Dan Snow's History Hit - Mutiny on the Spanish Main

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

Angus Konstam joined me on the podcast to tell the dramatic story of HMS Hermione. In 1797, the British frigate was the site of the bloodiest mutiny in British naval history.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Ahoy there, Team History Hit. Welcome to the podcast. We've got mutiny on this podcast, bloody mutiny, one of the most remarkable, infamous mutinies in the history of the Royal Navy on the podcast today. Angus Constam's back on the podcast. He's been on before. He's back to talk to us about the mutiny on the Spanish main HMS Hermione, a British frigate that was seized, officers butchered and delivered into enemy hands. It's the story the Royal Navy tried to suppress until now. Anyway, if you want to watch Maritime History, then the place to do it, my friends, the place to do it is my new history channel, where there is actual history on it. It's remarkable. A history channel with history on it.

You're going to love it. Historyhit.tv. You go over there, use the code POD1. P-O-D-1. Simple as that. And then because you're podcast listeners, the machine will recognise you and give you a special introductory rate not available to anybody else. That rate is one month for free. Free. You're being offered free stuff here. And your second month is one pound euro or dollar for that second month. So you get two months of it. Takes you through till Christmas with basically next to nothing paid. Almost free for the world's best history channel. Check it out. In the meantime, everybody, here is Angus Constance. Enjoy. Angus Constam. Enjoy.

Angus, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. A pleasure. Now, I thought the most interesting and remarkable mutiny in Royal Navy history was, of course, the mutiny on the Bounty in the late 1780s. But you've found a mutiny on board HMS Hermione that I'd never even heard of. But actually, it holds many records, if it's all right to put it like that. Well, it does. It didn't get covered by Hollywood, like the mutiny of the bounty, but it was much more horrific. It was the bloodiest mutiny in the Royal Navy's history. So that's certainly something for the record books. But it also was one which triggered a number of pretty major incidents, including a manhunt that lasted for a decade, but also an

international incident with the Americans that could well have led to the War of 1812. And then it had a very interesting bit of daring do when the ship that mutinied was eventually recaptured from the Spanish. So it's a story that just keeps on giving. The Royal Navy always pays its debts, that's for sure. Let's talk about HMS Hermione. She was a during the war and they basically just mothballed her until she was needed. So it was only when Britain was involved in the next war with the French Revolutionary War in 1793 and the execution of the French king that she was taken out of mothballs, refitted, recrewed and sent off to war. Was there anything in her DNA, her build, her character that meant that she would see this bloody confrontation or was it about the people on board?

Yes, she was just a pretty much a bog standard frigate in that she was 32 guns. She was a little old by then. She'd been designed 20 years before and technology had progressed. Frigates had got bigger. She carried 12-pounder guns. They had 18-pounder guns, much more powerful in the more modern frigates around. But she was still perfectly good, perfectly respectable, and in kind of putting down the little flashpoints of the French Revolution, as it were, in the Caribbean, in the former French colonies, the leading one of which is what's now Haiti. And in those days, it was the French colony of Saint-Domingue. So there's an incredibly complicated politics of what was going on in that French colony. But it's a hard place to serve, isn't it, the Caribbean? I mean, it's diseased. The ship becomes a pretty grim place to live.

It is. The blackjack or the yellowjack or basically yellow fever was horrendously prevalent. The Navy wasn't really so bad. They could clear off to sea. And she spent a lot of her time in the next few years escorting convoys. And she didn't really spend a lot of time

inshore. She did get involved in bombarding French ports in the area. But it's the army that really suffered. When they send 10,000 people out there, and the majority of them are either dead or really laid low within a few months. What is the trigger for mutiny? within a few months. What is the trigger for mutiny? Well, in the case of the Hermione, it was essentially her captain. She had a fairly benevolent captain when she first sailed to the Caribbean, but he died, unsurprisingly, of the yellow fever, Captain Hills, in September 1794. And he was replaced by another guy, Captain Wilkinson, who was known as a bit of a flogging captain. He established the ship as a very tough run outfit. And here, the Hermione had a crew of about 220 men and about seven or eight commissioned officers. And of course, there's the background of

this yellow fever and boredom. Boredom sets in, drunkenness sets in. And I've looked at the lists of what was going on under him and then under the new captain, which is the one we're going to mention in a second. And a lot of them are things like insubordination and drunkenness and fighting, all the kind of little seeds of bad discipline that start creeping in. Now, there was a problem with another captain commanding another frigate out there called the Success. Her captain was a young chap in his mid-twenties called Captain Hugh Piggott. Now, he was the son of an admiral. He came from a well-established family in Staffordshire. He took over the ship in February 1797. So it was mutiny with a sort of occasionally political, but mostly demanding better terms of engagement, better salary, things like that. That's exactly it, Dan. Yes, they were really protesting against the conditions they faced. But out in the Caribbean,

in places like Saint-Domingue, that was less of a problem. It was more about the harsh discipline on board. So when Captain Piggott took over, he continued this regime of regularly flogging his crew. Men who didn't really deserve it were being whipped. And I've looked at the records. Some people were being flogged really severely, getting two dozen lashes. And then three weeks later,

they were getting it again and again. It was a pattern of violence. But he also, from his old ship, the Success, he brought some of his favourites, some of the seamen and officers who'd been reasonably loyal to him. He'd brought them to his new ship and there was a bit of rivalry between the two groups. They weren't punished, they were almost treated with kid gloves by him, but the rest of the Hermione crew were given short shrift. There was a situation that was just getting worse and worse until eventually things just came to a head. What was the event that tipped it over into mutiny? Well, one of the officers on board, well,

a junior officer, a midshipman called David Casey. He was experienced. He'd been moved from another ship and put on board the Hermione a few months before. He was popular with his men. He was experienced. He'd been moved from another ship and put on board the Hermione a few months before. He was popular with his men. He was in charge of a number of seamen going up the masts. Now, each frigate has a team of young, fit top men who are the best, the brightest of the seamen who race up the masts, set the sails, and in conditions of bad weather, they'd pull them in, they'd lower them, they'd set new sails, and in conditions of bad weather, they'd pull them in, they'd lower them, they'd set new sails, all this kind of thing. And it's got to be done safely, but also at speed, because that's important. They're also just above the eyes of the captain. So what happened is he

was getting balled out for some of the seamen making mistakes, Mitchum and Casey, by the captain. for some of the seamen making mistakes, Mitchum and Casey, by the captain. This was really against the whole way that discipline is handled on a ship. And he was bawled out in front of his men. And the captain eventually said, right, I'm going to give you 12 lashes. You can't flog an officer, but that's exactly what he did. He took the midshipman the next day, gave him a chance to apologise on his bended knee. The midshipman refused. And then he was flogged in front of his men and disrated. So he was removed from his command and basically locked up. So the captain continued. A few days later, he had a situation where the top men were up aloft and he ordered, as they've done in naval fiction before he said the last one down gets flogged so people were racing to haul in the sails because weather

was deteriorating they had to reduce the amount of sail that was down and two of the young men fell to the deaths and landed in the deck right in front of the captain splat onto the holy quarter deck where never a stain is allowed well there were two stains that day these bodies were there and everything went quiet in the ship and all Piggott could say was get these lubbers thrown overboard so that was an insult to the seamen but also all the other seamen on the ship it was he already got this volatile situation where people were really tired of this very tough discipline on board, more so than any other ship in the fleet probably, and then he was doing things

like this. So it was an insult to the crew on board. So the combination of the humiliation of the midshipmen, the deaths of these two top men, and the severe punishment that all the other sailors were going through, apart from his own favourites, was enough to drive the crew to mutiny. There were a few other factors, but essentially it was this cruelty shown by the captain, his favouritism and his lack of even handedness. But above all, he was just an unpredictable, rather sadistic commander. And eventually the men had enough. How did they express their dissatisfaction?

Well, quite violently in the end. It was the night of the 21st of September 1797. That's in the middle of the French Revolutionary War. They were patrolling what's called the Mona Passage between Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico, two Caribbean islands, looking out for French or Spanish ships. We were at war with both nations at the time. The Hermione was working alongside another little brig, a smaller ship. They'd spread out to search for ships. A group of sailors, probably about two dozen, were gathering in the fo'c'sle of the ship, the front end.

They'd stolen some rum and they were plotting bloody mutiny and eventually what happened is captain pigott went back to bed to his bank to his cabin turned in for the night at about 11 o'clock about half an hour later a group of about a dozen of these men armed themselves with cutlasses and hatchets and knives stole through the ship so they weren't seen below deck rushed the marine sentry, clubbed him over the head and broke into the captain's cabin. His steward was asleep in there. He was woken up by the hullabaloo. And then these, all Captain Piggott had a chance to do was struggle out of his cot and arm himself with a dirk, a small knife. And

then these men set upon him. There was a moment where they just hesitated but then they just went in and started hacking at him and stabbing him and eventually within about a minute he was lying in a pool of blood on the floor still alive but looking a bit worse for wear so what happens then is this is a commotion on board so most of the men rush up to the upper deck where the officer of the watch is there. He'd heard what was going on. He'd ordered the helmsman to turn the ship, but they just refused to obey orders. At that point, he was grabbed by this mob of mutineers and he too was stabbed and thrown over the side. So the whole thing took a matter of minutes. So now the group of

mutineers are in charge of the ship. The captain's been killed. The officer of the watch has been killed. And by this time, the mutineers have sent armed sentries outside. So these officers are kept in their quarters. They're handling what's now a very volatile situation. But remember, there's only a small number of people. There's probably now probably 24, 25 mutineers, active mutineers.

The rest of the ship, the 200-odd, 220 men, are still below deck sleeping in their hammocks. And that's the crucial moment. The mutiny could go either way at this point. Land a Viking longship on island shores. scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills

needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. There are new episodes every week. There are only a handful of mutinies in the long 18th century, aren't there, in the Royal Navy? And most of them, it occurs to me, I might be wrong, but are kind of quite surly, refusal to obey orders, leave port, pull up the anchor, stuff like that. It's quite rare to have one where they do go on a rampage and kill a load of officers. They do indeed. And this is only the start of it. This is killing the captain and a lieutenant really was the first point of what's essentially

a night of terror on board. The first thing they had to do is the ringleaders had, there was about 18 ringleaders named later on. The first problem was to seize the ship. So they'd secured the officers, kept them in the cabin. They called the other hands on deck. They wanted to make sail and get away from there. By dawn, they wanted to be away from the other British ship in the area and in the middle of the open sea. So as soon as the men came up and found it wasn't the officers giving the order, it was this group of mutineers, they were faced with this dilemma. If they'd agreed to do their bidding, they'd have to go along with it. They were part of the mutiny. But the other option was to refuse. In the end, they went up the masts and did what they were told. They'd been trained to do that

and almost unthinking. But once they'd taken part in it, they were told. They'd been trained to do that and almost unthinking. But once they'd taken part in it, they were just as guilty of mutiny as the ringleaders. And so what do they do? They throw the ship into enemy hands, which often happens in mutinies. Yes, well, so you've got the ship. That night, it gets worse.

They go down to the mutineers. There's now a whole gaggle of them. And they're broken into the spirit locker. They go down to the mutineers. There's now a whole gaggle of them and they're broken into the spirit locker. They're all getting drunk. There's rum and the captain's wine stocks are flowing like water. A number break into the wardroom and one by one

they get officers that they don't like and drag them out on deck, stab them and throw them over the side. And it's not just the officers, it's also the warrant officers or petty officers who get attacked. The captain had a very unpopular first lieutenant taken from his other ship, the 6S. He went, he was killed, so was the second lieutenant. The third lieutenant was the guy on watch, he'd already met his match.

So that's three naval lieutenants. There was a lieutenant of marines who was actually dying of yellow fever in his cot, watched by his sergeant. He was dragged out. They found him very unpopular midshipman hiding under the cot. He was dragged out and stabbed. So too was the bosun. So too was the gunner and some of the other non-commissioned officers on the ship,

along with the surgeon who'd actually been patching up some of the stab wounds from before. Some of the officers had been attacked and then let go, but he was just dragged out. So was the purser. But then they remembered the captain. The captain was still injured in his cabin when they'd last seen him. So they raced back in there, finished him off and threw his body out of the big stern windows of the ship. By the end of this night of mayhem,

the captain and 10 of his officers had been killed. So that's what makes it the bloodiest mutiny in the whole history of the Navy. All that was left from the wardroom was the sailing master, who was the old salty professional who was in charge of navigation, and also a midshipman, the very midshipman, Casey, who was the one who was flogged by his captain just a week before. So they were spared. The mutineers then decided to sail the ship south across the Caribbean to the Spanish main, to the mainland of South America. And Caracas is the provincial capital of what's now Venezuela.

