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Radio War Nerd EP #511 — British Naval Mutinies of Late 1790s, Pt. 2: Spithead and Nore (Patreon)

Published:
2025-03-27 01:35:37
Imported:
2025-03
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Recorded: March 25, 2025

Part 2 of the War Nerd series on the British naval mutinies of 1797-8 (part 1 here): this episode, we discuss the mutinies at Spithead and Nore, the increasing radicalization of the sailors met with rapidly escalating repression.

At 1:19:50 - Music interlude by Brendon Anderegg. Check out music from his group Mountains hereAt 1:21:51 - We briefly discuss Signalgate

-Maps

*Spithead*The NoreLarger map

*Richard Parker's death mask

Total time: 1:32:01Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

Files

Comments

Martin

Avast me hearties!

Maggie+Al

yoeman in a British military context refers to volunteer cavalry raised at county level. As the name may give an inacurate picture of their class character many in the ranks would have been farmers but the officers would have been uniformly drawn from the gentry. If that description sets off alarm bells your basically on the right track, they were mostly used in aid of the civil power (a charming British euphemism for butchering protestors). In Ireland their role was later taken over by the RIC.

CR

Since you're going to Mexico, you should take a side trip to Cuba.

Mack Beveridge

I see John is back on his Napoleon and the English Channel kick. Napoleon could not have invaded England without defeating the British Navy first and he couldn't do that because he fundamentally did not understand naval warfare and the French sailors and commanders were vastly inferior to the British. Even if, as John suggests, he had been able to slip past the British Navy, he would have been immediately cut off from all reinforcements and resupply. And the landing itself would likely not go smoothly as amphibious operations under fire during this period were essentially impossible.

CR

Because I hate everyone involved, the funniest outcome of Signalgate would be Jonah imprisoned under the Espionage Act (because he still published the chat) and everyone else being fired.

Tvvvv

Maybe the funding cuts made signal chat secure. They laid off whoever is suppose to do the internal spying on the app.

Tvvvv

It would be amazing if the Atlantic goes down because of this.

THEKILLERWHALE

A rare War Nerd blunder by John. Let us have a bit of respect for William and the Norman's crossing of the channel. 1. William assembled his army in Normandy and waited a full month before the conditions were right to make the crossing. Knowing what we know about medieval warfare, this requires absolute clarity and certainty as maintaining a medieval army was a ruinous expense and leaving one fallow for a full month on your own soil is the last thing you want to do. 2. When the crossing was finally attempted, it only took eight hours. 3. We know this because it is a matter of historical record that they boarded the ships and then waited until midnight to cross. This is partially tidal conditions but also because they wanted to arrive in England with the dawn so that they could see while they were landing. So Napoleon absolutely could have learned from the Norman's crossing! They nailed it!

Benke

He should've dug a tunnel

Benke

Never fight uphill me'boys

Horseloverfat

🎶 left my home in Santiago//the heart of the city of Merida//served with my brothers and sisters oh//in the army of pancho villa🎶

THEKILLERWHALE

Another key part of the timing: land your fleet three days after the two potentially hostile armies that you would encounter in England have reduced each other to 1/2 an army following Stamford Bridge, inconveniently situated in the north of England. That is right, William landed his fleet a mere three days after Stamford Bridge. How much is chance/strategy is up for debate. But Napoleon had the right idea. And I smell an episode on the Norman Conquest (Marc Morris' book is excellent popular history on the subject).

Studio Novaya by Fredrick Edward ; Spandau22 coming 2027

Great episode. Sorry this is a totally unrelated comment but if possible could you please do an episode dedicated to the Houthis? My understanding of them is cursory but that they have been a formidable anti-imperialist force who also do function as a government in humanistic ways; meanwhile everyone is discussing the American plans to bomb Yemen without discussing the “why would Republicans want to do that?”

Daniel Hoppes

About Pamela. I've heard you mock it many times. I've read Clarissa, which I consider to be perhaps the greatest novel from England of all time, combining as it does the energy from the Puritan Revolution of the 1640s, and this rock solid belief in the sanctity of the individual, which is one of the major themes of liberalism and English history. And the attempt by a wicked old libertine aristocrat to violate that sanctity. It is an extraordinary book. I'm wondering how Pamela compares. I know it's thought to be weaker, but is it still valuable to read? Or is just prep for Clarissa?

T

My war nerdery started early from historical stories that my grandfather would tell me. His favorite story was the battle of Hastings, and in particular the fate of poor Harold, whom my grandfather would affectionately call “Harold Bung-eye”

fw

The vote to ban and passing around the cat o nine tales anecdote honestly seems like a high point of tory (and all the other parties, in contemporary times - nothing's changed) empathy. I cannot imagine a similar shock happening now. If you tried something equivalent today, they'd simply laugh harder. certainly the attempts to show the reality of the hundreds of thousands murdered via the bipartisan attempt to exterminate 'useless eaters' in the last few years has had that effect. a literal parallel with corporal punishment might be with the recent inquiries (it's cyclical, these inquiries never end; the purpose of the system is what it does, etc) into the mass abuse including corporal punishment of children in mental health institutions. the political response? to empower GPs to fast track those demographics for British MAID with no oversight, for profit.

underthefloorboard

wow of all time? i'll be honest i'm slowly making my way through Vol 1 and while i do think it's well written i'm finding the pace of it rather PUNISHINGLY slow,not that i could ever imagine me and Harold Bloom ever seeing eye to eye but his quote about how he read that book every year is such bullshit to me lol

Tom Warner

second this demand but meanwhile there are a solid handful of eps in the back catalog covering the Houthis and Yemen in general

GN

Eight hours crossing the channel is really very fast. The wind often blows westerly in the channel, and until modern fore-and-aft rigged ships, you only really picked up speed when you sailed downwind. Is the eight hour figure from Mortis's book?

William

They’ve been doing episodes on Yemen since they started the podcast. There’s even an index you can look at, on this very Patreon app, that gives topics and episode numbers. Look before you ask

William

What’s to update? They got bombed again, it did nothing, houthis are still in control and have restarted their blockade. This is easy shit to research “Can you do..” comments are annoying as fuck. Bite me

William

Interesting to see the same delusions spring forth from the minds of out-of-touch elites, when they’re slapped in the face with the wet fish of reality

William

The rank stupidity of Elon dismantling one covert state apparatus after another is just a chef’s kiss. Just tearing out one flying buttress after another

Jason Thompson

These were incredible episodes!! More Age of Sail! More mutinies!

Jason Thompson

War Nerd should do an episode on Important Syrupy Sentimental Liberal novels, and tackle Pamela and Uncle Tom’s Cabin (….maybe. Not sure if these are at all equivalent)

THEKILLERWHALE

Yes. I believe the rough details are confirmed in multiple original sources. It is above all related to the fact that they set out under darkness and arrived around dawn so 8 might not be a precise number and, looking back at his book, it actually says 9pm instead of midnight. So maybe more in the 10-12 range. Still, not bad!

xnfec

One of my early memories is of seeing a history in pictures type book which contained an image of John Byng standing on deck, blindfolded and holding a hankerchief at the end of his outstretched arm which upon dropping would signal the marines to fire. I later learned that he was executed for the loss of Minorca. This was a big deal apparently and he was rumoured to have been made a scapegoat. His sin was to have taken his squadron of ships to Gibralter for repair following the initial engagement rather than fighting to the death. Also, he was allowed to kneel on a cushion rather than standing but the picture I saw made the whole thing seem more noble.

xnfec

It was Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1926 who put Britain back on the gold standard and made the monied classes much richer. Not so good for international trade I would have imagined. Also, there was not a lot of gold at that time as the Americans had most of of it after WW1.

Studio Novaya by Fredrick Edward ; Spandau22 coming 2027

I don’t know what’s to update that’s the point 🤷‍♂️🙃 I’m an artist who makes work for a small but highly engaged and supportive following and I love it when they tell me what they’re thinking about and wanting. I’m not expecting to be catered to but it is super reasonable and meant as a gesture of support to let them know what I’m most currently curious about. I’m glad you doubled down tho, makes your shade way cuter when you are cartoonish about it

T

The creeps staffing those apparatus don’t just cease to exist either….

a clash of purple

Dolan's argument is that the British navy wasn't nearly as fearsome as English-language historians like to say. I don't know if he's right; I don't know if we can ever know the truth, since Napoleon chose to throw his army away in Russia instead. I mean, I'm sorry, but however bad an idea it would have been to launch an amphibious invasion of England, it's infinitely dumber to try a land invasion of Russia. And more than that, at least attacking England would be the right thing to do, from a moral and strategic perspective. I have no idea what he thought he was going to accomplish by attacking Russia. I mean, people give reasons for why he did it, but they're all incredibly stupid reasons that make Napoleon seem like a complete idiot. It's as if in Return of the King, Aragorn took the army of Gondor and attacked Lothlorien instead of Mordor. Or in Dune, if Paul had his Fremen army all slit their throats and die in the desert instead of attacking the Harkonnen and the Emperor.

a clash of purple

It's stunning to me that there are still people who think chopping the heads off aristocrats is a bad idea or wrong, somehow. The English ones are especially disgusting. And ugly. And evil.

