Stockwin's Maritime Miscellany

by Julian Stockwin

After each of the major naval battles of the 1790s a charitable subscription was started in the City of London to relieve the suffering of the wounded and bereaved. These were usually organised and managed by a committee of merchants at Lloyd’s Coffee House, later to become the famous insurance market. The first of these funds was raised in 1794 after Lord Howe’s victory over the French at the Glorious First of June. Howe donated his entire prize money from the battle.

  Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund, established in 1803, helped both wounded seamen and officers and dependants of seamen killed in action with cash sums. It was one of the first charitable trusts of this nature to be established in the world and continues to this day.

  ON THE WAY UP

  In the rigid social system of the eighteenth century, the Royal Navy offered virtually the only path for someone of low birth, but blessed with talent and luck, to become a gentleman.

  During the 22 years of the bitter wars with France probably 600,000 seamen served their king and country. Of those, some 200 or more made the incredible transition from lower deck to officer rank. The odds were huge – 1 in 2,500 – but it did happen. And of those who made the quarterdeck possibly 16 became captains of their own ship and six achieved flag rank.

  We know very little about this tiny handful of men. We do know that after Admiral Nelson and Captain Hardy the two most important people in HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar were both from the lower deck: John Quilliam, first lieutenant, and John Pascoe, signal lieutenant.

  Among the other heroic figures from before the mast was Provo Wallis, who joined the navy as an able seaman in 1795 and died in 1892 an admiral of the fleet. There was also James Clepham, a pressed man who was promoted to the quarterdeck in recognition of his role in a desperate cutting-out expedition in 1801. And Admiral Benbow, Captain Cook and Captain Bligh all rose above lowly origins…

  Admiral Benbow.

  * * *

  A LOOSE CANNON – someone likely to cause trouble. DERIVATION: cannon, which weighed up to three tons each, were mounted on wheels so that they could be quickly run in and out of gunports. They were secured with very strong ropes, but if they got loose in rough seas they would career all over the decks and in a heavy roll a cannon could get up enough momentum to smash through the side of the ship.

  * * *

  JOLLIES AND JOHNNIES

  ‘Jollies’ was the nickname for the trained bands of the city of London, a citizen army from whom the first marines were recruited in 1664 as sea-going soldiers, forming the Duke of Albany’s Regiment of Foot. The origin of ‘Jack/Johnny’ for mariners is harder to trace, but Jack has long been used as a generic term for a working man.

  * * *

  Different Races

  According to Captain Basil Hall, who served in the Napoleonic Wars, the difference between seamen and marines was absolute: ‘No two races of men differ from one another more completely than the “Jollies” and the “Johnnies”. The marines are enlisted for life, or for long periods as in the regular army. The sailors, on the contrary, when their ship is paid off are turned adrift and generally lose all they have learned of good order during the previous three or four years.’

  * * *

  Every warship with more than about ten guns had some kind of marine detachment. On board HMS Victory, for example, the marines included 146 officers and men. Marines, who could not be pressed, served as a professional military unit, both afloat and ashore. At sea they were employed to guard vital areas of the ship – the powder rooms, magazines, spirit room and the entrances to the officers’ and admiral’s quarters. They gave general assistance to seamen when unskilled heavy labour was required, such as hauling on ropes or turning the capstan, but were not obliged to go aloft. If there was any danger of mutiny, the marines had a paramount role in protecting the officers.

  During battle they provided extra manpower to operate guns, and were useful for small-arms fire and close-quarters defence. They also participated in cutting-out expeditions against the enemy.

  Seamen had no great inclination to mix with marines, a preference that was deliberately encouraged; they ate and slept separately. There was a certain amount of resentment among the officers of the two services, partly because the marines had a more impressive uniform, but also to do with the fact that mixed parties were generally put under the command of naval officers.

  In 1802, largely at the instigation of John Jervis, Earl St Vincent, George III decreed that the soldiers of the sea henceforth would be known as the Royal Marines. Three years later in 1805 some 30,000 marines had been voted by Parliament, and Jervis said of them, ‘If ever the hour of real danger should come to England, they will be found the country’s sheet anchor.’

  THE CALL OF NATURE

  In sailing ships toilet arrangements were provided in the form of ‘seats of easement’, boxes with a round hole cut in the top. For sailors they were placed at the bow of the ship, at the aftermost extremities of the beakhead, a sensible position as this was essentially downwind and normal wave action would wash out the facility. The term ‘heads’ or ‘head’ originates from this. In British ships, heads is always in the plural to indicate both sides, as seamen were expected to use the lee side, down weather, so that waste would fall direct into the sea. In ships of some other nations they were referred to in the singular.

  There were different arrangements for sailors and officers, depending on the size of the ship. Aboard HMS Victory, for example, over 650 men had to make do with two benches, each with two holes, placed on either side of the bowsprit. The deck here was open, in the form of a grating, to allow the free sluicing of waves across the area. Petty officers had a seat on either side of the bow. Two small enclosed spaces gave privacy for officers. The admiral, captain and senior officers had their own heads, aft, in the outer part of the great stern galleries.

  Toilet paper was not invented in Britain until the late nineteenth century, but officers used newspaper or discarded paper. The seamen made do with scrap fibrous material such as oakum.

  By the late eighteenth century there were even flushing toilets aboard some ships – those whose captains could afford them.

  * * *

  GONE BY THE BOARD – gone for good. DERIVATION: the side of a ship is known as a board, and if a mast, for example, was carried away it was said to have gone by the board.

  * * *

  IN THEIR OWN WORDS

  There aren’t many letters from eighteenth-century seamen in existence – mainly because most Jack Tars were illiterate, but also because letters of ordinary people were not often saved for posterity.

  The few that have survived offer poignant insights into those times. Here are excerpts from two. The first is from a pressed man in HMS Tiger, writing home to his wife after the capture of a Spanish port.

  My dear Life:

  When I left you, heaven knows it was with an aching heart to be hauled from you by a gang of ruffians but however I soon overcame that when I found that we were about to go in earnest to right my native country and found a parcel of impudent Spaniards… and God knows, my heart, I have longed for this for years to cut off some of their ears, and was in hopes I should have sent you one for a sample now. But our good admiral, God bless him, was too merciful. We have taken Porto Bello with such courage and bravery that I never saw before – and for my own part, my heart was raised to the clouds and I would have scaled the Moon had a Spaniard been there to come at him… My dear, I am well, getting money, wages secure, and all Revenge on my Enemies, fighting for my king and country.

  The next is from a young man who visited a friend in his ship who had joined the navy previously.

  I spent the evening with him very pleasantly, and the sailors of his mess, as is their manner in men-of-war, procured us plenty of wine and everything that could be got to make a stranger comfortable; when morning came and I should go ashore, I felt reluctant to part with my friend, and instead of doing so I volunteered to serve His Majesty…

  THE BENEFITS
OF CLARET

  Officers often recorded their wine consumption in terms of bottles, rather than glasses. One of the Royal Navy’s most colourful characters, Thomas Cochrane, recalled trying to avoid getting too drunk during his youthful years in the navy by pouring some of his wine down his sleeve. He was discovered and narrowly escaped the standard punishment of having to drink a whole bottle himself. French wine was popular, often from captures, and claret was said to ‘assist the memory, give fluency to speech and animate the mind with real gaiety to enliven conversation’.

  * * *

  Sign Up, Lads

  An eighteenth-century poster calling for volunteers to join one of His Majesty’s ships bound for the North American station read:

  Who would enter for a small craft whilst the Leander, the finest and fastest sailing frigate in the world, with a good spar deck overhead to keep you dry, warm and comfortable, and a lower deck like a barn where you may play at leap-frog after the hammocks are hung up, has room for one hundred active smart seamen and a dozen stout lads for royal yard men? This wacking double-banked frigate is fitting out… to be a flagship on the fine, healthy, full-bellied North American station, where you may get a bushel of potatoes for a shilling, a codfish for a biscuit, and a glass of boatswain’s grog for twopence. The officers’ cabins are building on the main deck on purpose to give every tar a double berth below. Lots of leave on shore! Dancing and fiddling on board! And 4 pounds of tobacco served every month! A few strapping fellows who would eat an enemy alive wanted for the Admiral’s barge. Every good man is almost certain of being made a warrant officer, or getting a snug berth in the dockyard… God save the King, the Leander and a full-bellied station!

  * * *

  * * *

  A CLEAN SLATE – a fresh start. DERIVATION: during a voyage all the current sailing orders were chalked up on a slate by a quartermaster, as instructed by the officer of the watch. Variations in the course to steer, the set of the sails and other important information were noted or amended. The slate was wiped clean at the beginning of a new watch or when the ship was safely at anchor in harbour.

  * * *

  JUST ONE NIGHT

  On 19 March 1801 Captain Richard Keats assumed command of HMS Superb. For the next four years and five months, until he put her into dockyard hands for repair on 22 August 1805, he would spend only one night out of his ship. While this probably is a record, service in the Royal Navy often meant long periods of time away at sea: Nelson was on blockade duty for two years and three months without setting foot off HMS Victory, and Collingwood once kept at sea for 22 continuous months, never dropping anchor. After Nelson’s death at Trafalgar Collingwood spent the next five years almost perpetually at sea. In 1809 he wrote to his wife, ‘I shall very soon enter my fiftieth year of service, and in that time I have almost forgot when I was on shore.’ Worn out from tireless devotion to duty he died at sea the next year, four days after finally being recalled home.

  Resolute devotion to duty.

  ANCHORS AWEIGH!

  The earliest anchors were just large stones attached by rope to the craft. They were held by friction and were inefficient. The breakthrough came when a wooden crossbar or stock set at right angles enabled the anchor to dig itself into the seabed, no matter which way it fell.

  However, it is not the anchor itself that holds ships in fixed positions against a current but the weight of the anchor cable, which acts like a spring. Ideally, its length is between three and a half and five times the depth of water.

  Eighteenth-century anchors were made from massive iron rods forged to form the shank and arms. These component parts were then welded together in a hammer forge. In those days, however, there was no means of checking welds, which meant that hidden defects could sometimes cause anchor arms to break off under severe strain.

  In the largest wooden warships, in addition to two main anchors, called bowers, there were two sheet anchors which served as spares, a stream anchor which was lightweight and ideal for low tide, and two kedge anchors which were used for operations such as warping the ship (hauling her to a fixed point using large ship’s ropes).

  The Admiralty pattern anchor is the type most readily recognised as a typical sailing vessel anchor, reaching its peak in the nineteenth century. Curiously, devices of rank at all levels in the navy, from a seaman’s rating badge to the flag of the Lord High Admiral and the Admiralty itself, feature the anchor fouled. This is an abomination to any seaman, an anchor entangled with its cable being more likely to drag. Equally curiously, the only one not being required to display it is the lowly able seaman.

  Weighing anchor in a ship of the line was an extraordinarily complex operation involving up to 300 men. In HMS Victory, for example, each main anchor stood the height of two or three men and weighed about 4 metric tons, and each anchor cable itself weighed over 6 metric tons, making a massive dead lift of over 10 metric tons. This load had to be lifted manually, as there was no mechanised means of providing power. The anchor cable itself was about 60 cm in circumference; in order to heave on the cable and weigh anchor a smaller endless rope, the ‘messenger’, was seized to it and this was the one taken around the capstan.

  * * *

  Hovelling

  The occupation of hovelling could earn a man a respectable living in the Downs, a favoured anchorage off Deal in Kent. When ships lost their anchor in a storm, hardy local mariners braved horrific sea conditions to carry out replacement anchors that they had previously salvaged from the seabed. The endangered ships had no choice other than to pay a good price.

  * * *

  * * *

  THREE SHEETS TO THE WIND – intoxicated and staggering about. DERIVATION: sheets are lines used to control sails and each sail has its own set of sheets. If these were carried away or allowed to run free the sails flapped uncontrollably. This was bad enough, but if the sheets on all three masts came loose, the situation was out of control.

  * * *

  BACK FROM THE BRINK

  Most sailors could not swim, preferring the thought of a quick end if they were swept overboard, rather than a slow, lingering death as they struggled on until exhaustion overtook them. But a ducking in Neptune’s Realm did not automatically mean a death sentence – around one-third of sailors who went overboard were rescued. Before the development of modern resuscitation techniques a near-drowned person was often placed face down over a barrel, which was then rolled vigorously back and forth to drain the water from his lungs. A favourite restorative of the ship’s surgeons was hot onion soup, which was believed to stimulate breathing. Other treatments included bleeding and forcing tobacco fumes into the victim.

  SO YOUNG …

  George III once asked a senior naval officer what was the proper starting age for a youngster intent on a sea career and was told: ‘Fourteen is as late as so hardy a profession can be embraced with the smallest chance of success.’ His son, the future William IV, was then sent off to sea shortly before his 14th birthday.

  Some were even as young as 10, but most entered service at 12 or 13. The Royal Navy divided them into classes of ‘boys’, first, second or third class, depending on their age.

  Horatio Nelson joined at the age of 12. As a boy he was known as Horace and in March 1771, then a frail-looking lad, he stepped down from the stagecoach near Chatham dock and made his way to HMS Raisonnable. He later recalled how nobody seemed to be expecting him and how he spent much of that day and night endlessly pacing the deck. It was a lonely and depressing introduction to the navy. His uncle Captain Suckling had agreed to take him on as a midshipman in his ship but had written in a letter to his father, ‘What has poor Horace done, who is so weak, that he above all the rest should be sent to rough it out at sea…? But let him come; and the first time we go into action a cannon ball may knock off his head, and provide for him at once.’

  One 11-year-old wrote home to his mother:

  ‘Indeed we live on beef which has been 10 or 11 years in corn and on biscuit whi
ch makes your throat cold in eating it owing to the maggots which are very cold when you eat them, like blancmange being very fat indeed… I do like this life very much, but I cannot help laughing heartily when I think of sculling about the old cider tub in the pond and Mary-Anne capsizing into the water just by the mulberry bush… I hope I shall not learn to swear, and by God’s assistance I shall not…’

  Norwich Duff was a 12-year-old midshipman on board HMS Mars. After the Battle of Trafalgar he wrote home to his mother about the death of the captain. ‘My Dear Mama, you cannot possibly imagine how unwilling I am to begin this melancholy letter… He died like a hero, having gallantly led his ship into action, and his memory will ever be dear to his king, his country and his friends.’ The hero he referred to was his own father, who had been decapitated by a cannonball. His headless body covered by an ensign lay where it fell on deck until the end of the battle. Norwich Duff was not put off naval service after this, and eventually rose to the rank of admiral.

  Boys as young as ten years old went to sea.

  * * *

  TO THE BITTER END – seeing something through relentlessly, to the last stroke of adverse fortune. DERIVATION: if a crew lets all the cable run out while anchoring, the rope will come to its bitter (inner) end, the turn of the cable around the mooring bitts at the ship’s bow. There is no more to let out.