The War of Wars (91 page)

Harvey was soon afterwards removed from command for using ‘grossly insubordinate language’ towards Gambier. He was court-martialled and dismissed from the service. But he was an immensely popular figure, one of Nelson’s most famous commanders and was reinstated the following year, although he was never given a command again.

Cochrane, assured by Harvey that he had no personal grudge against him, went off to his own ship, the frigate
Imperieuse
, to make preparations. He wrote directly to Mulgrave in response to his request to detail his original plan of attack, dating from Thornburgh’s time:

My Lord – Having been very close the Isle d’Aix, I find that the western wall has been pulled down to build a better. At present the fort is quite open, and may be taken as soon as the French fleet is driven on shore or burned, which will be as soon as the fireships arrive. The wind continues favourable for the attack. If your Lordship can prevail on the ministry to send a military force here, you will do great and lasting good to our country. Could ministers see things with their own eyes, how differently would they act; but they cannot be everywhere present, and on their opinion of the judgement of others must depend the success of war – possibly the fate of England and all Europe. No diversion which the whole force of Great Britain is capable of making in Portugal or Spain would so much shake the French government as the capture of the islands on this coast. A few men would take Oléron; but to render the capture effective, send twenty-thousand men who, without risk, would find occupation for the French army of a hundred thousand.

The Admiralty took no notice.

Cochrane supervised the conversion of the transports into fireships as they arrived from England. The construction of fireships was an old technique. Five large trails of gunpowder were laid criss-cross on the deck. Wood and canvas were stretched between them. Up above, tarred ropes dangled down from sails also covered in tar. Chains were fixed to the sides with grappling hooks –
a chevaux de frise –
so that it would be difficult for a ship which a fireship drifted against to detach itself. Resin and turpentine were poured all over the fireship to help it to burn. Finally huge holes were made in the hull so as to help suck in air and feed the flames after the ship began to burn.

With the arrival of a further nine fireships from England, Cochrane now had twenty-one under his command. But he was busier still on his own invention, explosion ships. The French would be prepared for fireships, but they would have no understanding of his new secret weapon, just approved by the Admiralty. The preparations for these were more elaborate still: ‘The floor was rendered as firm as possible by means of logs placed in close contact, into every crevice of which other
substances were firmly wedged so as to afford the greatest amount of resistance to the explosion. On this foundation were placed a large number of spirit and water casks, into which 1,500 barrels of powder casks were placed, several hundred shells, and over these again nearly three thousand hand grenades; the whole, by means of wedges and sand, being compressed as nearly as possible into a solid mass.’

Vice-Admiral Allemand had anchored the French fleet in an apparently impregnable position. They were drawn up in two lines, between two small islands, the Île d’Aix and the Île Madame, which dominated the approaches to the Charente river. There were gun batteries on the Île d’Aix and the Île d’Oleron, a large spur of land to the west, as well as on the mainland. Cochrane had, however, already personally observed that the battery on Aix was in a poor state of repair, and its firepower grossly exaggerated. Moreover his earlier reconnaissance had led him to discover a remarkable thing. The only clear line of attack upon the French would have to be between a large reef, around three miles wide, called the Boyart Shoal, which was uncovered at low tide, and the Île d’Aix. ‘From previous employment on the spot on several occasions I well knew there was room in the Channel to keep out of the way of red-hot shot from the Aix batteries even if, by means of blue lights [flares] or other devices, they had discovered us. The officers and crews of the line-of-battle ships would be impressed with the idea that every fireship was an explosion vessel, and that in place of offering opposition they would, in all probability, be driven ashore in their attempt to escape from such diabolical engines of warfare, and thus become an easy prey.’ In other words, the fort providing protection for the French fleet was no use at all. The ‘lethal’ fire of their guns could not reach the British ships if the latter stuck to the right-hand side of the Channel. There was no threat from this quarter, which Gambier persisted in regarding as extremely dangerous.

‘Dismal Jimmie’ had written to the Admiralty just a few days before:

The enemy’s ships are anchored in two lines, very near each other, in a direction due south from the Isle d’Aix, and the ships in each line not father apart than their own length; by which it appears, as I imagined, that the space for their anchorage is so confined by the
shoaliness of the water, as not to admit of ships to run in and anchor clear of each other. The most distant ships of their two lines are within point-blank shot of the works on the Isle d’Aix; such ships, therefore, as might attack the enemy would be exposed to be raked by red-hot shot, etc, from the island, and should the ships be disabled in their masts, they must remain within range of the enemy’s fire until they are destroyed – there not being sufficient depth of water to allow them to move to the southward out of distance.

Having thus set out the dangers of an attack in alarmist tones, Gambier then typically reached an ingratiatingly ambiguous conclusion: ‘I beg leave to add that, if their Lordships are of opinion that an attack on the enemy’s ships by those of the fleet under my command is practicable, I am ready to obey any orders they may be pleased to honour me with, however great the risk may be of the loss of men and ships.’

What neither Gambier nor Cochrane knew was that the French had their own secret defence – a 900-foot long boom made of wooden trunks held together by chains and anchored to the sea floor. Allemand had also taken other precautions: he had stationed four frigates along the boom, as well as some seventy smaller boats whose purpose was to tow any fireships away from the main fleet should they succeed – which seemed unlikely – in breaking through the boom. The ten French battleships in the front line had lowered their sails in order to lessen their chances of catching fire.

On the morning of 10 April Cochrane went to Gambier to seek formal authorization to put his plan into action. To his astonishment, Gambier refused, citing the danger to the crews of the fireships: ‘If you choose to rash on to self-destruction that is your own affair, but it is my duty to take care of the lives of others, and I will not place the crews of the fireships in palpable danger.’ Depressed and frustrated, Cochrane returned to the
Impérieuse
. The following day the wind got up from the west and a heavy sea began to run. Far from being deterred by this, Cochrane saw that it presented an opportunity: the sea would favour the British, especially as the tide came in, and, although the swell would make
navigation much trickier in the treacherous Channel, the French would be less on their guard, thinking the conditions too dangerous for an attack.

Gambier, meanwhile, had had time to reflect. His explicit orders were to allow Cochrane to make the attack; and he could not continue to refuse him authority without risking injury to his own reputation. Cochrane returned on board the flagship to ask for permission; and this time it was grudgingly given.

His ships would attack in three waves. The first would be his three explosion ships, the foremost of which he, never reluctant to place himself in intense danger at the front of the fighting, would command. The second wave would consist of the twenty fireships. Behind them were three frigates, the
Pallas
, the
Aigle
and the
Unicorn
, accompanied by HMS
Caesar
to pick up the returning crews of the explosion vessels and fireships; but they would not come close to the action at this stage.

There were two sobering thoughts. First, the French understandably regarded fireships as a barbaric instrument of war, and would execute anyone they caught that could be identified as crewing them; the sailors were instructed to say, if caught, that they belonged to victualling ships nearby. Second, although the flood-tide to shore in this heavy swell favoured the fireships’ approach, it would make it very difficult for their crews, now in small boats, to go out against the flow and regain the safety of the rescue ships.

Gambier, astonishingly, anchored his fleet nine miles away. It was such a distance that it could only be supposed he wanted to be able to make a break for it and escape if the French fleet came out after him – the reverse of virtually all British naval tactics for a century or more, which were based on carrying the fight to the French. The fleet would be too far to exercise the slightest influence on the initial action and, worse, it was impossible for him to see what was really going on; even signals were liable to be misinterpreted at that distance.

Cochrane floated in on the flood tide aboard the foremost explosion vessel – itself a desperately dangerous venture, as he and his men were sitting on top of tons of explosive; one lucky shot from the French and they would be annihilated. Besides Cochrane and Lieutenant Bissel of
the
Impérieuse
there were just four seamen. Behind him a second explosion ship followed with Midshipman Marryat – later to make a name as a great story teller – on board, commanded by a lieutenant. Cochrane had no idea there was a boom but his ship navigated successfully down the Channel at dead of night, in spite of the heavy swell, approaching as close to the distant huddle of the French fleet as he dared. Then he lit the fifteen-minute fuse of the explosives aboard. He was certainly very close to the boom when he did so; his men were already aboard the getaway gig.

As soon as he jumped aboard, they rowed for all they were worth away from the explosion ship in the pitch darkness. According to press accounts Cochrane, hearing barking, saw a dog aboard – the ship’s mascot – and rowed back to fetch it. Certainly something delayed his departure, and the fuse, for some reason, went off after only nine minutes. Cochrane’s boat had barely managed to get clear of the ship again when it went up. He was saved by his failure to get further. If he had not gone back he would have been on the receiving end of the shower of debris that soared overhead and landed in an arc in the sea just beyond.

The explosion was awesome. Cochrane vividly described the scene:

For a moment, the sky was red with the lurid glare arising from the simultaneous ignition of 1,500 barrels of powder. On this gigantic flash subsiding, the air seemed alive with shells, grenades, rockets, and masses of timber, the wreck of the shattered vessel; whilst the water was strewn with spars shaken out of the enormous boom, on which, on the subsequent testimony of Captain Proteau, whose frigate lay just within the boom, the vessel had brought up before she exploded. The sea was convulsed as by an earthquake, rising in a huge wave on whose crest our boat was lifted like a cork and as suddenly dropped into a vast trough, out of which, as it closed on us with a rush of a whirlpool, none expected to emerge. The skill of the boat’s crew however overcame the threatened danger, which passed away as suddenly as it had arisen, and in a few minutes nothing but a heavy rolling sea had to be encountered, all having become silence and darkness.

The boom lay in pieces. The second ship passed through its broken fragments some ten minutes later, and the decision was taken to detonate it and abandon ship in the same way. Another tremendous explosion shattered the peace of the night sky. The third explosion ship had, however, been pushed away from the scene by the
Impérieuse
because a fireship had come too close, and there was a risk of all three blowing up together. Marryat was ordered to go aboard the fireship and steer it away, a heroic action, after which Cochrane asked him laconically whether he had felt warm.

To Cochrane’s disappointment the fireships were badly handled. As he rowed back to the
Impérieuse
, three or four passed him, being towed by small rowing boats towards their destination. But the towing boats of some seventeen others had abandoned them about four miles out to sea, judging the risk too great, and most drifted harmlessly ashore. The whole spectacle, however, had been enough to cause havoc among the French fleet. Their first experience of the attack had been the ear-shattering explosion and conflagration aboard Cochrane’s ship, followed by another even closer to hand. Then the night sky had been lit up by the spectacle of twenty blazing vessels, some close, others out to sea, in a massive attack to destroy the French fleet.

Their first assumption was that the fireships coming towards them were also explosion vessels, and in the small space of water of the Aix anchorage, the French ships of the line manoeuvred desperately to avoid them, while both wind and tide drove them relentlessly towards the shore. The flagship
Océan
was the first to run aground. According to one of its officers:

At 10.00 we grounded, and immediately after a fireship in the height of her combustion grappled us athwart our stern; for ten minutes she remained in this situation while we employed every means in our power to prevent the fire from catching the ship; our fire engines and pumps played upon the poop enough to prevent it from catching fire; with spars we hove off the fireship, with axes we cut the chains of the grapplings lashed to her yards, but a
chevaux de frise
on her sides held her firmly to us. In this deplorable situation we thought we must have been burned, as the flames of the fireship
covered all our poop. Two of our line-of-battle ships, the
Tonnerre
and
Patriote
, at this time fell on board of us; the first broke our bowsprit and destroyed our main chains. Providence afforded us assistance on this occasion. At the moment the fireship was athwart our stern, and began to draw forward along the starboard side, the
Tonnerre
separated herself from us, and unless this had happened the fireship would have fallen into the angle formed by two ships and would infallibly have burnt them. The fireship having got so far forward as to be under our bowsprit, we left it there some time to afford the two ships above mentioned time to get far enough away to avoid being boarded by this fireship. While this fireship was on board of us we let the cocks run in order to wet the powder, but they were so feeble that we could not do that.