WHEN Mr Southcott and the rest of the loyal Hermiones arrived back in England in the Alfred, the five senior men had to face the customary court martial which was ordered to ‘inquire into the causes and circumstances of the loss of His Majesty’s ship Her-mione’, and try them ‘for their conduct respectively so far as may relate to the said ship’.
The trial was held on board the Director at Sheerness, and among the vice-admiral and nine captains forming the court was Captain William Bligh, a man who already had considerable experience of mutiny, both at the Nore the previous year, when his crew were among the first to order their officers to leave the ship, and in the Bounty ten years earlier.
The court heard the story of the mutiny and decided that the five men—Southcott, Searle, Price, Casey and Moncrieff—were acquitted ‘of all blame on the occasion of the loss of His Majesty’s late Ship Hermione, or of the murder of the said Captain and other officers…’
However, there were to be many more courts martial over the next ten years before the last of the Hermione’s mutineers could feel himself reasonably safe, and we will follow the fortunes of the rest of the men as they were caught in various parts of the world and brought to trial.
A fortnight after Benives, Hill and Herd were hanged at Cape Nicolas Mole, and six months after the mutiny, three more Hermiones were caught in the West Indies. They were Captain Pigot’s cook, John Holford, with his young son, and James Irwin, the Irishman from Limerick. After the two Holfords had sailed in the open boat from La Guaira to Cumaná, they signed on in a ship going to Jamaica. As soon as they landed both father and son went to the authorities and gave themselves up. The father was taken before Mr Algernon Warren, one of Kingston’s justices of the peace, where he made a long and detailed sworn statement. A copy was immediately sent to Sir Hyde Parker, who found it so interesting that, as he wrote to the Admiralty, ‘from its being full and circumstantial on this bloody tragedy’, he was enclosing a copy for Their Lordships.
James Irwin had signed on in an American ship bound for New York, but unfortunately for him she had not left the Caribbean before the British sloop La Tourterelle came in sight and ordered her to heave-to and wait for a boarding party. The lieutenant in charge was interested only to see if there were any British subjects on board to impress into His Majesty’s service—and he selected Irwin. According to Irwin, as he was being ‘read in’ La Tourterelle’s commanding officer asked him if he was ‘One of the Hermiones’, and ‘I told Captain West that I did belong to the Hermione in the time of the mutiny’. Captain West in his letter to Sir Hyde said, ‘I detected him’.
The two Holfords and Irwin were tried together at a court martial on May 23 on board the Brunswick. Presiding for the first time at an Hermione court martial was Sir Hyde’s second-in-command, Rear-Admiral Richard Rodney Bligh, who had presided at the trial of Lt Harris over the Ceres episode. Most of the captains forming the court had known Hugh Pigot well, and among them were Man Dobson and John Crawley sitting at their third Hermione trial, and John Loring at his second.
Three officers who had left the Hermione before the mutiny—John Forbes, Lt Harris, and the former boatswain, Thomas Harrington, who was by then second master of the Thunderer—gave evidence of identification; but the main prosecution witnesses were John Mason and John Brown.
The verdict the court reached was reasonable and just: that is quite clear from the minutes and was later confirmed by information from many other sources. Irwin, the court announced, was guilty of mutiny and deserting to the enemy in the Hermione, but the charge of murder was not proved. He was therefore sentenced to be hanged, but ‘it appearing he took no direct part in the mutiny,’ the court recommended him as ‘a proper object of mercy’. The Holfords, father and son, were found not guilty of any of the charges.
But the effect of the court’s findings on Sir Hyde was remarkable: because the men had not been sentenced to death he became so angry with Rear-Admiral Richard Bligh, the court’s president, that he at once wrote to the Admiralty ‘to request Their Lordships will remove Rear-Admiral Bligh from under my command, or that Their Lordships will allow me to resign from a situation which must be extremely unpleasant, finding myself so ill-supported by the person next to me in command, in keeping up the discipline and subordination of this particular squadron of His Majesty’s Fleet entrusted to me’.
