John Masefield

“ A midshipman had power to bully and maltreat all those beneath him. Aboard H.M.S. Revenge, just before Trafalgar, under a captain so strict and just as Robert Moorsom, there was a midshipman who amused himself by climbing on to gun-carriages, and calling to him the strongest and finest of the sailors. It was this little devil’s pleasure to kick and beat the poor fellows without cause. He was an officer, and to resent his cruelty would have been mutiny. A midshipman had but to complain to a lieutenant to get a man a flogging at the gangway. ”

“ In the years of which I have tried to write there were thousands upon thousands of sailors, wandering over many seas, in countless ships, standing their watches, doing the day’s work, breaking their hearts, and dying young, not because they liked it, not because they hoped for glory, but because much suffering had to be endured before man could learn to inflict less suffering on his fellows. We sit here quietly to-day in London—in that London which, as Nelson said, “exists by victories at sea.” Our great ships go thrashing hither and yon, turbulent and terrible, like islands of living iron. ”

“ The sailors get to crave for a fresh taste, a violent taste, strong enough to clear the mouth of the unpleasant taste with which one wakes in one’s hammock. A landsman can hardly imagine the pleasure of sucking a lump of sugar after a month on salt victuals. It was, perhaps, as much the sameness of the ship’s provisions as the emptiness of the life which sent the sailors to the grog jack for solace. In port they turned at once to the most strongly-flavoured articles their money could buy. ”

“ There were, of course, stubborn, brutal, and mutinous sailors. A fleet so manned could not lack such men. When such men were brought before Lord Nelson, he would say: “Send them to Collingwood. He will tame them, if no one else can.” Lord Collingwood was the man who swore, by the god of war, that his men should salute a reefer’s coat, even when it were merely hung to dry. Yet he didn’t tame his men by cutting their backs into strips. He would have his whole ship’s company in perfect order, working like machines, with absolute, unquestioning fidelity. ”

“ Smollett has painted for us a brutal captain, and Marryat and Mitford have shown us a type which was, we trust, more common in the service. Some captains were, perhaps, the most cruel and tyrannical fiends ever permitted on the earth. There were never very many of this kind, but there were enough to make a number of our ships mere floating hells. They could single out and break the heart of any man whom they disliked. They could make life a misery to every man under them. They could goad a crew to mutiny, and then see them hanged at the yard-arm. ”

“ In order that we might live in peace at home they were dragged, with blows and curses, from their homes. In order that we might walk erect among men they cringed before tyrants, and lost their manhood at the gangway. In order that we might live on the luxuries of the world, brought from the East and the West, things of great cost, wines, and spices, they were content, those great despisers, to eat salt junk and drink stinking water. They passed, those mighty ones, in the blackness of the cockpit, in the roaring hell of the gun-deck, that we might hear no [Pg 218] noise of battle. ”

“ When a ship set sail after a long sojourn in a home port there was a great deal of misery upon the lower-deck. The sailors, or at anyrate the tender-hearted ones, were melancholy; the women were either crying or drunk; the Jews were clamouring for their moneys; the bumboat people wanted their bills paid; and the sailors were drinking parting cans and hoping to pay their debts with a loose fore-topsail. Before the marines drove the women out of the ship the tender-hearted sailors came aft to the captain for permission to take their wives to sea with them. ”

“ Between the magazines was the vast round belly of the ship, known as the hold. Here the ballast, provision casks, and water casks were stowed. In the space forward of the after-magazine was a chamber known as the fish-room, for the storage of the ship’s salt fish. Beside it was the spirit-room, full of wine, brandy, and rum casks. Farther forward was the bread-room, a large apartment lined with tin, and artificially dried by hanging stoves. It contained an incredible quantity of ship’s biscuit, of which a pound a day was allowed to each man on board. ”

“ Many men were so torn with shot or splinter that they bled to death upon the sail long before the surgeon worked his way round to them. The sailors were indeed taught the use of the tourniquet, but it is one thing to adjust a tourniquet on a mate’s arm, at the word of command in a quiet drill hour, and quite another to fix it upon a stump of raw flesh that is pumping blood, in all the fury and confusion of a sea-fight. ”

“ Man is always ready to ignore the pounds of misery and squalor which go to make each pennyweight of glory. Our naval glory was built up by the blood and agony of thousands of barbarously maltreated men. It cannot be too strongly insisted on that sea life, in the late eighteenth century, in our navy, was brutalising, cruel, and horrible; a kind of life now happily gone for ever; a kind of life which no man to-day would think good enough for a criminal. There was barbarous discipline, bad pay, bad food, bad hours of work, bad company, [22] bad prospects. ”

“ It was a merry meal, eaten cheerily, with a great buzz of talk all along the gun-deck. At half-past twelve there came a great clink of cans and banging of tin plates on the tables. The fifer took his flute to the main or upper deck, where the master’s mate stood by the tub to dispense sea ambrosia to the ship’s company. At the sound of one bell the fifer struck up “Nancy Dawson,” or some other lively tune, such as “Drops of Brandy,” and immediately the ship’s company took up the tune. The mess cooks seized their black-jacks and hurried to the tub where the grog was served out. ”

“ When the marines and waisters manned the capstan, to weigh the anchor, aboard one of these old ships of war the pipers struck up “Drops of Brandy,” to put a heart into the jollies as they hove around. It was sung by many merry sailors over their grog, in the dark sea snuggeries between the guns. A tune which kept many a miserable pressed man from going over the side should be reverently treated. ”

“ A surgeon’s most common duty at sea was the dressing of ulcers, to which the seamen were very subject. In Smollett’s time the assistant-surgeon had to repair daily, in the forenoon, to the space about the fore-mast, where his loblolly-boy, or dresser, banged a mortar with a pestle, as a signal to the men to repair on deck to have their sores dressed. In ships newly commissioned, typhus, gaol, or ship fever was very common. ”

“ Next in importance to the second masters, and ranking above the master’s mates and midshipmen, was the boatswain, an officer, indeed, but a warrant or standing officer, not “on the quarter-deck,” like the gentlemen we have been describing. A boatswain had charge of the “boats, sails, rigging, colours, anchors, cables and cordage.” He was generally an old sailor, grizzled and tanned, who knew his business as well as it could be known. No man could be appointed boatswain until he had served a year as a petty officer, to the satisfaction of his captain. ”

“ Any man found drunk, or fighting, or playing at cards, or dicing, or using a candle, or otherwise transgressing the iron laws of the fleet, was promptly arrested by the master-at-arms, and placed in irons, and chained to an iron bar by the main-mast, till the captain could judge and sentence him. At evening muster, the master-at-arms stood in a prominent position, to spy out any man who walked a shade unsteadily or answered to his name with a thick intonation. He was armed with a cane, with which he was entitled to deal out punishment to those whom he suspected of playing the spy upon him. ”

“ A wooden ship, built of wood improperly seasoned, was always damp and foul, “tending to produce disease and generate infection.” [Pg 88] The ballast was often dirty; the water in the bilges was always putrid; the hold and orlop were badly ventilated; and the gun-deck was packed like a sardine tin with several hundreds of men, not all of whom were even tolerably cleanly in their habits. It was a surgeon’s duty to ask the captain to fix a general washing-day once in each week, whenever there was plenty of rain water, so that the men’s clothes might be washed and then dried in the sun. ”

“ An old sailor has told us of a captain of a top who deliberately threw himself overboard rather than suffer punishment for some slight irregularity aloft. “These men are frequently punished,” says Jack Nastyface, “and are always in dread when aloft lest they should be found fault with for not being quick enough, for punishment is sure to follow, and sure enough their conjectures are too true: for they are not only flogged, but their grog is stopped.” ”

“ Instead of enjoying a pleasant spell ashore they would be hurried aboard a King’s ship, to all the miseries of a gun-deck. It was the custom to say that a sailor was better situated on a man-of-war than on a merchant-vessel; that he had better food, better treatment, and better [Pg 123] money. As a matter of fact the merchant-seamen regarded the Royal Navy with dread and loathing. There can be little doubt that the thought of the press-gangs, and the fear of service in the navy, drove many of our best merchant-seamen into American ships, where they were rather less subject to impressment. ”

“ The quarter-gunners made the round of their guns, and in fine weather traversed them, in order to clean the plank covered by the carriages, and to remove any shakings or mess clouts stowed beneath them by idle sweepers. The gunner down in the magazine saw that the sea cocks which flooded the magazine in case of fire were ready for use, that the right proportion of cartridges was filled, and that the bands of the copper-bound powder casks were polished, with a little soft rag. Every petty officer and man aboard was busy polishing, cleaning, and arranging. ”

“ The tired men had to turn to with a will, to unbend sails and bend new ones, to send up new spars, or new yards, to reeve new running-rigging, and set up new stays and shrouds. “For days they have no remission of their toil, repairing the rigging and other parts injured in the action.” The work of a prize-crew, in charge of a prize, was especially arduous, for they were generally a mere handful of men, barely sufficient to sail the vessel, let alone to repair her. A prize-crew were sometimes too busy to clean the prize’s decks. ”

