The Fall of Toulon

by Bernard Ireland

  Once passed as lieutenant, an officer joined a pool of over two thousand such. Each could be commissioned only to a ship specified by the Admiralty and, for those with few connections or little talent, the wait could be very long in times of peace. A useful middle route could be to accept a post as a sub-lieutenant (a temporary rank only) to serve as a qualified subordinate to a lieutenant-in-command who captained one of the navy’s very many small ships, engaged principally against enemy privateers.

  When his ship paid off, an officer’s commission ended and he went ashore on half-pay, calculated at the rate that he had lately been receiving afloat. Half-pay depended upon holding himself in readiness for a further engagement, so it was difficult to accept paid employment in the meantime. Except in special cases, there were no formal provisions for a retirement pension, an officer simply going on an indefinite spell of half-pay.

  Intermediate in rank between commissioned officers (or, more correctly at this time, commission officers) and petty officers were the warrant officers who were, as already noted, appointed by the Navy Board rather than by the Admiralty. Some ranks, such as those of the master and the surgeon, carried wardroom status. Others, such as the gunner, carpenter and the boatswain, remained with the ship between commissions and were termed ‘standing officers’. Theirs was the key role of maintaining the overall standard of a warship while she was being refitted. The major cultural difference between warrant officers and the lower deck lay in the requirement that they be both literate and numerate. Warrant officers were rarely able to progress to commission status.

  We have already noted the difficulties experienced by the yards charged with bringing forward a surge of reserve warships as war was once more declared. Even had bottlenecks not occurred, however, it would have benefited the Admiralty little, for there remained the need to recruit and train the crews to man them.

  The British Parliament, effectively paymaster for the First Coalition, voted huge sums for the rapid increase in the size of the service. The number of men required was large, larger still when viewed against a British population which at this time totalled less than 9 million. In 1792 there served an official total of 15,000 seamen and marines. During the following two years, funds were approved to expand to 45,000 and 85,000 respectively. By 1797 the total had peaked at about 120,000.

  By today’s standard, complements were enormous. The average third rate, 74-gun ship, the backbone of the fighting fleet, had over 600 on her muster roll. A first rate 100-gun three-decker needed about 840. Due to shortages in personnel, however, most ships sailed with reduced complements.

  At a time when life at sea was hard and dangerous, it was impossible to attract sufficient volunteers. The Royal Navy suffered further in this respect because hostilities immediately began to inflate the wages paid to merchant seamen. This service was also more attractive in that a crew member could sign off at the termination of a voyage to enjoy a spell ashore, a right not available to his naval counterpart.

  About half the requirement was thus generated by impressment. Following the political revolutions of the previous century, the old principles governing enforced service for the British crown had received a setback in the new perceptions of personal liberty and reduced power of the state. Sheer necessity, however, had seen the rights of impressment reasserted.

  There was nothing makeshift about the impress service, which was well organized. The nation was divided into thirty zones, in each of which a full captain controlled the activities of gangs, some eighty in all, whose approach to their work varied in harshness according to the degree of urgency or the manner of the lieutenant in charge. A commissioned officer, bearing an Admiralty impressment warrant, had to be present by law. His gang typically comprised two petty officers and four or five other ranks, most of whom were landsmen. Violence was commonplace, with the gang itself often having to protect itself from a mob in particularly hostile quarters.

  Certain tradesmen and callings were supposedly immune from impressment, and certificates needed to be carried to this effect. Such papers were, however, commonly forged or obtained by agents for an appropriate consideration. They were, in any case, of little use during periods of the ‘hot press’, when national urgency was such as to render virtually anybody liable.

  The merchant service suffered particularly from impressment, with inbound vessels being brought-to in the Downs and stripped of their best men, often to the extent that a master would have to hire local crews (protected for the purpose) to assist in getting his vessel to port in London. Foreigners serving aboard British-flagged ships were supposedly immune to impressment but, at this time, it was still difficult for an American to prove his citizenship. Many were thus taken, causing a growing national resentment that was to be a contributory factor to the outbreak of war less than twenty years later, at a time when the colossal struggle against France was still unresolved.

  Perhaps a quarter of a ship’s company were volunteers. Many of them liked the life, qualifying as ‘able seamen’ and, quite often, remaining with a respected commanding officer as he progressed from commission to commission. As a commanding officer was responsible for manning his ship, his reputation was very important, particularly if he was associated with prize money.

  At his own expense, he would organize recruiting drives at suitable locations, usually an inn. Posters were written and produced locally appealing to patriotism, love of a fight and income. By today’s standards and sensitivities they read crudely, but men of the time did not mince their words to satisfy the demands of minority pressure groups.

  ‘Let us, who are Englishmen’, one read, ‘protect and defend our good King and Country against … the Designs of our Natural Enemies, who intend … to invade Old England, our happy country, to murder our gracious King as they have done their own … and teach us nothing but the damn’d Art of murdering one another.’ This was addressed to ‘All who have good Hearts, who love their King, their Country, and Religion, who hate the French and damn the Pope’.