The verdict of the court martial ‘strikes me with astonishment, from its inconsistencies, three men [the younger Holford was twelve years old at the time of the mutiny] brought to a trial implicated most indubitably in the same crimes, and from the nature of those crimes are accessory [sic] in all the horrid crimes, which were committed on that melancholy occasion, unless proofs had been brought of their endeavours to resist the mutineers, or, that upon their landing, as some did, declare their innocence by a request to be deemed prisoners of war: but opposite to this is the conduct of such criminals when it is proved by the minutes of the court martial that each of the three received twenty-five dollars paid by the Spanish officers, as rewards for their crimes. Still more marked is the criminality of the prisoner Irwin, by his voluntary assistance to fit out the ship as a ship of war against His Majesty, this very act was certainly an act which would have proved fatal to a subject independent of the other atrocious crimes of which he was an accessory.’ He ignored the fact that the Holfords had given themselves up voluntarily.
It was this type of warped and bigoted reasoning—if that is not too kind a word for the Admiral’s mental processes on this occasion—that throws so much light on Sir Hyde’s personality. No reasonable man—particularly after reading the evidence given at the trial—could condemn the seamen for not resisting when none of the Hermione’s officers, with the exception of Pigot and Foreshaw, put up any physical resistance.
Both the prosecution witnesses, Brown and Mason, gave specific evidence on oath that neither of the Holfords took part in the mutiny or helped work the ship to La Guaira; Mason added that Holford did not help refit the ship in Puerto Cabello—on the contrary, the Spanish put him in prison for refusing. When Mason was asked by the court, ‘Did any act, word, or deed of the prisoners lead you to believe they took any active part in the mutiny or murders?’, Mason replied ‘No’. Brown declared that necessity compelled the men to work, while Mason, asked by the court ‘Could the prisoner Irwin have got his subsistence by any other means than by working at the fort or on board the Hermione?’ said ‘No, I don’t think so’. As far as the twenty-five dollars payment was concerned, Sir Hyde already had the word of the Captain-General of Caracas that the payment was not a reward but ‘in order that they might clothe themselves and relieve their wants’. The minutes told Sir Hyde quite clearly that the men could not have lived without working.
Having decided that Holford was guilty—‘implicated most indubitably in the same crimes’—Sir Hyde wrote in the very next paragraph of his letter to the Admiralty that ‘Holford the Elder had made a declaration before a magistrate of the transaction of the mutineers, which from its being corroborated in many strong circumstances by Brown’s evidence and declaration upon a former trial, I look upon it as the truth, as far as man’s memory will allow, of facts being stated after such a lapse of time…’ Holford’s declaration (which Sir Hyde had seen before the trial and was also included in the minutes) was a description of his own activities as well as those of the mutineers, and showed quite clearly that he took no part whatsoever in the mutiny. Sir Hyde regarded this as the truth—yet demanded that his second-in-command be sacked, threatening to resign if he was not, because he did not find Holford guilty, and sentence him to death.
The crux of Sir Hyde’s argument appears to be contained in his reference to the men being ‘implicated most indubitably in the same crimes’, and therefore accessories ‘in all the horrid crimes…’ In other words the fact they were on board the Hermione at the time of the mutiny made them mutineers.
However, having told Their Lordships why a man and a boy who had been found innocent should have been found guilty irrespective of the evidence, the Admiral had by no means finished his tirade to the Admiralty: ‘Three of the members of this court [Dobson, Crawley and Loring] had signed the sentence of death passed upon the prisoners Benives, Herd and Hill, who were [previously] executed and gibbeted according to the sentence.… I can [therefore] only attribute the difference of conduct upon this solemn business to the difference of feelings of the two presidents, the one [Captain Bowen at the Benives trial] having all the energy for imposing discipline by the terror of exemplary punishment in this momentary crisis, when it becomes more than ever necessary for officers’ exertions to subdue the licentiousness and bloodthirsty ideas of seamen, and which from the supineness of the president [Rear-Admiral Bligh at Holford’s trial] in the discussion of the court martial he has been head of, would rather be encouraged’.
It is clear that Sir Hyde was not particularly concerned with justice, and that Bowen stood high in his estimation because he had handed over three men for hanging and gibbeting—-one of them being a man both prosecution witnesses said was blind at the time of the mutiny—while Bligh should be sacked for not producing more material for the gibbets, irrespective of whether the men were guilty or innocent. It perhaps explains why not one question was asked at the Benives trial about the capture of the Spanish cartel ship and its arrival at Port Morant Bay, a thousand miles from her intended destination, and Benives’s blindness was ignored.
