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Post by maxman on Sept 8, 2013 0:59:01 GMT
I think there should be a thread detailing the facts about impressment.
The press was limited to homebound British merchant ships, with exemptions for the Honourable East India Company (due to their political influence in Parliment) and colliers (whose coal ended up in the hearths in the homes of Members of Parliment).
Foreigners could not be pressed, but Britain did not yet recognise naturalised US citizens of British origin, and "American" accents were indistinguishable from British and papers were easy to forge and just as often fake as they were genuine, making identification extremely difficult.
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Post by the light works on Sept 8, 2013 13:53:21 GMT
I think there should be a thread detailing the facts about impressment. The press was limited to homebound British merchant ships, with exemptions for the Honourable East India Company (due to their political influence in Parliment) and colliers (whose coal ended up in the hearths in the homes of Members of Parliment). Foreigners could not be pressed, but Britain did not yet recognise naturalised US citizens of British origin, and "American" accents were indistinguishable from British and papers were easy to forge and just as often fake as they were genuine, making identification extremely difficult. my memory of the time period is a little vague, but I seem to recall it happened in "port of call" drinking establishments as well.
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Post by Cybermortis on Sept 8, 2013 14:31:11 GMT
Impressment was limited to those who made a living from the sea, which unfortunately covered rather a lot of occupations and could be taken to cover people who've never sailed a ship in their life - The Kings Oyster catchers ended up getting impressed at one point, and on another the Ferryman for the Thames was taken which caused problems because most Members of Parliment - including the Prime Minister of that time - had to use the Ferry to get to Parliament.
It was understood that Impressment - which was unpopular with everyone not just those how got taken - had to be limited to protect sea going trade, and with that the economy of the country. So there were a number of limitations and exemptions brought in on the national level, and agreements reached on local levels so Impressment could be avoided in some areas.
Colliers, specifically the coal trade on the East Coast of the UK, were exempt because the winters in London were so harsh people would have frozen to death without coal - this was the period in which the Thames froze over.
Outgoing trade was exempt because they would need the men to safely get to their destination, incoming trade wasn't protected from the press since you didn't need that many men to sail a ship back into a port it was in sight of.
Many of the larger shipping companies, and several ports, reached agreements where they would provide X-number of men per year in return the Impress service would not bother them.
It was only in very extreme cases that these rules were lifted for short times - a 'hot press' - because the Navy needed a lot of men immediately.
The impress service itself usually worked not through gangs of men combing the countryside like a pack of man-eating locusts. But by getting volunteers to sign up, which was quicker, easier and a lot safer than trying to take on the sea-going population of the average port. Apart from anything else the bounty for a volunteer was a lot higher. Impress officers also had to be very careful because local authorities tended not to support them very much, if at all. Impress officers could be and in a few cases were arrested and imprisoned for kidnapping. This was unusual if the person taken was clearly a seaman, but more or less assured if they were not. The Navy was willing to help such officers out, but had to be careful because the legality of the Impress service was questionable.
The more usual way the system worked was for the service on land to come to agreements with local ports, while the more forceful approach was saved for incoming ships. It also seems that most ships crews were raised simply by advertising for volunteers - One Captain circa 1790 was able to fully man his ship within a week simply by going to his home town and asking men to sign up. (Another Captain who was docked next to him was stuck in port for two months due to having too few men until the Navy transferred men from another returning ship.)
The Navy itself only wanted able seamen, who knew the trade and how to sail a ship. Landsmen were not really wanted because a lot of time had to go into training them up, and they tended to be in poor physical condition anyway. 'Showing someone the ropes' was a quite literal, and time consuming, job. Attempts were made to force the navy into taking such men, and one addition made to the law was the ability for Judges to sentence men to serve in the Navy. However the Navy effectively refused to take men from the jails, unless they were smugglers (who were skilled sailors). Nothing could wreck a good ships crew more than having a thief on-board*.
As far as nationality went, the press only covered British citizens. However as was noted it could be very difficult to tell an American from a Britain at this time - it was after all only a generation or so since the US gained its independence so the accents were not dissimilar. Papers could and were forged easily and in large numbers - so any Royal Navy officer could be forgiven for assuming any papers he might find were forged as they probably were. Last of all British law stated that a man's nationality was based purely on where he was born and could not be changed** - while the US allowed people to change their nationality.
The Navy itself understood that mistakes would happen, and were always willing to investigate and correct those mistakes. Landsmen or US Citizens who had been unfairly taken by the press would be released as quickly as possible - it could take some time in the latter case since proving nationality could take a while. What is often missed is that British nationals often decided to try and hide on US ships to avoid the press - understandable since they wouldn't need to learn a new language. Many of these men were deserters from the RN, which is why they tended to get taken up when discovered. By 1810 it seems that RN ships avoided taking men from US ships unless they were deserters, probably because it was far too much hassle than it was worth, or were clearly British***. The problem this caused with the US was more to do with searching the ships, especially warships, than in taking those men who were found. Even so US merchant ships do seem to have understood and accepted that the RN was going to stop and search their ships for contraband in the middle of a war.
(*By the late 1700's/early 1800's the majority of Captains tended to avoid flogging the men, instead finding other ways to punish sailors - the most popular were watering the grog or dunking the men over the bow****. This was as much practicality than it was a growing sense of humanity as a flogged man was not going to be able to work as well as an unflogged man. However theft was the universal exception, and anyone caught stealing would not only get flogged but most likely get the maximum number of lashes the Captain was allowed to give - or the maximum number he could get away with anyway.)
(**The exception were married women, who's nationality was determined by the nationality of their husband.)
(***Showing an understanding of Cricket or knowing if you should put the tea or milk in first would be a give-away)
(****This is not quite as humane as it sounds when the water is ice cold, the dunkie can't swim and the place you are being dunked is directly under the ships toilets....)
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Post by the light works on Sept 9, 2013 4:24:32 GMT
history has shown that conscript armies tend to be less motivated than volunteer armies. I'd assume the same goes for navies.
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Post by Cybermortis on Sept 9, 2013 12:10:46 GMT
history has shown that conscript armies tend to be less motivated than volunteer armies. I'd assume the same goes for navies. Actually it seems that while the quality of seamen went down this was because many of the pressed men didn't know their jobs or had never been in the Navy before. We are used to viewing the Royal Navy of the 18th century as hell at sea, but the reality was that it was by the standards of the time it was probably one of the best, if not the best, working employer you could have. Three large meals a day - something that no labourer on land could expect - free medical care (except for STD's), a 'pension' of sorts if you were injured in the line of duty, a community in which you worked and a fairly light workload - Men-of-war were crewed based on the number of men needed to work the guns so there were considerably more men on the ship than were needed to sail it. So the amount of work each man needed to do was a lot lower than you'd think - as evidenced by the fact that sailors had the time to learn how to read and write and officers had time to sit and paint while on duty. Sailors seem, for the most part, to have considered the Impress service as an occupational hazard - when they objected it was usually at being taken away from their families or because they knew full well that if they were impressed on an merchant ship before it had returned to port they would get no money for that voyage. The community aspect of life on a ship seems to have been the deciding factor for most men, and the rate of desertion from ships fell to next to nothing after a month or two - under good Captains anyway. We also see that sailors were quite happy at rejoining old comrades or Captains, and the Royal Navy ended up trying to allow men who volunteered to pick the ship on which they served (this wasn't practical during the Napoleonic wars, but the Navy does seem to have tried to accommodate sailors where possible). Another factor that is often over looked is that the Royal Navy was very progressive for the time. Unlike the Army it was quite possible for a pressed man to become an officer, at least until towards the end of the Napoleonic wars where the navy had far more officers of all ranks than they had ships they could serve on. Consider that Captain James Cook started out as a Masters Mate (basically a regular seaman who assisted one of the NCO's) and ended up as a Post-Captain because of his good service and skills. That the Navy had, at one time, had an argument about if 'gentlemen' or 'Tarpaulin's' made better officers says rather a lot about the service. The question as to if men from upper class backgrounds made better officers than men who came up from the ranks was never asked in the Army because it wasn't something that happened. In the navy however men were judged more on their ability than background, and having a title did not mean that you would get a ship if your skills were poor. At best a title just meant that you were less likely to be overlooked when or if a position opened up on a ship. Things changed after 1816, but then the Impressment act was not used after this date. The irony is that the 'harsh' navy life we think of was more in keeping with the Victorian and WW1 navy than that of the 18th century.
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Post by the light works on Sept 9, 2013 13:32:21 GMT
history has shown that conscript armies tend to be less motivated than volunteer armies. I'd assume the same goes for navies. Actually it seems that while the quality of seamen went down this was because many of the pressed men didn't know their jobs or had never been in the Navy before. We are used to viewing the Royal Navy of the 18th century as hell at sea, but the reality was that it was by the standards of the time it was probably one of the best, if not the best, working employer you could have. Three large meals a day - something that no labourer on land could expect - free medical care (except for STD's), a 'pension' of sorts if you were injured in the line of duty, a community in which you worked and a fairly light workload - Men-of-war were crewed based on the number of men needed to work the guns so there were considerably more men on the ship than were needed to sail it. So the amount of work each man needed to do was a lot lower than you'd think - as evidenced by the fact that sailors had the time to learn how to read and write and officers had time to sit and paint while on duty. Sailors seem, for the most part, to have considered the Impress service as an occupational hazard - when they objected it was usually at being taken away from their families or because they knew full well that if they were impressed on an merchant ship before it had returned to port they would get no money for that voyage. The community aspect of life on a ship seems to have been the deciding factor for most men, and the rate of desertion from ships fell to next to nothing after a month or two - under good Captains anyway. We also see that sailors were quite happy at rejoining old comrades or Captains, and the Royal Navy ended up trying to allow men who volunteered to pick the ship on which they served (this wasn't practical during the Napoleonic wars, but the Navy does seem to have tried to accommodate sailors where possible). Another factor that is often over looked is that the Royal Navy was very progressive for the time. Unlike the Army it was quite possible for a pressed man to become an officer, at least until towards the end of the Napoleonic wars where the navy had far more officers of all ranks than they had ships they could serve on. Consider that Captain James Cook started out as a Masters Mate (basically a regular seaman who assisted one of the NCO's) and ended up as a Post-Captain because of his good service and skills. That the Navy had, at one time, had an argument about if 'gentlemen' or 'Tarpaulin's' made better officers says rather a lot about the service. The question as to if men from upper class backgrounds made better officers than men who came up from the ranks was never asked in the Army because it wasn't something that happened. In the navy however men were judged more on their ability than background, and having a title did not mean that you would get a ship if your skills were poor. At best a title just meant that you were less likely to be overlooked when or if a position opened up on a ship. Things changed after 1816, but then the Impressment act was not used after this date. The irony is that the 'harsh' navy life we think of was more in keeping with the Victorian and WW1 navy than that of the 18th century. I would guess that naval service embodied the adage, "days of boredom punctuated by minutes of sheer terror" (except storms, of course, those would be hours of sheer terror)
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Post by Cybermortis on Sept 9, 2013 14:22:53 GMT
Actually most sailors would never come under fire, so the terror part probably didn't apply outside bad weather. Much depended on luck, the Captain and the mission given to the ship. Those aggressive Captains who had the good fortune to be given patrols near or along an enemy coast would often liven things up with raids and cutting out actions against signal posts and small ports, and those who felt that it might be a good idea to make sure that their crew knew how to use the guns you were carrying would often sail down the coast and use signal posts and small fortifications for target practice.
Such raids don't seem to have resulted in many casualties (at least for the British), a result of often gaining total surprise but also superb leadership and a high degree of trust between officers and sailors in a crisis - Unlike the army, naval officers shared the same risks as the rank and file and were not afraid to get their hands dirty when there was hard work to be done - At least one new midshipman who went aboard a ship for the first time was astonished to be told that the Captain was one of the men covered in dirt trying to step the mainmast.
Storms could go on for days or if you were really unlucky (and in the Atlantic) a week or more. Battle in comparison usually went on for at least an hour, if not several, although its pace was a lot slower than we are used to as even the best gun crews could not manage a shot more than every 90 seconds or so and certainly couldn't maintain that rate of fire for more than five or ten minutes. This, of course, was against an opponent who was willing to stand and fight. Ships that wanted to get away could result in running battles that lasted a day or more - although this was the exception since you were more likely to run into ships when they were a day or so from a friendly port.
In terms of the more usual working day most ships had a two-shift rotation of four hours on, four off with two two hour watches so men were not stuck working the same hours every day. As you'd have hour hours for sleep it is reasonable to assume that a lot of the men who found themselves with nothing to do would slip away and take a nap (hoping that the officers didn't catch them as it was a flogging offence). There would, in any case, be plenty to do on duty. From trimming the sails, to painting the ship or just keeping things neat and tidy. What differed from the merchant service was that the physical work was spread over more men, so the amount of individual effort required was lower, tasks took less time and therefore you had more time to rest or do lighter duties - such as splicing ropes. Maybe just as importantly this kind of work had a purpose beyond just keeping the men busy - unlike the Army who tended to invent work to keep men busy. So no matter how dull the work was you could always see the reason behind it - or have someone point out why you were doing it.
The worst ships to serve on were the Line ships, which were usually busy doing nothing. In earlier periods they were stuck in port waiting for the French Fleet to set sail, in later periods they were sailing the same route day after day blockading ports. Sloops and Brigs suffered from being badly overcrowded due to their size. Frigates however were the best ships to serve on, not only were they powerful enough to be given the really interesting duties (ie combat missions) but they in fact had more space per man than the line ships - making them a much better working environment. The size of Frigate crews was also perfect for creating a real community spirit - large enough for it to be a small village at sea, but not so large you couldn't get to know everyone on board.
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Post by the light works on Sept 9, 2013 14:28:32 GMT
This, of course, compares to modern aircraft carriers, which are large enough to be a small metropolis.
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Post by silverdragon on Sept 15, 2013 10:07:14 GMT
So is mine, but now you say that, I am sure I met you in those years.......... {BIG ( )grin?...}
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Post by Lokifan on Sept 26, 2013 19:30:40 GMT
Not something that could be tested, but along the lines of this thread, there's apparently a genuine quote from the pre-steam days:
"The beatings will continue until morale improves."
Supposedly, this wasn't meant to be humorous, just a statement of fact. Among crews, strict discipline was considered necessary by the crews themselves--and lax discipline could cause unrest and bad morale.
Anyone else hear this?
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Post by Cybermortis on Sept 26, 2013 21:49:30 GMT
Not something that could be tested, but along the lines of this thread, there's apparently a genuine quote from the pre-steam days: "The beatings will continue until morale improves." Supposedly, this wasn't meant to be humorous, just a statement of fact. Among crews, strict discipline was considered necessary by the crews themselves--and lax discipline could cause unrest and bad morale. Anyone else hear this? Flogging is one of those punishments that was used at later periods to try and paint the Navy in a poor light - not because the writer/speaker had anything against the Navy but because it was a useful way to discuss social issues without starting a fight. As I noted earlier, most (Naval) Captains disliked flogging - not because of moral issues but because a heavily flogged man was a man who couldn't do his duties on the ship. The majority tried to instil discipline though force of character, and failing that settled for punishments such as dunking or watering the grog. There were Captains who ruled by the lash, but they were unpopular both with the crews and with the Navy - in the latter case because they had trouble finding and retaining sailors for their ships. Indeed by the late 1700's the mark of a Captain was how often he used flogging and how many lashes he tended to give. Admirals were not beyond taking Captains who tended to overuse the 'cat' to one side and having a quiet word with them - pointing out that the Admiralty would be looking at the punishment book and had a strong inclination to avoid giving harsh Captains sea-going commands as they clearly couldn't handle the crew. Captains were also very limited in regards how far their authority to punish the crew went. They were officially limited to no more than 24 lashes, and certainly could not condemn any sailor to death. The former was probably ignored in extreme cases, although not to the extent of ordering a hundred lashes. The latter wasn't ignored, since a Captain who condemned a man to death would end up standing trial for murder*. (Which explains why Keel Hauling was never used in the RN). Just as importantly was the fact that the Admiralty tended to side with the sailors if they complained about gross abuse of power by officers and Captains. Good sailors were hard to find and keep hold of, while the Navy had far more officers of all ranks that it could employ - something like four times as many Post-Captains as ships for them and six times the number of Master and Commanders. Admirals were a different matter, as their were a limited number and they tended to be older - in fact many hadn't been on a ship in decades when they were given command of a fleet. So when the Admiralty found an Admiral who could do the job they tended to (unofficially) give them far more latitude. (Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood ended up dying simply because the Navy kept refusing him permission to return home on the grounds that no suitable replacement was available). (*Killing a sailor who was threatening to destroy a ship, especially during a battle, was a different matter entirely.) Compare flogging at sea, or at least in the RN, against flogging on land and the impression of the navy as being 'cat-happy' takes a pounding. In the RN the heaviest number of lashes was 500, which were not given all at once. On land 500 lashes was a minor sentence - and usually given all at once.
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Post by OziRiS on Oct 8, 2013 22:01:45 GMT
Wow... My view of ANY navy from that period has never been one of progressive thoughts on the leadership of men, but if what you're saying here is true (and I have no reason to believe it isn't) the RN was not only decades but centuries ahead of its time in terms of leadership.
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Post by silverdragon on Oct 9, 2013 9:52:14 GMT
Moral can go sour in a tight community if there is no discipline.
No one like a tea-leaf (thief) and if someone is flouting rules and laws, and it is not dealt with, or that person is not pulling their fair weight, unless it is dealt with, the rest of the crew adopt a poor attitude of "If he's getting away with it why should I bother"....
Discipline is therefore important.
As stated, no one liked a captain that ruled by miss-use of power... but that goes both ways.... No one liked a "Soft" captain either
On light offences, The captain would grab the offender, bring them to one side, and "Have a word", if the seaman gave his word that this was a once only mistake and wouldnt do it again, then the captain would leave it at that. Repeat offenders got official punishments..... Serious offences, the captain had various options, the cat was considered the last line.... Putting them on hard rations, or ships biscuits, for a day or two, refusing shore leave, ...
It all depended on the man the crime and the crew. If it was an popular old hand making a stupid accidental mistake, undue punishment would set the crew against you...
Its kind of a world in miniature with the captain being the chief of police. If the police did nothing?....
Leadership was important, and although reports of how you started your Navy career may be not so good, once on board a good ship, many of the crew disliked coming back ashore... The food was regular, there was a safe bed, and a roof over your head.... In the days when there was no benefits for unemployed, a life afloat was a solid future.
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Post by Cybermortis on Feb 22, 2014 14:00:38 GMT
Wow... My view of ANY navy from that period has never been one of progressive thoughts on the leadership of men, but if what you're saying here is true (and I have no reason to believe it isn't) the RN was not only decades but centuries ahead of its time in terms of leadership. The Royal Navy, at least the Georgian Navy, was very much ahead of the times in all fields (or should that be oceans?). The Navy was the first to; Include a pension of some form for sailors and officers alike. The former was the Chatham chest, the latter was half pay for officers who were not being actively employed - although it was always unclear if half pay was a retainer for future service or something else. In the case of 'Yellow' Admirals half-pay really was a pension. The first to provide free health care, except for sexually transmitted illnesses which were presumably considered self inflicted. The first to build large all brick buildings (this was for storing wood while it seasoned) The first to build a modern hospital. The first to use steam power for something other than pumping mines dry. The RN used steam for factories almost 100 years before the rest of the country (and hence world), and was using steam engines to pump out dry docks in England. (The next country in Europe to do this were the Spanish, almost 100 years later) The Navy was the first to not only put actual skill and ability before nobility, but the first to require that potential officers sit a test to prove that they knew their trade. As well as these, the Navy was also responsible for fostering innovations throughout Britain. These ranged from better metal working (needed for better guns) to stimulating the growth of agriculture and better transportation of goods throughout the UK (a requirement for the production of better provisions, and also for getting those provisions to ships). They supported scientific advancement, ranging from missions of exploration (Darwin and Cook to name but two) to better time keeping (needed for navigation) to advancements in medicine (The change from the old Greek and Roman view of medicine to what we would consider more modern medicine started with Doctors who served on Men of War. One of the first examples of this was the introduction of lemon and lime juice to combat scurvy, something that came not from the College of Physicians but from the practical experience and observations of sailors and ships Doctors.) Even something as trivial as record keeping was perfected by the Navy by the mid 1700's, since they simply couldn't have organised such a large organisation without it. Heck, the move towards the modern banking system was to a large extent a matter of copying the way the Navy (which was always badly underfunded) had been run for at least a century. The image we have of a dour Navy that was unwilling to accept any change, as well as being more than a little harsh, is really a distorted image of the Victorian Navy. But even here we need to keep in mind that the Victorian Navy went from 120 gun wooden ships of the line, to 12 gun steel Dreadnoughts. With new technologies appearing so quickly it is hardly surprising that the Navy had trouble keeping up, or that they may have been wary of accepting too many changes at once. Apart from anything else they wouldn't have been able to afford to make too many changes. But even here the Navy was more than willing to experiment. Sure, they got things wrong or underestimated the importance of certain technologies. But a lot of these mistakes are only clear with the benefit of hindsight, and in more than a few cases actually resulted in valuable lessons being learnt.
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Post by the light works on Feb 22, 2014 17:48:14 GMT
It pays to keep in mind that much of the popular impression of the navy came from those whose job it was to keep the ship clean and in good order. and that grumbling is the common trade of all enlisted men.
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Post by Cybermortis on Feb 22, 2014 18:49:30 GMT
Actually that wasn't usually the case. Sure sailors in the Georgian Navy did complain about many aspects of their life at sea, and in many cases not without reason. But the professional seaman knew that life in the Navy was a lot easier than in the merchant fleet.
Where you do see complaints being made by seamen (rather than landsmen who happened to be serving on ships) those complaints were remarkably tame, and in the case of punishments were not about the punishments themselves but when they were arbitrarily and unfairly handed out. In fact if you look at the complaints carefully, the overall picture of the British seaman is that of a man who was willing to put up with a hell of a lot as long as the officers treated him fairly and with respect.
What we forget is that a LOT of the 'things we know' about life at sea were really social or political comments about British society as a whole rather than comments about the Navy. Asking if flogging was actually effective in the Navy (which as I noted above was limited to 24 lashes at sea, and 500 after a court martial) was an indirect way to ask if flogging as a punishment was effective at all. Most judges on land around this time would have been rendered speechless at the idea of giving a convicted thief 24 lashes...they would have given at least a 100 or so.
Likewise the 'Gentlemen or Tarpaulins' argument was really about the class structure, and if 'gentlemen' were inherently better suited to be leaders than members of the working class.
In both of those cases the Navy itself had already worked through such questions. Often a decade or more before it was raised on land. Certainly in the case of capital punishments the Navy had effectively stopped flogging for all but the most serious offences long before anyone thought to question flogging on land.
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Post by the light works on Feb 22, 2014 18:55:33 GMT
yes, but complaining has always been a form of entertainment in the ranks. - which is the point I wasmaking.
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Post by Cybermortis on Feb 22, 2014 20:56:02 GMT
True, but that complaining isn't where we get our image of the Navy from.
Contrary to popular belief it seems that the average sailor in the Navy was at least reasonably literate, certainly more than the average landsman. Although I'm not aware of any letters from common sailors having survived, the fact is that during the Spithead mutiny in 1797 the majority of the sailors were able to sign their own names. In fact letters of complaint addressed to the Admiralty (and there were a lot) were usually signed by the complainant, even if the letter itself was written by one of the officers. (It is probable that the officers wrote the letters either as a sign that they agreed with the crew, or because they had a better grasp of spelling - if not a bit of both.)
A sign that sailors were quite capable of reading comes from the fact that one of the first things Captains tended to do when trying to man a ship was to hand out flyers, and place adverts in newspapers. This would have been a rather strange way to try and muster a crew unless sailors could read.
That said common sailors don't seem to have been all that interested in writing books or recording their day to day lives. Such records, or at least the ones that don't seem to have been written to make some sort of political point, come from the officers.
One thing about the Navy of the time that people don't realise is that the gap between the officers and men wasn't all that wide once a ship was at sea. True, the officers lived in less crowded conditions and the Captain on even the smallest ship could spend all day sitting alone in his cabin if he so wished. But even on the largest ship officers and men shared the exact same risks, and also had to share the work - it was rare officer in the Georgian Navy who could avoid getting his hands dirty doing the same work as the foremast jacks, especially if it was particularly difficult and dangerous work. Naturally this gap was smallest on the smaller ships, as officers had no real choice but to get stuck in. But even in the larger ships officers tended to be a lot closer to the men than you'd think - as evidenced by common sailors being able and willing to bring complaints or problems direct even to Admirals, many of whom knew the men by name. Another bit of evidence about how close officers and crew were can be seen by the fact that officers tended to agree with most of the complaints sailors had, and it was quite common for Captains to write letters on behalf of individual sailors to the Admiralty or courts. (Usually, although not always, this was about money and back pay.) Hell, Admirals were known to write letters on behalf of able seamen on occasion.
This state of affairs started to break down somewhat towards the end of the Napoleonic wars, principally because many of the sailors who were on ships were not 'professional' seamen which changed the dynamics. They further broke down when steam power replaced sail. On a sailing ship you needed men with particular skills to trim the sails, and those skills were very much on display. In the steam age however many of the tasks required little or no skill, and certainly did not require 'professional' seamen. So sailors in the steam age became more 'expendable', or at least more easily replaced, than a foretopman on a sailing ship.
Not that the officers in the steam (and later coal/oil) era were any less humane or for that matter cared any less for their fellow man than their counterparts who served with Nelson. They were just more removed from the crew, and less knowledgeable about life on the lower decks in general.
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Post by the light works on Feb 22, 2014 21:32:56 GMT
yeah, it wasn't until the modern era of business that management was only vaguely aware that some sort of lower life form was involved in carrying out their orders...
the fact of the matter is that conscript armies (or navies in this case) are not usually very motivated - just ask Saddam Hussein. Therefore, it is logical that for the British Navy to be as effective as it was, that the crews, for the most part, were invested in the work.
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Post by Cybermortis on Feb 22, 2014 22:03:58 GMT
Navies in general were not conscripted, this seems to be a result of 'impressment', how it worked and what/who it covered being misunderstood.
In the sailing age it took years, if not decades, to get the skills required in a sailor. This is why the oldest most seamen started their life at sea was 12, and many were a heck of a lot younger than that. Even picking up the basic skills needed for specific tasks took several months to learn, and that on a ship where there was plenty of time to learn the ropes.
Of course men of war were, as I noted somewhere above, crewed based on the number of men needed to work the guns rather than those needed to actually sail the ship. So they could to some extent afford to have a lower proportion of able seamen. Off the top of my head I think the ideal mix during the Napoleonic wars was 1/4tr able seamen (the professionals, highly skilled) 1/2-1/4tr ordinary seamen (reasonably skilled but not quite professionals) and the rest 'Landsmen' (could just about be trusted to pull on a rope under close supervision). So a small brig with a crew of 80 would have 10 able, 10-20 ordinary and 20-30 landsmen on deck per watch. By the end of the Napoleonic wars the proportion of landsmen would have been closer to 30 than 20, and of course the specific number of of each rating would have varied from ship to ship. Those Captains who had good reputations* would probably have had a much larger number of able and ordinary seamen, since they would have found it easier to get men to join up.
(*Reputation in this context usually meant treating the crew with respect, or being 'hard but fair'. As noted above, sailors didn't really object to flogging or the other punishments that a Captain could hand out providing that such punishments were seen as being fairly applied to the situation. For Captains most offences required a careful hand, as they tended to be covered by the last of the articles of war 'All other crimes not being capital, shall be punished according to the laws and traditions of the sea'. So Captains frequently tread a fine line between being too hard, and relying on flogging too much which tended to annoy the crew. Or just as bad was being too soft. For a lot of offences simply watering or stopping the grog was punishment enough...after all sailors were used to drinking a pint of high strength rum (or the equivalent) every day. This amount means that sailors were by modern standards alcoholics (not that all of them did drink grog anyway). So cutting off their alcohol even for a day would not have been a pleasant experience for most men).
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