Angus Konstam - Mutiny on the Spanish Main: HMS Hermione and the Royal Navy’s Revenge

DEDICATION
To David Nicoll, whose support in writing this has been invaluable

Contents

Captain High Pigot

Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker

A post captain

A British sailor

Toussaint LOuverture

Port-au-Prince, Saint-Domingue

Mle Saint-Nicolas, Saint-Domingue

HMS Hermione , under Spanish colours

A flogging on board a British warship

Port Royal, Jamaica

A meeting of the Board of the Admiralty

A British Sixth Rate frigate

Puerto Cabello, on the Spanish Main

Captain Edward Hamilton

The cutting out of the Hermione

Hamiltons men board the Hermione

A midshipman

A lieutenant

A warrant officer

A ships carpenter

Equity, or a Sailors Prayer before Battle , 1805

Portsmouth Point

illustration credits

Stratford Archive

Stratford Archive

Stratford Archive

Stratford Archive

Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Stratford Archive

Historical Picture Archive/Corbis Historical/Getty Images

Hulton Archive/Stringer/Getty Images

National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Print Collector/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division

Stratford Archive

Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Stratford Archive

Stratford Archive

Stratford Archive

Print Collector/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Stratford Archive

The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Thomas F. Furness in memory of William McCallin McKee

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1959

This book was 30 years in the making. I first heard about the story it tells in the late 1980s, during a visit to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, on the edge of London. Most of the museums world-class collection is displayed in the main building, a grand 18th-century structure which once housed a naval school, and was linked to the even more elegant Queens House by a graceful colonnade. This time, though, I bypassed the museum, and entered a much less stylish Victorian building around the corner. That was where they kept the objects for forthcoming exhibits, or ones needing a bit of restoration. I worked for the Royal Armouries at the time, and I was there to discuss the loan of a few weapons for a special pirate exhibit. However, as I walked through the building I was stopped by the sight of a painting, placed there to have its frame restored.

It wasnt particularly big the canvas was only about two feet across but what struck me was the scene itself. It showed a sailing frigate of what looked like the Napoleonic era, her decks aglow with fire as armed men fought their way on board. Others in ships boats were shown clambering over her bows, or rowing hard to join the fight. It was a stirring scene, and I asked a conservator what the painting was. I learned it was by Nicholas Pocock, the celebrated maritime artist whose immense, stirring paintings of Nelsons victories formed the centrepiece of the museums displays. I was told that this much smaller painting was entitled The cutting out of HMS Hermione , 1799 . At the time that didnt make much sense. This was a British frigate, and its cutting out or capture by boarding wasnt something I expected an artist like Pocock to celebrate in such style.

Later, after Id done my museum duty, I went round the corner to the Plume of Feathers, a lovely pub which was a favourite haunt for the museums curators. I was there to meet two of them, David Lyon and Teddy Archibald, both friends of mine, but also experts in their respective fields of naval history and maritime art. I mentioned the painting, and asked them about the Hermione . They both looked pityingly at me, as if to say that this rookie should be better informed. Then, over several beers and gins, they took turns to tell me the story. It turned out this was a celebratory painting after all, featuring the recapture of a British frigate in a daring night-time boarding action. That, though, was only part of it. The tale also involved the bloodiest mutiny in Royal Naval history, treachery, intrigue, revenge, and a captain who made Bligh of the Bounty seem like a pussy cat. I was enthralled.

I never forgot that conversation. So, over the following years, particularly when my travels took me to Greenwich, I went to their excellent library and archives, and delved deeper into the whole affair. Before I left the pub that first day, David told me to pick up a copy of The Black Ship by Dudley Pope, which told the story in a style typical of that master of naval fiction. However, this was also a well-researched piece of historical enquiry. I picked up a copy from Setishia at the Maritime Book Shop in Greenwich, and this became the starting point of my research. I later followed Popes research trail to The National Archives in Kew, and to the Spanish Historical Archives in Madrid. Later, while working in the USA, I began unearthing further strands to the tale, which revealed a new diplomatic element to the story.

My researches eventually took me around the Caribbean, and then on to more archives as far afield as Kingston, Seville and Washington. But, during this time, I was working on other projects and the story of the Hermione was always on the back burner. After all, I felt that Dudley Pope had told the tale so well back in 1963 that it probably didnt need retelling. However, I eventually realised that the fresh information I had found had changed the tale. It wasnt just about a bloodthirsty mutiny, a martinet of a captain, and the dashing cutting out expedition. There was now more to it a darker thread involving international politics, and the unbending determination of the British Admiralty to bring every last mutineer to justice.

The final motivation was a re-reading of Patrick OBrians novels. It was David Lyon who first encouraged me to give them a go at the time he was advising the great novelist on the nautical accuracy of his storytelling. I learned to love these Aubrey-Maturin novels, and every few years I re-read them all. In one, Captain Aubrey was entertaining his officers and guests to dinner, and one of the officers mentioned he had taken part in the cutting out of the Hermione . Aubrey invited him to recount the story, and then quizzed the officer afterwards. At the time, Aubrey was commanding HMS Surprise , the very frigate which, in real life and more than a dozen years before, had supplied the sailors and marines who recaptured the Hermione . I remembered that David was particularly pleased by this link between the real Surprise and OBrians one perhaps the best-known warship in historical fiction.