Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/355

Charles Dickens] dear to them, and hurried away, often through the agency of secret enemies, into slavery. Was it any wonder such unwilling men became mutinous, and that captains had at last to trust for half their force to thieves, beggars, and the sweepings of cities? The old resident mentions an infamous case of a young carpenter who, during his dinner hour, strolling on the Barbican Pier, was seized by the crew of a man-of-war and carried off to the port-admiral's ship. The mayor, not having backed the press warrant, declared the proceeding unlawful. A town sergeant was sent to the ship, but was told no such man was on board. A marine, however, letting out the secret, the mayor persisted, sent the proper officers, and took the man away. It was a common evasion of the port-admiral's men to put their prisoner, ironed, into the boat alongside, and then to say there was no such person in the ship.

Haydon, the painter, mentions once seeing the greatest of all the celebrities of Plymouth streets in the old time: a little invalid man, with a green shade over his eye, and wearing a shabby well-worn cocked hat, and a buttoned-up undress coat. Haydon, quite a child, called out to his companion, "That's Nelson—take off your hat." Nelson, who was leaning on the arm of a taller man in a black coat and round hat, touched his hat to the boy, and smiled.

It was at Plymouth that good Dr. Trotter, backed by the influence of Lord Howe, succeeded, by regulations as to diet, and the use of lime-juice and fresh vegetables, in stopping the ravages of scurvy. "Ruptured in clambering up the sides of vessels," says the old resident, "his own health ruined, he was allowed to retire, after his inestimable services, on a paltry one hundred and eighty pounds per annum."

Two more traditions of Plymouth, and the crow starts again on his aerial tour. It is still remembered how the "Captain," a seventy-four gun ship, that had borne Nelson's flag, caught fire in Hamoaze. As it was impossible to approach near enough to scuttle the hull, and it was feared the ship would get loose and set others on fire, the launches came and fired heavy artillery at the blazing mass.

At that time sailors, on shore after a long cruise, used to indulge in the wildest follies. One mad fellow once hired twenty-four hackney coaches, and drove out with them in long procession after him. Admiral Penrose, once meeting one of his sailors quite drunk and waving two twenty-pound notes, seized one of the notes and put it in his pocket. In two days the man came on board drunk and penniless. When he was sober, the captain returned him the money.

"Aye, aye, your honour," he said, "I thought I'd money enough for a couple of days longer, but I couldn't tell what had become of it."

Northcote, the painter, was one of Plymouth's celebrities, and Haydon sketches him as a small, wizen, bald-headed man, with little shining eyes, and speaking broad Devonshire.

"Heestoricaul painter!" he said to the young enthusiast. "Why ye'll starve with a bundle of straw under yeer head." The late Sir Charles Eastlake was a Plymouth man, son of the solicitor to the Admiralty. Turner was fond of the neighbourhood of Plymouth. Mr. Cyrus Redding describes him at a pic-nic on Bur Island, watching the long, dark Bolt-head on a rough day His "Crossing the Brook" was taken from near New Bridge, on the Tamar. He said he had never seen so many natural beauties crowded into so small a compass. The inhabitants of Plymouth loaded him with attention. Prout, too, was another Plymouth man, and so was the poet Carrington, whose name has been graven on a granite altar on Dartmoor.

The crow, leaving the town, sails away seaward to the Eddystone, where, after Winstanley had perished, and Rudyard's lighthouse had been burnt, that sturdy Yorkshireman Smeaton raised the present unshakable structure. Following that great and sure guide, nature, he took the trunk of the oak as his model of fixed and stubborn strength, and the granite case of the building he dovetailed and grafted into the solid rock of the gneiss reef. Mr. Smiles describes very admirably how, after a rough and dangerous night, Smeaton used to ascend the Hoe, and look anxiously south-west over the wild waters for his lighthouse. "Sometimes in the dim grey of the morning, he had to wait long, until he could see a tail white pillar of spray shoot up into the air. Thank God, it was still safe. Then as the light grew he could discern his building, temporary house and all, standing firm amid the waters, and, thus far satisfied, he could proceed to his workshops, his mind relieved for the day."

The Plymouth Breakwater, which the crow chose as his point of vantage, has a story of its own, illustrating the energy and perseverance of the engineers of the present century. Earl St. Vincent proposed it, and Mr. Rennie, in 1806, was first to survey the Sound, and suggest a mole erected across the Panther, Tinker, Shovel, and St. Carlos reefs. He expected that it would require two million tons of stone for the mole's three arms, and an expenditure of about one million fifty-five thousand two hundred pounds. Various other plans were proposed, more or less impossible, more or less absurd. One hundred and forty wooden towers full of stones were to be sunk in a double line; there was to be an open-arched mole, like that at Tyre; there were to be one hundred and seventeen triangular floating frames and piers at different points. Mr. Rennie at last received his order, and set to work in 1811. Twenty-five acres of Creston limestone were purchased, and ten vessels and forty-five sloops prepared to bring the stone. The first stone was laid in 1812, and by March of the next year forty-three thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine tons of stone had been deposited. In March, 1814, it bravely resisted a storm, and saved a French vessel under its lee. In 1816 alone three hundred and thirty-two thousand four hundred