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Updated: May 12, 2025
It was an old-world scene which the sponge of time has obliterated for ever, and I behold again in memory those two noble frigates, the Impérieuse and the Chesapeake, straining tightly at their cables, with smoke-stacks too modest in proportions to impair to the critical nautical eye the tack and sheet suggestions of the graceful, exquisitely symmetrical fabric of spars and yards and rigging soaring triumphantly aloft to where the long whip or pennant at the main flickered like a delicate line of fire against the hard cold blue of the Asiatic sky.
We on board the Impérieuse, which was anchored three miles away, felt the shock as if the ship had struck heavily on a rock. For a moment the sky seemed a sheet of fire. Then came the crash of the exploding shells and the rattle of the grenades, and then a roar as the fragments and pieces of wreck fell into the sea. “The fire-ships were very badly handled.
When I am dead I shall leave instructions that the words, ‘He served with Cochrane in the Speedy, the Pallas, and the Impérieuse’, shall be placed on my tombstone. They will be by far the most striking testimony that could be written as to my career as a sailor.”
On the top of this mass of gunpowder were 400 live shells with short fusees, together with as many hundreds of hand grenades and rockets. The night of the 11th of April was fixed on for the enterprise. The fire-ships were ready, but one mortar-vessel, the Etna, alone had arrived. The Imperieuse, from whence operations were to be directed, anchored close to the inner end of the Boyart Shoal.
The Impérieuse had proceeded to the edge of the Boyart Shoal, close to which she anchored with an explosion-vessel made fast to her stern, it being my intention, after firing the one of which I was about to take charge, to return to her for the other, to be employed as circumstances might require.
The tide rising enabled several of the ships to get afloat, and run up the Charente out of the way of danger. The Imperieuse, without waiting for orders, after signalling for assistance, stood towards three of the French ships, the Calcutta, Varsovie, and Aquilon. After some time she was joined by some gun brigs and bomb-vessels, and later by the Indefatigable, and other frigates.
It was not long, however, before effective aid was rendered on the coast by the British fleet under Collingwood, and especially by Lord Cochrane in the Impérieuse frigate; the undisciplined bands of Catalonian volunteers were reinforced by regular troops from Majorca and Minorca; the fortress of Gerona made an obstinate resistance; the siege of it was twice raised, and Barcelona, almost isolated, was now held with difficulty.
As an instance of this general mismanagement of naval affairs, Marryat, who had been sent to join the Impérieuse frigate as a young middy, thus writes in his private log "The Impérieuse sailed; the admiral of the port was one who would be obeyed, but would not listen always to reason or common-sense.
Cochrane's Autobiography contains a history of the Impérieuse; it is from Peter Simple and his companions that we must learn what Marryat thought and suffered while on board. Under Cochrane he cruised along the coast of France from Ushant to the mouth of the Gironde, saw some active service in the Mediterranean, and, after a return to the ocean, was finally engaged in the Basque Roads.
Lord Cochrane, in the Imperieuse, being the nearest English ship, was the first to perceive their condition, and immediately telegraphed, "The fleet can destroy the enemy seven on shore;" at 6:40, "Eleven on shore;" and at 9:30, "Enemy preparing to heave off."
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