not have another stoppage. Seeing the apparent useless attempts of our native seamen to get our vessel off the sand, our Sgt Maj asked the Captain to allow some of our men to work the capstan he refused saying that their slow movements would ameliorate the ship’s progress better than if stronger men were employed. The captain appears to give a good account of the natives generally and says they are better than English sailors for this sort of work. He has seen them, he said, work from morn’ till night, nearly one half of their time in the water, without a grumble. The little time I have been here among them I can see they are very patient and spite of you will be your slave. Even if you find one that has the advantage of a good education and speak to him as though you consider him as an equal he still thinks himself your inferior … [They] have thin lips, fine aquiline nose, noble foreheads and above all a splendid set of white teeth.59
Units which arrived intact, like HM’s 32nd in 1846, immediately set off for their garrison up-country. ‘We were drilled to pitching and striking of tents,’ wrote Private Waterfield,
so as not to be lost when on the road. The bustle attendant upon a European camp in India was something strange to us all. The constant jabbering of the natives, and the roaring of the camels, together with elephants and buffaloes, reminds one of the striking contrast between India and peaceful England. It’s an old saying that there’s no stopping a woman’s tongue, but the women of Bengal beat all I ever saw, for they will fight, and keep up such a chatter that they may be heard above the din of the Camp.60
In March 1834, HM’s 38th had reached Berhampore when, as Sergeant Thomas Duckworth told his parents, a drunken man was killed in an accident:
We came to this Station and he fell down the Stares when drunk and killed himself in the Company that I belong to not less than 9 or 10 Men as come to untimely end by being drunk, some drowned, some smothered, others going out to the Country and ill-treating the Natives and getting killed by them. The Barracks in Berhampore are 3 in number they are like Cotton Factorys for anything that you ever see they are 2 storeys high with flat roofs … the Barracks up the country are never more than one storey and thatched and those are not made with Brick and Mortar there is not so much Vermine in those Barracks as up the Country.61
Landing at Madraspatam – soon to be shortened by the British to Madras – was another matter altogether. There was no natural harbour, and new arrivals disembarked into local craft, either massulah surf boats or primitive catamarans, which made the perilous journey through the surf. Major Armine Mountain of HM’s 26th landed at Madras in 1829, and was shocked at the sight of the ‘catamaran’ which was to take him ashore:
It is impossible to conceive a more primitive vehicle; it consists simply of three logs of wood, some seven or eight feet long, lashed together without any attempt at excavation of bulwark, and awkwardly, though not always, brought to a point in front. On this rudest of rude rafts, generally, three natives stand in line stark naked, and with only a string tied round the waist, just above the hips; but I immediately observed the truth of Bishop Heber’s observation, that the duskiness of the skin does away with the idea of indelicacy. They were generally very small men, not so perfectly formed as I expected, and very noisy.62
In 1833 Cadet Hervey, still recovering from having received his first salute from a grenadier sergeant who came on board to explain disembarkation procedures, affirmed that:
In crossing the surf some degree of skill is necessary to strand the boats in safety, and the boatmen usually demand a present for the job; but griffins [i.e. newly arrived young officers] are 50 kind and so liberal, and these boatmen are such acute judges of physiognomy, that they can tell at a glance, whether there is a possibility of success or not. If refused, they sometimes bring their boats broadside on to the surf; the consequence is a good ducking, if not an upset altogether into the briny element; this is by way of revenge …
We crossed the dreaded surf and landed in safety. Passengers are either carried out of the way of the water in a chair or on the backs of boatmen. Upon gaining a footing, I was instantly surrounded by a multitude of naked-looking savages, all jabbering away in broken English and Malabar, asking me to take a palankeen, and some actually seized hold of me, and were about to lift me into one; however, I asked the sergeant, who was with me, for his cane, which being obtained, I laid about me right and left, and soon cleared myself of the crowd.63
When Lieutenant Walter Campbell reached Madras with his regiment in 1830, he described how he was immediately
beset by hawkers, jugglers, snake-charmers, ‘coolies’ and mendicants begging for coppers … After standing on the beach for upwards of an hour, braving the fury of a tropical sun and keeping our assailants at bay as well we could, the debarkation of the troops was completed and we were marched up to Bridge seven miles from Madras where we found tents pitched for our reception, and where we are to remain ten days or a fortnight to make the necessary preparations for marching up country to Bangalore.64
Lieutenant Innes Munro of HM’s 73rd Highlanders, arriving at Madras in March 1780, recalled his comrades’ confusion on seeing Indian men:
All those natives have such a genteel and delicate mien that, together with their dress, a stranger is apt to take them for women; and it is truly laughable to hear the Highlanders, under that idea, pass their remarks upon them in the Gaelic language. ‘Only smoke the whiskers on that hussy,’ says one. ‘Well, I never supposed till now,’ observed another, ‘that there was any place in the world where the women wore beards.’ And, seeing one of them who was very corpulent stalk about the deck in an unwieldy manner, a third wondered ‘how she could have ventured on board so far gone in her pregnancy’. All of them were taken for ladies of easy virtue; and it was only in attempting to use a few familiarities with them as such that the Highlanders realised their mistake.65
John Corneille landed at Cuddalore in September 1754 and marched to Madras with HM’s 39th Foot; on arrival the colonel was ‘saluted at entrance with thirteen guns’. He found that Madras had:
no security for ships and a roadstead wild and open, besides a most dangerous surf which makes the landing difficult and dangerous. There are two towns, the European and the Black towns. The former is well built, with lofty houses and flat roofs, but the streets are very narrow except for those immediately about the governor’s which is in the middle and was the first building the English made after they landed. It consists of a tolerably good house surrounded with offices and a slight wall, and is properly called Fort St George.
The fort was speedily rebuilt in the best modern manner to become:
one of the strongest places in India. There are several excellent good bastions, and a broad, deep, wet ditch. All the adjacent country is commanded from the bastions except a small hill at the north-west end which, if they continue as they have begun, will soon be carried away to make the glacis.66
Albert Hervey was escorted to the fort on his arrival in Madras, entered via its north gate, and ‘the sergeant took me directly to the adjutant general’s and the town-major’s offices, where I reported myself in due form. I was then conducted to the cadet’s quarters, where I was told I should have to reside until further orders.’
He was speedily posted to a regiment inland, which saved him expense and temptation:
I write strongly
