Life of a Sailor

By Frederick Chamier

Chamier was a Royal Navy officer, who like his exact contemporary Captain Marryat is best remembered for a series of naval novels. The Life of a Sailor was his first publication and is usually catalogued as fiction, which may be a tribute to Chamiers story-telling skills but it is wrong the book is an exact account of his naval career, with every personality, ship and event he describes corroborated by his service records. By the time he went to sea in 1809, the heroic age of Nelson was over, but the war was far from won, and he was to see a lot of action, from anti-slavery patrols off Africa to punitive raids on the American coast during the War of 1812.His descriptions of the latter were to prove highly controversial. Like many liberal officers, he deplored the strategy of bringing the war to the civilian population, and the book was much criticised by more senior naval officers for saying so. Chamier represents a new generation of post-Nelsonic naval officer, more gentlemanly, better educated and perhaps more open-minded he certainly got on well with Lord Byron, whom he met in Constantinople and his sympathies generally look forward to the Victorian age. He was too young to rise to high rank, and after the Napoleonic War, like many others, he was condemned to a life on half-pay and perhaps forced into a literary career, but out of it came one of the eras most authentic accounts of a junior officers naval service.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781783468737

Book preview

Introduction

When the gig capsized, it contained, besides Captain Marryat, a middy (who could not swim at all) and an old bumboat woman who could swim like a fish, and who now began needlessly to support Marryat. Marryat shook her off impatiently, saying: ‘The boy! Get the boy! He can’t swim!’

‘What!’ cried she. ‘Hold up a midshipman when I can save the life of a captain!’⁶

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF Frederick Chamier (1796–1870), The Life of a Sailor is the last of the quarterdeck accounts within the present Seafarers’ Voices series, that is, written by someone with Royal Navy officer status, who began his naval career as a young midshipman, but rose through the ranks to become commander: someone worth saving according to the old woman in the quotation above. It is a tale of excitement and escapades in the best seafaring tradition, and one of tragedy, comedy and controversy, as well as being significant as a historical document. This is an eyewitness account of naval life, offering a glimpse of the world from the point of view of one of the unsung participants in history, whose youthful encounters with poets, princes and jolly Jack Tar alike take the reader on an entertaining and illuminating journey into the world of the early nineteenth Royal Navy.

Chamier writes with sympathy in his account of the difficulties in getting promotion for those who lack ‘interest’, but Chamier was not one of these un fortunates, being the grandson of Admiral Sir William Burnaby, Bart., and grand-nephew of the politician, Anthony Chamier, member of parliament for Tamworth and Under Secretary of State.⁷ Interestingly, Chamier also has a link to Marteilhe, the French galley slave of Vol I of Seafarers’ Voices, the earliest recorded member of Chamier’s family being the Reverend Jean Des Champs who, like Marteilhe, came from Bergerac but who, unlike Marteilhe, managed to escape from France at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, eventually settling in Berlin where he died in 1730. Jean Des Champs’ son, also Jean, was born in 1709 and eventually became tutor to the brothers of Frederick the Great of Prussia, but because of the sanction Frederick ‘openly gave to infidel doctrines’⁸ eventually emigrated to England, where in 1753 he married Judith Chamier, also of impeccable French Huguenot antecedents. From the union of Jean Des Champs and Judith Chamier, John Ezekiel Des Champs, Frederick Chamier’s father, was born in 1754. Through the influence of his mother’s family, John Ezekiel Des Champs obtained a place in the Civil Service of the East India Company, eventually becoming a member of the Madras Council. While in Madras John Ezekiel met and married Georgiana Burnaby, daughter of Admiral Sir William Burnaby. This marriage produced six boys and five daughters, Frederick Chamier, author of these memoirs, being the ninth child, born on 2 November 1796, in Southampton. But before that, in 1780 John Ezekiel Des Champs took the surname and armorial bearings of his wife’s uncle, Anthony Chamier, who had first given Des Champs his start, eventually becoming this Anthony Chamier’s sole heir.

As a child, Frederick Chamier appears to have been (if only by his own account) intelligent and self-willed – ‘incorrigible’. He was moved from school to school until, at thirteen, the choice of some sort of career became an issue. After possibilities such as a clerical or military career had been rejected and a position in ‘trade’ dismissed out of hand, what remained was either India (by virtue of his father’s influential position), or the sea where there was Admiral Burnaby plus a half-pay lieutenant uncle. Frederick Chamier opted for the sea and began a career that has left us one of the most lively, entertaining, and seemingly honest of all maritime first-hand accounts. ‘I set my face against all cant and humbug’ he tells us in the preface and nothing we read thereafter seems to call this into question.

