THE MEN AND THE LIFE
AUTHORITIES.—This chapter has been founded mainly on: _Rooke’s
Journal_, published for the Navy Records Society; the Minutes
of the Court-Martial on Stucley and Brookes of the =Milford=;
Lillingston’s _Reflections on Mr. Burchett’s Memoirs_, and
Burchett’s _Justification of his Naval Memoirs_, published
separately, but sometimes found together; Maydman’s _Naval
Politics_; and William Hodge’s _An Humble Supplication of the
Seamen’s Misery_.
When the war of the Spanish Succession came to an end, the navy held
perhaps an even higher place than it has occupied since. At the signing
of the Peace of Utrecht, Great Britain was not so much the greatest
naval power in the world as the only power. Holland had been overtaxed
by the necessity of taking a foremost place in the war on land; France
was bled nearly to death; Spain had ceased to possess even the show
of a fleet. The Scandinavian nations and Russia were confined to the
Baltic. Elsewhere there was nothing. In the midst of this general
prostration we ruled at sea, not only without an equal, but without a
second.
There was a great danger in a supremacy of this nature. In the
kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and he who is the
best because the others are very bad may himself be far from good.
The truth concerning the British navy during the earlier eighteenth
century is that it owed at least as much to fortune as to its merits.
At heart it was sound, and moreover it existed by a necessity, and in
conformity with the nature of things, since it was for this country the
indispensable instrument not only of power but of safety. Therefore
it could not absolutely fail till the nation behind it withered. None
the less it was hampered by defects, which might well have proved
all but ruinous, had our enemy been more capable. Yet that he sank
so completely by his own weakness was perhaps, in the long run, a
misfortune to us. A sound beating at some not vital point, which could
have been demonstrated to be the result of maladministration, would
probably have roused the nation into taking the Admiralty and the
navy in hand, and would have been for our good. No such lesson was
inflicted, and we drowsed on in rather ignoble toleration for a dull
half-century. A sound beating at some not vital point which could have
been shown to be the result of pedantic adherence to a stupid method of
fighting might have stung the navy itself into intellectual activity.
Again no such lesson was given, and the navy drowsed on in brainless
acquiescence to the Fighting Instructions. Great then as our position
was, when compared with our neighbours’, we were yet at a level from
which we could not have sunk without becoming dangerously bad.
It is a significant fact that the mere quality of our ships was poor.
The superiority of the French shipbuilding, already noticeable in
the reign of Charles II., was maintained for long. When Spain began
to revive under the Bourbon dynasty she also constructed vessels far
superior to ours. In the year after the renewal of warfare in 1739
a Spanish 70-gunship, the _Princesa_, which however only mounted 64
guns, was taken by three English vessels of the same rate. It cost
them five hours and a half of fighting to get her, and although this
no doubt speaks well for her captain and crew, her long resistance to
apparently overwhelming force was largely due to her fine build. She
was of 1709 tons, whereas English vessels of the same rating were only
of 1225; therefore she would be stronger and could carry a heavier
battery. Her lower deck ports were higher out of the water, and could
be worked when ours had to be closed in bad weather. The inferiority
of our ships, rate for rate, to the French and Spanish had been noted
before, and had produced some effect, but the capture of the _Princesa_
gave a much needed stimulus. Nor was it only in size, and what depends
on size, that our ships were inferior. Their lines were poor, so that
they were crank (_i.e._ liable to overturn) and sailed badly. To some
extent this inferiority of our models was due to economy. The Admiralty
made its vessels of weak scantling, that is with a minimum of timber,
and preferred to patch up old ships rather than build new ones, and
therefore perpetuated inferior types. This was also part of the general
slackness of the time. We were content to be guided by routine, and to
leave the building of our ships in the hands of shipwrights who were
mere artisans going by traditional rule of thumb.
The difficulty of knowing what sort of men the officers and crews
of our old navy were is very great. They have left small record of
themselves, and they were too remote from the general life of their
time to come under the notice of ordinary witnesses. The pictures
we do possess of them are mostly drawn by satirists of whom one
only, Smollett, was a man of genius and had personal experience.
