Nelson and Hardy – the forging of a partnership

We have encountered HMS Blanche before, in her furious duel in January 1795, in the middle years of the Revolutionary War between Britain and France. In the process she captured the French frigate Pique, off Guadeloupe (Click here to read this earlier blog).  Blanche, a 32-gun frigate, had still four years of life ahead of her before she was wrecked in 1799 and these involved considerable drama, in which two of the best known naval heroes of the era  were to play a role.

End of the Blanche  (L) vs. Pique action - both ships in states not unusual after such combats
Painting by John Thomas Baines with Acknowledgement to National Maritime Museum, Greeenwich

Blanche’s captain, Robert Faulknor, had been killed in the Pique action and was succeeded by a Captain Charles Sawyer, who took her to Portsmouth for a refit and thereafter to the Mediterranean at the end of 1795. This theatre was to prove a difficult one for the Royal Navy in the following year, but for Sawyer personally it was to prove a personal disaster.

The Articles of War, under which Royal Navy ships operated, were merciless as regards punishment of homosexual acts, with the death penalty itself reserved for sodomy.  The offence would have been regarded as even more serious if it involved a commissioned officer. It appears that Captain Sawyer had gained a reputation among his crew for such behaviour – accusations were made as regards relations with two young midshipmen, his coxswain and an ordinary seaman. The offence was compounded by the fact that the captain of a ship at sea represented absolute authority and that there was an assumption that this would be exercised fairly and conscientiously. A captain was to be respected, as well as on-occasion feared, and in Sawyer’s case this respect was wholly  forfeited as his behaviour was common knowledge on board. Discipline deteriorated to the extent that Blanche’s first lieutenant, Archibald Cowan, wrote about it to the area commodore, Horatio Nelson. This step took considerable moral courage. To criticise a superior in this way was dangerous in the extreme as it could be construed as insubordination and lead to the quick ending of a career.

In the event the matter was handled with considerable pragmatism and adroitness, with humanity also. A charge of sodomy against a commissioned officer, which would involve embarrassing evidence that would be most likely challenged and debated, would have done nothing for the prestige of the service, and might have had a terrible outcome for Sawyer personally. The charge brought against him in the unavoidable court-martial was related instead to the breakdown of discipline, specifying “odious misconduct, and for not taking public notice of mutinous expressions muttered against him".  Sawyer was found guilty in October 1796 and dismissed from the service.

Nelson in 1796

Even before the court-martial was convened a new commander was required for the Blanche. This was to be Captain D’Arcy Preston, who was faced with the challenge of restoring discipline and respect for the chain of command. That he was successful in this was to be shown a few months later, in December 1796, when Blanche once more found herself in action.

During the year Britain’s position in the Mediterranean had weakened considerably in the face of French successes in Italy and Corsica. The Mediterranean Fleet commander, Sir John Jervis, took the unwelcome but realistic decision in October 1796 to withdraw to Gibraltar after evacuating British forces from Corsica and Elba. Nelson was to take charge of the latter operation and to initiate it he sailed from Gibraltar in December with two frigates, HMS Minerve and HMS Blanche. The Minerve had previously been French, having  captured in June 1795 by the frigates HMS Dido and Lowestoffe.  Nelson was on board Minerve and her second lieutenant was Thomas Masterman Hardy (1769-1839), who was to play a very significant role in Nelson’s life.

Capture of Minerve 1795 - Thomas Sutherland (engraver), Thoams Whitcombe (artist)

On 10th December, in the vicinity of Cartagena two Spanish frigates were spotted. These proved to be the Sabina and Matilde, each of 40 guns, fair matches for the British ships. The Sabina was the flagship of Commodore Don Jacobo Stuart, a descendent in the illegitimate line of James II of England. Minerve engaged the Sabina while the Blanche concentrated on holding off the Matilde. After a three-hour combat, during which she lost her mainmast, and had her fore and mizzen badly damaged, the Sabrina  surrendered.  The Minerve had also been damaged, but her masts still stood. One has the impression, as so often in the case of frigate to frigate actions, of the British gunnery being markedly superior.

The Sabrina was the boarded by a 40-man prize crew headed by Minerve’s first and second lieutenants , John Culverhouse and Thomas Hardy but her damage was such as to necessitate her being towed by the Minerve. At this point the second Spanish ship, the Matilde, re-entered the fray and attacked the Minerve. She was driven off but a new Spanish force now appeared, the 112-gun ship-of-the-line Príncipe de Asturias and two frigates. Nelson realised that there was no hope of fighting this larger force, especially not if the Minerve had the Sabrina in tow. He took the unpalatable decision of cutting the tow and abandoning the Sabrina and her prize crew to the advancing Spanish.

Lieutenants Culverhouse and Hardy were to be prisoners of war for little over a month. Nelson was eager to have them  back and he sent a message through to the Spanish authorities at Cartagena that he was prepared to exchange them for Don Jacobo Stuart. A pleasing statement in the letter was that “I have endeavoured to make the captivity of Don Jacobo Stuart, her brave Commander, as light as possible; and I trust to the generosity of your nation for its being reciprocal for the British officers and men.” The exchange was duly arranged and the two lieutenants arrived in Gibraltar at the end of January 1797.

Both men re-joined Minerve but on 11^th February, shortly after leaving Gibraltar to join Sir John Jervis’s fleet, she was pursued by Spanish vessels. In the course of the chase a seaman fell overboard and Hardy was dropped with a jolly boat to find him. The unfortunate man could not be found and strong currents swept Hardy’s  craft far from theMinerve so that his re-capture by the Spanish now became a distinct possibility. Despite the danger of engagement with a superior force Nelson exclaimed “By God, I'll not lose Hardy! Back that mizzen topsail!” so that the Minerve could drift down on Hardy’s boat and pick him up. The manoeuvre succeeded and once sail was again made Minerve’s superior speed drew her away from danger.

During the night that followed Minerve found herself in fog and sailing between dark shapes. These were those of the Spanish fleet but ineffective lookouts did not detect her. By morning she was clear and on her way to Jervis with news of the enemy fleet’s location. The scene was now set for Jervis’s victory over the Spanish at Cape St. Vincent two days later. 

The Battle of Cape Saint Vincent, Richard Brydges Beechey, 1881

Jervis’s exchanges with Captains  Robert Calder and Benjamin Hallowell on the quarterdeck of his flagship, HMS Victory, were recorded as it was discovered that his force was outnumbered almost two-to-one:

"There are eight sail of the line, Sir John"

"Very well, sir"

"There are twenty sail of the line, Sir John"

"Very well, sir"

"There are twenty-five sail of the line, Sir John"

"Very well, sir"

"There are twenty-seven sail of the line, Sir John"

"Enough, sir, no more of that; the die is cast, and if there are fifty sail I will go through them"

It was on HMS Victory that Nelson himself was to die eight years later. His admiration of Hardy had grown in this time. At the Battle of the Nile in 1798 Hardy commanded the corvette Mutine and when Nelson sent his flag captain back with news of the triumph he promoted Hardy to command of his flagship HMS Vanguard. When Nelson shifted his flag to HMS Foudroyant he took Hardy with him. 

In 1801 Hardy was again to be Nelson’s flag captain and he distinguished himself at Copenhagen by surveying the route whereby the British fleet would enter the Danish anchorage. The relationship continued and in the period leading up to Trafalgar Hardy was not only flag captain on Nelson’s HMS Victory, but de-facto captain of the fleet. It was a meteoric but well-merited rise.

The death of Nelson - the iconic image
Hardy takes his leave

Hardy as Admiral

Given the warmth and respect between these two men it was appropriate that Hardy should be with Nelson when he was shot down at Trafalgar in 1805. As Nelson lay dying in Victory’s cockpit Hardy brought him news of the succession of French surrenders and when they came to part Nelson’s request was “Kiss me, Hardy”, which he did on the cheek. Nelson was by this time fading and Hardy kissed him a second time, this time on the forehead. The dying man asked “Who is that?” and, when told who it was, said "God bless you Hardy" – his last words.

The young lieutenant whom Nelson had once been forced to abandon, and whom he had once risked everything to save on another occasion, had come a long way in nine years. A long, varied and honourable career awaited him after Trafalgar, culminating in his appointment as First Naval Lord, the professional head of the navy, in November 1830.

The (re)capture of HMS Minerve, aground off Cherbourg, July 1803

One other player in this drama was also to have a dramatic further career. HMS Minerve , which had been captured from the French in 1795 was recaptured by them when she ran aground in a fog off Cherbourg in 1803. She was recommissioned in the French Navy as the Canonnière and saw active service in the Philippines, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.  By 1809 she was considered worn out and was sold at Mauritius for merchant service, now renamed as the Confiance. She was captured by the Royal Navy in 1810 – as she was carrying goods worth £150,000 she was an exceptionally valuable prize and must have made the fortune of many of the crew of HMS Valiant, the ship that took her. Commissioned once more into the Royal Navy, this time as HMS Confiance, she saw little further service and was disposed of in 1814.

The Dawlish Chronicles in Audio Format

The first of the Dawlish Chronicles novels, Britannia’s Wolf,is currently being recorded in audio-format by the distinguished American actor David Doersch. Watch this space for further information.

David Doersch is a seasoned narrator with dozens of audiobooks under his belt. As an actor and director, he has worked at some of the leading Shakespeare Festivals in the United States most recently playing Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Virginia Shakespeare Festival. He is also an accomplished Fight Director, which is work that has taken him to 5 continents. Currently, he works as the Casting Director and Fight Coordinator for the live touring arena stunt spectacular, Marvel Universe LIVE! He literally gets to train superheroes for a living!. His favorite genre of literature is historical fiction, and as such is thrilled to be working on such a well-written piece as Britannia’s Wolf.

The Bell Rock Lighthouse and the loss of HMS Argyll 1915

Between 1902 and 1908 a total of 34 armoured cruisers were built for the Royal Navy. Expensive ships, almost all in the 10000 to 16000-ton range, they were of comparable displacement to contemporary pre-dreadnought battleships. Fast and, except in the case of the later classes, very inadequately armed for their size, they were to prove one of the most unlucky type of ship ever to enter service. Of the 34, eleven were lost by enemy action or by internal explosion while at anchor and two were wrecked. It is with one of the latter, which was lost 100 years ago on 28^th October 1915, that this article deals. (For details of losses of other armoured cruisers click here and here).

The “Bell Rock” – also called the “Inchcape Rock” – is a reef that lies some 11 miles of Scotland’s east coast, roughly in line with Dundee. Set as it is in open water, wave lashed, and below surface level for much of the time, it has represented a major hazard to shipping through human history. It got the name “Bell Rock” because of an attempt in medieval times to mount a warning bell there. This bell was quickly stolen by a pirate who, as recounted in Robert Southey’s poem “The Inchcape most appropriately got his come-uppance by being later wrecked on the same rock himself:

But even in his dying fear,

One dreadful sound could the Rover hear;

A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell,

The Devil below was ringing his knell.

By the early 19^th Century, with maritime traffic increasing, the Bell Rock was claiming an average of six ships a year. The last straw was however the wreck on it of the 64-gun ship-of-the -line HMS York in 1803. There were no survivors. Construction of a lighthouse was now recognised as essential but the technical challenges were immense.  The engineer Robert Stevenson (1772 – 1850) proposed a design based on interlocking stone blocks, a technique that had already been proven on the Eddystone Lighthouse in the middle of the previous century. The greatest challenge was not however the tower – subjected to powerful waves as it would be – but provision of a firm foundation, essentially a level platform constructed on the reef itself.

Constructing the foundation

Work started in 1807 and what followed was a four-year epic, with work severely restricted by tides that on occasion submerged the rock’s surface to twelve feet. The offshore activity only proceed during the summer month, and even then only with difficulty. Poor weather in the summer of 1808 allowed only 80 hours of work were completed. 

Construction work in progress - human muscle-power alone.
Note "Beacon House" partly visible at right, as base of operations

To avoid time lost in shuttling workers to and fro Stevenson built a temporary wooden “Beacon House” on the rock and this served as both a base of operations and living quarters for fifteen men. As this structure (see illustrations) was also exposed to storms during the construction period, residence on it must have in itself have been a nightmare. During the winter months Stevenson kept his crews busy ashore, dressing the individual granite blocks needed for the tower. The total number required was some 2500 and all were drawn to the dockside by one of the unsung heroes of the project, a horse called Bassey.

Nearing completion - the temporary "Beacon House" is on the left

The lighthouse came into service in 1810 and was to fulfil its purpose very effectively. Between then and 1914 only a single ship was lost on the rock, a steamer called the Rosecraig that ran aground during a fog in 1908, fortunately without loss of life.  With the onset of war however in 1914 orders were given for the light to be turned off to avoid its use as a navigation mark by German U-Boats and it was only with special permission that it could be switched on. As will be seen, the procedure put in place for this proved to be woefully inadequate.

HMS Argyll

And now to HMS Argyll, one of the unfortunate breed of armoured cruisers, in this case of the six-ship Devonshire class. Completed in 1905, this 10850-ton, 475-ft long vessel was armed with four 7.5-inch (in four single mountings – bow and stern-chasers and one forward on each broadside) and six 6-inch guns and two 18-inch torpedo tubes. Her crew was over 650. She was assigned to duties with the Grand Fleet on outbreak of war in August 1914 and she was engaged in patrol work – essentially the “distant blockade” of Germany –  between the Shetland and Faroe Islands and the Norwegian Coast. She captured one German freighter in the first days of the war.

At the present time, and with the availability of radar and GS aids for even small craft, it is difficult to imagine just how blind – and how vulnerable – shipping was in low visibility in the early 20^th Century. The Argyll’s fate is one instance. In the early hours of 28th October 1915, during stormy conditions, she was in the vicinity of the now-darkened Bell Rock and he signalled to shore to have the lighthouse illuminated. It seems incredible that there was however no radio on the lighthouse itself and its contact with shore was only bby boat or visual signals. Such attempts failing, the information that the lighthouse had not been alerted was not relayed to the Argyll. Assuming that the light would indeed be switched on, the armoured cruiser maintained her course. At 0430 hrs she ploughed into the reef and could not break free. Despite substantial damage to the hull, and a fire, two accompanying destroyers, HMS  Hornet and HMS Jackal, managed to get the entire crew off without loss.

HMS Hornet - one of the Argyll's crew's two saviours

The Argyll was a total wreck, though efforts to remove her guns and other usable equipment succeeded. Unlucky she might have been, but considering the massive loss of life associated with the sinking of so many other ships of her type, she got off lightly!

 The Dalwish Chronicles in Audio Format

The first of the Dawlish Chronicles novels, Britannia’s Wolf, is currently being recorded in audio-format by the distinguished American actor David Doersch. Watch this space for further information.

David Doersch is a seasoned narrator with dozens of audiobooks under his belt. As an actor and director, he has worked at some of the leading Shakespeare Festivals in the United States most recently playing Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Virginia Shakespeare Festival. He is also an accomplished Fight Director, which is work that has taken him to 5 continents. Currently, he works as the Casting Director and Fight Coordinator for the live touring arena stunt spectacular, Marvel Universe LIVE! He literally gets to train superheroes for a living. His favorite genre of literature is historical fiction, and as such is thrilled to be working on such a well-written piece as Britannia’s Wolf.

Life at sea in merchant service in the 1870s

It is easy, at this remove, to be entranced by the “romance” of the seaborne trade in the 19^th Century, when the numbers of ships grew explosively to satisfy the needs of the first era of commercial globalisation. Images immediately come to mind of clippers racing under full sail to carry tea from China, of square-riggers rising to the challenge of Cape Horn, of the tens of thousands of brigs and schooners which carried oceanic as well as coastal trade, of the early steamers that were to be immortalised in the writing of Joseph Conrad. The beauty of so many of these ships, even the humblest, and the skill with which they were handled in the absence of any modern aids to navigation, do however tend to blind us to the fact that life on so many of these ships was brutal in the extreme.

Wreck of the Copeland at South Shields, November 1861, by John Newington Carter 

Life in the merchant service was not just nasty and brutal however – it could also be very short. Shipwrecks on an annual basis were at levels undreamed of today. The losses off Britain in one year alone is starkly illustrative: in 1873-4, 411 vessels, many small, sank around the British coast, with the loss of 506 lives. Bad seamanship and extreme weather was not responsible in many – perhaps ever a majority – of cases and ships frequently broke up or fell apart for the simple reason that they were already rotten and worn-out.  Standards for structural integrity and for limits on loading had indeed been established as early as 1835 by Lloyd's Register and compliance was a pre-requisite for insurance by reputable entities associated with Lloyds. There was however no legal requirement to meet such standards and many ship-owners operated vessels that were so unsound that they became known as “coffin Ships”   and which, worse still, loaded them so heavily that they were frequently incapable of surviving the first serious storm they would encounter.

How it so often ended...

Samuel Plimsoll

The situation was made worse still by the fact that once a seaman had signed on for a voyage – which on occasion poverty might force him to do without having first seen the ship itself – refusal to board could result in criminal prosecution and imprisonment with hard labour, typically for twelve weeks.  In the 1850s a British prison-inspector reported that three-quarters of all prisoners in gaols in England’s south-west were such seamen. Their crime had been to refuse to sail on vessels they believed to be unseaworthy or which were inadequately manned.

This was the background to the great crusade for safety at sea waged by the coal-merchant turned activist, Samuel Plimsoll, one of the great Victorian heroes. He entered parliament to fight on this issue in the early 1870s and his efforts were to be finally rewarded by imposition of statutory safety requirements. The most notable was to be the “Plimsoll Line”, still carried on ships’ hulls, which provided visual confirmation that the ship was not over-laden. Legislation was one thing, enforcement of compliance was another, and a battle still lay ahead. A later blog will deal with Plimsoll’s campaign in more detail.

That there was still a long way to go in the 1870s was illustrated by an eyewitness account by the writer, artist and explorer Frederick Whymper (1838-1901) of crew conditions on shipping he saw departing from British ports. He noted that even on many “superior vessels” the seaman “may, and often does, wade to his bunk through water, and the forecastle is too often a miserable hole, full of dirt and filth, where the men are packed like herrings.”  Whymper was particularly critical of the food, mainly “salt horse” and hard biscuit of the most inferior type. Even at this late stage scurvy was still often a problem, not least because the lime-juice that should have prevented it was frequently grossly adulterated. Whymper claimed that there was little or no scurvy in the Russian and French merchant navies because of the use of “sour wine” in lieu of lime juice. (It is not clear whether this did indeed have anti-scorbutic properties).

The reality of shipwreck

A major component of British trade was that with the West Indies. A visit to London’s West India Docks, which provided docking for vessels trading to the West Indies, showed Whymper that, though some ships involved were “large and well supplied with provisions”, the majority of the vessels in the trade were “small, with wretched accommodation, badly manned, provisions indifferent in quality and deficient in quantity”. Conditions in the forecastles where the seamen were lodged were horrific, and unhealthy. Cases occurred on “first-class ships” in which seamen’s’ chests were “black from the gas which rises from the cargo, and which smells like sewage, which is especially the case in sugar ships.” A  Captain Toynbee told Whymper that he had seen a ship which “was carrying  two packs of foxhounds and three horses, which received half its ventilation by a hatch which opened into the sailors’ forecastle.”

Silex Bay, Flamborough by John Taylor Allerston, 1890

Ships engaged in the Baltic trade, most of them carrying timber, tended to have high rates of “consumption, bronchitis, and other chest diseases”. Whymper noted that Norwegian, Swedish and Russian vessels not only provided superior food than their British counterparts, but tended to accommodate the crew not in the forecastle but in deckhouses with “a fair amount of space and good ventilation”. The Scandinavian ships were also apparently cleaner than British ones and Whymper was critical of British crews –  “the chief fault is the extremely dirty and lazy habit of the men themselves, who allow filth of all kinds to accumulate in the deck-house and galley, without taking the slightest trouble to remove it.” The tendency to overload appears to be continuing, especially in the case of and bulky, high-volume cargo such as timber so that “the forecastle is very much reduced in size—too much so, considering the number of men that form the crew; these have either to remain on deck exposed to wet and cold, or have to breathe the foul atmosphere of a small forecastle, in which are stowed rusty chains, wet ropes, and all kinds of animal decaying matter.”

Laden collier being towed from harbour at a north-eastern English port

Though much of Britain’s coastal coal trade was bring carried in steamers by the 1870s there were still many sailing craft of 150 to 600 tons, usually rigged as sloops, schooners, or brigs, the latter being the most common. The crews to operate such vessels seem to have been wholly inadequate – which was probably a major factor in many shipwrecks. Whymper wrote that “a collier brig is generally worked by a captain and a mate, who live in a small dirty cabin, and by four men and a boy, who live and sleep in the most miserable of forecastles …  so old and ill-constructed are some of these colliers, that in rough weather the forecastle is deluged with water. This condition of things is made much worse by the negligence of the sailor himself, for it seems to be a rule that the cook, instead of throwing over the side of the ship the refuse of material used for food, as dirty water, potato parings, &c., deposits these with great care in some corner of the forecastle. No attention is paid by the captain to the sanitary state of the ship; during the voyage, which is often a rough one, he is engaged in working the vessel, and while she is in harbour he is on shore waiting upon the owners of the vessel, or transacting their business in the Coal Exchange.”

A collier brig in a North Sea gale  -  and crew of seven to cope wiht it

The conditions could be worse still when disease struck. Whymper claimed that he heard from a sanitary inspector engaged in fighting a cholera epidemic that one cholera-victim was taken ashore from a collier after he had been “lying in his hammock for two days prostrate, and with much vomiting and purging, and during this time the captain, although on board, was not aware of the man’s absence from deck.”

This is a sketch only, but it is a reminder, when we are entranced by depictions of billowing sails, or when we read of the romance of the age of sail, of what lay beneath the attractive exterior.

Beauty is often only skin deep.

Britannia’s Shark

1881 and the British Empire’s power seems unchallengeable.

