Every Man Will Do His Duty (27 page)

Our loss in boarding was Lieutenant Parker, severely wounded in several places, one seaman killed and three wounded, which with those previously killed and wounded gave a total of three seamen killed, and one officer and seventeen men wounded.

The
Gamo
’s loss was Captain de Torres—the boatswain—and thirteen seamen killed, together with forty-one wounded; her casualties thus exceeding the whole number of officers and crew on board the
Speedy.

Some time after the surrender of the
Gamo,
and when we were in quiet possession, the officer who had succeeded the deceased Captain Don Francisco de Torres, not in command, but in rank, applied to me for a certificate that he had done his duty during the action; whereupon he received from me a certificate that he had “conducted himself like a true Spaniard,” with which document he appeared highly gratified, and I had afterwards the satisfaction of learning that it procured him further promotion in the Spanish service.

Shortly before boarding, an incident occurred which, by those who have never been placed in similar circumstances, may be thought too absurd for notice. Knowing that the final struggle would be a desperate one, and calculating on the superstitious wonder which forms an element in the Spanish character, a portion of our crew were ordered to blacken their faces, and what with this and the excitement of combat, more ferocious looking objects could scarcely be imagined. The fellows thus disguised were directed to board by the head, and the effect produced was precisely that calculated on. The greater portion of the Spaniard’s crew was prepared to repel boarders in that direction, but stood for a few moments as it were transfixed to the deck by the apparition of so many diabolical looking figures emerging from the white smoke of the bow guns; whilst our other men, who boarded by the waist, rushed on them from behind, before they could recover from their surprise at the unexpected phenomenon.

In difficult or doubtful attacks by sea—and the odds of 50 men to 320 comes within this description—no device can be too minute, even if apparently absurd, provided it have the effect of diverting the enemy’s attention whilst you are concentrating your own. In this, and other successes against odds, I have no hesitation in saying that success in no slight degree depended on out-of-the-way devices, which the enemy not suspecting, were in some measure thrown off their guard.

The subjoined tabular view of the respective force of the two vessels will best show the nature of the contest.

It became a puzzle what to do with 263 unhurt prisoners now we had taken them, the
Speedy
having only forty-two men left. Promptness was however necessary; so driving the prisoners into the hold, with guns pointing down the hatchway, and leaving thirty of our men on board the prize—which was placed under the command of my brother, the Hon. Archibald Cochrane, then a midshipman—we shaped our course to Port Mahon—not Gibraltar, as has been recorded—and arrived there in safety; the Barcelona gun-boats, though spectators of the action, not venturing to rescue the frigate. Had they made the attempt, we should have had some difficulty in evading them and securing the prize, the prisoners manifesting every disposition to rescue themselves, and only being deterred by their own main deck guns loaded with cannister, and pointing down the hatchways, whilst our men stood over them with lighted matches.

Cochrane’s daring victory was quickly followed by a daring defeat. On July 3, 1801, while marauding the coast of Spain, the
Speedy
was caught in an impossible predicament. French Admiral Linois, having escaped the blockade at Toulon with three ships of the line, happened to be within viewing distance when the Speedy ignited a Spanish vessel carrying oil off Malaga. Linois hove to. Believing them to be merchant vessels, Cochrane positioned himself for a morning attack. At daylight, he found himself in the midst of an overwhelming enemy force. He surrendered, but not before trying to run between two of the 74-gun ships, either of which could have blown the
Speedy
out of the water with one broadside. In short order, Cochrane was paroled, court-martialed for the loss of his ship (a necessary formality), promoted to post-captain, and then brought back to earth again. On October 1, 1801, the preliminaries of the Peace of Amiens were signed. Peace would not be official until March 25, 1802, but the newest addition to the post-captain’s list had little prospect of a commission.

¹
Jack Larmour, Cochrane’s “sea daddy” when he entered the Royal Navy, was one of the rare seamen promoted from the forecastle to the quarterdeck.

I
N
J
ULY 1802, MIDSHIPMAN
Basil Hall sailed for Halifax on board HMS
Leander
, the flagship of Sir Andrew Mitchell, commander in chief on the North American Station. Along the way, Hall suffered from seasickness and a chronically sore tooth and endured relentless teasing for his Scotch patois and the unfortunate nickname of “Mr. Justice Gobble” (received after he complained about not getting his share of suet pudding one day). After a six-week sail, Hall finds himself in Halifax and—in the midst of the Peace of Amiens—with little to do other than cause mischief.

THE
LEANDER,
a fifty-gun ship, is well known to the profession, as having formed one of the sturdiest combatants in the action of the Nile, though not strictly entitled to a place in line of battle. She afterwards maintained a glorious, though unsuccessful fight with a large French seventy-four,
le Généreux,
when on her way to England with Nelson’s despatches. To our eyes she was the prettiest ship of her class; and she became permanently endeared to us as a practical illustration of the beautiful thought—that our “march is on the mountain wave, our home is on the deep.”

