Nelson & His World

I am reading the book Collingwood, by Max Adams again. On page 156 it says:
After a mutiny broke out among the ships stationed at the Nore and Yarmouth.

St. Vincent was confident that he could send Collingwood the most troublesome men. “Send them to Collingwood, he will bring them to order”. One man sent to him had been a seaman on Romulus. He had contrived to load a quarterdeck gun and point it at his officers, threatening to blow their heads off. When the man (who might easily have been hanged) was brought aboard Excellent, Collingwood spoke to him in front of the other men:

"I know your character well, but beware how you to attempt to excite insubordination in this ship; for I have such confidence in my men, that I am certain I shall hear in an hour of every thing you are doing. If you behave well in future, I will treat you like the rest, nor notice here what happened in another ship: but if you endeavour to excite mutiny, mark me well, I will instantly head you up in a cask, and throw you into the sea”.

I was wondering what could sailors do against a bullying or cruel officer or captain, without doing something for which the sailor himself could be punished for disobedience or contempt? I cannot believe that every captain or officer was as humane and friendly as Collingwood and Nelson were.

Sylvia

PS Every time I read this book or Collingwood’s letters I have downloaded on the PC, I regret that he always will remain standing in Nelson’s shadow.

Officers could indeed be harsh. One way of complaining was to petition the Admiralty, although I think the success rate was low, but officers were court martialled for cruelty.
One of the worst was Robert Corbett, described as "one of the ogres of the early nineteenth century". He was court martialled in 1809 for cruel and harsh treatment of his men. He was cleared of all charges except one, of allowing informal punishment by allowing beating with a stick of an improper size. He was reprimanded and transferred to another ship.
In 1810 he was given another command, the frigate Africaine; after he arrived onboard, the crew "mainfested an alarming degree of discontent ... and proceeded to the extremity of declaring they would not go to sea with Captain Corbett". The crew were eventually persuaded by Rear Admiral Buller to return to duty.
Not long after this, Corbett was killed in action when the Africaine engaged two French frigates. It was apparently a rumour at the time (unsubstantiated) that his own crew had shot him.

There was also the case of the tyrannical Captain Warwick Lake, who stranded Robert Jeffrey on an uninhabited island as a punishment in 1807. Jeffrey was fortunate to be rescued by another ship. When his story eventually reached England a couple of years later, Lake was court-martialled largely on the evidence of his officers and dismissed from the service.

I think mutinies were not as uncommon as you might suppose, but not as violent affairs on the high seas. I think they were more usually like a strike, whereby a crew of a ship in port might refuse to weigh anchor until their grievances were redressed. Crews might also petition the Commander in Chief, and I think there was a considerable incentive on captains to ensure complaints against them were resolved on board without reaching other ears.

Jacob Nagle's Journal contains a lively account of an averted mutiny aboard the 'Blanche'. A new Captain, Henry Hotham, had been appointed but the men refused to accept him, believing him to be 'a Tarter'. A threat was issued that, if they continued to refuse, every third man would be hung, whereupon 'the crew flew in a body forward to the guns with match in hand, likewise crowbars, handspikes and all kinds of weapons...'

Nelson himself came aboard and asked the reason for the disturbance. Instead of issuing further threats, he reminded the men of their excellent reputation: 'You have the greatest character of any frigate's crew in the navy...and now to rebel! If Captain Hotham ill-treats you, give me a letter and I will support you.' Immediately there were three cheers given.'

A very satisfactory solution: the mutiny defused, the men supported and the Captain in place, but with an incentive to behave less brutally in future. It is a testimony to Nelson's courage that he handled such a dangerous and difficult situation with such aplomb.

Another example of Nelson's attitude to cruel officers is revealed in a letter he wrote on 4 October 1804 to Lieut. Harding Shaw who reported to Nelson that he had had a man flogged. In his reply, Nelson noted, 'soon after, a shot was flung forward...and to discover the offender, you judged it necessary to threaten them with individual punishment, which as they would not confess, you had inflicted upon each of your company, by calling them over to the watch bill and giving them a dozen each. In answer to which I cannot approve of a measure so foreign to the rules of good discipline in His Majesty's Navy, and therefore caution you against a similar line of conduct. Had you fixed upon one or more guilty individuals and punished them severely, it might have had the desired effect...'

I think it is true to say that grievances arose not so much as a result of severe punishment, which the men accepted was sometimes necessary, but from unfairness. Nelson was a strict disciplinarian, but he always gave a man a fair hearing and looked for mitigating circumstances or previous examples of good conduct to ensure that a punishment was not excessive.

Was it not a fact that Hardy was a fairly harsh Captain, too? -t

Captain Hardy was certainly a sterner disciplinarian than Nelson and must have been shagrined on those occasions when the Admiral stepped in to lessen a man's punishment.

Hardy, as Flag Captain of the Victory, could have expected to run the ship as he saw fit, as with any other ship. However, having Nelson on board must have been both a blessing and a curse, for although they were well suited (and it must be remembered that Nelson specifically asked for Hardy) in many respects, there were some areas in which the Admiral would 'stick his oar' - if you'll pardon the expression - punishment being one of them, if he thought that Hardy was being overzealous.

I think the point here is that Nelson believed any man could be turned from his fault and always sought ways to make an individual see his error. Of course, if a man was accused of a crime which was patently obvious, then there was little he could do, although he did try here too. I am reminded of the case where the man in question, I believe a marine, actually faced the death penalty for his crime. I can't remember what the crime was, but as a result the man was allowed to live and a lighter punishment was given after Nelson had spoken to him. Hardy must have felt a little annoyed about that!

Nelson was known for getting the best out of the men, both in his own ship and the fleet, but through kindness and consideration not necessarily the cat-of-nine tails. An example of this happened just before the disasterous attack on Teneriffe, when his flagship became the 'Theseus'. This ship had been one of the worst offenders at the Nore Mutiny and had been sent out from England soon after, I believe specifically so that Nelson should have her and take them in hand. Although probably many of the worst cases had been taken off, there were enough left to be a problem, but Nelson's influence was soon felt. One night a paper was dropped on the quarterdeck, in which the crew voted that success attend Admiral Nelson and Captain Miller, expressing their content at the officers placed over them, and that they would spill every drop of their blood for them. They ended by saying that the ship's company would be immortalized as high as that of Nelson's earlier ship, the Captain.

Kester

The incident Kester mentions about the marine who had his death sentence remitted is an interesting one. I think everything was arranged for the execution and at the very last moment, a pardon was granted on Nlelson's orders to the Marine, John Jolley. It must have been a dramatic moment on board ship for all concerned, prisoner and witnesses. I read somewhere (source not to hand, sorry) that this might be construed as an exercise in sadism by Nelson; then I read in another book that another captain followed the same procedure so it was not an individual quirk on Nelson's part.

I'm sorry to be so woolly. Can anyone fill in the details? Are there other examples of dramatic last-minute reprieves? If so, it might be interesting to know the background to the decision to grant a reprieve.

I have read somewhere (sorry, I'm being woolly too! NAM Rodger, I think), that reprieves were common, and that it allowed courts martial to impose harsh punishments as deterrents, but in the knowledge that theirs was not the final decision. Apparently St Vincent was the only one to carry out the majority of sentences in full.

I wonder whether Hardy actually made use of Nelson's reprieves to help build his own reputation as a disciplinarian?

Some time ago I posted on Patrick Marione's Age of Nelson site some details of Captain John MacKellar of the Terpsichore, who was also dismissed the service, mainly for brutality. My interest is that my ggggfr was serving under him at the time. I have been transcribing his courtmartial, which can be found at
http://www3.telus.net/public/chasbaz/courtmartial.doc

I have recently added more pages - up to 62 now, which completes the case for the prosecution. On about page 60 I was finally rewarded by a mention of my ggggfr (Mr Bazelgate - sic) who was a midshipman at the time.

This all makes very interesting reading, Chasbaz. I'm puzzled by the remark that the 'Hottentots in the deserts of Arabia would not be guilty of such barbarity'. Did they really have Hottentots in Arabia?

Regarding the transcript: I assume you are transferring this from a contemporary but not verbatim transcript of the trial. I wonder how this was achieved. Shorthand as we know it had not been invented, yet the record seems close and accurate. Were there court writers capable of recording every word verbatim or did they make abbreviated notes of the salient points and elaborate on them in a post-trial transcript?

This all makes very interesting reading, Chasbaz. I'm puzzled by the remark that the 'Hottentots in the deserts of Arabia would not be guilty of such barbarity'. Did they really have Hottentots in Arabia or is it just a bit of Augustan extravagance?

Regarding the transcript: I assume you are transferring this from a contemporary but not verbatim transcript of the trial. I wonder how this was achieved. Shorthand as we know it had not been invented, yet the record seems close and accurate. Were there court writers capable of recording every word verbatim or did they make abbreviated notes of the salient points and elaborate on them in a post-trial transcript?

Tycho asked " ...I wonder how this was achieved. Shorthand as we know it had not been invented, yet the record seems close and accurate. Were there court writers capable of recording every word verbatim or did they make abbreviated notes of the salient points and elaborate on them in a post-trial transcript?"

Modern, Pitman, shorthand had yet to be invented, but other, earlier forms of shorthand certainly did exist - I believe Cicero devised a form.
Pepys's diary was written (partly) in shorthand and he certainly used it regularly. This was a form devised by a Mr Shelton. During the 18th century Parliamentary debates were noted using Mason's shorthand and either Masons or Taylor's shorthand were used in courts of law in the 18th and 19th century.

Having read PhiloNauticus's post, I was curious about the principles on which the earlier shorthand forms like Mason's were based. There is an informative extract on www.1911encyclopedia.org/shorthand

To refer to Tycho's remarks:
I agree, the Hottentots of Arabia doesn't look right, but who knows, perhaps they were Gastarbeiter. I suspect MacKellar's knowledge of geography was better on sea than on land.

The records of the court martial are in longhand, but they are a fair copy, so some sort of shorthand was probably used, unless the proceedings were held up after each exchange, waiting for the scratching to finish. I am continuing to add pages from time to time but it's a fairly low priority. Having started, it seems a bit pointless not to finish. I hope it will be of use, as well as stimulating further research.

On thing I had never seen mentioned before is the type of cat o'nine tails.
The (supposed) thief Patrick Miermin was flogged with a 'Thief's Cat' - how would that have differed from other breeds I wonder?

"...One thing I had never seen mentioned before is the type of cat o'nine tails. The (supposed) thief Patrick Miermin was flogged with a 'Thief's Cat' - how would that have differed from other breeds I wonder?"

"Cat-o'-nine-tails: An instrument of punishment used on board ships in the Navy; it is comprised of nine pieces of line or cord, about half a yard long, fixed upon a piece of thick rope for a handle, and having three knots on each at small intervals, nearest one end; with this the seamen, who transgress the articles of war and rules of the service are flogged upon the bare back.
A Thieves' Cat, a cat-o'-nine-tails having larger and harder knots upon it that those generally employed and is only used for the punishment of theft" (Falconers Marine Dictionary)