The privateer who plays so conspicuous a part in the maritime history of France is but a dim and subordinate figure beside the great disciplined and triumphant navy of this country. We can generally afford to neglect him and his doings altogether. Yet in the Seven Years’ War he does for one moment come forward in a manner so characteristic and instructive, that we may look at him very briefly before turning to the operations of honest warfare. Ever since the reign of Henry VIII. it had been the custom to favour these skimmers of the sea in Acts for the Encouragement of Seamen, which invited all sorts and conditions of men to set out armed ships to plunder the enemy. In the age of Elizabeth their part was honourable, for the privateers then were often gallant gentlemen—Raleigh or the Earl of Cumberland—who fitted out warships against the national enemy, as their ancestors had raised bands of spearmen and archers to follow King Edward or King Harry. But as the State grew in power and resources, such men found their proper place in the regular forces. The privateer tended more and more to become a mere vulgar plunderer. His competition with the navy for men had made him a nuisance, as far back as the time of the Commonwealth. The private ship with its slovenly discipline, and the greater chances of earning booty it offered, attracted all the restless spirits to whom the order of the navy was grievous. “A regular built privateer” became the naval officer’s phrase for a dirty, ill-managed, inefficient ship. The last great age of the privateer was the War of the Austrian Succession, when the navy was bad and incapable of blocking the enemy’s ports. In the Seven Years’ War, when the navy was equal to its work, the innate tendency of men, whose sole aim was plunder, to sink into mere pirates was rapidly shown. As French commerce soon disappeared off the sea, the privateers were driven to choose between starvation and the robbery of neutrals or even of their own countrymen. They made the choice which might have been expected of them. Very soon the outrages of the privateers in the Channel became a downright pest. They took to boarding neutral vessels, and to extorting booty or blackmail. At last the complaints of friendly states drove the British Government to adopt vigorous measures of repression. Extreme offenders found their way to Execution Dock, and in 1759 an Act was passed limiting the right to receive a “letter of marque” to vessels of over one hundred tons, belonging to owners who could give some guarantee of good conduct. An exception was made for small vessels belonging to the Channel Islands, which did some useful piloting and scouting work. The privateers are only mentioned here because the measures taken to restrain them show that the navy was growing in power to discharge its proper function, and that the country was coming to realise that it ought to leave the duty of representing it on the sea to a disciplined force with a code of honour.
It has been said already that some time passed, after the formation of Pitt’s great ministry in June 1757, before the naval and military powers of the country could be co-ordinated for definite and profitable purposes. One of the uses to which they were put reflects little honour on the sagacity of the Great Commoner. He reverted to futile expeditions against the coast of France. By the inevitable working of unvarying conditions these revivals of old errors produced identical results. They do not deserve that more time should be spent on them than is necessary to record that they took place, and came to an unavoidable failure. In September of 1757 Hawke sailed with a strong squadron, carrying a detachment of troops under General Mordaunt, for the purpose of taking Rochefort. He sailed on the 8th of that month, and by the 6th October he was back, and Rochefort was not taken. We did plunder the poor little island of Aix, and that was all—all except the ensuing court of inquiry and wrangle. Yet it was decided to make another and more serious effort next year, for Pitt clung with persistence to this part of his military policy. His critics called it breaking windows with guineas, but he valued it for two reasons. He hoped that the pressure on their coast would constrain the French to withdraw part of their troops from Germany where they were threatening the king’s electorate of Hanover, and were weighing on our ally the King of Prussia. It was a bad reason, for if an effectual diversion was to be made we ought to have landed a substantial army, capable of establishing itself in France. The second and perhaps better reason was given in 1759 by Captain Hervey of the Monmouth, who was serving in the Brest blockade, under Hawke, when he landed on the little island of Molines and levied a contribution on the inhabitants. The priest appealed to him to spare their poverty, and Captain Hervey answered, “That he was sorry to distress the poor inhabitants, but what he now did was to show the enemy and all Europe that the French could not protect their people in their own sight, much less dare the invasion of England.” After the shameful panic of 1756, there was something to be said for the policy of showing that our fleets could sweep along the French coast, and that the enemy would not dare to give them battle. This purpose at least was achieved to the full by the great combined expedition which made three sorties in 1758. A fleet of twenty-four sail of the line under Anson convoyed 14,000 troops under the Duke of Marlborough to St. Malo in June. The place proved too strong, and the expedition came back to the Isle of Wight. A scheme for attacking Cherbourg was defeated by a storm, and the expedition returned. The Duke of Marlborough was now replaced by General Bligh, a veteran called over from Ireland to take up the “buccaneering” work when officers of more interest had come to regard it with weary disgust. A second sortie was made, and Cherbourg was taken on the 6th August. This was our only genuine success, for several privateers were destroyed and some guns were brought away. As it was thought that more might have been done, the expedition sailed on its third sortie in September to make another attempt on St. Malo. But by this time we had achieved our purpose of inducing the French to withdraw troops from Germany and look to their own coast. The soldiers landed to invest the town were assailed by superior numbers, and driven to re-embark in the Bay of St. Cas with heavy loss. The military management was not good, but no skill could have secured success. The naval work of transport and convoy was thoroughly well executed.
