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The party consisted of three post-captains, a commander, four lieutenants, and half a dozen mids, ourselves included; which, with the jolly old admiral our host, made up a nice compact party. The guests, it appeared, had all been invited expressly to meet us and do us honour; we consequently found ourselves to be the lions of the evening.
Your eldest son, Fitz-Heehaw, is sure of a place in Parliament; your younger sons, the De Brays, will kindly condescend to be post-captains and lieutenants-colonels, and to represent us in foreign courts or to take a good living when it falls convenient. No and patriots as we are, under happier circumstances, Smith and I, I have no doubt, were we dukes ourselves, would stand by our order.
I bore in mind that there were some two hundred and fifty post-captains in the English navy clamouring for employment, and that there were at the moment I speak of only about forty employed. I calculated in those days of profound peace there was more probability of active service in the Eastern world than elsewhere.
Expansion sets in; and when contraction follows somebody is squeezed. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars there were over eight hundred post-captains in the British navy. What could peace do for them? Eight pleasant months I spent on shore at the Academy, and then was again whisked off to sea, there to remain for substantially all the rest of the war.
About the year 1775 they were placed in a different rate, and those carrying 20 guns had now the name of 20-gun post-ships given to them, signifying that they were commanded by post-captains. Afterwards vessels still called frigates, carrying 24 guns, were also ranked as post-ships.
Middies grew into post-captains, and admirals into dotards during that prolonged struggle. And what have we in literature to show for it all? Marryat's novels, many of which are founded upon personal experience, Nelson's and Collingwood's letters, Lord Cochrane's biography that is about all. I wish we had more of Collingwood, for he wielded a fine pen.
'We 're the two wretchedest creatures alive; haven't any of ye to spare a bit of sympathy for us? Julia began. 'We 're like on a pitchfork. There's William's duty to his country, and there 's his affection for me, and they won't go together, because Government, which is that horrid Admiralty, fears pitching and tossing for post-captains' wives.
No part of the unfortunate circumstances that have since occurred can, I believe, be attributed to my neglects or mistakes; and therefore I am not without hope that, when the Admiralty know I am suffering an unjust imprisonment, they will think me worthy to be put upon the post-captains' list.
I was bundled into the pinnace with old canvas, old ropes, and old blocks, condemned stores to the dock-yard, and, as I approached the landing-place appropriated for the use of admirals in posse, I saw embark from the stairs, exclusively set apart for admirals and post-captains in esse, my captain and the port-admiral in the admiral's barge, and seated between these two awful personages, there sat a civilian, smiling in all the rotundity and fat of a very pleasant countenance, and very plain clothes, and forming a striking contrast to the grim complacency, and the ironbound civility, of the two men in uniform.
Yet occasionally, when two or three post-captains, contemporaries and fleet-mates, gathered here to smoke after-dinner cigars, the host would unlock the glass-topped table, select some object from his miscellany, and hold it up with a "D'you remember ?" And one or other of his guests sometimes all of them would laugh and nod and blow great clouds of smoke and slide into eager reminiscence.
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