Frigate Commander (36 page)

I am at a loss to account for the frequency of these accidents to our Main top masts, this being the fourth that we have carried away since we sailed from Plymouth in the beginning of March.

His suspicion was that when the ship was last refitted, the futtock plates on the new main top had been fitted further aft than they should have been and this was putting undue stress on the topmast.

The next day Moore retired to his cabin to bury himself in an English translation of Saint Pierre’s
The Studies of Nature
⁹⁶
, but his attention was called sharply to his duties next day when what appeared to be a large French frigate was sighted. In fact, the ship was a very fine 30-gun letter-of-marque from London, bound for Martinique. She had been a French frigate and was as large as the
Melampus
. Moore took his revenge upon her for causing some alarm, by pressing three of her seamen, even though her Master,
‘a fine old sailor’
tried his best to have one of them returned. Later that day one of the
Melampus
’ men fell from the mizzen topsail yard while reefing the sail;

He fell on a netting about 8 feet from the Quarterdeck, from thence he tumbled down on the deck. He is a good deal bruised, but has received no permanent injury. It is a wonderful escape that he was not killed on the spot. He was half drunk, and had been punished three days before for that fault.

A few days later they came across a London ship bound for Jamaica. From her Master, Moore learned that she and the sloop-of-war
Serpent
had become separated from a West India convoy of forty-nine ships in foggy weather. Moore decided that he had better go in search of the convoy to offer his protection and later the same day they fell in with them. The
Serpent
reported she was desperately short of provisions and Moore gave her what he could spare, and decided that he had better continue to escort the convoy, even though

Thus ends our cruise, as it is impossible for me, consistent with my duty, to avoid escorting the convoy, which is very valuable, into safety.

He ordered Byng to escort the London-bound vessels as far as the Isle of Wight, whilst the
Melampus
would escort the Liverpool-bound vessels into the St George’s Channel. He then set about running past the different ships in the convoy to inform their masters of the arrangements. Behind the dutiful benevolence, however, Moore had his own additional motives, for he planned to press some good men out of the Liverpool and Bristol ships before taking his leave.

September 9th: I was obliged to punish a Marine today for impertinence to the Sergeant – cursed disgusting – the French Prisoners stare at an exhibition of this kind, they punish only thieves with stripes, for the generality of other crimes they confine and sometimes diminish their rations. This would not do with our people, although confinement is in fact a severe punishment it is not at all exemplary. Stopping any part of the provisions . . .
[is]
the same and is liable to other objections. A Punishment is nothing if it does not terrify the guilty.

Falling in with an American brig, Moore spoke to the Master and managed to acquire a relatively recent newspaper. The naval news contained a letter from Admiral Rainier, the Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies station,

. . . giving an account of a very gallant action between the English frigate
La Sybille
Captain Edward Cook and the French frigate
, La Forte,
in which the brave Cook was so desperately wounded that there were no hopes of his recovery; after an action of one hour and forty minutes
La Forte
was taken. Captain Cook was well known to me, he was a fine, gallant, young fellow, we served together on the coast of France with Sidney Smith. I sincerely regret his loss.
⁹⁷

There was also news of the British expedition to the Walcheren, where 300 men had been killed:

I have a strong idea my brother was busy when the landing was made. The Americans said none of our Generals had been killed or wounded.
⁹⁸

The following morning the
Melampus
sighted what seemed to be a privateer with a larger prize. Moore signalled to Byng to give chase, but no-one on the
Galatea
seems to have seen the signal. Moore tacked in pursuit, which he thought must have been noticed by the
Galatea
, and even fired a gun although this would also have alerted the privateer, but still the
Galatea
made no move to increase sail. Moore soon lost sight of both the convoy and the
Galatea
. When the two quarry separated, Moore gave chase to the larger, which turned out to be an American ship from Bristol. He put a prize crew on board and sent her into Cork before turning after the privateer. That ship however, had disappeared. Moore could not pursue further, for he had lost the convoy and he was seriously short of water. The crew of the
Melampus
was already down to a quart of water per day per man and, because they had used up so much of their provisions, Moore had the empty water casks filled with seawater to restore the frigate’s trim. The following day was 14 September; Moore’s birthday. In his journal, he noted dispassionately that he was thirty-five years old, as if that was all he needed to say on the subject.

The
Melampus
arrived back in Cork on 21 September, where the brig they had captured earlier had been placed in quarantine by an officer of the Customs. Moore was more concerned about his latest prize, the American ship, fearing that she might have been recaptured on her way to Cork. Admiral Kingsmill had gone to England, and Moore found himself the senior officer at the port. Waiting at Cork for him was a package of letters including some from his family, and one from Mr M. The contents of the latter were a particular blow, for he had written to tell Moore that his daughter had accepted a proposal of marriage from another. Moore knew the man concerned, for they had both been acquainted with Miss M for the same length of time. He

... is a very good natured, honest fellow, and heir to
immense wealth
,
that
is the charm . . . it levels her in my opinion with the common run of women who are capable of the legal prostitution of an interested marriage . . .

There was also news about brother John, who had been wounded
‘slightly’
in the hand. He also learned that the day after he had left Cork, orders had come for him to sail to the Downs, to join the expedition to the Walcheren. Moore was greatly relieved that he had not been around to follow those orders, especially as
‘. . . the
Melampus
is ill calculated for the shoal water there’.

There was still no sign of the prize – and Moore was most regretful at the possible loss of the prize crew, which included an excellent quartermaster and some very good seamen. His feelings could only have been exacerbated as he watched other frigates bringing in fine prizes. On 14 October, the frigate
Revolutionnaire
arrived with

. . . the
Bordelais
of 24 guns, her prize, the finest French privateer I ever saw, which she took after a chase of 9 hours, in which they ran 120 miles, a proof of the extraordinary good sailing of both ships.

Then on the following day Captain Robert Barlow arrived in the
Phoebe
, with a prize privateer carrying sixteen guns. Moore had also been reading the latest newspaper reports about the Walcheren expedition, and had learned of the more serious wound received by his brother. Perhaps because of its potentially dreadful nature (a wound from a bullet that exited below his left eye), he made no comment about it in the journal until several days later, when he unrolled his sea charts to study the disposition of the forces at Walcheren;

I suppose the wounds my brother has received will lay him up for some time, thank God there are now Quarters for the wounded. We have lost many brave men. Such is the inevitable consequence of war.

With Barlow’s arrival, Moore was superseded as senior officer. When Moore reported that the
Melampus
was ready for sea, Barlow gave him orders to cruise for six to seven weeks between Lat 48 – 51 N and Long 20 – 25 W, a box that straddled the latitudes from south of Cape Clear to Ushant. This was the sort of ideal cruise that only a frigate commander could devise. It was just as well that Barlow had ordered him out on such a promising cruise, for the latest London papers carried an announcement of the engagement of Miss M. Moore was extremely bitter:

The reluctance at leaving her Father and Mother may be construed into the attachment of a cat, which is to the house more than to its inhabitants. She could not bear the privation of the ease, comforts and luxuries to which she had been accustomed; but as soon as an honest, good natured, dull Homo appeared, holding these things out to her in still greater abundance, she instantly, simpering, closed with his snug proposal and proved herself to be a worthy help mate to this son of the earth.

By 22 October Moore was well on his way to his cruising ground when, in the early morning, three ships were sighted to leeward, sailing on a south-easterly course. Seeing that they were men-of-war, Moore guessed them to be three of Bridport’s frigates

. . . but took care to keep the weather gage in approaching them. We crossed the weathermost one on different tacks at the distance of about 2 gun shots, it was not until she was directly abreast of us that I perceived she was not an English frigate; they all three gave chase to us, we made the private signal which they did not answer, but one of them hoisted a yellow flag at the Mizen top mast head. I now plainly saw they were enemies, but could not be sure whether they were French or Spaniards. The wind blew a fresh gale from the Westward and we stood to the southward close to the wind, we could with difficulty carry single reefed topsails, we weathered upon them all.

Moore’s caution had paid off; keeping the weather gauge had enabled him to keep control of the situation. At 8pm, it being dark, Moore tacked to throw the frigates off his tail, but the wind baulked him and the
Melampus
lost ground down towards the enemy. With what must have been bated breath, they watched as one of the frigates loomed out of the darkness close behind them. From the quarterdeck Moore could see her plainly, but she gave no sign of seeing the
Melampus
. As soon as she had disappeared he ordered all sail set, and the
Melampus
sailed hard all night even though a violent squall in the middle watch split the jib. In the morning, there was no sign of the enemy frigates – but the
Melampus
had, once again, sprung her main topmast.

It is possible that the
Melampus
’ failure to complete her tack on the night of the 22nd was the fault of poor seamanship for, a little unusually, Moore began to find fault with his crew:

I am less satisfied with the stuff of which our crew is now composed than ever I was, we have too few seamen. We have been greatly diminished of late by accidents and by the Hospital, I have by no means the confidence in the Ship’s Company that I had. I do not mean that they are ill disposed, on the contrary I believe they are in general very well disposed, but they are not brisk nor in my opinion very effective.

If his crew was less than normally efficient, he may have felt that his chances against the French were reduced;

The French within these three years have brought the construction of their Privateers to a pitch of excellence which they never before attained. They often escape from our Frigates by fairly outsailing them, being of a very great length, armed with brass guns (for the sake of lightness) and having very little top hamper. From the account Captain Twysden of
La Revolutionnaire
gave me of his chase after
Le Bordelais
, I doubt very much if the
Melampus
could have caught her. I trust greatly to deceiving them by our appearance, the consequence will probably be that they will fire into us, taking us for a sloop of war; this is an inconvenience but it is not so bad as their escaping from us.

He was not to get the chance even of trying this. On the evening of 30 October, with a hard wind blowing, the
Melampus
sprang her mainmast. It was fished in the hope that this would enable them to continue their cruise, but they then discovered a second spring higher up the mast. The heel of the topmast now had to be lowered below the spring to act as a form of splint, and the head of the lower mast had to be secured by lashing the topmast to it above and below the spring. As Moore explained, this was called
‘reefing the topmast’
, and it would enable it to carry the double reefed topsail. However, to the crew’s disappointment, the damage meant that they would have to abandon their cruise and head for Plymouth immediately. As if the elements were now also against them, they were buffeted by a series of hard gales. Moore recorded that
‘. . . the sea was very high and the ship strained and worked very much making a great deal of water in at her upper works.’
The rough conditions continued for over a week and water from the deck found its way into the after magazine, damaging forty to fifty made-up cannon cartridges. Moore had the ammunition and powder shifted, and scuttles were cut in the platform to release the water. Once it had dried as best it might, the powder was replaced. There were a few days’ relief until 9 November, when the storm set in again,