|
I distinctly remember him saying it was a hulk and my being disappointed. At
that time, to me, a hulk was a dirty old discarded wreck, but I didn't pass
comment. Later I learn that The Royal Naval term for a hulk, simply meant that
the ship had been decommissioned, anything valuable removed, and no further
money was to be spent on her. But never the less, some of the pictures I've
found of training ships that were coming towards the end of their useful lives,
showed that they were indeed just dirty old wrecks!
When I was a little boy my Grandad would
often make little comments about what things were like when he was my age. I've
forgotten most of the things he said, but they were always humorous and
interesting. I never heard him speak bitterly or complain about his childhood
situation, so I just assumed he had a happy time like I did. A few things he
told me suggested that times were sometimes hard for his family, but nothing of
what he said prepared me for the shock when I eventually found out just how
horrible it was on the training ships at that time.
My Grandad was born on the 31st December 1883. But his actual time
of birth must have been close to midnight and no one actually looked at the
clock. So sometimes he said his birthday was the 31st December and sometimes he
said it was the 1st January. The actual birth certificate states 31st
December.
When Grandad was only five years old, his father died from an epileptic fit.
The condition originated from a kick in the head he received from a horse about
seven years previously. This is covered in the story 'Grandad's Origins'. His
mother, Kate, found herself faced with having to bring up five children, the
eldest being 11 years old, with no man about the house. Grandad never ever made
any comment to my Mother or I of the tragic similarity of fate that had resulted
in a similar situation occurring when my own Dad was killed and I, the eldest,
was also only eleven years old.
Grandad was the second youngest in his family. His little brother, Jimmy, was
killed by yet another tragic horse accident. This incident is also covered in 'Grandad's
Origins'. By this time the three elder girls had possibly left home and Grandad
told me it was his job to look after Jimmy when his Mum went to work. Sometimes
she worked as a cook in a restaurant, but she also seems to have been working as
a domestic servant in a large household at the time Grandad was born as he was
named after her employer who was good to the family.
I suspect Grandad felt himself partly responsible for his little brother's
death. It was a very painful memory for him. My Uncle Bob recalled finding him
in tears after remembering the incident (see Grandad's Origins).
When Grandad was eleven and a half his mother approached the St. Pancras
Parish Poor Law Authorities with a request that he be admitted to the Training
Ship Exmouth. Strictly speaking this school was only for destitute children, (children
who had no home or family), or children of paupers (people with no
financial livelihood or income), so she must have been in desperate
circumstances to have to make the approach and been accepted.
However, from the letter she wrote to the authorities during Grandad's time
on the TS Exmouth, it would appear she possibly tried to get him on the TS
Exmouth because it would give him training as a sailor, but she didn't fully
realise that it was specifically designated for destitute children and that in
fact she was signing him "away". Once accepted the children became the
sole "property" of the authorities until the age of 18, and parents
and family were rarely permitted any further contact with their children. Even
letters to them were intercepted and confiscated by the authorities.
It is also possible that a relative advised her that the Exmouth was a
suitable place to send Grandad. Two previous Painters were among the intake of
cadets to the Exmouth. Early on in the Exmouth's life, when she had only recently been commissioned,
two other Painters had attended her. They were J. Painter, Ship's Number 123 (Watchbill
No. 123), age 14. Parish or Union : Lambeth. His date of Admission was
18.5.1876, and date of discharge 19.10.1878 to s.s. Lyra. Lambeth is the
adjoining parish to where Grandad's father, Richard James Painter was born, so
George Painter could possibly have been a relation - even the uncle who did well
in Australia and returned to visit the family shortly before Grandad went into
the ship. This will be further researched.
Likewise, E. Painter, Ship's Number 331 (Watchbill No. 422), age 12, Parish
or Union : St. George's East, was admitted on 15.1.1877, and discharged
19.12.1879 to the Grenadier Guards. St George's East is a parish adjoining St
Pancras where Grandad came from, so he also could have been a relation who
advised Kate.
The concept of using redundant Admiralty ships for housing people was not
new. Hulks had been used as supplementary accommodation for the overcrowded
prisons for more than two hundred years. Indeed, the loss of the American
colonies in 1770 and the inability to transport felons there resulted in chronic
overcrowding of the prison hulks and led to the eventual introduction of the
transportation of felons to Australia in 1778.
To digress for a moment, the flagship of the first
fleet sent to Australia, the Sirius, was built at Rotherhithe and departed from
there when the fleet sailed. She was still having unfinished work done on her
when she left and it was common practice for Dockyard tradesmen to sign on for
the voyage. The Painter's came from Rotherhithe which at that time was only a
small dockyard village. R.J.P. (Grandad's father) was born
in 1850 at Rotherhithe, and Uncle Bob remembers an uncle who had a carrying
business using horse drawn carts to deliver materials from the docks. A James Painter, who was a shipwright/carpenter's mate, was a
member of the Sirius's crew and it is interesting to speculate whether this was
the uncle - or a descendant of his who was the Australian visitor mentioned in
Playing Hooky.
Also, the Vimeira, another convict ship, which arrived in Australia in 1852
from London, contained a crewmember William Painter, an able-bodied seaman, who
deserted ship to join the goldrush then in progress.
As mentioned, there were also two previous Painters (genealogy as yet
untraced) who served on the Exmouth, and yet another on the Arethusa, - which
Grandad had also claimed he attended. So it does seem as if there was some
previous history of Painters and the sea that could have influenced his mother
Kate's decision to seek Grandad's admission to a training ship.
The use of redundant Admiralty ships for training boys for a seafaring life
originated back in the Napoleon wars. The Arethusa was operated by The
Shaftesbury Homes Association, a philanthropic society set up by Lord
Shaftesbury about 1865. But there were many other organisations. The Marine
Society, of which Lord Nelson was a founding member, set up an organisation to
provide shelter and education for destitute children and at the same time help
alleviate the difficulties of recruiting seamen. The Warspite is perhaps the
most famous training ship this Authority operated and provided a model for the
Metropolitan Asylums Board to copy with the Goliath in 1870, followed by the
Exmouth in 1876.
The Exmouth, Goliath, Arethusa and Warspite were all wooden walled warships
built around 1830-1840. Although they sometimes changed their moorings, as they
outstayed their welcome, they spent most of their lives in the Greenhithe or
Grays area, on the lower reaches of the Thames.
With the introduction around 1850, of ironclad warships that were steam
powered, the older warships, had become superseded and by the 1870's were
obsolete. As Britain had followed the "double parity" policy since the
Napoleonic wars, of always having a Naval fleet with an overall power greater
than the combined power of the next two most powerful nations, there were always
plenty of ships coming out of commission for hulking or break-up. The various
training ship establishments, who provided trained boys for the Navy, were
always seeking suitable vessels, and the Admiralty was generous with the supply
of such ships, which were usually provided on a "free on loan" basis.
They even paid the training ships a bounty of between ten pounds and fifteen
pounds for each boy joining the Royal Navy who had reached a certain level of
proficiency in seamanship. This gradually developed into a situation where there
were scores of "training ships" located around the British coast-line
by the end of the nineteenth century, purporting to being Nautical Training
Schools. Often they were little more than money making exercises for emptying
the workhouses, or a means of incarcerating street arabs who were regularly
rounded up by the authorities. Indeed some "training ships" such as
the Cornwall, at Woolwich, were out and out reformatories, where young hardened
criminals were sent as a last resort.
Usually the ships were in good order and condition when passed over by the
Admiralty, even though much of what was valuable or salvageable had been
stripped from them. They were recognisably significant sailing warships, as the
painting of the Warspite at hand-over in 1876 shows. General practice was,
however, for the training authority to spend the absolute minimum on
maintenance. So before too many years had passed, spars, followed by topmasts,
began to disappear as rot set in and rigging deteriorated. Then various
doghouses would be built over the decks to increase accommodation. Sometimes,
complete shanty structures were thrown up over the deck to prevent water entry
through rotten and leaking decks. Finally, after the vessel had sunk at its
moorings, or had been burnt out by recalcitrant cadets, another vessel was
introduced, often being re-named the same as her predecessor, which makes for
difficult identification of old photos.
