Sea life in Nelson's time

by John Masefield

The true man-of-war’s man, or bluejacket, was said to have been “begotten in the galley and born under a gun.” He was a prodigy, “with every hair a rope-yarn, every tooth a marline-spike, every finger a fishhook, and his blood right good Stockhollum tar.” This kind of man-of-war’s man was rare. When he sailed aboard our men-of-war he generally held some position of authority, as captain of a top, or boatswain’s mate. We had never a ship’s crew of his like, even at the beginning of the French wars, when our ships were manned by the pick of the merchant-service. There were other kinds of sailor, for the King was always in want of men, and a man-of-war refused nothing.

The royal fleets were manned, as we have seen, by various expedients. A certain proportion of the man-of-war’s men came to sea as boys, and remained in the service all their lives, partly because they were too strictly kept to escape, and partly because “once a sailor always a sailor”—the life unfitted them for anything else. A large number joined the navy because their heads had been turned by patriotic cant; and very bitterly they repented their folly after a week aboard. A number came willingly, from merchant-ships, attracted by the high bounties or premiums, offered for seamen volunteering. Some came willingly, deceived by those placards in the seaports, which promised abundance of grog and plenty of prize-money to all who entered. But the greater number came unwillingly, by the imprest or quota, or from my Lord Mayor. The press-gang was especially active in securing sailors from merchant-vessels. Very frequently they stripped such ships of their crews and officers, leaving their captains without enough hands to work the ships home. It was a cruel hardship to the poor merchant-sailors; for often, on coming to a home port, after a long voyage, they would be snatched away before they had drawn their wages. Instead of enjoying a pleasant spell ashore they would be hurried aboard a King’s ship, to all the miseries of a gun-deck. It was the custom to say that a sailor was better situated on a man-of-war than on a merchant-vessel; that he had better food, better treatment, and better money. As a matter of fact the merchant-seamen regarded the Royal Navy with dread and loathing. There can be little doubt that the thought of the press-gangs, and the fear of service in the navy, drove many of our best merchant-seamen into American ships, where they were rather less subject to impressment. In the war of 1812 a number of them fought against, and often helped to defeat, the English frigates and small men-of-war.

We live at a convenient distance from those times, and regard them as glorious.—“The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy.” Man is always ready to ignore the pounds of misery and squalor which go to make each pennyweight of glory. Our naval glory was built up by the blood and agony of thousands of barbarously maltreated men. It cannot be too strongly insisted on that sea life, in the late eighteenth century, in our navy, was brutalising, cruel, and horrible; a kind of life now happily gone for ever; a kind of life which no man to-day would think good enough for a criminal. There was barbarous discipline, bad pay, bad food, bad hours of work, bad company,[22] bad prospects. There was no going ashore till the ship was paid off, or till a peace was declared. The pay was small at the best of times, but by the time it reached the sailor it had often shrunken to a half or third of the original sum. The sailor was bled by the purser for slops and tobacco; by the surgeon for ointment and pills; and by the Jew who cashed his pay-ticket. The service might have been made more popular by the granting of a little leave, so that the sailors could go ashore to spend their money. It was the long, monotonous imprisonment aboard which made the hateful life so intolerable. When the long-suffering sailors rose in revolt at Spithead, they asked, not that the cat might be abolished, but that they might go ashore after a cruise to sea, and that they might receive a little more consideration from those whose existence they guaranteed.

Having secured a number of reliable sailors from the merchant-ships and sailor’s taverns, the captains of men-of-war commissioning filled up their complements by taking any men they could get. The press-gangs brought in a number of wretches found in the streets after dusk. It did not matter whether they were married men with families, tradesmen with businesses, or young men studying for professions: all was fish that came into the press-gang’s net. The men were roughly seized—often, indeed, they were torn from their wives by main force, and knocked on the head for resisting—and so conveyed on board, whether subject to impressment or not. They could count themselves lucky if their neighbours came to the rescue before the press-gang carried them off. When once they were aboard they were little likely to get away again, for though they had permission to “state the case,” if they thought themselves illegally seized, the letters of appeal were very seldom successful. The press-gangs were sometimes rewarded with head money to make them zealous in their duty.

We have already described the Lord Mayor’s men. We will now describe the “quota,” or “quota-bounty” men, such as manned our fleets from 1795-1797. It was found that neither the press nor the bounty attracted men in sufficient numbers. Laws were passed by which the English counties were compelled to furnish a quota of men according to an established scale. The English seaports were put under a similar contribution. The sheriffs of the counties, and the mayors of the sea-port towns, at first found the arrangement by no means a bad one. They were able to ship off their rogues, criminals, poachers, gipsies, etc., without difficulty. After a time, when the rogues had grown wary, they found it difficult to make up the quotas. They had to offer bounties to induce men to come forward; bounties in some cases amounting to more than £70. It was said of the “most filthy creatures” who took advantage of the bounties that “they cost the King a guinea a pound.” They came aboard coated with filth, crawling with parasites, “so truly wretched, and unlike men,” that the lieutenants must have been disgusted to receive them. Criminals sentenced at the sessions were offered the alternative of going to sea. The direct consequences were that our ships of war were frequently manned by criminals and petty thieves, who stole from each other, and skulked their work, and deserted when they could. The lower gun-decks became the scene of nearly every vice and crime in the calendar. Theft aboard ship was punished with cruel severity, but these shore-going gentry robbed right and left, in gangs or singly, as though their fingers were indeed fish-hooks. Dr Johnson was right in wondering why folk came to sea while there were gaols ashore. Perhaps no place has contained more vice, wickedness, and misery, within such a narrow compass, than a ship of the line at the end of the eighteenth century.

When a ship’s crew[23] had been brought aboard they were examined by the first lieutenant, who lost no time in allotting them to their stations. Elderly, reliable seamen, who knew their duty and could be rated as able, were stationed on the forecastle to do duty about the anchors, bowsprit, and fore yard. They were called sheet-anchor or forecastle men, and next to the gunner’s crew and boatswain’s mates they were the finest men in the ship. They took great pride in making the forecastle the cleanest and trimmest place aboard. A visitor anxious to learn the state of the discipline of a vessel had but to go forward to her forecastle. If the forecastle were spotless, the hammocks well stowed, the paint work and bright work brilliant, and the ropes pointed and beautifully flemished, then the ship (he might be quite sure) was in pretty taut order. A forecastle or sheet-anchor man slept on the lower deck, far forward.

TWO OF NELSON’S SAILORS

Having picked his forecastle men, a lieutenant had to select his “topmen.” There were three divisions of topmen, one for each mast—fore, main, and mizzen. The topmen had to work the three masts above the lower yards. The lieutenant chose for the topmen all the young, active seamen who had been to sea for three or four years. Their work was very arduous, and very exacting. It was the hardest work of the ship, and demanded the smartest men, yet no men were more bullied than those to whom the duty fell. A topman lived in continual terror. He was at all times under the eye of the officer of the watch. His days were passed in an agony of apprehension lest something should go wrong aloft to bring him to the gangway. Smartness aloft was, to many captains, the one thing essential aboard a man-of-war. A topman had to be smart, and more than smart. He had to fly up aloft at the order, lay out on the yard, reef or furl, lay in, and be down on deck again, before a boatswain’s mate could draw his colt. The sailors raced “mast against mast” whenever sail was made or shortened, and whenever a spar was struck or sent aloft. They were not only smart, they were acrobatic. They were known to run aloft and to run along the yards to the yard-arms, and this in blowing weather, and with the ship rolling. But, no matter how swift they were, the captain and lieutenant, who watched from the deck, wished them to be swifter. It did not matter to these two flinty ones whether the men were doing their best, and breaking their hearts to do better. All they cared for was the honour of the ship, and perhaps a word from the admiral. Then it was:

“What are you doing on the yard, there? Are you all asleep there, mizzentop? The main-topmen are nearly off the yard. Stow that bunt, you crawling caterpillars, or I’ll stop the grog of the lot of you.”