Since ballad-mongering began, the sea and the men who go down to it in
ships have been a fruitful theme; and the conventional song-singing,
horn-piping tar of the chanteys is a creature of fancy, pure and simple.
Jack is as honest as any man. Aboard ship he goes about his duties
willingly, a creature of habit and environment, with a goodly respect for
his “old man” and the articles of war. Ashore he is an innocent,--a brand
for the burning, with a half-month’s pay and a devouring thirst.
Sailor-men all over the world are the same, and will be throughout all
time, except in so far as their life is improved by new conditions. Though
Jack aboard ship is the greatest grumbler in the world, ashore he loves
all the world, and likes to be taken for the sailor of the songs. In a
week he will spend the earnings of many months, and go back aboard ship,
sadder, perhaps, but never a wiser man.
He seldom makes resolutions, however, and so, when anchor takes ground
again, his money leaves him with the same merry clink as before. Though
a Bohemian and a nomad, he does not silently steal away, like the Arab.
His goings, like his comings, are accompanied with much carousing and
song-singing; and the sweetheart he leaves gets to know that wiving is
not for him. With anchor atrip and helm alee, Jack mourns not, no matter
whither bound.
The improved conditions on the modern men-of-war have changed things for
him somewhat, and, though still impregnated with old ideas, Jack is more
temperate, more fore-sighted, and more self-reliant than he once was. His
lapses of discipline and his falls from grace are less frequent than of
yore, for he has to keep an eye to windward if he expects to win any of
the benefits that are generously held out to the hard-working, sober, and
deserving.
But the bitterness of the old days is barely disguised in the jollity of
the chanteys. However we take it, the sea-life is a hardship the like of
which no land-lubber knows. Stories of the trials of the merchant service
come to him now and then and open his eyes to the real conditions of the
service.
Men are greater brutes at sea than ashore. The one-man power, absolute,
supreme in the old days, when all license was free and monarchies trod
heavily on weak necks, led men to deeds of violence and death, whenever
violence and death seemed the easiest methods of enforcing discipline. Men
were knocked down hatchways, struck with belaying-pins, made to toe the
seam on small provocation or on no provocation at all. The old-fashioned
sea-yarns of Captain Marryat ring true as far as they go, but they do not
go far enough.
In England the great frigates were generally both under-manned and
badly victualled, and the cruises were long and sickening. The practice
of medicine had not reached the dignity of the precise science it is
to-day, and the surgeon’s appliances were rude and roughly manipulated.
Anæsthetics were unknown, and after the battles, the slaughter in which
was sometimes terrific, many a poor chap was sent to his last account by
unwise amputation or bad treatment after the operation.
The water frequently became putrid, and this, with the lack of fresh
vegetables and the over use of pork, brought on the disease called scurvy,
which oftentimes wiped out entire crews in its deadly ravages. Every year
thousands of men were carried off by it. A far greater number died from
the effects of scurvy than from the enemy’s fire. Lieutenant Kelly says
that during the Seven Years’ War but one thousand five hundred and twelve
seamen and marines were killed, but one hundred and thirty-three thousand
died of disease or were reported missing. Not until the beginning of this
century was this dreadful evil ameliorated.
The evils of impressment and the work of the crimp and his gang--so
infamous in England--had no great vogue here, for the reason that, during
our wars of 1776 and 1812, the good seamen--coasters and fishermen, who
had suffered most from the Lion--were only too anxious to find a berth
on an American man-of-war, where they could do yeoman’s service against
their cruel oppressor.
“Keel-hauling” and the “cat” were relics of the barbarism of the old
English navy. Keel-hauling was an extreme punishment, for the unfortunate
rarely, if ever, survived the ordeal. In brief, it consisted in sending
the poor sailor-man on a voyage of discovery along the keel of the vessel.
Trussed like a fowl, he was lowered over the bows of the ship and hauled
along underneath her until he made his appearance at the stern, half or
wholly drowned, and terribly cut all over the body by the sea-growth on
the ship’s bottom. He bled in every part from the cuts of the barnacles;
but “this was considered rather advantageous than otherwise, as the loss
of blood restored the patient, if he were not quite drowned, and the
consequence was that one out of three, it is said, have been known to
recover from their enforced submarine excursion.”
