_Regattaites._ Not a tribe or nation, but participants in the summer
regattas on the Thames. In _The Annual Register_ for 1775 appears “Some
Account of the new Entertainment, called a _Regatta_, introduced from
_Venice_ into _England_, in the Course of the Year 1775,” from which the
following sentences are extracted:
Before five o’clock, Westminster bridge was covered with
spectators, in carriages and on foot, and men even placed
themselves in the bodies of the lamp-irons. Plans of the
regatta were sold from a shilling to a penny each, and songs
on the occasion sung, in which _Regatta_ was the rhyme for
_Ranelagh_, and _Royal Family_ echoed to _Liberty_.... Before
six o’clock it was a perfect fair on both sides the water, and
bad liquor, with short measure, was plentifully retailed....
The Thames was now a floating town. All the cutters,
sailing-boats, &c. in short, every thing, from the dung-barge
to the wherry, was in motion (“Appendix to the Chronicle,” pp.
216, 217).
_the Captain of the Licorne._ The _Licorne_ frigate, encountered
and detained by Admiral Keppel on the 17th of June, yielded Keppel
information respecting the strength of the French fleet.
_the wretched deficiency in our late naval equipments._ War-profiteering
is not of recent origin; in the Eighteenth Century the loose organization
of finance and supply in both services gave large opportunities to
contractors and commissaries. “You must not think of persuading us that
you are no gainer,” Lord Loudoun remarked to Benjamin Franklin when the
latter sought reimbursement for outlays in connection with Braddock’s
expedition in 1755; “we understand better those affairs, and know that
every one concerned in supplying the army finds means, in the doing
it, to fill his own pockets” (Franklin, _Writings_, ed. A. H. Smyth,
New York, 1905-07, I, 430). Satirists frequently exposed this form of
parasitism. Samuel Foote produced a comedy called _The Commissary_ in
1765. In Sheridan’s _The Camp_, 1778, the commissary Gage supplied a
regiment with lime (which he dug himself, at no expense) instead of
hair-powder. It did very well, he reported, while the weather was fine,
but when a shower came up the troops’ heads were all slacked in an
instant. “I stood a near chance of being tied up to the halberts; but I
excused myself by saying, they looked only like raw recruits before; but
now they appeared like old veterans of service” (I, i).