The name Donegal has a significance to the Royal Navy that is all its own. It was designated by the Admiralty as a county cruiser name, for one of the ships of the Kent and Monmouth group; but there is more than that behind the name. Donegal lettered on the stern of a man-of-war has its own traditions—associations of a yet wider interest to the British fleet. The name, as a fact, owes its appearance on the Navy List to a very special occasion. H.M.S. Donegal, in its origin, is only incidentally connected with County Donegal. The cruiser through her name stands, in fact, to remind the world that the Royal Navy does not “fear to speak of ’98.”

It is quite a little drama how this particular man-of-war name first came to make its appearance on the roll of the British fleet; and in that form, perhaps, one may most effectively tell the story—as a sort of pageant, bringing the details forward in, as it were, a series of tableaux.

First we have the opening scene, in bustling Paris, in the month of August, 1798, something after this fashion:

Then we have a September scene far away. We are now among the wild, unkempt kerns and peasants of County Donegal, in their villages and rude moorland huts of turf and boulders, dotted among the lonely valleys far away amid the bare, desolate, wind-swept uplands and bleak, gaunt, long-backed ridges, shrouded for half the year in rolling grey mists from off the ocean, that range along the coasts of North-Western Ireland. Everywhere the men are hard at work, seated in groups round their peat fires, all actively engaged in pointing pikes and grinding axes, lashing scythe-blades to short poles, and putting a fresh edge to ugly crooked knives; crooning to themselves the while over their toil:—

Again we are on the coast; by Donegal Bay. It is the morning of Friday, the 12th of October, ’98, between seven and eight o’clock. Eager-faced, excited watchers line the crags of Bloody Foreland. From the wide, flat expanse of sea below comes up on the wind the dull, heavy, throbbing sound of a distant cannonade. It has been getting nearer since daybreak. It now comes nearer and nearer still; and by degrees, from the direction of Tory Island, on the horizon over yonder, where a grey rolling cloud of powder-smoke lies heavy over the sea, two squadrons of men-of-war, two straggling lines of ships, most of them firing fiercely, come dimly into view. One is assuredly the long-looked-for French—Commodore Bompart’s squadron from Brest, bringing three thousand French soldiers and Wolfe and Matthew Tone. They were to have landed at Lough Swilly yesterday and raised the country-side. The other is the English fleet—a British squadron that has followed round from Cawsand Bay under press of sail to look after M. Bompart. They picked up news of him off the Fastnet and Achill Island, and pushed on here. On the previous day at noon—as we learn later on—off Malin Head in a stiff north-westerly gale, the British look-outs sighted the French squadron; and they have been working to bring Monsieur Bompart to battle ever since.

It looks likely to go hard with the French. At the last moment a mishap checked their attempt to give the British the go-by. Their best ship, the Hoche, a fine 80-gun two-decker, and M. Bompart’s own flagship, got disabled in a squall last night. Her maintopmast carried away, bringing down with it the main and mizen top-gallant masts and tearing a gaping rent in the mainsail. So Sir John Borlase Warren, the British Commodore, has been able to get level with his enemy, on whom he is now tacking to bring the fight to close quarters, in conditions where his superior force—three line-of-battle ships and five frigates to one line-of-battle ship, eight frigates, and a schooner—ought to decide M. Bompart’s fate before dinner-time.

Eleven o’clock. The inevitable has happened. The Frenchmen have been overpowered at all points and broken up. The French Commodore is now only holding out as long as possible pour l’honneur du pavillon. In the centre of the battle, a dismantled wreck, with the scuppers running blood at every heave of the vessel on the swell, lies M. Bompart’s flagship, the hapless Hoche. Three British ships together—a sixty-four and two frigates—are pouring broadside after broadside into her without ceasing for a moment.

Wolfe Tone, the story goes, was on board the Hoche, and refused at the outset a chance that was offered him to get away by a boat to the Biche, a fast-sailing schooner then about to make off, or to one of the French frigates, by which means alone it was possible for him to escape. “The action is hopeless,” said the French officers to him on the quarter-deck; “with the odds against us it can only have one end. We shall be prisoners of war; but what will become of you?” “No!” replied Tone. “Shall it be said that I fled when the French were fighting the battle of my country? No; I shall stand by the ship.” He went below and took charge of a division of guns in one of the batteries.

The end, as the watchers on land soon see, comes swiftly. Further resistance would be murder. Beaten to a standstill, riddled like a sieve, with twenty-five guns disabled, more than half her men put hors de combat, her lower masts shot through and every moment threatening to go over the side, her rudder smashed to splinters, with five feet of water in the hold—down perforce has to come the Hoche’s tricolor. So the battle ends.

It is just twenty minutes past eleven. Three other French ships, overtaken at their first attempt at flight, have already surrendered. The rest are making off, scattering over the horizon with British frigates in pursuit, to be run down and taken in the end—all of them except two.[11]

The fourth tableau rings down on the piece. The last scene closes some weeks later in the quiet waters of the Hamoaze off Devonport Dockyard, whither the Hoche was taken round, with the arrival of an Admiralty messenger at the Port Admiral’s office. He brings in his dispatch wallet an official memorandum that “My Lords have been pleased to direct Sir J. B. Warren’s prize to be registered in the List of the Navy by the name of the Donegal.”

In this way it was that the name Donegal came originally into the Royal Navy for a man-of-war, and the battle of October, ’98, off the coast of Donegal is our present cruiser’s principal bond of connection with the county.

The luckless Wolfe Tone passed from the quarter-deck of the Hoche to the condemned cell and a suicide’s grave. It came about in this way. The Hoche was towed into Lough Swilly and the prisoners were landed and marched to Letterkenny. The Earl of Cavan invited the French officers to breakfast. Tone was amongst the guests. He was in a French military uniform. An old college companion at T.C.D., Sir George Hill, recognized him. “How do you do, Mr. Tone?” said Hill pointedly. “I am very happy to see you.” Tone greeted Hill cordially, and said, “How are you, Sir George? How are Lady Hill and your family?” The police, who had had information that Tone would be among the prisoners, lay in waiting in an adjoining room. Hill went to them, pointed to Tone, and said, “There is your man.” Tone was called from the table. He knew what it meant—that his hour had come, but he went cheerfully to his doom. Entering the next apartment, he was surrounded by police and soldiers, arrested, loaded with irons, and hurried off to Dublin Castle. There he was tried by court-martial and sentenced to be hanged within forty-eight hours. His request for a firing party was curtly refused. Curran got a writ of habeas corpus from Lord Chief Justice Kilwarden. But he was too late. Tone anticipated the execution of the law, and died by his own hand—with a penknife.

The Donegal man-of-war served Great Britain for forty-seven years, keeping up to the last her reputation of being one of the swiftest two-deckers afloat.

Trafalgar should have been one of her battle honours. One of the very smartest captains that ever trod a British quarter-deck, “a dear Nelsonian” of exceptional ability and merit, the gallant and chivalrous Sir Pulteney Malcolm, commanded the Donegal at that time. The Donegal had been sent by Nelson to Gibraltar to shift the low tier of water-casks just four days before the battle. While there, at two o’clock on the morning of Trafalgar day, Monday, the 21st of October, the Weazle sloop-of-war came bustling into Gibraltar Bay, and firing alarm guns. She brought the fateful news that the enemy had left Cadiz and were at sea. Captain Blackwood, of the Euryalus, in command of Nelson’s inshore frigate squadron, had packed the Weazle off to Gibraltar to call up the six ships of the line, recently detached from Nelson’s fleet, that had gone in there to fill up water-casks and refit.

The Donegal was lying with her sails unbent from the yards, her bowsprit out, and her fore-topmast and foreyard struck. All her powder had been landed, and the ship was fast alongside the Mole. The crew had not turned in, as Captain Malcolm was keen to rejoin Nelson off Cadiz at the earliest moment. When the Weazle’s guns were first heard, they were hard at work shifting the lower tier of casks in the hold.

Instantly the order was given to prepare for sea. With extraordinary celerity the casks were got back into their tiers, and the powder was hurried into the magazines. The foremast was set up and the bowsprit replaced, the running rigging rove, and the sails were bent to the yards. Every man of the seven hundred on board the Donegal was working his hardest in one way or another. It proved, though, a twenty-two hours’ job; it would have been a four days’ business in ordinary times. Before one o’clock on the morning of the 22nd they were hauling out from the Mole into the bay. Then sea-stores and provisions were taken on board. Before noon the Donegal was ready for battle; a performance on which all concerned might justly pride themselves.

Not one of the other five ships was nearly so well advanced, although they also had been striving their hardest. Gibraltar is distant from the scene of the battle off Cape Trafalgar, as the crow flies, just fifty miles; but no sound of the firing reached there as it would appear, although at places further off, both in Spain and on the African coast, they heard the cannonading plainly. All on board the ships at Gibraltar still hoped to be in time for the expected battle, as it was to them.

A new spar had been ordered from the dockyard for the foreyard. It had not arrived by noon on the 23rd. It was forthcoming only at the last moment, just indeed as the Donegal was in the act of weighing anchor. Sail was made at once, and they went out of Gibraltar Bay with the foreyard towing in the water alongside the ship, not yet hoisted on board.

They had to beat out in the teeth of the wild storm, blowing a hard gale from the south-west, that, up the coast beyond Tarifa, was wrecking our Trafalgar prizes. Clawing out against the head wind, the Donegal won her way foot by foot, and by nightfall had gained the mouth of the Straits. Then they had to let go anchor, so as not to be swept back in spite of themselves. Next morning they weighed anchor, and once more went forward, forcing their way ahead against wind and storm and swamping seas.

