Jack Tar

by Roy Adkins

  Once they were further out to sea, the problem with insects diminished. ‘Thanks, however, to the cooler air of the sea, many have retired to their fastnesses,’ Prior noted with relief, ‘to be again drawn forth by the quiescence and warmth of the harbour.’143

  Despite the constant presence of vermin in the ships, army Major-General Cockburn appeared envious of the Royal Navy, but he was critical of the risk of fire:

  The principal thing I see in the navy, requiring improvement, is the galleys, or fire-places; considering their formation and the motion at sea, I am astonished that half our ships are not burned; to be sure the facts are against this, it does not happen: so many [people] are at all times about the fire during the day, and it is so carefully put out at night, that no doubt the probability is against it; but why leave it a possibility, when security might be had at very trifling expence? To observe the fire, and the number of grates, boilers, ovens, &c. and the combustible material all around, it is astonishing more accidents do not happen: I should be alarmed with a kitchen fire so constructed in my house. I am confident ship kitchens might be improved, and made secure from the danger to which they expose the ship.144

  What Cockburn did not consider was the risk of fire from candles. Captains were advised ‘to be extremely attentive in taking every possible precaution to prevent accidents by fire’.145 It was very dark below decks, pitch black in places, and unless there was moonlight, darkness reigned at night on the upper deck as well. Light from lanterns and candles was dim and did not extend any distance. Beeswax and tallow (animal fat) candles were placed inside lanterns of tin and translucent horn, or else oil was used as a fuel, and these lanterns were suspended from beams or carried around at night by those on duty, as Robert Wilson described: ‘The sergeants and corporals [of marines] in their watches at night time have to go round all the decks with a lantern and candle every half-hour to see if all is well; and when they have done so, they are to report to the Officer of the Watch accordingly.’146

  Only lanterns were allowed in the lower part of the ship, and naked candles were not supposed to be used by seamen because of the danger of fire. The captain was urged ‘strictly to forbid the sticking of candles against the beams, the sides or any other part of the ship. He is strictly to enjoin the officers not to read in bed by the light of either lamps or candles; nor to leave any light in their cabins without having some person to attend it.’147 Captain Cumby of the Hyperion emphasised this warning in his own orders: ‘no lights, whether at sea or in harbour, are to be allowed to remain unattended in any berth or cabin; and none to be allowed in the tiers except in lanthorns’.148

  The court martial of Francisco Falso and John Lambert demonstrated the degree of darkness. These two seamen were accused of committing sodomy in August 1798 in the galley of the Prince Frederick, at about eleven-thirty at night. Thomas King, a waister, said that ‘I heard a bustling on the bench, but did not know what it was, being so dark. I walked up to it, and touched a man’s naked flesh with my hand.’149 The boatswain’s mate, Richard Cunningham, was summoned, and he sent King for a light: ‘I brought the lanthorn and held the light to Cunningham and saw both prisoners, they were laying down and both their trowsers down.’150 Cunningham was then cross-examined: ‘Q. Was there a sufficient light for you to see anything by the Master at Arms lanthorn? A. It was a moonlight night and the light shone thro’ the gratings but was not so light as for me to determine who the persons were.’151 Thomas Ellis, a seaman, was in the galley at that time, dozing nearby, and he too was cross-examined: ‘Q. As you were sitting so near the prisoners, if they had been in the Act of Sodomy, with which they are charged, must you not have seen them? A. It was dark and I could not see them. Besides I had no suspicion of anything of the kind.’152 The two men were eventually acquitted because the galley was far too dark for those present to have seen the offence take place.

  Candles were always in short supply, and in another court martial one witness said that ‘the prisoner came with one of the lanthorns in his hand holding it up to me. I thought there was something amiss, and so I asked him what was the matter. He said he wanted a fresh candle as that was burnt out; I said it is impossible that the candle is already burnt out, it is hardly 10 minutes since I lighted it, and they will burn two hours and longer.’153 Wax and tallow candles were also burned in candleholders, but Captain Thomas Fremantle complained to his wife Betsey that his cabins were so large ‘that two wax candles are not perceived in them’.154 The chaplain Edward Mangin was forced to compose his sermons in his cabin, with only a small window for light. ‘I read and wrote by what, at best, could scarcely be called twilight;’ he complained, ‘and very frequently, even in the noon-tide of a summer-day, carried on these operations by candle light, or by what seamen facetiously termed, a Purser’s moon.’155 The purser was responsible for providing candles, and years later Basil Hall remarked: ‘Even at this distance of time, I have a most painfully distinct recollection of these dirty tallow candles in the midshipmen’s berth; dips, I think they were called, smelling of mutton fat, and throwing up a column of smoke like that from a steamboat’s chimney. These “glims” yielded but little light.’156

  When performing operations down in the cockpit during battle, the surgeons struggled to see, and what happened to the surgeon Forbes Chivers on board the Tonnant at the Battle of Trafalgar demonstrated the lack of light: ‘The place was utterly dark, half of its depth being below the water-line. C. did all his amputations by the light of tallow candles, held torch-like by two assistants, to whom he said, “If you look straight into the wound, and see that I do, I shall see perfectly” … A consequence was that, when he washed his face at the first opportunity, he found that his eyebrows had been burnt off.’157

  In the deepest recesses of the ship, the darkness was such that a man could – literally – live undetected. This happened with one Irish seaman who survived for weeks in the hold of the Nisus frigate anchored off Port Louis in Mauritius in early 1811:

  John Herring, a youth of eighteen, was discovered by the master-at-arms crawling into one of the tiers; he being supposed to have jumped overboard and been drowned, on the 4th of November last. For five months he had secreted himself in the main hold, unseen by any person whatever; during all which time he subsisted upon what he could nightly steal out of the mess kids and bread-bags between decks. His supply was, of course, precarious, and he says he was once five days without eating, though he could generally procure water. When detected diving to his hiding-place, he had two bags in his hand, one full of biscuit, and the other of onions, which he had just stolen. He could crawl pretty well, but stood with difficulty; he was unable to walk, and being very weak and emaciated, would not probably have lived many days longer.158

  Even in good weather, with ports and hatches open, little light penetrated as far as the lower decks, but when bad weather set in the problems of coping with the elements were compounded by the lack of light within the ship. Aaron Thomas, who wrote his journals in his cabin by candlelight, found the shadowy darkness could conjure up strange fantasies: ‘I am sitting below in my cabin, with the Purser’s dull rush light before me. Its horrible glance gives so deadly a hue to all around that I sometimes fancy myself in the regions below, amongst my ancestors in our family vault. So dismal is the light of my candle, and so black is the table on which I write, that the other day I thought I was using my pen on the lid of my Great Grandfather’s coffin.’159

  Map of the Netherlands

  FIVE

  A WIFE IN EVERY PORT

  I can say little about Cephalonia, having been but once on shore to my recollection, however I heard that there were plenty of fruit, wine and ‘bonny lasses’, which are the principal things sailors look for in any port.

  Able Seaman George Watson1

  When ‘in’ a port, warships seldom moored alongside or close to a quay or jetty, as the water was not always deep enough, and it was sometimes difficult to manoeuvre a ship in a confined area,
but the overriding reason was to stop the seamen deserting. Most warships anchored in the roads, sometimes called roadsteads, which were anchorages outside the ports or harbours that were as safe and sheltered from the prevailing winds as possible. In Britain, probably the best-known and certainly the busiest of such anchorages was Spithead, lying between the great naval base at Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. With the mainland to the north, the island to the south and a series of sandbanks to the east, it provided good protection combined with easy access. Here ships could be positioned well over a mile from the nearest land – far enough to deter all but the most confident swimmer.

  Other measures could be taken to prevent anyone escaping, such as posting a boat on guard duty during the night, which would be rowed round and round the ship. On top of such precautions, many captains rarely allowed shore leave to prevent desertion, and this only added to the men’s frustration. As Captain Anselm Griffiths admitted in 1811, ‘by far the larger portion of a ship’s company are there against their consent. Many are impressed and forcibly brought; others enter because if they do not, they will be impressed, and although they are cheerful and apparently contented, still there is that difference between them and the officers: the latter are there by choice.’2

  Because so few men could enjoy the benefits of going ashore, with no entitlement to days off or to holidays, it was customary for bum-boats to carry traders out to the ships to sell all manner of goods from fresh food to clothes, cheap watches and trinkets, but an even larger number of boats carried prostitutes. When Edward Mangin joined the Gloucester warship at Gravesend as chaplain in 1812, it was his first time at sea, and the presence of prostitutes on board was explained to him as necessary for the welfare of the seamen, even those who were married:

  According to custom while in harbour, and before the ship was paid, there were multitudes of women in her; some quartered with the midshipmen in the cable-tier and cockpit; the rest with the common men. This arrangement is asserted to be a necessary evil, and better than allowing the seamen to go and visit their friends and acquaintances on shore; and with reference to the interests of the Naval Service, this licence may be necessary; but, it was productive of considerable embarrassment to one in my situation on board.3

  The idea that sexual frustration would lead the men of the lower decks to ‘unclean acts’ of homosexuality was one reason why prostitutes were permitted on board when the ships were in port. While a first-time navy chaplain might be taken aback, even the seamen were sometimes shocked at the sheer numbers of women at the main naval bases. In the summer of 1809 the Irish seaman Henry Walsh in HMS Alfred arrived at Portsmouth, which in his view was ‘the capital naval seaport in England and consequently in the world’.4 The sight of the prostitutes was less agreeable:

  I was astonished in beholding the crowd of those women of pleasure that daily surround those ships of war and there remains until the man goes down into these boats and there chooses one. And then he asks the waterman what is the price of his wife. It is generally a shilling or more according to the state of the weather. When in harbour this is the way the sailors generally spends their time, in the arms of these infamous prostitutes, which indeed is a disgrace to womankind when on board. I have seen above four hundred of these ladies on board at one time, and they are not very particular about the convenience of sleeping in private, as that is impossible to find among so many men. Their expressions in conversation is quite beyond the limits of prudence or modesty.5

  The main ports had large populations of prostitutes awaiting the arrival of warships – at least one thousand in Portsmouth alone according to the 1801 census figures – and out of all the potential clients, naval seamen were likely to provide rich pickings, as this contemporary song demonstrates:

  Don’t you see the ships a-coming?

  Don’t you see them in full sail?

  Don’t you see the ships a-coming

  With the prizes at their tail?

  Oh! My little rolling sailor

  Oh! My little rolling he;

  I do love a jolly sailor,

  Blithe and merry might he be.

  Sailors, they get all the money,

  Soldiers, they get none but brass;

  I do love a jolly sailor,

  Soldiers they may kiss my arse.

  Oh! My little rolling sailor,

  Oh! My little rolling he;

  I do love a jolly sailor,

  Soldiers may be damned for me.6

  Major-General René-Martin Pillet, who was a prisoner-of-war in England for six years, provided an embittered French perspective:

  Some English sailors have been in the service twenty-five years; they have sailed to every part of the known world, and these sailors have never set foot on land for six hours … To deprive the sailor of a wish to visit the land, and to prevent the spirit of revolt … the vessel is opened to all the girls of a dissolute life, who offer themselves. Sometimes moreover, for form’s sake, a hypocritical captain requires the female visitors to take the title of the sister, niece, cousin or relation of the sailor they designate, according to the list sent ashore; it is to them a real lottery of age, form and money. These women never fail to bring with them a great abundance of provisions of the dearest kinds; some spiritous liquors, but not without some contrivance and secrecy.7

  Whenever a warship appeared, a rush of women tried to get on board, with only a few being genuine wives, as Daniel Goodall found:

  No sooner had the ‘Temeraire’ cast anchor off Plymouth than she was surrounded by shore boats, for the fact that a ship’s company was coming in to receive pay spread somehow with a rapidity and certainty that would have seemed marvellous to those who did not know how numerous were the harpies that preyed upon poor Jack, and how keen was their scent when plunder was in prospect. The first arrivals were, of course, the fair sex, who set up the most clamorous demands for admission on board, each claiming to have a husband amongst the crew. Some of them, it is true, really were the wives of men belonging to the ship, but, if all had been admitted who set up the claim of connubial right, it would have been a clear case of polygamy, for there could not have been less than a proportion of three or four to every man of marriageable age and position on board. As it was, three days sufficed to see fully more than two hundred of the Delilahs of Plymouth settled amongst the crew, not ten per cent. of whom could have made out a feasible claim to marital connection with any of the men.8

  Marine Lieutenant Robert Steele related one verse sung by these women:

  Come, ferryman, ferry me over,

  To a ship that’s call’d the Fame

  For there I’ve got a husband,

  But hang me, if I know his name.9

  Some captains, particularly those regarded as devout or even fanatical Christians, insisted that the women should prove they were married before being allowed on board. Writing to his wife Sally in February 1809, thirty-year-old William Wilkinson assured her:

  In regard to your wishing to know if there are any bad ladies onboard, I am very happy to be able to give you an answer that will be very satisfactory. Two days after the Christian joined the fleet under Admiral Lord Gambier (who is a very good and strict religious man) he gave a written order that none should be permitted to come onboard any of the ships of the fleet, saying that it was to the great annoyance of married men, and against all decency and morality, and if any officer disgraced himself so much as to break this order his name was immediately to be given by the first lieutenant to the captain and sent to the Admiral, that he might be severely punished. And I have no doubt but the person so offending would be broke … You may be sure that I was much pleased to see it. For the longer I live I feel the more disgusted with those creatures who do not deserve the name of woman.10

  When younger, Wilkinson had presumably resorted to prostitutes, because he was treated in the hospital at Plymouth for ‘venereal’11 at the end of 1803.

  Prostitutes were at times allowed to stay on board ships
sailing between British ports, but a few years earlier, when Gambier took command of the Defence, Midshipman Dillon said he became instantly unpopular by insisting that the men only have wives on board when they sailed from the Nore anchorage to the Downs:

  In character and disposition he was, it seems, a strictly devout, religious man, bordering upon the Methodist principles. The first act was to ascertain whether all the women on board were married. All their certificates were demanded – those that had any produced them; those that had not contrived to manufacture a few. This measure created a very unpleasant feeling among the tars. It was the custom on board the ships of war to allow the seamen to take their wives as passengers when sailing from one port to another – but they did not go to sea. A few of the seamen were married, the others had nominal wives – an indulgence winked at generally in the Navy. Consequently, when our Captain began this inspection you may easily comprehend the impression it caused upon the crew.12

  The artist and diarist Joseph Farington noted a similar situation with his nephew William, who was commander of the Clio:

  On board the Clio [at Leith in May 1813] Captain Farington allows the wives of seamen to abide with their husbands both in harbour and when cruising, and there were 10 or 12 wives now in the ship. He does not permit admission to the ship to any loose women. To the unmarried men he gives leave for them to go on shore occasionally, a certain number at a time. Thus he takes care that the married women shall not be offended by the society of loose women and the good effect is felt in the order which prevails.13