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 Company Formation, 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 Hong Kong Apartments, 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 MD Senses, 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. is that he had begun to have other ambitions.
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