This domestic character gives the Navy of England its peculiar distinction, and mainly contributes to its success,—English naval men, and they alone, do truly make the sea their home. When afloat, they have no other
thoughts of professional duty but what are connected with their vessel; they take a pride in her looks, and bring up her crew to honourable deeds, as they would wish to instruct their sons. Even the rate of sailing is a subject of never-ending discussion with officers, midshipmen, and crew; every soul of whom considers his own individual honour involved in all that his ship does, or is capable of doing. This is true, almost universally; but it is most striking in our first ship, which, like our first love, is supposed to drink up, from the opening flower of our young feelings, the richest drops of sentiment, never to be equalled by future attachments! I am sure the old
Leander
must ever remain the ship nearest and dearest to my nautical heart. I remember every corner about her—every beam—every cabin—every gun. I can almost look back to the school on board of her, with much of that affectionate sort of interest with which I observe Eton men regard the place of their education. Whenever any of the old Leanders meet, who were shipmates together at the happy time I speak of, every other topic is speedily swept aside, and, for hours together, the boyish adventures, and even the most ordinary events of the dear old ship, form the most delightful subject of conversation, the old stories and jokes, repeated fifty times before, invariably flow back again, recommended by increasing interest, and by that genuine freshness of spirits, so “redolent of joy and youth, which breathes a second spring.”

On the 6th of December, we sailed from Halifax, with a fresh northwesterly wind, in a day so bitterly cold that the harbour was covered over with a vapour called “the Barber,” a sort of low fog, which clings to the surface of the water, and sweeps along with these fierce winter blasts in such a manner as to cut one to the very bone. The Barber is evidently caused by a condensation of the moisture close to the water in this severe temperature. As the thermometer, when we sailed, stood at eleven degrees below zero, nothing but the violence of the wind, which broke the surface into a sheet of foam, prevented our being frozen up in the harbour, like Parry
¹
and his north-western voyagers at Melville Island.

As we dashed by one of the lower wharfs of Halifax, just before coming to the narrow passage between George’s Island and the main land on the south side of this magnificent inlet, a boat put off, having a gentleman on board, who, by some accident, had missed his passage, but succeeded in getting alongside the ship. In seizing hold of a rope, thrown to him from the main-chains, one of the boatmen, in his hurry, caught a turn with the line round the after thwart, instead of making it fast forward. The
inevitable and immediate consequence was, to raise the stern of the boat quite out of the water, and, of course, to plunge her nose under the surface, for the ship was running at the rate of ten knots.

In the twinkling of an eye, officer, boatmen, and all were floating about grasping at the oars or striking out for the land, distant, fortunately, only a few yards; for the water thereabouts is so deep that a ship in sailing out or in may safely graze the shore. Considering the intensity of the cold, we were quite astonished to see people swimming away so easily; but we afterwards learned that the water being between forty and fifty degrees warmer than the air, they felt, when plunged into it, as if they had been soused into a hot bath. The instant they reached the pier, however, and were lugged out, like half-drowned rats, they became literally enclosed in firm cases of ice from head to foot! This very awkward coat of mail was not removed without considerable difficulty; and one of them told me that he could not move at all till he had been laid for some hours in a well-warmed bed, between two other persons; and, for several months afterwards, he remained too unwell to leave his room.

For us to stop, at such a time and place, was impossible; so away we shot like an arrow past Chebucto Head, Cape Sambro, and sundry other fierce-looking black promontories of naked rock, smoothed off, apparently, by the attrition of some vast current. The breeze, which rose rapidly to a hard gale, split our main-top-sail to shreds, and sent the fragments cracking off to leeward in the storm, in such style, that, to this hour, I can almost fancy I hear the sound in my ears. I know, indeed, few things more impressive than the deep-toned thunder-like sounds caused by the flapping of a wet topsail, in such a fierce squall, when both sheets are carried away, and the unconfined sail is tugging and tearing to get clear of the yard, which bends so fearfully, that even the lower mast sometimes wags about like a reed.

I was standing, where I had no business to be, on the weather side of the quarter-deck, holding on stoutly by one of the belaying-pins; but the admiral looked up to the splitting sail quite composedly, and only desired that the main-top-men should be called down, out of the way of the ropes, which were smacking about their heads. Every now and then, the weather-wise glance of the veteran’s eye was directed to windward, in anxious hope that matters would mend. But they only became worse; the foremast bent over like a cane, though the foresail had been reefed. Without waiting for his orders to run through the usual round of etiquette by which an admiral’s commands are generally transmitted, he exclaimed, in a voice so loud that it made me start right over to the lee side of the deck:—

“Man the fore-clue garnets!”

In the next minute the sail rose gradually to the yard, and the groaning ship, by this time strained to her innermost timber, seemed to be at once relieved from the pressure of the canvas which had borne her headlong right into the seas, making the old barky tremble from stem to stern, as if she were going to pieces.

The jib-boom was now got in, in order to ease the bowsprit. In effecting this operation, rather troublesome at all times, one of the primest of our seamen fell overboard. He was the second captain of the forecastle; and his steadiness and skill as a steersman had, one day, elicited the complimentary remark from the captain, that he must surely have nailed the compass-card to the binnacle. On this, and other accounts, he was so much esteemed in the ship that more than the usual degree of regret was felt for his melancholy fate. I saw the poor fellow pitch headlong into the water, and watched him as he floated past, buoyant as a cork, and breasting the waves most gallantly, with an imploring look towards us, but in less than a minute he was out of sight. A boat could not have lived in such weather, and no further attempt could be made to save him, than to throw over ropes, which fell short of their mark. This, my first gale, was also one of the fiercest I ever saw. It lasted for three days, totally dispersed our little squadron, well nigh foundered one of them, the
Cambrian,
and sent her hobbling into Bermuda some days after us, with the loss of her main-mast and all three top-masts.