Death or Victory: The Battle for Quebec and the Birth of Empire. Dan Snow
resigned from the army in 1750 finding that Cumberland had not only vetoed any promotion for him but also for his youngest brother Roger.
Cumberland had fallen from grace and been removed as commander in chief of the British army after a catastrophic defeat on the Continent in 1757. Townshend meanwhile had been establishing friendly relations with the rapidly ascending politician William Pitt. They shared a belief in placing the defence of Britain in the hands of the militia rather than expensive regular troops. Pitt, now Secretary of State for the Southern Department, one of the most powerful jobs in government and one which gave him responsibility for North America, ensured that Townshend was reinstated into the army in May 1758 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and the job of aide-de-camp to George
II. Later that year Pitt helped to secure him a job on the Quebeccampaign.45 The gossip and prolific letter writer Horace Walpole wrote that, ‘the expedition, called to Quebec, departs on Tuesday next, under Wolfe, and George Townshend, who has thrust himself again into the service, and as far as wrongheadedness will go, very proper for a hero’.46
Wolfe sent a distinctly ungenerous note to Townshend on his appointment. There was some very faint praise: ‘such an example in a person of your rank and character could not but have the best effects upon the troops in America and indeed upon the whole military part of the nation’. There was condescension: ‘what might be wanting in experience was amply made up, in an extent of capacity and activity of mind, that would find nothing difficult in our business’. This was more than mildly offensive to a man who had stood on more battlefields than Wolfe himself. There was an attempt to play the role of intimate but stern commanding officer: ‘I persuade myself that we shall concur heartily for the public service—the operation in question will require our united efforts and the utmost exertion of every man’s spirit and judgement.’47 Wolfe was clearly not pleased by having this ‘political general’ foisted upon him. It is true that Townshend’s military experience had mainly been in staff jobs, and he had spent limited time actually commanding units. But Wolfe, who had served on the staff of a general, ought to have known better than denigrate Town-shend’s experience. Furthermore to resent a man for advancing swiftly through political connection is curious for Wolfe whose entire career was shaped by his father’s influence and those of powerful mentors, not least the son of the King, the Duke of Cumberland, but also Lord John Sackville, the colonel of the 20th Foot which Wolfe had commanded as Lieutenant Colonel. Wolfe wrote to the latter in sycophantic terms and never hesitated to bring friends to the notice of this powerful patron. Wolfe was no radical, he did not seek to change the rules governing advancement in the eighteenth-century army; he was just piqued that someone else was better placed to take advantage of them.
Townshend and Wolfe had shared the quarterdeck of the Neptune from Portsmouth to the St Lawrence. Their journals, however, remain distinctly silent on the subject of the other. It is likely that as the troops landed on the Île d’Orléans the relationship between the two men was at best, formal.
At 1400 hours of the day of the landing the gentle easterly breeze suddenly strengthened and veered violently. It seemed like the prayers of the French and Canadians might be answered. Within minutes the ships were hit by a full westerly gale. Montresor says vividly that it ‘rose with great violence together with a great swell which occasioned almost all the fleet to drive from their anchorage and running foul of one another’. He remembers it lasting between three and four hours, during which time, ‘there was nothing but cutting of cables—ships running one against the other, others driving and bearing away before the wind in order to run aground on the island of Orleans if possible which several ships were obliged to do’.48 Anchor cables parted, others were desperately jettisoned by their crews as the anchors dragged or loose ships threatened to collide with them and drive them ashore or tear away rigging. In a letter to his father Montresor wrote that ‘several vessels lost their masts’.49
Small boats, heavily loaded with stores for the landed army, were caught in the open. Many were swamped by the waves or driven inexorably into the shallows, their rowers unable to combat the gale. The crews of the warships worked quickly to ‘strike’ or dismantle their exposed yards and topmasts and then, where possible, sent men to the transports to help them avoid destruction. The transports were particularly vulnerable having fewer sailors on board than the men of war. The log of the Lowestoft gives us a glimpse of the pandemonium. Early in the gale she was hit by a ‘transport that came foul of us’ and tore away her ‘gibb boom sprit sail yard’, and one of her catheads, used to secure the anchor when raised (often decorated with the face of a cat), which sent their best anchor to the bottom. But there was still more damage as the afternoon wore on; two hours later she ‘came foul of another transport which carried away our spare anchor, larboard main chain and our barge cutter, and one flat bottomed boat, all lost’. At 2200 hours a schooner drifted onto the Lowestoft’s anchor cable and then got entangled with her, ripping away some timbers from the outside of the hull and the hand-rails around the most forward part of the ship. The schooner lost her mast in the encounter. It took an hour and a half to separate the two ships.50 The Third Lieutenant of the Diana recorded ‘hard gales’ in his log and reported ‘a great deal of damage done among the shipping’ especially the loss of ‘yards and topmasts’.51
The damage could have been catastrophic. Countless amphibious operations throughout history had been destroyed by storms which grateful defenders attributed to divine intervention. The expedition suffered real damage but it was not terminal. Pembroke’s log reports that ‘in the height of the gale seven sail of transports parted from their anchors and run on shore upon the island’. Wolfe’s journal agrees that the wind ‘drove several ships on shore’.52 All but two seem to have been refloated. The journeys of the vulnerable boats packed with troops, most of whom could not swim, were immediately suspended according to Wolfe’s ‘Family Journal’. It records that ‘at this time the debarkation of the army was not completed; by good fortune none of the troops were lost; the remaining troops landed the succeeding day’. The loss of a few empty transports, and damage to many others, was unimportant. Several accounts mention the loss of anchors, which would limit shallow-water operations. One says that the storm caused ‘great damage to many of the transports; they lost above ninety anchors and cables’.53 But the real blow to the expedition was the loss of many of the small open boats and flat-bottomed craft. Some had been swamped, others had been washed ashore and their fragile frames stove in on the rocks. The Pembroke’s log says that ‘several of the flat bottomed boats and others belonging to the transports broke adrift and drove on the south shore, and was afterwards burnt by the enemy’.54 The engineer Mackellar, who had accompanied Wolfe to the end of the Île d’Orléans that morning, wrote in his journal that, although there was a ‘good deal of damage among our transports…the only loss we felt sensibly was that of our boats, which affected our motions throughout the whole campaign’.55 Other reports all agree that the loss of flat-bottomed boats was potentially very serious.
Wolfe seems to have regarded the unfortunate episode as yet another example of naval incompetence. Despite the heroic efforts of Saunders’ men to keep the vast majority of the ships from running aground Wolfe, in his journal, criticizes the navy. He described a ‘multitude of boats lost and strange neglect of the men-of-war’s crews’.56 It is almost impossible to believe that the naval crews had showed neglect. On the contrary it is almost certain that a greater disaster was avoided only by the attention and skill of Saunders’ sailors. Saunders himself wrote to the Admiralty telling them that he had sought to give the transports the ‘best assistance in my power’.