Every Man Will Do His Duty (43 page)

Next day three more of the enemy’s line-of-battle ships got over the bar and went to Rochefort; three more remained, but so far up and in the shallow water that our frigates could
[not]
get near enough for their shot to reach them: the
Etna’s
13-in. mortar split, and all the shells of her 11-in. mortar were fired away, and apparently without doing any execution. Manned all the launches of the fleet to cover the three remaining fire-ships that are to be sent in to-night; but a gale came on with rain, and it was given up.

Next day, the 16th (still stormy weather), the enemy being afraid of an attack on the
Indiana
frigate, which lay aground, set her on fire, and she soon blew up.

17TH.
—All the enemy’s ships this day got over the bar except the
Regulus
(74 guns), which still remained aground near a place called Fouras, about four miles above the Isle of Aix; this day we released several male and female prisoners, gave them a boat, and saw them land safe at Rochelle, and hope they are thankful for their deliverance.

19TH.
—By order of the commander in chief public thanks were given to Almighty God through the fleet for our success over the enemy.

28TH.
—Orders arrived for the return of Lord Gambier, and we got four months of excellent provisions from the
Caledonia,
and likewise three dozen of Congreve’s rockets from the
Cleveland
transport. Next day Lord Gambier sailed for England in the
Caledonia,
leaving the command to Rear-Admiral Stopford in the
Caesar,
with the
Tonnant, Revenge,
and
Aigle
and
Medusa
frigates, four gun brigs, a schooner, and two cutters to watch the motions of the enemy.

Arrived the
Naiad
frigate from England, with the
Hound
and
Vesuvius
bombs; but being too late they were ordered
to
England again. The
Naiad
had some people on board taken out of a sinking galiot which had only left Rochefort yesterday; they informed us that Bonaparte had ordered the chief officers of his ships at Rochefort to be put under arrest, and ’twas thought some would suffer death; and that they were building two hundred gunboats with all haste to protect their coast.

A man named Wall, who called himself an American, ran away from the
Cassava,
stole a boat and got off to our squadron; he informed us that the
Tourville, Regulus,
and
Patriot
are so much disabled that they are ordered to be cut down for mortar vessels, and that the
Ocean
is in a bad state; the
Cassard
is to be docked, but the others were not very much damaged; that Captain Lacaille of the
Tourville
is to suffer two years’ imprisonment, to be erased from the list of officers and degraded from the Legion of Honour, and that Captain Porteau of the
Indiana
is to be confined to his chamber three months for setting fire to his ship without orders. Captain de la Ronciere of the
Tonnere
is acquitted; but John Baptist Lafon, captain of the
Calcutta,
is to be hanged at the yard-arm on board the
Ocean
for shamefully quitting his ship when in presence of the enemy. This is the fellow who had the English colours hung Union down last winter to insult us, and moreover they were hung under the bowsprit and near the privy: they generally who act in this manner are cowards.

30TH.—
Divine service performed, and an excellent sermon was preached by the Rev. Mr. Jones, touching on several remarkable instances of divine favour which happened on several occasions on our behalf, and how the very materials the enemy were collecting to destroy us fell into our hands and acted against themselves; how the winds favoured us in going into Aix Roads, and how they shifted to bring us safe out again; these were such convincing facts that they made a great impression on the ship’s company. Next day a bowsprit with the jibboom spritsail yard and part of the knee of the head hanging to it came floating alongside, and we hoisted them on board, and to our surprise found they had belonged to the
Calcutta
when she blew up, and had come, as it were, to do homage for the insult offered on it two or three months ago, by hanging the English colours under it Union downwards. The rascals little thought at the time it would be so soon in our possession; there surely was something mysterious in this.

MAY 12.—
A play was acted on board the
Revenge
called “All the World’s a Stage,” and several of us went on board to see it, the admiral among the
rest, which gave much satisfaction. As for the
Caesar,
we never had diversion of any kind to cheer us up during the many weary dull nights we had passed on this station.

