Women Sailors & Sailors' Women (22 page)

Why the truth in this instance?

I frequently saw him come out of Mr. Berry's cabin, apparently very red and high coloured more than he usually is.

 

In his defense Lieutenant Berry called a relation, William Sandell, an apothecary and male midwife from London, who said that Berry had consulted him in the past because he had problems with impotency and that he believed it would have been impossible for him to have committed an act of sodomy. The
Hazard
's surgeon said he had examined Berry and believed he was capable of an erection, but stressed he could not be certain of this “as it involves some nice and intricate parts of physiology.”

The court considered the evidence and came to the conclusion that Lieutenant Berry was guilty of sodomy and the other charges of uncleanness and was therefore condemned to be hanged. The sentence was carried out on October 19, 1807, and Berry was hanged from the starboard fore-yardarm of the
Hazard.

Hanging was not the only sentence meted out to those condemned under the 29th Article. At a court-martial in December 1754, Thomas Landerkin of HMS
Porcupine
was found guilty of having committed uncleanness and was sentenced to receive twenty lashes with a cat-o'-nine-tails on his bare back alongside every ship and sloop in commission at Plymouth. The floggings were to be inflicted at two different times, and he was ordered to be dismissed from the service afterward.
³
Robert Paton, the boatswain of HMS
Volage,
received a variation of this punishment, which involved the maximum public humiliation. In February 1800, he appeared before a court-martial at his own request for attempting to commit an unnatural crime. He was found guilty and was sentenced to receive 200 lashes and to be drummed ashore with a halter about his neck “in as disgraceful a manner as possible.” He was also stripped from his post as a boatswain, lost all pay due to him, and was ordered incapable of ever serving in the Royal Navy in any capacity.
⁴

Considering that the navy cooped up thousands of young men for months on end without access to women, it is surprising how few homosexual incidents resulted in prosecutions. When one looks through the massive leather-bound volumes in the Public Record Office that contain the summaries of naval courts-martial, one rarely finds cases of “unnatural crimes” among the multitude of other offenses. During the course of the Seven Years' War of 1756 to 1763, for instance, there were only eleven courts-martial for sodomy, four of which led to acquittals. Since there were some 70,000 or 80,000 men serving at sea during the war, one can only conclude that homosexuality was either overlooked, was not reported because of the savage punishments, or was very rare indeed. In 1795, no cases of sodomy appear among the offenses listed in the summary of courts-martial. In 1800, when the naval war against Revolutionary France was at its height, there were 272 courts-martial.
⁵
Analyzing the various offenses for which the accused men were charged, we find that 64 courts-martial were held for men charged with desertion; 34 for drunkenness and neglect of duty; 25 for mutinous behavior and seditious language; 21 for robbery, fraud, and embezzling stores; 20 for attempting to desert; 18 for being absent without leave; 14 for riotous and disorderly behavior and bad language; 13 for captains and officers charged with the loss of their ship; and then came such offenses as striking a superior officer and sleeping on watch. There were four cases of sodomy that year. Thomas Hubbard and George Hynes, both of HMS
St. George,
were found guilty and hanged; Robert Paton of HMS
Volage
we have already noted; and Joshua Thomas was charged with the unnatural sin of sodomy on a beast but was acquitted.

The fact is that the vast majority of seamen, when not actively engaged in working the ship, seem to have spent far more time thinking about women than about men. They wrote letters to women, they sang sea chanties and ballads about women, they tattooed their bodies with the names of women, they scratched pictures of women on whales' teeth and walrus tusks, they collected souvenirs in foreign ports to take back to their women, and they treasured mementos from the women they had left behind at home. And they thought about their women when they went into battle. Captain Collingwood, the friend of Nelson and his second in command at Trafalgar, wrote to his father-in-law shortly after the Battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794 and gave him a report of the action. He said that the night before the battle was spent in watching and praying and preparations for the next day, “and many a blessing did I send forth to my Sarah, lest I should never bless her more.” At dawn on June 1, the British fleet bore down on the French fleet under cloudy skies with a fresh breeze from the southwest. As the two lines of ships came within range, the French ships began firing their broadsides. Collingwood was flag-captain of the
Barfleur
and was on the quarterdeck with Admiral Bowyer as the thunder of the French guns boomed out across the ocean. “It was then near ten o'clock. I observed to the Admiral, that about that time our wives were going to church, but that I thought the peal we should ring about the Frenchmen's ears would outdo their parish bells.”
⁶

Collingwood married Sarah Blackett in 1790, and in the four years before the battle she gave birth to two daughters. Collingwood was devoted to them but was fated to spend most of his married years at sea, blockading the French ports. He was a courageous and able commander who put his service to his country before all else, but his letters betray his continual regret at being apart from his loved ones. “Would to God that this war were happily concluded!” he wrote in May 1800. “It is anguish enough to be thus separated from my family; but that my Sarah should, in my absence, be suffering from illness, is complete misery.” By October of the same year he was longing for peace to bring an end to the endless patrols off the French coast: “I have come to another resolution, which is when this war is happily terminated, to think no more of ships but pass the rest of my days in the bosom of my family, where I think my prospects of happiness are equal to any man's.”
⁷

In February 1802, during the negotiations for the Peace of Amiens, Collingwood was able to return home to spend a few precious months with his family in their house on the banks of the beautiful River Wansbeck. He spent an idyllic summer planting and cultivating the garden and getting to know his daughters, aged nine and ten. In the spring of 1803, the war was resumed and he was called back to sea. He never saw his home again. In August 1805, exactly two months before the Battle of Trafalgar, he was aboard the
Dreadnought
off Cádiz. As his squadron kept watch on the movements of the enemy fleet, his home was constantly in his thoughts. “Pray tell me all you can think about our family,” he wrote to his wife, “and about the beauties of your domain, the oaks, the woodlands, and the verdant meads.”
⁸

After Nelson's death at Trafalgar, Collingwood had to take over temporary command of the British Mediterranean fleet. The administrative burden that this placed on his shoulders was daunting. “How I shall ever get through all the letters which are written to me, I know not,” he wrote to Sarah in December 1805. “I labour from dawn till midnight, till I can hardly see; and my hearing fails me too. . . .”
⁹
His hopes of getting home were dashed when he was formally appointed to the command. A deeply conscientious man, he wore himself out with his unflagging attention to his duties. In February 1810, he was on board his flagship, the
Ville de Paris,
when he became so seriously ill that he was persuaded to hand over his command to Rear Admiral Martin so that he could return to England to recuperate. His ship cleared the harbor on March 6, 1810, and set sail for home, but he died the next day. A postmortem examination was carried out, and the surgeon concluded that his death was caused by a contraction of the pylorus, brought on by the confinement on board ship and by his continually bending over a desk while engaged in his correspondence.

Letters from other naval officers at sea betray their constant preoccupation with home and family. George Rodney, who achieved fame late in his life as commander of the victorious British fleet at the Battle of the Saints, married Jenny Compton when he was a thirty-three-year-old captain. She was the second daughter of the sixth Earl of Northampton. The marriage took place in London in January 1753, and the following year they acquired a town house on Hill Street near Hyde Park. Their letters reveal the warmth of their love for each other and their unhappiness at the separation caused by naval life. Rodney told her that ambition had lost all its charms and that to have a wife and children meant more to him than anything else, “for whatever I am about or doing, I think of nothing but Hill Street, and the dear pledges I left there with you.”
¹⁰
Jenny replied that nothing could make up for her sufferings while he was away: “without you life is not worth my care, nor would millions make me happy.” She concluded, “I hope you will then, as soon as you possibly can, give up that vile ship that causes us so much pain.”
¹¹

