Edward Fraser

“ As the Spaniards seemed to be upon them the wind shifted, the English sails filled, ship by ship and all together, and then stretching out with bowsprits pointing seaward, the Revenge, Victory, Ark Royal, Dreadnought, and the others safely cleared the enemy, pouring in so fierce a fire as they passed that the Spanish ships had to sheer off. This was the first fight of the day. Later, when the wind, going round with the sun, shifted again and gave Drake and Howard the weather gage, came on the most desperate encounter with the Armada that our ships had yet seen. ”

“ If we go backward, we die;
Better go forward—and live!
The story of what happened once in Frigate Bay, St. Kitts, in the West Indies, recalls one of our “forgotten glories”; a feat of arms that nine out of ten people, one may be quite certain, have never heard of. Nor do our general histories say much of it, even of those whose pages make reference to it. Yet it is one of the very smartest, and neatest, and cleverest displays that, it may be, any British Admiral ever made, and it was managed, too, in the face of heroic odds. ”

“ Keppel did so immediately, and settled the fate of the hapless Thesèe, a seventy-four, the same size as his own ship, which went to the bottom with awful suddenness as they were fighting yard-arm to yard-arm, struck by a fierce squall that burst on her and heeled her over just as she had opened her lower-deck ports to leeward in order to give the Torbay a broadside. Swamped by a tremendous sea, the luckless Thesèe filled and sank like a stone. Out of eight hundred men on board, not twenty in all were saved, picked up from floating wreckage. ”

“ It is very sad, but this is war time, and the fleet must be manned.
All day long duty-boats keep going up and down. Now it is an admiral’s twelve-oared barge with the flag at the bows; now a captain’s gig, or a pinnace, pulling between ship and shore; now a midshipman’s boat scurrying off to answer the flagship’s signal. Ships’ long-boats with water-casks and pursers’ stores for various men-of-war in harbour, pass and repass, and beer hoys and yard craft of all kinds. ”

“ She is the biggest and the heaviest and the fastest and the hardest-hitting vessel that any navy as yet has seen afloat. And more than that. The Dreadnought has been so built as to be practically unsinkable by mine or torpedo; while at the same time her tremendous battery of ten 12-in. guns—huge cannon, each forty-five feet long—makes her absolutely irresistible in battle against all comers ”

“ So terrible was the weather that on board some of the British ships men were flung down on deck or hurled helplessly about and seriously injured and maimed. In one or two men were washed overboard and never seen again. The guns were double-breeched; eight men were at the wheel in every ship. So on that awful November afternoon did Hawke swoop down to strike.
On the French side there were twenty-one ships—with Hawke, twenty-three; but the French ships were on the average bigger vessels than ours, and carried heavier guns. That for fighting purposes in such weather gave Conflans the advantage. ”

“ Royal Sovereign continued in close encounter, until the Santa Anna’s colours came down. It was just at that moment that Collingwood received, by an officer of the Victory, Captain Hardy’s first message that Lord Nelson had been “dangerously wounded.”
The stubborn stand that the Santa Anna made was a disappointment, it would appear, to the Sovereign’s men. Their terrible raking broadside at the outset had plainly “sickened” the Spaniards—as our men expressively put it—and many on board believed that the enemy must surrender forthwith. ”

“ She was following at a [114] half cable’s length astern—a hundred yards—when, almost at the moment that the Tyger anchored, the tide turned, and began to race back, swirling down the river. It checked the Kent’s way instantly, and she hung back at a dead standstill, unable to breast her way against it. At the same moment a heavy concentrated fire from the ramparts beat upon her, and the ship, reeling under the terrific battering began to drift down, stern first. First one anchor was let go, then another. ”

“ As the hands of the officers’ watches pointed to eleven, every ship was to cut her cable, come to sail at once, and get under way in line of battle ahead, every ship moving out to sea independently, steering to the westward, keeping on a given line of bearing. On no account must there be any noise—no hailing, no signalling whatever. Not a match must be struck on board, and all lights must be screened. ”

“ The rearmost of the French squadron, the Centaure, a ship of seventy-four guns, practically held the leading pursuers in check during most of that time. Nothing could be more courageous than the Centaure’s defence, regardless of the odds against her. Until nearly nightfall she kept Boscawen’s leading ships from closing on her and her consorts. The Centaure, under orders to cover the retreat, exchanged a never-ceasing cannonade with the ships of the English van for five hours, the fight becoming hotter and ever closer until just before sunset. ”

“ The Royal Sovereign, on the Santa Anna surrendering, pushed off from her giant prize—so big a ship, indeed, that, in Collingwood’s own words, she “towered over the Sovereign like a castle.” She moved away to seek another enemy. But the fall of her main and mizen-masts, cut through and through by shot, prevented her from taking a further part in the battle until after being taken in tow by the Euryalus frigate, Captain Blackwood’s ship. ”

“ One of the best known of all our man-of-war names reappears on the roll of the British fleet in the name Téméraire, now borne by one of our new giant 18,000-ton battleships of the Dreadnought type. This is the story of how it came to be a British battleship name in the first place, the story of the act of war which in the sequel led to that historic man-of-war the “Fighting” Téméraire figuring on another day among the ships of Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar, to fight there as the Victory’s chief supporter in the fiercest of the fray. ”

“ The hooks are meant to grip and hold fast the fireship’s destined prey as she sheers alongside. The fireship’s crew set the quick match-train leading to the stacks of pitch-barrels and other combustibles all over the vessel, ablaze at several points just as they are closing the enemy, and the little boat is for them to escape in at the last moment. Now a bomb-ketch passes, a clumsy craft with masts set well aft and two heavy 13-inch mortars, trained for firing over the bows right ahead, set side by side in the fore part of the ship, where the foremast would stand in an ordinary vessel. ”

“ The main garrison now were quickly on the qui vive, and the south-east bastion took up the firing; but for the moment the light was too uncertain for the gunners in Fort d’Orleans to shoot with much effect, until the Tyger and Kent had nearly drawn up abreast of the fort. Then, however, they got their chance.
The French gunners took advantage of it to the full before the men-of-war were in position. As it were by signal, a tremendous burst of artillery fire flashed out all along the ramparts from end to end, from bastions and curtain and ravelin. ”

“ The Channel Fleet was not to be received a second time on returning to Spithead with a dumb peal on the bells of Portsmouth Church. That plan of campaign had been to some extent a legacy to Pitt from the previous Ministry; he was prepared now to set on foot his own scheme. Great Britain would henceforward take the offensive vigorously and deal with the enemy at all points. Pitt’s plan was to make it first and foremost a naval war, to attack the oversea possessions of France all the world over, utilizing every ship at the disposal of the nation. ”

“ The Donegal, three months later, was in the thick of the fighting in the brilliantly successful battle in the West Indies, when Vice-Admiral Sir John Duckworth, with a squadron detached by Collingwood off Cadiz, on special service, captured or destroyed an entire French squadron of five ships of the line from Brest, including the finest three-decker in the world, the great 110-gun ship L’Impérial, so named in honour of Napoleon himself. ”

“ If Rodney arrived while the British flag was still flying in the island and could join hands with Hood, there was yet a chance of checkmating the enemy and of saving St. Kitts. But could Brimstone Hill hold out? It was more than doubtful.
The place was naturally an impregnable fortress, but the fortifications had been badly placed. The garrison were not numerous enough to line the walls. They had no heavy guns mounted, and the enemy were day after day bombarding them with a pitiless fire that closed in on them more and more, and became fiercer and more deadly and destructive every hour. ”

“ Passing on, the Donegal engaged another French ship till her colours in turn came down. Then she ran on board one more Frenchman, the Jupiter, a ship that had already been hotly engaged. The Jupiter surrendered to the Donegal after next to no defence. Such was the Donegal’s work that day, in [220] a battle that is really unique in the completeness of its results, but which, owing to its having taken place within three months of Trafalgar, the world paid little heed to at the time, and we have since quite forgotten—lost sight of in the dazzling lustre of the greater event near home. ”

“ Just now, perhaps, there is no man-of-war name all the world over of more unpleasant notoriety than hers. She is the Monarque, a seventy-four, taken from the French, and it was on her quarter-deck, some eighteen months ago, on a dull and cloudy March day, that they shot Admiral Byng. The Monarque has now just returned from “Straits” service, and if you went on board her you would see, still there, and part of the ship’s company, the men of the platoon of marines who formed Byng’s firing party. ”

“ The Dreadnought of Boscawen and Maurice Suckling ended her days at perhaps England’s darkest hour of national trial—at the time of the American War. She was doing harbour duty at Portsmouth at the time, as a guard and receiving ship.
At no period, perhaps in all our history did the future and the prospects of the British Empire seem so absolutely hopeless. We were fighting for existence against France and Spain, the two chief maritime Powers of Europe ”

“ Taking on herself the fire of the enemy’s line, centre and rear, as she advanced, she swept resistlessly under the stern of the Spanish flagship Santa Anna, a gigantic 112-gun three-decker, nearly a mile in front of Collingwood’s second astern, the Belleisle—“the most remarkable incident of the battle, a feat unparalleled in naval history,” as it has been called. “See,” exclaimed Nelson with delight to Captain Hardy, as he watched the Sovereign’s advance; “see how that noble fellow Collingwood carries his ship into [252] action!” ”

“ That is why victualling ships have to attend Her Majesty’s fleets on service outside the Narrow Seas. The “cook room,” of bricks and iron and paving stones, is in the hold over the ballast. Two more notes may be made as we return on deck and quit the ship. The captain’s cabin, opening on the gallery aft, is neatly wainscoted and garnished with green and white chintz, and with curtains of darnix hung at the latticed cabin windows. There are three boats for the Dreadnought: the “great boat,” which tows astern at all times, the cock-boat and the skiff, both of which stow inboard. ”

“ The energy of the British Admiral and his captains recovered the situation for England. Taken at a disadvantage as Boscawen’s fleet was, all hands turned to with such smartness that within two hours of the alarm guns being first heard every ship in Boscawen’s command was in sea-going trim, ready for the order to weigh anchor. Before ten that night, within two and a half hours of the Gibraltar coming in, every [132] line-of-battle ship of the British Fleet was at sea, together with two frigates and a fireship, heading through the Straits in chase of the French under all sail. ”

“ The name Donegal has a significance to the Royal Navy that is all its own. It was designated by the Admiralty as a county cruiser name, for one of the ships of the Kent and Monmouth group; but there is more than that behind the name. Donegal lettered on the stern of a man-of-war has its own traditions—associations of a yet wider interest to the British fleet. The name, as a fact, owes its appearance on the Navy List to a very special occasion. H.M.S. Donegal, in its origin, is only incidentally connected with County Donegal. ”

“ In every county of England and Wales the local authorities were getting ready for the early muster of the new militia levies—now, for the first time in our history, to be formed into regiments. Along the coasts of Sussex and Kent, from Selsea to beyond Dungeness and Hythe, where the open coast-line might seem to invite attack—at Littlehampton, Brighton, Blatchington, Seaford, Hastings, Rye, Hythe, Folkestone—the sites for four- and six-gun batteries were being pegged out by military engineers, to be thrown up by local labourers under expert supervision. ”

“ French fleet, cornered between the storm and the shore, in the midst of the rocks and quicksands; without charts themselves, and for the most part without pilots, or, at least, pilots that they could trust; flinging themselves on the enemy heedless of gale and breakers, attacking ship after ship of the French as each was met with, “to make,” in Hawke’s own expressive words, “downright work of them.”
De Conflans, Maréchal de France, commanded the French Fleet. ”