“Sent all the boats to impress the crew of the Britannia East India ship. The boats returned with thirty-nine men, the remainder having armed themselves and barricaded the bread room.”
“26th, the remainder of the Britannia crew surrendered, being twenty-three. Brought them on board.”
So great was the necessity of getting more men, and a better stamp of men, into the Navy, and of making them fairly content when there, that in 1800 a Royal Proclamation was issued encouraging men to enlist, and promising them a bounty.
This bounty, though it worked well in many cases, was of course open to various forms of abuse. Some who were entitled to it did not get it, and many put in a claim whose right was at least doubtful. An instance appears in the letters of the Leopard of a certain George Rivers, who had been entered as a “prest man,” and applied successfully to be considered as a Volunteer, thereby to procure the bounty. He evidently wanted to make the best of his position.
The case of Thomas Roberts, given in another letter from the Leopard, is an example of inducements offered to enter the service.
Thomas Roberts “appears to have been received as a Volunteer from H.M.S. Ceres, and received thirty shillings bounty. He says he was apprenticed to his father about three years ago, and that, sometime last October, he was enticed to a public-house by two men, who afterwards took him on board the receiving ship off the Tower, where he was persuaded to enter the service.”
The difficulty of getting an adequate crew seems to have led in some cases to sharp practice among the officers themselves, if we are to believe that Admiral Croft had real cause for complaint.
“‘If you look across the street,’ he says to Anne Elliot, ‘you will see Admiral Brand coming down, and his brother. Shabby fellows, both of them! I am glad they are not on this side of the way. Sophy cannot bear them. They played me a pitiful trick once; got away some of my best men. I will tell you the whole story another time.’” But “another time” never comes, so we are reduced to imagining the “pitiful trick.”
The unpopularity of the Navy, and the consequent shorthandedness in time of war, had one very bad result in bringing into it all sorts of undesirable foreigners, who stirred up strife among the better disposed men, and altogether aggravated the evils of the service.
Undoubtedly the care of the officers for their men was doing its gradual work in lessening all these evils. To instance this, we find, as we read on in the letters and official reports of Francis Austen, that the entry, “the man named in the margin did run from his Majesty’s ship under my command,” comes with less and less frequency; and we have on record that the Aurora, under the command of Captain Charles Austen, did not lose a single man by sickness or desertion during the years 1826-1828, whilst he was in command. Even when some allowance is made for his undoubted charm of personality, this is a strong evidence of the real improvements which had been worked in the Navy during thirty years.