And La Guira is the port serving it. So they sailed it into La Guira. And so this frigate eventually appears. And the mutineers on board say to the Spanish, can we surrender to you, please? And that's exactly what they did. They handed over the frigate to the Spanish. The Spanish were delighted., please? And that's exactly what they did. They handed over the frigate to the Spanish. The Spanish were delighted. They didn't really like mutineers.

But in the name of his most Catholic majesty, a frigate is a frigate. So they pardoned the mutineers and said, thank you very, very much. And we'll have the ship. Just briefly tell me why the manhunt had international repercussions. Right. A lot of the sailors changed their names, and a few remained in Spanish colonies, but a lot headed onto other ships. There were ones on Danish ships and captured on French ships. Some were serving in French privateers.

But a lot went to the Americas, obviously the common language, and there was generally a level of support. For years, the British had been stopping American ships americas obviously the common language and there was a generally a level of support for years the british had been stopping american ships and searching them for british sailors a lot of british sailors had run and when they deserted they went to america so the navy had a list of people that were identifying no photo ids in those days so they said you know a wart on their left side of the nose or whatever aged so and so with bad teeth that's how they identified them they just extended this as part of the dragnet for the mutineers and several got caught that way and it became a huge issue in the american press

the president at the time john adams was largely supportive of what was going on. His government had signed an extradition treaty with the British. It all came to a head with a chap called Nash, and he was one of the ringleaders of the mutineers, one of the worst of them. And his whole outcry in America was all centred around a trial in Charleston, South Carolina, where eventually he was handed over to the British as part of the extradition treaty. And in August 1799, Thomas Nash was hanged from the yardarm from a British ship in Kingston Harbour. But in America, this was so unpopular that almost the next year, 1800, was very topically, as it is just now election year and the president's opponents made a huge political issue of this and this whole support for extradition and the letting down of

american seamen and this bad feeling led to the change of government and the fall of john adams and his party the government that did landed up essentially on a course which set them straight towards, in 1812, a war with Britain on this very same issue. So huge strategic implications. How did they get their ship back though? The month after Nash was hanged in 1799, that September, the Admiral Hyde Parker in Jamaica decided he wanted to do something they had the intelligence that the ship was now ready for sea the spanish had had her for a couple of years but she was now in porto cayo or porto cabello as as i would have said still in venezuela but just up the coast but she was almost ready for sea so they decided they wanted to capture the The Spanish had probably 400 men on the ship now

but she was an anchor under the guns of a fortress in the harbour. The harbour was a fairly open one to the north there was a small inlet guarded by this fort and the frigate was anchored right in front of her. Guard boats were protecting her from attack and of, as soon as the signal went up, the gunners in the fortress would join in. But what happened is that night, Hamilton led an attack with six of the ship's boats and 100 men. So heavily outnumbered, but they crept into the harbour. They got into an encounter with one of the guard boats, which fired a gun gun which warned the Hermione. She was now by the way called the Santa Cecilia and under the Spanish flag. The Spanish crew thought they were being attacked so they started blazing away with their full broadside and under the cover of that Hamilton launched his attack. His men came in dribs and drabs. He was first on board with only a handful of men. You had something like 24 men in

his boat. They got into the deck of the ship and were surprised to see only a small knot of Spaniards on board. Everyone else was down below firing the guns. So they were able to secure the ship. More British sailors arrived. They ran up the masts and started lowering the sails. At that point, the Spanish realised what was happening, but the British threw down grenades down the hatches and then stormed down the ladder that the marines had joined the attack now the British marines so you have sailors marines going down wading into this pile of Spanish seamen who are crammed into the gun deck now and this horrendous fight starts in this dark confined space but essentially the British have the weapons the Spanish were for the most part unarmed apart from their gun tools and

the odd dagger so meanwhile they up on deck Hamilton who was wounded in the action it was described by an admiral at the time as the most daring cutting out expedition of the age. Another reminder of just how completely rubbish shore defences were in the 18th century. I don't know why they bothered building those forts. I mean, you know, whether it's Quebec or any of these places, they're just pounding cannonballs into the sea as ships are sailing around underneath them. Angus, that was another brilliant podcast. Thank you so much for coming on.

What's the book called? It's called Mutiny on the Spanish Main. Brilliant. Good luck with it thank you hope you enjoyed the podcast just before you go bit of a favor to ask i totally understand if you want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money makes sense but if But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that.

It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome. But if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.