Unfortunately his spirit was bitter, and his purpose led him to pick
out mainly the most extravagant and worst parts of his subject. Records
of courts martial, again, tell a good deal, but it is necessary to
remember they also are of the nature of selections of the worst. It was
the bad not the good officer who came before a court martial. Pamphlet
controversies reveal something, but once more it is the worst. That our
navy sailed the sea in such bad ships with comparatively few disasters
is proof of its seamanship. That its fighting was on the whole
successful, in spite of absurd rules and of defective intelligence in
leadership, shows that though the head lay wrong, the heart was right.
All the materials were there, they only wanted better handling.
The evils afflicting the navy are easy enough to see. First among them
was brutality. The times were hard. A glance at the trials which arose
out of General Oglethorpe’s agitation against the management of some of
our prisons will show how callous our ancestors could be in the early
eighteenth century. The navy produced no General Oglethorpe. Though
many officers sat in Parliament, none of them made a serious attempt
to check the unquestionable ill-usage of the sailors. From that we may
draw the deduction that they wanted humanity to incur the ill-will of
the Admiralty by insisting on reform, or that they were indifferent
to the miseries of others; or finally that, like the Roman Prefectus
Castrorum, who had been a common soldier, and who was known to the men
as “Bring another,” because he was for ever breaking sticks on their
backs and calling for more, they were all the harder because they
themselves had suffered.
Here is one brief passage of naval manners in the early eighteenth
century, written by a naval pen in the Journal of Rooke’s expedition to
Cadiz in 1702:—
“At six this evening Captain Norris coming on board this ship [the
flagship] my Lord Hamilton, Captain Ley, Captain Wishart, and Captain
Trevor, were standing on the quarter-deck, and as Captain Norris came
up, Lord Hamilton asked him if he had taken any more wine or brandy.
This means whether he had captured a ship laden with this kind of
cargo. The other answered No; upon which Captain Trevor asked the
price of his claret, whether he might have any at 4 li a hogshead.
Norris said he would have 6 li or salt water, and then Captain Ley
said he would rather the prizes were ashore than he would give the 6
li the hogshead; upon which Captain Norris said he was a rascal that
he wished his prizes ashore; the other replied he was a rascal if he
called him so; and then Captain Norris struck Captain Ley and threw
him over the gun, which Mr. Hopsonn hearing, as he and I were in my
cabin, ran out, and upon inquiry found he [Norris] had hurt Captain
Ley, and by the admiral’s directions ordered him to be confined, upon
which Captain Norris drew his sword, and offered to stab Captain Ley,
but Admiral Hopsonn, holding his hand, ordered him to be disarmed, and
confined in Mr. Rayney’s cabin.”
It is a scene of huckstering and violence on the very quarter-deck of
the flagship. Yet though Ley died soon afterwards, perhaps from the
effect of the blow, Norris was never called to account, and lived to be
the most distinguished officer of the reign of George I. and the early
years of George II.
The same Journal, under an earlier date, makes mention of one Captain
William Moses of the =Milford= who accused his lieutenant and one of
his midshipmen of attempting to murder him. It turned out on inquiry
that he had wounded himself, in order to bolster up charges which he
was bringing against these officers. They were brought to a court
martial, the lieutenant was acquitted, and the midshipman let off with
a mild rebuke. The story of this latter, whose name was Cæsar Brookes,
is worth quoting from the minutes of the court martial.
The witnesses, who disagree in many details, are at one in saying
that in the middle watch of a certain night, when the ship was on the
coast of Africa, the captain, one Mr. Mite a passenger, and various
officers, were sitting together on the quarter-deck drinking wine. Here
the agreement ceases. Mr. Cæsar Brookes joined the party, and then,
according to the captain, he voluntarily, without provocation, and out
of pure native arrogance, advanced the proposition that he could fight
any two men—nay, he swore he could. For this he was rebuked by the
captain, who told him he might perchance meet one who was a better man
than himself. To this Mr. Brookes, flaming into outrageous disrespect,
answered, “Well, damme, you’re not,” and was thereupon justly confined
for his mutinous behaviour. Brookes gives a very different version of
the affair. According to him, he was only arguing that in defending
narrow passages one man, if conveniently placed, could fight two—a
scientific question of shock tactics, in fact, very proper for an
officer to discuss. For this he was first abused and then put under
arrest, though his carriage throughout was of the most respectful
kind. The witnesses do not, with two suspicious exceptions, support
the captain’s version of what took place. The exceptions are sailors
who tell the same tale like parrots. One of them had been let out of
irons by the captain, although he had beaten the gunner, after the
quarter-deck scene be it observed. If the court martial thought that
Captain Moses had been attempting subornation of perjury, it was not
without excuse. Now follows a scene in the captain’s cabin, in which,
_teste_ Captain Moses, he was bearded by his extra midshipman; but Mr.
Brookes says it was otherwise, and that he was assaulted. Certain it
is that the midshipman remained in confinement for six mortal months
in the sweltering heat of the Guinea Coast. At Cape Coast Castle,
Captain Moses had reason to believe that his life was threatened by
the implacable and unbridled Brookes. It seems that Mr. Donnidge the
surgeon went to have a conversation with the imprisoned midshipman, and
by way of telling him something really worth hearing, let him know
that the captain had taken medicine and that it had done no good. Mr.
Brookes, on hearing that physicians had so far been in vain, remarked
that if he could meet the captain on shore he would give him two pills
that should move him. Hereupon Mr. Donnidge rushed out, and finding the
captain’s boat manned alongside, warned the crew to keep a good watch,
for he believed that their commander’s life was threatened. Something
of Mackshane the toady surgeon in Smollett’s _Roderick Random_ seems to
hang about Mr. Donnidge. Then there is another story of an anonymous
letter found in the captain’s cabin, warning him that the lieutenant
and the midshipman were plotting to raise a mutiny and run away with
the ship. The letter was either an impudent practical joke or another
device of this remarkable naval captain’s, much on a level with the
wound on his leg. The notes are but brief, and many clues were not
followed up; but one ends with the conviction that the court martial
came to a sound and humane decision. It told Mr. Brookes that he had
plainly been too free with his tongue, but that six months’ arrest
on the coast of Africa was quite punishment enough, and it dismissed
the captain’s rigmarole story of conspiracy to murder and mutiny as
frivolous and vexatious.
The name of Captain Moses may serve as connecting link to another tale
of the sea life of that time. It was told in 1704 by an army officer of
the name of Colonel Luke Lillingston, in the course of a controversy
with Burchett, the Secretary of the Admiralty, and historian of the
naval wars of King William and Queen Anne.
In 1695 an expedition left England to harass the French West Indies.
The squadron was commanded by Captain Robert Wilmot, and the soldiers
were under the command of Colonel Lillingston. As a military operation
it was of no importance, and its character has been sufficiently
described in the previous chapter. Our subject here is naval human
nature as it was displayed towards the close of the seventeenth
century and remained for two generations. Lillingston had served as
Lieutenant-Colonel of Foulkes’s regiment in the expedition of Sir
Francis Wheeler in 1692, and had, he tells us, seen instances of
the “arbitrary behaviour” of naval officers. So extreme was this,
and so much was it resented by military men that in 1695 they were
most reluctant to subject themselves to “the ill usage and insolent
behaviour of commanders at Sea, especially to officers of the army.”
Lillingston moved, he assures us, by a sense of duty, agreed to go
with Wilmot. A regiment was made up for him by drafts from others, and
the expedition sailed at the end of January. The naval commander, who
as senior captain was called commodore, carried two women with him,
in defiance of the regulations, and, so the soldier asserts, was on
various occasions “pleased to be very drunk.” He touched at Madeira,
and on the way there had the following conversation with Lillingston.
The men had not been on good terms, and we see clearly that the soldier
expected the sailor to be brutal, and was on the watch for instances of
“arbitrary behaviour.”
“He (_i.e._ Wilmot) told me he found I was a little strange to him,
and [that he] should be glad we might understand one another better.
I told him, I thought if there was any strangeness it was on his
side, and as we had both promised His Majesty to maintain an entire
confidence, and a friendly correspondence, it should not be my fault
if we did not, and so offered, forgetting all that was past, to
begin a more sociable agreement from that time, and so we drank to
one another again. ‘But,’ says the Captain, ‘our agreement is very
necessary on our own accounts, for if it be not our own faults we
may both make our fortunes in this voyage, and provide for ourselves
as long as we live.’ With all my heart said I, I shall endeavour not
to be wanting to myself provided the King’s business be done too.
‘Damn the King’s business,’ says he, ‘we will do the King’s business,
and our own too. But I’ll be free, with you,’ says the Captain, ‘I
had the misfortune to kill a man (and I think named him) and it has
almost ruined me, for it has cost me above a thousand pound, and I am
resolved this voyage shall pay for it, and if you will join with me in
such measures as I shall propose, this voyage shall make up all our
losses.’”
Lillingston refused, and Wilmot went off in the sulks, growling:—
“Well well” says he “if you don’t think fit to join with me you may
let it alone, but I am resolved to make myself amends. I won’t go to
the West Indies to learn the language. I’ll take care of myself, let
the King’s business go how it will.”
When the squadron reached Madeira, Wilmot endeavoured to get rid of
the military officers. He seized an opportunity to sail while most of
them were ashore buying provisions. A sudden gale was his pretext.
Fortunately his ships were scattered in a storm; one of them came
back to Madeira, and the officers were picked up. At a council of
the officers of both arms, Wilmot had refused to allow Lillingston’s
captain-lieutenant to sit, alleging that no officer under the rank of
captain had a right to a seat. Now the captain-lieutenant, according
to the military customs of the time, commanded what was counted as
the colonel’s company and ranked as the senior captain. Wilmot was
induced to see reason by the arguments of the commissary Murray; but
Lillingston, not unfairly, quotes his conduct as an example of pure
arbitrary insolence. He had turned the captain-lieutenant out of the
cabin “with a rudeness that I had never seen among gentlemen.” At
the Leeward Islands Wilmot was again “pleased to be very drunk,” and
went the length of offering to give away commissions in Lillingston’s
regiment. The military and naval elements came, in fact, to open
quarrel. From the Leeward Islands this jarring expedition went on first
to San Domingo, where some Spaniards, then our allies, joined us. There
was delay, wrangling, and an incessant conflict between soldier and
sailor. Wilmot, says Lillingston,
“loitered away six days in the Bay. During this time how his people
were employed I know not, but as for himself he spent the time in
diversions every day rowing about the bay in his barge with the
Ladies, and attended by trumpets and all the music of the fleet in
other boats to recreate himself and the women, with the pleasantness
of the country.”
When at last the expedition got to its work of plundering the French
settlements in Haiti, Captain Wilmot, who had been joined by various
Jamaica privateers, kept ahead of the troops as they marched along on
shore, and applied himself to robbing the plantations, particularly of
their negroes, who were then very valuable booty. At Port de Paix the
commodore made his last attempt to induce the colonel to come to an
understanding for their common advantage:
“But smiling he takes me by the hand and leading me aside he told
me he wanted to speak with me, and now he showed himself in his own
colours a second time and made his last attempt to bring me over to
him; he told me he would comply with all the orders of our council of
war, and assist me with all the men he could spare, and do everything
he could to forward the service if I would but join with him in one
thing, and allow a second. The first was I should consent to his
having an equal share of the plunder with me in case the fort should
be taken.
“To this I made him no answer but asked him what was his second
proposal. ‘Why,’ says he, ‘if you will join with me when the fort is
taken and all done that can be done on the island we will carry these
three Spanish men-of-war away with us to Jamaica, for,’ says he, ‘the
dogs have got a great many of the negroes, and other plunder, and if
you will consent,’ says he, ‘we’ll make them pay us well before we
part with them.’ [Lillingston objected that this would be dishonest
and would certainly get them into trouble at home.] ‘’Tis no matter
for that,’ says the commodore, ‘we are a great way off England, and
it may be long enough before the news of it will come there. We may
make it worth our while and may easily make it up when we come home.’
I told him I could not concern myself in such a thing unless the
Spaniards gave us some just occasion. ‘Occasion,’ says he, ‘there is
occasion enough, for they have got away our negroes, and it is easy
enough to pick a hole in their coats on that account, and answer it at
home.’”
Wilmot’s confidence that news took a long time to come home from the
West Indies, and that accusations were easily answered by people who
had money in their pockets, was not unfounded. Strange things happened
in those waters. It may well have been within the commodore’s memory
that in the reign of Charles II. a man-of-war sent out to suppress the
buccaneers had gone over to them, after her captain had run his master
through the body, and had then fled.
It is unnecessary to dwell much more on this story. Port de Paix fell,
and then the fever broke out among the sailors and soldiers, both the
allies separated and returned to their own ports. Lillingston became
very ill, and while in bed, and as he thought dying, was pestered
by several of the captains, William Moses being one of them, to
sign certain papers which were meant, he supposed, to exculpate the
commodore. The military officer asserts that Wilmot stopped on the
north side of Jamaica, and there sold the negroes he had plundered, for
twenty pounds a head, putting the money into his pocket. Lillingston
remained ill in Jamaica, and the ships returned home by the Straits of
Florida. The fever went with them. One vessel was lost on the Florida
shoals from want of men to handle her sails. Some of her crew were
brought off. Others were left to perish in the surf because they had
broken into the spirit-room, and were hopelessly drunk. Wilmot died
of fever, and so did Captain Lance who succeeded him. The command
fell to Captain Butler who brought the squadron home. In England
the commodore’s widow, Ruth Wilmot, accused Butler of having broken
into her husband’s desk, and of having stolen his plunder. A lawsuit
followed which ruined both. In the course of the suit affidavits were
produced by both sides, and one of these, made on behalf of Captain
Butler, for the purpose of discrediting the witness of Ruth Wilmot,
gives a curious picture of the discipline of the navy at that time. It
deals with the moral characters of one Theophilus Buxton and others.
“Theophilus Buxton during such his employment (of steward to wit)
was a person guilty of frequent drunkenness, abominable profaneness,
execrable oaths, blasphemy, thieving and embezzlement, and the said
Buxton and John Heath having, in one of their drunken fits at sea,
set a candle on a jar of oil in the steward’s room next to the powder
room, by which means the oil took fire, the said ship with all that
was in her had in all probability been burnt or blown up had not the
second lieutenant of the ship, with much difficulty and hazard, put
out the fire, for which offence the said Buxton, and John Heath had
about forty lashes apiece given them by order of Captain Butler, then
commander of the said ship, and after the said Buxton came into the
harbour he ran away from the said ship. And these deponents further
say, that they likewise well know John Brinley, mariner in the said
=Dunkirk=, who was a person very negligent of his duty, and very
seditious, and at Portsmouth threatened his said Captain, and to kill
one of the lieutenants of the said ship, and attempted to head the
ship’s company in an open mutiny, and these deponents believe that
the said Buxton, Heath, and Brinley are such profligate persons that
they will swear anything that their malice and desire of revenge can
dictate to them.”
It must not be supposed that the navy captain, who was a mere brute,
was always a man of obscure birth. In August 1742 a court martial was
held at Spithead for the trial of an officer, who, if long descent,
rank, and family connections were always, and not only as a rule,
enough to form a gentleman, ought assuredly to have been one. This was
the Honourable William Hervey, third son of the first Earl of Bristol
of the name. He had been captain of the =Superb=, 60, in the fleet
which sailed for the West Indies under Sir Chaloner Ogle in 1740,
and he was proved to the satisfaction of a court composed of brother
officers, and presided over by Admiral Cavendish, to have been guilty
of conduct surpassing anything Smollett has described in his grim
pictures of the navy. His first and second lieutenants, the gunner
and purser of his ship, swore that he beat an old seaman named White
so brutally that the man was carried insensible to his hammock, and
died there accusing the captain of being the cause of his death; that
he often beat the quarter-masters from the wheel with a cudgel, and
had on one occasion actually endangered the ship in this way, during
a paroxysm of rage; that he once threw a paper under the table of his
cabin, ordered a subordinate to pick it up, and kicked him while on his
knees, to the peril of his life; that he injured his gunner seriously
by a foul kick; that he thrashed his purser on the deck at Kinsale;
that he threatened to beat all his officers, “from the first lieutenant
to the cook’s boy,” and that he not only abounded in abusive terms,
but enforced them by insulting gestures. Captain Hervey’s defence
consisted of the plea that he was never violent in word or action
except when he was provoked, and in an unsupported counter-charge of
cruelty to certain Spanish prisoners against his first lieutenant,
which the court dismissed. It is consistent enough that while violent
captains behaved with a brutality never heard of now except among the
roughest and most ignorant class of the community, officers of weak
character had some difficulty in obtaining ordinary respect from their
subordinates. The discipline of the navy, in the highest sense of the
word, was bad, though its mere drill might be sound. There was not as
yet a standard of conduct, a prevailing spirit of honour to control and
inspire all alike.
Men with whom the loyal discharge of duty is not the first aim, want
only temptation and opportunity in order to disgrace themselves in the
very presence of the enemy. The charge of cowardice was frequently
made at this time. It was indeed one of the regular taunts brought
against bad commanders. We may believe that in a sense it was often
unjust. Brutal men are not seldom endowed with animal courage, and
do not always fail from mere fear. Indeed that weakness would hardly
be common among those who, by their own choice, followed a dangerous
profession. What, however, we might expect to discover among officers,
who agreed with Wilmot in the resolution to look after their own
business, and to make themselves easy for life, was a want of the
sense of honour which feels a stain like a wound. They would easily be
guilty of avoiding battle when no profit was to be expected, not out
of pusillanimous tenderness for their personal safety, but because to
their base minds there was no advantage to be secured by running risks.
If by any chance the cupidity which restrained them from obeying honour
and duty was stirred to active malignity by hatred of a comrade or of
a superior, if, moreover, they were far away from home and might hope,
even foolishly, to escape punishment, such persons would be capable
of sinking to well-nigh any excess of baseness. By keeping these
conditions in mind, we can understand that most shameful passage in the
history of the Royal Navy, the betrayal of Benbow by his captains in
August 1702.
Not much is known of the early life of John Benbow, about whom some
legends have accumulated and who has a higher reputation than his
recorded services justify, partly perhaps because his name strikes
the ear, and partly because of his melancholy end. His origin is
uncertain. That he was trained to the sea in the merchant service is
known. He served in a subordinate place in the navy for a time, and
he attracted the notice of James II. by making a manful defence of
the trading ship he commanded against a Barbary pirate. That he cut
off the heads of his prisoners, put them into a bag with salt, and
tumbled them out on the floor of the custom house at Cadiz may or may
not be true. It is a credible tale of one who assuredly was a thorough
Tarpaulin, and also it may well have been invented of such a man, or
transferred to him, from some older legendary sea hero. Common report
says that he had a rough tongue, and we may accept its testimony. The
“gentlemen captains” of the time would no doubt have defined him as a
“Wappineer Tar,” the abusive equivalent of Tarpaulin. His reputation
must have been good, for he was chosen to command a squadron in the
West Indies after the Peace of Ryswick, and was sent back again in
1701 to intercept the Spanish plate ships which afterwards fell into
our hands at Vigo. His movements are of little interest till August
1702. In that month he sailed to intercept a French squadron commanded
by M. du Casse on the Spanish Main. On the 19th he discovered his
opponent with a squadron of ten ships, and immediately attacked with
the eight vessels he had with him. His line was formed in the usual
way, his flagship, the =Breda=, being in the centre, and the others
ahead and astern of her. Two of his ships, the =Defiance=, Captain
Kirkby, and the =Windsor=, Captain Constable, fairly ran soon after
the action opened. If the French admiral had pushed his advantage
he must have destroyed Benbow’s squadron. But M. du Casse was on
treasure-carrying duty, and did not care to incur the hazard of having
his ships crippled. After doing some damage to the =Breda=, he drew off
at night. Benbow now rearranged his line, putting the =Breda= at the
head, and placing the misbehaving ships, the =Defiance= and =Windsor=,
immediately behind her, in the hope of shaming their captains into some
sense of honour. But example is wasted on men resolved to misbehave.
For four days the admiral followed the French, but his captains, with
the exception of the officer commanding the =Ruby=, Captain George
Walton, took every opportunity to fall behind. On the fifth day of the
pursuit, and the sixth since he had got touch of the enemy, Benbow had
his ships together, and renewed the action. Again he was shamefully
ill supported. A cannon shot shattered his right leg. He had his cot
brought up on deck, summoned his captains on board the flagship, and
made a last appeal to their honour. Encouraged in all probability by
their confidence that the wound would be mortal, and that they could
tell the tale in their own way, the misbehaving captains insisted on
returning to Jamaica. Even the officers who had done their duty joined
in recommending retreat, from a belief that their comrades would desert
them. The squadron went back to Jamaica, but though Benbow’s wound was
mortal he lived long enough to do the Royal Navy one signal piece of
service. He brought his disloyal officers to a court martial. The heart
of the navy was still sound in spite of the vices on the surface, and
the misconduct of these men had been too gross for pity. Sentences of
death or dismissal were passed on all, and the offenders were sent
home for execution. Kirkby, and Wade of the =Greenwich=, were shot on
board the =Bristol= at Plymouth. Hudson of the =Pendennis= died before
trial, else he would have shared their fate. Constable of the =Windsor=
was dismissed the service, and imprisoned. Even the officers who had
reluctantly joined in the recommendation to retreat were sentenced to
dismissal, and were pardoned only by the intercession of the admiral.
It was said, apparently by way of palliation for Kirkby and Wade, that
they had behaved well before, and were less cowards than traitors.
There is probably this amount of force in the pitiful excuse, that they
were greedy men chiefly intent on pelf, who in their foolish cunning
hoped to revenge themselves on their rough chief by ruining his chance
of gaining glory. To end before a firing-party was their proper fate.
It has been the good fortune of the navy that the nation has always
been very serious where it was concerned, and that in the worst of
times there has always been within its own ranks the capacity to apply
the last indispensable sanction of the code of honour.
The condition of the great dim mass of seamen, whose fate so often
depended on the bad commander, is not easy to realise. But we have
every reason to believe that it was hard, even in comparison with
that of other sailors. The word is used here of all the elements
forming the crews of our ships, though the “sailormen” to use
their own expression—that is to say those bred from boyhood to the
sea—never formed a majority, and even rarely amounted to a third of
the complements. The majority was always made up of soldiers and
landsmen. This proportion of one-third sailors and two-thirds landsmen
was enforced on the privateers. Taking the whole body of those who
lived in the warships, and by the sea, they suffered from two standing
grievances throughout the whole of the eighteenth century,—the amount
of their pay, and the system of payment. Though the establishment of
William III. doubled the pay of the officers, and the new establishment
of 1700 did not make very material reductions, nothing was done for
the sailors. They continued to receive 20s. a month for a month of
twenty-eight days in the case of able seamen, and less for others. To
the true sailors this was peculiarly hard. The first effect of a war
was to send up the wages in merchant ships to 45s. and 50s. a month,
while as much as £7 would be paid to the colliers for the voyage from
the Tyne to London, though it might last only six or seven weeks.
It was for this reason that the press was needed to man the navy.
Landsmen, waisters, and marines were found with no great difficulty.
Not being trained sailors they were not sought by shipowners. But the
real sailors were. Therefore it was necessary to draw them to the navy
by offers of bounties to make up the bad pay of the state, and when
this temptation failed, as it invariably did, to attract a sufficient
number, then to drive them in by the press.
Nor was the bad pay all, or even the worst. Their wretched 20s. or less
a month were paid to the men on a system both wasteful to the state and
cruel to its servants. At home the payment was made by a commissioner
who went round with a staff of clerks, and held an inspection on each
ship. Then he held another, named a recall, in the dockyards, to take
in the men overlooked, or absent during the first. The process was
long, and it led to an absurd outlay on travelling expenses and clerks’
wages. Such as it was this system applied only to the ships at home.
It was long before the crews abroad, including the officers, were paid
till their return to England. If the men had remained always with the
same ship the evil, though severe enough, would not have been so great.
But they were shifted about from vessel to vessel, and had often to
present “pay tickets” for four or five different ships. In the later
seventeenth century, before it became usual to maintain large squadrons
abroad for years, the wrong was not so acutely felt. But in the
eighteenth it became a monstrous oppression. The discontent it caused,
after leading to many minor mutinies, culminated in the great outbreak
of 1797. If the sailors had not been unorganised and unrepresented in
Parliament, and if it had been impossible to obtain them by force, a
remedy must have been found earlier. A bad system has always indirect
bad consequences, and one result of this was a sheer waste of public
money. Funds voted for a given ship could not be paid till the proper
claimants appeared. Meanwhile the money lay in the hands of the
treasurer of the navy, who received the interest. If he left office he
was still responsible for the unclosed accounts, and the money remained
with him. It is even said that far into the eighteenth century the
accounts of ships commissioned in the reign of Queen Anne had not been
wound up. For the sailors themselves the system worked out in downright
robbery. When they could get their pay tickets they were driven to sell
them to speculators at enormous discounts. In order to protect them
against this their tickets were kept in the hands of the captains—with
the result that they might never reach the proper owner. It was a
common accusation against bad commanders that they robbed their men in
combination with the purser.
One practice of the old navy certainly lent itself to fraud. The
captain was allowed four servants for each hundred of his ship’s
company, and was accustomed to count this among the perquisites of
his office. Indeed the total of their wages is sometimes spoken of as
part of his pay. A captain was fully entitled to employ men shipped on
these terms as servants, and he had a good claim to the patronage which
the power of selecting them gave him. He could for instance provide
for a son, or the son of a friend, by bringing him to sea, rating him
captain’s servant, and training him to become an officer. Many of the
best of our chiefs, Nelson himself being one of them, served their
apprenticeship or part of it in this very way, and where the captain
was an honourable man who used his patronage on a high principle the
state was the gainer. The history of our navy in the last century shows
that a large proportion of our captains did use their privilege in
this spirit. But here there is no question of money profit. That could
only be got in two ways, of which the first was mean and the second
fraudulent. A captain could take servants to sea, on the understanding
that he was to draw their pay, and give them what part he chose of
the ten pounds a year allowed for them by the state. He could also
keep false musters, that is, return boys or men as present when they
were not in the ship. This was an offence punishable by dismissal, but
it was habitually committed. In its least criminal form it was done
to allow a boy, who was still at school, to be borne on the books of
a ship in order to shorten the time he would have to serve at sea,
according to regulations before passing for lieutenant. A distinguished
officer who died in our own time, Sir Provo Wallis, had had his name on
the books of a ship for some years before he joined. At its worst it
was the offence of keeping false musters, pure and simple. The names
of imaginary persons or of lads, who never meant to go to sea, were
entered on the roll of the ship’s company, and their wages drawn by the
captain. In the old slang phrase they were known as “Captain’s Hogs”
and it is said that as many as thirty or forty of them drew pay in a
single ship. At ten pounds a head this made a material addition to the
commander’s salary.
Bad pay, badly given, did not sum up the wrongs of the sailors. The
constant infliction of the lash was, as far as we can see, not felt as
more of a grievance by sailors than by schoolboys. But the bad food
they did resent, and there can be no doubt that the rations supplied
were frequently inferior, while the practice of putting six men on the
allowance of four, in long voyages, caused the amount supplied to be
insufficient. It may be that the men did not realise how much the want
of ventilation and the prevalence of dirt was against their interests.
But they suffered from them none the less. It must be repeated that the
administration did not sin from want of knowledge. There was a standing
order to keep the ships properly aired. But a writer of the time,
Henry Maydman in his _Sea Politics_, has explained why this regulation
was not applied. Captains frequently took the steerage, the space
of the main-deck in front of their cabins, for themselves, forcing
the officers, who ought to have had it, further forward, so that the
after-hatchway was shut to the men. Thus only the fore-hatchway was
left to the crew, or for the purpose of establishing a draught. When
the ship was at sea, and the ports closed, the air below grew foul,
and turned food and drink bad. It is to this we have to look for the
explanation of the frightful ravages of fevers during the cruises of
the time. A few weeks at sea even in European waters commonly made
the ships sickly. At the close of the century a long cruise at sea
was relied on to make them healthy. In the interval a great internal
revolution had been wrought in the navy, dating from about the end of
the War of the Austrian Succession, and carried on partly by Captain
Cook, partly by Dr. Gilbert Blane, who accompanied Rodney to the West
Indies in 1782, but caused originally by the influence on the naval
officers of the great revival of intelligent humanity in the country.