The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth

by Edward Osler

Sir Edward, as far as he was himself concerned, had eventually little reason for regret. The position of true dignity, to be always ready to sacrifice to public duty personal feelings, and to surrender, when necessary, personal interests, but never to compromise any point of principle or character, is generally the course not less of prudence than of honour. He obtained on this occasion all he could desire, and more than he had hoped for, a candid inquiry. Before his letter reached England, there had been a change in the ministry, and Mr. Grey was at the head of the Admiralty. Nothing could be more honourable than all his conduct. It was at first believed that Sir Edward had committed an illegal and unprecedented act of resistance to that authority which, as an officer, he was bound implicitly to obey. Yet, believing that he had acted hastily, Mr. Grey himself went to the Duke of Northumberland, as Sir Edward's friend, to say, that the board would allow him to write a letter on service, recalling his ill-advised communication. The Duke sent to Sir Edward's brother, who was then in town, that he might write to India without delay; but Mr. Pellew at first thought the step unnecessary. His brother, he said, was not in the habit of acting without due consideration, and he did not think it would be found that he had done so now. But next day. Earl St. Vincent called upon the Duke, and insisted more strongly on the necessity for the step. Sir Edward's letter, he said, was not a question of this or the other administration, but an act of insubordination which no ministry could overlook: that his professional prospects would be entirely destroyed if the board took cognizance of it; and that extraordinary lenity was shown in allowing him to recall it. A letter was accordingly written; but before a ship sailed, Mr. Grey came a second time to the Duke, and told him he had found, upon inquiry, that Sir Edward was right. He did more; for he wrote to Sir Edward himself a very kind and handsome letter; and though opposed to him in political opinions, while Sir Thomas Troubridge was connected with his own friends, he recalled this officer, whom he appointed to the Cape, and continued to Sir Edward, as at first, the entire command in India.

Sir Thomas had with great reason assured himself of a different result. He prepared immediately to cross the Indian Ocean to the Cape in the Blenheim, though she was utterly unseaworthy, and required constant pumping even in harbour. She had grounded on a shoal in the Straits of Malacca, and was obliged to throw her guns overboard, and cut away her masts, before she could be got off. Her back was broken, her frame shaken to pieces, and she hogged excessively. In fact, her head and stern fell so much, that she rose like a hill amidships, and a person at the door of the poop-cabin could not see the sentry on the forecastle below his middle. Sir Edward Pellew entreated the Admiral to select any other ship on the station for his flag. The Captain of the Blenheim formally reported her condition, but was told, that if he were afraid, he might go on shore, a taunt that compelled the unfortunate officer to sacrifice himself with the ship's company. The Admiral thought to force back the broken keel to its place by putting in a very heavy mainmast, and could not be convinced that he thus increased the danger. The distinguished officer who supplied these particulars went on board the Blenheim the day she sailed, to take leave of the Captain, and found that he had just written a last farewell to his wife, from a conviction that the ship must inevitably founder. On the 12th of January, 1807, she sailed from Madras, in company with the Java frigate, and the Harrier sloop of war. On the 5th of February, the Harrier parted company off the island of Rodrigues, in a very heavy gale, in which the unfortunate Blenheim and Java were seen to make repeated signals of distress. They were never again heard of!

The possibility that the ships might have run on shore induced Sir Edward to send the Admiral's son with the Greyhound frigate in search of his lamented parent. Captain Troubridge explored the coasts with all the anxiety that filial affection could inspire, receiving every assistance from the French authorities at the isles of France and Bourbon; but he could discover no certain traces of the ships, and no doubt remained that they had both foundered.

