MARRIAGE, THE PRESS-GANG, AND THE FLAG
After twenty-two years of unbroken sea service Rodney was well entitled
to an easy billet on shore, or in a harbour ship. Besides, he now
established a kind of moral claim to a stationary post, for in 1753 he
married. The rank of the lady shows that he had a better social position
than the very great majority of contemporary naval officers. They were
largely sons of other officers or middle-class people, and they lived
among themselves in the ports, marrying and giving in marriage in their
own class. Rodney, who had some of the best blood in England in his
veins, lived when ashore in the great society of London. His wife was
chosen in this, and not in the naval world. She was a daughter of Mr.
Charles Compton, brother of the sixth, and father of the seventh, Earl
of Northampton. In Rodney’s life she is little more than a name. No
letter to her or from her has come in my way--partly, no doubt, because
the evidence about the Admiral’s life only becomes abundant in his later
years when she was dead, when he had remarried and begotten a second
family. All that can be said about her may be summed up in a few words.
Her name was Jane; she married Rodney in 1753, and died in 1757, having
borne him two sons and a daughter. The elder of the two sons, afterwards
an officer in the Guards, was the ancestor of the present Lords Rodney.
The younger went to sea, and was drowned in the wreck of his sloop, the
_Ferret_. The daughter died in childhood.
In 1751, too, Rodney had entered Parliament as member for Saltash, which
means that he was put into the seat by a patron. It was the first of
five seats which he held, with an interval of exclusion from the House
between the fourth and last, until he was made a peer in 1782. His
Parliamentary adventures will, however, be more conveniently taken
farther on.
With a wife and a seat in Parliament Rodney would have no present wish
to go to sea, nor would his political patron wish him to be too much
away. It was convenient to have him at hand if a critical division was
expected. A guardship at Portsmouth would meet the case exactly, and
accordingly he was appointed in 1753 to the _Kent_, sixty-four. Very
soon, in the next year in fact, this vessel was commissioned for service
in the East Indies, and then Rodney was moved into the _Fougueux_; and
when she also was commissioned, he moved in 1755 yet again to the
_Prince George_, still on guardship duty. In the earlier part of this
time there was little beyond routine to attend to, but in the last-named
year began the preparations for the Seven Years’ War. We were
strengthening our hands in the East Indies, and Boscawen’s fleet was
being got ready for that attack on the French-American fishing fleet
which was our not formal, but effective, declaration of hostilities.
Under these circumstances it was necessary to raise men for the fleet,
and no small part of that duty fell to the captains of the guardships.
The men were procured in two ways--by persuasion and by force. A bounty
was offered for seamen; landsmen, of whom a good proportion was carried
in every ship, were not then entitled to this advantage. When free
enlistment failed to supply sufficient crews, and it always did in war,
recourse was had to the press. Even if there had been a reasonable
security that enough men would ultimately come in, some quicker process
than the volunteer one was needed. The quicker process was compulsion,
pure and simple. As the press-gang, though a familiar name enough, is
but vaguely known in these days, some little account of Rodney’s share
in the working of it may not come amiss. There is no reason to suppose
that his activity differed from that of others in nature or degree, but
yet some sketch of it will help us to realise the surroundings in which
he worked. The letter book, already quoted, supplies some characteristic
facts.
His volunteers having first been secured, the captain of the _Prince
George_ selects from them and from the sailors who habitually enlisted
in the navy, of whom there was always a backbone in the service, certain
trusty gangs which he puts under active officers. One of these, a
Lieutenant Allon, was sent to London to set up a _rendezvous_, under the
direction of the registering captain, probably in the neighbourhood of
Limehouse or Wapping. From this centre of activity the lieutenant went
to work, recruiting men freely when he could, or laying hands on them in
the fashion described in _Roderick Random_. Lieutenant Allon’s requests
for more “imprest” money were frequent, and were regularly answered
with remittances. When he had secured a haul of men he sent them round
by tenders to Portsmouth. It is curious to reflect that Lieutenant Allon
and, through him, Rodney helped to secure Captain Cook for the navy. The
navigator enlisted at this very time in order to escape the “hot press”
on the river, deciding, like the long-headed Yorkshireman he was, that
he had better go quietly, get the bounty, and likewise secure a chance
of promotion, than be seized as pressed man, for whom there would be no
bounty and no chance. So it will be seen the press-gang worked
indirectly as well as directly. In the meantime other gangs were at work
in the fashion indicated by this little order, which is addressed on
February 14th, 1755, to Lieutenant Richard Bickorton.
You are hereby required and directed to proceed on board the
_Frederick and William_ tender, taking with you forty men from His
Majesty’s ship under my command, and immediately proceed to the
eastward of the Isle of Wight, and cruise for the space of eight
days between that island and Beachy Head, using your best
endeavours to impress or otherwise procure all such seamen as you
possibly can for His Majesty’s service. At the expiration of eight
days you are to return to Spithead for further orders. Given under
my hand February 14th.
G. B. R.
Lieutenant Bickorton was one of many officers in command of the tenders
then swarming in the Channel, waiting all of them for the homeward-bound
merchant ships and their crews, which were returning in ignorance of
what was waiting for them. One can imagine the feelings of the merchant
sailors when they were stopped in sight of shore, and carried off to
serve King George for nobody knew how long, without as much as an hour
given them to put a foot on dry land. A letter written by Rodney in June
of this year to Sir Edward Hawke, now commanding at Portsmouth, will
show what one crew thought of it all.
Sir--Lieutenant Robert Sax of His Majesty’s ship under my command,
who was sent on board the _Princess Augusta_ tender in order to
procure seamen for His Majesty’s service, is returned this morning
with fifteen men which he pressed out of the _Britannia_, a ship
from Leghorn bound for London. He acquaints me he fell in with the
said ship at 5 o’clock in the morning on June 1st off Portland, and
ordered them to bring to. The master desired he would defer
pressing the men till they got out of the Race of Portland--to
which desire of the master’s Mr. Sax acquiesced; but observing
after they got out of the Race of Portland the ship continued to
crowd all the sail she possibly could set, Mr. Sax fired a shot
athwart her, and ordered them to bring to again, upon which the
master of the _Britannia_ hailed the tender and acquainted the
Lieutenant that his men refused to obey his commands, and desired
the said Lieutenant would board him. Mr. Sax after acquainting the
men several times the Channel was full of tenders, and that it was
not possible for them to escape being pressed, and could not
prevail upon them to submit, they answered with three cheers, and
fired a shot at him, on which Mr. Sax boarded them with the tender;
but [I] am sorry to acquaint you three men on board the said ship
was killed in boarding, tho’ Mr. Sax assures me he gave positive
orders to his men not to fire. The ship is now come into Spithead,
and I shall take particular just care to send a sufficient number
of good and able men to navigate her to London. I should be glad to
receive your directions how I am to proceed in this affair, and
what is to be done with the men that was killed, as I find they are
still on board.
Rodney’s composition was hasty, or his clerk’s copying was careless, as
we may see from the two sentences jumbled into one in the middle of his
letter (“the men that was” is quite good grammar of the time), but the
meaning is clear enough. Composition and meaning are alike luminous in
Hawke’s answer.
By Sir Edward Hawke, Knight of the Bath, Vice-Admiral
of the White Squadron, and Commander of His
Majesty’s ships and vessels at Spithead and Portsmouth
You are hereby required and directed to cause the utmost despatch
to be used by the surgeons to whom the accompanying order is
directed in finishing their examination of the wounds of the three
men killed the 1st inst. on board the _Britannia_ merchant ship.
Then you are without a moment’s loss of time to put on board her
men sufficient in number and quality to navigate her in safety to
her moorings in the river Thames, directing them as soon as they
get without St. Helen’s to throw the dead bodies overboard. For
which this shall be your order.
Given under my hand on board His Majesty’s ship _St. George_ at
Spithead, this June 2nd 1755.
ED. HAWKE.
This brief official letter, and the laconic order which is its answer,
bring before one, all the more effectively because of their
business-like calm, the most cruel phase of the press-gang. It was
necessary, no doubt, that men should be found for the defence of the
country, and at all times in all nations the State has compelled the
service of its subjects. At this time the French had (as they still
have) an _inscription maritime_, which spares no part of the maritime
population; and nobody needs to be told in these days that the
obligation to render military service is universal in nearly all the
nations of the old world. But a conscription works on a definite system.
The burden it imposes is known, foreseen, and adjusted with some
approach to equality and justice. The press-gang was utterly erratic. It
was, in fact, a survival of the prerogative by which Edward the Third
could order the Lords Marchers to bring up just as many Welshmen as he
wanted for his French wars. Time and the growth of the “freedom of the
subject” had limited the incidence of the prerogative (if the expression
is permissible) to the levies for the sea service, but in that
restricted though still considerable field it worked as it had done in
the fourteenth century. Men were seized wherever they could be found,
with little or no regard to aught save the convenience of the service.
As a matter of course, the easiest thing to do was to wait for the
home-coming merchant ships, and take the men out of them close to port.
This could be done without stopping the trade, and so raising a clamour
among the merchants who possessed a vote. Moreover, it saved the
press-gangs an immense amount of trouble in hunting for men in the back
streets of towns and on the high roads. For the sailors seized in this
fashion at the end of a long sea voyage it was a cruel fate, and one’s
heart is sore for the three poor fellows who only came back to the sight
of Portland Bill to die by the hands of their own countrymen.
The tone of the letters, too, is not unworthy of notice. There is no
anger in Rodney’s mind with the sailors of the _Britannia_ for
resisting. That was “the game”; and if he feels aught, it is annoyance
that Sax’s men disobeyed orders, and regret that three stout sailors,
who might have been used in the _Prince George’s_ tops and batteries,
should be lying stiff and stark on the merchant ship’s deck, waiting to
be thrown to the fishes off St. Helen’s. Noteworthy, too, is Sir Edward
Hawke’s summary decision that there shall be no coroner’s inquest to
start unpleasant inquiries. There shall be no bodies for the jury to sit
on. Such were the freedom of the seafaring subject and the sanctity of
the law as understood by post-captains and vice-admirals of the blue,
white, and red squadrons in 1755 and for long afterwards. No wonder that
desertions were incessant, or that in this year Rodney has to receive on
board the _Prince George_ a company of “Colonel Bockland’s regiment of
foot” to stand sentry over his pressed men. Haslar Hospital was a common
“take off” for desertions. It was full in those times when complaints
were common from every ship in the Channel that there are not slops
enough, so that the men are naked, and in want of every necessary; that
the beef is bad, the beer sour, the cheese and butter “stinking rotten.”
From it the men ran in such numbers that the leakage threatened to
counterbalance the inflow due to the press. On the top of the press
warrants came orders to Lieutenant This and Mr. That, midshipman, to
take so many trusty men, and with them keep watch and ward round Haslar
to shut in the convalescent men who might try to make a run for the free
air of the South Down. One touch more and we can be done with the
press-gang. When in the following year Rodney had been transferred to
the _Monarch_, seventy-four, and was lying at Plymouth, he reports in an
official letter that many sailors use the high road by Wendover in going
from port to port. He suggests the despatch of a lieutenant and a dozen
trusty men to set up a _rendezvous_ on the road, and catch the seamen in
transit. The merchant sailor was hunted like the flying-fish. Clearly
Rodney was a zealous officer, and whether he liked this kidnapping work
or not he did it without shrinking. Probably he neither liked nor
disliked it, but just did it as a matter of course. As for the men, they
too took it as part of the incurable nature of things. They might give
three cheers, and fire a gun, or knock the press sailors down, or desert
if they could, but once in the mess, after a reasonable amount of
cursing and storming they settled down. The fund of loyalty in the
country was immense. They laid the blame of the misfortune on the
French, and prepared to take it out of the hereditary enemy. The country
in the meantime clung to the press out of the abundance of its love for
the freedom of the subject. A proposal to replace it by a registration
of seamen, made in Walpole’s time, was rejected indignantly because of
the increased power it would give the administration. In a muddle-headed
way the country was right, given the point of view. It was better to
tolerate the survival of an old and now limited prerogative as an evil
necessity than to give Government power to register men and call them
out in classes. That would have been a recognition of a principle and a
serious concession.
In 1755 Rodney was transferred from the _Prince George_ to the
_Monarch_, and from Portsmouth to Plymouth. During the first half of the
next year he was in this latter ship and port, engaged in much the same
work as before. Fighting had begun not only in America, but in the
Mediterranean, to which Byng sailed this year on his disastrous
expedition to Minorca, but there was no formal declaration of war till
May, 1756. At Plymouth, Rodney came across an illustration of the
barbarity of the time not inferior to the press-gang, which also he
doubtless accepted as a matter of course. We had stopped a French
emigrant vessel, apparently before the declaration, bound to Louisiana
with Alsatian emigrants. Louisiana meant then the valley of the
Mississippi, and as much to right or left of it as the French could
seize. It would never do to allow them to increase their number if it
could be prevented. There was no peace beyond the line--to the west that
is of the line drawn from north to south, three hundred and seventy
leagues to the west of the Cape de Verd Islands. So, though we were
nominally at peace with France, the emigrants were stopped in the
Channel by a kind of application, I take it, of the _Cyprès_ doctrine.
Among them were some twenty women and children, whom Rodney was ordered
to send over to Ostend in a tender. The poor creatures petitioned to be
allowed to remain with their husbands, promising to share the
subsistence allowed the men by the French King. What answer was given I
do not know, but it is characteristic of the slovenly inhumanity of the
day that we should, after stopping these poor people, have calmly
proposed to separate the wives from their husbands, and send them to beg
or starve at Ostend--and have done that too, as was no doubt the case,
under the impression that it was the good-natured thing to do. The
British official man of the middle of the eighteenth century was above
all things a very great ass. He was not so corrupt as he has been
called; he could work very hard, was conscious of the duty he owed his
king and country. Nobody, I think, can look at the evidence and doubt
that he tried his best, but it was absurdly bad, for being an ass what
could he do but administer in an asinine manner?
It is worth while to insist a little on this, because, unless you know
the element in which a man swam, it is impossible to estimate his
swimming. In 1755 that element was for naval officers one of official
incoherence and incompetence. Contradictory orders with their inevitable
consequences, which are omissions, and confusion, abounded. Men and
officers were drafted from ship to ship according to what Nelson called
“the infernal system” which prevailed too long in our navy. There seemed
to be no plan at headquarters, or, what is even worse, several plans at
once. To take a comparatively small detail as illustrating the working
of the Navy Board. When in July the _Monarch_ was ordered to sea to join
Boscawen, now cruising in the Channel, Rodney is found at the very last
moment applying for a third surgeon who had been promised to him, but
had not turned up. He did not come, but in place of him a consoling
letter from the senior officer at Plymouth informing Rodney that the
_Monarch_ would be better without him, for he had turned out on inquiry
to be entirely ignorant of a surgeon’s business, and only seventeen
years old. With that instance of official management we may leave the
subject. That we pulled through it all is entirely due to the one
redeeming merit our administration had. It did leave a very large share
of power to the admirals and captains. When they were of the right
stamp--admirals such as Hawke and Boscawen, captains of the order of
Rodney and Hood, or the less famous Lockhart and Gilchrist, who were
engaged in this and the following wars in snapping up the French
cruisers and privateers as fast as they showed a bowsprit in the
Channel--order and efficiency were soon evoked out of chaos. Of course
when the commander was of the wrong stamp--when he was a Byng, who
looked upon official mismanagement, not as a thing to be made good, but
as mere matter of complaint and excuse for doing nothing, the result was
very different. The fate which overtook Byng convinced every officer,
however, that it was safer as well as more honourable to follow the
example of Hawke and Boscawen. The naval officers and the great kindred
spirit of Pitt, the master of them all, saved the country in spite of
officialdom by sheer dint of playing the man.
In the July of 1756 the _Monarch_ joined Boscawen in Channel soundings
for a short time. She had only been with him a few days when the
carpenter, “a very good man,” who had been warned to present no
frivolous complaints, had to report that the “knee of the head” was
loose, and worked so much as to cause the ship to leak dangerously.
There was nothing for it but to apply to the Admiral for a survey. The
result of the report of the surveyors was an order to the _Monarch_ to
return to Portsmouth to refit. Rodney spent the remainder of the year
and the beginning of the next in the dockyard. He contrived to get some
good out of the evil state of the _Monarch_ by inducing the dockyard
authorities to alter the internal arrangement of the ship, which was a
French prize, and had her magazines in the wrong place. Whatever good
the alteration may have done the _Monarch_, the advantage of it was
reaped by another captain. About the end of February Rodney was
transferred to the _Dublin_, which makes the fifth ship he had commanded
in four years. One wonders how any kind of discipline and good spirit
was maintained in the midst of these incessant changes.
Almost the last order given him on board the _Monarch_ was one by
Admiral Thomas Smith, “Tom of Ten Thousand,” directing him to receive on
board, as “supernumeraries for their victuals only,” Rear-Admiral Byng
and his retinue. It is dated February 6th, 1757. On the 17th of the next
month poor Byng, having now no need to think and act, but only to
undergo his fate, faced the firing-party on the _Monarch’s_ quarter-deck
like a gentleman, without fear and without ostentation. Rodney had no
share, direct or indirect, in the trial or execution of the Admiral, but
I have come to a very mistaken estimate of his character if he
disapproved it. No man had less of the querulous spirit, which was
Byng’s ruin, or less toleration for such half-hearted leadership as was
shown in the fight off Minorca. If he ever saw, as he probably did,
Voltaire’s famous jest, he replied, no doubt, that the execution did
“encourage the others.” It set up a terrible warning to those who might
in future feel inclined to think that if they were badly treated by the
Admiralty they were therefore to be excused for not doing their best
against the enemy.
Rodney’s new ship the _Dublin_ lay at Deptford, and he was now to begin
all over again the weary work of fitting for sea. According to the
wholesome custom of the navy he was allowed to bring with him a few
chosen officers and men to form the heart of a new crew. From April to
August then we will suppose him at work as before, setting up a
_rendezvous_, superintending the rigging of his new ship, dunning the
Admiralty for slops to clothe his naked men, and food not “stinking
rotten” for them to eat. Since the little picturesque touch is always
welcome, we will note that he applies among other things to the
Admiralty for a cook’s warrant for “Charles O’Raaf,” hardly an
Englishman we should think, who had lost his arm in an action with the
French in 1747. In September he had at last got his ship into shape and
joined Hawke, now back from the Mediterranean, whither he had gone to
supersede Byng, and preparing for the first of those combined attacks on
the coast of France which were the least successful of the Great
Commoner’s enterprises.
The history of the attack on Rochefort, which was made in September, may
be quite fairly given in the words of Captain Marryat. “The army thought
that the navy might have beaten down stone ramparts, ten feet thick; and
the navy wondered why the army had not walked up the same ramparts which
were thirty feet perpendicular.” Sir Edward Hawke, who commanded the
fleet, was as capable an officer as ever hoisted his flag--and Wolfe was
with the troops. The two, if they had been at liberty to act together,
might have effected something, but unfortunately Wolfe was still only
Lieutenant-Colonel in Kingsley’s regiment. The General in command, Sir
John Mordaunt, was old and by no means competent. His personal bravery
was nearly the only soldierly quality he had, and though he did not fear
death he stood in terror of responsibility. With such a leader an
expedition which required dashing management was sure to fail, and fail
it did. Whatever credit was gained fell to Howe in the _Magnanime_, and
then the squadron and the troops came back with very little glory, but
with ample materials for a court of inquiry and a pamphleteering war.
Rodney took no part in this last, and had no conspicuous share in the
previous operations. The _Dublin_ was in truth a wretched ship.
Immediately after joining the squadrons he lost company because her
rudder had got out of order. Soon, too, Rodney had to represent to the
Admiral that a hundred and fifty of his men were down with an epidemic
fever, while many others were so weak as to be unfit for work. To make
good the defects of his vessel, and to recruit his crew, he was ordered
back to Spithead.
In May of 1758 he sailed on a much more satisfactory piece of service.
The _Dublin_ was ordered to join Boscawen in the attack on Louisburg in
Cape Breton. She was sent in place of the _Invincible_, which had just
been lost. After experiencing repeated delays, and a long struggle with
the difficulty of manning his ship--to make his complement up at all it
was found necessary to enlist “neutral” prisoners who volunteered--he
got off at last with a convoy. General Amherst and his staff sailed in
the _Dublin_, which was in fact crowded with soldiers and stores.
The siege and capture of Louisburg marked the turning of the tide for us
in the Seven Years’ War. It was the first completely successful thing we
did. It gave us the command of the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and was a
decisive step towards the final conquest of Canada. Navy and army,
Boscawen and Amherst, worked admirably together, and Wolfe, who was here
also, had some opportunity to show his great qualities as a leader. It
would be pleasing to his biographer to be able to say that Rodney had a
conspicuous share in the victory; but the truth is that during the
greater part of the actual fighting the _Dublin_ was at Halifax. She
maintained her character as an unhealthy ship, and was hardly on the
North American coast before the epidemic fever broke out again. Boscawen
kept her mostly at Halifax, where Rodney had to discharge the very
important but somewhat thankless duties of officer in command at the
basis of operations. What part of his attention could be spared from
forwarding transports was devoted to looking after the health of his
men. The hospitals of Halifax were full of sickly sailors or soldiers,
and the _Dublin’s_ men had to be attended to in sheds run up on shore by
the ship’s carpenter. Rodney rejoined Boscawen outside Louisburg just
before it surrendered in July, and then sailed for Europe on August 15th
with the convoy which carried the French prisoners of war. The room
which had been taken up on board the _Dublin_ on her way out by Amherst
and his staff, was occupied on the way home by the officers of the eight
French ships which were captured in the harbour. It is a not
uninteresting detail that Rodney also took home a present of dried fish
and Madeira from Wolfe to his family. One would like to know that the
men were friends as they were certainly acquaintances.
The choice of the _Dublin_ to attend the convoy was not only due to the
fact that she was the kind of vessel an admiral would be naturally
anxious to get rid of. Rodney was now a very senior captain, and would
as a matter almost of course be selected for independent service for
which a flag-officer could not be spared. He was now almost at the very
end of his service as post-captain. When he had brought his convoy into
the Channel and had sent it into Plymouth he proceeded to Spithead
himself, and there applied for leave to attend to his health. A year
spent on board a very ill-ventilated vessel reeking with fever had been
too much for him. The leave was granted, and there ended Rodney’s work
as a post-captain. In May of 1759 he was promoted rear-admiral.