SIR ISAAC COFFIN.
(1759-1839.)
The career of an officer who was disabled from active service afloat throughout the score of years made memorable by the wars which followed the French Revolution, can hardly be considered fortunate. Nor was the beginning of Coffin's naval record altogether congenial to a man of his temper. Though his attachment to the land of his birth was manifested throughout his long life, he had to bear a part in George III's attempt to "distress the Americas" in order to reduce them to submission, and his family had to share in the hardships which overtook the impenitent loyalists of Boston within a year after the battle of Bunker Hill. Yet it was evident by 1804 that Sir Isaac had earned his baronetcy and his rear-admiral's commission, and he was advanced to higher rank in the regular course during the ensuing period of retirement. The happiest phase of his later annals may, however, be said to relate to the renewal of cordial intimacies with his American kindred and to his manifold schemes for endowing nautical education for the benefit of the rising generation in Massachusetts.
Since the admiral's plans were made with special reference to those Americans who claimed descent from his ancestor Tristram Coffin—the number entitled to that distinction at the present day would hardly fall short of a hundred thousand, if that many of us had deciphered our genealogies—some notice of that pioneer may fitly precede an account of the life of his descendant. The first Coffin landed in Massachusetts in 1642, after taking some part in the civil wars; but the most zealous antiquarians have failed to determine on which side he fought or to trace his connection with any of the more or less illustrious families which have borne his name in the counties of England. The coats of arms adopted by some of the nineteenth-century Coffins in America are, therefore, plausible fabrications, and even Sir Isaac had to throw himself on the mercy of the Heralds' College when he attained hereditary rank. Tristram Coffin spent a decade or two on the banks of the Merrimac River, where he kept a tavern and engaged in other business until he discovered the advantages of emigrating to Nantucket. The payment of £40 to the agents of the Earl of Sterling and twice that sum to the Indian tribes of the island secured by 1660 a colorable title to all the best lands of Nantucket for Coffin and his associates; but the settlers were informed about ten years later that their domain belonged to the Duke of York and was attached to the government he had established at Manhattan. Coffin accepted the situation and secured in 1671 an appointment as chief magistrate for Nantucket from the royal governor of New York. Yet for all his arbitrary temper and his readiness to employ the rough methods of colonial authority, the deputy failed to secure for himself and the original squatters the exclusive privileges threatened by the coming of independent adventurers, and within a decade of his promotion he was deposed by the most active of his adversaries.
Some of the Coffins had settled in New Hampshire before their father went to Nantucket; others removed to New York; and before the Revolution the family was represented in Maine and South Carolina. The islanders followed the movement which made Quakerism dominant in Nantucket throughout the eighteenth century; but the more worldly and adventurous members of the Coffin family withdrew to the continent; and there ties were formed which made many of them loyalists and led to their banishment from the United States. William Coffin, who stood midway in the line of descent from Tristram to Sir Isaac, settled in Boston, and in 1731 he was licensed to keep the Bunch of Grapes tavern in King street, the magistrates approving him as "a person of sober conversation, suitably accommodated and provided for such an employment." His son Nathaniel graduated from Harvard and became a successful business man. He was appointed Cashier of the Customs in his native city before the strife over the Stamp Act began. This post was one of the most profitable of those within the gift of the crown in America, and loyalty to George III was expected from its occupant. The families of the officers of the customs followed the fortunes of the royal governors. The Coffins furnished a notable contingent to the forces which opposed the Revolution, and were proscribed and banished accordingly. One of the cashier's brothers went to Quebec in time to direct the fire of the battery which checked the advance of the American column under Montgomery; a son became a notable commander of partisan cavalry in the campaign in South Carolina and rose to the rank of lieutenant-general in the British Army; and Isaac, the fourth son, retained his position in the navy and earned promotion by active service against the Continental patriots.
Before entering the navy in 1773—a date which removes him from Sabine's list of loyalists of the Revolution—Isaac Coffin had gone to the Latin School in Boston in company with fifteen of his cousins and four boys destined to become generals in the armies of Great Britain. Of these the most famous were Sir Roger Hale Sheaffe, who rallied the British forces at Queenstown after the death of General Brock on the banks of the Niagara in 1812, and Sir David Ochterlony, who baffled the French in India, and in 1803 became the conqueror of Nepaul. Copley, who became Lord Lyndhurst after he was made Chancellor of England, was too young to enter the classes which Coffin remembered so fondly; and the great lawyer disliked to be reminded that he too was born in Boston—especially if any reference to the date of his birth was added. Charles Sumner had reason to regret such indiscreet allusions when he talked with Lyndhurst in the latter part of his long life—which lasted from 1772 to 1863. Sir Isaac, on the other hand, held in grateful remembrance the principles he had been taught at Boston and felt that all his success in life was "mainly to be attributed to the excellent education I received at that place." But his schooling came to an end when he was only fourteen, and he soon had occasion to show that he had no fondness for the political principles which made Massachusetts a commonwealth.
The youngster began his cruising in a brig, the Gaspee, successor to the vessel of that name which the Rhode Island patriots burned in revenge for her captain's zeal in enforcing the revenue acts. Though he was under the patronage of Admiral Montagu, commander-in-chief on the American Station, Coffin was not assigned to a flagship until he had become a practical seaman. His captain wrote: "Never did I know a young man acquire so much nautical knowledge in so short a time; but when he began to be of use to me the admiral thought proper to remove him." Montagu's squadron covered the embarkation of the British troops and the exiles who were forced out of Boston by Washington's advance in March, 1776; and the midshipman may have witnessed the wretched condition of his father's family on board the transport which carried the Tories to Halifax. Over a thousand had to find accommodations in inferior vessels and to sail short-handed after ten dreary days spent at anchor off Nantasket. They got little sympathy from their countrymen: Washington was not sorry to hear that "those who took upon themselves the style and title of government men" had to submit to every hardship on their voyage, or even that one or two of them have done what a great number ought to have done long ago, committed suicide."
By 1778 Coffin was commissioned a lieutenant, and that season did not close without an accident which led to his first trial before a court-martial. For the shipwreck of an armed merchantman under his command on the coast of Labrador he was, however, honorably acquitted. In 1781 he was signal-lieutenant in Arbuthnot's flagship during the action which that incompetent admiral fought with the French off the Capes of the Chesapeake in March. In June, Coffin came to New York, where his father had recently died, and in the sloop Avenger he kept the advanced post in the Hudson River until the end of the year. Later, he went north in a Greenland whaler for the good of his health.
