VOL. 66 Manning the Royal Navy in Bristol: Liberty, Impressment and the State, 1739–1815
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BRISTOL RECORD SOCIETY’S PUBLICATIONS General Editors: MADGE DRESSER ROGER LEECH JONATHAN BARRY VOL. 66 MANNING THE royal navy IN bristol: liberty, IMPRESSMENT AND THE state, 1739–1815 00a-RoyalNavy(prelims)-i-x.indd 1 07/10/2013 09:51 00a-RoyalNavy(prelims)-i-x.indd 2 07/10/2013 09:51 MANNING THE royal navy IN bristol: liberty, IMPRESSMENT AND THE state, 1739–1815 EDITED BY NICHOLAS ROGERS Published by BRISTOL RECORD SOCIETY 2014 00a-RoyalNavy(prelims)-i-x.indd 3 07/10/2013 09:51 ISBN 978 0 901538 35 2 © Nicholas Rogers 2013 No part of this volume may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage or retrieval system, without permission. BRISTOL RECORD SOCIETY President: The Lord Mayor of Bristol General Editors: Madge Dresser, BA, MSc, DPhil, FRHistS Roger Leech, MA, PhD, FSA, MIFA Jonathan Barry, MA, DPhil, FRHistS Secretary: Jonathan Harlow Treasurer: Jonathan Harlow The Society exists to encourage the preservation, study and publication of documents relating to the history of Bristol, and since its foundation in 1929 has published sixty-five major volumes of historic documents concerning the city. All the volumes are edited and introduced by scholars who are experts in their fields. Recent volumes have included: William Worcestre: The Topography of Medieval Bristol (Vol. 51); The Diary of Sarah Fox (Vol. 55); The Pre-Reformation Records of All Saints’ Church, Bristol (Vols 46, 53 and 56); Bristol Probate Inventories (Vols 54, 57 and 60); Robert Sturmy’s Commercial Expedition to the Mediterranean 1457–8 (Vol. 58); Records of Bristol Cathedral (Vol. 59); Bristol’s Trade with Ireland and the Continent, 1503–1601 (Vol. 61); Westbury- on-Trym: Monastery, Minster and College (Vol. 62); The Ledger of Thomas Speed, 1681– 1690 (Vol. 63); The Diary of William Dyer: Bristol in 1762 (Vol. 64); and Clifton College: Foundation to Evacuation (Vol. 65). The subscription for private members is £10 per annum, for UK institutions £12.50, and for overseas membership £20. In return, members of the Society receive the volumes as they are published. The Society acknowledges with thanks the continued support of the Bristol Record Office, the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England. Correspondence to the Secretary, Hardings Cottage, Swan Lane, Winterbourne, S. Glos. BS36 1RJ. Subscriptions to the Treasurer, Hardings Cottage, Swan Lane, Winterbourne, S. Glos. BS36 1RJ. Orders for past volumes to the Bristol Record Office, ‘B’ Bond Warehouse, Smeaton Road, Bristol BS1 6XN. Website: http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/History/bristolrecordsociety Produced for the Society by 4word Ltd Unit 15 Bakers Park Cater Road Bristol BS13 7TT 00a-RoyalNavy(prelims)-i-x.indd 4 07/10/2013 09:51 CONTENTS List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgements viii Abbreviations ix Editorial Conventions ix Introduction xi DOCUMENTS A: The Wars against Spain and France 1739–1748 1 B: The Seven Years’ War 1755–1763 19 C: The Falkland Islands crisis, 1770–1771 84 D: The War against America, 1776–1783 90 E: The Nootka Sound Mobilization, 1790 131 F: The War against Revolutionary France, 1793–1802 133 G: The Napoleonic Wars, 1803–1815 182 Index 341 00a-RoyalNavy(prelims)-i-x.indd 5 07/10/2013 09:51 00a-RoyalNavy(prelims)-i-x.indd 6 07/10/2013 09:51 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Plates (between pp. 134 and 135) 1 Mary Allen pleads to have her son discharged from the navy 2 The certificate of John Bush, a licensed waterman 3 Thomas Jones, the mate of a Newport brig, asks for a discharge 4 A “protection” for John Barker, shipwright of the Frederick 00a-RoyalNavy(prelims)-i-x.indd 7 09/10/2013 10:30 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This set of documents on Manning the Royal Navy in Bristol flows out of my book on The Press Gang, in which I wrote a chapter on the problems on impressment in Bristol and Liverpool. Madge Dresser suggested that I produce a volume for the Bristol Record Society and encouraged me along the way as I endeavoured to transcribe and expand on the material I had gathered. I am very grateful to her for her support and patience throughout this project, as I am to Elaine Stavro, who put up with my long hours in the National Archives during our visits to London. Working in the National Archives has been greatly facilitated by the efficiency of the staff and the rapid production of volume after volume of Admiralty letters that form the backbone of this collection. Most of the relevant documents were digitally photographed by the editor, but I would like to thank Ronnie Morris for taking time out from his own research to photograph those of 1810 and 1811. Thanks also to Ashley Geiser for helping with the index