Memoirs of the Extraordinary Military Career of John Shipp - Late a Lieut. in His Majesty's 87th Regiment

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Title: Memoirs of the Extraordinary Military Career of John Shipp
Late a Lieut. in His Majesty's 87th Regiment
Author: John Shipp
Editor: H. Manners Chichester
Release Date: April 7, 2010 [EBook #31910]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Pg 1]"Adventures are to the adventurous."
BEACONSFIELD
[Pg 2]
THE ADVENTURE SERIES.
Illustrated. Cr. 8vo, 5s.
1.
Adventures of a Younger Son. By E.J. TRELAWNY. With an Introduction by Edward Garnett. Second Edition.
2.Robert Drury's Journal in Madagascar. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Captain S.P. Oliver.
3.
Memoirs of the Extraordinary Military Career of John Shipp. With an Introduction by H. Manners Chichester.
4.
The Adventures of Thomas Pellow, of Penryn, Mariner. Written by himself, and edited with an Introduction
and Notes by Dr. Robert Brown.
Others in the Press.
[Pg 3]
MEMOIRS OF THE EXTRAORDINARY
MILITARY CAREER OF JOHN SHIPP,
LATE A LIEUT. IN HIS MAJESTY'S 87TH REGIMENT
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
A NEW ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY H. MANNERS CHICHESTER
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN,
PATERNOSTER SQUARE. MDCCCXC
[Pg 4]
LIEUTENANT JOHN SHIPP.
CONTENTS
PAGE
(1) EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 7(2) AUTHOR'S PREFACE 15
(3) MEMOIRS OF JOHN SHIPP 17
[Pg 5]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
(1) LIEUTENANT JOHN SHIPP Frontispiece.
(2) SAXMUNDHAM CHURCH 32To face p.
(3) PLAN OF BHURTPORE " 98
(4) EUROPEAN CAVALRY OF SHIPP'S DAY " 144
(5) GHOORKA SOLDIER " 210
(6) THE FORT OF HATTRASS " 216
(7) TRAVELLING ON THE GANGES " 236
(8) INDIAN TROOPS OF SHIPP'S DAY " 326
(9) GHAUT ON THE GANGES " 360
[Pg 6-7]
INTRODUCTION
In reproducing the "Memoirs of the Extraordinary Military Career of John Shipp" as a volume of the Adventure
Series, it may be well to say a few introductory words concerning the author and the book.
John Shipp was, he tells us, the second son of Thomas and Lætitia Shipp, persons in humble circumstances
in the little town of Saxmundham, in Suffolk, and he adds that in the registers of the parish church will be found
a record of his birth on March 16, 1785. The latter statement is incorrect. The church register records
baptisms, not births, and a careful search has shown that the only entry answering to the above is a record of
the baptism of John, the child of Thomas and Lætitia Shipp, at a date twelve months earlier—March 16,
1784. The error probably explains the conflicting statements of the author's age which occur in the course of
the story.
Shipp's father was a soldier (a marine?), and his mother dying when he was very young, he became an
inmate of the parish poorhouse (there were no Union workhouses in those days), whence he passed into the
[Pg 8]hands of a neighbouring farmer, one of those savage taskmasters only too common in the "good old
[1]times." His deliverance came in unexpected fashion. In the early years of the French Revolutionary War the
supply of recruits was far less certain than at a later stage. Partly as a recruiting experiment, partly to relieve
parishes of the burthen of pauper boys between the ages of ten and sixteen who might be willing to enter for
(unlimited) service in the army, three regiments of foot were ordered to be completed to a thousand rank and
file each by the enlisting of boys of this description. One of the regiments was the 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment
of Foot, which half a century later won much fame under the command of General Sir Charles Napier on the
plains of Sind. The 22nd, on return from the West Indies in 1795, had been ordered to Colchester, to recruit;
and a Muster Roll, now in the War Office, shows that John Shipp was duly enlisted into that regiment on
January 17, 1797.
Shipp appears to have been a bright, plucky, intelligent boy. Regimental schools were not in those days; but
through the kindness of his captain he picked up some education, and after serving in the Channel Islands, at
the Cape, and in India, found himself, in the year 1804, a young sergeant in the Grenadier company, which
was detached with the grand army under Lord Lake fighting against the Mahrattas. He was one of the
stormers at the capture of Deig, on December 24, 1804, and led the "forlorn-hope" of the storming column in
three out of the four desperate, but unsuccessful, assaults on Bhurtpore in January-February, 1805, receiving
severe wounds upon each occasion. Lord Lake rewarded his daring with an ensigncy in the 65th Foot. A few
weeks later he was promoted to lieutenant in the 76th Foot, both commissions being dated March 10, 1805.
[Pg 9]With the 76th Shipp returned home in 1807; but he speedily found himself in pecuniary difficulties, and sold
out of the army on March 19, 1808. His commissions having been given "without purchase," he was only
entitled to £100 for each twelve months of actual commissioned service abroad, and £50 for like periods at
home, up to the full value—£700. With the small sum so realized he paid his debts, and soon after found
himself alone in London, without a shilling in the world.Seeing, as he tells us, no reason why he should not rise again as he had done before, Shipp enlisted into the
24th light Dragoons, which he had known in Lake's army; returned to India to join that regiment; and in the
course of a few years rose to the position of regimental sergeant-major. In 1815 he was appointed by the
Marquis of Hastings (Earl of Moira), then Governor-general and Commander-in-chief in India, to an ensigncy
in the 87th Prince's Own Irish, better known under its later name of the 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers, the first
battalion of which landed at Calcutta from Mauritius in August that year. Shipp's commission bore the original
date of the vacancy, May 4, 1815; but by an omission, then not uncommon in the case of Indian appointments,
he was not gazetted at home until some time later, and his name never appeared in the Army List until May,
1819. Shipp had thus twice won a commission from the ranks by the time he was little more than thirty years
old—an achievement which may be regarded as unique in the annals of the British army.
Shipp served with the 87th in the second campaign of the Ghoorkha War, and distinguished himself by a
single combat with one of the enemy's sirdars in the action near Muckwanpore. He also served at the siege
of Hattrass, where he was the first to enter the fort, and was wounded in the hand. He was on the staff of the
left division of the grand army under the Marquis of Hastings in the Mahratta and Pindaree War of 1817-18,
during which he distinguished himself on several occasions. He became a lieutenant in the 87th on July 5,
[Pg 10]1821.
At the latter end of this year a series of unfortunate occurrences began, which brought Shipp's military career
to an untimely close. He appears to have entered into a racing partnership with Lieut.-Colonel Browne, of the
same regiment, to run horses at Cawnpore races. Shipp, who was supposed to be a good judge of
horseflesh, was to make certain purchases, for the purpose, at Calcutta. Colonel Browne, who died in
command of the regiment in Burmah a few years afterwards, was then one of the regimental majors. He was
a brave officer and, it is said, much liked in the regiment; but it does not seem to have occurred to him or any
one else that to encourage a junior officer in Shipp's position—a moneyless man, with family ties—to embark
in turf speculations was a most unfriendly action. The partners speedily fell out, each accusing the other of
"throwing him over." Browne claimed 2,000 rupees from Shipp, which the latter admitted he had not the
means to pay; and Shipp then accused Browne of prejudicing the minds of the other officers against him.
This state of things continued until Shipp had a misunderstanding with a civilian at Calcutta, in consequence
of which his brother officers treated him with marked coolness. Whether there were sufficient grounds for so
doing does not appear; but when Shipp asked that his conduct in the matter might be investigated by
courtmartial—the only course open to an officer without the means to go to the civil courts—he was told that the
Judge Advocate-General considered it unnecessary. Worried by pecuniary difficulties, and smarting under
what he considered undeserved treatment by his former associates, which he attributed to the hostile
influence of Colonel Browne, Shipp wrote some intemperate letters reflecting on the conduct of Colonel
Browne and of the regimental commanding officer. These he stubbornly refused to withdraw; although in after
years he admitted that they were unjust and written under a misapprehension of facts. The inevitable result
[Pg 11]followed. Shipp was brought before an European General Co