INTRODUCTION
In many respects the present volume differs from the most of those which have been issued by the Society; there is in it very little history, as commonly understood. The author, it is true, lived in a stirring time, and was himself an actor in some of the incidents which have shed a glory on our naval records; but his account of these is meagre and of little importance. The interest which attaches to his ‘Recollections’ is entirely personal and social; we have in them sketches roughly drawn, crude, inartistic, and perhaps on that account the more valuable, of the life of the time; of the men who were his companions in the berth, or the gunroom or the wardroom; on deck, in sport or in earnest.
In all this, there is perhaps little that we did not know before in an otiose sort of way. We knew that the men of the time were often coarse in speech, rude in action; but it may be that the reality, as portrayed by Commander Gardner, exceeds anything that we had imagined. It seems to carry us back to the days of Roderick Random, and to suggest that there had been but small improvement since Smollett wrote his celebrated description. A closer examination will correct this impression; will convince us that there had, on the contrary, been a good deal of improvement; that the life was less hard, the manners less rude; and if the language does not show very much difference, it has to be considered that Smollett was writing for the public and Gardner was not; that Smollett’s dialogues are more or less literary, and Gardner’s are, for the most part, in the vernacular.
Occasionally, indeed, the language has been modified, or its undue strength merely indicated by a ——; but where oaths and expletives formed such a large part of the conversational currency between intimates; when ‘son of a bitch’ was the usual equivalent of the modern ‘chappie’ or ‘Johnnie’ or ‘rotter’; when ‘damned’ was everywhere recognised as a most ordinary intensitive, and ‘damn your eyes’ meant simply ‘buck up,’ it has been felt that entirely to bowdlerise the narrative would be to present our readers with a very imperfect picture of the life of the day.
Independent of the language, the most striking feature of the portraits is the universal drunkenness. It is mentioned as a thing too common to be considered a fault, though—if carried to excess—an amiable weakness, which no decent commanding officer would take serious notice of. Looking down the lists of old shipmates and messmates, the eye is necessarily caught by the frequency of such entries as ‘too fond of grog,’ ‘did not dislike grog,’ ‘passionately fond of grog,’ ‘a drunken Hun,’ a term of reprobation as a bully, rather than as a drunkard, ‘fond of gin grog,’ ‘mad from drink,’ ‘insane from drink,’ and so on, passim. For the officer of the watch to be drunk scarcely called for comment; it was only when, in addition to being drunk, he turned the captain out at midnight to save the ship, that he narrowly escaped being brought to a court martial; ‘but we interceded for him, and the business was looked over’ (p. [217]).
It is, of course, familiarly known that during the later years of the eighteenth century, such drunkenness was almost more common on shore than afloat; and when more than half the peerage and the most distinguished statesmen were ‘habitual drunkards,’ there was, from the social point of view, some excuse for the many of Gardner’s messmates. For good or ill, the navy has always been very conservative in its customs; and at a much later date, when hard drinking was going out of fashion on shore, except among very young men, it still continued prevalent in the navy. Some of our older officers will remember at least one instance in which a great public scandal was averted only in consideration of the social connections of the principal offender; and courts martial, bringing ruin and disgrace to the individual, long continued to be painfully frequent. Absolute reform in this direction was slow; but there are few things more remarkable than the change which has come over the service during the last quarter of a century.
But in the eighteenth century this hard drinking brought in its train not only the terribly frequent insanity, such as is recorded in so many of Gardner’s pages; not only the gross lapses, some of which Gardner has indicated, but also numerous irregularities, which we may suspect where we do not know’, and of which, quarrels and free fights in the wardroom or in the steerage—such, for instance, as brought on the series of Phaëton courts martial (pp. [73]–4)—were only one type. Coarse practical joking among men no longer young was another characteristic of the life which seems subversive of true discipline. Here, of course, we are met by the great change which has everywhere taken place; and the horse-play of Billy Culmer and his friends—stupid vulgarity as it now appears—can scarcely be considered more childish than the pranks and hoaxes of Theodore Hook or Grantley Berkeley twenty or thirty years later. But the very serious objection to such practices on board ship was that—as is now common knowledge—the most inveterate practical joker is the most annoyed when the tables are turned and he himself is made the victim of the joke; that quarrels are certain to arise, which, in a small society and among armed men, are both dangerous in themselves and detrimental to the service. It is, too, difficult to draw the line between practical joking, ragging, or ‘hazing’ and actual bullying. There is no doubt that they merge into each other, and, in the present state of public opinion, could not possibly be tolerated.
Gardner himself, so far as we can judge from his own story, was a good, capable man, who took the life around him as quite a matter of course, without falling into its worst characteristics. He seems, too, to have been a man of singularly equable temper; and it is worthy of special notice that, amid much to annoy and irritate him, he has preferred to say what is good, rather than what is bad, of his messmates and superiors. It used to be so very much the custom to speak evil of dignities, that it is quite refreshing to meet with a young officer to whom his captain did not necessarily seem a bullying, tyrannical blockhead; who could see that the senior might have a proper motive and have formed a correct judgment, even though he did thwart the junior’s wishes or act contrary to the junior’s opinion. Gardner had, for instance, no particular cause to love Calder, but he could still speak of him as ‘a brave and meritorious officer, and of first-rate abilities, a man that had the service at heart’ (pp. [101], [107]). Leveson Gower he did not like—no subordinate did; but, though he relates several incidents, which of themselves are sufficiently damning, he does not seem to have set down aught in malice, nor has he made any spiteful commentary. His worst remark is ‘I have said enough of him’ (p. [90]).
First lieutenants were, of course, the natural enemies of a youngster; but with few exceptions his comments, even on them, are good-humoured. Of one only does he speak bitterly; it is Edward Hamilton (p. [172]), whose celebrated recapture of the Hermione might induce us to suspect that Gardner was merely expressing the spleen roused by the loss of his kit, did we not remember that, at this time, Hamilton was only 23, and that he was but 30 when his active career was brought to a premature end by a court martial dismissing him the service for cruelty and oppression. It is true that he was specially reinstated six months later, but he never afterwards commanded a sea-going ship, nor, as an admiral, did he ever hoist his flag. It is indeed a remarkable fact, and one giving much food for thought, that other young captains, whose brilliant courage before the enemy won for them a reputation little, if at all, inferior to that of Hamilton, were also tried by court martial for tyrannical and excessive punishments. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that this was in great measure due to utter want of training in the art of command. The way in which the ships’ companies were raised, the vicious characters of the men, almost necessarily led to severity which easily might and too often did degenerate into brutality.
On all this, however, Gardner offers no opinion. He took the service as he found it, content to do his duty honestly and faithfully. The story of his career, which is related at length in the following pages, may be summarised from the memoir in O’Byrne’s Naval Biographical Dictionary, the first draft of which was almost certainly written from information supplied by himself.
James Anthony Gardner, son of Francis Geary Gardner, a commander in the navy, who died at St. Lucia in September 1780, was born at Waterford in 1770–1. Francis Geary Gardner, captain of marines, was his brother. Sir Francis Geary Gardner Lee, who began life as a midshipman (p. [202]) and died a lieutenant-colonel of marines, was a cousin. Two other cousins—Knight and Lee—captains in the 17th regiment, are mentioned (p. [208]), and yet another, ‘son of the late Alderman Bates of Waterford’ (p. [221]). His grandfather, James Gardner, who died, a lieutenant in the navy, in 1755, was, in 1747–8, a lieutenant of the Culloden, with Captain, afterwards Admiral Sir Francis, Geary, the godfather of James’s son, who, on 2 February, 1768, married Rachel, daughter of Anthony Lee of Waterford, and niece of Admiral William Parry. It will be noticed that the younger Gardner, having been born in Ireland, son of an Irish mother, considered himself Irish, is especially Irish in his sympathies, and that throughout his ‘Recollections’ the word ‘Irish’ is very commonly used as denoting ‘exceptionally good.’
From 1775, when he was not more than five years old, Gardner was borne, as his father’s servant, on the books of the Boreas, the Conqueror, and the Ætna; and he might, according to the custom of the day, have counted these years as part of his time at sea. As, however, when he went up for his examination (p. [174]), he had more sea time than enough, he only counted it from his entry on board the Salisbury in December 1783 (p. [41]). Really, he first went to sea in May 1782 (p. [19]) in the Panther, and in her, under—in succession—Captains Thomas Piercy and Robert Simonton, he saw the loss of the Royal George, and was present at Howe’s relief of Gibraltar and in the ‘rencounter’ with the combined fleets of France and Spain off Cape Spartel on 20 October, 1782 (pp. [24], 27, 30 seq.).
During the ensuing peace he served on the Newfoundland and Home stations, as midshipman and master’s mate in the Salisbury, 50, flagship of Vice-Admiral John Campbell (pp. [41]–55); Orestes, 18, Captain Manley Dixon (pp. [56]–63); Edgar, 74, flagship of Rear-Admirals the Hon. John Leveson Gower and Joseph Peyton (pp. [64]–96); Barfleur, 98, bearing the flags of Admirals Roddam, the Hon. Samuel Barrington, Sir John Jervis, John Elliot and Jonathan Faulknor (pp. [97]–120), and Queen, 98, Captain John Hutt (pp. [121]–5). After a further service, chiefly in the Mediterranean in the Berwick, 74, Captains Sir John Collins, William Shield. George Campbell and George Henry Towry (pp. [126]–154); in the Gorgon, 44, Captain James Wallis, for a passage to England (pp. [155]–171); and in the Victory, 110, Captain John Knight, at Portsmouth (pp. [172]–7), he was promoted, 12 January 1795, to be lieutenant of the Hind, 28, Captains Richard Lee and John Bazely (the younger), on the North American and Irish stations, and in January 1797 was sent in to Plymouth in charge of a prize, La Favorite privateer, of 8 guns and 60 men (pp. [178], 202).
His next appointments were—8 March 1798, to the Blonde, 32, Captain Daniel Dobree, under whom he assisted in conveying troops to Holland in August 1799 (pp. [203]–225); 13 April, 1801, to the Brunswick, 74, Captain George Hopewell Stephens, which, after a year in the West Indies, returned home and was paid off in July 1802 (pp. [226]–249). After a short service as agent of transports at Portsmouth (p. [250]), he was appointed, in January 1806, in charge of the signal station at Fairlight in Sussex, where he continued till 7 December 1814 (pp. [251]–263). From that date he remained on half pay as a lieutenant, till on 26 November 1830, he was placed on the retired list with the rank of commander.
Reading this summary of Gardner’s service, in connection with the longer narrative, we are naturally inclined to say: Another instance of a good man choked out of the line of promotion by want of interest; there must have been something radically wrong with the system that permitted want of interest to shelve, at the age of 32, a sober, punctual and capable officer, with a blameless record and distinguished certificates. But would such a presentment of the case be quite correct? Gardner was excellently well connected, and had relations or good friends—including the comptroller himself (p. [97])—in many different departments of the public service. He must have had remarkably good interest; and we are forced to look elsewhere for what can only be called his failure.
The first reason for it—one, too, that has damaged many a young officer’s prospects—was his determination to pick and choose his service. This is apparent throughout. He wasted his interest in getting out of what he considered disagreeable employments. He quarrelled with Captain Calder and wearied Sir Henry Martin by his refusal to go to the West Indies, as it ‘did not suit my inclination’ (p. [97]); he scouted McArthur’s suggestion to try his fortune on board the Victory (p. [148]), and got himself sent to the Gorgon for a passage to England, only to find that his cleverness cost him five months’ time and the whole of his kit (pp. [172]–3). The same daintiness is to be observed throughout. But if one thing is more certain than another in calculating the luck of the service, it is that a whole-hearted devotion to it, a readiness to go anywhere and to do anything, pays the best.
Later on, there was another reason for Gardner’s want of this readiness. He married early—on 11 December 1798—and his future career does not contravene the frequently expressed opinion of our most distinguished admirals, from Lord St. Vincent downwards, that—as far as the service is concerned—a young lieutenant might as well cut his throat as marry. ‘D’ye mind me,’ says the old song—
‘D’ye mind me! a sailor should be, every inch,
All as one as a piece of the ship;’
and for a young man, with a young wife at home, that is impossible. His allegiance is divided; the wife on shore has the biggest share and continually calls for more, till the husband gets a home appointment—a guardo, a coast-guard, or a signal station—pleasant for the time, but fatal to all chance of promotion. No doubt there have been exceptions. It would not be impossible to cite names of officers who married as lieutenants and rose to high rank; but either under peculiar conditions of service, or because the wife has had sufficient strength of mind to prevent her standing in the way of her husband’s profession; possibly even she may have forwarded him in it. Exceptio probat regulam; but Gardner was not one. His direct connection with the service ended with the peace in 1814. It does not appear that he either asked for or wished for any further employment; but spent the rest of his life in a peaceful and contented retirement in the bosom of his family, at Peckham, where he died on 24 September 1846, in his 76th year. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Mary’s, Newington Butts, where a head-stone once marked the site of the grave. But the churchyard has been turned into a pleasure-ground, and the position of the stone or the grave is now unknown.
The ‘Recollections’ which by the kindness of the authors grandsons, Francis William and Henry James Gardner, we are now permitted to print, were written in 1836, and corrected, to some small extent, in later years. We have no information of the sources from which he composed them. He must have had his logs; and we may suppose either that these took the form of journals, or that he had also kept a journal with some regularity. Certainly it is not probable that, without some register, he could have given the lists of his shipmates, correct even—in very many cases—to the Christian names. That their characters and the various highly flavoured anecdotes were matters of memory is more easily believed.
What is, in one sense, the most remarkable thing about the work is the strong literary seasoning which it often betrays. The manuscript is a little volume (fcap. 4to) written on both sides of the paper, in a small neat hand. This, of itself, is evidence that Gardner—leaving school, after six or seven broken years, at the age of twelve—did not consider, or rather was not allowed to consider, his education finished in all branches except in the line of his profession. Of the way in which it was continued, we have no knowledge. It is quite possible that Macbride, the drunken and obscene schoolmaster of the Edgar, may, in his sober intervals, have helped to inspire him with some desire of learning. The educational powers of Pye, the schoolmaster of the Salisbury and of the Barfleur, can scarcely have stretched beyond the working of a lunar. In the Berwick he was shipmates with the Rev. Alexander John Scott—in after years chaplain of the Victory and Nelsons foreign secretary—a man of literary aptitudes, who was ‘always going on shore to make researches after antiquities’ (p. [150]), and Gardner may sometimes have been allowed to accompany him in his rambles.
However this may have been, it is very noteworthy that a tincture of polite learning was shared by many of his messmates. To those whose notions of life afloat are gathered from Roderick Random and other descriptions of the seamy side of the service, it will seem incredible that such should have been the case. We are not here concerned to prove it as a general proposition. It is enough to refer to the particular instances before us—that of Gardner and his messmates. He tells us that Macredie, who was with him in the Edgar, and afterwards in the Barfleur, was ‘an excellent scholar, well acquainted with Greek and Latin, ancient history and mathematics’ (p. [80]), which must mean something, even if we allow a good deal for exaggeration. In the Edgar they were with that disreputable but amiable and talented sinner, Macbride; and it was also in the Edgar that the assumption of Homeric characters was a common sport, in which Macredie figured as Ajax Telamon, Culverhouse as Diomede, and Pringle won the name of ‘Ponderous and Huge’ (pp. [84], 93).
This does not, perhaps, go for very much; but it cannot be lost sight of that, as concerns Gardner, it was accompanied by a readiness to apply quotations from Popes Iliad and from the Aeneid, sometimes in Dryden’s version, sometimes in the original. He was certainly, also, as familiar with Hudibras as ever Alan Quatermain was with The Ingoldsby Legends. Shakespeare he does not seem to have studied; and though it is but a small thing in comparison that he should have read Ossian and A Sentimental Journey, his knowledge of, his familiarity with, Roman history may be allowed as a makeweight, unless indeed—which is quite possible—it was drilled into him by Scott on each separate occasion. Thus, when the Berwick goes to Tunis and Porto Farino, he is reminded of the fate of Regulus (p. [136]); he connects Trapani with the destruction of the Roman fleet under Claudius (p. [137]), and knows that the concluding battle of the first Punic war—the battle which, as Mahan has shown, decided the result of the second Punic war—was fought off the Egades (p. [138]). Incomparably more attention is nowadays paid to the instruction of our youngsters; but we are confident that very few of them could note such things in their journal unless specially coached up in them by a friendly senior.
In this, again, there have been exceptions. Until recently there has probably always been a sprinkling of officers who kept up and increased the knowledge of Latin they brought from Eton or Westminster[[1]] or other schools of classical learning; and Hannay, the novelist, who had a personal acquaintance with gunroom life of sixty years ago, has represented the midshipmen and mates of his day bandying quotations from Horace or Virgil with a freedom which many have thought ridiculous, but which, we must admit, might sometimes be met with. We were told by an officer who served in the Hibernia under the flag of Sir William Parker, that it was easy to fit names to all the principal characters in Hannay’s novelettes; and it may be assumed that what was true for the captains was equally true for the midshipmen.
Such familiarity with the Latin poets was, of course, very exceptional then; it has now, we fancy, entirely dropped out. The Latin which our present youngsters bring into the service must be extremely little, and they have no opportunity of continuing the study of it; and though English history and naval history form part of the curriculum at Osborne and Dartmouth, there is but little inducement to a young officer to read more when he goes afloat. But there are certainly many of our older officers who would say that a sound and intelligent knowledge of history is more likely to be profitable to the average captain or admiral than the most absolute familiarity with the processes of the differential or integral calculus.
A considerable, and what to many will be a most interesting, part of the volume is occupied by lists of names and thumb-nail sketches of character. No attempt has been made to amplify these beyond filling in dates and Christian names [in square brackets] from Navy-lists and Pay-books. More would generally have been impracticable, for most of the names are unknown to history; and where otherwise, anything like full notices would have enormously swelled the volume, without any adequate gain. It has seemed better to add a mere reference to some easily accessible memoir, either in the Dictionary of National Biography (D.N.B.), Charnock’s Biographia Navalis, Marshall’s Royal Naval Biography, or O’Byrne’s Naval Biographical Dictionary; sometimes also to James’s Naval History, Schomberg’s Naval Chronology, or to Beatson’s Naval and Military Memoirs—all books which are quite common, and are or ought to be in every naval library.
It remains only for the Editors to express their grateful thanks to the Messrs. Gardner, who not only permit them to publish the ‘Recollections,’ but supplied them with a copy of the MS., typed at their expense; to the Very Rev. the Dean of Waterford, who has most kindly had all the registers at Waterford searched (though vainly) in the endeavour to determine the exact date of Commander Gardner’s birth; and to the numerous friends and even strangers who have so kindly helped them in answering the various queries which have presented themselves. These are too many to name; but the Editors must, in a special degree, mention their obligations to Commander C. N. Robinson, R.N., whose very exceptional knowledge of the byways of naval literature has been most generously put at their service. That some of their queries have remained unanswered and that explanatory notes are thus sometimes wanting will serve to emphasise the importance of the assistance referred to. What, for instance, is the meaning of the phrase ‘My hat’s off’ (p. [108])? Apparently ‘Not a word!’ but why? or again, what are ‘ugly podreen faces’ (p. [214])? To a mere Englishman the epithet looks as if it might be Irish; but Irish dictionaries and three competent Irish scholars are positive that it is not. Once more, they express their warmest thanks for the help that has been so freely given them.