Disasters
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SAILORS always ran the risk of being killed by enemy action. Between 1649 and 1689 there was no year of‘dead peace’ when Britain was not technically at war with one or more foreign states, or with less formally organised entities. In approximate order, British warships fought the Royalists, Dunkirk privateers, the Dutch, the Spanish, various kinds of Barbary corsairs, the Dutch again, the French, the Danes, the Dutch again, more Barbary corsairs and finally the French from 1689 onwards. As well as running the ever-present risk of chancing upon an entirely or debatably legitimate enemy warship and being killed by it, naval men might also encounter pirates or rebels (for example, warships were sent to assist in suppressing‘Bacon’s rebellion’ in Virginia in 1675–6 and ‘Keigwin’s rebellion’ in the East Indies in 1684–6). But gunfire was only one of the untimely deaths that might confront a sailor of the time, and it was not necessarily the greatest killer, nor the most feared. These truths were reflected in the prayers said aboard British warships. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer included several forms of prayer for use at sea, and specified two that were meant to be said daily on every king’s ship. The most well-known asked God to ‘preserve us from the dangers of the sea, and from the violence of the enemy’. Two prayers were intended for use when faced by an enemy, but four were provided for the approach of a storm. One hymn and one collect were given for the aftermath of a battle, but two psalms, two collects and a mighty hymn of praise were provided for the aftermath of a storm. In this way, the Church of England reflected a reality in which disaster was often more likely to do for British sailors than direct enemy action.
STORMS
In September 1659 the Sixth Rate Acadia set out for a voyage in the English Channel; she was never seen again, and was presumed to have been overwhelmed by a storm. Almost thirty years later the brand new Fourth Rate Sedgemoor was wrecked near Dover during a winter gale, during which snow flurries prevented her officers seeing the shore.1 Ships did not even have to be in the open sea. Pepys recorded the sinking of the Assurance in December 1660 by ‘a gust of wind’ in what should have been the safe waters at Woolwich dockyard; twenty men were drowned, although the ship was quickly refloated.2 The dangers of Plymouth rapidly became apparent when more use was made of the anchorages there after war broke out with France in 1689. A particularly violent storm on Christmas Day 1689 destroyed four ships, including the Fourth Rate Centurion and the Third Henrietta, which was driven across the Sound, eventually running aground and breaking up in the Cattewater with the loss of some sixty men.3 On 3 September 1691 the Second Rate Coronation and the Third Harwich were wrecked in another deadly storm on the Devon coast, the Coronation being driven onto Rame Head while the Harwich was driven ashore in Plymouth Sound itself.4 The havoc that even a less lethal storm could wreak was well chronicled by Henry Teonge:
About 4 in the morning the seas grow far more outrageous, and break clearly over our quarter-deck; drive our hen coops overboard; and washed one of our seamen clean off the crotchet-yard. A second sea came and threw down all our booms; brake both pinnace and longboat on the decks. A third came, and flung our anchor off the ship side, flung the bell out of his place, brake off the carving, and pulled two planks asunder in the midst of the ship, between decks, and just against the pump. Our forecastle was broke all down long before. Now the men are all disheartened, and expect nothing but the loss of ship and life. Our larboard gunwales all broke up, a whole plank almost out between decks; men swimming about in the waist of the ship; and great seas often breaking over us.5
Storms in the West Indies took a steady toll over the years. In 1664 the Fifth Rate Westergate and Sixth Rate Griffin simply vanished in a tropical storm off Jamaica. Perhaps only five men survived out of their combined crews of 150 or more. A Caribbean hurricane destroyed the Hope in 1666, leading to the loss of her entire crew and her illustrious passenger, Francis, fifth Lord Willoughby of Parham, the governor of Barbados and sometime Parliamentarian soldier and politician.6 The Mediterranean was kinder, but the Fifth Rate Orange was lost in a storm off Minorca in 1670, and the Fourth Rate Marigold in another at Tangier in 1679 with the loss of fifty-two lives. All of these storm losses were dwarfed by the disastrous night of 27 November 1703, when the ‘Great Storm’ swept across southern England. Thirteen ships were lost: the Second Rate Vanguard broke loose in the Medway and had to be sunk to protect the other ships; the Third Rates Northumberland, Restoration, Stirling Castle and Mary were wrecked in the Downs with the loss of over 1,000 men; and other vessels were lost off Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, Norfolk and Holland and in the Bristol Channel.
BURNINGS AND EXPLOSIONS
Fire was always one of the greatest fears of those who served in wooden warships, which might be carrying anything up to several hundred barrels of gunpowder. Elaborate regulations were introduced to reduce the dangers: the General Instructions of 1663 specified that no fires or candles were to be permitted below decks after the night watch was set, and smoking could take place only over a tub of water on the upper deck or forecastle. In 1680 the issue of leather buckets to ships in ordinary was ordered.7 Even so, several ships were burned and destroyed. Some fell victim to what might be termed shoddy workmanship. In 1658 the Third Rate Happy Entrance was burned when a dockyard boat carrying hot pitch was left unattended alongside her, while fifteen years later the Fifth Rate Milford was burned out at Port Mahon when the drying of her bread room started a fire that went out of control.8 Others perished through the carelessness of individuals. In 1656 the boatswain’s yeoman failed to douse a candle in the boatswain’s store of the Fourth Rate Pelican at Portsmouth, and the ship burned out. The Third Rate Defiance was burned out at Chatham on 6 December 1668 because her gunner had allowed his wife and daughter, who lived on board, to use unguarded candles below deck. On 16 May 1682 the Second Rate Henry was burned at Chatham because an elderly seaman named Wallis dropped a candle into a pile of oakum. The greatest ship of the age, the Royal Sovereign, was destroyed in much the same way. On 27 January 1696 an old seaman named Thomas Couch left a lighted candle in his cabin when he went on watch. The fire spread, the small and aged skeleton crew proved incapable of fighting it, and the ship that had been built sixty years earlier as the pride of Charles I’s Ship Money fleet was consumed.9
There were many other lucky escapes, and only a few have been chronicled. In 1666, for example, the gunner of the Matthias was dismissed for deciding that it would be a good idea to test some fireworks in his cabin while he was drunk.10 In 1673 the gunner’s mate of the Unicorn went into the powder room with a candle, which ignited the powder, but fortunately the fire was put out in time.11 In 1678 the master of Teonge’s ship left a candle burning in his cabin; this fired a bunch of rosemary and almost did for the ship.12 In 1691 some crewmen of the Sovereign held a drinking session below decks and left a candle burning, which ignited some oakum. Not long afterwards, a candle was left too near the powder room on the St Michael. A number of men convinced themselves that the ship was about to blow up and jumped overboard, where they drowned; but the fire itself was quickly extinguished.13 Edward Barlow, who was present in the fleet at the time, commented on the ever-present danger of fire:
when [ships] are on fire, it is a hundred to one if that you put it out, everything being so pitchy and tarry that the least fire setteth it all in a flame; and also there is great danger of the powder, for the least spark with a hammer or anything else in the room where it is, or the snuff of a candle causeth all to be turned into a blast, and in a moment no hopes of any person’s lives being saved from death in the twinkling of an eye.14
The loss of the Gloucester on the Leman and Oare bank, 1682; a distinctly sanitised painting by Johan Danckerts which downplays the drama and destruction of the shipwreck. Her pilot, James Aires, received most of the blame for the wreck, which was briefly suspected of being a clumsy plot to assassinate James, Duke of York, the unpopular heir to the throne.
(NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH)
Barlow’s sentiments were perfectly understandable and entirely justifiable, for a fire that spread on a fully armed ship at sea could easily end in a devastating explosion. Two of the ships on William Penn’s Caribbean expedition blew up in 1655, in both cases because a fire that began in the steward’s cabin spread out of control. One of them was the Second Rate Paragon, formerly the Henrietta Maria, which blew up with the loss of perhaps a hundred men. The captain of the Fifth Rate Forester had just gone ashore at Livorno (Leghorn) on 18 November 1672 when, for no apparent reason, his ship blew up behind him, taking most of the crew with it. The Third Rate Anne blew up in December 1673 when dockyard labourers began work in her powder room, not realising that it still contained gunpowder that the gunner had embezzled and intended to sell for his own gain. Some 120 men were killed, and the gunner was imprisoned.15 However, undoubtedly the most spectacular explosion to destroy a British warship of the period occurred aboard the Second Rate London on 7 March 1665, as she was being taken from Chatham round into the Thames. Off the Buoy of the Nore, she was suddenly torn apart by a huge internal explosion which killed some 300 of her crew. Among them were twenty-one kinsmen of her admiral, Sir John Lawson, and thirty women and children who had come aboard to take leave of their men.16
INCOMPETENCE AND ERRORS
The ignorance of captains, masters and pilots, and inadequate charts, brought about the ends of several ships and killed hundreds of seamen. Five frigates that believed themselves to be on the coast of North Africa ran aground at Gibraltar in December 1664, and two were lost outright, all because ‘of so many ancient masters and officers, never was such an oversight committed’.17 The Fifth Rate Norwich was lost in 1682 when her captain made an elementary navigational error while returning to Port Royal, Jamaica, in almost perfect conditions.18 Many vessels were wrecked among the complex sandbanks of the Thames and Medway estuaries. Most were small, but the Fifth Rate Sorlings was lost off Reculver in 1667 thanks to neglect by her pilot, the Third Rate Fairfax was wrecked on a sandbank off Greys in 1673 while sailing from the Thames to the Nore, and the Fifth Rate Algier was lost in the Swin channel in the same year after her captain ordered a course that took her over the Black Tail bank. The incompetence of her pilot led to the loss in 1689 of the Third Rate Pendennis, which ran onto the Kentish Knock.19
The sandbanks off the Norfolk coast were particularly notorious. The Third Rate Laurel was wrecked off Great Yarmouth in 1657 through the negligence of her officers, and thanks to the incompetence of her pilot the Fourth Rate Kent was wrecked on the same banks in 1672, with the loss of all but a few dozen men.20 Undoubtedly the most spectacular wreck in the area, and the one that could easily have changed the course of British history, occurred on 6 May 1682, when the Third Rate Gloucester ploughed onto the Leman and Oare banks following an error by her pilot, James Aire. About 130 men died, including Robert Ker, third Earl of Roxburgh, but the consequences could have been even greater, for she was also carrying the heir to the throne, James, Duke of York, who was en route to Leith.21 The duke’s fortunate survival meant that two and a half years later he could succeed to the throne as King James II and VII, thereby triggering a course of events that ended in the ‘Glorious Revolution’.
OTHER ACCIDENTS
Henry Teonge recorded a succession of accidents aboard the ships in which he served. While adjusting the sails during a gale, one man fell from the mainyard onto a gun, while another broke a leg. Not long afterwards, a seaman trying to disentangle the ship’s pendant from the mizzen chains fell into the sea and drowned.22 Aboard the Crown in 1673, a seaman was clearing her hold when a hogshead of beef fell on him and killed him.23 A man might lose a hand if a gun being loaded for a salute went off accidentally, while one unfortunate was relieving himself in the heads of the Portsmouth in 1678 when he was killed by a signal shot mistakenly fired from the Plymouth.24 Edward Barlow had been at sea for only a few days when he was struck by a capstan bar and fell into the hold, suffering a fractured skull which took almost a year to heal.25 Such occurrences were so common that they rarely found their way even into ships’ log books, let alone any official correspondence. Rather more serious was the 1686 case of the boatswain of the Charles Galley, who was shot dead by one of his friends during a musket practice; this went to a court martial, which rapidly concluded that it had been a tragic accident.26