Guest Blog by Chris Sams

I am glad to welcome naval-historian Chris Sams as guest on my blog. I hope you'll enjoy this story of warfare in the North Sea in 1917 - Antoine Vanner

 A bloody encounter in the North Sea, 1917 by Chris Sams

Day broke on the 17 October 1917 and HMS Strongbow, an R-class destroyer escorting a convoy consisting of two British, one Belgian and nine neutral Scandinavian vessels from Lerwick to Bergen with the armed trawlers Elise and P. Fannon. Strongbow was at the rear of the convoy whilst her sister HMS Mary Rose under Lt. Commander Fox led the convoy from the front, when the crew spotted two cruisers at 06:05 approaching through the early morning haze at two points after beam. Visibility was only 4000 yards and the two vessels were closing at speed. The Duty officer Acting Lieutenant James, believed them to be British light cruisers of the Cleopatra class and he signalled them for identification using a Morse spot lamp.

There was no response.

The second signal met with no response.

The third was met with a poorly morsed letters that made no sense when translated. Something was not right and James immediately sent for the Captain Lt-Commander Brooke and Strongbow turned to meet the two unknown vessels and increased speed.

HMS Strongbow

SMS Bremse and Brummer had been dispatched by Admiral Scheer to seek convoys on the Lerwick to Bergen route and if none were to be found to proceed to the West coast of Britain and range into the Atlantic at their discretion and depending on their fuel supplies.

The Germans reasoned that whilst the rest of their fleet was known to be engaged in the Baltic and capturing Helsingfors the British would not expect an attack. A successful attack would also cause problems for the enemy and ultimately aid the U-boat campaign as the Royal Navy would need to bleed off vessels searching for U-boats to protect these neutral convoys from surface raiders. The mine-laying cruisers Bremse and Brummer were specifically chosen for their appearance which was similar to British cruisers and that they had a top speed of 34 knots and could burn either oil or coal. With their decks cleared of all their mine laying equipment, save for the lowering mechanism, and the berths for 450 mines the cruisers left Wilhelmshaven and proceeded into the North Sea after a day's delay whilst minesweepers cleared a path for them.

SMS Brummer

Scheer legitimised attacking neutral ships in his memoirs;

It was known that neutral merchant vessels assembled in convoys to travel under the protection of English warships, and therefore they might be regarded as enemy vessels, since they openly claimed English protection as to benefit the enemy and consequently to injure us.

Room 40, the Admiralty's code breakers, had intercepted Bremse and Brummer reporting their position as north of the Sylt at Lister Tief. This information was passed on to Operations to evaluate as Room 40 had no knowledge of British vessels’ dispositions.

The Admiralty Operations room did not believe that two mine-laying cruisers would be a threat to anything and that they were probably adding to the formidable minefields already in existence. There had been a belief that the Germans would attempt a raid of some sort and a force of three cruisers, twenty-seven light cruisers and fifty-four destroyers spread itself from the mid North Sea to the coast of Norway looking for a mine layer and force of destroyers.

The Brummer and Bremse had slipped by at night using their high top-speed and now were closing on Strongbow. They fired at 3000 yards with their first salvo falling short. Their second hit the main steam pipe, causing the destroyer to stop and wrecking her wireless-room, thereby removing her ability to call for help. The time was 06:15.

With Mary Rose some way ahead the defenceless merchant ships slowed to a stop and began abandoning ship in the hope that their crews could be afforded safety in the lifeboats. The two German cruisers closed and began sinking the merchant ships with expertly aimed shots at the waterline and would eventually claim all nine of the neutral Danes, Swedish and Norwegian vessels whilst the Belgian and British vessels fled the scene.

M-Class destroyer HMS Marmion - her sister Mary Rose would have looked similar

At 06:20 the Mary Rose reappeared, reacting to the gunfire and sighting four merchant vessels already sinking. She bravely charged the German warships whilst trying to send an SOS transmission. Although acknowledged by a British shore station and asked for confirmation SMS Brummer managed to block any further communication. Mary Rose opened fire at a range of 6-7000 yards and closed with the enemy at top speed. At 2000 yards Lt. Commander Fox ordered the helm hard over.  As she responded the two German cruisers hit her engine-room, disabling her. Thereafter she was pounded to destruction, taking   all but eight of her crew with her to their deaths.

With the escorting destroyers dealt with the German cruisers returned to the task of shelling the defenceless merchant vessels. 

The fight was not over as the plucky armed trawler Elise defied orders and returned to the scene, first trying to rescue survivors from Strongbow and then firing upon the two German vessels and trying to draw them away. When this failed the trawler could do no more than move to a safe distance and wait.

With their work completed Bremse and Brummer withdrew to the South-East without picking up a single survivor. Scheer would later legitimise this by stating that;

As two (actually three) of the steamers had been able to get away in time on noticing the attack, the care of the crews in the boats could be left to them, for our cruisers had to consider their own safety on the long return journey.

The Elise did return and picked up survivors from the disabled Strongbow whilst others were picked up by boats from the lost merchants. Strongbow finally disappeared beneath the waves at 09:30 having been scuttled by her crew following the destruction of all code books.

In all, 250 men died in few hours by gunfire or from exposure. A further 50 were wounded. The Germans suffered no casualties.

News of the disaster did not reach the British authorities until 15:50 when HMS Marmion, on the return Bergen - Lerwick track, found the Elise at 13:30 and steamed to send the message to Admiral Brock, officer commanding Shetland and Orkneys. Beatty was told within an hour and hurriedly deployed his cruisers on the off chance of catching the two Germans that night but to no avail.

