Yes, the outbreak at the Nore was put down. But not every grievance was
redressed. If the contractors, for example, were no longer permitted to ply some
practices peculiar to their tribe everywhere, such as providing shoddy cloth,
rations not sound, or false in the measure, not the less impressment, for one
thing, went on. By custom sanctioned for centuries, and judicially maintained by
a Lord Chancellor as late as Mansfield, that mode of manning the fleet, a mode
now fallen into a sort of abeyance but never formally renounced, it was not
practicable to give up in those years. Its abrogation would have crippled the
indispensable fleet, one wholly under canvas, no steam-power, its innumerable
sails and thousands of cannon, everything in short, worked by muscle alone; a
fleet the more insatiate in demand for men, because then multiplying its ships
of all grades against contingencies present and to come of the convulsed
Continent.
Discontent foreran the Two Mutinies, and more or less it lurkingly survived
them. Hence it was not unreasonable to apprehend some return of trouble,
sporadic or general. One instance of such apprehensions: In the same year with
this story, Nelson, then Vice-Admiral Sir Horatio, being with the fleet off the
Spanish coast, was directed by the Admiral in command to shift his pennant from
the Captain to the Theseus; and for this reason: that the latter ship having
newly arrived on the station from home where it had taken part in the Great
Mutiny, danger was apprehended from the temper of the men; and it was thought
that an officer like Nelson was the one, not indeed to terrorize the crew into
base subjection, but to win them, by force of his mere presence, back to an
allegiance if not as enthusiastic as his own, yet as true. So it was that for a
time on more than one quarter-deck anxiety did exist. At sea precautionary
vigilance was strained against relapse. At short notice an engagement might come
on. When it did, the lieutenants assigned to batteries felt it incumbent on
them, in some instances, to stand with drawn swords behind the men working the
guns.
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