The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford

"Defence, PLYMOUTH

"MY DEAREST FATHER, – I am writing to you at once to tell you what a sad scrape I have just come out of. On Friday night I was with some other wild fellows on the outside of a cab, pea-shooting, myself the worst, when unfortunately I hit a lady who was leaning on a gentleman's arm in the face. The man chased us and with a good deal of difficulty, caught us; we were then taken to the station-house, and given into custody. The hotel-keeper we always go to, very kindly bailed us for the night. In the morning we went to the station-house according to promise; and were tried; the result was my paying £2, 10s. and costs, or one month's imprisonment, and another £1, or 7 days. The other two got off, no peas being found upon them. You will see all about it in the papers I am sending you. I am writing to you in such a hurry, as I am afraid you might believe the papers if you saw them before my letter. I most solemnly swear to you on my honour that I was quite sober the whole of the day that this took place. And as for behaving unbecoming a gentleman in the Court, I certainly did laugh, but the judge made me, and all did so, as he was chaffing all the time. The reason I did not apologise to the man was because he swore on his oath that I was drunk; which was a lie. I had been dining with Hutchinson (see in the paper), who was giving a dinner as he was leaving the ship. All I drank was two glasses of Moselle. The papers I sent you are Radical so of course they run me down… All that remains to be said is, I hope you will look upon it as a boyish lark and not as a disgraceful action … and will you send me 5 pounds as I have but 3 shillings left; and I must have some money to pay mess, wine, etc. etc. So now write soon to your prodigal son,

"CHARLIE BERESFORD"

I received in reply a severe but affectionate reproof from my father.

The gentlemen of the Press took upon themselves to improve the occasion, having first taken care, of course, to describe the affair as a great deal worse than it was. "Let this lesson be taken," says one kind journalist, "it may be a guide and a warning for the future. The days are gone – gone for ever – when the pranks of a Waterford would be tolerated; but while we would hope his follies are lost, we would likewise hope that his manly, frank, chivalrous nature is still inherited by his kinsmen."

Another reporter did me the justice to record that, on being called on for my defence, I said: "I certainly do apologise if I did strike the lady, because it was not my intention to do so; but I certainly don't apologise for striking Mr. Yates." I trust he bears me no malice.

Yet another guardian of public morals observed that "his Worship, in announcing the penalties, called attention to the inequalities of the law, which exacted fines for the same offence alike from the man with whom sovereigns were plentiful as hours and the man whose night's spree must cost him a week's fasting." Had his Worship taken the trouble to refer to the scale of pay granted by a generous country to midshipmen, comparing it with the scale of rations and the price we paid for them, and had he (in addition) enjoyed the privilege of perusing the financial clauses of the letter addressed to me more in sorrow than in anger by my father, he might perhaps have modified his exordium.

As an illustration of the strict supervision exercised by the senior officers, I may record that I received – in addition to my other penalties and visitations – a severe reproof from Captain Stewart, my old captain in the Marlborough.

The Channel Fleet visited Teneriffe. It was the first iron fleet ever seen in the West Indies.

In the cutting-out action off Teneriffe, Nelson lost his arm, and several ensigns of the British boats were captured by the French. Ever since, it has been a tradition in the Navy that the flags ought to be recaptured. A party of bluejackets did once succeed in taking them from the cathedral and carrying them on board; but the admiral ordered their restoration. They were then placed high up on the wall, out of reach, where I saw them. We held a meeting in the gun-room of the Defence to consider the best method of taking the flags. But the admiral, who was of course aware that all junior officers cherished the hope of recovering the relics, issued orders that no such attempt was to be made.

I was invited by an old friend of my father, a religious old gentleman living in Cornwall, to a couple of days' rabbit-shooting. I was overjoyed at the opportunity, and was the object of the envy of my brother midshipmen. Arriving after lunch, I was brought into the great room where the old gentleman was sitting in an arm-chair, with his feet, which were swathed in masses of cotton-wool, resting on gout-rests. Near him was a turn-table laden with books.

"Don't come near me, my boy," he shouted, as I entered. "I am very glad to see you, but don't come near me. I have a terribly painful attack of gout, the worst I ever had in my life. Go and sit down on that chair over there."

