Seafaring Sunday: Birth of a Legend

June 10, 1673:  Rene Duguay-Trovin is born in Saint-Malo, France.  Following a career path that almost exactly mirrored Jean Bart, Duguay-Trovin would start out as a successful privateer and graduate to a brilliant naval career.  In the process, he would take upward of 320 prizes.

Header: 19th century engraving of Rene Duguay-Trovin via Wikimedia

Tools Of The Trade: Seldom So Bloody

We have discussed the perilous decision to board an enemy at sea on more than one occasion. Just the act of jumping from one ship to another could be deadly – even before you got to the angry mob on the other deck – as French privateer Rene Duguay-Trouin discusses here. But the final culmination of boarding, the hand-to-hand combat beloved by so many movies, was a rare and decidedly horrific experience. In all fairness, such a thing would probably need to be seen to be believed.

In the early days of seafaring war, boarding was far more common than in the great age of sail. Greek and Roman ships had very little else in the way of tactics aside, of course, from ramming the enemy with the purposefully exaggerated bows of their biremes and triremes. Once the ramming had taken place the ships were hopelessly entangled on most occasions and boarding was as much a necessity as a tactic. Julius Caesar commented on the “closeness” of these battles, marveling at the sailors’ abilities to do horrendous damage to each other in such a claustrophobic space. Very little about that particular aspect of boarding has changed.

Once the Byzantines started hosing down enemy ships with Greek Fire, the boarding craze slowed down. Even after the memory of such terror tactics faded, Medieval and Renaissance naval battles were more likely punctuated with rains of arrows than jumping from your ship to the other guys’. Siege mentality was high in these eras and that included fighting on the ocean.

The development of cannon increased the risk of getting alongside an enemy. Boarding continued to occur but its focus shifted. As the heyday of the buccaneers dawned, it became the outlaws that used boarding as a tactic. Since very few merchants shipped workable guns, and many small pirate ships carried few if any as well, boarding was a sensible way to secure a prize and her people. That is not to say that firearms did not come into play. Merchants might retreat to closed quarters and this meant that deadly force was necessary.

Jean Baptiste Labat, the Catholic priest who made several voyages in the 17th century Caribbean and recorded the stories of the buccaneers he came in contact with, tells of a particularly gruesome boarding involving a botched attempt at closed quarters. According to Captain Pinel of the privateering corvette Volante, his ship met a merchant off Barbados whose crew proceeded to retreat below decks. The merchant’s men did such a poor (perhaps triggered by haste) job setting up their ship that they left hatches unlocked and even a fully loaded cannon on deck. Pinel’s men had a field day with these mistakes and the merchant’s crew was broken, bloodied and burned by cannon fire and grenades, made of both metal and glass, thrown into the hold.

With the dawn of the Age of Revolution, boarding returned to the naval canon. Men like John Paul Jones and Horatio Nelson boldly went where commanders before them had feared to tread. The results, however, were still a gory mess. Frederick Marryat, who served in Nelson’s navy and later wrote of his experiences in books that foreshadowed Forrester and O’Brian, described boarding this way:

In most instances of boarding, but more especially in boarding small vessels, there is not much opportunity for what is termed hand to hand fighting. It is a rush for the deck: breast to breast, thigh to thigh, foot to foot, man wedged against man, so pressed on by those behind that there is little possibility of using your cutlass, except by driving your antagonist’s teeth down his throat with the hilt.

The picture drawn is immediate and unsettling at best. The sounds and smells that don’t get mentioned are still easily imagined. And all this while great guns and innumerable pistols blazed away and Marines picked off the enemy from the tops.

The horror was not reserved for men-of-war either. Count de Forbin, commanding a frigate of 120 souls and transporting soldiers in the 17th century, met a Dutch privateer of similar crew and arms. To French consternation, the Dutchman chose to fight to the extent that the Dutch Captain locked his ship down so that his men could not retreat below and would therefore fight, as Forbin puts it, to “the last extremity”. A horrific battle ensues, with blood saturating the Dutchman’s deck and the French growing more and more enraged at the enemy’s refusal to surrender. Forbin states that it was only through his physical intervention that some of the Dutch crew’s lives were spared. In the end, dead bodies littered the Dutch ship, her Captain and officers being among them, and Forbin writes grimly that he has “but seldom seen so bloody a boarding.”

While “Never mind maneuvers, go at them” has a nice ring to it, boarding could be a decidedly deadly business. Better to think twice and know your strengths before that fateful decision is made. Extreme cases not withstanding, a simple ruse seems far more advisable whenever a prize is sighted.

Tools Of The Trade: The Perils of Boarding

Rene Duguay-Trouin, the French privateer from Saint-Malo who was certainly the successor to the greatness of Jean Bart, got a taste of how awful boarding a prize could be early in his career. As described in his Memoires written in 1741, he had "not yet found [his] sea legs" when the privateer he was aboard grappled an enemy and prepared for the bloody melee of hand-to-hand fighting on deck. When it was the young man's turn to make the leap, a mate next to him slipped, fell between the two ships and had his head crushed. Duguay-Trouin is graphic about the man's brains splattering him and honest about his own hesitation at the thought that he might be dealt a similar fate. In the end, the French took their prize - a Dutch merchantman - but only after three attempts to board her.

The final, usually messy, act of boarding was not the rope-swinging, teeth-clutching-knife, "Who wants some of this!" action-adventure that Hollywood would have us believe. Boarding was a last resort in almost all cases for privateers and pirates. Unless the merchant in question could be easily surprised, was at her most disorganized and, with the luck, very much undermanned, it was far better to get an across the water surrender. The boarding of a warship or - Lord help you - a man-of-war was right out of the question.

When it did come down to grappling your enemy, finesse and seamanship frequently had more to do with success than brute force. Knowing which way the wind was blowing was the first and often most critical factor. The prize should, if at all possible, be downwind or on your lee. This would give the attacker the weather gage and make any movement by the prey more difficult. Attempting to board in a heavy tide was ill advised. The prey could throw out her anchor at the last minute and wave at you as you drifted by. Tide and strong wind could also tug at the ropes of your grapnels, even breaking them and sending men tumbling into the sea or stranding them aboard the enemy. Boarding in dirty weather was a bad idea and only the truly insane attempted to board in a gale.

Three positions were favorable to the attacker with regard to their ship versus the prey's. Having a good leadsman and master, with stout men at the wheel, would be critical for getting you quickly to the right place at the right time. Remember, by the point of a decision to board your prize is doubtless on the run and preparing for attack. First was boarding amidships. Here the corsair placed his bow alongside the middle, or waist, of the prey. The second tack was to board at the bow, with the forecastles of the two ships as close together as possible. Finally, failing these options, boarding alongside would do. In this case both ships were literally lined up next to each other.

But wind and tide are unpredictable even for experts, and a freebooter might find herself across the enemy's bow or stern. Both of these situations were next to impossible for boarding, particularly if the prey was a larger ship. Her forecastle and quarterdeck would be taller than your waist. If she had swivels or other small arms, firing down on you would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Better to veer off and try again, or live to fight another day.

Of course, a thousand subtle combinations of the above ship-to-ship positions are possible on any given day. Knowledge and experience, along with a good deal of discipline and courage, would usually win the day. What happened after the grapples were set and the small arms were in hand is a subject for another post, but the seemingly simple act of maneuvering next to the prey could be half the battle in itself.

Mind the weather gage, Brethren, and watch your footing. A successful boarding could mean the difference between a fine share of prize money and a sadly empty stomach.

Home Ports: Bonjour, Anglais!

Saint-Malo is a port city in northwestern France on the English Channel. As you can tell from the picture, the town even today has a very closed in, medieval feel. The walls are sturdy and the harbor is cozy. The town is a tight knit place and, even though it can swell to well over 200,000 people during the summer, the 50,000 odd permanent residents are basically all family one way or another. They're also damn proud of their privateer ancestors.

In the 17th century, Saint-Malo became the port of choice for French privateers who preyed on English merchant vessels in the Channel. Over the course of that century, Saint-Malo grew rich with privateering profits and, like a factory town, everyone in Saint-Malo worked at the business of privateering. To the French, Saint-Malo was La Cite Corsaire. To the English, it was The Nest of Wasps. The French word for privateer - corsaire - was virtually born in Saint-Malo. The men who sailed out to plunder English shipping were said to pursue la course which meant, in this case the errand or the race. Privateering had a new name.

The corsairs of Saint-Malo were national heroes in France. They were the rock stars of the age. Girls of Brittany and beyond kept engraved cards with the visages of privateers near their bedsides. Whole families and even church officials grew rich on the profits. City streets in Saint-Malo were named after famous native sons who worked la course like Rene Duguay-Trouin, Robert Surcouf and Jean Bart. Even Jean Laffite claimed at some point or other to have been born in Saint-Malo (his family was actually from Bordeaux but whose counting?)

In 1693 the English got fed up and decided to take Saint-Malo out with what was then referred to as an "infernal machine". They packed an 85 foot long ship full of explosives, literally jamming everything from barrels of black powder to missiles and bombs into the unmanned frigate. They set their weapon of mass destruction off to blow a hole in the city's fortified wall one night but things didn't quite work out. The ship hit a rock, the all important black powder got a little more than damp and the whole thing fizzled rather than exploded. The resulting fireworks killed an unfortunate cat but did no damage what ever to the city. Impotent at best.

Saint-Malo continued her predations through the Napoleonic wars, her corsaires being some of the few French ships that could thumb their noses as the English blockades. After that, though, the time of privateering was done. Saint-Malo is still a great port, but today her snug harbor is full of luxury yachts instead of daring corsaires. Sigh.