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RJHG 01.06 Wolverine! The substance of this note was included in an article published in the May 1998 number of Mariner’s Mirror, the journal of the Society for Nautical Research. It was through sea-power that we were spared the tyrannical dictatorships of the Continent, across two hundred years of that Freedom’s War which was settled by sea power in our own century. Our ultimate victory over the French in 1815, as over Germany in 1918 and 1945, came not only from our great sea-leaders such as Nelson, but also through the personal tenacity, courage and skill of innumerable Royal Naval officers in subordinate stations, in small ships as well as line of battle ships, who put our Country first and themselves second. Just such a hero was Commander Lewis M Mortlock who, in command of HM brig-sloop Wolverine, 13 guns, 286 tons, gave his life for his country in most gallant circumstances. Lewis’ half-brother Patrick Murray has left a spirited account of how, on Friday 4th January 1799, Lewis, off Boulogne, encountered two French privateer luggers, Rusщ, commanded by “citizen” Pierre Audibert, which carried eight 4-pounders and about 70 men and Furet, under “citizen” Denis Fourmentin, with fourteen 4-pounders and 80 men. Wolverine was not born a warship; she was originally the barque-rigged Rattler, taken up from trade in 1797 and converted on principles espoused by Captain John Schank, the Dockyard Commissioner at Deptford. His idea was that, to increase the power of a small ship’s broadside, only half the complement of main deck guns need be carried, but grooves could be cut in the deck so that the guns could be trundled to whichever was the engaged side. Larger guns could then be carried than would otherwise be possible. Thus Wolverine, although her main deck bulwarks were cut with eight ports a side, only carried at that level two long 18-pounders and six 24-pounder carronades. Above, conventionally mounted, she carried four 12-pounder carronades on her quarterdeck, and a similar gun as a bow-chaser on her forecastle. There is a model of her, showing her bluff bows and merchant-ship lines, in the National Maritime Museum. Mortlock, newly promoted Commander, was appointed to Wolverine, which was fitting out at Deptford, as her first Commanding Officer on 16th April 1798. Hardly any of her crew had seen action before they joined the ship. Wolverine became part of a Channel patrol operating out of the Downs. On 3rd January 1799 Mortlock sailed on his final war patrol. When, four miles off Boulogne, he sighted the French luggers he knew they would sheer off if they took him for a warship, and he knew - you will see why - he could not catch them if they stood from him. When they fired at him he therefore hoisted Danish colours, and pretended to be a neutral merchantman en route from Plymouth to Copenhagen. With only six officers aboard - one a mere boy - and 69 men, he must have known that he was out-manned if not outgunned. Nevertheless he had decided to use his ship’s mercantile appearance to tempt his enemy to close quarters. This ruse de guerre successfully brought Furet under Mortlock’s quarter. At the same time Rusщ shot ahead and ran foul of Wolverine’s port bow. This put Mortlock in a tricky pinch, beset forward and aft, and unable bring any of his main armament to bear. Nevertheless he now broke out English colours and brought his enemy to battle, himself lashing Furet’s bowsprit, which was overhanging his quarterdeck, to an iron stanchion in his mizzen chains, and opening a great fire of those guns that would bear and of musketry. Securing Furet in this way equally prevented her edging forward and using her main armament on Wolverine. Furet’s men now attempted to board but were driven back with loss. Almost immediately Wolverine’s only mature midshipman, Furness, was killed outright and her Master severely wounded; Mortlock was shortly thereafter wounded in a finger and again in the breast, by a spent ball that had passed through a hammock but whose impact occasioned him immense pain. He was then wounded a third time in the hip, by a splinter. Nevertheless he contrived to shoot four assailants personally, as Rusщ’s men took their turn, clambering aboard twenty or thirty strong. Both the steering and handling of the ship, and all the fighting on deck, fell to