by Roy Adkins
Thirty years later Westcott was killed at the Battle of the Nile. In January 1801 Nelson went to see Westcott’s mother when he was on his way to Plymouth: ‘We left Axminster yesterday morning at eight,’ he wrote to Emma Hamilton. ‘At Honiton, I visited Captain Westcott’s mother – poor thing, except from the bounty of Government and Lloyd’s, in very low circumstances. The brother is a tailor, but had they been chimney-sweepers it was my duty to show them respect.’55
A career in the navy was particularly attractive to younger sons who were not in line to inherit landed estates and titles and also to sons of the respectable middle classes, especially with the lure of prize-money. Unlike the army, where officers’ commissions were bought for large sums of money without the need to prove any knowledge of military life and were the preserve of the upper classes, naval officers had to learn to be competent seamen and to demonstrate their skill through years of service and formal examinations by senior officers. All of them (even future kings such as William IV) started their officer career as midshipmen, the lowest officer rank. Such a career structure provided the chance of social advancement and so there was never a shortage of boys and young men wanting to be midshipmen. Despite not buying commissions, most fledgling officers were helped by ‘interest’ – the coy contemporary term for nepotism. It was crucial for these young men to achieve rapid promotion, because once they reached the rank of captain, they were literally in a line, waiting for the ones ahead of them to die off before they could be promoted. Nelson, for instance, was able to succeed because his maternal uncle Maurice Suckling was a naval captain. While ‘interest’ was essential for a rapid rise through the ranks, it was no substitute for basic seamanship. Inevitably, a few incompetent officers manipulated the system and rose to a high position, but they could not simply buy their way in, as army officers did.
Before becoming a midshipman, sea experience was needed. A few joined the merchant navy for a while, and others joined as able seamen or as captain’s servants. Each captain was allowed four servants for every one hundred men in the crew, though only a handful were domestic servants. The rest were his protégés or apprentices, and in 1794 these servants were classified as Volunteers First Class (or Boys First Class), who had to be at least eleven years old, or thirteen if they were not the son of a naval officer. Their next stage was to be a midshipman, and if they had a minimum of six years’ sea service, including two years at midshipman level, then they could take their lieutenant’s examination. The rules were constantly broken, as some certainly entered the navy at midshipman level without previous experience, others joined at a much younger age, while several were entered fictitiously on the books when very young to make their sea service appear longer.
The marines were not impressed, but were recruited like soldiers, and posters were printed to induce young men and boys to join. At Portsmouth during the hot press of March 1803, the marines were also trying to obtain extra hands: ‘Great encouragement is offered for recruits for the Marines service; bills [posters] have been stuck up this day, offering a bounty of three guineas per man, and a reward offered to any person who will bring a recruit.’56 During the 1812 war with America, one recruiting poster in Newark proclaimed:
GREAT ENCOURAGEMENT. AMERICAN WAR.
What a Brilliant Prospect does this Event hold out to every Lad of Spirit, who is inclined to try his Fortune in that highly renowned Corps,
The Royal Marines
When every Thing that swims the Seas must be a PRIZE!57
The poster enthusiastically announced that marines had plentiful opportunities to reap prize-money, as well as lots of food and drink on board, a bounty, generous pay, and the honour of serving king and country. ‘Lose no Time then, my Fine Fellows,’ it exhorted, ‘in embracing the glorious Opportunity that awaits you; YOU WILL RECEIVE Sixteen Guineas Bounty, And on your Arrival at Head Quarters, be comfortably and genteely CLOTHED. – And spirited Young BOYS of a promising Appearance, who are Five Feet high, WILL RECEIVE TWELVE POUNDS ONE SHILLING AND SIXPENCE BOUNTY, and equal Advantages of PROVISIONS and CLOATHING with the Men.’58
One boy who joined up in Norwich on 18 April 1795 was twelve-year-old William Mallet, not a schoolboy but a labourer, who no doubt was persuaded that a better future lay open to him in the marines. Being illiterate, he put his mark X to the statement that:
I William Mallet do make Oath, That I am a Protestant, and by Trade a Labourer and to the best of my Knowledge and Belief was born in the Parish of St Andrews in the City of Norwich and that I have no Rupture, nor ever was troubled with Fits, that I am no-ways disabled by Lameness or otherwise, but have the perfect Use of all my Limbs, and that I have voluntarily inlisted myself to serve His Majesty King GEORGE the Third, as a Drummer in the First Division of Marine.59
This was countersigned by the surgeon: ‘THESE are to certify that the abovesaid William Mallet aged 12 Years, 4 Feet, 6 Inches high, Fair Complexion, Sandy Hair, Blue Eyes Came before me … I have examined the above-named Man, and find him fit for His Majesty’s Service.’60
Another volunteer was Thomas Rees, from Carmarthen in Wales. He became bored with being a tailor’s apprentice and first joined the militia, then the marines at the age of seventeen in April 1808 because of ‘a very great desire to engage in active service, and to be able to visit foreign countries’.61 Apart from military service or joining the merchant navy, opportunities for visiting foreign countries were virtually non-existent, yet many men were intoxicated with tales of mysterious lands that were spread by sailors, travellers and explorers. Others wanted to join the marines because they had heard about prize-money. John Howe was the second-youngest son of a farming family from Middlezoy in Somerset, but his father died when he was one year of age, leaving his mother in poverty. A few years later she remarried, and John was apprenticed to a clothier in Bradford-upon-Avon, where he was taught to read and write. He began to be treated badly there and so, he recalled, ‘at last I thought I would go for a soldier and hearing some Marines had received five hundred pounds a man prize money I determined to go in them. I accordingly enlisted on the seventeenth of June 1779, at this time I was not seventeen years of age being born on the twenty-fourth of July 1761.’62 His initial plans at joining the marines did not work, as he enlisted as a soldier by mistake:
The sixteenth of June being Bradford Fair Monday* I enlisted with one of the Queens Light Dragoons but proving too short for him he asked me if I was willing to go in the marines. I said I thought he was one of them for I did not wish to be in any thing else … this being Tuesday morning we sauntered about town till meeting with a marine belonging to a party stationed at Froom [Frome] in Somersetshire: he told him he had enlisted a young lad who through a little drink had mistaken him for a marine.63
Much misery and tragedy were created with boys and men joining the navy as volunteers or by force and then being denied leave to see their families. When war broke out with France in 1793, thirteen-year-old William Douglas in London volunteered, but five years later, on board the Lapwing in the West Indies, he was devastated to receive a letter from his mother giving news of his father’s death. His shipmate Aaron Thomas related what happened: ‘At the time this Douglas received this letter, containing an account of his Father’s death, he was with me, and the very second day afterwards, he got almost as drunk, as a lad could get. This drinking he has learned aboard a man of war … He is now 17, was brought up amongst the butchers in Clare Market, but when the war began, he run away from his father and mother, and entered on board the Enterprize which is moored [on the Thames] off the Tower Stairs.’64 Thomas related a tragic incident about another seaman, a landsman from Holborn in London, who had joined around the same time:
Thursday 26 July 1798 … At half past seven PM Peter Bird a seaman aged twenty-three departed this life. He had been ill of a flux about nine days. About three months ago this young man … told me, that his mind was fixed upon [a] young woman in London, who he intended to marry, when the war was
over, adding I am but a young man, and she will forgive me for leaving her as I did … His mother lives in London, he was put apprentice to a butcher in Brookes Market, in that city, but on the wars breaking out, he run away from his master, and shortly after entered aboard this ship.65
It is hardly surprising that many men deserted or tried to desert. In 1803 Nelson suggested that to prevent desertion, seamen should be given certificates for every five years of wartime service with a bonus of two guineas every New Year’s Day and four guineas for eight years’ service: ‘It may appear, at first sight, for the State to pay, an enormous sum; but when it is considered that the average life of a Seamen is, from old age finished, at forty-five years, he cannot many years enjoy the annuity.’66 Nelson added as a warning that ‘whenever a large convoy [of merchant ships] is assembled at Portsmouth, [and] any [of ] our fleet [is] in port, not less than 1000 men desert from the Navy’.67 Some deserters were killed in the attempt, while others were caught afterwards. Like runaway slaves or apprentices, their descriptions were circulated and rewards for their capture offered. Captain John Clarke Searle on board the Venerable at Spithead sent a description of one seaman to Admiral Mark Milbanke in December 1803: ‘Charles Lane is aged about 29 years, stout made, 5 Feet Six Inches high; of a dark complexion, short dark hair, inclining to curl. Had on when he made his escape a short blue jacket, with