MUTINY AND INSECURITY
James Davey
For as long as Britain has had enemies abroad, its population has worried about invasion. The long eighteenth century was a period of great international turmoil in which years of war outweighed those of peace. For the British public, the threat of the enemy across the water was a daily reality. With only the small stretch of the English Channel separating Britain from the European continent, national defence fell almost exclusively on the shoulders of the Royal Navy. This fear of invasion was particularly prominent in the 1790s and 1800s, when Britain faced a renewed threat from abroad. The loss of the American colonies at the end of the American War of Independence in 1783 served as a reminder that Britain’s position in the world was neither secure nor guaranteed. This blow to national pride had also revealed a French navy that had grown in strength and confidence. Mutual distrust between the two nations remained: in the years that followed, the governments of William Pitt the Younger spent vast sums on shipbuilding programmes that placed the Royal Navy on a par with the combined fleets of France and Spain.
When in 1789 the French Revolution broke out, it was initially welcomed in Britain. Some observers were happy to see the nascent French democracy aping British parliamentary institutions, while others were content to spectate as Britain’s great rival was consumed by civil strife. However, as the revolution became ever more radical and entrenched, there was increasing concern that popular radicalism might spread across the Channel. In 1792, the first democratic organisations for political reform sprang up in Britain, with memberships drawn from the artisan and working classes. Politically motivated corresponding societies emerged across the country, which bridged social and geographical distances, and raised for the first time the spectre of mass political activity. There was an ever-flowing stream of radical pamphlets, and an increase in petitioning and workers’ protests. Fears of political subversion prompted unprecedented state repression, including a proclamation against ‘Seditious Writings and Publications’ issued in 1792, successive suspensions of habeas corpus after 1794, and the eventual outlawing of the London Corresponding Society. The ‘Gagging Acts’ (1795) restricted the size of public meetings to fifty people and made it possible to arrest on grounds of treason anyone overheard criticising the monarchy. This anxious mood was captured in a memorable passage in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, written in the late 1790s. Henry Tilney’s description of a country ‘where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies’, was at first comforting, but also an uneasy recognition of national paranoia.1
In February 1793, the new French republic’s avowed motive of spreading revolutionary ideas across Europe led to a declaration of war on Britain. This was not the traditional enemy of old, but a new and more threatening adversary. As one pamphlet put it, Britain was facing ‘an Enemy of a new kind…who fights not to subdue States, but to dissolve society – not to extend Empire, but to subvert Government – not to introduce a particular Religion, but to extirpate all Religion’.2 Eighteenth-century Britons were familiar with the story of the Spanish Armada, which had become a symbolic event in Britain’s national memory, a moment when foreign threats were decisively annihilated. In the tumultuous climate of the 1790s, the events of 1588 served as a reassuring point of reference. British security once again rested on its navy, charged with containing the French fleet in port, and destroying any attempt to land an army. People across the country came to rely on the Royal Navy. While its officers were celebrated as national heroes, its seamen – ‘the bulwark of Great Britain’ – were represented as brave, loyal and constant servants to the national interest. The British people were content to pay for fleets, funded by high levels of taxation, which promised protection from external threats. This unwritten contract between navy and nation would be tested to its limits by the challenge of revolutionary warfare.
Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588, by Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg, oil on canvas, 1796 (BHC0264)
For the first two years of the war, Britain watched uneasily as French armies marched across the Continent, and secured advantageous treaties with Austria, Prussia, Spain and Russia. It was only a matter of time before the French turned their attention northwards. Few doubted the navy’s ability to defend the shores of the British Isles. One observer, Maria Stanley, described the navy’s competence with considerable nonchalance: ‘Papa says Invasion is much talked of in London…I do not feel much alarmed, for I cannot think that our Navy is reduced so very low as to suffer the French to land in any number so as to do much damage.’3 By 1796, however, the French had begun seriously to plan an invasion of Britain, though they would struggle to overcome the logistical and geographical challenges that confronted them. In December of that year, a fleet of French transports carrying 15,000 troops was intercepted after being stranded in Bantry Bay, Ireland; twelve ships were captured or wrecked in harsh winds and blizzards and the would-be invasion ended in disarray. Two months later, in February 1797, Britain’s coastal defences were again put to the test when French frigates landed over 1,000 troops on the Welsh coast at Fishguard. The small and ill-disciplined invading army was quickly rounded up by Welsh militia, but the potential consequences of another more successful attempt were felt across Britain, prompting a run on the banks, a financial crisis, and widespread public alarm.
