Every Man Will Do His Duty (2 page)

In
Every Man Will Do His Duty,
we took a further step in this direction. This time we hoped to draw the dedicated readers of novels about the Royal Navy in this period to some of the remarkable nonfiction accounts written by the men who were actually there. To that end, we selected works of the period that describe events that have inspired not only Patrick O’Brian, but also C. S. Forester, Alexander Kent, C. Northcote Parkinson, Dudley Pope, et al.

We chose a series of cohesive, short essays that we think are well-written examples of the literature and that touch on many of the highlights of the wars. These passages have certainly been pored over by historians of maritime affairs, although some are rather obscure. We presented our collection in a way that leads the reader chronologically through the course of the period. Our purpose was to create a readable and interesting book that brings readers one step closer to original materials.

We excerpted from previously published memoirs, diaries, and accounts in an attempt to represent the true voices of the age. All the pieces in this volume are evocative of life in the navy during the age of sail, and, in this respect, all are good sources. While we can be certain that most of these pieces were actually written by the seamen who participated in the events, a few raise doubts in the historian’s mind. In these cases, the documentary evidence has not yet been found that would allow researchers to subject these works to the closest scrutiny. The pieces we selected have been convincing enough to satisfy earlier generations, even those who lived at the time; in one or two cases, however, they still may not have been written by the sailors themselves, from their own experience. They may have been ghostwritten or incomplete; some have surely been retouched by overzealous publishers. Nevertheless, they are evocative of the era and persuasive as nonfiction descriptions, if not testimonies of actual experience.

The works collected here are the predecessors of, and even the direct sources for, historical novelists. Any serious examination of the maritime literature for this period must start with published pieces such as these. Historians will eventually compare them to other forms of evidence that they find. In the meantime, modern readers can see these pieces on a variety of levels, learn from them, begin to ask questions about them, and, above all, enjoy reading them.

JOHN B. HATTENDORF

P
RIOR TO THE BATTLE
of Trafalgar, Admiral Lord Nelson issued to the captains of his fleet one of the lines for which he was so revered: “In case signals can neither be seen nor perfectly understood, no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy.” Nelson was an expert at distilling naval tactics down to a level readily understood by individual captains, their officers, and men: Be flexible and responsive to the immediate tactical situation by looking for and making the most of opportunities; get each ship and its guns into effective action against the enemy; and maintain that action as long as possible, optimally until the enemy ship strikes or is sunk. The key was getting all of the ships into action, something that had been a recurring problem in naval tactics since the seventeenth century. At the same time, Nelson appealed directly to their sense of courage, a virtue of which he was the paragon.

Just before the battle actually began on October 21, 1805, Nelson had another message to deliver, this time to the seamen of his fleet. The sentiment he chose, “England expects that every man will do his duty,” was singularly brilliant. Nelson was clearly out for glory that day, in the form of French and Spanish blood. This understated message swept away the pall of grievances held by the seamen of the British fleet in a resounding battle cry. Nelson was in touch with these men, many of whom were conscripted against their will and were subsequently governed by captains who had little choice but swift and merciless punishment to keep order.

As William Robinson, one lower-deck hand who was present that day and who deeply resented the arbitrary and excessive use of the cat-o’-nine-tails, later wrote in his memoirs:

How happy must that officer be, who has the consolation to know that he was beloved by his ship’s company. … Out of a fleet of nine sail of the line I was with, there were only two captains thus distinguished. … Those two ships beat us in reefing and furling; for they were not in fear and dread, well knowing they would not be punished without a real and just cause. Those men would have stormed a battery, or have engaged an enemy at sea, with more vigour and effect than the other seven; for the crews of those seven felt themselves so degraded at being wantonly and unmanly beaten about, that their spirits were partly broken; and in going to battle, the only thing that could stimulate, cheer, and inspire them, was not veneration for their commanders, but the recollection of the land that gave them birth, OLD ENGLAND.(pp. 136–37)

Clearly, Robinson—better known by his publishing pseudonym Jack Nastyface—had an ax to grind, and he may have overstated his case. A fighting captain and a friend of the foremast jack, Nelson was much esteemed by his seamen as well as his country. Still, he was well aware that, given the harsh nature of life on board a man-of-war and the dubious and often cruel means of naval recruitment, the undivided loyalty of the men of his fleet lay primarily in one place—their country. He knew that this loyalty was so strong and so deeply felt that, in the face of the enemy, it would overcome all else.

Every Man Will Do His Duty
presents some of the voices of the seamen and officers who fought and lived at sea during the French Revolutionary War (1793–1802), the Napoleonic War (1803–1815), and the War of 1812 (1812–15), which were interrupted only by a brief period of peace, the roughly year-long Peace of Amiens beginning on March 25, 1802. Notwithstanding an often rapacious desire for the pecuniary rewards of victory, the seamen who tell their stories here, whether British or American, were, generally speaking, motivated by national and personal pride, as well as for the love and respect of their shipmates.

Many of the great and historically important moments of the Napoleonic wars are captured in this reader, among them the Glorious First of June (1794), the Battle of Cape St. Vincent (1797), the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), the (land) Battle of Corunna (1809), and the frigate action between HMS
Macedonian
and USS
United States
(1812). In that
sense, this book serves as a selective history of these wars, as told by eyewitnesses.

To cover all of the great fleet actions and the most significant frigate actions would consume far more space than one volume allows. Instead this book tries to capture the nature of life and war at sea in square-rigged ships—not just the heroic moments but the deprivations, the monotony, the pleasures, the pain, the justice and injustice. Cochrane’s cruise of the Mediterranean in 1801 and Porter’s cruise of the South Pacific in 1812, 1813, and 1814, while not as historically significant as the previously mentioned actions, perhaps better capture the mystique of life at sea and the political nature and psychological effects of life on board a man-of-war.

Jacob Nagle’s two narratives and James Gardner’s account are especially strong at evoking the personalities of man-of-war men and their daily lives, on land as well as at sea. The accounts of Robert Eastwick and George Little, both merchantmen, reveal the effects of the wars on men outside the navy Eastwick experiences, in the Bay of Bengal, the frigate action between the French
La Forte
and HMS
La Sybille
while prisoner on board the enemy, and Little turns to privateering as a means of making a living, only to be captured by cannibals on the former Spanish Main and then imprisoned in England.

IN THE CASE
of the lower-deck seamen, these passages are akin to oral histories, frequently told in rough diction and jumping from one episode to another with little transition. These seamen wear their grievances in scars across their backs and frequently expound on the injustice and arbitrariness of the Royal Navy’s strict disciplinarians. If Studs Terkel had been there to document this “good war,” these are the accounts that he would have heard. In other cases, such as Drinkwater Bethune’s description of the Battle of Cape St. Vincent and Captain David Porter’s account of the action between USS
Essex
and HMS
Phoebe,
the presentation is more studied, often with a sense of creating or correcting history—the former wrote to glorify Nelson, the latter partly to document the violations of the rules of war by his opponent—and certainly from a more polished hand.

Whether well educated or less so, the writers have frequently borrowed from historians of the day to help set their experiences in place. Basil Hall, for example, frequently cites General Sir William Francis Patrick Napier’s history of the Peninsular War when setting the scene for the Battle of Corunna, which he witnessed.

In some cases the seamen are working from journals or writing shortly after the events occurred. William Henry Dillon recorded the events of his
career, which included a stint in the Impress Service and several years in French prisons, in a series of letters to his first cousin and good friend Sir John Joseph Dillon. Later he used these letters in creating his seven-notebook, twenty-six-hundred-page manuscript. Bethune’s account of the Battle of Cape St. Vincent was originally written as a letter to his father.

