The British Navy Book Part 7

_s._ _d._ Monmouth caps, each 2 6 Red caps 1 1 Yarn stockings, per pair 3 0 Irish stockings 1 2 Blue shirts, each 3 6 White shirts 5 0 Cotton waistcoats 3 0 Cotton drawers, per pair 3 0 Neat's leather shoes 3 6 Blue neckcloths, each 0 5 Canvas suits 5 0 Rugs of one breadth 4 0 Blue suits 5 0

[Ill.u.s.tration: UNIFORMS OF THE BRITISH NAVY

Midshipman. Admiral. Flag-Lieutenant. Secretary (Fleet Paymaster).]

A "Monmouth cap" is said to have been worn by both seamen and soldiers, and to have resembled a "tam-o'-shanter", but there appears to be some doubt about it. It seems possible that it may equally well have been what we now call a "fisherman's cap", or a cap like that worn by the bands of the Household Cavalry, but with the peak turned perpendicularly upwards. We sometimes see pictures of boats' crews in such caps at about this period.

In 1706 blue seems to have been superseded by grey, seamen being directed to wear "grey jackets and red trousers, bra.s.s and tin b.u.t.tons, blue and white check shirts and drawers, grey woollen stockings, gloves(!), leather caps faced with red cotton;" also "striped ticken waistcoats and breeches". Naval officers apparently wore what they pleased, though there are indications that red was the favourite colour right up to 1748, when a blue uniform with white facings and gold lace was ordered by the King. But it is said that naval officers did not take kindly to it at first, and in some ships tried to evade the order by having but one or two uniform coats on board, which were only worn by officers when sent away on duty where questions might be asked.

Red was now the recognized military colour, and, as mentioned elsewhere,[24] naval officers took a long time to forget the old military status of the commanders of the royal ships. Blue with white linings or facings is said to have been the uniform of two regiments of marines--who were "to be all fuzileers without pikes"--raised in 1690; but this had no connection with King George's selection, which is stated to have been due to his having seen the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford, wife of the First Lord of the Admiralty, riding in the park in a habit of blue faced with white, which prodigiously took His Majesty's fancy. The seamen seem to have worn grey and red up to about this time, when green and blue baize frocks and trousers were provided for them. The sailor of this period is described as wearing "a little low c.o.c.ked hat, a pea-jacket (a sort of c.u.mbrous Dutch-cut coat), a pair of petticoat trousers, not unlike a Scotch kilt, tight stockings, with pinchbeck buckles on his shoes". The "little c.o.c.ked hat" is elsewhere described as having its flaps tacked close down to the crown, which made it look like "a triangular apple pasty". This hat was gradually replaced by a tarpaulin or straw hat, not a bit like that worn at the present day, but more nearly resembling a low inverted flowerpot with a narrow curly brim.

Short, open, blue jackets began to be worn--"round jackets" they were called--showing the check shirt or a red or buff waistcoat. The trousers were longer than previously, and round the hat was often worn a bright blue ribband bearing the ship's name. Black, or occasionally coloured, bandana handkerchiefs were loosely knotted round the neck. In Nelson's days it was a favourite practice of the seamen to sew strips of white canvas over the seams of their jackets by way of ornamentation, and to adorn them with as many b.u.t.tons as possible. Pigtails were in full fashion and of a portentous length and stiffness, leading to the adoption of the square "sailor collar" to protect the cloth jackets from grease. But though a regulation uniform had been prescribed for officers there was no strict regulation as to the seaman's dress before 1857, an exact reversal of the previous state of things.

In the early part of the nineteenth century captains very often dressed their crews in "fancy rigs", but the short jacket, trousers taut on the hips and long and loose in the legs, with a straw or tarpaulin hat--now with a flat brim and lower crown--remained the general costume of the British sailor until, after the introduction of continuous service, a regulation uniform was laid down, as mentioned above. The marines, who had originally been under the War Office, and had worn different facings in their different regiments, were, in 1755, formed into the present corps under the Admiralty and dressed in red with white facings, which were changed to blue in 1802 on the occasion of the distinction "Royal"

being granted them, on the representations of Lord St. Vincent, as a recognition of their services both in action and in the suppression of various disorders in the fleet. One more change was made in the uniform of naval officers, by William IV, who inst.i.tuted red facings. It was a temporary one only, for in about ten years the navy was glad to be allowed to resume the time-honoured blue and white.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Purchased about 1544, probably from the Hansa.

[20] Seeling means literally to "roll from side to side", but it is evidently here used for the sides themselves.

[21] As guns of these days were called after animals and birds, the "musket" received its name from "mosquito".

[22] The Elizabethan seamen, and indeed their successors, must have inherited somewhat of the old Viking Berserkers' dislike of defensive armour, or any equipment limiting bodily activity. Sir Richard Hawkins complained in 1593 that though he had with him in his expedition to the South Seas "great preparation of armour, as well of proofe as of light corsletts, yet not a man would use them ".

[23] Law's _Memorialls_.

[24] Chapter VI.

CHAPTER VIII

The "Turks" in the Channel

"All, all asleep within each roof, along the rocky street, And these must be the lovers' friends, with gently sliding feet-- A stifled gasp! a dreary noise! 'The roof is in a flame!'

From out their beds, and to their doors, rush maid, and sire, and dame-- And meet, upon the threshold stone, the gleaming sabre's fall, And o'er each black and bearded face the white or crimson shawl-- The yell of 'Allah!' breaks above the prayer and shriek and roar-- Oh, blessed G.o.d! The Algerine is lord of Baltimore!"

_The Sack of Baltimore_, by THOMAs...o...b..RNE DAVIS.

YOU may read dozens of English histories, and even histories of the British Navy, and find little or no mention of the subject of this chapter. And yet during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and part of the eighteenth centuries the Algerine pirates, or "Turks" as they were generally called, were a real menace to our trade, our fishermen, and even to the dwellers on our coasts. The story is not at all a creditable one to us as a nation, nor did the Navy itself gain any particular distinction in fighting with these pests; but this was not so much the fault of our sea-commanders and their men as of the Government, which rarely gave them any real opportunity of exterminating the Turkish pirates that infested even our home waters.

The most discreditable part of all was that played by the British renegades, who were, more than anyone else, responsible for the Turkish efficiency at sea. Left to themselves, the corsairs from Algiers, Tunis, and Salee would never have become formidable. In mediaeval times, as has already been noted, the English had the reputation of being "good seamen, but better pirates", and piracy (including English piracy), though scotched, was not killed till some time after the days of "Good Queen Bess". Why, in the youth of Edward VI, when the country was ruled by the Regent Somerset, the Regent's own brother--Sir Thomas Seymour, the Lord High Admiral of England--did not disdain to "do a bit in that line" himself!

The story is this. He had been married to the Queen Dowager. When she died, he found himself rather "hard up". From his position he knew all about the Channel pirates; he had dealt with lots of them, and "executed justice" on them for their misdeeds. Now, however, he entered into a surrept.i.tious partnership with them, "winked the other eye" at complaints, and pocketed half-profits. He did so well that he tried to start a special mint of his own at Bristol. He still pretended to the Regent and the Council to be very poor, and eventually succeeded in getting an addition of 1500 ducats a year to his salary. He was allowed, moreover, to draw this in a lump sum in advance. But it was not very long before the Council began to "smell a rat". The pirates naturally got bolder and bolder, knowing that they could work with impunity, and Sir Thomas Seymour was asked "why he did not look after these matters?"

"Oh," said he, "I am just sending three ships after these fellows! I'll soon make things all right." His ships sailed, but only to become the worst and most successful freebooters in British waters. Their depredations and his great wealth, which, it seems, he spent openly and extravagantly, could not long remain a secret, and he was again summoned before the Council. He still a.s.serted that he was poverty-stricken, but he could no longer get anyone to believe him, and a piratical captain who was captured about this time admitted, under examination, that the admiral had "gone halves" with him. "Brother or no brother, he must be executed for this," said the Protector Somerset--and he was.

When a man in Sir Thomas Seymour's exalted position could behave in this manner, one can hardly be surprised that lesser "gentlemen" were not ashamed to follow in his footsteps--even some years later.

The first appearance of Mohammedan pirates in Northern waters was at a time very remote from that of which I am now writing, but I think it is of sufficient interest to deserve a pa.s.sing reference. It was in the year 1048--just eighteen years before the Conquest--that news came to William of Normandy that a band of Moorish or Saracen pirates had established themselves in a castle which they had built on an eminence right in the middle of the Island of Guernsey, from which they hara.s.sed and terrorized the inhabitants. A knight, Samson d'Anville, was sent to destroy "Le Chateau du Grand Sarrasin", as it was called, and he apparently succeeded in rooting out the wasps' nest; and when in 1203 a church was built on the site, the salvation of the islanders was commemorated by its consecration as "Notre Dame de la Deliverance du Castel". Catel Church still stands on this historic spot. We hear no more of Saracen pirates in Northern seas till the sixteenth century, unless the mysterious ships which were driven ash.o.r.e near Berwick in 1254 were in any way connected with them. Certainly the ships of any Northern nation would have been recognizable on our north-east coast.

The ships in question "were large handsome vessels, but unlike anything ever before seen in this country: well provided with naval stores and provisions, and laden with coats of mail, shields and weapons of all kinds, sufficient for an army".[25] Their crews were arrested "as barbarians, or spies, or even enemies", but as no one understood their language, nothing whatever could be made of them, and so they were eventually allowed to depart in peace. Who they were, whence they came, and whither they went has never been discovered. The incident remains one of the most impenetrable of the many mysteries of the sea.

