When the ImpÉrieuse reached the coast of Spain early in 1808, we were still at war with that country. Napoleon had not yet turned his submissive ally into an enemy by that act of brigandage which was the capital error of his life. The war was for us still a “rich war,” as Nelson put it—there were still Spanish prizes to be picked up. Cochrane was master of the work to be done. His previous cruise in the Speedy had made him perfectly familiar with the Spanish coast. It had also given him an absolute confidence in his power to beat the Spaniards at any odds. On this occasion he had no opportunity to equal the most marvellous of all his feats—the capture of the frigate Gamo with his tiny gun-brig the Speedy, but he was incessantly active and uniformly successful. The ImpÉrieuse hugged the Spanish coast, destroyed isolated forts, sailed into the very ports and marked her prey down coolly, before sending her boats in to cut out the more tempting prizes. In all this stirring fighting Marryat had such share as a midshipman might. The history of it is recorded in “Frank Mildmay,” in “Mr. Midshipman Easy,” in “Peter Simple.” One incident may be recorded as a type of the rest. Lord Cochrane learnt that a certain vessel which he was resolute to take was lying at anchor in Almeria. He himself, in his “Autobiography of a Seaman,” calls her “a large French vessel, laden with lead and other munitions of war.” Marryat, as quoted by his daughter, calls her a polacre privateer, and says nothing of her nationality, but in other respects the stories agree. The story may now go on in Marryat’s words:

It was on such an occasion as this, if not in this very affair, that Marryat is said to have had the adventure recorded by him in “Frank Mildmay.” Like the hero of that story, he was knocked down by the body of his leader, who was shot in front of him in a boarding affair, and then almost trampled to death by the men who pressed on to carry the prize. When the fight was over he was dragged out insensible, and laid among the dead. The unfriendly remark of a comrade—that he had cheated the gallows—revived him to give a vigorous denial. Mrs. Ross Church states that this happened in Arcassan Bay during the first cruise of the ImpÉrieuse, but Cochrane himself mentions no such fight there, and no loss of any of his officers. Frank Mildmay’s adventure happened in Arcassan Bay, but Marryat would have obvious reasons for not being strictly accurate as to place. If the incident was taken from his own life, it can only have happened at Almeria. It may be noted that both Mr. Handstone in the novel, and Mr. Caulfield in history, were first lieutenants, and that both died in the same way, riddled with bullets, at the head of a boarding party. Was Caulfield oppressed with a presentiment of his coming death like the lieutenant in “Frank Mildmay”—or was he indeed the original of that officer who, be it observed, is a very distinct character, and has much the air of being a portrait? Perhaps a preliminary question ought to be asked, namely, whether this incident did actually happen to Marryat as recorded in the novel? It is possible. The fact that he does not mention it in the passage quoted above proves nothing. It is apparently taken from his unfinished life of his friend Napier, in which he would naturally not dwell on his own personal adventures. On the other hand, it is very much the sort of story which might be transferred from the hero of the novel to its author.

In the course of 1808 a great change came over the war in the Western Mediterranean. Napoleon made his famous (and infamous) grab at the Spanish monarchy, and instantly, without hesitation, without concert among themselves, in one great spontaneous burst of patriotic enthusiasm, the Spanish people rose in arms. Their efforts were often unsuccessful, and even disgraced by mismanagement or treason; but, on the whole, they set Europe a magnificent example, which was well followed later on by Russia, and they gave England what she had long wished for in vain—a field of battle on land against Napoleon. The ImpÉrieuse had her share in the Peninsular War. It was her duty not only to help the Spaniards in the coast towns, but to harass the French troops which endeavoured to enter Spain by the coast road. Cochrane was at his best in work of this kind. For months he was engaged in incessant boat attacks on the French transports, which endeavoured to reach Barcelona (then and throughout the war in their possession), by hugging the shore. With this service were mingled landing expeditions to blow up French telegraph stations or batteries, or to help the Spaniards to defend forts which commanded the road, and which the French for that very reason were particularly anxious to capture. It was Cochrane’s belief to the end of his life that if he had been supplied with a flotilla of light vessels and a regiment of troops, he would have made it impossible for the French to enter Spain by the Eastern Pyrenees at all. How far he was justified in this opinion, he never was able to show. Indeed, when he was offered just such a command on condition that he would abstain from attacking Admiral Gambier in the House of Commons, he refused it. Even as it was, however, he did much. His untiring vigilance made it impossible for the French to use the sea for the transport of men or provisions, and difficult for them to use the coast route which at many places was liable to be swept by the cannon of the English frigate. They were driven to use the inland route through a poor and rugged country swarming with guerrilleros. It is known that all this part of the war proved enormously costly to the French, and much of the credit due for imposing the loss upon them must go to the ImpÉrieuse. Marryat had his share of it all, and in “Frank Mildmay” he has given a carefully finished sketch of one of the sharpest pieces of service in it—the defence of Rosas, where he himself received a bayonet wound.

The desire to be back in his place in Parliament, in order that he might expose the malpractices of the Maltese Admiralty Court (this is the motive assigned by himself, and was doubtless that of which he was most conscious), induced Cochrane to apply for leave to bring the ImpÉrieuse home to England. It was granted with a facility which throws some doubt on his theory that the Admiralty feared his presence; and early in March, 1809, he dropped anchor in Plymouth Sound. Unhappily for himself, Cochrane was selected for a special piece of service before he could resume his Parliamentary work. In February of this year a French squadron had slipped out of Brest, with orders to drive off the British seventy-fours which were then watching L’Orient, to pick up three more ships at anchor there under Commodore Troude, and then to proceed to the West Indies to relieve Martinique. Admiral Willaumez, the French commander, did not escape the vigilance of the Channel squadron. His fleet was sighted at sea, followed till it entered the Pertuis d’Antioche, between the islands of RÉ and OlÉron, and very soon a blockading force collected under Admiral Gambier. The outcries of the London and Liverpool merchants roused the Admiralty to make great exertions for the destruction of an armament which was designed to operate in the West Indies, and would, by its mere presence in those waters, have greatly disturbed English trade. In an evil hour for Cochrane, my Lords remembered that he was well acquainted with this part of the French coast, and they resolved to send him to execute an attack on the enemy’s ships. Very reluctantly, for he knew how ill he was likely to be received by officers whom he would practically supersede, he undertook the work. He prepared a flotilla of explosion vessels and fire-ships. In April the ImpÉrieuse had joined Gambier’s squadron. A detailed account of the action which followed would be out of place here. Its rather melancholy history is to be read in Cochrane’s “Autobiography,” and the Minutes of the court martial on Lord Gambier. The squadron was in an indifferent moral condition, divided by sour professional factions, and impatient of its Admiral, a brave but weak officer, chiefly known as what was called in the navy a “blue light,” that is a pious man of a somewhat Methodistical turn. Very little zeal was shown in supporting Cochrane. The attack was made on the night of April 11th, and whatever the ImpÉrieuse could do was magnificently done. The French fleet of eight line-of-battle ships, and some smaller vessels, had withdrawn to the Basque Roads, at the mouth of the Charente, and had fortified itself with a heavy boom. Towards that boom the English explosion and fire-ships were driven by wind and tide after dark on the 11th. It is doubtful whether more than one of them reached it—but that one was commanded by Cochrane himself. She was brought up to the boom at half a cable’s length off the French frigate Indienne, and there exploded, scattering the boom all over the mouth of the Charente. Through the opening thus made a few English vessels passed. They were a mere handful, and might have been sunk by the fire of the French, but our enemies were panic stricken. They cut their cables, and ran ashore. When day broke the French ships were fast aground, and might every one have been destroyed; but Lord Gambier was an officer of the stamp peculiarly hateful to Nelson. He was prompt to conclude that enough had been done, and was loth to risk ships and men in what he thought an unnecessary way. In vain did Cochrane, who had now returned to the ImpÉrieuse, hoist signal after signal urging the Admiral to attack. He told him that the enemy were ashore, and could be destroyed; that they would get off if they were not stopped; that they were actually preparing to get off. It skilled not, and Gambier remained stolidly at anchor miles off. At last Cochrane, who by this time was nearly rabid with rage, work, and want of sleep, flew into a Berserker fury. He deliberately drifted the ImpÉrieuse stern first under the guns of the French liners, and then signalled that he was overpowered and in need of assistance. This desperate measure, worthy of Nelson in his most splendid moments, did at last force Admiral Gambier’s hand. Some vessels were sent—when it was well-nigh too late to do any service at all—and distinctly too late to do all that ought to have been done. Three of the French liners were destroyed, but the others by throwing their guns overboard and starting their water, were able to grovel over the mud-bar of the Charente, and escape into a pool out of reach up the river. They never appeared in the West Indies certainly, but the work was half done. Cochrane went back to England—with all that was best and worst in him fermenting with fury—to make his unhappy motion of opposition in the House to the vote of thanks to Admiral Gambier. From thence came his final quarrel with the Admiralty, and the court martial on Lord Gambier, in which it is only too probable that English officers and officials of rank winked at the suppression of evidence, and something not unlike forgery. Cochrane’s service in our navy was over for long years.

