SAILORS.—“SOGERS.”—BOOKS.—ANECDOTES.
[Sidenote: _OUR SHIP’S CREW._]
If the purport of my title would permit it, I should like to write a
long chapter on our ship’s crew, and the general subject of American
officers and seamen. I will, however, but give, in this one word,
my testimony, as one having had some experience as to the tyranny,
barbarity, and lawlessness with which in most of our merchant ships
the common seamen are treated; and the vice, misery, and hopelessness
to which, as a body, they are left on our shores, by the neglect or
ill-judged and parsimonious assistance of those who compass sea and
land to make proselytes of the foreign heathen.
Our ship’s crew, as is usual in a Liverpool packet, are nearly all
foreigners—English, Scotch, Irish, Danes, French, and Portuguese. One
boasts of being “half-Welsh and half-Heelander,” judging from this
specimen, I have not a very high opinion of the cross. The mate is a
Dane, the second and third mates, Connecticut men. The captain, also,
is from somewhere down east. He is a good and careful seaman, courteous
in his manners, and a religious man, much more consistently so than
pious captains I have known before proved to be, after getting on blue
water. He never speaks to the seamen, or directly has any thing to do
with them. In fact, except when he is taking observations, or in bad
weather, or an emergency, you would never see in him any thing but
a floating-hotel keeper. It is plain, nevertheless, that his eye is
everywhere, and a single incident will show that the savage custom of
the sea has not been without the usual influence upon him. He went to
the kitchen the other day and told the cook he must burn less wood
than he had been doing. The cook, who is a peculiarly mild, polite,
peaceable, little Frenchman, replied that he had along been careful not
to use more than was necessary. The captain immediately knocked him
down, and then quietly remarking, “You’ll take care how you answer me
next time,” walked back to join the ladies. The cook fell on the stove,
and was badly burned and bruised.
The men complain that their food is stinted and poor, and they are
worked hard, at least they are kept constantly at work; men never exert
themselves much when that is the case. It has been evident to me that
they all _soger_ systematically. (_Sogering_ is pretending to work,
and accomplishing as little as possible.) It is usually considered an
insult to accuse one of it, but one day I saw a man so evidently trying
to be as long as he could at some work he had to do in the rigging,
that I said to him,—
“Do you think you’ll _make eight bells_ of that job?”
He looked up with a twirl of his tongue, but said nothing.
“Have you been at it all the watch?”
“Ay, sir, I have.”
“A smart man would have done it in an hour, I should think.”
“Perhaps he might.”
“Do you call yourself a soger?”
“Why, sir, we all sogers, reg’lar, in this here craft. D’ye see, sir,
the capten’s a mean man, and ’ould like to get two days’ work in one
out on us. If he’d give us _watch-and-watch_, sir, there’d be more work
done, you mote be sure, sir.”
[Sidenote: _SAILORS’ ETHICS._]
Sunday is observed by sparing the crew from all labour not necessary to
the sailing of the ship, but as it is the only day in which they have
watch-and-watch, or time enough to attend to such matters, they are
mostly engaged in washing and mending their clothes. We had selected
a number of books at the Tract-house, which we gave away among them.
They were received with gratitude, and the pictures at least read
with interest. The printed matter was read somewhat also; I noticed
three men sitting close together, all spelling out the words from
three different books, and speaking them aloud in a low, monotonous
tone. If they had come to a paragraph in Latin, I doubt if they would
have understood what they read any less. The truth is, as I have
often noticed with most sailors, _a book is a book_, and they read it
for the sake of reading, not for the ideas the words are intended to
convey, just as some people like to work out mathematical problems
for the enjoyment of the work, not because they wish to make use of
the result. I saw a sailor once bargaining with a shipmate for his
allowance of grog, offering him for it a little book, which he said
was “first-rate reading.” After the bargain was closed I looked at
the book. It was a volume of Temperance tales. The man had no idea of
making a practical joke, and assured me with a grave face, that he had
read it all through. One Sunday, in the latter part of a passage from
the East Indies, one of my watchmates, an old sea-dog, closed a little
carefully preserved Testament, and slapping it on his knee, said, with
a triumphant air, as if henceforth there was laid up for him a crown of
glory and no mistake,—“There! I’ve read that book through, every word
on’t, this voyage; and, damme, if I ha’nt got more good out on’t than
I should ’a got going aft long with the rest on ye, to hear that old
pharisee (the captain) make his long prayers.” Then, after gazing at it
a few moments, he added, musingly, as if reflecting on the mutability
of human affairs, “I hookt that book from a feller named Abe Williams,
to the Home, down to Providence, ’bout five year ago. His name was
in’t, but I tore it out. I wonder what’s become on him now; dead,—as
like as not” (puts it up and takes out his pipe); “well, God’ll have
mercy on his soul, I hope.”