Jack Tar

by Roy Adkins

  Each mess had its own table, usually with a bench either side, and a variable number of men, as Basil Hall remembered:

  The number of men in a mess varies from eight to twelve in a frigate, each mess having a separate table … In a line-of-battle ship the tables are larger, and two messes sit at the same table, one on each side. The average number in the mess is the same as in a frigate … A petty officer or leading man, who is styled captain of the mess, is at the head of each, and in a well-disciplined ship, he is in some manner responsible for the good conduct and cleanliness of the others.50

  It was within these messes that the seamen made lasting friendships, which were summed up in the saying about a sailor’s loyalty: ‘Messmate before a shipmate, shipmate before a stranger, stranger before a dog’.51 Goodall found that the messes could be quite cosmopolitan: ‘The mess to which I was allotted were all seamen, had all served aboard merchant ships, and several of them had been many years in the Royal Navy. They were seven in number before I was added to the mess. Five were Englishmen, one a native of Ireland, and the seventh a Frenchman.’52

  Most training of newly recruited seamen was centred on the skills necessary to sail the ship. By obeying orders most men learned the job as they went along, but because of the sheer variety of life in the navy, it took time to build up the necessary skills. William Robinson, who volunteered as a landsman in 1805, felt that the routine and discipline helped the learning process: ‘By this regular system of duty, I became inured to the roughness and hardships of a sailor’s life. I had made up my mind to be obedient, however irksome to my feelings, and … I soon began to pick up a knowledge of seamanship.’53 John Wetherell, an experienced seaman from Whitby taken by the press-gang in 1803, soon realised the difference between being a merchant seaman and one in the navy: ‘A little time gave me to understand that I was now entering on my first adventures and must consider myself under the martial laws of my country and must use every means to obey my superiors, attend to my duty, all calls and orders, to be sober, silent and submissive, and above all to curb your tongue and temper was what I soon found a golden rule.’54

  After his first few weeks at sea, Robert Hay started to learn navy jargon, or, as he put it, ‘I had … become familiar with a number of those phrases which distinguished the sons of Neptune from those of Terra Firma.’55 This was a problem for many new recruits, as the very language used at sea was completely different from that on land, and they were also faced with each sail and rope having its own name, reflecting its position in the ship or the purpose for which it was used – for example, stays were part of the standing rigging that braced the masts and helped them stay in position. They included shrouds that extended from the mastheads to both sides of the ship and backstays that ran from the top of each mast downwards to each side.

  On top of learning all the nautical names for equipment and procedures, recruits also had to come to terms with the sailors’ speech, which was full of curious expressions and slang words. Everything was at first strange to the chaplain Edward Mangin, but after a while he became accustomed to the peculiar language and proudly listed his newly acquired vocabulary, including ‘the combings, or coamings, and shot-lockers; the splinter-netting … I knew bunting from spun-yarn, and duck from canvas; understood the use of stanchions, and grapnels, and grummets, and windsails.’56 Sailors were notorious for their way of talking, and after Trafalgar, when many letters from sailors were published in newspapers giving details of the battle, a parody of such a letter was published in one magazine, in which the author commented on Nelson’s death:

  If it had been the Purser, or the Captain’s Clerk, or the Surgeon’s Mate, though for my part I like them all well enough, it wo’dn’t have mattered the strapping of a topsail-sheet block: but the gallant Nelson to broach to, to start about, to be let go by the run; By the mizen-mast!! I would have given my allowance of grog for six months to come, and have had nothing but banyan days, to have saved his precious life. However, clap the jigger-tackle on your spirits, honest Bob; for our chaplain says, that the brave Nelson is not dead, but that he liveth; and he must know more about it than we do.57

  The language used in this parody is exaggerated with meaningless expressions and real sailors’ slang used in a odd way, and the fact that it was published as a humorous piece demonstrates that people were accustomed to how sailors spoke, even if they did not always understand every word that they used. In fact, by the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 so many people in Britain had been closely involved with the navy, either serving in ships or shore establishments and ports, or in supplying goods and services to the Admiralty, that many sailors’ expressions entered the English language and have survived to the present day. Many do not betray their naval origins, so that it is not obvious that ‘to the bitter end’ originally referred to the bitts of a ship. These were wooden posts on the deck, to which ropes were secured, so ‘the bitter end’ was the end of a length of rope that was tied round a bitt. Scuppers were the drains along the sides of the deck that emptied through holes in the ship’s side, and to be scuppered was therefore to ‘go down the drain’. A ‘clean slate’ originally referred to changing the watch – any changes in the course, records of occurrences, distances travelled, and so on, were chalked on a slate by an officer of the watch. When the watch changed these records were copied into the logbook, and the new watch started with a clean slate.

  If he was lucky a new recruit would find an experienced hand to take pity on him and teach him what he needed to know for any given task, but sometimes this was ordered by the officers, as seems to have been the case with Robert Hay, serving under Vice-Admiral Collingwood, who, he said,

  gave each boy in charge to the best seaman of the mess to which he belonged with orders to look carefully after him, to teach him good behaviour, and all the little operations of seamanship. ‘I expect,’ said the Admiral to these tutors, ‘to find, on some future examination, that these boys have been placed in good hands. To you I will look for their improvement, and I expect no remissness will be shewn.’ Each of these tutors, strongly desirous that his pupil should not fall behind any of the others, embraced every opportunity of shewing him something; and the boys, on the other hand, resolving that neither they nor their tutors should be disgraced, attended to their lessons with the utmost assiduity and zeal. It was my lot to fall into the hands of Jack Gillies, than whom a handier fellow never left the Emerald Isle. ‘Let us have the necessaries first, Robert,’ said he, ‘and we will attend to other matters afterwards.’ Accordingly the cutting out and making of jackets, shirts and trousers, the washing of them when soiled, and the mending of them neatly when they began to fail, took precedence. The making of straw hats and canvas pumps [shoes] came next in order. Then followed various operations in seamanship.58

  Collingwood was exceptional in being more strict with his officers than with the men, on the grounds that they should set an example to their inferiors. In this he implicitly recognised the class divide between the ‘common seamen’ and the officers, who were drawn from the middle and upper classes.

  The lowest officer rank was midshipman (‘mids’ or ‘middies’). A few years before Robert Hay began to learn the ropes, Jeffrey Raigersfeld was removed from the midshipmen’s mess by Collingwood, partly as punishment and partly for the experience. Afterwards, Raigersfeld thought that mixing with the ordinary seamen – the bulk of the crew – was an invaluable lesson:

  Another of the midshipmen and myself were put to mess with the common men, where we lived with them three months, performing all the offices of the ships boys such as cooking the victuals, standing the rank [queuing] at the ship’s copper for the beef, burgoo and pease soup, and cleaning the mess platters. At first I was indignant at such treatment, but there was no help for it, therefore I quietly resigned myself to my fate, and I am very glad I was so placed, as it gave me a great insight into the character of seamen, and enabled me to govern them as well as their officers … during those
three months I gained more knowledge of the seaman’s character, than in all the other ships I have since served in.59

  Midshipmen were given some training in navigation, mathematics and astronomy, and sometimes a schoolmaster was appointed for this purpose. However, since the post of schoolmaster was paid the same as that of midshipman, it was hard to fill and often did not attract the best candidates. John Harvey Boteler recalled that ‘we youngsters had a schoolmaster, a clever seedy-looking creature, whose besetting sin was the love of grog; with very little trouble it floored him and then, I don’t much like to record it, we used to grease his head and flour it’.60 As well as teaching navigation skills to midshipmen, a schoolmaster often taught the officer boys how to read and write if they were willing to learn. In addition to instruction in religion and morals the chaplain sometimes added to the general education of the midshipmen and boys, but in the absence of a schoolmaster, the teaching of navigation could be rather haphazard, as Abraham Crawford admitted of his time as a midshipman in the Diamond: ‘As there was no schoolmaster in the ship, one of the elder Midshipmen, a protégé of the Captain, kindly undertook to give me lessons in mathematics and navigation, but I fear I did not profit much by his instruction; nor, indeed, did I ever after show any predilection or much aptitude for figures or abstruse calculations.’61

  Apart from those subjects that were essential for good seamanship, midshipmen were generally expected to pick up whatever knowledge they needed by their experiences on board ship. Their young age is evident in the instructions to shipboard schoolteachers in a contemporary manual:

  He should never suffer them to come to the mess table, or into the school cabin, without washing their hands and faces; he should insist on their keeping their heads perfectly clean; and, when opportunity serves, make them wash from head to foot … When the hatchways are open, the youngsters should always be cautioned against playing inadvertently near them; and care should be taken at the same time to tighten a rope round them, to prevent accidents, if possible.62

  Some captains took more interest in providing training and experience than others, and each had his own particular views. According to Crawford, Captain Edward Griffith of the Diamond ‘always was in the habit of giving his young gentlemen the opportunity of acquiring as much useful knowledge and accomplishments as the brief time allowed for refitting ships in time of war permitted’.63 While the ship was in dock,

  an experienced seaman [Matthew Walker] was employed a couple of hours each day in teaching the youngsters every practical part of a seaman’s duty. We learned each knot and splice that was known to Matthew Walker himself, and when we were sufficiently instructed in them, we were put to rig a small ship, that stood in the Captain’s cabin for the purpose. We were shown how to raise sheers,* and get in the lower masts and bowsprit; then to cut out, mark and serve the lower rigging … and, in fact, without entering more into particulars, we rigged and unrigged the ship, until we were pronounced perfect by our teacher.64

  Captain Griffith also provided instruction in ‘drawing, French and dancing, and, with a view of not permitting us to forget all early habits, and, from change of element, become “rude and boisterous children of the sea”, he invited us [when in port] frequently to his house, and introduced us to several of his friends’.65 These were useful accomplishments for a future naval officer. Because a large part of the world was still not properly surveyed, many officers sketched profiles of coastal landmarks in difficult waters, as well as the forms of foreign vessels and maps of harbours, shoals and other sea hazards for future reference. French was not only the language of England’s principal enemy, but the language of trade and politics in many parts of the world – Nelson tried, unsuccessfully, to master it by spending some weeks in France during the peace in 1783. On some foreign stations the most senior naval officer might also be, by default, British ambassador to the region, and in such cases a knowledge of foreign languages and social graces, such as dancing and dealing with people other than naval officers and seamen, would be advantageous. If a midshipman at sea from the age of twelve or thirteen years was to succeed as a senior captain or admiral in command of a fleet in a remote part of the world, he needed a very broad education.

  Midshipmen were often attracted to the navy as young boys by dreams of glory, such as inspired thirteen-year-old James Scott when he received his midshipman’s clothes: ‘Brightly dawned the auspicious morning that beheld me habited in His Majesty’s uniform, and which, in my excited imagination, was at once to make a man and a hero of me.’66 As many such boys found, though, reality rapidly replaced his hopes:

  I remember well on the following day, when we were receiving our guns, muskets, swords, tomahawks, pikes &c. that my reflections were by no means agreeable. The conviction that they were intended for deadly strife, and that the period might not be far distant when they would be brought into actual use, threw a chill over the enthusiastic ardour that generally governed my feelings respecting the navy. I felt most forcibly that I had not henceforth child’s play to encounter, and a feeling allied to fear crept into my mind that I might fail when the moment of trial came.67

  The young age of midshipmen, who had to give orders to men often old enough to be their grandfathers, seldom gave rise to trouble, because of the rigid navy discipline and the equally rigid class structure in Britain, which kept apart the worlds of the ordinary people and the officers. Along with all the officers, midshipmen were regarded as gentlemen and were even referred to as ‘the young gentlemen’. There was a degree of automatic deference from the sailor, but occasionally a midshipman would abuse his authority, as one verse of a contemporary ballad cruelly highlighted:

  There are snotty boys of midshipmen,

  Ha’n’t yet done shitting yellow;

  As to their age, some hardly ten

  Strike many a brave fellow,

  Who dare not prate at any rate,

  Nor seem in the least to mumble.

  They’ll frap you still, do what you will;

  It is but folly to grumble.68

  The Newcastle seaman George Watson, when on board the Eagle in the Mediterranean, detested one midshipman, who, he said,

  was haughty, arbitrary, ignorant, vain as a peacock, implacable, revengeful, cowardly, contemptuous and contemptible, hated by all over whom he had any control; he was one of those creatures that are most useless and offensive in his Majesty’s service, and only calculated to create and nourish sedition and mutiny … even seamen, so rude and boisterous in their manners, expect better things in those that rule them, and never fail to notice and condemn, the commander that wants them.69

  William Robinson recalled another midshipman, who was ‘a youth not more than twelve or thirteen years of age; but I have often seen him get on the carriage of a gun, call a man to him, and kick him about the thighs and body, and with his fist would beat him about the head; and these, although prime seamen, at the same time dared not murmur’.70 When this particular midshipman was killed in battle, Robinson noted that ‘the general exclamation was “Thank God, we are rid of the young tyrant!”’71

  After midshipman, the next rung on the career ladder for officers was the rank of lieutenant, but several years’ experience at sea were needed before taking the qualifying examination. Some midshipmen were stuck after continually failing to pass the examination, while others could be left in the role of midshipman for some time after passing but not being appointed as lieutenant. The most senior was the first lieutenant, then the second lieutenant, and so on, with more lieutenants in larger ships. The first lieutenant was the highest-ranking officer below the captain, and so one of the most important men in the ship. He was second-in-command, and took over if the captain was incapacitated or dead, but he was also responsible for the smooth day-to-day running of the ship. As the seaman Daniel Goodall commented, ‘It was a saying in the navy at the time, amongst the common seamen, that every man’s comfort afloat depended upon the kind of man a ship had for its First Lieu
tenant, for that he was the Prime Minister of the small community over which the Captain ruled as absolute monarch, and, as every measure and arrangement was to be carried out by him, it was better to sail with a bad Captain and a good First Lieutenant than to have the conditions reversed.’72

  Officers of the rank of lieutenant and above were commissioned officers, and their authority derived from the fact that they each held a commission from the Admiralty. Of all the officers in a ship, it was the first lieutenant who was under constant scrutiny by the crew. They looked first for skill and professionalism, because on many occasions the safety of the ship would rest on his decisions, and after that, leadership and fairness. A first lieutenant who was too harsh or too lax was likely to provoke trouble among the men, who preferred competent but caring leaders, as Goodall observed:

  Mr Thomas Furber [first lieutenant of HMS Flora] … in 1805 to do him justice, was an officer who well understood his profession, whilst he acted as much as he could up to his conviction that it was better to govern men by fear rather than by love. Very excellent authorities have differed with our noisy First Lieutenant on that particular point – such men, for example, as Nelson, Collingwood, Pellew, Codrington, and a host of others easy to name, having held fast by the opinion that an officer who wins the love of his men will work wonders where a leader of a different stamp will fail.73

  It was in the post of first lieutenant that an officer gained experience of commanding a ship, and the aim for most officers and probably all first lieutenants was to become a post-captain. The difference between these two ranks was seen as the great hurdle that had to be overcome, either by distinguishing themselves in battle or by the help of friends at the Admiralty. Below the rank of post-captain, promotion was in principle purely on merit, but as Basil Hall was well aware, except ‘in cases of extraordinary good fortune, or extraordinary good interest [the help of an influential person], an officer’s chance of promotion abroad is very small, unless he either gets actually into the flag-ship, or occupies a place on the Admiral’s list of protégés while serving in some other vessel’.74 Once a first lieutenant ‘made post’, as it was called, he was a post-captain on the bottom of the seniority list. From then on his promotion was automatic, governed not by merit but purely by the death or removal of the officers ahead of him on the list – hence the toast of officers dining together, ‘A bloody war and a sickly season’75 – events that could kill off officers above them and so lead to promotion. An instance of this was recorded by Aaron Thomas of the Lapwing in his journal: