The Years of Endurance (40 page)

The good humour and sense which had characterised proceedings at Spithead were lacking at the Nore. The chief ringleader was an ex-schoolmaster who had recently taken the Government's quota money to get himself out of a debtor's prison. The son of an Exeter tradesman, Richard Parker, now thirty years of age, had been three times to sea, had served as a midshipman and had been court-martialled for insubordination. He marked his return to the Navy by helping to stir up trouble in the port flag and depot ship, the
Sandwich,
already rife with discontent through her foul and overcrowded condition. Like many other famous talkers he was full of good intentions, on which later apologists have dwelt at length. But he was without moral ba
llast. He was ambitious, vain, un
truthful, weak and so excitable as to seem at times mentally deranged. In his hands the smouldering grievances and resentment of rough and ignorant men became a terrible menace.

The mutineers at the Nore formulated no specific demands. It was mutiny without an objective. It disregarded the general settlement reached at Spithead. Like the French Revolution in miniature, it proceeded on its own momentum and degenerated into rebellion for the sake of rebellion. Parker, who styled himself President and kept up an Admiral's state, never stirred without the accompaniment of musical honours and banners. He told the men that the act for the increase of their pay was only a temporary Order in

¹
" Oh tell me I does to-day's event

Serve to illustrate what you meant ?

—Or will the soldiers riot ?

Oh ! if the Guards have not rebell'd

And if the naval fray is quell'd,

If Portsmouth yet is quiet;

^‘
Come, Windham ! celebrate with me

This day of joy and jubilee,

This day of
no
disaster !

Our Government is
not
o'er turned—

Huzza !—Our Fleet has
not
been burned ;

Our Army's
not
our master.'

Council and, when shown to be wrong, declared that it had no validity beyond the end of the year. Only after repeated requests for the men's grievances did he present Admiral Buckner—in whose presence he remained contemptuously covered—with an ultimatum of eight articles. One or these affirmed the right of seamen to dismiss their officers. But he refused to discuss matters with any one but the Lords of the Admiralty, insisting that they should wait on the delegates.

Meanwhile his followers ceaseless
ly paraded the streets of Sheer
ness or rowed in procession round the port, armed with
pistols and cutl
asses and accompanied by brass bands playing " Rule Britannia" and "Britons, Strike Home! " For the men, though gready enjoying their holiday and unwonted power, Englishwise refused to admit any disloyalty in their attitude. When the Government marched two regiments of militia into the place, Parker wrote to Admiral Buckner protesting at the " insult to the peaceable behaviour of the seamen." He added that the Lords of the Admiralty were themselves remiss in their duty in failing to attend where their appearance would give satisfaction.

As the Admiralty declined to obey, the mutineers proceeded to more vigorous measures. On May 23 rd they seized eight gunboats lying in Sheerness harbour and carried them off in triumph to the Nore. Next day they dispatched delegates to Yarmouth to urge the men of the North Sea Fleet to join them. Here Admiral Duncan, having received news that the Dutch fleet was embarking troops at the Texel, was about to sail for Ireland. Though the fatal infection was at work in his ships, he trusted to his personal popularity to overcome it. Only a week before he had dealt with a further outbreak in the
Adamant
by hoisting his flag in her and asking the turbulent crew whether any man dared to dispute his authority. When one of the ringleaders said he did, the giant Admiral had picked him up by the collar with one hand and, bearing him to the side of the vessel, had cried out, " My lads, look at this fellow who dares to deprive me of the command of the Fleet! " After which incipient mutiny in that ship at least dissolved in laughter.

But on
the
29th, while standing out for the Dutch coast, one after another of Duncan's ships left him and sailed home to the Nore. Only his flagship, the
Venerable,
and the now faithful
Adamant
kept their course. " I am sorry," wrote the gallant old man, " that

I have lived to see the pride of Britain disgrace the very name of it.'" Not since an enemy sailed up the Medway had such shame befallen the Navy.

Meanwhile on the evening of the 27th the Cabinet, faced by the gravity of the situation, resolved that the Admiralty must swallow its pride and go down to Sheerness. A new Royal Pardon was made out specifically covering the post-Spithead mutinies. That night Spencer, accompanied by two colleagues and the Secretary of the Board, set off again on his travels. But on reaching Sheerness on the 28th, he found what he had already suspected, that the Fleet's attitude was not unanimous and that many of the men were already sickening of Parker's presumption. He therefore refused to receive the delegates and, remaining in the Dockyard Commissioner's house, used old Admiral Buckner as an intermediary. And as Parker refused to abate anything from his demands, the First Lord prese
ntly
returned to London with his mission unaccomplished. With Parker to deal with, it is doubtful if any other course was ever possible.

It was now war to the knife. Neither side would admit of compromise. While the mutineers were enthusiastically welcoming Duncan's absconding battleships, the Government was giving orders, to cut their communications with the shore. All fraternisation between the Fleet and the Army was stopped and the sailors were to be resisted by force if they attempted to land. A Bill was hurried through Parliament extending the death penalty to persons having intercourse with rebellious seamen. Finally the provisions of the Fleet at the Nore were stopped. These
measures
which passed both Houses with only one dissentient vote, were stein in the extreme. But they reflected the mood of the nation. They were an instance of the English method of grappling with a problem only when it became unmistakably dangerous but then doing so without second thoughts or hesitation. For the rulers of England weakness was a thing of the past.

Nor did they stand on pride. The Army, whose loyalty was so vital in that hour, was treated with a new consideration. Increases in pay long asked for in vain by the military authorities were immediately granted by Parliament. The soldiers responded cheerfully: having been so often sneered at by the seamen for their inefficiency and defeats, it was a pleasant change to become the

heroes of the nation and be set to police the proud favourites. Under the command of Sir Charles Grey, the most popular officer in the Army, the troops kept close watch along the Kent and Essex shores and scarcely allowed a man to pass.
¹

Behind them was the nation. Its patriotism and sense of danger were alike aroused: fear of the invader waiting at the Texel and the intangible bogy of revolution that had grown up during the horrors of the Terror and the unreasoning years of war propaganda. To simple Britons Fox and his gang of traitors and defeatists lurked under the delegates' table in the stateroom of the
Queen Charlotte.
To frustrate their vile tricks and save the nation, thousands of middle-class citizens enrolled as " peace officers " or volunteered to serve in the flotilla of gunboats which Commodore Gower was organising in Long Reach to defend London from the mutineers. The East India Company placed all its ships at the Government's disposal: hundreds of private merchants followed its example.

The stoppage of the Fleet's victuals placed the delegates in a quandary. Since they would not go back,
they
had to go forward. On May 31st they decided to " show the country that they had it in their power to stop the trade of the river." But when on June 2nd they did so, seizing every ship entering or leaving the Thames, they merely united the country more vigorously than before. The

¹
The kind of treatment to which the despised " lobsters " were subjected in the seaports is illustrated by an extract from Commander Gardner's
Recollections
(16), describing an incident on Gosport beach when a party of soldiers was marching some French prisoners to Forton Jail :
"A
posse
of women rushed out of Rime's noted alley, and, pointing to the soldiers, sang the following beautiful ditty :

" Don't you see the ships a-coming ?

Don't you see them in full sail ?

Don't you see the ships a-coming

With the prizes at their tail ?

Oh ! my little rolling sailor,

Oh ! my little rolling he ;

I do love a jolly sailor,

Blithe and merry might he be.

" Sailors they get all the money,

Soldiers they get none but brass ;

I do love a jolly sailor, Soldiers they may kiss . . .

Oh ! my little rolling sailor,

Oh ! my little rolling he ;

I do love a jolly sailor,

Soldiers may be damned for me ! "

trading community, attacked at i
ts most sensitive point, was ap
palled and, because it was appalled, furious. So were the good people of the Thames-side towns who found tarred and feathered officers dumped by piratical crews on their waterfronts. This was plainly the prelude to the orgy of massacre, rape and arson which the anti-Jacobin cartoonists had taught them to fear. When the Government retaliated against the blockade by removing
the
buoys and beacons at the mouth of the Thames, there was not a dissentient voice from a seafaring people.

As the rest of the nation became more unanimous, the seamen became less so. The mutiny was popular so long as it remained a holiday demonstration with plenty of triumphal processions ashore, patriotic songs and brass bands and an unwonted freedom for airing grievances and slighting tyrannical officers. It became another thing altogether when it meant being cooped in idle ships, denied the liberty of the shore and its taverns and kept to short commons. But what really sapped the spirit of mutiny was the realisation that the nation, which however sparing it might be in other things hai always lavished unstinted praise on its sailors, now regarded them as traitors and French dupes. Even their brethren of Spithead and Plymouth, now returned to their allegiance, wrote to the men of the Nore expressing horror at their proceedings. This imputation was more than the sailors could bear. The sense of community and playing for one's side so strong in Englishmen kept them a little while longer loyal to the mutiny, but they became moody, suspicious of one another and openly critical of their leaders. " Dam
n
my eyes," wrote one of them in desperation to a silent, unrelenting Admiralty, " if
I
understand your
lingo or long Procla
mations but in short give us our Due at Once and no more at it, till we go in search of the Rascals the Eneymes of our Country."
¹
In such a mood their attempts to celebrate Oakapple Day and the King's Birthday on June
5
th,
²
which struck their compatriots as an impertinence, assumed a pathetic significance.

On June
6th
the Government formally declared the mutineers rebels, though still extending its offer of pardon to all who should submit except the ringleaders. About the same time it became known in the Fleet that Parker had been keeping back the terms of

¹
Manwaring and Dobre
e,
201.

²
It actually fell
on
the 4th, a Sunday
.

this offer from his followers. Discontent at his admiral's airs and peremptory ways had been growing for some time: it now turned to open murmuring. The more popular officers detained aboard the ships were quick to take advantage of the change of temperature: and the sober seamen who had never approved of the mutiny began to come into their own.

The first sign of collapse came on the morning of the 9th when Parker, sensing the altered mood of the men and desperately resolving to take the hungry Fleet over to the Texel, gave the order to put to sea. Not a vessel stirred. The mutiny had come full circle. On the same day the officers of the
Leopard
seized control of the ship from the divided and disillusioned crew and set sail for the Lower Hope. The example was at once followed by the
Repulse
and, despite a desultory fire from the rest of the Fleet, both ships made good their escape.