A Mariner of England: An Account of the Career of William Richardson: From Cabin Boy in the Merchant Service to Warrant Officer in the Royal Navy (1780 to 1819) As Told by Himself

By William Richardson

From merchantman to man-of-war…

William Richardson was always certain he would be a seaman. His father and all his brothers were mariners so it was not unusual that he should go to sea in his turn. By the last part of the eighteenth century Richardson was an accomplished and experienced young mariner who had made steady progress in promotion and who had travelled sea-routes across the globe, including time served in the notorious slave trade. These were the days of the press gangs and many a merchant seamen was forcefully taken into the ranks of the Royal Navy. Richardson was no exception and, perhaps peculiarly, he accepted his fate with good humour. While under the ensign he joined Sir Ralph Abercromby's expedition to St. Lucia and served throughout the West Indies aboard HMS Prompte and HMS Tromp. War with Napoleonic France saw Richardson, now a master gunner, aboard HMS Caesar. Those interested in the wars of the 'Age of Sail' will find much to interest them in this book, as the author richly describes his experiences among the crew of a British man-of-war in action in the Channel, the Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean. An excellent and rare account of Nelson's navy from the pen of an ordinary seaman. Recommended.-Print ed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Braunfell Books
• Release date: Mar 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805231929

Book preview

CHAPTER II — 1785-89 — FROM APPRENTICE TO SECOND MATE

To Gibraltar and Arzeu (in Barbary)—Visit of a Moorish Prince—Fracas at Cadiz—To Memel and back to Coruña—Coal voyage to Cartagena and La Matt—At Philadelphia on July 4—Return to Spain—Bull baiting at Santander—Promoted to be second mate—Bordeaux to Philadelphia—Leaves the Forester—The captain gets him detained in jail—Last voyage in the Forester—Makes thirteen voyages between Shields and London in 1789—Death of his sister—His family dispersed.

EARLY in the year 1785, our ship not having been laid up, we made a voyage to London, and on our return were ordered off to Memel, in Prussia, for a cargo of timber to deliver at Lynn, in Norfolk. On our arrival at Memel we delivered our ballast on the quay, where stood a high pole, erected with a human skull with the hair on at the top of it; on inquiry we were told that it belonged to a beautiful lady of quality, who had perished on the rack for the murder of her infant child.

Up to this time our captain, as was the custom, had worn his hair in curls, and loose behind his ears; but one of these days he came on board with his hair tied in a queue, and looked so strange that he did not seem like the same person; this was the first time that tails came into fashion.

We took our timber to Lynn, delivered it there, and returned to Shields, where we took in a cargo of coals to carry to Marseilles in the Mediterranean; on arriving there we got the ship into the mole and moored her with her head to the quay, and in front of a row of fine lofty coffee-houses, where we could get a good breakfast of coffee and fine bread for threepence; fruit was abundant, and the finest grapes I ever saw, and everything cheap. This city is very populous, has a good trade, and a mixture of all nations here; murders are frequent, and when a dead corpse is found it is taken to the quay-side and covered with a white cloth; an old woman sits by it until she has collected enough alms for its interment.

There is a vessel lying here named the Noah’s Ark, and when any delinquents are taken up as disorderly they are put on board her, and into a place where they must pump for a certain time, or sink.

When our coals were delivered we took in near three hundred bags of nutgalls by way of ballast, then loaded up with cotton and sarsaparilla for London, and left this pleasant place.

Early in 1786 we loaded with coals and took them to Gibraltar, where I became involved in the following scrape: after the coals were delivered we boys were sent into the hold to sweep it clean fore and aft, and one of our party, a keen, old-fashioned Scotch lad, was employed sweeping close under the cabin deck; knowing that the captain was on shore, he took the liberty to lift up the cabin scuttle, and beheld in the cabin close to him a cask of Blackstrap with a cock in it; he soon got a quart pot, filled it, and put the scuttle down again; he praised it up and said how good it was, and got the rest of us to take part of the wine with him. How long we continued at this is impossible for me to tell, but the mate not hearing any noise, as there generally is when boys are working together, called down to know what we were about, and, receiving no answer, came down himself, and there found us lying on our backs drunk, and vomiting on each other; he called the foremast men down to have a look at us, and it was fine fun for them to see how simple and foolish we looked.

On another occasion we should have got a good rope’s-ending, for boys at this time in the North-country ships were cruelly used by the men, and the word and the blow generally came together; but the mate thought our crime so bad that he left it to the captain to punish us; and when the latter came on board and was informed of it, he told us it was so serious a crime that he would have us tried by the civil law, which would perhaps hang us.

I believe he only said this to frighten us, and which made us very uneasy, and had an opportunity offered to desert, we should certainly have embraced it; but the ballast coming alongside that night, together with fifty barrels of gunpowder, and some pigs of lead which we took in, we sailed for a place on the coast of Barbary named Arzeu, laying between Algiers and Oran, which eased us of our apprehensions; but I took such a disgust at wine after this that it was a long time before I could bear the taste of it.

We were told before we sailed that Arzeu was a wild place, and infested with lions and other wild animals, and never to be on shore between sunset and sunrise, as that is the time they come out in search of prey. We had a Minorca gentleman on board to manage our affairs as supercargo; his name was Taw—a good kind of man, who spoke English fluently, and understood some of the Moorish dialect; but the Jews manage the trading business for the Moors.

We arrived safe in Arzeu Bay—supposed to be the ancient Arsinaria—and came to anchor near a sandy beach, where the water was so clear that we could see the anchor at the bottom. The interior was mountainous, but, near the sea, level ground covered with brushwood, with not so much as a hut or any living being to be seen. But a day or two after our arrival we saw two animals at a distance coming swiftly along the shore towards us, and concluded they were lions; but as they came nearer we made them out to be two men on horseback, and when they came abreast of the ship they stopped.

Mr. Taw was sent on shore in the boat, and, after having some conversation with them, mounted behind one of them, and having ordered the boat to return on board, they set off at a gallop, and were soon out of sight.

We lay here near a fortnight without having any tidings from him, which made us very uneasy. But during that time we were not idle: a party of us were employed every day on shore in cutting brushwood, which grew higher than our heads; it was for dunnaging the hold—that is, laying wood under the cargo to keep it from the wet in the ship’s bottom. Here were the tracks of the wild beasts plainly seen, and here we met with a regularly built stone well with two troughs of hewn stone by the side of it. Three land tortoises were clinging to the sides of the well, so we got one of the boat’s oars and put it down, by which we caught the three tortoises and found about four feet depth of excellent water and the well about ten feet deep: this was the only place fresh water was found on the coast, and evidently was where the animals quenched their thirst, for often during our stay we had filled the troughs and found them empty in the morning; but how the animals got at the water in the well I know not. A lion might jump in and spring out again and others perhaps by their claws.

One afternoon, after being here a fortnight, we were alarmed at hearing a noise between us and the beach, and on peeping through the bushes saw marching along a Moorish prince with a hundred others, all well mounted on horseback, and a long train of camels and bullocks laden with wheat, beeswax, and dates, and a great many sheep with their leaders coming up in the rear; but what gave us more pleasure was to see Mr. Taw, our supercargo, among them.

They soon halted abreast of our ship, and formed a camp with their tents, placed the cattle in the centre, and in the evening made three large fires, one in the centre and others outside, to frighten off the wild beasts; yet for all that a lion got into the camp at night, but the noise the soldiers made in getting their muskets ready alarmed it, and it escaped into the woods.

The gunpowder and lead we had brought from Gibraltar were a present for this Moorish prince; and, gunpowder being scarce here, he was so well satisfied that he ordered us to be supplied with beef, mutton, and soft bread, at his own expense, as long as we remained here. He came from the interior, from a place named Masagara,{2} said to be about thirty miles off, and there the gunpowder was immediately sent. We had so much trouble in managing their bullocks and their bad manner in slaying them that we gave them up. One of them one day ran away with us, and a pair of steering sail halyards that we were dragging him with down to the boat; and yet they are not large bullocks.

