It was brawling and violent from the outset, with other ships and the shore being fired upon. Just after Proteus escaped, and those last few North Sea Fleet ships from Great Yarmouth had come down to be part of the mutiny, effigies of Pitt and Dundas were hung from the yardarms aboard HMS Sandwich. Waverers, 'Perjurers to the Oath,' and the remaining midshipmen, petty officers, and senior Marines were ducked by hauling them up 'two-blocked' to the main-course yard, then let go to sink deep in the harbour water as punishment. Some were flogged, as Rolston threatened, and shown round the anchorage with cries of 'here is a bloody sergeant (bosun, midshipman, etc).'
For a time, it looked as if the Nore Mutiny might topple the government. A regiment near Woolwich and the Arsenal did wobble in their discipline and loyalty; troops in Sheerness and Chatham did commingle with mutineer sailors. Ships anchored below the Tilbury forts on the Thames, not twelve miles below the Pool of London, did join the mutiny. At one time, seventeen ships of the line and well over ten thousand men were involved, blockaded London 's vital upriver imports, the downriver export trade, and seized nearly two hundred merchant ships.
Lewrie was lucky in escaping when he did, for a few days later, the ancient navigators' guild, the Trinity House Brethren, removed all the buoys, light ships, beacons, and channel marks near the Nore in the night and extinguished the lighthouses.
None of the merchant ships' crews joined hands with the sailors at the Nore though, and no foodstuffs were taken out of the captured ships; the lack of supplies helped end the mutiny. Despite the boast that McCann made that the 'people are with us,' after the King's Proclamation of 31st May (quoted in full, thankee very much!) the merchant sailors wouldn't even allow mutineers aboard their anchored ships, sure they'd be hung with them.
The Nore Fleet did try to sail out en masse. Vilified in newspapers, from the pulpits, knowing there would be no sympathetic civilian or Army revolt, the Green Cockades erred badly by announcing that they would steer course for France and join their Navy! But when it came down to it, most of the Nore sailors, even some of the initially determined hands, were simply too used to being True Blue Hearts of Oak and Englishmen, unable to turn real traitors, become life-long deserters… or sever ties to home, and kith and kin, forevermore. It is said that some sail was freed, but not set, and just as quickly was brailed back up again. No capstans turned to raise anchors, just as Lewrie's crew did when he ordered Proteus to set sail when the mutiny began!
As a final resort, the Nore Fleet split into five distinct camps or schools of thought. The largest group voted to stay in the Great Nore, surrender, and take their chances. A smaller second group was of a mind to sail out for Cromarty Firth in Scotland, far from authority's initial reach, and make up their minds what to do later.
Some wanted to sail for Shannon, and become a quasi-Irish Navy, to join the expected French invasion when it came. If all else, they thought to sell off the ships, guns, muskets, powder, and shot for what they could get to help arm the Irish countryside-then melt into the civilian population with the profits.
There were two other camps, both forlorn and deluded by rhetoric right to the end, of a mind for more radical things-or simply too stark-staring 'bonkers' to recognise reality if it crawled up to bite them on the ankles!
One group actually believed that they could continue a rebellion by sailing over to the Texel to seduce Admiral Duncan's few remaining warships into joining hands with them, then sail back down-Channel to the French port of Cherbourg, and become an English Republican squadron of the French Fleet!
The last group, spurred by thoughts of the Bounty mutiny, with heady romances of lusty native girls (perhaps by back copies of the National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel!) had a thought to sail to some nebulous 'New Colony,' wherever and whatever that was, beginning a new life of buccaneering and, 'Arrh, yo-ho-ing!'
But at the very last, none of them hoisted anchor for any purpose; they all ended up surrendering.
If you think that the tortured rhetoric that the mutineers used sounded a lot like the sort of Socialist Revolutionary, Bolshevik, or People's Liberation Army cant one might have heard in St. Petersburg in 1917, and in Havana or Pyongyang today, I'll admit that I was amazed too, when reading their writings or recorded speeches. It was Trade Unionism, 'All hail the proletariat!' to a Tee! And 'the Floating Republic ' had an eerie similarity to George Orwell's novel 1984, or his Animal Farm; Green Cockades were better than Red Cockades-'two legs good, four legs better'? Perhaps while delving among the stacks of the London libraries, Karl Marx found his 'lingo' for Communism in the annals of the Nore!
At the Nore, people had been wounded and killed. Damning insults had been uttered, a republic had been proclaimed, and a rebellion urged, civil war threatened in the mutineers' sneering response to the King's Proclamation {also quoted verbatim, thankee!) and broadsides fired, so there was little mercy for the Nore mutineers. Crown, Admiralty, and Society had been humiliated and taunted enough at Spithead; they were not about to swallow a second, more dangerous dose! Had the mutineers not been drunk on their own words and fantasies, the Nore might have ended much sooner and a lot more peacefully, but their truculence was their doom.
McCann, Richard Parker, and dozen of others were hung as rebels, as well as for being mutineers. Others were transported for life, got long gaol sentences-a stalwart few committed suicide. In the end, most sailors returned to duty, with the gains that Spithead had gotten them and they had already possessed before rising their only comfort-except for the part about removing officers and mates that did not apply to them.
I hope no one minds that Rolston (even I can't recall his first name from The King's Coat.1) served as a stand-in for Richard Parker… and got what Lewrie thought both deserved. But trust Lewrie to have a host of people in his past who wish to slip him a bit of 'the dirty' and give him a comeuppance, a talent pool upon which I may happily draw to challenge, confuse, and plague him. But what would life be like if things ran as smooth as a Swiss watch all the time, hmm?
And we've plagued him pretty sore, by now, ain't we! Old foes, new foes-it was looking rather neat, with Lewrie-1, Baddies-0, 'til that letter showed up. Was it really Lady Lucy Shockley nee Beauman, or Commander Fillebrowne? A lark played by Clotworthy Chute or Lord Peter Rushton? A skewering connived at by Harry Embleton and Uncle Phineas Chiswick; Zachariah Twigg and his spy minions run amok in his dotage? Could it possibly really be Theoni Connor… even Phoebe Aretino, who wants him back… Claudia Mastandrea, still in the pay of French schemers? Admit it, you didn't think of those, now, did you!
Well, no matter for now. He's truly in the 'quag,' 1797 and 1798 will be an adventurous time.
And even I can't wait to find out what happens!
