The War of Wars

by Robert Harvey

  The British could not just act the part of spectators. Castlereagh and Canning were determined to stand up to Napoleon. The guerrilla struggle in the Peninsula also kindled sparks of resistance elsewhere in Europe. Everywhere Napoleon began to be denounced as a tyrant rather than a liberator. The German philosopher Fichte issued an ‘Address to the German People’ in late 1807 which stoked feelings of latent nationalism. In Prussia, Stein, a liberal nationalist who had been appointed by the Kaiser to run his truncated state, was hunted down by the French and forced to flee to Austria.

  The Spanish resistance also encouraged the sputtering anti-French insurrection in Calabria, which had continued from 1806, although this was finally more or less crushed by the new King of Naples, Joachim Murat (far more ruthless and effective militarily than Joseph Bonaparte) by the end of 1811. In the Tyrol, with Austrian backing, anti-Bavarian anti-French guerrillas rose up in May 1809 seizing control of the capital of Innsbruck and forcing its garrison of 6,000 to surrender. They were led by a huge innkeeper called Hofer. But after terrible atrocities had been committed by both sides, the insurrection dwindled away by 1810. There was a smaller uprising in Westphalia.

  In Britain at last Wellesley won the argument and on 6 April 1809 he was authorized to lead a new expeditionary force on the Peninsula; General Beresford had already been sent to Portugal to organize Portuguese resistance. On 14 April Wellesley embarked, and his old ill-fortune with sea travel returned. Sailing into a gale, the captain told him the ship was sure to founder. ‘In that case’, replied Sir Arthur in one of the curt soundbites that were increasingly becoming his trademark, ‘I shall not take off my boots.’ He had been given a second chance to resume his controversial career.

  Chapter 61

  AIX ROADS

  As Sir Arthur sailed off to Spain, Thomas Cochrane, that even more peppery, fiery and bizarre commander, was about to reach the climax of his own career. Since the stinging defeat at Trafalgar in 1805, Napoleon had not been idle at sea: he had thrown himself into a programme of naval building and in 1809 for the first time in four years, appeared seriously to be threatening Britain with invasion once again. He had constructed fourteen new ships of the line at the superb new dockyard in the Scheldt estuary, while ten more were being built at Antwerp and Flushing. Others were being made in French dockyards.

  The French fleet was now located at Aix Roads. Although not doing mischief at sea, this was a seemingly impregnable anchorage, close to the French frontier with Spain. From there it could threaten the British sea lines of communication with the expeditionary army in Portugal. It was also liable to emerge to attack merchant shipping with the West Indies, if not the West Indies themselves, where the British had just captured Martinique once again. West Indian trade was a lifeline to Britain while the Continental System was in force. The Aix anchorage, with its long and treacherous approaches, was much more difficult to blockade closely than Brest, and rough weather in the Bay of Biscay always threatened to force British flotillas to stand well out to sea.

  It appeared that Napoleon was regaining his confidence at sea. The Admiralty would have none of it and ordered Admiral Lord Gambier, the commander who had so brutally bombarded Copenhagen, to attack the French with fireships: ‘The enemy’s ships lie much exposed to the operation of fireships, it is a horrible mode of warfare, and the attempt hazardous, if not desperate; but we should have plenty of volunteers in the service. If you mean to do anything of the kind, it should be done with secrecy and quickly, and the ships used should be not less than those built for the purpose – at least a dozen, and some smaller ones.’

  Gambier, however, was simply too cautious a man for this kind of warfare, although he had been commander of the seventeen-strong fleet when the British had bombarded Copenhagen in 1807 with appalling results for that beautiful city. Gambier was a dedicated tractarian Christian who distributed fundamentalist pamphlets to his crew, fiercely opposed alcohol, and refused the common practice of allowing women on board in port. He was known as ‘dismal Jimmie’ by his men. He was fully in the tradition of St Vincent, a new type of Admiralty bureaucrat, determined to bring greater morality on board ship, espousing middle-class values and despising old-style aristocratic pretensions of the kind Cochrane personified.

