Black Ship

By what seems to have been an odd working of coincidence, in 1963 two books were published on mutinies in the British Navy which took place in 1797. I will describe both events, because some earlier reviewers seem to have been rather unclear about the context of the account of one of them by the popular nautical historian and novelist, Dudley Pope (1925-1997). It must be remembered that these mutinies took place during the first round of war with post-Revolutionary France, while Napoleon Bonaparte was just one more ambitious general, and the English upper and middle classes were seriously concerned about home-grown Jacobins chopping off their heads. Both mutinies were causes of concern, at times amounting to hysteria, but for different reasons James Dugan's "The Great Mutiny," apparently long out of print, was a detailed (although not completely satisfactory) account of the "Great" (very large scale) Mutiny on the ships-of-the-line (three-deckers mounting 74 to 120 guns) at their bases at Spithead and the Nore. Although widely feared (or assumed) by the public and politicians to be an act of sympathy with the French Republic, the real trigger for this generally peaceful refusal to obey orders was simpler. It was fury at the decision to raise the pay of the army (which had known nothing but defeat), and keep that of ordinary seamen (who had been winning battles) where it had been for about a century. The mutineers, who did have a list of reforms they wanted, insisted on their patriotism, claiming that they would gladly obey orders to fight the French, or any other [provide offensive epithet] foreigners. Xenophobia was, it seems, a remarkably effective antidote to apparent self-interest, despite the efforts of some more radical elements. It was immediately recognized that the crews of frigates (cruisers, mounting 22 to 44 guns), except for those anchored under the guns of the three-deckers, did NOT join in the mutiny. These seamen had the hope of prize money from captured merchantmen (something available to the main fleet only in the rarest of circumstances), and seemed to have less interest in a comparatively negligible increase in official pay. Frigate captains, at least, must have felt relieved. In this context, therefore, it was a particular shock when, later in the same year, the crew of the frigate "Hermione" suddenly rose up, killed officers and a hapless midshipman, and took the ship into a foreign port -- not French and Republican, but Spanish and Catholic, which to some traditionalists must have seemed even worse. This very different, and, in comparison, slightly paradoxical, rebellion at sea was the subject of Pope's 1963 volume, "The Black Ship." The book has been reprinted at intervals over the years, a tribute to, among other things, its literary quality. (Also, I suspect to Pope's continuing production of naval fiction and non-fiction.) "The Black Ship" explains how the combination of an incompetent and unfeeling captain and

A well written historical book that gives great insight into life in the British Navy during the Age of Sail. The mutiny itself is far more violent than the Bounty, and the images evoked linger far afterwards. Dudley Pope is as good a sea writer Ive read, including Forester.