We now continued loading the ship (with corn, etc.) brought by the Moors from Masagara; but some accidents happened, for if they did not reach the camp before sunset ten to one they were attacked and some of their cattle carried off by wild beasts. One evening we heard cries of distress not far from our ship, and were sure some of them were in danger. The Prince sent a party of soldiers, who shot the lion; and by the skin, which I saw the next day, it must have been twice the size I ever saw in the menageries in England. Those farmers who bring the corn are generally armed: if they fire and don’t kill the lion their life is the sacrifice, but if they don’t resist, the lion will not hurt the farmer but prefer one of the cattle. Several of the Moors lost their lives during this time, not being near enough to the camp to get assistance.

One of these days our captain was introduced to the Prince by one of the Jew merchants, and was very politely received into his tent. I had likewise the pleasure of seeing him too, for like great men he was not to be seen every day. He was about five feet seven inches in height, stout made, about the age of forty, marked much with smallpox; but was too fair to be a Moor, so we concluded that he was a Turk, especially as he was dressed in the Turkish manner. We saw only one woman during our stay here: she was covered over from head to foot with something like a dirty blanket and two holes to see through; she looked more like a hobgoblin than a human creature.

The French brig Tartan, arrived here to load, and I being alongside of her one day in our boat, found an Englishman belonging to her. I asked him how he liked the French service, and he said very well, but could not at first relish their manner of living; so saying he took us to the cooking place and showed us a stewpan with live snails crawling in it, which they were going to stew. He said at first he could not bear the sight of them, but now he liked them as well as the Frenchmen: for my part I don’t see why they should not be as eatable as periwinkles.

The Tartan and we being now laden with wheat, dates, and beeswax, the Prince broke up his camp, and they all departed for Masagara, leaving the place as naked as when we first arrived; so we took our departure for Gibraltar, having on board two Jew merchants as passengers and Mr. Taw as supercargo, and the decks full of sheep, deer, poultry, and some cages of turtledoves.

At Gibraltar we received orders to proceed to Cadiz, and on our arrival there were put into quarantine for six weeks, yet this did not hinder us from delivering our cargo during that time; but not one of us was allowed to land, on pain of death. When the cargo was delivered we took in the salt, and then were permitted to land. Our passengers left us with Mr. Taw; but the Jews had concealed themselves, and entreated us sincerely not to expose them, as the Spaniards are very severe on them.

Cadiz is an ancient city, walled all round, and containing forty thousand inhabitants. It is so scarce of water (which is brought from St. Maries, on the other side of the bay) that it is sold by mule-drivers about the streets, even to so small a quantity as a glassful at a time. The houses are lofty, but the streets are narrow and dirty.

We took our departure from Cadiz laden with salt bound to Königsberg, in the Baltic. On our passage we suffered much for want of water, and what little we had was muddy and full of insects, so that we had to suck it through a handkerchief. Our captain said that when we got off Dover he would get a supply; but when we got there he would not stop, as the wind was favourable, so we pushed on, and in a few days after arrived at Pillau, the only place for delivering (and twenty miles from Königsberg, which lies higher up the river) where we anchored.

We left this clean little place in ballast, and went to Memel, another bar harbour, and we had to load outside exposed to the open sea. Here we loaded with spars as long as the hold of the ship, and put to sea, being bound for Coruña, in Spain. As soon as we had got all sail set and trimmed, the next order was, as usual, rig the lee pump; but all we could do, bucket after bucket poured down, we could not fetch her, so at last we hoisted her up, and found her broken in two pieces. We supposed it must have been done by one of the spars hitting it in getting them in, as our pump-well was not enclosed. However, we were in a poor mess, by having now only one pump and the Bay of Biscay to cross; but as necessity is the mother of invention, we set our heads to work and put the two parts together, nailed battens round to keep them together, then wound it round with tarred canvas and rope, and on putting it down again found it answered so well that it continued so all the voyage.

In crossing the bay we had a strong gale on our beam, which caused our old vessel to ship many seas, insomuch that we had to lash ourselves to the pumps for fear of being washed overboard; and the ship, being bound up with the long spars, was not near so lively as with another cargo. However, we, thank God! arrived safe at Coruña, where we delivered our cargo and took in ballast.

