It now becomes necessary that we should for a short time forsake the
_Aurora_, and follow the fortunes of the _Princess Royal_.
At the moment of our making the acquaintance of this vessel a very
unsatisfactory state of affairs happened to prevail on board her. She
was, as we have already seen, a large ship, as ships went at that time,
being of 870 tons register, and capable of carrying close upon 1200 tons
dead-weight. She had saloon accommodation for forty passengers, and
carried an armament of twelve 9-pounders upon her main-deck, the
intention of her owners being that she should fight her own way, if
necessary, to and fro across the ocean, and so be independent of convoy.
But on her present voyage this plan had to be abandoned, the activity of
the press-gangs, and the consequent scarcity of seamen being such that
she cleared out of the port of London with only thirty men in her
forecastle; a crew wholly inadequate to successfully defend a ship of
her size in the extremely likely event of her encountering an adversary.
She was therefore compelled, like many others, to avail herself of the
protection of convoy.
Upon her arrival at Plymouth, she, like the _Aurora_, received a visit
from a man-o'-war's boat, which carried off four of her best men,
reducing her number of seamen to twenty-six. It will thus be seen that,
when she finally sailed out of English waters, she was very
short-handed.
Now, as Jack is to this day, so he ever has been--an inveterate
grumbler; he _will_ find _something_ to growl about. It is not to be
wondered at, therefore, that, with such good cause, there should be
constant dissatisfaction in the _Princess Royal's_ forecastle.
But though Jack _is_, and always has been, such a grumbler, and though
probably nothing on earth will ever cure him of this habit--for habit
only it is--yet, even where there is good and sufficient cause for
discontent, a little judicious management, forbearance, and sympathy
will prevent the mischief from going any further.
Unfortunately, however, for the _Princess Royal_ and all connected with
her, the measures adopted by those in authority on board her for the
suppression of this quickly-discovered spirit of discontent were the
extreme opposite of judicious. The master--as is sometimes the case
with masters of very fine ships--was haughty and overbearing, possessed
of a highly-exaggerated opinion of his own importance, turning a deaf
ear to all the complaints of his crew, and treating them with an
impatience and superciliousness of manner which made him heartily
detested. The chief mate, an arrant sycophant, taking his cue from his
superior officer imitated him to the utmost extent of his ability, with
a like result; while the second mate was a blustering bully, whose great
pride and boast it was that he could always make one man do the work of
two. Hence, from the very commencement of the voyage, the quarterdeck
and the forecastle, instead of pulling together and making an united
effort to overcome the difficulties of their position, rapidly grew to
regard each other with mutual feelings of enmity and distrust.
Matters had consequently, as might be expected, been steadily growing
from bad to worse, from the first moment of sailing; and on the day
before the gale a very unpleasant incident had occurred on board.
It arose in this way. On the second mate's watch being called, one of
the men remained in his hammock, sending word by one of his shipmates to
the officer of the watch that he was ill and unfit for duty. The second
mate, instead of reporting the circumstance to the master, and having it
inquired into, as was the proper course, jumped at once to the
conclusion that the man was merely feigning sickness, in order to avoid
the performance of his proper share of work; and, taking the matter into
his own hands, he proceeded to the forecastle, armed with a "colt," and,
dragging the unhappy seaman out of his hammock, drove him on deck,
abusing him roundly the while in no measured terms, and setting him to
work to grease the main-mast, from the truck downward.
The poor fellow, who was really ill, procured a pot of grease and
started up the rigging, but, finding himself wholly unequal to the task
of going aloft, descended again, and proceeding aft to the poop went up
to the captain, who happened to be standing conversing with some of the
passengers, and requested to be released from duty, repeating his plea
of illness. The second mate had, however, in the meantime mentioned the
matter to the captain, putting his own construction upon it; the request
was therefore harshly and hastily refused, the refusal being accompanied
by the assertion that the pleader was a mean, skulking, mutinous rascal,
not worth his salt.
Lieutenant Walford happened to be one of the passengers standing near at
the moment, and, as the dissatisfied seaman turned away, Walford turned
to the captain and said--
"We in the army have a very short and simple method of dealing with
fellows like that--we flog them; and, I assure you, it proves a
never-failing cure."
The sick man heard this remark, so did the man at the wheel, and from
that moment Walford was a marked man.
The captain turned round sharply.
"Do you?" said he. "Then by Jove I'll see if it will prove equally
efficacious here. Mr Thomson, have that man seized up to a grating,
and give him two dozen; I'll be bound he'll be well enough to go aloft
after that; if he isn't, he shall have another couple of dozen."
Thomson, the second mate, at once sprang upon the man, and, seizing him
by the collar, ordered the boatswain to call all hands.
This was done. The men were drawn up in the waist of the ship on the
lee-side, the sick seaman was seized up at the lee gangway, and in the
presence of all on board (except the ladies, who retired to the saloon
in indignation and disgust) the unhappy man received his two dozen.
But here a further widening of the breach between the officers and the
crew of the ship took place. The individual appointed to administer the
flogging was the boatswain's mate, a great brawny Cornishman, named
Talbot. This individual, when all was ready, bared his muscular right
arm to the shoulder, and, grasping the cat firmly, measured his distance
accurately with his eye; then stood waiting the command to begin. The
captain, the mates, Walford, and one or two more of the on-lookers
smiled their satisfaction as they witnessed these elaborate preparations
for the infliction of a severe flogging; and the captain, willing to
prolong the man's suffering as much as possible, allowed a long pause to
ensue before giving the word.
At length he nodded to Talbot, who at once took a step back, and, giving
the tails of the cat a mighty flourish in the air, brought them down
upon the man's naked shoulders so gently that an audible laugh broke
spontaneously from the entire crew at the ludicrous sight. The captain
turned livid with fury.
"You!" he gasped; "what do you mean by that, you lubber? Lay it on,
sir; lay it on hot and heavy, or by Jove I'll have _you_ seized up, and
will give you five dozen myself."
"Ay, ay, sir," was the imperturbable reply; and the second stroke was
administered with even more threatening preliminaries than the first,
but with, if possible, even less effect.
"Put that fellow in irons at once!" shouted the captain, "and let him
have no food except bread and water until further orders. You hear,
steward? If he has anything more, I will make you responsible for it.
I will teach him--and everybody else--that when I give an order, I will
have it obeyed. Now, Rogers," to the boatswain, "take the cat, and give
that skulking rascal at the grating the two dozen he so richly
deserves."
The boatswain stepped forward, and, without removing his jacket or
making any other preparation, sullenly took the cat in his hand. The
chief mate meanwhile went off for a pair of handcuffs, and, returning,
slipped them on the wrists of the rebellious boatswain's mate.
The second mate, who was still looking on, noticing the behaviour of the
boatswain, and the ill-concealed triumph of the crew at Talbot's
conduct, now turned to the captain and said--
"Let _me_ play bo'sun's mate for once sir; I'll be bound I'll give the
sneaking lubber his proper 'lowance; he'll never get it from any of his
shipmates, I can see."
"Very well, do so," said the captain; "let him have it hot and strong;
it will show those mutinous scoundrels that we have it in our power to
punish them yet."
The second mate waited for no more, but, whipping off his coat and
rolling up his shirt-sleeves, snatched the cat out of Rogers' hand, and
began at once to administer the punishment.
His first stroke drew blood and forced a shriek of anguish from the
quivering lips of his victim, a sound which extorted a laugh of fiendish
glee from the captain. A second, third, fourth, and fifth lash followed
in slow, deliberate succession, stripping off shreds of skin, and
lacerating the back of the sufferer until it presented a sickening
sight. At the sixth stroke the shrieks ceased, and the man's head
dropped upon his breast.
At this sight the second mate seemed somewhat startled, and looked up
inquiringly at the captain.
"Go on," said the latter, with an encouraging nod of the head; "go on
and finish the dose; he's only shamming. Put a little more strength
into your blows, man; I'll be bound you can fetch another howl or two
out of him yet, if you feel inclined."
Thus incited, the second mate actually proceeded with and completed his
fiendish task, at the end of which the perspiration poured in a stream
down his face, so great had been his exertions.
But not another cry could he wring from his victim, in spite of all his
efforts--the poor fellow was insensible, and in that condition was cast
off from the grating, and taken below to his hammock. There was no
doctor on board, so the unfortunate seaman was left to the clumsy though
well-meant ministrations of his shipmates, who did the best they could
for him, the captain refusing to supply salve, lint, or in fact anything
else with which to dress his wounds.
At dinner that evening the captain was urged by some of the passengers
to represent to the commodore of the convoying squadron the
insubordinate condition of the crew, and to request his assistance.
This, however, he positively refused to do, roundly asserting his
ability to command his own ship; but, as a matter of fact, the only
reason for his reluctance to take this step arose out of the conviction
that an inquiry would certainly follow as to the causes of the
insubordination, from which inquiry, as he was very well aware, he and
his officers could hope for nothing but a complete revelation of their
own culpability.
At the moment that this course was being urged upon the captain in the
saloon, the incident of the flogging, and, indeed, the whole question of
their treatment by their officers, was being discussed on the forecastle
by the men; and, singular to relate, although Talbot was believed by his
officers to be at that instant in irons below, if either of them had
walked forward just then, they would have found him snugly seated on
deck, free, on the fore-side of the windlass, taking an active part in
the discussion. By the time that eight bells had struck, they had fully
made up their minds as to their course of action, and the assembly
quietly dispersed.
The next day was that on which the gale burst upon the fleet.
On the signal being made by the _Tremendous_ to "Shorten sail and
prepare for bad weather," the _Princess Royal_ was one of the first to
manifest signs of obedience. She was at the time under every stitch of
canvas she could spread, not because she was a sluggish sailer, for she
was the reverse of that, but because, there being a flat calm, it
mattered not how much or how little canvas was set, it could make no
possible difference in the movements or position of the vessel; and the
captain, seeing here a fine opportunity to impose upon his crew--"by way
of punishment," as he put it to himself and his officers--a great deal
of unnecessary work, ordered all sail, even to the studding-sails, to be
set, for the purpose, as he averred, of giving them an airing.
The first thing to be done in the way of shortening sail, therefore, was
to take in the studding-sails, which the crew, not being then aware of
the danger which threatened the ship, proceeded to do in a very
leisurely and deliberate fashion. Their next task was to haul down the
smaller staysails, then to clew up and furl royals and topgallantsails.
They were all aloft, in the act of stowing these sails, when the
hurricane burst upon them. They fortunately saw its approach in time to
save themselves, and, leaving the canvas drooping loose from the yards,
hurriedly descended to the deck by way of the backstays, and were
scarcely there when, with the first furious rush of the wind, the three
topmasts went, one after the other in quick succession, the wreckage
falling on deck and lumbering it fore and aft.
The crew regarded the mishap with stolid satisfaction. The delay which
it would occasion in the prosecution of the voyage was nothing to them;
the ship was stripped of everything above her lower mastheads, leaving
so much the less canvas for her crew to handle, and that was all they
cared about at the moment. A little later on in the day they saw that
if the gale lasted--of which there was every prospect--the loss of her
spars would result in her separation from the remainder of the fleet,
and as they remarked upon this to each other, the men smiled grimly, and
exchanged certain short pithy remarks which, had they been heard by the
occupants of the saloon, would have produced a feeling of grave
uneasiness.
The crew were, of course, at once set to work to clear away the wreck,
and this they forthwith proceeded to do, for their own sakes, however,
rather than out of respect to the captain's orders, the heavy spars
dashing about the deck with the roll of the ship in a manner which made
it positively dangerous to be there at all.
By nightfall the rest of the fleet had passed out of sight to the
eastward, scattered like chaff before the angry breath of the hurricane,
and the _Princess Royal_ was left to fight out her battle alone. By
dint of almost superhuman exertions, the shattered spars had been
secured, the main-sail cut away from the yard, and such other
dispositions made as would allow of her being kept dead before the wind,
and out of the trough of the sea during the coming night; and when the
captain took his seat at the head of the saloon-table at dinner that
evening, he was full of boastful exultation over the prompt obedience of
his crew, frequently congratulating his passengers upon their being on
board a ship in charge of such capable officers as himself and his
mates. Of course he did not actually say this in so many words, but the
burden of his remarks amounted to it, and nothing less.
The second mate had the middle watch on that eventful night, and just
after he had struck four bells, and the wheel had been relieved, he was
inexpressibly scandalised by hearing above the howling of the gale loud
sounds of singing and jocularity on the forecastle.
Such sounds were of so very unusual a character on board the _Princess
Royal_ that, coupled with the circumstance of their being uttered in the
middle watch of all times in the world, he was at first so astonished as
to be quite unable to believe his own ears. Very soon, however, they
were repeated, one of the men actually breaking into a rollicking song,
the burden of which was an invocation to "Let us all be jolly, boys,"
under every conceivable combination of circumstances.
"Jolly! The scoundrels! How dare they so much as think of such a thing
at a time when they were living under the ban of their officers' severe
displeasure? And the ship a perfect wreck aloft, too!" It was simply
monstrous; the second mate's righteous anger blazed up into full fury at
once, and, advancing to the break of the poop, he roared out in
stentorian tones--
"Silence, there, for'ard! What do you mean, you unmannerly swabs, by
disturbing the ship fore and aft with your infernal howling at this time
of night?"
Either the "unmannerly swabs" had not heard him, or they were so utterly
lost to all sense of the respect due to their officer as to pay no
attention to his polite adjuration, for the song was continued, with
some attempt at a chorus.
The second mate was not in the habit of speaking twice to those under
him, and he did not attempt to do so now. Drawing his knotted "colt"
out of his pocket, he descended the poop-ladder, and hurried forward as
fast as the heavy rolling of the ship would permit, determined to teach
the "howling thieves" a lesson they would not readily forget.
Meanwhile, though he was blissfully ignorant of the fact, sharp eyes had
been watching his motions for some time; and his foot was scarcely on
the top step of the poop-ladder when Jim Martin, the owner of a pair of
the aforesaid sharp eyes, exclaimed--
"Hurrah, my bullies! Keep it up; here he comes. The shark has bolted
the bait without so much as smelling at it."
The group of men clustered on the forecastle made a slight restless
movement, as men sometimes will when they are conscious of the approach
of a great crisis in their lives, and the voice of the singer quavered
the merest trifle. Another moment, and the second mate was among them,
his eyes flashing with anger and his colt uplifted to strike.
"What the deuce?"
Before he could utter another word, his legs were cut from under him by
the sweeping blow of a handspike, and he fell with a crash to the deck,
the back of his head striking so violently on the planking as to
momentarily stun him. In an instant a belaying-pin was thrust between
his teeth and secured there with a lashing of spun-yarn; and then,
before he had sufficiently recovered to realise his position, he was
turned over on his face, his arms drawn behind him, and his wrists and
ankles firmly lashed together.
"Very neatly managed," remarked Talbot approvingly, as his gaze rested
on the prostrate figure on the deck. "Now, mates, what's the next move?
Come, Ned," to the boatswain, "you're to be our new skipper, you know;
give us your orders, cap'n, and we'll be `yours obejently.'"
"Well, then, if you're all agreed upon that, shipmates, my first order
is for one of you--you Tom--to go aft into the saloon and knock at the
`old man's' door [Note 1], and ask him to come on deck at once, as Mr
Thomson have met with a haccident. Two more of you'll wait for him
outside the door, and when he steps out 'pon deck sarve him the same as
you've sarved our respected friend here. Then do the same with Mr
Nicholls (the chief mate)."
These orders were so skilfully executed, that in a quarter of an hour
the mutineers had the captain and his two _aides_ prisoners--bound and
helpless in their hands, without the slightest alarm having been given
to the other occupants of the saloon. The larboard watch was then
called; and from their first eager questions when aroused it became
evident that the seizure of the ship was a carefully planned affair, of
which all in the forecastle were fully cognisant.
The seamen having paraded on deck, and been, with the aid of a lantern,
carefully inspected by the boatswain to ascertain that there were no
recreant spirits among them now that the crisis had arrived, each man--
excepting a half-dozen left in charge of the deck--was provided with a
short length of well-stretched ratline, carrying which, they proceeded
in a body to the saloon, and, entering the state-rooms, surprised in
their sleep and secured without difficulty the whole of the male
passengers, pinioned them firmly, and then, after depriving them of such
weapons as they happened to possess, locked them up in their own cabins.
The ladies were only disturbed so far as was necessary to make them
acquainted with the fact that the ship had changed hands, and that, if
they had only the good sense to acquiesce in the arrangement, they would
be perfectly unmolested. The cook and stewards were also called, and,
having been left in ignorance of the proposed mutiny lest they should
inadvertently let the secret slip, addressed in somewhat similar terms;
whereupon they at once declared their readiness to throw in their lot
with the mutineers, and were forthwith sworn in.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. The master of a merchant-ship is frequently spoken of by his
crew as "the old man," whether his years happen to be few or many.