Mersey Class Armed Trawler - the Elise would have been generally similar

The Admiralty were criticised for their failings by the Conservative press and questions were asked in Parliament. The only defence offered was that the sea is a large place and occasionally the enemy, using night and fog, may slip through the defences and hit a convoy. It was also pointed out that some 4500 vessels had got through safely in the last six months on the same route.

Beatty was livid that the German ships had been Bremse and Brummer as, knowing their capability, he would have changed his whole deployment. Changes to the convoy system were brought in immediately with larger convoys on a less frequent basis. Destroyer commanders were ordered to be at constant standby, to suspect all unknown vessels as enemy until absolutely certain to the contrary, to scatter the convoy when attacked, to avoid engaging "superior forces" and use W/T to call for help "IMMEDIATELY"

Criticism was brought against Fox of the Mary Rose and Brooke of the Strongbow for their "ill advised" actions that day. (Fox had been killed in the action and Brooke died of pneumonia a year later, possibly weakened by exposure in the water before rescue). Although their bravery in engaging the enemy was recognised, the opinion of the various enquiries and court-martials that followed was that the destroyer commanders’ first duty was to summon assistance from the cruiser forces. It was later acknowledged that the Strongbow simply did not have the opportunity to contact anyone as her W/T set was knocked out within minutes. It was revealed by the Germans after the war that Mary Rose had also attempted to do the same.

Indeed the German official account post war acknowledge the bravery of the British crews:

The heroic fight put up by the two British destroyers had been in the highest British tradition, but it achieved nothing.

It was a defeat for the Allies but it was learnt from quickly. Beatty took steps to rectify the situation with his fresh orders and the number of vessels in convoy were increased whilst their frequency decreased so that they would be better protected.

For the Germans it was a victory and was celebrated by the Kaiser with the opening of champagne. Two cruisers had caused embarrassment to the Royal Navy for no loss at a time when good news in Germany was distinctly lacking. Strategically however, it achieved nothing.

There were accusations of war crimes post war with the German crews accused of shelling survivors in the water. Sir Henry Newbolt wrote that;

Throughout the attack the Germans displayed a severity which is hard to distinguish from downright cruelty. They gave the neutral masters and crews no chance to lower their boats and get away, but poured their broadsides into them without warning as though they had been armed enemies... In the case of the destroyers the enemy's conduct was even worse; for to their everlasting discredit fire was opened and maintained upon the Strongbow's survivors.

This would later be refuted by the Germans in Krieg in der Nordsee;

Some of Strongbow's crew, who had taken to the lifeboat , and others who had leapt into the water, became additional victims of gunfire, possibly from shots falling short; it stands to reason that there was no intention whatsoever of firing on them. The statement of the British Official history, that defenceless survivors from the Strongbow were deliberately fired on, cannot be refuted strongly enough.

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Chris Sams has been a student of history from a very young age and specialised in the Axis powers at war in his undergraduate studies as well as late Medieval English kingship. Chris published his first book on German cruiser warfare (Kreuzerkrieg) and the German Asiatic Squadron (Ostasiengeschwader) in 2015 and is beavering away on the next whilst trying to write blogs at boredhistorian.blogspot.com and spending time with his wife and three children.

Click here to find out more about his book.

The USA’s First Korean War, 1871

The Daewongun, 1869

A recent blog, “The French Navy in Korea, 1866”, described Korean attempts in the 1860s to retain its status as “The Hermit Kingdom”, cut off from contacts with the world outside. The key figure in this was the sinister Yi Ha-ung (1821-1898), the “Daewongun” – a title meaning “Prince of the Great Court” –who was to be a near-dominant player in internal Korean politics for four decades until the late 1890s. Adept in playing off internal and external forces against each other, his main objective was to limit external contacts and to maintain traditional structures and culture unchanged. This policy had led to large-scale and savage persecution of Christian converts and French missionaries and these in turn were to lead to a brief French punitive mission in 1866, as described in the previous blog. (Click here to read this). 

Korea, the "Hermit Kingdom",  in the 1860s - exotic and isolated

By the 1860s Western nations were already heavily engaged in trade with China, and since 1854 with Japan, which had been “opened up” to foreign merchants from 1854 and was now rapidly modernising. In Korea, however, the Daewongun, and the conservative interests allied to him, were not convinced of the merits of such contacts and were determined to preserve Korea’s isolation. It is against this background that in August 1866 an American owned vessel, the sidewheel-steamer SS General Sherman, was involved in an attempt to open trade. 

The timing was ill-chosen to say the least, for feeling against outsiders had been whipped up by the Daewongun and French intervention to avenge the slaughter of missionaries and converts was imminent. Despite her American registration, the General Sherman’s mission was funded by a British commercial company, Meadows & Co., which operated in China and hoped to negotiate trading rights. Only the vessel’s Captain Page and Chief Mate Wilson were Americans and there were two British citizens on board, the owner, W. B. Preston, and a Welsh missionary, Robert Jerman Thomas, who had been brought along as a translator. The crew consisted of thirteen Chinese and three Malay seamen. Though loaded with a cargo of trade goods – cotton, tin, and glass – the General Sherman also carried two 12-inch cannon. The presence of these weapons which was to make the vessel’s mission doubly unwelcome in Korean eyes.

A view of the Korean coast

In mid-August 1866 the General Sherman sailed up the Taedong River on Korea's west coast towards Pyongyang.  Initial contact with Korean officials were peaceful, if not cordial – permission to trade was refused – and the ship proceeded unhindered until it ran aground  at Yangjak island, close to Pyongyang. Korean attitudes were now hardening and on August 27^th, when an official boarded the vessel, Captain Page detained him, probably as a hostage. This worsened the situation and an order arrived from Daewongun that if the prisoner was not released, and if the General Sherman did not leave at once, all on board should be killed. Departure was not an option however – the level in the river had fallen – the ship had only reached so far upriver due to heavy rains earlier and it was now firmly lodged on a sandbank.

