The Killing Letter
At Twelve Mr. Byng Was Shot. By Dudley Pope. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 30s.)
Too often, the biographer with a man's reputa- tion to vindicate kills with over-kindness. One is reminded, inescapably, of that melancholy tombstone reported as found in Gibraltar: 'Here lies Captain Ernest Bloomfield, accidentally shot by his orderly, March 2nd, 1789. Well done, thou good and faithful servant.' But with At Twelve Mr. Byng Was Shot, Mr. Dudley Pope avoids the charge. He tells his well-documented story with restraint, allows his facts to speak for themselves. The tragically staid and stand- offish figure of Jahn Byng emerges in touch- ingly human colours.
Occasionally,, the drive of Mr. Pope's narra- tive falters under the weight of exhaustive detail. His prologue, evidently written while suffering from a slight touch of historical novelist's itch (`Thomas Tranter, who was one of the Admiralty's three official messengers, stepped carefully across the odorous mosaic of putrefying rubbish and muddy puddles as he walked northwards along Berkeley Street . . .'), gives no indication of the admirably terse yet vivid style in which the main body of his narra- tive is composed. Generally, Mr. Pope handles his mass of material with subtle skill and assurance, and his account of the confused events off Minorca on May 20, 1756, is a masterpiece 01 lucidity.
As the British fleet approached the French, it was observed that the Commander-in-Chief, Admiral the Hon. John Byng, stood on the quarter-deck of the Ramillies reading a book. Philosophy? Poetry? The Bible? Byng knew better. It was a copy of the Admiralty Fighting Instructions. Ten years before he had sat as second-senior member at the court-martial of Admiral Thomas Matthews after the battle of Toulon. Matthews had disregarded the Fighting Instructions, was cashiered and dismissed the service. Byng remembered Matthews's fate, and although himself invariably a stickier for the rules, nevertheless decided that the circum- stances off Minorca warranted breaking them.
Byng had been ordered to relieve the garrison at Minorca, but the French had landed with 15,000 men before he arrived in the Mediter- ranean with his leaky and undermanned fleet. Although his vessels equalled the French in number, they were lighter in armament, slower in speed. After the action, the French fleet with- drew, but instead of pursuing them or attempt- ing a landing on the island, Byng returned to Gibraltar, which he felt might now be threatened.
From here, he was relieved of his command: largely on the evidence of a copy of the French Admiral's dispatch, which had arrived in Lon- don via the Spanish Ambassador. Byng's own account did not arrive until three weeks later and the Government, anxious to avoid all accu- sations of incompetence, censored it heavily before publication.
Byng bore his disgrace, arrest, imprisonment with a kind of terrible fortitude. Right up to the delivery of the verdict, he expected an acquittal. Indeed, he was acquitted of any charge of cowardice or disaffection, but he was condemned for negligence. The penalty of death under this Article of War had been introduced, ironically enough, as a result of Matthews's trial Frantic attempts were made by Byng's friends to save him. The members of the court-martial had thought it their duty 'most earnestly to recommend him as a proper object of mercy.'
George II thought him guilty of cowardice in the action, and said so: whereupon Temple, First Lord of the Admiralty, 'walked up to his nose and said, sans autre ceremonie, "What shall you think if he dies courageously?" '
There is no doubt that Byng did. Mr. Pope gives a vivid account of Byng's last lunch in his cabin on board the Monarch in Portsmouth Harbour. He was the most cheerful man there. When, he noticed that every man present tried to avoid speaking of what was uppermost in his mind, he soon reassured them: 'I like to talk upon the subject. It is not to be supposed I do not think of it; why then should it be more improper to talk of it?'
The weather next day was stormy, and Byng's fears that the rest of the fleet would not be in harbour at the time of his execution were un- justified. He wished to face his firing-squad with open eyes, but in deference to the feelings of its members (the nearest rank would be barely two feet away) agreed to be blindfolded. This he managed himself, as well as the signal to fire by dropping a second handkerchief. That same morning he had given the gold buttons off his coat to his valet, and arranged for the Marine firing-party to be tipped ten guineas.
Byng's chief exasperation, towards the end, seems to have been that at one stage it appeared that his place of execution would be not the quarter-deck but the fo'c'sle. 'I think,' he said, 'I have not been treated like an officer in any instance since I was disgraced—excepting in that of being ordered to be shot.' Seamen, of course, were hanged.
CHARLES CAUSLEY
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