A CAPTAIN of one of His Majesty’s frigates in the long war against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France was forced to lead a solitary existence: although surrounded night and day by scores of men, he lived the life of a recluse. Because of the rigid bulkhead of discipline and tradition he was isolated from his own officers, entertaining them occasionally at his table but otherwise remaining socially aloof. He seldom saw his fellow captains since there were so few frigates and so many tasks that they were usually at sea during his infrequent stays in port. On the remoter stations like the West Indies the frigates were either escorting convoys or acting as lone wolves, hunting enemy merchantmen and warships, and at the same time keeping the seas cleared of the French and Spanish privateers lurking in the sheltered bays and lagoons.
In addition to this unnatural and enforced solitude the captain bore the sole responsibility for the fighting efficiency, safety and welfare of upwards of seven-score men, and for the ship herself. Combined with the knowledge that one error of judgment or navigation by himself or his officers could wreck his ship and possibly his career, it imposed a great strain on every type of captain, except perhaps the rare man who was a born leader or the less unusual person who knew he had so much influence and patronage in high places that only a massive blunder could affect his future in the service.
In the West Indies the solitary captain and his ship were further burdened with the ever present triple threat of virulent disease, which could decimate a crew overnight; dangerous and unpredictable currents which could, and not infrequently did, sweep a ship off her course in the darkness and fling her on to a shoal of uncharted rocks; and uncertain sub-tropical weather—for the Caribbean is the birthplace of the hurricane and the playground of the notorious white squall which, suddenly appearing out of a clear sky, would send the topmen racing aloft to reef or furl before its invisible strength tore the canvas of the sails out of the boltropes.
Occasionally all these responsibilities put too great a load on the moral fibres which kept a captain’s sense of proportion and temper under control so that, nearing breaking point, they became distorted and slowly warped the man’s personality. This rarely affected his efficiency as a fighting machine; but since he wielded almost absolute power over his ship’s company—a power backed by the Articles of War, and behind which was the whole weight and approval of the State—it could and often did have a powerful effect on the life and happiness of the men serving under him; particularly on the justice and the punishment he meted out to them.
It must be emphasized, because it says much for the natural resilience of the human spirit, and the rough and ready training which an officer received in the Royal Navy from the time he first joined as a young boy, that only rarely did a captain become so warped that he became an irresponsible tyrant; and this book is a study of one particular case, the worst in the whole history of the Royal Navy.
The Commander-in-Chief of ‘His Majesty’s ships and vessels employed… at and about Jamaica’ in 1797, Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, was usually to be found at Cape Nicolas Mole, at the western end of Santo Domingo (now Haiti), a small anchorage which was ridden with yellow fever and swarming with mosquitoes. The Mole’s purpose was entirely martial: it had recently been captured from the French and for the Commander-in-Chief was strategically better placed than Port Royal, in Jamaica. It had no social life; the captains of the warships nominally based there could expect leisure and equable company only when their ships needed dockyard refits at Jamaica, where the society of Port Royal and Kingston could be relied upon for invitations to dinner at the homes of rich planters, and the choicest food and wines would be served by immaculately uniformed Negro servants and eaten in the company of beautiful women. This emphasized the dreariness of a captain’s normal existence afloat, when an invitation to the First Lieutenant and the doctor to join him at his table constituted a social occasion, and everyone knew and was probably heartily sick of the others’ jokes and foibles.
Normally there was nothing but the usual harbour routine to occupy Captain Hugh Pigot’s thoughts during his infrequent stays at Cape Nicolas Mole in his frigate the Success; he would sit in the hot and humid solitude of his cabin dealing with the paper work, or pace the windward side of the quarterdeck (which was shaded by canvas awnings and specially reserved for his use). However, on January 19, 1797, as the frigate lay at anchor at the Mole he had plenty of time to reflect on the furore which he had caused because he had lost his temper with the captain of an American merchant ship, a certain Mr William Jesup, some six months previously. Indeed he was being forced to reflect, since he had to set down his explanation in writing.
To Captain Pigot, who though only twenty-six years old was a post captain, the whole wretched business was a matter for surprise, since all he had done was to order a couple of boatswain’s mates to give the damn’d fellow a ‘starting’ with a rope’s end. A few stripes across the back was little enough for Jesup to complain about considering his behaviour and the way he had handled his ship, which was one of several Pigot had been convoying.
