo. Thus, though I was not allowed to have any of the fun . . . I had the heartfelt gratification of being the first Englishman, that was not in the battle, who shook hands with him before he got off his horse, and of drinking his health at his table.54

  After the battle Smith organised wagons to bring in the wounded from the battlefield to the dressing stations and to the hospital in Brussels. As a fluent French speaker, he was asked by Wellington to arrange for the surrender of Arras and Amiens and to inspect the route that was to be taken by Louis XVIII on his return to Paris, to ensure it was safe and peaceful. Captain Harry Ross-Lewin of the 32nd Regiment, who had been in the disastrous Walcheren expedition, was returning from Waterloo when he came across Smith at the small town of Bavay:When passing through the principal street of Bavay, my attention was arrested by the uncommon appearance of the arms blazoned on the panels of a coach, which was drawn up at the door of a British general’s billet. ‘Pray, sir,’ said I to a little man who wore a travelling cap and was standing near, ‘can you tell me whose carriage this is?’ ‘It belongs to your humble servant,’ he replied, ‘Sir Sidney Smith.’ We entered into conversation. He had discovered Napoleon’s cipher, and with it all that monarch’s plans, from the papers found in the imperial carriage at Genappe. He also informed me that we would meet with no opposition before we reached Montmartre. Sir Sidney Smith carried his forage with him, and had a haystack raised between the hind wheels of his carriage. Some wags intended to put a coal of fire in this cumbrous appendage to the vehicle as he was going to start, but were by some means prevented from carrying this mischievous design into execution.55

  Napoleon’s carriage ended up on display at Madame Tussaud’s in London, where it was destroyed in a fire in 1925.

  Napoleon fled to Paris after the battle, arriving there on 21 June, and tried to rally what troops he had left, but his friends and commanders either abandoned him or turned against him, and he was forced to abdicate two days later. Smith’s prophecy that Napoleon would eventually find himself imprisoned in the Temple after Smith had achieved power and glory had come true in spirit - but not in detail, because the tower that was Smith’s prison had been demolished. Napoleon fled to Rochefort in the coastal area known as Basque Roads, where Thomas Cochrane’s fireships had cause so much havoc among the French fleet in 1809. His last hope was for a French frigate to take him to asylum in America, but as so many times before, his plans were upset by the British Navy. The blockade of the area was too tight for French ships to evade, and with a hue and cry of French Royalists hot on his heels, Napoleon finally ran out of options. On 15 July he surrendered to the captain of a British ship.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE TURN OF FORTUNE’S WHEEL

  You have already the hatred of all nations, in consequence of your maritime laws, and your pretensions to be mistress of the seas, which you say belongs to you by right. Then why not take advantage of it?

  Napoleon, speaking to the physician Barry O’Meara on St Helena1

  The victory at Waterloo in 1815 was celebrated in many ways, and on the morning of 24 July the schoolboy John Smart of Brixham in Devon was enjoying a holiday:In common with most English schoolboys of that Waterloo year, we had an extra week’s holiday at midsummer, and this was fortunate for me, as it tided me over my birthday on 24 July. It was a bright summer’s morning when I sallied out after breakfast, with two half-crowns in my pocket, to meet Charlie Puddicombe and his younger brother Dick. Charlie was the biggest boy in our school; Dick was almost the smallest, and I and they were great chums. We met . . . on the quay, and at once began to discuss how we should spend the day and my money. Suddenly we spied two ships coming round Berry Head and into the bay - the first a large man-of-war, and the other a three-masted sloop.2

  This was not an unusual occurrence, because the bay was a convenient anchorage for navy ships, particularly those on blockade duty in the Channel, but normally the boys would be confined in school, and John Smart recalled ‘how thankful we were that no school bell would drag us away, but that we might stay to see all the fun!’.3 Dick was sent running to fetch Michelmore Hawkins, the baker, while John and Charlie got a boat ready, for ships in the bay meant more sales for the local tradesmen, and the chance of some excitement, if not some extra pocket money, for the local schoolchildren. While they waited a boat from one of the ships landed two officers, one of whom immediately hired the ‘old yellow postchaise’4 and started out for London. Once he was on his way the other officer ordered the boat to take him back to the ship. Both officers had been unusually brisk, avoiding conversation, and giving out no news at all - it was the first indication of something out of the ordinary.

  The boat was just pulling away when the baker arrived on the quay: ‘“Bean’t he in a hurry, then?” said old Michelmore, who, in his floury coat and white hat, had just arrived with his apprentice boy from the shop. “Come, boys, let’s be off to the ship”.’5 With Charlie and Dick on one oar, the apprentice boy on the other, John Smart was a passenger in the bow while the baker steered. ‘He had a large sack with him containing new loaves,’ Smart remembered, ‘which he was taking as a speculation and as a suggestion for further orders.’6 As they got nearer they could see other local boats:[They] had stopped short of the ship, and were together, while in one of them a man was standing up, who, as we drew nearer, appeared to be in altercation with some one on board. Michelmore steered up to this boat and asked what was the matter. ‘They won’t let us come alongside, and they say as how they don’t want no shore boats at all.’ ‘But they’ll want some shore bread, I reckon,’ said Michelmore, letting our boat drift onwards with the tide towards the ship. It was a grand-looking line-of-battle ship, with 74 guns, and with stern galleries and square cabin windows. The tide took us right under the stern, and there was a sentry with his musket in the poop, and an officer by him leaning over the rail, who said in a loud voice, ‘Come, sheer off; no boats are allowed here.’ ‘But,’ said Michelmore, as he made a grab at a lower-deck port-sill with his boat-hook, ‘I’ve brought you some bread.’ ‘If we want bread,’ replied the officer, ‘we’ll come ashore and fetch it, and if you don’t let go I’ll sink you.’7

  By now the boat was right under the stern of the ship, and Smart was horrified ‘to see the sentry drop his musket and seize a large cannon-ball, which he held exactly over my head. “Let go, you old fool, or by the Lord I’ll sink you!” said the sentry, and to my great relief Michelmore let go, and we were soon out of harm’s way.’8 To back up the sentries on deck, the ship lowered boats full of men armed with cutlasses to row round the ship and keep the shore boats at a distance, and Smart remembered the baker ‘being most indignant. “Man and boy,” said he, “have I sailed in these here waters, and never have I been so treated.”’9 As the other boats gave up and rowed back to the quay, the boys ‘persuaded Michelmore to stay a little longer’,10 an
d Smart watched what was happening:

  The patrolling boats were content in keeping us outside of their circuit . . . at a proper distance. One might well suppose that an English crew, so close to their own shores, would be as eager for communication as we were, and although no word came to us from the ship, we could see the men round the guns peering at us through the portholes. As we rounded the bows of the ship the tide caught us with great force, and . . . we were taken a little nearer than we would willingly have ventured. As the current swept us along, I noticed at one of the lower-deck ports a man nodding violently to us, but standing back a little, as if frightened at being seen. His eye caught mine for an instant as he put his fingers to his lips with a warning gesture.11

  The boys and the baker did another circuit of the ship in their boat, and ‘this time the man was still standing back, and even less visible than before; but his hand was just visible on the port-sill, and as we passed he let something drop from his fingers into the water’.12 Smart later recalled thatwe dared not approach, but we kept it in view as it drifted along. I had my hand dragging as if carelessly in the water, and when we were a good hundred yards clear of the ship, Michelmore steered so as to bring the object into my hand. It proved to be a small black bottle; but as the evident intention of the officers had been to prevent all communication, I was frightened to look at my prize, and could only clutch it in my hand with a fear that some one on board must have seen me. However, our curiosity was too great to brook delay, and we steered towards the shore, so that Michelmore’s broad body was between me and the ship in case anyone was spying at us through a glass. It was a foreign-looking bottle, and as I drew the cork, its oiliness and perfume suggested that it had been used for some liqueur . . . In the bottle was a small piece of paper rolled up, and on the paper was written, ‘We have got Bonaparte on board’.13

  The secret was out, and it spread like a firestorm. As Smart put it, ‘in five minutes after we reached shore, there was not a soul in Brixham, except babies, ignorant of the news’.14

  The ships in the bay were the battleship Bellerophon, with Napoleon on board, and the frigate Myrmidon, which carried some of his entourage. When Napoleon had surrendered to the navy at Basque Roads, he had been forced to throw himself on the mercy of Frederick Maitland, captain of the Bellerophon. The British blockade of the French coast was so tight that in reality Napoleon had little other option, and Maitland was instructed not to promise anything to Napoleon, so delicate negotiations went on for several days. With the approach of the Royalists, Napoleon and his entourage boarded the Bellerophon on 15 July, still faintly hoping to be exiled in Britain or America. The British Navy having been the first to defeat Napoleon off the coast of Egypt, it was only fitting that it should take charge of the Emperor after his final defeat - especially since the Bellerophon had been in the thick of the fighting at the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar.

  The journey from Basque Roads to Brixham in Torbay had taken nine days, and Napoleon held discussions with Captain Maitland and his officers on a wide range of subjects. Well aware of the historic occasion, many of the seamen noted down these conversations, especially anything odd. Midshipman George Home recalled that ‘the Emperor seemed to entertain an idea that the Americans were bigger men than us, for whenever he saw any very stout man he asked if he was an American’.15 Lieutenant John Bowerman of the Bellerophon was one of those who kept a journal, and his entry for Monday 24 July began: ‘Early this morning we were close in with the land running into Torbay. Between five and six a.m. Buonaparte made his appearance on deck, and continued there until we anchored. He appeared delighted with the prospect, and his approach to England. Looking through his glass he frequently exclaimed in French “What a beautiful country!”.’16 Napoleon still talked of hoping to live the life of a country gentleman in exile among his former enemies in Britain, although many of his entourage were less optimistic, but when the first boat ashore returned the mood changed, as Bowerman recorded: ‘The conjectures contained in the several newspapers which now reached us of the probability of his being sent to St. Helena cast a sudden gloom over the whole party . . . Buonaparte . . . solemnly declared that he never would go there.’17

