Chapter IV: Part 4

There is a good illustration of spirit in a quaint story told of Admiral Gayton. He was making his way home to England when a large man-of-war was sighted. The Admiral’s vessel, the _Antelope_, was a crazy old craft, under-manned, and half-armed. Every preparation, however, was made to receive the stranger, and Gayton, himself crawling on deck, exhorted his people to behave like Englishmen. “I can’t stand by you,” he said, “but I’ll sit and see you fight as long as you please.” The stranger turned out to be an English man-of-war. Gayton’s resolution was based on something more than spirit only. In fact, he had several chests of dollars belonging to himself in the ship, proceeds of the sale of American prizes. His friends pointed out the inconvenience of transporting specie, and advised him to remit his property in bills. “No,” said the old sailor, “I know nothing so valuable as money itself, and should be a fool to part with it for paper.” His friends then urged him to send his money home in a frigate, as the _Antelope_ was old and might founder on the way. “No,” answered Gayton, “my money and myself will take our passage in the same bottom, and if we are lost there will be an end of two bad things at once.”[25]

Footnote 25:

The best humour of the marine annals must be sought in anecdotes of
dry old sea-dogs of the pattern of Gayton. There should be some lively
stories of American naval officers. This given by Nathaniel Hawthorne
in his “Note Books” is good. They are dining aboard a revenue cutter.
“The waiter tells the captain of the cutter that Captain Percival
(commander of the navy yard) is sitting on the deck of the anchor buoy
(which lies inside of the cutter) smoking his cigar. The captain sends
him a glass of champagne and inquires of the waiter what Percival says
to it. He said, sir, ‘What does he send me this damned stuff for?’ but
drinks nevertheless.”

Naval literature is like the ocean; many a gem of purest ray serene lies hidden in the depths of it. It is always the great conquerors one talks and thinks of; the Admiral on his quarter-deck, not Jack, half naked and mutilated, still heroically surging at his hot cannon below. It is a great many years since that an orphan, belonging to Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, was apprenticed by the parish to a tailor. As he was one day sitting alone on the shopboard—the ninth part of a man—he spied a squadron of men-of-war coming round Dunnose. Possessed by an unconquerable impulse, he ran down to the beach, cast off the painter from the first boat he saw, jumped into her, and plied the oars so well that he quickly reached the Admiral’s ship. He was received as a volunteer, and the boat sent adrift. Next morning the English fell in with a French squadron, and a hot action began. The young tailor fought with great cheerfulness and alacrity, but, growing impatient after awhile, he inquired of the sailors what was the object for which they were contending. He was answered that the fight would continue till the white rag at the enemy’s masthead was struck. “Oh, if that’s all,” he exclaimed, “I’ll see what I can do.” The vessels were engaged yard-arm and yard-arm, and enveloped in powder-smoke. The young tailor jumped aloft, gained the main-yard of the French Admiral, mounted to the masthead, and brought away the French flag. The English sailors, believing the enemy had hauled his flag down, shouted Victory! The French, perceiving their colours gone, ran from their guns, on which the English boarded and took the vessel. The young tailor’s name was Hopson. For this heroic action he was appointed to the quarter-deck, and progressing rapidly through the several ranks of the service became Admiral, with command of a squadron.[26]

Footnote 26:

This told in the _Naval Chronicle_.

The politeness of Howe as an example of spirit is not quite so common in the annals as illustrations of heroic bluntness. I find a specimen in the narrative of the action with the squadrons under Jonquierre and St. George off Finisterre, when the _Bristol_, Captain Montagu, began to engage _l’Invincible_. Captain Fincher, in the _Pembroke_, tried to get in between her and the enemy, but not finding room, he hailed the _Bristol_, and requested Montagu to put his helm a starboard, or the _Pembroke_ would run foul of his ship. Montagu answered, “Run foul of me and be, etc.; neither you nor any man in the world shall come between me and my enemy.” Similar bluntness is exhibited in a story told of Admiral Sir Richard King. During an action a shot struck the head of his captain and blew his brains over King, then commodore, who never flinched.[27] On being told by the master, towards the close of the fight, that two more of the enemy’s ships appeared to be coming up, and asked what he would do with the ship, “Do with her!” he exclaimed contemptuously, “Fight her, sir! fight her till she sinks.” This is as good as Howe’s memorable answer to the lieutenant who told him that the fire was extinguished and that he need no longer be afraid. “Afraid!” exclaimed Howe; then, fixing his eyes on the lieutenant, “Pray, sir, how does a man feel when he is afraid? I need not ask how he looks.”

Footnote 27:

“Captain Scott of the cutter told me a singular story of what occurred
during the action between the _Constitution_ and _Macedonian_—he being
powder-monkey aboard the former ship. A cannon shot came through the
ship’s side, and a man’s head was struck off, probably by a splinter,
for it was done without bruising the head or body, as clean as by a
razor. Well, the man was walking pretty briskly at the time of the
accident; and Scott seriously affirmed that he kept walking onward at
the same pace, with two jets of blood gushing from his headless trunk,
till, after going twenty feet without a head, he sunk down at once,
with his legs under him.” _Hawthorne Note Books._ One seems to hear
Mr. Burchell’s “fudge!” here.