The foundation of the piratical States on the north coast of Africa, which were to be the source of untold misery to European nations, may be traced to the final expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1509. Pursued by the Spaniards to Algiers--or Argier, as it was then usually called--the Moors called in the a.s.sistance of Arouji Barbarossa, a noted Mediterranean corsair. He succeeded in beating off the invaders and established himself as first Dey. Tunis, Sallee, and other rover communities soon sprang up along the African coast, and, beginning by retaliating on the Spaniards, the "Turks" gradually extended their sphere of operations till they became a terror to Christendom.

Christendom had itself to blame in a very great measure, since the Christian nations could never agree long enough between themselves to stamp out effectively these nests of pirates. Ceasing to be content with the spoils and slaves they could capture in the Mediterranean, they set themselves to--

"Keeping in awe the Bay of Portingale And all the ocean by the British Sh.o.r.e".[26]

The churchwardens' accounts of the parish of St. Helen's, Abingdon, bear curious witness to the pitch at which Turkish piracy had arrived by the year 1565. An entry in this year runs as follows: "Payde for two bokes of Common Prayer agaynst invading of the Turke 0_s._ 6_d._" The special prayer was probably the one that ran thus:

"O Almighty and Everlasting G.o.d, our Heavenly Father, we Thy disobedient and rebellious children, now by Thy just judgement sore afflicted, and in great danger to be oppressed, by Thine and our sworn and most deadly enemies, the Turks, &c."

The danger was evidently felt to be imminent. By 1576 the "Turks" of Argier had no less than 25,000 Christian captives in their cruel clutches. Most, certainly, came from the southern European countries, but our turn was to come, and half a dozen years later the miscreants were boasting as much to their English captives. We still had our own as well as Flemish, Irish, and French piratical gentlemen in the Channel at this time, for in 1580 the Council called the attention of the Cinque Ports to the fact that such robbers were "daily received and harboured by the inhabitants of the said places, making open sale of their spoils without interruption".

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Turkish Pirate Ship of 1579 (_From a print of Algiers of that year_)

Observe the sharp ram, the tower-like forecastle, and the curiously perched cabin aft. Also the tail-like ornaments at the stern, possibly reminiscent of the sterns of the old "Dragon-ships" and "Long Serpents".

The big and somewhat triangular openings are probably gun-ports, but no guns are visible.]

It is probable that the attempts at the suppression of our own sea-robbers drove some of them into the ranks of the Barbary corsairs.

And among them, it is shameful to relate, were not a few men of good family. Captain John Smith, who wrote about 1630, explains that at the accession of James I the "Gentlemen Adventurers" and other seaman who had long carried on a sort of licensed piracy against the Spanish possessions and ships on the Spanish Main, found themselves, like Oth.e.l.lo, with their "occupation gone". James wanted to live at peace with everybody. As an epigram of the time put it:

"When Elizabeth was England's King, That dreadful name thro' Spain did ring; How altered is the case ad sa'me, These juggling days of good Queen Jamie".

So that, to quote John Smith on the Gentlemen Adventurers, "those that were rich, rested with what they had; those that were poor, and had nothing but from hand to mouth, turned pirates; some because they were slighted of those for whom they had got much wealth; some for that they could not get their due; some that had lived bravely would not abase themselves to poverty.... Now because they grew hateful to all Christian Princes, they retired to Barbary, where altho' there be not many good harbours, but Tunis, Algier, Sally, Marmora and t.i.tuane, there are many convenient roads.... Ward, a poor English sailor, and Dansker, a Dutchman made first here their marts when the Moors scarce knew how to sail a ship. Bishop was ancient and did little hurt; but Easton got so much as made himself a Marquess in Savoy, and Ward lived like a Bashaw in Barbary; those were the first taught the Moors to be men of war." He gives the names of several other noted English pirates of the time: some were hung, others were "mercifully pardoned" by King James. Other villains acted as agents and contrived to give the "Turks" wind of the sailing of any punitive expedition.

"For there being several Englishmen," writes Sir William Monson, the celebrated Admiral, "who have been too long in trading with pirates, and furnishing them with powder and other necessaries, it is to be feared those same Englishmen will endeavour to give the pirates intelligence, lest their being taken, their wicked practices should be discovered."

Thanks to such scoundrels as these the "Turks" were able to attack us in our own waters. By 1616 they had no less than thirty ships north of the Mediterranean, and in that year a Salee rover was actually captured in the River Thames. By the year following so many British ships had been taken by the "Turks" that the merchants of London established a fund of 40,000--the Trinity House contributing 1068--"for the merchants and ships of the Port of London as a fund against the Turks".