Pigot was prepared to agree that he had been rather hasty; that his anger with the ‘Jonathan’ had clouded his judgment. But further than that he would not go; nor indeed had the Commander-in-Chief then desired it. But now—that very day—Sir Hyde had been forced to order a court of inquiry… simply because of a Yankee skipper whose behaviour, Pigot thought, had certainly shown him to be a fool or a knave, and perhaps both; whose behaviour had hazarded the Success and whom Pigot had punished accordingly.
Pigot’s hasty action had certainly landed him in deep water. Apart from the diplomatic relationship between Britain and the United States, which at that time was far from friendly, on a more prosaic level the masters of American merchant ships, although only too willing to trade with British ports, had an active and sometimes understandable dislike of the Royal Navy.
This had sprung up against the ever-present background of disagreement between the two nations over Britain’s claim to the right in wartime to board American ships on the high seas and take off British sailors. The rights and wrongs of this will be discussed later, but it must be remembered in turn that the masters of many neutral ships could be a nuisance to nations at war. They were always ready to protest but, in the opinion of the Royal Navy, seldom cared to give credit when it was due—when, for example, a British warship rescued and set free (without making any claim against her owners) an American merchantman which had been captured by the French because she was allegedly carrying a cargo to or from a British port.
Such bickering was natural: it had always existed in previous wars and was to continue in wartime for the next century and a half. Any combatant country expecting a neutral’s thanks for an act of kindness in time of war was naive, and any neutral skipper who failed to grumble and protest at every opportunity was a rare and tolerant prince among seafarers.
Nevertheless convoying a motley bunch of British and neutral merchant ships, all of different size and seaworthiness and whose masters were invariably rugged individualists, was a thankless and temper-fraying task for even an experienced and patient frigate captain, which Hugh Pigot certainly was not. No one in authority commented if the convoy arrived safely; but if even a single ship was lost to the enemy, her owners made wrathful protests to the Admiralty, blaming the escorting warship for what was often the master’s stupidity, or the result of their own notorious frugality in not allowing a large enough crew (which had probably been further depleted by a press-gang) or sufficient new sails and cordage. Sailing with a very small crew, reefing down too much at night through habit or over-cautiousness and falling far behind the convoy (the master of a merchant ship was freed by the convoy system of the need to hurry into port to be first at the market place with his cargo, since his rivals were usually in the same convoy)—all these, and several more, were the faults to which many of the charges of a harassed frigate captain were prone.
Captain Thomas Pasley, of the Glasgow, provides typical examples. ‘The Mary Agnus was leaky and sinking for want of men to pump her… came out so badly manned that at Bluefields he applied to me for men to weigh his anchor; I think him a rascal but could not see him sink—so gave him four men’, he wrote about one of his charges. ‘The damn’d mule her captain stood on till 6 o’clock ere he put about, not paying the smallest attention to the signal,’ he said of another. ‘… How can I pretend to answer for the safety of ships commanded by such a set of mules? Thus is a captain of a man-of-war’s character sported away, who happens to have the misfortune to command a convoy.’
The incident which had forced Sir Hyde Parker to order an inquiry into Captain Pigot’s behaviour had occurred in July 1796, just before the Spaniards joined the war on the French side. The British had earlier captured Port au Prince, a small French town sprawled on a plain at the far end of the long and ever-narrowing gulf at the western end of Santo Domingo, The coastline for dozens of miles on either side of the gulf consisted of jungle interspersed with isolated villages and small towns, most of which were still held by small French garrisons and hardly worth the bother of attacking. One town, Leogane, which gives the gulf its name and is only twenty miles short of Port au Prince, was a flourishing base for French privateers, so that British merchantmen bound up the gulf for Port au Prince had to be escorted.
Pigot in the Success had been convoying a dozen of them on the short voyage from St Marc, sixty miles away, when the incident happened. Pigot knew the Leogane privateers were a constant menace—not because they were powerfully armed, but they were small enough to be propelled by oars: dangerous opponents in an area where the wind often dropped suddenly, leaving sailing ships wallowing in a flat calm. The Frenchmen were so bold that in such a calm they would dart out and, skimming across the water like lissome flying fish, seize and tow away some fat merchantman as she lay helpless and out of gunshot from the escorting frigate, whose sails, starved of wind, would be hanging down limply like so much laundry.
