AT ST. HELENA xix 



often punished twice or thrice in a week. On board the ship 

 of this disciplinarian, Charles and his father were carried in a 

 billy-boat from Sheerness in December 1816 : Charles with an 

 outfit suitable to his pretentions, a twenty- guinea sextant and 

 120 dollars in silver, which were ordered into the care of the 

 gunner. ' The old clerks and mates,' he writes, c used to laugh 

 and jeer me for joining the ship in a billy-boat, and when they 

 found I was from Kent, vowed I was an old Kentish smuggler. 

 This to my pride, you will believe, was not a little offensive.' 



The Conqueror carried the flag of Vice- Admiral Plampin, At St. 

 commanding at the Cape and St. Helena ; and at that all- 

 important islet, in July 1817, she relieved the flagship of Sir 

 Pulteney Malcolm. Thus it befel that Charles Jenkin, coming 

 too late for the epic of the French wars, played a small part in 

 the dreary and disgraceful afterpiece of St. Helena. Life on the 

 guardship was onerous and irksome. The anchor was never 

 lifted, sail never made, the great guns were silent ; none was 

 allowed on shore except on duty ; all day the movements of the 

 imperial captive were signalled to and fro ; all night the boats 

 rowed guard around the accessible portions of the coast. This 

 prolonged stagnation and petty watchfulness in what Napoleon 

 himself called that ' unchristian ' clima,te, told cruelly on the 

 health of the ship's company. In eighteen months, according 

 to O'Meara, the Conqueror had lost one hundred and ten men 

 and invalided home one hundred and seven, ' being more than a 

 third of her complement.' It does not seem that our young 

 midshipman so much as once set eyes on Bonaparte ; and yet in 

 other ways Jenkin was more fortunate than some of his com- 

 rades. He drew in water-colour ; not so badly as his father, yet 

 ill enough ; and this art was so rare aboard the Conqueror that 

 even his humble proficiency marked him out and procured him 

 some alleviations. Admiral Plampin had succeeded Napoleon 

 at the Briars ; and here he had young Jenkin staying with him 

 to make sketches of the historic house. One of these is before 

 me as I write, and gives a strange notion of the arts in our old 

 English Navy. Yet it was again as an artist that the lad was 

 taken for a run to Rio, and apparently for a second outing in 



