The Years of Endurance (38 page)

a sickly season! " was the closing toast of many a jovial evening in the wardroom: it was so that men rose in their calling.
¹

Such men not only officered the fleet: they gave it their own tone and spirit. They were often rough teachers, full of fearful oaths like the master's mate of the
Edgar
who ended every sentence with a " Damn your whistle," and too fond of enforcing their commands with the lash. But the men they commanded were rough too: hard-bitten merchant seamen and fishermen, brought into the Service for the duration by the pressgangs, with always a sediment in every ship of jailbirds and incorrigibles whose only chance of freedom was the hard life of the sea. The unresting, automatic discipline which the handling of wind-propelled warships in northern waters demanded could not have been enforced by gentler souls: it was that which gave Britain command of the waves and kept the Royal Navy from the slovenly, helpless degradation which befell that of revolutionary France. From the admiral, piped on board, to the boatswain's mate with his colt ready to " start" the lower deck to action, strictly ordered subordination and readiness to obey were the hallmarks of the Service.

The life of the seamen was a life apart; something that was of England and yet remote from it. A King's ship was a little wooden world of its own, with its peculiar customs and gradations unguessed at by landsmen; its proud foretopmen, the aristocrats of the sea, and far down out of sight its humble waisters: pumpers and sewer-men, scavengers and pigsty keepers. In such a community, often years together away from a home port, men learnt to know each other as they seldom can on shore: to love and trust, to fear and hate one another. There were ships that became floating hells, ruled by some sadistic tyrant, with drunken, flogging officers " crabbed as fiends," and savage, murderous crews such as that which flung Bligh of the
Bounty
to perish in an open boat in a remote sea. There were others commanded by captains like Nelson, Pellew and Duncan, where the men looked on their officers as fathers and were eager to dare and do anything for them. Here

¹
So Nelson wrote to his father :
" i
wish
i
could congratulate you upon a rectory instead of a vicarage ; it is rather awkward wishing the poor man dead, but we all rise by deaths.
i
got my rank by a shot killing a post-captain, and
i
most sincerely hope
i
shall, when
i
go, go out of the world the same way ; then we all go in the line of our profession—a parson praying and a captain fighting."

something of the unspoken sympathy between experienced rider and horse entered into the relationship between quarter and lower deck.

The nation honoured its rough, simple seamen, as it had cause to, though it usually saw them at their worst: ashore on their brief spells of leave, with discipline relaxed and their hard-earned money riotously dissipated on brandy and
the
coarse Megs and Dolls of the seaports. But it saw too, as we also can glimpse from the prints of the old masters, the fine manly faces, the earnest gaze, the careless attitudes so full of strength and grace for all the gnarls and distortions of weather, accident and disease: symbols of rugged-headed courage, manly devotion and simple-hearted patriotism. They were children—generous, suspicious, forgiving, with the fortitude and patience of men: rough Britons tempered by the unresting sea into virtue of a rare and peculiar kind. The sight of a Monsieur's sails roused in them all the unconquerable pugnacity of their race: the whine of Johnny Crapaud's shot whipped their quick tempers to savagery. Though chivalrous and generous victors, they were not good losers like the courtly Spaniards and the aristocrats of the old French navy; they had to beat their adversary or
the
. As they waited at quarters before a fight, " their black silk handkerchiefs tied round their heads, their shirt-sleeves tucked up, the crows and handspikes in their hands and the boarders all ready with their cutlasses and tomahawks," they reminded an eye-witness of so many devils.
¹

Yet from such scenes the British sailor could pass in a few hours to the buffoonery and practical jokes dear to the lower deck, the fiddler's lively air, the droll or pathetic ballads with their rhythm of the waves, while the seas broke over the forecastle and the ship pitched and rolled; and to those tenderer moments when, homeward bound, hearts panted with the anticipated happiness of meeting wives and sweethearts and the headwind's moping contrariness was lulled by
the
chorus of " Grieving's a folly, Boys! "

" And now arrived that jovial night When every true bred tar carouses, When, o'er the grog, all hands delight To toast their sweethearts and their spouses."

¹
Gardner,
130.

History loves to linger over the good-humoured jollity between decks when port was reached: the girls on the seamen's knees with sturdy, buxom arms around their necks; the reels and jigs as Susan's bright eyes promised her Tom Tough his long-awaited reward; the grog and flip that passed about under the light of the flickering lanterns. And judging by the popularity of Dibdin's songs, the nation liked to think of such scenes too and took deep comfort in the thought of the hearts of oak and jolly tars that kept its foes at bay.
¹

It was because of these things that the news, whispered round London on the morning of April 17th, 1797, came as a knock-out blow to England. The fleet was in mutiny. Surprise, terror, grief appeared in every face. The Navy, which three months before had saved the country from invasion, was now ready to betray it to its enemies. The hour of this parricidal stab could not have been more fatal. The Austrians had asked Bonaparte for a truce, Ireland was defenceless and a new army of invasion was embarking under cover of a Dutch battle squadron at the Texel. And now the Channel Fleet—the buckler on which everything depended—had refused orders to sail and mutinied for an increase in pay. Britain had never known anything like it.

Naval pay, fixed by ancient enactment, had stood for nearly a century and a half at 19s. a month for an ordinary seaman and 24s. for an A.B. But the price of the commodities on which the sailor's family depended had not remained constant. To the normal rising trend of prices had been added war inflation now aggravated by the bank crisis. In the merchant service the laws of supply and demand had raised the seaman's pay to four times the naval rate. Prevented by the pressgang from selling their highly skilled services in the open market and forced to let their wives and children starve while they served their country, the men were conscious of a grave injustice of which their rulers—ill-served by statistics—were blissfully unaware. Even the despised soldiers had been given a small rise since the war.
²
But the sailors—the pride and defence of the nation —had had nothing done for them, though certain of their officers

¹
" I never sit down to dinner," wrote one lady," but I wish them a share."

²
Thanks to the Duke of York. It was an additional grievance that whereas a Chelsea pensioner received £13 a year, a Greenwich pension only brought in
£7.

had rece
ntly
had increases. So strong was their feeling that at the beginning of March before sailing for the spring cruise the men of the Channel Fleet combined to send round-robins to old Lord Howe, their nominal commander-in-chief. In these they respectfully pointed out that the cost of living had doubled and that their pay was insufficient to support their families. And since it was only paid in the port of commission, whence in war-time a ship might be absent for months and even years, it was frequently in arrears.
¹

As Howe was an invalid at Bath and about to hand over his command finally to his deputy, Lord Bridport, he merely forwarded the petitions to the Admiralty. Here they were ignored. For in the critical state of the country's finances, application to Parliament for a rise in naval pay seemed out of the question, and discussion of the matter would thus obviously be undesirable. As the petitions were anonymous no reply was made. When the Fleet returned to Spit-head at the end of March the men found their request met by silence. They were very angry and took steps to prepare a petition to Parliament and to support it by joint action. " They had better," the
Queen Charlotte's
men wrote of the Government, "go to war with the whole globe than with their own subjects."
²

Of all this Lord Bridport was unaware. For through an administrative oversight the Admiralty had failed to inform him of the petitions. But on April 12th he accidentally learnt of a plot to seize the ships and hold them as pledges for redress of grievances. He was naturally profoundly shocked and, hearing at second hand of the petitions to Howe, became exceedingly indignant with the Admiralty.
³
In his heart he sympathised with the men's demands. But when he raised the matter
with
Whitehall, he was merely told to take the Fleet to sea. For the Admiralty was determined to sidetrack the matter.

On the morning, therefore, of April 16th—Easter Sunday— Bridport reluctantly ordered the Fleet to weigh anchor. His signal was ignored. In the
Queen Charlotte,
Howe's former flagship, the men, seeing an attempt to forestall the mutiny, manned the shrouds

¹
Admiral Duncan thought this the greatest of all the sailor's grievances.
—Spencer Papers,
II, 122.

²
Bonner Smith,
Mariner's Mirror,
XXI, 447.

³
Bridport to the Admiralty, 15th April, 1797.—Bonner Smith,
Mariner's Mirror,
XXI, 439.

and gave three cheers—the prearranged signal for revolt. At once the leaders put off in boats and rowed round the fleet, ordering the crew of every vessel to send two delegates that night to the
Queen Charlotte.
Bridport, who like all the Hoods was a shrewd and sensible man, forbade his captains to resist. Instead he ordered them to muster their men and ask them to state their grievances.

That evening the delegates of sixteen battleships assembled in the
Queen Charlotte's
stateroom to draw up rules for the regulation of the fleet. They ordered watches to be kept, drunkenness to be punished by flogging and ducking, and yard-ropes to be rove at every fore-yard arm to enforce their authority. Women were to be allowed aboard as usual in har
bour, but to prevent tittle-tattl
e were not to go ashore till the matter was settled. Respect was to be paid to the rank of officers, but, until the desires of the men were satisfied, not an anchor was to be raised. To symbolise their unanimity the shrouds were to be manned morning and night and three cheers given.

It was a strange position. The Fleet was in indubitable mutiny. Yet the men did not regard themselves as mutineers and persisted in trying to behave as though ordinary discipline prevailed. The country was at war with an ideological creed which glorified revolution: it was hourly expecting invasion. Yet in the rebellious ships there was no sign of sympathy with that revolution: on the contrary the delegates declared that the Fleet would sail at once if the French put to sea. They even stopped the frigates and small craft from taking part in the mutiny lest the country's trade should suffer. Nervous folk on shore, imagining " secret Jacobin springs," looked for foreign agents and agitators. But if there were any such, they were unsuccessful in impressing their principles on their old foes of the Channel fleet. In its good order, common sense and almost pathetic legalism the start of the English revolution contrasted strangely with the French.

Meanwhile Admiral Pole, dispatched post-haste with news of the mutiny, had reached the Admiralty at midnight on the 16th. In the small hours of Tuesday morning he told his horrifying story to the First Lord. Earl Spencer was
the
best type of patrician—an athlete still in early middle age, a scholar with liberal leanings, red-haired, and handsome. He acted with promptitude and vigour. As soon as it was light he hurried to the Prime Minister and after a day
of interviews set out for Portsmouth with two junior Lords and the Secretary of the Admiralty.

Here on the 18th the Board, formally sitting in the Fountain Inn, opened its proceedings. Refusing to compromise its dignity by meeting the seamen personally, it used the flag officers of the Fleet as go-betweens. It might have been wiser for Spencer, who was over-persuaded by his Service colleagues, to have settled the matter directly with the delegates, whose real weakness was not Jacobinism but excessive suspicion. As it was, in the delays and second thoughts born of too much coming and going, the seamen's conditions tended to rise. A new petition on the 18 th added demands that rations—on paper a pound of meat, a pound of biscuits and half a pint of rum a day—should no longer be subjected to the purser's customary deduction of an eighth, that fresh vegetables should be provided in port, that the sick should be properly cared for, that pay should be continued to the wounded until discharged, and that in harbour men should have leave to go ashore instead of remaining aboard like prisoners. The unknown hand who framed this document asked that the sailors should be looked upon as a number of men standing in the defence of their country, and that they might in some wise " have the grant of those sweets of Liberty on shore when in harbour." He ended by assuring the Admiralty that the men would suffer double the hardships they complained of sooner than allow the Crown to be imposed on by a foreign Power.
¹