Seamen, Petty Officers and Others
THE SEAMAN
SEAMEN WERE USUALLY perceived as one of the lowest orders of society. Pepys believed that the service drew in chiefly ‘poor illiterate hands’, and on the whole he was quite correct. Seamen were characterised by contemporaries, including Pepys and the more thoughtful and literate of their own kind, as fickle, obstinate, lazy, gluttonous, obstreperous, drunken, irreligious brutes, and although there were many exceptions, this perception had a strong element of truth to it.1 Seamen lived for the moment. ‘A merry life and a short’, ‘longest liver take all’ and ‘never let us want when we have it [money] and when we have it not too’ were said to be three of their favourite maxims, and the debts recorded in the wills of many seamen suggest that they followed this philosophy to the letter.2 Nevertheless, and despite usually not having served a formal apprenticeship, a seaman or petty officer of several years’ experience was highly skilled, particularly in rope work, knots and perhaps gunnery and navigation as well: Pepys’s nephew Samuel Jackson was taught navigation by the yeoman of the powder room, hardly an obvious repository of such knowledge.3
Seamen of c.1650; from a watercolour by N Sotheby Pitcher.
For all their faults, most seamen were also brave and patriotic, and put up with dangers and hardships that were entirely anathema to landsmen. The best of the very few chroniclers of life on the lower deck of the Restoration navy, Edward Barlow, was clearly not atypical: the younger son of a Manchester husbandman, he abandoned a tedious apprenticeship and moved to London in his teens to seek a place at sea. Patriotic and an incorrigibly curious observer of foreign parts, Barlow was intensely critical of the naval administration and all landsmen, who in his view either ignored or abused the common seamen. Barlow had a strong streak of puritanical self-righteousness, constantly bemoaning the hardships of the seaman’s life and the general wickedness of the times he lived in.4 Barlow and his kind could be changeable (‘a people that will say one thing today and another tomorrow’, as a contemporary put it5), but they could also be passionately loyal, both to their country and to the captains they served. One of the most famous passages in Pepys’s diary recounted his experience as he came away from the funeral of Sir Christopher Myngs, a popular tarpaulin:
About a dozen able, lusty, proper men came to the coach side with tears in their eyes, and one of them, that spoke for the rest, begun and says to Sir W. Coventry – ‘We are here a dozen of us that have long known and loved and served our dead commander, Sir Chr. Mings, and have now done the last office of laying him in the ground. We would be glad we had any other to offer him, and in revenge of him – all we have is our lives. If you will please to get his Royal Highness to give us a fireship among us all, here is a dozen of us, out of all which choose you one to be commander, and the rest of us, whoever he is, will serve him, and if possible, do that that shall show our memory of our dead commander and our revenge’. Sir W. Coventry was herewith much moved (as well as I, who could hardly abstain from weeping) and took their names; and so parted …6
PETTY OFFICERS
Most ships during the period carried only two commissioned officers, the captain and lieutenant, and eight warrant officers, three of whom (the chaplain, cook and surgeon) were effectively non-combatants and separate from the hierarchy of command and discipline. Thus in practice, most of the responsibility for running the ship and for maintaining control rested with the petty officers: in 1678 a First Rate carried eighty-nine of them and a Fourth Rate thirty-two, which meant that they constituted up to a fifth of the entire crew.7 However, the position of petty officers was precarious. Their appointment, and continuation in office, depended wholly on the whim of their seniors aboard the ship, not on any external authority. The 1663 General Instructions to Captains specified that petty officers were to be selected by the captain, master and boatswain, so it was perfectly possible for a man who had been a petty officer on one ship to revert to able seaman on another where he had no connections among the superior officers. They were also likely to be the first targets of any grievances among the men, many of whom might be ambitious to supplant them and obtain the extra pay which many petty officers earned.*
Sir Christopher Myngs, a ‘tarpaulin’ admiral who was much loved among the seamen.
(© TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM)
The petty officers’ ranks included the mates to the warrant officers, namely the master, boatswain, carpenter, gunner and surgeon; the cook usually had a mate, but he did not rank as a petty officer.8 On most ships, each warrant officer only had one mate each; the exception was the master, who had at least two, and six on a First Rate. However, the complement of petty officers agreed for the 1678 fleet gave the boatswain of a First Rate three mates, the carpenter two, the gunner four (in wartime, with two in peace) and the surgeon two in wartime. Other petty officers were as follows.
Midshipmen: The office of midshipman was probably the most flexible, and the most confusing, in the seventeenth century navy. It had long been regarded as a training position for aspiring officers, and under the Commonwealth had been reserved for men over the age of twenty-one who were capable of taking the place of the boatswain or gunner. After the Restoration, it became the obvious next step on the ladder for the young gentlemen volunteers or ‘king’s letter boys’, and in 1677 Pepys made at least one year’s service as a midshipman an essential prerequisite of qualifying for the office of lieutenant.9 Most of the ‘letter boys’ entered the navy in their teens and became lieutenants in their early twenties, so there were few, if any cases, of the remarkably young midshipmen who often typified the rank in later years.10 Many midshipmen would have been much older men, promoted from the ranks of the able seamen or other petty offices. Richard Hillyard, midshipman aboard the French Ruby, was probably at least forty when he was killed in 1673, as his mother was over eighty at the time.11 Some used the position as a stepping stone to warrant posts, usually as boatswains or gunners; Abraham Hore was said to have been a midshipman for many years when he was recommended for a gunner in the 1670s.12 A further complication was added by the creation of the office of midshipman extraordinary. This evolved from the late 1660s onwards as a way of catering primarily for former commissioned officers who would otherwise be unable to find naval employment, although in the 1670s it was extended to men who had not previously held a naval commission.13 In 1686 maximum numbers of midshipmen extraordinary were laid down for the four lower rates: three for a Third Rate, two for a Fourth, one each aboard a Fifth or Sixth.14 The 1678 complements for petty officers suggested that a Fourth Rate in wartime should carry a total of eight midshipmen and a First Rate should carry twenty, and these figures seem to have corresponded roughly to practice: the Second Rate Royal Katherine had twenty-two midshipmen in 1673, and the Third Rate Montagu had thirteen in 1688.15
The quartermaster. Sixth Rates had two quartermasters and larger rates had four, although a First Rate in wartime could have eight. As well as overseeing the issue of stores by the steward and cook (to ensure that the men got full measure and were not defrauded), they supervised the helmsman, took turns at conning the ship and were responsible for the men allocated to each of the ship’s quarters.*16
The quarter gunner. These were appointed in the same numbers as quartermasters, though Sixth Rates had only one. As their name implied, they had authority for the guns in a given quarter of the ship.
The corporal: The corporal had the charge of the ship’s small arms, and was meant to exercise the crew in them at times assigned by the captain. Although the post was originally seen as a stepping stone towards lieutenancies and thus to commands, it never became so in practice, and remained a relatively lowly petty rank.17
Yeomen: A Fourth Rate carried two yeomen, while a First in wartime would carry six. These were primarily responsible for the jeers, sheets, shrouds, halliards and jacks; another yeoman was appointed to look after the powder room.
The steward: The steward, who had a mate in ships of all rates, was responsible for all the victuals once they had actually come aboard the ship, and was meant to some degree to restrict the purser’s opportunities to commit abuses (although in practice, it was more usual for pursers and stewards to collude to their mutual advantage). He was meant to check the hold and the breadroom, and to share out the appropriate proportions of stores to each mess.18 Stewards could aspire to become pursers, or to clerkships in the dockyards.
The coxswain: Most ships had only one coxswain, but First Rates had two. The coxswain had the charge of the ship’s ‘barge or shallop’, and was responsible for rowing the captain or other dignitaries to and from the shore or other ships. He carried a silver whistle ‘to cheer up his gang’.19
The armourer and gunsmith: These were two separate offices only on the largest rates; they were combined in smaller ships.
The swabber. The swabber did not usually feature on official lists of a ship’s officers, and was paid only as an able seaman. He was responsible for keeping the ship clean, both internally and externally, and this duty included examining every cabin, admonishing the occupants to be ‘cleanly and neat’.20
The cooper: The cooper, too, was not normally included in lists of officers, and received an able seaman’s pay. He was responsible for the care of the barrels of beer, water and dry provisions in the hold.
The sailmaker. This was not regarded as a ‘full-time’ position, and was paid only at four shillings a month above what the incumbent already earned in another capacity.
The carpenter’s crew: Like the carpenters and their mates, members of the carpenters’ crews often alternated between positions afloat and in the dockyards.
CLERKS
Clerks were allowed to the captains of Fourth Rates and upwards from January 1673. They were introduced to enable captains to comply more easily with their general instructions, particularly those that related to checking the books of subordinate officers.21 Clerks were often drawn from the family or friends of captains. In 1678 Baron Wylde was clerk to his father, Captain Charles Wylde, aboard the St Michael; he ultimately rose to command, an unusual career path for a captain’s clerk.22
SERVANTS
Servants could form a significant proportion of a ship’s crew. There were eighteen aboard the Second Rate Victory in 1673, and this was typical for a ship of her size.23 Senior officers had several servants, and these were often literally family affairs, seen as a way of training up close relatives or other connections and giving them gainful employment. The captain of the James Galley in 1679–81 had ten servants, ‘most of them his own contracted servants and the rest his relations and friends’.24 Aboard the Royal Charles in 1665, the captain (Sir William Penn) had four servants, the master had two (one of whom was his son), and the boatswain had three (one of whom was his son); but these retinues were dwarfed by that of the embarked admiral, the Duke of York, who came attended by ten of his household staff and forty-four guards.25 James took an even larger retinue with him to the Prince in 1672 – no fewer than eighty-three strong, it included eighteen watermen to man his barge and his personal guard of fourteen men, which included John Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough, and another controversial general-to-be, Percy Kirke.26
TRUMPETERS
The master trumpeter was counted a petty officer, and was paid between twenty-four and thirty shillings a month depending on the rate of the ship; other trumpeters were paid as able seamen at twenty-four shillings a month.27 Little is known of the backgrounds or careers of trumpeters. Thomas Smith, who was serving in the post in 1685, had been an able seaman, claimed to have served the king ‘from his cradle’ in all wars, and described himself as ‘very ancient’.28 One of the trumpeters on the Portsmouth in 1664 was described as a ‘neger’.29 Their most common function was to signal the setting of the watch at night and its ending in the morning, for which service they received a ‘can’ of beer.30 They were also used to relay messages or simply to provide entertainment aboard ship, to signal to other ships and to provide a warlike chorus as a ship went into battle.
* For the rates of pay in 1685, see Appendix.
* See Part Seven, Chapter 25, p136.