Mutinies from Spithead and Nore

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The Delegates in Council, or beggars on horseback , a contemporary cartoon.

The mutinies of Spithead and Nore were two major mutinies by seamen in the Royal Navy in 1797. The mutinies were not violent, but rather took the form of strikes to obtain better working conditions and pay.

The mutinies were potentially dangerous for the Kingdom of Great Britain as they took place at the time of the First Coalition War against France . In addition, there were fears in ruling circles that these mutinies could spark a spark from the French Revolution on the British island.

Spithead

The mutiny at Spithead , a ship berth near Portsmouth , lasted about four weeks, from April 16 to May 15, 1797. Sailors from a total of 16 ships in the Canal Fleet under Admiral Alexander Hood, 1st Viscount Bridport , protested the living conditions Boarding Royal Navy ships and demanding wage increases.

The amount of wages for seafarers was fixed in 1658 , so it has remained almost unchanged for over 100 years. Wages and prices remained stable until the 1760s, but after the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) there was a progressive devaluation of money. In addition, since the 1760s, the hulls were increasingly sheathed with copper plates , so that British warships no longer had to call regularly at ports to clean the hulls. The extra time at sea changed the rhythm of life of seafarers significantly. The Royal Navy made no attempt to incorporate these changes into their planning and was slow to understand the impact they were having on the crews. Finally, the formation of crews of volunteer seafarers and pressed men from the inland created tension and discontent during wartime.

The mutinies were led by elected delegates who tried for two weeks to negotiate with the Admiralty above all about better pay, the abolition of a purser's pound and the replacement of some unpopular officers. Neither the flogging nor the pressing was brought up. The mutineers maintained their daily nautical routine and discipline on their ships (mostly with their regular officers) and also allowed some ships to leave the berth, for example to go on patrol. They also pledged that they would end the mutiny and leave immediately if French ships were sighted.

Since the mutineers were suspicious, especially of the promised pardons, negotiations initially failed, and there were several incidents in which some unpopular officers were dismissed and others treated with disregard. As the situation nevertheless reassured, Admiral switched Lord Howe and presented an agreement that largely came to meet the mutineers as they pardon by the king for all teams, dismissal of some unpopular officers, a wage increase and the abolition of the purser's pound included . As a result of the mutinies of Spithead and The Nore, the worst abuses in the Royal Navy - bad food, brutal discipline, and withholding payment - were alleviated or eliminated.

The leaders of the mutiny remained anonymous, even after the agreement. Rumor has it that HMS Royal George's quartermaster Valentin Joyce was one of the spokesmen.

The Nore

Richard Parker before his execution by hanging

Inspired by the example of their comrades in Spithead, the seamen began to mutiny near the sandbank Nore , a berth in the mouth of the Thames near London. On May 12, 1797, the team gained control of the HMS Sandwich . The crews of several other ships, which were also anchored there, followed them, while other ships tried to sail away secretly, although they were shot at with cannons by the ships with the mutineers. It was more difficult to organize this mutiny centrally because the ships, unlike in Spithead, were further apart, but in the end delegates were elected for each ship.

The seaman Richard Parker was elected president of the fleet delegates. He was a former helmsman who was demoted and tried in a military tribunal in December 1793, but was re-engaged in 1797. On May 20, Admiral Charles Buckner was presented with a list of eight demands, essentially the same as those of the mutineers of Spithead, but also demanding that the king dissolve Parliament and make an immediate peace with France. These demands brought up the Admiralty, who only wanted to accept Spithead's concessions and immediate return to service.

The mutineers blocked sea access to London, and also prevented merchant ships from calling at the port of London. On June 5, 1797, Parker gave the order to let the merchant ships pass. Only the ships of the Royal Navy should continue to be blocked; the reason given for this order was that the passage of the merchant ships would make a good impression on the people on land. However, it may also have happened that the mutineers were overwhelmed with a total blockade of the busy Thames. After the mutiny in Spithead was successfully brought to an end, the government and the Admiralty were not prepared to make any further concessions, also because they assumed that some of the leaders of the mutiny in London had further political goals.

The mutineers were denied food, and when Parker gave the signal that the mutineers' ships should all sail to France, the other ships refused to follow and the mutiny failed. Parker was convicted of treason and piracy and was hanged on the sandwich . 29 other leaders were executed, others flogged, detained and deported to Australia. Most of the mutineers, however, were not punished.

After the mutiny of The Nore, ships of the Royal Navy no longer rang five times after the dog watch as usual , as this had been the signal for the start of the mutiny.

Further mutinies in 1797

In September 1797, the crew of the HMS Hermione mutinied in the West Indies . Almost all officers were killed in revenge for a number of incidents. At her command, the bodies of three men who had fallen from the rigging while trying to avoid being whipped as the “last man on deck” were thrown into the sea . On December 27, the crew of the HMS Marie Antoinette killed their officers and hijacked the ship in a French port on the West Indies. Other mutinies took place off the coast of Ireland and the Cape of Good Hope and spread to Admiral Jervis' fleet off the Spanish coast.

reception

  • Herman Melville's novel Billy Budd and the opera of the same name by Benjamin Britten are set shortly after the mutinies
  • The Men They Couldn't Hang , an English folk-punk group, remembered the mutiners who were executed in their 1988 ballad The Colors
  • Mutiny by Julian Stockwin is a novel based on the mutiny on The Nore . In German: Kydd - On the road to success . Novel. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main. 2004. ISBN 3-548-25772-0 .
  • The film HMS Defiant (German Rebellion ) describes a similar mutiny.
  • The father of the title character in Frederick Marryat's The King's Own was hanged for his role in the Nore mutiny.
  • The novel The King's Captain by Dewey Lambdin is set partly during the Nore mutiny
  • Ramage and the Buccaneersof Dudley Pope plays during the Spithead Mutiny
  • GE Manwaring and Bonamy Dobrée: "The Floating Republic - An account of the Mutinies at Spithead and The Nore in 1797". 1935
  • In 1982, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a dramatized narrative of the Manwaring and Dobrée book entitled The Floating Republic on its Saturday Night Theater show .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sixth Edition The Columbia Encyclopedia : Article: Mutiny . Columbia University Press, New York 2009.
  2. ^ Roberts 2006
  3. ↑ Demands of the Nore Mutineers . In: Royal Navy Mutinies at the Nore and Spithead . Napoleonguide.com. Retrieved June 6, 2012.
  4. ↑ Nore Mutiny . Museum of Learning. Retrieved September 12, 2011.
  5. ↑ a b Tracy: Who's who in Nelson's Navy , p. 294.

literature

  • GE Manwaring, Bonamy Dobrée [1. New York edition 1935]: The Floating Republic: An Account Of The Mutinies At Spithead And The Nore In 1797 . Cresset Library, London 1987, ISBN 0-09-173154-2 , p. 299.
  • James Dugan: The Great Mutiny , New American Library, 1967. Edition, GP Putnam's Sons, 1965, p. 510.
  • Conrad Gill: The Naval Mutinies of 1797 . Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK 1913, p. 445.
  • Jason Roberts: A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler . Harper Perennial , New York, NY 2007, ISBN 0-00-716106-9 , p. 432.
  • Richard Woodman: A Brief History of Mutiny , 1st Carroll & Graf. Edition, Carroll & Graf, New York 2005, ISBN 0-7867-1567-7 , p. 352.
  • Nicholas Tracy: Who's Who in Nelson's Navy: 200 Naval Heroes . Greenhill Books / Chatham Publishing, London 2006, ISBN 1-86176-244-5 , p. 388.
  • " Born in Exeter " a biography Chapter on Richard Parker - By The Historical Society of Hele's School Exeter (1950) Publisher A. Wheaton & Company Ltd Exeter
  • Jonathan Schneer: The Thames: England's River , Paperback. Edition, Abacus, London 2006, ISBN 0-349-11929-5 , p. 352.

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