Ian Garrick-Mason

For Jack Tar, going to sea was the ultimate adventure

Storms, shipwreck and scurvy were generally in store for the 18th-century seaman, but that still beat the prospect of drudgery on land

‘Jack fights for the love of it, being a pugnacious kind of animal.’ J. Fairburn’s hand-coloured print of British sailors boarding an Algerian pirate ship, c. 1825

Seafaring and the rule of the waves — as the song would have it — was an integral part of Britain’s sense of identity for centuries, a fire in the national imagination arguably first sparked by the exploits of Sir Francis Drake and the defeat of the Spanish Armada, rising to full flame with the Battle of Trafalgar and the expansion and consolidation of the Empire, and finally dwindling to embers as imperial ambitions failed and ownership of the seas passed to the United States. It’s a story often told, and known almost too well.

But this is not the story that the journalist-historian Stephen Taylor tells. Rather than taking seafaring and naval capabilities as a given, and then asking how these phenomena shaped Britain’s destiny, in Sons of the Waves Taylor looks instead at the common seaman and his officers during the 100-year zenith of the country’s sail-based power (roughly between 1740 and 1840), seeking to convey what such men were like, and what they experienced.

In this period, the archetypical seaman was often referred to as Jack Tar — the second word deriving from the tar with which sailors would cover their jackets in order to enjoy a level of waterproofing in bad weather. Jack may have been ‘pressed’ into service — a technique of recruitment relying more on cudgel-wielding gangs of men than on persuasion — but, as Taylor emphasises, he was just as likely to have volunteered, drawn by the lure of treasure or the excitement of adventure (or spurred by its converse: the fear of drudgery on land). After a hard winter, recruits might show up in port simply in the hope of getting regular meals. Those who stayed in the profession, though, and willingly returned to hazardous duty, often had a certain spirit. An officer in the West Africa squadron wrote:

Jack fights for the love of it, just as he is wont to do, being a pugnacious kind of animal, fond of a little excitement to vary the monotony of his life… and to add another tale to the string of yarns he has to spin.

There are glimpses of horror, especially of the ravages of scurvy: ‘Some lost their senses… some rotted away’

Jack was a participant in cultures that were, effectively, nested inside one another.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in