o_199m9vaui14ib1cnu10di10pocoj4h.pdf

ADMIRAL VERNON'S OPINION 295
therefore, that the discipline of the navy was extraordinarily
severe at the time of the Mutinies. And the
few examples that have been given show clearly enough
that the general conditions of the seamen's life in 1797
were no worse than they had been at any earlier time.
The Admiralty had made no attempt to deprive the
seamen of their constitutional rights : the officers, as a
whole, had not been unusually aggressive. Such innovations
as there had been all tended to improve the terms
of service.
The grievances brought forward by the mutineers
might have been urged with greater force by earlier
generations of seamen. The condition of the fleet at
the beginning of the seventeenth century, for example,
must have been quite as bad as it was in 1797. Sir
Walter Raleigh said that the seamen of his time went
11
with as great a grudging to serve in his Majesty's
ships as if it were to be slaves in the galley " ;
and in 1625
the naval commissioners complained "
: The pressed men
run away as fast as we send them down." 1 In the
eighteenth century discerning people, long before the
time of the Mutinies, had realized that the state of the
navy was unsatisfactory, and had pointed out the proper
remedy. As early as 1745, Admiral Vernon had said in
Parliament : "It will be necessary to reconcile the
affections of the seamen to the public service by a more
humane treatment. ... I have long lamented their situation,
and made some faint attempts towards relieving
it." 2 Writers of fiction had called public attention to
the hardships endured by the seamen ; and in 1786 a bill
for the reform of naval administration had twice been
brought before Parliament. 3
The mutineers themselves appreciated the fact that
there was nothing new in the hardships of which they
1. Bobinson, p. 338.
2. D. Ford, Admiral Vernon and the Nary, p. 251.
3. See Sheridan's speech in the Commons, 19 May, 1797 (Pari. Hist.,
xxxiii, 642).