For the whole of this particular voyage one American ship in the convoy had been a continual nuisance, according to Pigot. Badly sailed and usually out of station, she repeatedly ignored shouted orders and requests from the Success. She was the brig Mercury, of New York, and was being handled in such a lubberly fashion that in broad daylight she had run up so close under the Success’s stern that her jib-boom had nearly stove in the frigate’s jolly-boat in the stern davits.
This had been alarming enough, in Pigot’s view; but that very night, July 1, despite frequently shouted warnings, she had rammed the Success amidships, and her jib-boom had poked across the waist of the ship like a clumsy giant’s lance before being snapped off short by the frigate’s main shrouds.
To Pigot, roused out of his sleep by the crash of the collision, and whose frigate formed the convoy’s sole protection, there seemed to be only one immediate explanation for the Mercury’s strange and dangerous behaviour: with Leogane only a few miles to leeward it seemed obvious the American captain, William Jesup, was in the pay of the French and had deliberately rammed the Success to disable her, leaving the flock of merchantmen to the mercy of the enemy privateers.
The Mercury’s crew, Pigot had told Sir Hyde Parker, did little or nothing to help separate the two ships; and it was after Jesup had been called on board the Success—where he had made several unhelpful remarks—that he was given a ‘starting’.
Pigot was probably justified in being angry that the collision had actually occurred; but he was not the man to act with restraint or foresight: his impulsiveness and lack of judgment stopped him realizing that for the captain of one of His Majesty’s ships to order an American skipper to be ‘started’ with a rope’s end was bound to be regarded by even the British Government as an insult to the American flag. It was just the type of provocation, insignificant yet humiliating, which was bound to anger the sensitive Government of a new and proud country and give powerful ammunition to its considerable anti-British element.
Pigot’s troubles had begun officially when the Mercury arrived at Port au Prince and Jesup went on shore to register his protest with the American Consul, Mr L. MacNeal, who helped him draw up a petition to the British authorities. Addressed to ‘His Honour R. W. Wilford, Commander of His Majesty’s Forces at Port au Prince’, it gave Jesup’s version of the whole episode. According to him the fault was with the Success which ‘wore ship and ran foul of the Mercury’. Captain Pigot had then ‘ordered his people to cut away everything they could lay their hands on’, and also told them to bring back to the frigate the Mercury’s jib and foretopmaststaysail, saying ‘they would do to make trowsers’ [sic].
Jesup’s petition said that he ‘begged Captain Pigot for God’s sake not to cut any more than he could avoid, or words to that effect. Captain Pigot forthwith commanded his people to bring the d—d rascal that spoke on board the frigate, where he remained for a few minutes till the vessels were cleared. Pigot thereupon desired the boatswain’s mates to give the d—d rascal, meaning your Petitioner, a good flogging.
‘They took hold of your Petitioner, and inquired who he was—it was told them, he was the Master of the Mercury. Well, said Captain Pigot, “flog him well and let him flog his officers”. These orders were instantly obeyed in so severe and cruel a manner that your Petitioner was nearly bereft of his senses. During the time your Petitioner was thus so brutally beaten and ill-treated, he, your Petitioner, made use of no offensive language, or no kind of resistance—but only begged they would have compassion on him…
‘Your Petitioner arrived here same day, when he exhibited the marks and bruises of his shocking treatment to a number of the most respectable inhabitants and others in the town of Port au Prince, who all impartially pronounced it an outrage of the most brutal and unmanly kind, as the certificate annexed to this paper abundantly testifies.’
Jesup requested that his petition, dated July 4, three days after the Mercury arrived in port, should be put before the proper authority so that he could obtain ‘justice and satisfaction’. The certificate attached to it bore the signatures of thirty-seven of the ‘most respectable inhabitants’ who had ‘seen and viewed the marks and lashing inflicted on the body and person of Captain Jesup… by the order of Captain Pigot’, and ‘give it as our candid opinion that the dangers to be apprehended from such wanton and barbarous treatment, is of the most imminent and alarming nature to the life and person of Captain Jesup, revolting to humanity, degrading and dishonourable in the highest degree to the com: mander of a ship of His Britannic Majesty’.
Consul MacNeal also signed the certificate and added a paragraph saying that he too had ‘viewed the body and arms of Captain Jesup, and that it appears to me, that he had been severely flogged, beat and bruised, by some person or persons unknown to me’.
On July 8, possibly in reply to a counter-allegation by Pigot, the nine passengers who had been in the Mercury, including a Frenchwoman, Mme Gumaire, signed another certificate saying that at the time of the incident they ‘did not hear Captain Jesup utter or say anything of an irritating or offensive nature, but [that he] behaved in the most passive and forebearing stile [sic] in his answers when hailed from the Success’. When he left the Mercury for the frigate he appeared to be ‘in perfect health’; but when he returned he was ‘in a very suffering condition’ owing to ‘the sore beatings and bruises whereof his body and arms, which he exhibited to us, bore the most convincing proof…’
The petition and certificates were duly forwarded to the British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Hyde Parker. There is no record whatsoever that he took any action when he received them: certainly he neither noted the incident in his journal nor wrote to the Admiralty. (Under the Regulations and Instructions, a commander-in-chief’s dispatches were to tell the Admiralty of his fleet’s activities ‘and of all other circumstances worthy of notice’, and he had to keep a daily journal recording all such information.) Parker appears to have been satisfied with Pigot’s explanation and description of the episode.
Pigot was convinced that he had been perfectly in the right, and Sir Hyde had behaved very well so far, in his view: there had been no unnecessary nagging and carping. His confidence seems to have been well founded, for there must have been a tacit understanding with the Admiral that the whole episode should be ignored—unless demands for an explanation arrived from Their Lordships in Whitehall. Anyway, for many days after the arrival of Jesup’s petition all was quiet; but unknown to Pigot or Sir Hyde, copies of the petition and certificates had been sent to the United States, where they were immediately published in the newspapers. The reaction was instantaneous and noisy.
At that time the American Press and the British Government viewed each other with mutual suspicion—within a few months Lord MacDonald was to write to the Secretary of State in London that ‘half a dozen books are not certainly published in any one year… The printers are employed in the universal business of newspapers and… the consequence is that the opinions of all classes arise from what they read in their newspapers; so that by newspapers the country is governed.’ He added that ‘the newspapers which abuse or slight us most, sell best’.
Even allowing this was an exaggeration inflated by outraged indignation, it goes far to explain the extent of the uproar when Mr Jesup’s story was published. Within a few days copies of newspapers from the Southern states were delivered on board Sir Hyde’s flagship at Cape Nicolas Mole, and Pigot found the dog—indeed, a large pack of them—still worrying the bone.
It did not take long for the first of the swell waves heralding the storm’s approach to travel eastwards across the Atlantic from the United States and lap along the shores of Whitehall. The episode had happened on July 1, the latest date on the Jesup certificates was July 8, and on July 25 the New York Diary, among many other newspapers, had published its first full account of Jesup’s story. By September 22 the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty—otherwise known as the Board—were reading a copy of the Diary in London. This gave them the first news of the incident and since Sir Hyde Parker had made no mention of it in his dispatches—a major tactical error—Their Lordships instructed the Secretary to the Board, Mr Evan Nepean, to write to him at once demanding information.
With scant regard to the spelling of names, Nepean’s letter told Sir Hyde that ‘I am commanded… to transmit to you the enclosed extract from the New York Diary of 25th July last relating the particulars of the very extraordinary behaviour of Captain Pigott of His Majesty’s ship Success towards Captain Jessup of the ship Mercury and to signify Their Lordships’ direction to you to call upon Captain Pigott to report a full and circumstantial account of the transactions above alluded to, which report you will please transmit to me for Their Lordships’ information’.
The letter was sent at once to Falmouth for dispatch to the West Indies by the next packet. (There were nine packets maintaining the service between Britain and the West Indies and America.) However, before the ship sailed the Board had to send another letter to Sir Hyde about the same subject, but written in much stronger terms.
The reason was that Mr Robert Liston, the British Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in the United States, had of course read Jesup’s account in the newspapers. From Philadelphia he had written an indignant report to the Secretary of State, which arrived in London after the Board’s first letter to Sir Hyde had been sent off to Falmouth. Basing his judgment solely on the newspaper accounts, Liston wrote on August 13: ‘It is with great concern I observe that the complaints of acts of injustice and insult committed by our officers against American citizens continue and increase… A deep impression has in particular been made upon persons of all ranks by the enclosed statement of an outrage offered to Mr William Jesup… which has been published in every newspaper in the United States.
‘Although the petition of the injured party does not probably explain in its full extent the nature of the provocation given to Captain Pigot,’ Liston admitted, ‘yet the number of respectable names which are subscribed to the certificate annexed appear to leave little or no doubt as to the facts of the cruel treatment. And the matter is such that it seems to merit the most serious attention on the part of the King’s Ministers.’
Lord Grenville received this letter and an extract from a newspaper at the beginning of October. After showing it to the King he returned to Downing Street and wrote to the Admiralty, enclosing an extract from Listen’s letter, saying ‘I am to signify to Your Lordships His Majesty’s pleasure that a particular inquiry be immediately made respecting the conduct imputed to Captain Pigot, and the circumstances of the transaction’.
The Admiralty, who had of course already seen the New York Diary a week or two earlier, instructed Mr Nepean to send the second letter to Sir Hyde, this time in harsher terms, saying that the Secretary of State had sent them documents ‘relative to the outrageous and cruel behaviour of Captain Pigot’, and signifying the King’s pleasure that an inquiry should be held ‘into this very extraordinary proceeding, transmitting to me without delay a full statement of the case as you shall find the same to be, in order that Their Lordships may take such measures… as may appear to be meet and proper’.
By the time the packet reached Cape Nicolas Mole after her long southward sweep into the Atlantic to pick up the trade winds which carried her across to the regular landfall at Barbados, Their Lordships’ second letter was six weeks old. The Jesup episode had occurred five months earlier, and for the whole of that time Hugh Pigot had lived in a state of ever-increasing uncertainty.
Sir Hyde Parker may well have reflected that his efforts to hush up the whole business had been the worst mistake he could have made, since in any dispute the first person to protest to authority with boldly-phrased and well-documented allegations secured considerable tactical advantages. Now—well, Pigot must face a court of inquiry, and the Admiralty, not Sir Hyde, would then decide if Pigot should be court-martialled.
Such a court of inquiry was not authorized by law; its existence was based on custom. Usually it comprised three captains whose task was to investigate and see if there were sufficient grounds for a court martial. Sir Hyde gave orders on January 19, 1797, that Commodore John Duckworth, with Captains James Bowen and Man Dobson, were to ‘inquire into the conduct of Captain Pigot’. There was a safeguard for Pigot in Sir Hyde’s order because the next phrase said the inquiry was to be based ‘on the evidence of such officers and seamen as he [Pigot] may choose to bring before you’. Thus Pigot could, if he wished, make sure that no one likely to give unfriendly or potentially dangerous evidence would be heard.
Pigot selected his witnesses, but the Master of the Success, who had been on watch at the time of the collision, was now in hospital at Jamaica, the Gunner was also at Jamaica in a prize, and the ship had had only one lieutenant on board at the time.
Captain Pigot’s cabin in the Success was prepared as a courtroom, and the day after Sir Hyde issued his order the Commodore and two captains arrived on board the frigate with all due ceremony. With their clerk taking the minutes, they began the inquiry. On either side of the cabin, looking like a squat bulldog, was a 12-pounder cannon, the barrel gleaming black on its buff-painted carriage. The light from the skylight overhead was diffused by the white canvas awning stretched over the quarterdeck and poop, but where it streamed in unshaded through the stern windows it was harsher, giving more than a hint of the heat outside. The cabin was low—a man of average height had to duck and hunch his shoulders to avoid hitting his head on the beams. The cabin bore signs of Pigot’s occupation—a white-handled, light cavalry sword hung from a hook in its scabbard; a brass speaking trumpet, bell-mouthed, and highly polished, hung nearby; and a telescope sat in its rack. The silverware on the sideboard showed Pigot was not a poor man.
The Commodore ordered Captain Pigot to be called in, and the clerk first read out Sir Hyde’s order to hold the inquiry, followed by Mr Jesup’s petition and the accompanying certificates. Pigot had been busy writing in the hours before the inquiry, and when asked for a statement describing his side of the affair he handed Commodore Duckworth several sheets of paper covered in his large handwriting.
This was then read out to the court. Headed ‘Circumstantial account of the American ship Mercury running on board the Success,’ it said that Pigot had been asleep at 1 a.m. on July 1, when he was wakened by the Master calling out Tut your helm hard a’starboard or you will be on board of us’. Pigot said that while he was dressing he heard the Master ‘repeat these words very distinctly four or five times; and when the ship he was hailing had approached so near as to make it impossible for her to wear clear of the Success’s quarter, I likewise heard him repeatedly call to them to throw all a’back’. [Thus stopping the ship.]
The other ship, the Mercury, was close to the wind on the larboard tack, said Pigot, while the Success and the rest of the convoy were on the starboard tack [the Mercury was approaching the Success from the frigate’s right-hand side]. The Mercury ‘struck the Success with all her sails full on the starboard beam, her bowsprit passing through the Success’s main shrouds’.
