Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Preface
- About the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction, Analysis and Interpretation
- 1 Spithead Mutiny: Introduction
- 2 The Delegates: A Radical Tradition
- 3 What Really Happened On Board HMS London?
- 4 The Spirit of Kempenfeldt
- 5 Voices from the Lower Deck: Petitions on the Conduct of Naval Officers during the 1797 Mutinies
- 6 Crew Management and Mutiny: The Case of Minerve, 1796–1802
- 7 The 1797 Mutinies in the Channel Fleet: A Foreign–Inspired Revolutionary Movement?
- 8 The Nore Mutiny: Introduction
- 9 The East Coast Mutinies: May–June 1797
- 10 Reporting the Mutinies in the Provincial Press
- 11 A Floating Republic? Conspiracy Theory and the Nore Mutiny of 1797
- 12 Lower Deck Life in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
- 13 ‘Launched into Eternity’ Admiralty Retribution or the Restoration of Discipline?
- 14 Discipline, Desertion and Death: HMS Trent 1796–1803
- 15 ‘We went out with Admiral Duncan, we came back without him’: Mutiny and the North Sea Squadron
- 16 The Influence of 1797 upon the Nereide Mutiny of 1809
- Select Bibliography
- Index
12 - Lower Deck Life in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Preface
- About the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction, Analysis and Interpretation
- 1 Spithead Mutiny: Introduction
- 2 The Delegates: A Radical Tradition
- 3 What Really Happened On Board HMS London?
- 4 The Spirit of Kempenfeldt
- 5 Voices from the Lower Deck: Petitions on the Conduct of Naval Officers during the 1797 Mutinies
- 6 Crew Management and Mutiny: The Case of Minerve, 1796–1802
- 7 The 1797 Mutinies in the Channel Fleet: A Foreign–Inspired Revolutionary Movement?
- 8 The Nore Mutiny: Introduction
- 9 The East Coast Mutinies: May–June 1797
- 10 Reporting the Mutinies in the Provincial Press
- 11 A Floating Republic? Conspiracy Theory and the Nore Mutiny of 1797
- 12 Lower Deck Life in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
- 13 ‘Launched into Eternity’ Admiralty Retribution or the Restoration of Discipline?
- 14 Discipline, Desertion and Death: HMS Trent 1796–1803
- 15 ‘We went out with Admiral Duncan, we came back without him’: Mutiny and the North Sea Squadron
- 16 The Influence of 1797 upon the Nereide Mutiny of 1809
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
No one disagreed that the life of the eighteenth-century seaman was filled with danger and discomfort. Dr Thomas Trotter wrote of ‘the unparalleled hardships to which seamen are exposed from the nature of their employment. Toil and danger are their constant attendants. They suffer privations to which all other men are strangers.’ They had ‘unfailing fortitude’ and ‘matchless patience’. Perhaps the actual amount of work was not as much as some believe; another naval surgeon wrote:
While employed in the ports of those regions [i.e. the coasts of Great Britain], more particularly those termed their own, or even in those of the European allies of Great Britain, they are liberally supplied with diet at once nutritive and invigorating, consisting of a due admixture of well-chosen articles from the animal and vegetable kingdoms … It will also be admitted that during even their longest cruises on these stations, unless some unforseen exigency has occurred requiring a great share of exertion and some degree of sacrifice on the part of the sailor, his duty is not only light but his allowance as above is profuse in quantity and of an excellent quality.
But separation from family, very limited shore leave, overcrowding below decks and many other hardships made the seaman's life hard nevertheless. In a world in which life was very cheap in any case, a seaman had to begin his career at the age of eleven or twelve in order to become ‘inured to the hardships of a sea life’.
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- The Naval Mutinies of 1797Unity and Perseverance, pp. 194 - 208Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011