الفصل الفصل 3 · 第3章

At the time of Billy Budd’s arbitrary enlistment into the _Indomitable_

that ship was on her way to join the Mediterranean fleet. No long time

elapsed before the junction was effected. As one of that fleet the

seventy-four participated in its movements, though at times on account

of her superior sailing qualities, in the absence of frigates,

dispatched on separate duty as a scout, and at times on less temporary

service. But with all this the story has little concernment, restricted

as it is to the inner life of one particular ship and the career of an

individual sailor.

It was the summer of 1797. In the April of that year had occurred the

commotion at Spithead, followed in May by a second and yet more serious

outbreak in the fleet at the Nore. The latter is known, and without

exaggeration in the epithet, as the Great Mutiny. It was indeed a

demonstration more menacing to England than the contemporary manifestos

and conquering and proselytising armies of the French Directory.

To the Empire, the Nore Mutiny was what a strike in the fire-brigade

would be to London threatened by general arson. In a crisis when the

Kingdom might well have anticipated the famous signal that some years

later published along the naval line of battle what it was that upon

occasion England expected of Englishmen; _that_ was the time when at the

mast-heads of the three-deckers and seventy-fours moored in her own

roadstead--a fleet, the right arm of a Power then all but the sole free

conservative one of the Old World, the blue-jackets, to be numbered by

thousands, ran up with hurrahs the British colours with the union and

cross wiped out; by that cancellation transmuting the flag of founded

law and freedom defined, into the enemy’s red meteor of unbridled and

unbounded revolt. Reasonable discontent growing out of practical

grievances in the fleet had been ignited into irrational combustion as

by live cinders blown across the Channel from France in flames.

The event converted into irony for a time those spirited strains of

Dibdin--as a song-writer no mean auxiliary to the English Government--at

this European conjuncture, strains celebrating, among other things, the

patriotic devotion of the British tar--

‘And as for my life, ’tis the King’s!’

Such an episode in the Island’s grand naval story her naval historians

naturally abridge; one of them (G. P. R. James) candidly acknowledging

that fain would he pass it over did not ‘impartiality forbid

fastidiousness.’ And yet his mention is less a narration than a

reference, having to do hardly at all with details. Nor are these

readily to be found in the libraries. Like some other events in every

age befalling states everywhere, including America, the Great Mutiny was

of such character that national pride along with views of policy would

fain shade it off into the historical background. Such events cannot be

ignored, but there is a considerate way of historically treating them.

If a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or

calamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without

reproach be equally discreet.

Though after parleyings between Government and the ringleaders, and

concessions by the former as to some glaring abuses, the first

uprising--that at Spithead--with difficulty was put down, or matters for

a time pacified; yet at the Nore the unforeseen renewal of insurrection

on a yet larger scale, and emphasised in the conferences that ensued by

demands deemed by the authorities not only inadmissible but aggressively

insolent, indicated, if the red flag did not sufficiently do so, what

was the spirit animating the men. Final suppression, however, there was;

but only made possible perhaps by the unswerving loyalty of the marine

corps, and a voluntary resumption of loyalty among influential sections

of the crews. To some extent the Nore Mutiny may be regarded as

analogous to the distempering irruption of contagious fever in a frame

constitutionally sound, and which anon throws it off.

At all events, among these thousands of mutineers were some of the tars

who not so very long afterwards--whether wholly prompted thereto by

patriotism, or pugnacious instinct, or by both--helped to win a coronet

for Nelson at the Nile, and the naval crown of crowns for him at

Trafalgar. To the mutineers those battles, and especially Trafalgar,

were a plenary absolution, and a grand one; for that which goes to make

up scenic naval display is heroic magnificence in arms. Those battles,

especially Trafalgar, stand unmatched in human annals.

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