Famous Sea Fights Part 14

who "died like the Cid." He had no illusions, but told his friends he was going to defeat and death, and he knew that when he left Cadiz he was bidding a last farewell to the young wife he had lately married.

"The French admiral does not know his business," he said to his first lieutenant, as he watched the van division holding its course, while the two English lines rushed to the attack. As the English closed with the Spanish rear, Churucca's ship came into close action with the "Defiance,"

and was then attacked in succession by the "Dreadnought" and the "Tonnant."

The "San Juan" fought till half her men were _hors de combat_, several guns dismounted, and two of the masts down. As long as Churucca lived the unequal fight was maintained. For a while he seemed to have a charmed life, as he pa.s.sed from point to point, encouraging his men. He was returning to his quarter-deck, when a ball shattered one of his legs. "It is nothing--keep on firing," he said, and at first he refused to leave the deck, lying on the planking, with the shattered limb roughly bandaged. He sent for his second in command, and was told he had just been killed.

Another officer, though wounded, took over the active command when at last Churucca, nearly dead from loss of blood, was carried below. He gave a last message for his wife, sent a final order that the ship should be fought till she sank, and then said he must think only of G.o.d and the other world.

As he expired the "San Juan" gave up the hopeless fight. The three ships all claimed her as their prize, but it was the "Dreadnought" that took possession.

The French "Swiftsure," once English, was won back by the "Colossus," after a fight in which the "Orion" helped for a while. With her capture one-third of the enemy's whole force, including several flagships, was in English hands. The victory was won; it was now only a question of making it more and more complete.

Shortly after three o'clock the Spanish 80-gun ship "Argonauta" struck to the "Belleisle," which had been aided in her attack by the English "Swiftsure." A few minutes later the "Leviathan" took another big Spaniard, the "San Agustino," carrying her with a rush of boarders. It was about four o'clock that, after an hour of hard fighting, the "San Ildefonso" hauled down her colours to the "Defence." About this time the French "Achille" was seen to be ablaze and ceased firing. In the earlier stages of the fight she had been engaged successively with the "Polyphemus," "Defiance," and "Swiftsure." Her captain and several of her officers and nearly 400 men had been killed and wounded when she was brought to close action by the "Prince." Her fore-rigging caught fire, and the mast coming down across the decks started a blaze in several places, and the men, driven from the upper deck by the English fire, had to abandon their attempts to save their ship.

She was well alight when at last she struck her colours, and the "Prince,"

aided by the little brig "Pickle," set to work to save the survivors of her crew. She blew up after the battle. The "Berwick" was another ship taken before four o'clock, but I cannot trace the details of her capture.

While the battle still raged fiercely, Admiral Dumanoir, in the "Formidable," was steering away to the north-westward, followed by the "Mont Blanc," "Duguay-Trouin," and "Scipion." But two ships of his division, the "Neptuno" and the "Intrepide," had disregarded his orders, and turned back to join in the fight, working the ships' heads round by towing them with boats. The "Intrepide" led. Her captain, Infernet, was a rough Provencal sailor, who had fought his way from the forecastle to the quarter-deck. Indignant at Dumanoir's conduct, he had early in the battle given orders to steer for the thickest of it. "_Lou capo sur lou 'Bucentaure'!_" ("Head her for the 'Bucentaure'!") he shouted in his native patois. He arrived too late to fight for victory, but he fought for the honour of his flag. After engaging several British ships, Infernet struck to the "Orion." An officer of the "Conqueror" (which had taken part in the fight with the "Intrepide") wrote: "Her captain surrendered after one of the most gallant defences I ever witnessed. His name was Infernet, and it deserves to be recorded by all who admire true heroism. The 'Intrepide' was the last ship that struck her colours." The Spanish ship that had followed the "Intrepide" into action, the 80-gun "Neptuno," had shortly before been forced to strike to the "Minotaur" and the "Spartiate," another of the prizes of Aboukir Bay.

Before these last two surrenders completed the long list of captured ships, Nelson had pa.s.sed away. The story of his death in the c.o.c.kpit of the "Victory" is too well known to need repet.i.tion. Before he died the cheers of his crew and the messages brought to him had told him of capture after capture, and a.s.sured him that his triumph was complete. As the firing ceased, Collingwood took over the command of the fleet, and transferred his flag from his own shattered and dismasted ship, the "Royal Sovereign," to Blackwood's smart frigate, the "Euryalus."

