People: Brave Benbow

Every kid who has read Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Treasure Island remembers the inn where Jim Hawkins and his mother lived: the Admiral Benbow. In fact, the first chapter of the book is entitled “The Old Sea Dog at the Admiral Benbow”. This is no simple imagining on the part of Stevenson; many public houses were named after the famous British naval hero and pirate hunter, Admiral John Benbow.


John Benbow was born into country aristocracy some time in the mid-1600s. The National Museum of the Royal Navy states his date of birth as March 10, 1653 but there are other sources that say he was born in 1650. Either way, his family was very much attached to Charles I, which did not go well for them during the Cromwellian protectorate. One of Benbow’s uncles, Thomas, was executed either by the king himself or by Cromwell.

His family having fallen on hard times, Benbow decided to seek his fortune at sea in his early 20s. Though this makes him a late bloomer as seamen go, Benbow seems to have brought enthusiasm and audacity to his new profession and his successes mounted quickly. By 1678 he was master’s mate aboard HMS Rupert when she was sent to battle Barbary pirates on the Mediterranean coast of Africa. In 1679 he was promoted to master and sailing aboard HMS Nonsuch off Tangiers.

Nonsuch was quite successful in the taking of rich Barbary prizes, but when a dispute over how prize shares should be paid out arose with another ship, Benbow seems to have gotten a case of loose lips. He was court martialled for speaking ill of the officers of HMS Adventure and, of his own accord, left the service.

Around this time, Benbow married a woman named Martha (which was also his mother’s name). They would set up homekeeping in Stepney and eventually have seven children, five boys (three of whom died in childhood) and two girls.

Despite domestic bliss, Benbow by now had the sea bug and he turned to merchant service. He sailed a frigate, which he evidently owned and named eponymously, from Spain to Italy on regular runs. He continued to fight pirates, this time to protect his own ship and cargo. Dickens wrote in 1844 of seeing a silver cup made from a “Moorish skull-cap” which was inscribed:

First adventure of Captain John Benbow, and gift to Richard Ridley, 1687

Whether or not this was our John Benbow is somewhat in dispute as one of Benbow’s sons was also named John and followed his father into the service. The date, if accurate, would seem to point to the original Admiral Benbow.

For what ever reason, Benbow was welcomed back into the Royal Navy in 1688 with the rank of lieutenant. He was present at the Battle of Beachy Head, where his valor was noted against the French. He did a brief stint at Deptford Dockyard as master attendant but was again called to pirate hunting in 1693. This time, though, his talents would be used against the privateers of northern France.

Benbow’s particular foil was the Hero of Dunkirk, Jean Bart, who regularly slipped Benbow’s blockades of both his home port and Saint-Malo. Though Benbow led a bombardment of the latter city as captain of HMS Norwich, Bart’s flotilla of privateers managed to continue to harass English merchants in the Channel and elsewhere. Despite this, Benbow’s own taking of French prizes was noted by the Admiralty and he was promoted to Rear Admiral in 1695.

After a failed attempt to bombard the city of Dunkirk, Benbow was given new orders. He was sent to England’s American colonies in 1697 where he escorted merchants in the Caribbean and up and down the coast from Virginia to Newfoundland, protecting them from French buccaneers. This task kept the now Admiral occupied until 1700, when he returned to England and briefly commanded a fleet of ships in the Downs.

Benbow was in Jamaica by 1701 and poised to fight his most illustrious and well-remembered battle. In August of 1702, Vice-Admiral Benbow in command of HMS Breda and leading a squadron of heavily armed men-of-war, met the famous French Admiral Jean du Casse commanding a squadron of his own. The engagement began August 19 off Santa Marta and continued, either as a fire fight or a chase, for five days. In the course of the battle, Benbow was brutally injured; struck by chain shot that shattered the lower portion of one of his legs.

Though Benbow was insistent on keeping up the chase, he having finally put du Casse on the run, his captains intervened. They went so far as to draw up and mutually sign a paper stating that the action could not be won, and should be called off. Infuriated, Benbow bowed to their wishes and took his ships back to Port Royal. The incident caused uproar, and all of Benbow’s captains were called to a courts martial.

Meanwhile, Benbow received a letter from his old foe du Casse. According to the Age of Nelson online it read:

Sir, I had little hopes on Monday last but to have supped in your cabin; but it pleased God to order it otherwise. I am thankful for it. As for those cowardly captains who deserted you, hang them up, for by God they deserve it. Yours, Du Casse

In fact, none of the captains were hanged. After Queen Anne herself reviewed the findings of their trials, she approved dismissal for three of them and – in a curious twist not often seen in any navy – the death by shooting of captains Kirby and Wade. The sentence was carried out aboard HMS Bristol in April of 1703.

John Benbow, who was already being called brave for his heroism at the Action of August 1702, died of complications from his leg wounds on November 4, 1702. He was laid to rest in St. Andrew’s Church, Kingston.

Benbow’s career at sea was quite literally all over the board, much like that of Sir Francis Drake. This type of sailor for all seasons was on the wane when John Benbow died in Jamaica. His commitment to his calling though, and his bravery, can never be disputed. And, thanks at least in part to Stevenson, Admiral Benbow’s name will never be forgotten.

Header: John Benbow by Sir Godfrey Kneller c 1701

Ships: The Lady Of Bordeaux

In the French port city of Bordeaux on the Bay of Biscay the Governor, Louis Urbain Aubert, Marquis de Tourny, was full of big ideas. The Marquis, who was of royal blood even if it was only a drop or two, wanted his city to rival Paris in her grandeur. The way he financed his ambition was by backing and increasing the fleet of privateers that sailed from the port against that perpetual rival of France, Britain. The Marquis handed out commissions and encouraged ship building beginning immediately after he took office in 1743.

In 1744 one of the first new ships to slide out of dry dock into the Bay was a 460 ton, three-masted brig armed with 24 guns and a crew of approximately 150 men. She was christened that spring in honor of Louis’ wife, Jeanne Claude Cherouvrier des Grassieres and the lady’s full name was molded onto the shiny brass of the ship’s bell. La Marquise de Tourny set sail in search of British merchants, navy ships and privateers.

Fast forward to 2008 when a sizeable wreck, previously undocumented, was discovered in the English Channel by the famous exploration group Odyssey Marine. The ship lay on the bottom of the Channel approximately 60 miles off the coast of Devon and she was unfortunately disturbed by previous trawling. The Odyssey team at first thought they may have found a British merchant from the Napoleonic era, but closer inspection revealed a different story. The wreck carried mounted guns numbering 25 and no reasonable cargo could be located although heavy ballast was everywhere. Odyssey began regular dives in preparation to pull up the artifacts related to the ship and found the answer to the mystery. There among the blue glass bottles of French origin and the ten foot long cannons, was a brass bell now verdigris green. On the bell was the name of Madame la Marquise and from there the identity of the ship was only a few hours of research away.

La Marquise de Tourny had been a privateer masquerading as merchant. She may very well have been carrying “organic” cargo such as coffee, indigo and/or sugar which would, of course, no longer be detectable. Her voyages would have taken her from the Bay of Biscay through the English Channel into the French ports of Saint-Malo, Calais and Dunkirk. On her way she would have passed two of the outposts of British privateering, the islands of Guernsey and Jersey. There is documentation that she took at least one prize in the area in 1749 during the War of Austrian succession.

But did the French privateer succumb in battle? Did she go down fighting, so to say? The evidence says no. Odyssey co-founder Greg Stemm and his team think the sea and the weather were the end of their find. La Marquise de Tourny was probably playing merchant on her last voyage when she foundered in a storm. The sinking is currently dated to some time between 1749 and 1755. Regardless, the find is remarkable. As Stemm points out in this article from BBC.co.uk, she is “… one of our most important discoveries in the English Channel.”

As a superstitious sailor myself, I feel compelled to note an interesting dénouement to this story. After taking part in the christening of the ship that sailed with her name, Madame la Marquise went back to the business of being a gentlewoman. Almost exactly two years after her namesake sailed, on March 17, 1746, Jeanne Claude died suddenly at the age of 50. Was it an ill omen for La Marquise de Tourny? One way or another, you would have to think so.

Header: La Marquise de Tourny in situ

Ships: Chase The Tide

The little ship that could – be a mail packet, a revenue runner, a privateer or a smuggler, that is – was known to the French as a chasse-marée and to the British as a lugger. Chasse-marée (chaz mar-AY) translates as tide chaser and the ships were originally developed in the 16th century as coastal fishing vessels. Used initially around the coasts of France (and possibly developed in my paternal ancestral home, Bordeaux and Gascony), the ships caught on in other coastal countries like Holland and England. By the early 18th century, they were ubiquitous to the English Channel.

Chasse-marées (or, as the French derogatorily referred to the British version, lougres) were smallish, three-masted vessels square rigged on fore and main with a Mediterranean style lateen rig on the mizzen mast. Though the rigging was effective for the slow work of fishing, it would not do as the vessels evolved into privateers with the almost constant wars going on among European nations heading into the 18th century. The rigging evolved along with the chasse-marée’s duties and the lateen sail on the mizzen was replace by what is known as a lug sail (thus the name lugger). This type of sail, which resembled the more common gaff sail, allowed for ease of handling that the lateen sail did not. In fact, by the end of the 18th century the chasse-marée developed a short spar extending directly over the stern that carried a block. The lug sail’s sheet was carried inboard through the block and the mizzen was stepped very close to the stern. With this rig the chasse-marée could virtually turn on that proverbial dime.

Always a small ship, the general dimensions for a chasse-marée were comparable to a sloop of the same era. The length averaged about 75 feet, beam width at about 20 and tonnage just above 100. The draft of the ship was necessarily shallow, about 3 to 4 feet, and she was often packed to capacity with men when sailing as a privateer. The French in particular, during the Napoleonic Wars, would cram 50 or 60 men onto these little ships and then set prize crews aboard ships they took. Documents from the era show privateering chasse-marées leaving ports like Dunkirk and Saint-Malo with 55 men and returning with only 20.

It was during the Revolutionary War era that the British began to toy with their luggers’ rigging. They drastically raked the masts, pulling them backward to improve the weatherliness of their ships, and then added huge sails to afford all possible wind and speed. The French caught on and, finally taking one of these British luggers as a prize, began to pattern their own chasse-marées on their enemy’s version. The first such built for French naval service as a mail packet and tender, L’Espiegle (which means The Mischievous One), was based on the plans of a British lugger.

The chasse-marée was adopted and manipulated by the 19th century privateers of the New World, finally becoming the hermaphrodite brig. Slightly larger than her Old World cousins, and shipping just two masts, she was perfectly suited to the conditions of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean and she too was frequently jammed with men going out and surprisingly sparse on crew coming in. Unlike the chasse-marée, however, the hermaphrodite brig could carry a relatively large compliment of guns and was therefore also favored by the emerging navies of Argentina, Chile and Bolivar’s Grand Columbia.

Modern forms of the historical chasse-marée have become more like racing schooners and are popular with yachtsmen around the world. The traditional ship, with her long bowsprit and unusual lug spar at the stern, is more handsome to my eye. But then, I’m a sucker for history, particularly at sea.

Header: Revenue Cruiser Chasing a Smuggling Lugger by Charles Dixon

People: Le Heros De Dunkerque

When most Americans think of Dunkirk we think of World War II, the bombings and the heroism of the Allied forces and French people in their efforts to liberate France. But long before those grim battles, there was a seafaring hero out of the port of Dunkirk who was truly a shining star.

Jean Bart (or Jan Baert if you prefer the Dutch version) was born in 1650 in the notorious hotbed of French privateering, Dunkerque (or Dunkirk). The port is north and east of Calais and has alternated it's nationality over many years being French, Flemish and Dutch. Bart was born when the port belonged to France but had a heavy Dutch influence.

Bart was the son of a fisherman and certainly grew up in and around boats and ships. It was no surprise to anyone when 12-year-old Jean announced his intention to join the navy. Signing on with the Dutch, the young man had the good fortune to serve with the famous Captain Michel de Ruyter and he rose to the rank of lieutenant.

In 1672, France and the Netherlands declared war. Bart chose to serve for France and, returning home, took command of a privateer. The French were persnickety about who could and could not hold an officer's commission in their armed forces; the son of a simple fisherman was certainly not going to be given entree into the naval corps of officers. Jean would see about that.

Bart headed out of Dunkerque and returned with five enemy ships in tow. He was elected leader of the Dunkerque privateers and, with this armada behind him, he took 81 prizes by 1678 when peace was declared. With all this success under his belt, even the French navy had to concede defeat. Bart was made Lieutenant the same year.

Bart continued to sail for the French. When war with the Netherlands was again declared in 1688, he was given a captaincy. He led a fleet of both French navy and privateer ships and once again accomplished great things. He took twenty ships out of a convoy with only three frigates under his command. The prize included 19 merchantmen and a Dutch man-of-war. Louis XIV knighted Bart. It seemed nothing could stop the great commander.

Jean Bart at Versailles (source)

Privateer raids between France and Holland continued. At one point the Dutch blockaded the ports of Saint-Malo and Dunkerque in an effort to stop the continuous predations of the wily freebooters who called them home. Bart slipped the blockade and sailed with another mixed bag of ships to the Netherlands where he engaged five warships in convoy with twenty-five merchantmen. Bart and his seven ships took all thirty of the enemy as prize. He was promoted to chef d'escadre (literally "naval leader") or commodore for this outstanding victory.

Peace with the Netherlands was again declared in 1697 and Bart, who by now was working on his second marriage and the father of fourteen children, settled down a bit. Maybe the lack of seafaring got to him; he died of pleurisy in April of 1702. Jean Bart is buried in the Church of Saint-Eloi in his home port of Dunkerque.

French Navy ships have been named Jean Bart since 1788 and an anti-aircraft frigate with that name is currently in service. The statue at the header, by the way, was a rallying point for citizens of Dunkerque during WW II and it is still remarked that - when the city was virtually leveled by bombs - the Hero of Dunkirk continued to stand proud.