Naval Hero Sir James Lucas Yeo – Part 2

A recent blog introduced us to the real-life naval hero Sir James Lucas Yeo (1782 – 1818), a handsome and dashing officer who might seem overdone were he to step from the pages of a novel. At the end of that first article (Click here to read it) we left him in 1805, just appointed to command of a French privateer that he had been involved in capturing and which had been commissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS Confiance. This 22-gun, 490-ton corvette was initially classified in British service as a sloop and reclassified as a “sixth rate” in 1807, the same year in which Yeo achieved coveted post-captain rank. Already identified as an intrepid commander who led from the front, Yeo was to get an opportunity to demonstrate his ability to manage an amphibious force when he was assigned to complex operations off the coast of South America.

By late 1808 French garrisons and harbours in overseas colonies were largely cut off from the homeland, but still represented threats to British interests as support-bases for naval units and privateers which could escape the blockade of the European coasts. The main British focus for elimination of such bases was on the Caribbean but a smaller force was allocated to conquest of Cayenne – later known as French Guiana – on the north-west coast of South America. This operation was entrusted to Yeo. By this stage of the Napoleonic Wars Portugal was also at war with the French, and following invasion by them the Portuguese government had relocated to its vast colony of Brazil. Portuguese forces were accordingly allocated to Yeo to support British forces.

Location of Cayenne - map from 1760s
Note position of island and flanking rivers

What would now be described as Yeo’s task-force consisted of the Conficance, supported by two armed Portuguese brigs, Voador (24 guns) and Vingança (18 guns), and two unarmed vessels brigs, acting as transports for some 550 Portuguese regular troops. Seaman and marines from all vessels were also available for land operations and, as he had demonstrated in 1805, Yeo had experience of assaulting coastal fortifications. His objective was Cayenne, the town that gave its name to the French colony and was its administrative centre. Situated on an island between the estuaries of the Cayenne and Mahury Rivers, it was dominated by a masonry star fort (see illustration) and the approaches to it were covered by several smaller forts and gun batteries. Yeo’s first concern was to clear the approaches, concentrating on the positions along the Mahury River.

Plan view of main "star-fort" at Cayenne

Yeo began operations by landing a force in the early hours of the night of 7^th January 1809 despite heavy rain – which was to continue as a complicating factor through the subsequent fighting – and loss of boats in heavy surf, luckily without loss of life. A Portuguese force was allocated to capture of one French fortification, and Yeo’s seamen and marines to another. Surprise paid off and both positions were carried with minimal losses. They were now garrisoned with British and Portuguese personnel. Two further forts were now detected – the fact that they seem to have been unknown previously reminds one how difficult reconnaissance was in the days before availability of aircraft –  and Yeo brought the shallower draught Portuguese vessels inshore to provide covering fire while he launched land assaults – characteristically leading from the front. The attacks were successful and both positions were occupied.

Victor Huges (1762 - 1826 )

The French governor, Victor Hugues (a major player in the French colonies in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods), now sallied from Cayenne with the small forces available to him to attack the captured fortifications but was repulsed.  Yeo pushed his forces forward towards a defensive position close to Hugues’ own residence and a British party sent under a flag of truce to negotiate a surrender was fired upon. This may have been a diversion to assist an ambush of Yeo’s other forces. Sword in hand, Yeo drove these attackers back to Hugues’ house and captured it in hand-to-hand fighting. This was decisive as it was now obvious that there were insufficient French forces to withstand the invasion. Cayenne itself, garrisoned by some 400 troops, surrendered without a fight on 10^th January and the remaining French positions surrendered in the following days.

French frigate Clorinde - generally similar to Topaze

Successful as it was, Yeo’s task-force had only one reasonably powerful vessel, the Confiance herself. On station off Cayenne while the operations continued onshore, her crew had been depleted by allocation of seaman and marines to the land attack – there were now only two midshipmen and twenty-five sailors on board. It was therefore of concern when on 13^th January a 40-gun French frigate was seen approaching. This was the 40-gun Topaze, well capable of swift destruction of Confiance, and with her the Portuguese vessels. The Topaze had been despatched from France to reinforce the Cayenne garrison and she carried both troops and supplies. Were she to press the advantage of her superior armament the tables could easily be turned on Yeo.

In this situation the hero of the hour turned out to be Yeo’s younger brother George, one of the two midshipmen. With Confiance’s depleted crew – which he supplemented by some twenty local volunteers, all free black men – he relied on bluff as his only hope. He took Confiance directly towards the Topaze, with every display of intention to engage. He was not however aware the Topaze’s captain had instructions to avoid combat if the troops and supplies she carried were at risk. The outcome was that Topaze turned tail and ran, heading for the French-held Caribbean island of Guadoloupe. She never reached it – she was detected close to it by British forces and was captured by HMS Cleopatra. Taken into British service, she was to be named initially as Jewel and later as Alcmene.

Yeo’s victory at Cayenne had been comprehensive. With small forces and few casualties – for the British a lieutenant killed and twenty-three men wounded, and for the Portuguese one killed and eight wounded – the entire French colony fell under Anglo-Portuguese control. 400 regular French  troops were captured and some 800 local militia and irregulars were disarmed before being allowed to return to their homes. Some 200 cannon were captured as well as other military supplies. For its time, Yeo’s operation had been a text-book example of planning and executing an effective amphibious operation. It earned him well-deserved knighthoods from both Britain and Portugal – he was still only 27 years old – as well as a personal gift of a diamond ring by the Portuguese Prince Regent. His health had suffered in the campaign however – not surprisingly, as he was not a man to spare himself – and he required a period of recuperation before assuming his next command, the frigate HMS Southampton.

And that’s where we’ll leave him for now. We’ll return in a later blog to tell of Yeo’s subsequent – and even more challenging – career.

Britannia’s Spartan - and the Taku Forts, 1859 

The Anglo-French assault at the Taku Forts in Northern China – and the highly irregular but welcome intervention of the neutral United States Navy – was one of the most dramatic incidents of the mid-nineteenth century. It also led to the only defeat of the Royal Navy between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the outbreak of World War 1.

A remark of the American commander at the height of the battle - "Blood is thicker than water" - has entered the English language.

The Taku Forts attack event is described in detail in the opening of Britannia's Spartan.

Clickhere to read about this bloody action.

Guest Blog by Catherine Curzon: “The Sailor King”

Followers of my blog will have noted that my list of links to other blogs includes “A Covent Garden Gilflurt's Guide to Life” – a vastly entertaining blog that addresses all aspects (but especially outrageous ones!) of 18^th Century life. Catherine Curzon, alias Madame Gilflurt, has been kind enough to write a guest blog for me on the life of Britain’s King William IV (1765 – 1837) who became known as “The Sailor King”.

Over to Madame for more…

William IV – A Stormy Voyage to the Throne

William IV in dress uniform by Sir Martin Archer Shee

The end of the Georgian era is a point that has come in for some debate and, as I found when researching Life in the Georgian Court, William IV is not a man who is often included in the notorious list of the Georgian monarchs. William was not a farmer like his father, nor a Prinny, like his brother but instead the Sailor King, a committed naval man and the heirless monarch who came to the throne when he was already well into his sixties, paving the way for the Victorian era that was to follow.

When William gave his first newborn cries at Buckingham House, his status as third son to George III and Queen Charlotte meant it was unlikely that he would ever inherit the throne. Rather than submit to the painstaking preparation to rule that his brother faced, William’s life was set to be a nautical one. Under the guidance of his tutors, Major-General Budé and Dr James Majendie, he grew up fast until, at the age of thirteen, William joined the Royal Navy. It was the best decision for all, the king decided, keeping his son safely away from the potentially thorny influence of his brother, George.

Accompanied by a tutor, William went to sea as a midshipman aboard the Prince George and, in 1780, he even went to war serving at the First Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1780. He was a keen member of the crew yet his fame was about to get the better of him. It was in New York during the American War of Independence that William dodged a kidnap attempt sanctioned by George Washington himself. Though he was unharmed, this marked the end of the young man’s unrestricted gadding about.

The moonlight Battle of Cape St Vincent, 1780 by Francis Holman (1729–1784)

William’s rise through the ranks took a hiatus when he spent a couple of years in Hanover and found his first romantic fancy but in 1785 he was once more at sea, this time as Lieutenant. Just twelve months later, he was captain of his own vessel. By the age of nineteen, the ambitious young sailor was captain of HMS Pegasus and came to the attention of Nelson, who was soon a devoted admirer; indeed, William gave the bride away and was a witness when Nelson married Frances Nisbet in 1787.

 

HMS Pegasus - seen at St. John's, Newfoundland, in a  contemporary sketch 

Capriciousness was not the sole preserve of George, Prince of Wales, and William, though apparently a charming and fun sort of chap when the mood took him, was not a man who liked to be questioned. This meant that relationships with his crew were occasionally just a little fractious, though he had no such problems when it came to charming the girls.

In 1789, William’s star had grown even higher and he was appointed Rear-Admiral and placed in command of HMS Valiant. However, though his professional star was in the ascendancy,

at home William was not satisfied with the way things were going. Whilst his brothers had been made into dukes, no similar honour appeared to be coming his way and his father, in fact, seemed downright reluctant.

William as Lord High Admiral 1828

Finally, William decided to force the king’s hand and declared that he was thinking about standing as the parliamentary candidate for Totnes in Devon. As he had known it would, the threat sent George III scrambling to meet his demands and he accordingly named his son Duke of Clarence and St Andrews in 1789.