Think of it! Recovery was not anticipated, but if the victim got well,
the officer in command made no objection! Beside the brutality of these
old English navy bullies a barbarous Hottentot chief would be an angel of
mercy.
Flogging and the use of the cat were abolished in the American navy
in 1805. This law meant the use of the cat-o’-nine tails as a regular
punishment, but did not prohibit blows to enforce immediate obedience.
Before that time it was a common practice for the punishment of minor
offences as well as the more serious ones.
Flogging in the old days was an affair of much ceremony on board
men-of-war. The entire ship’s company was piped on deck for the
punishment, and the culprit, stripped to the waist, was brought to the
mast. The boatswain’s mate, cat in hand, stood by the side of a suspended
grating in the gangway, and the captain, officer of the deck, and the
surgeon took their posts opposite him. The offence and the sentence were
then read, and the stripes were administered on the bare back of the
offender, a petty officer standing by to count the blows of the lash,
while the doctor, with his hand on the victim’s pulse, was ready to give
the danger signal when absolutely necessary.
The men bore it in different ways. The old hands gritted their teeth
philosophically, but the younger men frequently shrieked in their agony as
the pitiless lash wound itself around the tender flesh, raising at first
livid red welts, and afterwards lacerating the flesh and tearing the back
into bloody seams.
The effect upon the lookers-on was varied. The younger officers, newly
come from well-ordered English homes, frequently fainted at the sight.
But the horror of the spectacle soon died away, and before many weeks had
passed, with hardened looks, they stood on the quarter-deck and watched
the performance amusedly. Soon the spectacle got to be a part of their
life, and the jokes were many and the laughter loud at the victim’s
expense. The greater the suffering the more pleasurable the excitement.
Many yarns are spun of Jack’s tricks to avoid the lash or to reduce to a
minimum the pain of the blows. Sometimes the men had their flogging served
to them regularly, but in small doses. To these the punishment lost its
rigor. For the boatswain’s mate not infrequently disguised the force of
his blows, which came lightly enough, though the victim bawled vigorously
to keep up the deception, and in the “three- and four-dozen” cases he
sometimes tempered his blows to the physical condition of the sufferers,
who otherwise would have swooned with the pain.
One Jacky, who thought himself wiser than his fellows, in order to escape
his next dozen, had a picture of a crucifix tattooed over the whole
surface of his back, and under it a legend, which intimated that blows
upon the image would be a sacrilege. When next he was brought before the
mast he showed it to the boatswain and his captain. The captain, a crusty
barnacle of the old harsh school, smiled grimly.
“Don’t desecrate the picture, bos’n,” he said; “we will respect this
man’s religious scruples. You may put on his shirt,” he said, chuckling
to himself, “but remove his trousers, bos’n, and give him a dozen extra.
And lay them on religiously, bos’n.”
All this was in the older days, and it was never so bad in the American as
in the English navy. The middle period of the American navy, from before
the Civil War to the age of iron and steel cruisers, presents an entirely
different aspect in some ways.
Illegal punishments were still inflicted, for there were always then,
as now, a certain percentage of ruffians forward who were amenable to
no discipline, and could be managed only by meeting them with their own
weapons. The “spread-eagle” and the ride on the “gray mare” were still
resorted to to compel obedience.
They “spread-eagled” a man by tricing him up inside the rigging, taut
lines holding his arms and legs outstretched to the farthest shrouds, a
bight of rope passed around his body preventing too great a strain. He
was gagged, and so he could not answer back.
The “gray mare” on which the obstreperous were forced to gallop was the
spanker-boom--the long spar that extends far over the water at the ship’s
stern. By casting loose the sheets, the boom rolled briskly from side to
side, and the lonely horseman was forced in this perilous position to hold
himself by digging his nails into the soft wood or swinging to any of the
gear that flew into his reach. At best it was not a safe saddle, and a
rough sea made it worse than a bucking broncho.
[Illustration: THE SMOKING HOUR]
Paul Jones had a neat way of disciplining his midshipmen aloft. He would
go to the rail himself, and casting loose the halyards, let the yard go
down with a run, to the young gentleman’s great discomfiture.
But the life of the old salt was not all bitterness. It was not all
shore-leave, but there was skittles now and then for the deserving and
good-conduct men. Jack’s pleasures were simple, as they are to-day. There
was never a crew that did not have its merry chanter and its flute,
fiddle, or guitar, or the twice-told tale of the ship’s Methuselah to
entertain the dog-watches of the evening or the smoking-hour and make a
break in the dreary monotony of routine.
On public holidays, when everything was snug at sea or in port, a glorious
skylark was the order of the afternoon. At the call of the bos’n’s mate,
“All hands frolic,” rigorous discipline was suspended, and the men turned
to with a will to make the day one to be talked about. Mast-head-races,
potato- and sack-races, climbing the greased pole, and rough horse-play
and man-handling filled the afternoon until hammocks were piped down
and the watch was set. Purses from the wardroom and prizes of rum and
tobacco--luxuries dear to Jack’s heart--were the incentives to vigorous
athletics and rough buffoonery. The rigging was filled from netting to
top with the rough, jesting figures, and cheer upon cheer and laugh upon
laugh greeted a successful bout or fortunate sally.
Jack is a child at the best of times and at the worst, and he takes his
pleasures with the zest of a boy of seven, laughing and making merry until
he falls to the deck from very weariness. And woe be at these merry times
to the shipmate who has no sense of humor. His day is a hideous one,
for he is hazed and bullied until he is forced in self-defence to seek
the seclusion granted by the nethermost part of the hold. A practical
joker always, when discipline is lax, Jack’s boisterous humor knows no
restraint.
The ceremony of “crossing the line,” the boarding of the ship by Neptune
and his court, seems almost as old as ships, and is honored even to-day,
when much of the romantic seems to have passed out of sea-life. It is the
time when the deep-sea sailor has the better of his cousin of the coasts.
Every man who crossed the equator for the first time had to pay due honor
to the god of the seas. They exacted it, too, among the whalers when they
crossed the Arctic Circle.
[Illustration: NEPTUNE COMES ABOARD]
The wardroom usually bought off in rum, money, or tobacco, but forward
it was the roughest kind of rough man-handling; and the victims were
happy indeed when they got their deep-water credentials. The details of
procedure in this remarkable rite differed somewhat on different ships,
but the essential elements of play and torture were the same in all cases.
The day before the line was to be reached both wardroom and forecastle
would receive a manifesto setting forth the intention of the god of the
seas to honor their poor craft and ordering all those who had not paid
tribute to him to gather forward to greet him as he came over the side. At
the hour appointed there was a commotion forward, and a figure, wearing
a pasteboard crown that surmounted a genial red face adorned with oakum
whiskers, made its appearance over the windward nettings and proclaimed
its identity as Neptune. Behind him was a motley crew in costumes of any
kind and all kinds--or no kind--who had girded itself for this ungentle
art of bull-baiting. The deep-water men intended to have an ample return
for what they themselves had suffered, not many years back, when they had
rounded the Horn or Cape of Good Hope.
The unfortunates, stripped to the waist, were brought forward, one by one,
to be put through their paces. After a mock trial by the jury of buffoons,
the king ordered their punishment meted out in doses proportioned directly
to the popularity of the victims as shipmates. The old long boat, with
thwarts removed and a canvas lining, served as a ducking-pond. After
vigorous applications, of “slush,”--which is another name for ship’s
grease,--or perhaps a toss in a hammock or a blanket, they were pitched
backward into the pool and given a thorough sousing, emerging somewhat the
worse for wear, but happy that the business was finally done for good and
all.
To-day the roughest sort of bullying no longer takes place, and much of
the romance seems to have passed out of the custom.
The punishments, too, have lost their severity. The “gray mare” swings to
an empty saddle, the “spread eagle” is a thing of the past, and the “cat”
is looked upon as a relic of barbarism. Things are not yet Pinafore-like,
but the cursing and man-handling are not what they used to be. There are
a few of the old-timers who still believe the “cat” a necessary evil,
and would like to see an occasional “spread eagle,” but the more moderate
punishments of to-day have proved, save in a few hardened cases, that much
may be done if the morale of the service is high.
The fact of the matter is, that the standard of the man behind the gun has
kept up with the marvellous advance of the ships and the ordnance. To-day,
the naval service of the United States is worthy of any seaman’s metal. As
a mode of living, sea-faring on American men-of-war attracts as many good
men as any other trade. Machinists, electricians, carpenters, gunners,
and sail-makers, all have the chance of a good living, with prizes for
the honest and industrious.
