1 - The First Decades of Peace
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2023
Summary
In the immediate aftermath of the war evangelical piety was more prominent in the merchant marine than in the Royal Navy. Nonetheless with so many points of contact between the two it was inevitable that what influenced sailors in trade would eventually affect the navy as well.
Merchant seamen and the Thames Revival
With the coming of peace the navy rapidly shrank in size. As large numbers of ships were paid off many thousands of officers and men effectively left the navy. Half-pay officers were assured of an income: some returned to the sea, perhaps in the merchant service, but many never did. For the most part seamen from the lower deck continued to earn their living by seafaring, often in trade but sometimes choosing to enlist once again in a man-of-war. Those wartime prayer groups scattered and disappeared: in a voluntary navy on a peacetime footing there was less fear of desertion or sedition, more opportunity to enjoy shore leave and less need for religion to sustain morale. What happened then to all that fervour?
Part of it burst out amongst merchant crews on the Thames, creating fresh interest in religion and expressions of shipboard piety. From this beginning sailors spread the custom of prayers and Bible reading in what became known as the Bethel movement. Within a few years it had acquired a distinctive character, largely due to the vision of one man, the Rev. George Charles Smith of Penzance, better known as Bo’sun Smith (1782–1863), and it gained extraordinary momentum as a result of his energies. What began as a small-scale impulse towards evangelism aboard merchant vessels developed first into what missiologists have called the Thames Revival, and then into a movement to reform the character and environment of seafarers – with repercussions in both mercantile marine and Royal Navy.
The Rev. Richard Marks, formerly a Trafalgar veteran and a naval lieutenant, was convinced that the origins of this movement were to be found in the wartime navy. At the annual meeting of the Naval and Military Bible Society in 1820 he described what had happened in his ship the Conqueror (74) when supplied with sixty-four Bibles, and the benefits that ensued.
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- Religion in the British Navy, 1815-1879Piety and Professionalism, pp. 17 - 39Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014