THE NIGHT ATTACK OFF CADIZ
"'Captain,' they cry, 'the fight is done,
They bid you send your sword!'
And he answered, 'Grapple her stern and bow.
They have asked for the steel. They shall have it now;
Out cutlasses, and board!'"
—KIPLING.
On the morning of July 3, 1801, a curious scene, which might almost be described as a sea comedy, was being transacted off the coast of Alicante. Three huge French line-of-battle ships were manoeuvring and firing round a tiny little British brig-of-war. It was like three mastiffs worrying a mouse. The brig was Lord Cochrane's famous little Speedy, a craft so tiny that its commander could carry its entire broadside in his own pockets, and when he shaved himself in his cabin, had to put his head through the skylight and his shaving-box on the quarter-deck, in order to stand upright.
Cochrane was caught by Admiral Linois' squadron, consisting of two ships of eighty guns and one of seventy-four, on a lee shore, where escape was impossible; but from four o'clock till nine o'clock Cochrane evaded all the efforts of his big pursuers to capture him. The French ships separated on different tacks, so as to keep the little Speedy constantly under the fire of one or the other; and as the British brig turned and dashed at one opening of the moving triangle or the other, the great ships thundered their broadsides at her. Cochrane threw his guns and stores overboard, and by the most ingenious seamanship evaded capture for hours, surviving some scores of broadsides. He could tack far more quickly than the gigantic ships that pursued him, and again and again the Speedy spun round on its heel and shot off on a new course, leaving its particular pursuer with sheet shivering, and nothing but space to fire into. Once, by a quick turn, he shot past one of the 80-gun ships occupied in trying to tack, and got clear. The Desaix, however, a seventy-four, was swiftly on the track of the Speedy; its tall canvas under the growing breeze gave it an advantage, and it ran down to within musket-shot of the Speedy, then yawed, bringing its whole broadside to bear, intending to sink its tiny foe with a single discharge. In yawing, however, the Desaix shot a little too far, and the weight of her broadside only smote the water, but the scattered grape cut up the Speedy's rigging and canvas so terribly that nothing was left but surrender.
When Cochrane went on board his captor, its gallant captain refused to take his sword, saying he "could not accept the sword of an officer who had struggled for so many hours against impossibility." Cochrane and his gallant crew were summarily packed into the Frenchman's hold, and when the French in their turn were pursued by the British line-of-battle ships, as every broadside crashed on the hull of the ship that held them captive, Cochrane and his men gave a round of exultant cheers, until the exasperated Frenchmen threatened to shoot them unless they would hold their tongues—an announcement which only made the British sailors cheer a little louder. The fight between Saumarez and Linois ended with a tragedy; but it may be said to have begun with a farce.
The presence of a French squadron in the Straits of Gibraltar at this particular moment may be explained in a few sentences. Napoleon had woven afresh the web of those naval "combinations" so often torn to fragments by British seamanship and daring. He had persuaded or bullied Spain into placing under the French flag a squadron of six line-of-battle ships, including two leviathans of 112 guns each, lying in the harbour of Cadiz. With haughty, it might almost be said with insolent daring, a couple of British seventy-fours—sometimes, indeed, only one—patrolled the entrance to Cadiz, and blockaded a squadron of ten times their own force. Napoleon's plan was to draw a strong French squadron, under Admiral Linois, from Toulon, a second Spanish squadron from Ferrol, unite these with the ships lying in Cadiz, and thus form a powerful fleet of at least fifteen ships of the line, with a garnishing of frigates.
Once having got his fleet, Napoleon's imagination—which had a strong predatory bias—hesitated betwixt two uses to which it could be turned. One was to make a dash on Lisbon, and require, under threat of an instant bombardment, the delivery of all British ships and goods lying there. This ingenious plan, it was reckoned, would fill French pockets with cash and adorn French brows with glory at one stroke. The amount of British booty at Lisbon was computed—somewhat airily—at 200,000,000 pounds; its disappearance would send half the mercantile houses of Great Britain into the insolvency court, and, to quote a French state paper on the subject, "our fleet, without being buffeted about the sea, would return to Brest loaded with riches and covered with glory, and France would once more astonish Europe." The alternative scheme was to transport some 32,000 new troops to Egypt and restore French fortunes in that country.
Meanwhile Great Britain took energetic measures to wreck this new combination. Sir James Saumarez, in the Caesar, of eighty guns, with six seventy-fours, was despatched to keep guard over Cadiz; and he had scarcely reached his station there when a boat, pulling furiously over from Gibraltar, reported that Admiral Linois' squadron had made its appearance off the Rock, beating up westward. The sails of the Caesar were instantly swung round, a many-coloured flutter of bunting summoned the rest of the squadron to follow, and Saumarez began his eager chase of the French, bearing away for the Gut under a light north-west wind. But the breeze died down, and the current swept the straggling ships westward. All day they drifted helplessly, and the night only brought a breath of air sufficient to fan them through the Straits.
Meanwhile Linois had taken refuge in the tiny curve of the Spanish coast known as the roadstead of Algeciras. Linois was, perhaps, the best French seaman of his day, having, it is true, very little French dash, but endowed with a wealth of cool resolution, and a genius for defensive warfare altogether admirable. Algeciras gave Linois exactly what he wanted, an almost unassailable position. The roadstead is open, shallow, and plentifully besprinkled with rocks, while powerful shore batteries covered the whole anchorage with their zone of fire. The French admiral anchored his ships at intervals of 500 yards from each other, and so that the lines of fire from the batteries north and south crossed in front of his ships. The French squadron carried some 3000 troops, and these were at once landed, and, manning the batteries, raised them to a high degree of effectiveness. Some fourteen heavy Spanish gunboats added enormously to the strength of the French position.
The French never doubted that Saumarez would instantly attack; the precedents of the Nile and of Copenhagen were too recent to make any doubt possible. And Saumarez did exactly what his enemies expected. Algeciras, in fact, is the battle of the Nile in miniature. But Saumarez, though he had the swift daring of Nelson, lacked his warlike genius. Nelson, in Aboukir Bay, leaped without an instant's pause on the line of his enemy, but then he had his own ships perfectly in hand, and so made the leap effective. Saumarez sent his ships into the fight headlong, and without the least regard to mutual support. At 7.50 on the morning of July 6, an uncertain gust of air carried the leading British ship, the Pompée, round Cabrita; Hood, in the Venerable, lay becalmed in the offing; the flagship, with the rest of the squadron, were mere pyramids of idle canvas on the rim of the horizon.
The Pompée drifted down the whole French line, scorched with the fire of batteries and of gunboats, as well as by the broadsides of the great French ships, and at 8.45 dropped her anchor so close to the Formidable—a ship much bigger than itself—that the Frenchman's buoy lay outside her. Then, deliberately clewing up her sails and tautening her springs, the Pompée opened a fire on her big antagonist so fierce, sustained, and deadly, that the latter found it intolerable, and began to warp closer to the shore. The Audacious and Venerable came slowly up into their assigned positions, and here was a spectacle of three British ships fighting four French ships and fourteen Spanish gunboats, with heavy shore batteries manned by 3000 troops thrown into the scale! At this stage, too, the Pompée's springs gave way, or were shot away, the current swung her round till she lay head on to the broadside of her huge antagonist, while the batteries smote her with a deadly cross-fire. A little after ten o'clock the Caesar dropped anchor three cables' lengths from the Indomptable, and opened a fire which the French themselves described as "tremendous" upon her antagonist.
Linois found the British fire too destructive, and signalled his ships to cut or slip their cables, calculating that a faint air from the sea, which was beginning to blow, would drift them closer under the shelter of the batteries. Saumarez, too, noticed that his topsails were beginning to swell, and he instantly slipped his cable and endeavoured to close with the Indomptable, signalling his ships to do the same. The British cables rattled hoarsely through their hawse-holes along the whole line, and the ships were adrift; but the breeze almost instantly died away, and on the strong coast current the British ships floated helplessly, while the fire from the great shore batteries, and from the steady French decks, now anchored afresh, smote them heavily in turn. The Pompée lay for an hour under a concentrated fire without being able to bring a gun to bear in return, and then summoned by signal the boats of the squadron to tow her off.
Saumarez, meanwhile, had ordered the Hannibal, under Captain Ferris, to round the head of the French line and "rake the admiral's ship." Ferris, by fine seamanship, partly sailed and partly drifted into the post assigned to him, and then grounded hopelessly, under a plunging fire from the shore batteries, within hail of the Frenchman, itself also aground. A fire so dreadful soon reduced the unfortunate Hannibal to a state of wreck. Boats from the Caesar and the Venerable came to her help, but Ferris sent them back again. They could not help him, and should not share his fate. Saumarez, as a last resource, prepared for a boat attack on the batteries, but in the whole squadron there were not enough uninjured boats to carry the marines. The British flagship itself was by this time well-nigh a wreck, and was drifting on the reefs. A flaw of wind from the shore gave the ships steerage-way, and Saumarez drew off, leaving the Hannibal to its fate.
Ferris fought till his masts were gone, his guns dismounted, his bulwarks riddled, his decks pierced, and one-third of his crew killed or wounded. Then he ordered the survivors to the lower decks, and still kept his flag flying for half-an-hour after the shot-torn sails of the shattered British ships had disappeared round Cabrita. Then he struck. Here was a French triumph, indeed! A British squadron beaten off, a British seventy-four captured! It is said that when the news reached Paris the city went half-mad with exultation. Napoleon read the despatch to his ministers with eyes that danced, and almost wept, with mere gladness!
The British squadron—officers and men in such a mood as may be imagined—put into Gibraltar to refit; the Caesar, with her mainmast shot through in five places, her boats destroyed, her hull pierced; while of the sorely battered Pompée it is recorded that she had "not a mast, yard-spar, shroud, rope, or sail" which was not damaged by hostile shot. Linois, meanwhile, got his grounded ships and his solitary prize afloat, and summoned the Cadiz squadron to join him. On the 9th these ships—six sail of the line, two of them giants of 112 guns each, with three frigates—went triumphantly, with widespread canvas and many-coloured bunting, past Gibraltar, where the shattered British squadron was lying, and cast anchor beside Admiral Linois in Algeciras Bay.
The British were labouring, meanwhile, with fierce energy, to refit their damaged ships under shelter of the guns of Gibraltar. The Pompée was practically destroyed, and her crew were distributed amongst the other ships. Saumarez himself regarded the condition of his flagship as hopeless, but his captain, Brenton, begged permission to at least attempt to refit her. He summoned his crew aft, and told the men the admiral proposed to leave the ship behind, and asked them "what they thought about it." The men gave a wrathful roar, punctuated, it is to be feared, with many sea-going expletives, and shouted, "All hands to work day and night till she's ready!" The whole crew, down to the very powder-boys, actually worked while daylight lasted, kept it up, watch and watch, through the night, and did this from the evening of the 6th to the noon of the 12th! Probably no ship that ever floated was refitted in shorter time. In that brief period, to quote the "Naval Register," she "shifted her mainmast; fished and secured her foremast, shot through in several places; knotted and spliced the rigging, which had been cut to pieces, and bent new sails; plugged the shot-holes between wind and water; completed with stores of all kinds, anchors and cables, powder and shot, and provisions for four months."
On Sunday, July 12, 1801, the French and Spanish ships in Algeciras Bay weighed anchor, formed their line of battle as they came out, off Cabrita Point, and, stately and slow, with the two 112-gun Spaniards as a rearguard, bore up for Cadiz. An hour later the British ships warped out of the mole in pursuit. It was an amazing sight: a squadron of five sail of the line, which had been completely disabled in an action only five days before, was starting, fresh and refitted, in pursuit of a fleet double its own number, and more than double its strength! All Gibraltar crowded to watch the ships as, one by one, they cleared the pier-head. The garrison band blew itself hoarse playing "Britons, strike home," while the Caesar's band answered in strains as shrill with "Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis for glory we steer." Both tunes, it may be added, were simply submerged beneath the cheers which rang up from mole-head and batteries and dock-walls. Just as the Caesar drifted, huge and stately, past the pier-head, a boat came eagerly pulling up to her. It was crowded with jack-tars, with bandaged heads and swathed arms. A cluster of the Pompée's wounded, who escaped from the hospital, bribed a boatman to pull them out to the flagship, and clamoured to be taken on board!
Saumarez had strengthened his squadron by the addition of the Superb, with the Thames frigate, and at twenty minutes to nine P.M., vainly searching the black horizon for the lights of the enemy, he hailed the Superb, and ordered its captain, Keats, to clap on all sail and attack the enemy directly he overtook them. Saumarez, in a word, launched a single seventy-four against a fleet! Keats was a daring sailor; his ship was, perhaps, the fastest British seventy-four afloat, and his men were instantly aloft spreading every inch of canvas. Then, like a huge ghost, the Superb glided ahead and vanished in the darkness. The wind freshened; the blackness deepened; the lights of the British squadron died out astern. But a wide sprinkle of lights ahead became visible; it was the Spanish fleet! Eagerly the daring Superb pressed on, with slanting decks and men at quarters, but with lights hidden. At midnight the rear ships of the Spanish squadron were under the larboard bow of the Superb—two stupendous three-deckers, with lights gleaming through a hundred port-holes—while a French two-decker to larboard of both the Spanish giants completed the line.
Keats, unseen and unsuspected, edged down with his solitary seventy-four, her heaviest guns only 18-pounders, on the quarter of the nearest three-decker. He was about to fling himself, in the gloom of the night, on three great ships, with an average of 100 guns each! Was ever a more daring feat attempted? Silently through the darkness the Superb crept, her canvas glimmering ghostly white, till she was within some 300 yards of the nearest Spaniard. Then out of the darkness to windward there broke on the astonished and drowsy Spaniards a tempest of flame, a whirlwind of shot. Thrice the Superb poured her broadside into the huge and staggering bulk of her antagonist. With the second broadside the Spaniard's topmast came tumbling down; with the third, so close was the flame of the Superb's guns, the Spanish sails—dry as touch-wood with lying for so many months in the sunshine of Cadiz—took fire.
Meanwhile a dramatic incident occurred. The two great Spaniards commenced to thunder their heavy broadsides into each other! Many of the Superb's shots had struck the second and more distant three-decker. Cochrane, indeed, says that the Superb passed actually betwixt the two gigantic Spaniards, fired a broadside, larboard and starboard, into both, and then glided on and vanished in the darkness. It is certain that the San Hermenegildo, finding her decks torn by a hurricane of shot, commenced to fire furiously through the smoke and the night at the nearest lights. They were the lights of her own consort! She, in turn, fired at the flash of the guns tormenting her. So, under the black midnight skies, the two great Spanish ships thundered at each other, flame answering flame. They drifted ever closer. The fire of the Real Carlos kindled the sails of the sister ship; the flames leaped and danced to the very mast-heads; and, still engaged in a fiery wrestle, they blew up in succession, and out of their united crews of 2000 men only a little over 200 were picked up!
The Superb, meanwhile, had glided ahead, leaving the three-deckers to destroy each other, and opened fire at pistol-shot distance on the French two-decker, and in thirty minutes compelled her to strike. In less than two hours of a night action, that is, this single English seventy-four had destroyed two Spanish three-deckers of 112 guns each, and captured a fine French battle-ship of 74 guns!
The British ships by this time were coming up in the rear, with every inch of canvas spread. They swept past the amazing spectacle of the two great Spaniards destroying each other, and pressed on in chase of the enemy. The wind rose to a gale. In the grey dawn the Caesar found herself, with all her sister ships, far astern, except the Venerable, under Hood, which was hanging on the quarter of the rearmost French ship, the Formidable, a magnificent ship of 80 guns, with a gallant commander, and carrying quite too heavy metal for Hood. Hood, however, the most daring of men, exchanged broadsides at pistol-shot distance with his big antagonist, till his ship was dismasted, and was drifted by the current on the rocky shoals off San Pedro. The Caesar came up in time to enable its disgusted crew to see ship after ship of the flying enemy disappear safely within the sheltering batteries of Cadiz.