a quantity of small white buttons close together, a blue waiscoat, & Trowsers. He has an aunt & a brother living at Gosport, & is well known both at Portsmouth and Gosport.’68 It would have been difficult for Charles Lane to hide in a place like Portsmouth, and his only chance would be to move right out of the area, yet he would probably still be easily identifiable as a seaman and in constant danger of being pressed. It was usually excessively harsh treatment or the yearning to see their family that drove men to risk the brutal reprisals and desert. When Samuel Leech was on board the Macedonian frigate off Spain at the end of 1810, punishments were so common that many men tried to desert, although, he said, ‘many others were kept from running away by the strength of their attachment to their old messmates and by the hope of better days’.69
For some, those better days never arrived. In mid-January 1807 William Skill, a former merchant seaman, fell overboard in the Adriatic and was drowned. Robert Wilson, a fellow seaman from the Unité, related his tragic story: ‘We pressed him out of the India fleet, just on his return from a three-year voyage, pleasing himself with the idea of soon beholding those he held most dear (a mother and sister) for whom he had brought presents many a long mile; and although in his time on board us, he had made away with most of his apparel for grog which he was fond of, yet the presents remained untouched; hoping one day or other to take them home himself.’70 Everything he had so carefully kept was auctioned off at the end of January, with the ship’s log simply stating, ‘Sold at the mast the effects of Wm Skill, seaman.’71
Map of Europe
THREE
SALT JUNK AND GROG
A deal of liquor found its way into the ship yesterday, many people were very drunk, and this morning the ship’s cook and his mate were so tipsy that neither the one, or the other, could put the fresh water into the copper to boil the fresh beef in.
Journal of Aaron Thomas for 7 July 17981
After a memorable meal on board HMS Brunswick in the West Indies in 1802, Lieutenant James Gardner was impelled to record the behaviour of Marine Lieutenant Augustus Field:
Our ship was full of rats, and one morning he caught four which he had baked in a pie with some pork chops. When it came to table he began greedily to eat, saying ‘What a treat! I shall dine like an alderman.’ One of our lieutenants (Geo. M. Bligh) got up from the table and threw his dinner up, which made Field say, ‘I shall not offend such delicate stomachs and shall finish my repast in my cabin,’ which he did and we wished the devil would choke him. When he had finished, he said one of the rats was not exactly to his taste as the flesh was black; but whether from a bruise or from disease, he could not say, but he should be more particular in future in the post mortem examination. I never was more sick in my life.2
Although seamen, marines and officers were given the same rations, lieutenants and above invariably supplemented their meals by buying better food, and ate rats only out of desperation or experimentation. Two years earlier in the West Indies, Lieutenant William Dillon was on board a French brig they had just captured: ‘The Diligent was full of rats. They were so numerous that the French seamen used to kill and cook them … But I could not be prevailed upon to taste any.’3
Midshipmen were a good deal poorer than the higher-rank officers, and they and many ordinary seamen were less squeamish about eating rats when the basic food was salt meat and hard-baked biscuits. The crew mostly subsisted on a monotonous diet, which Samuel Leech described:
As our fare was novel and so different from shore living, it was some time before I could get fully reconciled to it: it was composed of hard sea biscuit, fresh beef while in port, but salt pork and salt beef at sea, pea soup and burgoo. Burgoo, or, as it was sportively called, skillagallee, was oatmeal boiled in water to the consistency of hasty pudding. Sometimes we had cocoa instead of burgoo. Once a week we had flour and raisins served out, with which we made ‘duff ’ or pudding. To prepare these articles, each mess had its cook, who drew the provisions, made the duff, washed the mess kids [small wooden tubs], &c.4
The food may have been bad by the standards of today, and ignorance prevailed about what food was essential in preventing illness, but at least the seamen were fed, whatever the conditions prevailing on land. At home in Norfolk in 1792, Nelson wrote to the Duke of Clarence (future King William IV) and showed how concerned he was for the plight of the agricultural labourers and their low wages. He listed what a family earned and spent in one year and concluded that they could not make ends meet even if they were ‘to drink nothing but water, for beer our poor labourers never taste, unless they are tempted, which is too often the case, to go to the alehouse’.5 Dreadful weather leading to bad harvests also meant that the poorest starved, especially in times of war.
The uncle of William Wilkinson, writing from Dublin four months after the death of Nelson, thought that service in the navy was preferable to the difficulties of life for everyone else:
One thing is certain. Taxes will increase, necessaries advance in price, and every article of consumption or use grow dearer. These things to you happier beings of the floating region cause little sensation, who have a King for your banker, a King for your butler, brewer and baker, your wine excise free, no house rent, no hearth or window tax, no horse or dog duty to pay, who mounted on the wings of expensive gaiety have no cares, no anxieties other than birds of prey ever on the alert alluring or snaring those we call enemies within your fell grips, who notwithstanding cautious cunning often fall within the influence of your attraction, which like the devouring vortex of a comet, is inevitably fatal to all within its compass.6
When Daniel Goodall was a marine in 1805, his ship, HMS Flora, was with the North Sea fleet watching the Dutch coast, which was tedious work except when they returned to Yarmouth for supplies. ‘When we returned from a provisioning trip,’ Goodall related, ‘we invariably took with us to the fleet some thirty or forty live bullocks and an abundance of vegetables in bags, so that it was not without good reason that the North Sea station was called by sailors a full belly station.’7 He added: ‘But good rations could not reconcile us to dull and disagreeable work.’8
Appetites were never likely to be satisfied when food and alcohol were the high points of many a dull day, but Aaron Thomas writing in 1798 was certainly of the opinion that seamen went hungry: ‘How I have heard captains of men of war, boasting ashore, that the provisions allowed to sailors was more than they could eat – yesterday Lynn the armourer begged me to give him something to eat. This day my old servant D. came to me and said he had been hard laboring all day in the boats, and now had nothing to eat, he wished to have a little something
to eat, with his dry biscuits.’9 Over a decade later eighteen-year-old George Watson, serving in the Mediterranean, had similar grievances:
I was now become a proper man of war’s man. I could drink, fight, swear, &c. &c. with great eclat, and … was perfectly inured to toil. The greatest inconvenience I suffered from was hunger, whether that was owing to my youth, or to not having supplies equal to the labour we had to endure, I cannot determine; at any rate I never felt full, nor satisfied. This may appear strange to those who know the quantity of rations allowed a sailor on board of a King’s ship … but it should be recollected, such allowance has to serve a man, both for night and day, instead of day only; as a sailor, especially a boatman,* who has to work as much, by night as by day, and consequently as much inclined to eat.10
The biggest complaint was that the purser, responsible for provisions, gave short measure, as he only issued 14 ounces in a pound, creaming off 2 ounces for himself, a practice that was stopped after the 1797 mutinies. The type of provisions tended not to be an issue, since tastes in food were extremely conservative. Every seaman had a pound of bread and a gallon of beer a day. Each week he was also given 4 pounds of salt beef, 2 pounds of salt pork, 2 pints of dried pease, 1½ pints of oatmeal, 6 ounces of sugar, 6 ounces of butter and 12 ounces of cheese. As a daily ration this amounted to a pound of bread, a gallon of beer, ½ pound salt beef, ¼ pound salt pork, ¼ pint dried pease, 1/10 pint of oatmeal, 4/5 ounce of sugar, 4/5 ounce of butter and 1½ ounces of cheese. Even assuming that the seamen were given full measure and that everything was good enough to eat, this is barely sufficient to sustain a man doing hard physical labour, often in hostile weather conditions, and working shifts that were mostly four hours on and four hours off, through a twenty-four-hour period.
