Dan Snow's History Hit - Rum, Sodomy and the Lash?

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

The common sailor was a crucial engine of British prosperity and expansion up until the Industrial Revolution. From exploring the South Seas with Cook to establishing the East India Company as a global corporation; from the sea battles that made Britain a superpower to the crisis of the 1797 mutinies; these "sons of the waves" affected the nation's prosperity with their calloused hand. Yet, while British maritime history in the age of sail is full of the deeds of officers like Nelson, little attention has been paid to plain, "illiterate" seamen. Stephen Taylor, writer of maritime history and travel, challenges the perception of these sailors as a brutally punished, press ganged, anonymous group and reassesses a rich set of historical sources to illuminate their experiences. Dan and Stephen discuss ordinary seamen, far from the hapless sufferers of the press gangs, who were proud and spirited, learned in their own fashion. They demonstrated robust opinions and the courage to challenge overweening authority, and stood out from their less adventurous compatriots.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. Have I got a treat for you this time? I've got Stephen Taylor on the podcast. He's a writer that I've long enjoyed reading. He's written wonderful books about naval history in the long 18th century. And you know me, I'm a bit of a sucker for that. His latest book is on the common sailors, the experience of the sailors, the men before the mast. Not the officers, but the men at the sharp end. And rather than being the sort of illiterate, brutally punished, press-ganged, anonymous group of people that we might, the myth tells us they are, actually Stephen has found a rich set of historical sources to tell

the story of these sailors. We had a great chat. If you want to watch Maritime History, please head over to historyhit.tv. It's a new digital history channel. It is going crazy at the moment which is really exciting. We've got lots of commissions underway, lots of exciting things, lots of exciting bits of history that we are looking into. You can get a History Hit TV, you can watch the whole thing if you want, for just one pound, euro or dollar. If you use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, just enter it in, you get the first month for free and then they get the second month for just one pound a euro dollar. It's pretty sweet. We've got a new documentary about Stonehenge up there, including the latest research, exciting stuff,

you've got to check that out. And we've also got a new young historian, Luke Pepera, he's talking about Africa and how it's largely been written out of British history. So please, please go and check all those new films out. It's really, really exciting. If you want to get a face covering, if you want to cover your face because you should around the world stop the spread of COVID, please go to history.com slash shop to buy your historical face covering. You're going to absolutely love them. My favourite so far is the jawline of Abraham Lincoln. Go and check that out. the meantime everyone here is stephen taylor enjoy stephen thank you very much for coming on the podcast my pleasure indeed well it's my

pleasure because i love talking about this period and so is this period but what what is the what is the myth do you think that you're grappling with about the men who sailed in these ships i think it's the uh the widespread perception that has been bequeathed to us by a variety of histories that this was a terrible frightening and a suffering way of life that these were men who were invariably press ganged. You know, images of the press gang are absolutely typical of the period, usually cudgel-wielding brutes tearing some forlorn figure from his family. And it's true, of course, that press gangs were an ugly fact of naval policy in wartime. But many men actually went to sea voluntarily. And if we examine the history, the records,

and the voices of these men themselves, they are not the put-upon sufferers that we associate with the common seaman. They are, in fact, a proud and, it must be said, triumphant tribe. Because, essentially, we come back to the point I think repeatedly and it's not just a matter of naval history although that's absolutely key to British turning Britain into the superpower of the age as it were but there's so many other aspects

of the seafaring economy that transformed Britain. There was trade, there was discovery, there was navigation and charting. And I think sometimes these are overlooked in the sort of general focus on war. So we've got Cook's voyages to the South Seas. We've got the East India Company's business in India and China. seas. We've got the East India Company's business in India and China. And ultimately, of course, the voyages of the Enlightenment with Darwin and the Beagle. And all are absolutely dependent upon this individual, the common seaman, Jack Tarr, as we generally know him. Is it possible to make a judgment about what proportion would have volunteered or been

willing to go to sea? Because there was some press ganging, wasn't there? Oh, absolutely. And never more so than at times of war, because you've got these huge paradoxes between at the times of peace, when really there is no need for the Navy to be having a large crew at hand, to be having a large crew at hand, which accounts for the fact that there wasn't a standing force of naval crewmen. And once a conflict broke out,

those men who had been serving and earning quite handsome wages generally on sometimes on the coastal trade, but more specifically on the East India Company's business in India they would suddenly be at times of war be dragged off ships and and forced of course to serve in the navy for lower wages and all the things that went with naval service but I think one really does need to retain the sense of a kind of independence that

these men had. Essentially, you know, they may be press ganged. But if they didn't like a ship, and if they didn't like where they found themselves, they could desert. And they very often did. And of course, that was a dangerous business. But at the same time, they very often got away with it. Because if there was a need for seamen as self and there was, they would find themselves in another port and they would find themselves another captain. And the captain, because of the need in finding these skilled men, because their skills were great, we can discuss that at some length, were always in demand.

always in demand. I think as well, you know, if we go back to the sense of, you know, the serving in the Navy, it was a tough business. There was flogging and flogging was obviously a process of suffering in itself. But this is after all a time when sailing was booming, agriculture was in decline, and a man who learned the ropes as a sailor, he acquired a skill that was almost always in demand. And at the same time, he had a place to sleep. He was provided with food. And one might add, he was also provided with large quantities of drink. So, you know, he knows that this is a tough life, but he finds himself in a group with whom he

forms a bond. There is a brotherhood and one, we might say, this is a somewhat romantic notion. But actually, I think the record speaks, if you look at not only the success of so many of the aspects of British seafaring, which was really covering the world at that time. You only have to look at the records of British ships in battle against whoever it was. So whatever form of seafaring we're talking about, these men had an absolute conviction that what they were doing, they were doing well. And also, you don't want lots of landlubbers. You don't want to just grab any old person off the street, do you? You need people that know how to sail.

I mean, these are highly sophisticated pieces of machinery that you're sailing around the world. Absolutely. So there's a tier. We get the chap who comes on as a landsman. He is the most junior seaman. But in the process of, as it were, pulling on ropes and helping his crewmen, he learns a series of skills which culminate in his

rise from the lowest tier to an ordinary seaman and ultimately to the able seaman. A man who is in fact esteemed by his fellows, is valued by his officers simply because he is absolutely key when it comes to that extraordinary business of going up into the tops i think this is possibly an experience of which you have some experience yourself dan um and actually finding yourself uh up there uh at the you know 100 feet above a swaying deck uh your feet on ropes and swaying uh between between 60 degrees on either side but all the time looking upon onto this extraordinary magnificent scene that is this element which is your world and which in a way works into the kind of poetic side that one sees emerging through Seaman's stories,

through their writings. I think we have another misconception that these men, because they were common folk of their time, could not possibly be literate. In fact, we have got a number of records, 12 absolutely key memoirs, journals, published, unpublished, and another 10, 15 lesser journals, but still also filling in some of those gaps. And here is the seaman as a storyteller who senses there is something very special about his world. He doesn't really feel very much in common with the other commoners of his home soil. So he comes back from exotic parts of the world. Not invariably exotic, but he might have been to the South Seas, he might have been to China, he might have been to India. And he comes back with these extraordinary stories,

his experiences, encounters, strange creatures. There are a range of stories which come back in this process and which are spelt out in these memoirs. Some of them quite romantic. Romantic encounters with women in the South Seas, for example. Island women renowned for their beauty. There's another, there's a particularly interesting example of a seaman who was serving on the ships

which were taking convicts to New South Wales. And a very romantic story attaches to that, which we can discuss if you like. Yeah, well, tell us some of these stories, because I think, what are these sources? Were they written for the consumer markets, published sources? Are they private diaries? Where are you finding these accounts? Well, I think they're two particularly interesting characters. There was a period after the, if you like, sort of the Great Age of Sale,

which culminates, of course, in the revolutionary napoleonic wars when there was a recognition that the seaman had played a key part in the in these great victories the things that are celebrated in the maritime museum at greenwich you know all these wonderful canvases of epauletted offices gold gold epauletted offices, and their magnificent ships sailing along under sail in storms or in battle. But there was also a story to be told by those who had obviously served in these ships. So there was a small-scale publishing industry. scale publishing industry. We can take, for example, one of those individuals, a man named John Nicol, a very interesting Scot, a thoughtful romantic, you might say. And he was actually taken

to sea by reading Robinson Crusoe. Slightly odd one might think, you know, I go to sea in order to become a castaway. But there was that open door to adventure that these stories opened up to men like Nicol. And he then spent decades on naval and merchant ships. He was the guns at the Battle of the Nile. He was also just a natural adventurer who wanted to visit exotic parts of the world and who was exhilarated by the experiences he had of visiting China and the South Seas. He was also, and this is quite an interesting aspect of what I would see as Jack's character, is quite an interesting aspect of what I would see as Jack's character. He was quite unworldly. He was on the Lady Juliana, one of the ships transporting convicts to New South Wales, and fell completely in love with one of the female prisoners. Now, there was quite a lot of,

actually, what might be said, sexual experiences between the convicts and the seamen on these ships so far as john nickel was concerned this was the love of his life she in fact sarah bore him a child by the time that they landed in new south wales and although he might have been moved by this experience to desert he was a very loyal man on his ship. So he sailed on, but always came back with the intention of finding Sarah. And he did actually spend years on a quest, sailing to India, sailing back to New South Wales, only to discover that she had, as one might say, as many seamen had an instinct for survival, she needed an instinct for survival, and she found another man who could help to support her. So we've got men like Nicol,

on the one hand, as they say, romantic, somewhat unworldly, and yet on the other hand, another journal kept by another seaman reflects a different aspect of Jack's character. So whereas Nicol was a Scot, a man named Jacob Nagel was an American who actually fought for his country's independence before he decided that the Royal Navy was a perfectly good place for him to serve. And he then spent decades sailing with British ships of all kinds. And, you know, he's a complete rambustuous character. You know, he's quick with his fists. He loves a night out when he's full pay with his shipmates when they come to shore. His relationship with women generally is the case with so many seamen, a commercial kind,

but he's generous, thoughtful. He understands that they've got their difficulties too, the lasses who are working in Portsmouth, the Portsmouth Poles, he always treats them with generosity. And if we study these, let's just take these two journals, you read these stories, and you might be inclined to say, this is a good story, but is it possibly true? Because they do tell extraordinary tales, cast away, being cast away, shipwreck, and all the other things. And yet yet if you go to the maritime records at Kew, the National Archives, and you study the ship's logs, the ship's musters which record all the crew

who were on a ship at a particular time, and you match those with these individuals who've left their memoirs subsequently be to be published you find that they match there you will find on that ships muster Jacob Nagel or in the case of John John nickel and all the others whose memoirs journals published and not who I drew upon for the sources. If I would just give one particular interesting case in point, just again to emphasise the variety of individuals who came onto these ships.

After an old hand named James Choice died at a lodging house in Brighton in 1836. It was found that he had kept a journal. And although it's written in a rather wooden style, it does tell another astonishing story, how he was taken off a prisoner off a whaler in Peru when he was little more than a boy, how he survived at the very edge in South America, made various escape attempts, had a brief career as a pirate, and then another spell in captivity, this time in France. And at that point, he writes in his journal, I disowned the name of an Englishman, as it had always been so unlucky to me, and the enemy reasoning who would not fight for so

good a master as Bonaparte well he then writes of how and this is why he's still serving with the French on sighting a British squadron at anchor of Brittany he stole a boat and rode out to a ship called the Theseus at At this point, you say, this is pushing it a bit too far. This must be a fantasy. But if you go to the log of the Theseus, there it is entered and it confirms that a man named James Choice had been welcomed up the side, as he explained, after escaping from a French prisoner. So again, one finds that these sort of hair-raising, extraordinary stories actually fit so often into the records, which spread the wider picture, if you like. Land a Viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the

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There are new episodes every week. Sea battles were rare, but they sounded extremely dangerous. Terrifying to be on board a wooden ship as giant cannonballs are smashing through great planks of oak and sending splinters somersaulting through the air? Yes, I think clearly the wounds that were inflicted in these kind of circumstances, very often not by cannonballs themselves directly, but by the splinters that they generated as they exploded coming through a side or hitting some part of the ship. generated as they exploded coming through a side or hitting some part of the ship the wounds that were taken in these kind of uh in these circumstances were as you say very horrifying

there's a lot of kind of um the the telling of these stories quite often has a head-off variety you know you'll hear about so-and-so, and he was standing beside me and his head disappeared. I think that becomes a bit of a, if you like, a disguise for the really rather terrible wounds that could be inflicted on these occasions. And there was at the same time, in the intensity of this battle, at the same time in the intensity of this battle a confusion because very often the men were very unable to see much more than the powder at hand the ball that had to be loaded and the cannon that they were serving upon so it was an intense but relatively brief affair, as it was seen by, for example, those military men, army officers who had some experience of seeing naval battles,

actually thought, well, I wouldn't mind having a part in that because it's bloody, but it's brief. I wouldn't mind having a part in that because it's bloody, but it's brief. And that was, I think, the sense that the intensity that British sailors brought to that activity, the speed with which they were able to load a cannon and fire it, and the accuracy which they did, was so crucial to the success. Not so much of, well, tactics were clearly important, but it was actually the effectiveness of the British ship in battle that was so key.

And there is quite an interesting little extract, which I might read if you like, because it comes from a French officer who was at Trafalgar and he surrendered and found, of course, that on surrendering his ship, a British crew came on board came on board to take control. And as we know, Trafalgar and the battle itself was followed by the most furious storm. And as he described it, they, the British seamen, immediately set to work to shorten sail and reef in top sails with as much regularity and order as if their ships had not been fighting a dreadful battle. We were all amazement, wondering what the English sailor could be made of. All our seamen were drunk or disabled. Yeah, and I'm reminded after the Battle of the Saints

at the end of the American War of Independence, when the French commander just says the British are 100 years ahead of us. It's remarkable. You wouldn't want to be fighting against the Royal Navy in this period. What about meritocracy? Captain Cook obviously joins as an ordinary seaman and rises up through the ranks. I think Admiral Sanders does at Quebec. He was a former common seaman. Are you more likely to be promoted and grow wealthy if you're from a humble background

than their equivalents in the army? I think there was something about the nature of naval life, if we're talking about, and we are clearly talking about the Navy, but the nature of life on board where, of course, we're talking about and we are clearly talking about the navy but the nature of life on board where of course we're talking about a very limited space which created a degree of intimacy between the officer class and the lower deck i mean you couldn't on a space which was no more

than 50 meters by about and at about 12 13 meters sustain a huge social difference as you did for example on the landed class between the uh the land owner and his and his commoner laborers and because perhaps of that sense that um there was a community here working together there was a greater a degree of rising from the lower deck not very widespread but you mention those examples there's another very interesting example of indeed one of the most famous of our commanders Edward Pellew who who was, you know, he was a Cornish boy, grew up by the seaside, just immediately, because this was his world, drawn to the sea. And probably because of his initiative, his strength, his skill, and his robustness of character attracted attention in a way that did bring him the kind of sponsorship that rose him into an officer level

at a fairly early stage in his life. I think he was promoted to lieutenant when he was about 21. Because he didn't have the kind of sponsorship, the kind of, as it was said, influence that was generally required to go all the way to the top, he was then set aside and it took a series of extraordinary fortunate events for him and the eagerness and the talent with which he seized those opportunities to become first of all probably in my view the most successful frigate captain of that of that era and ultimately frigate captain of that era. And ultimately, because of that and because he did actually have huge abilities, despite the fact that he would generally spoil his influence

at Westminster sooner or later, and quite regularly did, he still rose to the level of admiral. And then lastly, did they tend, were they pensioned off? How did the story end for most of them? Did they just die of old age and hardship on board or did they have successful afterlives? Well, I suppose there are as many answers to that particular aspect of their story as there are individuals themselves. I mean, yes, a great number ended up in severe difficulties. Take, for example, John Nicol, who I mentioned earlier, the romantic seaman of that particular period, the great adventurous wanderer. He was actually found scrabbling on the streets of Edinburgh, looking for coals to keep himself warm by, in effect, a local journalist who recognised

that here was a man who had an extraordinary story to tell. It didn't greatly help Nicol but it removed him from that degree of poverty. Jacob Nagel also ended up in severe shortage. At the same time we must remember that one of the great institutions which was founded by the navy at the time was the pensioners refuge at Greenwich. It was always said that those who were fortunate enough to end up in that old, wonderful, what was called the Naval Hospital was safe moored in Greenwich Pier.

And you had to have a certain series of, you had to have a period of service that would entitle you to a place there. It wasn't always easy to obtain that. You had to report to a series of boards and present your documents. And if you didn't have those documents and you weren't able to prove your, as it were, your service,

you would be discarded. But those who did find themselves in Greenwich could not have been more, as it were, favoured. And they became a kind of a visitor centre for people who became interested in the maritime past. They would go down to Greenwich and they would speak to these old pensioners, ask them to spin their stories. One of those who they might have found down there, very interesting character as well, is a man named Tom Allen. Now, actually, if you go to Greenwich,

there at the Maritime Museum, among all the wonderful canvases all around, tucked away on a side wall is a painting, a portrait of Tom Allen. And Tom owes his place in history to a particular association. He actually started out as a ploughman in Norfolk until he was spotted by a local family and the family's name was Nelson.

The individual who spotted him was named Horatio and Horatio Nelson at that time was a relatively junior captain but he needed crew and so often these local resources provided a kind of if you like supply chain it was a very effective supply chain because these were men who shared a community they shared a background and so Tom Allen having been taken on board by Nelson, then just a captain, became his servant and stayed with him for years and would accompany him into the great cabin for dinners. with Nelson that somewhat astonished visitors because he would be telling Nelson that he'd had enough wine and it was time for him to retire.

He actually overstepped the mark in the end. But he, because of his long service, was one of those who did end up at Greenwich and who would be spinning his yarns, his years of service under the great man to anybody interested to come up at Greenwich and who would be spinning his yarns, his years of service under the great man to anybody interested to come down to Greenwich and ask those kinds of questions. He would certainly have been allowed on the podcast,

I'll tell you that much. Thank you so much. Your book is called? Sons of the Waves, The Common Man at Sea in the Heroic Age of Sail. Brilliant. Well, good luck with it. Thank you very much thank you dan

good luck to you one child one teacher book, and one pen can change the world. He tells us what is possible not just in the pages of history books, but in our own lives as well. I have faith in you.