The Exmouth followed such a fate. Commissioned in 1876, the low headroom
common in such ships made her impractical for any other activity below decks
other than eating or sleeping. She lost her spars, doghouses were built on her
decks, and stoves were installed to prevent the boys freezing to death in the
depths of winter. They slept all year round in hammocks and the wind whistled
through the old badly fitting gun ports. By 1905, seven years after Grandad had
left her, she looked very different to the TS Exmouth of 1876.
In 1905 she was replaced by a purpose built vessel, which was a
"replica" of the original. This vessel had higher headroom, more
accommodation, and better attention to fire hazards, it being built of riveted
steel plate.
It occurred to me that when Grandad told me, about 1953, that the ship he had
been on was still moored on the Thames for me to look at if I wanted to, he was
probably unaware that the original Exmouth had been replaced in 1905. When the
replacement was made, he was in the Far East, living there from about 1901-1912,
so it is very unlikely he would have learnt of the replacement.
In 1945 this second TS Exmouth was taken over by the Thames Nautical School
as a replacement for their training ship the Worcester. This was another old
wooden walled warship that had reached the end of its useful life and was moored
next to the Arethusa at Greenhithe. The ship was extensively refurbished, and in
1953 when Grandad showed me the pictures of the training ships he kept in the
old biscuit tin, he was probably innocently unaware it was not a picture of the
old original Exmouth he had been on. The replica looked just like the original
Exmouth, and was very similar in appearance and size to the Victory that is kept
at Portsmouth. There was quite a bit of publicity in the press at the time of
the recommissioning and he may well have become somewhat sentimental when he saw
the pictures of her. Maybe, despite the unhappy memories, that was why he had
saved the pictures. Who can tell?
Interestingly, the Admiralty had height limitations for recruitment, and boys
who were below the minimum requirement were then shipped off to the Colonies as
little better than convicts were if they could not find a place with the
Merchant Service. Grandad was always dismissive of the Royal Navy, and was
pretty negative when I told him I was emigrating to Australia. But he signed up
with the Royal Marines around 1902. It is possible the Royal Navy
rejected him, as he was only 4'9" when he left the Exmouth, and that is why
he joined the Merchant Navy. However, he shot up rapidly in height over the next
few years when he got some decent food inside him.
It must have been a tremendous change for him when he joined the Exmouth.
Previously he had plenty of freedom to do much as he pleased while his widowed
mother spent most of her time at work away from home. He once told me he
frequently played hooky from school and he and his little brother spent much of
their time playing in Kings Cross Station or cruising the Circle Line
underground system all day. I suspect Kate's children were a pretty wild bunch
of street arabs.
There are a number of records describing the conditions under which the
children were trained at these nautical schools. It was a grindingly boring
mindless system of long hours, hard work, little food, and strict authority with
strong religious and moralistic influences: all good material for a Dickens'
novel of drudgery and misery. Some of the ships, such as the Mercury and the
Indefatigable, had reputations for institutionalised bullying and excessive
cruelty from the instructors who were usually ex-Navy petty officers. Even
worse, some of the petty officers sexually abused young inmates. A story by an
ex 'Indy" boy is revealing. The boys were broken up into
"watches", as on a normal ship, and each watch was under the control
of a petty officer. Some of these officers formed attachment with a
"favourite", who would act as "prefect" for the petty
officer. The prefect was usually a bully who bashed up new recruits whilst
"showing them the ropes", after they joined the ship. The various
petty officers would also be in responsible for inter watch competition, which
often took the form of boxing tournaments. Each petty officer treated his
"favourite" much as a greyhound owner would treat his dog, - feeding
it well, exercising it, and betting on it. And just like a dog that
couldn't win races, the unfortunate boy suffered a similar fate if his
performance as a boxer or a "companion" was found lacking.
