THE CHOOSING OF WATCHES
The petty tally--Food--Work--Punishments
As soon as an ancient ship of war was fitted for the sea, with her guns
on board, and mounted, her sails bent, her stores and powder in the
hold, her water filled, her ballast trimmed, and the hands aboard, some
"steep-tubs" were placed in the chains for the steeping of the salt
provisions, "till the salt be out though not the saltness." The anchor
was then weighed to a note of music. The "weeping Rachells and
mournefull Niobes" were set packing ashore. The colours were run up and
a gun fired. The foresail was loosed. The cable rubbed down as it came
aboard (so that it might not be faked into the tiers wet or dirty). The
boat was hoisted inboard. The master "took his departure," by observing
the bearing of some particular point of land, as the Mew Stone, the
Start, the Lizard, etc. Every man was bidden to "say his private prayer
for a bonne voyage." The anchor was catted and fished. Sails were set
and trimmed. Ropes were coiled down clear for running, and the course
laid by the master.
[Illustration: THE SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS
CIRCA 1630]
The captain or master then ordered the boatswain "to call up the
company," just as all hands are mustered on modern sailing ships at the
beginning of a voyage. The master "being Chief of the Starboard Watch"
would then look over the mariners for a likely man. Having made his
choice he bade the man selected go over to the starboard side, while the
commander of the port-watch made his choice. When all the men had
been chosen, and the crew "divided into two parts," then each man was
bidden to choose "his Mate, Consort or Comrade." The bedding
arrangements of these old ships were very primitive. The officers had
their bunks or hammocks in their cabins, but the men seem to have slept
wherever and however they could. Some, no doubt had hammocks, but the
greater number lay in their cloaks between the guns, on mattresses if
they had them. A man shared his bed and bedding (if he had any) with his
"Mate, Consort, or Comrade," so that the one bed and bedding served for
the pair. One of the two friends was always on deck while the other
slept. In some ships at the present time the forecastles are fitted with
bunks for only half the number of seamen carried, so that the practice
is not yet dead. The boatswain, with all "the Younkers or Common
Sailors" then went forward of the main-mast to take up their quarters
between decks. The captain, master's mates, gunners, carpenters,
quartermasters, etc., lodged abaft the main-mast "in their severall
Cabbins." The next thing to be done was the arrangement of the ship's
company into messes, "four to a mess," after which the custom was to
"give every messe a quarter Can of beere and a bisket of bread to stay
their stomacks till the kettle be boiled." In the first dog-watch, from
4 to 6 P.M., all hands went to prayers about the main-mast, and from
their devotions to supper. At 6 P.M. the company met again to sing a
psalm, and say their prayers, before the setting of the night watch;
this psalm singing being the prototype of the modern sea-concert, or
singsong. At 8 P.M. the first night watch began, lasting until midnight,
during which four hours half the ship's company were free to sleep. At
midnight the sleepers were called on deck, to relieve the watch. The
watches were changed as soon as the muster had been called and a psalm
sung, and a prayer offered. They alternated thus throughout the
twenty-four hours, each watch having four hours below, after four hours
on deck, unless "some flaw of winde come, some storm or gust, or some
accident that requires the help of all hands." In these cases the whole
ship's company remained on deck until the work was done, or until the
master discharged the watch below.[24] The decks were washed down by the
swabbers every morning, before the company went to breakfast. After
breakfast the men went about their ordinary duties, cleaning the ship,
mending rigging, or working at the thousand odd jobs the sailing of a
ship entails. The tops were always manned by lookouts, who received some
small reward if they spied a prize. The guns were sometimes exercised,
and all hands trained to general quarters.
[Footnote 24: See "The Sea-man's Grammar," by Captain John Smith.]
A few captains made an effort to provide for the comfort of their men by
laying in a supply of "bedding, linnen, arms[25] and apparel." In some
cases they also provided what was called the petty tally, or store of
medical comforts. "The Sea-man's Grammar" of Captain John Smith, from
which we have been quoting, tells us that the petty tally contained:
[Footnote 25: The men were expected to bring their own swords and
knives.]
"Fine wheat flower close and well-packed, Rice, Currants, Sugar, Prunes,
Cynamon, Ginger, Pepper, Cloves, Green Ginger, Oil, Butter, Holland
cheese or old Cheese, Wine-Vinegar, Canarie-Sack, Aqua-vitæ, the best
Wines, the best Waters, the juyce of Limons for the scurvy, white
Bisket, Oatmeal, Gammons of Bacons, dried Neats tongues, Beef packed up
in Vineger, Legs of Mutton minced and stewed, and close packed up, with
tried Sewet or Butter in earthen Pots. To entertain Strangers Marmalade,
Suckets, Almonds, Comfits and such like."
"Some," says the author of this savoury list, "will say I would have
men rather to feast than to fight. But I say the want of those
necessaries occasions the loss of more men than in any English Fleet
hath been slain since 88. For when a man is ill, or at the point of
death, I would know whether a dish of buttered Rice with a little
Cynamon, Ginger and Sugar, a little minced meat, or rost Beef, a few
stew'd Prunes, a race of green Ginger, a Flap-jack, a Kan of fresh water
brewed with a little Cynamon and Sugar be not better than a little poor
John, or salt fish, with Oil and Mustard, or Bisket, Butter, Cheese, or
Oatmeal-pottage on Fish-dayes, or on Flesh-dayes, Salt, Beef, Pork and
Pease, with six shillings beer, this is your ordinary ship's allowance,
and good for them are well if well conditioned [not such bad diet for a
healthy man if of good quality] which is not alwayes as Sea-men can [too
well] witnesse. And after a storme, when poor men are all wet, and some
have not so much as a cloth to shift them, shaking with cold, few of
those but will tell you a little Sack or Aqua-vitæ is much better to
keep them in health, than a little small Beer, or cold water although it
be sweet. Now that every one should provide for himself, few of them
have either that providence or means, and there is neither Ale-house,
Tavern, nor Inne to burn a faggot in, neither Grocer, Poulterer,
Apothecary nor Butcher's Shop, and therefore the use of this petty Tally
is necessary, and thus to be employed as there is occasion."
The entertainment of strangers, with "Almonds, Comfits and such like,"
was the duty of a sea-captain, for "every Commander should shew himself
as like himself as he can," and, "therefore I leave it to their own
Discretion," to supply suckets for the casual guest. In those days, when
sugar was a costly commodity, a sucket was more esteemed than now. At
sea, when the food was mostly salt, it must certainly have been a great
dainty.
The "allowance" or ration to the men was as follows[26]:--
[Footnote 26: See Sir W. Monson's "Naval Tracts."]
Each man and boy received one pound of bread or biscuit daily, with a
gallon of beer. The beer was served out four times daily, a quart at a
time, in the morning, at dinner, in the afternoon, and at supper. On
Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, which were flesh days, the
allowance of meat was either one pound of salt beef, or one pound of
salt pork with pease. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, a side of salt-fish,
ling, haberdine, or cod, was divided between the members of each mess,
while a seven-ounce ration of butter (or olive oil) and a fourteen-ounce
ration of cheese, was served to each man. On Fridays, or fast days, this
allowance was halved. At one time the sailors were fond of selling or
playing away their rations, but this practice was stopped in the reign
of Elizabeth, and the men forced to take their food "orderly and in due
season" under penalties. Prisoners taken during the cruise were allowed
two-thirds of the above allowance.
The allowance quoted above appears liberal, but it must be remembered
that the sailors were messed "six upon four," and received only
two-thirds of the full ration. The quality of the food was very bad. The
beer was the very cheapest of small beer, and never kept good at sea,
owing to the continual motion of the ship. It became acid, and induced
dysentery in those who drank it, though it was sometimes possible to
rebrew it after it had once gone sour. The water, which was carried in
casks, was also far from wholesome. After storing, for a day or two, it
generally became offensive, so that none could drink it. In a little
while this offensiveness passed off, and it might then be used, though
the casks bred growths of an unpleasant sliminess, if the water remained
in them for more than a month. However water was not regarded as a
drink for human beings until the beer was spent. The salt meat was as
bad as the beer, or worse. Often enough the casks were filled with lumps
of bone and fat which were quite uneatable, and often the meat was so
lean, old, dry and shrivelled that it was valueless as food. The
victuallers often killed their animals in the heat of the summer, when
the meat would not take salt, so that many casks must have been unfit
for food after lying for a week in store. Anti-scorbutics were supplied,
or not supplied, at the discretion of the captains. It appears that the
sailors disliked innovations in their food, and rejected the
substitution of beans, flour "and those white Meats as they are called"
for the heavy, and innutritious pork and beef. Sailors were always great
sticklers for their "Pound and Pint," and Boteler tells us that in the
early seventeenth century "the common Sea-men with us, are so besotted
on their Beef and Pork, as they had rather adventure on all the
Calentures, and Scarbots [scurvy] in the World, than to be weaned from
their Customary Diet, or so much as to lose the least Bit of it."
The salt-fish ration was probably rather better than the meat, but the
cheese was nearly always very bad, and of an abominable odour. The
butter was no better than the cheese. It was probably like so much
train-oil. The bread or biscuit which was stowed in bags in the
bread-room in the hold, soon lost its hardness at sea, becoming soft and
wormy, so that the sailors had to eat it in the dark. The biscuits, or
cakes of bread, seem to have been current coin with many of the West
Indian natives. In those ships where flour was carried, in lieu of
biscuit, as sometimes happened in cases of emergency, the men received a
ration of doughboy, a sort of dumpling of wetted flour boiled with pork
fat. This was esteemed a rare delicacy either eaten plain or with
butter.
This diet was too lacking in variety, and too destitute of
anti-scorbutics to support the mariners in health. The ships in
themselves were insanitary, and the crews suffered very much from what
they called calentures, (or fevers such as typhus and typhoid), and the
scurvy. The scurvy was perhaps the more common ailment, as indeed it is
to-day. It is now little dreaded, for its nature is understood, and
guarded against. In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries, it killed its thousands, owing to the ignorance and
indifference of responsible parties, and to other causes such as the
construction of the ships and the length of the voyages. A salt diet,
without fresh vegetables, and without variety, is a predisposing cause
of scurvy. Exposure to cold and wet, and living in dirty surroundings
are also predisposing causes. The old wooden ships were seldom very
clean, and never dry, and when once the scurvy took hold it generally
raged until the ship reached port, where fresh provisions could be
purchased. A wooden ship was never quite dry, in any weather, for the
upper-deck planks, and the timbers of her topsides, could never be so
strictly caulked that no water could leak in. The sea-water splashed in
through the scuppers and through the ports, or leaked in, a little at a
time, through the seams. In bad weather the lower gun-decks (or all
decks below the spar-deck) were more or less awash, from seas that had
washed down the hatchways. The upper-deck seams let in the rain, and
when once the lower-decks were wet it was very difficult to dry them. It
was impossible to close the gun-deck ports so as to make them
watertight, for the water would find cracks to come in at, even though
the edges of the lids were caulked with oakum, and the orifices further
barred by deadlights or wooden shutters. Many of the sailors, as we have
seen, were without a change of clothes, and with no proper
sleeping-place, save the wet deck and the wet jackets that they worked
in. It often happened that the gun-ports would be closed for several
weeks together, during which time the gun-decks became filthy and musty,
while the sailors contracted all manner of cramps and catarrhs. In
addition to the wet, and the discomfort of such a life, there was also
the work, often extremely laborious, incidental to heavy weather at sea.
What with the ceaseless handling of sails and ropes, in frost and snow
and soaking sea-water; and the continual pumping out of the leaks the
rotten seams admitted, the sailor had little leisure in which to sleep,
or to dry himself. When he left the deck he had only the dark, wet
berth-deck to retire to, a place of bleakness and misery, where he might
share a sopping blanket, if he had one, with the corpse of a drowned rat
and the flotsam from the different messes. There was no getting dry nor
warm, though the berth-deck might be extremely close and stuffy from
lack of ventilation. The cook-room, or galley fire would not be lighted,
and there would be no comforting food or drink, nothing but raw meat and
biscuit, and a sup of sour beer. It was not more unpleasant perhaps than
life at sea is to-day, but it was certainly more dangerous.[27] When at
last the storm abated and the sea went down, the ports were opened and
the decks cleaned. The sailors held a general washing-day, scrubbing the
mouldy clothes that had been soaked so long, and hanging them to dry
about the rigging. Wind-sails or canvas ventilators were rigged, to
admit air to the lowest recesses of the hold. The decks were scrubbed
down with a mixture of vinegar and sand, and then sluiced with salt
water, scraped with metal scrapers, and dried with swabs and small
portable firepots. Vinegar was carried about the decks in large iron
pots, and converted into vapour by the insertion of red-hot metal bars.
The swabbers brought pans of burning pitch or brimstone into every
corner, so that the smoke might penetrate everywhere. But even then the
decks were not wholesome. There were spaces under the guns which no art
could dry, and subtle leaks in the topsides that none could stop. The
hold accumulated filth, for in many ships the ship's refuse was swept on
to the ballast, where it bred pestilence, typhus fever and the like. The
bilge-water reeked and rotted in the bilges, filling the whole ship with
its indescribable stench. Beetles, rats and cockroaches bred and
multiplied in the crannies, until (as in Captain Cook's case two
centuries later), they made life miserable for all on board. These
wooden ships were very gloomy abodes, and would have been so no doubt
even had they been dry and warm. They were dark, and the lower-deck,
where most of the men messed, was worse lit than the decks above it, for
being near to the water-line the ports could seldom be opened. Only in
very fair weather could the sailors have light and sun below decks. As a
rule they ate and slept in a murky, stuffy atmosphere, badly lighted by
candles in heavy horn lanthorns. The gloom of the ships must have
weighed heavily upon many of the men, and the depression no doubt
predisposed them to scurvy, making them less attentive to bodily
cleanliness, and less ready to combat the disease when it attacked them.
