by Roy Adkins
Access between decks was up and down ladders, which were difficult for those new to sea life, as Midshipman William Dillon admitted: ‘I found the ladders communicating from one deck to the other rather awkward. Not being used to going down them, my feet often slipped, and my back, coming in contact with the steps, caused considerable pain.’2 In bad weather gunports on the lower gun deck were closed to prevent the ship being swamped. The men ate and slept on the middle and lower decks, but the height of decks was dictated by the working space needed for the guns, not the comfort of the men. The headroom below decks was dependent on the design of the ship and on the need to balance the weight of the cannons on upper decks against the stores and ballast at the bottom of the ship for stability and good sailing qualities. Generally, the smaller the ship, the lower the headroom below decks. When the length of a ship is given, this refers to the gun deck. The Victory is 186 feet long and nearly 52 feet wide, but has an overall external length of 227 feet 6 inches.
Decks at or below the water-line did not carry guns, and had even less headroom. Below the lower deck (and below the water-line) of ships of the line was the orlop* deck, used for stores and the quarters of various warrant officers. The midshipmen had their quarters in the part of the orlop deck known as the cockpit, which in time of battle was taken over by the surgeon. Below the orlop deck was the hold, which was divided into compartments by partitions known as bulkheads. The hold of the Victory measured 150 feet long, 50 feet wide and 21 feet high. Compartments of the hold contained the ship’s stores and gunpowder magazines. At the very bottom of the hold was ballast of shingle and iron pigs, above which were stored hundreds of wooden casks containing water, beer, meat and other provisions.
Ships also carried small boats of various kinds, such as jolly boats, cutters, yawls and barges, which were critical for the day-to-day operations. These were not lifeboats but were used for essential tasks, such as conveying officers and men from ship to shore or to other ships, transporting stores and water, moving the ship when in a confined space or with no wind, and in amphibious attacks. They were housed side-by-side on beams across the open space between the quarterdeck and forecastle – the waist – or were hung from davits on either side of the stern. They were lowered and hoisted back up with lifting tackle, and were equipped with sails and oars (sweeps) for rowing. They could also be towed behind the ship when not in use, something that was usually done in battles to prevent them being smashed, with splinters flying about the decks.
There are no precise figures for the number of ships in the service of the Royal Navy at any one time, but in 1776, not long after Nelson joined, there were around 373 ships, of which 58 were ships of the line and 198 were frigates. Many were laid up in ordinary – kept in reserve in rivers and harbours, without guns, stores and upper masts, without a full crew and not ready to sail. In 1793 there were 411 ships, of which 169 were laid up or being repaired, in 1804 there were 726 ships, including 216 ships of the line and 204 frigates, and in 1811 there were 1019 ships.
Sizeable crews were needed to man the guns and control the sails, though many ships did not have their full entitlement because of difficulties in finding enough men. First-rate ships were allowed a crew of 850 or more, second-rates 750 to 850 men, third-rates 500 to 720, fourth-rates 350 to 420, fifth-rates 215 to 295, and sixth-rates 120 to 195. No exact figures are available for the numbers of men who were serving at any one time in the Royal Navy, but in 1771 there were around 26,000 men in total, including marines, rising to about 95,000 ten years later. By 1786, after the ending of the American War of Independence, the numbers reduced to about 13,500, but after war broke out with France in 1793, the figure expanded to over 81,000. By 1801 there were more than 118,000 men. During the Peace of Amiens the numbers dropped to below 50,000, but grew to over 109,000 by 1805 and over 130,000 men by 1813. At the end of the war this diminished to fewer than 80,000 men.
In 1776 the complement of marines increased to just over 10,000, and rose to 25,000 by 1783, but with the conclusion of the American War of Independence the number of marines was slashed to fewer than 4500. After war began with France in 1793, the numbers increased to nearly 20,000, but they were reduced in the short-lived peace in 1803 to just over 12,000. By 1810 there were over 30,000 marines.
Individual fleets were given geographical names, according to their area of operation, the main one being the Channel fleet. This patrolled the English Channel from Selsey Bill in Sussex to as far south as Ferrol in Spain. Fleets could be divided into several squadrons that operated within a smaller area, while some squadrons were independent. The North Sea fleet was responsible for the eastern stretch of the English Channel as well as the North Sea up to Shetland, while other fleets and squadrons operated in the Baltic, Mediterranean, North America, West Indies, East Indies and Cape of Good Hope. There were also bases abroad, though which of these were occupied changed according to the territory that was held by the British and who was an ally of Britain at the time. ‘The Fleet’ could also refer to the Royal Navy as a whole, which was formerly divided into three squadrons (the red, white and blue), and each squadron was in turn divided into the van, middle and rear divisions. These divisions were commanded (in descending order of rank) by admirals, vice-admirals and rear-admirals. Admirals outranked vice-admirals, who in turn outranked rear-admirals, but the term ‘admiral’ was loosely used to refer to all three ranks. This particular squadron structure with the three colours had long been superseded, but the different ranks of admiral survived. At Trafalgar, Nelson was a vice-admiral of the white.
Sailors had various approximate measurements for distances that are no longer widely used: a pistol shot was about 25 yards, a musket shot approximately 200 yards and a gun (or cannon) shot about 1000 yards. A cable was 200 yards, a fathom was 6 feet, and a league was 6116 yards – equivalent to 3 nautical miles. A nautical mile was equivalent to 6116 feet, but is now a distance of 6080 feet. A knot was regarded as the speed of 1 nautical mile per hour, or just the distance of 1 nautical mile – speeds were still being recorded in knots per hour at this time and not simply in knots as used today. For those better acquainted with metric than with the imperial measurements of the time, the following may be useful:
12 inches (in.) = 1 foot (ft)
3 feet = 1 yard (yd)
6 feet = 1 fathom
22 yards = 1 chain
10 chains = 1 furlong
1760 yards = 1 mile
8 furlongs = 1 mile
6116 feet = 1 nautical mile (but now 6080 feet)
2 pints = 1 quart
4 quarts = 1 gallon
36 gallons = 1 barrel
54 gallons = 1 hogshead
16 ounces (oz) = 1 pound
14 pounds (lb) = 1 stone
8 stone = 1 hundredweight (cwt)
20 hundredweight = 1 ton
12 pence (12d) = 1 shilling (1s)
20 shillings = £1 (one pound)
£11s = 1 guinea
Some imperial–metric conversions are:
1 inch = 2.54 centimetres
1 foot = 0.30 metres
1 yard = 0.91 metres
1 mile = 1.609 kilometres
1 pint = 0.568 litres
1 gallon = 4.54 litres
The spelling in eyewitness accounts has been largely corrected and the punctuation and style modernised where needed, particularly the tendency to use dashes instead of full stops, ampersands (&) instead of ‘and’, and upper-case letters for the start of many words. Ship names have been italicised. Most quotations have only been altered slightly, if at all, and the words and meaning have not been changed. Some have been made more readable because lack of education did not necessarily imply lack of intelligence, and so leaving the original spelling serves no useful purpose. For example, James Bodie was barely literate and wrote in 1807 that ‘it was aGreed among the offsers to Bord hir’, which should read ‘it was agreed among the officers to board her’,3 while two years earlier George Price wrote that ‘I thi
nk it very hard that I Cannot Git no Letter from You and You Know I have no body Ells to Right Too’, which should read ‘I think it very hard that I cannot get no letter from you and you know that I have nobody else to write to’.4
Key Events
This list of dates is primarily a reminder of naval or navy-related events and social context from the time that Nelson joined the Royal Navy to the final defeat and exile of Napoleon.
1758
Nelson was born at Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk (29 September)
1760
George III became king (October)
1771
Spain ceded the Falkland Islands to Britain ( January)
Nelson joined the Royal Navy as midshipman on board the Raisonnable (March)
The engineer Richard Trevithick was born (April)
1772
British case law established that a slave landing in England was a free person
Warren Hastings was appointed Governor of Bengal (April)
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born (October)
1773
The Boston Tea Party, when American colonists protested against the unjust taxation of tea imports (December)
1774
Accession of Louis XVI as king of France (May)
First Continental congress of the thirteen British colonies in America (September)
1775
War of American Independence began with the British defeat at Lexington (April)
1776
The painter John Constable was born ( June)
American Declaration of Independence ( July)
1777
War in America continued with successes on both sides. The Americans were defeated at Germantown in October and that same month the British were defeated at Saratoga
1778
The French became allies of America, and Britain declared war on France (February)
Ex-prime minister William Pitt (the elder), Earl of Chatham, died (May)
The engineer Humphrey Davy was born (December)
1779
Captain Cook was killed in Hawaii (February)
Spain declared war on Britain and laid siege to Gibraltar ( June)
The first iron bridge, across the River Severn at Coalbrookdale, was completed
1780
Admiral Rodney defeated the Spanish at Cape St Vincent (the Moonlight Battle) and temporarily relieved Gibraltar ( January)
First use of steel pens in England, but quills remained the standard writing implement
Britain declared war on the Netherlands (December)
1781
The engineer George Stephenson was born ( June)
Spain captured Pensacola, Florida, from the British ( July)
Following other British successes during the war in India, the Dutch settlement at Negapatam, Madras, was captured (November)
1782
The British captured Trincomalee, Ceylon, from the Dutch ( January)
Admiral Rodney defeated the French at the Battle of the Saintes in the West Indies (April)
Spain completed the annexation of Florida ( June)
The Spanish attack on Gibraltar ended in disaster and the Rock remained British (September)
Admiral Howe relieved the siege of Gibraltar (October)
1783
The Montgolfier brothers experimented with hot air balloons in France ( June)
Simon Bolivar was born ( July)
Peace of Versailles between Britain, France, Spain and America. Britain, France and Spain each recovered some of the territories they had lost during the war, and Britain recognised American independence (September)
The first manned flight of a hot-air balloon (November)
The first successful trial of a steam-powered paddle boat, built in France by the Marquis Jouffroy d’Abbans
1784
The British signed a peace treaty with Tippoo of Mysore (March) Peace treaty between Britain and Holland (May)
The East India Company was placed under a government board of control to curb territorial expansion in India (August)
Dr Samuel Johnson died (December)
1785
A rotary-action steam engine, built by Boulton and Watt, was installed in a cotton-spinning factory at Papplewick, Nottinghamshire
Alliance between France and Holland (November)
1786
The explorer John Franklin was born (April)
Frederick the Great died (August)
Commercial treaty between Britain and France (September)
1787
The first convoy of convicts (‘The First Fleet’) sailed from Britain to begin the European colonisation of Australia (May)
Political unrest in France
1788
John Walter founded The Times newspaper ( January)
The poet Lord Byron was born ( January)
Alliance between Britain and Holland (April)
The foundation of a British settlement in Sierra Leone, as a sanctuary for slaves (August)
The painter Thomas Gainsborough died (August)
1789
George Washington became first president of the USA (April)
The storming of the Bastille in Paris ( July)
The French Revolution began
J.L.M. Daguerre, inventor of the first practical photographs (daguerreo-types), was born (November)
1790
The revolution in France gathered strength, dividing political opinion in Britain
Benjamin Franklin died (April)
British alliance with the Mahrattas in India ( June)
1791
Fearing a war with Russia, Britain began to increase the Royal Navy (March)
Samuel Morse, inventor of the Morse Code, was born (April)
The National Assembly in France made the country a constitutional monarchy (September)
1792
The architect Robert Adam died (March)
France began the Revolutionary Wars by declaring war against Austria (April)
France declared war on Prussia and Sardinia ( July)
USA introduced its own coinage based on the dollar (October)
The trial of Louis XVI began (December)
1793
Execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette ( January)
France declared war on Britain and Holland (February)
France declared war on Spain (March)
Admiral Hood occupied the port of Toulon (August)
The British were driven out of Toulon by a young French officer, Napoleon Bonaparte (December)
The invention by Eli Whitney of the cotton gin for processing raw cotton led to a rapid growth of cotton exports from America
1794
The British defeated the French at the Battle of ‘Glorious First of June’ off Ushant ( June)
Slavery was abolished in the colonies of France
1795
The Batavian Republic was established in Holland (March)
Spain signed a peace treaty with France ( July)
The poet John Keats was born (October)
1796
Spain declared war on Britain (October)
The Royal Navy withdrew from the Mediterranean (November)
1797
The British defeated the Spanish at the Battle of St Vincent (14 February)
Mutinies aboard British warships at Spithead and the Nore (May–June)
Failed attack on Santa Cruz by Nelson in which he lost his right arm (July)
The British defeated the Dutch at the Battle of Camperdown (October)
1798
Napoleon’s army landed in Egypt ( July)
The French fleet was destroyed by Nelson at the Battle of the Nile (1 August)
Malthus published Essay on the Principle of Population – the start of his campaign to demonstrate that overpopulation inevitably leads to war, famine and epidemics
1799
Napoleon was defeated at Acre in Syria (May)
Napole
on escaped from Egypt and returned to France (October)
Napoleon and his allies seized control of France (November)
George Washington died (December)
1800
Britain captured Malta from France (September)
Spain sold Louisiana to France (October)
1801
The first Battle of Copenhagen (2 April)
Peace treaty (of Amiens) between France and Britain (October)
Robert Fulton, working in France, constructed the first practical submarine
1802
The Peace of Amiens was ratified between France and Britain (March)
Napoleon became First Consul of France for life (August)
1803
The hot press began (March)
USA bought Louisiana and New Orleans from France (April)
Start of the Napoleonic Wars between Britain and France (May)
1804
Diamond Rock was captured from the French ( January)
Napoleon declared himself Emperor of the French (May)
Spain declared war on Britain (December)
Napoleon was crowned Napoleon I (December)
The future Victorian prime minister Disraeli was born (December)
1805
Diamond Rock was retaken by the French ( June)
Battle of Trafalgar (21 October), when the French and Spanish were defeated by the British, and Nelson was killed
Strachan’s action when he captured several French warships that had retreated from Trafalgar (November)