Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (468 page)

They loved to grumble, those old salts, for as soon as one had shot off his grievance his neighbour would follow with another, each more bitter than the last.

“Look at our sails!” cried Captain Foley.  “Put a French and a British ship at anchor together, and how can you tell which is which?”

“Frenchy has his fore and maintop-gallant masts about equal,” said my father.

“In the old ships, maybe, but how many of the new are laid down on the French model?  No, there’s no way of telling them at anchor.  But let them hoist sail, and how d’you tell them then?”

“Frenchy has white sails,” cried several.

“And ours are black and rotten.  That’s the difference.  No wonder they outsail us when the wind can blow through our canvas.”

“In the
Speedy
,” said Cochrane, “the sailcloth was so thin that, when I made my observation, I always took my meridian through the foretopsail and my horizon through the foresail.”

There was a general laugh at this, and then at it they all went again, letting off into speech all those weary broodings and silent troubles which had rankled during long years of service, for an iron discipline prevented them from speaking when their feet were upon their own quarter-decks.  One told of his powder, six pounds of which were needed to throw a ball a thousand yards.  Another cursed the Admiralty Courts, where a prize goes in as a full-rigged ship and comes out as a schooner.  The old captain spoke of the promotions by Parliamentary interest which had put many a youngster into the captain’s cabin when he should have been in the gun-room.  And then they came back to the difficulty of finding crews for their vessels, and they all together raised up their voices and wailed.

“What is the use of building fresh ships,” cried Foley, “when even with a ten-pound bounty you can’t man the ships that you have got?”

But Lord Cochrane was on the other side in this question.

“You’d have the men, sir, if you treated them well when you got them,” said he.  “Admiral Nelson can get his ships manned.  So can Admiral Collingwood.  Why?  Because he has thought for the men, and so the men have thought for him.  Let men and officers know and respect each other, and there’s no difficulty in keeping a ship’s company.  It’s the infernal plan of turning a crew over from ship to ship and leaving the officers behind that rots the Navy.  But I have never found a difficulty, and I dare swear that if I hoist my pennant to-morrow I shall have all my old
Speedies
back, and as many volunteers as I care to take.”

“That is very well, my lord,” said the old captain, with some warmth; “when the Jacks hear that the
Speedy
took fifty vessels in thirteen months, they are sure to volunteer to serve with her commander.  Every good cruiser can fill her complement quickly enough.  But it is not the cruisers that fight the country’s battles and blockade the enemy’s ports.  I say that all prize-money should be divided equally among the whole fleet, and until you have such a rule, the smartest men will always be found where they are of least service to any one but themselves.”

This speech produced a chorus of protests from the cruiser officers and a hearty agreement from the line-of-battleship men, who seemed to be in the majority in the circle which had gathered round.  From the flushed faces and angry glances it was evident that the question was one upon which there was strong feeling upon both sides.

“What the cruiser gets the cruiser earns,” cried a frigate captain.

“Do you mean to say, sir,” said Captain Foley, “that the duties of an officer upon a cruiser demand more care or higher professional ability than those of one who is employed upon blockade service, with a lee coast under him whenever the wind shifts to the west, and the topmasts of an enemy’s squadron for ever in his sight?”

“I do not claim higher ability, sir.”

“Then why should you claim higher pay?  Can you deny that a seaman before the mast makes more in a fast frigate than a lieutenant can in a battleship?”

“It was only last year,” said a very gentlemanly-looking officer, who might have passed for a buck upon town had his skin not been burned to copper in such sunshine as never bursts upon London - “it was only last year that I brought the old
Alexander
back from the Mediterranean, floating like an empty barrel and carrying nothing but honour for her cargo.  In the Channel we fell in with the frigate
Minerva
from the Western Ocean, with her lee ports under water and her hatches bursting with the plunder which had been too valuable to trust to the prize crews.  She had ingots of silver along her yards and bowsprit, and a bit of silver plate at the truck of the masts.  My Jacks could have fired into her, and would, too, if they had not been held back.  It made them mad to think of all they had done in the south, and then to see this saucy frigate flashing her money before their eyes.”

“I cannot see their grievance, Captain Ball,” said Cochrane.

“When you are promoted to a two-decker, my lord, it will possibly become clearer to you.”

“You speak as if a cruiser had nothing to do but take prizes.  If that is your view, you will permit me to say that you know very little of the matter.  I have handled a sloop, a corvette, and a frigate, and I have found a great variety of duties in each of them.  I have had to avoid the enemy’s battleships and to fight his cruisers.  I have had to chase and capture his privateers, and to cut them out when they run under his batteries.  I have had to engage his forts, to take my men ashore, and to destroy his guns and his signal stations.  All this, with convoying, reconnoitring, and risking one’s own ship in order to gain a knowledge of the enemy’s movements, comes under the duties of the commander of a cruiser.  I make bold to say that the man who can carry these objects out with success has deserved better of the country than the officer of a battleship, tacking from Ushant to the Black Rocks and back again until she builds up a reef with her beef-bones.”

“Sir,” said the angry old sailor, “such an officer is at least in no danger of being mistaken for a privateersman.”

“I am surprised, Captain Bulkeley,” Cochran retorted hotly, “that you should venture to couple the names of privateersman and King’s officer.”

There was mischief brewing among these hot-headed, short-spoken salts, but Captain Foley changed the subject to discuss the new ships which were being built in the French ports.  It was of interest to me to hear these men, who were spending their lives in fighting against our neighbours, discussing their character and ways.  You cannot conceive - you who live in times of peace and charity - how fierce the hatred was in England at that time against the French, and above all against their great leader.  It was more than a mere prejudice or dislike.  It was a deep, aggressive loathing of which you may even now form some conception if you examine the papers or caricatures of the day.  The word “Frenchman” was hardly spoken without “rascal” or “scoundrel” slipping in before it.  In all ranks of life and in every part of the country the feeling was the same.  Even the Jacks aboard our ships fought with a viciousness against a French vessel which they would never show to Dane, Dutchman, or Spaniard.

If you ask me now, after fifty years, why it was that there should have been this virulent feeling against them, so foreign to the easy-going and tolerant British nature, I would confess that I think the real reason was fear.  Not fear of them individually, of course - our foulest detractors have never called us faint-hearted - but fear of their star, fear of their future, fear of the subtle brain whose plans always seemed to go aright, and of the heavy hand which had struck nation after nation to the ground.  We were but a small country, with a population which, when the war began, was not much more than half that of France.  And then, France had increased by leaps and bounds, reaching out to the north into Belgium and Holland, and to the south into Italy, whilst we were weakened by deep-lying disaffection among both Catholics and Presbyterians in Ireland.  The danger was imminent and plain to the least thoughtful.  One could not walk the Kent coast without seeing the beacons heaped up to tell the country of the enemy’s landing, and if the sun were shining on the uplands near Boulogne, one might catch the flash of its gleam upon the bayonets of manoeuvring veterans.  No wonder that a fear of the French power lay deeply in the hearts of the most gallant men, and that fear should, as it always does, beget a bitter and rancorous hatred.

The seamen did not speak kindly then of their recent enemies.  Their hearts loathed them, and in the fashion of our country their lips said what the heart felt.  Of the French officers they could not have spoken with more chivalry, as of worthy foemen, but the nation was an abomination to them.  The older men had fought against them in the American War, they had fought again for the last ten years, and the dearest wish of their hearts seemed to be that they might be called upon to do the same for the remainder of their days.  Yet if I was surprised by the virulence of their animosity against the French, I was even more so to hear how highly they rated them as antagonists.  The long succession of British victories which had finally made the French take to their ports and resign the struggle in despair had given all of us the idea that for some reason a Briton on the water must, in the nature of things, always have the best of it against a Frenchman.  But these men who had done the fighting did not think so.  They were loud in their praise of their foemen’s gallantry, and precise in their reasons for his defeat.  They showed how the officers of the old French Navy had nearly all been aristocrats.  How the Revolution had swept them out of their ships, and the force been left with insubordinate seamen and no competent leaders.  This ill-directed fleet had been hustled into port by the pressure of the well-manned and well-commanded British, who had pinned them there ever since, so that they had never had an opportunity of learning seamanship.  Their harbour drill and their harbour gunnery had been of no service when sails had to be trimmed and broadsides fired on the heave of an Atlantic swell.  Let one of their frigates get to sea and have a couple of years’ free run in which the crew might learn their duties, and then it would be a feather in the cap of a British officer if with a ship of equal force he could bring down her colours.

Such were the views of these experienced officers, fortified by many reminiscences and examples of French gallantry, such as the way in which the crew of the
L’Orient
had fought her quarter-deck guns when the main-deck was in a blaze beneath them, and when they must have known that they were standing over an exploding magazine.  The general hope was that the West Indian expedition since the peace might have given many of their fleet an ocean training, and that they might be tempted out into mid-Channel if the war were to break out afresh.  But would it break out afresh?  We had spent gigantic sums and made enormous exertions to curb the power of Napoleon and to prevent him from becoming the universal despot of Europe.  Would the Government try it again?  Or were they appalled by the gigantic load of debt which must bend the backs of many generations unborn?  Pitt was there, and surely he was not a man to leave his work half done.

And then suddenly there was a bustle at the door.  Amid the grey swirl of the tobacco-smoke I could catch a glimpse of a blue coat and gold epaulettes, with a crowd gathering thickly round them, while a hoarse murmur rose from the group which thickened into a deep-chested cheer.  Every one was on his feet, peering and asking each other what it might mean.  And still the crowd seethed and the cheering swelled.

“What is it?  What has happened?” cried a score of voices.

“Put him up!  Hoist him up!” shouted somebody, and an instant later I saw Captain Troubridge appear above the shoulders of the crowd.  His face was flushed, as if he were in wine, and he was waving what seemed to be a letter in the air.  The cheering died away, and there was such a hush that I could hear the crackle of the paper in his hand.

“Great news, gentlemen!” he roared.  “Glorious news!  Rear-Admiral Collingwood has directed me to communicate it to you.  The French Ambassador has received his papers to-night.  Every ship on the list is to go into commission.  Admiral Cornwallis is ordered out of Cawsand Bay to cruise off Ushant.  A squadron is starting for the North Sea and another for the Irish Channel.”

He may have had more to say, but his audience could wait no longer.  How they shouted and stamped and raved in their delight!  Harsh old flag-officers, grave post-captains, young lieutenants, all were roaring like schoolboys breaking up for the holidays.  There was no thought now of those manifold and weary grievances to which I had listened.  The foul weather was passed, and the landlocked sea-birds would be out on the foam once more.  The rhythm of “God Save the King” swelled through the babel, and I heard the old lines sung in a way that made you forget their bad rhymes and their bald sentiments.  I trust that you will never hear them so sung, with tears upon rugged cheeks, and catchings of the breath from strong men.  Dark days will have come again before you hear such a song or see such a sight as that.  Let those talk of the phlegm of our countrymen who have never seen them when the lava crust of restraint is broken, and when for an instant the strong, enduring fires of the North glow upon the surface.  I saw them then, and if I do not see them now, I am not so old or so foolish as to doubt that they are there.