Life of Frederick Marryat. David Hannay

an attack on the enemy’s ships. Very reluctantly, for he knew how ill he was likely to be received by officers whom he would practically supersede, he undertook the work. He prepared a flotilla of explosion vessels and fire-ships. In April the Impérieuse had joined Gambier’s squadron. A detailed account of the action which followed would be out of place here. Its rather melancholy history is to be read in Cochrane’s “Autobiography,” and the Minutes of the court martial on Lord Gambier. The squadron was in an indifferent moral condition, divided by sour professional factions, and impatient of its Admiral, a brave but weak officer, chiefly known as what was called in the navy a “blue light,” that is a pious man of a somewhat Methodistical turn. Very little zeal was shown in supporting Cochrane. The attack was made on the night of April 11th, and whatever the Impérieuse could do was magnificently done. The French fleet of eight line-of-battle ships, and some smaller vessels, had withdrawn to the Basque Roads, at the mouth of the Charente, and had fortified itself with a heavy boom. Towards that boom the English explosion and fire-ships were driven by wind and tide after dark on the 11th. It is doubtful whether more than one of them reached it—but that one was commanded by Cochrane himself. She was brought up to the boom at half a cable’s length off the French frigate Indienne, and there exploded, scattering the boom all over the mouth of the Charente. Through the opening thus made a few English vessels passed. They were a mere handful, and might have been sunk by the fire of the French, but our enemies were panic stricken. They cut their cables, and ran ashore. When day broke the French ships were fast aground, and might every one have been destroyed; but Lord Gambier was an officer of the stamp peculiarly hateful to Nelson. He was prompt to conclude that enough had been done, and was loth to risk ships and men in what he thought an unnecessary way. In vain did Cochrane, who had now returned to the Impérieuse, hoist signal after signal urging the Admiral to attack. He told him that the enemy were ashore, and could be destroyed; that they would get off if they were not stopped; that they were actually preparing to get off. It skilled not, and Gambier remained stolidly at anchor miles off. At last Cochrane, who by this time was nearly rabid with rage, work, and want of sleep, flew into a Berserker fury. He deliberately drifted the Impérieuse stern first under the guns of the French liners, and then signalled that he was overpowered and in need of assistance. This desperate measure, worthy of Nelson in his most splendid moments, did at last force Admiral Gambier’s hand. Some vessels were sent—when it was well-nigh too late to do any service at all—and distinctly too late to do all that ought to have been done. Three of the French liners were destroyed, but the others by throwing their guns overboard and starting their water, were able to grovel over the mud-bar of the Charente, and escape into a pool out of reach up the river. They never appeared in the West Indies certainly, but the work was half done. Cochrane went back to England—with all that was best and worst in him fermenting with fury—to make his unhappy motion of opposition in the House to the vote of thanks to Admiral Gambier. From thence came his final quarrel with the Admiralty, and the court martial on Lord Gambier, in which it is only too probable that English officers and officials of rank winked at the suppression of evidence, and something not unlike forgery. Cochrane’s service in our navy was over for long years.

      With this scene of mingled heroism and stupidity, the more brilliant part of Marryat’s naval life came to an end. He was engaged in the Basque Roads on one of the fire-ships, and when they proved of little use, was probably recalled to the Impérieuse. It is to be hoped at least that he was on her deck when her captain, in an exaltation of fury, drifted her among the French liners. In point of time, however, his service was merely beginning, and he was to do good work yet, both as a subordinate and as commander; but it wanted the heroic touch of the first three years. When Cochrane was superseded from the Impérieuse, Marryat remained with the new captain, and under him took part in the wholly wretched Walcheren business, out of which he got—in common with some thousands of others—all that it had to give—a distinct idea of how a combined expedition ought not to be conducted—and an attack of marsh fever.

      From this time until the close of the Great War, he was on such active service as the overpowering supremacy we had attained at sea left to be performed. From the Scheldt he returned invalided on board the Victorious, 74. As soon as he was fit for service, he was appointed to the Centaur, 74, the flag-ship of Sir Samuel Hood, with whom he went back to the Mediterranean, but not to the stirring life of his old frigate. After a year of the seventy-four he returned home, and was appointed to the Æolus frigate on the American station. He went out as a passenger on the Atlas, 64, and joined his ship at Halifax. In the Æolus, and then in another frigate, the Spartan, he became familiar with the West Indies, which are, with the Mediterranean, the scenes of so large a part of his stories. In 1812 he had served his time as midshipman, and returned home to pass. His influence was good, as the fact that he served so much in frigates proves, and he received his lieutenant’s commission immediately after going through his examination (December 26, 1812). Six months later he was appointed to L’Espiègle sloop, and cruised in her on the north coast of South America, till he was invalided by the breaking of a blood-vessel, and sent home as a passenger on board his old frigate, the Spartan, which had now finished her commission. This accident, due in part to a constitutional infirmity, which ultimately proved fatal to him, occurred at Barbadoes, at a dance—perhaps a dignity ball. In 1814 he was back on the coast of America in the Newcastle, 58, and was again invalided home, this time from Madeira. In June, 1815, just as the Great War was closing, Marryat was promoted commander, and the first period of his life came to an end.

      The years from 1809 to 1815 may be rapidly passed over, for though they added to his experience, they were colourless as compared with the cruises of the Impérieuse. He saw some service in them, but it was either tame, or a mere repetition of what he had seen before. The so-called “war of 1812” was in progress during part of his service in the Spartan and all his service in the Newcastle, but he saw little of it. Some boat work—and sharp work too—he went through in Boston Bay, but he saw nothing of those unlucky frigate actions with the Americans, which gave us such a disagreeable shock, and it was not his good fortune to be one of the crew of the famous Shannon. The capture of a small privateer or two, by so powerful a vessel as the Newcastle, was no important experience to a man who had seen the boarding of the King George, the defence of the Trinidad fort at Rosas, and the affair in the Basque Roads. An acquaintance he made with an American prisoner of war while on board the Newcastle was useful to him afterwards, but at the time he probably thought little about it.

      His captains in these years doubtless served him as models when he began his work as a novelist, but they were none of them men of the commanding kind. The best remembered of them was Captain E. P. Brenton of the Spartan, brother of the famous Sir Jahleel who fought a brilliant frigate action off Naples, under the very eyes of Murat. Captain Brenton had himself done good work, but his chief reputation was made in later days, as the author of a life of St. Vincent, and a history of the Great War, which is itself mainly remembered as the object of incessant corrections, often pettifogging, commonly superfluous, and always intensely wearisome, in James’s “Naval History.”

      Even in the most peaceful times, opportunities of facing danger come in every seaman’s way. He may have his chance to save life, and he must help to fight the storm. In both of these ways Marryat distinguished himself. Few men have more frequently risked their own lives to save others. As a midshipman in the Impérieuse he went overboard to save a fellow midshipman. He saved the life of a seaman while serving on the Æolus, and narrowly escaped drowning on a similar occasion when serving in L’Espiègle. On this occasion he was a mile and a half off before the sloop could be brought to, and when a boat picked him up he was nearly senseless. This also was a part of experience to Marryat, for it was while overboard from L’Espiègle that he discovered that drowning is not an unpleasant death. It is recorded in his Life by his daughter that, first and last, “during the time he served in the navy, he was presented with twenty-seven certificates, recommendations, and votes of thanks, for saving the lives of others at the risk of his own, beside receiving a gold medal from the Humane Society.” This mark of distinction given in 1818 was assuredly well deserved.

      Not less pleasing to Marryat than the memory of his efforts to save others, must have been his recollection of