Post Captain - Battle of Cape Santa Maria 2
What the archives say
In the fictional Post Captain, Jack Aubrey replaces Graham Hamond in command of the Lively so that O’Brian can have Aubrey share in the capture of the Spanish ships at the Battle of Cape Santa Maria. Last week we looked at the strategic context and consequences of the battle. This week, let’s look at what individual British captains thought about it. In addition to Hamond, Graham Moore was in overall command and the captain of the Indefatigable, John Gore commanded the Medusa, and Samuel Sutton the Amphion.
By a happy coincidence, both Moore and Hamond left personal papers which currently reside in the Cambridge University Library. What follows draws on research J Dancy and I did there for an article published in the Naval War College Review five years ago. The article isn’t about the Spanish frigates, but it’s important to take advantage of being in an archives to hoover up whatever you can. You never know when you’ll need it!
Intelligence
To maintain operational security, the Admiralty kept the captains in the dark about the mission. Just like Aubrey in Post Captain, Moore had to wait until he was well out to sea to open his sealed order. He recorded in his diary on September 22, “In the morning at day light I opened my sealed order which directs me to proceed with all possible dispatch off Cadiz on a particular service, which I will not yet mention.” Moore was in many ways a model officer—thoughtful, skilled, effective—but I admit I laughed when I read that line. Who keeps secrets from their own diary?
British intelligence was correct about the route the Spanish frigates were taking and about what they carried, but it was wrong about how many frigates there were. Both Moore and Hamond recorded that the initial orders told them to expect two Spanish frigates. That intelligence failure helps explain why the British did not send an overwhelming force—they thought they had! Four frigates would have been sufficiently powerful for two Spanish frigates to surrender to without dishonor. In fact, as we know, there were four Spanish frigates.1
Moore’s Account
Here’s what Graham Moore said in his diary about the events of October 5, 1804. After the two squadrons had formed up next to each other, with each British frigate accounting for a Spanish frigate, Moore wrote:
I had previously made the signal to prepare for battle. I now hailed the Spanish Admiral—Where are you bound to?—Cadiz—I then desired them to bring to, as I wished to send a boat on board, but they either did not or would not understand me but continued to carry a press of sail. I then fired a shot across the Admiral’s hawse on which he shortened sail and I sent Lieutenant Ascott on board with a verbal message that I had orders to detain the Spanish squadron and carry them to England, that I earnestly wished to shed no blood in the execution of them, but that his determination must be made instantly.
In Post Captain, O’Brian transforms Lieutenant Ascott into a civilian who is present entirely to protect Maturin’s identity as an intelligence agent. Reality was much less interesting: a lieutenant leads the negotiations which predictably fail. Moore continued:
As soon as Ascott returned and informed me they had treasure on board, I bore close down on his weather bow and fired another shot ahead of him; at this moment I observed the Admiral’s second astern fire into the Amphion, the Admiral fired a shot at us, I made the signal for close action, and in an instant we were engaged from van to rear.
After just ten minutes, the ship that had fired into the Amphion, the Mercedes, exploded when her magazine caught fire. Then, just as in Post Captain, Moore ordered the Lively to chase down the fleeing Fama. While that happened, Moore surveyed the wreckage of the Mercedes:
I made sail towards the floating remains of the unfortunate Spanish ship that had blown up, in hopes of saving some, but nothing remained on the surface but a few dead bodies, floating pieces of the wreck and quantities of ashes! The Amphion had saved 40 men, one of whom was the second Captain, all the rest perished.
A week later, Moore visited the Spanish admiral, Bustamente, who introduced him to an officer whose family had been aboard the Mercedes:
His wife, who was from Paraguay where he had married her, with all his children, five daughters and three sons, who were on board Mercedes, one boy remaining with him aboard Medea, perished before his eyes! The wife was very amiable, the daughters beautiful, the eldest only eighteen. This unfortunate officer seemed to feel his terrible loss with the sensibility of a man and the resignation of a virtuous and pious Christian. I could scarce bear to look in his mild and benevolent countenance. He presented me his only remaining boy 13 years of age. There, he said to me, Sir, is all that remains to me.
