Sea Fever

by Sam Jefferson

  He was soon to be bitterly disillusioned. All efforts to tout The Regicide to London’s many theatres ended in failure. There was a very simple reason for this: his play was, on the whole, utter drivel, and the only person unable to see this was, apparently, the author. He was also infuriated by the disingenuousness of theatre managers who, instead of telling him outright that the play was garbage, tended to humour him in true English style. Thus Smollett was left simmering with frustration and indignation, convinced that he was the victim of racism due to his Scottish nationality. Some years later, when he was famous, he himself would sponsor the showing of his ‘masterpiece’ prompting this piece of drollery from a contemporary writer:

  Whoever read the Regicide, but swore

  The author wrote as man ne’er wrote before?

  Others for plots and underplots may call,

  Here’s the right answer – have no plot at all

  While Smollett was doing the rounds of the numerous theatres and generally getting into a terrible stew over his lack of recognition, his slender funds were rapidly dwindling and it wasn’t long before he was in an exceedingly parlous position. There is little doubt that this played a part in persuading him to sign up to serve as surgeon’s mate aboard the HMS Chichester, an 80-gun full-rigged ship, 155ft in length. If he stepped aboard this vessel an embittered and frustrated young playwright, he would have benefitted greatly from a glimpse into the future, for his experiences were to form the backbone of his first and most successful novel, Roderick Random, a story that follows the fortunes of a young Scottish gentleman and aspiring playwright as he tries to make his way in the world. It was a tale which was to establish him as one of the great writers of his time. Of course, he couldn’t see into the future, however, as he stepped aboard the HMS Chichester. She lay, fitting out on the Thames, and what he saw proceeded to make him very irritable. He noted the hideous conditions aboard, being particularly disgusted by the stench of ‘rancid cheese’ that engulfed his nostrils when he stepped below.

  The seafaring adventures of Roderick Random commence with the young hero being pressganged by a group of rogues. Now, whether this was the actual fate of Smollett will never be known, but what is beyond doubt is that many young men who strayed too close to the Thames found themselves beaten up and forced or ‘pressed’ into serving in the Georgian Navy at this time. The reason for this was simple: Britain had declared war with Spain, and every able-bodied man that could be found was needed to serve for king and country. It was October 1740 and Britain had been at war with Spain since 1739. The conflict nowadays is remembered more for its name, ‘The War of Jenkin’s Ear’, than anything else. Back then, however, it was a very serious affair as Spain, the ailing superpower, came into conflict with the increasingly rapacious and bold British merchants over trade and territories in the Caribbean, along with South and North America. Under the existing trade agreement, Spain allowed British merchants very limited rights to trade with their colonies, monitored by Spanish Guarda Costas – coastguards. Given the demand for British goods in these same colonies, this set up the ideal backdrop for smuggling and it wasn’t long before there was a thriving black market, which infuriated the Spanish authorities. In turn, the British were outraged by the brutal treatment meted out to the smugglers by the Guarda Costas and things came to a head – somewhat literally – when, following the boarding of the British trader Rebecca, a particularly sadistic member of the Guarda Costa seems to have chopped off the ear of the captain, Robert Jenkins. Captain Jenkins took the somewhat unusual step of pickling his severed ear and parading it in front of MPs in the House of Commons. There followed a period of intense agitation, which ultimately led to Robert Walpole, the peace-loving Prime Minister of the time, reluctantly declaring war with Spain. As the bells rang out across London in celebration of the start of a much longed for war, Walpole wryly noted: ‘They may ring their bells now; they will be wringing their hands before long.’

  This brings us back to Smollett, treading tentatively across the decks of HMS Chichester, and sniffing the putrid air of the ’tween decks with visible disgust. The Chichester was part of a great fleet that was being assembled with the intention of heading across to the Caribbean and teaching the Spaniards a lesson. This was no mean feat, for although the eighteenth century was to witness the rise of Britain as a naval superpower, in 1739 the navy was a somewhat shambolic institution. Walpole, as mentioned, was not terribly interested in war, and many of the great ships of the line were in a poor state of repair. There were other problems too; quite frankly, there simply weren’t enough men available to adequately staff the navy during wartime. This was to prove a persistent problem throughout the next century. The problem was that in peacetime, the Royal Navy only needed a kind of skeleton staff of around 10,000 mariners to run their ships. In wartime, the figure could rise to as much as 80,000. It is therefore hardly surprising that there was a deficit of sailors, and this was particularly true in 1739, as the navy endeavoured to fit out a fleet of 25 fighting ships, plus innumerable bomb ketches, store ships, fireships, and hospital ships. The only solution to this chronic shortage of personnel was impressment, whereby men were forcibly dragged aboard naval vessels, imprisoned, and signed up for lengthy periods of service against their will. The whole unpleasant procedure is described in Roderick Random thus:

  As I crossed Tower Wharf, a squat tawny fellow with a hanger by his side, and a cudgel in his hand came up to me, calling, ‘Yo ho! brother, you must come along with me.’ As I did not like his appearance, instead of answering his salutation, I quickened my pace, in hope of ridding myself of his company; upon which he whistled aloud, and immediately another sailor appeared before me, who laid hold of me by the collar, and began to drag me along. Not being in a humour to relish such treatment, I disengaged myself of the assailant, and, with one blow of my cudgel, laid him motionless on the ground; and perceiving myself surrounded in a trice by ten or a dozen more, exerted myself with such dexterity and success, that some of my opponents were fain to attack me with drawn cutlasses; and after an obstinate engagement, in which I received a large wound on my head, and another on my left cheek, I was disarmed, taken prisoner, and carried on board a pressing tender, where, after being pinioned like a malefactor, I was thrust down into the hold among a parcel of miserable wretches, the sight of whom well nigh distracted me. As the commanding officer had not humanity enough to order my wounds to be dressed, and I could not use my own hands, I desired one of my fellow captives who was unfettered, to take a handkerchief out of my pocket, and tie it round my head, to stop the bleeding. He pulled out my handkerchief, ’tis true, but instead of applying it to the use for which I designed it, went to the grating of the hatchway, and, with astonishing composure, sold it before my face to a bumboat woman then on board, for a quart of gin, with which he treated his companions, regardless of my circumstances and entreaties.

  Whether this truly was Smollett’s introduction to the navy, or whether he entered the service of his own volition will never be known. Whether or not he was impressed into service, it is abundantly clear that he was deeply unimpressed with the service and this unpropitious beginning set the template both for his early fictional and later factual accounts of his time in the navy. It is important to mention at this juncture that Smollett could often be quite a tricky character: a red-headed, somewhat fiery Scot, he could be very thinskinned when criticised, and revenge was often wrought with the pen, which in his hands became a lethal weapon, delivering some memorably vicious pieces of satire. In the navy, he found the perfect target for his savage disdain, and no one emerges from his reminisces on the subject with much credit.

  Smollett – either voluntarily or involuntarily – was now installed as surgeon’s second mate aboard the Chichester, a rather ancient, three-decked vessel dating back to 1695. She mounted around 80 guns and carried a quite staggering crew of 600. How all these men managed to pack into the Chichester’s modest 155 feet is not clear but, with so many people
living in such a confined space, there was certainly plenty of call for the surgeon. Although the vessel had not yet left London, the surgeon’s ‘cock pit’ as his working place was known in the navy, was already crammed with sick men. Scurvy, cholera, small-pox and distemper were all common problems in the service at this time – these were the days before a daily ration of lime juice was introduced to good effect – and it didn’t help that ships were often manned with men fresh from the gutter. Smollett gives a clear indication of the impossible working conditions in this makeshift sick bay in Roderick Random:

  I could not comprehend how it was possible for the attendants to come near those who hung on the inside towards the sides of the ship, in order to assist them, as they seemed barricaded by those who lay on the outside, and entirely out of the reach of all visitation; much less could I conceive how my friend Thompson [the surgeon’s second mate] would be able to administer clysters, that were ordered for some, in that situation; when I saw him thrust his wig in his pocket, and strip himself to his waistcoat in a moment, then creep on all fours under the hammocks of the sick, and, forcing up his bare pate between two, keep them asunder with one shoulder, until he had done his duty. Eager to learn the service, I desired he would give me leave to perform the next operation of that kind; and he consenting, I undressed myself after his example, and crawling along, the ship happened to roll: this motion alarming me, I laid hold of the first thing that came within my grasp with such violence, that I overturned it, and soon found, by the smell that issued upon me, that I had unlocked a box of the most delicious perfume. It was well for me that my nose was none of the most delicate, else I know not how I might have been affected by this vapour, which diffused itself all over the ship, to the utter discomposure of everybody who tarried on the same dock! neither was the consequence of this disgrace confined to my sense of smelling only; for I felt my misfortune more ways than one. That I might not, however, appear altogether disconcerted in this my first essay, I got up, and, pushing my head with great force between two hammocks, towards the middle, where the greatest resistance was, I made an opening indeed, but, not understanding the knack of dexterously turning my shoulder to maintain my advantage, had the mortification to find myself stuck up, as it were, in a pillory, and the weight of three or four people bearing on each side of my neck, so that I was in danger of strangulation. While I remained in this defenceless posture, one of the sick men, rendered peevish by his distemper, was so enraged at the smell I had occasioned and the rude shock he had received from me in my elevation, that, with many bitter reproaches, he seized me by the nose, which he tweaked so unmercifully, that I roared with anguish.

  There is little doubt that conditions were far from pleasant, and you have probably already gathered that Smollett viewed the navy with a gimlet eye and pulled no punches in describing it in all its grubby glory. Roderick Random went on to describe the filth, cruelty and ineptitude of the navy with undisguised glee. Captain Oakum is a brutal and brainless disciplinarian, who parades sick men on deck until they drop dead, and doles out numerous lashings with the cat o’ nine tails for almost any reason at all. Smollett’s navy is unclean, unfair and utterly unpleasant. His rather relentless highlighting of bad practice has unquestionably had a profound effect on the layman’s view that life aboard a naval vessel was all about ‘rum, sodomy and the lash’ as Winston Churchill so picturesquely put it many years later. This has led some revisionists to rather condemn Smollett for exaggerating. Yet they are overlooking the fact that he was writing, if not fiction, an embellished and exaggerated version of his own experiences for comic effect, in order to sell his book. Another factor that doubtless contributed to Smollett’s rather jaded view of the navy was that he took part in one of the most disastrous campaigns in its history. This was the Seige of Cartagena, a disaster that ensured that the War of Jenkin’s Ear was a total pig’s ear.

  The plan was a simple one: HMS Chichester was part of a great fleet Britain had assembled, which was to sally forth across the Atlantic. Arriving in Port Royal, Jamaica, the fleet would be bolstered by further troops and ships from the Caribbean fleet and, under the joint command of Admiral Vernon, who ran the naval side of things, and General Cathcart, who would deal with the troops, the fleet would proceed to seize the main Spanish trading posts in the Caribbean. The major targets were identified as Havana in Cuba, Portobello in what is now Panama and Cartagena in modern day Colombia. British confidence was buoyed by an earlier success in 1739, which had seen Vernon, then vice admiral, with a force of six ships, briefly take Portobello from the Spaniards. Celebrations of this achievement were wild and disproportionate; commemorative medals of Vernon were produced and a famous road in London still bears the name of this brief and rather pointless victory. The huge fleet gathering in London was being despatched to finish the job off.

  Things did not go well from the start: there were long delays in the preparations. The truth was that it was incredibly difficult to find enough sailors and troops to support such an epic mission, and there were further hold-ups while the fleet awaited a favourable wind. In total, three months were lost and Smollett finally took leave of the English coastline with a heavy heart. It was not long before they were in even more trouble, as he recalls thus:

  It was not without great mortification I saw myself on the point of being transported to such a distant and unhealthy climate, destitute of every convenience that could render such a voyage supportable, and under the dominion of an arbitrary tyrant, whose command was almost intolerable; however, as these complaints were common to a great many on board, I resolved to submit patiently to my fate, and contrive to make myself as easy as the nature of the case would allow. We got out of the channel with a prosperous breeze, which died away, leaving us becalmed about fifty leagues to the westward of the Lizard: but this state of inaction did not last long; for next night our maintop-sail was split by the wind, which, in the morning, increased to a hurricane. I was awakened by a most horrible din, occasioned by the play of the gun carriages upon the decks above, the cracking of cabins, the howling of the wind through the shrouds, the confused noise of the ship’s crew, the pipes of the boatswain and his mates, the trumpets of the lieutenants, and the clanking of the chain pumps. I went above; but if my sense of hearing was startled before, how must my sight have been appalled in beholding the effects of the storm! The sea was swelled into billows mountain-high, on the top of which our ship sometimes hung as if it were about to be precipitated to the abyss below! Sometimes we sank between two waves that rose on each side higher than our topmast-head, and threatened by dashing together to overwhelm us in a moment! Of all our fleet, consisting of a hundred and fifty sail, scarce twelve appeared, and these driving under their bare poles, at the mercy of the tempest. At length the mast of one of them gave way, and tumbled overboard with a hideous crash! Nor was the prospect in our own ship much more agreeable; a number of officers and sailors ran backward and forward with distraction in their looks, halloaing to one another, and undetermined what they should attend to first. Some clung to the yards, endeavouring to unbend the sails that were split into a thousand pieces flapping in the wind; others tried to furl those which were yet whole, while the masts, at every pitch, bent and quivered like twigs, as if they would have shivered into innumerable splinters! While I considered this scene with equal terror and astonishment, one of the main braces broke, by the shock whereof two sailors were flung from the yard’s arm into the sea, where they perished.

  After this alarming start, things settled down and the fleet made stately progress across the Atlantic. In his role of surgeon’s second mate, Smollett would have been far from idle, for, as the great ship drifted into warmer latitudes and the temperature rose, so too did the number of men on the sick list, which was only kept under control by the steady flow of people dying. For every day of the Chichester’s 54-day transatlantic crossing, a man died and was unceremoniously dumped over the side. Smollett’s daily routine was an endless round of tendi
ng to the sick and dying; bleeding, dressing wounds and emptying the putrid chamber pots. In Roderick Random, this routine is broken by a disastrous breakdown in the relationship between the physician, Doctor Mackshane, and the surgeons, Thompson, Random, and the somewhat verbose Welshman, Morgan. This eventually results in Morgan and Random being disciplined and imprisoned, and Thompson throwing himself overboard in order to escape this humiliating treatment. Although it is doubtful there was any such a dramatic rift between the physician and his staff in real life, what is certainly true is that one man did indeed throw himself overboard and drowned, ‘after undergoing the shameful discipline of the ship’ as Smollett noted. All the while, Smollett was absorbing and assimilating every aspect of the seedy existence of life aboard ship, and his later writings were able to bring to life the camaraderie, bawdy humour and discomfort in a way few would match for realism and wit until Cooper, Marryat and Melville took up their pens many years later.

  After many weeks of drifting, the fleet finally made its landfall, the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe slowly materialising through the clouds. It must have felt like the promised land, although Smollett makes no mention of any feelings of wonder or joy. Perhaps it was because, at that time, the Caribbean’s greatest claim to fame was not so much pristine beaches and azure waters as yellow fever, malaria, despair and death. As a surgeon, Smollett knew that his work had only just begun. From here, the fleet threaded through the Leeward Islands to the neutral island of Dominica, where provisions and much needed fresh water supplies were replenished. It was at this point that General Cathcart, leader of the military arm of the planned offensive, died. This was a significant loss, and one that was to have a huge bearing on the eventual outcome of the mission. He was replaced by the rather inexperienced General Wentworth, ‘an officer of neither knowledge, weight nor self confidence to conduct an enterprise of such importance,’ as Smollett noted. The fleet then headed to Port Royal, Jamaica to prepare for action, but not before it had encountered a detachment of five French warships off the island of St Christopher (now known as St Kitts). Although France and England were not at war, the decision was taken to send a squadron of six ships to investigate. Before long, shots were exchanged and soon a full-scale naval battle was in progress. Smollett described it with disgust: