Issue V
Contents
I
The Specialists
II
Against Authority
III
Passage
to Mutiny
I
The Specialists
It is a fair comment to say that an eighteenth
century ship-of-war was designed and built as a floating gun platform.
The functions of her company, apart from the daily division of work, was
to take her wherever she might be needed, and serve those guns to the best
of their ability.
In the Navy it was often said,
and with some justification, that the strength of any ship was to be found
in her specialists, that elite of skilled and experienced men, warrant
officers and their mates, who stood between the captain and his lieutenants
and the great mass of seamen and marines.
The senior warrant officer
in any man-of-war was the sailing master. His experience over the
years of service made him stand out above the rest. To the master
fell the everyday responsibility of sailing the ship, watching over her
course, and under the direction of the captain, taking her to any known
place in the world. Assisted by the master's mates, who in turn hoped
to qualify as master or even lieutenant, he supervised the navigation,
the set of every sail, the training of helmsmen, and as an extra, and sometimes
wearing task, the instruction of the 'young gentlemen', as midshipmen were
so named, in the mysteries of charts and seamanship.
Another important member of
the specialists, but too often less experienced, was the ship's surgeon.
Originally appointed by the Sick and Hurt Office, he was required to guard
the ship's company's health under what were would call appalling conditions.
Surgeons of the time were a mixed bunch. Some took to the sea with
a genuine interest in improving their skills in a wider range of work than
they would find ashore. For quite apart from the savage demands of
battle, the daily rate of illness and injury amongst the seamen was impressive.
Falls from aloft, broken bones and ruptures were commonplace. Injuries
in heavy weather while fighting frozen canvas on some dizzily swaying mast
or yard were many and varied.
And of course when a sea fight
was in progress the surgeon was tried almost beyond any man's resources.
Deep in the ship's hull, usually on the orlop deck below the waterline,
where the only light was that of lanterns, he worked with saw and knife,
without anaesthetics or proper drugs, while his wretched victims were spread-eagled
and held firm by his mates on a table of sea-chests. How anyone survived
such surgery, or 'butchery' as it was described, is a miracle. Yet
many did, with nothing to sustain them but a desperate swallow of rum or
brandy beforehand, and with luck, unconsciousness at the first touch of
the knife.
Nelson, rarely at a loss for
words, found the right comment to make after his failed attack on Teneriffe.
He instructed his surgeon to "warm the blade" before he amputated his arm,
as he believed it would ease the pain.
Surgeons usually listed their
treatments of wounds according to the weapon which had created them.
Solid shot and grape, canister
and chain shot caused terrible havoc in the confined space of a gun-deck.
But at close quarters and grappled to an enemy, the work of boarding axe
and cutlass, pike and sword were no less fearful.
The over-eagerness of gun captains
and their crews was no help either. For a first broadside, guns were often
double-shotted for the maximum effect. But as the battle grew, men
became too dazed and shocked to concentrate on what they were doing.
The British carronade, the 'Smasher', which was introduced in 1779, was
a well-known culprit. One surgeon reported that carronades were invariably
overloaded, "nearly always with two shots, sometimes with three".
HMS Albion was twice set on fire by her own carronades, and many
men were bodily crushed by the weapon's massive recoil.
But because men expected no
relief from suffering, they often survived what would kill anyone today.
The French admiral, de Brueys,
at the Battle of the Nile, was a gallant example. When a shot carried
off both legs he had himself seated on his quarterdeck in an armchair with
a tourniquet on each stump, where he directed the battle until the final
destruction of his flagship L'Orient.
Height also had its problems.
Stenhouse, surgeon of the Glasgow, reported on the problems of seamen
who had been wounded aloft getting themselves to the deck for treatment.
He spoke of the captain of the foretop who had one leg carried away by
a cannon ball, except for a strip of tissue by which it was attached.
He seized a rope to lower himself to the deck, but halfway down discovered
his torn limb had become entangled amongst the rigging. He was obliged
to pull himself up again to disengage his limb with the assistance of the
sound one. He survived.