With this scene of mingled heroism and stupidity, the more brilliant part of Marryat’s naval life came to an end. He was engaged in the Basque Roads on one of the fire-ships, and when they proved of little use, was probably recalled to the ImpÉrieuse. It is to be hoped at least that he was on her deck when her captain, in an exaltation of fury, drifted her among the French liners. In point of time, however, his service was merely beginning, and he was to do good work yet, both as a subordinate and as commander; but it wanted the heroic touch of the first three years. When Cochrane was superseded from the ImpÉrieuse, Marryat remained with the new captain, and under him took part in the wholly wretched Walcheren business, out of which he got—in common with some thousands of others—all that it had to give—a distinct idea of how a combined expedition ought not to be conducted,—and an attack of marsh fever.

From this time until the close of the Great War, he was on such active service as the overpowering supremacy we had attained at sea left to be performed. From the Scheldt he returned invalided on board the Victorious, 74. As soon as he was fit for service, he was appointed to the Centaur, 74, the flag-ship of Sir Samuel Hood, with whom he went back to the Mediterranean, but not to the stirring life of his old frigate. After a year of the seventy-four he returned home, and was appointed to the Æolus frigate on the American station. He went out as a passenger on the Atlas, 64, and joined his ship at Halifax. In the Æolus, and then in another frigate, the Spartan, he became familiar with the West Indies, which are, with the Mediterranean, the scenes of so large a part of his stories. In 1812 he had served his time as midshipman, and returned home to pass. His influence was good, as the fact that he served so much in frigates proves, and he received his lieutenant’s commission immediately after going through his examination (December 26, 1812). Six months later he was appointed to L’EspiÈgle sloop, and cruised in her on the north coast of South America, till he was invalided by the breaking of a blood-vessel, and sent home as a passenger on board his old frigate, the Spartan, which had now finished her commission. This accident, due in part to a constitutional infirmity, which ultimately proved fatal to him, occurred at Barbadoes, at a dance—perhaps a dignity ball. In 1814 he was back on the coast of America in the Newcastle, 58, and was again invalided home, this time from Madeira. In June, 1815, just as the Great War was closing, Marryat was promoted commander, and the first period of his life came to an end.

The years from 1809 to 1815 may be rapidly passed over, for though they added to his experience, they were colourless as compared with the cruises of the ImpÉrieuse. He saw some service in them, but it was either tame, or a mere repetition of what he had seen before. The so-called “war of 1812” was in progress during part of his service in the Spartan and all his service in the Newcastle, but he saw little of it. Some boat work—and sharp work too—he went through in Boston Bay, but he saw nothing of those unlucky frigate actions with the Americans, which gave us such a disagreeable shock, and it was not his good fortune to be one of the crew of the famous Shannon. The capture of a small privateer or two, by so powerful a vessel as the Newcastle, was no important experience to a man who had seen the boarding of the King George, the defence of the Trinidad fort at Rosas, and the affair in the Basque Roads. An acquaintance he made with an American prisoner of war while on board the Newcastle was useful to him afterwards, but at the time he probably thought little about it.

His captains in these years doubtless served him as models when he began his work as a novelist, but they were none of them men of the commanding kind. The best remembered of them was Captain E. P. Brenton of the Spartan, brother of the famous Sir Jahleel who fought a brilliant frigate action off Naples, under the very eyes of Murat. Captain Brenton had himself done good work, but his chief reputation was made in later days, as the author of a life of St. Vincent, and a history of the Great War, which is itself mainly remembered as the object of incessant corrections, often pettifogging, commonly superfluous, and always intensely wearisome, in James’s “Naval History.”

Even in the most peaceful times, opportunities of facing danger come in every seaman’s way. He may have his chance to save life, and he must help to fight the storm. In both of these ways Marryat distinguished himself. Few men have more frequently risked their own lives to save others. As a midshipman in the ImpÉrieuse he went overboard to save a fellow midshipman. He saved the life of a seaman while serving on the Æolus, and narrowly escaped drowning on a similar occasion when serving in L’EspiÈgle. On this occasion he was a mile and a half off before the sloop could be brought to, and when a boat picked him up he was nearly senseless. This also was a part of experience to Marryat, for it was while overboard from L’EspiÈgle that he discovered that drowning is not an unpleasant death. It is recorded in his Life by his daughter that, first and last, “during the time he served in the navy, he was presented with twenty-seven certificates, recommendations, and votes of thanks, for saving the lives of others at the risk of his own, beside receiving a gold medal from the Humane Society.” This mark of distinction given in 1818 was assuredly well deserved.

Not less pleasing to Marryat than the memory of his efforts to save others, must have been his recollection of the honour he gained in volunteering during a gale to cut away the main-yard of the Æolus. The story appears, more or less coloured and adapted, with so many other of his reminiscences in “Frank Mildmay.” In the sober pages of Marshall, it is, however, a quite sufficiently gallant story. “On the 30th of September, 1811, in lat. 40° 50’ N., long. 65° W. (off the coast of New England), a gale of wind commenced at S.E., and soon blew with tremendous fury; the Æolus was laid on her beam ends, her top-masts and mizen-masts were literally blown away, and she continued in this extremely perilous situation for at least half an hour. Directions were given to cut away the main-yard, in order to save the main-mast and right the ship, but so great was the danger attending such an operation considered, that not a man could be induced to attempt it until Mr. Marryat led the way. His courageous conduct in this emergency excited general admiration, and was highly approved by Lord James Townshend, one of whose ship’s company he also saved by jumping overboard at sea.”

Up then to the age of three-and-twenty Marryat had prepared himself to write sea stories by making his life a sea story. He had, in fact, fulfiled the counsel of perfection given to the epic poet. He had seen no great battle; the last of them had been fought before he entered the service; he had not even shared in a single ship action. But what he did not witness himself he saw through the eyes of messmates. The battles, to judge from the little said of them in his stories, do not appear to have greatly interested Marryat—perhaps he found a difficulty in realizing what one would be like, perhaps he found them unmanageable. With the single ship actions he had no such difficulty. He could tell precisely what must happen, and he had no doubt heard tales of many such pieces of fighting. Indeed, in the actual sea-life of the time, the great battles did not play a much more considerable part than they do in the novels. Of the 2,437 lieutenants on the navy list when Marryat entered the service, the very great majority had never seen a general engagement. It was thought a rather exceptional thing that Collingwood should have been present in three battles. Nelson himself only took part in four, or five, if Admiral Hotham’s feeble action in the Gulf of Lyons is to be allowed the name. But most officers had seen service of some kind, and had tales to tell. Marryat, too, had been fortunate in an eminent degree. He had been wounded, but not severely—he had never been taken prisoner or shipwrecked. His service had been varied. Between 1806 and 1815 he had seen the North Sea, the Channel, the Mediterranean, and the Eastern Coast of America, from Nova Scotia to Surinam. His promotion had been rapid. Altogether he had had much to develop, and nothing to sour him, in this first period of his life.