When Admiral Buckner’s boat came alongside the Sandwich to take Richard Parker, at daybreak on Wednesday, none seemed certain he would leave the ship alive. A few days earlier, he had commanded the mutinous fleet at the Nore and spoken in the name of its delegates. Now the seamen of the Sandwich turned upon him. Parker delivered himself into the hands of four of the crew, hoping for their protection against the vengeance of the rest, and suffered himself to be handed down into the launch. On shore, the rabble hooted at him. He answered them that he was not responsible, and that he would clear himself. His hands were bound behind his back. Before the magistrates, they did no more than identify his person before drawing up the warrant that was to commit him to Maidstone Gaol.
In 1797, the seamen demanded redress for grievances whose settlement both the officers and the administration had long delayed. The rising of the fleet at the Nore followed upon that of Spithead, striking terror into the kingdom. The men seized command of their vessels; Parker, a supernumerary seaman on the Sandwich, became president of the committee of delegates. He held no authority acknowledged by the Admiralty, yet he bore the petitions of a fleet that had ceased to obey its captains. In the eyes of the Government, organised remonstrance had turned to outright mutiny. To the men, their unheeded complaints continued to lend the movement its justification.
The delegates submitted to the Admiral a statement of their grievances, requesting that the Board of Admiralty attend to ratify them. Buckner testified that the officers had been stripped of their side-arms and their authority; Parker replied that the Admiral had not been received aboard the Sandwich because he was absent at the time, and that he had since made his apologies. He maintained that the mutiny had not originated upon his ship, but aboard the Inflexible, where it remained at its most violent. This account does not absolve him of directing the movement: he acknowledged having delivered the proposals and having told the Admiral that his authority was at an end. He sought to draw a line between the office of spokesman and the command of every material act.
This boundary proved harder to defend in the depositions of several ships’ companies. One captain testified that Parker presented himself as the representative of the whole fleet and threatened a pilot that he would hang him from the yard-arm. Another recounted that he had given orders concerning men transferred from an auxiliary vessel. The surgeon of the Sandwich declared that Parker had passed sentence of a flogging with a ropes-end upon a man accused of drunkenness, warning the crew that whosoever disobeyed the committee might look for the same fate. The mutiny had overthrown the established hierarchy, but it was fashioning a new one, armed with its own chastisements.
The gravest matter in the proceedings turned upon the firing directed against the Repulse. As several ships returned to their duty, the Repulse attempted to run for Sheerness harbour. Parker went aboard the Director, where he first called for a boat and a flag of truce, to prevent the shedding of innocent blood. Witnesses then swore that he ordered the ship to be sprung upon her cable, so as to bring her broadside to bear upon the Repulse. When a shot came from the latter, guns were discharged from the Director. A seaman from the Monmouth affirmed that Parker had commanded the guns and endeavoured to ram an iron crowbar into a piece already charged with a round shot; he recalled, moreover, hearing him declare that no quarter should be given.
Parker disputed this version of events. He explained that he had gone aboard merely to have the band play, and that his first care had been to prevent the firing. He maintained he had called for a flag of truce, and then strove to pacify the crew. If the men had fired in spite of him, he argued, he had been obliged to feign concurrence in order to limit the mischief. The witnesses from the Director confirmed that he had asked for a boat, but they likewise described the manoeuvre that brought the guns to bear. Another seaman confirmed the shots fired from the Monmouth, while adding that he had wrested the crowbar from Parker’s hands.
Signals of submission were at last hoisted throughout the fleet. After a lieutenant had read the King’s proclamation, Parker gave three cheers and delivered up the keys of the magazine to the officer. He then requested to be put under arrest, yet refused to enter the cabin wherein they wished to confine him, declaring he would help work the ship. On the morrow, he was put in irons and conveyed ashore. In his defence, he laid great stress upon these tokens of return to order. He pleaded that the ships had not been delivered to the enemy, that the mutineers were neither Jacobins nor traitors, and that the fleet would have engaged the Dutch had the enemy put to sea. Proclaimed loyalty did not annul the refusal to obey; it merely rendered more complex the figure of the rebel as a foe to his country.
The court-martial sat to hear him from the 22nd of June. Parker could not purchase the counsel of an advocate, he explained, and prayed the court not to look for an elegant defence from a seaman who had been at sea since his youth. He repeated that his acts had been commanded by the delegates, or done only to conciliate the men. He asked that Barry’s deposition be weighed with singular rigour, for he was anxious to clear his name. He hoped, furthermore, that his death might suffice to spare the rest. The court unanimously pronounced the charges proved and condemned him to death. Parker replied that he would submit without a struggle, believing his intentions to have been just. Then he sued for mercy on behalf of the other seamen, affirming that they would gladly return to their duty.
On the 30th of June 1797, he rose at reveille, asked for a barber, and put on a suit of mourning sent to him by a friend. He took his breakfast, spoke of a will and of an estate he claimed to inherit, and then lamented the injury done to the country by the mutiny. He denied having held any correspondence with disaffected persons on shore. Upon the deck, he called for a glass of wine and drank to his soul, and then to the forgiveness of his enemies. At the foot of the gallows, he stated that he had no wish to address the ship’s company: he desired only that his death should be deemed an adequate atonement and preserve the others.
Captain Moss had shaken him by the hand. Parker begged him to carry a final message to his comrades confined aboard the Neptune: that they should prepare for their fate and put away all unseemly levity. He then knelt for a moment in prayer. When the halter and cap had been adjusted, he stepped to the edge of the scaffold erected on the deck, dropped his handkerchief, and thrust his hands swiftly into his pockets. The report of a gun announced the execution. The body was run up to the yard-arm.
The man who had spoken for the fleet had asked that his life alone might suffice. Several other ringleaders of the mutiny were nevertheless tried and executed after him; others languished for years in prison. On the ships that had returned to their allegiance, the powder had already been drawn from the magazines, lest some final stroke of revolt should blow them into the air.