| Name | Accused of | Result |
|---|---|---|
| John Taylor | Neglect of duty in action of Nov. 1652 | Ordered to enter into recognisances to come up for judgment if called upon.[1404] |
| Anth. Young | ||
| Edm. Chapman | ||
| B. Blake | ||
| Thos. Marriott | Embezzlement, 1652 | Not known |
| John Mead | ” 1653 | ” |
| John Best | Drunkenness and cowardice, 1653 | ”[1405] |
| Wm. Gregory | Embezzlement, 1653 | ” |
| Jon. Taylor | Signing false tickets, 1653 | ” |
| Thos. Harris | Neglect of duty, 1653 | Cashiered |
| Jas. Cadman | Killing one of his crew, 1653 | Suspended for 12 months |
| —— | Neglect of convoy duty, 1653 | Not known[1406] |
| Jas. Peacock | Embezzlement, 1653 | ” |
| Sam. Dickinson | ” 1654 | ” |
| Val. Tatnell | ” 1654 | ” |
| J. Clarke | ” 1655 | Cashiered |
| —— | ” 1655 | Wages suspended |
| Robt. Nixon | Cruelty, 1655 | Not known |
| J. Seaman | Drunkenness, 1655 | ” |
| Fr. Parke | Theft from prizes, 1655 | ”[1407] |
| Alex. Farley | Drunkenness and embezzlement 1656 | ” |
| J. Jefferies | Embezzlement, 1656 | Fined £60[1408] |
| Thos. Sparling | ” 1656 | ” £160 |
| J. Lightfoot | Fraud and violence, 1656 | Not known[1409] |
| J. Smith | Embezzlement and drunkenness, 1656 | ” |
| Rich. Penhallow | Making out false tickets, 1656 | Amount to be deducted from his wages |
| Jas. Cadman | Embezzlement, 1656 | Fined[1410] |
| W. Hannam | Cowardice, cruelty, and incapacity, 1656 | Not known |
| John Best | Drunkenness, 1656 | ” |
| Robt. Nixon | Cruelty and embezzlement, 1657 | ”[1411] |
| Hen. Powell | Embezzlement, 1657 | Severely admonished |
| —— | Drunkenness and blasphemy, 1657 | Not known |
| J. Vasey | Drunkenness, 1658 | Charge withdrawn[1412] |
| — Davis | Selling prize goods, 1658 | To refund |
| Robt. Saunders | Came home without leave, 1658 | Cashiered |
| Thos. Whetstone | Drunkenness and theft, 1658 | Not known |
| Rowland Bevan | Embezzlement and carrying cargo, 1658 | ” |
| —— | Carrying cargo, 1659 | ” |
| Pet. Foote. | ” 1659 | ”[1413] |
| Robt. Kirby | Drunkenness and theft, 1659 | ” |
| —— | Carrying cargo, false tickets, 1660 | ” |
It is curious to find that, in 1657, two ex-captains, Mellage and Baker, were in prison as Quakers. In cases of embezzlement the sentence of a court-martial, where ascertainable, appears to have been usually confined to fining the accused the value of the stores stolen, or stopping the amount from his wages. The custom was commencing of trying commanders, who lost their ships by misadventure, before a court-martial, instead of accepting their explanations, or holding an informal investigation at Whitehall, as had previously been done; and once a captain was sent before a court because his ship went ashore, although she came off without damage.[1414] This must be almost the first occurrence of that form of inquiry. Log books were now compulsory, and were sent up to the Navy Commissioners on the return of the ship; by an order of 2nd Feb. 1653 an advocate, who conducted prosecutions in courts-martial, was attached to the fleets. It will be noticed how often drunkenness is an article in the foregoing charges, and this weakness seems to have been common in all ranks, from captains down to ships’ boys. Among these naval papers there are very few indications of the existence of Puritan fervour or even of ordinary religious feeling; the great mass of men and officers aimed at pay and prize money, gave strenuous service when the former was punctual and the latter plentiful, and became heedless and indifferent when they failed. Sailors have been always much more interested in their material prosperity in this world than the prospects of their future welfare in the next. Nor does the rule of the saints appear to have spiritualised the proverbial hard swearing of the service.
Inception of Class Feeling.
It is, however, from this period that dates that sense of solidarity among officers and men which is at once the sign and consequence of an organised and continuous service. Hitherto the permanent executive force in peace time had consisted of a few subordinate officers and some 200 or 300 shipkeepers, many of whom were not even seamen. When a fleet was prepared, the ships were commanded by captains for whom sea service was only an episode, and officered and manned by men who came from, and were immediately sent back to, the merchant service on the completion of their cruise. But between 1642 and 1660 every available English sailor must have passed a large portion of those years on the state’s ships; and the captains and officers were kept in nearly continuous employment, with the result of the formation of a class feeling, and the growth of especial manners and habits, characteristic of men working under conditions which removed them from frequent contact with their fellows. The numerous notices in Restoration literature of the particular appearance, modes of expression, and bearing, stamping the man-of-war officer—references never before made—show how rapidly the new circumstances had produced their effect.
The other Officers.
