Are you for the men from Provence or the men from Brittany?

Small-boat adventurer Roger D. Taylor translates "The Adventures of Laforest-Dombourg"

Many of you will be familiar with the books of Roger D. Taylor about his singlehanded voyages aboard the diminutive Mingming and Mingming II. We have previously published extracts from these books and a long interview with Roger himself.

Roger also translates maritime literature from both French and Russian and has spent the last five winters translating the two volumes of The Adventures of Laforest-Dombourg, by the French author Eric Gautier. This is a magisterial work dealing with the struggle for naval supremacy between the French and the English during the eighteenth century. Think O’Brian meets Forester meets Dumas. Full details can be found here www.laforest-dombourg.uk

The sea-going action in the two books is of course centred mainly around very big vessels– ships of the line and frigates, but in the following extract we go aboard something smaller.

The year is 1779 and the French fleet, commanded by the Comte d’Estaing aboard le César, is anchored (somewhat perilously) off the coast of Georgia, to give support to the American Insurgents seeking to wrest control of the town of Savannah from the British. Our young hero, Pierre-Marie Laforest-Dombourg, midshipman aboard Lapérouse’s frigate l’Amazone, has command of one of the ship’s boats taking armaments ashore for the assault on Savannah. At that time there was great rivalry, even enmity, between the French sailors from Provence, in the south of France, and those from Brittany in the west. They stuck to their respective groups, spoke their own languages, and considered their rivals to be inferior seamen.

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Who would you rather sail with – the Bretons or the Provençals?

On 23^rd September the disembarkation work recommenced. The Comte de Brovès had received urgent messages from the Comte d’Estaing and commandeered all the sloops available in the squadron. The Comte de Lapérouse still needed his sloop, along with the whole ship’s crew, in order to complete his repairs, but he agreed to provide l’Amazone’s big boat, along with just ten sailors under my command. He allowed me to choose my men from amongst the Lower Bretons aboard. Most of them had fished for sardines and were skilled at handling small boats under sail. They all understood French but I did my best to speak their language, which endeared me to them. We were detailed to carry light artillery pieces which the Comte d’Estaing had commandeered at Saint-Domingue. These were 8-pound cannons on wheeled carriages, each weighing twelve hundred pounds, and 6-inch mortars weighing six hundred and fifty pounds. I was not sorry to have only a small boat, for if I had had a sloop, we would have had to load Naval guns weighing twice as much. I went to fetch my cannons from two transports anchored off Wassaw, an island between Tybee to the north and Ossabaw to the south. From there we had to go to the end of a brackish watercourse, called Saint Augustine Creek, whose mouth was just to the north of Wassaw island, and deposit our cannons at a place called Thunderbolt. This spot had the advantage of being less than three miles from our troops’ encampment.

It was blowing strongly from the north-east with a big swell left over from the bad weather of the previous days. From the transport ship to the river mouth we had the wind on the beam. The advantage of a ship’s boat over a sloop is that its hull is better suited to sailing. I had shipped both masts. With cannons for ballast and the prevailing wind, we had entered the shelter of the creek while the bigger boats were still struggling in the middle of the estuary, against the tide, making leeway, soaked by the spray from the swells and by the rain.

I had the oars manned to give support to the sails once we had entered the creek. We had to stay in the middle as the banks were marshy and thick with aquatic vegetation. We saw alligators lying in the sun on the banks, or more often, level with the surface of the water, floating like innocent tree trunks, with just their nostrils and eyes showing. Sometimes they were so close that we could hear them breathing.

Thunderbolt was a place comprised of two settlements. One was the Greenwich plantation, which belonged to a former captain of the English East India Company. These were the quarters chosen by the Comte d’Estaing to command his sea and land operations, though he spent most of his time under canvas close to Savannah. The second settlement was called Bonaventure and belonged to a Colonel Mullryne, a loyalist who had joined the garrison at Savannah, leaving his wife and daughters in charge of his house. The Comte d’Estaing had installed our field hospital there, which was already full of sick men.

The artillery was all ashore by the end of September, but we had been hearing cannon for several days. Maybe it was the English guns. We had no idea what was going on at Savannah.

Thanks to my Breton seamen, I was the only one to make all my passages under sail. In a good breeze or a half-gale, which often blew here, the boat behaved better under sail than oars. We made as much progress as the others against the current, but without tiring the crew. My sailors made fun of their Provençal shipmates as we overtook them. The Comte de Brovès noticed how quick we were and asked the Comte de Lapérouse to let me carry the daily reports and orders between Thunderbolt and le César. He gave me the use of his personal gig, and so I had fourteen Provençal boatmen to help me handle it. They did not all speak French, and I do not speak Provençal, but the bosun in charge of them acted as interpreter. His name was Perrin. He was quite blond, with curly hair and an intelligent face. He seemed no older than me, but the boatmen respected him. When I congratulated him on how shipshape his boat was, he answered proudly that he was from Saint-Tropez, the home, in his view, of the best sailors in the Kingdom. In fact, Provençal sailors are good to command, being in general more disciplined and less stubborn than their Breton counterparts. And they are more sober, or at least they don’t get drunk. The Bretons are perhaps more sober overall, but they like nothing better than to drink to excess from time to time. And, if you don’t keep an eye on them, they are likely to put aside their daily tot during the whole week, in order to drink the lot in one go on a Sunday. On the other hand, in difficult situations, where there is danger and the need to fight, I personally prefer to be with a crew of Bretons from Vannes or Cornouaille.

The Comte de Brovès was in command of the squadron in the absence of the Comte d’Estaing. I was carrying messages several times a day between le César and the Greenwich settlement, where I dealt with Ship’s Lieutenant de Truguet, the Comte d’Estaing’s liaison officer. The Comte de Brovès’ gig was extremely elegant; clinker built, with a gilded rubbing strake and leather cushions on the after thwart. But above all she had fine lines and sailed well. She cut through the water easily when we had to row in the bends of the Saint Augustine Creek amongst the alligators. Whenever possible we spent the night aboard le César, but if the weather was threatening, which happened often enough, we stayed at Thunderbolt. This was because it was impossible to board the ships when they were being tossed around by the swell at their anchorage. To pick up the Comte de Brovès’ packages when a sea was running, I went under the big ship’s poop, with the mizzen backed, the mainsail let right out and the helm down. A topman would throw a line down, along which the sacks were transferred. Even there our position was perilous. The huge stern frame would rise eight or nine feet above our heads and a moment later we were level with the windows of the great cabin.

By virtue of the fact that I was circulating amongst our ships, I had a good idea of the state of affairs aboard the fleet, and it was not especially good. Our ships were scattered over an exposed anchorage, unable to go ashore or revictual, under the threat of a hurricane or an attack from Admiral Byron. They were a long distance from the shore, on account of the shallowness of the water, and widely spaced. Even the shortest journey entailed hours of tiring rowing. And when the sailors got back on board, usually soaked by the spray and incessant showers, they then had to take turns on the pumps for the whole night. More and more men were falling sick. Scurvy had appeared, with the Toulon squadron the most affected. Every day men were dying who could have been saved had we been able to take on fresh food and water. This was even harder to take with the coast permanently in view, so close but forbidden. In many ways I was privileged to be able to go ashore every day. •SCA•