I was astonished to see how easily the midshipmen broke rules the ordinary seamen were expected to observe on pain of death. Some would organise ‘cutting out expeditions’ to the Purser’s stores, to steal cheese and bread, when our own stocks ran low. An ordinary seaman would be flogged for doing that. The midshipmen often stole from each other too, especially clothes. I had known seamen made to run the gauntlet for stealing trinkets from their comrades, and then throw themselves overboard in shame.
Our privileges extended to every area of the ship. While most of the crew made do with the ship’s heads, in full view of anyone on the fo’c’sle, the midshipmen were provided with ‘roundhouses’. These closets offered privacy and protection from the wind and waves.
The midshipmen’s day was divided into three watches, with two watches off to each one we were expected on duty. The ordinary seamen were expected to work an exhausting four hours on and four hours off throughout each day.
Some of the midshipmen’s perks I found uncomfortable. The middies all had a sailor who was their ‘hammock man’. He would clean their hammock every week in exchange for a glass of grog on Saturday night. Some of these men would clean clothes too, in exchange for more grog. It seemed demeaning to ask them to do this, but I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not to clean my own clothes or hammock. ‘It’s not a job for young gentlemen. You’ll be cleaning the heads next,’ hissed a lieutenant when he spotted me cleaning my hammock. I found a toothless old salt named Joshua Benedict, who was grateful for his extra ration. But when Saturday night came round, I always felt like a man giving a dog a biscuit.
From nine until noon every day I had to attend the midshipmen’s school. Most of my fellow pupils were much younger than me. The older middies called them ‘squeakers’ due to their high voices. My schoolmates were a mixed bunch. Several were still smooth-skinned boys, one of whom sucked his thumb. The rest, their faces ravaged by puberty, reminded me of Robert when I had first met him five years before on the Miranda.
They made life hell for the ship’s schoolmaster, a mild-mannered fellow called Mr Furnish. They would put shot in his blankets, or loosen the stays on his hammock so he crashed to the deck in the middle of the night. It was a wonder he never broke his neck.
He was a bumbler though, and I found his lessons so badly taught I had to go through everything with Robert again afterwards. He was happy to help me catch up and was determined I should master the sea sciences. I often reflected on how lucky I was to have such a friend.
Being one of Furnish’s pupils I spent a lot of my time with these younger boys and some began to look on me as a sympathetic older brother. James Patrick, who had been packed off straight from his Mayfair mansion, confessed that he had expected to find ‘a palace with guns’ and was distraught to discover how squalid the inside of a warship actually was. When the boys complained about their lot, I tried to be patient with them. I did not want to turn into one of those intolerant old salts I had been frightened of when I first went to sea.
Stephen Rider, a likeable lad of sixteen, was closest to my age in the class. He had none of the snobbery or high-handedness of some of the other middies. The son of a wine merchant, he told me he’d been taken on to his first ship a year ago, as a favour to his father who had agreed to cancel the Captain’s account. Rider’s family were not wealthy, and he had been sent to sea with a uniform he was intended to grow into. The sleeves were far too long on his jacket, and he sometimes wondered aloud when he was going to grow sufficiently to fit his clothes. He was the butt of some of the crueller midshipmen’s jokes. William Duffy, who had welcomed us aboard, sneered, ‘Rider, you look like you’ve been swallowed by a whale and thrown up again.’ Rider blushed, and I cursed myself for not being able to think of a witty retort to support him.
‘Duffy isn’t one of Eton’s finest,’ Robert said to me later. ‘The greatest thing he did at school was lock a wild boar in the Headmaster’s study. They expelled him for it, of course, but the Navy had no qualms about taking him. On his last ship, I heard, he would make a habit of standing on a cannon and calling over the biggest, roughest-looking tar and have him stand there whilst he punched and kicked him.’
I was aghast. ‘And didn’t anyone do anything about it?’
‘They didn’t care, was what I heard. And the man knew if he complained that would be considered mutiny. Duffy’s father is Lord Holland. He’s one of the richest men in Kent. That probably has something to do with it.’
Not only was Duffy a snob, he was a boaster too, regaling us with talk of all the ladies he’d ravished and the fun he had at his club. I wasn’t going to tolerate his bullying. At mealtimes he began to make a habit of stealing food from James Patrick’s plate. The lad was too frightened to object. I thought drastic action was called for and plunged my knife into Duffy’s sleeve, pinning it to the table. ‘If you want to steal food, steal it from someone your own size,’ I said to him, as quietly and calmly as I could. Duffy could hear the anger in my voice and he wasn’t going to be challenged without a quarrel.
He spoke sharply: ‘Mark my words, Witchall, I know people who’d slit your throat for five guineas.’ I stared him in the face and borrowed a line from Bel. ‘And I know people who’d slit your throat for nothing. Take any more food from Patrick and it’ll be your wrist that gets pinned to the table rather than your sleeve.’
After the incident, Duffy became a constant, sneering presence, and I grew to hate his languid drawl. He also had a crony in Edward Randal, a midshipman in his late twenties. Randal had passed for lieutenant when he was twenty-one, and was a perfectly able officer, but he had no patron to champion him, and had remained a midshipman. Eight years on, he had still not had a posting and was growing bitter. When he realised Robert and his family were my friends, he could hardly conceal his envy. ‘That country bumpkin who still goes to school with the squeakers,’ I once overheard him say, ‘even he’ll be a lieutenant before me.’
Duffy and Randal would imitate my Norfolk accent whenever I spoke to them and I felt a constant need to be on my guard. At night I always checked my hammock in case the ropes had been tampered with. On more than one occasion I noticed strands had been cut, so that they would snap in the night and send me crashing to the deck. I felt only mild contempt for such schoolboy pranks. I had survived much worse.
After we’d been at sea a week, Robert and I and a couple of the other new midshipmen were invited to dine with the Captain. We were all nervous as we prepared for the evening, dressing in our best clothes and blacking our boots.
It was just my luck to be seated next to Captain Hardy. Aside from his lofty position on the ship, here was a man who was a close friend to Britain’s greatest hero. I tried to bring this up in conversation: ‘Might I ask when you first met Lord Nelson, sir?’ I said as we spooned down our soup.
Hardy ignored my question entirely. Instead he said, ‘I’m interested in you, Witchall. Not many of our midshipmen come from the lower deck. Viscount Neville has told me about you. I know you have the benefit of his patronage, but he wouldn’t back you if you were no good. What makes you tick, Witchall? What is it about you that will make you a good midshipman?’
I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. Was he expecting me to boast about my great perspicacity, my formidable courage, my unwavering determination? Or should I affect modesty, or patriotism?
‘Damn it boy, you must know why you’re training to be an officer?’ He was trying to sound good natured, but the stern Captain feared by the crew was lurking just below the surface.
‘To lead men, sir.’ It was the best I could offer. I’d already got the job, why was he talking to me as if I were applying for it?
‘But what sort of fellow are you?’
I took my courage in my hands and gave it my best shot. ‘I’m a lucky fellow, sir. My father is a schoolmaster and a shopkeeper. He taught me to read and write, and from him I gained a curiosity about the world. That’s what took me to sea. I was pre
ssed but I found myself serving with people who became loyal friends.’
I expected him to have become bored, but he was scrutinising me closely.
‘And is curiosity an asset to an officer?’ he said.
‘I would suppose curiosity was an asset to anyone, sir.’
He didn’t respond. Instead he asked another question.
‘You seem like a sensitive fellow, Witchall. Someone who would consider what the other fellow was thinking. Is that a fair assessment?’
I didn’t like the direction this conversation was going, but I sensed Hardy was not a man who just expected his underlings to merely agree with everything he said. I said, ‘Sensitivity is often seen as one step away from weakness, sir. And many would say a Navy man-o’-war is no place for sensitivity. But I would say that knowing how others think is an essential step in knowing how to command them well.’
