After the fight had been in progress for several hours, the Townshend was so terribly “cut up” about her rigging, and had been hulled so frequently by the enemy’s shot that she was almost unmanageable, and in addition to this so many of her small crew had been put hors de combat that to serve the guns any longer was a matter of the greatest difficulty. Soon, with the loss of her bowsprit, jib-booms, steering wheel and other important gear, she was reduced to a sorry wreck. Then she began to take in water faster far than the pumps, even if they could have been manned, would have been able to keep under. The Americans still continued to rake her fore and aft, as they could now easily do owing to her helpless condition; but still the Townshend and her commander refused to strike the English flag. The water rose so rapidly that the carpenter, who was sent down into the hold to ascertain the worst, reported the vessel actually sinking. Half the crew were killed, or wounded so seriously that they were no longer able to render the slightest assistance, and in the end, with tears in his eyes, the English captain, to save other gallant and valuable lives, which would only be uselessly sacrificed by further resistance, hauled down his colours.[G]
[G] See The History of the Post-Office Packet Service between 1793 and 1815 (Macmillan & Co.)
So ended one of the most notable of many engagements in which the Falmouth packet boats of the end of the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth century took part. Often, however, though attacked by vessels of superior force they, by courage and skill, managed to avoid capture, and, indeed, both French and American privateers often found they had “caught a Tartar” in a Falmouth post-office packet ship. Such was the historic case of the Jeune (or Jean) Richard, a heavily armed French privateer carrying a crew of close upon a hundred, which, falling in with the packet boat Windsor Castle, Captain W. Rogers, with a crew of twenty-eight, and “only light guns,” almost on the same spot as that destined to be the scene of the Townshend’s engagement five years later, attacked her, doubtless expecting to gain an easy prize. The commander of the Jeune Richard had, however, “reckoned without his host,” for not only did Captain Rogers and his crew gallantly repulse each attempt made by the privateer to board them, but a happy idea of loading one of his 9-pounders with grape and musket bullets occurred to the skipper’s mind.
“This gun was then trained on the boarding party from the privateer with the happiest results.” The italics are ours. Subsequently, Captain Rogers determined to take the offensive, and with a shout of encouragement he leapt down upon the privateer’s deck followed by five of his men, who, after a sharp fight with the disorganized privateersmen, succeeded in driving them down below, and taking possession of their vessel. The Windsor Castle’s loss was heavy, considering the sparse number of her crew, namely, three killed and ten wounded. But the Frenchman lost twenty-one killed, and had no less than thirty-three wounded.
Many another equally gallant tale could be told of the old days, but these must suffice. Falmouth has remembered its heroes of the post-office packet boat’s service in a granite obelisk, erected upon the Moor by public subscription. Only too often, indeed, these “unofficial heroes” and acts of daring and gallantry are overlooked.
But heroic deeds by Falmouth seamen were not confined to those who manned the packets. The privateers of the town that sailed away into the Channel and Atlantic from the safe and beautiful haven which was the scene of such tireless activity and bustle in the days of the long French war, did yeoman service in harrying the shipping of Great Britain’s enemies, and often engaged with glory and success the smaller vessels of even the French and Spanish navies. The extraordinary feat of the Polperro ketch, the Gleaner, commanded by one William Quiller, which in the year 1814 came in sight of a Spanish man-of-war, not only of considerably greater size but more fully manned, and after a fierce engagement succeeded in capturing the Spaniard and bringing her into port can be more than once paralleled by the doings of Falmouth despatch boats and privateers.
In the stirring days of the Napoleonic wars, Falmouth was indeed a busy place. Carrick Roads were crowded with shipping merchantmen that had entered the haven to escape the French privateers (which were always hovering about the Channel on the look out for prizes) or were waiting for convoy to the West or East Indies; privateers always coming and going, sometimes returning maimed to refit, at others entering the harbour in triumph with a prize in tow; and the King’s ships on the look out for likely merchant seamen to replenish their depleted crews.
And in those days, too, the means by which the replenishment was brought about were not always distinguished either by justice or scrupulousness. Not only were merchantmen often boarded, when in harbour and waiting for a favourable wind or convoy, and their best hands impressed, so that when the wind became favourable, or convoy was to be had, they were too short-handed to put to sea; but privateers were also depleted of their crews which, when these vessels had letters of marque, was not only a high handed, but actually illegal proceeding.
One naval worthy who was in command at Falmouth in these troublous times, when, to tell the truth, England was but ill-prepared to conduct the naval and military campaign into which she had entered, was Sir Edward Fellow, who came of an old Cornish family, and after having done “some very worthy deeds and gallant things in the American War,” on the outbreak of the war brought about by the French Revolution, offered his services to the naval authorities, and was appointed to a fine frigate called the Nymphe. On his first cruise, when he had filled up his complement with Cornish miners! “owing to the lack of proper seamen,” and had finally taken on board as leaven a few prime seamen at Falmouth, he fell in with the Cleopatra, a revolutionary frigate in the mouth of the Channel, and after an astonishingly fierce engagement with the Frenchman (who had nailed the bonnet rouge to his mast head) succeeded in capturing her and bringing her in as a prize.
As a writer of the period says, “those were stirring days and restless anxious nights along the coast. But into our havens and ports came many prizes to British seamen’s gallantry, and prize money literally ran in the streets as it burned holes in the sailors’ pockets.... Whilst the officers, though perhaps a trifle more provident, yet denied themselves little of enjoyment so long as the money lasted. But they were gallant lads, one and all, who made Falmouth thus merry by day and night. And when the ‘rhino’ was spent sailed away with light and stout hearts in search of more glory and prizes.”