Jack Tar

by Roy Adkins

  They had both suffered severely in the conflict, and there was hardly a whole plank on either of their sides to be seen, so many balls had passed through them. The Rivoli, of the two was the worst: she was under jury masts [temporary masts], her proper ones having tumbled overboard in a breeze after the action, in consequence of their shattered condition. The Victorious’s masts were also severely wounded, and obliged to be fished, (that is, secured by planks extended up and down the mast to connect the weak parts). The guns in both ships had many of their muzzles broken off, by the shot taking them in a raking position. The carnage had been extensive in both, but in the Rivoli, dreadful; the marks of which yet remained, for I saw on the ceiling of the gun room, and cabin decks, part of the blood, brains, &c. of the slain adhering, as it had been scattered in the battle.72

  After the tension, fear and exhaustion of a battle, various emotions took over, and the men reacted in different ways. In a letter to his brother, Captain Codrington reflected on his recent experiences at Trafalgar: ‘The battle after all, as I warned my officers, is nothing compared with the fatigue, the anxiety, the distress of mind which succeeds [it], more particularly in the case of such horrible weather as we had to encounter on this occasion.’73 On board the captured Macedonian in 1812, Leech regretted what happened when the fighting was over:

  Most of our officers and men were taken on board the victor ship [United States]. I was left, with a few others, to take care of the wounded. My master, the sailing-master, was also among the officers who continued in their ship. Most of the men who remained were unfit for any service, having broken into the spirit-room and made themselves drunk; some of them broke into the purser’s room, and helped themselves to clothing; while others, by previous agreement, took possession of their dead messmates’ property. For my own part, I was content to help myself to a little of the officers’ provisions, which did me more good than could be obtained from rum. What was worse than all, however, was the folly of the sailors in giving spirit to their wounded messmates, since it only served to aggravate their distress.74

  On other occasions the men could appear light-hearted after a battle, as Wilson witnessed in 1806 on board the Unité:

  By way of showing how careless sailors are about any thing when fighting, while we were at dinner, says one, ‘Why Tom, how many bells is it?’ (i.e. what time is it). ‘About 2’ (i.e. 5 o’clock). ‘Why, damn my eyes, we dine at quality hours today.* But never mind, double allowance of grog, my boy! I’ll be damned to hell if I would not willingly kick up such a smoke every day for a double allowance, would not you?’ To which the other readily assented.75

  Many men found the sheer scale of the devastation and carnage resulting from a battle quite shocking. The end of the fighting was a time for reuniting with friends and mourning those who had been killed, as Leech discovered:

  Some who had lost their messmates appeared to care nothing about it, while others were grieving with all the tenderness of women. Of these, was the survivor of two seamen, who had formerly been soldiers in the same regiment; he bemoaned the loss of his comrade with expressions of profoundest grief. There were, also, two boatswain’s mates, named [George] Adams and [William] Brown, who had been messmates for several years in the same ship. Brown was killed, or so wounded that he died soon after the battle. It was really a touching spectacle to see the rough, hardy features of the brave old sailor streaming with tears, as he picked out the dead body of his friend from among the wounded, and gently carried it to the ship’s side, saying to the inanimate form he bore, ‘Oh Bill, we have sailed together in a number of ships, we have been in many gales and some battles, but this is the worst day I have seen! We must now part!’ Here he dropped the body into the deep, and then, a fresh torrent of tears streaming over his weather-beaten face, he added, ‘I can do no more for you. Farewell! God be with you!’76

  Even experienced officers, like Lieutenant John Yule of Nelson’s flagship the Victory at Trafalgar, had trouble coming to terms with events. Nearly a month after the battle he wrote to his wife Eliza about his mixed emotions in the days that had followed:

  The horrors of an action during the time it lasts, and for a short time afterwards, makes everything around you appear in a different shape to what it did before, and though the heart may for a moment be rendered callous by the dreadful carnage around him and though they may call us sea brutes for not feeling so acutely as they would do on shore, believe me my dearest Girl we are not void of sympathy. The mind is made up to fall, before the conflict commences, and each man when he sees his neighbour fall thanks God that it was not himself – Self, dear Self, occupies most of our thoughts, and yet Eliza believe me I thought of only half of myself. I wished to live for the better, and best beloved, half. The dear Infants engrossed not a little of my thoughts, and if I should fall!! – I felt more for my poor widowed Eliza than I did for myself – Heaven spared my Eliza’s husband and my children’s father. I return [still only] a Lieutenant after all my golden dreams, but am content. My Eliza, I am sure, will be equally so.77

  He then set down his feelings about the wider effect of the battle:

  The action will be, by the nation, conceived a glorious one, but when the devastation is considered, how can we glory at it? How many widows, orphans and fatherless has it made? How many has it made sad, and how few … has it made glad? In the Victory we do not feel it a victory. The loss of our Chief has thrown a gloom around that nothing but the society of our friends and families can dispel. That quarter deck, which was formerly crowded with courtiers, an hour after the combat was totally neglected. The happy scenes we formerly witnessed are now laid aside. The theatre, the music, the dancing which occupied the dull part of our time is laid aside. We look to the seat of an old messmate and find he is gone – we ask for such a man – he was killed Sir in the Action; another, he was wounded, he lost a leg. We ask for no-one for fear of a similar reply – One hundred and fifty killed and wounded, and I am alive without a wound – ought I not to thank the Almighty?78

  Map of Eastern Europe and Greece

  NINE

  UNDER THE KNIFE

  After being maimed in battle to be obliged to suffer the slow and erroneous amputation of a doubting, unskilful surgeon by the light of a purser’s short dip [candle].

  One of Captain Rotheram’s ‘Growls of a Naval Life’1

  It was during and after battles that the surgeon was most occupied, mainly in cutting off wounded limbs. The recurring phrase in eyewitness descriptions of where the surgeon worked during battle was a vision of hell’ – in almost the deepest part of the ship, down below the water-line, with no natural light, no ventilation, constantly shaken by broadsides, and with the noise of the battle raging above. It was an area dark, deafening and drenched in blood.

  Several hundred surgeons were employed by the Royal Navy as warrant officers, many of them Scotsmen or Irishmen, and all approved by the Company of Surgeons in London. Most had not been to university, but had learned their craft as apprentices to other surgeons. The Scotsman Peter Cullen left a description of his examination at Surgeon’s Hall in 1789:

  The examiners were seated at a semi-circular table, where were two, three or more candidates standing before it, and answering such questions as were put to them. Mr. Cullen having walked up to the table, and made his bow, was asked his name, from whence he came, and for what purpose he meant to be examined? On answering that it was for the Naval Service, one of the examiners arose, and taking Mr. Cullen to the side of the room, inquired his age, his apprenticeship, studies, and practice in his profession. To all these Mr. Cullen having returned a satisfactory reply, the examiner proceeded to question him on anatomy, physiology, and surgery. Then stated some of the most important surgical cases, or diseases, and how he would treat them. This gentleman was quite satisfied with Mr. Cullen’s proficiency, and taking him to the centre of the table, where the President was sitting, said ‘I find this young gentleman fully qualified as an Assistant Surgeon fo
r His Majesty’s Navy’. The President bowed to Mr. Cullen, and desired him to pay one guinea.2

  Physicians were higher in status than surgeons and were graduates of Oxford or Cambridge universities and fellows of the College of Physicians. Graduates of universities perceived to be inferior, such as Edinburgh or Leiden, were only admitted as associates. Virtually no physicians were employed by the Royal Navy, except in the naval hospitals and one assigned for each major overseas squadron.

  Within the navy many shared the view of Aaron Thomas who considered surgeons lazy and drunken, ‘the business being entirely done by surgeon’s mates. The surgeons themselves rarely know more of the men’s diseases than what they take from the sick list or the verbal word of their mates, they, poor souls, being employed in the more important concern of catering for the wardroom or gun room mess.’3 Marine Lieutenant Wybourn was very ill at Naples on board HMS Madras, but considered his life was saved by the surgeon’s mate, as he told his sister Matilda: ‘The Surgeon [is] such a brute that had I not had more fortitude than many, [he] would have hastened my end … To the skill and attention of the Mate, a very attractive young man, I may attribute my recovery … I put myself entirely under this young man and you see, my love, I am able to write though very weak.’4

  On board the Defence in 1794, Midshipman William Dillon rated the surgeon a disaster:

  He was a most amiable man. It was he who was the cause of introducing flannel for the use of the seamen in the Navy, to protect them against the effects of rheumatism. But, with all his humane intentions, he unfortunately could not perform the operation of amputating a limb, the consequence of which threw double labour upon his assistant, Mr. Youhall [William Yowell], an Hibernian … Mr. [ James] Malcolm, the Surgeon, was so sensible of his failing, being also extremely nervous, that he left the Defence a few days after her arrival in port.5

  Before Malcolm’s departure, Yowell was the only surgeon’s mate, but fortunately he was exemplary, in Dillon’s view:

  He turned out to be a most zealous and able practitioner, or the result might have been very fatal to many. It was to him that the wounded looked up for relief [after the Battle of the Glorious First of June]. There were upwards of 60 severely wounded. The slight ones were, of course, not of such importance. His attention in dressing these patients occupied 22 hours out of the 24. Many a time did I go the rounds with him and have witnessed his skill, and kindhearted care of those brave men. I have known him come on to the Quarter Deck at 2 o’clock in the morning after terminating his labours to breathe some fresh air. He would then say, ‘I have only two hours to rest myself. After that, I must recommence my visits.’6

  On the other hand, the surgeon James Ker was certainly not overworked on board HMS Elizabeth, which left Portsmouth in November 1778 to reinforce the fleet in the West Indies:

  Until we get into warm weather my time for rising is seven or half after seven o’clock. Breakfast at eight. At nine I see my patients which takes up half an hour or an hour. From that to eleven [I] generally read or write in my cabin, then take a walk on deck, give the captain an account of the sick. After having stretched my limbs, seen what the admiral is doing and what the fleet, how we steer and how the wind blows, I come down to my cabin again and take up a book till the drum beating The Roast Beef of Old England warns me to dinner … After dispatching this necessary piece of business and the grog being finished, the remainder of my time till supper is spent variously in reading, writing, card-playing, backgammon, walking or conversation as humour leads. From supper time at 8 o’clock till bed-time is spent in chit-chat over our grog drinking.7

  In 1805 surgeons received a substantial pay rise, along with entitlement to half-pay and a pension, and surgeons’ mates were renamed assistants. The surgeon’s cabin was on the dark orlop deck, alongside the midshipmen, while the assistants had to mess with the midshipmen. Instruments were the responsibility of the surgeon, though medicines were supplied by the Admiralty following the 1805 reforms. The sick-bay varied from ship to ship, often being a row of hammocks on the lower deck or next to the galley (where the smoke was believed to be beneficial), so that invalids could be cared for by their messmates. By the end of the eighteenth century the sick-bay was situated on one side of the upper deck, under the forecastle, where the pigs were once kept, which gave better access to the heads. Conditions in the sick-bay of the Rainbow in the West Indies in 1773 were revealed by the surgeon Robert Robertson, who took for granted that insects were commonplace when referring to one seaman, who eventually died. Lewis Campbell, he said, ‘expectorated moderately; the pus was no longer fetid or offensive to his taste … He remarked that the flies and insects which, before he began to take the bark, always devoured the pus, would not now touch it.’8 The chaplain Edward Mangin was appalled by the sick-bay of the Gloucester in 1812 when they were anchored off Holland:

  The apartment referred to [the sick-bay] is forward on the half-deck, and close to the ship’s head, which is the general water-closet for the crew. Add to this, that, whenever it blows fresh, the sea, defiled by a thousand horrible intermixtures, comes, more or less, into the hospital; and on the above occasion [a severe gale], passed completely through it; augmenting most severely the misery of the patients who amounted to the usual number of eighteen or twenty men, labouring under the common afflictions to which seamen are liable … The scene presented by this crowd of sufferers, to be conceived, must be beheld … The place less than six feet high; narrow, noisome and wet; the writhings, sighs, and moans of acute pain; the pale countenance, which looks like resignation, but is despair; bandages soaked in blood and matter; the foetor of sores, and the vermin from which it is impossible to preserve the invalid entirely free! Yet – to get put on the Doctor’s list is considered an indulgence; as it exempts the sick man from that more dreaded state of toil and servitude to which, when fit for duty, he is necessarily exposed.9

  During battles the sick-bay was of no use to the surgeon, being cleared for action and exposed to enemy fire, and so the cockpit, where the midshipmen lived, was converted to an operating theatre, with surgery performed by candlelight. When fighting was fierce, the injured men brought to the cockpit were so numerous that they overflowed into other parts of the ship. During the Battle of Camperdown against the Dutch, the surgeon Robert Young of HMS Ardent had little assistance and was overwhelmed by the number of wounded. He graphically related the scenes in the cockpit that day, 11 October 1797:

  I had no mate, having been without one for three months before. I was employed in operating and dressing till near four in the morning, the action beginning about one [in the] afternoon. So great was my fatigue that I began several amputations, under a dread of sinking before I should have secured the blood vessels. Ninety wounded were brought down during the action, when the whole cockpit deck, cabins, wing berths, and part of the cable tier, together with my platform, and my preparations for dressing, were covered with them, so that for a time, they were laid on each other at the foot of the ladder where they were brought down, and I was obliged to go on deck to the Commanding Officer to state the situation and apply for men to go down the main hatchway, and move the foremost of the wounded further forward into the tiers and wings, and thus make room in the cockpit.10

  About sixteen men died before Young was able to treat them, and another man was so severely injured that little could be done for him:

  Joseph Bonheur [ Joseph Bonier, a landsman from London] had his right thigh taken off by a cannon shot close to the pelvis, so that it was impossible to apply a tourniquet; his right arm was also shot to pieces, the stump of the thigh … presented a dreadful and large surface of mangled flesh. In this state he lived near two hours, perfectly sensible and incessantly calling out in a strong voice to assist him. The bleeding from the femoral artery, although so high up, must have been very inconsiderable, and I observed it did not bleed as he lay. All the service I could render the unfortunate man was to put dressings over the parts and give him drink.11 />
  In the battle between the frigates HMS Macedonian and USS United States in 1812, there were so many casualties that the surgeon, Michael O’Brien, and his assistants could barely cope. After the battle, Samuel Leech went to help: ‘The surgeon and his mate were smeared with blood from head to foot: they looked more like butchers than doctors. Having so many patients, they had once shifted their quarters from the cockpit to the steerage; they now removed to the ward-room, and the long table, round which the officers had sat over many a merry feast, was soon covered with the bleeding forms of maimed and mutilated seamen.’12

  The process of amputation under battle conditions was by today’s standards horrific, and terrified many of the men who were waiting to see the surgeon. Amputation was usually the only solution for badly injured limbs, as otherwise infection, primarily gangrene, was liable to set in, and the sooner the operation was performed, the more successful its outcome. Few operations other than amputations of limbs could be performed until anaesthetics were used. The first operation under anaesthesia did not take place until 1846, in London, though occasionally opium was administered beforehand to dull the pain. Patients were held in place by the surgeon’s assistants while he operated.

  The first task was to apply a tourniquet above the wound to reduce the flow of blood. This also helped the surgeon to see the wound a little better in the dim candlelight. He next cut through the skin, tissues and muscle right down to the bone with a knife, after which the flesh was pulled back so that the bone could be cut higher up. Nelson’s right arm was amputated by the surgeon Thomas Eshelby after being struck by a musketball just above the elbow in the disastrous attack in 1797 against the Spanish town of Santa Cruz on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. He could not forget the shock of the cold instruments, as George Magrath, his surgeon on board the Victory in 1803–4, learned from him: ‘Of all the sufferings of the operation … he complained most of “the coldness of the knife,” in making the first circular cut through the integuments and muscles. So painfully and deeply was the recollection engrafted on his feelings, that I had general instructions, in consequence, whenever there was a prospect of coming to action, to have a hanging stove kept in the galley, for the purpose of heating water, in which to immerse the knife.’13