Sahib: The British Soldier in India 1750–1914. Richard Holmes
left for India in 1754 with HM’s 39th as part of a small fleet, with his own regiment and an artillery detachment of seventy men and twelve short 6-pounder guns, crammed into the armed Indiamen Kent, London and Britannia. The latter vessel had 237 men ‘with livestock and provisions of all kinds laid on at the expense of the Company’, which was deeply anxious to get a British battalion to India.15 His voyage was uneventful, although the early loss of a gunner, who fell overboard while drawing up a bucket of water, warned the men that the sea could be dangerous even when it seemed calm:
Though a boat was let down in less than three minutes, and though the day was fine and the sea calm, yet he sank at about sixty yards’ distance in view of all the men on board. It was an introduction to the dangers of the sea and had at least this good effect, that it made our landsmen more cautious than they were at first.16
Lieutenant John Luard of HM’s 16th Light Dragoons had formerly served as a midshipman in the Royal Navy, so was less concerned about his voyage than another officer who feared ‘one hundred and twenty days in a sea prison, with a plank between one and eternity’. Luard sailed for India aboard the Marchioness of Ely, with the other half of the regiment on General Hewett. One officer recalled that ‘Old Die, the boatswain’, told him ‘that if he had been sent through hell with a small toothcomb he could not have picked up a more lousy crew’. They shared the ship with forty-four dozen ducks and hens, fifty-six pigs and seventy sheep. ‘The men were paraded each day to see that they were clean,’ wrote Luard, ‘and in hot weather they were paraded without shoes and stockings to see that their feet were washed and clean; their berths below were inspected daily and hammocks, unless the weather prevented, were sent on deck.’ The voyage took 121 days in all, and just before its end ‘Sergeant Major Maloney’s poor little child that had been ill nearly the whole of the voyage died, and was thrown over the sea gangway’.17
Women and children were regular passengers because a proportion of soldiers leaving for India were allowed to take their families with them. There were far fewer vacancies than there were ‘married families’, which led to heart-rending scenes as husbands and wives said farewell on the dockside. Regiments might be away for many years, and so a couple separated by a posting to India might very well be severed for ever. John Corneille reported:
a remarkable instance of love and resolution on the part of the wife of one of our corporals. The poor creature, passionately fond of her husband and loath to leave him, hoped that by disguising herself in the habit of a soldier she might remain undetected for some days and so make the voyage with him.
She was taken before the captain, still insisting that she was male, but quickly confessed her gender when ordered to show her chest. The regiment collected 20 shillings for her, and she was sent ashore ‘without enquiring if the husband was privy to the plot’, testifying to a degree of official sympathy.18
If a wife could remain concealed until a vessel was well under way she was likely to succeed in staying with her husband. Private John Pearman’s comrades of the 3rd Light Dragoons managed to smuggle ‘four young married women’ when they left for India from Gravesend aboard Thetis in 1845. In 1869, Mrs Johnson and Mrs Burns stowed away aboard the transport Flying Foam. On her arrival in India, Mrs Johnson was allowed to stay in the barracks of HM’s 58th Foot ‘as she has no other place to go’, and Mrs Burns was simply added to the authorised wives’ strength of her husband’s regiment, 107th Foot.
Some children could be a real nuisance, as Major Bayley discovered when he left Bombay for England in 1858 aboard the steamer Ottawa with:
sick and wounded men, and widows and orphans – and heaven forbid that I should ever again find myself on board ship in company with children brought up in India. They were perfect little devils; and for the first day or two we had a fine time of it, as many of the passengers were cripples, and unable to move after them … Trench of the 52nd … was the terror of mischievous and impertinent children. When a complaint was made to him respecting the bad behaviour of one of them, he sought out the offender, whom he smilingly led away, paying no attention to the remonstrances of its mamma, to the fore part of the deck; from whence, a few moments after, a sound resembling the clapping of hands, accompanied by loud howls, was heard; after which the culprit was allowed to join his angry parent.
In a few days the effect of this discipline was very apparent; and peace and comfort pretty nearly established. There were one or two young persons who continued to be troublesome, but a call for Trench never failed to send them to their cabins double quick.19
‘When all were aboard the good ship the word was given to weigh anchor and the band played “God Save the Queen”,’ wrote Private Pearman.
We were now employed in getting out our sea kits and utensils for cooking, and being told off into messes – six each mess. Then we got our hammocks down and were shown how to tie them up and get into them. We were as close together as the fingers on our hands … There was little to do on board ship but play cards and sing in fine weather: parade twice a day, once for health, clean feet and body, and once for muster. Food was very good and I got very stout. A comrade named Hamilton, a tailor, learnt me the use of the needle, which I found afterwards to be very useful to me.20
Pearman was lucky, because the weather was fine for most of his voyage. But Private Henry Metcalfe of HM’s 32nd Foot, who left Chatham on 14 June 1849, experienced
a very stormy voyage, being in a very severe storm off the Cape of Good Hope on the 15th, 16th and 17th August, in which we were what sailors term battened down between hatches without food or drink the whole of that time. We lost on that occasion two of our boats, the bulwarks stove in, our jib boom taken away, also our fore and main top masts, with the running and standing rigging. There was 2½ feet of water on the Troop Deck.21
Soldiers travelled on the troop deck, usually two decks down, with officers and civilian passengers a deck above them. Indiamen were generally armed, and could usually see off pirates and, if sailing in company, with the senior of their captains acting as commodore, might successfully take on a privateer. In early 1804, when there was a real danger from French frigates or privateers, Richard Purvis sailed aboard Sir William Bensley in company with the Indiaman Fame and the frigate HMS Brilliant. Surgeon Walter Henry of HM’s 66th Foot sailed for India in 1815, and although the Treaty of Ghent had just ended the inaptly named ‘War of 1812’ with the United States, his convoy took every precaution.
We sailed in a fleet of five ships – all Indiamen – our Captain being Commodore. One of the ships – the Princess Charlotte – the fastest sailor, was employed as a look-out frigate, to reconnoitre any suspicious strangers, as we were not quite sure that we might not fall in with an American frigate in our course; ignorant, most probably, of the Treaty of Ghent that had just been concluded. All the ships had troops on board, and we were determined to make a good fight.22
The need to clear for action meant that the partitions between cabins were made of canvas so that they could be struck if the ship was brought to action stations. But the partitions were as readily demolished if furniture, procured by the passengers from fitters-out at the docks, slid about during a storm. Mirza Abutakt, a Moslem gentleman travelling by Indiaman, complained of how
Mr Grand, who was of enormous size, and whose cabin was separated from mine only by a canvas partition, fell with all his weight upon my breast and hurt me exceedingly. What rendered this circumstance more provoking was that if, by any accident, the smallest noise was made in my apartment, he would call out, with all the overbearing insolence which characterises the vulgar part of the English in their conduct to Orientals, ‘What are you about? You don’t let me get a wink of sleep’ and other such rude expressions.