It was in this climate of uncertainty, with accounts of external threats disseminated across the country, that the naval fleets stationed around southern England mutinied: at Spithead, the Nore, and finally at Yarmouth. Seemingly at once, the nation’s protector against invasion was rendered impotent. These were uprisings on a greater scale than had ever been seen before. Naval mutinies during the eighteenth century rarely took the form of the violent usurpations of legend. Generally resembling a strike, they were labour disputes resolved consensually and quickly, normally without recourse to punishment. The mutinies of 1797, though, took on a more dangerous appearance. Coming in the politically charged atmosphere of the 1790s, and in such number, they appeared radical, revolutionary and subversive. Each successive uprising became more extreme and saw the aims of the mutineers expand. Whereas the first was marked by a speedy resolution with minimal violence, the later mutinies saw political radicalism, conflict and ruthless retribution.
The first mutiny at Spithead (Portsmouth) fell into a broad tradition of collective action in the navy. The seamen’s petitions ignored, on 16 April 1797 the signal was given for a refusal to weigh anchor. The fleet was immobilised, while two delegates from each ship were elected and sent to negotiate, first with the fleet’s commander, Admiral Bridport, then with the Admiralty, led by Lord Spencer. Their principal demands – an increase in wages, and improvements in the quality and quantity of food – were quickly granted by the Admiralty. There was little violence or disorder, and the delegates strongly rejected any suggestion that they had political motives. Throughout, the mutineers insisted on their readiness to sail if the French fleet put out from Brest. A delay in securing their demands briefly raised the suspicions of the crews and saw mutiny break out anew. Vice-Admiral John Colpoys ordered the officers and marines of the London to fire on the mutineers, mortally wounding several of them. Fortunate to avoid violent retaliation, Colpoys and his fellow officers were confined to their cabins, and later sent ashore. Following the announcement that a bill had been passed which answered the delegates’ grievances, the mutineers returned to their posts, amid much rejoicing and celebration. The crew of the Mars wrote a lengthy document to their officers, signed individually, that apologised for their conduct and hoped that shipboard relations would be restored to normality.4 On 17 May, the fleet left port, and took up station off Brest.
A written apology by the sailors of the Mars, 1797 (MKH/15)
A written apology by the sailors of the Mars, 1797 (MKH/15)
The Clyde arriving at Sheerness after the Nore mutiny, 30 May 1797, by William Joy, oil on canvas, 1830 (BHC0497)
However, the mutiny exposed Britain’s vulnerability for all to see. Martha Saumarez, wife of a naval captain, wrote to her husband describing her relief at the satisfactory ending to the mutiny. Britain, she said:
has weather’d one of the greatest perils that ever threaten’d her By the late alarming Mutiny in the Fleet, with heartfelt pleasure I acquiaint Thee that Disclipline & Order are once more restor’d… This Mutiny while it stands recorded as the most serious that has ever threatened this Country must at the same time excite the astonishment of the World at the regularity with which these men conducted themselves who at other times, when left to their own Conduct…are the most Disorderly Beings upon the Earth! It is a great satisfaction to perceive that there was no disaffection amongst them – for on the contrary they express as fully attach’d as ever to their Country & and are gone to Sea with Hearty Wishes. They may have the opportunity of giving the French a sound Drubbing.5
She well understood how close Britain had come to disaster, and how intertwined the nation’s interests were with the conduct of her seamen.
