The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth

by Edward Osler

The circumstances were concealed from the country, and the rest of the fleet, as effectually as if the court-martial had never been held. The distant and retired harbour where the mutiny occurred; the quietness with which it was suppressed; the holding of the court-martial abroad; the frequency of aggravated mutinies within the preceding two years; the magnitude of the political occurrences at that period; and the anxiety felt at the movements of the enemy's fleet, probably the largest they ever had at sea, for it numbered, with the Spaniards, forty sail of the line, all concurred to prevent it from becoming an object of public attention. But Earl St. Vincent appreciated Sir Edward's conduct very highly. "Your brother," he once said to Mr. Pellew, "is an excellent and valuable officer, but the most important service he ever rendered to his country was saving the British fleet in Bantry Bay. We know that it was the intention to burn the ships, and join the rebels on shore."

When the time arrived for executing the mutineers, it was found that preparations had been made to give to their fate the appearance of a triumph. For it strongly marks the general feeling in the navy during this unhappy period, that the individuals who thus suffered were regarded rather as martyrs than criminals. Encouraged to hardihood by his mistaken shipmates, generally excited by spirits, and some times even decorated with knots of ribbon, the mutineer went boldly to execution, leaving the spectators less appalled at his fate, than admiring his fearless bearing. Sir Edward quickly changed this feeling when the prisoners came up to the forecastle. Addressing a few words, first to the men who had followed him from the Indefatigable, and afterwards to the rest of the crew, "Indefatigables" he said, "stand aside! not one of you shall touch the rope. But you, who have encouraged your shipmates to the crime by which they have forfeited their lives, it shall be your punishment to hang them!" Quailing before their commander, their false feeling was destroyed in a moment; and as there is no medium between the hardihood and the cowardice of guilt, they felt as he intended, and many of them wept aloud. Afterwards, there was not in the service a more orderly ship than the Impetueux, or a crew more pleasant to command.

Considerate as he was upon all occasions where human life was concerned, and unwilling to resort to punishment, he was always anxious to make it as impressive as possible, whenever it became necessary to inflict it. He assisted to try one of the mutineers of the Hermione, whose crew had murdered their officers, and carried the ship into a Spanish port. This man's crime was attended with circumstances of peculiar aggravation. He was coxswain to Captain Pigott, who, savage tyrant as he was in general, and richly deserving of the fate he provoked, had brought him up from a boy, and treated him with much kindness and confidence. Yet he headed the murderers; and when they broke into the captain's cabin, and that officer, perceiving their intention, called for his coxswain to protect him, he replied with an opprobrious epithet, "Here I am to despatch you!" He had been entrusted with the captain's keys; and when the work of blood was over, the officers, even to unoffending midshipmen, being slaughtered, and the murderers were regaling themselves with wine, he told them that he knew where to get them better than what they were drinking. His crime was fully proved; and the court being cleared, Sir Edward proposed that sentence should be executed immediately. The circumstances of the case demanded, in his opinion, unusual severity, which might be expected to have a good effect upon the fleet; while there was every reason to conclude, from the prisoner's demeanour before them, that if delay were allowed, he would meet his fate with a hardihood which would destroy the value of the example. The court at first questioned their power to execute without the warrant of the Admiralty; but this was quickly settled by reference to the Act of Parliament. The President then declared that he could not make the order. "Look here!" said he, giving to Sir Edward his hand, trembling violently, and bathed in a cold perspiration. "I see it, and I respect your feelings," replied Sir Edward, "but I am sure that such an example is wanted, and I must press the point." "Well," he replied, "if it be the unanimous opinion of the court, it shall be done." It was agreed to, and the prisoner was called. Though, sure that he must be condemned, he entered with a bold front; but when informed that he would be executed in one hour, he rolled on the cabin-deck in an agony. "What! gentlemen," he exclaimed, "hang me directly? Will you not allow me a few days—a little time, to make my peace with God?" The whole fleet was appalled when the close of the court-martial was announced to them by the signal for execution; and at the end of the allotted hour, the wretched criminal was brought up to undergo his sentence.

A similar stern decision quelled in a few hours the spirit of resistance during the special commission for trying the Luddites at York, when the county was almost in a state of rebellion; and it was found necessary to protect the court with cannon. Six of the ringleaders having been convicted on the first day, the intrepid judge, Le Blanc, ordered them all to be hung at six o'clock next morning. While the multitudes, stunned by this unexpected vigour, waited in trembling anxiety for what was next to follow, eight more were convicted on the second day, and as promptly executed. The whole county was struck with terror; and the judge, having thus effected the great object of punishment, by compelling them to respect and fear the law, could now venture to show mercy. It is the hardest effort of human resolution for a judge to consign to certain and ignominious death the helpless being who stands trembling before him, imploring the mercy or the delay which it rests but with him to grant; but whenever justice demands life, duty requires that so great a sacrifice shall be made most useful; and to effort this, execution must take place before abhorrence for the crime is lost in pity for the offender. His proper time for repentance is the interval before conviction. Little dependence can be placed on the contrition which never shows itself till every hope of life is gone.

The Impetueux formed part of the force which pursued the combined fleets from the Mediterranean to Brest, and from which they escaped so narrowly. She afterwards remained with the Channel fleet, under Lord Bridport and Sir Alan Gardner. On the 1st of June, 1800, Earl St. Vincent, who had assumed the command a short time before, detached Sir Edward Pellew, with seven sail of the line, and some smaller vessels, to Quiberon Bay, whore they were to land five thousand troops under General Maitland to assist the royalists. Next day, the squadron arrived and anchored; and on the 4th, the forts on the peninsula were attacked and silenced by the Thames, 32, with some of the small craft; and destroyed by a party of troops. Several vessels, taken at the same time, were brought off or scuttled. Very early on the morning of the 6th, the armed launches, and a division of small craft, were sent away under Lieutenant Pilford, of the Impetueux, which completed the destruction of the shipping in the Morbihan, bringing off six prizes, and destroying several others, among which was the Insolente, 16-gun brig. They landed at the same time about three hundred troops, who carried and dismantled a fort. The whole service was effected with the loss of two men killed on board the Thames, and one in the boats. By this time, it was placed beyond doubt that the invalids were not strong enough to warrant a descent. Sir Edward, therefore, proposed an immediate attack on Belleisle, which had long been a favourite object with him, from a conviction that nothing would enable the British to harass the enemy more effectually than the possession of that island. He earnestly combated the doubts of the General, and pressed the point with all the energy of his character. Filled with the ardour so naturally inspired by the opportunity to attempt a long-cherished enterprise, he exclaimed, "I will be everywhere at your side, only let us attack the place without delay." But the General, who could not feel that confidence founded on a knowledge of the place, which Sir Edward had gained from having long cruised in the neighbourhood; and who well knew the difficulty and loss which a much larger force had formerly experienced in taking it, objected to the attempt, and the enemy in a few days decided the question by strongly reinforcing the garrison. The troops were then landed upon the small island of Houat, about two leagues to the south-east of Quiberon Point, where they remained encamped, while Sir Edward cruised with his squadron off Port Louis.

Towards the end of July, Mr. Coghlan, who had assisted Sir Edward in saving the people from the Dutton, and was now commanding the Viper cutter, tender to the Impetueux, with the rank of acting lieutenant, proposed and obtained permission to cut out a brig of war, which lay moored within the port. Accordingly, with twelve volunteers from the Impetueux, and a midshipman and six men from the Viper, in the line-of-battle ship's ten-oared cutter, a boat from the Viper, and another from the Amethyst frigate, he went away on the night of the 26th to attack a national brig of seven guns, three of them long twenty-four pounders, and with eighty-seven men on board.

The object of his attack, La Cerbère, was moored with springs on her cable, within pistol-shot of three batteries, surrounded with armed vessels, and not a mile from a seventy-four and a frigate. Notwithstanding her formidable position, and though her crew were prepared, while the boats of the Amethyst and Viper had not been able to keep up with the cutter, he pushed on with the single boat, and made a dash at the brig's quarter. In the act of springing on board, he became entangled in a trawl-net, and before he could disengage himself, he was pierced through the thigh with a pike, and knocked back into the boat. Still undismayed, they boarded the brig further ahead, and after a desperate struggle on her deck, carried her. Of the boat's crew, one man was killed, and eight wounded; the brig had six killed, and twenty wounded. The other boats now came up, and the prize was towed out under a heavy, but ineffectual fire from the batteries.

This very brilliant action was rewarded with peculiar notice. The squadron gave up the prize to the captors; Earl St. Vincent presented Mr. Coghlan with a sword; and a most unusual distinction, he was immediately made a lieutenant by an order in council, though, by the regulations of the service, he had still to serve a year and a half before he would be entitled to promotion.

A few days after, Sir J.B. Warren arrived, with a small squadron and a fleet of transports; and having re-embarked the troops from Houat, and taken the Impetueux under his orders, proceeded to attack Ferrol. The fleet arrived in the bay of Playa de Dominos on the 25th of August, and Sir James Pulteney, the military commander-in-chief, desired that the troops might be landed immediately. The direction of this service was committed to Sir Edward Pellew, who first silenced a fort of eight twenty-four pounders by the fire of the Impetueux, assisted by the Brilliant, 28-gun frigate, Cynthia, sloop of war, and St. Vincent gun-boat; and landed the whole army the same evening, without losing a man. Sixteen field-pieces were landed at the same time, and the sailors got them, with the scaling ladders, to the heights above Ferrol.

A slight skirmish took place on the first advance of the troops, and a sharper one next morning; but the enemy were effectually driven back, and the heights which command the harbour of Ferrol gained, with the loss in all of sixteen men killed, and five officers and sixty-three men wounded. Six sail of the line, two of them large first-rates, were in the harbour. Sir James now resolved to abandon the enterprise. Sir Edward entreated that he might be allowed to lead on with his sailors, for he was confident that the town must yield. But Sir James—to the intense disappointment and indignation of Sir Edward, who refused afterwards and in consequence even to meet him at dinner—declined to advance, and the troops and guns were all re-embarked without loss the same night. It was afterwards ascertained, that the garrison, despairing of effectual resistance, were prepared to surrender the keys.