Richard Parker, the President of the Floating Republic, was born on this date, and I reckon we owe him a toast in rum.
Parker was born to a relatively prosperous family in Exeter, and received a good education, but at the age of 12 he decided to join the Royal Navy instead of the family business. His naval career was not plain sailing: he seems to have been a bit bolshy, rather keen on standing up for his rights, and was on one occasion court-martialled for refusing an order.
Along with health problems, his scrapes with authority eventually led to him being discharged, but he rejoined the navy in 1797 as a means of escaping a prison sentence for debt. If Parker had any intention of keeping out of trouble, he'd signed up at exactly the wrong moment and been assigned to the worst possible posting.
The Nore is a naval anchorage in the Thames Estuary, and a mutiny there began in May that year, inspired by the better-remembered Spithead Mutiny. But while "the breeze at Spithead" was a disciplined and largely successful uprising, Nore was an altogether more chaotic matter.
In both places, sailors were demanding better treatment, wages and conditions of service. However, the government was convinced that at Nore, democrats - English, Irish and possibly even French (Britain being at war with France at that time) - were using the men's grievances for political purposes. The demands at the Nore were somewhat vague, and at one point seem to have stretched to include instructing the king to make peace with France. Historians have noted in the language used by the sailors' negotiators the influence of Thomas Paine, and his new ideas of human rights and civil liberties. Parker himself signed a manifesto which declared "The Age of Reason has at last resolved."
Parker's ship, the Sandwich, was where the revolt started, and probably because his upbringing would allow him to hold his own in negotiations with the admiralty, he was elected President of the Delegates of the Fleet, a kind of parliament representing all the mutinous ships.
It was clear from the start that the authorities had little appetite for compromise, and as the public figurehead of what became known as "the Floating Republic," Parker must have realised that he could face only one likely end. For a few days the mutineers succeeded in blockading London, but as the mutiny began to crumble, having never achieved the unity necessary for such an undertaking to succeed, a bounty of £500 was put on the president's head.
He was arrested on 13th June, charged with piracy and treason. The jury at his shipboard trial consisted entirely of naval officers holding the rank of captain or above (including one man that Parker had some years earlier challenged to a duel), and he was not allowed legal representation. The "admiral of mutineers," as the prosecutors called him, was hanged from the yardarm of the Sandwich on 30th June. During the mutiny, effigies of the prime minister had been hanged at the same spot.
During his defence, he had claimed to be a moderating influence on the mutiny; he was neither a revolutionary nor a traitor to his country, he insisted. But "How could I indifferently stand by, and behold some of the very best of my fellow-creatures cruelly treated by some of the very worst?"
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Sources:
The Chatto book of dissent ed. Michael Rosen & David Widgery (Chatto, 1991)
www.napoleonguide.com/richard-parker.htm
Restless revolutionaries by Clive Bloom (The History Press, 2010)
A people's history of London by Lindsey German & John Rees (Verso, 2012)
Regency spies by Sue Wilkes (Pen & Sword, 2015)
The making of the English working class by E.P. Thompson (Penguin, 1980)