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
1 - Spithead Mutiny: Introduction
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
In the Month of February the following Petition was Drawn out on board H.M. Ship Queen Charlotte and forwarded to the rest of the Fleet at Spithead and about a Dozen Coppys was sent to Admiral Earl Howe Just at the time the fleet was Ordered to sea and after being out one month and Laying a forthnight at Spithead.
These chapters represent the most recent research into the conditions of naval seamen in 1797 and the causes and consequences of the Spithead mutiny. The Spithead and Nore mutinies of 1797 have been comprehensively investigated by historians, from a variety of ideological perspectives, but textual and contextual dimensions have not been examined exhaustively. The mutinies had such a deep psychological effect on the Royal Navy during the nineteenth century, reinforced in the twentieth century by the 1931 Invergordon mutiny, that they have received wide, although sometimes shame-faced historical coverage in the biographies of officers concerned. However, the sheer scale and subtlety of the events has not yet been portrayed fully. Some conclusions of the following writers at the start of the twenty-first century vary markedly from those of earlier historians, informed by detailed research.
The four most comprehensive works on the mutinies to date are:
W. J. Neale, History of the Mutiny at Spithead and the Nore (Tegg, London, 1842);
Conrad Gill, The Naval Mutinies of 1797 (University of Manchester Press, 1913);
G. E. Manwaring and B. Dobrée, The Floating Republic (Geoffrey Bles, London, 1935);
James Dugan, The Great Mutiny (London, 1966).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Naval Mutinies of 1797Unity and Perseverance, pp. 17 - 38Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011