Abstract
The Duke of Clarence, the third son of George III, succeeded his brother, George IV, to become king on 26 June 1830. Sixty-four years of age, and generally known as ‘Silly Billy’, William IV was an uninspiring figure. By the time of his death, however, just seven years later in June 1837, The Times wrote warmly of ‘the most excellent, the most patriotic and the most British Monarch that ever sat on the imperial throne of these realms’.1 This was more than the routine praise demanded in an obituary notice; there was genuine respect for William, now commonly referred to as ‘the Sailor King’.2
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Notes
The Times, 15 July 1830, cited in Tom Pocock, Sailor King: The Life of William IV (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1991), p. 228.
On the changing image of the sailor, see Michael Lewis, The Navy in Transition, 1814–64: A Social History (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965), and
Henry Baynham, From the Lower Deck: The Old Navy, 1780–1840 (London: Hutchinson, 1969).
Eric J. Evans, The Great Reform Act of1832, 2nd edn (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 54.
Eric J. Evans, in The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 1783–1870 (London and New York: Longman, 1983), p. 211, emphasizes the importance of the reform: ‘The electoral system of Great Britain and Ireland was radically changed without revolution.’
Pocock, op. cit., pp. 218–19. Philip Ziegler, King William IV (London: Collins, 1971), p. 221, who refers to ‘the Mephistophelean role [William] had played so clumsily over the last few months’, is less complimentary than Pocock about the king’s contribution.
One of the best assessments is by William Toynbee, in Phases of the Thirties (London: Henry J. Glashier, 1927), p. 148, who points out that ‘if the throne had been occupied during the Reform conflicts by either the Duke of York or the Duke of Cumberland [the King’s brothers] it is tolerably certain that their obstinate bigotry would have created a national convulsion which might easily have led to Revolution.’
On the changing role of the navy, see Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Macmillan, 1983), and
Basil Greenhill and Ann Giffard, Steam, Politics and Patronage: The Transformation of the Royal Navy, 1815–54 (London: Conway, 1994).
In a similar way, Victorian army officers conformed to a changing model of how they were meant to be. See John Peck, War, the Army and Victorian Literature (London: Macmillan, 1998).
For a concise overall account of Marryat’s life and career, see John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Harlow: Longman, 1988), pp. 412–14.
As an illustration of the lack of critical interest in Marryat, see Paul Schellinger (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Novel (Chicago and London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998), which, in the course of over 1600 pages, mentions Marryat by name but offers virtually no commentary at all on his novels.
The only substantial work on Marryat that has been published recently is Louis J. Parascandola, Puzzled Which to Choose’: Conflicting Socio-Poltical Views in the Works of Captain Frederick Marryat (New York: Peter Lang, 1997).
C. Northcote Parkinson, Portsmouth Point (Liverpool and London: University Press of Liverpool and Hodder & Stoughton, 1948). Some admirers of the novels of Patrick O’Brian seem to be principally interested in his reconstruction of the Nelson era. At the same time, one senses in the essays in this vein about O’Brian that are included in the paperback editions of his works an identification with what the writers see as the conservative core values of these books.
See, for example, the essay by Charlton Heston included with H.M.S. Surprise (London: HarperCollins, 1996), pp. 383–8, and the essay by
William Waldegrave included with The Yellow Admiral (London: HarperCollins, 1997), pp. 265–8.
Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914 (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 49.
Captain Frederick Marryat, Frank Mildmay, or The Naval Officer (London: George Routledge, 1896).
Among those who comment on sadism in Marryat are Charles Napier Robinson, The British Tar in Fact and Fiction: The Poetry, Pathos and Humour of the Sailor’s Life (London and New York: Harper, 1909), and
Oliver Warner, Captain Marryat: A Rediscovery (London: Constable, 1953), p. 153.
On the Newgate Novel, see Keith Hollingsworth, The Newgate Novel, 1830–1847: Bulwer, Ainsworth, Dickens and Thackeray (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1963).
On Disraeli as a political novelist, see Mary Poovey, ‘Disraeli, Gaskell, and the Condition of England’, in John Richetti (ed.), The Columbia History of the British Novel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 508–32. The novels of Jane Austen might lead us to believe that a middle-class model of behaviour was dominant by the early nineteenth century, but the novels of her exact contemporary Sir Walter Scott focus on the issue of the transition from an old fighting culture to a new social dispensation.
Captain Frederick Marryat, The King’s Own (London: George Routledge, 1896).
The volume in the collected edition is Captain Frederick Marryat, Mr Midshipman Easy (London: George Routledge, 1896). The references in this chapter are to Mr Midshipman Easy (London: Pan, 1967), which includes an Introduction by Oliver Warner.
Captain Frederick Marryat, Peter Simple (London: George Routledge, 1896).
On the complex nature of mutiny, see Greg Dening, Mr Bligh’s Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
On boys’ adventure stories, see Joseph Bristow, Empire Boys: Adventures in a Man’s World (London: HarperCollins, 1991).
Captain Frederick Marryat, Poor Jack (London: George Routledge, 1898).
Edward Howard, Rattlin the Reefer (London: Oxford University Press, 1971).
Nautical Economy has been republished as Jack Nastyface: Memoirs of a Seaman (Hove: Wayland, 1973). Jack Nastyface has been identified as William Robinson. His account of the Battle of Trafalgar, from Nautical Economy, is reprinted in Dean King (ed.), Every Man Will Do His Duty: An Anthology of Firsthand Accounts from the Age of Nelson (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), pp. 159–68.
Charles Pemberton, The History of Pel Verjuice, The Wanderer, ed. January Searle (London: James Watson, 1853).
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Peck, J. (2001). Captain Marryat’s Navy. In: Maritime Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333985212_4
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