Mutiny on the Hermione – 22 September 1797
In September 1797, the bloodiest mutiny in British naval history occurred in the West Indies when the brutalised crew of the Hermione 32 rose against their tyrannical and unstable captain, murdered him and nine other men, and handed their frigate over to the Spanish.
The Hermione had long been an unlucky and unhappy ship. At the beginning of the French Revolutionary War in 1793, she had been sent out to Jamaica where within a year her commander, Captain John Hills, and many of her crew had succumbed to yellow fever. Hills’ successor, the brutish Captain Philip Wilkinson, was a friend of the ‘cat’, unlucky in the pursuit of prize money, and despised by his men because of his lowly upbringing. Yet if the crew of 160 men and boys (including many different nationalities), were discontented with their lot under Wilkinson, it was at nothing compared to the misery they were to suffer when in February 1797 he exchanged with Captain Hugh Pigot of the Success 32.
The 27-year-old son of a respected and likeable admiral, Pigot was much admired for his abilities by his commander-in-chief on the Jamaican station, Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker. However, he was also a young man racked by insecurity, whose ill-treatment of his subordinates and men would prove almost unparalleled in the navy. Being Parker’s favourite, he had been allowed to get away with his contemptible behaviour, but in July 1796 his career had almost unravelled when he had caused a diplomatic row with the United States after thrashing an American merchant captain. Despite the protests reaching the King’s ear, Pigot’s conduct on that occasion had been excused by a friendly court of enquiry presided over by Commodore John Duckworth , and an opportunity to put an end to his excesses for good had been missed.
Within weeks of taking command of the Hermione, Pigot embarked on the path that would lead to his own destruction. His first lieutenant, an able young officer by the name of John Harris, was regularly denied the opportunity to gain credit by participating in boat actions in favour of Pigot’s follower, the inexperienced second lieutenant Samuel Reed, who had transferred with the captain from the Success. Pigot was keen to dispense entirely with Harris, and the opportunity came in May when the Hermione was sent to cruise off the Spanish Main in company with the Ceres 32, Captain Robert Waller Otway. One dark night, the two frigates were on a course set by Pigot to weather Point Tucacas in the Gulf of Paria by some fifteen miles, when Harris, the officer of the watch, sensed land ahead. At first none of the six lookouts could see anything, but then land was confirmed, and Harris quickly ordered the ship put about before rushing below to alert his captain. The Hermione scraped the bottom but soon found deep water, whilst the Ceres, closer to the land, was not so fortunate, bumping across several reefs before going aground, although the resulting damage was minor. It transpired that in setting his course, Pigot had not allowed for the current, which had driven the ships some twenty miles further south than he had expected. Astonishingly, despite the fact that Harris had been the only man to identify the danger to both vessels, it was he rather than Captain Otway or the Ceres’ officers who was blamed by Pigot for the grounding of the latter frigate. Pigot’s unfounded accusation that Harris had kept a poor lookout was supported by the compliant Admiral Parker. Fortunately for Harris, his court-martial on 16 June aboard the Brunswick 74 at Cape St. Nicolas Mole was presided over by Parker’s second-in-command, Rear-Admiral Richard Rodney Bligh who, having no love for his superior or his favourites, wasted little time in ensuring that Harris was acquitted of any blame, and indeed praised the lieutenant for keeping a good lookout. Obviously, Harris could not stay aboard the Hermione after such an affair, and his departure left the way open for the junior man, Samuel Reed, an inadequate toady, to assume the vital role of first lieutenant.
The removal of Harris and elevation of Reed only added to the unhappiness of the Hermiones, who were already suffering multiple floggings for even the most trivial of offences. Pigot’s favouritism and leniency to his followers who had transferred from the Success only added to the discontent. Throughout the spring and early summer, the men were thrashed, abused and repressed. Then in July, they became aware of an incident on the Jamaican station that would have a significant influence on their future proceedings. The crew of a small schooner, the Maria Antionette 10, had thrown overboard their commanding lieutenant, John McInerheny, and another officer, and had handed their vessel over the to the French authorities at Gonaives on Saint-Domingue, where the remaining officers were imprisoned. This event would provide an example for the unhappy men of the Hermione.
On 16 August 1797 the Hermione departed her base at Cape St. Nicolas Mole on Saint-Domingue in company with the frigate Renommee 40, Captain Robert Rolles, and the brig Diligence 16, Commander Robert Mends, to undertake a patrol in the Mona Passage. The Renommee did not remain long at sea, being so badly damaged by a squall on 7 September that she was obliged to return to port. That same night, the discontent aboard the Hermione escalated when Pigot started raging at the length of time it was taking his topmen to reef the topsails. In the midst of his verbal onslaught, a promising midshipman, 20-year-old David O’Brien Casey, realised that a reefpoint had been left untied, and he sent a man to redo it, triggering an explosive tirade from his captain that continued even when the men had returned to the deck. Calmly, Casey attempted to explain what had happened, but the furious Pigot would have none of it, and when Casey continued to protest his own innocence, Pigot threatened to flog him immediately. This was no way to treat an officer, as everyone aboard knew, yet Casey’s dignified protest was met with his instant arrest.
Come the next morning, a calmer but misguided Pigot attempted to defuse the situation. However, he had decided that Casey would have to apologise to him on bended knee upon the quarterdeck before all of the ship’s company. This was totally improper, yet despite the attempted intervention of the other officers led by the ineffectual Reed, Pigot would not be swayed. Understandably, Casey resolved not to kneel before the captain when summoned for punishment the next morning, so unable to lose face, Pigot sentenced him to twelve lashes on the spot. Once these had been inflicted, the midshipman was hauled out of his mess and informed that he would be thrown off the ship at the first opportunity.
The Casey incident had a profound effect on the Hermiones – if Pigot was prepared to flog an officer under such humiliating circumstances then they could have little doubt of what awaited them. Sure enough, their worst fears would be justified when, on 20 September, the situation exploded out of control.
Having spent some time chasing what transpired to be a neutral American schooner, the frigate and her consort, the Diligence, were returning to their patrol ground when they ran into a squall at 6 p.m. Pigot ordered the topsails reefed, and as he raged at the time it was taking his topmen to get the reefpoints tied, he threatened to flog the last man down from the mizzen topsail-yard. In the ensuing panic a black sailor by the name of Peter Balcombe, sixteen-year-old Francis Stainton, and another unnamed youngster, all topmen serving on the outer end of the yard, leaped for a lower stay, missed their hold, and fell to their deaths. Unhesitatingly and totally devoid of remorse, Pigot ordered the ‘lubbers’ to be thrown over the side. Hearing a groan of disapproval, he then ordered the bosun’s mates into the rigging to ‘start’ (belabour with a rope’s end) the remaining topmen, exclaiming that he would flog them for their supposed clumsiness in the affair. True to his word, the next morning, Thursday 21 September (even as the Diligence and Hermione were chasing a strange sail), a dozen topmen were brought on deck and flogged at the capstan.
The death of the three topmen and the unprecedented thrashing of their comrades proved to be the final straw, and when the Diligence parted company in the late evening in order to intercept the strange sail, the Hermiones determined on mutiny.
Just before midnight, some twenty men of the starboard watch, sustained by stolen rum and wielding knives, cutlasses, and tomahawks, attacked the marine sentry guarding Pigot’s cabin. Leaving him dazed but alive, they smashed down the door and spilled into the cabin. Leaping out of his cot, the captain grabbed a two-foot dirk, but it was no defence against the hacking, slashing, baying mob. Though he resisted bravely, he was overwhelmed by the blows raining down upon him. Desperately, he cried out for his barge crew, not realising that some of those very men were dealing him the cruel blows. Managing to inflict a couple of serious gashes on his assailants but suffering more than a dozen wounds himself, Pigot collapsed over the breech of a twelve-pounder cannon and pleaded for his life.
Up on deck, the dazed marine and the cabin steward had alerted Henry Foreshaw, the young third lieutenant of the watch, to the assault in the captain’s cabin, and he ordered a master’s mate to investigate. To his astonishment the man, William Turner, (who would later take command of the post-mutiny Hermione), refused, and realising that he had a mutiny on his hands, Foreshaw ordered the helmsman to bear away for the Diligence, which appeared to be his only hope of assistance. The helmsman also refused the order, and when Foreshaw threw him to the deck, the seaman’s urgent call for assistance was met by a dozen or so men who rushed aft from the forecastle and seized the lieutenant. The hullabaloo reached the ears of some of Pigot’s assailants in the cabin who rushed up on deck and there began an argument with the others there over the lieutenant’s fate. It was sealed when a leading mutineer, David Forester, pinned Foreshaw down – suddenly tomahawks and bayonets were slashing the unfortunate officer, forcing him back to the bulwarks from where he tumbled over the side.
The lieutenant of the watch apparently dealt with; Forester and the other ringleaders rushed back to the cabin where the bloodied figure of Pigot remained slumped against his couch. Determined to finish him off, the men piled into him once more, and although the captain again fought back determinedly with his dirk, he was felled by a cutlass slash across his head, run though with a bayonet, and hauled towards the broken stern windows from where he was launched into the sea, still crying out.
By now a frenzy of hacking and stabbing had broken out throughout the ship. The sailing master, a popular officer by the name of Edward Southcott who was lying sick in his cabin, was axed in the face. Another lieutenant, the detested Archibald Douglas, sought a hiding place under the sick marine lieutenant’s cot but was given away by his boy servant, James Allen. A mob of twenty men with axes, boarding pikes and tomahawks hounded him bloodily to the gratings of the after hold where further blows left him desperately wounded. A fourteen-year-old midshipman by the name of Smith, one of the captain’s toadies, was chased with tomahawks and bayonets before collapsing near Douglas. Both officers were then pulled unceremoniously towards the side of the ship where a crazed Irishman took a final opportunity to assault the limp Douglas, smashing a tomahawk into his skull with such force that the handle snapped off. This sparked a further assault by another dozen men led by Forester. It was probably a mercy when the lieutenant was finally slung out of a gunport on the half-deck, to be followed by the dying midshipman.
Astonishingly, into this scene of bloody mayhem returned Lieutenant Foreshaw, who had caught hold of the hammock stanchion after being thrown over the side, and after regaining his strength in the mizzen chains had managed to climb aboard again. The mutineers sprang towards him but hesitated as he pleaded for mercy – after all, he had always been fair to the crew, unlike Pigot, Douglas and Smith. Several men took the opportunity to speak up for him, but then one of the leading mutineers, Thomas Nash, ran up from the cabin and grabbed Foreshaw, another man chopped the lieutenant’s hand off, and the two mutineers dragged him to the side to throw him overboard.
Four men had been murdered, and although there was a temporary hiatus as Turner put the ship about to sail down the Mona Passage and away from the Diligence, the savagery was far from over. In the wardroom sixteen of the leading mutineers, or at least those who were not sleeping off their drunken frenzy, gathered to discuss the fate of the remaining ten officers who were now confined in the wardroom or their cabins below. Forester wanted them all dead, Nash was prepared to spare Casey, whilst another leader, Richard Redman, demanded no more deaths. As they debated, other mutineers were attempting to get at the officers but were being held back.
Amidst this confusion one man, an educated, persuasive, but dangerous 35-year-old surgeon’s mate by the name of Laurence Cronin, stepped forward and demanded that the men gather at the after hatchway. Announcing himself to be an Irish republican from Belfast, he complimented the mutineers on their actions. He made a forceful case for extreme measures and then pronounced death on the surviving officers. No sooner had he finished his tirade than a hardcore group of mutineers led by the ubiquitous Forester bulldozed their way into the room, thrust the sentries aside, and hauled the purser, Stephen Percy, up on to the quarterdeck, stabbing him as they dragged him to the rail, before pitching him into the sea. Next the surgeon, Doctor Sansom, was treated in the same manner, then the first lieutenant Reed, bleeding from an earlier head wound that had been inflicted at the beginning of the mutiny. Casey and Southcott’s popularity, supported by Nash’s representations and those of the master’s black servant, saved those two officers, whilst the gunner, carpenter and cook were also spared. The remainder were stabbed or beaten, heaved into the sea and left to drown. The victims included the marine officer, Lieutenant M’Intosh, who was dying of yellow fever, the captain’s clerk, John Manning, and the boatswain, William Martin, whose wife, Fanny, immediately became the consort of her husband’s murderer, Redman.
The next morning, the mutineers set sail for the Venezuelan port of La Guaira; on arriving at 3 p.m. on 26 September they handed the Hermione over to the Spanish authorities. Eight loyal seamen and the surviving officers would later be returned to the British authorities, whilst the mutineers were paid a ransom and discharged.