  Gambier’s religious concerns seemed doomed from the start. As one contemporary chaplain wrote: ‘Nothing can possibly be more unsuitably or more awkwardly situated than a clergyman in a ship of war; every object around him is at variance with the sensibilities of a rational and enlightened mind . . . The entrance of a clergyman is, to a poor seaman, often a fatal signal . . . To convert a man of war’s crew into Christians would be a task to which the courage of Loyola, the philanthropy of Howard, and the eloquence of St Paul united would prove inadequate.’

  The poet Thomas Hood mocked the Admiral:

  Oh! Admiral Gam – I dare not mention bier,

  In such a temperate ear;

  Oh! Admiral Gam – an Admiral of the Blue,

  Of course, to read the Navy List aright,

  For strictly shunning wine of either hue,

  You can’t be Admiral of the Red or White.

  Gambier’s intense religious beliefs did not prevent him being a good commander, but as he so patently was not – he was cautious and indecisive – they merely grated on the officers beneath him, none more so than Admiral Eliab Harvey, the celebrated captain of the Temeraire at Trafalgar. Harvey detested his superior. The bad blood between these two senior commanders of the fleet further demoralized it.

  With Gambier in a mire of uncertainty off Aix Roads, the Admiralty conceived of an extraordinary idea. The one officer with close knowledge of Aix Roads from his tour of duty three years before was Thomas Cochrane, who had long suggested invading the anchorage with fireships. Here at last was a use for this tiresome but fearless seaman.

  Cochrane was ordered immediately to report to Whitehall. Where once Cochrane had striven desperately to gain an audience with Lord St Vincent, he was now received warmly, even effusively, by the new First Sea Lord, Lord Mulgrave, a red-faced Tory just appointed to office, who was a connoisseur of the arts and displayed an enviable unflappability towards all events, good and bad. Mulgrave was to the point, welcoming him and informing him that in spite of Gambier’s reservations, twelve transports were being converted for use as fireships. ‘You were some years ago employed on the Rochefort station and must to a great extent be acquainted with the difficulties to be surmounted. Besides which, I am told that you then pointed out to Admiral Thornburgh some plan of attack, which would in your estimation be successful. Will you be good enough to detail that or any other plan which your further experience may suggest?’

  Cochrane was immediately interested, and launched into his own pet project for building ‘explosion ships’ to add to the fireships. Even Cochrane was taken aback by how seriously, he, a mere captain, was being taken by the First Sea Lord. Now came the shock: Mulgrave told Cochrane that he was to command the expedition.

  At this Cochrane was aghast: he knew the fury that giving command of so major a venture to so junior a captain would arouse not just in Gambier, but all the senior captains serving with him. He was deeply sceptical of the Admiralty’s motives.

  It was now clear to me why I had been sent for to the Admiralty, where not a word of approbation of my previous services was uttered. The Channel fleet had been doing worse than nothing. The nation was dissatisfied, and even the existence of the ministry was at stake. They wanted a victory, and the admiral commanding plainly told them he would not willingly risk a defeat. Other naval officers had been consulted, who had disapproved of the use of fireships, and, as a last resource, I had been sent for, in the hope that I would undertake the enterprise. If this were successful, the fleet would get the credit, which would be thus reflected on the ministry; and if it failed, the consequence would be the loss of my individual reputation, as both ministry and commander-in-chief would lay the blame on me.

  Mulgra
ve brushed aside his objections: ‘The present is no time for professional etiquette. All the officers who have been consulted deem an attack with fireships impracticable, and after such an expression of opinion, it is not likely they would be offended by the conduct of fireships being given to another officer who approved of their use.’

  Cochrane argued that any senior officer could command the expedition as effectively as he: ‘The plan submitted to your Lordship was not an attack with fireships alone, and when the details become known to the service, it will be seen that there is no risk of failure whatever, if made with a fair wind and flowing tide. On the contrary, its success on inspection must be evident to any experienced officer, who would see that as the enemy’s squadron could not escape up the Charente, their destruction would not only be certain but in fact easy.’

  Mulgrave promised to think the matter over. The following day he summoned Cochrane: ‘My Lord, you must go. The Board cannot listen to further refusal or delay. Rejoin your frigate at once. I will make you all right with Lord Gambier. Your confidence in the result has, I must confess, taken me by surprise, but it has increased my belief that all you anticipate will be accomplished. Make yourself easy about the jealous feeling of senior officers. I will so manage it with Lord Gambier that the amour propre of the fleet shall be satisfied.’ To Gambier and the officers of the fleet, a single instruction was sent selecting Lord Cochrane ‘under your Lordship’s direction to conduct the fireships to be employed in the projected attack’. For once, military considerations had overridden political ones in the Admiralty.

  * * *

  Cochrane’s head was swimming with the opportunity offered as his carriage galloped back with all speed to Plymouth to join the twelve transports and to meet up with William Congreve, the inventor of a new type of explosive rocket, who was to take part in the attack. They set off to join the Channel Fleet where Cochrane went aboard Gambier’s flagship to witness an extraordinary scene.

  Harvey, incensed by news of Cochrane’s appointment, was giving vent to his spite. As the embarrassed young Cochrane stood by, the veteran seaman hurled a stream of invective upon the self-righteous Admiral. Cochrane recalled that Harvey’s ‘abuse of Lord Gambier to his face was such as I had never before witnessed from a subordinate. I should even now hesitate to record it as incredible, were it not officially known by the minutes of the court-martial in which it sometime afterwards resulted.’

  The young captain stood by in embarrassment and afterwards sought out Harvey to apologize to him:

  Harvey broke out into invectives of a most extraordinary kind, openly avowing that he never saw a man so unfit for the command of the fleet as Lord Gambier, who instead of sending boats to sound the Channels, which he (Admiral Harvey) considered the best preparation for an attack on the enemy, he had been employing, or rather amusing himself, with mustering the ships’ companies, and had not even taken the pain to ascertain whether the enemy had placed any mortars in front of their lines; concluding by saying, that had Lord Nelson been there, he would not have anchored in Basque Roads at all, but would have dashed at the enemy at once. Admiral Harvey then came into Sir Harry Neale’s cabin, and shook hands with me, assuring me that he should have been very happy to see me on any other occasion than the present. He begged me to consider that nothing personal to myself was intended, for he had a high opinion of me; but that my having been ordered to execute such a service, could only be regarded as an insult to the fleet, and that on this account he would strike his flag so soon as the service was executed. Admiral Harvey further assured me that he had volunteered his services, which had been refused.

  That provoked this exchange.

  Cochrane began: ‘The service on which the Admiralty has sent me was none of my seeking. I went to Whitehall in obedience to a summons from Lord Mulgrave, and at his Lordship’s request gave the board a plan of attack, the execution of which has been thrust upon me contrary to my inclination, as well knowing the invidious position in which I should be placed.’

  Harvey replied: ‘Well, this is not the first time I have been lightly treated, and that my services have not been attended to in the way they deserved; because I am no canting Methodist, no hypocrite, nor a psalm singer. I do not cheat old women out of their estates by hypocrisy and canting. I have volunteered to perform the service you came on, and should have been happy to see you on any other occasion, but am very sorry to have a junior officer placed over my head.’

  Cochrane responded: ‘You must not blame me for that. Permit me to remark, that you are using very strong expressions relative to the Commander-in-Chief’.

  ‘I can assure you, Lord Cochrane, that I have spoken to Lord Gambier with the same degree of prudence as I have now done to you in the presence of Captain Sir H Neal.’

  ‘Well, Admiral, considering that I have been an unwilling listener to what you really did say to his Lordship, I can only remark that you have a strange notion of prudence.’

  Harvey was soon afterwards removed from command for using ‘grossly insubordinate language’ towards Gambier. He was court-martialled and dismissed from the service. But he was an immensely popular figure, one of Nelson’s most famous commanders and was reinstated the following year, although he was never given a command again.