As mentioned above, Chamier’s career, like that of the majority of his social contemporaries, hinged heavily on ‘interest’ – whom you knew, and what they could do for you, particularly in the navy as ‘in the eighteenth century there were no . . . intermediate ranks (between Lieutenant and Post Captain) no minimum period of service, no examinations. Only influence (the record, incidentally was held by the son of Admiral Rodney who made Post just five weeks after passing for lieutenant – and was just sixteen at the time).’⁹

Under the aegis of his father’s old friend Captain William Bathurst, Chamier, at the age of thirteen, was appointed to the Salsette, frigate, quite a late start compared to many boys: for example, James Anthony Gardner (1770-1846) whose ‘recollections’ Above and under Hatches are Chamier’s main rival in this type of literature joined his first ship, the Boreas (commanded by his father, Captain Francis Geary Gardner), when he was five years old, although when the ship went abroad Gardner went back to school. Gardner’s career, although it precedes Chamier’s (Gardner was at sea 1775-1814) echoes, to some extent, Chamier’s: they saw the same places, and met many of the same type of people. But Gardner could never command the ‘interest’ that Chamier senior was capable of exerting on his son’s behalf, nor did Gardner seem to have Chamier’s personal attraction, and so Gardner’s reach is never as deep and all-encompassing as that of Chamier, nor is his ability with language. In Gardner we never read of someone clinging to his duty, ‘like the mate of the deck to the grog tub’, or to the ratlines like ‘a doctor to a consumptive patient’, examples of the vivid images used by Chamier which give his account a unique life and vigour, and make his tale such a fascinating and lively read.

Chamier seems to have been almost cosseted by most of his superiors, and at a time where the only quarterdeck shipboard entertainment was conversation (plus drinking and flogging), his presence would have been much in demand. Neither man would scale the heights of the profession – both were too individual, and neither would obey orders blindly if they suspected those orders, nor would they look another way. And as those who do the promoting in this life tend to advance those who bear more than a passing resemblance to themselves, Chamier and Gardner were never in serious contention for the heights of naval office. Besides, both men were naturally of the midshipmen’s cockpit and lieutenants’ wardroom cast of character – fond of practical seamanship and practical jokes in equal measure. In their accounts, both are at pains to detail the midshipman’s lot and to give some detail of the fittings, and of daily life, in the cockpit (where the midshipmen berthed).

By combining the information within the two volumes it is possible to produce a picture of the midship man amongst his ‘household gods’ over a period of sixty or so years. Gardner, entering the cockpit of the Panther in 1782, found ‘salt beef and sauerkraut and a pint of black strap (red wine) . . . canvas screens . . . well polished Windsor chairs . . . a pantry to stow crockery and dinner traps . . . the boards of our orlop deck as white as any crack dining room . . . and everything the appearance of spartan simplicity.’ Chamier, however, in the Salsette in 1809, encountered quadrant cases and shoes serving as soup plates. But by the time 1832 arrived, when Chamier was writing The Life of a Sailor, he tells how midshipmen were now drinking out of glasses and tripping across the quarterdeck in hunting pink in the early morning on route to a hunt. Gardner closes with a description of how he understands matters to be in 1836 when there is no more messing in the cockpit. Now it is the gunroom, fitted with ‘a brass knocker . . . window curtains . . . buffets . . . wine coolers [and] silver forks.’

After joining the Salsette Chamier’s account tells us that he saw action almost immediately (he was to be ‘closely engaged’ thirty times in the course of his career) in an attack on Flushing (1809), after which, being rewarded by his messmates for his behaviour under fire, he falls down the cockpit drunk. This earns him a reprimand – although a reprimand to a sailor in a similar situation would have involved a flogging. In a sense, this ease in disarming friends and foes alike when he wishes to, sets the tone for the whole of Chamier’s subsequent career. Nothing was going to happen to Chamier – either from enemy action – or acts of God or captains (much the same) – or even from being sold at one stage to a Turk. Chamier seems always to be confident that he will die in his own bed.

Chamier’s first tour is the Mediterranean. The Salsette is initially bound for Gibraltar, carrying out a General C. who is taking up a position there and who is travelling with his family, including a daughter, Caroline. During a gale Caroline is thrown towards the cabin skylight, Chamier springs forward, and ‘weak, young, only half-courageous, I certainly saved her life, or worse, her fractured limbs’. This might seem a strange observation, until one recalls the state of surgery in 1809, when, to an attractive young female, two broken legs, no anaesthetic and a ship’s surgeon’s bone-setting procedures (or amputations) might very well betoken a fate worse than death.

In Vol I of Seafarers’ Voices, Galley Slave, the observation was made that we had no account from anyone who had commanded one of the French galleys, as no one would wish to be linked with having run such an infamous prison ship. Similarly, we have little in the way of flogging accounts from any British naval officer – except perhaps Chamier in the present volume – who, for once, relinquishes his often ornate and dramatic style to present a simply drawn picture but one executed with clarity and power. At Gibraltar, one seaman causes the death of another, and has to be made an example of ‘pour encourager les autres’, to encourage the others as was observed about Admiral Byng. The Salsette seaman is given two dozen lashes, ‘A lenient punishment, I admit. But Captain Bathurst was so kind a man that he could not have inflicted one of great severity.’ Witnessing the first stroke of the cat, Chamier begins to cry – and it must be said that he always has time to notice the sailors and often repeat their remarks – whereas, to Gardner, they are more usually a parcel of ‘rogues’ and ‘scoundrels’.

Anecdotes which ground Chamier’s tale in time and place abound, and enliven this autobiography. Not only does the Salsette take a prize with Chamier earning his first money over and above his salary, but at Malta Chamier appropriates some of the dust from the ‘last remains of four of the Knights of Malta’ and brings it back to the ship, only to have it filched in turn by the boat swain who uses these dusty mortal remains as snuff.

Chamier even enjoys a brief friendship with the poet Byron, who solicits a passage to Constantinople. Chamier works his usual magic, provides Byron with an orange, and is invited to accompany the poet to the plains of Troy, where the contrast between our hero, the man of action, and Byron, as man of words, is made clear to the reader. Here, while Byron contemplates Homer, Chamier contemplates ‘next day’s dinner’ by shooting at every bird he sees, and undercuts Byron’s own attempts at heroic behaviour in swimming the Hellespont by telling us that Byron failed the first time, and ‘bore the look of an angry disappointed girl; while his upper lip curled like that of a passionate woman. I see it now as if it were yesterday.’ Byron is beaten in the swim the second time by one of the Salsette’s marines, Mr Ekenhead; even so, Chamier plays down the heroism of the achievement, depicting it as one of swimming barely a mile quite slowly.

At Constantinople, Chamier enrages the Turks so much by having them removed from his ship for smoking that, in an effort to impose retribution, a Turk attempts to buy Chamier. A senior midshipman agrees to the deal, but Chamier is retrieved from this potentially miserable fate by the captain of the main top and two of his men. Byron and the senior officers of the Salsette are invited to meet Mahmood II, and Chamier is taken along, once more the cynical witness of history who afterwards sells the formal Turkish court clothing provided for him as a dressing gown, for a mere twenty piastres.

In 1810, as the Salsette is ordered to Toulon for blockading duties, Byron is dropped off on route at Zea, and the young Chamier moves on along his travels to Malta, where Bathurst is appointed to the 74-gun Fame, Chamier following his captain but not liking it much, ‘for in those days a certain stigma was attached to midshipmen who belonged to line-of-battle ships’. Midshipmen of frigates apparently considered themselves as something like floating hussar regiments, the French hussar, Lasalle (1775-1809) summing up the whole philosophy with the words ‘Any hussar who is not dead by thirty is a blackguard’, an attitude tacitly acknowledged in of all of Chamier’s ships; Lasalle himself made it to the age of thirty-four, dying at Wagram.

Eventually, back in England in 1811, Chamier leaves the Fame and Bathurst for the Arethusa and Captain Coffin, and we see him once more as eyewitness and observer of the events of history. The Arethusa, ‘immortalised in song’, is sent to Africa to hunt slavers. While doing this, the Arethusa runs aground, springing an almost fatal leak, as befits a water nymph who became a stream, and Chamier now experiences the enervating heat, and constant exposure to sickness and fever that accompanies manual ship repair in such climates. He sees the native African in his indigenous environment and once again uses this asserted personal experience here and on his posting to the West Indies as evidence for his judgement on the slavery question, and his move away from the abolitionist stance which he claims to have held previously.

Not only does Chamier deal with such elevated matters as politics and poets, his story has its comic episodes, too. For example, when all the ship’s officers’ servants are required to man the pumps, Chamier is elected cook for the midshipmen’s mess, serving such delicacies as ‘mouse pie’. He has another opportunity to see a different side of naval life when, being short of food and water, Chamier and two other midshipmen steal some of the captain’s tripe. For this they are disrated and Chamier put before the mast as common sailor where, ‘I answered my call with the men, learnt to knot, splice, hand-reef, and steer, sing a jolly song, laugh at vindictive malice, hate oppression, support misfortune – and sleep in the royal or topgallant studding sail as quietly and as composedly as the most virtuous lady in the softest of beds.’

Back in Plymouth, though, Chamier sets the wheels in motion and is soon removed from the Arethusa to the Menelaus, captained by Sir Peter Parker (1785-1814), still only in his twenties. Interest of a high order was required to reach this sort of rank so young – indeed, Parker hailed from an extended and influential naval family, the grandson of both Admiral Sir Peter Parker on the paternal side and also Vice Admiral John Byron, his mother’s father; he was also cousin to Chamier’s former friend, Lord Byron, the poet. However, Parker’s interest does not compare to that exerted for William Fitzroy, who hailed from an even more influential background, but unfortunately had a less than desirable character:

In 1800 Midshipman Lord William Fitzroy, fourth son of the Duke of Grafton, passed for lieutenant. ... Though only eighteen, two years shy of the minimum age required, Fitzroy’s political and social interest superseded Admiralty regulations ... Fitzroy received his step to post captain in 1804 and then to the new, thirty-eight gun frigate HMS Macedonian in 1810... as plum an appointment as the Navy could offer. ... The Macedonian’s crew of more than three hundred mariners and marines experienced a taste of Fitzroy’s temperament with his first standing order that required the men address him as My Lord rather than Captain. Fitzroy next condemned a seaman to forty-eight lashes for getting drunk, four times the standard punishment traditionally allowed outside a