Privateers and Privateering Part 8

CAPTAIN JAMES BORROWDALE, OF THE "ELLEN"

Earlier in this same year, 1780, a Bristol ship made a very brilliant capture. This was the _Ellen_, an armed merchantman, provided with a letter of marque. She carried 18 six-pounders and a crew of 64, half of them boys and landsmen on their first voyage. She was commanded by James Borrowdale, a careful man, who, while fully aware that he was expected to make as good a pa.s.sage as possible, and refrain from engaging in combat unless it was forced upon him, took some pains to ensure that, in such event, the foe should not have a walk-over.

He had as pa.s.senger one Captain Blundell, of the 79th--Liverpool--Regiment, going out to join his regiment in Jamaica; and this gentleman, in order, no doubt, to beguile the tedium of the voyage, undertook to train sixteen of the crew to act as marines--hoping, probably, for an opportunity of proving their metal; and he was not disappointed.

A month out, on April 16th, a ship was sighted to windward, apparently of much the same size and force as the _Ellen_. Captain Borrowdale, with all his canvas set to catch the Trade-wind, stood on, apparently unheeding the approach of the stranger; but his men had the guns cast loose and loaded, and Blundell, with his little band of amateur marines, was very much on the alert.

Arriving within gunshot, the stranger fired a gun, hoisting Spanish colours; upon which Borrowdale shortened sail, seeing that it was impossible to avoid a fight, and hoisted American colours, to gain time; for his idea was to commence the action at very close quarters.

He then addressed his crew, bidding them ram down a bag of grape-shot into every gun--on top of the round shot, of course--to keep cool, and reserve their fire for close quarters, keeping the guns trained on the enemy meanwhile; to fire as quickly as possible, and to fight the ship to the last extremity.

When the other was within hailing distance down came the American colours, up went the English, and a deadly broadside was delivered, accompanied by a well-directed volley from Blundell's contingent. So effective, in fact, was the sudden and vigorous attack, that it quite staggered the Spaniards, who fell into confusion, neglecting the proper handling of their vessel, so that she fell off from the wind and got under the _Ellen's_ lee; upon which the other broadside was poured into her. The Spanish captain, imagining that he had only an ordinary armed trader to deal with--and many of them were very poor fighters--had perhaps not made full preparation for action; at any rate, he and his men were so demoralised by these two broadsides that he put his helm up and ran for it. The English captain, having successfully defended his ship, might now have pursued his voyage, without any loss of credit, that being his business; but no such idea entered his head. The crew gave three hearty cheers as they trimmed and cracked on sail, and the Spaniard, having sustained some damage aloft, was unable to escape.

Running alongside, the _Ellen_ attacked again, and the action was maintained for an hour and a half, the two vessels running yardarm to yardarm; and then, the _Ellen's_ fire having completely disabled the foe aloft, the Spanish colours came down, and Captain Borrowdale found himself in possession of the _Santa Anna Gratia_, a Spanish sloop-of-war, mounting 16 heavy six-pounders and a number of swivels, with a crew of 104 men, of whom seven were killed and eight wounded; the _Ellen_ had only one killed and three wounded; but these small losses were doubtless owing to the two vessels mutually aiming at the spars and rigging, each endeavouring to cripple her opponent aloft.

This was a very brilliant little affair, and Borrowdale and his merry men must have felt very well pleased with themselves as they sailed into Port Royal, Jamaica, the prize in company, with the English colours surmounting the Spanish.

[Footnote 10: The account of George Walker's exploits comes later on.]

TWO GREAT ENGLISHMEN

CHAPTER IX

FORTUNATUS WRIGHT

Surely the fairies must have been busy with suggestions at the birth and naming of this fighting seaman--great seaman and determined fighter, and withal a smack of romantic heroism about him, which is suggested at once by his Christian name--Fortunatus. No man with such a name, one is disposed to a.s.sume, could be an ordinary and commonplace sort of person, muddling along in the well-worn grooves of every-day life. This, of course, would be an absurd a.s.sumption; men have been named after all kinds of heroes, naval and military, statesmen, masters of the pen, and so on, and have fallen very far short--to put it mildly--of the aspirations of their fond and admiring parents.

Wright's father was a master-mariner of Liverpool, of whom we are told that he had upon one occasion defended his ship most gallantly for several hours against two vessels of superior force--an exploit which is recorded upon his tombstone in St. Peter's churchyard, Liverpool, and from which we gather that he was either a privateer commander, or that his vessel, an ordinary trader, was armed for the purpose of defence.

We do not know, however, why he named his son Fortunatus--we can only fall back upon the fairies; but a supplementary inscription upon the tombstone tells us that "Fortunatus Wright, his son, was always victorious, and humane to the vanquished. He was a constant terror to the enemies of his king and country"; and that is a very good sort of epitaph; moreover--unlike many such effusions, recording amiable or heroic characteristics of the dead which few had been able to recognise in the living--it is a true one. If not always victorious--and a probably true story, presently to be narrated, appears to point to one instance, at least, in which he and his antagonist parted indecisively--he was, at any rate, never beaten; and his conduct and character obtained for him, from a brave seaman and fighter of his own stamp, who sailed under him, the epithet, "that great hero, Fortunatus Wright"; the actual words, by the way, are "that great but unfortunate hero," and herein is an allusion, no doubt, to some very ungenerous treatment meted out to Wright by foreign authorities, and also to his unknown, and probably tragic, fate.

We have but little information concerning his early manhood; there is not, indeed, any evidence to hand of even the approximate date of his birth. Smollett, in his "History of England," alludes to Wright's exploits, and describes him as "a stranger to a sea-life," until he took to privateering in the Mediterranean; but it is not easy to see upon what grounds the historian bases such an a.s.sumption. Fortunatus Wright was, as we have seen, the son of a sea-captain of no ordinary stamp, and the probability is that he would be brought up in his father's calling--a probability which becomes, practically, a certainty when we reflect that, immediately upon a.s.suming the position of privateer commander, he displayed a consummate skill in seamanship, combined with remarkable tactical powers in sea-fighting, which elicited the enthusiastic admiration of his subordinates; and these qualifications are not acquired on land.

No; Fortunatus Wright was undoubtedly trained as a seaman, and very possibly a privateersman; but it appears that, somewhere about the year 1741, having previously retired from the sea, and settled in Liverpool as a shipowner, he realised his business, and went to reside abroad; and in 1742 we come across news of him in Italy.

Mr. (afterwards Sir) Horace Mann, at that time British Resident at the Court of Florence, in a letter to his friend Horace Walpole--with whom he kept up an enormous correspondence--relates how he had had complaints concerning the violent conduct of Mr. Wright at Lucca. It appears that our friend, travelling in that part of Italy, with introductions to some of the n.o.bility, presented himself one day at the gates of Lucca, never doubting but that, as a respectable and peaceably disposed person, he would immediately be admitted. He had not reckoned, however, with the particular form of "red tape" which prevailed there. He had upon him a pair of pistols; and, upon being informed that the surrender of these weapons was the condition of being permitted to pa.s.s the gates, his English choler immediately rose against what appeared to him to be a tyrannical and unnecessary proceeding; and his natural instinct being--as it always is in fighting men of his stamp--rather to beat down and override opposition than to yield to it, disregarding the serious odds against him--twenty soldiers and a corporal _versus_ Fortunatus Wright--he presented one of the offending pistols at the guard, and clearly indicated that the first man who endeavoured to arrest him would do so at the cost of his life. This was very awkward; no one cared to be the first victim of the "mad Englishman," who was evidently a man of his word, and how it might have ended n.o.body knows, had there not appeared upon the scene a superior officer--a colonel--with thirty more soldiers.

Mr. Wright was thereupon persuaded that the odds were too heavy even for a "mad Englishman," and was escorted to his hotel by this imposing bodyguard, being there made a prisoner while representations were made to the English Amba.s.sador.

Fortunately, one of the Luccese n.o.blemen to whom he had an introduction intervened, undertaking that no harm should result; and on the morning of the fourth day, at the early hour of four, the irate Englishman was informed that since he had been so daring as to endeavour to enter the town by force of arms, it was therefore ordered that he should forthwith leave the State, and never presume to enter it again without leave from the Republic; and that post-horses, with a guard to see him over the border, were waiting at the door.

"He answered a great deal," says Sir Horace Mann, "not much to the purpose"; and so was seen safely out of Lucca, with his pistols in his pocket, we may presume, swearing at the unreasonableness of Italians and their laws. He continued, however, to reside in Italy, and was living at Leghorn when, in 1744, war was declared with France; and then there came to Fortunatus Wright the imperative call to return to a seafaring life.

The war had not been long in progress before the English merchants in Leghorn began to suffer immense annoyance and loss from the depredations of the French privateers which swarmed upon the coast of Italy. Their trade was stifled, their ships compelled to remain in port, or almost inevitably captured if they ventured out; apparently there were not men-of-war available for escort, and the situation became unbearable.

When men have come to the conclusion that things are past bearing they look about for some drastic remedy, and in this instance Mr. Wright was the remedy; Mr. Wright, living quietly in Leghorn, with his wife and family, but with his sea-lore available at the back of his mind, and, for all we know, the love of the salt water tugging at his heart-strings--sailors are made that way. Why not fit out a privateer, and place Mr. Wright in command? The suggestion may, indeed, have come from him in the first instance; at any rate, no time was lost. There was a vessel available, to wit the _Fame_, a staunch brigantine. We have no precise details of her tonnage and force, but she was undoubtedly an efficient craft for the purpose, and Wright speedily demonstrated that he was an entirely fit and proper person to be placed in charge.

Carefully studying the winds of the Mediterranean, and the probable track of the enemy's privateers and merchant vessels, he had his plan of action matured by the time the ship was ready; and this is how it is set forth by William Hutchinson, one of his officers, writing thirty years later:

"Cruising the war before last, in the employ of that great but unfortunate hero, Fortunatus Wright, in the Mediterranean Sea, where the wind blows generally either easterly or westerly--that is, either up or down the Straits--it was planned, with either of these winds that blew, to steer up or down the channels the common course, large or before the wind in the daytime without any sail set, that the enemy's trading ships astern, crowding sail with this fair wind, might come up in sight, or we come in sight of those ships ahead that might be turning to windward; and at sunset, if nothing appeared to the officer at the masthead, we continued to run five or six leagues, so far as could then be seen, before we laid the ship to for the night, to prevent the ships astern coming up and pa.s.sing out of sight before the morning, or our pa.s.sing those ships that might be turning to windward; and if nothing appeared to an officer at the masthead at sunrise, we bore away and steered as before. And when the wind blew across the channel, that ships could sail their course either up or down, then to keep the ship in a fair way; in the daytime to steer the common course, under the courses and lower staysails, and in the night under topsails with the courses in the brails, with all things as ready as possible for action, and to take or leave what we might fall in with."

Before many months had elapsed the soundness of these tactics, and the sagacity with which Wright determined what to take and what to leave, were very conspicuous.

In the months of November and December, 1746, the _Fame_ had to her credit no fewer than eighteen prizes, one of which was a privateer, of 200 tons, with 20 guns and 150 men, fitted out by the French factories on the coast of Caramania, with the express object of putting a stop to the inconveniently successful cruising of Fortunatus Wright, who, however, turned the tables upon her, sending her as a prize into Messina. The Frenchmen, to avoid being taken prisoners, had run her on sh.o.r.e and decamped; but the English captain was not going to be deprived of the prize-money which he and his men had justly earned, so they set to work and got the vessel afloat again, in order that she might be produced and duly condemned as "good prize."

Wright's success, both in fighting and in the pursuit of traders, infuriated the French, and particularly the Knights of St. John, in Malta, where there was very hot antagonism between the two factions--the French and Spaniards on one side, and the Austrians and English on the other.

When Wright kept on sending in his prizes the Austrians would "chaff"

the French. "Here's another of your ships coming in, under the care of Captain Wright," we can imagine them saying. Some duels were fought by angry officers, and eventually the French sent urgent representations to Ma.r.s.eilles, and a vessel was fitted out and manned with the express object of humiliating the English by capturing the _Fame_ and putting a stop to Wright's victorious career.

In due course the privateer put in an appearance at Malta. She was of considerably superior force to the _Fame_, the captain was a man of repute as a seaman and fighter, and was entertained by the French, who patted him on the back and sent him forth to conquer.

But it is never safe to pat a man on the back for prospective triumphs.

As the days pa.s.sed excitement and expectation became intense; the points of vantage, whence a good view of incoming vessels could be obtained, were thronged with anxious spectators of both factions; and we may suppose that there was a considerable amount of mutual banter, not in the best of good-humour.

At length two vessels were sighted; as they approached it was seen that one was towing the other. Then the French privateer was recognised, and it was noticed that the other vessel, in tow, was very much knocked about. While conjecture was ripening into triumphant conviction up went the colours--French colours! That decided the question--the career of the obnoxious Wright--"ce cher Wright," sarcastically--was at an end, and the enthusiastic Frenchmen shook hands and embraced, and waved hats and handkerchiefs to the victor.

