26
WHILE THOMAS NASH had been in jail at Charleston, His Majesty’s sloop Kite had been convoying ‘the trade’ across the North Sea from Elsinore, in Denmark, to Scotland. As soon as she anchored in the Firth of Forth on June 1, 1799, her commanding officer, Charles Lydiard, wrote to the Admiralty reporting his arrival and adding: ‘Having been requested by Lord Robert Fitzgerald [Britain’s Envoy Extraordinary at Copenhagen] to take on board a British seaman, one of the mutineers of the Hermione, I beg Their Lordships’ orders what I am to do with him.’
An unsigned note enclosed in Lydiard’s letter gave a brief history of the mutineer. He was the foretopman James Duncan, who had said the day after the mutiny that if the officers were still alive his bad toe would never have recovered. Duncan’s arrival in the Firth of Forth as a prisoner was due to a combination of bad luck and the punctiliousness of the Danish authorities.
Part of Duncan’s story has already been told: how he and John Williams went to Cumaná and signed on in a Danish ship which was captured by a British privateer and sent into Tortola. At this point the stories told by the two men disagree. Williams went on shore and joined a British ship in which he returned to Liverpool and gave himself up. Duncan, however, said that when the Danish ship was captured the British prizemaster ‘Asked me if I belonged to the Hermione. I told him I did and he made a prisoner of me.’ Duncan claimed he was then sent to the island of St Thomas and put on board a Danish frigate bound for Denmark.
So much for Duncan’s claims. From then on official sources describe his movements. As soon as the frigate arrived in the Sound and anchored off Kronborg Castle at Elsinore, he was put on shore and imprisoned in the fortress. No doubt its dignified beauty, topped by the green coppered roof, and its romantic link with Hamlet, was lost on the seaman. In the meantime the Danish Government informed Lord Robert Fitzgerald of their prisoner and were asked that he should be put on board the Kite.
On July 3, 1800, just thirteen months after Lydiard’s letter to the Admiralty reporting the Kite’s arrival in the Forth, and nearly three years after the mutiny, James Duncan was brought to trial on board the Gladiator at Portsmouth on the usual charges. Southcott, having finally been made a lieutenant, Sergeant Plaice, John Williams, James Perrett and Steward John Jones, gave evidence against him. All these men, with the exception of Southcott, were being kept at Portsmouth, readily available as witnesses. But they had another task, which was simply to roam the streets of that great naval base, looking at the passing seamen, just in case they recognized a familiar face from the Hermione. The chances were not as remote as they would seem.
Duncan’s defence concluded with the plea that ‘I hope the court will take into account I have been two years confined’. This, of course, included the time he had been in Danish custody. The court no doubt took it into account, but it made no difference to the verdict: Duncan was sentenced to be hanged. The sentence was carried out on July 10 on board the Puissant, and a contemporary account said, ‘About a quarter of an hour before he was turned off [sic], he addressed the ship’s company, and said how justly he was condemned for being concerned in one of the worst of crimes, and warned them from ever being concerned in such an act of atrocity’.
A few days later a seaman from the Royal William, Thomas Nelson, was court-martialled for having ‘used reproachful and provoking speeches’ to one of the witnesses who had given evidence against Duncan. He was sentenced to two years in the Marshalsea Prison.
At the end of July, three weeks after Duncan had been hanged, the Gladiator was the scene of yet another Hermione trial, where the evidence given was the most gruesome so far. Two men were accused—John Watson, the sailor who had pretended to be blind before the mutiny and danced and drank on the halfdeck after it was over; and young James Allen, Lt Douglas’s servant, who had behaved more like a jackal when the lieutenant was murdered.
Both men had been taken out of a neutral ship in the West Indies and sent on board the flagship of Rear-Admiral Harvey, commanding in the Leeward Isles. Harvey had, as mentioned earlier, originally kept back some of the loyal Marines as witnesses should he capture any mutineers, but by then only Corporal Nicolas Doran remained. The Admiral sent for Doran and asked him if he recognized Allen. ‘I told him I knew him but had very little knowledge of the man,’ Doran said later. Admiral Harvey, having no one to use as a witness, sent both Watson and Allen to England, where the other witnesses were available.
Rear-Admiral John Holloway was the president of the court, and as usual the first witness was Lt Southcott, who described how after the mutiny Watson had said that he was not then blind—he had previously been pretending. But it was against James Allen that Southcott’s evidence was more effective: telling how the mutineers had been hunting for Lt Douglas, Southcott said that he heard Allen call, ‘Here he is!’ two or three times. He also described how later he saw the boy wearing one of Lt Douglas’s rings and cutting down a pair of his boots to make into shoes.
The former steward, John Jones, declared that he ‘saw Watson dancing with the people, very much in liquor, on the quarterdeck’. As for Allen, he saw him ‘showing the boys a ring he had on his finger which I supposed belonged to his master’.
Then came the turn of the Hermione’s former butcher, James Perrett, to tell his story. He described how he saw Allen holding on to Lt Douglas, and ‘He sung out “Let me have a chop at him. He shall not make me jump about the gunroom anymore.”’ Lt Douglas cried out for mercy as they dragged him away, Perrett added.
‘Did you see him take a chop at him?’ the court asked.
‘Yes, he made a chop at him as they were dragging him up the ladder of the after hatchway. I do not know whether it was with a tomahawk or a cutlass.’ A contemporary account said that ‘on receiving this deposition from Perrett, a general groan of horror was heard in the court.’
Sergeant Plaice gave a detailed description of how Lt Douglas had hidden under the dying Marine officer’s bed, and had later been found by the mutineers. ‘I suppose there were twenty tomahawks, axes and boarding pikes jagged into him immediately in the gunroom,’ he said.
Allen’s defence was simple. He said it was very improbable, as he was such a youth at the time, being only sixteen years old the previous February, that he should have been guilty of such a crime, and ‘if I had, I should not have slept in my bed’.
Both Allen and Watson were found guilty, and executed on August 7. According to the Naval Chronicle, ‘At ten o’clock Watson was launched into Eternity; but, as the same Provost Marshal was obliged to attend both men, Allen was not executed until eleven o’clock… They both behaved very penitent, and acknowledged the justice of their sentence. Allen was born at Chatham and was but twenty years of age the day he was tried. His brother was on board the whole of the trial and was extremely affected; and, at the time of the execution, he was at the Dockyard, directly opposite his brother, and, on the gun’s firing, he fell down speechless in the yard, from whence he was taken home in a state of insensibility…’
No more Hermiones were caught for nearly a year. Sir Hyde Parker had returned from the West Indies a rich man and then been sent to the Baltic with a squadron where his second-in-command, Nelson, fought and won the Battle of Copenhagen on Maundy Thursday, 1801. Sir Hyde was already back in his London house—having been ordered by the Admiralty to hand over command to Nelson and return home—by the time the next mutineers were put on trial.
They were the young former clerk, William Johnson, and Hadrian Poulson, the Dane who had helped Thomas Nash throw Captain Pigot’s body out through one of the Hermione’s stern windows. Both had been caught at Curaçao.
The court martial on board the Gladiator had Rear-Admiral John Holloway as its president. Johnson described how he had gone to Curaçao from La Guaira, finding a job there as clerk to the American Consul. ‘I remained in this employ,’ he said, ‘but hearing it was necessary for every person who was on board the Hermione at the unhappy period to be examined, I embraced the first opportunity to effect this, and on the 15th day of September [six days short of three years after the mutiny] I went on board His Majesty’s Ship Néréide, commanded by Frederick Watkins, Esquire, then off Curaçao, and surrendered myself for an examination of my conduct.’
That sounded an adequate defence and an indication that Johnson’s conscience was clear; but the former clerk had omitted to tell the full circumstances. The British frigate Néréide had indeed been cruising off Curaçao, and on September 11, 1800 she was close to the port of Amsterdam when Captain Watkins was surprised to see a boat pulling towards the frigate from the shore. He was even more surprised when a deputation of Dutchmen who, ‘tired out with the enormities of the band of 1,500 Republican ruffians who were in possession of the west part of the island,’ claimed the protection of Britain. Two days later Governor Johan Rudolph Lausser signed the capitulation, surrendering the island to Britain. Thus Captain Watkins came into the possession of an island—and a couple of Hermiones.
When Johnson went on board the Néréide he took with him a letter signed by Mr B. H. Phillips, of the firm of Bogle and Jopp (who were, among other things, agents for the sale of slaves) and addressed to the Admiralty. In it Mr Phillips, who was the American Consul, recommended ‘to your kindness and protection an unfortunate young man’. It had always been Johnson’s wish, the letter said, ‘to give himself up, and while with me as [has] conducted himself not only to please, but to gain my full confidence. We therefore pray you will show him countenance [sic] and we shall be very grateful for any service to him.’
The first prosecution witness at the trial was Lt Southcott, who said he could not remember seeing Johnson at the time of the mutiny, but he saw Poulson several times. Since Poulson was a Dane, a translator was sworn in to help him, and Poulson asked Southcott: ‘What was my character in the ship?’
Southcott was frank in his reply: ‘He had a very good one before the mutiny—all the best men were the principals of the mutineers.’
Earlier Southcott had been asked if either of the two accused men had expressed to him any contrition. ‘No, they did not,’ he said, ‘but Poulson, during the passage (I cannot say what day) when a great many of the mutineers were in the cabin and were boasting of what they had done in the murder of their officers, said that he assisted in killing the Captain and heaving him overboard, and that at the time he called out for his bargemen, and asked if everyone was against him, he [Poulson] said “Here are your bargemen, what do you want with them, you bugger?”’
‘Are you sure that [Poulson] was the wretch who made use of that infernal expression?’—‘Yes.’
When Johnson was called on to make his defence, he called the former Master of the Néréide, Mr Samuel Raven, to try to prove that he had surrendered at Curaçao.
‘Did I give myself up to Captain Watkins?’ he asked.
‘Not to my knowledge,’ was Raven’s uncompromising reply.
‘Did I live as clerk to the American Consul?’ Johnson asked. ‘Yes,’ said Raven.
The court then asked Raven: ‘How long had the ship been lying at Curaçao before Johnson came on board?’—‘We were lying off the harbour six or seven days. He was sent on board by the officer of Marines of the Néréide.’
The court then asked him about Poulson. ‘After we had been in quiet possession of the island he was sent on board by Governor Lawsor [Lausser], out of the Syren Dutch frigate…’
Johnson then made his written defence, and handed in the letter from Mr Phillips. His delay in reporting to the Néréide was because as cashier at the American Consul’s house he ‘had a great charge of cash’, he said: he was obliged to make up his accounts and therefore could not give himself up for several days.
Poulson, the other accused man, had nothing to say in his own defence, and the court announced their verdict: the Dane was guilty of both the charges—murdering or helping to murder the officers; and delivering the ship to the enemy. Johnson was not guilty on the first count, but he had helped take the ship into La Guaira and deliver her up to the enemy. Both men were sentenced to be hanged, but the court wrote to the Admiralty recommending Johnson to mercy. He was pardoned, but Poulson was executed on board the Puissant.
John Pearce, the Marine whom Mr Southcott had seen heaving his regimentals over the side shortly after the mutiny, was caught on board a ship at Malta and sent home for trial. This took place on board the Gladiator at Portsmouth in August 1801, and among the officers trying him was Captain Pigot’s old friend, Captain Robert Otway, formerly of the Ceres.
The most important of the prosecution witnesses was Pearce’s former superior, Sergeant Plaice, who told the court that ‘I saw him in the gunroom at the time our officer [Lt Mclntosh] was killed.’ He had no great opinion of Pearce: after the mutiny he ‘saw him about the decks frequently and very cheerful—he was a slothful man generally. I had a great deal of trouble with him in the Tartar frigate before.’
‘Did you see him at La Guaira?’ the court asked.
‘Yes,’ said Plaice, ‘he entered into the Spanish service, into the train of artillery: I saw him in their dress…’
Steward Jones noticed him drinking liquor with some other Marines, and added, with truth: ‘He seemed full of spirits and seemed to rejoice at what had happened.’ Pearce was sentenced to death and was hanged in August 31, the last Hermione to be caught in the year 1801.
We left William Bower, the seaman from Chesterfield, serving on board an American ship which called in at Charleston, where Bower—who had changed his name to William Miller—found posters stuck up in the port and notices in the newspapers offering rewards of a thousand dollars for anyone causing the arrest of a mutineer from the Hermione.
The captain of the American ship knew that Bower was a former Hermione—indeed, Bower said later, it was the captain that ‘showed him the paper’. However, the American had no intention of claiming the reward. Bower asked him what he should do—whether to give himself up to the British Consul or not. ‘He said I had better not; that it was so horrid an act none of us would be forgiven,’ and he assured Bower he would say nothing.
The American was as good as his word, and Bower continued to serve in the ship more than two years. Then, in the winter of 1801, she loaded a cargo for the Mediterranean, crossed the Atlantic, and called at Malta. While she was at anchor a lieutenant at the head of a press-gang from HMS Minerva came on board looking for men. Bower was one of those who had no Protection, and a short while afterwards he was being ‘read in’ on board the frigate, safe under his assumed name of William Miller.
So once again Bower was in the Royal Navy and, being a good seaman, he was soon made one of the captain’s bargemen. This subsequently proved unfortunate for him because within a few weeks the Minerva received orders to return to Portsmouth. While she was at anchor there in January, 1802, four and a half years after the mutiny, Bower was kept busy as one of the bargemen, since the captain frequently wanted to go ashore.
The result was described in a letter by Lt William Cathcart, of the Medusa, writing to his father, Lord Cathcart, on January 14, 1802: ‘A seaman belonging to the Minerva’s barge was arrested by one of the King’s Evidence (on shore for the purpose) and proved to be one of the mutineers of the Hermone.’ He went on to describe how one of the group of loyal former Hermiones, who were always at Portsmouth for the purpose, spotted Bower in the street.
The Admiralty’s order for Bower’s trial told Vice-Admiral Sir Andrew Mitchell to assemble a court martial ‘as soon after the arrival of the evidence at Spithead as conveniently may be’. The ‘evidence’ causing the delay was Lt Southcott, now serving in the sloop Renard. A few days before Bower was spotted in Portsmouth, Southcott was at sea in the sloop and facing some very bad weather—a contemporary report dated Plymouth, January 3, spoke of snow and said ‘Came in from Bantry Bay [Ireland] the Renard, of 24 guns, Captain Spicer. She experienced dreadful gales of wind, and shipped several heavy seas’.
The Renard was sent to Portsmouth, where she arrived on January 12. At the trial, held a month later, Lt Southcott gave his usual evidence about the mutiny and said of Bower that ‘at the time he seemed to be rejoiced at what had happened, and was dancing, singing and drinking with the rest.’
Steward Jones told the court that after the mutiny Bower ‘appeared to be more rejoiced than sorry at what had happened.’ Bower had previously been on the sick-list, but after the mutiny appeared to be perfectly fit. Sergeant Plaice corroborated this—‘I did not consider him to be a sick man but one aiding and assisting the navigating the ship. Several who were said to be sick that night, over whom I had a sentry, were active in the mutiny.’ Bower, found guilty of having helped carry the ship to La Guaira and handing her over to the Spanish, was hanged.
Towards the end of March, 1802, after months of negotiation, Britain and France finally signed the Treaty of Amiens which had brought the war—which had started in 1793—to a halt. The realists—surprisingly few in Britain, unfortunately—knew the Treaty would only give each side a breathing space before war inevitably began once again. Both sides had reached a stalemate because although Britain was supreme at sea (thanks to the Battle of Cape St Vincent, followed by Nelson’s victories at the Nile and at Copenhagen), France was supreme on the Continent. Neither side could make a challenge on the other’s battleground—for the time being.
Inevitably the protracted negotiations with Napoleon and the final Treaty had their effect on the fate of some of the Hermiones: we have seen for example that the Minerva had returned to England from the Mediterranean, with the result that William Bower was caught and hanged. Many other ships were also brought home, often to be paid off and laid up. But peace did not mean that the Royal Navy slackened its watch…
With the Bower court martial over, the Renard sailed from Portsmouth on March 7 with Lt Southcott on board, bound for Plymouth, and by chance three days later the 16-gun sloop Bittern arrived at Portsmouth under the command of Captain Edward Kittoe. The Bittern had been in the West Indies for more than three years. One of the seamen serving in the ship was a certain Thomas Williams, who had been on board for more than four years. Captain Kittoe had long since been impressed by Williams’s ability and smartness, with the result that he had been made one of the bargemen. When the Bittern anchored at Portsmouth on the 10th, Williams was naturally one of the men who rowed Captain Kittoe to the shore so that he could report to the port admiral.
Captain Kittoe went on shore several times after that—there were always plenty of appointments, both social and service, to occupy his time; and since Britain was at peace and seamen were plentiful, his bargemen were often allowed to go into the town for short periods while waiting for the Captain to finish his business.