  For obvious reasons, there was no preliminary training, so many, both volunteers and pressed men, went afloat with no previous experience. Possessing no seamanship skills, they were known as ‘landmen’ (or ‘landsmen’). Although regarded as the lowest category, most were intelligent and quickly became useful. Many were skilled tradesmen who had been displaced by the new mechanization of the industrial revolution. Dextrous, they proved to be hard-working and reliable.

  Others, charged with, or convicted for, minor misdemeanours also found their way into the service as an alternative to gaol. Neither hardened criminals nor guilty of violent crime, these were debtors, drunkards and small-time ne’er-do-wells. To these would soon be added the so-called ‘Quota Men’, following the government order that each county recruit a number of men proportional to its population. Most of these resulted from the offering of substantial bounties. Known as ‘Billy Pitt’s men’, many brought disharmony and radical notions in place of useful skills and were widely blamed for the imminent rash of mutinies that would scar the navy’s reputation.

  A surprising number of foreign seamen served voluntarily in the Royal Navy. The main reason was that, as the war progressed, blockade and general disruption to trade caused many neutral ships to be laid up, and their seamen were content to obtain alternative steady employment in a diminishing market.

  It says much for the national character that such an eclectic band of men could be forged into crews whose fighting qualities were respected the world over. Punishment and discipline were, by today’s standards, brutally harsh but need to be viewed through contemporary eyes, for life ashore was itself hard. What is evident is that the will to win cannot be instilled merely through the application of an iron disciplinary regime; much must depend upon organization and example. This came through applying the age-old principle of divide and rule as, for instance, expressed by Kempenfelt to Middleton (later Lord Barham).

  … If six, seven or eight hundred men are left in a mass
together … and the officers assigned no particular charge over any part of them, who only give orders from the quarterdeck or gangways – such crew must remain a disorderly mob, business will be done … without order or despatch, and the raw men put into no train of improvement … Left to themselves [they] become sottish and lazy, form cabals, and spirit each other up to insolence and mutiny.

  ‘The only way’, Kempenfelt went on,

  to keep large bodies of men in order is by dividing and subdividing of them … into as many companies as there are lieutenants … These companies to be subdivided and put under the charge of mates or midshipmen; and besides this, every twenty-five men to have a foreman to assist in the care of the men, as a sergeant or corporal in the army. Each lieutenant’s company should be formed of the men who are under his command at quarters for action. These companies should be reviewed every day … the officers … thus becom[ing] acquainted with the character and behaviour of each individual … find[ing] out the turbulent and seditious, and keep[ing] a strict hand over such.

  Not all beneficial activity was, in Kempenfelt’s opinion, necessarily directly related to duty: ‘… the men should always have the full time for their meals and for repose, and certain portions of time in the week allotted for washing and mending; but at all other times they should be kept constantly employed …’ A measure of puritanism is also evident: ‘… idleness is the root of evil … Motion preserves purity; everything that stagnates corrupts.’

  Aggression and the will to attack at any opportunity were deeply impressed into every British naval officer: reticence was simply the shortest route to half-pay. This was not necessarily the way with the French, their rather more individual attitude arousing frustration in the renegade John Paul Jones, who wrote to the comte de Kersaint:

  I have noticed … that the underlying principle of operation and rule of action in the French Navy have always been calculated to subordinate immediate or instant opportunities to ulterior, if not distant, objects … that it has been the policy of French admirals … to neutralize the power of their adversaries, if possible, by grand manoeuvres rather than to destroy it by grand attacks.

  Jones compared this with his own ‘small scale’ successes, going on to impress upon Kersaint that: ‘The rules of conduct … that serve to gain small victories may always be expanded into the winning of great ones … and it seems to be a law inflexible and inexorable that he who will not risk cannot win.’

  Certainly, the Royal Navy’s record was enhanced considerably by the straits to which the French had reduced their own navy. None the less, despite the propaganda, the enemy often fought well and fought hard.

  A significant incentive to the British was the prize money system, despite its being iniquitously unfair. Because a commander-in-chief on station was entitled to a one-eighth share of all monies thus awarded to ships under his command, it followed that he invariably had his most able frigate captains patrolling the most productive areas. For the Admiralty, this guaranteed that the maximum hurt was being inflicted on the enemy; for the crews, there was always the promise of a major windfall.

  Should an enemy warship be captured, it was the hope of all concerned that she was of sufficient value to be purchased by the Admiralty for further service. Her value had thus to be assessed down to the very last item of equipment. From the total had to be deducted the cost of repair which, following a hard-fought action, could be substantial.

  Also payable was so-called ‘head and gun’ money, calculated on the number of guns currently arming the prize and the number of her crew alive at the outset of the encounter. ‘Head and gun’ money was shared equally among the victorious crew, but prize money was divided according to a fixed scale. In 1793 this involved the sum first being divided into eighths. As already noted, it behove a C-in-C to recommend to the Admiralty that a prize was worth purchasing, a recommendation with which their lords still, of course, had to agree.

  The commanding officer of the ship making the capture was entitled to two-eighths, i.e. a quarter. Should he have been operating independently of any command, no C-in-C would have been involved and he would take three-eighths. This was a major incentive for an enterprising captain and formed the basis of many a family fortune. Of the remaining five-eighths, one was shared between the ship’s lieutenants, the marine captain, the master and surgeon. Another was awarded to the rest of the senior warrant officers, and one to the remaining warrant officers, their mates and the marine sergeants. This left just a quarter to be shared among the remainder of the ship’s company.

  A smaller frigate, with contents, might be valued at £25,000. The victorious commanding officer might thus expect between £6,000 and £10,000, then a sum greater than he would likely earn in wages over his whole career. Even the share for the lower deck would be equal to more than a year’s income, although this was more an indictment of their poor wage rates than generosity on the part of the system. Where any additional ‘head and gun’ award was no more than pocket money to senior ranks, it might account for 15 per cent extra to a seaman’s pay.

  A further cause for discontent was the Admiralty’s insistence on using ‘prize agents’ to distribute the bulk of the award. These gentlemen were masters of graft and were universally detested. Their official commission was 5 per cent of the total, to which amount they could add considerably through purchasing the share of beneficiaries who were being pressed for payment of debts. There were also various legal wrangles by which payment could be delayed, so that the agent could benefit from interest paid on the considerable sums entrusted to him.

  Such delays were particularly the case when the prize had been a merchantman. She and her cargo had first to be condemned by a prize court. Then, in a mixed, or ‘break-bulk’, cargo it was ever difficult to distinguish between the various grades of contraband material and what was inviolable on account of being neutrally owned (although if the end-user could be shown to be the enemy, it could still be impounded).

  It could thus be a considerable time before the rightful recipients saw any of their awards. In the case of Admiral Hood at Toulon, we will see that the special circumstances involved meant that over a decade would elapse before any distribution was made. Only a few fortunate commanding officers and crews ever benefited from prize money to a life-changing extent. As with a national lottery, many had small gains while most looked to the possibility of ‘the big one’. Meanwhile, the hard daily routine went on.

  Seamen had real grievances about their pay which, at this time, had not improved since the days of Cromwell. Not only was the private soldier, regarded as a being of lesser skills, now paid a shilling a day but the ordinary seaman’s 23 shillings and sixpence (about £1.18) monthly pay was not paid until six months in arrears.

  Some commanding officers cared more for running a ‘taut ship’ than for the welfare of their men. Particular officers could be greatly disliked for a variety of reasons. Whether the ship ran well or not, the conditions and food were very much products of their times and were very rough. Differentiation between seamen and landmen caused endless friction. Legitimate grievances could be presented by the lower deck in accordance with the Articles of War, but all too often those who presented them were dismissed without redress and, thereafter, treated as troublemakers.

  Such contempt shown by officers for their men began a trend towards protest by disobedience, first by individuals, then by small groups. From 1793 the practice spread, culminating in the great mutinies of 1797–8. Throughout this period of unrest, however, the Royal Navy fought as well as ever. On the vast majority of the hundreds of British warships, men grumbled but did their duty. Concentration upon mutinous behaviour in the few has stained the reputation of the many.

  THE SHIPS

  For the designer, warships were, as now, an acceptable compromise between conflicting requirements. One quality could be enhanced only at the expense of another. This was the age of the broadside-armed ship, carrying guns on either side of the maximum length
of one, two or three decks. Guns and their ammunition were extremely heavy and, towards the extremities of a vessel, imposed severe loading stresses. This was because the ends were finer-lined and, having smaller submerged volume than the centre sections, exerted less upthrust (or buoyancy) to support the weight. The result was that ships tended to ‘hog’, or sag, toward their ends.

  In a wooden-built ship, hogging was destructive in opening seams and loosening joints. The one admitted water to accelerate rot and decay, the other caused a ship to ‘work’ in a seaway, becoming so flexible that it was not uncommon for them to be totally dismantled, either for reassembly or to incorporate their useful timbers into the structures of others.

  Viewed as a uniformly loaded beam, a ship’s hull could be expected to deflect in proportion to its length. The degree of deflection was, importantly, dependent upon its depth. This meant that all hulls were length-critical but that, say, a three-decker could be built rather longer than a single-decker.

  Although in 1793 the great design innovations of Snodgrass and Seppings were, for the Royal Navy, still a decade away, such improvements were already being experimented with by the French and Spanish, who were much more ready to harness science to the improvement of ship design. Reports abounded of the superior sailing qualities of enemy warships. Those that were captured were often found to be flimsily built but were highly valued for their handling and extensively copied. It was not a question of speed, because the very full lines of contemporary sailing ships were inherently inefficient to the point where small differences had negligible effect. The superiority of foreign-built ships lay in their reputation for being able to lay closer to the wind and to go about without missing stays. Being totally dependent upon the wind, a sailing ship was inevitably judged by how well she could harness that element for her purpose.