Perhaps some early sea-captains tried to make the between decks less
gloomy by whitewashing the beams, bulkheads and ship's sides. In the
eighteenth century this seems to have been practised with success,
though perhaps the captains who tried it were more careful of their
hands in other ways, and the benefit may have been derived from other
causes.
[Footnote 27: The mortality among the sailors was very great.]
Discipline was maintained by some harsh punishments, designed to "tame
the most rude and savage people in the world." Punishment was inflicted
at the discretion of the captain, directly after the hearing of the
case, but the case was generally tried the day after the commission of
the offence, so that no man should be condemned in hot blood. The most
common punishment was that of flogging, the men being stripped to the
waist, tied to the main-mast or to a capstan bar, and flogged upon the
bare back with a whip or a "cherriliccum." The boatswain had power to
beat the laggards and the ship's boys with a cane, or with a piece of
knotted rope. A common punishment was to put the offender on half his
allowance, or to stop his meat, or his allowance of wine or spirits. For
more heinous offences there was the very barbarous punishment of
keel-hauling, by which the victim was dragged from the main yardarm
right under the keel of the ship, across the barnacles, to the yardarm
on the farther side. Those who suffered this punishment were liable to
be cut very shrewdly by the points of the encrusted shells. Ducking from
the main yardarm was inflicted for stubbornness, laziness, going on
shore without leave, or sleeping while on watch. The malefactor was
brought to the gangway, and a rope fastened under his arms and about his
middle. He was then hoisted rapidly up to the main yardarm, "from whence
he is violently let fall into the Sea, some times twice, some times
three severall times, one after another" (_Boteler_). This punishment,
and keel-hauling, were made more terrible by the discharge of a great
gun over the malefactor's head as he struck the water, "which proveth
much offensive to him" (_ibid._). If a man killed another he was
fastened to the corpse and flung overboard (_Laws of Oleron_). For
drawing a weapon in a quarrel, or in mutiny, the offender lost his right
hand (_ibid._). Theft was generally punished with flogging, but in
serious cases the thief was forced to run the gauntlet, between two rows
of sailors all armed with thin knotted cords. Ducking from the bowsprit
end, towing in a rope astern, and marooning, were also practised as
punishments for the pilferer. For sleeping on watch there was a
graduated scale. First offenders were soused with a bucket of water. For
the second offence they were tied up by the wrists, and water was poured
down their sleeves. For the third offence they were tied to the mast,
with bags of bullets, or gun-chambers tied about their arms and necks,
until they were exhausted, or "till their back be ready to break"
(_Monson_). If they still offended in this kind they were taken and tied
to the bowsprit end, with rations of beer and bread, and left there with
leave to starve or fall into the sea. Destruction or theft of ships'
property was punished by death. Petty insurrections, such as complaints
of the quality or quantity of the food, etc., were punished by the
bilboes. The bilboes were iron bars fixed to the deck a little abaft the
main-mast. The prisoner sat upon the deck under a sentry, and his legs
and hands were shackled to the bars with irons of a weight proportioned
to the crime. It was a rule that none should speak to a man in the
bilboes. For blasphemy and swearing there was "an excellent good
way"[28] of forcing the sinner to hold a marline-spike in his mouth,
until his tongue was bloody (_Teonge_). Dirty speech was punished in a
similar way, and sometimes the offending tongue was scrubbed with sand
and canvas. We read of two sailors who stole a piece of beef aboard
H.M.S. _Assistance_ in the year 1676.[29] Their hands were tied behind
them, and the beef was hung about their necks, "and the rest of the
seamen cam one by one, and rubd them over the mouth with the raw beife;
and in this posture they stood two howers." Other punishments were
"shooting to death," and hanging at the yardarm. "And the Knaveries of
the Ship-boys are payd by the Boat-Swain with the Rod; and commonly this
execution is done upon the Munday Mornings; and is so frequently in use,
that some meer Seamen believe in earnest, that they shall not have a
fair Wind, unless the poor Boys be duely brought to the Chest, that is,
whipped, every Munday Morning" (_Boteler_).
[Footnote 28: _Circa_ 1670.]
[Footnote 29: The punishment would have been no less severe a century
earlier.]
Some of these punishments may appear unduly harsh; but on the whole they
were no more cruel than the punishments usually inflicted ashore.
Indeed, if anything they were rather more merciful.