Commissioners 'upon account,' the State keeping the business in its own
hands[209]. But the system had scarcely a fair trial owing to financial
embarrassments[210], and just before the King's return matters were
as bad as they could well be[211]. The restored Government reverted to
the older system of contract, and in September, 1660, Denis Gauden was
appointed contractor under the satisfying title of 'surveyor-general
of all victuals to be provided for his Majesty's ships and maritime
causes,' with a fee of £50 a year, and 8_d._ a day for a clerk[212].
The whole burden of the victualling therefore rested upon a single
man, and when the war with the Dutch broke out, he was unable to
grapple with its demands; yet no fundamental change could be made in
the system until the Government was in a position to settle accounts
with him. Thus the victuals, although on the whole good in quality,
were deficient in quantity, and when Gauden was remonstrated with he
could always reply, and generally with perfect truth, that it was
impossible for him to do better as long as the Government failed to
carry out their part of the contract, and to make payments on account
at the stipulated times[213]. In the spring of 1665, when the fleet
was fitting for sea, complaints of the failure of the Victualler were
frequent[214]. Later on, when Pepys went down to visit the fleet in
September, Lord Sandwich told him that most of the ships had been
without beer 'these three weeks or month, and but few days' dry
provisions.'[215] In this year complaints of uneatable provisions
occur, though not often, but when they were bad they were sometimes
very bad. On 10 August, Commissioner Middleton wrote to Pepys from
Portsmouth that the _Coventry_ was still in port; her beer had nearly
poisoned one man, who 'being thirsty drank a great draught.'[216]
Probably now, as undoubtedly later, the backwardness of the victualling
in turn reacted upon the deficiency of men, for the sailors deserted
from ships where they could get no food[217].
The practical breakdown of the victualling system during the spring
and summer of 1665 led to the establishment, at Pepys's suggestion, of
new machinery for keeping the Victualler up to the mark—a Surveyor of
Victuals appointed at the King's charge in each port, with power to
examine the Victualler's books; and a central officer in London to whom
they were to report weekly[218]. As soon as Pepys's plan was adopted,
he wrote to suggest that he himself should be the new Surveyor-General
of Victualling[219], and on 27 October he accepted office[220] at a
salary of £300 a year[221]. The appointment was temporary only, and
came to an end at the conclusion of peace. While it lasted it effected
a slight improvement. Pepys himself was much pleased with the success
of his arrangements, and he was complimented upon them by the Duke of
York[222]. As he had £500 a year from Gauden as well as the £300 from
the King[223], he managed to do well out of the war.
The experience of the war had shewn the weak points of the one-man
system, and in subsequent contracts several Victuallers were associated
in a kind of partnership[224], but the fundamental difficulty was one
of finance, and this a mere multiplication of persons did little to
meet. Thus there are complaints in 1671[225], and the difficulties were
greatly increased when the Third Dutch War broke out in the spring of
1672. The Victuallers received such scanty payments from the Government
that they had to carry on the service with their own money and
credit[226], and eventually their condition in respect of funds became
'so exceeding strait' that they could not make proper deliveries[227].
This provoked the commanders at sea to take the field against them,
and Prince Rupert was so annoyed that he declared that he would never
thrive at sea till some were hanged on land[228]; and a little later
expressed the opinion that the only way to deal with the Victuallers
would be to send one of them on shipboard, there to stay in what
condition his Majesty shall think fitting, till they have thoroughly
victualled the fleet[229].
It is, on the whole, to the credit of the Victuallers that the
complaints as to quality are not more numerous than they are during
this period of large demands and scanty payment. If you would care
for illustrations, on 15 March, 1671, on board the _Reserve_ 'there
was a general complaint amongst the seamen, both of the badness of
the meat and want of weight.'[230] On 6 September, 1672, there was a
protest from the _Gloucester_ against the badness of the beer; but the
Victuallers replied rather ambiguously that their beer was as good
as ever was used in the fleet, and they counted themselves happy in
that they had been afflicted with less bad beer 'by many degrees than
ever was in such an action.'[231] On 29 September the commander of the
_Augustine_ wrote to say that the doctor attributed the sickness among
his men to the extreme badness of the beer[232]; while objection was
also taken to an untimely dispensation of rotten cheese[233].
