Pocock was rewarded by the immensely lucrative command of the fleet which sailed in the combined expedition against Havana in 1762, when Spain, in a moment of Royal folly, was dragged into the war against us. On that enterprise and of the contemporaneous expedition which Pocock’s successor in the East Indies command, Cornish, led against Manila, no more will be said here than that they were marked by a loyalty of co-operation between sailor and soldier which was then a novelty.
CHAPTER VII
THE AMERICAN WAR TILL 1780
Authorities.—See authorities for previous years; Mundy’s Life and Correspondence of Lord Rodney; Barrow’s Life of Howe; Chevalier, Histoire de la Marine Française pendant la guerre d’independence Americaine; Parliamentary History; Annual Register.
The interval of fifteen years which separates the end of the Seven Years’ War from the beginning of the American War in 1778 saw no change in the organisation of the navy. An improvement in their half pay was given to the captains in 1773. In 1715 the right to enjoy half pay when not on active service, which had hitherto been limited to twenty-five officers of this rank, was extended to all. The amount had come to appear insufficient by 1773, and the captains petitioned Parliament for relief. Their case was stated by Howe, who was then member for Dartmouth. Lord North, the Prime Minister, began by opposing the motion, on the ground that it affected the revenue, and ought therefore to have been made by a minister. But the sympathy of the house was with Howe and his clients. A committee of inquiry was appointed, and on its report Parliament decided that the increase ought to be granted. A sum of £7000 was finally voted, and the scale of half pay was fixed at 10s. a day for 50 captains, 8s. for 30, and 6s. for all the others, in their order of seniority. Howe and the more fortunate naval officers, who were members of the House of Commons and who gave him support, acted an honourable part on behalf of their brothers in arms. They would have done still better if they had gone on to represent the far more cruel grievances of the men. Had they acted with spirit for those fellow-seamen who did not belong to their own class, they might have secured a hearing, and have saved the navy from the long list of mutinies which were to disgrace the coming war. But so much magnanimity and foresight was perhaps not to be expected in those years of the eighteenth century. Nothing was done for the sailors. The isolated mutinies were sometimes suppressed with severity, but were sometimes concealed from public knowledge, and condoned. A long course of neglect and weakness, with now and then a spasm of ferocity, bore its natural fruit in the combined mutiny at Spithead in 1797.
The discipline of the navy continued to benefit by the admirable work done in the Seven Years’ War by the great chiefs and the less famous officers whom they inspired. Their influence and example went on bearing good fruit, and have indeed never ceased to be felt, but have been carried from one generation to another of their successors. Remote from the corruption of the dockyards and the fury of political factions on shore, on solitary voyages, in long cruises, in blockades, in battle and storm, the admirals and captains who were trained in the schools of Anson and Hawke, Pocock and Boscawen, and were themselves to train the admirals and captains of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, went on perfecting the seamanship and fighting efficiency of the fleet. An anonymous officer, who wrote in 1788, could declare in answer to those who boasted of the ancient discipline of the navy, that “if we compare the past practices and methods, as they have been explained to us thirty years ago by old seamen in the service, with the present, we shall find, that in no one thing under the British Government has there been so much improvement as in the art of fighting, sailing, and navigating a British ship of War.” The reason he gives is full of instruction, and deserves to be quoted at length:—
“The old method of enforcing discipline was without method, by main strength and the frequent use of the rattan, without which no officer, from the captain down to the youngest midshipman, ever went upon deck. Even twenty years ago there was much of this discipline (if it can be called by the name) remaining in the service. Last war [i.e. between 1778 and 1783] there is no doubt that the internal discipline of His Majesty’s ships in general was brought to as great a degree of perfection, almost, as it is capable of receiving; I say in general. There were indeed exceptions; but in captains bigoted to the old customs, and whose ships might always be distinguished by their awkwardness and inactivity and by the indifferent figure they cut in action, though commanded with bravery. This general improvement proceeded from a method adopted in every branch of an officer’s and sailor’s duty, by dividing and quartering the officers with the men, and making them responsible for the performance of that portion of the duty allotted them, without noise, or the brutal method of driving sailors like cattle with sticks. Whether it were to make or shorten sail, to manœuvre the ship, to keep the men clean clothed, clean bedded, and berthed, this method was practised.”
The writer attributes the efficiency of the crews and the good health they enjoyed even in the West Indies, while under the command of Rodney and Hood, to this more humane and intelligent system. He claims that there were cases when out of twenty-two sail of the line cruising together, there were not twenty-two men who could not come to quarters. The reader who compares this with the terrible ravages made by fever and scurvy in the naval expeditions of Queen Anne’s reign and the beginning of the Seven Years’ War will see how vast had been the change for the better. The example of Captain Cook and the exertions of Rodney’s doctor, Gilbert Blane, brought about improvements in the diet of the men which saved thousands for the service of their country, who would have been thrown to the sharks in former times. All this reform was the spontaneous work of the navy. There was so little about it of Admiralty system that no universal system of quartering men and dividing work was established till far into the nineteenth century. Captains followed the practice of the officers under whom they had first served, with improvements of their own. The perfected discipline of the navy was the result of the labours of hundreds of officers, many of whom are completely forgotten, thinking, experimenting, and toiling, each in his own sphere, but all with the same noble love of good work. Therefore it had, and has, a grand life of its own, incomparably higher, and far more enduring than the mechanical order enforced by a minister or king. “It is the service” was the most emphatic praise a naval officer could give, and “It is not the service” his most severe condemnation. “The Service” was the formula standing for that combination of smartness, of cleanliness, of precision of movement, of exactness of stroke, of resolution to endure, and of intrepidity to venture, which is the glory of the navy, its strength, and the real explanation of its triumphs. It is of this too that the nation has the best reason to be proud. There is something rather servile and more than rather blind in the habit of attributing all success to the commander. In the long run the Roman Legion will wear down Hannibal, and it is a greater feat for any people to produce the organism which is animated by the virtue of tens of thousands of its sons, than the exceptional leader, whose genius does not always last even for the whole of his own life. We do well to put up monuments to Nelson, and it would be to our honour to remember other admirals more fully than we do. The navy itself is the living memorial raised to the generation of forgotten men whose names have passed into forgetfulness, but whose work lives to this day on the quarter-decks and forecastles of every ship flying the cross of St. George.
While the seamen were steadily perfecting the discipline of the navy, their rulers on shore were allowing the administration to drift back to the corruptions of Walpole’s time. The cause of this unhappy reaction is easily stated. George III. came to the throne with the determination to be king. This meant that he would not consent to be a puppet in the hands of the Whig oligarchy of Revolution families, who had dominated his grandfather. He could not crush them by the use of force, and was consequently compelled to fight them with their own weapons, which were interest and corruption. Interest meant that he bought the obedience of Members of the House of Commons by bribery. Every branch of the public service, and the Royal Household also, suffered because places were given to buy votes, and no reform could be effected without losing the support of members of Parliament who profited by the abuse. The evil was particularly bad in the navy. Parliamentary boroughs and dockyard seats were regularly filled with henchmen of the king’s ministers, on the understanding that they gave their help to suppress inquiry. Money voted with a great appearance of precision for specific purposes was not applied to the ends for which it was in theory granted. What became of it nobody was ever able to discover. On paper the system of accounts was so rigid that fraud might have appeared to be impossible, but its very severity made it cumbersome, and the men in office were not even honest. When taxed with misuse of the nation’s money they were in the habit of boasting that they did not take it for themselves. It is probable that they did not put it directly into their own pockets, but their defence was sophistical. Corruption was needed to keep them in place—and place was lucrative. Every department had its own treasury. The money paid out by the Exchequer was put to the account of the minister. The bankers paid interest on it, and this interest was the perquisite of the members of the ministry. It was their interest to delay payments and conceal the actual use made of the funds. Brougham repeats a story which illustrates the spirit of the politicians of that generation. When Lord North was appointed Paymaster of the Forces he found that he had to divide the emoluments with another politician. His disgust was great, and he revenged himself by a characteristic jest. A dog made a mess in the passage outside his room. Lord North sent for one of the servants, ordered him to carry the offensive matter away, and take care that his colleague received his due share, for said he, “Mr. Cooke is to have half of everything that comes into the office.”