CH. XXVIII. END OF THE MUTINY. 405 were constructed, and furnaces for heating shot red hot prepared. In response to a King's message, the Parliament hastily passed a stringent law for repressing treason in the army and navy, and a royal proclamation forbade, under pain of death, all intercourse, either personal or by letter, with the ships that were in rebellion. These methods gradually succeeded. The difficulties of obtaining water and provisions; the divisions and insubordination that soon broke out in the revolted fleet; the feeling of loyalty and patriotism, which was by no means extinct among the sailors, and the clear signs that the nation repudiated and reprobated their conduct, had soon their effect. Parker speedily lost his authority, and every ship was left to its own guidance. In each of them there was a loyal element, and in most of them there was soon one of those strong reactions of feeling to which impulsive sailors are peculiarly liable. It was a strange and touching fact that, on June 4, the King's birthday, the red flag was hauled down on every ship except that of Parker, and a royal salute was fired, and the royal colours were hoisted. Soon ship after ship began to drop away. Lord Northesk, the captain of one of them, who had been detained as prisoner, was sent on shore to carry a letter to the King. The sailors in the fleet at Plymouth, and the sailors in the fleet at Spithead, exhorted their revolted comrades to make their submission. The ships from the northern fleet went back to Admiral Duncan, and the whole fleet at last returned to its allegiance. On June 14, the mutiny of the Nore was terminated by the arrest of Parker, and a few days later he was tried and hanged. Some of the other ringleaders were either executed or flogged. It is not surprising that, after such an episode, all the enemies of England should have entertained sanguine hopes that the invincible fleet would soon perish by internal decay. Few persons could have expected that its tone and discipline and efficiency could be speedily restored, and some months elapsed before all dangerous symptoms had passed. In September, the crew of a frigate called the 'Hermione,' which was quartered in the West Indies, being exasperated by the gross tyranny of their captain, rose in mutiny, murdered their officers and carried the ship into a Spanish port, and in the following month serious signs of insubordination appeared in the ships at the Cape of Good Hope. The reputation of British sailors had never sunk so low as in the spring and summer of 1797. But the grievances that were felt, were much more professional than political; the evil was much more riotous insubordination than deliberate disaffection; and good administration, the redress of grievances, and perhaps, still more, active service under commanders in whom the sailors had unbounded confidence, soon effected a cure. It is a memorable fact, that the few years that immediately followed the mutiny of the Nore, form one of the most glorious periods in the whole history of the British navy. That history is, indeed, a very singular one, when we consider at once the elements of which the British navy was composed, the treatment it underwent, and the services it rendered. Criminals whose offences were not very great, or against whom the legal evidence was not perfectly conclusive, were at this time constantly permitted to escape trial, by enlisting in it, and, as we have already seen, the press-gangs hung specially around the prison doors, to seize upon discharged prisoners when their sentences had expired. The navy, too, was usually the last resort of tainted reputations and broken careers. Scapegraces in respectable families, disqualified attorneys, cashiered excisemen, dismissed clerks, labourers who through idleness or drunkenness had lost their employments, men from every walk of life, who, through want of capacity or want of character had found other careers closed to them, poured steadily into it. With these were mixed multitudes of United Irishmen, and of other Irish peasants, who had been torn from their cabins by the illegal violence of Lord Carhampton, or under the provisions of the Insurrection Act; 3 line, which at two different periods had belonged to the Plymouth division, and in the majority of which the Catholics greatly exceeded the Protestants; in some of the first and second rates amounting even to twothirds; in one or two first-rates nearly the whole; and in the naval hospital, about four years since, of 470 sick, 303 were Catholics.' (Substance of the speech of Sir J. Hippisley, May 18, 1810, p. 53.) CH. XXVIII. DUTCH FLEET AT TEXEL. 407 and multitudes of merchant seamen who were victims of the press-gangs. The ships were often hells upon earth. The pay was miserable. The allowances were inadequate. The lash was in constant use, and in no other English profession were acts of brutal violence and tyranny so common. Yet it was out of these elements, and under these circumstances, that a navy was formed, which under Duncan, and Collingwood, and Nelson, covered England with undying glory, carried her triumphantly through the struggle with the united navies of the Continent, swept every sea, and defeated every rival. Reckless courage and contempt for death, a boundless spirit of adventure, complete devotion to every chief who was fully trusted, discipline and fertility of resource in the hour of battle, kindliness and chivalry in the hour of victory, were seldom wanting, and the careless, dauntless, generous, childlike sailor type, which shines so brightly in the life of Nelson, and in the songs of Dibdin, is perhaps more popular than any other with the English people. All the qualities of the British navy were now needed to guard against the storm which was brewing in the North. Wolfe Tone arrived at the Texel on July 8, and his journals furnish a vivid and authentic picture of the expedition. The admiral, De Winter, and still more, General Daendels-a man who, in after years, played a great part as Governor of Javaat once impressed him by their manifest resolution and ability, and he was no less struck by the enormous superiority of the Dutch fleet at the Texel to the French fleet at Brest. The Dutch expedition for the invasion of Ireland, now consisted of fifteen ships of the line, besides ten frigates and sloops, and 13,544 soldiers, a force, in the opinion of Tone, amply sufficient to accomplish the task; and a French expedition, in which Hoche was to take part, was intended to follow it. The number of the ships with Duncan varied greatly, and the intelligence relating to them was very scanty. At the period of the mutiny of the Nore, the desertion of many ships appears to have reduced the fleet almost to a skeleton, but at that time the 1 Tone's Memoirs, ii. 419–441. 2 James states that Admiral Duncan then found himself with only one ship besides his own, but that he con 2 Dutch expedition was still unprepared. On July 9, all was ready at the Texel, and at this date the Dutch admiral estimated that the ships of the line in the English fleet were at the utmost not more than thirteen, and he believed that they could make no effectual opposition.1 This forecast may have been too confident, but English sailors, who knew how immeasurably superior the Dutch navy still was to the navies of France and Spain, in seamen, ships, and discipline, and how stubbornly it had always contended with England for the empire of the sea, would hardly think lightly of a combat with a superior Dutch fleet, commanded by a very competent admiral, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the enemies' coast. But the winds, which had so signally defeated the French expedition to Bantry Bay, when success seemed almost within its grasp, once more assisted the English, in a way which, in another age, would have been deemed manifestly providential. Day after day, week after week, with a monotony which rather resembled the trade winds of the tropics, than the inconstant climate of the North, the wind blew steadily against the Dutch, making it impossible for their fleet to sail out of the Texel. A concurrence of wind and tide was necessary for it to do so, and for more than six weeks, this concurrence never once occurred. In the mean time, Duncan received reinforcements, and the favourable season was fast passing away. The diary of Tone describes graphically the rage of disappointed hope that was gnawing at his heart. At Brest, we had, against all probability, a fair wind for five days successively, during all which time we were not ready, and at last, when we did arrive at our destination, the wind changed, and we missed our blow. Here all is ready, and nothing is wanting, but a fair wind. . . Everything now depends upon the wind, and we are totally helpless. . . . I am, to-day, eighteen days aboard, and we have not had eighteen minutes of fair wind. . . . I am, to-day, twenty-five days aboard, and at a time when twenty-five hours are of importance. There seems to be a fate in this business. Five weeks, I believe six weeks, the English fleet was paralysed rate account, however, of the mutiny in the Annual Register, it is said that Duncan was deserted by only four men-of-war and one sloop, and that the other ships remained with him. (Annual Register, 1797, pp. 214, 215.) Tone's Memoirs, ii. 433. CH. XXVIII. REPORTS FROM IRELAND. 409 by the mutinies at Portsmouth, Plymouth, and the Nore. The sea was open, and nothing to prevent both the Dutch and French fleets to put to sea. Nothing was ready; that precious opportunity, which we can never expect to return, was lost; and now that we are ready here, the wind is against us, the mutiny is quelled, and we are sure to be attacked by a superior force. . . . Had we been in Ireland, at the moment of the insurrection of the Nore, we should, beyond a doubt, have had, at least, that fleet. . . . The wind is as foul as ever, viz. south-west, in or near which point it has now continued thirty-six days that I am aboard.'1 Two United Irishmen, fresh from Ireland, arrived at the beleaguered fleet, and their news was not encouraging. The people, they said, were losing confidence in the organisation, and in French assistance, especially since the French Government had suffered the great crisis of the mutiny to pass, without making the smallest attempt to profit by it. They waited, in general, till the last day allowed by the proclamation, and then made their submission, took the oath of allegiance, received their pardon, and surrendered their arms. There were fewer guns than was supposed, among the United Irishmen, and their leaders seemed wanting in promptitude and courage. Three months ago, the United Irishmen said, an expedition to Ulster with only 500 men would have succeeded, but public spirit was exceedingly gone back in that time, and a great number of the most active and useful chiefs were either in prison or exile.' Still, Down and Antrim were ready to rise, and it was reported that there were, last June, in the former county, 'twenty-four regiments of 1,000 men each, ready organised, with all their officers and sub-officers.' Tone himself believed, that if either the Dutch or the French effected a landing, the submissive attitude of the people would speedily cease. 'If no landing can be effected, no part remains for the people to adopt but submission or flight.' 2 One other judgment of the probable effects of an invasion, given about the same time, by a man who was very competent to estimate them, may here be cited. McNally reported a con 'Tone's Memoirs, ii. 421, 424, 427, 435. 2 Ibid. ii. 428, 436. |