The seaman himself, in times of peace, may rise by faithful service to
a competency and a retiring pension more generous than that of any other
nation in the world. The discipline is the discipline of right relations
between superior and inferior men of sense, and the articles of war govern
as rigorously the cabin as the forecastle. Republican principles are
carried out, as far as they are compatible with perfect subordination,
and there exists no feeling between the parts of the ship, except in
extraordinary instances, but wholesome respect and convention. There is
little tyranny on the one side or insubordination on the other.
The training of the young officer of the old navy was the training of
the larger school of the world. “Least squares” and “ballistics” were
not for him. He could muster a watch, bend and set a stun’sail, work out
a traverse, and pass a weather-earing; but he toyed not with the higher
mathematics, like the machine-made “young gentleman” of to-day. What he
knew of navigation he had picked haphazard, as best he might.
At the age of twelve his career usually opened briskly in the thunder
of a hurricane or the slaughter of a battle, under conditions trying to
the souls of bronzed, bearded men. Physical and even mental training of
a certain kind he had, but the intellectual development of modern days
was missing. The American officer of the days before the Naval Academy
was founded was the result of rough conditions that Nature shaped to her
own ends with the only tools she had. Though these “boys” had not the
beautiful theory of the thing, they had its practice, and no better seamen
ever lived.
At the beginning of the century, the crusty Preble, commodore of the
blockading fleet before Tripoli, was sent a consignment of these “boys”
to aid him in his work. The names of the “boys” were Decatur, Stewart,
Macdonough, Lawrence, and Perry. Excepting Decatur, who was twenty-six,
there was not one who was over twenty-four, and two or three of them were
under twenty. The commodore grew red in the face and swore mighty oaths
when he thought of the things he had to accomplish with the youngsters
under his command. But he found before long that though youth might be
inconvenient, it could not be considered as a reproach in their case.
Decatur, with a volunteer crew, went under the guns at Tripoli, captured
and blew up the “Philadelphia” in a way that paled all deeds of gallantry
done before or since. The dreamy Somers went in with a fire-ship and
destroyed both the shipping and himself. In the hand-to-hand fights on
the gunboats, Lawrence, young Bainbridge, Stewart, and the others fought
and defeated the best hand-to-hand fighters of the Mediterranean. The Dey
of Algiers, when Decatur came before him to make terms of peace, stroked
his black beard and looked at the young hero curiously. “Why,” he said,
“do they send over these young boys to treat with the older Powers?”
When the war was over, Preble no longer grew red in the face or swore. He
loved his school-boys, and walked his quarter-deck with them arm-in-arm.
And they loved him for his very crustiness, for they knew that back of it
all was a man.
These youthful heroes were not the only ones. Young Farragut, an infant
of twelve years, with an old “Shoot-if-you’re-lucky,” quelled a promising
mutiny. At eighteen Bainbridge did the same. Farragut, at thirteen, was
recommended for promotion to a lieutenancy he was too young to take. Perry
was about thirty when he won the victory of Erie.
A youngster’s character bears a certain definite relation to the times he
lives in. Skies blue and breezes light, he shapes his life’s course with
no cares but the betterment of his mental condition. Baffling winds create
the sailor, and storm and stress bring out his greater capabilities.
The Spanish war has proved that heroes only slumber, and that the young
gentleman with the finely-tempered mind of an Annapolis training is
capable of the great things his father did.
The blue-jacket of to-day has plenty of hard work to do, but he is as
comfortable as good food and sleeping accommodations, regular habits, and
good government can make him. As a class, the United States Jacky is more
contented, perhaps, than any other man of similar conditions. Unlike the
soldier, he does not even have to rough it very much, for wherever he goes
he takes his house with him.
Jacky sleeps in a hammock strung upon hooks to the beams of the deck
above him. When he turns out, he lashes his hammock with its lashing, and
stores it in the nettings,--the troughs for the purpose at the sides of
the ship,--where it must stay until night. If Jack wants to sleep in the
meanwhile, he chooses the softest spot he can find on a steel-clad deck;
and he can sleep there, too, in the broad glare of daylight, a hundred
feet passing him, and the usual run of ship’s calls and noises droning in
his ears.