A North Korean stamp commemorating the destruction of the SS General Sherman

The details of what now followed are uncertain as nobody on the General Sherman was to survive. Hostilities erupted on August 31^st and cannon were apparently fired from the ship at Korean troops on the river bank. The confrontation lasted four days and was brought to a head by fire-ships being drifted downriver towards the immobile ship. Two attempts failed but the third succeeded in setting the General Sherman ablaze. Chinese and Malay crew-members either died in the flames, or drowned when they jumped overboard or were beaten to death when they reached the shore. The captain, mate, owner and translator appear to have been murdered after capture. The Korean official they had so unwisely taken hostage survived.

 

A North Korean depiction of the destruction of the SS General Sherman
It's not clear which of the figures is Kim Il Sung's great-grandfather!

A century later this incident was to attain near-mythic status under the later Communist Government of North Korea. The dictator Kim Il Sung claimed that his great-grandfather was involved as an early opponent of US imperialism. Like so much emanating from North Korea, the claim deserves to be viewed with some skepticism!

The steam-frigate USS Colorado

The American response was tardy in the extreme. In early 1867 an attempt by a US warship to determine what had happened seems to have got nowhere due to “foul weather” and a year later contact with the Koreans by the USS Shenandoah confirmed that all who had been on board the  General Sherman were dead.  Decisive action only came in May 1871 when the US American Minister to China, Frederick Low,was tasked with gaining an apology. He came in force, backed up by five warships commanded Rear-Admiral John Rodgers who flew his flag in the steam frigate USS Colorado. 

The long-lived USS Monocacy - seen here at Shanghai in 1898

The American flotilla was a powerful one – besides the Colorado there were two sloops, Alaska and Benicia, as well as the paddle-gunboat Monocacy, and the screw-gunboat Palos. Between them they mounted 85 guns. The focus was on the Han River, on which the royal capital Seoul lay some 40 miles from the sea – the same approach taken by the French five years earlier. The warships moored at the river mouth and gunboat USS Palos was sent to assess the possibility of reaching Seoul.  This vessel was fired on by Korean forts defending the Han and it retired with two men wounded.  When the Palos was again fired upon, on June 1^st, the paddle-gunboat Monocacy silenced the battery responsible. Further negotiation attempts failed in the nine days that followed and Minister Lowe and Rear-Admiral Rodgers finally authorised punitive action. This was to involve the capture of Korean defences on Ganghwa Island – a total of six forts and four coastal batteries.

Officers of the USS Colorado

The landing went ahead on Jun 10^th, preceded by a bombardment by the warships. The force sent ashore consisted of 542 seamen and 109 marines, together with and six 12-pounder howitzers. The first fort to be attacked fell without significant resistance and the American force pressed on to the next, which was now labelled “Fort Monocacy”. This in turn was to fall and the landing forces spent the night in it – the first US forces to be stationed on Korean soil. 

Hand-to-hand fighting in one of the Korean forts

The attack resumed the following day, the force offshore bombarding the forts while the landing party attacked from the land side as the barrage ended. The key to the Korean defence was a position labelled by the Americans as “Fort McKee” in honour of the lieutenant, Hugh McKee, who led the assault on it. Resistance by some 300 Koreans armed with antiquated matchlocks and swords was fierce but lasted only fifteen minutes – the fact that the Americans were armed with Remington rolling-block carbines proving  a significant advantage. McKee, who was the first to enter the fort, was fatally wounded but Commander Winfield Scott Schley – who was to win renown in the victory over the Spanish fleet at Santiago in 1898 – was close on his heels and he shot the Korean who had killed him.

Korean prisoners on the Colorado

Captured "Sujagi" - Corporal Brown in middle

By the end of the day the island and its defences were in American hands. Korean casualties amounted to 243 dead, a small number of wounded and twenty prisoners. The Americans suffered three dead and ten wounded. Nine sailors and six marines were later awarded the Medal of Honor, among them a marine corporal, Charles Brown, who captured a large Korean standard or “sujagi”.  These were the first Medals of Honor to be won on foreign service.

Then, after the victory – nothing. The Koreans still refused to negotiate and there was nothing the Americans could do about it. The first external treaty to be negotiated was with Japan, and not with a Western nation. It was not until 1882 that the United States finally signed  a treaty with the Koreans, at a time when the Daewongun was temporarily side-lined by his equally clever and ruthless daughter-in-law, Queen Min. (This provides the background to my novel Britannia’s Spartan).

Recently published: Britannia’s Spartan

This latest novel in the Dawlish Chronicles series is set in Korea in 1882 and a sinister role is played in it by the Daewongun.  

Author Antoine Vanner talks about his latest novel, Britannia’s Spartan, in a short video. Click here to watch it.

Click below for more details for both paperback and Kindle versions:

For UK: Click here    For US & Rest of World: Click here

Honour insulted, Disobedience triumphs – Guadeloupe 1759

The incident at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 when Nelson put his telescope to his blind eye and stated “I really do not see the signal!” is the most famous case of a Royal Navy officer disobeying orders and thereby achieving victory. A less well-known case occurred some four decades earlier in the West Indies.

The Seven Years War of 1756 – 1763 should merit the title of “The First World War,” for was the first to be fought on a global scale. It was longer indeed than seven years, for hostilities had opened between Britain and Britain in North America in 1754, triggered by an incident in Pennsylvania involving a 22-year old officer called George Washington. Two years later the conflict took on an even wider European dimension. The British-led alliance included Prussia, Portugal and the smaller German states, including Hanover, and was opposed by a French alliance with the Austrian Empire, Spain, Sweden and Saxony. Russia was initially allied with Austria but changed sides halfway through. Vast in geographical scope, it was a war in which, in Thomas Babington Macaulay’s phrase, European enmities ensured that “black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America.” 

