Jack Tar

by Roy Adkins

  In February 1809 George King was at Spithead in the Melpomene and after a drunken spree on shore, he was paid prize-money which he immediately spent on liquor:

  As the ships boats usually went on shore on the impress service, I gave a pound note to one of my messmates to bring me off a gallon of rum which he accordingly did, about twelve at night, I being fast asleep in my hammock, my messmate Frederick Thomas brought me a quart basin full of rum and washed me. I sat up in my hammock and took a hearty drink and laid down; in a short time I began to feel it and immediately jumped out of my hammock and commenced drinking more but mixed with a little water. The morning following I was completely stupid with grog.115

  At that stage King was a marine, as was his messmate Thomas. The seamen and marines often smuggled spirits on board, and George Price believed that ‘a man of war is more like a gin shop than anything else’.116 In his general orders Captain Barlow of the Phoebe insisted that ‘It is strictly forbid to buy or sell grog … The boat keepers are to be accountable for any liquor smuggled into the ship in the boats.’117 However, sailors were ingenious smugglers and usually managed to bring liquor on board. While the Minerva was being repaired at Bombay, the crew were held in the Alexander hulk, and William Richardson said that they went frequently on shore and constantly smuggled drink on board by passing bladders and bottles from the boats into the lower deck through a porthole:

  Here the greatest indulgence was given to the ships company with plenty of liberty on shore and as they had received several sums of prize money previous to my joining the ship, plenty of hollands gin soon found its way on board from the shore. As the proper officers always attended at the gangway to see there was no spiritous liquors smuggled in when liberty men returned on board, they were greatly at a loss to find out how it was got into the ship. Little did they think of a scuttle hole on the orlop, abaft the main chains, for whenever liberty men came off they were sure to not let the boat reach the gangway, but only near the scuttle hole, then they passed in their bottles and bladders in a twinkling, where their messmates were waiting to receive them, then the boat was hauled up to the gangway and they went on board as innocent as if they had been doing nothing and this continued the whole time we were hulked on board her.118

  In 1801 Dr Trotter described some of the smuggling methods he had witnessed: ‘Singular strategems had lately been devised for carrying liquor into ships; for, in proportion to the vigilance of officers, cunning and invention are set to work. Vessels [containing alcohol] in the form and dress of a sugar loaf, and other articles, the small guts of animals, and bladders formed into the most fantastical shapes, and covered with silk or cotton, to be concealed in different parts of the female dress, have been all detected.’119 This smuggling of liquor was also recorded by Samuel Leech of the Macedonian:

  Were it not for the moral and physical ruin which follows its [alcohol’s] use, one might laugh at the various contrivances adopted to elude the vigilance of officers in their efforts to procure rum. Some of our men who belonged to the boat’s crews provided themselves with bladders; if left ashore by their officers for a few moments, they would slip into the first grocery, fill their bladders, and return with the spoil. Once by the ship’s side, the favorable moment was seized to pass the interdicted bladders into the port-holes, to some watchful shipmate, by whom it was carefully secreted, to be drunk at the first opportunity. The liberty to go on shore … was sure to be abused for drunken purposes.120

  It was not just the seamen who drank to excess, but also petty and commissioned officers, especially when they were at places where alcohol was plentiful and cheap. Writing to his wife Elizabeth from his ship the Saint George in March 1802, Lieutenant John Yule informed her that ‘We are at present cruising off the island of Saint Domingo [West Indies] merely to keep the ship’s company in health. If continually in harbour it is probable many might suffer from intoxication. The officers say the sailors die from drinking new rum; the sailors say the officers die from drinking old rum.’121 The West Indies were a major producer of rum, and while the Lapwing was there in 1798 the hard-drinking boatswain, John Dixon, and his wife took full advantage of it. Aaron Thomas constantly referred to their antics, and in early July he wrote:

  Our Boatswain and his wife went ashore on Anguilla on Friday last, on leave. They are a pair, whose principal failings are, that they will get drunk, whenever they can get the liquor. They both got drunk this last night, the woman was taken care of by a black girl, but the boatswain laid himself down in a boat which was hauled ashore under a manganeel tree. It rained in the night, which dropped off this poisonous tree on the Boatswain; the consequence is that now his hands are swollen, blistered and enflamed.122

  Jeffrey Raigersfeld noted that ‘Your Johnny Newcomes, who arrive fresh to the West Indies, when a shower of rain falls, are very apt to seek shelter under the fine spreading trees that grow by the roadside, some of which are poisonous, particularly the Machineel, so that if the rain which runs off drops upon your skin, a blister rises.’123 In mid-July Thomas recorded yet another incident: ‘The Boatswain’s wife was ashore, tipsey as usual. But as she had drunk porter, her speech was quite gone.’124

  Thomas’s journal presents a succession of drunken sprees on board the Lapwing, particularly by Robert Ridgway, the surgeon, Alexander Craer, the surgeon’s mate, William Dunn, a quarter gunner, John Dixon, the boatswain and the boatswain’s wife. At the end of July, he noted: ‘before 11 oClock this day, the doctor and gunner got drunk, the captain sent for the gunner into his cabin about the guns being loose. The Gunner came in, and fell against the tail of the foremost gun. Captain gave him a long, a piercing look, and then left him to get out of the cabin as well as he could.’125 Six months later things had become so serious that ‘our Boatswain and Surgeon in confinement for drunkenness, and both will have court martials’.126 In April 1799 the Lapwing chased and captured a French schooner, and the next day Thomas commented: ‘Our Gunner was so drunk last night, during the business of the chase, that he was speechless. Captain sent for him this day, stopped his grog, and threatened to put him in irons; however, he was drunk again this evening. Craer pissed under the halfdeck against the capstan, he being stupefyed drunk.’127

  The following month the boatswain was court-martialled: ‘At 7 A M the Vengeance fired a gun, and made a signal for a court martial. At 8 all our officers and several men went on board the Vengeance as witnesses for and against Dixon, the Boatswain of the Lapwing. He was tried by a court martial and sentenced to be broke,* for drunkenness and neglect of duty. He was left on board the Vengeance, and in her I suppose he will go to England.’128 Thomas claimed that Craer was given a certificate of service by the captain, in which it was stated that ‘he conducted himself with sobriety, and always obedient to command’.129 Thomas thought this was a huge joke, adding: ‘Craer was drunk 10 months, out of the 12, during the time he was with us, but the Captain signed this Sober certificate.’130 Even when the surgeon and his mates were not drunkards, seamen were reluctant to report sick, because they were not allowed grog or tobacco in the sick-bay.

  Too much alcohol was also the root of countless arguments and fights. The court martial of the Lapwing’s boatswain had little effect on others, and in August Thomas related another incident: ‘The Surgeon, Gunner, Captain’s Clerk, and Mr. Tildersley [Midshipman Thomas Tildesley] were all drinking grog together this evening in the clerk’s cabin. After they were strongly grogged, a general quarrel issued, which ended in the surgeon kicking the bum of the gunner, and the rest of the party shoving him across to his own cabin.’131 Drunkenness caused so many accidents that seamen often ended up in the care of the surgeon, or were even killed. During the winter of 1808–9 the Superb warship was iced up near Gothenburg until the spring, and the marine Thomas Rees, who was on board the Temeraire in the Baltic, heard what happened:

  What a dreadful description they gave to us of the time they had passed there, whilst blockading the port … The Superb had
lost a great number of men, as they would frequently slide over the ice to the shore, and getting intoxicated, fall asleep, never to wake again in this world. What a sorrowful sight it must have been, when their companions went to look for them, to find them in that shocking state, and their bodies sometimes cut in two by the keenness of the ice!132

  On special occasions, the seamen attempted to have a celebration despite their meagre rations, and Samuel Leech recorded the Christmas festivities at Lisbon in 1810 on board the Macedonian:

  The Sabbath was also a day of sensuality. True, we sometimes had the semblance of religious services … but usually it was observed more as a day of revelry than of worship. But at Christmas our ship presented a scene such as I had never imagined. The men were permitted to have their ‘full swing.’ Drunkenness ruled the ship. Nearly every man, with most of the officers, were in a state of beastly intoxication at night. Here, some were fighting, but were so insensibly drunk, they hardly knew whether they struck the guns or their opponents; yonder, a party were singing libidinous or bacchanalian songs, while all were laughing, cursing, swearing or hallooing; confusion reigned in glorious triumph; it was the very chaos of humanity.133

  From Malta, George Watson’s ship, the Fame, returned to England, but instead of being allowed to return home, he was transferred to the Eagle. While waiting for that ship to arrive, he and many others were detained on board the Trident guardship, where they spent Christmas:

  Christmas day arrived, a day kept with great festivity in a man of war, owing to there being generally on that day, a double allowance of grog, &c. given to the sailors; besides, they also provide themselves with many indulgencies for that memorable occasion, such as wine, plums for puddings, &c. &c. In the year that I am speaking of [1808], it fell upon a Sunday, and on that account, we ought to have set some limit to our carousals, but we did not; towards evening, the major part of us (the Fame’s) were half seas over, or better, and to a late hour kept up loud singing, (or rather roaring,) and many other demonstrations of infatuated joy. The officers and crew of the Trident, not accustomed to witness such extraordinary uproar and profligacy on so sacred a day, sent some of the marines to request us to moderate our outrageous festivity, and cease to shout in the manner we had done. This request was made with the greatest calmness and good nature, but answered very differently by us – We replied, ‘they might go to hell’.134

  On New Year’s Day 1814, the Orlando was off Smyrna in Turkey, and the seaman George King (who had by now changed ships several times) related that ‘The ships company had a week to ourselves … The whole ships company being at liberty to drink their fill and not forgetting [they did not forget] to pour the wine down the throats of sheep, goats, pigs, fowls &c. but no man in the ship attempted to run.’135

  Map of the Baltic

  FOUR

  FACING THE ELEMENTS

  The lightning was awfully grand, but at the same time dreadful to behold, flashing blue flame every moment in our faces, and making the darkness darker, while the hoarse thunders grumbled over us in terrible succession, loud enough to make the stoutest heart tremble.

  The seaman George Watson at the masthead of the Eagle during a Mediterranean storm1

  Enduring storms at sea was more perilous than facing the enemy, yet immense acts of bravery during such weather attracted no official gratitude. In a letter to his brother William after the fierce storm that followed the Battle of Trafalgar, Captain Edward Codrington summed up the challenge of such everyday hazards: ‘It is not fighting … which is the severest part of our life, it is the having to contend with the sudden changes of season, the war of elements, the dangers of a lee shore,* and so forth, which produce no food for honour or glory beyond the internal satisfaction of doing a duty we know to be most important, although passed by others unknown and unnoticed.’2

  Because they journeyed to every part of the globe rather than keeping to established trade routes, sailors in the navy faced extreme conditions more often than most. Nevertheless, James Prior, an Irish surgeon from County Antrim on board the Nisus frigate, had great faith in his ship’s ability to weather a storm:

  A frigate is the perfection of ship-building; her compactness, equipments, number of men, guns, and stores of every description, render her fit to carry the British flag to any part of the world, amid the conflicts either of elements or enemies. It is annoyance, more than danger, that makes a storm irksome: we cannot walk, stand, or sit, nor can we scarcely lye, at least with any prospect of repose, in this wooden castle. If there be any purgatory in this world, it is in the sufferings of a gale of wind. It is quite a season of lamentation and low spirits.3

  Barely a year old, the Nisus was in a good condition to cope with particularly bad weather off Madagascar:

  On the 19th of March [1811], about noon, we experienced a tremendous storm, exceeding, in violence, any I have felt during my naval career. During the evening and night, it increased so much in violence, that every rag of canvas was obliged to be taken in, to prevent being blown away. Daylight, next morning, found us lying-to under bare poles [the masts], the ship rolling violently, the sea breaking, occasionally, over the weather gang-way, the hatches battened down,* and the wind, in gusts, bursting upon us with incredible fury … I hurried on-deck to gain a mouthful of fresh air, supporting myself by clinging to the ropes of the weather bulwark. Here the scene, to any unwary landman, would have been truly awful.4

  In severe storms the only thing to be done was to keep the ship’s stern to the wind to prevent being rolled sideways and capsizing, but sometimes the huge waves whipped up by the wind would catch up with the ship. Off Toulon in November 1807, the four-year-old warship Repulse was hit by an enormous wave at the stern, which shattered the glass windows that lit the officers’ wardroom. Marine Captain Marmaduke Wybourn witnessed the terrifying scene:

  The galley fire was put out by it, and everything displaced everywhere; the men said the ship trembled fore and aft and everyone thought a thunder bolt had struck us … the wave burst in all our windows, window frames, woodwork etc. and rushing into our cabin, our mess room and every place at once, filled us all with consternation and we really thought we were going down, the crash was so great, which with the loud thunder, and all confusion, that no one had power to get away till washed in a heap together: tables, chairs, musical instruments, backgammon boxes etc., etc., all swimming about, the water above our knees before it got vent, when it rushed impetuously out between decks and half drowned all the sailors.5

  For once, the officers suffered most from the storm. ‘It afforded some mirth,’ Wybourn acknowledged, ‘the ludicrous figures we all cut when the Seamen came in to put all to rights, and see the extent of our mischief. We were of course wet thro’ and thro’.’6 The next day he added: ‘The ship exhibits a pretty scene – a perfect wreck at our end, and no glass to mend our windows … The sailors are no doubt enjoying the thoughts of all the officers suffering only … It is considered by seamen to be the most dangerous of any accident at sea, as the ship is of course broadest at the stern, and the weight of a large wave generally presses her so much that she cannot right again and goes to the bottom, stern foremost.’7

  Aaron Thomas described another incident in May 1794 while on board HMS Boston accompanying a convoy to Newfoundland: ‘The sea this day may with truth be said to run mountains high, the long tremendous swells, formed into mountains, broke over the Boston’s gangway, while the gunwhale on the larboard side lay under water. Some vessels of our convoy not half a mile from us buried some minutes from our sight.’8 Like Wybourn, he gave some idea of the damage that could occur:

  I have often wondered that artists do not exercise their talents in picturing a Captain’s cabin after a gale of wind. I can only account for it by supposing that few men of abilities make long voyages at sea. Quadrants, chairs, compasses, tables, quoins, guns, tackle, ports, maps, pistols, tomahawks, lanthorns, windows and quarter galleries – split, cracked, stoved, rended, dashed and bro
ke all to pieces, would form a good subject for a humorous limner. Possibly such a picture may be in existence but it has never fell my way.9

  A few days later, the Boston reached the Newfoundland Banks, with its notorious fogs:

  Our ship was enveloped in one of those fogs which eternally hover over the Banks. Fog guns were constantly fired, and a horn continually kept sounding to warn other vessels of our situation. A European, who has never been in this part of America, can have but a faint idea of these fogs. You frequently can see but a few yards before you, and by getting on deck for two hours you will get wet to the skin. The ship’s rigging and yard collect great quantities of these particles, which fall on deck in drops which would cover a half crown piece.10

  Some hours later Thomas was startled by the sight of an iceberg:

  For the first time in my life, I saw one of these awful and massive bulks, an island of ice. The fog was very thick and it was not more than half a mile from us. The Boston was going at the rate of six knots an hour, it passed us on the larboard side. I could not but look at it with horror and amazement, to see such an enormous mass floating in the midst of the Ocean … part of this frightful structure, had the Boston struck on it, would a been sufficient to a consigned her to a watery tomb.11