"We gave them three such cheers as are only to be heard on a British man-of-war. This intimidates the enemy more than a broadside." the deaths of all but one of the nine men who went to Pitcairn. Two distinguished students of the mutiny, the American Sam McKinney , whose Bligh has been mentioned, and the Australian Greg Dening, in a fascinating book devoted to unraveling the double helix of the past and present, Mr. Bligh' s Bad Language (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK & New York NY, 1992), conclude that Bligh, act ing out hi s resentments verbally, did worse damage to ship ' s morale and discipline than he would have done had he used the physical violence of flo gg ing . The failure of the crew to ac t one way or the other when the mutiny took place argues a crew that has been cowed and is uncertain of itself. And much as we may admire Bligh ' s leadership and seamanship on the voyage of the Bounty launch , his disciplinary systems aboard ship have ri ghtly been judged to be against the best traditions of the Navy which Bligh served .
"The Tight Ship and Her Merry Hearts" Those traditions and practices, in a world far removed from ours, were different, perhaps, than most of us imagine today. Loyalty down the necessarily hierarchical ladder of shipboard organization was expected and much prized , for it was vital to the spirit and performance of a loyal , cheerful and energetic ship 's company. Captains who used flogging excessively were reprimanded; a record with few punishments logged was held to be a clean record and singled out for compliments. A sull en, put-upon or ab used crew is not much good. An old Navy say ing has it: "A silent forecastle is a dangerous forecastle. " A recent popular account of how the Royal Navy adopted chronometers to determine longitude has Sir Clowdisley Shovell, an admiral of notable leadership qualities, taking an impossible action when a crewman points out that his ship was headed for the rocks. Dava Sobel, author of the book Longitude , says the admiral had the seaman hanged on the spot. This could not have happened, for a capital sentence could be administered only by court martial formally convened, with officers from other ships present at the trial. These vital constitutional ri ghts, evo lved through centuries in the English-speaking world , were absolutely adhered to. It is disheartening , indeed rather alarming, to see these hard-won rights turned to dust and blown away in conformity with the ideological preconceptions of a late r age. These unquestionable rights, of course, paid off handsomely for the Royal Navy and, later, the US Navy . The yeoman tradition which insi sted that "a man is a man for all that" had taken root deeply in the British psyche and gave us a marvelously tough , cheerful, resourceful breed in the British tar. This was the stock that enabled Royal Navy ships to win victory after victory against formidable odds. Let the British tar John Nicol speak for himself of the spirit of the crews he served in- a modest but very proud old sailor who had been drafted, or " pressed," into the Navy in the Napoleonic War. Nicol dictated hi s memories to a sympathetic printer in 1822, seven years after the war was over, at the outset of the Pax Britannica, which prevailed for another ninety-odd yea rs before it had run its course. " A serious cast was to be perceived on every face ; but not a shade of doubt or fea r," says John Nicol , mariner, describing how hi s sh ip the Goliath went into action at the Battle of St. Vincent on 14 February 1797. "We rejoiced in a general action; not that we loved fighting; but we all wished to be free to return to our homes , and fo llow ou r own pursuits ." He goes on to
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describe the British custom of cheering as they closed the enemy: Wh en everything was cleared, the ports open, the matches lighted, and guns run out, then we gave them three such cheers as are only to be heard on a British man-of-war. This intimidates the enemy more than a broadside , as they have often declared to me. It shows them that all is right; and the men in the true spirit baying to be at them. In this Sea History you'll find Nicol's account of the Battle of the Nile, as he experienced it aboard the Goliath. Goliath was the lead ship in the British line and as she passed down the line of anchored French battleships she fired a broadside at each, cheering each enemy in succession . The wonder is, they meant it. Without romanticizing the hard conditions of naval service-and indeed of life ashore for the lower orders of society- the British consistently regarded themselves as a free people. And this applied to those who had been pressed into service, including Nicol him self. When John Nicol spoke of being free to "follow our own pursuits," he meant itdespite the fact that he was then a broken old man , in 1822, after the end of the wars with France, living on the edge of poverty and reduced to picking up bits of coal in the streets. In his lifetime he seethed with indi gnation at the treatment of black slaves in the British Caribbean pl antations. Slavery had long been abolished in Britain, so Nicol was unu sed to this debasing condition, more debasing to mas ter than servant, as he makes clear in this recoll ection , hearing the " mirth and dancing" of the slaves on shore : "There the negroes bounded in all the spirit of health and happiness; while their oppressors could hardly drag their effeminate bodies along." Nicol also cites examples of British tars intervening in situations where slaves are abused-and getting away with it, with the support of all hands . We may end our brief visit with thi s good man of unquenchable pride and spirit with hi s e pi gra ph to hi s memoirs: Old as I am, my heart is still unchanged; and were I young and stout as I have been, again would I sail upon discovery: but, weak and stiff, I can only send my prayers with the tight ship and her merry hearts.
To Keep the Sea The British strategy carried forward so successfully by Britain's captains and crews in the late l 700s and l 800s was one of "keeping the sea." Thi s was a strategy of having the fleet at sea, shutting the enemy up in port so that the continuing ocean traffics that were the source of Britain's wealth-and getting to be vital to the nation' s survival-could be carried on while the opponents were blocked. "Keeper of the Sea" was the old English title for commanders of fleets (the word "admiral " is of Arab origin). "Keeper," in its archaic sense, means guardian, as well as one who possesses or maintains , in the current sense of storekeeper or bookkeeper. The sense of the age-old phrase "to keep the sea" patently springs from these origins , but to a seaman mean s something a little more. To "keep the sea" is to stay at sea, and abide its ri sks and surprises and occasional violence. In boatyards today you can hear people talk of a boat's "seakeeping" qualiti es-in other words the boat 's ability to endure what the sea throws at her, and cope with it, and stay afloat-or "keep the sea." Before the 1500s, English ventures by sea, as with other nations, had been pretty much to sail from headland to headland , the sea serving as auxiliary to the land, rather than as the truly global element, the medium of universal access SEA HISTORY 85, SUMMER 1998