24TH.
—Three very long and large boats belonging to the enemy came out from Aix Roads, and in a daring manner lay on their oars for some time nearly within gunshot, staring at us. We sent our boats manned and armed, who soon made them run, and chased them close in to Aix Roads. Five other boats came out and joined their other three; a smart fire commenced, and the shot from their batteries fell around our boats likewise. Our admiral, seeing the enemy were getting too powerful, recalled the boats, and they returned without having a man hurt.

JUNE 5.
—This morning a heavy gale of wind and rain came on from the westward, which caused the sea to rise much; struck lower yards and topmasts; at 11 a.m. she drove with two cables out; let go the best bower and veered out another cable, which brought her up. The
Tonnant
parted from both anchors and nearly drove on shore near Rochelle, but her sheet anchor being let go brought her up; she made a signal of distress, but no assistance could be given in such stormy weather; fortunately she rode the storm out.

10TH.
—A cartel came in from Cayenne and anchored near us; three French small craft were sent from Rochelle to take the people out of her. An American and a Maltese who came out in these vessels entered into our service, and would not return to Rochelle again: so much for Bonaparte’s popularity! They told us the French ships at Rochefort were getting ready very fast and five of them would soon come down; and sure enough this same afternoon we saw three of the rascals coming down the Charente for Aix Roads. Sent our boats to assist the
Tonnant
in sweeping for her anchors, and found one.

17TH.
—This day arrived Rear-Admiral Sotheby in the
Dreadnought
and relieved us in the command; saluted each other with thirteen guns each, distributing our provision (except one month’s) to the other ships of the squadron; gave an anchor to the
Tonnant
and in the evening got under way with glad hearts for Old England.

While the action at Aix Roads was politically successful and the Royal Navy further established its hegemony of the seas, it was a bitter experience for Cochrane, who had been forced by the Admiralty to command the dangerous fire-ship attack,
thereby superceding officers superior to him and already on the station. This, as Cochrane knew it would, infuriated and insulted at least one, Admiral Sir Eliab Harvey, who argued vehemently with Gambler, returned to England, and was dismissed from the service. Furthermore, at a crucial stage in the attack, Gambier—the same captain who had so boldly led the British fleet into battle at the Glorious First of June—failed to send Cochrane the supporting ships of the line he needed to strike a more devastating blow upon the stranded French ships. Cochrane was made a Knight Commander of the Order of Bath for his courageous and vigorous attack; nonetheless, he aired his negative views about Gambier in public, thus tainting the victory and his reputation at the Admiralty.

With a little more initiative from Gambier, perhaps the Battle of Aix Roads could have been a much greater victory for the Royal Navy. But it was perceived publicly as a triumph. Britain was still riding the tide of Trafalgar. Virtually unchallenged at sea now, the Royal Navy was in a position to support land incursions on the continent by the British Army. Accordingly, troops were landed in Portugal in August of 1808, and before the end of the month Sir Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) had defeated the French at Vimiera, Portugal. But a politically disastrous negotiation at Cintra, which repatriated 26,000 captive French soldiers, on British ships, no less, caused Wellesley and his superiors, General Sir Harry Burrard and General Sir Hugh Dalrymple, to be recalled to England.

Sir John Moore now took command of the British Army on the Iberian Peninsula, moving his 35,000 men against Joseph Bonaparte, usurper of the Spanish throne. Outnumbered, Moore eventually was forced to beat a retreat to Corunna, Spain, where, in January 1809, the Navy was ready to embark his army. Among the naval forces present was Lieutenant Basil Hall.

¹
A short mast midway between the centerline and the bulwarks from which a derick is supported and stayed.

²
Corunna, Jan. 16, 1809. For an account of this battle, see “When I Beheld These Men Spring from the Ground, 1809” page 234.

³
They were, in fact, the
Italien
,
Calypso
, and
Sybille
as previously reported by Richardson.

W
HEN WE PREVIOUSLY ENCOUNTERED
Basil Hall, during the period of peace between the two Napoleonic wars, he was a midshipman frolicking on board the Leander in the waters off Bermuda. Having recently passed for lieutenant and been appointed to the frigate Endymion, commanded by the Honorable Thomas Bladen Capel, Hall sailed from Spithead to Corunna along with some two hundred transports carrying troops to reinforce Sir John Moore’s army. In this passage, Hall witnesses the brief but fierce Battle of Corunna (January 16) on the northwest coast of Spain, where the retreating British troops (fifteen thousand men and nine cannon) under General Sir John Moore fight a Trench force of sixteen thousand men and forty cannon under Marshal Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult.

As
SOON AS SIR JOHN MOORE
heard of Napoleon’s march from Madrid, in the direction of Galicia, to which quarter it had been the English general’s sole object to allure his enemy, he gave orders for the retreat to commence. This was at the beginning of the last week in December, 1808; and as it was then proposed that the troops should fall back upon Vigo, the transports were sent to that port from Corunna, as I have before mentioned. The convoy were afterwards joined at Vigo by a squadron of line-of-battle ships, under Sir Samuel Hood, to render the embarkation more secure.

On the 5th of January, 1809, however, Sir John Moore, who was then at Herrerias, received from his engineers such reports of the unfitness of Vigo as a place of embarkation, that he changed his line of retreat, and directed
his march upon Corunna. Orders to this effect were sent ahead to Sir David Baird, the second in command, from Sir John Moore, who, it appears, “constantly directed the movements of the rear-guard himself.”
¹
These orders, after reaching Sir David, were forwarded by the hands of a private dragoon, who got drunk and lost them on their way to General Fraser, who had already proceeded some distance on the road to Vigo. This trivial incident cost many lives and was the cause of much delay.
²
I know not who had charge of the original despatches sent to the admiral at Vigo; but they never came to hand. Several precious days were thus lost, before we knew that the ships would be again required at Corunna. At length, on the 9th of January, a memorandum from the commander-in-chief—a duplicate or triplicate it might be, for aught we knew—written on a drum-head, apparently in the rain, but clear, soldier-like, and to the purpose, was put into Sir Samuel Hood’s hands, by an officer, half dead with fatigue and anxiety, who had found his way, on horseback, from the British head-quarters to Vigo, across the wild mountains of Galicia.

The wind blew dead in from the south, and so hard that not one of the transports could be moved. The brief despatch from the army, however, was scarcely half read through, before the signal “to weigh” was made from the
Barfleur;
and in less than half-an-hour the men-of-war were under sail, and working out to sea, under close-reefed topsails and courses. I think they all got out; and when once round the point, the wind being fair to Corunna, away they dashed, with a flowing sheet, to tell we were coming after them, as fast as we could, with our flock of three hundred transports.

On the 11th of January the wind lulled a little, and, by dint of whip and spur, we got our immense fleet fairly under weigh. By good fortune, too, we were enabled to work out of the Bay of Vigo, and afterwards to carry the wind with us all the way to Corunna, where we arrived on the morning of the 15th of January, surrounded by upwards of two hundred and fifty sail of ships. On the previous evening, the 14th of January, many of the fastest-sailing vessels of the convoy had entered the harbour of Corunna, where the squadron of men-of-war under Sir Samuel Hood had already arrived. The dismounted cavalry, the sick, some of the horses, and fifty-two pieces of artillery, were embarked during the night.

I have often since heard officers who were then with the army, in position along the ridge, just above where the battle was fought, describe the feelings with which they turned round to look at the ships crowding into
the harbour, under all sail, right before the wind. The sight gave fresh spirits and confidence to the soldiers, of which, poor fellows, they stood in some need; for on their first arrival at Corunna, on the 11th of January, not a single ship had made her appearance.

“As the troops approached Corunna,” says General Napier, “the general’s looks were directed towards the harbour; an open expanse of water painfully convinced him that to fortune at least he was no way beholden. Contrary winds detained the fleet at Vigo; and the last consuming exertion made by the army was thus rendered fruitless.