Chapter IV: The Two Colonial Wars (1)

AUTHORITIES.—Beatson, _Military Memoirs_; Campbell’s _Lives of the
Admirals_; Schomberg’s _Naval Chronology_; Burrows’ _Life of Hawke_.

From the signing of the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 till the beginning of the colonial war with Spain in 1739, the Royal Navy was used as an instrument in the hand of diplomacy to keep the peace, or as the police of the seas. Europe was disturbed in the North by the last stages of the struggle between Peter the Great of Russia and Charles XII. of Sweden, in the South by the foolish ambitions of Philip V., the first Bourbon king of Spain, and his second wife, Elizabeth Farnese. But the statesmen who controlled the policy of Western Europe during most of these years, Sir Robert Walpole in England and Cardinal Fleury in France, were unwearied in warding off another war. Once, in 1718, a strong fleet sent into the Mediterranean, to put a stop to one of the Italian ventures of Philip V., destroyed a much weaker and very ill-handled Spanish fleet off Cape Passaro, in Sicily. As a rule, the appearance of our ships was enough. Now and then an officer found some chance of distinction in service against the pirates, largely recruited among the privateers of the war, who swarmed in distant seas. The most signal example was the suppression of a noted adventurer of this class, named Roberts, by Sir Chaloner Ogle, on the West Coast of Africa in 1722. Meanwhile war on a vast scale was being prepared by two causes—on the Continent by the rivalries of France and Austria in Germany, and Spain and Austria in Italy, together with the ambition of the rising kingdom of Prussia and its great King Frederick; and on the sea by the collision of England with Spain and France in America, and with France in India. Great Britain was drawn into the Continental War by the Hanoverian interests of the royal family and the desire to maintain the balance of power. Here the navy played an indispensable but secondary part. But in the colonial struggle it was the foremost combatant, and exercised a decisive influence.

A common interest drew France and Spain into alliance against us, but the causes of hostility were various. As regards Spain, they go back to the reign of Charles II. From the time of our settlement in Jamaica it had been our constant wish to secure the right of trading with the Spanish colonies, while firmly refusing the Spaniards all access to our own. The buccaneer wars, in so far as they were more than plundering raids conducted by miscellaneous scoundrels, were the attempts of private adventurers to carry out this policy. By the Peace of Utrecht we secured the right to share in the trade of Spanish America. Agents were allowed to establish themselves at Carthagena on the Eastern, and Panama on the Western side. We secured an _asiento_, or contract for the supply of negroes. We were also authorised to send one trading ship of 500 tons burden laden with manufactured goods to the Spanish Main in each year. This arrangement led, as it was bound to lead, to much smuggling. As Spain revived, under the more intelligent administration of the Bourbon dynasty, the abuse of English treaty rights was resented. The Spaniards said that the treaty ship was continually supplied with fresh goods by tenders, and complained that other smugglers haunted their coast, and were guilty of many excesses. To protect themselves, they insisted on searching English vessels found near their coast, and condemning those they considered guilty, and Spanish adventurers retaliated by piracy. Hence arose a long angry conflict of claims and counter-claims between England and Spain, complicated by political disputes in Europe, and only prevented from ripening into war by the resolute peace policy of Walpole. The Parliamentary Opposition, composed largely of disappointed office-seekers, and, as they afterwards proved, incapable administrators, took up the cause of the West India traders. There was much general denunciation of the atrocities of the Spaniards. The best known instance given was that of a certain John Jenkins, master of a trading vessel called the =Rebecca= of Glasgow. Jenkins asserted that in 1730 his vessel had been boarded by a Spanish _guarda costa_, or revenue cutter, in the West Indies, and that the Spanish captain, who is habitually described as “the infamous Fandino,” had cut his ear off. His vessel was undoubtedly searched near Havana, but was allowed to proceed on her voyage, and there is no evidence for the story that his ear was cut off except his own word. As the country grew tired of the long predominance of Walpole, and was worked into a pugnacious mood by the Patriots, use was made of Jenkins’s case to appeal to popular sentiment. A theatrical scene was arranged before a Committee of the House of Commons, and the man was prompted to declare “that he had recommended his soul to god, and his cause to his country” when he was subject to the violence of Fandino. At last Walpole, seeing that the country was resolved on war, yielded, dishonestly, to what he believed to be a mistaken policy for the sake of keeping office. War with Spain was declared in July 1739.

The Colonial quarrel with France arose in another way—and one more honourable to us. The trade of her colonies was less worth striving for than the Spanish, and she was too strong to be hectored. The aggression came from her. In America her agents endeavoured to unite her possessions, in Canada and Louisiana, by annexing the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi, which were first explored by her brilliant and daring adventurers. The result would have been to confine the growing British colonies between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic. In India the French Company was bankrupt. It endeavoured to gain the means of expelling its prosperous English rival, by acquiring political power among the native princes. For a time the Colonial conflict with France was postponed by the great European war arising over the scramble for the heritage of the house of Austria on the death of Charles VI. It was our exceeding good fortune that, when the decisive struggle for trade colonies and supremacy at sea had to be fought out, the attention and the resources of France were mainly employed on an attempt to acquire a predominant position in Central Europe.