When the "Intrepide" struck, seventeen ships of the allied fleet had been taken, one, the "Achille," was in a blaze, and soon to blow up; four were in flight far away to the north-west, eleven were making for Cadiz, all bearing the marks of hard hitting during the fight. Some desultory firing at the nearest fugitives ended the battle. Crowds on the breakwater of Cadiz and the nearest beaches had watched all the afternoon the great bank of smoke on the horizon, and listened to the rumbling thunder of the cannonade. After sunset ship after ship came in, bringing news of disaster, and all the night wounded men were being conveyed to the hospitals.

More than half the allied fleet had been taken or destroyed. The four ships that escaped with Dumanoir were captured a few days later by a squadron under Sir Richard Strachan. The French ships that escaped into Cadiz were taken possession of by the Spanish insurgents, when Spain rose against the French, and Cadiz joined the revolt.

As the battle ended, the British fleet was, to use the expression of the "Neptune's" log, "in all directions." The sun was going down; the sky was overcast, and the rising swell and increasing wind told of the coming storm. Most of the prizes had been dismasted; many of them were leaking badly; some of the ships that had taken them were in almost as damaged a condition, and many of them were short-handed, with heavy losses in battle and detachments sent on board the captured vessels. The crews were busy clearing the decks, getting up improvised jury masts, and repairing the badly cut-up rigging, where the masts still stood. Nelson's final order had been to anchor to ride out the expected gale. Collingwood doubted if this would be safer than trying to make Gibraltar, and he busied himself getting the scattered fleet and prizes together, and tacking to the south-westward.

The gale that swept all the coasts of Western Europe caught the disabled fleet with the hostile sh.o.r.e under its lee. Only four of the prizes, and those the poorest ships of the lot, ever saw Gibraltar. Ship after ship went down, others were abandoned and burnt, others drove ash.o.r.e. In these last instances the British prize crews were rescued and kindly treated by the Spanish coast population. One ship, the "Algeciras," was retaken by the French prisoners, and carried into Cadiz. Another, the big "Santa Ana," was recaptured as she drifted helplessly off the port.

But though there were few trophies left after the great storm, Trafalgar had finally broken the naval power of Napoleon, freed England from all fear of invasion, and given her the undisputed empire of the sea. Yet there were only half-hearted rejoicings at home. The loss of Nelson seemed a dear price to pay even for such a victory.

Some 2500 men were killed and wounded in the victorious fleet. Of the losses of the Allies it is difficult to give an estimate. Every ship that was closely engaged suffered severely, and hundreds of wounded went down in several of those that sank in the storm. For weeks after search-parties, riding along the sh.o.r.es from Cadiz to Cape Trafalgar gathered every day a grim harvest of corpses drifted to land by the Atlantic tides. The allied loss was at least 7000 men, and may have been considerably greater.

The news came to England, just after something like a panic had been caused by the tidings of the surrender of a whole Austrian army at Ulm. It reached Napoleon in the midst of his triumphs, to warn him that his power was bounded by the seas that washed the sh.o.r.es of the Continent. Well did Meredith say that in his last great fight Nelson "drove the smoke of Trafalgar to darken the blaze of Austerlitz."

CHAPTER X

THE COMING OF STEAM AND ARMOURED NAVIES

THE FIGHT IN HAMPTON ROADS

MARCH, 1862

Trafalgar was the greatest fight of the sailing-ships. There were later engagements which were fought under sail, but no battle of such decisive import. It was a fitting close to a heroic era in the history of naval war, a period of not much more than four centuries, in thousands of years.

Before it, came the long ages in which the fighting-ship depended more upon the oar than the sail, or on the oar exclusively. After it, came our present epoch of machine-propelled warships, bringing with it wide-sweeping changes in construction, armament, and naval tactics.

Inventive pioneers were busy with projects for the coming revolution in naval war while Nelson was still living. The Irish-American engineer, Fulton, had tried to persuade Napoleon to adopt steam propulsion, and had astonished the Parisians by showing them his little steamer making its way up the Seine with clumsy paddles churning up the waters and much sooty smoke pouring from its tall, thin funnel. The Emperor thought it was a scientific toy. Old admirals--most conservative of men--declared that a gunboat with a few long "sweeps" or oars would be a handier fighting-ship in a calm, and if there was any wind a spread of sail was better than all the American's tea-kettle devices. Fulton went back to America to run pa.s.senger steamers on the Hudson, and tell unbelieving commodores and captains that the future of the sea power lay with the "tea-kettle ships."

In the days of the long peace that followed Waterloo, and the great industrial development that came with it, the steam-engine and the paddle-steamer made their way into the commercial fleets of the world, slowly and timidly at first, for it was a long time before a steamship could be provided with enough efficient engine power to enable her to show the way to a smart clipper-built sailing-ship, and the early marine engines were fearfully uneconomical. Steam had obtained a recognized position in small ships for short voyages, ferry-boats, river steamers, and coasting craft, but on the open ocean the sailing-ship still held its own. An eminent scientist proved to demonstration that no steamship would ever be able to cross the Atlantic under steam alone. He showed that to do so it would be necessary for her to carry a quant.i.ty of coal exceeding her entire tonnage capacity, and he expressed his readiness to eat the first steamer that made the voyage from Liverpool to New York. But he lived to regret his offer.

In 1838 the "Great Western" and the "Sirius" inaugurated the steam pa.s.senger service across the Atlantic, and the days of the liner began. By this time paddle-wheel gunboats were finding their way into the British navy, and other powers were beginning to follow the example of England.

Steamships were first in action in 1840, when Sir Charles Napier employed them side by side with sailing-ships that had shared the triumphs of Nelson. This was in the attack on Acre, when England intervened to check the revolt of the Pasha of Egypt, Ibrahim, against his suzerain, the Sultan.

But still the steamship was regarded as an auxiliary. The great three-decker battleships, the smart sailing frigates, were the main strength of navies. The paddle-steamer was a defective type of warship, because her paddle-boxes and paddle-wheels, and her high-placed engines, presented a huge target singularly vulnerable. A couple of shots might disable in a minute her means of propulsion. True she had masts and sails, but if she could not use her engines, the paddles would prove a drag upon all her movements.

It was the invention of the screw-propeller that made steam propulsion for warships really practical. Brunel was one of the great advocates of the change. He was a man who was in many ways before his time, and he had to encounter a more than usual amount of official conservatist obstruction.

For years the veteran officers who advised the Admiralty opposed and ridiculed the invention. When at last it was fitted to a gunboat, the "Rattler," it was obvious that it provided the best means of applying steam propulsion to the purposes of naval war. The propeller was safe under water, and the engines could be placed low down in the ship.

By 1854, when the Crimean War began, both the British and French navies possessed a number of steam-propelled line-of-battle ships, frigates, and gunboats, fitted with the screw. They had also some old paddle-ships. But in the fleets dispatched to the Baltic and the Black Sea there were still a considerable number of sailing-ships, and a fleet still did most of its work under sail. Even the steamships had only what we should now describe as auxiliary engines. The most powerful line-of-battle ships in the British navy had engines of only 400 to 600 horsepower.[17] With such relatively small power they still had to depend chiefly on their sails. Tug-boats were attached to the fleets to tow the sailing-ships, when the steamships were using their engines.

[17] Compare this with 23,000 horse-power of the "Dreadnought's"

turbine engines.

Another change was taking place in the armament of warships and coast defences. The rifled cannon was still in the experimental stage, but explosive sh.e.l.ls, which in Nelson's days were only fired from mortars at very short range, had now been adapted to guns mounted on the broadside and the coast battery. Solid shot were still largely used, but the coming of the sh.e.l.l meant that there would be terrible loss in action in the crowded gun-decks, and inventors were already proposing that ships should be armoured to keep these destructive missiles from penetrating their sides.

The attack on the sea front of Sebastopol by the allied fleets on 17 October, 1854, was the event that brought home to the minds of even the most conservative the necessity of a great change in warship construction.

It rang the knell of the old wooden walls, and led to the introduction of armour-clad navies.

The idea of protecting ships from the fire of artillery and musketry by iron plating was an old one, and the wonder is that it did not much earlier receive practical application. The Dutch claim to have been the pioneers of ironclad building more than three hundred years ago. During the famous siege of Antwerp by the Spaniards in 1585 the people of the city built a huge flat-bottomed warship, armoured with heavy iron plates, which they named the "Finis Belli," a boastful expression of the hope that she would end the war. An old print of the "Finis Belli" shows a four-masted ship with a high p.o.o.p and forecastle, but with a low freeboard amidships. On this lower deck, taking up half the length of the ship, is an armoured citadel, with port-holes for four heavy guns on each side. The roof of the citadel has a high bulwark, loopholed for musketry. On three of the masts there are also crow's-nests or round tops for musketeers.

Heavily weighted with her armour, the ship had a deep draught of water, and probably steered badly. In descending the Scheldt to attack the Spaniards she ran aground in a hopeless position under their batteries, and fell into the hands of the Spanish commander, the Duke of Parma. He kept the "Finis Belli" "as a curiosity" till the end of the siege, and then had her dismantled. If she had scored a success, armoured navies would no doubt have made their appearance in the seventeenth century.

Between the days of the "Finis Belli" and the coming of the first ironclads there were numerous projects of inventors. In 1805 a Scotchman, named Gillespie, proposed the mounting of guns and "ponderous mortars" in revolving armoured turrets, both in fortifications on sh.o.r.e and on floating batteries. Two years later Abraham Bloodgood, of New York, designed a floating battery with an armoured turret. During the war between England and the United States in 1812 an American engineer, John Steevens, who was a man in advance of his time, proposed the construction of a steam-propelled warship, with a ram-bow, and with her guns protected by shields. He prepared a design, but failed to persuade the Navy Department that it was practicable. His son, Robert L. Steevens, improved the design, made experiments with guns, projectiles, and armour plates, and at last in 1842 obtained a vote of Congress for the building of the "Steevens battery," a low-freeboard ram, steam-propelled, and armed with eight heavy guns mounted on her centre-line, on turntables protected by armoured breastworks. The methods of the American navy were very dilatory, professional opinion was opposed to Steevens, whose project was regarded as that of a "crank," and the ship was left unfinished for years. She was still on the stocks when the Civil War began. Then other types came into fashion, and she was broken up on the ways.

The man who introduced the armour-clad ship into the world's navies was the Emperor Napoleon III, the same who introduced rifled field artillery into the armies of the world. Like other great revolutions, this epoch-making change in naval war began in a small way. What forced the question upon the Emperor's attention was the failure of the combined French and English fleets in the attack on the sea-forts of Sebastopol on 17 October, 1854.

The most powerful ships in both navies had engaged the sea-forts, and suffered such loss and injury that it was obvious that if the attack had been continued the results would have been disastrous. Some means must be found of keeping explosive sh.e.l.ls out of a ship's gun-decks, if they were ever to engage land batteries on anything like equal terms. Under the Emperor's directions the French naval architects designed four ships of a new type, which were rapidly constructed in the Imperial dockyards. They were "floating batteries," not intended to take part in fleet actions, but only to be used against fortifications. Their broad beam, heavy lines, rounded bows, and engines of only 225 horsepower, condemned them to slow speed, just sufficient to place them in firing position. They were armoured with 4-inch iron and armed with eighteen 50-pounder guns. The port-holes had heavy iron ports, which were closed while the guns were reloading.

Three of these floating batteries, the "Devastation," "Lave," and "Tonnant," came into action against the sh.o.r.e batteries at Kinburn on 17 October, 1855 (the anniversary of the attack on the Sebastopol sea-forts).

There was some difficulty in getting into position, as they could just crawl along, and steered abominably. But when they opened fire at 800 yards at 9 a.m. they silenced and wrecked the Russian batteries in eighty-five minutes, themselves suffering only trifling damage, and not losing a dozen men.

It was the first and last fight of the floating batteries. But while in England men were still discussing the problem of the sea-going ironclad, the French constructors were solving it. They had to look not to parliamentary and departmental committees, but to the initiative and support of an intelligent autocrat. So events went quicker in France. In 1858 the keels of the first three French sea-going armour-clads were laid down at Toulon, and next year the armoured frigate "Gloire," the first of European ironclads, was launched, and every dockyard in France was busy constructing armour-clads or rebuilding and armouring existing ships.

France had gained a start in the building of the new type of warship. When the "Dreadnought" was launched, it was said somewhat boastfully that single-handed she could destroy the whole North Sea fleet of Germany. It might be more truly said of the "Gloire" that she could have met single-handed and destroyed the British Channel or Mediterranean Fleet of the day. It was the moment when tension with France over the Orsini conspiracy had caused a widespread antic.i.p.ation of war between that country and England, and had called the Volunteer force into existence to repel invasion. But the true defence must be in the command of the sea, and the first English ironclad, the old "Warrior," was laid down at the Thames Ironworks. Work was begun in June, 1859, and the ship was launched in December, 1860. She was modelled on the old steam frigates, for the special types of modern battleships and armoured cruisers were still in the future.

She was built of iron, with unarmoured ends and 4 1/4-inch iron plating on a backing of 18 inches of teak over 200 feet amidships of her total length of 380 feet. There was a race of ironclad building between France and England, in which the latter won easily, and it was only for a very short time that our sea supremacy was endangered by the French Emperor's naval enterprise. But when the English and French fleets entered the Gulf of Mexico in 1861, our ships were all wooden walls, while the French admiral's flag flew on the ironclad "Normandie," the first armoured ship that ever crossed the Atlantic.

Notwithstanding this fact, American writers are fond of saying, and many Englishmen believe, that the introduction of armoured navies was the outcome of the American Civil War of the early 'sixties. All that is true is that the War of Secession gave the world the spectacle of the first fight between armour-clad ships, and the experiences of that war greatly influenced the direction taken in the general policy of designers of ironclad warships.

[Ill.u.s.tration: H.M.S. WARRIOR, THE FIRST BRITISH IRONCLAD]

Towards the close of the Crimean War a Swedish engineer settled in the United States, John Ericsson, had sent to the Emperor Napoleon a design for a small armoured turret-ship of what was afterwards known as the Monitor type. He wrote to the Emperor that he asked for no reward or profit, for he was only anxious to help France in her warfare with Russia, the hereditary foe of Sweden. The war was drawing to a close, and for his future projects the Emperor wanted large sea-going ships, not light-draught vessels for work in the shallows of the Baltic. So Ericsson received a complimentary letter of thanks and a medal, and kept his design for later use. His opportunity came in the first months of the Civil War.

In the fifty years between the war of 1812 and the outbreak of the struggle between North and South, the American navy had been greatly neglected. It was a favourite theory in the United States that a navy could be improvised, and that the great thing would be, in case of war, to send out swarms of privateers to prey upon the enemy's commerce. Very little money was spent on the navy or the dockyards. On the navy list there were a number of old ships, some of which had fought against England in 1812. There were a number of small craft for revenue purposes, a lot of sailing-ships, and a few fairly modern steam frigates and smaller steam vessels depending largely on sail-power, and known as "sloops-of-war"--really small frigates.

While the dockyards of Europe had long been busy with the construction of the new armoured navies, the United States had not a single ironclad. Both parties to the quarrel had to improvise up-to-date ships.

Sea power was destined to play a great part in the conflict. As soon as the Washington Government realized that it was going to be a serious and prolonged war, not an affair of a few weeks, a general plan of operations was devised, of which the essential feature was the isolation of the Southern Confederacy. When the crisis came in 1861 the United States had done little to open up and occupy the vast territories between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi Valley. The population of the States was chiefly to be found between the Mississippi and the Atlantic, and in that region lay the states of the Confederacy. They were mainly agricultural communities, with hardly any factories. For arms, munitions of war, and supplies of many kinds they would have to depend on importation from beyond their frontiers. It was therefore decided that while the United States armies operated on the northern or land frontier of the Confederacy, its sea frontiers on the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico should be closely blockaded, and its river frontier, the line of the Mississippi, should be seized and held by a mixed naval and military force. For these last operations troops on the banks and gunboats on the river had to combine. It was said at the time, that on the Mississippi army and navy were like the two blades of a pair of shears, useless apart, but very effective when working together.

Strange to say, it was not the industrial North, but the agricultural South, that put the first ironclad into commission as a weapon against the coast blockade. When the Secessionist forces seized the Navy Yard at Norfolk, in Virginia, a fine steam frigate, the "Merrimac" (built in 1855), was under repair there. The guard of the dockyard set her on fire before surrendering, but the flames were extinguished, and the "Merrimac," with her upper works badly damaged, was in possession of the Southerners. A Northern squadron of frigates and gunboats, steam and sailing ships, anch.o.r.ed in Hampton Roads, the landlocked sheet of water into which runs not only the Elizabeth River, which gives access to Norfolk, but also the James River, the waterway to Richmond, then the Confederate capital. The northern sh.o.r.es of Hampton Roads were held by Federal troops, the southern by the Confederates. Presently spies brought to Washington the news that the "Rebels" were preparing a terrible new kind of warship at Norfolk to destroy the squadron in Hampton Roads and raise the blockade.