In the first decade or two of peace, merchant sailors were subjected (as we have seen) to an unprecedented level of church activity and direct evangelisation. In due course this would have some effect on the fleet which recruited from just this class of men. But meanwhile, how was evangelicalism faring in the navy itself? Was it welcomed, ignored or discouraged by officialdom or custom? Did it retain an effective presence or had its day of eminence passed? This chapter will look for traces of fervent piety, not to attempt the impossible task of numbering its adherents, but to recognise the forms it might take in a naval context. How did people with these views correlate their faith with their profession? Further research is needed to show how representative these instances were, either of the navy or of evangelical officers and men.

The new piety in naval dress

It will be helpful at the outset to distinguish the kind of piety we are looking for – evangelical of course, but in the context of naval life where possible. Evangelicals were not alone in the importance they attached to scripture and yet it makes sense to emphasise this feature (‘biblicism’). They treated the Bible as foundational for belief and conduct, and as a dependable source of divine revelation: they were always keen to distribute it widely, and in reading it they nourished their private devotional life. Hard as it might be to maintain the practice at sea, the lower-deck prayer groups would normally gather to read and consider scripture passages. The central and distinctive feature of their beliefs concerned the significance of the Crucifixion and the doctrine of Atonement; while these beliefs were common to Christianity, evangelicals emphasised the substitutionary element as the ground of divine forgiveness (‘crucicentrism’). Furthermore they were convinced such beliefs demanded personal appropriation beyond factual acceptance: they looked for faith to be kindled and to prove its reality in lives of changed moral quality (‘conversionism’).

Where a person grew up surrounded by expressions of Christian belief (as with Admiral Sir Edward Parry) it was not always possible to point to a time of spiritual crisis when personal faith dawned; nonetheless the normal evangelical experience was ‘conversion’ – not necessarily dramatic in its onset or induced by dramatic events, but a deliberate act of trusting God’s grace for pardon instead of human endeavour, or else it might be a recognition that such a state of trust already existed.