Chapter XXI: Part III: The Administration (4)

When peace was made with Holland the protective cordon round the coasts was renewed, and increased rather than decreased in strength during the last years of the Commonwealth. To illustrate the way in which the ships were employed one station list for May 1659 may be quoted.[1372] In the Downs, 12, of 232 guns; watching Ostend, 3, of 70 guns; off the mouth of the Thames, 2, of 12 guns; between the Naze and Yarmouth, 2, of 34 guns; off Lynn Deeps, 2, of 20 guns; between Yarmouth Roads and Tynemouth Bar, 3, of 66 guns; on Scotch coast, 2, of 52 guns; with the mackerel boats, 2, of 24 guns; with the North Sea boats, 1, of — guns; in mouth of Channel, 4, of 76 guns; between Portland and Alderney, 2, of 26 guns; on Irish coast, 3, of 50 guns; on convoy service, 8, of — guns; and 6 others have not their duties specified. The large increase in the effective of the Navy diminished the necessity for hired merchantmen, and the need became less as the Dutch prizes were refitted for service. The caste feeling which divides the professional from the amateur fighter was beginning to be strongly marked among officers who had gone through the experiences of the civil war, and who by a succession of events had been retained in the service of the state instead of being returned to mercantile pursuits, as had been the case formerly on the cessation of warfare. Both these causes helped to do away with the use of hired merchantmen, although at one time thirty or forty were in pay. Blake desired that not more than two-fifths of the fleets should consist of hired ships, that they should carry at least twenty-six guns, and be commanded and officered by approved men. The proportion does not appear to have risen to this figure even before prizes became plentiful, and so eager was the government to adapt suitable prizes that it did not always wait for legal condemnation, and sometimes found itself compelled to make terms with the injured owners when the ship had been used and sold out of the service. After long efforts the owners of the _Golden Falcon_, captured in 1652, obtained, in March 1659, a decree of the Admiralty Court in their favour; but the vessel had been sold a year before, and the Navy Commissioners were ordered to pay her appraised value when taken. Nor is this a solitary instance.[1373]

[Sidenote: Merchant Shipping.]

In 1652 there was a survey of merchant shipping throughout the kingdom, but the resulting reports have not survived. In December 1653 there appear to have been only sixty-three merchantmen, of 200 tons and upwards, in the Thames suitable for service; but the size of these does not show much advance on the tonnage of the previous generation; one was of 600, four of 500, two of 450, five of 400, twenty-five of from 300 to 400, and the remainder under 300 tons.[1374] According to one (royalist) writer both the merchant navy and trade decreased under the Commonwealth; but the customs receipts directly contradict the latter and inferentially negative the former portion of his statement.[1375] Store ships and transports were paid for at the rate of £3, 15s 6d a month per man, the owners sending them completely ready for sea. If a ship was meant to go into action the state took the risk of loss, paid and provisioned the men, and supplied powder, shot, and any guns necessary beyond the normal number. When stores were sent out as part of an ordinary trader’s cargo, the cost of freight was, to the Straits of Gibraltar, from 40s to 44s a ton; to Alicante, 50s to 54s; to Leghorn, 60s to 64s; and to Jamaica, £4.[1376]

[Sidenote: Privateering.]

Private enterprise turned naturally towards letters of marque as a lucrative, if hazardous, speculation. In July 1652 letters were restricted to owners able to send out vessels of not less than 200 tons and 20 guns, but it was soon found out that this limitation was almost prohibitive. Such privateers were further placed under the direct control of the admirals, and compelled to keep them and the Council informed of their proceedings.[1377] Afterwards letters of marque were more charily issued, since it was found that they were competing for men against the regular service, much to the disadvantage of the latter, the looser discipline and larger chance of prize money of the privateer being much more to the sailor’s liking. Frequently ordinary trading ships sailed with letters of marque among their papers on the chance of some profitable opportunity occurring; but from 1st August 1655 all such commissions were, without exception, revoked, in consequence of the difficulty their possessors seemed often to find in distinguishing between the ships of enemies and those belonging to friendly states. Thenceforward, although still at war with Spain, Englishmen acting under them were to find themselves in the position, and liable to the punishment, of pirates.

[Sidenote: Caroline Ships lost or sold.]

Besides the losses of the Commonwealth Navy in the ships, from 1649 onwards, noted in connection with their names in the preceding list, the following vessels of the old Navy were lost or sold; as well as various prizes dating from the civil war, and merchantmen bought during the same period, not here entered:—

_Bonaventure_, lost in action.
_Charles_, wrecked.
_Crescent_, broken up.
_Defiance_, sold.
_Garland_, lost in action.
_Greyhound_, lost in action.
_Happy Entrance_, burnt at Chatham.
_Henrietta_, sold.
_Henrietta Maria_, burnt in West Indies.
_Leopard_, lost in action.
_Mary Rose_, wrecked.
_Merhonour_, sold.
_Nicodemus_, ”
_Roebuck_, ”
_1st Whelp_, ”
_2nd Whelp_, ”
_10th Whelp_, ”

The _Bonaventure_, _Garland_, and _Leopard_ were lost to the Dutch, but the two former were burnt and sunk when fighting under the Dutch flag in July 1653. The _Merhonour_, _Defiance_, and _2nd Whelp_, all three long laid up as useless, were handed over to Taylor in 1650, at a valuation of £700, in part payment of his shipbuilding bill; the _1st Whelp_ was used for some time as a hulk at Deptford, and the _10th Whelp_ remained in commission till 1654. The _Greyhound_ was blown up in action with two privateers, in 1656, by her captain, Geo. Wager, when she was boarded and practically taken by 100 of the enemy, who went up with her.[1378] The _Henrietta Maria_ and _Happy Entrance_ were burnt by accident in 1655 and 1658; the _Mary Rose_ was wrecked off the coast of Flanders in 1650, and the _Charles_ off Harwich in the same year.

Whenever ships were lost on the British coasts the authorities did their best to recover the stores, and, in the case of the _Charles_, men were still engaged in 1660 patiently fishing for her guns. At first Bulmer, a man whose name has been mentioned under Charles I as an inventor in connection with maritime matters, was employed, but it was not until May 1657, after seven years of search, that he triumphantly announced that he had discovered her exact position. He was succeeded by Robert Willis, described as a diver, who was more fortunate in that he did at last recover at least two brass guns, for which he was allowed 20s a cwt. As the Admiralty had been for eight years at the expense of a hired hoy and the wages of the men occupied in work, it might have been cheaper to have allowed the guns to remain under water. The methods used are not alluded to, but, as the diving-bell was described by Bacon in the beginning of the century, it must have been a well-known appliance; and Bourne had described a diving dress on the modern principle in 1578.

One other man-of-war, the _Phœnix_, belonging to Badiley’s squadron, was captured on 7th September 1652 by the Dutch off Leghorn, and gallantly retaken in November by eighty-two volunteers, under captain Owen Cox, who boarded her at daybreak while at anchor amidst the enemy’s fleet. Cox did not disdain to eke out the lion’s with the fox’s skin, since, in the afternoon, he hired ‘a bumboat or two with good wine to go aboard and sell it cheap;’ the Dutch were consequently keeping a careless watch, but fighting continued below for two hours after the ship was under way. Cox further promised £10 to each man with him, but this was still unpaid in June 1653, and he then tells the Council of State that the men ‘persecute him to fulfil his engagement’; and Badiley wrote that ‘since their exploit they are very turbulent and disorderly.’ Cox was granted £500 for his good service;[1379] he was killed in the action of July 1653, while still in command of the _Phœnix_.

[Sidenote: Piracy.]

Complaints of piracy, in the strict sense, are very few during this period, and there is not a single reference to the presence of a Turk in the narrow seas. In face of the Commonwealth Navy there were no more of such incidents as the sack of Baltimore. The French, Dutch, and Spanish privateers, who kept our men-of-war continually on the alert, and occasionally overpowered a smaller one, sailed under some sort of commission, either from their own states or the Stewarts, and did not, therefore, possess that freedom from responsibility which in warfare soon degenerates into savagery. The owners of the _Constant Cavalier_, for instance, cruising under a commission from the nominal Charles II, had to give a bond for £1000 not to injure his allies or his loyal subjects.[1380] That the Dunkirkers and others found privateering by no means so easy a road to fortune as it had been in the days of Charles I is sufficiently shown by the number of their captured ships taken into the national service, besides the loss of many more not considered suitable for that purpose. Their best opportunity was during the Dutch war, when the cruisers were mostly withdrawn to strengthen the fleets: but even then the government usually managed to provide convoys for the coasting trade. English, Scotch, or Irish seamen taken in a privateer were summarily transported to the plantations.[1381]

In 1656 for some reason, probably the effort to keep the fleets on foreign service at their full strength, the guard round the coasts seems to have been temporarily relaxed, and the result was that ‘the Ostenders and Dunkirkers begin to grow numerous.’ On the east coast they were so successful for the moment that, dreaming hopefully that the old times were about to return, they desired some of their released prisoners to ‘tell the Protector that while he is fetching gold from the West Indies they will fetch his coals from Newcastle.’[1382] Oliver was not a safe subject for threats, and their spoon was certainly not long enough to enable them to enjoy in comfort the meal they proposed sharing with him; at any rate very shortly afterwards the war was carried into the enemy’s country by the blockade of Ostend and Dunkirk, and there are no more lamentations about the number of them at sea, or the mischief they were doing, until the very eve of the Restoration.

[Sidenote: The Administration:—The Committees.]

The administrative direction of the Navy was, at the beginning of the Commonwealth, placed in the hands of (i.) the Admiralty Committee of the Council of State,[1383] (ii.) the Committee of Merchants of Navy and Customs, and (iii.) the Commissioners of the Navy. The second Committee took no practical part in the administration, was early requested to leave the management to the Navy Commissioners, ‘as formerly,’[1384] and was dissolved in 1654. Warwick’s second appointment as Lord Admiral was cancelled by a parliamentary ordinance of 23rd Feb. 1649, and the first Admiralty Committee of the Council of State took over his duties from that date for the one year for which the Council of State was only itself existent. This Committee was renewed yearly until the Protectorate, when ‘Commissioners of the Admiralty and Navy’ were nominated by act of Parliament, and the control of the Ordnance department was also given them.[1385] Their number varied but was seldom less than twelve or fifteen; they met at first at Whitehall once a week, during the Dutch war once a day, and, from January 1655, occupied Derby House at a rental of £100 a year. Following the fall of Richard Cromwell an act was passed, 21st May 1659,[1386] nominally vesting authority in ‘Commissioners for carrying on the affairs of the Admiralty and Navy,’ but power really remained in the hands of Parliament to which the Commissioners had to submit the names of even the captains they appointed.

[Sidenote: The Administration:—The Navy Commissioners.]

The brunt of administrative work and responsibility fell, however, on the Navy Commissioners, who, so far as may be judged from the letters and papers relating to them and their work, laboured with an attention to the minutest details of their daily duties, a personal eagerness to ensure perfection, and a broad sense of their ethical relation towards the seamen and workmen, of whom they were at once the employers and protectors, with a success the Admiralty never attained before and has never equalled since. The earliest Commissioners were John Holland, Thos. Smith, Peter Pett, Robt. Thompson, and Col. Wm. Willoughby;[1387] the last-named died in 1651, and was replaced by Robt. Moulton, who himself died the next year. In 1653, Col. Fr. Willoughby, Ed. Hopkins, and major Neh. Bourne, who, besides being a soldier had also commanded the _Speaker_, were added to the first four. In 1654 Geo. Payler replaced Holland, and from then there was no change till 1657, when Nathan Wright succeeded Hopkins. All the Navy Commissioners, except Holland, had £250 a year, a sum for which they gave better value than did the members of the Admiralty Committee for their £400 a year; but for 1653 each was granted an extra £150 in consideration of the excessive and continuous toil of that year.

From the first they adopted a tone towards the Admiralty Committee which would hardly have been endurable but that it was excused by an obvious honesty, and justified by superior knowledge. Early in 1649 they recommended that the rope-makers at Woolwich should have their wages increased by twopence a day, but their letter was returned by the Admiralty Committee, probably with a reprimand. This was not to be borne in silence, so ‘we have cause to resent that we are so misunderstood as to be inhibited by you to do our duty.’ If the Committee has not itself power to make the order it can move Parliament, ‘who will not see men want, especially as in the sweat of these men’s brows consists not only their particular living but also that of the republic.... What interpretation soever may be made of our actions by those that have the supervision of them we shall not fail to represent the grievances of those under our charge when they represent them to us.’[1388] On 22nd May 1649 the admirals and captains at sea were ordered to address the Commissioners direct on all administrative details, thus leaving only matters of the highest importance to be dealt with by the Admiralty Committee. In some ways the relative position of superiors and inferiors seems to have been reversed, for, on one occasion, we find the Committee writing to the Commissioners about a course of action the former had decided on, that, ‘as you disapprove’ of such procedure, it was not to be adopted; and it frequently happened that the Council of State communicated directly with the Navy Commissioners, ignoring the intermediate Admiralty Committee.

During the Dutch war a Commissioner was stationed in charge of each of the principal yards—Pett at Chatham, Willoughby at Portsmouth, and Bourne at Harwich, which last place, in consequence of the operations on the North Sea and off the Dutch coast, had suddenly sprung into importance. Monk wrote concerning Bourne: ‘It is strange that twenty ships should be so long fitting out from Chatham, Woolwich, and Deptford, where there are so many docks ... when there have been twenty-two or more fitted out from Harwich in half the time by Major Bourne.’[1389] There is a consensus of evidence as to the way in which Bourne threw his heart into his work, and the success he obtained under difficulties due to the want of docks and materials at Harwich and an insufficient number of men. Notwithstanding Monk’s depreciatory reference to Chatham, Pett was very well satisfied with his operations there. A few months before he had reported to the Admiralty Committee that he had graved nine ships in one spring tide, without injury to ship or man; ‘truly it makes me stand amazed at the goodness of God in such unparalleled successes.’

Besides their superintendence of the building, repairing, and fitting out of ships, the purchase and distribution of stores, the control of the dockyards, and all the diverse minutiæ of administration in war time, the Commissioners were called upon to maintain the not very rigid discipline of the service. Hitherto all ranks had been allowed to do much as they pleased when ships were in port, but henceforth no captain was to leave his command for more than six hours without the express permission of either the Admiralty or Navy Commissioners, and during any such absence the lieutenant, or the master, was to remain on board; for the first disobedience the penalty was a fine of one month’s pay, for the second three months’, and for the third to be cashiered. Similar rules applied to all the officers; and men absent without leave forfeited a month’s pay. The clerks of the check[1390] were to ‘take an exact account’ how officers and others performed their duties, and once a week report to the Navy Commissioners, a regulation which, if loyally obeyed, must have made the clerks popular. The clerks of the check attached to the dockyards were to similarly watch the clerks on shipboard, and, in turn, report on them once a week to the Commissioners.[1391] This system was akin to that of the sixteenth-century Spanish navy, in which the duties were so arranged that each officer was a spy on another; admirable in theory, it did not suit English idiosyncrasies, and these reports never took any practical shape.

From 2nd June 1649, the Navy Commissioners had occupied rooms in the victualling office at Tower Hill, but in 1653 they found the annoyance caused by the proximity of the victuallers’ slaughterhouses there to be unbearable. It was not, however, till the next year that Sir John Wolstenholme’s house in Seething Lane was purchased for them for £2400, and became the Navy Office for a long period;[1392] the Treasurer’s, now a quite distinct office, was in Leadenhall Street, and its lease was renewed in February 1657 for eight years at a rental of £49, 6s 8d a year and a £700 fine. The next request of the Commissioners was that their number might be increased, as half the members of the Board were constantly away in charge of dockyards, and for this they ‘desire timely remedy or dismissal from our employment.’ It has been noticed that three new men, of whom certainly two—Bourne and Willoughby—were, in their sphere, amongst the ablest administrators who have ever served the state, were in consequence added in 1653. Besides the Commissioners, Thomas White at Dover, captain Hen. Hatsell at Plymouth, major Richard Elton at Hull, and major William Burton at Yarmouth, acting as Admiralty agents, had nearly as much work and responsibility, and executed it as ably, as their more highly placed colleagues.

In 1655 the salaries of subordinates at the Admiralty amounted to £1740, the secretary, Robert Blackborne, receiving £250. The first secretary of the Admiralty Committee, Robert Coytmore, had £150 a year, of which £50 was regarded as an extra given on condition that neither he nor his clerk received fees—a stipulation probably due to a lively recollection of the habits of Nicholas and his successor, Thomas Smith. The Navy Commissioners had no secretary, and until September 1653 each Commissioner was allowed only one clerk, at £30 a year—scanty assistance, considering the amount of work thrown into their hands. From September the number was doubled, and two purveyors were appointed to assist them in purchasing stores. The total annual cost of the Admiralty, the Navy Office, and the chief officers of the four dockyards was £11,179, 9s 10d.[1393]

If we may trust a later writer, the sums spent on the Navy Office, which bore only a trifling proportion to the naval expenses, sometimes reaching a million and a quarter, were not misapplied. Henry Maydman, who was a purser under the Commonwealth, and Mayor of Portsmouth in 1710, wrote long afterwards:—

In all the wars we had in the time of King Charles’s exile the
Navy Office was so ordered that a man might have despatched
any affair almost at one board ... and with the greatest ease
imaginable, and cheapness too. For their public business was
carried on with all imaginable application, and it was a crime
for any one to absent himself from his post.[1394]

So far as the intentions and efforts of the Navy Commissioners were concerned this was doubtless true, but it is to be feared that the State Papers do not support the implication that money matters were settled with the same ease as those relating to the routine of daily management, although that, of course, was an imperfection for which they were not accountable, and over which they had no control. To the full extent of their power they watched not only over the public interests, but also over those of the men who, for the first time, seem to have looked up to officials of their position as friends and helpers. Some of the appeals they listened to are embodied in a letter to the Admiralty Committee.[1395]

We have complaints daily made unto us by poor seamen pressed
out of merchant ships into the state’s service that they are
grossly abused by their masters and owners in pretending
leakage, damage, or not delivery of their goods, whereby they
keep their pay from them, meanly taking advantage of the poor
men’s forcing away by the state’s press masters and not having
time to get their rights, are by this means defrauded of their
wages. We look upon it as a very great oppression and have
therefore thought good to acquaint your honours therewith.

Shortly afterwards they had to write on behalf of merchants who had trusted them[1396]:—

It is not pleasing to us to fill your ears with complaints, yet
we judge it our duty, while entrusted with so great a share of
the naval affairs, to again remind you of the emptiness of all
the stores.... We have not been wanting in obtaining supplies
by means of fair promises, and now we are hardly thought and
spoken of by those who cannot obtain their money.

In one instance the ‘fair promises’ resolved themselves into a bill for £400 on account, which, said the recipient, ‘has hitherto done me no more good than an old almanac.’ It has been remarked that the position of all who were in the service of the state became more difficult as time passed, and money became scarcer and scarcer towards 1660. When, in 1658, the Navy Commissioners were obliged to pay—or promise—prices from 30 to 50 per cent. above the market standard, it may be supposed that their situation had its own discomforts.[1397] Besides guarding the material interests, they had to review the moral conduct, of their subordinates, and they were evidently shocked to be compelled to report to the Admiralty Commissioners that captain Phineas Pett, clerk of the check at Chatham, was the father of an illegitimate child. On another occasion Willoughby was inquiring whether a boatswain possessed two wives.

After the resignation of Richard Cromwell Parliament interposed more directly in naval affairs, and the Commissioners exercised less authority; on one occasion the agent at Chester, who went on board a man-of-war to muster the men, was refused an opportunity to perform his duty, and told, in answer to his threats, that ‘the power of the Navy Commissioners was not as formerly.’ A fact so plainly put must have been generally recognised, and accounts for the comparative disappearance of the Commissioners from the papers of the last year of the Commonwealth.

[Sidenote: The Administration:—The Navy Treasurer.]

From 1st January 1651, Richard Hutchinson replaced Vane as Treasurer of the Navy under circumstances noticed on a previous page. He began with a salary of £1000 a year, in lieu of all former fees and perquisites, and the appearance of his name in the State Papers is almost invariably associated with requests for higher pay, or melancholy wails about the amount of work thrown upon him by the wars in which we were engaged. For 1653 he was allowed an extra £1000;[1398] not satisfied with this he petitioned again in December, and so successfully that, by an order of the Council, he was to be given, in 1654, £2500, and a further £1000 for every £100,000 disbursed in excess of £1,300,000.[1399] That this man, who was merely a glorified clerk, who was never required to act on his own initiative, and whose work demanded neither energy, foresight, nor talent, should have received over £2500 a year, while the Navy Commissioners, to whose organising genius was mainly due the rapid and complete equipment which enabled the English fleets to be of sufficient strength at the point of contact, were rewarded with £250 a year, and a gratuity of £150 for one twelvemonth, is one of those incidents which interest the impartial student of forms of government. From January 1655 his pay was fixed at £1500 a year, with £100 commission on every £100,000 issued above £700,000; a year later he tried to get this commission doubled, and to have it allowed on his first three years of office, ‘I having much larger promises at the time.’[1400] A remark like this, the ease with which he obtained his almost annual increments, and the fact that he was appointed in spite of Vane’s opposition, taken together, lead one to suspect that he must have had some potent influence behind him.

[Sidenote: The Commonwealth Captains.]

Among officers, captains were the class who gave most trouble throughout these years, the number tried for, or accused of, various delinquencies yielding a much higher percentage of the total employed than that afforded by the men, or by officers of any other rank. This was, perhaps, largely due to the rapid promotion necessitated by the sudden increase of the Navy, commanders being chosen mainly for professional capacity, and, if considered politically safe, few questions were asked about their religious or moral qualifications. Many, again, had risen from the forecastle, and possibly brought with them reminiscences of the habits existing in the Caroline Navy: others had been privateer captains, an occupation which did not tend to make their moral sense more delicate. Professional honour was not yet a living force, and, in some orders issued by Monk to the captains of a detached squadron, the threat of loss of wages as a punishment for disobedience came after, and was obviously intended as a more impressive deterrent than, the disgrace of being cashiered.[1401]

With one offence, however—cowardice—very few were charged; after 1642 few men wanting physical courage were likely to force their way to the front. George Wager, who chose to blow up the _Greyhound_ rather than strike the English flag, had been a boatswain; Amos Bear, a boatswain’s boy; Robert Clay, a carpenter; Heaton, a trumpeter’s mate; Badiley, Sansum, and Goodson, cabin boys; and doubtless close inquiry would reveal many more examples. Four days before the execution of Charles the Navy Commissioners wrote to Portsmouth, and presumably to other naval stations, ‘to entreat’ those in charge to take care that all officers appointed were well affected to the Parliament, and authorising them to suspend any suspected ones on their own responsibility.[1402] But the government was not unforgiving; two of Rupert’s captains, Goulden and Marshall, commanded state’s ships,[1403] and officers who had deserted in the mutiny of 1648 were received back into the service of the Commonwealth. The following list, in all probability by no means complete, will show the large number of captains whose conduct came under observation, and the character of their misdemeanours:—

+---------------+------------------------------+------------------------+
| Name | Accused of | Result |
+---------------+------------------------------+------------------------+
|John Taylor }| |{ Ordered to enter into |
|Anth. Young }|Neglect of duty in action |{ recognisances to come |
|Edm. Chapman }| of Nov. 1652 |{ up for judgment if |
|B. Blake }| |{ called upon.[1404] |
|Thos. Marriott |Embezzlement, 1652 | Not known |
|John Mead | ” 1653 | ” |
|John Best |Drunkenness and cowardice, | ”[1405] |
| | 1653 | |
|Wm. Gregory |Embezzlement, 1653 | ” |
|Jon. Taylor |Signing false tickets, 1653 | ” |
|Thos. Harris |Neglect of duty, 1653 | Cashiered |
|Jas. Cadman |Killing one of his crew, 1653 | Suspended for 12 months|
|—— |Neglect of convoy duty, 1653 | Not known[1406] |
|Jas. Peacock |Embezzlement, 1653 | ” |
|Sam. Dickinson | ” 1654 | ” |
|Val. Tatnell | ” 1654 | ” |
|J. Clarke | ” 1655 | Cashiered |
|—— | ” 1655 | Wages suspended |
|Robt. Nixon |Cruelty, 1655 | Not known |
|J. Seaman |Drunkenness, 1655 | ” |
|Fr. Parke |Theft from prizes, 1655 | ”[1407] |
|Alex. Farley |Drunkenness and embezzlement, | ” |
| | 1656 | |
|J. Jefferies |Embezzlement, 1656 | Fined £60[1408] |
|Thos. Sparling | ” 1656 | ” £160 |
|J. Lightfoot |Fraud and violence, 1656 | Not known[1409] |
|J. Smith |Embezzlement and drunkenness, | ” |
| | 1656 | |
|Rich. Penhallow|Making out false tickets, 1656| Amount to be deducted |
| | | from his wages |
|Jas. Cadman |Embezzlement, 1656 | Fined[1410] |
|W. Hannam |Cowardice, cruelty, and | Not known |
| |incapacity, 1656 | |
|John Best |Drunkenness, 1656 | ” |
|Robt. Nixon |Cruelty and embezzlement, | ”[1411] |
| | 1657 | |
|Hen. Powell |Embezzlement, 1657 | Severely admonished |
|—— |Drunkenness and blasphemy, | Not known |
| | 1657 | |
|J. Vasey |Drunkenness, 1658 | Charge withdrawn[1412] |
|— Davis |Selling prize goods, 1658 | To refund |
|Robt. Saunders |Came home without leave, 1658 | Cashiered |
|Thos. Whetstone|Drunkenness and theft, 1658 | Not known |
|Rowland Bevan |Embezzlement and carrying | ” |
| | cargo, 1658 | |
|—— |Carrying cargo, 1659 | ” |
|Pet. Foote. | ” 1659 | ”[1413] |
|Robt. Kirby |Drunkenness and theft, 1659 | ” |
|—— |Carrying cargo, false tickets,| ” |
| | 1660 | |
+---------------+------------------------------+------------------------+

It is curious to find that, in 1657, two ex-captains, Mellage and Baker, were in prison as Quakers. In cases of embezzlement the sentence of a court-martial, where ascertainable, appears to have been usually confined to fining the accused the value of the stores stolen, or stopping the amount from his wages. The custom was commencing of trying commanders, who lost their ships by misadventure, before a court-martial, instead of accepting their explanations, or holding an informal investigation at Whitehall, as had previously been done; and once a captain was sent before a court because his ship went ashore, although she came off without damage.[1414] This must be almost the first occurrence of that form of inquiry. Log books were now compulsory, and were sent up to the Navy Commissioners on the return of the ship; by an order of 2nd Feb. 1653 an advocate, who conducted prosecutions in courts-martial, was attached to the fleets. It will be noticed how often drunkenness is an article in the foregoing charges, and this weakness seems to have been common in all ranks, from captains down to ships’ boys. Among these naval papers there are very few indications of the existence of Puritan fervour or even of ordinary religious feeling; the great mass of men and officers aimed at pay and prize money, gave strenuous service when the former was punctual and the latter plentiful, and became heedless and indifferent when they failed. Sailors have been always much more interested in their material prosperity in this world than the prospects of their future welfare in the next. Nor does the rule of the saints appear to have spiritualised the proverbial hard swearing of the service.

[Sidenote: Inception of Class Feeling.]

