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- V
The outbreak at the Nore was put down. But not every grievance was
redressed. If the contractors, for example, were no longer permitted to
ply some practices peculiar to their tribe everywhere, such as providing
shoddy cloth, rations not sound, or false in the measure; not the less
impressment, for one thing, went on. By custom sanctioned for centuries,
and judicially maintained by a Lord Chancellor as late as Mansfield,
that mode of manning the fleet, a mode now fallen into a sort of
abeyance but never formally renounced, it was not practicable to give up
in those years. Its abrogation would have crippled the indispensable
fleet, one wholly under canvas, no steam-power, its innumerable sails
and thousands of cannon, everything in short, worked by muscle alone; a
fleet the more insatiate in demand for men, because then multiplying its
ships of all grades against contingencies present and to come of the
convulsed Continent.
Discontent foreran the Two Mutinies, and more or less it lurkingly
survived them. Hence it was not unreasonable to apprehend some return of
trouble sporadic or general. One instance of such apprehensions: In the
same year with this story, Nelson, then Vice-Admiral Sir Horatio, being
with the fleet off the Spanish coast, was directed by the admiral in
command to shift his pennant from the _Captain_ to the _Theseus_; and
for this reason: that the latter ship having newly arrived in the
station from home where it had taken part in the Great Mutiny, danger
was apprehended from the temper of the men; and it was thought that an
officer like Nelson was the one, not indeed to terrorise the crew into
base subjection, but to win them by force of his mere presence back to
an allegiance, if not as enthusiastic as his own, yet as true. So it
was, that for a time on more than one quarter-deck anxiety did exist. At
sea precautionary vigilance was strained against relapse. At short
notice an engagement might come on. When it did, the lieutenants
assigned to batteries felt it incumbent on them in some instances to
stand with drawn swords behind the men working the guns.
But on board the seventy-four in which Billy now swung his hammock very
little in the manner of the men and nothing obvious in the demeanour of
the officers would have suggested to an ordinary observer that the Great
Mutiny was a recent event. In their general bearing and conduct the
commissioned officers of a warship naturally take their tone from the
commander, that is if he have that ascendency of character that ought to
be his.
Captain the Honourable Edward Fairfax Vere, to give his full title, was
a bachelor of forty or thereabouts, a sailor of distinction, even in a
time prolific of renowned seamen. Though allied to the higher nobility,
his advancement had not been altogether owing to influences connected
with that circumstance. He had seen much service, been in various
engagements, always acquitting himself as an officer mindful of the
welfare of his men, but never tolerating an infraction of discipline;
thoroughly versed in the science of his profession, and intrepid to the
verge of temerity, though never injudiciously so. For his gallantry in
the West Indian waters as flag-lieutenant under Rodney in that admiral’s
crowning victory over De Grasse, he was made a post-captain.
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