A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
BY SIR WALTER BESANT.
Portsmouth, as I remember the place in the days of my early youth—say, somewhere about the years 1844 to 1850—was surely the liveliest place, the most full of action, movement, and life, of any in her Majesty's dominions, which were then half as wide as they are at present. Not as a place of industry; there was never, if you please, any industry at all carried on in that town outside the Dock-yard, except of course the industry of fleecing the sailor. This was a merry and an exhilarating sport, because the sailor himself enjoyed being fleeced, entered thoroughly into the spirit of the game, and neither resented nor regretted what he knew would be the end of it—viz., the loss of all his money. Nor, again, could the town be considered picturesque. Somehow, Portsmouth always escaped any beauty of buildings and streets. There was, it is true, a late eighteenth-century look about most of the streets; there was one old church within the Walls; there was a square low tower at the end of High Street which looked well; there were Gates in the Walls; and there was the Domus Dei, the ancient garrison chapel, then not yet "discovered" or restored. There must have been, I suppose, a time when the High Street and St. Thomas's Street and St. Mary's Street were built with gabled houses and with timbered fronts, but they had all disappeared long before my time.
The real centre of the town was, of course, the Common Hard—which is one of the streets of the world like the Cannebière of Marseilles, the King's Road of Brighton, or the High Street of Oxford. Portsmouth cannot be conceived as existing without the Common Hard. It is a broad street facing the harbor; at one end are the gates of the Dock-yard; at the other, a police station, in front of which at one time stood a pair of stocks. The magistrates, in their wisdom, revived this time-honored punishment for a while, but I believe it did not answer. Certainly I myself once saw a man in the stocks. I must have been a child of six or eight at the time, but I remember him well, because I was immensely impressed with the shamefulness of it, and I expected to see the prisoner hanging his head and weeping. Not a bit, if you please. The hardened villain sat up, faced the foot-lights, and grinned merrily all the time.
The street contained shops of all sorts—shops of curios brought home by the sailors and sold to their merchants; jewellers' shops; shops offering telescopes, sextants, and all kinds of naval things; taverns and hotels—then called inns. These shops, however, were not designed for able-bodied Jack, I believe, but for his officer.
It was a fine lookout from the Hard upon the harbor, which was crammed full of ships—ships fitting, ships just come home, harbor-ships, hulks, store-ships, tugs, tenders, and small steamers. As yet the man-o'-war was a wooden ship. She carried 120 guns and a thousand men; mostly she sailed, and in the art of sailing she had no equal. As a boy I thought, and still think, that there is no work of man's craft and ingenuity more wonderful, more beautiful, than a great three-decker in full sail.
Those who wished to cross the harbor or to visit a ship, started from the "Beach" or from the "Logs." The Beach was a narrow spit of sand and shingle running out into the water; it was the "stairs" for the watermen, who all day long kept up a perpetual bawling. "Going over? One more. Just going over. Only one more!" When they had a boat-load, say six or eight passengers at a penny apiece, they put off, and rowed across the harbor to Gosport, on the other side.
Saw one ever a more animated sight than the harbor on a fine summer morning in the forties? Boats manned by Royal Navy men working their way here and there, yachts letting out their sails for a cruise in the Solent, wherries plying backwards and forwards, ships in the grip of the tide. We pass on our way the Victory, Nelson's last ship; she is moored off the Beach, and swings round with every tide. If you went on board you would see the place where Nelson fell, and the place where Nelson died—a dark and noisome hole on the orlop-deck down below. Yonder black hulk without masts is a ship whose exploits would fill a volume. Her name is the Billy Ruffian—mealy mouths call her the Bellerephon. Beside her, another dismasted hulk, now a coal-ship, is the Asia, from which was fired the shot which blew up the Turkish Admiral at Navarino. Beside her is the Arethusa, another historic ship. Beyond, in line, the old worn-out ships are laid up one after the other up the harbor; they are all historic ships; to hear their names is to be reminded of Copenhagen, the Nile, Trafalgar; they are store-ships, coal-ships, training-ships now, and those painted yellow are the convict-hulks. How much misery, how much brutality, how much despair had their permanent home on those terrible yellow ships called convict-hulks? The men were taken ashore every day to work—their work, the heaviest and the most disagreeable, lay chiefly in the Dock-yard; they worked under warders armed with guns, shotted and bayonetted. Many a time have I gone into the yard, a penny quid or screw of tobacco secreted in my pocket. One would get as near as one dared to one of the gang without raising suspicions. There one waited, pretending idle curiosity, till the warder's eyes were turned in the opposite direction, then out with the quid, and down with it at the nearest convict's foot. He made no sign; he never moved or looked up; he just covered the packet with his foot, and went on with his work. The donor retired a space, yet kept an eye upon him. Presently the man straightened himself out; he looked at his tool; he picked up a stone as if to knock off something; he hammered it, and looked at it again critically; the warder, who had watched his movement, turned his head, as satisfied that it was harmless; the convict put down the stone; then, if you had good eyes, you would see the quid transferred in a moment to the man's mouth. Oh! the rapture of that quid! He could not express his gratitude in words, but with a glance of his eye he could, and did. What would have been done to the boy had he been discovered is too terrible to be considered. However, that boy escaped. The sight of convicts working in a gang has always fascinated and terrified me. The submission and obedience, the awful silence, the evident determination to do as little as possible, the profound misery of the life, the cruel crushing down of manhood—these things I felt as a boy of twelve as much as I feel them now. And always with it that feeling of John Bunyan, "But for Grace, John, thou too hadst been here."
A little up the harbor there rose a few inches out of the water an islet called Rat Island. This was the burying-ground of those poor wretches who died on the hulks. I have rowed round this island in the twilight of a summer evening, wondering whether the ghosts of the convicts still haunted this dreary spot and exchanged stories of crime and the cat-o'-nine-tails and irons with each other. I now understand that the ghost which could choose to remain on so desolate a spot must have been indeed a fool.
The Logs were a narrow and rude pier constructed of square trunks laid side by side, with upright posts here and there to keep them in place. They were chiefly used by the Royal Navy boats which were coming and going all day long. I recall the picture of one. At sight of the boat and the officer in command the boy on the Logs runs a little farther out where the Logs are covered with water—he would not willingly stand in the way of that officer, whom he envies with a yearning inconceivable to be in his place. Nobody remembers how boys yearn and long for the impossible. The boat is manned by eight stout, well-set-up fellows; they wear spotless white ducks, jerseys, and straw hats. The officer stands up in the stern, strings in hand. He commands these splendid fellows—He!!!—and he is no older than the envious boy who looks on. He wears a jacket, white ducks, and a cap with the enviable crown and anchor on it. His voice is clear and loud. Timid? Afraid? Not a bit of it. This midshipmite is already Captain and First Lieutenant and all. He jumps on the Logs and marches off, head erect, conscious that all other boys regard him with envy unspeakable. Do the sailors put tongue in cheek and mock him when he is gone? Not a bit of it. The child is their officer; he represents authority. It is not the boy who commands men—it is the Captain. The faces of the men, if you look at them, are not quite like the faces of their grandsons who at present man the navy. Our man of '96 is sober, quiet, thoughtful, as becomes one whose long training has almost made him belong to a learned profession. He is a total abstainer too. When he goes ashore it is to the Sailors' Home and not to the old quarters. The men of '48 are sturdy and bluff and resolute; but they have a certain look that means rum when they can get it, and other indulgences such as can be afforded.