Privateers and Privateering Part 16

"My lads, this Englishman is very strong, and we are only nineteen; shall we try to take him by surprise, and thus acquire both gain and glory? Or do you prefer to rot in a beastly English prison-ship?"

It was cleverly put, from his own standpoint: he was spoiling for a fight, for an opportunity of displaying his masterly strategy and determined courage, to say nothing of the dollars in prospect; but the implication was perfectly unjustifiable that the choice lay between a desperate a.s.sault and certain capture. If he did not want to fight, he had only to sheer off and run for it; no Indiaman would initiate an action, or give chase, under such circ.u.mstances. However, he knew his audience, and his speech had the desired effect:

"Death or victory!" cried the eighteen heroes.

"Good!" replied their captain, "this ship shall either be our tomb or the cradle of our glory!"

It was really very fine and melodramatic--more especially since it was the prelude to an act of undoubted piracy.

This fact, however, does not detract from the merit of a very clever and bold attack, which was perfectly successful. Making his eighteen heroes lie down, while the Lascars stood about the deck, he took the helm and ran down for the _Triton_. The people on board only saw the expected pilot brig approaching, as no doubt they habitually did, to within a biscuit-toss, to tranship the pilot. Suddenly she hoisted French colours and let drive a heavy dose of grape and canister among the Indiaman's crew. A cry of dismay and astonishment rose from her deck, as every one instinctively sought shelter from the hail of iron. In another moment the brig was alongside, and Surcouf was leaping on board at the head of his small company. The surprise was so complete that there was but little resistance. The captain and a few others made a brave attempt, but were killed immediately; the rest were driven below, and the hatches clapped on. And so, with five killed and six wounded on the English side, and one killed and one wounded on the French, the thing was over.

Really, it was a masterly affair.

Putting his prisoners on board the _Diana_, which he permitted her captain to ransom, he left them to make their way to Calcutta; and it is stated by contemporary Indian newspapers that he treated them with consideration, and was polite to the lady pa.s.sengers.

The _Cartier_ was captured by an English man-of-war, but Surcouf carried the _Triton_ in triumph to Mauritius, where he was, of course, received with a tremendous ovation.

He was greatly dismayed, however, upon having it pointed out to him by the Governor that those who choose to go a-pirating are liable to be called upon to pay the piper. All his captures were condemned, and forfeited to the Government, as he had not been provided with a letter of marque. This was perfectly right and proper, though his biographer tries to make it out an injustice. There was a fearful outcry, of course, and eventually the matter was referred home, Surcouf appearing in person to plead his cause; the appeal was successful, and all the captures were declared to be "good prize," which was very nice for Surcouf and his owners, who pocketed a good round sum of money. About the morality of the proceedings the less said the better.

During this period of litigation the privateer hero had, of course, revisited St. Malo and seen his family and friends; and there he also fell in love with Mlle. Marie Blaize, to whom he became engaged. But the sea was calling him again, and he left her without being married.

His new command was the _Clarisse_, 14 guns, with a crew of one hundred and forty hardy seamen of St. Malo and elsewhere; while Nicolas Surcouf, brother to the captain, and a man of similar type, was chief officer.

She sailed in July 1798 for the old familiar cruising-ground in the Indian Ocean; and just after crossing the Equator, fell in with a large armed English vessel, from which, after a sharp action, she parted, considerably damaged; but Surcouf consoled himself for this failure--from which, as his biographer puts it, "there remained only the glory of having seen the flag of England flying before the victorious standard of France!"--by the capture of a rich prize off Rio Janeiro; and anch.o.r.ed in December 1798 at Port Louis, Mauritius, "where his expected return from Europe was awaited with impatience by those who had built great hopes upon the conqueror of the _Triton_."

