Nelson & His World

Hello,
Long time no sea.
Thought I'd let you know of a couple of blogs by Sarah J. Waldock listing naval pay etc., which deserve a wider audience.

http://sarahs-history-place.blogspot.co ... 0531285005
Prize Money and Pensions

http://sarahs-history-place.blogspot.co ... -1815.html
Royal Naval Pay

Any feedback would be welcome and I'm sure Sarah would value any comments.
Cheers (on National Pirate Speak Day, or whatever it is)

Charles

How nice to hear from you, Charles! How's great-great-great (?) grandpapa's biog. coming along?

And thank you for posting those useful links. I've been trying to find a thread that mentions the cost of kitting out a young lieutenant for sea service. By the time he'd obtained uniforms (including 'muskito trousers' and about six pounds of hair powder, as well as all his other requisites), his remaining pay wouldn't have gone very far.

Does anyone remember the post? I thought the source was Brian Lavery's 'Nelson and the Nile', but I can't find anything there.

I didn't know what you meant about 'Speak Like A Pirate' Day until I found a mention of it on Another Website (which shall be nameless).

They supply an appropriate phonetic alphabet to assist with customer phone calls:


A Avast
B Blackbeard
C Cat o Nine Tails
D Dubloon
E Exchequerman
F Flog-em
G Grog
H Hornpipe
I I-I Sir
J Jape
K ketch
L Lubber
M Mainbrace
N Nine’Tails
O Overboard
P Parrot
Q Quarterdeck
R Rigging
S Silver
T Treasure
U Underway
V Vang
W Walk-the-plank or Wench
X Marks the spot
Y Yarr
Z Zounds!

Thanks for the enquiry, Anna.
The blog is still going at http://chasbaz.posterous.com/.
Since I am still working on the book the naval research has taken a back seat again.
Best wishes to all,
Charles

Hi Tycho, I have other Brian Lavery books, I'll have a look see.
Thanks, Charles, for introducing me to this site.

Sarah

Dear Sarah

I think you have provided a very useful service in compiling and publishing lists such as these. However, things are often not what they seem in the navy and I fear that your preliminary comments about prize money and the inclusion in your tables of ”a list of [war]ships and their costs as a rough guide to the value for which they might be condemned for prizes” and distributed among officers and men is slightly misleading.
In case you are interested, I make a few points on the subject below:
1. Prize money fortunes were not made by capturing warships but by taking rich merchantmen and their cargoes. A good example was Blackwood’s capture of the 'Eenrom' (value at £23,575 after legal costs – the great percentage of which was the value of the cargo.) Officers did not attacked enemy warships in search of financial gain, but of honour and promotion.
2. There were strict legal penalties to prevent the ‘breaking’ of the cargoes of captured ships – not the least because until they was condemned by a Prize Court, they were still the property of their owners (under temporary detention as it were) and might – in the case of neutrals - have to be returned. Indeed in some cases the detention was ruled illegal to the financial distress of the unhappy captain. The reason that cargo breaking did not take place was not therefore “because stealing from a valuable cargo was stealing from oneself and one’s shipmates [who would not be amused]” but because of the law and punishment.
3. To encourage ships to attack enemy warships rather than concentrate on merchantmen the navy therefore supplemented the value of a captured warship by paying ‘head money’ – £5 for every member of the enemy crew at the time of the action. A captured frigate with 250 men would therefore have brought in £1250 in addition to hull and stores. A captured 80-gun ship, something like £4000. I don't think you don't mention this.
4. The value of a ‘second hand’ captured vessel (like a second hand car) was obviously lower than its original cost. The cost of building and fitting out of the 74-gun 'Bellona' may have been £43,322, but this is lower than usual for ships build after 1785. The 74-gun 'Minotaur' cost £50,842, 'Mars' £50,270, 'Achille' £50,524 and the 80-gun 'Foudroyant' £60,685. The value of the 80-gun captured 'Guillaume Tell' (without head money) by contrast, was only £37,138. I think the figure you quote for building a frigate (£8,200) is also far too low. Even Nelson’s small 28 gun frigate 'Boreas' cost £10,118 and the later 36- and 38-gun 18 pounder frigates much more - 'Euryalus' cost £15,568 , 'Naiad' £24,989 and 'Phoebe' £15,791. Compared with this, the value of the captured frigates 'Cleopatre', 'La Reunion', 'La Victoire' and 'Nereide' in the 1790s were, respectively £8250, £5310, £8243 and £14,400.
5. This raises another point – namely what the captured ship was carrying by way of stores – their own and other people’s - or, in the famous cases of the occasional Spanish ship, silver. The extra value of 'Nereide' for example was because she was carrying extra stores for overseas garrisons valued at £8722 – her hull and fittings being only being worth £6678.

Brian

Many thanks, Brian! Yes, I've oversimplified grossly, largely to give just an idea of the range of value in which the ships fall - I should have made it clear that most prize money would come from merchant vessels and their cargoes.
Did I leave off head money? that was stupid of me.... so much to put together!
This is excellent information, and I would be very grateful - pretty please - if you'd copy and paste it as a comment at the blog for others who are interested.
Sarah

PS, Tycho, I can't find the the actual cost of outfitting in 'Nelson's Navy, The Ships, Men, and Organisation 1793-1815' which is where I thought it might be, sorry.

Hi Sarah,

You have put together an excellent resource on your blog (especially if tweaked with some of Brian's superb information!).

I tried to add a comment to the blog post, but for some reason it wouldn't work. I was just wondering whether the tables of annual pay were calculated on the basis of 13 lunar months per year?

Dear Sarah

I tried to post a comment on your site but being computer naive failed to do so.
And here is another one!

Those consulting the tables may wonder why the pay of surgeons suddenly went up from £65 per annun to £365 (sic) in 1806.
The answer is that in the earlier period, the bulk of a surgeons’ emoluments came not from pay but from a range of supplementary allowances. The most important were the ‘Queen Ann’s Bounty’ or 'Gift' (which varied according to the class of ship and whether the country was at war); 2 pence for every crew member; and a payment for venereal cures (originally charged to the sufferer, but later in the form of a central payment of £5 per 100 men). There was no distinction according to seniority, though obviously the more senior men went to the biggest ships and got more 2 pences.
Thus the surgeon of a 74 in 1798 got £65 in pay; £62 in 2 pences; £43 in Queen Ann’s Bounty; £30 for venereals and £12 for servant – total, just under £213.
By Order in Council in 1805, all these clumsy allowances were rolled up and replaced by a set salary of 10s a day for those with less than 6 years experience and £18 a day for those with above 20 years (ie £185-10s and £328-10s per annum) I do not know where the £365 in the table comes from.

Brian