'Pushing forward with a strength equal to their animation, they soon climbed the entrenchments, and entering the embrasures in the face of a continued fire, and on the very muzzles of the guns, they drove the enemy from the works with considerable slaughter; and after spiking the cannon and burning the platforms, together with the gun-carriages, guard-house, and magazine, Boscawen led off his detachment in order, and returned to the fleet with six wounded prisoners. The Spaniards, fully sensible of the support which this battery had afforded them, were indefatigable in their endeavours to repair it; and having in a few days so far succeeded as to be able to bring six guns to bear upon the English fleet, Boscawen was again ordered to reduce it, but in a manner which exposed him less to personal danger than in the service in which it was before deemed expedient to employ him. He was directed to proceed with his own ship, the Shoreham, together with the Princess Amelia and the Lichfield, as close inshore as the depth of the water would admit them (a dangerous enterprise in consequence of the difficulties of the navigation here), to anchor abreast of the battery, and to bring the ships' broadsides to bear upon it; whilst, on the other hand, a detachment of seamen, under the command of Captains Watson, Cotes, and Dennis, were at the same time to storm it. These measures, taken with so much skill and prudence, would in all probability have ensured the success of the attack; but the Spaniards, intimidated by the formidable appearance of the assailants, abandoned the battery without firing a shot.'
But the place was too strongly fortified; and the siege of Carthagena was soon after raised (a circumstance which, by the way, tended to hasten the fall of Walpole). Yet before Boscawen left he was again employed, as at Porto Bello, to rase the different forts which the English had taken on the neighbouring coast; and, whilst engaged on this service, was appointed to the Prince Frederick, of 70 guns, on the death of Lord Aubrey Beauclerk, who gallantly fell at Boca Chica.
Clinton observes that the siege lasted from January to 24th April, 1741; and that as the surf prevented a bombardment from the sea, it was determined to make a lodging on Boca Chica, in order to reduce the fort there. The long-standing jealousy between the navy and the army was, he thinks, the cause of the failure of the siege. However that may be, three thousand men were lost by assaults and sickness; and the fleet returned to Jamaica.
On the 14th May, 1742, Boscawen reached home, or rather St. Helen's, Isle of Wight, bringing advices of Admiral Vernon's having sailed on a fresh expedition, which unfortunately proved abortive. But this year was memorable in his life for other than warlike exploits; for its close witnessed his marriage with the graceful, sprightly, and accomplished Frances Evelyn Glanville, of St. Clere, Kent; a lady sufficiently distinguished in her day to claim, as a Cornishman's wife, the notice which I have ventured to append to this sketch of the Admiral, her husband,—whose epitaph, glowing with eloquence, she was destined to write.
In the year that he married he was elected Member for Truro. And here it may be observed that the gallant naval officer was always extremely popular in his native county. One account states that he was 'positively adored' by the people, and that they insisted on sending him to Parliament as their representative, notwithstanding his reluctance to serve, on account of one member of his family being already there—namely, his father—in the House of Peers. Again, in 1747 he was elected for both Saltash (another old Cornish borough) and Truro; but he decided on maintaining his political connexion with the latter.
The next few months of his life would seem to have passed without any events of public interest occurring; but, early in 1744, war, arising out of the assistance given by the French to the Young Pretender's ill-starred descent upon England, broke out with France; and Boscawen was made Captain of the Dreadnought, of 60 guns. With her he very soon after captured the Medea, a French frigate of 26 guns and 240 men, commanded by a M. Hocquart—whom in the course of our history we shall twice meet again as Boscawen's prisoner. This was the first prize taken in the war. For some time he continued doing what may be called home duty—cruising in the Channel, sitting on courts-martial, and acting as Commodore on board the Royal Sovereign, at the Nore. Whilst acting in the latter capacity it fell within his province to send out several of the newly-pressed men as they were brought to him in company with some experienced seamen, in frigates and small vessels, to guard the mouths of many of the minor creeks and rivers along the shores of Kent and Sussex.
In January, 1746, he was appointed to the Namur, formerly of 90 guns, but afterwards reduced to a third-rate; and in November of that year, being in command of a small squadron at the mouth of the Channel, he captured two prizes—one a large privateer from St. Malo, the other a despatch-boat from M. De Jonquiere (the commander of the French fleet on the American station), with advices of the death of the Duc D'Anville, and of the consequent failure of the expedition under that officer's command.
We now approach the time when he was to receive his first wound of consequence, and to perform one of the most gallant and self-denying exploits of his brave career—a deed so daring and so brilliantly successful as to excite the jealousy of Anson, his superior officer, and thus to lay the foundation of an ill-feeling between those two gallant seamen which, it is to be feared, can be traced throughout their lives.
In 1747, whilst commanding a line-of-battle ship in the fleet intended for America, under Admirals Anson and Vernon, he was present at the gallant action of the 3rd May, off Cape Finisterre. 'Here,' says Campbell, 'Boscawen signalized himself equally by his heroism and his judgment. The French fleet, having got the weather-gage, kept up a constant and well-directed fire on the English ships as they turned to windward to form the line abreast of the enemy. But Boscawen, perceiving that our ships would thereby be disabled before their guns could be brought to bear upon the French line, and his ship being a very superior sailer to any of the rest, and being, besides, the leading ship of the van, pressed forward with a crowd of sail, received himself the greatest part of the enemy's fire, and singly maintained the conflict until the remainder of the fleet came up to his support; by which daring but judicious manœuvre he principally contributed to the success with which on that day the British arms were crowned.[92] On this occasion he was severely wounded in the shoulder by a musket-ball. His country, however, was not long deprived of his services by this misfortune, from the effects of which he recovered in a few weeks.' At Finisterre all the French ships, ten in number, were taken, including the Diamant, of 56 tons, commanded by M. Hocquart, who thus became, for the second time, Boscawen's prisoner.
Shortly after being made Rear-Admiral of the Blue, he was invested with a command which shows the remarkable estimation in which he was held by the Government, receiving, as he did, a commission from the King as Admiral and Commandant of a squadron of six ships of the line and five frigates, with 2,000 soldiers on board, ordered for the East Indies; and also as General and Commander-in-Chief of the land forces employed in the expedition—'the only instance, except that of the Earl of Peterborough, of any officer having received such a command since the reign of Charles II.' Yet, such were his tact and personal character, that no ill-feeling arose on the part of the troops thus placed under his command—in fact, as an officer, quoted by Campbell, quaintly says, 'the Admiral, by his genteel behaviour, gained the love of the land officers, and never was greater harmony among all degrees of men than in this expedition;' notwithstanding which it failed in effecting the main objects which it had in view, viz. the capture of Pondicherry, and the attack on Port Louis, Mauritius, en route thither. He sailed from St. Helen's on the 4th November, 1747; but owing to bad weather and contrary winds, did not reach the Cape of Good Hope till the 29th March, 1748; and here he remained a short time to refresh his jaded crews.