Stockwin's Maritime Miscellany

by Julian Stockwin

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  POOPED – visibly overwhelmed by exhaustion. DERIVATION: the poop is the high deck aft above the quarterdeck, found in the larger sailing ships. A ship is pooped when a heavy sea breaks over her stern while she is running before the wind in a gale – a very dangerous situation because the vessel’s speed in this circumstance is approximately the same as the following sea. She therefore loses steerage way and becomes uncontrollable as the wave rampages down her deck.

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  ADMIRAL HOSIER’S GHOST

  In March 1726 Vice-Admiral Francis Hosier was appointed to command a squadron bound for the West Indies. His orders were to prevent the Spanish treasure ships sailing home from Porto Bello. However, when Hosier’s ships arrived, the Spaniards simply sent their treasure back to Panama, leaving the galleons empty. In the absence of further orders Hosier blockaded these ships from June to December, losing great numbers of his men to the dreaded yellow fever, the ‘black vomit’.

  With so many casualties to disease he was forced to return to his base in Jamaica, where the ships were cleared out and new men were recruited to replace the dead. However, the contagion remained and over the next six months, while the squadron was blockading other Spanish ports, the casualties continued to mount. Out of 4,750 men over 4,000 died.

  Eventually Hosier succumbed to the disease himself, and after lingering for ten long days he died on 27 August 1727 in Jamaica, as did his immediate successors, Commodore St Lo and Rear Admiral Hopson. Hosier’s body was embalmed and brought back in the ballast of a sloop inaptly named Happy. He was buried in his native Deptford.

  Hosier achieved posthumous fame in 1740 when Richard Glover published a poem, ‘Admiral Hosier’s Ghost’, a blatantly political piece. Glover used Hosier’s fate to support attacks on the Walpole government. In the poem (which later became a popular song) Hosier’s ghost appears to Edward Vernon, after his successful capture of Porto Bello, which had eluded Hosier.

  Heed, oh heed our fatal story

  I am Hosier’s injured ghost

  You who now have purchased glory

  At this place where I was lost.

  Contemporary satirical print.

  A TERRIBLE SCENE OF DEVASTATION

  The frigate HMS Amphion had just completed repairs in Plymouth dockyard, Devon, and as she was due to sail the next day, she had more than 100 visitors and relatives on board in addition to her crew, making a total of about 400 persons.

  Captain Israel Pellew was dining in his cabin with his first lieutenant and Captain Swaffield of a Dutch man-o’-war. At about 4 p.m. in the afternoon on 22 September 1796 a violent shock was felt in the town and the sky lit up bright red as a massive explosion blew the ship apart. People ran to the dockyard and witnessed a terrible scene of devastation. Strewn in all directions were splintered timbers, broken rigging and blackened, mangled bodies.

  At the instant of the explosion Pellew and his guests were thrown violently off their chairs. Pellew rushed to the window and climbed out. He managed to escape virtually unharmed and was picked up by a boat. The first lieutenant, too, got clear with only minor injuries. Captain Swaffield, however, perished. His body was found a month later with his skull fractured.

  There were some miraculous escapes among the crew. At the moment of the explosion the marine at the captain’s cabin door was looking at his watch – it was dashed from his hands and he was stunned senseless. He knew nothing more until he found himself safe on shore, having suffered only slightly. The boatswain was standing on the cathead directing his men at work when he felt himself suddenly carried off his feet into the air. He fell into the water and lost consciousness. When he came to, he found he was entangled in some rigging and had suffered a broken arm, but he managed to extricate himself and was picked up by a boat.

  Apart from Pellew, the only survivors were two lieutenants, a boatswain, three or four seamen, a marine, a woman and a child. The child was discovered clutched to her mother’s lifeless bosom; the lower half of her body had been blown to pieces.

  The cause of this disaster was never established, but many believe the ship’s gunner was stealing gunpowder, which accidentally ignited.

  MAN OVERBOARD AND THEN SOME …

  A fall from the rigging was usually fatal if the seaman hit the decks. Landing in the water he had a chance of survival if he could be found quickly enough.

  On occasion the attempt to rescue a man from the water led to greater disaster. On 24 November 1804 a signal was made for the fleet moored at Torbay, a naval anchorage in southern England, to get under way. It was a very dark night, and while raising the anchor of HMS Venerable a master’s mate and a seaman fell overboard. A boat was instantly lowered to try to save them, but in the confusion it filled with water and the rescue crew were thrown in the sea.

  At that moment another ship loomed up in the dark and evasive action was taken to avoid collision. Then Venerable began drifting, stern first, into the shore and grounded on rocks and hard sand. Water poured into the doomed vessel.

  The cutter Frisk attempted to take men off Venerable, as did other ships’ boats, but the weather worsened and the hulk became submerged to the upper gun deck. Then Frisk did manage to rescue a number of the men, and a makeshift raft enabled others to get ashore. Some of the sailors still aboard, meanwhile, believing their fate was sealed, broke into the spirit room to seek oblivion in drink.

  A court martial was convened on 11 December following the loss of the ship. Captain Hunter, his officers and the ship’s company were all honourably acquitted, except for one sailor who was found guilty of drunkenness, disobedience of orders and plundering the officers’ baggage. He was sentenced to 200 lashes around the fleet.

  HMS Venerable meets her end at Torbay.

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  CUTS A FINE FEATHER – said of a person who is a nifty dresser. DERIVATION: when a ship was sailing well her bow wave looked like a white feather.

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  ‘PLAGUE OF THE SEA’

  Scurvy was once the most malignant of all sea diseases. Painful and loathsome in its symptoms, it killed two million sailors during the Golden Age of Sail.

  The disease was first observed by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. Physical symptoms included black-coloured skin, ulcers, difficulty in breathing, loss of teeth and rotting gums. Sometimes old wounds reopened from injuries sustained decades earlier. Scurvy resulted in strange sensory and psychological effects. When a man was in the last stages of the disease the sound of a gunshot was enough to kill him, while the smell of blossom from the shore could cause him to cry out in agony. The sufferer broke down into tears at the slightest provocation and suffered acute yearnings for the shore.

  History records the devastation caused on long sea voyages. Vasco da Gama saw two-thirds of his crew succumb to the disease en route to India in 1499. In 1520 Magellan lost more than 80 per cent of his men to scurvy while crossing the Pacific. The Elizabethan sea explorer Sir Richard Hawkins cursed the disease as ‘the plague of the sea and the spoyle of mariners’. In 1740 Commodore Anson led a squadron of five warships on a four-year voyage which turned into the worst sea-borne medical disaster in history. Over half of the 2,000 men who left England with him died from scurvy, and only one vessel of his fleet returned, his flagship HMS Centurion.

  Many anti-scorbutics that were heralded as cures were in fact useless. Among these were elixir of vitriol – made from sulphuric acid, spirit of wine, sugar, cinnamon, ginger and other spices, and Ward pills, a violent diuretic. Some believed that going ashore and being half buried in earth would result in a cure. Spruce beer, made from the leaves of the conifer, was officially issued in the North American station.

  James Cook succeeded in circumnavigating the world in 1768–71 in Endeavour without losing a single man to scurvy. He was a great believer in regular doses of wort of malt, but this would not have been effective as a remedy. He did ensure that his crew’s diet was supplemented with fresh fruit and vegetables, but proba
bly the one truly anti-scorbutic measure he took was to prohibit the eating of the fat skimmed off the vats used to boil salt meat. Cook took this measure as he believed the practice was unhealthy but we now know that fat interacts with copper to produce a substance that prevents the gut from absorbing vitamins.

  The Scottish naval surgeon James Lind proved the disease could be treated with citrus fruits in experiments he described in his 1753 book A Treatise of the Scurvy. Scurvy was not eradicated from the Royal Navy, however, until the chairman of the navy’s Sick and Hurt Board, Gilbert Blane, finally put the prescription of fresh lemons to use during the Napoleonic Wars. Other navies soon adopted this successful solution.

  Earlier experiments with the use of limes, which were not nearly as effective as lemons in preventing scurvy, gave rise to the nickname ‘limey’ for British sailors.

  James Lind.

  THE EVENT THAT INSPIRED MOBY DICK

  By the beginning of the nineteenth century whaling had made Nantucket, Massachusetts, one of the richest localities in the United States. In 1819 the whaling ship Essex under 29-year-old Captain George Pollard left for the whaling grounds of the South Pacific with a crew of 20 men. The voyage was expected to take two and a half years.

  On 20 November 1820 spouts were sighted, and as usual the ship gave chase and launched the dories, leaving just a skeleton crew aboard. Suddenly a huge bull whale breached, spouted and swam at high speed towards the ship, ramming it at the waterline near the bow and throwing all those on board to the deck. The creature then surfaced beside the ship, shook itself and dived again. Then it came back for a second attack and the ship rolled over on to her beam-ends. Hastily returning to the ship, Pollard asked, ‘My God, what is the matter?’ and was told, ‘We’ve been stove by a whale!’ Essex stayed afloat for two days, after which the crew had to abandon ship and take their chances in the whaleboats.

  After 22 days they landed on uninhabited Henderson Island, within the modern-day Pitcairn Islands. They soon exhausted the natural resources there, however, and all but three of them decided to press on.

  Back at sea, one by one the men died. At first they were thrown overboard, but as time went on and more died, hunger drove the sailors to eat the corpses. In Pollard’s boat, however, there had been no natural deaths and the men drew lots to determine who would be sacrificed for the survival of the others. The grim fate befell Pollard’s young cousin.

  Eventually they were picked up by other whaleboats. After more than 90 days in the tiny craft, in which they drifted some 6,400 km, only eight of the original 21 mariners from the Essex had survived.

  According to Nantucket legend, years later George Pollard was asked if he had known a man called Owen Coffin. He replied, ‘Know ’im? Why bless you, I ate ’im.’

  First mate Owen Chase wrote an account of the disaster which inspired Herman Melville to pen his famous novel Moby Dick.

  Braving the seas to hunt oil-rich sperm whales.

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  SKYSCRAPER – few cities in the world today are without these majestic buildings soaring skyward. Chicago’s Home Insurance Building erected in 1884 was the world’s first tall building supported by an internal frame and was dubbed a ‘skyscraper’ by the press. DERIVATION: the highest sail in a ship, a skyscraper is a small triangular canvas set above the royals in order to maximise the effect of a light wind.

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  SUNK IN THE SIGHT OF THE KING

  The warship Mary Rose, named after Henry VIII’s favourite sister and the Tudor emblem, was the pride of the King’s fleet, described as ‘the flower of all ships that ever sailed’.

  Mary Rose had a long and successful career against the French behind her when she sailed from Portsmouth harbour in July 1545 at the head of the English fleet to take on the approaching enemy once again.

  King Henry watched from Southsea Castle, just a few hundred metres away. Mary Rose fired one broadside at the French and was turning to fire the other broadside when water flooded into her open gunports and she suddenly capsized in full view of the monarch, the screams of the sailors ringing in his ears. Only 30 or so of those on board survived. The official crew of Mary Rose was 200 mariners, 185 soldiers and 30 gunners, but one account says there were as many as 700 on board when she sank.

  Among those drowned was Vice-Admiral Sir George Carew, whose wife, watching with the king, collapsed in shock. The cry of horror that broke from Henry’s lips became seared in the memory of those near him.

  There is no agreement as to exactly why the great warship sank. One recent theory puts it down to a French cannonball. Some believe it was indiscipline within the crew. Indeed the last message shouted by George Carew to his uncle Sir Gawen Carew sailing nearby in the Matthew Gonnson was, ‘I have the sort of knaves I cannot rule.’ Others believe it was due to the gunports being too close to the waterline. It was probably a combination of factors, however, that caused the catastrophe.

  The wreck of Mary Rose was discovered in 1968, and in 1982, after much underwater preparation, the surviving section of the ship was lifted from the seabed and returned to Portsmouth harbour 437 years after her departure. Now on view in the Historic Dockyard, she is the only sixteenth-century warship on display anywhere in the world.

  Mary Rose.

  MUTINY!

  During the age of sail the penalty for naval insurrection was hanging at the yardarm. Under the Articles of War, a court martial had first to be convened before such punishment, usually swift and merciless, was administered.

  One of the most notorious mutinies to take place in the Royal Navy occurred aboard HMS Hermione, a 32-gun frigate. In July 1797 Hugh Pigot became her new captain. He already had a reputation for cruelty, and after a very unjust punishment of one of the crew the others became particularly restless.

  On 20 September, patrolling the Mona Passage, a major entry point into the Caribbean, the men prepared to shorten sail for the night. Not content to leave the supervision of this to his officers, Pigot called out through his speaking trumpet that the sailors were slow and that he would flog the last man down on deck. Three younger sailors panicked and slipped in their haste to come down. One broke his fall by landing on the master, injuring him. The others fell senseless at Pigot’s feet, and he growled, ‘Throw the lubbers overboard.’ He then ordered two boatswain’s mates to go aloft with knotted ropes to beat the remaining sailors. He had a dozen seamen flogged the next day.

  The following night three parties of mutineers took matters into their own hands. One group overpowered the marine on duty outside Pigot’s cabin and then forced the door open. Pigot jumped up from his cot in his nightshirt. Grabbing a dirk he put up a strong fight against cutlasses and boarding axes, but soon he was backed into a corner, injured and bleeding.

  Meanwhile the alarm had been raised and the third lieutenant, Mr Foreshaw, tried to take control on the quarterdeck, but he was quickly overcome and thrown overboard.

  In his cabin, Pigot was subjected to continuous physical and verbal assaults. His cries for mercy were ignored, and he was finally hurled through the stern windows into the sea. His screams of fury and pain could be heard from the shark-infested waters as the ship drew away.

  Although some were opposed to taking any more lives, the carnage continued. The maddened ship’s company brutally murdered another ten and dispatched them overboard. They then took the ship into La Guaira, Venezuela, a few days’ sail away, where they handed it over to the Spanish.

  The navy set about seeking retribution, finally bringing 33 to trial and hanging 24 of them. Many eluded capture. Hermione was recaptured and returned to naval service. It was decided that she must have a new name, and at first it was to be Retaliation, but this was considered too pointed and it was changed to Retribution.

  Other notorious British naval uprisings were the mutinies at Spithead and the Nore, the latter led by former naval officer turned seaman Richard Parker, and the insurrection against Captain Bligh on board HMS Bounty, famously made into
five films.

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  Hanged Without Trial

  An incident in the American naval brig USS Somers, captained by Alexander Mackenzie, caused a controversy that is still argued over today. Three sailors were hanged in December 1842 aboard the vessel, before a court martial was convened. They were midshipman Philip Spencer, son of the secretary of war, boatswain’s mate Samuel Cromwell and seaman Elisha Small. It was alleged that they had planned to take over the ship, throw the officers and loyal crew members to the sharks and then use the ship for piracy. Ashore, Mackenzie was the subject of a court of inquiry, which fully exonerated his conduct. At a subsequent court martial, convened at Mackenzie’s request, he was acquitted of a charge of murder.

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  The execution of mutineer Richard Parker.

  THE LOSS OF THE MIGHTIEST WARSHIP IN THE WORLD

  Vasa was built in the 1620s for the new naval fleet of Sweden’s King Gustavus Adolphus, one of the country’s ablest and most successful military rulers. The first in a projected series of five great warships, Vasa was to be the mightiest in the world, armed with 64 guns on two gundecks, a broadside of nearly half a ton. Her cost had been 100,000 dalers, equivalent to the value of 10 per cent of the country’s annual harvest.

  On 10 August 1628 she was ready for her maiden voyage to the naval station at Alvsnabben, some 110 km around the coast, to pick up 300 soldiers before continuing to Poland, her final destination. Thousands of spectators crowded the vantage points in Stockholm’s harbour, including foreign ambassadors, some of whom were no doubt spies of the king’s enemies. Vasa was a magnificent sight, with hundreds of extravagant carvings and gold, green, red and blue paintwork. A flotilla of small boats gathered to see her on her way.