Charles’s desperation for the throne led him to sever relations with the Marquess of Montrose, who had given his all for the Royalist cause. The marquess, an open admirer of Rupert’s military style, was the enemy of Charles’s new allies. He was captured soon afterwards. Montrose showed astonishing bravery at his May execution, before his body was quartered and its parts despatched to hang above the gates of various cities. Charles’s betrayal of his loyal supporter was a cowardly, vile disgrace, which echoed his father’s feeble sacrifice of the Earl of Strafford.
Days later Charles sailed for Scotland. However, in September his supporters were trounced at the battle of Dunbar, perhaps Cromwell’s most brilliant victory. Charles remained in Scotland throughout the winter and was proclaimed the nation’s king on 1 January 1651. There were plans to invade England but, although the Scottish army contained able and experienced soldiers, only a fraction of its troops was fully behind its new monarch. The Commonwealth, meanwhile, could call upon 70,000 men under Cromwell’s dynamic leadership.
The year 1651 also marked an expansion in the Commonwealth’s commitments at sea: in reaction to the slump in trade, and in an effort to make inroads into Dutch commerce, Parliament passed the Navigation Act. This was an attempt to bypass the Dutch merchant system to the benefit of British business. From now on trade would have to be direct, between the goods’ port of origin and England. At the same time, the ships employed had to be English, with English crews. There was no realistic chance that the Netherlands would agree to these strict stipulations. Hostilities between the two naval powers were inevitable, once Cromwell felt his fleet strong enough to enforce this inflammatory legislation.
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France, although experiencing its own civil wars, offered Rupert a rare safe haven in an increasingly hostile Mediterranean: Blake’s successes had impressed the Spaniards, persuading them officially to recognise the English Republic at the end of 1650. Yet the Commonwealth was in a state of undeclared war with France, after suffering numerous losses from privateers. Some of these privateers were Royalist and others were French.
At Toulon, Rupert and Maurice enjoyed an excited reunion. Maurice had arrived there first, convinced his brother had died in a recent dramatic storm. Mourning his loss, Maurice initially refused to leave his ship. Eventually the senior French admiral in the harbour, Chevalier Paul, coaxed him ashore. ‘The day appointed for his landing being come, and all things in readiness for his reception, it pleased Heaven to remove all obstacles of sorrow by the happy tidings of his brother’s safety, who came that day to an anchor, and went ashore together.’[418] The French greeted the princes with marks of respect, cannon saluting them from land and sea. Maurice had arrived with a prize in tow and its contents were sold to merchants from Leghorn. With the proceeds, Rupert paid for the careening of his two remaining fighting ships and began to convert the prize into a man-of-war. He intended to put to sea again that summer.
Gradually, the captains of the ships taken at Carthagena drifted into Toulon, with news of the debacle. There was much squabbling among the defeated as to who should bear the most blame. Captain Allen Elding, who had previously been given a prize to skipper, was blamed by many for putting the safety of his vessel above the imperative of aiding his comrades. Meanwhile, others accused Burleigh, captain of the Henry, of treachery, ‘by giving [Blake] intelligence of our rendezvous’.[419] Burleigh insisted that his men had detained him, before handing his papers to the enemy. Although Rupert suspected the worst of both captains, he refused to conduct a court martial in another king’s port. Burleigh, though, he could no longer trust: he was permanently dismissed from the fleet.
The rest of the Carthagena captains were received back into Royalist service, to oversee Rupert’s burgeoning crews. ‘Seeing himself reduced to three sail’, the prince, ‘strained the utmost of his treasure, and bought another, which was named the Honest Seaman; and, being but weak in ships, endeavoured to be strong in men.’[420] When an Englishman, Captain Craven, asked if his ship could join the flotilla, he was welcomed. His vessel, the Speedwell, was renamed the Loyal Subject.
Aware that Toulon contained enemy spies, Rupert fanned false rumours that he was taking his flotilla ‘for the Archipelago’. Falling for the bluff, the Commonwealth despatched its fleet to intercept him at Cape Corsica. In fact, Rupert had decided to head west: when he left the French port in May 1651, he made for the Straits of Gibraltar, ‘to take revenge on the Spaniard’[421] in the West Indies.
