|
|
|
Previous
Page PDF
James Lowry – edited by John Millyard, Fiddlers
and Whores: the Candid Memoirs of a Surgeon in Nelson’s Fleet. Chatham Publishing
2006. 192 pp. index, line illustrations ISBN 1-86176-288-2
Mary Jones (Editor), A Naval Life: The Edited Diaries and Papers of Admiral John Locke
Marx 1852-1939. Persona Press, Somerset
(Distributed by Gazelle Book Services Limited, Hightown,
White Cross Mills, South Road, LANCASHIRE LA1 4XS
UK)
January 2007. xiv & 281 pp. illustrations.
ISBN 978-0-9553095-0-2, £15.99 pb
Reviewed by Dr. Andrew Lambert
King’s College London
_____________________________________________________________________
What was life
really like in the navies of Nelson and Victoria? What did officers leave
out of their letters home and their published memoirs? James Lowry and John
Marx went to sea at either end of the nineteenth century. The first, a
young Irish medical student, used the Navy and the Napoleonic wars to make
his way in an expensive profession, and saw a good deal of the Mediterranean in the process. The second, the great
grandson of a German Jewish doctor, had a long and successful career that
demonstrated just how easily immigrants were absorbed into the British
elite.
The written remains of these two men
repay study because they were never intended for publication. In contrast
to the pious platitudes that usually pass for memoirs they record life in
the round. Lacking the obvious professional interest in ships and seafaring
Lowry spends most of his time recounting the delights of his various runs
ashore, and his amorous adventures. Marx found relief from the demands of
his career with the denizens of an altogether older trade, and left a clear
reminder of the fact in his journal. He records how he and three fellow
officers went ashore together. They all caught ‘the clap from the same house
at Cadiz.’
(p.68) Like Gladstone Marx used a
simple symbol to record morally suspect actions. He also described the
infectious consequences with such accuracy that a modern doctor has been
able to diagnose! In an age before penicillin Marx took a large number of
mercury cures, and indulged in a good deal of sanctimonious remorse for
sins he would commit again. Lowry never admits to catching a venereal
complaint, but his fascination with the subject outstripped purely
professional interest. On joining the Navy he was sent to the accommodation
hulk Bedford, where he noted: ‘We had on board 400 prostitutes and of
course out of such a number many were diseased.’ (p.31) He went on to
observe venereal effects everywhere he went. One suspects he used the old
line ‘trust me, I’m a doctor’ as his calling card at many a bordello –
while the availability of a ‘cure’ made English surgeons very attractive
friends.
Lowry lost his original journal in a
shipwreck, so the version we have here was rewritten from memory and sent
to his brother. He witnessed the tempestuous years that followed the Battle of the Nile, offering fascinating insights into
the Neapolitan Jacobin Revolution, Nelson’s conduct in Naples,
the successful British invasion of Egypt
in 1801, a brief period as a French Prisoner of war, and the return of
Nelson to the Mediterranean in 1803. Nelson scholars will be fascinated to
learn that Francesco Caracciolo’s corpse was made
to float upright by his fellow rebels. As a surgeon Lowry saw the horrific consequences
of battle, terrible injuries, screaming men, and bloodstained decks, men
transfixed by massive splinters and limbs crushed. Little wonder he took
such delight in female company and polite society ashore, in Naples and Sicily.
He came ashore in 1804, fully qualified in his profession, and richly
endowed with salty yarns. He reminds us that Nelson’s fleet was crammed
full of young men for whom fiddlers and whores were a source of constant
delight.
Nor had tastes changed by the time John
Marx began his naval life on board HMS Britannia,
the floating cadet training hulk at Dartmouth, in 1866. He did well in his
studies, but lacked the self-confidence to be a leader. He continued in the
same vein for some time, a diffident lieutenant assailed with self doubt,
despite the support of neighbour and family
friend Admiral Sir Geoffrey Hornby. Hornby’s support kept his career moving along, until he
hit his stride as a commander with his own ship. From this point on Marx
showed himself to be a man of superior talent, resourceful, and confident.
His actions on the African station were typical of the best of his
generation. The combination of righteous zeal and effortless superiority
that marked out the officers of Victoria’s
Navy from all other men ensured he had no hesitation in acting against
slavers, smugglers and other riff-raff. As editor, Dr. Mary Jones observes
the transition from the largely independent Imperial cruisers of the
Victorian navy to the tightly controlled Edwardian battle fleets did him few
favours. Because he had little fleet experience
he was retired as a captain in 1909 – a victim of John Fisher’s fleet
concentration policy. However, the Royal Navy was not done with him.
When war broke out in 1914 Marx went to London and pestered the
Admiralty until they gave him a job, as a captain in the Royal Naval
Reserve – rather than his actual rank of Admiral of the Retired List.
Commanding in armed yachts and decoy or ‘Q’ ships he played his part in the
anti-submarine war – delighting in the independence of his command, the
challenge of finding the enemy and the camaraderie of the wartime Navy. He
didn’t sink a U-boat, but for years he was convinced he had. Only when the
captain of the U-boat wrote to him did he accept that the damage inflicted
had not been fatal!
Like many a naval man home from the sea
Marx loved the countryside of his South Hampshire childhood. After the war,
having retired for a second time, he took up fox hunting, unpaid civic
duties, charitable concerns, farming and gardening with the same zeal and
energy he had employed at sea. His last act was to build an air raid
shelter, ready for the Second World War. He did not live to use it, dying
in mid August 1939.
Editor Mary Jones has used Marx’s
surviving diaries and letters to create a fresh and vivid picture of a
Victorian sailor’s life. The reality of a service career combined constant
anxiety about promotion and prospects ambitions with frequent runs ashore.
Young officers ended up in the most insalubrious areas of many seaport
towns, and like the men they led, frequently got more than they paid for.
Venereal disease was an occupational hazard – and a good surgeon was a real
friend. For all their professional ambitions they were human, and fallible.
Marx was a good officer, he knew his business, but he lacked the killer
instinct to make the highest grades.
The accidental survival of Lowry and
Marx’s accounts has provided a powerful corrective to the usual naval
memoirs, texts carefully edited to avoid offending maiden aunts, spouses or
offspring. Naval officers did not live Spartan, monkish lives of absolute
dedication, abjuring the sins of the flesh. Nelson’s infidelity was not the
exception, it was the rule, Lowry was completely
uninterested in the subject. When those old memoirs were written the
Admirals filled them with endless tales of runs ashore to slaughter the
local avian population. Perhaps they were resorting to an old trick – if
Marx’s account is to be trusted the ‘birds’ they pursued were not of the feathered
variety!
These two books provide a novel
perspective on the great events of war and empire, appealing to anyone who
has wondered just what naval officers did when they were not on duty.
|