But now a group of revolutionaries threaten that power’s economic basis. Their weapon is the invention of a naïve genius, their sense of grievance is implacable and their leader is already proven in the crucible of war. Protected by powerful political and business interests, conventional British military and naval power cannot touch them…

A daring act of piracy drags the ambitious British naval officer, Nicholas Dawlish, into this deadly maelstrom.  Drawn in too is his wife Florence, for whom a glimpse of a half-forgotten face evokes memories of earlier tragedy. For both a nightmare lies ahead, amid the wealth and squalor of America’s Gilded Age, and on a fever-ridden island ruled by savage tyranny …

For UK click here to get more details and to read the first chapter 

For US and rest of world click here to get more details and to read the first chapter 

Miss Betty Mouat and the Colombine 1886

My blog posts often deal with blood and thunder, conflict and battle, but this present item deals with a middle-aged lady of poor background, who demonstrated a very high degree of heroism in peacetime without having any prior warning of what was needed.

I have been an admirer for many years of the Scots poet William McGonnagal (1825-1902) whose style was truly unique and whose command of verse can only be described as unique and unmatched. He produced an enormous canon of work and there was hardly a natural disaster, national tragedy, military victory or notable contemporary event in the late nineteenth century about which the poetic muse did not inspire him to write. Many of these happenings would probably be forgotten today were they not recorded in McGonnagal’s collected work. Some readers may remembering me quoting from him on an earlier blog (Click here). I was drawn to the subject of this present blog by a poem he wrote about it.

The event in question was not of massive national significance but it was the unexpected adventure of a quiet, middle-aged Scottish lady who came through a ghastly ordeal with courage and spirit undimmed.

In 1886 the unmarried Betty Mouat was 59 years old. She supported herself by knitting and she lived with her half-brother’s family in the tiny hamlet of Scatness near the southern tip of the main island of the Shetlands group. As will be seen from the map below it is one of the most remote inhabited locations in the British Isles and in the 1880s life would have been hard and primitive in the extreme. 

Miss Moutat's  background was a tragic one – her father had died six months before her birth when the whaler he was serving on disappeared in the Arctic. Her poor luck continued – a cartwheel broke her leg, and she was once shot in the head by a man hunting rabbits.  She herself had suffered a stroke shortly before the events recounted below but in view of what transpired one can only assume that it was not a seriously debilitating one. In January 1886 however she had occasion to see a doctor in Lerwick, the island’s main town and about 25 miles to the north. Given the poor state of the roads,  she elected to travel there in the Columbine, a small cutter-rigged sailing craft that carried mail and passengers. A short sea-passage was also preferable since she was bringing some forty hand-crafted shawls with her for sale on behalf of herself and neighbours.

Miss Betty Mouat
With acknowledgements to the Shetland Museum
(http://photos.shetland-museum.org.uk)
Photo_00106.jpg

On 30^th January the weather was deteriorating and the Columbine’s captain warned Miss Mouat  that a rough passage could be expected. He advised that she might better wait. She was quite adamant however – sail in the Columbine she would. She came on board with her merchandise and with two pints of milk and two biscuits for refreshment during the expected three or four- hour passage. She went down into the small cabin and settled herself.

Disaster struck within half an hour of departure.  The main sheet broke, allowing the boom to swing free and in the process of securing it the captain was thrown overboard. The craft carried two deckhands and now – with the Columbine unable to manoeuvre due to the unavailability of the mainsail – they too the decision to launch the vessel’s single row-boat and go to the captain’s rescue. Given the weather conditions it seems remarkable that they expected to get back to the Columbine. The captain could not be found but by the time they realised that their search was futile the Columbine had been driven too far off to reach. She was carrying Miss Mouat, the only passenger, with her. The two deckhands were successful in reaching shore and raising the alarm but given the communications of the time the response could not be immediate.

In his poem McGonagall devoted two stanzas to these events:

The waves washed o'er the little craft, and the wind loudly roared,

And the Skipper, by a big wave, was washed overboard;

Then the crew launched the small boat on the stormy main,

Thinking to rescue the Skipper, but it was all in vain.

Nevertheless, the crew struggled hard his life to save,

But alas! the Skipper sank, and found a watery grave;

And the white crested waves madly did roar,

Still the crew, thank God, landed safe on shore.

Back on the Columbine Miss Mouat now found herself a prisoner in the cabin. The violent movements when the boom broke free caused the steps leading down into the cabin to collapse and she had not the strength to lift them back into position. Furniture within the cabin was constantly thrown about – a hazard in itself – and there was nowhere to sit or wedge herself securely. To prevent herself being tossed about she held on to a rope hanging from the deckhead – so long, and so tightly, she afterwards recounted, that her hands became painfully blistered. Through the ordeal that followed she was unable to sit or lie down but she managed to fashion loops in the rope with which she could suspend herself. Worse still was the fact that the Columbine’s food stores were in a separate compartment near the bows, which she was now unable to reach. Her only provisions were now her milk and biscuits. Despite this desperate situation this splendid woman did not lose her nerve. She prayed, encased herself in a jacket of the captain’s and she found his watch and wound it daily to keep track of time. The poor weather continued, including driving snow, and the craft’s rolling and pitching at the mercy of the sea made broken or fractured bones a real possibility. McGonagall described the scene vividly:

Oh! think of the poor soul crouched in the cabin below,

With her heart full of fear, cold, hunger, and woe,

And the pitless storm of rain, hail, and snow,

Tossing about her tiny craft to and fro.

While the Columbine was being driven roughly north eastwards by the storm, across an area of sea now studded with huge oil and gas production platforms , attempts were being made in Shetland to get a search underway. The result was that two steamers owned by local shipping companies searched over a wide area, but without success.

The ordeal that continued over the coming days might have driven a lesser woman insane. Miss Mouat kept her nerve however, despite all that nature threw at the Columbine.  Confined to her small prison, unaware of where she was, she continued to pray, to keep herself supported to avoid injury, to wind the watch, to sleep somehow and to eke out her milk and two biscuits with iron self-discipline. As the weather eased somewhat she managed to wedge a box beneath the hatchway. By standing on it she could keep a lookout. 

On the evening of the eighth day of this horror, on 5^th February, as light was fading, snow-capped land came into sight. The weather drove the Columbine on and she was smashed from one rock to another through the darkness as she approached the coast.  McGonnagal described what followed:

At last the Columbine began to strike on submerged rocks,

And with the rise and fall of the sea she received some dreadful shocks,

And notwithstanding that the vessel was still rolling among the rocks,

Still the noble heroine contrived once more to raise herself upon the box.

Though badly battered, and close to breaking up, the craft somehow survived – and Miss Mouat with it. As dawn broke the Columbine suddenly found herself in calm water. She was lying on her side in shallow water off the small island of Lepsoy, on the Norwegian west coast.  Quickly spotted by local fishermen, Miss Mouat was carried to shore and over rough terrain to a nearby house. Here she received every kindness from good people from who she was separated by the barrier of language. Though exhausted and feverish, she seems to have recovered quickly – given the sort of woman she was this was probably not surprising. McGonnagal’s final stanza is somewhat of an anti-climax:

Still the Columbine sped on, and ran upon a shingly beach,

And at last the Island of Lepsoe, Miss Mouat did reach,

And she was kindly treated by the inhabitants in everyway that's grand,

And conveyed to Aalesund and there taking steamer to fair England.

Norwegian Fisherfolk by Hans Dahl (1849-1937)
People such assaved Miss Mouat

Miss Mouat’s linguistic isolation ended when a message was got to an Englishman living relatively close by, a manufacturer of cod-liver oil. He helped arrange a passage on a Norwegian vessel from nearby from Aalesund to Hull, and transport onwards by train to Edinburgh – the first time she had been on a train. Her story had already been receiving sensational treatment in the press and when she arrived in Edinburgh she found hundreds of well-wishers waiting at the station. A Shetland family living there had offered to give her accommodation and she was driven the house in a carriage to the cheers of the crowd. She was to remain there for three weeks, visited by the rich and curious – some of whom asked for locks of her hair.  She turned down offers to recount her story on the stage, including in London, and was happy to return to her home in Scatness.  A fund was set up on her behalf, one of the contributors being Queen Victoria, who donated £20.

She never left Shetland again, though on occasions tourists came to ask about her experience. She appears to have been invariable patient and courteous, as admirable on home ground as she had been at sea.

It is pleasing to record that Betty Mouat lived on to the age of 93, dying in 1918, an example not only of courage and indomitability, but of how an apparently unexceptional person can rise to the greatest heights of heroism when confronted with unexpected challenge.

A splendid woman – and worth remembering.

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Britannia's Shark - the Third Dawlish Chronicles Novel - is available in paperback and Kindle.  

It’s April 1881, a year since Commander Nicholas Dawlish returned from the brutal campaign in Paraguay detailed in Britannia’s Reach.  A personal tragedy has drawn him yet closer to his beloved wife Florence and in its aftermath they welcome the opportunity to combine his duty to observe trials of a new weapon in the Adriatic with an idyllic holiday together. Neither suspects that they are about to be drawn into a nightmare…

Click here to learn more - and to read the opening chapter

“I’d prefer to be blown up!” - Antwerp 1831

The Netherlands and Belgium are today two separate nations, and have indeed had separate existences, in one form or another, for most of the time since the late sixteenth century. Up until 1806, the Netherlands had a complex republican form of government, though allowing however a hereditary role to Princes of the House of Orange. The nation fell under French control in 1795 and in 1806 it became the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with the Emperor Napoleon’s younger brother Louis installed as King. What is today Belgium (allowing for frontier adjustments) was ruled through the same period as a province of the Hapsburg Empire.

King William I's son leading Dutch-Belgian forces during the Waterloo campaign

As Napoleon’s power waned, and as he was sent in exile to Elba, the great powers of Europe supported creation of a single unified state, combining both regions, and henceforth to be known as “The Kingdom of the Netherlands.”  Its sovereign was to be the current Prince of Orange, who took the title of King William I and who was also made ruler, under the title of Grand Duke, of the separate state of Luxembourg. The new Kingdom was functioning when Napoleon came back from Elba during “The 100 days” in 1815, and Dutch-Belgian forces were to fight against him at Waterloo.

Belgian rebels in Brussels 1830

For the next 15 years the northern, Dutch, and the southern, Belgian, parts of the kingdom lived uneasily together. Though adherents of both religions lived in all areas, the north was predominantly Protestant and the south predominantly Catholic. The situation was further complicated by the southern provinces containing both French-speaking Walloon and Dutch-speaking Flemish communities.  Tensions increased and in the south resentment grew against what was seen as the Protestant hegemony by the House of Orange and its adherents. This discontent exploded in outright rebellion in Belgium in 1830. King William attempted to restore order but was hampered by mass desertion of troops hailing from the southern provinces. Unable to restore order, despite bloody street-fighting in Brussels and elsewhere, William withdrew his forces, though he maintained a blockade of Antwerp, and appealed to the Great Powers to resolve the problem. This resulted in the London Conference of European powers which recognised Belgium as an independent country. Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was installed as "King of the Belgians".