Rupert was fortunate that the Commonwealth now recalled Blake: London believed that the threat of the prince had been neutralised after twenty months of dogged pursuit. Blake returned to England and received the thanks of Parliament, a gift of £1,000, and the eminent position of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. He was now deployed closer to home — taking the Scilly Isles, before subduing the Royalists on Guernsey and Jersey.
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Rupert was not to reach the Caribbean for a year. The flotilla had barely set off when the sailors insisted on taking a Genoese ship heading for Lisbon. This episode was indicative of the problem the prince faced in concentrating on military matters, while most of his sailors were preoccupied by a thirst for booty. However, there were scant prizes to be had along the Andalusian coast: the Genoese ship’s main cargo was not — as hoped — spices or treasure, but rice and corn. When a more promising victim was eventually spotted, Rupert resorted to trickery to lure in his prey: he flew the Commonwealth flag. The Spanish galleon came alongside its supposed friend and, when her officers came aboard, the Royalist buccaneers revealed their true identity and overwhelmed her.
At the end of June Rupert and Maurice stopped at Madeira to sell the perishable grain from the Genoese ship and to take on fresh supplies. Although Madeira’s merchants were too poor to give a good price for the corn, the brothers were greeted with the respect and hospitality due to visiting foreign royalty: ‘The Princes were received with much kindness, and assisted with anything the island afforded for refreshment.’ The governor entertained them in his fort, mounting a military tattoo for the brothers’ appreciation, before taking them on a tour of the island’s monasteries, ‘and having accompanied them to the sight of what was worthy seeing on the island, returned with them to the seaside, where at setting off saluted us with all the artillery.’[422]
On board ship, Rupert could not count on the same deference. His crews were men who, either through choice or force, were risking their lives in a dangerous voyage, where everyday conditions were tough and military encounters could be brutal. They knew that they were fighting in a force that was likely to face a superior enemy. Theirs was, essentially, a defeated unit whose continued existence was a result of their admiral’s cussedness, grafted uneasily onto their own hopes of self-enrichment.
Rupert preferred to take his war away from Europe, where he realised he could be no more than an irritant. He also sought to distance his flotilla from the enemy ships combing the seas, seeking him out for destruction. In choosing discretion over valour, he was in tune with the advice offered to ‘The Good Sea Captain’, in Thomas Fuller’s contemporary book, The Holy State and the Profane State: ‘Escaping many dangers makes him not presumptuous to run into them.’[423]
However, there was no escaping the weather. A massive storm near Madeira gave a foretaste of what was to come. Rupert’s ship, the Constant Reformation, took in so much water that it was clear that she had a leak, but not even the governor’s personal diver could locate the hole. Rupert ordered bonnets to be stitched together, which were compressed into parts of the vessel that might be concealing the fissure. It was to no avail. Since the ship could not be docked for a proper investigation, she continued at sea, the unplugged leak a source of constant worry.
Rupert wanted reinforcements. He proposed that the ships go to the Canary Islands to persuade passing English ships to join his expedition. More experienced sailors told Rupert that stopping at the Canaries would be of no use: it was too early in the yea
r for vessels to be there in any number. The prince accepted this advice and led the fleet past the Canaries without alerting their inhabitants to his presence.
Rupert now let it be known via the unpopular commander of his ship, Captain Fearnes, that his intention was to sail for the Caribbean. His projected route was via Cape Verde, a cluster of tropical islands 1,000 miles southwest of the Canaries. This was a good plan: the archipelago had been a crucial stopping off point for Portuguese explorers since its discovery in 1456. ‘Yet,’ recalled an officer called Pitts, when writing about this troubled voyage, ‘his Highness was prevented by a party that opposed going to the West Indies, merely because Capt. Fearnes proposed it; and strengthened their party by alleging the leak ... in the Admiral [that is, the Constant Reformation] made the ship in too bad a condition to be carried [on] so long a voyage.’[424] Rupert, concerned at the strength of opposition to his plan, called a council of war, to which all captains, lieutenants, and masters were summoned.
