Dawlish Chronicles

In January 2015 I wrote a blog about the loss of the steamship London in 1866. It was one of the most appalling maritime disasters – of which there were only too many – in the 19^th Century. (Click here to read that article).

Since then a book had been published recently that describes this tragedy in much greater detail. “The Wreck of the SS London” is by the respected maritime genealogist Simon Wills, who has already written several books about the era (You’ll find links at the end of this article). I’m therefore honoured today to welcome Simon as a guest blogger – his article deals not only with the disgracefully high casualty rates in maritime commerce but traces a fascinating link between one of the survivors – and heroes – of the 1866 London shipwreck and two earlier disasters.

Over to Simon …

Death on the Ocean Wave by Simon Wills

The British merchant fleet was the lifeblood of its Empire in the nineteenth century. It was trade that gave the Empire stability, power and growth, and merchant ships were needed to transport the goods that allowed this to happen. This meant that there was plenty of work for seamen, but life at sea could be a dangerous business since there were few safety regulations.

The SS London going down in 1866

Shipwrecks were common, and the loss of the SS London in 1866is a good example of a notorious mid-Victorian shipping disaster. One of my earliest connections with this tragedy was finding a slip of paper in an old encyclopedia that carried the autograph of one of the London’s survivors: John King. He was credited with providing great leadership during the ship’s final moments by ensuring that a boat got away with a few survivors. King also took responsibility for steering this boat, even though the tiller was broken and he had to improvise with a makeshift scrap of wood to keep the boat heading into the waves without turning over.

John King's autograph

A remarkable thing about the autographed piece of paper is that John King wrote down the names of two other ships he’d been wrecked in as well: the Alma in 1861 and the Duncan Dunbar in 1865. The Alma was dashed onto jagged rocks off the coast of Australia, where the crew became trapped in their sinking ship. The local lifeboatmen got a rope aboard and King and 23 colleagues had to work their way along it, hand over hand, with the raging sea and sharp rocks beneath them. They only just made it because the Almawas soon torn apart and dispersed over ten miles of beach.

Rescue by lifeline from shore - how John King survived the Alma sinking

John King’s second shipwreck was a famous one. The Duncan Dunbar collided with an atoll at night off the coast of Brazil. The terrified passengers were sure they were going to drown in the darkness, but they made it through the night. The next morning, the crew lowered passengers off the stern in a chair, one by one, and into a boat that took them to an islet. It was baking hot and the islet was covered with vermin, but the 117 survivors hoped to sight a passing ship. They rigged a shelter from the Duncan Dunbar’s sails and managed to get some supplies ashore including, crucially, some drinking water. Eventually the captain took some of his crew to Pernambuco by boat and a steamship came to the rescue of the remaining people ten days later.

The Duncan Dunbar wrecked on the atoll

Having survived both these disasters, John King returned to England and immediately found a job as able seaman on the SS London in December 1865. It was his first steamship, and virtually a new vessel. He was greatly surprised to recognise passenger Alan Sandilands on board, a fellow survivor of the Duncan Dunbar. The rest, of course, is history. The SS London sank in the Bay of Biscay in early January 1866 and King was one of only 19 survivors. The unfortunate Alan Sandilands didn’t make it this time.

John King - three times lucky

The number of ships lost during this period is shocking. Vessels were smashed by storms, ran aground, collided with other ships, got lost, and caught fire. There were also construction defects to contend with, ageing timbers, incompetent officers, neglectful crews, and unscrupulous owners who scrimped on safety. Between 1867 and 1871, official statistics show that there were over 500 ships lost every year on the coast of Great Britain, and an alarming 34 people died in shipwrecks every week. Yet these figures are only part of the story because there are no records for the number of ships lost away from the British coastline in the Atlantic, Pacific, Baltic and so forth – the real figure is much higher.

The survivors of the London were traumatised and, understandably, reluctant to go to sea again. When survivor David Main first tried to set foot on a ship a few weeks later, the events of the London came back to him so intensely that he fainted. Ship’s boy Alfred White was only fourteen when he escaped the Londonbut he turned away from the sea and became a door-to-door salesman, while steward Edward Gardner opened a barber’s shop. Midshipman Walter Edwards did go back to sea, but a few years later his ship the SS Tacna blew up off the coast of South America and that was enough. He changed careers and became a priest.

What about John King? Maybe we should say ‘lucky’ John King, having survived three sea disasters. He and a few other survivors emigrated to Australia where many of them became miners; King died here, in Queensland, in the 1880s.

About Simon Wills...

Simon is a maritime genealogist and history journalist with a special interest in shipwrecks. He is author of the book The Wreck of the SS London(Amberley, 2016) as well as several other works on seafaring in the 19^th Century.

Click here to reach Simon’s author page and to learn more about his books.

Click on the cover image to find out more about his latest volume.

In much historical fiction (including my own) women tend to turn up in the most extraordinary situations and bear heavy responsibilities, to an extent which may seem fanciful to many today who have the idea of women’s roles in the past being always so subservient.

Mrs. Reston at the well

One example is “The Heroine of Matagorda”, a Mrs. Agnes Reston, wife of a sergeant of the Scots Brigade which was responsible for the defence of a small fort of Matagorda, on the approaches to Cadiz, in 1810. The city was under siege by French forces and the Matagorda outwork was a critical point in the defences. She was one of the few women (mainly wives of NCOs) who were allowed to follow their husbands, often acting as laundresses, and she refused to leave the fort when the other wives were sent away for safety.

According to Joseph Donaldson, a sergeant of the 94th Regiment of Foot who later published his memoirs, Mrs. Reston tore up her linen for bandages and tended the wounded. She carried sandbags for repair of the batteries, and brought ammunition and water to the men at the guns. When she saw a frightened drummer-boy was had been sent to get water for the wounded from a well that was under French fire she exclaimed “The puir bairn is frightened, and no wonder! Gie the bucket to me!”

Mrs. Reston proceeded to the well and drew water calmly, though no less an authority than General Napier, historian of the Peninsular War, stated that a shot cut through the bucket rope but she recovered it and continued on regardless. She had a child with her in camp and Donaldson recorded that “I think I see her yet, while the shot and shell were flying thick around her, bending her body to shield her child from danger by the exposure of her own person.”

Mrs. Reston’s courage was however remembered in a long poem by the Scottish poet William McGonnagal in his poem “A Humble Heroine”. The most memorable lines as typical of McGonagall at the height of his not-inconsiderable lyric power and mastery of rhyme:

And while the shells shrieked around, and their fragments did scatter,

She was serving the men at the guns with wine and water;

And while the shot whistled around, her courage wasn't slack,

Because to the soldiers she carried sand-bags on her back.

A little drummer boy was told to fetch water from the well,

But he was afraid because the bullets from the enemy around it fell;

And the Doctor cried to the boy, Why are you standing there?

But Mrs Reston said, Doctor, the bairn is feared, I do declare.

And she said, Give me the pail, laddie, I'll fetch the water,

Not fearing that the shot would her brains scatter;

And without a moment's hesitation she took the pail,

Whilst the shot whirred thick around her, yet her courage didn't fail.

And to see that heroic woman the scene was most grand,

Because as she drew the water a shot cut the rope in her hand;

But she caught the pail with her hand dexterously,

Oh! the scene was imposing end most beautiful to see.

The Victorian-era illustration shows a possibly idealised picture of Agnes Reston at the well but nothing indeed can convey the depth of her heroism. Not all the women of her time were dancing and flirting with Mr. Darcy. She should not be forgotten.

And to read about the adventures of another heroine ...

... albeit a fictional one - you may be interested in Britannia's Amazon, which deals with the adventures of Florence Dawlish while her husband is overseas in the service of Queen and Country. Click on the image below for more details.

Download a free copy of Britannia’s Eventide

To thank subscribers to the Dawlish Chronicles mailing list, a free, downloadable, copy of a new short story, Britannia's Eventide has been sent to them as an e-mail attachment.

If you have not already subscribed to the mailing list, you can do so by clicking here. You will then receive a copy of the story by e-mail.

I continue to be amazed by the sheer number – and scale – of shipping disasters in the 19^th Century and many have been described previously in this blog. It’s notable that in so many cases the “accidents” were avoidable and attention to even the most basic precautions would have averted them. Unwillingness to provide adequate lifeboats was to be a common feature up to the Titanic sinking in 1912, but many other tragedies resulted from sheer bad seamanship. It’s also probable that the custom of recruiting crews for short periods – often only a single voyage – mitigated against formation of efficient teams that worked together over long periods. Working and accommodated in often-atrocious conditions, and poorly paid, the merchant-seamen of the period must have had very little identification with their ships. It’s notable that in the same era there were relatively few losses in the Royal Navy. On many occasions indeed, naval ships survived conditions that would have doomed civilian vessels, the cohesion, discipline and esprit de corps of the naval crews being worth diamonds in extreme situations.

RMS Atlantic
(Like other black and white illustrations in this article, this is public-domain ex-Wikipedia)

These musings were prompted by reading a Victorian-era account of the wreck of the 3700-ton RMS Atlantic, a liner belonging to the famed White Star Line which would later own the Titanic. When she came into service in 1871 this ship was one of the fastest and most luxurious afloat. 420-feet long, and driven at a maximum of 14.5 knots by her single-shaft 600-hp engine, she carried auxiliary sails on four masts – the back-up to steam that was still essential in this period. With the “RMS” identifying her as authorised to carry Royal Mail, the Atlantic was employed on the prestigious Liverpool-New York route “with wonderful regularity”, and with capacity for 1166 passengers in addition to her crew.

In March 1873 the Atlanticset out on her nineteenth voyage to the United States with 835 passengers – many of them emigrants – and 117 crew on board. Stormy weather was encountered from the start and this caused such heavy consumption of coal that the Atlantic’s Captain Williams decided to head for Halifax, Nova Scotia, to replenish his bunkers before pressing on to New York. On the evening of March 31^st, the Atlantic was within some dozen miles of Halifax and stormy conditions were continuing. Williams decided to put off entering harbour until daylight and in the meantime the ship was set on a southerly course. retired to his. At midnight he retired to rest in the chart-room, leaving instructions for the officer of the watch to call him at three o’clock. The first officer had apparently also retired, leaving the vessel in charge of the second and third officers. Despite proximity to a dangerous coast, they did not take soundings, or post a masthead lookout, or reduce speed. They failed to spot the Sambro Lighthouse to the south of Halifax’s harbour entrance.

The watch changed at three o’clock but the captain was apparently not woken. Minutes later an alarm of “Breakers ahead” was called from deck, too late to allow evasive action. The Atlantichad driven herself on to rocks and was stranded there immovably. Pounded by the waves, she heeled over on her starboard side, rendering it impossible for the boats there to be launched, while those on the port side, exposed to the storm’s full fury, were ripped away. Bewildered passengers crowded up on deck and were told by the officers to lash themselves to the rigging to prevent being washed away. It appears that significant numbers of passengers never made it on deck and drowned in the steerage. The Victorian account almost relishes the horror of the moment: “they slept, ignorant of the danger, until the cold waves dashed in upon them, and rose to their lips. Then, one wild startled cry, and all was hushed!”

The Wreck of the Atlantic - a contemporary Currier and Ives print
(Found on http://angloboerwarmuseum.com and gratefully acknowledged)

The Atlantic was aground some fifty yards from a large rock, itself lying about a hundred and fifty yards from an island behind. The third officer, named Brady, and two seamen braved the waters and managed to get five lines across to the nearer rock. A single rope was then passed from this rock to the island behind. The courage of the men who managed this must have been superhuman. A photograph of one of these heroes survives, Quartermaster John Speakman.

One of the heroes: John Speakman

An appalling choice now confronted the survivors on deck – stay on the doomed ship or risk passage through the raging surf along the ropes to the rock and island. “Of those who made their way to the deck, or clambered into the rigging, tens and scores were washed away by the inrush of waters. The fore-boom broke loose and, swinging to and fro, crushed the unfortunates who chanced to be within its range. Then, again, there were not a few who, in a sudden frenzy, threw themselves headlong into the sea, and were carried out of sight in a moment.” About two hundred people managed to gain the rock along the ropes and fifty of them reached the coast beyond.

At dawn a boat from a nearby island reached the wreck but was too small to take off survivors. The indomitable Third Officer Brady made use of tis skiff however to assist freeing of Atlantic’s boats trapped on her starboard side and with them managed to get more survivors ashore. Captain Williams was apparently still on board “issuing his orders with admirable composure, and doing his best to direct, tranquilise and encourage, until his hands and feet were frozen, when he was rescued by one of the boats.”

The Second Officer, named Frith, was still on board with thirty-two passengers, one of them a lady, and they had climbed up into the rigging of the mizzen mast. Some were rescued by boat, others were washed away, until at last only Frith remained with the lady and a boy. The storm had worsened and the boats could no longer approach closely. Washed away by the waves, the boy managed to reach a boat but the lady was held tight by Frith – one can imagine that with the female clothing of the period survival in the water would have been impossible. A local clergyman, named Mr. Ancient (a wonderful name!), had arrived in a small boat with four volunteers and they now made one last attempt to rescue Frith and the lady. By the time the boat reached the ship this unfortunate woman had succumbed to cold and it proved impossible to reach the mizzen mast where Frith was stranded. Ancient did manage however to get a footing in the rigging of the main mast and threw a rope across to Frith, who was dragged back by it and then brought to shore by boat.

Burial service for victims of Atlantic shipwreck, April 1873, Lower Prospect, Halifax County, N.S.
(Could the clergyman be the heroic Mr. Ancient?)

There were 371 survivors. All 156 women and 189 children on board died, the only surviving child being the twelve-year-old boy whom Frith had stood by. Ten crew members were lost, while 131 survived (there appears to be some uncertainty as to numbers). The courage of the islanders – not least Mr. Ancient – who came to the rescue and who cared for the survivors afterwards was beyond praise. There can be little doubt that neglect of proper precautions when so close to a dangerous coast led to the disaster. A subsequent court of enquiry resulted in Captain Williams being “severely censured” but in view of is courage and his efforts to save lives, his captain’s certificate (“ticket”) was suspended for only two years. One wonders what became of him afterwards. Did he perhaps become like Conrad’s Lord Jim, haunted by his failure and striving to make amends?

Perhaps some of the readers of this article may know.

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Sir Murray Fraser Sueter (1872 – 1960) was one of the most colourful personalities of the Royal Navy prior to and through the First World War. He is best remembered today as a pioneer of aviation – of airships as well as fixed-wing craft – and he was essentially the creator of the RNAS, the Royal Navy Air Service. One of his most notable achievements was development of the torpedo-carrying aircraft, and his was also involved with innovative employment of armoured cars. A forceful personality, he ran foul of senior levels in the Admiralty late in the war, and he retired – or was perhaps induced to do so – at the age of only 48 as a Rear Admiral, entering politics thereafter.

Prior however to his association with aviation, Sueter had been involved with introduction of submarines into the Royal Navy, a role that his specialism in torpedoes during his early career fitted him for. In 1907 he published a massive volume entitled “The Evolution of the Submarine Boat, Mine and Torpedo”, with a subtitle of “From the sixteenth century to the present time.” This massive tome, well-illustrated by old prints and later by photographs, is a goldmine of information for anybody interested in naval warfare. I have been lucky to have access to a copy and the following account, of an early experiment I had never previously heard of, draws upon it.

John Day (? – 1774) was a ship’s carpenter. When living in Norfolk in the 1770s he became fascinated with the idea of submarines. He does not seem to have paid attention to propulsion underwater and concentrated on the ability to submerge a human safely. He experimented initially with models and later modified a small boat in which he conducted test dives to 30-feet near Yarmouth, ascending safely afterwards. Following this success, he gained support of a gambler called Christopher Blake, and others, who put 340 Pounds Sterling at Day’s disposal to build a "diving chamber". A 50-ton sloop was purchased for conversion and was fitted out for more ambitious tests.