There are no words.
As for Bustamente, Moore recorded:
I endeavored to console him and to soothe his feelings by telling him that even before his second blew up the force of our squadron was much superior to his, that I was extremely distressed at the dreadful misfortune that had happened and that it was with much regret & very painful to me to be obliged to fire upon the Spaniards in the execution of my orders. He seemed to be a sensible man, said he was satisfied with my conduct but thought it a most extraordinary proceeding on the part of the English government, wished to know if I considered the Spanish ships as prizes.
It was a truly extraordinary proceeding, as discussed last week, and it raised several questions that had no easy answers. For the captains, the most important one was, would they get their prize money shares?
Prizes
The same question animates the end of Post Captain and the beginning of HMS Surprise, the third novel. As we discussed at the beginning of this series, O’Brian’s genius is his portrayal of life on a ship at sea; his weakness is often the administrative side of the navy. In this case, though, he’s spot on: there really was a question about whether the captains would receive prize money from the capture of the Spanish treasure, or whether the government would confiscate it since it was taken before war was declared.
Both Moore and Hamond were fully aware of the issue. Hamond wrote to his father on October 12, “I suppose if war is not actually declared (which I trust it was before this action) that this will produce it, and that we may get something handsome for our fighting, besides the honor.” Hamond assumed the government hadn’t been so reckless as to order the strike without declaring war—a reasonable assumption, but wrong. He still held out hope in January, though: “I am very anxious to hear what day our King’s proclamation against the Spaniards was dated, and what is to be our fate with regard to the Spanish frigates.”
There are echoes of Jack Aubrey in Hamond’s correspondence from these months. He wrote to his father while the prize question was still unresolved: “Should I be so fortunate as to share in any sort of proportion to what we have a right to expect (in the event of its really being war), I hope you will not think I should neglect my sister and brother. I shall be able to make her and Hood perfectly comfortable.” What is more Aubrey than promising money he does not yet have?
A year later, the government agreed to pay out £160,000 in prize money to the officers and men of the four frigates, giving each captain a share of about £15,000—real, life-changing money, even if it was a fraction of the millions that they had captured.
The Medusa Question
What animated Hamond and Moore almost as much as the prize issue was the conduct of John Gore of the Medusa. Moore noticed in his diary that three of the four British ships had handled their Spanish opponents comfortably: Moore in Indefatigable had captured the Spanish flagship; Sutton in Amphion had exploded the Mercedes; and Hamond in Lively had captured the Santa Clara. But Gore in the Medusa had allowed the Fama to escape, causing Moore to have to order Hamond to chase her down (just as Aubrey does in Post Captain). Moreover, Hamond reported that when the Santa Clara had already struck her colors, the Medusa fired a shot into her. It struck and killed a woman who had come on deck thinking that the fighting was over. Hamond is clear in his letters: he thinks Gore is an incompetent war criminal.
All that is context for what Hamond said to his father in March 1805:
I am pretty much astonished at Captain Gore being knighted, which I observe by the papers. Both Captain Sutton and all our officers are very indignant about it, and let whatever be the cause of it, I cannot but say it is very ill-timed to mark the best of it, and I should have been much better pleased to have seen the name of Sir Graham Moore, instead of John Gore, who I am sure had a much better right to such distinction, nor can I stop without saying that he was the last man in the squadron that had any pretensions to such an honor and if that is the way they dispose of their honor it is not much worth the while of any officer to look after them. I cannot help having said this much, being very much mortified at the event.
Naval officers were (are?) acutely sensitive to unfairness in the rewards system. That is not to say that Hamond was wrong to be outraged—Gore really was the least deserving of the bunch.
But whether Gore deserved a knighthood is also the wrong question. Hamond himself asked the correct question when he surveyed the wreckage of the exploded Mercedes: “What recompense can be made for 350 men destroyed almost in cold blood?”
I have searched in vain for anyone else noting that the intelligence mistake explains why the British didn’t deploy a strong enough force to compel the Spanish to surrender. I might have stumbled on to the seed of a short article here? Bully for me.