Sir Edward had been in India but a very short time, when his friend and former opponent, Bergeret, was brought to him a prisoner. This gallant officer had employed himself through the peace in the merchant service, with the Psyché, formerly a small national frigate. When hostilities were renewed, he armed her with thirty-six guns, and sent her out in charge of another officer, Captain Trogoff, not choosing to command a privateer. In her first cruise, on the 11th of April, 1804, she attacked, and was beaten off by the Wilhelmina store-ship, Captain Henry Lambert, and returning to the Isle of France, disabled, General Decaen, the governor, bought her into the national marine, and appointed Bergeret to command her. He cruised in the Bay of Bengal for a short time with much success, while his very liberal conduct obtained for him the highest respect of the British residents. Fortune was again unjust to him. On the 14th of February, 1805, the San Fiorenzo, commanded by Captain Lambert, late of the Wilhelmina, and which had been sent expressly in pursuit of him, fell in with the Psyché off Vizagapatam, and after a chase of two days brought her to action. Bergeret defended his ship against a very superior force for three hours and a half, when the San Fiorenzo hauled off to repair her rigging, leaving him with his ship entirely disabled, and more than half his crew killed and wounded. On the approach of the British frigate to renew the action, he surrendered.

Sir Edward was a warm admirer of the brave prisoner, whose character so much resembled his own, and who returned his friendship with equal warmth and sincerity. There is not often such a scene on board a man-of-war as occurred when the two officers first met on the quarter-deck of the Culloden. Both were deeply affected, and the struggle of their feelings, from meeting under such circumstances, drew tears from many who witnessed the interview.[11]

Sir Edward was not always so happy as to meet with enemies thus deserving of his sympathy. A French frigate, the Piedmontaise, was guilty of conduct which would have-disgraced a pirate. Cruising off the Cape, on the 17th of February, 1805, she fell in with the Warren Hastings, one of the China fleet which on a former voyage so gallantly bent off the squadron of Admiral Linois; and after a very long and severe action, in which the Indiaman was dismasted, and otherwise completely disabled, took her. Her brave defence appears to have excited the fury of the enemy, probably because her very crippled state increased the probability of recapture. Before taking possession of the prize, the frigate, by her own mismanagement, fell on board. Immediately, the first lieutenant, with a party of ruffians, many of whom, like their leader, were intoxicated, rushed on the deck of the Indiaman with horrid imprecations and drawn daggers, accusing the prisoners of having run foul of the frigate intentionally. The lieutenant himself wounded Captain Larkins dangerously, and stabbed a young midshipman in several places; and the second officer, the surgeon, and a boatswain's mate, were wounded by his followers. Sir Edward did not become acquainted with these facts for two years, as Captain Larkins and his crew could not depose to them until they reached St. Helena, after they had been liberated from the Isle of France. The Piedmontaise was then cruising in the Indian seas, and Sir Edward transmitted copies of the depositions to every ship on the station, with a general order, in which "the attention of the respective captains and commanders of H.M.'s squadron is especially called to the statement, in order that the ferocious conduct of the first lieutenant, and part of the crew of the Piedmontaise, may receive the general reprobation of H.M.'s service."

The San Fiorenzo was again the fortunate frigate which stopped the career of the enemy. Commanded by Captain George Nicholas Hardinge, brother of Lord Hardinge, the present Commander-in-Chief—a young officer of great promise and distinguished courage—she fell in with the Piedmontaise on the evening of the 6th of March, 1808; and after an exchange of broadsides that night, and a severe but still undecided engagement next morning, brought her to close action on the afternoon of the third day, and took her. The San Fiorenzo commenced action with only 186 effective men; the Piedmontaise, a larger and heavier frigate, had more than 500, including 200 Lascars. Captain Hardinge was unfortunately killed on the third day. For some time before the enemy struck, the first lieutenant was seen exposing himself to the hottest of the fire; till, disappointed of the death he sought, and dreading to fall into the hands of the British, he discharged his pistols into his own body. It is said, that as he did not die immediately, he ordered some of his people to throw him overboard alive.

The French naval force in the Indian seas was at no time considerable, for whenever a cruiser was known to be committing depredations, her career was generally cut short by some of the squadron. It consisted chiefly of privateers, for which the Isle of France afforded a convenient rendezvous; and of which some were large enough to capture a regular Indiaman. The Emiline, taken after a two days' chase by the Culloden, had been a British sloop of war: and the Bellone, taken by the Powerful and Rattlesnake, was added to the navy as a small-class frigate, and actually maintained a running fight with the seventy-four. The resemblance between ships of war and the larger Indiamen more than once deceived the enemy. The Union, a small privateer, mounting only eight guns, thus ventured to chase, and was taken by the Culloden; and the Jena, national corvette, was taken in the same manner by the Modeste frigate. The Jena was a remarkably fine and fast vessel, and, as the Revenant privateer, had formerly cruised long and very successfully. She was commissioned as the Victor, to replace a sloop of war of that name, which in the preceding year had been the scene of one of the most extraordinary and tragical events on record.

The Victor, commanded by Captain George Bell, whose name has been already mentioned in connection with the Nymphe and Indefatigable, had taken four brigs in Batavia Road, and was returning to Prince of Wales' Island. On the 15th of April 1807, off Cheribon, she met three Malay prows under Dutch colours, which, on its falling calm, she detained with the armed boats, and brought alongside. The crews of two of them, a hundred and twenty men, were taken on board the Victor, and placed under a guard, while the prows were being examined; but the people in the third being refractory, a carronade was fired into her, and some small arms, which they returned by throwing spears and firing pistols. A second gun was therefore fired, some sparks from which reached a quantity of powder which had been taken out of the prows, and blew up the after-part of the ship. The guard ran to extinguish the flames, leaving the prisoners, who instantly seized their arms, with the spears and knives which had been thrown on board, and attacked the crew with all the desperation of their character. The prows were immediately cut adrift, and the crew, under the direction of their officers, proceeded with admirable order and coolness, one part to extinguish the fire, and the rest to defend themselves against the murderous attack. After half an hour's dreadful struggle for life, for the Malays would take no quarter, eighty of them lay dead on the deck, and the rest were driven overboard. The Victor had her first lieutenant and five men killed, and her captain and twenty-five wounded; nine of whom died shortly after.

Holland, which in reality, though not yet in name, was now a French province, had a moderately strong squadron in India. Two frigates had been taken since Sir Edward's arrival, the Maria Riggersbergen, by the Caroline; and the Pallas, by the Greyhound and Harrier. The first was the unfortunate ship which, under the name of the Java, shared the fate of the Blenheim; the other was the convoy of the spice ships. Two line-of-battle ships, the Pluto and Revolutié with a frigate and several corvettes and gun-boats, were at anchor in Batavia Road; and information had been received by the Powerful, 74, Captain Plamplin, that Rear-Admiral Willaumez, with six sail of the line, one of them commanded by Jerome Bonaparte, might be expected in the Indian seas. To destroy the ships already at Batavia, and to intercept the French squadron, Sir Edward sailed on the 22nd of October 1806, from Madras to Trincomalee. Here a fleet of Indiamen under his convoy was joined by other ships, and went on to Europe in charge of the Woolwich and Duncan; while the Admiral, with the Culloden, Powerful, Russell, and Belliqueux line-of-battle ships, and Terpsichore frigate, proceeded to the Straits of Sunda, where the Albion and others were to join him. Lieutenant Owen, commanding the Seaflower brig, was instructed to disguise her as one of the expected French squadron, and to hasten on before. On the 23rd of November, they were joined by the frigate Sir Francis Drake, Captain Pownoll Pellew; and on the same day they learnt that Willaumez had gone to America. On the 26th they arrived in the Straits of Sunda, where they found the Seaflower, which had already communicated with the Dutch authorities at Bantam as one of the expected French force, and information was sent accordingly to the Governor at Batavia. So completely were the enemy deceived by this step, that the squadron sailed along the coast of Java, and anchored on the 27th in Batavia Road, before its character was suspected.