It had at first been intended to send two expeditions to the South Seas, one under Anson to Manila, and another under Captain Cornwall round the Horn. But the Government changed its mind. Anson alone sailed, and was directed not on Manila but on Panama. There was delay, as always at that time, and the squadron did not leave England till the 18th September 1740. It consisted of six ships:—
| Guns. | Men. | ||
| Centurion | 60 | 400 | George Anson, commodore. |
| Gloucester | 50 | 300 | Richard Norris. |
| Severn | 50 | 300 | Honourable Edward Legge. |
| Pearl | 40 | 250 | M. Mitchell. |
| Wager | 28 | 160 | Dandy Kidd. |
| Trial | 8 | 100 | Honourable G. Murray. |
There were two victuallers, transports to carry stores—the Anna and Industry. The squadron was fairly provided, but was hampered by a number of so-called soldiers who were in fact Chelsea pensioners, sent on board in disregard of Anson’s protest. All who could walk deserted. The others died before the ships entered the Pacific; among them it is said that there was a veteran who had fought at the Boyne for King William. On the 25th October the squadron was at Madeira, and it reached St. Catherine, in Southern Brazil, on the 21st November. Already the scurvy had broken out, and Anson stopped to restore the health of his crews till the 18th January 1741. From St. Catherine the squadron fought its way South through storms to Port St. Julian, famous in the voyages of Magellan and of Drake. From thence it went on to the Pacific by the Straits of Le Maire and the Horn. It was a less dangerous route than the Straits of Magellan, but the incessant tempest made it perilous. Through one unbroken fury of wind and wave the squadron struggled on to the Pacific, but all did not reach it. The navigation of the time was rude, there were no chronometers, no means of finding the longitude. Two of the ships of the squadron, the Severn and the Pearl, came up on the wrong side of South America, and returned to England. Of the others the Wager rounded the Horn, but was wrecked in the Golfo de Peñas. Anson did not reach Juan Fernandez, the island of Robinson Crusoe, or at least of his original Alexander Selkirk, till 10th June, with his crew reduced to a mere handful by scurvy. The Trial, the Gloucester, and the Anna came in one after the other. The last was broken up, and her crew taken into the other vessels. It was September before the crews were sufficiently revived for service. During the last months of 1741 and the first of 1742, Anson remained on the coast taking prizes and capturing Paita. The Trial was condemned. His squadron was too weak to effect anything against Panama, and he missed the heavily laden ship, which came yearly from the Philippines to Acapulco, in Mexico. On the 28th April he left the American coast and stretched across the Pacific. Storms and scurvy raged round him again, and the Gloucester had to be sacrificed. The Centurion now alone remained. With her, Anson reached Canton, 21st November 1742, where he refitted. Then he took the sea once more to look for the Manila treasure-ship. On the 20th June 1743 he met and captured the Nuestra Señora de Covadonga, a prize of immense value, off Cape Espiritu Santo, in the Philippines. As a feat of war the achievement was naught, for the Spaniard had most of his guns dismounted, and fought at hopeless disadvantage. Anson’s greatness comes from this—that he conquered so much to be there at all. He returned with his prize to Canton, sailed for home on the 15th October 1743, and reached Spithead on the 15th June 1744.
The naval operations carried out against Spain in Europe were in themselves insignificant, and are only worth noticing because they led to war with France. The actual declaration of war was not made till 1744, by France on the 20th March, by England on the 31st, but it was a pure formality. Conflicts had already taken place on the sea between the ships of the two nations; the battle of Dettingen, in which English troops took part as allies of Maria Teresa, had been fought, and an attempt had been made to cover an invasion of England in the interests of the Jacobites. France was openly giving moral and material support to Spain before actually joining her. While the great expedition to the West Indies was preparing, Sir John Balchen was dispatched to the Spanish coast with a small squadron. It was characteristic of our half-hearted way of conducting the war that he was ordered out only to capture the treasure-ships. They, however, were warned in time, and so came safe home to Santander. Balchen was in some danger of falling in with a much superior force sent out by the Spaniards to look for him, and returned having effected nothing. Meanwhile Haddock was watching Cadiz, not so vigilantly, however, but that a Spanish squadron got away unimpeached by us, and reached Ferrol. The Spanish Government collected troops on the east coast as if to threaten Minorca, and on the north as if in preparation for an invasion of England, to be supported, it was hoped, by help from the Jacobites. The apparent danger of Minorca distracted Haddock, who was even short-handed till reinforced by a squadron under Lestock. At home a powerful force was collected under Sir John Norris to repel the threatened invasion. He sailed twice to watch Ferrol, but was driven back by storms in July and August. When 1740 ended, we had certainly done nothing proportionate to our immense numerical superiority. The Spanish fleets lay quiet in port, or slipped away to the West Indies, and the Basque privateers were active even in the Channel. In 1741 there was no change. Sir John Norris was again at sea in the Channel and Bay of Biscay, but to little purpose. Haddock, with his fleet reinforced by Rear-Admiral Lestock, continued to watch Don José Navarro at Cadiz. In December the English fleet had become very foul, and was compelled to go into Gibraltar and clean. Navarro at once put to sea, and entered the Mediterranean. Meanwhile a French fleet under M. de Court had left Toulon, and advanced south along the coast of Spain. So soon as he knew that the Spaniards had passed him, Haddock started in pursuit, but only came up in time to see the French and Spanish fleets join, and to find himself in the presence of a very superior force. It was notorious that M. de Court would support Navarro if attacked, but since France was still endeavouring to make war and keep peace at one and the same time, he would not attack us. Haddock was allowed to go on to Minorca. The allies covered the passage of some Spanish troops to Italy, and then went into Toulon. Here they remained till February 1744. Haddock, old and worn-out, resigned his command to Lestock at the close of 1741. In May 1742 Admiral Mathews came out with a commission not only to command the fleet but to be Minister at the court of Sardinia. It would have been difficult to make a worse choice. He was stupid, boorish, illiterate, and of a violent temper, which earned him in Italy the nickname of “Il Furibondo.” Moreover, he had a long-standing quarrel with Lestock, and had asked that this officer might be recalled. The Ministry did not consent, and Mathews revenged himself by coarse insolence to his subordinate. A proud man would have sought his own recall; but Lestock was only sulky and malignant.
During 1742 some service was done. In June a squadron of Spanish galleys was burnt at St. Tropez by fireships under the command of Captain Callis, who earned the last gold collar and badge given for this kind of service. In August a detached squadron under Captain Martin forced the Bourbon king of the Two Sicilies to withdraw the troops he had sent to serve against our ally the Queen of Hungary by threatening to bombard Naples. With these exceptions, 1742 and 1743 wore away, while Mathews was mostly at Turin, and his fleet lay at anchor without practice at sea. Some acts of violence on the coast of Italy are recorded against our captains. The British Minister at Florence, Sir Horace Mann, who looked upon them, with the sole exception of Captain Temple West, as “genteel porpoises,” asserts that when some of our men robbed a church of a cross and of the sacrament, Mathews hung the cross round the neck of his pet monkey, and stuck the consecrated wafer on the beast’s forehead. The tardy determination of France to take an active part on the sea gave a stimulus to the war in the early days of 1744.
In this year she acted with some vigour both in the Channel and in the Mediterranean. At the close of 1743 troops had been collected at Dunkirk for an invasion again, in the hope of causing a Jacobite rebellion. A fleet of twenty-four sail was armed at Brest, and put under the command of M. de Roquefeuil. He sailed at the end of January, was off the Eddystone on the 3rd February 1744, and had come as high as Dungeness by the 24th. The peril served for a moment to calm the feuds of the politicians, for the country was terribly frightened. English soldiers and foreign mercenaries were called in from abroad, and we applied to the Dutch for the contingent they were bound to supply by treaty. A fleet was collected under Sir John Norris in the Downs, and a battle seemed inevitable. But a succession of heavy gales from the east and north-east drove the French out of the Channel back to Brest, and the peril passed away.
While the wind and the inefficiency of the enemy were standing our friends in the Channel, a transaction was taking place in the Mediterranean which did us little honour and was the beginning of infinite bitterness. It was known by the end of 1743 that France was coming actively into the naval war. In January 1744 Mathews came down from Turin, where he had been acting as Minister, and resumed his functions of admiral. His fleet was at anchor in the roadstead of Hyères, between the mainland and the islands of Porquerolles, and there it remained till M. de Court and Don José Navarro put to sea from Toulon on the 19th February. It consisted of twenty ships of the line when he rejoined it, but was raised by reinforcements to twenty-nine. The allies numbered twenty-eight, twelve of them being Spaniards. One of the Spanish ships, the Real Felipe, carried 116 guns, and her fellows were fine ships. The French were somewhat inferior, and the weight of metal as well as of numbers was in favour of Mathews, but the battle which followed was a disgrace alike to the discipline, the intelligence, and, with a few exceptions, even to the manhood of the navy.
When the enemy was known to be at sea, we struggled out from Hyères, foul from long lying at anchor, and clumsy from want of practice. The code of signals, too, was arbitrary and poor. The same signal was found both in the fighting and the sailing orders, and meant different things in each. During the 10th February and the night of the 10th-11th Mathews’ fleet struggled towards the enemy in light breezes and baffling currents. On the morning of the 11th it had got between the enemy and Toulon. The van under Admiral Rowley and the centre where Mathews was himself, were in a position to force a battle on the allies, who lay in a line to the south and west of them, heading to the west with the French in the van and centre, and the Spaniards in the rear, and therefore nearest us. But the English rear under Lestock had drifted apart in the night, and was five miles astern. In the light breezes it could not come up in time to be of use. Yet Admiral Mathews decided to give battle. We bore down at one in the afternoon, so that the English van came into action with the French centre, and the English centre with the Spanish ships behind M. de Court. If the breezes had been stronger, or the French more alert, their van might have doubled back, and have put our leading ships between two fires. They did not, and Admiral Rowley maintained a lively cannonade with M. de Court till the French admiral turned in the evening to help the Spaniards, whom he believed to be hard pressed. At that part of the line there had been not only failure but shame. Admiral Mathews brought the Spaniards to an action. He would have made it close had several of his captains not been “shy.” He himself in the Namur showed the courage which is the redeeming quality of his type, and stood out of his line with the signal for the line still flying in order to come closer to the enemy. Captain Cornwall of the Marlborough fought the great Real Felipe nobly, being himself mortally wounded, and his ship cut to pieces. Captain Edward Hawke in the Berwick set a fine example, and compelled the Spanish Poder to strike. But with these exceptions nobody did brilliantly and several captains showed what, if it was not actual cowardice, was the kind of confusion and stupidity which keep a man well away from the enemy. These “cankers of a long peace” proved once more that a loud voice, a blustering manner, and a parade of brutality are no guarantees of courage. A notable feature of the battle was that it gives the last example of the old practice of using a fireship in action. One was sent down to burn the Real Felipe, but the result showed the limitations of this old-fashioned weapon. She was reduced to a sinking state by the well-directed fire of the Spaniard, who also sent out a boat to tow her clear. It was perhaps fortunate for us that she was shattered by an explosion, and went down, since the enemy might possibly have turned her against the Marlborough, then lying crippled where she had pushed in among their own ships. Night and the confusion of both sides ended the battle, but the allies had suffered some rough handling, and were chiefly intent on retreat. Mathews might well have renewed the action when he was at last joined by Lestock. He came, however, to the strange conclusion that he could not follow the enemy, because it was his duty to protect the coast of our allies in Italy—though it would surely have taxed a less torpid intellect than his to say what that coast was to be protected against, unless it were the very fleet he was refusing to pursue. The enemy was actually allowed to recover the Poder, which he abandoned, and to retire unmolested to Carthagena. The Poder was then burnt by us. Mathews returned to Mahon, where he solaced his feelings by putting Admiral Lestock under arrest.
The failure off Toulon, coming as it did after a long succession of repulses in the West Indies, and futilities in Europe where nothing effectual had been done to intercept the Spanish fleets, stirred the country to deep anger. The news came slowly, and it was not until Lestock had returned under arrest, and Mathews had resigned and had come home, that their recriminations began to bring out the whole truth. Parliament took the matter up, and carried out a preliminary inquiry during April and March of 1745. Lestock and others were heard at the bar, and Mathews, who was a member, in his place. The debate left him, according to Horace Walpole, “in the light of a hot, brave, imperious, dull, confused fellow,” and it also left the House persuaded that a court martial must be held on the whole battle. On the 18th of April, the Commons with their Speaker waited on the king at St. James’s Palace with a petition that a “court martial may be held in the most speedy and solemn manner, to inquire into the conduct of Admiral Mathews, Vice-Admiral Lestock, Captains Burrish, Norris, Ambrose, Frogmore, and Dilk,” together with that of the lieutenants of the Dorsetshire, who were accused of misleading their captain, Burrish. The king granted the petition. The measure was somewhat irregular, and might be represented as trenching on the rights of the Admiralty,—it was so considered by Anson who was now on the Board,—but the case was exceptional, and it was by no means certain that the Admiralty would have acted if Parliament had not applied firm pressure. The action it took is one more reminder that, in the dullest times, the country has always been in earnest about its navy. It may, as Sir Charles Pasley has said, have played with the army, which it long regarded with jealous distrust and dislike, but where the navy was concerned it knew that its very existence was at stake. Therefore, though tolerant of much corruption in the naval, as in other branches of the administration, it was roused to wrath, and the resolve to have the whole truth out, by any failure on the sea.
A court martial, consisting of no less than twenty-four members, and presided over by Sir Chaloner Ogle, began to sit on the 11th September 1745. First it tried the four lieutenants of the Dorsetshire, whom their captain had accused in order to clear himself, and acquitted them. Then it tried Captain Burrish, and condemned him to be cashiered. Captain E. Williams of the Royal Oak was next tried and condemned, but with less severity on the ground that he was old and nearly blind. Captain John Ambrose of the Rupert, who had shown courage and zeal in single ship actions, was yet condemned for misconduct at Toulon, and sentenced to be cashiered during the king’s pleasure. He was restored in rank, but never again employed, and died a superannuated rear-admiral. Captain Dilk of the Chichester shared his fate. Captain Frogmore of the Boyne died before the trial. Captain Norris of the Essex did not dare to face a court martial. He fled into Spain from Gibraltar, and was never heard of more. Five supplementary trials were held on Captains Pelt, Sclater, Temple West, Cooper, and Lloyd. The last three named were sentenced to be cashiered, but the finding was generally considered unjust, and all three were restored. The sentence of the court in this case is worth noting. Temple West and his colleagues had been stationed in the van with Admiral Rowley, and had taken steps to prevent the French ships, which stretched ahead of our line, from doubling back and putting us between two fires. It is doubtful whether the enemy had any such design, though his movements seemed to show that he had, and the counter-measures of these captains were correct. But they had acted without the express orders of their superior. They were therefore to be punished, not for doing what was wrong, but for doing what was right without orders. Observe that the punishment inflicted on them for what at the worst was a pardonable, even an honourable error of judgment, was identical with the penalty imposed on Captain Burrish, who showed the white feather. We have to come to the conclusion that, according to the principles of a court martial at that time, it was better that an English fleet should be defeated than that an officer should disregard an order no longer applicable to the circumstances, or act with independent intelligence. If this rule had continued to prevail, Nelson would have been cashiered for his bold move at St. Vincent.