CHAPTER III

From the Channel to the Mediterranean

WITH Norris and Hawke-The Truth about the Yarmouth

Sailors and the Marriage Act-" A Cargo of Courage Saunders in the Mediterranean-Barbary Pirates-The Seven Years' War.

ENGLAND was fighting France on the high

seas and in Flanders in both her own and Maria Theresa's interests. Captain Saunders was not long unemployed, as one may gather from an odd letter or two.1 He was appointed to the Plymouth-Rodney's old ship-from which he wrote to Corbett of the Admiralty :

"13th December, 1743.

"Sir, I have received your letter of 10th instant signifying that their Lordships have ordered me as much powder and as great an addition of stores proper for a West Indian voyage as can be taken on board which I beg you'll acquaint their Lordships I will be carefull to demand and am

"Your most obedient humble servant, "CHAS. SAUNDERS." This letter is docketed "Let him know he may take in now no more of the one or the other than the proper proportion for the voyage

1 Captains' Letters. Admiralty In Letters, 2459, P.R.O.

he is ordered which is to the West Indies." Three days later Saunders was busy getting the Plymouth ready for sea, but he was not to go to the West Indies after all. On the 27th December he wrote to Corbett :

"Sir, I have your letter of the 22nd instant signifying their Lordships' direction that of that kind of provisions on board the Plymouth which is above the proportion of six months should be spent on till they are reduced to that proportion and as I have now command of the Saphire have given a copy of it to the commanding officer on board the Plymouth. "I am, etc."

It was in February, 1744, according to all history, that Sir John Norris, assisted by a storm, scattered the French fleet which was despatched to invade England. February, "1744," I take it, was February, 1743, in the Calendar of the time.1 Saunders, in the Sapphire, was certainly with Norris, but we have no account from him of the affair. The only

1 The change of Calendar in 1752, effected by Lord Chesterfield's Act of 1751, often makes confusion worse confounded in dates. Letters dated March, 1743, are taken by the unwary before the letters of December, 1743. According to the old reckoning, March 24th, 1743, was the end of the year, December being the 9th month. Failure to remember this, as I have reason to believe some have, would transfer to the historian the I divers inconveniences which the Act of 1751 was intended to remove for the general public.

"

Saunders with Norris

letters which I have been able to unearth show that in March he, in company with the Dover, was looking after the transports which carried "the Recruits to Flanders." In April he was cruising off the Flemish coast on the look-out for the French. His log of the Sapphire opens on the 26th December, 1743, and covers thirteen and a half months. On Saturday the 7th April, 1744, he makes his first reference to the war. The Sapphire was then moored in Ostend Roads :

"At 2 p.m. sent a boat on board a Galliot Hoy in Ostend Road by which I understand she came from Dantzick bound for Dunkirk with recruits for the service of the French King, at 8 manned and armed a boat from Ostend and our Barge, Yawl and Cutter and sent them to take the vessel, at 12 the boats returned and brought on board 138 prisoners and sent the remaining part on board the Dover, left the 1st Lieutenant, a mate and six men on board. the prize. A. M. came on board General Pultney, got up yards and topmasts, got on board from the Prize 60 arms, read his Majesty's declaration of War against the French King.'

They left next day for England, and after sighting the South Foreland, moored in the Downs where they spent the next three weeks. Then came an active spell with other Captains chasing suspicious craft, and with Sir John

5-(2218)

Balchen, Saunders moved down Channel to take a huge convoy in charge. On the 31st August the Sapphire was off the Portuguese coast. There they received intelligence that the French fleet was in the neighbourhood of "the Rock of Lisbon." Saunders parted company with Balchen, moored in Gibraltar Bay, 15th September, and was not back in the English Channel till the 30th December, 1744. His movements were no doubt full of the excitements inseparable from the time, but the log of the Sapphire affords little enlightenment. Among its most suggestive entries are such items as “Tuesday, 17th July, surveyed, condemned, and hove overboard cheese, 1,489 pounds"-a touch which by its very simplicity tells its story.

In March, 1745, Saunders was promoted to the Sandwich which carried ninety guns. From the Sandwich he was apparently transferred to the Yarmouth of sixty-four guns, and in command of her he went out with Rear-admiral Edward Hawke from Plymouth on the 9th August, 1747, to intercept the great convoy for the West Indies which the French had collected in the Basque Roads. The fight off Cape Finisterre two months later was one of Hawke's notable victories-one that showed the extraordinary tenacity and resource of the