The Dutch made an attack on the Landguard Fort below Harwich, but were beaten off. Then De Ruyter, leaving Van Ghent to blockade the Thames, sailed along the Channel as far as Plymouth without meeting any English force to oppose him, or, so great was the panic, any number of English merchant ships at sea. The desperate exertions of the Government did at last succeed in collecting a squadron of frigates and fireships in the Thames under the command of Sir Edward Spragge. Some very vague and inconclusive skirmishing, out of which our national vanity strove hard to make a victory, took place between Sir Edward and Van Ghent, but the Dutch fleet was cruising unimpeded in our waters at the end of July, when a messenger brought the news of the signing of the Peace of Breda.
CHAPTER XIII
THE ALGERINE PIRATES AND THE THIRD DUTCH WAR
Authorities.—The operations against the pirates of the Barbary States were recorded in separate narratives, which have been largely quoted in Campbell's Admirals and Charnock's Biographa Navalis. Playfair's Scourge of Christendom gives full accounts of them. The operations of the third Dutch war are less fully recorded in the State Papers than the second, but we have now the advantage of the French historians. The most copious of these is Troude's Batailles Navales, founded on French official papers. It is particularly full for the battle of Solebay. Lediard and Colleber are of little value. An account of the capture of St. Helena will be found in Brookes's history of the island.
The conclusion of peace with the United Provinces in July 1667 gave the king an interval of quiet. He had already begun secret negotiations with Louis XIV., which were certain to lead him once more into hostilities with Holland, but in the interval there was some work to be done of a more honourable character. It has been said already that the Barbary pirates had speedily forgotten the sharp lesson taught them by Blake. One of the first duties of the navy in the reign of Charles II. had been to cruise against Algiers. The squadron left by the Earl of Sandwich on their coast, under the command of Sir John Lawson, had done something to renew their respect for the power of England, but it had not done enough. Like most other barbarians and Orientals, the Barbary pirates could not believe in the reality of a Power which was not always present to their eyes, and was not exercised with uniform severity. Therefore, so soon as the second Dutch war began fully to employ the naval power of England, they resumed their old practices. From Sallee in the West to Tripoli in the East, their cruisers were out again plundering and capturing every English ship they found unprotected by a convoy. No English Government could afford to offend the whole trading class by allowing these outrages to go on unchecked, so, in the year after the conclusion of the Dutch war, Sir Thomas Allen was sent with a squadron into the Mediterranean to expostulate with the Dey of Algiers, and if possible to bring him to order. Allen sailed in August, and was off the pirates' stronghold on the 8th of October. The Spaniards, to whom we were in fact giving the protection they had now become too feeble to provide for themselves, allowed us to make use both of Cadiz and of Port Mahon in the Balearic Isles, as naval stations.
Allen succeeded in making one of the long string of treaties with the Algerines. These barbarians were generally ready to promise when they were under pressure, and never hesitated to break their word when our fleets were out of sight. Their conduct on the present occasion was in exact accordance with their usual practices. Having secured their worthless engagements on paper, Allen returned home in the autumn. He was hardly out of the Straits before they began again. Once more he was sent out, this time with the determination to make clean work. His squadron, eighteen strong, sailed from England on the 22nd July 1669 and reached Cadiz on the 30th. From the Spanish port Allen returned to Algiers, not to negotiate, but to blockade. In this work he had the assistance of a Dutch squadron under the command of that Admiral Van Ghent who had burnt the ships at Chatham two years before. The Dutch had as good reason as ourselves to complain of the Algerines, and in this field we could act together for a common purpose. The united efforts of Allen and Van Ghent did something to clear the sea. On the 8th of August six of the pirates who were fleeing from Van Ghent were cut off by a detachment of Sir Thomas Allen's squadron under the command of Captain Beach. They were all destroyed. Those of their crews who were Mohammedans were made prisoners, the English and Dutch who were found in slavery among them were restored to their countrymen.
In this year there took place an action which was long remembered in the navy as particularly heroic, and is interesting because it makes us acquainted with a singularly fine specimen of the Tarpaulin naval officer of the seventeenth century. John Kempthorne was a Devonshire man, the son of an attorney at Modbury, who had fought as a cavalry officer in the service of Charles I. and had died in poverty. The son was apprenticed to the sea, and entered the service of the Levant Company. In 1657, on his way home from the Levant, Kempthorne was attacked by a Spanish privateer of the name of Papachino, and taken after a desperate resistance. There is a legend which may be accepted as a more or less poetical version of the facts, that, having used up all his bullets, he had recourse to firing bags of dollars into the Spaniards. Papachino treated him handsomely. In the following year the Spaniard fell into our hands, and owed his release on comparatively easy terms to the friendly offices of Kempthorne. Such a man was obviously destined by nature to end in the fighting fleet. In the second Dutch war he served with distinction as a captain, and had the honour to be chosen to act as Rear-Admiral of the Blue in the battle of the 25th of July. In 1669 he carried an English envoy to Morocco in his ship, the Mary Rose. Having landed his passenger at Tangier, Kempthorne went on to Sallee, one of the most notorious of the pirate strongholds. A gale blew him off the coast into the Straits of Gibraltar. Here he fell in with a squadron of seven corsairs. There were two small merchant ships in sight. One of the pirates sailed in pursuit of them, and the other six fell on Kempthorne. The old opponent of Papachino was not the man to be carried tamely into slavery by any enemy, however superior in numbers. He fought, and was well supported by his crew. The Mary Rose was cut to pieces, eleven of her men were killed and seventeen wounded, but Kempthorne reduced the principal ship of the corsairs to a sinking condition. The others sheered off and left him to make his way unmolested to Cadiz. All sea fighting at this time was fierce, but there was a peculiar quality of ferocity in actions with the Barbary pirates. They themselves gave their victims the choice of slavery or death, and it was given to them. Immediately before this action in the Straits, Kempthorne had retaken a prize from the corsairs, and had sold the prize-crew of twenty-two men as slaves. Kempthorne's fight lived long in the memory of the navy as a model of stout-hearted courage, and it rounds the story off pleasantly that he was imitated eleven years later by his son, Captain Morgan Kempthorne. In 1681 the younger Kempthorne, who was then twenty-three years of age, was commander of a small vessel called the Kingfisher in the Mediterranean. He was attacked by a squadron of Algerines, said to have consisted of seven vessels, one more than the force his father had fought. The Kingfisher repeated the obstinate resistance of the Mary Rose. Morgan Kempthorne was himself killed by a cannon-shot early in the action, but his lieutenant, Wrenn, an officer who afterwards rose to high rank, filled his place. The pirates were finally beaten off, and the Kingfisher, though seriously damaged, and having lost a large part of her men, was carried safely into Naples.
Sir Thomas Allen remained in the Mediterranean till the close of 1670, when he returned home at his own request, leaving his second in command, Sir Edward Spragge, behind him with a part of the squadron. During the short remainder of 1670 and the whole of 1671 Spragge carried out the most uniformly energetic and the most effective of our cruises against the Barbary pirates. In December 1670 he managed, by disguising his ship, to tempt some of the quick-sailing pirates to come too near him, and was able to effect the destruction of one among them. In the spring of the following year he struck a far more brilliant blow. News reached him in April that a squadron of Algerines was lying at Bougie, a port to the east of Algiers. Spragge set out with his squadron and several fireships, with the determination to destroy them. A storm crippled one of his vessels so severely that she was compelled to return to the coast of Spain, and it also inflicted some temporary damage on a fireship. But, though weakened, the admiral considered himself still able to deal with the pirates. He refitted the fireship at sea, and then went on, reaching Bougie on the 2nd of May.
The squadron had approached with a brisk gale, but as it drew near the land the wind fell, and for the remainder of the day there were only treacherous breezes, with calms between. In these conditions no direct attack by the heavy ships was possible, but Spragge was in hopes that something might be done with a fireship after dark. There were three vessels of this class in the admiral's force, two small and one somewhat larger—too large, in fact, to be used conveniently against an enemy who drew few feet of water, and was hauled up close to the land on a shelving beach. The smallest of the three was chosen. She could be rowed, and was therefore independent of the wind. The combustibles having been arranged and the slow matches laid, the fireship left the squadron, accompanied by armed boats under the command of Nugent, the first lieutenant of the flagship. The night was very dark, and the enemy, lying close under the shadow of the land, was invisible. The pirates had also no doubt taken the obvious precaution of putting out their lights. In the prevailing blackness Nugent overshot the enemy. Calculating that he had gone too far, he stopped the expedition, and turned back with his own boat only to grope for the enemy. In a few moments he came upon them, and then silently, with muffled oars, slipped away to bring on his fireship. At that moment she burst into flames, alarming the whole coast. Perhaps she was ill fitted, and the inflammable matter in her caught fire by accident. Perhaps she was prematurely fired by her men. The work of the "brander" was singularly trying to the nerves of the crew; they were always liable to become flurried, and the less resolute among them were subject to the temptation to seek strength in the use of spirits, which betrayed their senses just when the utmost coolness was needed. Whatever the cause of the misfortune may have been, the chance was lost. The enemy was alarmed, and, as he could succeed only by surprise, Nugent returned to the flagship.