Jack Tar

by Roy Adkins

  The seamen had a concessionary cheap postage rate of one penny, prepaid, which was introduced in 1795. This was subsequently believed by some officers to have been partly responsible for the serious mutinies that occurred two years later, at a time of revolution in France, since the men were being encouraged to read and write. In Captain William Hotham’s view,

  in granting additional privileges and advantages to the seamen of the Fleet, the temper of the times does not appear to have been sufficiently considered, in which every spark of innovation, however trifling, was likely to burst into a flame. Amongst the most ill-judged of these impolitic indulgences which were gratuitous, was that of giving the commissioned officers the power of franking the seamen’s letters and thereby giving encouragement to an extent of epistolary communication never known before and palpably injurious to discipline and order. Fancied grievances were generated by these means, in addition to real ones, and opportunity given to ill-disposed men to institute comparisons and test the different modes officers had of preserving their authority. This circumstance of franking, insignificant as it may appear per se, was nevertheless one great assistant, if not cause, of the general spirit of insubordination that existed.42

  Not everyone could afford this cheap rate – of his seven surviving letters, George Price only paid the penny rate on three of them. His brother paid the postage on delivery for the rest, costing him between six and seven pence each.

  Letters from home, and the opportunity to send letters, were intermittent because they were totally dependent on the ship carrying the letters meeting up with the ship the letters were bound for, while avoiding the hazards of shipwreck, sinking in bad weather or capture by an enemy. Frequently, letters were taken to the nearest friendly port, where they waited to be picked up. On 27 August 1807, William Wilkinson began a letter to his wife from the Minotaur off Copenhagen: ‘My dear wife, This is the fourth letter to you and I cannot scold you for not writing because I know you have written, but I have not received any. I have just been looking over the last dear letter I received from you which you wrote when we were off the Texel and it is a great comfort to me to have anything belonging to you.’43 The further the ship was from Britain, the more problems there were with communications, and just two months earlier, at Palermo, Marine Captain Wybourn complained to his sisters:

  At length an opportunity offers to send letters to England, which we have been anxiously looking for this long time. I fear you will think it long since the date of my last, but I assure you no ship has sailed for England, and to send by land might cost 16 shillings, which would exceed by, at least, 15 times the value of my scrawl, thus have I accounted for my silence, but what excuse can all my dear friends at home advance? Two letters are all I have received in ten months.44

  With no news from home, Marine Lieutenant John Fernyhough was feeling lonely during the blockade of Cadiz in October 1805. In a letter to his parents he confided:

  I wrote to my brother Robert [also in the marines] during our short stay in the Channel (only two days), after our return from the West Indies. I have yet received no answer, which I can only attribute to his not having received my letter, as I think he had sailed from Spithead before it arrived in England. Sometimes I fancy myself deserted by all the world, every ship brings letters to all except myself. I wrote to my brother to procure me a flute, to beguile a few tedious hours.45

  This was the last letter he wrote, because he was drowned a few days later when trying to save a Spanish ship after Trafalgar.

  When letters did arrive it was a cause for rejoicing, which Leech observed: ‘The arrival of the mail-bag is a season of peculiar interest on board a man of war … The men crowd around, as the letters are distributed, and he was pronounced a happy fellow whose name was read off by the distributor; while those who had none, to hide their disappointment, would jocularly offer to buy those belonging to their more fortunate messmates.’46 On another occasion, when blockading Cadiz, Wybourn told his sister Emily: ‘To my joy the other day I saw the well known characters on the back of your letter as it was tumbled out of a large bag of letters from England; it was the more acceptable as the day before the general packet [Post Office ship] had arrived, and I perceived everyone happy round me by the receipt of letters, and had to deplore my hard fate not having received one line since I left England now many, many months since.’47

  George Price was likewise desperate to receive letters from his brother in Southwark, and wrote to him in March 1805:

  I take this opportunity of writing, hoping to find you in health as it leave me at present, bless God for it. I think it very hard that I cannot get no letter from you and you know I have nobody else to write to, therefore I should be very happy to hear how you do and your wife and my sister Ann. You must suppose that my case is very hard to be on board of a man of war exposed to the greatest dangers and not a soul in the world that I can get letters from to hear of my relations or anybody that I know.48

  In the total absence of other forms of communication, such as are now taken for granted, letters from home were precious items that were read and reread, and frequently treasured. Soon after writing to his brother, Price received a much-coveted letter, yet he was still anxious for more family news. ‘I am very glad my Aunt Stammers has not quite forgot me,’ he replied to his brother, ‘and please to remember me to her the next time you write. I am very sorry I cannot hear whether my sister Ann is alive and well or not, but let me know this time if you have heard anything about them … Please to remember me to your wife and child and my sister if you should hear of her and to all inquiring friends.’49

  Frederick Hoffman recalled a letter that was addressed to a young midshipman:

  He had, among others, received a letter from his mother, and to be more retired had gone abaft the mizzenmast to read it. The sea-breeze was blowing fresh, when just as he had opened it and read the first words, it blew from his hands overboard. Poor little fellow! The agonised look he gave as it fell into the water is far beyond description. He was inclined to spring after it. Had he known how to swim he would not have hesitated a moment. Unfortunately all the boats were on duty, or it might have been recovered.50

  Another leisure activity was the reading of books, common among officers, as well as a few educated seamen, but a warship was at best damp and often wet, as Aaron Thomas found: ‘Books are truly perishable things. What numbers have I had spoiled since I came afloat. This day I sent ashore to Mrs Wainwrights, the history of Corsica, printed in Italian in Naples. My Turkish and Italian grammar, Horace’s Odes, and several other books, all spoiled by salt water getting into the chest in which they were kept.’51 Some commanders, including Nelson, distributed among their crews Bibles and prayer books provided by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, and in a few ships other books might be provided, as Joseph Bates in the Rodney remembered:

  To improve our mental faculties, when we had a few leisure moments from ship duty and naval tactics, we were furnished with a library of two choice books for every ten men. We had seventy of these libraries in all. The first book was an abridgement of the life of Lord Nelson, calculated to inspire the mind with deeds of valor, and the most summary way of disposing of an unyielding enemy. This, one of the ten men could read, when he had leisure, during the last six days of each week. The second was a small church-of-England prayer book, for special use about one hour on the first day of the week.52

  Sunday was marked out as special in most warships, and Basil Hall observed that many men took the opportunity to rest:

  Even were it not an affair of duty, sheer weariness would generally enforce the fourth commandment on board a man-of-war, and the delicious day of rest be most fully enjoyed at sea. It must be owned, indeed, on the lower deck of a man-of-war on Sunday afternoon, between dinner-time and the hour of tea, or evening grog, a cast of idleness is the most characteristic feature. Groups of men may be seen sitting on the deck chatting over very old stories, a few are reading, a
nd many are stretched out flat on their backs fast asleep, or dosing with their heads on their arms on the mess-table.53

  Although the seamen were only occasionally given shore leave, they were generally permitted to visit other nearby ships on Sundays, as Archibald Sinclair described:

  As little or no leave was ever granted to the sailors, to have a run on shore, partly from the uncertainty of their ever returning on board again, and also when, by any chance, they did get on shore, either on duty or otherwise, they did not know very well how to behave themselves, and generally got themselves, and others, into serious trouble, the habit was established of allowing ‘ship visiting,’ on a Sunday, and on no other day … in foreign ports particularly, but occasionally at home.54

  Sinclair thought the scheme was terrible, since it was simply an excuse for the men to get uncontrollably drunk:

  After dinner on Sunday, at one o’clock, the word was passed through the ship that leave would be granted, upon application, to visit certain ships which were named … Lists were made out and signed; boats were manned, and a respectable lot of sailors and marines, all clean and sober, were mustered upon the quarter-deck, to see that they were so, and taken on board various ships. What took place below, from that hour till sunset, and how the sinews of war were supplied [with alcohol], was a mystery … At sunset the boats were sent from the various ships to bring back the absentees. The boatswain piped, and called, ‘Away there, Royal Sovereigns!’ ‘Away there, Princess Royals!’ ‘Away there, Constances!’ This would be done in a tolerably respectful manner while dealing with the men of the large ships, but it was different when he came to the men of the small fry of vessels. ‘Tumble up there, you Badgers, Teasers, and Scorpions,’ was the very mildest form in which they would be invited to take their departure.55

  The next stage was the most difficult as invariably the returning seamen were in a drunken state:

  Two or three ‘Royal Sovereigns,’ the same number of ‘Princess Royals,’ and a ‘Constance,’ would be got on deck, each between two very unsteady friends, but comparatively sober, and placed in their boats alongside. Next come, perhaps, the fighting, or bumptious lot … and they are, with some difficulty, stowed away in the boats. Then come the last lot, or the dead ones, as they were called; who were hopelessly, helplessly dead drunk, and had to be hoisted out of the ship, or down the side, like a sand-bag, and to be got on board their own ship in the same manner. Their messmates then took charge of them, and they were kept as much out of sight and hearing as possible. No notice of missing muster, or unusual noises, was taken. The commanding officer became hard of hearing, and took to hard winking, to cure it; and like the two magical words in the Arabian Nights, ‘open sesame,’ two other words passed everything, ‘liberty men.’56

  In the long absences from home, the officers especially took some consolation in their pets, and even became attached to the livestock. In his journal entry for 26 March 1781, Captain Pasley lamented: ‘Today my favourite pet sheep, who had been my companion to and from the Cape of Good Hope, to my no small regret died. His disorder poison, by constantly licking the washings or scrapings of the copper [from the galley stove], he having the liberty of the deck at all times.’57 Animals were readily acquired, occasionally to sell for a profit, but mostly as pets. The officers frequently had dogs, which were sometimes the spoils of war, such as one rescued by Captain Fremantle from the Santissima Trinidad after the Battle of Trafalgar: ‘My pug dog is called Nympha … and is a great favorite,’ he told his wife, ‘she sleeps in the bed with me and is solaced every morning from the warm blankets into a large tub of cold water, this keeps her clear of fleas, and she is at this instant worrying an unfortunate kitten that is her companion. I mean to buy a parrot at Gibraltar and perhaps a monkey to amuse myself.’58 In a letter written later that year he admitted that ‘If it was not for my poor little dog that I worry all day and who is so good that I allow him to sleep in my bed, I should be more miserable than I am.’59

  Dublin-born Hercules Robinson attributed his early promotion to his kindness towards Vice-Admiral Collingwood’s pets:

  When Collingwood promoted me from his own ship to be Lieutenant of the Glory, he sent a commendation with me, which, when my new Captain Otway read to me, made my cheek tingle, knowing how undeserved it was, and feeling that my having been discovered playing with and petting ‘Bounce,’ the Admiral’s dog, ‘Poor Bouncey, good dog, dear Bouncey,’ &c.; and feeding ‘Nanny,’ his goat, with biscuit, when she butted her head at me, had effected more than I cared to acknowledge in my promotion.60

  Dogs were habitually taken on board by the ships stationed at Newfoundland. In 1785 Midshipman James Gardner was in the Salisbury at St John’s, and he related what happened when the ship was about to sail for home:

  The Admiral having given permission for any person that pleased to take home a dog, 75 were actually embarked … I messed in the main hatchway berth on the lower deck, with four midshipmen and a scribe. We had eight of those dogs billetted on us. One of them had the name of Thunder. At dinner I once gave him a piece of beef with plenty of mustard rolled up in it. The moment he tasted it, he flew at me and I was obliged to run for it. He never forgot it, and whenever I offered him victuals he would snap at me directly. Another of those dogs used to sleep at the foot of Charley Bisset’s cot, and when the quartermaster would call the watch this dog would fly at him if he came near Bisset, who would often plead ignorance of being called, and by that means escape going on deck for the first hour of the watch.61

  James Scott reminisced about how such a dog on board the Barfleur was renowned for his life-saving:

  Whenever the weather would permit, the ship’s company were allowed to bathe alongside, in a sail suspended from the fore and main yard-arms. We had on board a valuable Newfoundland dog of great size: Boatswain was not only the pet and delight of the middies’ berth, but equally enjoyed the goodwill of the whole crew; the animal richly merited the affection and attentions showered upon him. His station, while the men were sporting in the water, was always on the gangway, couchant, with his fore paws over the gunnel, and his head so far advanced that he could obtain a clear view of all that was passing under him. Did the cry for assistance reach his ear, Boatswain would instantly distinguish it from amidst the hubbub of the multitude, prick up his ears, jump overboard, and swim to the person who appeared to require his assistance … This noble quadruped had saved several lives. Whilst lying in Hamoaze, a shore-boat pulling athwart the ship’s hawse in a strong ebb tide, took the cable amid ships, and was upset: he was overboard in a moment, and succeeded in saving a woman and a man.62

  Considering the livestock that was carried to provide fresh food during the voyage, some of which was allowed to roam freely through the ship, to which were added sailors’ pets of all descriptions, warships must at times have resembled floating menageries. The Culloden, returning to Plymouth from India in 1809, was probably in this category. The arrival of the ship was reported in the local newspaper: ‘Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, Bart. landed last week, from the Culloden, a beautiful full-grown hunting-tiger. It was so tame, that a seaman led it through the streets with a small rope, and the children stroked it over the back without the least danger of being hurt. The Admiral also landed a turtle of nearly five hundred weight.’63

  Towards the end of the war, in 1815, Abraham Crawford described how they brought back a young bear captured in the Pyrenees that had been presented to their admiral:

  These kind of rough pets … are not much to be desired on board ship; for, besides the difficulty, if not impossibility, of teaching them cleanly habits, they are at times extremely mischievous, and even dangerous … From being petted and kindly treated by the sailors, Bruin was in the habit of paying a visit to the different messes, when they were at their meals. One day he lingered on the lower deck after the men had finished their dinners, and kept prowling about, and going from mess to mess, to see and pick up a few scraps more. In his perambulatio
ns, he thrust himself in the way of one of the cooks, whose business it is to put things to rights after all the others have dined. This man, to get rid of the interruption, gave the animal a sharp kick, when Bruin turned round, and not seeing from whence the blow came, seized the first thing he laid his eyes upon. This happened to be the hand of some poor fellow that hung below the stool upon which he had stretched himself to take a nap after dinner, and before it could be released from the brute’s jaws, the man’s hand was much lacerated, and one of his fingers had to be amputated.64

  Officers like Crawford were also plagued by the bear: ‘It not unfrequently happened that, in attending to some duty on deck, the first intimation one had of Bruin being at hand, was finding your leg tightly clasped in the arms of the brute. This was by way of play; but it was a rough and unseasonable interruption, and sure to set Jack grinning, who chuckled to see the officer in limbo.’65

  Among those animals specifically bought as pets, monkeys were perennially popular because of their antics. In Basil Hall’s opinion,

  A dog is the most obvious and natural pet for a gentleman, but still, a dog, with all his familiarity, is a selfish sort of companion, for he generally bestows his whole sociability either upon his master, or his master’s servant who feeds him … No dog, therefore, can ever become a very general favourite of the crew, for it is so completely his nature to be exclusive in his regards that were a whole pack of hounds on board, they would not be enough, nor afford a tenth part of the amusement – I may almost call it occupation – which a single monkey serves out to a ship’s company.66