Daniel Hoppes

I was lucky, I'm a house painter. So I listened to an audio version of it, in which each letter was spoken by a really great actor. So I imagine reading it might take a little more time to get acquainted with the rhythm. Yeah, but the argument of all time is merely an expression of how it encapsulates the spirit of the English Revolution of the 1640s, 1650s. And how it captures this society in transition, even a century afterwards. And Clarissa is such an extraordinarily intelligent person in the novel. And realistically drawn. You get a sense of the power of this ideology of liberalism, which is just an updated secularized version of puritanism, so far as I'm concerned. It is an ideology that I disagree with violently. But for me, it was the key to understanding this phenomenon of the English nation and its power and the ideological/spiritual justification for its power. All these forces, class conflict and crass money matters, are shoving this one girl, who seems to just be trying to be true to herself, in all different directions. England, I take to be a monstrosity after the death of Byron or in the 1820s, they've just become so horrifyingly despicable that, unlike with the 18th century where there was a joie de vivre, i just grit my teeth at everything. In the eighteenth century they saw themselves as the homeland of liberty, and there was a small degree in which that could be justified, at least in the experience of some sections of society. Richardson i think captures so much of the spirit and the real contradictions and limitations that make England England, at least at its cultural high point. Clarissa, this impossibly intelligent and conscientious girl, is an ideal, and there's this sense that the ideal is fooling herself. And you can see what happens to this ideal in the novel. I'm sorry i'm rambling and have failed to express myself well, but maybe i'll think back on it later.

a clash of purple

It's really a testament to the power of British propaganda that Stalin is remembered as worse than Churchill. The man was basically England's version of Boris Yeltsin. Just a fat, odious tub of lard absolutely drenched in liquor at all times, chuckling around his cigar at the idea of Indians starving to death.

a clash of purple

I'm not sure who's really out of touch. The way that commoners and serfs imagine that their masters really truly care about them, or the way that revolutionaries imagine that they can create solidarity among underclasses who live and think like backbiting vermin, to me seems more delusional than indulging in paranoid fantasies. The elites are usually the ones who win, after all. It could be that what seems like insane overconfidence and conviction is a better survival strategy than daydreams about the poors working together instead of cutting their own throats every single time.

Daniel Hoppes

I love the literature episodes. I hope they do, too. Pamela and Uncle Tom's Cabin. I'm not sure I'd place side by side. I haven't read Pamela, though. Uncle Tom's Cabin may not perhaps be the best written book ever, but it does have an interesting and moving portrayal of slavery and slave hunters. I like the comparison between Turgenev's Sportsman's Sketches and Uncle Tom's Cabin. One supposedly is credited with ending slavery in America, and the other is credited with ending serfdom in Russia. And by comparing the two, maybe you get a measure of the quality of each culture. Not to the advantage of the Americans, I'm afraid. Pushkin mocked Clarissa too. I wonder if this sentimentality, syrupyness, as you call it, is just a problem of liberalism in general and their lack of perspective. Is it due to the unrealistic nature of their entire worldview that it gets these excessive, sickly modes of empathy and compassion that do not do justice to their subject?

William

It might not be one or the other, but a little of both, with enough of the poors going along with the rich for survival purposes to tip the scales

underthefloorboard

i think The Life of Josiah Henson & The Golovlyov Family would make great counterpoints to Sportsman's Sketches and Uncle Tom's Cabin especially in Henson's case he was apparently the basis for Uncle Tom's Cabin (although Ishmael Reed said that she ripped him off)

underthefloorboard

i did read a blog somewhere on Clarissa where the person pointed how for somebody who wanted the novel to be respectable Richardson's books have a lecherous streak

Daniel Hoppes

It was the times. I heard original readers of clarissa were livid that she didnt end up with her rapist. But samuel richardson definitely has a very, sincerely respectable level of moral seriousness. He recognizes the sexual exitement quite openly, but recognizes the many problems that attend it.

William

Most people who ask for episodes haven’t listened to the back catalog, so my initial response is not as out of pocket as you keep trying to make it. When I am interested in something, I look into it first. Because this is so easy to do, easier than it has ever been in history, your request struck me as incredibly lazy. It doesn’t take that much media literacy to sift through the bullshit, just time. Anyways, where I’ve been blunt, you’ve been coy and condescending. Interesting how you respond to the lightest of pushback

drizzly_november

That description of the Nore reminds me of the Mississippi south of New Orleans, which, prior to the creation of the Gulf Outlet Canal, was nearly impossible to navigate without expert pilots. New Orleans could send ships out to sea, but it was impossible to find the city from the Gulf. Something about river cities protected by a swampy labyrinth from the wider ocean.

Alex Muir

I don't know when the first modern industrial strike was (I seem to remember in Genesis the Hebrews held a sit-down strike when Pharoah raised the quota of bricks they had to make in a day without a pay increase), but I do know to 'strike' in its modern meaning of stopping work in protest comes from seafaring. You know the expression "to strike the sails"? Well, if you do that on a sailing ship it stops sailing. And that's what sailors did when they had had enough... It was the maritime equivalent of laying down your tools. When the expression spread land-based work places, the sails bit had to be dropped off of the expression...

Terry Dunk

The Dig Radio w Dan Denvir has an excellent episode on the Houthis from a year or two back

IRIDYSCENZIA

You’re doing great! Keep it up! 👏

CR

It turns out we can never have anything nice.

Capital Knockers

Coming from the uk, these episode on the british empire are fantastic. The establishment do an excellent job on keeping this part of history undocumented. I'm just going through the old episodes with british empire tags. Any more are greatly appreciated.