Part 5
It was a Man of Kent who, as admiral in chief command, planned and gave the order for the capture of Gibraltar. It was another Man of Kent who, as admiral second in command, carried that order out. Sir George Rooke, one of the Rookes of Monk’s Horton, Kent—by far the ablest sea-officer in the British service in the hundred years between Blake and Hawke—was the Commander-in-Chief before Gibraltar. Byng, Sir George Byng, was the second in command—the elder of the two Byngs known to naval history, “Mediterranean Byng,” as he was called in the Navy in connection with a later exploit of his, and remembered nowadays as the Byng who beat the enemy and was not shot. He became Lord Viscount Torrington, and may, in like manner, be distinguished from the other Lord Torrington of naval history (Arthur Herbert) as the Torrington who beat the enemy and was not court-martialled and broke.
A famous family of old-time Kent were the Byngs, seated at Wrotham ever since the fifteenth century, more than one member of which came to the front in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and the Stuart kings. Such as, for instance, the fine old Kentish cavalier of Browning’s rousing song:
Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing, And, pressing a troop unable to stoop And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop, Marched them along, Fifty score strong, Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!
Fifty score strong! Fifty score strong! Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!
Other Kentish men of note associated directly with the Old Navy were Sir Thomas Spert, founder of Trinity House, and captain of the _Harry Grace à Dieu_ when Henry the Eighth crossed the Straits of Dover in her to the Field of the Cloth of Gold; Sir William Hervey, of Kidbrooke, “who greatly distinguished himself in boarding one of the vessels composing the Spanish Armada,” and was raised to the peerage as Lord Hervey; old Captain Dick Fogg, of Repton, near Ashford, captain under Charles the First of the tenth whelp and the _Victory_ and of other men-of-war of note; Kit Fogg, his son, who fought for England in half a score of sea-fights under Charles the Second and down to the time of Queen Anne; Christopher Gunman, a bold fireship and frigate captain in the Dutch wars, captain of the Duke of York’s flagship at Solebay, who later on nearly drowned the future James the Second; George Legge, afterwards the Earl of Dartmouth, whose valour in battle at Solebay made his fortune, a member of a Kent county family of long descent; two notable Commodores, two St. Lo’s of Northfleet; Commodore Boys of the _Luxborough_ galley; Sir Piercey Brett, who as a lieutenant went round the world with Anson, and lived to be one of the most distinguished officers of his day; Sir Thomas Boulden Thompson, who fought under Nelson at Teneriffe, at the Nile, and at Copenhagen. These are a few names taken at random.
Sir Sidney Smith, the “Hero of Acre,” the man who made Bonaparte, as the Emperor himself put it, “miss his destiny,” was of Kentish birth and family, and learned his “three R’s” at Tunbridge School; and it was to Lord Barham, as First Lord of the Admiralty, that Nelson reported himself in September, 1805, when he volunteered to shorten his leave at home and go out at once to fight the enemy at Trafalgar.
It was Kent, too, that gave England Captain John Harvey—one of the Harveys of Eastrey, a family that for generations had sent its sons into the Navy—captain of the _Brunswick_ on Lord Howe’s famous day, the “Glorious First of June,” 1794, who fell mortally wounded in close action with the French _Vengeur_. When the two ships first collided, the master of the _Brunswick_ proposed to cut the _Vengeur_ clear. “No,” answered Captain Harvey; “we’ve got her, and we’ll keep her!” After he received his mortal wound he refused to let himself be carried off the quarter-deck. He dragged himself down to the cockpit, saying as he went off the deck, “Remember my last words: the colours of the _Brunswick_ must never be struck!” A brother, Henry Harvey, was the admiral whose name is still to be met with on old tavern signboards here and there in East Kent. Henry Harvey, captain of the _Ramillies_, came to his brother’s aid on the 1st of June, and with three terrific broadsides finished off the _Vengeur_ for the _Brunswick_, amid resounding cheers from the _Brunswick’s_ men, and giving occasion to an officer in another ship who was looking on to improvise on King David: “Behold how good and joyful a thing it is for brethren to fight together in unity!”
It was this same Henry Harvey who, as a rear-admiral, later in the Great War (in 1797), took Trinidad. That the conquest proved an easy business was not his fault. The Commander-in-Chief of the Spanish squadron at Trinidad, Admiral Apodoca, when he saw Admiral Harvey coming, without clearing for action or firing a shot set fire to his ships and escaped ashore. He took horse and galloped off, and presented himself, excited and panting with his exertions, before the Governor of the island, General Chacon. “I have burnt my ships, sir,” he burst in with, “in case they should fall into the power of the English.” “Burnt them?” exclaimed the astonished Governor; “destroyed them! Have you saved nothing?” “Oh, yes I have!” Apodoca replied. “Yes I have! I have! I have saved”—drawing a carved and painted wooden image, some fifteen inches long, from under his cloak as he spoke—“my flagship’s patron saint—I have saved San Juan de Compostella!” That Apodoca’s flagship was the _San Vincente_, and that there was no _San Juan de Compostella_ on the Spanish Navy List at the time, are details the story does not concern itself with.
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Yet another interesting connection between Kent and the sea service of bygone times is this. H.M.S. _Kent’s_ name is not the only man-of-war name associated with the county that has figured in the fighting days of old. No fewer than eighteen other man-of-war names connected with the county of Kent have from time to time been borne on the roll of the British fleet. It was on board a _Canterbury_ that a notable naval officer of the earlier part of the eighteenth century, Captain George Walton, penned words which have been quoted over and over again as a masterpiece of conciseness. He had been in pursuit of a Spanish squadron, and on his return, as most of us have read, reported as follows:—
“_To Admiral Sir George Byng, Commander-in-Chief._
“Sir,
“We have taken and destroyed all the Spanish ships and vessels which were upon the coast, as per margin.
“I am, etc.,
“GEORGE WALTON.
“Canterbury, off Syracusa, _August 16, 1718_.
“One of 60 guns, one of 54, one of 40, one of 24—taken; one of 54, two of 40, one of 30 guns, with a fireship and two bomb vessels—burnt.”
As a fact, unfortunately, Captain Walton’s “dispatch” was written in quite another way. The captain of the _Canterbury_ really sent the admiral a letter of two pages. What is passed off as his whole “dispatch,” is actually only the concluding sentence of the letter, excerpted and dressed up. An unscrupulous admiralty official, for the purposes of a book on the campaign, manipulated the letter and printed its last paragraph by itself as the entire despatch. Historians following one another have since then simply copied Secretary Corbett.
Our first _Sandwich_ broke the French line at the battle of La Hogue, and lost her gallant captain in doing it. Another bore Rodney’s flag in five battles—two with the Spaniards and three with the French—and was at the first relief of Gibraltar during the Great Siege. Our first _Dover_ was present at the taking of Jamaica. Another won fame as Captain Cloudesley Shovell’s ship. Commodore Trunnion served on board another _Dover_, if Smollett spoke by the card in making him express a wish to be buried “in the red jacket which I wore when I boarded the _Renummy_.” Apart from the taking of Louis the Fifteenth’s frigate _Renommée_, if we count in other French and Spanish frigates and privateers taken, our various _Dovers_, in their time, must have brought home captured flags enough to deck the town out from end to end. All, of course, have long since rotted out of existence. People in old times set little store by such trophies. “What are you going to do with all these flags?” a friend once asked of a frigate captain who, in his barge, gaily decorated from bows to stern with the colours of ships taken during the commission, was being pulled in from Spithead to land at the old Sally Port, Portsmouth. “Do with them?” came the reply. “Why, take ’em home and hang ’em on the trees round father’s garden.”
It was a _Chatham_ whose twenty-four pounders, one May morning, just a hundred and forty-eight years ago, gave the Royal Navy our first, and the original, “Saucy” _Arethusa_. One _Maidstone_ fought with Blake at Santa Cruz de Teneriffe. Another, acting as “guide of the fleet,” led Hawke to victory on that stormy November afternoon among the reefs of Quiberon Bay, which the French Navy, pillorying the memory of its unfortunate admiral, has ever since called “la journée de M. Conflans.”
A _Greenwich_ fought at La Hogue, and was one of Benbow’s squadron in his last fight. One _Deptford_ was also at La Hogue, and another with Byng off Minorca, where the _Deptford_, at any rate, did her duty. A _Romney_, in Queen Anne’s war, after a career of distinction, went down with all on board to westward of St. Agnes, Scilly, on the night of the catastrophe to Sir Cloudesley Shovell. _Rochester_, and _Medway_, and _Sheerness_, are also man-of-war names that have attaching to them interesting memories of the fighting days of old, as have too, in one way or other, in differing degrees, the remaining names of the group, _Woolwich_ and _Faversham_, _Eltham_ and _Deal Castle_, _Margate_, _Queenborough_, and _Folkestone_.
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Our modern-day cruiser the _Kent_ has her own story also as a man-of-war, a notable and interesting historic reputation of her own, to uphold. This summary will give its points, the “battle honours” which the _Kent_ would be entitled to bear on her ship’s flag were our ships authorized to follow the practice of the army in regard to regimental flags.
H.M.S. _KENT_.
Blake’s victory over Tromp off Portland Feb., 1653 Blake and Monk’s victory off Lowestoft June, 1653 Monk’s victory over Tromp off Camperdown July, 1653 Blake’s bombardment of Tunis April, 1655 Duke of York’s victory off the North Foreland June, 1665 Rupert and Albemarle—“The Four Days’ Fight” June, 1666 Rupert and Albemarle—“The St. James’s Day Fight” July, 1666 Battle off Cape Barfleur and Attack at La Hogue May, 1692 Rooke’s battle in Vigo Bay Oct., 1702 Capture of a French convoy off Granville July, 1703 Battle of Malaga[5] Aug., 1704 Siege of Barcelona Sept., 1705 Action with Duguay Trouin April, 1709 Capture of the French 60-gun ship _Superbe_ July, 1710 Sir George Byng’s victory off Messina July, 1718 Relief of Gibraltar Feb., 1727 Capture of the Spanish 74-gun ship _Princessa_ April, 1740 Hawke’s victory off Finisterre Oct., 1747 Taking of Geriah Feb., 1756 Recapture of Calcutta and bombardment of Chandernagore Feb., 1757 Alexandria Mar., 1801 Service with Nelson off Toulon 1803-4 In the Mediterranean 1807-12
A peculiarly interesting memento of the _Kent_ in connection with one of these battles is in existence. It refers to the part played by the _Kent_ of Charles the Second’s navy just before the battle of June, 1666, “The Four Days’ Fight,” in which Monk, Duke of Albemarle, during Prince Rupert’s temporary absence with a third of the fleet in the Channel, without waiting for Rupert to rejoin, rashly flung his weaker force on De Ruyter with the whole of the Dutch fleet at hand and brought about a general engagement.
The _Kent_ had been sent off on the 27th of May on a scouting cruise between “Blackness” (the old name for Cape Grisnez) and Ostend. Late in the evening of the 30th of May the following letter was handed to the Duke of Albemarle from the captain of the _Kent_, sent across by a Dutch ketch that the _Kent_ had taken:—
“May it please yr Grace,
“This morning being off Gravelines in chase of a small ship and a ketch belonging to Newport, as they pretend, whom I have sent into the Downs to your Grace, I mett with a Swede who came from Amsterdam on Sunday last in his ballast, bound for Bordeaux, who relates that 75 sayle of the Flemish Fleet sett sayle out of the Texel the 21st present, and 28 more from Zealand, leaving 6 ships behind them, whose men they tooke out to man the rest of the Fleet, & stoode away to the Northwest, which as my duty binds me I have thought fit to acquaint yr Grace with: & humbly kissing your hands I remain
“Yr Grace’s most humble servant to be commanded,
“THOS. EWENS.
“From aboard his Matⁱᵉˢ shipp _Kent_: this 30th May, 1666.”
The captain of the _Kent’s_ letter was considered so important that Albemarle at once sent it off by express to the Admiralty. It is still in existence; a stained sheet of yellowish paper with the writing crabbed and not easily decipherable, and brown with age and faded. The letter, with Albemarle’s covering note, was found many years afterwards among some correspondence that had belonged to King James the Second, just as the letter had been filed on its receipt at the Admiralty in 1666, when James, Duke of York, was Lord High Admiral. It is endorsed:—
“For his Grace the Duke of Albemarle, aboard the _Royall Charles_ this ⸺ d.dd. In the Downes.”
Albemarle’s covering letter to the Admiralty bears the curiously scrawled endorsements of the various postmasters on the Dover Road as they passed the courier along on his hurried journey up to London:—“Received ye packett at Canterbury, att past 5 in ye Morneing, by Mee, Edw Wheiston”; “Sittingborne, past 8 in ye morning, by mee Wm Webb”; “Rochester, past ten Before noon, Wm Brooker”; “Gravesend at nowne, Hen White.”
Albemarle was roughly handled and had to beat a retreat for the mouth of the Thames—fighting a rear-guard action, skilfully conducted and gallantly contested. Rupert joined him just in time to avert disaster, but one of the English flagships, the _Prince_, grounded at the last moment on the Galloper Shoal, and was taken by the Dutch and burned as she lay. This was just as the _Kent_ rejoined the flag, in time for the last day’s battle.
Cromwell, it is curious to note, first gave the name Kent to the navy for a man-of-war; one November day of the year 1652. On that day—Saturday, the 6th of November—an application from the Admiralty Committee as to the names for four frigates, two of which were to be launched in the following week, was laid before the Lord General Cromwell and the Commonwealth Council of State. The reply was that the following would be the names: _Kentish_, _Essex_, _Hampshire_, and _Sussex_. So a State Paper, now among the national archives in the Record Office, explicitly states. In their selection the Council made thereby a new departure, and introduced a set of man-of-war names entirely different from any before known at sea. The little group of four ships named in November, 1652, leads the way at the head of the long series of British men-of-war which have borne the names of our counties in battle on the sea with distinction on so many historic days.
Why the form “Kentish” was preferred to “Kent” for the first of the four ships, is a matter that is not quite obvious. The name, of course, may have been appointed for no particular reason. The four names chosen were names of four seaboard counties, locally interested in maritime affairs, and it may well have been thought that to call one of the ships the “Kentish” was much the same thing as calling her the “Kent.” On the other hand, there may have been in addition something behind, in regard to the name appointed. Everybody knows, _teste_ Lord Macaulay, why the Puritan authorities put down bull-baiting; not because it hurt the bull, but because it pleased the people. The Puritans rather liked, it is to be feared, making themselves deliberately offensive to those who saw otherwise to them. It is certainly curious, if not significant, that at the Restoration the name “Kentish” disappears forthwith from off the official Navy List, and “Kent” appears instead. This was just at the time, too, that certain distinctly obnoxious names, bestowed on men-of-war by the Puritan authorities, as, for instance, _Naseby_, _Marston Moor_, _Worcester_, _Torrington_, _Newbury_, _Dunbar_, _Tredagh_ (the vernacular for _Drogheda_), were replaced by names such as _Royal Charles_, _York_, _Dunkirk_, _Dreadnought_, _Revenge_, _Henry_, and _Resolution_.
Was any reference intended in the form “Kentish,” as originally appointed for the new ship of 1652, to the “Kentish Rising” of 1648, and its hard fate under the sword blades of Fairfax’s troopers? Was the name designed as a reminder to the Royalists of South-Eastern England? Was it meant as a memento of the penalty that had been paid by so many who, only four years before, had buckled on sword and ridden forth so blithely to the county marching song:—
Kentish men, keep your King, Long swords and brave hearts bring, Down with the rebels, and slit their crop ears! Hell now is wanting rogues, Send there the canting dogges, Ride to the scurry, my Kent cavaliers! God and our King for grace, Leave now your wives’ embrace, Up and avenge all their insults for years! Ironsides! Who’s afear? Pack ’em to Lucifer, Ride to the scurry, my Kent cavaliers!
The name “Kentish,” if introduced with such intention, would help in serving to recall in the stately mansions of the squires of Kent, and in many a humble yeoman’s home as well, why there were vacant places round the family board.
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A brief comparison between Cromwell’s _Kentish_ and her lineal successor of our own day, His Majesty’s ship the _Kent_, may be of interest in conclusion.
The _Kentish_ was of 601 tons burthen, 187 feet in length of hull, 32½ feet beam, and 15 feet draught. Our modern _Kent_ is 440 feet between perpendiculars (463½ feet over all), 66 feet beam, and 24½ feet depth. The first _Kent_, under full sail, might perhaps do nine knots at her best speed; the present _Kent_, with her engines of 22,000 horse power, has done twenty-three knots an hour. The first _Kent’s_ guns, forty in number, were identical with the guns that Queen Elizabeth’s fleet carried when it fought the Spanish Armada; the same kind of guns, practically, that Henry the Eighth’s _Mary Rose_ had on board when she capsized at Spithead. The same quaint old mediæval style of nomenclature, indeed, was still in vogue for the _Kentish’s_ guns. They were called culverins (18-pounders), demi-culverins (9-pounders), and sakers (6-pounders). The heaviest of them, the culverins, weighed 48 cwt. each, and were 5½ inches in calibre. The _Kentish’s_ guns also were of brass, specially cast for her; refounded, for the most part, according to an existing Ordnance order, out of condemned pieces and captured Royalist cannon. According to a curious manuscript list of the ship’s equipment, the _Kentish_ when ready for sea had on board as her establishment of war stores—908 round shot, 468 double-headed shot, 100 barrels of powder, 60 muskets; and for close-quarter fighting, 7 blunderbusses, 60 pikes, and 40 hatchets. The modern _Kent_ carries as her main armament 6-inch quick-firing steel guns, each firing 100-pounder shot and shell, and able to discharge, each piece in half a minute, heavier metal than the whole broadside (270 lb.) of the original _Kentish_. The old ship, of course, was built of wood, oak timber; most of which, as a curious fact, seems to have been cut on the confiscated estates of delinquent Royalists in the County of Kent. The new _Kent_, built of steel, and with 4-inch Krupp armour along her water line, cost to complete for sea upwards of three-quarters of a million sterling; the _Kentish_ frigate, guns and all, cost £5000, or in present-day money from £20,000 to £25,000.
That the gallant “Kents” of His Majesty’s navy at the present hour are quite ready to give a satisfactory account of themselves before the enemy, should occasion arise, may be judged from their firing record in the “gunlayers competition” for 1907. With the 12-pounder, the average per gun for the whole ship was 11·18 hits a minute. Petty Officer Nash achieved fourteen hits in fourteen rounds, the run, during which the score was made, being only of fifty-five seconds duration. In his fifty-five seconds Able Seaman Ramsden fired fifteen rounds, the time taken to load and fire each time being just over three and a half seconds, and he hit the target thirteen times. During the light quick-firing gunlayers’ test, the _Kent_ fired, in the short space of fifty-five seconds, 107 rounds, scoring 83 hits, from her 12-pounders; and 42 rounds, scoring 35 hits, from her 3-pounders. Some of the guns hit the target with every shot they fired, and the loading was wonderfully smart, averaging 15 rounds per gun for the fifty-five seconds.
The _Kent_ of King Edward’s fleet was laid down at Portsmouth Dockyard on the 12th of February, 1900, as a first-class armoured cruiser, and launched on Wednesday, the 6th of March, 1901, Lady Hotham, the wife of the Admiral Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, naming the ship in the orthodox way, with wine grown and produced within the British Empire, and specially presented for the ceremony by the Agent General of South Australia. The _Kent_ was the first to be launched of our modern set of County Cruisers. She was also the first to hoist the pennant and join the fleet at sea.
III
THE AVENGERS OF THE BLACK HOLE:—WHAT THE NAVY DID FOR CLIVE
The fathers in glory do sleep That gathered with him to the fight, But the sons shall eternally keep The tablet of gratitude bright.