Women Sailors & Sailors' Women (7 page)

3

Ann Parker and the Mutiny at the Nore

S
AILORS' WIVES HAD
more than their fair share of anxiety and grief, but few had to endure the agony of Ann Parker. She arrived at Sheerness shortly before her husband was due to be executed. She was too late to be allowed on board HMS
Sandwich
to see him and exchange a few last words with him, but she was not too late to witness his body being hanged from the yardarm of the ship. Richard Parker went to his death not knowing that his wife was among the thousands of onlookers who had gathered to watch the final episode in a drama that had gripped the nation.
¹

Apart from the heroic determination that she showed in the days before and after the execution, nothing is known of Ann Parker beyond the fact that she was a farmer's daughter from Aberdeen. Her husband's early years are almost as obscure. Richard Parker was born in Exeter around 1764. He is believed to have come from a respectable family and to have obtained a good education, but at the age of nineteen he was taken by the press gang in Plymouth. He was imprisoned in a navy tender and transported to London, where he was forced to join the crew of the 74-gun ship HMS
Ganges.
Unusual for a pressed man, he was promoted to midshipman, which suggests that he may have had some seafaring experience in merchant ships. According to one source, he was discharged from the
Ganges
for immoral conduct and transferred to the sloop
Bulldog
as an ordinary seaman.
²
He served on the
Bulldog
until June 1784, when he was discharged sick to Haslar Hospital. He seems to have remained in the navy for a few more years and to have been promoted to petty officer or acting lieutenant.

At some point Parker came into an inheritance, left the navy, and settled in Scotland, where he met and married Ann. Like many others before him and others since, being unemployed and having money to spend led him into a life of gambling and dissipation. He soon spent his entire fortune, ran into debt, and ended up in an Edinburgh jail. At the outbreak of the war with Revolutionary France in 1793, he volunteered to rejoin the navy and was released from prison after paying his creditor with part of the bounty he received from the commissioning officer. From Edinburgh's port of Leith, he was transported south to the Nore with volunteers and pressed men, and was signed on to HMS
Sandwich
as a supernumerary.

Parker rejoined the navy at a critical time. After years of grumbling about their wretched conditions, the seamen of the channel fleet at Spithead had united in protest and on April 15, 1797, they submitted a petition to the Admiralty in which they demanded better food, shore leave on returning to port, pay for those injured, and above all, an increase in their wages, which had not changed since 1653. Senior officers were generally sympathetic to the men's requests, and with the country at war with France, they needed a fighting navy manned by loyal hands. Within eight days the Admiralty had agreed to all the demands, but when the fleet was ordered to sea on May 7, the men refused to obey their officers because they did not believe the promises that had been made. An Act of Parliament was hastily passed, and on May 14, Admiral Lord Howe arrived at Portsmouth with the news that all the men's demands would be met and that a pardon would be provided for the Spithead mutineers.

Meanwhile, unrest had spread among the ships anchored at the Nore, and Parker became a leading figure among the seamen's delegates. In addition to the concessions made to the men at Spithead, which had been extended to the whole navy by the act, the Nore seamen wanted a more equal distribution of prize money, the payment of arrears of wages before the ship went to sea, and the removal of the harshest of the Articles of War. The mutiny at the Nore began on May 12. At half past nine in the morning, the sailors climbed out on to the booms of the
Sandwich
and gave three cheers, which were at once answered by the crew of the nearest ship, the
Director,
commanded by William Bligh, who had already experienced a mutiny on his ship the
Bounty
eight years before. The men of the
Sandwich
trained the forecastle guns on the quarterdeck, and the officers had little option but to surrender the ship. Later that day the seamen unanimously chose Parker as their leader. There followed several days of confusion. Most of the other ships joined the mutiny. Parker held a number of meetings in the Chequers, a public house in Sheerness, and he and his committee of mutineers drew up a set of nine demands that they presented to the port admiral. Parker seems to have done his best to keep a check on the wilder actions of the rebellious seamen, but although there was no bloodshed, he could not prevent a certain amount of looting and other excesses. The seamen stole sheep from the Isle of Grain, robbed fishing boats of their catches, and so alarmed the local inhabitants that many respectable families sent their women away with their valuables for safety.

