I shall now relate a few anecdotes as they come to my memory. When near the shoal I have just mentioned, our surgeon’s mate and the ship’s cook were almost frightened out of their senses. The former, who would fight any man, or face the devil as soon as let it alone, was not equal to this; and when the junior pilot said, ‘—— seize me if we shan’t be on the sands,’ he clapped his hands and ran down to the gun room, with his hair standing on end, crying out, ‘Lost! Lost! Lost!’—and then flew on deck again; and when the wind shifted, he cut several capers and said ‘I’m a man again.’ As for the cook, he had saved a sum of money by keeping shop on board and selling things to the ship’s company. At the time the best bower parted, he was on the forecastle in the greatest tribulation; says he, ‘Betty’ (meaning his wife, who was on board) ‘will go to a better mansion, but I’m doubtful about myself.’ He had hardly made the observation when the sea broke over the bows that threatened destruction and with a faltering voice he said, ‘Liver me! Liver me!’—meaning ‘Deliver me,’ but could not get the word out. ‘Damn your liver, you croaking son of a bitch,’ says the captain of the forecastle. ‘Go into your coppers and be damned to you, and there you’ll be safe, and don’t come barking here like a tanner’s dog.’ I was on the forecastle with Captain Dobree at the time. He looked at me and for my life I could not help laughing.
While at Sheerness we had two courts martial held on board of us[[141]]; one on Lieutenant Brice, on charges brought against him by Captain Charles Brisbane while on the South American station. The charges being proved, he was sentenced to be dismissed the service and rendered incapable of serving his Majesty, his heirs or successors. This was most unfortunate for Lieutenant Brice, as his commission to the rank of commander only waited the result of his trial. The next was on Captain George Tripp, for the loss of the Nassau, 64, on the Dutch Coast.[[142]] The court having heard all the evidence came to the following conclusion:—That H.M. ship Nassau was lost through the gross ignorance and inattention of Captain Tripp, and that he did not set a good example to those under his command; and for such conduct he was sentenced to be dismissed from the service as unfit and unworthy, and rendered incapable of serving his Majesty, his heirs or successors.
I promised (page [12]) to speak of Pat Gibson when I came to the Blonde. He was at this time (1799) purser of the Pallas, 38 (formerly the Minerva), having given up the Princess Royal as too great an undertaking for his age, being, as he told me, eighty. The Pallas being alongside the same hulk, we were constant visitors. As every circumstance, however trifling, may be interesting, I shall relate a few anecdotes. Gibson was a tall raw-boned Irishman from the county of Tipperary; very powerful, with an Herculean grasp, and woe betide those who got into his clutches if roused to anger. He was a very jovial companion, droll in his manner, full of anecdote, and sung in the Irish language, of which he was a perfect master. He used to go on shore to bring off the drunken Irish who had stayed above their time, and I remember his saying to me, ‘Arrah, don’t you think, my dear fellow, that it’s a hard thing that nobody can manage those spalpeens but an ould man like me, now eighty years of age? Och, By the Holy Father, how I knocked their heads together, and left the mark of my fist upon their ugly podreen faces, bad luck to them.’
He was at the taking of Quebec and was one of those that assisted in carrying General Wolfe off the field when mortally wounded. His account of the battle was very interesting, and in it he fought most manfully. It was amusing to see him sitting in his cabin with his legs stretched outside the door singing Irish songs. The steward once interrupted him, for which he got a thump on the back that sent him the length of the gunroom, Pat saying, ‘To hell wid you! take dat till the cows come home.’ There was a countryman of his by the name of Fegan, who, in the American war, was sent by Sir John Fielding (the celebrated magistrate of Bow Street) on board the Conquistador, 60, then lying as a guard-ship at the Nore with Admiral Roddam’s flag. This Fegan was a shrewd, keen fellow, and made a song on being sent on board of a man of war, and Gibson was very fond of singing it. I only remember a few verses:—
The beginning of the war they hobbled poor Fegan,
And sent him on board of the Conquistador;
That floating old gin shop, who struck upon her beef bones,
While laying as a guard-ship near the buoy of the Nore.
When first they lugged him before Justice Fielding,[[143]]
Fegan thus to him did say: