Jack Nastyface: Memoirs of an English Seaman

William Robinson used a pseudonym in 1836 to publish his now-famous memoir, knowing his all-too-realistic description of life on the lower decks would create a scandal. But he hoped it also would provoke changes in the practices of impressment and unfair punishment of sailors. Writing from the point of view of the ordinary Jack Tar in Nelson's Navy, he described the press gangs, floggings, keel-haulings, poor food, long watches, and bloody battles that were routine, as well as the relief found in drinking grog. Such vivid accounts of forecastle adventures were rare in the literature of the day--and remain rare today. Robinson himself fought at Trafalgar in 1805 and took part in many other events in the long war against Napoleon. His revelations about the brutal conditions of everyday shipboard life in the classical Age of Sail--an era that nevertheless managed to produce some of England's finest seamen and most famous victories--provide a valuable record of the seaman's experience. This edition is illustrated with the work of caricaturist George Cruikshank, a contemporary of Robinson's well known for his sketches of nautical life, and an introduction by the noted Nelson scholar Oliver Warner. Originally published under the title Nautical Economy by Jack Nastyface, a hardcover edition of the memoir with the current title was published by the Naval Institute Press in 1973.