s.p.a.ce does not admit of following the adventures of Robert Surcouf in detail; his grand-nephew spares no pains, indeed, in this respect, spinning out his narrative, embellished with admiring outbursts of national and personal eulogy, in a somewhat tedious fashion. In the _Clarisse_ Surcouf had more successes, capturing two armed merchant vessels very cleverly at Sonson, in Sumatra, not without damage, which rendered it advisable to return to Port Louis to refit: thence, putting out again, he was on one occasion chased by the English frigate _Sibylle_; and so hard pressed was he that he was compelled to have recourse to desperate measures to improve the speed of his vessel: eight guns were thrown overboard, together with spare spars and other loose material, the rigging was eased up, the mast wedges loosened, the between-deck supports knocked away. It was a light breeze, of course, and these measures have a remarkable effect under such circ.u.mstances, rendering the vessel "all alive," as it were, and exceedingly susceptible of the smallest variation of pressure on the sails--and so the _Clarisse_ escaped. Two days later she captured an English vessel, the _Jane_--which is misnamed _James_ in French narratives--whose skipper wrote a long account of the affair. She sailed in company with two Indiamen, the _Manship_ and _Lansdowne_, having been warned that Surcouf was on the prowl outside. The captain imagined that, by keeping company with the two large Indiamen--armed vessels, of course--he would be safe from molestation; but he was sorely mistaken, for when the privateer hove in sight, and he signalled his consorts, they calmly sailed on and left the _Jane_ a victim, after a trifling resistance.

Surcouf, being informed that these two large vessels, still in sight, were Indiamen, contemptuously remarked: "They are two _Tritons_," and he and his officers expressed the opinion that the captains deserved to be shot.

Next he encountered two large American ships: there was much ill-feeling between France and the United States, though war had not been declared, and when they met they fought like dogs of hostile owners. One of these vessels Surcouf captured by boarding, the other escaping; and this was his last cruise in the _Clarisse_.

It is in connection with his next command that Surcouf's name is, perhaps, most familiar. This was the _Confiance_, a new ship, and by all accounts a regular beauty. Before he got away, however, he had a quarrel with Duterte, another privateer captain of some note, commanding the _Malartic_, who had recourse to a ruse to obtain the pick of the available seamen in Mauritius for his own ship. Surcouf eventually contrived to circ.u.mvent him, and, after some high words in a cafe, they arranged a meeting with swords at daybreak. The Governor, General Malartic, however, intervened, commanding their attendance at the hour arranged for the duel, and, after an harangue from him, the two corsairs embraced and remained friends thereafter--they cruised, in fact, in consort for a time, in the Bay of Bengal, with much success.

Surcouf's great exploit in the _Confiance_ was the capture of the _Kent_, East Indiaman, at the end of her voyage. M. Robert Surcouf, in describing this event, dwells upon every detail, from the moment the _Kent_ was sighted, with most tedious prolixity, as though this was one of the decisive battles of the world. What happened is as follows:

On October 7th, 1800, a large sail was sighted at daybreak. After careful scrutiny, Surcouf decided that she was an Indiaman, a rich prize, and determined to have her if possible; so he hailed from aloft, where he was inspecting the stranger: "All hands on deck, make sail--drinks all round for the men! Clear for action!"

Then, coming down from aloft, he mounted on the companion hatch, ordered everybody aft, and harangued them--he was great at a speech on an occasion of the kind, though probably his biographer has embellished it--told them the Englishman was very strong, but that he intended to board at once.

"I suppose each one of you is more than equal to one Englishman? Very good--be armed ready for boarding--and, as it will be very hot work, I will give you an hour of pillage."

It was very hot work. The _Kent's_ people certainly greatly outnumbered the privateer's; she had on board a great proportion of the crew of the _Queen_, another East Indiaman, which had been destroyed by fire on the coast of Brazil. Surcouf says she had 437 on board, and the _Confiance_ only 130; but the figures for the _Kent_ are probably greatly exaggerated.

After the exchange of some broadsides, Surcouf at length out-manoeuvred the English captain, his vessel being probably far more handy, and succeeded in laying him aboard. Captain Rivington, of the _Kent_, was a man of heroic courage, and fought at the head of his men with splendid determination; but the privateer crew had all the advantage of previous understanding and a.s.sociation. The _Kent's_ men were undisciplined and but poorly armed for such an encounter, while Surcouf's, we are told, had each a boarding axe, a cutla.s.s, a pistol, and a dagger--to say nothing of blunderbusses loaded with six bullets, pikes fifteen feet long, and enormous clubs--all this, in conjunction with "drinks all round," and the promise of pillage!