‘Imposing discipline by terror’—that, perhaps, was the clue to Sir Hyde’s behaviour: he could think of only one way of driving thoughts of mutiny out of his men’s heads, and that was to hang and gibbet. His letter to the Admiralty shows better than anything else why Captain Pigot had never received moderating advice or reproof from the Commander-in-Chief about the cruel way he treated his men, first in the Success and then in the Hermione: he was maintaining discipline in the manner that Sir Hyde understood and approved. It apparently never crossed that worthy Admiral’s mind that good leadership—which included making sure that the men were well treated—was the best, indeed the only, antidote to mutiny: that despite the quality or quantity of the food issued, good captains could and did have contented ships’ companies.
When Sir Hyde’s wretched letter arrived at the Admiralty on July 11, the First Lord took no action over Rear-Admiral Bligh or over Sir Hyde’s threat to resign. However, he raised the matter of James Irwin’s reprieve with the King, and later, on a turned-up corner of the court’s covering letter—which Sir Hyde had of course forwarded—was written: ‘Acquaint Admiral Bligh that upon laying the sentence and the minutes of the court before the King, His Majesty has been pleased to grant his [Irwin’s] pardon on condition of his being transported to New South Wales for the rest of his life, and that he is to send him to England as a prisoner by the first opportunity’. (When the Adventure arrived at Portsmouth from the West Indies in January 1799, her commanding officer wrote to the Admiralty that he had Irwin on board. He was ordered to put him on board the Porpoise ‘that he may be conveyed to the place of his destination’.)
The last three Hermiones caught in the year 1798 were Adam Lynham, who had been born in Dublin forty-eight years earlier and had adopted the cumbersome alias of ‘Isaac Hontinberg’, Thomas Charlton, aged twenty-six from Stockton, who had become ‘William Thompson’, and John Coe, from Norfolk, who was one of the afterguard and had not changed his name.
The trial of Lynham and Charlton was held on board the York at Port Royal, Jamaica, on August 7, when both men were found guilty of murder, deserting with the ship, and handing her over to the enemy. Only the court’s judgment has survived, so it is not known how they were caught. However, the log of Sir Hyde’s flagship records on Friday, August 10, ‘Answered the signal for punishment; at 8 two seamen, lately belonging to His Majesty’s ship Hermione, were hung on board the Albion for mutiny and piracy; and their bodies gibbeted on one of the cays’.
The men’s bodies were in fact hung in chains from gibbets erected on Gallows Point, in full view of all the warships anchored in Port Royal. They were soon to be joined by some of their former shipmates at this, the last resting place of some of the Caribbean’s most distinguished pirates and murderers.
The third man, John Coe, had been captured in dramatic circumstances. After leaving La Guaira he had signed on as a member of the crew of the French privateer La Fleur de Mer. When she captured an American brig, the Ring Boston, bound from New York to New Orleans, the privateer’s captain chose Coe to be one of the prize crew to sail the brig down to the French base at Port Dauphine, Santo Domingo.
A few days later a strange sail was sighted from the brig—and from the intercepting course she was steering, it was obvious to the prize crew that she was interested in the Ring Boston. As she approached Coe soon recognized her as a British frigate—the 32-gun Aquilon, in fact—commanded by Captain Thomas Boys. who soon forced the Ring Boston to heave-to. As the frigate’s boarding party approached, some of the privateersmen, including John Coe, lowered a boat and started to row away in a frantic but hopeless attempt to escape. They were soon caught and lined up under a Marine guard in the Aquilon, and it did not take Captain Boys long to discover that among the prisoners was Coe, one of the notorious Hermiones.
The Aquilon landed him at Port Royal, where both Sir Hyde Parker and Rear-Admiral Bligh were flying their flags. Because the ‘officer next in command to such Commander-in-chief had to preside at a court martial, Sir Hyde was forced to disregard his dislike for Bligh and order him to try Coe on board the Brunswick on December 8. Among the captains were Man Dobson, who was attending his fifth Hermione trial, and a newcomer to the judicial aspect of the Hermione story, Captain Edward Hamilton, who was soon to provide its exciting finale.
The court’s verdict was a foregone conclusion: Coe was guilty of deserting to the enemy by running away with the Hermione and delivering her up to the enemy; not guilty of murder; and guilty of ‘being taken in arms against His Majesty’. The third charge would have been enough to condemn him, and two days later Coe’s body was swinging in chains from a gibbet on Gallows Point, beside his two former shipmates.
Up to the end of 1798, fifteen months after the mutiny, seventeen Hermiones had been caught and court-martialled. Eleven had been hanged, one transported, two had turned King’s Evidence, and three were acquitted. It will have been noticed that the last two courts martial were held at Port Royal, Jamaica, where Sir Hyde had his flagship. The reason for this was that the British had evacuated Santo Domingo in the previous October, signing an agreement with Toussaint l’Ouverture, the leader of the Negroes who had rebelled against the French. At a time when the French held almost the whole of Europe from the Texel in northern Netherlands to Leghorn in the Mediterranean, ‘the folly of mortgaging the flower of the nation’s manhood for sugar islands had at last dawned on the authorities’, in the words of Sir Arthur Bryant. ‘In five years,’ he added, ‘100,000 young Britons had been killed or permanently disabled by the Caribbean climate.’
So the year 1799 began—a year in which Britain’s chances in the war looked a good deal brighter, thanks to the victory won the previous August by a young admiral some sixty places lower down the flag list than Sir Hyde Parker. The admiral was, of course, Horatio Nelson; the victory was the Battle of the Nile, which had resulted in the capture or destruction of eleven French battleships.
The year was also to see the capture of ten more Hermiones. The first three were caught together at the beginning of the year serving in an American ship, which they had joined after leaving La Guaira for Jacmel in a Danish schooner. Two of them were also former Successes, Henry Croaker, who had been born at St Anthony-in-Roseland, Cornwall, within sight of St Anthony’s light, the welcoming beacon for Falmouth; and Thomas Ladson, from Chatham, who was then twenty-nine years old. The third man was Peter Stewart, who had been transferred to the Hermione from the Adventure a month before Mr Southcott.
Admiral Bligh again presided at the trial on board the Brunswick at Port Royal on January 15, and the court found Croaker and Ladson guilty on the charges of mutiny, deserting to the enemy and murder, and sentenced them to be hanged and their bodies gibbeted. In acquitting Stewart they said that it appeared ‘he was incapable from his state of health of assisting or repressing the mutiny’.
If any one person’s evidence saved Peter Stewart it was that of young Holford. The first question the court had asked the boy after he was sworn in as a witness was: ‘How old are you?’—‘Thirteen years last August’.
After he had said that he knew the three accused men, Peter Stewart asked him: ‘Do you recollect that at the time of the mutiny that I was not able to go to the head [the rudimentary lavatory in the bows, or head, of the ship] without assistance, and if I was blind at night so as to be deprived of seeing a star?’
‘Yes,’ answered the boy, ‘I do recollect you could not go without being led, your not being able to walk, but crawling with your hands and knees along the deck on your backside.’
Stewart, in his written defence, added that he had been in hospital for three months at La Guaira, and when he recovered tried to give himself up to the Spanish authorities as a prisoner, ‘and was informed they would make no prisoners but would give me a pass to any place I wished to go’.
Henry Croaker, in his written defence, said, ‘I served three years in the Success with Captain Pigot, also five or six months in the Hermione, and had no reason to dislike him so as to have acted as has been stated…’ Ladson’s defence said more or less the same thing. It is noteworthy that none of the three men could write: their written defences were signed with a cross. Two days after the trial Croaker and Ladson were hanged and their bodies joined those of Lynham, Charlton and Coe on the gibbets at Gallows Point.
The next Hermione trial took place in England when in March a letter from the Board of Admiralty addressed to ‘Charles Morrice Pole Esquire, Rear-Admiral of the Red and Second Officer in Command of His Majesty’s Ships and Vessels at Portsmouth and Spithead’, ordered him to assemble a court martial on board the Gladiator ‘as soon as conveniently may be,’ to inquire into the loss of the Hermione and try ‘John Williams, John Henison (alias John Slushing), James Parrott [Perrett], John (alias Richard) Redmond [Richard Redman] and Jacob Folliard (alias Jacob Fieldge)…’ (Folliard was Fulga, whose name was so spelled in the Hermione muster but also appears elsewhere as Fidtge, Fuldge and Fieldge.)
The five men, like Chaucer’s Pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, each had a strange story to tell of how his travels had brought him on board the Gladiator to face his accusers. However one of them had a perfect alibi—but to prove it he had to confess to having committed another crime which could also result in being hanged.
