Jane Austen’s Naval Brother, Charles, and La Tribune: Milestones in a Naval Career

Particular ships may come to have a special significance in a naval career. For Charles Austen, a ship that repeatedly touched his life in the Royal Navy was the vessel first known to him as the French frigate, La Tribune. Charles was a sixteen-year-old midshipman aboard HMS Unicorn (38 guns) when, on 8 June 1796, she encountered La Tribune (44 guns).[1] Charles had recently completed three years of rigorous study at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth. He was now learning to apply the theory of seamanship in practice at sea under the tutelage and supervision of his mentor and family friend, Captain Thomas Williams. He was about to take part in an epic chase in which Williams and his men would distinguish themselves.

While cruising west of the Scilly Islands, the Unicorn sighted and gave chase to La Tribune in a running fight which lasted ten hours. The Unicorn eventually pulled alongside the enemy and a “sharp contest ensued and continued with great impetuosity for thirty-five minutes.” When the smoke from their guns cleared, Unicorn saw that Tribune was preparing to cross her stern to gain the wind. This manoeuvre was defeated by “Captain Williams instantly throwing his sails back,…[and passing] the enemy’s bow. The action now renewed with fresh vigour but lasted only minutes, the [Tribune] having her mizen mast alone standing, surrendered.”[2] Thirty-seven of the Tribune’s crew were killed and fifteen, including her captain, were wounded; the Unicorn with  240 aboard suffered no casualties.

Fig 1: “The Capture of “La Tribune by HMS Unicorn”[3]  

This was an important coup for those on the Unicorn. Captain Williams was knighted by King George III for his exemplary leadership. La Tribune was a valuable prize capture so, not surprisingly, the  next year she was refitted and taken into British service as a 34 gun frigate. Her value was shared as prize money among all aboard in proportion to their rank. Midshipman Charles Austen would have received only a small sum but the event was significant to him. As the youngest in a clergy family of seven children, Charles had no expectations of private sources of income. He would have to make his own way. From his perspective, this exploit demonstrated the fame and fortune that a naval career might offer. If he could develop the expert  naval skills and have luck like that of his captain, Thomas Williams, a bright future might be his.

Charles’s role in the capture of the Tribune and the subsequent benefits for all involved would be well known to Jane Austen and the family. Jane took a keen interest in both her naval brothers’ successes at sea. She could appreciate that this chase, fight and seizure of an enemy warship would give Charles a sense of accomplishment. Moreover, she may have been an indirect beneficiary of  the Unicorn’s success. Charles purchased the topaze crosses that he famously  gave to his sisters in 1801 with prize money he had recently received. As the Unicorn had made other prize captures in 1796 and beyond, we cannot know for sure that the £30 of prize money Charles spent on jewelry for his sisters came from the Unicorn’s victory over the Tribune. However, as payouts of prize money were often much delayed, due to the slow processes of  the Vice  Admiralty Courts, there is a possible connection.[4]

Jane Austen would also have rejoiced in the Unicorn’s triumph for Sir Thomas Williams’s sake. He was considered one of the family since, four years earlier, he had married the beautiful Jane Cooper, who was the first cousin and former school mate of Jane and Cassandra Austen. Jane was a witness at the wedding and she had earlier dedicated “A Collection of Letters” in Volume the Second of her Juvenilia to the bride, alluding to the “Charming Character which in every Country, & in every Clime in Christendom is Cried Concerning you.” With Thomas Williams’s elevation to a knighthood, his wife became “Lady Williams.” Such a distinction would surely have pleased the romantically minded seventeen-year-old Jane.

Once at work in the British Navy, HMS Tribune was considered one of the finest frigates in his majesty’s service. However, instead of winning glory for the British, a year later she was shipwrecked on the Atlantic coastline of North America in Nova Scotian waters.

The sinking of HMS Tribune resulted from a constellation of human errors. On the morning of 16 November 1797, the ship was about to enter the port of Halifax after completing convoy duty from Newfoundland. Her sailing master, who was in charge of the ship’s navigation, was overconfident and refused the services of a local pilot. This was a fatal decision as the Tribune ran aground on the treacherous Thrum Cap Shoal on the eastern side of the entrance to the harbour. Her captain, Scory Barker, refused the offer of rescue boats from the Halifax Naval Yard and nearby military forts, judging that if he jettisoned guns and other heavy articles, the ship would safely refloat at high tide. Although she came off the shoal with the rising tide, a violent gale from the southeast also arose and carried the rudderless Tribune towards the western coast and onto the rocks near Herring Cove.[5] Of the over 240 on board, about 100 took to the rigging in the harsh temperature of that November night, hoping for rescue from onshore.

Fig.2: Chart showing the relation between the Thrum Cap Shoal and Herring Cove[6]

Local inhabitants of Herring Cove did what they dared. They lit a huge bonfire on shore, but as to reaching the survivors, heavy surf on the rocky shore made any approaches to the Tribune very dangerous. An acknowledged hero of the catastrophe was thirteen-year-old Joe Cracker, who saved two men in his small rowing boat. Eight others were subsequently saved by boats from the Cove. Overall, only twelve survived the wreck.[7] This disaster is marked with a monument honouring Joe Cracker set at the closest site on land, named Tribune Head.

Fig. 3: Tribune Head as seen from the land[8]

Fig. 4: Plaque honouring Joe Cracker, who intrepidly rescued two men from the rigging of the Tribune

Fig. 5: Herring Cove today

Fast forward now to 1805-1810 when the newly commissioned Lieutenant Charles Austen was commanding HMS Indian (18 guns) on the Royal Navy’s North American Station.  His assignments often took him in and out of Halifax Harbour, the northern base of the Station. From the westward approach his little sloop must pass close to Herring Cove and traverse the waters where HMS Tribune had wrecked and sunk. How might he have reflected in making this passage?

Perhaps he recollected, with sorrow, on the huge loss of life and profound suffering which had occurred, a situation made the more poignant by the probability that women and children belonging to naval officers’ families had perished with the Tribune. The tragic end of the Tribune was, additionally, a reminder of the importance of sound navigation and the necessity of competent seamanship among officers and men. The ill-fated Tribune had been badly served in both these dimensions. Charles probably also recollected the excitement of the chase of the Tribune in her earlier incarnation as a French frigate and his hopes for a future career of action and profit which was now just beginning with his first command.

Fig.6: The Naval  General Service Medal, 1847

The Tribune was to surface one more time in the narrative of Charles Austen’s long naval career. In 1847, Queen Victoria authorized the award of a silver medal, named the Naval General Service Medal, to recognize successful actions served in between 1793 and 1840. Charles received the new award with the “Unicorn 1796” clasp affixed in 1849.[9] By then a Rear Admiral of the Blue, it was fitting that the valour of the Unicorn in capturing the Tribune should become part of the honours which marked Charles Austen’s successful naval career.

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[1] She was originally the French frigate Charente Inferieure, launched in 1793 during the French Revolutionary war. and renamed La Tribune the next year.

[2] See John Marshall, Royal Naval  Biography, entry on Sir Thomas Williams (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Royal_Biography/Williams,_Thomas).

[3]After a painting by Thomas Whitcombe, courtesy of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.

[4] See Victor Lucas, in Jane Austen, Pipkin Guides Series, 3.

[5] See HMS Tribune -1797- Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Maritime Heritage Database (https://novascotia.ca/museum/wrecks/shipwrecks.asp?ID=4539).

[6] Chart showing the lights and buoys in the approaches to Halifax harbour in The Sea Road to Halifax by Admiral Hugh Pullen, 1980, 72.

[7] Lieutenants Campbell and North managed to escape in a jolly boat before the Tribune struck the rocks near Herring Cove. There are conflicting accounts about how many were aboard, ranging from 250-289; some sources say 14 survived. See endnote 5.

[8] Figs. 3-5, photos by Sheila Kindred

[9] Charles was one of the 4 survivors of this action who received the clasp in1849. His medal had a second clasp for  “Acre 1840.” It referred to Charles’s  participation in the bombardment of the Egyptian stronghold, the fortress of St Jean d’Acre, which was said to be impregnable.

Vice-Admiral Sir Francis Austen in Halifax, Nova Scotia: 1845-1848

INTRODUCTION

Jane Austen had two naval brothers: Francis and Charles. I have written extensively about Charles, drawing on research which revealed his close naval connections to my home town of Halifax, Nova Scotia, when he served on the North American Station for 6 ½years (1805-1811) during the Napoleonic Wars.[1] But Charles was not the only member of the Austen family who came to know Halifax well. His older brother, Francis,[2] was Commander-in-Chief of the North America and West Indies Station from 1845-48 and he made his summer base in Halifax during this commission.  This post continues the narrative of the Austen family’s intriguing connections to Halifax and Nova Scotia.     

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Fig. 1: Admiral Sir Francis Austen [3]

In 1845 Sir Francis Austen, Vice-Admiral of the White, was seventy-one years old and back in uniform again after 31 years on shore on half pay. During his absence from the sea service, naval practices had greatly changed. Steam ships now operated alongside sailing vessels and made up a quarter of the British navy. Sir Francis held a peace time appointment, which, while he was on the North American end of his Station, required him to ensure the protection of the fisheries against American interests, to make coastal surveys and maintain a British presence in waters adjacent to Great Britain’s colonial possessions in the area.[4]

Sir Francis’s flag ship, the third rate Vindictive (50 guns) with a crew of 500 men, first arrived with the squadron in Halifax on 19 June 1845. According to the Halifax Morning Chronicle, Sir Francis “disembarked under a salute from the Citadel and was received by a guard of honour on landing.” He immediately established his summer headquarters and set about his administrative tasks with speed and precision.

Sir Francis had a reputation for attention to detail, and a commitment to do a job well according to what he judged to be the appropriate standards.  By 1 July he issued his General Instructions and Port Orders for the Squadron Employed on the North America and West Indies Station. His  orders for Halifax left his officers and men in no doubt regarding what he expected in matters of navigation, safety, discipline, refitting, provisioning, and ordinance. He also paid attention to the flag signals employed by the military telegraph system, which provided continuing communication between the Citadel in Halifax to Fort George, the outer forts and the harbour entrance.

Fig. 2:  Signal Flags used in communication with the Vindictive.

Fig.3: Detail of Signal flags

Sir Francis was also concerned for the well-being of his men. While in port in 1846, he innovated a temporary hospital for “patients employed in the northern part of the station during summer months.” By using the services of the Vindictive’s surgeon, her medical supplies and part of the old naval hospital, he was able to provide health care in an environment conducive to recovery.[5] Another commitment to healthy practices was his directive forbidding the dumping of waste in the vicinity to the Naval Yard. He specified that “whenever any Ship may have occasion to go alongside the wharf at the Halifax Yard, care is to be taken to prevent any rubbish or dirt from being thrown overboard.” [6] 

Sir Francis’s orders also show concern for the safety of others in distress. He stipulated that “whenever the Signals for Vessels being in distress at the entrance of the Harbour shall be hoisted on Citadel Hill, assistance is to be immediately sent from each Ship. A Launch, with an Anchor and Hawser, is always to be kept in readiness for that purpose at one of the Wharfs of the Yard.”[7]  

 His squadron included four of the newer steam/sail combination sloops: HMS Vesuvius, HMS Columbia, HMS Hermes, and HMS Growler. Although all his previous experience had been in sailing vessels, he conscientiously addressed the challenges of the new steam technology, which required the management of different operational skills. His General Orders included cautions about getting steam up too quickly, directives about economizing on fuel and the necessity of employing competent stokers for maintaining the boilers.[8] He understood the versatility of steam/sail sloops. Their steam power made them much more maneuverable for navigating around shoals and in swift currents or when ships became becalmed. Sir Francis wisely chose the Vesuvius to take him on a tour of the Bay of Fundy, a Nova Scotia marine area with powerful, fifty-foot tides.

Contrary to usual practice, Sir Francis had four members of his family with him on the Vindictive: his 3rd son, George, 4th son, Herbert, and two unmarried daughters, Cassandra (Cassy, 31) and Frances (24). George, an ordained minister, served as the ship’s chaplain. Herbert joined the Vindictive as his father’s flag lieutenant. The women were ostensibly along to act as their father’s social hostesses. Sir Francis’s original intent was to commission his namesake and eldest son, Francis, as flag captain of the Vindictive. However, recently enacted Admiralty regulations prohibited such favouritism. 

In November 1846, Herbert was promoted to the rank of commander and commissioned into HMS Vesuvius. His promotion was benevolent, if not self-serving, behaviour on Francis’s part. It gave his son experience with steam power, which the navy would increasingly rely on. Additionally, the Vesuvius was suitable for carrying out cartographic assignments, which Herbert would soon undertake. Fortuitously for another family member, Herbert’s promotion created a vacancy which Sir Francis promptly filled in May 1846 with Charles John Austen, son of his brother, Charles.

Fig. 4: HMS Vindictive and HMS Vesuvius in Halifax harbour. Notice the large funnel on the  Vesuvius.[9]

Sir Francis attended to his official duties scrupulously but showed scant interest in lighter, less serious aspects of social life. He did what was proper in the realm of expected social courtesies. But he preferred to live quietly in the company of his own family and officers instead of hosting entertainments for members of the local military, administrative and business classes. When official social occasions were required, his elder daughter, Cassy, put herself forward as chief organizer and manager of the proceedings.

William King Hall, lieutenant on the Vindictive, was vehement in his criticism of Cassy’s behaviour. He viewed her as petulant and domineering; he declared her presence was “the destruction of all comfort.” She had, he observed, “every bad quality of heart and hand.”[10] Her influence even permeated the day to day routine of the Vindictive. King-Hall complained that “she is the Mistress of the Ship, influences the [Admiral] in every way, and in fact, I imagine will soon be Commander-in-Chief.”[11] He referred to her privately as “Miss Vindictive.”[12]

On shore in Halifax, Sir Francis and his retinue enjoyed the spacious and elegant residential quarters of Admiralty House. This fine, two-story, stone mansion, situated above the Naval Yard, was surrounded with landscaped gardens and offered a fine view of the harbour. While in port, the Vindictive’s officers were required to live at Admiralty House and were expected to dine with Sir Francis, as if they were aboard ship, at six thirty each evening. Although he was said to keep a good table, this obligation frustrated several of his artistic and socially minded officers. They found reasons to absent themselves from Admiralty House and pursue their personal interests elsewhere. Understandably, they had no desire to be spending their free time in the odious company of “Miss Vindictive.”

Fig. 5: Admiralty House, Halifax, completed 1819, where Sir Francis and his retinue lived while in Halifax.

Flag captain Michael Seymour made pencil sketches and watercolours of the harbour, Admiralty House, and the rugged countryside outside Halifax. He continued to sketch and paint whenever the Vindictive called into ports. Herbert Austen followed suit. While in Halifax, he captured what it looked like to enter the harbour (see Fig. 6), he documented how the Vindictive compared with his new command, the Vesuvius (see Fig. 4), and he recorded the beauties of the North West Arm of the harbour.[13] Seymour and Austen often sketched together and were considered talented amateurs. Both men had attended the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, where they were most likely taught drawing by Professor John Christian Schetky.

Fig. 6: “Halifax Harbour 1848”[14]

Young Charles John Austen had romantic rather than artistic interests. He met and fell in love with a pretty young Halifax girl, Sophia Emma Deblois. They married on 6 September 1848 at St Paul’s church in Halifax. He was not the only young officer in the squadron to fall in love. W.D. Jeans, secretary to Sir Francis, also met his future bride, Elizabeth “Bess” Hartshorne in Halifax. They were wed on 18 July 1848. Additionally, William King-Hall was introduced to Louisa Forman[15] in 1847 and by September they became engaged. He returned to Halifax from England after his current vessel, HMS Growler, was paid off in England in May 1848 so that he could marry Louisa in June of that year. Thus, three young officers from Sir Francis’s squadron married Halifax girls in 1848. Cassy Austen, who had flirted and unashamedly pursued several officers in the squadron,[16] did not figure in this inventory of happy couples.    

Sir Francis’s three-year term of service on the Station was completed by mid-1848. The Vindictive arrived at Spithead, the anchorage for Portsmouth, on 6 June. The next day Sir Francis lowered his flag as Vice-Admiral of the White for the last time.[17] He was subsequently promoted to Admiral of the Red. Although he was never to serve at sea again, he lived to enjoy further honours: in 1862 when he was made both Rear Admiral and Vice Admiral of the United Kingdom. On 27 April 1863 he achieved the navy’s highest rank, Admiral of the Fleet. Sir Francis died on 10 August 1865, after 79 years of service in the navy.  

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[1] See the bibliography in Kindred, Jane Austen’s Transatlantic Sister, MQUP, 2017, 2018, 273. 

[2] Francis Austen’s early career was marked with considerable professional and personal success. Beginning with his initial training at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, and subsequently service as a midshipman in 1789, Francis later undertook commissions in the English Channel, the North Sea, the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the Azores. At the age of twenty-six he achieved the rank of post captain. During this first phase of his naval career, Francis married Mary Gibson in July 1806 and together they had eight children. 

To his great and lasting regret, Francis missed the famous Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805 for, although one of Admiral Nelson’s squadron, his ship, HMS Canopus, had been deployed on convoy and supply duty just before the commencement of the battle. However, he did fight at the St Domingo action in February 1806, leading the lee line of ships into combat. By May 1814 his current ship, HMS Elephant, was paid off and Francis came on shore.

[3] Oil portrait, private collection.

[4] Elsewhere on the Station, he arrested slave traders sailing under Portuguese and Brazilian flags and protected British commercial interests during the Mexican American war. According to Austen scholar Brian Southam, “gun boat diplomacy was called for along the coasts of Venezuela and Nicaragua, in Sir Francis’s own words ‘to protect property from apprehended outrage in consequence of revolutionary insurrection.”‘ See Southam, Jane Austen and the Navy, National Maritime Museum, 2005, 57. When tension in Venezuela required a show of British force, Sir Francis travelled overland to Caracas to parlay with the President in order to defuse the political unrest.

[5] See AUS/11, 22 June 1846.

[6] See Francis Austen, General Instructions and Port Orders for the Squadron Employed on the North America and West Indies Station (GO), Gossip and Coade, !84, 2,51. 

[7] GO, 3, 51.

[8] GO, 4, 49

[9] Watercolour by Herbert Grey Austen, private collection.

[10] Cassandra Austen’s domineering behavior became known to the Admiralty once the ship had been paid off in England. The ship’s former flag-captain, Michael Seymour, reported in a letter (29 June 1848) to W. D. Jeans, who had served as secretary to Sir Francis, that “the Admiralty were pleased with our old ship the Vindictive and have so expressed themselves to me. There is a feeling of displeasure at the Admiral having so systematically taken his daughter to sea with him. I, of course, said very little and merely listened to the remarks made - and I fancy that in future cases some restrictions will be put on family privileges. ... It is surprising how much [Sir Francis] and [Cassy] have been the subject of conversation.” Seymour’s remarks suggest he would be in some agreement with King-Hall’s criticism of Cassy. Things did not go well for her once on shore. According to Seymour, Sir Francis and Cassy “were in lodgings in London (June 1848) to consult medical men on her health.” She died eleven months later. See Michael George and Edwin Harris, W.D. Jeans: Admiral’s Secretary Bermuda, National Museum of Bermuda, 2010, 24. 

[11] See Sea Saga: Being the Naval Diaries of the King-Hall family, ed. L. King-Hall, Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1935, 145-148.

[12] King-Hall gave examples of Cassy’s meddling tactics: On 20 March 1845, she told Lt Bernard that “she thought it would be a good thing if the officers were changed (146).” While docked in St Thomas, Virgin Islands, Cassy “remarked to [Lt] Burton that ‘she was moving all she could to get the ship’s birth changed (148).”’She pointedly told to King-Hall it would be “a much better thing if [he] joined [HMS Vesuvius] (148).” King-Hall was delighted to be commissioned into HMS Growler on 29 December 1847, thus escaping from his “spinster enemy,” Cassy.

[13] He liked to sketch initially with pencil and then later applied watercolours or gouache.

[14] Watercolour by Herbert Grey Austen, private collection.

[15] According to the editor of Sea Saga, L. King-Hall, Louisa was lovely to look at. She had “auburn ringlets, a dazzlingly fair complexion, lovely hands, and a slim figure” (164).

[16] King-Hall mentions in his journal that he was “highly amused at … Cassandra’s flirtations (148).” He observed “A dead set has been made at Commander Pelly of the sloop Rose by her. Yesterday the Father [ Sir Francis] asked [Pelly] or hinted to him about taking her [for] a drive.” (147). 

[17] As his commission ended, Sir Francis appointed his nephew Charles John Austen, to the rank of commander..