While serving as a volunteer in the Barfleur, the flagship of Sir Samuel Hood, second in command, he witnessed Rodnev's famous victory over De Grasse off St. Kitts in April, 1782, and he may have borne a part in the capture of the Ville de Paris. That battle has been regarded as marking an era in naval tactics because Rodney broke the enemy's line—though it does not appear that he had any particular purpose in doing so. He had, however, shown some grasp of tactical principles in his comments on the report of Admiral Graves after his ineffective action with De Grasse in September, 1781. Rodney protested that he could not understand the beaten admiral's letter, "particularly his ‘cut up,’ a term neither military nor seamanlike," and he protested that Graves should not have tried to extend his line of battle to make 19 ships cover 25; the line should have been contracted, he thought, to bring the whole British force against some 15 of the French ships. Hood had denounced Graves for failing to order a close action when fighting for the command of the Chesapeake and the relief of Cornwallis, and Rodney's slackness in pursuing the French after breaking their line was likewise condemned. Hood wrote that had he been in command when so favorable an opportunity was missed, "I should have thought my head would have been justly required for such a glaring and shameful neglect." Whether Coffin shared Hood's critical opinion or not, he owed his prompt advancement to the favor of that admiral, and he was soon to learn that Rodney was his enemy.
The Shrewsbury, 74, was his first command as a captain, and before his commission was six weeks old, or he had completed his twenty-third year, a court-martial was ordered to try him for disobedience and contempt of the orders of the commander-in-chief. Rodney had sent him three boys, who could count only two, four, and five years' sea service, respectively, to serve as lieutenants. Coffin pointed out that they were not qualified for that rank, where a minimum of six years' service was required by the instructions of the Admiralty, and he held out against receiving them as long as possible. The court acquitted him on the charge preferred by Rodney, recording the opinion that the appointments were "irregular and contrary to the established rules of the service." The youngsters remained on board, however, until the Admiralty cancelled their commissions in view of Coffin's remonstrance against having lieutenants who did not know their duty. But before they were withdrawn the resolute captain had been sent to England in a 20-gun ship.
The significance of this case cannot be appreciated without taking note of the current practice in regard to promotions in the British Navy. Under the regulations which prevailed throughout the eighteenth century, every lieutenant had to show that he was twenty years old, and that he had served in a King's ship for six years, two of them as midshipman or mate. Both requirements were habitually evaded in favor of those supported by the interest of admirals, peers, or members of parliament: boards passed youngsters because they looked old enough, or accepted forged extracts from parish registers or certificates prepared by the hall porter at the Admiralty as evidence of the date of birth; and the term of service was reckoned to cover years in which the boys had inhabited nurseries or boarding schools on shore. Applicants had to present letters from captains, but professional qualifications were not closely investigated. All these abuses were aggravated on foreign stations, especially where the admirals had kinsmen or protégés to advance. Rodney, himself, had made his worthless son a lieutenant at the age of fifteen years and four months, and posted him as a captain five weeks later. Macaulay denounced the Admiralty of the reign of Charles II for appointing youths to command, but ignored the instances which were recorded in the navy lists of his own day. Sir Thomas John Cochrane, who outlived the historian by thirteen years, had become a post-captain at the age of seventeen after ten years' nominal service in ships and squadrons commanded by his father, Sir Alexander, who had also carried his nephew, the future Earl of Dundonald, on his ships' books for many years before the boy ever went to sea.
In the earlier years of constructive sea-service, the boys were described as cabin-servants, and they became midshipmen only when they began to go to sea. Other men had to do the work of the ratings thus distributed, and false musters became an established institution. The whole clandestine artifice rested on the habit of purchasing political support by traffic in appointments in the public service and the kindred system of maintaining privileged classes—all of which was expressed in the word "interest." Without that, neither talent nor industry might serve to carry a man to the higher ranks of the navy; though Cook, who enlisted as a seaman after serving as mate of a collier, is a notable exception. Washington's boyish dream of a career in the English Navy was frustrated by the opposition of his mother, but this was based on sound advice from her brother in London, who warned her that, as George lacked influence to secure his advancement, he might never be able to win a place on the quarter-deck. Coffin had friends at court, but his troubles were by no means at an end when Rodney sent him home from the West Indies.
After a season on half-pay and a visit to France, he got command of the Thisbe and was sent to carry the Governor of Canada to Quebec. Lord Dorchester, who went out to assume that post is 1786, had defended Canada against the Americans and rendered other valuable services under the name of Sir Guy Carleton during the Revolutionary War. During the voyage, he made a grant of the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the captain with whom he was sailing. Coffin was thus placed under obligations which he undertook to repay in the most approved fashion by entering the names of two of Dorchester's sons on the books of the Thisbe, along with those of two other children whose guardians wished to qualify them for a commission. The master of the ship was at odds with his captain, and Coffin was called upon to defend himself from the charge of signing a false muster. The fact was indisputable; the boys were not on board; and the certainty that every member of the court-martial had found his advantage in this "common irregularity" at some stage of his naval career, could not justify his acquittal. But the court failed to apply the legal penalty; the articles of war prescribed that any officer guilty of a false muster should "be cashiered and rendered incapable of further employment in His Majesty's naval service"; but Coffin was only sentenced to be dismissed from his ship. Noting the illegality of this sentence, Lord Howe, the First Lord of the Admiralty, undertook to rectify the error by striking the culprit's name from the list.
After filing a petition for reinstatement, Coffin went to Flanders to seek employment in the naval service of certain provinces which were organizing rebellion against the House of Austria. Circumstances prevented him from beginning a career like that of Dundonald in South America, but this episode, coupled with the rumor that he subsequently offered his services to Russia, suggests that he was no more at home in England than exiles are wont to be. Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, though a gallant leader of the Tories in America, got his title and most of his reputation in Bavaria. John Paul Jones was also a wanderer, and he and Coffin might have served together in Russia had not the younger seaman found relief from the penalty imposed by the Admiralty.
The King had Coffin's case submitted to twelve judges, and the result of their opinion was his restoration to duty. The legal sentence had not been awarded; but the regular punishment could not "be inflicted or judgment pronounced or supplied by any other authority than that of the court-martial which tried the offence." Lord Howe's intervention had, therefore, been illegal, and Coffin was still a captain in the navy. He might indeed have been dismissed by the arbitrary use of the King's prerogative. Howe is said to have urged that measure for every member of the heedless court; but George III declined to take such action. It was plain that justice would not allow the indiscriminate punishment of officers sworn not to disclose the vote or opinion of any member, and thus debarred from proving their own innocence of any dereliction. Courts-martial are still liable to be censured collectively, but their members are immune from punishment as individuals. So much was established when Captain Coffin was reinstated and appointed to command a ship in 1790. Nor did the device for crediting children with sea-service long survive the incidental discussion: "Coffin's court-martial broke the neck of the illegal practice, and in a very few years it died out," though boys were still caught young for naval education in England.
The Alligator, in which Coffin hoisted his pennant after his restoration, crossed the Atlantic for service on the American coast, and her captain seems to have visited Boston as well as Quebec in 1791. After an absence of fifteen years, he doubtless found a welcome among his kindred of the Amory and De Blois families, some of whom were his intimates for the rest of his life. His health was already impaired by an injury received in jumping overboard to rescue one of his crew when the ship lay at the Nore; but he continued to cruise until 1794, when his rupture was aggravated by the strain of keeping the deck in a gale to such an extent that he was permanently unfitted for service afloat.
This was a grievous stroke for a zealous captain of thirty-five who had spent the better half of his years at sea; but Coffin was able to retrieve his career by strenuous service as a commissioner at various dock-yards improvised for the squadrons serving abroad. In 1795 he took charge of repair stations in Corsica and Elba; in 1797 he was removed to Lisbon, and he sailed in company with the Spanish fleet on the eve of the battle of Cape St. Vincent, though Sir John Jervis refused to let a store-ship take part in the action. A year later he returned to the Mediterranean and was stationed at Minorca. Thence he was transferred to Halifax; and his service as commissioner terminated at Sheerness in 1808, after he had become a rear-admiral with his flag in a harbor ship. Advancement continued until 1814, when he became a full admiral on the retired list.
This is not a glorious record, perhaps, but Coffin had won the friendship of Nelson before he left Corsica. The great admiral corresponded with him in the easy and affectionate style which won the regard of all his subordinates, pointing out that "we left handed gentlemen are privileged to write short letters," and indicating his wishes in a manner that makes one regret that other admirals are denied that privilege. In sending ships to Port Mahon, Nelson wrote his orders in the simplest and most effective style: "I send you the Mutine. Pray see if you can patch her up and give her some stores." When the Emerald had to be hove down and refitted, "my dear Coffin" was asked to be expeditious: "In doing this public service, you will very much oblige your friend, Nelson." There are other official styles, but this one seemed to answer.
The commissioner wrote in the like cordial temper to ask Nelson's favor for Captain Blackwood. With a sense of the discretion imposed by the admiral's friendship, he added, "Whenever I recommend to your notice and protection a friend, you may always be sure I have the best opinion of him." The officer thus commended became one of Nelson's confidential friends and was entrusted with the curious testament signed shortly before the glorious and fatal battle of Trafalgar. While preparing to assume command of the fleet in 1801, Nelson wrote to Lady Hamilton from Sheerness that he was living in Coffin's house.
A few months later, however, Nelson expressed his resentment at Coffin's indiscretion in disclosing the contents of a letter in which the admiral had criticized his stepson, Captain Nisbet, with some sharpness. Nelson felt bound to protect that incompetent officer, who did not care whether his patron were "dead or damned," and he urged that the Admiralty ought to punish those who opposed the advancement of his ungrateful protégé—who had, after all, some pretext for resenting the wrong done to his mother.
Coffin did not learn amenity from his chief, and his latest correspondence with the Admiralty abounds in bitter words. The captains who brought their ships to Portsmouth for repairs were headstrong and inefficient; "everybody seems to be slack in stays but the commissioner." Yet his requests to his superiors were ignored by the Board. This he denounced as harsh treatment, tending to "degrade me materially in the eyes of the service . . . . I am not a grumbler or disposed to cavil, but there are bounds to patience beyond which I cannot go." It is not surprising that he should have been relieved from all naval duty shortly after these lines were penned, but not before he had suggested a comparison between his seamanship and that of the Lords of the Admiralty: "The board may laugh at me for printing a book, because you all know more than I do; still nine-tenths of the captains, masters, and boatswains are ignorant as pigs, and to this base stupidity may you attribute half the disasters we meet with." Coffin's treatise on the theory and practice of setting up rigging may have been a valuable work, but it can hardly have won him friends in the navy. It must be noted that these remarks occur in semiofficial letters, interspersed with regrets that dancing had become impossible to a veteran of fifty.
Doubtless the commissioner had many friends in the service, but his retirement relaxed his relations with the navy; and it is possible that he was out of sympathy with his comrades during the naval war of 1812. Some such feeling appears in his remark when he heard the capture of the Guerrière disparaged by comparison with the fight which cost Lawrence his life and his ship: it was lucky for Broke, he said, that he fell in with the unprepared Chesapeake and not with Hull and the Constitution. There may be a trace of Bostonian prejudice in this comparison; or the later alliance between Coffin and Hull may have been already inaugurated.
A seamanlike legend credits Coffin with notable complaisance in the case of a mate of an American merchantman who is said to have thrown an English boarding-officer over the side in Portsmouth harbor for insolence sometime before 1812. Coffin sent word that he would dismiss the case if the American apologized, but encountered the bluntest form of refusal, coupled with an assertion of the honor of his country's flag. The affair was settled somehow, and Coffin asked the mate to crack a bottle with him at the inn. The uncompromising Yankee refused to drink with anybody who approved an insult to an officer on his own quarterdeck, and sent word that "the admiral might go to hell with his wine." American sailors had their reasons for a pugnacious attitude in the first decade of the last century, and Decatur's adventures in the Mediterranean show that the navy and the merchant-service were of the same temper.
Coffin experimented with domestic life after his retirement by contracting a marriage with Miss Greenly of Titley Court; and he assumed his wife's name and arms, though he had been duly provided by the heralds when he became a baronet. In 1813 the……couple separated after living together for two years, and Sir Isaac resumed his own ill-omened patronymic. De Ouincey notes that, though seamen have been regarded as superstitious, they were as ready to fight under Captain D'Aeth or Admiral Coffin as under any other commander. Sir Isaac was not happy in his alternative names; Greenly was fit to be discarded; and his dream of becoming Earl of Magdalen—which the English pronounce Maudlin— had its ridiculous aspect. As he left no children, these fancies signified nothing.
In 1819 Coffin engaged in a lively correspondence with Commodore Hull, whom he had doubtless met on some of his visits to Boston. The admiral had once told a naval company—doubtless he did not bet on it until after dinner—that "lobsters of 90 pounds weight were found in America," and he relied on Hull for a specimen. The Commodore did his best, and his lobster was declared marvellous, but Sir Joseph Banks found it short of the promised weight. Hull was then asked to be on the lookout and boil the biggest lobster he could find in strong brine preparatory to shipment; thus "my reputation will be saved, though my money is gone," Coffin wrote. He also thanked General Dearborn for a terrapin, and asked for "as many more as you can pick up in your garden." To balance the score with the American commodore, Coffin forwarded some sort of a manual for signalling by the telegraph, which might be useful when the Americans had as many ships of the line as the English, protesting that he had no time to look into a signal-book and adding words which imply a curious mixture of patriotic inclinations: "I am too old to pry into modern curiosities, never meaning to serve again against friend or foe, but to do as much good as I can for the rising generation, who may, when I am underground, fight it out in any way most convenient to the parties." This might pass as mere playfulness had not Sir Isaac devoted both time and money to train Americans for the sea during the decade of activity which remained to him.
From 1818 to 1826 Sir Isaac was a member of Parliament, and he wrote to Hull after his first session that he had "fired a shot or two, avoiding close action," in the House: "Having had occasion to address my ship's company gave a facility at first setting off, so that I did not broach to or get becalmed while delivering my sentiments." Quarter-deck eloquence is now out of date, and few orators earned a naval reputation during the nineteenth century; but it had been practiced by some of the captains to whom Macaulay denied the art of speaking except in oaths and nautical phrases. An obituary notice in the Gentleman's Magazine credits Coffin with consistent attention to naval matters in Parliament, adding that he spoke "not unfrequently in a style of facetiousness that relieved the subject of its dry technicality." While his matter was doubtless sound enough, the admiral's manner may have given rise to humorous interpretations among those who failed to understand his professional dialect. An eccentric sailor is expected to be facetious; but those whose duty it may be to mystify a confused legislative assembly will find it safer to employ sober and didactic forms of speech.