  The first boat ashore had carried a lieutenant to take dispatches to London. He held his tongue at Brixham, but when he changed horses at Exeter he spread the news. By the evening carts and coaches crammed with sightseers from the city were flooding into Brixham, and the next day the Bellerophon was surrounded by all manner of craft from the local ports of Torquay, Paignton, Dartmouth and even further away that had been hired by people trying to catch a glimpse of the man who had dominated Europe for over a decade. John Smart, who had received the message in the bottle the day before, was amazed at the sight:There never was before or since such an assembly of craft in Torbay . . . Torquay was little else but a fisherman’s village in those days, and was only beginning to be known by health-seeking visitors as a salubrious hamlet in Torre parish, but the population, such as it was, seemed to have turned out altogether and crossed the bay. From Exmouth, Teignmouth, Plymouth, the boats and yachts continued to arrive all day . . . Gentlemen and ladies came on horseback and in carriages; other people in carts and waggons; and to judge by the number of people, all the world inland was flocking to see Bonaparte. The Brixham boatmen had a busy time of it, and must have taken more money in two days than in an ordinary month. It seemed a gala day as the boats thronged round the Bellerophon.18

  Everyone was eager to find out all they could about Napoleon, and officers who came ashore from the ships were treated like celebrities, as recalled by Midshipman Home:I was taken prisoner by some twenty young ladies, marched off to a fine house in the little town [Brixham], regaled with tea and clouted cream [Devon clotted cream], and bored with five thousand questions about Napoleon, the ridiculousness of which I have often laughed at since: What was he like? Was he really a man? Were his hands and clothes all over blood when he came aboard? Was it true that he had killed three horses in riding from Waterloo to the Bellerophon? Were we not all frightened of him? Was his voice like thunder? Could I possibly get them a sight of the monster, just that they might be able to say they had seen him? etc. etc.19

  Midshipman Home did what he could to redress the balance andassured those inquisitive nymphs that the reports they had heard were all nonsense; that the Emperor was not only a man, but a very handsome man, too; young withal; had no more blood upon his hands or clothes than was now upon their pure white dresses; that if by chance they got a look of him at the gangway they would fall in love with him directly; that, so far from his hands being red with blood, they were as small, white, and soft as their own charming fingers; and his voice, instead of resembling thunder, was as sweet and musical as their own. This account of the Emperor’s beauty perfectly astonished the recluses of Torbay. Some misbelieved altogether, while the curiosity of others was excited beyond all bounds.20

  It may have been an idealised picture that Home painted of Napoleon, but it was closer to the truth than that held by many of the British - after years of propaganda in the press, it was not just ‘the recluses of Torbay’ who believed him to be a monster who might literally not be human. The local newspapers carried accounts from people in the boats around the Bellerophon describing his physical appearance and behaviour, while anyone from the ship itself was pressed for details. Woolmer’s Exeter and Plymouth Gazette carried the story:By some passengers who came in the Bellerophon it appears that Bonaparte was quite at his ease on board that ship; took possession of the Captain’s cabin, sans ceremonie, invited the officers of the ship to his table, talked with great freedom on the present state of things, said it was impossible for the Bourbons to govern France, and that Napoleon II would very soon be recalled to the throne . . . He acknowledged that England alone had ruined all his grand plans, and that but for her he had now been Emperor of the East as well as of the West. He walked on the poop and quarterdeck, conversed with the seamen, and affected great ga
iety and unconcern. In short, such is the talent of this ‘Child and Champion of Jacobinism’, that before they arrived in Torbay he was considered by all on board as a devilish good fellow.21

  Once the news spread, the national newspapers were quick to take up the story, and at first Napoleon’s appearance was of greatest interest. In a time when the only forms of representing Napoleon were by drawing or painting, which in Britain were frequently distortions or outright caricatures, people wanted to know if Napoleon was the devil incarnate as he was sometimes portrayed. The Times accordingly published a report from a correspondent in Dartmouth:I was alongside his Majesty’s ship Bellerophon last evening, and I saw Buonaparte very distinctly. Buonaparte walks the deck till six o’clock, at which time he retires to dine. He shows himself frequently to the spectators round the ship, and on retiring he pulls off his hat. He appears often looking at the people with his eye glass, and his picture which appeared in London about two months since, is an exact likeness of him. He wore a dark green coat, with red collar, buttoned close; cocked hat, two epaulets, light nankeen coloured breeches, and silk stockings the same colour. Every person on the quarter deck, both French and English, remain with their hats off when he is on deck. This I did not like to see, it hurt the feelings of all to see so much humility paid him . . . He reads the English newspapers, but appears afterwards very serious, no doubt not liking their contents. He, I am told, dreads the idea of going to St. Helena, and is very much afraid of being sent to that island.22