But in this instance they were outwitted, for lo and behold, after running some time I saw a light right ahead, which I instantly knew to be Scilly light, and I called to Captain Wallis, who immediately hauled the ship off to the southward. If the weather had not cleared after the squall before mentioned we should certainly have made the port where Sir Clowdsiley Shovell took in his last moorings.
The gale separated the convoy, and in standing up Channel we had near run on the Bolt Head, but hauled off just in time. At last we arrived at Spithead, where a large fleet of men of war were assembled. Before we came to an anchor we had nearly run foul of several ships, and I remember the Invincible, 74, hailing us, saying, ‘You have cut my cable, sir.’ This was not all, for we shaved off the old Royal William’s quarter gallery, which some shipwrights were repairing—who had barely time to save themselves. We were not allowed to anchor at Spithead, but to proceed to the Motherbank to perform quarantine on December 4, 1794, after the most extraordinary voyage that ever took place since the expedition of the Argonauts. Here I left the Gorgon and joined the Victory, who I found to my astonishment at Spithead.
But before I quit the Gorgon I must relate a few things that happened on and before the passage home. At the time we left Corsica we had forty-seven French prisoners on board. One of them could play the violin remarkably well. One morning on the forecastle, this man was reading to some of his comrades, and having his violin with him, Mr. Duncan (our late master in the Berwick) requested him to play Ça Ira, which he for some time refused, being fearful of giving offence. At last he struck up the Marseilles hymn accompanied by his voice, which was very good, and when he came to that part ‘Aux armes, Citoyens, formez vos bataillons,’ etc., he seemed inspired; he threw up his violin half way up the fore mast, caught it again, pressed it to his breast, and sung out ‘Bon, Ça Ira,’ in which he was joined by his comrades.
Fired with the song the French grew vain,
Fought all their battles o’er again,
And thrice they routed all their foes; and thrice they slew the slain;
and seemed ready and willing for any mischief. But our soldiers were called up and the French were sent below, and not so many allowed to be on deck at a time.
On the passage we were frequently sent as a whipper-in among the convoy. On one occasion, a master of a merchantman was rather slack in obeying the signal and gave tongue when hailed; upon which Captain Wallis sent the first lieutenant and myself to take charge of his vessel. It was in the evening, blowing fresh, with a heavy sea, and we had great difficulty in getting on board; our boat cut as many capers as a swing at a fair, and in returning got stove alongside. We remained all night on board and had to prick for the softest plank. When Edgar, the first lieutenant, awoke in the morning, it was laughable to hear him exclaim, ‘God bass ‘e’ (for he could not say ‘blast ye,’ and for this he was nicknamed little Bassey) ‘What’s got hold of me?’ The fact was the night was hot, and the pitch in the seams waxed warm, and when he attempted to rise, he found his hair fastened to the deck and his nankin trowsers also. He put me in mind of Gulliver when fastened to the ground by the Liliputians. Captain Wallis having sent for us, we took this chap in tow. It blew very fresh, and the wind being fair, we towed him, under double reefed topsails and foresail, nine knots through the water, so that his topsails were wet with the spray. The master would sometimes run forward and hail, saying, ‘I’ll cut the hawser’; and Captain Wallis would reply, ‘If you do, I’m damned if I don’t sink you, you skulking son of a bitch; I mean to tow you until I work some buckets of tar out of the hawser.’
Our admiral (Cosby) was a glorious fellow for keeping the convoy in order, and if they did not immediately obey the signal, he would fire at them without further ceremony. While lying at Gibraltar a Portuguese frigate arrived, and one of our midshipmen (Jennings, a wag) was sent on board with a message from Captain Wallis. Having stayed a long time, the signal was made for the boat, and when she returned the captain asked Jennings what detained him. ‘Why, sir, to tell you the truth, saving your presence’ (for Jennings was a shrewd Irishman), ‘the commanding officer of the frigate was so busy lousing himself on the hen-coop that I could not get an answer before.’
When we arrived at Cadiz to join the convoy and to bring home dollars, the merchants used to smuggle the money off to the ship to avoid paying the duty; and for every hundred taken on board, they would give as a premium two dollars and sometimes two and a half. It was a dangerous traffic, but very tempting; and some of our officers while lying there made sixty and others eighty pounds. On one occasion, my old shipmate, Lieutenant Chantrell, fell down in the street with six hundred dollars at his back—a moderate load—and sung out to some of the Spaniards who were looking on, ‘Come here, you sons of ——, and help me up.’ Had they known what he had at his back they would have helped him up to some purpose; imprisonment and slavery would have been the punishment. The manner they carried the dollars was this. A double piece of canvas made to contain them in rows, fixed to the back inside the waistcoat, and tied before. It was to an English hotel where they were sent to be shipped. This house was kept by Mr., or rather Mrs., Young, an infernal vixen, who would make nothing of knocking her husband down with a leg of mutton or any other joint she had in the larder, and he fool enough to put up with it. She used to charge us very high for our entertainment, which is the case in all English houses abroad; and if you have a mind to be treated fairly you must go to a house kept by a native, who will never impose on you. Having got a load of dollars to take off, we found our boat had left the landing place; so we hired a shore boat, and it appeared their custom house officers had suspicions, for they gave chase, and it was by uncommon exertion that we escaped, as they were nearly up with us when we got alongside. And yet those very men who would have seized us used to smuggle. I saw one of them come alongside and throw into the lower-deck port a bag of dollars containing, as I understood, a thousand, with a label on the bag, and then shove off his boat to row guard and prevent smuggling!