Ford of H.M.S. Vigilant: A Tale of the Chusan Archipelago
By Thomas Tendron Jeans
I don’t expect that you have ever heard of Upton Overy in North Devon, but it is there where Captain Lester of the Royal Navy lives, and, at any rate, you must have heard of him. Everyone in the West Country knows him by name and most of them by sight, and whenever he comes back from the sea, the villagers won’t do any work, and the bellringers ring peals and “changes” on the old church bells all day long, till you’d think that the top stones must be shaken off. The noise always causes my mother a terrible headache. You see, my father is the parson of Upton Overy, and our house is so close to the church that the noise seems to go through and through it.
If he happened to be at home, on leave, or half-pay, the Captain sometimes asked my father to go out shooting with him, and when I was quite a kiddy, I was so fearfully keen to go too that once I crept away and followed them. My father would have sent me back had not the Captain growled out—and he had an intense growling voice—”Let the nipper come along o’ us, Padré.” You may be sure that I did follow them, keeping close behind the Captain, without saying a word, and with my eyes glued on him to see exactly what he did. I got so tired that I should have cried if I hadn’t been afraid of making a noise.
“Send the young ‘un to sea. He’ll do,” he had said when my father, furious at having his day’s sport spoilt, had at last to carry me back. That is the first I remember of Captain Lester, and is why I remember what he said. Afterwards, he would often let me go with him, and when I was big enough, he would let me hold his great mongrel dog “Blucher”. The Captain took this dog to sea with him and always brought him out shooting, but he got so excited that he would obey nobody and, if let loose, always ranged ahead of the guns and put up every bird for miles. The result was that he was kept on the chain nearly all the time. Although he was so useless, the Captain would never leave him behind.
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Thomas Tendron Jeans
Jeans was born on 19 January 1871 in Chippenham, Wiltshire, England, and baptised on 27 March 1871.
Biography.
His parents were Thomas Mark Jeans (1842 – 1902), a Crown Surveyor of Taxes, and Elizabeth Ellen Filer (c. 1843 – 1930), a merchant’s daughter, who had married in Croydon on 12 February 1867. Jeans was educated at the Manchester Grammar School. He matriculated from there in January 1888. He studied medicine at Owens College, a regional affiliate of the University of London, and at the Manchester Royal Infirmary. He completed his preliminary science course at Owens in July 1889 and his intermediate medicine course at Owens and the Royal Infirmary in July 1891.
The 1891 census records him as a medical student, living with his parents at 10 Mayfield Road, Withington, in Manchester. He completed his degree course in 1893, was made a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians on 24 July 1893, and was awarded his degree by the University of London in October 1893. He was also appointed a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons that year. In his autobiography, Jeans notes that most of those joining the Royal Navy medical service when he did had been educated, like him, at the London Schools. Jeans began his career as a clinical assistant at the Manchester Cancer Hospital. However, he was marking time as he wanted a career with the Royal Navy.
He records that even while studying for his degree, he had learned everything he could, year after year, from Brasseys Naval Annual. Within a year of qualifying, he had passed the Royal Navy’s competitive examination and joined as a Surgeon on 16 May 1984. After four months’ initial orientation training at the Royal Naval Hospital at Haslar, Jeans was assigned to the Torpedo School Ship H.M.S. Vernon for six months before being transferred to the H.M.S. Raven, a fishery protection vessel based in the Channel Islands on 16 March 1895. Immortalitité was assigned to the China Station; Jeans witnessed the American conquest of Manila during the Spanish-American War. There, he acquired a knowledge of the treatment of small-bore bullet wounds. This served him well during the Boer War. After initially treating the wounded brought down from the front, Jeans was landed on 1 February 1900 and advanced with the Naval Brigade on the Orange Free State. After three months, he returned on board.
Thomas Tendron Jeans
