A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217-1815. Volume II, 1689-1815

by David Hannay

In describing this struggle only a brief space need be given to the early years, and in them what is best worth looking at is the promise of better times. Vernon in the West Indies and Mathews and Lestock in the Mediterranean are the dominant figures of the first period—and the types of all the navy had to succeed in shedding, or to perish. Beside them we see the gradual rise of Anson and Hawke, and with their predominance the triumph of the good over the bad.

The Spanish War, or War of Jenkins’s Ear as it came to be called when the rage of the country was over, began by attacks on the possessions of Spain in the New World. A rigid blockade of our enemy’s ports at home and invasion of his territory in Europe would have brought him to terms more effectually. But we had no sufficient army, and the navy, besides being hardly yet fit for prolonged blockade in stormy seas, much preferred colonial expeditions rich in prize and plunder. To the country nothing seemed more likely to be effectual than the seizure of Spanish colonies—or more lucrative. During the long peace, in 1726, ’27, a powerful fleet had been sent to blockade the port of Porto Bello for the purpose of stopping the sailing of the treasure-ships, and so depriving King Philip V. of the means of being mischievous in Europe. Admiral Hozier who commanded, his successor, and many thousands of officers and men died miserably of fever. The memory of this sacrifice to Walpole’s peace policy rankled, and an expedition to Porto Bello was sure to be popular. It was the port of lading for the treasure from the South Seas, and the headquarters of the guarda costas employed, as we said, to destroy our trade—but as the Spaniards put it, to stop our smuggling. An attack on it had been vehemently supported by the Patriots, and particularly by a sailor who was very conspicuous among them.

Edward Vernon had been a captain in the navy since 1706 and was the son of a Secretary of State. He owed his rapid rise to family influence, and no conspicuous service is recorded of him. During the peace he had been for several years member for Ipswich, and had been among the loudest-mouthed of those who first assailed the “profligate” administration of Sir R. Walpole, and then imitated him in everything except his love of peace and his admirable finance. The navy now and then produces a person who “has the gift of the gab ‘although’ he was bred to the sea,” and is continually playing the British seaman to the gallery. Vernon was the example of the type in his generation. He was as brave as any man, but too proud of what he ought to have taken for granted. He was clever, but far too conscious of his cleverness. Withal he was arrogant, had no control over his temper, and was afflicted with an insatiable vanity. Already he had boasted that he would take Porto Bello with six ships. When the war began, he was sent with nine vessels to keep his promise. Vernon left in July 1739, and reached Jamaica late in October. On the 20th November he sailed into Porto Bello with six ships, and took it almost without resistance. The fortifications were not complete, nor were all the guns mounted. The garrison was crippled by tropical fever and was seized by a panic. They ran from their guns under the fire of our ships, and the town was captured with less loss than has often accompanied the taking of a sloop. Vernon behaved with humanity when in possession of the place. This easy success threw the nation into a delirium of joy, and turned Vernon’s head completely. He became convinced that all fortifications could be taken by merely rushing at them. In the position of unchecked authority he held in his own squadron, surrounded by men who deferred to him in obedient silence even when they did not toady him, his arrogance and self-assertion swelled till they grew to the proportions of mania. Vernon made an idle demonstration off Carthagena on the 6th March 1740, but nothing else was done.

Meanwhile the country was preparing to follow up the first success. After changes of plan, hesitations, and much administrative confusion, it was finally decided to make a double attack on Spanish America. A small squadron under Anson was to go round Cape Horn and range the west coast of South America as far north as Panama, while a great expedition carrying a body of troops under command of Lord Cathcart was to sail to the West Indies, join Vernon, and other troops drawn from the British possessions in America, and then the whole was to fall on the Spaniards. The actual point of attack was left to the discretion of the chiefs. Anson’s justly famous voyage may be left aside for the present with the observation that as part of a combined operation it was a failure through the delays shown in dispatching the expeditions. According to the original plan, Lord Cathcart was to have reached the West Indies at the end of October 1740 under protection of six warships. But the Government heard that the Spaniards were sending out a fleet. France was also beginning to move for the purpose of supporting Spain. The Government delayed the expedition till a more powerful fleet could be collected. It left England under the care of 25 warships commanded by Sir C. Ogle on 26th October, at which date it ought to have been on the field of operations. On the 19th December it reached Dominica, where Lord Cathcart died, and was succeeded by General Wentworth. It was not at Jamaica till the 7th January. Meanwhile the enemy had not been idle. The attention of France, still nominally at peace with us, was drawn off by the death of the emperor and the opening of the Austrian Succession. Spain was left to her own resources, which, however, proved greater and were better handled than we had expected. Don Rodrigo de Torres sailed on the 10th July, reached the West Indies unmolested by us, sent part of his ships to reinforce Carthagena under Don Blas de Leso, and then went on, still unmolested by us, to Havana. It may be added that he finally brought the Spanish trade home unseen, and even unsought by us.

