The permanent navy, begun by Henry VIII. and given its first system of regular warfare by the Duke of York in 1665, had become well established, and trading vessels had ceased to form a part of the regular establishment. King William III., although not so good a friend to the service as his predecessor, and anything but a sailor, like the fourth William, did not altogether neglect it. In the Introduction to James' Naval History we are told that between the years 1689 and 1697 the navy lost by capture alone 50 vessels, and it is probable that an equal number fell by the perils of the sea. King William meantime added 30 ships, and half that number were captured from the French, while several 20 and 30-gun ships were besides taken from the enemy.
Coming back to the first naval expedition to Australia, the ship commanded by Dampier was the Roebuck, as Evelyn tells us, a vessel of 290 tons. Dampier has left very little description of his ship, but it is not difficult to picture her, for by this time the ratings of ships had been settled upon certain lines, and the meaning of the word "rating" as used at this period is easily ascertainable.
According to Charnock's Marine Architecture, the Roebuck, lying at Deptford in June, 1684, was a sixth-rate of 24 guns and 85 men. This was her war complement; but Dampier himself tells us that he "sailed from the Downs early on Saturday, January 14th, 1699, with a fair wind, in His Majesty's ship the Roebuck, carrying but 12 guns on this voyage and 50 men with 20 months' provisions."
In 1677, according to James' History, the smallest fifth-rate then afloat corresponds nearest to the Roebuck, and, no doubt, by Dampier's time this vessel had been reduced in her rating. The vessel of 1677 is described as being of 265 tons and 28 guns, "sakers and minions," with a complement of about 100 men. The largest sixth-rate was 199 tons, 18 guns, and 85 men. So from these particulars we can take it as correct that the Roebuck in 1699 was a sixth-rate. It is worth remembering that in Cavendish's second expedition to the South Sea, in 1591, there was a ship called the Roebuck, commanded by John Davis, and likely enough the sixth-rate in which Dampier sailed was named after her, those who gave her the name little thinking at the time of her christening (she was built before Dampier's voyage, and was certainly not the Roebuck of Cavendish's fleet) how appropriately they were naming her for her future service.
Her armament is a matter of interest, for just about her timethat is, between the years 1685 and 1716the naming of guns after beasts and birds of prey went out of fashion, and they were distinguished by the weight of the shot fired. James, quoting from Sir William Monson's Naval Tracts, supplies the following table on the subject of sea guns; and, as they were probably still in use in Dampier's time, we print it here:
The small arms were matchlocks, snaphainces, musketoons, blunderbusses, pistols, halberts, swords, and hangers.
From this it will be seen that the Roebuck's guns, considering the peaceful service she was upon, were probably known to her company as "sakers" and "falcons."
In a sixth-rate the sakers were carried all on the one deck, and the minions on the quarterdeck. Charnock supplies an illustration of a sixth-rate of the time, and the picture is a familiar one to all who have taken even a slight interest in the ships of a couple of centuries ago. A lion rampant decorates the stem, set as it remained till early in the present century (the galley prow had gone with Charles I.); the hull looked not a whit more clumsy than that of an old north-country collier of our youth, but the flat stern, with its rows of square windows, richly carved panelling, and big stern-lanterns, and the row of round gun-ports encircled by gold wreaths along the ship's sides, are distinctive marks of this period.
A vessel of this kind was ship-rigged, about 88 feet long by 24 feet beam; the depth of her hold, in which to store her twenty months' provisions (a marvellously large quantity as stores were then carried), was about 11 feet, and her draught of water when loaded about 12 feet aft. She had one deck and a poop and forecastle, the former extending from either end of the ship to the waist. A good deal of superfluous ornament had by this time been done away with, although there was plenty of it so late as 1689. Charnock describes a man-of-war of that date. After the Restoration, ships grew apace in grandeur in and out. Inboard they were painted a dull red (this was, it is said, so that in fighting the blood of the wounded should not show), outside blue and gilded in the upper parts, then yellow, and last black to the water-line, with white bottoms. Copper sheathing had not come into use, and ships' bottoms were treated with tallow, which was made to adhere by being laid on between nails which studded the bottom.
The pitching of the vessels imperilled the masts of these somewhat cranky ships of 1689, says a writer of about Dampier's time, who also tells us that ships then had awnings, and that "glass lanthorns were worthier best made of crystal horn; lanthorns were worthier than isinglass."
The sails were the usual courses: big topsails and topgallantsails, staysails, and topmastsails, with a spritsail and a lateen-mizen; the spanker and jib were not yet, but the sprit-topsail had just gone out. The ship when rigged and fitted ready for sea probably cost King William's Admiralty about £10,000. But the Roebuck was pretty well worn out when Dampier was given the command of her, as he tells us when relating her subsequent loss.
The British Fleet, by Commander C.N. Robinson, is an invaluable book to the student of naval history, and, notwithstanding plenty of book authorities and ten years' study of the subject, the present writers are compelled to draw upon Commander Robinson for many details. With the aid of this work and from allusions to be found in the writings of a couple of centuries ago, it is possible to make some sort of picture of Dampier's companions in the Roebuck.
Dampier himself was a type of naval officer who entered the service of the country by what was then, and remained for many years afterwards, one of the best sources of supply. He had been given a fair education, and had been duly apprenticed and learned the profession of a sailor in a merchant ship. Upon his return from his first voyage to the South Seas he published an account of his travels, and dedicated it to the President of the Royal Society, the Hon. Charles Mountague, who, appreciating the author's zeal and his intelligent public spirit, recommended him to the patronage of the Earl of Oxford, then Principal Lord of the Admiralty. Dampier's dedication has nothing of the fulsome flattery and begging-letter style so often the chief characteristic of such compositions, but is the straightforward offer of a humble worker in science of the best of his work to the man best able to appreciate and to make the most of it. Dampier's dedication led to his appointment in the navy, and the transaction does honour to both the patron and him who was patronized.
As is well known, until comparatively recent times only the officers of the fighting branch held commissions; all others were either warrant or petty officers. In the time of William III., a captain and one lieutenant were allowed to each ship, and none of the other officers held commissions. The peaceful mission of the Roebuck justifies us in concluding that Dampier held the King's commission as a lieutenant commanding, and he was probably given a lieutenant to take charge in case of accident, a master, a couple of master's mates, a gunner, a boatswain and carpenter, and the usual petty officers; seamen and boys made up the complement. Dampier's pay, so far as we can ascertain, would be at the rate of about £12 per month.
Two regiments of marine infantry had been formed so early as 1689, but they were disbanded nine years later. It was not until 1703 that the marines, all infantry, became a permanent branch of the service.
Uniforms had not even been thought of at this time, and the Roebuck's officers, from her commander downwards, ate and drank and clothed themselves in much the same fashion as their men. Dampier probably had a room right aft under the long poop, and the other officers at the same end of the ship in canvas-partitioned cabins, the fore part of her one living deck being occupied by the crew. There was probably a mess-room under the poop common to all the officers. What they had to eat and drink, as we have said, was the same for all ranks. Here is a scale of provisions for eighty-five men of a sixth-rate of 1688 for two months, taken from Charnock:
[A] In lieu of three eighths of a fish.
In 1690 flour and raisins were added, and an effort made to condense water. Beer took the place of all forms of drink, and water was at that time carried in casks.
The dress, from contemporary prints, can be easily made out, and the allusions of Pepys and Evelyn supply the names and materials of the garments. Pepys' diary and letters inform us how the pursers of the time supplied the men with slops, and in The British Fleet considerable detail on this subject is given. Roughly it may be assumed that Dampier's sailors wore petticoats and breeches, grey kersey jackets, woollen stockings and low-heeled shoes, and worsted, canvas, or leather caps. Canvas, leather, and coarse cloth were the principal materials, and tin buttons and coloured thread the most ornamental part, of the costume. Charnock says that in 1663 "sailors began first to wear distinctive dress. A rule was that only red caps, yarn and Irish stockings, blue shirts, white shirts, cotton waistcoats, cotton drawers, neat leather flat-heeled shoes, blue neckcloths, canvas suits, and rugs were to be sold to them. Red breeches were worn."
