The Years of Endurance

by Arthur Bryant

  But though the country congratulated itself that a dreadful week had been attended by no worse consequences, suspicion and unrest remained. The men were not sure that the Government meant to honour its promises. The inexplicable delays attendant on parliamentary processes1 increased their distrust. During the next fortnight while the fleet waited for the wind, the ferment continued to work. The seamen had tasted power and learnt their strength. Moreover the recognition of their principal grievances had reminded them of others.

  On several occasions in the recent past abuses in particular ships had been so serious that they had provoked isolated mutinies. Over-rapidity of war-time expansion and the difficulty of raising men and keeping them from desertion had aggravated the severity of discipline. With the jails emptied to supply the pressgangs, it is not surprising that some officers could only enforce order at the cat's tail. Such a regimen could be accompanied by a horrible brutality. " The ill-usage we have on board this ship," the crew of the Winchelsea wrote to the Admiralty early in the war, " forced us to fly to your Lordships the same as a child to its father." Another ship's company referred to its treatment " from the tirant of a captain " as more than the spirits and hearts of Englishmen could bear, " for we are born free but now we are slaves." These things were against the Regulations, but, with each ship a world of its own and often

  1 The King with his usual common sense complained of these.—Spencer Papers, II, 124.

  far from port, the Regulations were hard to enforce. In certain ships the officers, as Collingwood said, beat the men into a state of insubordination.

  Grievances apart, the Fleet was ripe for trouble. The dilution of the better elements with the worse had left a dangerous sediment at the bottom of every crew. In four years of war naval personnel had swollen from 16,000 to 120,000. Many of the latest joined were " quota men " raised under the Act of 1795 which had imposed on every parish the obligation of supplying the Service. Among these were inevitably some of superior station—broken-down tradesmen, fraudulent attorneys and the like, who were disgruntled with their lot. Ten per cent of the seamen were foreigners. Another ten per cent were Irish, some of them under sentence for political offences and illegally smuggled into the Fleet by high-handed officials. Recently an increasing number had been United Irishmen and sympathisers with the principles proclaimed by France.1

  The agitation and struggle of those seven breathless days at Spithead stirred all this perilous matter into a ferment. This was no ordinary mutiny, for it had succeeded. Suspicion that its fruits were going to be filched by parliamentary chicanery was now aroused by two circumstances. On the 3rd the Duke of Bedford, making party capital out of a national misfortune, contrived by an awkward question in the Lords to convey to uninitiated seamen poring over their newspapers the false idea that the Government was going to drop the bill for supplementary naval pay. Simultaneously the Admiralty circulated a foolish document forbidding captains to temporise with mutiny, and directing the marines to be kept in constant readiness for action. This was no more than a childish attempt of official pride to recover official face. But by accident or design its contents became known to the Fleet. On Sunday, May 7th, when on a change of wind Bridport hoisted the signal to sail, the seamen at St. Helens once more manned the shrouds and broke into defiant cheers.

  This time mutiny wore a graver aspect. The seamen of the Royal George, swearing their officers had deceived them, seized the arms and ammunition. A broil in Admiral Colpoys's flagship at Spithead, in which a seaman lost his life while rushing the quarter-deck, nearly

  1 Wolfe Tone himself was nearly pressed while sailing in 1795 from Ireland to America.—Lecky, III, 46.

  ended in the Admiral and the officer who had fired the shot being summarily hanged. In other ships unpopular officers were bundled ashore and left with their belongings on the quayside. Some of the marines, the traditional keypins of naval discipline, joined the rest.

  The people of Portsmouth, confronted with the spectacle of the fleet flying the red flag and of shaken captains and admirals dumped on the sea front like emigres, hourly expected the arrival of the French and the guillotine. As a Civil Lord of the Admiralty wrote to Spencer, the situation formed " the most awful crisis " the country had ever known.

  Meanwhile the conflagration had spread. At Plymouth the crews of Sir Roger Curtis's squadron had mutinied on April 26th and turned most of their captains ashore. Four days later ominous cheering signalled an outbreak of revolt in the flagship of the North Sea Fleet waiting at Yarmouth for a wind to blockade the Dutch invasion fleet in the Texel. But in this case the Admiral in command was equal to the occasion. Towering with rage, the giant Scot, Adam Duncan, called his men out of the foreshrouds and rated them like a father. The affair ended—for they adored the fine old man—in their promising to go to any part of the world with him and writing a letter thanking the Lords of the Admiralty for their compliance with the request of the Channel Fleet.

  For underneath the suspicion, the smouldering grievances and agitation ran the English individual sense of humanity. A worthy officer remained in the seamen's eyes a worthy man, however much he might theoretically embody the forces of despotism. All the generalisations of French ideology or Irish logic could never persuade them otherwise.

  It was this deep-rooted manliness of the British sailor that saved the day. The authorities, at last abandoning false pride, behaved with equal good sense. The supplementary estimates providing for the increase in pay were hurried through their remaining stages, and the one line of approach to the disgruntled seamen which was certain of success—the simple human one—was chosen. Someone with a flash of the inspiration which always seems to come to the salvation of England in the last ditch suggested the victor of the First of June as a deus ex machina. Armed with full powers to redress grievances on behalf of the Admiralty and to grant pardon on that of the Crown, Lord Howe, overcoming gout and infirmities, set off for Portsmouth. Without wasting a minute he had himself rowed across the Solent to St. Helens where, visiting every ship in turn, he set to work to restore the confidence of the seamen in their rulers.

  By May 13 th, six days after the renewed mutiny had begun, the old hero had achieved his purpose of quietening what he described as " the most suspicious but most generous minds " he had ever met.

  The demand of the men to dismiss the more unpopular officers was tactfully turned by getting the latter to petition the Admiralty for transfer to other ships. There only remained to celebrate the reconciliation of Fleet and nation. On May 15th, after twelve hours of rowing round the cheering fleet amid the strains of " Rule Britannia," " Black Dick "—as exhausted as after the battle of the First of June—was carried by the sailors shoulder high to the port governor's house. Here in a perfect delirium of patriotic emotion he and his lady entertained the delegates to a grand dinner and jollification. At Plymouth, where a similar happy ending occurred, Captain Boger, after being kept a prisoner in the Cambridge guard-ship, was paraded with his fellow-captains in open carriages round the town on a broiling summer day, amid tumultuous cheering. Dressed in full uniform, with a face scarlet from the heat, he repeatedly asked for a glass of water, but his men, who were extremely fond of him, horrified at the request, told him that " his Honour might have any sort of grog, but that as for water, they would not suffer his Honour to drink it." 1

  Two days later the Channel Fleet put to sea to seek the enemy. But the country had no time for relief. During the second Spithead mutiny the news reached London that Austria, brought to her knees by Bonaparte's advance on Vienna, had signed an armistice at Leoben and that France was free to concentrate her entire force against England. Already a Dutch army was waiting at the Texel. Every day brought new alarms. On May 12th, while Howe was completing his work of pacification, a brilliant young Tory M.P., George Canning,, penned some mock verses congratulating his friend Windham, who had made a comforting ministerial reference in a recent speech to " negative successes," on a " day of

 
; 1 C. N. Robinson, The British Tar in Fact and Fiction (1909), 129.

  no disaster." 1 He was too soon. For on that very day, while rumours percolated through London that the Household troops had revolted, the men of the flagship at Sheerness defied their officers and turned the forecastle guns on the quarter-deck. The rest of the battleships lying in the mouth of the river at the Great and Little Nore followed their example.

  The good humour and sense which had characterised proceedings at Spithead were lacking at the Nore. The chief ringleader was an ex-schoolmaster who had recently taken the Government's quota money to get himself out of a debtor's prison. The son of an Exeter tradesman, Richard Parker, now thirty years of age, had been three times to sea, had served as a midshipman and had been court-martialled for insubordination. He marked his return to the Navy by helping to stir up trouble in the port flag and depot ship, the Sandwich, already rife with discontent through her foul and overcrowded condition. Like many other famous talkers he was full of good intentions, on which later apologists have dwelt at length. But he was without moral ballast. He was ambitious, vain, untruthful, weak and so excitable as to seem at times mentally deranged. In his hands the smouldering grievances and resentment of rough and ignorant men became a terrible menace.

  The mutineers at the Nore formulated no specific demands. It was mutiny without an objective. It disregarded the general settlement reached at Spithead. Like the French Revolution in miniature, it proceeded on its own momentum and degenerated into rebellion for the sake of rebellion. Parker, who styled himself President and kept up an Admiral's state, never stirred without the accompaniment of musical honours and banners. He told the men that the act for the increase of their pay was only a temporary Order in

  1 " Oh tell me I does to-day's event

  Serve to illustrate what you meant ?

  —Or will the soldiers riot ?

  Oh ! if the Guards have not rebell'd

  And if the naval fray is quell'd,

  If Portsmouth yet is quiet;

  ‘ Come, Windham ! celebrate with me

  This day of joy and jubilee,

  This day of no disaster !

  Our Government is not o'er turned—

  Huzza !—Our Fleet has not been burned ;

  Our Army's not our master.'

  Council and, when shown to be wrong, declared that it had no validity beyond the end of the year. Only after repeated requests for the men's grievances did he present Admiral Buckner—in whose presence he remained contemptuously covered—with an ultimatum of eight articles. One or these affirmed the right of seamen to dismiss their officers. But he refused to discuss matters with any one but the Lords of the Admiralty, insisting that they should wait on the delegates.

  Meanwhile his followers ceaselessly paraded the streets of Sheerness or rowed in procession round the port, armed with pistols and cutlasses and accompanied by brass bands playing " Rule Britannia" and "Britons, Strike Home! " For the men, though gready enjoying their holiday and unwonted power, Englishwise refused to admit any disloyalty in their attitude. When the Government marched two regiments of militia into the place, Parker wrote to Admiral Buckner protesting at the " insult to the peaceable behaviour of the seamen." He added that the Lords of the Admiralty were themselves remiss in their duty in failing to attend where their appearance would give satisfaction.

  As the Admiralty declined to obey, the mutineers proceeded to more vigorous measures. On May 23 rd they seized eight gunboats lying in Sheerness harbour and carried them off in triumph to the Nore. Next day they dispatched delegates to Yarmouth to urge the men of the North Sea Fleet to join them. Here Admiral Duncan, having received news that the Dutch fleet was embarking troops at the Texel, was about to sail for Ireland. Though the fatal infection was at work in his ships, he trusted to his personal popularity to overcome it. Only a week before he had dealt with a further outbreak in the Adamant by hoisting his flag in her and asking the turbulent crew whether any man dared to dispute his authority. When one of the ringleaders said he did, the giant Admiral had picked him up by the collar with one hand and, bearing him to the side of the vessel, had cried out, " My lads, look at this fellow who dares to deprive me of the command of the Fleet! " After which incipient mutiny in that ship at least dissolved in laughter.

  But on the 29th, while standing out for the Dutch coast, one after another of Duncan's ships left him and sailed home to the Nore. Only his flagship, the Venerable, and the now faithful Adamant kept their course. " I am sorry," wrote the gallant old man, " that

  I have lived to see the pride of Britain disgrace the very name of it.'" Not since an enemy sailed up the Medway had such shame befallen the Navy.

  Meanwhile on the evening of the 27th the Cabinet, faced by the gravity of the situation, resolved that the Admiralty must swallow its pride and go down to Sheerness. A new Royal Pardon was made out specifically covering the post-Spithead mutinies. That night Spencer, accompanied by two colleagues and the Secretary of the Board, set off again on his travels. But on reaching Sheerness on the 28th, he found what he had already suspected, that the Fleet's attitude was not unanimous and that many of the men were already sickening of Parker's presumption. He therefore refused to receive the delegates and, remaining in the Dockyard Commissioner's house, used old Admiral Buckner as an intermediary. And as Parker refused to abate anything from his demands, the First Lord presently returned to London with his mission unaccomplished. With Parker to deal with, it is doubtful if any other course was ever possible.

  It was now war to the knife. Neither side would admit of compromise. While the mutineers were enthusiastically welcoming Duncan's absconding battleships, the Government was giving orders, to cut their communications with the shore. All fraternisation between the Fleet and the Army was stopped and the sailors were to be resisted by force if they attempted to land. A Bill was hurried through Parliament extending the death penalty to persons having intercourse with rebellious seamen. Finally the provisions of the Fleet at the Nore were stopped. These measures which passed both Houses with only one dissentient vote, were stein in the extreme. But they reflected the mood of the nation. They were an instance of the English method of grappling with a problem only when it became unmistakably dangerous but then doing so without second thoughts or hesitation. For the rulers of England weakness was a thing of the past.

  Nor did they stand on pride. The Army, whose loyalty was so vital in that hour, was treated with a new consideration. Increases in pay long asked for in vain by the military authorities were immediately granted by Parliament. The soldiers responded cheerfully: having been so often sneered at by the seamen for their inefficiency and defeats, it was a pleasant change to become the

  heroes of the nation and be set to police the proud favourites. Under the command of Sir Charles Grey, the most popular officer in the Army, the troops kept close watch along the Kent and Essex shores and scarcely allowed a man to pass.1

  Behind them was the nation. Its patriotism and sense of danger were alike aroused: fear of the invader waiting at the Texel and the intangible bogy of revolution that had grown up during the horrors of the Terror and the unreasoning years of war propaganda. To simple Britons Fox and his gang of traitors and defeatists lurked under the delegates' table in the stateroom of the Queen Charlotte. To frustrate their vile tricks and save the nation, thousands of middle-class citizens enrolled as " peace officers " or volunteered to serve in the flotilla of gunboats which Commodore Gower was organising in Long Reach to defend London from the mutineers. The East India Company placed all its ships at the Government's disposal: hundreds of private merchants followed its example.

  The stoppage of the Fleet's victuals placed the delegates in a quandary. Since they would not go back, they had to go forward. On May 31st they decided to " show the country that they had it in their power to stop the trade of the river." But when on June 2nd they did so, seizing every ship entering or leaving the Thames, they merely united the country more vigorously than b
efore. The

  1 The kind of treatment to which the despised " lobsters " were subjected in the seaports is illustrated by an extract from Commander Gardner's Recollections (16), describing an incident on Gosport beach when a party of soldiers was marching some French prisoners to Forton Jail : "A posse of women rushed out of Rime's noted alley, and, pointing to the soldiers, sang the following beautiful ditty :

  " Don't you see the ships a-coming ?

  Don't you see them in full sail ?

  Don't you see the ships a-coming

  With the prizes at their tail ?

  Oh ! my little rolling sailor,

  Oh ! my little rolling he ;

  I do love a jolly sailor,

  Blithe and merry might he be.

  " Sailors they get all the money,

  Soldiers they get none but brass ;

  I do love a jolly sailor, Soldiers they may kiss . . .