VIII.

GENERAL MATTERS IN THE PERIOD OF THE FRENCH WARS.

Naval uniform, as we understand it, first came into use for officers in the days of George II,[63] who so admired a blue and white costume of the Duchess of Bedford that he decided then and there to dress his naval officers in similar fashion. No very precise regulations were, however, followed, and for many years uniform was more or less optional or at the fancy of the captain.

The first uniform consisted of a blue coat, with white cuffs and gold buttons. The waistcoat, breeches, and stockings were white. The hat was the ordinary three-cornered black hat of the period with some gold lace about it and a cockade. Other officers wore uniforms which were slight variants upon this: while as special distinguishing marks only the captain (if over three years’ seniority) wore epaulettes upon both shoulders. A lieutenant wore one only.

From time to time the uniform was altered slightly, mostly as regards the cuffs and lapels; but enormous latitude was allowed, and some officers even dressed as seamen.

There was no general uniform whatever for the men; though circumstances led to the bulk of the men in any one ship being dressed more or less alike.

This was the result of the “slop chest.” This was introduced about the year 1650, and amounted to nothing more than a species of ready-made tailor ship at which men at their own expense could obtain articles of clothing. Later on it became compulsory for newly-joined men, whose clothes were defective, to purchase clothing on joining, to the tune of two months’ pay.

These articles being supplied to a ship wholesale, were naturally all alike, and so the men of one ship would all be more or less uniformly attired. Men of another ship might be dressed quite differently, though also more or less like each other. But any idea of uniform as “uniform,” right up to Trafalgar, was entirely confined to one or two dandy captains, and they mainly only considered their own boat’s crews.[64] Some fearful and wonderful costumes of this kind are recorded.

Uniform wearing of the “slop chest” variety was, however, always regarded as the badge of the pressed man and jail bird. The “prime seaman” who joined decently clad was allowed to wear his own clothes, and these were decided by fashion. There were dudes in the Navy in those days, and contemporary art records a good deal of variety. In our own day, when exactitude is at a premium, it has erred badly enough to depict bluejackets with moustachios.[65] In the old days it was probably even more careless still. Consequently everything as to the costume of men in the Nelson era required to be accepted with caution. It is, however, clear from the more reliable literary and descriptive sources that the dandy sailor existed very freely. The “prime seaman” loved to hall-mark himself by his costume.

On board ship in dirty weather he wore anything and his best when coming up for punishment.[66] In a general way fashion always worked from the officers’ uniform, with fancy additions. A natty blue jacket was the essential feature, with as many brass buttons as the owner could afford. A red or yellow waistcoat seems to have been _a la mode_. Trousers, preferably of white duck, but sometimes of blue, were also “the fancy.” Sometimes these were striped. In all cases they were ample, free, and flowing, as they are at the present day. Convenience of tucking up on wet decks is the usual explanation; but there is good reason to believe that idle fashion of the Nelson days had just as much or more to do with the modern bluejacket’s trousers.

The quaint little top hat of the midshipman was generally worn by the Lower Deck dandy. A pig tail was also a _sine qua non_ during the period of the Second Great War.

The origin of the pigtail is wrapped in some mystery. It has been variously ascribed to copying the French Navy[67] and to imitating the Marines, who wore wonderfully greased pigtails at this period.

To complete the rig the seamen used to decorate themselves with coloured ribbons let into their clothes. They lived a hard life, and much has been written upon the subject. But the evidence generally tends to prove that the “prime seaman” as a rule had a far better time than those who (failing to recognise that conditions have altered to-day) appear to realise.[68] The lack of liberty, entailed by the presence of so many men who would assuredly desert on half a chance, was so general and so long-standing that it is doubtful whether it was felt to any really great extent. Customs cover most things.

To our modern ideas the punishments afloat were horribly brutal; but here again it is necessary to remember the difference in era. Floggings and kindred punishments were plentiful enough ashore; and there is a good deal of evidence to indicate that they were taken as “all in the day’s work afloat.” The victim was usually “doped” by his messmates, who saved up part of their rum tots for the purpose, and the horrors of the cat have undoubtedly been somewhat exaggerated. It was undeniably brutal and cruel; but, to select a homely simile, so were dental methods a few years ago. Our fathers submitted to things in this direction which none of us would, or, for that matter, could stand nowadays. The bulk of contemporary evidence is that the (to our eyes) brutal punishments of the Navy of a hundred odd years ago were never regarded as serious grievances by those who stood to undergo them.

The actual grievances revolved entirely around the administration of undeserved punishments. A certain number of captains misused their powers and prerogatives, but only a small percentage did so. At no time does the average captain appear to have been a brutal bully. This is, however, to be qualified by the midshipmen, of whom a certain number deliberately bullied men into doing things for which they got brutally punished afterwards. But outside this the conditions were by no means so horrible as generally depicted. The real sufferers were the pressed landsmen, who certainly learned to be seamen in a very hard school.

It is necessary, however, even here to remember the times and the conditions. This view is borne out by the Great Mutiny. The mutineers, even at the Nore, never demanded the abolition of the cat. When trouble was connected with it in any way, it was over its unreasonable use, as, for instance, in the insensate flogging of the last two men off the rigging, which led to the Mutiny in the _Hermione_. This--which entailed punishing the smartest men since these had furthest to go--goaded the “prime seamen” to desperation and sympathy with the landsmen element afloat, which was ever in a semi-mutinous condition. It is impossible to hold that Captain Pigot of the _Hermione_ did not deserve his fate. But Pigots were comparatively rare, and captains like Nelson by no means scarce. Nelson had no hesitation in flogging men, but he flogged justly, and no troubles ever occurred in any ship commanded by him. For that matter it was characteristic of the time that a captain might be a Tartar, and yet be quite popular with his crew so long as he was just. The “prime seamen” who formed the nucleus of the ship’s company realised the necessity of severe measures and strict discipline in order to tame the human ullage which made up the rest of the crew.

In this connection it is interesting to note that towards the end of the period there began to creep in the commencement of a later classification of ratings not liable to corporal punishment.

Had life afloat in the days of the Great War been quite as terrible as it is often depicted as having been, the volunteer element of trained seamen could hardly have existed, nor could the glamour of the sea have brought so many raw volunteers as it did. When a ship was commissioned, the first step was advertising for men. The advertisements were specious and alluring enough; but the captain’s character generally had most influence on the response; and all the essential seamen element, unless they had spent all their money, were pretty wary as to who they shipped with.

To be sure it did not take the seaman long to lose his money. On a ship paying off he received a considerable accumulated sum, and every kind of shark and harpy was on the lookout to relieve him of it. He got gloriously drunk and so remained while the money lasted, and in this condition the press-gang often got him.

The press-gang was a legalised form of naval conscription. In theory any seafaring man who could be laid hands on might be taken; in practice all was fish that came to the press-gang’s net.

The press-gang, armed with cudgels and cutlasses, used to operate at night, generally in the naval towns,[69] but at times also further afield. It laid hands upon all and sundry, hitting them over the head if they resisted.

A cargo secured, the men were taken on board and kept between decks under an armed guard pending examination by the captain and surgeon. Certain people, such as apprentices or some merchant seamen, were exempt and had to be liberated. Badly diseased men were also let loose again. Verminous and dirty folk were scrubbed with a brutality which created subsequent cleanly habits. Their clothes were either fumigated or else thrown away altogether, and fresh clothing supplied from the “slop chest” at so much off their pay.

If within a fortnight the pressed man cared to call himself a volunteer he received a bounty; but, whether he volunteered[70] or not, once aboard the ship there he remained till death or the paying off of the ship years later. It was this confinement to the ship which led to so much agitation, and was made one of the principal grievances of the mutineers at Spithead.

On the side of the authorities it has to be remembered that had any man been allowed ashore he would certainly never have been seen again, at any rate, so long as he had any money. In most fleets also, an attempt at a substitute was made by allowing ship to ship visiting. Such visits invariably resulted in drunken bouts and subsequent floggings. Nelson went further--he instituted theatricals on shipboard. It is generally clear that--very crudely, of course--the authorities were not blind to the desirability of relieving the tedium of imprisonment on board ship.

The feeding of the men in the days of the Great War is generally considered to have been villainous. It was one of the causes of the Mutiny; but there is some reason to believe that it was not invariably bad. Rodney’s fleet is said to have been excellently provisioned, and much of what has been written about “thieving pursers” in the past is now known to be mythical. It was a classical legend that the purser stole and swindled with bad food. He might do so, and many did. But all did not, either from honesty or because they did not get the chance. Under Nelson or Rodney an unscrupulous purser stood to have a very bad time indeed, and there were others very keenly alive to the fact that good feeding and efficiency went hand in hand. The bad food at the time of the mutinies seem to have been a feature of that particular time, and even so due rather to mismanagement than much else. For the rest, the real culprits were economists on shore, who had no connection whatever with the Fleet, and were merely interested in husbanding the financial resources of the country.

The provisions as made were almost uniformly good, and the stories of unscrupulous contractors who, in league with the pursers, foisted inferior food on the Fleet, may mostly be dismissed. Such cases occurred now and again, but comparatively rarely. “Rogues in authority” were mainly mythical. There are yarns by the score. There are corresponding yarns to-day, quite as plentiful, which the careless historian of the future will no doubt swallow. For example, at the present day it is an article of faith with every bluejacket that the first lieutenant pockets odd sixpences out of the canteen, and nothing ever can or ever will remove the impression.

It is absolutely absurd; but within the last ten years I have had it chapter and verse all about the peculation of 1s. 4d. by a first lieutenant whose private income ran well into five figures! It is a sea-legend so hoary that bluejackets honour it, no matter how ridiculously improbable. The purser of the days of the Great War was not perhaps entirely clean handed, but as Commander Robinson has pointed out,[71] even at the Spithead Mutiny, when the provision question was very much to the fore, the mutineers did not complain of the purser, but of the system and regulations. It was people on shore, not the man afloat, who, when it came to the point, mixed up the instrument with the handlers thereof.

The Spithead trouble, which was purely naval (the Nore Mutiny was more or less political) arose entirely, so far as food was concerned, out of the economists already referred to. Vast stores of provisions had been accumulated, and many were going bad. Pursers received very strict orders to use up the old “likely to decay soon” before touching the new. The result was the issue of decayed pork, stinking cheese, and mildewed biscuits to an unprecedented degree. A badness that had hitherto been more or less occasional chanced just about the Mutiny period to be general.

The men were by no means starved or badly fed, presuming the food to be good. The usual scale was somewhat as follows:--A daily issue of a pound of biscuit and a gallon of beer or else pint of wine; and when these were exhausted, one gill of Navy rum diluted with three of water twice a day. On Tuesdays and Saturdays an issue of 2lbs. of beef was made; on Sundays and Thursdays 1lb. of pork. Over the week the issue of other articles was 2lbs. pease, 1½lbs. oatmeal, 6ozs. of butter, an equal amount of sugar, and 12ozs. of cheese and half-a-pint of vinegar nominally per man; but actually every four men took the provisions of six. Nine pounds of meat a week could hardly be called starvation fare even to-day, and in those times it was an extraordinarily liberal diet for men who at home would not have had anything like it.[72] Except in cases with admirals like Collingwood (who in the matter of understanding the ratio of health to efficiency was about the most incompetent admiral the British Navy ever had), it was generally seen to that, whenever possible, fresh provisions could be purchased from traders who regularly visited blockading fleets.

Furthermore, rations were normally varied so far as circumstances would permit, and when possible fresh beef and mutton were substituted for the salt meat allowance. Nelson went to almost extravagant lengths in these directions; but the majority of other officers were not far behind. Whatever hell the Lower Deck of the Fleet entailed, the blame in hardly any case lay with the officers, executive or otherwise, but entirely with civilian officials and Members of Parliament with ideas of their own about economy. All the reliable evidence is to the effect that the responsible authorities desired their fighting men to live (relatively speaking) like fighting cocks, that the difference between the ideal and the real was due to civilian influence, and that even so it was only really thoroughly bad just before the Great Mutiny. Had it been a regular thing the Mutinies would probably never have happened, the men would have been too used to the conditions to find in them a special cause of complaint.

The whole trouble in messing in the old days arose out of quality, not quantity. The beef and pork were almost invariably bad, owing to the system of using up the old provisions first, with a view to economy. Every ship carried tons of good provisions going bad, while those already bad and decayed were being consumed. Consequently the men starved in the midst of relative plenty.

It remains to add that the officers fared little better.[73] On the whole, taking their general shore food into consideration, it may be argued that they fared worse. As a rule, they had to eat what the men ate, a fact too often forgotten by those who believe that the officers of those days generally peculated on provisions for the men.

Both aft and forward there was one consolation. Liquor was plentiful enough for anyone who wanted to be half seas over by eventime. So was the hard life lived, with an occasional battle to break the monotony.

To both officers and men battle seems to have been the “beano” of to-day. Conditions on board were not rosy enough to make life worth clinging to, while battle meant a good time afterwards to those who got through unscathed. There was only one terror--being wounded. The horrors of the cockpit are beyond exaggeration. The surgeons did their best. They were poorly paid men[74] and expected to find their own instruments: only if they could not did they borrow tools from the carpenter.[75]

[Illustration: A TRAFALGAR ANNIVERSARY.]

They heated their instruments before use so as to lessen the shock of amputation; they doped their patients with wine or spirit so far as might be. They took all as they came in turn, whether officer or man. If anyone seemed too badly wounded to be worth attention they had him taken above and thrown overboard. If, at a hasty glance, taking off an arm or a leg, or both, seemed likely to promise a cure, they gave the wounded man a tot of rum and a bit of leather to chew, and set to work! The wounded who survived were treated with a humanity which makes the “more humanity to the wounded” of the Spithead mutineers a little difficult to understand at first sight. They were fed on delicacies; and anything out of the ordinary on the wardroom table was always sent to them. They also got all the officers’ wine.

On the other hand, time in the sick bay was deducted from their pay,[76] and they were liable to all kinds of infectious diseases caught from the last patient.

To satisfy the demands of the economists, lint was forbidden and sponges restricted, so that a single sponge might have to serve for a dozen wounded men. Blood-poisoning was thus indiscriminately spread, and a wounded man thus infected with the worst form of it, was mulcted in his pay for medicines required. When the Spithead mutineers demanded “more humanity to the wounded” those were the things that probably they had in mind. It has further to be remembered that a man wounded too badly to be of any further use afloat was flung ashore without pension or mercy. The surgeons were fully as humane as their brethren ashore, possibly much more so, from the mere fact that any community of men flung together to sink or swim together compels common sympathies. To the men the purser was classically a thief, the surgeon a callous brute, the officers generally brutes of another kind. This cheap view of the situation has been perpetuated _ad lib_. But all the best evidence is to the effect that, as a rule, and save in exceptional cases, most of those on board a warship pulled together, and that all strove to make the best of things. Things to be made the best of were few, no doubt, and the grumblers and growlers are the folk who have left most records. Allowing for the different era, similar growls can be found to-day. To-day the contented man says nothing; the discontented says a little, and outside sympathisers say a great deal. The truth probably lies with the actually discontented’s version somewhat discounted. In the days of the Great War, the same fact probably obtained. Unquestionably the seaman proper loved the sea and his duty, despite all hardships and drawbacks. To this fact is to be attributed the easy victories of the Great Wars, and, relatively to corresponding shore life, sea life afloat can hardly have been quite so black as most people delight to paint it.[77]

The pay of the Navy of the period remains to be mentioned. It ran as follows:--

Captain--6s. to 25s. a day, according to the ship, plus a variety of allowances.

Midshipmen--£2 to £2 15s. 6d. a month.

Surgeons--11s. to 18s. a day, with half-pay when unemployed.

Assistant-Surgeons--4s. and 5s., with half-pay when unemployed.

Chaplains--about 8s. 6d. a day, with allowances.

Schoolmasters--£2 to £2 8s. a month, with bounties.

Boatswains--£3 to £4 16s. a month.

Boatswain’s Mate--£2 5s. 6d. a month.

Gunner--£1 16s. to £2 2s. a month.

Carpenter--£3 to £5 16s. a month, according to the ship.

Quartermaster--£2 5s. 6d. a month.

Sailmaker--£2 5s. 6d. a month.

Sailmaker’s Assistant--£1 18s. 6d. a month.

Master-at-Arms--£2 0s. 6d. to £2 15s. 6d. a month.

Ship’s Corporals--£2 2s. 6d. a month.

Cook--11s. 8d. a month and pickings.

Able Seaman--11s. a month (33s. a month after 1797).

Ordinary Seaman--9s. a month (25s. 6d. a month after 1797).

Landsman--7s. 6d. a month (23s. a month after 1797).

Ship’s Boy--13s. to 13s. 6d. a month.

As a rule the men received their pay in a lump when the ship paid off. Hence those extraordinary scenes of dissipation with which the story books have made us sufficiently familiar. Jews[78] and women soon fleeced the Tar, who was generally too drunk to know what he was doing, there being dozens of willing hands ready to see to it that he was well plied with liquor.

_FLAGS._

In the year 1800 the Union flag was altered to its present form by the incorporation of the red cross of St. Patrick. This flag, the Union Jack, was used for flying on the bowsprit,[79] and at the main masthead by an Admiral of the Fleet. To hoist it correctly, _i.e._, right side up, was a special point of importance in the Fleet of Nelson’s day, and many a foreigner seeking to use British colours got bowled out from hoisting the flag incorrectly, _i.e._, without the greater width of white being uppermost in the inner canton nearest the staff. To this day many people on shore do the same.

The ensign was coloured according as to whether the Admiral was “of the white,” “blue,” or “red.” It was flown, as till quite recently, from the mizzen peak.

For battle purposes this variety ensign died out after Trafalgar, where, in order to avoid confusion, Nelson ordered all ships to fly the white ensign--he himself being a Vice-Admiral of the white, while Collingwood was Vice-Admiral of the blue. Trafalgar was thus the first battle to be fought deliberately under the white ensign.