The only accessible fragment of Coffin's parliamentary eloquence is earnest and impassioned enough in form, though it embodies a view which has now become absurd. The Commons were asked to sanction the building of a railway from Liverpool to Manchester, and the admiral was foremost in opposing the project: "Was the House aware of the smoke and noise, the hiss and the whirl, which locomotive engines passing at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour would occasion? Neither the cattle plowing in the fields or grazing in the meadows could behold them without dismay." Railways could not be built without invading widows' premises, ruining coachmen, horse-breeders, and innkeepers, and making the country uninhabitable: what was to become of those who might "still wish to travel in their own or hired carriages, after the fashion of their forefathers?" Building these tracks would double the price of iron and perhaps exhaust the supply; "It would be the greatest nuisance, the most complete disturbance of quiet and comfort in all parts of the kingdom, that the ingenuity of man could invent." These arguments were in vain. England was on the verge of an industrial and political revolution; and Coffin's conservatism in 1826 did not prevent him from supporting the Reform Bill which deprived the landlords of supremacy in Parliament a few years later.
Ever since the peace in 1815, Sir Isaac had been renewing his relations with Massachusetts. He is said to have made thirty voyages across the Atlantic, less than half of which were in men-of war. In Boston he frequented the house of the Amorys on Park street, and his shout of "Home ahoy!" often won admission in the small hours of the morning. For all his conviviality and idealism, the admiral was a man of business; and the investments he made in New England brought him handsome profits. Indeed, his agents found themselves sharply called to account when dividends were not forthcoming. This did not imply any aversion to spending money in America; and Coffin devoted much time to the elaboration of charitable projects which would have absorbed all his transatlantic gains had they been carried into execution. In spite of all discouragements, he actually endowed one school which still endures to commemorate his name. He was zealous for the improvement of agriculture as well as education, and thoroughbred horses and cattle were shipped to Boston on his account. But his pet schemes related to the sea and to the equipment of nautical schools and training-ships.
The brig Clio was fitted out to cruise under the command of Captain Hector Coffin of Newburyport, a kinsman whose pretensions were to cause his patron considerable annoyance in the end; and voyages along the coast were made during several seasons prior to 1830. In that year, the imprudent captain visited Quebec and showed the Canadians, many of whom were men of New England who now called themselves Loyalists of the United Empire, that a crew of boys from Nantucket were being trained for the sea-service at the expense of a British admiral. Naturally, they were keenly irritated, and the case was duly represented to the authorities in England with little respect for Sir Isaac's humanitarian zeal.
Of course the sharpest critics were those who had a double motive for resenting the imprudence of a kinsman. General John Coffin wrote from New Brunswick to censure his brother "for deserting the country that has conferred on him even more than he had a right to expect," in the way of rank and consequence; he feared that "the family will be injured in every branch of the service." "Were the American people any way behind those of Great Britain in nautical tactics, he might gain some applause"; as it was, Sir Isaac's fame was "much clouded on the other side of the water. I should not be surprised to hear that His Majesty has struck his name out of the list of admirals." The Tory general began his letter to a Boston friend by professing that he did not "envy your constitution and government," a phrase which may have been common form in addressing a New England Federalist about 1830. Some resentment might have been expected from George III, who never forgave the American rebels; but the sailor-king, William IV, who assumed the crown a few months after these apprehensions were expressed, was not the man to repudiate a comrade who had shared the friendship of Nelson. Sir Isaac is said to have declared, however, that his nautical school in America had cost him an English peerage.
General Coffin did not renounce his ties with Boston on account of his ultra-loyalty. He had fought a duel with a British colonel in his youth, and he had much controversy with colonial officials in later years. In 1811 he offered his manor of Alwington near St. John, New Brunswick, describing its 6000 acres as "well covered with pine and spruce spars, great quantities of the finest ship-timber, and other hard wood as yet unculled, possessing several convenient places for ship-building, an excellent salmon and herring fishery, etc." In conversation with Boston intimates, he used to relate that Samuel Adams had tried to attach him to the patriot cause, saying: "Coffin, you must not leave us; we shall have warm work, and want you"—words not inconsistent with the temper of that resolute contriver of American independence. The general added that without the battle of Bunker Hill, the Revolution could have made no progress; something was needed "to fix men somewhere, and to show the planters at the South that the Northern people were really in earnest and could and would fight." The author of these opinions had little active service after the independence of the United States was acknowledged, but he attained the rank of lieutenant-general and died a year before the end of Sir Isaac's life at the age of 87. Another brother of great age had died in 1831 at St. Kitts in the West Indies, where he had been for 34 years collector of customs.
Since few men seem to have given more thought to the subject of naval educatiton prior to 1830 than Sir Isaac Coffin, it may be worth while to analyze an unexecuted will which fully discloses his project. As an imaginative man, he naturally planned in every detail foundations which went far beyond his actual or prospective resources. He meant to establish three nautical schools; Boston and Newburyport were to share his bounty with Nantucket; and each school was to educate 24 boys. Half of these were to be descendants of Tristram Coffin—and to assume his surname; the rest were to be "sons of honest and industrious citizens," with a preference for the poor and also for students of the classics. The staff of each school included a ship-master, a teacher of mathematics, and a teacher of drawing, "all native citizens of Massachusetts." Besides quarters on shore, each school was to have a sloop of 50 tons, "coppered and copper-fastened," which the two senior classes were to caulk, rig and sail, the juniors exercising in twelve-oared boats. Cruising was to last from May to September; and the youngsters were to "survey all harbors between Passamaquoddy and Nantucket, and to trawl and dredge on every part of the coast, and on all occasions to try to discover the treasures of the deep," seeking for oyster-beds especially. Navigation and pilotage were to be learned while afloat, and every useful art pertaining to the sea was also to be cultivated: neither carpentry nor rope-making, cookery nor painting, was forgotten; and the boys were to have practice in slaughtering cattle and curing sea-stores.
The admiral drew up both bills of fare and regulations for the uniform of his protégés; their sloops were to fly a pine-tree flag; and they were to be rewarded with prizes for proficiency, including books, sextants, and medals inscribed with "I aspire to command" and "God is my guide." Natural philosophy was to be taught by models and books, including a cyclopedia. Athletic sports, including cricket, foot-ball, and swimming, were to be encouraged. The boys were to leave school at the age of 18, "as well qualified," Sir Isaac hoped, "in mathematical and astronomical knowledge as the scholars at the Naval College at Portsmouth in England."
The comparison was a hazardous one for a British admiral to make, but Coffin's program seems to justify it. Up to 1839 candidates for commissions in the English Navy learned little beyond "elementary mathematics and English studies" at Portsmouth, and the notion that they would acquire a knowledge of navigation while cruising proved fallacious. Naval instructors suffered from the disrespectful conduct of their pupils, even when both parties were sober; and their work was turned over to chaplains in order to secure the rudiments of moral discipline. Coffin's scheme had the defect common to most academic programs in that it assumed an eagerness and a capacity for learning quite beyond the average pupil. His own rapidity in acquiring nautical knowledge was described as exceptional—or rather unique—in the certificate of his first captain; and the attempt to make whole classes follow his example could only result in cramming. The contemporary effort made by Bancroft, the founder of our Naval Academy, to educate boys at Round Hill, near Northampton, under a régime of severe classical studies, tempered by domestic vigilance and the new German gymnastics, was less practical and durable than Coffin's limited experiment.
Though no attempt was made to carry the larger scheme into execution—indeed, it is hard to see how £1300 a year, which was to be the admiral's income after the death of his wife, could have supported even a single school and sloop, to say nothing of the retiring allowance he meant to give his teachers at the age of 6o— yet the Nantucket foundation did materialize in Sir Isaac's lifetime with an endowment of £2500, since increased to $50,000, and the island still derives much advantage from his generosity: "While her children have been driven to the ends of the earth to earn a livelihood, while her wharves have fallen in decay, the grass grown in her streets, and the sound of labor become low and ceased altogether, yet this grand old institution . . . . has flourished and grown strong amid the general wreck." The founder dedicated the school to descendants of Tristram Coffin, but this would hardly exclude any member of the ancient families of Nantucket. The Gardners and Folgers, who contended with the first governor of the island, no less than the Starbucks and Macys who were of his faction, had blended their blood with his within three or four generations.
Sir Isaac visited his school in 1829 and found it "an affecting and gratifying exhibition." He recorded that no event of his life of seventy years "has ever afforded me more pleasure than my late visit to Nantucket." He also enjoyed fitting out the brig for her indiscreet voyage to the St. Lawrence, and he gave the boys "plenty of pumpkins, squashes, apples, and good advice. They go to their work with a hearty good-will." Who shall say that the sailor who wrote these words did not die a Yankee?
Coffin tried to complete his indiscretion by writing to Sir John Barrow that he had "been among 300 Coffins," for whose young ones to the number of 100 he had built a school, adding an account of the perils he had encountered when the vessel which brought him from Nantucket caught fire. Fortunately, the worthy Secretary of the Admiralty, the official patron of explorers and hydrographers, confused that island with the Magdalens, and credited Coffin with providing a school for the fishermen of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Barrow had known Sir Isaac for nearly fifty years, having met him first on the edge of the Arctic ice about 1781, when both youngsters were cruising in the Greenland whaling fleet and the American had just taken a codfish of 63 pounds weight. His official opinion was that the admiral was an oddity, "not governed by the ordinary rules of mankind," though he gives no evidence except that he was addicted to the practice of harpooning porpoises from the forecastle of his ship.
On his death-bed, in 1839, he remembered the needs of English seamen and sent money to certain organizations for their relief; but more of his intellectual endowment was bestowed upon his American projects. The school at Nantucket lost its nautical characteristics before its founder was dead, but it has helped thousands toward a broader education; and it will stand as a perpetual memorial of an eccentric worthy whose allegiance was strained to the breaking-point by the Revolution, but who never lost faith and hope in the future of America. England had the loyal service of his prime, and she can afford to overlook whatever inconsistency may have arisen from his instinctive devotion to the towns where his ancestors had dwelt and the coasts where he had learned his skill and boldness as a seaman and navigator.
SIR BENJAMIN HALLOWELL CAREW.
(1760-1834.)
Throughout his fighting and cruising in the British Navy, this officer bore a single surname preceded by the Christian name handed down by a succession of American ancestors. The first Benjamin Hallowell, who came to Boston, had been a captive in Algiers before 1689, when he visited Samuel Sewall, the future judge of the witchcraft court, at his lodging in London. As he planned to go to Massachusetts and did not look as if he could live over the sea," Sewall lent him twenty shillings and added the gift of "my frieze coat and Right Thoughts, bound with Mr. Nathan Mather's Life"—thinking that the story of one who had been honored as "an aged person that had seen but nineteen winters in the world," might encourage the invalid. Nevertheless, Hallowell survived to found a family and to dine with his benefactor in 1715 at the table of a Doctor Gee, who had once given Sewall a pair of "Jerusalem garters" from Algiers, and who commemorated his own captivity in that den of pirates by giving the Puritan magnates "a good treat," for which Doctor Cotton Mather returned thanks in his weightiest manner.
The senior Benjamin Hallowell of 1760 was a shipbuilder, whose yard and dwelling-house were burned in the great fire which ran from Oliver's Dock to the sconce of the South Battery. His sons, Robert and Benjamin, were both shipmasters in their youth, but they became officers in the customs in time to suffer from the resentment of their fellow citizens after 1765. Captain Robert Hallowell had his house sacked and his wine drunk by one of the earlier mobs, and was desperately wounded in the fray which followed the seizure of John Hancock's sloop in 1768. The comptroller found safety on board an English frigate, but spake of landing again on a certain day. A patriot warned him not to land then or ever, "for whenever you do, you may expect a certain powerful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation to devour you." The Bostonians tried to live up to this prophecy until all the Hallowells went into exile in 1776; but the Tory captain returned to his father's house on Battery March street in 1792, and lived there peaceably enough until he removed to Maine, where he died in 1818.
Benjamin Hallowell, the commissioner, was no less unpopular, and in 1774 he was chased from Cambridge to Boston by a mob of 160 horsemen, eager to upset his chaise. A little later this official engaged in a street fight with Rear-Admiral Graves, who, judging from his professional career, may be assumed to have had the worst of it. At the evacuation of Boston, Hallowell's family of six were among the 37 occupants of a small cabin, where they were "obliged to pig together on the floor, there being no berths," until the fleet reached Halifax. Naturally, he was bitter against his countrymen: "If I can be of the least service to either army or navy, I will stay in America until the rebellion is subdued." In 1784 his family lived in London "handsomely, but not as splendidly as when in Boston," the wife of John Adams reported after dining with them. The commissioner had an agreeable visit in Boston in 1796, but he went to Canada to die at York in 1799. This seems to be the foundation for the statement that his most famous son was born in Canada. The eldest son assumed the name of Ward Nicholas Boylston, and he was able to recover the homestead at Jamaica Plain by inheritance from his mother, the Federal Court ruling that the confiscation ordered in 1776 applied only to his father's life interest. The name of this temporary exile is commemorated by endowments at Harvard College as well as by various landmarks of Boston.
The younger son joined the navy at the outbreak of the war, and is, therefore, classed among the Tories. His early career was less conspicuous than that of his friend Coffin. Hallowell did not attain the rank of lieutenant until 1781, when he was serving in the squadron which fought ineffectually to secure command of Chesapeake Bay. He took part in Rodney's great battle of the next year, and witnessed the capture of part of the shattered fleet of De Grasse. His promotion to commander was delayed until 1791, and he became a post-captain three years later. The lack of "interest" to press his claims for employment continued to baffle his efforts to obtain a command, and half his most notable service was performed as a volunteer, under conditions which deprived him of prize-money and other rewards.