The man was Fulga. His problem was that he had not been on board the Hermione at the time of the mutiny because he had deserted while she was being careened at the Mole just before sailing for the last time. But the muster book recording that he had deserted had gone with the ship on her last voyage.
When Fulga had deserted at the Mole he had managed to escape completely. He changed his name to Jacob Folliard, and all went well for eighteen months, until one day he was arrested in Portsmouth as a former Hermione, and accused of mutiny and murder. Would a court believe his story? Would there be a prosecution witness who remembered that he had deserted?
The second of the accused men was John Williams, a Liverpool man who had served in merchant ships trading out of that port for more than twenty-five years. Then, at the beginning of the war, he was caught by a press-gang and forced to serve in the King’s ships. He was a simple man: a sailor who became caught up in a series of circumstances which were beyond his control or comprehension.
The story of how he came to be a member of the Hermione’s crew is a good example of how the Navy was able to use merchant seamen, as a reserve to be drawn on in wartime. As early as 1781 Williams had been a gunner’s mate in the Rumbold, and he served in her for three years until the Master, Mr Thomas Molyneux, bought another merchantman, the Ned. He took Williams with him as Gunner, which was a promotion. Both men were still in the Ned when the war against France began, but it was not until he transferred to the Mercy that Williams’s trouble began.
The Mercy left Liverpool in the spring of 1797, bound for the West Indies, and arrived at Port Royal in July. Unfortunately for Williams the Hermione had also just reached there, and Pigot was under orders from Sir Hyde to take in ‘such things as you might be in want of’. Pigot was, as usual, in want of seamen, and before leaving sent out press-gangs. When they boarded the Mercy the lieutenant in charge chose John Williams: a merchantman’s gunner was a valuable man, and despite all the pleas of the Mercy’s Master, he took Williams off to the frigate.
Thus John Williams, a mariner of Liverpool, was to become involved in the mutiny, It will be recalled that Williams was sent to hospital after the ship arrived in La Guaira because he was lame, and that when Price, the Carpenter, had seen him he had cried and declared he would go back to England and give himself up. We left Williams in company with James Duncan signing on in a Danish brigantine bound for Santa Cruz.
The story of what happened to him after that is told in his petition to Admiral Sir Peter Parker, the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth. Since much of the story has proved to be correct when checked against official documents, it seems reasonable to accept the rest as also being true.
The Danish brigantine had left La Guaira with a Spanish cargo and was bound for a Spanish port, so that she was a legitimate prize for the British privateer which intercepted her later and sent her into Tortola. There Williams was allowed to go on shore, without anyone realizing he was an Hermione. He saw a Liverpool merchantman called the Mona in the harbour and discovered that he knew the Master, who offered to give him a passage back to Liverpool. Williams gladly accepted, and two days later the ship sailed. The lameness which had resulted in him being sent to hospital in La Guaira was still not cured.
The rest of the story is best told in Williams’s own words (he refers to himself as ‘your petitioner’): ‘On his arrival at Liverpol Mr Fourshaw [Foreshaw], father of Lt Fourshaw who was thrown overboard at the time of the insurrection, called on him to make an inquiry respecting his son, and to whom he faithfully related every part of the said transaction that came to his knowledge, likewise that as his [Williams’s] leg was not yet perfectly whole he wished to go to an hospital for chirurgical assistance before he delivered himself up to the law, which he intended to do as soon as he was pronounced out of danger and fit to undergo the rigour of confinement, which met with Mr Fourshaw’s approbation, and on the day following your petitioner went into hospital, where he remained five days, when he delivered himself up to the Mayor [of Liverpool], who then confined me to prison and wrote to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to acquaint them therewith.
