The economic problems when Lewrie got home were true. Taxes were high, wages had not kept pace, the Industrial Revolution had been jump-started by the need for mountains of war materiel. Almost overnight, a tranquil, pastoral, rural England was ripped from its doldrums into the Steam and Machine Age, and with Enclosure Acts stealing poor crofters' common lands drove a horde of displaced farm workers into the cities and manufacturies. Later, this exodus would give rise to the squalor, wage slavery, oppressive day-labourer poverty, and other evils resulting that Dickens wrote of in his condemning novels of the 1840s and 1850s.
With all this upheaval, following democratic revolutions in the former American Colonies and the republican revolt in France, and now being exported by force-of-arms by French conquests to the rest of Europe (mostly welcomed in the beginning by the Common People who got conquered!) it was no wonder that England and the British Isles looked more than ready for a social explosion from the bottom up!
The only people who could vote were those who earned, or owned property worth, Ј100 per annum. In some "Rotten Boroughs," and in more than a few normal, the number of voters were as few as thirty, perhaps twelve, or a mere three or five! The power-holding voters elected their own kind-the educated, land-holding, well-to-do, even the titled, or the sons and son-in-laws of such, who were easily controlled. The so-called House of Commons was hardly representative of the vast bulk of voteless commoners back then; though there were some progressive New Men who championed commoners' rights, such as Sir Samuel Whitbread, "the Ale King"-who was rumoured to have been seen conferring with some mutineers near the Nore in the beginning!
There was already an uprising in Ireland, without the expected French arms and troops, and Anglo-Irish tenant landlords, overseers for the absentee landlords (such as Proteus's first captain), and Protestants were being burned out or "refugeed" to Dublin. The "Houghers" and the White Boys that Furfy and Desmond mentioned were irregular partisans (pre-IRA) who punished the rich, oppressive, and uncaring; burning, plundering, and ham-stringing (houghing) livestock. British troops and Anglo-Irish militia units quite gleefully returned the favour all over the countryside. The Irish language, music, legends, dances, and the Catholic religion were banned; their bards, priests, teachers, and leaders reduced to being homeless "hedge-folk," liable to arrest, hanging, prison terms, or transportation for life overseas. All while the songs and stories of Ossian and O'Carolan were madly popular with the English! Great stuff for making the British Isles feel special, and different from "feelthy frog-eatin' Frenchies"-but not good enough for their original owners, the Irish and the Scots!
Binns, Thelwall, Place, Priestley, and Thomas Paine (now exiled in France!) were merely a few of the influential men who spoke and wrote for more freedoms, and were harried by the Crown, every meeting broken up by hired government mobs ordered by Tory government ministers like Pitt and Dundas, and prosecuted by the Duke of Portland. Men like the poet Samuel Coleridge, a huge admirer of the American and French Revolutions, saw which way the wind was blowing and ducked for cover- silenced and intimidated. Reformation of politics wasn't fashionable any longer-and was too dangerous for dilettantes.
The real danger came from the many more anonymous writers and printers of penny tracts, of a true rebellious, blood-thirsty nature, who called for real radicalism-even if everything had to go up in flames!
And as industry grew by leaps-and-bounds, so did the first tentative workers' guilds (not owners guilds) and trade unions, although the government had outlawed them. Many a tavern, pub, music hall, coffee house, and printing shop was a forum for dissent and a fertile Petri dish for revolutionary fervour.
In the spring of 1797, therefore, England had never been closer to massive uprisings of the Mob, the Have-Nots, the Voiceless. And the war had just resulted in the introduction of the first-ever income tax! Even middle-class shopowners and tenant farmers could be disaffected!
Which is why books like James Dugan's, The Great Mutiny, and Mr. Johnathon Neale's, The Cutlass And The Lash, which cover the Spithead and Nore mutinies, are not catalogued under Naval History, but can be found under Industrial Relations!
The first mutiny in Channel Fleet at Spithead and later down the coast at Plymouth scared the Be-Jesus out of everybody, though it was, as I wrote of it, a rather respectful and dignified "jack-up," a strike without smashed machinery, punishment for scabs (for the simple reason that no one in his right mind would trade places with sailors, in those days!), or threats against the nation. No one was hanged when it was over, and the principal organiser, speaker, and representative-Valentine Joyce-went on to participate in many battles. There was no talk of revolution. The Duke of Portland's agents sifted and probed all over Portsmouth and could find no sign that it had been sponsored by anyone ashore, or from overseas either.