This was notably the case during the invasion of Corsica in 1794. In the operations against Bastia, Hallowell commanded a flotilla of gunboats. Later, as Lord Hood reported, he "became a volunteer whenever he could be useful," and he was joined with Nelson and another captain, who was killed at the beginning of the siege, in commanding the seamen who had been landed to assist in the reduction of Calvi. For weeks Nelson and Hallowell lived almost under fire, relieving each other for twenty-four hour watches in the advanced battery, sharing the small comforts of the camp, including a few newspapers, "a very great treat to us," Nelson wrote. Both felt themselves equal to whatever duty could be performed by seamen on shore, though Nelson suffered from his Nicaraguan fever and lost an eye from an injury which never put him off duty, and Hallowell became "very unwell and much reduced" without the attendance of a surgeon. Hood adopted Nelson's praise of "that brave fellow, Hallowell"; but neither of them could secure for him a share of the prize-money awarded after the towns were captured. The exclusion was based on the fact that Hallowell had no command afloat, though he had "done more service than almost any, other officer," Nelson said—there could be no exception for any but Nelson himself. The Corsican enterprise was a failure, and its heroes were slighted in the midst of the consequent irritation and detraction.
Hallowell was cruising off Genoa in the Lowestoft frigate in 1795 when a French squadron was encountered, and he saved his crew from the effects of a raking broadside of a ship of the line by clearing the deck of all except the officers and the men at the wheel. In December, 1796, he had command of the Courageux, 74, while the fleet lay at Gibraltar; but the captain was serving on court-martial duty ashore when his ship dragged her anchors and drifted under the guns of a Spanish battery on the west side of the bay. Hallowell had been prevented by the president of the court from attempting to go on board, and the ship was driven out into the Strait and totally wrecked at the foot of Apes' Hill on the Moroccan coast, nearly 500 of her men being lost. Being without a ship, Hallowell was again rated as a volunteer when he sailed in the flagship of Sir John Jervis and took part in the battle of Cape St. Vincent in February, 1797. The admiral reported that this conduct "made him more dear to me than before," and sent him to London to carry despatches, including a request that, as he had declined to take command of a prize on account of the idleness that might ensue, he might be sent back to the fleet with a large frigate.
Hallowell returned to the Mediterranean in 1798, and he earned for the Swiftsure a reputation which survived her capture three years later. Upon approaching the shores of Egypt in August, Nelson sent three ships under Troubridge to reconnoitre the harbor of Alexandria. The battle of the Nile began about 6 p. m., but the detached ships could not close until two hours later. The Culloden grounded off Aboukir Island, and Troubridge had no part in the fight. Ball, in the Alexander, and Hallowell, in the Swiftsure, came into action when smoke and darkness made it hard to select a berth. A dismasted vessel without lights drifted past, and she might have been sunk by a broadside had not Hallowell, "aware of the difficulty of breaking men off their guns when once they have begun to use them, determined not to suffer a shot to be fired till the sails were all clewed up and the Swiftsure anchored in her station." Avoiding the berth whence the Bellerophon had been forced to slip, Hallowell anchored by the stern on the off-shore bow of l'Orient and between her and the Franklin. The combined fire of the Alexander and the Swiftsure was more than l’Orient could endure; seeing a fire in her cabin about 9 o'clock, Hallowell kept all his guns and the muskets of the marines plying upon that point, and the doomed ship was soon wrapped in flames. Before 10 she blew up, and most of her company perished. The Franklin had to surrender as soon as fire was concentrated upon her, and morning showed that every important vessel of the French line had been either sunk or captured. Hallowell was sent to bombard the castle of Aboukir, and his fire was so effective that the French sent a flag of truce to protest against the use of incendiary projectiles; but the English were able to prove that they were using French ammunition; and a capitulation was soon arranged.
During the heavy task of refitting the fleet at Alexandria, Nelson reported that he should have sunk under the fatigue but for the aid rendered by four of his captains, one of whom was Hallowell: "All have done well, but those are my supporters." Again in May, 1799, he repeats that they are as good and active as ever; "Not that I mean to say any are otherwise, but . . . . these are men of resources." Nelson had been wounded about the time that the Swiftsure engaged in the Battle of the Nile as he was bending over a French chart of Aboukir Bay which Hallowell had taken in a prize, and he was soon to receive a stranger and more fatal gift from that gallant supporter. From a fragment of the mainmast of l’Orient picked up after the explosion, Hallowell had a coffin made by his carpenters, and to this he attached a certificate that all its wood and iron came from the French flagship. It was delivered to Nelson with a note expressing the wish that when he had done with life—Hallowell hoped that the day might be far off—he would be buried in a trophy of his victory. Nelson took the present in good part, had the coffin set up in his cabin, and after seven glorious years of activity was actually enshrined in it to be borne to his last resting-place under the dome of St. Paul. Hallowell told his brother-in-law that he had meant to remind the admiral that he was mortal, "fearing the effect of the flattery that was lavished upon him." From an intimate, this was hardly a compliment; but many knew that the great man was subject to vanity; and the Duke of Wellington, for one, never got beyond amazement at the egotistical note of Nelson's familiar speech. For all this, the latest and ablest biographer of England's naval worthies has to add that "the grim humor of the gift seems also to remind us of Hallowell's American education."
The crew of the Vanguard manifested much excitement when this ominous trophy was installed on board, and by no means interpreted Nelson's acceptance in terms of American humor: "You see the admiral intends to fight until he is killed, and there he is to be buried," was the seamanlike explanation. Thus the Swiftsure's memorial of Aboukir served the same purpose as the bullet which an officer told Frederick the Great was worn at the end of his watch-chain " to remind me of my duty to your Majesty." The samurai's dagger which lay on the table in the cabin where Admiral Togo held his councils during the late war between Japan and Russia, doubtless appealed to warlike impulses akin to those inspired by the sight of Nelson's coffin.
From Egypt, Hallowell was transferred to Naples in June, 1799, to bear a part in carrying out Nelson's principle of "driving the French to the Devil and restoring peace and happiness to the rest of mankind" by securing the absolute authority of the Bourbons in the southern kingdom and promoting insurrection and brigandage in other parts of Italy. Hallowell had no part in the courtly intrigues and vindictive cruelties by which the fame of his chief was tarnished, but as usual he volunteered for service which brought him into the thick of the fight on shore. When the allies were besieging the French garrison of St. Elmo, Troubridge and Hallowell advanced with the pioneers, and tradition has it that the latter demonstrated his American vigor, axe in hand, when a tree had to be felled in the midst of volleys of grape-shot. The seamen who marched inland to assist in storming Capua were commanded by Hallowell, and the same officer was sent to promote insurrection in the Papal States, though such measures involved an alliance with the worst elements of the Italian population and the promotion of pillage and cruelty. Lord Keith warned Nelson against such dealings, and the Admiralty protested against his expedition to Capua; the Board could "by no means approve of seamen being landed to form part of an army to be employed in operations at a distance from the coast." Nevertheless, the captain who relieved Hallowell at Civita Vecchia "rowed up the Tiber in his barge, hoisted English colors on the Capitol, and acted for a time as governor of Rome." One can fancy that the Bostonian would have enjoyed the performance of such an exploit.
Hallowell was cruising with a convoy in the Levant in June, 1801, when he heard that a French fleet was at large. He at once took the responsibility of deserting his convoy and sailing to reinforce the nearest English squadron. But, before the junction was effected, he fell in with several of Ganteaume's ships of the line; the Swiftsure was surrounded by vessels which her foul and leaky condition prevented her from outsailing; and after a brisk action she was forced to surrender. Her spars and rigging were riddled by shot, but she had lost only two killed and eight wounded. A comparison of Hallowell's conduct with that of Decatur when the President was taken hardly justifies the adoption of the verdict of the English historian James, who censured the American for acting tamely. Hallowell had to encounter no such criticism; Ganteaume gave him a guard of honor and full authority over his captured crew; and the inevitable court-martial cleared the Swiftsure's captain on every charge, highly commending him for abandoning his convoy as well as for fighting his ship in gallant and resolute fashion. Nelson welcomed Hallowell's return to the Mediterranean in a "new Swiftsure" in 1804, and said that he hoped to retake the old one within a month.
The first ship which Hallowell got after his misadventure was the Argo, in which he made a voyage to the coast of Africa in 1802. Calling at Barbadoes on his way home, he learned that the war had been renewed, and he lost no time in placing his ship at the disposal of the commodore in charge of the West India station. True to his soldierly antecedents, Hallowell volunteered for service on shore during the invasion of St. Lucia and Tobago in 1803. Sir Samuel Hood frankly acknowledged the "friendly advice" and cordial assistance he had received from Hallowell, whose merit was so generally known that "additional encomium" seemed impossible.
After returning to England in 1804, Hallowell was sent to join Nelson in the Tigre, and that ship sailed in the fleet which went to the West Indies in ineffectual pursuit of Villeneuve's squadron during the early part of 1805. In October the Tigre and several other ships of the line were sent to Gibraltar for supplies, and Hallowell was thus deprived of an opportunity to share in the glory of Nelson's last and greatest day. Had the Tigre been in action off Cape Trafalgar, she would doubtless have been laid alongside a ship of heavy metal in the gallant fashion which her captain had learned at Aboukir.
Before giving an account of Hallowell's later fortunes certain passages which reveal his relations with the great admiral may be cited. Nelson was capable of firm friendships for those who had been closely associated with him in the toils and perils of war, and he never forgot the comrade who had helped him at the siege of Calvi. Even in cases where his friends fell from grace, like that colonel of engineers who was tried and executed for high treason in 1803, Nelson was not ashamed to testify in their favor. Remembering the trials of service against the Spaniards in Nicaragua, the admiral took the stand to bear witness for him who had been his associate in 1779: "We were together in the enemies' trenches and slept in the same tent; Colonel Despard was then a loyal man and a brave officer." Hallowell never strained his chief's attachment by misconduct, and Nelson was always eager to protect his interests accordingly. Thus in 1797 he hoped for many prizes in the Mediterranean: "We shall get hold of something if anything is moving on the face of the waters. I long for poor Cockburn and Hallowell to enrich themselves." Cockburn may have done something in that line when he visited Washington in 1813, but the other captain remained poor until he was an old man.
Nelson was indignant at the Admiralty for neglecting to give Hallowell the rewards he had earned, and he blamed Troubridge for neglecting the merits of his old comrade when he had a seat at the Board. Both of these officers testified their attachment to Earl St. Vincent by refraining to seek employment at the hands of his successor, the political jobber, Lord Melville. That Hallowell was a man of uncompromising temper, there is curious evidence in a letter of Nelson's to Lady Hamilton in 1804. After mentioning a consignment of Spanish wine and honey shipped in the Tigre for delivery at Merton, Nelson adds that he had extracted from Hallowell a conditional promise to pay a visit to the mistress of that domain, but warns her that "his spirit is certainly more independent than almost any man's I ever knew; but I believe he is attached to me." It was a pity that Nelson never learned that his most devoted friends were not those most eager to pay honor to Lady Hamilton.
In 1807, Hallowell convoyed the army to Egypt and covered the movement which led to the capture of Alexandria by the English. He was not at hand to protect the troops from defeat in the town of Rosetta, but he provided for the embarkation which was agreed upon when they had to capitulate. He served on the Spanish coast during the Peninsular War, and he was called to account for expressing his satisfaction at the removal of an incompetent general by an indiscreet signal from his flagship. He led an expedition which destroyed several French vessels under the guns of the castle of Rosas in 1809, and had other opportunities for fighting. In 1811 his military aptitudes were recognized by appointing him a colonel of marines, in which capacity he continued to command a ship. A little later he was promoted to the rank of rear-admiral and made a baronet. His vice-admiral's commission dated from 1819, and he had a chance to hoist his flag in a cruising squadron during the long peace. His last naval promotion dated from 1830, when he became admiral and wore the Grand Cross of the Bath.
He had already adopted the name of Carew in 1828 in accordance with the will of a cousin, who left him the manor of Beddington, though he had no connection with the ancient family of that name. The change did not arouse his enthusiasm; money might be worth taking, but he could not help reflecting that "half as much twenty years ago had indeed been a blessing." He had married in 1800 a Miss Inglefield of a distinguished naval family, and he left children to continue his name. Officers who remember Japan in 1897 will recall the two persons bearing all the admiral's names who were involved in a sinister tragedy in Yokohama, the father being foully done to death and the child doubly orphaned by a mother's crime.
Sir Benjamin does not appear to have revived his American connection during his latter years, though his brother and other kindred still resided in Boston. His active service lasted longer than that of his townsman Sir Isaac Coffin, whom we find asking Nelson to "give my love to Troubridge, Hallowell, and your other heroes" after the Battle of the Nile. His happier domestic life would also tend to attach him to English soil, though his character was marked by many American traits. He is said to have been a giant in strength and stature, and to have made full use of these physical advantages in quelling disorder in his ship when the blockade of Cadiz had to be maintained by squadrons in which mutiny was epidemic.
SIR JAHLEEL BRENTON.
(1770-1844.)
As this officer was obviously less of an American than those sons of the Tories who entered the royal service before the end of the Revolutionary War and as his naval career was hardly to be counted in the first rank—in spite of the season of royal favor and popularity which he gained in 1810—his story will be told in less space than has been allotted to his predecessors. The Brentons were an old family of Rhode Island, and the Jahleel of that name born in 1729 entered the English Navy in his youth and held a commission as lieutenant in 1776. As a resident of Newport, he was persecuted by the patriots when he refused to engage in rebellion, and his Rhode Island estates were confiscated. He took passage for England in a man-of-war, with three of his sons for whom places were found in the navy of George III. The father died in 1802, without having had opportunity to attain a higher rank than that of a captain.
His namesake was borne of the books from 1781, but his first commission was received late in 1790. He had previously volunteered for service in the navy of Sweden, then at war with Russia, and he had taken part in a desperate battle off Wiborg, in which several British captains threw away their lives. Under the pious influences of his later years, "he felt and acknowledged the guilt of this step": but it did not hinder his advancement. In 1799, Brenton began to gain notoriety by smart actions with Spanish gunboats; three of these were pursued among the reefs off Cape de Gata and brought off after a brisk fight with infantry on shore; another flotilla sheltered under a castle near Cape Trafalgar could not be towed off a lee shore; but their arms were captured and the hulls left to sink. A similar action was fought within range of the batteries of Gibraltar; and Brenton was indignant because these afforded him no support; but he was told by the governor, General O'Hara, that by arrangement with the governor of Algeciras the town was spared from annoyance by the gunboats on condition that the Rock never opened fire on them. All these skirmishes were fought in the little brig Speedy, armed with four-pounders and manned by less than fifty sailors. Cochrane relieved Brenton in command of her in 1800, and her name was rendered immortal by his exploits on the Spanish and French coasts.
Brenton went home to get his commission as post-captain, but he was soon sent back to the Straits in Command of the Cæsar. That ship bore the flag of Sir James Saumarez when his attack on the French squadron at Algeciras was defeated in 1801, and her spars were crippled during the fight. Brenton told his crew that the admiral would shift his flag if there was any delay in refitting the Cæsar, and by working all hands during the day and watch and watch at night, her lower-masts were stepped and her rigging set up in time to engage the combined French and Spanish squadron within a week. When the Cæsar was ready to chase the enemy's squadron, she warped out from the Mole with her band playing "Come, cheer up, my lads; 'tis to glory we steer," while the garrison answered with "Britons strike home." The French ships were not worsted without sharp fighting, but their allies were of little avail. The heaviest Spanish ships were the Real Carlos and the Hermenegildo of 112 guns, and these lightened the enemy's task by firing into each other for an hour in the darkness and then hanging foul of each other until both caught fire and blew up.
In his next ship, the Minerve, Brenton ran aground on the submerged breakwater off Cherbourg in 1803, and lay under the guns of the batteries for a whole night. Having cut out a lighter big enough to carry out a bower anchor, Brenton hove the ship off the rocks, though several men were killed at the capstan by the raking fire of two gun-brigs before she was floated. But the calm which followed at sunrise left him helpless, and the ship had to surrender. Brenton started a pretty row among his captors by publishing a statement that he had yielded only to the guns of the forts. The army supported that view, but the navy held that he had been almost out of range of the shore batteries. Napoleon adopted the latter opinion and published a bulletin declaring that "a superb frigate of the enemy's has just surrendered to two of our gunboats"; and he had the prize renamed the Canonnière. Brenton spent thirty months in France before he was exchanged, and some of his men were held as captives for eleven years.
After his release in 1806, Brenton got a favorable verdict from a court-martial and was appointed to the Spartan, 38, and his fame was established by the cruise she made in the Mediterranean during the next four years. He was often in touch with superior forces of the enemy, and on one occasion he escaped by holding his fire while the leading Frenchman opened at long range and "killed the wind." Early in 18o8, Ganteaume was abroad for three months, and the Spartan got accustomed to cruising with his flagship's light abeam during the night and tacking at daybreak. Thus he hung on to the fleet for several days "with great doggedness and excellent seamanship." Brenton's luck was not always so good; in 1807 his boats were repulsed by a French vessel which he tried to capture off Nice, 63 of their 70 men falling at the first fire, nearly half of them, including two lieutenants, being killed or mortally wounded. The Spartan did good service in the Adriatic and the Levant, cutting out French shipping and seizing harbors and islands wherever the enemy had a foothold.
In May, 1810, the Spartan and a consort lay off Naples, and Brenton determined to make sure of bringing the Neapolitan squadron to action by detaching the other vessel and displaying his inferior force within sight of the Mole. Two vessels not much below the Spartan in weight of metal and gunboats enough to give twice the battery power of the Englishman sallied forth to engage him in smooth water. They carried 400 Swiss soldiers and 1000 sailors, while the Spartan's crew numbered only 246. She was deftly handled, however, and each of the three leading vessels got a broadside as they stood out in close order. The flotilla was soon shattered, and the Spartan brought off one prize and towed her past the Mole, where Joachim Murat, King of Naples, is said to have been on watch for the victory he had planned. His seamen were duly complimented for their valor on this "brilliant occasion"; but Brenton and his officers got more substantial rewards. He had been knocked off the capstan by a grape-shot and he got a pension of £300 for his injury, besides an appointment to command a royal yacht. As a compliment to Sir Jahleel— who was made a Knight of the Bath and a baronet in due course, to say nothing of an order from the King of Sicily—a brother, Captain Edward Pelham Brenton, was sent to command the Spartan. The old king was eager to praise the victor; a sword was voted him from the Patriotic Fund; and he was, for a season, a popular hero. Modern critics point out that Brenton's admirers "forgot to remark on his mistaken judgment" in sending away the vessels which might have completed the defeat of the enemy—who had resolved to come out when the English squadron was sighted.
As a navy commissioner, Brenton continued in service until 1822, serving at Port Mahon and Capetown successively. He was not forgotten in the navy list, and the rank of vice-admiral was conferred on his final retirement in 1840. His memoirs are extant, "a ponderous work, smothered in a huge mass of religious meditation," but they have not been available in his native town. Sir Jahleel Brenton's son and heir shocked his countrymen by becoming a non-conformist minister, and with him the baronetcy became extinct.
One of the admiral's younger brothers was killed in action; the other, Captain Edward Pelham Brenton, had an active naval career up to 1815, when he was flag-captain with Sir Benjamin Hallowell, but he never commanded in any notable naval engagement. After his retirement he wrote a History of the Royal Navy during his time and a Life of Earl St. Vincent. Both have been harshly criticized, and their author is described as "constitutionally incapable of sifting evidence," and as guided by prejudice, personal and national. He was naturally prejudiced against the land of his birth—he was born at Newport in 1774; and he denounces the Americans for concocting unfavorable reports concerning the dealings of British men-of-war with their merchantmen after the affair of the Chesapeake in 1807. He adds that they were then the "crouching friends" of Napoleon, in spite of the fraud and violence which he had manifested in dealing with their commerce. To support his theory that Americans made false affidavits—"no respectable person ever gave credit to them”—he relates that his brother was the victim of "unparalleled treachery" at the hands of an American captain whose ship he had had searched; after verbal thanks for the "delicacy" shown by the boarding-officer had been received it was found that the American's log contained a rancorous statement charging him with misconduct. The younger Brenton served on the American coast during the War of 1812; but his ship failed to encounter any of the American frigates; and the supercilious estimate of the fighting powers of those vessels set forth in his history was not based on practical experience. Perhaps if the worthy captain had been assured that both the Brentons and the Pelhams of his ancestry would be commemorated by local names on the shores of Narragansett Bay he might have contemplated the progress of the United States in a less irritable frame of mind.