THE EXPERIENCES AND WEAPONS OF WAR
Roland Pietsch
Standing before an oil painting depicting majestic sailing ships engaged in battle, the observer is easily captured by a sense of romance. The sailors manoeuvring these ships and firing the guns are, however, often barely visible. In stark contrast to the museum visitor viewing the battle from the gallery’s quiet, steady and dry floors, these sailors were in the midst of it, their bare feet on the trembling wooden decks awash with water and blood, shot and splinters flying past their heads, and the horrendous noise of the cannons pounding their ears. How did they experience naval war? What did the men who handled the collection of weapons displayed in the National Maritime Museum actually feel?
Charles Pemberton, pressed into the navy during the war against Napoleon, claimed that he simply fought himself into frenzy:
I had no time to be frightened during all this, for I was not in my right mind – I was in a whirl: the bustle, hallooing, hurraing, crashing, cracking, rattling, thundering, whizzing, and whistling, made me drunk and delirious; like a fellow in a tavern, who, when he is in the third heaven of jollity, smashes tables and chairs, dishes and glasses – dashes his fist through the door-panels and the windows, all senseless of the scarifying and bruises he inflicts upon himself...and I dare say, if any one had set me the example, I should have ran away and hid myself if I could; only, it happens, that there are no back doors to escape by in these affairs.1
Other sailors were more thoughtful. Samuel Leech remembered from his battle experiences as a fourteen-year-old during the War of 1812:
We all appeared cheerful, but I know that many a serious thought ran through my mind: still, what could we do but keep up a semblance, at least, of animation? To run from our quarters would have been certain death from the hands of our own officers; to give way to gloom, or to show fear, would do no good, and might brand us with the name of cowards, and ensure certain defeat. Our only true philosophy, therefore, was to make the best of our situation, by fighting bravely and cheerfully.2
A sailor’s wartime experiences greatly depended on his ship and what it was engaged in. Taking part in a grand fleet battle in a ship of the line – those floating fortresses, of which the Victory is the surviving example, with over 100 guns spread on its multiple decks – was a rare event, something that a sailor would see, if at all, only once or twice in his time in the navy. Sailing in a smaller, speedy frigate, with guns only on her single upper deck, and being on patrol duty or protecting a convoy, promised a very different experience of war.
Sailors in a Fight, by William Ward after Thomas Stothard, published by John Raphael Smith, mezzotint, 16 April 1798 (PAH7352)
The first challenge seamen encountered, however, was the monotony and claustrophobia that could gnaw on their nerves when the enemy was nowhere in sight. This did not mean they were out of danger, though, for their deadliest enemies had already closed in on them: rats and lice, the as-then undiscovered carriers of diseases. Compared to them, the enemy’s ships were, for the first part of the eighteenth century, a minor threat. The naval physician James Lind claimed that ‘the number of seamen in time of war, who die by shipwreck, capture, famine, fire, or sword, are indeed but inconsiderable, in respect of such as are destroyed by the ship diseases, and by the usual maladies of intemperate climates’.3 Only in the second half of the eighteenth century, when increased care was taken over diet and hygiene, were the high percentages of disease-related deaths lowered. Even without a battle, then, the combination of limited space, threat of disease, and weeks of waiting and exercising, could create a highly pressured environment, and one in which some sailors may have longed for the day when an engagement would offer a relief valve.
When that day came, the ship had to be transformed from a floating home into a battle station. The order to clear the decks for action was piped: bulkheads, partitions, entire officer’s cabins, mess tables, benches, chests and anything superfluous had to be removed. They were not only obstacles for the fighting seamen, but could also produce deadly flying splinters when hit by enemy cannonballs. The decks were sanded – on board the Spanish Santísima Trínidad, before the Battle of Trafalgar, one of the novices recounted how: ‘My curiosity prompted me to ask a lad who stood next to me what this was for. “For the blood”, he said very coolly. “For the blood!” I exclaimed, unable to repress a shudder.’4 The sand gave a foothold once the decks were soaked in blood and water.
French republican banner captured during the Battle of the ‘Glorious First of June’, 1794 (AAA0564)
Fire hoses were rigged to the pumps, water placed in strategic spots to fight fires, weapons distributed to fight boarders, and different types of shot stored near the guns. The carpenters and their mates prepared to undertake any emergency repairs, while the surgeons and their mates warmed their knives and saws, expecting soon to be cutting and sawing their way through flesh and bone in scenes even more gruesome than those on deck. Other non-combatants, such as the chaplain, steward or purser, had to prepare themselves for the prospect of assisting the surgeons, knowing that this was something even hardened seamen dreaded. Time permitting, a meal could be served, alcohol given out to numb fears or letters home could be written and wills exchanged. When the captain ordered ‘beat to quarters’, everyone had to be at his battle station, silently listening for commands. An eerie stillness set in, as Charles Pemberton noted:
Every man and boy was mute as he stood at his station...Every thing was now in order...guns cast loose, crow bars for pointing the guns lying at hand on deck, tompions out, all ready for a game of thunder...There was no noise, no laugh...Men, shirtless, with handkerchiefs bandaged tightly round their loins or heads, stood with naked brawny arms folded on their hairy and heaving chests, looking pale and stern, but still...I felt a difficulty in swallowing. Now if we had gone at it at once, without this chilling prelude, why I dare say I should have known very little about the thing which we call fear.5
The Battle of the ‘Glorious First of June’, 1794, by Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg, oil on canvas, 1795 (BHC0470)
Powder horn, late eighteenth to early nineteenth century (KTP1100)
Tier shot, late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century (KTP1144)
Cannonball thought to have become embedded in the Victory’s timbers at the Battle of Trafalgar, c.1805 (KTP1138)
Depending on the size of cannon, up to seven men made up a gun crew. Unless the ship was fighting on both sides, each gun could be attended by two crews. Guns were classified by the weight of ball they fired and their length, ranging from rare and massive forty-two-pounders, to thirty-two-, twenty-four-, eighteen-, twelve-, nine- and six-pounders. Heading each gun was the captain of its crew. He was responsible for aiming and firing. The other crew members were responsible for sponging the gun (to neutralise any traces of burning cartridge from the previous shot), ramming home the cartridge and wadding, then ramming in the shot and another wad (to prevent the shot from rolling out), and running out the gun. At the bottom of the gun crew’s hierarchy was the most junior member, the powder boy. As it was too dangerous to store the powder on deck, it was kept in a magazine below the waterline, and the job of these boys was to fetch the powder for each round. Being a powder boy gave the young sailors their first experiences of war. Olaudah Equiano, later a famous anti-slavery campaigner, was a fourteen-year-old powder boy during the Battle of Lagos in 1759, when the British and French fleets met during the Seven Years War:
My station during the engagement was on the middle deck, where I was quartered with another boy, to bring powder to the aftermost gun; and here I was a witness of the dreadful fate of many of my companions, who, in the twinkling of an eye, were dashed in pieces, and launched into eternity. Happily I escaped unhurt, though the shot and splinters flew thick about me during the whole fight.6
The decision about how much powder to use was made by the gun crew’s captain, who would also pour additional powder down the touch hole from his powder horn. The crew’s captain had different types of shot at his disposal, each being preferable for specific targets. Round shot – a simple solid iron ball – was the most used, and was designed to penetrate the enemy’s hull. When targeting the rigging, chain shot (two balls at each end of a chain, with the chain spreading once fired), and double-headed or bar shot were more suitable. It is worth remembering that at the receiving end of the gun crew’s work were not just wooden structures but also their opposing crews. A direct hit by round shot would blow a man apart and scatter his body parts over his mates. Even when the shot went into the hull, it was likely to unleash a vicious hail of wooden splinters that could be equally deadly. The bar shot opposite shows the effect these weapons could have when they hit men instead of rigging: it killed eight Royal Marines. There was also ammunition aimed specifically at the crews: grape, canister and tier shot, which were small balls confined in containers or canisters, with the balls being scattered by the explosion. Neither round shot nor any of the other shot available to the gun crew contained any explosives. The only naval guns firing explosive shells were mortars, which were carried on specially designed bomb vessels, and were chiefly used to attack towns and fortresses. They required very accurate aiming and timing; consequently, their operation was left to trained artillerymen of the marines or army.
While frequent gun drills were acknowledged to have been the reason for the British navy’s more rapid firepower, accuracy in firing was often neglected in training. In fact, during most gun drills the crews did not fire at all, in order to save ammunition. At the same time, the heavy movement of the deck during battle made aiming difficult and also hard to recreate during a drill. Traversing the gun by applying different pressures to the gun tackles assisted with crowbars or handspikes was possible but far from easy; elevation could be achieved by adjusting the wedge at the breech to lower or raise the muzzle. Having aimed the gun as rapidly as possible, the crew’s captain would then fire. The force unleashed was tremendous, and so was the noise, leaving many sailors with long-term hearing damage, the handkerchiefs tied around their heads not giving much protection. One can almost hear the thunder in the smoke of Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg’s painting of Lord Howe’s victory at the Battle of the ‘Glorious First of June’ (see here). This battle – in which the British Channel Fleet clashed with the French Atlantic Fleet west of Ushant – was the biggest naval engagement of the eighteenth century. To the left, the sinking French Vengeur du Peuple is depicted, its fate witnessed by the twelve-year-old William Parker (later an admiral) and described to his parents as follows:
You could plainly perceive the poor wretches climbing over to windward and crying most dreadfully…Oh my dear father! When you consider five or six hundred souls destroyed in that shocking manner, it will make your very heart relent. Our own men even were a great many of them in tears and groaning, they said God bless them.7
Spanish bar shot fired at the Victory during the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805 (KTP1079)
Twelve-pounder carronade (the carriage is a later addition), c.1805 (KTP0036)
Pair of officers’ flintlock pistols, late eighteenth century (AAA2430)
Future officers, like Parker, had to learn how to command their men during battle while simultaneously giving an impression of utter calmness. Lieutenant Paul Nicholas on board the Belleisle remembered his experience at Trafalgar:
My eyes were horror struck at the bloody corpses around me, and my ears rang with the shrieks of the wounded and the moans of the dying. At this moment seeing that almost everyone was lying down, I was half disposed to follow the example, and several times stooped for the purpose, but...a certain monitor seemed to whisper, ‘Stand up and do not shrink from your duty’. Turning round, my much esteemed and gallant senior [Captain Hargood] fixed my attention; the serenity of his countenance and the composure with which he paced the deck, drove more than half my terrors away; and joining him I became somewhat infused with his spirit, which cheered me on to act the part it became me.8
Although their experiences of war were different, sailors on board frigates could go through something very close to the realities of a grand fleet action when equally matched frigates met and each was determined to win a decisive victory. On 25 October 1812, the British frigate Macedonian and the American frigate United States encountered each other near Madeira. Britain and the United States had been at war since June that year, so both ships cleared for action. Macedonian carried twenty-eight long eighteen-pounders, as well as eighteen thirty-two-pounder carronades, a twelve-pounder carronade, and two nine-pounders. Carronades had been introduced in the navy as an addition to the main armament in 1779. They were shorter, lighter and had a large bore, delivering heavy firepower at shorter ranges and requiring fewer men to operate (see here). Carronades increasingly replaced cannons, particularly on smaller ships, while being less used on large ships of the line. A first rate like the Victory still carried only two carronades, though these were capable of firing sixty-eight-pound cannonballs. Serving on board the defeated Mac-edonian, the lower-deck sailor Samuel Leech left a graphic description of the firepower of both frigates:
[T]he whole scene grew indescribably confused and horrible; it was like some awfully tremendous thunder-storm, whose deafening roar is attended by incessant streaks of lighting, carrying death in every flash, and strewing the ground with the victims of its wrath: only, in our case, the scene was rendered more horrible than that, by the presence of torrents of blood which dyed our decks.9
A below-decks sketch showing a man having his leg amputated, graphite, c.1820 (PAD8484)
The Naval Surgeon, by William Turnbull, 1806 (PBN4879)
Instructions for training a ship’s crew to the use of arms in attack and defence, by Lieutenant William Pringle Green, early nineteenth century (JOD/48)
Sailors who were mortally hit were usually tossed immediately overboard to make space. There was no Nelsonian funeral procession for Jack Tar. Badly injured sailors were hastily brought into the cockpit to the surgeon. If Samuel Leech thought the scenes on deck already resembled hell, then the sights he encountered here were equally testing: the operating table, tubs for amputated limbs, and a surgeon and his mates smeared with blood. While the battle raged on, the surgeon went about his work. The threat of infections – antiseptic practice being unknown – frequently left him only one solution: amputation. After applying a tourniquet, the surgeon used an amputation knife to cut through the skin, tissues and muscles as swiftly as possible until the bone was exposed. He would then pull back the flesh with a retractor, cut through the bone with a saw and then tie off the major blood vessels with silk ligatures. All of this was carried out without anaesthetics and death from shock was not uncommon.
Gunnery frequently decided the outcome of a battle from a distance, yet there was always the possibility that during an engagement the ships could get close enough, either intentionally or accidentally, to prompt boarding attempts. In fact, for a ship being outgunned, forcing a collision and switching to man-to-man combat was potentially a way of turning the tables. In contrast to the well-drilled work of the gun crew, boarding was primeval, tumultuous, often improvised, with no body armour or shields protecting the fighters. Although specific boarding roles were assigned to the gun crews and marines, by the time it came to boarding it was often a case of hack and run, rather than skill and tactics. After all, those that attempted to board were still primarily sailors, not professional fighters, with many hastily recruited or pressed fishermen, watermen, landsmen and boys among them. Unlike the marines and officers, seamen were not even entrusted with their own weapons, which were locked up and guarded by marines, and only handed out just before the engagement. Small-arms drill was part of the navy’s regulations since the middle of the eighteenth century, though it is not clear how often edged weapons and boarding tactics were included. There are few historical documents like Lieutenant William Pringle Green’s manuscript containing written training instructions. Dating from the early nineteenth century, they are perhaps an indication that such detailed instruction was a new doctrinal development.
The War of 1812 provides a notable example of a successful boarding. In May 1813, the British frigate Shannon, under the command of Captain Philip Broke, was cruising off Boston to intercept merchant vessels, but also challenging American warships to a duel. As Chesapeake left Boston harbour to take up the gauntlet, cheered on by excited spectators on land, preparations were made on board both frigates to arm their crews for the eventuality of a boarding attempt – Shannon having a complement of 330 men and Chesapeake 379. In addition to muskets and pistols, both crews would have had around seventy-five boarding axes at their disposal, perhaps similar to the tomahawk-style axe depicted overleaf. The axe was both weapon and tool, with a long history of being used at sea. Fire being a constant danger, it was needed to hack free burning rigging and heated shot or for clearing wreckage. The axe was also a terrifying weapon. The drawing below shows considerable use of axes during shipboard fighting, while the central character’s musket has been fired and only serves him as an unwieldy cudgel. The same illustration features a sailor fighting with a pike. On board Shannon and Chesapeake around 100 such pikes were handed out or placed around the ship. Primarily a defensive weapon, pikes were particularly useful in connection with anti-boarding nettings, as used by Captain William Rogers and the crew of the Windsor Castle on 1 October 1807, when successfully defending against the boarding attempt of French sailors from the Jeune Richard who heavily outnumbered them.
The Boarding of the Chesape[a]ke by the Crew of the Shannon. Death of Captain Lawrence, engraving, 1860 (PAD5835)
Pike, nineteenth century (WPN1658)
Boarding axe, nineteenth century (XXX2304)
A sketch of fighting on deck, graphite, c.1820 (PAD8485)
Captain William Rogers capturing the Jeune Richard, by Samuel Drummond, oil on canvas, 1808 (BHC0579)
FLINTLOCK PISTOLS AND MUSKETS, SEVEN-BARRELLED VOLLEY GUN
LATE EIGHTEENTH TO NINETEENTH CENTURY
(AAA2440, AAA2446–50, AAA2576, AAA2578, AAA2581, AAA2519)
Muskets specifically modified for sea service had appeared during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Loading was time-consuming, which was one reason why the musket only slowly replaced the crossbow and longbow. Unlike Royal Marines and naval officers, lower-deck sailors were not entrusted with the continuous possession of firearms or other weapons. Instead, these were locked up and guarded by marines, and were only handed out to the crew during preparation for an engagement. Most members of a ship’s company would, nonetheless, have received some training in their use. As smoothbore firearms, muskets were not able to deliver accuracy at long range, and were typically only used once combatant ships had come within 100 yards of each other.
The best shots among the marines were placed high above the deck in the tops. There they were joined by the topmen among the sailors, who not only carried some of the ship’s muskets with them, but also tools, spares and buckets of water to deal with any damage or fire in the rigging. Grenades and swivel cannons were also hauled up. Their first targets were usually their counterparts on the opposing ship – once these had been eliminated, they would then have free range to fire down. Muskets were a particular danger to officers who, as the only ones wearing uniform, could be easily picked out, as Nelson’s death at Trafalgar exemplified. Victory actually had no musketry in her tops, as Nelson had been concerned about small arms setting the sails or rigging on fire. The danger was not far-fetched. In particular, a weapon such as the seven-barrelled volley gun, introduced in the 1780s and firing all of its barrels simultaneously, was a considerable fire hazard.
In addition to the muskets, large naval vessels, such as the Shannon and Chesapeake, would have had 100 or more ship’s pistols ready to be handed out to the men. Introduced in the 1730s, it should be noted that their range and accuracy was even more limited than for muskets. Pistols were only lethal at close range and took some time to reload. In practice, therefore, they were either used as a last resort in self-defence, or were fired right at the start of a boarding attempt and then unceremoniously thrown towards the nearest head. Pistols were no substitute for swords, axes or even pikes.
The most important boarding weapons for the crews of Shannon and Chesapeake would have been cutlasses, swords and sabres – perhaps 150 of which would have been issued. The time for the cutlass came when the fighting parties became intermingled. The often curved and short blades suggest there was no space for sophisticated fencing: it was hacking and slicing instead. The officers also preferred to fight with curved blades, or even dirks, and left the straight blade for ceremony. Most ships had made some plan in advance of combat regarding which men would act as boarders. Some distinguished between ‘first boarders’ – an attacking force carrying cutlasses and pistols – and ‘second boarders’, a defensive force with pikes and axes. Behind them, the marines would wait with muskets and bayonets. Fit young lieutenants were meant to lead the boarding party, but it was not unusual for more senior officers like Broke and Nelson to charge ahead – a sign that notions of masculinity and honour could outweigh other considerations, though it certainly guaranteed them the respect of their crews. Tactics aside, the practice often looked more improvised: when Captain Broke started the successful boarding of Chesapeake, shouting ‘Follow me who can!’, he was reportedly followed by Irish sailor James Bulger, not carrying any weapons at all, but mouthing some Gaelic oaths and looking on board Chesapeake for anything with which to club her crew. This was no bar brawl though: 10 per cent of the men lost their lives that day.
Usually a battle did not go all the way to the sinking or violent boarding of a ship. Even in a culture that placed high demands on heroism and masculinity, it was acceptable for the captain to strike the ensign if defeat appeared inevitable. In the aftermath, men on both sides had to come to terms with the loss of some of their mates, with different reactions, as sailor Sam Leech observed: ‘some who had lost their messmates appeared to care nothing about it, while others were grieving with all the tenderness of women.’10 Others had to cope with the loss of a limb, their only comfort being a ‘smart ticket’ that promised financial compensation for their disability from the Chatham Chest. Naval sailors had contributions to the Chatham Chest and Greenwich Hospital deducted from their pay – an occupational health insurance covering injury and retirement. There was a queue of retired seamen waiting to be admitted into Greenwich Hospital, yet also many others who happily took the hospital’s so called ‘out-pension’.
Cutlasses, 1804 pattern (WPN1637–41)
‘Smart ticket’ issued to James Pool, who served at the Battle of Trafalgar, as proof that his injury was sustained at sea, allowing him to draw a pension, 3 November 1805 (ADL/T/16)
Descriptions of Battles by Sea & Land, in Two Volumes, From the Kings Library’s at Greenwich & Chelsea, by Robert Dighton, hand-coloured etching, March 1801 (PAH3336)
Some sailors may have sustained battle wounds that were not immediately visible. At the start of the eighteenth century, former seamen began to make up the largest group among the patients in Bethlem Hospital, London’s infamous madhouse. During the war against Napoleon, the physician Sir Gilbert Blane was surprised to notice that insanity appeared to be an estimated seven times more common in the Royal Navy than among the general population.11 Blane’s only explanation was that sailors frequently banged their heads against the wooden beams of their ships, often when intoxicated. We might now speculate, though, that sailors struggled to digest their wartime experiences. Facing war without fear, even with intentionally displayed unaffectedness or irony, was the culture the navy fostered. Perhaps this was the only defence mechanism to cope with what was the most dangerous profession of the time. The naval physician Thomas Trotter believed that the young age at which sailors began their seafaring careers helped them adapt to the hardships of naval life: ‘the mind, by custom and example, is thus trained to brave the fury of the elements, in their different forms, with a degree of contempt, at danger and death, that is to be met with no where else.’12 Whether this bravado remained genuine, or whether all negative impressions gathered from a young age were simply locked away uneasily in a sea chest deep down in their souls, we cannot tell. Few sailors published their memoirs. The writers among them were, perhaps, unusual seamen. They frequently marvelled at their shipmates’ apparent toughness, looking like lions ‘anxious to be at it’, as one sailor observed at Trafalgar when Nelson signalled that ‘England Expects That Every Man Will Do His Duty’.13
In this context, the emerging idea of a nation explains much, but it cannot account for how people conducted themselves in all the numerous conflicts of the eighteenth century. Nor can it illuminate the motivations of everyone on board the Victory on that day, not least the almost 10 per cent of her crew who were not British – the Americans, Dutch, Swedes, Germans, even French, and the seamen from the West Indies and Africa. Even when sailors went through similar wartime experiences, each one would have perceived them differently, his feelings dependent on his personal hopes and fears, his belief in the cause and wartime propaganda, his life experience and training. They were opposed by ships containing a similar mix of men, also trapped in their vessels either because they had been forced or had volunteered, with the great majority on both sides losing their lives throughout the century without a grand column or an oil painting to provide a higher meaning to their particular wartime experience and death.
Locket commemorating Lieutenant William Harman, who was killed in action, c.1812 (JEW0192)