Four hundred and sixty British ships had already fallen into their hands.

When in 1619 Sir John Killigrew asked permission to erect a lighthouse on the Lizard the Trinity House refused, on the ground "that it is not necessary or convenient to erect a lighthouse there, but _per contra_, inconvenient, having regard to _pirates_ and enemies whom it would conduct to a safe place of landing". In 1620 James I was at last persuaded to send an expedition against "Argier". The 40,000 collected in London, and other sums subscribed, went towards its equipment. It consisted of six men-of-war and twelve hired merchantmen under Sir Robert Mansell; but as during the previous sixteen years of the King's reign, "never a nail had been knocked into any of the Royal ships", and as their captains "were of little repute", the whole affair turned out such a dismal failure that the Algerines were encouraged to attack us with greater determination than ever.

"But too true it is," wrote Monson, "that since that time our poor English, and especially the people of the West country, who trade that way daily, fall into the hands of those pirates. It is too lamentable to hear their complaints, and too intolerable to suffer the misery that has befallen them."[27]

By 1625 the Turkish pirate ship was "a common object of the seash.o.r.e" in the West. There were at least a score of them in the Channel. They captured the Island of Lundy, and, "Hun-like", threatened to burn Ilfracombe unless a large sum was paid as indemnity. They landed in Cornwall one Sunday, surrounded a church while divine service was proceeding, and carried off sixty men from the congregation into slavery. Some months earlier it had been officially reported that there were nearly 1400 Englishmen captive in Salee alone, "all, or greatest part, taken within 20 or 30 miles of Dartmouth, Plymouth, or Falmouth.

When the winter takes, then the Sally men-of-war go to Flushing and Holland, where, having supplied all wants, and the winter past, they go to sea again. If they want men in the places with the Dutch, they are furnished."

Perhaps the most celebrated coastal raid was that made by Murad Reis upon the village of Baltimore, on the Munster coast, on 31st June, 1631.

Piloted by a traitor from Dungarvon--one Flachet by name, who, it is consoling to learn, expiated his crime on the scaffold--the "Turks"

sailed into the little harbour in the dead of night and descended on the sleeping village like a "bolt from the blue". Completely surprised, the Irishmen could oppose no resistance to the dark-skinned demons and their blacker-hearted renegade comrades. Those who were not fortunate enough to be slain on their own doorsteps were herded on board the corsairs with all the weeping women and children of the village, even babies in arms, and carried off into a captivity worse than death itself. The total "bag" amounted to 237 men, women, and children. Baltimore was then a thriving fishing centre, but it has never recovered from this raid.

The south coast of Ireland and the Bristol Channel seem to have been a favourite hunting-ground at this period. Murad had already been harrying the English coast before he carried out his coup at Baltimore. The year before the "Turks" had taken six ships _near Bristol_, and had something like forty ships operating in English waters. But the Government of King Charles was so feeble and so incompetent that even the Sack of Baltimore failed to rouse it to the necessary action.

The navy was willing enough to deal with the pirates, but it was in a very poor way itself, its men robbed, starved, and stinted, its ships and many of their commanders anything but efficient. It is even stated that two of the King's ships lying at Kinsale had word of Murad Reis's attack, but did not attempt to intercept it. Apparently all that was done was to set up additional alarm-beacons on the coast. Captain Richard Plumleigh wrote from Waterford in October of the year following, reporting an engagement he had had with "the arch-pirate Nutt", and adds, "Nutt has 2 Turks with him and his consort.... I never saw people in whom one disaster had settled so deep an impression as the Turks'

last descent hath done in these Irish: every small fleet they see on the coast puts them into arms, or at least to their heels."

There would appear to have been something like a permanent, though inefficient, watch in St. George's Channel about this time, for in 1634 Sir John Plumleigh, another naval officer, writes from the Isle of Man, after "scouring" those waters, "Of the Turks as yet we hear nothing, though the general bruit runs that they intend hither this year, as some prisoners from Algiers have written over to their friends". So enterprising had the pirates become that not long before this it was represented very strongly to the Mayor of Barnstaple that "unless vigorous steps are taken for the suppression of these marauders" there was great danger that "they will fall upon our fishing shippes both at Newfoundland and Virginea, for they desire both our shippes and men".

The "Turks" were, in fact, insatiable. At this time it was reported that they had 25,000 Christian slaves in Algiers alone, besides 8000 renegades, among whom were over 1000 women. The pet.i.tions to the Government from coastal towns, from merchants, from the friends and relations of the unhappy captives, were legion--but nothing practical was done. The celebrated Robert Boyle writes of his pa.s.sage from Youghal to Bristol in 1635, that he accomplished it safely, "though the Irish coasts were infested with Turkish galleys".