by Roy Adkins
Officers and many of the men were clean-shaven, like civilians – not even moustaches were fashionable, although fairly short side whiskers were common. The reference to the ‘beards’ of the deserters was a description of the colour of facial hair, rather than meaning they had full beards. On board the Lapwing in the West Indies in 1799, thirty-seven-year-old Aaron Thomas loathed the custom of some seamen tying their hair in a long plait – a pigtail or queue – and he joked that ‘In the next war I suppose it will be the fashion for sailors never [to] shave but wear long beards, which they will tye into tails.’21 With his sardonic humour he added: ‘These chin tails will have its use, for when a man is ordered on the quarter deck to be started [beaten with the end of a rope or stick], the boatswain’s mate, instead of laying hold of the collar of your shirt, will lay hold of the chin tail, to keep you too, while the thrashing [is] performed.’22
The pigtails were commonly bound with tape or strips of cloth, explained by Thomas with exaggeration: ‘A sailor’s head is … very friendly to tape makers, as he often has as many yards of tape lapped round his hair as would reach from England to Newfoundland, so that when the tape and hair are bundled up together behind, so far from its looking like a tail, it appears as if half the main topgallant mast had been cut off, then rolled up in coarse slips of canvas, and in this state stuck to the hind part of the head.’23 Such pigtails were worn by seamen and officers alike, and Nelson’s pigtail, bound in tape, was cut off when he died and is now in the National Maritime Museum. When writing to a former shipmate, Thomas remarked: ‘I hope you will have followed my wishes; that is to wear your hair short and thin. That nasty custom of tying hair, is as bad as drinking your grog out of a piss pot. I now wear no hair on my head that is longer than the hair on your eyebrows.’24 Some months before, he described himself as ‘my hair curled close to my head, as I generally wear it’25 – dressed in black, he was often mistaken on shore for a clergyman.
Pigtails were so fashionable that some men wore false ones. Marine Lieutenant John George wrote to his parents that ‘I was obliged to get a false tail, my hair being too short to tie.’26 On joining the navy in 1783, Jeffrey Raigersfeld’s first captain was Cuthbert Collingwood. ‘Now it so happened,’ he related, ‘that at this time it was a fashion for your bucks of the navy to wear their hair tied in a pigtail behind, close up to their neck.’27 One day Captain Collingwood wanted to see all the midshipmen doing navigational observations of the height of the sun at noon, and many years later Raigersfeld had a feeling that short hair came into fashion because of what happened next:
Only three or four out of twelve or thirteen could accomplish this with any degree of exactitude, so calling those to him who were deficient, he observed to them how remiss they were, and suddenly, imputing their remissness to their pigtails, he took his penknife out of his pocket and cut off their pigtails close to their heads above the tie, then presenting them to their owners, desired they would put them into their pockets and keep them until such time as they could work a day’s-work, proper.28
Aaron Thomas thought long hair was dangerous: ‘I have heard of a sailor, whose tail [pigtail] catched in the block [pulley], as the fall [ropes] was going, and had his head pulled out from between his shoulders. So also of a sailor, whose hair was long and loose; it blew in his eyes as he was going up the shrouds [ropes]; he put his hands to his face, to clear it, when he missed his hold, fell into the chains and broke his neck.’29 Thomas also colourfully demonstrated that long hair was unhygienic and harboured lice:
A sailor who wears his hair tyed appears to me to be a very accommodating man; the queue which falls from his head down his back being well adapted to answer the purpose of a bridge, over which large bodies of lice may decamp from headquarters, when the napper is overstocked, and spread themselves in more commodious pasturage about the jacket, shirt and fork of the trowsers. The tail also well answers the use of a backstay, for it not only assists in keeping the head steady, but it affords the means of giving to every part of the body the same quantity of scrat,*for when the lice are all in the head, the general scrat is there also, but when they crawl down the tail, and disperse themselves, there then exists a general scrat from head to toe.30
As if to prove his point, Thomas recorded that on 16 May 1799, off Montserrat, they ‘flogged the boy Joseph Hilliar on his bare bum for having scabby and lousy hair. Cut all his hair off, and shaved his head.’31
Despite cutting off his midshipmen’s pigtails, Collingwood wore his own hair like this, as Midshipman Abraham Crawford, from Lismore in Ireland, observed on first meeting him: ‘At the time I write [1806], Lord Collingwood was between fifty and sixty … He wore his hair powdered, and tied in a queue, in the style of officers of his age at that time.’32 Hair was universally powdered by officers up to 1795, but the practice declined after a tax on hair powder was introduced, though in a list compiled a decade later of items a lieutenant needed to buy, Captain Rotheram included ‘Six pound of hair powder £0.6.0’.33 Wigs were also worn by some officers, but gradually wigs, powder and queues became unfashionable, officers wore their hair much shorter, and in 1808 marines were ordered to crop their hair and cease using powder.
The nationalities of a warship’s crew were even more varied than their hairstyles, and in 1803 the fourteen-year-old Scottish volunteer Robert Hay was amazed by the different backgrounds of the seamen in his first ship:
It would be difficult to give any adequate idea of the scenes these decks presented to anyone who has not witnessed them. To the eye were presented complexions of every hue, and features of every cast, from the jetty face, flat nose, thick lips and frizzled hair of the African, to the more slender frame and milder features of the Asiatic. The rosy complexion of the English swain and the sallow features of the sun-burnt Portuguese. People of every profession and of the most contrasted manners, from the brawny ploughman to the delicate fop. The decayed author and bankrupt merchant who had eluded their creditors. The apprentice who had eloped from servitude. The improvident and impoverished father who had abandoned his family, and the smuggler and the swindler who had escaped by flight the vengeance of the laws. Costumes of the most various hues presented themselves from the kilted Highlander to the quadruple breeched sons of Holland. From the shirtless sons of the British prison-house to the knuckle ruffles of the haughty Spaniard. From the gaudy tinseled trappings of the dismissed footman to the rags and tatters of the city mendicant. Here, a group of half-starved and squalid wretches, not eating but devouring with rapacity their whole day’s provisions at a single meal. There, a gang of sharpers at cards or dice swindling some unsuspecting booby out of his few remaining pence.34
Hay was also astonished at all the languages spoken by the numerous foreign recruits: ‘To the ear was addressed a hubbub little short of that which occurred at Babel. Irish, Welsh, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Swedish, Italian and all the provincial dialects between Landsend and John O’Groats, joined their discordant notes.’35 The Irishman Henry Walsh and the Scotsmen Daniel Goodall and Robert Hay all spoke English as their first language, but this was not universal since the Irish, Scottish and Welsh languages were the first (and at times only) languages of many. Today, mass communications by radio and television have weakened local dialects, but in Nelson’s time even the speech of many English people was virtually incomprehensible to their fellow countrymen from other regions. Nelson himself had a ‘true Norfolk drawl’.36 Captain Rotheram in his survey of the Bellerophon’s crew noted details like their manner of speech. Dialects included many ‘Scotch’, with some being described as ‘broad’, many Irish, and others from Devon, Somerset, Yorkshire, Newcastle, Northumberland, Welsh and Cockney, as well as men from abroad with a variety of accents, including some described as ‘Creole’ and a man from Sweden who spoke ‘broken English’.37
Some foreign seamen spoke next to no English, and in the court martial of Francisco Falso for sodomy, one witness was asked, ‘Does Francisco Falso understand Engl
ish?’, to which came the reply, ‘He speaks and understands but very little of it. He is a Maltese.’38 Because the court realised that Falso did not understand the charge – a capital offence – an interpreter was summoned to translate everything. The mixture of foreign accents and languages and the variety of speech of men from different parts of the British Isles were extra obstacles to the attempts by petty officers to impose order and discipline on new recruits. ‘The occasional rattle of the boatswain’s cane, the harsh voices of his mates blended with the shrill and penetrating sound of their whistles,’ Robert Hay remembered, ‘[all] served [at] once to strike terror into the mind and add confusion to the scene.’39
Irrespective of his nationality, it was how a new recruit was rated that determined his duties and level of pay, as Robert Wilson outlined: ‘The ratings are thus – able seamen, ordinary seamen, and landsmen; there are also boys, who gradually rise to able seamen according to the length of time they may be on board and as they may deserve.’40 Wilson himself was twenty years old when taken by the press-gang, and because he had sailed on merchant ships, he was rated as an able seaman, but young Robert Hay had no seafaring experience and was rated as a Boy, being under the age of eighteen. Those under the age of fifteen were Boys Third Class, and those over fifteen were Boys Second Class. Boys First Class, more usually called Volunteers First Class, were literally a class apart, as they were training to be officers and expected to be appointed midshipmen.
Adults with no seagoing experience (of whom many had been pressed) were rated as Landsmen (or Landmen), while expert sailors were rated as Able Seamen. Between these two levels were the Ordinary Seamen, who had been to sea before but were not recognised as skilful sailors. This rating system was based on the level of competence of the crew member, although men could be disrated as a punishment, since it meant a drop in pay and privileges, so it was possible to have a skilled seaman rated as a landsman. The navy really wanted men like Andrew Mouat, on board the Immortalité in 1805, who was described as
thoroughly versed in every branch of a seaman’s duty, [but] he had none of the thoughtless, reckless habits and manners, that usually characterize the profession to which he belonged: on the contrary, his were peculiarly quiet, orderly, and sober: whatever duty he was put to perform, or whatever trust was reposed in him, he never left the one until he had finished it, and never disappointed or betrayed the other. And yet Mouat was a pressed man, with a wife and children, from whom he was unwillingly separated. His former situation, too, had been one of respectability, being mate of a vessel that traded between London and one of the north-eastern ports.41
The forecastle, in front of the foremast, was where the seamen congregated, and on some ships this was where they ate and slept, and so ‘before the mast’ meant ordinary seamen as opposed to officers. Similarly, ‘men of the lower deck’ referred to the seamen, in contrast to the officers who belonged to the quarterdeck.
After being rated, the recruits were told which watch (a naval term for a shift) they would be in, although a few had special duties and were exempt from keeping watch. The period of time when half the crew, including the officers, was on duty was called a ‘watch’, and the same term was also used for the men who were on duty. Depending on their previous experience, the new crew members were then allotted specific duties, which were largely defined by their place or ‘station’ in the ship. ‘It next follows to station them, and to describe the different employments of every different class of the people, according to their stations,’ Wilson recorded. ‘The able seamen are stationed on the forecastle, or fore part of the ship, in the tops, and some in the afterguard. The ordinary seamen and landmen compose the afterguard and waisters, except a few of the smartest of the former who are occasionally put among the topmen.’42 The topmen were stationed aloft, at the top of the mast, and were generally the youngest and most agile sailors, as Wilson acknowledged:
The duty of the topmen relates to everything above the lower yards, and what relates to the top, whether on deck or aloft; and they occasionally assist at duty on deck when not employed aloft. The topmen are generally smart young men, as the duty imposed on them requires alertness, such as shortening or reducing sails, or canvas, on a ship in a sudden squall, etc. It not only requires alertness but courage, to ascend in a manner sky-high when stormy winds do blow. In short, they must not be slack in stays – i.e. indolent – but exert themselves briskly. The youngest of the topmen generally go the highest … The fore and maintopmen when at sea look out at their different mastheads,* an hour each – two men, one a foretopman and t’other a main. The mizentopmen do not look out at any of the mastheads.43
The biggest problem for such lookouts was coping with boredom and staying alert, and so the masts and woodwork where they stood were ‘hacked and scarred and carved with fancy designs and would-be representations of Men-of-War, the handiwork of men aloft on lookout by way of wiling away the time’.44
The forecastle men handled the sails from the deck towards the bow of the ship, and similar work was done towards the stern by the afterguard. Between these two groups were positioned the waisters, as Wilson detailed: ‘The afterguard is composed of able and ordinary seamen and landsmen, and their duty consists in attending about the quarterdeck, trimming sails, etc. The waisters in common are the worst of the landsmen, and are what the seamen call “neither soldiers nor sailors”. Their duty is to do all the drudgery work on the main or gun deck and occasionally to assist in working ship.’45 By contrast, the gunner’s crew were able seamen chosen for their skill and experience and were considered to be ‘the best seamen in the ship. Their duty is to attend to the main yard and rigging, to the guns and whatever relates to them, so far as they may receive orders from the gunner of the ship. They are allowed 1/- more per month than any other able seamen; what with making of cartridges and wads, etc., they earn it.’46
Other workers with special skills like the sailmaker, carpenter and cooper were referred to as ‘idlers’, because they did not belong to one of the watches and could in theory sleep all night and work by day. Daniel Goodall explained the system:
In all vessels, whether of war or commerce, there are a number of men who keep no watch at all, both officers and crew, and who are known by the somewhat uncomplimentary but misapplied term of ‘idlers’, seeing they are often the very individuals who work hardest. For instance, the captain, first lieutenant, sailing-master, surgeon, purser, boatswain, gunner, and carpenter – and in all large ships a number of inferior officers – are included in this designation. But it is obvious that, although those officers I have just named are not included in the regular watch of the ship, they are by no means ‘idlers’ in the ordinary sense of the word. All men who are employed either as mechanics [such as blacksmiths and armourers] or officers’ servants during the whole or greater part of the day are also excused from night work, but they are liable to be called up at any moment when the lieutenant of the watch may think their assistance necessary. In all the ships to which I have at any time been attached, there were a few of the crew specially exempted from all duty, save in action with the enemy, such as the captain’s steward, the purser’s steward, the gunroom steward, and a very few others.47
Since a ship had to be a self-sufficient community, as far as was possible, these various specialists were employed primarily for their skills rather than for a direct contribution to the working of the ship. At one end of the scale the ship’s surgeon seldom, if ever, helped with the sailing of the ship, although Captain Thomas Cochrane left only his surgeon, James Guthrie, to steer the Speedy when he needed every available man to board and capture the Gamo in 1801. The surgeon normally concentrated on maintaining the health of the ship’s crew, while other specialists, such as the carpenter, cooper and gunner, were also generally exempt from helping to sail the ship. Their assistants or ‘mates’, though, were frequently called upon to lend a hand, as Wilson noted for the cooper: ‘The cooper and his mate are employed in their line [maki
ng and dismantling barrels], but seldom having much to do, the cooper generally acts as assistant to the ship’s steward and his mate graces the afterguard.’48
As well as their rating, station and watch, which governed their pay, duties and the time when they were at work, each man was assigned to a mess. In the short term this could have a much greater impact on a new recruit, as Samuel Leech remembered about his time on board the Macedonian:
The morning after my arrival [in 1810], I was put into a ‘mess’. The crew of a man of war is divided into little communities of about eight called ‘messes’. These eat and drink together, and are, as it were, so many families. The mess to which I was introduced, was composed of your genuine, weather-beaten, old tars. But for one of its members, it would have suited me very well; this one, a real gruff old ‘bull-dog’, named Hudson [he probably meant able seaman Richard Hodgson], took into his head to hate me at first sight. He treated me with so much abuse and unkindness, that my messmates soon advised me to change my mess, a privilege which is wisely allowed, and which tends very much to the good fellowship of a ship’s crew, for if there are disagreeable men among them, they can in this way be got rid of. It is no unfrequent case to find a few, who have been spurned from all the messes in the ship, obliged to mess by themselves.49