THE MASS of documents and the evidence of the eyewitnesses, whether given for the prosecution or the defence, can leave little doubt at this stage that the main reason for the mutiny in the Hermione was the unrestrained and cruel behaviour of her captain. Any attempt to blame Irish revolutionaries or English malcontents can only be made by apologists who are unable to accept that cruel officers existed and fail to realize that we are dealing with the worst mutiny in a ship of the Royal Navy.
There is one qualification: it was unfortunate for Pigot that among the Hermione’s crew there were men—like Nash, Elliott and Farrel—who had served for years without giving the slightest trouble but who were sufficiently spirited and ruthless when driven too far to plan a mutiny, and others—like Montell, Forester and Redman—who were good seamen but when subjected to the laws of the jungle became cold-blooded killers. Had there not been this element in the crew, and had the officers been more alert in the preceding days and made of sterner stuff, then the actual mutiny might have been avoided. There is no doubt the officers with the possible exception of Southcott, Casey and Foreshaw, do not emerge with much credit, although Pigot’s courage was never in question.
However, the shameful part of the Hermione’s story has now been told: the extraordinary and stirring finale will show that other young frigate captains had the daring of a Nelson or a Peltew; that while some seamen were prepared to murder their officers in an orgy of senseless slaughter, others cheerfully followed their captain to fight against odds of more than seven to one—and win.
The episode about to be described is little known, yet it is among the bravest, best-planned and most successful operations in British naval history. There were plenty of actions of a similar nature during the war against Revolutionary France. Most were gallant; few were so completely successful; none provided such vindication for the Royal Navy and its officers and men.
By an unfortunate coincidence the third young frigate captain to play an important role in the brief history of the Hermione was a harsh man, but one can forgive him much for his bravery and leadership.
In the autumn of 1799—at the time that Thomas Nash was being tried at Port Royal after being extradited from the United States—Edward Hamilton was twenty-seven years old. He was three years and 152 places lower on the post list than Wilkinson, and commanding the 28-gun Surprise. He came from a naval family—his father had been a captain in the Navy, receiving a baronetcy for his services, and the title had since passed to Edward’s elder brother, who was commanding the Melpomene.
There is a frank description of Hamilton by Admiral George Vernon Jackson who, recording in the calm of his eighties the period when he served as a young midshipman in the Trent under Hamilton, wrote of the ship that ‘as regards discipline and the general efficiency of her company, she was equal, if not superior, to any other frigate afloat; but these qualities had all been promoted at no small sacrifice of humanity.
‘No sailor was allowed to walk from one place to another on deck, and woe betide the unfortunate fellow who halted in his run aloft, unless expressly bidden to do so… ‘The “cat” was incessantly at work,’ continued Admiral Jackson. ‘The man who approached at walk when called by a midshipman, instead of running for his life, the penalty he paid for this offence was a “starting” at the hands of the boatswain’s mate.’
The Admiral added, ‘I should be loath to say what my opinion of Sir Edward Hamilton might have become had I stopped much longer in the Trent. As each day passed, so did I conceive new terrors of this man. A more uncompromising disciplinarian did not exist, or one less scrupulous in exacting the due fulfilment of his orders, whatever they were’. Hamilton was ‘one of those men who allow nothing to escape them. He could see through a plank a little farther than most of his fellow-creatures, and seeing, would follow up his observations with a pertinacity that defied interruption’.
Captain Hamilton had arrived in the West Indies in October 1798, thirteen months after the Hermione mutiny, in command of the Surprise. The next thirteen months provided him with a considerable amount of prize money and established him as one of Sir Hyde Parker’s favourite young captains, because in that period he captured, sank or burned more than eighty enemy ships.
At Port Royal, Jamaica on Thursday, September 17, 1799, a few days short of two years after the mutiny, Sir Hyde Parker wrote a significant entry in his journal:
‘Strong breezes and squally. Ordered Captn Hamilton to proceed with the Surprise and cruise between the Aruba [sic] and Cape St Roman (taking care to prevent his station being known at Curaçao) and use his utmost endeavours to capture the Hermione frigate loading at Porto Cavallo [Puerto Cabello] and intended to sail early in October for the Havana’.
When Hamilton received these orders he went to Sir Hyde, according to one usually reliable source (although there is no other supporting documentary evidence) and proposed that he should send in boarding parties to cut out the Hermione, instead of capturing her on the high seas. For this purpose he requested an extra twenty seamen and another launch to carry them, but Sir Hyde ‘thought the service too desperate and refused the request’.
During the previous few days the Surprise had been taking on stores in preparation for what would probably be a long cruise, and on September 18, just before the flagship hoisted the Surprise’s number and the signal for a lieutenant, another 485 pounds of fresh beef was brought on board. More casks of water were ferried out in the launch as the lieutenant collected Captain Hamilton’s written orders from Sir Hyde.
Next morning the frigate sailed and as the pilot took her from the fairway out through the reefs scattered across the entrance to the harbour, the crew could see Gallows Point, where from the gibbets six skeletons hung in chains, the mortal remains of John Coe, Adam Lynham, Charlton, Croaker, Ladson and, put up only a month earlier, Thomas Nash. By 7 a.m. the pilot had left and the frigate steered south-eastwards, leaving the Blue Mountains on her port quarter: she would be more than fifty miles out to sea before she put the great range below the horizon. On board there was the usual day-to-day routine: a seaman, John Mitchell, was given a dozen lashes for being dirty; Mr Thomas Made, the acting Master, noted in his log at noon the ship’s course, her latitude, and the fact that they had 51⅔ tons of water left.
Captain Hamilton planned to make a landfall on the Spanish Main at the Bay of Honda, 300 miles west of his patrol area. He would then follow the coast as it trended north-eastwards, thus putting himself in a good position to capture any Spanish merchantmen trading between local ports, and also to intercept the Hermione if she had already sailed from Puerto Cabello on her long voyage to Cuba.
The Surprise arrived off the Spanish Main a few miles west of the Bay of Honda on October 1, eleven days out from Port Royal and, shortly after she had turned north-eastwards to follow the coast, her lookouts spotted a schooner at anchor in a large, shallow and almost land-locked lagoon called El Portete. The water was not deep enough for the frigate so Hamilton sent in his two cutters and the gig to cut her out.
Within the hour they were back and by mid-afternoon the frigate was hoisting in the three boats again while the schooner (the Nancy of twenty-five tons, French and loaded with a cargo of coffee) was hove-to nearby, being inspected by the frigate’s Carpenter to see if she had been damaged in running aground. He reported she was quite seaworthy, and within the hour she was heading for Port Royal with a prize crew of a midshipman and a few seamen on board.
The Surprise spent the next few days making her way along the coast under easy sail. On Sunday, October 13, the crew were mustered; finally on Monday at noon the frigate arrived at the western end of the fifteen-mile-wide channel she had been ordered to patrol. On the larboard bow the south-western tip of the island of Aruba was in sight, looking like a series of low hummocks, while to starboard the jagged ridge of hills forming the mainland came to an abrupt stop at Cape San Roman. Here, if Sir Hyde’s intelligence report had been correct, they would intercept the Hermione. They could afford to wait, for the Surprise still had thirty-six tons of water remaining in her casks: she had used sixteen tons in twenty days, so there was enough on board to last for at least another forty days, while watering from the shore, as demonstrated earlier by the Hermione and Diligence, presented no difficulties.
The island of Aruba belonged to the Dutch: it is small and lies more than forty miles to the westward of the larger island of Curaçao, also Dutch owned and where (for this was before Governor Lausser had handed it over to the British frigate Néréide) the young Hermione William Johnson was working as a clerk to the American consul.
Captain Hamilton, paying scant attention to Sir Hyde’s instructions that he was to take care ‘to prevent his station being known at Curaçao’, steered for Aruba, and on Monday, October 14, his lookouts reported that a sizeable schooner was at anchor in the Roads of Port Caballos, the main village on the island, Hamilton decided she would make a good prize and gave orders that as soon as darkness fell the Surprise would tack close in to the Roads and then send in the boats to cut her out.
By 11.30 p.m. they were back alongside and the schooner was hove-to nearby with a prize-crew on board. She was an 80-ton Dutch vessel, the Lame Duck, armed with ten guns and loaded with a cargo of what Captain Hamilton listed as ‘sundries’. Her capture had not, however, been a bloodless victory—Lieutenant John Busey, the frigate’s acting First Lieutenant, who had led the expedition, had been very badly wounded. He was carried below for the Surgeon, Mr John M’Mullen, to tend him; but at midnight, despite all that M’Mullen could do, he died.
Next day, Tuesday, October 15, the Surprise began the important part of her task of patrolling the wide channel, It was more difficult than it seemed, because Hamilton had a strong west-going current to contend with. The Hermione on leaving Puerto Cabello, which was to the eastwards, could make a very fast passage through the channel with a fair wind and the current under her, and she would be hard to spot at night. And since he had cut out the schooner, if he was to carry out the second part of his orders—not to allow the Dutch at Curaçao to know his station—Hamilton now had to ensure that no craft knowing the Surprise’s position left Aruba bound for Curaçao, which was forty-three miles to the eastwards. If the Spanish received the slightest hint that there was a British warship in the channel, there was nothing to stop the Hermione avoiding it by passing north of Aruba—the extra distance involved going north of the island made no difference since it was more than two thousand miles from Puerto Cabello to Havana in Cuba.
The rest of the week passed without incident: the Surprise tacked back and forth across the channel. On Sunday she captured a io-ton Spanish schooner, La Manuela, which had a crew of six men and a cargo of plantains. Neither cargo nor craft had any value, so the men were taken off and La Manuela was sunk.
Early on Monday, when the Surprise had been in the area a week, Hamilton was either becoming impatient or afraid the Hermione had passed north of Aruba. He therefore decided to make for Puerto Cabello to find out if she was still there. In the back of his mind, no doubt, was another plan for capturing her. The Surprise had been at sea for twenty-seven days. It has been suggested that she was getting short of water and supplies, and this was the reason for Hamilton steering for Puerto Cabello. However, her log shows that on Monday she had more than thirty tons remaining of the fifty-two tons she had taken on board at Port Royal. She could stay at sea without watering for at least another month.
By sunset Puerto Cabello was twelve to fifteen miles away to the south-east, and Hamilton tacked ship. For the moment he did not want to approach any closer: from his present position he could catch any vessel leaving the port, unless she was lucky enough to find a very favourable slant of wind. This became even more important next day when Mr Made, the Master, noted in his log that at noon there were ‘light airs inclinable to calm’. By midnight—and for the next seven hours—he was reporting ‘Calm, [ship’s] head all round the compass.’
Daylight on Wednesday, October 23, soon brought hails from the lookouts: there was a sail to the south-west, heading for Puerto Cabello, and apparently she had her own private slant of wind. This was the one thing that Hamilton had feared—she was bound to spot the Surprise and warn the Spanish.
With the Surprise wallowing in a slight swell, her sails hanging limp, there was only one way of intercepting the other vessel: ‘At 6 sent the boats manned and armed after her,’ said the log. It would be a long row, but there was no heat in the sun yet, and apart from the swell waves, which were long and low, the sea was calm.
An hour later, when the boats were still just in sight, like tiny beetles in the distance, the Surprise’s lookouts spotted wind shadows on the water, coming from the south-west. The frigate’s yards were hurriedly trimmed round to catch the first puffs and soon the sails gave a half-hearted shake, then another, and quickly the ship had way on—just enough to leave behind any rubbish thrown over the side by the cook’s mate. The chase was now dead to windward and it took the frigate five hours of patient tacking to catch up with her boats, which were then called alongside and hoisted inboard. By that time, however, the wind had turned into a fresh breeze and the Surprise was soon up with the chase, from which a boarding party returned to report that she was a Danish schooner bound, as Wilkinson had suspected, to Puerto Cabello from Curaçao. Having given that much information, and being almost within sight of his destination, the Danish skipper was disinclined to obey Captain Hamilton’s request for him to steer away from Puerto Cabello for the time being, and he only obliged after, as Mr Made noted in the log, the Surprise ‘fired a shot to make her tack from the land’.
However, Denmark was neutral, and there was little that Hamilton could do to prevent her going into port if she wished. The shot across the bow might well put off her captain for twenty-four hours, but after that…
In Puerto Cabello, His Most Christian Majesty’s frigate Santa Cecilia, the subject of Captain Hamilton’s thoughts, was ready to sail. The long squabble between the Captain-General and the Intendant had not, of course, been resolved—Leone was awaiting a reply to his protest to Admiral Langara that the Captain-General’s critical report had been wrong.
In the meantime the Spanish admiral commanding the squadron at Havana, Cuba, had given orders for the Santa Cecilia to be prepared for sea. The intelligence report which had reached Sir Hyde Parker several weeks earlier had been correct but not complete. The Spanish authorities intended that she should join a squadron being formed with the idea of attacking British convoys, which were known to be lightly escorted. The squadron was to consist of the 64-gun Asia, under the command of Don Francisco Montes (who was to be captured in the San Rafael by Sir Robert Calder’s squadron three months before Trafalgar); the 44-gun Amfitrite under Diego Villagomez, and the 16-gun corvette El Galgo, under Jose de Arias. (Two weeks later this squadron, without the Santa Cecilia, attacked a British convoy in the Mona Passage. The escort of two British frigates drove off the considerably more powerful Asia and Amfitrtte, and captured El Galgo. The enemy ‘appeared very undetermined’ one of the frigate captains reported later to Sir Hyde Parker.)
AS a British ship, the Santa Cecilia had been armed with twenty-six 12-pounders on the maindeck, with four 6-pounders on the quarterdeck and two more on the fo’c’sle, plus eight carronades. Her official complement had been 220, although we have seen that in practice it was rarely more than 170. However, as she prepared to sail for Havana under the command of Don Ramon de Eschales y Gaztelu, she had a complement of 392—more than double the number of men Pigot ever had—consisting of 321 officers and seamen, reinforced by 56 infantrymen and 15 artillerymen. And the frigate was at last in an excellent condition thanks to the work of the Spanish shipwrights at Puerto Cabelio, who had carried out the necessary repairs: new gangways had been laid on either side; new bulwarks had been built on; various planks in the hull and decks had been replaced, as well as beams and knees. A new capstan had been fitted forward—the frigate originally had only one, which was aft on the quarterdeck—and she had a new rudder. Any captain would be pleased with her outfit of sails: only two of her outfit of twenty-six were half-worn: the rest were either new or only a third worn. The Spanish had also increased her armament and rated her a 44-gun ship.
The Surprise by comparison, was much smaller: her official complement was 200, but she had only 180 men on board. The Santa Cecilia’s crew outnumbered hers by more than two to one. Like the Santa Cecilia, she had been built under a different flag from the one she now flew, having been captured from the French and commissioned by the Royal Navy as a 28-gun frigate.
Captain Hamilton had only a few hours in which to make up his mind what his next move was to be: with the Danish ship in the offing and waiting to dart into Puerto Cabelio, and more neutral ships likely to arrive at any moment, there were only two plans worth considering. The Hermione was still in Puerto Cabelio—that much was certain, since his lookouts peering over the curvature of the earth from the mastheads had been able to see her masts. So he could either return to the Aruba—Cape San Roman area and continue his patrol, or he could take some action at Puerto Cabelio.
Hamilton does not appear to have even considered resuming his patrol; but it was too late to do anything on Wednesday night, after he had forced the Danish ship to tack offshore. He seems to have wasted little time in making his plan, which was devastatingly simple and on the face of it so daring as to be impossible. If he failed he would almost certainly be court-martialled (providing he survived to face a trial) since it meant disregarding, if not actually disobeying, Sir Hyde’s orders. If he succeeded—well, he would probably get a knighthood.
Hamilton did not discuss his plan with his officers, and that night, as the frigate wallowed in a light wind, barely making a knot through the water, Hamilton worked in his cabin with the watch and quarter bills—which listed the name and various tasks of every man in the ship for each evolution, whether sailing or fighting—and then wrote out six different sets of instructions.
Dawn on Thursday, October 14, brought only cloudy weather and very little more breeze. For Hamilton’s purpose the cloud was welcome, but he wanted more wind. At noon Puerto Cabello lay to the south-west. There were still twenty-eight tons of fresh water remaining below in the hold, and the crew had already filled the emptied casks with sea-water because, stowed low down in the ship, they acted as ballast.
Captain Hamilton finally decided that any further delay was dangerous: at the moment the Spanish at Puerto Cabello were almost certainly unaware that the Surprise was waiting just over the horizon, but there were many neutral ships around who could easily raise the alarm. The plan to deal with the Hermione depended, like all good plans, on surprise, and would therefore be carried out that evening.
‘I turned the hands up to acquaint the officers and ship’s company of my intentions to lead them to the attack,’ he wrote.
According to one source, he began by reminding the men of the frequent and successful enterprises they had undertaken together, and then declared: ‘I find it useless to wait any longer; we shall soon be obliged to leave the station, and that frigate will become the prize of some more fortunate ship than the Surprise; our only prospect of success is by cutting her out this night.’
At this the men gave ‘three tremendous cheers’. Hamilton is said to have added: ‘I shall lead you myself, and here are the orders for the six boats to be employed, with the names of the officers and men to be engaged in this service.’ The cheers and the shouts that they ‘would follow me to a man,’ Hamilton wrote later, ‘greatly increased my hopes, and I had little doubt of succeeding’. (The scene is shown in the oil painting by Lt-Col Harold Wyllie, specially commissioned for this book, facing page 272.)
As the officers read out the names of the men and their boats, the excitement in the frigate increased. The disappointed men who had not been chosen to go are reputed to have offered cash to their more fortunate shipmates to change places.
Hamilton’s confidence can only have been in his men: the task he had set himself in cutting out the Hermione was otherwise an almost hopeless one. He knew where she was moored—in an apparently impregnable position—and his boats could not carry more than one hundred seamen and Marines. If there was no wind—or, even worse, a foul wind—at least half those men would have to stay in the boats and tow the Hermione out, leaving only fifty to board and capture the ship.…
Puerto Cabello harbour, formed by a large lagoon with its entrance on the west side, was bounded to the north—the seaward side—by sandy islands, with the eastern and southern sides merging into swampy cays of mangrove. The town stands on the south side of the entrance and the actual anchorage (at that time a small basin on the north side of the lagoon called Great Bay) was linked to the entrance by a half-mile-long channel which was too narrow to allow ships to tack. With a foul wind, they had to be towed in or out. The Hermione was moored with her stern towards the entrance and her starboard side facing the town.
The whole lagoon was well guarded: on the north side of the entrance stood St Philip’s Castle; to the south, beyond the town, was another large castle, with a third, Fort Brava, also covering the entrance. Hamilton had few illusions about the defences—‘there are about two hundred pieces of cannon mounted on the batteries,’ he wrote.
His attack had to have two main aims: first, to achieve complete surprise—that alone would reduce the odds considerably, since his boarders might then have a sporting chance of overwhelming the Spaniards actually on deck; and secondly, he would have to get the Hermione under way as soon as possible—even though his men would probably still be fighting for possession of the ship. If there was no wind or it was foul, so that he had to tow her out with boats, then half a dozen out of the 200 Spanish guns sweeping the lagoon with round and grapeshot could rapidly reduce the boats to matchwood and, if the Spanish gunners were made of stern enough stuff to fire on their own countrymen, they could easily sink the frigate even before she reached the channel leading from the anchorage. Once clear of the entrance, however, Hamilton would be able to get help from the Surprise.
The written instructions he had given his officers were detailed right down to the names of the actual seamen and Marines forming the crew of each boat. All the men were to wear blue or black clothing: no one was to carry anything white, which might show up in the darkness. The rendezvous for the boarders would be the Hermione’s quarterdeck; the pass word was ‘Britannia’ and the answer ‘Ireland’—perhaps in deference to the fact that Hamilton’s family originally came from Ireland, though his father had settled at Chilston in Kent.
The six boats were to be divided into two divisions, each of three boats. There were to be two alternative methods of attack—one to be used if the alarm was raised before they reached the Hermione and the ship strongly defended; the other in case they managed to get alongside without being spotted.
The first division (consisting of the launch, pinnace and jolly-boat) would board from starboard, which was the town side, while the second division (the gig, and the two cutters, which were distinguished by their colours, one being red and the other black) would attack from the larboard side.
The pinnace, leading the expedition as well as the first division, would be commanded by Captain Hamilton, and with him would be the Gunner, Mr John Maxwell, a midshipman and sixteen seamen. They would all board the Hermione at the starboard gangway, and make straight for the quarterdeck, except for four men who would immediately climb aloft to loose the maintopsail.
The launch, commanded by Lt William Wilson, the acting First Lieutenant, with a midshipman and twenty-four men, would board over the Hermione’s starboard bow, but three men were to stay in the boat and cut the anchor cables. These were likely to be at least 17-inch rope (each anchor weighed nearly two tons) and Hamilton had already thought of the difficulty and confusion there would be if three men were crowded together, leaning over the side of the boat as they slashed away with axes: he had therefore ordered the carpenter to construct a small platform over the launch’s stern and quarters on which the axe men could stand.
The jolly-boat, under the Carpenter, would carry ten men and get alongside on the starboard quarter. While three men with axes stayed behind to cut the stern cables, the rest were to board the Hermione. Two would go aloft immediately and loose the mizen-topsail.
The first boat in the second division would be commanded by, of all people, the Surgeon, Mr John M’Mullen, who had volunteered for the job. Since Hamilton was short of officers—the First Lieutenant had of course died of his wounds after the attack on the schooner at Aruba—he gladly accepted. There would be sixteen other men in the gig, and they were to board over the larboard bow, sending four men aloft immediately to loose the foretopsail.
The black cutter, commanded by Lt Robert Hamilton (no relation to the captain), with the Marine Lieutenant, Mr de la Tour du Pin, and sixteen men, most of them Marines, would board at the larboard gangway and make for the quarterdeck. The red cutter, commanded by the Boatswain, with sixteen men, would board over the larboard quarter.
That was the plan of attack if the alarm had been raised before the boats reached the frigate, because in that case everyone—except the axemen and topmen—who could wield a boarding pike, tomahawk or cutlass would be needed for actual fighting. However, if they reached the Hermione undetected, Hamilton knew that surprise would be a valuable ally and he would need fewer boarders. The most important task would be to get the ship under way at once—either under sail if the wind served, or by using the boats to tow—and out of range of the shore batteries.
Therefore in his plan each boat had its normal crew, plus boarders and the necessary axemen and topmen. If the alarm had been raised, both normal crews and boarders—all but the axemen—would board; but if they really lived up to their ship’s name and achieved surprise, only the boarders would do the fighting: the boat’s crews would stay in their respective craft and take the Hermione in tow as soon as the axemen had cut the cables. For towing, each boat would be equipped with hook ropes (which were simply ropes six or eight fathoms long, each with a hook spliced into one end).
So much for the plans. On board the Surprise the boat commanders soon had their boarding parties and crews grouped round them, picking men for special tasks, Lt Wilson chose three strong men to wield the axes to cut the bow cables for instance, while the Gunner picked four of the best topmen to loose the maintopsail.
Cutlasses and tomahawks were handed out; boarding pikes were taken down from the racks round the masts and issued. The Carpenter produced three heavy axes for the launch men and three more for the jolly-boat, and set his crew to work making the platforms. The grindstones were brought up from below and set spinning while the men crowded round, anxious to put a sharp edge on their cutlasses, pikes and tomahawks.
The Marines under their Lieutenant checked their muskets, powder and shot, made sure the flints in the locks were good ones, and then sharpened their bayonets. Cloths were brought out ready to wrap round the mechanism of muskets and pistols to protect them from spray. The looms of the oars were bound with sacking and smeared with tallow, so that they should not click and squeak in the rowlocks.
The chatter of the excited men, the rumbling and grating of the grindstones, the hammering and sawing of the Carpenter’s crew busy on the platforms, must have pleased Hamilton—a man who, for all his faults, did not lack daring and initiative and, in action, the quality of leadership. Soon the sun set and dusk gave way to darkness as the Surprise tacked inshore to get as close as possible without warning the Spaniards. Suddenly—or so it seemed to the busy men—it was 7.30 p.m., and time to hoist out the boats. Hamilton had ordered that the boarding parties were to take the first spell at the oars—until they were roughly halfway to Puerto Cabello. They would then hand over to the normal boats’ crews and have a brief rest before the actual attack.
Finally Mr Made, the Master, who was being left in command of the ship, noted laconically in his log: ‘At 8 the boats under the command of Captain Hamilton left the ship to attempt to bring His Majesty’s late Ship Hermione out of Porto Cabello.’
The launch headed the little convoy, and while the Coxswain steered, using a compass lit by a small and well-shielded lantern, Captain Hamilton looked towards the shore with his night glass to pick out the hills behind Puerto Cabello and get his bearings.
The wind was falling away, leaving a lumpy swell. This made it hard work for the men bending to the oars, but on the other hand the fleeting shadows thrown by the swell waves as they chased each other silently through the night made it more likely that any Spanish guard boats rowing round the Hermione might mistake the silhouettes of the British boats for innocent crests surging into the lagoon.
When the boats—which were linked to each other by ropes, so that none should fall astern or get lost—were half way to the shore, Captain Hamilton ordered the normal crews to take over from the men at the oars, and the perspiring and tired boarders thankfully took up their cutlasses and pikes and settled down for the long wait. The launch once again got under way, followed by the other five boats, and headed for the shore: towards the possibility of glory and prize-money for them all; towards the probability of death or maiming for many; towards the certainty of 200 shore guns (plus the Hertmone’s own broadside if her men were alert). If the Spanish kept their heads even half a dozen of the guns could lay down such a barrage of roundshot, grape, chainshot and canister that the lagoon would be eut up like the surface of a pond in a hailstorm, and no boat could hope to survive.
Silence in the boats was essential: each of the men had been examined before leaving the Surprise to make certain he had not stoked up his courage with a hoarded tot of rum that would make him careless or loquacious. Nevertheless, a man shifting a cramped leg usually caused someone else’s cutlass to clatter or an oarsman, not dipping the blade deep ‘caught a crab’ with the resulting hiss from the boat commander of ‘Quiet there!… Pull together… Don’t rattle that dam’ hanger!’
Soon Captain Hamilton could make out the entrance of the lagoon. To the left, beyond the chain of sandy islets forming the seaward side, was the dark bulk of the Hermione and other ships at anchor. A few lighted windows showed the town, and it was not difficult to pick out the three fortresses.
There was less swell as they closed the shore and the men who did not normally smoke or chew tobacco could soon detect the stench of the mangrove swamps and mud. Were there Spanish guard boats rowing to and fro across the entrance to the lagoon? Or would they be inside, circling the ships? There was a chance—just a chance—that the Spaniards were slack enough not to be rowing guard at all.
The tiny British convoy was within a mile of the Hermione when suddenly Hamilton spotted two Spanish guard boats in the darkness, and a moment later the flash and boom as the cannon in one of them fired showed that the British craft had been sighted. The echoes had hardly zigzagged back and forth across the lagoon, setting the wild birds and animals shrieking, before the cannon in the second boat was fired, followed by the popping of musketry.
A few moments later a drum started rattling its urgent call to arms on board the Hermione: sleepy-eyed Spaniards began tumbling from their hammocks, and groping their way in the darkness to their quarters, while in the forts on shore the gunners in the batteries, for the moment without the slightest idea what was happening, grabbed shot and cartridges.
Hamilton, realizing that speed was now essential if they were to live, let alone succeed, cast off the rope linking the pinnace with the boats astern, roused his seamen into giving three cheers, and ordered them to pull at their oars with every ounce of energy they possessed. He steered direct for the Hermione—he could ignore the guard boats because they were small and their single cannons would do no harm, except to their owners, since the flash of firing blinded them for several seconds. Hamilton had assumed—although this present situation was not specifically covered in his orders—that the rest of his boats would follow him in a mad dash to get alongside the Hermione. Every second’s delay in achieving this meant more Spaniards on deck, wider awake and better armed.
But glancing astern a few moments later he was angered to see from the flashes of musket fire that some of his boats—he could not see how many—were wasting time attacking the guard boats, forgetting their main, indeed their only objective, the Hermione, and endangering the whole attack.
In fact two boats were involved—the launch commanded by Lt Wilson, whose twenty-four men were supposed to cut the anchor cable and board at the bow to secure the fo’c’sle; and the Boatswain’s red cutter, whose sixteen men, intended to board on the larboard quarter, were vital in helping to capture the quarterdeck, from where the ship could be steered.