As long as their captain kept his feet the "Kents" maintained the desperate combat; but when at length he fell mortally wounded, though his last cry was "Don't give up the ship!" the flag was shortly lowered, though the chief officer made a desperate attempt to rally the crew once more.

And then commenced the promised pillage. Surcouf, hearing the loud complaints of the English, despoiled of their property, was on the point of angrily restraining his crew, when he remembered his promise, and stepped back, we are told, with a sigh of regret. But then came the screams of women.

"Good Lord! I'd forgotten the women!" he cried, and called his officers to come and protect them, which was very necessary. So hideous was the scene of plunder, amid the dead and wounded, that Surcouf exerted his power of will to cut short the time. He landed the prisoners in an Arab vessel, and arrived at Mauritius with his prize in November.

The French were accused of having behaved with great brutality, even wantonly poniarding the wounded and dying. This, of course, is denied; but it does not require a very vivid imagination to picture the scene--a crowd of half-disciplined men, excited with liquor, brutalised by bloodshed, elated with victory, turned loose to plunder; some word of remonstrance from a wounded man, finding his person roughly searched, and a knife-thrust, or fatal blow with the b.u.t.t of a pistol, would be the only reply. Surcouf's protection of the ladies was, however, said to be effective; and this is probably true.

Surcouf took his flying _Confiance_ back to France, with a letter of marque; he caught a Portuguese vessel on the pa.s.sage, and arrived at La Roch.e.l.le on April 13th, 1801. His adventure in the East had not cooled the ardour of his feelings towards Mlle. Marie Blaize, whom he married six weeks later; and he now became in his turn the _armateur_ or owner of privateers.

He was persuaded, however, to go to sea once more in 1807, when war had broken out again, in a vessel which he named the _Revenant_--_i.e._ the _Ghost_: and she had for a figure-head a corpse emerging from the tomb, flinging off the shroud.

With 18 guns and a complement of 192 men, the _Revenant_, a swift sailer, was quite as formidable as her predecessor; and so effectually did Surcouf scour the Bay of Bengal and the adjacent seas, so crafty and determined was he in attack, so swift in pursuit or in flight, that his depredations called forth an indignant but somewhat illogical memorial, in December 1807, from the merchants and East India Company to the Admiralty. The fact was that the British men-of-war on the station were doing pretty well all that could be done, but the _Revenant_, when it came to chasing her, was apt to become as ghostly as her figure-head--she had the heels of all of them, and her captain seemed to have an intuitive perception as to the whereabouts of danger.

Surcouf eventually settled down as a shipbuilder and shipowner at St.

Malo. He had, of course, made a considerable fortune, and his business prospered, so he was one of the most wealthy and influential men in the place. He died in 1827.

Captain Marryat, in one of his novels, "Newton Forster," gives a vivid description of a fight between Surcouf and the _Windsor Castle_ Indiaman, commanded by the plucky and pugilistic Captain Oughton. Such a yarn, by an expert seaman and a master-hand, is delightful reading, and the temptation to transcribe it here is strong. It must, however, be resisted, as the story is, after all, a fiction, and therefore would be out of place.

There are other French privateersmen well worthy of notice, did s.p.a.ce permit, foremost among whom is Thurot, who, single-handed, contrived to hara.s.s the English and Irish coasts for months; the brothers Fourmentin, the eldest of whom has the Rue du Baron Bucaille in Boulogne named after him, though his biographer informs us that he never called himself Bucaille, nor was he a baron--but somehow this t.i.tle became attached to him.

M. Henri Malo, in "Les Corsaires," tells a story of him which is said to be traditional in his family, and is certainly entertaining; so it shall be transcribed as related.

"One evening, several privateer captains were dining together. There was a leg of mutton for dinner, and a discussion arose as to whether French mutton was superior or inferior to English. Fourmentin said the only way to decide the question was to have the two kinds on the table; they had French mutton, they only wanted a specimen of the English mutton--he would go and fetch it. Forthwith he proceeded to the harbour, and, according to his custom, summoned his crew by beating with a hammer on the bottom of a saucepan. Making sail, he landed in the middle of the night on the English coast, seized a customs station, and bound the officers, except six, whom he directed, pistol in hand, to conduct him to the nearest sheep-fold. Choosing the six finest sheep in the flock, he made the six customs officers shoulder them and take them on board his vessel. He gave his six involuntary porters a bottle of rum by way of reward for their trouble, and straightway made sail for France. He had left on the flood-tide--he returned on it, with the required sheep, which he and his colleagues were thus able to appreciate and compare with the others."

A very good family story, and probably quite as true as many another!

These Frenchmen of whom we have been discoursing were certainly fine seamen, and intrepid fighters; they had, no doubt, the faults common to privateers, but they were able and formidable foes, and left their mark in history.

CONCERNING THE FRONTISPIECE

On July 27th, 1801, capture was made of a remarkable vessel. There was no fighting, but the ship herself excited a good deal of interest at the time.

We learn from the captain's log of the British frigate _Immortalite_ that, in the small hours of the morning, a large ship was observed, and sail was made in chase. At daylight the chase proved to be a four-masted vessel, fully rigged upon each mast--a common enough object nowadays, but then almost unique. This was the French privateer _Invention_, a ship built under the special supervision of the man who commanded her--M. Thibaut. She was brand-new, having sailed upon her first voyage only eight days previously, and had already eluded one of our frigates by superior speed. She was probably a very fast vessel, and might quite possibly have outsailed the _Immortalite_; but, very unhappily for Captain Thibaut, another British frigate, the _Arethusa_, Captain W. Wolley, appeared right in her path. Thus beset, Thibaut's case was hopeless, and so the _Invention's_ very brief career as a privateer came to an end, the _Immortalite_--commanded by Captain Henry Hotham--taking possession at eight o'clock.

Captain Wolley, as senior officer, reported the circ.u.mstances to the Admiralty:

"She is called _L'Invention_, of Bordeaux, mounting 24 guns, with 207 men. She is of a most singular construction, having four masts, and they speak of her in high terms, though they say she is much under-masted. I directed Captain Hotham to take her into Plymouth. I should have ordered her up the river for their lordships' inspection, but I did not choose to deprive Captain Hotham of his men for so long a time."

The corner of the letter is turned down and on it is written: "Acquaint him that their lordships are highly pleased with the capture of this vessel."

There is an enclosure giving the dimensions of the vessel, as follows:

Ft. In.

Length of keel 126 10 Extreme length 147 4 Breadth of beam 27 1 Depth of hold 11 9 Draft of water 13 9

Mention is also made of a sketch enclosed, but this is not now with the letter. It is probable, however, that a small woodcut, on the first page of vol. vii. of _The Naval Chronicle_, is copied from this sketch, and the frontispiece of this volume is an enlargement and adaptation from the woodcut.

The _Invention_ had less beam in proportion to her length than was usual in those days, and perhaps Captain Thibaut was afraid of masting her too heavily lest she should be "tender" under canvas. Her draft of water is moderate for her other dimensions, which would be an additional occasion of anxiety on this score; but, with a large spread of canvas, she would have been very swift in moderate weather.

There does not appear to be any record to hand as to what became of the _Invention_, whether she was afterwards sent up the river for the inspection of their lordships, or taken on as a man-of-war; possibly some dockyard archives may contain the information.

On August 25th, 1801, the Navy Board reported to the Admiralty that the _Invention_ had been surveyed, and was a suitable vessel for the Royal Navy, and asked whether her four masts should be retained; and September 1st following they ask that the sketch of the ship may be returned; but there is no reply to be found to either of these letters in the proper place; so the further correspondence must either have been lost or placed among other papers. Possibly the ship was not, after all, taken for the Navy; if she was it would probably be under some other name.

[Footnote 14: Captain Smith appears, however, to have been very harshly used, through the implications, rather than any specific accusation, of his senior, Captain Osborn; and upon his presenting a memorial to the King (George III.), setting forth the circ.u.mstances under which he was tried in the East Indies, the case was referred to the law officers of the Crown and the Admiralty Counsel, who declared that the finding of the court was unwarrantable, and should not be upheld. Captain Smith, who had been dismissed the Service, was thereupon reinstated; but an officer who thus "scores" off his superiors is not readily pardoned, and he was never again employed. It appears to have been a shady business, with some personal spite in the background.]