The charm of British naval biography lies in its modesty and accuracy. A pity as much cannot be said for the marine records of other countries. There is an excellent example of impudent and deliberate lying in the Memoirs of M. du Gué-Trouin, chief of a squadron in the French navy, in the time of Louis XIV. The book is scarce. It was translated in 1732, by “A Sea Officer,” who in his dedication writes, after commenting on the Frenchman’s account of an action with the English, “But this is scarce anything to the wonders you will find wrought by Du Gué, his people, and his consorts. For my part, I had scarce gone through his book before I expected to hear he had attempted to run away with the Land’s End of England.... No ’tis in France, and France alone, where you must meet with these men who can do anything, no matter what stands in the way, no matter for the difficulties; nay, no matter whether they know what it is they are to do, they’ll do it.” But the Spanish and Dutch annals are too full of lies also to suffer us to consider the French singular in this way. As to the Yankees, one should read James’ “Naval Occurrences” to appreciate their amazing capacity as romancers.

Lord Bacon amused his leisure by collecting the witty sayings of others; Horace Walpole delighted in ana; there is no choicer reading than the Menagiana, Selden’s Table-Talk, and Spence’s anecdotes. In the face of such precursors no apology can be felt needful from any one who should think proper to attempt an anecdotal history of the British Navy.

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_WOMEN AS SAILORS._

A young lady of Plymouth, having illustrated her able-seamanlike capacity by diving from the masthead of a vessel at anchor in the Sound, proceeded some time afterwards to justify her marine enthusiasm by swimming from the Breakwater to the Hoe in a tumbling sea, the distance being three miles and the time occupied within an hour and a quarter. Now, if this young lady took it into her head to start away to sea, for what aforemast capacity, from boatswain down to boy, would she not be fit? Even as a skipper might she not excel after a proper course of ogling the sun through a sextant and a well-digested commitment of Norie or Raper to heart? A girl capable of measuring three miles of turbulent surges in seventy odd minutes ought to be equal to a weather top-sail ear-ring in a whole gale; whilst the lungs that could defy a league of flying spume should be able to wake some dancing silver pipings out of a boatswain’s whistle.

A good many ladies have gone to sea as sailors since the first chapters of the world’s maritime history were written, and the majority of them not only made excellent seamen, but fought their countries’ enemies with pike, cutlass, and pistol with a courage and determination equal to any exhibition of the same qualities in the bravest of their pig-tailed shipmates. And yet women are deemed unlucky at sea! A French tradition affirms that the ocean near Cape Finisterre swells at the sight of a woman. Possibly the old fear originated with the witches. Hideous crones who wrecked ships for lucre and drowned mariners to gratify their own spleen or that of others would necessarily taint Jack’s view of “the sex” in their maritime relations. An American writer[28] quotes from Sandy’s Ovid: “I have heard of seafaring men, and some of Bristol, how a quartermaster in a Bristol ship, then trading in the Streights, going down into the hold saw a sort of women, his own neighbours, making merry together, and taking their cups liberally; who having espied him, and threatening that he should report their discovery, vanished suddenly out of sight; who thereupon was lame for ever after. The ship having made her voyage, nowe homeward bound, and neere her harbour, stuck fast in the deep sea before a fresh gaile, to their no small amazement, nor for all they could doe, together with the help that came from the shore, could they get her loose, until one (as Cynothea, the Trojan ship) shoved her off with his shoulder.” For bewitching the ship the ladies who had been seen taking their cups liberally in the hold were convicted and executed.

Footnote 28:

Mr. Bassett, of the United States Navy, who has collected much
interesting information in this and the like superstitions in his
work, “Legends of the Sea,” New York, 1886.

But, undeterred by forecastle superstitions, the girls, whenever they had a mind to go to sea, went. In Von Archenholtz’ “History of the Pirates” you read of Ann Bonny and Mary Read, two English women, as may be judged from the names, joining the buccaneers, “not from licentious motives to gratify their pleasures, but solely by a thirst of plunder, and as co-partners in their dangers as well as in their profits.” To appreciate the courage of Mary Read and Ann Bonny it is necessary to understand the kind of lives the buccaneers led—moral, physical, and intellectual. The typical pirate of the Antilles—in those times—was a bruised and battered rogue, dressed in a shirt and a pair of pantaloons, both made of coarse linen cloth, dyed with the blood of animals he had killed. His unstockinged feet were protected by boots formed from hogskins, and his head was covered with a round cap. He tied a raw hide girdle round him, hung a sabre upon it and filled it with knives. He also carried a firelock that shot two balls, each weighing an ounce.[29]

Footnote 29:

Bailey says the word Bucanier is said to be derived from the
inhabitants of the Caribee Islands who used to cut their prisoners to
pieces “and laid them on hurdles of Brazil wood erected on sticks,
with fire underneath, and when so broiled or roasted to eat them, and
this manner of dressing was called _bucaning_. Hence our Buccaneers
took their name, in that they, hunting, dressed their meat after their
manner.”

Such was the dainty figure whom Ann Bonny and Mary Read made a comrade of, themselves retaining the apparel of their sex, to which they added long sailors’ trousers. With hair dishevelled, hangers at their waists, pistols on their breasts, and hatchets in their hands, they must have been objects nicely calculated to excite whatever of romantic enthusiasm there yet lingered in the bosoms of the cut-throats whose troop they had joined for love of blood and gold.

A more heroic female sailor, despite a fierceness that, though warrantable enough, makes an historical tigress of her, offers in the famous Jean de Belville, who vowing vengeance for the murder of her husband, De Clisson, at Paris, in 1343, fitted out a squadron of ships and swooped down upon the coast of Normandy, firing every castle that a torch could be put to, and reddening the seaboard with burning villages. She is represented to have been one of the finest women in Europe, and a sense of her beauty joining with perception of her wrongs and the brilliant loyalty of her very scheme of revenge, does unquestionably give a high quality of majesty to that posture of ferocity in which she is pictured by the historian.

In one of the old Dutch books of voyages—whether De Weert’s, Van Noort’s, or Schouten’s I cannot be sure—mention is made of a discovery, when the ship was off the Horn, of one of the crew as a woman. Even in these days of science, of canned meats, condensing apparatus, ice-houses, steam-winches, double-top-sail yards, clipper keels, and short voyages, a woman would find seafaring a calling bitter enough. But think of one of the sex a member of the crew of the Dutch ship of the seventeenth century, on a voyage of discovery, struggling against the western sleet-laden tempests of the bleak, iron melancholy Horn! Ships were butter-boxes in those times,[30] sawed-off old wagons, as broad as they were long, with running gear that worked like drawing teeth, and a discipline composed of keel-hauling, fixing to the mast by driving a knife through the hand, and marooning, or, in other words, setting the culprit ashore on an uninhabited island, with a day’s provisions, and without the means of obtaining more if more was to be had. That men died by the scores in those days of scurvy, months of bitter bad meat and foul water, pestiferous ’tween-deck atmosphere, supplemented by the barbarous ignorance of the chirurgeons, is readily intelligible; but that a woman should have managed to exist under such conditions all the way from the Texel to the Straits Le Maire, doing the sailors’ work, and eating the sailors’ food, and living in the sailors’ quarters, is little short of a miracle and an amazing instance of female endurance.

Footnote 30:

Few features of those chronicles of adventure which are included in
the collections of Hakluyt, Purchas, Churchill, Harris, and others are
more interesting than the descriptions given of the tonnage, arms, and
crews of the vessels which discovered the Indies, penetrated the great
South Sea, gave names to capes and headlands of the vast but still
shadowy continent of New Holland; coasted the bleak shores of
Newfoundland, and searched the ice of the Frozen Ocean for the
North-west Passage. Of course, the measurements of those days are not
the measurements of these. A tun might signify a capacity for
different kinds of freight without reference to cubical dimensions.
The capacity of some vessels in those days was measured by the number
of pipes of wine which could be stowed in them. Even in recent times
there is a considerable difference between old and new measurements,
the old representing less than the new. Nevertheless it is impossible
to read about the ships in which the early navigators sailed—it is
impossible to think of their tub-like forms, their enormous
top-hamper, the astonishing clumsiness of their yards and gear, their
castellated poops and rampart-like quarters, without wondering how on
earth such structures managed to roll in safety over the stormy ocean,
and to push their way, however slowly, against opposing winds and
adverse tides. Certain expressions have changed their meaning, and on
reading the old voyages one is often puzzled with names given to craft
which, to modern experience, do not in the least degree correspond
with their titles. For instance, the galley in our times is known as a
long rowing boat, mounting so many oars. But in former days by the
term galley was meant a vessel whose complement of men was one
thousand or twelve hundred. She mounted a good show of ordnance, had
three masts and thirty-two banks of oars, every bank containing two
oars, and every oar being handled by five or six men. Equally
perplexing are those names of shallops, skiffs, pinnaces, lighters,
and so forth, which are met in abundance in the old stories, and which
express fabrics very different indeed from the kinds of craft they now
designate. For Drake’s glorious voyage five ships were equipped. The
_Hind_ was one hundred tons, the _Elizabeth_ eighty tons, the
_Marigold_ thirty tons, the _Swan_ fifty tons, and the _Christopher_
fifteen tons. The captain of this fifteen-ton pinnace was Thomas Moon,
and we hear of her disappearing in great storms and reappearing in
fine weather, to the general joy of the rest of the fleet. Such an old
skipper as this must have made noble company over a mug of strong
beer, and would have been able to tell of things even more wonderful
than trees with oysters growing upon them. Schouten, who discovered
and named Cape Horn, put to sea in vessels which in these days would
class amongst small, inferior coasters; yet the _Unity_ managed to
carry nineteen pieces of cannon and twelve swivels and a company of
sixty-five men. How those ancient mariners contrived to stow
themselves away in their dark ’tweendecks and black forecastles, how
in their little holds they could find room for sufficient provisions
and water to last them for months, not to mention the gunpowder and
cannon balls which they carried, surpasses modern marine
comprehension. Among the ships William Funnell writes about, in a
narrative that is commonly taken to be William Dampier’s, was the
Cinque Ports galley, for ever memorable as the craft in which
Alexander Selkirk sailed. This vessel, that was equipped for a
buccaneering cruise in little known waters against towering and
powerful galleons, was ninety tons, a burthen which in these days
would about fit a pleasure yacht intended for the blue skies and
summer seas of the holiday period. Or take Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s
expedition, which included the _Golden Hind_ of forty tons, the
_Swallow_ of forty tons, and the _Squirrel_ of ten tons. “The
resolution of the proprietors was that the fleet should begin its
course northerly, and follow as directly as they could the trade-way
to Newfoundland.” Think of a ten-ton boat starting on such an
expedition as this! Yet Sir Humphrey took command of her when her
master deserted, with this sequel: that when off Cape Race homeward
bound, “the storms and swellings of the seas increasing, he (namely,
Sir Humphrey) was again pressed to leave the frigate (that is, the
_Squirrel_), but his answer was, ‘We are as near to Heaven by sea as
by land.’ About midnight, the _Squirrel_ being ahead of the _Golden
Hind_, her lights were at once extinguished, which those in the _Hind_
seeing cried out ‘Our general is lost!’ and it is supposed she sank
that instant, for she was never more heard of.” Lord Byron exclaims:

“Columbus found a new world in a cutter,
Or brigantine, or pink, of no great tonnage,
While yet America was in her non-age.”

The conjecture—it seems no more—of Washington Irving that Columbus’
ships were undecked boats “not superior to river and coasting craft of
more modern days,” is disproved by Lindsay in his “History of
Shipping.”

In the cases of women who have put on men’s clothes and shipped as sailors many were incited by love or jealousy. The old ballad of Billy Taylor is representative. The best known instance is that of Hannah Snell, whose story has been often told.[31] This distinguished female was born in 1723, and married, at Wapping, one James Summs, a Dutch sailor, who spent her money and abandoned her. Thereupon Hannah made up her mind to go in quest of her faithless spouse. She dressed herself as a man, and started. Her adventures would fill three volumes. Romance and farce, tragedy and comedy are happily combined. She first went a soldiering, and, of course, a young woman fell in love with her. She deserted, re-enlisted as a marine, and saw a great deal of active service. How many men she killed is not stated, but it is conceivable that her love for the sex was not keen, and that she never discharged a musket without an emotion of joy mingled with hope that James Summs was not far off. She was wounded on several occasions, but contrived to conceal her sex until the news reached her that her Jim, whilst a prisoner at Geneva, had committed a murder, for which he was stitched up in a bag and thrown into the sea, when, without further ado, she resumed the petticoat and returned to London. From a grateful country she obtained an annuity of £50, which with her earnings as an actress—it seems she achieved a great popularity as Bill Bobstay, a sailor—enabled her to cut a genteel figure. Growing weary of the stage, she opened a public house in Wapping that was very handsomely supported down to the time of her death by the numerous jolly tars of that marine district.

Footnote 31:

A very full account of this extraordinary woman is printed in a little
volume entitled “Eccentric Biography,” 1803.

A less known, but to the full as remarkable a case of a woman masquerading as a sailor occurs in the life of Mary Anne Talbot, “otherwise John Taylor.” Her story was written and published by herself at the beginning of the present century, and may be accepted as certainly not less accurate than the memoirs of George Ann Bellamy, whose sweet face crowned with feathers still looks laughingly over the mask in her hand from the plate after Ramberg in the old collections. Miss Talbot, otherwise John Taylor, was born in 1778, and was induced by an officer in an infantry regiment to assume male attire and accompany him as his foot-boy to the West Indies. Afterwards she acted in the capacity of a drummer at the siege of Valenciennes, and was twice wounded. It is observable that this young lady, who claimed to be the natural daughter of Lord William Talbot, Baron of Hensol, began her amazing career, like Hannah Snell, as a soldier. The infantry officer having been killed, Miss Talbot threw off her drummer’s dress, assumed that of a sailor, and, having made her way to Luxembourg, engaged with the captain of a French lugger, and sailed with him, in the belief that the vessel was a peaceful trader. After cruising about awhile the lugger fell in with the British fleet under the command of Lord Howe. Mary Ann refused to fight. The French captain swore at her and beat her, but she was not to be manhandled into firing upon her countrymen. The lugger hauled down her flag, and her captain and crew were taken on board the _Queen Charlotte_ to be examined by Lord Howe. On being questioned Mary Anne replied that she was an English boy, and had shipped in the lugger in order to escape from France, and with the intention of deserting when the chance occurred. Fortunately Lord Howe’s questions were not very minute. She was dismissed, and stationed on board the _Brunswick_, Captain Harvey. In the great sea fight that followed Mary Anne was desperately wounded, and conveyed to the cockpit, and on the arrival of her ship at Spithead was sent to Haslar Hospital, from which, after four months’ attendance as an out-patient, she was discharged, partially cured. She then entered the _Vesuvius_ bomb; the vessel was carried by privateers, and Mary Anne was taken to Dunkirk and lodged in the prison of St. Clair. On the prisoners being exchanged she met with an American captain, engaged with him and sailed to America as ship’s steward. She resided with the captain’s family at New York, and declares that she was subjected to much embarrassment on account of an attachment conceived for her by the captain’s niece, who actually proposed marriage, and obtained a miniature of her beloved in the full uniform of an American officer, for which Mary Anne paid eighteen dollars. Shortly after her return to England, the press being hot, she was seized by a gang, and in the scrimmage received a severe cutlass-wound on the head. She was carried on board the tender, but having probably had enough of the sea, she revealed her sex and recovered her liberty. How much truth there is in this narrative it would now be idle to conjecture. It is certain, however, that she obtained a pension of £20 a year, and that she received her money from the Navy Office as John Taylor, the name she had assumed when she followed the officer in the walking regiment to the West Indies.

In October, 1759, a person named Samuel Bundy, twenty years old, married a girl named Mary Parlour. He said he was ill, and his bride patiently waited until the following March, hoping meanwhile that he would be cured. Her friends growing tired, insisted upon searching him, and to the general amazement the bridegroom proved a female. Her story was that seven years previously she had been betrayed by a sweetheart and taken away from her mother, and that to prevent her from being discovered he dressed her as a boy. They separated after a year, and she went to sea as a sailor. This life she quitted after twelve months of rough work, and apprenticed herself to a Mr. Angel who lived at the King’s Head, Gravel Lane, Southwark. A young woman, Mary Parlour, fell in love with Mr. Angel’s brisk and saucy-looking apprentice, and they were married. The “husband” declared that his “wife” speedily found out the mistake she had made, but determined not to expose the matter. After her marriage “Samuel Bundy,” as she called herself, entered on board a man-of-war, but deserted for fear of detection. She then tried a merchantman, but left her also to return to the “wife” whom, says the account, “she says she dearly loves.”

In 1761, as a sergeant was drilling some soldiers aboard a transport, he was struck with the prominent breast of one of them named Paul Daniel. When the drill was over he sent for him to the cabin, where, after taxing “him” she confessed her sex. Her story was that she had a husband whom she dearly loved, and who had been reduced to beggary; he enlisted in a marching regiment and was in Germany for two years, as she believed. She had not heard of or from him in all that time, and she finally decided to hunt for him the world over. On learning that troops were being despatched to Germany she enlisted. This, to be sure, is a tale of a female soldier, but I introduce it here for its strangeness and likewise for the scene of it being on board ship.

In 1771, a man named Charles Waddall, on board the _Oxford_ man-of-war, was sentenced to receive two dozen lashes for desertion; but when tied up the sailor was discovered to be a woman. She said that she had travelled from Hull to London after a man with whom she was in love, and hearing that he was a sailor on the _Oxford_ she entered for that ship. When she arrived on board she learnt that her sweetheart had deserted, on which she resolved to run away too. The admiral gave the poor creature half a guinea, and others connected with Chatham dockyard made up a purse for her.

The following is illustrative of the power of the passion that inspires the lass who loves a sailor: In 1808, the relatives of a girl who had given her heart to a sailor, hoped to end the attachment by procuring his impressment; but she resolved nevertheless to marry him, and he was accordingly brought ashore and escorted by the press-gang to the church, whence, after the marriage ceremony, he was again conveyed to the tender. I think I see the commiserating expression on the mahogany faces of those old Jacks, as they witness the impressed man saying good-bye to his Poll.

In 1807, a woman, dressed in sailor’s clothes, was brought before the Lord Mayor of London. She said that she had been apprenticed by her step-father at Whitby to a collier called the _Mayflower_; that she had served four years out of the seven without her sex being discovered; that she was bound when she was thirteen years old, and that her step-father had likewise bound her mother to the sea—this lady being killed, whilst serving as a sailor, at the battle of Copenhagen! She said that her ship was at Woolwich, and that she had run away because the mate had rope’s-ended her for not getting up. She was provided with female attire and sent to her parish.

In 1792, the Marchioness de Bouillé and Madame de Noailles arrived at Brighton from Dieppe. The marchioness crossed the channel in an open boat, and was disguised as a sailor! The other, who was in mean male attire, crossed in one of the packets, the master of the vessel having pitied her and taken her under his protection.

Another romantic instance may be quoted: it is given in the _Naval Chronicle_ (1802), and seems authentic enough. A gentleman, towards the end of the last century, became bankrupt. He went to Bradford with two daughters, and there died of a broken heart. The girls were left absolutely without provision. Rather than starve—or beg, which was worse than starving to these high-spirited women—they resolved to assume the character and dress of men and enter the navy. They went to Portsmouth and obtained a situation on the quarter-deck—as the term then was—of a troopship bound to the West Indies. They were engaged, we are told, in the reduction of Curaçoa, “and served with credit in two or three actions in those seas, till one of them was wounded by a splinter in her side, when her sex being discovered, she was discharged, and came to England about six weeks since,” making the date about May, 1802. Meanwhile, the other sister was ill with fever, having been put ashore at Dominica. Believing herself to be dying, she sent for one of the officers of the ship, disclosed her sex to him, and related her story. “The discovery gave tenderness to the esteem he had before entertained for his young friend; his attentions contributed to her convalescence. In short, she recovered, they were married, and are now returned to England in possession of the means to render happy the remainder of their days.”

It is a common saying at sea on a fine bright day, “That if it were always such weather, ships would go manned with ladies.” Possibly if the romance of women sailors terminated with handsome lovers and well-to-do husbands, there might, even in these practical days, arise the same necessity for overhauling the forecastle for masquerading girls that is now found for overhauling the hold for stowaways. But the time for Hannah Snells, for Mary Anne Talbots, otherwise John Taylors, for Ann Bonnys and Mary Reads is dead and gone. Those heroines belonged to a seafaring age of which old salts are ridiculed for deploring the extinction. And in sober truth old salts must not grumble if they are laughed at for thus lamenting, for surely better six days to New York in a steamer wholly free of Hannah Snells than four months to the same port in a ship entirely worked by Mary Anne Talbots.

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_FIGHTING SMUGGLERS._

I have noticed of late (1886) an exceptional degree of spasmodic vigour in the direction of the suppression of smuggling. It is not, indeed, that the Customs’ people have afforded proofs more astonishing than usual of their peculiar power of discovering tobacco, spirits, eau-de-Cologne, cigars, and the like in inconceivable and apparently impracticable shipboard nooks and holes; the special display takes the comparatively unaccustomed form of small men-of-war chasing smack-rigged craft flying Dutch colours, and bearing the strange name of “coopers” or “copers.” It is not known, I think, that there is any British or other law which renders illegal the act of sailing the high seas with a hold freighted with spirits, tobacco, and perfumes. That this is so may be gathered from the case of a Dutch cooper which, after an “exciting chase,” was brought to and boarded by a small cruiser and carried into an English port. But she had not been long detained before orders arrived for her release. One sees in a thing of this kind how hard it is to squeeze the least drop of romance from marine events in these days. Chases may be “exciting:” but they are of the rocket pattern—fire going up and stick coming down. Where is now the burly smuggling salt with a face as big and as full of colour as a topside of beef, great fearnought trousers, and boots; a stout jacket, plentifully garnished with buttons; a striped shirt and a large silk neckerchief, and a belt broken by the shafts of knives, the hilt of a cutlass, the butt-ends and gleaming barrels of a brace or more of big pistols? “Old Stormy he is dead and gone!” is the burden of a sea-chorus that is very applicable to those heavy villains of the long-shore theatre, Dirk Hatterick and bold Will Watch. The issue of a chase in these times is strictly in correspondence with the decidedly sneaking way in which smuggling—such as it is—is carried on. The concealment of a few watches in the heels of a pair of shoes; yards of pigtail snugly coiled away in cheeses; cigars marvellously well packed in the hollow hearts of balks of timber; how dull, mean, twopenny are such devices in the face of the defiant heroism of those historic braves who, waiting for moonless nights, mastheaded their lug-sails in death-like silence, and stole out into the wide waters of the English, the Irish, the Bristol Channels, a mere blot of ink upon the dusk, crossing the hawse of cruisers like shadows of vaporous wings, and melting into the sullen gloom of some secret bay flanked by cliffs liberally honeycombed with caves and echoing corridors![32]

Footnote 32:

Nevertheless instances abound of extraordinary ingenuity even in the
faint-hearted directions. “When,” says a writer whose book now dates
back many years, “I arrived the first voyage from Bombay, I had a few
rows of Cornelian beads which I had purchased there for some friends
at home. For some time they lay snug enough in the toe of an old shoe,
at the bottom of my chest, until we got in the river, when I gave them
to the second mate to place in greater security. Next day, as the men
were receiving rations, the word was passed that the searchers were
alongside. At the instant the second mate came running to me with my
beads. He had not been able to discover a good place to conceal them.
I ran to the steward; he took them, and lifting up one of his lockers,
where lay a large snake coiled up like a top-sail sheet, he lifted up
its terrific head and threw my beads under its straw. The searchers
came, overhauled the steward’s traps and lifted up the lid of the
locker. The snake put forth its forked tongue—the lid dropped from the
searcher’s hand!”

Long antecedent to the days in which the Dutch cooper coquets with her Majesty’s customs, and seduces Revenue cruisers into issueless pursuits, the smuggler gave the naval officer as much to do as the Frenchman or the Batavian. The fights were desperate; there was scarce an anker of run brandy that did not represent a life. It is not pleasant, perhaps, in the old pictures and book “embellishments” to see a smart frigate in hot pursuit of a top-sail lugger, and to know that yon puff of smoke at the bow of the chaser represents a cannon ball fired by an Englishman at his own countrymen. Whenever that sort of thunder is raised under the British Jack, you feel that the destination of the levin-brand which preceded it ought not at all events to be an English hull or an English breast. Nevertheless the blood will tingle to those early cuts and whole-page illustrations. How grandly the cruiser looms up astern! The spray breaks as far aft as the gangway, and the silver glitter sweeps in sparkling smoke over the sprit-sail yard that has been got “fore and aft” in readiness. Her royals soar cloud-like among the clouds, and her flag, as big as the main-topgallant-sail, streams its milky splendour of white bunting, crimson-crossed and nobly jacked in the corner, from the signal halliards at the end of the spanker gaff. But the eye, and, perhaps, the heart, is with that nimble shape in the foreground. She is a three-masted lugger, with yards long enough to give as much head to the canvas as would serve to blow a _Royal George_ along. What a spring she has of bow! How elegant is the sweep of the line of her lee rail, lying dark amid the wash of cream there! Not so much as a puff from a musket-barrel answers that fore-chaser, blazing away at her astern. If the Revenue were not the abstraction that, with Charles Lamb, one somehow regards it, one would wish that saucy smuggler speedily overhauled. As it is, the sympathetic artist, by introducing a touch of thickness away to windward there, hints at the approach of a fog, and at the possibility, even yet, of that crouching whiskered crew successfully landing their tobacco, spirits, silk, and tea.

The old smuggling laws were somewhat stiff. Compared to them how mild are the penalties which the modern collector of Customs can press for! In the good old times, in the days of the fine old English gentleman—on whose account, by the way, it is nowhere recorded that any human being ever went into mourning—a penalty of £300 was imposed upon any master of a ship coming from abroad having more than one hundred pounds of tea on board or more than one hundred gallons of foreign spirits in casks under sixty gallons (besides two gallons for each seaman). Foreign spirits imported from any part of Europe, in a vessel containing less than sixty gallons, were forfeited along with the ship and her furniture. If any goods, such as tea or coffee, liable to forfeiture were found on board a ship bound from foreign ports, lying at anchor or “hovering” within two leagues of the coast, the ship, if not above two hundred tons, was forfeited. Any person selling coffee, tea, cocoa-nuts, or chocolate was forced to write “Dealer in coffee, etc.,” over his door under a penalty of £200. Illustrations of this kind make one see the sort of risks the smuggler ran in those days. Not but that the public should have held themselves very much obliged for all these penalties and punishments. It is on record that, information having been laid against some persons living in Dorsetshire for harbouring smuggled tea, their houses were searched, and there were found about thirty pounds of tea, mixed with leaves, and one thousand and thirty pounds weight of ash, elder, and sloe leaves, dried and prepared, ready for mixing with the tea! This was about the time when the poet Cowper in his nightcap was celebrating the merits of the cup that cheers. But did it not inebriate? Think of the proportion of a thousand and thirty pounds of ash, elder, and sloe leaves, to thirty pounds of the Hong merchant’s sample! All these leaves were got in the summer, and I read that the poor of the district were so well paid for collecting them, that the farmers could not obtain labourers for their harvests.

The war waged by the State against the smuggler was as vengeful as the hottest against a foreign foe. As an example: in 1784 the severity of the winter had obliged the smugglers to lay up a great number of their vessels. It was suggested to Mr. Pitt that a fine opportunity offered for destroying these boats, if sufficient force could be procured to prevent the smugglers from attempting a rescue. Pitt sent word to the war office for a regiment of soldiers to be at Deal on a certain day. The officer in command of the soldiers found on his arrival that the people of the town having got scent of what was to happen, had advised the publicans to pull down their signs that the soldiers should not be able to get quarters. They consented and no quarters were to be had. Eventually the men obtained shelter in a barn, but the officer had the utmost difficulty to procure provisions for them. Next day some cutters were seen lying off the beach and the soldiers marched down to the water. The inhabitants thought the troops would embark in the cutters. Then it was that the order was given to burn the boats, and the force being great, the people were obliged to stand idly looking on, not daring a rescue.

Those were days when a cruise against the smugglers promised some excellent pickings. One of the most successful of the cruising ships was the _Atalanta_, of eighteen guns, that was hardly paid off and her crew discharged when, such was her popularity, on being almost immediately re-commissioned men entered with extraordinary eagerness. In one short cruise alone she captured eight sail and nearly two thousand ankers of spirits, besides bale goods; and every man’s share of the prize money amounted to twice the value of his wages. The old reports run thus: “Came in the _Atalanta_, eighteen guns, Captain Mansfield, with a fine smuggling cutter of eighty tons, called the _Admiral Pole_, of Exeter, with one hundred and seventy ankers of spirits, taken after a long chase. She was seized some months since at Weymouth for having an over quantity of spirits on board, and was liberated on bond being given to the Board of Customs and Excise.” Or, “Came in, the _Eagle_, Excise cutter, Captain Ward, with a fine smuggling cutter, called the _Swift_ (formerly the _Bonaparte_, French privateer), with five hundred tubs of brandy, after a long chase within the limits of the _Dodman_.” Or, “Sailed on a cruise against the smugglers, the _Ranger_, cutter, Captain A. Fraser.” Or, “Came in from a cruise against the smugglers, the _Galatea_, of thirty-six guns, Captain Wolfe.”

It will be judged that if bold Will Watch or belted Joe Marline succeeded in running his goods it was certainly not through lack of attention to him on the part of the King’s navy. And, as may be supposed, many black deeds of violence and murder are on record. The story of an assassination eminently characteristic of the old smuggling times is preserved in the Old Bailey annals. On the night of December 26, 1798, a Custom House officer went in a boat to look after smugglers near Cawsand Bay on the coast of Cornwall. He saw a sloop lying at anchor, the people of which hailed him, and asked him whose boat it was. He answered that it was a King’s boat. They warned him not to approach; if he did, they would fire on him; he was then some eight or ten fathoms distant from the sloop. His men, nothing daunted, continued to row, whilst he held the Revenue colours in his hand. The smugglers fired a volley from their muskets, slipped their cable, and made off. One of the men in the boat was killed. The smugglers were apprehended on the evidence of one of their own people. This man, named Tom Rogers, said that he was a sailor on board the vessel (named the _Lottery_) on the night referred to. They had just arrived from Guernsey with a cargo of smuggled spirits, and, at the moment of the approach of the Customs’ boat, they were discharging the tubs into boats alongside. The witness declared that after they had made sail, one of the crew named Potter said it was he who had fired, that he had taken good aim, and had seen a man drop in the boat. On this evidence Potter was found guilty, and hanged at Execution Dock.

But whatever may be thought of the morality of the smuggler, it is indisputable that his cutter or lugger was a magnificent nursery for seamen. The exploits of some of these fellows in respect of recaptures alone would fill a stout volume with wonderful instances of intrepidity and seamanship. Take the case of the _Echo_, of Poole, that was boarded by a French privateer, and retaken by the mate and a boy of twelve, who seized the helmsman, forced him below with two French seamen, battened them down, and brought them to Plymouth.

Of the _Marquis of Granby_, that was captured off the Goodwins by a French lugger; the captain and two men were put into the Frenchman’s boat, in order to be conveyed on board the privateer, that was giving chase to another vessel, and that, by carrying a press of sail, in a short time left the boat nearly five miles astern. On observing this the smuggling skipper wrested a sword out of the hands of the officer of the boat, and compelled the French sailors to row him back to his own ship. This done, he gallantly boarded her, sword in hand, and speedily cleared the deck of the Frenchmen, who, to save their lives, jumped overboard, and were picked up by their own boat. The smuggler then proceeded on his voyage; but what became of the French sailors was never known.

Of the _William_, that was captured by a privateer off Bridlington; all the crew, except three, were taken out and five Frenchmen put on board. The three Englishmen found means to choke the pumps with ashes, and made the Frenchmen believe the vessel was sinking. Sooner than go to the bottom they agreed to make for the nearest port, and eventually they carried the _William_ to Sunderland. The Frenchmen, I read, were landed the same evening, “and have since been sent to Durham gaol.”

Of the _Beaver_, that was captured by a French privateer, named La Braave, of eighteen guns and seventy men. They put a prize-master and four seamen in the prize, leaving only the captain and a boy on board. The skipper contrived to secure the French prize-master by seizing him in the cabin and fastening his hands behind him; he then ran on deck with a crow-bar and a pistol, and in the scuffle the steersman fell overboard, and was drowned. The other three were aloft. The English captain, taking the helm, ordered them to remain aloft, or he would shoot them. In this manner he steered the vessel all night, and next morning sighting an English frigate, signalled and was brought safely to port by her. There is something not a little humorous in the thought of those three Frenchmen hanging on aloft all night, the smuggling Britisher at the helm, steering with one hand and with the other covering them with a pistol.

These are but a plum or two from a pudding very rich with such fruit. Somehow the British mariner of that period never could be taught to respect the French seaman as an adversary. Again and again you read of a man and a boy out-manœuvring and subduing a fair ship’s company of wooden-shoes. I sometimes fancy that Napoleon Bonaparte helped to confirm the Englishman’s indifference to the French mariner—the intellectual heritage of years of conquest—by his coddling policy of dress and treatment. The uniform he himself designed for his nautical braves consisted of a blue jacket in the manner and of the cut of those of dragoons; red waistcoat with gilt buttons, and blue cloth pantaloons; red stockings, pointed shoes with round buckles, cropped hair “without powder!” They were ordered to change their shirts three times a week, and when on shore to wear small cocked hats. They were also provided with red nightcaps, ordered to be washed once a week. Every man had two nightcaps and two neckcloths. They were obliged to comb their hair three times in the seven days, and to be shaved twice a week. Their captains called them “mes enfans.” It was impossible for Jack to have a high opinion of marine masqueraders after this pattern, and when it came to fighting, the more the merrier, as you notice in the actions of smuggling men and boys.

The smugglers often turned out some fine useful seamen. There was Mr. Harry Paulet, who happened to be sneaking home with a cargo of brandy one morning when the French fleet, under Conflans, had stolen out of Brest, while Admiral Hawke lay concealed behind Ushant to watch the motions of the enemy. Paulet, loving his country better than his cargo, ran up to the British admiral, and, asking leave to speak to him, was allowed to go aboard. On his telling what he knew of the enemy, Hawke said if he was right he would make his fortune; but that if he _lied_ he would hang him at the yard-arm. The fleet was instantly under weigh, and by Paulet’s directions was presently brought between the enemy and the French coast. The admiral then ordered Paulet into his own vessel; but the bold smuggler begged leave to remain, that he might assist in beating the enemy. This favour was granted, a station was assigned to Paulet, who fought like a gamecock, and when the battle was over he was sent home with a pocket full of letters of commendation, and subsequently rewarded in such a manner as to enable him to live in ease during the rest of his life. The famous comedian, Parsons, used to say that “he would rather spend a crown to hear Harry Paulet relate one of Hawke’s battles than sit gratis by the most celebrated orator of the day. There was,” said Parsons, “a manner in his heart-felt narrations that was certain to bring his auditors into the very scene of action; and when describing the moments of victory I have seen a dozen labouring men, at the Crown public house, rise together and, moved by an instantaneous impulse, give three cheers while Harry took breath to recite more of his exploits.”

Johnson, a smuggler, achieved amazing reputation as a pilot and seaman. He was several times locked up, laid in irons, as for instance in the New Jail in the Borough, and the Fleet, but always managed to break out, and at this work was a complete Jack Sheppard. He went to Holland, and his fame as a seafarer having spread, the French Government offered to make a settlement of £600 a year upon his family if he would engage in the attempt to invade England; but the bold smuggler was a patriot, and said no. His life was then threatened, but the skill that was equal to a Borough jail was superior to a French prison. Johnson got away, came home, and received King George’s pardon in consideration of “qualities which would do honour to a more elevated state.” But smugglers after the pattern of Paulet and Johnson have long ceased to flourish. Well may the old tar sing:

Farewell to every sea-delight!
The cruise, with eager watchful days,
The skilful chace by glimmering night,
The well-worked ship, the gallant fight,
The lov’d commander’s praise!

Will Watch has flung down his hanger and pistols, and appears in the more amiable and less hazardous part of a ship’s steward, a lascar, a foremast seaman, with a few pounds of cigars in his shirt or a cube of honeydew under his bunk boards. The coastguard, it is true, still keeps a look-out; but if it were not for the gardens and lawn-tennis grounds which his superior officer sets him to work upon, he would find his calling very dull and uneventful.

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_SEA PHRASES._