Mortlock, Midshipman Edward Hartley and five seamen, for although messages were sent to bring up the hands manning the now useless main armament between decks, none came up. Nevertheless throughout the action Mortlock never lost steerage way in spite of being partly luffed by the luggers and encumbered by them. The fight on her forecastle left Wolverine exposed aft. Seeing this, three of Furet’s men leapt onto Wolverine’s roundhouse. Mortlock with his own fists punched one clean over the side and then ran Fourmentin himself through with a half-pike, although under aim from the Frenchman’s pistol, which mercifully missed fire. A crack shot with a musket or pistol, Mortlock was just as good a shot with a cannon. He personally raked the Furet with one of his after 12-pounders, causing horrific carnage as his shot made a lane through the men crowding her deck. He later told his brother that the frightful screams and the horror on the faces of his many French victims made his blood run cold. However Furet’s men managed to toss some leather bags full of combustibles through Wolverine’s cabin window, starting a fire above her magazine which it required the attention of all her people to extinguish. The French had made six attempts to take over Wolverine, and had been thwarted each time. Hartley recorded how the Frenchmen took cover each time Mortlock aimed at them, as they early learned that when he fired, he never missed his man. Boarded and aflame, the Wolverines had their work cut out, but they had carried their point with their enemy. The luggers, worsted after an hour and fifty minutes’ close action and foiled in six attempts at boarding, which had cost them four officers and seventeen men killed or mortally wounded, and conceivably fearing being blown up, took this opportunity to sheer off, the Furet breaking away the stanchion to which its bowsprit was lashed. Mortlock was taken below, the parting shot from Furet having shattered his arm and torn the flesh from his side, the while ordering “Luff, luff, stick close to them”, at which point he fainted from loss of blood. Recovering somewhat, he sent orders on deck “not to strike the colours while the ship could swim”; but Wolverine was no match for the luggers in sailing and could not make good any pursuit. The Wolverines tried their utmost, but with three pair of main shrouds, one fore and two mizzen shot away, enormous damage to her running rigging and with grape- and chain-shot through her sails, the Frenchman could sail faster than Wolverine with all she could set, and anyway was being lured onto a hostile shore. Wolverine, under her Lieutenant, Donald MacDougall, therefore bore up for Portsmouth, where Mortlock was landed on 6th. An agonising twenty-four hours had been spent off the Isle of Wight, Wolverine being frustrated by contrary winds from entering harbour. Lewis Mortlock died in his mother’s arms on 10th, after a week of pain throughout which his first thought was to console his parent and his half-brother Patrick Murray. He lies at Gosport in the naval cemetery, where he was interred on 12th, attended by a procession formed by every Captain in the port. His large Newfoundland dog, which stood beside him throughout the fight, escaped without a scratch. MacDougall, who was new in his rank when Wolverine originally commissioned, died in 1815. Hartley was awarded a Lieutenancy after being wounded at Trafalgar and died in 1813. Lewis had earlier, on 19th May 1798, been in action against shore batteries at Ostend, in support of a successful commando raid on the sluices and lock gates of the Bruges canal, a little-remarked precursor of Keyes’ 1918 St George’s Day Zeebrugge Raid. On this duty Wolverine had, because of battle damage to her hull and rigging, been forced out of action after four hours’ hard pounding on both sides, starting at 0415 when the shore batteries first opened up on Wolverine and the two gun-brigs in company with her. Wolverine had lost one seaman killed and ten wounded; the embarked 23rd Regiment had lost one Private killed and five wounded. She had to cut her cable and withdraw because of her losses and battle damage, the two ships which were supposed to be assisting her being anchored off out of gun-shot were they could not support her. As it was on 20th the ship was still making a lot of water because many shot-holes were inaccessible to