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
7 - The 1797 Mutinies in the Channel Fleet: A Foreign–Inspired Revolutionary Movement?
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
The Ships at Spithead for a whole week in a perfect state of mutiny – the Men commanding their Officers, and a Parliament consisting of Delegates from each Ship of the Line, sitting all that time on board the Queen Charlotte, and issuing Orders to his Majesty's Fleet.
George III, his government and the Board of Admiralty were horrified by this threat to naval discipline, expressed here by the Duke of Clarence to Nelson on 30 April 1797. The potential threat to the security of Britain while the French and Batavian fleets were preparing for invasion was a publicly expressed fear, but the breakdown in discipline was regarded as a far more serious risk by the British establishment, whose intelligence system had led them to expect no immediate invasion of Britain or Ireland.
This chapter will examine the extent of revolutionary inspiration for the 1797 mutinies in the Channel Fleet. Was it a rebellion inspired by American, Irish or French revolutionary ideas, part of a plot to overturn the government, oust Pitt's ministry and substitute an opposition ministry, or impose a republic on French or American lines?
Many writers, from Pitt onwards, have portrayed the 1797 mutinies as overt proof of foreign-inspired revolutionary activity in Britain in the 1790s. He asserted that the ‘whole affair was of that colour and description which proved it to be not of native growth’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Naval Mutinies of 1797Unity and Perseverance, pp. 120 - 141Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011