The illustration above, taken from Sueter’s book, shows cross-sections of the vessel. A sealed wooden air-chamber was constructed amidships with access through a manhole in its roof. Large stones were suspended beneath as ballast and could be slipped free from within to allow fast ascent. One successful submergence was made in Plymouth Sound and this prompted a second in a deeper and more exposed part of the anchorage. This attempt took place on June 20^th 1774 and the craft was initially found too buoyant to sink. Day accordingly ordered further stones to be added after he had entered and sealed the airchamber. With the extra ballast, the craft plunged down to the seabed 22 fathoms (132 feet) below the surface.

Day had bet with Blake that he could remain safely underwater for 12 hours. The time passed and there was no sign of the craft itself, nor of the coloured floats which Day had intended to release for signalling. Given the depth and the water pressure – some 57 pounds per square inch – it is probable that the slab-sided wooden compartment had collapsed. Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty (professional head of the navy) was in Plymouth at the time and he ordered the Frigate HMS Orpheus to undertake a rescue attempt. These proved fruitless and hope was abandoned.

There was a macabre postscript. A London physician – a Doctor Falcke – heard of the incident and rushed to Plymouth. He was convinced that if Day was still in the air-filled chamber the cold of the water might have kept “his blood in a good condition” and that animation might be suspended. If the body could be recovered before decomposition set in then Falcke believed that he could reanimate the body. With this in mind he privately initiated sweeping operations. These located the wreckage some 300 yards from shore but attempts to lift it failed when weather deteriorated. It seems that Day’s body was never recovered.

Day’s death was to be the first in a submarine. It was not to be the last and fatal accidents were to mark to development of these craft long before they ever saw service in war.

And to read about another early submarine ...

... you may be interested in Britannia's Shark, in which a real-life submarine prototype developed by John Phillip Holland ("Father of the Submarine") plays a significant role/ Click on the image below for more details.

Download a free copy of Britannia’s Eventide

To thank subscribers to the Dawlish Chronicles mailing list, a free, downloadable, copy of a new short story, Britannia's Eventide has been sent to them as an e-mail attachment.

If you have not already subscribed to the mailing list, you can do so by clicking here. You will then receive a copy of the story by e-mail.

Single-ship actions, in which a lone ship from one navy is matched against a lone ship of the enemy’s, represent some of the most dramatic battles in naval history. The captains and crews cannot depend on support or rescue through the intervention of a larger force and the battle represents the moment in which training, skill and discipline all come together to determine victory or defeat. In other articles on this blog I’ve described some of the most dramatic of such actions – Quebec vs Surveillante (1779), Indefatigable vs. Droits de l’Homme (1797) and Shahvs. Huascar (1877) – and the Naval War of 1812 consisted largely of similar encounters. Each of these actions took place in the context of larger tactical or strategic objectives.

German pride; The Battle of Havana, November 9th 1870
A card issued by a margarine manufacturer - SMS Meteor on left

A more obscure action, fought off the coast of Cuba in 1870, was one which was radically different in that it could have had no bearing, however remote, on the outcome of a greater conflict. It was indeed triggered by almost medieval concepts of pride and honour.

In 1870 the French Second Empire under Napoleon III entered unwisely into war with Prussia, the pre-eminent power in Germany. Within weeks of the start of hostilities French land forces had been defeated in battle after battle. Napoleon III himself had been surrounded and forced to surrender with an entire army and Prussian forces, supported by other German allies, had invaded Northern France and had brought Paris itself under siege. France had a large navy, Prussia a few ships only, and those small, but the French found themselves incapable of using their powerful modern ironclads to gain any strategic advantage.

After French defeat at Sedan, Germany's chancellor, Bismarck (on right)
comforts the defeated Emperor Napoleon III

By November 1870, as winter came, siege conditions inside Paris were beginning to bite. Food was running short (even elephants in the zoo were eventually eaten), political upheaval had resulted in proclamation of a republic, but without agreement by various hostiles factions as to what this meant, attempts at breakout by the defenders and of relief by other French forces were unsuccessful and communication with the outside world was by balloon only. Elsewhere in France efforts were being made to regroup whatever forces had so far escaped defeat – futile efforts which in turn were to lead to yet further defeats.

While Metropolitan France was enduring this agony a wooden-hulled French sloop of the three-ship Guichenclass, the Bouvet, was serving in the more idyllic surroundings of the French West Indies. Launched five years earlier, of 750 tons and 182 feet long, she carried auxiliary sails to complement the 575 hp steam engine that gave her, at best, 10.7 knots. Like many similar vessels in other navies she was intended for “colonial service” only, with shore bombardment of unsophisticated enemies her most likely hostile duty. This said, she was heavily armed for her size – one 6.4” and four 4.7” guns.

SMS Meteor

Also in the area was the Prussian gunboat Meteor of the eight-ship Chamaeleon class. She too waswooden hulled, of 415 tons and 142 feet long. She carried sail as well as steam – a 320 hp engine which urged her to just over 9 knots maximum. She was more weakly armed than the French Bouvet, carrying only one 24 pounder and two 12 pounders.

On November 7^ththe Meteor steamed into Havana, then the capital of what was still the Spanish-ruled colony of Cuba. The Bouvet arrived from Martinique a few hours later. Both ships moored and it is easy to imagine the suspicion with which their crews viewed each other. They were however in a neutral port and no offensive action could be undertaken. Also in the harbour was a French mail steamer, the Nouveau Monde.

On the following day the Nouveau Monde left Havana, en route for Veracruz. Fearing however that the Prussian Meteor might emerge, overtake and capture her, the mail steamer’s captain appeared to lose his nerve and he returned to Havana. The Meteor’s potential as a commerce raider had been recognised – but to realise it she had to get away from Havana, and that meant neutralising the Bouvet.

Events now took a turn that seemed to belong more to the days of chivalry than to those of total war in which Prussia and France were already locked. The Meteor's captain issued a formal challenge to the captain of the Bouvetto fight a battle – not indeed a wise move since the Meteor was heavily outgunned and as both ships were evenly matched as regards speed, making flight unlikely if defeat threatened. The Bouvet duly accepted the challenge and she left Havana to wait for the Meteor. Neutrality laws did however demand that the Prussianwarship had to wait another day before she could leave harbour since Spain was not a party to the conflict.

The Bouvet (right) pounds the Meteor

Meteor- 1911 image

The Meteor duly steamed out from Havana on November 9^th and towards the Bouvet, which was waiting 10 miles offshore, just outside the Spanish/Cuban territorial waters. The French opened fire immediately and the German vessel returned it. The action, at very close range, lasted upwards of an hour and the Meteor, not surprisingly, got the worst of it, losing both main and mizzen masts.

The Bouvet now moved in to finish the job by boarding but at the critical moment a steam pipe was damaged, leaving her dead in the water. Had the Meteor been more heavily armed this might have been her opportunity to destroy the Bouvet. The French did however succeed in getting their ship into neutral Spanish territorial waters under sail and the struggle could no longer be continued. (This is perhaps the only instance of sail power proving of utility under battle conditions to a steam-powered warship).

SMS Meteor - dismasted and damaged, but still full of fight

Though both ships survived the encounter, the Bouvetwas to come to an equally dramatic end some ten months later when she was wrecked near Haiti. Inconclusive as it was, and without any potential to influence the outcome of the main conflict, this was the only naval encounter of the Franco-Prussian War. It was however of great symbolic significance to the Prussians – who within three months, and with the support of their other German allies, were to proclaim the establishment of the new German Empire – the Second Reich. Humiliatingly for the French, the proclamation was to take place in Louis XIV’s huge palace of Versailles.

A fledgling navy had stood up to a larger and longer established one and it had held its own. The courage of the Meteor’s crew had served notice to the world that however small its naval power might still be, Germany had the determination and skills to make her a force to be reckoned with at sea in the future. And the rest is history…

Britannia's Reach

It's November 1879 and 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, and 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. A British naval officer, Nicholas Dawlish, is playing a leading role in the expedition. But as brutal land and river battles mark its progress upriver, and as both sides inflict and endure ever greater suffering, stalemate threatens. And Dawlish finds himself forced to make a terrible ethical choice if he is to return to Britain with some shreds of integrity remaining…

Click here or on cover image to read the opening chapters

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To thank subscribers to the Dawlish Chronicles mailing list, a free, downloadable, copy of a new short story, Britannia's Eventide has been sent to them as an e-mail attachment.

If you have not already subscribed to the mailing list, you can do so by clicking here or on the banner image above. You will then receive a copy of the story by e-mail.

Probably like many others I have always thought of privateers in the Age of Fighting Sail as preying on enemy merchant shipping on commercial routes in open ocean, far from land. My perception has however been changed by an 1889 book, “Betwixt the Forelands”, by the Victorian maritime author W. Clark Russell, in which he deals with the naval history of the English Channel from the Middle Ages onwards. At its narrowest, this strait between the English and French coasts is only some twenty miles wide, and domination of it was always a key objective of British naval policy. It was – and is – one of the busiest commercial waterways in the world, offering access to Northern Europe from the Central Atlantic. Clark Russell’s book highlights the fact that, though Britannia might rule the waves and dominate the Channel, the prize of rich commercial pickings was always an inducement for French privateers in light craft to dart out, seize their prizes and retire quickly to the cover of their well-defended home ports. The story of one such foray tells just how savage these encounters could be.

Close action action in the Narrow Seas

“British brig attacking a French lugger” by Thomas Buttersworth (1768-1842)

Tensions between Britain and Revolutionary France had escalated through 1792. Following the execution of the French King Louis XVI on 21^st January 1793 Britain expelled the French ambassador and on 1 February France responded by declaring war on Great Britain. The period of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, which were to last until 1815, with a break of only a few months, had begun. Within days of the declaration the crew of a British merchant ship, the Glory, was to be one of the first victims of the war at sea, and indeed at its most cruel. Under a Captain Benson she had just cleared the South Foreland and its White Cliffs, just north-east of Dover, when a French privateer bore down upon her. An attempt to flee failed and the French vessel sent a boat across with fifteen armed men. What followed was atrocious. According to Clark Russell Benson was “seized, bound hand and foot, and lashed down upon a chest. His crew was clapt in irons, plundered of every article, and insulted by every injurious terms the Johnnies could lay their tongues to” (It is notable that in this period the French were referred to as ”Johnnies”).

Sir Samuel Hood

The French were now preparing to run their prize back home – Calais was twenty miles away, the great base at Dunkirk just twice that – but now retribution arrived in the form of the 32-gun frigate HMS Juno, en-route to the Mediterranean and commanded by the future Vice-Admiral Samuel Hood (1762 – 1814), a cousin of the more renowned admiral of the same name. There could be no contest, no hope of escape, and the French surrendered without further ado.

It is what followed which was perhaps most interesting, and I quote below from the statement made by the Glory’sCaptain Benson, as repeated by Clark Russell:

After his ship had been boarded and his crew put in irons Benson claimed that the Frenchmen “led me down to my cabin, where they placed me on my back, and lashed me to my chest by my neck, arms and legs, with my head hanging over. I was in the most excruciating pain for four hours and a half. In this helpless condition the cowardly miscreants (they disgrace even the name of Frenchmen) snapped a pistol at my head, and another made a thrust at me with a cutlass, which fortunately went off at an oblique direction through my coat and jacket.” Worse was to follow. “They cut off my dog’s head, they said, for the purpose of representing the fate of the whole crew when we got to France.”

As the Juno drew near the French released their prisoners – it would have been unwise for the French to be found with their captives so cruelly trussed up. Benson was however little inclined to forgive and forget and, as he remarked, “It is difficult at all times to keep the passions within a due state of subordination.” He accordingly snatched a cutlass from the hand of the French seaman who untied him and “I almost at one stroke severed his left hand from his body; when, fearing for the further effects of my frenzy, he jumped out of the cabin window and was drowned. Another followed his example. And jumped off the taffrail, and the (French) captain, dreading the just vengeance which was awaiting him, took a pistol and shot himself through the head.”

Thomas Buttersworth - a Royal Navy brig chasing a privateer

Benson’s “frenzy” was still unsatisfied: “I was not yet reduced to reason and, before the Juno’s crew could overpower me, had cut and lacerated three more of the Frenchmen so dreadfully that they were now entirely covered with blood, and now lie in the hospital without any hope of recovery.”

It is possible that today Benson would be hauled before a court to answer for violation of the Human Rights of his persecutors. His era was however a more robust one and he ends his statement: “Those only who suffer can feel, and, though the more moderate part of mankind my blame me for rashness, my own heart acquits me of any deliberate or unprovoked act of cruelty.”

This small, vicious, action was one of the first of the new conflict. Hundreds more lay ahead in a then-unimaginable twenty-two years of war.

Britannia's Spartan

Six-inch breech loading guns represented the cutting edge of naval technology in the early 1880s. In my novel Britannia’s Spartan they are seen in use on both British and Japanese ships. The splendid woodcut below shows Japanese crews managing just such a weapon in the war of 1895 against China.

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To thank subscribers to the Dawlish Chronicles mailing list, a free, downloadable, copy of a new short story, Britannia's Eventide has been sent to them as an e-mail attachment.

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The French Navy’s record through the centuries never achieved the string of memorable victories won by Britain’s Royal Navy – though one French victory, that of the Virginia Capes in 1781, was decisive in assuring American Independence. One French naval hero was however to achieve a status in his countrymen’s eyes comparable to Nelson in British ones. This was Jean Bart (1650 – 1702), a man whose career was so dramatic, and whose character was so outlandish, that only the most daring of authors would dare create a similar figure in fiction.

The name Dunkirk evokes today images of the almost miraculous evacuation of British and French forces in 1940 from the harbour and nearby beaches of this port on the French side of the English Channel. It played an equally important role in the late seventeenth century, when Britain, France and the Netherlands were locked in a series of wars, as it represented the most northerly French naval base. As such it provided a fortified refuge and source of supply not only for formal naval forces but also for privateers. Its possession was vital for supporting French efforts to control the Channel and the North Sea.

The boyhood of Jean Bart - French chocolate label!

It was here that Jean Bart was born in 1650 to a seafaring family. It may not have been French – there is some evidence that his original name was Jan Baert, indicating a Flemish origin, and that he spoke both languages. (Even today the French/Flemish linguistic boundary lies around a dozen miles north-east of Dunkirk). Details appear scarce but he seems to have first gone to sea in Dutch service, under the illustrious Admiral Michiel de Ruyter in the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1664-67), from which the Dutch emerged victorious.

The price of Louis XIV's glory - French atrocities during invasion of the Netherlands

In 1672 France invaded the Dutch Republic, the so-called United Provinces. The Dutch fought back ferociously, so initiating six-years of warfare in which, surprisingly in view of later history, Britain was to be France’s ally for the first two years. Jean Bart now entered French service, not as a naval officer – a rank not open to those of humble birth – but as a privateer operating out of Dunkirk. Such privateers were privately-owned ships sailing under a “letter of marque”, with government backing, and were frequently funded by syndicates of investors. Bart’s raids on Dutch commerce during the first years of the war were so fruitful that in 1675, at his own expense, he could afford to equip a sloop carrying two guns and 36 men. With this he at once captured a Dutch warship mounting eighteen guns and crewed by 65 men. He continued to take prizes and could now afford to fit out a 10-gun ship, promptly capturing a Dutch 12-gun vessel. He then was given command of five frigates, and on 4th March 1676, captured an 18-gun Dutchman. Shortly afterwards he met eight British merchant ships, escorted by three warships. He promptly captured one of the escorts, drove the others off, and took the merchantmen into Dunkirk. In September of the same year he captured the Neptune, 36-gun frigate, and her entire convoy. During the six years the war lasted he took 49 vessels in total.

French ship under attack by Barbary corsairs, mid-17th Century

With peace restored Bart, irrespective of his birth, was awarded a lieutenant’s commission – a first step in the Royal French Navy that was ultimately to carry him to the rank of admiral. He was now given command of a 14-gun ship and sent to cruise off North Africa against the Barbary corsairs who were to be a scourge of European – and later American – shipping for another century and a half. This resulted in capture of a large armed-xebec which was brought back to Toulon as a prize.

In 1683 France was at war again, this time with Spain. It lasted less than a year but it gave Jean Bart the opportunity to take a Spanish vessel carrying 350 troops, which he sent in to Brest. He followed this up by capturing two warships off Cadiz, receiving a severe thigh-wound in the process.

King Louis XIV’s territorial ambitions were to trigger war again in 1688, a nine-year conflict which was to pitch France against the so-called “Grand Alliance” of the Dutch, British, Holy Roman Empire and several lesser principalities. For Jean Bart this was the start of the most spectacular part of his career. He now commanded a 24-gun frigate, and immediately took a Dutch privateer, but his luck ran out when he ran into met two 50-gun British ships. Taken prisoner, he was brought to Plymouth but was to make a daring escape, stealing a boat and rowing in two and-a-half days across the Channel to near St. Malo on the coast of Brittany.

The long row home - Jean Bart escaping from Plymouth to St. Malo

Now a national hero, he was promoted to captain and given command of the frigate Alcyon. In her he was to fight under the Count de Tourville on 10th July 1690 at the Battle of Beachy Head in the English Channel – known by the French as the Battle of Béveziers – a French tactical victory which resulted in British and Dutch losses of eleven ships for no French loss. This gave the French temporary control of the English Channel but de Tourville did not follow up the victory. The battle is unique in that both commanders, British and French, were to lose their commands for their performances.

The Battle of Beachy Head, July 1690, by Nicholas Ozanne

Jean Bart’s next assignment was escorting merchant shipping from Hamburg to Dunkirk, an activity he combined with successful commerce-raiding in the North Sea. By 1691 however enemy forces had blockaded Dunkirk. Bart escaped with several small vessels, slipped out at night and opened fire on the blockading squadron as he passed. The following evening he captured two British ships, of 40 and of 50 tons respectively, together with merchant ships he took in to neutral Bergen, in Norway. He then now directed his attention to savaging a large Dutch fishing fleet, burning most of them, seizing their escorts and landing their crews on the English coast, then going on to plunder and burn villages on the Scottish coast. Again blockaded in Dunkirk, , he once more broke out successfully in October 1693 and at once hurled himself on British shipping, sustaining his record of captures and raiding the English coast near Newcastle, returning with enormous spoils. Sallying out again from Dunkirk with three frigates, he captured more merchant vessels before engaging a convoy escorted by three men-of-war. Two of these he captured but the third, a 54-gun vessel, fought off three attempts to board her. She made her escape, abandoning the convoy to Bart.

The Battle of Texel, June 1694, by Eugene Isabey

The battle that was to earn Jean Bart his title of nobility was fought off the Dutch island of Texel on 29th June 1694 when, with a flotilla of seven ships, he recaptured a French convoy which had earlier that month been taken by the Dutch. He also took three warships of the eight-strong escort. Greeted with rapture on his return to Dunkirk, he found himself invited to Versailles to receive the personal congratulations of Louis XIV.

Bart’s last triumph in the North Sea was at the Battle of the Dogger Bank on 17^th June 1696. It was initiated by his locating a Dutch convoy of 112 merchantmen, escorted by five warships. Speed was essential for a large British squadron under Admiral John Benbow was searching for Bart’s force of seven ships. Bart threw his own ship nevertheless at the Dutch flagship, the Raadhuis van Haarlem, capturing it only after a three-hour battle. Four more Dutch warships surrendered. Bart then burned

25 merchant ships, making away to the east only as Benbow's squadron hove into sight. A year later the Treaty of Rijswijk brought the war to an end, and with it Bart’s fighting career. He died five years later, still a relatively young man, yet one who had packed more into a single life than the vast majority of men ever dream of.

A lesson in courage - Jean Bart's son tied to the mast during a battle

Jean Bart was to achieve mythic status in death, the embodiment of an “up and at them” tactical commander rather than a strategist. Records indicate that he captured a total of 386 ships, besides sinking or burning many more. Some of the stories told of him may or may not be true, but even the fanciful ones hint at the nature of his character. One tale has him causing outrage among courtiers at Versailles by smoking his pipe in the ante-room while waiting for an audience with Louis XIV. On the king asking him how he broke the blockade at Dunkirk, he is said to have arranged the courtiers present in a line, then attacking them with his fists, knocking them down, as a practical demonstration. In 1697, towards the end of the war, he was tasked with carrying the Prince de Conti (François-Louis de Bourbon), the French candidate for the Polish crown, to Danzig. This demanded slipping six frigates through a tight enemy blockade. When clear of danger, the prince asked Bart if he had not been afraid that the enemy might have captured them. Much to the Prince's horror, Bart informed him that not the slightest danger of such a contingency had existed, as his son had been stationed with a match in the magazine to blow up the ship upon receiving a pre-arranged signal. Another story has him tying his own son to a mast during an action to cure him of fear of death and gunfire.

Jean Bart under attack by aircraft from the USS Ranger, Casablanca, November 1942

Jean Bart’s name has lived on in the French Navy, some 27 ships being named for him since his death. The most famous was France’s last completed battleship, which in November 1942, when only partly completed, was to fire on American warships during the Casablanca landings until silenced by dive bombers from the carrier USS Ranger and five 16-inch hits by the USS Massachusetts. Finally completed after WW2, she was to remain in French service until 1961. The current vessel is an anti-aircraft frigate launched in 1988.

The name of Jean Bart lives on.

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

Britannia’s Reach is the second of the Dawlish Chronicles.So what’s it about?

Click image for details

It’s 1880. On a broad river deep in the heart of South America, a flotilla of paddle steamers thrashes slowly upstream. 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.

Nicholas Dawlish, an ambitious British naval officer, is playing a leading role in the expedition. But as brutal land and river battles mark its progress upriver, and as both sides inflict and endure ever greater suffering, stalemate threatens.

And Dawlish finds himself forced to make a terrible ethical choice if he is to return to Britain with some shreds of integrity remaining…

It is always gratifying to an author to received feedback from readers, particularly when detailed research to support a story is recognised and appreciated. I was therefore delighted to be contacted recently by an American reader, Douglas R. Smith, who was intrigued by the central role played in my novel Britannia’s Spartan by HMS Leonidas, a fictional member of the innovative and real-life Leanderclass of “protected cruiser” which entered service with the Royal Navy in the 1880s. I’m proud therefore to welcome Douglas as a guest blogger today. I’ve no doubt you’ll enjoy his article.

PROTECTED CRUISERS IN

THE PRE-DREADNOUGHT ERA

by Douglas R. Smith

The British Empire was vast and overextended in the late 1800s, and dependent upon vulnerable sea lanes. To compensate it had a Navy equal to the next two contenders combined. British bankers and businessmen built a network of intercontinental telegraph lines, reaching all of the way to New Zealand by 1876, with London at the center. The role of protected cruisers was for protecting commerce, and raiding that of the enemy, often operating distantly and independently around the globe.

1891 Telegraph Map

Telegraph Connections (Telegraphen Verbindungen), 1891 Stielers Hand-Atlas, Plate No. 5, Weltkarte in Mercators Projection. Uploaded to en:Wikipedia on 03:53, 16 February 2006 by w:User:Flux.books == Licensing == {{PD-

"Britainia's Spartan" by Antoine Vanner is the story of the shakedown cruise of the fictional HMS Leonidas, first of her class. Captain Nicholas Dawlish has earned the honor of being her first commander. We have followed his meteoric career in earlier books, and like all career people, he must struggle to find a balance, and determine if that balance is worth the personal cost. In a similar way a warship must find a balance between speed, firepower, and protection, and do so at an acceptable cost in lives and resources. This is an outline of naval dynamics with respect to protected cruisers in the dawn of the Pre-Dreadnought Era, when hydraulics, electricity, and triple reciprocating steam engines were enhancing the capabilities of warships, but before submarines, destroyers, and airplanes, much less carriers and tenders for them, changed the nature of naval warfare.

HMS Leonidas - Nicholas Dawlish's command in Britannia's Spartan

HMS Leander, analog to the Leonidas.

Armed with ten 6" breechloaders, and carried two 2nd class torpedo boats.

She became a destroyer depot ship in 1904.

Source : "The Navy and Army Illustrated" Scanned by Steve Johnson.

Downloaded from Steve Johnson's cyber-heritage website : http://www.cyber-heritage.co.uk/vicnavy/

Armored cruisers ( the Russian Navy favored them ) relied on a steel belt for protection, much the same as the battleships. Often a belt included a ram in the bow, a relic of ironclad steamships fighting against wooden ships. But since weight was the enemy of speed, armored cruisers were little better than battleships at commerce raiding. Not too cost effective. Protected cruisers relied on clever use of curved steel to deflect shells away from, and coal bunkers to protect, the machinery and magazines below water level. It worked well provided you didn't collide with armored ships. The weight savings resulted in greater speed and the range to defend a far-flung empire.

It's always nice to have superior range in a main weapon. That's been true ever since the trebuchet. You can hit the enemy, but they can't hit back. HMS Leonidas had a main battery of all 6" breech loading rifles. A bigger gun could do more damage, but a contemporary 7", 8", 9", or even 10" breach loader wouldn't necessarily have more velocity, accuracy, or effective range ( about 10,000 yards). It would require separate powder charges and shells in the magazine, complicate handling, adding weight and reducing speed, particularly as a bow chaser, where it would be most advantageous. The alternative solution would have been to develop lighter shells for long range situations, but the trade-off would be reduced impact.

Japanese protected cruiser Izumi left elevation plan

The British-built protected cruiser Chilean Esmeralda1884 (aka IJN Izumi after 1894 ).

A bow ram, 10" chasers, a 6" broadside, and 3 sizes of other guns,

but no torpedo launchers until the sale and refit.

Source: Janes Fighting Ships, 1904 edition Sampson, Low, Marston and Co, London

In Nelson's era, sailing ships of the line tended to have lighter weapons as the decks got higher, ranging from 32-pounders to swivel guns. It didn't much matter at "pistol shot range" in the days of sail when rate of fire was the key. As the range opened up in the Pre-Dreadnought Era, it became difficult to correct the aim because they couldn't differentiate the splashes. The continuous smoke from the rapid-fire weapons never cleared, so they couldn't see well enough to aim anything properly. The innovative “all big gun” design of the HMS Dreadnought solved these issues.

Adding extra "tools" to the armament to anticipate a multitude of situations, such as several small rapid-fire breach loaders of various sizes to defend against torpedo boats, is a design temptation for an independent command. This "Swiss Army knife approach" requires more crew and training, complicates ammunition storage and handling, and versatility comes at the expense of role specialization and refinement.

Torpedoes as we know them were in the early stages, with an effective range limit of only 800 yards, less for a moving target. Lethal, but more of a coup d' grace than a stand-off weapon. HMS Leonidas carried two launchers on each broadside. Pairs of torpedoes are much harder to avoid than solo ones, but crippled ships aren't so nimble. Perhaps it wasn't a very practical addition to the armament.

An alternative arrangement would be for the cruiser to carry a pair of torpedo boats, (like HMS Leander, and the fictional Kiroshima in Britannia’s Spartan) which could be launched for coordinated night attacks. More skill, but more effect. In terms of costs in cash and lives, it takes a lot of torpedo boats to equal a battleship, so they were the emerging threat at the time. France embraced them as part of her “Jeune Ecole” doctrine. The Americans were developing flywheel powered torpedoes, which had no telltale bubble trails. A pair of torpedo boats carried aft would lift the bow and improve the ship's trim, offer an option against a battleship (when a gun fight was out of the question) , and would enhance blockading a hostile port or protecting a friendly one (more so with the addition of a few sea mines) . They might also come in handy for patrolling, carrying messages, search and rescue, or on convoy duty. They add weight, but would replace some boats and torpedo launchers.

HMS Vulcan, a torpedo boat depot ship launched in 1889 carried six 16' torpedo boats,

two counter-mining launches, and eight 4.7" guns.

From 'The Royal Navy : a history from the earliest times to the present' Vol 7 by William Laird Clowes,

published 1903 by Samson.Low, Marston and Co. London.

Available at http://www.archive.org/details/royalnavy07clow,

Public Domain, File:HMS Vulcan 1889.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Gatling being fired from a fighting top

Ships retained masts, yards, and sails as backup propulsion and to stretch the coal supply on long voyages, but the sailing rigs had less area and the ships more weight than their predecessors, and weren't practical. In combat, these rigs often became a liability that would obstruct a battery, create splinters, or act as a sea anchor when hit. Radios hadn't been invented yet, so they didn't need an antennae mast. They did still need signal halyard and lookout platforms, and they were good places to mount Gatling guns and search lights to defend against night torpedo boat attacks. An observer or gunner couldn't see much from a mainmast close to the smoke stacks. A foremast and it's supports interfered with the bow chaser and the view from the bridge. It took years for naval architects to sort things out.

The first designated torpedo boat destroyer went into service in 1895. Navies would adopt submarines at the turn of the century, radio 1905, HMS Dreadnought in 1906, and floatplanes circa 1910. In 1912 the effective range of the torpedo was as much as 6,000 yards. By then the value and versatility of the destroyer was proven, and they were replacing torpedo boats. Naval warfare would become "modern". But in the early 1880s, other cruisers, battleships, and torpedo boats were the recognized perils, and how to optimize the new cruisers to fulfil the role of commerce raiders or protectors was the question.

Douglas R. Smith was born in Pennsylvania in 1959, where he developed an interest in history and reading historical fiction. This included Pre-Dreadnought navies, because they established both Japan and the USA as world powers. He worked in agriculture, sales, and insurance. Now he and his wife Karen are in Wisconsin, enjoying their retirement, dining, Disney, and travel.

Britannia's Spartan

If you're in the UK click here to read the opening

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Download a free copy of Britannia’s Eventide

To thank subscribers to the Dawlish Chronicles mailing list, a free, downloadable, copy of a new short story, Britannia's Eventide has been sent to them as an e-mail attachment.

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Helen Hollick

For me, Antoine Vanner, one of the most unexpected but very rewarding outcomes of publishing my first book some years ago was that it brought me into contact with a network of other writers. They proved almost invariably to be delightful, fascinating, engaging and generous people whom I would never otherwise have met and they all work in the Historical Fiction genre in all its various forms. They have immersed themselves in specific periods and in conversation, no less than in their fiction, and it is impossible not to be infected by their enthusiasm for bringing past eras to life, no matter how different they may be to one's own chosen period.

Not least among these new friends is Helen Hollick, who is equally at home in the Arthurian, Norman Conquest and early Georgian periods. She is now adding to her substantial fiction output with her first non-fiction book, "Pirates: Truth and Tales"(links later in article). To mark the publication I invited Helen to contribute a guest blog - not for the first time - and what she has come up with has one of the most irresistible titles imaginable!

THE WICKEDEST PIRATE PLACE IN THE WORLD - PORT ROYAL

By Helen Hollick

"... a variety of weaponry..." - and ready for any devilry!

Pirates. We tend to like pirates – at least the ones from the ‘Golden Age’, which was a very short period in the early eighteenth century, from about 1715 – 1722. Before that, in the latter 1600s, pirates were better known as privateers and buccaneers - ‘legal’ sea-faring terrorists. If you had a ship, a crew, plenty of gunpowder for a variety of weaponry (including cannons), and could persuade your King to provide you with a Letter of Marque, you could sail off in merry pursuit of the Spanish. Or the French. Or the Dutch – or a variety of all three, but mostly the Spanish.

England was often at war with Spain. It all sort-of started with the Armada of Elizabeth I’s reign. The Spanish took their shattering defeat badly. In fact, they tried again in March 1719 as an attempt to place Catholic James Stuart on the throne of Britain, instead of George I of Hanover. The Spanish Navy were obviously not very good at their history lessons, for almost exactly the same thing happened as that previous attempt – but without Sir Francis Drake playing bowls at Plymouth Hoe before setting off to do battle. (And before you think it, no, he was not wasting time. He was an experienced seafarer and knew perfectly well that he had several hours before he could set sail because the tide was out.)

