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Hawke’s Blockade of Brest 

 

 

            Thirty-six years before Captain Pellew made his courageous interference with a French squadron escaping out of the harbor of Brest, another English captain was in a similar position.  The year was 1759, the pivotal year in the Seven Years War between France and Great Britain. Britain’s Royal Navy had grown in size and professionalism.  With a clear understanding that its objective was to rule the seas, the Royal Navy had taken a terrible toll on French shipping and commerce.  The English had been so successful that France was increasingly cut off from its colonies in Canada and the West Indies.   It was feared, correctly as it turned out, that without a turn in fortunes, Canada would be lost to the English.  Just as they had previously, and would again decades later, the French concluded that their best hope was an invasion of England.  Three years earlier, the mere assembling of a force to invade England had kept most of the Royal Navy close to home in the English Channel for protection, freeing French ships to sail where they pleased.  Perhaps the same result would occur again, allowing French fleets to supply the beleaguered soldiers in Canada.  Preparations for the invasion moved forward, with major activity taking place in the harbors of Brest and Quiberon Bay, France.    

            Admiral Sir Edward Hawke was in command of Britain’s Western Squadron, which had responsibility for the protection of the English coast.  Hawke had orders to cruise to Brest within fourteen days, check on French invasion preparations there, and return to a home port for reprovisioning.  When Hawke got to Brest, however, he was confronted with eleven full-size battle ships appearing capable of sailing out of the harbor at any time.  Hawke immediately decided to countermand his orders and began a close-blockade of the harbor. 

            Blockading an enemy harbor was not new.  Amassing a fleet of ships off the coast of an enemy port was an effective strategy, because the ships at sea had a distinct advantage over those that would try to come out of the port and engage in battle.  With the slow speeds of sailing ships, their reliance upon wind and its direction, and the large amount of space required to bring a fleet of ships into proper formation for battle, any fleet emerging from port into the waiting ships of an enemy blockade would be in for utter destruction. 

            Hawke, however, took the concept of close-blockade a step further than usual.  Already low on provisions, he knew he and his fleet could not last long outside the enemy port.  Water was in short supply, and it wouldn’t be long before all the other victuals would run out.  So Hawke initiated a system of re-supply at sea.  What sounds so obvious and simple to modern ears was actually quite revolutionary at the time.  Hawke sent ships back to English ports to obtain supplies, and had them rendezvous with various ships under his command out to sea.  The ships on blockade duty would then either go out in small groups to meet those ships for re-supply, or would have supplies brought to them.  This idea had been considered before, and even tried in limited ways, but never had met with much success or favor with commanders.  With Hawke, however, an aggressive and strategic commander, the concept worked remarkable well.

            Hawke’s close blockade effectively took the French fleet at Brest entirely out of the plans for invasion.  That was not all.  With the English ships on constant duty at sea, keeping watch over the trapped French ships, the morale of English sailors soared while that of the French plummeted.  There was just something intimidating about being trapped at harbor, watching an enemy off shore show its flag every day, baiting you to come out and fight.  Additionally, the English used their time to hone their skills, getting actual sailing time twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and practicing their gunnery.  The French were growing rusty while the English were growing strong.  Additionally, the French port was effectively blocked off from receiving any waterborne commerce or supplies.  The large French fleet there instead had to be sustained with expensive and slow overland operations. 

            According to author Peter Padfield, “This relentless grip on the enemy fleet base formed the cornerstone of a series of victories that year which established Great Britain as the final winner at sea and across the seas; as such it ranks among the most decisive naval campaigns in world history.”  And it all began with Hawke’s decision to cast aside his orders and pioneer the idea of a sustainable close-blockade.

             Finally, frustrated by the effectiveness of Hawke’s blockade, the French fleet made an ill-advised escape when winds were favorable to them and had blown the British out into the Atlantic.   It was the kind of move for which Hawke had been hoping.  With incredible decisiveness and almost reckless abandon, Hawke pursued the French south as they fled into QuiberonBay.   With terrible weather and dangerous rocks all around, and the day’s light fading quickly, Hawke charged ahead for the attack.  Padfield wrote, “The scene was the grandest in the long history of Anglo-French wars: under low skies darkened with lines of squalls, the two fleets drove down the spume-lathered swell from the Atlantic, ships heeling wildly as the wind gusted up and shifted a degree or so, tiers of canvas whipped taut, topmasts, t’gallants and slender stunsail booms quivering with the strain, weather rigging stretched bar-tight, timber groaning, water torn through the head gratings as the bows plunged, pressing out wide patterns of foam, the sea surging swiftly down the sides . . . Quiberon Bay . . . put an end to [king] Louis XV’s invasion plans and to his battle fleet, which ceased to exist as an effective fighting force.  The victory was a natural outcome of the close blockade which had preceded it . . . .”  Hawke’s victory at Quiberon Bay was total.  J. Creswell wrote, “It has been observed, with justice, that ‘no more courageous decision in the handling of a navy’s main battle fleet has ever been taken.’”    

 

 

Understanding and Application

 

 

            Being a sea captain in the nineteenth century was a picture of loneliness.  Far out to sea, separated from superiors and all lines of communication, with orders that were usually months old, these men were forced to rely upon their own judgment.  There was no one else on scene to guide their actions or concur with their decisions.  It is a beautiful picture of leadership. 

Leaders know that their very calling requires action, decision, and courage.  Often, leaders are confronted with facts that they don’t like, circumstances that put them at peril, and adversaries that mean them harm.  Further, there will not always be time to gather adequate intelligence before taking action, and the odds will not always be in a leader’s favor.  A leader takes stock of a situation, confronts brutal reality without denial or panic, and calculates the best plan of action.  Since time is almost always of the essence, leaders are normally faced with making decisions on their own.  Usually there just isn’t time for consultations and committee approval.  Then, once the leader makes a decision and takes action accordingly, he or she takes great pains to make the decision into a correct one.  As one lawyer stated, “I have never seen a case I couldn’t win, if properly handled, and I’ve never seen a case I couldn’t lose, either.”  A true leader makes a decision, and then works to make the decision right. 

In the course of “making it right,” leaders are often forced to improvise.  The incredible story of Cochrane and his tiny Speedy capturing the much larger El Gamo is a study in creative leadership and innovation.  Each time the battle turned against him, Cochrane was ready with a quick ruse or creative stroke.  He strung enough of these together fast enough to pull off an upset against incredible odds.  He made decisions quickly and confidently, then backed them with immediate action.  His innovative ruses then ensured that each previous decision didn’t turn out to be the wrong one.  Cochrane took initiative, created solutions, and progressed through the incredible drama with such alarming success that it enthused his crew to follow him boldly.  That’s the power of a leader’s initiative.

Hawke’s courageous decision to countermand his orders and blockade Brest, which he was unprepared to do, was bold enough.  But then creating a way to sustain his decision proved to be the master stroke.  It not only gave him an enormous strategic advantage over his enemy, but ultimately caused one of the most devastating battles in naval history.  It should also be noted, that Hawke’s innovation became a new standard of operation for the Royal Navy and a major weapon against the French in its own right.  The impact of Hawke’s methods of re-supply at sea and resulting long-term close blockade were used extensively in the later Napoleonic Wars to enormous effect.              

Action and the habit of initiative, in addition to developing a leader’s effectiveness, also tend to foster creativity.  Innovation in the face of adversity is a key component in the initiative required of a leader.  Where many people, when confronted with difficult circumstances, hesitate, gather more information, and seek to ask superiors for advice and assistance, leaders enact creative solutions and take action.  If there isn’t a ready-made solution, they invent one.  What others may perceive as a gamble, leaders understand to be a mere calculated risk.   In the face of superior odds, a leader must have the courage to innovate.

  One trait common to all leaders is initiative.  Leaders don’t have to be told to do something, they don’t need managers above them, and they don’t wait for the all lights to turn green before departing on a trip.  Leaders take action, they take responsibility, and they don’t take their time waiting and wondering if they should act.  There is an old line that there are three types of people in the world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.  Leaders are the ones in the first group making things happen.  A component in initiative is the courage to act.  Another is decisiveness.  Leaders display a willingness toward action, seeing what needs to be done and doing it without further delay.  Initiative is not to be confused with recklessness.  Instead, it is a mixture of a spirit of enterprise, courage, and competent decisiveness.

Thomas Cochrane and the Capture of the Gamo 

            Englishman Thomas Cochrane’s first command was the tiny brig misnamed the Speedy.  It was actually quite slow and difficult to handle.  But this fact hadn’t stopped Cochrane and his crew from amassing an impressive string of victories, capturing scores of enemy vessels along Spain’s Mediterranean coast.  In fact, their successes had been so numerous that the crew of the Speedy was at about half strength, the remainder of the men having been sent off as “prize crews” responsible for sailing the captured crafts back to home ports.  There were barely enough men left on board to sail the ship.  The Speedy and its plucky commander had become more than a nuisance to the Spanish, whose trade had been significantly interrupted by the capture of nearly fifty ships in less than a year.

            On the one year anniversary of his command, Cochrane was in pursuit of two Spanish gunboats that fled into the harborof Barcelona.  Apparently acting as decoys, the gun boats led the Speedy into the path of a thirty-two gun Spanish frigate named El Gamo, which had been sent out in search of Cochrane.  The Gamo was four times the size of the Speedy, and had over three hundred sailors and marines on board compared to Cochrane’s mere fifty-four.  Whereas the Speedy had only fourteen guns, the El Gamo had thirty-two.  The capability of the guns was all out of proportion as well, with the broadside of the Gamo being 190 pounds to the Speedy’s 28 (a broadside was the total weight of shot capable of being fired from one side of a ship’s guns and was a common measure of firepower). 

Being too close to the larger ship to run for safety, Cochrane surprised his crew by deciding to turn and fight rather than surrender.  According to biographer Donald Thomas, “The one factor in Cochrane’s favour was the improbability of what he was about to do.  The officers of the Gamo would never believe that anyone but a lunatic would try to attack them with a brig whose mastheads hardly reached much above their own quarterdeck.”  Cochrane sailed in close to windward (the side offering the advantage of the wind), and to cause confusion, he flew the American flag.  Flying the colors of other countries, particularly a neutral like the United States, was a common ruse during the age of fighting sail.  Nonetheless, it caused hesitation on the part of the Gamo.  For the moment the menacing gun ports of the Spanish ship remained silent.  Then Cochrane turned the Speedy and came around on the leeward side of the Spanish (giving the Gamo the wind advantage); another move designed to confuse.  At this point, Cochrane quickly had his crew raise the British flag.

As the Speedy sailed closer at high speed, it somehow survived the first broadside of the larger ship.  This was by design.  Cochrane had surrendered the coveted “weather gauge” by giving the Spanish ship the windward position, and he purposely took the leeward side.  Although battle maneuvers were more difficult from that side, it was also harder for a ship in the Gamo’s position to fire at an enemy so close to leeward.  The wind heeled the ship over and shots were likely to go into the sea.

 

Cochrane told his men to hold their fire, and he instructed them to double-shot their guns.  This meant they would have less of a firing range, but would spew forth twice the amount of projectiles and have the potential for causing much more destruction.  “Grape” or “grapeshot” was a mixture of metal pieces and balls designed to scatter like a shotgun blast and inflict maximum damage to personnel and rigging.  A double-shot dose of it, properly aimed, would be deadly to all in its path.  It was risky to sail in close enough to use a double-shotted broadside, but it just might give the Speedy a chance.

 

A second broadside for the Gamo had no affect on the charging Speedy, which was approaching as though it meant to ram the bigger vessel.  Then there was a crash as the masts and rigging of the two ships entangled upon impact.  The Gamo’s guns fired again, but the shot went over the heads of all aboard the tiny Speedy and only damaged sails and rigging.  Finally, the Speedy aimed its comparatively little four-pounders as high as possible and fired.  Because of the angle of the shots, upward and through the Gamo’s gun ports, the effect was devastating.  The flooring under some of the Spanish guns was blown upwards as the grapeshot scattered in its deadly patterns. The captain of the Gamo was killed instantly.  The firing continued furiously from both sides, but because of the mismatch in size and gun position, the Speedy inflicted more damage.

Because of the ineffectiveness of their firing, soldiers aboard the Gamo made three attempts to “board” the Speedy and force a hand-to-hand fight.  Each time, however, Cochrane would let the Spanish assemble for the jump across, then maneuver his ship to widen the gap of ocean between.  Once perched in such a position, musket and small arms fire from the Speedy would wipe out the would-be attackers.

The fight continued in this manner for over an hour.  Then, according to Cochrane, “The great disparity of force rendering it necessary to adopt some measure that might prove decisive, I resolved to board.”  His men, in disbelief over what they had so far achieved, enthusiastically responded to this practically suicidal order.

Cochrane split his men into two groups, leaving only the ship’s surgeon aboard and at the wheel.  One group, with faces painted black for effect, went to the front and climbed aboard the Gamo from the bow.  The other, led by Cochrane himself, climbed straight up the side of the Spanish ship.  In the smoke, noise, and confusion, the Spanish were unnerved by the screaming black faces rushing at them from the front of their ship while they were engaged with attackers from the side as well.

 

In the tight quarters aboard the deck of the Gamo, the superior numbers of the Spanish could not be brought to full advantage.  Even so, Cochrane was not out of surprises.  In the middle of the melee, he called over to the only man left aboard the Speedy and instructed him, very loudly, to send the second wave of attackers.  Somehow the recipient of the bogus order managed to contain his surprise, and pretended to comply with loud shouts and orders to sailors who didn’t exist.  Many of the Spanish apparently concluded that the Speedy had been packed with Marines and the whole battle had been a trap. 

Next, someone noticed that the Spanish ensign was being lowered from the mast: the sign of surrender.  But it wasn’t the Spanish lowering it. Rather, it was one of Cochrane’s men who had previously been instructed to do so at a proper point in the struggle.  Before they could figure out that it was a trick, the disheartened Spanish, with their captain dead, laid down their weapons.  Afraid the Spanish would discover how few had defeated them, Cochrane and his men were quick to shuttle the Spanish below decks, where they were held in position with the Gamo’s two largest guns. 

The tiny little Speedy proceeded to the British port in Minorca towing a prize ship four times its size.  Donald Thomas wrote, “The Gamo should have been able to blow the Speedy out of the water before the British ship came near enough to fire a shot.  The Spanish troops should have been able to overwhelm the depleted crew of the brig as soon as she came alongside.  A man who was so foolish as to lead forty-eight seamen on board an enemy ship with a crew of more than three hundred ought to have found himself and his men prisoners within a few minutes.”  But it didn’t happen that way.  Instead, Cochrane had pulled off what Nathan Miller called “the finest single-ship action of the Napoleonic Wars.”

(To be continued)