The victualling contract of which we possess the fullest details was
that of 31 December, 1677[234]. From this it appears that the daily
allowance of each man was 'one pound averdupois of good, clean, sweet,
sound, well-bolted with a horse-cloth, well-baked, and well-conditioned
wheaten biscuit; one gallon, wine measure, of beer' ... 'two pounds
averdupois of beef, killed and made up with salt in England, of a
well-fed ox ... for Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays'—or,
instead of beef, for two of those days one pound averdupois of bacon,
or salted English pork, of a well-fed hog ... and a pint of pease
(Winchester measure) therewith' ...; 'and for Wednesdays, Fridays, and
Saturdays, every man, besides the aforesaid allowance of bread and
beer, to have by the day the eighth part of a full-sized North Sea cod
of 24 inches long, or a sixth part of a haberdine 22 inches long, or
a quarter part of the same sort if but 16 inches long ... or a pound
averdupois of well-savoured Poor John, together with two ounces of
butter, and four ounces of Suffolk cheese, or two-thirds of that weight
of Cheshire.' The contract provides for English beef because there was
a strong prejudice in the navy against Irish beef. Pepys quotes one
writer as saying 'The Irish meat is very unwholesome, as well as lean,
and rots our men'[235]; and John Hollond argues that to serve Irish
beef was greatly to discourage the seamen[236]. 'Haberdine' is salt or
sun-dried cod, and 'Poor John' is salted or dried hake.
In the case of vessels sailing 'to the southward of the latitude of 39
degrees N.' it was allowable for the contractors to vary the diet—'In
lieu of a pound of biscuit, a pound of rusk of equal fineness; in lieu
of a gallon of beer, a wine quart of beverage wine or half a wine pint
of brandy ... in lieu of a piece of beef or pork with pease, three
pounds of flour and a pound of raisins (not worse than Malaga), or in
lieu of raisins, half a pound of currants or half a pound of beef suet
pickled; in lieu of a sized fish, four pounds of Milan rice or two
stockfishes of at least 16 inches long; in lieu of a pound of butter
or two pounds of Suffolk cheese, a wine pint of sweet olive oil.' The
separate victualling contract for the Mediterranean[237] provided
for this lighter diet there in any case; but the variation was not
popular among the seamen. In Captain Boteler's _Six Dialogues about Sea
Services_, printed in 1685 but written some fifty years earlier, the
'admiral,' who, having just been appointed to the 'high-admiralship,'
is occupied throughout the book in remedying an abysmal ignorance of
naval matters by conversation with a 'sea-captain,' suggests that
it would be better for the health of the mariners if the ordinary
victualling were assimilated 'to the manner of foreign parts.'
'Without doubt, my lord,' replies the captain, 'our much, and indeed
excessive feeding upon these salt meats at sea cannot but procure
much unhealthiness and infection, and is questionless one main cause
that our English are so subject to calentures, scarbots, and the
like contagious diseases above all other nations; so that it were to
be wished that we did more conform ourselves, if not to the Spanish
and Italian nations, who live most upon rice-meal, oatmeal, biscake,
figs, olives, oil, and the like, yet at the least to our neighbours
the Dutch, who content themselves with a far less proportion of
flesh and fish than we do, and instead thereof do make it up with
pease, beans, wheat-flour, butter, cheese, and those white meats (as
they are called).' To this view the admiral assents, but he adds,
'The difficulty consisteth in that the common seamen with us are so
besotted on their beef and pork as they had rather adventure on all
the calentures and scarbots in the world than to be weaned from their
customary diet, or so much as to lose the least bit of it.' I should
explain that a calenture is a fever, associated with delirium, to which
sailors in the tropics were peculiarly liable; and scarbot is the
scurvy[238].
Pepys expected much from the new contract of 1677[239], but the
old complaints of delay and bad quality recur[240], and in 1683
his successors decided to abandon contract in favour of a state
victualling department resembling in its general character the
system of victualling 'upon account,'[241] established from 1655 to
the Restoration. If we may infer anything from the silence of the
_Admiralty Letters_, hitherto so vocal upon the subject, this change
of method resulted in an improvement in the victualling of the navy,
and on the whole the Victualling Office did not come out badly under
the test of the mobilisation of 1688. The necessity for this had been
realised about the middle of August, and at first the delays caused
a good deal of anxiety; but by the end of October Pepys was able to
report that the fleet is 'now (God be thanked) at the Gunfleet, and in
very good condition there.'[242] There were still ships waiting to be
got ready for sea, but of these he writes: 'I do with the same zeal
continue to press the despatch of the rest that are behind that I would
do for my victuals if I were hungry.'[243]
One of the earlier acts of the Restoration Government was the passing
of a statute to incorporate into the system of English law the
ordinances already in force during the Interregnum for regulating
the discipline of the navy. Before 1652 such crimes as murder and
manslaughter on board ship had been punishable by the ordinary law, and
lesser offences by the 'known orders and customs of the seas';[244] but
in that year the service was for the first time subjected to articles
of war,[245] and it was upon these that the provisions of the Act of
1661[246] were founded. By this commanders at sea were empowered to try
a great variety of offences by court-martial, and for many of these the
maximum penalty was death. This Act continued to govern the navy until
the reign of George II.
Another Act, of 1664,[247] dealt with two matters which had given a
great deal of trouble to the Navy Board—the frequent embezzlement of
naval stores, and the riots among disappointed seamen who could not
get their pay. Efforts had been already made to prevent embezzlement
by adopting special modes of manufacture for the King's rope, sails,
and pennants, and by marking other stores with the broad arrow;[248]
but there were some things, such as nails and some other kinds of
ironwork, which could not be thus marked. Ironwork in particular was
especially favoured by the depredators, because it could be so easily
disposed of. In August, 1663, an illicit storehouse discovered at
Deptford for the reception of nails, iron shot, and other embezzled
ironwork, was described as the 'gulf that swallows up all from any
place brought to him.'[249] The riots also had been a serious matter.
The preamble of the Act gives as the ground of legislation 'diverse
fightings, quarrellings, and disturbances ... in and about his
Majesty's offices, yards, and stores,' and 'frequent differences and
disorders' which had occurred on pay-days through 'the unreasonable
turbulency of seamen.' To meet this state of things the Act invests the
Navy Board with some of the powers of magistrates, and authorises them
to punish riots and embezzlements with fine and imprisonment.
The Act was useful, but it did not entirely stop embezzlement. In
September, 1666, a prize worth £300 was plundered of her lading, and
'will soon,' we are told, 'be dismantled of all her rigging, till
she will not have a rope's end left to hang herself, or the thievish
seamen that go in her.'[250] Chatham Harbour had always been 'miserably
infested' with 'thieves and pilfering rogues,'[251] and in February,
1668, the clerk of the check wrote, 'our people's hands are of late so
inured to stealing, that if the sawyers leave any work in the pits half
cut, it's a hazard whether they find it in the morning.'[252] The state
of things complained of was partly due to the uncertainty of pay. As
far as the riots of seamen were concerned, the Act was a failure, as
for their grievances force was no remedy. Pepys writes on 4 November,
1665[253], when the Act of 1664 was in full operation, 'After dinner
I to the Office and there late, and much troubled to have a hundred
seamen all the afternoon there, swearing below and cursing us, and
breaking the glass windows, and swear they will pull the house down on
Tuesday next. I sent word of this to Court, but nothing will help it
but money and a rope.'
The period of Pepys's first Secretaryship witnessed several attempts
to effect an improvement in naval discipline. Abuses connected with
the unlimited number of cabins built on the King's ships, leading to
'the pestering of the ship,' 'contracting of sickness,' temptation to
officers 'to neglect their duties and mis-spend their time in drinking
and debauchery,' and 'the danger of fire,' led to the adoption, on 16
October, 1673, of a regular establishment of cabins for ships of each
rate[254].
Another abuse of long standing had been the taking of merchants'
goods in the King's ships. Sir Robert Slyngesbie had observed in his
_Discourse_[255] in 1660 that this made it easy for the officers to
sell the King's stores under the pretence that they were merchandise;
to waste time in the ports which ought to have been spent at sea; and
so to fill the ship's hold 'that they have no room to throw by their
chests and other cumbersome things upon occasion of fight, whereby
the gun decks are so encumbered that they cannot possibly make so
good an opposition to an enemy as otherwise they might'; and, lastly,
to defraud the custom-house. In 1674 Pepys took the matter up, and
induced the King to take severe notice of the offenders[256], and
in one particularly flagrant case of 1675 to offer the delinquent
commander the alternative of imprisonment until trial by court-martial,
or forfeiting the whole of his pay for the voyage, and 'making good to
the poor of the Chest' at Chatham out of his own purse the value of the
freight of the merchants' goods brought home by him[257].
The absence of commanders from their ships without leave gave a good
deal of trouble during the period 1673-9. On 1 October, 1673, the
Commissioners of the Admiralty ordered that the commanders should be
'pricked out of pay' for such absences[258]; but on 25 May, 1675,
Pepys observes 'with much trouble' that the 'late resolutions' 'are
already forgotten,' commanders 'appearing daily in the town' without
leave[259]. On 9 July he 'spied' the captain of the _Lark_ 'at a
distance sauntering up and down Covent Garden, as I have too often
heretofore observed him spending his time when the King's service
required his attendance on shipboard, as it doth at this day—a practice
which shall never pass my knowledge in any commander (be he who he
will) without my taking notice of it to his Majesty and my Lords of the
Admiralty.'[260] Three years later complaints of this kind became very
frequent, and so to the end of Pepys's first Secretaryship in 1679. On
24 March, 1678, he writes: 'I must confess I have never observed so
frequent and scandalous instances as I do at this day by commanders
hovering daily about the Court and town, though without the least
pretence for it.'[261] 'I would to God,' he writes on 29 June to Sir
Thomas Allin, 'you could offer me something that may be an effectual
cure to the liberty taken by commanders of leaving their ships upon
pretence of private occasions, and staying long in town, to the great
dishonour of his Majesty's service, and corrupting the discipline
of the Navy by their example ... it seeming impossible as well as
unreasonable to keep the door constantly barred against commanders'
desires of coming to town upon just and pressing occasions of their
families, and of the other hand no less hard upon the King that his
gracious nature as well as his service should be always liable to be
imposed upon by commanders, as often as their humours, pleasures, or
(it may be) vices shall incline them to come ashore. Pray think of it
and help me herein, for, as I shall never be guilty of withstanding
any gentleman's just occasions and desires in this matter, so I shall
never be able to sit still and silent under the scandalous liberties
that I see every day taken by commanders of playing with his Majesty's
service, as if it were an indifferent matter whether they give any
attendance on board their ships, so as they have their wages as if they
did.'[262]
The official correspondence of 1673-9, although it reveals a grievous
laxity of discipline[263], exhibits Pepys himself in a favourable
light. He had a high sense of the honour of the service, and shewed
himself both firm and humane in his dealings with his official
inferiors. He was at great pains to keep himself informed of the
proceedings of the commanders, and when breaches of discipline were
reported to him, he took infinite trouble to arrive at the facts. His
admonitions to the offenders, though sometimes a little unctuous, are
as a rule in the best Pepysian style.
The decay of discipline in the Restoration period has been associated
by some writers with the practice of appointing 'gentlemen captains'
without experience to important commands at sea. The matter is
discussed by Macaulay, picturesquely but with exaggeration[264]; Pepys,
in the _Diary_, quotes Coventry as referring to the 'unruliness' of
the 'young gentlemen captains'[265] and confessing 'that the more of
the cavaliers are put in, the less of discipline hath followed in the
fleet'[266]; and a Restoration paper printed in Charnock's _Marine
Architecture_[267] very much shocks that author by its 'illiberal and
improper observations' on the subject. He admits, however, that 'there
certainly appears much truth and solidity in the general principle
of them,' though 'it might have been wished for the sake of decency
and propriety' that the writer 'had conveyed his animadversions in
somewhat less vulgar terms.' The victim of Charnock's criticism traces
every kind of evil to the year 1660, when 'gentlemen came to command
in the navy.' These 'have had the honour to bring drinking, gaming,
whoring, swearing, and all impiety into the navy, and banish all order
and sobriety out of their ships'; they have cast their ships away for
want of seamanship[268]; they have habitually delayed in port when
they should have been at sea; a gentleman captain will bring 'near
twenty landmen into the ship as his footmen, tailor, barber, fiddlers,
decayed kindred, volunteer gentlemen or acquaintance, as companions,'
and these 'are of Bishop Williams's opinion, that Providence made man
to live ashore, and it is necessity that drives him to sea.' The writer
concludes that 'the Crown will at all times be better able to secure
trade, prevent the growth of the naval strength of our enemy, with
£100,000 under a natural sea admiralty and seamen captains ... than
with three times that sum under land admirals and gentlemen captains
not bred tarpaulins.'
With some qualifications this is the view of Pepys. He disclaims
hostility to gentlemen captains as such; but he quotes from a speech
delivered by Colonel Birch in the House of Commons, in which he had
urged that one of the 'present miscarriages' of the navy is that
'employment and favour are now bestowed wholly upon gentlemen, to the
great discouragement of tarpaulins of Wapping and Blackwall, from
whence ... the good commanders of old were all used to be chosen.'[269]
Pepys also refers to the liberty taken by gentlemen commanders of
'thinking themselves above the necessity of obeying orders, and
conforming themselves to the rules and discipline of the Navy, in
reliance upon the protection secured to them therein through the
quality of their friends at Court.'[270] Pepys himself was probably an
impartial witness, for he was denounced by each side for favouring the
other[271].
It is in a way remarkable that during the period of complaints
against gentlemen captains we come upon the first establishment of
an examination for lieutenants. Towards the end of 1677 complaints
reached the Admiralty from Sir John Narbrough, commanding in the
Mediterranean, of the 'defectiveness' of his lieutenants 'in their
seamanship.'[272] Pepys also refers to 'the general ignorance and
dulness of our lieutenants of ships' as 'a great evil' of which 'all
sober commanders at this day' complain. They are 'for the most part
(at least those of later standing) made out of volunteers, who having
passed some time superficially at sea, and being related to families
of interest at Court, do obtain lieutenancies before they are fitted
for it.'[273] The result was the adoption on 18 December of a regular
establishment[274], drawn up by Pepys[275], 'for ascertaining the
duty of a sea-lieutenant, and for examining persons pretending to
that office.' A lieutenant was required to have served three years
actually at sea; to be 20 years of age at least; to produce 'good
certificates' from the commanders under whom he had served of his
'sobriety, diligence, obedience to order,' and 'application to the
study and practice of the art of navigation,' as well as three further
certificates—from a member of the Navy Board who had served as a
commander, from a flag officer, and from a commander of a first or
second rate—'upon a solemn examination,' held at the Navy Office, of
'his ability to judge of and perform the duty of an able seaman and
midshipman, and his having attained to a sufficient degree of knowledge
in the theory of navigation capacitating him thereto.' Candidates
were sometimes ploughed[276], and this, as Pepys points out, was an
encouragement to the 'true-bred seaman' and greatly to the benefit of
the King's service. 'I thank God,' he writes in 1678[277], 'we have not
half the throng of those of the bastard breed pressing for employments
which we heretofore used to be troubled with, they being conscious
of their inability to pass this examination, and know it to be to no
purpose now to solicit for employments till they have done it.'
To about the same time as the examination for lieutenants belongs
another minor reform—an establishment for the better provision of naval
chaplains. In April or May, 1677, the King and Lords of the Admiralty
resolved 'that no persons shall be entertained as chaplains on board
his Majesty's ships but such as shall be approved of by the Lord Bishop
of London.'[278] The proposal originated in the first instance with
Pepys, who designed it to remedy 'the ill-effects of the looseness
wherein that matter lay, with respect both to the honour of God
Almighty and the preservation of sobriety and good discipline in his
Majesty's fleet.'[279] The details of the scheme were more fully worked
out by resolutions adopted by the Admiralty Commission on 15 December,
1677[280].