Chapter XV: Part I: The Seamen (1)

The life of Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham and Earl of Nottingham, commander of the English fleet in 1588, and for thirty-three years Lord Admiral of England, may be regarded as the link between the mediæval and the modern navy. Born in 1536, and dying in 1624, his era connects the cogs and crayers, carracks and balingers of the Plantagenets, then hardly out of use, with the established Royal Navy of James I, a fleet divided into rates; controlled on present principles, and differing but little in essentials from that existing up to the introduction of armour and machine guns. His period of authority included the struggle which shaped isolated maritime essays into an organised navy, and fashioned a school of seamanship of which the traditions have never since been lost. Although we cannot point to any important measure known to be directly due to his initiative, his influence, during at any rate the earlier half of his time of office, must, judging by results, have been always exercised towards the selection of capable men for command, towards the adoption of any promising invention or improvement, and towards the encouragement and welfare of the seamen on whom the stress of work and danger must fall, and for whom he always showed a humane sympathy. At the time of trial he proved himself equal to his responsibilities; and that he was so well served by his subordinates of all grades implies a confidence and respect on their part not given merely to a peer and an officer of the crown, but to one in whose skill, care, and kindliness, experience had already taught men of all ranks to confide. Then, as now, only an able leader had good officers and willing men. He clung too long to office, and his old age was sullied by an eagerness for money amounting almost to avarice, and by the unwavering support given to one as unworthy of it as Mansell; no allegation, however, was ever made against his own honesty, either of act or purpose, and for the rest his years are his best excuse. He has a right to be judged by his season of vigorous manhood, when acting with the other sea heroes of the age of Elizabeth, among whom he holds an honourable place.

[Sidenote: The new Political Conditions.]

The reign of James I may be looked upon as a maritime truce, during which old antagonisms remained latent while new ones were springing into life. The contest with Spain was practically terminated, that power having been vanquished not so much by English superiority of seamanship as by the national decay due to causes patent to all students of history. But now other and more dangerous rivals were to be faced in France and the United Provinces, both wealthier than England, the former temporarily strong in a centralised monarchy of which the resources were to be wielded by Richelieu, and in an army reorganised and a navy created by him, the latter spiritually strong from the same sources as had stirred English thought, with traditions of mercantile supremacy reaching back to the dawn of European commerce, and proud of a successful contest with the greatest of European states. Moreover the fresh strife was to be waged under less favourable conditions than heretofore. Against Spain England occupied a position of strategical advantage; her fleets concentrated at any western port could strike at either the mother country or at the straggling, disconnected colonies of the new world. Against France and the Low Countries she was between hammer and anvil, her own harbours continually threatened, her commerce exposed to constant attack, and her fleets quite insufficient in strength for their new duties. Nor had the interval of peace been utilised in view of the approaching conflict, although it cannot be said that warnings were wanting. The royal ships were fewer in number and of little greater strength than at the death of Elizabeth; few improvements had been effected in their construction, while seamanship had greatly deteriorated, owing to the decay of the fishing industry, the lack of enterprise and long voyages, and the bad treatment of the men. England was still greatly dependent on Russia for cordage and other naval necessaries, an administrative weakness of which Spain had endeavoured to take advantage in 1597 by negotiating with the rulers of Russia and Poland for a cessation of such exports to England and Holland,[943] but a weakness which might have formidable results with enemies planted on the line of communication. The Dutch had taken the lesson to heart, for, since that year, they had made their own cordage.[944]

[Sidenote: England, France, and Holland.]

An examination of the comparative wealth and state revenues of the three countries would show the relative position of England to be still less favourable. Although the commerce of this country had increased during the reign of James, the royal revenue, except that drawn from the customs, had remained nearly stationary, while the administration was more extravagant than that of Elizabeth, and the salaries of officials and the prices of materials and labour were higher, owing to the influx of the precious metals. The wars of France and the Netherlands had indirectly given room for expansion to English commercial and speculative activity; but, in the one case, the reign of Henry IV, and, in the other, the truce with Spain had enabled both countries to meet their rival on more equal terms. The same causes operated throughout the reign of Charles, for it may be held that the place of England as a naval power in 1642 was even relatively lower than in 1625; and this without reference to the question of good or bad government, for any attempt to maintain a maritime supremacy comparative to the last years of the sixteenth century would have entailed national bankruptcy. That strength was a temporary and, in a sense, artificial condition, attributable not to the actual power or resources of the country, but to the momentary cessation of the compression of mercantile rivalry and competition, to the stimulus due to the increase of circulating coin, and in a lesser degree, to the wave of moral exaltation then moving the Teutonic races.[945] Indeed, it may be said in favour of the ship-money writs that but for the fleets they enabled Charles to send to sea, and so present a semblance of power, the strife with France and Holland might have been precipitated by nearly half a century. That they had some such intimidating influence was shown by the care taken by the French fleets, also cruising, to avoid meeting them, and the efforts of the French court to evade the question of the dominion of the narrow seas.

It was fortunate for England that the troubles of the Fronde coincided with the first Dutch war, for had the strength of France been then thrown into the balance against fleets and dockyards still organised on a Tudor scale, which had undergone little expansion during two reigns, the maritime glory of this country might have had an early end. Even if Charles had not quarrelled with his parliaments, no grants of theirs could have kept pace with the rapid growth of French prosperity; in 1609, after paying off an enormous amount of crown debts, the yearly revenue was 20,000,000 livres,[946] and in 1645 it was £3,560,000.[947] The ordinary revenue of the English crown in 1610 was £461,000, in 1623 £539,000, in 1635 £618,000,[948] and for the five years from 1637 to 1641 it averaged £895,000 a year, exclusive of ship money.[949] It has been difficult to obtain any statistics for the United Provinces, but, as the trade and commercial marine on which they relied were greater than those of England, it is obvious that a contest with France alone would have overwhelmingly strained our resources during the reign of Charles I, and that an alliance of the two states would, in all probability, have been most disastrous to us. M. Lefèvre Pontalis indeed, in the first chapter of his ‘Vie de Jean de Witt,’ states exactly that the Dutch merchant marine comprised 10,000 sail and 168,000 men; but, as he gives no authority and may be referring to any one of the first seventy-five years of the seventeenth century, the information in that form is valueless for purposes of comparison.[950]

[Sidenote: The Cadiz Fleet of 1625]

The accession of Charles led to a more active prosecution of the war with Spain, signalised by the Cadiz expedition of 1625, and the administrative incidents of this voyage enable us to measure the decadence of seamanship and the utter collapse of the official executive during the twenty years of peace. Efforts had been made to get the fleet away during the summer, but owing to want of money, stores, and men, it did not sail till 8th October, too late in the season to do effective service. Disease raged among the soldiers and sailors assembled at Plymouth, and not a boat went ashore but some of its men deserted. Of 2000 recruits sent first to Holland and then to Plymouth only 1500 arrived at the sea-port, of whom 500 were ill;[951] and the few professional sea captains there, who saw the unpromising material in men and supplies being collected, continually warned the Council and Buckingham of the results to be expected from the quality of the men and provisions and the want of clothing.[952] When the expedition finally sailed, its equipment appears to have been rather that of a defeated and disheartened fleet returning home after long service than of a long planned and prepared enterprise. The ships were leaky and their gear defective; the _St George_ was fitted with sails which were used by the _Triumph_ in 1588, while her shrouds were ‘the old _Garland’s_ and all starke rattan.’ The _Lion_ was in such bad condition that she had to be left behind. The cordage supplied was rotten but ‘fairly tard ovar.’ An officer writes: ‘There was great wrong done ... by pretending the ships were fit to go to sea.’[953] Even before they left port the casks were so faulty that beer came up in the ships’ pumps, so that by November they were reduced to beverage of cider ‘that stinks worse than carrion, and have no other drink.’ A few days after leaving Plymouth it was already thought necessary to put five men on four men’s allowance, and by December they were on half rations which ‘stinks so as no dog of Paris Garden would eat it.’ Men ill fed and ill clothed, sent across the Bay in early winter, easily broke down, and when they arrived off Cadiz, after a twenty-one days’ voyage, and before even seeing the enemy, one-fourth of the men on six of the men-of-war were on the sick list.[954] The _Convertine_ had only fifteen men in a watch. In November ‘the sickness is so great that there are not seamen enough to keep the watches,’[955] and a month later there were not ten men fit for duty on board the _St George_.[956]

Sir Edward Cecil, Viscount Wimbledon, the commander-in-chief, was a soldier of only average capacity accustomed to the methodical Dutch military discipline, and he was aghast at the ways of his officers, who, besides being ignorant of their work, shared with their men what plunder there was. Many of the captains were landsmen who depended on their subordinates to handle their vessels, and these men, unaccustomed to large ships and to sailing in comparatively close order, were constantly in difficulties. If the subordinates were good seamen, they were mostly contemptuous of their commanders. Sir Thos. Love, captain of the _Anne Royal_, issued orders to the whole fleet without Cecil’s knowledge; the master of the _Reformation_ flatly refused to obey his captain’s commands. It does not seem to have occurred to Cecil or his advisers that any sailing orders were necessary during the voyage out, and the result of independent management was that collisions were frequently occurring; beakheads, galleries, and bowsprits were carried away, and ‘the confusion was such that some had their starboard when other had their larboard tacks on board.’[957] Sometimes the ships chased each other, under the impression that they were enemies, although the differences between the English and Spanish schools of shipbuilding were almost as great as those to be observed in a cruiser of the middle of this century and a merchantman of the same time. Two transports with 300 soldiers on board, perhaps thinking that they had better prospects of success by themselves than with Cecil, deserted and turned pirates.[958]

The flagship was the _Anne Royal_, Nottingham’s _Ark Royal_ of 1588, of which he lovingly said that she was ‘the odd ship of the world for all conditions.’ She was handy enough for the Elizabethan seamen who built her and knew how to work a ship at sea, but she did not win favour in the eyes of Cecil and his officers, who complained that they could not make her lie to and that she rolled too much for their dainty stomachs. Nottingham’s opinion of them might have been even more scathing than theirs of the _Anne Royal_. More justly Cecil expressed his astonishment at the amount of theft which prevailed. He could not prevent his captains pillaging the cargoes of prizes, ‘a thing of such custom at sea that I cannot see how it will be remedied.’ The men he considers the worst ever seen; ‘they are so out of order and command and so stupefied that punish them or beat them they will scarce stir.’[959] Sick and starving it was not their fault if they were dull and inefficient, but neither Cecil nor those next him in rank were the men to rouse English sailors to those efforts which, when well led, they can be moved to make under circumstances of surpassing distress.

Perhaps this Cadiz expedition indicates the low water mark of English seamanship. There have been many previous and subsequent occasions when fleets were sent to sea equally ill found and ill provided, but never, before or since, have we such accounts of utter incapacity in the mere everyday work of a sailor’s duties. The shameful picture of that confused mass of ships crowded together helplessly, without order or plan, colliding with each other, chasing or deserting at their own will, the officers losing spars and sails from ignorance of the elementary principles of their art, is the indictment against the government of James I which had allowed the seamanship of Elizabeth to die out in this generation. It was the first time that the new system of the commissionership had been tried by conditions of active service, and on the side of stores and provisions, for which they were mainly responsible, the breakdown was as complete as on the side of navigation. Assuming their honesty, which was probable, but of which some of their contemporaries hint doubts, they were mostly merchants or court officials, unacquainted with naval matters, and evidently unable to adapt the routine peace control to which they were accustomed to the wider requirements of war time. As even the normal method of inspection was almost nominal, depending mainly on subordinate officials of little character, capacity, or responsibility, such stores as were now bought, under the pressure of immediate necessity, usually proved expensive and bad. Among the higher officials the impression given by the State Papers, now and afterwards, is that their chief desire was to get money sent to them on some pretext—purchase of clothes or arms, payment of wages, etc.—and that they could then trust to their own ingenuity to account for its expenditure, possibly for the benefit of the service, certainly for their own. Not even a nominal system of inspection existed in the victualling department. The two contractors, Apsley and Darrell, appear, when the Commissioners had once given their orders, to have sent what provisions they pleased on board the ships, quite independently of any supervision or of any way of calling them to account, for supplies infinitely more deadly to our men than the steel and lead of the enemy.[960]

[Sidenote: The Disorganisation:—The Return of the Fleet.]

Naval historians have usually considered the condition of the seaman, a mere pawn in the game, as of little account compared with graphic descriptions of sea fights and the tactics of opposing fleets. He had, however, not only existence but memories, and an examination of his treatment under the government of Charles I, will systematise scattered references, and may go far to explain why the Royal Navy ‘went solid’ for the Parliament in 1642. We have seen that there was little demand for his services during the reign of James I, though the few men employed had reason to be mutinous and discontented under their scanty fare and uncertain wages. With Charles on the throne the seagoing population was called away from the fisheries and trading voyages to man the royal fleets, although the attitude of Parliament caused smaller resources to be available to support their cost. The sailor, being a despised and inarticulate quantity, soon felt the result. When the ships of the Cadiz fleet straggled ignominiously home in midwinter, some to Kinsale, some to Milford, Falmouth, Plymouth, and other western ports, a cry for help went up from the captains and officials concerned. The _Anne Royal_ with 130 dead and 160 sick, had scarcely fifteen men in a watch; a vessel at Milford had not sufficient to man her long boat, and the dried fish remaining was ‘so corrupt and bad that the very savour thereof is contagious.’[961] Pennington, who was usually more intelligible than grammatical, wrote from Plymouth that ‘the greatest part of the seamen being sick or dead, so that few of them have sufficient sound men to bring their ships about,’[962] and ‘a miserable infection among them, and they die very fast.’ St Leger told Conway that it would not be possible to move the men till they had recovered some strength, ‘they stink as they go, and the poor rags they have are rotten, and ready to fall off,’ and that many of the officers were in nearly as bad case as their men.[963] But the government had expended all its available means in the preparation, such as it was, of the expedition, and could neither pay the men off nor provide them with clothes, victuals, or medical aid. Moreover, the attention of Buckingham was fixed rather on the equipment of another fleet than on the plight of the men, a condition which he doubtless regarded as one they should accept naturally, and a detail unworthy of _la haute politique_ in which he and his master intrepidly considered themselves such proficients. Pennington had orders to collect forty sail at Plymouth, but as yet had only four ships.[964] There were no stores, no surgeons, and no drugs, he reported; and everything on board the returned vessels would have to be replaced, even the hammocks being ‘infected and loathsome;’ the mayor of the town would not permit the sick men to be put ashore, so that contagion spread among the few healthy remaining. He hints that there is little hope of getting fresh men to go when they had their probable fate before their eyes. All the remedy the Council seemed to find was to order the Commissioners to prepare estimates for fleets of various strengths, while the _Anne Royal_ and four other ships were lying in the Downs with ‘their companies almost grown desperate,’ the men dying daily and the survivors mutinous. In March, Pennington, who was an honest, straightforward man and a good seaman, and who wrote to Buckingham in an independent and even reproving way, which reflects some credit on both of them in that servile age, says that he has twenty-nine ships, but neither victuals, clothes, nor men; that those sent down run away as fast as they are pressed. ‘I wish you were a spectator a little, to hear their cries and exclamations; here die eight or ten daily,’ and, if something is not done ‘you will break my heart.’[965] Under James the men considered that the galleys were better than the royal service; thus early in the reign of his son they had come to the conclusion that hanging was preferable.[966]

