The British Navy Book

by Cyril Field

"We're sober men and true,
And quite devoid of fe-ar.
In all the Royal N.
There are none so smart as we are.
When the wind whistles free
O'er the bright blue sea
We stand to our guns all da-ay;
When at anchor we ride
By the starboard side,
We've plenty of time for play."
—H.M.S. "Pinafore". W. S. Gilbert.

At the beginning of our naval story we found our fleets composed of rowing-vessels, fought and commanded by soldiers. Then came a time—the viking period—when fighting-ships were manned and fought by warriors who were emphatically "soldiers and sailors too". In battle their dragons and long-serpents relied mainly on their oars, but the sail began to take a much more important position than before, and the oars were not pulled by slaves but by the crew proper, all of whom were fighters. In the period that followed, the sail—in northern waters at any rate—continued to grow in importance, till in the biggest ships it entirely ousted the oars.

Then arose the professional sailor. Ships carried but a few sails, so that comparatively few men were required to handle them, and the fighting-men on board and the commanders of ships and squadrons were once more soldiers. When the fully rigged ship arrived—in Tudor times—the sailor element naturally was considerably increased, and, the heavy gun making its appearance on shipboard at about the same time, the "gunners" seem to have been taken from that class rather than from the soldiers, who formed about half the ship's company. But in the royal ships the supreme command was always in the hands of a military officer, till the successes gained by the privately-equipped ships commanded by men like Drake and Frobisher introduced a new type of distinctly naval officer. But he did not supersede the military ship-commander much before the time of William III. Up to that time ships seem to have had sometimes a soldier, like Blake, in command and sometimes a sailor, like Sir George Rooke and others.

The latter is a good example of what may be called the transition period, because he, like Sir Cloudesley Shovel and many other sea-commanders, had a commission in the Duke of York and Albany's Maritime Regiment, instituted in 1664 and generally accepted as being the ancestor of the present corps of Royal Marines. But it seems possible that there must have been an idea underlying the institution of this regiment of sea-soldiers that has never been explained. The key to it may perhaps be found in the oft-repeated reference to marine regiments at this period as "nurseries for the fleet". The idea did not work, as the men trained as soldiers did not volunteer to become sailors to an appreciable extent; but in my own opinion there was more in the idea than this. It must be remembered that at this time there was a great controversy as to the most suitable officers to command our war-ships. The "gentleman captains", who were in many cases soldiers, but often merely courtiers, clung tenaciously to their position, and the Court influence at their back enabled them to stand their ground. But at the same time the claims of the real sailors—the "tarpawlins", as they were called—who were neither soldiers nor gentlemen, were being more and more recognized by the public, and grew stronger and stronger. And they certainly had a very strong case. They could themselves sail, navigate, and fight their ships, while the other class had to have "masters" to do everything but the fighting for them.

It seems possible that the intention of those responsible for the raising of the "Maritime Regiment", the men of which were indifferently referred to as "marines" or as "mariners", was not only to provide the nucleus of a disciplined personnel, but to produce a corps of officers who, while retaining a military status, would yet be professional seamen. It was an experiment, but not on a sufficiently comprehensive scale, to transform the ill-paid, ill-treated, and ill-fed seamen of the day into a loyal, contented and disciplined body, or to supply a sufficient number of "gentleman-tarpawlins" to command our ships and fleets. A large number of these officers did do so, but quite as many continued to serve as soldiers, some afloat in command of marines, and many others in the army.

As time went on, things adjusted themselves, and before the eighteenth century had progressed very far the sailor came into his own. The "days of oak and hemp" were at their zenith. Our men-of-war were commanded by officers who were thorough seamen, able to handle their ships under sail themselves, though masters who were navigation experts still remained. Their crews were composed of two distinct classes—seamen and marines.[74] The former were, as before, still recruited for the commission only, while the latter were enlisted for a fixed period of service.[75] The best seamen, nevertheless, made a regular profession of the navy, going from one ship to another as they were paid off and commissioned. If they made an occasional trip to sea in a merchantman or privateer between whiles, that by no means impaired their professional ability, and the "prime seamen" of those days were the finest sailors in history. Unfortunately their number, for various reasons, was somewhat limited, and a ship's company, especially if she or her commander bore a bad name afloat, had to be completed by all kinds of people. Even the marines, regularly enlisted men as they were, were by no means always of the same calibre.

According to our apparently interminable national practice, we always began our wars shorthanded in this as well as in every other militant service, and recruits had on these occasions to be sent on board in the rawest stages of their training. Yet, in spite of all these drawbacks, look at the victories our navy won in those glorious days! Good, bad, or indifferent, sailor or marine, the men were all true Britons when the time came to "strike home" for King and Country, just as their gallant descendants have proved themselves in the Great European War. As the nineteenth century progressed, and our navy had no big wars on hand, the seaman element by no means deteriorated. The professional sailor was forthcoming in sufficient numbers to man our navy in peace-time or in minor operations, and there was no necessity to send untrained marines afloat. Steam had made its appearance, but it was far from superseding sail-power. The executive were still sailors, heart and soul, and had no hankering after soldiering and drill ashore. All the same, the sailing-masters were still retained, and seemed to be indispensable. Admiral John Moresby, in his interesting work entitled Two Admirals, which relates his own and his father's naval experiences from 1786 to 1877, gives the following account of the naval officers of 1847:—

"The officers, with few exceptions, were content to be practical seamen only. They had nothing whatever to do with the navigation of the ship or the rating of the chronometers. That was entirely in the hands of the master, and no other had any real experience or responsibility in the matter. I may instance the case of a captain whose ship was at Spithead. He was ordered by signal to go to the assistance of a ship on shore at the back of the Isle of Wight. In reply he hoisted the signal of 'Inability: the master is on shore.' 'Are the other officers on board?' he was asked. He answered 'Yes,' and to the repeated order, 'Proceed immediately,' he again hoisted 'Inability', and remained entrenched in his determination until a pilot was sent to his assistance."

If a "practical seaman" was so dependent on his master as this he would not appear to have been much of an improvement on the soldier-captains of earlier times. It seems a most extraordinary position, and it is almost as extraordinary that now, when sailoring proper is a thing of the past, we may be quite certain that no captain in His Majesty's service would hesitate to get under way on receipt of an order to go to the assistance of a ship in distress, whether the navigating officer was on board or not. But, probably on account of the long period of peace which had followed after Waterloo, neither our navy nor army was in such a high state of efficiency as it had been earlier in the century or is at the present minute. The Crimean War broke like a thunder-clap on our peace-organized forces. We know what terrible times our gallant soldiers went through before Sebastopol on account of deficiency of commissariat, equipment, and every other aid to efficiency which ought to have been in readiness, but which, in fact, had no existence. We commissioned a fine fleet for the Baltic, but it practically effected nothing, and we had the greatest difficulty in manning it.

"Public opinion", writes Admiral Moresby, "resented the revival of the press-gang; therefore the only alternative was the offer of a large bounty, and by this means the ships were filled with counter-jumpers and riff-raff of all sorts, and rarely a sailor amongst them. What this meant only those who had to do the necessary slave-driving can tell. . . . In the Driver . . . we may have had twenty seamen as a nucleus. The rest were long-shore fellows, and when Admiral Berkley came on board and told us that the Russians were at sea, and probably in a few days we should be in action, there was a strong dash of anxiety in our satisfaction."