This second Armada set sail from Cádiz – without James, who had failed to reach the rendezvous point in time. On a previous attempt at landing in Scotland to claim his throne he fell ill and returned home to France. On several other occasions he found excuses to clear off on the eve of battle. He would not, I think, have made a Good King, and he was nothing like his more famous son, Bonnie Prince Charlie. So off sailed the Spanish, only to have their fleet wrecked by a horrendous storm in the English Channel.

© HelenHollick – Cathy Helms

Because of these attempted invasions (and a few additional reasons involving religion, which we won’t go into here) the Spanish were not liked by the English. Squabbling, however, was an expensive business. Fortunately (for the English) there were a lot of Spanish Galleons returning from the South Americas and Mexico laden with treasure… enough to pay for the mounting financial deficit caused by war. Hence, open season for privateers to plunder any Spanish ship they could find. The only rule, the loot gained had to be shared with the Government’s Representative, the Admiralty and the King.

Columbus discovered Jamaica (although there were native tribes already there) and for more than 146 years Spain dominated the island. But the British Navy realised the island’s strategic importance for defence, its flat beaches were ideal for careening (cleaning the underside of the ship), and its deep-water anchorage was a perfect sheltered haven. In 1655 Jamaica became British. They set about building Fort Cromwell, which within a couple of years was tactfully renamed Fort Charles; such are the consequences of political upheaval.

In the days of Henry Morgan who was raiding the Mexican coast around 1665, Port Royal welcomed in-bound ships as if it were a celebration feast day. Everyone in town would drop what they were doing and hurry to the waterfront to see what treasures were to be unloaded. The air was filled with ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’, somewhat like a 17^th century version of a modern high-prize TV quiz show. Officials would board a ship as soon as it dropped anchor to remove 1/5^th of the plunder for the King, 1/10^th for the Admiralty and 1/12^thfor the Governor. (Even pirates paid taxes.) That still left a lot for the captain and crew. Henry Morgan (and yes, the Rum Brand was named after him) became Governor in 1675, and Port Royal established itself as a notorious pirate-paradise - the Wickedest City in the World. Every pirate worth his (or her) salt would have dropped anchor there at least once. Such famous names as Blackbeard, Benjamin Hornigold, Charles Vane and Calico Jack Rackham, although for these two their last visit was not exactly pleasant. They were hanged there in 1720. (Vane maybe a year later, the records are uncertain.)

A typical pirate? © igroup

By 1692 6,500 to 10,000 people occupied fifty-one acres of land on Jamaica, with over 2,000 buildings. A quarter of the population would have been slaves, with another quarter a fluctuating population of sailors, pirates and merchant traders. Nor was it only the wealthy citizens who possessed valuable goods. Spices, silver, jewellery, porcelain and cloth abounded from Big House to Tavern alike. Port Royal was a thriving boomtown and everyone living in it during those years of decadence enjoyed those consumer-good luxuries to the cutlass-hilt.

But maybe the Spanish had the last laugh. On June 7^th 1692 Port Royal met a devastating fate by something more omnipotent than any seafaring pirate could ever hope to be.

An earthquake struck and the sea swallowed two-thirds of the town in one gulp. Geologically speaking, for the area to remain underwater the earthquake must have lowered the level of the sea floor, one plate slipping under another. A tsunami recedes again, leaving destruction and acres of mud. Old Port Royal is now an underwater town, in effect, a piratical Atlantis.

There are some excellent documentaries, including images of what Port Royal would have looked like on the National Geographic website:

www.nationalgeographic.com.au/tv/wicked-pirate-city

4,000 people lost their lives, many killed by the earthquake and tidal wave which followed, the rest by injuries and disease. Port Royal was never rebuilt, the survivors moved across the bay and founded Kingston instead.

As for Henry Morgan, he died, probably of liver disease caused by excessive drinking, in 1688 and was buried on the spit of land that the earthquake swallowed. His bones are there today, somewhere beneath the surf and the waves, visited only by the fishes.

After Morgan’s death, attitudes towards piracy changed. Wars with Spain were less frequent and trade was becoming more important. Buccaneering had ceased, and piracy took its place hitting the profits of wealthy merchants back in England. It had to be stopped. An anti-piracy law was passed in 1687, although it was not taken seriously until 1715, when Henry Jennings, after acquiring a shipload of treasure from a Spanish fleet wrecked off the coast of Florida, was turned away as a pirate. Forty-one men were hanged during one month alone in 1722. Far from welcoming pirates, Jamaica became their nemesis.

Helen’s latest book, Pirates; Truth and Talesis a blend of non-fiction and fiction, looking at the fact and the fiction of pirates such as Blackbeard, Edward Low, Bartholomew Roberts – and Jack Sparrow, Captain Hook and Pugwash, with excerpts from her own Sea Witch Voyages and the novels of Anna Belfrage, Helen Hart, James L. Nelson and other fiction authors. ‘Pirates,’ she says ‘because of the movies from Errol Flynn to Johnny Depp have always been a favourite topic. I wanted to explore some different pirates – and the fictional tales alongside their factual lives.’

Available now in hardback in the UK and in early May in the USA (but you can pre-order)

myBook.to/PIRATESTruthTale

LINKS

Website: www.helenhollick.net

Main Blog: www.ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/HelenHollick

Twitter: @HelenHollick

Subscribe To Newsletter: http://tinyletter.com/HelenHollick

When thinking of the ocean-going navy of the Southern Confederacy in the American Civil War the image immediately comes to mind of fast, largely unarmoured vessels such as the Alabama and the Florida, general similar in construction terms to commercial vessels, albeit strengthened to carry heavy armament. The corresponding image of a Confederate ironclad is, by contrast, an armoured, improvised, steam-propelled raft intended for service in rivers and coastal waters. It is therefore somewhat of a surprise to learn that the Confederacy’s last “Blue-Water” naval vessel was a heavily-armed ironclad, well capable of sinking any major Union warship she encountered. Completed late in the Civil War, only the end of the conflict brought her potentially devastating career in Confederate service to an end only just as it was starting. This was however to be just the prelude to spectacular battle-service in a newly created navy on the other side of the world.

CSS Stonewall

The ship that was to become the CSS Stonewall was one of two ironclads constructed in France, personal approval for the project being given in 1863 by the Emperor Napoleon III, who was sympathetic to the Confederate cause. The objection that French neutrality would be compromised by delivery of warships to either the Union or to the Confederacy was neatly side-stepped by circulation of the rumour that they were intended for delivery to the Khedive of Egypt – the appropriate names of Sphynx and Cheops were allocated to them. A further element of confusion was added by ensuring that the armament would come from Britain. The seagoing ironclad concept was a new and revolutionary one at the time – France’s Gloire and Britain’s HMS Warrior, the first of the type, had been launched in 1859 and 1860 respectively – so the Confederacy was betting on acquiring cutting-edge naval technology.

Armouring of Cheops and Sphynx - note waterline belts and armoured redoubts for and aft

Sphynx and Cheops were of 1358 tons and some 190 feet long. Their 1200-hp steam engines, driving two screws, gave a top speed of over 10-knots. Twin rudders made for very tight turning circles – a decided advantage at a time when combat was likely to be at very close range. They also carried an auxiliary sail rig – especially valuable for conservation of coal when operating over long distances. The most notable feature was however the heavy armour protection – a waterline belt with thickness ranging from 3-5 to 5-inches or iron, as well as some 5-inches on the redoubts fore and aft in which the armament was housed. These latter structures were not rotating turrets, but rather protective casemates from which the guns fired through ports. As such they could be regarded as precursors of the later “central battery” type of ironclads, as compared with the traditional broadside arrangement of the earlier Gloire and Warrior. Sphynxand Cheops each carried a single 300-pounder muzzle-loading Armstrong forward, firing over the pronounced ram-bow, with two 68-pounder weapons in the after redoubt. As such they were built to absorb tremendous punishment as well as to deal it out.

Sail Plan of Cheops and Sphynx - note armouring above ram.
Note also how the weapons are carried high behind thick armour,

The vessels were constructed in Bordeaux, on France’s Atlantic coast, and were launched early in 1864. Human greed is however a major obstacle to keeping a project of this sort secret. In this case the subterfuge about purchase by Egypt was exposed by a clerk at the shipyard who supplied information on the deal – and hard evidence, in the form of documentation – to the United States ambassador in Paris. With a diplomatic crisis about neutrality brewing, the French Government had no option but to block the sale. A new customer was immediately available however. Prussia’s “Iron Chancellor”, Otto von Bismarck, supported by the Austro-Hungarians, had precipitated war with Denmark. Heavily outnumbered, the Danish resistance was fierce, heroic and doomed. The bright spot for Denmark was the performance of its navy, both in support of land operations and on the open sea. (My blog of 8^th January 2016 regarding the Battle of Heligoland refers. It can be found via the sidebar).It was accordingly inevitable that both the Danes and their enemies should be looking to purchase more warships. Sphynxand Cheops would fit the bill to perfection. In a cynical deal in which a sale to one side was balanced by a sale to the other, the Sphynx was sold to Denmark – and renamed Stærkodder– while the Cheops was purchased by Prussia and called Prinz Adalbert. Thus were neutrality concerns elegantly sidestepped!

Denmark's day of glory - the Nils Juel at Heligoland, 9th May 1864

A Danish crew arrived in Bordeaux in June 1864 to start acceptance trials and take her to Denmark thereafter. (One wonders if there were any embarrassing encounters with a Prussian crew arriving to take over Prinz Adalbert!). The war was however winding down – with Denmark comprehensively beaten – and by 1^stAugust a preliminary peace treaty had been signed. By the time Stærkodder arrived in Copenhagen all was over and she was by now essentially surplus to the requirements of the vanquished nation.

Confederate agents had however followed the Sphynx/ Stærkodder affair with interest and were still determined to acquire her. Negotiations – which must have required a high degree of secrecy – resulted in a sale by Denmark and in early January 1865 a Confederate crew commanded by Captain Thomas Jefferson Page (1808 – 1899) took delivery. The ship was commissioned at sea as the CSS Stonewall.

These events had not gone unnoticed by Union agents and diplomats and once intelligence was obtained of the Stonewall’s“breakout” from the Baltic to the North Sea, and on to the Atlantic, powerful Union Navy units were despatched to find and sink her. There are strong parallels with the breakout of Germany’s battleship Bismarckin 1941 and her hunting by Royal Navy forces. Among the Union ships deployed were the steam-sloop USS Kearsarge– recently the victor of her duel with the CSS Alabama off the French coast – and her sister USS Sacramento, supported later by the steam-frigate USS Niagara. Though Kearsarge had been partly protected by improvised chain-armour, all these ships would have been at a decided – and perhaps fatal – disadvantage in any duel with the heavily-armoured Stonewall.

Gun exposed on an open deck during the Kearsarge - Alabama duel
It is clear that such ships would be at a disadvantage when facing a heavily armoured
vessel like the Stonewall with its weapons sheltered behind 5-inches of iron plate.

Once at sea the Stonewalldeveloped a leak – it is notable that her now-Prussian sister Prinz Adalbert deteriorated so rapidly that she was taken from service in 1871 – and she put in at Quiberon, on France’s Brittany coast, where repair possibilities see to have been limited, and to take on supplies and further crew members. It is likely that many of these recruits were not American, as was the case also with other Confederate raiders, but men of other nationalities who were attracted by pay and by the opportunity for adventure. Stonewallnow pressed on to Ferrol, in North-West Spain, where she could undertake repairs. She remained there for almost two months. Word of her presence spread and the USS Sacramento and USS Niagara took up station outside. (One is reminded of HMS Shannon lying off Boston in 1813, daring the USS Chesapeaketo come out).

Portuguese battery at Belem fort firing warning shots
to restrain USS Niagara. Common sense prevailed a
and the situation was defused

When the Stonewalldid finally emerge from Ferrol on 24^th March, the Union warships waiting for him declined to engage – wisely, in view of the disparity in armament and armour. Captain Page now headed for Lisbon, Portugal, to take on coal prior to a dash across the Atlantic to attack Port Royal in South Carolina, the supply base for the Union General Sherman's army. The Stonewallwas followed into port by the Sacramentoand Niagara– which under neutrality rules could only glower at each other in enmity. An attempt by the Niagara to shift her berth was interpreted by the Portuguese authorities as a potentially hostile move against the Confederate vessel and warning shots from cannon on the castle of Belem put an end to the manoeuvre. Formal neutrality rules – demanding that enemy ships could not leave harbour simultaneously – were strictly applied and the Stonewall slipped away unmolested.

Time was running out for the Confederacy however. On 9th April Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant and on 26th April the only other major Confederate force was surrendered by Johnson to Sherman. By the time that Page and the Stonewallput in at Nassau, in the British possession of the Bahamas, on 6^thMay the epic conflict was at an end. The ironclad and her crew were now orphans.

Page now decided to take his ship to Havana, in Cuba, then still a Spanish possession. He handed her over to the government authorities there against a payment of $16,000 and paid off her crew. The Spanish in turn handed the Stonewall to the United States in return for a similar payment.

The triumphant Union now possessed one of the most powerful warships afloat, but in the aftermath of the Civil War there was little appetite for retention of a large navy – the concern was indeed to run down one which had grown to gigantic levels during the conflict. The Stonewalllay decommissioned at the Washington Navy Yard for some two years until it was decided to sell her.

And the buyer?

Opened up to foreign contact only thirteen years before, the Empire of Japan was engaged on a furious, and historically-unprecedented, campaign of modernisation. Its ambitions were all but boundless and acquisition of an effective navy was of the highest priority. The ex-Confederate ironclad would be ideal for their purposes.

The Stonewallwould be heading east, and under a new name - Kōtetsu - would embark on the most active part of her career.

I’ll tell about that in the second part of this article, which will appear soon. Watch out for it!

Japan’s rapid creation of a superbly efficient modern navy is one of the most remarkable stories in Maritime History. This achievement is a major theme in my Dawlish Chronicles novel Britannia’s Spartan. Click on the image below to learn more.

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Franz Josef in 1910 -
an old man for whom so many young ones died

The Emperor Franz Josef (1830 - 1916) of the Austro-Hungarian Empire reigned for an amazing 68 years and is probably best remembered today for his complicity in starting World War 1. Conscientious, unimaginative, hardworking, pig-headed, but essentially stupid, his tenure was to be marked by military defeat, political decline and personal tragedy. His wife was murdered, his son died in a suicide pact, his brother – the so-called Emperor of Mexico – was shot by a firing squad and his nephew’s assassination triggered disaster in 1914. His domains lay in Central and Southern Europe and it is therefore all the more surprising that the archipelago named after him – Franz Josef Land – should be located in the Arctic Ocean and be today a Russian possession of considerable strategic value.

In an earlier blog (30 September 2016 – accessible through sidebar on right) I described Austro-Hungary’s Novara scientific expedition of 1857-59. In this period, such expeditions were matters of international prestige comparable to space exploration in our own day and Austro-Hungary, which had only acquired a navy in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, was keen not to be left out. The resulting Novaraexpedition was to be a triumph that included oceanographic and geomagnetic surveys as well as onshore botany and geology of lands visited and it provided material for what would become Vienna’s Naturhistorisches Museum in such volume that some of it is still under examination today.

The Novara model in Vienna's
Naturhistorisches Museum

My wife and I spent two days in the museum last year and we could have spent an entire week there with no less pleasure and were impressed by two splendid models of ships which had participated in important scientific expeditions. The first was the previously mentioned Novara, but the second was of the later Tegetthoff, which was responsible for the discovery of Franz Josef Land.

By the 1870s the Arctic had become a major focus of exploration activity (see blog of 27.12.16). It was not surprising therefore that when a major Austro-Hungarian scientific and exploration effort be launched in the early 1870s the focus was to be on the Arctic Ocean and investigation of a possible route to the North Pole. Financed by two noblemen, the exploration was to concentrate on the area north-west of Novaya Zemlya. It was under command of a Captain Karl Weyprecht, who had himself served under the famous Admiral Tegetthoff, for whom the vessel was named. The crew was small – 24 in number, including scientific staff.