Damaged British ships began, one by one, to come in sight during the forenoon. The Belleisle was made out, totally dismasted, in tow of a frigate. Then the Victory was seen, partially dismasted and also in tow. The Donegal made her number to the flagship as she passed. A little time afterwards a third British man-of-war, with her three topmasts gone, came into view. It was the Téméraire. The Donegal passed quite near, and hailed across: “What news?” The answer was shouted back from the Téméraire through a speaking trumpet: “Nineteen sail of the line taken and Lord Nelson killed!”

On board the Donegal all were listening with straining ears. As the trumpet bawled the direful intelligence across, a shudder, we are told, seemed to run through the whole ship, followed by a deep, long drawn-out groan, plainly heard on board the Téméraire as that ship swept past on her way.

They reached Collingwood and the rest of the fleet off San Lucar a few hours later. At once the Donegal found work to do in finishing off and taking possession of the stricken and dismasted Spanish three-decker El Rayo, one of the forlorn-hope squadron that had made the sortie from Cadiz on the 23rd, hoping to find the British fleet in serious distress after the battle and the storm, and to be able to recapture some of the prizes.

Most of El Rayo’s men were taken on board the Donegal. In connection with one of them, Captain Brenton tells this story. “A man fell overboard from the Donegal in a gale of wind on this occasion; the usual cry was raised, when some one thoughtlessly called out, ”He is only a Spaniard.” “Supposing he is only a Spaniard?” said a gallant English seaman, seizing the end of a rope, and darting into the sea at the same time; “no reason the poor — should be drowned!” Happy am I to say, from the information of Sir P. Malcolm, both men were picked up.

Besides that, the Donegal rendered invaluable assistance to several of the badly-damaged British ships during the second gale between the 25th and the 28th; and in rescuing men from some of the prizes that had been driven ashore, or were in peril among the reefs here and there along the rock-bound coast.

Wrote Collingwood a day or two afterwards: “Everybody was sorry that Malcolm was not there, because everybody knows his spirit and skill would have acquired him honour. He got out of Gibraltar when nobody else could, and was of infinite service to us after the action.”

By way also of appreciation and acknowledgment of the magnificent services rendered by the Donegal after the battle, the officers and men of the Trafalgar fleet, without one dissentient voice, agreed that the Donegal should be specially permitted to have a share, equally with themselves, in the Nelson Monument, which the ship’s companies that fought at Trafalgar immediately after the battle jointly subscribed for, as their own personal tribute to their dead chief—the tall obelisk on Portsdown Hill at the back of Portsmouth Harbour.

The Donegal, three months later, was in the thick of the fighting in the brilliantly successful battle in the West Indies, when Vice-Admiral Sir John Duckworth, with a squadron detached by Collingwood off Cadiz, on special service, captured or destroyed an entire French squadron of five ships of the line from Brest, including the finest three-decker in the world, the great 110-gun ship L’Impérial, so named in honour of Napoleon himself. It was in this battle that the British flagship Superb led down into the fight with a portrait of Nelson lashed to the mizen stay, and her band playing “Nelson of the Nile.”

Three of the five French ships lowered their colours to Captain Malcolm and the Donegal. First she led off with a rattling exchange of broadsides with the mighty French flagship L’Impérial. Then she fastened on a second French ship, and after a sharp set to at close quarters made her give in. Passing on, the Donegal engaged another French ship till her colours in turn came down. Then she ran on board one more Frenchman, the Jupiter, a ship that had already been hotly engaged. The Jupiter surrendered to the Donegal after next to no defence. Such was the Donegal’s work that day, in a battle that is really unique in the completeness of its results, but which, owing to its having taken place within three months of Trafalgar, the world paid little heed to at the time, and we have since quite forgotten—lost sight of in the dazzling lustre of the greater event near home.

Until after Waterloo had been won, the Donegal helped to keep the seas for England, and on more than one occasion with shotted guns in the face of the enemy.

Our second Donegal, a wooden 91-gun two-decker, built in the Fifties of the last century, was one of the very last sent afloat of our old “wooden walls.” She still exists, under the name of the Vernon, torpedo school ship at Portsmouth.

The direct association between the Donegal of the Royal Navy and County Donegal came into existence first of all in the case of the present armour-clad cruiser, the Donegal of King Edward’s fleet. She is a sister ship of the Kent, and was launched and named by the Duchess of Abercorn, as wife of the Lord Lieutenant of Donegal, and at express desire of the King. The Donegal of to-day was the second ship of our county cruisers to receive the honour of a special county presentation in commemoration of the name she bore. The presentation was made before the assembled officers and men of the ship by the Marquess of Hamilton, as M.P. for Derry City, and comprised a service of silver plate, inscribed as the gift of “the King’s subjects in the County of Donegal and the City of Derry.”[12]