Book: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864




"We had been sent for in order to protect a fleet of merchantmen that
were bound to the Baltic, and were to sail under the convoy of our ship
and the Countess of Scarborough, commanded by Captain Piercy. And thus
it came about, that, after being twenty-five days in His Majesty's
service, I had the fortune to be present at one of the most severe and
desperate combats that have been fought in our or in any time.

"I shall not attempt to tell that story of the battle of the 23d of
September, which ended in our glorious captain striking his own colors
to our superior and irresistible enemy." (This enemy, as Mr. Thackeray
has just said, is "Monsieur John Paul Jones, afterwards Knight of His
Most Christian Majesty's Order of Merit.") "Sir Richard [Pearson, of the
English frigate Serapis] has told the story of his disaster in words
nobler than any I could supply, who, though indeed engaged in that fatal
action, in which our flag went down before a renegade Briton and his
motley crew, saw but a very small portion of the battle which ended so
fatally for us. It did not commence till nightfall. How well I remember
the sound of the enemy's gun, of which the shot crashed into our side in
reply to the challenge of our captain who hailed her! Then came a
broadside from us,--the first I had ever heard in battle."[G]

Ingham did not speak for a little while. None of us did. And when we
did, it was not to speak of Denis Duval, so much as of the friend we
lost, when we lost the monthly letter, or at least, Roundabout Paper,
from Mr. Thackeray. How much we had prized him,--how strange it was that
there was ever a day when we did not know about him,--how strange it was
that anybody should call him cynical, or think men must apologize for
him:--of such things and of a thousand more we spoke, before we came
back to Denis Duval.

But at last Fausta said,--"What do you mean, Fred, by saying you
remember Denis Duval?"

And I,--"Did you meet him at the Battle of Pavia, or in Valerius
Flaccus's Games in Numidia?" For we have a habit of calling Ingham "The
Wandering Jew."

But he would not be jeered at; he only called us to witness, that, from
the first chapter of Denis Duval, he had said the name was
familiar,--even to the point of looking it out in the Biographical
Dictionary; and now that it appeared Duval fought on board the Serapis,
he said it all came back to him. His grandfather, his mother's father,
was a "volunteer"-boy, preparing to be midshipman, on the Serapis,--and
he knew he had heard him speak of Duval!

Oh, how we all screamed! It was so like Ingham! Haliburton asked him if
his grandfather was not _best-man_ when Denis married Agnes. Fausta
asked him if he would not continue the novel in the "Cornhill." I said
it was well known that the old gentleman advised Montcalm to surrender
Quebec, interpreted between Cook and the first Kamehameha, piloted La
Perouse between the Centurion and the Graves in Boston harbor, and
called him up with a toast at a school-dinner;--that I did not doubt,
therefore, that it was all right,--and that he and Duval had sworn
eternal friendship in their boyhood, and now formed one constellation in
the southern hemisphere. But after we had all done, Ingham offered to
bet Newport for the Six that he would substantiate what he said. This is
by far the most tremendous wager in our little company; it is never
offered, unless there be certainty to back it; it is, therefore, never
accepted; and the nearest approach we have ever made to Newport, as a
company, was one afternoon when we went to South-Boston Point in the
horse-car, and found the tide down. Silence reigned, therefore, and the
subject changed.

The next night we were at Ingham's. He unlocked a ravishing old black
mahogany secretary he has, and produced a pile of parchment-covered
books of different sizes, which were diaries of old Captain Heddart's.
They were often called log-books,--but, though in later years kept on
paper ruled for log-books, and often following to a certain extent the
indications of the columns, they were almost wholly personal, and
sometimes ran a hundred pages without alluding at all to the ship on
which he wrote. Well! the earliest of these was by far the most elegant
in appearance. My eyes watered a little, as Ingham showed me on the
first page, in the stiff Italian hand which our grandmothers wrote in,
when they aspired to elegance, the dedication,--

"TO MY DEAR FRANCIS,
_who will write something here every day, because he loves his_
MOTHER."

That old English gentleman, whom I just remember, when Ingham first went
to sea, as the model of mild, kind old men, at Ingham's mother's
house,--then he went to sea once himself for the first time,--and he had
a mother himself,--and as he went off, she gave him the best album-book
that Thetford Regis could make,--and wrote this inscription in ink that
was not rusty then!

Well, again! in this book, Ingham, who had been reading it all day, had
put five or six newspaper-marks.

The first was at this entry,--

"A new boy came into the mess. They said he was a French boy, but
the first luff says he is the Capptain's own nef-few."

Two pages on,--

"The French boy fought Wimple and beat him. They fought seeventeen
rounds."

Farther yet,--

"Toney is offe on leave. So the French boy was in oure watch. He
is not a French boy. His name is Doovarl."

In the midst of a great deal about the mess, and the fellows, and the
boys, and the others, and an inexplicable fuss there is about a
speculation the mess entered into with some illicit dealer for an
additional supply, not of liquor, but of sugar,--which I believe was
detected, and which covers pages of badly written and worse spelled
manuscript, not another distinct allusion to the French boy,--not near
so much as to Toney or Wimple or Scroop, or big Wallis or little Wallis.
Ingham had painfully toiled through it all, and I did after him. But in
another volume, written years after, at a time when the young officer
wrote a much more rapid, though scarcely more legible hand, he found a
long account of an examination appointed to pass midshipmen, and, to our
great delight, as it began, this exclamation:--

"When the Amphion's boat came up, who should step up but old Den, whom I
had not seen since we were in the Rainbow. We were together all
day,--and it was very good to see him."

And afterwards, in the detail of the examination, he is spoken of as
"Duval." The passage is a little significant.

Young Heddart details all the questions put to him, as thus:--

"'Old Saumarez asked me which was the narrowest part of the Channel, and
I told him. Then he asked how Silly [_sic_] bore, if I had 75 fathom,
red sand and gravel. I said, 'About N.W.,' and the old man said, 'Well,
yes,--rather West of N.W., is not it so, Sir Richard?' And Sir Richard
did not know what they were talking about, and they pulled out
Mackenzie's Survey," etc., etc., etc.,--more than any man would delve
through at this day, unless he were searching for Paul Jones or Denis
Duval, or some other hero. "What is the mark for going into Spithead?"
"What is the mark for clearing Royal Sovereign Shoals?"--let us hope
they were all well answered. Evidently, in Mr. Heddart's mind, they were
more important than any other detail of that day, but fortunately for
posterity then comes this passage:--

"After me they called up Brooke, and Calthorp, and Clements,--and then
old Wingate, Tom Wingate's father, who had examined them, seemed to get
tired, and turned to Pierson, and said, 'Sir Richard, you ought to take
your turn." And so Sir Richard began, and, as if by accident, called up
Den.

"'Mr. Duval,' said he, 'how do you find the variation of the compass by
the amplitudes or azimuths?'

"Of course any fool knew that. And of course he could not ask all such
questions. So, when he came on _practice_, he said,--

"'Mr. Duval, what is the mark for Stephenson's Shoal?'

"Oh, dear! what fun it was to hear Den answer,--Lyd Church and the ruins
of Lynn Monastery must come in one. The Shoal was about three miles from
Dungeness, and bore S.W. or somewhere from it. The Soundings were red
sand--or white sand or something,--very glib. Then--

"'How would you anchor under Dungeness, Mr. Duval?'

"And Duval was not too glib, but very certain. He would bring it to bear
S.W. by W., or, perhaps, W.S.W.; he would keep the Hope open of Dover,
and he would try to have twelve fathoms water.

"'Well, Mr. Duval, how does Dungeness bear from Beachy Head?'--and so
on, and so on.

"And Den was very good and modest, but quite correct all the same, and
as true to the point as Cocker and Gunter together. Oh, dear! I hope the
post-captains did not know that Sir Richard was Den's uncle, and that
Den had sailed in and out of Winchelsea harbour, in sight of Beachy Head
and Dungeness, ever since the day after he was born!

"But he made no secret of it when we passed-mids dined at the Anchor.

"A jolley time we had! I slept there."

With these words, Denis Duval vanishes from the Diary.


Of course, as soon as we had begged Ingham's pardon, we turned back to
find the battle with the Bon Homme Richard. Little enough was there. The
entry reads thus,--this time rather more in log-book shape.

On the left-hand page, in columns elaborately ruled,--

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Week-days. |Sept. 1779.|Wind.|Courses. |Dist.|Lat. |Long. | Bearings.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | |Waiting for | | | | Flamboro.
Wednesday,\| 22.23. | S.E.|Convoy till |None.|54 deg. 9'|0 deg.5' E.| H.
Thursday. /| | |11 of | | | | N. by W.
| | |Thursday. | | | |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The rest of that page is blank. The right page, headed, "_Remarks, &c.,
on board H.M.S. Serapis_," in the boy's best copy-hand, goes on with
longer entries than any before.

"42 vessels reported for the convoy. Mr. Mycock says we shall not wait
for the rest."

"10 o'clock, A.M. Thursday. Two men came on board with news of the
pirate Jones. Signal for a coast-pilot,--weighed and sailed as soon as
he came. As we pass Flamboro' Head, two sails in sight S.S.W., which the
men say are he and his consort."

Then, for the next twenty-four hours,--

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Week-days.|Sept. 1779.|Wind. |Courses.|Dist. |Lat. |Long. | Bearings.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | | | |Flamb. H.
Thursday,\| 23.24. |S.S.W.| E.S.E. |Nothing.|52.13.|0.11. E.|W. aftern.
Friday. /| | | W.S.W. | | | |W. by N.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Foggy at first,--clear afterwards.

"At 1 P.M. beat to quarters. All my men at quarters but West, who was on
shore when we sailed, the men say on leave,--and Collins in the sick
bay. (MEM. _shirked_.) The others in good spirits. Mr. Wallis made us a
speech, and the men cheered well. Engaged the enemy at about 7.20 P.M.
Mr. Wallis had bade me open my larboard ports, and I did so; but I did
not loosen the stern-guns, which are fought by my crew, when necessary.
The captain hailed the stranger twice, and then the order came to fire.
Our gun No. 2 (after-gun but one) was my first piece. No. 1 flashed, and
the gunner had to put on new priming. Fired twice with those guns, but
before we had loaded the second time, for the third fire, the enemy ran
into us. One of my men (Craik) was badly jammed in the shock,--squeezed
between the gun and the deck. But he did not leave the gun. Tried to
fire into the enemy, but just as we got the gun to bear, and got a new
light, he fell off. It was very bad working in the dark. The lanthorns
are as bad as they can be. Loaded both guns, got new portfires, and we
ran into the enemy. We were wearing, and I believe our jib-boom got into
his mizzen rigging. The ships were made fast by the men on the upper
deck. At first I could not bring a gun to bear, the enemy was so far
ahead of me. But as soon as we anchored, our ship forged ahead a
little,--and by bringing the hind axle-trucks well aft, I made both my
starboard guns bear on his bows. Fired right into his forward ports. I
do not think there was a man or a gun there. In the second battery,
forward of me, they had to blow our own ports open, because the enemy
lay so close. Stopped firing three times for my guns to cool. No. 2
cools quicker than No. 1, or I think so. Forward we could hear
musket-shot, and grenadoes,--but none of these things fell where we were
at work. A man came into port No. 5, where little Wallis was, and said
that the enemy was sinking, and had released him and the other
prisoners. But we had no orders to stop firing. Afterwards there was a
great explosion. It began at the main hatch, but came back to me and
scalded some of my No. 2 men horribly. Afterwards Mr. Wallis came and
took some of No. 2's men to board. I tried to bring both guns to bear
with No. 1's crew. No. 2's crew did not come back. At half-past ten all
firing stopped on the upper deck. Mr. Wallis went up to see if the enemy
had struck. He did not come down,--but the master came down and said we
had struck, and the orders were to cease firing.

"We had struck to the Richard, 44, Commodore Jones, and the Alliance,
40, which was the vessel they saw from the quarter-deck. Our consort,
the Countess Scarborough, had struck to the enemy's ship Pallas. The
officers and crew of the Richard are on board our ship. The mids talk
English well, and are good fellows. They are very sorry for Mr. Mayrant,
who was stabbed with a pike in boarding us, and Mr. Potter, another
midshipman, who was hurt.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Week-days.|Sept., 1779.|Wind. |Courses.|Dist.|Lat. |Long. |Bearings.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, \|24th, 25th. |S.S.W.| |None.|As |As |As above.
Saturday./| | | | |above. |above. |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

"The enemy's sick and wounded and prisoners were brought on board. At
ten on the 25th, his ship, the Richard, sank. Played chess with Mr.
Merry, one of the enemy's midshipmen. Beat him twice out of three.

"There is a little French fellow named Travaillier among their
volunteers. When I first saw him he was naked to his waist. He had used
his coat for a wad, and his shirt wet to put out fire. Plenty of our men
had their coats burnt off, but they did not live to tell it."

Then the diary relapses into the dreariness of most ship-diaries, till
they come into the Texel, when it is to a certain extent relieved by
discussions about exchanges.

* * * * *

Such a peep at the most remarkable frigate-action in history, as that
action was seen by a boy in the dark, through such key-hole as the
after-ports of one of the vessels would give him, stimulated us all to
"ask for more," and then to abuse Master Robert Heddart, "volunteer," a
little, that he had not gone into more detail. Ingham defended his
grandfather by saying that it was the way diaries always served you,
which is true enough, and that the boy had literally told what he saw,
which was also true enough, only he seemed to have seen "mighty little,"
which, I suppose, should be spelled "mity little." When we said this,
Ingham said it was all in the dark, and Haliburton added, that "the
battle-lanterns were as bad as they could be," Ingham said, however,
that he thought there was more somewhere,--he had often heard the old
gentleman tell the story in vastly more detail.

Accordingly, a few days after, he sent me a yellow old letter on long
foolscap sheets, in which the old gentleman had written out his
recollections for Ingham's own benefit, after some talk of old times on
Thanksgiving evening. It is all he has ever found in his grandfather's
rather tedious papers about the battle, and one passing allusion in it
drops the curtain on Denis Duval.

Here it is.

"JAMAICA PLAIN, NOV. 29, 1824.

"MY DEAR BOY,--I am very glad to comply with your request
about an account of the great battle between the Serapis and the
Bon Homme Richard and her consort. I had rather you should write
out what I told you all on Thanksgiving evening at your mother's,
for you hold a better pen than I do. But I know my memory of the
event is strong, for it was the first fight I ever saw; and
although it does not compare with Rodney's great fight with De
Grasse, which I saw also, yet there are circumstances connected
with it which will always make it a remarkable fight in history.

"You said, at your mother's, that you had never understood why the
men on each side kept inquiring if the others had struck. The
truth is, we had it all our own way below. And, as it proved, when
our captain, Pearson, struck, most of his men were below. I know,
that, in all the confusion and darkness and noise, I had no idea,
aft on the main deck, that we were like to come off second best.
On the other hand, at that time, the Richard probably had not a
man left between-decks, unless some whom they were trying to keep
at her pumps. But on her upper deck and quarter-deck and in her
tops she had it all her own way. Jones himself was there; by that
time Dale was there; and they had wholly cleared our upper deck,
as we had cleared their main deck and gun-room. This was the
strangeness of that battle. We were pounding through and through
her, while she did not fight a gun of her main battery. But Jones
was working his quarter-deck guns so as almost to rake our deck
from stem to stern. You know, the ships were foul and lashed
together. Jones says in his own account he aimed at our main-mast
and kept firing at it. You can see that no crew could have lived
under such a fire as that. There you have the last two hours of
the battle: Jones's men all above, our men all below; we pounding
at his main deck, he pelting at our upper deck. If there had not
been some such division, of course the thing could not have lasted
so long, even with the horrid havoc there was. I never saw
anything like it, and I hope, dear boy, you may never have to."

[_Mem._ by Ingham. I had just made my first cruise as a midshipman
in the U.S. navy on board the Intrepid, when the old gentleman
wrote this to me. He made his first cruise in the British navy in
the Serapis. After he was exchanged, he remained in that service
till 1789, when he married in Canso, N.S., resigned his
commission, and settled there.]

The letter continues:--

"I have been looking back on my own boyish journal of that time.
My mother made me keep a log, as I hope yours does. But it is
strange to see how little of the action it tells. The truth is, I
was nothing but a butterfly of a youngster. To save my conceit,
the first lieutenant, Wallis, told me I was assigned to keep an
eye on the after-battery, where were two fine old fellows as ever
took the King's pay really commanding the crews and managing the
guns. Much did I know about sighting or firing them! However, I
knew enough to keep my place. I remember tying up a man's arm with
my own shirt-sleeves, by way of showing I was not frightened, as
in truth I was. And I remember going down to the cockpit with a
poor wretch who was awfully burned with powder,--and the sight
there was so much worse than it was at my gun that I was glad to
get back again. Well, you may judge, that, from two
after-portholes below, first larboard, then starboard, I _saw_
little enough of the battle. But I have talked about it since,
with Dale, who was Jones's first lieutenant, and whom I met at
Charlestown when he commanded the yard there. I have talked of it
with Wallis many times. I talked of it with Sir Richard Pearson,
who was afterwards Lt.-Gov. of Greenwich, and whom I saw there.
Paul Jones I have touched my hat to, but never spoke to, except
when we all took wine with him one day at dinner. But I have met
his niece, Miss Janet Taylor, who lives in London now, and
calculates nautical tables. I hope you will see her some day. Then
there is a gentleman named Napier in Edinburgh, who has the
Richard's log-book. Go and see it, if you are ever there,--Mr.
George Napier. And I have read every word I could find about the
battle. It was a remarkable fight indeed. 'All of which I was,
though so little I saw.'"

[_Mem._ by F.C. And dear Ingham's nice old grandfather is a little
slow in getting into action, _me judice_. It was a way they had in
the navy before steam.]

The letter continues:--

"I do not know that Captain Pearson was a remarkable man; but I do
know he was a brave man. He was made Sir Richard Pearson by the
King for his bravery in this fight. When Paul Jones heard of that,
he said Pearson deserved the knighthood, and that he would make
him an earl the next time he met him. Of course, I only knew the
captain as a midshipman (we were 'volunteers' then) knows a
post-captain, and that for a few months only. We joined in summer
(the Serapis was just commissioned for the first time). We were
taken prisoners in September, but it was mid-winter before we were
exchanged. He was very cross all the time we were in Holland. I do
not suppose he wrote as good a letter as Jones did. I have heard
that he could not spell well. But what I know is that he was a
brave man.

"Paul Jones is one of the curiosities of history. He certainly was
of immense value to your struggling cause. He kept England in
terror; he showed the first qualities as a naval commander; he
achieved great successes with very little force. Yet he has a
damaged reputation. I do not think he deserves this reputation;
but I know he has it. Now I can see but one difference between him
and any of your land-heroes or your water-heroes whom all the
world respects. This is, that he was born on our side, and they
were born on the American side. This ought not to make any
difference. But in actual fact I think it did. Jones was born in
the British Islands. The popular feeling of England made a
distinction between the allegiance which he owed to King George
and that of born Americans. It ought not to have done so, because
he had in good faith emigrated to America before the Rebellion,
and took part in it with just the same motives which led any other
American officer.[H]

"He had a fondness for books and for society, and thought himself
gifted in writing. I should think he wrote too much. I have seen
verses of his which were very poor."

[_Mem_. by F.C. I should think Ingham's grandfather wrote too
much. I have seen letters of his which were very long, before they
came to their subject.]

The letter continues:--

"To return. The Serapis, as I have said, was but just built. She
had been launched that spring. She was one of the first 44-gun
frigates that were ever built in the world. We (the English) were
the first naval power to build frigates, as now understood, at
all. I believe the name is Italian, but in the Mediterranean it
means a very different thing. We had little ships-of-the-line,
which were called fourth-rates, and which fought sixty, and even
as low as fifty guns; they had two decks, and a quarter-deck
above. But just as I came into the service, the old Phoenix and
Rainbow and Roebuck were the only 44s we had: they were successful
ships, and they set the Admiralty on building 44-gun frigates,
which, even when they carried 50 guns, as we did, were quite
different from the old fourth-rates. Very useful vessels they
proved. I remember the Romulus, the Ulysses, the Actaeon, and the
Endymion: the Endymion fought the President forty years after. As
I say, the Serapis was one of a batch of these vessels launched in
the spring of 1779.

"We had been up the Cattegat that summer, waiting for what was
known as the Baltic fleet.[I] If there were room and time, I could
tell you good stories of the fun we had at Copenhagen. At last we
got the convoy together, and got to sea,--no little job in that
land-locked sailing. We got well across the North Sea, and, for
some reason, made Sunderland first, and afterwards Scarborough.

"We were lying close in with Scarborough, when news came off that
Paul Jones, with a fleet, was on the coast. Captain Pearson at
once tried to signal the convoy back,--for they were working down
the coast towards the Humber,--but the signals did no good till
they saw the enemy themselves, and then they scud fast enough,
passing us, and running into Scarborough harbor. We had not a
great deal of wind, and the other armed vessel we had, the
Countess of Scarborough, was slow, so that I remember we lay to
for her. Jones was as anxious as we were to fight. We neared each
other steadily till seven in the evening or later. The sun was
down, but it was full moon,--and as we came near enough to speak,
we could see everything on his ship. At that time the Poor Richard
was the only ship we had to do with. His other ships were after
our consort. The Richard was a queer old French Indiaman, you
know. She was the first French ship-of-war I had ever seen. She
had six guns on her lower deck, and six ports on each side
there,--meaning to fight all these guns on the same side. On her
proper gun-deck, above these, she had fourteen guns on each
side,--twelves and nines. Then she had a high quarter, and a high
forecastle, with eight more guns on these,--having, you know, one
of those queer old poops you see in old pictures. She was,
therefore, a good deal higher than we; for our quarter-deck had
followed the fashion and come down. We fought twenty guns on our
lower deck, twenty on our upper deck, and on the forecastle and
quarter-deck we had ten little things,--fifty guns,--not unusual,
you know, in a vessel rated as a forty-four. We had twenty-two in
broadside. I remember I supposed for some time that all French
ships were black, because the Richard was.

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