The following year, William resigned from active service, a decision he would always regret. He pined to be back at sea during the Napoleonic Wars, yet no call ever came. Following a speech in which he questioned the need for the conflict, he became convinced that this was the reason that he received no command and recanted, speaking out in favour of the war, but still no call came.

Promotions followed and eventually he rose to the rank of Lord High Admiral, yet even this couldn’t match the thrill of a naval command. When he took to the waves with a fleet of ships in 1828 and no word as to their mission, Wellington demanded that he resign; William was happy to oblige. Two years later William inherited the throne as his two older brothers died without leaving living legitimate issue.

William died on 20th June 1837, just a week before the seventh anniversary of the beginning of his reign. With his death, Queen Victoria assumed the throne whilst in Hanover, where no woman could rule, the crown passed to his brother, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland.

No longer would the two thrones be linked.

An era had ended.

  

About the Author

Catherine Curzon is a royal historian and blogs on all matters 18th century at A Covent Garden Gilflurt's Guide to Life.

Her work has featured by publications including BBC History Extra, All About History, History of Royals, Explore History and Jane Austen’s Regency World. She has also provided additional material for the sell-out theatrical show, An Evening with Jane Austen, will she will introduce at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, in September (tickets are available here).

Catherine holds a Master’s degree in Film and when not dodging the furies of the guillotine, she lives in Yorkshire atop a ludicrously steep hill.

Her book, Life in the Georgian Court, is available now from Amazon UK, Amazon US, Book Depository and all good bookshops!

About Life in the Georgian Court

As the glittering Hanoverian court gives birth to the British Georgian era, a golden age of royalty dawns in Europe. Houses rise and fall, births, marriages and scandals change the course of history and in France, Revolution stalks the land.

Peep behind the shutters of the opulent court of the doomed Bourbons, the absolutist powerhouse of Romanov Russia and the epoch-defining family whose kings gave their name to the era, the House of Hanover.

Behind the pomp and ceremony were men and women born into worlds of immense privilege, yet beneath the powdered wigs and robes of state were real people living lives of romance, tragedy, intrigue and eccentricity. Take a journey into the private lives of very public figures and learn of arranged marriages that turned to love or hate and scandals that rocked polite society.

Here the former wife of a king spends three decades in lonely captivity, Prinny makes scandalous eyes at the toast of the London stage and Marie Antoinette begins her last, terrible journey through Paris as her son sits alone in a forgotten prison cell.

Life in the Georgian Court is a privileged peek into the glamorous, tragic and iconic courts of the Georgian world, where even a king could take nothing for granted.

Naval Hero Sir James Lucas Yeo – Part 1

When reading of action by the Royal Navy in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic War period one is struck not just by the commitment in carrying the fight into the enemy’s inshore waters – and even harbours – but by the almost insane gallantry that was so widespread among officers and enlisted men alike. Nowhere was this more apparent than in “cutting out” operations – captures of enemy shipping by boarding parties in small boats – and in assaults on coastal fortifications. Hazardous as such actions were, they represented craved-for opportunities for young officers to distinguish themselves and to earn advancement, while prize-money provided a welcome inducement for officers and men alike.

James Lucas Yeo - a dashing captain whom
 Jane Austen heroines would have swooned over!

One such example of a young officer who earned fast promotion, and whose career would probably have brought him to the most senior levels, had he not died young, was Sir James Lucas Yeo (1782 – 1818). He is best remembered today for his command of British naval forces on the Great Lakes in the War of 1812 but his rapid ascent to such a significant command started with a spectacular attack on coastal fortifications in 1805. Handsome and courageous, obviously a born leader, he seems like a figure who steps from the pages of a work of naval fiction.

Yeo joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman at the age of 10. By 1805, having already seen significant action, this twenty-three year old was serving as First Lieutenant on the frigate HMS Loire. Her name betrayed her French origin – it was Royal Navy policy for ships captured from the enemy to retain their original names – and this 1350-ton, 150-ft frigate had been captured off the west coast of Ireland in 1798 in the aftermath of the Battle of Tory Island.

The Battle of Tory Island, 12th October 1796 by Nicholas Pocock (1740-1821) -
Loire escaped but was run down and captured six days later

In June 1805 – when Spain was still allied with France – the Loire was on patrol off the north-west coast of Spain. Information reached her that a 26-gun privateer was fitting out in Muros Bay, a deep inlet on this indented coast. Loire’s Captain Fredrick Lewis Maitland (1777-1839) had been in the bay on a previous occasion and – though his recollection was not perfect – believed it possible to either to capture or destroy the enemy vessel. The complication was however that the entrance to the bay was commanded by a shore battery and in any contest between a warship and shore-based artillery the ship was likely to come off worst. This insight was summarised in Nelson’s aphorism that “A ship’s a fool to fight a fort”. As a precursor therefore to Loire entering Muros Bay, Lieutenant Yeo was directed to take a landing party of fifty men – seamen and marines – to storm the battery.