This was the happier for us because years were to pass before we could afford to dispense with any of the help fortune gave us. Never was the Government of England less able than during the fag end of Walpole’s rule and the administration of the so-called Patriots. Never, save during the last ignoble days of Charles II., was the navy less fit to meet the calls of a great war. Its paper strength was indeed imposing. There were 124 ships of the line—of from 100 to 50 guns each, and 104 of lesser rates—that is, of 40 guns each or less. The total was 228, and it exceeded the united navies of France and Spain in everything except the quality of the individual ships. But it was suffering from the moral and intellectual diseases spoken of in the previous chapter. The long peace had afforded no opportunity of testing the quality of officers. In the earlier years its chiefs were worn-out and commonplace, or brutal and noisy. All those years did for us was to bring forward the men who were to lead gloriously in after times. From the point of view of the navy, the struggle waged under various names, the Spanish War, the War of the Austrian Succession, and the Seven Years’ War from 1739 to 1763 with an eight years’ truce in the middle, was one and the same war. Fortunately for us, if we were bad, our enemies were worse. Spain was languid, brainless, and could only fight on the defensive. France was overtaxed, distracted by a multiplicity of aims, drifting to bankruptcy, corrupt at heart and frivolous. Great Britain was a mighty force, healthy, though afflicted by bad habits, but capable of reform, and even at its worst advancing on sound lines. Therefore it could bear its administrative scum as a mighty river carries driftwood and rubbish on its surface. This floating trash may make a block and delay the current for a short space, but the moving water flows below, and accumulates in irresistible pressure till one day it sweeps the obstruction out of its path.

In describing this struggle only a brief space need be given to the early years, and in them what is best worth looking at is the promise of better times. Vernon in the West Indies and Mathews and Lestock in the Mediterranean are the dominant figures of the first period—and the types of all the navy had to succeed in shedding, or to perish. Beside them we see the gradual rise of Anson and Hawke, and with their predominance the triumph of the good over the bad.

The Spanish War, or War of Jenkins’s Ear as it came to be called when the rage of the country was over, began by attacks on the possessions of Spain in the New World. A rigid blockade of our enemy’s ports at home and invasion of his territory in Europe would have brought him to terms more effectually. But we had no sufficient army, and the navy, besides being hardly yet fit for prolonged blockade in stormy seas, much preferred colonial expeditions rich in prize and plunder. To the country nothing seemed more likely to be effectual than the seizure of Spanish colonies—or more lucrative. During the long peace, in 1726, ’27, a powerful fleet had been sent to blockade the port of Porto Bello for the purpose of stopping the sailing of the treasure-ships, and so depriving King Philip V. of the means of being mischievous in Europe. Admiral Hozier who commanded, his successor, and many thousands of officers and men died miserably of fever. The memory of this sacrifice to Walpole’s peace policy rankled, and an expedition to Porto Bello was sure to be popular. It was the port of lading for the treasure from the South Seas, and the headquarters of the _guarda costas_ employed, as we said, to destroy our trade—but as the Spaniards put it, to stop our smuggling. An attack on it had been vehemently supported by the Patriots, and particularly by a sailor who was very conspicuous among them.

Edward Vernon had been a captain in the navy since 1706 and was the son of a Secretary of State. He owed his rapid rise to family influence, and no conspicuous service is recorded of him. During the peace he had been for several years member for Ipswich, and had been among the loudest-mouthed of those who first assailed the “profligate” administration of Sir R. Walpole, and then imitated him in everything except his love of peace and his admirable finance. The navy now and then produces a person who “has the gift of the gab ‘although’ he was bred to the sea,” and is continually playing the British seaman to the gallery. Vernon was the example of the type in his generation. He was as brave as any man, but too proud of what he ought to have taken for granted. He was clever, but far too conscious of his cleverness. Withal he was arrogant, had no control over his temper, and was afflicted with an insatiable vanity. Already he had boasted that he would take Porto Bello with six ships. When the war began, he was sent with nine vessels to keep his promise. Vernon left in July 1739, and reached Jamaica late in October. On the 20th November he sailed into Porto Bello with six ships, and took it almost without resistance. The fortifications were not complete, nor were all the guns mounted. The garrison was crippled by tropical fever and was seized by a panic. They ran from their guns under the fire of our ships, and the town was captured with less loss than has often accompanied the taking of a sloop. Vernon behaved with humanity when in possession of the place. This easy success threw the nation into a delirium of joy, and turned Vernon’s head completely. He became convinced that all fortifications could be taken by merely rushing at them. In the position of unchecked authority he held in his own squadron, surrounded by men who deferred to him in obedient silence even when they did not toady him, his arrogance and self-assertion swelled till they grew to the proportions of mania. Vernon made an idle demonstration off Carthagena on the 6th March 1740, but nothing else was done.

