The Pickle The Boats That Built Britain

'Britain is an island, surrounded by a cold and unforgiving sea.

'For centuries, it protected us from attack, but to prosper and thrive,

'we would need to do more then just hide behind her saltwater shield.

'Britain needed brave men, willing to venture out into the unknown,

'and she needed good boats to take them there.

'I've spent my life at sea.

'Now I'm going to take passage on six boats, that together tell the story of modern Britain.

'Built for exploration, war, fishing, industry, and our very survival,

'these are the boats that built Britain,

'and changed the way we live forever.

'This time, I'm sailing on a replica of the boat

'that delivered the most important message in British naval history,

'a message that confirmed Britain as the world's first maritime superpower.'

I'm on the deck of one of the unsung heroes of British history,

HMS Pickle, the boat that delivered

the most important piece of naval news of all time.

Britain had just thrashed the forces of France and Spain.

Now, we really ruled the waves after the Battle of Trafalgar,

and this is the little ship that brought the news home to a waiting nation.

'Today, the Royal Navy's ships circle the globe unhindered,

'but at the end of the 18th century, the world's oceans were a much more dangerous place.

'In 1805, Britain had just fought the most significant naval battle in her history.'

After years of bloody struggle,

the French and the Spanish were finally thoroughly defeated on the high seas.

The challenge now was how to get the good news home to the nation, and the King.

'Today, we take instant communications very much for granted.

'This modern Navy vessel is equipped with every communication device imaginable,

'but, back at the beginning of the 19th century,

'relaying important military news back home could take weeks, sometimes months.

'In 1805, HMS Victory had just survived the Battle of Trafalgar.

'Thousands of men had perished, and many more lay wounded.

'And though Nelson, England's hero, was dead, the battle had been won.

'But, back in Britain, where fear of a French invasion was rampant,

'nobody had any idea of the momentous scenes

'that had just unfolded 1,000 miles away, off the coast of Spain.'

HMS Victory, an upper gun deck.

Absolute precision, naval fashion, as it was before the battle, and as it would have been weeks afterwards.

But on the day, in the hours following the conflict, this place would have been so different.

Guns upended off their carriages, holes in the side, splinters,

scores across the deck where cannonballs had run.

Men, still lying where they fell, others being carried below to the doctor.

Smoke, blood, unimaginable chaos.

The last thing on people's minds would have been getting the news home to England.

'But the fleet's new commander, Admiral Collingwood, knew that getting the news back was vital.

'What he needed now was a ship to carry the message.

'His choice for this critical mission must have surprised everyone.

'To naval eyes, HMS Pickle was hardly a ship at all.

'She was only 73ft on deck.

'She had no large guns, and, worse, she had a strange, suspiciously modern rig.

'During the battle, she'd run errands and picked up survivors -

'valuable work, but hardly the stuff of heroes.

'For a little ship like the Pickle, being chosen to deliver this news was an unimaginable honour,

'and it was a pay day, too, with £500 - a fortune in 1805 - the reward for completing the mission.

'But what should have been the Pickle's moment of glory almost ended in failure,

'as she became engaged in a race with a bigger, faster ship,

'determined to take the reward money for herself.

'The race is one of the greatest sea stories of them all.

'So, just what was it about the Pickle that enabled her to hold her own,

'against a ship, that, in most conditions, should have left her dead in the water?

'Walking around the decks of the Pickle,

'I'm immediately struck by just how different she is to most of Nelson's Navy ships.

'By the time of Trafalgar, the British Navy had developed a massive shipbuilding industry -

'capable of turning out huge ships of the line at an amazing rate.

'They were impressive fighting machines,

'but, as sailing vessels, they were extremely limited.

'In fact, their sail plan had hardly changed in over 100 years.

'The sails were square rigged, and set from wooden crosspieces, known as yards.

'It meant they were good at sailing with the wind pushing them from behind.

'But with the breeze coming from any other direction, they were far, far less effective.

'Unlike the little Pickle, a schooner, with her more modern rig.'

This is the main mast, not a square yard on it,

to the eye of an old-time captain in the Royal Navy,

that would have looked bare naked.

He would have expected to see three or four yards going across it, to drive his ship downwind,

and they'd have done that fine.

But when he put a hard on the wind, and tried to tack up towards the wind's eye, no dice, mate.

What you needed then was a big, long boom like this,

with a great big sail on it, that would lie close to the wind,

and make the boat fly into the direction

that sailors from time immemorial hadn't believed she could really go.

That is the magic of the schooner.

'It wasn't just the sails that were revolutionary.

'She had a hull to much.'

The Pickle was far from typical of the naval vessels of her time.

This is a heavy battleship, but it gives you some idea of what they tended to look like.

The Pickle was completely different, much finer, much more of a sailing vessel.

'Most Navy ships of the time were built around their need to carry a huge and heavy arsenal of guns.

'Glorious, but ungainly vessels to sail,

'unlike the Pickle.'

See that, that lovely, wine glass sweep of the boat?

This great big dead drop,

straight down into the water aft, at the back end.

Never mind the propeller, that's just a temporary feature for the 20th century.

That wouldn't have been here. What we're seeing is the magic of the Pickle.

If you look at the bow,

she's... Ooh, lovely, like a knife going through the water.

At five or six knots, you can see her go through the water, you won't know where she's been.

She's what we call slippery.

'By today's standards, the Pickle's hull looks conservative.

'Back in 1805, many Navy men would have considered her dangerously unconventional.

'But her radical new shape gave her one huge advantage over older designs.'

This section of the boat here,

all the way forward to where she starts to V out,

is actually like a wall, straight down into the water.

Now, look at it like this.

If you had a barrel in the water, and you pushed it,

you'd expect it to go sideways quite nicely, wouldn't you?

If you had a sheet of plywood, and you pushed it into the water,

held it down, and tried to push it sideways,

you'd meet tremendous resistance. It's as easy as that.

What you need is what sailors call dead drop in the hull.

Dead drop is that wall, that stops the boat going sideways.

Pickle's got lots of it.

This is what was developing, fore-and-aft rig boats,

that would resist the temptation of the wind to shove them away to kingdom come.

They pointed at the wind, they sailed upwind like bandits,

and the square rig vessels, with shapes like barrels,

they couldn't match them.

But just where had Pickle and her uncompromising design come from?

Accounts from the time suggest the Pickle

was an American or Bermudan boat captured in the Caribbean

and sailed back to Britain by a forward-thinking officer

who'd seen what a handy little boat she was.

Unhindered by convention, the Americans were completely rethinking

boat design and the old powers ignored their ideas at their peril.

It was the new world, there were new men with new ideas and they rattled the Royal Navy.

The Pickle was certainly unorthodox, and her skipper, Lieutenant Lapenotiere, was unusual too.

From a humble Cornish background, he was a far cry

from the well-connected officer class

more common in the navy at the time.

Gordon Frickers has researched the Pickle and her commanding officer extensively.

He was considered a solid, reliable officer. He didn't seem to make friends easily.

He missed a number of chances to enjoy the patronage of officers who rose and became very distinguished.

Many other officers rose through the ranks faster than him.

On the other hand, he had a fairly successful career.

He captured a number of prizes. He never lost a ship.

So he may have not been very sociable,

and some of the officers were very sociable.

A lot of them sang and danced and put on theatre and all sorts of things like that.

But he was clearly a very good seaman, a very good person to be under the command of.

And Pickle was a particularly difficult ship to command.

Small, wet and uncomfortable, the Pickle might have been hard to command, but with a modern design

and a down-to-earth skipper, she was an early sign of a new mood sweeping the Navy.

For centuries, it had been who you knew that had opened the way ahead.

Now, the Navy were trying to ensure that it was what you knew that counted.

And that knowledge was tested here in Portsmouth, where the dreaded naval exams were held.

Introduced in 1792, the exams were designed to create a navy run on merit.

The Pickle's skipper, Lieutenant Lapenotiere, was one of this new breed.

And he'd have faced a situation just like this when he came to take his exams.

As I'm about to find out, a daunting prospect.

You're going large and you see a ship in the wind's eye.

How are you going to proceed to chase her?

OK...sir.

I'm large which means I'm sailing away from the wind.

And I see a chase

in the wind's eye, directly to windward of me.

'The exams could last up to five hours and covered every aspect of command.

'Any weakness or slight mistake and the officer would be failed,

'with years passing before he could reapply for promotion.

'I suspect that if I'd been taking this exam for real I wouldn't have got that vital promotion.

'But young Lieutenant Lapenotiere had done his homework and he managed rather better.

'And passing the exam meant he was now qualified to take command of his own vessel.

'HMS Pickle.

'The original Pickle was lost on a shoal in 1808, but this boat is an exact replica.

'And gives us a perfect insight into how she would have handled all those years ago.

'She weighed a mere 127 tonnes.

'And with only ten guns, she didn't pack much of a punch either.

'But she was handy, a small agile craft,

'capable of pulling off manoeuvres that larger ships wouldn't have dared attempt.

'I'm raring to get her out to sea to find out just how she handles for myself.

'To discover what this little ship is really capable of,

'I've brought along a shipmate of mine Craig Nutter.

'Craig's a circumnavigator and racing professional

'who knows more about sailing fast than anyone I know.

'Today, there's a force eight to storm ten predicted,

'not the sort of weather you'd normally consider setting out in.

'But we've got an experienced crew, a proven ship,

'and these are exactly the sort of conditions that will allow us to see what the Pickle is really made of.'

So I've got my little GPS here and it shows us doing between about 7.5 and 8.25 knots.

You can really feel the power. There's a bit of a heel on the boat and we are moving nicely.

That's great. We've just taken a gust of wind

over the quarter which is where sailing vessels like it.

And the boat staggered, leaned a bit, came up and took off and we're on our way.

What a great feeling, and you know,

this schooner really surprised a lot of the old boys with the square riggers.

As we head out of the straits, the wind begins to pick up

and I'm keen to find out what is it that makes this little ship sail so well.

So, Craig. Topsail schooner.

-What makes her such?

-Well, we've got to look round the boat itself.

There's the main mast with the mainsail on it which has a standard 4.5 type gaff mainsail.

We have the foresail here, which is on the foremast.

And the main mast itself is, under schooner configurations, normally taller than the foremast.

What's interesting, it's called a topsail schooner because if we look up, we can see a little topsail.

that's sat above the foresail on the foremast.

And then we come to the jibs up forward.

The jibs themselves help balance the power and force of the big sails at the back to actually her track along.

As we break out into open water, Craig picks up a sign that shows us it won't be

too long before we can really put this sail-plan through its paces.

I've just noticed on the water over here a slightly darker patch,

a line of it, about two minutes away and I imagine that's going to be quite a big increase in wind.

Craig's as good as his word and soon we've a gale force 8 coming over the port quarter.

The perfect opportunity for me to find out just how well the Pickle's hull and sails really work together.

She's actually amazingly light.

Beautifully-balanced vessel.

I'm steering her here comfortably with one hand.

And there's many a gaff cutter half this size you couldn't do that on with this wind.

She's balancing beautifully. And she's driving along like a sweetheart,

absolutely lovely. I'm just steering her on the edge of the wind here.

I've just gone a little bit too high. The wind's just getting round the back of my headsail.

There she goes. You feel her take? Isn't that lovely?

That's when the sails fill.

But soon the wind is gusting up even higher.

-Well, Tom, that's that gust we talked about coming in.

-Yep.

These are challenging conditions for any boat.

And now the Pickle's crew are fighting to just keep her on track.

Here's the gust.

Right behind us now cos we've actually come onto the wind a bit.

You can see her crabbing slightly and the force the helmsman's putting in

-to try and keep the boat tracking straight.

-Yeah, he's working now.

The Pickle is sailing on the edge of her capability, as fast as her length and design will allow.

You're much closer to the elements on a small ship,

and contemporary accounts speak of the Pickle as a wet, uncomfortable boat.

Her fine lines might make her fast but they also allow a lot of water over the rail.

Sweet!

And with over 40 men on board, conditions must have been wet and miserable, even down below.

Back then it was very, very different.

The cabin sole that I'm standing on which is as low as it can be today

in order to get the bilge underneath me

where, if the boat were leaking, there'd be water sloshing around, I expect it's dry down there now.

A bit of ballast, that's it.

But in those days, that's where all the stores were.

So, that cabin sole was lifted up right up here so there were two decks.

In there, in that dark, damp glory hole, there were barrels of water, there was all the cheese,

all the food, the barrels of salt beef, the stores, the cannonballs, the powder.

The lot was all down there and the guys

have to live up here, under about four foot six inches of headroom.

But, somehow, in this cramped, tight space, they managed to maintain

their morale and drive this ship as fast as anybody could drive her and deliver the goods.

And in 1805, as the Pickle headed for home, the mood on board ship must have been sky-high.

Lieutenant Lapenotiere, thinking of his promotion to Commander, and the huge £500 reward.

But only two days into what should have been a straightforward run north,

they saw a sight that must have changed the mood in a heartbeat.

They were being hailed by a larger, more senior vessel,

a square-rigged sloop of war, HMS Nautilus,

commanded by a higher-ranking officer, Captain Sykes.

Nautilus commanded the Pickle to stop.

There, look, the Nautilus. This is where he's come across Sykes, right here, off Cape St Vincent.

The encounter is faithfully recorded in the Pickle's logs

and it gives an hour-by-hour account of what was about to turn into an epic race for home.

Normally, Lapenotiere would've had to go on board

the senior man's boat.

He'd have been summoned.

But because he had these dispatches

and Collingwood had said nothing

was to divert him, he actually wouldn't move from his own deck

and this superior officer had to come on board and see him.

Sykes was trying to snatch the Pickle's mission for himself.

The meeting between the two captains lasted over an hour as the Pickle's crew waited on tenterhooks.

Would their captain stand tall or would he give in to the demands

of a determined officer on a bigger

and what should have been a faster ship?

As Sykes left the Pickle, Lapenotiere gave his order.

"Crack on sail, boys."

