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
6 - Crew Management and Mutiny: The Case of Minerve, 1796–1802
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
Looking back over the writing that has shaped our attitude to the Spithead and Nore mutinies, the most striking feature of the books by Gill, Manwaring and Dobrée and Dugan is the extent to which they themselves were heirs to the belief that Britain in 1797 was on the brink of revolution. According to their thinking, the whole of Europe was subject to tumult precipitated by revolutionary France. England stood in danger of invasion, Ireland was on the brink of revolt, at which point the Channel Fleet, Britain's shield against invasion, mutinied against appalling conditions of service, brutal discipline, and tyrannical officers. It is a view that has fuelled an empathic and impassioned rationalisation of the mutinies as an element in the politicisation of the whole working community of Great Britain. It was foolish, E. P. Thompson claimed in 1963, ‘to argue that, because the majority of the sailors had few clear political notions, this was a parochial affair of ships' biscuits and arrears of pay, and not a revolutionary movement’. It is a view that has been refined more recently by Roger Wells who has revealed that the seamen were both influenced by external democrats and revolutionaries, predominately Irish, and managed by a politically radical but divided minority.
It is not the purpose of this paper to take issue with these beliefs. However it does take notice of two more recent contributions to the naval and political historiography of Britain that have done much to change the ideological context within which the Spithead and Nore Mutinies are considered.
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- The Naval Mutinies of 1797Unity and Perseverance, pp. 107 - 119Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011