Privateers and Privateering

by Edward Phillips Statham

After the exchange of some broadsides, Surcouf at length out-manœuvred the English captain, his vessel being probably far more handy, and succeeded in laying him aboard. Captain Rivington, of the Kent, was a man of heroic courage, and fought at the head of his men with splendid determination; but the privateer crew had all the advantage of previous understanding and association. The Kent's men were undisciplined and but poorly armed for such an encounter, while Surcouf's, we are told, had each a boarding axe, a cutlass, a pistol, and a dagger—to say nothing of blunderbusses loaded with six bullets, pikes fifteen feet long, and enormous clubs—all this, in conjunction with "drinks all round," and the promise of pillage!

As long as their captain kept his feet the "Kents" maintained the desperate combat; but when at length he fell mortally wounded, though his last cry was "Don't give up the ship!" the flag was shortly lowered, though the chief officer made a desperate attempt to rally the crew once more.

And then commenced the promised pillage. Surcouf, hearing the loud complaints of the English, despoiled of their property, was on the point of angrily restraining his crew, when he remembered his promise, and stepped back, we are told, with a sigh of regret. But then came the screams of women.

"Good Lord! I'd forgotten the women!" he cried, and called his officers to come and protect them, which was very necessary. So hideous was the scene of plunder, amid the dead and wounded, that Surcouf exerted his power of will to cut short the time. He landed the prisoners in an Arab vessel, and arrived at Mauritius with his prize in November.

The French were accused of having behaved with great brutality, even wantonly poniarding the wounded and dying. This, of course, is denied; but it does not require a very vivid imagination to picture the scene—a crowd of half-disciplined men, excited with liquor, brutalised by bloodshed, elated with victory, turned loose to plunder; some word of remonstrance from a wounded man, finding his person roughly searched, and a knife-thrust, or fatal blow with the butt of a pistol, would be the only reply. Surcouf's protection of the ladies was, however, said to be effective; and this is probably true.

Surcouf took his flying Confiance back to France, with a letter of marque; he caught a Portuguese vessel on the passage, and arrived at La Rochelle on April 13th, 1801. His adventure in the East had not cooled the ardour of his feelings towards Mlle. Marie Blaize, whom he married six weeks later; and he now became in his turn the armateur or owner of privateers.

He was persuaded, however, to go to sea once more in 1807, when war had broken out again, in a vessel which he named the Revenant—i.e. the Ghost: and she had for a figure-head a corpse emerging from the tomb, flinging off the shroud.

With 18 guns and a complement of 192 men, the Revenant, a swift sailer, was quite as formidable as her predecessor; and so effectually did Surcouf scour the Bay of Bengal and the adjacent seas, so crafty and determined was he in attack, so swift in pursuit or in flight, that his depredations called forth an indignant but somewhat illogical memorial, in December 1807, from the merchants and East India Company to the Admiralty. The fact was that the British men-of-war on the station were doing pretty well all that could be done, but the Revenant, when it came to chasing her, was apt to become as ghostly as her figure-head—she had the heels of all of them, and her captain seemed to have an intuitive perception as to the whereabouts of danger.

Surcouf eventually settled down as a shipbuilder and shipowner at St. Malo. He had, of course, made a considerable fortune, and his business prospered, so he was one of the most wealthy and influential men in the place. He died in 1827.

Captain Marryat, in one of his novels, "Newton Forster," gives a vivid description of a fight between Surcouf and the Windsor Castle Indiaman, commanded by the plucky and pugilistic Captain Oughton. Such a yarn, by an expert seaman and a master-hand, is delightful reading, and the temptation to transcribe it here is strong. It must, however, be resisted, as the story is, after all, a fiction, and therefore would be out of place.