Rodney could not abandon his naval career, but he did apply to Lord Anson for a transfer from HMS
Fougueux,
which was due to be ordered to sea, to the 90-gun ship
Prince George,
which he believed would be stationed at Portsmouth for the foreseeable future. Anson approved the transfer, and Rodney took lodgings in Portsmouth so that Jenny could join him. They were together only briefly, for within weeks he received orders that the
Prince George
was to join the Channel Squadron under Sir Edward Hawke. Jenny was distraught at their parting and later wrote to apologize for not being able to control her emotions. She explained that “when the time approached that you (who are far more dear to me than my own life) was to leave me, I could not support it with the patience I am afraid I ought.”
¹²
By August 1755, Rodney's ship was off Cape Finisterre on the northwest tip of Spain. In the great cabin of the
Prince George,
he sat down at his desk and wrote “to tell my dearest Jenny that thank God I am very well but not in the least satisfied with being at sea.” He told her that their two little boys were ever in his mind, waking and sleeping, and he thanked God for bestowing on him a woman of virtue whose love meant more to him than the whole world. During the next sixteen months they met briefly when his ship put in to Portsmouth, but then in December 1756, Jenny became seriously ill. Rodney took a leave of absence and was by her side when she died on January 29, 1757, at their house on Hill Street. They had been married only four years.

The correspondence between Rodney and his wife, Jenny, provides a glimpse of the travails that have faced naval families over the centuries. It is vivid, but it is fragmentary. By comparison, the correspondence between Admiral Boscawen and his wife, Fanny, provides a more detailed and illuminating account of their lives for certain periods when he was serving at sea. Her letters were published in 1940 in a biography entitled
Admiral's Wife,
and they will be examined in chapter 14, which looks at the fate of the women left behind. Boscawen's letters to his wife from the years 1755 and 1756 were published in 1952.

Boscawen never achieved the fame of Rodney, Hawke, Nelson, and other British admirals who commanded ships in celebrated naval victories. Much of his early naval career was spent in the West Indies. He later headed an expedition to North America that led to the capture of the fortified town of Louisbourg, situated at the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in 1758, and the following year, as commander in chief in the Mediterranean, he inflicted a crushing defeat on the French fleet at Lagos Bay, Portugal. During the course of his naval career he accumulated enough prize money to be able to acquire Hatchlands Park near Guildford. At first he and his wife lived in the old Tudor house on the estate, but later they built an imposing redbrick mansion and commissioned Robert Adam to carry out the internal decoration of the principal rooms. The planning of the spacious grounds was a major preoccupation of Boscawen while he was at sea, and his wife was much consumed with running the estate.

Fanny Boscawen was perhaps the most intelligent of the many accomplished women who married naval officers in the eighteenth century. She was born at St. Clere in Kent in 1719. Her father was a member of Parliament and high sheriff of Kent, and her mother was a descendant of John Evelyn, the diarist. Fanny first met Boscawen when he was home on leave in 1738 and was staying with his elder sister in Kent. He was then a twenty-seven-year-old captain, and she was eighteen. They continued to meet in Kent and were married in December 1742. She became a well-known figure in London society and was a friend of David Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Dr. Samuel Johnson. In his
Life of Johnson,
James Boswell wrote, “her manners are the most agreeable, and her conversation the best of any lady with whom I ever had the happiness to be acquainted.” She became a close friend of Elizabeth Montagu, and together they founded the “Blue-Stocking assemblies,” the object of which was to replace the game of whist with good conversation.

Fanny had no illusions about her looks, and there is a moving passage in one of her letters to Boscawen in which she writes, “Beauty and I were never acquainted. But may I not hope, dear husband, that you will find charms in my heart, the charms of duty and affection, that will endear me as much to you as if I were in the bloom of youth and beauty.”
¹³

Her charms did indeed endear her to Boscawen, who was devoted to her. “Don't conceive I live one day without thinking of you,” he wrote from on board the HMS
Torbay
some 300 miles out from England. “Rest assured, my dearest love, that I am well, that I love you, and think of you constantly. . . .”
¹⁴
He treasured the letters that she wrote to him when he was at sea; he arranged them in order and read them over and over again. Fanny was a wonderful writer. She kept Boscawen in touch with the activities of their children, described her friends, and detailed her life in London and on their country estate at Hatchlands with a revealing frankness.