HIS MAJESTY'S SHIP UNDAUNTED
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life,
Is worth an age without a name.
Scott.
There is no incident quite like it in all the annals of the Royal Navy. There is hardly a finer tale, all said and done, hardly a more stirring story, than that which tells how we came by our first Undaunted—why there is an Undaunted to-day on the roll of the British fleet. Better name for British fighting ship there could be none; none, assuredly, of happier omen. In a sense, indeed, it is, so to speak, a self-made name. No Admiralty Lord of high degree in the comfortable surroundings of a sanctum at Whitehall first made choice of or appointed it. No lady fair with customary libation of foaming wine on dockyard gala day wished 'God speed' to our first Undaunted. In quite another way, indeed, was the name first given. Amid the clash and ring of hostile steel, in the heat of a hard-fought fight, with shells bursting round, and grape-shot hurtling through the powder smoke, with bullets flying thick, while men closed hand to hand with cutlass and bayonet and boarding pike, came the first idea of the name Undaunted, and the scene of its first appointment, of its first bestowal on a British man-of-war, was the quarter-deck of a British flagship, as the last echoes of battle were dying down.
THE FIRST CAPTAIN OF THE FIRST UNDAUNTED—CAPTAIN ROBERT FAULKNOR
The West Indies, Nelson's 'station for honour,' was the scene of the event, off the island of Martinique, and Thursday the 20th of March 1794 was the day. There had been turbulent doings in Martinique for the past six weeks. Ever since the second week of February, day after day, almost incessantly, the quiet valleys and hillsides of the fair island had re-echoed with the crackle of musketry and the booming of cannon. It was the old story, of course, red-coats fighting blue; the old story—with the old result. We were in the second year of the war with the French Revolution, and a British army had been sent over to drive the French from their West Indian possessions. Martinique was the first to be attacked, and three columns of British troops had landed there at different points to fight their way inland until they met, driving the French field force and garrisons before them. Outmatched in the open, the French troops and local militiamen had in the end fallen back on Fort Royal, whither General Rochambeau, the French Commander-in-Chief in the West Indies, had called in all his forces and massed his battalions to make a final stand at bay. The fate of Martinique depended on their power of holding out until help from outside should reach them.
A large and powerful British fleet under Vice-Admiral Sir John Jervis, the future Earl St. Vincent, had escorted the troops across the Atlantic. After assisting the soldiers in the earlier stages of the campaign it had closed in and fastened its grip on the seaward approaches to Fort Royal.
Fort Royal was the headquarters station of the French in the West Indies. It was situated at the head of a deep bay, Cul de Sac Royal as it was called. The place was strongly fortified, and was the great arsenal and dockyard of France across the Atlantic. For a hundred years past and more French fleets and squadrons had fitted there for war, and had put in to repair after battle. Thence Du Casse had sailed to fight Benbow. From there, as we have seen, De Grasse put out to meet his fate off the 'Saints' at the hands of Rodney. Two fortified positions of considerable strength and with heavy cannon, besides outlying redoubts and batteries, defended the town of Fort Royal; one position fronting inland, the other facing towards the sea.
Against the former, Fort Bourbon, an entrenched work set on high ground at the back of the town of Fort Royal, the main force of our soldiers was to operate, attacking with a siege train of heavy guns and mortars and opening zigzags and parallels in the orthodox way. Fort Louis on the sea front, blocking the entrance to the carénage, or man-of-war harbour, and the dockyard, was to be attacked by the Naval Brigade, assisted by a number of grenadier and light infantry companies, with siege batteries made up of ships' 24-pounders. At the entrance to Fort Royal Bay, to 'keep the ring,' as it were, rode the big two-deckers and frigates of the fleet.