Sahib: The British Soldier in India 1750–1914. Richard Holmes
troopships of the 1870s had large troop decks for the rank and file. Private Frank Richards of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, who went out to India in 1902, ‘enjoyed every day of his voyage’. His battalion embarked from Southampton, and the voyage to Bombay took twenty-one days. ‘The food was excellent,’ he wrote, ‘and the ship’s bakers, who provided us with excellent bread, made money too by selling us penny buns.’ Sailors, too, made some extra money by charging a penny for a Bombay fizzer – a glass of fresh water with sherbet in it. The men slept in hammocks, and after the ship had passed Gibraltar they were allowed to sleep up on the hurricane deck or forecastle, rather than on the sweltering troop deck below. There was an hour’s ‘Swedish drill’ in the morning, and most of the rest of the time was spent gambling: ‘There were card-parties of Kitty-nap and Brag dotted here and there on the hurricane deck and forecastle, but Under and Over, Crown and Anchor, and House were the most popular games.’24 A young officer, however, complained that troopships were poorly provided with first-class accommodation:
This was aft, over the screw, its main feature being a long saloon with cabins on either hand, those of the naval officers being on the starboard side while on the port side was an elongated rookery in which ladies and children were herded. There were also a large ladies’ cabin on the deck below, known as the ‘dovecote’, and senior officers dwelt on this deck, inside sombre, ill-ventilated structures dubbed ‘horse-boxes’. Pandemonium, which provided berthing for the meaner sort, was a deck below this again, well beneath sea level, where rats abounded and the air was tinned; it was no paradise, even if it hardly deserved the title by which it was invariably designated. Oddly enough, only on my fourth and last voyage on an Indian trooper, did I ever find myself relegated to these unpleasant quarters.25
At the beginning of the period overseas travel was rare, and men took suitable precautions when undertaking it. John Corneille was off the Canaries when ‘most of the officers and men had themselves bled by way of precaution, as we were approaching the nearer visits of the sun. It is, I believe needless when in perfect health, the only precaution to be recommended is abstemiousness in eating and drinking, and regularity in hours.’26 However, on sea as on land, soldiers were generally ready to drink to excess if they got the chance. Albert Hervey’s 1833 voyage was punctuated by ‘courts-martial innumerable amongst the recruits, several floggings, and one death’.27 Lieutenant William Gordon-Alexander’s 93rd Highlanders left Portsmouth in June 1857 and were inspected by the Queen before departure, greatly valuing this ‘highly complimentary farewell from our much-loved Queen’. But during the ceremony of ‘Crossing the Line’ some of the sailors got drunk, and several of the 93rd joined in, and were put in irons. One of them ‘a violent-tempered man of bad character’ began to drum his heels on the deck, knowing that the colonel’s cabin was directly below. When Gordon-Alexander ‘had to take measures to put a stop to the noise … two other 93rd prisoners … then broke into bad language and “threatened to be even with me” the first time we were under fire together’.28 Corneille had a rather easier time:
There is a forfeit which custom has fixed upon those who cross the equinox for the first time. It is taxed at a quart of brandy and a pound of sugar, or half a crown. Those that are not willing to pay undergo a christening of some severity. They are hoisted by a rope tied round their waist to the end of the main yard, and from there are given three duckings. We saw all the ceremony but the ducking, which the captain would not permit to take place for fear of the sharks.29
Albert Hervey recalled ‘the usual ceremonies of saving and ducking’. He was exempt from ‘the dirty ordeal because he had crossed the line already’, but still had to pay ‘Neptune five shillings by way of a fee’.30 In 1801 an unamused Mr Maw objected to the jollifications, and when he reached Bombay he accused the captain of assault: the justices inclined to his view, and the captain was fined a staggering £400.
It was always more congenial to travel as an officer than a soldier or NCO, but officers travelling without their regiments had to strike bargains with sea captains for their food and accommodation. It paid to get on the right side of the captain, and to remain there, for the commanders of East Indiamen were famously autocratic: in 1818 one clapped an army lieutenant in irons for whistling in his august presence. In August 1768, William Hickey, whose father had secured him an East India Company commission to get him out of London, visited one of the Honourable Company’s officials, Mr Coggan, at India House:
He advised me to try for a passage to Madras in the Plassey, and gave me a letter of introduction to Captain Waddell who commanded her and who was a particular friend of his.
The letter I delivered the same day to Captain Waddell at his house in Golden Square. He received me with much civility, saying that, although he had determined not to take any more passengers … he could not refuse his friend Mr Coggan. He told me he expected to sail early in December, and that I as well as everybody else must be on board prior to the ship’s leaving Gravesend. I next ascertained what was to be paid, and found it to be fifty guineas for a seat at the captain’s table.31
In 1804 Richard Purvis’s father was told that his son, a newly appointed East India Company cadet, was to sail aboard Sir William Bensley at the cost of £95 and for this ‘of course he is to be at the Captain’s table – I hope you will approve it – at the third mate’s he could have gone for £55’.32 The following year Captain George Elers of HM’s 12th Foot returned from Madras:
Captain Crawford and myself made a bargain with Captain Timbrell, of the Hawkesbury, for a passage, and we got a large cabin between us, where we slung our cots. It was the last aft on the starboard side. This cabin cost us something more than £200 each, and part of the 74th Regiment’s poor, worn-out old men came on board with us; also the colours of the regiment and Lieutenant Colonel Swinton, commanding officer … [Other passengers included] a Mrs Ure, the wife of a Dr Ure of Hyderabad, who had two fine children of three and four years old under her charge, the children of Colonel Kirkpatrick of Hyderabad, by a Princess, to whom report said he was married. Her Highness would not part with her children until £10,000 had been settled on each of them. They were a boy and a girl, and they had a faithful old black man, who was very fond of them. Mrs Ure had an infant of only a few months old, nursed by a young native woman, immensely fat, and she had also a young European woman to be her maid.33
A traveller’s status was no guarantee of comfort, however. Warren Hastings, an outgoing governor-general, complained of:
The Want of Rest, the violent Agitation of the Ship, the Vexation of seeing and hearing all the Moveables of your cabin tumble about you, the Pain in your Back, Days of Unquiet and Apprehension, and above all the dreadful Fall of the Globe Lantern.34
The Hon. Emily Eden, sister to Governor-General Auckland, wrote to her friend Lady Campbell in 1836:
I know you will shudder to hear that last Saturday, the fifth day of dead calm, not a cloud visible, and the Master threatening three weeks more of the same weather, the thermometer at 84 in the cabin – temps on the go and meals more than ever the important points of life – at this awful crisis the Steward announced that the coffee and orange-marmalade were both at an end.
No wonder the ship is so light, we have actually ate it a foot out of the water since we left the Cape.35
It took Garnet Wolseley fifty days to get to Table Bay. He shared a cabin with Ensign Grahame of HM’s 22nd Foot, and sometimes their large square porthole was fastened shut by the crew. ‘When so fastened down in the tropics the cabin became unbearable,’ he