Smollett's pictures of the service in Roderick Random, written forty years after Dampier's time, give us some idea of life on board ship, for in the forty years between the two dates it differed in no essential particulars. Pepys describes a sailor who had lost his eye in action having the socket plugged with oakum, a fact which tells more than could a volume of how seamen were then cared for. It was the days of the press and of the advance-note system, which prevailed well into the present century, and those seamen who went with Dampier of their own free will on a voyage where nothing but the poorest pay and no prize money was to be got were probably the lowest and most ill-disciplined rascals, drawn from a class upon whose characters, save for their bulldog courage and reckless prodigality, the least written the better.
The modern bluejacket, superior in every respect, notwithstanding certain croakers, is infinitely better than his ancestors in the very quality which was their best; the modern sailor faces death soberly and decently in forms far more terrible than were ever dreamt of by his forefathers. When the Calliope steamed out of Apia Harbour in the hurricane of March, 1889, the youngest grimy coal-trimmer, whose sole duty it was to silently shovel coal, even though his last moment came to him while doing it, never once asked if the ship was making way. All hands in this department were on duty for sixteen hours, and during that time no sound was heard, save the ring of the shovels firing the boilers, nor was a question asked by any man as to the progress of the ship or the chances of life and death.
Compare this end-of-the-century story with that of the loss of the Wager, one of the ships of Anson's squadron; and compare the behaviour of the Wager's castaways with that of the bluejackets who stood to attention on the deck of the Victoria till the word was given to jump as the ship heeled overrecent instances quoted merely because they occur to the writers' minds, for there are any number of others. Such cases illustrate forcibly this truth: we have, by careful training of the modern sailor, added to the traditional bravery of the class a quality, not lacking, but never properly developed, in the old type, that is, the dignity of coolness and self-restraint, the perfect control of men in the supreme moments of excitement and death.
Dampier's men, from a very early stage in his voyage, were a trouble to him. Two only of them, he says, had ever crossed the line, and he was in continual fear of some sickness arising because they were too lazy to shift themselves, but would lie in their hammocks in wet clothes. Three months after the ship got to sea, when nearing Brazil, he tells us that
"the disorders in my ship made me think at present that Pernambuco would not be so fit a place for me, being told that ships ride there two or three leagues from the town, under the command of no forts; so that whenever I should have been ashore it might have been easy for my discontented crew to have cut or slipt their cables, and have gone away from me, many of them discovering already an intention to return to England, and some of them declaring openly that they would go no further onwards than Brazil. I altered my course, therefore, and stood away from Bahio de todos los Santos, or the Bay of All Saints, where I hoped to have the governor's help, if need should require, for securing my ship from any such mutinous attempt, being forced to keep myself all the way upon my guard and to lie with my officers, such as I could trust, and with small arms, upon the quarterdeck, it scarce being safe for me to lie in my cabin, by reason of the discontents among my men."
Similar instances of the ill-discipline of the ship are given at intervals throughout Dampier's account of his voyage, and the commander and his officers were all on bad terms with each other, which, however, so far as can be judged now, was, in some degree, the fault of Dampier's uncertain temper.
The scientific results of the Roebuck's voyage were, chiefly on these accounts, of no great importance, judged by the standard of such work to-day; but, with the state of nautical science at the time, not much was to be expected in the way of accurate surveying.
When Dampier set out to explore the coast of New Holland, what charts, what instruments, what scientific knowledge and equipment, had he for the work?
Dampier's time was distinctively an intermediate period. Little more than a century had elapsed since Gerard Mercator's chart was published, and Edward Wright had taught its true principles, and about half a century before the voyage of the Roebuck such improvements as Gunter's application of logarithms to nautical calculations, middle latitude sailing, and the measurement of a degree on the meridian were introduced. Hadley's quadrant came thirty years after Dampier, who must have used Davis' instrument, then about ninety years old. Davis' work on navigation, with Wright's chart showing the northern extremity of Australia, and Addison's Arithmetical Navigation (1625) were, no doubt, text-books on board the Roebuck. Longitude by chronometer was to come half a century after Dampier was in his grave, and such charts as he possessed did little more than indicate the existence of Terra Australis. The Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch maps were not easy for Englishmen to procure, and all that Dampier has to say on the matter is: