Cochrane (27 page)

The tide fell further. French battleships on the Palles Shoal and elsewhere heeled over as the water fell away from them. Some presented nothing more warlike than the bottom of the hull towards the English frigates. The men of the
Caesar
saw the flagship
Oce
an
stranded with her stern up on a mud flat and her bows down in the water. Soon they saw the French crews begin to throw their guns overboard in order that the ships might float as soon as possible when the tide began to flood the anchorage again. Cochrane was jubilant. The next few hours would present the Royal Navy with an opportunity which even Trafalgar and the Nile could hardly have rivalled.

With the falling tide, the
Imperieuse
had anchored farther out, though to be within range of the French ships she would in any case have had to sail into the Aix-Boyart channel. Not doubting that Gambier would give his permission for an attack to begin, and that his lordship would follow with the rest of the fleet, Cochrane signalled the
Caledonia
at
5.48
a.m. "Half the fleet can destroy the enemy. Seven on shore." An answering pennant fluttered from the
Caledonia's
mainmast. "Very good."

Cochrane waited. He was not authorised to take the small ships in alone, indeed his only command was of the attacking vessels of the night before. Even the
Imperieuse
had been captained by John Spurling during the action. He had no authority whatever over the other captains of the fleet, every one of whom seemed to be his senior. Impatiently, he awaited Gambier's instructions. Hearing nothing by
6.40
a.m., he signalled the
Caledonia
again. "Eleven on shore." To his own companions he pointed out the pride of the French fleet, "lying on their bilge, with their bottoms completely exposed to sh
ot, and therefore beyond the po
ssibility of resistance". At length an answering signal was run up the mainmast of the
Caledonia,
"Very good."
²⁶

Cochrane's agitation began to grow. There was a crucial moment for making the attack. As soon as the tide began to flow into the anchorage, the British ships must go in and rake the stranded French with their broadsides. They would have the flood tide and a favourable wind to take them in, and having destroyed the enemy, the ebb tide would be in their favour for withdrawal. But Gambier and his ships rode peacefully at anchor on the horizon, nine miles out from the Aix-Boyart channel. The tide had fallen almost as far as it would and the best moment for launching the attack was already passing. Cochrane surveyed the anchorage again and saw that, with the exception of two battleships, the
Foudroyant
and
Cassard,
80
and
74
guns respectively, the entire French fleet was stranded on the mud flats and shoals in attitudes of most unmartial indignity. At
7.40,
when the tide was already turning, he signalled Gambier, "Only two afloat." Surely a man did not have to be a born hero to find that temptation irresistible. The
Caledonia
replied with the familiar pennant. "Very good."

However little he admired Gambier, Cochrane was unable to believe that any man who had at his disposal eleven battleships, including the
120
-gun
Caledonia,
seven frigates, and an assortment of sloops, brigs, and bomb vessels was afraid to take on two enemy battleships. There were guns on the
Ile
d'Aix, but to judge by their performance on the previous evening they were not likely to decide the issue of a battle. In terms of fire-power, the two French ships still afloat carried
154
guns. Gambier's force boasted
1270
guns, as well as the mortars in the two bomb-ketches. When the news of the Basque Roads affair reached England there was bewilderment that the men who had fought under Hood, or Nelson, or St Vincent, had been obliged to wait placidly while their commander replied to every signal with his predictable "Very good", and the tide was allowed to turn, literally, in favour of the French.

Realising that Gambier was not prepared to seize the advantage himself, Cochrane decided to ask for permission to attack alone. He signalled insistently to
Caledonia,
"The frigates alone can destroy the enemy." The signal was not even acknowledged, apparently because it was considered "impertinent". Cochrane's orders were to remain where he was until instructed to do otherwise. Worst of all, he had not the least idea of what was happening on the battleships or what Gambier intended. It was perfectly possible that the commander-in-chief was engaged in a muster of the crews to see whether they had imbibed the contents of the last bundle of evangelical tracts handed out to them. It was at nine twenty-five, with the tide filling the anchorage of Aix Roads that Cochrane signalled despairingly, "Enemy preparing to haul off." And in reply came the imperturbable "Very good."
²⁷

Cochrane, who watched the French heaving guns and stores overboard and even trying to haul their ships through the mud to meet the rising tide, swore that "the Commander-in-Chief would not permit such a catastrophe". Accordingly, the
Imperieuse
nosed in and anchored by the Boyart Shoal, ready to dash down the channel as soon as the order was given and lead the attack. The main French shore-batteries on the
Ile
d'Ol
eron were firing at them now but the splashes of the shells were far short of the frigate. The flash of cannon and the drifting smoke along the wooded shore of 016ron were three miles or so distant from the anchorage. Cochrane, surveying the batteries through his glass, saw that the French commanders were using mortars, which they loaded perilously to the muzzle in order to reach their distant target. The gun-crews were obliged to fire them by lighting fuses and then running for cover. Yet, as Cochrane remarked, "not a shell, even thus fired, reached our position".
²⁸

It was not only Cochrane who saw how easily the stranded enemy might be destroyed. On H.M.S.
Caesar,
Gunner Richardson heard from a French pilot that the
Ile
d'Aix had "as many guns as days in the year", trained on the two-mile passage between the island and the Boyart Shoal. It was a remarkably short year. When at length the
Caesar
was permitted to enter the channel, said Richardson, "we could not find above thirteen guns that could be directed against us in passing; and these we thought so little of that we did not return their fire." The truth, as the French accounts admitted, was that these guns were manned by conscripts with no experience of battle. For all that, thirteen guns on Aix and
154
on the two remaining French ships afloat deterred Lord Gambier with his
1270
cannon. It was hardly a shining example of the Nelson Touch.
²⁹

The French sailors were carrying stream anchors across the mud to the deeper water, with six cables running back to each ship. By winding in the cables, it was proposed to haul the ships across the mud to the point where they could float off. But before this happened, the officers on the
Oce
an
were dismayed, at 11
a.m., to see their remaining ships afloat, the
Cassard
and the
Foudroyant,
drift inshore with the tide and run aground on the shoal of Founts, the northern tip of the Charente estuary.

Cochrane could hardly have asked for more. Then, at last, he saw that Gambier's fleet was coming in. They had left it late, very late, but something might still be done. On the quarterdeck of the
Imperieuse,
he waited in a state of growing agitation. And then the unthinkable happened. Three and a half miles short of their target, at a point where the opposing fleets were still just out of range of one another, Gambier's ships dropped anchor. "It was now evident," said Cochrane, "that
no attack was intended."
Gambier, as he later learnt, was of the opinion that the object of the attack had been achieved and "there was no occasion to risk any part of the fleet".
³⁰

By noon, the French flagship
Oce
an,
a splendid three-decker, was afloat. Four more ships on the mud near her soon followed. At this point, Gambier made his gesture of defiance, sending in the bomb-ketch
Etna
with her
13
-inch mortar. Because of her range, she was able to shell the French anchorage without coming under fire herself. But as the French ships floated, Cochrane saw them "making sail for the Charente", where they would find sanctuary in the mouth of the river beyond even the range of the mortar. The bomb-ketch was hardly more than a floating mortar battery, a squat unattractive little vessel with no foremast but a large triangular sail. Cochrane hailed her captain.

"What attack is going to be made on the enemy by the fleet?"

"I know nothing further than that I am ordered to bombard the ships ashore," replied Captain Godfrey stolidly.
³¹

It was clear that there was to be no attack, but Cochrane was not done with Gambier yet. "I made up my mind, if possible, to force him into action by attacking the enemy with the
Imperieuse"
This was not so easy to do, since he had to contend with two opponents, the French and Gambier. If the
Imperieuse
was seen to be making sail for the anchorage, she would be ordered back at once by the
Caledonia.
The ruse which Cochrane adopted was entirely Nelsonian, though rather more perilous than putting a telescope to a blind eye. Without making sail, he ordered the anchor of the
Imperieuse
to be weighed and the frigate began to drift, slowly, almost unobtrusively into the Aix-Boyart channel, stern-foremost. Cochrane later defended himself on the grounds that if he had not done this, Gambier would have let the entire French fleet escape.
³²

"Better to risk the frigate, or even my commission," he said grimly, "than to suffer such a disgraceful termination."
³³

For half an hour, the frigate drifted past the guns of the
Ile
d'Aix, which opened up on her without effect. It was one-thirty, when she was past the point of recall, that Cochrane gave his order. The sails billowed out, and he bore down to engage the enemy. At the same time he made a signal to the
Caledonia,
inviting Gambier to show his courage. "Enemy superior to chasing ship, but inferior to fleet." Five minutes later he signalled more irritably, "In want of assistance." Unfortunately the signalling code also used the same flag for the message "In distress", and it was this news which the signal officer of the
Caledonia
conveyed to Gambier.
³⁴

Gambier looked towards Aix Roads, where the flashes of gunfire and the drifting smoke signalled more clearly than any pennant the action which had begun. The
Imperieuse
was among the French fleet but seemed singularly undistressed. The French battleship
Calcutta
originally an East Indiaman converted to take supplies, was exchanging broadsides with
Imperieuse,
much to the advantage of the latter. With his stern and bow guns Cochrane was simultaneously pouring shot into two more stranded battleships, the
Aquilon
and the
Ville de Varsovie.

While Cochrane turned a blaze of fire on to the three great ships,

Gambier hesitated a moment longer. The ambiguous signal had its uses for Cochrane. The commander-in-chief would not come well out of any subsequent inquiry if he refused aid to a frigate in distress. On the other hand, if he complained that Cochrane had pretended to be in distress without cause, Cochrane could always claim that he had merely requested assistance in destroying the French fleet.

By now the
Imperieuse
was incurring casualties. Marryat saw the captain of the forecastle killed, his head taken off by a cannon shot, and reported Cochrane as saying:

"Poor fellow! Throw him overboard; there is no time for a coroner's inquest now."

Another casualty in the forecastle was a young seaman whose body was blown in two by a shot in the midriff, except for the connection of the spinal cord. Marryat and another midshipman, half blinded by the scattered flesh, were then confronted by an extraordinary phenomenon. The severed body sprang suddenly to its feet, "stared us horridly in the face, and fell down dead". The spine was still carrying the brain's messages to the lower limbs.
³⁵

By this time the boats of the
Imperieuse
were closing on the
Calcutta,
whose commander, Captain Lafon, led the evacuation by clambering ignominiously out of his stern cabin window and taking flight across the mud. For this, he was later court martialled and shot. At three twenty, the
Calcutta
surrendered and the crew of the
Imperieuse
cheered heartily as "assistance" arrived in the shape of five British frigates and the battleships
Valiant
and
Revenge,
each carrying seventy-four guns. Not realising what had happened, the
Revenge
opened fire on the
Calcutta,
now in the possession of Cochrane's men and had to be warned off. Gambier subsequently overlooked this and noted that the French ship had not been taken by Cochrane but by those who came to assist him.