Noteworthy is the discipline and patience of the gallant 78th, when the transport Charlotte, in which they had embarked, for transference from Batavia to Calcutta in 1816, ran ashore on a sunken rock a few miles from the island of Preparis, and that so violently, that in fifteen minutes she filled to her main deck. Though death was apparently imminent, the men behaved like the heroes and soldiers they were. Every man waited for orders, and there was no sign of panic or disobedience. The women, children, and sick were transported to the island, with a few bags of rice only, and a few pieces of salt pork. It was four days before the rest of the men and crew were landed on the inhospitable shores of Preparis, and during that time some 140 men were quartered on a raft fastened to a rock near the ship that was just aflush with water at low tide. There they had neither sleep, nor food, nor water. But the most perfect order obtained none the less. When they were all got on to the island, things were little better. They remained without relief from the 9th November until the 6th December, by which time even the poor two-day allowance of a glass of rice and two ounces of meat per head had been exhausted. Shell-fish were collected at low tide and stored. All such finds were brought to the common stock, and there was no need even for a guard! Officer and man shared the same privation until the final relief came, and throughout the discipline of the men was perfect.
But it is not merely in times of dangerous emergency that soldiers alone have shown that they are descended from those Vikings who were the true marines, equally good on shore or afloat. At the conclusion of the China war of 1860, the regiments engaged returned to England, and among them were the Buffs. Three companies of this grand old regiment, who, like the Royal Marines, claim their descent from London trained bands, and oftentimes had done seagoing duty, embarked on board the Athleta. All went well till after she had touched at the Cape to water. The crew was like many a merchant’s crew now, even if not much more so now than then, built up of indifferent materials, probably what is known as “Beachcombers,” men who in sterner days were marooned on desert islands. The gold fever in Australia, too, had set in, and hence caused desertions in homeward bound crews. So the crew of the Athleta tried to desert, and were prevented, and then came aft in a body to complain of imaginary ill-treatment, and request to be taken on shore before a magistrate. To have done so would have been fatal; and the commanding officer of the Buffs stepped in. He suggested that the captain should at once “weigh” and go to sea. The crew refused to move a finger in the matter. Colonel Sargent proposed, as a quiet and friendly way of settling the matter, to put the seamen in the fo’castle, with an armed guard for their protection, and bread and water for their food, while the Buffs worked the ship home. Captain Potter joyfully assented, and went to sea with his strange, untrained, crew. Volunteers were asked to go aloft, and the detachment was cautioned as to its dangers, and the supreme necessity for coolness and readiness of resource; and was told that to be ordered aloft was contrary to Queen’s regulations. None the less, sixty stalwart lads stepped forward, and of these, twenty-eight were chosen for the yards and “tops.” A week’s duty of this kind brought the mutineers to their senses; that and the bread and water probably. They prayed to be allowed to return to their duty, and did so. Colonel Sargent thought, and rightly, that “he had had pleasure in going aloft with them himself, because the boldest and most zealous of his men had never been in the rigging before, and some had not even been on board a ship of any kind previous to their voyage out and home.” Captain Potter thought and said that he “was perfectly astonished to see soldiers able to turn themselves all at once into such good sailors, and to teach so wholesome a lesson to his crew, not one of whom, he was convinced, would ever again strike work in a vessel on board of which British soldiers were embarked.” The Buff crew refused payment for their extra work, when it was proposed to stop a portion of the mutineers’ pay and hand it over to the new crew, and “wished to enjoy the satisfaction of feeling that they had only done their duty as British soldiers, determined to support their commanding officer in any position.”
The incident is not merely one of passing interest, it evidences that sentiment du devoir and discipline which, combined, form the finest soldiery the world has ever seen.
These are but a few of the noble records of the “Army at Sea.”
CHAPTER IX
THE PENINSULAR ARMY: (a) ITS MAKING—1793–1808
Peace—general peace at all events—had reigned from 1783 to 1789, when the French Revolution broke out. With the merits or demerits of that great struggle this story has nothing to do; but none the less the overthrow of the monarchy of France not only created an almost continuous condition of war for a quarter of a century, but helped most materially to raise to the highest pitch the Continental opinion as to the military value of Great Britain. Its naval strength throughout that quarter of a century was most fully proved. It remained for the stubborn fighting power of the land forces to be displayed during the same eventful period. French anger, English panic, had dragged the latter into open war with France, and that not without allies. All the world began by being against the new Republic: small wonder, then, that in her new-born freedom she turned bitterly against her world-wide antagonists, and fought them all. That she did not fully conquer them was largely due to one small State—England. The wealth of the latter, even then comparatively greater than the Continent, her naval preponderance, infinitely greater, as events proved, than that of her antagonist, though her numerical fighting strength as compared with the Continental powers was but small, and her insular position, made her eventually almost the arbiter of Europe, when the great struggle drew to an end.
As usual, the actual number of the army throughout the years from 1793 to 1808 constantly varied. The 150,000 men under arms in 1780 was reduced to 40,000 the next year, was increased the year after to about 55,000 in Great Britain, and fell in 1784 to 18,000 at home, 12,000 in the “Plantations,” and some 6000 in India. The provision for the latter force was made by a new and special vote. The importance of the growing empire in the East was being at last recognised.
The system of levying troops continued much the same. Men were enlisted voluntarily by heavy bounties, and when that attraction failed, the pressgang, or even the prisons, was then employed to raise recruits. Unless disbanded at the end of a campaign, they served for life, or till worn out; but the dawn of a short-service system appeared in 1805, when the period of service was fixed at seventeen years.[32]