The Tegetthoff model in Vienna's
Naturhistorisches Museum

The Tegetthoff departed from Tromsø, in Norway, in July 1872. A month later she found herself locked in pack ice north of Novaya Zemlya. The phenomenon of ice-drift in the Arctic ocean was not yet known much less understood, and the ship was in the same nightmare situation as the American Jeanette expedition of 1878-81 (see blog of 27.12.16).

Forecastle details

Deck Details

Tegetthoff fast in the ice

Though there was continued expectation that the ice would ultimately release its hold and give access to open water, the Tegetthoff was now drifting into the unknown. The ship was to remain locked during the winter of 1872-73, through the summer that followed, and through another winter, 1873-74. Hope, discipline and morale remained high however and when an obvious land mass was sighted a sledge expedition was despatched, under one of the expedition leaders, Julius von Payer, to investigate. The land discovered proved to be an archipelago, now known to consist of 191 islands, and one of the most barren places on earth, and then wholly uninhabited. It was duly named after Emperor Franz Josef.

Location of Franz Josef Land - with thanks to Google Earth

It seems to have emerged later that this may not however have bene the first sighting the archipelago, since a Norwegian sealing vessel may have done so in 1865. Anxious however to keep secret what could be a fertile area for sealing and whaling, and to ensure that other vessels would not come to exploit it, no announcement was made by the captain responsible. The Tegetthoff Expedition’s objective was however less mercenary and the credit for the discovery is therefore due to it. One cannot be impressed by the cool-efficiency with which sledging parties were sent out throughout 1873, even though the prospects for release of the ship from the ice became more grim by the day. On one of these sledge journeys von Payer reached 81° 50′ North, the highest latitude achieved up to that time.

The Franz Josef archipelago - with thanks to Google Earth

When spring arrived in May 1874 the expectation that the ice might free the ship was proved vain. The decision was accordingly taken to abandon the Tegetthoff and to strike out for the open sea, dragging the ship’s boats. The journey involved must have been a nightmare and it lasted almost three months, but on 14 August 1874 open water was reached. The boats carried the crew to Novaya Zemlya, from where a Russian fishing boat carried them to Northern Norway. Weyprecht, von Payer and their men were accorded a well-deserved hero’s welcome at each stage of their returned to Austria through Norway, Sweden and Germany. Their entry to Vienna was greeted by a crowd numbered at over a hundred thousand. For all that the Tegettoff herself had been lost, her scientific contribution had been enormous.

The empire that Franz Josef had ruled lasted only two years after his death and is now a distant memory. It is ironic therefore that in the wastes of the Arctic, where he himself never set foot, his name should be preserved.

r

Britannia’s Reach

Click image for details

It’s 1880. On a broad river deep in the heart of South America, a flotilla of paddle steamers thrashes slowly upstream. 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.

And Dawlish finds himself forced to make a terrible ethical choice if he is to return to Britain with some shreds of integrity remaining…

opening

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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 period 1756-1815. Though the type is primarily thought of as British, the original concept, dating from the 1740s, was French.

Battle of Cape Finisterre 3 May 1747 by Samuel Scott
The Royal Navy captured 4 French ships-of-the-line (including 74s), 2 frigates and 7 merchantmen

The Royal Navy captured a number of the early French 74-gun ships during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) and was greatly impressed by them compared to their own smallish 70-gun ships. Britain thereafter began to construct its own 74s. The balance of fire-power, sailing qualities, habitability, ability to absorb punishment, plus the endurance that a large store-capacity brought with size, suited the 74 not just to service in the battle line but also for blockade duty and for independent missions on distant stations. As such they were of particular value to the British and French navies, and to a somewhat lesser extent to the Spanish, in view of the global reach of their ambitions. The Russian, Dutch and Danish navies were also to build 74s and the type was to figure in every major action of the period.

The most notable characteristic of the 74 was that it carried its guns on two decks, compared with the three decks of First and Second Rate ships, of which there were far fewer, and which usually served as Admiral’s flagships. HMS Bellona, launched in 1760, was essentially the prototype of the Royal Navy’s 74s and her vital statistics were not significantly departed from in more than 40 generally similar ships which followed. These were:

Two 74s slugging it out off Brest 21st April 1798
The French Hercule (l) and the British Mars. The Hercule was captured.

When Bellona commissioned the Seven Years War – which can be fairly described as “The First World War” since it was fought on a global scale – was already in progress for four years. Her first duty was one that was to become monotonously familiar to herself and to her sisters in the next five and a half decades – blockade of the French coast. Her first blooding – most appropriately since she was carried the name of the Roman Goddess of War – was however to occur off the western coast of Portugal and Spain in 1761. There, off the port of Vigo, Northern Spain, on August 13^th, and in company with the 36-gun frigate HMS Brilliant, she was to encounter a close counterpart, the French 74 Courageux. The latter was in company with two frigates, Malicieuseand Ermine. The latter were 36-gun vessels, very similar to Brilliant.

French frigate of the Magicienne class - generally similar to what Brilliant took on two of

In view of the French having the numerical advantage it is surprising that the greater aggression was shown by the British. Captain Loggie of the Brilliant concentrated on drawing off the two enemy frigates so that Captain Faulkner, of Bellona, could concentrate on the Courageux alone. Throughout the following engagement Brilliant withstood the united attacks of both French frigates, until they at last sheered off, both seriously damaged.

Bellona and Courageux were meanwhile involved in a classic single-ship action. They had closed very quickly and the Courageux fired her first broadside when she reached musket-shot range. Faulkner, on Bellona, kept his nerve – and his fire – however, ordering his gun-crews not to fire till they saw the whites of the Frenchmen’s eyes, adding, “Take my word for it, they will never stand the singeing of their whiskers!”

Whether or not the speech recorded in an admiring Victorian history was ever actually delivered by Faulkner it was however an excellent summary of what he intended to do – and did:

“I propose to lead you close on the enemy’s larboard quarter, when we will discharge two broadsides, and then back astern, and range upon the other quarter, and so tell your guns as you pass. I recommend you at all times to point chiefly at the quarters, with your guns slanting fore and aft; this is the principal part of a ship. If you kill the officers, break the rudder, and snap the braces, she is yours, of course; but, for this reason, I desire you may only fire one round of shot and grape above, and two rounds, shot only, below. Take care and send them home with exactness. This is a rich ship; they will render you, in return, their weight in gold.”

The plan was carried out to the letter and almost every shot took effect. The French returned a very brisk fire, and within nine minutes of the action commencing Bellona’sshrouds and rigging were almost all cut to pieces and the mizzen-mast had fallen over the stern. Faulkner managed nonetheless to wear his ship round; the officers and men flew to their respective opposite guns, and carried on, from the larboard side, a fire even more effective than they had hitherto kept up from the starboard guns. The French colours were hauled down little over ten minutes later.

Courageux (l) and Bellona (r) in close action. Brilliant's separate frigate action to the right
19th Century illustration by H.Fletcher

Faulkner ordered the Bellonato cease firing as soon as the Courageuxstruck. Many of her crew had come on deck, congratulating each other on their victory – and, no doubt, on their prize money – when gunfire erupted, perhaps accidently, from the Courageux’s lower gun-deck. Fury now overtook the Bellona’s crew and, without waiting for orders, they rushed back to their guns. Two full broadsides were poured into the French vessel before quarter was called for. By the time firing ceased the Courageux was virtually a wreck. Only her foremast and bowsprit still stood, several of gun-ports had been knocked into one, and she had suffered 240 killed and 110 wounded. The Bellona, by contrast, had only six dead and twenty-eight wounded. The Brilliant which, while outnumbered, had put two similar frigates to flight, had five men killed and 16 wounded.

Victorian-era illustration of Bellona's gunners in action

The Courageux was brought to Lisbon (the Portuguese were Britain’s allies) and after repair was taken into the Royal Navy as HMS Courageux. She was to serve for three decades until she was wrecked off Gibraltar in 1791. Her French captain, Dugue L'Ambert, had been wounded in the neck at the start of the action. He died, at Lisbon and it is pleasing to record that his funeral was attended by the Bellona's officers and the surviving officers of the Courageux.

The Bellona was to serve until 1814, and to play honourable roles in numerous actions, including the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. It was however the Courageux action for which she is most remembered. By it she had established a British reputation for almost unvarying victory in single-ship actions which was to last until the encounters with the United States Navy from 1812 onwards. But that’s a another story!

Britannia's Reach

Click here or on the image below to plunge yourself into a world of danger, betrayal and merciless conflict in which neither side has clean hands and one man battles to maintain his integrity. One click gives you access to the opening chapters...

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A major role is played in the Dawlish Chronicles novel Britannia’s Shark, set in 1881, by an experimental “pneumatic projector” – essentially a gun from which the projectile is launched by compressed air. Such weapons were considered very promising in the 1880s and 1890s and indeed the inventor John Phillip Holland, who also features in “Britannia’s Shark”, built a 9-inch projector into his 1882 Fenian Ram, arguably the first successful submarine.

15-inch Dynamite Gun at Fort Winfield Scott, San Francisco

Though forgotten today, the concept was very attractive in its own day and the spur to its development was the recent invention of dynamite, an explosive of considerably greater power than any other previously available. Filling conventional artillery shells with dynamite would obviously increase their potency but the concern was that dynamite was sufficiently unstable as to be incapable of resisting the rapid acceleration involved in discharge from a conventional gun. A method of propulsion which would give slower acceleration, but comparable range, was what was required. The answer was to eject the shell from a giant blow-pipe by means of compressed air.

There were other advantages. Lighter gauge metal could be used for the discharge tube than would be needed for a conventional gun-barrel and larger-calibre weapons could be carried for the same weight. Also the lack of flame and smoke when the projectile was discharged would reduce visibility, and chance of location, particularly at night. The greatest potential was as an anti-shipping weapon. A direct hit would not be necessary if a large enough projectile could be dropped into the water close to the ship. Exploding underwater, the shock waves would rupture the hull. Recognition of the effectiveness of below-waterline attack had already led to the development of the self-propelled torpedo. At a time however when torpedo speeds, ranges and sizes were still low a pneumatic projector offered the opportunity of landing a larger charge close to a moving ship more quickly and accurately, and at greater ranges.

8-inch Zalinski gun on trial - note barrel built up of flanged tubes

Credit for proving the concept went to a Mr.D.M.Melford of Toledo, Ohio, who demonstrated a 2-inch prototype to the US Military in 1884, firing a 5-pound solid shot over half-a-mile and driving it through a 26-inch thick concrete target. Mefford seems to have faded from the scene thereafter but one of the observers at the trial, an artillery lieutenant called Edmund Zalinski picked up the idea and formed the “pneumatic Dynamite gun Company”. By 1885 Zalinski had an operational prototype with an 8-inch bore which could fire a projectile with a 100 pound dynamite charge over two miles. The projector was at least as accurate as conventional cannon of the same calibre and, though the range was less, could carry a much larger explosive charge,

The US Navy was now interested – not least because such weapons could be mounted in smaller, lighter ships. A test in 1887 completely destroyed a target ship and the publicity this got led to the decision to build a "dynamite cruiser" armed with three such weapons. Zalinski, by now US Naval attaché to Russia, returned to supervise development of these projectors as well as the construction of similar ones for mounting in coastal-defence fortifications.

USS Vesuvius on contemporary postcard. Note the three black projector barrels on foredeck

The Vesuvius– an unarmoured 246 ft, 930 ton vessel, with two 2200 hp engines giving her a top speed of 21 knots – was fitted with three fixed 15-inch bore projectors. To aim them the entire ship needed to be aimed at the target –this was to prove the main operational drawback – and range was varied by adjusting air pressure. They offered the capability of hurling quarter-ton dynamite charges up to a mile, while with a reduced charge of 200 lbs the respectable range of two and a half miles was achievable. In one test fifteen projectiles were fired by the Vesuvius in just over sixteen minutes. The projectiles themselves looked like huge darts, with sheet meal tails carried on an extensions behind the charge proper, the fins being angled to as to impart a spin – and stability – in flight. Once the projectile had dropped into the water, and had begun to sink, salt-covered fuses were exposed which, when fully exposed to sea-water, completed an electric circuit and detonated the charge.

15-inch Zalinski projectile - note the twisted fins

USS Vesuvius - the projector barrels could only be aimed
by aligning teh ship's bows on the target

Despite extensive trials, which revealed many operational problems, the Vesuviusdid not enter active service until the Spanish-American War in 1898. She was to bombard a Spanish fortification at Santiago, Cuba, but the results, though visually spectacular, seem to have been meagre, doing little more than plough up the fort’s glacis. She was converted to a torpedo-trials vessel thereafter (an ironic fate, in that the Zalinski guns once had once promised to replace the torpedo) and, with her pneumatic projectors removed, she lasted to 1922.

One other Zalinski gun was mounted on a warship. This was a single 15-inch unit mounted on a Brazilian auxiliary cruiser, the Nictheroy, a 7080-ton (displacement) Brazilian auxiliary cruiser. She was originally a coastal passenger and cargo operated under the name El Cid by the Morgan Lines company. Faced with a large-scale naval mutiny in 1894, the Brazilian government looked frantically for ships overseas, bought El Cid, and had a Zalinski weapons similar to those of the Vesuviusinstalled. Though she reached Brazil the mutiny was suppressed without the Nictheroy needing to open fire. She was purchased back by the US Navy at the time of the Spanish-American War and had a worthy career thereafter in various support roles as the USS Buffalo. She was sold in 1927.

"Battery Dynamite" at Fort Winfield Scott, San Francisco

15-inch Zalinski guns were also evaluated by the US Army’s coastal artillery, offering enough promise for two such weapons, and a small 8-inch gun, to be mounted Fort Hancock, New Jersey, in 1894. These were regarded as sufficiently successful for three more 15-inch guns to be located at San Francisco in 1898 to protect the Golden Gate, followed by individual weapons at Hilton Head, South Carolina and Fishers Island, New York. in 1901. By then they were being made obsolete by the development of more stable explosives – such as cordite – which were stable enough to be fired from conventional guns over much greater ranges. All US Army batteries were scrapped well before WW1.

USS Holland - note inclined Zalinski guns
with torpedo tube below that at the bow

The concept still had sufficient promised for John Phillip Holland, built two 8.4-inch Zalinski guns into the first commissioned US submarine USS Holland (SS-1), no doubt remembering his first attempt to do so in the early 1880s. They were however removed afterwards.

USS Holland - note projector tube.
The cover is missing, so weapon presumably no longer in use

One other pneumatic gun was to enter service. This was the bizarre Sims-Dudley gun for use as mobile field artillery. This duty precluded use of steam-driven compressors, as installed on ships or at fixed shore batteries. Instead, a separate cylinder was placed below the projector tube and a smokeless-powder charge was detonated in it to send compressed air – presumably on the other side of a piston, to the launching tube. This seems to have been an example of having the worst of both worlds in design terms, and the age-old principle of Occams’s Razor, as valid in technology as in philosophy, must have been unknown to the inventors. Despite this the US Army bought sixteen of these guns, firing 2.5 inch calibre, 10-pound projectiles with 5-pound bursting charges. The projectiles seem to have been smaller versions of the Zalinski missiles, as shown in teh illustration below.

Sims-Dudley gun - note projectile and smokeless-powder charge on sheet

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders used a Sims-Dudley gun during the siege of Santiago. Its greatest advantage appears to have been its lack of a loud report and the fact that its smokeless-power charges did not reveal the weapon’s location to the enemy. It seems however to have been mechanically unreliable. The Sims-Dudley faded from history afterwards – probably deservedly so!

Though considerable ingenuity was expended in making pneumatic guns work, and though the American Government was prepared to invest large sums in their development, they ultimately represented one of history’s technological dead-ends. The advent of more stable explosives, and of longer-ranged and faster torpedoes, quickly sidelined them. Pneumatic guns do not however deserve to be forgotten, and for me, in Britannia’s Shark, it has been a delight to write about the period when they still held such promise.

