When the great war came at last to an end in 1815, leaving Marryat a commander at the age of three-and-twenty, his ambition was still to be the successful naval officer, and not the portrait painter of the sea life. Twelve years were to pass before he ceased to be employed. During this period he held three commands, and once more saw the face of war. It was a small and poor war after the heroic conflicts of his boyhood, but still it had its own difficulties and trials. He began to use his pen in these years, but at first it was for merely professional purposes. His code of signals must have been prepared, and his pamphlet on the best method of recruiting the navy, and his scheme for stopping Channel smuggling, were certainly written, in this second period, while he was still looking forward to the chance of hoisting his flag.

Marryat was one of the great swarm of Englishmen who profited by the peace to visit the Continent, which had been as nearly as might be shut to the peaceful traveller for twenty-two years. He is credited with having “occupied himself in acquiring a perfect knowledge of such branches of science as might prove useful should the Lords of the Admiralty think fit to employ[47] him in a voyage of discovery or survey.” Doubtless Marryat loved his profession, and worked at it, but when he was recalled from Italy, in 1818, on some vague scheme of African exploration he was probably engaged in amusing himself. The scheme came to nothing, and in January, 1819, he married—a most convincing proof that his intention of exploring Africa had not lasted long. Mrs. Marryat was a Miss Shairp, daughter of a Scotch gentleman who had been Consul-General in Russia. Marryat never agreed with St. Vincent that married men are ruined for the service, and some eighteen months later he was at sea again in command of the Beaver sloop.

In this commission he saw the end of the man who had kept Europe in turmoil for the major part of a generation. The Beaver was ordered on an all-round cruise in the South Atlantic to show the flag at Madeira and the Azores, at the solitary rock of Tristan d’Acunha, at our own possessions at the Cape, and finally to do guard duty at St. Helena. When the Beaver arrived at her station Napoleon was just reaching the end of his final years of imprisonment. We still maintained a naval guard against the enterprises of any Buonapartist adventurer who might try to take the Emperor off the rock where he sat, consumed with unavailing regrets, and disgracing his fall by undignified squabbles with Sir Hudson Lowe. An English man-of-war was always kept cruising to windward of the island. The last officer who performed this duty was Captain Marryat. The Beaver was watching for the possible liberator, who never came, when Napoleon died. Marryat, who was a[48] clever draughtsman, took a sketch of the Emperor on his death-bed. He was already apparently suffering from dysentery or he fell ill immediately (and somewhat conveniently) afterwards. As his health did not permit him to remain in the South Atlantic station any longer, he was allowed to exchange into the Rosario. In her he brought the despatches announcing the Emperor’s death home to Spithead. From Spithead he was ordered round to Harwich to form part of the squadron which escorted the body of Queen Caroline to Cuxhaven. This piece of ceremonial duty was followed by work of a very different kind. The Rosario was told off for revenue duty in the Channel, and continued cruising for smugglers till she was put out of commission in February, 1822. This was service of a very sufficiently serious kind. There was indeed no fighting to be done, but the cruising was arduous and incessant. The smugglers were among the smartest seamen in the Channel, and to catch them required on the part of the revenue officers constant vigilance, great activity, and an intimate knowledge of the coast—that is to say, if the work was to be properly done. As a matter of fact it seems to have been scamped. Marryat, who had perhaps been infected by Cochrane with an inability to let a comfortable old abuse alone, forwarded to the Admiralty a long despatch showing that the preventive service was inefficiently performed, and pointing out how it could be improved. The despatch was written after the Rosario had been paid off, and was founded on his own experience. It gives a curious glimpse into a phase of sea life which has entirely disappeared since the establishment of free[49] trade ruined the smugglers by making it not worth any man’s while to smuggle. The industry which went on all round the coast, from the mouth of the Clyde to the mouth of the Firth of Forth, was conducted on varying principles in different districts. Marryat dealt only with what he had seen himself:—the smuggling carried on in that part of the English Channel which lies between Portsmouth and the Start.