‘Their Lordships in a short time afterwards sent an order to the Mayor to send him hither [Portsmouth] to stand his trial…’
The latest surviving muster book of the Hermione was of course the one ending July 7, 1797, and the names of anyone joining (or leaving, as Fulga’s case showed) the ship after July 7 would be entered in a new book which the mutineers destroyed. John Williams was impressed on July 8, and knew about this. He continued: ‘Your petitioner begs leave to observe that as he never was on board of any of His Majesty’s ships before and consequently unknown to any of His Majesty’s officers, and likewise as no person in Europe ever knew of his ever being on board the Hermione he might, if guilty, easily elude justice, but being innocent, indeed incapable of taking the least share in the said horrid conspiracy and insurrection, he thought it a duty he owed to God and his country to come home with all possible expediency, and by throwing himself under the protection of the law and giving a faithful account of what came to his knowledge, to clear himself in the most satisfactory manner…
‘… That your petitioner hath a wife and three sons, all children, at Liverpool, whose sole dependence is under God on the fruit of his industry and through his being confined reduced to great pecuniary and mental distress from which nothing but his being brought to a speedy trial can extricate them…’
The third accused man was Richard Redman, the former Success who had murdered the Boatswain and spent the rest of the night of the mutiny with the man’s widow. With the fourth of the men charged, James Perrett, the tearful butcher, Redman had left La Guaira in a Spanish ship bound for Vigo, in northern Spain. The ship had successfully evaded the British warships in the Caribbean and crossed the Atlantic before, on June 22, 1798, only a few miles from her destination, the British frigate Aurora came in sight. Within a short while the Spaniards hauled down their colours and when the frigate’s captain, Henry Digby, sent across a boarding party, John Perrett promptly gave himself up and pointed out Redman as another former Hermione.
The witnesses against the five men (it is not known how Slushing was captured) included Mr Southcott, (who had been given a very poor appointment, that of Master’s Mate in the 74-gun Magnificent), Midshipman Casey, the Carpenter, Richard Price, and Steward Jones. The trial itself lasted three days and the evidence they gave was detailed. Richard Redman heard Mr Southcott describe how the former quartermaster’s mate had hit him over the head with a handspike—and later given him wine and water to drink. Casey said he had seen Redman brandishing a white-hilted sword and Steward Jones told how Redman had made him get liquor from the Captain’s store-room. He described how he had heard Redman, Nash and Farrel arguing whether or not to kill the Doctor and Purser. Later, he said, he heard Redman ‘Swear by the Holy Ghost that the Boatswain should go with the rest…’ and that then ‘Redman remained in the cabin with the Boatswain’s wife, and I saw him no more that night’.
John Williams was glad to hear Mr Southcott say that he had been ill with bad feet at the time of the mutiny, and Richard Price confirmed that he had been lame. But Jacob Fulga was the most relieved of all, because Southcott testified that he ‘was in the Adventure with me and was sent to the Hermione about the same time I went to her. He behaved very well until the ship was hove down at Cape Nicolas Mole and there deserted and was not on board the Hermione at the time the mutiny took place.’ Fulga was lucky that he had not been brought to trial in the West Indies, since the prosecution witnesses there, Brown and Mason, might not have known that he had ‘run’.
Midshipman Casey declared that he had not seen James Perrett active in the mutiny, and Price in evidence said that Perrett had come to him afterwards crying, saying he had a wife and family in England and that ‘he was sorry for what had happened’. Steward Jones also said he ‘saw him frequently crying’. However, as mentioned earlier, Southcott had different views about the Hermione’s former butcher', saying that Perrett acted as a steward after the mutiny, ‘giving things out’, and he ‘always appeared very cheerful, speaking very disrespectfully of the officers who were killed, saying what big rogues they were’.
No one had a good word to say for the fifth accused man, John Slushing: although Southcott had not seen him during the mutiny, he appeared to be very active afterwards and ‘in the confidence of the mutineers’, while Price declared ‘he seemed to be cheerful with the rest of the ship’s company, drinking as they did’. The sharp-eyed Jones saw him frequently in the company of two men ‘who were the chief ringleaders in the murder of the officers’, and heard his name called when the Captain’s silver and money was being shared out.
When the time came for the men to make their defence, Slushing declared he was down below asleep at the time of the mutiny, and by the time he got on deck ‘the murders had been done and the ship taken’. James Perrett claimed he was ‘as innocent as a child unborn’, and pointed out that in addition to giving himself up to the lieutenant from the Aurora, he had also told him that Redman was on board.
Richard Redman had written his defence, as befitted a man with a claim to ‘some learning’, and he read it out to the court. The document, preserved in the minutes, is as bizarre as it is revealing, and started off with a long dissertation on his affection for Captain Pigot—how he had joined the Success and had been quickly promoted. ‘So far Captain Pigot befriended me with whome I could sail the world round with…’ When Captain Pigot transferred to the Hermione and included Redman’s name among those he wanted to take with him, ‘with gratitude I couldn’t deny him with any properity [sic] for he behaved to me very kindly…’
Redman (whose spelling has been retained) described differences between the Hermiones and the former Successes over the question of Pigot’s favouritism. ‘There was a continual murmuring among the Hermoins ships company concerning his followers and the usuage they had before Captain Pigot came on board.’ Granting a day’s leave for the former Successes to spend prize money resulted in the Hermiones being ‘Charegrined or disatisfied by granting favours to them that came with Captain Pigot’.
He had been the lookout on the starboard bow at the time of the mutiny, he said, and the first he knew of it was when he heard men shouting ‘The ship is ours’ and seeing them come on to the quarterdeck. ‘I was stopt by some of the mutineers making some dreadful expressions, and knowing I had some learning to do as they ordered me…’ Later he heard a noise below and found the mutineers were ‘haveing [heaving] the Boatswan before them, a great many in number. I went to them and said in the name of God what do you main to coramitt murder, with that some of the most desperate mad answers we think you will go the same way if you do not keep a silent tongue…’
His reason for going to Vigo later in the Spanish ship, he explained, was that ‘if she got there to leave her and go to Lisbon and to give myself up to the English Council’ [Consul].
The court did not take long to reach a verdict: Redman and Slushing were sentenced to death, and Williams, Perrett and Fulga were acquitted.
Among the minutes of the court martial is an inventory of all of Captain Pigot’s silver and valuables, and, although not signed, it was probably drawn up by his former steward, John Jones. There is also a list of the names of five men who received watches, and those who received sixteen dollars, or silver. On it is written: ‘Theys is the peple that received the property of the Capston Head, September the 24th 1797.’
One of the captains forming the court was Sir Edward Pellew, later Lord Exmouth, attending his only Hermione trial. His biographer refers to the fact—mentioning only one mutineer—that the man’s crimes were aggravated since Pigot had ‘brought him up from a boy and treated him with much kindness and confidence’, and writes: ‘The court being cleared, Sir Edward proposed that sentence should be executed immediately. The circumstances of the case demanded, in his opinion, unusual severity, which might be expected to have good effect upon the Fleet; while there was every reason to conclude, from the prisoner’s demeanour before them, that if delay were allowed, he would meet his fate with hardihood which would destroy the value of the example.’
This presumably refers to Redman, though he was only one of two sentenced to death. The biographer continues: ‘The court at first questioned their power to execute without the warrant of the Admiralty, but this was quickly settled by reference to the Act of Parliament.
‘The president then declared he could not make the order. “Look here,” said he, giving to Sir Edward his hand, trembling violently and bathed in cold perspiration. “I see it and I respect your feelings,” replied Sir Edward, “but I am sure that such an example is wanted, and I must press the point.”
‘“Well,” he replied, “if it be the unanimous opinion of the court, it shall be done.” It was agreed to, and the prisoner was called. Though sure that he must be condemned, he entered with a bold front; but when he was informed that he would be executed in one hour, he rolled on the deck in an agony. “What! Gentlemen,” he exclaimed, “hang me directly! Will you not allow me a few days—a little time—to make my peace with God?”
‘The whole Fleet,’ continued the biographer, ‘was appalled when the close of the court-martial was announced to them by the signal for execution; and at the end of the allotted hour, the wretched criminal was brought up to undergo his sentence.’
The next Hermione to be caught was James Barnett, the youngster who had pounded salt at Macuto and then gone to Cumaná with the two Holfords and James Bell in an open boat to work on board the Spanish xebec. From there Barnett had gone on alone to the nearby port of Barcelona and joined a Danish ship. Eventually he ended up as a member of the crew of the American schooner Polly which, after going to Green Island, Jamaica, cleared for Boston.
However the frigate Maidstone, commanded by Captain Ross Donelly, was patrolling the Strait of Florida, through which the Polly had to pass. Donelly was regularly stopping all neutral ships—particularly American—to search them for British seamen, and when he ordered the Polly to heave-to Barnett was one of the three men taken off by the boarding party.
Barnett was ‘read in’, and the Maidstone continued her cruise, leaving the Polly to continue her voyage to Boston. During the next two or three weeks the Maidstone took several more men from various neutral ships and then returned to Port Royal. Donelly later reported to Sir Hyde Parker that having ‘taken some unprotected men out of different American vessels, and having reason to suppose that some of them were mutineers late belonging to His Majesty’s ship Hermione, I applied to Captain Dobson [commanding the Queen, in which John Mason, John Brown and the two Holfords were serving] to send on board the ship I command the proper persons to ascertain whether they were so or not.’
That evening Lt Charles Boyce of the Queen took Brown, Mason and the elder Holford across to the Maidstone to see the men. By the time they arrived on board it was dark, and the newly-pressed men were lined up. In the light of candles, the three men walked along the line, and John Holford picked out Barnett—who was using the alias John Barton—saying he was a former Hermione. However Brown and Mason both said they did not recognize him.
Barnett was put under arrest and the three men returned to the Queen where Lt Boyce questioned them again. ‘Holford still said he knew him. I asked him what name the prisoner went by on board the Hermione: he replied “John [sic] Barnett”. Brown and Mason knew there was a person of that name but did not recollect him sufficiently to identify him’.
Three days later James Barnett was tried on board the Hannibal, and both Mason and Brown in evidence stuck to their story until Mason eventually admitted that ‘I have seen the prisoner before, but do not recollect where’, and Brown said, ‘He looks to me that I have seen him several times, but where I cannot recollect’.
Holford, therefore, was the only witness against Barnett; but although the prosecution’s whole case against Barnett rested on him, Holford’s evidence was favourable. He described how they had been together at La Guaira, and how eventually they had gone together to Cumaná in an open boat.
‘Did you at any time of the mutiny or afterwards see the prisoner take an active part in it?’ asked the court. Holford said, ‘No, I did not’.
‘Did he ever express himself to you in any manner upon the subject?’—‘I heard him say that he was sorry for what happened, and was weary in his mind about it, as he could not venture with safety home, not knowing the consequence of what might happen if he was taken.’
‘Did the ringleaders point out, by any violent conduct, those that did not incline to obey their order?’
‘I heard several voices in the course of the night saying that every man belonging to the ship… should attend to their stations, or otherwise they must put up with the consequences that might follow.’
After several more questions, the court asked, ‘Were the men you call salters forced by the Spaniards to work, or was it voluntarily?
‘Being in necessity they were obliged to work for a livelihood,’ replied Holford. ‘All the work I saw the prisoner do was pounding salt.’
‘Had he given himself up as a prisoner, would he have been supported by the Spanish Government?’—‘I believe so, the same as the other prisoners.’
‘Was that generally known among the Hermione’s men?’—‘No,’ said Holford.
Barnett was then called upon to make his defence. After describing how he had kept out of the way during the mutiny, he said that in La Guaira and later at Puerto Cabello, ‘without money, which was taken from me during the night, I was driven to great distress, and had it not been for the kindness of Holford I must have starved’.
He concluded with a description of his wanderings from when he left Holford at Cumaná until he joined the American schooner Polly ‘and out of which I was pressed by an officer of the Maidstone’.
The court decided that the charge—deserting to the enemy by running away with the Hermione, and murder—were proved, and sentenced him to death; but ‘in consideration of his youth and inexperience at the time, being then only fifteen years of age,’ the court recommended him to mercy. They explained to Sir Hyde that having found him guilty the Articles of War did not leave it ‘in the power of the court to pronounce any other sentence’.
Sir Hyde noted in his journal, ‘Ordered the Provost Marshal to keep him in custody ‘till the King’s Pleasure is known’. The pardon eventually arrived on November 23, four months to the day after the trial.
An entry that Sir Hyde made in his journal on August 4, a few days after the reference to Barnett, showed that even though nearly two years had passed since the Hermione mutiny, there was still a danger in the West Indies of the crews mutinying and seizing their ships. ‘Ordered Captain Smith… to assemble a court martial to try Timothy Donavan, Edmund Lawler and Hans Peters, belonging to the Volage, for forming a conspiracy, with an intent to murder the captain and officers when at sea and delivering the ship into the hands of the enemy.’
By now twenty-four former Hermiones had been tried, excluding the officers and Fulga; but apart from Thomas Leech and Richard Redman, the main leaders had so far escaped the Royal Navy’s net. However, one of the most important was at last cornered, and the full weight of Britain’s diplomatic influence was working to bring him to trial.