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

by David Hannay

The brevity of the suspension of hostilities allowed no time for important internal changes in the navy, but this interval saw the beginning of administrative reforms which were to produce their chief fruits after 1815. St. Vincent, who had become First Lord in the Addington Ministry in 1801, was profoundly conscious of the waste and corruption which prevailed in the Navy Office. He persuaded, indeed it may be said that he forced, his colleagues to pass the Act of the 43rd George III., which appointed Commissioners “for inquiring into irregularities, frauds, and abuses in the Navy Departments, and in the business of prize agency.” The Commissioners produced a series of reports between 1802 and 1805, which revealed much mismanagement and the existence of not a little pilfering. The Commission of 1802 was succeeded in 1806 by another “for revising and digesting the civil affairs of the Navy,” which also made reports in 1809. These documents are full of instruction, but they cannot be analysed and extracted here. Their immediate effect was good, for they terrified evil-doers and aroused the temper of the country. But they produced their main fruits as late as 1830, and during the administration of Sir James Graham.[6] St. Vincent, intent on reform, was obstinate in refusing to believe in the renewal of war with France. He was accused of allowing the strength of the navy to fall to a dangerously low figure. His enemies did their best to raise public anger against him, and Pitt attacked him hotly in the House of Commons.

A little sober investigation reduces these charges to moderate proportions. St. Vincent’s critics were as unmeasured, and as indiscriminating in criticising him, as he and his followers were in scolding the Navy Office. In Parliamentary and other public discussions our English respect for truth is qualified by a lively sense of the value of loud-mouthed and hectoring accusations of stupidity and turpitude as instruments of controversy. In March 1803 there were perhaps not so many vessels in commission as there might have been, and it is possible that St. Vincent had carried economy too far in the dockyards. But the French dockyards were empty, and Napoleon was taken completely by surprise—as indeed he confessed. He had exhausted his resources by fitting out the fleet sent to San Domingo, and his naval arsenals had been stripped bare. Some of the vessels he sent out were unable to reach French ports before the renewal of hostilities. Six of the line took refuge in the Spanish port of Ferrol, and another hid at Cadiz. Even including these seven, he had only thirteen sail of the line ready for sea, and they in bad condition. We had thirty-nine, and the superiority in frigates was much greater. Thus we were able to blockade our enemy with overwhelming forces from the beginning. Nelson took the command in the Mediterranean; Pellew off Ferrol; Cornwallis off Brest; Sir Sidney Smith in the North Sea; while Keith took the command of the reserve in the Downs. As for the condition in which these squadrons were, we have the word of Sir Edward Pellew, a very competent witness. Speaking in the House of Commons on the 15th March 1804, he said:—

“I know, Sir, and can assert with confidence that our navy was never better found, that it was never better supplied, and that our men were never better fed or better clothed. Have we not all the enemy’s ports blockaded from Toulon to Flushing? Are we not able to cope anywhere with any force the enemy dares to send out against us? And do we not outnumber them at every one of those ports we have blockaded? It would smack a little of egotism, I fear, were I to speak of myself, but as a person lately having the command of six ships, I hope I may be allowed to state to the House how I have been supported in that command. Sir, during the time I was stationed off Ferrol I had ships passing from the fleet [i.e., the fleet in the Channel] to me, every three weeks or a month, and so much was the French commander shut up in that port deceived by these appearances that he was persuaded, and I believe is to this very hour, that I had twelve ships under my command, and that I had two squadrons to relieve each other, one of six inside, and one of six outside.”

When Pellew was speaking, a year after the war began, the whole sea-going naval force at Napoleon’s disposal, including vessels belonging to the Batavian Republic and stationed at the Cape or in the Indian Ocean, did not exceed, and except on paper did not reach, 48 of the line and 37 frigates. At that time England had in commission 88 ships of the line, 13 ships of 50 guns, 125 frigates, and a swarm of sloops, gunbrigs, cutters, and “armed ships”—hired merchant-ships carrying guns. We had every means of collecting stores, and the French had few. The disproportion of force in our favour was so overwhelming, and was so well known, that it is hard not to feel some contempt for the flushings of apprehension and spasms of clamorous terror into which our fathers were thrown by the fear of invasion.

