Dawlish Chronicles

The Crimean War (1854 – 56) is most remembered for images of the charge of Britain’s Light Brigade at Balaclava, the privations suffered by the ill-equipped besiegers of Sevastopol through a deadly winter and the achievements of Florence Nightingale, all episodes that took place in the Crimea itself. Earlier blogs have however pointed out that lesser-known operations took place in the Baltic and on the Kamchatka peninsula on Russia’s Northern Pacific coast. (Links to earlier blogs on this and other topics addressed in this article can be found at its end). The least-known operations of all took place however on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, in the White Sea and in the Kola Inlet. Both these locations were to play roles in both World Wars as landing points for aid sent by the Western Allies to Russia, most notably via the epic Arctic Convoys of WW2. They were also to provide bases for ineffectual British support of White Russian forces against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War.

British and Dutch shipping had been accessing Russia for trade by this area since the late sixteenth century – indeed the Dutch navigator Willem Barents (1550 – 1597) had given his name to the sea north of which forms part of the Arctic Ocean. Arkhangelsk, a major city at the southern end of the White Sea had remained a major trading port ever since. Murmansk, at the head of the Kola inlet further to the west, also had port facilities, though minor.

When Britain and France entered the war in early 1854 to support the Turks, who had already been fighting the Russians for several months, the decision was taken to send a small Royal Navy squadron to harry Russian presence in these northern waters by attacking shipping and forts. The Russian Navy had no significant presence in the area and weather conditions in winter made it advisable to confine operations to the summer months.

Esasmus Ommanney

The British squadron that was sent was under the overall command of Captain Erasmus Ommanney (1814 – 1904). He had been present at the Battle of Navarino when he was thirteen years old – naval careers began early in those days! He had previous experience in high latitudes as he had been second-in-command of the expedition sent in 1850 to search for Sir John Franklin and his ships Erebues and Terror which had disappeared during an effort to find the North-West Passage. It was Ommanney who discovered "fragments of stores and ragged clothing and the remains of an encampment Beechey Island " though no further trace could be found. Ommanney awarded the Arctic Medal for this and he was to spend of his later years in Arctic-related scientific work, for which he was knighted. He rose to the rank of vice-admiral.

HMS Miranda (on right) later in service in New Zealand waters

Ommanney’s squadron consisted of the 26-gun frigate HMS Eurydice and two near-identical steam sloops, HMS Miranda and HMS Brisk, carrying 15 and 16 guns respectively. The 910-ton, 140-foot Eurydice carried sail only and though she entered service in 1843 she was little different to frigates of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic War eras. Her ultimate fate was to be a tragic one, but at the time of the White Sea expedition that still lay some three decades in the future. All her guns were truck-mounted 32-pounder muzzle loaders, no different to those in service at Trafalgar. Though commissioned only a few years later, the Miranda and the Brisk, though also wooden-hulled, represented major technological advance. Improved versions of HMS Rattler, the first screw-driven warship in Royal Navy service, these two 1,523-ton, 196- foot vessels could make just over 10 knots maximum under steam power.This advantage was however offset by the fact that, like Eurydice, they were still armed only with 32-pounders on the broadside.

The White Sea - with thanks to Google Earth

The small force arrived off the north Russian coast in July 1854 and the campaign started by advancing towards the southern end of the White Sea. Here, on a small archipelago called the Solovetsky Islands was something of a curiosity – a Russian fortress that was also a monastery. Much of this massive construction dated from the 16^th century and then and in the early 17^th century, it had withstood attacks by the Livonian Order (a branch of the Teutonic Knights) and by the Swedes. It is hard at this remove to understand what was to gain by attacking this fortress. (In other blogs I have approvingly quoted Nelson’s dictum that “A ship’s a fool to fight a fort”).

Solovetsky Fortress-Monastery in 2009 (courtesy of Wikipedia entry)

Even had Ommanney destroyed this fortress-monastery – in itself an impossibility given the limited forces at his disposal – the strategic value would have been essentially zero. In the event the bombardment lasted two days – 6^th and 7^th July. It achieved nothing and had the fort been better armed the British ships might have stood a good chance of being destroyed themselves. Two weeks later, on July 23^rd, Miranda and Brisk, operating close inshore, bombarded the small town of Novitska.

Illustration from Russian pamphlet showing bombardment of Solovetsky Fortress

Contemporary British view of the bombardment

Kola Inlet today - 30 miles from
Baretns Sea in north to Kola/Murmansk

The only other significant action was further west, in the Kola inlet. Miranda sailed southwards – that is upriver – towards the settlement of Kola, just south Murmansk. Her steam propulsion was a major advantage since the thirty miles distance to be covered was against a strong current and in waters sometimes so narrow that there was scarcely room to swing the ship. Miranda anchored off Kola on August 23^rd and under a flag of truce a demand was made that the fort there, its, garrison and all government property be surrendered. The crew remained at their stations through the night and when no answer was returned in the morning, the flag of truce was hauled down, and the Miranda, getting within 250 yards of the shore battery, opened a fire of grape and canister. This supressed opposition enough to allow a landing party of bluejackets and marines to storm ashore. They succeeded in dislodging the enemy from the batteries and in capturing capture the guns. A hot fire was opened on them from the towers of a nearby monastery but its defenders were also driven out. Government stores and buildings, was immediately set on fire and completely consumed. Miranda then dropped downriver again.

That was the end of the campaign and the squadron returned to Britain thereafter. Miranda proceeded thereafter to the Black Sea to support the main Allied effort. Captain Edmund Moubray Lyons (1819 -1855), who had manoeuvred her up the Kola Inlet with considerable skill, died of wounds in June 1855. Miranda herself had an active career thereafter, mainly in Australian and New Zealand waters, and was broken up in 1869. Brisk was to have a similarly active career, most notably including service on the West Africa Anti-Slavery Patrol. She survived to 1870. The Eurydice, by then an anachronism, was to come to a tragic end in 1878.

And the final verdict on the White Sea expedition of 1854? It is easy to be critical with the advantage of hindsight, but even so one can only question why lives – both British and Russian – should ever have been squandered in a such a pointless exercise. The same applies to the operation in the Northern Pacific. What, in either case, was the strategic value?

Click on the links below to read earlier blogs about to topics mentioned above

North Pacific Operations 1854

Baltic Operations & First Victoria Cross 1854

HMS Rattler

HMS Eurydice

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Britannia’s Shark

1881 and the British Empire’s power seems unchallengeable.

But now a group of revolutionaries threaten that power’s economic basis. Their weapon is the invention of a naïve genius, their sense of grievance is implacable and their leader is already proven in the crucible of war. Protected by powerful political and business interests, conventional British military and naval power cannot touch them…

A daring act of piracy drags the ambitious British naval officer, Nicholas Dawlish, into this deadly maelstrom. Drawn in too is his wife Florence, for whom a glimpse of a half-forgotten face evokes memories of earlier tragedy. For both a nightmare lies ahead, amid the wealth and squalor of America’s Gilded Age, and on a fever-ridden island ruled by savage tyranny …

For UK click here to get more details and to read the first chapter

For US and rest of world click here to get more details and to read the first chapter

Like everybody who writes novels I’m frequently asked “Where do you get the ideas from?”

There’s no easy answer and I suspect that the process varies considerably between writers. One is usually drawing on a very wide knowledge and interest in a wide range of topics, and frequently the inspiration comes from what may be an all but subconscious asking of “What if…” Given a reasonable familiarity with the events, personalities, beliefs and politics of a given time it’s not too difficult to visualise the scenery within which a story can be set. What brings the story to life however is identification of the main characters and the challenge they must face. What are their strengths, their weaknesses, their drivers, their loyalties, their priorities, their moral compasses? When we meet them at the beginning of a novel they’re already living, breathing personalities, each with his or her own back-story that makes them what they are at this moment. That back-story may be hinted at – and in some cases main events in it may be briefly sketched – but as often as not it does not require extensive detailing in the current story. The reader does not to know all the details, but the writer must. Unless he or she knows what had brought a character to the point of their appearance on Page 1 or Page 25 or Page 100 then they can never be credible.

This train of though was initiated when I recently stumbled across an 1882 drawing from the Illustrated London News from entitled “Recruits”. It shows a recruiting sergeant with a small group who have just enlisted by “taking the Queen’s shilling”. They’re on their way to the regimental depot – since it’s in London it may be one of the Household Regiments – and they’re leaving their civilian life behind. And so too perhaps memories, histories, responsibilities and failures they might like to put behind them, but which may prove hard to forget.

For me this drawing crystallises so much about some aspects of the Late-Victorian period and it’s easy to imagine a back-story for each of the characters. It could represent “Act 1, Scene1”, the point of departure for a half-dozen linked stories. So let’s look in more detail.

First the setting. It’s London, spring or early summer judging by the clothing. The Houses of Parliament in the background hint at the confidence and power of Empire. A newsvendor has some news about The Queen – we can’t see what it is, but it might or might not be significant for the story that follows. We glimpse the driver of a Hansom cab in the background, and a fashionably dressed man, but the central group have turned away from this normality and are heading for another.

It’s on the group at the centre upon which attention focusses and from the reaction of the lady with the little boy, and of the dog in the foreground, there’s a hint that they’re already men apart who are heading off into the unknowable. So what could be the backstory of each of them?

The recruiting sergeant is a trusted and proven man – otherwise he would not be in this job. A decade before he might have been like any one of these men, but his whole demeanour tells of an identity that he has adopted fully and that he is proud of. It’s 1882, so there’s a good chance he may have served in the Ashanti and Zulu Wars, and perhaps has seen action on India’s North-West Frontier with Afghanistan. Whatever his story was when he enlisted he’s now at ease with his military identity and he has the confidence to draw others with him into the same path.

There are five recruits behind him.

On the extreme left is a “gentleman”, certainly from a “good family” and well educated. But he’s a waster – his financial and moral credit has run out through drink or women or gambling, or perhaps all three. He’s deep in debt and close to penniless. His parents are dead and his brothers and brothers-in-law, all solid and respected professionals, have finally given up on him. He has the choice between a leap off a bridge over the Thames and enlistment in the Army. He’ll give the Army a try - at least he won't starve. As a “gentleman ranker” he’s going to find it hard, not just the discipline but the company of the barrack room. In a year or two’s time he may put a muzzle in his mouth and push a trigger with his toe. But there’s another chance, a slim one, but not impossible. He may make the best of it, may distinguish himself in action – and there’s always plenty of it around in this period - and he may be given the choice between a medal and an officer’s commission. There’s hope, but he doesn’t see to at this moment. It’s interesting that his eyes are cast down, perhaps in shame. But it’s perhaps also to avoid the gaze of the lady who is hurrying past and pulling a little boy with her. She may have recognised him as her brother or her husband.

An agricultural labourer in a smock and gaiters also follows the sergeant, somebody straight from the pages of Thomas Hardy. He looks pensive and realises the full enormity of what he’s doing, but he’s accepting it manfully. But what is he escaping? It seems more likely to be poverty rather than family responsibilities, but how did he find himself in Central London rather than enlisting at some Wessex market town? There’s a mystery there. He’s likely to be good soldier. The life he’s heading to may well be less harsh than what he has left behind and he’s at least assured of three meals a day and a dry bed in barracks when he’s not on campaign. He’ll accept discipline easily, will prove reliable in all circumstances, may well be an NCO himself in the next decade. He’ll serve in the Sudan, the Boer War, in several minor Indian and African campaigns. He’ll be retired from the Army and working as a trusted warehouse supervisor in 1914 and he’ll return to the colours to help train Kitchener’s “First Hundred Thousand.” His son – also a regular – will be killed at Mons and his grandson will be a Second Lieutenant at El Alamein and a successful accountant thereafter.

The young man on the right, with cane and pipe, is probably a clerk, somebody from one of H.G.Wells’ turgid novels such as Kipps or Mr. Polly. He’s flashily dressed – more so than he can afford on his thirty-shillings per week. He may have joined up because he’s been embezzling and he knows that his employers are all but on to him. He has almost certainly enlisted under a false name and though he’s putting on an air of swagger he’s deeply worried about what’s to come. The Army will make or break him very quickly. He’ll probably resent the discipline and, at least initially, will be somewhat of a “barrack-room lawyer” until he realises that it will get him nowhere. He may quite soon be involved in misappropriations of some type and he may be cunning enough to carry it off for a long time. And yet there’s a small chance that he’ll take to the life, that he’ll do well in action, that he too could be a recruiting sergeant ten years from now – he’ll be glib enough with the patter that will entice others like him. Given a good NCO to take him in hand, he has possibilities.

The individual behind him in the “scotch bonnet” and half-mast trousers, is possibly a much nastier piece of work. It’s because of him that a policeman is bringing up the rear because if a close eye isn’t kept on him he’ll disappear He’s had numerous runs-in with law before now – nothing big or violent, but sly and underhand – but it’s never been possible to hang anything on him. The magistrates have had enough – they’ve finally got him for something and to save the rate-payer the expense of his incarceration he’s been given to option of joining the Army. He’ll keep his head done initially but he’ll be running a racket of some type as soon as he knows the system. He’ll chat on cards if he can and he’ll be a regular on the VD list. But he’ll be a survivor, in the short term at least, and when better men are holding their ground to the last he’ll have weaselled some way of avoiding any action at all. He’ll come to an unpleasant end however, not in the line of fire, but from a knife in the ribs from some pimp he has fallen out with.

A good man to have on your side.
It's two years on. Which of the five is it?

And finally, the young man at the back on the left. He’s naïve, has probably read stirring accounts of military life in the popular press. He’s got some basic education – he’s risen from office boy to very junior clerk, but he’s got a romantic streak and he thinks his soul isn’t fettered to an office stool. Girls don’t take him seriously and he’s had more than one disappointment in that line. He’s probably cannon-fodder. In a badly-conceived story he’ll be a type that’s a cliché in movies – the simple but decent young man who’ll be taken under the wing of the country bumpkin and may well die in his arms, probably clutching a picture of his mother. But he too, if given a good NCO to guide him, may well turn out well. He may end up doing excellent work in transport and supply rather than front-line combat, and he’ll be trustworthy and honest too. But in the meanwhile, as he’s chatting to the well-meaning policeman, who’s probably sorry for him, he’s giving the shifty type an opportunity to scarper.

So there we have it – one picture worth a lot more than a thousand words and possibly worth a series of novels. It’s 1882. Britain has very colourful and dramatic decades ahead and the Army will be in the thick of it. The possibilities are endless. Five men – six including the recruiting sergeant – are heading into the future.

Would anybody like to take up the challenge?

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Britannia’s Reach

In 1880, on a broad river deep in the heart of South America, a flotilla of paddle steamers thrashes slowly upstream. It is laden with troops, horses and artillery, intent on conquest and revenge. Ahead lies a commercial empire that was wrested from a British consortium in a bloody revolution. Now the investors are determined to recoup their losses and are funding a vicious war to do so.

But as brutal land and river battles mark its progress upriver, and as both sides inflict and endure ever greater suffering, stalemate threatens.

And Nicholas Dawlish, the ambitious British naval officer, first introduced in Britannia’s Wolf, finds himself forced to make a terrible ethical choice if he is to return to Britain with some shreds of integrity remaining…

Click here to read the opening via “Look Inside” on the Amazon page

The name Wasp is one of the oldest and most illustrious names given to ships in the United States Navy. The earliest, a schooner purchased by the Continental Navy in late 1775, was one of the first ships in American government service and since then ten more vessels have carried the name. The latest of these is the current Wasp, a 40500-ton amphibious assault ship launched in 1989 and currently in service. Two Wasps were aircraft carriers which saw extensive service in World War 2, the first of these being lost during the Guadalcanal Campaign and her successor, launched in 1943, remaining active until the early 1970s.

The Wasp of 1807 (r) lying across the bows of HMS Frolic - painting by Thomas Birch

In the 1807-1814 period, four Wasps were commissioned and two of these were to come to eerily similar ends. The earliest of these was a sloop-of-war which entered service in 1807. She was a compact and powerful vessel, carrying no less than sixteen 32-pounder carronades – murderously efficient weapons at close quarters – as well as two 12-pounder long guns on her 450-tons and 105-ft length. Her 140-man crew was small but this was most likely an advantage for welding it together as a well-trained and cohesive force. She remained in home waters until war broke out with Britain in June 1812 and she continued thereafter to operate off the American coast. In 14^th October she sighted a British convoy off the Delaware River. On investigation this proved to consist of six-merchant ships, escorted by a 22-gun sloop-of-war, HMS Frolic. The Wasp drew close during the night and at mid-morning on 15^th October the two sloops opened fire on each other in strong wind and unfavourable sea conditions.

As Frolic, like Wasp, had carronades as her main armament, the range was necessarily close. Unusually for the Royal Navy (though it was apparently common practice for the French) Frolic concentrated her fire on Wasp’s rigging, while the latter directed her own cannonade on the Frolic’s hull. Wasp suffered badly – the upper parts of her mast were shot away and many of her braces severed. Now unmanageable, she drifted slightly ahead and the Frolic collided with her. The initiative of the American commander, Jacob Jones, could not be praised too highly for he took immediate advantage of this situation. He delivered a single raking broadside – devastating at this range when carronades were involved – and then launched boarders. Frolic struck her colours. The action had taken twenty-two minutes and every British officer and half her crew – some 90 men in all – were either dead or wounded.