Wood and metal splinters, gangrene
and fever took a heavy toll, but from those same poorly trained surgeons
came much of the knowledge we accept without a qualm.
A much maligned man in any
ship was the purser. It was hard to be popular, as anyone responsible
for food and stores in any service will certainly appreciate. Most
ships were many months at sea, and when on foreign service the purser's
problems were very real. In home waters he had to deal with the masters
of the victualling yards, many of whom were dishonest. They knew
that no purser could inspect every single cask of meat, which was salted
as tough as timber anyway. So they often got rid of rotten pork or
beef, knowing that the foul casks might not be broached for months, even
years. In fact, some salted meat became so hard that sailors carved
it into tiny and delicate snuff boxes, which can now be seen in some maritime
museums.
Fresh fruit was obtained whenever
possible to prevent the spread of scurvy, another curse among sailors.
Clothing, simple equipment such as knives and needles, shoes and lamp-wicks,
all came out of the purser's ledgers. He was responsible to his captain,
and was well aware of what would happen if the ship ran short of supplies
because she was detained by adverse winds or took longer to reach port
than calculated.
The daily work of the ship
was sub-divided around the needs of her masts and spars, rigging and fabric,
and of course her firepower.
The gunners and his mates were
held responsible for every piece of artillery equipment, the magazine and
powder rooms, and the care and maintenance of same under all conditions.
As a ship 'lived off her own
fat' she naturally changed her layout of weight and displacement on every
passage. For whereas her powder and shot might remain unused, she
would devour tons of food and water, spare timber and canvas, as a matter
of course.
The gunner, with the guidance
of the first lieutenant, was required to adjust the trim of his ship.
Sometimes by moving iron shot from one locker to another, or by taking
away a heavy cannon and replacing it with a 'quaker', or wooden gun, which
would still deceive anyone who did not draw too close.
The gunner watched over the
filling of charges and the selection of gun crews. When a ship was
at sea for long periods he had to ensure that the gun captains took real
care of their weapons. One method of keeping a gun's bore rust-free
was to have a muzzle and touch-hole plugged after a cannon ball and half
a gallon of oil had been inserted. As the ship rolled the ball would
move from breech to muzzle, so keeping a film of oil all over.
In battle it must have been
hard not to think of the great store of gunpowder all around him in his
magazine as he worked in almost complete darkness directing the making
and issue of charges to the powder monkeys, and wearing his familiar felt
slippers to prevent himself from striking the one, fatal spark.
To all various trades and rates
of the lower deck, the boatswain was probably the most familiar warrant
officer. A highly skilled and professional sailor, he needed to be
everywhere. He had to watch over each job done by the ship's company
to keep the vessel seaworthy and able to face the worst gale.
Miles of rigging, standing
and running, had to be repaired or replaced. In most cases it was
made up from spare cordage carried aboard. Spars and the hull's fabric,
boats and even the care and appearance of each mess came under his watchful
eye.
But of course he had a good
team to assist him. The carpenter, who with his crew was expected
to repair even the worst damage within hours or days after a battle or
a great storm. His crew could build and replace pulling boats, make
tables and chairs, caulk decks, and daily inspect the lower hull for signs
of wear, or a ship's worst enemy, rot. Today he would compare quite
well with a ship's engineer, ready to repair anything with what he had
available. Whenever a ship touched land, no matter how primitive
or frugal, the carpenter would be one of the first ashore. Looking
for suitable trees to be cut and formed into spars or timbers.
The sailmaker aided both carpenter
and boatswain. With his assistants he would patch torn canvas, eke
out his supplies, and use the scraps for making awnings, hammocks or shrouds
for the dead. He was usually a good tailor, too.
The midshipmen, working for
the reward of a commission, would try to learn something of everything,
without drawing wrath from their superiors or scorn from the warrant ranks
they would one day command.
And there were many others
who worked for the main bulk of the ship's company. The cooper, whose
skill was making casks of every size and shape for storing anything from
water to salt beef. The master-at-arms, next to the purser usually
the most unpopular man aboard because of his work in supervising discipline
and punishment with the aid of his ship's corporal. From captain's
clerk to sergeant of marines, from cook to quartermaster, they were the
specialists. The hard backbone of any man-of-war.
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II
Against Authority
Throughout
the history of ships and the men who served them, and particularly in the
turbulent years of the eighteenth century, even a hint of mutiny lurked
like a threat in most captain's minds.
The dictionary coldly describes mutiny as anrevolt against constituted
authority. But the pictures conjured up of individual cases are
as different and as mixed as their causes.
For a maritime nation growing yearly in strength and importance, the need
to improve trade andup better sea routes became paramount.
The design of hull and sail plans gave wider scope and greater range to
merchant adventurers. To protect their rich cargoes, the Navy also
had to put its ships to sea for longer periods of time.
The daily lot of the common seaman was hard. Everything aboard a
ship-of-war had to be maintained and replaced by the men who manned her.
Perverse winds or foul weather meant back-breaking work, high in the rigging,
fisting and fighting rebellious canvas without any mechanical aids at all.
In peacetime the Navy's ships were manned by every nationality you could
imagine. Urgent orders had to be passed by simple means such as the
boatswain's call, and often a sharp cut from his starter.
In the fierce climate of the Tropics the work became even more demanding.
A vessel might drift for days under a merciless sun. Then, almost
without warning, would come rain so heavy that it could knock a man from
the yards and turn the sailor's world into a nightmare. He would
eventually stumble below, soaked to the skin, only to find his bedding
and spare clothing sodden from the water which had run through the deck
seams, too shrunken by the previous heat to restrain it.
And then, another shift of wind and it was the cry for all hands on deck
to reef or re-trim the yards.
If work was hard, discipline had to be harsher. But against this,
it must be remembered that we are speaking of a time when law and order
ashore was maintained with equal, if not greater severity. Deportation,
imprisonment in the hulks and finally an agonising end on the hangman's
rope were too commonplace for comment, except by those directly involved.
And aboard ship, especially one out of company and miles from other authority,
the opportunity for both tyrant and rebel was all the more tempting.
Captains were as varied as the men they commanded. It was not merely
a case of being kind or cruel. A captain needed only to be practical
to be a just one. There was no sense in flogging men until they were
incapacitated or completely broken. While they were ill they could
not work, and so both ship and captain were at a loss. Likewise,
it was utterly pointless to ignore the needs of sick men, or the perils
of bad food and bodily discomfort.
It is ironic that one of the most maligned men in naval history, William
Bligh of the Bounty, was quick to seize every method, and to invent
a few of his own, to improve the lot of his men by diet and by the simple
expedient of airing messes and damp clothes to avoid unnecessary illness.
But the Bounty mutiny was a perfect example of what could cause an uprising
aboard a small ship hundreds of miles from home or help.
It is strange to think that Captain Cook, who was as confirmed a flogger
the Navy ever had, got nothing but praise, whereas Bligh was condemned
out of hand.
The mutiny broke out in April, 1789, and the facts of what happened, as
well as Bligh's incredible voyage in anboat across three thousand
six hundred and eighteen miles of hostile ocean with his loyal men, are
fairly well known.
But what of the causes? It was not the flogging, as so often claimed
by sensational film makers. The recorded punishments on that unhappy
voyage were minimal, and by the standard of the day, fair.
Bligh was said to have a quick temper and a foul tongue. Think of
it as then, and not against today's ideas of discipline.
The voyage took place between wars, when the Navy was run down to its lowest
limits, Seaports and towns were filled with unemployed and often
starving sailors. Officers daily thronged the corridors of the Admiralty
seeking ships, any ship, and at any junior rank or appointment. It
applied equally to discharged soldiers, men who had fought long and hard
campaigns during the American Revolution, against the French, the Spanish
and even the Dutch. But the sailors seemed to feel it more, for despite
the rigours of a life at sea, it gave a freedom, a sense of movement which
was denied those left ashore.
The Bounty had a fair number of such men. Imagine their feelings
when their little ship dropped anchor in Tahiti. After the hunger
and bad times in Europe, the sights of the laughing girls, the friendly
villagers and lush surroundings must have made them believe they had found
Paradise.
If Bligh's temper gave the mutineers their opportunity, I am certain that
Tahiti offered them the cause. Under such circumstances, I do not
think even a Nelson or a Keppel would have had any better luck.
But that mutiny, small though it was, still holds a firm place in our hearts.
It was certainly overshadowed just a few weeks later by an uprising
which was to rock the world, but it was never forgotten.
During the night of 14 July, 1789, Louis XVI, King of France, was at versailles.
He was awakened by the Duke of Rochefoucauld-Liancourt who had brought
the news from Paris.
"But this is a revolt," said the King.
"No, sire," said the Duke, "it is revolution."
In England the news was received with mixed feelings. Some were pleased
to see their old enemy torn apart by the Terror. Others knew it could
so easily spread, even across the Channel. Almost everybody knew
it would mean eventual war.
Run down, ill equipped and undermanned, the British Navy had never been
in such a sorry state.
Once more the cry was for ships and more ships, and once again the recruiting
parties explored villages and hamlets far inland, while in seaports and
along the great rivers the nights rang to the feet of the dreaded press-gangs.
There was a sense of great urgency, and it was hardly surprising that ships
were sent to the various fleets and squadrons with barely enough trained
hands to work them out of harbour.
And yet, despite their shortcomings, their successes were impressive.
In the first few years the Navy won several victories, including the Glorious
First of June, and the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in 1797 where the young
Commodore Nelson was to distinguish himself by boarding and taking the
San
Nicolas, 84 guns, and then using her decks as a bridge to take possession
of the giant San Josef of 112 guns.
But the work of convoy and blockade in all weathers and conditions placed
a heavy strain on every man in the fleet. While their French adversaries
waited in harbour, dashing out only occasionally for a hit-and-run attack,
the British were made to endure everything which sea and weather could
throw at them.
Many captains were quick to do their best for their people with what small
resources they could find. But others still believed that relentless
discipline, the misuse of power, could and would prevail.
In the same year as Nelson's novel attack on two ships at once, the impossible
became a reality, and at Portsmouth and Spithead the fleet mutinied.
Delegates were elected, and while a stunned nation waited to see what would
happen, and whether the French would take advantage of the lowered shield
to invade England, Admiral Lord Howe, affectionately known throughout the
fleet as Black Dick, hurried to Portsmouth to negotiate.
Howe met the delegates and examined their charges and their demands.
He granted a pay rise, and when told of the cruelty of certain officers
he ousted a hundred of them, with the approval and support of Pitt, the
Prime Minister.
Nevertheless, the main bulk of the fleet stayed firm and unmoving for a
month, and as the mutiny broke up, and order and discipline were restored,
an even greater one broke out in the Nore.
The demands of the mutineers were much the same, but this time the atmosphere
was more militant and the eventual reprisal more severe, with thirty-six
hangings and hundreds flogged or exiled.
Fortunately, a new breed of
sea officer had begun to emerge, as can often happen in time of war.
Nelson, Collingwood, Saumarez and Troubridge were just a few who were destined
to change history, not merely for a nation, but for the men who made victory
possible.
The lessons learned at Spithead
and the Nore were to be remembered. The mutineers' cause had built
up over the years. Bad food, cruel discipline and the tyranny of
a handful of captains joined to become the spark to the powder-keg.
What is hard to understand
even today is the over-confidence and complacency of some such tyrants.
By curious coincidence the
worst and bloodiest mutiny ever to break out aboard a British man-of-war
took place just weeks after the events at the Nore, and at the other end
of the world.