the carpenter; it was a week before Wolverine was finally warped into dock. This blooding came only a month after Lewis’ promotion to Commander and appointment to command on 16th April, which in turn was just less than four years after the gazetting of his Lieutenancy on 13th May 1794. In the Ostend action Wolverine was quite badly knocked about - indeed disabled in masts, yards and rigging, and rendered very leaky by shot holes below the waterline, although Mortlock reported that she “sails remarkable well”, and asked for her to be coppered during the resulting docking at Sheerness. Mortlock had already asked for more hands so that she could, under the right conditions, fight eleven guns on one broadside, but this request for a formal increase in complement was brushed past by the Admiralty. In early June he wrote in with a list of “cloaths” that had been lost by the crew when bundled into the nettings during the Ostend fight. The Admiralty noted, without reasons, that this request could not be complied with, but the sending of this obviously unpopular letter shows that Mortlock had a commendable regard for the comfort of his men. The letter was sealed but, irritatingly, the seal was broken in such a way that a mere two centuries later it cannot be read. Managing his Ship’s Company cannot have been easy - at least one was pressed judging by a letter from a gentleman in Southwold asking for his “lad”’s release. This letter was forwarded by Mortlock to the Admiralty, containing as it did detailed intelligence of enemy forces and fortifications at Flushing, albeit data already a month old. In loyally talking up Wolverine’s sailing qualities Mortlock remarked that the ship would have been drier between decks, in a seaway, if time had allowed the inside ports devised by Captain Schank to be fitted. Wolverine had clearly been readied for service in rather a rush. Mortlock reported himself very pleased with Wolverine, saying she could fight seven or eight guns to a side in reasonable weather, and could easily carry a hundred troops - Mortlock was mad keen for a squadron of more such ships to be formed which could descend on an enemy coast with a thousand men. In between these two engagements and within her limitations, Wolverine had not been idle. In July, with others including battleships, she had been present at the capture of a 21-ship Swedish convoy and its escorting 44-gun frigate. To this day the Swedes have a song about sighting the British fleet coming over the horizon. Also in the same month Wolverine had captured nine Dutch fishing boats off Neuport. Mortlock reported that Wolverine, with her merchant build, proved a “perfect deception” and had successfully lured nearly all the fishermen into what they must have hoped was to be a successful act of piracy. In this Wolverine was a little-known precursor to the Q-ships of the First World War. The captured boats were not worth much, said Mortlock, who had them and their gear cut up and sold off for the benefit of his crew. Unfortunately HM Customs then descended on him with greater force than the French and Dutch enemy. A cry for help to the Admiralty earned Mortlock yet another brush-off. The idea of landing commando raids may have caught on as, when reporting being blown off station back to the Downs just before Christmas, Mortlock had a Lieutenant Colonel Sontag on board, who was still there at the time of a further report four days later. John Sontag’s presence is a bit of a mystery as throughout the period he is listed as Military Superintendent of Hospitals. All this had been achieved in spite of the main catch to the Schank system, which was that if all the guns were run out to one side, the gunport sills had only four inches of freeboard and any manoeuvre ran the risk of dipping them under even in calm water. This was demonstrated when Wolverine sank in her final engagement in the Atlantic in 1804. It explains why Mortlock had to make the enemies come to him, for he could not drive his ship close-hauled to chase them. It is a tribute to a natural seaman that Mortlock achieved so much by working cleverly within his vessel’s limitations and thereby getting more out of her than another might have done, in spite of his having been several years on the beach. The later story of HMS Wolverine can be read in the May 1998 issue of Mariner’s Mirror. The Channel engagement was the equivalent of front-page news in its day and the subject of popular prints; there is one delightfully primitive engraving by Charles Turner from a sketch by Masquerier showing Mortlock skewering his frog the while his dog leaps supportively beside him. Lewis Mortlock was the younger brother of the James, discoverer of the Mortlock Islands. In another article I explain their mutual ancestry. Like his brother, Lewis had been put out of employment by the Peace following the American war, but immediately; in his will written in January 1784 he describes himself as lately a midshipman in HMS Jupiter but "now a gentleman of the City of Westminster". However he had clearly passed for Lieutenant and was made so almost immediately on the outbreak of the French Revolutionary war in 1793. It is a reasonable presumption that he had been originally blooded in the action at Porto Praya in April 1781. His first command came in 1795, when he was given the Crache-feu, a 3-gun vessel that had been captured from the French by Sir Richard Strachan off the French coast on 9th May of that year. Sailing from Portsmouth for the West Indies with Admiral Cloberry Christian’s expedition sent out of season to recover the islands from pro-French rebels, she carried away her rudder head in the gale which scattered his fleet and just managed to limp into Milford Haven hauling on tackles hooked a sweep fastened to the after part of her rudder. Crache-feu was broken up in 1797. On 12th January 1799 Wolverine fired her final respects to her first and most honoured Captain; twenty minute-guns roared him to glory. There would be no-one to touch him, as a Wolverine, for nearly a century and a half until the sixth and last ship of that name, which had already played a key part in sinking three Nazi U-boats in the Atlantic, came into the hands of that master of sea warfare, Peter Gretton, and under him, as her grand finale, rammed and sank the Italian submarine Dagobar in 1942. In the circumstances it seems an impertinence that the United States Navy had a Wolverene on the Great Lakes in 1942, a coal-burning paddle-wheel aircraft carrier razщed from a passenger ferry. There is a portrait of Lewis Mortlock in the National Maritime Museum, which also has a collection of some of his effects. ЉRJH Griffiths, Havant, 2004-8 griffithsrobert at hotmail.com References and Sources: Copy letter of Patrick Murray, (found as a newspaper cutting in the effects of Miss GBR Mortlock of Meldreth, 6.11.1953 and supplied by Mrs E Clark-Kennedy of Abington, Cambs.) The Times, 17 December 1795 Gentleman’s Magazine, 1799, pp75, 83 Naval Chronicle, vol.i, January 1799 PRO ADM51/1352, Captain’s Journal, HMS Wolverine 24.2.1798-21.1.1799 PRO ADM52/3543, Master’s Journal, HMS Wolverine do. PRO ADM1/2136 ff332-342, letters by Cdr LM Mortlock PRO PROB11/1318 f53 PCC will pr. January 1799, Lewis Mortlock International Genealogical Index (IGI), Suffolk (entries for Denham) Parish Register, Kirtling, Cambs “Commissioned Sea Officers of the Royal Navy 1660-1815” 2nd edn, D Synet and RL Dinardo, Navy Records Society 1994 Navy Lists, various; Army lists 1787-1800 Mariner’s Mirror, vols 7 p.335, 15 p.238, 58 p.244 “Ships of the Royal Navy” JJ Colledge, Greenhill 1987 “Sloops and Brigs” S Henderson, Adlard Press 1972 “Naval History of Great Britain” EP Brenton, 2nd edn London 1837 “Naval History of Great Britain” W James, London 1868 “The Royal Navy” William Laird Clowes (re action at Porto Praya 11.4.1781) ^_БПС+`ЅЕзрди6{uouicu]u{Y{U{U{ $6;‡Юе–Z c ь ё !=F!&жл,5{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{5:?™!CHZcЄЉЎГљЈБ‚Œу{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{ушW\clОШЃЌљЖПЗРK!T!""G"P"$$${w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{$$/%8%d*m*!+*+Ž+—+а,й,ѓ-ќ-G.P. //g2j2&3/3ш4ё45{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{w{5'5Ё7Ј7 99ы:ѕ:%;/;ј<џ<]=c=d=f=а=в=P>Q>{w{w{w{w{w{w{r{wmwg( ( Q>>‘>“>Ћ>Џ>c?l?ФAдA'C)C+C-Cysojfsysysfsf(  БГПС/bd„†…‡# % „ † С qf`````ZZZZZZZZZZ †* :u С У 8:egѓѕxzhjїљ> @ %%L*N*‘,“,к-м-yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyм-†0ˆ02 2*5,5J6L6;; = =а=в=N>P>q>‘>“>yyyyyyyyyyyyyyysgg а0§“>•>Џ>Б>c?€?І?Ь?@G@|@Л@A#A~A™AФAјA/BbBЄBлB'C)Cyyy)C+C-Cu  65у$$5Q>-C‡ˆ‰Š‹ŒС м-“>)C-CŽ‘’Times New Roman MS Sans SerifЉаа БŠŠппШAƒ.с9ŠŠппШAƒ.с9dCompObjџџџџџџџџџџџџUџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџ