Chapter VII: The American War Till 1780 (1)

AUTHORITIES.—See authorities for previous years; Mundy’s _Life
and Correspondence of Lord Rodney_; Barrow’s _Life of Howe_;
Chevalier, _Histoire de la Marine Française pendant la guerre
d’independence Americaine_; _Parliamentary History_; _Annual
Register_.

The interval of fifteen years which separates the end of the Seven Years’ War from the beginning of the American War in 1778 saw no change in the organisation of the navy. An improvement in their half pay was given to the captains in 1773. In 1715 the right to enjoy half pay when not on active service, which had hitherto been limited to twenty-five officers of this rank, was extended to all. The amount had come to appear insufficient by 1773, and the captains petitioned Parliament for relief. Their case was stated by Howe, who was then member for Dartmouth. Lord North, the Prime Minister, began by opposing the motion, on the ground that it affected the revenue, and ought therefore to have been made by a minister. But the sympathy of the house was with Howe and his clients. A committee of inquiry was appointed, and on its report Parliament decided that the increase ought to be granted. A sum of £7000 was finally voted, and the scale of half pay was fixed at 10s. a day for 50 captains, 8s. for 30, and 6s. for all the others, in their order of seniority. Howe and the more fortunate naval officers, who were members of the House of Commons and who gave him support, acted an honourable part on behalf of their brothers in arms. They would have done still better if they had gone on to represent the far more cruel grievances of the men. Had they acted with spirit for those fellow-seamen who did not belong to their own class, they might have secured a hearing, and have saved the navy from the long list of mutinies which were to disgrace the coming war. But so much magnanimity and foresight was perhaps not to be expected in those years of the eighteenth century. Nothing was done for the sailors. The isolated mutinies were sometimes suppressed with severity, but were sometimes concealed from public knowledge, and condoned. A long course of neglect and weakness, with now and then a spasm of ferocity, bore its natural fruit in the combined mutiny at Spithead in 1797.

The discipline of the navy continued to benefit by the admirable work done in the Seven Years’ War by the great chiefs and the less famous officers whom they inspired. Their influence and example went on bearing good fruit, and have indeed never ceased to be felt, but have been carried from one generation to another of their successors. Remote from the corruption of the dockyards and the fury of political factions on shore, on solitary voyages, in long cruises, in blockades, in battle and storm, the admirals and captains who were trained in the schools of Anson and Hawke, Pocock and Boscawen, and were themselves to train the admirals and captains of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, went on perfecting the seamanship and fighting efficiency of the fleet. An anonymous officer, who wrote in 1788, could declare in answer to those who boasted of the ancient discipline of the navy, that “if we compare the past practices and methods, as they have been explained to us thirty years ago by old seamen in the service, with the present, we shall find, that in no one thing under the British Government has there been so much improvement as in the art of fighting, sailing, and navigating a British ship of War.” The reason he gives is full of instruction, and deserves to be quoted at length:—

“The old method of enforcing discipline was without method, by main strength and the frequent use of the rattan, without which no officer, from the captain down to the youngest midshipman, ever went upon deck. Even twenty years ago there was much of this discipline (if it can be called by the name) remaining in the service. Last war [_i.e._ between 1778 and 1783] there is no doubt that the internal discipline of His Majesty’s ships in general was brought to as great a degree of perfection, almost, as it is capable of receiving; I say in general. There were indeed exceptions; but in captains bigoted to the old customs, and whose ships might always be distinguished by their awkwardness and inactivity and by the indifferent figure they cut in action, though commanded with bravery. This general improvement proceeded from a method adopted in every branch of an officer’s and sailor’s duty, by dividing and quartering the officers with the men, and making them responsible for the performance of that portion of the duty allotted them, without noise, or the brutal method of driving sailors like cattle with sticks. Whether it were to make or shorten sail, to manœuvre the ship, to keep the men clean clothed, clean bedded, and berthed, this method was practised.”

The writer attributes the efficiency of the crews and the good health they enjoyed even in the West Indies, while under the command of Rodney and Hood, to this more humane and intelligent system. He claims that there were cases when out of twenty-two sail of the line cruising together, there were not twenty-two men who could not come to quarters. The reader who compares this with the terrible ravages made by fever and scurvy in the naval expeditions of Queen Anne’s reign and the beginning of the Seven Years’ War will see how vast had been the change for the better. The example of Captain Cook and the exertions of Rodney’s doctor, Gilbert Blane, brought about improvements in the diet of the men which saved thousands for the service of their country, who would have been thrown to the sharks in former times. All this reform was the spontaneous work of the navy. There was so little about it of Admiralty system that no universal system of quartering men and dividing work was established till far into the nineteenth century. Captains followed the practice of the officers under whom they had first served, with improvements of their own. The perfected discipline of the navy was the result of the labours of hundreds of officers, many of whom are completely forgotten, thinking, experimenting, and toiling, each in his own sphere, but all with the same noble love of good work. Therefore it had, and has, a grand life of its own, incomparably higher, and far more enduring than the mechanical order enforced by a minister or king. “It is the service” was the most emphatic praise a naval officer could give, and “It is not the service” his most severe condemnation. “The Service” was the formula standing for that combination of smartness, of cleanliness, of precision of movement, of exactness of stroke, of resolution to endure, and of intrepidity to venture, which is the glory of the navy, its strength, and the real explanation of its triumphs. It is of this too that the nation has the best reason to be proud. There is something rather servile and more than rather blind in the habit of attributing all success to the commander. In the long run the Roman Legion will wear down Hannibal, and it is a greater feat for any people to produce the organism which is animated by the virtue of tens of thousands of its sons, than the exceptional leader, whose genius does not always last even for the whole of his own life. We do well to put up monuments to Nelson, and it would be to our honour to remember other admirals more fully than we do. The navy itself is the living memorial raised to the generation of forgotten men whose names have passed into forgetfulness, but whose work lives to this day on the quarter-decks and forecastles of every ship flying the cross of St. George.