Dutch cavalry under attack in a Belgian town

Unhappy with this outcome, King William of the now truncated Netherlands – essentially the territory it consists of today – was to oppose the separation, culminating in an unsuccessful invasion of Belgium known as De Tiendagse Veldtocht ("The Ten Days' Campaign") which lasted from the 2^nd to the 12^th of August 1831.  Despite initial successes, French intervention forced the Dutch to agree to an indefinite armistice. Faced with such opposition, William had no option but to withdraw, humiliated and smarting, but it was not until 1839 the Netherlands accepted Belgian independence by signing the Treaty of London. As one of its signatories, it was in line with the terms of this treaty that Great Britain entered World War I when Belgium was invaded by Germany in 1914.

van Speijk's youth romanticised
- admiring tomb of Admiral de Ruyter

Only one incident from this complex series of events is widely remembered in the Netherlands today. This was the exploit of the young Dutch naval lieutenant, Jan van Speijk (pronounced like “Spike” in English), who achieved immortality at Antwerp in February 1831. Dutch naval forces were maintaining a blockade of this important port – then as now, one of the largest in Europe, as it functioned as a commercial gateway to Germany. Van Speijk was in command of a small gunboat, one of many engaged in blockade duty, a more difficult task then than nowadays as many mouths of the Scheldt Delta, at the head of which Antwerp lies, were then open but which have since been closed off by dams.

Van Speijk’s background seems almost too good to be true for a popular hero. Born in Amsterdam in 1802, his parents died when he was a baby and he was brought up in an orphanage and subsequently trained as a tailor. Such a mundane career did not attract him and he instead joined the Royal Netherlands Navy in 1820. Thereafter he was to serve with distinction in the Dutch East Indies in the Boni Campaign of 1825 in the South Celebes. 

By 1830 van Speijkwas a lieutenant – a very impressive achievement for a man who had started with such poor prospects. As the revolt in Belgium grew he was in command of Kanonneerboot  Nummer 2 (Gunboat Number 2), a small sailing craft armed with a single cannon and on October 27^th he performed so effectively in a bombardment of Antwerp that he was award a decoration.

19th Century comic strip about van Speijk's life

The blockade continued through the winter and during this time van Speijk seems to have thought deeply – might have indeed been obsessed – about what he should do if his vessel were to fall into Belgian hands. In December 1830 he wrote to his niece that he would rather blow up his craft rather than surrender it, and he referred to an incident in 1606 when a Dutch captain had done just this to prevent seizure by the Spaniards. During new-year celebrations he told his crew the same and was allegedly applauded by them, though it is uncertain whether they thought that he was wholly serious.

What van Speijk feared could happen does happen- the mob storms the gunboat,
the ship's boy knows what's coming and jumps overboard and van Speijk himself goes below

The crunch came on February 5^th 1831. Caught in a north-west gale, and with a dragging anchor, van Speijk’s gunboat was thrown up on the shore. A Belgian mob surged on board. What followed was the stuff of legend, the more so since few survived to tell a coherent story. Unable to prevent the vessel’s capture, van Speijk went below and with the reported words of “Ik ga liever de lucht in” (I’d prefer to be blown up) he either fired his pistol or dropped his cigar into a keg of gunpowder.

"Ik ga liever de lucht in!" and van Speijkshoots into the keg of gunpowder

The resulting explosion wrecked the gunboat and killed van Speijk himself and 27 of his crew of 30 as well as an unknown number of Belgians. Since there were only two survivors, one of whom was boy who, seeing what was intended,  had jumped overboard before the explosion, it is not quite sure how van Speijk’s final words were recorded, or indeed if he ever spoke them

The destruction of Gunboat Number 2, Antwerp in the background

The latest van Speijk

Van Speijk was immediately hailed as a national hero in the Netherlands, the admiration being led by King William himself, who within a week of his death issued an order that there should always be a ship called van Speijk in the Royal Netherlands Navy. This order has been honoured ever since and the current van Speijk, the eighth, is a Karel Doorman-class frigate launched in 1995.  Van Speijk’s remains were buried with pomp in Amsterdam with the King present and his life was thereafter the subject of poems, paintings and even inspirational nineteenth-century versions of comic strips.

And the expression “Ik ga liever de lucht in!” entered the Dutch language and even today is used as a term of exasperated refusal.

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Britannia’s Reach is the second of the Dawlish Chronicles. So what’s it about?

Click here for details and to read the first chapter by clicking again on image on Amazon page

It’s 1880. On a broad river deep in the heart of South America, a flotilla of paddle steamers thrashes slowly upstream. Laden with troops, horses and artillery, intent on conquest and revenge.

Ahead lies a commercial empire that was wrested from a British consortium in a bloody revolution. Now the investors are determined to recoup their losses and are funding a vicious war to do so.

Nicholas Dawlish, an ambitious British naval officer, is playing a leading role in the expedition.  But as brutal land and river battles mark its progress upriver, and as both sides inflict and endure ever greater suffering, stalemate threatens.

And Dawlish finds himself forced to make a terrible ethical choice if he is to return to Britain with some shreds of integrity remaining…

1863: The first American-Japanese naval battle

July 1863 was recognised both at the time and afterwards as the turning point of the American Civil War. The Union victory at Gettysburg in the first three days of the month, and the surrender of the Confederate fortress of Vicksburg in the 4^th, ensured that the days of the Southern Confederacy were numbered. Long and bitter fighting still lay ahead but from this time onwards there could be no doubt that the Union would be restored. The role of the US Navy had been crucial in gaining control of the Mississippi – the fall of Vicksburg put its entire length under Union control – and no less important was the close blockade of the southern coastline which was to strangle Confederate commerce and strategic imports. Given this concentration of US Naval power in American waters, it is surprising that one of the most dramatic naval actions in July 1863 was to be with Japanese.

USS Wyoming

The background to this action was the Union decision, from the start of the war, to maintain a six-ship Pacific Squadron to protect American interests, strategic and commercial, over this vast area. The first concern was to ensure that the Confederacy should not gain a foothold at any point on the Pacific coast. As this threat receded it was replaced by that of Confederate commerce raiders. The most successful of these, the CSS  Alabama, operated on a global basis, including the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. The American whaling fleets were considered especially vulnerable and the squadron’s patrols extended across the North and South Pacific, from Alaska to Chile and as far west as Australia and the Chinese coast, where piracy was a major problem both then and in many years to come.

CSS Alabama

Entering service in 1859, the USS Wyoming was the newest of the squadron’s vessels. A wooden-hulled steam sloop of 1460-tons and 200-foot length, she was not called after what is now the State of Wyoming (which did was not admitted to the Union until 1890) but rather after the similarly-named valley in Pennsylvania which had been the scene of ghastly massacre of settlers by British-allied Indian forces during the War of Independence. The Wyoming was heavily armed for her size – two 11-inch Dahlgren smoothbores, one 60-pounder Parrott rifle and three 32-pounder smoothbores. She could make 11-knots under steam but auxiliary sail provision made her less dependent on coal supplies and extended her range considerably.

The Wyoming’s Civil War was to open dramatically. She was at San Francisco when secession commenced and her captain, a Southern sympathiser, took her to Panama with the apparent intention of committing her to Confederate service. This was frustrated and he was dismissed. On the voyage back to California she struck a reef, was grounded for three days, and had to be dragged free. In mid-1862, now commanded by Commander David S. McDougal (1809 – 1882), she was sent across the Pacific to Malaya and the Dutch East Indies to search for the Alabama. In October of that year the Alabama received news from British and Dutch trading vessels of the Wyoming’s presence in the area. The Alabama’s captain, Raphael Semmes, wrote in his journal that he was resolved to give the Wyoming battle and that he believed the ships to be evenly matched. The game of hide and seek that followed did not however lead to an encounter.

"Expel the barbarians" poster

Trouble that would demand the Wyoming’s attention was however brewing in another quarter. Japan had only been “opened” to foreign trade and contact since 1854 and a major issue in the nation’s internal politics was to be the extent to which it should either modernise, or to continue its existing social and cultural norms while rejecting all outside influences. We know now that it was the modernisers, led in the 1860 by the Tokugawa Shogun, Iesada, who were to prevail but the issue was only decided after a long series of revolts and civil wars. The movement against both the Shogun and trade with outsiders was led by the Choshu Clan from their territory in south-west Honshu. Their policy was summed up in the slogan “Honour the Emperor and expel the barbarians." The Emperor in question had been a figurehead, and above politics in the preceding period, with political power vested in the Shogun. Now Emperor Komei broke with tradition and issued an edict supporting the “expel the barbarians” policy which was immediately acted upon by the Choshu.  They  were well placed for this since, with powerful shore batteries, they controlled the Straits of Shimonoseki which divide Honshu from  Kyushu, the most southerly of Japan’s main islands. Soon British, French, Dutch, and American traders were coming under fire.

Following her unsuccessful search for the Alabama, the Wyoming moved north in 1863.  She arrived in Yokohama to find that all foreigners had been ordered to leave Japan immediately and that the Straits of Shimonoseki had been closed to foreign vessels. On 26th June news arrived that two Choshu vessels had attacked an American merchantman in the Straits. She escaped without casualties but US ambassador and Commander McDougal agreed that the insult to the American flag was unacceptable. Immediate action was needed if further such incidents were to be prevented. McDougal, commanding what amounted to a one-ship navy, headed south.

USS Wyoming in action at Shimonseki

The Wyoming entered the Shimonoseki Strait in mid-morning on 16^th July. She was cleared for action and her guns were loaded. The Choshu coastal batteries – which included five modern 8-inch Dalghrens as well as more antiquated smoothbores –  opened fire on her shortly afterwards . The Wyoming opened up in return with her pivot-mounted 11-inch Dahlgrens. She drove towards three armed Choshu vessels moored at the town of Shimonoseki, all steamers built in the United States and one of them bizarrely named the Daniel Webster after the renowned statesman . Wyoming took hits she forged ahead, one of them killing and wounding men manning a 32-pounder broadside gun. Lacking charts for these waters the Wyoming now ran aground. The Chosu steamer Lancefiled charged straight for her with the apparent intention of boarding, but Wyoming managed to break free from the mud in time to blast her attacker with her Dahlgrens. The Lancefield’s  boiler exploded and she sank. McDougal now concentrated his fire on the two remaining Chosu vessels and some of the shells fired went over and exploded in the town beyond and started fires. During the action the Wyoming took eleven hits on her hull as well as substantial damage to her funnel and rigging. Losses amounted to four killed and seven wounded.

Honour was satisfied and McDougal was pleased that, in his words, "the punishment inflicted (on the Choshu leader) and in store for him will, I trust, teach him a lesson that will not soon be forgotten." This conclusion was somewhat premature for the Chosu leaders were undeterred. Four days later two French warships, the Tancrede and the Dupleix, also bombarded and landed men briefly to destroy one of the gun batteries. This was still not enough to deter the Choshu and the following year it took a larger campaign by significant numbers of British, Dutch and French warships, with a nominal American presence, to clear the strait. This larger action may be the subject of a later blog.

USS Wyoming's crew in action

Damage repaired, the Wyoming set off again for the Dutch East Indies to hunt the Alabama. They were never to sight each other, though it emerged later that at one stage they had been a mere 25 miles apart in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java (Where the USS Houston CL-30 was to go down fighting in early 1942). The Wyoming remained in the area after the Alabama left and was later involved in the hunt for the Confederate raider Shenandoah. Her only further action was to be  a punitive expedition against Formosan natives who had murdered the crew of a wrecked American merchantman. She remained in active service until 1882.

And the quarry that Wyoming hunted so relentlessly but never sighted? The Alabama had an appointment with Destiny, and with the USS Kearsarge off the coast of France tin 1864. But that is a separate story.

To see a short video interview with Antoine Vanner about his approach to writing naval fiction and his interest in the 19th Century please click here.