A Landsman is a person who has not been to sea before and has no experience of the Royal Navy. The Landsman was the lowest rank in the Royal Navy at that time.
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A Landsman is a person
who has not been to sea before and has no experience of the Royal Navy. The
Landsman was the lowest rank in the Royal Navy at that time.
Rome, John. Rank: Landsman,
ship’s book number S539, age 23, nationality British he was born in Battersea,
London, received a Government grant of £4-12-6 and prize money of £1-17-6.
He joined the Victory from the Sheerness tender on 11th May 1803. After Trafalgar,
on returning to England, he went on the run in Chatham on the 14 January 1806.
('run' in the days we are now talking about means to escape, to run away from,
or to leave without the permission of the person in charge).
John Rome was born in Battersea in 1782 and was working as a barge-hand on the
Thames when with many others he was taken by the press gang in the spring of
1803 and sent to Chatham to join the Victory.
Having never been to sea he was rated Landsman (LM) but being an intelligent and smart young man he was put on the signal staff.
When the Victory returned
to Chatham after Trafalgar Rome did not relish the prospect of going to sea
again and so on 14th January 1806, the day before he would have probably been
drafted to the brand new 98 gun second rate Ocean fitted out at Chatham to be
Admiral Lord Collingwood’s flagship in the Mediterranean, he and several
others deserted.
His name in the ship’s books was marked ‘R’ meaning ‘Run’
and debarring him from any pension or a place at Greenwich Hospital.
Rome, the man who actually hoisted Nelson’s famous signal at the Battle
of Trafalgar, would have vanished into obscurity had not 40 years later a resident
of Blackfriars, Forbes McBean Chevers, who had been the Surgeon in HMS Tonnant
at Trafalgar, noticed ‘an old and broken down man hawking watercress and
red herrings in the streets’. Concerned for his health Chevers questioned
the old man and learnt that he was John Rome.
Chevers wrote to John Pasco who had been the Signal Lieutenant in the Victory
at Trafalgar and who, as a Captain in 1846, had assumed command of her in Portsmouth
where she had become the stationary flagship of the Commander in Chief.
Through Pasco’s influence the Admiralty was persuaded to make an exception
in admitting Rome to Greenwich Hospital. Here his health improved. He became
stout and contented and made a small fortune in tips from visitors who were
impressed to be shown around by ‘The man that hoisted Nelson’s Signal’.
There he died aged 78 in December 1860.
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