The Black Ship Page 9

  Rolling up the scroll, Pigot ordered the crew to give three cheers for the Admiral and, after telling Harris to dismiss the men, went below to his cabin, where his personal furniture, clothing, food and wine was being stowed. He had yet to choose his steward, and he picked—wisely, it transpired—John Jones, a man who came from Shrewsbury, in Shropshire, and was then twenty-four years old. The men from the Success were brought on board, and from then on the Hermione had two boatswain’s mates—one more than she was officially allowed.

  The fact that Pigot did not have a clerk was a nuisance, because there was a great deal of paper work attached to exchanging ships. In the Success he had to leave for Wilkinson attested copies of unexecuted orders, signal books, muster book and many other documents which were needed if the administration of the Navy was to run smoothly and the voracious appetite of its bureaucrats be satisfied. On joining the Hermione Pigot had to check and sign similar papers. A captain signed warily, because his signature meant that he accepted as a fact the various stores were on board and the documents recording the quantities were in order. He would be answerable for any deficiencies.

  Pigot was pleased, therefore, when from the remoteness of the lowerdeck he received a neatly-written and polite note from a young boy who had been press-ganged and brought on board the Hermione a few days earlier. The boy, William Johnson, had taken the bold step of writing to the captain ‘representing… my situation and my not being used to seafaring life,’ and he expressed the naïve hope that Captain Pigot ‘would not insist on keeping me’. Young Johnson’s knowledge of writing and grammar, and the innocent revelation in his letter that he had been trained as a clerk in a counting house, made Pigot send for him. Any hope that Johnson still had of being set free was dashed by Pigot telling him that as he had no clerk, Johnson could serve as a writer. According to Johnson, Pigot told him that ‘in a short time I should be preferred if I merited it’. A captain’s clerk held an important post, receiving the same pay as a midshipman or master-at-arms, and had a cabin to himself. A writer, however, was just what his title implied; indeed, ‘copier’ would be more accurate, since his main task was to copy orders into the order book, and letters into the letter book.

  William Johnson, aged fifteen, and the captain’s writer, was a good example of the wide scope and impartial tyranny of the press-gang. A year earlier he had been living in England, and by his account he was probably an orphan, since ‘friends’ found him a job in the counting house of a firm in Port au Prince and paid his passage across the Atlantic.

  ‘On arrival there I was settled accordingly,’ Johnson wrote later. But within a short time his firm had some business to be done at Kingston, Jamaica, and it was entrusted to the young clerk—probably because his superiors regarded the short voyage as dangerous owing to French privateers, rather than as a tribute to the boy’s commercial ability. Their wary wisdom was justified because Johnson’s ship was captured by the French less than twenty-five miles from Port au Prince and he ‘suffered a long and severe imprisonment’.

  It was the custom for the British and French to exchange prisoners from time to time, and eventually Johnson and several others were freed in return for some French captives in British hands and put on board a cartel, or exchange, ship. Unfortunately the sight of a cartel arriving at Cape Nicolas Mole brought out press-gangs like wasps discovering a honey pot, and the young clerk found himself on board the Hermione, just as much a prisoner as he had been in the hands of the French, but with all the added dangers and hardships of being at sea in one of the King’s ships in time of war.

  Within a few days several more men joined the Hermione. One of them, however, Midshipman David O’Brien Casey, was familiar to several of the older members of the crew and takes a leading part in this narrative. Casey had just been sent over from the Ambuscade to fill one of the vacancies in the Hermione. This meant demotion because he had been serving as an acting lieutenant. (His rank of lieutenant could not be confirmed since he was only nineteen, but a youth of less than twenty could serve in the acting rank.) For Casey the Hermione was a familiar ship, since he had served in her before.

  Joining the Navy as an eleven-year-old boy Casey, who came from Kinsale in Southern Ireland, had been in the Hyena when she was captured by the 40-gun French ship La Concorde off Santo Domingo. After narrowly escaping being killed in an insurrection by French Negroes, the Hyena’s men were exchanged for French prisoners in British hands. Within a few months Casey was transferred to a 64-gun ship as an acting lieutenant. As he was then only sixteen years old, he must have been a competent youth, because coming from a poor family he had no ‘interest’ to help him on.

  By the time he was seventeen he was an acting lieutenant in a 74-gun ship; but when Sir Hyde Parker arrived as Commander-in-Chief he had many young midshipmen and master’s mates among his protégés who had reached the age of twenty and passed their lieutenants’ examination, and he was on the lookout for vacancies. Since Casey was under twenty, he lost his post as acting lieutenant to someone with more seniority or influence, and was sent as a midshipman to the Hermione where, he wrote later, ‘I was received by Captain Pigot and all the officers in the kindest manner, all seemed to commiserate my late misfortune, even my old shipmates among the crew partook of the same feeling…’

  Another newcomer to the gunroom was Archibald Douglas, who had been sent to the ship as the new junior lieutenant. The frigate now had her full complement of sea officers, although she was short of a lieutenant of Marines and some warrant and petty officers.

  On Sunday, two days after Pigot took over command of the Hermione, and with the convoy due to sail for England on Wednesday, escorted by the 74-gun Leviathan and the Success, Sir Hyde spent the whole day—after Divine Service on board his flagship—dictating and writing letters ‘to the Admiralty and other naval Boards’.

  Although the Leviathan and Success were to be the convoy’s only escorts for the actual Atlantic crossing, Sir Hyde proposed sailing in the Queen, with several more of his ships, to cover the convoy until it was well clear of the Windward Passage. He would then send some of his frigates, including the Hermione, on independent cruises, while he returned to the Mole with his flagship.

  Wednesday’s dawn brought a cloudy sky and a brisk northeasterly wind. The merchantmen began weighing anchor at daylight and by noon they were clear of the land and beginning to form up as a convoy, urged on by the hoists of flag signals from the Leviathan and the Success. By 1 p.m. the flagship, with the Valiant, Quebec and Hermione in company, had also sailed and soon passed the convoy: Sir Hyde did not intend to stay with the merchantmen: instead he would keep to windward, patrolling along the north coast of Santo Domingo, where he could intercept any French or Spanish ships attempting an attack.

  The four warships sighted the convoy occasionally on Thursday and Friday, but as night came strong winds and vicious squalls forced each of them to send down topgallant masts and yards to reduce the windage up aloft. It was hard work for the ships to keep together in the darkness, and the bad weather lasted until Saturday night. As it cleared up on Sunday morning the topgallant masts and yards were once again swayed up, while reefs were shaken out of the topsails.

  But Pigot’s fury can be imagined when shortly after dark on Sunday night, having kept the Hermione in station all through the bad weather, the officer of the watch reported the flagship and the rest of the squadron were not in sight.…

  Unknown to Pigot he had little or no chance of finding the squadron again in the darkness because Sir Hyde tacked his ships an hour after the frigate lost touch, so that for the rest of the night they were sailing a different course from the Hermione. In the meantime Sir Hyde had been joined by the Mermaid, which was commanded by one of his favourites, Captain Otway. The Admiral had intended to put Otway (who was junior) under Pigot’s command, and send the two frigates away to cruise off Puerto Rico. Finally, with the Hermione still not in sight on Tuesday morning, he ordered Otway to go alone.

&
nbsp; The Hermione did not find the squadron again until dawn on Wednesday—she had been absent for more than two days. ‘½ past 4 a.m. found H.M. Ship Hermione had joined us’, wrote Sir Hyde. ‘Ordered Captain Pigot to proceed off the west end of Puerto Rico, where he will find the Mermaid, which he is to take under his command and cruise on that station as long as they have provisions and water, then to return to the Mole.’

  The Hermione arrived off the western end of Puerto Rico on Friday, found the Mermaid, and began cruising along the coast searching for enemy ships. The two frigates made a well-matched pair; but the Hermione was a Bristol ship, having been built on the River Severn and launched fifteen years earlier, while the Mermaid was a Kentish ship, built on the Medway and launched three years after her consort.

  Although both captains shared Sir Hyde’s favour, Otway was the more deserving. Then within a month of his twenty-seventh birthday, he had served at the Glorious First of June and in 1795, while commanding a 16-gun sloop, he had captured an 18-gun French corvette after an action lasting thirty-five minutes. He had been lucky with prizes, and his good fortune was to hold out: by the time he returned to England in 1800 after six years in the West Indies he was reputed to have captured or destroyed 200 enemy merchantmen and privateers.

  Sir Hyde’s orders to Pigot meant the Hermione and Mermaid had to patrol the Mona Passage, the seventy-mile channel separating Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico. Shoals of rock and coral reefs litter the coastline of Puerto Rico, some stretching as far as a dozen miles offshore. To add to the navigational hazards the Mona Passage, another of the sea highways linking the Caribbean with the Atlantic, was notorious for its sudden heavy squalls, which could shred the sails of a ship caught with too much canvas aloft.

  By Wednesday, March 22, the Mermaid had parted company and the Hermione was patrolling off Desecheo, the tiny mountainous island sitting squat, like a sagged blanc-mange in the Mona Passage twelve miles off Punta Jiguero, the western tip of Puerto Rico.

  As soon as the frigate rounded the island Captain Pigot gave orders for the Master to steer the Hermione close in under Punta Jiguero, thinking that if he followed the coastline he might well find some French privateers sneaking round the headland, their outline hidden from seaward against the green of the palms and the jungle.

  When Puerto Rico stretched ahead of the ship and curved round to the starboard beam, Pigot swung his telescope to the right and could just make out the village of Aguadilla. From there to Punta Jiguero surf broke on to a long sandy beach, looking in the distance like a thin white ribbon on the edge of the sea. Backing the beaches were scattered groves of coconut palms, and a few hundred yards behind them the hills begin, huge green rollers of forest surging inland to lap at the feet of Pico Atalaya, the western peak of the mountains. This stretch of the coast is not hospitable: it does not invite strangers close inshore. Sand bars extend seawards for several hundred yards, and rock and coral reefs radiate like giant claws, waiting to rip the bottom out of an unwary ship.

  The Hermione was within five or six miles of Punta Jiguero when the low part of the Point began to lift above the rim of the horizon as the ship slowly sailed over the curvature of the earth. Suddenly the lookouts in the mastheads called down that they could see the masts of several ships close inshore under the southern side of the Point.

  Pigot could safely guess the masts belonged to French privateers—and probably to some of their prizes. And if the French were using Punta Jiguero as a privateer base it would certainly be well protected, both by Nature and the enemy. Soon he could see at least sixteen vessels at anchor, one of them a large brig. She and many of the others were definitely privateers’ prizes, and it was equally certain that hidden among the palm groves round the anchorage would be shore batteries.

  The Hermione herself would be able to get in close enough to open fire, but there was only one way of successfully plundering the nest—sending in the Hermione’s boats to cut out the ships. It was the kind of operation at which the British seaman excelled: there was something in the boat’s swift approach as he strained at his oar, and then the last-minute spurt, often with round shot and musket balls kicking up fountains of water round him, that put fire in his belly.

  ’Clear the ship for action,’ Pigot ordered, ‘and send the lieutenants down to my cabin.’

  While the Master took the Hermione in closer, Pigot explained his plan in detail to the three lieutenants, Harris, Reed and Douglas. He was going to send in the Hermione’s six boats with boarders and Marines. They would cut out as many ships as possible and tow or sail them clear of the land. The rest they would destroy. The only weapons for the boarders would be cutlasses, pistols and tomahawks (which were like the Red Indian tomahawk from which they were derived: the head—one side of which was an axe blade, the other pointed—was fitted on to a handle usually about three feet long). Pigot said that Harris, the First Lieutenant, would stay in the ship while Reed would command the expedition.

  Pigot went up to the quarterdeck: in a few minutes the Hermione would be within random shot of the shore battery. The ship was ready for action: it was time to send the men to the guns, Pigot gave the order to beat to quarters, and while the drummer thumped out his rhythmic call to arms Pigot’s ears began to take in a strangely assorted symphony of sound—the leadsman’s monotonous chanting of the depth of water; the squealing of ropes running through the gun tackles, followed by the dull rumbling of the carriages as loaded guns were run out, their muzzles poking through the ports in the ship’s side; the raised voices of the boats’ commanders as they detailed individuals for special tasks; and the harsh scraping of metal on a grindstone as men hurriedly put a better edge on tomahawks and cutlasses.

  Seamen were hoisting three of the boats over the side from their stowed position amidships, while the three in the stern and quarter davits were already towing astern. With the Hermione less than a mile away from the anchorage, Pigot saw that the large brig and the rest of the enemy craft had been stripped of their sails: the French had taken precautions against just this sort of attack. He told Reed that they should first tow the brig clear: she was heavily laden and the most valuable prize.

  Soon the leadsman’s shouts showed the water was shallowing fast: less than ten fathoms, sixty feet. The Hermione had only her topsails set and Pigot ordered them to be clewed up. As the frigate glided along, gradually slowing down, he searched the undergrowth backing the beach with his telescope. Was there a shore battery or not? He could see plenty of activity in the ships: it looked as if the crews were quitting—they were so close to the shore the men could almost jump on to dry land: indeed, one might think that they had been beached deliberately…

  ‘By the deep nine!’ sang out the leadsman: his lead had touched bottom at nine fathoms, which was fifty-four feet. The Hermione, Pigot estimated, was about half a mile off the beach. No coral, no rocks—and no shore batteries so far. The boarders climbed down into the boats. Then suddenly there were three muffled thumps from the direction of the beach, as if someone was beating a big drum. Three puffs of smoke drifting away into the undergrowth on the breeze betrayed the position of the French guns. Three thin spouts of water leapt up from the sea, but the French artillerymen, unused to firing at a ship, had underestimated the range as usual.

  The guns were no real danger to the Hermione, but they could smash the boats. However, a few broadsides of case-shot would soon persuade the French gunners to quit their guns. Each of the Hermione’s 12-pounders fired a case in which there were forty-six shot, every one of which weighed four ounces: for the human targets it was like being pelted with lethal iron eggs.

  The French guns fired, and once again the gunners underestimated the range.

  Slowly, as the Hermione turned parallel to the shore, the sights of her carronades—which could be trained round further than the cannons—began to traverse the length of the beach, approaching the undergrowth where the French battery was about to fire its third salvo. The captains of the carrona
des had permission to fire as soon as their sights were on, and a few moments later those on the port side tugged their trigger lines and the stubby little guns leapt back in recoil, spurting flame and smoke. Men sprang forward with wet sponges, fresh cartridges and case shot, wads and rammers. Like machines they went to work: in and out with the sponges to remove any burning debris left inside—in cartridges and ram home—in wads and ram—in case shot and ram… While that had been going on the captains had fitted new tubes and primed the carronades, which were then run out again. They were trained round a few more degrees—for the ship was still swinging to bring the broadside guns to bear—and again the captains tugged the trigger lines.

  A few moments later the ship was far enough round for the 12-pounders on the maindeck to bear, and Pigot gave permission for them to open fire. There were a few swift last-minute adjustments in the aim—a couple of handspikes under a carriage to lever the gun round a few more degrees to right or left; a slight movement of the wedge-shaped quoin on which the breech rested, to change the elevation of the barrel. Then in quick succession each gun captain, kneeling well behind the gun, beyond the limit of the recoil, saw the sight was on, shouted a warning and tugged the long trigger line in his right hand. One after another the guns flung back in recoil with a swirl of smoke and flame, to be held by the thick rope breechings. The fumes blowing back in through the ports started the men coughing—after a few more rounds the whole of the gundeck would be almost hidden in a fog of smoke, and the men, half blinded, as well as deafened by the noise, would load and run out the guns by instinct and habit rather than in obedience to orders.