When he came to write as a novelist, Marryat displayed a certain sympathy with the adventurous scamps who ran cargoes of brandy from Cherbourg to the coast of Hampshire and Dorsetshire. But Captain Marryat the revenue officer was a very different person. In this severe and official capacity he did his best to suppress what he afterwards described with a distinctly humorous sympathy. The smugglers, he pointed out, profited by the system adopted by the English revenue boats. Cherbourg was the centre of the trade—the free trade, as the smugglers called it, not knowing, poor fellows, who their real enemy was. Their vessels were almost exclusively manned by Portland or Weymouth men. When they were going to run a cargo to a point of the coast with which they were not familiar, they would take on a local hand, but as a rule they kept the trade pretty exclusively to themselves. When one of their luggers was sighted by the revenue boats and could not show a clean pair of heels, the cargo was jettisoned. If this happened in mid-channel it was a clear loss to everybody. The smuggler crews were only paid when they landed a cargo. The revenue boats could get no prize money unless they seized the tubs of spirits. If, however,[50] the cargo was jettisoned in shallow water, the case was different. The smugglers might return, or their confederates on shore could fish up the sunken kegs, and then of course they earned their money. On the other hand, if the landing was stopped, or the kegs were dredged up by the revenue officers they earned their prize money. It is therefore perfectly obvious that it was the interest of the revenue officers not to see the smuggling luggers in mid-channel. The more brandy they picked up, the more prize money they earned, and the more credit also. But by allowing the smugglers to approach the English coast they gave them many opportunities of running cargoes. Partly because they wished to secure the approval of their chiefs, who took no account of any service which did not include the capture of kegs—partly also out of a natural human desire for prize money, the revenue boats nursed the illicit trade. They went very little to sea, and confined their exertions to scouring the coasts in cutters and gigs. Marryat’s idea was that much more effect would be produced by pursuing the luggers in mid-channel. If, he argued with great force, the smugglers found that they were compelled to make a dead loss, voyage after voyage, they would soon become tired. As it was, the immense profits earned on any cargo successfully run, paid them for the loss of two, or even three. Of course if his system were adopted there would be no captures to show for the credit of the coastguard, and no prize money to be earned. But the smuggling would be put a stop to. The despatch in which he set forth his opinions is a thoroughly able and business-like document,[51] and shows that if Marryat was allowed to fall out of the service it was not because he was wanting in zeal or ability.

Although Marryat, like every other naval officer who ever held His Majesty’s commission, thought himself “no favourite” with the Admiralty, he had no intelligible reason to complain—at least as yet. The grumblings of naval officers are generally, indeed, unintelligible to the landsman, who is apt, after hearing much of them, to arrive at the conclusion that if every gentleman in the service were promoted to be Lord High Admiral and made G.C.B. to morrow morning, they would all be as discontented as ever by midday. Certainly Marryat, who was a commander at twenty-three, and had received a command, on service which brought him into notice, in time of profound peace and reduction of armaments, when the great majority of his fellow officers were vegetating on half pay on shore, had little cause to growl. He must, in truth, have had very good influence at the Admiralty, for though he was only paid off the Rosario in February, 1822, he was re-appointed to the Larne, of twenty guns, in March, 1823, so that he had barely a year on shore. The Larne was fitted out at Portsmouth for service in the East Indies. In July Marryat sailed from Spithead for his station, this time taking out his wife and family. An entry in his log briefly records an accident which might, if the amplified form of the story given in his biography is to be taken as literally true, have ended his career in a somewhat absurd manner. His gig upset in Falmouth Harbour while he was in it. To an athletic man and good[52] swimmer a ducking in the month of July was no great disaster, but the boat carried a bumboat woman and a midshipman. The woman swam like a fish, and was delighted at the prospect of distinction and profit apparently thrown in her way. She fastened on Marryat, intent on saving a captain, and refused peremptorily to let him go when she was asked to transfer her help from the superior officer, who did not need it, to the obscure midshipman, who, not being able to swim, was in imminent danger of drowning. In some way or another Marryat did contrive to get rid of the incumbrance of her assistance, and the mid was not sacrificed. Whether he did not invent the bumboat woman’s devotion to rank, is perhaps doubtful. A bumboat woman was capable of acting in this way, no doubt, but then Marryat was equally capable of seeing that she ought to behave in this way, and of crediting her with fulfilling her duty.

When the Larne reached India, Marryat found that she was to form part of the combined force ordered to invade Burmah. This war, which filled 1824 and 1825, was of a kind common with us before we learnt that in war, as in building, it is more economical to employ a hundred men for one day, than one man for a hundred days—before also the common use of steam had made great rapidity of movement possible. Sir Archibald Campbell’s force was not numerous enough, and was unable to move quick. The operations dragged on for months, till fevers, cholera, and scurvy, had almost annihilated our army, and had almost unmanned the squadron. The duties of the navy, in the war, were to clear the Irrawaddy of Burmese war-boats, to transport[53] the troops, protect their landing, cover their flank, and now and then to help storm a stockade, or beat down the fire of native batteries mounted with guns which would not fire, handled by gunners who could not shoot. The enemy fought fiercely, according to his lights, but then he had neither good weapons, nor discipline, nor experience. Except when attacked in a particularly strong position, by an insufficient force, the poor Burmese were sent into action as cattle to the slaughter. We naturally make the most of these wars, and politically they are often of the utmost importance, but as far as fighting is concerned, a wilderness of them is not equal to the action between the Shannon and the Chesapeake or the Blanche and the Pique. Yet Marryat was well entitled to say, as he did in a letter to his brother Samuel, that the crew of the Larne had in the course of five months “undergone a severity of service almost unequalled.” The climate was deadly to unseasoned men exposed to it in an unhealthy season. Much toil had to be gone through in moving the troops, in rowing guard against the Burmese war-boats, and even in doing engineer work. It is a complaint sometimes made by the navy that, in combined operations with the army, a disproportionate amount of the toil falls to them, while the redcoats get all the fun and the glory of the fighting. In this war the navy had plenty of work, and suffered proportionately from the strain. It also complained, in later days, that its exertions were hardly sufficiently recognized by military historians. Yet their comparatively subordinate position was a necessity of the case. The war was a land, and not a naval war, and the[54] sailors could hardly expect to be more than accessories in it.

Marryat’s share, both of the work and the credit, was as large as that of any naval officer engaged. From the beginning of the campaign, in May, 1824, he was employed until September; at first as subordinate, and then, when Commodore Grant was invalided, as senior naval officer at Rangoon. The five months almost destroyed the crew of the Larne, and greatly damaged his own health. His men had been on salt provisions since February, and when fatigue and exposure were added to unwholesome diet, they naturally suffered grievously from scurvy. After a rest at Pulo Penang, he was back at Rangoon in December, and then, after being despatched on service to India, he was recalled to Burmah to take part in an attack on Bassein. There were more river work, more attacks on stockades, more exposure to fever. In July, 1824, on the death of Commodore Grant, he was transferred into the Tees, 26, a post-ship, which—as it was a death vacancy—should have given him post rank. The nomination was not, however, confirmed by the Admiralty, and Marryat was not actually posted till 1825, a loss of a year, which affected his seniority. It was in the Larne that he took part in the occupation of Bassein, and the attack on the Burmese stockades at Negrais and Naputah, but he brought the Tees home and paid her off early in 1826. The thanks of the general and the Indian Government, the Companionship of the Bath, and the command of the Ariadne, 28, were his rewards for good service in Burmah. This command he held for exactly two years,[55] from November, 1828, to November, 1830, when “private affairs” induced him to resign. The Ariadne was his last ship. He was never employed again, nor does he ever seem to have applied for a command. When there was a prospect of war with the United States some years later, he spoke of going on active service again, but he was in ordinary times quite reconciled apparently to the termination of his career as a naval officer. The end was rather sudden. Up to 1830 he had been in constant employment and very successful. He could hardly have hoped for more than to be a post-captain and a C.B. at thirty-four. The truth doubtless is that he had begun to have other ambitions.

As is not uncommonly the case, the end of the old life overlapped the beginning of the new. Indeed, the old cannot have consciously come to an end with Marryat for some years. The evidence as to his wishes and hopes is scanty—extraordinarily scanty considering his prominence and that he lived almost into this generation; but what has been made known about him shows that he did not cease to think and work for “the service,” or quite gave up for a long time expecting that he might again hold a command. As an active naval officer, however, his career ended when he resigned the command of the Ariadne. Before that date he had written and published “Frank Mildmay,” and had written the “King’s Own.” What the private affairs may have been which induced him to resign his ship does not appear very clearly. Mrs. Ross Church supposes that he wished to devote himself to his duties as equerry to the Duke of Sussex, which hardly appears a sufficient explanation.[56] Perhaps, like many other sailors, he may have had a period of revolt against the routine work, and long absence from friends and family imposed by naval life, and for which there is little compensation in peace time. With a growing family to look after he had a strong attraction to the shore. Then service in peace time cannot have had many temptations to a man who enjoyed excitement as Marryat did. To be sent on “diplomatic duties,” which in practice would mean visits, in the company of His Majesty’s Consuls, to foreign governors, or to be ordered off in winter to look for reefs in the Atlantic, which never existed except in the bemused brains of some merchant skipper, must have been very trying. An experience or two of this kind, coinciding with the success of his first book and the equerryship, would be enough to decide him to try his fortune on shore—all the more as he had private means. Whatever the exact motives may have been, in 1830 he was on shore for good, and established in Sussex House, Hammersmith.

His equerryship seems to have led him to no particular good. “The smiles of princes,” says Mrs. Church, “are by nature evanescent.” The favour of princes at least, like that of other men, requires to be cultivated with due skill and attention. Possibly Marryat may have been wanting in the will or the capacity to practise the art. Certain it is that neither from the Duke of Sussex, nor from the duke’s royal brother, William IV., did he ever obtain any visible good beyond invitations to festivities which appear to have been of a somewhat dreary character. According to a story given in the preface to Bone’s edition of the “Pirate and Three[57] Cutters,” and quoted on that authority by Mrs. Ross Church, the King, who all through his life seems to have been moved to do something silly whenever he remembered that he was a naval officer, was offended by Marryat’s condemnation of the press-gang. He not only refused to consent to the conferring of some mark of distinction on Marryat in addition to the C.B. given for the Burmah campaign, but would not even allow him to wear the Legion of Honour sent him by Louis Philippe as a reward for the code of signals. The story is credible enough of William IV., who, saving the reverence of the Crown, was very little better than a fool, and a spiteful fool, too, at times. The Admiralty of its own motion, or the Admiralty and the King together, seem to have decided that Marryat need not be employed again. In the enjoyment of literary success and liberty, he probably reconciled himself to the want of employment readily enough. He must have been prepared to do without it when he threw up his command. The Admiralty does not love captains who resign their ships.