SAILOR-MEN
But the greater number of the travellers along the Portsmouth Road, whether they walked or rode, were sailors; and so salt of the sea are the records of this old turnpike that the romance of old-time travel upon it is chiefly concerned with them that went down to brave the elements on board ship; or with those happy mariners who, having entered port, came speeding up to home and beauty with all the ardour of men tossed and buffeted by winds and waves on a two or three years’ cruise. Pepys, who happened to be on the road, on his way up from Portsmouth, June 12, 1667, met several of the crew of the “Cambridge,” and describes them in a manner so unfavourable that I am inclined to suspect they showed too little consideration for the Secretary to the Admiralty. At any rate, he pictures them as being “the most debauched swearing rogues that ever were in the Navy, just like their prophane commander.” My certes, sirs! just imagine Pepys playing the shocked Puritan, after having, perhaps, just committed some of those peccadilloes which he sets down so frankly in his ciphered “Diary.”
THE SAILOR’S RETURN
That is one of the earliest glimpses we get of Jack ashore on this route, and by it we can well see that his spirits were as boisterous then as ever after. “Sailors earned their money like horses and spent it like asses,” says an old writer, and certainly, once ashore, they were no niggards. It was the natural reaction from a long life of stern discipline, tempered by fighting, wounds, floggings, and marline-spikes, and for the most part cheerfully endured on a miserable diet of weevilly biscuit, “salt horse,” and pork full of maggots. The Mutiny at Spithead, April 15, 1797, was due in part to the shameful quality of the provisions supplied, and partly to the open huckstering of the pursers, the unfair distribution of prize-money, to stoppages, and to insufficient pay. But these grievances were of old standing, and the Government actually felt and expressed indignation that sailors should object to be half starved and half poisoned with insufficient and rotten food. However indignant the Government may have been, redress was seen to be immediately advisable, and the demands of the mutineers were granted. Sailors rated as A.B.’s had their wages raised to a shilling a day, and were paid at more frequent intervals than once in ten years or so. It was stated (and names and dates were given) in the House of Commons that some ships’ companies had not been paid for eight, ten, twelve, or fifteen years. Under such a system, or want of system, as this, it frequently happened in those days of much fighting and more disease that when the ships were paid off, the sailors to whom money was due had long been dead. In those cases it was very rarely that their heirs touched a penny, and certainly the Government reaped no advantage. The money went into the pockets of the Admiralty clerks and paymasters, who thrived on wholesale and shameless peculation. If by some strange chance, or by a singular strength of constitution, some hardy sailors remained to claim their due, they were paid it grudgingly, without interest, and whittled away by deductions amounting to as much as thirty or forty per cent.
The Sailor’s return from Portsmouth to London.
Publish’d as the Act directs March 2 1772 by J. Bretherton, No. 134, New Bond Street.But when a man did receive his pay, together with his prize-money, he was like a school-boy out at play. Nothing was too ridiculous or puerile for him to stoop to, and he was, as a class, so entirely innocent and unsophisticated that the land-sharks waiting hungrily for homeward-bound ships found him an easy prey. Stories innumerable have been told of his childlike innocence of landsmen’s ways, and pictures and caricatures without end have been drawn and painted with the object of making men smile at his strange doings. Here is a caricature dated so far back as 1772, showing “The Sailor’s Return from Portsmouth to London.” The point of view chosen is, apparently, only a mile or two from Portsmouth, for in the background rise some ruins obviously intended to represent Porchester Castle. The sailor, after the manner so often dwelt upon, is keeping up a pleasing travesty of sea-faring life. His jaded nag is a ship, and the course is being steered by the nag’s tail. The sailor himself has evidently “come aboard” by the rope-ladder, seen hanging down almost to the ground, and he keeps the fog-horn going to avoid collisions. A flag flies from his top-gallant—in plain English, his hat—while a Union Jack is fixed at the forepeak and an anchor is triced up at the bows, in readiness for “heaving-to.” His log might well be that of “Jack Junk” on a similar journey:—“Hove out of Portsmouth on board the ‘Britannia Fly’—a swift sailer—got an inside berth—rather drowsy the first watch or so—liked to have slipped off the stern—cast anchor at the ‘George’—took a fresh quid and a supply of grog—comforted the upper works—spoke several homeward-bound frigates on the road—and after a tolerable smooth voyage entered the port of London at ten past five, post meridian.”
TRUE BLUE; OR BRITAIN’S JOLLY TARS PAID OFF AT PORTSMOUTH, 1797. By Isaac Cruikshank.
POOR JACK
Another, and a much more spirited, plate by Isaac Cruikshank, dated 1797, and entitled, “True Blue; or Britain’s Jolly Tars Paid Off at Portsmouth,” shows a coach-load going off to London without more ado, accompanied by Poll and Sue, Nancy, Kate, and Joan; all (nay, I will not say uproariously drunk) in the merriest of moods. The horses gallop, hats are waved in every direction, and those who have no hats flourish beer-bottles instead. Some jolly Jack-a-Dandy stands upon the roof, at the imminent risk of his neck, and scrapes a fiddle to what, considering the pace of the coach, must have been a tune of the most agonizing description; while an amorous fellow hugs his girl behind. The Union Jack is, of course, in a prominent position, and a riotous, devil-me-care figure sits one of the horses backwards. I do not observe any one of this merry company “heaving the lead overboard,” as became the pleasing fashion among sailor-men flush of money who rode outside the day coaches to town. These merry men would purchase long gold chains at Portsmouth, and on their journey would now and then hang them over the side of the coach with their watches suspended at the end by way of plummets, and would call out, in nautical style, so many fathoms. Some home-coming sailors would walk up the road, either because they had spent most of their money in drink and debauchery at Portsmouth, or else because the idea commended itself to their freakish natures; and the people of the inns and beerhouses on the way reaped a fine harvest from this class of customer. I have told you, on another page, how most of these sailor-men were accommodated, as to their sleeping arrangements, by being given a shake-down in the clean straw of some outhouse. They in many instances threw themselves down amid the straw, hopelessly drunk; and then entered unto them the honest innkeeper, who would not rob his guests, but saw no objection to taking them up by the heels and shaking them vigorously until the money fell out of their pockets among the straw. If they found the coin in the morning, why, it was bad luck from the publican’s point of view; and if they reeled away, leaving their money behind them, it was a happy chance for mine host, who came and gleaned a golden hoard from his straw. But if some indignant sailor, full of horrid oaths and terrible threats, came and swore he had been robbed during the night, the virtuous publican could suggest that before he made such serious charges, it would be better if he made a search. He might have dropped his money!
Sometimes the Portsmouth Road was traversed by long processions of wagons containing treasure captured at sea and landed at Portsmouth for greater security in transmission to London. Such an occasion was that when Anson, returning in 1744 from his four years’ cruise in South American waters, brought home a rich cargo of spoil in the “Centurion.” This treasure was valued at no less than £500,000, and was stowed away in twelve wagons, which were sent up to London under an escort of sailors and marines. Eighteen years later, another splendid haul was made by the capture of the Spanish galleon “Hermione,” from Lima, off Cadiz, and on this occasion the value was scarcely less than before. The prize-money distributed amounted to handsome fortunes for the officers, and conferred competencies upon every man and boy in the two ships’ companies that took part in the capture. Such windfalls as these were not everyday occurrences, and many a man gave and took hard knocks all his life, to die in his old age in poverty and neglect. Very few, probably, of those fortunate prize-sharers from the “Hermione” treasure-chest retained their wealth.
QUOTA-MEN
The people who dwelt along the highway all shared to some degree in this marvellous good fortune, but they lived in fear of the murderous rascals who began to infest the roads in 1795, tramping or being sent down from London to join the navy at a time when every man was needed to help the nation through the vast wars we were continually engaged in. At that period of England’s greatest struggle for existence the press-gang was in full tide of activity, but the pressed men were few in proportion to the number required to man the ships, and so Acts of Parliament were passed in order to provide a certain number of men from each county and from every seaport for the service of the navy. The men thus provided were induced to join by the extraordinarily large bounties offered, some of which were as much as £30; and many of these “quota-men,” as they came to be called, belonged to the most depraved of the criminal classes. The personnel of the navy was lowered by these men, and the sailors were disgusted with them. The “quota-bounty,” says an authority, “we conceive to have been the most ill-advised and fatal measure ever adopted by the Government for manning the fleet. The seamen who voluntarily entered in 1793 and fought some of the most glorious of our battles received the comparatively small bounty of £5. These brave fellows saw men totally ignorant of the profession, the very refuse and outcasts of society, flying from justice and the vengeance of the law, come on board with a bounty to the amount of £70. One of these objects, on coming on board a ship of war with £70 bounty, was seized by a boatswain’s mate, who, holding him up with one hand by the waistband of his trousers, humorously exclaimed, ‘Here’s a fellow that cost a guinea a pound!’”Criminals were allowed as an alternative to long terms of imprisonment, to volunteer for what was evidently regarded by the authorities as an equivalent to the gaol—a man-o’-war. “All the bad characters of a neighbourhood, loafers, poachers, footpads, possible murderers, men suspected of any crime, but against whom there was not sufficient evidence, were arrested and sent on board, with a note to the captain begging him to take measures to prevent their return; which, as such men were commonly stout-built fellows enough, he was no ways loath to do. The gaol-birds from the towns were unquestionably worse; worse physically, worse morally, and perhaps worse hygienically; they were not infrequently infected with gaol-fever, and brought the infection to the fleet; they were largely the cause of the severe, even brutal, discipline that ruled in the navy towards the end of last century.” According to the sailors themselves—“Them was the chaps as played hell with the fleet: every grass-combing beggar as chose to bear up for the bounty had nothing to do but to dock the tails of his togs and take to the tender.” They used to ship in shoals; they were drafted by forties and fifties to each ship in the fleet; they were hardly up the side, hardly mustered abaft, before there was “Send for the barber, shave their pates, and send ’em for’rd to the head, to be scrubbed and sluished from clue to ear-ring, afore you could venture to berth ’em below. Then, stand clear of their shore-going rigs—every finger was fairly a fishhook; neither chest, nor bed, nor blanket, nor bag escaped their sleight-of-hand thievery; they pluck you, aye, as clean as a poulterer, and bone your very eyebrows whilst staring you full in the face.”
These were the men who, instead of bringing prosperity to the innkeepers and country folk, robbed and plundered stray travellers and lonely houses by the way. Singly, they robbed hen-roosts and old market-women; in bands their courage rose to highway robbery on a larger scale, and even to murder. An official posting down to Portsmouth with money for a ship’s company came within an ace of being relieved of several thousands of pounds; for on his coach being upset on Rake Hill a number of fellows appeared with offers of help, and would have carried off the gold had not the boxes in which it was contained been too heavy. As it was, while some of them were engaging every one’s attention in attempting to raise the coach out of the slough in which it had become embedded, the remainder of the band had got hold of the specie-boxes, and were battering them in with great stones, when a party of marines opportunely arrived and caught them in the very act.
Men of this stamp were the curse of the navy. They were more often town-bred weaklings than robust countrymen, and to their constitutional disabilities they added the vices of the towns from which they came, and a sullen habit of mind that could leave no room for discipline. Those were the days of the press-gang, when likely fellows, whether seamen or landsmen, were taken by force from their occupations, shipped under guard upon men-o’-war in the harbours, and sent to fight, willy-nilly, for King and country. Merchantmen, coming home from long and tedious voyages, were seized and hurried off immediately upon their stepping ashore, and, in fact, any well-built young fellow, an apprentice or clerk, who could not prove himself to be a master-man became at one time the ordinary prey of the press-gangs that roamed about the seaboard towns in search of prey. Seamen only were their proper quarry, but when more, and still more, men were required as time went on, it mattered little whether pressed men were landlubbers or sailors; and as the members of the press-gang came to be paid so much a head for all the sturdy fellows they could seize, it may be seen that they were not apt to stand upon trifles or to weigh evidence very narrowly. There were exemptions from the press, and it was open to a man who considered himself to have been illegally seized to send a statement to the authorities. These became known as “state-the-case-men,” but as, in many instances, the ship upon which they had been sent sailed almost immediately, this formality was simply a cruel farce. If their statements were ever forwarded to their destination, they only arrived by the time the ships were well out to sea; and if their complaints were ever investigated, the inquiries would most likely take place while the subjects of them were in the thick of an action with the enemy; perhaps wounded, possibly even already dead.
THE LIBERTY OF THE SUBJECT, 1782. By James Gillray.
THE PRESS-GANG
The forays of the press-gangs were battles in themselves, and many a man on either side was killed in these man-hunting expeditions. “Private mischief,” said the Earl of Mansfield, “had better be submitted to than that public detriment and inconvenience should ensue;” but the men who fought with the press-gangs did not see matters in this light, and neither did their womenkind. The beautiful decorative drawing by Morland that forms the frontispiece to this book puts the sentiment of the time against impressment in a poetical way, but Gillray’s more nervous and satirical pencil gives, in his “Liberty of the Subject,” a realistic and satirical picture that shows how strenuously the press was resisted. It is a most graphic and humorous representation of a “hot press” in the streets of some seaport town, at a period immediately following upon the American War of Independence, when men were particularly scarce. A gang has seized a tailor, a poor, miserable-looking wretch with no fighting in him, almost literally as well as metaphorically the “ninth part of a man,” and his captors are dragging him off, knock-kneed and incapable of resistance. But if he submits so easily, the women of the crowd have to be reckoned with, and are doing nearly all the fighting. The furious virago in the foreground is pulling at a midshipman’s hair with all the strength of one hand, while with the other she is lugging his ear off, kicking him, at the same time, with her knee. A sailor in the rear, with an animated expression of countenance, has hold of her arm, and appears to be aiming a blow at her head with the butt-end of a pistol; while another woman with a heavy mop is preparing to fell him to the ground.
One of the “hottest presses,” and at the same time the most successful, ever known, was that of March 8, 1803, Portsmouth. Five hundred able seamen were obtained on that occasion by the strategy and cunning of a certain Captain Brown, who assembled a company of marines late at night with all the fuss and circumstance he could display, in order, as he gave out, to quell a mutiny at Fort Monckton. The news of this pretended mutiny spread rapidly, and great crowds came rushing down to see the affair. When they had all crossed Haslar Bridge they were cooped up like so many fowls, and that master of strategy, having posted his marines at the bridge end, seized every suitable man in the crowd.
But the pressed men, although they tried every dodge to escape this forced service, and though their unwillingness to serve his Majesty afloat has made a classic of the saying, “One volunteer is worth three pressed men,” did good service when once they were trapped and trained. For one thing, they had no choice. ’Twas either a cheerful obedience to orders and readiness in action when once afloat, or else a flogging with the cat and a remand, heavily ironed, to the hold. Seeing how useless would be any malingering, the pressed men turned to with a will, and fought our battles with such spirit that the victories of Trafalgar, of “the glorious First of June,” off Cape St. Vincent, and many of the other notable exploits of the British Fleet, are due to their courage and resolution.
REVELRY
When the pressed men came home (if ever they were so fortunate) they were as a rule so inured to sea-service and hard knocks, that, so soon as they had had a spree and spent their money, they were ready for another cruise. But meanwhile they enjoyed themselves with the reckless prodigality possible only to such men. When the ships came home (and ships were always coming home then), Portsmouth ran with liquor, riot, and revelry; and on fine summer days the grassy slopes of Portsdown Hill were all alive with the jolly Jacks engaged with great earnestness in the business of pleasure. Here, in the taverns that overlook from this breezy height the harbour, the town, and the distant mud-flats, generations of soldiers and sailors, fresh from battle and the salt sea, have caroused. Here, opposite the “George” and the Belle Vue Gardens, where “the military” and the servant-girls, the sailors and their lasses, still disport on high-days and holidays, with swings, Aunt Sallies, cocoa-nut shies, and, in short, all the fun of the fair, have the look-out men of a hundred years ago shivered in the wind while scanning the distant horizon for signs of Bonaparte and his flotilla, the inglorious Armada that never left port.