But Buckingham was quite superior to all such particulars. Complaints had been made to him that merchantmen were chased into the Downs by Dunkirkers, while the men-of-war lying there did not even weigh anchor. He sharply censured Palmer, who was in command, but Palmer’s reply was a variation of the old legal defence; they had not been chased, and if they had been he was without victuals or necessaries enabling him to move.[967] As the captain of one of his ships wrote to Nicholas that he had no sails, and that he could not obtain their delivery without cash payment, the second portion of his statement was probably true. The greatest stress, however, fell upon Pennington at Plymouth. It need hardly be said that there was not yet a dockyard there; but there was not even a government storehouse, the lack of which mattered less as there were no stores, such provisions as were procured being urgently needed for the daily requirements of the crews. In April Pennington heard that there was £2000 coming down, but he was already indebted £2500 for which he had pledged his own credit, and his estate ran risk of foreclosure unless the mortgage was cleared.[968] He adds: ‘I pray you to consider what these poor souls have endured for the space of these thirteen or fourteen months by sickness, badness of victuals, and nakedness.’

Official routine worked, in some respects, smoothly enough. If some of the officers and men—like those of the _St Peter_, a prize in the royal service—petitioned Buckingham direct, begging for their discharge, saying that they could get neither pay nor food, and would have perished from want if they had not been supplied by their friends, they were referred to the Commissioners, who suavely remarked: ‘there are many other ships in the same predicament.’[969] If others applied direct to the Commissioners, they were told to go to those who hired them, as the Navy Board would ‘neither meddle nor make’ with them, ‘which answer of theirs I find strange,’ says Pennington.[970] One day the crew of the _Swiftsure_ mutinied and went ashore, intending to desert in a body. He went after them and persuaded them to return, but ‘their cases are so lamentable that they are not much to be blamed for when men have endured misery at sea and cannot be relieved at home in their own country, what a misery of miseries is it!‘[971] Not all the officers of rank were as kindly as Pennington; Sir John Watts could only see in the clamour of ragged and starving men ‘insolent misdemeanours.’ At Harwich the mutineers vowed that they would no longer shiver on board, but would lie in the best beds in the town, all the elysium the poor fellows aspired to. It almost seemed as though the naval service was disintegrating and that such organisation as it had attained, was to be broken up, since the shipwrights and labourers at the dockyards were also unpaid, although they did not find it so difficult to obtain credit. Pennington was now almost despairing, and said that having kept the men together by promises as long as he could, only immediate payment would prevent them deserting _en masse_, and ‘it would grieve any man’s heart to hear their lamentations, to see their wants and nakedness, and not to be able to help them.’[972] There is a curious resemblance between these words and those used nearly forty years before by Nottingham in describing the condition of the men who had saved England from the Armada, and who were likewise left to starve and die, their work being done. But any comparison is, within certain limits, in favour of Charles and Buckingham. Elizabeth had money, but all through her life held that men were cheaper than gold. In 1626 the sailors were the first victims of the quarrel between King and Parliament, a struggle in which, and in its legacy of foreign wars, they bore a heavy share of the burden, and from which even to-day they have reaped less benefit than any other class of the community.

The original estimate for the Cadiz fleet was under £300,000, but in 1631 it was calculated that altogether, for the land and sea forces, it had amounted to half a million,[973] and as the government found it impossible to procure this or any serviceable sum they resorted to the expedient of nominally raising wages all round.[974] The seaman’s monthly pay, ten shillings during the reign of James, had been temporarily raised to fourteen for the attack on Cadiz; in future it was to be permanently fifteen shillings, subject to a deduction of sixpence for the Chatham chest, fourpence for a preacher, and twopence for a surgeon, and as the scale remained in force till the civil war, and was eventually paid with comparative punctuality, the full list for all ranks, per month may be appended here:[975]

_£_ _s_ _d_ _£_ _s_ _d_

Captain[976] 4 14 4 to 14 0 0
Lieutenant[977] 3 0 0 ” 3 10 0
Master 2 6 8 ” 3 13 9
Pilot 1 10 0 ” 2 5 0
Master’s mate 1 10 0 ” 2 5 0
Boatswain 1 3 4 ” 2 5 0
Boatswain’s mate 1 0 8 ” 1 6 3
Purser 1 3 4 ” 2 0 0
Surgeon 1 10 0
Surgeon’s mate 1 0 0
Quartermaster 1 0 0 ” 1 10 0
Quartermaster’s
mate 0 17 6 ” 1 5 0
Yeomen of {jeers } 1 1 0 ” 1 5 0
{sheets }
{tacks }
{halliards }
Carpenter 1 1 0 ” 1 17 6
Carpenter’s mate 0 18 8 ” 1 5 0
Corporal[978] 0 18 8 ” 1 10 4
Gunner 1 3 4 ” 2 0 0
Gunner’s mate 0 18 8 ” 1 2 6
Cook 1 0 0 ” 1 5 0
Master Trumpeter 1 5 0 ” 1 8 0
Other trumpeters 1 3 4
Drummer 1 0 0
Fifer 1 0 0
Armourer 1 1 0
Gunmaker 1 1 0
Seaman 0 15 0
Gromet 0 11 3
Boy 0 7 6

The purpose in appointing lieutenants was

‘to breed young gentlemen for the sea service.... The reason
why there are not now so many able sea-captains as there is
use of is because there hath not been formerly allowance for
lieutenants, whereby gentlemen of worth and quality might be
encouraged to go to sea. And if peace had held a little longer
the old sea captains would have been worn out, as that the
state must have relied wholly on mechanick men that have been
bred up from swabbers, and ... to make many of them would cause
sea service in time to be despised by gentlemen of worth, who
will refuse to serve at sea under such captains.’[979]

According to this view the original naval lieutenant was equivalent to the modern midshipman, in which case his pay seems very high, unless it is to be explained by the tendency to favour social position. The midshipman, introduced somewhat later, was at first only an able seaman with special duties. The foregoing extract is in itself a vivid illustration of the reasons for the loathing, yearly growing in intensity, the seamen, or ‘mechanick men,’ had for their courtier captains.

[Sidenote: The Disorganisation:—Poverty of the Crown.]

As at the time the crown was making these liberal promises it had not sufficient money to fit out two ships required for special service on the Barbary coast, and as vessels were being kept in nominal employment because even a few hundred pounds could not be raised wherewith to pay off their crews, it is not surprising that the men showed no renewed eagerness to die lingeringly for their country, and that the proclamation of April needed a corollary in the shape of another threatening deserters with the penalty of death. This was issued on 18th June, and a week later the crew of the _Lion_ at Portsmouth, 400 or 500 strong, left the ship with the intention of marching up to London. The officers read the last proclamation to them and promised to write about their grievances; but the men, quite unappalled, replied that ‘their wives and children were starving and they perishing on board.’[980] Wives and children were neglected factors in the dynastic combinations of Charles and Buckingham, and husbands and fathers might consider themselves amply rewarded if their efforts enabled the King to restore the Palatinate to his nephew. The Commissioners complained despondingly that they were unable to progress with the new fleet while the back wages were unpaid, and ‘the continual clamour ... doth much distract and discourage us.’[981] The _Swiftsure_ at Portsmouth had only 150 instead of 250 men, of whom 50 were raw boys, and all the other ships there were but half manned. Palmer, commanding in the Downs, had never suffered such extremity even in war time, he said, and his men flatly refused to work unless they were fed, a really justifiable form of strike. At this date there were six men-of-war and ten armed merchantmen at Portsmouth, but, says Gyffard, the men ‘run away as fast as they are sent ... all things so out of order as that I cannot see almost any possibility for the whole fleet to go to sea in a long time.’[982] The intensity of Captain Gyffard’s feelings somewhat obscured his clearness of expression.

The lessons of the previous year appear to have taught nothing; the victuallers were still sending in provisions of the old bad quality, and the beef sent to Portsmouth weighed only 2 lbs. the piece, instead of the 4 lbs. for which the crown was charged. The Chatham shipwrights threatened to cease work unless they were paid, and Pennington, now at Portsmouth, wrote that after all the preparations, extending over some months, there were no hammocks and not even cans or platters to eat and drink from. All these requests and complaints poured in nearly daily on Buckingham who should have been an organising genius to deal with the complex disorder, instead of merely a man of some talent and much optimism, also troubled by a refractory Parliament, perverse continental powers scornful of his ingenuous diplomacy, and the varied responsibilities of all the other departments of the government. In September the Commissioners pointed out to him that a debt of £4000 a month was being incurred for want of £14,000 to pay off the men, who were now reduced to stealing their daily food; those in the river were so disorderly that the Board could not meet without danger, as the sailors threatened to break the doors down on them, and the shipwrights from Chatham had besieged them for twenty days.[983]

By this time, however, as the result of requiring the coast towns to provide ships, forced loans, and other measures, Willoughby was at sea with a fleet, but one which was a third weaker in strength than had been intended. Before reaching Falmouth he found twenty tuns of ‘stinking beer’ on his own ship, and the rest of the squadron was as ill off. The men were ‘poor and mean’ physically, and deficient in number, the stores generally bad and insufficient, there being only enough provisions to go to the Straits of Gibraltar and back again, and the excursion being useless, because too late in the year, when all the enemies’ fleets had returned home.[984] The complaint of want of men was met by an order that he should take on board 500 soldiers to help in working the ships; in two vessels intended for him two-thirds of the men had run away, being too glad to escape at the cost of forfeiting five months’ wages due to them, and the Commissioners proposed to fill their places ‘by forcing men to work with threatenings, having no money to pay them.’[985] The artless belief of their kind in the efficacy of threats once more placed them in a foolish position. The crew of the _Happy Entrance_ refused to sail, saying that they would rather be hanged ashore than starve at sea,[986] but even the relentless egotism of Charles was not equal to hanging them.

It may be said for the Commissioners that their situation was not a happy one, seeing that they were continually ordered to perform impossibilities. When they were told to provide fresh ships and men, they retorted that they were already keeping twelve vessels in pay for want of money to discharge the crews, the wages bill alone running at the rate of £1782 a month.[987] Other men sent away with tickets, which could not be paid when presented, congregated round their house whenever they met for business, shouting and threatening and causing them actual personal fear. There was £20,000 owing to the victuallers, and they, in December, refused any further supplies until they had some money, the result being that, at Portsmouth, ‘the common seamen grew insolent for want of victuals,’ wrote Sir John Watts, who, in his own person, only suffered from the insolence of a well-lined belly. Sir Allen Apsley, the chief victualling contractor, justified himself to the council and pointed out the serious consequences to be feared:[988]

‘By the late mutinous carriage of those few sailors of but
one of H.M. ships the _Reformation_, the humours of the rest
of the fleet may be conjectured.... What disorder, then, may
be feared if twenty times that number, having no promise of
speedy payment, no victuals, fresh or salt, nor ground for
the officers to persuade or control—for alas! say they, when
men have no money nor clothes to wear (much less to pawn), nor
victuals to eat, what would you have them do? Starve? This is
likely to be the condition of the ships now in the Downs and
those at Portsmouth, having not two days’ victuals if equally
divided ... not having any victuals at all but from hand to
mouth upon the credit of my deputies who are able to trust no
longer, so as this great disorder may be seen bearing very near
even to the point of extremity.’

About 2200 men were in this plight, and matters must indeed have been bad when it was no longer to the Victualler’s profit to supply the carrion beef and fetid beer useless for any other purpose than to feed seamen. Punishment and promises were becoming equally useless. An officer at Portsmouth had to confess that punishing his men only made them more rebellious, and they revenged themselves by cutting his ship’s cable, in hopes that she might drift ashore; like Apsley, he remarked that they were only victualled from hand to mouth, but adds, ‘with refuse and old stuff.’[989] Charles was going to recover the Palatinate by means of his fleet, but Pennington’s opinion of the armed merchantmen which made up the bulk of the royal force was not high. He considered that two men-of-war could beat the fifteen he had with him, as their ordnance was mostly useless and they had not ammunition for more than a two hours’ fight.[990] Nor, from incidental references, can the discipline on these auxiliary ships have been such as to promise success. In 1625 they had to be forced under fire at Cadiz by threats; in 1628, at Rochelle, they fired vigorously, but well out of any useful or hazardous range. In this year the captain of one of them killed, injured, and maltreated his men, while he and five gentlemen volunteers consumed sixteen men’s allowance of food every day; and in January 1627, when some of them lying in Stokes Bay were ordered westward, they mutinied and would only sail for the Downs.

[Sidenote: The Disorganisation:—The Remedies.]

In despair the Council resorted to the expedient of a special commission[991] to inquire into the state of the Navy, nineteen in number and including eight seamen, perhaps in the hope of gaining time, but probably from sheer prescription of routine. While the naval organisation was crumbling, they took careful measurements of the dimensions of each ship, and anxiously examined whether Burrell had used his own or government barges for the conveyance of stores. When they inquired at what cost ships were built, the answer came in a petition from the Chatham shipwrights that they had been twelve months,

‘without one penny pay, neither having any allowance for meat
or drink, by which many of them having pawned all they can,
others turned out of doors for non-payment of rent, which with
the cries of their wives and children for food and necessaries
doth utterly dishearten them.’[992]

John Wells, storekeeper to the Navy, had 7½ years’ pay owing to him, and it may be inferred that, unless he was more honest than his fellows, the crown, if it did not pay him directly, had to do so indirectly. The Treasurer of the Navy, like the Victualler, had refused to make any more advances on his own credit, but when the Chatham men marched up to London in a body, he promised to settle their claims, a promise which was not fulfilled. Then the special commissioners had to deal with the crews of the _Lion_, _Vanguard_, and _Reformation_. The men of the _Vanguard_ told them that they were in want of food, clothing, firing, and lodging, ‘being forced to lie on the cold decks.’[993] The sailors, like the shipwrights, came to London in the hope of obtaining some relief, but with even less success. Their ragged misery was an outrage on the curled and scented decorum of the court, and Charles perhaps feared that they might not confine themselves to mere vociferation, and, heroic as he looks on canvas, had no liking for the part of a Richard Plantagenet in face of a threatening mob. He confined himself to ordering the Lord Mayor to guard the gates and prevent them coming near the court, and Apsley, in his other capacity as lieutenant of the Tower, was directed to ‘repress the insolencies of mariners’ by ‘shot or other offensive ways.’[994] Probably death from Apsley’s ‘shot’ was, even if as certain, a less painful fate than that from his victuals. As for Charles, we may suppose that the lesson in kingly honour, justice, and responsibility was not thrown away on those of his seamen who lived till 1642.

Notwithstanding the financial straits of the government large schemes relating to the increase of the number of ships and the construction of new docks were being continually planned. In naval as in other affairs Buckingham’s vision was fixed on the future, careless of the present. Such money and supplies as were obtained did not go far towards relieving the necessities of the sailors. In May, Mervyn found that his own crew came unpleasantly ‘’twixt the wind and his nobility,’ for, ‘by reason of want of clothing, they are become so loathsome and so nastily sick as to be not only unfit to labour but to live.’[995] Among the State Papers, undated but assigned to this year, occurs the first instance of a round robin yet noticed; the men signing it refuse to weigh anchor until provisioned.[996]

[Sidenote: The Disorganisation:—Its Continuance.]

Despite all these drawbacks Buckingham had contrived to get together the Rhé fleet of 1627, by various means, although the pecuniary receipts were not nearly adequate to the requirements. Some 3800 seamen were employed, and when they came home were worse off than ever, and the monotonous sequence of complaints was continued with greater intensity. The crew of the _Assurance_ deserted in a body; the sailors at Plymouth were stealing the soldiers’ arms and selling them to obtain bread,[997] and wages were running on at the rate of £5000 a month, because there was no money wherewith to pay off the men.[998] By December 500 sailors of the returned fleet had died at Plymouth, and both there and at Portsmouth the townspeople refused to have the sick men billeted ashore, for at Plymouth they professed to have never shaken off the infectious fever spread by the men of the Cadiz fleet. If we had any statistics at all of the death and disease on board the fleets of 1625-8, the figures would probably be ghastly in the terrible mental and physical suffering they would represent. In this century the ‘wailing-place’ on the quays of Amsterdam, where the friends and relatives of Dutch sailors bid them farewell, was well known, but in another sense, and too often for a longer farewell, every royal ship was a wailing-place for English wives and mothers. Nicholas, as Buckingham’s secretary, sometimes had franker communications than were sent to his master. Mervyn wrote to him that the king would shortly have more ships than men, there being commonly twenty or thirty fresh cases of sickness every day, and

‘the more than miserable condition of the men, who have neither
shoes, stockings, nor rags to cover their nakedness ... all
the ships are so infectious that I fear if we hold the sea one
month we shall not bring men enough home to moor the ships.
You may think I make it worse, but I vow to God that I cannot
deliver it in words.... The poor men bear all as patiently
as they can.... I much wonder that so little care be taken
to preserve men that are so hardly bred. I have used my best
cunning to make the _Vanguard_ wholesome. I have caused her
to be washed all over, fore and aft, every second day; to be
perfumed with tar burnt and frankincense; to be aired ’twixt
decks with pans of charcoal; to be twice a week washed with
vinegar.... Yet if to-day we get together 200 men within four
days afterwards we have not one hundred.’[999]

Watts, at Portsmouth, who, in the intervals of solicitation of money for himself and preferment for his son, wrote abusively of men who asked at least food and clothing in midwinter, was a man after Charles’s own heart, for he also had arranged with the governor of the town to use ‘shot,’ if necessary, when the seamen came showing their tattered clothes and making ‘scandalous speeches.’[1000] Mervyn, in the letter to Nicholas quoted above, admits that he has overdrawn his pay, but asks for another advance, and doubtless officers who had friends at court, or who could afford to bribe, had little difficulty in obtaining their salaries. Nicholas, for instance, who subsequently developed into a knight and secretary of state, had an itching palm on occasion. On the other hand, even in later years, when the pressure was not so great, if the paymaster or pursers advanced any portion of the wages already due to the mere sailor, a discount of 20 per cent. was deducted for the favour. The merchant was also competing with the royal service, owners paying 30s a month; therefore the need for men caused boys and weakly adults to be pressed, and during the winter the mortality among them was great.[1001] In January 1628 Mervyn reported from Plymouth that there were no hammocks, and

‘the men lodge on the bare decks ... their condition miserable
beyond relation; many are so naked and exposed to the weather
in doing their duties that their toes and feet miserably
rot and fall away piecemeal, being mortified with extreme
cold.’[1002]

A few days later he said that things were worse than ever, that the vessels were full of sick men, they being refused ashore.[1003] Notwithstanding the refusal to have them ashore their diseases spread so rapidly on land that both Plymouth and Portsmouth were ‘like to perish.’

A striking feature in this wretched story is the want of sympathy shown by nearly all the officials, high or low. These extracts are taken principally from the letters of those officers who felt for their men and endeavoured to obtain some alleviation of their distress, but many of the despatches contain only dry formal details or, as in the instances of Watts and Sir James Bagg—Eliot’s defamer and, from his absorptive capacity in relation to government money, known as the Bottomless Bagg—are filled with cowardly gibes and threats directed at men who could not obtain even their daily bread from the crown. It has long been held a point of honour with officers to share the dangers and hardships of those under their command, but in those years the superiors to whom the men looked for guidance and support left them to suffer alone, ‘the infection so strong that few of the captains or officers durst lie on board.’[1004] The sailors in the river were somewhat better off. Perhaps their proximity to the court, and potentialities of active protest, stirred the most sensitive portion of Charles’s conscience, and arrangements were made to billet them on the riverside parishes, at the rate of 3s 6d a man per week, till money could be provided to pay them. This was a plan which relieved the crown at the expense of the householder; nor does it appear to have been very successful, since a proclamation was issued on 17th February to repress the disorderliness of such billeted mariners and warning them not to presume to address the Commissioners. In March the pressed men at Plymouth armed themselves, seized the Guildhall, and there prepared to stand a siege.[1005] The issue is not stated, but although mutinies were continually happening they usually had little result, for if the men got away from the ship or town the endeavour to reach their homes would have been almost hopeless. They were only frantic outbursts of desperation by isolated bodies of a class which has always lacked the gift of facile expression, and has never learnt to combine. An official describes plainly the causes of these mutinies, and his paper is worth quoting in full:[1006]

‘1st. They say they are used like dogs, forced to keep aboard
without being suffered to come ashore to refresh themselves.
2nd. That they have not means to put clothes on their backs to
defend themselves from cold or to keep them in health, much
less to relieve their poor wives and children. 3rd. That when
they happen to fall sick they have not any allowance of fresh
victuals to comfort them, or medicines to help recover them.
4th. That some of their sick fellows being put ashore in houses
erected for them are suffered to perish for want of being
looked unto, their toes and feet rotting from their bodies, and
so smelling that none are able to come into the room where they
are. 5th. That some provisions put aboard them is neither fit
nor wholesome for men to live on. 6th. That therefore they had
as lief be hanged as dealt with as they are.’

Gorges suggests that some of these complaints are frivolous and some untrue, and recommends the remedy, dear to the official soul, of a commission. The commission of 1626 had hardly ceased sitting, and how far the complaints were frivolous and untrue, can be judged by the evidence brought forward here.

[Sidenote: Murder of Buckingham.]

In April, 1628, Denbigh sailed to relieve Rochelle, and returned without having effected his purpose. Preparations then went on apace for the great fleet Buckingham proposed to command himself in August. The difficulty in obtaining provisions, and their quality, may be inferred from a petition of Sir Allen Apsley’s addressed directly to the king. He says that he has sold and mortgaged all his property, and that he and his friends had pledged their credit to the extent of £100,000.[1007] These were unpromising conditions under which to engage to supply a fleet which was intended to be as large as that of 1625, and as the crown could not suddenly replace the mechanism organised by the Victualler and his deputies, it was practically dependent on his efforts. It was probably due to the poverty of Sir Allen Apsley that in this fleet water was, for the first time, taken from a home port as what may be called a primary store.[1008] Hitherto, although water had been taken for cooking purposes, beer, as has been shown, had always been the recognised drink on ship board. In June the ships were being collected at Portsmouth, but with the usual troubles. There were two mutinies. ‘God be thanked, they are quieted,’ writes Coke, but the men ‘have no shift of clothes. Some have no shirts, and others but one for the whole year.’ There were few surgeons, and those few ‘haunt the taverns every day.’[1009] In one party of 150 pressed men sent down in July there were to be found saddlers, ploughmen, and other mechanics; some were old and weak and the majority useless. Pettifogging tricks were employed to trap the men. In one instance Buckingham ordered that certain vessels were not to be paid off till the _Swiftsure_ and other ships were ready, and that then Peter White was to be present to at once press the crews for further service.[1010] Fire ships were required, but Coke found that they could not be had without £350 in cash, as no one would trust the Crown.[1011]

Buckingham himself did not intend to share the hardships of the beings of coarser clay under his command. A transport was fitted to serve as a kitchen and store ship for him, and the bill for his supplies came to £1056, 4s. It included such items as cards and dice, £2; wine, etc., £164; eight bullocks and a cow, £59; eighty sheep, £60; fifteen goats, £10; ten young porklings, £5; two sows with pig, £3; 980 head of poultry, £63, 1s.; 2000 eggs, £2, 10s; and pickled oysters, lemons, damask tapestry, and turkey carpets.[1012] Then came Felton’s knife, and we may hope that some of the sailors made an unwonted feast on the more perishable articles of this liberal collection. In any case, Buckingham’s murder was an unmixed good for them, although had he spared to the men some of that energy and care he gave, at least with good intention, to the improvement of the _matériel_ of the navy, the verdict might have been different. But in his neglect of their rights or welfare he was not below the standard of his age, in which the feudal feeling remained without its sense of reciprocal obligation, and in which only a very few were impelled by conscience to more than the defence of their own rights.

[Sidenote: Its Results.]

One result of the shuffling of the political pack which followed Buckingham’s death was the appointment of Weston as Lord Treasurer. Weston, Mr Gardiner tells us, was neither honest, nor amiable, nor popular, but he was at any rate determined to re-introduce some order into the finances, and the sailors were among the first to reap the benefit. When the Rochelle fleet, which had sailed under Lindsey, returned, the men were as surprised as they were delighted to find that they were to be paid. ‘The seamen are much joyed with the Lord Treasurer’s care to pay them so suddenly.’[1013] All the same the civic authorities of Plymouth desired that the ships should be paid off somewhere else. They wrote to the Council that when the Cadiz expedition came back, 1600 of the townspeople died of diseases contracted from the soldiers and sailors, that many also perished after the return of the Rhé fleet, and that they heard that this Rochelle one was also very sickly, and if so, ‘it will utterly disable this place.’[1014] Either there was a relaxation of Weston’s alacrity in paying, or mutinous habits had become too natural to be suddenly discarded, as in November the crews of three of the largest of the men-of-war were robbing openly, for want of victuals, they said. Nevertheless we do not hear of many difficulties in connexion with the Rochelle fleet, and the work of payment may be assumed to have progressed with unexpected smoothness.

[Sidenote: After Buckingham.]

With the cessation of ambitious enterprises the demand for the services of the maritime population became less, although the smaller number of men employed were treated no better than when the government had the excuse, such as it was, of large expenditure. In 1629, Mervyn, commanding in the narrow seas, wrote to the Lords of Admiralty: ‘Foul winter weather, naked bodies, and empty bellies make the men voice the King’s service worse than a galley slavery.’[1015] It should be remarked that although hammocks were provided for over-sea service in the proportion of one for every two men, they were not yet furnished to ships stationed in home waters, a want which must have affected the health and contentment of the seamen even when they were properly fed. Again, Mervyn protests:—

‘I have written the state of six ships here in the Downs, two
of which, the _Dreadnought_ and 3rd whelp, have neither meat
nor drink. The 10th whelp hath drunk water these three days.
The shore affords soldiers relief or hope, the sea neither.
Now with what confidence can punishment be inflicted on men
who mutiny in these wants?... These neglects be the cause that
mariners fly to the service of foreign nations to avoid his
majesty’s.... His majesty will lose the honour of his seas,
the love and loyalty of his sailors, and his royal navy will
droop.’[1016]