By John G. M. Sharp
At USGenWeb Archives
All rights reservedOn the evening of 21 September 1797, at 11 P.M., half dozen angry members of frigate HMS Hermione crew, their courage fueled on a stolen bucket of rum, rushed to Captain Hugh Pigot's cabin, smashed the door, and forced their way in.1
1. Pope, Dudley, The Black Ship (Henry Holt, New York, 1998), p. 156.
Captain Hugh Pigot, 1802After overpowering the marine guards stationed outside, they hacked at Captain Pigot with cutlasses or tomahawks and one man with a musket and bayonet before throwing him overboard.2, 3 Two of the mutineers, American, Able Seaman John Farrel of New York and Bosun's Mate, Thomas Nash, of Waterford, Ireland took significant leadership roles during the mutiny.4
4. Hannibal in Port Royal Harbour Jamaica on Thursday the 15 August 1799 for the Trial of Thomas Nash one of the Mutineers of His Majesty's late Ship Hermione (Court Martial James Irwin (Irvin), John Holford, Senior, John Holford, Jr. – PRO ADM 1/5344 May 23, 1798 British National Archives.
HMS Hermione 1799The HMS Hermione was recommissioned, as a fifth-rate frigate, under Captain John Hills, in December 1792. She sailed from Chatham Dockyard to Jamaica on 10 March 1793. The Hermione served in the West Indies during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars. On 4 June 1794, under John Hills, the ship participated in the British attack on Port-au-Prince, where she led a small squadron that accompanied troop transports. Hermione had five men killed and six wounded in the attack. The British captured both the port and its defenses, and in doing so captured a large number of merchant vessels. Throughout her years in the Caribbean, the crew suffered repeated outbreaks of Yellow Fever and Malaria.
Death from disease, and not as a direct result of combat with the enemy, was in fact one of the navy’s biggest adversaries. Life on board a sailing ship was grueling and unhealthy. Ships teemed with refuse, rotting provisions, rats, insects, dirt and unclean drinking water. It is not surprising that these conditions resulted in diseases becoming widespread. Provisions for seamen to clean themselves and launder their belongings were not supplied by the navy, meaning the men usually slept in filthy hammocks and wore the same dirty clothing for months at a time.5
5. Convertitio, Coriann, 2011, The Health of British Seamen in the West Indies, 1770 -1806, PHD thesis University of Exeter https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10036/3918/ConvertitoC.pdf?sequence=3
Out of a shipboard population that usually hovered at just below 180, 134 Hermione men died between December 1792 and July 1797, on average one man every ten days or so. During the course of 1794 most British forces were killed by Yellow Fever. In the summer of 1794 the mortality rate for fever cases at the Port Royal Naval Hospital increased to 41%.6 Likewise later in the year the registers of the Mole Naval Hospital recorded the percentage of fatal cases caused by "fever" and the percentage of "fever" cases resulting in death rose to exceptional levels in the last quarter of the year, respectively seventy-three per cent and fifty-six per cent, excluding "intermittent" fevers.7 On 24 August 1794, Captain John Hills, the Hermione’s commanding officer, died from Yellow Fever at Port-au-Prince Hospital.8
6. Yellow Fever in the 1790’s The British Army in occupied Saint Dominque, David Greggus, Medical History, 1979,
23: 38-58, pp.40, n. 11 and 46. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/89199FC7FE981F69B1C7D132CE170DBB/S0025727300051012a.pdf/
yellow_fever_in_the_1790s_the_british_army_in_occupied_saint_domingue.pdf7. Frykman, Niklas, The Bloody Flag, Mutiny in the Age of the Atlantic Revolution (University of California Press, Oakland, 2020), p. 168.
8. The Gentleman's Magazine (1850), Vol. 188, p. 662.
HMS Hermione, muster 7 April 1797 to 7 July 1797, “Widows Men”, number 12 -15Widow's man was a fictitious seaman kept on the books of Royal Navy ships during the 18th and early 19th centuries so that their pay and rations could be redistributed to the families of dead crew members. This financial arrangement helped keep widows from being left destitute following the death of their seafaring husbands. The number of widows' men on a Royal Navy ship was proportional to the ship's size. A first-rate might have as many as eighteen, while a fifth - rate like the Hermione might have only three or four. The existence of widows' men served as an incentive for men to join the Royal Navy, rather than the Merchant Navy, as they knew that their wives would be provided for if they died. 9
9. On the HMS Hermione muster (numbers 12 -15) and that of many other ships, were widows’ men. A widow’s man was a fictitious seaman, entered on the muster whose wages would be set aside to be used to make payment to the families of dead crew members. See “The Purpose and Content of Musters” Captain Cook Society, https://www.captaincooksociety.com/cooks-life/cooks-ships/the-ships-cook-sailed-in/the-purpose-and-content-of-musters
