Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital. Philip Hoare

PART

Pray Stop All Work

      You might as well take 1,100 men every year out upon Salisbury Plain and shoot them.

      FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

      On 19 May 1856, Queen Victoria sailed across the Solent from her island retreat at Osborne in the Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert, accompanied by a grand flotilla of a frigate and twelve gun boats. She had come to lay the hospital’s foundation stone, her first public engagement since the end of the folly and bravado that had been the Crimean War. The time was right for a new symbol of national pride. With the country’s focus on Netley, the local press was particularly excited about the event and the building it was to bring to the county’s shore: ‘It will be one of the greatest national schemes which, of the kind, has been yet undertaken’, declared the Hampshire Independent, ‘and will, we think, completely eclipse the asylum at Chelsea, both in extent and beauty.’

      A 300 foot jetty stretching out into Southampton Water had been constructed for the occasion, and was decorated by an archway of evergreens surmounted by a crown, its length covered with scarlet cloth to await the Queen’s arrival. It was said that she could have landed perfectly easily at Southampton but had conceived a dislike for the town, having been heard to say that it had ‘snubbed’ her on a previous occasion. Perhaps Southampton and its climate decided to ruffle her feathers again, for the day was windy and the sea too rough for the Queen, who took refuge below deck during the crossing. Meanwhile, local shipping had been warned to keep clear of the area, ‘to prevent any confusion or accident which might otherwise be occasioned’ – a warning which proved all too prescient.

      That day 11,000 people and 400 vehicles crossed by the Itchen Floating Bridge, and Netley Abbey was packed with picnickers. In the evening it was proposed to ‘light up the Ruins … with variegated lamps at the rate of eight pounds per thousand for no less than six thousand lamps’, and the daytrippers were looking forward to a grand fireworks display. Down at Netley Hard, crowds eagerly awaited their monarch and her consort. These were glorious times, and it seemed the whole country was en fête. Basking in the mid-century glow of empire, England was the cynosure of the civilised world, its imperial progress epitomised by the recent success of the Great Exhibition, with its myriad of souvenirs decorated with the images of the glamorous young Queen and Prince.

      Some of that glamour was about to arrive on Netley’s shore. The royal party included the young Prince of Wales and Princess Royal, and all the men of the entourage were in uniform, a panoply of gold braid, silk and cockades. It was a state occasion by any other name, and the party was to be met at the pierhead by Lord Panmure, the Secretary of State for War, ‘Lord Winchester (Ld. Lieut of Hampshire), the Admiral, General, & the authorities &c.’, as Victoria noted in her journal. But when the Royal Yacht arrived, the waves were washing over the jetty and Fairy, its tender, had to be unceremoniously beached on the shingle. ‘A considerable and rather amusing confusion was caused by this sudden change in the Royal movements’, noted the Hampshire Independent:

      There was, of course, no scarlet cloth laid on the beach, and though it was torn up piecemeal from the jetty the moment Her Majesty’s intention was perceived, yet she landed before it could be transferred. Then a rush was made to the obstructive hoarding which excluded Her Majesty from the presence of the corporate and other officials assembled on the platform to receive her, and, amid the hearty laughter of the Queen, the planks were torn away, and Her Majesty was admitted within the enclosure, having in the interim been kept back among the crowds at this part of the shore, who never anticipated so good a view of the Royal party.

      After this hilarious and somewhat embarrassing scene of flummoxed dignitaries, Victoria replied to a welcoming address from Southampton’s Deputy Mayor – his superior having been taken ill at the last moment. ‘We then walked a short way up to where the ceremony was to take place … troops lining the way’. Arriving at a large marquee, she examined the plans of the hospital. Then, in a copper casket, the Queen placed coins of her realm, a Crimean Medal and an early Victoria Cross, made from Russian guns captured at Sebastopol (although it was later discovered that the Russians had actually captured them from the Chinese), along with documents signed by herself and Albert.

      This Victorian time capsule was then sealed and set in a trench, there to remain for the marvel of some future generation. Six hundred years after Henry III’s name had appeared on the foundation stone of the abbey, his successor watched as, with due ceremony, the two-and-a-half-ton Welsh granite foundation stone of the hospital was lowered by pulleys on to the prepared mortar bed. Dwarfed by the great system of wooden block-and-tackle which loomed above her as though it were about to lower the royal visitor into the earth’s core, the Queen ‘tried the stone with the plummet and level, and tapped it in the usual form, taking counsel with Lord Panmure as to the correct and truly masonic method of doing so’. The Secretary of State then declared, ‘I am directed by Her Majesty that the first stone of the Military Hospital has been laid, and that Her Majesty has been pleased to sanction its being called the Royal Victoria Hospital.’

      At that moment, the gunboats assembled out on Southampton Water fired a salute in the Queen’s honour. But on one of the boats, the Hardy, she was told of ‘a gun exploding & 2 poor men being blown to pieces. So sad, & so grievous, just on such an occasion!’ In fact the Hardy’s gun had gone off prematurely, casting into eternity the mortal remains of Ordinary Seaman Michael Deran and AB Cornelius Flannigan, and wounding several other sailors. Meanwhile, on Netley’s shore, oblivious of the carnage precipitated by the thunder of the guns, the Bishop of Winchester offered a blessing and the choir sang Psalm One Hundred: ‘Enter his gates with thanksgiving,/ And his courts with praise!’

      ‘… After which we went into a large tent, specially prepared for us, where we conversed with the different Gentlemen there’, wrote the Queen. The man from the Hampshire Independent rivalled his metropolitan peers with his description of the scene, ‘one of the most imposing and exhilarating character’.

      The long ‘red lines’ of the troops, bending out into a spacious circle, contrasting with the black robes of the Corporation, the black gowns of the Clergy present, the white scarfs [sic] of the Cathedral choir, and the many-coloured hues of the gay dresses in which the ladies, who graced the stand, were arrayed – the masses of people and carriages assembled all around – flags floating in all directions – the water in the river dancing and sparkling in the sunbeams, and covered with the various vessels and gunboats, all dressed in colours, and jetting forth their white curls of smoke as the salutes were fired – the whole, combined, made up as pretty a picture as can well be imagined, whilst the ear was gratified by the performance of the National Anthem by the military bands.

      Among all this uproarious splendour processed their Sovereign, the centre of attention, and of the civilised world. Having seen ‘the soldiers at their dinner’ – where the reporter noted that when the men were ordered to continue with their meal, ‘Her Majesty smilingly observed the zest with which they appeared to obey’ – the party ‘returned at once on board the Royal yacht, and immediately left for Osborne’. It was another rough crossing, and Victoria was glad to be back on dry land in time for lunch and an afternoon drive, as ‘nightingales sing charmingly in the woods’.

      From her newly-built seaside villa – a Victorian version of the Brighton Pavilion, designed by Prince Albert, painted bright yellow and set like a great stately ship on the verdant slopes of the Isle of Wight – the Queen had made plain her concern for her troops serving in the Crimean War – a war in which for every one of the 1,700 who died of their wounds, another nine would die of disease.

      The previous year Victoria had twice visited the wounded and afflicted at the General Hospital at Fort Pitt, Chatham, a former Napoleonic fortification. With straw mattresses, no toilets, no exercise space and the kind of ‘malodorous sewers’ which had created the diseases of the barrack hospital at Scutari, conditions at Fort Pitt were cold, damp and unhealthy. On the Queen’s second visit, in June 1855, she declared the facilities wanting, according