Unaware of the Hermione’s fate, the Diligence had continued on her patrol, but Captain Mends grew increasingly mystified by his consort’s absence. The orders from Admiral Parker had been to return to base after a seven-week cruise, and so on 16 October Mends set a course for Saint-Domingue. Over the next few days the brig scooped up several prizes, and it was from the captain of the Spanish schooner San Antonio, which had been at La Guaira when the Hermione had come in, that Mends learned of the mutiny. Mends arrived at Cape St. Nicolas Mole on the morning of 31 October, bringing the first news of these events. His report to Admiral Parker (based on the information he was given by the Spanish captain) captured the gist of what had occurred, but contained a number of inaccuracies – these included the claim that forty people had been murdered, including all of the officers bar the surgeon and a master’s mate, along with most of the marines, and six women.
Parker immediately dispatched the packet Princess Royal to England with news of the mutiny, and after a seven-week passage she reached Falmouth, from where the admiral’s report was hastened up to the Admiralty. On 15 December the newspapers went to print, sourcing their accounts of the atrocity from Captain Mends’ initial and misleading report. Soon other confusing accounts of the mutiny filtered through, some of which were founded on a claim made by the mutineers on their arrival at La Guaira that while Pigot had died in a scuffle, the other officers had been landed at Porto Bello. By the second week of January 1798, American newspapers received in Britain were able to provide some clarity as to the events leading up to the mutiny, along with a more accurate account of the number of dead. It was only in March that the testimony of Fanny Martin (who had turned up in New York) enabled the names of those killed (albeit with a couple of errors) to be published in the newspapers.
Within two years the Hermione, which had been renamed the Santa Cecilia by the Spanish, was back in British hands following her brilliant cutting-out to by six boatloads of men led by Captain Edward Hamilton of the Surprise 28. By the time that she was broken up in 1806, having been renamed the Retribution, twenty-four of her mutineers had been caught and executed, the first of them at Port Royal just six months after Pigot’s death, with three more being gibbeted at Cape St. Nicholas Mole shortly afterwards. Perhaps only forty men out of the one hundred and sixty aboard had actively participated in the mutiny, but most of them paid the price for their actions.
The Royal Navy went to extraordinary lengths to find and punish the mutineers, circulating lists and descriptions of the men to all warships in the Caribbean, and to ports where they might turn up. Amongst the leading mutineers, Richard Redman joined a Spanish ship bound for Vigo which had the misfortune to be intercepted by the Aurora 28, Captain Henry Digby, off the Spanish coast in July 1798. When the British boarding party came aboard, a seaman who had been aboard the-Hermione identified Redman. After a swift court-martial he was hanged within an hour of the death sentence being handed down, the haste being at the instigation of Captain Sir Edward Pellew. Thomas Nash took up a berth in an American merchant vessel, claiming to be a citizen of that country, but gave himself away by bragging of his exploits. Despite a huge public outcry in America, he was extradited (with the blessing of President John Adams) to Jamaica, where he stood trial and was hanged on 19 August 1799. Following a trial on board the Gladiator at Portsmouth on 30 July 1800, John Watson of approximately 60 years of age and James Allen, Douglas’ servant, who had been but 14 in 1797 were also hanged. David Forester remained at large for four and a half years under an assumed identity before being spotted in Portsmouth and arrested by Captain Pigot’s old steward. He was found guilty at his subsequent court martial aboard the Gladiator and made a full and frank confession of his crimes prior to being hanged on 1 April 1802. The last Hermione court-martial took place in 1806, but the navy was still questioning suspected mutineers as late as 1813. Unsurprisingly, the slippery Lawrence Cronin was never heard of again – he was thought to have remained on the Spanish Main where he found employment as a clerk. William Turner too was never found.
Of the two officers who were spared by the mutineers, Mr Casey, (who earlier in 1793 had endured a harrowing imprisonment by the black rebels in Haiti following the capture of the Hyaena 24) returned to England, was promoted lieutenant in 1799 of the Nemesis 28, Captain Thomas Baker, and continued in active service until the end of the Napoleonic Wars. After twenty years on half pay, he was appointed to command the semaphore signal station at Putney in 1835, before being admitted to Greenwich Hospital four years later. He died there in December 1852 in his 75th year. The master, Edward Southcott, was promoted a lieutenant on 15 August 1799 and reached the rank of commander before he died at Portsea on 28 April 1841, aged 82.