Grandad gave me several stories about his time on the Exmouth, but never
showed any bitterness. I think he thought the Exmouth no better or worse than
others experienced elsewhere, and he just accepted things for what they were. He
said they gave him a good education but were very strict. The emphasis was on
the three R's - reading, writing and arithmetic. He must have been an
intelligent child who could have done who knows what with his life with the
right opportunities. He had nice handwriting, typical of the late Victorian
period, and could compose a letter free of grammatical or spelling errors. He
liked reading when he was retired, albeit a preference for Zane Grey westerns,
which may have been a touch of nostalgia harking back to his early years in
America. He was also adept at basic arithmetic, and could quickly tell if a
shopkeeper had diddled him in his change.
He mentioned little things over the years that I've gradually remembered
whilst I've been writing about him. Once he told me how his education had heavy
emphasis on Britain's naval tradition and he had to know all the details of
Nelson's sea battles and that sort of thing. If the answer was not correct, he
was wrapped over the knuckles with a cane. "Keep your hands on the desk top when I ask you a question", the
teacher would say. Whack! "Wrong answer; stay back after class and write 50 lines on your
slate: The Battle of Trafalgar, 1805."
He told me that the worst bullying person he was taught by was the chaplain
who gave religious instruction. Maybe that had something to do with his poor
opinion of the church.
He also mentioned that they sometimes had visits by "toffs". When I
asked him what a toff was, he said airily, "Oh, important people. People
with titles or letters after their names. Sometimes we would be standing for
hours barefooted on the deck in our best blues waiting for them to arrive, and
then they'd just look at us and in a couple of minutes they'd be gone. But we
didn't mind the waiting. They gave us an apple or a bit of cake on those
days."
I suppose I was a bit sceptical of this and suspected he was making out that
things were tougher than they really were. But I have since obtained a copy of
the meals and rations menu for boys at that time. It makes for sober reading,
and confirms other reports I've read, that deliberate underfeeding was a
commonplace practice at the time. General belief was that full stomachs made for
independence of spirit and insubordination.
Each year certain boys who had homes to go to and were not wards of the
Parish, were allowed a holiday period to visit their family. It would seem that
Grandad was officially a ward of the Parish. If a parent allowed adoption of the
child as a ward of the Parish, the Clerk to the Guardians had complete control
and discretion over that child until it reached the age of 18. It was an
extension of the Workhouse system, and in fact the Metropolitan Asylums Board,
who operated the Exmouth, still ran Workhouses in London until they were
amalgamated into the newly formed London County Council in 1905. It is a
shocking thought to realise that my Grandad, who I loved so much, started out
his life in such terrible circumstances.
For some reason, when Grandad was about 13, he was refused leave to visit his
Mother. Clearly it was an extremely distressing situation. It would seem that as
Kate, his mother, had made no contribution towards his maintenance at the ship,
he was designated a pauper. A Mr. Wright, presumably the Clerk of the Guardians,
told her that under these circumstances he would not be allowed further contact
with her. An undated letter from Kate is on file at the M.A.B. Archives. It was
sent to the Superintendent of the Exmouth, Captain Bouchier, and in it she
requests the discharge of Grandad from the ship. Although no record of a reply
has yet been found, permission was obviously not granted as he remained on the
ship for a further eighteen months or so.
Clearly, as can be seen from the following Kate was of limited education, but
must have been a woman of great personal independence of spirit to bring up five
children on her own, and so spiritedly tell the authorities that "her son
was no pauper."
LETTER IN M.A.B 2512/5742.
Re : Archie Painter, Reference 5742/152
(Copied from hand-written letter)
"2, Blackhorse Gardens,
Grays Inn Road.
Sir,
I take the liberty of writing to ask you if you will kindly grant my son
"Archie Painter" 152, disgarge. Last holidays Mr. Wright refused his
leave and I have a comfortable clean home though I am alwhys at work from Monday
till Saturday as cook in restaurant I am no pauper but in my ignorance I applied
to the Parish to get my boy on the ship. Mr. Wright's idea is that I ought to
pay for him but I have brought up a young family for eight years the eldest was
only eleven and I never trouble the Parish for a penny and I don’t see why my
boy should be called a pauper. Will you Sir, your kindness of which so many
speak kindly let me know what I am to do to have my Son home. He has not bad
record always being the best of boys for an answer I shall be truly grateful.
I am Sir,
Yours most respectably,
Kate Painter.
Captain Bouchier."
Note: The above is a copy of a hand-written letter from Archie's mother, Kate
Painter, as found in the M.A.B. files. The following are comments received from
the Exmouth Association Archivist, Patrick Jones:
"Mr. Wright, was, presumably, the Clerk to the Guardians. Once the
Parish or Union had 'adopted' a child they had complete control and discretion
over that child until it reached the age of eighteen. In some instances they
would not allow any contact between the parents, or other members of the family,
and the boy. Letters either way were intercepted and sent to the Guardians if
they required it. Captain Bouchier was indeed, an extremely kindly man but there
is no record of a reply to Kate's letter. Admittedly, copies of replies were not
always filed, but it is quite possible he may have taken the easy option and
ignored it."
Patrick Jones, TS Exmouth Association Archive Collection, C/- 19 Markville
Gardens, Caterham, Surrey, CR3 6RG.
I once asked Grandad what was his very first experience of sailing on a ship
at sea and was surprised when he told me the following story:
"When I was about your age (it was at Beddington Road he told me and
I would have been about 11 or so), I ran away and sailed around the coast in
a Thames sailing barge. The barge was manned by just an old man and me and
another boy about my age. We went from Gravesend to Harwich and up the Thames to
the Port of London. It was great fun." Recently I found that it was
commonplace for Thames sailing barges to be manned by just a man and a boy, or a
man and his wife.
Grandad told me all about how they had to raise and lower the leeboards on
the barge when they tacked her, and all about how you had to avoid the Goodwin
Sands and other navigation hazards around the estuary mouth. He told me how he
never dreamt that one-day the sailing barges (which were extremely common in
those days) would all gone and only occasionally used as pleasure boats. When I
was very young I once went with Nan and Grandad to Clacton and Grandad got quite
excited when he pointed out a sailing barge to me. She looked quite elegant out
at sea, the wind filling the rust coloured sails as she slowly sailed along the
coastline. She didn't look at all like the dirty old things kept moored near the
Tower of London.
I got the impression he enjoyed the experience of sailing. Having had a yacht
of my own I can imagine a young boy's exhilaration of spirit when sailing in the
open sea for the first time. There is nothing quite like the feeling of freedom
as a fresh wind and the sea spray stings your face, and the sails crack when the
wind shifts as the craft beats her way into a stiff breeze in a choppy sea. I
must have enjoyed his yarn, because only now do I realise that I never asked him
why he ran away to sea on a sailing barge.
I remember another incident which makes me think that Grandad enjoyed
sailing. When I was about 16 I had my own little bedroom at Eccleston Crescent.
The room was only about 6' by 8' - just enough room for a single bed and a small
desk for me to study at. I'd spend Saturday mornings lying on the bed, reading a
book and listening to "pick of the pops" on my very own radio. One
morning Grandad poked his head round the door and said, "What have you been
up to since I last saw you?"
"Working out how I'm going to make my own sailing dinghy," I
replied.
He came into the room and sat down on the end of the bed.
"And how do you plan to do that?" he asked with a smile.
"I've been reading a book about how you can do it. It's not hard you
know. I've already drawn up the plans." I nodded towards the book and my
"plans", which were sitting on the desk with all the heaps of other
books and junk I kept there. He picked them up and started studying them. He
took his time. Most other adults would have laughed and said I was foolish, but
Grandad was never like that with me. The book described how the author, as a
teenager, had made a 12' pram dinghy from plywood and taught himself how to sail
on the Thames.
Presently he put them down and lit a cigarette. I could see his mind was
working overtime and he was interested in my project.
"Mmm, well I suppose you could do it if you really wanted to, but why go
to all that trouble when I could get you a real boat for less than all
that stuff will cost you? And besides," he added as an after thought,
"It's not much fun sitting in one of those matchboxes, with a wet arse,
waiting for the first puff of real wind to blow you over into the drink."
He gave me one of his special winks and he had me hooked, the old devil. Soon
it was our project, but I didn't mind. Grandad explained that he knew
where he could get a really nice little lifeboat for only 10 pounds. "On
second thoughts, I reckon I could get a fully equipped one, complete with oars,
sails, kedge, and life jackets for about twenty," he mused.
"But a ships lifeboat, that's too big. And where would we keep it?"
I asked.
"Oh I'm not talking about a normal lifeboat, often they put a little
eighteen footer on a ship. Eighteen foot for a sailboat is small. I've rowed
bigger boats than that on my own."
I was not convinced. "But where would we keep it? Mum wouldn't let me
keep a lifeboat here."
"Oh Lord, we wouldn't keep it here." He took a few more puffs on
his cigarette as he considered the problem. Then he slapped his knee and smiled.
"I know just the place. It's down near Benfleet. Someone I know will let us
keep it there for nothing. We can catch the train down whenever we want to do
some work on her, or take her for a sail."
"But I don't even know how to sail a little dinghy, let alone a big
eighteen foot lifeboat." I gasped. The situation was developing faster than
my thoughts could keep track.
"Well isn't that the whole point. I'm going to teach you. Lord, anyone
can learn to sail a little lifeboat. Don't you worry about that."
At that point, just as Grandad's enthusiasm for the project had completely
won me over, my Mum poked her head round the door with some tea and biscuits for
us. "What have you two been talking about? You've been nattering away for
the last half hour?"
"Grandad and me are getting a sailing boat, and he's going to teach me
how to sail," I replied excitedly without thinking.
I swear she nearly dropped the tray in shock. "Oh no. Oh no, I'm not letting you go sailing at your age. It's much too
dangerous." She was extremely agitated and it was if someone had thrown a
bucket of cold water over Grandad and me. We looked at each other with
disappointment, and then Grandad sighed and raised his eyebrows in resignation.
I could see that he wanted to say something, but he kept his peace.
"Oh well, maybe your Mum's right Mike, maybe we can talk about it again
in a year or two." But I could sense that the subject was closed.
My Mum was without fault as a parent, but she was inclined to be always
worrying about things that might happen. She couldn't face taking a risk
just for the fun of it. Who knows what would have happened if she'd let Grandad
take me sailing. I can't help feeling it would have been a wonderful experience.
When I read the letter Grandad's mother sent to Captain Bouchier at the
Exmouth, I feel sure it was after being refused leave that he absconded. The
Exmouth was moored at Grays, close to Gravesend, so it would not have been too
hard for him to make his way there by foot. And anyway, it was nothing
exceptional that he did. Absconding was commonplace with the boys when they got
the chance, and was usually committed out of desperation rather than
intransigence. Indeed, conditions of bullying and public humiliation were so
commonplace that some of the boy cadets of more fragile temperament ended up
drowning or hanging themselves!
If my interpretation of the circumstances of his running away are correct, he
must have either voluntarily or compulsorily returned to the Exmouth at some
stage after his adventure. We know that he completed his training and was
discharged to the steam ship Cayo Romano in 1897, bound for Bermuda as a deck
boy on a pay rate of 10/- per month. Probably he ran away because he was home
sick and just wanted to see him Mum; he was only a small boy of 13. Captain
Bouchier, who, fortunately, was reported to be a 'kindly man' with a genuine
sense of care for his wards (which was certainly the exception rather than the
rule with other training ships), presumably took him back and did not put the
incident on his school record.
When the Admiralty gave the Exmouth to M.A.B. on permanent loan, she came
complete with masts, spars (no sails), and two cannons. On other training ships
these guns sometimes served a sinister purpose. Boys that had to be made an
example of, for misdeeds (such as absconding), were made to lie stomach down
over the barrel of the cannon and be secured so they could not move. They then
received corporal punishment. By the turn of the century they had dispensed with
the 'cat o nine tails' employed earlier, but the birch was still used, and this
was almost as painful and could cause laceration of the skin. The practice was
continued until well into the 1920's. I really hope that my Grandad did not
suffer such a humiliation. However, whatever the outcome, little wonder that
when he got the chance, he spent his late teenage years and twenties in the Far
East and in America, and it was not until the equally traumatic 'Peter the
Painter' incident in America that he finally returned to England.
|