Jacky’s food is provided by the government, while his superior of the
wardroom has to pay his own mess-bill. He is allowed, in addition to his
pay, the sum of nine dollars per month, and this must purchase everything,
except such luxuries as he may choose to buy from his pay. The ship’s
paymaster is allowed a certain amount of money to furnish the supplies,
and between him and the ship’s cook the problem is settled. At the end
of the month, if the amount served out is in excess of the computation
for rations, the brunt falls upon the “Jack-of-the-Dust,”--the assistant
to the paymaster’s yeoman,--who has the work of accurately measuring the
rations which are given to the cook of the ship.
The ship’s cook receives from the government from twenty-five to
thirty-five dollars a month, according to the size of the ship, and, in
addition, certain money perquisites from the different messes, which gives
him a fair average. He has complete charge of the ship’s galley and the
cooks of the messes, and must be able to concoct a dainty French dish for
the wardroom as well as the usual “salt horse” or “dog” for the Jacky.
“Salt horse” is the sea-name for pork. “Dog” is soaked hardtack, mixed
with molasses and fried; and, though it is not pleasant twenty-nine days
out of the month, it is healthful, and tastes good to a hard-working
sailor with the salt of the sea producing a splendid appetite.
The mess-tables hang by iron supports to the beams of the deck above,
and when the mess has been served and eaten,--as only Jack knows how to
eat,--they are triced up into their places, and all is cleaned and made
ship-shape in the twinkling of an eye. A half-hour is allowed for dinner,
and this time is kept sacred for Jack’s use. A red pennant flies from the
yard-arm, that all may know that the sailor-man is eating and must not be
disturbed by any importunate or curious callers.
In the dog-watches of the evening, after supper, from six to eight P.M.,
the blue-jacket is given his leisure. It is then that pipes are smoked,
vigilance relaxed, boxing and wrestling bouts are in order, and Jacky
settles down for his rest after the day of labor. From somewhere down on
the gun-deck comes the tinkle of a guitar or banjo, and a tuneful, manly
voice sings the songs of France or Spain, and, better still, of beloved
America, for the shipmates.
The sailor of to-day is also a soldier. Back in the days of Henry the
Eighth, when England first had a navy, the sailors only worked the ships.
The fighting was done by the soldiers. Later, when the ships were armed
with many guns and carried a greater spread of canvas, there was no space
for great companies of soldiers, and the sailors became gunners as well.
A few soldiers there were, but these did only sentry duty and performed
the duties of the ships’s police. As such they were cordially hated by
the jackies.
This antipathy has come down through the ages to the present day,
and marines are still looked on by the sailor-men as land-lubbers and
Johnnies--sea-people who have no mission upon the earth save to do all
the eating and very little of the rough work.
The new navy has done much to change this feeling. The mission of the
marine is now a definite one. Always used as a sharpshooter, he now mans
the rapid-fire batteries, and even guns of a larger caliber. He has done
his work well, and the affair at Guantanamo has caused the sneer to fade
from the lip of the American sailor-man. Two of the ablest captains of our
navy, always the deadliest opponents of the marine corps, upon assuming
their latest commands, applied immediately for the largest complement of
marines that they could get.
Any ship, old or new, is as frail as the crew that mans it. The strength
of any vessel varies directly with its discipline and personnel. Hull,
Jones, Decatur, Bainbridge, and Stewart, in the old days, knew with some
accuracy the forces they had to reckon with. Their guns were of simple
contrivance, and their men knew them as well as they knew how to reef
a topsail or smartly pass a weather-earing. They feared nothing so long
as they were confident of their captain. New and mysterious contrivances
for death-dealing were unknown to them, and hence the morale of the old
sea-battles was the morale only of strength and discipline. There were
no uncertain factors to reckon with, save the weight of metal and the
comparative training of the gun-crews.
To-day the unknown plays a large part in warfare. Intricate appliances,
mysterious inventions, new types of torpedo-boats, and submarine vessels
form a new element to contend against and have a personal moral influence
upon the discipline of crews. To combat this new element of the unknown
and uncertain has required sailors and men of a different stripe from the
old. Where, in the old days, ignorance and all its accompanying evils held
sway over the mind of poor Jack, and made him a prey to superstition and
imagination, to-day, by dint of careful training of brain as well as body,
he has become a thinking creature of power and force of mind. He knows
in a general way the working of the great mechanical contrivances; and
in the fights that are to come, as well as those that have been, he will
show that the metal the American Jacky is made of rings true and stands
well the trial by fire.