Confusion after Cromwell’s Death.

The death of Cromwell, and the intrigues which followed that event, intensified the disorder existing in naval affairs, but even before September 1658 the strong hand which had kept some sort of order seems to have been losing its grip. In July the Commissioners of the Admiralty told the Council that ‘the credit of your Navy is so greatly impaired that, having occasion to buy some necessary provisions, as tallow and the like, your ministers can obtain none but for ready money,’ and they complained that out of the customs and excise, nominally set apart for the Navy, half was diverted to the army, £2000 a week to the Protector, and judges’ and other salaries taken from it.[1311] The navy debt on 1st July was returned at £573,474, and of this £286,000 was due for wages, so that we can understand why some crews had been for two and three years unpaid. Yet the succession of Richard Cromwell was well received by the fleet in the Downs, and the officers and crews of vessels on outlying stations, such as the Paradox at Milford and Assurance at Scarborough, hastened to announce their satisfaction. When Montagu wrote to Stokes, commanding in the Mediterranean, for signatures to an address promising fidelity to Richard, only one officer of that squadron, Captain Saunders, of the Torrington, manifested any hesitation about signing it.[1312]

In their address to the new Protector the officers of the fleet, in expressing their affection for the memory of Oliver, speak of ‘the indulgence he showed to us who served him in his fleet’; but, unless they were alluding to the higher scale of pay and the arrangements, to be presently noticed, made for the care of the sick and wounded, one or both of which may or may not have been owing to his initiative, it is difficult to divine what indulgences they had to be especially grateful to him for.[1313] By June 1659 there was owing for wages £371,930,[1314] and it may be imagined that if the men, whom it was important to conciliate, remained unpaid, merchants supplying stores, victualling agents, and dockyard workmen fared still worse. In September the crew of the Marmaduke solicited some redress; they said they were abused by their officers, cheated of their victuals and pinch-gut money,[1315] and had to go begging about the streets, ‘scoffed and jeered at by other nations.’ On 1st February 1660 the wages debt was £354,000, some ships having been four years unpaid,[1316] and these figures, the correlatives of which existed in every other branch of the administration, form the best explanation of the equanimity with which the Restoration was viewed by the seamen and others who may have seen in the return of Charles II their only chance of payment.

Care for the Sick and Wounded.

Under the Commonwealth occurs the earliest attempt to afford the men some of that attention to which, when ill or wounded, they were entitled. The arrangements made in 1649 and 1652, although sufficient for ordinary needs, were inadequate to the necessities of the Dutch war; and the State was compelled to supplement the existing resources for the relief of disabled men, and to provide additional aid for widows and orphans. After the action of 28th and 29th September 1652 the Council ordered the lord mayor to provide space for the wounded in the London hospitals, and on 18th October £500 was assigned to the mayor of Dover to meet the expense of the injured landed there. On 15th December the Admiralty Committee passed a formal resolution that every care was to be taken of the sick and wounded, both at sea and on shore, and that the London hospitals were to receive some, and the most suitable port towns the others. Every ship was to be allowed medical comforts—rice, oatmeal, and sugar—at the rate of £5 per 100 men, every six months, and, for the first time, men invalided ashore were continued in pay till death or recovery. A special hospital was to be provided at Deal, and from 1st January 1653 half the space in all English hospitals, as they became empty, to be reserved for the seamen.[1317]

In February and March 1653, Portsmouth, Deal and Dover were full of wounded men; surgeons were sent down to these towns, and seven shillings a week granted for the support of each man. Judging from the returns, the death-rate among the injured was not so high as might have been expected, if the conditions existing at Portsmouth also obtained elsewhere. There the sick were mostly in private or beer houses, which were said to be small and stifling, besides exposing their occupants to the temptation of drink; of the town itself the governor, Nath. Whetham, had nothing good to say, dwelling on ‘the filthy nastiness of this place,’ unpaved, undrained, and enduring an epidemic of small-pox.[1318] The town must have been continually full of suffering men, since for two months alone of 1654 the cost of the sick and hurt there was £2300, of which £580 went to the surgeons and £325 to the nurses.[1319]

Knowing that they would be repaid any outlay, the civic authorities of the coast towns were attentive to the wants of the invalids, and, for a time, the government spent liberally in this direction. In August 1653 there were 1600 men at Aldborough, Ipswich, and adjacent villages, whose charges amounted to some thousands of pounds, cleared in due course, while smaller sums of £958, £400, and £1366 were sent, on account, to Dover, Weymouth, and Harwich; at Yarmouth between 3rd August 1653 and 6th February 1655 £2851 was expended in the town for the same purpose. In some respects the sick men were better off than their able-bodied fellows. Monk and Deane reproached the Admiralty Commissioners for paying the former their wages, but not the latter, and ‘we think it neither in reason nor conscience to employ men who must perish for want of clothes lost in the service, and whose families are starving, and yet their pay is due, their tickets signed, and their captains satisfied they will not run away.’[1320]

Hitherto all the duty of superintendence had been thrown on the Navy Commissioners, but, in view of their protests that they were overwhelmed by their own more special work, a new department was created from 29th September 1653, consisting of four commissioners at £150 a year each and fifteen subordinate officers, who divided £1090 a year between them. They took the title of ‘Commissioners of sick and wounded at Little Britain,’ where their office was situated, were to supervise the distribution of invalided men, provide surgeons and medicines, and control the authorities of the towns. They had also to take charge of prisoners, see that the convalescent returned to their ships, and were authorised to grant gratuities up to £10 and pensions up to £6, 13s 4d.

Pensions.

A pension or gratuity might be augmented by appeal to the Admiralty Committee, although we may be certain that such a petition was rarely successful, but the corresponding gifts to officers’ widows were on a much more liberal scale. To seven captains’ widows sums ranging from £400 to £1000 were granted in April 1653, and it seems a somewhat uneven ascent from the seaman’s widow at £10 to the captain’s at £1000. So far as applicants of inferior rank were concerned, the Commissioners must have had their time fully occupied if they investigated every case as closely as that of Susan Cane. They held that £5 was enough for her, as she had not lived with her husband, led a loose life, and possessed more than ordinary skill in making stockings. The institution of a new benefaction caused new rogueries, and soon some of the office clerks were levying commissions on the donations given to these women and were in partnership with people who made real or false claims on their behalf.[1321] In the two years ending with May 1656 some £12,000 had been disbursed on behalf of men sent on shore ill or injured;[1322] but it is apparent that, although the Commonwealth procedure compared very favourably with the indifference which preceded it, the tender anxiety the government displayed for the sailor’s welfare, when it had urgent need of him, languished after the Dutch war and died away with the Spanish one. Later, in the year 1656, the bailiffs of Yarmouth wrote to the Admiralty Commissioners that the Commissioners at Little Britain were now careless about paying for the men sent on shore, leaving it to the bailiffs to spend the town money and get it back how or when they could. The squadron before Mardike was considered very unhealthy, there being usually about ten per cent. sick, and when these were sent home they were simply laid on the ballast and shot about by the pitching and rolling of the ship;[1323] and another paper mentions the ‘noisome smells’ produced by the condition of these men. Fleets must, however, have been much healthier than in earlier times, since on 24th March 1659 the number of sick in nearly 3000 men under Montagu was only nineteen, and but seventy-two in 2803 under Goodson.[1324]