The Glorious First of June by Sam Willis

Author:Sam Willis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781849160384
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2011-09-29T04:00:00+00:00

But to the crew’s astonishment and relief, the hail of death never materialised; only a few cannon were let off, randomly, which did no more than bring down the Defence’s already disabled foremast. British gunfire had already taken its toll aboard the French ship. With most dead and injured, what was left of her gun crews were at the pumps or desperately trying to secure the rigging: there was no one left at their quarters to fire shot. In such fleeting opportunities lay the seeds of victory. Had the French had enough gunners, as they did at the start of the action, they would have been able to seize this kind of chance, as they did, for example, when they raked the foredecks of the Defence with grapeshot, killing the master, boatswain, captain of the forecastle and ‘nearly the whole party of the Queen’s 2nd regiment stationed forward …’90 As the battle progressed, however, the discrepancy between the effectiveness of British and French gunfire took its toll on French manpower. The British powder was stronger and their ships’ hulls were stronger, thus British crews were much less likely to be driven from their station by an enemy broadside. Ultimately, British gun crews were not only able to maintain their fire longer than the French but, also, their fire was more effective in the first place.

It appears British gunners had new technology that allowed them to reload with the gunport lids shut. The tools used to clean and reload the guns were usually long, straight instruments called spoons, sponges, rammers and ‘worms’ – so named for its corkscrew tip for cleaning the gun. The British had recently introduced flexible handles for these tools, which made it easier to reload the guns from farther inboard. Sailors with traditional rigid-handled tools, by contrast, were compelled to ‘expose their persons, even to climbing half-way out of the ports’.91 The ability of the British to lower their gunports if they desired ‘was a great casualty-preventer, and proved a considerable advantage to the British’. The same witness claimed that he distinctly saw a Frenchman ‘riding upon a lower deck gun, loading it’.92

Aboard the Marlborough the captain was trialling a new method of securing the guns to the ship’s sides. Pioneered by a carpenter disabled in an action long past and who had since dedicated his energy to innovation, it involved securing the cannon by one tackle, not the traditional two. The advantages of this were considerable: it ensured the gun was run out and recoiled through the centre of the gunport every time, it needed men on only one side of the gun to move it around, leaving the other side clear for men to load it, and the gun could be worked with fewer men. The ship’s captain, George Berkeley, wrote to the admiralty singing the praises of the new method, though it remains unclear if it was more widely adopted.93

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