In 1830 he resigned the command of the Ariadne, a move not looked upon favourably at a time when there were captains queuing up for a commission, and it was arguably this rash move that ensured he never again achieved a command in the Royal Navy, though he sometimes missed the service. The 1830s were to be typified by restless wanderings as Marryat desperately sought to find his niche. He tried his hand as editor of the Metropolitan magazine, dabbled with becoming an MP, travelled to the US and enjoyed many revels with London’s artistic community, becoming firm friends with his literary rival Charles Dickens in the process. All the while the list of books he published continued to grow, as did his fame. Newton Forster, Peter Simple and Mr Midshipman Easy were perhaps the best works of these years and all feature swashbuckling tales, rambling plotlines and rapier wit. They were each major hits, making him one of the top-selling authors of his era.
He never returned to the sea, although he often seemed poised to do so. By the 1840s his stock of tales was running dry. He had other problems too: his marriage was not a particularly happy one, this despite – or perhaps because of – the couple having five children. Another problem was money: like many a sailor before him, he was generous to a fault and seemed to run through his substantial fortune at a rate of knots. It was time for a reinvention, and after adventure in North America and a year spent in Brussels, Marryat returned to his country home in Langham, Norfolk after agreeing to separate from his wife. Here he indulged in the simple pleasures of life in the country surrounded by his children. Mounting his favourite horse, Dumpling, he would spend his days surveying his property and dreaming up elaborate methods of wasting his dwindling fortune. He took to writing children’s stories and proved himself very adept. His Children of the New Forest and Masterman Ready have both stood the test of time.
Marryat had much to be proud of as he reflected back over his turbulent life, yet even then he seems to have had a sneaking suspicion that history would overlook him to some extent. He had already endured the chagrin of seeing his friend and rival Dickens overtake him as the dominant novelist of the era. In naval terms, Marryat also felt thwarted: for all his heroism as a youth, history had dictated that he could never achieve the greatness of Cochrane and he felt that the Admiralty had for many years passed him over. The event that finally broke his health and led to his death was a visit to the Admiralty in London in 1847 to enquire about the possibility of a new command, or some kind of pension, or at least further recognition of his services, particularly in Burma. His requests were brushed aside and Marryat was so livid that he lost his temper, bursting several blood vessels and suffering an internal haemorrhage. This was a recurrence of the old complaint that had laid him up many years before while serving on the Espiegle and Newcastle. Weakened by many years of overexertion, it was now to prove fatal. His health and spirits took a further tumble when his eldest surviving son Frederick, who was serving as second lieutenant aboard HMS Avenger, was lost when the vessel was wrecked in the Mediterranean. This was a final shattering blow for Marryat Senior and he returned to Langham, where he died in August 1848.
News of his death was largely greeted with indifference by the British public, who had come to view him as little more than a writer of children’s books and adventure novels, and his memory gradually faded to the point where he is merely a literary footnote. Yet time and fashion have been unjust to Marryat; and the resurgence of naval literature covering this era has highlighted what a talented chronicler he was of this heroic age. His characters, the action he depicts and the bitter cynicism he uses to describe it are all so unquestionably real that his novels are not only hugely entertaining, but vital pieces of British history, which serve to preserve and bring alive a fascinating period of war in a manner no one has been able to do since.
Perhaps what really sets Marryat apart is the fact that although he loved the navy and served it faithfully, he certainly did not love the service blindly and many years of witnessing the blundering incompetence of his seniors sharpened his ready wit to the keenness of a dagger. He also saw that lionhearted heroism and absurdity went hand in hand and this made his depiction of the navy far more ‘real’ than later, more glamourised novels. It is perhaps best to close this chapter with a passage from The King’s Own, which perfectly encapsulates Marryat’s cynicism and affection for the service in equal measure. You can easily visualise his sneer as he penned these lines:
The squadron of men-of-war and transports was collected, the commodore’s flag hoisted, and the expedition sailed with most secret orders, which, as usual, were as well known to the enemy, and everybody in England, as they were to those by whom they were given. It is the characteristic of our nation, that we scorn to take any unfair advantage, or reap any benefit, by keeping our intentions a secret. We imitate the conduct of that English tar, who, having entered a fort, and meeting a Spanish officer without his sword, being providentially supplied with two cutlasses himself, immediately offered him one, that they might engage on fair terms.
The idea is generous, but not wise. But I rather imagine that this want of secrecy arises from all matters of importance being arranged by cabinet councils. In the multitude of counsellors there may be wisdom, but there certainly is not secrecy.
On the arrival of the squadron at the point of attack, a few more days were thrown away, – probably upon the same generous principle of allowing the enemy sufficient time for preparation.
John Masefield
The seasick sailor
I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking.
Masefield’s Sea Fever
Surely no poetry or prose ever written evokes the great beauty, mystery and romance of the sea with more pith and elegance than John Masefield’s classic poem ‘Sea Fever’. Since its publication in 1903, this short verse has become almost a mantra for sailors from all walks of life and its beautiful depiction of an almost irresistible call of the sea must have seduced many a hesitant landsman out onto the water for the first time. The poem is perhaps Masefield’s best-remembered work, yet he penned many other poems, novels and short stories and, as often as not, he returned to the theme of tall ships and the sea for inspiration, often with great success. His narratives of day to day life at sea in the twilight of the tall-ship era bring the subject matter to life in a way that many have struggled to do either before or since: the roughness, simple humour and superstition of sailors are more closely observed and lifelike than anything many more celebrated writers of maritime literature ever managed. He was also able to convey the joy of a ship underway, and the utter misery of actually serving aboard that same vessel, better than almost anyone else.
With this in mind, it is perhaps understandable that one would have expected Masefield to be a crusty old sea dog. The kind of leathery-skinned old sailor who, having rounded the Horn a score of times and more, had retired to some rustic fisherman’s cottage, reeking of Stockholm tar and hemp, in order to scribble down his musings. Yet this was not the case. Masefield only ever undertook a single tall-ship passage from Cardiff to Iquique, Chile in 1894 during which he was violently seasick and often desperately unhappy. At the conclusion of the passage he was invalided home from Valparaiso and, despite much pressure from his family to return to the sea, he fled the water, and home for that matter, going on the run in the US and becoming a vagrant, then a barman, then working as sweated labour in a carpet factory in Yonkers, upstate New York.
Despite these hardships ashore, the young Masefield still successfully managed to evade the call of the sea, and it was only when he settled to writing a couple of years after these adventures that the oceans beckoned him once again. By the 1900s his poetry and prose on the subject were beginning to bring him great acclaim and the British public looked up to see
who this champion poet, sailor and salt-encrusted spinner of yarns really was, at which point Masefield felt himself very much at a disadvantage. As he reflected in 1907, when his career was taking off: ‘I am, quite frankly, a fraud and have very little sea experience’. It is perhaps this that explains his reticence when it came to writing, or talking, about his own short seafaring career. He often dismissed his early life by simply describing it as ‘squalid’, yet by dismissing it, he did himself an injustice and, in some circles, allowed a fallacy to be perpetuated. One only has to read some of Masefield’s seafaring tales to realise that here is a man who understood the sea and ships thoroughly: from the technicalities of sailing a tall ship through to an appreciation of the sea itself.
Masefield may never have commanded ships like his contemporary Joseph Conrad, but his alienation from the subject meant that he could convey, better than perhaps anyone, the great contradiction of life at sea: the constant knife-edge between beauty and brutality; exhilaration and terror; the excitement and utter tedium that make up a sailor’s existence. Indeed, perhaps unwittingly, Masefield himself had become a perfect microcosm of that contradiction. To understand why, we must learn more about the man and his connection with the sea.
Masefield was born in 1878, the third of six children. His father was a solicitor and the family lived in something of a rural idyll near the town of Ledbury, in Herefordshire, many miles from the sea. John was a naturally dreamy child and the beautiful countryside ably abetted his lively imagination. Although he was far inland, it was to be the waterways surrounding the area that first captured his vivid imagination, as he later recalled:
Of all the countless beauty spread before me, in childhood, the ponds, the springs, the brooks, the varying lovely river with its bewitching mill stream, were among the most dearly loved.
Masefield was also fascinated by the canal, which ran close to his house, and watched with wonder at the boats passing by his home, the leisurely horse ahead of the barge and the captain busy about the decks. He also recalls being rather traumatised when the canal was closed and the narrow waterway filled with rubble. It was the first of many rude shocks for the youngster, as in 1885 his mother died rather suddenly following a bout of pneumonia. Following this, John and his five siblings were placed under the supervision of a nanny, who John loathed and once stabbed with a fork. Only six years later, his father, who had spiralled into a terrible mental and physical decline after his wife’s death, followed her to an early grave, leaving six orphans. With both parents gone, such extravagances as a nanny were out of the question, and the Masefields were fortunate to be taken into the care of Uncle William, his father’s brother and his wife, Aunt Kate. Although the couple were evidently generous to take on such a burden, Kate had little tolerance for John.
Now aged 13, John was a sensitive soul and already harboured dreams of becoming a writer. To Kate, such a tenuous profession was beyond the pale and she was often aggressively dismissive in her attempts to discourage the boy. It was perhaps in an endeavour to crush the youngster’s literary tendencies that, in the summer of 1891, the decision was taken to sign Masefield up as an apprentice aboard the HMS Conway, a school ship lying on the River Mersey and set up expressly to prepare young men for a seafaring career. Masefield, however reluctantly, went down to the sea for the first time.
