Part 14

The British Admiral lost no time over his preparations. He had made up his mind what to do within an hour of receiving the news of the fall of Brimstone Hill. And then he acted forthwith.

At noon on the 14th Hood signalled for a lieutenant from every ship to come on board the flagship _Barfleur_. Certain special instructions were given out, and the officers were directed to come on board for further orders after dark—at nine o’clock that night. In accordance with the admiral’s instructions, at four in the afternoon every ship ostentatiously lowered top-gallant yards, making things snug for the night to all appearances, to spectators at a distance. Immediately it was dark, as quickly as possible stream-anchors were got in, and every preparation was rapidly made for putting to sea. These left every ship riding with only one anchor down, the small bower. At nine o’clock, as had been ordered also, top-gallant yards were quietly rehoisted and crossed on board every ship. Then the officers told to return for further orders, pulled silently off to the _Barfleur_ again and reported everything ready.

Each officer on arriving was requested to go down to the _Barfleur’s_ cabin. Hood was there, and he saw each one set his watch exactly by the flagship’s clock. Then all were ordered to return on board their respective ships. 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.

Not a single mishap, not one mistake, from all accounts, marred the execution of the bold manœuvre.

It was a black and moonless night. As six bells—eleven o’clock—clanged out on board the _Barfleur_, the other ships each struck six bells. The next moment a couple of heavy blows with an axe chopped the bower cable through on board every ship. Then, simultaneously, sails were let fall silently from the yards everywhere, and were swiftly and silently sheeted home. At once now, in unison, the whole fleet began to forge ahead, moving all together through the water. To aid in deceiving the enemy as to what was happening, lighted ship’s lanterns were left behind, lashed to poles set up on the casks that had served as cable buoys, making it appear from a very short distance off as though the fleet were still there, riding at anchor in the roads.

The masterly _ruse_ succeeded to the full. The watch on board the English fleet could see the lights of some of de Grasse’s ships away to seaward. They themselves, one and all, entirely unobserved, passed out in the darkness. Not a trace of Hood’s twenty-two ships was visible when de Grasse came on deck on board his flagship, the _Ville de Paris_, next morning.

They met Rodney at sea a few days later;—and then, in due course Rodney and Hood together smote the French once for all for that war, in the great battle of “The Glorious Twelfth of April,” 1782.[10]

VIII

THE PAGEANT OF THE _DONEGAL_:—A MEMORY OF ’98

Joy! joy! the day is come at last, the day of hope and pride— And see! our crackling bonfires light old Bann’s rejoicing tide, And gladsome bell and bugle-horn from Newry’s captured towers, Hark! how they tell the Saxon swine this land is ours—is OURS!

Come, trample down their robber rule, and smite its venal spawn, Their foreign laws, their foreign Church, their ermine and their lawn, With all the specious fry of fraud that robbed us of our own; And plant our ancient laws again beneath our lineal throne!

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. The cruiser through her name stands, in fact, to remind the world that the Royal Navy does not “fear to speak of ’98.”

It is quite a little drama how this particular man-of-war name first came to make its appearance on the roll of the British fleet; and in that form, perhaps, one may most effectively tell the story—as a sort of pageant, bringing the details forward in, as it were, a series of tableaux.

* * * * *

First we have the opening scene, in bustling Paris, in the month of August, 1798, something after this fashion:

The Marseillaise is pealing! the crowds are mad with joy, With flags and failtë fêting the gallant Paris Boy, Who leads the bright procession of Frenchmen gay and bold?, The Students of the Quarter, the Latin Quarter Old;— They’re girt with dainty rapiers, they’re gloved with gloves of white, The knightly Gallic Swordsmen who love the People’s Right! They bear in bright procession a pledge from France’s shore, The busts of Hoche and Humbert beneath the Tricolour!

Then we have a September scene far away. We are now among the wild, unkempt kerns and peasants of County Donegal, in their villages and rude moorland huts of turf and boulders, dotted among the lonely valleys far away amid the bare, desolate, wind-swept uplands and bleak, gaunt, long-backed ridges, shrouded for half the year in rolling grey mists from off the ocean, that range along the coasts of North-Western Ireland. Everywhere the men are hard at work, seated in groups round their peat fires, all actively engaged in pointing pikes and grinding axes, lashing scythe-blades to short poles, and putting a fresh edge to ugly crooked knives; crooning to themselves the while over their toil:—

Oh, the Frinch are on the say, Says the Shan Van Voght— Oh, the Frinch are on the say, Says the Shan Van Voght— The Frinch are in the Bay, They’ll be here without delay, And the Orange will decay, Says the Shan Van Voght.

Again we are on the coast; by Donegal Bay. It is the morning of Friday, the 12th of October, ’98, between seven and eight o’clock. Eager-faced, excited watchers line the crags of Bloody Foreland. From the wide, flat expanse of sea below comes up on the wind the dull, heavy, throbbing sound of a distant cannonade. It has been getting nearer since daybreak. It now comes nearer and nearer still; and by degrees, from the direction of Tory Island, on the horizon over yonder, where a grey rolling cloud of powder-smoke lies heavy over the sea, two squadrons of men-of-war, two straggling lines of ships, most of them firing fiercely, come dimly into view. One is assuredly the long-looked-for French—Commodore Bompart’s squadron from Brest, bringing three thousand French soldiers and Wolfe and Matthew Tone. They were to have landed at Lough Swilly yesterday and raised the country-side. The other is the English fleet—a British squadron that has followed round from Cawsand Bay under press of sail to look after M. Bompart. They picked up news of him off the Fastnet and Achill Island, and pushed on here. On the previous day at noon—as we learn later on—off Malin Head in a stiff north-westerly gale, the British look-outs sighted the French squadron; and they have been working to bring Monsieur Bompart to battle ever since.

It looks likely to go hard with the French. At the last moment a mishap checked their attempt to give the British the go-by. Their best ship, the _Hoche_, a fine 80-gun two-decker, and M. Bompart’s own flagship, got disabled in a squall last night. Her maintopmast carried away, bringing down with it the main and mizen top-gallant masts and tearing a gaping rent in the mainsail. So Sir John Borlase Warren, the British Commodore, has been able to get level with his enemy, on whom he is now tacking to bring the fight to close quarters, in conditions where his superior force—three line-of-battle ships and five frigates to one line-of-battle ship, eight frigates, and a schooner—ought to decide M. Bompart’s fate before dinner-time.

Eleven o’clock. The inevitable has happened. The Frenchmen have been overpowered at all points and broken up. The French Commodore is now only holding out as long as possible _pour l’honneur du pavillon_. In the centre of the battle, a dismantled wreck, with the scuppers running blood at every heave of the vessel on the swell, lies M. Bompart’s flagship, the hapless _Hoche_. Three British ships together—a sixty-four and two frigates—are pouring broadside after broadside into her without ceasing for a moment.

Wolfe Tone, the story goes, was on board the _Hoche_, and refused at the outset a chance that was offered him to get away by a boat to the _Biche_, a fast-sailing schooner then about to make off, or to one of the French frigates, by which means alone it was possible for him to escape. “The action is hopeless,” said the French officers to him on the quarter-deck; “with the odds against us it can only have one end. We shall be prisoners of war; but what will become of you?” “No!” replied Tone. “Shall it be said that I fled when the French were fighting the battle of my country? No; I shall stand by the ship.” He went below and took charge of a division of guns in one of the batteries.

The end, as the watchers on land soon see, comes swiftly. Further resistance would be murder. Beaten to a standstill, riddled like a sieve, with twenty-five guns disabled, more than half her men put _hors de combat_, her lower masts shot through and every moment threatening to go over the side, her rudder smashed to splinters, with five feet of water in the hold—down perforce has to come the _Hoche’s_ tricolor. So the battle ends.

It is just twenty minutes past eleven. Three other French ships, overtaken at their first attempt at flight, have already surrendered. The rest are making off, scattering over the horizon with British frigates in pursuit, to be run down and taken in the end—all of them except two.[11]

The fourth tableau rings down on the piece. The last scene closes some weeks later in the quiet waters of the Hamoaze off Devonport Dockyard, whither the _Hoche_ was taken round, with the arrival of an Admiralty messenger at the Port Admiral’s office. He brings in his dispatch wallet an official memorandum that “My Lords have been pleased to direct Sir J. B. Warren’s prize to be registered in the List of the Navy by the name of the _Donegal_.”

In this way it was that the name Donegal came originally into the Royal Navy for a man-of-war, and the battle of October, ’98, off the coast of Donegal is our present cruiser’s principal bond of connection with the county.

* * * * *

The luckless Wolfe Tone passed from the quarter-deck of the _Hoche_ to the condemned cell and a suicide’s grave. It came about in this way. The _Hoche_ was towed into Lough Swilly and the prisoners were landed and marched to Letterkenny. The Earl of Cavan invited the French officers to breakfast. Tone was amongst the guests. He was in a French military uniform. An old college companion at T.C.D., Sir George Hill, recognized him. “How do you do, Mr. Tone?” said Hill pointedly. “I am very happy to see you.” Tone greeted Hill cordially, and said, “How are you, Sir George? How are Lady Hill and your family?” The police, who had had information that Tone would be among the prisoners, lay in waiting in an adjoining room. Hill went to them, pointed to Tone, and said, “There is your man.” Tone was called from the table. He knew what it meant—that his hour had come, but he went cheerfully to his doom. Entering the next apartment, he was surrounded by police and soldiers, arrested, loaded with irons, and hurried off to Dublin Castle. There he was tried by court-martial and sentenced to be hanged within forty-eight hours. His request for a firing party was curtly refused. Curran got a writ of habeas corpus from Lord Chief Justice Kilwarden. But he was too late. Tone anticipated the execution of the law, and died by his own hand—with a penknife.

