Part 11

A British officer who went on board the _Formidable_ on the morning after the battle, wrote down a description of the scene that met his eyes there. “A lieutenant and 80 men,” he says, “being ordered from our ship on board the _Formidable_ to assist in repairing her rigging, etc., I embraced the opportunity of seeing the havoc that had been made by the fire of so many large ships who had battered her. The destruction of her upper works was dreadful, and her starboard side was pierced like a cullender by the number of shots she received in the course of the action. The loss of men was prodigious in killed and wounded, amounting to more than 500; among the former the Admiral, M. St. André de Verger and his brother, the first captain, all the other officers either killed or wounded, except a lieutenant-colonel, who assured me that every man of his detachment, drawn up on the quarter-deck and forecastle, etc., had been either killed or wounded but himself; that he had served in the army for thirty years, had been present at the bloody field of Fontenoy, but had never before witnessed such a scene of carnage. The grand-chamber was filled with wounded officers, many of whom had suffered amputation.... Monsieur major invited me below to certify the number of his patients, and there a melancholy scene presented itself. The large gun-room and every space between the guns on the lower deck was crammed with wounded soldiers and sailors, besides three rows of cradles in the hold, containing 60 seamen, and many not yet dressed.... I am afraid that few of the wounded could recover, considering their very miserable situation and circumstances.”

As soon as the weather would allow her to start the _Formidable_ was sent off to England under escort. She arrived at Plymouth “almost in a sinking state, from the shot-holes she had received, and only kept afloat with great difficulty.” She rolled away her jury masts, we are told, and the cook’s coppers were washed out of the ship. The prize crew, the officers and men from the wrecked _Essex_, and the prisoners, had to live for four days on the boatswain’s tallow.

The _Formidable_ was taken into the British Navy, and the name was registered on the roll of King George’s fleet in its original form; but the ship had suffered too severe a mauling to be fit for sea service again. Some ten years after her capture Hawke, as First Lord of the Admiralty, signed the death warrant of his old prize—the order that delivered his old Quiberon trophy over to the shipbreaker.

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One final word. The _Formidable’s_ magnificent defence was the redeeming event for the other side of the “Journée de M. Conflans,” as the French Navy, pillorying the memory of its unfortunate Admiral, has ever since called the battle. So, too, France has recognized it. A new _Formidable_ was laid down in France at the first fitting opportunity, so named in honour of the Comte de Verger’s gallant man-of-war. The French battleship _Formidable_ of to-day—not so long since, with her armour plates of 44 tons weight each and 75-ton guns, the pride of her fleet, and still, as reconstructed, a ship capable of striking a hard blow for the honour of her flag—commemorates the heroism of de Verger and his gallant men for the twentieth-century French Navy.

VI

WHEN THE _VICTORY_ FIRST JOINED THE FLEET

Thou great vessel, whose tremendous claim So well is proved to Victory’s famous name!

In stately guise, all smart and trim, rides the _Victory_ to-day at the flagship’s moorings in Portsmouth Harbour, flying at her masthead the red St. George’s Cross flag of the Admiral holding the chief command at the principal naval port of the British Empire. To see her now, spick and span and as smart as paint can make her, she looks at the first glance barely a day older than the latest launched of the old style wooden men-of-war that are yet left among us doing harbour duty in various capacities. The old _St. Vincent_, which passed away only the other day, a worn-out veteran, was launched ten years after the _Victory_ had fired her last shotted gun. The still existing _Asia_, at Portsmouth, was launched thirteen years after the _Victory_ had finally retired from the sea. The _Victory_ as a fact had been some years afloat and had fought her first battle long before the great-great-grandfathers of most of us were old enough to trundle a hoop or spin a top. She forms in herself, indeed, a direct and actual link between our own day and the times of George the Second.

Two famous Admirals of the Seven Years’ War time, Anson and Boscawen, were the Lords of the Admiralty who signed the order to lay the _Victory’s_ keel. The names themselves take us back into history well over a century and a half. And the difference between things then and now is wider than the gap of years. It is difficult indeed, as we nowadays see the _Victory_ in Portsmouth Harbour, amidst the stir and activity of a modern naval port, to realize how wide a space her lifetime really covers.

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Imagine yourself as a visitor at Portsmouth on any afternoon almost of the present year of grace, and observing what takes place in the harbour round the _Victory_. Here comes along, sliding swiftly past between ship and shore, a long, low-built black torpedo-boat; or a yet more grim-looking sleuthhound of the sea, a thirty-knot destroyer, with squat funnels and high-raised forecastle, from which peers forward the long barrel of a twelve-pounder, shearing its way ahead on business of its own. Now a snub-nosed gunnery-school gunboat passes, returning from a day’s target-practice out beyond the Warner lightship, with a weapon that can fire from twelve to twenty aimed shots in a minute. Then, it may be, a brand new twenty-three-knot cruiser passes, coming back from a trial run, or a huge high-sided four to five hundred feet long battleship of from fifteen to eighteen thousand tons, stern and resolute of appearance, her giant barbette guns of massive bulk and enormous length, weighing each from fifty to sixty tons, and able to send an eight hundredweight twelve-inch shell from fifteen to twenty miles, and with the certainty of being able to hit the mark with each shot at half that range—the horizon limit from on board. It was not so long ago that one of our battleships (the _Commonwealth_), firing at eight thousand yards at a target representing an enemy’s battleship, dropped successive twelve-inch shells into a space the size of a lawn-tennis court, and, at the same distance at the third round, shot away a boat’s flagstaff that topped the target. At all times, too, there is a passing and repassing of Navy steam-launches and pinnaces, and now and again the busy forging to and fro of puffing harbour tugs and yard craft of all sorts. Such are every-day sights in Portsmouth Harbour in these times of ours.

Then carry your mind back to the year in which the _Victory_ first figured on the Estimates of the Navy—1758. Imagine yourself standing on the Hard as a sightseer in the Portsmouth of the Seven Years’ War time—on, say, a day in October of the year when my Lords at Whitehall were making their final decision about the ship’s dimensions.

At this same moment, by the way, there is lying in a far-off parsonage, in an out-of-the-world locality on the Norfolk coast, a puny baby boy, a fortnight or three weeks old, so sickly that he is not thought likely to live. So weakly, indeed, is the child that his baptism—at which the name Horatio was given to the small babe—has taken place privately, just six days after his birth.

You would, in Portsmouth Harbour on that October afternoon of 1758, have seen something very much like this.

First of all, almost opposite the Hard, and just where the _Victory_ herself now lies, there is moored a big yellow-sided two-decker of foreign build flying the British flag. 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.

Near the _Monarque_ lies a big ninety-gun three-decker—a yellow-sided vessel also, for all men-of-war are so painted. It is the _St. George_. In her cabin Byng’s court martial sat some twenty months ago. The court, by a grim coincidence, was held in the very cabin that had been Byng’s own thirteen years before that, when Byng was captain of this same _St. George_. There, on a snowy January day, as plenty of people at Portsmouth can tell you, for they were looking on, Byng stood to hear his sentence in his own old cabin, crowded almost to suffocation with spectators, stuffy and close, and the walls “sweating down” with trickling beads of water; the hapless, doomed British Admiral, standing there, firm and erect, with squared shoulders, calmly facing his judges, with his own sword lying on the table, its point turned towards himself.

To the very last, they say, Byng expected an acquittal. He had not anticipated, at the worst, a sentence more severe than a reprimand. So he himself said in the cabin of the _Monarque_, on the very morning of the 27th January, when the Admiralty Marshal came to accompany him on board the _St. George_ to hear the finding of the court. He learnt the dread reality first as he came up the side of the _St. George_. At the entering port a personal friend, instructed privately by the President of the Court to do so, stood waiting to give the Admiral a word of warning. As he met his friend, Byng saw instantly from his downcast countenance and embarrassed manner that things had gone adversely and that the sentence was a hard one. “What is the matter,” asked the Admiral, “have they broke me?” The bearer of the news, convinced that Byng had no idea of what was coming, hesitated and stammered. Byng stopped short. He gazed fixedly at his friend for a few seconds, and then changed colour as he seemed to take in the situation. A moment later he had recovered himself. Exclaiming in a calm tone, “Well, well, I understand: if nothing but my blood will satisfy them, let them take it,” he passed with set countenance into the presence of the Court.

Beyond the _St. George_ lies another “Mediterranean ship,” just returned home—the _Revenge_, one of the ships in Byng’s battle. It was the damning evidence of the _Revenge’s_ captain—Frederick Cornwall, now at home on half-pay—as they all say in the fleet, that settled Byng’s fate. “If I cannot disprove what you have said, Captain Cornwall,” exclaimed Byng, as the one-armed captain of the _Revenge_ turned to leave the cabin, after a futile attempt at cross-examination on the part of the Admiral, “may the Lord have mercy on me.” There is no need to go further.

If you could look round to Spithead from the Hard, you would see the old _Royal Sovereign_ on duty as the port flagship. On board her it was that, on the morning of the execution, Admiral Boscawen put his signature to Byng’s death warrant, and the order for the firing party. She is the oldest ship in the King’s Navy, in which connection the _Sovereign_ has other memories of her own. The great Duke of Marlborough named her at her launch in the year that William the Third died, and it was in her great-cabin, during the _Sovereign’s_ first cruise, that Rooke’s council of war planned the swoop on the Vigo treasure galleons, which Vigo Street, in London, serves to commemorate. Some of the old ship’s timbers, it is the fact, formed part of the frame of Charles the First’s world-renowned _Sovereign of the Seas_, and were salved, by special Admiralty order, out of the _débris_ when the _Sovereign of the Seas_ was burned at Chatham in January, 1696, by the carelessness of a sleepy bos’un’s mate.

Out yonder at Spithead, too, at this moment, rides at anchor yet another veteran of our old-time navy, the _Royal Anne_. They have a really marvellous continuity of service, some of these ancient men-of-war. The _Anne_ carries us back to the time of the Dutch raid up the Medway. She was launched as the _Royal Charles_ to fill the place of the _Royal Charles_ that the Dutchmen carried off. William the Third renamed her the _Queen_, in honour of his consort, and the ship kept that name until George the First came over. King George, having at that time his legal consort under lock and key in Germany, promptly renamed the ship. He called her after himself, _Royal George_—the first of the series. Three kings, indeed, have been present at this ship’s various “christenings.” Charles the Second was present at her first naming as the _Royal Charles_; William the Third saw her renamed the _Queen_. George the First paid a special visit to Woolwich when she received the name _Royal George_, and gave £300 to be divided among the dockyard men employed at the float-out, in honour of the occasion. The name _Royal Anne_ was given to the ship only two years ago, when the present _Royal George_, Hawke’s flagship in the Channel Fleet, was launched. She exchanged the name for that borne on the stocks by the _Royal George_.

Within sight from the Hard is an 80-gun three-decker, the _Royal William_, just back from the capture of Louisbourg, Cape Breton. She, too, was launched as long ago as Charles the Second’s reign, under the name _Royal Prince_, and she fought her first battle at Solebay, eighty-six years ago. She carried James Duke of York’s flag during part of the battle, and Prince Rupert in turn had his flag in her in a later battle. William the Third gave the ship her present name, and under it she fought at La Hogue as Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s flagship, not without distinction.

If one might dip into the future and witness events just one year later, the visitor to Portsmouth would then see the _Royal William_ there again, and again just arrived from across the Atlantic. This time she would be in other guise—a ship “in mourning,” all over funereal black, with yards set to point in all directions—“a-cockbill,” as the old term went—and colours at half-mast, firing minute guns, and with a funeral procession of boats putting off from alongside to bear to the shore the body of General Wolfe.

Off the dockyard, on this October afternoon of 1758, awaiting their turn for repair, are two jury-rigged ships. One is a small, old-fashioned sixty-four, firing a broadside of some 540 lb. weight of metal. The other is a giant 80-gun ship of French build, and brand new. She is bigger than the finest first-rate in King George’s service, a fair match for the new _Royal George_, and fires the tremendous broadside of 1136 lb. weight of metal. Yet the little ship took the big one in a midnight battle last February. It was as fine a feat of arms as the Navy has seen. The two are the _Monmouth_ and the _Foudroyant_. They have just come into port, and both show plenty of marks by way of battle scars. If you were to row round the _Foudroyant_ you would find her, on her larboard side, where the _Monmouth_ made her attack, battered almost to splinters. The fight lasted four and a half hours, from eight till after midnight, and went on for most of the time within pistol-shot. The _Monmouth_ in that time used up four tons of powder and about ten tons of cannon-balls. At Gibraltar, where they repaired the _Foudroyant_ to bring her to England, they had to plug over seventy shot-holes at the water-line—and two or three cannon-balls had gone through some of the holes.

One more word of the _Foudroyant_. It would seem as though, in the Portsmouth of these times, we cannot lay the shade of Admiral Byng. The _Foudroyant_ was flagship of the fleet that Byng failed to beat, and Arthur Gardiner, who later commanded the _Monmouth_ when she took the _Foudroyant_, was Byng’s flag-captain. Captain Gardiner, after Byng’s battle, it is said, swore that if ever he got another ship, however small, and met the _Foudroyant_, he would attack her and take her, or sink alongside. He got the _Monmouth_ and met the _Foudroyant_ and kept his word; meeting himself a heroic death on his own quarter-deck in the heat of the battle.

A second French man-of-war, taken on the same occasion and also badly mauled—the _Orphèe_, a smart 70-gun ship, prize to the _Revenge_—lies near the _Foudroyant_; also recently brought to England from up the Straits.[8]

All the day long there keeps on a continuous passing up and down the harbour of small war-vessels and dockyard craft of every sort. Here a fireship goes by, a small two-masted vessel, readily distinguishable by the heavy iron double hooks and grapnels that tip the yard-arms; and that little boat towing astern. 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. A rakish-looking Portsmouth privateer, it may be, now comes by, towing a prize astern of her—some captured French “sugar ship” from Martinique, snapped up off Ushant. Then there passes, on the way to one of the guardships or “receiving” ships, a press-gang tender, coming in from a run along the South Coast. She has been out for some days to pick up hands for the fleet, and some of those on board could tell more than one ugly story of high-handed doings among the villages and farmsteads on the coast, within a night’s march from the sea. In confinement under hatches on board, it is quite possible, is also the unfortunate crew of some homeward-bound merchantman, waylaid and boarded almost within sight of home, off the back of the Isle of Wight. 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. You can always tell a dockyard boat by the heavy way in which the “maties” row, giving their elbows a curious lift with each stroke. At intervals, also, ships’ launches and wherries go past, and lighters carrying cables or anchors, spars and sailcloth, or gangs of shipwrights from the yard on their way to Spithead to attend to pressing repairs to some Channel Fleet ship or frigate just come in and impatient to be off again.

Now and again, two or three times a month perhaps, a line of ships’ launches from newly arrived vessels from Spithead are to be seen following one another up the harbour, crammed with men—swarthy foreigners, poor, ragged, dejected-looking wretches for the most part. Each boat has its guard of red-coated marines, standing under arms at the head and stern, all with bayonets fixed. The boatloads comprise prisoners of war, taken at sea and on their way to undergo confinement in Porchester Castle,[9] going to join their two thousand compatriots already there. A favoured few in due course may obtain exchange by cartel, but the greater number must perforce endure their captivity to the end of the war.

Such were some of the every-day scenes to be witnessed in Portsmouth Harbour at the very time that the Admiralty order for the building of the _Victory_ was being drafted.

Ashore in the streets of Portsea, old salts who had fought with Vernon when he took Porto Bello, are to be met with any day of the week. You may come across, indeed, an occasional old fellow who can remember Benbow, and how the news first came to England of the taking of Gibraltar. And sitting at his door on a sunny morning you may yet find an old Portsmouth grandsire here and there who can carry his memory further back still, and tell you how the bonfires blazed in High Street in honour of the battle of La Hogue.

Turn away now from the harbour and the Hard and take a short walk through the streets of Portsmouth town. Soldiers in the uniform that Corporal John’s men wore at Blenheim and Ramillies, rub shoulders with you every hour of the day. Some are for Canada, some for the West Indies, some for Northern Germany. All are passing through Portsmouth on the way to the great depôt camp in the Isle of Wight where the troops for oversea service assemble. Most are men of the foot regiments, with long-skirted red coats, red waistcoats, and red breeches with high white gaiters. Some wear the big cocked hat that came in with George the First; others the tall sugar-loaf grenadier cap of the Prussian pattern. Those with buff facings are “Howard’s” men; those with yellow facings, “Kingsley’s”; those with willow green, “Rufane’s”; those with blue, “Duroure’s.” For six or seven years past our regiments have had numbers, but the men still hold to the old way, and each regiment calls itself for preference according to the custom of the army for these eighty years past. Now and then a party of dragoons pass through the streets, red coated and wearing black leather fur-crested helmets and long jack-boots. These come from one of the cavalry camps at Chichester or Southampton. Occasionally, too, cocked-hatted artillerymen are to be met with, in blue coats with red waistcoats and breeches and white gaiters.

Batches of men of the standing garrison of the Fortress of Portsmouth, the “Royal Invalids,” as the corps they belong to is called, are to be seen about the streets at all hours; veterans drafted from off the Chelsea Hospital out-pension list as being sufficiently able-bodied for home-service fortress duty, old war-worn warriors bearing scars, many of them got in action at Dettingen and Fontenoy.

A Portsmouth visitor would certainly, too, have seen in and about the town a personage of some notoriety in those times: Governor Hawley, Commandant of the Garrison, the Duke of Cumberland’s hard-riding, hard-drinking friend. “Bloody Hawley” was what the soldiers called him, taking the _sobriquet_ from the name that years before the hapless clansmen of the north gave the man who led “Butcher” Cumberland’s dragoons in the merciless chase after Culloden. In General Hawley you would have seen perhaps as badly hated an officer as ever held a King of England’s commission. “Chief Justice Hawley” the rank and file also called him: and the reason for it any one would have seen for himself by walking round Governor’s Green any day of the week, or passing beyond the postern and strolling out across the Portsmouth ramparts to the glacis on an execution morning.

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