Meanwhile the country was preparing to follow up the first success. After changes of plan, hesitations, and much administrative confusion, it was finally decided to make a double attack on Spanish America. A small squadron under Anson was to go round Cape Horn and range the west coast of South America as far north as Panama, while a great expedition carrying a body of troops under command of Lord Cathcart was to sail to the West Indies, join Vernon, and other troops drawn from the British possessions in America, and then the whole was to fall on the Spaniards. The actual point of attack was left to the discretion of the chiefs. Anson’s justly famous voyage may be left aside for the present with the observation that as part of a combined operation it was a failure through the delays shown in dispatching the expeditions. According to the original plan, Lord Cathcart was to have reached the West Indies at the end of October 1740 under protection of six warships. But the Government heard that the Spaniards were sending out a fleet. France was also beginning to move for the purpose of supporting Spain. The Government delayed the expedition till a more powerful fleet could be collected. It left England under the care of 25 warships commanded by Sir C. Ogle on 26th October, at which date it ought to have been on the field of operations. On the 19th December it reached Dominica, where Lord Cathcart died, and was succeeded by General Wentworth. It was not at Jamaica till the 7th January. Meanwhile the enemy had not been idle. The attention of France, still nominally at peace with us, was drawn off by the death of the emperor and the opening of the Austrian Succession. Spain was left to her own resources, which, however, proved greater and were better handled than we had expected. Don Rodrigo de Torres sailed on the 10th July, reached the West Indies unmolested by us, sent part of his ships to reinforce Carthagena under Don Blas de Leso, and then went on, still unmolested by us, to Havana. It may be added that he finally brought the Spanish trade home unseen, and even unsought by us.

The great English expedition reinforced by troops from the North American colonies, and by negroes to do the work of the trenches, left Jamaica by the 26th January 1741, and after some further hesitation was led against Carthagena. It reached its destination on the 4th March. The town stands at the north end of lagoons, and can only be entered at the western end by large ships at the Boca Chica, or Small Mouth. It was not accessible from the sea front because of the shoal water and the heavy surf. The Boca Chica was well fortified, and there were other outworks dotted along the lagoons. These had to be beaten down before the body of the place, which was further defended by a strong outwork called the San Lazaro and a double wall, could be reached. From the 9th to the 26th March we were fighting up along the lagoons with good success. Vernon accused the military men of sloth and incompetence, and afterwards repeated his charges in a scolding pamphlet full of provable misstatements of fact. At Carthagena he pestered his military colleagues in a tone which revolted the pride of General Wentworth. Still, by the end of March we were close to the town, and on the 1st April, a fatal date, Vernon dispatched a vessel to England with a report of victory. It was soon followed by another with authentic tidings of disaster. The wet season begins at Carthagena at the end of March, and the troops were already very sickly. Their condition was aggravated by the fact that the admiral seized the only supply of good water for the fleet. At last Wentworth, who was plainly a weak man unfitted to contend with a bully, had the feebleness to allow himself to be badgered into making an attempt to storm the unbreached San Lazaro, and was repulsed with frightful loss. Vernon made no use of his ships against the town, though there was ample depth of water for them, as M. de Pointis had shown when he took the place in 1697.

It was now clear that Carthagena could not be taken without a regular siege, an operation at that season, and with our resources, impossible. A council of war was held in the cabin of the flagship. The soldiers when asked what they proposed to do answered that they must first learn what help they were to expect from the fleet. Vernon burst out in an explosion of abuse, and was firmly answered by Wentworth. Then he flung out of the cabin in a fit of shrewish rage, and remained during the rest of the council in the stern gallery, bawling occasional interruptions. There could be but one end to the debate. The expedition retired with shame, and the odd hits, and the loss of several thousand men.

Nor would there be any profit in going into the details of the war in the West Indies. Few conflicts have ever been more insipid. Operations similar in purpose to this at Carthagena but on a smaller scale were carried out by Vernon and Wentworth near St. Jago de Cuba in the autumn of 1741, and at Porto Bello in the spring of 1742. In 1743 a squadron under Sir Charles Knowles was beaten off with severe loss in attack on Puerto Cabello and La Guayra on the Main. Then the war died down to mere privateering for a time, to revive slightly towards the end. Knowles fought a moderately successful action with a Spanish force near Havana in September 1748. But he was disliked by some of his officers and accused of not doing enough, was tried by court martial, and reprimanded. A feud arose among his officers, who fought it out in duels. The West Indies in this war were destined to give us no glory, and very doubtful profit. The honour of the flag was deeply stained by Captain Cornelius Mitchell, who while in command of a superior English force showed mere cowardice in the presence of the French in August 1746. For this he was only dismissed the service by a very weak court martial. Some good did, however, come to the navy and the country from this scandal. In 1749, after the conclusion of the war, it helped to persuade Parliament to revise the Naval Discipline Act of Charles II. The rest of the war in the West Indies deserves no further notice. The Spaniards avoided battle except on the one occasion named, and applied themselves to bringing home their trade, with fair success. The French were too overtaxed elsewhere to appear in force. We not being put on our mettle, drowsed on in sloth, quarrels, and scandals. On both sides the privateers were active. Throughout the course of the war we took from the Spaniards 1249 ships, and they from us 1360. Our prizes included several treasure-ships, and were the more valuable. To conclude this side of the subject, it may be added that after France joined in the war against us we took from her 2185 ships, and she from us 1878. The balance in our favour was therefore 196.

Here also may be put what remains to be said of Vernon. It is to the honour of a man of whom little good can be told, that if he was insolent to colleagues and harsh to his officers, he showed an intelligent humanity to his crews. He reduced the excessive allowance of rum given to men in the West Indies, and introduced the custom of diluting it with water. The mixture is said by tradition to have got its name of “grog” from his nickname of “Old Grog,” given him for his practice of wearing a grogram boat-cloak. This is the only kindly trait (for we cannot praise him for not behaving like a buccaneer at Porto Bello) in an unamiable character. Vernon had offered to resign after the failure at Carthagena, but was flattered into remaining by ministers who were unwilling to see him among them till his tar-barrel popularity had waned, as they no doubt began to see it would soon do. He did return at the close of 1742. In 1744 his name was passed over in a promotion of admirals, and he resented the slight in a letter of incredible insolence to the Board. Yet in April 1745 he was promoted Admiral of the White, and appointed to a home command during the Jacobite rising. On service he began a course of violent wrangling with the Admiralty, and finally threw up his post in a pet. Then he appealed to the public in anonymous pamphlets with clap-trap titles, consisting largely of official letters which he had clearly no right to publish. When called to account for what was at the best a gross irregularity, he refused to acknowledge his responsibility, and was, by the king’s orders, struck off the list of admirals. He died on his estate at Nacton, in Suffolk, on the 30th October 1757, forgotten and obscure—an example of the worthlessness of mob popularity.

It is indeed a pleasure to turn from this story of loud talk and little performance to Anson’s immortal voyage. Not that it was without dark shades and disasters, not only because it ended in triumph, but because there was at the head of it a hero, and round him a band fit to follow a hero. Of Anson himself it may be said that in him English manhood gave itself a witness amid the vulgar crowd of Vernons, Knowleses, Mitchells, Mathews, and Lestocks. Stern but just, asking for no affection, but deserving it, and commanding absolute confidence, he was indeed “the flower and pattern of all bold mariners ... unchangeable of purpose, crafty of counsel, and swift of execution; in triumph most sober, in failure ... of endurance beyond mortal man.”

It had at first been intended to send two expeditions to the South Seas, one under Anson to Manila, and another under Captain Cornwall round the Horn. But the Government changed its mind. Anson alone sailed, and was directed not on Manila but on Panama. There was delay, as always at that time, and the squadron did not leave England till the 18th September 1740. It consisted of six ships:—

+--------------+-------+-------+--------------------------+ | | Guns. | Men. | | | +-------+-------+ | | =Centurion= | 60 | 400 | George Anson, commodore. | | =Gloucester= | 50 | 300 | Richard Norris. | | =Severn= | 50 | 300 | Honourable Edward Legge. | | =Pearl= | 40 | 250 | M. Mitchell. | | =Wager= | 28 | 160 | Dandy Kidd. | | =Trial= | 8 | 100 | Honourable G. Murray. | +--------------+-------+-------+--------------------------+

There were two victuallers, transports to carry stores—the =Anna= and =Industry=. The squadron was fairly provided, but was hampered by a number of so-called soldiers who were in fact Chelsea pensioners, sent on board in disregard of Anson’s protest. All who could walk deserted. The others died before the ships entered the Pacific; among them it is said that there was a veteran who had fought at the Boyne for King William. On the 25th October the squadron was at Madeira, and it reached St. Catherine, in Southern Brazil, on the 21st November. Already the scurvy had broken out, and Anson stopped to restore the health of his crews till the 18th January 1741. From St. Catherine the squadron fought its way South through storms to Port St. Julian, famous in the voyages of Magellan and of Drake. From thence it went on to the Pacific by the Straits of Le Maire and the Horn. It was a less dangerous route than the Straits of Magellan, but the incessant tempest made it perilous. Through one unbroken fury of wind and wave the squadron struggled on to the Pacific, but all did not reach it. The navigation of the time was rude, there were no chronometers, no means of finding the longitude. Two of the ships of the squadron, the =Severn= and the =Pearl=, came up on the wrong side of South America, and returned to England. Of the others the =Wager= rounded the Horn, but was wrecked in the Golfo de Peñas. Anson did not reach Juan Fernandez, the island of Robinson Crusoe, or at least of his original Alexander Selkirk, till 10th June, with his crew reduced to a mere handful by scurvy. The =Trial=, the =Gloucester=, and the =Anna= came in one after the other. The last was broken up, and her crew taken into the other vessels. It was September before the crews were sufficiently revived for service. During the last months of 1741 and the first of 1742, Anson remained on the coast taking prizes and capturing Paita. The =Trial= was condemned. His squadron was too weak to effect anything against Panama, and he missed the heavily laden ship, which came yearly from the Philippines to Acapulco, in Mexico. On the 28th April he left the American coast and stretched across the Pacific. Storms and scurvy raged round him again, and the =Gloucester= had to be sacrificed. The =Centurion= now alone remained. With her, Anson reached Canton, 21st November 1742, where he refitted. Then he took the sea once more to look for the Manila treasure-ship. On the 20th June 1743 he met and captured the _Nuestra Señora de Covadonga_, a prize of immense value, off Cape Espiritu Santo, in the Philippines. As a feat of war the achievement was naught, for the Spaniard had most of his guns dismounted, and fought at hopeless disadvantage. Anson’s greatness comes from this—that he conquered so much to be there at all. He returned with his prize to Canton, sailed for home on the 15th October 1743, and reached Spithead on the 15th June 1744.

The naval operations carried out against Spain in Europe were in themselves insignificant, and are only worth noticing because they led to war with France. The actual declaration of war was not made till 1744, by France on the 20th March, by England on the 31st, but it was a pure formality. Conflicts had already taken place on the sea between the ships of the two nations; the battle of Dettingen, in which English troops took part as allies of Maria Teresa, had been fought, and an attempt had been made to cover an invasion of England in the interests of the Jacobites. France was openly giving moral and material support to Spain before actually joining her. While the great expedition to the West Indies was preparing, Sir John Balchen was dispatched to the Spanish coast with a small squadron. It was characteristic of our half-hearted way of conducting the war that he was ordered out only to capture the treasure-ships. They, however, were warned in time, and so came safe home to Santander. Balchen was in some danger of falling in with a much superior force sent out by the Spaniards to look for him, and returned having effected nothing. Meanwhile Haddock was watching Cadiz, not so vigilantly, however, but that a Spanish squadron got away unimpeached by us, and reached Ferrol. The Spanish Government collected troops on the east coast as if to threaten Minorca, and on the north as if in preparation for an invasion of England, to be supported, it was hoped, by help from the Jacobites. The apparent danger of Minorca distracted Haddock, who was even short-handed till reinforced by a squadron under Lestock. At home a powerful force was collected under Sir John Norris to repel the threatened invasion. He sailed twice to watch Ferrol, but was driven back by storms in July and August. When 1740 ended, we had certainly done nothing proportionate to our immense numerical superiority. The Spanish fleets lay quiet in port, or slipped away to the West Indies, and the Basque privateers were active even in the Channel. In 1741 there was no change. Sir John Norris was again at sea in the Channel and Bay of Biscay, but to little purpose. Haddock, with his fleet reinforced by Rear-Admiral Lestock, continued to watch Don José Navarro at Cadiz. In December the English fleet had become very foul, and was compelled to go into Gibraltar and clean. Navarro at once put to sea, and entered the Mediterranean. Meanwhile a French fleet under M. de Court had left Toulon, and advanced south along the coast of Spain. So soon as he knew that the Spaniards had passed him, Haddock started in pursuit, but only came up in time to see the French and Spanish fleets join, and to find himself in the presence of a very superior force. It was notorious that M. de Court would support Navarro if attacked, but since France was still endeavouring to make war and keep peace at one and the same time, he would not attack us. Haddock was allowed to go on to Minorca. The allies covered the passage of some Spanish troops to Italy, and then went into Toulon. Here they remained till February 1744. Haddock, old and worn-out, resigned his command to Lestock at the close of 1741. In May 1742 Admiral Mathews came out with a commission not only to command the fleet but to be Minister at the court of Sardinia. It would have been difficult to make a worse choice. He was stupid, boorish, illiterate, and of a violent temper, which earned him in Italy the nickname of “Il Furibondo.” Moreover, he had a long-standing quarrel with Lestock, and had asked that this officer might be recalled. The Ministry did not consent, and Mathews revenged himself by coarse insolence to his subordinate. A proud man would have sought his own recall; but Lestock was only sulky and malignant.

