Types of Naval Officers Part 13

The historical significance of the position now occupied by Saumarez, and its importance to the great issues of the future, are thus manifest.

It was a post that he was eminently qualified to fill. Firm, yet calm, sagacious, and moderate, he met with rare efficiency the varied and varying demands of those changeful times. The unremitting and well directed efforts of his cruisers broke up reciprocal commerce between the countries surrounding the narrow inland sea, so essential to their welfare while submitting to Napoleon; while the main fleet sustained the foreign trade with Russia and Sweden, carried on through neutral s.h.i.+ps for the advantage of Great Britain. Two instances will ill.u.s.trate his activities better than many words. In the year 1809 four hundred and thirty local vessels were captured, averaging the small size of sixty tons each, three hundred and forty of which belonged to Denmark, then under Napoleon's absolute sway. At the close of the open season of 1810, the merchant s.h.i.+ps for England, which ordinarily were despatched under convoy in bodies of five hundred, numbered, according to Saumarez's flag-lieutenant and biographer, no less than one thousand vessels, gathered in one ma.s.s.

As long as Sweden remained friendly, the admiral's duties, though weighty, did not differ materially from those usual to his profession; but when she was unwillingly forced into a declaration of war by Napoleon, his task became more complicated and more delicate. The British minister having to leave, Saumarez succeeded to a diplomatic situation, in which the problem was to support the interests and dignity of his own nation, without transforming the formal war into actual hostilities, and subst.i.tuting imbitterment for the secret good will of the Swedish government and people, who, in common with the Russian n.o.bles and subjects, were alienated by the imperious and merciless exactions of the French demands. The secret aim of Great Britain was so to nourish this ill-will towards France, and so to avoid causes of offence by herself, as to convert covert hostility into open antagonism, and thus to reverse the political and military combinations of Europe.

In the absence of regular accredited diplomatic representatives, Saumarez became at once the exponent and the minister of this vital policy. He had to avoid quarrels, and yet at the same time to restrain Sweden from acts of injury to which she was constantly impelled by the Emperor, whose purpose naturally was exactly the opposite of his; and who sought further to estrange all people from Great Britain.

In the performance of this task Saumarez's success was not only complete, but peculiarly his own. His temper was at times severely tried, but it never got beyond his control. He repressed injury, and demanded satisfaction for it, when committed; but, relying with good reason on the motives of the Swedish government, he contrived to secure redress without resorting to force, which, however understood by statesmen, would enrage the peoples he had to conciliate. After the ordeal was over, and Russia was at war with France, a leading Swedish statesman wrote to him: "You have been the guardian angel of my country; by your wise, temperate, and loyal conduct, you have been the first cause of the plans which have been formed against the demon of the continent.... Once more I must tell you, that _you_ were the first cause that Russia had dared to make war against France; had you fired one shot when we declared war against England, all had been ended and Europe would have been enslaved." Saumarez, an extremely religious man, may have reflected that "he who ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city."

Though in the strictest sense professional, the Baltic service of Saumarez involved little of purely military interest. Shortly after his a.s.suming the command, in 1808, a Russian fleet which had been keeping the sea took refuge, on the approach of the allied British and Swedes, in a harbor on the Gulf of Finland. Saumarez followed close upon their heels, and after a consultation and reconnoissance of the position, which consumed two days, secured the co-operation of the Swedish admiral for an attack on the day following; an essential condition, for the Russian force was superior to his own in the proportion of eight to six.

Unhappily, the wind s.h.i.+fted, and blew an adverse gale for eight days; at the end of which time the enemy had so far fortified the surroundings that Saumarez thought it inexpedient to attack. In this decision he was supported by the opinion of captains of such established reputation as, joined to his own brilliant record, must be taken to justify his action, which seems to have caused some dissatisfaction in England. On the face, it could not but be a disappointment to people accustomed to the brilliant victories of Nelson, and his apparent invincibility by obstacles; but in the end it was all for the best, for doubtless the mortifying destruction of a Russian fleet would not have furthered the reconciliation, which soon became a leading object with the British government and the great bulk of the Russian nation. It is, however, probable that to this frustration of public expectation, which had been vividly aroused by preceding accounts of the conditions, is to be attributed the delay in granting the peerage, eagerly desired by Saumarez in his later days,--not for itself merely, but as a recognition which he not unnaturally thought earned by his long and distinguished service. Saumarez held the Baltic command through five eventful years,--from 1808 to 1812. After Napoleon's disastrous Russian expedition, affairs in that sea no longer required a force adequate to his rank, and he then finally retired from service afloat, still in the full maturity of a healthy prime, at the age of fifty-five. The remainder of his life, with brief exception, was pa.s.sed in his native island of Guernsey, amid those charms of family affection and general esteem which he had deserved by his fidelity to all the duties of the man and the citizen. Though so far removed from the active centres of life, he kept touch with it by the variety of his interests in all useful and benevolent undertakings, to which an ample fortune allowed him freely to contribute. "The hopes entertained of his a.s.sistance and sympathy," observes his biographer, "were never disappointed." Among naval biographies, there is none that presents a more pleasing picture of genial and dignified enjoyment of well-earned repose. In 1831, upon the accession of William IV., the Sailor King, the long-coveted peerage was at last bestowed. Lord de Saumarez died on the 9th of October, 1836, in his eightieth year.

PELLEW

1757-1833

Like the English tongue itself, the names of British seamen show the composite origin of their nation. As the Danes after the day of Copenhagen, to them both glorious and disastrous, claimed that in Nelson they had been vanquished by a man of their own blood, descended from their Viking forefathers; as Collingwood and Troubridge indicate the English descent of the two closest a.s.sociates of the victor of Trafalgar; so Saumarez and the hero of this sketch, whose family name was Pellew, represent that conquering Norman race which from the sh.o.r.es of the Northern ocean carried terror along the coasts of Europe and the Mediterranean, and as far inland as their light keels could enter. After the great wars of the French Revolution and the Battle of Algiers, when Lord Exmouth had won his renown and his position had been attained, kins.h.i.+p with him was claimed by a family still residing in Normandy, where the name was spelled "Pelleu." Proof of common origin was offered, not only in the name, but also in the coat of arms. In England, the Pellew family was settled in the extreme southwest, in Cornwall and Devons.h.i.+re, counties whose nearness to the great Atlantic made them the source of so much of the maritime enterprise that marked the reign of Elizabeth. Lord Exmouth's grandfather was a man of wealth; but, as he left many children, the juniors had to s.h.i.+ft for themselves, and the youngest son, Samuel Pellew, the father of the admiral, at the time of the latter's birth commanded a post-office packet on the Dover station.

He accordingly made the town of that name the home of his wife and children; and there Edward, the second of his four sons, was born, April 19, 1757. Their mother was the daughter of a Jacobite gentleman, who had been out for the Pretender in 1715,--a fact which probably emphasized the strong Hanoverian sympathies of Samuel Pellew, whose habit was to make his children, every Sunday, drink King George's health upon their knees.

In 1765, when the future admiral was only eight years old, his father died, and the mother making an imprudent marriage three years later, the children were thrown upon the world with small provision and scanty care. The resolute, active, and courageous character of the lads, however, brought them well forward among their equals in age. At school Edward was especially distinguished for fearlessness. Of this he gave a marked instance, when not yet twelve, by entering a burning house where gunpowder was stored, which no other of the bystanders would approach.

Alone and with his own hands the lad brought out the powder. A less commendable but very natural result of the same energetic spirit was shown in the numerous fighting matches in which he was engaged. Being threatened with a flogging for one of these, the circ.u.mstance became the immediate occasion of his going to sea. If flogged, he declared, he would run away; and as a decided taste for seafaring life had already manifested itself, his guardian thought better to embrace at once the more favorable alternative and enter him regularly in the navy. He thus went afloat towards the end of 1770, the date at which Nelson, also, though one year younger, began his career.

His first cruise was in the Mediterranean. It came to a premature end through a quarrel between the commander of the s.h.i.+p and one of the mids.h.i.+pmen. In this the captain was clearly and grossly in the wrong; yet nevertheless carried his resentment, and the power of oppression in his hands, then little restrained by law, so far as to expel the youngster from the s.h.i.+p and set him on sh.o.r.e in Ma.r.s.eilles. Pellew insisted upon accompanying his messmate, and the two lads of fourteen, aided by some of the lieutenants, secured a pa.s.sage home. It shows a pleasing trait in our hero's character that, some years afterwards, he advanced materially the professional fortunes of the son of the officer who had thus abused his authority.

He next pa.s.sed under the command of a Captain Pownoll, between whom and himself were established such warm relations, of affectionate interest on the one side and reverential regard on the other, that Pownoll became a family name among the descendants of the admiral. He himself gave it to his first-born, and it still appears in the present generation. Under him, also, Pellew was brought into direct contact with the American Revolution; for on board the frigate _Blonde_, Pownoll's s.h.i.+p, General Burgoyne embarked in 1775 for Canada, there beginning the undertaking which ended so disastrously for him. It is told that when the distinguished pa.s.senger came on board, the yards being manned to receive him with the honors due to his rank, he was startled to see on one yardarm a mids.h.i.+pman standing on his head. Upon expressing alarm, he was laughingly rea.s.sured by the captain, who said that Pellew--for he it was who put this extra touch upon the general's reception--was quite capable of dropping from the yard, pa.s.sing under the s.h.i.+p's bottom, and coming up on the other side. A few days later the young officer actually did leap from the yardarm, the s.h.i.+p going fast through the water--not, however, as bravado, but to aid a seaman who had fallen overboard, and whom he succeeded in saving.

Throughout his youth the exuberant vitality of the man delighted in these feats of wanton power. To overturn a boat by press of canvas, as a frolic, is not unexampled among lads of daring; but it is at least unusual, when a hat goes overboard, to follow it into the water, if alone in a boat under sail. This Pellew did, on one occasion, when he was old enough to know better; being at the moment in the open Channel, in a small punt, going from Falmouth to Plymouth. The freak nearly cost him his life; for, though he had lashed the helm down and hove-to the boat, she fell off and gathered way whenever he approached. When at last he laid hold of her rail, after an hour of this fooling, barely strength remained to drag himself on board, where he fell helpless, and waited long before his powers were restored. It is trite to note in such exhibitions of recklessness many of the qualities of the ideal seaman, though not so certainly those of the foreordained commander-in-chief.

Pellew was a born frigate captain.

At the end of 1775 the Americans were still engaged in the enterprise against Quebec, the disastrous termination of which is familiarly known.

After the fall of General Montgomery in the unsuccessful night a.s.sault of December 31, 1775, the American operations were reduced to a land blockade of the town, which was cut off from the sea by ice in the river. A close investment was thus maintained for five months, until the early part of May, 1776, when the place was relieved by the arrival of a small naval force, commanded by Captain Charles Douglas.

Immediately upon its appearance the commanding British general Carleton, attacked the besiegers, who, already prostrated by disease and privation, abandoned their positions and fell back upon Sorel, at the mouth of the river Richelieu, the outlet from Lake Champlain to the St.

Lawrence. Here they remained until June, when the enemy, who had received heavy reinforcements, advanced in overpowering numbers. The Americans again retired above the rapids of the Richelieu to St. Johns.

Thence there is a clear channel southward; and embarking there, the retreating force without further molestation reached Crown Point, a fortified post a hundred miles distant, at the head of the lake, commanding the narrow stream to which it is reduced in its upper part.

Twelve miles above Crown Point is Ticonderoga, the well-known border fortress of the Colonial and Revolutionary wars; and for fifteen or twenty miles farther the stream is navigable for boats of some size, thus affording an easy means of communication in those early days of impa.s.sable forests and scanty transport.

Though greatly superior on land, the British had now for a time to stay their pursuit; for the water highway essential to its continuance was controlled by the flotilla under the command of Benedict Arnold, forbidding further advance until it was subdued. The presence of these vessels, which, though few, were as yet unopposed, gained for the Americans, in this hour of extremity, the important respite from June to October, 1776; and then the lateness of the season compelled the postponement of the invasion to the following year. The toil with which this little force had been created, a few months before, was thus amply justified; for delay is ever to the advantage of the defence. In this case it also gave time for a change of commanders on the part of the enemy, from Carleton to Burgoyne, which not improbably had a decisive effect upon the fortunes of the next campaign.

As soon as established at St. Johns, the British took steps to place a naval force upon the lake, an undertaking involving trouble and delay, notwithstanding their greatly superior resources in men and material.

Some thirty fighting vessels, suitable to the waters upon which they were to act, were required, and also four hundred bateaux for the transport of the troops. These had either to be built upon the spot, despite the lack of all dockyard facilities, or else to be brought bodily from the St. Lawrence, by road, or through the rapids of the Richelieu, until the deep water at St. Johns was reached. In this hardy, strenuous work, Pellew naturally was conspicuously active; and in its course he gained a particular professional accomplishment which afterwards stood him in good stead. Several vessels were built upon the sh.o.r.es of the stream; among others, one of one hundred and eighty tons, the _Inflexible_, whose heavier timbers were brought overland to St.

Johns. The construction of these craft was superintended by a lieutenant--afterwards Admiral Schank--of scientific knowledge as a s.h.i.+p architect; and through close a.s.sociation with him Pellew's instinctive appreciation of all things nautical received an intelligent guidance, which gave him a quick insight into the probable behavior of a s.h.i.+p from an examination of her build, and enabled him often to suggest a suitable remedy for dangerous faults. During this period of equipment occurred a characteristic incident which has only recently become public through a descendant.[15] "On the day the _Inflexible_ was launched, Pellew on the top of the sheers was trying to get in the mainmast. The machinery not being of the best gave way, and down came mainmast, Pellew, and all, into the lake. 'Poor Pellew,' exclaimed Schank, 'he is gone at last!'

However, he speedily emerged and was the first man to mount the sheers again. 'Sir,' Admiral Schank used to conclude, 'he was like a squirrel.'"

Thirty days after the keel of the _Inflexible_ was laid at St. Johns, the vessel herself not only was launched, but had set sail for the southward. She carried eighteen twelve-pounders, nine on a side, and was thus superior in power, not only to any one vessel of the Americans, but to their whole a.s.sembled flotilla on Lake Champlain. Except the princ.i.p.al pieces of her hull, the timber of which she was built was hewed in the neighboring forest; and indeed, the whole story of the rapid equipment of this squadron recalls vividly the vigorous preparation of Commander Perry, of the United States navy, in 1813, for his successful attempt to control Lake Erie. The entire British force, land and naval, now moved toward Crown Point. On the 11th of October the American flotilla was discovered, a short distance above Plattsburg and about twenty miles from the foot of the lake, drawn up between Valcour Island and the western sh.o.r.e, which are from one-half to three-fourths of a mile apart. It lay there so snugly that the British, wafted by a northwest wind, had actually pa.s.sed to the southward without seeing it, and the discovery was purely accidental,--a fact which suggests that Arnold, who must have felt the impossibility of a force so inferior as his own contesting, or even long delaying, the enemy's advance by direct opposition, may have entertained some purpose of operating in their rear, and thus causing a diversion which at this late season might effectually arrest their progress. It is true that such a stroke would frightfully imperil his little squadron; but, in circ.u.mstances of absolute inferiority, audacity, usually the best policy in war, offers the only chance of success. Mere retreat, however methodical, must end in final destruction. To act towards St. Johns, trusting to dexterity and to local knowledge of the network of islands at the foot of the lake to escape disaster, or at least to protract the issue, offered the best chance; and that the situation thus accepted would not be hopeless was proved by the subsequent temporary evasion of pursuit by the Americans, even in the open and narrow water of the middle lake.

The British moved to attack as soon as the hostile s.h.i.+pping was discovered. Pellew was second officer of the schooner _Carleton_, of twelve guns, the third vessel of the flotilla in point of force. The wind being contrary, and apparently light, the _Carleton_ alone of the sailing vessels got into action; and although she was supported by a number of rowing gunboats, whose artillery was heavy, the match was unequal. According to Arnold's own account, he had disposed his gunboats and gondolas "on the west side of Valcour Island, as near together as possible, and in such a form that few vessels can attack us at the same time, and those will be exposed to the fire of the whole fleet." To this Captain Douglas, in his report of the occurrences, adds the suggestive particular that the _Carleton_, by a lucky slant of wind, fetched "nearly into the middle of the rebel half-moon, where she anch.o.r.ed with a spring on her cable." The position was one of honorable distinction, but likewise of great exposure. Her first officer lost an arm; her captain, Lieutenant Dacres, was so severely wounded that he was about to be thrown overboard as dead; and Pellew, thus left without a superior, fought the vessel through the engagement. When signal was at last made to withdraw, the _Carleton_ was able to do so only by help of the gunboats, which towed her out of fire. On the other hand, Arnold's flag-s.h.i.+p, the schooner _Royal Savage_, which had fought in advance of her consorts and under canvas, fell to leeward, and came there under the distant fire of the _Inflexible_, by which she was badly crippled. She then was run ash.o.r.e on the southern point of the island, where she fell momentarily into the hands of the British, who turned her guns on her former friends. Later in the day, it seeming probable that she might be retaken, she was set on fire and burned to the water's edge. Thus abandoned, she sank to the bottom, where her hull rests to this day.

During the recent summer of 1901 some gun-carriages have been recovered from her, after lying for a century and a quarter beneath the surface of the lake.

Pellew's personal activity and strength enabled his gallantry to show to particular advantage in this sanguinary contest. When the _Carleton_, in her attempt to withdraw, hung in stays under the island, her decks swept by the bullets of the riflemen on sh.o.r.e, it was he who sprang out on the bowsprit to bear the jib over to windward. When the tow-rope was cut by a shot, it was Pellew again who exposed his person for the safety of the vessel. His two seniors being forced by their wounds to leave the schooner, he succeeded to the command, in which he was afterwards confirmed. In this sharp affair the _Carleton_ lost eight killed and six wounded,--about half her crew,--and had two feet of water in her hold when she anch.o.r.ed out of range.

Towards evening the _Inflexible_ succeeded in getting within point-blank range of the American flotilla, "when five broadsides," wrote Douglas, "silenced their whole line;" a sufficient testimony to the superiority of her concentrated battery over the dispersed force of all her numerous petty antagonists. The British then anch.o.r.ed to the southward of Arnold's little force; but that active and enterprising officer succeeded in stealing during the night between the enemy and the western sh.o.r.e, and retired towards Crown Point. The chase to windward continued during the next day, but a favorable s.h.i.+ft of wind, to the north, reached the British first, and enabled them to close. Arnold again behaved with the extraordinary bravery and admirable conduct which distinguished him in battle. Sending on the bulk of the squadron, he took the rear with two galleys, covering the retreat. Fighting like a lion, he opposed the enemy's advance long enough to secure the escape of six of his vessels; and then, seeing his one consort forced to strike, he ran his own galley ash.o.r.e and set her on fire. "Arnold," says the naval historian Cooper, "covered himself with glory, and his example seems to have been n.o.bly followed by most of his officers and men. The manner in which the Congress was fought until she had covered the retreat of the galleys, and the stubborn resolution with which she was defended until destroyed, converted the disasters of this part of the day into a species of triumph." "The Americans," says a contemporary British writer, "chiefly gloried in the dangerous attention paid by Arnold to a nice point of honor, in keeping his flag flying, and not quitting his galley till she was in flames, lest the enemy should have boarded and struck it."

Pellew received like recognition, not, perhaps, from the popular voice, but from his official superiors. Douglas, the senior naval officer at Quebec, who was made a baronet in reward of these operations, Lord Howe at New York, and the First Lord of the Admiralty in England, all sent him personal letters of commendation; and the two latter promised him promotion as soon as he came within their respective jurisdictions. His continuance at the front of operations during this and the following year therefore postponed his deserved advancement to a lieutenancy, by retaining him from the "jurisdiction" of those able to bestow it.

The two gallant enemies were soon again brought together in an incident which came near to change the career of one of them, and, in so doing, to modify seriously the fortunes of many others. Arnold having one day pulled out on the open lake, in his venturesome manner, Pellew gave chase in another boat. The Americans being hard pressed and capture probable, Arnold unbuckled his stock and himself took an oar. So nearly caught was he, that he had to escape into the bushes, leaving behind him stock and buckle; and these, as late as sixty years after, remained in the possession of Pellew's brother. Had he thus been deprived of the opportunity that Saratoga gave him the next year, Arnold's name might now be known to us only as that of the brave officer who kept his country's flag flying till his vessel was in flames.

On the 14th of October Carleton landed at Crown Point, which the Americans had abandoned; but the lateness of the season deterred him from advancing against Ticonderoga, and he soon afterwards returned to Canada. The full import of this halt is too easily overlooked, with consequent failure to appreciate the momentous influence exerted upon the course of the Revolutionary War by this naval campaign, in which Pellew bore so conspicuous a part. It has never been understood in America, where the smallness of the immediate scale has withdrawn attention from the greatness of the ultimate issue, in gaining time for the preparations which resulted in the admittedly decisive victories about Saratoga. "If we could have begun our expedition four weeks earlier," wrote a German general there present, "I am satisfied everything would have been ended this year [1776]; were our whole army here, it would be an easy matter to drive the enemy from their entrenchments at Ticonderoga." The delay, not of four weeks only, but of the whole summer, was obtained by the naval force organized upon Champlain by Arnold and his superior, General Schuyler. The following year the invasion was resumed, under General Burgoyne. Pellew accompanied him with a body of seamen, taking part in all the operations down to the final surrender. Burgoyne, indeed, afterwards chaffed him with being the cause of the disaster, by rebuilding the bridge which enabled the army to cross from the east bank of the Hudson to the west.

Returning to England in the early part of 1778, Pellew was made lieutenant, and in 1780 we find him again serving under Captain Pownoll, as first lieutenant of the _Apollo_ frigate. On the 15th of June, in the same year, the _Apollo_ met the French frigate _Stanislas_. A severe action followed, and at the end of an hour Pownoll was shot through the body. As his young friend raised him from the deck, he had barely time to say, "Pellew, I know you won't give his Majesty's s.h.i.+p away," and immediately expired. The engagement lasted an hour longer, when the enemy, which had all the time been standing in for the Belgian coast, took the ground, the most of her spars, already wounded, going overboard with the shock. The _Apollo_ had hauled off a few moments before, finding that she had less than five feet of water under her keel.

Though unable again to attack the _Stanislas_, which claimed the protection of the neutral flag, the result was substantially a victory; but to Pellew's grief for the death of a tried friend was added the material loss of a powerful patron. Happily, however, his reputation was known to the head of the Admiralty, who not only promoted him for this action, but also gave him a s.h.i.+p, though a poor one. After a succession of small commands, he was fortunate enough again to distinguish himself,--driving ash.o.r.e and destroying several French privateers, under circ.u.mstances of such danger and difficulty as to win him his next grade, post-captain. This step, which, so far as selection went, fixed his position in the navy, he received on the 25th of May, 1782.