Conversation around the table had died. Everyone was looking at me. I felt embarrassed. Hardy sensed this too and turned to his fellow diners. ‘Carry on, carry on,’ he waved his hand at them impatiently.
Then he put a hand on my shoulder and spoke quietly. ‘Inquisitiveness and sensitivity are fine human qualities, Witchall, but more suited to men of science than midshipmen. What the Navy requires is toughness and an unthinking faith in giving orders. They are rough men you are commanding, Witchall. You of all people must know that. They should fear, admire and believe in you as their leader. Keep your human qualities, Witchall, but build a carapace over them, otherwise you will never survive in the bear pit that is a man-o’-war.’
This was advice to take to heart. I knew he meant well.
Apart from the Captain, the officer I was most wary of was the flag officer Lieutenant Pasco. Robert and I had both been assigned battle stations with him on the poop deck. Our chief duty here involved fetching and unfurling flags from the flag locker at the very stern of the ship, and then folding and returning them to their rightful place.
Pasco was a cold fish. But what Robert told me, from gossip heard from other middies, offered an explanation. The Lieutenant, a darkly handsome man of thirty or so, had been First Lieutenant on the Victory – second in rank only to the Captain. His record was formidable. Sent to sea at nine years old, he had served aboard fifteen ships before arriving on the Victory two years previously. With Nelson during the blockade of Toulon, he had also sailed across the Atlantic in search of the Combined Fleet.
But when Nelson returned to the Victory in September, he had made Pasco his flag officer and promoted another Lieutenant, John Quilliam, as his First Lieutenant. Pasco was upset about this, not least because a first lieutenant could expect to be promoted to a Captain following a successful action but a flag officer would not.
His mood was not brightened by the rheumatism he suffered. I also heard he had married during a brief shore leave the previous month, when Victory anchored at Spithead. He must have been disappointed to have been immediately recalled to sea.
He was often haughty and distant, but this made me more determined to make him think I was worthy of my rank. Every night, before I went to sleep, I would pore over Sir Home Riggs Popham’s book Telegraphic Signals, or Marine Vocabulary, to assist him the best I could.
It was a taxing read, although the idea behind it was brilliant. Signalling with flags from ship to ship had changed since I first went to sea. Then, a few flags had served as basic signals, such as ‘Enemy in Sight’ or ‘Engage the Enemy’. There was no provision for anything other than the bluntest message. But with Popham’s new system, a ship’s captain could speak to another ship, or an admiral to his entire fleet, with whatever words he chose. The Signals Officer used ten flags, arranged in particular formation, to either make one of five hundred commonly used words, or to spell out words letter by letter if they fell outside the five hundred.
I thought it an ingenious thing, that captain could speak clearly to captain, beyond the hailing distance of a human voice – even over several miles if telescopes were used.
Most nights, I would get Robert to test me. Popham’s system was second nature to him now, and he would instantly know which combination of three flags would make, for example, the word ‘Captain’ or ‘Advance’. Learning the vocabulary kept my mind off other worries – not least the battle that awaited us.
Given Robert’s skill in signalling, I was surprised when the two of us were summoned to Captain Hardy’s cabin. ‘You’ll stay on the poop for now, Neville,’ said Hardy, ‘but battle is imminent and, when called to quarters, you are to be stationed on the lower gun deck companionway to the orlop deck, where you will be required to shoot dead any seaman deserting his post. You, Witchall, will remain on the poop deck, where you will continue to act as Lieutenant Pasco’s messenger and assistant.’
Robert cautiously suggested he would be far better employed on the poop with me on the companionway, but Hardy cut him off instantly, and threatened to have him whipped for insolence. ‘It makes no sense,’ Robert told me as we walked back to our berth. ‘You’re learning fast, but I know my signals like the back of my hand.’
I shook my head in agreement but said nothing. I wondered if Hardy had sent him below decks as a favour to Robert’s father. Was Hardy trying to ensure he had a better chance of surviving the battle? I was more expendable.
With a fresh wind behind us, the journey down to the southern tip of Spain took only two weeks. By the end of September, we anchored off the port of Cadiz, where the French and Spanish fleets were stationed. The weather continued to be kind to us, despite the lateness of the season, and our ships were well supplied with fresh food from our base in nearby Gibraltar. Lord Nelson took extraordinary care of his sailors, ensuring they had an onion with every meal, and plenty of lemon juice in their grog. These provisions, he knew, would keep a man vigorous and ward off the scurvy. As we bobbed up and down in the Atlantic swell, we could see the coast off Cape Trafalgar through the haze. Training my telescope on the distant shore, I thought often of how much I would like to walk that hinterland and be free of the burden of the coming battle. At night my dreams grew more vivid and terrifying, and what could happen in the days to come preyed on my mind hourly.
CHAPTER 19
‘Enemy Coming Out of Port’
After three weeks in this constant state of anxiety I started to feel a new sensation – a sort of restless boredom, as we waited for something to happen. I was settling into my role, and seemed to have been accepted by the men I had to command. Rarely now did I have to admonish a man or send a fellow to be clapped in irons. Only Duffy remained a fly in my ointment, someone whose pranks and sneers made me perpetually wary.
When I came down to the midshipmen’s berth one evening to find the lock levered away on my sea chest, I immediately suspected it was him. Nothing had been stolen save the pears in calvados that we had bought in Fortnum and Mason’s. I was saving those for a special occasion – to celebrate our victory or survival, or a safe homecoming at least. The ship’s blacksmith repaired the damage soon enough, fashioning a much stronger clasp and lock in the process, but I was still livid about it.
I didn’t want to have to fight Duffy. I knew we’d both end up covered in bruises and might be disciplined. When you have to command men, it doesn’t do to have to undergo the humiliation of punishment. Midshipmen were rarely flogged. Instead, they would be sent up the mast in disgrace, for hours on end. At worst, they could be denied their rank and forced to serve as an ordinary seaman. I was determined that was not going to happen to me.
Instead, I bided my time. I found Duffy squiffily drowsy at the dining table one afternoon, and was sure I could smell the aroma of calvados brandy hanging in the air. My moment had come. He was leaning back on his chair and as his head nodded down on his chest I gave that chair a nudge with my foot and he crashed down to the deck. We were even.
* * *
‘I’m beginning to think the French and Spanish will stay in Cadiz for ever,’ said Robert one morning. He was
edgy too.
The very next day a frigate off to our east hoisted a signal on its main mast. It was soon after first light so I had to peer through my telescope awhile before I recognised it. When the wind blew hard, making the flags flutter straight enough to read them, a shiver ran through me. It was number 370: ‘ENEMY COMING OUT OF PORT’.
I knew that from leafing through the Popham signal book in my hammock a few nights earlier. I had thought then that to see it would mean action was imminent. Now it was actually happening and our fleet was to face death or glory. My heart began to beat faster and I ran over to Pasco at once to report my observation. ‘Well done, Witchall. Go and inform the Captain.’
The honour of setting the ball rolling aboard our ship fell to me. With mounting trepidation I knocked on the oak door and was ushered into the plush interior. Hardy nodded and dismissed me. Within minutes Lieutenant Pasco was handed two signals from Lord Nelson to be run up the mast. The Admiral had intended to entertain several of his captains for dinner that night. One set of signals cancelled this engagement. Alongside it we ran up flags that read, ‘GENERAL CHASE. SOUTH EAST.’
Pasco had shown me a glimmer of warmth earlier, so I dared to offer him an opinion. ‘I think we may find it difficult to catch the enemy fleet, sir, given the scarcity of wind to fill our sails.’
Pasco smiled. ‘Do you know of Captain Troubridge, Witchall? Fine man. Lord Nelson holds him in great regard. Troubridge likes to say ‘Whenever I see a man look as if he’s thinking, I say that’s mutiny.’
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