The largest of the fireships sent in against the
French fleet at Basque Roads was the Mediator, a ship with a chequered career.
Built as an East Indiaman in 1781, she was purchased by the Navy in 1804 and
employed as a frigate, but was soon converted to a storeship. At nearly 700
tons, she was very big for a fireship, but something particularly threatening
may have been required in the circumstances. She is shown here just after
ignition, with the crew escaping in the boat astern; but the proximity of the
French fleet is artistic licence.
Map illustrating the position of the anchored French
fleet shortly before the British attack on the night of 11 April.
After the battle of Trafalgar Napoleon did not give up on
his navy, but tried to rebuild it gradually, which meant that many French ports
contained well-found operational warships. Beyond the harbour, there was
inevitably a British blockading squadron, but every so often small flotillas of
French ships managed to break out and make a specific foray against British
interests. One major breakout occurred in February 1809, but for the French it
did not go as planned.
The Brest blockading squadron, under the command of Admiral
Lord Gambier (1756–1833), was forced from its station for a few days by heavy
weather. This was long enough to allow eight French ships of the line, under
the command of Rear Admiral Jean Baptiste Philibert Willaumez (1763–1845), to
slip out of the harbour of Brest at the break of dawn. His orders were to drive
off the English squadron blockading Lorient, allowing the ships there to make
their escape. They would then sail for the island of Oléron in the Bay of
Biscay and pick up troops, supplies and any other ships at Rochefort before
heading for the West Indies for a campaign of commerce-raiding. Once they had
disappeared into the open seas of the Atlantic, they would pose a real problem
for the British.
They got no further than the Pointe du Raz before the line
of French ships was spotted by a British warship, and quickly all the squadrons
of the Navy in the region were brought together. Visual contact was maintained
with the French until the next day, and in the evening twilight they saw
Willaumez and his ships sail into the Pertuis d’Antioche, the waters between the
island of Oléron and the mainland, where they dropped anchor under the
protection of the coastal batteries. The British referred to these shallow
waters as the Basque Roads or the Aix Roads.
The British fleet anchored further offshore, in the narrows
just off the city of La Rochelle, and the positions of both fleets reawakened
old ideas of what a fireship could do in this situation. Admiral Gambier took
all possible precautions against a surprise fireship attack, ordering his ships
to buoy their anchors and thus be ready to slip their cables at a moment’s
notice. Boats were kept in the water with poles, chains and grapnels to fend
off approaching fireships. The apprehension of fire-ships was mutual. Gambier
and his advisers vigorously discussed the best method of dealing with the
enemy. One camp suggested a quick forceful Nelson-style assault, bearing down
on the enemy with guns blazing. Against this, the navigation was known to be
tricky, and the French ships were practically unreachable at the mouth of the
Charente under the shelter of shore-batteries, so the losses in ships and men
would be heavy. The other school of thought, which included Gambier himself,
advocated a fireship attack, despite all the risks and imponderables this
entailed. But one way or another, something had to be done to neutralise the
threat posed by the French force.
The First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Mulgrave, had already
outlined his position on 11 March, pointing out that the situation looked
promising for a fireship and recommending this method. Gambier, however, was
one of those naval officers of the time who were really uneasy about fireships,
red-hot shot and explosive devices with time-delay fuzes, looking on these
unorthodox methods as somehow unfair, unmanly and worthy of assassins rather
than Christians. His profoundly religious, rather pedantic character was summed
up by his nickname ‘Dismal Jimmy’; ‘It is a horrible mode of warfare’, he
wrote, ‘and the attempt very hazardous, if not desperate.’ He wanted
reassurance from the Admiralty, but in London the authorities had no qualms
whatsoever and had already prepared for the enterprise. Twelve fireships and
five explosion-vessels had already been dispatched to the Basque Roads.
Gambier learned also that William Congreve, an artillerist
and engineer, was on his way, bringing a special invention and an operating
crew. His apparatus, which had already proved successful on land and at sea,
made use of black-powder rockets to set enemy ships on fire from a distance. It
weighed about nineteen kilograms and had a range of 270 metres. Unlike a
mortar, it had no recoil, so it could be fired from small boats, but on the
other hand it was not particularly accurate.
Then the British had a stroke of luck. On 19 March the
frigate Impérieuse sailed into Plymouth. She had come from the Mediterranean
and was under the command of Lord Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
(1775–1860). Scarcely had Cochrane landed than he was summoned by telegraph to
the Admiralty, where Lord Mulgrave asked the daredevil captain what he thought
about the potential of a fireship attack at Basque Roads. The Admiralty knew
that in Cochrane they had the right man – he was not only a brilliant and
inventive warship commander, but also an unruly individualist, and as an
independent member of Parliament he had been a vocal critic of Admiralty
policy; better, therefore, to involve him in any controversial operation from
the outset, so if things went awry he would be poorly placed to make trouble.
Furthermore, as a frigate captain he had enjoyed a successful career as a
raider up and down the French coast, so he was familiar with the region. His
specialised knowledge and expertise would be essential.
Cochrane, unlike Mulgrave, did not favour a classic fireship
attack. He thought it would almost certainly miscarry if the normal defensive
measures were used to counter it, so he proposed that explosion-vessels be
deployed as well. The Admiralty accepted the plan, and after some hesitation,
Cochrane was persuaded to lead the attack, although he knew that this would
lead to problems with some of the more senior officers under Gambier’s command.
Many were jealous of his reputation and some felt that the appointment of a
mere post captain was a poor reflection on the competence of the fleet. But
time was of the essence, and each day that passed increased the chance of a
French breakout, so Cochrane’s energy and enterprising spirit were invaluable.
What the British did not know was that the French fleet had been divided by a power-struggle
among the French senior officers, which was eventually resolved when Vice
Admiral Zacharie Jacques Théodore Allemand prevailed over Rear Admiral
Willaumez and took command of the fleet.
By 3 April Cochrane was with Gambier’s ships and was finally
was able to get a good look at the tactical situation east of the island of
Oléron. For the moment there was not much more to do, since the
explosion-vessels and rockets had not yet arrived. He started by converting a
few available transports; using the materials found on board the ships of the
line, the shipwrights were able to outfit a dozen conventional fireships, and
the relatively large Mediator (a purchased merchantman serving as a Fifth Rate)
was selected to smash through the floating boom, behind which lay the French
fleet. Three of the merchant ships were converted to explosion-vessels. Their
sides were strengthened to increase the violence of the explosion, and in each
hold were packed 1,500 powder-kegs in big casks, with bomb shells secured on
the covers and 3,000 hand-grenades packed around them. The whole thing would
function like a gigantic mortar. A fuze was laid from the explosive to the
stern so that the crew would have about twelve minutes to make their escape.
Meanwhile, volunteers were called for throughout the fleet to serve as captains
and crews of these vessels.
For these crews there was not just the risk of premature
explosion, but also the danger that if captured they would be brutally handled,
if not shot out of hand. So they all had to have a prepared cover-story – for
example, that they had fallen overboard or belonged to a merchant ship which
had previously sunk.
On 10 April more fireships from England reached the Basque
Roads, giving Cochrane a total of twenty. His force was now complete. Time was
pressing, so the following evening, with a strong wind and high sea, the
volunteer captains assembled aboard Lord Gambier’s flagship. Cochrane gave them
their final instructions, explaining that he himself would lead the attack in
the first explosion-vessel. To this end, the Impérieuse had already sailed in
the direction of the boom, with two explosion-vessels in tow. Cochrane would
attempt to break the boom with one of them, and if that did not work the second
one would follow. Once the way was clear, the fireship captains were to take
advantage immediately of the flood tide, this second wave attacking the French
ships themselves. Three other frigates would take up predetermined positions in
order to pick up the escaping fireship crews.
