Nelson, Navy & Nation by Quintin Colville

Author:Quintin Colville
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A sailor’s return in peace, by Thomas Stothard, oil on canvas, c.1798 (BHC1125)

Sailors’ willing participation in the theatre may have helped to endorse a view of Britain’s ‘jolly tars’ that actually made it easier for the public to ignore the real hardships of their life at sea. Conditions in a warship were not well known to those who had never served, but could broadly be assumed to be unpleasant. It made people less uncomfortable to foster an image of the navy composed of devil-may-care, cheerful heroes. Seamen themselves seem to have internalised this image and tried to live by it. Officers also valued ‘your jolly, merry-making, don’t care sort of seamen’ because they were good for morale.5 Occasionally, the image of Jack Tar was used with radical intent in subversive prints but it was never entirely free of sentimentality. Even when caricatures alluded to the damage sailors inflicted on their health by excessive drinking, they made both the seaman and his doctor figures of fun. For example, Jack, hove down — With a Grog Blossom Fever shows Jack rejecting treatment from an incompetent doctor, declaring, ‘You may batter my Hull as long as you like, but I’ll be d—m’d if ever you board me with your Glyster pipe’ (see here). By the end of the eighteenth century, the dominant, popular image of the sailor was of a bluff, cheerful lad who lived for the present.

As numbers of seamen grew with the expansion of the navy, they were increasingly represented in sentimental terms. This trend may reflect a wish to deflect or neutralise the threat that boisterous seamen could pose to social order when ashore. Some sea songs mention a girl in every port but by Nelson’s time prints, ballads and chinaware were more likely to feature jolly Jack Tars faithful to one girl who waited at home. Sailors were portrayed as brave, true, and fatalistic about their chances of survival. The songs rehearse various scenarios: the sailor’s joyful return, his shipwreck and death, or the loss of a limb leading to beggary and want. These options were repeated in many songs with only slight variations, and possibly helped to normalise disruptive events that affected many families. The government recognised that such songs were good for public morale. Dibdin was awarded a pension of £200 a year for keeping his London theatre open nightly, and was also ‘instructed to write, sing, publish, and give away what were termed War Songs’.6 The situations depicted in the songs are reflected in the prints and ceramics of the period, notably in porcelain and earthenware figures of the sailor’s parting and his return (see here).

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