The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford
me for stealing Government stores. "Zeal, all zeal, Mr. Easy!"
It was during my time in the _Defence_ that I was so fortunate as to be
enabled to save two lives. On one occasion, the ship was lying in the
Mersey, and visitors were on board. A party of these was leaving the
ship, when their boat was slewed round by the strong tide, and one of
them, a big, heavy man, fell into the water. I dived after him.
Luckily there was a boat-keeper in the galley secured astern of the
ship. He held out a boat-hook, {44} which I caught with one hand,
holding up my man with the other.
I received the gold medal of the Liverpool Shipwreck Humane Society,
and the bronze medal of the Royal Humane Society. The name of the man
who fell overboard was Richardson. More than forty years afterwards,
the son of Mr. Richardson sent me a kind letter, enclosing a photograph
of his father, who had died in 1882, nineteen years after his rescue.
"My mother," wrote Mr. J. Richardson, "was in very great terror, as my
father could not swim a stroke. He was a very fine man, and this made
your task you so quickly undertook not any the easier.... The clothes
he wore on that memorable occasion were, after their thorough wetting,
too small for him to wear again, so they were cut down for my elder
brothers, and were called by them their 'Channel Fleet' clothes, and
jolly proud they were to wear them too."
The boys' sentiment is pleasing, whether it arose from the exciting
fact that Mr. Richardson had fallen overboard in them--a thing which
might happen to any gentleman--or from his having in them been picked
out by an officer (however junior) of the Channel Fleet.
The second occasion when I was successful in saving a man from drowning
was in Plymouth Sound. A string of boats from the Fleet carrying
liberty men was pulling ashore, when a shore-boat crossed their bows
and was run down by the leading boat. I jumped in and held up one of
the passengers; and was again awarded the bronze medal of the Royal
Humane Society.
In the _Defence_, as in my other ships, my Service transgressions were
few and venial, as in the case of the signal halliards. My troubles
arose from my intervals of relaxation on shore. It is now so long ago
that perhaps I may without imprudence relate a sad episode in which I
fell under the condemnation of the law, with all that attendant
publicity which--as one journalist rather unctuously remarked at the
time--is so often worse than the penalty.
{45}
"_Defence_, PLYMOUTH
"MY DEAREST FATHER,--I am writing to you at once to tell you what a sad
scrape I have just come out of. On Friday night I was with some other
wild fellows on the outside of a cab, pea-shooting, myself the worst,
when unfortunately I hit a lady who was leaning on a gentleman's arm in
the face. The man chased us and with a good deal of difficulty, caught
us; we were then taken to the station-house, and given into custody.
The hotel-keeper we always go to, very kindly bailed us for the night.
In the morning we went to the station-house according to promise; and
were tried; the result was my paying £2, 10s. and costs, or one month's
imprisonment, and another £1, or 7 days. The other two got off, no
peas being found upon them. You will see all about it in the papers I
am sending you. I am writing to you in such a hurry, as I am afraid
you might believe the papers if you saw them before my letter. I most
_solemnly swear_ to you on my honour that I was _quite_ sober the whole
of the day that this took place. And as for behaving unbecoming a
gentleman in the Court, I certainly did laugh, but the judge made me,
and all did so, as he was chaffing all the time. The reason I did not
apologise to the man was because he swore on his oath that I was drunk;
which was a lie. I had been dining with Hutchinson (see in the paper),
who was giving a dinner as he was leaving the ship. All I drank was
two glasses of Moselle. The papers I sent you are Radical so of course
they run me down.... All that remains to be said is, I hope you will
look upon it as a boyish lark and not as a disgraceful action ... and
will you send me 5 pounds as I have but 3 shillings left; and I must
have some money to pay mess, wine, etc. etc. So now write soon to your
prodigal son,
"CHARLIE BERESFORD"
I received in reply a severe but affectionate reproof from my father.
The gentlemen of the Press took upon themselves to {46} improve the
occasion, having first taken care, of course, to describe the affair as
a great deal worse than it was. "Let this lesson be taken," says one
kind journalist, "it may be a guide and a warning for the future. The
days are gone--gone for ever--when the pranks of a Waterford would be
tolerated; but while we would hope his follies are lost, we would
likewise hope that his manly, frank, chivalrous nature is still
inherited by his kinsmen."
Another reporter did me the justice to record that, on being called on
for my defence, I said: "I certainly do apologise if I did strike the
lady, because it was not my intention to do so; but I certainly don't
apologise for striking Mr. Yates." I trust he bears me no malice.
Yet another guardian of public morals observed that "his Worship, in
announcing the penalties, called attention to the inequalities of the
law, which exacted fines for the same offence alike from the man with
whom sovereigns were plentiful as hours and the man whose night's spree
must cost him a week's fasting." Had his Worship taken the trouble to
refer to the scale of pay granted by a generous country to midshipmen,
comparing it with the scale of rations and the price we paid for them,
and had he (in addition) enjoyed the privilege of perusing the
financial clauses of the letter addressed to me more in sorrow than in
anger by my father, he might perhaps have modified his exordium.
As an illustration of the strict supervision exercised by the senior
officers, I may record that I received--in addition to my other
penalties and visitations--a severe reproof from Captain Stewart, my
old captain in the _Marlborough_.
The Channel Fleet visited Teneriffe. It was the first iron fleet ever
seen in the West Indies.
In the cutting-out action off Teneriffe, Nelson lost his arm, and
several ensigns of the British boats were captured by the French. Ever
since, it has been a tradition in the Navy that the flags ought to be
recaptured. A party of bluejackets did once succeed in taking them
from the {47} cathedral and carrying them on board; but the admiral
ordered their restoration. They were then placed high up on the wall,
out of reach, where I saw them. We held a meeting in the gun-room of
the _Defence_ to consider the best method of taking the flags. But the
admiral, who was of course aware that all junior officers cherished the
hope of recovering the relics, issued orders that no such attempt was
to be made.
I was invited by an old friend of my father, a religious old gentleman
living in Cornwall, to a couple of days' rabbit-shooting. I was
overjoyed at the opportunity, and was the object of the envy of my
brother midshipmen. Arriving after lunch, I was brought into the great
room where the old gentleman was sitting in an arm-chair, with his
feet, which were swathed in masses of cotton-wool, resting on
gout-rests. Near him was a turn-table laden with books.
"Don't come near me, my boy," he shouted, as I entered. "I am very
glad to see you, but don't come near me. I have a terribly painful
attack of gout, the worst I ever had in my life. Go and sit down on
that chair over there."
With the breadth of the polished floor between us, we chatted for a
while; and then the old gentleman, pointing to the table of books,
asked me to give him a particular volume.
"Now be very careful," said he.
Full of ardour, delighted to think that I should now escape to the
keeper and the rabbits, I jumped up, ran to the table, my foot slipped
on the parquet, and I fell face forward with my whole weight upon the
poor old man's feet, smashing both foot-rests. The agonising pain shot
him into the air and he fell on my back. I have never heard such
language before or since. As he rolled off me, he shouted:
"Ring the bell, you ---- ----!"
In came the butler.
"Take that ---- ---- out of my house! Send him back to his ---- ship!
Never let me see his ---- face again!" screamed my host.
{48}
So I departed in the dog-cart. It was many a long day ere I heard the
last of my rabbit-shooting from my messmates.
A few months afterwards, when I had been less than a year in the
_Defence_, Rear-Admiral Charles Eden appointed me to the _Clio_ as
senior midshipman. He said he wanted me to learn responsibility.
NOTE
_The New Ships_.--The predecessors of the _Defence_ and her class were
wooden vessels plated with iron armour. The first iron-built,
armoured, sea-going British vessel was the _Warrior_, launched in 1860.
She was laid down in the previous year, in which Lord Charles Beresford
entered the Navy. Several wooden ships (_Royal Oak_, _Caledonia_,
_Prince Consort_, _Ocean_, _Royal Alfred_, _Repulse_, _Favorite_,
_Research_) were converted into armoured ships during their
construction. These were launched from 1862 to 1864. For some years
the Admiralty built wooden armoured ships and iron armoured ships
simultaneously. From 1860 to 1866, ten iron-built, armoured, sail and
steam ships were launched: _Warrior_, _Black Prince_, _Defence_,
_Resistance_, _Hector_, _Achilles_, _Valiant_, _Minotaur_, _Agincourt_,
_Northumberland_. In 1864 and 1865, five wooden-built, armoured ships
were launched: _Lord Clyde_, _Lord Warden_, _Zealous_, _Pallas_,
_Enterprise_. The _Royal Sovereign_, launched in 1857 as a wooden
line-of-battle ship, was converted in 1862 to an armoured vessel and
was equipped with four turrets. She was thus the first turret-ship in
the British Navy. The next step was to group the guns in a central
armoured battery, and to belt the ship with armour along the
water-line. At the same time, more turret-ships were constructed.
Earnest controversy was waged among naval authorities as to what were
the most important qualities of the fighting ship, to which other
qualities must be partially sacrificed; for, broadly speaking, all
warships represent a compromise {49} among speed, defence and
offence--or engines, armour and guns. The controversy still continues.
The disaster which befell the _Captain_ decided, at least, the
low-freeboard question in so far as heavily rigged sailing steam
vessels were concerned, for the Captain, a rigged low-freeboard
turret-ship, capsized on 6th September, 1870. (_The Royal Navy_, vol.
i., Laird Clowes.)
Lord Charles Beresford, entering the Navy at the beginning of the
changes from sails to steam, from wood to iron, and from iron to steel,
learned, like his contemporaries, the whole art of the sailing ship
sailor, added to it the skill of the sailor of the transition period,
and again added to that the whole body of knowledge of the seaman of
the New Navy. He saw the days when the sailing officers hated steam
and ignored it so far as possible; as in the case of the admiral who,
entering harbour under steam and sail, gave his sailing orders but
neglected the engineer, and so fouled the wharf, and said, "Bless me, I
forgot I was in a steamship!"
Admiral Penrose Fitzgerald, who entered the Navy five years before Lord
Charles Beresford, describes the transitional period in his _Memories
of the Sea_. Speaking of the _Hercules_, one of the new
central-battery, armoured-waterline ironclads, to which he was
appointed first lieutenant when she was first commissioned in 1868,
Admiral Fitzgerald writes:--"The _Hercules_ was the most powerful