The Spithead Mutiny was well-organised; the ships involved were united by prior service and contact because they had been based together, sailed together, and worked and fought together for several years.
Admiral Lord Howe-"Black Dick, the Seaman's Friend"-met a respectful, pleasant reception when he went down, at long last, to sit with the delegates and settle things. Whatever sentiments among those (for the most part) worthless Quota Men or the infiltrators from the United Irishmen never arose. It was strictly over conditions, money, shore leave, and such that they'd mutinied, and they were intelligent enough to keep it that way.
By the way, the pay rise wasn't much, a few more shillings per month for all. The Victualling Board still tried to foist off their flour for fresh meat, but the weights and measures were altered, and they got rid of the worst officers-Lord Bridport among them. All officers had been sent ashore at Spithead and Plymouth, and Admiral Howe and the delegates listed officers and mates to be denied a return by the posts they held, not their names. Without formal courts-martial and lower-class common seamen as witnesses against the Quality, their reputations remained intact. And, as I related, it only applied down at Channel Fleet, a thing only to be abided by HM government once!
This caused problems later. If Lieutenant Algy Whiphand was the First Officer of HMS Flagellant and got turned out because he was born a brutal, wall-eyed bastard, he's still free and in good odour with Admiralty when assigned to another ship, since his name was not put on paper, only his position. And, years later, if he runs into some mutineers from Flagellant aboard HMS Pederasty, and he has a long memory, then God help the former mutineers!
There were also some senior officers who got "yellow squadroned" as unfit for future sea commissions; the Spithead Mutiny at least weeded out a fair number of "gummers" and overaged ninnies who weren't worth a pinch o' pig-shit already, and action was taken about the real bastards who delighted in abusing their crews. But it didn't cull many of the middle and lower-ranks who'd go on to command ships later-those who were of the "off-with-their-heads" persuasion to start with, and were utterly convinced, after the mutinies, that their sailors were the scum of the earth forevermore.
Lewrie met quite a few real people in this book, such as Commissioner Proby at Chatham, who really did christen HMS Bellerophon on a night of winter gales, after she'd launched herself! Whether Proby really believed the sentiments I gave him (for dramatic effect) I do not know, and I'll thank his family to keep a cool head and lose the phone number of their solicitors if I portrayed him as more romantic or mystic than he really was. Evan Nepean's descendants too.
Vice-Admiral Buckner and Commissioner Captain Hartwell at the Nore were real people too. Poor Buckner, he really did command all, and nothing, no matter his vaunting title. Admiralty lost patience with him 'round the beginning of June 1797, and shipped Admiral Lord Keith down to dictate in their name, whilst still signing orders in Buckner's name; but the old fellow was relieved soon after it ended. Thomas McCann and Richard Parker…
In Dugan's The Great Mutiny (the year-long loan of which I am most heartily grateful for from Bob Enrione's personal collection!) Thomas McCann was limned as a loose can
non. He'd been in HMS Sandwich but had been sent ashore to the naval hospital for skin ulcers, where he railed against almost everything, though his main complaint was the quality of the beer, and hoisted a red flag from the hospital's roof! McCann was such an irritating and fiery rabble-rouser that, towards the end of the mutiny, he was kicked off his own ship, and none other would accept him aboard, sure every man-jack would be hanged if found within a mile of him. And he was the irksome sort who could turn missionaries into mass-murderers! That incident when McCann demanded the arms-chest keys-that really occurred, but aboard Captain William "Breadfruit" Bligh's HMS Director (3rd Rate, 64-gun). Bligh told him rather calmly (given his allergic reaction to mutiny by then!) that he couldn't have them, and McCann went bug-eyed, "snot-slingin' " nuts, howling, "By God, was I in Director I'd have the arms-chest keys!" Though he was, at the moment, aboard that ship and armed to the teeth to boot!
