Ordinary Seaman John Hodgkinson of the Highflyer

There is much information about the officers of the Victorian Royal Navy, much of it in their own words - for example the three volumes of autobiography and biography by Admiral Penrose-Fitzgerald. However, first hand accounts by the ordinary sailors are vanishingly rare. As a result, we mostly see the lower deck ratings through the patronising eyes of their officers looking across a chasm of social and educational privilege.

Ordinary Seaman John Hodgkinson was an exception; a Jack Tar who was also a published author. He wrote A Sailor-Boy's Log-book: From Portsmouth to the Peiho as a first hand account of his time in the Royal Navy, man and boy. The book was published anonymously1; its author was well educated, lucid, perceptive and candid. He joined the navy in the winter of 1855, against advice from friends and inspired by a romantic wish to go to sea after reading the book Robinson Crusoe. His fifteenth birthday on 21 December 1855 was spent aboard the training ship HMS Illustrious, in which he served four months as a Boy 2nd Class, followed by three months on the training brig HMS Sealark. He was drafted to HMS Highflyer, which was being fitted out at Portsmouth for service on the China station under Captain Charles Shadwell. Highflyer was a screw corvette, steam powered but fully rigged. As a boy seaman, Hodgkinson was initiated into the immemorial ways of the British seaman in the age of sail - he mentions engines in passing twice, but there are many accounts of working aloft.

HMS Highflyer, photo of a model at The Science Museum, London

The passage to Hong Kong took from October 1856 to May 1857, when the ship arrived just in time for the start of offensive operations against the Chinese Empire. On arrival, Hodgkinson was rated Ordinary Seaman Second Class, officially no longer a boy at the age of 16½. He was in the naval brigade landed to capture Canton (Guangzhou) in December 1857. Until March 1858, much of Highflyer's time was spent anchored in the Pearl River where Shadwell was the senior naval officer. In March, the ship moved to Shanghai, where it spent more long periods moored up, with occasional trips to sea to bring relief to the crew from the stifling hot and unhealthy conditions on board. There was much anti-piracy boat work, however, although Hodgkinson was rarely involved.

Our captain sails where'er he pleases,
And catches Tartars or Chineses,
Say but the word and he's your man,
To treat or trade with shy Japan.

Verse from the title page of Hodgkinson's book, probably referring to Captain Shadwell

Come June 1859, Highflyer sailed with the rest of the squadron for the mouth of the Peiho river. Although an advantageous peace treaty had been signed with the Chinese twelve months before, it was the British view that the Emperor was insufficiently zealous in his compliance with its terms. Rear Admiral Hope, the squadron commander, decided to teach a lesson by capturing the Taku forts at the mouth of the Peiho, then sailing up the river to the imperial capital at Peking. But the Chinese had reinforced and rebuilt the forts and were determined to make a stand. On 25 June 1859, the British assault was roundly repulsed; four British gunboats were sunk and over 400 men were killed or wounded. Hodkingson was detached to the gunboat HMS Banterer where he was heavily engaged in a fruitless gun battle with the Chinese forts. The final act of the debacle was an unsuccessful amphibious assault on the forts by 750 sailors commanded by Captain Shadwell2; they charged the walls into a setting sun across 600 yards of bullet swept mudflats. Hodgkingson was almost killed, and only barely made it back to the Banterer. The verdict of the lower deck on this disaster is telling. They concluded that the Chinese must have had European help to put up such a good fight; that Rear Admiral Hope, while perhaps lacking good judgement, fought bravely beside his sailors and proved himself by being wounded; and finally that they would do it all again under his leadership if called upon, bravery trumping confidence in their opinion.

In September 1859, the Highflyer was part of a diplomatic mission to Japan, recently opened to Western contact. In December, the much liked Captain Shadwell, who had been badly injured in the abortive assault on the Taku forts, was invalided home. His successor was both short in height and roundly disliked by the crew - they called him "four feet of trash". More monotonous station duty at Hong Kong ensued during 1860, before in February 1861 to everybody's delight the Highflyer was ordered home to be paid off. After five years away from home, Hodkingson arrived back at Portsmouth on 24 May 1861. He had decided that the navy was not for him - no prospects of promotion beyond petty officer and no outlet for his bookish ambitions whilst a oddball member of a largely uncouth lower deck. He paid £12 and 10 shillings to buy himself out of the remaining seven years of his ten year Continuous Service engagement, and received a magnificent 28 shillings prize money for his part in the capture of Canton. We know nothing of his life before or after his time in the navy, and he fades into obscurity like the vast majority of his fellow sailors.

It is the details of how the ship's company functioned as a group that stick in the mind. The men's slang for lieutenant is "luff". When Hodgkinson is questioned by the First Luff about where he is going while on an errand, the officer detects some attitude from the sixteen year old adolescent boy and puts him on punishment duties for five days. The Captain gets wind of this, takes Hodgkinson aside and gives words of advice - "Be civil to all; be smart; and always do as you are told, then you will get on". This helps Hodgkinson reconcile himself to obedience, which he identifies as the main lesson of his time in the navy.

Every Bonfire Night, the men made a guy, set fire to it and throw it overboard. Crossing the line involved two days of sanctioned misrule, with the neophyte sailors barricading themselves below decks, throwing wet sponges at their officers and refusing to attend King Neptune's court. On Christmas Day 1856, the whole crew got so drunk that the Captain decided against reefing sails overnight despite the bad weather; he was worried that the sailors will fall from the yards in their inebriated state. Lower deck recreations were singing, amateur dramatics3 and getting blind drunk at every opportunity. Hodkingson writes all the love letters of the two illiterate members of his mess. While he considers his messmates rough and rude, they mostly had a warm heart and he "was never molested on account of [his] book-reading and quiet-loving propensities".

In many respects, Hodgkinson's story is a classic military coming of age tale, which he tells well. He left home a boy and came back as a man, shaped by the experience of living for five years in close contact and deep interdependence with 250 other men in a ship less than 200 feet long. These were the comrades with whom he went to war; some were killed next to him. Hodgkinson decided not to make this life his career; for hundreds of thousands of others, it was the only way of life they knew or were qualified for.

Links

HMS Highflyer (1851)

Battle of Taku Forts (1859)

Further reading and references

Lavery, B, Able Seamen: The lower deck of the Royal Navy 1850 - 1939, Conway, 2011. pp 18-20, 55-56.

White, W (ed), A Sailor-Boys Log-Book from Portsmouth to the Peiho, Chapman and Hall, 1862. Hodgkinson's memoirs of his career, published anonymously. Available at archive.org

Winton, J, Hurrah for the life of a sailor! Life on the lower deck of the Victorian Navy, Michael Joseph, 1977. Excellent and very readable social history; Hodgkinson features in chapter 10.

Picture credits

The header picture shows John Hodgkinson in uniform at the age of 21 taken from the frontispiece of his book; the China medal with Canton clasp is similar to the one he was awarded; and behind is the bow of a model of the Highflyer at the Science Museum, London.

The plan of the Taku Forts action is from S. Wells Williams (1900). The Middle Kingdom. Volume 2. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 667. Available at Wikimedia Commons

Hodgkinson's identity can be deduced from the China Medal Roll, which lists all the members of the crew of HMS Highflyer that received a medal for service in China whilst he was serving in the ship.

Midshipman Jackie Fisher, future First Sea Lord of Dreadnought fame, was Shadwell's aide-de-camp in this attack. Fisher was a Midshipman in the Highflyer from 1856 to 1859 - it is probable that he was the Midshipman of Hodgkinson's boat, the ship's cutter.

Known as a "sod's opera" in the twentieth century navy,