AT NOON on March 1, 1798, more than five months after the mutiny, Sir Hyde Parker was cruising in the Queen with the Valiant and Carnatic in company. Up to that moment the Admiral had not succeeded in capturing even one of the Hermione’s mutineers: his only knowledge of what had happened in the frigate came from the captain of the San Antonio. He still believed that of the officers only the surgeon survived.
Shortly after noon the Queen’s lookouts reported a strange sail in sight. Sir Hyde gave his orders, and the signal to chase, with the Valiant’s number and the bearing of the strange sail, was hoisted and a single gun fired to draw Captain Crawley’s attention to it.
Soon both the strange ship—which had taken to her heels—and the Valiant were out of sight of the flagship. Five hours later the Valiant was hove-to windward of the chase which, Captain Crawley could see, was a 16-gun French privateer.
Since one broadside from the Valiant would have reduced her to so much driftwood, the privateer hauled down her colours without firing a shot, and a lieutenant with a boarding party took possession. She was La Magicienne from Curaçao, and within a few minutes her crew were lined up ready to be ferried across to the Valiant as prisoners. However, one of the prisoners, who spoke perfect English, told the lieutenant he wanted to speak to the Valiant’s captain. The reason he gave was described by Captain Crawley in a report to Sir Hyde.
‘It being hinted to me that James [sic John] Mason, late carpenter’s mate of His Majesty’s ship Hermione, was one of the corsair’s crew and was desirous of relating what he knew concerning the mutiny, murder and piracy committed on board His Majesty’s ship Hermione, I thought it proper to avail myself of the opportunity of bringing to light such an atrocious act.’
He called to his cabin as witnesses his two senior lieutenants, and Mason was inarched in under a Marine guard. Captain Crawley began questioning him and was startled to find that Mason had not been the only former Hermione on board La Magicienne: there were four others among the prisoners, now in the Valiant, all intent on keeping their identity secret. The questioning was interrupted while Anthony Mark (who was Antonio Marco), John Elliott, Joseph Mansell (Joe Montell) and Peter Delaney (Pierre D’Orlanie) were weeded out from the other prisoners and put in irons under the watchful eye of the Valiant’s Marines.
Captain Crawley finally had a written statement drawn up in the form of a deposition which Mason signed. In it he named nine officers and the midshipman killed by the mutineers, and listed the other officers and men who were prisoners of war at La Guaira. He added that several other Hermiones were on board another privateer, L’Espoir.
Rejoining Sir Hyde Parker next day, Captain Crawley gave him Mason’s deposition and his own covering letter. Sir Hyde, delighted at the prospect of hearing for himself at first hand all the details of the murderous affair, ordered Mason to be brought over to the flagship. After a prolonged questioning, the facts that Mason had given were drawn up as another statement, which Mason signed. (The deposition is shown opposite page 240).
They were just the facts that Sir Hyde needed—particularly the names of ‘the leading characters’, whom Mason listed as Turner, Nash, McReady, Farrel, Bell and Lawrence Cronin. There had been only one woman on board, said Mason; no firearms had been used (i.e. no shots had been fired); he ‘saw a great quantity of blood in the Cabin window and at the afterhatch leading from the Gun Room’; and he had heard ‘repeated groans and screeches from the officers when murdering [sic]’. The colour of the Hermione’s hull, he added, was black with white mouldings.
But if Sir Hyde knew of the harsh way Captain Pigot had habitually treated the majority of his men—and it is inconceivable that he was unaware of it—then the last four lines of Mason’s statement were significant. ‘The night before the mutiny two men [but he lists three] fell off the mizen topsail yard and were killed, their names are Francis Statten [Staunton], a Negro boy Peter, another (name unknown). There was punishment for several days previous to this and no appearance of mutiny.’
As soon as Sir Hyde satisfied himself that Mason, if not necessarily innocent, was the least guilty of the five prisoners, he decided he would use him as the main—and indeed the only—prosecution witness against the other four.
However, even before Sir Hyde signed the order for the court martial he was horrified to discover that the crew of at least one other frigate, Captain Rolles’s Renommée, had been on the verge of a similar sort of mutiny while at sea.
Sir Hyde later reported to the Admiralty that ‘a plot was discovered on board His Majesty’s Ship Renommée just in time to prevent its execution. The intention was to perform the same tragedy as that in the Hermione, by murdering all the officers and carrying the ship into Havanah.’
Sir Hyde added that, ‘The man who first warned Captain Rolles of his danger is one of so insignificant character as not fit to be rewarded by promotion. I therefore submit to Their Lordships’ consideration whether a pension for life might not be attended by a general good as an example to hold out for the encouragement of men coming forward upon similar occasions.’
While the four would-be mutineers of the Renommée were kept in prison at the Mole under a heavy guard, Sir Hyde gave orders for the court martial of the four actual mutineers from the Hermione, appointing Captain Bowen the president and sending him three documents—copies of Captain Mends’s letter from the Diligence, Captain Crawley’s report on the capture of the men in La Magicienne, and John Mason’s deposition. The other members of the court were Captains Edward T. Smith, John Ferrier, Man Dobson and John Crawley, and the trial began at 9 a.m. on March 17 on board the York. Mr William Page acted as Deputy Judge-Advocate and brought the Articles of War, the Bible, a Crucifix and law books with him.
As soon as Captain Bowen gave the order the four prisoners, manacles securing their arms, were marched in under a Marine guard. Once the witnesses were all present, Mr Page stood up and read out Sir Hyde’s order to try the men ‘upon an information contained in a letter from Captain Mends… and also a deposition of John Mason, late Carpenter’s Mate of His Majesty’s Ship Hermione… representing the said Anthony Mark, alias Antonio Marco, John Elliott, Joseph [Mansell Montell] and Peter Delaney, alias Pierre D’Orlanie, were a part of the French privateer La Magicienne… and were actually on board His Majesty’s said Ship Hermione at the time the mutiny, murder and piracy were committed on board her; and for being taken in arms against His Majesty’. (On this and subsequent occasions the real names and aliases were transposed in the charge.)
After Page had administered the necessary oaths, he read out Captain Mends’s letter. To the two Italians, the Frenchman and the Man of Kent the scene must have appeared entirely unreal: the drone of Page’s voice as he read Mason’s deposition; the cold, impersonal glances of the five captains in full dress; the solemn ritual of the trial itself—all so remote from that wild night six months earlier when they had shouted and cheered and wielded cutlasses and tomahawks to kill the tyrannical Pigot and secure their liberty.
What had then seemed just and reasonable was now given a sinister turn: slinging Hughie over the side had become murder and mutiny: going into La Guaira with the Hermione was piracy: signing on in La Magicienne was being ‘in arms against His Majesty…’
Three of the four men might have protested that they owed no allegiance to His Britannic Majesty: D’Orlanie could have been accused by the French Government of being in arms against France, while as far as Marco knew, his allegiance was to the Republic of Genoa (although in fact three and a half months earlier it had become the Ligurian Republic). Montell’s birthplace in Italy is not known, but his allegiance was to one of more than a dozen states. Yet had the men made that protest they would have been reminded of the oath of allegiance they had taken when, as pressed men or volunteers, they had first entered the Royal Navy—an oath to ‘His Sovereign Lord King George the Third’, promising to serve him faithfully ‘in defence of his person, Crown and dignity against all his enemies and oppressors whatsoever’.
All except the first of the witnesses were ordered out of the court, and the four accused sailors recognized the man in lieutenant’s uniform who held the Bible while Page administered the oath as Lt John Harris.
‘Did you know any of the prisoners as belonging to the Hermione?’ asked Captain Bowen.
‘Yes,’ replied Harris, ‘since the 17th of June last, when I left her, they all belonged to her.’
One witness was probably lucky not to be manacled with the other four men. He was John Kelly, a Catholic, who took the oath on the Crucifix before testifying that he had been in the Hermione on her last cruise until sent away in a prize. At the time he left, he said, the accused men were members of the crew.
A copy of John Mason’s deposition was then produced in court and the former Carpenter’s Mate signed it, whereupon ‘he was sworn in to give evidence against the prisoners’. Mason, who was thirty years old and came from Belfast, also swore on the Crucifix as a Catholic.
‘Inform the court,’ ordered Captain Bowen, ‘what you know of the transaction relating to the mutiny, murder and piracy which took place on board the Hermione.’
‘It was about ten o’clock at night,’ said Mason. ‘I was in my hammock and I heard the ship’s company cheering and saying that the ship was their own.… I went down between decks and saw the Gunner sitting in his cabin, stripped and crying; the Carpenter likewise. The whole cry of the ship was “Hand them up”, meaning the officers…’
From time to time Captain Bowen and other members of the court interrupted with questions to clear up points as Mason went on to describe how the ship was taken to La Guaira. But he gave no evidence whatsoever about the role the four accused men had played in the mutiny, although he described how they had served with him later in the French privateer.
When the four accused men were asked ‘separately and severally’ if they had any defence to offer, they said they had none, and Captain Bowen ordered the court to be cleared. The onlookers left; the Marines closed in round the four prisoners and shuffled them out. The five captains did not take long to reach a verdict and decide on the sentence. The Deputy Judge-Advocate wrote it out in the time-honoured formula and the court was opened once again. The four men were marched in to hear Page read out the court’s findings.