Richard Parker was a more enigmatic character, because no one I could find for research knew much about him. Richard Parker had entered the Navy young, had been a Master's Mate, perhaps a Midshipman, and was reputed to have gained a Lieutenant's commission, before challenging his captain, Edward Riou, to a duel! Dismissed from the service, Parker tried his hand as a private tutor, teacher, and schoolmaster, essayed a few commercial pursuits, but failed at each. He last enlisted under his own name in Scotland, was now married, and deep in debt. He wangled a Ј30 Joining Bounty to support his wife while he was at sea-a main-well job of negotiating, that-and was in HMS Sandwich.
There is no record that Parker ever called himself the President of the " Floating Republic " or Admiral of the Nore Fleet; he must have had some sense, after all! He did sign himself as the President of the Fleet Delegates though, which was enough to get him hung in the end.
After being tossed out of the Royal Navy, Richard Parker simply must have been infected with radical (small R) republican grievances. As a failed "gentleman" who could not make a decent living, his grudge against Society must have been stoked by London Corresponding Society newspapers and tracts, to a certain extent-though not, perhaps, as red-hot as Bales's/ Rolston's grudges. In fact, compared to the majority of the Fleet Delegates, Parker might have been considered a moderate! He was educated and literate, more so than the rest, able to pen a telling letter, and the perfect choice of the wild-eyed radicals who appointed him spokesman and president. Later, for trying to quell the greater foolishnesses of his fellow delegates, he was punished by the end of his presidency every night at eight bells, re-elected every morning at eight bells, so they could keep him
under their thumbs!
It was Parker, though, whose limited knowledge of legislation and his misperceptions, (from what I could gather) who led the mutineers into thinking the Acts of Parliament settling the Spithead Mutiny were mere Orders-in-Council or, even if a real Act or Acts, good but for a year-and-a-day. Poor, misguided fellow-he even failed when acting as his own attorney at his court martial; victim of his belief that he was capable. And a man who did not lead, quite as much as he was pushed from below!
"A British naval historian told the author (James Dugan) in 1963, '… Ah, the Nore! Nobody will ever understand the Nore!' "
Compared to Spithead, the Nore Mutiny was a disorganised mess and a lot more violent. None of the mutineers were as familiar with each other as the Channel Fleet and Spithead ships had been. The comment has been made that Spithead was "leaders looking for supporters"… whilst the Nore was a disgruntled "herd" looking for leaders; and they found people like McCann and Parker and other firebrands-to their great loss.
It was brawling and violent from the outset, with other ships and the shore being fired upon. Just after Proteus escaped, and those last few North Sea Fleet ships from Great Yarmouth had come down to be part of the mutiny, effigies of Pitt and Dundas were hung from the yardarms aboard HMS Sandwich. Waverers, "Perjurers to the Oath," and the remaining midshipmen, petty officers, and senior Marines were ducked by hauling them up "two-blocked" to the main-course yard, then let go to sink deep in the harbour water as punishment. Some were flogged, as Rolston threatened, and shown round the anchorage with cries of "here is a bloody sergeant (bosun, midshipman, etc)."
For a time, it looked as if the Nore Mutiny might topple the government. A regiment near Woolwich and the Arsenal did wobble in their discipline and loyalty; troops in Sheerness and Chatham did commingle with mutineer sailors. Ships anchored below the Tilbury forts on the Thames, not twelve miles below the Pool of London, did join the mutiny. At one time, seventeen ships of the line and well over ten thousand men were involved, blockaded London 's vital upriver imports, the downriver export trade, and seized nearly two hundred merchant ships.
Lewrie was lucky in escaping when he did, for a few days later, the ancient navigators' guild, the Trinity House Brethren, removed all the buoys, light ships, beacons, and channel marks near the Nore in the night and extinguished the lighthouses.
None of the merchant ships' crews joined hands with the sailors at the Nore though, and no foodstuffs were taken out of the captured ships; the lack of supplies helped end the mutiny. Despite the boast that McCann made that the "people are with us," after the King's Proclamation of 31st May (quoted in full, thankee very much!) the merchant sailors wouldn't even allow mutineers aboard their anchored ships, sure they'd be hung with them.
The Nore Fleet did try to sail out en masse. Vilified in newspapers, from the pulpits, knowing there would be no sympathetic civilian or Army revolt, the Green Cockades erred badly by announcing that they would steer course for France and join their Navy! But when it came down to it, most of the Nore sailors, even some of the initially determined hands, were simply too used to being True Blue Hearts of Oak and Englishmen, unable to turn real traitors, become life-long deserters… or sever ties to home, and kith and kin, forevermore. It is said that some sail was freed, but not set, and just as quickly was brailed back up again. No capstans turned to raise anchors, just as Lewrie's crew did when he ordered Proteus to set sail when the mutiny began!
As a final resort, the Nore Fleet split into five distinct camps or schools of thought. The largest group voted to stay in the Great Nore, surrender, and take their chances. A smaller second group was of a mind to sail out for Cromarty Firth in Scotland, far from authority's initial reach, and make up their minds what to do later.
Some wanted to sail for Shannon, and become a quasi-Irish Navy, to join the expected French invasion when it came. If all else, they thought to sell off the ships, guns, muskets, powder, and shot for what they could get to help arm the Irish countryside-then melt into the civilian population with the profits.
There were two other camps, both forlorn and deluded by rhetoric right to the end, of a mind for more radical things-or simply too stark-staring "bonkers" to recognise reality if it crawled up to bite them on the ankles!
One group actually believed that they could continue a rebellion by sailing over to the Texel to seduce Admiral Duncan's few remaining warships into joining hands with them, then sail back down-Channel to the French port of Cherbourg, and become an English Republican squadron of the French Fleet!
The last group, spurred by thoughts of the Bounty mutiny, with heady romances of lusty native girls (perhaps by back copies of the National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel!) had a thought to sail to some nebulous "New Colony," wherever and whatever that was, beginning a new life of buccaneering and, "Arrh, yo-ho-ing!"
But at the very last, none of them hoisted anchor for any purpose; they all ended up surrendering.
If you think that the tortured rhetoric that the mutineers used sounded a lot like the sort of Socialist Revolutionary, Bolshevik, or People's Liberation Army cant one might have heard in St. Petersburg in 1917, and in Havana or Pyongyang today, I'll admit that I was amazed too, when reading their writings or recorded speeches. It was Trade Unionism, "All hail the proletariat!" to a Tee! And "the Floating Republic " had an eerie similarity to George Orwell's novel 1984, or
his Animal Farm; Green Cockades were better than Red Cockades-"two legs good, four legs better"? Perhaps while delving among the stacks of the London libraries, Karl Marx found his "lingo" for Communism in the annals of the Nore!
At the Nore, people had been wounded and killed. Damning insults had been uttered, a republic had been proclaimed, and a rebellion urged, civil war threatened in the mutineers' sneering response to the King's Proclamation {also quoted verbatim, thankee!) and broadsides fired, so there was little mercy for the Nore mutineers. Crown, Admiralty, and Society had been humiliated and taunted enough at Spithead; they were not about to swallow a second, more dangerous dose! Had the mutineers not been drunk on their own words and fantasies, the Nore might have ended much sooner and a lot more peacefully, but their truculence was their doom.
McCann, Richard Parker, and dozen of others were hung as rebels, as well as for being mutineers. Others were transported for life, got long gaol sentences-a stalwart few committed suicide. In the end, most sailors returned to duty, with the gains that Spithead had gotten them and they had already possessed before rising their only comfort-except for the part about removing officers and mates that did not apply to them.
I hope no one minds that Rolston (even I can't recall his first name from The King's Coat.1) served as a stand-in for Richard Parker… and got what Lewrie thought both deserved. But trust Lewrie to have a host of people in his past who wish to slip him a bit of "the dirty" and give him a comeuppance, a talent pool upon which I may happily draw to challenge, confuse, and plague him. But what would life be like if things ran as smooth as a Swiss watch all the time, hmm?
And we've plagued him pretty sore, by now, ain't we! Old foes, new foes-it was looking rather neat, with Lewrie-1, Baddies-0, 'til that letter showed up. Was it really Lady Lucy Shockley nee Beauman, or Commander Fillebrowne? A lark played by Clotworthy Chute or Lord Peter Rushton? A skewering connived at by Harry Embleton and Uncle Phineas Chiswick; Zachariah Twigg and his spy minions run amok in his dotage? Could it possibly really be Theoni Connor… even Phoebe Aretino, who wants him back… Claudia Mastandrea, still in the pay of French schemers? Admit it, you didn't think of those, now, did you!
King`s Captain l-9 Page 38
