THE MUTINIES
AUTHORITIES.—In addition to the general histories and biographies
of officers named already, two pamphlets ought to be consulted
for the mutinies. _A Narrative of Occurrences which took
place during the Mutiny at the Nore in May and June 1797_, by
Rear-Admiral Charles Cunningham, 1829; and _The Natural Defence
of an Insular Empire_, by Admiral Phillip Paton, 1810.
The year of St. Vincent and Camperdown was also the year of the great
mutinies which mark a turning-point in the history of the navy. They
were the culmination of long-standing grievances caused by old evils.
If we could reconstruct a crew (supposing the thing to have been done
fairly and without beautifying), the spectacle would surprise, and
somewhat disenchant, the spectator. To do it fairly we must take not
a crack frigate commanded by a popular officer with a good reputation
for luck in prize-taking, but one of the ordinary vessels, liners or
less, which did the bulk of the heavy work of the old wars. If the
date chosen had been well on in any of our naval wars, and certainly
if it had been taken in the midst of the last and greatest, the
figures of wax or wood—which we suppose to be properly ticketed—would
tell a curious tale. It would be startling to see how many foreigners
there were, how many landsmen, how many boys, how many quota-men, and
state-the-case-men. The quota-men were those whom each county of the
United Kingdom was called upon at one period in the old war to supply
for the fleet. Of course they all came from the Cave of Adullam, and
were, in fact, the scamps of every neighbourhood, tempted by high
bounties. Their character is sufficiently well indicated by the fact
that Parker, who headed the mutiny at the Nore, was a quota-man from
Perth. The state-the-case-man is more complicated. As the press-gang
swept all fish into its net, a great many were seized who were, or
believed themselves to be, exempted. They were for ever appealing to
the Admiralty for release, and the Department kept writing to the
captains about them. For convenience, these letters were marked outside
“State the case.” Hence the expression a “state-the-case-man,” as
applied to the poor forced complaining creatures, of whom every captain
would have been delighted to get rid, if only he could have kept his
complement up without them. Of such material our crews were largely
formed in the most triumphant times; for the navy was not popular
with the real sailors, and least of all with the best. Although the
prime men who were the real nerve of a crew were supposed to form a
third only of the complement, they contributed more to the list of
deserters than the ordinary seamen, landsmen, boys, and marines put
together. Every ship carried a proportion of landsmen, who were not
expected to do real sailor’s work. This perversity of the seamen was a
sore grievance to officers. Admiral Cunningham, who was captain of the
frigate =Clyde= during the mutiny at the Nore, and wrote an account
of it, was very severe on them. He thought that they were as happy
as mortal sailor could expect to be. But they were of another way of
thinking.
This wrongheadedness of theirs, too, was an old story—as old as the
seventeenth century—and, in spite of Admiral Cunningham, was thoroughly
intelligible. It was a question of pay, both in amount and manner. As
far back as the reign of William III., Captain Saint-Lo put the whole
thing into a nutshell. The wages of A.B.’s were then 23s. a month for
a month of twenty-eight days, which is 25s. a month on the year. This
rate of pay remained unchanged, in spite of the fall in the value of
money, till the mutiny at Spithead scared Parliament into greater, but
still very measured, liberality. Now in Captain Saint-Lo’s time the
average wages of a good man in the merchant service during war were
50s. and 60s. a month. In the eighteenth century they were known to
go as high as £4. The men who manned the coal-ships in the North Sea
earned as much as £6, £7, or £8 the run. Here was a contrast which the
A.B. naturally perpended. But what had equal, or even greater, weight
with him was the reflection that, whereas a man in the merchant service
was sure of his money at the end of the voyage, the man-of-war’s man
could never know when he would be paid. Admiral Cunningham quoted
as one of the blessings of the sailors that the Admiralty had done
all human wisdom could do to see that each man got exactly his right
amount; but, unluckily, it was precisely the fatherly care of “My
Lords” which constituted the grievance. The treatment given to the
seamen had indeed been improved in the course of the eighteenth
century. In 1758, George Grenville, who was then Treasurer of the Navy,
persuaded Parliament to pass “an Act for the Encouragement of Seamen
employed in the Royal Navy; and for establishing a regular method
for the punctual, frequent, and certain payment of their wages; and
for enabling them more easily and readily to remit the same for the
support of their wives and families; and for preventing frauds and
abuses attending such payments.” But these fine promises of the title
of the Act were spoilt by many limitations. A man who volunteered was
to receive an advance of two months, and could assign part of his
pay for the support of his family. All men who had served for a year
and upwards were entitled to be paid the wages due to them (less a
deduction of six months, which was kept back as a guarantee against
desertion) whenever the ship they were in came into a home port where
there was a Commissioner of the Navy. But pressed men got no advance,
and none of the men were paid when serving abroad, or at a home port
other than a naval dockyard. The deduction of six months was calculated
in a way which the sailors complained of. Their wages were paid by
months of four weeks, but the deductions were made in calendar months.
In practice the men got their wages not in hard coin on board, but
in pay-tickets, which had to be presented at an office, and were
only cashed when all the red tape had been duly complied with. As a
ship’s commission in war-time might last four years, we can easily
imagine what this might mean for a man who had been pressed out of a
home-coming merchant-ship at the beginning of hostilities, and also
what it meant for his wretched wife and family. But even this was not
all. It frequently happened, when there was great need to keep fleets
at sea, that when a ship was “paid off” and her crew had received
their “tickets,” they were bodily turned over to a fresh ship, with
their paper money in their hands, and sent off on another four years’
cruise. Admiral Ekins, who wrote after the great war, when something
had been done for the men, says that he heard of a case of one who had
served fourteen years without touching a penny of actual pay. This
he gives as mere report; but he adds that, to his own knowledge, men
often served nine years without the receipt of wages. After that, one
understands what Nelson meant when he said that his heart was with
the men who mutinied at Spithead. After all, their main demands were
that their pay should be raised above the figure fixed in Charles
II.’s time, when money was worth twice what it was in 1797, and
that they should be paid whenever a ship returned to England—which
assuredly were moderate requests. The practical results of the old
system were horrible. For one thing, as the men had to buy their
clothes, they were actually reduced to nakedness and rags for want
of money. When a crew were turned over in the style described above,
the Jews (by race or occupation) were allowed on board. To them the
sailors sold their tickets at the price they were likely to get in a
forced market. On these occasions a certain latitude was allowed by
the humanity of officers. Liquor was winked at, and the “wives” of
the sailors were allowed on board. The scenes which followed on the
mess decks reproduced the animalism of the South Sea Islands without
the picturesqueness. But it was not only by the “Jews,” and on board,
that the unfortunate sailor was pillaged. William Hodges, who in 1695
made a pathetic representation of their grievances to Parliament,
draws a dreadful picture of the misery inflicted on the whole class
by the monstrous system on which they were paid. Hodges does not
measure his language, and was plainly one of those good men in whom
zeal for justice has eaten up moderation; but his statements are too
substantially in agreement with probability to be rejected. From
him we learn that when the sailors’ tickets were sent home to their
families to be cashed, the poor women were compelled to come up to
the pay office for their money, even from Scotland, and then if they
were ignorant of the forms to be complied with, or a “Q” (query) was
put against any name, which he declares was often done on frivolous
pretexts, they were put off, and had their journey for nothing. Of
course they sold the tickets to traders, who made a business of
speculating in them. Hodges takes great credit to himself for having
bought large quantities at the very moderate discount of half a crown
in the pound. It is probable that, allowing for all risks—stoppage of
deserters’ wages and Government delays—he did not make much profit.
Still, his boast shows that a sailor’s family was thought lucky if it
only lost 12·5 per cent. on his wages. Hodges may be believed when he
says that in one small precinct of London he found a thousand, besides
children, belonging to seamen’s families in absolute destitution.
There must have been a great fund of loyalty and discipline in England
in the eighteenth century; otherwise all this would not have been
endured for over a century by armed men, who again and again had the
country, apparently at least, at their mercy. It is noteworthy that it
was mainly against this that the fleet mutinied at Spithead. The Nore
business was the work of political agitators—quota-men, themselves
supported by quota-men. Little was said of the cat, which may, we
venture to think, be taken as evidence that the cat was never the
grievance it has been called. Admiral Cunningham asserts that the good
men considered it a protection against the bad. The grievance of the
pay, and the inhumanly long detention on shipboard, explains why the
real seamen, who knew how valuable they were to the merchant-skipper,
avoided the navy as much as they could. It is said by Admiral Ekins
that, when Captain Manley Dixon was commissioning a ship for the
Mediterranean, his crew was made up by men turned over from a ship
which had just come home. A body of them came to him to represent
that they had not been ashore for nine years, and to ask that, if he
could, the captain would give them a run. Manley Dixon gave them his
promise that he would, and kept it; nor had he any cause to regret his
humanity. Captains of this stamp did much to alleviate the hardship
of the system, but it sufficiently explains the straits to which we
were driven to get good men. They were, indeed, extreme. Prisoners of
war, smugglers, debtors, boys, old men, convicts, anything that could
stand on two legs—all were taken. When Manley Dixon himself laid the
=Lion= across the bows of the _Guillaume Tell_ outside of Malta, he
was not only short-handed, but the large majority of his crew were
boys—which explains why he did not allow himself to be boarded by the
Frenchman, who had some two thousand seasoned fighters on board. There
is an absolutely comic story told of Sir Home Popham, who was going on
a foreign station as Admiral. He complained to the Admiralty that his
crew were mere boys. In reply, he was told that his books showed that
he had received his due proportion of A.B.’s—which is, by the way,
a pleasing illustration of the trustworthiness of official papers.
Popham was not to be fobbed off in this style. He weighed his crew,
and found that they averaged under jockey-weight. Then the Admiralty
did scrape together a hundred grown men for him. A crew of boys with
a stiffening of seasoned seamen was not unpopular with captains, for
it was active and amenable to discipline. The convicts were another
story, yet even with them something could be done. It is said by Ekins
that one captain received a batch of fifty at once. He called them aft,
and made them a pregnant speech. He said that he knew their record,
but was resolved to consider them as men of fair character, subject to
this one proviso—if any of them misbehaved, he was to be punished twice
as severely as another man. It was noted that the convicts generally
behaved particularly well, and no doubt came back reformed characters.
Perhaps it may be said that this is not only a disenchanting picture,
but that it starts the question how, with such materials, we contrived
to do so well? To this question several answers may be made. The human
animal, even when he is a quota-man, state-the-case-man, or convict,
is indefinitely improvable by discipline, particularly when it can
be promptly and efficaciously enforced by the cat. Our discipline
was good, and the cat was not, as a rule, abused; such officers as
Pigot and Corbet being, in spite of foolish talk to the contrary, the
exception and not the rule. Then there was always a proportion of men
who preferred the order of the navy, and its life of adventure, to
the pay of the merchant service. These seasoned the lump. Then there
was the captain, with his harsh standard of efficiency and his nearly
absolute power, to keep everybody up to the mark. We had an admirable
cadre of officers, and under them a good body of warrant officers.
They, with a proportion of really fine seamen, and the steady corps of
marines, supplied a mould so strong and so admirably built that a great
deal of inferior material could be run into it without too much risk.
It was impossible that discontent should not be rife, and its existence
was shown by the mutinies in individual ships which occurred during
the American rebellion. They were generally hushed up, and quieted
by concessions to the mutineers; but there was no general removal of
grievances. With the outbreak of the Revolutionary war the grievances
of the men were renewed and intensified. The press needed to supply
the immense fleets then armed was severe. A rise of thirty per cent.
in the price of all necessaries reduced the already inadequate pay to
a starvation level. Minor grievances were more keenly felt because of
the increase in the great one. It was the custom of the Admiralty to
give the men only fourteen ounces for a pound in their rations, in
order to prevent what was called leakage of stores. The medical stores
were insufficient and bad; indeed, the whole medical department was
ignorant and corrupt. The Greenwich Hospital pension was only £7, as
compared with the £13 given at Chelsea. Then, too, the experiments of
Captain Cook, and the reforms in diet by which Blane kept Rodney’s
fleet in the West Indies in perfect health, had taught the sailors that
fresh vegetables were an effectual protection against scurvy. Yet the
Admiralty persisted in serving out flour to the squadrons when they
were in harbour in England. The seamen felt—and they would have been
made of strange flesh and blood if they had not felt—bitterly aggrieved
that they, who were necessarily exposed to great hardships for the
defence of their country, should also be unnecessarily subjected to
a loathsome disease for want of what the Admiralty could easily have
supplied. Here, then, were all the elements of mutiny. Legitimate
discontent among the men, felt most keenly by the prime seamen, who
exercised a great influence over their less skilful comrades, but
also felt by the ordinary seamen, landsmen, and marines; and at
the Admiralty an authority which was obstinate in neglecting real
grievances, and had shown itself weak in dealing with insubordination
in the last war. It was certain that as soon as a general combination
could be formed—always a difficult thing to do among ships on active
service—there would be an outbreak. Admiral Patton had predicted one as
far back as ’92.
In the winter of 1796 a combination was formed in the Channel fleet
then cruising off Brest under Bridport. It seems to have been confined
to the prime seamen, who calculated, rightly, as it turned out, that
their comrades would follow their lead. Four anonymous petitions
were sent to Howe—“Black Dick,” as the sailors called him—who had
been compelled by gout to resign the command of the Channel fleet,
and was recruiting at Bath. Howe sent them to the Admiralty, which,
finding them in the same handwriting, dismissed them as the work of
an “ill-intentioned person,” and of no importance. This neglect was
taken by the men as a proof that even Howe, who was very popular with
them, could or would do nothing for them. They decided to act, and
the opportunity came when Bridport anchored at Spithead in the early
spring of 1797. It was known that the fleet would go to sea on the 16th
of April, and the men were resolved that the order to weigh should
not be obeyed till their grievances were redressed. By some means,
which have never been revealed, news of this decision was given to
Captain Patton of the Transport Office at Portsmouth on the 12th, and
by him carried to the Port-Admiral, who at once forwarded it to London
by semaphore. The Admiralty recognised the gravity of the danger at
last, but could think of no way of dealing with it except to order the
fleet to sea at once. Bridport hoisted his signal accordingly, but the
men were ready with their plan and their determination. They manned
the yards with cheers, hoisted the red flag—which was the recognised
signal for battle—at the main, and took the command out of the hands
of the officers. There are some features of this mutiny which are
altogether exceptional. No man’s name is associated with it as leader;
it was absolutely unanimous, the marines joining eagerly with the
sailors; no officer was hurt; the admiral’s flag was not hauled down;
the discipline of the ships went on as before—so much so that some
bad characters, who took the opportunity to get drunk, were soundly
flogged by their own comrades; but the crews would not get up anchor.
A committee of thirty men—two delegates from each ship—was appointed
to state their grievances to the king and both Houses of Parliament.
It met in the cabin of Howe’s old flagship, the =Queen Charlotte=,
and there drew up its petitions. They are excellently worded, quite
free from bombast, and contain only a demand—firmly enough made, to
be sure—that the pay of the A.B.’s might be raised to a shilling a
day, and that of all others in proportion; that their grievances as to
pension and rations should be removed, and that reasonable leave should
be given to men in home ports to see their families. The delegates also
insisted on a free pardon from the king, to be given in all the forms.
The devil in whom it had refused to believe being now raised, the
Admiralty behaved after the unchanging pattern of authorities, who
are obstinate when they might have yielded with credit. It became
frightened. The position was, indeed, a dangerous one enough; for,
though little memory of the fact remains, the spirit of the army was
not much better than that of the fleet. The military pay had also
remained stationary since the reign of Charles II., and in 1797 there
was a serious danger that the garrisons near London would break out as
the sailors had done. Fortunately, the Duke of York used his influence
with success. The War Office was induced to be wise in time, and
military discipline was saved from the shock of forced concessions
to mutineers. There being no Duke of York to speak for the sailors,
things had been allowed to drift to the pass they had now reached. By
this time it was clear that the whole fleet was discontented. In the
circumstances the use of force was perhaps impossible. There remained
the alternative of instant, frank, and unreserved compliance with
demands which, after all, were very moderate. Concession ought to have
been the easier because it was universally felt in the country that the
men were only asking for what should have been spontaneously granted at
the outbreak of the war. The Admiralty took the weak man’s favourite
middle course, which combines all the evils of the other two, and
misses the good in them. The Board went down to Portsmouth and began
to negotiate with the delegates. It showed a distinct tendency to make
scapegoats of the subordinate officers, but refused for days to promise
the rise of pay. The result of this line of action hardly needs to be
told. The delegates refused to abate a jot of their demands. They even
increased them by adding a demand that the grievances of particular
ships should be corrected—in other words, that officers accused of
tyrannical conduct should be dismissed. After ten days of useless
talk, “My Lords” surrendered at discretion, promised everything,
and took themselves off, having done their best to consolidate the
power of the delegates, and not a little to weaken still further the
authority of the officers. The red flag was hauled down, the Committee
was dissolved, everything appeared to have returned to the old order,
and the mutiny to be at an end. It was promised that the fleet should
not go to sea till the House of Commons had voted the money for the
increase of pay, and the king’s proclamation of pardon was published.
Though it appeared difficult for the Admiralty to add to the blunders
it had already committed, it contrived to do so. Some delay took place
in the publication of the king’s proclamation, and the introduction of
the vote for the wages in the House of Commons. As days passed, and
nothing was heard of the proclamation or of the vote, the suspicions
of the men were aroused. They knew the danger in which they stood,
and began to fear that the Admiralty meant to cheat them. It was an
absurd enough suspicion, but a not unnatural one. The Admiralty ought
at least to have foreseen that it could only be removed by the utmost
promptitude and openness, since there was no power at hand to control
the fleet. Yet it kept silence, and delayed the execution of its
promises from day to day. At Spithead discipline seemed to be restored.
The bulk of the squadron moved round to St. Helens, leaving Colpoys’s
flagship, the =London=, and the =Marlborough= at Spithead. Whether
order would have remained unbroken is perhaps doubtful; but just at
this moment the Admiralty took a step which set the whole mutiny
flaming again. An order was sent down to the captains of ships which
was a masterpiece of folly. It began by instructing the officers to
be more careful in superintending the issue of stores to the men, and
then proceeded to give them a number of directions as to the course
to be taken for the preventing of future mutinies. The first part,
which by implication accused them of pilfering—a charge never made
by the delegates—caused profound indignation among the officers. The
second, of which the substance was immediately known to the crews,
converted their suspicions into certainty—and they instantly broke out
again. With this outburst began the second and distinctly criminal
stage of the great mutiny. Hitherto the conduct of the men had been as
innocent as the nature of the work they were doing permitted. Now they
were about to illustrate the universal tendency of all revolt against
authority to degenerate into sheer violence and rebellion.
This order was to be inserted in the general instructions between the
clauses providing for the reading of the articles of war and for the
rating of the ship’s company. Among other things, it directed the
captain to “see that the arms and ammunition belonging to the marines
be constantly kept in good order and fit for immediate service as well
in harbour as at sea.” At the end was a general direction to officers
to be ready “on the first appearance of mutiny to use the most vigorous
means to suppress it, and to bring the ringleaders to punishment.”
Hitherto the inspection of the marines’ arms had been left to the
marine officer. That a change should be made at this moment was not
unnaturally considered an ominous sign by the men. The purpose for
which it was made was clear enough to crews which were from the very
nature of the case in a state of “preternatural suspicion.” Neither the
arrival of the order nor its purport could be wholly concealed, though
the captains were as reserved as they possibly could be. Rumours leaked
out in an exaggerated form, and had the very worst effects on the minds
of the men, who were already angry at the apparent delay on the part
of Parliament to vote the money required to make good the promises of
the Admiralty. This delay was undoubtedly a mistake. Pitt, looking
too exclusively to the dignity of the Government, had decided that it
would be the more becoming course to grant the money by a silent vote.
As a mere matter of Parliamentary manners he was probably right;
but it argued a certain want of imagination on his part that he did
not realise the effect the silence of the House would produce on the
sailors. The necessary forms of business might have made it impossible
to bring the motion in sooner, but some notice might have been taken of
the petition of the sailors to the Commons. Pitt decided otherwise, the
Admiralty acted in its own injudicious way, and the mutiny broke out
again at St. Helens just two days before Parliament voted the £372,000
required to provide for the increase of pay.
The disturbance began in the =Duke=, a three-decker, which had been the
vessel immediately ahead of Rodney’s flagship in the line of battle in
the great battle off Dominica in 1782. The crew forced their way into
Captain Holloway’s cabin, and insisted on seeing the menacing Admiralty
order. Holloway had destroyed it, foreseeing the effect it was likely
to produce if made public. The crew were not to be stopped. They seized
Holloway, and sent a message to the admiral demanding a copy of the
order, with the threat that they would hang the captain or inflict “a
degrading punishment”—in other words, flog him—if it was not produced.
This was mutiny pure and simple, but Bridport was helpless, and the
order was given up. Of course, it was instantly sent round the fleet to
exasperate the prevailing ferment. This happened on the 5th or 6th of
May. On the 7th, Bridport, having heard that the French fleet at Brest
had dropped down to the outer harbour, hoisted the signal to proceed
to sea. Thereupon the scene of the previous 15th April was repeated.
The red flag was hoisted, ropes were reeved at the yardarm as a threat
to “traitors” who should fail to support their fellow-members of the
crews, and the officers were disarmed. The fleet was divided. The bulk
of it was at St. Helens, while Admiral Colpoys, with his flagship, the
=London=, and the =Marlborough= remained at Spithead. From the deck
of the =London= the coming and going of the boats among the ships at
St. Helens was distinctly visible. Judging rightly that the mutiny had
broken out afresh, Colpoys decided to make a fight for his authority.
He turned up his crew, and asked them whether they had any complaints
to make. They answered they had not. Whether Colpoys overrated the
meaning of the answer or not, he certainly decided to fight. The men
may only have meant that, unlike the crew of the =Marlborough=, who had
particular grievances, they had no complaint to make of their officers.
It did not follow that they were disposed to break away from the rest
of the squadron. The question was soon put to the test. Boats were
seen coming into Spithead from the ships at St. Helens. They could
only be bringing the delegates on their way to demand the adhesion of
the =London=. Colpoys at once paraded the marines on the quarter-deck,
stationed sentries at the sally-ports, and gave orders that the boats
were to be fired on if they insisted on coming alongside. Then he
ordered the sailors below. Some obeyed, but it was noted as a bad
sign that among those who went below were the three warrant-officers,
the boatswain, the gunner, and the carpenter. A portion of the crew,
including, as would appear, most of the real sailors, collected in a
group forward, and stood there facing the admiral, who remained with
his officers and the marines on the quarter-deck. The delegates came
alongside, and were warned off by the sentries. They then appealed
to the crew, and with effect, for the men in the forecastle began
to stir, and some of them started to unlash one of the forward guns
and train it on the quarter-deck. Bover, the first lieutenant of the
=London=, threatened to fire if they did not desist. Some of the men
were cowed, but one of them, made of stouter and more dangerous stuff,
dared the lieutenant to fire. Bover took him at his word, fired, and
shot him dead. If the crew had been really wavering and the marines
steady, this act of vigour would probably have quelled the mutiny.
But, in the spirit they were in, it had a directly contrary effect.
The whole crew broke out at once. The men forward rushed aft; those
below rushed on deck; the marines broke from their ranks and mingled
with the sailors. As might be expected in such a scene, different
accounts were given of what happened. There was certainly a fight,
in which several of the mutineers, a midshipman, and the officer of
marines were more or less severely wounded. As a matter of course, the
officers were soon overpowered. It is extraordinary that no harm was
done to Colpoys himself. He attributed his escape to the fact that
he faced the mutineers all through. They seem to have preserved some
respect for him personally. According to one story, a mutineer who
called him “a d——d b——y rascal” was silenced by his fellows with the
threat of being thrown overboard; and another, who aimed a musket at
him through a grating, had his weapon knocked out of his hands. But
the men appeared determined to go to all lengths against Bover. He was
dragged to the forecastle, and a rope prepared to hang him at the yard
arm. The noose was actually round his neck, when Colpoys manfully came
forward and declared that the lieutenant had acted by his orders. It
shows how strong the tradition of discipline was among the crews still,
that this was accepted as a justification. One of the topmen is also
said to have appealed to the mutineers to spare Bover because “he was a
brave boy.” The admiral and the topman contrived between them to save
his life. Of course the =London= now joined the other ships, and the
=Marlborough= with her. Colpoys and Bover were, after some discussion
whether they should not be tried on board, sent on shore for trial. The
coroner’s jury which sat on the mutineer found a verdict of justifiable
homicide. The wounded midshipman and marine officer were carried to
Haslar, but the sick and wounded seamen in the hospital showed such a
savage determination to do them a damage that the authorities found it
necessary to transfer them to a private house.
This second phase of the mutiny lasted from the 7th to the 15th of May,
and was in all ways worse than the first. Many of the officers were
set on shore by the men, and among them, Admiral Alan Gardner, who
had, idly enough, drawn his sword on the delegates in the cabin of the
=Queen Charlotte= during the first stage of the mutiny. It is said that
when told that a cutter was manned to take him on shore, he replied
that he should at least be allowed his barge, and that the barge was
allowed him. When the news of the mutiny reached London, the Admiralty
had recourse to the officer to whom it might well have appealed at the
beginning. It sent Howe down on the 10th with the Act just passed by
Parliament for the increase of pay, and the king’s pardon. It was the
admiral’s last piece of service, and a more disagreeable one could
hardly have been found, for he had in fact to notify the surrender of
Government to the mutineers. It was a duty, however, which he could not
possibly refuse, for there were no means of coercing the men, and they
would apparently not be convinced that no deceit was intended except
on the word of “Black Dick.” Howe did the work in his usual solid way.
He met the delegates on board the =Queen Charlotte=, and persuaded
them to promise that the fleet should return to duty. The promise was
kept. The squadron went to sea at once, and there was an end of what
is commonly called the mutiny at Spithead, but was in fact the double
mutiny at Spithead and St. Helens. If the disorder had ended here, the
movement would have stood altogether alone among military seditions.
Certainly no body of mutinous men was ever provoked by more genuine
grievances, and none ever behaved with greater moderation on the whole.
But it was not in the nature of things that it could stop here. The
men had tasted the pleasure of defying authority, which is of itself
corrupting. During the second outbreak they objected by name to over a
hundred officers of all ranks from Colpoys down to two masters-at-arms.
All these officers were left on shore when the squadron put to sea.
The Admiralty did not try them, and it did keep them on full pay; but
it did not restore them to their ships. This was, of course, a very
bad example, and could only serve to convince all crews that they
could get rid of any officer they pleased. If the prime seamen had
preserved their influence throughout the fleet, the agitation might
have died quietly. But these men soon made the discovery commonly made
by any class which has headed a revolt against one above. It had set
an example to those below. In the Channel, where the quality of the
crews appears to have been above the average, there was no more open
disorder, though the mutinous feeling continued to require watching. On
other stations, where the quota-men and the convict element were more
fully represented, the example set at Spithead was followed, and this
time the leaders were seditious agitators of the stamp of Parker and
Bott.
The end of the mutiny at St. Helens overlapped the beginning of the
mutiny at the Nore. This more criminal movement began on the 12th May,
three days before Howe received the submission of the delegates of the
Channel fleet. At that date the North Sea squadron was at sea, under
command of Admiral Duncan, watching the coast of Holland. There were at
the Little Nore some half-score frigates and small vessels, together
with two 64-gun ships—the =Inflexible=, commanded by Captain Ferris,
and the =Director=, commanded by Captain Bligh. This was the Bligh of
the =Bounty=, he who was afterwards deposed from his governorship of
New South Wales by Major Johnston of the 102nd Foot. It would have
been strange if there had been mutiny to the fore, and he not there.
The flagship of Buckner, the Port-Admiral, was the =Sandwich=, 90,
which was not armed for sea-service, having only her upper-deck guns
on board. She was, however, full of men, and of prime seamen. For fear
that they would desert, these men were not allowed on shore. Buckner,
who wished to preserve them for Duncan, would not even give them to
the frigate captains who applied for some of them by name to fill the
petty officers’ berths. We can understand that there was much sulky
indignation among them, and that the news of the outbreak at Spithead,
which filtered in, set up some ferment on the flagship’s lower deck.
There was a man on board her who was admirably fitted, by training and
character, to turn discontent into mutiny. In France, as it had been
four years earlier, this man would probably have played a considerable
part. By us he is only remembered as Richard Parker the Mutineer, who
ended his life at the yardarm of the =Sandwich=. He was the son of a
tradesman at Exeter, and he began life in the position of a gentleman,
as midshipman on board the =Culloden= in 1786. He was discharged from
her, and then from the =Leander=, for immoral conduct, and for setting
a bad example to his messmates. In 1793, when he had finished his time
as midshipman and was rated mate, he was broken by court martial for
insubordination, was sent before the mast, and thence invalided into
hospital. For a space he disappeared. When he reappeared, he was in
prison for debt at Edinburgh. He had married, and had attempted the
trade of schoolmaster. To escape from prison, he took the bounty, and
came into the navy again as quota-man from Perth. He had only been
drafted to the =Sandwich= six weeks before the mutiny broke out. This
is not unlike the early career of many heroes of the French Revolution.
Whether Parker belonged to one of our native revolutionary societies
of the time is not certain. It was afterwards asserted that he did,
and was sent on board as being, from his training, a likely person to
foment a mutiny. This, however, is so much the kind of story which
would be told that it cannot be accepted as evidence. On the other
hand, it is not intrinsically improbable. He himself had the grace
to “die game,” and without betraying his associates on shore, if he
had any. All we can be sure of is, that he was very much the stamp of
man who did belong to Jacobin societies, and that his training had
qualified him admirably for the part he played. On board the ships at
the Nore he had to his hand plenty of the kind of material which the
demagogue loves. The London police had been in the habit of sending
its criminals on board for some time, and among them undoubtedly were
members of the Corresponding Society and United Irishmen. Men of a
better stamp felt the common grievances, and there was a feeling among
them—very wrong-headed, but not wholly base—that it would be mean in
them not to back up their fellow-seamen at Spithead.
That Parker had been active in fomenting the mutiny is clear from
the fact that he appears as leader from the very beginning. It broke
out on the =Sandwich= while most of the captains were on board the
=Inflexible=, attending a court martial on a Captain Savage. As had
been the case at Spithead, no violence was done to the officers. In the
course of the day an incident happened which showed the difference of
the two movements. The =San Fiorenzo= frigate arrived from Portsmouth.
The mutineers cheered her as she came in, believing perhaps that she
came to ask her help for the Channel fleet. But the =San Fiorenzo= was
a loyal ship. Her captain, Sir Harry Burrard Neale, seeing from the
look of the ships at the Little Nore that something must be wrong, gave
orders that the cheers should not be answered. This was a bad sign for
the mutineer leaders, and in the course of the day they learnt that
the crew of the =Clyde= frigate, commanded by Captain Cunningham, was
also loyal and would obey their officers. This was a warning to Parker
and his associates of the dangerous nature of the game they were
playing. Their one chance of success was the unanimity of the fleet;
but they had gone too far to go back now. It was decided to coerce the
recalcitrant ships. On the 13th the =Inflexible= ranged up alongside
the =San Fiorenzo=, and threatened to fire into her if the crew did
not cheer. With the consent of Captain Neale, the sign of adhesion was
given. It is one of the comic incidents of the mutiny that, when the
men took the command from Captain Ferris, they rated him midshipman to
show that there was no ill-feeling. A similar course was taken with the
=Clyde=. But though these ships were forced to appear to join, and to
accompany the mutineers when they went out from the Little Nore to the
Nore, they remained loyal to their officers. The men of the =Clyde=
did so far show themselves mutinous as to insist on getting rid of the
doctor and the sergeant of marines. The latter was, perhaps, a bully,
and the medical department was, as we have said before, exceptionally
and intensely unpopular among the men. Cunningham would have stood
by his officer; but the doctor became frightened, and begged to be
allowed to go. The sergeant of marines was discharged regularly to
save appearances, and replaced by a man appointed in the ordinary way.
The conduct of the men of the =Clyde= and the =San Fiorenzo= is worth
noting, because it shows what it was that finally brought about the
ruin of the mutineers. This fleet was not unanimous. These two vessels
were forced into the mutiny against their will, and on board all the
other vessels there was a loyal minority. The daily proceedings on
board were not noted with detail on the logs, for good reasons; but it
is known that on several vessels there were officers who defied the
mutineers all through and withstood Parker to his face; yet they were
protected from outrage by a minority of the men.
There were two stages in the mutiny at the Nore. The first lasted
from the 15th to the 31st of May. During this period the only ships
engaged were those already mentioned. On the 31st vessels began to
drop in from the North Sea, and they continued to come till the 6th
June. These were the ships which aroused the intense indignation of
the whole country by first deserting their admiral in the presence of
the enemy in the Texel, and then attempting to blockade the Thames.
During the first fortnight the mutinous ships moved out to the Nore,
dragging the reluctant =Clyde= and =San Fiorenzo= with them. The red
flag was hoisted, and Admiral Buckner’s flag was hauled down. Day after
day Parker with his committee of delegates and a mob of mutineers
several hundred strong landed at Chatham and paraded the streets with
red banners. Buckner was helpless. The only garrison in the town was
a handful of invalids, and they, it was noted, began, “when elevated
with drink,” to express the intention to appoint delegates of their
own and to demonstrate for themselves. Parker was abundantly insolent
to Buckner personally, but, on the whole, there was no great violence
shown. A committee from the fleet visited the hospital, and used such
strong language that the assistant-surgeon, a certain Mr. Safferay,
committed suicide in a fit of terror by shooting himself. The boatswain
of the =Proserpine=, who had made himself hateful to the men, was
seized and dragged off to the =Sandwich= to be hanged. But he pleaded
the orders of his superiors, and, strange to say, the excuse was
accepted, as it had been in the case of Lieutenant Bover. The mutineers
did not, however, let the boatswain off altogether. They paraded him
round the fleet with two large swabs tied to his shoulders and a rope
round his neck, while a boatful of drummer boys beat the rogue’s
march. There was as yet more vacant horseplay and noise than violence
among the mutineers. So little did the crews appear to be in earnest
that they allowed eight days to pass before they presented their
list of demands. When it was handed in, it was found to begin with a
superfluous demand that, whatever had been given to ships at Spithead
should be given to those at the Nore, and then to contain a demand that
a ship’s company should have a right to object to an officer, and that
the articles of war should be revised. It was now becoming clear that
there must be no paltering with this mutiny. Lord Spencer, the First
Lord, with his colleagues, Lord Allan and Admiral Young, came down to
Chatham with an offer of pardon to those who would return to duty at
once, but resolved to direct resolute measures against the disorderly
ships. The militia was called out, and steps taken to put Chatham in a
state of defence. An attempt to bring the men to reason quietly was
made on the 28th May, when the king’s proclamation of pardon was read
on all the ships. It was not without effect. On the =Brilliant=, at
least, the mutinous party only kept the upper hand with difficulty.
Throughout the fleet the loyal minority was encouraged, and some of
the mutineers shaken. Parker did not improve his popularity by causing
one of the sailors of the =Brilliant= to be ducked for speaking
disrespectfully of the delegates. Still the mutineers kept possession
of the squadron. The first serious blow was given them by the escape
of the =Clyde= and the =San Fiorenzo=. Cunningham and Neale decided to
make a push for freedom, and would have done it sooner if they had not
had hopes of bringing off the =Director=. Cunningham was sure of his
own men, who had refused to put him on shore, though Parker came with
the demand himself, and had stood at quarters all through the night of
the 28th with the guns cast loose, expecting every moment to be fired
into. On the 29th, Cunningham took an opportunity while the ships were
swinging in the tide, so that he was not actually under the guns of a
mutinous ship. He cut his cables and made a dash for Sheerness. The
mutineers fired on him as soon as their guns would bear, but he escaped
serious damage, and after tacking twice, contrived to turn into safe
anchorage under the guns of the forts. Sir Harry Neale was less lucky.
A pilot, who had been smuggled on board the =San Fiorenzo= through the
mutineers’ guard-boats, cut his cable too soon, and she cast the wrong
way. There was nothing for it but to run through the mutinous ships,
which Sir Harry did successfully, though fired into right and left.
The =San Fiorenzo= was carried over to the coast of Essex, and thence
to Portsmouth. On her way out she sighted the first of the ships which
had deserted Duncan standing into the Thames with the red flag flying.
Neale kept the red flag up himself as long as he was in any danger, and
then went on to Spithead, where he arrived not only safely, but with a
French privateer, which he picked up on his way down.
The desertion of Duncan by his squadron was the culmination of the
great mutiny. It was also the event which proved to the country and to
the better stamp of men throughout the fleet what the consequences of
insubordination inevitably are. None were made more indignant by it
than the crews in the Channel, who refused to have any dealings with
Parker, and even volunteered to assist in reducing the mutineers to
order. News travelled slowly in those times, and it is probable that
the crews in the North Sea had only a very vague notion of what had
been the end of the Spithead outbreak; but they did know that there was
a Dutch force in the Texel getting ready for an invasion of England,
and they did their best to leave it an open road. As might be expected,
the conduct of these men was throughout wanting in the moderation shown
at Spithead. Among the demands which they made was one that in future
a common sailor should be a member of every court martial by which a
foremast man was tried. The revolutionary flavour of that demand was
beyond dispute. When the ships actually reached the Nore, some of their
crews not only committed acts of savage violence on officers, but were
guilty of downright piracy.
The trouble in Duncan’s ships began in Yarmouth Roads on the 27th of
May, the day before the =Clyde= cut her cable and ran for Sheerness.
On that day the crew of the =Venerable=, 74, the flagship, who are
said to have been instigated by Parker, and who must in any case have
known what was happening at the Nore, ran into the rigging and began
cheering in a disorderly manner. They had to deal with a body of
officers who were not to be trifled with. Duncan called the marines
under arms, and sent his officers among the men with orders to bring
them down. The order was obeyed, and the men mustered in the waist.
Then the admiral gave them a little address, the point of which was
that he would go all lengths before he would allow the command of the
ship to be taken out of his hands. When one of the men cried out that
this was precisely what they meant to do, the admiral drew sword on
him, and would have cut him down if his arm had not been held by the
chaplain. Then he ordered all who meant to stand by their officers to
go over to the starboard side, and was instantly obeyed by all the
crew except six. These six were at once put in irons in the wardroom.
They were, obviously, entirely surprised by the turn their adventure
had taken, and sent a humble message begging for pardon. Duncan, with
what would have been weakness in another man, forgave them. It was not
credible that the crew of the =Venerable= was the only one infected by
the mutinous spirit, and the admiral called on his captains to report
whether they had seen any sign of disaffection among their men. With
the single exception of Captain Hotham, of the =Adamant=, 50, they
replied that they had seen none. Duncan went on board the =Adamant=
and mustered the crew. There was a repetition of the scene on the
=Venerable’s= deck; one of the crew of the =Adamant= told the admiral
that they meant to dispute his authority. Duncan was, as his pictures
remain to prove, a man of great height, and his physical strength was
immense. He seized the impudent fellow, and swung him over the side of
the ship. Then, holding him suspended by one hand, he asked the crew to
look at this fellow who dared to dispute his authority. The Adamants
cheered with delight, and no more was heard of their discontent. For a
moment it appeared as if the admiral’s personal influence would keep
his whole squadron steady; but the appearance was delusive. On the 29th
May he ordered his ships to sea, and they stood out; but no sooner
were they clear of the shoals off Yarmouth than all of them which had
been declared to be trustworthy deserted him, leaving him only his own
flagship and the =Adamant=, on which he had already faced and disarmed
the mutiny. Duncan’s further conduct is famous in our naval history.
He took the =Venerable= and the =Adamant= over to the Texel. There he
remained through the summer, announcing his intention to fight the
Dutch if they came out, and go down with the flag flying. As he had his
two crews now well in hand, it is credible that, if the enemy had put
to sea, our naval history would have included another last fight of the
=Revenge=.
The rest of the squadron now went off in detachments to the Nore, to
the number of ten or a dozen line-of-battle ships and frigates. On
board some of them, at least, disgraceful weakness was shown by the
officers. No one, perhaps, has the right to sneer at the commander who
quails before unanimous and violent mutiny, unless he has himself faced
that most dreadful of military dangers. But there is no excuse for
an officer who shrinks from doing his duty when a part of his command
is ready and even eager to support him. According to Brenton, who was
then one of his lieutenants, Captain Fancourt, of the =Agamemnon=,
was guilty of this weakness. He yielded to his crew at once, and not
only so, but when he was told by some of the petty officers, who sent
the message through Brenton, that, if he would order the marines to
act, a large part of the sailors would stand by him, he deliberately
refused, on the ground that there would be a fight, and that he could
not bear to see his poor men “writhing on the deck.” As was only
natural, no captain in the squadron was treated with more absolute
contempt by the mutineers than Fancourt. By the 6th of June the North
Sea ships had assembled at the Nore. Their arrival revived the spirit
of Parker and his associates, which had been greatly shaken by the
escape of the =Clyde= and the =San Fiorenzo=, and then further damped
by the subsequent escape of the =Serapis= and the =Discovery=, armed
transports, which succeeded in following the example set by the
frigates. The news, too, from the shore was very bad; but the leaders
still hoped to cow the country. A blockade of the river was ordered,
and the trade stopped. Parker still professed great loyalty. The
feasts on the Restoration Day, 29th of May, and the King’s Birthday,
the 4th of June, were observed with all the usual forms. On the 4th
of June, Parker sent on shore for the chaplain of the =Sandwich= to
preach the Birthday sermon. The chaplain, whose name was Hatherall,
came, and he had the courage to choose for his text Job xxvii. 5—“God
forbid that I should justify you; till I die I will not remove mine
integrity from me”—and to preach a loyal sermon on it. To the credit
of the men, he was allowed to land unhurt. Other incidents of these
days were not equally creditable. The surgeon of one ship was tarred
and feathered. Brenton, who does not give the names, says that this man
had been drunk in his cabin for five weeks, and he half excuses the
act as one of “wild justice.” On the =Monmouth=, whose captain, Lord
Northesk, afterwards third in command at Trafalgar, disliked the use
of the cat, the men flogged the second master, two masters’ mates, a
midshipman, and a sergeant of marines. They then shaved their heads,
and turned them ashore. Parties landed from the ships and plundered
the farmhouses. Trading vessels were overhauled and pillaged. In fact,
the fleet was rapidly drifting into mere piracy. Meanwhile the anger on
shore was growing daily. Troops and volunteers poured into Sheerness.
The forts at the mouth of the Thames were supplied with furnaces for
heating shot. Some vessels in the Long Reach were manned and got ready
for service. The whole body of merchant seamen, who were threatened by
the blockade of the Thames, were eager to serve against the mutineers.
On the 6th of June Parliament passed the Act for preventing the
seduction of sailors or soldiers, which made all communication with the
mutineers an indictable offence.
This Act really broke the backbone of the mutiny. It showed the men
that the country was not to be cowed. The timid or more moderate were
frightened, and those who had committed themselves too far began to
clamour for desperate courses. Parker talked of taking the ships over
to Holland, and surrendering them to the enemy. Whether, even if he
had induced the squadron to follow him, he could have got off is very
doubtful. Lord Keith, who had arrived a few days before to take command
of the naval operations against the mutineers, had removed the beacons
and buoys from the Swin and other shallows at the mouth of the Thames,
for the express purpose of cutting off their retreat. Without pilots,
whom they could not obtain, they could hardly have got the ships out.
But there was no inclination on the part of the men to follow Parker
they knew not where. He himself obviously felt that the game was going
against him, but an air of defiance was kept up painfully enough. Lord
Northesk was “ordered” on shore with a statement of grievances to be
given to the king. On the 7th the effigies of “Billy Pitt” and “Dundas”
were hung at the yardarm. Parker went round the fleet reading extracts
from what he called the king’s “foolish” proclamation, with seditious
comments; but on board the =Ardent=, 74, he was openly rebuked by a
Lieutenant Wardour for garbling it, and enough men stood by the officer
to save him from retaliation. In fact, the dislike of all Englishmen
for an upstart was beginning to tell against the mutineer leader. He
was openly jeered at as a “pretty admiral of the fleet.” It does
not appear that Parker ever called himself by this title, and the
story that he proclaimed a “floating republic” is a myth; but he did
exercise authority, and it soon became offensive. On the 10th June the
first-fruits of the combined disgust, fear, and repentance of the men
was seen in the escape of the =Leopard=. The captain had been landed,
but one lieutenant at least remained on board, with some subordinate
officers. This officer, whose name was Robb, learnt that he would find
support if he attempted to retake the ship. During the night of the 9th
June, he, with the help of some masters, mates, and midshipmen, trained
two of the wardroom guns forward and loaded them with grape-shot. Next
morning, when the tide was flowing, and therefore able to carry the
ship up the river, he threw open the door and unmasked his battery.
Then, leaving trusty men by the guns with orders to sweep the deck, if
necessary, he rushed out and ordered the mutineers to surrender. There
was a fight, but in the end Robb and his fellow-officers contrived to
cut the cable, to get enough sail set to give the =Leopard= steerage
way, and to carry her off, fighting fiercely all the time with those
of the mutineers who refused to submit. He brought her up the Thames
with the remnant of the mutineers under hatches. The =Repulse=, 64,
followed. Her crew spontaneously replaced the officers in command. She
ran on the Nore Sand and lay under the fire of the mutineers for an
hour and a half, but was at last got off, and carried into Sheerness.
From that moment till the final surrender of the =Sandwich=, one
vessel after another either cut and ran, or merely hauled down the
red flag and hoisted the blue—which the sailors called the “signal of
agreeableness.” On board the =Standard= the leader of the mutineers,
whose name, “strangely enough,” says Captain Cunningham, was William
Wallace, shot himself when he saw the game was up. A few of the more
desperate men seized a smack and fled across the North Sea. They ran
her ashore on the coast of Holland. Parker himself, whether from
irresolution or from what in a better man one might call magnanimity,
did not attempt to escape. He was surrendered by his messmates of the
=Sandwich=, and, as we have said, met his death at the fore-yardarm
like a man, having written the proper sort of letter to his wife,
expressed due contrition for his offences, and asked, as the leader
of an unsuccessful rebellion should, that his life might be accepted
as sufficient sacrifice. If it was all, or even partly, affectation,
at least it was the affectation of a man who knew the becoming thing
to do. There were in all eighteen mutineers executed, of whom four
were marines. The total number of men condemned to death was nearly
forty; but the Government was not disposed to be more severe than it
could help. When Duncan, at the head of a fleet consisting almost
wholly of ships which had been in the mutiny, gained the battle of
Camperdown, the king was advised to publish a general pardon. It was
long before the discipline of the navy wholly recovered the shock it
had received; but the great mutiny was over, and the State could afford
to be generous without fear that its generosity would be mistaken for
weakness.
The grievances of the men being universal, the conditions which led to
insubordination were found everywhere more or less. As the Government
in its dire need of men had gone so far as to send such known rebels
as United Irishmen into the crews of some of its ships—particularly
into those which had their headquarters at Beerhaven and to some of
the vessels with Jervis—there was no lack of agitators ready to profit
by the unrest of their comrades. Something, too, must be allowed for
the force of example. Men mutinied on one station when they heard of
a mutiny elsewhere. It was the report from Spithead which started the
outbreak at the Nore. It was the arrival of the =Alcmene= frigate from
the Nore which set going the ferment in Jervis’s squadron. The fatal
result of all successful insubordination is that it sets the worser
kind of man arguing that, if so much has been extorted already, more
can be obtained by the same method. Therefore spasmodic outbreaks
continued for a time to occur at home and abroad as the fire spread.
Some were of little importance, and may be briefly dismissed. Among
them was the insubordination at Plymouth which followed the mutiny
at the Nore. Lord Keith had been sent there from Sheerness when the
last of Parker’s followers surrendered. He was to hoist his flag in
the =Queen Charlotte= as second in command of the Channel fleet. The
outbreak was a comparatively slight one, and Keith quelled it by
firmness and tact. In October, so soon as the news began to arrive
from home, a very serious mutiny took place among the ships at the
Cape. This was suppressed mainly by the firmness of the governor, Lord
Macartney, and of Dundas, the general in command. They threatened to
sink the ships, which were few in number and were lying under the guns
of the forts. To this threat the men surrendered. Several of the more
active leaders were hanged or flogged.
The most dangerous and the best known aftermath of the great convulsion
at home was the so-called mutiny off Cadiz. The movement never went
beyond partial disorder and treasonable threats in individual ships.
Still, in view of Duncan’s experience at Yarmouth, it would be rash
to assert that if firmness and promptitude had not been shown, a part
at least of the Mediterranean fleet would not have broken away. It
does not appear that Jervis had cause to distrust the ships which had
fought under him on the 14th February, but as the summer wore on the
Government began to reinforce him. Not unnaturally, it selected for
this service such ships as it preferred to employ at a distance—namely,
those which had been conspicuous in the Spithead mutiny, or had been
noted for bad conduct in the squadron serving under Curtis on the
coast of Ireland. These ships were swarming with United Irishmen,
who formed a large proportion of the eleven to twelve thousand Irish
in the fleet. In Jervis’s own squadron the marines had been largely
recruited among Erse-speaking Irishmen. The admiral was early informed
of what had happened in the Channel, and took his measures with vigour.
All visiting from ship to ship was stopped, even the captains being
forbidden to ask one another to dinner. The marines were quartered
apart from the sailors, and the speaking of Irish was forbidden.
Jervis took the wise and bold course. He made no attempt to conceal
the news of the mutiny at home from his men. When the letter-bags were
found to contain circulars, written in a fair hand, inciting the crews
to mutiny, he ordered them to be delivered. He trusted to his own
vigilance and to the wholesome effects of occupation. The bombardments
of Cadiz were at least partly undertaken to keep the men busy. Being a
man of judgment, he looked to it carefully that his men were well fed.
He spared no pains to procure fresh food and vegetables from Morocco,
so that his squadron was better provisioned and was in better health
than many ships had been in home ports. Under an admiral of this stamp
mutiny had the least possible chance of coming to a head. Resolute
officers knew they would be supported, and the crews were saved from
the exasperation provoked by unfair treatment and unwholesome food.
Therefore Jervis never had to deal with a general outbreak, as Bridport
had at Spithead, but only with the rebellious element represented by
the United Irishmen, or rascals of the stamp of Bott of the =Princess
Royal=, an agent of the Corresponding Society. A little firmness was
enough to dispose of them. How completely this was the case was shown
by the fact that Maitland of the =Kingfisher= (afterwards Maitland
of the =Bellerophon=) suppressed disorder in his vessel by running
the first man who was mutinous to him through the heart, and Captain
Pearce of the =St. George=, with the help of his first lieutenant,
Halley, was able to seize and put in irons two agitators who were rash
enough to defy his authority. They were tried, condemned to death, and
hanged next day. The admiral’s determination and his power to keep
order were never doubted in his squadron. Among the vessels sent from
the Channel was the =London=, the vessel in which Lieutenant Bover had
shot the mutineer. Bover had returned to his post, and it does not
appear that the crew bore him any grudge. When the =London= came into
the Tagus, her captain, Purvis, went in his barge to report to the
admiral. While he was in the flagship, the =Ville de Paris=, one of his
barge’s crew, seeing a sailor looking out of a lower-deck port, sang
out to him, “I say there, what have you fellows been doing while we
have been fighting for your beef and pork?” The sailor of the =Ville
de Paris= gave him this friendly warning: “If you’ll take my advice,
you’ll say just nothing at all about all that here, for by G——d if
old Jarvie hears ye, he’ll have you dingle dangle at the yardarm at
eight o’clock to-morrow morning.” The crisis of the disorder was the
so-called mutiny of the =Marlborough=. This vessel had come out from
England, where an outbreak quelled with some difficulty had taken place
in her. A court martial was held on the principal mutineers, and one
of them was condemned to death. Jervis, who had a keen sense of the
value of an imposing spectacle, determined to make an example. He gave
orders that the execution should be carried out next morning, although
it was a Sunday, and by the crew of the =Marlborough=—not, as was the
custom, by a boat’s crew from another ship. Captain Ellison, of the
=Marlborough=, an old officer who had lost an arm in action, went to
the flagship to protest, and was received by Jervis very theatrically
on the quarter-deck of the =Ville de Paris=, in the presence of all
her officers. Jervis refused either to postpone the execution or to
allow it to be performed in the usual way. With a brutal ostentation of
authority, not unusual with him, he insulted Ellison by asking him if
he was afraid, by threatening to send an officer to supersede him, and
by jeering at his age. Ellison was compelled to endure the insolence
of the admiral. He returned to the =Marlborough=, and next morning the
execution took place in sight of all the fleet. A large force of armed
boats was sent under Captain Campbell of the =Blenheim= with orders
to lie alongside the =Marlborough= and fire into her if any disorder
took place on board. The mutineer was brought to the cathead, and
the rope was put round his neck. At eight o’clock the signal gun was
fired from the flagship, and the man was swung off. By some horrible
piece of neglect the tackle had been so badly fitted that it would
not work properly, and the man had to be lowered. For a moment it was
thought that the crew had broken into mutiny, and Campbell brought his
boats nearer. But the defect was quickly put right, and the execution
was completed. Then Jervis, who had been watching the scene from his
flagship, said, “Discipline is preserved, sir.”
No account of the year of mutiny would be complete without at least
some record of the story of the =Hermione= frigate. It was a case in
which a badly constituted crew was driven frantic by a captain of
manifestly inhuman violence and brutality. The mutiny occurred in
September in the West Indies. Pigot, the captain, was an officer of no
mark. He seems to have been one of those men in whom the exercise of
authority and seclusion from the check of criticism by equals permit
the development of moral putrefaction. It is difficult to write on
that subject without touching on things which are _tacenda_. There
was in the sea life of long confinement to the ship and long solitary
cruises an underworld of the brutal lust generated among segregated
men. The power to torture by flogging bred the foul love of inflicting
torture which is never far from lust. It is a stock, and as it seems,
a true story that Pigot, growing more and more frantic in cruelty,
ended by threatening to flog the last men off the yards when the sails
were handled. Two fell in their hurry to come down, and were killed by
their fall on the deck. Pigot ordered the bodies of “the lubbers” to
be thrown overboard. That night “hell broke loose” in the =Hermione=.
The crew rose in revolt. Pigot was beaten down in his cabin and hurled
overboard, all the commissioned officers were butchered—some of them
while piteously appealing for mercy for the sake of their wives and
children. The gunner, the carpenter, and one midshipman only were
spared. It is recorded that the boatswain was given over to be tortured
by the ship’s boys, and that they killed him slowly by scraping his
flesh from his bones with dumbscrapers. Then the mutineers took the
ship into La Guayra, and handed her over to the Spaniards.
It has been counted a signal example of the good fortune of England
that the French made no attempt to profit by the disorganisation of
the fleet during all these months of 1797. Some ridicule has been
directed in France against members of the Directory who thought
interference would be injudicious, since it would only tend to reunite
the English. Yet the Frenchmen who judged thus judged rightly. There
was no general disloyalty to the State among the mutineers. If there
had been, what could have prevented the mutineers from taking the ships
to Brest, or the Texel? If they shrank from going over to the enemy,
they could still have sailed to America, for they were provisioned
for long blockades, and there were men among them who could navigate.
In the United States they would have found a safe refuge in an
English-speaking community. They rose only against grievances. They did
not attain all they wished, but they obtained a part, and they shocked
their rulers into beginning to improve the conditions of their service.