Ship's cook

“ Yet, strangely enough, even the elementary skill required for cooking the staple food served out in the great majority of sailing ships to-day is generally wanting. Surely it is only reasonable to expect a man who engages to serve as cook of a ship to be able to boil salt beef and pork, make pea-soup, and bread, and boil rice. Nothing more is required of him at sea than this, for the better food carried for the cabin is prepared by the steward, who will generally give an eye to it also during preparation. ”

“ Now, in an American ship the crew's plates are washed by the cook, who also keeps the tin dishes in which their food is served to them as bright as silver. That, again, is a point where an American ship's cook differs widely from his British confrère. Indeed, it is not too much to say that a cook who would be called a very clean man in a British ship would be looked upon as dirty on board of a Yank, so high is the standard maintained there in matters of cleanliness. ”

“ They had told me that the ship's cook must know how to manage things at sea; but it is easy enough to manage things when one has plenty of sides of bacon, and whole tubs of salt pork, and mouldy flour. One has delicate living on board; but one does not learn to prepare soup on a sausage-peg. ”

“ The ship shines from prow to stern, and the decks are clean enough to eat from. [Pg 245] Every piece of metal is polished until it glitters in the sunlight.
When this is finished, Jacky has his breakfast. The government allows thirty cents a day for the rations of each sailor. The paymaster serves out food enough to last several days or sometimes a week, and if the cook does not make this last the crew must go hungry.
The sailors are divided into "messes," each mess having its own cook who is under the direction of the general ship's cook. Jacky has no table-cloth or napkins. ”

“ With an anxious look on his face he came out of the galley with the leg of pork smoking on the dish, the cook coming to the door to see its safe transit, when, as if in protest against such a comfortable meal being enjoyed by our much harrassed captain, a huge sea broke over the ship, down went Tommy and the dish, and the tasty leg of pork went slithering along the deck and through the main deck port, and was lost to view before one of us could make an attempt to stop it, leaving Tommy still clinging to the dish. ”

“ Why, on a sailing ship, the very sea-cook at the galley door, amidships, clutching his pans, gazing across the wild, lonely waters, where the leaping, white-bearded waves seem like old misers’ hands plucking at the sunset’s gold, is sheer downright poetry compared with the electric-lighted saloon crowded with munching, over-fed men and women with moving mouths and pince-nez on their respectable noses. ”

“ The good people who, with the [Pg 207] welfare of the seaman at heart, take so much pains in order that he shall have his food properly prepared are undoubtedly doing a good work for their pupils; but the unhappy sailing-ship man seldom gets the benefit from those educated cooks that their teachers hope for. And this for the simple reason that, when once a ship's cook has really learned cookery, he will use his utmost endeavours to get a ship where there is something that requires skill in cooking. ”

“ The boatswain, who had stood nearby, had seen and heard all that had taken place, and word soon spread that the “Old Man,” as the captain was usually called, had been setting up the negro cook. It appears that up to this time the cook had had all the crew in fear of him, and had been doing about as he pleased. Our ship was unusually well supplied with good food, and we gave the men bread twice a day instead of the customary hard bread, or ships’ biscuit. ”

“ The last-named duty must have been a most difficult and wearisome one. From what has been shown of the poverty of the ship’s cooking facilities (especially for so large a company) , one must infer that it would be hopeless to expect to cook food in any quantity, except when all conditions favored, and then but slowly and with much difficulty. ”

“ Talk o' strength!"
"Come below, cook!" bawled one of the seven men.
"No; I've got to see to the capt'n's dinner. But I'm of ye if there's to be trouble. When I signed it was for wittles and a dry bottom and a ship's company. Pump, pump, and nothen to eat! Nothen to eat and pump, pump! Here's logic as don't tally with this covey's reckoning for one." And the man, violently smiting himself upon the breast, disappeared.
The powerful sailor who had held the pork aloft whilst the cook discoursed, shook it off the blade into the tub again and spat. ”

“ From the fact that so many would require food at practically the same hours of the day, it is clear that there must have been distribution of food (principally uncooked) to groups or families, who, with the aid of servants (when available) , must each have prepared their own meals, cooking as occasion and opportunity indicated; much after the manner of the steerage passengers in later days, but before those of the great ocean liners. There appears to have been but one cook for the officers and crew of the ship, and his hands were doubtless full with their demands. ”

“ You're either my ship's cook—and then you were treated handsome—or Cap'n Silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!" ”

“ We contrived to swipe a number of hams out of the galley. The captain accused Smutje, which made that honest sea cook so indignant that he deserted the ship at Newcastle. Now there was no cook, no Smutje. The captain asked for volunteers, but none came forward. Ships' cooks as a rule think themselves indispensable and irreplaceable, and make the sailors think so, when in fact they often cannot do more than cook pea soup and fry doughnuts.
"If nobody wants to be the cook," said the captain, "I shall have to commandeer one. Phelax, can you boil water?" ”

“ Even the ship’s cook, whom nobody regarded as a fighting man, must needs add his little quota to the general preparations, the same taking the form of several gallons of greasy boiling water with which he had filled his coppers, the which he proposed to employ at such time as might seem to him most suitable. ”

“ In sailing-ships on long voyages the cook’s berth is perhaps the worst on board, for he has to hear the continual growling of the men at the brutal monotony of the food (which he cannot help) , and he must, if he would not be badgered to death, perform the difficult task of keeping on good terms with both ends and the middle of the ship. ”

“ As for the jib, let it go; I saved pieces of it, and, after all, I was in want of pot-rags.
On August 3 the gale broke, and I saw many signs of land. Bad weather having made itself felt in the galley, I was minded to try my hand at a loaf of bread, and so rigging a pot of fire on deck by which to bake it, a loaf soon became an accomplished fact. One great feature about ship's cooking is that one's appetite on the sea is always good—a fact that I realized when I cooked for the crew of fishermen in the before-mentioned boyhood days. ”

“ Upon the berth-deck he has a chest, in which to keep his pots, pans, spoons, and small stores of sugar, molasses, tea, and flour.
But though entitled a cook, strictly speaking, the head of the mess is no cook at all; for the cooking for the crew is all done by a high and mighty functionary, officially called the “ship’s cook,” assisted by several deputies. In our frigate, this personage was a dignified coloured gentleman, whom the men dubbed “Old Coffee;” ”

“ Cooking.—The ship has two galleys, two cooks and four assistants. The provisions used in the first cabin, house on deck and second cabin ’tween decks are cooked in the starboard galley; and those used by the third cabin or intermediate passengers and crew in the larboard galley. They also cook anything extra as ham for breakfast.
Loaves, oatmeal cakes, puddings, etc., must be taken up to the galley before a certain hour in the forenoon. Between meal times hot water is sometimes exchanged for cold water to old and delicate passengers. ”

“ These things amaze me; but, after all, much of the work may be done ashore, or in the quiet of the moorings before starting-time in the morning, and pastry may be bought all ready for table, also cold side-dishes.
But none of these adjuncts are available to the sea-going ship. His dinners must be prepared, down to the smallest item, by the cook himself and his subordinates. It is true that he has a large staff in a liner, and that those assistants are carefully selected for their several duties ”

“ As I therefore kept the mate, whom we then called captain, on board with his men to refresh them, so I also forgot not the starving crew that were left on board, but ordered my own boat to go on board the ship and with my mate and twelve men to carry them a sack of bread, and four or five pieces of beef to boil. Our surgeon charged the men to cause the meat to be boiled while they stayed, and to keep guard in the cook-room, to prevent the men’s taking it to eat raw, or taking it out of the pot before it was well boiled, and then to give every man but a little at a time ”

“ How did you get on about the cook? Did you ship one?”
“Yes, I've got one, but he's only signed as far as Fairhaven,” replied the mate. “Fine strong chap he is. He's too good for a cook. I never saw a better built man in my life. It'll do your eyes good to look at him. Here, cook!”
At the summons a huge, close-cropped head was thrust out of the galley, and a man of beautiful muscular development stepped out before the eyes of the paralyzed skipper, and began to remove his coat. ”

“ It's a sin and a shame to spoil good food the way 'e does.”
“The moment I can ship another cook he goes,” said the skipper. “He seems busy, judging by the noise.”
“I'm making him clean up everything, ready for the next,” explained the mate, grimly. “And he 'ad the cheek to tell me he's improving—improving!”
“He'll go as soon as I get another,” repeated the skipper, stooping and peering ahead. “I don't like being poisoned any more than you do. He told me he could cook when I shipped him; said his sister had taught him.” ”

“ This gentleman being on a cruize in a large ship*, in the beginning of the late war, and the scurvy breaking out among his crew, he bethought him self of a kind of food he had seen used in some parts of the country, as the most proper on the occasion. Some oatmeal is put into a wooden vessel, hot water is poured upon it, and the infusion continues until the liquor begins to taste sourish, that is, till a fermentation comes on, which in a place moderately warm, may be in the space of two days. ”

“ I know not how to account for the scurvy raging more in the one ship than the other, unless it was owing to the crew of the Adventure being more scorbutic when they arrived in New Zealand than we were, and to their eating few or no vegetables while they lay in Queen Charlotte’s Sound, partly for want of knowing the right sorts, and partly because it was a new diet, which alone was sufficient for seamen to reject it. To introduce any new article of food among seamen, let it be ever so much for their good, requires both the example and authority of a commander ”

“ On some of the pans of ice are seals basking in the sun, and over the ship, apparently touching the masts and the ropes as the bark rocks to and fro, are giant petrels, Cape pigeons, gulls, white, brown, and blue petrels, all pointing their bills and stretching their necks to examine, perhaps for the first time, human beings and their crafts.
There is a dreamy stillness in the air, in spite of the frequent stirs of wild life, and a charming touch of colour to the sea, the ice, and the land, though the sky is dull, gray, and gloomy. ”

“ Men and women worked together, and the pieces were passed out weighing anywhere from ten to fifty pounds. To add to the misery, no fires or lights were allowed on board the ship; all cooking had to be done ashore in a general cook-house, and a dirty, filthy place it was. Then the food was transferred to the ship in a boat, and by the time it was on the table it was cool and unpalatable. ”

“ The cook on an ocean steamer gets more pay than the captain, and is now ranked as an officer. The managing director of a big German company was accustomed on visiting any ship of their line, to first shake hands with the cook and then with the captain. When one of the officers suggested that he was not following etiquette he answered that there was no trouble getting captains and lieutenants but it was a darned hard job to find a cook. The cook has to buy, plan meals, supervise the kitchen and run it economically for the company and satisfactorily for the passengers, for over 2,000 people. ”

“ Yet her life was most precious by far of the two.
I live on the sea and I'm lord of a ship,
That starts from her rest like a hound from the slip;
Her speed is unrivalled, her beauty is rare;
But her timbers are black as the highwayman's mare. ”

“ There is the head cook, and the second cook, and the baker, and the pastry cook, and the vegetable cook, &c. We have our butcher, our store-keeper, our porter, our steward. The ship's crew consists of one hundred and thirty-five men. There are four boilers, each heated by eight furnaces, and unitedly they consume eighty tons of coal a day. The two engines are of one thousand horse-power, and the weight of these enormous machines is eight hundred tons. Fifty-two men are constantly employed in their service. ”