If there was little or no method in regard to entry, how did the youngsters of those days fare as to education?
Well, as a matter of fact, there was rather less system in this respect than in the other. It depended in a great measure upon the sort of captain a boy shipped with, and also, in a lesser degree, upon the junior officers. The seamanship of those days was pretty readily picked up by a lad who kept his eyes open and was eager to learn; a state of war was far more frequent than quiet times; ships were always on the move, and seamanship came of itself; the navigation required was of a rough and ready description, and the master and his mates were as a rule the only people who took any trouble about it.
Marryat, indeed, gives us some vivid and entertaining pictures of the process of education of a certain kind, as applied by the midshipmen and others to a new comer; also of what may be termed preliminary instruction.
Jack Easy, it will be remembered, received some valuable preliminary training at the hands of Mr. Bonnycastle, who literally “licked him into shape” with a good pliant cane, and who, having inculcated obedience by this stern method, took care that his scholars should know how to use their fists; an accomplishment which proved of great service to Master Jack when Vigors, the bully of the mess, attempted to ride roughshod over him.
Mr. Midshipman Easy is, however, far too great a favourite of fortune to be accepted as a typical example.
Frank Mildmay, in his new uniform, tumbling up against the Port Admiral, whom he failed to salute, and so humbled by the rebuke he received that he went about touching his hat to everyone he met, is a truer picture. Another valuable piece of education was imparted by Murphy, his senior, in the form of a hiding for not comprehending the significance of the captain’s hint at the dinner table, “Go and see how the wind is.” Poor Mildmay went out, and returned, in all good faith, with the required information; whereupon Murphy was instructed to “show him the ropes,” and Nemesis supervened.
Peter Simple, joining as a more than usually verdant specimen, intuitively obeyed when someone said, “Hand me that monkey’s tail, youngster”; from which it was argued that he was not such a fool as he looked, and much was expected of him afterwards.
In such fashion, for the most part, were our future admirals and captains pitchforked, as it were, into the Service, to swim or sink as best they might; and many were the anomalies which prevailed also in the senior ranks. Captains barely out of their teens, with grey-haired first-lieutenants to dry-nurse them; so-called midshipmen of any age up to thirty-five; and so on. Looking back on those days through the perspective of years—those days when our position as a naval Power was a-making year by year, and was completed at Trafalgar—we are apt to say that “the world went very well then.”
Curiously enough, there existed for many years, side by side with this rough and ready “pitchfork” system, “another way,” as the cookery books have it, of getting into the Navy; and a way, moreover, which was fenced about with very precise regulations as to age, and involved a course of pretty hard study. That this mode of entry should have been made entirely optional, and consequently partial, seems strange; but such was the case.
Anyone who is acquainted with Portsmouth Dockyard is familiar with the appearance of the old Naval College, standing just to the southward of the Commander-in-Chief’s house; but comparatively few people, even among naval officers, know very much of its history, or when and why it was built.