It was dark as pitch when Cochrane, with a lieutenant and a
crew of four men in one of the explosion-vessels, reached the area where they
believed the boom to be. They could not see the French ships, and could only
guess how far they were from the boom. Cochrane ordered the men into the boat
and waited for the moment when he would light his portfire and set the fuze
alight. Then he would spring into the boat and the men would pull for their
lives against wind, waves and tide to ensure that they were as distant as
possible when the explosion occurred. There is something resembling an
eyewitness account of this phase of the action; although, strictly, it is
fiction, its representation of the explosion-vessel’s approach to the boom and
the following detonation is supported by factual reports. The author was
Captain Frederick Marryat (1792–1848), who was to call on his experience of
service with the Royal Navy for a series of authentic stories of the maritime
world, producing heroes who were forerunners of C S Forester’s Horatio
Hornblower and Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey. At this time he was a midshipman
aboard the Imperieuse and a volunteer in one of the explosion-vessels. In his
first book, Frank Mildmay, or the Naval Officer, he describes the attack:
The night was very dark, and it blew a strong breeze
directly in upon the Isle d’Aix, and the enemy’s fleet. Two of our frigates had
been previously so placed as to serve as beacons to direct the course of the
fire-ships. They each displayed a clear and brilliant light; the fire-ships
were directed to pass between these; after which, their course up to the boom
which guarded the anchorage was clear, and not easily to be mistaken.
Marryat, in the persona of his hero Midshipman Frank
Mildmay, recalls exactly what it was like to serve aboard an explosion-ship.
‘They were filled with layers of shells and powder, heaped one upon another:
the quantity on board of each vessel was enormous. We had a four-oared gig, a
small, narrow thing (nicknamed by the sailors a ‘coffin’), to make our escape
in.’
Marryat describes how the strong wind drove the ship against
the boom, and how the frigates remained in the darkness. Into Mildmay’s head
came a line from Dante: ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!’ The ship crashed
hard broadside into the boom, and the crew just managed to spring into their
boat, while Mildmay seized his torch. Only later was he able to express the
sentiments that came to him at that moment:
If ever I felt the sensation of fear, it was after I had
lighted this port-fire, which was connected with the train. Until I was fairly
in the boat, and out of the reach of the explosion – which was inevitable and
might be instantaneous – the sensation was horrid. I was standing on a mine;
any fault in the port-fire, which sometimes will happen; any trifling quantity
of gunpowder lying in the interstices of the deck, would have exploded the
whole in a moment. Only one minute and a half of port-fire was allowed. I had
therefore no time to lose.
Finally, he lit the fuze and leaped into the boat, at
which the men began to row as hard as they could to get as far away as possible
… ‘we were not two hundred yards from her when she exploded’.
Some distance away, the crews of the English ships
perched in the rigging and stared tensely into the night, wondering when they
would see the flashes of the explosion-vessels among the French ships. Many of
them thought it ‘a cruel substitute for a manly engagement’.
The French had been forewarned of a fireship attack and so
had taken appropriate countermeasures. They imagined the boom to be
unbreachable, constructed as it was out of hundreds of metres of stout spars,
lashed together with chains and anchored to the sea-floor with large iron
blocks. Behind this, they felt secure, but as an additional precaution their
boats were gathered along the boom.
The attack succeeded more quickly than Cochrane had
expected, the first explosion ripping apart the quiet of the night. Shells,
grenades and wreckage from the ships flew in all directions, at the same time
setting off the Congreve rockets, which disappeared into the distance with a
fearsome hissing like glowing snakes. An observer on the British side wrote
later: ‘Here was exhibited a grand display of fire-works at the expense of John
Bull; no gala night at Ranelagh or Vauxhall could be compared to it.’ The boom
was torn from its moorings, and the energy of 1,500 powder-kegs swept a violent
wall of water before it. The boat with Cochrane’s fleeing crew had not got far
before the wreckage of their former vessel and the rest of its explosive cargo
came down around them. The ‘coffin’ bobbed like a cork on the waves and then
was swamped, and they were rescued by the skin of their teeth. Ten minutes
later the second vessel blew sky-high.
Now the second phase of the attack got under way. First
Cochrane sailed his frigate through the breach in the boom, followed by about
twenty unlighted silhouettes. But the fireship flotilla quickly fell into
disorder, with only four of them coming within striking distance of the French
warships (their principal target was the flagship of Admiral Allemand, the
Océan). In panic cables were slipped, guns and ammunition were thrown
overboard, and the ships drifted uncontrollably towards shoals, ran aground or
collided with each other. But none of the fireships caused direct damage, with
most burning out in the darkness, far from any target. It was the centuries-old
problem of fire-ship captains losing their nerve, setting their vessels on fire
too early and abandoning them. Also demonstrated was the huge psychological
effect these weapons could have. The disorder in the French fleet arose because
the men saw the fire-ships but could not be sure they were not more
explosion-vessels, which would be more difficult to counter, and all discipline
vanished. Later during his exile on St Helena, Napoleon, discussing this
phenomenon with one of his English warders, concluded: ‘They ought not to have
been alarmed by your brûlots, but fear deprived them of their senses, and they
no longer knew how to act in their own defence.’
In the morning light of 12 April the extent of the disaster
suffered by the French fleet became visible. The tide had turned at midnight,
and as it ebbed eleven of the great ships of the line had been left high and
dry, keeled over at perilous angles, with their guns unable to bear. As long as
the tide was out, they remained an easy target for a second attack, so Cochrane
signalled Gambier to inform him of this unrivalled and very promising
opportunity. Gambier, however, hesitated to launch an all-out attack.
Naval historians still disagree about the reason: was it
timidity, or did he just resent the attempt by a junior captain to browbeat his
admiral? However, faced with the commander’s inaction, Cochrane decided on his
own initiative to move on the enemy without delay, believing that a lot more
destruction could be inflicted on the stranded ships. With the support of a
small detachment from the main fleet, he did succeed in irreparably damaging
one or two more before Gambier ordered him to break off the attack. Cochrane
was furious, and eventually Gambier ordered him to return to England. Although
this was not a case of total annihilation, the French had been forced to
abandon their planned Caribbean expedition, and Napoleon later used the word
‘imbécile’ to describe the French admiral who had allowed his ships to get into
this sad situation. However, things did not go well for the British admiral
either.
At home, Cochrane was hailed as the hero and was made a Knight
Commander of the Bath, an honour awarded only for outstanding achievement. This
event marks the point at which honours and social accolades replaced the
financial rewards and prospects of promotion that successful fireship captains
of an earlier era had enjoyed. However, Gambier himself demanded credit, as
commander-in-chief, for the success of the action, and this roused the enmity
of Cochrane. As a Member of Parliament, Cochrane objected to a plan to offer a
vote of thanks to the man who, in his view, had merely observed the battle from
afar. Stung by the criticism, Gambier demanded a court-martial and, not
surprisingly, he was found not guilty by his colleagues. For Cochrane, things
went downhill from then onwards, in part because his outspoken attitude made
him many enemies in the Navy and the government. The senior naval authorities
deemed him ‘uncontrollable’, and his career stalled. Later Cochrane was
implicated in a stock market fraud, and was stripped of his honours, lost his
seat in Parliament, and was thrown out of the Service. He remained a popular
hero in Britain, with many admirers and supporters, but decided that if his
native country did not appreciate his talents sufficiently he would take them
abroad.
Throughout the rest of his long adventurous life, Cochrane
continued to develop unconventional weapons for use against ships or coastal
installations. He went on trying to improve explosion-vessels, one of his
innovations being the addition of small metal particles – like the terrorist’s
nail-bomb – designed to maximise casualties. These were thought by his
superiors to be ‘effective but inhumane’ and were not pursued. As the Duke of
Wellington said in his inimitably succinct style, ‘Two can play at that game.’
Some of Cochrane’s schemes even presaged the use of poison gas in war; these
were kept secret until 1908. For attacking coastal fortresses he dreamed up a
new version of the well-known ‘smoke-ship’ of Sir Francis Drake, known as the
‘sulphur-vessel’ and inspired by a visit to sulphur mines in Sicily in 1811. On
the upper deck of a small vessel he planned to spread a layer of charcoal and
lumps of sulphur. The burning charcoal would cause the sulphur to melt,
emitting smoke which would cause coughing by irritating the airways. He envisaged
these vessels being deployed with favourable wind and tide, emitting ‘noxious
effluvia’ as they drifted towards shore installations and causing their
garrisons to take to their heels to escape the stink. He also came up with idea
of the ‘temporary mortar’ – a small vessel in which the decks were stripped
out, and a bed of clay laid in its bottom planking. This was covered with scrap
metal and gunpowder, and finally with a layer of animal carcasses and rows of
shells. By appropriate ballasting, the whole vessel was heeled to one side to
‘aim’ it at its target, and it would then explode like a gigantic mortar.
Cochrane would get the opportunity to put some of these
notions in to practice during the Greek War of Independence.
