The Leeward Islands Squadron, page 30
part #2 of Carlisle & Holbrooke Series
As the anchor cable snaked out of the hawse hole, the longboat was hauled alongside and manned. By the time the cable was made fast to the bitts, Carlisle was being piped over the side, and the boat shot away towards the flagship. He had departed Medina to the accompaniment of only a single bosun’s call and two side boys, all that could be spared from the tasks of working the ship and guarding the prisoners. By contrast, he was greeted at the entry port of the flagship by the full ceremonial required for a post-captain – a chorus of calls, six side boys and all the flagship’s commission officers. If Frankland planned any kind of reprimand, he was at least providing the outward signs of a very cordial greeting.
Carlisle looked over his shoulder before he allowed himself to be ushered to the great cabin. The visible evidence of his success was laid out before him in the intense tropical sunshine, framed by the flagship’s entry port. All his ships were safely at anchor behind the guns of Fort Berkeley and The Half Moon Battery. His beloved Medina, L’Arques, Scorpion, the ship that he captured to the northeast and the four merchantmen that he took off Martinique only twelve days ago – it seemed like a lifetime. Carlisle realised in an instant that he had nothing to fear from this interview with the admiral. Here was substantial evidence that the Leeward Islands Squadron was contributing to the war effort, evidence that would make good reading on the streets of London and be welcomed by an embattled Admiralty still reeling from the disaster at Minorca. The pressures on the Devonshire Pitt government would be eased at least for a day or two, Frankland would be enriched by his eighth share of the value of the prizes, even Scorpion would be likely to yield an ex gratia payment as she had been more than twenty-four hours in French hands. If Frankland privately disagreed with Carlisle’s actions regarding Lieutenant Godwin, he would take it as a fait accompli. Godwin’s career was wrecked – he would be lucky not to be broken by the inevitable court martial – and Carlisle found it hard to feel any pity for a man who had spurned so many opportunities to unbend.
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It was an hour later that Carlisle was shown back to the entry port. The same ceremony but now in reverse, the only difference being the unexplained absence of Winchester’s officers and the addition of the admiral who had come to personally see Carlisle over the side. There was a strange hush over the ship as he took his seat in the stern sheets of his boat beside Jackson, who had magically appeared in his rightful place.
‘Now how has Jackson managed to get back to my boat so soon?’ thought Carlisle, who had last seen him boarding Scorpion with Holbrooke. ‘And was Jackson fighting back a grin? Damn him, the man had probably been drinking.’ With a shove from the bows, the boat turned and headed towards Medina.
‘Captain Carlisle,’ called the admiral from the entry port. ‘You should remove your hat, sir.’
‘How strange, what on earth was Frankland talking about?’ thought Carlisle. But at that moment he was startled by a single gun from the bows of the flagship, and then the anchorage erupted as a great cheer arose from every ship. The yards of all the squadron were festooned with sailors, and they were cheering – cheering him, Captain Carlisle, the post-captain from the Colonies. That explained the absence of the officers from the entry port.
‘Your hat sir,’ whispered Jackson, now smiling broadly. He wouldn’t have missed this for anything, he would have swum past shoals of sand sharks – if that is what it took – to be at the tiller of his captain’s boat at this moment. Carlisle was rowed back to his frigate past every ship of the squadron, bare-headed in recognition of the extraordinary honour. The cheers continued, echoing back from the hills until the longboat hooked onto Medina’s chains.
***
Carlisle hauled himself through the break in the gunwale and onto the waist. He was dazed and disorientated by having been cheered by the squadron – an honour that few sea officers were granted, and none ever forgot.
‘Mister Hosking, be so kind as to ask Mister Holbrooke to come to my cabin.’
‘Mister Holbrooke is not yet on board, sir. Shall I send a boat ashore for him?’
‘No thank you Mister Hosking, I’m sure he has some business ashore, and we will see him soon,’ replied Carlisle, hiding his irritation. ‘But that is odd and slightly disappointing,’ he thought. ‘The first lieutenant’s clear duty is to report on board as soon as his ship has anchored.’ Carlisle had expected to be met on the waist by Holbrooke, and in any case, he had a host of tasks to unload on him. ‘Let me know when he returns; I will be in my cabin.’
Carlisle had not even reached his cabin when he heard the call from the quarterdeck, ‘boat approaching sir. It’s Mister Holbrooke.’ There was some whispering that Carlisle couldn’t catch, but if it was important, he could rely upon the officer of the watch to let him know.
Carlisle threw himself into his chair. Exhaustion was threatening to overwhelm the euphoria of his reception by the admiral. He was on the point of loosening his stock when there was a knock at the door. It was Midshipman Lynton, with a look somewhat like the one he saw on Jackson in the longboat, a suppressed grin.
‘If you please, sir, Mister Holbrooke will be on board in two minutes.’
‘I know that very well, damn you,’ said Carlisle letting his annoyance show. Was there no rest for the captain of one of His Majesty’s frigates? What did Lynton expect him to do, greet his first lieutenant – who should have reported an hour ago – at the gangway?
‘Sir,’ said Lynton crestfallen. ‘There is a lady in the boat with him, and I very much believe it’s Lady Chiara … from Nice.’ Lynton stood indecisively. Should he add that she looked unreasonably beautiful, should he comment at all? But the decision was taken out of his hands as Carlisle leapt to his feet and rushed through the cabin door, thrusting Lynton to the side in his haste. He reached the quarterdeck in half a dozen strides to see the boat only thirty yards away. There were six oarsmen, two less than usual to allow space for the passengers. He could see the young soldier Enrico, and in a flash of insight, he knew at least one of the viscountess’ mysterious conditions. For there, sat bolt upright in the space normally occupied by the stroke oar, sat the mysterious and formidable chief-of-household of the Angelini family – Black Rod as he had been dubbed on account of his impressive bearing. There was a midshipman at the tiller and Holbrooke. But he had eyes for none of these, because – incredibly – his beloved Chiara was sat beside Holbrooke, smiling delightedly below her flowered hat. Old Eli, the quartermaster, turned discreetly away as he saw the tears on his captain’s face.
***
Epilogue: Pitt’s Strategy
What became known as the First Newcastle Administration collapsed in November 1756, shortly after Wessex and Medina sailed from the Downs. The Duke of Newcastle and his cabinet had been severely criticised for their handling of the war, Britain having lost Calcutta in India, leading to the tragic incident of The Black Hole, and Oswego on Lake Ontario. But it was the debacle at Minorca that sealed his fate, at least for the next six months. It could have been worse. Months later it was a commonplace, heard in the taverns and salons, that Byng was shot so that Newcastle wouldn’t be hanged. Henry Fox, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department and Lord Anson, the First Lord of the Admiralty, followed Newcastle into the wilderness. But not before they had set in train the events that caused Wessex and Medina to be sent under sealed orders to the West Indies and initiated Carlisle and Holbrooke’s adventures on the Leeward Islands Station.
The incoming administration was headed by the Duke of Devonshire, who promoted a new man into the Southern Department, William Pitt, known to history as Pitt the Elder. In this post, Pitt was responsible for Southern England, Wales, Ireland and the American Colonies, and for diplomatic relations with the Roman Catholic and Muslim states of Europe. With it came the responsibility for the naval and military strategies for operations in those areas, in effect the majority of Britain’s naval and military effort in the Seven Years War.
Pitt had already served as Paymaster General of the Forces, but for some years he had wielded influence that belied his relatively junior ministerial role. By his straightforward approach and ostentatious honesty – some would call it self-serving political opportunism – he had become a favourite of the people, earning the popular name of The Great Commoner. Now, with Devonshire sitting in the Lords, he found himself in the much-coveted position of Leader of the House of Commons – the de facto Prime Minister. Earl Temple became the First Lord of the Admiralty, a relatively harmless six-month punctuation in Anson’s brilliant career.
Pitt, almost alone in the cabinet, thoroughly understood the value to Britain of its burgeoning empire and particularly the Thirteen Colonies in North America, and this at a time when the sugar plantations in the West Indies were the jewel in the British economic crown, overshadowing all other trade. Consequently, his war aims at this point were focussed on securing Britain’s American Colonies without sacrificing any of the valuable possessions in the West Indies, the East Indies, or those in Africa.
Pitt knew that the British North American Colonies could never be at peace while the French held Canada. This point that had been demonstrated by France’s 1754-1756 push down the Ohio valley that had precipitated this war, an attempt to link up with their countrymen in Louisiana through the Mississippi basin. French dominion of the Ohio and Mississippi would have confined the Thirteen Colonies to a narrow strip of land between the sea and the Appalachian mountain range, while France would be left free to expand westward across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains to the blue Pacific Ocean. Pitt knew that if Britain didn’t act, France would hold the north, the south, the west and the centre of that vast continent, denying the British Colonies the opportunity to increase and keeping them under constant threat of overland invasion. Under those conditions, it would only be a matter of time before they fell under French domination.
France’s American strategy had one great and – as it was to prove, fatal – weakness. The very existence of Canada, known as New France to the French, was dependent upon its sea communications with its homeland, but ever since the end of the War of Austrian Succession in 1748, Britain had been the dominant European maritime power. Consequently, the British grand strategy was inherently maritime, to cut off the sea lines of communication between France and New France and when their garrisons and economy were sufficiently weakened, to invade. When that was achieved, Pitt planned to apply the same strategy to the lesser threat of the French settlements in Louisiana.
Britain’s involvement in the continental war would be designed to support the maritime grand strategy and protect its colonies. Frederick of Prussia (he was not yet known as Frederick the Great), Britain’s only Great Power ally, would be offered cash subsidies to keep him fighting and to tie down French manpower and finances on the continent, thus preventing them building a navy to rival Britain’s. Otherwise, Pitt had little interest in continental affairs apart from the continuing need to ensure that no single power dominated Europe. In Pitt’s mind, the only vital ground on the continent – and then only reluctantly acknowledged – was Hanover, George II’s personal fiefdom and Electorate, the place where he had spent the first thirty years of his life and to which he was particularly attached. It was generally understood that if Hanover were lost, then something substantial would have to be exchanged for it in the eventual peace negotiations. If that something were Canada, then the war and all its miseries and all its expense would have been for nothing.
***
During the winter of 1756 Devonshire and Pitt shook off the defeat at Minorca and the disappointments in North America and India and planned their naval deployments to hold the line until they could muster the forces to take the offensive against France. In this, they benefitted from Anson’s careful stewardship of the navy as more and more ships became available and – of the utmost importance – the men to operate them. In the mid-eighteenth century, the navy was still predominantly a volunteer service, with the impress service – the Press Gang of lurid fame – supplementing the numbers by forcibly recruiting those who used the sea as their profession.
Rear Admiral Thomas Cotes was sent to relieve Townshend in Jamaica, flying his flag in the sixty-eight-gun Marlborough, with two sixty-gun ships, a fifty-gun ship and six frigates to supplement the existing three ships of the line. This gave Cotes a respectable battle squadron of seven ships which, if concentrated, would be the equal of anything the French were likely to deploy to that theatre. Frankland had to make do with his three ships of the line and numerous frigates and smaller vessels.
With no significant French squadron in the Caribbean and, so far, no strategy of territorial conquest, Cotes and Frankland could concentrate on the commerce war – the protection of British commerce and the interdiction of French trade. The deployment of the ships to support this commerce war was a well-understood science. The ships of the line were stationed to keep a watch on the two main French naval bases in the region, Fort Royal at Martinique and Cape François at the western end of St. Dominique, leaving the frigates to cover the main trade routes and the sloops and smaller vessels to protect British trade from privateers.
While the opening months of 1757 hardly looked any less gloomy for Britain and its navy than the closing months of 1756, and British politics was in a hopeless mess of its own making, we can nevertheless see the first glimmerings of a winning strategy shining through the gloom of political confusion. To quote Winston Churchill, speaking in a much more hazardous situation nearly two centuries later:
‘Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’
***
Carlisle and Holbrooke will return, in the third book of the series, to implement the British naval strategy in the second year of the war.
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Nautical Terms
Throughout the centuries, sailors have created their own language to describe the highly technical equipment and processes that they use to live and work at sea. This holds true in the twenty-first century. When counting the number of nautical terms that I have used in this series of novels, it became evident that a printed book was not the best place for them. I have therefore created a glossary of nautical terms on my website
https://chris-durbin.com/glossary/
My glossary of nautical terms is limited to those that I have used in this series of novels, as they were used in the middle of the eighteenth century. It is intended as a work of reference to accompany the Carlisle and Holbrooke series of naval adventure novels.
Some of the usages of these terms have changed over the years, so this glossary should be used with caution when referring to periods before 1740 or after 1780.
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My online glossary is not exhaustive; a more comprehensive list can be found in Falconer’s Universal Dictionary of the Marine, first published in 1769. I have not counted the number of terms that Falconer has defined, but he fills 328 pages with English language terms, followed by a further eighty-three pages of French translations. It is a monumental work.
An online version of the 1780 edition of The Universal Dictionary (which unfortunately does not include all the excellent diagrams that are in the print version) can be found on this website:
https://archive.org/details/universaldiction00falc
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Bibliography
The following is a selection of the many books that I consulted in researching The Leeward Islands Squadron.
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Sir Julian Corbett wrote the original, definitive text on the seven years war. Most later writers use his work as a stepping stone to launch their own.
Corbett, LLM., Sir Julian Stafford. England in the Seven Years War – Vol. I: A Study in Combined Strategy: Normandy Press. Kindle Edition.
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Three very accessible modern books cover the strategic context and naval operations of the seven years war. Daniel Baugh addresses the whole war on land and sea, while Martin Robson concentrates on maritime operations. Jonathan Dull has produced a very readable account from the French perspective.
Baugh, Daniel. The Global Seven Years War 1754-1763. Pearson Education 2011. Print.
Robson, Martin. A History of the Royal Navy, The Seven Years War. I.B. Taurus, 2016. Print.
Dull, Jonathan, R. The French Navy and the Seven Years’ War, University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Print
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For an interesting perspective on the life of sea officers of the mid-eighteenth century, I would read Augustus Hervey’s Journal, with the cautionary note that Hervey was by no means typical of the breed, but he is very entertaining and devastatingly honest. For a more balanced view I would read British Naval Captains of the Seven Years War:
Erskine, David (editor). Augustus Hervey’s Journal, The Adventures Afloat and Ashore of a Naval Casanova: Chatham Publishing, 2002. Print.
McLeod, A.B. British Naval Captains of the Seven Years War, A View for the Quarterdeck. The Boydell Press, 2012. Print.
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I recommend The Wooden World for an overview of shipboard life and administration during the seven years war:
N.A.M Rodger. The Wooden World, An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy. Fontana Press, 1986. Print.
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The Author
Chris Durbin grew up in the seaside town of Porthcawl in South Wales. As a sea cadet, he had his first experience of sailing in the treacherous tideway of the Bristol Channel. He was a crew member on the Porthcawl lifeboat before joining the navy.