Other stories, such as George Little’s, were written well after the event by aging and often financially strapped seamen. Many of these state in apologetic prefaces that they were compelled to write by friends and family, who so desired the authors to record their lives at sea that their humble natures were forcibly overcome. Little was, in fact, blind, and so dictated his story.

The degree of detail and flow of events correspond to the amount of time between the action and the writing, and whether or not the writer has kept any sort of diary. Each type of account has its own intrinsic merits and demerits that must be borne in mind during the reading. Accounts written very near the time of the event often contain fairly accurate dialogue and crisp details. But too much detail can be tedious, and enthusiasm combined with lack of perspective can cloud the author’s judgment. More distantly scribed sea accounts are frequently well seasoned from the retellings and should be taken with a grain of salt. The minutiae that indicate accuracy have been washed away by the sea of years. The gauntlet of time that has buried lesser accounts has also frequently rounded the surviving narrative, like it has King Offa’s dyke, into a beautiful, mythic form.

SINCE THESE ARE
by and large the accounts of the men who fought the battles, their vantage points were frequently limited. Midshipman Dillon describes the Glorious First of June from the lower deck of HMS
Defence,
the first ship into action. Locked in a cabin on board the French frigate
La Forte,
merchant captain Eastwick describes a battle—between two powerful frigates,
La Forte,
50 guns, and HMS
La Sybille,
44 guns—that he didn’t see. He did, however, have to duck friendly shot that pierced the cabin. Together these portraits of war tell not just what happened but what it actually was like to be there.

Some of these accounts, like Beatty’s, Cochrane’s, Gardner’s, and Robinson’s, are considered classics. As Christopher Lloyd writes in his 1955 introduction to James Anthony Gardner’s comparatively “racy and colourful” memoirs, “These recollections have been the favourite reading of members of the Navy Record Society since they were first printed for the Society in 1906.” Others here are less well known but equally as powerful. Jacob Nagle’s was only recently discovered by Professor John Dann and published for the first time in 1988.

While the viewpoint is primarily British, there are several Americans represented here. Some of the Americans fought in the Royal Navy by choice—Nagle fought against the British during the American Revolution and for them during the French Revolutionary War—and some were coerced. While the rest of his shipmates frolicked on land just prior to embarking on a cruise, James Durand slept on board his ship to avoid any risk of falling prey to the hot press in Plymouth. They escaped it; he didn’t, and he bitterly resented the treatment he and other Yankee sailors received on board a British man-of-war. Samuel Leech, on the other hand, fought for the British, was taken in a bloody frigate action by the USS
United States,
and later shipped in the U.S. Navy. Such were the vagaries of war.

ONE FINAL NOTE
on the episodes that follow: you will notice that some authors appear more than once. For instance, William Richardson, who tells of his early service after being impressed in India in 1793, later narrates the interesting action at Basque Roads, where, he complains, those who performed the dangerous work—rigging fire-ships with explosives—received no recognition for it. William Dillon, who wrote one of the most extensive and detailed diaries of the wars, gives two accounts, one of the Glorious First of June and another of a much-honored single-ship action in which he fought against great odds. And Basil Hall narrates two episodes in
Every Man Will Do His Duty,
only one of which is a battle on land, where he is merely an observer. But Hall’s accounts vividly capture life in the Royal Navy during the time. Being present with him at the Battle of Corunna is truly thrilling.

I hope that the time lapse between the stories of these writers, and several others who appear more than once in this book, sheds some light on how the authors’ lives and naval careers progressed and how they become more interesting as people. Ultimately this war, like any war, was fought by individuals, and they had to make very personal decisions, often under great duress.

IN ANY EVENT,
I hope this collection presents an informative cross-section of the firsthand accounts that exist from the great Age of Nelson, that it is evocative of the many varied experiences of naval life during this period, and that it catches many of the highlights of the period’s memoirs. Above all, I hope that these accounts provide today’s readers, as they have those of previous generations, splendid reading.