Book 5 - Desolation Island

by Patrick O'Brian

  A worsening manpower situation was bound to affect life on the lower deck in many ways, mostly adversely. For the professional seafarer, landmen were troublesome messmates and meant more work for the men who knew their business: (Rodger, The Wooden World) A general shortage made it much more likely that men would be turned over from one ship to another without being granted leave. Lack of leave was one of the complaints of the mutineers in 1797, (Conrad Gill, The Naval Mutinies of 1797) but again we lack hard evidence with which to analyse the situation. Leave was certainly given often in the 1750s, and a recent study concludes that some, though not all captains were still giving regular leave at the end of the century, (Rodger, The Wooden World) but it seems probable that the complaints of lack of shore leave, and in particular of turning-over crews without leave when ships paid off, will be found to be justified. One probable cause of the lack of leave is the coppering of the ships of the Navy during the American War. (R. J. B. Knight, 'The Introduction of Copper Sheathing into the Royal Navy, 1779-1786', Mariner's Mirror, LIX) From the military point of view this was an enormous advantage, making ships faster and allowing them to stay out of dock for years at a time. It was certainly one of the reasons why the Navy was able to hold its own during the American War against a coalition of enemies which was greatly superior in numbers. But the necessity of docking several times a year had provided the opportunity for regular leave, and it seems likely that coppering, in a desperate war which called for every effort, had the effect of reducing the opportunities for leave by increasing the 'availability' of the ships.

  The bad effects of 'turning-over' men was not simply that it denied them leave, for if the people were divided among several ships in need of men, as usually happened, it broke up the natural social unit of a ship's company. It is clear that, however they had been recruited and whatever their initial feelings, men could and generally did become con tented members of a ship's company after a while—specifically after not more than twelve or eighteen months' service. (Rodger, The Wooden World) Taking men from a settled ship's company and distributing them wherever they were wanted might meet a short-term need, but it acted powerfully to destroy men's loyalty to their ship and their officers. This was always to some extent a necessity of wartime operations, but it seems to have become a serious problem during the American War. As early as 1776 Lord Sandwich observed that:

  it is to be wished that every ship should form a regular ship's company, which will be much broken into if we go on borrowing and lending; (Rodger, The Wooden World)

  and in 1783 Nelson complained that:

  the disgust of the Seamen of the Navy is all owing to the infernal plan of turning them over from Ship to Ship, so that Men cannot be attached to their officers, or the officers care two-pence about them. (Sir N. H. Nicolas, The Despatches and Letters of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson)

  His friend Collingwood thought exactly the same:

  There is one thing in the use of those [men] have which I think is ill judged, the frequent shifting of them from ship to ship, and change of officers so that people do not feel themselves permanently established. To make the best use of all the powers of a body of men it is necessary the officers shou'd know the characters and abilities of their people, and that the people shou'd feel an attachment to their officers, which can only exist when they have served some time together. (C. Collingwood to Dr. A. Carlyle, 20 Mar 1795, in The Private Correspondence of Lord Collingwood)

  The worse the shortage of men, the more difficult it was to avoid this experiment, but it gravely damaged men's loyalty and morale, and was a powerful incentive to desertion. (Rodger, The Wooden World) It made it much harder for men to join or rejoin the officers of their choice, for not all possessed the talent, or luck, of Barret Bonden:

  How did he come to be at liberty at such a time, and how had he managed to traverse the great man-hungry port without being pressed? It would be useless to ask him; he would only answer with a pack of lies. (Patrick O'Brian, Post Captain)

  Tactless as well as useless, for many men deserted from one warship to join another whose officers they preferred. (Rodger, The Wooden World)

