Every Man Will Do His Duty (22 page)

We then run north as far as Cape Finister and was laying two, close under the Cape, sounding, and the capt[ain] was taking the remarks of the Cape, of a thick foggy morning [13 August 1800]. All of a suddent appeared
a verry large ship in the fog. We up hellem before the wind, but coming to vew hur with the spy glass and counting hur port, we found she carried only 24 guns. We hall’d our wind for hur. She hoisted hur Spanish colours. When we got a long side we up English colours and gave hur three or four of our 24 pounders. They finding our mettle so heavy, they run from there quarter and struck there colours.

We boarded hur. She proved to be a fine packet [
La Reyna Luisa
]from South America bound to Spain with a good quantity of Kings money on board. She had two capt[ains] and a Spanish general on b[oar]d. Mr. Buchan, master, took charge, he being my suprior officer, while I took the officers on board. When we ordered the men into the cabin and overhall’d them, we found a good quantity of dollars, half joes, doubleelons, 7 lb. bars and 14 lb. bars of gold. We overhall’d the men twice and found as much with them the last time as we did the first. We found doubleoons sowed in the soles of there stockings, 2 deep, from one end to the other. All the money we found was among the men and officers and some bars they hove overboard. The general got away with 4 gold bars, as the Spanis[h] capt[ain] inform Capt[ain] Bond afterwards. We brought hur into Lisbon. She had a great quantity of curious articles on board such as curious mats, wild fir skins, one of them was so butiful, dimond cut of different colours and not more than three and a half square, it sold for 38 dollars on b[oar]d the
Netley
Schooner. She had on b[oar]d 30,000 neats tongues dried, ostrige feathers in stands, length about two feet and about 40 in one stand, and 45 pigs of tooth and egge, beside a great quantity of goods in boxes which I cannot give an acount of. The ship was a fast sailor. The Spanish capt[ain] inform’d us that two English frigates had chased them three days and could not cetch them. When the prisoners were sent on shore, I remain’d on b[oar]d the Spanish ship with the men I had with me.

Having some business on shore I landed at the lower end of the town [Lisbon] where the ship lay and walked up to town, but being two late to go to the ship, about 10 o’clock at night I went down to Buckleys Stares to go on b[oar]d the
Netley
that lay off in the stream. While standing at the foot of the stairs, next to the water, calling a boat, two men came down the steps behind me. One, raped [wrapped] up in a cloak, clap’d a small sord to my brest. The other, behind me, had a Portegee dirk and put the point of it to my side. I had no arms, neither would they allow me to put my hand into my pocket for fear I had arm. They took my gold watch, a silver chain purse, and about forty five gold dollars and even some copper in my jacket pocket. I had a large gold ring on my finger which they did not observe. They then left me. I went up the steps when they ware at a small distance to see where they went to, but when they see me follow them, they gave
chase after me. I took up a large street, [k]nowing if they came up with me they would kill me. I run for life. Coming to a large brick building that was broke down, I run into the back side of it and covered myself with bricks and the dry morter. When they came up, they looked all round, both in side and out and then discoursed together and went off. I lay there till day light, for fear they might be watching me. When day light apeared, I got up and brushed myself as well as I could and went and got some refreshment and went on board. The next day I received two hundred Pounds [sterling], therefore I only regreted the loss of my watch, though I had others at the same time.

We went out, and standing to the nothord we saw a schooner at a long distance off. We made sail and was coming up very fast with hur, when to our surpris she hove two and took in hur sale when she was above two leagues off. Coming up to hur, our capt[ain] asked him what he hove two for.

“O, I [k]now de trees kealus. No can run away, so I stay,” which made all hands laugh.

We took hur into Lisbon. Ariving, Capt[ain] Bond received a Letter of Preferment from the Board of war. It was a severe cut to the ships crew. Capt[ain] Bond wished to take me with him, but not having a nother ship apointed, he could not take me with him.

While the Netley wreaked its own peculiar brand of havoc off Spain and Portugal in the Indian Ocean, several oversize French frigates were creating bad news for British merchants and thus for the Royal Navy. Merchantman and shipowner Robert Eastwick sees his fortunes rise and fall several times over as two heavy frigates duke it out off the coast of India. One of the combatants, the French
La Forte
, launched at Rochefort in 1795, was, at the time, the largest frigate ever built originally as a frigate.

¹
HMS
Netley,
a 16-gun schooner with a sliding keel, was designed by General Samuel Bentham and launched in 1798. The ship was 82.6 feet in length, and had a tonnage of 177 and a mean draft of 9.3. The ship surrendered to the French in the West Indies in 1806. “Rupert Jones List,” National Maritime Museum.

²
In a letter of 12 September 1798, from Haslar Hospital, Portsmouth, Captain Bond wrote to Evan Nepean, secretary of the Admiralty, that he not only suffered from the wound in the thigh, but also from having received “a violent contusion in my breast, the effect of which is not a little alarming, though the pain, by blistering etc. is something palliated.” Health may have been a factor in limiting his active career. Captain’s Correspondence, ADM/1/2756, Public Records Office.

³
In a letter of 4 July 1797, Samuel Hood wrote to Admiral Jervis describing his ill-fated effort to take Vigo. He attributed the failure to “extraordinary” poor intelligence provided by Vice-Consul Allen. Allen’s kindness to Nagle may have been, in part, an effort to improve his reputation with the Royal Navy.

⁴
Nagle is confusing with regard to his acquaintances at Vigo. The editor’s reading of the journal is that the consul, Mr. Allen, arranged for Nagle to board with neighbors. Although Nagle is not clear about how close the relationship became, he suggests that the wife of Allen’s friend exceeded the bounds of propriety in her show of affection for him. Nagle may be teasing his reader a bit, or he may be salving a guilty conscience.

B
ORN IN
L
ONDON IN 1772
, Robert Eastwick went to sea in the merchant service at age twelve. After being taken by the press gang and serving very briefly on board HMS
Inconstant
prior to the Napoleonic wars, Eastwick returned to the merchant service on board an East Indiaman. He eventually settled with his wife near Calcutta and hauled freight in the East Indies, dodging potentially ruinous confrontations with pirates and the king’s enemies. Finally his luck runs out, but not without a few twists of fate.

I HAVE MENTIONED
how dangerous was the Bay of Bengal in these days, owing to the French men-of-war, and privateers that were continually cruising about in search of our merchant ships. It was computed that within a single twelve-month British shipping to the value of not less than two millions sterling had been captured or sunk. There were three notorious frigates which every one had learnt to dread, the
Preneuse,
the
La Prudente,
and the
La Forte.
It was from the latter two ships that I had escaped when returning from Bencoolen in 1797, and by a strange coincidence they were both captured in the month of February, 1799, though at points many hundreds of miles apart. The victory over the
La Forte
I shall presently relate. Her companion ship, the
La Prudente,
¹
on the 16th of the same
month, was sighted early one morning off the south-east coast of Africa by the
Daedalus
, Captain Ball, who immediately gave chase, and by midday brought her into action, and in fifty-seven minutes forced her to strike. She was returning to Europe from the Isle of France, and had three hundred men on board. In the next year the
Preneuse
²
likewise met her fate off the same coast, being run ashore and burnt by her own captain in order to escape capture at the hands of a British squadron that was in pursuit of her. But before these three frigates were taken their presence had paralyzed our Eastern trade, and the rates asked for insurance were so prohibitive, that at last I was totally unable to afford the premiums demanded, and on the voyage I am now describing I remained uninsured.

During my passage to Bombay I had been most fortunate, not having sighted a single hostile sail, and on my return had arrived as far as the Balasore Roads, close to Juggernauth Pagoda, and in the waters where the Bengal pilots are always cruising, without encountering any of the enemy, so that I was already congratulating myself upon my good fortune, when at the eleventh hour I found myself all undone.

For towards evening, while we were becalmed and on the lookout for a pilot, a large ship was sighted in the offing, which, on a breeze springing up, stood towards us. As she came near I felt sure she was a man-of-war, and the cut of her sails soon indicated a French one. My belief was presently confirmed by seeing her fire a shot to windward at another vessel of my own size that chanced to be passing. As, however, her chase was after me, she did not alter her course, so I crowded on all sail and endeavoured to escape. But I soon found the frigate was faster than I, for she overhauled us rapidly, and after a time brought her bow-chasers to bear, and sent a shot after us. It showed that we were within her range, for the ball went clean through our main and fore sails, making great holes in them, and carrying away some of the rigging. In this extremity I altered my course, and stood in towards a sand-bank in the Balasore Roads, with various soundings from ten to four fathoms, and considered dangerous to large ships. The Frenchman evidently had this feeling and redoubled his fire, his aim being very accurate, and the shot going over our deck, and through our sails and cutting away our rigging. The man at the helm was so alarmed that I was obliged to threaten him to keep him at his duty, but with the effect of making him steer very badly. It now became a stiff breeze, and the enemy having drawn quite close, evidently with a view to ending the matter, made disposition to give me a broadside. As such would have
sunk me, or at any rate occasioned great loss of life, and it being evident that to hold out longer was only risking the safety of those on board, and that there was no alternative but to strike, I threw my sails aback. And so at 9 p.m. on the last day of February, 1799, I was forced to haul down my colours and surrender my ship.

I cannot describe my feelings of mortification as I saw the boarding party put foot on my deck and heard the officer summon me to give up my vessel. It was the first time I had ever been placed in such a position, and although there was no disgrace in being captured by an enemy so superior, still my spirit rebelled at having to strike my colours to a Frenchman.

Having placed a prize officer and crew on board the
Endeavour,
I and my chief and second mates were taken as prisoners to the frigate, which proved to be the famous
La Forte.
She now put about and proceeded to chase, and soon captured, the vessel at which she had first fired, and which was the
Mornington,
Captain Cooke, with a valuable cargo and sixty thousand dollars specie on board. On this capture they put a prize master and a very considerable body of men, and also a commissary with an additional crew to secure the money. The two prizes were then told to keep within signalling distance until further orders were sent them in the morning, and all the ships were hove to for the night.

Captain Cooke and Mr. Mackerel (a passenger on board the
Mornington)
were brought prisoners on board the frigate, and sent to keep us company on deck, where I had seated myself behind one of the guns. I was previously acquainted with the former, and we were comforted to meet, even under such distressing circumstances. He, like myself, had lost his entire fortune with his ship, and we mutually condoled with each other upon the unlucky fate that had robbed us of our all just as safety seemed within our grasp.

There were several other English prisoners on board the
La Forte,
from whom we learnt the treatment we might expect. Their food was salt beef, boiled in vinegar, to which was added boiled peas as a substitute for bread. Only one quart of water was allowed
per diem,
and not a glass of wine or spirits.

As for the discipline of the ship, it was very slack. It was not at all unusual to see one of the foremast men, with his beef in his hands, eating it while walking the quarter-deck, and claiming an equal right to do it with the commanding officer, thus, I suppose, demonstrating the claims of liberty, equality, and brotherhood. Nor was any scruple made of playing cards on the quarter-deck. The lieutenants generally came on deck with only trousers and an open shirt, often a check one, so that it was almost impossible to distinguish them. The men, however, went through their duty with alacrity and were obedient to orders.

Amongst the prisoners were two officers of the 28th Light Dragoons. They had been in charge of 107 men of their regiment, who were being conveyed on board the
Osterley
from Madras to Calcutta, when that ship was captured, about a week previously to us, by the frigate. An exception had been made in their favour, for they were most courteously treated, especially by Captain Beaulieu La Loup, the second in command on board the
La Forte.
Whilst we were sitting talking about these matters, a message was brought to us that Captain Cooke, Mr. Mackerel, and myself were required aft. We immediately went to the quarter-deck, where we found the admiral
[Rear-Admiral Marquis de Sercey],
a fine old man and a very distinguished officer. He told us that he was sorry for us, as he was informed that we were the owners, as well as the commanders, of the ships he had just taken, but that we must console ourselves by the reflection that it was the fortune of war, and that, seeing what a loss we had already sustained, he would give us our liberty, and also allow the passenger, Mr. Mackerel, to accompany us, and that in the morning a long boat and all our personal property would be placed at our disposal and permission granted us to make our way ashore.