But Sykes hadn't given up. He sent a dispatch to Lisbon,

relieving himself of his duties, under the pretence of making sure Pickle completed her journey safely.

Thus, as you might say, covering his large transom, his rear end,

just in case anybody gave him a hard time.

Now he's covered, he can give it his best shot

and he sets off in pursuit of Lapenotiere.

A day later, the crew of the Pickle were horrified to see HMS Nautilus on the horizon once again.

This time though, she wasn't stopping.

She pulled level and then ahead.

On paper, it was no contest.

But this was one fight Lapenotiere and the Pickle were determined to win.

They would have been trimming everything.

They would have been moving the sheet six inches at a time.

Likely, they held the sheets for the mainsails in hand,

rather than making them fast, just so they could get every last tiny little bit

out of the vessel because they knew that that quarter of a knot could give them an hour at six knots.

This was a seven or eight day run home.

That could give them seven or eight hours which would be a whole tide

which would leave the other vessel blown away.

Every little bit counted and they were really going to work at it, night and day.

Both ships were making good headway but as they headed up to Finisterre, the square-rigged Nautilus

pushed ahead, driven by following winds that suited their sail-plan perfectly.

In the Bay of Biscay, weather conditions worsened.

The Pickle's crew were pushing the boat to her limits and in the rough seas, she started taking on water.

Now, Lapenotiere wasn't just racing,

he was also fighting to stay alive. What does he do?

We know, because his pumps weren't working,

he was having a bucket chain to bail the water out.

-Frightened man with a bucket!

-Exactly.

Also he takes the extraordinary act

of actually throwing the guns and gun carriages overboard.

For a navy ship, throwing your guns over the side was a last, desperate measure.

Now, the Pickle was helpless as a fighting ship

but as a sailing vessel, she was lighter and faster.

But with the Nautilus out of sight, what the Pickle needed now was a lucky break

and as the wind changed direction, she got one.

This schooner is now doing what she does best actually, she was able to sail on her course

with that wind direction, a square rigger wouldn't have been able to do that.

She'd have been driven into the Atlantic, and it would have to have had to sail further

if indeed she could get there at all.

Finally, the Pickle's great advantage, her more modern rig, was coming into play.

Now, she picked up her skirts and flew for home.

Yes, standing here, looking at that bow, feeling her

fill with wind and lean to it and put a shoulder to the job,

you understand how a brave little boat like this could have beaten Sykes

and got home to England with the news. Lapenotiere - he knew what he was about.

But just as it seemed Pickle was about to win the day, disaster struck again.

Within sight of the south coast of England, the wind suddenly died.

The Pickle had been aiming for Plymouth

but now, only miles from Falmouth, Lapenotiere had a choice,

get off here and face a longer journey by land

or try and coax another 40 miles from the Pickle in uncertain winds.

And without knowing where the Nautilus was, he had only his instincts to go on.

Lapenotiere made his call.

Leaving the Pickle behind, he ordered his crew to row him the final miles to shore.

By getting himself ashore, Lapenotiere showed himself to be a clever man.

He kissed goodbye to the tides

but you know, getting himself up to London was not going to be a walk in the park.

Lapenotiere had no way of knowing where Sykes was.

All he could do now was make sure he got to London first

and delivered the news that King and country were waiting for.

Lapenotiere had taken his big gamble going to Falmouth, not Plymouth.

Now he needed rapid transport to London so he went to the local car rental man who didn't have a Mondeo

but he did have a post-chaise, the fastest on four wheels.

He hired it and set out for town, post-haste.

HORSE WHINNIES

Now it was hell-for-leather all the way to London,

a long, long journey, 270 miles.

He changed horses 21 times and it cost him dear.

When he added up his expenses at the end of the trip,

he was horrified to learn he had spent £46 odd,

half a year's salary for a lieutenant,

and there was no way he could be sure of ever getting it back.

Falmouth to London is a long haul today in a car.

In this,

we're moving at boat speeds here,

right now we're going down a steep hill

and I could get out and walk faster.

It must have caused Lapenotiere to eat his liver.

But after 37 hours on the road, Lapenotiere had reached London.

After a race of over 1,000 miles, he discovered later he had beaten Sykes by just half-an-hour.

The Pickle had done it.

And now it fell to Lapenotiere to claim his reward

and announce the tidings that the nation had been waiting for.

With studied economy, he drew breath and told the First Sea Lord,

"Sir, we've gained a great victory but we've lost Lord Nelson."

Today, Trafalgar and Nelson are names known to everyone

but for most, Lapenotiere and has little ship, the Pickle, are all but forgotten.

To me, the Pickle sums up everything that's best about the sea,

a boat packed with new ideas, sailed to perfection by men with timeless qualities

and the news she carried changed British history for ever.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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