As the mutiny of Spithead ended, a second broke out at the Nore, off Sheerness dockyard. The sailors demanded further indulgences to those granted at Spithead, among which were: shore leave for every sailor, selection of their own offic-ers, courts martial run by sailors and marines, advanced wages for pressed men, and a more equitable distribution of prize money in which the majority would go to the lower deck. To twenty-first-century eyes this may not seem unreasonable, but to the eighteenth-century Admiralty these requests threatened to undermine the very fabric of shipboard discipline. Unlike the Channel Fleet at Spithead, the smaller fleet at the Nore had little political leverage. The Admiralty refused to accede to any of the demands. This served only to agitate the mutineers further. It was reported that ‘the Mutiny at the Nore seems to have attained the most dangerous and alarming height. The Seamen appear to enter into open hostility against their Country’.6
Drum believed to have been used on board the St Fiorenzo during the Nore mutiny, late eighteenth century (AAB0233)
The uprising was strengthened by the mutiny of Admiral Duncan’s fleet at Yarmouth, which sailed to join the ships at the Nore. Responsible for the blockade of the Dutch fleet, the mutiny of this strategically crucial squadron exposed the entire south-east coast of Britain to invasion. The Admiralty refused to blink and cut off all communications and supplies from the shore. Whereas the seamen had initially been united in their designs, the crews became increasingly hesitant. Individuals, then ships, began to desert the mutiny. In one last attempt to force a decisive result, the order was given to sail to a French port. No ship obeyed it. Isolated from their supporters on land, starving and unable to sail anywhere else, the loyalist elements of each ship’s crew began to seize control. Fighting broke out and by 13 June the mutinous ships had been captured.
The mutinies were over, but they left an uncertain legacy. The press and the London pamphleteering circle lost no time in highlighting the explicitly political motivations of the seamen, and blamed the influence of Irish, French and radical agitators. However, almost without exception, the mutineers were able seamen and seamen petty officers of long experience, rather than newly recruited and politically charged landsmen recently brought into the navy through the Quota Acts of 1795–96. There is some evidence of ideological motivation: for instance, at the court martial of seaman George Shave, he reportedly shouted at an officer ‘that his country had been oppressed for these five years, that the war had been too long, and now was the time to get themselves righted’.7 It is hard to judge how representative these beliefs were, though it is important to remember that seamen did not live in a political vacuum, nor were they unaware of the long-standing practice of collective lobbying on board naval ships.
THE DELEGATES IN COUNSEL OR BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK
BY ISAAC CRUIKSHANK, PUBLISHED BY S.W. FORES, HAND-COLOURED ETCHING, 9 JUNE 1797 (PAF3899)
Caricatures of naval events were routinely published in tandem with, and even anticipating, official dispatches and news reports. This journalistic concern for current affairs ensured that caricature served as both a barometer of, and a guiding force for, British public opinion. The radical undertones of the 1797 mutinies, though often exaggerated, proved irresistible for satirical artists. This print appeared during the Nore mutiny, but played on deeper-seated concerns present since the first outbreak of insurrection at Spithead, merging the mutinies into one awful spectre of naval rebellion. The Delegates in Counsel shows the ringleaders of the Nore mutiny sitting at a cabin table while an Admiral – likely to be Admiral Buckner – stands to hear their demands. Buckner had been sent aboard the Sandwich to be received by Richard Parker, the alleged ‘president’ of the delegates. The artist reinterprets the scene, creating a picture of disharmony and unease, reversing the normal pattern of shipboard relations. While Buckner waits hat in hand, the delegates hold guns and swords, some displayed prominently on the table. The dangerous appearance of the assembled seamen is exaggerated by their unkempt look, their red jackets and their aggressive, purposeful stances. On the far right, a sailor pours from a jug of grog and expresses the group’s determination to overturn the social make-up of the navy: ‘Tell him we intend to be masters’, he says. In the background a portrait of Britannia hangs upside-down, a graphic symbol of the social order being turned on its head.
Cruikshank’s presentation of the British seaman is in notable contrast to the dutiful, constant sailors described in the ballads of the time, or the comical figures of fun preferred by other caricaturists. Here, the seamen take on a threatening appearance, showing how the nation’s bulwark had suddenly become its greatest danger. Two song sheets are shown ripped and shredded on the wall. Those named, ‘True Blue’ and ‘Hearts of Oak’, were traditional songs that celebrated the courage and loyalty of the British sailor. In showing them torn, the artist was making a direct comment on the damage done to the sailor’s image across British society. Four days after this print was published, the Nore mutiny came to a violent end, leading to relief and recrimination in public and in parliament. Aware of its political resonance, the artist added a partisan twist to the image. Underneath the table (see detail) the politician Charles James Fox mutters supportively with his fellow Whigs, admitting to their complicity in recent events. The Whig party, guided by Fox, had been early sympathisers of the French Revolution, and vocal opponents of the war. Although their support was tempered by the extreme violence of the Terror of 1793–94, Fox and his closest allies were unable to escape their reputation as Francophile revolutionaries. The mutinies of 1797, with their undercurrent of radicalism and subversion, were placed firmly at Fox’s door. In this, the threat to the social configuration of the Royal Navy mirrored precisely the political dangers facing the nation.
Whether radical political events or not, the mutinies were certainly perceived as such by the British population. For all that its end was anti-climactic, with the majority of sailors returning to their ships, the national reaction to the Nore mutiny was one of fear. One distant observer, writing to her friend the month after the event, warned against the nation’s dependence on its navy. ‘I was never so much alarmed by any circumstances of our political situation, as by the horrid mutiny of our sailors’, she wrote:
It may teach us humility…when, what we considered as our greatest human defence, was turned against ourselves…It must be hoped, that such as are the least guilty, and escape capital punishment, may be entirely banished from the country, which they have endeavoured to destroy.8
Pamphlets were produced that alleged a nationwide conspiracy to undermine the navy and the nation it defended.9 Officers who had helped to dissolve the mutiny were gratefully rewarded by mercantile and City companies, while the mutinies’ dissolution was celebrated with a mixture of relief and wariness. Celebratory patch-boxes were sold alongside prints warning the sailors about their future conduct. It was recognised that the bond between the British people and its navy had been temporarily fractured.
Richard Parker. President of the Delegates in the late Mutiny in his Majesty’s Fleet at the Nore…, by William Chamberlain, published by J. Harrison & Co., hand-coloured etching, 8 July 1797 (PAH5541)
Richard Parker who was executed on board the Sandwich off Sheerness, on Friday June 30th. 1797…, by F. Sansom after John Bailey, published by S.W. Fores, stipple engraving, 21 July 1797 (PAD3034)
Presentation small-sword given to Captain W. Daniel by the Committee of Merchants & Co. of London following his conduct at the Nore mutiny, 1797 (WPN1553)
Those in government were also shocked by the events. Eyewitness reports to the Admiralty confirmed their worst fears. Sir Charles Grey, the commander of the Sheerness garrison, had watched in horror as the mutineers paraded through the town with red flags flying: ‘everything bore the most unpleasant, and alarming appearance…I trembled…for the consequences that might have ensued.’10 In an exercise of deter-rence and ruthless retribution, the Admiralty moved quickly to punish the leaders of the Nore mutiny. Altogether twenty-nine were hanged and many others disciplined for their actions. The trial of the mutineer Richard Parker excited much public interest. Pamphlets – many sympathetic to his plight – were published describing his trial and execution. Deemed to have been the ringleader of the mutineers at the Nore, he was hanged on 30 June on board the Sandwich.
For the navy, the events at the Nore transformed the relationship between officers and their crews. The nation’s sure shield had briefly threatened to become its Achilles heel. Instructions were issued by the Admiralty that reinforced ‘the enormity of the crime of Mutiny’, and warned that from henceforth those who failed to resist uprisings would also be deemed guilty of the crime. At the same time, special mention was made of the companies that had not mutinied: ‘if the very great majority of Good Men in every ship were to conduct themselves in the same manner, the few ill-disposed who may be among them, would find it impossible to succeed in their wicked designs.’11 Four months later, the vessels and crews involved fought and won the great victory of Camper-down against the Dutch navy. It would take years, however, before seamen and officers would fully trust each other again.
The mutinies proved to be a unique and unprecedented moment of shipboard disharmony. In the years that remained of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, there were no further widespread outbreaks in the navy. With invasion fears continuing to escalate, various Britons took it upon themselves to rehabilitate the image of the British seaman as a brave, loyal and trustworthy patriot, rather than the scurrilous radical suggested by recent events. One pamphlet, An Address to the Seamen in the British Navy, aimed to ‘cast a veil’ over recent events, and suggested how ‘British seamen’ might resurrect their image ‘of being respected at home, and feared abroad’. The balladeer Charles Dibdin wrote over 100 songs celebrating the manly virtues of Jack Tar, while the caricaturist James Gillray would resuscitate the British seaman by drawing him punching a Frenchman from the face of the world (see here). Jack Crawford – a seaman widely celebrated for nailing fallen colours to the shattered topmast of his ship at the Battle of Camperdown – was transformed into a national hero, not least on ceramics. This was not the stereotypical naval sailor so often found in bawdy and patriotic prints, but a real person, in an individual act of valour. For the first time the ordinary British seaman had a name and a face.
Ceramic plate celebrating a sailor, Jack Crawford from Sunderland, for his heroism at the Battle of Camperdown, late eighteenth to nineteenth century (ZBA4377)
An Address to the Seamen in the British Navy, letterpress, 1797 (MKH/15)
For all these efforts, the navy’s position as the nation’s defender had been undermined by recent events. In the months after the mutiny, reports of French invasion plans continued to circulate through British society, given greater credence by further French Continental successes and a seemingly disloyal Royal Navy. Exaggerated tales of vast invasion craft spread across the nation, fanned by uncertainty and rumour. Prints were published with absurdist configurations of windmills, paddle wheels, citadels and armaments, as artists attempted to convey the imagined, unquantifiable threat from across the Channel. Some of the reports verged on the ridiculous. The Star reported on 10 February 1798 that in St Malo:
a Raft, one quarter of a mile long, proportioned breadth, and seven balks deep, mounting a citadel in the centre, covered with hides, was nearly finished; and that a second upon a much larger scale, being near three quarters of a mile long, was constructing with unremitting activity…desperate as an expedition of this nature appears, it is not impossible that they may attempt it.
Two days later, the True Briton poured scorn on the idea of such invasion craft: ‘We have seen Letters of a recent date from Jersey, which state… that the French had no means whatever on the opposite Coast of transporting their Troops. There are no Boats even at St Maloes, nor have they the means of building any, much less a floating Machine of such magnitude as that represented.’12 Caricatures mocked the idea of invasion, while conveying a patriotic image of a strong, unbending and invincible navy – images that reached a still wider audience when displayed on penny tokens. But while the idea of a full-scale invasion was often greeted with ridicule, even the most outlandish reports from across the Channel exploited a genuine and well-founded fear of attack. Gillray’s print series, Consequences of a Successful French Inva-sion, was hugely popular. In it, various symbols of nationhood – parliament, the countryside, and the church – are shown submitting to French soldiers set upon destroying the British way of life. The credibility of the reports ushered in a series of military reforms that ensured an invasion force would be strongly opposed. The government took the invasion threat very seriously, withdrawing ships from foreign climes to home waters, particularly the English Channel. As early as 1796, a shutter-telegraph system was in operation, allowing messages to be passed from the south coast to London in a mere fifteen minutes. The county militia was expanded to 116,000 individuals: by 1803, around half a million volunteers were armed and ready to defend the English coast.
An Accurate Representation of the Floating Machine Invented by the French for Invading England…, by Robert Dighton, hand-coloured etching, c.1798 (PAH7433)
Victory at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 temporarily assuaged fears of invasion, though they were resurrected again with Napoleon Bonaparte’s seizure of power in France in 1799. The British government’s attempts to sue for peace in 1801 were carried forward against a background of anxiety. The Peace of Amiens that resulted from these discussions was settled in France’s favour, though it brought only a temporary respite in the conflict. In 1803, war was again declared, and Napoleon committed vast resources to the planned invasion of Britain, including the creation of a new basin at Boulogne, resolute in his belief that only a few miles of water lay in the way of total French victory. ‘Let us be masters of the Straits for but six hours, and we shall be masters of the world’, he said in July 1804.13 Within a few months, a vast flotilla of boats and barges was constructed to transport the troops across the Channel. By the spring of 1805, Napoleon had assembled a mighty invasion force of more than 160,000 men. Medals were struck and watches manufactured in anticipation of an imminent French victory.
French medal commemorating Napoleon’s planned invasion of England, 1804 (MEC0830)
Penny token showing an invasion craft, 1798 (MEC1746)
Consequences of a Successful French Invasion, by James Gillray and Sir John Dalrymple, hand-coloured etching, 1 March 1798 (PAG8509)
Invasion fears in Britain reached their zenith. The Whig politician Charles James Fox described ‘a picture of a People so terrified as we have been was never before exhibited’. Newspapers referred time and again to the menacing forces in northern France: ‘Nothing is spoken of but the premeditated invasion of this Country, and every day produces fresh proof of the Corsican’s determination to attempt our overthrow’, wrote one. Rumours and false intelligence abounded. Papers attempted to outdo each other for detail, each publishing ‘accurate representations’ of the invasion craft. Lloyd’s Evening Post, a newspaper not normally given to exaggeration, described ‘between nine hundred and a thousand vessels of different descriptions’ at Boulogne, with troops waiting to embark. They published the account of ‘an English Gentleman, lately arrived from Paris’, who described the ‘undiminished activity’ of invasion preparations. The threat became all-consuming: plays were written and produced throughout the summer of 1803 which celebrated patriotic notions and ridiculed Napoleon and his military plans. The French leader was represented as a diminutive, delusional character. The plays promised to place the ‘bravery of Britons’, and the ‘intrepidity of British Tars’, against Napoleon, the ‘Corsican Fairy’.14
Model of a shutter-telegraph system, c.1795 (MDL0020)
Swiss watch (with later additions) depicting a French invasion of England, c.1803 (JEW0265)
Reports of naval activity and attacks on the invasion fleet at Boulogne went some way to calming the public’s nerves. Naval officers, con-fident in their ability to repel any attempt at invasion, reassured those in London. ‘I do not say’, Admiral St Vincent reportedly stated to the House of Lords, ‘that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea’. As St Vincent had long known, Napoleon’s ambitions were far-fetched and unrealistic. The few miles of water between the two nations proved more of a barrier than he had imagined. Disillusioned with his admirals, and facing a renewed military threat from Austria and Russia, Napoleon was forced to abandon his invasion plans. However, the only true antidote to public alarm was naval victory: the Battle of Trafal-gar in October 1805 demolished French sea power and removed the likelihood of a French invasion. Britons would worry about invasion again, for instance in 1809, but the navy had proved itself to be the ultimate guarantor of British safety.
The combined threats of revolution, invasion and mutiny in these years had led many to question the loyalty of the British people; in both 1798 and 1803 the government commissioned surveys to report on the public’s disposition. These fears proved to be largely unfounded. Rather than internal dissension, the anxieties prompted by war against revolutionary and Napoleonic France resulted in an outpouring of patriotism, based on an almost unanimous loyalty to crown and constitution. Loyalist associations (sometimes supported by the state) outstripped memberships of radical societies, while volunteer militias sprang up around the country. By the second half of the 1790s, every county had its own volunteer cavalry regiment and every town its own infantry volunteers. Between 1797 and 1804, one in six adult males enrolled in a volunteer corps. At the height of national fears in early 1798, Martha Saumarez, ever the canny observer, described the mass of voluntary contributions that poured in from all quarters, including the fleet that had recently mutinied:
all descriptions of People have caught the generous flame…it is truly delightful to see Patriotism surmounting avarice & all other selfish Passions. The sailors belonging to the Channel Fleet & the Ships in Port have subscribed a month’s Pay but all the Corps in the Kingdom will follow this noble example. The Navy Captains have given also a month’s pay in addition to what they may give from their private Fortune. This day’s Paper mentions a donation from the Queen of £5000, the Corporation of Bath have subscribed £1000, & the Bankers and Merchants in London have come forward with Contributions suitable to the spirit of Englishmen.15
While news of French invasion plans brought insecurity, reports of naval success proved a welcome tonic, inculcating a sense of national unity and a belief in the navy as Britain’s foremost champion. It was in this environment of widespread apprehension and patriotic verve that Horatio Nelson made his mark on the national stage.
A Farce…The Invasion of England, mock playbill, letterpress, c.1803 (PBF5077)
A Correct View of the French Flat-Bottom Boats, intended to convey their Troops, for the Invasion of England…, published by John Fairburn, hand-coloured etching, 17 August 1803 (PAH7437)
Destruction of the French Gun-Boats – or – Little Boney & his Friend Talley in high Glee, by James Gillray, published by Hannah Humphrey, hand-coloured aquatint, 22 November 1803 (PAF4005)
