Part 5

A new and important principle in connexion with the pay of naval officers was established in 1668. Deane had urged in 1653 that seamen should be entered for continuous service and kept on continuous pay like soldiers[199], but the practice of the navy was quite different, both for officers and men. Hitherto it had been usual to regard naval officers as appointed for particular services, and possessing no claim upon the Government when these services had been discharged. The result of this was that, except in time of war, the field of employment was far too small, and a number of good officers were thrown upon their own resources. But at the close of the Second Dutch War the Government formally recognised for the first time the claims of officers to pay in time of peace. The first step did not go far, but the principle now accepted was destined to lead to the modern system of continuous employment. By an Order in Council of 17 July, 1668[200], it was provided that, in consideration of 'the eminent services performed in the late war against the Dutch by the flag officers,' and the fact that 'during the time of peace several of them are out of employment, and thereby disabled to support themselves in a condition answerable to their merits and those marks of honour his Majesty hath conferred on them,' they should receive 'pensions' in proportion to the scale of pay on active service which had been fixed at the beginning of the war. These 'pensions' ranged from £150 a year for captains of flag-ships up to £250 a year for rear-admirals and vice-admirals of fleets[201]. By an Order of 26 June, 1674, the same scale was established for flag officers who had served in the Third Dutch War[202]; and in 1674 and 1675 the system of half-pay for officers when they were not being actually employed was further extended to the captains and masters of first and second rate ships who had served in the war[203], and to the commanders of squadrons[204].

In 1672[205] another important change relating to pay was made by the Council. The principle of pensions on superannuation was adopted for officers. These were to be 'equal to the salary and known allowances they enjoyed,' provided that they had completed fifteen years of service 'where the employment is constant, such as that of boatswains, gunners, pursers, carpenters, &c.,' or eight years where it is not constant, 'such as that of masters, chirurgeons, &c.' In 1673[206] the principle of superannuation was extended from cases of old age to officers wounded in service at sea. Such officers were to receive one year's wages, 'and the continuance of them in pay during the whole time they shall by good proof appear to have lain under cure.'

LECTURE IV

VICTUALLING; DISCIPLINE; SHIPS; GUNS

The arrangements for victualling had always had an important bearing upon the contentment and efficiency of the seamen. 'However the pay of the mariners, both for sea and harbour, may be wanting for some time,' wrote one of the Victuallers, 'yet they must have continual supplies of victuals, otherwise they will be apt to fall into very great disorders.'[207] Pepys, in his private _Minute Book_[208], makes the same point. 'Englishmen,' he says, 'and more especially seamen, love their bellies above anything else, and therefore it must always be remembered, in the management of the victualling of the navy, that to make any abatement from them in the quantity or agreeableness of the victuals, is to discourage and provoke them in the tenderest point, and will sooner render them disgusted with the King's service than any one other hardship that can be put upon them.' But in this department also the want of money had fatal effects, and contributed more than any other cause to the comparative failure of the administration to provide victuals of good quality, sufficient quantity, and promptly delivered where they were required.

Before the Restoration the victualling was being managed by Victualling Commissioners 'upon account,' the State keeping the business in its own hands[209]. But the system had scarcely a fair trial owing to financial embarrassments[210], and just before the King's return matters were as bad as they could well be[211]. The restored Government reverted to the older system of contract, and in September, 1660, Denis Gauden was appointed contractor under the satisfying title of 'surveyor-general of all victuals to be provided for his Majesty's ships and maritime causes,' with a fee of £50 a year, and 8_d._ a day for a clerk[212]. The whole burden of the victualling therefore rested upon a single man, and when the war with the Dutch broke out, he was unable to grapple with its demands; yet no fundamental change could be made in the system until the Government was in a position to settle accounts with him. Thus the victuals, although on the whole good in quality, were deficient in quantity, and when Gauden was remonstrated with he could always reply, and generally with perfect truth, that it was impossible for him to do better as long as the Government failed to carry out their part of the contract, and to make payments on account at the stipulated times[213]. In the spring of 1665, when the fleet was fitting for sea, complaints of the failure of the Victualler were frequent[214]. Later on, when Pepys went down to visit the fleet in September, Lord Sandwich told him that most of the ships had been without beer 'these three weeks or month, and but few days' dry provisions.'[215] In this year complaints of uneatable provisions occur, though not often, but when they were bad they were sometimes very bad. On 10 August, Commissioner Middleton wrote to Pepys from Portsmouth that the _Coventry_ was still in port; her beer had nearly poisoned one man, who 'being thirsty drank a great draught.'[216] Probably now, as undoubtedly later, the backwardness of the victualling in turn reacted upon the deficiency of men, for the sailors deserted from ships where they could get no food[217].

The practical breakdown of the victualling system during the spring and summer of 1665 led to the establishment, at Pepys's suggestion, of new machinery for keeping the Victualler up to the mark—a Surveyor of Victuals appointed at the King's charge in each port, with power to examine the Victualler's books; and a central officer in London to whom they were to report weekly[218]. As soon as Pepys's plan was adopted, he wrote to suggest that he himself should be the new Surveyor-General of Victualling[219], and on 27 October he accepted office[220] at a salary of £300 a year[221]. The appointment was temporary only, and came to an end at the conclusion of peace. While it lasted it effected a slight improvement. Pepys himself was much pleased with the success of his arrangements, and he was complimented upon them by the Duke of York[222]. As he had £500 a year from Gauden as well as the £300 from the King[223], he managed to do well out of the war.

The experience of the war had shewn the weak points of the one-man system, and in subsequent contracts several Victuallers were associated in a kind of partnership[224], but the fundamental difficulty was one of finance, and this a mere multiplication of persons did little to meet. Thus there are complaints in 1671[225], and the difficulties were greatly increased when the Third Dutch War broke out in the spring of 1672. The Victuallers received such scanty payments from the Government that they had to carry on the service with their own money and credit[226], and eventually their condition in respect of funds became 'so exceeding strait' that they could not make proper deliveries[227]. This provoked the commanders at sea to take the field against them, and Prince Rupert was so annoyed that he declared that he would never thrive at sea till some were hanged on land[228]; and a little later expressed the opinion that the only way to deal with the Victuallers would be to send one of them on shipboard, there to stay in what condition his Majesty shall think fitting, till they have thoroughly victualled the fleet[229].

It is, on the whole, to the credit of the Victuallers that the complaints as to quality are not more numerous than they are during this period of large demands and scanty payment. If you would care for illustrations, on 15 March, 1671, on board the _Reserve_ 'there was a general complaint amongst the seamen, both of the badness of the meat and want of weight.'[230] On 6 September, 1672, there was a protest from the _Gloucester_ against the badness of the beer; but the Victuallers replied rather ambiguously that their beer was as good as ever was used in the fleet, and they counted themselves happy in that they had been afflicted with less bad beer 'by many degrees than ever was in such an action.'[231] On 29 September the commander of the _Augustine_ wrote to say that the doctor attributed the sickness among his men to the extreme badness of the beer[232]; while objection was also taken to an untimely dispensation of rotten cheese[233].

The victualling contract of which we possess the fullest details was that of 31 December, 1677[234]. From this it appears that the daily allowance of each man was 'one pound averdupois of good, clean, sweet, sound, well-bolted with a horse-cloth, well-baked, and well-conditioned wheaten biscuit; one gallon, wine measure, of beer' ... 'two pounds averdupois of beef, killed and made up with salt in England, of a well-fed ox ... for Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays'—or, instead of beef, for two of those days one pound averdupois of bacon, or salted English pork, of a well-fed hog ... and a pint of pease (Winchester measure) therewith' ...; 'and for Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, every man, besides the aforesaid allowance of bread and beer, to have by the day the eighth part of a full-sized North Sea cod of 24 inches long, or a sixth part of a haberdine 22 inches long, or a quarter part of the same sort if but 16 inches long ... or a pound averdupois of well-savoured Poor John, together with two ounces of butter, and four ounces of Suffolk cheese, or two-thirds of that weight of Cheshire.' The contract provides for English beef because there was a strong prejudice in the navy against Irish beef. Pepys quotes one writer as saying 'The Irish meat is very unwholesome, as well as lean, and rots our men'[235]; and John Hollond argues that to serve Irish beef was greatly to discourage the seamen[236]. 'Haberdine' is salt or sun-dried cod, and 'Poor John' is salted or dried hake.

In the case of vessels sailing 'to the southward of the latitude of 39 degrees N.' it was allowable for the contractors to vary the diet—'In lieu of a pound of biscuit, a pound of rusk of equal fineness; in lieu of a gallon of beer, a wine quart of beverage wine or half a wine pint of brandy ... in lieu of a piece of beef or pork with pease, three pounds of flour and a pound of raisins (not worse than Malaga), or in lieu of raisins, half a pound of currants or half a pound of beef suet pickled; in lieu of a sized fish, four pounds of Milan rice or two stockfishes of at least 16 inches long; in lieu of a pound of butter or two pounds of Suffolk cheese, a wine pint of sweet olive oil.' The separate victualling contract for the Mediterranean[237] provided for this lighter diet there in any case; but the variation was not popular among the seamen. In Captain Boteler's _Six Dialogues about Sea Services_, printed in 1685 but written some fifty years earlier, the 'admiral,' who, having just been appointed to the 'high-admiralship,' is occupied throughout the book in remedying an abysmal ignorance of naval matters by conversation with a 'sea-captain,' suggests that it would be better for the health of the mariners if the ordinary victualling were assimilated 'to the manner of foreign parts.' 'Without doubt, my lord,' replies the captain, 'our much, and indeed excessive feeding upon these salt meats at sea cannot but procure much unhealthiness and infection, and is questionless one main cause that our English are so subject to calentures, scarbots, and the like contagious diseases above all other nations; so that it were to be wished that we did more conform ourselves, if not to the Spanish and Italian nations, who live most upon rice-meal, oatmeal, biscake, figs, olives, oil, and the like, yet at the least to our neighbours the Dutch, who content themselves with a far less proportion of flesh and fish than we do, and instead thereof do make it up with pease, beans, wheat-flour, butter, cheese, and those white meats (as they are called).' To this view the admiral assents, but he adds, 'The difficulty consisteth in that the common seamen with us are so besotted on their beef and pork as they had rather adventure on all the calentures and scarbots in the world than to be weaned from their customary diet, or so much as to lose the least bit of it.' I should explain that a calenture is a fever, associated with delirium, to which sailors in the tropics were peculiarly liable; and scarbot is the scurvy[238].

Pepys expected much from the new contract of 1677[239], but the old complaints of delay and bad quality recur[240], and in 1683 his successors decided to abandon contract in favour of a state victualling department resembling in its general character the system of victualling 'upon account,'[241] established from 1655 to the Restoration. If we may infer anything from the silence of the _Admiralty Letters_, hitherto so vocal upon the subject, this change of method resulted in an improvement in the victualling of the navy, and on the whole the Victualling Office did not come out badly under the test of the mobilisation of 1688. The necessity for this had been realised about the middle of August, and at first the delays caused a good deal of anxiety; but by the end of October Pepys was able to report that the fleet is 'now (God be thanked) at the Gunfleet, and in very good condition there.'[242] There were still ships waiting to be got ready for sea, but of these he writes: 'I do with the same zeal continue to press the despatch of the rest that are behind that I would do for my victuals if I were hungry.'[243]

One of the earlier acts of the Restoration Government was the passing of a statute to incorporate into the system of English law the ordinances already in force during the Interregnum for regulating the discipline of the navy. Before 1652 such crimes as murder and manslaughter on board ship had been punishable by the ordinary law, and lesser offences by the 'known orders and customs of the seas';[244] but in that year the service was for the first time subjected to articles of war,[245] and it was upon these that the provisions of the Act of 1661[246] were founded. By this commanders at sea were empowered to try a great variety of offences by court-martial, and for many of these the maximum penalty was death. This Act continued to govern the navy until the reign of George II.

Another Act, of 1664,[247] dealt with two matters which had given a great deal of trouble to the Navy Board—the frequent embezzlement of naval stores, and the riots among disappointed seamen who could not get their pay. Efforts had been already made to prevent embezzlement by adopting special modes of manufacture for the King's rope, sails, and pennants, and by marking other stores with the broad arrow;[248] but there were some things, such as nails and some other kinds of ironwork, which could not be thus marked. Ironwork in particular was especially favoured by the depredators, because it could be so easily disposed of. In August, 1663, an illicit storehouse discovered at Deptford for the reception of nails, iron shot, and other embezzled ironwork, was described as the 'gulf that swallows up all from any place brought to him.'[249] The riots also had been a serious matter. The preamble of the Act gives as the ground of legislation 'diverse fightings, quarrellings, and disturbances ... in and about his Majesty's offices, yards, and stores,' and 'frequent differences and disorders' which had occurred on pay-days through 'the unreasonable turbulency of seamen.' To meet this state of things the Act invests the Navy Board with some of the powers of magistrates, and authorises them to punish riots and embezzlements with fine and imprisonment.

The Act was useful, but it did not entirely stop embezzlement. In September, 1666, a prize worth £300 was plundered of her lading, and 'will soon,' we are told, 'be dismantled of all her rigging, till she will not have a rope's end left to hang herself, or the thievish seamen that go in her.'[250] Chatham Harbour had always been 'miserably infested' with 'thieves and pilfering rogues,'[251] and in February, 1668, the clerk of the check wrote, 'our people's hands are of late so inured to stealing, that if the sawyers leave any work in the pits half cut, it's a hazard whether they find it in the morning.'[252] The state of things complained of was partly due to the uncertainty of pay. As far as the riots of seamen were concerned, the Act was a failure, as for their grievances force was no remedy. Pepys writes on 4 November, 1665[253], when the Act of 1664 was in full operation, 'After dinner I to the Office and there late, and much troubled to have a hundred seamen all the afternoon there, swearing below and cursing us, and breaking the glass windows, and swear they will pull the house down on Tuesday next. I sent word of this to Court, but nothing will help it but money and a rope.'

The period of Pepys's first Secretaryship witnessed several attempts to effect an improvement in naval discipline. Abuses connected with the unlimited number of cabins built on the King's ships, leading to 'the pestering of the ship,' 'contracting of sickness,' temptation to officers 'to neglect their duties and mis-spend their time in drinking and debauchery,' and 'the danger of fire,' led to the adoption, on 16 October, 1673, of a regular establishment of cabins for ships of each rate[254].

Another abuse of long standing had been the taking of merchants' goods in the King's ships. Sir Robert Slyngesbie had observed in his _Discourse_[255] in 1660 that this made it easy for the officers to sell the King's stores under the pretence that they were merchandise; to waste time in the ports which ought to have been spent at sea; and so to fill the ship's hold 'that they have no room to throw by their chests and other cumbersome things upon occasion of fight, whereby the gun decks are so encumbered that they cannot possibly make so good an opposition to an enemy as otherwise they might'; and, lastly, to defraud the custom-house. In 1674 Pepys took the matter up, and induced the King to take severe notice of the offenders[256], and in one particularly flagrant case of 1675 to offer the delinquent commander the alternative of imprisonment until trial by court-martial, or forfeiting the whole of his pay for the voyage, and 'making good to the poor of the Chest' at Chatham out of his own purse the value of the freight of the merchants' goods brought home by him[257].

The absence of commanders from their ships without leave gave a good deal of trouble during the period 1673-9. On 1 October, 1673, the Commissioners of the Admiralty ordered that the commanders should be 'pricked out of pay' for such absences[258]; but on 25 May, 1675, Pepys observes 'with much trouble' that the 'late resolutions' 'are already forgotten,' commanders 'appearing daily in the town' without leave[259]. On 9 July he 'spied' the captain of the _Lark_ 'at a distance sauntering up and down Covent Garden, as I have too often heretofore observed him spending his time when the King's service required his attendance on shipboard, as it doth at this day—a practice which shall never pass my knowledge in any commander (be he who he will) without my taking notice of it to his Majesty and my Lords of the Admiralty.'[260] Three years later complaints of this kind became very frequent, and so to the end of Pepys's first Secretaryship in 1679. On 24 March, 1678, he writes: 'I must confess I have never observed so frequent and scandalous instances as I do at this day by commanders hovering daily about the Court and town, though without the least pretence for it.'[261] 'I would to God,' he writes on 29 June to Sir Thomas Allin, 'you could offer me something that may be an effectual cure to the liberty taken by commanders of leaving their ships upon pretence of private occasions, and staying long in town, to the great dishonour of his Majesty's service, and corrupting the discipline of the Navy by their example ... it seeming impossible as well as unreasonable to keep the door constantly barred against commanders' desires of coming to town upon just and pressing occasions of their families, and of the other hand no less hard upon the King that his gracious nature as well as his service should be always liable to be imposed upon by commanders, as often as their humours, pleasures, or (it may be) vices shall incline them to come ashore. Pray think of it and help me herein, for, as I shall never be guilty of withstanding any gentleman's just occasions and desires in this matter, so I shall never be able to sit still and silent under the scandalous liberties that I see every day taken by commanders of playing with his Majesty's service, as if it were an indifferent matter whether they give any attendance on board their ships, so as they have their wages as if they did.'[262]

The official correspondence of 1673-9, although it reveals a grievous laxity of discipline[263], exhibits Pepys himself in a favourable light. He had a high sense of the honour of the service, and shewed himself both firm and humane in his dealings with his official inferiors. He was at great pains to keep himself informed of the proceedings of the commanders, and when breaches of discipline were reported to him, he took infinite trouble to arrive at the facts. His admonitions to the offenders, though sometimes a little unctuous, are as a rule in the best Pepysian style.