There was one delightful characteristic of "ce cher Wright," however, which they had failed to realise--he was possessed of a very keen sense of humour. In spite of the shattered condition of the staunch little _Fame_, she had come off victorious, and Wright had very naturally placed her in tow of the larger vessel, which he himself was navigating, her crew his prisoners of war; and seeing the crowded ramparts from afar, this agreeable but unsuspected little trait of his had displayed itself in the hoisting of French colours.

Then, when the cheering and embracing was at its climax, as the vessels rounded the fort, the English colours sailed up to the peak, with the French below!

And then--well, then we may imagine that there was the making of some more duels!

Fortunatus Wright was no mere filibustering swashbuckler, like so many other privateer commanders who, as we have seen, brought their calling into sad disrepute; nor was he a man to be intimidated by his crew into committing any unlawful act for the sake of plunder; but he was very tenacious of his rights, and on more than one occasion came to serious loggerheads with high authorities; very much, eventually, to his cost.

In December 1746, while reports were going home of his numerous captures, he overhauled and seized a French vessel, on a voyage from Ma.r.s.eilles to Naples, having on board the servants and all the luggage and belongings of the Prince of Campo Florida. The French skipper produced a pa.s.s, from no less a person than King George II. of England, by which these persons and goods should be exempt from molestation by English cruisers; but there was a flaw in this doc.u.ment, for the name of the ship was not entered upon it. "All very well," said Wright, "but how am I to know that King George intended this ship to go free? She is not named on the safe-conduct"; and into Leghorn she went as a prize, prince's servants, baggage, and all, to the horror of the British Consul, and to the great disgust of the Prince of Campo Florida; nor would Wright listen to the remonstrances of the Consul, maintaining that he was technically justified in his action; and there was undoubtedly some ground for this contention. However, the British Minister persuaded him to refer the matter to the Admiral commanding on the station, by whose adverse decision Wright loyally abided, and the vessel was released accordingly.

It was a much more serious affair when, in 1747, he fell out with the Turkey Company--officially known as "The Company of English Merchants trading to the Levant Sea"--a very wealthy and powerful organisation, jealous of its rights, and somewhat perturbed, moreover, at this particular period, by the falling off in its returns; so that it was exceedingly annoying to find Turkish goods being seized by Captain Wright on board French ships.

There were two vessels in question, and the English Consul at Leghorn received orders from home to investigate the business. With his previous experience of the privateer captain's stiffness and command of technical knowledge of prize law, the Consul, we may be sure, did not antic.i.p.ate an easy acquiescence in any suggestions he might make; and, in fact, Wright's reply was a very decided refusal to admit that he was in fault.

He said that both ships had a French pa.s.s, hailed from Ma.r.s.eilles, and hoisted French colours; and one of them offered a stout resistance before she struck. "For these reasons I brought them to Leghorn, and have had them legally condemned in the Admiralty Court, by virtue of which sentence I have disposed of them and distributed the money."

Quite an una.s.sailable position, one would imagine; but the irate Governors of the Turkey Company were able to procure, by some means or other, an order from the English Government that Turkish cargoes in French vessels were to be exempt from capture. Upon this order being communicated to the privateer captains and Admiralty Courts in the Mediterranean, it was expected that Wright would refund the prize-money; but he, very properly, as it appears, refused to admit that such an order could be retrospective--he had the money, and meant to keep it; and then there was trouble. Orders were sent from England to have him arrested and sent home; the Italian authorities obligingly caught him and locked him up, refusing, with singular and gratuitous crookedness, to yield him up to consular jurisdiction--and there he remained in prison at Leghorn for six months, when he was at length handed over to the Consul. Wright had, however, had enough of prison, and, upon giving bail to answer the action in the High Court of Admiralty, he was set at liberty.

The action appears to have dragged on for two or three years, without result--at any rate, Captain Wright never refunded the money, and one cannot help feeling gratified at his success. He wrote, in June 1749, a long letter to the Consul in vindication of his right, which concludes as follows: "They attacked me at law; to that law I must appeal; if I have acted contrary to it, to it I must be responsible; for I do not apprehend I am so to any agent of the Grand Signior, to the Grand Signior himself, or to any other Power, seeing I am an Englishman and acted under a commission from my prince"; surely a most logical, and certainly a most dignified att.i.tude.

Peace restored, Wright engaged in commerce, in partnership, apparently, with William Hutchinson. They fitted out as a trader an old 20-gun vessel--the _Lowestoft_--which made several voyages to the West Indies--Wright continuing to reside at Leghorn.

CHAPTER X