VICTORY OF LORD DUNCAN (CAMPERDOWN) 1797
The abuses in the navy included those of interest, which in those days honeycombed every branch of professional life. Lord Rodney made his son John a post captain after he had been a midshipman little over a month, and when he was just over fifteen years old. But this, at a time when boys of fourteen held commissions in the Guards, must have seemed a trifle. Mrs. Lybbe Powys, speaking of her brother-in-law, says—
“Our young officer is what I fear too generally young men in the army are, gay, thoughtless, and very handsome; but what boy of fourteen, having a commission in the Guards, can be otherwise?”
The Times of 1797 speaks of the “baby officers,” and says—
“Some of the sucking colonels of the Guards have expressed their dislike of the short skirts. They say they feel as if they were going to be flogged.”
A peculiar feature of the end of the eighteenth and beginning of nineteenth centuries was the tendency to mutiny, induced doubtless by the terrible hardships and injustices undergone by the men on board. And the wonder is, not that the men did mutiny, but that they endured so long and fought so splendidly without doing so.
Some of the mutineers on board the Téméraire, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, are thus described by an eye-witness. “They were the noblest fellows, with the most undaunted mien, I ever beheld—the beau ideal of British sailors; tall and athletic, well-dressed, in blue jackets, red waistcoats, and trousers white as driven snow. Their hair like the tail of the lion, hung in a queue down their back. At that time this last article was considered, as indeed it really was, the distinguishing mark of a thoroughbred seaman. Unfortunately, these gallant fellows were as ignorant as they were impatient, and the custom of the time was to hang everyone who should dare to dispute the orders of his superior officers.”
Of the mutinies the most serious were those at Spithead and the Nore, which followed closely upon one another. After the first, concessions in regard to pay and various improvements in commissariat were granted; and both mutinies were put down firmly and sharply, but they were followed from time to time by lesser outbreaks.