On March 22, while Captain Kittoe was busy on shore and the bargemen were enjoying a brief hour or two in the town, Thomas Williams went for a walk. Portsmouth was its usual bustling self: ships’ officers hurried to and fro; on most corners there was at least one comely Poll or Bess with her eye on the sailor who had just been paid off, or who still had a few shillings left in his pocket despite the earlier attentions of her sisters-in-trade.
Williams was just walking through the Point Gates when someone tapped him on the shoulder and spoke to him. The man was John Jones, Captain Pigot’s former steward in the Hermione, and he asked:
‘Isn’t your name David Forester?’
‘No,’ said the Bittern’s bargeman.
‘Yes, but it was in the Hermone!’ declared Jones, and seized him. Four and a half years had passed since Forester had come out of Captain Pigot’s cabin, tapped Jones on the shoulder and said: ‘I have just launched your bloody master overboard’.
The seaman then admitted that he was indeed David Forester, and Jones took him to the main guard house, at the Dockyard, where he was put in irons. A message was sent to the Commander-in-Chief, who ordered Rear-Admiral John Holloway to question the man.
A contemporary description of this interview said that while Forester was in the guard house, ‘Admiral Holloway and several other officers went to interrogate him concerning the mutiny, when he confessed himself to have been the person who killed, and afterwards threw Captain Pigot overboard: it appears that in the scuffle he was wounded in the foot by the Captain, who defended himself with his dirk.
‘Admiral Holloway asked him if he had been easy in his conscience since the transaction. He replied, perfectly so, as he was ordered to do it by the Captain of the Forecastle, and that if he had not done it, he should have been killed himself.
‘On this the Admiral observed, “Suppose I was to order you to kill one of those soldiers, (who were standing near), would you do it?” He said, “Yes, if I thought you would kill me if I did not.”’
Word of Forester’s arrest was at once sent to the Admiralty in London, but since Lt Southcott had recently returned to Plymouth in the Renard, the court martial would have to wait until he could be brought back to Portsmouth. Finally on March 30, while the peace treaty between France and Britain was being ratified by His Majesty and by the First Consul, David Forester faced his trial on board the Gladiator.
There were three witnesses for the prosecution, Lt Southcott, Steward John Jones and James Perrett. The evidence they gave was brief and utterly damning. ‘… Soon after the mutiny commenced I saw him before my cabin door with arms in his hands: he was calling to take the officers out to put them to death,’ said Southcott. ‘He was as active in the mutiny as any in the ship. After that I saw him in the Captain’s cabin… They were boasting of what horrid deeds they had done in murdering the officers, and the prisoner said that he had assisted in murdering Captain Pigot; that he had cut him three or four times, that he had assisted in throwing him out of the stern window; that Captain Pigot spoke to him and said, “Forester, are you against me too?” He said, “Yes, you bugger.” He was also very active in carrying the ship to La Guaira.’
John Jones told the court that, ‘On the night of the mutiny, I was tying the sentinel at the cabin door’s head, which had been cut… David Forester, the prisoner, came out of the cabin with a cutlass or tomahawk in his hand—I cannot be positive which. He tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘I have just launched your bloody master overboard’.
Jones described how Forester said, ‘The bugger—I gave him his death wound, I think, before he went out of the window’. Later he saw Forester, when the Second Lieutenant or the Lieutenant of Marines was being dragged up the ladder, ‘chop at him several times with a cutlass or tomahawk; there were ten or a dozen round him chopping at him, and when the prisoner could not chop at him he stabbed him…’
Forester had little to say in his defence and he was sentenced to death. He was hanged on board the Gladiator on April 1, and a contemporary account said that ‘just before he was launched into eternity, he made the following confession: That he went into the cabin and forced Captain Pigot overboard through the port, while he was alive. He then got on the quarterdeck, and found the First [Third] Lieutenant begging for his life, saying he had a wife and three children totally depending upon him for support: he took hold of him and assisted in heaving him overboard, and declared he did not think the people would have taken his life had he first not took hold of him. A cry was then heard through the ship that Lt Douglas could not be found; he took a lanthorn and candle and went into the gunroom and found the Lieutenant under the Marine Officer’s cabin [sic]; he then called the rest of the people, when they dragged him on deck and threw him overboard. He next caught hold of Mr Smith, Midshipman, a scuffle ensued, and finding him likely to get away, he struck him with his tomahawk and threw him overboard. The general cry next was for putting all the officers to death, that they might not appear as evidence against them; he seized on the Captain’s Clerk [Manning] who was immediately put to death. These, he said, were the whole of his actions during the murdering of the officers. He called God to witness, hoped He would forgive him, and said his mind was easy after making the above confession.’
Occasionally the Royal Navy arrested the wrong man on suspicion that he was a former Hermione. Vice-Admiral Thomas Pasley—the same officer who, as a captain, had taken Vice-Admiral Hugh Pigot and his young son Hugh out to the West Indies in 1782—wrote to the Admiralty from Plymouth in May, 1800, about one of them.
When the frigate Stag stopped the brig Hope and sent a boarding party over to press some seamen, the lieutenant in charge brought back a man who gave his name as Frederick Stirke and who claimed he was born in Ostend. But as he had what appeared to be an Irish accent, the Stage’scommanding officer, Captain Robert Winthrop, was suspicious and questioned him closely.
Captain Winthrop wrote that Stirke, ‘on his first examination, says he was born at Ostend, again says he was born at Oldenburgh, and lastly at Flushing. On being asked how he came to speak English, said he belonged to a merchant ship called the Hermione, was taken by the St Amonisa[sic] and carried into Barbados, where he was imprisoned for nine months.
‘On being asked if it was not the Hermione frigate that he belonged to, he appeared very much confused and said he could not help the misfortune that happened [to] her, then said he was a prisoner at Barbados in the year 1783, went passenger in the Hermione to Plymouth, and there imprisoned’.
Apart from the way he contradicted himself, Stirke was hardly helping his own case by giving such facts: the frigate Hermione, for instance, did not make her first voyage until 1783. However, Admiral Pasley made inquiries among the ships at Plymouth—where he was the Port Admiral—and found that two lieutenants had served in the Hermione until September 1796. They were ordered to see if they recognized Stirke, and they reported that at the time they were in the Hermione ‘no such man was on board’. Stirke appears to have been a man who was mentally unbalanced.
Later in the same year in the Mediterranean there was another and more curious case. In Naples on October 2, two men—Cornelius Corton (or Coston), the cook on board the American ship Hero, and Edward Greenfield, a seaman from the British merchantman Princess Mary—called on the British Consul-General, Mr Charles Locke, with stories which they later repeated in depositions.
Corton told Mr Locke that while he was serving on board the American schooner Max Meon in Cuban waters, he saw the Hermione brought into a Cuban port by the mutineers ‘who, after disposing of her to the Spaniards, then came on shore’. That much was a lie, but the rest of the story had a percentage of truth in it.
Among the men, said Corton, he saw a certain Benjamin Brewster, who later left Cuba for Philadelphia. More than two years later, he continued, he met Brewster again when, joining the Hero as cook, he found that Brewster was the second mate, and had changed his first name from Benjamin to William, Corton said he never gave the slightest hint to Brewster that he recognized him ‘Because he was afraid of being ill-used, [Brewster] being a very violent man’.
He noticed that the second mate had two ‘B’s’ tattooed on his arm, and that when he remarked that they were not Brewster’s initials, the man ‘smiled and answered that although his real name was Benjamin, yet he chose go to by the name of William’.
Corton declared that Brewster ‘has on more than one occasion confessed and bragged that he had been one of the mutineers on board His said Majesty’s Ship Hermione when she was taken by the rebellious crew, and that he had with another man knocked down the Boatswain… and thrown him overboard; that while he was swimming upon the waves they called upon him to whistle and ride and be damned.’
The other seaman, Greenfield, said in his deposition that he had been on board the Hero one day and was ‘in discourse with one Isaac Vanblarigan who, at that very time, was disputing with the mate of the ship, Mr Benjamin Brewster, when several words passed between them’. Vanblarigan turned to Greenfield and, touching him on the shoulder, said ‘Don’t mind what that damned rascal says… for he is one of the Bloody Hermiones’.
These two depositions were quite enough for the Consul-General who had Brewster seized and for good measure his main accuser, Corton, as well and sent them both on board a British warship in the Bay with a note to the captain asking him to take them in custody.
Benjamin Brewster had in his possession the Protection mentioned earlier, claiming that he was an American citizen, and which had been issued on February 15, 1800. Of course, Brewster was never brought to trial. He may well have boasted that he had been a mutineer, without realizing the danger in which he placed himself, because he had once served in the Hermione.
By October, 1806 the Hermione mutiny had been long forgotten by the British public: it had taken place nine years earlier, and since then Britain had faced many perils, lost many battles, and won many victories. Lord Nelson had been dead more than a year and his third and last great victory at Trafalgar had finally given Britain a mastery at sea which was to last more than a hundred years.
In the nine years since the mutiny, thirty-two of the Hermione’s crew—excluding those who gave themselves up at La Guaira as prisoners of war—had been brought to trial, but several ringleaders were still free—Thomas Jay, Lawrence Cronin, William Turner, Robert McReady, John Smith and James Bell among them. Some had undoubtedly gone to America and settled down in a new life on shore. Others including Cronin, had stayed in Caracas and, in all probability, married Spanish girls.
Yet despite the passage of time, the Royal Navy had not forgotten them, although several had felt themselves safe—David Forester, it will be remembered, had strode through the Point Gates at Portsmouth five years after the mutiny little thinking he would ever meet the much-despised Steward Jones. Another man who probably thought himself safe after nearly ten years was James Hayes, who had been the doctor’s servant in the Hermione, and, angry at having been caught stealing from him, had helped murder his master.
At the time Hayes had been fourteen years old; but in October 1806, at the age of twenty-three, and still using his alias, Thomas Wood, he found himself a prisoner and about to be court-martialled on board the Salvador del Mundo at Plymouth. It has been impossible, at this stage, to discover how Hayes was caught; but the minutes of the trial show that among the captains forming the court were Pigot’s friend, Robert Otway and two others who had served with Pigot and later helped to try several other mutineers, Ross Donelly and John Loring.
By this time all the men who had been kept at Portsmouth, always watching in case they saw a mutineer in the street, and always available as witnesses, had been dispersed; but it was easy to trace Lt Southcott who was, in this case, the person in the best position to give evidence about Hayes, since the youth’s activities had taken place outside Southcott’s cabin door. His testimony was damning. Hayes ‘appeared very active and boasted of having been the occasion of putting his master to death. And the rest of the mutineers said that the prisoner was the great cause of the Surgeon being put to death… Previous to the mutiny he had broke [sic] open a trunk or some article of his master’s property and had taken something from his master, and was punished for it. That was the occasion of his persuading the people to put his master to death—to be revenged, as he called it.’
When Hayes was called on for his defence, he handed the Judge-Advocate a written statement and asked him to read it.
‘Mr President and gentleman of the honourable court,’ the statement began. ‘At the time when this detestable and horrid mutiny took place… I was a boy in my fourteenth year, with all the disadvantages of education and moral example. Necessity drove me to sea in my ninth year. Drove by the torrent of mutiny I took the oath administered to me on the occasion. The examples of death which were before my eyes drove me for shelter amongst the mutineers, dreading a similar fate with those who fell, if I sided with, [sic] or showed the smallest inclination to mercy.
‘If any amongst the many who have been tried for the same offence have not had mercy, tho’ guided by experience and having arrived at the age of maturity, who were abettors or actors at that dreadful time, most humbly and contritely let me solicit your humanity on a youth in his fourteenth year at the time, who has not enjoyed one hour’s repose of mind from jeopardy and compunction, which has led to the present trial.’
The court—which included Captain Richard King who, commanding the Achille at Trafalgar, had seen fifty-nine of his men wounded and thirteen more killed in the battle—decided Hayes deserved no mercy, and he was sentenced to death. We can close the story of the trials—for Hayes was the last of the Hermiones ever to be brought to trial—with an extract from a contemporary description of his execution:
‘On Friday, October 17, a signal was fired on board the Salvador del Mundoy flagship in the Hamoaze, and the yellow flag hoisted as a signal for an execution. Woods [i.e. Hayes], the Hermione’s mutineer, after praying some time in his berth with the chaplain of the ship, at eleven o’clock was led forth for execution along the gangway, to a platform erected on the fo’c’sle. He persisted in his innocence of the crime for which he was going to suffer, but said he deserved death for his other crimes, which were numerous. He appeared very penitent, and declared he died in peace with all mankind.’
Hayes’s execution meant that thirty-three Hermiones had been brought to trial, and he was the twenty-fourth to be executed. The way the men had been caught has made a series of strange and dramatic episodes; yet the most dramatic part of the Hermione’s story provides the final chapters of this narrative.