The great English expedition reinforced by troops from the North American colonies, and by negroes to do the work of the trenches, left Jamaica by the 26th January 1741, and after some further hesitation was led against Carthagena. It reached its destination on the 4th March. The town stands at the north end of lagoons, and can only be entered at the western end by large ships at the Boca Chica, or Small Mouth. It was not accessible from the sea front because of the shoal water and the heavy surf. The Boca Chica was well fortified, and there were other outworks dotted along the lagoons. These had to be beaten down before the body of the place, which was further defended by a strong outwork called the San Lazaro and a double wall, could be reached. From the 9th to the 26th March we were fighting up along the lagoons with good success. Vernon accused the military men of sloth and incompetence, and afterwards repeated his charges in a scolding pamphlet full of provable misstatements of fact. At Carthagena he pestered his military colleagues in a tone which revolted the pride of General Wentworth. Still, by the end of March we were close to the town, and on the 1st April, a fatal date, Vernon dispatched a vessel to England with a report of victory. It was soon followed by another with authentic tidings of disaster. The wet season begins at Carthagena at the end of March, and the troops were already very sickly. Their condition was aggravated by the fact that the admiral seized the only supply of good water for the fleet. At last Wentworth, who was plainly a weak man unfitted to contend with a bully, had the feebleness to allow himself to be badgered into making an attempt to storm the unbreached San Lazaro, and was repulsed with frightful loss. Vernon made no use of his ships against the town, though there was ample depth of water for them, as M. de Pointis had shown when he took the place in 1697.

It was now clear that Carthagena could not be taken without a regular siege, an operation at that season, and with our resources, impossible. A council of war was held in the cabin of the flagship. The soldiers when asked what they proposed to do answered that they must first learn what help they were to expect from the fleet. Vernon burst out in an explosion of abuse, and was firmly answered by Wentworth. Then he flung out of the cabin in a fit of shrewish rage, and remained during the rest of the council in the stern gallery, bawling occasional interruptions. There could be but one end to the debate. The expedition retired with shame, and the odd hits, and the loss of several thousand men.

Nor would there be any profit in going into the details of the war in the West Indies. Few conflicts have ever been more insipid. Operations similar in purpose to this at Carthagena but on a smaller scale were carried out by Vernon and Wentworth near St. Jago de Cuba in the autumn of 1741, and at Porto Bello in the spring of 1742. In 1743 a squadron under Sir Charles Knowles was beaten off with severe loss in attack on Puerto Cabello and La Guayra on the Main. Then the war died down to mere privateering for a time, to revive slightly towards the end. Knowles fought a moderately successful action with a Spanish force near Havana in September 1748. But he was disliked by some of his officers and accused of not doing enough, was tried by court martial, and reprimanded. A feud arose among his officers, who fought it out in duels. The West Indies in this war were destined to give us no glory, and very doubtful profit. The honour of the flag was deeply stained by Captain Cornelius Mitchell, who while in command of a superior English force showed mere cowardice in the presence of the French in August 1746. For this he was only dismissed the service by a very weak court martial. Some good did, however, come to the navy and the country from this scandal. In 1749, after the conclusion of the war, it helped to persuade Parliament to revise the Naval Discipline Act of Charles II. The rest of the war in the West Indies deserves no further notice. The Spaniards avoided battle except on the one occasion named, and applied themselves to bringing home their trade, with fair success. The French were too overtaxed elsewhere to appear in force. We not being put on our mettle, drowsed on in sloth, quarrels, and scandals. On both sides the privateers were active. Throughout the course of the war we took from the Spaniards 1249 ships, and they from us 1360. Our prizes included several treasure-ships, and were the more valuable. To conclude this side of the subject, it may be added that after France joined in the war against us we took from her 2185 ships, and she from us 1878. The balance in our favour was therefore 196.

Here also may be put what remains to be said of Vernon. It is to the honour of a man of whom little good can be told, that if he was insolent to colleagues and harsh to his officers, he showed an intelligent humanity to his crews. He reduced the excessive allowance of rum given to men in the West Indies, and introduced the custom of diluting it with water. The mixture is said by tradition to have got its name of “grog” from his nickname of “Old Grog,” given him for his practice of wearing a grogram boat-cloak. This is the only kindly trait (for we cannot praise him for not behaving like a buccaneer at Porto Bello) in an unamiable character. Vernon had offered to resign after the failure at Carthagena, but was flattered into remaining by ministers who were unwilling to see him among them till his tar-barrel popularity had waned, as they no doubt began to see it would soon do. He did return at the close of 1742. In 1744 his name was passed over in a promotion of admirals, and he resented the slight in a letter of incredible insolence to the Board. Yet in April 1745 he was promoted Admiral of the White, and appointed to a home command during the Jacobite rising. On service he began a course of violent wrangling with the Admiralty, and finally threw up his post in a pet. Then he appealed to the public in anonymous pamphlets with clap-trap titles, consisting largely of official letters which he had clearly no right to publish. When called to account for what was at the best a gross irregularity, he refused to acknowledge his responsibility, and was, by the king’s orders, struck off the list of admirals. He died on his estate at Nacton, in Suffolk, on the 30th October 1757, forgotten and obscure—an example of the worthlessness of mob popularity.

It is indeed a pleasure to turn from this story of loud talk and little performance to Anson’s immortal voyage. Not that it was without dark shades and disasters, not only because it ended in triumph, but because there was at the head of it a hero, and round him a band fit to follow a hero. Of Anson himself it may be said that in him English manhood gave itself a witness amid the vulgar crowd of Vernons, Knowleses, Mitchells, Mathews, and Lestocks. Stern but just, asking for no affection, but deserving it, and commanding absolute confidence, he was indeed “the flower and pattern of all bold mariners ... unchangeable of purpose, crafty of counsel, and swift of execution; in triumph most sober, in failure ... of endurance beyond mortal man.”