The HMS Conway almost deserves a book in her own right. Indeed, a number have been written, not least by Masefield himself. The Conway was permanently stationed in the river and had been converted to a school ship after serving for many years in the Royal Navy as a ship of the line under the name HMS Nile, an old relic of Nelson’s navy. She was eventually destroyed after grounding in the Menai Straits in 1956. Masefield came to know her intimately in the two and a bit years he served aboard her from 1891–93. She was set up expressly to educate youngsters who wished to become officers in the Merchant and Royal navies and, to this end, classes were given with an emphasis on navigation, meteorology and seamanship. In addition to this, the usual tasks of running a ship, such as pumping, swabbing and polishing brass were also carried out. At the end of the working day, pupils remained aboard the ship, sleeping in hammocks slung up in the ’tween decks and taken down every morning. It was unquestionably rather a strange and claustrophobic existence and it is perhaps understandable that Masefield didn’t take to it at first, ‘The tone of the ship was infamous. Theft, bullying, barratry, sodomy, and even viler vice were rampant.’
This is a fairly damning assessment, and given that Masefield was the youngest pupil aboard when he first joined, things must have been even more miserable. His experiences are recalled in his book New Chum, a short autobiographical piece that almost puts the teeth on edge it is so painful to read, as Masefield recalls the bewilderment, loneliness and systematic bullying that came his way in his first few weeks aboard. Perhaps what is most sad is that it marks the beginning of Masefield’s love/hate relationship with the sea, for even as he documents this miserable existence, he tries to put a brave face on things, does his best to fit in and works hard to please. Thus, after a depressing first meal where he is vilified by his messmates for allowing the butter to be stolen, he still manages to remain strangely optimistic as he looks out upon the river:
My heart was still young enough to bounce up after coming down. The river was exquisitely new and beautiful, the most interesting thing I had ever seen. The fact I was on a ship, in a mess, on a gun deck, one of a ship’s company, was overwhelming.
Newcomers to this singular institution were known as ‘new chums’ and were treated with utter disdain by their superiors, yet gradually Masefield began to find his feet aboard the Conway. He was fortunate to be befriended in the first few days by an older boy, HB Meiklejohn, whom he idolised. HB slept in the hammock next to him and always asked Masefield to tell him a ghost story after they had turned in. This was a source of great pleasure to Masefield. He also enjoyed going aloft into the rigging of the Conway whenever he got the chance, and he loved the solitude of the cross trees. It was during one of these forays aloft that his imagination was first fired by the sight of a tall ship, the Wanderer, which he described as:
… much the finest ship now in dock. It struck into my mind as a name of beauty, as a sort of seagull of grace there. The Wanderer, the more I thought of the name, the more wonderful it seemed. It suggested skies of desolation, with a planet; seas of loneliness with that ship in sail.
It was the Wanderer that was to provide young Masefield with the first hint that there was an even crueller, harsher yet more beautiful world outside the Conway, for a couple of weeks later she left the Mersey on her maiden voyage. That night the wind blew fearfully from the north, and Masefield lay in his hammock aboard the Conway as she groaned and strained at her anchor, all the while fearing the worst for the beautiful Wanderer, battling gallantly into the teeth of this equinoctial gale in the Irish Sea. The following day, his fears were confirmed, for the Wanderer was back in the Mersey, her masts badly damaged and her skipper dead after being hit by a falling yard. Masefield described the scene of her return with awe:
At an instant, the fog in the lower Sloyne went, and the river there brightened. The Wanderer came out of the greyness into sunlight as a thing of such beauty as the world can seldom show … She had been lopped of her upper cross trees and the wreck of her upper spars was lashed in her lower rigging. As she turned, her tattered sails (nearly all were tattered) suddenly shone all over her; her beautiful sheer, with its painted ports shone. I had seen nothing like her in all my life and knew, then, that something had happened in a world not quite ours.
Afterwards the ship was always labelled an unlucky or ‘hoodoo’ ship in sailor’s terms and she was dogged by death, wreck and misfortune throughout her life. Given the powerful impression she had made on the youngster, it is perhaps unsurprising that she provided the inspiration, and title, for one of Masefield’s best-known poems in later years.
In the meantime, Masefield continued to
adjust to life aboard the Conway and prepare for his own seafaring career. There were other consolations too. As time went by, Masefield became well acquainted with one of his seamanship instructors, Wally Blair. Blair was a true seadog who had served for many years aboard the China tea clippers, and he could sometimes be persuaded to spin a few yarns of the saltiest sort from his time at sea, transporting his young audience to the hazy shores of the Min River or skimming before the south-east trade winds down to Mauritius, stunsails set alow and aloft. Such tales would hold young Masefield entranced, and a number of them were included or adapted in his later works. For a time, things looked promising for the aspiring sailor, although the unconventional life aboard the Conway began to envelop the youngster to the detriment of his literary ambitions, as Masefield himself noted:
Sea Fever Page 21
