the collections of Hakluyt, Purchas, Churchill, Harris, and others are
more interesting than the descriptions given of the tonnage, arms, and
crews of the vessels which discovered the Indies, penetrated the great
South Sea, gave names to capes and headlands of the vast but still
shadowy continent of New Holland; coasted the bleak shores of
Newfoundland, and searched the ice of the Frozen Ocean for the
North-west Passage. Of course, the measurements of those days are not
the measurements of these. A tun might signify a capacity for
different kinds of freight without reference to cubical dimensions.
The capacity of some vessels in those days was measured by the number
of pipes of wine which could be stowed in them. Even in recent times
there is a considerable difference between old and new measurements,
the old representing less than the new. Nevertheless it is impossible
to read about the ships in which the early navigators sailed—it is
impossible to think of their tub-like forms, their enormous
top-hamper, the astonishing clumsiness of their yards and gear, their
castellated poops and rampart-like quarters, without wondering how on
earth such structures managed to roll in safety over the stormy ocean,
and to push their way, however slowly, against opposing winds and
adverse tides. Certain expressions have changed their meaning, and on
reading the old voyages one is often puzzled with names given to craft
which, to modern experience, do not in the least degree correspond
with their titles. For instance, the galley in our times is known as a
long rowing boat, mounting so many oars. But in former days by the
term galley was meant a vessel whose complement of men was one
thousand or twelve hundred. She mounted a good show of ordnance, had
three masts and thirty-two banks of oars, every bank containing two
oars, and every oar being handled by five or six men. Equally
perplexing are those names of shallops, skiffs, pinnaces, lighters,
and so forth, which are met in abundance in the old stories, and which
express fabrics very different indeed from the kinds of craft they now
designate. For Drake’s glorious voyage five ships were equipped. The
_Hind_ was one hundred tons, the _Elizabeth_ eighty tons, the
_Marigold_ thirty tons, the _Swan_ fifty tons, and the _Christopher_
fifteen tons. The captain of this fifteen-ton pinnace was Thomas Moon,
and we hear of her disappearing in great storms and reappearing in
fine weather, to the general joy of the rest of the fleet. Such an old
skipper as this must have made noble company over a mug of strong
beer, and would have been able to tell of things even more wonderful
than trees with oysters growing upon them. Schouten, who discovered
and named Cape Horn, put to sea in vessels which in these days would
class amongst small, inferior coasters; yet the _Unity_ managed to
carry nineteen pieces of cannon and twelve swivels and a company of
sixty-five men. How those ancient mariners contrived to stow
themselves away in their dark ’tweendecks and black forecastles, how
in their little holds they could find room for sufficient provisions
and water to last them for months, not to mention the gunpowder and
cannon balls which they carried, surpasses modern marine
comprehension. Among the ships William Funnell writes about, in a
narrative that is commonly taken to be William Dampier’s, was the
Cinque Ports galley, for ever memorable as the craft in which
Alexander Selkirk sailed. This vessel, that was equipped for a
buccaneering cruise in little known waters against towering and
powerful galleons, was ninety tons, a burthen which in these days
would about fit a pleasure yacht intended for the blue skies and
summer seas of the holiday period. Or take Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s
expedition, which included the _Golden Hind_ of forty tons, the
_Swallow_ of forty tons, and the _Squirrel_ of ten tons. “The
resolution of the proprietors was that the fleet should begin its
course northerly, and follow as directly as they could the trade-way
to Newfoundland.” Think of a ten-ton boat starting on such an
expedition as this! Yet Sir Humphrey took command of her when her
master deserted, with this sequel: that when off Cape Race homeward
bound, “the storms and swellings of the seas increasing, he (namely,
Sir Humphrey) was again pressed to leave the frigate (that is, the
_Squirrel_), but his answer was, ‘We are as near to Heaven by sea as
by land.’ About midnight, the _Squirrel_ being ahead of the _Golden
Hind_, her lights were at once extinguished, which those in the _Hind_
seeing cried out ‘Our general is lost!’ and it is supposed she sank
that instant, for she was never more heard of.” Lord Byron exclaims:
“Columbus found a new world in a cutter,
Or brigantine, or pink, of no great tonnage,
While yet America was in her non-age.”
The conjecture—it seems no more—of Washington Irving that Columbus’
ships were undecked boats “not superior to river and coasting craft of
more modern days,” is disproved by Lindsay in his “History of
Shipping.”
In the cases of women who have put on men’s clothes and shipped as
sailors many were incited by love or jealousy. The old ballad of Billy
Taylor is representative. The best known instance is that of Hannah
Snell, whose story has been often told.[31] This distinguished female
was born in 1723, and married, at Wapping, one James Summs, a Dutch
sailor, who spent her money and abandoned her. Thereupon Hannah made up
her mind to go in quest of her faithless spouse. She dressed herself as
a man, and started. Her adventures would fill three volumes. Romance and
farce, tragedy and comedy are happily combined. She first went a
soldiering, and, of course, a young woman fell in love with her. She
deserted, re-enlisted as a marine, and saw a great deal of active
service. How many men she killed is not stated, but it is conceivable
that her love for the sex was not keen, and that she never discharged a
musket without an emotion of joy mingled with hope that James Summs was
not far off. She was wounded on several occasions, but contrived to
conceal her sex until the news reached her that her Jim, whilst a
prisoner at Geneva, had committed a murder, for which he was stitched up
in a bag and thrown into the sea, when, without further ado, she resumed
the petticoat and returned to London. From a grateful country she
obtained an annuity of £50, which with her earnings as an actress—it
seems she achieved a great popularity as Bill Bobstay, a sailor—enabled
her to cut a genteel figure. Growing weary of the stage, she opened a
public house in Wapping that was very handsomely supported down to the
time of her death by the numerous jolly tars of that marine district.
Footnote 31:
A very full account of this extraordinary woman is printed in a little
volume entitled “Eccentric Biography,” 1803.
A less known, but to the full as remarkable a case of a woman
masquerading as a sailor occurs in the life of Mary Anne Talbot,
“otherwise John Taylor.” Her story was written and published by herself
at the beginning of the present century, and may be accepted as
certainly not less accurate than the memoirs of George Ann Bellamy,
whose sweet face crowned with feathers still looks laughingly over the
mask in her hand from the plate after Ramberg in the old collections.
Miss Talbot, otherwise John Taylor, was born in 1778, and was induced by
an officer in an infantry regiment to assume male attire and accompany
him as his foot-boy to the West Indies. Afterwards she acted in the
capacity of a drummer at the siege of Valenciennes, and was twice
wounded. It is observable that this young lady, who claimed to be the
natural daughter of Lord William Talbot, Baron of Hensol, began her
amazing career, like Hannah Snell, as a soldier. The infantry officer
having been killed, Miss Talbot threw off her drummer’s dress, assumed
that of a sailor, and, having made her way to Luxembourg, engaged with
the captain of a French lugger, and sailed with him, in the belief that
the vessel was a peaceful trader. After cruising about awhile the lugger
fell in with the British fleet under the command of Lord Howe. Mary Ann
refused to fight. The French captain swore at her and beat her, but she
was not to be manhandled into firing upon her countrymen. The lugger
hauled down her flag, and her captain and crew were taken on board the
_Queen Charlotte_ to be examined by Lord Howe. On being questioned Mary
Anne replied that she was an English boy, and had shipped in the lugger
in order to escape from France, and with the intention of deserting when
the chance occurred. Fortunately Lord Howe’s questions were not very
minute. She was dismissed, and stationed on board the _Brunswick_,
Captain Harvey. In the great sea fight that followed Mary Anne was
desperately wounded, and conveyed to the cockpit, and on the arrival of
her ship at Spithead was sent to Haslar Hospital, from which, after four
months’ attendance as an out-patient, she was discharged, partially
cured. She then entered the _Vesuvius_ bomb; the vessel was carried by
privateers, and Mary Anne was taken to Dunkirk and lodged in the prison
of St. Clair. On the prisoners being exchanged she met with an American
captain, engaged with him and sailed to America as ship’s steward. She
resided with the captain’s family at New York, and declares that she was
subjected to much embarrassment on account of an attachment conceived
for her by the captain’s niece, who actually proposed marriage, and
obtained a miniature of her beloved in the full uniform of an American
officer, for which Mary Anne paid eighteen dollars. Shortly after her
return to England, the press being hot, she was seized by a gang, and in
the scrimmage received a severe cutlass-wound on the head. She was
carried on board the tender, but having probably had enough of the sea,
she revealed her sex and recovered her liberty. How much truth there is
in this narrative it would now be idle to conjecture. It is certain,
however, that she obtained a pension of £20 a year, and that she
received her money from the Navy Office as John Taylor, the name she had
assumed when she followed the officer in the walking regiment to the
West Indies.
In October, 1759, a person named Samuel Bundy, twenty years old, married
a girl named Mary Parlour. He said he was ill, and his bride patiently
waited until the following March, hoping meanwhile that he would be
cured. Her friends growing tired, insisted upon searching him, and to
the general amazement the bridegroom proved a female. Her story was that
seven years previously she had been betrayed by a sweetheart and taken
away from her mother, and that to prevent her from being discovered he
dressed her as a boy. They separated after a year, and she went to sea
as a sailor. This life she quitted after twelve months of rough work,
and apprenticed herself to a Mr. Angel who lived at the King’s Head,
Gravel Lane, Southwark. A young woman, Mary Parlour, fell in love with
Mr. Angel’s brisk and saucy-looking apprentice, and they were married.
The “husband” declared that his “wife” speedily found out the mistake
she had made, but determined not to expose the matter. After her
marriage “Samuel Bundy,” as she called herself, entered on board a
man-of-war, but deserted for fear of detection. She then tried a
merchantman, but left her also to return to the “wife” whom, says the
account, “she says she dearly loves.”
In 1761, as a sergeant was drilling some soldiers aboard a transport, he
was struck with the prominent breast of one of them named Paul Daniel.
When the drill was over he sent for him to the cabin, where, after
taxing “him” she confessed her sex. Her story was that she had a husband
whom she dearly loved, and who had been reduced to beggary; he enlisted
in a marching regiment and was in Germany for two years, as she
believed. She had not heard of or from him in all that time, and she
finally decided to hunt for him the world over. On learning that troops
were being despatched to Germany she enlisted. This, to be sure, is a
tale of a female soldier, but I introduce it here for its strangeness
and likewise for the scene of it being on board ship.
In 1771, a man named Charles Waddall, on board the _Oxford_ man-of-war,
was sentenced to receive two dozen lashes for desertion; but when tied
up the sailor was discovered to be a woman. She said that she had
travelled from Hull to London after a man with whom she was in love, and
hearing that he was a sailor on the _Oxford_ she entered for that ship.
When she arrived on board she learnt that her sweetheart had deserted,
on which she resolved to run away too. The admiral gave the poor
creature half a guinea, and others connected with Chatham dockyard made
up a purse for her.
The following is illustrative of the power of the passion that inspires
the lass who loves a sailor: In 1808, the relatives of a girl who had
given her heart to a sailor, hoped to end the attachment by procuring
his impressment; but she resolved nevertheless to marry him, and he was
accordingly brought ashore and escorted by the press-gang to the church,
whence, after the marriage ceremony, he was again conveyed to the
tender. I think I see the commiserating expression on the mahogany faces
of those old Jacks, as they witness the impressed man saying good-bye to
his Poll.
In 1807, a woman, dressed in sailor’s clothes, was brought before the
Lord Mayor of London. She said that she had been apprenticed by her
step-father at Whitby to a collier called the _Mayflower_; that she had
served four years out of the seven without her sex being discovered;
that she was bound when she was thirteen years old, and that her
step-father had likewise bound her mother to the sea—this lady being
killed, whilst serving as a sailor, at the battle of Copenhagen! She
said that her ship was at Woolwich, and that she had run away because
the mate had rope’s-ended her for not getting up. She was provided with
female attire and sent to her parish.
In 1792, the Marchioness de Bouillé and Madame de Noailles arrived at
Brighton from Dieppe. The marchioness crossed the channel in an open
boat, and was disguised as a sailor! The other, who was in mean male
attire, crossed in one of the packets, the master of the vessel having
pitied her and taken her under his protection.
Another romantic instance may be quoted: it is given in the _Naval
Chronicle_ (1802), and seems authentic enough. A gentleman, towards the
end of the last century, became bankrupt. He went to Bradford with two
daughters, and there died of a broken heart. The girls were left
absolutely without provision. Rather than starve—or beg, which was worse
than starving to these high-spirited women—they resolved to assume the
character and dress of men and enter the navy. They went to Portsmouth
and obtained a situation on the quarter-deck—as the term then was—of a
troopship bound to the West Indies. They were engaged, we are told, in
the reduction of Curaçoa, “and served with credit in two or three
actions in those seas, till one of them was wounded by a splinter in her
side, when her sex being discovered, she was discharged, and came to
England about six weeks since,” making the date about May, 1802.
Meanwhile, the other sister was ill with fever, having been put ashore
at Dominica. Believing herself to be dying, she sent for one of the
officers of the ship, disclosed her sex to him, and related her story.
“The discovery gave tenderness to the esteem he had before entertained
for his young friend; his attentions contributed to her convalescence.
In short, she recovered, they were married, and are now returned to
England in possession of the means to render happy the remainder of
their days.”
It is a common saying at sea on a fine bright day, “That if it were
always such weather, ships would go manned with ladies.” Possibly if the
romance of women sailors terminated with handsome lovers and well-to-do
husbands, there might, even in these practical days, arise the same
necessity for overhauling the forecastle for masquerading girls that is
now found for overhauling the hold for stowaways. But the time for
Hannah Snells, for Mary Anne Talbots, otherwise John Taylors, for Ann
Bonnys and Mary Reads is dead and gone. Those heroines belonged to a
seafaring age of which old salts are ridiculed for deploring the
extinction. And in sober truth old salts must not grumble if they are
laughed at for thus lamenting, for surely better six days to New York in
a steamer wholly free of Hannah Snells than four months to the same port
in a ship entirely worked by Mary Anne Talbots.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_FIGHTING SMUGGLERS._
I have noticed of late (1886) an exceptional degree of spasmodic vigour
in the direction of the suppression of smuggling. It is not, indeed,
that the Customs’ people have afforded proofs more astonishing than
usual of their peculiar power of discovering tobacco, spirits,
eau-de-Cologne, cigars, and the like in inconceivable and apparently
impracticable shipboard nooks and holes; the special display takes the
comparatively unaccustomed form of small men-of-war chasing smack-rigged
craft flying Dutch colours, and bearing the strange name of “coopers” or
“copers.” It is not known, I think, that there is any British or other
law which renders illegal the act of sailing the high seas with a hold
freighted with spirits, tobacco, and perfumes. That this is so may be
gathered from the case of a Dutch cooper which, after an “exciting
chase,” was brought to and boarded by a small cruiser and carried into
an English port. But she had not been long detained before orders
arrived for her release. One sees in a thing of this kind how hard it is
to squeeze the least drop of romance from marine events in these days.
Chases may be “exciting:” but they are of the rocket pattern—fire going
up and stick coming down. Where is now the burly smuggling salt with a
face as big and as full of colour as a topside of beef, great fearnought
trousers, and boots; a stout jacket, plentifully garnished with buttons;
a striped shirt and a large silk neckerchief, and a belt broken by the
shafts of knives, the hilt of a cutlass, the butt-ends and gleaming
barrels of a brace or more of big pistols? “Old Stormy he is dead and
gone!” is the burden of a sea-chorus that is very applicable to those
heavy villains of the long-shore theatre, Dirk Hatterick and bold Will
Watch. The issue of a chase in these times is strictly in correspondence
with the decidedly sneaking way in which smuggling—such as it is—is
carried on. The concealment of a few watches in the heels of a pair of
shoes; yards of pigtail snugly coiled away in cheeses; cigars
marvellously well packed in the hollow hearts of balks of timber; how
dull, mean, twopenny are such devices in the face of the defiant heroism
of those historic braves who, waiting for moonless nights, mastheaded
their lug-sails in death-like silence, and stole out into the wide
waters of the English, the Irish, the Bristol Channels, a mere blot of
ink upon the dusk, crossing the hawse of cruisers like shadows of
vaporous wings, and melting into the sullen gloom of some secret bay
flanked by cliffs liberally honeycombed with caves and echoing
corridors![32]
Footnote 32:
Nevertheless instances abound of extraordinary ingenuity even in the
faint-hearted directions. “When,” says a writer whose book now dates
back many years, “I arrived the first voyage from Bombay, I had a few
rows of Cornelian beads which I had purchased there for some friends
at home. For some time they lay snug enough in the toe of an old shoe,
at the bottom of my chest, until we got in the river, when I gave them
to the second mate to place in greater security. Next day, as the men
were receiving rations, the word was passed that the searchers were
alongside. At the instant the second mate came running to me with my
beads. He had not been able to discover a good place to conceal them.
I ran to the steward; he took them, and lifting up one of his lockers,
where lay a large snake coiled up like a top-sail sheet, he lifted up
its terrific head and threw my beads under its straw. The searchers
came, overhauled the steward’s traps and lifted up the lid of the
locker. The snake put forth its forked tongue—the lid dropped from the
searcher’s hand!”
Long antecedent to the days in which the Dutch cooper coquets with her
Majesty’s customs, and seduces Revenue cruisers into issueless pursuits,
the smuggler gave the naval officer as much to do as the Frenchman or
the Batavian. The fights were desperate; there was scarce an anker of
run brandy that did not represent a life. It is not pleasant, perhaps,
in the old pictures and book “embellishments” to see a smart frigate in
hot pursuit of a top-sail lugger, and to know that yon puff of smoke at
the bow of the chaser represents a cannon ball fired by an Englishman at
his own countrymen. Whenever that sort of thunder is raised under the
British Jack, you feel that the destination of the levin-brand which
preceded it ought not at all events to be an English hull or an English
breast. Nevertheless the blood will tingle to those early cuts and
whole-page illustrations. How grandly the cruiser looms up astern! The
spray breaks as far aft as the gangway, and the silver glitter sweeps in
sparkling smoke over the sprit-sail yard that has been got “fore and
aft” in readiness. Her royals soar cloud-like among the clouds, and her
flag, as big as the main-topgallant-sail, streams its milky splendour of
white bunting, crimson-crossed and nobly jacked in the corner, from the
signal halliards at the end of the spanker gaff. But the eye, and,
perhaps, the heart, is with that nimble shape in the foreground. She is
a three-masted lugger, with yards long enough to give as much head to
the canvas as would serve to blow a _Royal George_ along. What a spring
she has of bow! How elegant is the sweep of the line of her lee rail,
lying dark amid the wash of cream there! Not so much as a puff from a
musket-barrel answers that fore-chaser, blazing away at her astern. If
the Revenue were not the abstraction that, with Charles Lamb, one
somehow regards it, one would wish that saucy smuggler speedily
overhauled. As it is, the sympathetic artist, by introducing a touch of
thickness away to windward there, hints at the approach of a fog, and at
the possibility, even yet, of that crouching whiskered crew successfully
landing their tobacco, spirits, silk, and tea.
The old smuggling laws were somewhat stiff. Compared to them how mild
are the penalties which the modern collector of Customs can press for!
In the good old times, in the days of the fine old English gentleman—on
whose account, by the way, it is nowhere recorded that any human being
ever went into mourning—a penalty of £300 was imposed upon any master of
a ship coming from abroad having more than one hundred pounds of tea on
board or more than one hundred gallons of foreign spirits in casks under
sixty gallons (besides two gallons for each seaman). Foreign spirits
imported from any part of Europe, in a vessel containing less than sixty
gallons, were forfeited along with the ship and her furniture. If any
goods, such as tea or coffee, liable to forfeiture were found on board a
ship bound from foreign ports, lying at anchor or “hovering” within two
leagues of the coast, the ship, if not above two hundred tons, was
forfeited. Any person selling coffee, tea, cocoa-nuts, or chocolate was
forced to write “Dealer in coffee, etc.,” over his door under a penalty
of £200. Illustrations of this kind make one see the sort of risks the
smuggler ran in those days. Not but that the public should have held
themselves very much obliged for all these penalties and punishments. It
is on record that, information having been laid against some persons
living in Dorsetshire for harbouring smuggled tea, their houses were
searched, and there were found about thirty pounds of tea, mixed with
leaves, and one thousand and thirty pounds weight of ash, elder, and
sloe leaves, dried and prepared, ready for mixing with the tea! This was
about the time when the poet Cowper in his nightcap was celebrating the
merits of the cup that cheers. But did it not inebriate? Think of the
proportion of a thousand and thirty pounds of ash, elder, and sloe
leaves, to thirty pounds of the Hong merchant’s sample! All these leaves
were got in the summer, and I read that the poor of the district were so
well paid for collecting them, that the farmers could not obtain
labourers for their harvests.
The war waged by the State against the smuggler was as vengeful as the
hottest against a foreign foe. As an example: in 1784 the severity of
the winter had obliged the smugglers to lay up a great number of their
vessels. It was suggested to Mr. Pitt that a fine opportunity offered
for destroying these boats, if sufficient force could be procured to
prevent the smugglers from attempting a rescue. Pitt sent word to the
war office for a regiment of soldiers to be at Deal on a certain day.
The officer in command of the soldiers found on his arrival that the
people of the town having got scent of what was to happen, had advised
the publicans to pull down their signs that the soldiers should not be
able to get quarters. They consented and no quarters were to be had.
Eventually the men obtained shelter in a barn, but the officer had the
utmost difficulty to procure provisions for them. Next day some cutters
were seen lying off the beach and the soldiers marched down to the
water. The inhabitants thought the troops would embark in the cutters.
Then it was that the order was given to burn the boats, and the force
being great, the people were obliged to stand idly looking on, not
daring a rescue.