“ TWO OF NELSON’S SAILORS
Having picked his forecastle men, a lieutenant had to select his “topmen.” There were three divisions of topmen, one for each mast—fore, main, and mizzen. The topmen had to work the three masts above the lower yards. The lieutenant chose for the topmen all the young, active seamen who had been to sea for three or four years. Their work was very arduous, and very exacting. It was the hardest work of the ship, and demanded the smartest men, yet no men were more bullied than those to whom the duty fell. A topman lived in continual terror. ”

“ The watch below were sometimes allowed to keep below, to sleep if they could, or to amuse themselves as they pleased, as soon as they had swept away the crumbs of dinner. More frequently they were called on deck with the rest, to be drilled into smartness. Top-sails were reefed, and upper spars sent down, the ship was tacked and wore, the fire bell was rung, the men were sent to stations for letting go anchor. Landsmen and raw hands were taken below by the gunner’s mates, and trained at the heavy guns. ”

“ He had power to loose and to bind, and perhaps no single man has ever held such authority over the fortunes of his subordinates as that held by a sea captain over his company at sea during the Napoleonic wars. He lived alone, like a little god in a heaven, shrouded [Pg 58] from view by the cabin bulkheads, and guarded always by a red-coated sentry, armed with a drawn sword. If he came on deck the lieutenants at once shifted over to the lee side, out of respect to the great man. No man on board dared to address him, save on some question relating to the duty of the day. ”

“ Many marines were so eager to learn the sailors’ duty that they were allowed to go aloft. In some ships they were allowed to furl the main-sail. When at sea they helped the after-guard in various light duties. They stood sentry-go outside the captain’s cabin, magazine hatchways, and in various other parts of the ship, such as the galley door while dinner was cooking. In action they fell in with their muskets on the poop, quarter-deck, and gangways, to gall the enemy’s sail-trimmers and topmen, and to give a hand at the braces, if occasion arose. ”

“ The least pleasant part of a ship of war in action was the waist or midship part, near the main rigging. It was the custom in these sea engagements to converge a broadside fire upon some central point in the opposing ship’s side. The men stationed in the waist or main battery always suffered more in proportion than the men at the after or forward guns. That part of a ship’s [Pg 179] lower-deck between the fore and after hatchways, was known as “the slaughter-house,” on account of the massacre which generally took place at that part. ”

“ When a gun had become hot from continuous firing the violence of its recoil became so great that the carriage would be lifted from the deck, and the whole contrivance would leap to the beams above at each shot. ”

“ A lower-deck was the home of every vice, every baseness, and every misery. The life lived there was something like the life of the negro slave who happened to be housed in a gaol. It is not strange that the men sometimes revolted, and broke out in open mutiny in order to obtain redress. The story of the mutiny of the Bounty, in which the men were “hazed” [Pg 211] into turning their obnoxious officers adrift in an open boat, is well known. The stories of the mutinies at the Nore and at Spithead are also familiar. ”

“ He was a prodigy, “with every hair a rope-yarn, every tooth a marline-spike, every finger a fishhook, and his blood right good Stockhollum tar.” This kind of man-of-war’s man was rare. When he sailed aboard our men-of-war he generally held some position of authority, as captain of a top, or boatswain’s mate. We had never a ship’s crew of his like, even at the beginning of the French wars, when our ships were manned by the pick of the merchant-service. There were other kinds of sailor, for the King was always in want of men, and a man-of-war refused nothing. ”

“ In those days “every ship was a separate navy.” Each captain had his own theories, and to some extent his own routine. He had also his own whims and fancies, with power sufficient to enforce them. Some captains took a delight in causing their crews to dress uniformly, in the slops supplied by the purser. Others took a great delight in inventing fancy uniforms for their coxswains and gigs’ crews. A smart captain liked to dress his gig’s crew in some distinctive dress—such as scarlet frocks, white hats, blue trousers, and black handkerchiefs ”

“ A rope handle was found far safer than one of wood, for it allowed the sailor to bend it, so that he could pass it down the gun without leaning out of the port, as a mark for the enemy’s sharpshooters. In sponging and ramming the sailor showed himself as little as possible. If he had to expose himself at the port as he sponged, he always held the sponge away from the ship’s side, with his body between it and the timbers, so that if a shot struck the handle it might not force the implement through his body. ”