JAMES BURNEY Ro the RIGHT HONOURABLE EARL SPENCER
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JAMES BURNEY ro THE RIGHT HONOURABLE EARL SPENCER: A DoclJilent in the History of the Naval Mutinies of 1 m by Hugh Sproule A Thesis Submi tted to The Facul.ty or Graduate Studies and Research, McGill University, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English 1958 TABLE OF CONTENTS PartI: The naval mutiny of 1797 p.l Part II: Biogra.phical sketch of James Burney 31 Part III: The text of the letter from James 42 Burney to Earl Spencer, wi th notes and commentary Part IV: Conclusions 58 Introduction The career of James Burney (1750-1821) included nearly sixty years of experience in naval affairs, in voyages of exploration throughout the world, and in publication of scientific writings on travel and discovery. During the naval mutiny in 1797 he wrote a letter to Lord Spencer, then First Lord of the Admiralty, in which he set forth what he believed to be the causes of the uprising, and made recommandations whereby the naval service might be improved. Burney' s letter must have been lost or removed from the Admiralty records, because no mention is made of it either by his biographer or by those writing of the mutiny. A copy of the letter is preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library, in a collection of letters and documents b,y or relating to James Burney. It is in Burney' s hand, and appears on two sheets of ivory-coloured bond paper, written on both aides. Each sheet measures eight inches by twalve and three-quarters inches. The first sheet, which bears the first and second pages of the letter, is water-marked, n C W Willmott 1815." The second sheet, bearing the third and fourth pages of the latter, is water-marked with an oval shield beneath a crown; contained wi thin the shield is a lion rampant before an obelisk. Both sheets are faded to a paJ.e brown colour, but are not otherwise discoloured, marked or disfigured. In addition to the letter from James Burney to Lord Spencer, a number of other letters in the Pierpont Morgan Library were used in preparing this paper, as were also certain letters in the Barrett and Osborn Collections. In the selection and organization of this material, the assistance of Professor Joyce Hemlow and Professor Archibald E. Malloch is gratefully acknowledged. 1 I Throughout the winter of 1796-97, i t became clear to the people of England that the war wi th France was going from bad to worse. Pitt•s attempt to treat for peace with the newly-activated Directoire had failed, and the fear of, aFrench invasion persisted in the public mind in much the same way as did the fear of a German invasion during the last war. This popular tmeasiness was made worse by such bitter trials as a soaring national debt, ruinously high priees, and a foreign trade heavily damaged by French and Dutch strength on the high saas. Worry changed to open dismay, however, when the Navy, long celebrated as the nation•s true bulwark, seemed to have become inadequate and ineffectuaJ.. In December, a large French fleet had sailed unopposed out of Brest, and only b,y violent storms and gales was prevented from landing troops in Bantry Bay, County Cork. Another sma11 task force actually did affect a landing at Fishguard, but was soon captured by the local militia • .Along wi th these disquieting alarUills of imminent invasion came the news that the banks had suspended payments in gold and were offering pa.per currency instead. The gloom was lightened for a moment in February when the Spanish fleet was defeated off Cape St. Vincent. This British victory was acknowledged wi th an earldom ( St. Vincent) and an annua1 pension of three thousand pounds a year to Admiral Jervis. On the same occasion Nelson was given an Order of the Bath. The most important consequence, however, was the restoration of the Navy as the beloved symbol of national strength and pride. That service was not destined, alas, to occupy such a position for long. 2 On Easter Sunday, April 16, 179'7, when the Channel Fleet was ordered from Portsmouth to St. Helen• s on the Isle of Wight (the usual place of rendezvous where the ships assembled to await favourable winds), the signal was not obeyed; with no anchor weighed 1 or sail unfurled, the Fleet was plainly in a state of mutiny. This unhappy and dangerous situation was the immediate faul t of the Admiral ty who, having for several weeks ignored petitions from various ships of the Channel Fleet for long-overdue pay increases, for fair measures of the food and supplies sold to them, and for the redress of such grievances as brutal treatment and inequity of prize money, now committed a final act of folly, but with the reasoning that if the ships were sent off to sea, the developing troubles might be kept from spreading. For several weeks before Easter, seamen had been preparing and forwarding anoeymous petitions to the Admiral ty; they had agreed amongst themselves that once they could be sure that their petitions had been placed before the Admiral ty, they would force the Admiral ty to consider them, by the deviee of taking charge of the ships until an acceptable answer should be received. On Easter Sunda.y morning, therefore, the crews of all the ships at Portsmouth were watching Admiral Gardner• s fiagship, the Roya1 1 Conrad Gill, The Naval Mutinies 9f.l1!21. (Manchester, 1913). There is relatively little material elsewhere on the mutiny, wi th the exception of G.E. Manwaring and Bonamy Dobree, The Floating Republic (New York, 1935), a work hypercritical of the Admiralty and less objective than Gill, although the two share much similar source information. David Bonner Smith, in various articles appearing in The Mariner• s Mirror, a periodical devoted to nautical affairs, also uses largely the same sources as the two works just mentioned. Except as otherwise indicated, Gill' s work, the most thorough, scholarly and best-documented on the mutinies of 1797, has furnished the material for my brief account. Sovereign; when the seamen on the other ships saw her acknowledge the signal. to proceed to sea, and then perceived that she did not o bey the signal, they realized that this order was to be their answer from the Admiralty- on the subject of their petitions. They proceeded, accordingly, with their pre-arranged plans to mutiny. The men in the Que en Charlotte were first to give the sign of recognition, which consisted of repeated cheers from the hands on deck; the sign was picked up and relayed through ail the ships in harbour. Then two representatives ( styled "Delegates") from the Queen Charlotte, followed by two elected from the Royal George, were rowed through the Fleet, in crder to arrange that avery ship like wise send two Delegates to a meeting aboard the Queen Charlotte that same evening. The Admiralty had received frequent warnings of threatened disorders, but had set these aside as normal complaints from a service long noted for chronic dissatisfaction. Several weeks before the mutilly began, some ships' companies had tried the deviee of sending petitions directly to the semi-retired Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Howe (the much-beloved "Black Dick"), who wasmtering at Bath. Although he was much concerned at the seriousness of' these signa of unrest, he was not in a position to ta.ke direct action, and turned them over to the Ad.miralty where they might be considered in the light of other information which their Lordships might have acquired in the matter. They instructed Seymour, one of their n'IJ!lber, to visit Ports mouth, from which he returned with nothing remarkable to report. It was evidently his reassurance, coupled wi th the extrema unpopularity of any measure requiring an increase in Navy estimates already em barrassingly large, that prompted Spencer, the First Lord, to ignore 4 the petitions and give them no formaJ. recognition. In the middle of Roly Week, both Sir Peter Parker (Port Admiral at Portsmouth), and Lord Bridport (Admiral of the Channel Fleet) had written to the Admiralty, warning that serious mischief was a.foot. In a letter of April 1.3, Bridport had asked for instructions, since he had heard that nt disagreeable combinations• were forming, particularly on the Queen Charlotte." (Gill, p.l6) He was therefore much surprised that his reply from the Admiralty gave no instructions, in view of the fact that they had sent to him, under the same cover, those same petitions which had been originally sent by the sea.men to Lord Howe. Seeing for the first time this eloquent evidence, Bridport was alarmed to recognize how extensive the impending mutiny seemed to be. The seriousness of his concern is indicated in his reply to the Board on April 15: I • • • conclme • • • their Lordships will not direct the squadron to proceed to sea, before soma answer is given to these petitions, as I am afraid i t could not be put in execution witho ut the appearance of serious consequences, which the complexion of the fleet sufficiently indicates. (Gill, p.l8) De spite the traditionaJ. immovability of the Board of Admiralty, i t is only fair to admit that they would undoubtedly have issued more useful instructions if they had received this latter o~ Bridport•s sooner. As it was, they had been disturbed by a letter from Parker written on April 14, containing specifie details and information about the forth- coming mutiny.