Frederick Lewis Maitland (1815)

On the morning of 4^th June the Loire stood in towards the bay, apparently to draw fire from the battery to provide a diversion to cover the landing party’s approach. In the elegant expression of the time, the Loire was described as having been “much annoyed” by fire from the battery, which proved to be armed with two guns only. Loire’s action proved effective enough for Yeo to get his force ashore under the battery. The arrival of this group proved enough for the troops manning the battery guns to abandon the position, leaving Yeo in possession. He immediately ordered spiking of the guns but also identified, about a quarter mile distant, and further into the bay, a “regular fort protected by a ditch and a gate", with its guns commanding the inner bay. The presence of this fortification had not previously been known – Captain Maitland’s recollection of his previous visit to the bay was indeed incomplete.

With the battery eliminated – but with Yeo and his men still ashore – Captain Maitland now brought the Loire further into the bay. He could now see that the privateer was a corvette – later to be identified as the Confiance – and also a large armed brig. He concluded that these vessels had not yet shipped their guns and were, accordingly, at his mercy. Only now however was he to become aware of the previously unseen fort. Loire was now subjected to what was descried as “well-directed” fire from shore, with virtually every shot striking her hull. Nothing daunted, Maitland dropped anchor in a position relative to the battery’s protective embrasures that made aiming of its guns at the ship virtually impossible. He then engaged the fort but the Loire’s fire alone could not be enough to neutralise it –  that would be dependent on Yeo, ashore, having the initiative to take appropriate action.

Yeo brought his force, apparently undetected, close to the fort’s landward side – activity in the fort itself being focussed on action with the Loire. He launched a charge at the outer gate, where a single soldier fired on them and then retreated within. The landing party stormed behind him and towards a second, inner gate, which also appears to have been open. Here a furious struggle commenced, with the Loire’s men opposed by the fort’s governor, Spanish troops and the crews of the French privateers. Yeo led from the front and killed the governor with a blow that broke his own sword in two. The defenders broke and retreated back into the fort, some being seen from the Loire as jumping down – twenty-five feet – from the embrasures. It was later stated that “such as laid down their arms received quarter, but the slaughter among those who resisted was very great”. After surrender however care does seem to have been taken of the wounded prisoners and indeed the local bishop and one of the community leaders afterwards went out to the Loire to express gratitude for this. Despite the heavy French and Spanish casualties. Loire lost no men, though Yeo and fifteen others were wounded – eleven on the ship as a consequence of fire from shore. (It should be borne in mind however that the classification “wounded” could be serious enough as to require amputation).

Loire (L), under command of Surcouf, capturing the East Indiaman Kent in 1800

With the fort neutralised, Captain Maitland now easily captured the Confiance and the brig – both of which proved to be as yet unarmed – as well as a Spanish merchantman. The brig was found to be not ready for sea, and was accordingly burned, but the Confiance was taken into Royal Navy service. She was a ship with an already notable history. Commissioned in 1799, this 490-ton corvette had served in the Indian Ocean under the renowned French privateer (and slaver) Robert Surcouf.  Confiance’s most notable action under his command was capture in 1800 of the East Indiaman Kent after a fierce battle. She had returned to Europe under Surcouf’s command but when found by Loire was fitting out for a new privateering voyage under another captain.

Command of what was now HMS Confiance was now awarded, deservedly, to Yeo who was promoted to commander – who would achieve coveted post-captain rank two years later. In Confiance he was to achieve notable further success in the South Atlantic and by the War of 1812 had built a reputation that earned him the important command on the Great Lakes.

And Captain Maitland? Napoleon Bonaparte was to surrender to him on board HMS Bellerophon in 1815, in the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo.

 James Lucas Yeo’s further career – and Confiance’s – will be the subject of a future blog. 

Britannia’s Shark by Antoine Vanner 

Click here to read the opening chapters.

1881 and the power of the British Empire seems unchallengeable.

But now a group of revolutionaries threaten the economic basis of that power. 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 or naval power cannot touch them. A daring act of piracy draws the ambitious British naval officer, Nicholas Dawlish, and his wife into this deadly maelstrom. Amid the wealth and squalor of America’s Gilded Age, and on a fever-ridden island ruled by savage tyranny success – and survival –will demand making some very strange alliances...

  

Britannia’s Shark brings historic naval fiction into the dawn of the Submarine Age. 

Click here to read the opening chapters.

Guest Blog by Helen Hollick: Pirates, Night-Walkers and White Witches!

The Nautical Fiction genre has many different sub-genres within it and once of the most entertaining – and original – has been virtually created by one writer, my friend Helen Hollick. You may have encountered her previously as a guest in my blog and I’ve invited her back to mark the launch of her latest novel in a series she herself describes as “Nautical Adventure with a touch of Fantasy”. There’s a message in her blog also for aspiring writers – don’t be put off by refusals and hang in there doggedly! Though I operate at the other end of the Nautical Fiction spectrum (gritty and linked to real events) I can endorse her advice wholeheartedly.

