The Naval Mutinies of 1798; The Irish plot to seize the Channel Fleet. By Philip MacDougall. Pen and Sword Maritime, Barnsley, Yorkshire, 2024.
Reviewed by Tim Coyle
Few maritime topics evince drama and mayhem as naval mutinies. The most notable 20th century naval mutiny was that of the German High Seas Fleet in 1918. Disaffected by Communist influences and command ineffectiveness, the crews revolted when ordered to sea to engage the British Grand Fleet in a climactic battle which the crews regarded as a suicide mission.
The mutinies played out at the major fleet bases rather than at sea and had major repercussions throughout Germany leading to the Armistice in November 1918.
Naval mutinies have a uniquely intense character. Tensions over harsh discipline imposed by unfeeling authority, political influences and unsatisfactory conditions in cramped and unhealthy ships kept at sea for long periods are characteristics of historical naval mutinies.
All these conditions, and more, were prevalent in ships of the Royal Navy Channel Fleet in the last years of the 18thcentury. Britain was simultaneously engaged in a war against revolutionary France and facing a rebellion in Ireland. The rebellion was instigated by the Society of United Irishmen, who had links with French revolutionaries. Their aim was to entice the French to send a military force to Ireland where they would join with the United Irishmen to overwhelm and expel the British from Ireland and even foment an invasion of England. Although the British government crushed the rebellion, seething discontent remained, none more so than in the Irish crew members of the Channel Fleet.
The Royal Navy Channel Fleet was a bulwark against French naval and military incursions against Britain and was blockading the major naval port of Brest. If Irish crews in the Channel Fleet could seize their ships and sail them to French ports, they would dilute the British order of battle and reinforce French maritime capability, thereby opening the blockade and allowing the French liberation forces to sail to Ireland. The Irish plot, in association with other malcontents of English and Scottish origin, would have associated implications through disaffection generally in the fleet and fear in the officer corps.
The Board of Admiralty was fully aware of this internal danger and imposed severe punishments on miscreants. ‘Flogging around the fleet’ and ‘hanging from the yardarm’ were liberally imposed and crews were in no doubt of the consequences of rebellion through the monthly reading of the Articles of War in each ship before the assembled ships’ companies.
The author of The Naval Mutinies of 1798, Philip MacDougall, has written articles and books on early naval topics which include Islamic navies, naval resistance to British power in India and the Anglo-Russian naval alliance. His particular interest is the politics and social conditions of the lower deck. In Naval Mutinies of 1798 MacDougall examines the maritime strategic situation of the times and how the United Irish plots developed and their implementation through sowing seeds of discontent in the Fleet via shore-based agents and provocateurs. For this he sets the scene through the Path to Mutiny in which the ships and their people are introduced, together with the Society of United Irishmen.
Crucial to the Brest blockade was the island of Ushant around which the Channel Fleet concentrated to interdict enemy vessels entering and leaving the vast waters of the Rade de Brest within which the naval dockyard was located. The Irish connection was Bantry Bay, on the south coast; both these locations were fundamental to the Irish plot.
MacDougall then examines the various mutinies in the Channel Fleet but also addresses conditions in the Mediterranean Fleet, and the aftermaths. The Mediterranean Fleet, under Admiral St Vincent, was a totally different force from the Channel Fleet. Admiral Bridport exercised lackadaisical oversight of the Channel Fleet. Returning to home ports for victualling officers disappeared ashore leaving the crews to their own devices which fomented mutinous plotting with United Irish agents ashore. On the other hand, St Vincent micromanaged the Mediterranean Fleet; ruling it with an iron rod, although he was fair within the standards of the day. Consequently, indiscipline was brutally countered, and punishments dispensed without delay, thereby effectively disabusing potential miscreants.
MacDougall takes the reader into the messdecks and secluded spaces where Irish ringleaders pressured fellow countrymen to swear oaths of loyalty to the Irish struggle. He emphasises the invidious position in which individuals found themselves. Any hint of involvement in a rebellious plot was punishable by death. On the other hand, the individual lived in fear of maiming or death from shipmates if he did not acquiesce and support the conspiracy.
The author uses primary sources extensively: contemporary newspaper reports and National Archives Admiralty files as well as printed books and papers which document the plots, their implementations and results, The overwhelming majority failed with appalling consequences for the participants. Admiralty instructions on the carrying out of punishments are starkly presented with details of individual mutineers’ courts-marshal and their consequent punishments ‘pour encourager les autres’.
Most people, with even a passing understanding of British social conditions in the late 18th century, are familiar with the extreme class distinctions, grinding poverty (particularly in Ireland) under despotic rule and harsh punishments for minor crimes. However, conditions for the lower deck in the Royal Navy were extreme; the Admiralty keeping ships at sea in wartime, crewed by thousands of largely pressed men in thrall of, for the most part, pitiless martinets.
In the Naval Mutinies of 1798, Philip MacDougall has provided an authoritative and stark history of these dramatic events. The Royal Navy’s strategic and operational history over centuries helped shape the modern world and deserves recognition for the benefits it has brought; however, it came at a brutal cost to those who worked the ships and the guns which brought the victories lauded in naval lore.
Naval Mutinies of 1798 has a place in any collection of works on Royal Navy history.
