THE MAN described in official letters as ‘Sir Hyde Parker, Knight, Vice-Admiral of the Red and Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s ships… at and about Jamaica, etc., etc.’ was a widower of fifty-eight. As a commander-in-chief he was a competent administrator but (as events were to prove at the Battle of Copenhagen four years later) an indecisive and uninspired leader.
Like his protégé Hugh Pigot, Sir Hyde when a youngster had powerful interest to help him get to windward in his career: at the time he was appointed Commander-in-Chief at Jamaica he had reached the same position as his father, whose Christian name he also bore.
On the Jamaica Station Sir Hyde had little opportunity to distinguish himself in battle; but as we have seen, there were financial considerations which made up for any lack of martial glory. The mob’s cheers for a hero died as the sun set; but a few score thousands of pounds in the Funds continued to bear interest.…
For any commander-in-chief, one of the most important men on his staff was his secretary, and when he came out to the West Indies Sir Hyde had been fortunate in persuading a young parson, the Reverend Alexander John Scott, to become his chaplain and confidential secretary. Scott, then twenty-eight years old, was a keen bibliophile and had a remarkable talent for languages, speaking fluent French, German, Spanish and Italian. (He later became Nelson’s secretary, and it was in his arms that the great admiral was to die at the close of the Battle of Trafalgar.)
With only a tiny staff (Scott, some clerks and writers) Sir Hyde was always kept busy with a great deal of paperwork, particularly when a convoy or a packet was about to sail for England. There were always many official letters to write—to the Admiralty, Navy Board, Sick and Hurt Board, Pay Office and Victualling Office, among many others. Surveys and reports had to be made on sick ships and sick men; details of prizes captured, requisitions for shot, powder, provisions, masts and spars, rigging and paint—all these had to go through the Commander-in-Chief.
We have seen how a commander-in-chief could enrich his favourite captains by sending them to patrol areas where there was the best chance of finding prizes. In Sir Hyde’s own command at this time the plums were going to three young captains, William Ricketts, Robert Waller Otway, and Hugh Pigot. Ricketts had powerful interest to back him up—he was the nephew and heir of Admiral Sir John Jervis who, within ten days of Wilkinson and Pigot agreeing to exchange ships, was to win a great victory off the Cape from which he took the name of the earldom a grateful King bestowed on him, St Vincent. Otway was the son of a rich Irishman, Cooke Otway, of Castle Otway in Tipperary. Both these young men had considerable ability as well as interest. Nevertheless, an example of the advantage conferred by interest is a comparison of the tasks allotted to Ricketts and to Philip Wilkinson for the last two months of 1796—Ricketts in the Magicienne captured an 18-gun French corvette on November 1, a couple of coasters on November 9, two laden schooners on December 1, and a large sloop on December 3. During that time the Hermione had been at anchor at Cape Nicolas Mole or patrolling off Port au Prince, and had captured nothing.
On Wednesday, February 8, 1797, two days before Pigot and Wilkinson were due to exchange ships, the sun rising over the Black Mountains was hidden by low cloud and Cape Nicolas Mole was gloomy and humid. The crews of all the vessels in the harbour, both warships and merchantmen, were about to be treated to another public display of justice at work. Michael Supple, a seaman on board the 74-gun Valiant, had been found guilty of mutiny and Sir Hyde had directed that he should be hanged on board his own ship at 8 a.m. on the 8th.
A few minutes before eight o’clock, Captain Pigot appeared on the quarter-deck of the Success, and tucked under one arm was the familiar slim volume containing the Articles of War. At the same time, on board the Valiant, Michael Supple was led up on to the fo’c’sle by the Provost Marshal with a guard of Marines, followed by the chaplain.
Then the ship’s bell sounded the four double strokes for eight bells, 8 a.m. The ominous silence that had fallen over all the ships was suddenly shattered by the heavy thud of a gun firing on board the Valiant. The cloud of smoke which swirled up finally blew away in the wind, revealing Supple’s body hanging lifeless at the yard-arm.
On board the Success Captain Pigot—as did every other captain, including Wilkinson in the Hermione—then read to his crew the 19th Article of War, the one that Supple had broken, followed by an ‘admonition’ written and signed by Sir Hyde explaining why Supple had been executed, and warning them to take heed, because such punishment was the inevitable sequel to mutiny.
After half an hour Supple’s body was lowered from the Valiants yard-arm and the boats returned to their respective ships. In the Success the crew went back to their work and Captain Pigot walked below to his cabin, ordering that the Muster Book should be brought to him.
The reason why Pigot sent for the Muster Book was that he was preparing to transfer to the Hermione, and under the Regulations and Instructions a captain exchanging ships in the same port was allowed to take a certain number of men with him. Pigot could have his own cook, steward, clerk and coxswain—who were in effect his personal entourage—and another fourteen men, of whom five could be petty officers.
Pigot and Wilkinson no doubt made an agreement beforehand, because Pigot took more men from the Success than Wilkinson did from the Hermione: no doubt Wilkinson was prepared to help out Pigot, since seamen were so hard to find in the West Indies, while the Success would be paying off as soon as she arrived back in England.
So Pigot sat at his desk and read through the names in the Muster Table to refresh his memory, and started drawing up a list in his large and characterless handwriting. He was not taking his steward, so the first name was that of his cook and then his coxswain. He added nearly two dozen adults and two boys—one the cook’s son—to the list, and then sent for the First Lieutenant.
By this time every man in the Success knew from rumour that the ship was due to sail for England in a few days. For most of them England—the British Isles, at least: naturally meant home, and they must have been delighted at the prospect: many of them had been in the West Indies for two or three years. In reality it would make little change in their way of life: they were unlikely to be allowed leave—though women would be brought off to them by the boatload, and some of them might even be the legal, as well as self-proclaimed, wives of the men.
However, more than a score of them soon received a rude shock: as soon as the First Lieutenant arrived, Pigot gave him the list he had just drawn up and told him to send all the men named in it down to the cabin.
When they arrived—startled, no doubt, at this invitation to otherwise forbidden territory, for at the door to the captain’s quarters there was always a Marine sentry on guard—Pigot was affable. One of the men, describing the scene later, wrote (omitting all punctuation) that the Captain said: ‘My men I am going to inform you of my leaving this ship but I should be glad to go home as well as you but I dare say you know the reason* I would wish to carry you along with me if you are agreeable not that I can force you against your inclination so I’ll leave you for a day or two to consider.’
Pigot did not have to wait: all but two men agreed to go with him to the Hermione. But if Pigot was so cruel, why did these men, with two exceptions, agree? The answer is quite simple: Pigot had his favourites, in the same way he had his victims. In addition the men had prize-money owing to them, thanks to the Success’s previous good fortune, and if they went back to England under another captain they could say good-bye to the money.
They knew, however, that if they stayed with Captain Pigot he would make sure that he wrung the money out of the prize-agents—apart from any other consideration, he wanted his own two-eighths, and there was Sir Hyde Parker, waiting for his eighth. When the rates of pay are borne in mind—they had not been changed for a century: since the days of Charles II—it is clear that the lure of even £10 in prize-money was a big one, since it was almost a year’s pay for an ordinary seaman, who received 19s. a month.
A written statement by one of the men, Richard Redman, confirms these conclusions. The relevant passage (without any punctuation) comes immediately after his description of Pigot’s appeal for volunteers, referred to earlier, and gives his response: ‘With gratitude I couldn’t deny him with any properity [propriety] for he behaved to me very kindly in several respect even in every port he whuld endeavour to get whatever prize-money be due to us.’
Since Redman was one of the first to turn on Pigot a few months later, and a dozen more of the twenty-one adults were to be among the ringleaders in the Hermione plot, it would be fascinating to know exactly what made Pigot choose them from among the 175 men then serving in the Success. His list is another—and the most disastrous—example of his unerring instinct for picking the wrong men. Had the Devil been his advocate, Pigot could not have chosen his own executioners with more skill.
Since such a high percentage of the men were subsequently to become murderers and traitors, and because the Irish have—quite wrongly—been blamed by some naval historians for being the ringleaders, it is worth noting that of the twenty-one men twelve were English, three Irish, three Scottish, one a Manxman, and two American.
Among the more important men that Pigot took with him were his cook, John Holford, a mild-mannered, almost timid man of forty-four who came from Epsom in Surrey (Holford’s son, aged thirteen, was also in the ship, and usually helped wait on Captain Pigot at table); a boatswain’s mate, Thomas Jay, thirty-three years old and born in Plymouth; and his coxswain, Patrick Foster. Listed as ‘Foster’ in the Hermione’s Muster Table and ‘Forster’ in the Success’s, he was an Irishman—a ‘Patlander’ in the contemporary naval slang—born in Galway thirty years earlier. A captain’s coxswain held a curious position in a ship: a first-class seaman and responsible for the crew of the captain’s barge, which he always steered, he was also a personal and highly-trusted servant: a mixture of butler (though not valet—that was the steward’s job), bodyguard and major-domo.
In addition to the twenty-one petty officers and seamen, Pigot had also arranged to take with him to the Hermione a lieutenant, a master’s mate and a midshipman. The lieutenant was Samuel Reed, who had joined the Success in the previous July, and from his rapid—and apparently unmerited—promotion in the Hermione, he seems to have been one of Pigot’s favourites. The Master’s Mate was John Forbes, and the midshipman John Wiltshire, a Londoner who was eighteen years old and had been in the Success for only nine weeks. A midshipman often had some link with his captain—one of his family, or the relative of a friend or patron—but there is no indication of any such connection in Wiltshire’s case.
* If the seaman intended a full stop at this point it shows Pigot was implying they knew he was being kept in the West Indies as the result of unexpected orders, which would obviously have been the aftermath of the Jesup affair.