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To rancour unknown, to no passion a slave,
Nor unmanly, nor mean, nor a railer,
He’s gentle as mercy, as fortitude brave;
And this is the true English sailor.—Dibdin.
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London on my return to it presented altogether a different
aspect to me. Three years had wrought a mighty change in it, in my quondam associates and
in myself. The first was, perhaps, merely a delusion of the mind created by the latter two;
for my friends had got into the harness of busy life, whilst I had been loitering on the
way. They were full of activity and hope: I had no fixed object, and was unsettled and
dissatisfied. This was a very unfavourable condition, and its consequences, as might be
anticipated, such as could not be experienced without trouble and sorrow. My resources from
home were necessarily limited, my anxieties unceasingly preying on my soul, and my
desultory endeavours to achieve my indefinite scheme for provision and reputation,
unfailingly abortive! Such a design so prosecuted could not possibly be successful; and the
inevitable fate of relying upon chance in the chapter of accidents was the consummation of
my visionary projects. In a small measure, it is true, I got into difficulties and into
debt; and I mixed in too good and respectable a
| 74 | AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. |
It was not much, indeed; but everything is overwhelming where the demands exceed the supplies, and, be he ever so poor, he who lives within his income is infinitely more prosperous and happier than the wealthy person who exceeds his revenues. It was now that I got my first lesson of that fatal truth, that debt is the greatest curse which can beset the course of a human being. It cools his friends and heats his enemies; it throws obstacles in the way of his every advance towards independence; it degrades him in his own estimation, and exposes him to humiliation from others, however beneath him in station and character; it marks him for injustice and spoil; it weakens his moral perceptions and benumbs his intellectual faculties; it is a burthen not to be borne consistently with fair hopes of fortune, or that peace of mind which passeth all understanding, both in a worldly and eternal sense. But I shall have much to say on the subject in the future pages of this biography, though I cannot omit the opportunity afforded by my earliest taste of the bitter fruit which poisons every pulse of existence, earnestly to exhort my youthful readers to deny themselves every expense which they cannot harmlessly afford, and revel on bread and water and a lowly couch, in humility and patience, rather than incur the obligation of a single sixpence beyond their actual means.
In the present instance, my difficulties, distressing in their nature
though trifling in their amount, were shortly arranged, and the harpies chased away; but my
hardly
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| 76 | AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. |
While shoreward now the bounding vessel flies, |
| NAVAL SERVICES. | 77 |
There were matters which struck me with surprise, awakened feelings of intense interest, shocked and pained me, and in other ways acted strongly on my observant mind. The trial of Admiral Calder by a court-martial was a solemn and affecting sight, which I could not reconcile to my sense of right. The noble presence of the accused, a splendid old gentleman with grey hairs, the obvious uneasiness and regret of his judges, the calm of the dismal proceedings, and the memory of the political murder of Byng haunting the imagination, the impression of the spectacle was altogether of a distressing order.
Then came home a division of the victorious fleet from Trafalgar: the
Victory with the precious freight of Nelson’s corpse; the Téméraire,
the Mars, the Tonant, and other
bullet-riddled ships; whose wooden walls and wounded or missing masts, bore witness to the
gallant share they had in the brunt of that immortal battle. The inspection of these
vessels was very interesting, and many of the individual yarns of the seamen deserving of
being noted for posterity. But I have forgotten such as were told to me, except one of a
boatswain’s mate, I think, who was pointed out to me as the hero of a marvellous
exploit. The Téméraire was so closely engaged with an
enemy on each side, that the guns could not be run out to fire, without their muzzles
absolutely coming against the side of the ship for which the compliment of the discharge
was intended. At the station of our mate, two portholes had been knocked into one aperture,
and the guns disabled; but not to be idle at such
| 78 | AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. |
Of the extraordinary force of cannon shot, there was a remarkable example in the Tonant (I think). The ball had entered the end of a solid beam of wood, and penetrated it so deeply that it could only be reached by a boarding pike, pushed at nearly arm’s length into the splintered breach.
Of the painful circumstances to which I have alluded, I may enumerate my
witnessing the wreck of a boat with eight or ten on board, and the finding of two of their
dead bodies a few days after in a walk along the shore. There was also a man flogged
through the fleet, a spectacle of horror and disgust. The unhappy criminal was taken in a
boat, fitted up for his punishment, alongside of every ship, the crews of which were
mustered to witness the laceration; and at each received a certain number of lashes, till
the surgeon who attended, declared that human nature could endure no more. He was then
carried to the hospital to be cured, for receiving the remainder of his sentence; but this
barbarity was mercifully spared. Since that day, I never could read a proposition for
ameliorating the condition of the navy (or army either) in respect to corporal punishment,
nor hear of an improvement in the system, without feeling an ardent desire to wield my pen
in support of the former, and
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Were it possible to tolerate the ever-ready application of the lash to a fellow-man, there was a strange being, one of my shipmates in the Gladiator, who might have induced us to fancy it was rather agreeable than otherwise. He was a raw-boned, sturdy Irishman, of the name of Conolly—a namesake, by-the-by, of the Captain; but far from being a favourite with him. His appetite for drink was irrepressible. If he was sent ashore he deserted the boat, at Point or Common Hard, and got drunk. If he was kept on board, he contrived to smuggle liquor somehow or other and got drunk—sometimes, as he averred in stay of punishment on his allowance of swipes! But the fact was that Conolly was always in trouble and irons, and so used to a dozen or two of lashes every ten days or a fortnight, that his life was literally spent between tippling and flogging; to the latter of which he was at last so accustomed that a sigh and hitch of his trousers were all the signs of dislike he gave when his unfortunate back was bared for the sad and disgraceful reckoning he was doomed to pay. Such a man would now be discharged, and the demoralising influence of such revolting scenes avoided.
A convict ship, moored near the Gladiator, was another source of painful remark. The general aspect of the black hulk and gloomy looks of its fettered inmates were always bad enough; but frequent mutinies, desperate struggles, suicidal casualties, and severe punishments, rendered the whole a hell, in the neighbourhood of which it was dismal to be located.
These drawbacks, however, did not particularly affect me.
| 80 | AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. |
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