On June 4, the day when the fleet normally celebrated the King's birthday, some sailors took the opportunity to avenge themselves on their most unpopular officers. A mock trial was held on board HMS
Monmouth,
and four petty officers and a midshipman were subsequently flogged. Several officers were tarred and feathered and rowed in boats among the anchored ships. Effigies of William Pitt, the prime minister, were hoisted at the yardarms of some ships, and the seamen took potshots at them with guns and pistols, which inevitably led to rumors that real executions were taking place. The mutineers also began intercepting shipping on the Thames with the aim of blockading London. But soon the seamen began to have second thoughts. The Spithead mutineers had already won some major concessions, and it soon became clear that the authorities were not inclined to agree to the additional demands. The Admiralty brought up ships to surround the fleet at the Nore, and the mutiny began to collapse. Officers resumed command of their ships, and the crew of the
Sandwich
delivered up Parker as a prisoner. He was sent at once to Maidstone jail. On June 22, he found himself before a court-martial on board HMS
Neptune,
moored in the Thames off Greenhithe. There could be only one verdict for the ringleader of a mutiny, and he was duly sentenced to death. Parker, who had conducted his own defense, heard the verdict “with a degree of fortitude and undismayed composure which excited the astonishment and admiration of everyone.”
³

When Ann Parker learned that her husband had taken the bounty and rejoined the navy, she hurried to Leith, but when she arrived she discovered that the ship with the pressed men and volunteers aboard had already left the harbor and was sailing south to the Thames. She waited for further news, and when she heard of the mutiny at the Nore and Parker's imprisonment, she set off on the long journey from Scotland to London. By the time she arrived in the capital, her husband had been tried and convicted. The day before the execution was due to take place she made her way to St. James's Palace. There she handed a petition to the Earl of Morton for delivery to the Queen. Observers noted that she behaved in a manner appropriate to her unhappy situation. She waited until five o'clock in the afternoon, but with no response forthcoming from the palace, she abandoned all hope of a reprieve and set off to see her husband.

It was thirty-five miles from St. James's to the River Medway where the fleet was anchored. She managed to get a place on a coach that rattled east along the southern shores of the Thames through Dartford and Northfleet and Gravesend. It was eleven o'clock in the evening by the time she reached the ancient city of Rochester, huddled on the riverbank beneath its Norman castle and cathedral. She hurried down to the waterfront and found a boatman who had a cargo of garden produce for Sheerness. He agreed to take her with him early the next morning.

At four o'clock in the morning on the day set for the execution, the boatman helped Mrs. Parker aboard his boat and they set off downstream with the outgoing tide. As the winding river broadened out into the estuary of the Medway, the first light of dawn from an overcast sky revealed mile upon mile of marshes and mudflats on either side of them. There was a fresh easterly breeze, and even at that early hour, there was considerable activity on the river.
⁴
Local fishing boats headed out to the fishing grounds in the Thames estuary, and trading sloops and brigs set off for the ports of Kent, Suffolk, and farther afield.

By six o'clock, they could see the distant forest of masts marking the anchorage of the fleet at the Nore. This was the name given to the final stretch of the Medway before it joined the Thames. More than twenty warships were anchored there that morning, protected by the guns of Sheerness fort. It was nearly seven o'clock when they came alongside HMS
Sandwich.
The massive wooden hull of the 90-gun ship towered above them. Normally she was the flagship of the fleet, but the admiral had recently removed his flag to HMS
L'Espion,
leaving the
Sandwich
under the command of Captain Mosse. Mrs. Parker asked permission to speak to her husband, but the marine sentries on duty refused to allow her on board and ordered the boatman to pull clear, threatening to fire into his boat if he did not do so.

The boatman had no intention of endangering himself or his boat, and in spite of Mrs. Parker's desperate pleadings, he headed for the low fortress and the dockyard at Sheerness, which lay a few hundred yards away across the water. He assured her that no execution would take place that day because the yellow flag was not flying from any of the anchored ships. This flag was the signal to warn the fleet and onlookers that an execution was imminent.

As soon as they landed, Mrs. Parker spoke to another boatman on the garrison dock-stairs and persuaded him to take her back out to the
Sandwich.
At exactly eight o'clock, as she was being rowed up to Blackstakes, where the leading ships were anchored, a single gun was fired from the flagship
L'Espion.
Looking across she was horrified to see the fatal yellow flag hoisted to the masthead, and immediately afterward another yellow flag was hauled up on the foremast of HMS
Sandwich.
As they came alongside for the second time, she frantically renewed her entreaties to the sentries to let her come on board so she could speak to her husband. With the recent mutiny in everyone's minds, all officers present were aware that the execution of its ringleader might spark off more trouble. The sentries were under strict orders that no one should board or leave the ship, so once again they refused her permission. The boatman told her that he could not wait because he had promised to collect some people who had booked his services earlier.

The waterfront was now swarming with an expectant crowd of men, women, and children who were gathering to see the execution. Scaffolding had been erected on the shore of the Isle of Grain for spectators, and an increasing number of yachts, cutters, and rowboats were collecting in the vicinity of the
Sandwich.
Pushing through the curious onlookers on the shore, Ann Parker hired a third boatman and once again headed across the water toward the ships at anchor. But as she neared the
Sandwich
she saw a procession of men heading from the quarterdeck toward a platform that had been erected on the cathead, the heavy beam that supported the anchor near the bows of the ship. In the center of the procession she could clearly see the figure of her husband. Richard Parker was dressed in a black suit of mourning, and his hands were bound. Those present on deck observed that he looked a little paler than usual but that he carried himself with a remarkable composure and fortitude. As soon as she recognized his familiar figure and realized that he had only minutes to live, Ann Parker shrieked, “Oh, my dear husband!” and fainted. After a few minutes she recovered, and looking across toward the flagship, she saw the chaplain in his robes turn away from her husband.

While she lay unconscious in the bottom of the boat, Richard Parker had spoken briefly to the assembled ship's company. He had knelt and prayed, and had then stood up and said, “I am ready.” The provost marshal had placed the greased halter around his neck but had done it so clumsily that Parker spoke to the boatswain's mate who was standing nearby and said, “Do you do it, for he seems to know nothing about it.” The boatswain's mate expertly made fast the halter to the reeve-rope and indicated that all was ready. Parker turned around and looked for the last time at his shipmates gathered on the forecastle. He nodded his head toward them and with an affectionate smile said, “Goodbye to you.” He then turned to Captain Mosse and asked him whether the gun was primed. He was told that it was.

“Is the match alight?”

“All is ready.”

Parker asked whether any gentleman would lend him a white handkerchief so that he could give the signal, and after a pause a gentleman stepped forward and handed him one. Parker bowed and thanked him and ascended the platform. A cap was drawn over his face, and he stepped firmly to the edge of the platform. He dropped the handkerchief and quickly placed his hands in his coat pockets. As the reeve-rope swung him in the air, the gun at the bows of the ship fired with a shattering boom that echoed across the water. The explosion was followed by a rising cloud of gunpowder smoke, but the eyes of the hundreds of seamen on the anchored ships and the waiting crowds on the shore were fixed on the black figure suspended from the yardarm on the flagship's foremast. It was noted that Parker's body appeared extremely convulsed for a few seconds and then hung lifeless.

In all, some 3,000 people watched the last moments of Richard Parker, but his wife was not one of them. She lay senseless in the boat among the dozens of other small craft gathered around the warship. She said later that she “saw nothing but the sea, which appeared covered with blood.”

For the third time she was rowed back to the shore. Almost overcome with shock and grief but still determined to be with her husband, she hired a fourth boat, and as she was once again rowed back to the flagship, she saw his body being lowered to the deck. By the time she came alongside, she was told that the corpse had been taken into a boat for burial ashore at Sheerness.