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50 THE NAVAL MUTINIES OF 1797
(u May) reported that " some persons from London had
been distributing handbills through the fleet, inflaming
the minds of the seamen, and saying their Bill had been
thrown out of the House of Lords." In the True Briton
(9 May) it was said: "We yesterday learnt that the
present ferment in the fleet arose from a gross misrepresentation
of what passed a few days ago in Parliament,
upon the subject of the late complaints of the seamen
conveyed through the medium of a Jacobin Evening
Newspaper, which got on board the fleet." Perhaps the
"Jacobin Evening Newspaper" was the London Courier,
which was mentioned by a Secret Committee of the
House of Commons as having helped to foment the
mutiny. 1
Some further evidence of the work of incendiaries in
the Channel fleet will be discussed in a later chapter,
dealing with the political aspect of the mutinies. We
may notice here one incident which shows how the
mischievous documents were circulated among the ships
at St. Helens. On 5 or 6 May a boat from the Mars
came alongside the Queen Charlotte. The men in the
boat threw in a bundle of newspapers through a lowerdeck
port-hole, and shouted that Parliament was going
to refuse the promised redress. 2
The false news was firmly believed. Those men in
the fleet who for political reasons, or from sheer love of
disorder, preferred mutiny to obedience—and perhaps
others who honestly feared that "the seaman's cause"
1. House of Commons Iteports, vol. x, p. 790. Some of the mutineers
at the Nore wrote that the Star was the only newspaper which remained
friendly to the seamen (A.S.M. 137, Papers of the Inflexible, No. 50).
But there is very little in the Star itself to support this opinion. In
common with nearly all the contemporary press it favoured the demands
of the seamen at Spithead, but deplored the method of advancing them,
and it consistently opposed the Nore Mutiny. On 29 May it spoke
favourably of the conduct of the delegates, and this observation probably
gave the mutineers the impression that the Star was their friend.
As a matter of fact the Morning Chronicle was much better disposed
towards them.
2. Papers of the Queen Charlotte, 6 May (A.S.I. 5125). This event
probably happened on 5 May, as the dates given in these Papers are
often one day in advance of the fact.