John Knox Laughton

“ Thus he wrote on 14 June 1807 : 'I hardly ever see the face of an officer, except when they dine with me, and am seldom on deck above an hour in the day, when I go in the twilight to breathe the fresh air.' The conduct of a fleet consisting of thirty sail of the line and upwards of fifty smaller vessels involved a great deal of clerical work, exclusive of much official correspondence ; but a commander-in-chief who seldom moves from his desk can scarcely be absolved of neglecting other most necessary parts of his duty. ”

“ This bold front led the French to suppose that the English fleet was in the immediate neighbourhood, a supposition which was confirmed by the English look-out frigate making deceptive signals, and by the fortuitous appearance of some distant sail. They bore up and relinquished the pursuit, leaving Cornwallis at liberty to proceed to Plymouth with intelligence of the French fleet being at sea. This escape from a force so enormously superior, and especially the bold manœuvre of the Royal Sovereign, raised the reputation of the vice-admiral to a very high pitch. ”

“ But stress is often laid on the fact that Collingwood's private life was noble and pure. That he was an earnest and pious man, exemplary in his domestic relations, is admitted; but from a strictly professional point of view, Collingwood can only be considered as a brave and capable sailor, a good officer, an admirable second in command, but without the genius, fitting him to rise to the first rank as a commander-in-chief. ”

“ The Americans, bewildered and panic-stricken, were beaten below without much difficulty. Broke was indeed most seriously wounded on the head by a blow from the butt-end of a musket ; but within fifteen minutes from the time of the first gun being fired by the Shannon the American colours on board the Chesapeake were hauled down, and the English colours hoisted in their stead.
The apparently easy capture of the Chesapeake, a ship of the same nominal force but larger, with more men and a heavier armament than the Shannon, created a remarkable sensation both in America and in England. ”

“ There is no doubt that they disliked each other; that Cochrane considered Gambier as a canting and hypocritical methodist, while Gambier looked on Cochrane as a rash and insolent youngster, and though obliged, by the orders of the admiralty, to give him nominal support, steadily refused to make that support effective. The success was, therefore, very partial, and Gambier, on learning from the first lord of the admiralty that Cochrane would oppose the vote of thanks for the destruction of the French ships, at once applied for a court-martial. ”

“ Torrington's defence appears to have mainly followed the lines of his speech to the House of Commons, dwelling upon the inferior strength of the English fleet, and the probability of a great disaster if it had imitated the recklessness of the Dutch. He said that he had served at sea for twenty-seven years, been in more battles and lost more blood than any gentleman in England. If these facts did not prove his courage, if his sacrifices on behalf of the revolution did not prove his integrity, no man's reputation could be safe. ”

“ He is a cousin of John Hawkyns, and his name is Francis Drake. He is about thirty-five years old, of small size, with a reddish beard, and is one of the greatest sailors that exist, both from his skill and from his power of commanding. His ship is of near four hundred tons; sails well, and has a hundred men, all in the prime of life and as well trained for war as if they were old soldiers of Italy. Each one is especially careful to keep his arms clean. He treats them with affection, and they him with respect. ”

“ A still more fatal error had been committed in giving Boscawen special instructions to be guided in the siege operations by the opinion of the engineers, a body of men whose pedantic ignorance of their profession, and whose utter want of practical training, had, but a few years before, brought ruin to the expedition against Cartagena. Boscawen, who had gone through that deadly experience, now again found himself hampered by the same clog and under the same circumstances of a sickly and stormy season drawing on, and rendering the utmost despatch the first condition of success. ”

“ On one occasion he thinks him ‘a good man, but one that professes he loves to get and to save;’ and on another he has been told ‘how Sir Thomas Allin, whom I took for a man of known courage and service on the king's side, was tried for his life in Prince Rupert's fleet, in the late times, for cowardice and condemned to be hanged.’ Such a story of the man whom Rupert afterwards singled out for his especial favour, carries with it its own refutation. ”

“ The next day the other forts and the town capitulated; all the ships in the harbour, including three guarda-costas, were taken possession of; the brass guns were carried off; the iron guns were destroyed, and the forts were blown up.
This was the celebrated capture of Porto Bello, the news of which caused the people of England to go mad with excitement and joy. As an achievement of war it was a very small thing, for the Spaniards had done what they could to make it easy; but the feeling against the government was running very high, and Vernon's success was counted as a great party victory. ”

“ The Monmouth was reduced to a wreck; her ensign nailed to the stump of the mizenmast, and the pennant to the stump of the mainmast; the wheel shot away; and the ship, under no control, a helpless log, lay between the lines, a target for every gun which the enemy could bring to bear. Eventually a rag of sail was hoisted on the stump of the foremast, and a lucky shift of wind enabled Captain Wood, in the Hero, to take her in tow and place her, in comparative safety, to leeward of the English line. ”

“ The Constitution was a more powerful ship, with a numerous and well-trained crew. Under the circumstances the Java's defence was highly creditable. The action lasted for more than two hours. Although, about the middle of the time, Captain Lambert fell mortally wounded, and though the heavy, well-aimed broadsides of the Constitution racked the Java through and through, while the Java's return was wild and produced little effect, her men stuck manfully to their guns to the last. ”