Contemporary illustration - a real morale-booster for the United States

Had the affair ended there it would have been a resounding triumph. Unfortunately however, the Frolic’s masts collapsed soon after the surrender and Wasp herself also needed extensive repairs. Neither ship was in a fit state to escape when a British “74”, the ship-of-the-line HMS Poictiers, arrived, en route to join the fleet blockading the American coast. Outgunned, and with two crippled ships on his hands, Captain Jacob Jones had no option but to surrender both Wasp and Frolic. They were taken to Bermuda for repair, after which the Wasp became was taken into service in as HMS Loup Cervier the Royal Navy, her name being again changed to HMS Peacock two years later. Under these names she saw significant service and captured several mercantile prizes. The changes of name brought her no luck and she disappeared without trace, with all hands, somewhere off the Virginia Capes, in July 1814.

The next Wasp was a schooner which went to sea under a privateer’s warrant in July 1812 – this meant that two Wasps were briefly in simultaneous service. She cruised in the West Indies later that year, captured at least one prize, and was lucky to survive a hurricane that cost her both her masts. She made one further, but unsuccessful, cruise as a privateer, her service ending in 1814. Yet another Wasp was by now in service, this one a chartered sloop that operated on Lake Champlain during the late 1813 and into 1814. Her charter ended without her having been in action.

Contemporary illustration

The fourth Wasp of the period was the replacement for the sloop captured by the British in 1812 and she was specifically constructed as a warship. Though tonnage and armament was comparable she was ship-rigged – i.e. had three masts, making her look like a miniature frigate. Commissioned in early 1814 she set sail in May to carry the war into the Eastern Atlantic and the approaches to Britain itself. She immediately captured four small merchant ships as well as a Royal Navy brig. Except for one vessel retained for prisoners, all were either burned or scuttled – one assumes that with Wasp’s small crew, some 170 men, and the manning demanded by her twenty 32-pounder carronades and two long 12-pounders, provision of prize crews would have diminished her fighting ability. The decision proved a wise one for on 28^th June she encountered the almost identically-armed Cruizer-class sloop Reindeer some 200 miles west of Cornwall

Marines on Wasp (r) repelling boarding attempts from HMS Reindeer

The resulting battle was brief – nineteen minutes – but it once again involved a ferocious exchange of carronade-fire at close range. The Reindeer made several attempts to get a boarding party on to Wasp but they were beaten back each time. It was now Wasp’s turn and her attempt at boarding proved successful. Reindeer struck her colours – her captain was among the 25 dead and there were in addition 42 wounded, a casualty rate of approximately 40%. She was too badly damaged to be taken as a prize and she was accordingly burned. Thereafter Wasp headed for the French port of L’Orient to land her prisoners and to refit, taking two small prizes on the way.

Now repaired, Wasp was back at sea in late August and immediately captured two brigs. On 1^st September she encountered a ten-ship British convoy and, even though it was escorted by a “74”, Wasp darted in, captured a brig, took off her crew, burned her and escaped without loss. Later that evening she sighted a solitary sail. It proved to be an 18-gun brig, HMS Avon. Wasp closed with her and in late evening – it would have been dark – opened fire. Following a merciless battering Avon struck her colours. Three further British warships now arrived on the scene and Wasp, outnumbered, made off, though not without sustaining some damage in a brief exchange of fire.

Johnston Blakely

Wasp’s successes continued through September and on the 21^st captured an 8-gun brig, HMS Atalanta. A valuable acquisition, a prize crew was put aboard her under command of a midshipman to sail her to the United States. She arrived in Savannah in early November.

And that was all but the last contact with Wasp. She was spotted by a Swedish merchantman in October, apparently heading for the Carribbean. She was never seen again.

Like her almost-twin and her namesake – later HMS Peacock– Wasp disappeared without trace, taking all hands with her. In her half-year of active service she had accumulated a list of successes seldom equalled in so short a time and it is ironic that she should ultimately have succumbed to Nature rather than to enemy action. Her commander, Johnston Blakely (1781 - 1814) was promoted posthumously to the rank of Captain. Three American ships have been named in his honour.

The War of 1812 left a proud tradition for later Wasps to live up to – and they did.

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Britannia's Wolf - the first book in the Dawlish Chronicles Series

1877: Russian forces drive deep into the corrupt Ottoman-Turkish Empire. In the depths of a savage winter, as the Turks face defeat on all fronts, a British officer is enmeshed and finds himself confronting enemy ironclads, Cossack lances and merciless Kurdish irregulars. And in the midst of this chaos, while he himself is a pawn in the rivalry of the Sultan’s half-brothers for control of the collapsing empire, he is unwillingly and unexpectedly drawn to a woman whom he believes he should not love.

Click here to learn more and to read the opening by the "Look Inside" feature

The war fought by Britain, France, Turkey and Piedmont in 1854-56 is normally referred to as the “Crimean War” since it was in the Crimea, on the northern shores of the Black Sea, where most of the combat took place. The Allied forces concentrated on besieging the great Russian naval base at Sevastopol and on destroying the fleet bottled up there and the siege, imagined initially as likely to be of short duration only, was to drag on for a year and a half, causing vast suffering to both sides. The first British action in the Black Sea involved bombardment and blockade of Odessa. Attacks were also made in peripheral and far-flung theatres far from the main theatre of war (See links at the end of this article to earlier blogs about these campaigns).

Thereafter, the Royal Navy’s main contribution to war in the Black Sea was support of the siege of Sevastopol by large scale but mainly ineffective bombardment as well as by escorting shipping bringing supplies northwards from Constantinople/Istanbul.

A major role for the Royal Navy - securing supply lines by sea
Here is British shipping in Balaclava Harbour, near Sevastopol

Some limited harrying of the extensive Russian coastline was also undertaken since, with the Allies having control of the Black Sea, the possibility always existed of them landing troops at some other point. We know in retrospect that the Allies were too stretched to do this but this has the benefit of hindsight. The danger could not be discounted at the time and each pinprick attack on the Russian coast demanded diversion of Russian forces that might otherwise been valuable in helping raise the Sevastopol siege.

Sevastopol under bombardment from the sea as well as from land

An early instance of such action was at Sulina, at the mouth of the Danube, and it took place in June 1854, even before Allied troops were landed near Sevastopol. The town of Sulina was of importance in peacetime as it was the export point for the vast grain production in the provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia. The channel had not yet been dredged – as it later was – to allow large ships to move upriver. Grain accordingly came downriver to Sulina in small boats and was transhipped there into sea-going vessels.

Sulina - seen here pre-war

Two Royal Navy paddle sloops, HMS Firebrand, commanded by Captain Hyde Parker, and HMS Vesuvius, commanded by a Captain Powell, were tasked with closure of the Danube. (Readers of this blog may remember Firebrand being in action against Argentinian forces in 1845 – see link at end). The initial action was on 22nd June when boats from both ships, supported by a Turkish gunboat, carried landing parties to attack a guard-house and signal-station some twenty miles north of Sulina. As they approached, signals rippled along the coast from station to station, to summon aid. Close to the landing point a body of Cossack cavalry was posted but it pulled back as it came under fire from the vessels close inshore. Sheltered by this fire, the seamen and marines landed from their boats, formed up on the beach and advanced in skirmishing order towards the Cossacks, who retreated on horseback. The station was immediately burnt, the signal-staff destroyed, and the landing parties returned to their ships in good order and – one must assume – high good spirits.

Russian Military Post on the Danube

In the following days several other stations were destroyed in the same way and on the night of the 27th June, Captain Parker raided the garrison of Sulina itself, though his force withdrew afterward and the town was not held. Among the prisoners taken was the Russian commander. The operations so far had been exemplary – minimal force for maximum effect – and they were upkeeping the tradition of aggressive small boats raids and cuttings-out of which the Royal Navy had made such deadly use of in the Napoleonic period.

Firebrand and Vesuvius now maintained a strict blockade of the Danube and landing parties continued to operate with impunity. Parker did however come to suspect that Russian forces had reoccupied a “Gabion” battery (essentially an earthwork) on the quarantine ground close to Sulina –

the location where crews suffering from infectious diseases would normally be confined. On 6th July therefore boats from both ships carried parties to investigate and, if required, to storm the position. Parker himself took command.

There was no sign of Russian presence until Parker’s own boat was close to the position. A single rifle-shot then flashed in the darkness and a volley followed, rounds thudding into the boat, one grazing Parker’s elbow, and another severely wounding one of the men. Parker immediately ordered the boat to pull round, and, as she retreated, he shot his own rifle back towards the enemy, which by now were pouring in a galling and heavy fire on all the boats. One of these, a pinnace grounded within fifty yards of the battery, putting its occupants at high risk.

Night attack on the Russian gabion battery - note high trajectory use of Congreve rocket

Parker now decided – probably unwisely, since surprise was lost – that landing was now his best option. The boats headed shorewards and he seems to have been the first to leap from his craft, shouting in the best tradition “We must storm — follow me, my men!” He and his followers rushed towards a line of high canes growing parallel with the river, and about fifteen yards from it. He advanced along this, firing, and knocking down a Cossack who confronted him. He paused to reload and in doing so was killed by a burst of Russian fire, one round of which took him in the heart. He fell into the arms of his coxswain and command devolved to his deputy, a Commander Powell. This officer seems to have been less precipitate and more cautious, since before advancing further he directed the boats to open fire on the battery with the light cannon mounted in their bows and with the Congreve rockets that some carried. The rockets, though difficult to aim and range with accuracy, were especially valuable since, like mortar shells, they could drop on targets not vulnerable to direct gunfire. This barrage gave sufficient support for the marines and seamen to storm the position and drive the Russians back into a marsh beyond where, wisely, they were not followed.

The final onshore action was a week later. On 13^th July a paddle gunboat, HMS Spitfire– of shallower draught than either Firebrand or Vesuvius – towed the latter’s boats across the bar at the Danube mouth. She opened fire on Sulina directly, driving off the Russians who had reoccupied it after the previous raid. This time there was no holding back. The marines and bluejackets who landed burned the town to the ground.

Parker’s death aside, these operations can only be regarded as text-book examples of economic use of resources, but which by their very aggressiveness secured a moral superiority that forced the enemy to divert resources that could be better employed elsewhere. In their way they were forerunners of successful commando ”hit and run” raids in WW2.

Links to other articles related to the above:

Battle of Obigado 1845

Bombardment of Odessa 1854

The Crimean War's North Pacific Theatre

The Crimean War’s White Sea Theatre

The First Victoria Cross Winner

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Britannia’s Shark

1881 and the British Empire’s power seems unchallengeable.

For UK click here to get more details and to read the first chapter

For US and Rest of World click here to get more details and to read the first chapter

It has been very noticeable over the last year that though commemoration of the First World War opened with a fanfare – and in Britain at least focussed on the Western Front to the exclusion of all else – it is notable that its profile in the media has dwindled steadily ever since. Throughout these months there have however been a number of 100^th anniversaries of losses and tragedies which provoked shock and anger at the time, but which are now remembered, if at all, only by the families of the victims. It is with one such case that this article deals, for though all shipwrecks are terrible an extra degree of horror is involved when the vessel in question is a hospital ship.

SS Anglia - seen in peacetime service in 1904

Away from the Western Front 1915 was not only the year of Gallipoli, but also of the first German unrestricted U-boat campaign. From February to August commercial shipping was especially targeted and two incidents in particular, the sinking of the liner RMS Lusitania in May and of the SS Arabic in August, both involving loss of American citizens, came close to drawing the United States into the war. It was to avoid this that in September orders were given that the German High Seas U-Boat flotillas be withdrawn from the commerce war. This did not mean the end of the killing however and merchant ships and fishing vessels continued to be vulnerable should they be considered to be contributing to the Allied war effort. In the month of November 1915 some 60 non-naval ships were sunk by U-boat action, either by torpedoes, by shelling, by explosive charges placed by boarding parties, or by laying of mines in coastal waters. This last was a role for which the submarine was particularly suited.

Le Calvados - she took 470 lives with her 04.11.1915

The vast majority of these craft were sunk in the North Sea, in the English Channel and Western Approaches, and in the Mediterranean. In addition two major troopships were torpedoed off the North African coast by the submarine U-30, the French Le Calvados on 4^th November, with the loss of 740 lives and the Italian Ancona, sunk four days later with some 200 lost. The most terrible loss of all, smaller in number of casualties but even more dreadful in detail, was the sinking of HMSS Anglia. The 100^th anniversary of this tragedy will be on 17^th November this year.

The Anglia as hospital ship. Her white hull and markings identified herself as such
to enemy vessels, and bought immunity, but mines could take no account of that

Built in 1900, this 1862-ton, 362-foot passenger ferry had served in peacetime on routes across the Irish Sea from Liverpool and Holyhead to Dublin. Her extensive public spaces and high speed – 21 knots – suited her for conversion into an auxiliary hospital ship in mid-1915. Serving on routes across the English Channel, she was an ideal vessel for carrying wounded back to Britain from France. She was sufficiently well thought of that when King George V, visiting France to review troops, suffered a riding accident it was on the Anglia that he was brought back to Britain.

UC-5 after capture by Royal Navy later in war -
small but very deadly. Note mine on deck.

Considering the vast numbers of troops who were carried across the English Channel in the war years, it is surprising that so few hospital or troop ships were sunk. This is the more so since German capture of most of the Belgian coast allowed U-boat flotillas to be based in the ports of Ostende and Zeebrugge. Nets and minefields offered some, but not impenetrable, defence against U-boats passing through the Straits of Dover, and the majority that managed to do so were focussed on raiding or mine-laying further west. The success of the mixed force known as “The Dover Patrol” in securing the safety of troop movements to and from France was to be one of the great, and now largely forgotten, epics of the First World War.

The Anglia was to be one of the victims of a U-boat which did pass safely through the British defences. This was UC-5, a small 168-ton minelayer submarine which entered service in mid-1915. In a career lasting just one year the mines she planted accounted for no less than 28 ships, including the British submarine E-6, as well as damaging several more.

In the morning of17th November 1915, the Anglia left Boulogne harbour and headed for Britain – a passage of a few hours only. On board she carried some 366 wounded men, of whom 166 were “cot cases” accommodated on beds or stretchers. She headed for a gap in the British sub-surface defences known as “The Folkestone Gate”, reaching it just after noon. Close to it she struck a mine, the explosion being sufficiently powerful to rupture a hole on the port side, just ahead of the bridge. She immediately began to settle by the bows, listing heavily to port as she did. The bridge had been wrecked, though the captain, Lionel John Manning, had survived. He immediately tried to have a radio-SOS transmitted but the set was damaged and the operator was injured.

Photograph taken from rescue ship - Anglia is down by the bows, Ure standing close by

The scene on deck as visualised by the
Illustrated London News

All now depended on the Anglia’s escort, the River-class destroyer HMS Ure, and other vessels in the vicinity. The Anglia had begun to settle so quickly that two of its hospital wards were flooded almost immediately and it appears that few escaped from them. Other wards became quickly awash and crew, nurses and the less badly-wounded patients now attempted to get the more severely injured cases to safety. Due to the listing only one lifeboat could be got away – this was on the port side and could take no more than 50 people. Despite this order was maintained and the behaviour of all involved appears to have been beyond praise as regards selfless courage and discipline. Stories abounded of nurses staying by the wounded as the ship settled and of amputees finding the strength to struggle on deck or even to swim.

HMS Ure (l) and Anglia (r), sinking

The Ure drew close to take off as many as she could, transferring them to a nearby collier, the SS Lusitania (a namesake of the liner torpedoed earlier in the year) and to HMS Hazard, an 1894-vintage Dryad Class torpedo-gunboat that had been converted for use as a submarine depot ship. By now the Anglia’s stern had risen so high that her propellers were uncovered, still rotating. The Lusitania had been just to the west as the mine exploded and she had immediately put about and launched two boats. Despite the hazard represented by the propellers these boats pulled in under the Anglia’s stern and allowed some 40 men to jump into them. As the Anglia’s head dipped further the Ure’s captain placed her across the sunken bows and managed to get yet more survivors away. The last off appears to have been a fourteen-year old assistant steward called Herbert Scott.

Artist's impression of Anglia's final plunge. Note the inaccuracies - HMS Ure is shown too large (r)
while the Lusitania, sinking in right background, went down later. Good propaganda but bad history!

The Anglia went down some twenty minutes after the explosion, and settled on the shallow seabed, her masts rising above the water’s surface. The tragedy was not yet over however.

The actuality - the Anglia's final plunge caught on camera

The Lusitania’s survivor-laden boats had just drawn alongside her when she too touched off a mine. As she settled, and rolled over, her boats managed to get her crew off. She floated for some time, keel up. By now however other ships had arrived on the scene and the survivors were quickly transferred to them.