Battle of Lagos in 1759 off Portugal - painting by Thomas Luny

1759 proved to be the “Year of Victories” that firmly established Britain as a global power with battles won and conquests made by land and sea. Most notable was the capture of Quebec (and of French Canada thereafter), the smashing of a French army at Minden in Central Germany and the two massive naval victories of Lagos and Quiberon Bay. Less well known was the capture of the French island of Guadeloupe, in the West Indies in M1y 1759 after a four-month naval and land campaign. As a sugar-producer the island was of great economic significance and it also acted as a refuge for French privateers.

Sir John Moore

The “disobedience case” referred to earlier occurred at the climax of the campaign when the British commodore, Sir John Moore (1718-1779) in charge of the naval forces proposed a direct bombardment of Guadeloupe’s fortified citadel. Attacks by ships on fixed defences were always dangerous (Nelson once stated that “A ship’s a fool to fight a fort”) and in a council of war the majority of Moore’s officers advised against it. The opposition was led by Captain – later Admiral – Clark Gayton (1712-1785) who commanded the 96-gun line-of-battle-ship HMS St. George. Commodore Moore had apparently taken offence at Gayton’s stance and he accordingly assigned the St. George to lead the attack – which could be construed as an honour – but he followed this up by sending Gayton a written order to proceed.  This could be regarded as a slight – a verbal order should have been sufficient – and as implying reluctance, and at worst want of courage. Gayton was deeply offended.

The attack on Guadeloupe 1759

The upshot was that Gayton not only brought the St. George into close action with the fort, close enough for its fire to envelop her. The bombardment lasted several hours and all the British ships suffered severely from shore-battery fire without any apparent effect on the citadel. Commodore Moore now began to doubt the wisdom of his decision to attack and – probably to his mortification – signalled to the St. George to break off the action. When Gayton was made aware of the signal he determined to ignore it – his honour had been impugned and he had no intention of retreating at this stage. Commodore Moore followed this up by sending a boat with a verbal order to retreat. Instead of obeying it, Gayton told the officer who brought it that he would require a written order from Moore before he would feel justified in leaving his post.

Admiral Clark Gayton

by John Singleton Copeley 1779

While this to-ing and fro-ing was in progress the St.George maintained a constant fire and at last a lucky shell reached the citadel’s magazine. It blew up before Moore’s written order was received by Gayton. His honour was thus redeemed – and indeed in the process secured victory for the Commodore.

The incident did not damage Gayton’s reputation or prospects and he finished his career as an admiral, following a very successful posting as commander of the Jamaica station during the American War of Independence.

An interesting footnote was that Gayton’s ship, the 1230-ton St.George, was one of the oldest major units in the navy at the time of the Guadeloupe action. She had been laid launched in 1668, and originally known as HMS Charles, and renamed St.George in 1691. She was rebuilt in 1701 and six years later was one of the ships to escape the mass-wrecking of Sir Cloudesley Shovell's fleet in the Scilly Isles. She was to be rebuilt twice more – in 1726 and 1740. Having amassed significant battle-honours she was finally broken up in 1774. Few ships of the Royal Navy can have been so long-lived.

Recently published: Britannia’s Spartan

Author Antoine Vanner talks about his latest novel, Britannia’s Spartan, in a short video. Click here to watch it.

Click below for more details for both paperback and Kindle versions:

For UK: Click here    For US & Rest of World: Click here

A British cruiser 2000 miles up the Amazon: HMS Pelorus 1909

As a prisoner on HMS Bellerophon, prior to his exile on St. Helena, Napoleon told its commander, Captain Maitland, that, "If it had not been for you English, I should have been Emperor of the East; but wherever there is water to float a ship, we are sure to find you in our way." This ability was to manifest itself on numerous occasions up to the middle of the next century. Small Royal Navy units were to operate in China on the Upper Yangtze, on Lake Tanganyika and on the Nile in the Sudan, in the Caspian Sea and on remote Russian rivers during the Russian Civil War and they were to reach Vienna, some 800 miles up the Danube from the Black Sea at the end of World War 1.  More impressive of all these achievements was however that, not of a small gunboat, but of a cruiser of over 2000 tons that reached Peru in 1909. This does not perhaps seem remarkable – Peru has a long coast on the Pacific Ocean – until it is realised that the approach was from the east, up the Amazon River, almost to its headwaters.

HMS Pelorous in late 1890s - resplendent in "Victorian Livery"
of black hull, white upperworks and buff funnels

Launched in 1896, the name ship of a class of eleven, HMS Pelorus was a third-class protected cruiser. “Protected” meant that the vessel’s sides were not armoured but that an arched armoured deck protected the boilers, engines and other vital areas. “Third Class” implied a small vessel, suited to commerce-protection duties, or for scouting for larger units. Pelorus and her ten sisters were 2135-ton, 300-feet long vessels and their 7000-hp gave them a top speed of 20 knots. Crewed by 224 men, their main armament consisted of eight 4-inch breech loading guns for ant-ship use, supplemented by eight 3-pounder quick-firing weapons for defence against attack by torpedo boats. They also carried two 18-inch torpedo tubes.

Rudyard Kipling in the 1890s

Pelorus served almost ten years in the “Channel Fleet” – that tasked with operations in the North Atlantic and the North Sea but in 1906 she was posed to the Cape of Good Hope Station. Although only a small unit in a navy made up of hundreds of ships, she had already achieved fame through a series of articles published in the Morning Post newspaper, and subsequently gathered into a small book entitled “A Fleet in Being”. The author was the writer and poet Rudyard Kipling, who was a friend of a Captain E.H. Bayley, who was then commanding Pelorus.  In 1897, as a guest of Bayly, Kipling was on board Pelorus for two weeks during the Fleet’s summer exercises and he was to repeat the experience the following year.  His writings about his time on Pelorus give fascinating insights into shipboard naval life in the late nineteenth-century. There if however a strong impression of forced enthusiasm, of determination to see everything through rose-tinted glasses, and to give an epic quality to what were, in reality, peacetime manoeuvres. As with much of Kipling’s writings the treatment of individuals is condescending and patronising, and leaves a sour taste with at least one modern reader.

Manaus Opera House - best known symbol of the Amazon rubber boom
(photograph by Pontanegra via Wikipedia)

In 1909 the “Rubber Boom” in Brazil and Peru was in full swing.  The rubber in question grew wild in the forests lining the Amazon and its tributaries as plantation growing of rubber in Malaya had not yet taken off on the large scale it was to become. The arrival of the automobile had pushed the demand for rubber to unprecedented levels and fortunes were made by anybody who could organise its collection from trees growing wild in the forest. This was the era when the city of Manaus was to build its exotic opera house at the confluence of the Amazon and the Rio Negro, the period immortalised in Werner Herzog’s stunning movie “Fitzcaraldo”. British commercial firms were active in the trade and it was only by the investigations in 1910 and 1911 of a British consul, Roger Casement, that the true nature of their activities was revealed. 

Enslaved Peruvian Indians during the rubber boom

In the Putomayo of north-eastern Peru he found that indigenous tribes were begin forced into unpaid labour – essentially slavery – to collect the forest rubber. Abuse of these innocent people included starvation-level feeding, physical abuse, rape of women and girls, branding and casual murder. The chief offender was the Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC), which had been registered in Britain in 1908 and had a British board of directors and numerous stockholders. Casement’s report aroused public outrage in Britain but what in the end brought a complete end to the abuses was the arrival of cheaper, plantation-grown rubber from Malaya that made wild-rubber collection economically unattractive. (Casement’s career was to end in hanging in 1916 as an Irish Republican working closely with Imperial Germany).

Pelorus's 200-mile route up the Amazon

Casement’s uncovering of the realities of the rubber trade were still a year and more in the future when, in February 1909,  HMS Pelorus arrived in the eastern Peruvian town of Iquitos, on the upper reaches of the Amazon. The objective of this good-will visitwas to help promotion of British exports to Peru as the rubber boom had created an enormous demand for goods from the industrialised world. The arrival of a sophisticated warship was ample proof of similarly sized, or smaller, steamships, being well capable of following the same route. The achievement was a spectacular one – Pelorus had navigated some 2000 miles of winding, often forest-lined, river from the river’s estuary on the South Atlantic coast. On arrival at Iquitos the nearer ocean was the Pacific, a mere 600 miles away, but with the Andes mountain range lying between. Despite its isolation, Iquitos, a town of 30,000,  boasted electric lighting, tramways,  a theatre and, apparently, a cinema. The seven day visit followed the usual pattern for such “showing the flag” missions – dinners, speeches, an open-day for the public, a football match, a concert and a “cinematograph show”. (One wonders what was shown at the latter.)

Pelorus needed to replenish her bunkers before embarking on the return trip. Remarkably, she was to do so with Welsh coal which was apparently a normal import to the area from Britain for use on river craft. The costs of its transportation raised the cost to more than four times its British level. With congratulations, well-wishes and handshakes all round Pelorus then commenced her voyage homewards, docking at Manaus and Belem en route to the Atlantic. She spent six-weeks in total on the Amazon and was a matter of pride for both captain and crew that the river passage had been a healthy one, with minimum sickness and, despite the prevalence of mosquitoes and insects, no cases of fever.

The Amazon voyage was Pelorus’s last moment in the limelight. By the time of outbreak of war in 1914 she and the few of her sisters still in service were old, obsolete ships suited only to secondary duties. She was scrapped in 1920.

One wonders if the Indians in the Putomayo area, north of Iquitos, who laboured in slavery for the London-based Peruvian Amazon Company, ever heard of the visit. Even if they did it is unlikely that they would have been able to go on board during Pelorus’s open day.

Britannia’s Reach by Antoine Vanner

"Britannia’s reach is not just political or military alone. What higher interest can there be than consolidation of Britain’s commercial interests?” So says one of the key figures in this novel , which centres on the efforts of a British owned company – not unlike the Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC) – to reassert control of its cattle-raising investment in Paraguay, following a revolt by its workers. The story of desperate riverine combat brings historic naval fiction into the age of Fighting Steam. Click on the image below for more details.

Stranger than fiction: Privateer action off Madagascar 1806

Though mention warfare in the Age of Fighting Sail so often conjures up images of major fleet actions such as Camperdown, The Nile, and Trafalgar, single-ship actions between small vessels represented the vast majority of combats at sea. One of the most remarkable of these – stranger than fiction indeed - occurred in the Indian Ocean, off Madagascar in 1806. It did not involve ships of the official British and French navies but rather two privateers – privately owned vessels which had been issued “letters of marque” by their governments and thereby authorised to wage war on their behalf. The profit motive was powerful in such cases and where possible the objective was to capture enemy commerce rather than to risk combat.

