The War of Wars

by Robert Harvey

  Down below, the Spanish guns were still firing at a nearby British ship, the Prince George, while another Spanish giant, the San Josef on the other side of the San Nicholas, was crammed with marines firing with their muskets at the British boarders. Nelson ordered his men to stand by the hatchways with their muskets, to prevent the still fighting Spaniards below from pouring on to the deck, then summoned a boarding party to attack the San Josef, which was passing just six feet away and was in turn being raked by the muskets of the British marines.

  Nelson climbed up the ropes on this side and was astonished to encounter a Spanish officer announcing surrender – the admiral had been hit and was dying. The British captain made the officers hand over their swords. As Collingwood later wrote: ‘On the deck of the Spanish first-rate San Josef he received the swords of the officers of the two ships, while a Johnny, one of the sailors, bundled them up with the same composure he would have made a faggot, and twenty-two of their line still within gunshot!’

  Nelson had captured a 112-gun enemy three-decker across the deck of an 80-gun Spanish three-decker from his own much smaller two-decker: the feat became known as ‘Nelson’s patent bridge for boarding first-rates’. Meanwhile the missing lee flotilla of eight Spanish ships had veered round to attempt to rejoin the main Spanish fleet. Jervis formed a line to prevent the junction and protect the four Spanish ships he had taken as prizes, as well as the disabled Captain. At this stage the Spanish fleet had had enough. Headed by the limping Santissima Trinidad, it made for Cadiz.

  Nelson now had to face a foe every bit as dangerous as the Spanish: the wrath of the disciplinarian Jervis for so blatantly flouting the fleet’s orders. As he climbed wearily and apprehensively aboard the Victory, part of his hat blown away by shot, he was astonished to find the usually unemotional Jervis rush forward to embrace him. The disapproving flag-captain reminded the admiral that Nelson had disobeyed orders. ‘He certainly did,’ exclaimed Jervis, ‘and if you ever commit such a break of orders I will forgive you also.’

  Jervis thus established his immortality, as a man who recognized boldness and genius when he saw it, even though the rules were flouted. Later it was said that Nelson alone had saved the day, or the Spanish fleet might have escaped, and that Jervis had been largely out of the battle. This was untrue. The latter had headed straight for the fight and had initiated the first engagement with a Spanish ship; and he also had shown speed in veering his ships around when the Spaniards nearly outmanoeuvred him to return to the battle. Above all, he had displayed the boldness to engage a far superior fleet, while traditionally admirals would decline battle unless the odds were much more even. Nelson was later to turn this in to an art form, but Jervis had shown the way. Finally, for all his severity, Jervis’s obsession with order had ensured a perfect formation and clockwork manoeuvring by his fleet – unlike the indiscipline that had so nearly cost Howe victory on the Glorious First of June.

  In terms of prizes the victory was not overwhelming – just four Spanish ships taken, with twenty-three others escaping, leaving the fleet largely intact, although with several badly damaged, including the mighty Santissima Trinidad. But Jervis and Nelson had confounded the plan to unite the French, Spanish and Dutch fleets. They had also established a ferocious reputation for the British fleet which the Spanish now sought to avoid engaging at all costs, and which prevented the French from venturing out to seek battle against the close blockade of enemy ports that Jervis now rigorously enforced. Above all, as with the Glorious First of June, the Battle of Cape St Vincent was a tremendous boost to British morale at a time when the nation’s plight seemed truly desperate – akin to the Battle of Britain in the Second World War a century and a half later.

  Nelson’s actions in taking on the cream of the Spanish fleet veering down upon him in a single ship, fighting the flagship, then capturing two large ships, had now created a legend – and Jervis was far too generous a man to be jealous: instead he promoted his subordinate mightily. As Nelson himself wrote, ‘The more I think of my late action the more I am astonished. It absolutely appears a dream.’ But he was disgusted not to have captured the Santissima Trinidad itself. ‘Had not my ship been so cut up, I would have had her!’ Yet alongside the soaring fame of young Nelson deserves to be placed the figure of Jervis, now to be elevated to Earl St Vincent. Like Howe before him, he had shown boldness, a readiness to grasp opportunities, impeccable seamanship and disregard for conventional tactics in striking contrast to his deeply conventional reputation.

  Chapter 29

  MUTINY

  Scarcely had Pitt, his ministers and the country ceased celebrating the great triumph at Cape St Vincent when a blow came which shook Britain to its very foundations. It marked the closest moment that France came to defeating Britain in the entire period of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. It was all the more bizarre in that the French played no part whatsoever in inflicting this blow – indeed, had no idea it was taking place at all. For a month Britain virtually lost its ability to fight in the only theatre in which it had been successful so far – at sea. Britain was suddenly left unguarded, at the mercy of its enemies. Worse still, it seemed on the brink of precisely the kind of insurrection that the revolutionaries of France had so long dreamt of. What occurred was a genuine outburst of authentic working-class dissent, and it came from within the very service that had become the shield of Britain against foreign invasion – the navy, the thin wooden line of magnificent ships that were all that stood between the country and French domination.

  On 15 April 1797, the pride of the British fleet rode at anchor at Spithead; this was the Channel Fleet, and it was preparing to weigh anchor to pursue the French fleet, which had left Brest. As dawn broke, a signal was given by the flagship, the Queen Charlotte. Then, instead of the billowing of sails from the ship as it set out to sea, an extraordinary sight was observed– the foreshrouds of the flagship were thick with sailors, and they burst out into three cheers. In an instant, the same happened in the foreshrouds of all the other ships, each cheering group answering the other. Below, the officers of the fleet could only look on bewildered, some incandescent with fury, others bemused and frustrated: every one of the men above them was technically liable to flogging or even death for that most heinous of naval crimes, not just disobeying orders but mutiny. The entire Channel Fleet had gone on strike.

  There was nothing any of the officers could do. The marines were supposed to enforce order, but could not do so against every ship’s company, even if the men with guns could get the upper hand. It was a naked insurrection, and for a moment Pitt’s government feared that revolution was indeed what was on the sailors’ minds: nothing like this had ever happened in the history of the navy, or indeed in British history. Two days later the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Spencer, rushed down to Portsmouth and the following day three admirals – Gardner, Colpoys and Pole – were rowed aboard the Queen Charlotte to negotiate. The admirals were old men bewildered by this entirely new situation, having to talk as equals to common sailors instead of giving them peremptory orders.

  The mutineers, in fact, had excellent cause for their actions, which were arrears of pay and bad food. Their demands were extraordinarily modest by any standards: first, ‘that our provisions be raised to the rate of sixteen ounces to the pound, and of a better quality’. The purser deducted two ounces out of every pound of meat and of flour in his ration as his perquisite. The purser of the period had no fixed salary; he was paid by gains of this character, and, naturally, as his perquisites expanded the rations of the sailors shrank.

  Second, ‘your petitioners request that your honours will be pleased to observe that there shall be no flour served while we are in harbour’. That is, they wanted fresh bread while in port, instead of weevily biscuits. Also, ‘that it might be granted that there be a sufficient quantity of vegetables of such kinds as may be most plentiful in the ports to which we go’.

  Third, that there be ‘better care of the sick, and tha
t the necessaries for the sick be not on any account embezzled’.

  Fourth, ‘that we may be looked upon as a number of men standing in defence of our country, and that we may in some wise have grant and opportunity to taste the sweets of liberty on shore when in any harbour, and we have completed the duty of our ship after our return from sea’.

  They concluded ‘that we should suffer double the hardships we have hitherto experienced before we would suffer the crown of England to be in the least imposed upon by that of any other power in the world,’ but they were obdurate that they would not weigh anchor unless the enemy’s fleet put to sea and threatened Britain.

  The strike had been carefully planned. Lord Howe, the highly popular former First Lord of the Admiralty, had for several weeks been receiving round robins and anonymous letters of complaint from Portsmouth, and had inquired of the admiral there whether there were real grievances. The captains there had put the whole business down to a few agitators. On 12 April, however, the port admiral learnt that there was a definite plot to take control of the ships on 16 April, so he rushed forward the date for departure of the fleet to the 15th, hoping to forestall it, but failed.