During 1742 some service was done. In June a squadron of Spanish galleys was burnt at St. Tropez by fireships under the command of Captain Callis, who earned the last gold collar and badge given for this kind of service. In August a detached squadron under Captain Martin forced the Bourbon king of the Two Sicilies to withdraw the troops he had sent to serve against our ally the Queen of Hungary by threatening to bombard Naples. With these exceptions, 1742 and 1743 wore away, while Mathews was mostly at Turin, and his fleet lay at anchor without practice at sea. Some acts of violence on the coast of Italy are recorded against our captains. The British Minister at Florence, Sir Horace Mann, who looked upon them, with the sole exception of Captain Temple West, as “genteel porpoises,” asserts that when some of our men robbed a church of a cross and of the sacrament, Mathews hung the cross round the neck of his pet monkey, and stuck the consecrated wafer on the beast’s forehead. The tardy determination of France to take an active part on the sea gave a stimulus to the war in the early days of 1744.

In this year she acted with some vigour both in the Channel and in the Mediterranean. At the close of 1743 troops had been collected at Dunkirk for an invasion again, in the hope of causing a Jacobite rebellion. A fleet of twenty-four sail was armed at Brest, and put under the command of M. de Roquefeuil. He sailed at the end of January, was off the Eddystone on the 3rd February 1744, and had come as high as Dungeness by the 24th. The peril served for a moment to calm the feuds of the politicians, for the country was terribly frightened. English soldiers and foreign mercenaries were called in from abroad, and we applied to the Dutch for the contingent they were bound to supply by treaty. A fleet was collected under Sir John Norris in the Downs, and a battle seemed inevitable. But a succession of heavy gales from the east and north-east drove the French out of the Channel back to Brest, and the peril passed away.

While the wind and the inefficiency of the enemy were standing our friends in the Channel, a transaction was taking place in the Mediterranean which did us little honour and was the beginning of infinite bitterness. It was known by the end of 1743 that France was coming actively into the naval war. In January 1744 Mathews came down from Turin, where he had been acting as Minister, and resumed his functions of admiral. His fleet was at anchor in the roadstead of Hyères, between the mainland and the islands of Porquerolles, and there it remained till M. de Court and Don José Navarro put to sea from Toulon on the 19th February. It consisted of twenty ships of the line when he rejoined it, but was raised by reinforcements to twenty-nine. The allies numbered twenty-eight, twelve of them being Spaniards. One of the Spanish ships, the _Real Felipe_, carried 116 guns, and her fellows were fine ships. The French were somewhat inferior, and the weight of metal as well as of numbers was in favour of Mathews, but the battle which followed was a disgrace alike to the discipline, the intelligence, and, with a few exceptions, even to the manhood of the navy.

When the enemy was known to be at sea, we struggled out from Hyères, foul from long lying at anchor, and clumsy from want of practice. The code of signals, too, was arbitrary and poor. The same signal was found both in the fighting and the sailing orders, and meant different things in each. During the 10th February and the night of the 10th-11th Mathews’ fleet struggled towards the enemy in light breezes and baffling currents. On the morning of the 11th it had got between the enemy and Toulon. The van under Admiral Rowley and the centre where Mathews was himself, were in a position to force a battle on the allies, who lay in a line to the south and west of them, heading to the west with the French in the van and centre, and the Spaniards in the rear, and therefore nearest us. But the English rear under Lestock had drifted apart in the night, and was five miles astern. In the light breezes it could not come up in time to be of use. Yet Admiral Mathews decided to give battle. We bore down at one in the afternoon, so that the English van came into action with the French centre, and the English centre with the Spanish ships behind M. de Court. If the breezes had been stronger, or the French more alert, their van might have doubled back, and have put our leading ships between two fires. They did not, and Admiral Rowley maintained a lively cannonade with M. de Court till the French admiral turned in the evening to help the Spaniards, whom he believed to be hard pressed. At that part of the line there had been not only failure but shame. Admiral Mathews brought the Spaniards to an action. He would have made it close had several of his captains not been “shy.” He himself in the =Namur= showed the courage which is the redeeming quality of his type, and stood out of his line with the signal for the line still flying in order to come closer to the enemy. Captain Cornwall of the =Marlborough= fought the great _Real Felipe_ nobly, being himself mortally wounded, and his ship cut to pieces. Captain Edward Hawke in the =Berwick= set a fine example, and compelled the Spanish _Poder_ to strike. But with these exceptions nobody did brilliantly and several captains showed what, if it was not actual cowardice, was the kind of confusion and stupidity which keep a man well away from the enemy. These “cankers of a long peace” proved once more that a loud voice, a blustering manner, and a parade of brutality are no guarantees of courage. A notable feature of the battle was that it gives the last example of the old practice of using a fireship in action. One was sent down to burn the _Real Felipe_, but the result showed the limitations of this old-fashioned weapon. She was reduced to a sinking state by the well-directed fire of the Spaniard, who also sent out a boat to tow her clear. It was perhaps fortunate for us that she was shattered by an explosion, and went down, since the enemy might possibly have turned her against the =Marlborough=, then lying crippled where she had pushed in among their own ships. Night and the confusion of both sides ended the battle, but the allies had suffered some rough handling, and were chiefly intent on retreat. Mathews might well have renewed the action when he was at last joined by Lestock. He came, however, to the strange conclusion that he could not follow the enemy, because it was his duty to protect the coast of our allies in Italy—though it would surely have taxed a less torpid intellect than his to say what that coast was to be protected against, unless it were the very fleet he was refusing to pursue. The enemy was actually allowed to recover the _Poder_, which he abandoned, and to retire unmolested to Carthagena. The _Poder_ was then burnt by us. Mathews returned to Mahon, where he solaced his feelings by putting Admiral Lestock under arrest.

The failure off Toulon, coming as it did after a long succession of repulses in the West Indies, and futilities in Europe where nothing effectual had been done to intercept the Spanish fleets, stirred the country to deep anger. The news came slowly, and it was not until Lestock had returned under arrest, and Mathews had resigned and had come home, that their recriminations began to bring out the whole truth. Parliament took the matter up, and carried out a preliminary inquiry during April and March of 1745. Lestock and others were heard at the bar, and Mathews, who was a member, in his place. The debate left him, according to Horace Walpole, “in the light of a hot, brave, imperious, dull, confused fellow,” and it also left the House persuaded that a court martial must be held on the whole battle. On the 18th of April, the Commons with their Speaker waited on the king at St. James’s Palace with a petition that a “court martial may be held in the most speedy and solemn manner, to inquire into the conduct of Admiral Mathews, Vice-Admiral Lestock, Captains Burrish, Norris, Ambrose, Frogmore, and Dilk,” together with that of the lieutenants of the =Dorsetshire=, who were accused of misleading their captain, Burrish. The king granted the petition. The measure was somewhat irregular, and might be represented as trenching on the rights of the Admiralty,—it was so considered by Anson who was now on the Board,—but the case was exceptional, and it was by no means certain that the Admiralty would have acted if Parliament had not applied firm pressure. The action it took is one more reminder that, in the dullest times, the country has always been in earnest about its navy. It may, as Sir Charles Pasley has said, have played with the army, which it long regarded with jealous distrust and dislike, but where the navy was concerned it knew that its very existence was at stake. Therefore, though tolerant of much corruption in the naval, as in other branches of the administration, it was roused to wrath, and the resolve to have the whole truth out, by any failure on the sea.

A court martial, consisting of no less than twenty-four members, and presided over by Sir Chaloner Ogle, began to sit on the 11th September 1745. First it tried the four lieutenants of the =Dorsetshire=, whom their captain had accused in order to clear himself, and acquitted them. Then it tried Captain Burrish, and condemned him to be cashiered. Captain E. Williams of the =Royal Oak= was next tried and condemned, but with less severity on the ground that he was old and nearly blind. Captain John Ambrose of the =Rupert=, who had shown courage and zeal in single ship actions, was yet condemned for misconduct at Toulon, and sentenced to be cashiered during the king’s pleasure. He was restored in rank, but never again employed, and died a superannuated rear-admiral. Captain Dilk of the =Chichester= shared his fate. Captain Frogmore of the =Boyne= died before the trial. Captain Norris of the =Essex= did not dare to face a court martial. He fled into Spain from Gibraltar, and was never heard of more. Five supplementary trials were held on Captains Pelt, Sclater, Temple West, Cooper, and Lloyd. The last three named were sentenced to be cashiered, but the finding was generally considered unjust, and all three were restored. The sentence of the court in this case is worth noting. Temple West and his colleagues had been stationed in the van with Admiral Rowley, and had taken steps to prevent the French ships, which stretched ahead of our line, from doubling back and putting us between two fires. It is doubtful whether the enemy had any such design, though his movements seemed to show that he had, and the counter-measures of these captains were correct. But they had acted without the express orders of their superior. They were therefore to be punished, not for doing what was wrong, but for doing what was right without orders. Observe that the punishment inflicted on them for what at the worst was a pardonable, even an honourable error of judgment, was identical with the penalty imposed on Captain Burrish, who showed the white feather. We have to come to the conclusion that, according to the principles of a court martial at that time, it was better that an English fleet should be defeated than that an officer should disregard an order no longer applicable to the circumstances, or act with independent intelligence. If this rule had continued to prevail, Nelson would have been cashiered for his bold move at St. Vincent.

That some such rule did prevail in their dim minds is indeed obvious from the result of the two great trials which followed on these small ones. Vice-Admiral Lestock was tried in May 1746, and honourably acquitted. The charges against him were, in substance, that on the night before the battle, when the signal to form the line was flying, the admiral signalled the fleet to lie to for the night. At that moment Admiral Lestock’s squadron was separated from the main body of the fleet. On any intelligent interpretation of the orders it is clear that Lestock should first have joined the other ships, and should then have lain to with them. He preferred to lie to at once, and drifted still farther apart in the night. Next day he was five or six miles astern. He pleaded that he could not come up, and that as the signal for the line was flying he was bound to remain in a line even although that kept him out of the action. One thing is abundantly clear from his defence, and it is that whenever he saw a conflict of orders Lestock habitually preferred that one of the two which kept him away from his admiral, and well out of reach of the enemy. In after times Rodney, who served in this fleet before the battle, and who knew the men, recorded on the margin of Clerk’s _Naval Tactics_ his firm conviction that Lestock had betrayed his admiral. Rodney was headlong in his judgments, but his is the voice of one seaman of that time judging another, and shows what charges were not thought incredible. Certain it is that Lestock behaved like a man who was very glad of any excuse not to help a superior whom he hated. Yet he was honourably acquitted.

There now remained nothing to be done but to try Admiral Mathews. He appeared before a court martial in June 1746—and was sentenced to be cashiered. That he was a stupid man, and was equally unfit to be a minister plenipotentiary or an admiral, is true. In giving up the pursuit of the allies, and so losing his chance to renew the battle, he showed extreme dulness and even want of spirit. But in the action he had fought manfully, and if his example had been well followed the Spanish squadron would in all probability have been cut to pieces. His great sin in the opinion of the court was that he engaged in such a way as to make the maintenance of the line impossible while the signal to preserve it was flying. Again we have to arrive at the conclusion that, from the point of view of the court martial, it was better that the enemy should not be brought to action than that the line should be disordered. Such a result could only have been reached by men who had never spent an hour in thinking out the methods of fighting a battle to the best purpose, but had simply accepted the sixteenth article of the Fighting Orders with the docility of pedants. The consequence of their finding was to rivet the tyranny of a pedantic rule so firmly that it required forty years of war, and an extraordinary combination of happy circumstances at the end of them, to free the navy from its bonds.

In the course of these trials an incident took place which is of interest, because it settled the question of the subordination of the military to the civil courts. The President of the court martial formed to try Admiral Mathews was Perry Mayne, Rear-Admiral of the Blue. It happened that Admiral Mayne had sat on a court martial in the West Indies to try a lieutenant of marines named Frye, and had sentenced him to dismissal and imprisonment. Lieutenant Frye took proceedings against the members of the court in England for acting beyond their powers and for imprisoning him illegally. He gained his case, and £800 damages. In the course of these proceedings a writ was issued by Sir John Willes, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, against Perry Mayne and Captain Rentoul, another of Mathews’ judges, who also had sat on the court martial. The other members of the court were extremely angry at this interference with their President, and recorded a violent protest against the action of Sir John Willes, in which they were encouraged not only by the king, who was a German prince, and very ignorant of English ways to the end of his life, but by the Lords of the Admiralty and Corbet the Secretary, who ought to have known better. Sir John Willes at once asserted his authority by attaching all the members of the court for contempt. They were compelled to present a very humble and public apology.

While the failures of the chiefs who had risen during the long peace and their quarrels were filling the eyes and ears of the world, a great work was beginning to be done for the Royal Navy, quietly and within the walls of the Admiralty. It dated from December 1744, when Anson was appointed as a member of the new Board, with the Duke of Bedford as head. The duke was an indolent, great noble, who served the state because public life was proper to a man of his rank. But he was honest and sincerely patriotic. Though too much accustomed to a splendid and pleasure-seeking life to be a hard worker himself, he supported Anson steadily. Other politicians, and notably the Duke of Newcastle, were too incapable, and too completely devoted to jobbery, to give any active help, but self-interest made them understand that something must be done for the navy. The country would not tolerate a repetition of the miscarriages of the early years of the war, and efforts must be made to bring about an improvement, if the eminent persons engaged in the parliamentary, and court, scuffling of kites and crows, were to be safe in their lives and estates. A good method of securing this desirable end was to obtain the services of a competent workman, and to let him labour unhampered. No better help could have been found than Anson’s. The great seaman’s connection with the administrative work of the navy began in 1744, and continued with brief interruptions till his death in 1762. Until 1751 he served as a subordinate under Bedford and Bedford’s successor, the Earl of Sandwich, who both trusted him. After that date he was himself First Lord, almost continually. Anson was not fitted to shine in the society of London. He could not shake off the silent retiring habits formed during long years of cruising in solitary command at a time when the chief was accustomed to keep all subordinates at an awful distance. He was proud and shy, a little hard too, and inclined to be grasping, as strenuous ambitious men commonly are. It is therefore not surprising that he excited a good deal of dislike, and laid himself open to the attacks of writers so different, and so well able to make their voices heard, as Horace Walpole and Smollett. We, whose ambitions he has not disappointed, and whose advances he did not snub, can judge him by another standard. We can remember that if he took care of his own fortunes, he also worked hard to improve the quality of our shipbuilding, and, what was even more important, to improve the quality of the senior ranks of the navy, while he did a great deal to promote inquiry into, and reform of, the corruptions of the dockyards.