Stockwin's Maritime Miscellany (4 page)

At dawn on 1 October 1807 off Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, the lookout in
Windsor Castle
saw enemy sail rapidly overhauling them and the ship prepared to defend itself. With no prospect of escape the 28-man crew rigged the anti-boarding nets and went to quarters. The French privateer
Jeune Richard
, its crew of 92 outnumbering that of the
Windsor Castle
by more than three to one and with close to double their weight of metal, quickly closed in, but the nets prevented them from boarding.

Acting-Captain William Rogers prepared
Windsor Castle
for action and stood by to sink the ship should it be necessary to keep her out of enemy hands. After a fierce close-in fight over several hours in which
Jeune Richard
was severely damaged Rogers and just five men then stormed aboard the French vessel, killing the captain and tearing down their colours. Losses on the British side were 3 killed, 10 wounded; the French suffered 21 dead and 33 wounded.

Given the odds, this was a remarkable victory in itself, but
Windsor Castle
was no naval warship but a civilian vessel, a lightly armed Falmouth packet, run by the Post Office to carry mail, freight and passengers overseas.

The news of how Rogers had turned upon his pursuer and taken her as a prize caused a sensation in England. Among the many rewards Rogers received was the full captaincy of another packet ship.

Lord Horatio Nelson has been voted England’s greatest hero, the man who led the nation to her most glorious victories at sea. Yet this revered figure suffered so much throughout his life from disease and injury that he brings special meaning to the phrase ‘mind over matter’. He was wounded more times than any other Royal Navy admiral during the Napoleonic Wars. Ironically, Copenhagen, the hardest fought of all his battles, was the only one in which he was not hurt.

In his teens, serving in India, the young Horatio became ill with the first of many fevers that would turn his hair prematurely grey before the age of 25.

In July 1794, while engaged in the siege of Calvi in Corsica, he received his first serious battle wound and subsequently lost the use of his right eye. During the Battle of St Vincent in 1797 he suffered an internal trauma, and abdominal pain troubled him greatly in later years.

At Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, on the night of 24 July that same year he was leading a desperate assault ashore when he was struck in the upper right arm by a musket-ball. A tourniquet fashioned by his stepson saved his life. It is typical of Nelson that he refused to go back aboard his own ship HMS
Seahorse
in case he alarmed Betsy Fremantle, the wife of the captain, who was at sea with her husband at the time. Instead he was rowed to HMS
Theseus
, where his right arm was amputated. (Later, recalling the shock of the cold steel of the surgeon’s knife, he included in his fleet orders the instruction that henceforth all such instruments be warmed before use.)

At the Battle of the Nile Nelson sustained a wound to his forehead which cut right to the bone; the flesh fell over his good eye, temporarily blinding him.

Finally, at Trafalgar, a ball from an enemy musket struck the epaulette on his left shoulder and penetrated through his lung to the spine – where some of the gold braid from his epaulette was found to be still adhering to it. Nelson was carried below to the orlop deck in great pain; he died at 4.30 p.m., after stoically enduring for another two hours 45 minutes.

The annals of history record the name of Hastings as the site of the last invasion of Britain. But there is another contender – the town of Fishguard in southwest Wales. And the story of this attempt by France’s revolutionary government to liberate England is proof positive that the women ashore in the age of sail had just as much spunk as their men at sea!

On 22 February 1797 the French set in motion a plan to divert British troops away from Ireland so they could launch a major attack there. Some 1,400 soldiers led by Colonel William Tate, an American, were landed from four French warships on the shore of Carreg Wastad, just west of Fishguard.

However, the French were to have only two days on British soil. At the sight of military reinforcements mustering on the nearby hills they surrendered to the local militia led by Lord Cawdor. In fact it was not British Army Redcoats they saw, but hundreds of Welsh women in their traditional scarlet cloaks. One local woman is particularly celebrated as the heroine of the hour – Jemima Nicholas, a 47-year-old Fishguard cobbler, who advanced on 12 Frenchmen with a pitchfork and captured them all single-handedly.

A magnificent record of the event, ‘The Last Invasion Tapestry’, over 30 m long and in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry, is now on display at the Fishguard Town Hall.

A WEATHER EYE – alertness for a sudden change in the situation.
DERIVATION
: in the open sea the lookout watched on the weather, or windward, side of the ship. The first sign of a change always came on this side.

During the Battle of Trafalgar 21-year-old Lieutenant William Ram on board HMS
Victory
was badly wounded by vicious wooden shards splintering out with the impact of round shot from
Redoutable
. Bleeding severely, Ram was carried below to the cockpit, where the surgeon did what he could to staunch the haemorrhage. When told of the severity of his injuries, Ram was so distraught that he tore off the ligatures that were being applied and rapidly bled to death. Along with other casualties he was committed to the deep.

Several days later his body was washed up on the Spanish coast and found by some English prisoners of war who identified the corpse from Ram’s name stitched into his shirt. They obtained permission from the governor of Cadiz to give him a Christian burial.

The Royal Navy played a vital but little-known role in suppressing slavery. After the evil trade was outlawed by the British Parliament in 1807 the West Africa Squadron was established the following year. Initially the unit was limited to intercepting British slave ships, fining them £100 for every slave found aboard, but it expanded to target slavers from other countries.

The West Africa Squadron patrolled the 5,000 km of the West African coast for 60 years and at its height accounted for one-sixth of the resources of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. The squadron seized 1,600 vessels and liberated 150,000 slaves, and played as important a role as the campaigners led by William Wilberforce in bringing slavery to an end.

One of the most successful ships was poacher-turned-gamekeeper HMS
Black Joke
. A captured slave ship, she had originally sailed under the name of
Henrietta
. With a fair wind
Black Joke
was capable of overhauling the best on the coast and although only lightly armed she quickly became the scourge of the slavers.

Among
Black Joke
’s most notable conquests was the Spanish brig
El Almirante
. The slaver was sighted on 1 February 1829 and although her quarry was vastly superior in size and arms
Black Joke
immediately gave chase. The winds were light and variable and
Black Joke
had to resort to sweeps to close the gap. The chase lasted 11 hours under the blazing sun and the light was fading as a desperate duel began. When the Spanish vessel finally surrendered it had 15 crew dead and 13 wounded.
Black Joke
had suffered six wounded, two of whom later died. Over 450 slaves were found chained together in appalling conditions in the hold of
El Amirante
.

In one year alone
Black Joke
took 22 ships and liberated 7,000 slaves. Sometimes she worked in tandem with another ship. In September 1831 she was sailing with the schooner HMS
Fair Rosamond
off the mouth of the Bonny River when they surprised two Spanish slavers. Recognising the Royal Navy ships the vessels fled back up the river and
Black Joke
and
Fair Rosamond
gave chase. As they were overhauled the Spanish began throwing slaves over the side. Some were chained together in pairs and quickly drowned. Others tried to make for the shore but were attacked by sharks and torn to pieces. The four vessels crammed on all sail as they raced up the river. Eventually the slavers were captured and what remained of their sorry human cargo given their freedom.

HMS
Black Joke
met an inglorious end in May 1832. Her timbers rotten, she was condemned by Admiralty surveyors and burnt. All that remains of her is an envelope filled with brown dust in the Public Record Office at Kew in southwest London.

There was a huge human cost for the men who served in the West Africa Squadron. Much of daily life was tedious and there was little chance of promotion as a result of a celebrated victory in a famous battle. Fever was rife and between 1830 and 1865 some 1,600 men in the West Africa Squadron died. In one year about 25 per cent of the officers and men died, a proportion 15 times higher than the navy had ever lost in wartime in any year.

During the War of 1812 the Royal Navy lost three frigates, HMS
Macedonian
, HMS
Guerriere
and HMS
Java
, to the young United States Navy. This was a bitter blow to the pride of a nation with such a long and proud tradition. Captain Philip Broke knew that his ship HMS
Shannon
could not match the big American frigates in size and firepower, but gunnery
was
one thing he could do something about. During his seven years as captain of
Shannon
he worked his ship to a peak of fighting efficiency with an unrivalled regime of gun drill. Every day, with the exception of Sunday, his men were exercised at quarters and firing at a target.

In June 1813
Shannon
engaged USS
Chesapeake
under Captain James Lawrence in an epic fight off Boston, the finest single-ship action in the age of sail.

After
Shannon
fired a devastating broadside into
Chesapeake
Lawrence fell wounded but continued to give orders to return fire. A vicious hand-to-hand fight ensued as Broke himself led a boarding party on to
Chesapeake
. Lawrence bravely urged his men: ‘Don’t give up the ship!’ Three American sailors attacked Broke. He killed the first, but the second hit him with a musket and the third sliced open his skull before being overwhelmed.

The entire action lasted only 11 minutes, but its unequalled ferocity (a projectile hit
Shannon
every four seconds) left 148 American and 83 English sailors killed or wounded. Lawrence died of his wounds three days later.
Shannon
’s victory caused a sensation in America and England, and Broke returned to a hero’s welcome. He eventually recovered from his wound but was unable to return to active service and was troubled with head pains for many years.