It may be said for the Commissioners that their situation was not a happy one, seeing that they were continually ordered to perform impossibilities. When they were told to provide fresh ships and men, they retorted that they were already keeping twelve vessels in pay for want of money to discharge the crews, the wages bill alone running at the rate of £1782 a month.[987] Other men sent away with tickets, which could not be paid when presented, congregated round their house whenever they met for business, shouting and threatening and causing them actual personal fear. There was £20,000 owing to the victuallers, and they, in December, refused any further supplies until they had some money, the result being that, at Portsmouth, ‘the common seamen grew insolent for want of victuals,’ wrote Sir John Watts, who, in his own person, only suffered from the insolence of a well-lined belly. Sir Allen Apsley, the chief victualling contractor, justified himself to the council and pointed out the serious consequences to be feared:[988]
‘By the late mutinous carriage of those few sailors of but one of H.M. ships the Reformation, the humours of the rest of the fleet may be conjectured.... What disorder, then, may be feared if twenty times that number, having no promise of speedy payment, no victuals, fresh or salt, nor ground for the officers to persuade or control—for alas! say they, when men have no money nor clothes to wear (much less to pawn), nor victuals to eat, what would you have them do? Starve? This is likely to be the condition of the ships now in the Downs and those at Portsmouth, having not two days’ victuals if equally divided ... not having any victuals at all but from hand to mouth upon the credit of my deputies who are able to trust no longer, so as this great disorder may be seen bearing very near even to the point of extremity.’
About 2200 men were in this plight, and matters must indeed have been bad when it was no longer to the Victualler’s profit to supply the carrion beef and fetid beer useless for any other purpose than to feed seamen. Punishment and promises were becoming equally useless. An officer at Portsmouth had to confess that punishing his men only made them more rebellious, and they revenged themselves by cutting his ship’s cable, in hopes that she might drift ashore; like Apsley, he remarked that they were only victualled from hand to mouth, but adds, ‘with refuse and old stuff.’[989] Charles was going to recover the Palatinate by means of his fleet, but Pennington’s opinion of the armed merchantmen which made up the bulk of the royal force was not high. He considered that two men-of-war could beat the fifteen he had with him, as their ordnance was mostly useless and they had not ammunition for more than a two hours’ fight.[990] Nor, from incidental references, can the discipline on these auxiliary ships have been such as to promise success. In 1625 they had to be forced under fire at Cadiz by threats; in 1628, at Rochelle, they fired vigorously, but well out of any useful or hazardous range. In this year the captain of one of them killed, injured, and maltreated his men, while he and five gentlemen volunteers consumed sixteen men’s allowance of food every day; and in January 1627, when some of them lying in Stokes Bay were ordered westward, they mutinied and would only sail for the Downs.
The Disorganisation:—The Remedies.
In despair the Council resorted to the expedient of a special commission[991] to inquire into the state of the Navy, nineteen in number and including eight seamen, perhaps in the hope of gaining time, but probably from sheer prescription of routine. While the naval organisation was crumbling, they took careful measurements of the dimensions of each ship, and anxiously examined whether Burrell had used his own or government barges for the conveyance of stores. When they inquired at what cost ships were built, the answer came in a petition from the Chatham shipwrights that they had been twelve months,
‘without one penny pay, neither having any allowance for meat or drink, by which many of them having pawned all they can, others turned out of doors for non-payment of rent, which with the cries of their wives and children for food and necessaries doth utterly dishearten them.’[992]
John Wells, storekeeper to the Navy, had 7½ years’ pay owing to him, and it may be inferred that, unless he was more honest than his fellows, the crown, if it did not pay him directly, had to do so indirectly. The Treasurer of the Navy, like the Victualler, had refused to make any more advances on his own credit, but when the Chatham men marched up to London in a body, he promised to settle their claims, a promise which was not fulfilled. Then the special commissioners had to deal with the crews of the Lion, Vanguard, and Reformation. The men of the Vanguard told them that they were in want of food, clothing, firing, and lodging, ‘being forced to lie on the cold decks.’[993] The sailors, like the shipwrights, came to London in the hope of obtaining some relief, but with even less success. Their ragged misery was an outrage on the curled and scented decorum of the court, and Charles perhaps feared that they might not confine themselves to mere vociferation, and, heroic as he looks on canvas, had no liking for the part of a Richard Plantagenet in face of a threatening mob. He confined himself to ordering the Lord Mayor to guard the gates and prevent them coming near the court, and Apsley, in his other capacity as lieutenant of the Tower, was directed to ‘repress the insolencies of mariners’ by ‘shot or other offensive ways.’[994] Probably death from Apsley’s ‘shot’ was, even if as certain, a less painful fate than that from his victuals. As for Charles, we may suppose that the lesson in kingly honour, justice, and responsibility was not thrown away on those of his seamen who lived till 1642.
Notwithstanding the financial straits of the government large schemes relating to the increase of the number of ships and the construction of new docks were being continually planned. In naval as in other affairs Buckingham’s vision was fixed on the future, careless of the present. Such money and supplies as were obtained did not go far towards relieving the necessities of the sailors. In May, Mervyn found that his own crew came unpleasantly ‘’twixt the wind and his nobility,’ for, ‘by reason of want of clothing, they are become so loathsome and so nastily sick as to be not only unfit to labour but to live.’[995] Among the State Papers, undated but assigned to this year, occurs the first instance of a round robin yet noticed; the men signing it refuse to weigh anchor until provisioned.[996]