Stockwin's Maritime Miscellany

by Julian Stockwin

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  FROM LITTLE ACORNS MIGHTY OAKS GROW

  The supply of timber came to be one of the main constraints of naval power during the Napoleonic Wars. To build a ship of the line like HMS Victory the timber from about 6,000 trees was required. Oak, prized for its strength and durability under exposure, was by far the most valuable timber, often accounting for 90 per cent of the timber in a ship’s hull. The Wealden forests of Kent and Sussex were an important source. Later, oak was imported from Danzig, modern Gdansk.

  In 1793 the cost of a 74-gun ship of the line was just under £50,000. Construction took several years. Curved or ‘compass’ oak, which could take up to 100 years to grow to size, was highly valued and was used for stern-posts, frames, knees, etc. This often came from isolated trees, deliberately constrained during their growth. Straight oak was used for beams, planking and strengtheners.

  Concerned at the dwindling supply of timber, Admiral Collingwood decided to do something about it himself. He loved to walk the hills of his Northumberland estate with his dog and would always start off with a handful of acorns in his pocket; whenever he found a good place for an oak tree to grow he would press a few into the soil.

  Building England’s wooden walls required vast quantities of timber.

  JANE TAR

  Many sailors believed that to have a woman on board would bring bad luck to the ship in the form of a terrible storm that would destroy the vessel and all in her. Female mariners were not common in the age of sail, but life at sea was not completely a male preserve.

  Pirate lore tells of women sea captains such as the fearless Irish pirate Grace O’Malley and French noblewoman Jane de Belleville, who sought to avenge her husband’s death by ravaging the coast of Normandy. Some women went to sea disguised as men. Hannah Snell enlisted in the marines and for over five years managed to conceal her true sex. During that time she took part in the attack on Pondicherry in India and was wounded in battle. Back in England she finally revealed her secret and became somewhat of a celebrity.

  One person’s true sexual identity could not help but be discovered at the Battle of Trafalgar when British sailors pulled a naked woman out of the water. This was ‘Jeanette’, who had disguised herself as a seaman when the French fleet sailed from Cadiz because she could not bear to be parted from her sailor husband. Although she initially feared he had been killed, the couple were later reunited.

  There were of course women who came on board when the ship was at anchor, a mixture of prostitutes and those who claimed a more established relationship. Some wives of standing officers went to sea; they assisted with the care of the sick and wounded and even acted as powder monkeys during battle.

  John Nichols, a seaman aboard HMS Goliath, wrote of the women on board ships during the Battle of the Nile, recording that some were wounded, and one died. During the Glorious First of June in 1794 Mrs Daniel McKenzie of HMS Tremendous went into labour and delivered her son in the bread room. The infant was named Daniel Tremendous McKenzie. He was awarded the naval General Service Medal, his rating being recorded as ‘baby’.

  Ann Hopping was born in Devon in 1769 and served as seamstress to Captain Saumarez in Orion. Her husband Edward was on board and both of them were present at the Battle of St Vincent and the Battle of the Nile. In 1847 the British government awarded a special medal to all living survivors of the major battles fought between 1793 and 1840. Ann and several other women applied and were originally approved, but later refused on the basis that ‘there were many women in the fleet equally useful and it would leave the army exposed to innumerable applications of the same nature’. Ann Hopping remained at sea until her husband died. She remarried and lived to the age of 96 and was buried in Exmouth – in the same church graveyard as Nelson’s wife Fanny.

  IRISH HORSE AND DOG’S BODY

  The daily diet of a seaman serving in one of Henry VIII’s ships was virtually unchanged for his descendants serving in Nelson’s navy 300 years later. It consisted largely of ship’s biscuits and salted meat, with some cheese, peas, oatmeal, sugar and butter. Although adequate in terms of calories (up to 5,000 per day) for hard work at sea, the food was often of poor quality and the diet lacking in vitamins and minerals.

  From Drake’s day onwards the crew ate in groups of six to eight called messes. Each man would take his turn as mess cook and collect the day’s rations from the purser’s steward in readiness for the noon meal. The prepared food, which varied with the skill and interest of the man on duty, was taken to the galley to be cooked (each mess marked their food with a tag). The mess cook was responsible for washing up the utensils and generally cleaning the eating area after the meal. He was entitled to an extra tot of rum for his trouble.

  The mess cook carved and served the meal. To ensure fairness, one of the other men was blindfolded, a portion of the meat was carved, the blindfolded man called out a name and the portion went to that man and so on, until it was served. However, this system was not always followed, and younger mess members were sometimes bullied and deprived of the best victuals by older men.

  The ship’s cook was no trained culinary master. Usually a disabled seaman, often having suffered an amputation, his main role was to ensure the galley was run efficiently and that the boiling coppers were cleaned daily.

  Sailors had their own names for certain items of their diet:

  Cornish duck

  pilchards

  Dog’s body

  pigs’ trotters with pease

  Crowdy

  watery porridge

  German duck

  boiled sheep’s head

  Lobscouse

  stew made with pounded biscuits

  Irish horse

  salt beef

  Canned meat and vegetables was first tried out in the Channel Fleet in 1813. It became known as bully beef because it was adapted from the French recipe for boeuf bouilli (boiled beef). In 1866 the Victualling Office itself began to manufacture it. Unfortunately, the very next year a famous prostitute named Fanny Adams was murdered and her body cut up into small pieces. The word went around among seamen that what the authorities were providing was Sweet Fanny Adams.

  Ship’s cook by Rowlandson.

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  LIFELINE – a source of salvation in a crisis. DERIVATION: in foul weather, ropes were rigged fore and aft along the deck of a ship to provide a secure handhold for a sailor to grip to prevent him from being washed overboard. If conditions turned extremely nasty a sailor would grab the line and wrap it around his arm for extra security – then hang on for dear life!

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  RUMBUSTION

  Since the early days of sailing ships the most readily available liquids to take on voyages were water and beer, both of which could only be stored for a short time before they became unpalatable.

  Vice-Admiral William Penn’s fleet conquered Jamaica in 1655, and it was here that rum, or rumbustion, was first issued on board ships of the Royal Navy. Rum was also called rumbullion, kill devil, Barbados waters and redeye.

  Rum has the advantage of keeping well, even improving with age. When abroad captains of ships were allowed to replace beer with fortified wine, sometimes brandy, but neither was available in the West Indies. Rum was, however, and it became a popular drink ration in this part of the world, even though the Victualling Board back in England had not officially sanctioned its use.

  From 1655 well into the eighteenth century the issue of rum very much depended on individual captains. In 1731 it was officially decreed that if beer was not available then each man was entitled, daily, to a pint of wine or half a pint of rum or other spirits.

  In 1740 Admiral Vernon (nicknamed Old Grogram because of the boat cloak he wore made of that material) ordered that the rum issue be diluted 1:4, and thereafter the drink was called grog. He talked of ‘the swinish vice of drunkenness’.

  By 1793 the dilution was usually 1:3. From Vernon’s day until the end of the Napoleonic Wars two issues of grog per
day remained the custom whenever beer was unavailable. But the use of rum gradually became more widespread, as did the issuing ritual. The ship’s fiddler played ‘Nancy Dawson’, the signal for the mess cooks to repair to the rum tub to draw rations for their messmates. This was always done in the open air because of the combustible nature of rum.

  Rum was a currency aboard ship, with special terms for various amounts of the spirit. Gulpers meant one swallow, but as much as you could drain in one go; sippers, a more genteel amount as suggested by the name; and sandy bottoms, the entire tot.

  The American Navy ended the rum ration on 1 September 1862, but the practice continued in the Royal Navy for over a century. Friday 31 July 1970 saw the last issue and became known as Black Tot Day.

  The First Sea Lord issued this message to the Royal Navy:

  Most farewell messages try

  To jerk a tear from the eye

  But I say to you lot

  Very sad about tot

  But thank you, good luck and good-bye.

  ‘Old Grogram’ gave his name to the sailors’ favourite tipple.

  SET UP FOR LIFE

  Prize money was a lottery; while the odds of great wealth were very slim, fortunes could be made. The origins of prize money lay in the Cruisers and Convoys Act of 1708, which gave practically all the money gained from the seizure of enemy vessels to the captors ‘for the better and more effectual encouragement of the Sea Service’. In some ways prize money was unfair – all ships within sight when the capture took place were entitled to equal shares. And the admiral under whose orders the ship sailed was entitled to a share even if he was nowhere in the vicinity.

  The following distribution scheme was used for much of the Napoleonic Wars, the heyday of prize warfare:

  One-eighth went to each of these groups – flag officer; the captains of marines, lieutenants, masters, surgeons; lieutenants of marines, secretary to the flag officer, principal warrant officers, chaplains; midshipmen, inferior warrant officers, principal warrant officers’ mates, marine sergeants. Two-eighths went to each of these groups – captains; the rest. The latter included all the seamen, many hundreds of men.

  The taking of prizes could be very lucrative. The record haul came from the capture of the treasure-carrying Spanish vessel Hermione in 1762 by two British frigates. When the pay of a seaman was less than a shilling a day, the prize money in this instance to each seaman of £485 (nearly 35 years’ salary for a few hours’ work in the afternoon) promised to set them up for life – if they didn’t spend the proceeds on too many rollicking celebrations ashore. Their share pales into insignificance, however, beside what the two captains responsible were awarded: £65,000 each, or over £8,000,000 in today’s money. The treasure was conveyed from Portsmouth to the Tower of London in 20 wagons and was greeted in the capital by a troop of light dragoons, a band and joyous spectators.

  After taking a number of rich prizes Captain Thomas Cochrane in HMS Pallas famously sailed into Plymouth with three five-foot-high gold candlesticks at the masthead. Among the other naval officers who amassed enormous sums were Hyde Parker, who realised £200,000 when he was in command in the West Indies, and Peter Rainier and Edward Pellew, who accrued around £300,000 each during their careers.

  It was usually only frigates that took prizes. Ships of the line were too ponderous to be able to capture the smaller ships that carried treasure. However, ‘gun money’ and ‘head money’ was paid on larger captures, which went some way to compensate.

  Nelson did not fare well with prize money. This was not so much bad luck as the irony that, largely due to his genius, Britain achieved mastery of the sea – and few enemy ships dared to sail.

  The distribution of prize money to crews of ships involved persisted in the Royal Navy until 1918.

  The magnificent Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, built with the fortune Admiral Anson amassed from prize money.

  THE SILENT SERVICE

  When Napoleon surrendered to HMS Bellerophon shortly after the Battle of Waterloo he remarked, as the ship was getting under weigh, ‘Your method of performing this evolution is quite different to the French. What I admire most in your ship is the extreme silence and orderly conduct of your men. On board a French ship everyone calls and gives orders and they gabble like so many geese.’ Then, before he left Bellerophon, he said, ‘There has been less noise in this ship, where there are 600 men, during the whole time I have been in her than there was on board the Spervier [a French frigate] with only 100 men in the passage from Isle d’Aix to Basque Roads.’

  Later, on the voyage to the South Atlantic, Napoleon was also struck by the way the crew of HMS Northumberland, taking him to exile in St Helena, performed their duties in a similar manner. This was not unusual, however. Work in the Royal Navy was generally performed in silence.

  MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE sea and mariners abound across history. Many endure to this day, such as the myth of the ruthlessness of the press gangs. Although often rough-handed, they were regulated as to whom they could take and certainly did not have carte blanche to drag innocent young men off to sea. Fanciful accounts of the life of that great sea hero Horatio Nelson also enjoy popular currency. His body was not pickled in rum after his death at Trafalgar, nor were his last words ‘Kiss me, Hardy’.

  It is true, however, that those who follow the sea have always been among the most superstitious people on earth. Some notions, including those about the weather such as ‘when the rain’s before the wind, strike your tops’ls, reef your main’, often have more than an element of truth in them. One above all, the fabled Fiddler’s Green, the sailors’ Elysium of perpetually flowing rum casks and willing wenches, no doubt gave comfort to sailors – should they die at sea they would not end as food for fishes but go to a better place. Superstitions, meanwhile, for example the belief that setting sail on a Friday brings bad luck, may have little to back them up, but are still held today.

  Life at sea goes at its own pace, and a good yarn-spinner was always a popular member of any crew. Tales such as the legend of Cornish lass Sarah Polgrain, who came back from the grave to enforce her seaman lover’s promise of marriage, would be embroidered at every telling – and the more entertaining the better! Lurid details of encounters with mermaids and denizens of the deep held a salty audience spellbound – and guaranteed that the story-teller’s pot of grog seldom ran dry.

  Sea serpent, from a sixteenth-century book on Nordic folklore.

  IF YOU NEED ME, YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO

  There are legends a-plenty about the Devon-born Elizabethan sea hero Francis Drake. It is said that when he supplied the city of Plymouth with water from the high moor nearby he muttered magic words over a stream and the leat followed him back to the gates of the city. He once whittled on a stick in the harbour and as each shaving fell into the water it was transformed into a fireship which wreaked havoc among the Spanish Armada.

  Even Drake’s love life had a supernatural twist. While he was harrying Hispanic ships the lady betrothed to him, fearing him dead, gave her hand to another. As the wedding party entered the church a cannonball fell just short of the building, like a shot across the bows of the bridegroom warning him that Drake was very much alive. Elizabeth Sydenham, the shocked bride, called off the wedding and in due course became Drake’s wife.

  On occasion Drake even joins King Arthur to lead the Whist Hunt across the land. Accompanied by spectral hounds with eyes of fire, he rides in a black carriage pulled by four headless horses. They search for no mundane quarry such as fox or deer, but the souls of unbaptised babies.

  A more benign legend, that of Drake’s Drum, was celebrated in a famous poem by Henry Newbolt:

  Take my drum to England, hang it by the shore

  Strike it when your powder’s runnin’ low

  If the Dons sight Devon, I’ll quit the port o’ Heaven

  An’ drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long ago.

  On his voyages around the world Drake carried wit
h him a snare drum emblazoned with his coat of arms. When he lay dying off the coast of Panama in 1596 he expressed the wish that the drum be taken back to Devon, promising that if anyone beat on it when England was in danger he would return and lead her to victory. It is believed that Drake has returned twice, reincarnated once as Admiral Robert Blake and then as Admiral Horatio Nelson.

  The drum has been known to sound without the help of human hands when significant national events take place, and there are reports that it was heard at the beginning and end of the First World War.

  Drake’s Drum now has pride of place at the Buckland Abbey Maritime Museum in Devon, England.

  Drake’s biography, 1626.

  POLLYWOGS AND BADGER BEARS

  Crossing the Line is a ceremony still performed by both naval and merchant ships to celebrate passing through the equator in a north– south direction. Today’s version, however, is a good deal less rowdy than in the Golden Age of Sail. In the early days, the ceremony was a test for the novices on board to see if they could endure the hardships of life at sea. One account from 1708 tells of sailors being hoisted up on the yard and then ducked into the sea up to 12 times. This evolved into a less hazardous version involving a large canvas bath filled with seawater on deck, with a plank across it that could be suddenly withdrawn.