design, and built of such poor materials, that a near sight of it would be
sufficient to make the mildest architect swear loud and long. This
plastered abomination is, of course, among the earliest buildings here;
for no sooner are two or three houses gathered together than an
unbeneficed clergyman--what we may on this sea-faring road most
appropriately term a "sky-pilot"--comes along and solicits subscriptions
towards the building of a church for the due satisfaction of the
"spiritual needs" of a meagre flock. It would be ungenerous to assert that
he always scents a living in this spiritual urgency, but the labourer is
worthy of his hire, and if by dint of much canvassing for funds amongst
pious old ladies and retired general officers (why is it that these men of
war so frequently become pillars of the Church after their army days are
done?) he succeeds in putting up some sort of a building called a church,
who else so eligible as incumbent?
[Sidenote: _PURBROOK_]
Where Waterlooville ends, the road runs for half-a-mile in mitigated
rusticity, to become again, at the sixth milestone from Portsmouth, lively
with the thriving, business-like village of Purbrook.
And at this point the traveller in coaching times came within sight of his
destination. Painfully the old stages climbed up the steep ascent of
Portsdown Hill before the road was lowered by cutting through the chalk at
the summit, about 1820, and grumblingly the passengers obeyed the coachman
and walked up the road to save the horses. But when they did reach the
crest of the hill such a panorama met their gaze as nowhere else could be
seen in England: Portsmouth, the Harbour, Gosport, the Isle of Wight, and
the coast-line for miles on either hand lay spread out before their eyes
as daintily as in a plan, and smiling like a Land of Promise.
Unfortunately, however, our forebears were not yet educated to a proper
appreciation and admiration of scenery. They, with that jovial bard of the
Regency, Captain Morris, preferred the pavements of great cities to the
pastorals of the country-side, and would with the greatest fervour have
echoed him when he wrote--
"In town let me live, then, in town let me die;
For, in truth, I can't relish the country, not I.
If one must have a villa in summer to dwell,
Oh! give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall."
Fortunately, however, the view remains unspoiled for a generation that
takes its pleasures afield, and can find delight in country scenes which
our great-grandfathers characterized as places of "horror and
desolation."
This is the point of view from which Rowlandson has sketched his
"Extraordinary Scene," and although we miss in the picture the "George
Inn," that stands so four-square and stalwart, perched up above the road,
yet the likeness to the place remains after these many years have flown.
The occasion that led to Rowlandson's producing the elaborate plate from
which the accompanying illustration was made, is referred to at length in
the title, which runs thus--
"An Extraordinary Scene on the Road from London to Portsmouth, Or an
Instance of Unexampled speed used by a Body of Guards, consisting of 1920
Rank and File, besides Officers, who, on the 10th of June, 1798, left
London in the Morning, and actually began to Embark for Ireland, at
Portsmouth, at four o'clock in the Afternoon; having travelled 74 Miles in
10 Hours."
[Illustration: AN EXTRAORDINARY SCENE ON THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD. _By
Rowlandson._]
Such a performance as this, at such a time, made a great impression, and
Rowlandson has made a very spirited drawing of the scene, full of life and
vigour. In the foreground is the "Portsmouth Fly," with officers inside,
taking their ease, and a number of soldiers occupying a precarious perch
on the roof, fifing and drumming, regardless of jolts and lurches. Flags
are waving from the windows of the "Fly," soldiers on the box are "laying
on" to the horses with a whip, while three others ride comfortably in the
"rumble-tumble" behind. Other parties follow, in curricles and carts,
hugging the shameless wenches who "doted on the military" in those
times as demonstratively as Mary Jane does now. On the right hand stands
an enthusiastic group at the door of the "Jolly Sailor": the landlord, in
apron and shirt-sleeves, about to drink the soldiers' healths in a bumper
of very respectable proportions, his womenkind looking on, while a young
hopeful, who has donned a saucepan by way of helmet, is "presenting arms"
with a besom. An ancient, with a wooden leg and a crutch, is fiddling away
with vigour, and a dog runs forward, barking. The long cavalcade is seen
disappearing down the hill, while away in the distance is Portsmouth
Harbour with its crowded shipping.
XXXV
[Sidenote: _SAILOR-MEN_]
But the greater number of the travellers along the Portsmouth Road,
whether they walked or rode, were sailors; and so salt of the sea are the
records of this old turnpike that the romance of old-time travel upon it
is chiefly concerned with them that went down to brave the elements on
board ship; or with those happy mariners who, having entered port, came
speeding up to home and beauty with all the ardour of men tossed and
buffeted by winds and waves on a two or three years' cruise. Pepys, who
happened to be on the road, on his way up from Portsmouth, June 12, 1667,
met several of the crew of the "Cambridge," and describes them in a manner
so unfavourable that I am inclined to suspect they showed too little
consideration for the Secretary to the Admiralty. At any rate, he
pictures them as being "the most debauched swearing rogues that ever were
in the Navy, just like their prophane commander." My certes, sirs! just
imagine Pepys playing the shocked Puritan, after having, perhaps, just
committed some of those peccadilloes which he sets down so frankly in his
ciphered "Diary."
[Sidenote: _THE SAILOR'S RETURN_]
That is one of the earliest glimpses we get of Jack ashore on this route,
and by it we can well see that his spirits were as boisterous then as ever
after. "Sailors earned their money like horses and spent it like asses,"
says an old writer, and certainly, once ashore, they were no niggards. It
was the natural reaction from a long life of stern discipline, tempered by
fighting, wounds, floggings, and marline-spikes, and for the most part
cheerfully endured on a miserable diet of weevilly biscuit, "salt horse,"
and pork full of maggots. The Mutiny at Spithead, April 15, 1797, was due
in part to the shameful quality of the provisions supplied, and partly to
the open huckstering of the pursers, the unfair distribution of
prize-money, to stoppages, and to insufficient pay. But these grievances
were of old standing, and the Government actually felt and expressed
indignation that sailors should object to be half starved and half
poisoned with insufficient and rotten food. However indignant the
Government may have been, redress was seen to be immediately advisable,
and the demands of the mutineers were granted. Sailors rated as A.B.'s had
their wages _raised_ to a shilling a day, and were paid at more frequent
intervals than once in ten years or so. It was stated (and names and dates
were given) in the House of Commons that some ships' companies had not
been paid for eight, ten, twelve, or fifteen years. Under such a system,
or want of system, as this, it frequently happened in those days of much
fighting and more disease that when the ships were paid off, the sailors
to whom money was due had long been dead. In those cases it was very
rarely that their heirs touched a penny, and certainly the Government
reaped no advantage. The money went into the pockets of the Admiralty
clerks and paymasters, who thrived on wholesale and shameless peculation.
If by some strange chance, or by a singular strength of constitution, some
hardy sailors remained to claim their due, they were paid it grudgingly,
without interest, and whittled away by deductions amounting to as much as
thirty or forty per cent.
[Illustration: THE SAILOR'S RETURN FROM PORTSMOUTH TO LONDON.
_Publish'd as the Act directs March 2 1772 by J. Bretherton, N{o}. 134,
New Bond Street._]
But when a man _did_ receive his pay, together with his prize-money, he
was like a school-boy out at play. Nothing was too ridiculous or puerile
for him to stoop to, and he was, as a class, so entirely innocent and
unsophisticated that the land-sharks waiting hungrily for homeward-bound
ships found him an easy prey. Stories innumerable have been told of his
childlike innocence of landsmen's ways, and pictures and caricatures
without end have been drawn and painted with the object of making men
smile at his strange doings. Here is a caricature dated so far back as
1772, showing "The Sailor's Return from Portsmouth to London." The point
of view chosen is, apparently, only a mile or two from Portsmouth, for in
the background rise some ruins obviously intended to represent Porchester
Castle. The sailor, after the manner so often dwelt upon, is keeping up a
pleasing travesty of sea-faring life. His jaded nag is a ship, and the
course is being steered by the nag's tail. The sailor himself has
evidently "come aboard" by the rope-ladder, seen hanging down almost to
the ground, and he keeps the fog-horn going to avoid collisions. A flag
flies from his top-gallant--in plain English, his hat--while a Union Jack
is fixed at the forepeak and an anchor is triced up at the bows, in
readiness for "heaving-to." His log might well be that of "Jack Junk" on a
similar journey:--"Hove out of Portsmouth on board the 'Britannia Fly'--a
swift sailer--got an inside berth--rather drowsy the first watch or
so--liked to have slipped off the stern--cast anchor at the 'George'--took
a fresh quid and a supply of grog--comforted the upper works--spoke
several homeward-bound frigates on the road--and after a tolerable smooth
voyage entered the port of London at ten past five, post meridian."
[Illustration: TRUE BLUE; OR BRITAIN'S JOLLY TARS PAID OFF AT PORTSMOUTH,
1797. _By Isaac Cruikshank._]
[Sidenote: _POOR JACK_]
Another, and a much more spirited, plate by Isaac Cruikshank, dated 1797,
and entitled, "True Blue; or Britain's Jolly Tars Paid Off at Portsmouth,"
shows a coach-load going off to London without more ado, accompanied by
Poll and Sue, Nancy, Kate, and Joan; all (nay, I will not say uproariously
drunk) in the merriest of moods. The horses gallop, hats are waved in
every direction, and those who have no hats flourish beer-bottles instead.
Some jolly Jack-a-Dandy stands upon the roof, at the imminent risk of his
neck, and scrapes a fiddle to what, considering the pace of the coach,
must have been a tune of the most agonizing description; while an amorous
fellow hugs his girl behind. The Union Jack is, of course, in a
prominent position, and a riotous, devil-me-care figure sits one of the
horses backwards. I do not observe any one of this merry company "heaving
the lead overboard," as became the pleasing fashion among sailor-men flush
of money who rode outside the day coaches to town. These merry men would
purchase long gold chains at Portsmouth, and on their journey would now
and then hang them over the side of the coach with their watches suspended
at the end by way of plummets, and would call out, in nautical style, so
many fathoms. Some home-coming sailors would walk up the road, either
because they had spent most of their money in drink and debauchery at
Portsmouth, or else because the idea commended itself to their freakish
natures; and the people of the inns and beerhouses on the way reaped a
fine harvest from this class of customer. I have told you, on another
page, how most of these sailor-men were accommodated, as to their sleeping
arrangements, by being given a shake-down in the clean straw of some
outhouse. They in many instances threw themselves down amid the straw,
hopelessly drunk; and then entered unto them the honest innkeeper, who
would not rob his guests, but saw no objection to taking them up by the
heels and shaking them vigorously until the money fell out of their
pockets among the straw. If they found the coin in the morning, why, it
was bad luck from the publican's point of view; and if they reeled away,
leaving their money behind them, it was a happy chance for mine host, who
came and gleaned a golden hoard from his straw. But if some indignant
sailor, full of horrid oaths and terrible threats, came and swore he had
been robbed during the night, the virtuous publican could suggest that
before he made such serious charges, it would be better if he made a
search. He _might_ have dropped his money!
Sometimes the Portsmouth Road was traversed by long processions of wagons
containing treasure captured at sea and landed at Portsmouth for greater
security in transmission to London. Such an occasion was that when Anson,
returning in 1744 from his four years' cruise in South American waters,
brought home a rich cargo of spoil in the "Centurion." This treasure was
valued at no less than L500,000, and was stowed away in twelve wagons,
which were sent up to London under an escort of sailors and marines.
Eighteen years later, another splendid haul was made by the capture of the
Spanish galleon "Hermione," from Lima, off Cadiz, and on this occasion the
value was scarcely less than before. The prize-money distributed amounted
to handsome fortunes for the officers, and conferred competencies upon
every man and boy in the two ships' companies that took part in the
capture. Such windfalls as these were not everyday occurrences, and many a
man gave and took hard knocks all his life, to die in his old age in
poverty and neglect. Very few, probably, of those fortunate prize-sharers
from the "Hermione" treasure-chest retained their wealth.
[Sidenote: _QUOTA-MEN_]
The people who dwelt along the highway all shared to some degree in this
marvellous good fortune, but they lived in fear of the murderous rascals
who began to infest the roads in 1795, tramping or being sent down from
London to join the navy at a time when every man was needed to help the
nation through the vast wars we were continually engaged in. At that
period of England's greatest struggle for existence the press-gang was in
full tide of activity, but the pressed men were few in proportion to the
number required to man the ships, and so Acts of Parliament were passed in
order to provide a certain number of men from each county and from every
seaport for the service of the navy. The men thus provided were induced to
join by the extraordinarily large bounties offered, some of which were as
much as L30; and many of these "quota-men," as they came to be called,
belonged to the most depraved of the criminal classes. The _personnel_ of
the navy was lowered by these men, and the sailors were disgusted with
them. The "quota-bounty," says an authority, "we conceive to have been the
most ill-advised and fatal measure ever adopted by the Government for
manning the fleet. The seamen who voluntarily entered in 1793 and fought
some of the most glorious of our battles received the comparatively small
bounty of L5. These brave fellows saw men totally ignorant of the
profession, the very refuse and outcasts of society, flying from justice
and the vengeance of the law, come on board with a bounty to the amount of
L70. One of these objects, on coming on board a ship of war with L70
bounty, was seized by a boatswain's mate, who, holding him up with one
hand by the waistband of his trousers, humorously exclaimed, 'Here's a
fellow that cost a guinea a pound!'"
Criminals were allowed as an alternative to long terms of imprisonment, to
volunteer for what was evidently regarded by the authorities as an
equivalent to the gaol--a man-o'-war. "All the bad characters of a
neighbourhood, loafers, poachers, footpads, possible murderers, men
suspected of any crime, but against whom there was not sufficient
evidence, were arrested and sent on board, with a note to the captain
begging him to take measures to prevent their return; which, as such men
were commonly stout-built fellows enough, he was no ways loath to do. The
gaol-birds from the towns were unquestionably worse; worse physically,
worse morally, and perhaps worse hygienically; they were not infrequently
infected with gaol-fever, and brought the infection to the fleet; they
were largely the cause of the severe, even brutal, discipline that ruled
in the navy towards the end of last century." According to the sailors
themselves--"Them was the chaps as played hell with the fleet: every
grass-combing beggar as chose to bear up for the bounty had nothing to do
but to dock the tails of his togs and take to the tender." They used to
ship in shoals; they were drafted by forties and fifties to each ship in
the fleet; they were hardly up the side, hardly mustered abaft, before
there was "Send for the barber, shave their pates, and send 'em for'rd to
the head, to be scrubbed and sluished from clue to ear-ring, afore you
could venture to berth 'em below. Then, stand clear of their shore-going
rigs--every finger was fairly a fishhook; neither chest, nor bed, nor
blanket, nor bag escaped their sleight-of-hand thievery; they pluck you,
aye, as clean as a poulterer, and bone your very eyebrows whilst staring
you full in the face."
[Sidenote: _ROADS INFESTED_]
These were the men who, instead of bringing prosperity to the innkeepers
and country folk, robbed and plundered stray travellers and lonely houses
by the way. Singly, they robbed hen-roosts and old market-women; in bands
their courage rose to highway robbery on a larger scale, and even to
murder. An official posting down to Portsmouth with money for a ship's
company came within an ace of being relieved of several thousands of
pounds; for on his coach being upset on Rake Hill a number of fellows
appeared with offers of help, and would have carried off the gold had not
the boxes in which it was contained been too heavy. As it was, while some
of them were engaging every one's attention in attempting to raise the
coach out of the slough in which it had become embedded, the remainder of
the band had got hold of the specie-boxes, and were battering them in with
great stones, when a party of marines opportunely arrived and caught them
in the very act.
Men of this stamp were the curse of the navy. They were more often
town-bred weaklings than robust countrymen, and to their constitutional
disabilities they added the vices of the towns from which they came, and a
sullen habit of mind that could leave no room for discipline. Those were
the days of the press-gang, when likely fellows, whether seamen or
landsmen, were taken by force from their occupations, shipped under guard
upon men-o'-war in the harbours, and sent to fight, willy-nilly, for King
and country. Merchantmen, coming home from long and tedious voyages, were
seized and hurried off immediately upon their stepping ashore, and, in
fact, any well-built young fellow, an apprentice or clerk, who could not
prove himself to be a master-man became at one time the ordinary prey of
the press-gangs that roamed about the seaboard towns in search of prey.
Seamen only were their proper quarry, but when more, and still more, men
were required as time went on, it mattered little whether pressed men were
landlubbers or sailors; and as the members of the press-gang came to be
paid so much a head for all the sturdy fellows they could seize, it may be
seen that they were not apt to stand upon trifles or to weigh evidence
very narrowly. There were exemptions from the press, and it was open to a
man who considered himself to have been illegally seized to send a
statement to the authorities. These became known as "state-the-case-men,"
but as, in many instances, the ship upon which they had been sent sailed
almost immediately, this formality was simply a cruel farce. If their
statements were ever forwarded to their destination, they only arrived by
the time the ships were well out to sea; and if their complaints were ever
investigated, the inquiries would most likely take place while the
subjects of them were in the thick of an action with the enemy; perhaps
wounded, possibly even already dead.
[Sidenote: _THE PRESS-GANG_]
The forays of the press-gangs were battles in themselves, and many a man
on either side was killed in these man-hunting expeditions. "Private
mischief," said the Earl of Mansfield, "had better be submitted to than
that public detriment and inconvenience should ensue;" but the men who
fought with the press-gangs did not see matters in this light, and neither
did their womenkind. The beautiful decorative drawing by Morland that
forms the frontispiece to this book puts the sentiment of the time against
impressment in a poetical way, but Gillray's more nervous and satirical
pencil gives, in his "Liberty of the Subject," a realistic and satirical
picture that shows how strenuously the press was resisted. It is a most
graphic and humorous representation of a "hot press" in the streets of
some seaport town, at a period immediately following upon the American War
of Independence, when men were particularly scarce. A gang has seized a
tailor, a poor, miserable-looking wretch with no fighting in him, almost
literally as well as metaphorically the "ninth part of a man," and his
captors are dragging him off, knock-kneed and incapable of resistance. But
if he submits so easily, the women of the crowd have to be reckoned with,
and are doing nearly all the fighting. The furious virago in the
foreground is pulling at a midshipman's hair with all the strength of one
hand, while with the other she is lugging his ear off, kicking him, at the
same time, with her knee. A sailor in the rear, with an animated
expression of countenance, has hold of her arm, and appears to be aiming a
blow at her head with the butt-end of a pistol; while another woman with a
heavy mop is preparing to fell him to the ground.
[Illustration: THE LIBERTY OF THE SUBJECT, 1782. _By James Gillray._]
One of the "hottest presses," and at the same time the most successful,
ever known, was that of March 8, 1803, Portsmouth. Five hundred able
seamen were obtained on that occasion by the strategy and cunning of a
certain Captain Brown, who assembled a company of marines late at night
with all the fuss and circumstance he could display, in order, as he gave
out, to quell a mutiny at Fort Monckton. The news of this pretended mutiny
spread rapidly, and great crowds came rushing down to see the affair. When
they had all crossed Haslar Bridge they were cooped up like so many fowls,
and that master of strategy, having posted his marines at the bridge end,
seized every suitable man in the crowd.
But the pressed men, although they tried every dodge to escape this forced
service, and though their unwillingness to serve his Majesty afloat has
made a classic of the saying, "One volunteer is worth three pressed men,"
did good service when once they were trapped and trained. For one thing,
they had no choice. 'Twas either a cheerful obedience to orders and
readiness in action when once afloat, or else a flogging with the cat and
a remand, heavily ironed, to the hold. Seeing how useless would be any
malingering, the pressed men turned to with a will, and fought our battles
with such spirit that the victories of Trafalgar, of "the glorious First
of June," off Cape St. Vincent, and many of the other notable exploits of
the British Fleet, are due to their courage and resolution.
[Sidenote: _REVELRY_]
When the pressed men came home (if ever they were so fortunate) they were
as a rule so inured to sea-service and hard knocks, that, so soon as they
had had a spree and spent their money, they were ready for another
cruise. But meanwhile they enjoyed themselves with the reckless
prodigality possible only to such men. When the ships came home (and ships
were always coming home then), Portsmouth ran with liquor, riot, and
revelry; and on fine summer days the grassy slopes of Portsdown Hill were
all alive with the jolly Jacks engaged with great earnestness in the
business of pleasure. Here, in the taverns that overlook from this breezy
height the harbour, the town, and the distant mud-flats, generations of
soldiers and sailors, fresh from battle and the salt sea, have caroused.
Here, opposite the "George" and the Belle Vue Gardens, where "the
military" and the servant-girls, the sailors and their lasses, still
disport on high-days and holidays, with swings, Aunt Sallies, cocoa-nut
shies, and, in short, all the fun of the fair, have the look-out men of a
hundred years ago shivered in the wind while scanning the distant horizon
for signs of Bonaparte and his flotilla, the inglorious Armada that never
left port.
XXXVI