The ten years of peace that shortly followed were pa.s.sed by many officers in retirement, which we have seen was contentedly accepted by his distinguished contemporary, Saumarez; but Pellew was a seaman to the marrow, and constantly sought employment afloat. When out of occupation, he for a while tried farming, the Utopian employment that most often beguiles the imagination of the inbred seaman in occasional weariness of salt water; but, as his biographer justly remarks, his mind, which allowed him to be happy only when active, could ill accommodate itself to pursuits that almost forbade exertion. "To have an object in view, yet to be unable to advance it by any exertions of his own, was to him a source of constant irritation. He was wearied with the imperceptible growth of his crops, and complained that he made his eyes ache by watching their daily progress."

His a.s.siduous applications, however, were not wholly unavailing to obtain him the professional employments usually so hard to get in times of peace. For five of the ten years, 1783-1793, he commanded frigates, chiefly on the Newfoundland station; and in them, though now turning thirty, he displayed the superabundant vitality and restless activity that had characterized his early youth. "Whenever there was exertion required aloft," wrote a mids.h.i.+pman who served with him at this period, "to preserve a sail or a mast, the captain was foremost in the work, apparently as a mere matter of amus.e.m.e.nt, and there was not a man in the s.h.i.+p that could equal him in personal activity. He appeared to play among the elements in the hardest storms. I remember once, in close-reefing the main topsail, the captain had given his orders from the quarter-deck and sent us aloft. On gaining the topsail yard, the most active and daring of our party hesitated to go upon it, as the sail was flapping violently, making it a service of great danger; but a voice was heard from the extreme end of the yard, calling upon us to exert ourselves to save the sail, which would otherwise beat to pieces. A man said, 'Why, that's the captain! How the ---- did he get there?' He had followed us up, and, clambering over the backs of the sailors, had reached the topmast head, above the yard, and thence descended by the lift,"--a feat unfortunately not easy to be explained to landsmen, but which will be allowed by seamen to demand great hardihood and address.

All this was the simple overflow of an animal energy not to be repressed, the exulting prowess of a giant delighting to run his course.

It found expression also in joyous practical jests, like those of a big boy, which at times had ludicrous consequences. On one occasion of state ceremony, the king's birthday, Pellew had dressed in full uniform to attend a dinner on sh.o.r.e. The weather was hot, and the crew had been permitted an hour's swimming around the s.h.i.+p. While his boat was being manned, the captain stood by the frigate's rail watching the bathers, and near by him was one of the s.h.i.+p's boys. "I too shall have a good swim soon," called the latter to a comrade in the water. "The sooner, the better," said Pellew, coming behind him and tipping him overboard.

No sooner had the lad risen to the surface from his plunge than it was plain that he could not swim; so in after him went the practical joker, with all his toggery. "If ever the captain was frightened," writes the officer just quoted, "it was then."

But along with all this physical exuberance and needless a.s.sumption of many of the duties of a foremast hand, Pellew possessed to a very remarkable extent that delicate art of seamans.h.i.+p which consists in so handling a s.h.i.+p as to make her do just what you want, and to put her just where she should be; making her, to use a common sea expression, do everything but talk. This is a faculty probably inborn, like most others that reach any great degree of perfection, and, while a very desirable gift, it is by no means indispensable to the highest order of naval excellence. Nelson did not at all equal Pellew in this respect, as is indicated by an amusing story transmitted by a Colonel Stewart, who served on board the great admiral's flag-s.h.i.+p during the expedition against Copenhagen: "His lords.h.i.+p was rather too apt to interfere in the working of the s.h.i.+p, and not always with the best judgment or success.

The wind, when off Dungeness, was scanty, and the s.h.i.+p was to be put about. Lord Nelson would give the orders, and caused her to miss stays.

Upon this he said, rather peevishly, to the officer of the watch, 'Well, now see what we have done. Well, sir, what mean you to do now?' The officer saying, with hesitation, 'I don't exactly know, my lord. I fear she won't do,' Lord Nelson turned sharply to the cabin, and replied, 'Well, I am sure if you do not know what to do with her, no more do I, either.' He went in, leaving the officer to work the s.h.i.+p as he liked."

Yet Nelson understood perfectly what s.h.i.+ps could do, and what they could not; no one could better handle or take care of a fleet, or estimate the possibility of performing a given manoeuvre; and long before he was called to high command he was distinguished for a knowledge of naval tactics to which few, if any other, of his time attained. He was a great general officer; and whether he had the knack of himself making a s.h.i.+p go through all her paces without a fault mattered as little as whether he was a crack shot with a gun.

A s.h.i.+p is certainly the most beautiful and most graceful of machines; a machine, too, so varied in its movements and so instinct with life that the seaman affectionately transfers to her credit his own virtues in handling her. Pellew's capacity in this part of his profession was so remarkable that it is somewhat singular to find him, in his first frigate action, compelled to discard manoeuvring, and to rely for victory upon sheer pluck and luck. When war with the French republic began in 1793, his high reputation immediately insured him command of a frigate, the _Nymphe_. The strength of England as a naval power lay largely in the great reserve of able seamen manning her merchant s.h.i.+ps; but as these were scattered in all quarters of the world, great embarra.s.sment was commonly felt at the outbreak of a war, and especially when it came with the unexpected rapidity of the revolutionary fury. As the object of first importance was to get the fleets of s.h.i.+ps-of-the-line to sea, Pellew had to depend chiefly upon his own indefatigable exertions to procure a crew for his vessel. Seamen being hard to find, he had on board a disproportionate number of landsmen when the _Nymphe_, on the 19th of June, 1793, encountered the French vessel _Cleopatre_, of force slightly inferior, except in men, but not sufficiently so to deny the victor the claim of an even fight.

A peculiar incident preceding the action has interest, as showing the strong preoccupation of men's minds at the opening of war, before meetings with the enemy have lost novelty. Pellew's younger brother, Israel, a commander in the navy, being otherwise unemployed, had come out with him for the cruise. The _Cleopatre_ having been first seen in the early morning, Edward would not have him called till just as the _Nymphe_ was closing. As he came on deck, the brother said affectionately, "Israel, you have no business here. We are too many eggs from one nest. I am sorry I brought you from your wife." But the other was unheeding, his eyes fixed upon the stranger. "That's the very frigate," he cried, "that I've been dreaming of all night! I dreamt that we shot away her wheel." And, hastening to the after-gun, he made the French s.h.i.+p's wheel the object of an unremitting fire.

By the way the enemy was handled it was evident that she was well manned and ably commanded. She had, in fact, been in commission for over a year. Great as was his own skill, Pellew could not venture upon manoeuvres with a green crew, untrained save at the guns, and only filled the night before by pressing from a merchant vessel. He therefore determined upon a simple artillery duel. The Frenchman waited under short canvas, while the _Nymphe_, with greater way, drew slowly up on his starboard, or right-hand side; both s.h.i.+ps running nearly before the wind, but having it a little on the left side. Each captain stood uncovered, and as the bows of the _Nymphe_ doubled upon the stern of the _Cleopatre_, within three hundred feet, a French sailor was seen to run aloft and fasten a red cap of liberty to the mainmast head. The eyes of the British seamen were fastened upon their commander, awaiting the gesture which he had set, instead of word of mouth, for opening fire. At quarter-past six he gave it, raising his cap to his head. A furious cannonade at once began, and, the _Nymphe_ shortening sail as soon as fairly abreast her antagonist, the two frigates continued on parallel lines, maintaining their relative positions as though at anchor, and rolling easily in the soft summer sea under the recoil of their guns. So nearly matched were the gunners that the conflict, unusually deadly though it was, might have lasted long, but at a little before seven Israel Pellew's dream was fulfilled. The Frenchman's wheel was shot away, and, the mizzenmast going overboard at the same time, the _Cleopatre_ yielded to the impulse of her forward sails, turned sharp round to the right, and ran perpendicularly into the _Nymphe_. The British boarded her, fixed in this disadvantageous position, fought their way aft, and, although the French crew was numerically superior, in ten minutes hauled down the colors. In this brief hour they had lost twenty-three killed and twenty-seven wounded, the enemy sixty-three killed and wounded, out of s.h.i.+ps' companies numbering respectively two hundred and forty and three hundred and twenty.

This was the first decisive frigate action of the War of the French Revolution, and in consequence great was the enthusiasm aroused. Lord Howe wrote to Pellew, "The manner in which you have taken the enemy's s.h.i.+p will set an example for the war." In truth, however, while admitting the soundness of Pellew's judgment in adopting the course he did, the actual demand upon his personal skill was less, and in so far the credit due therefore less, than in the second successful frigate action, in the following October, in which Sir James Saumarez commanded.

Not only was the French vessel's superiority in force more marked in the latter instance, but Saumarez's s.h.i.+p there met with an accident similar in character to that which befell the _Cleopatre_, from the consequences of which she was extricated by his masterly seamans.h.i.+p. Still, it may with fairness be argued that, as the one action from its attendant circ.u.mstances evidenced the individual skill of the commander, so the other testified to the antecedent preparation and efficiency of the crew, which are always to be attributed to the care of the captain, especially under the conditions of Pellew's enlistments. Both captains fully deserved the reward of knighthood bestowed upon their success.

Israel Pellew was promoted to post-captain.

During the first three years of this war British commerce in the neighborhood of the Channel suffered most severely from French cruisers.

The latter resumed the methods of Jean Bart and other celebrated privateers of the days of Louis XIV.; the essence of which was to prey upon the enemy's commerce, not by single vessels, but by small squadrons of from five to seven. Cruisers so combined, acting in mutual support, were far more efficient than the same number acting separately.

Spreading like a fan, they commanded a wider expanse than a s.h.i.+p alone; if danger arose, they concentrated for mutual support; did opportunity offer, the work was cut out and distributed, thus insuring by co-operation more thorough results. At the suggestion of Sir Edward Pellew, the British Admiralty determined to oppose to these organized depredators a similar system. Groups of crack frigates were const.i.tuted, and sent to cruise within the limits of the Channel Fleet, but independent of its admiral. In these Pellew served for the next five years, much of the time as squadron commander; to him a period of incessant, untiring activity, and ill.u.s.trated by many brilliant and exciting incidents, for which the limits of this sketch afford no s.p.a.ce.

There are, however, two episodes in which he was so distinctly the central figure that they demand at least a brief narration. In January, 1796, while his s.h.i.+p was repairing, a large East Indiaman, the _Dutton_, carrying some six hundred troops and pa.s.sengers, was by a series of mishaps driven ash.o.r.e on the beach of Plymouth, then an unprotected sound. As she struck, all her masts went overboard, and she lay broadside to the waves, pounding heavily as they broke over her. Pellew was at this moment driving to a dinner with his wife. Seeing crowds running from various directions towards the same quarter, he asked the reason. Upon learning it, he left his carriage and hurried to the scene.

When he arrived, he recognized, by the confusion on board, by the way the s.h.i.+p was laboring, by the poverty of the means that had been contrived for landing the imperilled souls,--only a single hawser having been run to the sh.o.r.e,--that the loss of nearly all on board was imminent. Night, too, was falling, as well as the destruction of the vessel impending. After vainly offering rewards to the hardy boatmen standing by, if they would board the wreck with a message from him, he said, "Then I must go myself." Though then close to forty years of age, his immense personal strength and activity enabled him, though sorely bruised thereby, to be hauled on board through the breakers by the hawser, which alternately slacked and then tightened with a jerk as the doomed s.h.i.+p rolled to and fro in the seas. Once on board, he a.s.sumed command, the want of which, through the absence of the proper captain, had until then hampered and well-nigh paralyzed all effectual effort.

When his well-known name was spoken, three hearty cheers arose from the troops on board, echoed by the thousands of spectators on sh.o.r.e; and the hope that revived with the presence of a born leader of men showed itself at once in the renewed activity and intelligent direction of effort, on the decks and on the beach. The degree of the danger can be estimated from the fact that boats from the s.h.i.+ps of war in port, his own included, tried in vain to approach and had to run for safety to the inner harbor. With sword drawn,--for many of the soldiers were drunk and riotous,--Pellew maintained order, guided with a seaman's readiness the preparations for landing, and saw the women, the children,--one child but three weeks old,--the sick, landed first, then the soldiers, lastly the seamen. When he himself was transferred to the beach by the same means that his skill had contrived for others, but three persons remained on board, officers of the s.h.i.+p, who eased him on sh.o.r.e. The injuries he had received in his perilous pa.s.sage out, and which confined him to his bed for a week, forbade his being last. To the end of his life, this saving of the crew of the _Dutton_ was the action in which he took most pride.

The year that opened with this magnificent act of self-devotion saw Pellew, at its close, bearing a seaman's part in the most serious crisis that befell his country during the wars of the French Revolution. The end of 1796 and the earlier months of 1797 marked the nadir of Great Britain's military fortunes. The successes of Bonaparte's Italian campaign were then culminating; Austria was on the point of making peace with France; England was about to find herself alone, and the discontent of the seamen of the navy, long smouldering, was soon to break out into the famous and threatening mutinies of the Channel Fleet and of the Nore. At the same time France, relieved on her eastern frontiers, felt able to devote seventeen s.h.i.+ps-of-the-line and eighteen thousand troops to the invasion of Ireland.

Pellew, with two frigates besides his own, was stationed off the mouth of Brest harbor to watch the enemy's movements; the main British fleet being some fifty miles to seaward. To this emergency he brought not only the intrepidity of a great seaman and the ardor of an anxious patriot, but likewise the intense though narrow Protestant feeling transmitted from a past, then not so remote, when Romanism and enmity to England were almost synonymous. "How would you like," said he to an officer who shared Pitt's liberal tendencies, "to see Roman Catholic chaplains on board our s.h.i.+ps?" and to the end of his life he opposed the political enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of persons of that creed.