When captains showed themselves so ready to steal it might have been expected that officers of lower rank would follow, and even improve upon, the pattern set them, but this did not prove to be the case. Although, of course, there are many flagrant cases recorded, the number of officers charged with fraud or theft is not only relatively less, considering the much larger aggregate employed, than under Charles I, but also absolutely smaller for any equal series of years. Experience, gained during the civil war, had led to closer inspection and the introduction of safeguards which made theft neither so easy nor so free from risk, and further precautions were taken under the Commonwealth. Embezzlement by a captain could not be prevented, it could only be punished: but the regulations which made it easy for him might make it difficult for his gunner or boatswain. The first step, taken in 1649, was to raise the wages of those officers who were in charge of stores, a measure recommended long before by Holland and every other reformer. In 1651 the Navy Commissioners were directed to consider how the frauds, still numerous among officers, might be best dealt with, and this was probably the cause of an order the next year that sureties should be required from pursers, boatswains, and others for the honest performance of their duties.[1415] These sureties were usually entered into by two persons, and were sometimes as high as £600.
That some such method was necessary, at least with the pursers, is evident from the following catalogue of their ‘chief’ abuses, drawn up by the Navy Commissioners in 1651:[1416] (1) They forge their captains’ signatures; (2) make false entries of men; (3) falsify the time men have served; (4) sign receipts for a full delivery of stores and compound with the victualling agents for the portion not received; (5) do not send in their accounts for one voyage till they are again sailing; (6) charge the men with clothes not sold to them; and (7) execute their places by deputy while they stop on shore. The principal reforms suggested by the Commissioners were that bonds should be required, that stewards should be employed for the victualling, that pursers should in future sail as clerks of the check, with limited powers, and that all their papers should be countersigned by the captain. These measures were all adopted, but a further recommendation that a pillory should be erected near the Navy Office for their especial use was not, apparently, acted upon. When one purser openly declared that he cared not how the seamen starved if he could ‘make £500 or £600 a year out of their bellies,’ it was full time to apply to his kind the treatment exercised by governments on such dangerous idealists as constitutional reformers.
The Commissioners had set themselves a hard task in the inculcation of honesty, for that sentiment which still regards lightly cheats on a government was strongly against them. When Dover was searched, in 1653, large quantities of stolen cordage, sold from the ships, were discovered, and Bourne found that ‘these embezzlements are so common that the people declare that they think it no wrong to the state.’ Still in the long run they were more successful than their predecessors had been, and the trials for embezzlement became fewer after 1653. Their treatment of the pursers had the best results, judging from the small number of those officers who came up for judgment; these gentlemen did not at all like the new rules and at first mostly refused to sail as clerks of the check. For reasons unknown, unless it was that they had become more trustworthy and that the new system was in some respects cumbrous, the clerks were abolished in 1655 and the pursers reinstated in their old powers, pecuniary guarantees in the shape of the bonds still being required from them.[1417] It must have been a very new and unpleasant experience to some of these men, who many of them remembered the free hand they were allowed before 1640, to find themselves before a court-martial for acts they had come to look upon as natural to their places. One steward attempted to evade an accusation of embezzlement by declaring that the rats had eaten his books; he might have improved his defence by producing some of the victuallers’ ‘salt horse,’ and showing that his books, being tenderer and more nutritious, were more likely to tempt the rats. In the trial of another we have some account of the mode of proceeding. The prisoner, Joshua Hunt, was tried under the twenty-eighth article of war before Lawson and twelve commanding officers, and was himself sworn and examined. By the twenty-eighth article the character of the penalty is left to the decision of the court, and Hunt was given the option of making restitution or of undergoing punishment. In making his report, Monk remarked that the prisoner had only been found out in that which most stewards did, and that he would be sent up to London to give his friends or sureties the opportunity of making amends; if they failed to do this he was to be returned to the fleet for corporal punishment at the decision of a further court-martial.[1418] This form of sentence was very frequent, and gunners, boatswains, and stewards were ordinarily fined the value of the stores stolen, and committed to prison until it was paid.
The wide discretion left to the courts-martial led to great inequality in the sentences, especially when an example could be made without losing the stores or their money value. A carpenter was tried for theft; he confessed to the intention, and partly to the act, but returned the articles before arrest. He was, however, ordered to be taken from ship to ship in the Downs, with a paper describing his offence affixed to his breast, the paper being read at each ship’s side, to be thrice ducked from the yardarm, and to be cashiered. Obviously it was more profitable and less dangerous not to stop halfway in theft. In 1653 is found a rather remarkable sentence: Wm. Haycock, carpenter’s mate of the Hound, was, for ‘drunkenness, swearing, and uncleanness,’ ordered, among other things, ten lashes at the side of each flagship. Haycock has the distinction of being the first recorded victim of the form of punishment which afterwards developed into the devilish torture known as ‘flogging round the fleet.’ It became comparatively common during the reign of Charles II.
At Chatham, in 1655 the authorities appear to have discovered and broken up a gang of receivers, of whom one had an estate of £5000 obtained from thefts from the ships and yards. A hoyman, Dunning, confessed to having conveyed 500 barrels of powder from the men-of-war at Chatham and Deptford within four years. When pressed for particulars, he exclaimed, ‘Alas! shall I undo a thousand families? Shall I undo so many? I did not think you would put me upon it to do so!’ Finding that this appeal, instead of silencing, only whetted his examiners’ curiosity, he had at last to name eighteen ships whose gunners had given him powder to remove.[1419] The Admiralty employed detectives of their own to find out thefts, but on more than one occasion these men turned thieves themselves. The aforesaid Dunning bought a cable from one of them; another was found ‘to have unduly abused his trust,’ but a third was granted £15 for proving the larcenies of captain Cadman. Sometimes, when the amount was small, the Admiralty, instead of bringing offenders to trial, deducted the estimated value of their embezzlements from wages;[1420] evidently punishment was very uncertain in extent, but the practical impunity of former times could no longer be reckoned on.