by Sam Willis
The starboard Bumpkin Shot away
The starboard Cat Head and Supporter Shot & carried away
Head Rails and Timbers Shot to pieces. Figure [head] much cut
A number of shot in the sides not through
A number of Chain Plates shot & Damaged
WM YELLAND CARPENTER
BOATSWAINS DEPARTMENT
Admiral R. Howe to P. Stephens, 13 June 1794 enclosing an account of the casualties in the British fleet
The battle over, Howe turned his mind to the manpower issues and other logistical headaches that were raised by such a battle. He thus wrote once more to the Admiralty when his ship was off Dunnose Point on the eastern side of the Isle of Wight. His first priority was to get his fleet operational but there were too many damaged ships for them all to be repaired in Portsmouth. He therefore divided his fleet and sent one half to Plymouth. The rest, with the captured French ships which he now named for the first time, sailed with him to Portsmouth.
Howe enclosed a detailed account of the killed and wounded compiled in the days following the battle. The casualty figures of Molloy’s Caesar are particularly interesting. He lost 55 men dead or injured, by no means a particularly low figure and one that suggests Molloy did see a far greater share of the fighting than his critics suggested (pp. 51, 59, 64).
The significant missing figures are those of the Brunswick, a significant omission considering that her crew suffered more than any other, losing 41 killed and 114 wounded. Howe’s total of 904 British casualties is therefore 155 short of the total of 1,059 for the entire fleet. More men subsequently died from their wounds, raising the final total to 1,098. Compared with the subsequent battles, this is a particularly large figure; only the casualty figures from the Battle of Trafalgar are higher; but the problem was exacerbated in 1794. We know from this letter that Howe was concerned that his crews would become sick. He was right to be worried. Many of the French crews were already depleted by typhus, a sickness which could spread with terrifying speed through a crowded ship, and Howe’s victorious ships certainly were crowded. He estimates in this letter that there were 2,300 French prisoners crammed into his holds, an estimate that we now suspect to be at least 2,000 too few. They were making each other sick and, if they stayed aboard for much longer, the British crews would suffer too.
Howe’s warnings and concerns were received and given the appropriate attention and priority by the Admiralty. However their orders to prepare prisons and prison ships were not carried out as they should have been. The result was everything that Howe had feared. The British fleet became infected with typhus and the manning problem became so serious that, between June and December, the Channel Fleet was at sea for less than a month. By failing to cope with their success, the British were unable to capitalise on the victory they had won.
THE CHARLOTTE OFF OF DUNNOSE
13TH JUNE 1794
Queen Charlotte
Royal George
Queen, Barfleur
Glory
Bellerophon
Cæsar
Leviathan
Defence
Invincible
Valiant
Ramillies
Russel
Majestic
Thunderer
Latona
Niger
Aquilon
Pegasus
~
FRENCH SHIPS
Le Juste
Le Sans Pareil
L’Amerique
L’Impetueux
L’Achilles
Le Northumberland
~
R Sovereign
Impregnable
Marlborough
Tremendous
Gibraltar
Culloden
Orion
Alfred
Montagu
Sir
Being arrived off of Dunnose on the passage to Spithead with the Ships of the Channel Fleet, and captured French Ships of War named in the margin; I send enclosed the account of the Killed, and Wounded, not able to resume their Stations at Quarters, in the Actions of the 28th and 29th of May, and 1st of this Month: as far as they have been collected. Also an abstract of the principal Damages to the ships on those occasions. Concluding it will be judged necessary to have the Ships made ready for service with all possible expedition, I would submit my opinion, that the greater part of the absolutely necessary repairs, besides replacing their lost or defective Masts and Yards, may be adequately done afloat. –
It will however be requisite that the french prisoners (about 2300) should be taken out of His Majesty’s Ships the most Speedily: for preventing the infection, which is to be apprehended from the unprovided condition, and confined situation wherein several of them unavoidably remain at this time: The Seamen of the Fleet being otherwise, for the most part, now in a very promising State of permanent good health.
On the arrival of the Fleet off of the Lizard I gave directions for Admiral Graves to proceed with the other Ships named also in the margin to Plymouth Sound, where I conclude he arrived yesterday. –
The Defects of the Ships I have brought to Spithead, will be reported to the Yard; And the commands of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty waited for thereon.
I am Sir
Your most obedient
humble servant
Howe
PHILIP STEPHENS ESQR
&CO &CO &CO
Account of the casualties in the captured French ships
The true scale of the British victory is best indicated by the next document, a return of the killed and wounded in the captured French ships. As we have seen, a figure of 1,098 is an acceptable figure for the entire British fleet of 25 ships. In the six captured ships alone 1,270 were killed or injured, to which can be added the approximate figure given here of 320 who sank in the Vengeur, bringing the total to 1,590 for just seven ships. In other words, 18 fewer ships suffered 492 more casualties. The full return of the French fleet is unknown but it is estimated to be somewhere around 4,200 dead and 3,300 wounded or 10 per cent of all of the seamen in France. Not only had so many experienced French seamen and particularly officers already been driven out of the navy by the ideological zealots of the early Revolution, but this new navy was now crippled at birth.
The claim that the Jacobin was sunk is incorrect. Numerous British sailors in this battle claimed to have seen ships sink when they did not. One can assume that the sight of a giant sailing warship well over 150 feet long and with masts nearly as high being swallowed by the sea is not one that can be mistaken, so it is likely that those sightings were occasions when an enemy ship simply vanished into the dense gunsmoke that we know hung over the battle.
Report on the condition of the British ships that returned to Portsmouth
This is a report on the condition of the British ships that returned with Howe. Information on those that returned to Plymouth is not included. The document tells us several important things. The Queen Charlotte received numerous shot in her hull, clear evidence of the French firing low which explodes the enduring myth that the French ‘always’ fired high. Those shot, however, did not break through. Even though there were several shot below the waterline, the ship made no water. This was common. The sides of a British warship were immensely thick, 3 feet at some points, and enemy shot would often lodge in the side. The velocity of that shot, moreover, was dependent on the quality of the powder, which we know was very deficient at this early stage of the war. This meant that injuries to British sailors in the gundecks were more likely to have been caused by splinters exploding off the inside of the hull than by direct hits from enemy shot.
The scale of the damage was also important. All of the ships with the exception of the Barfleur had damaged masts and the Marlborough, the worst of all, required nothing less than ‘A General outfit of everything above the Deck’. But the British yards, sailors and shipwrights could cope. The necessary expertise and labour were readily available and the stockpiles
of naval matériel adequate. In contrast, the French stores had been stripped clean to get their fleet ready for sea and, when the French fleet returned, many of the ships could not be repaired.
The arrival of the crippled ships in Portsmouth with their prizes in tow was a wonderful spectacle and thousands of people travelled to witness it. The King even came with his family, a unique example of a royal visit in the aftermath of battle during these wars. Numerous artists also made the trip because images of such maritime glory could be lucrative. Several sketches and prints of the damaged ships still survive.
While The Glorious First of June was a major victory for British seapower, it had a sting in its tail. The French battlefleet had been mauled and thousands of French sailors killed, disabled or captured, but British seapower also suffered, at first from the battle casualties but later, and to a much greater extent, from the typhus that the French crews brought into English ships.
The French fought well and none of the captured ships surrendered until there was no hope of succour. For all of the destruction suffered and inflicted in the battles on 28 and 29 May and 1 June, however, the British failed to intercept Vanstabel’s convoy. The merchant ships, holds brimming with grain, arrived in Brest unharmed, having passed directly through the site of the battle on 29 May and only a little to the south of that on 1 June.
French politicians did their best to celebrate the battle and applaud the navy for achieving its strategic goal. They had done so by outfoxing the British and fighting with sufficient resolve to occupy them for five full days. For many French politicians and naval officers, however, the evident beating that the navy had taken was too bitter a pill to swallow. The battle thus became one of several political weapons wielded by enemies of the Jacobins that eventually ended their short but intense period of tyranny.
Robespierre and many of his supporters were beheaded within two months of the battle. Their deaths brought an end to the Reign of Terror but by no means an end to the Revolution. On the contrary, the Jacobin excesses re-invigorated popular enthusiasm for the original humanistic and democratic ideals of the Revolution while The First of June was seen by many as proof that the new Republic could survive by defending her coasts and maritime trade from the British ‘leopards’. The battle also coincided with numerous significant French land victories to east and south that both expanded the territory of France and made the Revolution secure from a landward threat. Many in Britain had hoped that a significant naval victory would bring an end to the war but it did no such thing. In fact, things soon became much worse for the British.
St Vincent
Cap San Vincente
St Valentine’s Day 1797
‘I would much rather have an action with the enemy than detail one’
Admiral John Jervis, 1797
AT A GLANCE
DATE:
14 February 1797
NAVIES INVOLVED:
British and Spanish
COMMANDING OFFICERS:
Admiral Sir John Jervis and Admiral Don José de Córdoba
FLEET SIZES:
British, 15 ships of the line; Spanish, 23 ships of the line
TIME OF DAY:
11.00 – 16.00
LOCATION:
Off Cape St Vincent, Portugal. 37°01'30"N 8°59'40"W
WEATHER:
Light west-southwesterly breezes and cloudy
RESULT:
4 Spanish ships captured
CASUALTIES:
British, 300; Spanish 1,484
BRITISH COURT MARTIALS:
None
DISPATCHES CARRIED HOME BY:
Captain Robert Calder, Jervis’s flag captain. Nelson, however, sent home his version of events, which arrived first, via Lieutenant William Pierson
The palace
Fifty miles or so north of Madrid, lies one of the world’s finest royal palaces. La Granja de San Ildefonso nestles in the cool northern slopes of the Sierra de Guadarrama (fig. 6). It sits within a vast landscape of formal gardens whose lines drag you hither and thither to fountains, sculptures, rare specimens of trees, vistas and dead-ends. More often than not the features you see are in some way deceptive, seeming farther away, closer, larger or smaller than they really are. You are constantly manipulated by the garden’s designers and the men who have worked there for centuries. Here you are as much in the heart of Spain as it is possible to be, at least 200 miles from the nearest coastline or from the Pyrennees, and yet it is impossible not to notice how convincingly foreign – how un-Spanish – the entire establishment is. Compare it to another palace nearby, El Escorial. Radically different in appearance from La Granja, the latter oozes the majesty and arrogance of 16th-century Spain. Both palace and fortress, it is convincingly austere as the residence of the normally black-clothed Philip II (1527–98), a Spanish raven in an age of peacocks. The most distinctive feature of La Granja, by contrast, is that it appears so French. It was, in fact, built by Philip V of Spain (1683–1746), who was the grandson of Louis XIV of France (1638–1715). Philip had even been born in France, at the magnificent French royal palace of Versailles. Just like Versailles, La Granja lies only a short distance from the nation’s capital in magnificent landscaped gardens and with its symmetrical wings dominating the landscape. Philip built himself a replica of the house in which he was born: La Granja is his Versailles.
La Granja is also important, however, because it reminds us of the strong family ties that united France and Spain in an age of shifting alliances and loyalties. When Catholic France and Catholic Spain were separated, Protestant Britain could rest more easily. In 1794 they had been divided because the Spanish King, Charles IV, had been as outraged by the murder of Louis XVI as every other European monarch. By 1796, however, things had changed. The French Revolution had failed to self-destruct in the fierce heat of Jacobinism and the Republic seemed if anything to have grown stronger for the experience. There was certainly no doubting the scale or capability of its armies. Moreover the memory of Louis’s regicide had begun to fade, its pain dulled by the intensity of the events that had followed his execution.
So much had changed. The men who now governed France were not the men who had executed Louis and many of the countries which had formed the first coalition against France had been concerned not about Republicanism per se but about regicide. To complicate matters further, Charles IV of Spain was weak and unstable and his prime minister, Manuel de Godoy,3 who held the reins of power, was a Francophile. With thousands of the French soldiers who invaded through Catalonia and the Basque Country between 1793 and 1795 still encamped in Spain, it had become easier for the Spanish to remember ancient ties, even if they were now based on a shared fear and hatred of a common enemy rather than a shared royal bloodline. They had, after all, suffered at the hands of the British in both of the previous two wars and the former enemy still occupied Gibraltar, that strategic key to global seapower at the southern tip of Spain.
So it was that the Spanish swapped sides on 19 August 1796 when, in a symbolic gesture of Franco-Spanish unity and shared history, they signed the treaty of San Ildefonso at La Granja. In that magical Gallic enclave in the heart of Spain and so many miles from the sea, naval warfare was turned on its axis.
The Allies
On 11 October 1796 Spain declared war on Britain. The British now had to contend at sea not only with the French but with the Spanish as well. When combined, the French and Spanish naval forces outnumbered the British 132 to 123. While it would be impossible for all the ships of both navies to meet at any one time, this discrepancy in numbers made it more likely that a combined Franco-Spanish fleet would outnumber a British fleet. If naval officers knew one thing about fleet warfare, it was that numerical superiority won fleet battles.
However, while on paper the alliance between the French and Spanish was bad news for the British, they did have one thing in their favour. During their time as allies under the First Coalition, the British had gained a detailed understanding of the cap
abilities of Spanish seapower. On the one hand, the Spanish ships, as they always had been, were magnificent. Much larger than their British counterparts if compared rate for rate, their tropical hardwood hulls made them almost impervious to rot. The British wooden walls were made from English oak but the Spanish built theirs in dense, beautiful, nut-brown, oily mahogany from the New World and lined the ships’ interiors with cedar. Have you ever smelled a freshly sawn cedar plank? It is one of the most aromatic of all woods and, for someone who is not accustomed to the smell, quite overpowering in confined spaces. All Spanish ships not only looked exotic; they smelt exotic.
For all of their visual and aromatic appeal, however, it was clear that Spanish warships were, in the words of Horatio Nelson who visited Cadiz early in the war, ‘shockingly manned’,1 ill equipped and badly provisioned. They were no match for the British, and Admiral John Jervis, commander of the Mediterranean fleet, certainly knew it. In October 1796 he wrote to the First Lord, Earl Spencer, ‘Be assured I will omit no opportunity of chastising the Spaniards, and if I have the good fortune to fall in with them the stuff I have with me in this fleet will tell.’2 The Spanish knew this too, but only some of them were prepared to face up to the problem. These are the words of Antonio de Escaño, head of the general staff of the Mediterranean squadron, in the winter of 1796:
‘ ... it has come to my notice that all the ships, with few exceptions, are in a bad state of repair and without the means to change the situation. Even the weakest of enemies could destroy them with ease ... If we have to enter into battle this squadron will bring this nation into mourning, digging the grave of the person who has the misfortune to command it.’3