We’ve met Edward Pellew (1757 – 1833) on this blog before
(see link at end of article) and it’s probable that we’ll meet him again as he
ranks just below Nelson, and certainly with
Cochrane, as one of the Royal Navy’s most intrepid commanders during the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. His earliest fighting experience came during
the American War of Independence when he was present at fighting on Lake
Champlain and his career was to culminate as Admiral Viscount Exmouth when he
commanded a combined British-Dutch squadron in operations against Barbary
pirates in Algiers in 1816. A humane and decent man, his personal courage was legendary
and although his career was studded with desperate naval actions one of his
most notable feats of heroism was not to be in a combat situation.
1795, the third year of the Revolutionary War, saw Commodore
Pellew commanding a squadron of frigates from his own HMS Indefatigable. Operating in the Western Approaches and off
North-Western Coast of France, Pellew’s force was to score significant success through
the year. By January 1796 however Indefatigable
had been brought into Plymouth for refitting. It was an opportunity for
Pellew to relax ashore on and 26th January he was on the way with his
wife to dine at the house of a well-known clergyman, Dr. Robert Hawker. As the Pellew arrived Hawker
ran out and called "Have you heard
of the wreck of the ship under the Citadel? " This was enough to send
Pellew racing to the scene of the disaster.
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| The wreck of the Dutton by Thomas Luny Note group on beach, hauling on hawsers |
The ship involved was the Eastindiaman Dutton – and as such was manned by civilians. This vessel had been
underway for the West Indies with no less than 400 troops for the strengthening
of the garrisons there, together with a number of camp followers, not to
mention the ship’s own crew – the total on board was estimated at somewhere between 500
and 600. It is an indication of the extreme dependence upon weather conditions
during the Age of Sail that the Dutton
had already been seven weeks at sea but had been driven back to Britain by
adverse winds. Given the number of people crammed into a vessel less than 200
feet long it is not surprising that there should be a large number of sick on
board. It had now been driven against Plymouth Hoe, an open space that slopes
down towards the sea and on which the Citadel referred to by Dr. Hawker stands.
It ends at low limestone cliffs with a beach below.
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| Edward Pellew |
Pellew arrived on the beach to find – one can imagine that
it was to his disgust – that most of the
Dutton’s senior officers had already abandoned ship. They had made it by
clinging to a single rope stretched between ship and shore. Others had also gained the shore but the process
was slow and dangerous – one eyewitness wrote that “you would at one moment see a poor wretch hanging ten or twenty feet
above the water, and the next you would lose sight of him in the foam of a wave”.
It was obvious that this method alone would be incapably of saving the hundreds
on board before the hull broke up. Despite Pellew’s exhortations to the ship’s
officers to return to the ship – and to each an offer of five guineas – they refused
to do so, as too did local pilots who believed that the case was hopeless. Pellew
realised that without his direction almost all on Dutton ship would be lost and he resolved to go out himself. He did
so by getting dragged to the ship by the single rope. This was hazardous, since
the vessel’s masts had collapsed towards the shore and he was at one stage
dragged under the mainmast, only extricating himself with leg and back-injuries
that were afterwards to confine him to bed. He did however finally reach the wreck
and took command – he made it plain that absolute compliance with his orders
would be essential and that he himself would be the last to quit the wreck. His
reputation as a national hero was already well established and his presence
alone did much to reduce any tendency to panic. A complication was however that
some of the soldiers had broken into the spirit store and were already drunk. Pellew, sword in hand, made it plain that that
he would have no hesitation in killing anybody exhibiting disobedience.
Back at HMS Indefatigable
it was not known that Pellew was on the Dutton
but efforts were made to get boats to her. Despite gallant attempts it proved
impossible to bring them alongside. More successful however was a small boat from
a merchant vessel. This was manned by a naval midshipman and by the merchant
vessel’s Irish mate, one Jeremiah Coghlan. With these men’s help Pellew managed
to get two more hawsers stretched from the wreck to the shore. Pellew set men to work to get cradles constructed
that could be slung beneath the hawsers to be pulled to and fro. In order to
avoid shock-loading of the hawsers as the wreck rolled, and to avoid the consequent
risk of their snapping, they were not made fast at the shore end. Each line was
instead held by a group of men who tightened and relaxed them so as to keep the
tension steady. This must have been exhausting and was not the least impressive
aspect of the entire rescue. Transfer by cradle now commenced but it was
obviously unsuited to the weak and vulnerable – a category that included one
three-week old baby on board. Coghlan in his small boat managed to get some 50
people to shore before any other craft reached the wreck.
While this was in progress a sloop and two large pulling-boats
had managed to reach the Dutton from
shore. In these the women children and the sick were landed, Pellew being adamant
in ensuring that order was maintained despite the soldiers’ drunkenness – he was
witnessed beating one looter with the flat of his sword. The handling of the rescue
boats in such conditions was an epic in itself and they were in due course to get
the soldiers to shore, followed by the ship’s company. Pellew was among the last
to leave – passing ashore along a hawser – and the battered hull broke up soon
afterwards. All on board had been saved.
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| Coghlan in silhouette (Like Jane Austen's Captain Wentworth?) |
It is typical of Pellew that the only mention he made in the Indefatigable’s log was the statement “'Sent two boats to the assistance of a ship
on shore in the Sound” with no reference to himself. A pleasing postscript –
and a long one – was that Jeremiah Coghlan, the young civilian who had done
such heroic work in his small boat was to join the Navy and have an illustrious
career. Pellew took him on board the Indefatigable
as a midshipman and had him follow him when he took command of HMS Impetueux in 1799. Coghlan was given
command of the cutter HMS Viper the next
year and he was promoted further following a cutting-out operation, in which he
snatched the French gun-brig Cerbère
from a defended harbour. His subsequent career was to be the stuff of naval
fiction – single-ship actions, storming shore-batteries, seizing Naples in 1815.
When Pellew became Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean, from 1811 Coghlan was to
be his flag captain on HMS Caledonia. One
of the heroes of the Age of Fighting Sail, he was to live long enough to see the
birth of the steam navy.
And Pellew? We’ll return to him again in the future.
Britannia’s Spartan
Six-inch breech loading guns represented the cutting edge of
naval technology in the early 1880s. In my novel Britannia’s Spartan they are shown in use in battle on both British and Japanese
ships. The splendid Japanese woodcut below shows Japanese crews managing just
such a weapon in the war of 1894-95 against China. Click on the image for further
details.
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