While the seamen were steadily perfecting the discipline of the navy, their rulers on shore were allowing the administration to drift back to the corruptions of Walpole’s time. The cause of this unhappy reaction is easily stated. George III. came to the throne with the determination to be king. This meant that he would not consent to be a puppet in the hands of the Whig oligarchy of Revolution families, who had dominated his grandfather. He could not crush them by the use of force, and was consequently compelled to fight them with their own weapons, which were interest and corruption. Interest meant that he bought the obedience of Members of the House of Commons by bribery. Every branch of the public service, and the Royal Household also, suffered because places were given to buy votes, and no reform could be effected without losing the support of members of Parliament who profited by the abuse. The evil was particularly bad in the navy. Parliamentary boroughs and dockyard seats were regularly filled with henchmen of the king’s ministers, on the understanding that they gave their help to suppress inquiry. Money voted with a great appearance of precision for specific purposes was not applied to the ends for which it was in theory granted. What became of it nobody was ever able to discover. On paper the system of accounts was so rigid that fraud might have appeared to be impossible, but its very severity made it cumbersome, and the men in office were not even honest. When taxed with misuse of the nation’s money they were in the habit of boasting that they did not take it for themselves. It is probable that they did not put it directly into their own pockets, but their defence was sophistical. Corruption was needed to keep them in place—and place was lucrative. Every department had its own treasury. The money paid out by the Exchequer was put to the account of the minister. The bankers paid interest on it, and this interest was the perquisite of the members of the ministry. It was their interest to delay payments and conceal the actual use made of the funds. Brougham repeats a story which illustrates the spirit of the politicians of that generation. When Lord North was appointed Paymaster of the Forces he found that he had to divide the emoluments with another politician. His disgust was great, and he revenged himself by a characteristic jest. A dog made a mess in the passage outside his room. Lord North sent for one of the servants, ordered him to carry the offensive matter away, and take care that his colleague received his due share, for said he, “Mr. Cooke is to have half of everything that comes into the office.”

When the war with France came in 1778 the mischief had been in full swing for seven years under the administration of Lord Sandwich, which began in 1771. During that period he had received for the building and equipping of the navy £6,472,072, besides large sums charged on the debt. This was nearly twice as much as had been voted between 1755 and 1762, and considerably more than a million beyond the votes of 1763 to 1771. These sums did not cover the whole expense of maintaining the navy. The supplies were voted under three heads. There was the Ordinary of the Navy, which meant the maintenance of the dockyards, care of the ships not in commission, and half pay. Then there was the Extraordinary of the navy, the “building, rebuilding, and repairs” and all “extra works over and above what was meant to be done upon the heads of wear and tear in ordinary.” The third vote was for so many men at £4 a head per month of twenty-eight days. Of this sum £1, 16s. was for wages of all ranks, 19s. for rations, and the balance covered current expenses in replacing rigging and ammunition. This was naturally the largest sum of all. The votes for 1779 for example were respectively: for the Ordinary, £369,882, 6s. 1d.; for the Extraordinary, £579,187; and for 70,000 men “for 13 months, including ordnance,” £3,640,000. The £6,472,072 supplied to Sandwich between 1771 and 1778 did not include the vote for men. Though the sum was so considerable, the Admiralty was unable to find fifty line-of-battle ships for sea in the summer of 1778.

Why so much money produced such unsatisfactory results was well shown in the course of a discussion in the Commons on the 13th January of this year. Mr. Temple Luttrell quoted figures to show that as much had been voted for the repairs of the =Namur=, the =Defence=, and the =Arrogant=, as would have built them new from the keel at the most extravagant rate. Yet they were not fit for service. An even more scandalous case was that of the =Dragon=, 74. She had been launched in 1760 in the heat of the Seven Years’ War, and was one of the vessels then hastily constructed of green timber to meet a pressing need. They were rotten by 1771, and Sandwich was in the habit of taking credit to himself for his exertion to replace them by better ships. What had happened with the =Dragon= was this—that between 1771 and 1778 the Admiralty came to Parliament for successive sums, amounting to £27,000, for her repairs, and £10,273 for her stores. Yet in the latter year she was notoriously lying in a rotten state at the head of Portsmouth Harbour, and not one penny of this money had ever been spent upon her. The facts were not disputed. All that the Sea Lords, who answered for the Admiralty, could say was, that they had not pilfered the money themselves, and that this sort of thing had always been done. The answer was, that it was directly contrary to the representation of the House of Commons in 1711. It was on this occasion that Burke threw the book of the estimates across the Speaker’s table, knocking over a candle, and all but breaking the shins of the Treasurer of the Navy, Welbore Ellis. He said, that it was “treating the House with the utmost contempt, to present them with a fine gilt book of estimates, calculated to the last farthing, for purposes to which the money granted was never meant to be applied.” Burke was right, but the Whig Opposition had done nothing to amend the evil in its days of power, and had little right to take a lofty moral line with its successors. Contempt was the exact word for the attitude taken towards all criticism by Sir Hugh Palliser and Lord Mulgrave, the naval representatives of the Admiralty in the Lower House. Palliser was arrogant and laconic, lying as to the state of the fleet with a burly assurance. Lord Mulgrave, the Irish peer, better remembered as the Captain Constantine Phipps, with whom Nelson made his early voyage to Spitzbergen, was fluent, jocular, and insolent. A docile majority supported them by voting “the previous question” as the most convenient way of stifling inquiry.

Indignant contemporary critics declared that accounts made in this fashion were in fact deliberately designed to “envelope in utter darkness the true appropriation of the immense sums they (the Ministers to wit) extort thereupon from the public.” The respective shares of deliberate design and mere convenient use and wont in producing the disorder present a nice question. What is beyond dispute is, that when the gilt book of the estimates showed the expenditure of such and such sums for repairs and stores, and when the money was devoted to other purposes, and the vessels named were lying rotten and unfit for sea, it must have been impossible even for the best informed officials to know the effective strength of the navy. Indeed, nothing is more difficult than to find what was the real available force of the fleet at this crisis. The common printed authorities, Beatson’s _Naval and Military Memoirs_, Schomberg’s _Chronicle_, and Derrick’s _Memoirs of the Royal Navy_ (all good books in their different ways), contradict one another. It is only natural they should, for there were no accurate sources of information. It was not till 1773 that the Admiralty itself began to try to take stock of its vessels. In that year it was ordered that a return, to be known as the “Progress of the Dockyards,” should be made every week, showing what ships of all classes were under the care of the officials. There was also a monthly list of ships in full sea pay. It ought to have been possible to make an exact return of the strength of the navy by adding the one to the other. But these papers were avowedly untrustworthy. A ship in full sea pay, or commission, might go into the dockyard for repairs. She would then appear in the Weekly Progresses, and if the totals alone were looked to, she would be counted twice. Then a vessel was considered to be in full sea pay when her captain was appointed, but months might pass before he joined her, and in the meantime she lay unmanned. So she, again, would be included twice. The Weekly Progresses were drawn up by the clerks of the Navy Office, and the monthly lists by the Admiralty officials. They were independent and might not agree. Some allowance must be made for mere blunders. It is obvious, too, that the dockyards returned such rotten hulks as H.M.S. =Dragon= among the ships under their charge, while the fact that a man-of-war was in full sea pay hardly established a presumption that she was manned, rigged, or as much as in good repair. These official papers are therefore but blind guides. When the great reform of the navy administration was begun in the early years of the nineteenth century, a manuscript book called the “Progress of the Navy from 1765 to 1806” was compiled in the Admiralty. The author warns all who may use it that his sources were untrustworthy, but he professes to have done his best to get at the truth and to have made the necessary deductions. It may be accepted as giving the nearest attainable approach to an exact statement of the paper strength of the navy during the years which it covers.

According to this authority, the total nominal force of the Royal Navy in January 1778 was 399 vessels, of which 274 were in full sea pay, or commission, while 125 were in ordinary, or reserve. The usual phrase of the time was “lying by the walls”—that is to say, in the dockyards. The advance during the war will be seen from the following list:—

+------------------+---------------+--------------+ | | Vessels in | Total of all | | | Full Sea Pay. | Vessels. | +------------------+---------------+--------------+ | 1st January 1778 | 274 | 399 | | " " 1779 | 317 | 432 | | " " 1780 | 364 | 481 | | " " 1781 | 396 | 538 | | " " 1782 | 398 | 551 | | " " 1783 | 430 | 608 | +------------------+---------------+--------------+

This, however, is paper strength. It includes battered hulks fit only for harbour duty, prizes needing a refit, yachts and ships building. Even at the very end of the war such authorities as Keppel and Howe could not agree as to the number of vessels really available for service. Ships were put into commission simply in order to please supporters by conferring professional favours on them, their relations, or clients. A great display of pennants might be made by this device, but it was a show out of all proportion to the effective strength. Then, as in much later times, it was the dishonest official practice to include vessels building in the list of the navy. Thus, in the last year of the war, it was said that we had four first-rates of 100 guns. In reality there had been three, which were reduced to two by the sinking of the =Royal George= at Spithead. Another was ordered to replace her, and a fourth, the =Queen Charlotte=, which afterwards carried Howe’s flag on the 1st June, was also begun. They were not ready for years, but they were counted in to make up the tale of four.

Where our evidence is confessedly not sound, it is idle to make confident assertions about the strength of the fleet. But the sea pay lists represent what was the utmost claimed by the Government as ready for immediate service. The figures for the beginning and the end of 1778 will show what was the disposition of the fleet, and also what was the first effect of the outbreak of hostilities with France.

January 1778. December 1778.

Station. Number. Station. Number. East Indies 6 East Indies 5 Jamaica 22 Jamaica 21 Leeward Islands. 19 Leeward Islands 10 North America 92 North America 85 Mediterranean 6 Mediterranean 5 Newfoundland 13 Newfoundland 15 Convoy and Cruising 22 Convoy and Cruising 36 Ships at home 94 Ships at home 97 —— Western Squadron 43 274 —— 317

The difference between the two lists is partly accounted for by transfer of vessels from one station, or duty, to another. The high figure of the North American station came from the use of numbers of small craft to co-operate with the troops employed against the insurgents from 1775 onwards. In the main, however, the second list differs from the first by the addition of the Western Squadron—that is, the great force of battleships collected under Keppel to meet the French at Brest.

It will be seen that there is an increase in the vessels employed on “Convoy and Cruising.” We tell only half the service of a navy in war when we confine ourselves to the movements of the squadrons and the battles. The other half consists in the patrol duty done to protect trade and keep down the enemy’s attacks on commerce. To explain it by narrative would be tedious and confusing to the reader, but the following list of the warships of various classes employed in this way at and about home when the war began will help the reader to realise how the duty was provided for:—

CRUISERS

Ship. Guns. Disposition.

=Thetis= 32 To come to Plymouth. } =Actæon= 44 " Spithead. } Channel =Seaford= 20 " Falmouth. } Islands. =Hyæna= 20 " Spithead .} =Cygnet= 16 } =Grasshopper= 14 } To the Downs. =Pheasant= 8 } =Boston= 28 To cruise between Belfast Lough and the Mull of Cantyre. =Stag= 28 To cruise in the Irish Channel. =Squirrel= 20 To cruise between the Dodman and the Land’s End. =Harpy= 18 } To convoy the trade from =Wolf= 8 } Ireland to England. =Wasp= 8 At Plymouth. =Beaver’s Prize= 14 To cruise between Flambro’ Head and Yarmouth. =Merchant A. S.= 20 } To cruise from Flambro’ Head to Shields. =Content A. S.= 20 } =Queen A. S.= 20 North Shields. =Heart of Oak A. S.= 20 Liverpool. =Three Sisters A. S.= 20 } Leith. =Leith A. S.= 20 } =Three Brothers A. S.= 20 Bristol. =Satisfaction A. S.= 20 Greenock. Cutter =Meredith= 6·10 To cruise from Beachy Head to Portland. Cutter =Sherburne= 6·8 To cruise from Portland to Ram Head.

CONVOY

Ship. Guns. Disposition.

=Belleisle= 64 To proceed to St. Helena to
convoy the East India trade
home.
=Jupiter= 50} To cruise on coast of Spain
} and Portugal till the 20th
=Medea= 28} October, and return with the
} trade.
=Warwick= 50 To convoy the trade to Canada
from Cork, and return to
Spithead.
=Chatham= 50} To cruise between Stromness
=Portland= 50} and the isle of Bona, for the
=Jason= 28} protection of the Hudson’s
} Bay trade, and repair with
=Atalanta= 16} it to the Nore.
=Montreal= 32 To convoy trade to the Mediterranean
and repair to Spithead.
=Hussar= 28 To cruise between Oporto and
Lisbon.
=Pelican= 24 To cruise between Finisterre
and Lisbon.
=Fly= 14 To convoy trade to Holland
and return with it to the
Nore.
=Savage= 14 To proceed to New York with
dispatches and return to
Spithead.
=Hawke= 10 To proceed to Newfoundland
with dispatches and return
to Plymouth
=Endeavour= 10 To proceed with dispatches to
Jamaica.
=Ranger= 8 To attend the Yarmouth Herring
Fishery and return to
the Nore.
=Resolution= 12·12″}
=Discovery= 8·8″ } In remote parts.

The letters A.S. stand for “Armed Ship.” These were merchant craft bought into or hired for the navy, and armed with small guns. The =Resolution= and =Discovery= were the ships of Captain Cook, then on his last voyage. It must be remembered that these lists represent the cruisers and convoy ships at home or sent directly from home. On every station the admiral would detail part of his command for such duties as these.

The manning of the navy continued to present the old difficulties, aggravated by the fact that we had lost the services of the thousands of American seamen who had been found in our ships in the last war. They were now manning the privateers which preyed on our commerce as far abroad as the Channel and the Mediterranean. All the old complaints were heard of the cruelty, the unconstitutional character, and the inefficiency of the press. A Bill to abolish it was introduced and favourably received in the House of Commons, but went no further. The fact is that the press was indispensable. We would not train men in peace. The merchant seamen would never enlist of their free will in the navy, and were the less likely to do so because the first effect of a war was to send up wages in the trading-ships. But the press was not only needed for the sailors. They indeed were sought by it with particular zeal, because their skill was indispensable in the ships as riggers and to set an example to other men in handling masts and sails in all conditions of weather. It was on them, too, that the captain relied in the greater perils of navigation. But they never formed the bulk of the crews of our warships, nor was it possible they should. In a debate on the Bill to abolish the Press, held on 11th March 1777, Lord Mulgrave declared that the total number of seamen in the country was only 60,000, while the number required for the navy in war had sometimes risen to 80,000. If the whole body of our merchant seamen had been swept into the navy and their places in our trading-ships taken by foreigners who swarmed in to earn the high war wages, there would still have been a deficiency. In truth we never secured all the merchant sailors. The list of men rated as seamen was made up by taking landsmen, who either volunteered or were impressed, and were not uncommonly vagabonds and jail-birds. Though all might be known officially by the same name, a wide distinction was always made among the crews themselves, and in the opinion of the officers, between the “prime seamen” who had served their apprenticeship in the long sea voyages and could turn their hand to anything, and the mere “man-of-warsman,” who had not been bred to the sea and had only been taught the work of his particular station. It was inevitable that in crews composed in this fashion there should have been wide differences of quality and that some of their elements were worthless and criminal. Neither was it denied by the representatives of the Admiralty that this was the case. On the 11th November of 1777, Mr. Temple Luttrell said in the Commons, “Your bounties procure few good seamen, and your press warrants, though enormously expensive, fewer still, while great numbers are daily deserting from your ships and hospitals to commit robberies and murders in the interior counties.... I am assured that fifty have lately deserted from the =Monarch= while in dock, forty from the =Hector=, and twenty-five from the =Worcester=, six of these are confined at Winchester for felonies, and there are two committed to Exeter jail on a charge of murder.” Lord Mulgrave’s answer was that fifty men had indeed deserted, from the =Monarch=, because Captain Rowley was humanely unwilling to treat his men as slaves, and that the deserters were not to be regretted, because “the health of the rest was preserved, as the service was freed from a number of men not to be depended on.” No reply was given on other points. Lord Mulgrave’s tone of jaunty flippancy was characteristic of the incompetent Government which led the country unprepared into the most disastrous of its wars.

Yet in 1777 the navy was beginning to reap the benefit of the General Press warrant issues in October 1776, when the king and his ministers were at last forced to recognise that the rebellion in America was very serious. It was now possible to lay hands on good men by force. Until this was the case, our ships were not uncommonly manned in the fashion described in the following letter from Captain Price of the =Viper= sloop on the North American station in 1775, as quoted by Beatson in his _Naval and Military Memoirs_:—

“I am very much distressed for Petty officers, as well as Warrants. My Carpenter infirm and past duty, my Gunner made from a livery servant, neither seaman nor gunner; my Master a man in years, never an officer before, made from a boy on board one of the guardships, he then keeping a public house at Gosport. Petty officers I have but one, who owns himself mad at times. A Master’s Mate I have not, nor anyone I can make a Boatswain’s mate. I have not one person I could trust with the charge of a vessel I might take to bring her in.”

What complication of slovenliness and jobbery there was behind that master who had been borne as a boy on a guardship and yet kept a public-house at Gosport, we do not know, but it must be allowed that H.M.S. =Viper= differed vastly from the smart British man-of-war with her crew of fine seamen which is supposed to have represented the navy of the eighteenth century. It is probable, however, that she only differed in degree from the average vessel in commission at a time when jobbery was common, and there was no press at work to sweep in the thoroughbred seamen.

When our navy was weakened by corrupt administration and political faction, it was about to be matched against more formidable foes than it had met since the Dutch wars of the seventeenth century. The Americans were only privateers, but they were active and skilful. The French joined battle with us in 1778, the Spaniards in the following year, and the Dutch in 1780. Of these the first and second were not only more numerous but far more efficient than they had been in the two previous struggles. The disasters of the Seven Years’ War had stung the pride and patriotism of the French, and they had made serious efforts to restore their strength at sea. Public subscriptions had been opened to supply ships, and though the money promised was not always paid, they did something to supply the Government with funds. Choiseul, who was minister at the end of the war, tried hard to restore the naval service. Some of his changes and intended reforms were fantastic and could not last. Yet he did not a little to provide ships and to give the officers opportunities for practice. When he was driven from office by the king’s fear that he meant to provoke another war with England, his work was for a time lost. But after the death of Louis XV. and the accession of Louis XVI. the French Navy became again an object of attention to the Government. With the encouragement of the young king, two able ministers, Turgot and M. de Sartine, strove hard to make it worthy of the rank of France among nations. These efforts were greatly increased as the progress of the American insurrection began to afford hope that an opportunity would be found to take revenge for the disasters of past years. In 1778 the French Navy consisted, according to official papers, of 122 vessels, of which 73 were of the line. A very large proportion of these were new, and were admirably built. The French naval officers had studied hard, and were animated by pride, both patriotic and professional, and the desire to retrieve their reputation.

Spain was a nerveless power, as Burke said years afterwards, and had not recovered even in the mere number of her population, still less in intellect and character, from the terrible exhaustion of the seventeenth century. Yet her king, Charles III., had tried seriously to supply his dominions with a navy. Happily for us, he was a man of limited intelligence, and made the common mistake of supposing that numbers constituted strength. In 1778 his navy presented a list of 141 vessels, in all of which 62 were of the line. Though his liners were with few exceptions two-deckers of 60 and 70 guns, they were fine ships. Some of them had been built by English shipwrights in the Spanish service. If Charles III. had been content with forty line-of-battle ships, and had spent the money economised on the building vote on giving practice to his squadrons and on forming a good corps of seaman gunners, his navy would have been a more serious opponent than it was. Still, the addition of the sixty-two Spanish liners with all their defects to the French seventy-three constituted a combination able to try the resources of our navy to the utmost.

The Dutch Navy had fallen far below the standard of its great days. In 1780, when the United Provinces joined the alliance against us, they had only twenty-six line-of-battle ships of from 50 to 76 guns, and twenty-nine lesser vessels. Great efforts were made to add to this short list during the course of the war, but the additions were made too late to have any considerable effect. Holland, too, though it had not withered to the same extent as its old enemy Spain, had sunk from its former energy. Yet the seamanlike skill of the Dutch crews, their steady gunnery and phlegmatic valour, made them rank higher in the opinion of our navy than the French, and far higher than the Spaniards. The best contested battle of the war took place between an English and a Dutch squadron.

The beginning of the great naval war with France in the spring of 1778 was preceded by three years of warlike operations. They were mainly of an ancillary character, and the scope of this book does not allow them to be told in detail. It must suffice to say that they may be divided into two classes. On the Atlantic seaboard and the American lakes our officers and men were engaged in supporting the military forces employed to subdue the insurgents, or to repel inroads on Canada. Captains Douglas and Pringle did good and gallant service both in aiding Sir Guy Carleton to repel the invasion of Montgomery and Arnold, and in clearing the way for Burgoyne’s advance into the valley of the Hudson during the autumn of 1777. Here it was possible to force the enemy to action with the advantage of better discipline and larger resources in our favour. Less success was achieved along the far-stretched seacoast of the plantations. The fault lay to a very great extent with the Ministry, which would not recognise the magnitude of its task. It estimated the case so ill that in 1775, the year of Lexington and Bunker Hill, and of the publication, on the 23rd August, of the proclamation for “Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition in North America,” it reduced the establishment of the navy. The vote for men was cut down by 2000, and the total estimate was lowered from £2,104,917 to £1,674,059. From this figure it rose to £5,001,895 in 1778. In October 1776 the General Press warrant was issued. The bounty, though raised to twelve guineas, failed to draw volunteers. At that date there were on the muster books at home 8933 men. By the December of 1778, and under the strain of stern compulsion, the complements of our ships had been collected, at least on paper, on an adequate scale. The return for the 1st January 1778 is 62,719, and from that level the navy advanced to the 107,446 men borne on its books on 1st January 1783.

During the three years from 1775 to 1778 the admirals successively commanding on the American station, Samuel Graves, Shuldham, and Howe, were endeavouring to overawe hundreds of miles of seacoast swarming with active seamen who were thrown out of work by the interruption of trade. In the summer of 1775 Graves had at his disposal four line-of-battle ships and twenty-one smaller vessels. If he had been able to make free use of all of them, they still would have been inadequate to the work to be done, but he was compelled to keep the bulk of them together at Boston to support General Gage. Reinforcements gradually brought the station up to the nine liners, 64- and 50-gun ships, and eighty or so small craft of all kinds which were under the flag of Howe, who assumed command in July 1776. But he was bound to attend mainly to the duty of helping his brother, Sir William Howe, during the advance to, and occupation of, Philadelphia.

The result was precisely what any competent naval adviser would have predicted. Our admirals were always able to cover the movements of troops and to carry out punitive expeditions against seaports. Of these there were many, and they were justified by the attacks made by the inhabitants on our boats’ crews and small cruisers. But they were wretched expedients, for they exasperated the enemy without crushing him into submission. Meanwhile American armed vessels intercepted supplies, cut off our boats, and captured transports—all the more easily because these last usually sailed without convoy. On one occasion, in August 1775, the insurgents actually landed in Bahama, and carried off a hundred barrels of gunpowder—a very seasonable supply to General Washington.

Out of this weakness at home came the second task thrown on the navy. Quick-sailing American privateers were soon swarming all over the Atlantic. The French and Spanish Governments professed to maintain strict neutrality, and did occasionally take measures to stop the use of their ports by the Americans, when the king’s Ambassadors were energetic in protesting, and could quote a definite instance. But they saw our growing embarrassments with glee, and encouraged the privateers under hand. With this secret support to help them, and the even more effectual aid due to the unprepared condition of our navy, the privateers cruised with signal success. In 1777 they did heavy damage in the West Indies, and it was found necessary to appoint a convoy for the Irish linen trade with England—a precaution we had never been compelled to adopt in the Seven Years’ War. It was calculated in February 1778 that the insurgent corsairs had then taken 739 British ships. Of these, 174 had been released or recaptured, but the net loss was £2,600,000.

Counter captures of American ships engaged on the coast and West India trade were made to about equal numbers, but the loss and the retaliation were alike injurious to the commerce of the empire. The number of American privateers known to exist was 173, carrying 2556 guns and about 14,000 men. We had captured 34, but they were promptly replaced, and were reinforced by Frenchmen who fitted out their ships almost without disguise in French ports.

On the 13th March 1778, the Marquis de Noailles, then French Ambassador in London, made the momentous but not unforeseen announcement, that his master had signed a treaty of commerce and friendship with the United States, which he considered as already in possession of their independence. He added the ironical diplomatic expression of a hope that this alliance with the king’s American rebels, as our ministers were bound to consider them, would not disturb the friendly relations between the countries; but both sides knew that war was come. If the fighting did not begin immediately, the explanation of the delay is simply that M. de Sartine had not yet been able to bring the French Navy into thorough order, while King George’s ministers were, if I may use an expression which some of their successors have not scrupled to apply to themselves with a strange inverted pride, “muddling through.”

Had the house of Bourbon which ruled in France and Spain, and was resolved to abate the power of England, been in a position to adopt the most effectual method of attack, it would have thrown an overwhelming force into the Channel at once, thereby paralysing us all the world over. But King Louis XVI. was hardly ready, and Spain, according to her custom, was not ready at all. King Charles III. maintained a show of neutrality till the following year, and was allowed to do so by the British Government, which continued till the last moment to profess the belief that he would not intervene. Had Lord North and his colleagues been ready to meet a danger foreseen by everybody else, one British fleet would have been promptly off Brest, while another would have been detached to the Mediterranean to blockade Toulon. Neither side having its squadrons fit for immediate use, there was an interval of pause. One French fleet was prepared at Brest under the Comte D’Orvilliers, a very old officer who had commanded the training squadron during peace, and had in that position proved himself a good instructor and a shrewd judge of character. Its purpose was to menace us at home, and so limit the force which could be detached to America. Our answer was the formation of the Western Squadron. The command was given to Keppel under pressure of public opinion. This admiral was then the most distinguished survivor of the leaders of the Seven Years’ War. Lord Hawke, Boscawen, Pocock, and Saunders were dead or in retirement. Rodney, who was as yet comparatively unknown, had ruined himself by gambling and electioneering, and had taken refuge from his creditors in Paris, where he had accumulated a new load of debt. The character and position of Keppel had an important influence on the early stages of the war. He was by family connection a strong Whig. Burke, who loved him, has recorded in the “Letter to a Noble Lord,” that “though it was never shown in insult to any human being, Lord Keppel had something high. It was a wild stock of pride on which the tenderest of all hearts had grafted the milder virtues.”

From early in 1777 Sartine had begun to prepare a squadron at Toulon. It was got ready with difficulty, for the Treasury was always in straits, and the _classes_ then, as ever, worked ill. The purpose it was to serve was to carry help to the Americans. The command was given to the Comte d’Estaign, a great noble of the Rouergue, now known as the department of Rodez. D’Estaign had been bred a soldier, had served in the East Indies, and had held a governorship in the West Indies. He was accused by us of having shown sharp practice when a prisoner of war to the East India Company. His bold, undertaking disposition had induced his sovereign to impose him on the corps of naval officers, which was discredited by the failures of La Clue and Conflans in 1759, and the timidity of D’Aché. That he was our ostentatious enemy was another strong recommendation. From his conduct in command we may gather that his daring was born of a heat of the blood, and not of a settled resolution of mind. He was therefore subject to fits of depression under the weight of responsibility. D’Estaign, whose destination was well known, was allowed to sail unmolested. Reinforcements were sent to Howe under the command of Admiral Byron. Byron, the grandfather of the poet, had all the knightly virtues of his brilliant cavalier house. He had sailed with Anson, had shared the wreck of the =Wager= to the south of Chiloe, had recorded his adventures of starvation among savages, or in friendship and love among the Spaniards of Chili, in a fine narrative, and had been the commander of a voyage of circumnavigation singularly barren of discovery. He was a brave, steady officer, but without original faculty for the higher parts of war, and so persistently unfortunate in meeting storms that the sailors had nicknamed him “Foul Weather Jack.”

The first movement was made by D’Estaign, who left Toulon on the 13th April with a squadron of twelve sail of the line and four frigates. Baffling winds, the unskilfulness of his crews which contained few seamen, and the bad sailing qualities of some of his ships delayed his progress, and it was not till the 15th May that he was able to clear the Straits of Gibraltar. The series of operations which opened with his appearance off the Delaware on the 9th July was long, and ranged from New England to the southern limit of the West Indies. While it was beginning, the main fleets of England and France were coming to battle in the Channel. It will tend to make a narrative which runs the danger of being confused from the number of contemporary events somewhat clearer if we turn to the first meeting between Keppel and D’Orvilliers, noting only that Byron left Plymouth with thirteen sail of the line and a frigate on the 9th June to reinforce Howe, and therefore race D’Estaign across the Atlantic in a parallel and more northerly course. How he lost the race we shall see.

Amid delays and the wrangling of opposition with ministerial orators, the grand home fleet, or Western Squadron, was slowly made ready. On the 12th June, Keppel sailed from Plymouth with twenty sail of the line, and was joined later by two more. When on his way to his station off Brest, and at a distance of some twenty miles to the west of the Lizard, he met the French frigates _Belle Poule_ and _Licorne_. There was as yet no formal declaration of war, but the absence of this mere ceremony only served to give an air of irregularity to his actions. The French frigates were ordered to come under the admiral’s lee. The _Licorne_ being overtaken by the =Hector= 74, obeyed, but not without firing a broadside as she hauled her flag down—a mean demonstration very much on a level with our exercise of the rights of war while we denied that war as yet existed. The _Belle Poule_ was summoned by the frigate =Arethusa=, a vessel of equal strength. Her captain, La Clochetterie, naturally refused to obey an order which Captain Samuel Marshal of the =Arethusa= had no right to give. A smart action ensued. The =Arethusa= rigging was cut to pieces, and the _Belle Poule_ made off on the approach of fresh British ships.

Keppel returned to St. Helens on the 27th June, having learnt that the French fleet at Brest was stronger than his own. On the 9th July, the very day by the calendar on which D’Estaign was seen off the Delaware, he again went to sea with thirty sail of the line and six frigates. His second in command was Sir Robert Harland, and his third was Sir Hugh Palliser, the member of Sandwich’s Board of Admiralty who has been already named. D’Orvilliers had left Brest on the previous day with thirty-two sail of the line and fourteen frigates. He was endowed with large powers to punish or reward, and carried energetic instructions from Sartine to repair the misfortunes and errors of the past. The minister gave him clearly to understand that the king might pardon his officers for being beaten, but not for failing to fight hard.

On the 23rd July the fleets sighted one another 90 miles W.N.W. of Ushant in a westerly wind. We were between the enemy and the land, and therefore to leeward. The French admiral did not avail himself of his windward position to force on a battle, but followed the cautious tradition of his service and kept aloof. Four days of thick unsettled weather followed, hiding the opponents from one another. In this interval two of D’Orvilliers’ ships, the _Bourgoyne_, 80, and the _Alexandre_, 64, had separated and returned to Brest. Thus he was reduced to equality of numbers with Keppel, and to real inferiority of force, for one of his ships was of only 56 guns—a tolerably sharp warning of what may happen to officers who miss opportunities. At 9 a.m. on the 27th the French were seen eight miles to the W.S.W. with the wind at S.W. They were on the port tack, and heading to seaward. Keppel at once pressed in chase, while D’Orvilliers brought his fleet round to the starboard tack, and continued to hold his wind as if wishing to avoid battle. It was Keppel’s object to bring one on, and he headed for the rear of the French line. His own rear showed the usual tendency of a long line to straggle, and signals were made to Palliser, who commanded, to urge him on. Shortly after ten we were coming close on the rear of the French. A squall of both mist and rain swept over both fleets, hiding them from one another. When it cleared, the French admiral was seen to have turned his fleet again, and was heading to the west, still to windward, but so close that he would pass within cannon shot on the opposite tack. To Keppel this was a disappointment, for he actually avowed his belief that if the Frenchman meant to fight seriously he would have remained where he was. In other words he was of opinion that D’Orvilliers ought, as a man of honour, to have allowed his rearguard ships to be overtaken one after another, and crushed by the fire of the English as they came up in succession. By taking this absurdity for granted, Keppel gave the measure of his own intelligence as an admiral, and of his inferiority to D’Orvilliers as a manœuvrer.

The much debated battle of Ushant was in fact little more than a feeble parade. The fleets were going at the rate of five miles an hour, or at a combined speed of ten miles; allowing 150 feet for the average length of a ship this meant that each individual vessel would be abreast of the passing enemy for about a minute. A little more than an hour was employed by the whole of the two forces in sweeping alongside from end to end. During this brief period of cannonading, made up as it was of much briefer flashes of combat between their component parts, the French gunners did more execution than ours. They pierced some of our ships on the water line where they were exposed as they lay over to leeward, and seriously crippled the rigging of many of them. As the two lines began to pass clear, D’Orvilliers ordered his van, nominally commanded by the Duc de Chartres afterwards known to infamy as Philippe Egalité, to turn and engage Keppel’s rear division on the lee side, meaning to turn his centre and rear at the same time, thus putting Sir Hugh Palliser between two fires. But he was ill obeyed by the Duc de Chartres, whom common fame accused of cowardice, and finding that his plan could not be executed, he ran down to leeward and formed his fleet on the starboard tack heading to the east, and in the same direction as ours. Keppel had wished to turn his fleet also, but many of his ships were severely crippled in hull and rigging, and the order could not be executed. One of the most injured was the =Formidable=, 90, flagship of Sir Hugh Palliser. We therefore remained on the same tack. With both heading in the same direction, and we to windward, an opportunity might appear to have offered itself for our favourite manœuvre of bearing down, and engaging from end to end. But in the course of these twistings and turnings, the van and centre, which were less injured than the rear, had gone further to leeward and were nearer the French. Palliser found the =Formidable= unmanageable, and his division remained about him. Thus Keppel could not get his whole force together, and would not attack with a part. When night fell D’Orvilliers left two quick sailing vessels to show a light in order to produce the erroneous impression that he was still there, and steered for Brest where he anchored on the 29th. Keppel, concluding on reflection that he had many ships injured, that the enemy was better able to repair damage than he was, and that Brest was a dangerous lee shore, decided to return home, and anchored in Plymouth on the 31st July. On the 23rd August he was at sea once more, and on the 28th October back at Spithead. D’Orvilliers came out on the 18th August and was home again at Brest on 30th September. Our fleet took several French prizes, but there was no meeting, while our trade was fortunate in escaping French cruisers. And this was the summer campaign of 1778 in home waters.