“To this I made him no answer but asked him what was his second proposal. ‘Why,’ says he, ‘if you will join with me when the fort is taken and all done that can be done on the island we will carry these three Spanish men-of-war away with us to Jamaica, for,’ says he, ‘the dogs have got a great many of the negroes, and other plunder, and if you will consent,’ says he, ‘we’ll make them pay us well before we part with them.’ [Lillingston objected that this would be dishonest and would certainly get them into trouble at home.] ‘’Tis no matter for that,’ says the commodore, ‘we are a great way off England, and it may be long enough before the news of it will come there. We may make it worth our while and may easily make it up when we come home.’ I told him I could not concern myself in such a thing unless the Spaniards gave us some just occasion. ‘Occasion,’ says he, ‘there is occasion enough, for they have got away our negroes, and it is easy enough to pick a hole in their coats on that account, and answer it at home.’”
Wilmot’s confidence that news took a long time to come home from the West Indies, and that accusations were easily answered by people who had money in their pockets, was not unfounded. Strange things happened in those waters. It may well have been within the commodore’s memory that in the reign of Charles II. a man-of-war sent out to suppress the buccaneers had gone over to them, after her captain had run his master through the body, and had then fled.
It is unnecessary to dwell much more on this story. Port de Paix fell, and then the fever broke out among the sailors and soldiers, both the allies separated and returned to their own ports. Lillingston became very ill, and while in bed, and as he thought dying, was pestered by several of the captains, William Moses being one of them, to sign certain papers which were meant, he supposed, to exculpate the commodore. The military officer asserts that Wilmot stopped on the north side of Jamaica, and there sold the negroes he had plundered, for twenty pounds a head, putting the money into his pocket. Lillingston remained ill in Jamaica, and the ships returned home by the Straits of Florida. The fever went with them. One vessel was lost on the Florida shoals from want of men to handle her sails. Some of her crew were brought off. Others were left to perish in the surf because they had broken into the spirit-room, and were hopelessly drunk. Wilmot died of fever, and so did Captain Lance who succeeded him. The command fell to Captain Butler who brought the squadron home. In England the commodore’s widow, Ruth Wilmot, accused Butler of having broken into her husband’s desk, and of having stolen his plunder. A lawsuit followed which ruined both. In the course of the suit affidavits were produced by both sides, and one of these, made on behalf of Captain Butler, for the purpose of discrediting the witness of Ruth Wilmot, gives a curious picture of the discipline of the navy at that time. It deals with the moral characters of one Theophilus Buxton and others.
“Theophilus Buxton during such his employment (of steward to wit) was a person guilty of frequent drunkenness, abominable profaneness, execrable oaths, blasphemy, thieving and embezzlement, and the said Buxton and John Heath having, in one of their drunken fits at sea, set a candle on a jar of oil in the steward’s room next to the powder room, by which means the oil took fire, the said ship with all that was in her had in all probability been burnt or blown up had not the second lieutenant of the ship, with much difficulty and hazard, put out the fire, for which offence the said Buxton, and John Heath had about forty lashes apiece given them by order of Captain Butler, then commander of the said ship, and after the said Buxton came into the harbour he ran away from the said ship. And these deponents further say, that they likewise well know John Brinley, mariner in the said Dunkirk, who was a person very negligent of his duty, and very seditious, and at Portsmouth threatened his said Captain, and to kill one of the lieutenants of the said ship, and attempted to head the ship’s company in an open mutiny, and these deponents believe that the said Buxton, Heath, and Brinley are such profligate persons that they will swear anything that their malice and desire of revenge can dictate to them.”
It must not be supposed that the navy captain, who was a mere brute, was always a man of obscure birth. In August 1742 a court martial was held at Spithead for the trial of an officer, who, if long descent, rank, and family connections were always, and not only as a rule, enough to form a gentleman, ought assuredly to have been one. This was the Honourable William Hervey, third son of the first Earl of Bristol of the name. He had been captain of the Superb, 60, in the fleet which sailed for the West Indies under Sir Chaloner Ogle in 1740, and he was proved to the satisfaction of a court composed of brother officers, and presided over by Admiral Cavendish, to have been guilty of conduct surpassing anything Smollett has described in his grim pictures of the navy. His first and second lieutenants, the gunner and purser of his ship, swore that he beat an old seaman named White so brutally that the man was carried insensible to his hammock, and died there accusing the captain of being the cause of his death; that he often beat the quarter-masters from the wheel with a cudgel, and had on one occasion actually endangered the ship in this way, during a paroxysm of rage; that he once threw a paper under the table of his cabin, ordered a subordinate to pick it up, and kicked him while on his knees, to the peril of his life; that he injured his gunner seriously by a foul kick; that he thrashed his purser on the deck at Kinsale; that he threatened to beat all his officers, “from the first lieutenant to the cook’s boy,” and that he not only abounded in abusive terms, but enforced them by insulting gestures. Captain Hervey’s defence consisted of the plea that he was never violent in word or action except when he was provoked, and in an unsupported counter-charge of cruelty to certain Spanish prisoners against his first lieutenant, which the court dismissed. It is consistent enough that while violent captains behaved with a brutality never heard of now except among the roughest and most ignorant class of the community, officers of weak character had some difficulty in obtaining ordinary respect from their subordinates. The discipline of the navy, in the highest sense of the word, was bad, though its mere drill might be sound. There was not as yet a standard of conduct, a prevailing spirit of honour to control and inspire all alike.
Men with whom the loyal discharge of duty is not the first aim, want only temptation and opportunity in order to disgrace themselves in the very presence of the enemy. The charge of cowardice was frequently made at this time. It was indeed one of the regular taunts brought against bad commanders. We may believe that in a sense it was often unjust. Brutal men are not seldom endowed with animal courage, and do not always fail from mere fear. Indeed that weakness would hardly be common among those who, by their own choice, followed a dangerous profession. What, however, we might expect to discover among officers, who agreed with Wilmot in the resolution to look after their own business, and to make themselves easy for life, was a want of the sense of honour which feels a stain like a wound. They would easily be guilty of avoiding battle when no profit was to be expected, not out of pusillanimous tenderness for their personal safety, but because to their base minds there was no advantage to be secured by running risks. If by any chance the cupidity which restrained them from obeying honour and duty was stirred to active malignity by hatred of a comrade or of a superior, if, moreover, they were far away from home and might hope, even foolishly, to escape punishment, such persons would be capable of sinking to well-nigh any excess of baseness. By keeping these conditions in mind, we can understand that most shameful passage in the history of the Royal Navy, the betrayal of Benbow by his captains in August 1702.
Not much is known of the early life of John Benbow, about whom some legends have accumulated and who has a higher reputation than his recorded services justify, partly perhaps because his name strikes the ear, and partly because of his melancholy end. His origin is uncertain. That he was trained to the sea in the merchant service is known. He served in a subordinate place in the navy for a time, and he attracted the notice of James II. by making a manful defence of the trading ship he commanded against a Barbary pirate. That he cut off the heads of his prisoners, put them into a bag with salt, and tumbled them out on the floor of the custom house at Cadiz may or may not be true. It is a credible tale of one who assuredly was a thorough Tarpaulin, and also it may well have been invented of such a man, or transferred to him, from some older legendary sea hero. Common report says that he had a rough tongue, and we may accept its testimony. The “gentlemen captains” of the time would no doubt have defined him as a “Wappineer Tar,” the abusive equivalent of Tarpaulin. His reputation must have been good, for he was chosen to command a squadron in the West Indies after the Peace of Ryswick, and was sent back again in 1701 to intercept the Spanish plate ships which afterwards fell into our hands at Vigo. His movements are of little interest till August 1702. In that month he sailed to intercept a French squadron commanded by M. du Casse on the Spanish Main. On the 19th he discovered his opponent with a squadron of ten ships, and immediately attacked with the eight vessels he had with him. His line was formed in the usual way, his flagship, the Breda, being in the centre, and the others ahead and astern of her. Two of his ships, the Defiance, Captain Kirkby, and the Windsor, Captain Constable, fairly ran soon after the action opened. If the French admiral had pushed his advantage he must have destroyed Benbow’s squadron. But M. du Casse was on treasure-carrying duty, and did not care to incur the hazard of having his ships crippled. After doing some damage to the Breda, he drew off at night. Benbow now rearranged his line, putting the Breda at the head, and placing the misbehaving ships, the Defiance and Windsor, immediately behind her, in the hope of shaming their captains into some sense of honour. But example is wasted on men resolved to misbehave. For four days the admiral followed the French, but his captains, with the exception of the officer commanding the Ruby, Captain George Walton, took every opportunity to fall behind. On the fifth day of the pursuit, and the sixth since he had got touch of the enemy, Benbow had his ships together, and renewed the action. Again he was shamefully ill supported. A cannon shot shattered his right leg. He had his cot brought up on deck, summoned his captains on board the flagship, and made a last appeal to their honour. Encouraged in all probability by their confidence that the wound would be mortal, and that they could tell the tale in their own way, the misbehaving captains insisted on returning to Jamaica. Even the officers who had done their duty joined in recommending retreat, from a belief that their comrades would desert them. The squadron went back to Jamaica, but though Benbow’s wound was mortal he lived long enough to do the Royal Navy one signal piece of service. He brought his disloyal officers to a court martial. The heart of the navy was still sound in spite of the vices on the surface, and the misconduct of these men had been too gross for pity. Sentences of death or dismissal were passed on all, and the offenders were sent home for execution. Kirkby, and Wade of the Greenwich, were shot on board the Bristol at Plymouth. Hudson of the Pendennis died before trial, else he would have shared their fate. Constable of the Windsor was dismissed the service, and imprisoned. Even the officers who had reluctantly joined in the recommendation to retreat were sentenced to dismissal, and were pardoned only by the intercession of the admiral. It was said, apparently by way of palliation for Kirkby and Wade, that they had behaved well before, and were less cowards than traitors. There is probably this amount of force in the pitiful excuse, that they were greedy men chiefly intent on pelf, who in their foolish cunning hoped to revenge themselves on their rough chief by ruining his chance of gaining glory. To end before a firing-party was their proper fate. It has been the good fortune of the navy that the nation has always been very serious where it was concerned, and that in the worst of times there has always been within its own ranks the capacity to apply the last indispensable sanction of the code of honour.
The condition of the great dim mass of seamen, whose fate so often depended on the bad commander, is not easy to realise. But we have every reason to believe that it was hard, even in comparison with that of other sailors. The word is used here of all the elements forming the crews of our ships, though the “sailormen” to use their own expression—that is to say those bred from boyhood to the sea—never formed a majority, and even rarely amounted to a third of the complements. The majority was always made up of soldiers and landsmen. This proportion of one-third sailors and two-thirds landsmen was enforced on the privateers. Taking the whole body of those who lived in the warships, and by the sea, they suffered from two standing grievances throughout the whole of the eighteenth century,—the amount of their pay, and the system of payment. Though the establishment of William III. doubled the pay of the officers, and the new establishment of 1700 did not make very material reductions, nothing was done for the sailors. They continued to receive 20s. a month for a month of twenty-eight days in the case of able seamen, and less for others. To the true sailors this was peculiarly hard. The first effect of a war was to send up the wages in merchant ships to 45s. and 50s. a month, while as much as £7 would be paid to the colliers for the voyage from the Tyne to London, though it might last only six or seven weeks. It was for this reason that the press was needed to man the navy. Landsmen, waisters, and marines were found with no great difficulty. Not being trained sailors they were not sought by shipowners. But the real sailors were. Therefore it was necessary to draw them to the navy by offers of bounties to make up the bad pay of the state, and when this temptation failed, as it invariably did, to attract a sufficient number, then to drive them in by the press.
Nor was the bad pay all, or even the worst. Their wretched 20s. or less a month were paid to the men on a system both wasteful to the state and cruel to its servants. At home the payment was made by a commissioner who went round with a staff of clerks, and held an inspection on each ship. Then he held another, named a recall, in the dockyards, to take in the men overlooked, or absent during the first. The process was long, and it led to an absurd outlay on travelling expenses and clerks’ wages. Such as it was this system applied only to the ships at home. It was long before the crews abroad, including the officers, were paid till their return to England. If the men had remained always with the same ship the evil, though severe enough, would not have been so great. But they were shifted about from vessel to vessel, and had often to present “pay tickets” for four or five different ships. In the later seventeenth century, before it became usual to maintain large squadrons abroad for years, the wrong was not so acutely felt. But in the eighteenth it became a monstrous oppression. The discontent it caused, after leading to many minor mutinies, culminated in the great outbreak of 1797. If the sailors had not been unorganised and unrepresented in Parliament, and if it had been impossible to obtain them by force, a remedy must have been found earlier. A bad system has always indirect bad consequences, and one result of this was a sheer waste of public money. Funds voted for a given ship could not be paid till the proper claimants appeared. Meanwhile the money lay in the hands of the treasurer of the navy, who received the interest. If he left office he was still responsible for the unclosed accounts, and the money remained with him. It is even said that far into the eighteenth century the accounts of ships commissioned in the reign of Queen Anne had not been wound up. For the sailors themselves the system worked out in downright robbery. When they could get their pay tickets they were driven to sell them to speculators at enormous discounts. In order to protect them against this their tickets were kept in the hands of the captains—with the result that they might never reach the proper owner. It was a common accusation against bad commanders that they robbed their men in combination with the purser.