These lines were written by Lord Byron of my godmother, Lady Wilmot Horton, of Catton Hall, Burton-on-Trent. She was still a very beautiful old lady at 73 years of age when she died.
One of her great friends was Admiral Sir William Parker (the last of Nelson’s Captains), and he, at her request, gave me his nomination for entering the Navy. He had two to give away on becoming Port Admiral at Plymouth. He gave the other to Lord Nelson’s own niece, and she also filled in my name, so I was doubly nominated by the last of Nelson’s Captains, and my first ship was the “Victory” and it was my last! In the “Victory” log-book it is entered, “July 12th, 1854, joined Mr. John Arbuthnot Fisher,” and it is also entered that Sir John Fisher hauled down his flag on October 21st, 1904, on becoming First Sea Lord.
A friend of mine (a yellow Admiral) was taken prisoner in the old French War when he was a Midshipman ten years old, and was locked up in the fortress of Verdun. He so amused me in my young days by telling me that he gave his parole not to escape! as if it mattered what he did when he was only four foot nothing! And he did this, he told me, in order to learn French; and when he had learned French, to talk it fluently, he then cancelled his parole and was locked up again and then he escaped; alone he did it by filing through the iron bars of his prison window (the old historic method), and wended his way to England. I consider this instance a striking testimony to the inestimable benefit of sending little boys to sea when they are young! What splendid Nelsonic qualities were developed!
But it was quite common in those days of my old yellow Admiral for boys to go to sea even as young as seven years old. My present host’s grandfather went to sea as a Midshipman at seven years old! Afterwards he was Lord Nelson’s Signal Midshipman, his name was Hamilton, and his grandson was Midshipman with me in two ships. He is now the 13th Duke of Hamilton! It is interesting as a Nelsonic legend that the wife of the 6th Duke of Hamilton (she was one of the beautiful Miss Gunnings; she was the wife of two Dukes and the mother of four) peculiarly befriended Emma, Lady Hamilton, and recognised her, as so few did then (and, alas! still fewer now), as one of the noblest women who ever lived—one mass of sympathy she was!
The stories of what boys went through then at sea were appalling. I have a corroboration in lovely letters from a little Midshipman who was in the great blockade of Brest by Admiral Cornwallis in 1802. This little boy was afterwards killed just after Trafalgar. He describes seeing the body of Nelson on board ship on its way to Portsmouth. This little Midshipman was only eleven years old when he was killed! This is how he describes the Midshipman’s food: “We live on beef which has been ten or eleven years in a cask, and on biscuit which makes your throat cold in eating it owing to the maggots, which are very cold when you eat them! like calves-foot jelly or blomonge—being very fat indeed!” (It makes one shudder!) He goes on again: “We drink water the colour of the bark of a pear tree with plenty of little maggots and weevils in it, and wine, which is exactly like bullock’s blood and sawdust mixed together”; and he adds in his letter to his mother: “I hope I shall not learn to swear, and by God’s assistance I hope I shall not!” He tried to save the Captain of his Top (who had been at the “Weather earing”) from falling from aloft. This is his description: “The hands were hurried up to reef topsails, and my station is in the foretop. When the men began to lay in from the yards (after reefing the topsails) one of them laid hold of a slack rope, which gave way, and he fell out of the top on deck and was dashed to pieces and very near carried me out of the top along with him as I was attempting to lay hold of him to save him!!!” Our little friend the Midshipman was eight years old at this time! What a picture! this little boy trying to save the sailor huge and hairy! His description to his mother of Cornwallis’s Fleet is interesting: “We have on board Admiral Graves, who came in his ten-oared barge, and as soon as he put his foot on shipboard the drums and fifes began to play, and the Marines and all presented their arms. We are all prepared for action, all our guns being loaded with double shot. We have a fine sight, which is the Grand Channel Fleet, which consists of 95 sail of the line, each from 120 down to 64 guns.”
That is the Midshipman of the olden day, and one often has misgivings that the modern system of sending boys to sea much older is a bad one, when such magnificent results were produced by the old method, more especially as in the former days the Captain had a more paternal charge of those little boys coming on board one by one, as compared with the present crowd sent in batches of big hulking giants, some of them. However, there is more to learn now than formerly, and possibly it’s impossible (all the entrance examination I had to pass was to write out the Lord’s Prayer, do a rule of three sum and drink a glass of sherry!); but one would like to give it a trial of sending boys to sea at nine years old. Our little hero tried to save the life of the Captain of his Top when he was only eight years old! Still, the Osborne system of Naval education has its great merits; but it has been a grievous blow to it, departing from the original conception of entry at eleven years of age.
However, the lines of the modern Midshipman are laid in pleasant places; they get good food and a good night’s rest. Late as I came to sea in 1854, I had to keep either the First or Middle Watch every night and was always hungry! Devilled Pork rind was a luxury, and a Spanish Onion with a Sardine in the Middle Watch was Paradise!
In the first ship I was in we not only carried our fresh water in casks, but we had some rare old Ship’s Biscuit supplied in what were known as “bread-bags.” These bread-bags were not preservative; they were creative. A favourite amusement was to put a bit of this biscuit on the table and see how soon all of it would walk away. In fact one midshipman could gamble away his “tot” of rum with another midshipman by pitting one bit of biscuit against another. Anyhow, whenever you took a bit of biscuit to eat it you always tapped it edgeways on the table to let the “grown-ups” get away.
The Water was nearly as bad as the Biscuit. It was turgid—it was smelly—it was animally. I remember so well, in the Russian War (1854–5), being sent with the Watering Party to the Island of Nargen to get fresh water, as we were running short of it in this old Sailing Line of Battleship I was in (there was no Distilling Apparatus in those days). My youthful astonishment was how on earth the Lieutenant in charge of the Watering Party discovered the Water. There wasn’t a lake and there wasn’t a stream, but he went and dug a hole and there was the water! However, it may be that he carried out the same delightful plan as my delicious old Admiral in China. This Admiral’s survey of the China Seas is one of the most celebrated on record. He told me himself that this is how he did it. He used to anchor in some convenient place every few miles right up the Coast of China. He had a Chinese Interpreter on board. He sent this man to every Fishing Village and offered a dollar for every rock and shoal. No rock or shoal has ever been discovered since my beloved Admiral finished his survey. Perhaps the Lieutenant of the Watering Party gave Roubles!
I must mention here an instance of the Simple Genius of the Chinese. A sunken ship, that had defied all European efforts to raise her, was bought by a Chinaman for a mere song. He went and hired all the Chinamen from an adjacent Sponge Fishery and bought up several Bamboo Plantations where the bamboos were growing like grass. The way they catch sponges is this—The Chinaman has no diving dress—he holds his nose—a leaden weight attached to his feet takes him down to where the sponges are—he picks the sponges—evades the weight—and rises. They pull up the weight with a bit of string afterwards. The Chinese genius I speak of sent the men down with bamboos, and they stuck them into the sunk ship, and soon “up she came”; and the Chinaman said: