The Log of a Privateersman

by Harry Collingwood

The first thing now to be done was to see to the wounded. The carnage had been very great in proportion to the numbers engaged, and our men had no sooner sheathed their weapons than they went to work among the ghastly prostrate forms to separate the wounded from the dead. This task was soon completed, and it was then discovered that our loss had not been nearly so great as I had feared; the dead amounting to eleven, and the wounded to nineteen, three of whom were dangerously injured. Our own dead and wounded were carefully removed to the schooner, and then,—the unwounded Frenchmen having been driven below and securely confined in the hold,—the skipper put me in charge of the prize, with a crew of twenty men, and the two craft made sail in company, in pursuit of the merchantman, which was now hull-down in the south-western quarter. The moment that the two craft were clear of each other, and the sails trimmed, I set my people to work to convey the wounded Frenchmen below to the cabin, where, the vessel by good luck being provided with a surgeon, they were quickly attended to. When this was done it was found that the French loss totalled up to no less than twenty-seven killed and forty-four wounded, out of a complement of one hundred men with which she had commenced the engagement. She was a heavily-manned vessel, for, in addition to the number already given, she had thirty men on board the prize.

Having seen the wounded carried below, the dead thrown overboard, and the decks washed down, I had an opportunity to look about me a bit, and take stock of the noble craft that we had captured. She turned out to be the Tigre of Nantes, thirty-four days out, during which she had captured only one prize, namely, the ship of which we were now in pursuit. She was a brand-new vessel, measuring three hundred and seventy-six tons, oak-built, coppered, and copper fastened; of immense beam, and very shallow, drawing only ten feet six inches of water. She was extraordinarily fast with the wind over her quarter, running away from the Dolphin easily. But I suspected that in a thrash to windward, in anything of a breeze, the schooner would prove to be quite a match for her, with, perhaps, a trifle to spare. She mounted fourteen twelve-pounders, and her magazine was crammed with ammunition, it having been the intention of her captain to try his luck, like ourselves, in the West Indian waters.

It was about six bells in the afternoon watch when we filled away in pursuit of the ship, and the sun was within half an hour of his setting when we overtook and brought her to, the Dolphin being at that time some two miles astern of us. I knew that there were thirty Frenchmen on board her, but did not anticipate any resistance from them, since it would be perfectly clear to them that anything of the kind, although it might temporarily prevent our taking possession, would be utterly useless in the end, and only result in loss of life. I therefore lowered a boat, and, taking with me ten men armed to the teeth, proceeded on board and secured undisputed possession of the ship. My first act was to release the crew of the prize, after which the disarmed Frenchmen were transferred to the brigantine, and confined below along with their comrades, and while this was still in process of performance the Dolphin joined company, and Captain Winter came on board. He fully approved of all that had been done, and directed me to remain on board in charge, shifting himself over into the brigantine and placing the schooner under the temporary command of Comben. By the time that all these arrangements had been completed the night had fallen, dinner was about to be served in the cuddy, and at the earnest invitation of the captain of the ship, the skipper accepted a seat at the table. Meanwhile, all three of the craft had been hauled to the wind, on the larboard tack, and were heading to the eastward, the ship under everything that her jury-rig would permit to be set, and the schooner and brigantine under double-reefed topsails.

We now had an opportunity to learn some few particulars relating to our prize, and the circumstances of her capture by the French privateer, the latter being somewhat remarkable. The ship, it appeared, was named the Manilla, and was homeward-bound with a rich cargo of spices and other rare commodities, including several tons of ivory which she had shipped at the Cape, together with a number of passengers. She had here joined the homeward-bound convoy, and all had gone well with her until the springing up of the gale during which we had fallen in with the convoy. During this gale, however, she had laboured so heavily that she had not only lost her fore and mizzen-topmasts and her main-topgallant-mast, but she had also strained so much that she had made a great deal of water, necessitating frequent and long spells at the pumps. This, and the clearing away of the wreck of her top-hamper, had, as might have been expected, greatly exhausted the crew, the result being that, on the night of her capture, the look-out was not quite so keen as perhaps it should have been. But after all, as the captain remarked, there really did not appear to be any necessity for the maintenance of an especially bright look-out beyond what was required to provide against their falling foul of any of the other ships belonging to the convoy, and although he admitted that he had noticed both the brigantine and the Dolphin, which he had immediately set down as privateers, he did not consider them as enemies, and even if any such suspicion had entered his mind he would not have deemed himself liable to attack within sight and reach of eight men-o’-war. Therefore, when night came on, he allowed his exhausted crew to get what rest they could, keeping only a sufficient number of men on deck to meet any ordinary emergency. He was thus profoundly astonished and chagrined at being awakened about one o’clock in the morning to find his crew overpowered and safely confined below, and his ship in possession of a crew of thirty Frenchmen. How they had contrived to get on board, in the height of so heavy a gale, and with so tremendous a sea running, he had been unable to ascertain, the Frenchman in charge resolutely refusing to explain.

Such was the extraordinary story told by the captain of the Manilla; and that it was absolutely true there could be no doubt, for we had ourselves seen enough to assure us of that. I was greatly disappointed, however, at the captain’s inability to explain by what means the Frenchmen had contrived to board the ship in the face of such formidable difficulties; for that was precisely the point that had puzzled me all through, and I resolved to find out, if I could, for such a secret was quite worth the knowing.

Captain Winter had determined to return home with his prizes; and we accordingly continued to steer to the eastward all that night. The next morning at daybreak I turned to the hands and went to work to complete the jury-rig that the Frenchmen had so well begun; and, as the Manilla happened to be well provided with spare spars, we contrived, after two days’ hard work, to get her back to something like her former appearance, and to so greatly increase her sailing powers that the brigantine and the schooner could shake the reefs out of their topsails without running away from us. Meanwhile the wind had gradually hauled round until we had got it well over our starboard quarter, and were booming along at a speed of eight knots, with studding-sails set.

The officer who had been put in charge of the Manilla when she fell into the hands of the French privateersmen was a very fine young fellow named Dumaresq; a smart seaman, high-spirited, and as brave as a lion. We early took a fancy to each other, especially after I had offered him his parole, and we soon became exceedingly friendly. He possessed a rich fund of amusing anecdote, together with the art of telling a story well; he was refined in manner, excellently educated, and an accomplished pianist; he was, therefore, quite an acquisition to the cuddy, and now that the ship was no longer in his possession, was heartily welcomed there by Captain Chesney and his passengers. I scarcely ever turned in until after midnight, and by and by young Dumaresq contracted the habit of joining me on the poop and smoking a cigar with me after the passengers had retired for the night; and upon one of these occasions our conversation turned upon the clever capture of the ship by himself and his countrymen. This aroused my curiosity afresh, and after he had been talking for some time about it, I said:

“But how in the world did you manage to get aboard in such terrific weather? That is what puzzles me!”

“No doubt, mon cher,” he answered with a laugh. “And how to manage it was just what puzzled us for a time also. We knew that our only chance was to do it during the height of the gale; for if we had waited until the weather moderated, we should have had some of your men-o’-war looking after us and instituting unpleasant inquiries which we should have found it exceedingly difficult to answer. So, after considerable cogitation, poor Captain Lefevre—whose brains I understand you were unkind enough to beat out with a handspike—hit upon a plan which he thought might succeed. We had a few barrels of oil on board, and one of these he broached for the purpose of testing his idea. He had a canvas bag made, capable of containing about four gallons of the oil, and this bag he filled, bent its closed end on to a rope, and threw the affair overboard, paying out the rope, as the brigantine drifted to leeward, until we had about a hundred fathoms of line out, with our bag about that distance to windward.

“We soon found that the oil, exuding through the pores of the canvas, had a distinctly marked effect upon the sea, which ceased to break as soon as it reached the film of oil that had oozed from the bag. Still the effect was by no means as great as he desired, the oil not exuding in sufficient quantity to render the sea safe for a boat, so we hauled our bag inboard again, punctured it well with a sailmaker’s needle, and then tried it again. It now proved to be everything that could be desired; the oil oozed out of the bag in sufficient quantity to make a smooth patch of water with a diameter fully equal to the length of our ship; and, after testing the matter through the whole afternoon, we all came to the conclusion that our boats would live in such a patch, and that the experiment was quite worth trying. Wherefore three bags were made, one for each boat, and attached by a becket to a length of line measuring about twenty fathoms. Then, when night had set in, and the darkness had become deep enough to conceal our movements, the bags were filled and dropped overboard, the other end of the line being made fast to the ringbolt in the stern of the boat for the use of which it had been destined. A party of thirty men was told off—ten to each boat, with four additional to take the boat back to the ship in the event of our venture proving successful,—and the brigantine was then sailed to a position about a mile ahead and half-a-mile to windward of the Manilla; that being the ship that we had marked down for our prey. The great difficulty that we now anticipated was that of unhooking the falls with certainty and promptitude the moment that the boats should reach the water; but our captain provided for that by slinging the boats by strops and toggles attached to the ordinary fall-blocks. We were now all ready to put the matter to the test; but at the last moment the captain suddenly decided that it was too early, and that it would be better to defer the attempt until after midnight. This was done; and at the appointed hour the brigantine was once more sailed into a suitable position with regard to the Manilla; the boats were manned, lowered, and we managed to get away from the brigantine without much difficulty. She remained hove-to upon the spot where we had left her, and to make matters as safe as possible for us, capsized overboard the contents of two of the oil-barrels. This smoothened the sea to such an extent that, deeply as we were loaded, and heavily as it was blowing, we did not ship a drop of water. We allowed the boats to drift down to leeward, with their oil-bags towing astern, and with only two oars out, to keep them stern-on to the sea; and so accurately had our distance been calculated that when the Manilla came up abreast of us we only needed to pull a stroke or two to get comfortably under her lee. We boarded her by way of the lee channels, fore, main, and mizzen simultaneously; and that, let me tell you, was the most difficult part of our work, for the ship rolled so heavily that it was with the utmost difficulty we avoided staving or swamping the boats. Each man knew, however, exactly what to do, and did it without the necessity for a word to be spoken; and thus our desperate adventure—for desperate indeed it was, let me tell you—was accomplished without mishap. Ah! there goes eight bells; time for me to turn in, so I will say good-night, mon cher Bowen, and pleasant dreams to you!”