Chapter VIII Captain Death, of the “Terrible”
One of the bloodiest privateer actions on record was that between the Terrible, owned in London, and the Vengeance, of St. Malo.
The Terrible carried 26 guns, with a crew of 200 men, and was commanded by Captain Death. She was cruising off the mouth of the Channel at the end of the year 1756, and had had some success, capturing an armed French cargo ship, the Alexandre le Grand, (the narrator very simply translates this “Grand Alexander”!), which she was escorting into Plymouth, with a prize crew of an officer—the first lieutenant—and fifteen men, when on December 27th, at daylight, two sails were sighted to the southward, about twelve miles distant. Some communication was observed to take place between the two vessels, and then the larger one steered for the Terrible and her prize, which was far astern, so that the Terrible was obliged to back her mizzen-topsail and wait for her.
Meanwhile, every preparation was made for action; but, from the absence of the prize crew and other causes, no more than 116 men out of 200 were able to stand to the guns; indeed, the narrator, who was third lieutenant of the Terrible, tells rather a sad story of her crew—“the rest being either dead or sick below with a distemper called the spotted fever, that raged among the ship’s company.” This may have been malignant typhus, or the plague, terribly infectious; and there would be great reluctance to handle the dead bodies—hence some of these were left below.
The enemy approached, as was usually the practice, under English colours until within close range, when she shortened sail and hoisted French colours. The Terrible was ready for her, with her starboard guns manned, and the prize had by this time come up; but she was a clumsy sailer, deep-laden, and fell off from the wind; so the Frenchman got in between them, gave the prize a broadside, and then, ranging close up on the Terrible’s port quarter, delivered a most destructive fire, diagonally across her deck, killing and wounding a great number. So close were the two ships, that the yardarms almost touched, and the Terrible’s people, in spite of the awful battering they had just received, returned a broadside of round and grape, which was equally destructive. For five or six minutes they surged along side by side, while each disposed his dead and wounded, and a touch of the helm would have run either vessel aboard her opponent. The Frenchmen, more numerous in spite of their losses, might have boarded, and the “Terribles” were in momentary expectation of it—but they held off, and the English did not find themselves strong enough to attempt it. Separating again, they exchanged a murderous fire at close range, the casualties being very heavy on both sides.
The French ship had, however, one great advantage at such close quarters; in each “top” she had eight or ten small-arm men, who were able to fire down upon the Terrible’s deck, and pick off whom they would—the latter was too short-handed to spare any men for this purpose.
This slaughter, to which they were unable to reply, really decided the action. Every man in sight was either killed or miserably wounded—the captain and the third lieutenant escaped for some time, but the latter was grazed on his cheek, and the captain, he states, was shot through the body after he had struck his flag. This is a very common accusation, and no doubt it has often been true, though probably only through a misapprehension; men who are blazing away and being shot at in a hot action do not always know or realise at the moment that the enemy has struck, and so some poor fellow loses his life unnecessarily.
It was too hot to last. The enemy was a ship of considerably superior force, and probably had three times the number of the Terrible’s available crew at the commencement of the action. On board the English vessel nearly one hundred men were dead or wounded, the decks were cumbered with their bodies, and only one officer was left untouched; they had not a score of men left to fight the ship, and the enemy continued to pour in a pitiless fire, which at length brought the mainmast by the board.
Captain Death, a brave man, could then see no course but to surrender, having put up a very gallant fight; and so he ordered down the colours, and was then, as is said, fatally wounded by a musket-ball.
Then follows a dismal story of the treatment of the English prisoners, which we may hope, for the sake of French humanity and generosity, is somewhat exaggerated—as we know that such things can be, under the smart of defeat and surrender: “They turned our first lieutenant and all our people down in a close, confined place forward the first night that we came on board, where twenty-seven men of them were stifled before morning; and several were hauled out for dead, but the air brought them to life again; and a great many of them died of their wounds on board the Terrible for want of care being taken of them, which was out of our doctor’s power to do, the enemy having taken his instruments and medicine from him. Several that were wounded they heaved overboard alive.”
If this is a true account one shudders to think what may have been the fate of those unhappy, plague-stricken men below—probably brought up and hove overboard in a ferocious panic!
The French ship was named the Vengeance, of 36 guns and about 400 men; so there was no discredit to Captain Death in yielding, after such a plucky resistance. The merchants of London opened a subscription at Lloyd’s Coffee House for his widow and the widows of the crew, and for the survivors, who had suffered the loss of all their possessions.
This desperate fight was much talked about at the time, and inspired some rhymester, whose name has not come down to us, to compose the following:
CAPTAIN DEATH
The muse and the hero together are fir’d,
The same noble views has their bosom inspir’d;
As freedom they love, and for glory contend,
The muse o’er the hero still mourns as a friend;
So here let the muse her poor tribute bequeath,
To one British hero—’tis brave Captain Death.
The ship was the Terrible—dreadful to see!
His crew was as brave and as valiant as he.
Two hundred or more was their full complement,
And sure braver fellows to sea never went.
Each man was determined to spend his last breath
In fighting for Britain and brave Captain Death.
A prize they had taken diminish’d their force,
And soon the brave ship was lost in her course.
The French privateer and the Terrible met,
The battle began with all horror beset.
No heart was dismayed, each bold as Macbeth;
The sailors rejoiced, so did brave Captain Death.
Fire, thunder, balls, bullets were soon heard and felt,
A sight that the heart of Bellona would melt.
The shrouds were all torn and the decks fill’d with blood.
And scores of dead bodies were thrown in the flood.
The flood, from the time of old Noah and Seth,
Ne’er saw such a man as our brave Captain Death.
At last the dread bullet came wing’d with his fate;
Our brave captain dropped, and soon after his mate.
Each officer fell, and a carnage was seen,
That soon dy’d the waves to a crimson from green;
Then Neptune rose up, and he took off his wreath,
And gave it a triton to crown Captain Death.
Thus fell the strong Terrible, bravely and bold,
But sixteen survivors the tale can unfold.
The French were the victors, tho’ much to their cost,
For many brave French were with Englishmen lost.
For thus says old Time, “Since Queen Elizabeth,
I ne’er saw the fellow of brave Captain Death.”
There is another poetic effusion on the subject, under the title “The Terrible Privateer”; but it is such halting doggrel that the reader shall be spared the transcription; with the exception of the last verse, which breathes such a blunt British spirit that it would be a pity to omit it:
Here’s a health unto our British fleet.
Grant they with these privateers may meet,
And have better luck than the Terrible,
And sink those Mounsiers all to hell.
The Vengeance was, in fact, captured about twelve months later by the Hussar, a man-of-war, after a stout resistance, in which she lost heavily; it is impossible, however, to say how far the devout aspiration of the poet was fulfilled!