Deeds that Won the Empire by William Henry Fitchett

Author:William Henry Fitchett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, british empire, britain, waterloo, war, wars, battle, battles, naval
ISBN: 9781781664537
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

FAMOUS CUTTING-OUT EXPEDITIONS

"We have fed our sea for a thousand years,

And she calls us, still unfed,

Though there's never a wave of all her waves

But marks our English dead;

We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest,

To the shark and the sheering gull.

If blood be the price of admiralty,

Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

There's never a flood goes shoreward now

But lifts a keel we manned;

There's never an ebb goes seaward now

But drops our dead on the sand.

******

We must feed our sea for a thousand years,

For that is our doom and pride,

As it was when they sailed with the Golden Hind,

Or the wreck that struck last tide -

Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef

Where the ghastly blue lights flare.

If blood be the price of admiralty,

If blood be the price of admiralty,

If blood be the price of admiralty,

Lord God, we ha' bought it fair!"

- KIPLING.

As illustrations of cool daring, of the courage that does not count numbers or depend on noise, nor flinch from flame or steel, few things are more wonderful than the many cutting-out stories to be found in the history of the British navy. The soldier in the forlorn hope, scrambling up the breach swept by grape and barred by a triple line of steadfast bayonets, must be a brave man. But it may be doubted whether he shows a courage so cool and high as that of a boat's crew of sailors in a cutting-out expedition.

The ship to be attacked lies, perhaps, floating in a tropic haze five miles off, and the attacking party must pull slowly, in a sweltering heat, up to the iron lips of her guns. The greedy, restless sea is under them, and a single shot may turn the eager boat's crew at any instant into a cluster of drowning wretches. When the ship is reached, officers and men must clamber over bulwarks and boarding-netting, exposed, almost helplessly, as they climb, to thrust of pike and shot of musket, and then leap down, singly and without order, on to the deck crowded with foes. Or, perhaps, the ship to be cut out lies in a hostile port under the guard of powerful batteries, and the boats must dash in through the darkness, and their crews tumble, at three or four separate points, on to the deck of the foe, cut her cables, let fall her sails, and - while the mad fight still rages on her deck and the great battery booms from the cliff overhead - carry the ship out of the harbour. These, surely, are deeds of which only a sailor's courage is capable! Let a few such stories be taken from faded naval records and told afresh to a new generation.

In July 1800 the 14-gun cutter Viper, commanded by acting-Lieutenant Jeremiah Coghlan, was attached to Sir Edward Pellew's squadron off Port Louis. Coghlan, as his name tells, was of Irish blood. He had just emerged from the chrysalis stage of a midshipman, and, flushed with the joy of an independent command, was eager for adventure.

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