Rupert was more vulnerable to dissent than most commanders, since his authority lacked effective support. His king was dead, while his heir was merely an exiled pretender, and there was no forceful body able to underwrite Rupert’s power. Besides, if pushed too far, mutiny remained a realistic threat: it would be simple for any ship to sail away and transfer allegiance to the Commonwealth. The prince needed the diplomacy to absorb or deflect his officers’ antagonism, while not losing control of an increasingly fractious force.
Rupert had Fearnes present his plan to the council of war: he proposed that the ships should head for the islands of Cape Verde, where supplies of dead and living goats would be readily available. From there they could progress to the West Indies, where cassava and meat were in abundance. But only one other captain, Goulding, agreed with this plan: the rest insisted that Fearnes was dangerously exaggerating the availability of meat in Cape Verde and that, because the men refused to eat cassava, ‘we must expect no more than starving in the West Indies’.[425]
The majority wanted the flotilla to sail to the Western Islands, the Azores. Here all their needs could be met: supplies could be taken on board, bounty sold, and further prizes would be on tap, since the English East Indies’ fleet used the islands as a staging post. Some of the officers also pointed to the harbours of the Azores, which would be ideal for the refitting of the Constant Reformation.
Rupert adjourned the council to consider his decision. The following day, with the wind blowing away from his favoured West Indies course, and with the Constant Reformation riding higher in the water than she had for some time, he reluctantly gave way to the majority’s resolution. Those who had won the argument ‘neither considered the extremity of the weather,’ Rupert’s papers ruefully acknowledged, ‘nor the time we were to consume in victualling ... Yet to avoid the censure of self-will and rashness, he stood for those Islands, although he foresaw part of his ensuing disasters.’[426]
The disagreements in the council of war fomented the divisions among the Royalist officers, leading to the most vituperative passage in Prince Rupert’s diary:
But they whose souls were seized with a fatal cancer, suffered their undigested venom to overflow like a raging billow, to the destruction of us all. So high was their insolence, that they infested [Rupert’s] very domestics, and so public their improvidence, that they concealed not their intentions in their cups, making private meetings in their cabins where they conceived it convenient to engage any man to their faction, until his Highness, full freighted with such contempt of their audacious proceedings and actions, commanded some of the cabins to he pulled down, with further order to the captain of his guards not to suffer any meetings after setting the watch, nor candle to be lighted betwixt decks, but in such places as were appointed for the ship’s use. So great and violent was their distemper that he feared the private communication of his men.[427]
The discontented flotilla reached the Azores on 15 July. It was immediately evident that those who had opposed Fearnes had grossly exaggerated the islands’ facilities: there were few supplies to be had; there was no sign of the promised East Indiamen; and there was nowhere to fix the leaks of the Constant Reformation, since all the approaches to the coastline were treacherous — especially so during the many days when the weather was poor. ‘By this relation,’ Pitts reported home, ‘you may perceive how miserably we have been misguided and ruined, more by these Islands than possibly we could have been by any strength that ever the Rebels could have sent against us.’[428]
Rupert, regretting having acted against his better judgement, decided to bypass another heated council of war. On 3 September he ordered Pitts to go to each ship in turn, bearing his warrant as admiral, insisting that each captain and master give his individual written judgment whether the fleet should stay where it was, or go to the West Indies. In this way Rupert not only put each of his officers on the spot, he also extracted from them tangible proof of their opinion, which could be referred to in the future. The majority, this time, elected to head for the West Indies. The ringleader of the opposition, ‘finding himself outwitted, took occasion to pick a quarrel with the master of the Admiral [the Constant Reformation], whereby to have more pretence to leave the fleet’.[429] Rupert was happy to be rid of him. From now on, he made it clear that he would make all the decisions: the council of war would not be summoned again.
Before the flotilla could be prepared for the voyage, however, it was struck by a spectacular storm. The Constant Reformation’s leak grew, as the waves pummelled its timbers. Rupert, on board the ailing flagship, ordered the crew to man the pumps. This kept the ship afloat. He then manoeuvred the Constant Reformation ‘to bear up before the wind’, but this exposed her holdings, which was where the invisible tear had begun. The weather continued to deteriorate over the ensuing three days, during which the Constant Reformation’s pinnace was whipped away by the wind. On the third day, 20 September 1651, it was clear that the ship was in mortal danger. Rupert ordered his gunners to fire their cannon at regular intervals, so the other ships were aware of the Constant Reformation’s location: he wanted his comrades close at hand, to pluck survivors from the sea when his ship could take no more.
The desperation of the crew galvanised frantic energy on board: the pumps were operated at full capacity and the sailors used everything that came to hand to bale out the water. When the battle seemed to be won, Rupert ordered 120 pieces of raw beef to be taken from storage down into the bowels of the ship, to plug the leak. This staunching of the wound failed to hold: the force of the sea blew in the meat, as well as the barrier of bonnets and planks that had been formed around the leak. Staving off the inevitable, the crew now jettisoned the ship’s cannon. The doomed sailors then signalled to the other crews that they were about to go down. They stopped pumping and baling, because there was no longer room for a man to stand up in the hold. Besides, the ship’s barrels had come loose and were rolling around dangerously: anyone who ventured below decks would most likely be crushed.
There was no hope of other ships coming alongside to take the crew off: the sea was so rough that this would have resulted in the loss of the rescue vessel, too. The Constant Reformation’s men knew they were about to perish. The chaplain told those who required the sacrament to meet him at a pre-assigned point, when the end was inescapable, and they would all die together. When the main mast was felled by the tempest, the Honest Seaman strained to reach it, expecting to find some of the Constant Reformation’s men latched onto it, waiting for rescue. But the resolution to die together had held: not one chose to desert his comrades.
Rupert waved to Maurice to come as near as he could, so that he could say a final goodbye to his favourite sibling and his dearest friend. The younger prince raged against the imminent loss of his brother and ordered his men to take their ship alongside the Constant Reformation, so he could attempt to rescue Rupert. But Maurice’s officers declined to let emotion affect their judgement: they refused to obey an order that promised to add thei
r own destruction to that of the condemned crew of the Constant Reformation. Maurice then insisted that a small boat be prepared, which he would take across to bring his brother off. But volunteers to row through the towering waves were slow in coming forward and the rescue launch was prepared with a marked lack of haste.
Rupert’s men urged him to attempt to save himself. There was one remaining lifeboat and they insisted he take his chance in it, rather than join them in certain death. Rupert, brought up in a strict military code, refused to desert his men as their collective fate approached. He thanked them for their loyalty, but told them that it would be an honour to die with his brothers-in-arms. The sailors persisted: they knew they were to drown; let them, though, preserve their leader as a final act of heroism, by which history would remember them. The prince again declined. ‘His men,’ Prince Rupert’s papers note, ‘seeing supplications would not prevail, having selected a crew of undaunted lads, hoisted out their boat, and by force put him into it, desiring him at parting to remember they died his true servants.’[430]
The skiff somehow made it from the sinking Constant Reformation to the nearest vessel, the Honest Seaman. Rupert, hauled aboard, insisted that the lifeboat return immediately, to save as many others as was possible. He nominated three men who must be given priority during the second rescue mission: Captain Fearnes; Captain Billingsley, one of the prince’s army officers; and Monsieur Mortaigne, Rupert’s Gentleman of the Horse, who had helped save his life during one of Marshal Gassion’s madder escapades. The skiff managed to shuttle back and forth, through mountainous seas, but Mortaigne and Billingsley were not aboard when it reached the Constant Reformation: they had insisted on sharing their soldiers’ lot. Fearnes, though, had accepted his chance of salvation. He was accompanied by Galloway, one of Rupert’s servants.
Maurice continued to agitate for the Honest Seaman to move nearer to the Constant Reformation. He wanted to launch its lifeboat, which was of a stronger design than the flagship’s little skiff. But Captain Chester, the Honest Seaman’s commander, refused to help his comrades. Pitts noted with disgust that when Chester ‘saw the ship perishing he made no action at all for their boat to help to save the men, but walked upon the deck, and said, “Gentlemen, it is a great mischance; who can help it!” And the Master never brought the ship near the perishing ship, notwithstanding Prince Maurice’s command for it.’[431]
Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier Page 28