  The seamen’s leaders were highly organized. They imposed their own discipline which was enforced through floggings. Each ship had its own ‘seamen’s captain’ to see that watches were kept and order observed, reflecting the high professionalism on which the seamen prided themselves. Every morning the crew was to man the foreshroud bars at eight o’clock and give three cheers as a sign of solidarity. A rope was hung at the end of the yardarm of each ship as a deterrent to indiscipline, although most miscreants were punished by being dunked in the sea three times to the intense amusement of crew members. Respect was to be shown to the officers, although they were not to be obeyed. The mutineers’ ‘delegates’ – their leaders – were piped aboard like officers and met in the admiral’s state cabin of the Queen Charlotte.

  There the mutineers received the emissaries of the Admiralty. It was decided that Spencer, as First Lord, should not go aboard for fear he would be seized as hostage. So Gardner, Colpoys and Pole went across, where the first, an old martinet, started railing at the sailors as ‘skulking fellows who know the French are getting ready for sea and are afraid of meeting them’. The strikers’ leaders, quite reasonably, had asked for Pitt himself to guarantee their demands, and for a royal pardon: this was their only guarantee against terrible retribution. But after Gardner’s outburst the meeting broke up.

  The mutineers now raised the red standard of rebellion on the ships and loaded their guns to repel an expected attack. Then news arrived that the government had bowed to their demands: these were to be met, and the King had signed a royal pardon on 22 April, after just a week of tense stand off. Cheering broke out across the fleet and the red flag was lowered. The fleet sailed for St Helen’s Bay. But arriving there the seamen learned, first, that the Admiralty had issued orders to the marines to be ready for a fight and suppress any further mutiny and, second, that an outburst of anger in the House of Commons had erupted against the Admiralty’s concessions. In an instant the mutiny was reignited and by 7 May all the St Helen’s ships were defiant once again.

  Meanwhile Admiral Colpoys, who had reoccupied his old ship, the London, at Spithead, ordered his men to fire on the mutineers’ boat when they arrived to seek support: three ‘delegates’ were killed and five wounded. As the shots rang out, Colpoys’ own seamen revolted: one group tried to bring a gun round to fire on the marines. In the tense confrontation the first lieutenant of the ship shot a sailor’s leader dead before being seized by mutineers and taken to the noose on the yardarm to be hanged. Colpoys rushed forward into the angry cluster of seamen and told them that he had acted on orders from the Admiralty, which he had issued to the lieutenant, and that he if anyone was to blame and should be hanged. The lynch-mob read the orders, or pretended to do so, very few being able to read, and the lieutenant was set free. The other officers were also set free, but the mutineers decided that full publicity should be given to the Admiralty’s ‘concessions’. Guns were trained on the ships from the shore, while the ships’ guns were trained back at them.

  The dispute dragged on for another tense week. At last the most popular admiral, ‘Black Dick’, Lord Howe, arrived at Portsmouth on 14 May. The hero of the Glorious First of June was received aboard with much fanfare, where he proceeded to defuse the situation and agreed to the sailors’ new demand that the most hated officers be transferred to other ships: this list makes interesting reading:

  1 admiral, 4 captains, 29 lieutenants, 5 captains of marines, 3 lieutenants of marines, 3 masters, 4 surgeons, 1 chaplain, 17 masters’ mates, 25 midshipmen, 7 gunners, boatswains, and carpenters, 3 sergeants, 3 sergeants of marines, 2 corporals of marines, 3 masters-at-arms.

  The dispute had at last been settled, and to music the seamen rowed around the bay in procession in honour of ‘Black Dick’. On Monday 16 May the fleet set sail at last, a month late, to blockade Brest. The French were either entirely ignorant of the whole affair, or had failed to take advantage of the precipitous collapse of Britain’s defences.

  Yet the crisis was far from over. Just four days earlier, at Sheerness, the North Sea Fleet staged an exact replica of the original mutiny with the men climbing into the forespars and cheering. Again the mutineers demanded that ‘no disrespect be shown to any officer whatsoever’ and even that swearing be banned. They were equally punctilious about discipline, but it was an altogether uglier revolt. The seamen’s leader, Parker, set up a blockade of the Thames and would only allow ships to go through to London with permits signed ‘L. Parker, Admiral’. This turned the ordinary people of London against the mutineers. Pitt ordered a flotilla of gunboats to be prepared for use against the strikers. Communications to the ships were cut off. Pardons were offered to all those who gave up the strike, and those who persisted were told they would be branded as rebels.

  Troops poured into Sheerness and the inhabitants were expelled. The buoys and beacons at the mouth of the Thames were moved, so that any attempt by mutinous ships to escape would be endangered. All trade to London was now blocked by the mutineers, and it was feared that they would move upriver to shell the capital with their twenty-four warships. It was only when it became apparent that news of the royal pardon had been suppressed by Parker and the other strikers’ leaders that the seamen began to waver. In addition, they were running out of supplies: although they were blockading London, they themselves were being blockaded from the shore. Finally, on 31 May, after two weeks, they parleyed, offering to return to sea in exchange for two months’ pay and clothing, and a pardon.

  However, the government’s mood had hardened since the Portsmouth mutiny had been settled, partly because Britain was no longer completely undefended against the French and partly because of the fear that strikes would soon become endemic: the much less important North Sea Fleet was to be made an example of. Their demands were refused and two ships left the strike. This was offset by the arrival of four other mutinous ships from the squadron blockading the Dutch coast, which gave the increasingly desperate seamen’s leaders some respite. Parker and his associates were now considering escaping to Ireland or America (although patriotically they never contemplated France).

  When on 9 June Parker ordered the fleet to flee to sea, none of the other ‘captains’ obeyed: they went on strike against their own strikers’ leader. Two more ships suddenly bolted from the mutinous fleet, and were fired upon by the others. Meanwhile fights broke out within the remaining ships: several sailors were killed. On 13 June five more ships broke away, leaving just fourteen. The following day these hauled down the red flag and the Sandwich hauled up a white flag and made for port.

  Parker was seized, along with 300 other ringleaders. The revolt’s leader, who came of a respectable lower-middle-class family with a small estate, was aged thirty, dark and good-looking with a prominent nose. He made an impression with his dignified calm at the tr
ial, and was hanged at the yardarm after dropping his own handkerchief as a signal to the executioner. His parting words were: ‘I wish only to declare that I acknowledge the justice of the sentence under which I suffer, and hope my death may be considered a sufficient atonement.’ Other seamen’s delegates were also executed or, in that most cruel of ritual punishments, flogged around the fleet. Henceforth any further such mutinies were ferociously repressed.

  St Vincent himself led the way when a mutiny broke out in his fleet off Cadiz; that ferocious old disciplinarian ordered the execution of a mutineer in 1798 aboard the Marlborough, a ship seething with discontent, and surrounded the ship with the rest of the fleet, threatening to sink it unless the execution was carried out by the seaman’s shipmates. Three other ships which had nearly joined the uprising were also threatened, and St Vincent ordered armed boats to row around one of them, the Prince, threatening to attack her if she went to the aid of the Marlborough.

  A month later there was another attempted mutiny in St Vincent’s fleet, this time from the most disaffected element among the seamen, the United Irishmen, many of whom, after Wolfe Tone’s failure, had been impressed aboard the Royal Navy. (Some 25,000 Irish, most of them completely loyal, served aboard British ships at the time.) The leader of the rebels was a man named Bott, one of Tone’s senior lieutenants who sought the support of 200 men aboard the Princess Royal. Along with conspirators aboard a number of ships, Bott intended to seize the ships, murder the officers and hijack the whole fleet to Ireland.

  St Vincent himself was in no doubt about the depth and danger of this audacious conspiracy, which would have dealt a death blow to British naval strength in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Bott, however, was by chance ordered to go on a routine boat mission just when he was supposed to lead the insurrection. He decided not to attract suspicion by refusing; and the other mutineers, panicking when the time set for the uprising had passed, revealed the plot. With St Vincent’s customary savagery, the ringleaders were arrested and hanged.