  Cochrane, assured by Harvey that he had no personal grudge against him, went off to his own ship, the frigate Imperieuse, to make preparations. He wrote directly to Mulgrave in response to his request to detail his original plan of attack, dating from Thornburgh’s time:

  My Lord – Having been very close the Isle d’Aix, I find that the western wall has been pulled down to build a better. At present the fort is quite open, and may be taken as soon as the French fleet is driven on shore or burned, which will be as soon as the fireships arrive. The wind continues favourable for the attack. If your Lordship can prevail on the ministry to send a military force here, you will do great and lasting good to our country. Could ministers see things with their own eyes, how differently would they act; but they cannot be everywhere present, and on their opinion of the judgement of others must depend the success of war – possibly the fate of England and all Europe. No diversion which the whole force of Great Britain is capable of making in Portugal or Spain would so much shake the French government as the capture of the islands on this coast. A few men would take Oléron; but to render the capture effective, send twenty-thousand men who, without risk, would find occupation for the French army of a hundred thousand.

  The Admiralty took no notice.

  Cochrane supervised the conversion of the transports into fireships as they arrived from England. The construction of fireships was an old technique. Five large trails of gunpowder were laid criss-cross on the deck. Wood and canvas were stretched between them. Up above, tarred ropes dangled down from sails also covered in tar. Chains were fixed to the sides with grappling hooks – a chevaux de frise – so that it would be difficult for a ship which a fireship drifted against to detach itself. Resin and turpentine were poured all over the fireship to help it to burn. Finally huge holes were made in the hull so as to help suck in air and feed the flames after the ship began to burn.

  With the arrival of a further nine fireships from England, Cochrane now had twenty-one under his command. But he was busier still on his own invention, explosion ships. The French would be prepared for fireships, but they would have no understanding of his new secret weapon, just approved by the Admiralty. The preparations for these were more elaborate still: ‘The floor was rendered as firm as possible by means of logs placed in close contact, into every crevice of which other substances were firmly wedged so as to afford the greatest amount of resistance to the explosion. On this foundation were placed a large number of spirit and water casks, into which 1,500 barrels of powder casks were placed, several hundred shells, and over these again nearly three thousand hand grenades; the whole, by means of wedges and sand, being compressed as nearly as possible into a solid mass.’

  Vice-Admiral A
llemand had anchored the French fleet in an apparently impregnable position. They were drawn up in two lines, between two small islands, the Île d’Aix and the Île Madame, which dominated the approaches to the Charente river. There were gun batteries on the Île d’Aix and the Île d’Oleron, a large spur of land to the west, as well as on the mainland. Cochrane had, however, already personally observed that the battery on Aix was in a poor state of repair, and its firepower grossly exaggerated. Moreover his earlier reconnaissance had led him to discover a remarkable thing. The only clear line of attack upon the French would have to be between a large reef, around three miles wide, called the Boyart Shoal, which was uncovered at low tide, and the Île d’Aix. ‘From previous employment on the spot on several occasions I well knew there was room in the Channel to keep out of the way of red-hot shot from the Aix batteries even if, by means of blue lights [flares] or other devices, they had discovered us. The officers and crews of the line-of-battle ships would be impressed with the idea that every fireship was an explosion vessel, and that in place of offering opposition they would, in all probability, be driven ashore in their attempt to escape from such diabolical engines of warfare, and thus become an easy prey.’ In other words, the fort providing protection for the French fleet was no use at all. The ‘lethal’ fire of their guns could not reach the British ships if the latter stuck to the right-hand side of the Channel. There was no threat from this quarter, which Gambier persisted in regarding as extremely dangerous.

  ‘Dismal Jimmie’ had written to the Admiralty just a few days before:

  The enemy’s ships are anchored in two lines, very near each other, in a direction due south from the Isle d’Aix, and the ships in each line not father apart than their own length; by which it appears, as I imagined, that the space for their anchorage is so confined by the shoaliness of the water, as not to admit of ships to run in and anchor clear of each other. The most distant ships of their two lines are within point-blank shot of the works on the Isle d’Aix; such ships, therefore, as might attack the enemy would be exposed to be raked by red-hot shot, etc, from the island, and should the ships be disabled in their masts, they must remain within range of the enemy’s fire until they are destroyed – there not being sufficient depth of water to allow them to move to the southward out of distance.