* * * * *

The _Donegal_ man-of-war served Great Britain for forty-seven years, keeping up to the last her reputation of being one of the swiftest two-deckers afloat.

Trafalgar should have been one of her battle honours. One of the very smartest captains that ever trod a British quarter-deck, “a dear Nelsonian” of exceptional ability and merit, the gallant and chivalrous Sir Pulteney Malcolm, commanded the _Donegal_ at that time. The _Donegal_ had been sent by Nelson to Gibraltar to shift the low tier of water-casks just four days before the battle. While there, at two o’clock on the morning of Trafalgar day, Monday, the 21st of October, the _Weazle_ sloop-of-war came bustling into Gibraltar Bay, and firing alarm guns. She brought the fateful news that the enemy had left Cadiz and were at sea. Captain Blackwood, of the _Euryalus_, in command of Nelson’s inshore frigate squadron, had packed the _Weazle_ off to Gibraltar to call up the six ships of the line, recently detached from Nelson’s fleet, that had gone in there to fill up water-casks and refit.

The _Donegal_ was lying with her sails unbent from the yards, her bowsprit out, and her fore-topmast and foreyard struck. All her powder had been landed, and the ship was fast alongside the Mole. The crew had not turned in, as Captain Malcolm was keen to rejoin Nelson off Cadiz at the earliest moment. When the _Weazle’s_ guns were first heard, they were hard at work shifting the lower tier of casks in the hold.

Instantly the order was given to prepare for sea. With extraordinary celerity the casks were got back into their tiers, and the powder was hurried into the magazines. The foremast was set up and the bowsprit replaced, the running rigging rove, and the sails were bent to the yards. Every man of the seven hundred on board the _Donegal_ was working his hardest in one way or another. It proved, though, a twenty-two hours’ job; it would have been a four days’ business in ordinary times. Before one o’clock on the morning of the 22nd they were hauling out from the Mole into the bay. Then sea-stores and provisions were taken on board. Before noon the _Donegal_ was ready for battle; a performance on which all concerned might justly pride themselves.

Not one of the other five ships was nearly so well advanced, although they also had been striving their hardest. Gibraltar is distant from the scene of the battle off Cape Trafalgar, as the crow flies, just fifty miles; but no sound of the firing reached there as it would appear, although at places further off, both in Spain and on the African coast, they heard the cannonading plainly. All on board the ships at Gibraltar still hoped to be in time for the expected battle, as it was to them.

A new spar had been ordered from the dockyard for the foreyard. It had not arrived by noon on the 23rd. It was forthcoming only at the last moment, just indeed as the _Donegal_ was in the act of weighing anchor. Sail was made at once, and they went out of Gibraltar Bay with the foreyard towing in the water alongside the ship, not yet hoisted on board.

They had to beat out in the teeth of the wild storm, blowing a hard gale from the south-west, that, up the coast beyond Tarifa, was wrecking our Trafalgar prizes. Clawing out against the head wind, the _Donegal_ won her way foot by foot, and by nightfall had gained the mouth of the Straits. Then they had to let go anchor, so as not to be swept back in spite of themselves. Next morning they weighed anchor, and once more went forward, forcing their way ahead against wind and storm and swamping seas.

Damaged British ships began, one by one, to come in sight during the forenoon. The _Belleisle_ was made out, totally dismasted, in tow of a frigate. Then the _Victory_ was seen, partially dismasted and also in tow. The _Donegal_ made her number to the flagship as she passed. A little time afterwards a third British man-of-war, with her three topmasts gone, came into view. It was the _Téméraire_. The _Donegal_ passed quite near, and hailed across: “What news?” The answer was shouted back from the _Téméraire_ through a speaking trumpet: “Nineteen sail of the line taken and Lord Nelson killed!”

On board the _Donegal_ all were listening with straining ears. As the trumpet bawled the direful intelligence across, a shudder, we are told, seemed to run through the whole ship, followed by a deep, long drawn-out groan, plainly heard on board the _Téméraire_ as that ship swept past on her way.

They reached Collingwood and the rest of the fleet off San Lucar a few hours later. At once the _Donegal_ found work to do in finishing off and taking possession of the stricken and dismasted Spanish three-decker _El Rayo_, one of the forlorn-hope squadron that had made the sortie from Cadiz on the 23rd, hoping to find the British fleet in serious distress after the battle and the storm, and to be able to recapture some of the prizes.

Most of _El Rayo’s_ men were taken on board the _Donegal_. In connection with one of them, Captain Brenton tells this story. “A man fell overboard from the _Donegal_ in a gale of wind on this occasion; the usual cry was raised, when some one thoughtlessly called out, ”He is only a Spaniard.” “Supposing he is only a Spaniard?” said a gallant English seaman, seizing the end of a rope, and darting into the sea at the same time; “no reason the poor ⸺ should be drowned!” Happy am I to say, from the information of Sir P. Malcolm, both men were picked up.

Besides that, the _Donegal_ rendered invaluable assistance to several of the badly-damaged British ships during the second gale between the 25th and the 28th; and in rescuing men from some of the prizes that had been driven ashore, or were in peril among the reefs here and there along the rock-bound coast.

Wrote Collingwood a day or two afterwards: “Everybody was sorry that Malcolm was not there, because everybody knows his spirit and skill would have acquired him honour. He got out of Gibraltar when nobody else could, and was of infinite service to us after the action.”

By way also of appreciation and acknowledgment of the magnificent services rendered by the _Donegal_ after the battle, the officers and men of the Trafalgar fleet, without one dissentient voice, agreed that the _Donegal_ should be specially permitted to have a share, equally with themselves, in the Nelson Monument, which the ship’s companies that fought at Trafalgar immediately after the battle jointly subscribed for, as their own personal tribute to their dead chief—the tall obelisk on Portsdown Hill at the back of Portsmouth Harbour.

* * * * *

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. It was in this battle that the British flagship _Superb_ led down into the fight with a portrait of Nelson lashed to the mizen stay, and her band playing “Nelson of the Nile.”

Three of the five French ships lowered their colours to Captain Malcolm and the _Donegal_. First she led off with a rattling exchange of broadsides with the mighty French flagship _L’Impérial_. Then she fastened on a second French ship, and after a sharp set to at close quarters made her give in. 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 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.

Until after Waterloo had been won, the _Donegal_ helped to keep the seas for England, and on more than one occasion with shotted guns in the face of the enemy.

Our second _Donegal_, a wooden 91-gun two-decker, built in the Fifties of the last century, was one of the very last sent afloat of our old “wooden walls.” She still exists, under the name of the _Vernon_, torpedo school ship at Portsmouth.

* * * * *

The direct association between the _Donegal_ of the Royal Navy and County Donegal came into existence first of all in the case of the present armour-clad cruiser, the _Donegal_ of King Edward’s fleet. She is a sister ship of the _Kent_, and was launched and named by the Duchess of Abercorn, as wife of the Lord Lieutenant of Donegal, and at express desire of the King. The _Donegal_ of to-day was the second ship of our county cruisers to receive the honour of a special county presentation in commemoration of the name she bore. The presentation was made before the assembled officers and men of the ship by the Marquess of Hamilton, as M.P. for Derry City, and comprised a service of silver plate, inscribed as the gift of “the King’s subjects in the County of Donegal and the City of Derry.”[12]

IX

ON BOARD OUR FLAGSHIPS AT TRAFALGAR

CAPTAIN HARDY AND THOSE WHO MANNED THE _VICTORY_

Heard ye the thunder of battle, Low in the South and afar? Saw ye the flush of the death-cloud, Crimson o’er Trafalgar? Such another day, never, England shall look on again, When the battle fought was the hottest, And the hero of heroes was slain!

This is a glance at Captain Hardy, the captain of the _Victory_ at Trafalgar, his lieutenants and other quarter-deck officers of Nelson’s flagship, and also something of the men who manned the _Victory_ and where they came from.

Incidentally this should be said of Nelson’s own personal connection with the _Victory_. Nelson’s first association with the _Victory_ dated back to many years before Trafalgar—ever since, indeed, the year in which he entered the Navy as a boy of twelve. At that time the _Victory_, in her seventh year afloat, was lying up in reserve at Chatham, the pride of the Medway, as the finest and biggest first-rate man-of-war in the British Navy. The boy Nelson while at Chatham saw her day after day for months, and must have gone on board her. Later on, during the four years that Nelson served in the Mediterranean under Hood and Jervis, between 1793 and 1797, the _Victory_ was flagship of the fleet, and Nelson, as we know, was constantly on board her on business with the Admiral. It was on the _Victory’s_ quarter-deck also that Sir John Jervis, after the battle of Cape St. Vincent, publicly embraced Nelson and congratulated him on the magnificent display of heroic daring that he had made that day. In October, 1805, Nelson had flown his flag on board the _Victory_ for two and a quarter years, ever since the war began, having at the outset gladly accepted the offer of her for his flagship from what he knew of her as the fastest three-decker afloat.