Given the short time between explosion and sinking, and the incapacity and vulnerability of the passengers the Anglia carried, the casualty list could have been much longer had not such discipline prevailed. The 164 dead were made up of one nursing sister, nine Royal Army Medical Corps staff, and 129 wounded men. 25 of the Anglia’s own crew died.

UC-5 on display in Central Park, New York, after the US entered the war

And the UC-5? Her fate was a bizarre one. She ran aground off the British coast in April 1916. She was recovered and put on display in the Thames in London and afterwards, then the United States entered the war, in New York’s Central Park. Few who saw her there could have imagined the horror she had unleashed on the Anglia– yet dreadful as it had been it was just one more tragedy in a month of tragedies.

Britannia’s Reach

But as brutal land and river battles mark its progress upriver, and as both sides inflict and endure ever greater suffering, stalemate threatens.

And Nicholas Dawlish, the ambitious British naval officer, first introduced in Britannia’s Wolf, finds himself forced to make a terrible ethical choice if he is to return to Britain with some shreds of integrity remaining…

Click here to read the opening via “Look Inside” on the Amazon page

In reading about the classic Age of Fighting Sail – roughly 1700 to 1830 – one is struck by the fact that encounters between the British and French navies had an almost monotonous aspect in that the British almost invariable won and the French almost invariably lost. This applied to single-ship actions and small-scale operations, no less than to fleet actions. In this period the French were to score one significant triumph – albeit one which had enormous strategic and historical implications. This was the Battle of the Virginia Capes in 1781 which led to the British Surrender to American and French forces at Yorktown and secured the independence of the United States. A much smaller action, which occurred at the very outset of Franco-British confrontation in this war, was also to be a French triumph, and one that aroused enormous enthusiasm at the time.

The amazing M. de Beaumarchais
(What did he NOT do in his life?)

Covert French involvement in the American War was important almost from the very outset and it focussed on supply of arms and munitions to the rebel colonists. ( A key figure in this was the playwright Beaumarchais, the author of “The Marriage of Figaro”, soon to be turned into an opera by Mozart). It was only however in February 1778 that France and the United States signed a Treaty of Alliance. Britain declared war on France on 17^th March but hostilities were surprisingly slow in commencing. Not until June would the first battle take place and this was at sea.

In the run-up to the treaty signing a confrontation had occurred which, if handled with less tact on both sides, might have led to fighting starting earlier than actually happened. This was in January 1778 when a French Frigate, the Belle Poule, was carrying an American envoy back from France to America to report on progress of negotiations. This was Simeon Deane, brother of Silas Deane, one of the American commissioners in Paris. Two larger Royal Navy ships stopped the Belle Poule and demanded to inspect her. Though he would be outnumbered and outgunned were it to come to a fight the French captain, Charles de Bernard de Marigny, answered: “I am the Belle Poule, frigate of the King of France; I sail from sea and I sail to sea. Vessels of the King, my master, never allow inspections”. The British apologised and the frigate was allowed to proceed, though she had later to turn back due to adverse weather. The Belle Poule was to meet the Royal Navy again and would fight in first Franco-British naval engagement of the war.

French frigate Machault (1757)
Belle Poule was generally similar

Entering service in 1767, the Belle Poule was notable for being the first French ship to receive copper plating on her hull to deter the marine growths which would reduce a ship's speed appreciably. Thus equipped she was well suited to hydrographic missions, which occupied her from 1772 to 1776. Of 1150 tons at full load, and 141-feet in length, she was a typical 30-gun frigate of the time, carrying twenty-six 12-pounder long guns and four 6-pounders. It is notable that at this stage the short-range but high-firepower carronade, which was in the near future to increase the offensive capability of frigates so dramatically, had not yet made its appearance.

In June 1778 a major British force was sent to watch the French base at Brest, in Britany, thus initiating the long series of blockades that would continue with few interruptions in the wars that would occupy most of the years from 1778 to 1815. A major concern in 1778, as so often later, was to prevent a junction between the French Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleets. With 21 ships of the line, three frigates, and a characteristically aggressive orientation, Admiral Augustus Keppel (1725 – 1786), was well resourced for this mission. On 17^th June a small French reconnaissance force, consisting of the Belle Poule, a similar frigate named the Licorne, and two smaller vessels, encountered the British force north of Brest. Keppel, unwilling to have his squadron’s exact whereabouts reported, ordered the French ships to be run down and captured. The Licorne was captured during the following night after a brief combat.

Belle Poule and Arethusa - the action begins

The Belle Poule, accompanied by a cutter named Le Courier, found herself meanwhile chased by the British frigate Arethusa, which was also in company with a cutter, in this case HMS Alert. The Arethusa was herself originally a French vessel which had entered service in 1758 and had been captured by the Royal Navy the following year. The Belle Poule’s captain, Jean de la Clocheterie (1741–1782), refused a British order to submit to Arethusa and was greeted by a shot across his bows. He responded with a full broadside. de la Clocheterie’s objective was however escape rather than capture of his opponent and – as was to be so characteristic of French commanders in the coming decades – concentrated his fire on the British ship’s masts, yards and rigging.

Belle Poule's sails in tatters (r) and Arethusa (l) dismasted

The two-hour battle that followed was a slogging match and the Arethusa had the worst of it. She lost her mainmast overboard and was unable to close again after a small wind-increase allowed the Belle Poule to escape despite her shot-rent sails. She had suffered 30 killed and de la Clocheterie was among the 72 wounded. The Arethusa had endured a worse pounding, with 44 of her 198-man crew dead or injured. The arrival of Keppel’s force was her salvation however. She managed to cut away her wreckage, to rig a jury mast and to crawl away with Keppel’s squadron to fight another day.

The battle as painted by August-Louis de Rossel de Cercy
Arethusa on the left, Belle Poule still pounding her

As this was the first naval action of the war the Belle Poule’s stalwart performance was greeted with delight in France – not least, once suspects unkindly, since French victories at sea were so infrequent. King Louis XVI promoted de la Clocheterie, whose formal rank had bene Lieutenant, to Captain and received him at court. Here he was to play a hand of the card game piquet with Louis and was surprised when the King remarked during it that he was “unfaithful to his ship.” Louis then explained that "You are sure to abandon the Belle Poule to be captain of a ship with 64 guns"and in this way de la Clocheterie learned that he was being given command of the newly constructed Triton.

A bizarre aspect of the admiration of the action against Arethusa was that ladies appeared at court functions with their hair dressed in a style known as “Belle Poule”. This involved mounting a small model of the ship at the top of a complicated coiffure. One wonders indeed how often, or by how many, this creation was actually worn. The writer of this article, Antoine Vanner, does however remember being amazed as a boy when a court lady was shown wearing it in the spectacular 1935 Ronald Colman film of “A Tale of Two Cities” which was re-issued around 1957. Even with Hollywood’s resources this coiffure must have taken hours to construct, and scarcely less to remove – an indication of the insane levels of hedonistic expenditure in the near-bankrupt France that was already sliding headlong towards Revolution.

de la Clocheterie’s later career was a short one. He performed well at two further engagements but was killed, commanding L'Hercule, at the Battle of the Saintes, in April 1782, the major British naval victory of the war, but a useless one, as the outcome of the conflict had already been settled by the French victory at the Virginia Capes eight months earlier.

And the Belle Poule herself? Like the Arethusa before her she was captured by the Royal Navy in 1780 and saw active service under British colours until the end of the war. She was broken up in 1796.

---------------------------------------------

A personal update from Antoine Vanner

This has been a very busy week indeed. During it I approved the cover for the fourth Dawlish Chronicles novel, based on a painting commissioned from the talented artist Sara Lee Paterson and I also submitted the final manuscript for publication – more details will be provided here shortly. It will be available in both paperback and Kindle formats next month. I’m also about 25% of the way into the first draft of the next Dawlish novel (in addition to another which had gone through three drafts and is ready for the final one).

What has been for me the most novel experience this week has been proof-listening to the audio-book version of “Britannia’s Wolf”, the first of the Dawlish novels. It has been read by the American actor David Doersch and we intend to have it available before the holiday season. It’s been an amazing experience hearing my own words brought to life by a talented narrator. As an actor and director, David has worked at some of the leading Shakespeare Festivals in the United States most recently playing Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Virginia Shakespeare Festival. He is also an accomplished Fight Director, which is work that has taken him to 5 continents. Currently, he works as the Casting Director and Fight Coordinator for the live touring arena stunt spectacular, “Marvel Universe LIVE!” He literally gets to train superheroes for a living! I’ll be providing more details of the audio-book in the near future – it too will be available before Christmas. .

I was also flattered in the last week to be asked to be a speaker at the Weymouth Leviathan Maritime Literary Festival in March next year. I'll be delighted to be able to meet fans who can attend and to discuss my books and my approach to research and writing, with them. It promises to be a fascinating occasion. I'll be providing updates as details are firmed up but on the meantime, if you're in the UK in 12th-13th March period next year please consider reserving a slot in your diary. For further information click here.

RMS Cedric - a giant in 1901

One of the more attractive aspects of the Victorian Age was the willingness to take on large and often unprecedented engineering challenges. This was perhaps never more so than at sea where, in the course of less than a century the definition of what constituted “a large vessel” changed by a factor of over 600%. In 1805, at the time of the Battle of Trafalgar, HMS Victory, of 3500 tons and 220 feet long, wind-powered and of wooden construction, was almost certainly larger than any merchant ship afloat. By 1901 the largest type of ship, the ocean liner, was typified by the “Big Four” built for the White Star Line – Celtic, Cedric, Baltic and Adriatic– of over 21000 tons and 720 feet long, driven at 17 knots by steam-power and built of steel.

For the world’s navies the process had taken off in the 1860s, with the arrival of the sea-going ironclad, typified by the Royal Navy’s innovative HMS Warrior of 9200 tons and 420 feet long. Yet larger ironclads were to follow in quick succession. Maintenance of such huge vessels, especially exterior access to their hull-plating below normal water level, posed new challenges. The mechanics of corrosion caused by galvanic action was still imperfectly understood and so demanded regular inspection – and if necessary renewal – of plating. As a global mercantile power, dependent on naval protection in time of war, it was essential that Britain should have necessary repair facilities at its major bases scattered through the world. The most important facility available at any such location was a drydock which would allow full access to all parts of a hull exterior.

HMS Warrior - on display in Portsmoouth today

During the 19^th Century the British island-possession of Bermuda, in the western part of the North Atlantic, was an important Royal Navy base. It was well placed for support of operations not just in the Atlantic but in the Caribbean as well and as such it replaced Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1818 as the headquarters for the North America and West Indies Station. It was well defended with fortifications and coastal artillery batteries and a repair-dockyard was an essential requirement. Such a facility was accordingly constructed at Ireland Island on the west side of the Bermuda group. Much of the work was accomplished by convict labour, which was only finally withdrawn in 1863.

Bermuda dockyard in 1848 - note three hulks at right centre for accommodation of convicts

Construction of a conventional drydock – a basin which could be open to the sea and into which a ship could be floated, and which could be closed off by watertight gates and pumped dry – proved however to be challenging in the extreme. The problem was that the sandstone which constituted Ireland Island was porous, so that pumping out of any flooded excavation was negated by constant influx of water. The solution finally decided upon in the late 1860s was therefore to build a floating drydock. Such items were ship-length constructions of U-shaped cross section. When compartment’s in their bottoms were opened to flooding, they could sink until only the tops of the U’s arms remained above the surface.

Sequential operation of floating drydock (l to r) - as illustrated in an 1870 book on the Bermuda project

A ship could then be manoeuvred between the sides and when the bottom compartments were once more pumped dry the dock would rise, carrying the ship with it. An additional advantage of such docks is that they are mobile and can be built at a shipyard and towed thereafter to another location, or even succession of locations.

The Bermuda drydock nearing completion, Woolwich, 1868

By the 1860s the floating dock concept was known and proven but the growth in ship size demanded that what was needed for Bermuda would be the biggest such unit yet built. It was to take ships of up to 10000 tons – including Britain’s new ironclads – but its location in Bermudan waters, where marine growth was likely to foul it underwater valves and piping, would demand the facility to allow regular “careening” – cleaning by scraping. The design that resulted was 380 feet long and 120 feet separation between its vertical sides. It could accommodate vessels longer than its own length and its own displacement was 8400 tons.

The dock being careened during its working life, rolled over by flooding to expose the bottom

Construction started at the Campbell and Johnstone shipyard on the river Thames, near Woolwich, in 1866 – in this period, and up to the beginning of the 20teh Century, London was still a major ship-building centre. Construction was of iron – use of steel was still a decade or more in the future – and some 1400 men were involved in the work. It was launched, after one failed attempt, in September 1868 and was taken downriver to Sheerness, where it was submerged to wait out winter storms until the following year.

The dry dock under tow, as seen from HMS Warriot - HMS Terrible can be glimpsed astern
and linked to it to facilitate manoeuvring.

A tow of this magnitude and length – allowing for course alterations this was to amount to just under 4000 nautical miles – had not been attempted previously. Timing was essential so as to minimise the chance of encountering story weather. The start of the towing operation was accordingly postponed until June 1869.The specialist ocean-going tug concept had not yet been developed and two of Britain’s largest ironclads, Agincourt and Northumberland– were therefor tasked with the first leg of the tow, from Britain to Madeira. This proceeded without incident, as did the second leg, from Madeira to Bermuda, the task now passing to HMS Warrior and her sister BlackPrince. The average speed for the entire tow was a very respectable 4.8 knots, with 6 knots being exceeded on two occasions. Progress was helped by the open ends of the dock being closed off with pointed “cutwaters” to reduce drag, and when following winds were encountered a sail was rigged within the dock to take advantage of it. Manoeuvring was assisted by the veteran paddle-slop HMS Terrible being linked to the dock’s stern (see illustration above).

Triumphant progress, Warrior and Black Prince towing, Terrible astern of drydock

After its successful arrival in Bermuda the floating drydock was to provide over three decades of service until replaced by a new, steel, unit, in 1906. It was sold for scrap thereafter to a German company but while being towed away broke loosed and grounded on a reef. Her remains are still visible off Spanish Point, Bermuda.

Small cruiser HMS Psyche in the floatign dock, circa 1900

A wonder in its time, one cannot but speculate how many of our greatest engineering achievements today will be forgotten like the Bermuda dry dock as century and a half from now. Sic transit gloria mundi.

A personal update from Antoine Vanner

The last 10 days have been very busy indeed. During it I approved the cover for the fourth Dawlish Chronicles novel, based on a painting commissioned from the talented artist Sara Lee Paterson and I also submitted the final manuscript for publication – more details will be provided here shortly. Today I received the proof copy and this is currently under intensive scrutiny!

The new book will be available in both paperback and Kindle formats next month. I’m also about 25% of the way into the first draft of the next Dawlish novel (in addition to another which had gone through three drafts and is ready for the final one).

What has been for me the most novel experience this week has been approving, after “proof-listening”, the audio-book version of “Britannia’s Wolf”, the first of the Dawlish novels. It has been read by the American actor David Doersch and we intend to have it available before the holiday season. It’s been an amazing experience hearing my own words brought to life by a talented narrator. As an actor and director, David has worked at some of the leading Shakespeare Festivals in the United States most recently playing Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Virginia Shakespeare Festival. He is also an accomplished Fight Director, which is work that has taken him to 5 continents. Currently, he works as the Casting Director and Fight Coordinator for the live touring arena stunt spectacular, “Marvel Universe LIVE!” He literally gets to train superheroes for a living! I’ll be providing more details of the audio-book in the near future – it too will be available before Christmas.

I was also flattered in the last week to be asked to be a speaker at the Weymouth Leviathan Maritime Literary Festival in March next year, where I’ll also be running a workshop on plot-developments for aspiring writers. I'll be delighted to be able to meet fans who can attend and to discuss my books and my approach to research and writing, with them. It promises to be a fascinating occasion. I'll be providing updates as details are firmed up but on the meantime, if you're in the UK in 12th-13th March period next year please consider reserving a slot in your diary. For further information click here.

It is only in the last few days, while perusing a publication of mid-19^th Century vintage that I came across a reference to Admiral Sir Nesbit Josiah Willoughby (1777–1849) who “has so lately departed from the scene of earthly fame.” The writer went on to portray Willoughby as “one of those men from whose breast all sense of danger seems to have been banished.” Instances to evidence this were then quoted, some of which I’ll refer to later in this article. He seems to have been an extraordinary figure, one whom a novelist would hesitate to create lest accused of exaggeration.

The Guns of HMS Sceptre - by Lady Anne Barnard

I hadn’t come across Willoughby before, though I’ll do my best to find out more, particularly as the regards the most unusual phase of his career. He had entered the Royal Navy in 1790 and in 1799 he was lucky to have survived the wreck of the 64-gun HMS Sceptreat Table Bay, at Cape Town, South Africa. She was caught at anchor by a sudden storm and her cables parted. She was driven onto a nearby reef and pounded to destruction. Over 350 of her crew died and there were only 42 survivors. One was Willoughby.

The Battle of Copenhagen - a brutal slogging match. Painting by Christian Molstead

Willoughby was to distinguish himself in 1801, as a lieutenant, at the Battle of Copenhagen. Here he boarded the Danish ship Provestein “under fire from her lower-deck guns ,and with only thirty men, succeeded in keeping possession of her in the most trying circumstances” (One is impressed by how the Victorians could refer to close-quarter slaughter by terms such as “trying circumstances”!) This should have led to greater things but Willoughby was court-martialled for “insolent behaviour” to a senior officer. He seems to have had previous form on this score and as this was a second offence he was dismissed from the service.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758-1806)

When war with France resumed in 1803, following the short-lived peace of Amiens, Willoughby immediately volunteered for service – insolent or not, capable officers must have been at a premium. He soon found himself assigned to the Blockade of Haiti (or “Saint-Domingue” as it was then referred to) which had been almost completely overrun by Haitian forces under the command of the brilliant and ruthless General Jean-Jacques Dessalines. The remaining French forces were isolated in the two large ports of Cap Français and Môle-Saint-Nicolas and a few smaller settlements. When war broke out in May 1803, Britain immediately despatched a squadron to eliminate communication between the French outposts and to capture or destroy the French warships based in the colony. Several actions followed and some of the French ships manged to Spain. One significant action was when HMS Hercule, on which Willoughby was serving, encountered the French frigate Poursuivante. A spirited action followed but the more nimble Poursuivante managed to escape. In this period the Hercule was caught in a hurricane. Willoughby was in the sick bay at the time but when the fore-topmast was carried away his illness did not stop him going aloft to help clear the wreckage.


Poursuivante vs HMS Hercule: byLouis-Philippe Crepin (CC BY-SA 2.0 fr)

By November the French garrison at Cap Français was starving and an agreement was negotiated by them with the Haitians that they could evacuate safely provided they would leave by 1st December. The British blockading force refused the French permission to sail and there was no option but to surrender. A French ship, the Clorinde, that attempted to escape but was almost wrecked but saved by Willoughby, who not only rescued the 900 people on board, but also refloated the vessel.

Action against the Dutch forces on the Caribbean island of Curacoa now followed. A British force was landed and began siege operations which were ultimately to be abandoned as too costly. One of the officers who landed was Willoughby “who had charge of the advanced batteries and, in order to encourage his men under the tremendous fire that was kept up, he took his meals in the most exposed situation. The earth was ploughed up all around him, and one man we believe was killed close to the spot; but still the table and chair of the daring young officer who sat there remained untouched. On one occasion Lieutenant Samuel Perrott R.M. (Royal Marines) was induced to seat himself in the chair; scarcely had he done so when a shot came, took off his left arm, badly wounded the knee upon which it had been resting, and knocked the table to atoms.”

One can but wonder whether Willoughby’s heroics on this occasion were in fact in any way supportive of the morale of his men. One suspects that he might not have been popular for such behaviour and he was later to gain a reputation for taking “a great delight in inflicting punishment”, which was ultimately to lead to another court-martial, in 1808. On this occasion he was acquitted, but with the advice “to be more moderate in future in his language”.

Duckworth's squadron forcing the Dardanelles

Willoughby had the distinction of the last man to leave Curacao when the British withdrew, just as he had been the first ashore, and he had destroyed one of the main defences, Fort Piscadero, which he had led a storming party to capture. His name next came to prominence in 1807, during the Royal Navy’s successful attempt to run a fleet up the Dardanelles (this operation – which was more successful than the attempt 108 years later – is worth a future blog). Willoughby was now serving on the “74” HMS Ajaxand on 14^th February, while anchored off the island of Tenedos, just outside the Straits, she caught fire. At the cost of some 250 lives she was to be a total loss. Willoughby distinguished himself in rescuing survivors but suffered burns himself. A few weeks later he was injured in another shore attack, so badly that a surgeon pronounced his wounds to be mortal. “He had been struck by two pistol balls, one of which entered his head in the direction of the brain, where it remained through his lifetime, while the other cut his cheek in two.”

HMS Ajax

Surviving, and now an acting but not yet confirmed post-captain, Willoughby was appointed to command of the 36-gun ex-French frigate HMS Nereide. In her he was to be involved in the 1809-11 campaign to capture the French island-base of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Further raids by landing parties – which Willoughby was now well versed in – led to his confirmation as “post”. In one such attack he was however wounded very seriously again –this time when a musket he was firing exploded and shattered his jaw. A complicated series of naval engagements followed – they deserve an article to themselves in due course – but they were to culminate in the disastrous Battle of Grand Port, which was to be the only significant French naval victory in the Napoleonic wars. In the course of it two French frigates, Bellona and Minerve, a corvette, Victor, and two captured East-Indiamen, Windhamand Ceylon, trapped four British frigates, Sirius, Iphegenia, Magicienne and Nereide in a bay. Sirius ran aground and was burned to avoid capture, Magicienne was similarly destroyed and Nereide lost main and mizzen masts and was beaten to a wreck before Willoughby surrendered her. Iphigeniaalmost escaped but was captured when a larger French force arrived.

Battle of Grand Port, 1810 - by Pierre-Julien Gilbert (CC BY-SA 2.0 fr)

On Willoughby’s Nereide222 out of her 281 man crew were dead or wounded. Among the latter was – inevitably – Willoughby himself and he found himself treated in the same room as the wounded French commander, Duperré . Released after the British capture of the island ,Willoughby was duly court-martialled for the loss of his ship. He was acquitted with the comment that “the Nereidehad been carried into action in a most judicious, officer-like and gallant manner.” Despite this he was not offered a new command.

Willoughby now took the most remarkable step of his career, and entered the phase which is apparently least documented. In 1812 he offered his services to the Russian government and was accepted for service on land rather than at sea. Appointed Colonel he was soon in action against the invading French and he was taken prisoner “owing to his generosity in giving his horse up to some wounded Russian soldiers, and thus became involved in all the horrors of the retreat from Moscow.” The nature of his subsequent adventures is uncertain – though this writer, Antoine Vanner, is thirsting to find out more. According to the “Annual Register” in the year of his death it was recorded that “at Leipzig had his right arm shattered by cannon shot”. How he came to be involved at this “Battle of Nations” in 1813 must be a dramatic story in his own right.

Retreat from Moscow 1812 - Willoughby survived it

Willoughby saw some further service in the Royal Navy thereafter and was knighted twice, the second time apparently by accident because the “Sailor King” William IV had forgotten that he was already knighted. (It seems inevitable that such bizarre incidents should continue to feature in Willoughby’s career.) He was advanced to Rear Admiral of the Blue in 1817. In his later years he appears “to have got religion” and 1839 published “Extracts from Holy Writ and various Authors, for Soldiers and Seamen “, which was described as “a pious and well-intentioned compilation from a very heterogeneous set of authors”. He never married.

The “Annual Register” listed at the time of his death his other injuries besides that sustained at Leipzig : "He was eleven times wounded with balls, three times with splinters, and cut in every part of his body with sabres and tomahawks: his face was disfigured by explosions of gunpowder, and he lost an eye and had part of his neck and jaw shot away.”

Few officers of his era had survived as much – it was rightly said that “he seems to have possessed more lives than a cat with all the courage of a British lion.” One wishes to know yet more about this amazing man.

======================

Britannia's Wolf - the first book in the Dawlish Chronicles Series

Click here to learn more and to read the opening by the "Look Inside" feature

Fisher in 1902 - cartoon by "Spy"

Few men can have had a greater influence on naval warfare than John Fisher (1841 – 1920), later Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher. This formidable figure, a human whirlwind, was responsible for building HMS Dreadnought, thereby “making every other battleship afloat obsolete overnight” and for reorganising the Royal Navy in the years before World War 1. He did this in the teeth of strong internal opposition but he brought to the process keen strategic insights as to its composition and disposition. Had his career ended in 1911 at the end of his appointment as First Sea Lord, the professional head of the Royal Navy his reputation would have been greater still. It was unfortunate that, at the age of 73, he was reappointed to this same position in 1914. Well past his best, he held it, in increasing rancour with his political opposite number, Winston Churchill, until he resigned in connection with the catastrophe that had developed in the Dardanelles operation against Turkey.

The fascination of Fisher’s career is that he entered a navy of wooden ships and smoothbore cannon, commanded by veterans of the Napoleonic era, but he went on to create a steel navy that employed big guns, torpedoes, radio, submarines and aircraft. His nomination to the Navy, at the age of 13, was by Admiral Sir William Parker (1781 – 1866), the last survivor of Nelson’s captains. Readers of The Dawlish Chronicles will find several references to Fisher, including Nicholas Dawlish’s first meeting with him at the Storming of the Taku forts in China in 1859).

The paddle dispatch vessel HMS Coromandel in the Far East
She was Fisher's first command,, a temporary one - and he was just 19 years old

My Treasured Copy

This article is not an account of Fisher’s life, but deals rather with Fisher’s “Memories” – note, not “Memoirs” – which he wrote in the year before his death. I found a copy in a second-hand bookshop some 40 years ago and I’ve been dipping into it since as it is not only of great historical interest but is vastly entertaining to boot. It can be best described as a “brain-dump”, with reminiscences, statements of opinion, proverbs, aphorisms. trivialities, obsessions and much else all mixed up in no particular order. I haven’t encountered any comparable book ever. One suspects that much of the veracity has be treated – Fisher’s memory was perhaps failing even if his energy and vehemence remained undiminished. Few other eminent figures can have referred in a published book to “Some venomous reptile (his name has disappeared - I tried in vain to get hold of it)”, or to human “limpets, parasites, sycophants, and jellyfish”, even if they would have liked to have done so.

What follows are direct quotes. I’ve concentrated on Fisher’s opinions (in some cases obsessions) and may return in a future blog to his accounts of key events. The preface gives a foretaste, and Fisher’s full use of fonts available merits it being shown in a direct scan.

Fisher mentions at the beginning of the book that he started work on 7^th September 1919.

“My reluctance to this book being published before my death is increasingly definite; but I have put my hand to the plough, because of the overbearing argument that I cannot resist, that I shall be helping to:

(a) Avoid national bankruptcy.

(b) Avert the insanity and wickedness of building a Navy against the United States.

(d) Enable the United States and British Navies to say to all other Navies "If you build more, we will fight you, here and now. We’ll 'Copenhagen' you*, without remorse."

This is why I have consented, with such extreme reluctance, to write letters to The Times and dictate six articles; and having thus entered into the fight, I follow the advice of Polonius - Vestigia nulla retrorsum (We Do Not Retreat). And so, today, I will begin this book – not an autobiography, but a collection of memories of a lifelong war against limpets, parasites, sycophants, and jellyfish - at one time there were 19 and ½ millions sterling of 'em'. At times they stung ; but that only made me more relentless, ruthless and remorseless.”

(* by “Copenhagening” Fisher meant launching a pre-emptive strike, if necessarily without declaration of war, as the Japanese did at Port Arthur in 1904. One story is that he proposed doing this in peacetime to the eliminate the German Navy to King Edward VII who, not surprisingly, told him “Fisher – You’re Mad!” – Antoine Vanner)

Fisher was proud of being emphatic in manner. Even King Edward VII did not escape:

The man who reads this in his arm-chair in the Athenaum Club would take it all quite differently if I could walk up and down in front of him and shake my fist in his face.

(It was a lovely episode this recalls to my mind. King Edward- God bless him! – said to me once in one of my moments of wild enthusiasm: “Would you kindly Ieave off shaking your fist in my face?”)

I tried once, so as to make the dead print more lifelike, using different kinds of type-big Roman block letters for the "fist-shaking," large italics for the cajoling, small italics for the facts, and ordinary print for the fool. The printer's price was ruinous, and the effect ludicrous. But I made this compromise and he agreed to it -whenever the following words occurred they were to be printed in large capitals: "Fool,"“Ass”, “Congenital idiot.”

Myself, I don't know that I am singular, but I seldom read a book. I look at the pages as you look at a picture, and grasp it that way. Of course, I know what the skunks will say when they read this -"Didn't I tell you he was superficial ? And here he is judged out of his own mouth.”

Fisher as First Sea Lord 1904-1910

One particular Chapter heading is irresistible:

Chapter VII

A JEU D’ESPIRIT

BOWS AND ARROWS – SNAILS AND TORTISES –

FACILE DUPES AND SERVILE COPYISTS

An entire chapter, entitled “THINGS THAT PLEASE ME” is a mixture of insights of genius, common sense, obsessions, trivialities and just about anything that came into Fisher's head. Here’s a section, separated as he listed them.

* * *

Thou shalt not kill, but needst not strive Officiously to keep alive! (When catching Submarines)"

* * *

I never bother to bother to bother about anyone who doesn’t’ bother about Me!

* * *

"Put on the impenetrable armour of contempt and fortitude."

* * *

Never fight a Chimney Sweep; some of the soot comes off on you.

* * *

“Liberty of Conscience" means doing wrong but not worrying about it afterwards.

* * *

" Tact" is insulting a man without his knowing it.

* * *

Even a man's faults may reflect his virtues.

* * *

Sincerity is the road to Heaven.

* * *

I thought it would be a good thing to be a missionary, but I thought it would be better to be First Sea Lord.

* * *

Think in Oceans – shoot at sight.

* * *

Big Conceptions and Quick Decisions.

* * *

Napoleonic in Audacity,

Cromwellian in Thoroughness.

Nelsonic in Execution.

* * *

"Surprise"– the pith and marrow of war!

* * *

Audacity and Imagination beget Surprise

* * *

Rashness in War is Prudence.

* * *

Prudence in war is Imbecility.

* * *

Hit first ! Hit hard ! Keep on hitting ! ! (The 3 H's)

* * *

The 3 Requisites for Success – Ruthless, Relentless, Remorseless (The 3 R's)

* * *

BUSINESS – CaIl on a Business man in Business hours only on Business. Transact your Business and go about your Business, in order to give him time to finish his business, and you time to mind your own Business'.

[I had this printed on cards, one of which was handed to every caller on me at the Admiralty.]

* * *

The Nelsonic Attributes –

(a) Self Reliance.

(b) Power of Initiative.

(d) Fertility of Resource.

* * *

Originality never yet led to Preferment.

* * *

Mediocrity is the Road to Honour.

* * *

No difficulty baffies great zeal.

* * *

The Pavement of Life is strewn with Orange Peel.

* * *

Inconsistency is the bugbear of Silly Asses.

* * *

Never Deny: Never Explain : Never Apologise.

* * *

The Best Scale for an experiment is 12 inches to a foot.

* * *

Dean Swift satirized the vulgar exclusiveness of those who desired the infinite meadows of Heaven only to be frequented by the religious sect they adorned on earth:

“We are God’s chosen few!

All others will be damned!

There is no place in Heaven for you,

We can’t have Heaven crammed!”

* * *

Dread Nought is over 80 times in the Bible (“Fear Not”) so I took as my motto “Fear God and Dreadnought!”

* * *

If as is often said, Genius and Madness are not far apart , then Fisher was a splendid example!

--------------------------------

I’m flattered to have been asked to be a speaker at the Weymouth Leviathan Maritime Literary Festival in March next year. I’ll also be running a workshop on plot-development for aspiring writers. I'll be delighted to be able to meet fans who can attend and to discuss with them my books and my approach to research and writing, It promises to be a fascinating occasion. I'll be providing updates as details are firmed up but on the meantime, if you're in the UK in 12th-13th March period next year please consider reserving a slot in your diary.

For further information click here.

Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square has been a landmark in London since it was completed in 1843. It is just under 170 feet tall (including the statue of Nelson himself at the top) and the four sides of the pedestal carry relief panels that commemorate Nelson’s four great fleet actions – St.Vincent, The Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar – the bronze they are cast from being from French cannon captured in battle. It is guarded at its corners by four enormous bronze lions which were added in 1867.

Trafalgar Square 1845

Nelson's Column under construction 1843
Photograph by William Henry Fox Talbot

The creation of the memorial, and of the square surrounding it, commemorated the 21 October 1805 battle which established British naval supremacy for over a century and which laid the foundation for the ultimate victory over Napoleon. Nelson’s death just after victory had been secured (“I thank God I have done my duty” were his last words) confirmed him as a national hero whose lustre has not faded to this day. Construction of the column was recorded in one of the earliest photographs taken in Britain. It was made by the great pioneers of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877).

Nelson's Needle

The massive strategic significance of the Trafalgar was recognised as much by Nelson’s contemporaries as by later generations and in the years after his death memorials were constructed to him in Edinburgh, Dublin, Birmingham, Liverpool and elsewhere. The earliest however, and the one that has the closest associations with Nelson himself, is perhaps the least known.

“Nelson's Needle”, is on the top of the steep Portsdown Hill, just north of Portsmouth, the city that was been the centre of British naval power for almost a thousand years. It stands exposed and lonely, all but surrounded by fields, the only building nearby being the half- hidden, half- underground 1860s-era Fort Nelson. The monument is an austere structure, a granite obelisk, 93 feet tall, its design based on 4^th Century AD monuments in Axum, the ancient religious capital of Ethiopia.

Nelson's bust at the top of the Needle

At the top, looking out over the Portsmouth, the Solent, the Isle of Wight and the Channel beyond – the starting and finishing point for so many of Nelson’s adventures – is a small bust of the man himself. A dignified inscription on a panel at the base bears the consecration.

The origin of the monument goes back to Nelson’s lifetime when, in 1799, Nelson's prize agent Alexander Davison campaigned to establish a memorial to “perpetuate the glorious victories of the British Navy” and “to honour Britain’s naval glory and pre-eminence”. It was, however, Nelson’s death at Trafalgar, 21 October 1805, that gave the impetus for construction.

The “Needle” was built in 1807-08, in the immediate aftermath of the battle, and was paid for by a donation of two day’s pay by all who served on Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, at Trafalgar, as well as by prize money arising from it. It is pleasing that even 210 years after Nelson’s death the masts and yards of the Victory can still be glimpsed from the monument in the dockyard where it is so lovingly preserved.

Today, by its relative isolation, the monument on Portsdown Hill is still moving in its austerity. In this its dignity contrasts with the tawdry state into which Trafalgar Square in London is so often plunged, especially since holding “Pop” concerts and other such events there involves blanking off much of Nelson Column’s base from view. It's as if an entire nation wants to turn its back on its past - I never pass Trafalgar Square now without a tinge of regret and sometimes of disgust.

The Victorians erected statues to heroes. Today statues are erected in honour of blue roosters.
One can only assume that some sort of condescending sneer at the past is implied.

There are four plinths in the square, the fourth until recently being kept unoccupied – possibly reserved for a statue of the Queen after her death. A recent decision is however that items of art are displayed on this plinth for several months, until replaced with another. One wonders what Nelson would have thought of this. He would certainly have approved of the temporary display of the statue of Air Marshal Sir Keith Park, a kindred spirit who played a leading role in ensuring victory in both the Battle of Britain and the Battle of Malta. One doubts however if Nelson would have thought much of a 2014 occupant of the plinth – a huge blue rooster which looks like an overgrown toy from a child’s collection of cheap plastic farmyard animals. Why Nelson has had this inflicted on him is anybody’s guess!

Interested in taking your own first steps towards writing fiction?

I'll be speaking at the Weymouth Leviathan Maritime Literary Festival in March next year and during it I’ll also be running a workshop on plot-development for aspiring writers. If you're interested in writing fiction yourself this might help you take the plunge! To mix metaphors, the proverb says that the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. I hope we'll do better than that - perhaps workshop participants will get some ten miles along! I'd be very happy if participants were to include fans of the Dawlish Chronicles novels and readers of my regular blogs. The festival - the first of its kind - promises to be a fascinating occasion. I'll be providing updates as details are firmed up but on the meantime, if you're in the UK in 12th-13th March period in 2016 please consider reserving a slot in your diary.

For further information click here.

When reading of the Royal Navy’s role in the Napoleonic Wars one is always struck by the dogged determination with which a blockade of the French and French-controlled coasts of Europe was maintained for more than two decades. One imagines the blockade in terms of sealing off these coasts to commercial traffic as well as to movement of warships. In the later stages of the conflict however, when Napoleon introduced his “Continental System” to close all Europe off to trade with Britain, an important role for the Navy became an economic one – to facilitate smuggling of British goods into French-controlled countries, while preventing trade in the opposite direction. This was perhaps nowhere more notable than along the shores of the German Bight, those of the northern Netherlands and the German states, all controlled by the French, and of the western coast of Denmark, a country that was to be at war with Britain from 1807 to 1814.

Danish Kanonchalup Gunboat

The Royal Navy’s presence in these waters did not normally involve – or require – a battle-fleet, as was the case elsewhere, since the Netherlands Navy had never recovered from the defeat of Camperdown in 1797 while the Danish Navy had been massacred at the Battle of Copenhagen three years later. The actions in the years of the Continental System were involve what later came to be known as “coastal forces”, with small Royal Navy units facing even smaller open gunboats propelled by oars as well as sails. The two main Danish types were typical of those used in the area. The larger was the Kanonchalup that carried two 24-pounder long-guns in bow and stern, often complemented by four 4-pounder howitzers and a crew of as much as 80. A smaller type was the Kanonjol, armed with one 24-pounder cannon and two 4-pounder howitzers, and manned by some 40 men. Such vessels would be at a disadvantage if they were to engage a larger vessel alone but the balance could shift were larger numbers present, with the oars providing high mobility and nimbleness, independently of the wind. Once such instance of gunboat success was in 1808 when the powerfully-armed brig-sloop HMS Tickler hauled down her colours after defeat by Danish craft.

HMS Tickler surrenders to Danish gunboats 4th June 1808

It was recognised that maintenance of a Royal Navy presence close inshore in enemy waters would be aided immeasurably by availability of a nearby base. The answer was to occupy the Danish-held island of Heligoland, a speck of rocky ground less than three quarters of a square mile in area and situated some 30 miles from the German coast. It was surrendered without a fight in 1807 (though the destruction by explosion of the aptly named bomb ketch HMS Explosion added some excitement) and was to remain in British possession until 1890 when Britain traded it with Germany to get control of Zanzibar instead.

The German Bight - courtesy of Google Earth

In the years 1807-1814 Heligoland was to become not just a forward naval support-base but also a base through which goods could be smuggled into mainland Europe to the benefit of the British economy. The deterrent to such smuggling was in the form of gunboats and in 1811 a Royal Navy operation was undertaken to destroy those concentrated in the vicinity of the East Friesan island of Nordeney. The shallow coastal waters precluded inshore action by larger units and like had to be met with like, Royal Navy pulling boats matching themselves against the enemy gunboats.

Heligoland - courtesy of Wikipedia (c) CCBY-SA 3.0

At the end of July 1811 what would now be described as a task force arrived north of Nordeney. Led by HMS Quebec, a 32-gun frigate, it included three brig-sloops Raven, Exertion and Redbreast as well as the armed yacht Princess Augusta and an ex-collier, now armed, the Alert. On 1^stAugust a total of ten boats were launched from these ships and they headed shorewards. They carried a total of 117 officers and men, under command of Lieutenant Samuel Blyth (1783-1813) of the Quebec and piloted by James Muggeridge, mate of the Princess Augusta, who seems to have known these challenging waters well. They carried on through the night and on the following day identified six heavily-armed enemy gunboats. Blythe realised that he was outgunned and though he did not attack he held his ground, being credited with the remark that he “would play children’s play and let them alone if they would him”.His resolute stand intimidated the enemy craft and they stood away.

Undeterred, Blyth’s force continued to creep shorewards through the night hours, the navigation being intricate in the extreme due to the shallows. Early on the morning of 3^rd August four moored enemy gunboats were sighted. Each proved to be crewed by twenty men, with some soldiers in addition, and to be each armed with a single 12-pounder and two smaller weapons. Blyth determined to attack and told his crew that “They seem to be waiting for us and, as the witch said when she was going to be burnt, there will be no fun until we get there.”

Samuel Blyth

What followed was the stuff of naval fiction. The day was calm and Blyth’s boats stroked forward, lashed by two volleys as they neared their quarry and holding fire until they ran alongside. That they ever got so close is a negative commentary on the skill and alertness of the gunboats’ crews but, even so, the Quebec’sbarge alone was found afterwards to have been hit by fourteen grape shot and twenty-two musket balls. Blyth drove his own boat towards what he identified as that of the enemy commander. He leaped across, killing one man and wounding two others, while Muggeridge was confronted by two soldiers. He shot one dead but was bayoneted in the throat by the other and fell overboard. The fight was brief however – Blyth possessed the gunboat in minutes and turned her 12-pounder on the three other enemy craft, all so placed as not to be able to return fire without damaging each other. Blyth found powder charges stacked by the cannon and they were used to load it. A match could not however be found and the Quebec’sgunner, who was one of the party, set it off by firing his own pistol over the touchhole. The cannon blasted but its flash set off powder spilled on the deck, leading to an explosion that engulfed nineteen, three of whom were later to die. Blyth himself had his clothes burned off on one side and was thrown into the water and others suffered similar injuries. This disaster did not however check the attack of the remaining British boats which quickly boarded, and captured, the three remaining enemy craft. From first shot to last the action had lasted ten minutes. The number of prisoners taken exceeded the number of attackers and surprise rather than hand-to-hand combat had decided the issue, as was evidenced by enemy casualties of two dead and twelve founded. The British force lost four dead – and three who would die later – as well as nine wounded, a casualty rate of 13%, a high one for such a short action.

The British force withdrew – it had made another pinprick on the hide of Napoleon’s empire and one cannot but wonder if the gain made outweighed the loss of life. Blyth himself was to gain by it however and a month later he was promoted from Lieutenant to Commander.

Capture of HMS Boxer by USS Enterprise, September 1813

Blyth’s career thereafter was however to be a short one. In 1812 he took command of the 12-gun brig sloop HMS Boxer. In the war now in progress with the United States he captured a total of seven vessels of the American Atlantic coast. An act of chivalry by him was to win praise from the enemy, stemming from capturing a small craft crewed by a group of ladies out for a sail. He brought them on board Boxer, where he courteously advised them that they should stay closer inshore in future. He then released them. One of the ladies was the wife of the local militia commander who was so impressed that he placed advertisements in local newspapers praising Blyth’s chivalry. The luck that had saved Blyth from worse injury at Nordeney was however to run out in September 1813. In a single-ship action, in which Boxer met the American brig USS Enterprise,he was killed by the first broadside and Boxerwas captured. He was just 30 years old.

To read about an earlier HMS Quebec click here

To read about the Heligoland- Zanzibar connection click here.

Britain’s legal abolition of her slave trade in 1807 is one of the most admirable actions in her history, making it illegal for British subjects to deal in slaves or to carry them in British ships. The penalty for so doing was initially only a fine but as the trade was so profitable that this had relatively little impact. In 1811 however the penalty was increased to transportation four fourteen years. This involved being sent to Australia as a convict and set to work there either directly for the government or in indentured service to a settler. Return to Britain during this term was punishable by death. Increasing scarcity value tended to make trading even more profitable for successful operators and so this penalty did not prove fully effective. The decision was then taken in 1824 to treat slave-trading as piracy and therefore punishable by death. Thirteen years later this was reduced, once more back to transportation, but now for life, not just fourteen years. In 1837, however, the punishment inflicted on British subjects for trading in slaves was changed to transportation for life.

Slaves being shipped out to a vessel offshore - a Royal Navy cruiser has
been spotted on the horizon (left) - a quick getaway is desirable!

During these years however other nations also abolished the trade – the United States in 1807 (but at sea only), Portugal in 1810, Sweden in 1813, the Netherlands in 1814 and France in 1817. It should be noted that slavery per se continued to exist where it was already established. Britain was the first in implementing full emancipation, in 1833, while Spain was to be the last, in 1886. Several of these nations were however notably unenthusiastic – to say the least – about enforcement. Cuba and Brazil in particular continued to have a high demand for slaves and Spanish and Portuguese slaver vessels figure prominently in all accounts of suppression. Out of the estimated 11 million total slaves who survived shipment from Africa to the Americas, some 4 million, nearly 40 percent of the total, went to Brazil.

Typical anti-slaving action - the Capture of Spanish ship Dolores by HMS Ferret, 1816
Painting by W.J.Huggins (1781-1845)

Between 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and 1860, the Royal Navy’s Anti-Slavery Squadron – most of the time based at what would become Lagos, Nigeria – carried the greatest burden in combating the Atlantic Slave Trade. When this declined, British efforts, up to around 1890, were shifted to combatting the Indian Ocean slave trade between East Africa and Arabia. An earlier blog (see reference at the end of this article) pointed out just how dangerous such service could be – an annual mortality rate of 55 per 1,000 men for Royal Navy crews operating off West Africa, compared with 10 for fleets in British waters or in the Mediterranean. Disease, particularly malaria, was a killer, but so too were the ruthless masters and crews of the slave ships they were chasing. These vessels were usually small, fast and often armed, and the condition in which their human cargos were confined shamed Humanity. There were cases of some 900 people in a single hold and decks being battened down during storms. Stories were told of more than a third of the slaves being found dead from suffocation when the hatches were opened after a hurricane and that rather than have the trouble of hauling up the dead bodies, the hatches were battened down again. A third more might die during the remainder of the voyage. The previous blog mentioned told of one instance that typified the dangers to the Anti-Slavery Squadron and events in 1847, as described below, were to provide another.

Typical 19th Century slaver taking on captives off West Africa
Small and fast, her raked masks give a hint of speed that may be enough to outrun naval vessels

In July 1847 a Brazilian slaver, the brigantine Romeo Primero, had been captured off West Africa by the brig-sloops HMS Waterwitch and HMS Rapid. The procedure, once the slaves had been released, was for the fate of the ship – usually resale by the government – was to be decided by a court established for the purpose. In this instance the “adjudication” was to take place at the island of St. Helena. The Romeo Primero was being sailed by a Royal Navy crew consisting of a Lieutenant W.G. Mansfield and four seamen. The four Brazilian slavers who had manned the vessel before capture were kept on board as prisoners but – unwisely – were allowed the freedom of the ship during daytime. Unfavourable winds caused Mansfield to decide to abandon the attempt to reach St. Helena and to head instead for the nearer British base in Sierra Leone.

Around midday on 11th August Mansfield was on deck, presumably at the helm, two of the British seamen were aloft and the two others were sleeping in their bunks in the same space as the small-arms were stowed. Why Mansfield and his men had not carried their weapons at all times is unclear – it would seem to have been a wide precaution in the circumstances. One of the prisoners now moved up behind the unsuspecting Mansfield and attacked him with an axe used for chopping firewood. The other three prisoners simultaneously attacked the seamen in their bunks, wounding both. They managed somehow managed to get on deck and here one of the two died of his injuries. Lieutenant Mansfield, meanwhile, had survived the initial attack and had grabbed a piece of firewood to defend himself. A prisoner armed with a cutlass now attacked him and inflicted nine separate wounds, their severity mitigated only by the fact that Mansfield was wearing a greatcoat. The two sailors – both of them unarmed – who had been aloft now arrived on deck and Mansfield, weak from profuse bleeding, struggled towards them. The surviving man who had been sleeping below had also reached them. None were armed and there was nothing for it but to attack their attackers with their bare hands. It says much for the strength of the seamen of the era that this proved successful. One of the prisoners was thrown overboard in the scuffle and the others were overpowered. The seamen were about to send the three remaining after him when Mansfield, who was all but unconscious, revived enough to order them to be kept alive so as to face trial at Sierra Leone.

Freetown in this period - a dangerous station, due to malaria

It took some three weeks – until 1st of September – for the Romeo Primero to reach Freetown. The voyage must have been a nightmare. Mansfield hovered at death’s door for several days and even when he recovered slightly was all but incapable for the duration. His three surviving crew were all wounded and one was to die of his injuries after reaching port while another, already weakened, succumbed to malaria. It is unclear what because of the three prisoners – one cannot feel pity if they had been hanged, as was most likely.

Admirable as his behaviour was after being attacked one cannot but regard Mansfield as having been anything other than lax and complacent in the extreme. He recovered but it was due to his slackness that three of his four men died and that he himself nearly went with them. One trusts that his experience would have proved a warning to other officers assigned similar tasks. It is therefore with surprise that one learns that he was promoted to Commander within the year!

To read more about the Anti-Slavery Squadron, “Slavers, Piracy, Shipwreck, Survival & Injustice: The Royal Navy off West Africa 1845” click here.

For an account of another desperate encounter with slavers in this period, you may be interested in this account of the life of the spectacular – but now largely forgotten – Victorian naval hero, Hobart Pasha. His unlikely career included chasing slavers, service in the Crimean War in the Royal Navy, an encounter with the Pope, blockade-running for the Confederacy in the American Civil War, dealing in ladies' foundation garments and leadership of the Turkish Ottoman Navy. Click here to read about him.

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Interested in taking your own first steps towards writing fiction?

For further information click here

The 9^thof December will be the 100^th anniversary of the torpedoing in the Eastern Mediterranean of the SS Orteric. This 6,535-ton, 460-feet cargo and passenger liner was a relatively new ship, built in Scotland and entering service in 1911. At the time of her loss to a torpedo fired by the German submarine U-39 she was carrying a cargo of sodium nitrate from Chile to Egypt. Two seamen lost their lives – a tragedy for their direct families, but small in scale compared with that occasioned by so many other sinkings in the period. It also played by comparison with a much more dreadful tragedy – if not to say scandal – in which the Orterichad been involved shortly after entering service four years previously.

SS Orteric in peacetime

An earlier blog on this site dealt with the conditions in which steerage-class passengers were carried on board ship in the last decades of the 19^th Century (click here for link). It is however somewhat of a shock to read of conditions as bad, or worse, prevailing on a newly-built, modern ship, just before the outbreak of World War 1. Managed for ship-owner Andrew Weir of Glasgow, whose interests included the Bank Line and the Inver Transport & Trading Company, the Orteric was set to work to carry Spanish and Portuguese families to Hawaii to work as contract labour in the sugar-cane fields there.

Departure of Italian emigrants in the same period - the scenes at Lisbon and Gibraltar must have been similar

The Orteric left Europe in February 1911, carrying an incredible 1525 emigrants, of which 960 were Spanish and 565 Portuguese. The Portuguese boarded at Lisbon and the Spanish – apparently Andalusians – boarded at Gibraltar (scene of another emigrant shiptragedy – click here for blog link). As this was a year before the Titanicdisaster was to expose the scandal of even luxurious passenger liners carrying insufficient numbers of life boats, one can only question how many of these 1525 people could have been saved in the event of collision, fire or wrecking. It is hard to imagine what the accommodation provisions must have been – one presumes temporary bunks in the cargo spaces – and one wonders also how the catering and sanitation needs could have been met. The conditions these emigrants were fleeing from in their homelands must have been dreadful if a voyage of this nature was accepted by so many as the price of deliverance. Portuguese immigration to Hawaii had been underway since 1878, mostly coming from Madeira and the Azores, but it was only from 1907 that Spaniards were recruited to work on the plantations and given free passage. In this case “free” almost certainly implied that accommodation and provisioning costs would be the lowest possible.

Sugar-cane cutters on Madeira - the same labour they emigrated to Hawaii to do

The Spanish and Portuguese did not appear have got on well together on the Orteric – later newspaper reports indicated that they fought with each other during the long voyage, "so much so that they had to be separated. The women . . . went as far as hair pulling." Given that most of these people had probably never previously been more than a few miles from their home villages, distrust of strangers was probably unavoidable.

The voyage to Hawaii lasted 48 days and rough conditions in the Atlantic, and rougher ones still when rounding Cape Horn at the tip of South America, made it an uncomfortable one. This might have been tolerable – just – had it not been for an outbreak of measles. This resulted in 58 deaths, the majority of them of children. The overcrowding, and the necessarily poor ventilation during stormy conditions, must have made rapid cross-infection unavoidable. The fact also that many of these people were from rural communities meant that they had little chance of having built up immunity to common childhood diseases. In this respect the child growing up in an urban slum might have been better protected than one from a remote rural village. The mind recoils from imaging the nightmare of illness, death and bereavement endured by the families on the Orteric and yet it is hard to find much evidence that this largely preventable tragedy evoked any great public outrage in Britain. It would be interesting to know how – or if at all – the directors and shareholders of the company owning that Orteric reacted to the news.

Spanish immigrants on arrival at Hawaii in 1907

By 1915 the Orteric was in service as a cargo vessel and supporting Britain’s war effort. On the 9^th of the month she had the misfortune to encounter U-39, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Walter Forstmann (1883 –1973), south of the Greek island of Crete. Forstmann was to be one of the most successful U-boat commanders of the war, scoring the highest tonnage loss – 384,304 tons – and sinking 146 ships. On sighting the U-boat on the surface the Orteric tried to escape but when this proved impossible the decision was taken to surrender. The ship was torpedoed anyway but the occupants, other than two seamen, got away in three boats. They were picked up by a British hospital ship three hours later.

Forstmann with Blue Max

Forstmann’s career continued – his most spectacular coup being to sink five steamers – together carrying over 31,500 tons of coal – in the Straits of Gibraltar in only two days in 1916. It was to win him the coveted Pour le Mérite– the so-called Blue Max. Surviving the war, he was to qualify as a lawyer thereafter and to work – most appropriately – for the Thyssen coal company. He was an active member of the conservative-liberal German People's Party until its dissolution after the Nazis came to power in 1933. He returned to the navy during World War 2 and assigned to administrative positions. His subsequent peacetime career was concerned with housing management and in 1956 was involved with the design of Pestalozzi villages, a charity set up after the war for accommodation and education of children from all sides in the conflict. It is still active, sponsoring study by students from developing countries. It is strange to think of such admirable work having remote links to the tragedies involving the SS Orteric and that a man who had been responsible for so much destruction should have played a such a role in reconciliation.

And the owners of the Orteric? One presumes that they were compensated for their loss. And, even if it was paid, no compensation could ever have made up for the deaths of the 58 peacetime deaths in her holds.

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Apology

I apologise to all my readers for non-appearance on my normal Tuesday blog this week. It was due to an unfortunate incident involving a keyboard and a cup of coffee. Be warned my experience - the two don't go well together! The situation is now resolved but it came at an unfortunate time as I’m preparing for launch of the 4^th Dawlish Chronicles novel and of the audio version of the first. Watch out for announcements about both next week.

Fireships were for many centuries to be some of the most dramatic and devastating of all naval weapons, albeit that they were difficult to deploy and dangerous to their crews. The most effective and history-changing use ever of such ships was when they were used to attack the Spanish Armada at anchor off Gravelines in 1588. The effect was out of all proportion to the damage they did – or could do – as they panicked the Spanish captains into cutting their cables and running out into the North Sea. Adverse weather made a return impossible, ending hopes of landing a Spanish army on British soil and driving the majority of the ships to destruction on the Scottish and Irish coasts. Creasey, the historian, was to number this defeat among what he termed “The 15 Decisive Battles of the World”.

"The Spanish Armada under fireship attack" by Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740 - 1812)

One of the last – if not the last – deployment of fireships by the Royal Navy was to take place in July 1800. Close inshore action against French shipping by aggressive British naval officers was to be a constant feature of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and this attack, on the heavily defended French base at Dunkirk, was to be one of the most daring. The inspiration for the raid came from the noted frigate captain, Henry Inman (1762 – 1809), then in command of the 32-gun Andromeda, and the objective was destruction of four French frigates anchored in the Dunkirk roads – Poursuivante, Incorruptible, Carmagnole and Désirée. They lay under the protection of powerful coastal gun-batteries, the anchorage was patrolled by rowed gunboats and treacherous shoals and shallows made approach treacherous. Fireships were to be a key feature of the operation and four obsolete brigs were prepared for such duty –Wasp, Falcon, Comet and Rosario.

Under Inman’s overall command, the squadron – what would now be termed a task-force – consisted of the frigates Andromeda and Nemesis, the brigs Boxer and Biter, the four fireships, two hired cutters, Kent and Ann and a hired lugger, Vigilant. There was in additiona most unusual vessel, HMS Dart, classed as a sloop since nobody knew what else to call her.

Samuel Bentham

HMS Dart, and her sister HMS Arrow, were experimental vessels, never indeed to be repeated. They were the brain-child of Sir Samuel Bentham (1757 – 1831) – brother of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. At this stage in his remarkable career as an engineer and naval architect, in Britain, Russia and China, Bentham held the position of Inspector General of Naval Works. Designed to operate in coastal waters these two vessels were virtually double-ended and featured a large breadth-to-length ratio, structural bulkheads, and sliding keels. Of 150 tons and a mere 80 feet long overall, they packed an enormous punch for their size, all guns being carronades, twenty-four 32-pounders on the upper deck, two 32 pounders on the forecastle and another two on the quarterdeck. Dart’s command had been assumed in 1799 by Commander Patrick Campbell (1773 –1841), who would later rise to flag rank and in this year, and the next, she would see active and successful service in Dutch coastal waters.

Bad weather delayed the start of the operation but it was finally launched on the night of 7^th July, the vessels in line-ahead with Campbell and the Dart – and her massive fire-power– leading. His objective was to attack the innermost French frigate while the fireships were to grapple the other three and so destroy them. Dart drew ahead of the other British vessels and, as the night was dark, managed to come close enough by midnight for the nearest French vessel to challenge her. Campbell answered that his ship was French, from Bordeaux, and this appears to have been accepted. Dart, unsuspected, moved on unhindered past the first two frigates until another French challenge asked what convoy was coming in her wake. The answer “Je ne sais pas”– “I don’t know” – was, quite amazingly, accepted. Suspicions were however aroused on the third French ship, which now opened fire. As she ran past her, Dart unleashed a smashing broadside. Her carronades had been double-shotted with round and grapeshot – almost 900 pounds of metal per broadside – and the effect was devastating.

Dart (r) crashes into Desiree - note that she is virtually double-ended

Engraving after a painting by Thomas Whitcombe (1763-1824)

Dart drove on to crash into her target, the fourth and innermost frigate, the Désirée. Her bowsprit ran into the foremast’s shrouds. Led by Dart’s first-lieutenant, James M'Dermeit, fifty men swarmed across. The inevitable man-to-man fighting ensued and M'Dermeit, wounded, called for reinforcement. Campbell managed to drag the Dart fully alongside so as to allow a second boarding party to get across. This decided the issue and the French were subdued, and struck. Captain Inman had been following in the lugger Vigilant, crewed by thirty volunteers from Andromeda, and under intense fire, came alongside Désirée, boarded, cut her cable and took her out to sea. The struggle had been vicious but one-sided – of Désirée’s 330-man crew over 100 were killed or wounded, with only a single midshipman surviving from her officers. Dart, by comparison, suffered one man killed and eleven wounded – surprise had paid off

The fireships had meanwhile launched their attack. Packed with combustible material and gunpowder, set ablaze by their volunteer crews, they were steered towards the remaining three French frigates while the Dart and the two brigs, Boxer and Biter, provided covering fire.Pulling boats accompanied them to take off the crews – the officers commanding the fireships remained on board until they were all but enveloped by flames. The French reacted as the Spanish had done over two centuries previously – they cut their cables and sailed under fire past Dart, Boxer and Biter into shoal-waters familiar to them where the British could not follow. Unmanned now, the fireships drifted until they exploded without doing any damage to the enemy. Rowed gunboats came out from Dunkirk to join in the fray but were repulsed by the hired cutters.

Incorruptible, sister of the Desiree, of the same Romaine-class
She was one of the three French frigates to escape capture at Dunkirk

Recognising that the three surviving French frigates were now unreachable, Inman ordered withdrawal. With no room for prisoners and with large numbers of French wounded, he sent his captives back into Dunkirk. Success had been partial, and the moral effect of the attack must have been considerable. Campbell of the Dart was deservedly promoted to post captain and given command of the sixth-rate Ariadne. The Désirée was commissioned in the Royal Navy as HMS Desireeunder Inman’s command. She was to see much active service thereafter, including participation in the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. Inman’s own subsequent career was also active but poor health led to his early death in India in 1809. It is notable that prize money was paid for Désirée’scapture but head money, an award made for enemy servicemen killed, wounded or captured, was not paid, probably due to the return of the prisoners.

And what became of the innovative HMS Dart and her sister Arrow? Both were to have further active careers and deserve separate blogs in the future. Watch out for them!

Britannia's Wolf:Audiobook available as part of a 30-Day Free Trial

Britannia's Wolf,the first in the Dawlish Chronicles series of naval adventure novels set in the Victorian period, is now available as an audio-book. It's been read by the distinguished American actor David Doersch. If you haven't previously ordered an audio-book from audible.com you can download it without cost as part of a 30-Day Free Trial. You can listen on your Smart Phone, Tablet or MP3 Player.

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If you have already read it you may like to hear a world of battle by land and sea, palace intrigue and refugee flight during a savage winter brought to life. And if you haven't yet read, it this may be your introduction to a resolute but often self-doubting Royal Navy Captain and the woman he hesitates to recognise as the love of his life.

Close blockade of the coasts of French-occupied countries in the Napoleonic era was the most important weapon in Britain’s armoury. It may indeed also have been the single most important factor in securing Napoleon’s ultimate defeat. He all but acknowledged this by his remark during his exile of St. Helena: "If it had not been for the English I should have been emperor of the East, but wherever there is water to float a ship we are sure to find them in our way."

The cartoonist James Gillray's view of Britain's Jack Tar as Napoleon's Nemesis

Recent articles in this blog have focussed on the confident aggression that was such a characteristic of Royal Navy personnel involved in such operations. In this article we look at an example of what was perhaps the most difficult – and all but suicidal – action of the period, the capture of an enemy vessel anchored under the protection of powerful shore batteries.

In July 1796 The great French naval base of Toulon, in Southern France, was under close blockade by forces under the command of Sir John Jervis (1735 –1823) – not yet Earl St. Vincent – who was then flying his flag in HMS Victory. On July 9^th a French corvette, which later proved to be l’Utile, armed with twenty-four 6-pounders, was detected creeping along the coast into the bay of Hyères, separated from Toulon by a jutting peninsula. Lying to the east of the latter’s tip were three islands, that of Porquerolles and the dual Illes d’Hyères. l’Utile anchored there, very close inshore, behind the islands and overlooked by powerful French shore-batteries. Her officers might well have regarded her position as invulnerable.

For Jervis l’Utile represented a challenge. He signalled for Captain McNamara (1768 –1826) of HMS Southampton to come on board Victory. McNamara an officer of known daring who was to establish an enviable reputation as a frigate-captain. Southampton, his present command, was a “sixth-rate” of 670 tons, 124-feet long and carrying twenty-six 12-pounders and six 6-pounders. She had a crew of some 210. Jervis was well aware of the hazards of attempting l’Utile’scapture but he had obviously decided that if any man could manage it then it would be McNamara. He was not prepared however to give a direct order in writing and was prepared to allow McNamara a high degree of discretion. He pointed towards l’Utile and said “Bring out the enemy’s ship if you can, but take care of the King’s ship under command.” The implication was clearly that if McNamara found it too dangerous to persist then no shame would be associated with breaking off the attempt.

1794: Capture of the French Castor by HMS Carysfort - a 6th rate similar to Southampton

McNamara took Southamptoninshore in the hours of darkness and navigated through the ”Grand Pass”, the four-mile wide channel between Porquerolls and the Illes d’Hyères. L’Utile lay directly ahead, under the guns of Fort de Brégançon on the coast. In his report the next day to Jervis McNamara stated “I had got within pistol-shot of the enemy’s ship before I was discovered.” In splendid terminology of the day he“cautioned the (French) captain , through a trumpet, not to make a fruitless resistance; when he immediately snapped his pistol and fired his broadside.” McNamara laid Southampton alongside l’Utile and launched a boarding party under the command of his First Lieutenant, Charles Lydiard (circa 1770 – 1809). Of him McNamara was to write that “his intrepidity no word can describe” and that Lydiard “entered and carried her in about ten minutes, although he met with a spirited resistance from the captain (who fell) and a hundred men at arms.”

Charles Lydiard

Presumably to get his prize away as quickly as possible – Fort de Brégançon had now opened fire – McNamara had the two vessels lashed together, Southampton having sails set and the time needed to set them on l’Utile too great a luxury in the circumstances. It was quickly realised however that l’Util was going nowhere. In the darkness it had not been seen that in addition to her anchor-cable – which can be presumed to have been cut free by now – she was also secured to the shore by a hawser. Lydiard found it and severed it by repeated blows of his sword. By one-thirty in the morning of July 10^thboth ships had emerged from the treacherous waters of the Grand Pass and had joined the blockading squadron.

Lydiard was promoted to command of the prize and later, as captain of HMS Anson, was to distinguish himself in, in company with HMS Arethusa, in capture at Havana of the Spanish frigate Pomona which was guarded by twelve gunboats and, like l’Utile, by a shore battery. He was to win further praise by his participation in the capture of the Dutch base of Curacao. Anson returned to Britain thereafter and was assigned to blockade duty off the French Atlantic coast. This was to bring Lydiard’s promising career to a tragic end. During a gale in December 1807 she was driven towards the Cornish coast. Attempts to anchor failed and Lydiard attempted to beach her to save his crew. Many were able to get to shore along the fallen mainmast but Lydiard was among the 60 dead, remaining on board to get as many away as possible and at last being washed off and drowned when he tried to leave.

The loss of HMS Anson 1807

McNamara’s career was to be longer. He seems to have been a Jack Aubrey type, and his colourful record included killing an army colonel in a duel. The origin of the quarrel was a petty one – one’s dog attacked the other’s while they were walking in Hyde Park. The owners took sides and unacceptable language appears to have been used – in his subsequent trail for manslaughter McNamara claimed that he had no option but to fight if he was to maintain his dignity as a naval officer. Senior naval officers, including Nelson, Hood, Troubridge – and, it is pleasant to record, Lydiard – testified that he was the “reverse of quarrelsome”. He was acquitted and was to have an active career that culminated in promotion to rear-admiral.

Britannia's Wolf: Audiobook available as part of a 30-Day Free Trial

Britannia's Wolf, the first in the Dawlish Chronicles series of naval adventure novels set in the Victorian period, is now available as an audio-book. It's been read by the distinguished American actor David Doersch. If you haven't previously ordered an audio-book from audible.com you can download it without cost as part of a 30-Day Free Trial. You can listen on your Smart Phone, Tablet or MP3 Player.

Click here for details (UK)

Click here for details (US and elsewhere)

In sea battles from the 1780s to the end of the Napoleonic Wars a decisive factor was often the use of the carronade. Few of these guns were carried on any one ship, and they were not counted in a ship’s rated number of guns so that, in practice, the actual number of weapons carried might be significantly higher than the rating by which a ship was classes, such as a “74” or a “50”.

Carronade on slide mounting

The word “carronade” was an early, perhaps earliest, example of a trade-name becoming the accepted term for an entire class of products, in this case a short smoothbore cast iron cannon. It took its name from the original manufacturer, the Carron Company, which had an ironworks in Falkirk, in Scotland. The short barrel indicated that it was a short-range weapon, powerful against ships but even more so against personnel in close actions. A carronade weighed a quarter as much and used a quarter to a third of the gunpowder-charge for a long gun firing the same size of roundshot. The lower recoil forces meant that slider mountings, rather trucks, could be employed. The light weight of the carronade made it especially attractive for mounting at higher levels – and important factor when an enemy’s deck should be cleared by grapeshot before boarding. They could also provide a very powerful punch for a small vessel such as a gunboat or sloop. Though the basic concept remained unchanged, carronades were manufactured for a huge range, from 6 to 42-pounders, and 68-pounder weapons not unknown.

Antoine Vanner with 24-pdr Carronade

When introduced into the Royal Navy for trial in 1779, many captains had reported most unfavourably upon it, owing to its short range and tendency to overheat when fired rapidly. The comment on short range was justified for, devastating as a carronade could be in action, its weakness was its short range. The analogy may be a sub-machine gun which, if used at close quarters, can be murderous, but is useless against an enemy armed with a sniper rifle who prefers to stay out of its range and count on his accuracy. Only by luring the sniper closer can the man armed with the sub-machine gun make use of its ability to unleash a devastating volume of fire. In the case of sailing warships encountering each other at sea the presence of carronades might not be immediately obvious and in many cases were to provide a very unpleasant surprise as the ships closed. The first occasion on which carronades were used in action, when the Royal Navy’s 36-gun frigate Flora encountered the French 36-gun frigate Nymphe, was a good example.

Peere Williams by George Romilly

In August 1780 the Florawas under the command of Captain William Peere Williams (1742 – 1832). He was to be one of the officers whose entire life spanned the classic Age of Fighting Sail and who lived on to see the dawn of steam-power. As a junior officer he had served at the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759 during the Seven Years' War. By the time of the American War of Independence he had achieved command, first the frigate HMS Venus, in American waters and subsequently as the first captain of HMS Flora with the Channel Fleet. She was a new ship, commissioned in 1780 and her performance in action later that year indicates that Peere Williams was relentless in training his crew to a high standard of gunnery.

The Flora’s rating as “36 guns” was deceptive though she did indeed carry that number of long guns – twenty-six long 18-pounders, and ten long 9-pounders – she also carried six of the new 18-pounder carronades, giving her a 333-pound broadside weight. On the afternoon of 10 August 1780 she was patrolling off Brest, a monotonous but war-winning duty that was familiar to the crews of hundreds of Royal Navy vessels for seven decades from the 1750s. The weather was hazy but two vessels were sighted some four miles distant. The smaller vessel made off but the larger stood her ground, obviously willing to accept battle. She was the French frigate Nymphe, of the French Royal Navy, her Captain the Chevalier de Runrain. She nominally superior to the Flora in everything but armament. She was the bigger ship by about 70 tons (868 to 737, important as regards enduring damage), sailed faster, and had the larger crew. She carried twenty-six long 12-pounders, and six long 6 – pounders, giving a broadside weight of only 174 pounds, just over half of the Flora’s.

The HMS Flora - Nymphe action by Dominic Serres

Flora's log summarised very clearly what happened in the resulting action:

"At 4.30 P.M. saw a ship and a cutter in the S.W. quarter, standing to the northward under easy sail. Made sail and stood for them, at which they tacked and stood towards the shore for some minutes, and then brought to, having French colours flying. We made the private signal to them, which we found they did not understand by the ship hoisting a blue flag at the ensign staff. We cleared for action, hauled down the signals of recognisance and hoisted our St George's ensign, hauled up the fore-sail, bunted the main-sail and top-gallant-sai1, still running down on her to windward.

"At 5.15, being then about two cables, length distant from her, received her larboard broadside. We ran within one cable's length of her and then began the action, which continued very hot on both sides till 6.15, when we had our wheel and tiller-rope shot away and fell alongside of her with our spare anchor hooking her fore-shrouds. They then attempted to board us, but were repulsed with great loss, we still keeping up a warm fire of great guns and musketry. At 6.80 boarded her, cleared her decks, and burnt their colours for them."

The action was a punishing, straightforward fight to a finish, with little attempt on either side at finesse or manoeuvre. The total French loss was 60 killed and 71 severely wounded. Many of these casualties resulted from the ineffectual attempt to board and the havoc unleashed on them by six 18-pounder carronades mounted on the poop and quarter-deck of the Flora. In the heat of the action one of these weapons was manned only the boatswain and a single boy. The French captain was killed by a musket ball just before the two ships touched, the second-in-command fell on the deck of the Flora at the head of his boarders and the first lieutenant fell between the two hulls and was crushed to death. Almost every other French officer was wounded. The report by the Nymphe's dangerously wounded second lieutenant, the Sieur de Taillard – written in Falmouth, to where the captured frigate was taken – stated that "I do not think it possible to speak too highly of the cool and collected courage shown by all the officers. We were twice on fire, and there was an explosion of cartridges”. The Flora lost fewer dead – nine in total – but sustained the same number of wounded as the Nymphe and her total casualties amounted to approximately one third of her crew.

HMS Flora’s later career was useful rather than spectacular. While still commanded by Peere Williams she participated in the second naval relief of the Siege of Gibraltar in 1781 and thereafter her most notable contribution was support of Britain’s Egyptian campaign in 1801. She was wrecked in 1809. The Nymphe’s career in the Royal Navy – she retained her name after the change of ownership – was to be much more spectacular and we shall meet her again in another war and in a later blog.

Just published: Britannia’s Spartan

Antoine Vanner talks about his latest novel, Britannia’s Spartan, in a short video. Click here to watch it.

In April 1882 Captain Nicholas Dawlish RN has just taken command of the Royal Navy’s newest cruiser, HMS Leonidas. Her voyage to the Far East is to be a peaceful venture, a test of this innovative vessel’s engines and boilers. Dawlish has no forewarning of the nightmare of riot, treachery, massacre and battle he and his crew will encounter.

A new balance of power is emerging in the Far East. Imperial China, weak and corrupt, is challenged by a rapidly modernising Japan, while Russia threatens from the north. They all need to control Korea, a kingdom frozen in time and reluctant to emerge from centuries of isolation.

Dawlish finds himself a critical player in a complex political powder keg. He must take account of a weak Korean king and his shrewd queen, of murderous palace intrigue, of a powerbroker who seems more American than Chinese and a Japanese naval captain whom he will come to despise and admire in equal measure. And he will have no one to turn to for guidance…

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Some recent articles on this blog have dealt with inshore-operations of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Characterised by aggressive daring, they were critical in hampering – and often paralysing – the coastal traffic of every maritime nation controlled or occupied by the French. As such they are the inspiration of so much naval fiction. It is however easy to forget the price paid in human misery and this article deals with one of the most pathetic of such instances and a humble heroine who deserves to be remembered with honour.

HMS Swallowentered service in 1805, yet another of the Cruizer-class vessels that feature so prominently in so many inshore-operations. Of 386 tons, and 100-feet long, she was armed with massive firepower for her size – sixteen 32-pounder carronades and two 6-pounder long guns. Her crew was officially 121 but, as told later in this article, she was carrying at least two other people. In July 1812 she was to be involved in a vicious encounter with a French brig-corvette Reynard off Frejus, on the Mediterranean coast. Under the command of Commander Edward Reynolds Sibley (Circa 1775 – 1842), Swallow was part of a small British squadron consisting in addition of the “74” ship-of-the-line” HMS America and the Frigate HMS Curacoa, and together they had driven a French convoy from Genoa to seek shelter in shallow waters and under shore batteries – a scenario that must have been monotonously familiar during the period. The larger British ships drew too much to go inshore, leaving the Swallow to reconnoitre.

HMS Swallow (at centre) raking Reynard from astern (engraving by Chabannes)

On 16 July two French vessels came out to engage the Swallow– the Renard, armed with fourteen 24-pounder carronades and two long 6-pounders, and the schooner Goéland, with twelve long-guns, probably 6-pounders. The brief reference in Wikipedia describes the action that followed “sanguine but inconclusive” and so too it must have been considered in various official accounts also, just another small and all-but-forgotten engagement in a larger conflict. A more detailed account however in a book by the 19^th-century Admiral Edward Giffard brings the savagery of the encounter to life and tells of the human cost in poignant detail.

In smooth water and low wind, Commander Sibley “waited with confidence” for the French vessels to approach the Swallow on either side before unleashing both broadsides at 50-yards range. The French closed and made four separate attempts at boarding, all of them repulsed, while Sibley attempted to manoeuvre Swallow between his attackers and the French coast. With head-braces shot away Swallow’s manoeuvrability was badly impaired and after forty-five minutes of furious action Sibley broke off the engagement and the French retreated to the cover of their shore-batteries. Sibley’s conduct was admired so highly by Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet – and himself no stranger to furious close-action – that he was promoted to coveted “post rank”.

A Purser - as seen by Rowlandson
Ryan of the Swallow did not conform
to the rank's stereotype, often one of dishonesty

Admiral Giffard’s book refers to “A private letter of the day”– presumably from one of the officers –that indicates that one of the heroes of the action was Swallow’s purser, a Mr. Ryan. Early in the battle “his hat was shot off and he fell, apparently mortally wounded. His servant, an old marine, took him up in his arms and was carrying him below, but before he got on the ladder Mr. Ryan, who had suffered no real injury, recovered sufficiently to ask whither he was taking him; on hearing it was to the cockpit, he desired his weeping servant to take him back up again, as he was unhurt, and the blood with which he was covered was not his own.”

Purser of not, Ryan now took charge of some of the carronades – the officer responsible having had his leg taken off by a shot – and got the crew to load with double charges of canister – 64 pounds per gun of small projectiles. The crews were“mad to fire” but Ryan said “he would not fire a gun until he rubbed their muzzles against her (Reynard’s) sides.” He then ordered a bag of musket balls – another 32 pounds – to be rammed home into each gun, bringing the total to 96 pounds (43.5 kilograms!) in each. The result, when Ryan finally gave the order to fire, was not surprising: “the volley proved so effective that not a Frenchman was to be seen on deck, and the Reynard made every effort to escape from the deadly combat.”

Another stereotype - women on board, especially in port, are usually depicted as prostitutes
In actuality many went to sea with their husbands and performed valuable - and heroic - service

The most surprising aspect of the action is however that at least one woman was on board the Swallow. This was a Mrs. Phelan, the wife of one of the seamen. (As Ryan and Phelan are common names in Ireland’s County Tipperary, one wonders if there was some link between the two men.) Giffard’s account does not make any wonder of her presence, and indeed seems to accept it as normal, remarking that “she was stationed (as is usual when women are on board in time of battle) to assist the surgeon in the care of the wounded.” This splendid lady was not content to say below however – “the wounded, as may be expected, were brought below very fast; amongst the rest a messmate of her husband’s (consequently of her own) who had received a musket ball through his side. Her exertions were being used to console the poor fellow, who was in great agonies and nearly breathing his last, when by some chance her husband was wounded on deck.; her anxiety and already overpowered feelings could not one moment be restrained; she rushed instantly upon deck and received the wounded tar in her arms; he faintly raised his head to kiss her; she burst into a flood of tears, and told him to take courage as ‘all would yet be well’; but has scarcely pronounced the last syllable when a shot took her head off.” Her husband was already badly injured and “the poor fellow, who was closely wrapt in her arms, opened his eyes once more, then closed them forever.”

This was not the end of the tragedy.“What rendered the circumstance more affecting was that the poor woman had only three weeks before given birth to a fine boy, who was thus in a moment deprived of both father and mother.” After the battle there was much concern that the baby – named Tommy – would not survive. “All agreed that he should have a hundred fathers, but what was the substitute for a (wet) nurse and a mother? However, the mind of Humanity soon discovered that there was a Maltese goat on board, the property of the officers, which gave an abundance of milk, and, as there was no better expedient, she was resorted to for the purpose of suckling the child who, singular to say, is thriving and getting one of the finest little fellows in the world; and so tractable is his nurse that she lies down when little Tommy is brought to be suckled by her.”

One aches to know what became of little Tommy – Giffard says nothing about him – and one hopes that he had a long and happy life. Of his parents’ end there is however no doubt: “Phelan and his wife were sewed up in one hammock, and it is needless to say were buried in one grave.”

We don’t even know what Mrs. Phelan’s name was. By all means let us remember and honour the Nelsons and Cochranes and Pellews, but let’s remember Mrs. Phelan too. Her courage puts her in their company.

Just Published: Britannia's Spartan

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It is remarkable in the course of this year how little attention has been paid in the media, in popular memory or in large-scale centenary- commemorations to the events of 1915, the first full year of World War 1. This is in marked contrast to the wave of interest shown last year when the conflict’s opening was remembered in every way possible. And yet, throughout 1915, a brutal attrition of human life occurred on all fronts and this was not least at sea, where the mine and the submarine were proving themselves more deadly than anticipated. For all that it should have been a season of goodwill, the Christmas to New Year period of 1915, from December 24^th to 31^st, saw horrific losses that are today largely forgotten except by descendants of the victims.

SS Persia - a victim oblivious of her approaching fate

At least 27 merchant and naval ships were lost to torpedoes and mines during these eight-days. A small but vicious naval conflict, the Battle of Durazzo matched British, French and Italian naval forces against units of the Austro-Hungarian fleet off Albania with losses on both sides. Nor was enemy action alone a danger – in this era, when large numbers of sailing craft were still in use, bad weather represented a major threat. Approximately a dozen of such craft were wrecked in this short time and some brief summaries of their fates could have used wording identical to that for similar losses at any time in the previous two centuries. One such example was the three-masted Danish schooner Dana, “ driven ashore at Craster, Northumberland, United Kingdom, and wrecked.”

The most spectacular losses involved two British units, one naval, one civilian which were lost within hours of each other on December 30^th. Together, these two tragedies accounted for some 760 deaths.

HMS Natal seen - ironically - on a Christmas card (perhaps pre-war, judging by the aircraft)_

HMS Natal was among the last British armoured cruisers to be built before the type was superseded by the new (and equally ill-starred) battlecruiser concept. Launched in 1905, she was one of a four-ship Warrior class, three of which were to be lost in World War 1. These ships vessels were as large as many contemporary battleships, displacing 13,550-tons and 505-feet long. With 23,000-hp installed power they were capable of a top speed of 23 knots. Their armament was heavy for the type – six 9.2-inch and four 7.5-inch guns, plus many smaller weapons, as well as three 18-inch torpedo tubes. Their major advantage over almost all previous armoured cruisers was that all ten main weapons were carried in turrets rather than in casemates, allowing operation in rough sea conditions. Given the size of thee ships it is not surprising that each carried a crew of up to 790.

Individual gun-turrets on Natal's starboard flank

During 1915 the Natalwas attached to the Royal Navy’s “Grand Fleet”, which was based at Scapa Flow, the vast semi-protected anchorage in the Orkney Islands, north-east of the Scottish mainland. The patrols she undertook in the North Sea were uneventful and, like the other vessels of the Grand Fleet, Natal would have spent much of her time at her moorings, waiting for news of the German fleet venturing out from its own bases. In December 1915 however she moved south to the base in the Cromarty Firth, on the Scottish east coast, and at Christmas approximately a quarter of her crew were allowed ashore on leave. On December 30^th, as a gesture of goodwill, the Natal’scaptain, Erik Black, invited civilians aboard for a film-show – then still a novelty. These invitees included family members of the crew as well as personnel from a hospital ship moored nearby, HMHS Drina. In the event – and luckily – many of them could not attend and only eight civilians came on board, seven of them women and three of them children. The party had no sooner started than a succession of explosions commenced which were to rip the vessel apart within minutes.

Natal's wreckage remained visible for many years

Boats rushed to the scene from nearby ships and some 170 survivors were dragged from the freezing water. Deaths, including the captain’s, were announced officially soon afterwards as 390, though the number has been estimated as being as high as 421, the increase perhaps due to later deaths occasioned by exposure. The immediate fear was that the anchorage had bene penetrated by a German U-boat which had either fired a torpedo or dropped a mine, but evidence soon indicated spontaneous combustion of unstable cordite propellent charges stored in the after magazines. Such instability caused losses in several of the navies of the period, and the Royal Navy was to lose the pre-dreadnought HMS Bulwark to this in 1914 (750 dead) as well as the modern dreadnought HMS Vanguardin 1916 (804 dead).

SS Persia, as seen on a peace-time postcard

"The Spirit of Ecstacy"

While Natal’stragedy was unfolding another, almost as dreadful, was taking place in the Eastern Mediterranean. SS Persia was an 8000-ton passenger liner which had been built in 1900. Still in civilian service, on December 30^th she was e-route to India and carrying not only passengers but a large amount of gold and jewels belonging to the Jagatjit Singh, maharaja of the of the princely state of Kapurthala, in the Punjab, who had left the ship at Marseilles. At midday, just south of Crete, the Persia was struck by a torpedo fired by the German submarine U-38, which has sunk another ship, the freighter Clan Macfarlane, some hours earlier at a cost of 52 lives. U-38 was commanded by Kapitänleutnant Max Valentiner (1883 –1949), who was to prove himself one of the most outstanding – and ruthless – U-boat commanders of the war. The Persiasank in less than ten minutes, taking 343 of the 519 people on board with her. Among the survivors was the British motoring pioneer Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, though his secretary and mistress, Eleanor Thornton, drowned. This lady was allegedly the model for the "Spirit of Ecstasy" mascot that is still featured above the radiators of Rolls-Royce cars.

Persia's sinking - contemporary view

The Persia’ssinking caused outrage since it was without warning and violated the so-called “Arabic Pledge” that Germany had given in August 1915 and which instructed U-boat commanders not to torpedo passenger ships without notice and without allowing passengers and crew to enter “a place of safety. Kapitänleutnant Valentiner of the U-38 was to be accused of a total of fifteen generally similar incidents involving civilian shipping (out of a total of 34 ships sunk) and after the war the Allies demanded his extradition as a war-criminal. He got around this by temporarily changing his name and hiding, though he later followed a business career in his own name. He was to serve again in the Second World War, in support of the U-boat campaign, though not going to sea. He died in 1949.

There is a sad addendum to the loss of HMS Natal. The Drina, the hospital ship moored close to her, was reconverted to freighter service in 1916. The following year, as she returned from a voyage to South America with vital supplies, she was sunk off the south-west coast of Wales by a U-boat. Fifteen lives were lost.

Just published: Britannia’s Spartan

Author Antoine Vanner talks about his latest novel, Britannia’s Spartan, in a short video.Click here to watch it.

In April 1882 Captain Nicholas Dawlish RN has just taken command of the Royal Navy’s newest cruiser, HMS Leonidas. Her voyage to the Far East is to be a peaceful venture, a test of this innovative vessel’s engines and boilers. Dawlish has no forewarning of the nightmare of riot, treachery, massacre and battle he and his crew will encounter.

A new balance of power is emerging in the Far East. Imperial China, weak and corrupt, is challenged by a rapidly modernising Japan, while Russia threatens from the north. All need to control Korea, a kingdom frozen in time and reluctant to emerge from centuries of isolation.

Dawlish finds himself a critical player in a complex political powder keg. He must take account of a weak Korean king and his shrewd queen, of murderous palace intrigue, of a power-broker who seems more American than Chinese and a Japanese naval captain whom he will come to despise and admire in equal measure. And he will have no one to turn to for guidance…

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And a sample 5-start review on Amazon by “Westsail” on December 22, 2015

“Iron men steaming into danger. Superb characterization and historical details. A truly wonderful book.

Antoine Vanner is a rare find - an author who knows his subject matter inside out and who possesses the ability to communicate that knowledge in a gripping and highly entertaining style. His creation, Nicholas Dawlish, is so completely rendered that the reader rejects the possibility that he is a fictional character rather than a piece out of the Victorian era. Vanner knows the details of the engineering innovations in whose creation and trials Dawlish often is involved. The ships in Vanner's novels are characters as well drawn as the people who sail them. The political sides of these books are well put together as well, from London to Seoul. All of the Dawlish novels are delights in themselves. I believe, however, that Vanner continues to improve. In my opinion, Britannia's Spartan is his best to date. One waits with bated breath for each additional gem!”

I got somewhat of a surprise when I checked today how many articles I had published on this blog in 2015. The total came to 97, not counting this one, and considering that each article averages 1200 words I had published 116,000 words, the equivalent of an average book. As in previous years the majority of the articles were on historical themes, mainly but not exclusively nautical in orientation and covering the period 1700 to 1930. A few articles were prompted by personal experience and I was also lucky enough to several splendid guest-bloggers contribute articles. Within these boundaries the range of topics has been vast, and the choice has often been surprising to my readers. I though therefore that it might be of interest to pick out twelve articles, one per month and to provide links to them. Making the choices has been far from easy and I’ve had to make hard choices between some personal favourites. If you have not previously seen them then I hope they’ll give you pleasure and if you have read them before then you might enjoy a second acquaintance.

January: The Battle of Solferino and the foundation of the Red Cross, 1859

This article was prompted by my driving past a girl’s school some six-miles from my home in South-East England. This is the unlikely last resting place of the French Emperor Napoleon III, his Spanish-born Empress Eugenie and his son, Napoleon Eugene, the Prince Imperial, who was to die, incongruously for a Bonaparte, in British uniform during the Zulu War. I was reminded of hoe Napoleon III’s policies led to one of the most brutal battles of the nineteenth century and how its horrors prompted a Swiss business man to found what became the International Red Cross. Click here to read the blog article.

February: The Anglo-German Blockade of Venezuela 1902-03

I lived for several years in Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second city, which today was a population of 1.3 million. It lies at the western side of the short waterway that leads from Lake Maracaibo – the largest lake in South America – to the Caribbean Sea. It was to be the scene of one of the few actions fought by the Imperial German Navy before World War I when an old Spanish fort that guarded the approaches was attacked by Imperial German naval forces in 1903. This was part of a much larger international confrontation that led to a restatement of American foreign policy, with implications that last until our own days. Click here to read the blog article.

March: Bellona and Courageux action 1761

Stories of close action in the Age of Fighting Sail have a fascination of their own and a battle in 1761 between two well-matched “74s”, the British Bellona and the French Courageux, was no exception. Devotees of naval history and fiction will know that the “74”, the so-called Third- Rate ships of the line, were the backbone of the fleets of the major European powers in the years 1756-1815. The Bellona’s own career was to span almost this entire period. Click here to read the blog article.

April: The SS Arctic Disaster 1854

For almost a century insufficient provision of lifeboats a major factor in marine tragedies. Only the Titanicloss in 1912 was to evoke a sufficient measure of outrage for the problem to be finally addressed, even if the rules are not always enforced today. The spectacular loss of the SS Arctic in 1854, some 60 years before the Titanicwas one of the maritime disasters that should have led to much earlier reform – and to the saving of countless lives. But it didn’t. Click here to read the blog article.

May: Discipline, heroism and survival: HMS Alceste, 1817

The value of professionalism and discipline has seldom been so dramatically illustrated as when the frigate HMS Alceste was wrecked off Java in 1817. She was returning from a diplomatic mission to China – which also included some lively action against hostile Chinese junks as well as surveying and charting-work off the Korean coast. Alceste’s survivors found themselves castaways, and under attack from Malay pirates, but superb leadership was to lead not only to rescue, but to the fact that not a single life was lost in the process.Click here to read the blog article.

June: One Submarine, Two Flags and Two Heroes, 1914

Early in World War I an intrepid French submarine commander navigated his vessel deep into the heart of the Austro-Hungarian naval base at Pola. Though it ended in tragedy, the attack demanded courage and professionalism of a very high order. It was also to be the prelude to an amazing – and unlikely – second career for the submarine involved. The story also links two decent and heroic men who were cast as enemies but who, in other circumstances, might well have valued each other as friends. Click here to read the blog article.

July: Adam Worth: the real-life “Napoleon of Crime”

Adam Worth, alias Henry Judson Raymond, plays a key role in my novel Britannia’s Shark. Important though this involvement in the affairs of Empire proved to be however, it was only one episode – unknown to the general public until now – in the career of a real-life professional criminal who was to be described by a senior Scotland Yard official as “The Napoleon of the Criminal World.” This historical figure was as remarkable for the global span of his activities as for the ease with which he found acceptance at the highest levels of British society, despite very humble beginnings. He was also to be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s inspiration for Sherlock Holmes’ adversary Professor James Moriarity. Click here to read the blog article.

August: Penang – the German naval connection

In August my travels brought me to Penang, an island off Peninsular Malaysia’s west coast. While there I was fascinated by a one-sided battle that had taken place there in 1914 when the German light-cruiser Emden sank the Russian cruiser Zhemchug after daringly penetrating the anchorage. Russian unpreparedness was punished by German professionalism but the sinking was to be only one in a series of successes scored by the Emden before she was run down by Allied forces later that year. That was not however to be the end of German naval links with Penang, for in World War II U-boats were to be based there andsinking Allied shipping as far south as off Fremantle in Australia. Click here to read the blog article.

September: Miss Betty Mouat and the Colombine 1886

My blog posts often deal with blood and thunder, conflict and battle, but this article dealt with a middle-aged lady of poor background, who demonstrated a very high degree of heroism in peacetime without having any prior warning of what was needed. When a resident of Scotland’s Shetland Islands, the 59-year old Miss Betty Mouat, set out on what she thought was a short coastal passage she little suspected what lay ahead. Alone on a small, crippled sailing vessel, sustained only by a bottle of milk, two biscuits, prayer and iron self-discipline, her survival was to be an epic of courage in adversity. Click here to read the blog article.

October: Nelson and Hardy – the forging of a partnership

The name of Admiral Thomas Masterman Hardy is forever inseparable from that of Britain’s greatest naval hero, Lord Horatio Nelson, whom Hardy was to comfort with news of success as he lay dying during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The relationship between the two men, one of mutually reciprocated respect and affection, had been forged nine years before when Nelson was prepared to risk accepting unequal battle rather than abandon the younger officer. Click here to read the blog article.

November: Bermuda’s Floating Dry Dock 1869

As an engineer myself I have always found one of the more attractive aspects of the Victorian Age to be willingness to take on large and often unprecedented engineering challenges. One such was not only the construction of an enormous floating dock for repair of warships, but getting it from the location where it was built in Britain to the Royal Navy base at Bermuda. The 4000 nautical-miles tow of the vast structure was the most ambitious towing attempt up to that time and it demanded organisation and seamanship of the highest order. Click here to read the blog article.

December: HMS Dart& Désirée 1800

During December I wrote three articles about inshore operations by Royal Naval forces during the Napoleonic Wars. Each one involved deeds of almost insane daring – the sort that inspire much of naval fiction. A British attack on the French naval base at Dunkirk in 1800 was one of the actions I wrote about and it was to be one of the last – if not the last – deployment of fireships by the Royal Navy. Fought in darkness, this was to be one of the most dramatic actions of the Age of Fighting Sail. Click here to read the blog article.

And I want to include one more item – my saddest blog of the year, posted in May 2015:

Palmyra: A World-Legacy under threat

I sat down on May 15^th to write my usual Friday-evening blog and my chosen subject was another incident of the Napoleonic period. In the event however an item on the evening news so outraged me that I find it impossible to write about anything else. This related to the advance of ISIS forces on the ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria, bringing with them the threat of the same type of epic vandalism that they have already wreaked on the remains of the Assyrian city of Nimrud. I had visited Palmyra twice before, most recently in 2009, and regarded the site as one of the most beautiful and inspiring places I have ever seen. My article was a cry of mingled anger and sorrow, but I little suspected just how barbaric the aftermath of the ISIS capture was to prove. I make no apology for referring to it again. Click here to read the blog article.

**Click here to see Antoine Vanner speak about his new novel, Britannia’sSpartan, in a short video.**

The Imperial German Navy that went to war in 1914 was essentially a creation of previous four decades. One tends to think of it in terms of its squadrons of superbly engineered battleships and battle-cruisers, designed primarily for the anticipated show-down with the Royal Navy in the North Sea. It was however with smaller vessels on remote locations that the most action had been seen by German naval personnel and such service was a vital element in developing the leadership and expertise of officers and ratings alike. Operations to protect trading interests in China, or in support of colonial ventures in Africa and in the Pacific, or in projecting German influence in the Caribbean, all involved light cruisers and smaller ships, some of which saw very active service indeed.

SMS Jaguar - sister of the SMS Panther

One such vessel was the gunboat SMS Panther, which in this blog has been seen in action in Venezuelan coastal waters in 1903 (Click here to read the article aboutthis). Her presence at the Moroccan port of Agadir in 1911 was to be interpreted as a hostile act by the French Government – which regarded Morocco in its sphere of influence – and the resulting crisis all but plunged Europe into World War I three years early. Before either of these events however the newly-built Panther had already played a violent international role, though against an adversary so weak that the rest of the world took little notice.

SMS Charlotte (1883): 3700-ton corvette

The history of the Caribbean nation of Haiti had been a sad one ever since achieving independence in 1804. Poverty, the threat of foreign intervention, negative racist attitudes by many nations towards the world’s only “Black Republic” established by ex-slaves and a succession of coups and countercoups held back development and left its people in abject poverty. In 1897 the Imperial German Government – flexing its new naval muscles – sent two warships, SMS Charlotte and SMS Stein, to intimidate Haitian president into apologising for the attest of a certain Emile Lüders, born in Haiti but whose father was German, who had been involved in a brawl. The affair was a trivial one – Lüders, though sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, had already been pardoned by the president and had left the country six weeks before the German warships arrived. Despite this, Haiti was forced to accept a humiliating climb-down –compensation of $20,000 for Lüders, a promise that he could return to Haiti, a letter of apology to the German government and a 21-gun salute to the German flag. Four hours were allowed for acceptance, which was to be accepted by raising of a white flag over the presidential palace. Out-gunned, Haiti had no option but to comply.

Humiliation, 1897: the German ultimatum is delivered to Haiti. There are four hours to comply.

Haiti’s navy consisted of a single modern vessel, the gunboat Crête-à-Pierrot which had entered service in 1896. Built in Britain, at Earle’s shipyard in Hull, this 950 ton single-screw vessel was armed with one 6-inch gun, one 4.7-inch, four 4-inch and several machine guns. Command of the Haitian navy fell to Admiral Hammerton Killick (1856 – 1902), of mixed Haitian and British descent. His job must have been an almost impossible one for shortage of funds meant thatpayment of crews was irregular, food insufficient and cannibalisation of parts essential to ensure operability. It was not a good foundation from which to confront the Imperial German Navy when it would next come calling.

Hammerton Killick

In 1902 Haiti was plunged yet again into one of the interminable civil conflicts that had bedevilled it since independence. This had resulted from disagreements between two political leaders, Anténor Firmin and Pierre Nord Alexis, as to who should succeed a president who had just resigned. Admiral Hammerton Killick threw his support behind Firmin and proceeded to use the ships available to him to blockade the ports held by Alexis’s forces. This affair would have remained a local one had Alexis not ordered ammunition from overseas and it was carried on a German ship, the Markomannia, of the Hamburg-Amerika Line. This ship was intercepted by Killick’s Crête-à-Pierrot, searched and it cargo confiscated, the munitions on board being transferred to the Haitian gunboat. The Markomannia was then allowed to proceed unhindered.

German prestige was judged to have been damaged by the Crête-à-Pierrot’s action, a stance that was strengthened when Alexis – the Haitian leader who had been deprived of his ammunition – appealed for help to eliminate “a pirate ship.” The task was allocated to a recently commissioned German gunboat, SMS Panther, a 1200-ton, 210-foot vessel armed with two 4-inch and six 1.5-inch guns, plus lesser weapons. Given the differences in resources, training and professionalism, the contest was going to be an unequal one.

Crête-à-Pierrot’s after-magazine blowing up

The Crête-à-Pierrotwas in the harbour of Gonaïves, on Haiti’s north-west coast, when the Panther arrived on 6^thSeptember 6. Hammerton Killick and most of the crew were on shore but he rushed back to his ship. Realising that resistance would be futile, he ordered the crew still on board to leave and then, in an insane act of defiance, wrapped himself in a Haitian flag and blew up the aft magazine. As the shattered Crête-à-Pierrot settled she took with her not only Killick but four crew members who had remained with him. His action had been eerily similar to that of the Dutch Lieutenant Jan van Speijk at Antwerp in 1831(Click here to read an earlier article about this).

The Panther was not finished however – she poured some thirty shells into the wreck before departing, leaving Haitian forces to salvage whatever weapons and munitions they could. It was hardly a victory to boast of. It is interesting to note that the United States did not object to the German action as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine. The State Department apparently endorsed the action and the New York Times stated that “Germany was quite within her rights in doing a little housecleaning on her own account". One cannot but have an uneasy feeling that a degree of racial prejudice was involved in this stance since the next time the SMS Panther went into action, against Venezuelan defences in 1903, it led to the so-called “Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” This asserted a right of the United States to intervene to "stabilise" the economic affairs of small states in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts, in order to preclude European intervention to do so.

And Hammeton Killick? Though his sacrifice may look in retrospect to be a futile one, he came to be regarded as a national hero. A stamp bearing his likeness, and with a picture of the Crête-à-Pierrotexploding, was issued by Haiti in 1943. It seems like a poor compensation for five lives, his four crew members’ as well as his own.

Just published: Britannia’s Spartan

AuthorAntoine Vanner talks about his latest novel, Britannia’s Spartan, in a shortvideo.Click here to watch it.

Click below for more details:

For UK:Click here For US:Click here