The number available.
With proper organisation there were sufficient men available at the beginning of the reign to have manned both the royal and merchant marine, as will be seen from the following returns made in 1628, but it is probable that the numbers did not increase much during subsequent years:—[1049]
| Seamen | Fishermen | |
|---|---|---|
| London | 3422 | 302 |
| Kent | 181 | 231 |
| Cinque Ports | 699 | 193 |
| Essex | 309 | 357 |
| Suffolk | 804 | 326 |
| Norfolk | 600 | 436 |
| Lincoln | 66 | 126 |
| Devon | 453 | 86 |
| Northumberland | 33 | 260 |
| Cumberland | 72 | |
| South Cornwall | 731 | 393 |
| North ” | 154 | 88 |
| South Wales | 753 | |
| Southampton and Isle of Wight | 321 | 209 |
| Dorset | 958 | 86 |
| Bristol | 823 |
There were 2426 watermen in London, also liable to impressment. Of the seamen two-thirds were at sea, one-third at home, their favourite abiding place being Ratcliff. Yorkshire, North Wales, Chester, and some parts of Sussex are omitted, and the figures for Northumberland cannot include the Newcastle coal traffic, which in 1626 employed 300 colliers;[1050] it may be, however, that their crews are reckoned in the London total.
In various ways, during the war time, Parliament showed its satisfaction with the work done by officers and men, and occasionally rewarded them by extra gratuities of a month’s pay, or presents of wine. Doubtless these donations were also in the nature of bribes on the part of a power without much historic prestige compared with its opponent, and depending for existence on the goodwill of men who served with a closer regard to pay than to sentiment; but that the parliamentary authorities considered their relations with the Navy fairly secure is shown by the fact that in 1645 they ventured to place the service under martial law.[1051] In 1647 wages, per month, were raised for officers, according to rates, as follows—[1052]
| £ | s | d | £ | s | d | ||
| Captain | 7 | 0 | 0 | to | 21 | 0 | 0 |
| Lieutenant | 3 | 10 | 0 | ” | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Master | 3 | 18 | 8 | ” | 7 | 0 | 0 |
| Master’s mate | 2 | 2 | 0 | ” | 3 | 5 | 4 |
| Pilot | 2 | 2 | 0 | ” | 3 | 5 | 4 |
| Carpenter | 1 | 15 | 0 | ” | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| Boatswain | 1 | 17 | 4 | ” | 3 | 10 | 0 |
| Gunner | 1 | 15 | 0 | ” | 3 | 3 | 0 |
The Chatham Chest.
The Chatham Chest, founded by Hawkyns and others in 1590, for the relief and support of injured or disabled sailors, was not of so much use to them during these years as it should have been. The original contribution was sixpence a month from able, and fourpence from ordinary, seamen, with threepence from boys. In 1619 the gunners joined the fund, and from 1626 all, whether able and ordinary, seamen or gunners, were to pay sixpence.[1053] The sixpences were unfailingly deducted from their wages, but the distribution was more irregular. Every formality was employed for the safe custody of the money, and in 1625 an iron chest with five locks was ordered for this purpose, the keys to be kept by five representative officers of different grades, who could only open it when together, and who were to be changed every twelve months. As an illustration of the value of these precautions the Treasurer of the Navy, Russell, the very next year took £2600, out of the Chest with which to pay wages, subsequently excusing himself by the ‘great clamours’ then being made and the poverty of the state. He did not commence to return this money till 1631, and in 1636 £500 of it was still owing. Sir Sackville Crowe, when Treasurer between July 1627 and December 1629, took out £3000, and this sum, with the accruing interest, is regularly carried forward as a good asset till 1644, when there is a gap of ten years in the accounts, and in 1654 it no longer appears. From the character of the man it is very unlikely that he ever paid. In 1632 a commission of inquiry issued, but if any report was ever made it has not come down to us. In January 1636 the Chest had £542 in hand and possessed Chislett farm producing £160 a year,[1054] but it was said that its narrow resources were further depleted by money having ‘been bestowed on men that never were at sea.’
Sir John Wolstenholme and others were directed, in December 1635, to inquire into the administration, and their report was sent in by April 1637.[1055] The yearly receipts from land were now £205; since 1617, when there was £3145 in hand, £2580 had been received in rents and £12,600 from the sixpences. Out of this £3766 had been expended in purchasing land and £10,621 in relieving seamen; £159 remained in the Chest, and £3780 was owing to it. Of the £3780 some of the items went back to Elizabethan days, and Roger Langford, Sir Peter Buck, some of the master shipwrights, and two ladies were among the debtors. Between 1621 and 1625, inclusive, there was paid £1722 in gratuities and pensions, and between 1625 and 1629, £1372;[1056] as the first series were mostly peace, and the second war years, the men were either very successful in avoiding injury between 1625 and 1629 or, as is more likely, were defrauded of the benefits they could rightly claim. The result of the commission was that fresh rules, signed by Windebank, were shortly afterwards made, directing the Treasurer of the Navy to pay over the sixpences within one month of their deduction from wages, to make up the accounts yearly and ‘publish them to all the governors,’ that no pension was to exceed £6, 8s 4d a year, although an additional gratuity might be given, and that the keepers of the keys were to be changed yearly.[1057] As the last regulation was only a repetition of the one made in 1625, it is to be presumed that it had been previously ignored.
Neither now nor afterwards, neither in official papers nor in the sheaves of ephemeral publications which enlightened this and the succeeding century, does it seem, with one exception, to have entered into the minds of those who ruled or those who tried to teach that the cost of providing for the wants or age of men disabled by service should in justice fall upon the country they had spent their youth and health in protecting, instead of on an accident fund maintained from their own meagre earnings. The one government which in this, as in other matters, had a higher perception of its duties was that of Cromwell, and even here only in a limited sense. The host of pamphleteers who in the succeeding reigns lamented the condition of the royal and merchant marine, or aired their universal panaceas for its ills, only rang the changes on further methods for the exploitation of the seaman to the private profit of the shipowner and the general profit of the state. For him to carry the burden of empire was to be its own reward.