Essential Information
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National Maritime Museum
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20 Aug 2010
Image courtesy of Glasgow University Archive Services, ref. UGC182
A fascinating online bicentennial exhibition has just been launched at Glasgow University Archive Services. It concerns a log kept by a Glaswegian able seaman Andrew Service. The log offers a rare glimpse into the daily routine of service on the 38 gun frigate Medusa during the Napoleonic Wars. Recounted are not the regulation views of the ship's officers but Andrew's own impressions of 9 years at sea including distant foreign ports and their indigenous inhabitants, battles with the Spanish treasure ships and the perils of getting one's fingers caught in the armoury hammock!
Frequently phonetic, Andrew's spelling is a challenge to one's palaeographic skills and to read it aloud is to hear a little Glaswegian of 200 years ago. Recording the encounter with the Spanish treasure ships, he writes:
Commenced action and after 3½ hours ingagin 3 of thim struck and blue up in action. They were laden with monny.
And what of Greenwich? The project turned out to be a great example of collaboration in the Archive sector, with a fusion of resources and expertise up and down the country. As a former employee of Glasgow University Archive Services, I was only too happy to lend a hand. I visited the National Archives to find out more about Andrew Service. The muster rolls soon revealed he joined aged 20 and in the 9 years he was on the ship, his age remains at 20! In this time his rank changes from landsman to ordinary seaman, then on to able seaman and then back to 'ordy' for reasons we can only guess at. Imagine my amazement as I turned a page and found a certain well known naval personality had also recently been onboard the Medusa:
Image of ADM 36/15155 courtesy of the National Archives
I regularly commute on the train with a colleague from the Museum's Plans and Photos department and it became apparent that we also had the plans of HMS Medusa. These give another perspective of what shipboard life was like for Andrew Service. As Historic Photograph and Ship Plans Manager Jeremy Michell points out:
The lower deck plan (ZAZ2968) illustrates the various cabins for the lieutenants, purser, surgeon, captain of marines, and the master on one side of the wardroom bulkhead, and the standing warrant officers on the other side. Compare these cabins to that of the Captain on the upper deck (ZAZ2969), and the space on the lower deck for the sailors' hammocks and tables, then one gets a sense of the spatial distribution onboard.
In other words, stores, guns and two hundred and fifty people crammed into a space the size of the Caird Library reading room!
The exhibition was launched 200 years to the day when Andrew Service completed his log, left the ship and 'retired' on a naval pension of £10 a year! Its publication online caused quite a stir and generated a lot of interest.
Martin (Manuscripts Cataloguer)