This done, we lay here idle two days, and wondered that our captain did not put to sea, he being always such a stirring hand for pushing forward; but we soon found out the reason for it. It was to smuggle money; and one night a large boat came alongside with boxes containing 40,000 dollars, which were no sooner on board than we up anchor and put to sea; but had we been caught at this work, we were liable to be made convicts and transported to the Spanish mines for life.

We put into Exmouth, and the dollars were sent to Exeter (being merchants’ property); and here we lay near three weeks, little to do and often on shore, where our young men found plenty of sweethearts among the Exmouth lasses, some of whom ‘twas said could earn two guineas a week by lace-making—a fine chance for a sailor!—but before a match could be made we were hurried off to sea, and arrived at Shields, where we laid the old ship up a short time in the winter.

Early in 1787 we loaded with coals for Cartagena, in the Mediterranean, and on our arrival there found a squadron of Spanish men-of-war at anchor, under the command of Admiral Lanzara. The harbour is quite open to the southward, but it is remarked that the wind never blows hard here from that quarter. The land is high on each side, and there is a rock (just above water on the left hand in coming in) without any mark or beacon to show it. The principal dockyard the Spaniards have is here. We delivered our coals, took in ballast, proceeded higher up the Straits, and came to anchor at a place called La Matt, on the open coast, there being no harbour here. The town is a little insignificant place, and Alicante was in sight to the eastward, the land very mountainous; we came here for salt.

There are, ‘tis said, five salt-ponds in this place, each yielding a different sort of salt, so we loaded with the coarsest and took our departure, our captain intending to steer for Ireland or America, whichever way the wind answered best for us when we got out of the Straits. When we got out, the wind being inclined to the northward, we steered away for Philadelphia.

Soon after this we met with three Algerine frigates, which brought us to. Our captain went on board with his pass, and took with him half of a large cheese, some biscuit, and a few bottles of wine as a present. The former they accepted, but not the wine; and, our pass being correct, we were ordered to depart. After getting a few miles from them their admiral made a signal, fired a gun, and came in pursuit of us again; but by this time it was getting dark, so we pushed on, and saw no more of them.

On our passage our beef began to get short, and in order to make it hold out another mess was ordered for us for breakfast, which was oatmeal and flour boiled together like hasty pudding, and some wine poured on the top as a substitute for butter: there was much grumbling at this at first, but in a few days we got reconciled to it, and liked nothing better.

Whenever we bent a new sail we gave it a good scrubbing to wash out of it the gum (which prevents the sail from getting mildewed), and one of these days we had scrubbed a new maintopgallant sail, and in bending it to the yard aloft, being wet and heavy and four boys’ weight likewise, the larboard lift broke, and overboard went poor Joe Watson. The ship fortunately was going slowly at the time, and every one ran to get the jolly-boat out to save him; but everyone knows that this is not easily done in a merchantman, for the skiff is stowed inside of the longboat, and the jolly-boat on her sometimes bottom up and lumbered with other ropes; moreover, we had no tackles rove ready, and as everyone was doing his utmost, and nearly got the boat ready, to our great surprise we saw poor Joe climbing over the taffarel; being able to swim, he had got hold of the beef-net towing astern, and climbed up without any hurt except a good ducking.{3}

We arrived safe in the Delaware, but it puzzled the Custom-house officers who came alongside to know where La Matt was situated, as they had never heard of such a place. We soon got up to Philadelphia, and moored ship alongside a wharf, and began to throw our salt upon it, which they took away in carts. I don’t know whether the English cattle are fond of salt or not, but here we were obliged to keep them off with a good stick, they devoured it so greedily.

Philadelphia is a noble city—the streets at right angles, and built on a sloping hill near the river-side; the marketplace is said to be a mile long, and all roofed over and stocked with all the necessaries of life; the people (being Quakers) are honest in their dealings, and will neither raise nor lower the price first proposed. The celebration of July 4 (the day on which they gained their independence from Great Britain) now took place, and great were the rejoicings