But Hamilton could do nothing about these errant idiots: there was no drawing back at this stage and the pinnace, apparently alone, sped through the darkness towards the objective. Suddenly the silhouette of the Hermione seemed to spring to life as red flashes rippled along the side and the men in the pinnace heard the thunder of the guns and the sigh of shot passing overhead. Fear, for they were helpless to retaliate, lent strength to the oarsmen as the pinnace surged on; then they realized the shot were not landing anywhere near them.
They could see the Hermime’s bulk huge—her bulwarks were twenty feet above the waterline—as the spurts of flame from the larboard side guns bathed her in momentary flashes of red light and silhouetted the great masts and yards which towered overhead, stark like massive trees stripped of their leaves by a winter gale. The smoke from the frigate’s guns began to roll down towards them like banks of sea mist—towards them: not only was there a breeze, however slight, but it was fair for getting the Hermione out to sea, although because she had her stern to the entrance she would have to be turned.
Hamilton ordered the coxswain to steer the pinnace close round the frigate’s larboard bow, under the bowsprit and jibboom which stuck out like the questing neck of some prehistoric monster. By now the men were almost deafened by the confused medley of noise: shouts in Spanish were punctuated by heart-stopping crashes of the Hermione’s 12-pounders and the rumble as the gun carriages recoiled across the deck; muskets popped in an almost ludicrous descant to the thunder of the shore batteries.
Then the pinnace was right under the Hermione’s larboard bow and turning fast; only a few more yards and they would be at the starboard gangway: the men braced themselves, ready to scramble up the side of the frigate by whatever means presented itself. Suddenly the launch lurched and stopped.
‘We’re aground, sir!’ shouted the Coxswain. They were only a few yards from the Hermione’s stem and she drew more than fifteen feet forward, so Hamilton knew this was nonsense: the pinnace’s rudder had obviously caught in the frigate’s anchor cable or the rope of the anchor buoy.
‘Unship the rudder!’ he ordered.
By the time this was done the pinnace had drifted back right under the frigate’s bulging, apple-cheeked bow and the starboard side oars were jammed against the hull. There was no time—or point—in trying to get the boat further aft to board at the gangway, particularly since Hamilton realized that despite the turmoil going on in the frigate the pinnace had apparently not been spotted by the Spaniards.
Overhead, slung from the cathead, was a huge anchor still covered with reeking mud, showing it had been weighed a short while earlier. That meant there would be only one cable for Lt Wilson’s men to cut.
Hamilton sprang up on to the bends—some extra thick planks which ran round the ship’s side—and then scrambled on to the fluke of the anchor, followed by several of his men. But his feet slipped on the mud and he fell sideways, just managing to grab the lanyards of one of the foremast shrouds to avoid plunging into the sea. In his struggles one of the pistols tucked in his belt went off, fortunately without wounding him.
By now Gunner Maxwell and the rest of the pinnace’s men had swarmed over the bulwarks on to the fo’c’sle—to find only two Spaniards there who, bewildered for the few moments of life left to them by the sudden appearance of the enemy, were quickly cut down.
Captain Hamilton and Maxwell ran to the break of the fo’c’sle and looked aft. They could hardly believe their eyes and realized why the two Spaniards now lying dead behind them had been so surprised: apart from a few men by the wheel, the whole of the upperdeck—fo’c’sle, both gangways, quarterdeck and poop—was deserted. All the Spaniards were at the guns down on the maindeck—from where they stood by the belfry at the after end of the fo’c’sle the two Britons could see dozens of them only a few feet below. Gun after gun on the larboard side fired and sprang back in recoil, and hurriedly the Spaniards sponged out the barrels, rammed home cartridges, wads and shot, and fired again. But from the elevation of the guns Hamilton could see at a glance that whatever the Spaniards were blazing away at was several hundred yards away. The ‘targets’, he discovered later, were two British frigates which—in the Spaniards’ imagination—were sailing into the lagoon. None of them realized that British boats were staging a cutting-out expedition and nineteen men were already on board.
Shouting to Maxwell to follow with his men, Hamilton dashed aft along the starboard gangway, heading for the quarterdeck: from there, with the wheel in British hands, he could control the ship, unless the Spaniards had the wit to run below and cut the tiller lines.
But even as the Britons ran aft the few Spaniards on the quarterdeck recognized them as the enemy and advanced along the gangway towards them. Within a few seconds there was a confused mêlée with pistols firing, cutlasses clashing with pikes, tomahawks with musket barrels. And below them on the maindeck the frigate’s 12-pounders continued to thunder away.
While the pinnace’s boarders tried to drive the Spaniards aft towards the quarterdeck, a second British boat arrived alongside: this was the gig, commanded by the Surgeon, John M’Mullen, who with his sixteen men promptly climbed on board over the larboard bow. Finding the fo’c’sle clear except for the two dead Spaniards, M’Mullen sent the four topmen scrambling up the foremast to loose the topsail and then, as ordered, led the rest in a dash along the larboard gangway for the rendezvous on the quarterdeck, which they found deserted.
At that moment he was joined by Captain Hamilton, who had fought his way clear of the Spaniards battling with the Gunner’s men on the starboard gangway. But M’Mullen’s fighting spirit was fully roused and before Hamilton could stop him he had led his men off in a wild dash forward along the starboard gangway to help the Gunner’s party by attacking the Spaniards in the rear. The purpose of the quarterdeck rendezvous was completely forgotten and Hamilton was left standing alone by the wheel, unarmed except for two discharged pistols and a sword.
The Spaniards at the gangway, sandwiched between the Gunner and the bloodthirsty Surgeon, fought desperately, and while slowly retreating before M’Mullen’s men they drove Maxwell’s group back towards the fo’c’sle.
