THIS BOOK is the first detailed story of the bloodiest mutiny that ever occurred in a ship of the Royal Navy, and it is written entirely from contemporary official and private documents. The facts are relatively simple: Captain Hugh Pigot, at the age of twenty-seven, commanded the frigate Hermione in the West Indies. He was possibly the cruellest captain in the service, and we can now say with certainty that eventually he drove his men too far. There is no question of the men being led or inspired by revolutionaries: constant flogging with the cat-o’-nine-tails and sheer terror of a man whom they had seen kill their shipmates in the name of smartness drove a section of the crew to a point where the law of the jungle, kill or be killed, overcame ingrained discipline.
At that point the men mutinied, murdering Pigot and nine other officers in a most brutal manner: ironically, in destroying a tyrant they established a worse tyranny. They then sailed to the Spanish Main and handed the ship over to the enemy. Naïvely, they thought they had found liberty: instead they found themselves despised by the Spaniards and ruthlessly hunted down by the Royal Navy, so that over the next ten years more than a score of them were hanged from the foreyardarms of the King’s ships.
First I must explain why I came to write this book. Sometime in 1950 I was checking a fact in James’s Naval History of Great Britain, published in 1822, when I saw a brief reference—less than 700 words—to the mutiny in HMS Hermione in 1797. The well-respected James, in explaining why the mutiny occurred, wrote ‘This most tyrannical conduct on the part of Captain Pigot, operating upon a very motley, and, from a succession of similar acts of oppression, ill-disposed ship’s company, produced discontent, which kept increasing until the next evening, when it fatally burst forth…’
He added that if he could describe Pigot’s humanity or kind behaviour it would heighten the guilt of his murderers, ‘but a regard to truth compels us to state, that Captain Hugh Pigot bore a character very opposite to a mild one; in short, he has been described to us by those who knew him well, as one of the most cruel and oppressive captains belonging to the Royal Navy’.
I had earlier seen many brief and passing references to the Hermione mutiny: indeed, I had read that particular passage more than once; but this time the phrase describing Pigot’s ‘tyrannical conduct… operating on a very motley, and, from a succession of similar acts of oppression, ill-disposed ship’s company…’ stuck in my mind.
Although engaged on other research but becoming ever more intrigued, I began to investigate further the Hermione story. There was little published; apart from James, there was a highly inaccurate article in the Cornhill Magazine, 1899; and a selection in The Sailors’ Rebellion, pp 285–303, by J. G. Bullocke (London 1938), drawn from published sources. Much later a short but accurate article appeared in The Mariner’s Mirror’s May, 1955 issue. Slowly I accumulated material and the story became more extraordinary. Always I came back to the question: if Pigot was cruel—and James, for instance, who knew many of his contemporary captains, had no doubt about it—why did the crew stand Pigot’s tyranny for so long and then suddenly mutiny? Why one day and not another?
Finally, three years ago, my publishers became as interested in the Hermione mutiny as my wife and I, so we started full-scale research. Carefully we built up the picture of the daily life of the 170-odd men crammed into the tiny Hermione, came to know the habits and idiosyncrasies of many of the individuals, and accumulated fact after damning fact which bore out the words written by William James nearly one and a half centuries earlier.
From a large number of documents in Britain and Spain we have been able to reconstruct the mutiny almost minute by minute, and always using the men’s own words. Every single quoted or reported word of dialogue in the book is taken directly from original sources, except for occasional sail orders, which are of course those used at that period. Apart from that, there is a source for every word or phrase in quotation marks.
After we had re-created all the extraordinary events leading up to the mutiny, the mutiny itself, and the ship’s arrival in a Spanish port, we then went to Spain to search among the Spanish archives and discover what the Hermione did under the red and gold flag of Carlos IV. At this point the story became almost ludicrous.
We came eventually to the extraordinary epilogue: how the Spaniards’ problems were neatly solved by a small British warship, the Surprise.
The result of all this research is a book derived almost entirely from hitherto unpublished material which tells a story considerably stranger than fiction, and which is also, incidentally, a series of studies—of the life on board a British frigate in the West Indies during the long war against Revolutionary France; of the men of more than a dozen nations—ranging from Portugal to America, and Italy to Prussia, who formed the crew; of the personality, upbringing, background and behaviour of Hugh Pigot; of the way in which a mutiny actually occurs.
This book, then, is a study of many men and one ship; and of the qualities of leadership, courage and fear. The facts always to be born in mind are that the Hermione mutiny was the worst in the Navy’s history; that Pigot was one of the cruellest, if not the most cruel, of the Navy’s captains; and that the conditions described in the Success and the Hermione were by no means common. The behaviour of the officers and men in the twenty-seven British battleships as they sailed down to give battle off Cape Trafalgar, as described in my book (published in Britain as England Expects and in the USA as Decision at Trafalgar) gives a better idea of the more usual living conditions in the King’s ships.
Having shared at this remote date their hopes and fears, and sought out their activities and motives, we feel we know many of the Hermione’s officers and men, both loyalist and mutineer, and Captain Pigot is no mystery: he had a personality and background which is all too familiar today. The ordinary reader as well as the experienced psychiatrist will recognize the type; many will be unfortunate enough to number a similar sort of man among their acquaintances.
It is accepted that such things as microfilming and tape-recording are among the necessary everyday tools of people engaged today in detailed historical research among original and unpublished documents. The assistance of a highly-experienced psychiatrist is less usual. However since I, for instance, was concerned mainly with discovering the secrets of the personality of Pigot, the most modern methods of finding out about them had to be used if the research was to be effective—in the same way that recent scientific developments have helped the archaeologist in his task of dating the earth’s history.
No one does anything without a reason or motive. It was comparatively easy to find out what Pigot did, said and wrote; but it was more important to know why. Some of his actions were governed by orders from his superiors; but most—those which caused the mutiny—resulted from defects in his character. It was in elucidating and evaluating those defects that an experienced psychiatrist was of help—if only to confirm, in several cases, my own analysis which, of necessity, was only instinctive.
A word on sources: to avoid scattering footnotes on relevant material of a more specialized nature, and detailed source references, throughout the book, they have all been included in the Notes and Bibliography section, beginning on page 344 and listed chapter by chapter.
The research has been arduous, inevitably; and it would never have been completed but for my wife’s unflagging encouragement and assistance, whether helping me to triple check a fact or dig our car out of snow drifts on the Pyrenean passes while returning from research in Madrid; transcribing a mass of microfilmed papers, translating Spanish documents, or typing the MS.
Many people have helped us, but particularly I must thank Brigadier-General Sir Robert Pigot, Bt, a direct descendant of Captain Hugh Pigot, for material concerning his family; Admiral Julio F. Guillen Tato, head of the Museo Naval, Ministerio de Marina, Madrid, and his son, for their welcome and assistance while we were working on the Spanish naval archives, and Mr David Crossley, of the British Embassy in Madrid.
Lt-Colonel Harold Wyllie, OBE, has once again proved to be more than a friend. In addition to his two paintings—the view from the Hermione’s maintop and the scene on the Surprise’s quarterdeck, which were executed specially for the book—he has always been ready to answer the most complicated questions about sea life at the time of the Hermione—a subject on which he is one of the world’s experts. Viscount Bridport, Cdr W. R. Rowbotham and Rear-Admiral A. H. Taylor, CB, OBE, DL, JP, have likewise helped over similar queries.
When re-creating and analysing the personality of Hugh Pigot from documentary evidence of the letters he wrote, the statements he made, his actions and his family background, I was very fortunate in being able to discuss it in detail with Dr John Randall. I am deeply indebted to him, although of course the responsibility for the assessment of Pigot’s character and opinions expressed is entirely mine.
The staff of the Public Record Office, London, and particularly Messrs E. K. Timings and R. Anslow gave unfailing and patient help. (Unpublished Crown Copyright material in the Public Record Office has been reproduced by permission of the Controller of HM Stationery Office); and the staff of the Admiralty Library, London, particularly Cdr Peter Kemp, the Head of Historical Section, and Mr Young, were of great assistance. Our friend Mrs Anthea Barker made good use of her knowledge of the Public Record Office, and unearthed some extra material at a time when we were a thousand miles from London, and we are most grateful to her, as we are to another old friend, Mr Henry Bailey, who kindly read the proofs.
Mrs Gloria Smyth put her fluent knowledge of Spanish at our disposal and worked on the translation of dozens of Spanish documents which age had faded and, with my wife, bore with fortitude the numerous local electricity failures which frequently plunged the microfilm projector into darkness and myself into a fury.
To our other friends who have helped with encouragement, comments and suggestions, and to my patient publishers in Britain and America, my wife and I extend our thanks.
Porto Santo Stefano,
(Grosseto), D.P.
Italy, 1963