H.M.S. “Prince.”
A first-rate of 110 guns, showing the stern balconies as built before the close sterns were introduced.
There is an interesting passage in a letter written by Captain Duff of H.M.S. Mars, in 1805, to his wife, in which the following words occur: “October 10th. I am sorry the rain has begun to-night, as it will spoil my fine work, having been employed for this week past to paint the ship à la Nelson, which most of the fleet are doing.” That, of course, was just a few days before Trafalgar. And there is a phrase in a letter written by a young midshipman to his father, in 1794, telling him all about the Glorious First of June battle. “The French ... called us the little devil, and the little black ribband, as we have a black streak painted on our side.” The explanation of these two passages is as follows. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century it was left to a captain’s own taste to paint his ship whatever colours he liked. There was no uniformity as to-day, but generally a ship was painted with a wide black streak along the water-line just above the copper sheathing. This streak ran right round the ship, and in depth reached to the lower gun-deck. Above this the hull was painted a brownish yellow, but sometimes it was more a lemon-colour. The after upper works above the gun-decks and the outer sides of the poop above the quarter-deck guns were painted a vivid red or blue.
This bright band of colour gradually faded until, by the time Trafalgar was fought, it became a dull, deep blue—almost black. Round the forecastle ran a band of scarlet or pale blue edged with gold, and continued down the beak to the figurehead. The outsides of the port-lids were a brownish yellow like the sides, and the stern walks were decorated with elaborate gilt carvings, cherubs and dolphins and mermaids, the royal arms, and wreaths, etc. Round the stern of each ship, outside the glazed windows of the cabin, ran a quarter gallery for the captain, while at the bows a figurehead was seen which was regarded with a sentimental interest and kept in good condition. But Nelson had his ships painted black, with a yellow streak along each tier of ports, and the port-lids were painted black. This chequer painting, then, was the method “à la Nelson” to which Captain Duff was referring.
Internally the sides of the ships were still painted a blood-red, for the reason already given in an earlier century. So also were the inner sides of the port-lids. But after Trafalgar the interiors were sometimes painted in other colours, such as green or yellow or even brown, until, after the year 1840, white became uniform. Many internal fittings such as the gun-carriages, and even the guns themselves, were painted red or chocolate during the Nelson period. The lower masts were painted a dull yellow, the topmasts and upper spars varnished a dark brown, and the lower yards and gaffs painted black. The blocks, the chains, the dead-eyes, the wooden and iron fittings for the rigging were all tarred black, just as one often finds them to-day on some old coaster or fishing smack. The masts of the British warships were painted white usually before any engagement with the French, so as to distinguish them from the Gallic masts, which were black.
An Early Nineteenth-Century Design for a Man-of-War’s Stern.
It was the superiority of the British gunnery which won most of our battles against the French, even when the latter had better ships and faster. The British directed their fire chiefly against the hull, whereas the French aimed at the rigging. The cartridges were filled in the magazines and handed up to the fighting decks above by the powder-monkeys. Along the decks were arranged, at intervals, match-tubs to receive the slow-matches used in firing the guns, whilst in the cockpit of the ship the surgeon and his mates were busy attending to the wounded. The ’tween decks were very cramped, and there was not much air, and there was still a good deal of disease rampant among the seamen. The surgeon’s mate messed in a space only six feet square in the cockpit, “screened off with canvas, and shut in by chests, dark as a dungeon, and smelling intolerably of putrefied cheese and rancid butter.”
Course, Topsail, and Topgallant Sail of an Early Nineteenth-Century Ship.