  Perhaps the gravest material decline in seamen's conditions between 1750 and 1800 was caused by inflation. The seaman's wage (an able seaman received 22s. 6d. a lunar month net of fixed deductions) had been established as long ago as 1653, but it seems to have remained more or less competitive with peacetime wages in merchant ships for at least a century. In wartime wages rose to levels which the Navy could never match directly, but it had the means to establish loyal cadres of long-serving men who could form the nucleus of wartime expansion. From the 1760s, however, wages in the merchant service rose steadily, and by the out break of war in 1793 the Navy had fallen well behind. How far is difficult to say with precision, for wages in merchantmen varied from trade to trade, port to port and season to season. Recent work suggests that in the first half of the eighteenth century wages averaged about 29s. a calendar month in peacetime and 42s. in wartime. (Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World 1700-1750) The Seamen of the London River (where wages were generally higher than at other ports) successfully struck for 40s. a month in 1768. (Public Record Office, ADM 7/299 No. 40.) In 1792 a seamen in the Baltic trade might earn 30s. a month, but during the war this rose to as much as five guineas. (Simon Ville, 'Wages, Prices and Profitability in the Shipping Industry during the Napoleonic wars: A Case Study', Journal of Transport History) By 1815 merchant seamen's wages in various trades ranged from 35s. to 60s; though in all cases they were subject to heavier and more arbitrary deductions than in the Navy. (Jon Press, 'wages in the Merchant Navy, 1815-54', Journal of Transport History) Probably Captain Pakenham was exaggerating when he told the Admiralty in 1796 that seamen could get four times as much money in the merchant service, but undoubtedly the naval wage by then was much less than merchantmen paid even in peacetime. (Private Papers of George, Second Earl Spencer, ed. by Julian S. Corbett) This, together with the operation of the bounty system which often had the effects of rewarding landmen more highly than seamen, was the principal grievance of the Spithead mutineers in 1797. (Gill, The Naval Mutanies) They secured an increase to 28s. a month net for an able seamen, and in 1806 this was again raised to 32s. net. (Gill, The Naval Mutanies; G. E. Manwearing & Bonamy Dobree, The Floating Republic)

  By the late 1790s there were therefore several 'material disadvantages to life in the Navy which had grown up, or at least grown much worse, since the 1750s. It may be, however, that they were not the only or even the most serious social problems of the Service. It has been argued that the Navy in Anson's day was a product of its times, largely innocent of the tensions of class-consciousness, held together by internal bonds of mutual dependence between patrons and followers which threw officers and their men into close contact. In such a world the distant, and almost feeble authority of the Admiralty counted for much less than the officers' powers to reward, and their need of reliable followers. (Rodger, The Wooden World) As a social system it offered strong incentives to mutual accommodation, and both officers and men were reluctant to push disputes to extremes. If the men had occasion to complain, they generally found senior officers who took them seriously. If complaints were not met, the resulting mutinies invariably conformed to established rules which confined them to the status of a sort of formal demonstration. Only mutinies openly led or covertly incited by officers broke the rules, and only then did authority react with severity. Respectable mutinies conducted in accordance with Service tradition, in pursuit of proper objectives such as the payment of overdue wages or the ejection of intolerable officers, could expect to get what they demanded, and with no question of punishing the mutineers. (Rodger, The Wooden World)

  It is clear that this solidarity, almost intimacy between officers and men was breaking down by the 1790s, and was largely destroyed by the effects of the French Revolution. It is perilous to gener
alise about changing attitudes, especially on the basis of anecdotal evidence, but there can be little doubt that this was a period of growing class-consciousness and tension between officers and men. It shows in an increasing intolerance of complaint, and a notably harsher attitude to mutinies. As early as 1780 a mutiny at Spithead, on grounds completely justified both by tradition and the letter of the law, was treated with considerable severity, though the incapacity of the admiral commanding may have been a factor in this case. (The Private Papers of John, Earl of Sandwich, ed. by G. R. Barnes & J. H. Owen, Navy Records Society) By the early 1790s even successful mutinies had become extremely risky affairs, (Jonathan Neale, The Cutlass and the Lash: Mutiny and Discipline in Nelson's Navy) and the course of the French Revolution confirmed officers in the idea that any complaint, or even a hint of independent thought, called for harsh repression. Of the 1797 Spithead mutiny, conducted with great moderation and good sense for entirely traditional objectives, one captain remarked,

  . . . the character of the present mutiny is perfectly French. The singularity of it consists in the great secrecy and patience with which they waited for a thorough union before it broke out, and the immediate establishment of a system of terror. (Spencer Papers, II)

  Sir William Hotham thought the concession of cheap postage to the ratings had been a fatal move, since encouraging men to read and write letters was bound to tempt them to think for themselves, (A. M. W. Stirling, Pages & Portraits from the Past, being the Private Papers of Admiral Sir William Hotham, G. C. B. Admiral of the Red) while Collingwood for the same reason deprecated even allowing ships' companies to subscribe to patriotic collections. (Oliver Warner, The Life and Letters of Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood) Significantly, it is at this period that officers came to think of the Marines as 'men which we look to in general for protection' in the event of mutiny, (Spencer Papers, II) something quite foreign to the objects of the corps as established in 1755. By 1797 the Admiralty no longer felt that officers' promises to their men needed to be kept if it were inconvenient to do so. (Spencer Papers, II)

  In parallel with the widening gulf between officers and men came a growing snobbery among the officers. (Michael Lewis, A Social History of the Navy 1793-1815; See also: N. A. M. Rodger, 'Officers, Gentlemen and their Education, 1793-1860', in Les Empires en Guerre et Paix, 1793-1860) In 1794 the Admiralty signalled its distaste for levelling principles by replacing the old ratings indiscriminately, with three classes of boy, distinguished on a class basis. (Lewis, Social History of the Navy) The coming of peace in 1815 allowed the process to be taken further, with a widespread sifting of the commissioned officers ironically known as 'passing for a gentleman'. (David Hannay, Naval Courts Martial); N. A. M. Rodger, 'Officers, Gentlemen and their Education') In all this the Service simply reflected the changing climate of opinion in British society ashore, and the ratings generally shared their officers' values. Many of their complaints were directed at low-born officers, (For example: The Adventures of John Wetherell, ed. by C. S. Forester) and it is striking to hear the words of the mutineers in one ship at the Nor in 1797, sending two of their officers ashore:

  The first Lieutenant, they said, was a blackguard and no gentleman, and by no means fit for being an officer. That the Master was like him; both of them a disgrace to His Majesty's Service.' (Peter Cullan's Journal, ed. by H. G. Thursfield, in five Naval Journals, 1789-1817, Navy Records Society)

  The most zealous defender of the privileges of birth could hardly have put it better, and the officer who tells this anecdote remarks that 'we all had proofs enough of the correctness of their observations'.

  With growing class-consciousness and mutual suspicion between quarterdeck and lower deck went a steady rise in the severity of punishments both formal and informal, and a growing tendency to indiscriminate brutality. Although we have little systematic research, it is certain that court martial sentences increased as the century went on, and probable that the same was true of flogging at captains discretion.' (Hannay, Naval Courts Martial, Peter Kemp, The British Sailor: A Social History of the Lower Deck) In principle no captain might award more than twelve lashes without a court martial, but in practice two or three dozen was common, and as many as 63 or 72 are recorded. (Neale, The Cutlass and the Lash) This in itself was not usually a grievance, for the cat remained, as it had always been, the good man's defence against his idle, troublesome or thieving shipmate; it was the growth of casual and indiscriminate brutality which aroused so much resentment. As one ship's company put it to Lord Howe in 1797:

  My Lord, we do not wish you to understand that we, have the least intention of encroaching on the punishments necessary for the preservation of good order and discipline necessary to be preserved in H.M. navy, but to crush the spirit of tyranny and oppression so much practised and delighted in, contrary to the spirit or intent of any laws of our country. (Gill, The Naval Mutanies)

  Or, in Dr Maturin's words:

  The world in general, and even more your briney world, accepts flogging. It is this perpetual arbitrary harassing, bullying, hitting, brow-beating, starting these capricious torments, spreadeagling, gagging—this general atmosphere of oppression. (Patrick O'Brian, Post Captain)

  It would be tedious to recite the many examples to be found in both reliable and unreliable sources, but two, not extreme, cases may be cited. Captain James Burney reported serving in a ship in which the maintopmen were flogged because another ship had swayed up her yards faster,' (Kemp, The British Sailor) while in 1794 a petty officer was court martialled and flogged for refusing to 'thrash the men up' from below. (Hannay, Naval Courts Martial) In both cases what was shocking to lower deck opinion was not simply the brutality but the fact that the sufferers were prime seamen, as it shocked Jack Aubrey to hear that his coxswain Bonden had been flogged by Captain Corbett. (Patrick O'Brian, The Mauritius Command) The ignorant landmen had always been herded about their work with blows, but that smart topmen should suffer likewise offended every seaman's idea of natural justice and the social order within a ship's company. Resentment at such abuse of authority led the mutineers of 1797 to put ashore large numbers of their officers. At Spithead 114 officers were removed, including four captains and Vice-Admiral Colpoys.(Gill, The Naval Mutanies)

  It is possible that part of the problem was the many inexperienced or simply bad officers brought in by rapid wartime expansion. This was certainly the opinion of some contemporaries; Collingwood condemned captains who, 'endeavouring to conceal, by great severity, their own unskilfulness and want of attention, beat the men into a state of insubordination.'(G. I. Newnham, A Selection from the Public and Private Correspondence of Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood)

  No doubt this was part of the problem, but it was certainly not the whole. Behind the growth in class-consciousness and mutual suspicion between officers and men lay another secular trend which affected the Navy along with the rest of society the growth of state power and centralisation. In the 1750s the authority of the Admiralty still largely relied on co-operation with senior officers whose patronage rep resented much of the real power within the Navy. By the 1790s the Admiralty was in process of taking much of that power into its own hands. (Rodger, Inner Life of the Navy) A succession of gifted and arrogant administrative reformers, notably Sir Charles Middleton, Lord St. Vincent and General Bentham, attempted to improve the discipline of the Navy, and the efficiency of the Navy Board and the dockyards, by the method traditional among reformers in every age: centralisation in their own hands. This was only one example of the way that the growing complexity of society and the pressures of a desperate war forced, or permitted, the British government to become more efficient, more centralised and more powerful. (Clive Emsley, British Society and the French Wars, 1793-1815) One of the effects of this development in the Navy was to weaken the old personal bonds of mutual obligation between officers and their followers which had been one of the major cohesive forces of the Service in earlier years, and replace them with an artificial discip
line. Where officers' powers to reward had weakened, their powers to punish had to grow to compensate. When officers and men were less and less known and beholden to one another as individuals, they needed an impersonal authority to regulate their relations.

  An illustration of this trend is the Admiralty's attitude to captains' personal followings. In Anson's day captains and admirals were almost always allowed to take at least their particular followers with them from ship to ship, and they were strongly encouraged, indeed compelled, to use their local influence to recruit men in their home districts. (Rodger, The Wooden World) During the American War Sandwich favoured the same methods, and publicly praised officers who recruited their own ship's companies from among their followers:

  Such a mode of procuring men creates a confidence between the commanding officer and the seaman. The former is in some measure bound to act humanely to the man who gives him a preference of serving under him; and the latter will find his interest and duty unite, in behaving well under a person from whom he is taught to expect every present reasonable indulgence, and future favour. These, and other instances of a similar nature which have come to my knowledge, have enabled me to point out one thing that might, in my opinion, be the means of furthering the naval service; that is, trusting less to the assistance of the Admiralty board, and giving every possible encouragement to the captains appointed to the command of ships to complete their own crews. (William Corbett, The Parliamentary History Of England)