“JIM THE PIONEER’S” GRAVE.
Photo: Smale & Son, Dartmouth.
A far more important institution, of which he was the founder, is the pack of beagles. Being blessed with a good deal of energy and of sporting instinct, Lieutenant Mainwaring was the first to make any effort in this direction. It is astonishing how keen naval men are on following beagles when they get the chance.
The Gosport and Fareham Pack in bygone days—and, it is to be hoped, at the present time—used to be followed by quite a crowd of sailors; captains, commanders, lieutenants and sub-lieutenants, to say nothing of athletic paymasters and surgeons, all vying with each other for the front rank, and all returning in the afternoon, caked with mud and exceedingly cheerful, especially those happy ones who had succeeded in “pounding” their dearest chums at a muddy ditch, or had glanced back to see the said chums, not to be daunted, make a futile jump into tenacious mud, and draw out their legs with a sound as of cork extraction.
LIEUTENANT MAINWARING AND CADET CAPTAINS.
Photo: Smale & Son, Dartmouth.
Lieutenant Mainwaring, deeming it a drawback that the youngsters in the Britannia should be deprived of these joys, proceeded to negotiate for the nucleus of a pack, and succeeded in obtaining as a start two and a half couples of fourteen-inch hounds, from the kennels of the late Mr. Thomas Cartlich, of Woore, Staffordshire; these were supplemented by the ship’s terrier, “Jim,” and they commenced in a humble way by “drag” hunts, varied by badgers, when available, sent by neighbours and friends from the numerous “earths” in South Devonshire.
This began in the winter of 1878-9, and before long another couple was presented by Admiral Stokes, who hunted a pack of beagles in South Wales. Another addition was a hound bought from the Home for Lost Dogs, at Battersea, and consequently named “Homeless”; and in three years, with incidental additions and breeding, the pack numbered twelve and a half couples, and was firmly established as an asset of the ship, under the recognition of, and eventually subsidised by, the Admiralty.
The kennels were at first by the racquet court, but this was found to be a bad situation from a sanitary point of view, and lacking sunshine, so they were subsequently transferred, on a much more ambitious scale, to their present site on the lower edge of the cricket ground; and there, as you pass, you are greeted by the voices, at present, of some two and twenty couples of lively little hounds, tumbling over one another inside a wire enclosure.