Ferrol, Facts and Fiction

an analysis of C.S. Forester's The Duchess and the Devil

Jetse Reijenga

In preparation for my 2005 summer holiday trip to Northern Spain and Galicia in particular, I re-read the final chapter of C.S. Forester's Mr. Midshipman Hornblower [1], entitled the Duchess and the Devil. This describes Hornblower's 2 years captivity at Ferrol, how he mastered Spanish and rescued shipwrecked Spaniards, a feat which ultimately set him free. My aim was visiting the sites mentioned in the novel and do some reconstruction of Forester's background research. It was already obvious that Forester seldom mistakes in historical personalities, so I wondered, was Katherine (Kitty) Cobham a real person? No, but a fan fiction source [2] does suggest she was: "a renowned comedienne of the Georgian age who lived from 1755 until 1834". And did she have a drinking problem and a career dip in the 1790's? The fact remains that by implicating she had, CSF succeeded in making her a real person.

According to the Biography [3], Forester was said to have been in Spain to cover the civil war in 1937, to cover the Franco side for a conservative English newspaper. It cannot be ascertained that he actually did visit the Ferrol area, Ferrol, incidentally being the birthplace of General Franco (1892-1975). My conclusion after visiting the sites concerned, is that Forester did a nice piece of background search on local geography, and the history of fortifications and military events, based on maps likely more detailed and accurate than the one describing a reconstruction of the rescue action in the Hornblower Companion [4]. Only few minor discrepancies were observed, but let's start with the impressive facts first.

Ferrol

The city of Ferrol, ever since the 17th century, is still very much a naval base today. At present the larger part of the waterfront of the old city is occupied by naval facilities. Several 18th century entry ports from the city to the navy harbor, still serve the same purpose today, such as the one on the picture on the right, built in the 1790's. Such entry ports however, did not give access to the navy dockyard, as this was located slightly more inland, as can be seen from engravings of around 1800 [5].

The naval dockyard in 1797, according to Hornblower, was a poor state of affairs, but then, we have to consider that Forester seldom ventured a positive opinion about England's naval enemies in the Napoleonic wars, neither in terms of equipment, nor with respect to discipline and morale.

map (left) with details, and from Companion (top) [4]

A Fort San Anton
B Battery on the Ferrol headland
C city of A Coruña
D Doniños beach
E Punta Cointelada
F Ferrol town and harbor
G Castle la Palma
H Hercules tower
L Monteventoso lookout position
P Cabo Prioriño
S Punta del Seijo Blanco
T Castle San Felipe
Y Navy dockyard at Ferrol

Location of captivity: Castle San Felipe

The exact location of Hornblower's captivity would be Castle San Felipe, see map above left. This can be argued as follows: until his parole for 2-hour excursions was granted, his freedom was limited to walking the ramparts, and neither Ferrol, nor the headland battery had much for ramparts. Two citations might be counter-arguments:

On p.229 "10 square ft. of floor space per man in an empty sail loft at Ferrol", but this may refer to preliminary quarters just after capture.
On p.233 "with 5 other junior lieutenants in a single room in the fortress of Ferrol", but this can also refer to San Felipe. Ferrol didn't have much of a fortress: San Felipe served this purpose for centuries.

On parole he was granted to go into the city of Ferrol to have a drink with locals and practice his Spanish, or to walk to the headland to stare at the horizon. While on the headland battery witnessing the chase, he had to extend his parole. Hence, the location of captivity must have been in between the city of Ferrol and the headland Battery. This can only be Castle San Felipe, although the name is not mentioned. Satellite image of Castle San Felipe.

Castle San Felipe

The view of open sea was limited (left). Ferrol river with Castle la Palma on the opposite side (right).

The castle of San Felipe [6] is a defensive construction built in the classic baroque style. In the 16th century, the discovery and colonization of America made the port of Ferrol of great strategic importance. The first castle on this site was built in the reign of Felipe II. The reforms of 1731 to 1775 converted this castle into a fortified battery which was typical of the 18th century. Of further interest are the cannon batteries of La Palma and San Martin castles which covered the defense of the mouth of the estuary. The castles thus formed a dangerous and insuperable triangle of fire, protecting the Ferrol naval base. Furthermore San Felipe also has a system of bastions covering the flanks of the frontal walls, thus also repelling attacks by land. Due to its location however, the angle of view on the open sea is only limited to a few degrees.

The castle at present is in fairly complete condition and can be visited for a 1 euro fee [6]

Headland battery

The headland battery, due to its location and height above sea level, has a most favorable view of the sea approach of both A Coruña and Ferrol. It played an important strategic role, also in the 19th and early 20th century. There are two massive holes where Vickers 381 cannons once stood. The whole place is in a state of decay, although remains of sentry posts and buildings are still visible, but these are probably late 19^th/early 20^th century. See reference [10] for more details.

This must be the place where Hornblower was supposed to have spent hours and days, staring towards the Atlantic horizon. In two instances, Forester refers to the significance of Hornblower's knowledge of local conditions:

on p.236 "one day it might be useful to know all about the defenses at Ferrol"
on p.242 "on fine days he had seen fishermen working on that beach and he himself had taken note of it as a suitable place for a landing party, should the Royal Navy ever plan a descent against Ferrol"

Doniños beach

Doniños Battle of 1800

The latter of the above citations of course refers to the view on Doniños beach (picture above, taken from the lookout position), where actually in 1800 a British landing did take place. This is again a typical Forester trick: indirectly referring to an event that actually was to take place in future, but of course unknown to the hero at that time. Accounts of this battle from several sources only differ in small detail, the outcome can only be described as a disaster.

On the 25th of august 1800, an English fleet of over a hundred warships and a large number of infantry arrived off the beach, ready to disembark and take Ferrol. Although it seemed easy, Admiral Warren's troops had considerable difficulties with the undertow. The ships were bombarded by Ferrol cannons, the road was well-defended, and the passage via the lagoon was not practical. And so Doniños Beach contributed to the English defeat [7].
On 26th August, 1800, the English army attempted a direct attack on San Felipe Castle with the intention of taking it and leaving without defense the area with most artillery at the entrance of Ferrol. The ground attack took place in the morning. The English had 4,000 men and the Spanish, with a lesser number, defended themselves with the magnificent launcher of the horn work of the castle, the caponiere and the outer works, The English companies advancing by way of the sloping embankment, suffered the fire of the Spanish hidden in the covered loopholes, with the support of the cannons installed in the curtain and in the bastion. After several attacks, always rejected, the English finally retired to the heights of Brión [8].
A lookout position on the headland is the White House located in the summit of Monteventoso at an altitude of 221 meters above sea level. It gives a magnificent view from Monteventoso over the beach and lagoon of Doniños. From this position, the invasion by British troops was first observed. In spite of the fact that is was a moonless night [9], from the high lookout position, the troops landing on the broad, white, shallow beach in their number must have been clearly visible. In the middle of the beach of Doniños, at the base of Monteventoso, was the small castle of Doniños (built in 1795 by the engineer M. Hermosilla). It was destroyed by the English before they advanced towards San Felipe where a ferocious battle took place [10].
The attack was carried out on 25 of August, when rear-admiral John Borlase Warren (1753-1822) disembarked almost ten thousand men under general James Pulteney on the beaches of Doniños and San Justo. Luckily the British, due to fierce local defense, lost spirit and chose to disembark two days later. [11]

This latter citation, of course, is from a Spanish source and interestingly enough, the operation appears to have been a combined navy-army action, one which somehow reminds me of the one described in the Frogs and the Lobsters, another chapter in the same Mr.. Midshipman Hornblower [1]. I will refrain from further speculation and would like to leave the summary to prime minister William Pitt:

It is said in El Ferrol, that after the unsuccessful British attempt to capture Ferrol in the year 1800, the British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger said in one of his speeches at the House of Commons that "If Great Britain had a naval station so easy to defend as El Ferrol, due to its location, it would have been surrounded by a thick silver wall" [12].

San Anton

At the beginning of the chase, witnessed from the headland battery, it is mentioned that Hornblower saw a flag being hoisted from the Fort San Anton, near A Coruña.

on p.235 "The flag of Spain rose up the flagstaff beside the battery, and Hornblower saw an answering flag rise up the flagstaff on San Anton where another battery guarded Coruña Bay"

San Anton is theoretically visible from the headland, but during my visit visibility was insufficient (picture above).

Flagstaff or Lighthouse?

I am not sure the San Anton flagstaff would have been visible from the Ferrol headland under favorable conditions, but the ancient lighthouse on the A Coruña headland must have been more prominent on the horizon: the height of the focal point is 105 m above sea level. From the top of the tower (picture on the right), the Ferrol headland and the outline of the house of the Monteventoso lookout position L can be seen (pictures below). This so-called Tower of Hercules might well have excited Hornblower's antiquarian interest. Its name (like others (Pillars of Hercules/Melcart, Cadiz, Cartagena) might evince a Carthaginian presence before the Roman foundation of Brigantium, but the present structure, 56.8 m tall, is Roman work dating from or at least remodeled during the reign of Trajan (AD 98-117), when the port and hinterland was an important source of supply for the army of the Rhine. Even more significantly, the lighthouse had been restored by Eustaquio Giannini as recently as 1791, and therefore was a key site during Hornblower's captivity [13, 14, 15]. However, Forester does not mention it at all.

wide angle panorama picture (left) and zoomed in on yellow rectangle: a 300 mm telephoto picture (right) from Hercules tower

Seen from the flagstaff (pictures below) of Fort San Anton, the outline of the headlandwas not as clear as from Hercules tower. My binoculars were not powerful enough to see the white house on Monteventoso. The reason of course is the larger distance and a height above sea level of less than 20 m)

28 mm wide angle (left) and 300 mm telephoto picture (right) from the flagstaff of Fort San Anton

Fort San Anton

The renaissance fort San Anton was built during the reign of Philip II (1556-1589). Construction began on a former leper hospital on the island of San Anton (where there was a chapel devoted to this saint). The governor's house on the upper level was completed in the 18th century. The fortress was intended as a defense for the harbor of A Coruña. It also served as a prison until 1960 [16].

Restored after 1964 and connected to the mainland, it is now open to the public and also houses a very nice archeological museum devoted to the area of A Coruña, covering the megalithic, bronze, iron and Roman periods, in addition to sculptures from the middle ages [16].

p.252 "It was a sunny morning....that the British cruiser off the headland [of A Coruña] was lowering a boat........She hove-to within musket shot [of San Anton] and it was a mild surprise to the sentry when in reply to the officer's hail, someone rose up in the boat and replied in unmistakable Gallego dialect. Summoned alongside the landing slip, the cutter put ashore ten men and then headed out again to the frigate. Nine of them were laughing and shouting; the tenth, the youngest, walked with a fixed expression on his face with never a sign of emotion."

the landing slip at Fort San Anton

Conclusions

About distances: first the Companion map, which seems to indicate the distance between Cabo Priorino and Hercules tower is 2.97 nautical miles or 5.5 km (a nautical mile being 1852 m). Contemporary maps from different origin [17, 18, 19] give this distance as between 8.8 and 9 km. So the scale on the Companion map is in error by a factor 1.6. If Hornblower was supposed to have been walking from San Felipe castle to either the headland or Ferrol city, both distances cannot have exceeded a nautical mile. Both took me at least 15 minutes by car, using the shortest route.

A Hornblower entry on the Wikipedia website [20] cites "the Naval Station of El Ferrol where Hornblower was taken as a prisoner of war by the Spaniards". Of course he was, but "taken to as a prisoner" is not the same as " held in captivity for 2 years". But this is more about consistency of fiction rather than about facts vs. fiction.

Did Hornblower see the San Anton flagstaff from the headland battery? The distance in reality is even 12 km, impossible to see with the naked eye. The distance over which the life saving boat would have to be transported, from the Ferrol dockyard to Doniños beach, is 8 km in a straight line over a hill: this seems physically impossible in just a couple of hours.

All in all, there can be no doubt that Forester had the historical facts correct, both in time and in general geography. Distances in reality however are larger, compared to what the story leads us to believe. On average a factor 2-5 would do the job. The genius of Foresters yet again shows his ability to mold geographical en historical reality with perfectly plausible ingredients to make a gripping storyline: there's not a trace of Devil's teeth in reality, neither on maps nor on satellite images!! Forester just needed them for the shipwreck, but also for referring to Hornblower's temptation to break his parole while on board his Majesty's frigate Syrtis after the rescue.

Acknowledgements

I thank José Cadaveira for providing local information, and driving instructions, and David Stead for valuable proofreading and many suggestions for improvement.

Equipment used

binoculars: Minolta Activa 10x50
analog photography: Nikon F80, 28-105 mm and 75-300 mm
digital photography: Nikon Coolpix 2200, 36-108 mm, 2 Megapixel
scanner: Canon Canoscan FB320P

References