Hammer-And-Tongs Off Guadaloupe: Schooner Days MCCXXXVII (1237)

by C. H. J. Snider

AHEAD [of] the Royal Forth Yacht Club, just inside the wall, is an 11-ft. anchor lost by Queen Elizabeth I of England when she sends a fleet to bombard Leith in 1564. Astern is anchorage for a hundred smart yacht in the deep-water commercial harbor of Granton, built by the fifth Duke of Buccleuch, captain of the Queen's Bodyguard in Scotland more than a century ago. The stone-built clubhouse is a former waterside mansion of the ancient Scottish ducal family.

It was fitting, therefore, that the royal yacht Britannia should moor in Granton Harbor when Queen Elizabeth II and I of Scotland, if you insist, was visiting her ancestral palace of Holyrood House in Edinburgh last July. Fitting also that the Britannia crew should be entertained to tea at the Royal Forth Yacht Club then. And fortunately it was for Schooner Days that at that particular time he had been put up as a Canadian guest of the Scotch club.

We were having tea under a fine oil painting by R. Dodd, notable marine painter a century and a half ago.

An inscription with English genius for understatement explained that this was the Blanche and the Pique, of Guadaloupe in 1795. None of the Britannia or Royal Forthers could tell more, so after tea we turned to our well thumbed James' "History of the Royal Navy," Naval History of Great Britan, and read that:

After four days maneuvering and three hours fighting broadside to broadside between the 38-gun frigate Blanche, Capt. Robt. Faulkner, RN, and the French frigate Pique, Captain Conseil, also 38 guns, at 2:30 a.m. Jan. 3, 1795... "The Blanche, having shot ahead, was in the act of luffing up in port, when her wounded mizzen and main masts in succession fell over the side. Almost immediately after this the Pique ran foul of her on her larboard quarter and made several attempts to board. These attempts the British crew successfully resisted, and the larboard quarter-deck guns, and such of the main-deck ones as would bear, were fired with destructive effects into the Pique's starboard bow; she returning the fire from her tops, as well as from some of her quarterdeck guns run in amidships and trained fore and aft.

"At a few minutes before 3 a.m., while assisting his second lieutenant, Mr. David Milne, and one or two others of the crew in lashing, with such ropes as were handy, the bowsprit of the Pique to the capstan of the Blanche, preparatory to a more secure fastening by means of a hawser which was getting up from below, the young and gallant Captain Faulkner fell by a musket ball through his heart.

"At this moment the lashings broke loose; and the Pique, crossing the stern of the Blanche, who had now begun to pay off for want of aftersail, fell on board the latter, a second time, upon the starboard quarter.

"In an instant the British crew, with the hawser which had just before been got on deck, lashed the bowsprit of the Pique to the stump of their own mainmast. In this manner the Blanche, commanded now by Lieutenant Frederick Watkins, towed before the wind her resolute opponent; whose repeated attempts to cut away this second lashing were defeated by the quick and well-directed fire of the British marines."

"At about 3:15 a. m. the mainmast of the French frigate (her fore and mizzen masts fallen) fell over the side. In this utterly defenseless state, without a gun which, on account of the wreck of her masts, she could now bring to bear, the Pique sustained the raking fire of the Blanche until 5:15 a.m., when sone of the French crew, from the bowsprit end, cried aloud for quarter. The Blanche immediately ceased her fire; and, every boat in both vessels having been destroyed by shot, Lieutenant Milne, followed by ten seamen, endeavored to reach the prize by means of the hawser that still held her, but their weight bringing the bight of the rope down in the water, they had to swim a part of the distance."

The Blanche lost 8 killed and 24 wounded of her crew of 193, the Pique lost 76 killed, including her captain and 110 wounded, of her complement of 279. In armament the ships were equal. The Blanche's surviving lieutenants were made commanders for this action, and the Pique was taken into the Royale Navy as a 36-gun frigate which meant much prize money for the Blanche crew.

LAST OF HER KIND

Not the ghost of the BLANCHE or the PIQUE mentioned below, the LEVIN J. MARVEL, discussed in Schooner Days las week, an ex-lumber schooner out of Baltimore. Since 1945 she has been a successful pleasure cruiser, ranging from Chesapeake Bay to Florida. She was 61 years old when Hurricane Connie caught up with her last month - and in 64 minutes she was in 64 pieces on North Beach in Maryland.