And two days after, “I have just heard from Charles, who is by this time at Deal. He is to be second lieutenant, which pleases him very well. He expects to be ordered to Sheerness shortly as the Tamar has never been refitted.”
Frank apparently remained on the Petterel until he received promotion in the beginning of 1801, for his sister writes jestingly: “So Frank’s letter has made you very happy, but you are afraid he would not have patience to stay for the Haarlem, which you wish him to have done as being safer than the merchantman. Poor fellow, to wait from the middle of November to the end of December, and perhaps even longer, it must be sad work; especially in a place where the ink is so abominably pale. What a surprise to him it must have been on October 20, to be visited, collared, and thrust out of the Petterall by Captain Inglis. He kindly passes over the poignancy of his feelings in quitting his ship, his officers, and his men. What a pity it is that he should not be in England at the time of his promotion, because he certainly would have had an appointment, so everybody says, and therefore it must be right for me to say it too. Had he been really here, the certainty of the appointment, I dare say, would not have been half so great, but as it could not be brought to the proof, his absence will always be a lucky source of regret.”
The real name of the ship was evidently the Petrel, but it is very variously spelt by other writers beside Jane, for orthography was not considered of great moment in the eighteenth century.
Captain Francis Austen had done good service on board and had well earned his promotion; in William James’s Naval History of Great Britain, his name is mentioned with praise. On the 20th March, 1800, in the evening, while the Mermaid, a twelve-pounder thirty-two gun frigate, under Captain R. D. Oliver, and the ship sloop Petrel, under Captain Francis William Austen, were cruising together in the Bay of Marseilles, the Petrel, which was nearer the coast than the Mermaid, came into action with three armed vessels; two escaped by running on shore, but the third, the Ligurienne of “fourteen long six pounders two thirty-six pounder carronades all brass” and with one hundred and four men on board to the Petrel’s eighty-nine,—for the first lieutenant and some of the crew were absent on prizes,—began to fight. They kept up a running fight of an hour and an half’s duration, within two hundred and fifty yards, and sometimes half that distance. Then the Ligurienne struck her colours, her commander being shot. The Petrel was at that time only six miles from Marseilles. No one was hurt on the Petrel, though four of her twelve pounder carronades were upset, and the sails riddled with shot holes. The Mermaid apparently stood in the offing, giving moral support throughout. The Ligurienne was a fine vessel, only about two years old, and her capture must have meant good prize-money into the pockets of the captain and crew of the Petrel. After describing this action, Mr. James continues—
“Before quitting Captain Austen we shall relate another instance of his good conduct; and in which, without coming to actual blows, he performed an important and not wholly imperilous service.” On the thirteenth of August, the Petrel being then attached to Sir Sydney Smith’s squadron on the coast of Egypt, he was the means of burning a Turkish ship so as to prevent the French from stealing her guns, and for this service the Captain Pacha presented him with a handsome sabre and rich pelisse. Though his service seems to have landed the Turkish vessel “out of the frying-pan into the fire.”
Charles Austen had seen active service when only a lad of fifteen, and both brothers frequently took part in the small actions which were continually occurring on the seas.
There was, as we have seen, six years’ difference in age between them, but they were both at sea during some of the most glorious years in the whole annals of England. In spite of bad provisions, bad quarters, bad discipline, all of which will be again referred to, the English seamen at this time showed pluck and energy that was limitless. Britain was absolutely supreme on the seas. In 1794, Tobago, Martinique, St. Lucia, and Guadaloupe were all taken in less than a month. In the same year, Lord Howe, encountering twenty-six ships which the French by great exertions had sent to sea, manœuvred for three days, but on the “glorious first of June” bore down upon them and broke their line, captured six, and dispersed the rest, while 8000 men were killed or wounded on the French side against 1158 of the English. On September 16 of the following year, the Cape of Good Hope was taken by the English under Sir James Craig. The Dutch made an attempt to retake the Cape in 1796, but the whole of the armament they sent was captured by Admiral Elphinstone. In 1797 the Spaniards, who had declared war against Great Britain, put forth their full naval strength to attempt to raise the blockade which bound the ports of France. They were met by Sir John Jarvis, who had only fifteen ships of the line against their twenty-seven, and half the number of frigates.
By the well-known manœuvre the Admiral broke the Spanish line, cutting off a number of their ships, and when three of the largest wore round to rejoin their comrades, they were met by Nelson and Collingwood. Two of these Spanish ships got entangled with each other, and Nelson, driving his own vessel on board of one of them, carried both sword in hand, and received the sword of the Spanish Rear-Admiral in submission; this was afterwards awarded to him for his own possession. The Spaniards were totally routed and comparatively few ships were taken; the battle, which earned its commander the title of Lord St. Vincent, is considered one of the most important in the whole history of England.
In October of the same year, the battle of Camperdown was gained by Admiral Duncan, and these two victories together, by making the British complete masters of the home seas allayed for a while the terror of a French invasion. The mezzotint by James Ward from Copley’s famous picture, given in illustration, shows the variety of costume adopted by the British seamen at that time, the style of the officers’ dress, and gives a very good idea of the appearance of the picturesque old wooden sailing-ships in which such heroic services were performed.
The most amazing part of this splendid series of victories, all of which contained much boarding and hand-to-hand fighting, demanding personal pluck and endurance, is, that the sailors, as a mass, were either unwilling men pressed into a service which they disliked, or the very off-scourings of the country. On board there was bad food, bad water, wretched accommodation, and often rank brutality. There was the discipline of terror not of respect, and insubordination was only held down by fear.