Age of Heroes: A Boy, a Prince and the 1797 Wreck of La Tribune

In the forward for Age of Heroes, John R. Dickie describes how the French Revolution of 1789, the ensuing French Republic “swallowed Europe and the world’s oceans in the first truly global conflict.”

 

With so many far flung colonies fueling their economies, and warring ideologies spicing a sense of peril, the stakes had never before seemed so high for the European powers. It was during this tempestuous era that La Tribune, a French warship, was captured by the British off the coast of Ireland only to meet its demise the following year, wrecked with the loss of 240 lives in Halifax Harbour.

 

Dickie’s brief is to set into the full context of politics and history the thrilling history of La Tribune, complete with insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the comparative navies for which she sailed. The author notes, for instance, that while the French navy remained strong in terms of ships and equipment, the Revolution and the guillotine had depleted France of her most experienced officers who were traditionally drawn from the aristocracy.

 

The Tribune’s brief story spans the world and hones in great detail upon Dickie’s account of the agonizing chase and ensuing battle in June 1796 which saw La Tribune captured by the British Unicorn.

 

An impressive command of the language of sail and cannon enables the author to create a robustly physical poetry throughout these scenes, and he delves tellingly into the sights, sounds and smells of battle. The reader feels the horror of when Dickie describes the bar or chain shot which “spun toward their target like a circular saw.” He is equally unflinching when it comes to the battle’s aftermath. “Scattered limbs without owners lay amidst the sheared-off rope, bent and broken metal pieces, blood splatters, loose muskets . . . shot-holed sails and frayed rope ends hung across the decks.”

 

Despite a dearth of surviving first hand accounts, Dickie’s descriptions are highly convincing recreations derived from ships’ logs, and other documents, as well as first hand accounts from the Battle of Trafalgar. Using techniques employed in fiction—moving, for instance, from the reflections of an officer on deck to his memory of the recent past before scooping back again to the present—he quite effectively marries history to living narrative.

 

A note of poignancy is planted early with a description of an elderly Joe Cracker, shabbily dressed and careworn, overlooking Halifax Harbour. As a young lad he had been deservedly hailed for bravery for saving eight men from the foundering Tribune. Although the narrative might seem a little dense in patches, Dickie has elected to plunge deep into the likely experience of each player in this drama, and the result for the reader is rich and rewarding. —Paul Butler