to this volume. I should also like to thank the archivists of the Bristol Record Office for the help they have given me with the local records of impressment, and to the staff of various libraries – the Bristol Reference Library, the Mills Library at McMaster University, Hamilton, and the Robarts Library at the University of Toronto – for providing me with copies of provincial newspapers that rounded out my research into the Charles Burney collection of newspapers, housed in the British Library but now accessible on line. Finally I would like to thank my daughter, Kate Greenslade, for enhancing some of my images, and my sister, Sally Powell, for free accommodation in London. In Bristol, Madge Dresser, Steve Poole and Janette Kerr were hospitable and convivial hosts. It is a pleasure to make some contribution to the history of my native city, and the company of UWE historians make it more so. 00a-RoyalNavy(prelims)-i-x.indd 8 07/10/2013 09:51 ABBREVIATIONS TNA The National Archives, London Adm Admiralty Records BRO The Bristol Record Office SMV Records of the Society of Merchant Venturers EDITORIAL CONVENTIONS Most of the documents in this collection are letters of captains to successive secretaries of the Admiralty about the problems of manning the fleet in Bristol and providing convoys for merchant shipping. Standard English was slowly coming into vogue and so spelling and capitalization is erratic, particularly in the mid-eighteenth century. I have retained this, although in the interests of clarity I have altered the punctuation. Sea captains had a tendency to use many commas and write run-on sentences with too many subordinate clauses, none of which helps the modern reader. I have also standardized the possessive case, something that naval officers often ignored, although occasionally I have retained the ungrammatical original to capture the texture of a letter from a writer struggling to make him or herself understood. In the regular correspondence of captains, I have also abbreviated and sometimes omitted the parting phrases, which today seem excessively formal and formulaic. I have retained these phrases for letters of supplication, where authors are asking the Admiralty for favours or concessions. Here they are an important part of the language of petition and their nuances are of some significance. In the interest of intelligibility I have sometimes paraphrased a letter or part of its contents. This is registered by an asterisk and by an indented entry. Marginal comments have been retained in the original, but sometimes the scrawl is such that I have again summarised the general drift of the contents, again with an asterisk. Nineteenth century letters survive in larger numbers than eighteenth, and often with enclosures. These enclosures, often loose sheets accompanying a letter to the secretary of the Admiralty, are not individually paginated or foliated. Readers will also find that some letters are not foliated either, especially before 1795, and are therefore cited by volume number, author (since the letters are clustered that way) and date. 00a-RoyalNavy(prelims)-i-x.indd 9 07/10/2013 09:51 00a-RoyalNavy(prelims)-i-x.indd 10 07/10/2013 09:51 INTRODUCTION In the period covered by this volume, from 1739–1815, Britain was at war roughly two in every three years. The navy was crucial to its success. It defended the country from foreign invasion, kept vital lines of supply open to expanding theatres of war, and provided convoys for the commercial traffic that was Britain’s bloodline. All this required a heavy outlay in crews and equipment. In 1739, at the beginning of the War of Jenkins’ Ear, the number of seamen borne, that is actually registered on the ships’ books, was 23,000. The demand for men was such that 85,000 sailors were borne at the peak of the Seven Years’ War, rising to over 100,000 in the American War and 145,00 at the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815.1 That is a six- fold increase in 75 years, a growth rate that greatly exceeded that of the merchant marine, which stood at 36,000 on the eve of the Seven Years War and just over 52,000 in 1793. This meant that the Royal Navy was constantly looking for new sources of seaworthy men as well as trying to balance its own needs against those of the merchant marine, whose traffic was essential to the country’s prosperity and tax base. The French answer to this sort of problem was conscription. In the early 1670s Colbert instituted an inscription maritime whereby all coastal areas had to provide lists of eligible men over 18 to serve in the Royal Navy. Over 150,000 were on the books by 1673, and the men were obliged to serve one year in every three or five in return for certain tax exemptions, pensions and fishing rights.2 The British disliked this modern and arguably efficient system because it seemed too centralized, too despotic.