Every Man Will Do His Duty (30 page)

All this was very creditable to the memory of poor Shakings; but, in the course of the day, the real secret of this extraordinary difficulty of taking a pig out of mourning was discovered. Two of the mids were detected in the very fact of tying on a bit of black bunting to the leg of a sow, from which the seamen declared they had already cut off crape and silk enough to have made her a complete suite of black.

On these fresh offences being reported, the whole party of us were ordered to the mast-head as a punishment. Some were sent to sit on the top-mast cross-trees, some on the top-gallant yard-arms, and one small gentleman being perched at the jibboom end, was very properly balanced abaft by another little culprit at the extremity of the gaff. In this predicament we were hung out to dry for six or eight hours, as old Daddy remarked to us with a grin, when we were called down as the night fell.

Our persevering friend, being rather provoked at the punishment of his young flock, set seriously to work to discover the real fate of Shakings. It soon occurred to him, that if the dog had indeed been made away with, as he shrewdly suspected, the ship’s butcher, in all probability, must have had a hand in his murder: accordingly, he sent for the man in the evening, when the following dialogue took place:—

“Well, butcher, will you have a glass of grog tonight?”

“Thank you, sir, thank you. Here’s your honour’s health!” said the other, after smoothing down his hair and pulling an immense quid of tobacco out of his mouth.

Old Daddy observed the peculiar relish with which the rogue took his glass: and mixing another, a good deal more potent, placed it before the fellow. He then continued the conversation in these words:—

“I tell you what it is, Mr. Butcher—you are as humane a man as any in the ship, I dare say; but if required, you know well that you must do your duty, whether it is upon sheep or hogs?”

“Surely, sir.”

“Or upon dogs, either?” suddenly asked the inquisitor.

“I don’t know about that,” stammered the butcher, quite taken by surprise, and thrown all aback.

“Well—well,” said Daddy, “here’s another glass for you—a stiff northwester. Come! tell us all about it now. How did you get rid of the dog?—of Shakings, I mean.”

“Why, sir,” said the peaching scoundrel, “I put him in a bag—a bread-bag, sir.”

“Well!—what then?”

“I tied up the mouth, and put him overboard, out of the midship lower-deck port, sir.”

“Yes—but he would not sink?” said Daddy.

“Oh, sir,” cried the fellow, now entering fully into the subject, “I put a four-and-twenty pound shot into the bag along with Shakings.”

“Did you?—Then, Master Butcher, all I can say is, you are as precious a rascal as ever went about unhanged. There—drink your grog and be off with you!”

Next morning, when the officers were assembling at breakfast in the ward-room, the door of the captain of marines’ cabin was suddenly opened, and that officer, half-shaved, and laughing through a collar of soap-suds, stalked out with a paper in his hand.

“Here,” he exclaimed, “is a copy of verses which I found just now in my basin. I can’t tell how they got there, nor what they are about; but you shall judge.”

So he read aloud the two following stanzas of doggerel:—

“When the Northern Confederacy threatened our shores,

And roused Albion’s Lion, reclining to sleep, Preservation was taken of all the King’s Stores,

Nor so much as a Rope Yarn was launched in the deep.

“But now it is Peace, other hopes are in view,

And all active service as light as a feather. The Stores may be d—d, and humanity too,

For SHAKINGS and Shot are thrown o’erboard together!”

I need hardly say in what quarter of the ship this biting morsel of cockpit satire was concocted, nor indeed who wrote it, for there was no one but our good Daddy who was equal to such a flight. About midnight, an urchin—who shall be nameless—was thrust out of one of the after-ports
of the lower deck, from which he clambered up to the marine officer’s port, and the sash happening to have been lowered down on the gun, the epigram, copied by another of the youngsters, was pitched into the soldier’s basin.

The wisest thing would have been for the officers to have said nothing about the matter, and let it blow by; but as angry people are seldom judicious, they made a formal complaint to the captain, who, to do him justice, was not a little puzzled how to settle the affair. The reputed author, however, was called up, and the captain said to him—

“Pray, sir, are you the writer of these lines?”

“I am, sir,” he replied, after a little consideration.

“Then, all I can say is,” remarked the captain, “they are clever enough, in their way; but take my advice, and write no more such verses.”

So the matter ended. The satirist took the captain’s hint in good part, and confined his pen to topics less repugnant to discipline.

In the course of a few months the war broke out, and there was no longer time for such nonsense; indeed our generous protector Daddy, some time after this affair of Shakings took place, was sent off to Halifax, in charge of a prize. His orders were, if possible, to rejoin his own ship, the
Leander,
then lying at the entrance of New York harbour, just within Sandy Hook light-house.

Our good old friend, accordingly, having completed his mission, and delivered up his charge to the authorities of Halifax, took his passage in the British packet sailing from thence to the port in which we lay. As this ship sailed past us, on her way to the city of New York, we ascertained, to our great joy, that our excellent Daddy was actually on board of her. Some hours afterwards, the pilot-boat was seen coming to us, and, though it was in the middle of the night, all the younger mids came hastily on deck to welcome their worthy messmate back again to his home.

It was late in October, and the wind blew fresh from the northwestward, so that the ship riding to the ebb, had her head directed towards the Narrows, between Staten Land and Long Island: consequently, the pilot-boat (one of those beautiful vessels so well known to every visitor of the American coast) came flying down upon us with the wind nearly right aft. Our joyous party were all assembled on the quarter-deck, looking anxiously at the boat as she swept past. She then luffed round, in order to sheer alongside, at which moment the main-sail jibed, as was to be expected. It was obvious, however, that something more had taken place than the pilot had anticipated, since the boat, instead of ranging up to the gangway, being brought right round on her heel, went off upon a wind on the other tack. The tide carried her out of sight for a few minutes, but she was soon again
alongside; when we learned, to our inexpressible grief and consternation, that on the main-boom of the pilot-boat swinging over, it had accidentally struck our poor friend, and pitched him headlong overboard. Being encumbered with his great-coat, the pockets of which, as we afterwards heard, were loaded with his young companions’ letters, brought from England by this packet, he struggled in vain to catch hold of the boat, but sunk to rise no more.

Basil Hall remained on board the
Leander
until shortly after the death of Sir Andrew Mitchell in 1806. In 1808 he was promoted to lieutenant, and in 1809 he was sent to Corunna. (See “When I Beheld These Men Spring from the Ground, 1809,”.)

The peace through which Hall and his fellow middies so restlessly passed their time at Bermuda was, for them, mercifully short-lived. In March 1803, the French fleet began to prepare for an invasion of England, and on May 16, Britain declared war on France. Britain made aggressive moves in the West Indies, taking St. Lucia and Tobago from France and Demerara and Barbice from the Batavian Republic, and resumed its blockade off key French ports. On December 14, 1804, Spain declared war on Britain.

Nelson was stationed in the Mediterranean on the Toulon blockade. In early 1805, he chased Villeneuve to the West Indies and back. Napoleon still held out hope of combining the French and Spanish fleets to invade England, but that would end on October 21, 1805, off Cape Trafalgar, Spain.

¹
Sir William Edward Parry (1790–1855) searched for the Northwest Passage between 1819 and 1825 and attempted to reach the North Pole via sledge boat from Spitzbergen in 1827.

W
ILLIAM
R
OBINSON VOLUNTEERED
for the Royal Navy in May of 1805. Serving on board the newly built HMS
Revenge
, a 74-gun ship of the line commanded by Captain Robert Moorsom, Robinson quickly learned how to holystone, keep a watch, and drink Scotch coffee (burnt bread boiled in water with sugar). He saw discipline brutally instilled with the cat-o’-nine-tails. “By this regular system of duty,” he later wrote, “I became inured to the roughness and hardships of a sailor’s life. I had made up my mind to be obedient, however irksome to my feelings, and our ship being on the Channel station, I soon began to pick up a knowledge of seamanship,” He would also soon be a battle-hardened man-of-war’s man. On October 21, the
Revenge
would suffer twenty-eight men killed and fifty-one wounded. This is the first of two passages recounting the events of one of the Royal Navy’s greatest and most tragic days.

AFTER BEATING
about the Channel for some time, we were ordered to proceed along the Spanish coast, to look after the combined fleets of France and Spain. Having heard that Sir Robert Calder had fallen in with them a few days previous, we pursued our course, looking in at Ferrol and other ports, until we arrived off Cadiz, where we found they had got safe in. Here we continued to blockade them, until Lord Nelson joined with us with five sail of the line. In order to decoy the enemy out, stratagem was resorted to, and five sail were sent to Gibraltar to victual and water, whilst Lord Nelson, with his five sail, kept out of sight of the enemy, and thus they
thought we were only twenty-two sail of the line, whilst their fleet consisted of thirty-three sail. With this superior force they put to sea, with the intention, as we afterwards learned, of taking our fleet; and, if they had succeeded, possessed of so great a force, they were to occupy the Channel, and assist in the invasion of England by the troops then encamped along the French coast, with an immense number of flat-bottomed boats, with which the French ports swarmed; but here, as in many other instances, they reckoned without their host. British valour and seamanship frustrated their design, and destroyed their hopes; for on the memorable 21st of October, 1805, as the day began to dawn, a man at the topmast head called out, “a sail on the starboard bow,” and in two or three minutes more he gave another call, that there was more than one sail, for indeed they looked like a forest of masts rising from the ocean; and, as the morning got light, we could plainly discern them from the deck, and were satisfied it was the enemy, for the admiral began to telegraph to that effect. They saw us, and would gladly have got away when they discovered that we counted twenty-seven sail of the line, but it was too late, situated as they were; hemmed in by Cape Trafalgar on the one side, and not being able to get back to Cadiz on the other.

As the enemy was thus driven to risk a battle, they exhibited a specimen of their naval tactics by forming themselves into a crescent, or half-moon, waiting for our approach; which did not take place until ten minutes of twelve o’clock, so that there was nearly six hours to prepare for battle; while we glided down to them under the influence of a gentle breeze, cheering to every seaman’s heart, that Providence took us in tow; and from a signal made by Lord Nelson, our ships were soon formed into two lines, weather and lee.

DURING THIS TIME
each ship was making the usual preparations, such as breaking away the captain and officer’s cabins and sending all the lumber below—the doctors, parson, purser and loblolly men, were also busy, getting the medicine chests and bandages out; and sails prepared for the wounded to be placed on, that they might be dressed in rotation as they were taken down to the after cock-pit. In such a bustling, and it may be said, trying as well as serious time, it is curious to notice the different dispositions of the British sailor. Some would be offering a guinea for a glass of grog, whilst others were making a sort of mutual verbal will, such as, if one of Johnny Crapeau’s shots (a term given to the French), knocks my head off, you will take all my effects; and if you are killed, and I am not,
why, I will have yours, and this is generally agreed to. During this momentous preparation, the human mind had ample time for meditation and conjecture, for it was evident that the fate of England rested on this battle; therefore well might Lord Nelson make the signal,
“England expects each man will do his duty,”
¹

Here, if I may be indulged the observation, I will say that, could England but have seen her sons about to attack the enemy on his own coast, within sight of the inhabitants of Spain, with an inferior force, our number of men being not quite twenty thousand, whilst theirs was upwards of thirty thousand; from the zeal which animated every man in the fleet, the bosom of every inhabitant of England would have glowed with an indescribable patriotic pride; for such a number of line-of-battle ships have never met together and engaged, either before or since. As we drew near, we discovered the enemy’s line was formed with a Spanish ship between two French ones, nearly all through their line; as I suppose, to make them fight better; and it must be admitted that the Dons fought as well as the French in that battle; and, if praise was due for seamanship and valour, they were well entitled to an equal share. We now began to hear the enemy’s cannon opening on the
Royal Sovereign,
commanded by Lord Collingwood, who commenced the action; and, a signal being made by the admiral to some of our senior captains to break the enemy’s line at different points, it fell to our lot to cut off the five stern-most ships; and, while we were running down to them, of course we were favoured with several shots, and some of our men were wounded. Upon being thus pressed, many of our men thought it hard that the firing should be all on one side and became impatient to return the compliment: but our captain had given
orders not to fire until we got close in with them, so that all our shots might tell; indeed, these were his words: “We shall want all our shot when we get close in: never mind their firing: when I fire a carronade from the quarterdeck, that will be a signal for you to begin, and I know you will do your duty as Englishmen.” In a few minutes the gun was fired, and our ship bore in and broke the line, but we paid dear for our temerity, as those ships we had thrown into disorder turned round, and made an attempt to board. A Spanish three-decker ran her bowsprit over our poop, with a number of her crew on it, and, in her fore rigging, two or three hundred men were ready to follow; but they caught a Tartar, for their design was discovered, and our marines with their small arms, and the carronades on the poop, loaded with canister shot, swept them off so fast, some into the water and some on the decks, that they were glad to sheer off. While this was going on aft, we were engaged with a French two-deck ship on our starboard side, and on our larboard bow another, so that many of their shots must have struck their own ships and done severe execution. After being engaged about an hour, two other ships fortunately came up, received some of the fire intended for us, and we were now enabled to get at some of the shot-holes between wind and water and plug them up: this is a duty performed by the carpenter and his crew. We were now unable to work the ship, our yards, sails, and masts being disabled, and the braces completely shot away. In this condition we lay by the side of the enemy, firing away, and now and then we received a good raking from them, passing under our stern. This was a busy time with us, for we had not only to endeavour to repair our damage, but to keep to our duty. Often during the battle we could not see for the smoke whether we were firing at a foe or friend, and as to hearing, the noise of the guns had so completely made us deaf, that we were obliged to look only to the motions that were made. In this manner we continued the battle till nearly five o’clock, when it ceased.