Pigot added that ‘Fortunately for both the wind was slight, and not much swell. Our people were immediately employed endeavouring to clear the two ships.
‘I must here observe that to the best of my knowledge and belief they did not cut away more of the rigging or anything else belonging to the Mercury than was absolutely necessary to disengage the two ships from each other. I, as well as the officers of the Success, repeatedly called to the people on board the Mercury… pointing out many other necessary steps to be taken to prevent her yards catching the rigging of the Success… I can confidently say that from the time she was first hailed until she struck the Success and during the time she was on board her, not a soul belonging to the Mercury made the smallest effort (in the first instance to avoid it) nor afterwards in endeavouring to clear the ships of each other.’
Pigot listed the damage to the Success, and said that although it blew a strong easterly wind next day he saw the Mercury ‘carry as much sail as any other ship, and to be one of the first beating into Port au Prince’. He recalled that on the morning before the collision the officer of the watch in the Success ‘hailed this ship and cautioned her against keeping so near us, as she had narrowly escaped several times falling on board of us,’ and added that ‘the circumstances already mentioned, added to the many instances I have been witness to and experienced, of the incivility of the Americans to His Majesty’s ships officers, and the partiality shown by them to our enemies, led me firmly to believe the Mercury’s running on board the Success was not accident but design’, so that the Success would be damaged and would be forced to leave her convoy at the mercy of the French privateers from Leogane.
‘So firmly was I impressed with this idea, which was strengthened by their want of exertion in endeavouring to clear the ships… that passion overcame my reason, and I am sorry to acknowledge, on the Master of Mercury coming on board the Success, I immediately ordered him to be punished by the boatswain’s mate with the end of a rope; however,’ Pigot admitted, ‘I now feel sensible that in the heat of passion I was led to exceed much the bounds of propriety by inflicting that or any other punishment of the kind.’
It must have taken a great deal of effort on Pigot’s part publicly to admit having been even that much in the wrong; but he was almost certainly acting under advice—advice which told him that without a complete apology for the flogging it would be impossible for the Admiralty to avoid a trial. However, Pigot qualified his statement by adding: ‘I feel it equally necessary for my own justification to declare on my word of honour (and I may say if further proof is wanting I can call on the officers and ship’s company under my command to certify) the circumstances as related in the American papers is for the most part—particularly by that relative to the severity of the punishment inflicted—fraught with the greatest falsehood and malice, and I can take it upon myself to say I do not believe the Master of the ship would himself have taken any notice of it, had he not been urged to do so by the Americans at Port au Prince with the hope of extorting money from me, as they offered to come to compromise, but gave out it should not be for any small sum.’
As soon as his statement was read, Pigot handed Commodore Duckworth a list of his witnesses. The first one was the Success’s First Lieutenant, William Hill, who described the collision and continued, ‘The Master of the Mercury then said we had better take his ship and destroy her, than to leave him in that situation, and murmured greatly at our people when on board [the Mercury] assisting him to get clear of us: he likewise said to our people when on board his ship that he was fearful of their stealing from him. On that expression Captain Pigot called him on board and… desired him to remain aft on our quarterdeck.… During the time we were employed clearing the ships of each other, the Master of the American still murmuring and abusing our people on board his ship, Captain Pigot directed me to send two boatswain’s mates aft, and ordered them to thrash him, and I suppose he received about twenty strokes with a rope’s end on his back.
‘Captain Pigot then ordered him into the jolly-boat, at that time alongside, to go on board his own ship. When going down the ship’s side, he [Jesup] swore and said he would pay his Mate for that, and thought himself very well off in escaping so well.’
The three officers forming the court then questioned Lieutenant Hill. ‘Do you recollect Captain Pigot giving directions to his people to cut away the Mercury’s jib and foretopmast-staysail and bring them on board the Success to make themselves trowsers?’ they asked. ‘I did not hear it,’ said Hill.
‘Is it your opinion, as a gentleman, officer and man of honour, that the cause of the Mercury’s getting foul of the Success arose from negligence and inattention, or appeared to be from design?’
‘It appeared to happen from negligence and inattention,’ said Hill, ‘as that ship was frequently hailed and no person answered…’
‘Did Captain Pigot express any apprehension that the American ship had acted by design, to disable the Success?’ asked the court.