It is a satisfaction to be able to turn to scenes where the navy was more effectually employed. In March of 1758 a squadron of small vessels, under the command of Captain Holmes, drove a French and Austrian garrison out of Embden, a port belonging to our ally the King of Prussia. This was a most useful piece of service, since it helped us to retain the power to land soldiers on the continent for the defence of Hanover and the prosecution of the war in Germany. In the following month of April Hawke was allowed to use a squadron in a way much better calculated to convince the French of our superiority at sea, and of their inability to invade, than any number of mere sporadic raids on their coast, since it gave them no chance of retaliating as they did in the Bay of St. Cas. Pitt, who was always well informed of the enemy’s movements, learnt early in the year that a great convoy was being prepared in the Basque Roads for America, and was to sail under protection of a small squadron. Hawke was sent to intercept it with seven sail of the line and three frigates. He found five French line-of-battle ships and several frigates, with forty merchant ships carrying 3000 troops to reinforce the American garrisons, starting or about to start from the Basque Roads and the Pertuis d’Antioche, the anchorages on the mainland just opposite the islands of Oléron and Ré. Between the 4th and 6th of April he broke up the convoy and drove it into the mud. In their anxiety to escape to Rochefort up the Charente the Frenchmen threw their guns overboard and started their water to lighten the ships. When it is remembered that they were five to seven, and on their own coasts, the prompt flight of the French liners speaks aloud of the little spirit of their navy at this period.
On the 7th of the same month of April Captain John Campbell of the Essex, 64, and a fireship, the Pluto, Captain James Hume, fell in with and scattered a convoy of twelve French merchant ships from Bordeaux under protection of a frigate and a large privateer. The two armed ships were taken after a resistance which cost Captain Hume his life. Such pieces of service as these were not glorious, but they were typical examples of the work done by the fleet to sweep the enemy off the sea.
Far beyond the waters of Europe the navy was beginning to apply itself to the task of rooting out the French settlements. The operations of 1758 were preparatory for the great undertaking of the following year; one of them makes us acquainted with the oddest figure of all this war, the Quaker Thomas Cumming. This man was a trader on the west coast of Africa, who had elaborated a scheme for expelling the French from all their stations. When asked how he reconciled his active share in hostilities with his religious principles, he answered with ingenious casuistry by saying, that if his scheme had been executed with the force he thought necessary there would have been no resistance, and therefore no fighting. Mr. Cumming had been busy from early in 1757 in urging his ideas on Ministers, but it was not till he secured a hearing from Pitt and in the following year that he saw his advice put in practice, though on a smaller scale than he wished. In the interval a French squadron, commanded by M. de Kersaint, had made an unsuccessful attack on Cape Coast Castle. This event may have served to awaken ministers to the need there was for putting our settlements on a safer footing. The fortunes of M. de Kersaint may be followed for the sake of one name with which they make us acquainted, and also because they show how wide-ranging are the movements of war at sea. Having failed at Cape Coast Castle the French officer stood across the Atlantic to the West Indies. At Cape Français, now called Cape Haytiën, in Hispaniola, he was engaged on convoy work, when he had an action with a British squadron under Commodore Forrest on the 21st October. The English and French accounts cannot be reconciled. According to our version three of our ships engaged most gallantly with a much stronger French force and got the better of them. Our story runs that M. de Kersaint, having shown a disposition to engage, Commodore Forrest consulted his two subordinate captains, and one of them answered that it would be a pity to disappoint the Frenchman. The officer to whom this spirited reply is attributed was Captain Maurice Suckling, to whom we owe the introduction into the navy of the heir of all its past labours, and the most famous of all its chiefs, his nephew, Horatio Nelson. The action need not be discussed. It was counted a gallant affair long before Nelson, with whom it was always a cherished memory and the 21st October a fateful day, was known to fame. Beyond confirming our growing sense of superiority to the French it produced no effect, for the convoy got away. If, as the French deny, M. de Kersaint was in much greater force, he no doubt acted on the rule of his service described above, and threw away his chance of overpowering the three British ships in order to fulfil his mission to see the merchant vessels safe to port.
It was in March 1758 that Mr. Cummings saw his idea put into practice. A small squadron, under Captain Henry Marsh, sailed on the 9th of that month, carrying the Quaker with it. On the 30th April (the month in which Hawke scattered the French convoy in the Basque Roads), St. Louis de Senegal was taken, and the supply of slaves for the French colonies much reduced. An attack on the island of Gorée in May failed, and then the commodore sent on to the West Indies with the trade, which in plain English meant the kidnapped negroes.
So far the enterprise had been successful enough to encourage a repetition and to earn Mr. Cummings “the gratification of a handsome pension.” It was decided to complete the conquest begun by Commodore Marsh. The officer chosen for the task was Keppel. On the 26th October he sailed from Cork with four line-of-battle ships, one 50-gun ship, six smaller vessels, and a body of troops. He was driven back by bad weather, but started finally on the 11th November. On the way out the 50-gun ship, the Lichfield, was lost on the coast of Morocco. The loss was of no great importance to the squadron, but it is to be mentioned because we afterwards, and that at a time when Pitt took a tone of haughty superiority to the civilised powers of Europe, condescended to pay the bloodstained savage, whom we termed Emperor of Morocco, a heavy ransom to save the crew from slavery. It was one of the worst passages in our long ignominious toleration of the pirates of Barbary. On the 14th December Keppel was at the Canaries, and on the 28th he reached Gorée a little island near the Cape de Verd. The French post soon surrendered under the combined pressure of bombardment by the ships from the sea and attack by the troops under Colonel Worge on shore. Worge remained as governor of Senegal, and Keppel returned home.
While Marsh and Keppel were expelling the French from the slave-producing region of West Africa, the navy had taken a foremost share in delivering the first great blow at the French dominion in North America. Boscawen and Amherst had taken Louisbourg, and had thereby cleared the way for the capture of Quebec by Wolfe and Saunders in the following year. The incapable Government of France was now fairly launched into a war in Germany, and could spare neither attention nor adequate forces for the defence of its colonies.
A squadron of six line-of-battle ships and five frigates left early in the year for Louisbourg and arrived in safety. Three of the liners were armed en flûte, and were practically mere transports. Such a handful of vessels as this was not even a match for the English ships which had wintered at Halifax. Our squadron in North American waters was now under the orders of Sir Charles Hardy, who came out in the Captain in early spring. M. Drucourt, the naval officer who was governor of Louisbourg, foreseeing that he would be seriously attacked, could only use the vessels in the port to strengthen his defences of the place. Three frigates, the Biche, the Echo, and the Fidèle, were sunk to block the entrance to the harbour. The measures taken to prevent the English from coming in had one good effect for the French. They prevented the useless sacrifice of more of their ships than were already in harbour. On the 29th May Captain Duchaffault de Besné, who had left Rochefort on the 2nd with four liners, one armed en flûte and three frigates, appeared outside Louisbourg. Finding the entrance closed he landed the soldiers he brought with him and went on to Quebec, where he remained a helpless spectator of the disaster.
Boscawen meanwhile had left Spithead on the 18th February with a powerful fleet, escorting 13,000 troops under the command of Amherst, who had Wolfe with him as one of his subordinates. The soldiers were distributed in 150 transports. This great armament sailed first to Halifax, where Boscawen collected the whole naval force in those waters, now amounting to twenty-three sail of the line and eighteen frigates. When the necessary arrangements had been made at the base of operations soldiers and sailors started, “well combined in mutual love to each other and common resolution against the enemy,” on the 29th of May, just when Duchaffault was landing the last French reinforcement. On the 2nd June the fleet reached Gabarus Bay, on the south-eastern coast of Cape Breton, below the place where a heap of ruins marks what was once the site of Louisbourg. The combined operations lasted till the 26th July, when Drucourt beat the chamade after a stout fight. As there was no enemy at sea the bulk of the work fell to the army, and was performed in a fashion presenting a welcome contrast to the futility of Carthagena and Pondicherry. Amherst was a capable general, and Wolfe, besides being the most exact of officers in all matters of detail, had the calm and rapid mind of the born leader in war, and that zest for the joys of battle which makes the supreme fighter. To the navy it fell to land the troops, to supply them, to assist in the bombardment by which some of the French ships in the harbour were destroyed, and to do one dashing piece of work in its own line.