Pocock was rewarded by the immensely lucrative command of the fleet which sailed in the combined expedition against Havana in 1762, when Spain, in a moment of Royal folly, was dragged into the war against us. On that enterprise and of the contemporaneous expedition which Pocock’s successor in the East Indies command, Cornish, led against Manila, no more will be said here than that they were marked by a loyalty of co-operation between sailor and soldier which was then a novelty.
AUTHORITIES.—See authorities for previous years; Mundy’s _Life and Correspondence of Lord Rodney_; Barrow’s _Life of Howe_; Chevalier, _Histoire de la Marine Française pendant la guerre d’independence Americaine_; _Parliamentary History_; _Annual Register_.
The interval of fifteen years which separates the end of the Seven Years’ War from the beginning of the American War in 1778 saw no change in the organisation of the navy. An improvement in their half pay was given to the captains in 1773. In 1715 the right to enjoy half pay when not on active service, which had hitherto been limited to twenty-five officers of this rank, was extended to all. The amount had come to appear insufficient by 1773, and the captains petitioned Parliament for relief. Their case was stated by Howe, who was then member for Dartmouth. Lord North, the Prime Minister, began by opposing the motion, on the ground that it affected the revenue, and ought therefore to have been made by a minister. But the sympathy of the house was with Howe and his clients. A committee of inquiry was appointed, and on its report Parliament decided that the increase ought to be granted. A sum of £7000 was finally voted, and the scale of half pay was fixed at 10s. a day for 50 captains, 8s. for 30, and 6s. for all the others, in their order of seniority. Howe and the more fortunate naval officers, who were members of the House of Commons and who gave him support, acted an honourable part on behalf of their brothers in arms. They would have done still better if they had gone on to represent the far more cruel grievances of the men. Had they acted with spirit for those fellow-seamen who did not belong to their own class, they might have secured a hearing, and have saved the navy from the long list of mutinies which were to disgrace the coming war. But so much magnanimity and foresight was perhaps not to be expected in those years of the eighteenth century. Nothing was done for the sailors. The isolated mutinies were sometimes suppressed with severity, but were sometimes concealed from public knowledge, and condoned. A long course of neglect and weakness, with now and then a spasm of ferocity, bore its natural fruit in the combined mutiny at Spithead in 1797.