CHAPTER XIII

FLAG-LIEUTENANT AT PLYMOUTH

In 1871, I was appointed flag-lieutenant to Admiral (afterwards Admiral

of the Fleet) the Hon. Sir Henry Keppel, commander-in-chief at

Plymouth. His flag was flown in the _Royal Adelaide_. Sir Harry, as

already recorded, had been commander-in-chief upon the China station

when the Duke of Edinburgh visited Japan, and had accompanied his Royal

Highness upon his visit to the Mikado. It was at Plymouth that I first

had the honour of serving under Sir Harry Keppel: a splendid seaman, a

most distinguished officer, a fine sportsman, one of the best and

kindest of men.

Admiral the Hon. Victor Montagu, who served as a midshipman under Sir

Harry, relates in his _Reminiscences_ some interesting actions of his

old captain, which I may be permitted to quote. Commodore Keppel

distinguished himself by his personal gallantry and skilful leadership

in the battle of Fatshan Creek, 1st June, 1857; of which a full account

is given in Laird Clowes' _The Royal Navy_; and Admiral Montagu records

his own recollections of the affair:

"During the many years in which I knew him I never once Sir Harry lose

his temper, except when the Chinese war-junks beat us back on the first

attack we had made on them.... John Chinaman, seeing us retire, took

the hint, and began making off himself, which so infuriated Harry

Keppel that he jumped up on our paddle-box, shook his fist at the

war-junks, some 500 or 600 yards away, and shouted out: 'You d----d

rascals! I'll pay you out for this! Man the boats, boys--man the

boats at once! The beggars are {112} trying to escape!' I never saw

such a rush. At no regatta could men have rowed faster."

Commodore Keppel commissioned the _Raleigh_ frigate, 50 guns, for the

China station. Admiral Montagu states that she was "the last

man-of-war that ever sailed out of Portsmouth Harbour." Keppel would

have none of your steam-tugs. "We ran out with a fair wind with

studding-sails set on both sides." Alas! the _Raleigh_ never came back

any more. On 14th April, 1857, she struck a sunken rock in the China

Seas, near Macao. Keppel's indomitable conduct turned a disaster into

an achievement.

"Shortly afterwards," writes Admiral Montagu, who was a midshipman on

board at the time, "we descried a French squadron lying at anchor in

Macao Roads, with an admiral's flag flying, and, though we were firing

minute guns of distress as the water gained on our pumps, Keppel,

nothing daunted, called out: 'Up with the French flag. Give him his

salute. Sinking or not, let the Frenchmen hear us.'"

A French frigate coming to the assistance of the _Raleigh_, her captain

asked permission "to go below to see how high the water had risen in

the ship. 'Oh,' said Keppel, 'don't go below; look down the hatchway.'

'Ah! mon Dieu!' exclaimed the captain." ...

Keppel kept the pumps going, crowded sail on the ship, and finally

beached her off Macao, just in time. He landed the ship's company, but

himself stayed aboard the vessel, sleeping on the bridge. The stores

and guns were saved. Keppel was deeply distressed at the loss of his

fine ship, "which," he wrote, "brings my career as a captain to an

end." Fortunately he was mistaken. In after years, when I told him

that the Admiralty were about to build a second _Raleigh_, Keppel

replied, "Very glad to hear it, my dear boy. I had the honour of

losing the first one."

Admiral Montagu records that Keppel, while in command of the _Raleigh_,

challenged an American clipper ship to race from Penang to Singapore.

"We were constantly going at a speed of thirteen knots, during heavy

squalls, close-hauled, {113} and trailing the muzzles of our main-deck

guns through the water on the lee side, and I sometimes used to turn

into my hammock in abject terror, fearing that at any moment we might

capsize."

Sir Harry Keppel was famous throughout the Service when I was appointed

his flag-lieutenant. One of my first recollections of that office

concerned an old-fashioned "Eighteen-hundred-and-war-time," peppery,

strict-service captain, who, having just come home from the West Coast

of Africa, asked to see the commander-in-chief. It happened that Sir

Harry and myself were on the point of going out hunting when the old

captain called, and the admiral was attired in hunting kit.

"Tell him I'll see him to-morrow," said Sir Harry.

But that wouldn't do at all, nor would any other excuse serve.

"I insist on seeing the admiral," said the captain. "I have just come

home and it is my duty to see him at once."

"Bring him in, then," said Sir Harry impatiently, "Now, sir," said he,

"my flag-lieutenant informed you that I was engaged. Why couldn't you

see the secretary?"

"The secretary, sir? The secretary!" says the old captain wrathfully

staring at Sir Harry's informal attire. "Indeed I am told, sir, that

the secretary _is_ the Commander-in-chief here. That's what they say,

sir--that's what they say!"

"Do they?" returned Sir Harry placidly. "And a d----d good

commander-in-chief too!" says he.

When, in later years, I became commander-in-chief, I made it a rule

that all admirals and captains should have direct access to myself, no

matter how trifling the occasion.

In those days, there was a turnpike-gate outside the town. I was

driving a brother officer home late one night, after dining at a house

some distance away and when we came to the toll-gate, the keeper was in

bed, and all my knocking and shouting failed to wake him up. So I

{114} proceeded to heave a large stone through his window. That

fetched him; and down he came, grumbling and swearing. I thrust a

sovereign--the only coin I had--into his hand to pay for his broken

window and the toll. It was bad tactics, for he promptly retreated

into his house (with my sovereign) leaving us still on the wrong side

of the gate. There was nothing for it but to break the rest of his

windows, but still he wouldn't come out. Evidently a surly fellow,

unfit to take charge of turnpike gates, an office demanding tact and

courtesy; and we thought it well to remove his temptation. So my

companion and I wrenched the gate from its hinges and lashed it to the

cart, vertically, so that it projected over our heads like a kind of

ornamental roof, its weight nearly lifting the mare between the shafts

off her legs and making her kick like blazes. Then we drove into

Plymouth, gate and all. The gate was reduced to firewood before

sunrise. Next day, the town was placarded with vain offers of reward

for information concerning "some evil-disposed person or persons

unknown who," etc.

At that time, I used to ride steeple-chases whenever I had an

opportunity, and kept myself in regular training by hard exercise; a

habit which on one occasion involved the commander-in-chief in an

alarming rumour. It arose from the trifling circumstance that I had

borrowed his overcoat. The Fleet was at Holyhead, to celebrate the

opening of the new breakwater by the Prince of Wales; I was just going

for a training run up and down that breakwater, when, finding I had no

coat, I took Sir Harry Keppel's uniform overcoat. I took it, without

thinking, merely because I wanted it. The next thing that happened was

that the signalmen in the Fleet reported that the Admiral must have

gone mad on the breakwater, seeing that he was racing up and down it

clad in a shooting-cap, grey trousers, muffler and uniform overcoat.

As my face was almost hidden by cap and muffler, the signalmen were

deceived by the gold lace, took me for the admiral, and thought that

poor Sir Harry was smitten with insanity.

[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AS LIEUTENANT]

{115}

We used to hunt a good deal with the Dartmoor hounds; and upon a day

when there was no run, and everyone was bored, one of the ladies

present begged me to provide some kind of sport, kindly suggesting that

I should personate the fox, a part I declined.

"You _must_ do something to amuse us," she said.

"Very well, I will," said I.

Among the officers there were an elderly admiral and an elderly

general, and I pointed them out to the lady.

"I will get up a race between the two of them," said I.

She bet me I would not, and I took it. I began with the soldier.

Ambling alongside the general, I asked him casually if he had ridden

much in his life.

"Of course I have," says he irritably. "What do you mean, sir?"

"Nothing at all," says I. "I thought I would ask. The admiral----"

"What about the admiral?" cries the general, staring suspiciously at

the distant and unconscious officer.

"He was saying he didn't think you knew very much about a horse."

The general lost his temper. He swore. He said he would show the

admiral what he knew about a horse.

"You can easily prove it," said I; and before he understood what was

happening, he had agreed to ride a race. Then I went over to the

admiral.

"Do you know what the general says? He says you look like a monkey on

a horse," said I; and it was the admiral's turn to swear.

"D----d impertinence!" says he. "I'll race him, and beat him any day

in the week." And he continued to use forcible language.

"You can do that," I said, for the admiral was riding one of my best

horses.

"If you really want a race, I'll arrange the whole thing," said I. And

I brought the two wrathful old gentlemen {116} together, rode with them

to the starting-point, gave the word, and off they went as hard as they

could pelt. I followed, cheering them on. The general began to draw

ahead, when his horse baulked at a soft place. The admiral's horse did

the same, throwing his rider upon his neck.

"Get back into the saddle and he'll go through," I shouted, for I knew

the horse. The admiral hove himself into his seat, and won the race.

He wouldn't have won, if his adversary hadn't baulked.

The members of the Board of Admiralty came down to Plymouth to witness

the autumn military manoeuvres. I offered to drive them all in my

coach; and they were settled in their places--Mr. Goschen the First

Lord, Admiral Sir Alexander Milne, the Earl of Camperdown and Mr.

Shaw-Lefevre--when out of the house came Rear-Admiral Beauchamp Seymour.

"Get down!" he shouted. "Gentlemen, you must get down."

They asked him why.

"You don't know that boy," said Seymour. "He's not safe. He'll upset

you on purpose, just to say he's upset the whole Board of Admiralty!"

And he actually ordered my guests off my coach, so that they had to go

in barouches.

Sir Harry Keppel often came sailing with me in my little yacht. We

were out together, when I said to him,

"I cannot weather that ironclad, sir."

"Then run into her, my dear boy," said Keppel placidly.

"All right, sir--obey orders."

I held on, and we cleared the jib-boom of the ironclad by an inch.

Sir Harry had an old friend of his to stay with him, Captain Clifton, a

most remarkable and interesting man. In the old days, the passage for

the opium trade existing between China and India was taken only once a

year--the opium ships running up to China with one monsoon and down to

India with the other. Clifton went to the Government {117} of India

and undertook, if the Government would permit him to build vessels to

his own design, to build clippers to thrash up against the monsoon as

well as run before it, and so double the income accruing from the opium

trade. The Government consenting, Clifton designed the _Blue Jacket_

and the _Red Jacket_ and vessels of that class, which were the famous

opium clippers of the "roaring forties" and fifties.

The Indian Government gave Captain Clifton a lakh of rupees. On his

way home, Clifton, touching at what is now the city of Melbourne in

Australia, but which was then a small assemblage of wooden shanties,

noticed the possibilities of the magnificent harbour. He told me that

he could have bought the whole site of Melbourne for a lakh; but on

consideration, he decided against the project.

One of my great friends, Sir Allan Young, a brilliant seaman of the old

school, commanded, at the age of twenty-four, one of Clifton's opium

clippers.

Upon the occasion of the Prince of Wales's opening the new breakwater

at Holyhead, in 1873, his Royal Highness was entertained together with

a large party at a country house in the neighbourhood. The Prince

called to me, and said:

"This is very slow. You really must do something to enliven the

proceedings."

"Well, sir," said I, "I will run a hundred yards race with Lord ----.

As he is Irish, he is sure to take me up if I challenge him."

Sure enough, Lord ---- accepted the challenge, but on conditions.

These were: that I should race in full uniform, excepting my sword,

while himself should "take his wardrobe from off himself." Lord ----

then proceeded to divest himself there and then of his Patrick ribbon,

coat, waistcoat, and boots, which he confided to the care of the wife

of a certain distinguished Liberal statesman. He dropped his Patrick

ribbon into her lap, saying:

"Madam, will ye have a care now of me Jewel, for glory {118} be to God

there's no saying what twist this mad one might give me!"

Entirely at ease, with the seat of his breeches patched with stuff of

another colour from the rest, and his toes sticking from his stockings,

he was wholly unperturbed by the laughter of the assemblage.

Although attired in cocked hat, frock coat, and epaulettes, I had the

speed of him, and waited on him. Then the devil entered into me; and

when Lord ---- drew abreast of a big plant of pampas grass, I cannoned

into him, pitching him head first into the grass, not, of course,

intending to harm him. But to my consternation and sorrow, Lord ----'s

leg was broken below the knee. I put the poor lord into his coach--he

had a coach and four-in-hand--and drove him back to his hotel. That

excellent and magnanimous sportsman was perfectly unconcerned.

"You hit me a bad skelp, and I am destroyed," said he. "Never mind,

they all laughed, anny way."

It was about this period of my life, when, returning from a ball in

London in the early morning, I came upon a person selling whelks. He

invited me to sup--or breakfast--upon a plate of these delicacies.

"How much do you charge for a plateful?"

"Threepence," said he.

"I'll give you sixpence for every plateful you eat yourself."

"Done," said he.

He finished two platefuls, and had begun a third, when he was overtaken

by rebellion from within, swiftly followed by catastrophe.

"That's not fair," I said. "You can't count those two platefuls."

"O my Gawd," he said. "'Ave I got to begin again?"

To this time, too, belong my memories of a certain famous naval

captain, who was extraordinarily particular both as to his own dress

and the wearing of proper uniform by others. His regard for

appearances, however, {119} did not prevent his diving overboard in

full and immaculate uniform, including white gloves, to save a seaman.

Exceedingly precise in his speech, he owned the singular trait of

becoming deprived of utterance when he was angry; and few things made

him more angry than faulty attire in the Service.

He was driving with me in a cab towards Plymouth, when we met an old

warrant officer, who was wearing a purple woollen waistcoat and green

gloves. My friend, stopping the cab so suddenly that the horse

slithered along on its haunches, leaped from the vehicle. The old

warrant officer, his attention arrested, had halted and turned round.

My friend went up to him. Then I perceived that he was stricken

speechless with wrath; for, continuing to swallow nothing, as his habit

was in these crises of emotion, he tapped the warrant officer's

waistcoat and gloves. Glaring at him and still silently swallowing, he

turned about and got into the cab. The old warrant officer stood

staring with dropped jaw, like a man petrified.

It was my friend who, being asked at a court-martial what he would have

done in certain difficult circumstances, replied deliberately:

"If I was where I was not I might have done something I did not do."

In after years, when he was commander-in-chief at the Nore, he was

walking along the road to Sheerness, dressed in plain clothes, when a

bluejacket, who was slightly intoxicated, lurched against him.

"Man, man," said my friend, with his picked elocution, "do you know

what you are doing? Man, you are colliding with the

commander-in-chief."

"Ho," returned the seaman, totally unimpressed. "Har you, indeed?

Then all I've got to say, is to say you've got a ruddy good billet--an'

wha's more, you take care you don't lose it by getting drunk."

Despite of my diversions, I did a good deal of hard work. As

flag-lieutenant I was in charge of the signalling, a {120} science

which, as it was understood in those days, I mastered completely.

My first independent command was the _Goshawk_ gunboat, to which I was

appointed as lieutenant-commander for the manoeuvres and for review in

1873, while I was still flag-lieutenant to Sir Harry Keppel. I had a

narrow escape from disaster at the very beginning. Fortunately I

noticed that the navigator was going the wrong side of the buoy off

Drake's Island, and I was just in time to point out his mistake. I

remember my feeling of horror at the prospect of running on a rock in

Plymouth Sound in my first command.

The first thing I did in the _Goshawk_ was to get from the flagship a

big working party of a hundred men to work at holystoning our decks

until they were as clean as a hound's tooth. From that day onwards I

set myself steadily against bright-work and spit-and-polish. My

objection to bright-work is that you have first to dirty it with brick

and oil in order to clean it afterwards. There are certain things in a

ship which must be kept bright, and these I would burnish; but

everything that could be painted I would paint, and then scrub the

paint with soap and water. I remember the shock it was to the

commander when I told him to cover the brass rails with canvas and

paint it. Under the spit-and-polish system no doubt the men take a

pride in keeping the ship bright, but such a process involves perpetual

extra bother and worry and black-list, which are quite unnecessary.

Cleaning bright-work makes the men's hands filthy at divisions; and

after ten minutes of bad weather, the copper turns blue and the brass

green, and the whole of the work must be done over again.

At one time the bright-work system was carried to absurd extremes. I

have known a ship actually to have a bright cable. I have known

another ship with bright hammock hooks. The hatchways of some vessels

were polished and decorated with inlay and all kinds of ocean ornament

until the ship looked like a lady's boudoir or a transatlantic liner.

{121} The custom came in as the old sailing ships gave place to steam

ships, when the time hitherto devoted to making a vessel all a-taunto,

ropes taut, sail furling and mending and so forth, was given instead to

polishing, burnishing and making bright-work shine, until the present

system of gunnery and gymnastic training was introduced. Captains and

officers used to spend on their ships large sums out of their private

income, which very often they could ill afford. "Promotion by paint"

was not unknown. A ship ought to be scrupulously clean, but she should

have paint wherever possible, and soap and water should replace

spit-and-polish.

{122}