With Cochrane the Dauntless

by G. A. Henty

“‘We must make them think that we are strong-handed,’ Cochrane said to me; and he ordered the men aloft to fasten up the furled sails with rope-yarn and to cast off the gaskets and other ropes. Then he waited until the enemy approached, while the men remained on the yards knife in hand. When he gave the word they cut the rope-yarns, and the sails all fell together. This naturally produced the impression upon the Frenchmen that we had a very strong crew, and directly the cloud of canvas fell they hauled their wind and made off along the shore. Every hand on board, officers and men, hauled at the sheets, and we were soon in chase. We gained rapidly upon them, divided the crew among the bow-guns, and opened fire. Scarcely had we fired half a dozen shots when the captain of the foremost vessel ran his ship ashore.

“The shock brought down her masts, and the crew landed in her boats. We ran as close as we dared, and fired several broadsides into her to prevent her floating with the rising tide. The other two corvettes came back to assist their comrade, but when we sailed boldly towards them, firing our bow-guns again, the one nearest to us also deliberately ran ashore, and was, like the first, dismasted. The third boat made for the [pg 151]river, but by our superior sailing we cut her off, whereupon she also ran herself ashore, and was abandoned by her crew. I don’t know that I ever saw forty men laugh so much as did our fellows at seeing three strong corvettes thus deliberately run ashore and destroy themselves, when, if any one of the three had attacked us single-handed, we could have made no real resistance. The prize captured by the boats now came down, and the Pallas rejoined the squadron. Admiral Thornborough wrote a very warm despatch as to the gallantry of the affair, but no notice was taken of it at the admiralty, and the first lieutenant did not receive the promotion that he deserved. After two or three other affairs we were ordered to sail into the Basque Roads to reconnoitre a French squadron lying there. This, after a brush with a French frigate and three brigs, we succeeded in doing, and discovered that there were five men-of-war, two heavy frigates, three smaller frigates, and three brigs. A few days later we sailed inshore, and the boats landed and destroyed two of the French signal stations and carried the battery and spiked its guns.

“A day or two afterwards we had a sharp fight in the Basque Roads. A frigate and three brigs came out to meet us. We disabled one of the brigs, drove the frigate on to a shoal, and were on the point of capturing it when two other frigates came out to her assistance, and as we had lost several spars when we ran aboard the first frigate we were obliged to make off. After this we returned to England. Another election was coming on. Cochrane stood again for Honiton, and was returned to parliament without spending a penny. On the 23rd of August he was appointed to the command of the Impérieuse, and the crew of the Pallas were turned over to her, and on the 29th of November we joined the fleet again. We took several prizes, and returned to Plymouth in February. While we were there another election came on. As Honiton was sick of Lord Cochrane and Cochrane was sick of Honiton, [pg 152]he stood this time for Westminster, and was returned. He presently brought forward in the House of Commons a motion with reference to the abuses in the navy, the only result of which was that he was at once ordered to join the Impérieuse.

“In September we sailed to join Lord Collingwood’s fleet in the Mediterranean. I need not go through all the events of that cruise. We took a great many prizes, and had a good many actions with batteries. Spain joined France, and we had a brisk time of it and gained an immense amount of credit, and should have gained a very large amount of prize-money had it not been for the rascality of the prize-court at Malta, which had, I believe, been instigated by some one in London to adopt as hostile an attitude as possible towards Lord Cochrane. The most important and exciting affair that we had was our defence of Fort Trinidad, close to the town of Rosas. Lord Cochrane’s orders had been to assist the Spaniards against the French, and he had done a great deal that way by landing strong parties, who blew up roads, blocked communications, and rendered the passage of bodies of French troops difficult if not impossible. When we arrived off Rosas the French had already invested the town. The marines of the Excellent had been holding Fort Trinidad; but had suffered severely from a battery erected by the French upon a hill commanding it. They were withdrawn on the arrival of the Impérieuse, and their place taken by our marines.

“It was a rum place that fort. The side towards the sea sloped gradually but steeply, and two forts were placed one above another, like big steps. Above these stood a tall tower, very strongly built. The forts had no guns; but had they had them they could not have used them against the enemy’s battery on the high cliff, for the tower stood in their way and so protected them from the French fire. We defended the place for a long time, even after the town of Rosas had itself fallen. Several [pg 153]attempts at assault were made, but all were repulsed. The last was the most serious. The enemy had made a breach at the foot of the tower, but to reach it they would have to scale the cliff on which it stood, by means of ladders. Cochrane prepared for the assault in a very curious way. Just below the breach was a sort of vault, some forty feet deep, under the tower. Cochrane knocked away a portion of the arched roof of this vault, so that on reaching the top of the breach the French would see a great gulf in front of them. With timbers and planks he erected a sort of slide from the breach down into this vault, and covered it with grease, so that those trying to descend would shoot down to the bottom and remain there prisoners until released.

“When he had completed this he laid trains to blow up the magazines in case it was necessary to evacuate the fort. Being thus prepared, he waited for the assault. Commanded as the tower was by the batteries on the cliff, nothing could be done to prevent their making this breach, and for the same reason there were no means of preventing the scaling parties placing their ladders and climbing up. Interior barricades were, however, formed, and when they made an attack before daybreak we repulsed them with ease. Forty of the enemy who got on to the top of the breach were destroyed by our musketry fire as soon as they reached it; shells were dropped down upon those waiting below, hand-grenades thrown, and after suffering severe loss they drew off. The French erected fresh batteries, and at last the place became absolutely untenable; so we took to the boats, blew up the castle, and got safely on board the Impérieuse. After capturing some more prizes and doing other service the Impérieuse returned to Plymouth, and Cochrane was appointed to go out and take the command of some fire-ships, and to attack the French fleet in the Basque Roads.

“Admiral Gambier, who was in command of our fleet on that coast, was in strong opposition to the plan, and had denounced the effort as desperate; but the ministry were extremely unpopular, and they desired to strike a blow that would excite enthusiasm. They themselves did not believe in success, but offered Cochrane the command in order that, should it fail, the blame could be thrown wholly on his shoulders. He at first declined altogether to have anything to do with it, and drew up a memorandum showing the number of batteries that would have to be encountered, and the extreme improbability of their ever arriving near enough to the French squadron to do them any harm. His objections were overruled, and he was ordered to sail for the Basque Roads, where six transports prepared as fire-ships were to join him. This appointment caused, as was natural, very great dissatisfaction among the captains commanding the ships in Gambier’s squadron. They were all senior to Cochrane, and regarded his appointment on such a service as being a slur, and indeed an insult on themselves personally, their anger however being excited rather against Lord Gambier than against Cochrane himself. The fleet, indeed, was in a state of general disorganization approaching mutiny, at the inactivity in which they had been kept and at various measures that had been carried out by the admiral. As he might have had to wait for a long time before the fire-ships arrived from England, Cochrane obtained from Gambier several craft which he fitted up as fire-ships. The others, however, arrived from England, and Cochrane wanted to make the attack on the night they joined, before the French could gain any knowledge of the nature of the attempt that was going to be made against them. But Lord Gambier refused to consent, and the result was that the French did get notice of our intentions and were prepared.

“In order to avoid the danger, the enemy’s ten men-of-war [pg 155]struck their topmasts and got all their sails on deck, his four frigates alone remaining in sailing order. These were placed half a mile in front of the men-of-war, and lay in shelter of an immense boom, specially designed to arrest the approach of an enemy at night. In addition to the fire-ships, Cochrane had prepared two or three vessels as what he called explosion-ships. These were intended not so much to damage the enemy as to terrify them, and to prevent their sending boats to divert the course of the fire-ships. A solid foundation of logs had been first laid on the keel, so as to form an extremely solid floor and to give the explosion an upward tendency. On these were placed a large number of empty spirit and water casks set on end. Into these fifteen hundred barrels of powder were emptied; the space around them was filled in with timber and sand, so as to form a solid mass, and over the powder casks were laid several hundred shells and some three thousand hand-grenades.

“The French deemed their position impregnable. Their men-of-war were ranged close together in two lines, and the frigates and guard-boats they considered would be sufficient to divert any fire-ships that might make their way round the boom. Half a gale was blowing on shore. Cochrane himself went in the explosion-ship that led the advance.

“The night was dark, and when Cochrane reached what he thought was the vicinity of the advanced ships of the French he lit the fuse, and with the officer and four men with him took to the boat and rowed away. They made but little way against the wind and sea, and the fuse, instead of burning for fifteen minutes as intended, only burned half that time. This, however, was really the means of saving the lives of those on board the boat. She was nearly swamped by the effect of the explosion; but as its force, as intended, took place upwards, the shells and grenades exploded far overhead, scattering their contents over a wide area, and the boat itself lay inside the [pg 156]circle of destruction. We on board the Impérieuse, which was anchored three miles away, felt the shock as if the ship had struck heavily on a rock. For a moment the sky seemed a sheet of fire. Then came the crash of the exploding shells and the rattle of the grenades, and then a roar as the fragments and pieces of wreck fell into the sea.