VII
ON VALENTINE’S NIGHT IN FRIGATE BAY
If we go forward, we die;
If we go backward, we die;
Better go forward—and live!
The story of what happened once in Frigate Bay, St. Kitts, in the West Indies, recalls one of our “forgotten glories”; a feat of arms that nine out of ten people, one may be quite certain, have never heard of. Nor do our general histories say much of it, even of those whose pages make reference to it. Yet it is one of the very smartest, and neatest, and cleverest displays that, it may be, any British Admiral ever made, and it was managed, too, in the face of heroic odds. In every sense it was a daring and dashing deed of arms, and its moral effect on the enemy at the time was immense and widespread. It was in February of the year 1782, in the closing year of England’s long war with France and Spain in alliance with the rebel American Colonists. At that moment the French under the Comte de Grasse were in overpowering force in the West Indies, and were about, as they loudly vaunted, to make a sweeping attack on the five remaining British Islands, which, they declared openly, would prove an easy prey.
Rodney, the British Commander-in-Chief in the West Indies, had gone home on sick leave for a short time at the end of the preceding season. He was now on his way out again, with what reinforcements the sorely-tried Admiralty, at their wits’ end for ships and the men to man them with, could get together for him; but he had not yet arrived. Sir Samuel Hood (the famous Lord Hood of a later day), Rodney’s second in command, was in charge of the station in Rodney’s absence. It was by him that the brilliant exploit which forms our story here was achieved in Frigate Bay, St. Kitts.
Hearing in December, 1781, that the French Admiral, de Grasse, who had been co-operating with Washington in the Chesapeake, had arrived with his whole force at Martinique, and was on the point of sailing thence, or had already sailed, with a large force of troops on board to attack and capture Barbados, Hood at once followed; to try and hold the enemy in check till Rodney joined. He had only twenty-two ships of the line to de Grasse’s twenty-six, but he meant to make a fight of it in any event.
Six of Hood’s ships, it should be noted, were only 64-gun ships, the smallest class of vessels placed in the line of battle; and two of the fleet, also, the Invincible and the Prudent, were old vessels, worn out and crazy. Both, indeed, had been officially reported on as unfit for sea. Hood’s biggest ship was his own flagship, the Barfleur, a 90-gun ship. De Grasse’s ships, on the other hand, comprised the most powerful man-of-war in the world—the gigantic Ville de Paris of 112 guns; and the French had as well twenty seventy-fours and three sixty-fours.
On his way to Barbados, Hood put into English Harbour, Antigua, the naval head-quarters of the Leeward Islands Station. There he heard fresh news. The blow had fallen elsewhere. De Grasse had been delayed on his way to Barbados by bad weather. He had turned aside, and swooped down on St. Kitts. He had already begun a fierce attack, it was reported, and the small British garrison of regulars in the island were in a very precarious position. They were, however, still holding out. They occupied an impregnable position on Brimstone Hill, but their supplies were short and there was treachery among the islanders.
Hood received details at Antigua of the attack on St. Kitts. Taking on board the 28th and 69th Foot and two companies of the 13th, part of the garrison of the island, and arranging also to form two battalions of marines, made up from the marines serving on board his fleet, Hood sailed at once to try and save the island. “He sailed,” to use the words of one of Hood’s officers, “with the inadequate force of 1500 troops, which was all he could get from the general commanding at Antigua, on the 23rd of January, to relieve St. Christopher’s, attacked by 9000 Frenchmen under the Marquis de Bouville” [sic] (i.e. de Bouillé).