Among the gallant deeds performed at this time, an action fought by the Fame, a privateer belonging to Liverpool, and commanded by Captain Fortunatus Wright, deserves to be recorded. While on a cruise in the Levant, she encountered sixteen French ships, one of them mounting 20 guns, with 150 men, fitted out expressly for the purpose of taking her. They engaged her furiously for three hours off the island of Cyprus, when the large ship was run ashore and her crew fled up the country. The Fame’s crew then boarded and brought her off.
By an Act of Parliament passed this year, every ship in Great Britain or his majesty’s plantations in North America was compelled on first going to sea to be furnished with a complete suit of sails, made of sail-cloth manufactured in Great Britain, under a penalty of fifty pounds. It was also enacted that every sail-maker in Britain or the plantations shall on every new sail affix in letters and words at length his name and place of abode, under a penalty of ten pounds.
By an order in council dated the 10th of February, 1747, established rank was first given to the officers in the Royal Navy, and a uniform clothing appointed to be worn by admirals, captains, lieutenants, and midshipmen. Hitherto they had dressed much as suited their fancy. The crew of a man-of-war must have looked more like a band of pirates than a well-ordered ship’s company of the present day. Even in later days midshipmen sometimes appeared on the deck of a man-of-war in rather extraordinary costume, as the following account, taken from the journal of an old admiral, will show.
“As we midshipmen met on board the cutter which was to carry us to Plymouth, we were not, I will allow, altogether satisfied with our personal appearance, and still less so when we stepped on the quarter-deck of the seventy-four, commanded by one of the proudest and most punctilious men in the service, surrounded by a body of well-dressed, dashing-looking officers. Tom Peard first advanced as chief and oldest of our gang, with a bob-wig on his head, surmounted by a high hat bound by narrow gold lace, white lapels to his coat, a white waistcoat, and light blue inexpressibles with midshipman’s buttons. By his side hung a large brass-mounted hanger, while his legs were encased in a huge pair of waterproof boots. I followed next, habited in a coat ‘all sides radius,’ as old Allen, my schoolmaster, would have said, the skirt actually sweeping the deck, and so wide that it would button down to the very bottom—my white cuffs reaching half-way up the arm to the elbow. My waistcoat, which was of the same snowy hue, reached to my knees, but was fortunately concealed from sight by the ample folds of my coat, as were also my small clothes. I had on white-thread stockings, high shoes and buckles, and a plain cocked hat, a prodigiously long silver-handled sword completing my costume. Dick Martingall’s and Tom Painter’s dresses were not much less out of order, giving them more the appearance of gentlemen of the highway than of naval officers of respectability. One had a large brass sword, once belonging to his great-grandfather, a trooper in the army of the Prince of Orange, the other a green-handled hanger, which had done service with Sir Cloudsley Shovel.” The writer and his friends had to beat a precipitate retreat from the Torbay, as, with a stamp of his foot, their future captain ordered them to begone, and instantly get cut-down and reduced into ordinary proportions by the Plymouth tailors. This description refers to some thirty years later than the time we are speaking of. The tailor had taken his models, the writer observes, from the days of Benbow; or rather, perhaps, from the costumes of those groups who go about at Christmas time enacting plays in the halls of the gentry and nobility, and are called by the west-country folks “geese-dancers.”
Vice-Admiral Anson, who had returned from his voyage to the Pacific, was now placed in command of a powerful fleet, and sent to cruise on the coast of France. He and Rear-Admiral Warren sailed from Plymouth on the 9th of April to intercept the French fleet, with which it fell in on the 3rd of May off Cape Finisterre, convoying a large number of merchantmen. Admiral Anson had made the signal to form line of battle, when Rear-Admiral Warren, suspecting the enemy to be merely manoeuvring to favour the escape of the convoy, bore down and communicated his opinion to the admiral, who thereon threw out a signal for a general chase. The Centurion, under a press of sail, was the first to come up with the rearmost French ship, which she attacked in so gallant a manner that two others dropped astern to her support. Three more English ships coming up, the action became general. The French, though much inferior in numbers, fought with great spirit till seven in the evening, when all their ships were taken, as well as nine sail of East India ships. The enemy lost 700 men, killed and wounded, and the British 250. Among the latter was Captain Grenville of the Defiance, to whom a monument was erected by his uncle, Lord Cobham, in his gardens at Stowe. Upwards of 300,000 pounds were found on board the ships of war, which were conveyed in twenty waggons by a military escort to London.
So pleased was the king with this action that, after complimenting Admiral Anson, he was created a peer of Great Britain, and Rear-Admiral Warren was honoured with the order of the Bath.
A sad accident occurred shortly afterwards in an action off the Azores, when the Dartmouth, Captain Hamilton, of 50 guns, while engaging for some hours the Glorioso, a Spanish ship of 74 guns and 750 men, caught fire and blew up, every soul with her brave commander perishing, except Lieutenant O’Bryan and eleven seamen, who were saved by the boats of a privateer in company. The Dartmouth’s consort, the Russell, pursuing the Spaniard, captured her after a warm engagement.
As an encouragement and relief to disabled and wounded seamen in the merchant-service, an Act of Parliament was passed in this year authorising the masters of merchant-vessels to detain sixpence per month from the wages of seamen. It was extended also to the widows and children of such seamen as should be killed or drowned. A corporation was established for the management of this fund.
Admiral Hawke in command of another squadron, was equally successful, having captured in one action no less than six large French ships.
The war terminated at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. The total number of ships taken from the French and Spaniards amounted in all to 3434, while the entire loss of English merchant-vessels amounted to 3238.