                                                                                                        Antoine Vanner 

The Fascination of Fantasy

By Helen Hollick

I wrote the first Voyage of my Sea Witch series because I had enjoyed the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, The Curse of the Black Pearl. (Have to admit I didn’t think much of the others.) The movie was fun. It was not meant to be taken seriously – a sailor’s yarn of a tale.

I wanted to read something similar, a nautical adventure to be read with a large pinch of salt. Something written for fun, to be read for fun. I also wanted something with an adult content. I’m not talking erotica or OTT horror or violence, just an adult book for adult readers with a bit of realists adult content. I found plenty of young adult novels (Pirates! By Celia Rees as a good example). Plenty of ‘straight’ nautical fiction – and as much as I love C.S. Forrester and Patrick O’Brian they are somewhat lacking in the make-believe department, and even in the ‘romance’ side of things. (Not  exactly many women taking major roles in their books are there?)

So, simple solution. Write the book I wanted to read.

Sea Witch was the result, followed by Pirate Code, Bring It Close, Ripples In The Sand and now, released on 7^th July 2016 the Fifth Voyage, On The Account.

Rather frustratingly, though, no publisher or agent wanted Sea Witch. They loved the story, but all said the same two things:

Adults do not read pirate novels.

It will not be easy to market a cross-genre novel.

(Heavy sigh from me.)

The first is utter nonsense. Adults adore pirates, whether it be movies, TV shows (look at the popularity of Black Sails) Re-enactments, pirate festivals – Talk Like A Pirate Day….

The second? Maybe a good point, but deciding to go Indie after these sort of comments I have had no problem whatsoever with marketing. Publishers like their novels to be square pegs in square holes – Indie authors can be any shape we like! I market the series as Nautical Adventure with a touch of Fantasy. They are a blend of P.O.B., Hornblower, Indiana Jones, James Bond and Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe.

The fantasy in my series I try to keep as believable as I can – there are no mermaids, but there is, spread through the series, a ghost, a Night-Walker and the spirit of the sea, Tethys. Plus my lead female protagonist, Tiola Oldstagh, the ‘love interest’ for my pirate, Captain Jesamiah Acorne. She is a white witch, a Wising Woman, the last of the Old Ones. I think of her powers as having more of ‘the Force’ as in Star Wars rather than the magic spells of Harry Potter.

As for Maha'dun the Night-Walker, who has a considerable part in this fifth Voyage, no he is not a vampire. Night creatures are not restricted to handsome guys (or gals) who wander about afraid of the sun baring very sharp fangs. Owls are night-dwellers. Bats are night dwellers, so are my Night-Walkers.

Alas I am not going to reveal what he is here, as that is to come in Voyage Six, Gallows Wake. But no, he does not have fangs and he does not drink blood. He was also great fun to write, especially as Jesamiah assumes that he is Tiola’s lover – that causes a stir between husband and wife I can tell you!

So why the interest in fantasy? Why not just stick to the straight nautical romps? Why do readers like dragons, elves, fairies, witches, wizards, vampires, mermaids… lah lah lah….?

Simple answer. Escapism.

We all like to believe that there is magic around us, in whatever shape or form. Perhaps because ordinary life is too boring, mundane or plain normal. Who can deny looking at a rainbow and automatically thinking of that pot of gold which is supposed to rest at its end? Who cannot gaze up at the stars and think of alien worlds?

Mind you, I still haven’t quite figured out the attraction of pirates and vampires – aren’t they supposed to kill people? Ah, perhaps that is the point – there’s safe danger lurking behind their smiles! No matter how dark, how fearful the narrative of a book (or a movie) it is all make-believe, we can enjoy being thrilled, frightened – or fall in love – knowing our real lives are perfectly safe.

So it is like I said. Escapism.

Although maybe I could add ‘Romantic’ Escapism! 

The Sea Witch Voyages – swashbuckling nautical adventure yarns for adults

Sea Witch : Voyage One

Pirate Code : Voyage Two

Bring It Close : Voyage Three

Ripples In The Sand : Voyage Four

On The Account : Voyage Five  

Links

Website: www.helenhollick.net

Blog: www.ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.com

Sea Witch Page : https://www.facebook.com/HelenHollick.SeaWitchVoyages/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/HelenHollickAuthor

Twitter: @HelenHollick

Author Page on an Amazon near you : http://viewAuthor.at/HelenHollick

1066 Turned Upside Down (e-book) https://1066turnedupsidedown.blogspot.co.uk/

The families left behind by merchant seamen of the 1870s

In September last year I wrote a blog about working conditions in merchant shipping in the 1870s (Click here to read it). In it I referred to the work done by the great maritime reformer Samuel Plimsoll (1824-1898) who worked tirelessly to combat the practices of over-insuring decrepit ships that were likely to founder – taking their crews with them – and of overloading ships far beyond their safe draughts. His name lives on in “The Plimsoll Line” – the marking on ships’ hulls that marks the deepest loading allowed for the vessel in various conditions. In 1867, Plimsoll advanced his cause by getting elected as the Liberal Member of Parliament but his efforts to get a law passed on safe loading were frustrated by the larger number of ship-owners who were also members.

Plimsoll’s crusade, inside and outside the British Parliament, was heavily dependent on amassing a vast amount of evidence, much of it gained through interviews with officers and sailors. He also interviewed seamen’s families in harbour-towns – who were only too often reduced to the status of widows and orphans. This provided a basis for a book entitled “Our Seamen”, which he published in 1872. It evoked much outrage in the wider public and gained support eventually for the legislation Plimsoll had demanded. His meetings with bereaved relatives provide particularly poignant insights to the lives of the poor in the 1870s. Below are summaries of some such interactions.

In a particularly moving example Plimsoll tells of a 23-year old widow, with children, who is keeping alive by mangling clothes (i.e. squeezing the water from items that have just been washed). The mangle, a rolling device worked by a crank, was bought for her by her neighbours. Plimsoll remarked that “the poor are very kind to each other.” Her husband was serving on a ship identified as the S—n (Severn, perhaps? Threat of legal action made direct references risky), an unseaworthy vessel which her owner insured for £3,000 more than he had paid for her. For one last voyage she was loaded under the owner’s personal superintendence, so deeply that Plimsoll claimed that the dockmaster told him that he had pointed her out to a friend as she left the dock, saying emphatically, “That ship will never reach her destination.” She did not – she was lost with all hands – twenty in total. The young widow’s husband had complained to the owner before sailing that the ship was too-deeply loaded, but without avail.

The popular image of the clipper - the aristocrat of merchant shipping in the 19th Century
The underlying reality could be much less romantic

A dreadful aspect of cases like this was touched on in the earlier blog referred to. The law was such 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 for each offence.  Large numbers of seamen were jailed for refusing to sail on vessels they believed to be unseaworthy or which were inadequately manned.

Plimsoll refers to another pathetic case. In “a most evil-smelling room” in a slum he found in the corner of a room “two poor women in one bed, stricken with fever (one died two days after I saw them), mother and daughter.” The daughter’s husband, the only support of both women, had been lost at sea shortly before in an overloaded ship. Plimsoll spoke to a customs officer, “a Mr.  B——l”, a customs officer who had needed to visit the ship before she departed and when asked how to identify her was told “She’s yonder; you can easily find her, she is nearly over t’head in the water” Mr. B——l told Plimsoll that “I asked no questions, but stepped on board; this description was quite sufficient.”

The Workhouse, last refuge of the destitute widow -
this is mealtime in the St. Pancras workhouse in London

Another lady told Plimsoll that she and her younger brother were orphans and brought up by an older sister. The latter’s husband supported the brother in going to sea, and he did well enough to qualify as a Second Mate on sailing ships. He wished however to qualify in steamships and was engaged to serve in a ship that was leaking badly. He was however assured when he signed on that full repairs would be made before loading. This did not happen and according to Plimsoll he told his sister that the vessel was loaded “like a sand-barge.” Both his sister and her husband urged him not to sail and he promised that he would not. He went to the ship to get the wages due to him. Here he “was refused payment unless he went, was over-persuaded and threatened, and called a coward, which greatly excited him. He went, and two days afterwards the ship went down.”

The brutal reality of destitution  - one of the greatest Victorian paintings
Applicants to a Casual Ward (1874) by Sir Luke Fildes (1843-1927)

Even across fourteen decades it is impossible not to be moved – and outraged – by some of Plimsoll’s findings. His account of the simple dignity of one of these widows deserves respect. She was surviving by sewing for a ready-made clothes shopkeeper. “She was in a small garret with a sloping roof and the most modest fireplace I ever saw; just three bits of iron laid from side to side of an opening in the brickwork, and two more up the front; no chimney-piece, or jambs, or stone across the top, but just the bricks laid nearer and nearer until the courses united. So I don’t fancy she could be earning much. But with the very least money value in the place, it was as beautifully clean as I ever saw a room in my life.”

This lady’s husband had also committed to a ship that proved to have been overloaded. He came home and, according to her “got his tea without saying a word, and then sat looking into the fire in a deep study, like. I asked him what ailed him, and he said, more to himself than to me, “She’s such a beast!” I thought he meant the men’s place was dirty, as he had complained before that there was no place to wash. He liked to be clean, my husband, and always had a good wash when he came home from the workshop, when he worked ashore. So I said, “Will you let me come on board to clean it out for you?” And he said, still looking at the fire, “It ain’t that.” Well, he hadn’t signed, only agreed, so I said, “Don’t sign, Jim,” and he said he wouldn’t, and went and told the engineer he shouldn’t go.”  The engineer overcame his objections by offering ten shillings (half-a-pound sterling) per month more. He had had no work for a long time, and the money was tempting, so he signed. “When he told me I said, “You won’t go, Jim, will you?” He said, “Why, Minnie, they will put me in gaol if I don’t go.” I said, “Never mind, you can come home after that.” It turned out however that he had also been accused of cowardice and that too had played a role in his decision. It cost him his life.

Plimsoll himself was clearly moved and he told the wretched woman, who was by then crying bitterly, “I hope you won’t think I am asking all these questions from idle curiosity.” He was to remember her answer: “Oh no, sir; I am glad to answer you, for so many homes might be kept from being desolate if it was only looked into”.

A homeless mother on the street with her children
A German illustration of the period - such sights were common across Europe

Another story involved a couple who had lost a son at the age of twenty-two. He had been taken on as a stoker, and worked on the ship some days before she was ready for sea. He did not want to go when he saw how she was loaded. She looked like a floating wreck, he claimed, but the owners refused to pay him the money he had earned unless he went, and so he too was lost with the crew. “Just one more specimen of the good, true, and brave men we sacrifice by our most cruel and manslaughtering neglect,” Plimsoll commented.

It is indeed too easy, at this remove, to be entranced by the “romance” of the seaborne trade of the 19th Century, with its sleek hulls and billowing clouds. We are indebted to Plimsoll not only for his load-line, and the countless lives it was to save, but to his insights into the lives of some of the most overlooked and forgotten of his era.

He was a true hero.

Britannia’s Wolf is available as an audio book

                                     – listen to a sample

The first book in the Dawlish Chronicles series is now available as an audio book read by the distinguished American actor David Doersch. If you haven't previously ordered an audio-book from audible.com you can download it without cost as part of a 30-Day Free Trial. You can listen on your Smart Phone, Tablet or MP3 Player.

To listen to as sample go to the links below and click on the small arrow beneath the cover image there:

Click here for sample and audio details (UK)

Click here for sample and audio details (US and elsewhere)

The Natal Mutiny, 1889 - how much to believe?

Mutiny at sea is an inherently dramatic subject and few were as dramatic – because of the small size of the crew involved, and the small craft on which it played out – than that on the brigantine Natal in 1889. I learned of it in a book entitled “Revolt at Sea” by Irvin Anthony, published in the United States by Putnam in 1937. The book contains accounts of some twenty-four other mutinies, the last three being those on the Russian pre-dreadnought Potemkin in 1905, in the German Fleet in 1918 and on the Dutch Zeven Provinciën in 1933. The Natal incident is therefore presented as factual but there are areas left unexplained which I will return to at the end of this article.

It appears that in 1889 – days and months unspecified – the “trim but small” brigantine was en route for Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. The registration of the Natal was not specified, but as her captain was called Peter F. Enstrom it is possible that she was Scandinavian. The cargo was described as “of no particular worth” and the size of her crew, though apparently small, was not mentioned. There were apparently “no grim feuds among her people”, a fact that makes the subsequent savagery hard to understood. It should however be borne in mind that working conditions on merchant shipping in this period could be atrocious. (There is a link at the end of this article to an earlier blog on this subject). Even on the best-run ships, accommodation and messing could be unacceptable by modern standards, and the rough discipline often imposed tended to foster deeply felt animosities between owners, officers and crews.

"Winged Arrow and Southern Cross in Boston Harbour" by Fitz Hugh Lee (1804-1865)

This was the romantic view in the Age of Merchant Sail -the reality was often brutally differen

For whatever reason, four of the Natal’s crew decided on murdering the officers and taking over the ship. A seaman called Johannsen armed himself with a capstan bar, while another, Toton, possessed a revolver. The carpenter had his axe while the steward relied on a long sheath knife. Their objective remains unclear – by 1889 telegraphic communications and naval steamships had made it impossible for old-style piracy to succeed and remain undetected for any length of time.

The attempt to capture the ship began on a midnight, when the vessel was in charge of the second mate – who was the captain’s seventeen-year old son – and while the captain himself, and the first mate, were asleep in separate berths in the same cabin.  The second mate had just taken over the watch and was still feeling sleepy. He therefore lowered a bucket over the side, drew up water, and sluiced it over his head to wake himself. He was in the act of doing so when the carpenter crept up behind him and split his skull with an axe. Death was instantaneous and no alarm was raised. (One has the impression that there was nobody else was on deck, or was indeed needed, as there was later mention of “light airs”). The body was unceremoniously dropped overboard.

The reality of life at sea - "Eight Bells" by Winslow Homer (1836-1910)

The four mutineers now headed for Captain Enstrom’s cabin. They entered stealthily without wakening either him or the mate. The carpenter was chosen – or had volunteered – to kill the captain, like his son, with the axe, while Toton was to shoot the mate with his revolver. The carpenter moved first, sweeping down his axe on the captain’s head, but shearing past with a glancing blow that drew blood but was not serious. Enstrom was instantly awake and on his feet, punching his assailant. Johannsen tried to intervene, but in the close confines of the cabin he could achieve only enough with his capstan bar to knock of the aim of Totton, whose four successive shots all missed the mate.

Familiarity with the cabin layout, particularly in the darkness, now played in the captain’s and mate’s favour. Fighting for their live,s they punched and kicked and their assailants’ nerve broke. They fled up the companionway and back on deck, leaving Totnes’ revolver in the hands of the mate, who had wrestled it from him. The two officers now locked themselves in the cabin and began to rummage for the small arms the ship carried but never had occasion to use. They located a rifle, three revolvers and ammunition. The captain appears to have been aware by now that his son was dead and was obviously bent on revenge. The remainder of the crew, intimidated perhaps by the mutineers, seem to have remained neutral in what had happened and to have gathered on deck.

Remaining in the cabin was no long-term alternative, especially with the firearms on board being in the hands of the captain and mate. They rushed on deck with loaded weapons and those there – neutral as well as mutineers, one gathers – rushed in panic before them down the forehatch. Captain Enstrom and the mate locked it, trapping the crew below.

The “light airs” referred to allowed the vessel to drift safely without manning and the two officers on deck kept turns on watch, with weapons trained on the scuttle opening from the forehatch. A full day passed and no food or water reached the prisoners. Two more passed, during which the conditions beneath the hatchway must have become intolerable.

On the fourth day a flag of truce was waved from the scuttle but was met with gunfire. With his son dead, Enstrom was not in a forgiving mood. Only on a second attempt at parley did the mutineers suggest surrender, only to be told that it would be unconditional. The prisoners accepted and trooped on deck. Enstrom separated the four mutineers from the others and calmly shot the carpenter and Toton. The steward and Johanssen, trembling, were sent below as prisoners and the Natal resumed her course for Brisbane.

The Age of Merchant Sail captured by British master John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893)

"Nightfall on the Thames" - 1880

The story, as told above, is a summary of that in Irvin Anthony’s “Revolt at Sea”. My immediate reaction was “Did it really happen?” for there is so much detail missing – origin of the ship, location of the mutiny, size of the crew. Were there earlier events that triggered such brutal resentment? How did the authorities in Brisbane deal with these events, and was Captain Enstrom held accountable in any way for his summary execution of two of the mutineers? What became of Johansen and the steward afterwards? The whole story seems like incidents in some of Joseph Conrad’s novels that hinge on blindly malignant brutality – one thinks of his “Victory” and “Because of the Dollars”. I had never heard of this Natal incident previously and an internet search has turned up nothing. I did however discover that the book’s author, Irvin Anthony, born in Philadelphia in 1890, had produced a large number of other books with nautical themes. The inclusion of the Natal story with those of other well-known and factually-attested mutinies inclines one to think there must be some truth in it.

But how much truth?

Is there any reader of mine out there who can shed some light on this?

Update 0930 on 22.06.16:

In answer to the question above, more light was shed on the Natal affair in two splendid comments - with external links - by "Astrodene" and by Mike Rattenbury. Here they are shown here in their entireties:

astrodene21 June 2016 at 17:35

It seems the Captain gave an interview to his local newspaper when he got back home, which was America. A much more graphic account of the cabin battle and their injuries. The mate was actually shot in his own cabin and subsequently joined the affray in the Captain's. Johanssen was captured when the others fled below and helped man the ship while the crew were confined. It seems the captain was not prosecuted, although they thought about it and the courts let the mutineers go. You can read the article at http://nyx.uky.edu/dips/xt72jm23cs9q/data/0185.pdf

Mike Rattenbury23 June 2016 at 00:38

It looks like it happened on November 27, 1883, but the news dosn't get out until the beginning of 1884. There are quite a few newspaper reports online, and entering 'Natal Mutiny 1884' brings them up. By March, the mutineers seem still to be in custody in Australia, awaiting extradition to Sweden for trial. http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=EP18840301.2.33 gives another detailed account. None of the reports seem to disagree with the captain's shooting of the mutineers.

(Click here to read an earlier blog about abuses in the merchant shipping industry which were uncovered by the great British maritime reformer, Samuel Plimsoll).

Britannia’s Spartan

Six-inch breech loading guns represented the cutting edge of naval technology in the early 1880s. In my novel Britannia’s Spartan they are seen in use on both British and Japanese ships. The splendid woodcut below shows Japanese crews managing just such a weapon in the war of 1895 against China. Click on the links below for further details – you can read the opening via the “Look Inside” feature at the top left of the screen opened.

UK  readers click here    and      US & Rest of World readers click here