Hamilton’s situation in the meantime was both ludicrous and desperate: he was the only man on the quarterdeck of a frigate whose entire maindeck was in enemy hands and whose guns were busy firing away into the night. Only two of his six boarding parties were actually on board, and both those were scrapping on the gangway. Where were the other four parties? They comprised another sixty-seven men, apart from the vitally-important axemen who were to cut the cables. Were they still messing about with the guard boats, or had they been blown out of the water? Either way, Hamilton must have thought his attack would fail.
But he had no time to make other plans—or even to despair: four Spaniards suddenly appeared out of the smoke heading straight for him. Within a few seconds one had stabbed him in the left thigh with a cutlass, another jabbed him in the right thigh with a pike, and a third hit him across the head with a musket, smashing the butt. Hamilton collapsed, hitting his head on a hatch coaming as he fell. The Spaniards were just going to finish him off when two or three British seamen arrived in time to drive them off.
The seamen picked up Hamilton, who quickly regained consciousness and then set to helping his rescuers try to guard the quarterdeck from another group of Spaniards who, realizing at last that the ship had been boarded, had swarmed up the quarterdeck ladder from the maindeck below.
A sudden burst of cheering—British cheering—heralded the arrival of more boarders: at last the black cutter’s crew, under the command of Lt Hamilton, had managed to get on board. Their tardiness was not the result of chasing off into the night after the guard boats: the Lieutenant had, as ordered, got his cutter alongside and, at the head of his men, scrambled up the battens on the ship’s side forming the steps to the break in the gangway.
However a Spaniard—one of the group caught between the Gunner’s and Surgeon’s men—had darted across to give him a smart blow on the head, so that he had toppled backwards and fallen into the cutter, knocking down the rest of the boarders who had been following him up the ship’s side. With the Lieutenant sprawled on top of a pile of his men in the bottom of the boat, too dazed for the moment to do anything, the cutter’s crew concluded from the noise of the fighting on the gangway, and their officer’s precipitate return, that the opposition was too strong at that point, and shoved off, rowing round the ship looking for a more promising place to board. They reached the starboard side to find the musket fire too hot for them and then went back to the larboard side, which by then was comparatively clear because the Spaniards had driven the Gunner’s party to the fo’c’sle, though they were themselves trapped there by the Surgeon’s men behind them.
Swiftly Lt Hamilton, followed by Lt du Pin and his Marines, scrambled on board and headed for the quarterdeck, where they found Captain Hamilton and his rescuers trying to stop the Spaniards coming up the ladder from the maindeck. Hamilton ordered them to keep the quarterdeck clear and du Pin, forming up his Marines, began firing volleys down at the Spaniards on the maindeck below.
By this time the Gunner’s and Surgeon’s parties had finally mopped up the Spaniards on the fo’c’sle—the Gunner being dangerously wounded in the process—so that the whole of the upper-deck was free of the enemy. But the Spaniards, still in complete control of the maindeck below, were busy firing muskets up through the hatches at any Briton who showed himself.
Lt Wilson’s launch with twenty-six men and responsible for cutting the bow cable, the Boatswain’s red cutter with seventeen men, and the Carpenter’s jolly-boat with eleven, charged with cutting the stern cables, still had not arrived, so that in fact the fifty-four Britons then on board were fighting 365 Spaniards, who were all now concentrated on the maindeck (the rest of the ship’s company were in the guard boats or on leave).
Captain Hamilton, dazed and bleeding from his several wounds, decided the next move was to clear the maindeck of the enemy. This was hardly an easy task, even though at this time he had no idea that the Spaniards outnumbered him nearly seven to one.
Mustering the three boats’ crews on the quarterdeck, Hamilton ordered every man with a musket or pistol to reload while those without firearms stood ready. He then told them to fire a volley at the same moment down the after hatch into the midst of the Spaniards crowded on the maindeck below. Before the enemy had time to recover from the murderous hail of shot, the British seamen and Marines, yelling and whooping, leapt down the hatch and immediately began slashing and jabbing with their cutlasses, pikes and tomahawks.
This attack cut the Spanish force into two sections: sixty or more were trapped aft of the hatch, and a dozen British seamen drove them back towards the Captain’s cabin. Finally the Spaniards retreated into the cabin and surrendered, whereupon they were swiftly disarmed and locked in.
The rest of the British seamen and Marines were in the meantime battling their way forward, fighting the main mass of the frigate’s crew, but the Spaniards were putting up a desperate resistance, making each gun on either side a partial barricade, because the centreline was blocked with masts, hatchways, pump wells and handles. Here the British began to lose men—a quartermaster, John Mathews, and a quarter-gunner, Arthur Reed, collapsed dangerously wounded; Henry Miller, one of the Carpenter’s crew, fell to the deck badly hurt.
By this time the Carpenter finally had arrived alongside the frigate in the jolly-boat and, leaving three men to cut the stern cables, led the other seven on board. Two of them scrambled up to loose the mizen topsail while the rest joined in the battle on the maindeck. It did not take long for the trio of axemen in the boat to slice through the stern cables and within a few minutes the frigate was held only by the bow cable. Cutting this was the task of Lt Wilson’s launch, which had not yet put in an appearance.
The Spanish gunners in the fortresses on shore had by then worked out what had happened. Training their guns on the frigate, they opened fire with round shot and grape. They soon found the range and shot began crashing into the ship’s side and slicing through the rigging. The heavy mainstay was cut through, leaving the mainmast in a dangerous state. Grapeshot spattered the ship—one ricocheted to hit Captain Hamilton’s shin, inflicting his fourth wound so far.
With the frigate still held forward by her anchor, she was in grave danger of being pounded to pieces by the guns of the fortresses. The Spaniards, fighting for every inch of the forward part of the maindeck, naturally stopped any of the British getting into the cable tier and cutting the anchor cable from inboard, since the bitts to which it was secured and the hawse hole through which it passed, were of course at the forward end of this deck.
Fortunately at this moment Lt Wilson, having finished his almost childish fight with the guard boat, arrived with his launch and went alongside at the Hermione’s bow where the three axemen immediately began chopping away at the cable. Wilson was ordered to send up his boarders, who were urgently needed to help deal with the Spaniards on the maindeck—but keep the boat’s crew and be ready to tow the ship round. Captain Hamilton then sent some men down to the other boats with instructions to help the launch, and they were joined by the Boatswain’s red cutter, the last to arrive alongside.
The Hermione, held by the anchor, was lying head to wind. There was little enough room to manoeuvre under sail in daylight; in the darkness it was out of the question. But once the anchor cable was cut the boats could tow her bow round and, with the wind blowing down the channel, she could sail out under her topsails, which had already been let fall.
A man sent to look down from the fo’c’sle had already reported to
Captain Hamilton that the axemen were hard at work on the cable. The stalwart Gunner, despite his wounds, was at the wheel, helped by two seamen and ready to steer the ship out of Puerto Cabello. Other men stood by at the sheets, halyards and braces, waiting for the moment when the topsails began to draw. On the maindeck, however, there was still bitter fighting. (See Plate II, page 273.)
Finally shouts from the fo’c’sle told Hamilton the cable had been cut: at last the Hermione was free of her anchor, and the Surprise’s boats began to tow her round. Navigationally, at least, Hamilton was for the moment in complete command, since his men controlled the upperdeck; but would the Spaniards be able to fight their way up again? He was in the position of a coachman who dare not leave the reins even though his passengers were trying to murder each other.
A few minutes later the ship had been towed round enough for the sails to start drawing: sheets, halyards and braces were hauled home, and the Gunner felt the wheel react as the water began to swirl past the rudder. The shore batteries were still keeping up a heavy fire while the boats, their task of towing completed, hooked on astern so that they in turn could be towed. The frigate’s topsails now filled, and at once she came to life. She rolled slightly in the breeze, and for a few moments the movement exposed her hull below the waterline: just long enough for a shot from a shore battery to crash home and, as she came on to an even keel again, water began to flood in through the hole.
Some of the boarders had to break off the fight to work the pumps, but the clanking of the pumphandles combined with the movement of the ship was a turning point in the battle: the Spaniards realized that the frigate was now under way and, for all they knew, in danger of sinking. Several of them leapt out through the gun ports, preferring to risk the long swim to the shore.
At that point Antonio, the Portuguese Coxswain of the Surprise’s gig, who understood Spanish, ran up to the quarterdeck to warn Captain Hamilton that some Spaniards, trapped on the lowerdeck, were planning to blow up the ship. Lt du Pin was sent with some Marines to fire a few shot down the hatchway and dissuade them from any such idea.
Finally, almost exactly one hour after Captain Hamilton had first scrambled on board, the Hermione was sailing out of the entrance of Puerto Cabello heading for the open sea with the boats in tow. The Spaniards still fighting at the forward end of the maindeck then realized their position was hopeless and surrendered.
With the fighting over, Captain Hamilton was able to devote his whole attention to sailing the ship. Seamen were soon at work securing the mainmast, which, with the main and spring stays cut, was in danger of going over the side, particularly if the ship started pitching. The Carpenter set men to work plugging the shothole below the waterline, and the rest of the boarders guarded the prisoners and tried to make the wounded comfortable. A Red Ensign was run up with the red and gold flag of Spain beneath it.
The Surprise was waiting four miles offshore for His Most Christian Majesty’s former frigate Santa Cecilia, and Mr Made noted in his log: ‘Half past five [a.m.] the boats returned with the Hermione.’
With the Surprise and the Hermione well clear of the coast, it was possible for Captain Hamilton to check the casualties that the British and Spanish had suffered. The difference between them was fantastic, and but for the Spanish corpses and prisoners in the Hermione to prove the figures, would have been almost unbelievable.
In drawing up a list of the British casualties, Captain Hamilton dismissed his own wounds as ‘several contusions, but not dangerous’. Four men, including John Maxwell, the Gunner, had been dangerously wounded; and seven others slightly wounded—a total of twelve. Not one Briton had been killed, and the maximum number of them on board the Hermione at any one time, and then only for a few minutes, was eighty-six.
Yet on board the Hermione were the bodies of 119 Spaniards who had been killed, while another 231 (ninety-seven of them dangerously wounded) remained as prisoners. Among them was Don Ramon de Eschales y Gaztelu who, until 2 a.m. that morning, had been commanding the ship.
He gave Captain Hamilton some interesting information, both about the ship’s intended activities with the squadron from Havana, and the number of men on board. He explained that there should have been 392 in the ship, but seven officers were on leave, and twenty men were in the guard boats. Thus with 119 killed, 231 prisoners, twenty in the boat and seven on leave, a total of 377 were accounted for. The remaining fifteen must have jumped overboard.
With 231 Spanish prisoners to guard—ninety-seven of whom needed urgent medical attention—Hamilton was thankful when a ship was sighted at 7 a.m. and, chased by one of the Surprise’s cutters, proved to be an American schooner bound for Puerto Cabello from La Guaira. Her captain agreed to take the prisoners and the wounded into Puerto Cabello (with the exception of Don Eschales and two other officers, whom Hamilton proposed keeping). The schooner hove to near the Hermione and the slow work of ferrying across the prisoners, including the wounded, began.
By noon the new crew of the Hermione—who were, of course, men sent over from the Surprise—hoisted in the boats and both frigates got under way, heading for Port Royal, Jamaica.
Arriving there with the two ships on November 1, Hamilton wrote his report to Sir Hyde Parker, beginning with the words, ‘Sir, the honour of my Country and the glory of the British Navy were strong inducements for me to make an attempt to cut out, by the boats of his Majesty’s ship under my command, his Majesty’s late Ship Hermione…’