by Roy Adkins
Establishing who were genuine wives could be difficult, though. The seaman John Martindale Powell described the forging of marriage certificates in a letter to his mother in London:
I have been ready always to write for the men but I have had an escape, for I have been requested by one of the women on board to write out a certificate of marriage between her and one of the men, she telling me she had forgot to bring the right one with her on board and that she might perhaps have occasion for it, she should be glad if I would make one out and she would direct me how to draw it up but this I absolutely refused to do, well knowing the consequence of forgery, so by this you may see how soon any unexperienced person may be taken in by a set of abominable wretches like them. When the men received their money they were ready to tear them to pieces to buy them new things. One man belonging to another ship had received one hundred pounds and getting drunk the next morning he lost it all, every farthing.14
Once the women were on board, the resulting revelry was chaotic and deafening, as Daniel Goodall described:
This addition to our company made a noise more than proportionate to their number, and, I am bound to add, they displayed such a reckless disregard of every claim of decency and morality as Jack, even at his worst, could ever hope or would ever attempt to equal. A ship-of-war at that period was often enough compared to a portion of the ‘lower kingdom’ set afloat, and truly the comparison was not undeserved when applied to the period that a ship was in harbour during pay. The brawling and uproar never ceased the whole day long, and sometimes continued during the greater part of the night also. As long as the ladies could contrive to obtain drink – and it astonished me to see how very successful they were in getting it – they solaced themselves with libations stinted only by the extent of the supply. Smoking was quite a prevalent fashion amongst the dear creatures, and, as for swearing, they seemed to take quite a peculiar delight in uttering the ‘oldest oaths the newest kind of ways,’ and those ways the most revolting it is possible for even the vilest to imagine. The coarsest seamen on board were far outdone by those damsels.15
Little could be done, Goodall acknowledged, to control these women:
The officers, of course, did all they could to keep the sisterhood within bounds, but, as there was no other means of coercion save the threat of sending them ashore, and as they were well aware that this threat was never carried out except in extreme cases, remonstrances produced little effect beyond the moment. Some there were, even amongst the degraded class I am treating of, who seemed sickened by the outrage to womanhood of which their viler sisters were guilty, but the poor creatures who thus paid homage to virtue amid their degradation were held in but small account by the majority of their companions. There were, too, some few – alas, how very few! – really virtuous females amongst them, wives of seamen on board, whose modesty and worth was unsullied amid all the vice and pollution by which they were surrounded.16
In 1821 Captain Edward Hawker, who was deeply concerned about the morals of the seamen, anonymously published a pamphlet deploring the continued tradition of allowing prostitutes on board. He was particularly concerned for the genuine wives and children:
The tendency of this practice is to render a ship of war, while in port, a continual scene of riot and disorder, of obscenity and blasphemy, of drunkenness, lewdness, and debauchery. During this time, the married seamen are frequently joined by their wives and families (sometimes comprising daughters from ten to fifteen years of age), who are forced to submit to the alternative of mixing with these abandoned women, whose language and behaviour are usually of the most polluting description, or of foregoing altogether the society of their husbands and parents.17
Others were concerned with more practical issues than the moral health of the seamen, and attempted to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. One officer commented anonymously: ‘The next step which, in many ships, is insisted upon, before the seaman is allowed to take his prostitute on the lower deck, is to get her examined by the assistant surgeon, to ascertain whether she is infected with the venereal disease; in which case she is sent out of the ship. It must however, be mentioned, to the honour of the assistant surgeons in the navy, that some have resisted this order of their captains.’18
Another practical concern was overcrowding, since the arrival of women could more than double the number of people on board, especially if one officer was correct in asserting that ‘it is frequently the case that men take two prostitutes on board at a time, so that it sometimes happens that there are more women than men on board’.19 The seaman John Wetherell described the scene in June 1803 when his ship HMS Hussar moored at Plymouth:
In the course of an hour the ship was surrounded with shore boats. First the married men had liberty to take their wives on board then the young men had their girls come off* and took them on board, a curious sight to see boats crowded with blooming young girls all for sale. Our crew were mostly young men and caused the boatmen to have a quick dispatch or as we usually term it a ready market; this business over, nothing particular occurred that day. Next morning it was found that there was two more women than men on board … a mighty jovial crew [of ] 616 souls.20
Such overcrowding could have lethal consequences and was undoubtedly a contributing factor to the Royal George disaster on 29 August 1782. That summer the twenty-six-year-old 100-gun warship was anchored at Spithead and was full of visitors – a mixture of prostitutes, wives, children, workmen and some traders. An officer from a nearby ship noted the situation: ‘There was unfortunately more than even her own complement of men as a first-rate on board – a large number of artisans and workmen from the yard to expedite her repairs – some 200 or 300 women and children come to see husbands and fathers – and 100 or 200 ladies from the Point [at Portsmouth], who, though seeking neither husbands nor fathers, yet visit our newly-arrived ships of war – and also a due proportion of the Jewish tribe with their various tempting baubles.’21 To carry out repairs below the water-line, the ship had been heeled over at an angle by the customary procedure of moving the cannons from one side to the other until their weight tilted the vessel. Because the decks were at a steep angle, the visitors had difficulty keeping their footing, to the amusement of the sailors – until water began to wash in at the lowest gunports on the underside of the ship, which were still open and through which a lighter was transferring barrels of rum. To keep the ship heeled over and the gunports open was an error of judgement by the officers in charge, and an order had just been given to bring the Royal George upright when the huge warship passed the point of no return. Saved from capsizing at once by the lighter, which was pushed under the waves by the weight of the mast, the Royal George lay on one side, filled up with water and sank.
One survivor, twenty-four-year-old James Ingram, an ordinary seaman, told how he struggled clear of the wreck:
I caught hold of the best bower-anchor, which was just above me, to prevent falling back again into the port-hole, and seized hold of a woman who was trying to get out at that same port-hole, – I dragged her out. The ship was full of Jews, women, and people selling all sorts of things. I threw the woman from me, and saw all the heads drop back again in at the port-hole, for the ship had got so much on her larboard side, that the starboard port-holes were as upright as if the men had tried to get out of the top of a chimney with nothing for their legs and feet to act upon … When I got on the main topsail halyard block I saw the admiral’s baker in the shrouds of the mizen-topmast, and directly after that the woman whom I had pulled out of the port-hole came rolling by.22
Ingram shouted for assistance:
I said to the baker, who was an Irishman named Robert Cleary [actually Robert McClary], ‘Bob, reach out your hand and catch hold of that woman; – that is the woman I pulled out at the port-hole. I dare say she is not dead.’ He said ‘I dare say she is dead enough; it is of no use to catch hold of her.’ I replied, ‘I dare say she is not dead.’ He caught hold of the woman and h
ung her head over one of the ratlins of the mizen shrouds, and there she hung by her chin … but a surf came and knocked her backwards, and away she went rolling over and over. The captain of a frigate which was lying at Spithead came up in a boat as fast as he could. I dashed out my left hand in a direction towards the woman as a sign to him. He saw it, and saw the woman. His men left off rowing, and they pulled the woman aboard their boat … The captain of the frigate then got all the men that were in the different parts of the rigging, including myself and the baker, into his boat and took us on board the Victory, where the doctors recovered the woman, but she was very ill for three or four days.23
The Royal George crew numbered 867, though some may have been on shore that day. Because no record was kept of any visitors, the exact number of people on board was not known, but probably around 1200. Two hundred and fifty-five people survived, among whom were only eleven women and one child. A court martial concluded that the hull of the ship was decayed and had given way, despite witnesses testifying that the cause was the deliberate tilting of an overloaded ship. Newspapers all over the country reported the scenes:
There was on board nearly the full complement of 850 seamen. The marines, of which the whole was on board, and many of the officers, went off for Portsmouth the preceding evening. There was also a body of carpenters from the dock, to assist in careening the ship; and, as usual on board all ships of war in the harbour, a very large number of women, probably near 400. Of these the bulk were the lowest order of prostitutes; but not a few of the wives of the warrant and petty officers. A most poignant scene of anguish and distress was exhibited by a respectable-looking old woman, whose daughter and five children had gone on board the same morning to see their father.24
A fund was set up at Lloyd’s Coffee House in London to help the widows and children of the sailors who lost their lives, marking the start of the Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund that has, over the centuries, provided assistance to the families of sailors and continues to help ex-servicemen and ex-servicewomen and their dependants. However, nothing was done for the prostitutes and other civilians who were victims of the disaster.
The prostitutes at Portsmouth, where they were frequently called ‘Portsmouth Polls’ or ‘Spithead Nymphs’, were depicted in a colourful passage by the surgeon George Pinckard:
Imagine a something of more than Amazonian stature, having a crimson countenance, emblazoned with all the effrontery of Cyprian confidence, and broad Bacchanalian folly: give to her bold countenance the warlike features of two wounded cheeks, a tumid nose, scarred and battered brows, and a pair of blackened eyes, with balls of red; then add to her sides a pair of brawny arms, fit to encounter a Colossus, and set her upon two ankles like the fixed supports of a gate. Afterwards, by way of apparel, put upon her a loose flying cap, a man’s black hat, a torn neckerchief, stone rings on her fingers, and a dirty white, or tawdry flowered gown, with short apron and a pink petticoat; and thus, will you have something very like the figure of a ‘Portsmouth Poll.’25
It may not have taken long for a prostitute to come to resemble the hard-bitten caricature figure that Pinckard presented. They were of all ages and most had become prostitutes through necessity, with no other means of supporting themselves apart from turning to crime. There were few ways that a single woman could earn a living, and it was customary for a woman to be supported by her family until she was married. If she became a social outcast, often by giving birth to a child whose father had abandoned her, she was left with barely any choice. The common view at the time, expressed by the seaman George Watson about the prostitutes at Portsmouth, was that they had all been seduced and abandoned:
Notoriously wicked young women flock here from all corners of our island, and some from Ireland, and live by prostitution. I mean women that are previously seduced, and cast upon the world, abandoned by the villains that caused their ruin: it would be absurd to suppose any truly modest girl, though brought to the greatest extremity of penury and want, would deliberately come hither to join herself to such an unblushing set of wretches as pervade the Point at Portsmouth, where a modest woman would be as hard to find as a Mermaid.26
The situation in British ports was mirrored in all the major foreign ports frequented by naval vessels of different nations. At Palermo in Sicily, Watson described the way prostitutes gathered as warships arrived:
When we anchored, in less than half an hour, we were entirely surrounded by boats containing those wretches, seeking admittance on board. Almost every boat had a fiddler, or some other inspirer of mirth in it, to whose melody the wanton ladies capered away in every posture of lascivious incitement speaking, as it were, unutterable things and were they as happy, and in reality as beautiful as they appear, you would think it the height of bliss to be in their society, and to be a partaker of that felicity they pretend so abundantly to possess.27
These prostitutes, Watson was amazed to find, were devout Roman Catholics:
They are all religious harlots these, in their way, they go on shore uniformly every morning to confess their sins, and get absolution of the Priest! What a delightful task he must have, to hear all their amorous relations, and to be able, after such a night’s work, to speak peace to the minds of so many guilty Magdalenes! It seems strange that women under such circumstances … can sin cheerfully all the hours of darkness, and without any compunction on their part, inherit the joy of the righteous in the morning, and at it again at night as fresh as ever, falsely believing that one stroke from the magic wand of a confessor, grey in iniquity himself, can entirely remove all their guilt, and leave them in quiet possession of all their iniquitous delights.28
Watson emphasised that he was speaking the truth, having accosted one woman and ‘asked her one morning, why she did not stay on board all day. She told me, she must go on shore to confess, and be made clean by the Father, but she would come off again in the evening.’29 He was also struck by the beggars who accompanied the prostitutes: ‘In several boats there were some of the most pitiful looking beings, halt, maimed, blind, exhibiting their imperfections, asking for charity, and exclaiming, “much-a miserable, John!” at the same time holding up arms without hands, legs without feet, or some other portion of deformity, to excite our commiseration. These scenes are quite common, and whenever you see a group of whores come off, you are to expect a party of “miserables” in the train.’30
In some parts of the world the prostitutes were slaves. This in itself did not seem to bother the seamen unduly, but cruelty towards slaves quickly roused them to anger, as John Nicol recalled:
While we lay at any of the West India islands, our decks used to be crowded by the female slaves, who brought us fruit and remained on board all Sunday until Monday morning – poor things! and all to obtain a bellyful of victuals. On Monday morning, the Jolly Jumper, as we called him, was on board with his whip; and, if all were not gone, did not spare it upon their backs. One cruel rascal was flogging one on our deck, who was not very well in her health; he had struck her once as if she had been a post – the poor creature gave a shriek. Some of our men, I knew not which, there were a good many near him, knocked him overboard; he sunk like a stone – the men gave a hurra! One of the female slaves leaped from the boat alongside into the water, and saved the tyrant, who, I have no doubt, often enough beat her cruelly.31
Those seamen given shore leave in the West Indies found the same easy access to female slaves, as Aaron Thomas observed:
What a dissolute life does man lead in the West Indies. The Blacks never marry. But have intercourse one with another promiscuously. All the white men, planters as well as merchants, have connection with their female negroes. As to the black girls themselves, any white or creole man may have commerce with them, so very little difficulty is there on this head, that it is as easy to lie with them, as it is to convey a glass of wine to your mouth … A white sailor may go amongst the huts upon an estate, where there is 70 female negroes and he will not find the smallest opposition to his w
ill, but will be courted to stop amongst them. All the seamen at the Naval Hospital generally have a black girl.32
Thomas was outraged by the rules of property that governed slaves, and while at Antigua, he recorded the plight of the ship’s surgeon:
Doctor Ridgeway asked me this morning to lend him 12 Joes, until the ship went down to St. Kitts. His reason for being in want of money was rather curious. He says that he was here in the Lapwing fifteen months ago, and that a woman now daily brings him a child and says that he is the father of it. That [claim] he himself believes; that he had the greatest hand in making the pudding … therefore being convinced of this great and uncertain truth, he wishes to buy the infant’s freedom … I did not lend him the money, but he got it this evening from Captain Harvey. Wretched slavery. What a disgrace it is to all Christian countries to traffic in human flesh. Here is an instance of its infamy. A surgeon of an English Man of War has a child by a black woman, but has no more property in the infant than he has claim to the Throne of England, because the woman he had the child by is not free, unless he buys the child, of the owner of the girl, and then the buying of his own son or daughter will cost him 20 or 30 pounds.33