‘At a court martial assembled and held on board His Majesty’s Ship York, Mole St Nicolas… the Court… having heard the evidence… and very maturely and deliberately weighed and considered the several circumstances… and the prisoners having no evidence to produce, or anything to offer in their defence, the court is of opinion that the charge of mutiny, murder and running away with His Majesty’s Ship Hermione and delivering her up to the enemy; and being found actually in arms against His Majesty and his subjects, on board La Magicienne, a French privateer, are fully proved…’ The four men were ‘to be hung by the necks until they are dead, at the yardarms of such of His Majesty’s ships, and at such times, as shall be directed by the Commander-in-Chief.
‘And as a further example to deter others from committing, or being accessory to, such shocking and atrocious crimes, that when dead their bodies be hung in chains upon gibbets on such conspicuous points, or headlands, as the Commander-in-Chief shall direct…’
Unfortunately the first half of the court’s verdict was sheer rubbish. The men had not been charged with ‘mutiny, murder and running away with His Majesty’s said Ship Hermione and delivering her up to the enemy’; yet the court ‘fully proved’ this non-existent charge. The charge in fact said ‘and were actually on board… at the time the mutiny, murder and piracy were committed on board her’, which was a completely different thing.
Secondly, even if they had been charged with mutiny, murder, running away with the ship and delivering her up to the enemy, the court never heard one word of evidence to prove it. Witnesses testified the four men were on board the Hermione as late as September 4, seventeen days before the mutiny, while Mason’s oral evidence in court never once mentioned any of the quartet by name. The only evidence linking them with the mutiny in any way was in Mason’s written deposition, which said the four men ‘were actually on board His Majesty’s Ship Hermione at the time of the above-mentioned murder, mutiny and piracy’.
This, of course, covered the actual charge drawn up by Sir Hyde; but men cannot be condemned to death for crimes not mentioned in a charge. However, in this case there is no need to waste any sympathy on the men, since justice was done, albeit by accident. They were four of the worst mutineers; and the second part of the charge, ‘being found actually in arms against His Majesty and his subjects’, was fully proved, and for that alone the death sentence was inevitable.
As soon as Sir Hyde received the minutes of the court martial, he ordered some large posters to be printed. Beginning ‘At a court martial…’ they went on to describe the trial and ended up with the stark wording of the sentence. As soon as the posters were ready (see illustration opposite page 241), they were pasted up in ports the length and breadth of the Caribbean.
The execution of the four men was arranged to take place on board the York and Sir Hyde ordered a chaplain to attend them. The chaplain was Mr Scott, the Commander-in-Chief’s secretary, and the episode is described in his biography. ‘When he was in attendance on them after they were condemned, they exhibited so much good feeling that he was greatly interested for them. They were, moreover, all young, and in person the finest models of seamen that he had ever seen of any nation.’
Promptly at 9 a.m. on the 19th a yellow flag was run up at the mizen peak of the York and a gun fired. Boats came across from all the other warships. ‘Nothing could be more distressing to Mr Scott than the necessity of being present’, wrote his biographers. ‘He described it as awful. The firing of the signal gun—the smoke rising to conceal the death struggles—and, as it cleared off, the lifeless bodies swinging from the yardarms.’
Soon the bodies were lowered and taken on shore, where hastily erected gibbets were waiting in a conspicuous spot—well in sight of every ship that entered the anchorage. The bodies were slung from the gibbets in chains, so that the skeletons long remained to be a grim warning to would-be mutineers.
Later that day a document was handed to Sir Hyde: Joseph Montell had left a confession, written an hour before he was hanged. In it he admitted—according to a report which Sir Hyde sent to the Admiralty—that ‘he was a principal, and [also] the principal in the massacre of the officers in that ship’. It went on to say that he and three other men (whom he named as Bell, Draytenham and Farrel), obtained a bucket of rum and then, with ‘about four or five or six more’ went into the Gunroom in the darkness ‘and were the murderers of those in command’. Having then gone forward again, they later ‘burst a second time into the Gunroom and fully completed the murder’. In the confession Montell admitted hitting the First Lieutenant on the head with an axe; and then later replying to Captain Pigot, who cried out for mercy, ‘You have shown no mercy yourself, and therefore deserve none’, after which he ‘ran him through with a bayonet or a musquet’.
But the last paragraph was the most interesting: ‘He believed that Elliott, the Quartermaster of the Hermione… saved the life of the Master of the Hermione, standing sentry over him sick in his berth the whole transaction, and that Delaney [D’Orlanie] who was executed with him suffered innocently.’
Next morning the four seamen of the Renommée were brought to trial, and by nightfall the sentences had been pronounced—three were to be hanged and one was jailed for three months.
With the information about the Hermione mutiny supplied by John Mason and Joseph Montell Sir Hyde could write a second and more specific letter to the Spanish authorities. Instead of addressing it to the Captain-General, he again wrote it to the Governor of La Guaira.
‘Providence having put me in possession of five of the pirates and murderers of His Britannic Majesty’s late Ship Hermione, whose confession before their execution has furnished me with the names of most of the principal actors and murderers in that horrid transaction,’ he said, he was now writing ‘not only from a supposition you must have by this time received instructions from your Court,’ but also because His Excellency ‘must also be convinced of the impropriety which all Europe must view the politicks [sic] of the Court of Spain in protecting the persons of pirates and declared murderers from that exemplary punishment which it is the general interest of all nations to bring such atrocious villains to; and I am still surprised that a nation so marked in history for its national honor [sic] and justice should have adopted the contrary line of proceedings in confining the five officers that escaped the massacre, and allowing the perpetrators of these bloody acts to be at large, and even giving them rewards.’
He concluded that ‘I do therefore, Sir, once more demand of Your Excellency in the name of His Britannic Majesty the bodies of these men marked in the enclosed list, as principals in the piracy and murder… as also… those gentlemen named as lately officers, and that Your Excellency will deliver them up to the officer charged with this dispatch.’
Sir Hyde’s demand was certainly written with a full charge of indignation, but unfortunately it went off with only a slight fizzle when it reached La Guaira. The reason was that on April 4, four days before Sir Hyde had dictated it, Captain Ricketts had again arrived off La Guaira in the Magicienne and, apparently acting on his own initiative (no orders appear among Sir Hyde’s papers), sent his First Lieutenant on shore under a flag of truce with a letter which Ricketts had written to the Governor, claiming ‘the murderers of Captain Pigot and his officers’, adding that he would ‘return within three days for an answer’.
The Captain-General’s reply was sent to the Governor to await Rickett’s return. It said that ‘The Most Excellent Sir Hyde Parker’ had previously written demanding the men and claiming they had murdered their captain and part of the ship’s company, ‘the which was unknown at the time of the said frigate’s being received’. The King had approved of the reception of the men, but no reply had yet been received from Madrid in answer to Sir Hyde’s demand. At the time he first heard from Sir Hyde, Carbonell said, he had replied that he would communicate ‘with punctuality and despatch the resolution of the King my master’, and ‘when it comes to hand I will forward it to His Excellency with the least possible loss of time’.
The Magicienne was due to return for the reply on April 7 but did not appear until the 23rd, and when her First Lieutenant, John Maples, came on shore once again under a flag of truce he did not ask for it: instead he delivered Sir Hyde’s letter dated April 8, based on Mason’s deposition.
This was at once taken to Don Carbonell, who read it with some irritation, judging from his reply. He said he had answered Sir Hyde’s previous demand by saying that as soon as he heard from Madrid he would write again. ‘I am at a loss to know,’ he wrote primly, ‘whether or no this said answer has reached the hands of Your Excellency.’
Now Sir Hyde had demanded ‘some individuals… as being officers and others as being principally guilty in the murders said to have been committed on board that ship. In reply I am to inform you that those in the enclosed list considered at their own request as prisoners of war were sent with others not belonging to the said frigate on the 30th March to be exchanged at the island of Granada.’
As far as Sir Hyde’s other points were concerned, Carbonell declared that ‘Equivocal information has been given Your Excellency that some of the officers… had been imprisoned and others of the crew left at liberty and had had rewards given them. When I understood some disagreement had arisen amongst some of them I quartered them separately, which cannot be called putting them in prison; and I ordered money to be given to those who were naked in order that they might clothe themselves and relieve their wants, the which can with no little reason be called rewards.’ The list he enclosed gave the names of Southcott and the othe loyal men.
The next letter Sir Hyde Parker wrote to a governor was as forthrightly phrased as the others. However, this time the recipient was a Dutchman, not a Spaniard—Herr Johan Rudolph Lausser, the Governor of the island of Curaçao. ‘Having received information that Your Excellency with great propriety to the interests of all maritime nations has secured in confinement three of the pirates and murderers that were a part of His Britannic Majesty’s late Ship Hermione, and trusting that Your Excellency’s sentiments coincide with the general policy of making exemplary examples of those atrocious villains, I have sent His Britannic Majesty’s ship the Magicienne to demand in the King my Master’s name, the bodies of these three pirates.’
But poor Herr Lausser had done no such thing as put anyone in jail. ‘Some time ago some English sailors arrived here from La Guaira and Puerto Cabello, all provided with proper passports from the generals of those places… in order to be employed in the garrison service here,’ he replied, ‘yet on an assumption that these men might have participated in the piratical seizure of His Britannic Majesty’s ship the Hermione I was not willing to receive them, and therefore immediately ordered them to quit the island. However, as I did not know for an absolute certainty that they were the crew of the Hermione they were not arrested or detained.’