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

by David Hannay

In the following year, 1747, the new spirit at the Admiralty began to tell. The fleet was employed with vigour on well-selected services, and was rewarded with proportionate success. It was no longer used to convey insufficient military expeditions to besiege towns they had not the means of taking, or to invade countries they were not numerous enough to occupy. The French Government was stung by the fall of Louisbourg, and by the news from India, into making efforts to use its fleet to better purpose, and the increase of activity on both sides gave an energy to the naval war it had not as yet possessed. In spring it was known that two squadrons were to sail from France together and were to divide at sea—one, commanded by M. de la Jonquière, was then to steer for America, and the other, of which M. St. George was the chief, was to sail for India. They were composed of eight king’s ships, and of six of the vessels of the French East India Company. Transports and merchant vessels were to go under their protection. A squadron of sixteen ships of from 40 to 90 guns were formed to intercept them, and Anson took the command while still retaining his seat on the Board. It is characteristic of the prevailing jobbery of the time that this force was not got together without the necessity of defeating an intrigue. Two of the vessels selected to serve under Anson were the Defiance, 60, Captain Grenville, and the Bristol, 50, of which William Montagu, commonly called Mad Montagu, a brother of Lord Sandwich, was captain. Neither of these officers was wanting in spirit. Grenville was killed in the action of the 3rd May, fighting most gallantly, and whatever could have been said against the sense of Mad Montagu, a noisy violent man of much deliberate eccentricity whose rôle it was to play the rattlepated Jack Tar, his courage was above dispute. But both would have preferred to cruise alone, and pick up prizes. Grenville belonged to the famous “cousinhood” of the name, and his cousin George Grenville, who was on the Board, attempted a little manœuvre on his behalf. An order to Anson not to keep the Defiance and Bristol with him for more than seven days was put into a letter which the Duke of Bedford was expected to sign without looking at it. The Duke did detect the trick, and refused to sign, declaring that “they should deserve to be hanged for it if it was done.”

Anson sailed for his station off Finisterre on the 9th April, sent his look-out sloops to watch Rochefort, and stretched his fleet out in a line abreast, each ship a mile from the other, in order to diminish the risk that the enemy would pass undiscovered. In the early morning of the 3rd May the Falcon sloop brought the news that she had seen the French the day before steering for the west. Anson called in all cruisers, collected his ships, and steered to cross the presumed route of the enemy. Between nine and ten the French squadron was seen to the S.W. It was at first not possible to estimate its strength, for warships and transports were all sailing together, and the one could not be distinguished from the other. Anson therefore kept his fleet in a body lest he should meet an equal enemy whom it would be rash to attack in disorder. As the space between the two fleets was reduced, it was seen that the French had divided. Nine vessels were formed in a line to meet our attack, while the others were making off to leeward. La Jonquière and St. George had, in fact, no more than that number of vessels fit to meet line-of-battle ships. When the inferiority of the enemy’s force was seen, Anson ordered a general chase. The English captains went into action at their best speed, attacking the enemy on both sides. The French fought brilliantly, but the superiority of force against them was so overwhelming that they could do no more than sacrifice themselves bravely in order to give their charge time to escape, which many of the merchant ships did succeed in doing. Six of the French king’s ships and four of the Company’s were taken. Yet the French sold their defeat dear. Five hundred and twenty men were killed and wounded in our ships. The loss of the enemy was about seven hundred. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when the first of the English ships—Anson’s old ship the Centurion, now commanded by his former lieutenant, Denis—came up with the rear of the French ships as they were edging away to leeward, and hoping to delay our attack by showing a firm front till the night should come. The action was over at seven. Anson was made a peer for the victory, which filled the country with well-grounded delight. Our superiority in numbers and weight of ships was great, and as a battle the action of the 3rd May was not glorious, but here was a success won by foresight, good management, and activity against a gallant enemy. It was the first time that so much could be said since the war began in 1739, and it was the promise of greater things to come.

On the 21st-22nd June, some six weeks after Anson had ruined the French expeditions to America and India, Captain Thomas Fox, who was cruising with a small squadron on the 47th degree of North Latitude, met and scattered the valuable convoy coming home from San Domingo. Forty-eight prizes were taken by our ships, and the injury inflicted went beyond the material loss, for the disaster showed how little able the French were to protect their sea-borne commerce against the British Navy. They were too weak to keep the road open, in face of energetic direction given to our forces by the new Admiralty. Before the close of the year a third blow drove the lesson well home, and did a great deal to bring France to recognise the necessity for making peace. The outward bound trading ships to the French West Indies were collected at Rochelle. A strong squadron of eight line-of-battle ships of the French Royal Navy, and of one 64-gun ship belonging to the Indian Company, was told off to protect them. The Chef d’escadre, or Rear-Admiral, Desherbiers de l’Etanduère, was in command, with his flag flying in the Tonnant, 80, a noble vessel. Indeed l’Etanduère’s squadron was a stronger one than La Jonquière’s, and the vessels composing it were superior in build and strength to our ships of the same nominal force. A powerful squadron was prepared to intercept this convoy. What was wanted in quality of ships we made up in number, and fourteen vessels were sent to overpower the French nine. The command was given to Rear-Admiral Edward Hawke, the captain of the Berwick, whose gallantry had stood out brilliantly against a background of blundering and pusillanimity in the battle of Toulon five years before.

Being fixed by the necessity they were under of reaching the West Indies soon after the end of the hurricane season in October, the enemy’s time of sailing could be calculated. Hawke left England on the 9th August for his cruising ground, the latitude of from 46° to 48° N. The enemy was sighted on the 14th October. The ensuing action was an almost exact reproduction of Anson’s engagement with La Jonquière. Hawke has had an affectionate biographer in our time, and the glory he won twelve years after this meeting with the convoy reflects back on all his life. Therefore he has naturally been credited with displaying great originality, but the truth is that he followed the pattern given him by Anson six months before, down to the details. The English ships approached in order, till they were near enough to estimate the enemy’s inferior numbers. Then they went ahead in general chase, attacking on both sides, and crushing their opponent by weight of numbers. As l’Etanduère’s squadron was stronger than La Jonquière’s, it made a harder fight. The French flagship, the Tonnant, proved too much for any of our vessels, and in company with the Intrépide, commanded by the Count of Vaudreuil, broke her way through and escaped. Captain Philip Saumarez in the Nottingham, 60, who pursued the two for a time, was killed. But six of the eight French were taken. They did not surrender till they were thoroughly wrecked. As his own vessels were severely cut up, Hawke made his way home and reached port on the 31st October. Meanwhile the French merchant ships, protected by the Content and a frigate, had continued their voyage and had escaped for the time being. Hawke, however, took the precaution to send a sloop to the West Indies with the news, and many of the French vessels were captured by our cruisers when nearing their destination.

It will be observed that on both these occasions the French officers secured the escape of the vessels put under their protection. The substantial victory may therefore, in a sense, be said to have been theirs, since they did what they were sent out to do. The question then arises whether Anson and Hawke could not have done better, since they were sent out to interrupt the enemy’s commerce, and since they had a superiority of nearly two to one in fighting ships. They might have detached four sail to pursue the trading vessels, and still have left themselves a superiority over the French squadron of twelve to nine on the 3rd May, and of ten to eight on the 9th October. Yet the policy of making the destruction of the fighting force of our enemy as near as might be a certainty was the sound one, since, if his fleet was once driven off the sea, his convoys could not sail at all. Moreover, it is to be remembered that in 1747 the general bad quality of our ships might well lead our admirals to think that they could not afford to dispense with any superiority of numbers over the French.

With Hawke’s victory the naval war in Europe came to an end. In the East Indies, however, it continued. One of the few relieving features in the dulness of this war—or these wars, the Spanish and the French—is the extension of the activity of our fleet into the remote east. Hitherto when the Royal Navy had gone to the Indian Seas it had been on particular missions, but from 1744 it acted there continuously, and in squadrons, for so long as the countries were at war in Europe. Not that anything the navy did there was very flattering to our pride. Rather the contrary, indeed, since the dispensation by which it was arranged that while we were bad, our enemy should be even worse, was nowhere more conspicuously to our advantage. Yet it marks one step in the growth of the navy that it is found taking over its duties on the other side of the world.

In 1744 a squadron of 4 ships, two of 60, one of 50, and one of 20 guns, was sent to the Eastern Seas under Commodore Curtis Barnett. Here at once there is occasion to note how well we were served by the folly of our opponent. A man was then at Paris who was admirably qualified to defeat any enterprise we might undertake against the French posts in India. This was Bertrand Mahé de la Bourdonnais, governor of the French islands of Bourbon and Mauritius. He had not been trained as a king’s officer, though the rank of Capitaine de Frégate was conferred upon him. He was a native of St. Malo, a merchant skipper and trader. But he had acquired all the knowledge needed to make a skilful naval commander, and had shown great faculty in his government. La Bourdonnais was convinced that England would attack the French settlements in the East, and he laid a scheme before the king’s ministers for forestalling us. His plan was accepted, and he was promised a squadron of five vessels. But La Bourdonnais, most happily for us, had excited the hostility of the French East Company by his self-assertive character, and his exposures of its corruptions, and his talent for scornful retort. The company opposed his scheme, and had influence enough to get it laid aside. It persuaded itself and the king’s ministers that it would be possible to maintain neutrality with the English East India Company. Neither thought fit to consider the probable action of the British Government, which might very well decline to be guided by the company. Being deprived of the force promised to him, La Bourdonnais was driven back on his own resources, and on those he could draw from the islands.

Commodore Barnett sailed from Spithead on the 5th May 1744, and after touching at Porto Praya in the Cape Verd islands, went on to the Indian Ocean. After rounding the Cape, he visited Madagascar, where fresh meat could always be got from the natives, and then stood over to the coast of Sumatra. He detached two of his vessels to take post in the Straits of Malacca, between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, and himself went through the Straits of Sunda, between Sumatra and Java, and took up his station in the Banca Straits, between Sumatra and Borneo. He was thus on the trade route between China and the European possessions on the coast of Coromandel. On the 25th January 1745 three French China ships of great value sailed right into his hands. In these far seas he did not trouble to look for an Admiralty Court, but carried his prizes into Batavia, sold them to the Dutch for £92,000, and divided the proceeds at the capstan head. Then he came across to Madras.

The relations between the English and the French Company did, to some extent, justify those who held that a neutrality could be maintained if the traders only were considered. The English Company was flourishing, and asked nothing better than to be allowed to trade in peace. The French Company was not so well off, and therefore was much more lean, hungry, and disposed to adventure. But it was not strong on land, and at sea had so far no force. A tacit arrangement was made by which the French promised to abstain from attacking us by land, so long as Barnett did not assail them from the sea. The Company persuaded the commodore to accept this arrangement, and 1745 passed in insignificant movements. Barnett died in the spring of 1746 at Fort St. Davids.

The command now fell to the senior captain, Edward Peyton, and its fortunes in his hands have caused the death of Barnett to be esteemed a misfortune. The arrival of reinforcements from home and arming of a prize taken from the French had raised the number of the squadron to six, one of 60, three of 50, one of 40, and one of 20 guns. It had, therefore, a total of 270 guns, and all the vessels, with the exception perhaps of the French prize, were built for war. The quality of the squadron must be taken into account in estimating what followed. While our ships were idly parading the Bay of Bengal, La Bourdonnais was straining every nerve to fit out a squadron at the Île de France, now Mauritius. In the spring of 1746 he had scraped together, by all kinds of devices and makeshifts, eight vessels, one of them being a man-of-war mounting 70 guns, and the others converted merchant ships of from 26 to 36 guns. The total was 292, and most of the pieces were small. The vessels were indeed full of men, but a large proportion of them were Lascars and Caffres. La Bourdonnais sailed on the 29th March, and after nearly suffering total shipwreck on Madagascar left it for the Coromandel coast in May, and arrived there in June. On the 25th of this month, before he had touched at any of the French settlements, he met the English squadron at sea between Fort St. Davids, at Cuddalore, and Negapatam, to the south of Pondicherry, the chief French port. Knowing his inferiority in artillery La Bourdonnais tried to come to close quarters and overpower the English by the number of his men. Peyton baffled this effort by keeping well to windward, and the encounter resolved itself into a distant cannonade, by which one of the French ships was crippled and very little harm was done to us. That little was enough to deprive Peyton of all desire to meet the French again. He held a council of war next morning, and by its advice sailed away to Trincomalee, leaving La Bourdonnais free to continue his voyage to Pondicherry. The decision was without excuse, for if Peyton had used his eyes at all during the cannonade of the day before, he must have learnt that he had to deal with ships of very inferior armament. But some of his own vessels were in no good condition, and he could think of nothing but of their defects, and of the excuse afforded him for a retreat.