Life at Sea, "A SAILORS LIFE"

     In wartime the Royal Navy needed another 60,000 men to fit out the fleet, so it would draw in professional seamen from the merchant service, usually by impressment, an age-old right of the Crown to the labour of seafarers. As there were no spare seamen, however, both fleets sometimes needed the additional labour of landlubbers, attracted by the pay and opportunity, or of foreign sailors, who made up a significant proportion of all British crews. Cook had at least three such men on the Endeavour. The resulting dilution of skills was acceptable on large warships, where only 20 per cent of the crew was needed for skilled work aloft. The rest of the work, including the heavy hauling, was done by the 'landmen' or 'waisters' - those who worked in the waist area of the ship.

...their carefree, spendthrift and often riotous adventures led many to see them as simple, careless creatures...'

   By contrast, the prime seamen, rated as Able or Ordinary, saw themselves as an elite group within a vertically stratified working community. The topmen, who worked on the highest yards, spent much of their day aloft, in the tops, which on a battleship would be spacious areas out of sight of the officers, and far above the inferior members of the crew. They would form their own mess, a group of six to ten men who cooked and ate together, and avoided 'waisters', marines and other deck-bound labourers.

  To work aloft was to be among the elite of the 18th-century working class, and this was something that seamen delighted in advertising through their unique and colourful clothes, hairstyles, personal jewellery and - after contact with the Polynesian societies of the South Pacific - tattooing. This distinctive dress also marked them out when on shore, where their carefree, spendthrift and often riotous adventures led many to see them as simple, careless creatures and figures of fun. Yet this was a fundamental mistake. Professional sailors were skilled, daring and resourceful men. Their true worth was known to the state they served, and it was they, more than anything else, that gave Britain command of the sea.

   The social divisions of the navy were by no means class based. Not all officers were gentlemen. Some, like Cook, rose through the ranks of seaman and master to gain their position, others were admitted as officers despite humble origins. They had to pass formal examinations in all aspects of seamanship, and had to serve at least six years at sea before they could be commissioned as lieutenant, the rank at which Cook commanded the first voyage of the Endeavour. Further promotion to Commander and then Captain was through merit, bravery or patronage; Captains were promoted to Admiral through seniority.

In the 1780s, the Royal Navy began to dramatically increase the size of its fleet© 

Women and children

      Not a few children were born on board warships, and some women entered under assumed male identities, although the fact that they were not discovered is very revealing of the low incidence of bathing among the seafarers, either on deck or in the sea. The 18th-century mind preferred homely dirt and the occasional clean shirt to the terrors of cold water or the deep ocean. Those women who were on board officially soon made their presence felt. In 1797 that crusty old martinet Admiral the Earl St Vincent issued an order demanding that they reduce their consumption of water. If not, he proposed sending them all home on the next transport. It is unlikely he gave them the separate bathing rights enjoyed by the female members of our modern-day replica crew.

'The 18th-century Royal Navy... won all the great battles at sea, and almost all the wars.'

Books

The Ship - Retracing Cook's Endeavour Voyage by Simon Baker (BBC Worldwide, 2002)

War at Sea in the Age of Sail by A D Lambert (Cassell, 2000)

Shipboard Life and Organisation, 1731-1815 edited by B Lavery (Navy Records Society, 1998)

The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy by NAM Rodger(many editions since 1986, including WW Norton & Co, 1996)

Links

The National Maritime Museum

The Royal Naval Museum

About the author

  Andrew Lambert is Laughton Professor of Naval History at King's College, London. As well as being the Honourable Secretary of the Navy Records Society, he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He also sailed aboard the replica Endeavour as part of the BBC TWO programme 'The Ship'.

Diseases at Sea

• Disease was part of life aboard ship. It was common for sailors to come on board with diseases such as chicken pox or measles; these rapidly spread to others in the tight quarters.

• Diseases were contracted in ports while the crew was on shore leave. Dysentery, typhus fever, and syphilis all could be traced to contact on shore. Still other ailments came from the food. Food poisoning was common, as was scurvy.

• Many sailors returned from a voyage suffering from malnutrition. Malaria would be contracted from mosquitoes in tropical climates. Any diseases involving vomiting and diarrhea was called the flux. Most ships' captains did very little to assist the sick sailors; many sailors would die at sea.

• Doctors did travel on board, but their remedies of purging (giving something that made you vomit) and bleeding probably harmed more than they helped. Techniques like scrubbing the ships with vinegar helped control the bed smells (it really killed germs). Most sailors were left to survive on will power and a hope to get home soon.

Captain Cook

As one can see, life at sea in the early days was perilous at best.

These conditions were typical of most of the worlds' Navies and Merchant Seamen

   Captain Cook was a man ahead of his time. Both as an explorer and a man of science. He recognize the need for new rules and Naval laws to safeguard the health and well being of Ships' company. One of the more interesting figures in maritime history.

 Please follow the links below to learn more: