Organisation and the Ship’s Day
THE ORGANISATION OF A ship’s company and the ship’s day was based on several fundamentals that were already well established by the middle of the seventeenth century, and in some cases have changed little since. The evidence for shipboard organisation in this period is much less detailed and less extensive than that which survives for later periods; for example, there are no surviving captain’s orders or quarter bills, which become much more prevalent after about 1750.1 For all his innate curiosity and comprehensive detailing of other aspects of naval service, Pepys was surprisingly uninterested in such matters, and barely comments on them at all (despite the fact that he maintained a diary during both of his extended periods at sea, in 1660 and 1683–4).
WATCHES AND TIMEKEEPING
At its first assembling, the crew was divided into two watches, starboard and larboard. These normally worked within the pattern of four-hour shifts (also confusingly called watches) that still persists in Western navies: the first watch from 8pm until midnight, the middle watch from midnight until 4am, the morning watch from 4am until 8am, the forenoon watch from 8am until noon, the afternoon watch from noon until 4pm, then two two-hour ‘dog watches’ between 4pm and 8pm to bring variety into the pattern. When, say, the starboard watch was on duty for one of the four-hour periods, it had responsibility for the working of the ship. Its men trimmed the sails, manned the pumps, carried out running repairs, painted and tarred anything that needed it, dealt with emergencies and carried out any other tasks that might be required by the ship’s officers. Meanwhile, the larboard watch would be off duty, unless particular urgency led to a cry for ‘all hands’. The night watch was set at 8pm; the off-duty watch then slept until midnight, when it relieved the other. Despite having spent a lifetime at sea, Edward Barlow still resented the fact that ‘at night when we went to take our rest, we were not to lie still above four hours’.2 In harbour or a roadstead the ship went to ‘quarter watches’, effectively a four-watch system whereby ‘they allow themselves so much the more sleep and rest, as having less to look after than when they are at sea’.3 Occasionally, though, ordinary watches were worked in harbour at night if the ship urgently needed to be fitted or readied for sea.4
Each four-hour watch was divided into eight half-hour periods, the passing of which was marked by the number of strokes on the ship’s bell. This was kept in a prominent and often elaborately decorated belfry at the after end of the forecastle; some examples have been recovered from ships of the period.5 Thus four bells marked the half-way point of the watch, and eight signified its end. Sand glasses kept the time. In 1686 a First Rate had one watch glass, which lasted for the full four hours; a half-watch glass lasting two hours, in other words one dog watch; and eighteen half-hour glasses to time each chiming of the bell. The bell itself had an arm leading aft with a rope hanging from it, which would be rung by a man standing in the waist.6 There is little evidence from this period for the duties of helmsmen and lookouts, but given the nature of their responsibilities it is probably fair to assume that they were relieved more frequently within each watch, as was the case a century later.7 Any man found in his cabin or below decks when he should have been on watch would lose a day’s pay; anyone found asleep on watch was to be punished according to the captain’s discretion.8
A ship’s bell and belfry (on the contemporary model of the Fourth Rate Adventure).
(KRIEGSTEIN COLLECTION)
THE SHIP’S DAY
Beyond the unchanging framework provided by the watches, a ship’s day was probably less rigidly organised than it became in later years. Nevertheless, certain features were already present. The early-morning cleaning of the decks, a ritual familiar to all students of Nelson’s navy and readers of Patrick O’Brian’s novels, does not yet seem to have been carried out daily, but only when the ship was ‘on show’. It was done at about three in the morning aboard the Royal Charles on 7 June 1660; Pepys, who must have had a cabin immediately below the quarterdeck or poop, was wakened by water pouring through the deck and into his mouth, forcing him to abandon his bed ‘and sleep leaning upon my table’.9 Otherwise, the ship’s working day effectively began with the start of the morning watch at four, even on Christmas Day, when officers might be awakened by trumpeters or fiddlers playing a festive salute outside their cabins.10 Breakfast was followed by a morning’s work which culminated in prayers shortly before noon (a daily prayer was provided in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer). The main meal was then taken, usually at mid-day.11 Supper was taken at about six, within the dog watches and thus causing less disruption to the watch rota.12 The night watch was set at eight, following supper, after which no lights or candles were permitted below decks. An officer would then do the rounds to ensure that this had been complied with, paying particular attention to the hold, the steward’s room and the cockpit. From the mid-1670s onwards, guard-boats checked that ships in harbour were complying with ‘lights out’ at eight.13 In practice, officers turned in as and when the work of the ship allowed it, and, as on shore, as the pattern of the seasons dictated; on 11 December 1665 Captain Sir Thomas Allin was in bed by nine, but it is clear from his journals that he was often up by two or three in the morning.14 Men slept in their clothes, for they never knew when the call might go up for‘all hands’.15
STATIONS AND QUARTERS
The General Instructions to Captains of 1663, which in most cases simply codified long-established practice, specified that in addition to its watches, the ship’s company should also be formed of‘quarters’. In essence, these were the specific duties and locations around the ship to which individuals were allocated, and these were already long established; as the General Instructions of 1663 put it, men were to be allocated to ‘the great guns, small shot, trimming of sails, etc, as is usual’. Nathaniel Boteler, the Bedfordshire sea-captain who wrote a series of‘dialogues’ on naval affairs three decades earlier, was more specific when referring to the beginning of a fight:
All the ship’s company duly quartered and disposed; some of them to the Master for the management of the sails; some to assist the gunners in the traversing of the ordnance; others to the corporal to ply their small shot; some to fill powder in the powder room; others to carry it from thence to the gunners in cartridges, and to the musketeers in bandoliers; the carpenters [i.e. carpenters’ crews], some of them being ready in the hold, with sheets of lead, plugs, and the like, necessaries for the stopping of such leaks as shall there be made by any great shot received from the enemy; others of them betwixt the decks, for the like purpose … every man taking strict notice of his particular station and task, from whence he is not to budge without leave.16
ESTABLISHMENT AGREED DURING A MEETING AT THE NAVY OFFICE, 16 MAY 1677, BETWEEN THE NAVY BOARD, THE OFFICERS OF THE ORDNANCE AND SEVERAL CAPTAINS
A table listing each man’s duty was to be hung in the steerage, with additional lists hung in each quarter detailing the men appointed to it.17 Men would be allocated to the afterguard, or the forecastle, or one of the yards. Although there is little specific evidence from this period, it is probable that this was done in much the same way as in later years; for instance, there are several references in contemporary sources to foremast men, who were essentially synonymous with the forecastle men of later generations.18 Men would have been allocated to particular stations for important manoeuvres, such as mooring, unmooring and tacking; in action, they would have been allocated to specific guns.19 A detailed table of the proposed dispositions was drawn up for the ‘thirty new ships’ when that programme commenced in 1677, though the veteran sea-officer Sir Richard Haddock objected to them on the grounds that‘the number of men allowed doth far exceed any former establishment and them divided to the guns are thought sufficient, but if the captains commanding shall judge otherwise they may add more men to the guns out of the small shot and sails’.20
The quarters were entirely distinct from the messes, the main means of social organisation aboard the ship,* and each had at least one quartermaster allocated to it, who conned the ship and supervised the helmsman.21 Men would be called to their duties by the shrill note of the boatswain’s whistle, perhaps supplemented by the efforts of the ship’s trumpeters.
SALUTES
Giving or receiving salutes was an essential part of the work of the ship, and something of an obsession in the navy; as Nathaniel Boteler put it, it led to ‘the fond and foul expense of powder … especially by the English, who herein are the vainest of all nations, as practising it in every ordinary feasting fit, and health drinking’.22 Captains were bound by instructions which enjoined them to enforce the correct salutes, which were seen as an essential manifestation of the nation’s honour. In home waters, or the ‘British seas’ (which were assumed to extend as far as Cape Finisterre), foreign ships were expected to strike their topsails and take in their flags to acknowledge the king’s sovereignty over the seas. The journals of ships employed on ‘cruiser and convoy’ duty suggest that in a busy sea lane this was a constant concern, with barely a day going by when several salutes did not have to be exacted from passing merchantmen. Encounters with foreign fleets or visits to foreign ports demanded an even more sophisticated ritual. In general, a British ship expected to fire fewer guns than it received, or to receive a gun-for-gun return of the salute from a gun battery on land. Captains often had to go ashore to check beforehand with foreign cities or forts to see whether or not they were prepared to fire the appropriate number of guns; if not, no salute would be fired on either side.23 Meetings or leave-takings were invariably an excuse for a cacophony of salutes, with an accepted ‘sliding scale’. When Sir Thomas Allin’s fleet encountered a Dutch squadron under Willem van der Zaen off Trafalgar in March 1669, the Dutchman opened proceedings (see table).24
SALUTES EXCHANGED BETWEEN BRITISH AND DUTCH SQUADRONS, MARCH 1669
Dutch fire |
British response |
15 |
13 |
9 |
7 |
7 |
5 |
5 |
3 |
3 |
1 |
The two admirals exchanged gifts, and at parting each fired five guns to salute the other.
* See Part Eight, Chapter 29, p154.