The disposition of our[7] forces was admirably calculated to place concentric barriers, elastic, mobile, but tough and impenetrable, between the shores of Great Britain and a Continental assailant. The inner barrier consisted of the fleet under the command of Lord Keith, who had his headquarters in the Downs. He had 21 sail of the line and 6 ships of 50 guns, 29 frigates, 26 sloops, 12 bomb-vessels, 25 gunbrigs, 32 cutters and luggers, 19 armed ships. These vessels watched the coast of France, and the dependent Batavian Republic from Havre to the Texel. There was on our own coast a swarm of armed boats:—135 between Yarmouth and Leith; 149 between Southend and Orfordness; 181 between Hastings and the mouth of the Thames; 138 from Poole to Newhaven; 21 at Liverpool, Glasgow, and Greenock; 114 on the coast of Ireland: in all, 738. Keith’s fleet was also the reserve on which other fleets could fall back in case of need. Next, outside of Keith, came the Brest blockade under Cornwallis:—20 sail of the line, 5 frigates, 1 sloop, 5 cutters, or luggers, or schooners. Beyond Cornwallis was the squadron watching Rochefort:—5 sail of the line, 1 frigate, 1 cutter. Then came 7 sail of the line, 2 frigates, 1 sloop, 1 cutter, which watched Ferrol. In the Mediterranean, Nelson had 13 sail of the line, 1 50-gun ship, 11 frigates, 10 sloops, 3 bomb-vessels, 6 gunbrigs, 2 cutters. In the East Indies were 6 sail of the line, 2 50-gun ships, 7 frigates, 5 sloops. In the West Indies were 8 sail of the line, 1 50-gun ship, 11 frigates, 20 sloops, and 15 small craft. The vessels doing convoy work may be left aside at present.

As we had no such army as could assail Napoleon at home, this mighty force could only cruise and watch till such time as the Emperor of the French (to give him the title he assumed on the 18th May 1804) put its strength to the test. He threatened invasion by arrogant word and ostentatious deed. There were then, there are now, it is probable that there always will be, disbelievers in the sincerity of his threats. He wrapped himself in clouds of lies, and he is not to be believed on his bare word, either when he said he would invade, or when he declared that he had never seriously contemplated invasion. As he said himself, he served a merciless taskmaster, “the nature of things,” and it was in the nature of things that his empire was subject to attack by the powers of Central and Eastern Europe. He cannot have meant to attempt an invasion of England at a time when the armies of Austria were actually marching against him. We know that during the last months of 1804 and the first of 1805, when war with Austria seemed imminent, he suspended his preparations for an invasion of England, and resumed them only when a letter from the Emperor Francis II. gave him assurance that he would not be interrupted. But though he was bound to bow to necessity, and turn from England when the frontier of the Rhine was in danger, it by no means follows that he would not have made the attempt had it been at any time possible. He had promised the French to rid them of their hereditary enemy England, and he could only make sure of keeping his word by invasion. His power depended on his popularity, and that depended on victory. He had risen to a towering height by running great risks, and he went on running them to the end, to keep what he had won. If he believed anything, he believed that his presence in England at the head of an army would bring the country to submission at once, and even to revolution. Assuredly he did mean to run the hazard of making an invasion, subject always to the leave of “the nature of things,”—if, that is to say, the forces at his command and the circumstances around him allowed of the venture.

It is not necessary to produce reasons for believing that he never meant to risk a crossing of the Channel with a flotilla alone. He had given conclusive reasons for not running that hazard when the Directory made him General of the Army of England in 1797. The swarm of flat-bottomed boats he collected between the spring of 1803 and the autumn of 1805, and the army he encamped at Boulogne, were never meant to act by themselves. The flotilla might be used under protection of a fleet. The army was very well placed to be drilled, and kept under his own eye and influence for all service. His assurances that he meant to invade with the flotilla and army by themselves were designed to satisfy public opinion in France, and inspire fear in England. It must not be forgotten that Napoleon was betrayed, and knew he was betrayed, by people about him who dreaded the consequences of his rule to France. Their identity is uncertain, though Talleyrand has been supposed to have been one of them. Whoever they were, these persons known as the “he-friend,” and the “she-friend,” and the “son of the friend,” had access to Napoleon’s most secret papers, and communicated the substance of them to a certain Count d’Antraigues, an exiled French Royalist attached to the Russian mission in Saxony. Through Antraigues the information came to the English Government. Napoleon, who knew he was betrayed but could not detect the traitors, used countermines to confuse and mislead them. Many of the minutes he made and the orders he issued have much the air of having been designed to reach his enemies and put them on a false scent.

When the preliminaries of October 1801 were signed, there were 250 flat-bottomed boats in existence of the model brought to France by Muskeyn. In March 1803 only 136 were available. Napoleon began at once to repair and strengthen this remnant. His first plan was to add a moderate number of flat-bottomed boats, and to draw largely on fishing and coasting craft for his transports. It was soon found that these resources would be insufficient. By July 1803 he had adopted plans for building 1410 flat-bottomed vessels, and in August the number was fixed at 2008. They were to be divided into frames of 110 feet by 25, drawing 8 feet, rigged as barques; chaloupes of 76 to 80 feet by 17, drawing 5 to 6 feet, rigged as brigs; bateaux cannoniers of 60 by 14 feet, drawing 4½ feet, rigged as luggers; caiques—small luggers and schooners; bomb-vessels, and péniches, a species of fishing-boats. All carried guns, from the twelve 24-pounders of the frames down to the single obusier or shell-firing gun of the péniches. They were built all along the north coast of France, at Paris, on the Rhine and in Holland. They were brought to their headquarters at Boulogne, down rivers and canals and by voyages along the coast from fort to fort and creek to creek. Harbours were cleared for them, and batteries built for their protection. The most determined efforts on the part of our naval officers failed to prevent these craft from collecting in and about Boulogne. But there Napoleon’s success with them ended. They could not be sent to sea. The fine schemes for combining troops and transports remained mere schemes. The ports cleared for the transports silted up again as fast as they were made. When the vessels were anchored in the harbours, they could only get out in driblets. When they anchored outside, they were harassed by English attacks, and injured by gales. Napoleon was eye-witness to the destruction of a number of them by a gale in June 1804. It is true that we did them but little harm. Our sea-going ships could not push their attacks home on a shallow coast, and we did not build corresponding vessels for the purpose. An attempt to make an end of them by a species of floating mines called “catamarans,” much favoured by Mr. Pitt, proved a failure in October 1804. Yet the utmost they could do was to escape destruction. They could not go out, as Napoleon knew from the first. His naval officers told him the truth with perfect candour.

Something else must be done to clear the way for an invading army, and there was only one thing which promised success. A force of sea-going ships must be collected to protect the transports. Therefore, from the end of 1803 till late in 1805, the correspondence of Napoleon is filled with elaborate plans for concentrating a fleet in the Channel. These plans of campaign and the letters written in combination with them fill hundreds of pages in the vast compilation of Captain Desbrière. This most competent French authority is inclined to believe that much of the vast correspondence was meant to be betrayed and to mislead the English Government. No other rational explanation can indeed be found for the confusing way in which proposals for expeditions to Scotland, Ireland, and the East Indies are mingled with plans for bringing squadrons from Brest, Rochefort, Ferrol, Cadiz, and Toulon together in the Channel. These alternative schemes, eccentric in every sense of the word, were never acted on. If they were designed to deceive the British Government, they failed.