With the breadth of the polished floor between us, we chatted for a while; and then the old gentleman, pointing to the table of books, asked me to give him a particular volume.

"Now be very careful," said he.

Full of ardour, delighted to think that I should now escape to the keeper and the rabbits, I jumped up, ran to the table, my foot slipped on the parquet, and I fell face forward with my whole weight upon the poor old man's feet, smashing both foot-rests. The agonising pain shot him into the air and he fell on my back. I have never heard such language before or since. As he rolled off me, he shouted:

"Ring the bell, you – !"

In came the butler.

"Take that – out of my house! Send him back to his – ship! Never let me see his – face again!" screamed my host.

So I departed in the dog-cart. It was many a long day ere I heard the last of my rabbit-shooting from my messmates.

A few months afterwards, when I had been less than a year in the Defence, Rear-Admiral Charles Eden appointed me to the Clio as senior midshipman. He said he wanted me to learn responsibility.

NOTE

The New Ships. – The predecessors of the Defence and her class were wooden vessels plated with iron armour. The first iron-built, armoured, sea-going British vessel was the Warrior, launched in 1860. She was laid down in the previous year, in which Lord Charles Beresford entered the Navy. Several wooden ships (Royal Oak, Caledonia, Prince Consort, Ocean, Royal Alfred, Repulse, Favorite, Research) were converted into armoured ships during their construction. These were launched from 1862 to 1864. For some years the Admiralty built wooden armoured ships and iron armoured ships simultaneously. From 1860 to 1866, ten iron-built, armoured, sail and steam ships were launched: Warrior, Black Prince, Defence, Resistance, Hector, Achilles, Valiant, Minotaur, Agincourt, Northumberland. In 1864 and 1865, five wooden-built, armoured ships were launched: Lord Clyde, Lord Warden, Zealous, Pallas, Enterprise. The Royal Sovereign, launched in 1857 as a wooden line-of-battle ship, was converted in 1862 to an armoured vessel and was equipped with four turrets. She was thus the first turret-ship in the British Navy. The next step was to group the guns in a central armoured battery, and to belt the ship with armour along the water-line. At the same time, more turret-ships were constructed. Earnest controversy was waged among naval authorities as to what were the most important qualities of the fighting ship, to which other qualities must be partially sacrificed; for, broadly speaking, all warships represent a compromise among speed, defence and offence – or engines, armour and guns. The controversy still continues. The disaster which befell the Captain decided, at least, the low-freeboard question in so far as heavily rigged sailing steam vessels were concerned, for the Captain, a rigged low-freeboard turret-ship, capsized on 6th September, 1870. (The Royal Navy, vol. i., Laird Clowes.)

Lord Charles Beresford, entering the Navy at the beginning of the changes from sails to steam, from wood to iron, and from iron to steel, learned, like his contemporaries, the whole art of the sailing ship sailor, added to it the skill of the sailor of the transition period, and again added to that the whole body of knowledge of the seaman of the New Navy. He saw the days when the sailing officers hated steam and ignored it so far as possible; as in the case of the admiral who, entering harbour under steam and sail, gave his sailing orders but neglected the engineer, and so fouled the wharf, and said, "Bless me, I forgot I was in a steamship!"

Admiral Penrose Fitzgerald, who entered the Navy five years before Lord Charles Beresford, describes the transitional period in his Memories of the Sea. Speaking of the Hercules, one of the new central-battery, armoured-waterline ironclads, to which he was appointed first lieutenant when she was first commissioned in 1868, Admiral Fitzgerald writes: – "The Hercules was the most powerful ironclad afloat, in this or any other country. She carried 18-ton guns – muzzle-loaders – and nine inches of armour, though this was only in patches; but she had a good deal of six-inch armour, and her water-line and battery were well protected, as against ordnance of that date. She was full-rigged, with the spars and sails of a line-of-battle ship, and she could steam fourteen knots – on a pinch, and could sail a little. In fact she was the masterpiece of Sir Edward Reed's genius.

"Up to the advent of the Hercules the three great five-masted ships of 10,000 tons, the Minotaur, Agincourt and Northumberland, had been considered the most powerful ships in the British Navy, and probably in the world, and Sir Edward Reed's triumph was, that he built a ship of about 8500 tons which carried a more powerful armament, thicker armour, fifty feet shorter and thus much handier, steamed the same speed, and I was going to say – sailed better; but I had better say – did not sail quite so badly; and it must ever be borne in mind that at this transition stage in the development of the Navy, our rulers at Whitehall insisted that our ships of all classes should have sail power suitable to their tonnage. 'For,' said they, 'the engines might break down, and then where would you be?'" (Memories of the Sea, Admiral Penrose Fitzgerald, chap. xiv.)

CHAPTER V

THE MIDSHIPMAN OF 1864

I wish I could convey to my readers something of the pride and delight which a sailor feels in his ship. But who that has never had the luck to be a deep-water sailor, can understand his joy in the noble vessel, or the uplifting sense of his control over her matchless and splendid power, born of a knowledge of her every rope and sail and timber, and of an understanding of her behaviour and ability. For every ship has her own spirit, her own personality. You may build two ships or twenty upon the same design, line for line the same, and each will develop her own character. As there are no two people alike, so there are no two ships the same.

What can be more glorious than a ship getting under way? She quivers like a sentient thing amid the whole moving tumultuous lusty life. Men are racing aloft; other men, their feet pounding upon the white decks, are running away with the ropes; the ringing commands and the shouting fill the air; the wind strikes with a salt and hearty sting; and the proud and beautiful creature rises to the lift of the sea. Doctor, paymaster, idlers and all used to run up on deck to witness that magnificent spectacle, a full-rigged ship getting under sail. As for me, I blessed my luck when I returned from the Defence to a sailing ship.

The Clio was a corvette pierced for 22 guns, of 1472 tons burthen, and 400 h.p. The screw was hoisted when she was under sail, which was nearly all the time. She was an excellent sailer, doing fourteen to sixteen knots.

The midshipmen's mess was so small, that there was no room for chairs. We sat on lockers, and in order to reach the farther side, we must walk across the table. One of our amusements in this tiny cabin was racing cockroaches, which were numerous. We used to drop a bit of melted tallow from a purser's dip upon their backs, plant in it a piece of spun-yarn, light the spun-yarn, and away they would go from one end of the table to the other. There was once a cockroach – but not in the Clio– which escaped, its light still burning, and set the ship on fire.

I began in the Clio by immediately assuming that responsibility of senior midshipman desired by Rear-Admiral Charles Eden. I purchased the stores for the gunroom mess, expending £67, accounting for every penny, with the most sedulous precision. We paid a shilling a day for messing, and the stores were to supplement our miserable rations. They were so bad that I wonder we kept our health; indeed, only the fittest survived.

We sailed from Portsmouth in August, 1864. It was my first long voyage. It is curious that the first week of a long voyage goes very slowly, and the rest of the time very fast. I used to keep the first dog watch and to relieve the officer in the morning watch. In the keen pleasure of handling the ship – loosing sails, sheeting them home, reefing, furling, and all the rest of the work of a sailor – I regained all my old delight in the sea which I had lost in the Defence. Keeping watch under sail required unremitting vigilance, perpetual activity, and constant readiness. The officer of the watch must be everywhere, with an eye to everything, forward and aft; while the helmsman handling the wheel under the break of the poop, keeps the weather leach just lifting.

The memory of the continuous hard work of the daily routine, makes the sober and pleasant background to the more lively recollection of events, which were after all but the natural reaction from the long monotony of sea life.

It was my duty to preserve order in the gun-room; and a lively lot I had in charge. One of the midshipmen, a big fellow, was something of a bully. He used to persecute a youngster smaller than himself, and one day the boy came to me and asked what he could do to end the tyranny. I thought that this particular bully was also a coward – by no means an inevitable combination – and I advised his victim, next time he was bullied, to hit the bully on the point of the nose as hard as he could, and I promised that I would support him in whatever came afterwards. He did as he was told; whereupon the bully came to me with a complaint that a junior midshipman had struck him. I formed a ring and put the two to settle the matter with their fists. The little boy was a plucky youngster, and clever with his fists. He knocked out his enemy, and had peace thereafter.

I crossed the Line for the first time. In going through the usual ceremonies, being ducked and held under in the big tank, I was as nearly drowned as ever in my life, being hauled out insensible. We towed out the Turtle, a Government vessel, bound for Ascension with stores. While towing, it is necessary to wear instead of tacking, for fear of coming on top of the tow. But the first lieutenant thought he would tack; so he tried to go about. There was a gale of wind; the ship missed stays, and came right on top of the unfortunate Turtle, dismasting and nearly sinking her. I was sent on board her to give assistance; and I made excellent use of the opportunity to collect from the Turtle's stores many useful little ship's fittings of which the Clio was in need. We took the Turtle into Ascension, where the midshipmen landed, collected the eggs of the "wideawake" gulls, and bottled them for future consumption.

We put in at the Falkland Islands in November. The population consisted of ex-Royal Marines and their families. It was considered necessary to populate the Islands; and we always send for the Royal Marines in any difficulty. There were also South American guachos and ranchers. The governor came on board to ask for the captain's help. The governor wanted a man to be hanged, and his trouble was that he was afraid to hang him. The prisoner was a guacho, who had murdered a rancher, whom he had cast into the river and then shot to death. The governor was afraid that if he executed the murderer, the other guachos would rise in rebellion. So he wanted the captain to bring the murderer on board and hang him to the yard-arm. The captain refused this request; but he offered to hang him on shore, a proposal to which the governor agreed. The boatswain's mate piped: "Volunteers for a hangman – fall in." To my surprise, half the ship's company fell in. The sergeant of Marines was chosen to be executioner. He took a party on shore, and they constructed a curious kind of box, like a wardrobe, having a trap-door in the top, above which projected the beam. The man dropped through the trap door into the box and was no more seen, until the body was taken out under cover of night and buried.

The shooting on that island was naturally an intense delight to a boy of my age. We midshipmen used to go away shooting the upland geese. I managed to bring aboard more than the others, because I cut off the wings, heads and necks, cleaned the birds, and secured them by toggling the legs together, so that I was able to sling four birds over each shoulder. The whole island being clothed in high pampas grass, it was impossible to see one's way. Officers used to be lost in the Falklands. The body of a paymaster who was thus lost was not discovered for eight years. The cold induced sleep, and a sleeping man might freeze to death.

Admiral Penrose Fitzgerald, in his Memories of the Sea, relating his experience as a midshipman in the Falkland Islands, says, "Everybody has heard of the Falkland Island geese, and they may be seen to-day in St. James's Park. The upland geese – as they are generally called – are excellent eating; but there are also immense numbers and different varieties of other geese and these are known as 'kelp geese.' Alas! our ornithological education had been so sadly neglected that we did not know the difference with the feathers on, though we soon found it out, when we came to cook and eat them. All the birds we shot were kelp geese, about as fishy as cormorants; but they were not wasted, for we gave them to our Marine servants, who ate them all and declared them to be excellent. 'Some flavour about them,' as they said."

While we lay at the Falkland Islands a merchant ship came in whose whole company was down with scurvy. When I joined the Navy, lime-juice, the prophylactic, was served out under the regulation; but in the mercantile marine scurvy was still prevalent. It is a most repulsive disease. The sufferer rots into putrid decay while he is yet alive. If you pressed a finger upon his flesh the dent would remain. He is so sunk in lethargy that if he were told the ship was sinking he would decline to move. His teeth drop out and his hair falls off. It is worthy of remembrance that the use of lime-juice as a prophylactic was discovered, or at least largely introduced, by Captain James Cook the navigator; whose statue, erected at Whitby, I had the privilege of unveiling in 1912. Historically, I believe that Captain Lancaster, commanding the Dragon, in the service of the Honourable East India Company in the time of James I, was the first to cure scurvy by administering three spoonfuls of lemon to each patient, with his breakfast.

From the Falkland Islands we proceeded to the Straits of Magellan, where the natives of Terra del Fuego came off to us in boats. They were totally naked, and were smeared all over with grease. It was snowing, and they had made a fire in the boats; and when the sea splashed upon the fire and put it out, they beat the sea in anger with their paddles.

At the convict settlement there used to be a box to hold mails fixed on the top of a pole. The letters were taken on board the next ship passing homeward bound. I posted a letter addressed to my mother, who received it in due time.

We dropped anchor off Port Mercy. It came on to blow a hurricane. We had two anchors down ahead, struck lower yards and topmast, and kept the screw moving to ease the cables. Without the aid of steam, we should have been blown away. Even so, the captain became anxious and decided to put out to sea. We battened down and went out under trysails and forestaysail. Instantly we were plunged into a mountainous sea, and the wind whipped the canvas out of us. We set close-reefed foretopsail. A tremendous squall struck us, we shipped water and were blown upon our beam ends. So strong was the wind that each successive blast listed the ship right over. The captain then determined to run back to Port Mercy. The master set the course, as he thought, to clear the headland; and we steamed at full speed. I was standing half-way up the bridge ladder holding on to the man-rope in a violent squall of hail and snow, the hail cutting my cheeks open, when I saw land right ahead. The fact was that the master had mistaken his course, and the ship was driving straight on shore, where every man would have perished. I reported my observation to the first lieutenant, who merely remarked that it was probable that the master knew better than I did. But presently he too saw the high rocks looming ahead through the smother of snow and spray, and the course was altered just in time. The wind was on the port beam; we edged into it out to sea; and so were able to clear the headland and get under the lee of the land. The first lieutenant afterwards handsomely admitted that it was a good job I was standing where I was "with my eyes open" at the critical moment. It was in the height of this emergency, that I first heard the pipe go "Save ship."

We proceeded to Valparaiso, where the ship put in to refit. At Valparaiso, we were able to get horses, and we organised paper-chases.

It was about this time that the incident of the Impresario occurred. He was conducting the orchestra from the stage itself, being seated in a hole cut in the stage, so that his legs rested upon a little platform below. The refreshment room was underneath the stage, and the Impresario's legs projected downwards from the ceiling into the room, where were two or three midshipmen and myself. The temptation was irresistible. We grasped the legs; hauled on them; and down came the Impresario. Overhead, the music faltered and died away.

From Valparaiso we proceeded to the Sandwich Islands, whence we were ordered to take Queen Emma to Panama, on her way to England to see Queen Victoria. Queen Emma was born Miss Emma Booker. She married Kamehameha IV in 1856. We took the Queen on board with one native lady as her attendant. The natives were devoted to their queen, and they insisted on loading the ship with presents for her. They brought pigs, masses of yams, sweet potatoes, water-melons and other fruit. The pigs were housed forward on the main deck, and the other offerings were piled on the rigging and hammock nettings and about the davit guys, so that the ship looked like an agricultural show when we sailed for Panama.

We sighted a schooner flying signals of distress. The life-boat was called away to go to her assistance. I was in charge of the life-boat. When a boat is called away at sea, the crew of course take their places in her before she is lowered. The whole operation, from the sound of the pipe to the moment the boat touches the water, occupies no more than a few seconds in a smart ship. There was a little sea-way on, and the movement of the boat caused a jerk to the falls, unhooking the safety catch, and dislodging an enormous water-melon, which fell through about eighteen feet upon the top of my head. I was knocked nearly senseless. It was the melon that split upon the impact, deluging me with red pulp; but I thought that it was my skull which had cracked, and that they were my brains which were spoiling my uniform, and I remember wondering that my brains should be so queerly and vividly coloured.

But I recovered from the shock in a few minutes. Boarding the schooner, I found she was short of water. But the remarkable thing about that schooner was that although she carried a cargo of six thousand pounds in Mexican dollars, they had only four men on board, all told – an easy prize for a pirate.

After touching at Acapulco, which was all heat and flies, we landed the Queen of the Sandwich Islands at Panama.

Some years afterwards, I went to call upon her Majesty. In all my voyages, I carried with me a set of tandem harness; and on this occasion, I hired a light cart and a couple of ponies, and drove them tandem. Approaching the royal residence, I took a corner too sharply, the cart capsized, I was flung out, and found myself sitting on the ground in the Queen's presence.