It is, however, from this period that dates that sense of solidarity among officers and men which is at once the sign and consequence of an organised and continuous service. Hitherto the permanent executive force in peace time had consisted of a few subordinate officers and some 200 or 300 shipkeepers, many of whom were not even seamen. When a fleet was prepared, the ships were commanded by captains for whom sea service was only an episode, and officered and manned by men who came from, and were immediately sent back to, the merchant service on the completion of their cruise. But between 1642 and 1660 every available English sailor must have passed a large portion of those years on the state’s ships; and the captains and officers were kept in nearly continuous employment, with the result of the formation of a class feeling, and the growth of especial manners and habits, characteristic of men working under conditions which removed them from frequent contact with their fellows. The numerous notices in Restoration literature of the particular appearance, modes of expression, and bearing, stamping the man-of-war officer—references never before made—show how rapidly the new circumstances had produced their effect.

[Sidenote: The other Officers.]

When captains showed themselves so ready to steal it might have been expected that officers of lower rank would follow, and even improve upon, the pattern set them, but this did not prove to be the case. Although, of course, there are many flagrant cases recorded, the number of officers charged with fraud or theft is not only relatively less, considering the much larger aggregate employed, than under Charles I, but also absolutely smaller for any equal series of years. Experience, gained during the civil war, had led to closer inspection and the introduction of safeguards which made theft neither so easy nor so free from risk, and further precautions were taken under the Commonwealth. Embezzlement by a captain could not be prevented, it could only be punished: but the regulations which made it easy for him might make it difficult for his gunner or boatswain. The first step, taken in 1649, was to raise the wages of those officers who were in charge of stores, a measure recommended long before by Holland and every other reformer. In 1651 the Navy Commissioners were directed to consider how the frauds, still numerous among officers, might be best dealt with, and this was probably the cause of an order the next year that sureties should be required from pursers, boatswains, and others for the honest performance of their duties.[1415] These sureties were usually entered into by two persons, and were sometimes as high as £600.

That some such method was necessary, at least with the pursers, is evident from the following catalogue of their ‘chief’ abuses, drawn up by the Navy Commissioners in 1651:[1416] (1) They forge their captains’ signatures; (2) make false entries of men; (3) falsify the time men have served; (4) sign receipts for a full delivery of stores and compound with the victualling agents for the portion not received; (5) do not send in their accounts for one voyage till they are again sailing; (6) charge the men with clothes not sold to them; and (7) execute their places by deputy while they stop on shore. The principal reforms suggested by the Commissioners were that bonds should be required, that stewards should be employed for the victualling, that pursers should in future sail as clerks of the check, with limited powers, and that all their papers should be countersigned by the captain. These measures were all adopted, but a further recommendation that a pillory should be erected near the Navy Office for their especial use was not, apparently, acted upon. When one purser openly declared that he cared not how the seamen starved if he could ‘make £500 or £600 a year out of their bellies,’ it was full time to apply to his kind the treatment exercised by governments on such dangerous idealists as constitutional reformers.

The Commissioners had set themselves a hard task in the inculcation of honesty, for that sentiment which still regards lightly cheats on a government was strongly against them. When Dover was searched, in 1653, large quantities of stolen cordage, sold from the ships, were discovered, and Bourne found that ‘these embezzlements are so common that the people declare that they think it no wrong to the state.’ Still in the long run they were more successful than their predecessors had been, and the trials for embezzlement became fewer after 1653. Their treatment of the pursers had the best results, judging from the small number of those officers who came up for judgment; these gentlemen did not at all like the new rules and at first mostly refused to sail as clerks of the check. For reasons unknown, unless it was that they had become more trustworthy and that the new system was in some respects cumbrous, the clerks were abolished in 1655 and the pursers reinstated in their old powers, pecuniary guarantees in the shape of the bonds still being required from them.[1417] It must have been a very new and unpleasant experience to some of these men, who many of them remembered the free hand they were allowed before 1640, to find themselves before a court-martial for acts they had come to look upon as natural to their places. One steward attempted to evade an accusation of embezzlement by declaring that the rats had eaten his books; he might have improved his defence by producing some of the victuallers’ ‘salt horse,’ and showing that his books, being tenderer and more nutritious, were more likely to tempt the rats. In the trial of another we have some account of the mode of proceeding. The prisoner, Joshua Hunt, was tried under the twenty-eighth article of war before Lawson and twelve commanding officers, and was himself sworn and examined. By the twenty-eighth article the character of the penalty is left to the decision of the court, and Hunt was given the option of making restitution or of undergoing punishment. In making his report, Monk remarked that the prisoner had only been found out in that which most stewards did, and that he would be sent up to London to give his friends or sureties the opportunity of making amends; if they failed to do this he was to be returned to the fleet for corporal punishment at the decision of a further court-martial.[1418] This form of sentence was very frequent, and gunners, boatswains, and stewards were ordinarily fined the value of the stores stolen, and committed to prison until it was paid.

The wide discretion left to the courts-martial led to great inequality in the sentences, especially when an example could be made without losing the stores or their money value. A carpenter was tried for theft; he confessed to the intention, and partly to the act, but returned the articles before arrest. He was, however, ordered to be taken from ship to ship in the Downs, with a paper describing his offence affixed to his breast, the paper being read at each ship’s side, to be thrice ducked from the yardarm, and to be cashiered. Obviously it was more profitable and less dangerous not to stop halfway in theft. In 1653 is found a rather remarkable sentence: Wm. Haycock, carpenter’s mate of the _Hound_, was, for ‘drunkenness, swearing, and uncleanness,’ ordered, among other things, ten lashes at the side of _each_ flagship. Haycock has the distinction of being the first recorded victim of the form of punishment which afterwards developed into the devilish torture known as ‘flogging round the fleet.’ It became comparatively common during the reign of Charles II.

At Chatham, in 1655 the authorities appear to have discovered and broken up a gang of receivers, of whom one had an estate of £5000 obtained from thefts from the ships and yards. A hoyman, Dunning, confessed to having conveyed 500 barrels of powder from the men-of-war at Chatham and Deptford within four years. When pressed for particulars, he exclaimed, ‘Alas! shall I undo a thousand families? Shall I undo so many? I did not think you would put me upon it to do so!’ Finding that this appeal, instead of silencing, only whetted his examiners’ curiosity, he had at last to name eighteen ships whose gunners had given him powder to remove.[1419] The Admiralty employed detectives of their own to find out thefts, but on more than one occasion these men turned thieves themselves. The aforesaid Dunning bought a cable from one of them; another was found ‘to have unduly abused his trust,’ but a third was granted £15 for proving the larcenies of captain Cadman. Sometimes, when the amount was small, the Admiralty, instead of bringing offenders to trial, deducted the estimated value of their embezzlements from wages;[1420] evidently punishment was very uncertain in extent, but the practical impunity of former times could no longer be reckoned on.

In some few instances the Admiralty had to deal with difficulties of another nature among the officers. Richard Knowlman, a gunner, and described as a Quaker, wrote to the Commissioners that he had served by sea and land from 1641, and was still willing to continue in any other capacity, since ‘I would be free to act against all deceit ... for I see most men, especially those in the navy and of most rank and quality, are corrupted.’ Knowlman could not have expressed less respect for the average official had he enjoyed access to the State Papers, but on the whole his was one of the very rare eras when such doubts were unjust. Another master gunner had, for two months, refused to fire a gun, ‘lest blood might be spilt,’ and a third insisted on preaching to the crew of the _Fame_, who by no means appreciated his amateur ministrations. In three instances chaplains are found accused of drunkenness, but their presence on board ship was not invariable, and their influence appears to have been very slight. One was tried for forging Monk’s signature.

[Sidenote: The Commissioners’ Success.]

The habits of half a century were not to be at once overthrown, but after 1655 references to thefts became far fewer; and the Navy Commissioners could congratulate themselves on having done much to extinguish customs which had gone far to destroy the vitality of the former Royal Navy. The want of trust, that long experience had shown to be justifiable in gunners, carpenters, and boatswains, who had been, and were still to a certain extent, treated as officers, may have been one reason why lieutenants were now always attached to ships, except fifth- and sixth-rates. Another may probably be found in the growing demand for scientific seamanship, an accomplishment the former class had little opportunity of acquiring. Whatever the cause, the effect was to thrust the gunners and their compeers lower down in the social scale, to lose them that respect on shipboard they had hitherto possessed, to lessen their authority, and so quicken the downward movement. We are told that, a generation later, it was as usual to strike them as to strike the men, and that they had to ‘fawn like spaniels’ on the lieutenants to retain favour or position. The lieutenants must have been found much more satisfactory; in the whole series of papers relating to this period there is no instance of one being tried by court-martial, and only one in which such an officer got into any trouble. His captain put him in irons, but the reason is not given. Lieutenants were occasionally appointed to the naval service in the reign of Elizabeth, but the Dutch war may be taken as the period where their position became permanent. In June 1652, Sir Wm. Penn, then vice-admiral, writing to Cromwell, gave expression to the unanimous desire of his colleagues that such a rank should be allowed in all ships carrying 150 men.

Another difficulty the Commissioners had to contend with was the forging of seamen’s tickets, an old form of crime which grew in extent with the employment of so many more men. The Navy Commissioners, in advance of their time, recognised that the only legal penalty, death, was too severe, and practically prevented any punishment.[1421] The Navy department was not the only one which suffered from these forgers, who were all more or less connected with each other; in the same year forgeries of public faith bills to the amount of £115,000 were discovered. Some of these men were in league with clerks in the Navy and prize offices, and obtained the necessary papers and information from them. At a later date one of the gang confessed, when in prison, that the total of the public faith bill and other forgeries was nearly £500,000.[1422] In 1656 a new plan was tried: ‘to prevent the many frauds and deceits formerly practised,’ the Commissioners were ordered to send the Treasurer, daily or weekly, an abstract of all the bills or tickets they signed authorising payment of money. Subsequently the Admiralty Commissioners obtained power to themselves commit offenders to prison. Nicholas Harnaman, for instance, was sent to Bridewell with hard labour ’till further order,’ for counterfeiting tickets.[1423]

[Sidenote: Officers’ Pay.]

Officers’ pay was raised in March 1649, and again in 1653, after which latter date there was no alteration.[1424] It then stood per month at:—

+-----------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| |1st Rate|2nd Rate|3rd Rate|4th Rate|5th Rate|6th Rate|
+-----------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| | £ s d | £ s d | £ s d | £ s d | £ s d | £ s d |
|Captain |21 0 0 |16 16 0 |14 0 0 |10 0 0 | 8 8 0 | 7 0 0 |
|Lieutenant | 4 4 0 | 4 4 0 | 3 10 0 | 3 10 0 | | |
|Master | 7 0 0 | 6 6 0 | 4 13 8 | 4 6 2 | 3 7 6 | [1425] |
|Master’s mate or | | | | | | |
| pilot | 3 6 0 | 3 0 0 | 2 16 2 | 2 7 10 | 2 2 0 | 2 2 0 |
|Midshipman | 2 5 0 | 2 0 0 | 1 17 6 | 1 13 9 | 1 10 0 | 1 10 0 |
|Boatswain | 4 0 0 | 3 10 0 | 3 0 0 | 2 10 0 | 2 5 0 | 2 0 0 |
|Boatswain’s mate | 1 15 0 | 1 15 0 | 1 12 0 | 1 10 0 | 1 8 0 | 1 6 0 |
|Quartermaster | 1 15 0 | 1 15 0 | 1 12 0 | 1 10 0 | 1 8 0 | 1 6 0 |
|Quartermaster’s | | | | | | |
| mate | 1 10 0 | 0 10 0 | 1 8 0 | 1 8 0 | 1 6 0 | 1 5 0 |
|Carpenter | 4 0 0 | 3 10 0 | 3 0 0 | 2 10 0 | 2 5 0 | 2 0 0 |
|Carpenter’s mate | 2 0 0 | 2 0 0 | 1 16 0 | 1 14 0 | 1 12 0 | 1 10 0 |
|Gunner | 4 0 0 | 3 1 0 | 3 0 0 | 2 10 0 | 2 5 0 | 2 0 0 |
|Gunner’s mate | 1 15 0 | 1 15 0 | 1 12 0 | 1 10 0 | 1 8 0 | 1 6 0 |
|Surgeon | 2 10 0 | 2 10 0 | 2 10 0 | 2 10 0 | 2 10 0 | 2 10 0 |
|Corporal | 1 15 0 | 1 12 0 | 1 10 0 | 1 10 0 | 1 8 0 | 1 5 0 |
|Purser | 4 0 0 | 3 10 0 | 3 0 0 | 2 10 0 | 2 5 0 | 2 0 0 |
|Master | | | | | | |
| Trumpeter[1426]| 1 10 0 | 1 8 0 | 1 5 0 | 1 5 0 | 1 5 0 | 1 4 0 |
|Cook | 1 5 0 | 1 5 0 | 1 5 0 | 1 5 0 | 1 5 0 | 1 4 0 |
+-----------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+

[Sidenote: Guns and Ordnance Stores.]

When Parliament began the rapid construction of new ships some of its members may have had misgivings about getting the crews to man them, but few probably anticipated the future difficulties in procuring the guns wherewith to arm them. Geo. Browne, for so many years the royal gunfounder, was still almost the only maker, and his works were unequal to the increased demands.[1427] In March and April 1652, when war appeared certain, 335 guns were immediately required to equip only part of the Navy,[1428] but the authorities were already reduced to such straits as to be compelled to send searchers about London to try to find ordnance.[1429] A month later some of the inland strongholds were disarmed, and 84 brass and 544 iron guns thus obtained; the sale of ordnance taken in prizes was strictly prohibited, and, in the course of the year, guns were hired at ten and twelve shillings each a month. In December the ordnance officials announced that 1500 iron pieces, weighing 2230 tons, at £26 a ton, were required, the same number of carriages at from 21s to 31s 3d each, 117,000 round and double-headed shot, 5000 hand grenades at 2s 6d each, 12,000 barrels of corn powder at £4 10s a barrel, and 150 tons of breechings and tackle at £50 a ton.[1430] To meet these wants they had in store only 121 guns and 34,000 rounds.[1431] In February 1653 the contracts were made for these guns, but, very soon after they were entered into, the officials saw that the deliveries would be at ‘a vast distance from our pressing occasions,’ for not only was the Tower empty but the ports were also destitute of munition, and, at Portsmouth, they were in April ‘at a stand’ for powder and shot.

All that Browne and Foley could promise was to deliver 140 guns in October, 190 in February 1654, 254 in June, 230 in October, and 86 in June 1655; but, as 500 were still to be sent in on old contracts, their engagements could hardly be relied on. Fifty tons of shot and 5000 hand grenades they promised for June, 50 tons in September, and 100 more by March 1654. In the meantime ships intended to serve as armed merchantmen were actually waiting uselessly for 117 guns, which the Ordnance department could not procure anywhere.[1432] The immediate outlook for powder was no better, since there was instant demand for 2780 barrels and only 500 in store, while the contractors were only bound to supply 660 barrels a month. Here, however, the further prospect was more favourable, as there were many powder-makers at work and the government could purchase quantities at Hamburg.

The staff of the Ordnance office was very much larger, proportionately, than that of the Admiralty. It employed, at yearly salaries, a surveyor, £194; clerk, £215; storekeeper, £216; clerk of the delivery, £166; master gunner of England, £121; keeper of the small gun office, £66; messenger, £60; two furbishers, £12 each; and twenty labourers at £21 each.[1433] Its management had mended considerably since 1640, but the improvement did not avail to save its independence in 1653 when it became a department of the Admiralty. In February 1654 matters were so far better that there were 2359 barrels of powder and 38,000 round and other shot in hand, but still no guns in reserve. There are no complaints about the quality of the powder supplied during the Dutch war, but, in 1655 and 1656, accusations against the makers, who were said to ‘use some sleight to make it Tower-proof on delivery, but it does not long continue good nor abide change of weather,’ became numerous. All that the authorities could do was to call upon the manufacturers to make it good, or, if they preferred, take it back with a licence to export it abroad; 6827 out of 15,098 barrels recently furnished were defective, and, by an order of 2nd April 1656, the Council gave the contractors the choice between these courses and being committed to prison. The makers, however, had something to say on their side. Like most other naval purveyors they had not been paid, and even to get any money on account were sometimes compelled, under threats of still longer postponement, to repair Hamburg powder at 17s a barrel when the real price should have been £2, naturally with unsatisfactory results. Some attributed all the mischief to the Hamburg importations, but most of them seem to have gone into the business without any expert knowledge, simply with a view of profiting by the sudden demand for war material.[1434]