Britannia's Shark

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My blog of February 10th of this year – accessible through the bar to the right – dealt with privateering action in the English Channel in 1793, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. It demonstrated that even at this very early stage the naval warfare in the “Narrow Seas” between Britain and the European coastline was to be of a quite savage nature, not unlike the battles that were to be fought by British and German coastal forces in the same waters in World War 2. The pace of action was not to let up in the years that followed as French privateers, often of very small size, darted out to prey on British coastal traffic and retired quickly to well-defended bases such as Calais. The war against them was to be waged not by the mighty battle-fleets or their supporting frigates but by small handy craft such as brigs and cutters, heavily armed for their size. The following account, drawing largely on information in the same W. Clark Russell book of 1889 as my previous blog, relates to another small-scale but epic battle that was typical of this aspect of the larger conflict.

HMS Wolverine 1798 - her rounded civilian bows
betray her civilian origin

HMS Wolverine was a civilian-owned collier before being purchased by the Royal Navy in 1798 for conversion to an armed brig. Her armament was powerful – only two of her guns were long 18-pounders and her others were all carronades, six of them 24-pounders and six 12-pounders. The carronades were murderously efficient weapons at short range and gave a craft such as the Wolverine a “punch” out of all proportion to their size. She was to see service immediately after commissioning by Commander Lewis Mortlock when she supported a “Dieppe 1942” type raid on the port of Ostend. On January 3^rd1799 she was cruising off the French port of Boulogne, some twenty miles from the English coast. Weather conditions were poor but two large French armed luggers were spotted. These were later identified as the fourteen-gun Le Furet and the eight-gun Rusé, all weapons being four-pounders. Their combined crews were roughly four times the 70 men carried by Wolverine– a potentially decisive factor should it come to boarding. These were typical privateers of the English Channel and such craft usually fled from confrontation with naval units – their objective was capture of rich commercial prizes rather than combat – and Mortlock realised that to bring them to action it would be necessary to play the role of a merchantman, a ruse that Wolverine’s civilian lines would assist. He accordingly hoisted Danish colours and, as expected, the luggers bore down on him and hailed. Asked for his identity, Mortlock answered that he was en-route from Plymouth to Copenhagen. All his guns were manned, their crews out of sight and to all appearances Wolverine looked like an unarmed and attractive commercial prize.

An armed French lugger of the period
Le Furet and Rusé possibly looked similar

Mortlock’s deception paid off. As the unsuspecting Le Furet drew close, British colours were run up in place of the Danish and a full broadside unleashed. Given the disparity in firepower the only French hope now lay in boarding. Le Furet accordingly ploughed on towards Wolverine’s starboard quarter and crashed her bowsprit between the mizzen-shrouds and the mast while small-arms fire were poured on to her decks from the British tops. Close on Le Furet’s heels the Rusé came in on Wolverine’s port bow. From both luggers French boarders now poured across and Wolverine’s gunners had to abandon their weapons to join in the close combat on deck. The four-to one disparity in crew numbers was firmly in favour of the French and the fighting was now of a close, hand to hand, nature. According to Russell’s account, one Frenchman in particular“was observed to be cheering his men and beating them forward with the flat of his sword. The plucky rascal sprung to the top of the round house, where he stood hysterically yelling to his people and flourishing his weapon. Mortlock, supposing him to be the captain of the privateer, rushed at him. The Frenchman snapped a pistol in his face; it missed fire; he drew out another pistol but before he could level it Mortlock had plunged his half-pike into his body and he went overboard.” The resistance seems to have been so resolute that the French did not press their advantage with any great enthusiasm. A diversion was created by men from Le Furet throwing bags full of incendiary material through Wolverine’s stern windows and starting a fire. This drew the British crew away to fight the conflagration and in the confusion the French boarders withdrew, cut the lashings that bound their luggers to the Wolverine, and made off. Wolverine, scarred but triumphant, retired to Portsmouth.

Lewis Mortlock - young, handsome and doomed

Reading of such close actions one is often struck by how light the casualties could be. Wolverinelost two men, one of them Commander Mortlock, who had been badly wounded. He died in his mother’s arms a week later and his funeral was attended by every captain then in Portsmouth. A touching footnote is that his Newfoundland dog, who had been on board Wolverinethroughout the action, survived unscathed. French losses were heavier – a total of nineteen killed or dying of wounds shortly afterwards, plus many wounded who survived. Among the dead were Le Furet’scaptain – possibly the “plucky rascal” whom Mortlock had slain – and three officers from the Rusé. The disproportion in losses may be partly explained by the surprise Wolverine unleashed on her unsuspecting attackers and another factor is almost certainly that the British crew’s stricter discipline and better training made them more effective than the privateersmen.

Commander Lewis Mortlock’s name is a forgotten one today, yet he was one of the thousands of brave, promising, splendid men whose professionalism was to save Britain and Europe from French domination. We owe him, and those like him, a debt.

Britannia's Reach

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The name HMS Vanguardis associated today with the Royal Navy’s last battleship, scrapped in 1960. An earlier Vanguard was however to meet an even more unpleasant fate, and arguably a wholly avoidable one.

HMS Vanguard

The HMS Vanguardlaunched in 1870 was one of a class of four ironclads, her sisters being Audacious, Invincible and Iron Duke. The concept of a sea-going ironclad capital ship was only ten years old. HMS Warrior, the first of the type, and which was as revolutionary in her time as HMS Dreadnoughtfour decades later, had become the starting point for a new type of warship. The Vanguard and her sisters represented a second generation of such ships. Their most notable departure from the Warrior configuration was that although Warrior carried her many guns in broadside mountings, as warships had done for centuries, the Vanguard’s armament of much heavier weapons was concentrated in a two-storey armoured box amidships.

HMS Warrior - obsolescent in 1875 but today restored to her former glory at Portsmouth

Vanguard and her sisters (see table) were rated as “second-class”, of moderate dimensions that were well suited for deployment on foreign stations, most likely singly. Iron Duke was to serve as flagship of the China Station for four years form 1871 and was one of the largest ships to transit the Suez Canal up to that time. Her sailing rig made her particularly suitable for operations in areas, such as the Pacific Ocean, where coaling opportunities were limited. All four vessels of the class were described as “good and steady seaboats but slow under sail”.

By 1875 Iron Dukehad returned to home waters and was assigned, with her three sisters, with the ironclads Hector, Defence, Penelope and Achilles, and the by-then obsolescent Warrior, to the First Reserve Squadron. In late August the squadron was based at Kingstown (now Dun Laoighaire) the large artificial harbour on the southern side of Dublin Bay. On the morning of September 1^st the Squadron left Kingstown in line, the majority of the vessels headed for Queenstown (now Cobh) further south on the Irish Coast. This enormous force, splendid with their black hulls and buff funnels and masts, must have been a magnificent sight as they passed, one by one, through the narrow-gap between Kingstown’s two projecting mile-long piers.

HMS Vanguard at sea under sail and steam power

Six miles out, off the Kish Bank lightship, the Achilles broke away to head for Liverpool and the remaining ships turned south. The sea was moderate, but a fog came on, its density increasing. The ships had been proceeding at some twelve knots, but speed was reduced to half this as the fog persisted. By a half-hour after noon the lookouts on Vanguard could not see more than fifty yards ahead, and the officers on her bridge could not see the bowsprit. It is unlikely that the situation was any better on the other ships.

Contemporary illustration - Vanguard sinking and Iron Duke's damaged bows (l)

The Vanguard’swatch suddenly reported a sail ahead, and the helm was put over to prevent running it down. The Iron Duke was then following close in the wake of the Vanguard, whose action brought the two vessels closer, presenting Vanguard’s port broadside-on to Iron Duke’s bow. Unaware of any change, and blinded by the fog, the Iron Duke ploughed on. Only at the last moment did her commander, Captain Hickley, who was on the bridge, see Vanguard emerging from the mist. He ordered reversing of his engines, but it was already too late. The Iron Duke’s ram struck the Vanguard below the armour-plates, on the port side, abreast of the engine-room. The rent made was very large—amounting, as the divers afterwards found, to four feet length —and the water poured into the hold in torrents. It was immediately obvious that Vanguard was doomed for this was still an age when compartalisation and damage-control of iron vessels were in their infancy.

Boats from both ships rescuing Vanguard's crew

There was nothing more to be done but to save lives. The Vanguard’s Captain Dawkins ordered abandonment and officers and men behaved calmly. At the risk of his life one of the mechanics returned to the engine-room to blow down the boilers, so preventing an explosion,. The water rose quickly in the after-part, and rushed into the engine and boiler rooms, eventually finding its way into the provision-room flat, through imperfectly fastened “water-tight” doors – which proved anything but. Discipline was superb, the crew standing on deck as if at an inspection and not moving until ordered. Boats were lowered by both Vanguard and Iron Duke and in the process of transfer the only casualty of the disaster was sustained – a finger crushed between a boat’s gunwale and a ships’ hull. The actual transfer to Iron Dukeof Vanguard’s entire crew was achieved in twenty minutes and Captain Dawkins was the last man to leave her.

Vanguard heeled gradually over until the whole of her enormous flank and bottom, down to her keel, was above water. Then she sank gradually, righting herself as she went down, stern first, the water being blown from hawse-holes in huge spouts by the force of the air rushing up from below. She disappeared some ninety minutes after the collision.

The court-martial

The inevitable court-martial was to prove remarkable for the statement by the then First Lord of the Admiralty – the minister responsible for the Navy – that “we ought to be rather satisfied than otherwise with the occurrence”. Edward Reed, the designer of both ships, and by 1875 a Liberal Member of Parliament, stated that ironclads were in more danger in times of peace than in times of war. In peacetime, he said, they were residences for several hundred men, and many of the water-tight doors could not be kept closed without inconvenience. In wartime however they were fortresses, and the doors would be closed for safety. Even more remarkably, close station-keeping in a fog was not considered as contributing to the disaster. The Court commented negatively on the conduct of the Iron Duke’s officers and indirectly blamed the admiral in command of the squadron. The Admiralty could find nothing wrong in either case and visited their wrath on the unfortunate lieutenant on deck at the time.

Vanguard still lies, largely intact, in some 150 feet of water off Ireland’s Wicklow coast. She is reachable by experienced air-divers – and reaching her must be a magnificent experience.

And Vanguard’s Captain Dawkins? It's sad to report that, well as he behaved after the collision, his career was at an end.

If you want to read about adventure in the age of transition from sail to steam, then try The Dawlish Chronicles, which so far stretch to five volumes.Start the adventure with "Britannia's Wolf"which features ironclads in combat, desperate land action in the depths of a savage winter, and murderous political intrigue. You can get it in Kindle or paperback format. Click on the image below for details.

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In earlier posts I mentioned discovering the wonderful 1895 “Story of the Sea”, edited by “Q” (Sir Arthus Quiller Couch, with contributions from several luminaries of the era and with splendid illustrations. It dates from the period in which the British general public’s fascination with things nautical in general and with the Royal Navy in particular was at its zenith. One of the most impressive stories I found in it, and which I had not previously aware of, was of the survival, in appalling conditions, by HMS Guardian, en route to Australia in 1789. This epic of courage and seamanship is well worth sharing more widely.

The First Fleet entering Port Jackson, 26th January 1788, by E. le Bihan

British settlement of Australia commenced in 1788 when the “First Fleet”, consisting of two naval escorts, six convict transports and three stores ships, arrived from Britain at Port Jackson – Sydney Harbour. This was a vast and ambitious project, all the more impressive in that the ships had to voyage half the way around the world yet arrived safely within two days of each other after a passage lasting some 250 days. There is almost a “science-fiction” air about the project, aimed as it was at establishing a large-scale settlement from the start, albeit one relying on convict labour for its development. The First Fleet landed 1373 people, of whom 754 were convicts (including some 189 women and 22 children, some born at sea). Officials and marines, the latter to preserve order and discipline, amounted to 259 and the remainder were seamen, many of whom were to leave again with the ships.

Further support for the infant colony was provided the following year, 1789, with the despatch of HMS Guardian, a frigate converted to carry stores. These consisted of seeds, plants, agricultural implements and livestock. She had a crew of 123, under the command of who proved to be the very capable Lieutenant Edward Riou, as well as a further 25 convicts. Her voyage from Britain to Cape Town, where she put in briefly, was uneventful, but twelve days after departure from there, on December 23^rd, about 1400 miles south east of the Cape, a large iceberg was sighted.

At this stage Lieutenant Riou was concerned about lack of water for the animals on board – one gets the impression that these needs had been underestimated, the more so since one would have expected water supplies to have been replenished at Cape Town. Hoping to replenish his water by taking on ice from the berg, Riou advanced cautiously towards it. Boats were swung out and the Guardian lay to for the ice to be brought on board.

Guardian aground - Victorian era illustration

The fact that the iceberg extended a large distance under water does not seem to have been suspected, since as the Guardian attempted to stand away her bows struck. She swung around and the bows, though damaged, came free, but the stern now smashed on to the ice. The rudder was sheared away and a serious breach was made in the hull. The ice mountain towering above was estimated as “twice was high as the mainmast of a first-rater” and there were fears of sections of it crashing down. Riou remained calm in all this and managed, by use of his sails, to get the vessel free.

The situation was desperate, with six feet of water already in the hold. It was now a question of “all hands to the pumps” while an attempt was made to patch the hole at the stern by a sail. The labour went on through the night and all through the entire next day, during which the weather deteriorated. Despite this efforts were in progress to lighten the ship, during which Riou’s hand was crushed by a falling cask. Some ground had however been gained against the leak when the starboard pump broke down around midnight on the 24^th. By Christmas morning not only was the water depth in the hold increasing once more but the night’s tempest had blown the fore- and top-mainsails to shreds, leaving the vessel at the mercy of the sea.

Some of the crew, exhausted and despairing, left the pumps and hid themselves and it was only by threatening to cast them overboard that they were brought back to work. By now the water had reached the orlop deck and was gaining two feet an hour. Some of the more self-reliant men came to the officers and asked for boats to be made ready. Riou agreed to this and those who wished to leave could do so. Masts, sails, compasses and water casks were placed in each boat.

Contemporary view of the boats leaving the stricken Guardian

Knowing that there was insufficient space in the boats, Riou determined to stay behind. 61 others remained with him. These included the officers and 21 of the convicts – it is unlikely that the latter had any say in the matter. The five boats launched carried 259 – the overcrowding is almost unimaginable. Clements, the ship’s master, took charge of the launch, the largest boat. Riou handed him a letter which should be forwarded, in the event of Clements’ survival, to the Secretary of the Admiralty. It embodies all that is best of the Royal Navy of the period and is worth quoting in full as an example of calm dignity, honour and resolution in the face of almost certain death:

HMS Guardian, December 25^th, 1789

Sir – If any part of the officers or crew of the Guardian should ever survive to get home, I have only to say their conduct after the fatal stroke against an island of ice was admirable and wonderful in everything that related to their duties considered either as private men or on his Majesty's Service.

As there seems no possibility of my remaining many hours in this world, I beg leave to recommend to the consideration of the Admiralty a sister who if my conduct or service should be found deserving any memory their favour might be shown to her together with a widowed mother.

I am Sir remaining with great respect, your ever Obedt & humble servt,

E. Riou

A contemporary depiction of the overcrowding in the boats
(With acknowledgement to the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, Australia)

With the boats gone, Riou’s efforts to save the ship continued undiminished. Though the Guardianwas wholly unmanageable it appeared that she had sunk as far as she would go. This appears to have been due to empty casks in the hold pressing up against the lower deck, the hatchways of which had been firmly secured. In addition, as well as the damage at the stern, there was also a hole in the bows and through this iron and shingle ballast seems to have washed out. The vessel was however wholly unmanageable, and was drifting at the mercy of wind and wave. It was at this time that Riou’s leadership was most impressive. At one stage he had to face down a near mutiny when some of the men constructed a raft of the booms and were readying to leave the ship on it. Quite providentially a favourable breeze sprung up as they were launching it and Riou convinced them to stay with the Guardian.

The ship was to drift for almost two months, until February 22^nd 1790, when the flat top of Table Mountain was spotted on the horizon, for by a miracle the Guardianhad drifted steadily towards Cape Town. A British ship sighted her and sent boats to tow her into the anchorage. Though Riou had brought his people (including one woman) to safety, his hopes of repairing the Guardian and getting her back to Britain were frustrated and she had to be abandoned.

In the meantime the Guardian’slaunch – the only one of the five ship’s boats to survive – had been picked up by a French ship after twelve days at sea. There were only fifteen survivors on board, including Clements, the master, wo could now forward Riou’s letter to the Admiralty.

On arrival in Cape Town Riou now wrote another letter:

Table Bay, February 22^nd. 1790

Sir, - I hope this letter will reach you before any account arrives of the loss of His Majesty’s ship Guardian. If it should, I have to beg of your lordships that, on the 23^rd of December, the ship struck on an island of ice; and that on the 25^thall hope of her survival having vanished, I consented that as many of the officers and people should take the boats as thought proper. But it pleased Almighty God to assist my endeavours, with the remaining part of the crew, to arrive with His Majesty’s ship in this bay yesterday. A Dutch packet is now under sail for Europe, which prevents me from giving any further particulars, especially as at this instant I find it more necessary than ever to exert myself to prevent the ship from sinking at her anchors.

I am, sir, most respectfully

Your ever obedient servant, E. Riou

This letter arrived at the Admiralty on April 28^th, five days after Riou’s first letter and in this period Riou and his men had been mourned as dead. News was sent immediately to King George III, “who on reading it, expressed uncommon satisfaction.”

It is pleasing to know that though the 21 surviving convicts were sent on to Australia, 14 of them were pardoned as a result of Riou's report of their good conduct on the Guardian.

Thomas Pitt, 2nd Lord Camelford
- he seems to radiate pugnacity

Among the others who remained with Riou on the Guardian was a young midshipman named Thomas Pitt (1775-1804), son of Lord Camelford, brother of the ex-Prime Minister William Pitt. Undeterred by this experience Pitt, now 16, volunteered for the major exploration expedition due to leave under the command of Captain George Vancouver. With no positions left for officers, Pitt signed on as an able-seaman, a remarkable step for one of his background. His undisciplined behaviour on the voyage resulted however in his being flogged three times (once for consorting with native women on Tahiti, an activity regarded with great suspicion since the Bounty mutiny). While at sea Pitt’s father had died, making him Lord Camelford himself and also – perhaps – the only member of the House of Lords ever to be flogged as a common seaman. Back in Britain, and now commissioned as a lieutenant, Pitt (or Camelford as he now was) initiated a vendetta against Vancouver, going so far as to assault him in the street. His life continued to be violent to an extent to which insanity was suspected – when posted to the West Indies he shot dead a subordinate officer who hesitated to obey orders. His end was to come after he left the navy when, in a dispute over a mistress, he challenged an ex-friend, a Captain Best, to a duel. Camelford was to die of wounds sustained in the encounter, though, to his credit, his will directed that Best not be prosecuted in the event of his death.

"The Caning in Conduit Street"
James Gilray's cartoon of Camelford attacking Vancouver

And the splendid Edward Riou, the hero of the Guardian, what became of him?

It is sad to record that he was to die at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. As captain of HMS Amazon, Riou was entrusted with command of the frigate squadron, which he brought in close to the Danish forts. Undeterred by a splinter-inflicted head wound, and surrounded by dead and dying, he was still encouraging his men when he was killed by a roundshot while– a death he himself might have wished for. Nelson, on learning of Riou's death, called the loss 'irreparable'.

Had Riou survived there is little doubt that he would have advanced to the highest levels of command and would be better remembered today. He was a magnificent man.

Britannia's Amazon

Mystery, Vice and Scandal in Victorian London

In Britannia's Spartan Captain Nichols Dawlish headed to unexpected dangers in the Far East in the cruiser HMS Leonidas. He left behind in Britain his indomitable wife Florence, who was determined to fill the months of separation with welfare efforts to support seamen's families. She expected it to be dull - if worthy - work but a chance encounter was to bring her into brutal contact with the squalid underside of complacent Victorian society. On home ground she faces hazards and betrayals every bit as deadly as her husband does in Korea and the powerful enemies she threatens are prepared to stop at nothing to frustrate her. Britannia's Amazon - strongly linked to actual events - tells her story.

Click here or on the image above to read the opening chapters

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Courage of the highest order was demanded of the officers and men of the navies that first employed submarines in the early twentieth centuries. Designs were still experimental and operating experience limited, so that every dive was an adventure. Accidents were frequent – and usually fatal when they did occur – and progress was achieved by learning very hard lessons.

The French navy was one of the first to commit to large-scale submarine construction. It looked to the new weapon, as it had looked to torpedo boats two decades before, as a cheap method of compensating for relative weakness in battleship numbers by comparison with potential rivals. At this stage submarines were primarily seen as suited to coastal and port-defence and the second –and so-far largest – design class, the four Farfadet units, launched between 1901 and 1903 were intended for this purpose.

The Farfadet in service

135-ft. long and of 185/ 202 tons (surface/submerged), the Farfadets craft were propelled by a single electric motor driving a variable-pitch propeller. The latter was an innovative item that dispensed with the need to provide reversing capability for the motor. Range, determined by the batteries that had to be charged at the operating base, was limited to 115 miles surfaced and 28 submerged, and the maximum speeds attainable were 6.1 knots on the surface and 4.3 knots when submerged. Small as they were, these units packed a potentially powerful punch – four 18-inch torpedoes carried on external drop collars. The potency was proved when one unit of the class, the Korrigan, succeeded in hitting the monitor Tempete, serving as a harbour guard, with a practice torpedo while remaining unobserved. This was possibly the first time a target had been hit by a torpedo launched by a submarine. This considerable feat demanded the Korrigan and her sixteen-man crew remaining submerged for some twelve hours, somewhat of a record.

A contemporary artist's impression of salvage operations
Shallowness of water is exaggerated

Both Korrigan and Farfadet were towed from La Rochelle, on the French Atlantic coast to the naval base at Bizerte, in Tunisia, in 1904 to provide port-defence. It was here that disaster was to overcome the Farfadet on July 6^th of the following year when the vessel was undertaking diving exercises some 500 yards from the arsenal. Commander Cyprien Ratier ordered water to be admitted to the ballast tanks and the craft began to settle very quickly – too quickly, for the hatch was not closed properly. (It will be seen from the photographs that the hatches were a point of vulnerability as they were very close to the waterline when surfaced and there was no tower as such). Ratier, his mate and the quartermaster struggled unsuccessfully to close the hatch. Large volumes of water where now cascading into the boat’s interior and Ratier and his two assistants were blasted out through the hatch by the escaping air. The Farfadet sank, head-foremost, and buried her bows in the mud. Ten men had gone down with her.

Immense public interest
in the salvage

The stricken craft was lying in approximately thirty feet of water and some salvage equipment was immediately available at the base. There were obviously still men alive inside, for they were hammering on the hull. By the following morning divers had managed to get four steel hawsers passed around the hull and a floating crane managed to lift it in the early afternoon so as to lash it to a pontoon. Sufficient of the hull had been exposed for air-valves to be accessed and air passed in to the survivors. It was now attempted to move the craft into shallow water, so as to ground her. The process was a slow one and in the early hours of the following morning the hawsers parted and the Farfadetdropped again. Further efforts failed to lift her before the victims trapped inside died. No further sounds were heard after July 8^th, two days after the disaster. (One notices dreadful similarities to the HMS Thetis disaster in Liverpool Bay in 1939, when the stern of the sunken submarine had been raised above the surface).

Salvage efforts continued, a floating dock being used to lift the Farfadet– once again, the role of divers would have been crucial in passing hawsers under, and around, the hull. On July 9th, the Minister of Marine, Gaston Thomson, arrived from Paris to observe operations. On July 15th, the floating dock and the submarine suspended underneath were towed into a dry dock. The floating dock lowered the Farfadet, was then removed, and the dry dock was pumped out to expose the vessel.

The Farfadet - recovered and lying on her side in the dry dock.

Repatriation of the bodies

The distressing duty of retrieving the bodies was allocated to the crew of the sister submarine Korrigan. Four bodies were discovered in the bow compartment, and two in the centre, all probably killed during the initial inrush of water. Eight men had however managed to seal themselves in the compartment aft. These men – who had been beating for hours on the hull plating – had died dreadfully as seawater had reached the sulphuric acid of the batteries, thereby releasing poisonous chlorine gas. It appeared that the last of the crew had died after being trapped for 32 hours.

The long-drawn out agony of the Farfadet had kept France in horror-stricken fascination, the more so since submarines were a new concept, poorly understood by the general public. There was a massive outpouring of national grief and an imposing funeral service was held in Bizerte and the coffins returned to France thereafter for final burial. The salvaged submarine was towed across the Mediterranean to the naval base at Toulon, was reconditioned, and taken back into service. Cyprien Ratier continued as her commander for another two years.

The Lutin - Farfadet's sister and doomed to follow her in a year

The Farfadet was not the only one of her class to meet disaster. Her sister, the Lutin, was to sink, also near Bizerte, in October 1906. On this occasion structural failure of the hull occurred under external pressure. An expensive lesson was learned about design and an entire crew was lost. She too was salvaged. Already outmoded by the time of these disasters, and having served their purpose in introducing naval personnel to the science of submarine operation, all members of the Farfadet class were taken from service in the following years, to be replaced by more sophisticated and more reliable designs.

The Farfadet was not to be the last peacetime submarine disaster. They have continued up to our own time.

Britannia's Shark

The third of the Dawlish Chronicles series centres on the development - and role - of a prototype submarine. Based on actual events and personalities, Britannia's Shark paints a vivid picture of the skills and courage - bordering on madness - which was needed to operate such craft. Click on the image below to learn more and o read the opening chapters.

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It is well known that the USS Monitor, which can be argued to be the first modern warship, and which gave its name to a type of ship which would see service until the end of WW2, was lost off Cape Hatteras in late 1862. This resulted from a very low-freeboard vessel being exposed to heavy seas – conditions such ships were never intended for since they were designed as mobile and heavily-armoured batteries for service in sheltered waters such as river estuaries. Sixteen men died when the Monitor sank but the scale of the tragedy was dwarfed by the much heavier loss of a later, more sophisticated, vessel of the same type in 1882, the Adderof the Royal Netherlands Navy.

The monitor concept proved to be a very attractive one for the Dutch Navy, tasked as it was in home waters with defence of the approaches to its two largest cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The Netherlands coast in the mid-19^th looked significantly different to what it does today. The Zuiderzee, the huge and shallow sea inlet to the north-east of Amsterdam would not be closed off by an enormous dyke until 1932, and much of the area within it reclaimed. The Delta area in the south of the country, where the rivers Rhine, Maas and Schelde enter the sea, was a labyrinth of individual channels, some giving access to Rotterdam, and would remain so until the vast “Delta Works” were undertaken in the 1950s and 60s to close them off.

Longitudinal section of three types of Dutch monitor
Cerberus (1870, Adder (1875) and Luipard (1877)

With increasing sizes and draughts of ships in the 1860s and 70s access to Amsterdam and Rotterdam through the Zuider Zee and the Delta proved increasingly difficult. The solution was to build two large-scale ship canals, both running due west from these cities to new openings on the Netherlands West Coast. Opening in the 1870s, and engineering marvels of their time, both waterways have been regularly increased in dimensions and capacity in the years since. The two new waterways changed the pattern of sea-borne mercantile access to the Netherlands, and given their single points of access to the sea were easily defensible by shore batteries. In the event of war however – even though the Netherlands was not liable to any significant threat from other European powers in this period – the possibility of enemy access to the country’s heartland through the Zuiderzee and the Delta could not be ignored. Shallow-draught monitors represented an ideal mobile defence for these areas. Speed and sea-worthiness were not major requirements since the vessels would be required to operate over short-distances in largely land-locked conditions but heavy armouring and heavy weapons would make them formidable opponents to any invading force.

Between 1868 and 1878 thirteen monitors were completed for the Royal Netherlands Navy, substantial ships of around 1500 tons and when fully manned demanding a crew of some 115 men. Since a design requirement can be deduced as being not to exceed a draught of 3 meters (9.75 ft) very limited accommodation was provided, or indeed required, since the crews could be housed in barracks ashore when the vessels were not exercising. Long, narrow upperworks abaft the single turret seem to have been mainly designed to provide light and ventilation to the spaces below, as will be seen from the contemporary illustration above that shows three of these ships in profile.

Plan view of Luipard and cross-sections of her, Adder and other Dutch monitors

The Adder gave her name to a class of six vessels which was completed between 1870 and 1876. All fitted with ram bows as ramming was still regarded as a viable tactic, especially in confined waters. 192 ft. long and of 1555 tons, these vessels were heavily armoured with iron – 5.5” on the hull sides and between 8” and 11” on the turret. Two 9” muzzle-loading rifles were carried in the turret. Speed as low – maximum 7 to 8 knots and horsepower varied from ship to ship in the range 560 – 740 IHP.

By the nature of their design, and of their likely tactical use, such vessels spent little time in the open sea, their greatest exposure to such conditions being apparently when they moved parallel to the Netherlands coast when transferring from Ijmuiden or Den Helder in the north, to the base at Hellevoetsluis in the Delta region.

It was on such a voyage south, a short one, that the Adder set off from Ijmuiden on the morning of 5^th July 1882. The stretch of coast involved consisted almost entirely of long open beaches. A difficult passage was expected as the vessel did not perform well with wind on the beam and in even moderately heavy waves the decks would be awash. By early afternoon a strong south-westerly was blowing on the starboard beam and the monitor was sighted close inshore, off the fishing village of Scheveningen, a suburb of the Hague and which did not then have a harbour which could have offered shelter. (The present harbour dates from 1904).

Artist's impression: Adder at sea

Though the seas might have provided problems for the Adder they were not bad enough as to interrupt the activities of Scheveningen fishermen. At 1800 hrs a fishing skipper, Abraham Westerduin, sighted the Adder– seas were washing across her up as high the funnel – and he judged the situation to be sufficiently serious as to decide to stand by to render assistance if possible. Around 2030 the monitor, now obviously in desperate straits, began to shoot off red, white and green rockets. Some 40 minutes later there was one last flash – a large one – and a cloud of smoke, or perhaps steam, and then nothing more was to be seen of the monitor. She had disappeared with all 66 men on board at the time.

In the following days several bodies wearing life-belts were recovered. A note found in an officer’s pocket indicated that a decision had been taken at 1800 hrs to turn back to Ijmuiden, the nearest harbour, but the monitor proved incapable of responding to the helm in the conditions prevailing. This was confirmed when the wreck was examined by a diver two weeks later – it lay just over a mile to the north-west of the Scheveningen lighthouse (still in existence today) and in 60 ft of water depth. The bows were pointed southwards, and not north towards Ijmuiden. A flag signal calling for tug-assistance was also found but it does not appear to have been sighted from shore. The boiler was intact and but the cause of the loss appeared to be large volumes of water spilling down into the engine room through deck openings.

The inevitable enquiry followed. Not unexpectedly the unsuitability of monitors for exposure to open-sea conditions was a major issue but the final responsibility was laid on the Adder’s officers. The vessel’s captain appears not to have had previous experience or training in handling monitors but the responsibility for assigning him – which must have been higher up in the naval hierarchy – appears to have been skated over.

The Reinier Claeszen - the Netherlands' last, and unlovely, monitor

The Adder disaster evoked an outpouring of sympathy throughout the nation and a fund was set up to support the crew’s widows and orphans. A further consequence was the spontaneous decision by a group of naval officers to set up the Royal Association of Naval Officers, which still exists today and is the oldest professional association in the Netherlands. The monitors continued in service, but one assumes in conditions that took account of the Adder experience, and only one further one was built for the Netherlands Navy, the Reinier Claeszen of 1891. The Wikipedia entry (in Dutch) on this vessel describes her as “not fully seaworthy: she steered badly and encountered serious maintenance problems.” This seems perhaps an appropriate epitaph for all these unfortunate vessels.