‘Captain Pigot did express those sentiments to me immediately on the Master of the Mercury going from the Success, and likewise in the morning watch, being then opposite to the enemy’s post of Leogane.’
The next witness was the Surgeon, Mr John Crawford, who told the court that Captain Pigot had said the American ship might have intended to disable the Success, and he had ‘mentioned a circumstance which had happened to the trade [i.e. merchant ships] we had last convoyed to Port au Prince, of a gunboat coming from Leogane and attacking a brig in a calm, not more than two gun-shots off…’
‘Do you know,’ inquired the court, ‘that Mr Jesup… was so cruelly beat on board the Success as to be nearly bereft of his senses?’
As a medical man, Crawford was of course an expert witness; but more important was his considerable experience in patching up men after they had been flogged on Captain Pigot’s orders. ‘I do not think so,’ said Crawford, ‘and I heard the punishment, and did not consider at the time it could injure him materially.’
With this assurance ringing in their ears, the court adjourned for the day, and when they met again their first witness was a young master’s mate, Mr John Forbes, who had been on deck at the time of the collision. In answering the stock question whether Jesup was beaten in such a manner as nearly to have deprived him of his senses, Forbes said no: he had received from twenty to twenty-four strokes, ‘and in going into the jolly boat said that he would be damned if he did not give his Mate the same’.
Finally the name of Thomas Jay was called: he was one of the two boatswain’s mates who had actually administered the ‘starting’ to Jesup. Did he give the American such a severe beating, inquired the court, that the man was nearly deprived of his senses? ‘No I did not,’ declared Jay.
‘What sort of rope was it that you gave the strokes with?’—‘It was a piece of one of the main ratlines, cut for the purpose of disentangling the ships from each other.’
The court—which had already read in Jesup’s petition that Pigot was to blame for the collision—had now heard Pigot put it squarely on Jesup, denying the American’s story that he was forcibly taken on board the Success. And although Pigot said he thought Jesup deliberately tried to disable the Success, his four senior witnesses had all considered it was an accident.
The court when it met again did not take long to draw up its written report, which was soon on its way by boat to Sir Hyde on board the Queen, to be followed later by the minutes of the inquiry evidence.
For both the Commander-in-Chief and his hot-tempered captain the findings were not unsatisfactory. The Mercury, the report said ‘instead of being run foul of by His Majesty’s ship Success, was from negligence and inattention, or from wantonness and design, evidently run on board the Success, when it might have been avoided if the person directing the Mercury had only complied with the seamanlike suggestions offered to him by the Master of the Success.…
‘After this extraordinary act was committed it fully appears… that the two ships were extricated from the alarming situation… with most officer-like dispatch by the crew of the Success, under the directions of Captain Pigot, and in the performing of the essential and momentous piece of service, it does not appear that any wantonness in destroying the sails and rigging of the ship Mercury was committed… or any kind of plunder authorized by Captain Pigot, or any language such as might appear indignant to the nation the vessel belonged to, used; nor was the said Mr William Jesup seized and brought on board of the Success by force, but came on board without being touched.…’
‘We must’, continued the court, ‘give due praise to Captain Pigot’s conduct thus far in the proceedings, but we must (as Captain Pigot in his statement of proceedings doth) most truly lament that the agitation and torment produced in his mind by this act of negligence and inattention, or wantonness or design, had so put him off his guard, as an officer and a gentleman, that he did improperly and in a manner not to be justified, direct the said Mr William Jesup to be punished with some stripes with a rope’s end across his shoulders, though it does not appear that in this act there had been the least premeditation, as there were no orders for stripping the said Mr William Jesup, nor does he appear to have been so confined as to prevent him using his endeavours to avoid the strokes by moving about.…
‘We therefore feel that Captain Pigot’s situation was a very particular one, and trust it will clearly and evidently appear that the warning given to the Mercury on the morning previous to the accident, as well as the Master’s again hailing her directly antecedent to her running on board of the Success, had impressed Captain Pigot’s mind with a full conviction that it was committed by design, which with his admitted and known zeal and ardor [sic] for His Majesty’s service, and considering his honour and character as an officer blended in the protection of the vessels under his convoy, which had he been disabled would most probably have been captured…had created such warmth and irritation in his mind, as by the impulse of the moment to make him lose sight of what he owed to Justice and his own character: but it appears to us as evident during the whole transaction that Captain Pigot had not in his thoughts the most distant idea of any national offence, or disrespect to, the States of America, and that act could only be applied to the individual aggrieved, and consequently we experience great distress of mind that Mr Liston, His Majesty’s Minister in America, should in an extract of his letter, say that the complaints of acts of injustice and insult committed by His Majesty’s naval officers against American citizens continue and increase, as with great truth and confidence, we can assert during our service in this country [the West Indies] the reverse has been the case…’
Sir Hyde, after reading the report, wrote to the Admiralty that he had the honour of transmitting the minutes and result of the inquiry, ‘and trust that however unjustifiable [Captain Pigot’s] conduct may appear to Their Lordships, they will be of opinion with me, that it is proved to be far, very far, more favourable than what has been represented either by Mr Liston or the party aggrieved, and most sincerely hope that His Majesty will be graciously pleased, when the papers are laid before him, to see and consider it in the same manner or light as I do’.
His Majesty’s views were never recorded; but it is certain neither he nor Sir Hyde knew that in a file at the Admiralty containing official letters from captains was one from Pigot, dated two years earlier and written within a month of him obtaining his first command, the sloop Swan. Pigot complained to the Board of ‘the insolent conduct of the master of the Canada, West Indiaman, towards me’. The Swan was part of the escort of a convoy which included the Canada, and the senior officer of the escort ordered Pigot to ‘enforce the sternmost of the merchant ships… to carry more sail and attend to his signals’. But, complained Pigot, ‘I received for answer from the master of the Canada that he would make what sail he thought proper and desired me to fire at him at my peril… Upon my firing a shot across his forefoot [i.e. bow] he set his maintopgallant sail and made use of some insolent language…’
Then, wrote Pigot, a few hours later, when the sloop was lying-to reefing sails, the Canada collided with her, ‘and I am strongly of opinion purposely’. All the time Pigot and his men strove to free the two ships, ‘the master of the Canada stood upon the bowsprit of his ship and addressing himself to me made use of the most insolent and provoking language…’ (The letter is shown opposite page 113.)
The Secretary of the Admiralty noted on the letter, ‘Sent copy to the Master of Lloyd’s Coffee House’ for the Canada’s owners, hoping they would not condone such behaviour. By chance the next letter written by the Secretary referring to Pigot concerned the Jesup affair.
Apart from the official aspects of the Jesup affair, the episode had caused Sir Hyde considerable personal distress because of all the officers serving under him, Hugh Pigot was one of his favourite captains: indeed, the young man’s father had once been the Commander-in-Chief of that very station. However, the Admiral had no way of knowing—until he received their reply in three or four months’ time—whether or not the letter he had just written to the Admiralty pleading in the young man’s favour would have any effect. There was undoubtedly a very definite risk that Pigot would be court-martialled and cashiered to placate the Americans, the King and the Opposition in Parliament, or even the First Lord of the Admiralty.
This delicate situation had also produced an urgent operational problem for the Admiral: he had written his letter on January 24, but a convoy already assembling at the Mole was due to sail for England on February 14, and the Success had to be one of the escorts because she was under Admiralty orders to return to England.
But with Pigot involved in a scrape, Sir Hyde clearly regarded it as an inopportune time for him to return to England: once there he would have no champion and no one to shelter him from the immediate and direct wrath of the Admiralty, Parliament and the newspapers. Undoubtedly Pigot was safer in the West Indies: whatever the Admiralty decided to do, Sir Hyde could up to a point argue and temporize for a considerable time. With letters taking weeks to cross the Atlantic, he could delay things long enough for tempers to cool and for the whole episode—at least as far as Parliament and Press were concerned—to have been forgotten.
But the Success herself had to sail for England: that could not be avoided. Fortunately there was an easy solution—Pigot could exchange ships with another captain. Sir Hyde as Commander-in-Chief had full authority to agree to such an exchange—though he could not force it on anyone. By chance there was a captain commanding a frigate of the same size as the Success who was quite willing to change: he was Philip Wilkinson, of the frigate Hermione.
While there is no surviving documentary evidence which says in so many words that Sir Hyde arranged the exchange solely to keep Pigot in the West Indies the motive is obvious, and it is known that up to a few days before the convoy was due to sail, Pigot expected to go to England in the Success, and his crew were aware of this. Then suddenly the exchange was arranged, and Pigot told more than a score of his men (while appealing to them to transfer with him to the Hermione) that he was disappointed that he would not be going to England with the Success. That Sir Hyde was deliberately protecting Pigot appears to be the only possible explanation—although one for which written evidence is unlikely to be available.