WHY THE GANG WAS NECESSARY.
The root of the necessity that seized the British sailor and made of him
what he in time became, the most abject creature and the most efficient
fighting unit the world has ever produced, lay in the fact that he was
island-born.
In that island a great and vigorous people had sprung into being--a
people great in their ambitions, commerce and dominion; vigorous in
holding what they had won against the assaults, meditated or actual, of
those who envied their greatness and coveted their possessions. Of this
island people, as of their world-wide interests, the "chiefest defence"
was a "good fleet at sea." [Footnote: This famous phrase is used,
perhaps for the first time, by Josiah Burchett, sometime Secretary to
the Admiralty, in his _Observations on the Navy_, 1700.]
The Peace of Utrecht, marking though it did the close of the protracted
war of the Spanish Succession, brought to the Island Kingdom not peace,
but a sword; for although its Navy was now as unrivalled as its commerce
and empire, the supreme struggle for existence, under the guise of the
mastery of the sea, was only just begun. Decade after decade, as that
struggle waxed and waned but went remorselessly on, the Navy grew in
ships, the ships in tonnage and weight of metal, and with their growth
the demand for men, imperative as the very existence of the nation,
mounted ever higher and higher. In 1756 fifty thousand sufficed for the
nation's needs. By 1780 the number had reached ninety-two thousand; and
with 1802 it touched high-water mark in the unprecedented total of
one hundred and twenty-nine thousand men in actual sea pay. [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 7. 567-Navy Progress, 1756-1805. These figures are
below rather than above the mark, since the official returns on which
they are based are admittedly deficient.]
Beset by this enormous and steadily growing demand, the Admiralty, the
defensive proxy of the nation, had perforce to face the question as to
where and how the men were to be obtained.
The source of supply was never at any time in doubt. Here, ready to
hand, were some hundreds of thousands of persons using the sea, or
following vocations merging into the sea in the capacity of colliers,
bargemen, boatmen, longshoremen, fishermen and deep-sea sailors or
merchantmen, who constituted the natural Naval Reserve of an Island
Kingdom--a reserve ample, if judiciously drawn upon, to meet, and more
than meet, the Navy's every need.
The question of means was one more complicated, more delicate, and hence
incomparably more difficult of solution. To draw largely upon these
seafaring classes, numerous and fit though they were, meant detriment
to trade, and if the Navy was the fist, trade was the backbone of the
nation. The sufferings of trade, moreover, reacted unpleasantly upon
those in power at Whitehall. Methods of procuration must therefore be
devised of a nature such as to insure that neither trade nor Admiralty
should suffer--that they should, in fact, enjoy what the unfortunate
sailor never knew, some reasonable measure of ease.
In its efforts to extricate itself and trade from the complex
difficulties of the situation, Admiralty had at its back what an
eighteenth century Beresford would doubtless have regarded as the finest
talent of the service. Neither the unemployed admiral nor the half-pay
captain had at that time, in his enforced retirement at Bath or
Cheltenham, taken seriously to parliamenteering, company promoting,
or the concocting of pedigrees as a substitute for walking the
quarter-deck. His occupation was indeed gone, but in its stead there
had come to him what he had rarely enjoyed whilst on the active service
list--opportunity. Carried away by the stimulus of so unprecedented
a situation as that afforded by the chance to make himself heard,
he rushed into print with projects and suggestions which would have
revolutionised the naval policy and defence of the country at a stroke
had they been carried into effect. Or he devoted his leisure to the
invention of signal codes, semaphore systems, embryo torpedoes, gun
carriages, and--what is more to our point--methods ostensibly calculated
to man the fleet in the easiest, least oppressive and most expeditious
manner possible for a free people. Armed with these schemes, he
bombarded the Admiralty with all the pertinacity he had shown in his
quarter-deck days in applying for leave or seeking promotion. Many,
perhaps most, of the inventions which it was thus sought to father upon
the Sea Lords, were happily never more heard of; but here and there one,
commending itself by its seeming practicability, was selected for trial
and duly put to the test.
Fair to look upon while still in the air, these fruits of leisured
superannuation proved deceptively unsound when plucked by the hand of
experiment. Registration, first adopted in 1696, held out undeniable
advantages to the seaman. Under its provisions he drew a yearly
allowance when not required at sea, and extra prize-money when on
active service. Yet the bait did not tempt him, and the system was
soon discarded as useless and inoperative. Bounty, defined by some
sentimentalist as a "bribe to Neptune," for a while made a stronger
appeal; but, ranging as it did from five to almost any number of pounds
under one hundred per head, it proved a bribe indeed, and by putting an
irresistible premium on desertion threatened to decimate the very ships
it was intended to man. In 1795 what was commonly known as the Quota
Scheme superseded it. This was a plan of Pitt's devising, under which
each county contributed to the fleet according to its population, the
quota varying from one thousand and eighty-one men for Yorkshire to
twenty-three for Rutland, whilst a minor Act levied special toll on
seaports, London leading the way with five thousand seven hundred and
four men. Like its predecessor Bounty, however, this mode of recruiting
drained the Navy in order to feed it. Both systems, moreover, possessed
another and more serious defect. When their initial enthusiasm had
cooled, the counties, perhaps from force of habit as component parts of
a country whose backbone was trade, bought in the cheapest market. Hence
the Quota Man, consisting as he generally did of the offscourings of the
merchant service, was seldom or never worth the money paid for him. An
old man-o'-war's-man, picking up a miserable specimen of this class of
recruit by the slack of his ragged breeches, remarked to his grinning
messmates as he dangled the disreputable object before their eyes:
"'Ere's a lubber as cost a guinea a pound!" He was not far out in his
estimate.
As in the case of the good old method of recruiting by beat of drum and
the lure of the king's shilling, system after system thus failed to draw
into its net, however speciously that net was spread, either the class
or the number of men whose services it was desired to requisition. And
whilst these futilities were working out their own condemnation the
stormcloud of necessity grew bigger and bigger on the national horizon.
Let trade suffer as it might, there was nothing for it but to discard
all new-fangled notions and to revert to the system which the usage
of ages had sanctioned. The return was imperative. Failing what Junius
stigmatised as the "spur of the Press," the right men in the right
numbers were not to be procured. The wisdom of the nation was at fault.
It could find no other way.
There were, moreover, other reasons why the press-gang was to the Navy
an indispensable appendage--reasons perhaps of little moment singly,
but of tremendous weight in the scale of naval necessity when lumped
together and taken in the aggregate.
Of these the most prominent was that fatal flaw in naval administration
which Nelson was in the habit of anathematising as the "Infernal
System." Due partly to lack of foresight and false economy at Whitehall,
partly to the character of the sailor himself, it resolved itself into
this, that whenever a ship was paid off and put out of commission, all
on board of her, excepting only her captain and her lieutenants, ceased
to be officially connected with the Navy. Now, as ships were for various
reasons constantly going out of commission, and as the paying off of a
first-second-or third-rate automatically discharged from their country's
employ a body of men many hundreds in number, the "lowering" effects of
such a system, working year in, year out, upon a fleet always in chronic
difficulties for men, may be more readily imagined than described.
To a certain limited extent the loss to the service was minimised by
a process called "turning over"; that is to say, the company of a
ship paying off was turned over bodily, or as nearly intact as it was
possible to preserve it, to another ship which at the moment chanced to
be ready, or making ready, for sea. Or it might be that the commander of
a ship paying off, transferred to another ship fitting out, carried the
best men of his late command, commonly known as "old standers," along
with him.
Unfortunately, the occasion of fitting out did not always coincide with
the occasion of paying off; and although turnovers were frequently made
by Admiralty order, there were serious obstacles in the way of their
becoming general. Once the men were paid off, the Admiralty had no
further hold upon them. By a stretch of authority they might, it is
true, be confined to quarters or on board a guardship; but if in these
circumstances they rose in a body and got ashore, they could neither
be retaken nor punished as deserters, but--to use the good old service
term--had to be "rose" again by means of the press-gang. Turnovers,
accordingly, depended mainly upon two closely related circumstances: the
goodwill of the men, and the popularity of commanders. A captain who
was notorious for his use of the lash or the irons, or who was reputed
unlucky, rarely if ever got a turnover except by the adoption of the
most stringent measures. One who, on the other hand, treated his men
with common humanity, who bested the enemy in fair fight and sent rich
prizes into port, never wanted for "followers," and rarely, if ever,
had recourse to the gang. [Footnote: In his Autobiography Lord Dundonald
asserts that he was only once obliged to resort to pressing--a statement
so remarkable, considering the times he lived in, as to call for
explanation. The occasion was when, returning from a year's "exile in a
tub," a converted collier that "sailed like a hay-stack," he fitted out
the _Pallas_ at Portsmouth and could obtain no volunteers. Setting
his gangs to work, he got together a scratch crew of the wretchedest
description; yet so marvellous were the personality and disciplinary
ability of the man, that with only this unpromising material ready
to his hand he intercepted the Spanish trade off Cape Finisterre and
captured four successive prizes of very great value. The _Pallas_
returned to Portsmouth with "three large golden candlesticks, each about
five feet high, placed upon the mast-heads," and from that time onward
Dundonald's reputation as a "lucky" commander was made. He never again
had occasion to invoke the aid of the gang.] Under such men the seaman
would gladly serve "even in a dung barge." [Footnote: _Admiralty
Records_ 1. 2733--Capt. Young, 28 Sept. 1776.] Unhappily for the
service, such commanders were comparatively few, and in their absence
the Infernal System drained the Navy of its best blood and accentuated a
hundred-fold the already overwhelming need for the impress.
The old-time sailor, [Footnote: The use of the word "sailor" was
long regarded with disfavour by the Navy Board, who saw in it only a
colourless substitute for the good old terms "seaman" and "mariner."
Capt. Bertie, of the _Ruby_ gunship, once reported the pressing of a
"sailor," Thomas Letting by name, out of a collier in Yarmouth Roads,
and was called upon by My Lords to define the new-fangled term. This
he did with admirable circumlocution. "As for explaining the word
'sailor,'" said he, "I can doe it no otherwise than (by) letting of
you know that Thomas Letting is a Sailor."--_Admiralty Records_ 1.
1468--Capt. Bertie, 6 May 1706.] again, was essentially a creature of
contradictions. Notorious for a "swearing rogue," who punctuated his
strange sea-lingo with horrid oaths and appalling blasphemies, he
made the responses required by the services of his Church with all the
superstitious awe and tender piety of a child. Inconspicuous for his
thrift or "forehandedness," it was nevertheless a common circumstance
with him to have hundreds of pounds, in pay and prize-money, to his
credit at his bankers, the Navy Pay-Office; and though during a voyage
he earned his money as hardly as a horse, and was as poor as a church
mouse, yet the moment he stepped ashore he made it fly by the handful
and squandered it, as the saying went, like an ass. When he was sober,
which was seldom enough provided he could obtain drink, he possessed
scarcely a rag to his back; but when he was drunk he was himself
the first to acknowledge that he had "too many cloths in the wind."
According to his own showing, his wishes in life were limited to three:
"An island of tobacco, a river of rum, and--more rum;" but according
to those who knew him better than he knew himself, he would at any time
sacrifice all three, together with everything else he possessed, for the
gratification of a fourth and unconfessed desire, the dearest wish of
his life, woman. Ward's description of him, slightly paraphrased, fits
him to a hair: "A salt-water vagabond, who is never at home but when
he is at sea, and never contented but when he is ashore; never at ease
until he has drawn his pay, and never satisfied until he has spent
it; and when his pocket is empty he is just as much respected as a
father-in-law is when he has beggared himself to give a good portion
with his daughter." [Footnote: Ward, _Wooden World Dissected_, 1744.]
With all this he was brave beyond belief on the deck of a ship, timid to
the point of cowardice on the back of a horse; and although he fought to
a victorious finish many of his country's most desperate fights, and
did more than any other man of his time to make her the great nation
she became, yet his roving life robbed him of his patriotism and made it
necessary to wring from him by violent means the allegiance he shirked.
It was at this point that he came in contact with what he hated most in
life, yet dearly loved to dodge--the press-gang.
That such a creature of contradictions should be averse from serving the
country he loved is perhaps the most consistent trait in his
character; for here at least the sailor had substantial grounds for his
inconsistency.