Britannia's Amazon

Mystery, Vice and Scandal in Victorian London

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Chile’s Punta Arenas, on the Brunswick Peninsula, to the northern side of the Strait of Magellan, is probably the most southerly city in the world. It was originally established as a penal colony by the Chilean government in 1848 to assert sovereignty over the Strait – at the expense of Argentina, which had similar ambitions. The Chilean claim was finally accepted in a treaty between the two countries in 1881. Through the nineteenth century, and up to the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, this waterway was of the highest importance as it allowed passage from the South Atlantic to the Pacific while bypassing Cape Horn. Developments on the Pacific coasts of both North America and South America led to very high levels of traffic through the strait and as such the area assumed greater geopolitical importance than it possesses today.

Punta Arenas today (courtesy of Wikipedia)

It was at Punta Arenas that one of the Royal Navy’s most significant peace-time disasters occurred in 1881 when the steam sloop, HMS Dotterel, was destroyed there by internal explosion. The significance of this event was that it was possibly the first in a long series of internal explosions that were to destroy warships in many navies in the next forty years. Many of the ships involved were very large units. France was to lose two battleships – Iena and Liberté– in the years before World War 1 and during this conflict Britain was to lose several major units – including a modern battleship, HMS Vanguard. Japan was also to lose two capital ships to explosions during the war, as did Italy, which lost the modern battleship Leonardo di Vinci. One explosion – that which destroyed the USS Maine in Havana harbour in 1898 – was to have a major influence on world history. Wrongly blamed on a mine laid by the Spanish authorities, this accident was a trigger for the Spanish-American War, which was decisive in setting the United States on the path to global superpower status.

HMS Doterel, as completed

Though the exact causes of the explosions remained uncertain in many cases – not least because the massive loss of life usually incurred meant there were few surviving witnesses – the majority were due a low perception of the risks involved in handling and storing modern ammunition. The victims were almost invariably moored in harbour when the accident happened and in many cases ammunition loading and stowage was in progress. Unstable explosives were not the only cause –a dust explosion during coal loading was a possibility in at least one case. Careless handling of flammable substances also led to accidents. Many of these explosions were regarded as mysteries for many years – in the case of the Maine for decades. In its immediate aftermath the loss of HMS Doterelwas also seen as unexplained.

HMS Doterel was one of fourteen sloops of the Osprey/Doterel-class sloops launched by the Royal Navy from 1876 to 1880. They were of “composite construction”, which meant wooden planking over an iron frame. Cheap, slow and well-armed, they were not intended for fleet employment but rather for support and power projection, often on a single ship basis, on distant stations. Of 1130 tons and 170 ft length they carried a barque rig to supplement their 1100 hp single-screw engines. Under power they struggled to make much over 11 knots but the provision of sails reduced their dependency on coal supplies – a major concern on remote stations – as well as increasing their operational range. They were heavily armed for their size – two 7 in on pivoting mounts and four 64-pounders, all muzzle loaders. Though obsolescent, these weapons were simple to operate and more than adequate for the type of shore bombardment needed for dealing with local emergencies or petty uprisings.

HMS Miranda, a sister of HMS Doterel

HMS Doterel was a new ship, launched the previous year, when she was sent in early 1881 to join the Pacific Station, which included the western coasts of North and South America as well as China and Japan. Under her captain, Commander Richard Evans, she arrived at Punta Arenas at 09:00 on 26 April 1881. Less than an hour later an explosion occurred in her forward magazine. Eyewitnesses described wreckage being thrown into the air, followed by a huge column of smoke. Broken into two sections, the ship sank instantly. Boats from several vessels in the immediate vicinity, and from shore, rushed to find survivors but out of a crew of 155 only twelve were found, one of them Commander Evans. The force of the explosion had stripped all his clothing away and was indeed so violent that only three complete bodies were subsequently recovered, as well as some body parts. The horror of the situation is illustrated by the fact that these remains were loaded into boxes and buried at sea in the same afternoon. An Anglican missionary working in the area, a Reverend Thomas Bridges, subsequently presided over the mass memorial service.

Funeral service held above the site of Doterel's wreck

In the immediate aftermath several theories were advanced as causes. A boiler explosion, triggering a magazine detonation, was perhaps the most obvious possibility. Another involved sabotage by Fenians – Irish Republicans – an idea not as bizarre as it might sound since a successful mission had been mounted five years previously to rescue six Fenian prisoners from a penal colony in Western Australia. The key role in this rescue was played by a chartered American whaler, the Catalpa. Another theory considered that the explosion had been caused by a Whitehead torpedo lost by HMS Shah when she has been in the area three years before.

Salvage operations - note the diver being lowered from the boat on the right

Two Royal Navy cruisers, HMS Garnet and HMS Turquoise, were sent to Punta Arenas to conduct salvage and investigation operations. Extensive use was made of divers and this received much coverage in illustrated papers since the “Standard Diving Dress” then represented cutting edge technology. The possibility of a boiler explosion was definitively proven to be false when the boilers were found in perfect condition. The investigations showed that Doterel’s hull had been blown apart, leaving two separate sections, fore and aft. The ship's guns, screw and other valuable fittings were salvaged. Insights gained provided evidence for formal enquiry at Portsmouth by a scientific committee. This decided in September 1881 that the disaster had been caused by detonation of coal gas in Doterel’s bunkers, and that no crew members were at fault.

Another view of salvage operations

Shortly afterwards, in November 1881, another explosion occurred on a Royal Navy warship, once again in Chilean waters. This was on board HMS Triumph, a broadside ironclad en route to the Pacific Station, as had been the Doterel. Though three men were killed and seven were wounded the ship herself survived. It was determined that the explosion had been caused by a volatile substance called xerotine siccative which was mixed in paint to accelerate drying.

HMS Gannet

It was not until 1883 that the cause of the Doterel explosion was settled. A surviving crew member, upon later smelling xerotine siccative while on another ship, stated that he had smelled it before the 1881 explosion. He explained that a jar of the liquid had cracked while being moved below deck. Two men were ordered to throw the jar overboard. While cleaning the leaking explosive liquid from beneath the forward magazine, the men may have broken the rule of not having an open flame below decks. The xerotine siccative exploded first, letting off the huge explosion in the forward magazine.

A lesson had been learned the hard way. The Admiralty ordered the compound to be withdrawn from use and demanded better ventilation below decks. One source of disaster had been eliminated, but more remained and numerous other ship losses lay in the future. But that’s another story…

Though the Doterel's career was a short one, a sister of hers, HMS Gannet, is still in existence. She has been restored beautifully and is now on view at Chatham Historic Dockyard in England. She is well worth a visit and provides as splendid insight to life in the Victorian Royal Navy.

The photograph on the left shows Gannet in 2005 and is reproduced with all thanks to Paul Englefield and Wikipedia.

If you want to read about adventure in the age of transition from sail to steam, then try The Dawlish Chronicles, which so far stretch to five volumes. Start the adventure with "Britannia's Wolf" which features ironclads in combat, desperate land action in the depths of a savage winter, and murderous political intrigue. You can get it in Kindle or paperback format. Click on the image below for details.

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“He’s a thief,” Topcliffe said. “A most accomplished and successful one. That’s why he’s useful to us.”

“But he seemed…”

“Exactly what he is. A clever, cultured, agreeable American gentleman, whose profession just happens to be larceny.”

Adam Worth in 1892

And this is how Adam Worth, alias Henry Judson Raymond, is described as he makes his appearance in Britannia’s Shark, in which he plays a key role. He is similarly prominent as a character in Britannia's Amazon. 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.

Worth was born in Germany in 1844 and was taken by his parents to the United States when he was five years old. The family settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his father worked as a tailor. Worth left home early and by 1860 was in New York City, employed there as a clerk in a department store – what he apparently described later as “my first and only honest job". This could have been the start of a life of respectable drudgery but for Worth – as for many others – the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 was to provide an opportunity if only he could survive it.

Second Bull Run - where Worth died officially

Worth, now seventeen, enlisted, attracted probably as much by the generous bounty paid to volunteers as by the prospect of adventure. Showing obvious leadership talents, he was quickly promoted to sergeant in the 34^th New York Light Artillery Regiment. When serving at the Second Battle of Bull Run in August 1862 – yet another in a long string of Union defeats – Worth was seriously wounded and shipped back to hospital in Washington D.C. On recovering he found that he had in error been listed as killed in action.

This was Worth’s big opportunity. Officially dead, he was now free to enlist once more and to claim another bounty. Like many others he got a taste for it, taking the money, deserting, re-enlisting again in another unit under another name. (It might be commented in passing that such “bounty- jumpers”, though reprehensible, were no worse than the rich young men who took advantage of their right to pay poor men to serve as substitutes on their behalf once the draft was introduced. The bounty-jumpers at least risked death by firing squad if apprehended. Those who typically paid $300 to a substitute included the banker J.P.Morgan, future president Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt's father, as well as many other wealthy people. There is much truth in the saying that this was "A Rich Man's War and a Poor Man's Fight").

Worth evaded retribution for his bounty-jumping and at the end of the Civil War saw opportunities in the New York criminal underworld, that merciless society so memorably depicted in the Martin Scorcese movie “Gangs of New York”. Working in his favour was the fact that he was abstemious by nature and that he had a marked talent for planning and financing criminal enterprises. His luck did however run out, landing him in Sing Sing prison. He escaped within weeks.

Marm Maddelbaum
- not to be underestimated!

With his appearance now altered by magnificent mutton-chop whiskers, he established a profitable relationship with a fence and criminal financier called Frederika Mandelbaum, known to her friends as "Marm" - obviously a lady to be approached with caution. By 1869 Worth had masterminded a serious of big robberies and was sufficiently respected to be contracted to spring a robber called Charley Bullard from prison. This successful operation involved bribing of guards and digging of a tunnel. Worth and Bullard now formed a partnership – one of their most notable coups was robbery of a bank in Boston by the same method featured in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Red Headed League”. For this a shop was set up near the bank and from it a tunnel was excavated to gain entrance. Worth and Bullard were now so successful that the Pinkerton Detective Agency was set on their trail. Judging the United States to be too hot for them they set sail for Europe.

A typical dinner party hosted by “Marm” Mandelbaum (R) and her "inner circle".

From "Recollections of a New York Chief of Police" (1887) by George W. Walling,

Paris in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Commune that followed in 1871 was the corrupt and hedonistic sink immortalised in the work of Zola, de Maupassant and Toulouse-Lautrec. Worth had now re-invented himself as “"Henry Judson Raymond", an American financier, and had acquired the grace and polish to carry it off. With Bullard he operated a major gambling operation in Paris as well as initiating a series of high-value robberies. In the mid-1870s they moved to Britain and here “Raymond” established himself as a popular member of smart society, an acquaintance of the Prince of Wales and a free spender. He bought a magnificent villa in the London suburb of Clapham and maintained in parallel an apartment in a fashionable area off Piccadilly.

Worth's Clapham villa today
(with acknowledgements to Wikipedia)

Worth formed a criminal network and organised major robberies and burglaries through intermediaries such that his name was unknown to those who were involved directly. The focus was on high-value proceeds and Worth established the principle that those working for him did not use violence. William Pinkerton, who was later to have direct dealings with him, wrote that:

In all his criminal career, and all the various crimes he committed, ... he was always proud of the fact that he never committed a robbery where the use of firearms had to be resorted to, nor had he ever escaped, or attempted to escape from custody by force or jeopardizing the life of an official, claiming that a man with brains had no right to carry firearms, that there was always a way, and a better way, by the quick exercise of the brain.

Gainsborough's Duchess of Devonshire

Scotland Yard was aware of Worth’s network but was unable to prove anything. From his London base the Worth operation now functioned on an international scale, including an ambitious swindle involving forged letters of credit in Turkey and a theft of $500,000 worth (in 1870s money!) of uncut diamonds. To oversee the latter operation Worth travelled to South Africa. It was in this period also the Worth pulled off his most spectacular coup. The Thomas Ganisborough painting of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, had recently been rediscovered and was on display in 1876 at an art dealer’s gallery in London. Worth became fascinated by it – obsessed might be the better word. He organised its successful theft with two associates, thereby triggering an international hue-and-cry in the coming years about its whereabouts. The expectation was that the unknown thieves would attempt to sell it or ransom it but it was in fact to remain in Worth/Raymond’s London apartment within a mile of the gallery. He appears to have immense pleasure in possessing it.

Worth’s criminal enterprises – and his double life – continued through the 1880s. By the early 1890s however he was losing his touch and was arrested in the course of a botched robbery of a money-transport in Belgium in 1892. Worth refused to talk but the net drew in on him when his photograph and details were circulated to Scotland Yard and the United States’ Pinkertons and NYPD. He was now betrayed by several of his associates and following trial was sentenced to seven years in a Belgian gaol. It appears to have broken him, possibly more for the fall from social respectability and prestige than from the physical conditions – he must have endured worse in the Civil War.

He was released early, for good behaviour, in 1897. He determined to return to the United States, where his two children were living (Worth’s affairs with women would need an article to themselves!) but to do so he needed funds. He got them by robbing £4000 (1897 money!) worth of diamonds from a London dealer.

Karl Marx - Worth's neighbour
in Highgate Cemetery

Worth was at risk of prosecution in the United States for his earlier offences there. He had one card still up his sleeve – the Duchess of Devonshire, whom he had managed to keep hidden for some twenty years. He approached the Pinkertons and agreed to return the painting to the dealers he has stolen it from in return for $25,000 and a guarantee of non-prosecution. The exchange of portrait and payment took place in Chicago. In funds again, Worth returned to London – again as Henry Judson Raymond – with his children. His son appears at a later stage to have become a career Pinkerton detective. The Duchess of Devonshire’s ransom seems to have slipped as easily through Worth’s fingers as all the other money he had come by over four decades. He died in London in 1902 and was buried, under the name of Raymond, in a pauper’s grave in Highgate Cemetery, close to Karl Marx.

The appellation of “The Napoleon of the Criminal World” was awarded Worth by Sir Robert Anderson, Assistant Commissioner (Crime) of the London Metropolitan Police, from 1888 to 1901. The phrase seems to have inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, with the idea of a criminal mastermind, Professor James Moriarity. Holmes described him as follows:

Moriarty - he looks
less fun than Worth!

'He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organised… the agent may be caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defence. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught - never so much as suspected”

And Holmes summed him up as:

“…the Napoleon of crime. He is the organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order.'

Adam Worth would have been flattered!

Adam Worth's role in the Dawlish Chronicles...

1881: It is in Britannia's Shark that Nicholas Dawlish encounters Adam Worth, a.k.a. Henry Judson Raymond for the first time. To all appearances a rich and cultured Americn who had chosen to live in Britain and move in the highest levels of society, Raymond also has the contacts that Dawlish needs across the Atlantic if a threat to British naval supremacy is to be overcome. Urbane, ruthless and very, very effective, Raymond is an ally worth having...

Click here to read the opening chapters of Britannia's Shark

1882: In Britannia's Amazon, Florence Dawlish is facing months of separation when her husband Nicholas sails with his cruiser to the Far East ( as told in Britannia's Shark). Florence expects them to be quiet months which she plans to fill with welfare work for seamen's families in Portsmouth. But her witnessing of a brutal abduction on the street plunges her into a maelstrom of corruption, violence, blackmail and intrigue. The enemies she faces are merciless an vicious, their identities protected by guile, power and influence. Henry Judson Raymond might jut be the person to assist her... but can she trust him?

Click here to read the opening chapters of Britannia's Amazon

Download a free copy of Britannia’s Eventide

To thank subscribers to the Dawlish Chronicles mailing list, a free, downloadable, copy of a new short story, Britannia's Eventide has been sent to them as an e-mail attachment.