James Caithness: the Boatswain's Call

From documents concerning James Caithness’s sons and their admittance to the Royal Hospital School, Greenwich, it’s known that James snr met his death in an unusual way.

He ‘Died of an asthma thro over exertion in the use of the Call as Boatswain’s Mate’.

In other words, James blew his whistle too hard and this proved fatal.

The fact that he was Boatswain’s (or Bosun’s) Mate is evidenced by entries in the musters of HMS Calcutta: 

'James Caithness AB to 17th Nov 1803 then Boatswain's Mate'

In this role James would have conveyed orders to crew members by sounding the Call on his Boatswain’s ‘pipe’ or whistle. This was a time-honoured tradition dating as far back as the Crusades. There were specific calls – each a series of notes – applicable to various tasks. The one perhaps most familiar to non-seafarers is the piping aboard of people of consequence, such as the captain, an admiral of the fleet, or a Royal visitor.

The boatswain's call is a none diaphragm aerophone. It is a symbol of office and a practical instrument for giving orders as well as for playing music to pass the time at sea. Every seaman had to know the call codes and one officer would be in charge of the Call to alert the crew to carry out routine chores as well as to mark ceremonial occasions.

Its distinctive shape has remained practically unchanged from medieval times to the present day. The Call's shrill whistle can be varied in pitch and duration to convey a variety of information and can be heard above the sound of wind and sea.

A beautiful silver Call like this one dated 1804 would probably be a ceremonial or presentation piece. Usually they were personal possessions retained by an individual during his career. 

The pipe or Call consists of a narrow tube (the gun) which directs air over a metal sphere (the buoy) with a hole in the top. The player opens and closes the hand over the whole to change pitch. The rest of the pipe consists of a 'keel', a flat piece of metal beneath the gun that holds the Call together, and the 'shackle', a keyring that connects a long silver or brass chain that sits around the collar when in ceremonial uniform.

The precise circumstances under which James could have succumbed to an asthma attack while sounding the Call are not stated, but it may be that almost ten years spent in grim conditions as a prisoner-of-war in France during the Napoleonic Wars undermined his health. He died in 1826 aged about forty.

Boatswain's Mate in shore-going rig

Listen to audio examples of the Call at:

http://whistlemuseum.com/2012/03/29/boatswains-call-history-timeline-examples-and-more.aspx


Acknowledgement:
Tom Sheldon

Caithness and Napoleon 5: sidelights and sources

Napoleon on board the Bellerophon (he surrendered to Maitland 1808)
by Sir William Quiller Orchardson

Further reading on the Napoleonic Wars and prisoners held in France:

Napoleon the Gaoler, Personal Experiences and Adventures of British Sailors and Soldiers during the Great Captivity: Edward Fraser

http://archive.org/details/napoleongaolerpe00frasiala

Prisoners being marched between depots in Napoleonic France: an idealized version -
the reality was considerably less elegant

Prisoners of war in France from 1804 to 1814, being the adventures of John Tregerthen Short and Thomas Williams of St. Ives, Cornwall

https://archive.org/details/prisonersofwarin00shoriala

Adventures during the Late War: Donat Henchy O’Brien 1804-14

https://archive.org/details/myadventuresdur00omangoog

Givet, where James Caithness is likely
 to have been imprisoned

Narrative of a Captivity and Adventures in France and Flanders between the years 1806 and 1809: Captain Edward Boys, RN, late Midshipman of HMS Phoebe.

https://archive.org/details/narrativeacapti01boysgoog 

Bitche penal depot -  a cosmetic version of the grim reality

A Picture of Verdun or the English Detained in France: James Henry Lawrence

https://archive.org/details/apictureverdun00whitgoog

Narrative of a Captivity in France from 1809 to 1814: Richard Langton

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015070303535;view-1up;seq=13

The Surrender of Napoleon: Frederick Lewis Maitland, RN

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28934 The story of the Bellerophon, the ship which took Napoleon to England 1808.

English Prisoners in France … during nine years’ residence in the depots of Fontainebleu, Verdun, Givet and Valenciennes: Rev R B Wolfe, Chaplain

http://books.google.fr/books/reader?id=UAoMAQAAMAAJ&hl=fr&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb_hover&pg=GBS.PP11

Memoir of the Life and Services of Vice Admiral Sir Jahleel Brenton, Bart., KCB

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SCoPAAAAYAAJ   Brenton was captain of the frigate Minerve when she ran aground near Cherbourg France and was forced to surrender. Brenton was at Verdun during which time he made strenuous efforts to improve the conditions under which British prisoners-of-war were held, arranging financial and other forms of support. He was exchanged in return for the release of a French prisoner in England. In 1807 he was given command of HMS Spartan and went on to further achievements, notably a brilliant action against a French squadron at Naples, 1 May 1810, when he was severely wounded.*

Jahleel Brenton 1802

*One of his descendants was Jahleel Brenton Carey, the man held responsible for the death of yet another Napoleon, the Prince Imperial, who was killed while on reconnaissance at Ityotyosi by the Zulus in 1879. Carey, the scapegoat, was 'sent to Coventry' by his fellow officers; the incident ruined his life. www.careyroots.com/hd1.html

 

 

 

 

A colony established and Calcutta returns home

It rapidly became clear that the location chosen for the settlement was not ideal.

One of the main difficulties was the scarcity of fresh water. A survey of the area was made and the unfavourable report soon prompted Collins and the other members of the expedition to consider abandoning the place in favour of ‘a more eligible situation’, either to Port Dalrymple on the north side of Van Diemen’s Land or to the river Derwent on the south coast of the same island where a small party from Port Jackson was already established.

The crew of the HMS Calcutta, including James Caithness, were meanwhile busily employed collecting ship-timber to be taken back to England. This is a reminder that war against Napoleon was about to erupt once more and every British ship afloat would need to be fit for action, so Calcutta’s task was of great importance and Captain Woodriff was well aware that speed was of the essence.

It was finally decided to move the infant colony to the Derwent and this was partly accomplished before the Calcutta sailed on 18 December. The name Hobart was given to the new settlement.

Mount Nelson near Hobart

HMS Calcutta took on timber at Port Jackson and sailed again on 17 March 1804, passing south of New Zealand which was sighted on 29 March. 

Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, where Calcutta loaded 600 logs destined
for England's shipyards

Calcutta doubled Cape Horn on 27 April, arriving at Rio de Janeiro 22 May, thus, as Tuckey pointed out, ‘accomplishing a voyage round the world, discharging and receiving a cargo, in eleven months’. He reports:

The remainder of the Calcutta's voyage was almost totally barren of incident, either to amuse or instruct. In the long navigation between New Zealand and Cape Horn, scarce a single incident occurred either to interest the seaman, or the naturalist.Throughout this navigation, the wind seldom deviated to the northward of N. W. or to the southward of S. W. with strong gales, which enabled us to make an average of one hundred and eighty miles a-day for twenty nine days.

At Rio de Janeiro they took on water and all on board must have echoed Tuckey’s fervently-expressed wish to ‘see the shores which custom and reason bid us hail as the happiest of our globe’: in short, they sailed for home on 1 June. The end of one chapter for James Caithness and further adventures awaited him in the next.

Panorama: Greater Hobart

Disease and Impressment: Royal Navy 18th c

H.M.S. Mars: the 74-gun ship of the line 
on which James Caithness served in 1798

It’s unthinkable to us that boys aged 12 should be exposed to the dangers of life at sea. During wartime the risks were obviously extremely high but there was also a strong likelihood of death from disease. Typhus and scurvy, both killers, were rife, though by 1795 the Royal Navy had improved revictualling methods and with regular supplies of fresh meat, fruit and vegetables there were fewer cases of scurvy.

This progress in the second half of the 18^th c stemmed partly from efforts to provide better treatment and care of naval personnel than was then available in the merchant service. There was always a demand for men to serve in the navy but little incentive for them to join: conditions were generally poor and more money could be made in the mercantile marine.  The navy offered a hard way of life and many deserted – the figure during the French Revolutionary Wars is said to have been 42, 000. Others were lost to the service through death from disease or as casualties of war. Impressment was increasingly resorted to.

There is a notion that any man could be ‘pressed’ but in reality this was restricted by law to seamen – landlubbers were of little use to the navy, though undoubtedly the system was abused and people who should have been exempt, or had no knowledge of the sea whatsoever, were taken by the brutal press-gangs whose ‘approach was dreaded like the invasion of a foreign enemy. Outrages were deplored but the navy was the pride of England and every one agreed that it must be recruited.’

The Impress Service scoured coastal towns and villages in search of men over 18 and under 45. Press gangs were also authorized to stop merchant ships and impress sailors – though sea apprentices were supposedly exempt. Merchant seamen were especially sought after because they had the necessary experience. Frequently men were forcibly abducted from taverns and other mariners’ haunts, when drunk and incapable of resisting, or made unconscious by use of the cosh, waking up on board ship and often already at sea. Their options at that stage were limited. Impressment came to an end with the defeat of Napoleon in 1814.

  

Souvenir Saturday: early 19th c Maritime Miniature

A sailor and his lady, delightful early 19th c maritime folk art miniature:
in keeping with the mariner theme and to pave the way for
further sea adventures of James Caithness snr coming soon on this blog ...
the era of the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.

Mariners: Caithness at Greenwich

A Squall, Southampton Water

The Caithness brothers, James and George, lost their father young. James snr had been discharged from the navy in 1814 after serving during the Napoleonic Wars and by the time his children were born was living in Marchwood, Hampshire earning an income as a waterman and ferryman. His death in 1826 left his widow Ann in an unenviable situation without the family breadwinner and with five children to rear.

However, Ann was a resourceful woman and with the help of influential friends managed to get her two eldest sons James and George into the Lower School at the Royal Hospital, Greenwich, with a view to their being educated towards a seafaring career.

The magnificent group of buildings beside the Thames at Greenwich must be one of the most recognisable sights in the world; the National Maritime Museum has been situated there since 1934. Greenwich’s maritime history, though, goes back much earlier. King William III and Queen Mary II founded the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich in 1694. Its Royal Charter included provision for the 'Maintenance and Education of the Children of [Royal Naval] Seamen happening to be slain or disabled'. The aim was to create a hospital, to provide support for seamen's widows, education for their children and to improve navigation. 

The Hospital – now the Old Royal Naval College – was built from 1696 to 1751.

Greenwich Royal Hospital

The School began when the Hospital took in ten ‘orphans of the sea’ to be educated in navigation for the merchant service. At first housed in Thomas Weston’s Academy in Greenwich, the Hospital built its own school on King William Walk which was replaced by a larger building in 1782.

In 1798 an orphanage school, The British Endeavour, was founded in Paddington for children whose fathers died in the French Revolutionary War. 

This establishment was granted the Queen’s House, Greenwich, in 1806 and renamed the Royal Naval Asylum, which was later extended to house 800 children (boys and girls). 

By 1821 the Asylum and Hospital School amalgamated as the Royal Hospital Schools.

Greenwich Hospital and Royal Naval Asylum 1820, South Aspect; 
engraved by Henry Wallis from painting by Charles Bentley

Ann Caithness made application for her boys James and George to attend the Lower School in 1827 and surviving records offer a glimpse into their world at the time. 

James and George Caithness would have qualified for admittance
to the Lower School as 'boys whose Fathers have fallen in His Majesty's Service,
whose Mothers are living.'

To be continued …

Acknowledgement:

Tom Sheldon for copies of the Lower School documents

Caithness at Eling, Marchwood and Totton

Caithness family history is closely associated with the environs of Eling, including Marchwood and Totton, in Hampshire.

James Caithness (ca 1786-1826) lived at Marchwood with his wife Ann b Scorey; their five children were baptized at St Mary’s Church, Eling, between 1815 and 1826. During some of those years, James snr was waterman and ferryman at Cracknore Hard. His widow Ann Caithness lived at Totton until her death in 1889.

Ordnance Survey Map 1851 showing Cracknore Hard

Eling (the parish is recorded in the Domesday survey) has a long tradition of shipbuilding and seafaring. New Forest timber – oak and beech in vast quantities – supplied local shipbuilders from the Middle Ages onwards. Oak was used for hulls of ships, beech for masts. During James Cathness’s time, the era of the Napoleonic Wars, ships were being built here for the Royal Navy.

Action at Sea between HMS Hydra and the Furet 27 Feb 1806 

                                   Views of Magazine Lane and Marchwood village

Cracknore Hard Lane today

But there was more to Marchwood than quiet, narrow country lanes. The area was a vital strategic site: in 1812 a depot was constructed for 20,000 barrels of gunpowder. One wonders how the residents of Marchwood felt about living in close proximity to a powder keg; later generations certainly complained.

The threat of French invasion in 1779 and the advent of Napoleon on the European stage brought about reform in the way gunpowder was stored and issued in Britain. Up to that time, powder was kept in old fortifications or more recently constructed vaults in various parts of the country. In 1811 the decision was taken to increase the number of depots and to build more permanent storage. Marchwood was the largest of four new magazines.

Gunpowder at that period was stored in barrels each containing 90 lbs of powder. It was originally intended to store 20, 000 barrels at Marchwood all in one large magazine. Later, three separate magazines were constructed as far apart as possible to minimize the danger of explosion. Each held 6, 800 barrels. A canal was used to move the barrels by barge from magazine to magazine. There were also other buildings which served as receiving and examining rooms, all within a perimeter wall, and put up between 1814 and 1816.

Earth banked blast walls and high walled enclosures protected each building. An office and guard house and a barrack block were built on Magazine Lane, Marchwood. There was a rolling stage, a raised planked barrow way, built out to a landing stage in deep water. A sea wall was added fronting Southampton Water and returning along the Creek.

Old Main Gate: Marchwood Magazine

                                                         

                         

Remains of Marchwood Magazine: part of the vaulted
floor. Water flowed underneath to keep the atmosphere damp *

The depot closed briefly in 1850 but was reopened during the outbreak of the Crimean war and in 1856-57 four new and larger magazines were added. The Royal Naval Armaments Depot, Marchwood, continued in use for the storage of munitions into the 20th century. Stocks of munitions were reduced after World War II and the site was finally decommissioned and closed in 1961.**

Magazine A is the only one of the original magazines at Marchwood to survive; the others were destroyed in 1940. Today the buildings and walls are rare survivals of Georgian military works; though some require restoration they are of historic importance, a tangible reminder of the era when Britain ruled the waves.

  

It’s not impossible that among the tasks James Caithness might have undertaken when he was a waterman at Marchwood was transporting gunpowder. Whether he was involved in such risky business or kept to ferrying passengers, by the look of the contemporary advertisement below, at least he could have popped in to the Ship Inn for a ‘heavy wet’ at the end of a busy day.

*  browse the series of photos at 
   www.flickr.com/photos/r36ariadne/4197741140/in/photostream/

** www.nfdc.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2178

Google Map 
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz3Xo6QO-1_DUfCmkrelLZEtwVwitzlYW5-VBtrsFmMmWxlpM4ntwi1wj57_XYVpy5bdshMvHn1eADhz7SRgMwdocZ0Yj3DBEeJ8HW0ASIVSFxoLQRqLn-RvC91UXlsrS0NnhzsZWab92W/s1600/cracknore-hard.jpg

Acknowledgement:

Tom Sheldon

Child Emigrants to the Cape Colony Part 1 cont

Naval battle

After the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815 and throughout the Regency and early Victorian eras there was a spectacular increase in Britain’s population, especially in the cities. The urban crime rate rose to new heights; gaols were full. A wide chasm existed between rich and poor. The spectre of the workhouse hovered over the poorer echelons.

Conditions in the metropolis of London (with an estimated 1.1 million inhabitants in 1797) led to thousands of vagrant children living on the streets and turning to theft or other criminal activities for survival. There were also juveniles who, as paupers, were under the guardianship of the Parish. Many of them were put out to work, ostensibly as apprentices but actually as unskilled child labourers. The system was open to abuse. 

Much is heard of the wickedness of the Regency years but there were individuals who had a social conscience and made efforts to improve the lot of the underprivileged. Influenced by the missionary and evangelical movements, they believed that ‘philanthropy was an expression of piety, benevolence a moral obligation’. One such philanthropist was Edward Pelham Brenton, the founder of the Children’s Friend Society.

Captain Brenton

Brenton, a Captain in the Royal Navy, retired on half-pay at the end of the War. Though offered another command, he had no wish to serve during the Peace, and dedicated his life  to improving the situation of the working classes, particularly the children of the poor. 

In 1829 the notorious Hibner trial made a sensation in the British press. The story had a profound effect on Brenton. In the Memoir written by his brother, Sir Jahleel Brenton, Captain Brenton’s own words are quoted:   

A woman named Hibner, a tambour worker … had murdered two of her little female apprentices. These unhappy children were poor orphan parish girls of St Pancras. She had six of them bound to her and the testimony of the survivors, corroborated by indisputable evidence, exposed to the public a scene of tyranny and cruelty … I immediately made myself acquainted with the process of binding parish apprentices, the motives of the guardians of the poor in getting rid of them, as well as those of the generality of tradesmen who apply for them.

 [The trial proceedings can be accessed at www.oldbaileyonline.org under the keyword Hibner] 

Brenton, with the support of like-minded patrons, began his crusade by founding the Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy in 1830, and establishing an ‘asylum’ at West Ham Abbey near Bow in Essex, where twenty boys of ‘a forlorn and neglected condition’ were received. In 1833, this institution was relocated to Hackney Wick and named the Brenton Juvenile Asylum. The Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy was given a more positive title - The Children’s Friend Society (CFS).

WORKHOUSES AND PRISONS

Brenton was a man of strong religious beliefs who expressed his views forthrightly Describing himself as ‘the uncompromising enemy’ of the workhouse system, he pointed out its many flaws. Workhouses were ‘receptacles of misery …fraught with the very germ and essence of all moral depravity …’ Those who, though not ‘vicious’, were driven by circumstances to take refuge in the workhouse, were crowded together with the most depraved and were inevitably influenced for the worse. The workhouses too often relieved the poor with money, irresponsible parents spending this on gin and leaving their children to beg.

Equally critical of prisons, Brenton wrote: 

Coldbath Fields Prison

'The House of Correction in Coldbath Fields has within its walls some hundreds of children and young people, whose offences are mostly trivial, and grew out of want and idleness.

Many poor little boys are shut up among thieves for robbing orchards and fruit gardens’. Conversely, ‘at our little Asylum at West Ham our boys are reclaimed and happy, without police, or iron bar, or flogging'.

However, it was clear that vagrant children were frequently enticed into organized crime: 

... in the neighbourhood of St Giles … a very large house was let out at 4d per night to pickpockets and thieves, chiefly from 10-16 years of age, who were seen every morning sallying forth in groups of three and four, having previously arranged their routes for the day. 

Oliver Twist asks for More

Is this scenario sounding familiar? Of course it is: shades of the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Bill Sykes and company. Charles Dickens began writing his novel Oliver Twist seven years after the founding of the CFS.

To be continued