It was the classic example
with all the ingredients for mutiny. Captain Hugh Pigot, the young
officer commanding H. M. Frigate Hermione, had already been removed
from his previous command for brutality of the highest order. His
punishment book was always full, and he even had a midshipman humiliated
and then flogged in front of the ship's company when he refused to kneel
on the deck before him.
I will not dwell on the terrible
deeds which began Pigot's murder and continued with the rampage of killing
and drunkenness, and the exchange by the mutineers of the Hermione
with the Spanish authorities at La Guaira for their own freedom.
I was in Venezuela a few years
ago completing some research, and while at La Guaira I had no difficulty
in picturing the solitary frigate, her cabin and decks still stained with
the blood of guilty and innocent alike, as she anchored and prepared to
parley with the startled Spanish governor.
The rest of the tale reads
like a maritime detective story. For despite the vast sea areas and
difficulties of communication, many of the mutineers were finally rounded
up and executed. Some had even returned to hide in the Navy under
false identities, to the only life they had ever really understood.
Even the Hermione was
recaptured by a daring cutting-out attack by the frigate Success.
That was surely the last piece of irony, the final judgement on a tyrant.
For the Success was the ship originally commanded by Pigot, the
one from which he was removed for brutal misuse of his authority.
With the passing of sail much
of the seaman's old hardship was removed. New inventions too, like
long-range wireless, helped to break down distances and allow authority
to keep an eye on even the most isolated outpost.
But the word mutiny is still
relevant, and as recently as 1931 at Invergordon, when the fleet 'downed
tools' because of threatened cuts to their already poor pay, we have seen
what leadership and indifferent treatment can cause.
It was once explained to me,
"Orders must be obeyed without question. But respect has to be earned
by the one who gives them."
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III
Passage to Mutiny
 It
is October, 1789, when Captain Richard Bolitho, in command of the thirty-six
gun frigate Tempest, arrives in Sydney, capital of the infant colony
of New South Wales. The ship has been in commission for two years,
and has been constantly employed on isolated patrols, hunting out pirates
and endeavoring to protect the great spread of trade and its vulnerable
supply routes.
Bolitho has been fretting for orders which will send him home to England,
or to some more active role where he will be part of things again.
But it is not to be. After the American Revolution the Navy was allowed
to run down, and as always, frigates are in constant demand.
His new orders send him to the outwardly idyllic islands of the Great South
Sea where one more trading concession has been claimed for the Crown.
It is a place of temptation and no little danger. Tempest's
company is made up of the sweepings from many ports and several nationalities,
and Bolitho knows it will be hard to make them risk their lives for ideals
of which they know little and have no respect for.
The vast sea areas and distances make communications almost impossible,
and while Tempest fights through raging storms or suffers becalmed
beneath a blazing sun, the first rumours of mutiny and revolution begin
to filter through.
From the convict slums of New South Wales, to the sensuous temptations
of the islands, Bolitho represents his country's authority, unaware until
almost too late of the sweeping revolution in far off France, and the consequences
it will bring to him and his companions.
And there is a more personal involvement which becomes important enough
for him to risk his career, the rediscovery of a woman's love which he
had thought beyond reach.
Thomas Herrick, Tempest's first lieutenant, is torn between loyalty and
a need to speak out as he sees the dangers mounting for his best friend.
John Allday, the captain's coxswain, has no such doubts, and his firm faith
has never been more needed when tragedy strikes.
Above all, this is a story of a ship and her company, and the will to survive.
Author's
Note
Since Newsletter
No. IV, I am pleased to be able to report the formation of the first branch
of the Richard Bolitho Association.
Based in Vancouver, it was formed last year, and has already gathered many
members. Entirely self-supporting, The Pacific Coast Squadron
of the Association as it is titled, has its own newsletter and arranges
meetings and social gatherings where interests of ships and maritime history
usually predominate.
When I visited Vancouver last year during one of my research trips, I had
the great pleasure of being entertained by the newly formed branch, and
I would like to take this opportunity to thank them again for their impressive
hospitality and to congratulate them on their initiative.
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