Privateers and Privateering

by Edward Phillips Statham

No; Fortunatus Wright was undoubtedly trained as a seaman, and very possibly a privateersman; but it appears that, somewhere about the year 1741, having previously retired from the sea, and settled in Liverpool as a shipowner, he realised his business, and went to reside abroad; and in 1742 we come across news of him in Italy.

Mr. (afterwards Sir) Horace Mann, at that time British Resident at the Court of Florence, in a letter to his friend Horace Walpole—with whom he kept up an enormous correspondence—relates how he had had complaints concerning the violent conduct of Mr. Wright at Lucca. It appears that our friend, travelling in that part of Italy, with introductions to some of the nobility, presented himself one day at the gates of Lucca, never doubting but that, as a respectable and peaceably disposed person, he would immediately be admitted. He had not reckoned, however, with the particular form of "red tape" which prevailed there. He had upon him a pair of pistols; and, upon being informed that the surrender of these weapons was the condition of being permitted to pass the gates, his English choler immediately rose against what appeared to him to be a tyrannical and unnecessary proceeding; and his natural instinct being—as it always is in fighting men of his stamp—rather to beat down and override opposition than to yield to it, disregarding the serious odds against him—twenty soldiers and a corporal versus Fortunatus Wright—he presented one of the offending pistols at the guard, and clearly indicated that the first man who endeavoured to arrest him would do so at the cost of his life. This was very awkward; no one cared to be the first victim of the "mad Englishman," who was evidently a man of his word, and how it might have ended nobody knows, had there not appeared upon the scene a superior officer—a colonel—with thirty more soldiers. Mr. Wright was thereupon persuaded that the odds were too heavy even for a "mad Englishman," and was escorted to his hotel by this imposing bodyguard, being there made a prisoner while representations were made to the English Ambassador.

Fortunately, one of the Luccese noblemen to whom he had an introduction intervened, undertaking that no harm should result; and on the morning of the fourth day, at the early hour of four, the irate Englishman was informed that since he had been so daring as to endeavour to enter the town by force of arms, it was therefore ordered that he should forthwith leave the State, and never presume to enter it again without leave from the Republic; and that post-horses, with a guard to see him over the border, were waiting at the door.

"He answered a great deal," says Sir Horace Mann, "not much to the purpose"; and so was seen safely out of Lucca, with his pistols in his pocket, we may presume, swearing at the unreasonableness of Italians and their laws. He continued, however, to reside in Italy, and was living at Leghorn when, in 1744, war was declared with France; and then there came to Fortunatus Wright the imperative call to return to a seafaring life.

The war had not been long in progress before the English merchants in Leghorn began to suffer immense annoyance and loss from the depredations of the French privateers which swarmed upon the coast of Italy. Their trade was stifled, their ships compelled to remain in port, or almost inevitably captured if they ventured out; apparently there were not men-of-war available for escort, and the situation became unbearable.

When men have come to the conclusion that things are past bearing they look about for some drastic remedy, and in this instance Mr. Wright was the remedy; Mr. Wright, living quietly in Leghorn, with his wife and family, but with his sea-lore available at the back of his mind, and, for all we know, the love of the salt water tugging at his heart-strings—sailors are made that way. Why not fit out a privateer, and place Mr. Wright in command? The suggestion may, indeed, have come from him in the first instance; at any rate, no time was lost. There was a vessel available, to wit the Fame, a staunch brigantine. We have no precise details of her tonnage and force, but she was undoubtedly an efficient craft for the purpose, and Wright speedily demonstrated that he was an entirely fit and proper person to be placed in charge.

Carefully studying the winds of the Mediterranean, and the probable track of the enemy's privateers and merchant vessels, he had his plan of action matured by the time the ship was ready; and this is how it is set forth by William Hutchinson, one of his officers, writing thirty years later:

"Cruising the war before last, in the employ of that great but unfortunate hero, Fortunatus Wright, in the Mediterranean Sea, where the wind blows generally either easterly or westerly—that is, either up or down the Straits—it was planned, with either of these winds that blew, to steer up or down the channels the common course, large or before the wind in the daytime without any sail set, that the enemy's trading ships astern, crowding sail with this fair wind, might come up in sight, or we come in sight of those ships ahead that might be turning to windward; and at sunset, if nothing appeared to the officer at the masthead, we continued to run five or six leagues, so far as could then be seen, before we laid the ship to for the night, to prevent the ships astern coming up and passing out of sight before the morning, or our passing those ships that might be turning to windward; and if nothing appeared to an officer at the masthead at sunrise, we bore away and steered as before. And when the wind blew across the channel, that ships could sail their course either up or down, then to keep the ship in a fair way; in the daytime to steer the common course, under the courses and lower staysails, and in the night under topsails with the courses in the brails, with all things as ready as possible for action, and to take or leave what we might fall in with."

Before many months had elapsed the soundness of these tactics, and the sagacity with which Wright determined what to take and what to leave, were very conspicuous.

In the months of November and December, 1746, the Fame had to her credit no fewer than eighteen prizes, one of which was a privateer, of 200 tons, with 20 guns and 150 men, fitted out by the French factories on the coast of Caramania, with the express object of putting a stop to the inconveniently successful cruising of Fortunatus Wright, who, however, turned the tables upon her, sending her as a prize into Messina. The Frenchmen, to avoid being taken prisoners, had run her on shore and decamped; but the English captain was not going to be deprived of the prize-money which he and his men had justly earned, so they set to work and got the vessel afloat again, in order that she might be produced and duly condemned as "good prize."