“ Anson may have been cold in his affections, studious of his own interest, and even selfish; calm, placid, possibly—as his enemies might say—fish-like in his temperament; but he was a careful, painstaking, thoughtful man, of singularly accurate judgment: and much of the more important work which fell to him was work in which a warmer-hearted, warmer-tempered, more loveable man might well have broken down. And one point which tells enormously in Anson's favour is the fact that so many young officers, trained under him in the Centurion, were afterwards honourably known. ”

“ It is impossible to speak too highly of his daring yet cool courage, or of the quaint inventive genius which directed it; but it is equally impossible to assign him any place among the great masters of naval tactics, for the display of which he never had any opportunity. ”

“ He arrived at Surat in the beginning of September to the great annoyance of the Portuguese, who had previously established themselves in the country. They collected a force of four galeons, each as large as the Dragon, and some twenty small craft, row-boats carrying many men, and on 29 Oct. appeared off the mouth of the river, where they hoped to surprise the English. Best, in the Dragon, at once weighed, stood out to meet them, and passed between two of their ships, firing into each. This caused the Portuguese to pause. The darkness closed in, and they had to anchor for the night. ”

“ The Americans have formed a very high estimate of Blakely; and though the great superiority of the Wasp over both the Reindeer and the Avon may perhaps be considered as leaving little room for the display of any extraordinary courage, his conduct of these actions, and of his venturesome cruise in the chops of the Channel, then swarming with English men-of-war, and his successful raid on the Gibraltar convoy, all tend to show that the American estimate is not exaggerated. ”

“ The Southampton, however, does not appear to have been either a comfortable or a well-disciplined ship. Her chaplain was discharged, on her return from the Mediterranean, on account of some unpleasantness with the captain; the boatswain was broken and flogged, by sentence of court-martial, for disobedience and insolence; a seaman was sentenced to be flogged and ‘towed ashore’ for ‘scandalous actions, to the great corruption of good manners;’ and on her return from the West Indies in 1698 Kirkby himself was tried on charges of embezzling, plunder, and of cruelty and oppression. ”

“ Franklin was a man not only of iron resolution and indomitable courage, but of a singular geniality, uprightness, and simplicity, which kindled into the warmest affection his influence over his comrades and subordinates. ”

“ The cruise, which extended from February to April 1805, proved remarkably fortunate; and having made several rich prizes, and on the homeward voyage escaping from a squadron of French line-of-battle ships by a ruse as clever as it was daring, the Pallas sailed into Plymouth Sound with a large gold candlestick, about five feet high, on each masthead. These, which had been made in Mexico for presentation to some church in Spain, Cochrane was desirous of possessing, and had made an arrangement to that effect with his officers and ship's company. ”

“ It is by this great work that he is most generally known—a work, great not only in size, but in conception, but which loses much of the value it should have had from the lax way in which it is written; official as well as private letters and documents having been garbled to suit the editor's ideas of elegance, and hearsay anecdotes mixed up indiscriminately with more authentic matter. Of this faulty execution Clarke must bear the blame, for it was understood that while McArthur supplied the material, Clarke supplied the literary style. ”

“ Drake was so entirely a man of action that by his actions alone he must be judged. In them and in the testimony of independent witnesses he appears as a man of restless energy, cautious in preparation, prompt and sudden in execution; a man of masterful temper, careful of the lives and interests of his subordinates, but permitting no assumption of equality ”

“ But no censure of Buckingham can absolve Cecil from the blame which must attach to the gross incapacity which he displayed under circumstances of no peculiar difficulty. To his incompetence the Spaniards owed it that every ship in the harbour was not taken or burnt, that Cadiz was not sacked, and that the treasure-ships were not captured. The superior officers of the expedition, especially the Earl of Essex, did not hesitate to prefer a formal charge of misconduct against the general. ”

“ The wind was blowing straight on shore, and though the Dutch forming their line to the north preserved a bold front, it was clear that if the attack was not made promptly they would speedily get into shoal water, where no attack would be possible. Duncan at once realised the necessity of cutting off their retreat by getting between them and the land. At first he was anxious to bring up his fleet in a compact body, for at best his numbers were not more than equal to those of the Dutch ”

“ It is impossible to suppose that Codrington had any real expectation of peace being preserved between two fleets so situated. The Dartmouth frigate found herself anchored dead to leeward of a Turkish fireship, and sent a boat to move her, or order her to move ; and the Turk, taking for granted that the boat was coming on a hostile mission, fired a volley of musketry into it. The Dartmouth replied, other ships took it up, and within a few minutes the action became general. The real disparity of force was very great, and the issue could scarcely be a moment doubtful. ”

“ The success was complete; but ‘the joy of it,’ wrote George Lyttelton, ‘is palled to our family by the loss of poor Captain Grenville, one of the most promising young men in the navy, and who, had he lived, would have been an honour not to his family only, but to his country.’ About two hours after the action began his left thigh was smashed by a huge splinter, and though the mangled limb was at once amputated, he died in the course of five hours. His body was brought to England, and buried at Wotton. ”