For one thing, his aversion to naval service was as old as the Navy
itself, having grown with its growth. We have seen in what manner King
John was obliged to admonish the sailor in order to induce him to take
his prest-money; and Edward III., referring to his attitude in the
fourteenth century, is said to have summed up the situation in the
pregnant words: "There is navy enough in England, were there only
the will." Raleigh, recalling with bitterness of soul those glorious
Elizabethan days when no adventurer ever dreamt of pressing, scoffed
at the seamen of King James's time as degenerates who went on board a
man-of-war "with as great a grudging as if it were to be slaves in the
galleys." A hundred years did not improve matters. The sailors of Queen
Anne entered her ships like men "dragged to execution." [Footnote:
Justice, _Dominion and Laws of the Sea_, 1705, Appendix on Pressing.]
In the merchant service, where the sailor received his initiation into
the art and mystery of the sea, life during the period under review, and
indeed for long after, was hard enough in all conscience. Systematic
and unspeakably inhuman brutality made the merchant seaman's lot a daily
inferno. Traders sailing out of Liverpool, Bristol and a score of other
British ports depended almost entirely for their crews upon drugged rum,
so evil was their reputation in this respect amongst seafaring men. In
the East India Company's ships, even, the conditions were little short
of unendurable. Men had rather be hanged than sail to the Indies in
them. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1463, 1472--Letters of Captains
Bouler and Billingsley, and numerous instances.]
Of all these bitternesses the sailor tasted freely. Cosmopolite that
he was, he wandered far a-sea and incurred the blows and curses of many
masters, happy if, amid his manifold tribulations, he could still call
his soul his own. Just here, indeed, was where the shoe of naval service
pinched him most sorely; for though upon the whole life on board a
man-of-war was not many shades worse than life aboard a trader, it yet
introduced into his already sadly circumscribed vista of happiness the
additional element of absolute loss of free-will, and the additional
dangers of being shot as an enemy or hanged as a deserter. These
additional things, the littles that yet meant so much, bred in him a
hatred of the service so implacable that nothing less drastic than the
warrant and the hanger could cope with or subdue it. Eradicated it never
was.
The keynote to the sailor's treatment in the Navy may be said to have
been profane abuse. Officers of all ranks kept the Recording Angel
fearfully busy. With scarcely an exception they were men of blunt speech
and rough tongue who never hesitated to call a spade a spade, and the
ordinary seaman something many degrees worse. These were technicalities
of the service which had neither use nor meaning elsewhere. But to the
navigation of the ship, to daily routine and the maintenance of that
exact discipline on which the Navy prided itself, they were as essential
as is milk to the making of cheese. Nothing could be done without them.
Decent language was thrown away upon a set of fellows who had been bred
in that very shambles of language, the merchant marine. To them "'twas
just all the same as High Dutch." They neither understood it nor
appreciated its force. But a volley of thumping oaths, bellowed at them
from the brazen throat of a speaking-trumpet, and freely interlarded
with adjectives expressive of the foulness of their persons, and the
ultimate state and destination of their eyes and limbs, saved the
situation and sometimes the ship. Officers addicted to this necessary
flow of language were sensible of only one restraint. Visiting parties
caused them embarrassment, and when this was the case they fell back
upon the tactics of the commander who, unable to express himself with
his usual fluency because of the presence of ladies on the quarter-deck,
hailed the foreyard-arm in some such terms as these: "Foreyard-arm
there! God bless you! God bless you! God bless you! _You know what I
mean!_"
Hard words break no bones, and to quarter-deck language, as such, the
sailor entertained no rooted objection. What he did object to, and
object to with all the dogged insistence of his nature, was the fact
that this habitual flow of profane scurrility was only the prelude to
what, with grim pleasantry, he was accustomed to describe as "serving
out slops." Anything intended to cover his back was "slops" to the
sailor, and the punishments meted out to him covered him like a garment.
The old code of naval laws, the _Monumenta Juridica_ or _Black Book_ of
the Admiralty, contained many curious disciplinary methods, not a few
of which too long survived the age they originated in. If, for instance,
one sailor robbed another and was found guilty of the crime, boiling
pitch was poured over his head and he was powdered with feathers "to
mark him," after which he was marooned on the first island the ship fell
in with. Seamen guilty of undressing themselves while at sea were ducked
three times from the yard-arm--a more humane use of that spar than
converting it into a gallows. On this code were based Admiral the
Earl of Lindsay's "Instructions" of 1695. These included ducking,
keel-hauling, fasting, flogging, weighting until the "heart or back be
ready to break," and "gogging" or scraping the tongue with hoop-iron
for obscene or profane swearing; for although the "gentlemen of the
quarter-deck" might swear to their heart's content, that form of
recreation was strictly taboo in other parts of the ship. Here we have
the origin of the brutal discipline of the next century, summed up in
the Consolidation Act of George II. [Footnote: 22 George II. c. 33.]--an
Act wherein ten out of thirty-six articles awarded capital punishment
without option, and twelve death or minor penalties.
Of the latter, the one most commonly in use was flogging at the gangway
or jears. This duty fell to the lot of the boatswain's mate. [Footnote:
"As it is the Custom of the Army to punish with the Drums, so it is
the known Practice of the Navy to punish with the Boatswain's
Mate."--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1482--Capt. (afterwards Admiral)
Boscawen, 25 Feb. 1746-7.] The instrument employed was the
cat-o'-nine-tails, the regulation dose twelve lashes; but since the
actual number was left to the captain's discretion or malice, as the
case might be, it not infrequently ran into three figures. Thus John
Watts, able seaman on board H.M.S. _Harwich,_ Capt. Andrew Douglas
commander, in 1704 received one hundred and seventy lashes for striking
a shipmate in self-defence, his captain meanwhile standing by and
exhorting the boatswain's mate to "Swinge the Dog, for hee has a Tough
Hide"--and that, too, with a cat waxed to make it bite the harder.
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5265--Courts-Martial, 1704-5.]
It was just this unearned increment of blows--this dash of bitter added
to the regulation cup--that made Jack's gorge rise. He was not the sort
of chap, it must be confessed, to be ruled with a feather. "An impudent
rascal" at the best of times, he often "deserved a great deal and had
but little." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1472--Capt. Balchen, 26
Jan. 1716-7.] But unmerited punishment, too often devilishly devised,
maliciously inflicted and inhumanly carried out, broke the back of his
sense of justice, already sadly overstrained, and inspired him with a
mortal hatred of all things naval.
For the slightest offence he was "drubbed at the gears"; for serious
offences, from ship to ship. If, when reefing topsails on a dark night
or in the teeth of a sudden squall, he did not handle the canvas with
all the celerity desired by the officer of the watch, he and his fellow
yardsmen were flogged _en bloc_. He was made to run the gauntlet, often
with the blood gushing from nose and ears as the result of a previous
dose of the cat, until he fell to the deck comatose and at the point of
death. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1466--Complaint of ye Abuse of
a Sayler in the _Litchfield_, 1704. In this case the man actually died.]
Logs of wood were bound to his legs as shackles, and whatever the nature
of his offence, he invariably began his expiation of it, the preliminary
canter, so to speak, in irons. If he had a lame leg or a bad foot, he
was "started" with a rope's-end as a "slacker." If he happened to be
the last to tumble up when his watch was called, the rattan [Footnote:
Carried at one time by both commissioned and warrant officers.] raised
weals on his back or drew blood from his head; and, as if to add insult
to injury, for any of these, and a hundred and one other offences, he
was liable to be black-listed and to lose his allowance of grog.
Some things, too, were reckoned sins aboard ship which, unhappily for
the sailor, could not well be avoided. Laughing, or even permitting the
features to relax in a smile in the official presence, was such a sin.
"He beats us for laughing," declare the company of the _Solebay_, in
a complaint against their commander, "more like Doggs than Men."
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1435--Capt. Aldred, 29 Feb. 1703-4.]
One of the _Nymph's_ company, in or about the year 1797, received three
dozen for what was officially termed "Silent Contempt"--"which was
nothing more than this, that when flogged by the boatswain's mate the
man smiled." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5125--Petitions, 1793-7.]
This was the "Unpardonable Crime" of the service.
Contrariwise, a man was beaten if he sulked. And as a rule the sailor
was sulky enough. Works of supererogation, such as polishing everything
polishable--the shot for the guns, in extreme cases, not even
excepted--until it shone like the tropical sun at noonday, left him
little leisure or inclination for mirth. "Very pretty to look at,"
said Wellington, when confronted with these glaring evidences of
hyper-discipline, "but there is one thing wanting. I have not seen a
bright face in the ship."
A painful tale of discipline run mad, or nearly so, is unfolded by that
fascinating series of sailor-records, the Admiralty Petitions. Many of
them, it must in justice be owned, bear unqualified testimony to the
kindness and humanity of officers; but in the great majority of cases
the evidence they adduce is overwhelmingly to the contrary. And if their
language is sometimes bombastic, if their style is almost uniformly
illiterate, if they are the productions of a band of mutinous dogs
standing out for rights which they never possessed and deserving of a
halter rather than a hearing, these are circumstances that do not in
the least detract from the veracity of the allegations they advance. The
sailor appealed to his king, or to the Admiralty, "the same as a child
to its father"; and no one who peruses the story of his wrongs, as set
forth in these documents, can doubt for a moment that he speaks the
truth with all a child's simplicity.
The seamen of the _Reunion_ open the tale of oppression and ill-usage.
"Our Captain oblidges us to Wash our Linnen twice a week in Salt Water
and to put 2 Shirts on every Week, and if they do not look as Clean as
if they were washed in Fresh Water, he stops the person's Grog which has
the misfortune to displease him; and if our Hair is not Tyd to please
him, he orders it to be Cutt Off." On the _Amphitrite_ "flogging is
their portion." The men of the _Winchelsea_ "wold sooner be Shot at like
a Targaite than to Remain." The treatment systematically meted out
to the _Shannon's_ crew is more than the heart "can Cleaverly
Bear"--enough, in short, to make them "rise and Steer the Ship into an
Enemies Port." The seamen of the _Glory_ are made wretched by "beating,
blacking, tarring, putting our heads in Bags," and by being forced to
"drink half a Gallon of Salt Water" for the most trivial breaches of
discipline or decorum. On the _Blanch,_ if they get wet and hang or
spread their clothes to dry, the captain "thros them overboard." The
_Nassau's_ company find it impossible to put the abuse they receive on
paper. It is "above Humanity." Though put on board to fight for king and
country, they are used worse than dogs. They have no encouragement to
"face the Enemy with a chearful Heart." Besides being kept "more
like Convicts than free-born Britons," the _Nymph's_ company have an
unspeakable grievance. "When Engaged with the Enemy off Brest, March
the 9th, 1797, they even Beat us at our Quarters, though on the Verge of
Eternity." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 5l25--Petitions, 1793-7.]
On the principle advanced by Rochefoucault, that there is something
not displeasing to us in the misfortunes of our friends, the sailor
doubtless derived a sort of negative satisfaction from the fact that he
was not the only one on shipboard liable to the pains and penalties of
irascibility, brutality and excessive disciplinary zeal. Particularly
was this true of his special friend the "sky-pilot" or chaplain, that
super-person who perhaps most often fell a victim to quarter-deck
ebullitions. Notably there is on record the case of one John
Cruickshank, chaplain of H.M.S. _Assurance,_ who was clapped in irons,
court-martialled and dismissed the service merely because he happened
to take--what no sailor could ever condemn him for-a drop too much, and
whilst in that condition insisted on preaching to the ship's company
when they were on the very point of going into action. [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 5265--Courts-Martial, 1704-5. His zeal was
unusual. Most naval chaplains thought "of nothing more than making His
Majesty's ships sinecures"] There is also that other case of the "saucy
Surgeon of the _Seahorse_" who incurred his captain's dire displeasure
all on account of candles, of which necessary articles he, having his
wife on board, thought himself entitled to a more liberal share than
was consistent with strict naval economy; and who was, moreover, so
"troblesome about his Provisions, that if he did not always Chuse out
of ye best in ye whole Ship," he straightway got his back up and
"threatened to Murder the Steward." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
1470--Capt. Blowers, 3 Jan. 1710-11.] Such interludes as these would
assuredly have proved highly diverting to the foremast-man had it not
been for the cat and that savage litter of minor punishments awaiting
the man who smiled.
In the matter of provisions, there can be little doubt that the sailor
shared to the full the desire evinced by the surgeon of the _Seahorse_
to take blood-vengeance upon someone on account of them. His
"belly-timber," as old Misson so aptly if indelicately describes it, was
mostly worm-eaten or rotten, his drink indescribably nasty.
Charles II. is said to have made his breakfast off ship's diet the
morning he left the _Naseby,_ and to have pronounced it good; and Nelson
in 1803 declared it "could not possibly be improved upon." [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 580-Memorandum on the State of the Fleet, 1803.]
Such, however, was not the opinion of the chaplain of the _Dartmouth,_
for after dining with his captain on an occasion which deserves to
become historic, he swore that "although he liked that Sort of Living
very well, as for the King's Allowance there was but a Sheat of
Browne Paper between it and Hell." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
1464--Misdemenors Comited by Mr Edward Lewis, Chapling on Board H. M.
Shipp Dartmouth, 1 Oct. 1702.] Which of these opinions came nearest to
the truth, the sequel will serve to show.
On the face of it the sailor's dietary was not so bad. A ship's stores,
in 1719, included ostensibly such items as bread, wine, beef, pork,
peas, oatmeal, butter, cheese, water and beer, and if Jack had but had
his fair share of these commodities, and had it in decent condition,
he would have had little reason to grumble about the king's allowance.
Unhappily for him, the humanities of diet were little studied by the
Victualling Board.
Taking the beef, the staple article of consumption on shipboard, cooking
caused it to shrink as much as 45 per cent., thus reducing the sailor's
allowance by nearly one-half. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
1495--Capt. Barrington, 23 Dec. 1770.] The residuum was often "mere
carrion," totally unfit for human consumption. "Junk," the sailor
contemptuously called it, likening it, in point of texture,
digestibility and nutritive properties, to the product of picked oakum,
which it in many respects strongly resembled. The pork, though it lost
less in the cooking, was rancid, putrid stuff, repellent in odour and
colour-particulars in which it found close competitors in the butter and
cheese, which had often to be thrown overboard because they "stunk
the ship." [Footnote: To disinfect a ship after she had been fouled by
putrid rations or disease, burning sulphur and vinegar were commonly
employed. Their use was preferable to the means adopted by the carpenter
of the _Feversham_, who in order to "sweeten ship" once "turn'd on
the cock in the hould" and through forgetfulness "left it running for
eighteen howers," thereby not only endangering the vessel's safety,
but incidentally spoiling twenty-one barrels of powder in the
magazine.--_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2653--Capt. Watson, 18 April 1741.]
The peas "would not break." Boiled for eight hours on end, they came
through the ordeal "almost as hard as shott." Only the biscuit, apart
from the butter and cheese, possessed the quality of softness. Damp,
sea-water, mildew and weevil converted "hard" into "soft tack" and added
another horror to the sailor's mess. The water he washed these varied
abominations down with was frequently "stuff that beasts would cough
at." His beer was no better. It would not keep, and was in consequence
both "stinking and sour." [Footnote: According to Raleigh, old oil
and fish casks were used for the storing of ship's beer in Elizabeth's
reign.] Although the contractor was obliged to make oath that he had
used both malt and hops in the brewing, it often consisted of nothing
more stimulating than "water coloured and bittered," and sometimes the
"stingy dog of a brewer" even went so far as to omit the "wormwood."
Such a dietary as this made a meal only an unavoidable part of the day's
punishment and inspired the sailor with profound loathing. "Good
Eating is an infallible Antidote against murmuring, as many a Big-Belly
Place-Man can instance," he says in one of his petitions. Poor fellow!
his opportunities of putting it to the test were few enough. On Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays, the so-called Banyan days of the service, when
his hateful ration of meat was withheld and in its stead he regaled
himself on plum-duff--the "plums," according to an old regulation, "not
worse than Malaga"--he had a taste of it. Hence the banyan day, though
in reality a fast-day, became indelibly associated in his simple mind
and vocabulary with occasions of feasting and plenty, and so remains to
this day.
If the sailor's only delicacy was duff, his only comforts were rum and
tobacco, and to explore some unknown island, and discover therein a
goodly river of the famous Jamaica spirit, flowing deep and fragrant
between towering mountains of "pig tail," is commonly reputed to have
been the cherished wish of his heart. With tobacco the Navy Board did
not provide him, nor afford dishonest pursers opportunity to "make dead
men chew," [Footnote: Said of pursers who manipulated the Muster Books,
which it was part of their duty to keep, in such a way as to make it
appear that men "discharged dead" had drawn a larger quantity of tobacco
than was actually the case, the difference in value of course going
into their own pockets.] until 1798; but rum they allowed him at a
comparatively early date. When sickness prevailed on board, when beer
ran short or had to be turned over the side to preserve a sweet ship,
rum or wine was issued, and although the Admiralty at first looked
askance at the innovation, and at times left commanders of ships to foot
the bill for spirits thus served out, the practice made gradual headway,
until at length it ousted beer altogether and received the stamp of
official approval. Half a pint, dealt out each morning and evening in
equal portions, was the regular allowance--a quantity often doubled were
the weather unusually severe or the men engaged in the arduous duty
of watering ship. At first the ration of rum was served neat and
appreciated accordingly; but about 1740 the practice of adding water was
introduced. This was Admiral Vernon's doing. Vernon was best known to
his men as "Old Grog," a nickname originating in a famous grogram coat
he affected in dirty weather; and as the rum and water now served out
to them was little to their liking, they marked their disapproval of the
mixture, as well as of the man who invented it, by dubbing it "grog."
The sailor was not without his sense of humour.
The worst feature of rum, from the sailor's point of view, worse by far
than dilution, was the fact that it could be so easily stopped. Here his
partiality for the spirit told heavily against him. His grog was stopped
because he liked it, rather than because he deserved to lose it. The
malice of the thing did not make for a contented ship.
The life of the man-o'-war's-man, according to Lord Nelson, was on an
average "finished at forty-five years." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
1. 580--Memorandum on the State of the Fleet, 1803.] Bad food and
strenuous labour under exceptionally trying conditions sapped his
vitals, made him prematurely old, and exposed him to a host of ills
peculiar to his vocation. He "fell down daily," to employ the old
formula, in spotted or putrid fevers. He was racked by agues, distorted
by rheumatic pains, ruptured or double-ruptured by the strain of
pulling, hauling and lifting heavy weights. He ate no meal without
incurring the pangs of acute indigestion, to which he was fearfully
subject. He was liable to a "prodigious inflammation of the head, nose
and eyes," occasioned by exposure. Scurvy, his most inveterate and
merciless enemy, "beat up" for him on every voyage and dragged his
brine-sodden body down to a lingering death. Or, did he escape these
dangers and a watery grave, protracted disease sooner or later rendered
him helpless, or a brush with the enemy disabled him for ever from
earning his bread.
His surgeons were, as a rule, a sorry lot. Not only were they deficient
in numbers, they commonly lacked both professional training and skill.
Their methods were consequently of the crudest description, and long
continued so. The approved treatment for rupture, to which the sailor
was painfully liable, was to hang the patient up by the heels until the
prolapsus was reduced. Pepys relates how he met a seaman returning from
fighting the Dutch with his eye-socket "stopped with oakum," and as late
at least as the Battle of Trafalgar it was customary, in amputations,
to treat the bleeding stump with boiling pitch as a cauterant. In his
general attitude towards the sick and wounded the old-time naval surgeon
was not unlike Garth, Queen Anne's famous physician. At the Kit Cat Club
he one day sat so long over his wine that Steele ventured to remind
him of his patients. "No matter," said Garth. "Nine have such bad
constitutions that no physician can save them, and the other six such
good ones that all the physicans in the world could not kill them."
Many were the devices resorted to in order to keep the man-o'-war's-man
healthy and fit. As early as 1602 a magic electuary, invented by one
"Doctor Cogbourne, famous for fluxes," was by direction of the Navy
Commissioners supplied for his use in the West Indies. [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 1464--Capt. Barker, 14 Oct. 1702.] By Admiral
Vernon and his commanders he was dosed freely with "Elixir of Vitriol,"
which they not only "reckoned the best general medicine next to
rhubarb," but pinned their faith to as a sovereign specific for scurvy
and fevers. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 161--Admiral Vernon, 31
Oct. 1741.] Lime-juice, known as a valuable anti-scorbutic as early as
the days of Drake and Raleigh, was not added to his rations till 1795.
He did not find it very palatable. The secret of fortifying it was
unknown, and oil had to be floated on its surface to make it keep.
Sour-crout was much more to his taste as a preventive of scurvy, and
in 1777, at the request of Admiral Montagu, then Governor and
Commander-in-Chief over the Island of Newfoundland, the Admiralty caused
to be sent out, for the use of the squadron on that station, where
vegetables were unprocurable, a sufficient quantity of that succulent
preparation to supply twelve hundred men for a period of two months.
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 471--Admiral Montagu, 28 Feb. 1777,
and endorsement.]
Rice the sailor detested. Of all species of "soft tack" it was least to
his liking. He nicknamed it "strike-me-blind," being firmly convinced
that its continued use would rob him of his eyesight. Tea was not added
to his dietary till 1824, but as early as 1795 he could regale himself
on cocoa. For the rest, sugar, essence of malt, essence of spruce,
mustard, cloves, opium and "Jesuits'" or Peruvian bark were considered
essential to his well-being on shipboard. He was further allowed a
barber-one to every hundred men-without whose attentions it was found
impossible to keep him "clean and healthy."
With books he was for many years "very scantily supplied." It was not
till 1812, indeed, that the Admiralty, shocked by the discovery that he
had practically nothing to elevate his mind but daily association with
the quarter-deck, began to pour into the fleet copious supplies of
literature for his use. Thereafter the sailor could beguile his leisure
with such books as the _Old Chaplains Farewell Letter_, Wilson's
_Maxims, The Whole Duty of Man_, Seeker's _Duties of the Sick_, and,
lest returning health should dissipate the piety begotten of his
ailments, Gibson's _Advice after Sickness_. Thousands of pounds were
spent upon this improving literature, which was distributed to the fleet
in strict accordance with the amount of storage room available at the
various dockyards. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ Accountant-General,
Misc. (Various), No. l06--Accounts of the Rev. Archdeacon Owen,
Chaplain-General to the Fleet, 1812-7.]
A fundamental principle of man-o'-war routine was that the sailor formed
no part of it for hospital purposes. Hence sickness was not encouraged.
If the sailor-patient did not recover within a reasonable time, he was
"put on shore sick," sometimes to the great terror of the populace, who,
were he supposed to be afflicted with an infectious disease, fled
from him "as if he had the plague." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
2732--Capt. Young, 24 June 1740.] On shore he was treated for thirty
days at his country's charges. If incurable, or permanently disabled, he
was then turned adrift and left to shift for himself. A clean record
and a sufficiently serious wound entitled him to a small pension or
admission to Greenwich Hospital, an institution which had religiously
docked his small pay of sixpence a month throughout his entire service.
Failing these, there remained for him only the streets and the beggar's
rôle.
His pay was far from princely. From 3d. a day in the reign of King John
it rose by grudging increments to 20s. a month in 1626, and 24s. in
1797. Years sometimes elapsed before he touched a penny of his earnings,
except in the form of "slop" clothing and tobacco. Amongst the instances
of deferred wages in which the Admiralty records abound, there may be
cited the case of the _Dreadnought_, whose men in 1711 had four years'
pay due; and of the _Dunkirk_, to whose company, in the year following,
six and a half years' was owing. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
1470--Capt. Bennett, 8 March 1710-11. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt.
Butler, 19 March, 1711-12,] And at the time of the Nore Mutiny it was
authoritatively stated that there were ships then in the fleet which
had not been paid off for eight, ten, twelve and in one instance even
fifteen years. "Keep the pay, keep the man," was the policy of the
century--a sadly mistaken policy, as we shall presently see.
In another important article of contentment the sailor was hardly better
off. The system of deferred pay amounted practically to a stoppage of
all leave for the period, however protracted, during which the pay was
withheld. Thus the _Monmouth's_ men had in 1706 been in the ship "almost
six years, and had never had the opportunity of seeing their families
but once." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1468-Capt. Baker, 3 Nov.
1706.] In Boscawen's ship, the _Dreadnought_, there were in 1744 two
hundred and fifty men who "had not set foot on shore near two year."
Admiral Penrose once paid off in a seventy-four at Plymouth, many
of whose crew had "never set foot on land for six or seven years";
[Footnote: Penrose (Sir V. C., Vice-Admiral of the Blue), _Observations
on Corporeal Punishment, Impressment, etc.,_ 1824.] and Brenton, in
his _Naval History_, instances the case of a ship whose company, after
having been eleven years in the East Indies, on returning to England
were drafted straightway into another ship and sent back to that quarter
of the globe without so much as an hour's leave ashore.
What was true of pay and leave was also true of prize-money. The
sailor was systematically kept out of it, and hence out of the means of
enjoyment and carousal it afforded him, for inconscionable periods. From
a moral point of view the check was hardly to his detriment. But
the Navy was not a school of morals, and withholding the sailor's
hard-earned prize-money over an indefinite term of years neither made
for a contented heart nor enhanced his love for a service that first
absorbed him against his will, and then, having got him in its clutches,
imposed upon and bested him at every turn.
Although the prime object in withholding his pay was to prevent his
running from his ship, so far from compassing that desirable end it had
exactly the contrary effect. Both the preventive and the disease were of
long standing. With De Ruyter in the Thames in 1667, menacing London
and the kingdom, the seamen of the fleet flocked to town in hundreds,
clamouring for their wages, whilst their wives besieged the Navy Office
in Seething Lane, shrieking: "This is what comes of not paying our
husbands!"
Essentially a creature of contradictions, the sailor rarely, if he could
avoid it, steered the course laid down for him, and in nothing perhaps
was this idiosyncrasy so glaringly apparent as in his behaviour as his
country's creditor. He "would get to London if he could." [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 12 Dec. 1742.] "An
unaccountable humour" impelled him "to quit His Majesty's service
without leave." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 480--Shirley, Governor
of Massachusetts, 12 Sept. 1746.] Once the whim seized him, no ties of
deferred pay or prize-money had power to hold him back. The one he could
obtain on conditions; the other he could dispose of at a discount which,
though ruinously heavy, still left him enough to frolic on.
The weapon of deferred pay was thus a two-edged one. If it hurt the
sailor, it also cut the fingers of those who employed it against him. So
exigent were the needs of the service, he could "run" with impunity.
For if he ran whilst his pay was in arrears, he did so with the full
knowledge that, barring untimely recapture by the press-gang, he would
receive a free pardon, together with payment of all dues, on the sole
condition, which he never kept if he could help it, of returning to his
ship when his money was gone. He therefore deserted for two reasons:
First, to obtain his pay; second, to spend it.
The penalty for desertion, under a well-known statute of George I.,
[Footnote: 13 George I., art. 7.] was death by hanging. As time went on,
however, discipline in this respect suffered a grave relapse, and fear
of the halter no longer served to check the continual exodus from the
fleet. If the runaway sailor were taken, "it would only be a whipping
bout." So he openly boasted. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
1479--Capt. Boscawen, 26 April 1743.] The "bout," it is true, at times
ran to six, or even seven hundred lashes--the latter being the heaviest
dose of the cat ever administered in the British navy; [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 1. 482--Admiral Lord Colvill, 12 Nov. 1765.] but
even this terrible ordeal had no power to hold the sailor to his duty,
and although Admiral Lord St. Vincent, better known in his day as
"hanging Jervis," did his utmost to revive the ancient custom of
stretching the sailor's neck, the trend of the times was against him,
and within twenty-five years of the reaffirming of the penalty, in the
22nd year of George II., hanging for desertion had become practically
obsolete.
In the declining days of the practice a grim game at life and death was
played upon the deck of a king's ship lying in the River St. Lawrence.
The year was 1760. Quebec had only recently fallen before the British
onslaught. A few days before that event, at a juncture when every man in
the squadron was counted upon to play his part in the coming struggle,
and to play it well, three seamen, James Mike, Thomas Wilkinson and
William M'Millard by name, deserted from the _Vanguard_. Retaken some
months later, they were brought to trial; but as men were not easy to
replace in that latitude, the court, whilst sentencing all three to
suffer the extreme penalty of the law, added to their verdict a rider
to the effect that it would be good policy to spare two of them. Admiral
Lord Colvill, then Commander-in-Chief, issued his orders accordingly,
and at eleven o'clock on the morning of the 12th of July the condemned
men, preceded to the scaffold by two chaplains, were led to the
_Vanguard's_ forecastle, where they drew lots to determine which of them
should die. The fatal lot fell to James Mike, who, in presence of the
assembled boats of the squadron, was immediately "turned off" at the
foreyard-arm. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 482--Admiral Lord
Colvill, 10 July 1760; Captains' Logs, 1026--Log of H.M.S. _Vanguard_.]
Encouraged in this grim fashion, desertion assumed alarming proportions.
Nelson estimated that whenever a large convoy of merchant ships
assembled at Portsmouth, at least a thousand men deserted from the
fleet. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 580--Memorandum on the State
of the Fleet, 1803.] This was a "liberty they would take," do what you
could to prevent it.
Of those who thus deserted fully one-third, according to the same high
authority, never saw the fleet again. "From loss of clothes, drinking
and other debaucheries" they were "lost by death to the country." Some
few of the remainder, after drinking His Majesty's health in a final
bowl, voluntarily returned on board and "prayed for a fair wind"; but
the majority held aloof, taking their chances and their pleasures in
sailorly fashion until, their last stiver gone, they fell an easy prey
to the press-gang or the crimp.
While the crimp was to the merchant service what the press-gang was
to the Navy, a kind of universal provider, there was in his method of
preying upon the sailor a radical difference. Like his French compeer,
the recruiting sergeant of the Pont Neuf in the days of Louis the
Well-Beloved, wherever sailors congregated the crimp might be heard
rattling his money-bags and crying: "Who wants any? Who wants any?"
Where the press-gang used the hanger or the cudgel, the crimp employed
dollars. The circumstance gave him a decided "pull" in the contest for
men, for the dollars he offered, whether in the way of pay or bounty,
were invariably fortified with rum. The two formed a contraption no
sailor could resist. "Money and liquor held out to a seaman," said
Nelson, "are too much for him."
In law the offence of enticing seamen to desert His Majesty's service,
like desertion itself, was punishable with death; [Footnote: 22
George n. cap. 33.] but in fact the penalty was either commuted to
imprisonment, or the offender was dealt with summarily, without invoking
the law. Crimps who were caught red-handed had short shrift. Two of the
fraternity, named respectively Henry Nathan and Sampson Samuel, were
once taken in the Downs. "Send Nathan and Samuel," ran the Admiralty
order in their case, "to Plymouth by the first conveyance. Admiral Young
is to order them on board a ship going on foreign service as soon as
possible." Another time an officer, boarding a boat filled with men as
it was making for an Indiaman at Gravesend, found in her six crimps,
all of whom suffered the same fate. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
1542--Capt. Bazeley, 7 Feb. 1808. _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1513--Capt.
Bowater, 12 June 1796.]
Men seduced by means of crimpage bounty were said to be "silver cooped,"
and the art of silver cooping was not only practised at home, it was
world-wide. In whatever waters a British man-o'-war cast anchor, there
the crimp appeared, plying his crafty trade. His assiduity paid a high
compliment to the sterling qualities of the British seaman, but for the
Navy it spelt wholesale depletion.
In home ports he was everywhere in evidence. No ship of war could lie in
Leith Roads but she lost a good part of her crew through his seductions.
"M'Kirdy & M'Lean, petty-fogging writers," were the chief crimps at
Greenock. Sheerness crimps gave "great advance money." Liverpool was
infested with them, all the leading merchant shippers at Bristol,
London and other great ports having "agents" there, who offered the
man-o'-war's-man tempting bounties and substantial wages to induce him
to desert his ship. A specially active agent of Bristol shipowners was
one Vernon Ley, who plied his trade chiefly at Exeter and Plymouth,
whence he was known to send to Bristol, in the space of six months, as
many as seventy or eighty men, whom he provided with postchaises for the
journey and 8 Pounds per man as bounty. James White, a publican who kept
the "Pail of Barm" at Bedminster, made a close second in his activity
and success. Spithead had its regular contingent of crimps, and many an
East India ship sailing from that famous anchorage was "entirely manned"
by their efforts, of course at the expense of the ships of war lying
there. At Chatham, crimpage bounty varied from fifteen to twenty
guineas per head; and at Cork, a favourite recruiting ground for both
merchantmen and privateers, the same sum could be had any day, with high
wages to boot.
In the Crown Colonies a similar state of things prevailed. Queen's ships
visiting Jamaica in or about the year 1716 lost so heavily they scarce
dared venture the return voyage to England, their men having "gone
a-wrecking" in the Gulf of Florida, where one armed sloop was reputed
to have recovered Spanish treasure to the value of a hundred thousand
dollars. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1471--Capt. Balchen, 13 May
1716.] Time did not lessen desertion in the island, though it wrought a
change in the cause. When Admiral Vernon was Commander-in-Chief there
in the forties, he lost five hundred men within a comparatively short
time--"seduced out," to use his own words, "through the temptations of
high wages and thirty gallons of rum, and conveyed drunk on board from
the punch-houses where they are seduced." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_
1. 233--Admiral Vernon, 5 Sept. 1742. A rare recruiting sheet of 1780,
which has for its headpiece a volunteer shouting: "Rum for nothing!"
describes Jamaica as "that delightful Island, abounding in Rum, Sugar
and Spanish Dollars, where there is delicious living and plenty of GROGG
and PUNCH."]
At Louisberg, in the Island of Cape Breton, the North American Squadron
in 1746 lost so many men through the seductions practised by New England
skippers frequenting that port, that Townsend, the admiral in command,
indited a strongly worded protest to Shirley, then Governor of
Massachusetts; but the latter, though deploring the "vile behaviour"
of the skippers in question, could do nothing to put a stop to it.
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 480--Townsend, 17 Aug.; Shirley, 12
Sept. 1746.] As a matter of fact he did not try.
On the coast of Carolina many of the English merchantmen in 1743 paid
from seventeen to twenty guineas for the run home, and in addition "as
many pounds of Sugar, Gallons of Rum and pounds of Tobacco as pounds
in Money." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1 1479-Capt. Bladwell, 1 July
1743.]
The lust for privateering had much to answer for in this respect. So
possessed were the Virginians by the desire to get rich at the expense
of their enemies that they quite "forgot their allegiance to the King."
By the offer of inordinately high wages and rich prizes they did their
utmost to seduce carpenters, gunners, sailmakers and able seamen from
His Majesty's ships. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1480--Capt.
Lord Alexander Banff, 21 Oct. 1744.] Any ship forced to winter at Rhode
Island, again, always counted upon losing enough men to "disable her
from putting to sea" when the spring came. Here, too, the privateering
spirit was to blame, Rhode Island being notorious for its enterprise in
that form of piracy. Another impenitent sinner in her inroads upon the
companies of king's ships was Boston, where "a sett of people made it
their Business" to entice them away. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1.
1440--Capt. Askew, 27 Aug. 1748.] No ship could clean, refit, victual
or winter there without "the loss of all her men." Capt. Young, of
the _Jason_, was in 1753 left there with never a soul on board except
"officers and servants, widows' men, the quarter-deck gentlemen and
those called idlers." The rest had been seduced at 30 Pounds per head.
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 2732--Capt. Young, 6 Oct. 1753. The
"widows' men" here humorously alluded to would not add much to the
effectiveness of the depleted company. They were imaginary sailors,
borne on the ship's books for pay and prize-money which went to
Greenwich Hospital.]
So it went on. Day in, day out, at home and abroad, this ceaseless drain
of men, linking hands in the decimation of the fleet with those able
adjutants Disease and Death, accentuated progressively and enormously
the naval needs of the country. For the apprehension and return of
deserters from ships in home ports a drag-net system of rewards and
conduct-money sprang into being; but this the sailor to some extent
contrived to elude. He "stuck a cockade in his hat" and made shift to
pass for a soldier on leave; or he laid furtive hands on a horse and
set up for an equestrian traveller. In the neighbourhood of all great
seaport towns, as on all main roads leading to that paradise and
ultimate goal of the deserter, the metropolis, horse-stealing by sailors
"on the run" prevailed to an alarming extent; and although there was
a time when the law strung him up for the crime of borrowing horses to
help him on his way, as it had once hanged him for deserting, the naval
needs of the country eventually changed all that and brought him a
permanent reprieve. Thenceforth, instead of sending the happy-go-lucky,
devil-may-care felon to the gallows, they turned him over to the
press-gang and so re-consigned him, penniless and protesting, to the
duty he detested.