way of the river, and at 3 h. 30 m. A. M. anchored off Pointe des Barques in perfect safety. At 4 P. M., by following the same plan as the Océan, the Cassard met with the same success. So that the only ships that remained aground at the mouth of the Charente, were the Foudroyant, Régulus, Indienne, and Tourville, the latter furthest up of any. Against these ships no effective attack could be made, even had the weather permitted, because there was no bomb-vessel in the British fleet, the Etna having split her 13-inch mortar and used all her 10-inch shells. On the 16th, at 10 A.M., after more than five days' exertions, highly creditable to her commander, M. Proteau, and his officers and crew, the Indienne was set on fire, and in an hour or two blew to pieces. On the 17th at 4 A. M., it being then about high water, the Foudroyant and Tourville extricated themselves and stood up the river; the latter anchoring off Pointe Vergeron, and the former a little below Pointe des Barques. There now remained only the Régulus; and she lay, as already stated, on the north-east bank of the Charente, just under the town of Fouras. The 18th and 19th passed, without any attempt to destroy this French ship. On the first day there was no bomb-vessel. On the second day the Thunder arrived, but the weather was too violent for the small vessels to co-operate with her. The officer of the Océan, whose letter we have before quoted, says, under date of the 19th of April: "We begin to despair of getting off the Régulus, which ship is still in the same situation. The enemy continue in Isle d'Aix road to the number of 20 sail. They have not made any movement whatever for these three days which is a thing not at all to be understood (ce qui l'on ne conçoit pas bien), for they might with ease attack the Régulus, and oblige her crew to abandon her." On the 20th the Thunder, covered by the gun-brigs, went to attack the Régulus; but a few discharges from the former's 13-inch mortar soon reduced it to the state of the Etna's. The 21st and 22d appear to have passed inactively. On the 23d four gun-brigs took each on board two of the Aigle's long 18-pounders, and, with the two bomb-vessels (the Etna having supplied herself with 10-inch shells from the Thunder), used every means, during the whole of the 24th, to drive the French out of the Régulus, but without success. This was the last attempt that was made; and at daylight on the 29th the Régulus got herself afloat, and soon joined her companions at Rochefort. On the same day Admiral Lord Gambier, in the Caledonia, sailed for England; and Basque road soon became thinned of its shipping. Although rather a ticklish subject to handle, we shall not be deterred from submitting a few observations upon the proceedings which were carried on, for the avowed purpose of destroying the French fleet at anchor in the road of Isle d'Aix. In the first place, we ask, Is it necessary that an attack by fire-ships should take place in the night? It is clear that, if the officers commanding those at Basque roads had had daylight to steer by, fewer of them would have failed in their object. To destroy the French boats at the boom, one or more explosion-vessels were admirably calculated; but, if no boats were assembled at the boom, the blast, however great, could have produced little or no effect, as is evident from the Indienne's escaping comparatively unhurt, although not above 110 yards from the vessel that exploded ahead of her. Had it not been for the accidental employment of the Mediator as a fire-ship, it is probable that the boom would have been unbroken, and then all the ships, as well as the explosion-vessels, would have expended themselves outside of it. The existence of a boom should have been presumed; and one heavy fire-ship, or explosion-vessel if deemed preferable, should have been sent considerably ahead of the others, to break it down and open a channel for them. The remaining fire-ships, chained in twos or fours, might then have proceeded, with almost a certainty of taking effect, admitting, as we before suggested, that daylight had been the time of the operation. Another question presents itself, applicable to either a day or a night attack. Supposing the attack to have been delayed until the tide had flowed two hours more, would not the French ships have grounded upon the harder parts of the shoal, as well as the shallower at low water, and have been therefore less likely to get afloat at the return of the tide ? The next point for consideration is the attack upon the grounded ships. It must here in justice be stated, that Lord Gambier had not such an effective force in vessels of a light draught of water, as, according to the nature of the service, he ought to have been supplied with. In most navies a gun-vessel means a small vessel, carrying from one to four heavy long guns, capable, from the manner in which they are mounted, of being used on either side, and from the extent of their range, of annoying an enemy at a considerable distance; but in the British navy a gun-vessel, or gun-brig, is a vessel that carries on her broadside five or six 18-pounder carronades, whose effective range is scarcely two-thirds that of a long gun of the same caliber Lord Gambier had five of this description of small-craft: he had also, except just as the affair ended, one, and only one bomb : * Mr. James has asked this question as a landsman, and it is easily answered had the attack taken place by daylight, the fire-ships would most probably have been sunk by the well-directed fire of the French ships; the effect of the attack would have been destroyed by the danger being visible, and night, and its darkness and horrors, adds more to the fear of fire than the inexperienced can imagine; by daylight, the French ships if they cut their cables, might have run without grounding, into security; whereas by night, the marks could not be seen, the danger could not be avoided.-Ed.; vessel. This was not the kind of force which Captain Keats contemplated, when in April, 1807, he proposed attacking the French squadron at anchor in the same road. He required small vessels with long guns, and "that class which have been in the custom of throwing 8-inch shells from 68-pounder carronades."* Being deficient, as he undoubtedly was, in his force of small vessels, the admiral should have been more vigorous and decisive in his attack by the larger vessels. Next to the Caledonia and Gibraltar, the Cæsar and Revenge drew the most water of any ship in Lord Gambier's fleet. What business, then, had the Cæsar and Revenge in Isle d'Aix road, while the Bellona and Resolution were lying at anchor in Basque road? Why was not the water from the transports, that were fitting as fire-ships emptied into the sea, instead of being transferred to the line-ofbattle ships? Every additional half-foot the latter drew was of consequence, in the service in which they were about to be engaged. Even of the small vessels, the best use was not made. Why were the Doterel and Foxhound, with their 32-pounder carronades, not sent into the road of Aix before the 13th? Then came ignorance of the navigation and of the shore-defences, and disputes about the authenticity of charts. It was at length discovered, but too late to be of any utility, that there was room for ships to act upon a fleet in Aix road out of range of the batteries on either side; and it was even doubted, whether the fort of Aix might not have been silenced by two or three British 74s. A remark made by the officer of the Océan may here be introduced. "The batteries of Isle d'Aix afforded us no protection at all, for the enemy forced a passage up the road with the greatest ease. Two of our line-of-battle ships (Foudroyant and Cassard) did not think they could maintain their position at the anchorage, and ran aground under Fouras. I did not think even the flotilla (alluding to some gun-boats fitting out) can hinder ships from forcing their way into the road; a road with which the enemy, during the 15 days he was at anchor there, made himself so well acquainted, that he went in and out as if it was one of his own harbours." Upon his return to England, Lord Cochrane, for the gallant part he had performed, was created a knight of the Bath. He shortly afterwards intimated to the first lord of the admiralty, that he should, in his seat in parliament, oppose the passing of any vote of thanks to Lord Gambier for his conduct at Basque roads. Lord Mulgrave communicated this to the admiral; and Lord Gambier, being well advised on the subject, requested that a court-martial might be held upon his conduct between the 17th of March and 29th of April. The court-martial was granted; and on the 26th of July Admirals Sir Roger Curtis and William † Ibid. pp. 210. 214, 221, &c. * Minutes, &c., P 18. Young, Vice-admirals Sir John Thomas Duckworth, Sir Henry Edwin Stanhope, Billy Douglas, and George Campbell, Rear admiral John Sutton, and Captains John Irwin, Robert Hall, Edward Stirling Dickson, and Richard Dalling Dunn, assembled at Portsmouth, to try Admiral Lord Gambier upon the following charge: And whereas, by the log-books and minutes of signals of the Caledonia, Impérieuse, and other ships employed in that service, it appears to us that the said Admiral Lord Gambier, on the 12th day of the said month of April, the enemy's ships being then on shore, and the signal having been made that they could be destroyed, did for a considerable time neglect or delay taking effectual measures for destroying them." The court sat from the 26th of July to the 4th of August. The minutes of the trial are now before us; and we cannot refrain from observing, that several of the members, particularly the president (Sir Roger Curtis) and Admiral Young, evinced a strong bias in favour of the accused. On two or three occasions, Admiral Young attempted to browbeat Lord Cochrane; and the cross-examination of some of the witnesses, whose evidence went in support of the charge, would have done credit to a practitioner of Westminster hall. Nor must we omit to notice the singular circumstance, that Captain Maitland, of the Emerald, who had made no secret of his opinion on the character of the proceedings in Aix road, should happen, when the court-martial was about to take place, to be on the Irish station. It is true that the secretary of the admiralty informed Lord Gambier, that Captain Maitland, if his lordship desired, should be ordered to attend. But Lord Gambier, as may be supposed, did not wish to delay the trial on that account; and out of the 17 captains employed in Basque roads, with the exception of Captain Richardson of the Cæsar, Captain Maitland was the only one who was not examined as a witness on the admirals court-martial. Upon the whole, therefore, we are not at all surprised at the sentence which that court-martial pronounced upon Admiral Lord Gambier. The sentence was as follows: " 'Having heard the evidence produced in support of the charge, and by the said Right Honourable Lord Gambier in his defence, and what his lordship had to allege in support thereof; and, having maturely and deliberately weighed and considered the whole, the court is of opinion, that the charge has not been proved against the said Admiral the Right Honourable Lord Gambier; but that his lordship's conduct on that occasion, as well as his general conduct and proceedings as commander-in-chief of the Channel fleet in Basque roads, between the 17th day of March and the 29th day of April, 1809, was marked by zeal, judgment, ability, and an anxious attention to the welfare of his majesty's service, and doth adjudge him to be most honourably acquitted; and the said Admiral the Right Honourable Lord Gambier is hereby most honourably acquitted accordingly.” Lord Gambier's assertion at his trial, that the most distant French ship of the two lines was within point-blank shot of the works of Isle d'Aix, we, by giving the exact distance, have shown it to be incorrect. Equally untenable are the last two of the four points upon which his lordship rested his defence. One of those two points was: "That three out of the seven of the enemy's ships aground on the Pelles were, from their first being on shore, totally out of the reach of the guns of any ships of the fleet that might have been sent in; and that at no time whatever, either sooner or later, could they have been attacked." The other point was: "That the other four of the 11 ships of which the enemy's fleet consisted, were never in a situation to be assailed after the fire-ships had failed in their main object."* To demolish the first of these grounds of justification, it is only requisite to advert to the situation, near the Calcutta, of the Regulus and Jemmappes, two of the above three ships, until 2 P. M. on the 12th ; and the second ground gave way beneath his lordship, when the first British cannon-shot struck the Indienne, described by her commander as half a league to the eastward of the Océan, and she was the north-easternmost of all the grounded line-of-battle ships. The neglect, or the impossibility, to send out the promised bomb-vessels contributed, undoubtedly, to mar the enterprise, but not to the extent generally supposed, because of the inefficient state of all the 13-inch mortars (chiefly from being too light, an evil since remedied) then in use in the British navy. It has been urged, that the admiralty ought to have selected officers acquainted with the navigation of Basque and Aix roads; but it will be recollected, that, when the attack was resolved upon, a British fleet already lay at anchor in the former road, and to have substituted officers for others, who were on the spot, might have led to the inference that there was not merely a lack of information, but a lack of zeal. As it was, the appointment of Lord Cochrane, the junior of so many captains in the same fleet, to conduct the enterprise, created a jealousy, where the utmost unanimity should have prevailed. A little management and address might have effected the object, without giving offence to any one. Or the thing might have been done boldly; and, as Lord Gambier had expressed a doubt as to the success of the plan in the contemplation of the admiralty, he should have been recalled, and another admiral, who saw no uncommon difficulty in the undertaking, have been sent to relieve him. The opinion which Napoléon is said to have expressed, when many years afterwards questioned relative to the attack upon his fleet in the road of Aix, is contained in the following extract from a well-known English publication: "Some conversation now took place about Lord Cochrane, and the attempt which * Minutes, &c., + See p. 1121 |