A classic image of small-ship action in the Napoleonic era -

A brig chasing a privateer by Thomas Buttersworth (1768-1842)

A John Myers (I have no information on his previous or subsequent career) was serving as first lieutenant on the privateer Tamar in September 1806. Close to Madagascar this vessel captured a small French privateer, the Bon Fortune, which was operating out of the French island stronghold, the Isle de France, now known as Mauritius. The crew was removed to the Tamar and Myers took over the Bon Fortune with a prize crew of fourteen men. The two vessels separated in the night but the following morning Myers saw a strange sail approaching at speed and her general appearance indicated that she was La Brave, a large privateer carrying 16 guns and 130 men, which had been operating in the area with considerable success.

Myers recognised that he had no hope of escaping this enemy vessel or of defeating her in straight combat but he settled on a stratagem that was as audacious as it was dangerous. La Brave had a reputation for capturing her prizes by boarding with almost her entire crew, a manoeuvre that avoided damage and potential loss of valuable cargos. Myers accordingly brought the Bon Fortune’s two portside guns across to supplement the two on the starboard side, on which La Brave was approaching. He had them all loaded and the remaining gunpowder was then dumped overboard. His vessel carried one boat only and this he had lowered from the stern, filled with small-arms and secured close to the cabin’s portside port. He then briefed his crew on what he wanted of them and waited. As La Brave closed to “within pistol shot” Bon Fortune opened fire and received a broadside in return. The French ship then crashed into her, her bowsprit lodging in the Bon Fortune’s rigging. Briefly locked together, La Brave repeated the manoeuvre for which she was known – the greater part of her crew, all but four men, swarming across to take the prize. They met no opposition. Myers and his crew had retreated to the stern cabin and had locked themselves in. The French placed guards on the door to prevent a sally.

No illustrations seem to exist of the Bon Fortune vs. La Brave action but it might have looked like this:
In 1797  HMS Nimble captured the French privateer cutters Bonheur, and L'Impromptu

The ships had by now drifted apart and Myers and his crew piled out of the cabin and into the boat secured alongside. They cut the rope that secured it and rowed frantically away towards La Brave. As they boarded her the four Frenchmen left on board ran to opposed them. Two were killed and the other two secured. Myers’ men now had control of La Brave and he brought her around under the stern of the vessel he had just vacated, bringing all guns to bear on it. Under threat of raking by the ship he had just lost, La Brave’s captain surrendered on promise of his crew’s treatment as prisoners of war.

Now with both La Brave and the Bon Fortune under his command, Myers set out to search for his parent ship, the Tamar. He found her three days later but the appearance of La Brave in the Bon Fortune’s company raised fears that both ships were under French control. The Tamar made every preparation to open fire and Myers lowered his topsails in sign of capitulation and sent his men below decks to minimise the risk of casualties. Disaster was thus avoided.

Myers continued in command of La Brave for several months until she in turn was captured by the French frigate Tamise. He was received honourable treatment as a prisoner at Port Louis, on the Isle de France. It would be interesting to know what became of him subsequently. Would any of this blog’s readers know? 

Britannia’s Reach by Antoine Vanner

 Historic naval fiction moves on into the age of Fighting Steam. Click here for more details ofthis story of desperate riverine combat.

An epic last stand – HMS Arrow and Acheron, 1805

This article deals with the most notable naval “last stands” of the Napoleonic era.

In an earlier blog article we encountered the innovative sloop, HMS Dart, when she went into attack on the heavily defended French base at Dunkirk in 1800 (Click here for this article). The Dart and her sister HMS Arrow, were experimental vessels, never indeed to be repeated. They were the brain-child of Sir Samuel Bentham (1757 – 1831) – brother of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. At this stage in a remarkable career as an engineer and naval architect, in Britain, Russia and China, Sir Samuel held the position of Inspector General of Naval Works. These two vessels were virtually double-ended and featured a large breadth-to-length ratio, structural bulkheads, and sliding keels. Of 150 tons and a mere 80 feet long overall, they packed an enormous punch for their size, all guns being carronades, twenty-four 32-pounders on the upper deck, two 32 pounders on the forecastle and another two on the quarterdeck.

Close up of HMS Arrow - detail from larger painting shown below

The second of the sister-vessels, HMS Arrow, left Malta in January 1805, under the command of Commander Richard Vincent (1770–1831), to escort a British convoy of 34 merchant vessels headed westwards out of the Mediterranean. Accompanying her, as the only other escort, was HMS Acheron, commanded by Commander Arthur Farquhar (1772 – 1843). The latter was somewhat of an unusual choice, as she was a bomb vessel, a 388-ton, 108-foot merchant ship that had been converted to carry a 10-inch mortar and a massive 13-inch weapon for shore bombardment. Though these mortars was unsuited to ship-to-ship action, Acheron did however carry a heavy close-range armament of eight 24-pounder carronades. Once again, as we see in so many accounts of actions in this era, the carronade was to provide notably strong gun-power to a small vessel.

The convoy had passed out into the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar when on the morning of 3^rd February two large vessels were seen coming up fast from astern. These were initially thought to be laggards from the convoy but as they closed they were perceived to be most likely warships. Commander Vincent on the Arrow accordingly signalled to Acheron to investigate. The strangers proved to be powerful 40-gun French frigates, later to be identified as the Hortense and the Incorruptible. Neither Arrow nor Acheron could be considered a fair match for either. A stern chase developed and continued through the day but by nightfall it was obvious that there would be no way of escaping. The options were to fight or to surrender. Commander Vincent chose to fight.

French frigate Incorruptible

It appears that Vincent had previously made an agreement with the captains of the larger merchant ships in the convoy that carried guns to form a line of battle in such circumstance. He now called on them to do so but according to one account “these gentlemen were of the opinion that discretion was the better part of valour… they did not even answer the signal.”

Darkness had now fallen, so too the wind, and no contact were made with the enemy during the night. A breeze sprung up with first light the following morning however and one of the French frigates was revealed to be close enough to hail the Arrow. Vincent was invited to submit and come on board the French vessel but he replied with a similar request. The French now opened fire on both Arrow and Acheron and it was returned, falling off however until full daylight would allow more accurate shooting. At seven o’clock the real action began – one can imagine the preparations on all the ships during the three or so hours immediately prior to this, and the sense of supressed fear that must have reigned among the crews.

Opening oaf action: on left Acheron takes on Incorruptible and on right Arrow engages Hortenseby Francis Sartorius Jr. (c) National Maritime Museum; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Both British and French vessels opened fire almost simultaneously. The Hortense concentrated on the Arrow while her sister Incorruptible focussed on the Acheron. The wind was so light that the vessel had difficulty in manoeuvring but the unequal contest continued regardless for an hour and twenty minutes. The Arrow sustained massive injury – her masts and rigging badly damaged, four guns dismounted on her engaged side, her rudder rendered inoperative. Most serous of all was however that she had taken many hits “between wind and water” – that is, on her hull below the water line as it was exposed by rolling. Out of some 132 on board (including several passengers, among them a lady, her baby and her maid) thirteen men had been killed and twenty-seven wounded, a casualty rate of 30%. Commander Vincent realised that further resistance was futile and he struck his colours in surrender. The Arrow was so badly damaged that French boats were sent across to take off the survivors, her own boats having been badly damaged. The transfer was just completed when the Arrow rolled over in her beam ends and disappeared.

The Acheron had been in action against the Incorruptible all this time and had suffered severe damage, but low casualties. She resisted for a quarter hour longer than Arrow but in the end the Acheron’s Commander Farquhar reluctantly ordered his colours to be struck as well. She was so badly disabled that the French set her on fire after her crew had been taken off.

HMS Arrow sinking after surrender, Acheron and Incorruptible still engaging on the right

by Francis Sartorius Jr. (c) National Maritime Museum; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

 The behaviour of the French officers and men to their captives offers significant insights to the state of discipline and morale in Napoleon’s navy at this time. On board the Hortense the conduct of the officers was “polite and humane” but they had so little control over their crew that they were unable to restrain them from pillaging the British prisoners. The treatment of the prisoners was even worse on the Incorruptible, the officers themselves “taunting them with their misfortunes, using very opprobrious terms.”

The sacrifices of the Arrow and the Acheron brings to mind similarly doomed resistance by the armed merchant cruisers Rawalpindi and Jervis Bay in 1939 and 1940 when they too were faced by overwhelming enemy force while escorting convoys. In all these cases the “last stands” by the escorts allowed a substantial part of the convoy to escape. After the Arrow and Acheron action the French frigates captured only three out of the 34 ships in the convoy. Some of these vessels, now sailing independently, did however later fall prey to Spanish privateers.

The Acheron’s crew were taken to Malaga and, as was common at this period, a prisoner-exchange deal was agreed soon after. Commander Farquhar, his officers, and his crew were court-martialled on board HMS Royal Sovereign off Sardinia for the loss of their ship. The court-martial was a formality – Farquhar was not only acquitted with honour but he was promoted to the coveted rank of Post Captain. The court-martial president returned Farquhar’s sword with the words “I hope you will soon be called upon to meet the Hortense on more equal terms. The result of the contest may prove more lucrative to you, but it cannot be more honourable” (What a way with words!)

The Arrow’s crew were taken to Cartagena and were exchanged some three months later. Their court-martial took place on board HMS Gladiator in Portsmouth and Commander Vincent and his men were acquitted with similarly eulogies to those accorded the Acheron’s crew. Vincent too was promoted to “post”.

A pleasing postscript was the two ships’ defence of the convoy was rewarded by commercial organisations. Swords of Honour were presented to both Vincent and Farquhar by the Lloyds (Insurance) Patriotic Fund and cash payments were made to wounded, bereaved families and survivors who had lost all they had when the vessels were destroyed.

Looking back over two centuries however, the most significant aspect of the action was the post-victory behaviour of the French crews and the inability of their officers to control them. It was hard to imagine such men ever prevailing against the discipline and professionalism of Royal Navy crews. And Trafalgar, only eight months later, proved that they could not.

I'm busy at present preparing for the Weymouth Leviathan festival in the coming weekend.I'm particularly looking forward to the writer's workshop "From Idea to Plot" that I'll be running from 0900 to 1045 on Saturday 12th. Participants will receive and use a workbook for developing a plot from one of eight "ideas" for a historical naval adventure which I'll ask them to choose from. There are a few places left for this session so if you've ever thought "I've got an idea for a novel", but have never got further, and are in the South of England in the coming weekend, you may find it useful to come along. Click here for booking detailsfor this or any one of a myriad number of fascinating events at which well-known names in the factual and fictional nautical writing worlds are appearing.

Creasy’s 15 Decisive Battles of the World – and 10 suggested additions

This item was originally posted in 2013 when I was first starting blogging and few readers saw it at the time. On looking at it again I thought it might be of interest for the wider audience that I now reach. Comments will be welcome.

In 1851 the English historian and jurist Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy published his “Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World”. A different outcome of each of these battles would have resulted in a significantly different course of world history, and as such they still influence the world we live in today. As such they represent major “points of departure” for alternative histories. 

Tours (Poitiers) 732: Charles Martel repels the Muslim invaders from Northern Europe

Each chapter of Creasy’s book describes a different battle. The fifteen battles chosen are:

1. The Battle of Marathon, 490 BC: Persian expansion into Europe halted
2. Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse, 413 BC: The end of Athenian power
3. The Battle of Gaugamela, 331 BC: Opened Asia to Alexander’s armies
4. The Battle of the Metaurus, 207 BC: Guaranteed Rome’s survival and triumph over Carthage
5. Victory of Arminius over the Roman Legions under Varus, AD 9: Ended Roman hopes of expansion into Germany
6. The Battle of Châlons, AD 451: Roman victory over the Huns saved Western Europe’s Future
7. The Battle of Tours, AD 732: Stopped Moslem expansion into Northern Europe
8. The Battle of Hastings, AD 1066: Essential First step towards Britain as a World Power
9. Joan of Arc's Victory over the English at Orléans, AD 1429; The end of English power in France
10. Defeat of the Spanish Armada, AD 1588: The beginning of the end for Spain as a World Power
11. The Battle of Blenheim, AD 1704: Britain’s emergence as a Superpower
12. The Battle of Pultowa, AD 1709: Russia’s first step to Superpower status
13. The Battle of Saratoga, AD 1777: Secured the survival of the United States
14. The Battle of Valmy, AD 1792: Ensures survival of French Revolutionary power and thinking
15. The Battle of Waterloo, AD 1815: France never again achieved Superpower status

Poltawa 1709: Russia's first step to superpower status

It is notable that due to Creasy’s focus on European (and North American) power, and because little was then known in the West about Far Eastern history, no battles were listed which refer to China’s consolidation and survival as an imperial power, the failed Mongol invasions of Japan or to Japan’s failed bid for conquest of Korea in the 15th and 16th centuries and the implications that had for subsequent Japanese history.  The Mameluk victory in 1260, over the Mongols at Ain Jalut, in Galilee, which was critical in stemming Mongol power, was also omitted. Taking these and other Asian battles into account Creasy’s list might rightly have been extended to 20 or even 25 at the time he wrote. There is also good reason that he should have included the 1836 Battleof San Jacinto, which led in due course to United States acquisition of a vast areal percentage, and an economically vital one, of the modern nation.

Mongol horsemen - virtually unstoppable until defeated by the Mameluks
at Ain Jalut, near Nazareth, 1260

 Since that time various writers have added to the list of post-1851 battles. Given the increasing pace and scale of conflicts since then it is not inappropriate to add at least 10. As a starting point for discussion and speculation, and with all due lack of modesty I’m suggesting the 10 post-1851 decisive battles as below:

1)       Gettysburg (and Vicksburg) 1863: though fought in separate theatres, but at almost exactly the same time, these battles made the defeat of the Southern Confederacy inevitable, not least by ending hopes of international recognition. A long attritional grind lay ahead but Union victory was now inevitable.

2)       Sedan1870: Not only did Bismarck’s Germany crush France decisively, and usher in the new German Empire, but it was absolute enough to ensure that the French would ultimately settle for a peace that ceded Alsace and Lorraine, thereby planting the seeds for WW1.

3)       Manila (and Santiago) 1898: Two naval victories half the globe apart that announced the arrival of the United States as a world power and established a position in Asia that would be critical in WW2.

4)       Tsu Shima 1905: Japan’s victory over the huge Russian fleet was perhaps the most absolute in naval history. It marked the arrival of Japan as a major power and encouraged ambitions that would ultimately lead to WW2 in the Far East and the Pacific.

5)       The Marne 1914: Decisive in the sense that Germany could not achieve the quick victory in the west that it had built its strategy on. From this moment on Germany was on the back foot in the West. The Western Allies bought time that would ultimately lead to their defeat of Germany.

6)       Warsaw 1920: Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War was almost absolute when the Red Army was launched westwards to carry revolution into Central Europe. The new Polish state worked a miracle in defeating it. It saved Europe but at the cost of stoking Russian resentment that would exact a terrible revenge in later decades.

7)       The Atlantic 1939-45: Though the struggle to secure Britain’s supply lines climaxed in 1943, the fight went on from the first to the last day of WW2. Churchill described the U-Boat menace as the thing that frightened him most – and with good reason. Without victory in the Atlantic, no Allied victory in Western Europe.

8)       Stalingrad 1942-43. The name says it all. No need to say more.

9)       Saipan 1944: I’ve identified the conquest of Saipan rather than the Battle of Midway as being the decisive battle in the Pacific in WW2. My reasoning is that though Midway was critical in weakening the Japanese Navy, the United States would still have prevailed, though over a much longer time scale, if it had lost the battle. Saipan was critical in identifying the type of war that had to be fought to beat Japan, leading in due course to the decision to drop nuclear weapons, At Saipan not only did the Japanese military fight to the death, but huge numbers of civilians, including women who killed their own children, were prepared not only to resist but to commit suicide rather than surrender. This was the first US encounter with a Japanese civilian population and it highlighted just how costly an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands would be. From this point on I believe that use of nuclear weapons was unavoidable.

10)   The Battle That Never Was 1983-90: The US commitment to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI – “Star Wars”), whether it was ever technically feasible or not at the time, was believed to be feasible by the Soviets. Their military budgets were already an unsustainable percentage of their total economy and the pressure to compete with Star Wars was possibly the greatest single factor in bringing about the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union. Not a shot was fired and the tyranny hundreds of millions had lived under for seven decades died not with a bang but a whimper.

The list above is obviously subjective and I’d be welcome to hear comments

Warsaw 1920: The Miracle of the Vistula
Poles advance past Marshal Pilsudski to achieve the impossible

The reality of the six-year Battle of the Atlantic

Burning tanker painted by Commander Anton Otto Fischer, USCGR, February 1943

Britannia’s Shark by Antoine Vanner

Historic naval fiction moves on into the age of Fighting Steam. Click here for more details of this story of the birth of a new weapon, of savage repression and revolt by land, of survival at sea, and below it.