“THE PEOPLE” ARE GIVEN “LIBERTY.”
Whenever, in intervals of mild benevolence, or yielding to mere politic
dictates, Kings and Commodores relax the yoke of servitude, they should
see to it well that the concession seem not too sudden or unqualified;
for, in the commoner’s estimation, that might argue feebleness or fear.
Hence it was, perhaps, that, though noble Jack had carried the day
captive in his audience at the mast, yet more than thirty-six hours
elapsed ere anything official was heard of the “liberty” his shipmates
so earnestly coveted. Some of the people began to growl and grumble.
“It’s turned out all gammon, Jack,” said one.
“Blast the Commodore!” cried another, “he bamboozled you, Jack.”
“Lay on your oars a while,” answered Jack, “and we shall see; we’ve
struck for liberty, and liberty we’ll have! I’m your tribune, boys; I’m
your Rienzi. The Commodore must keep his word.”
Next day, about breakfast-time, a mighty whistling and piping was heard
at the main-hatchway, and presently the boatswain’s voice was heard:
“D’ye hear there, fore and aft! all you starboard-quarter watch! get
ready to go ashore on liberty!”
In a paroxysm of delight, a young mizzen-top-man, standing by at the
time, whipped the tarpaulin from his head, and smashed it like a
pancake on the deck. “Liberty!” he shouted, leaping down into the
berth-deck after his bag.
At the appointed hour, the quarter-watch mustered round the capstan, at
which stood our old First Lord of the Treasury and Pay-Master-General,
the Purser, with several goodly buck-skin bags of dollars, piled up on
the capstan. He helped us all round to half a handful or so, and then
the boats were manned, and, like so many Esterhazys, we were pulled
ashore by our shipmates. All their lives lords may live in listless
state; but give the commoners a holiday, and they outlord the Commodore
himself.
The ship’s company were divided into four sections or quarter-watches,
only one of which were on shore at a time, the rest remaining to
garrison the frigate—the term of liberty for each being twenty-four
hours.
With Jack Chase and a few other discreet and gentlemanly top-men, I
went ashore on the first day, with the first quarter-watch. Our own
little party had a charming time; we saw many fine sights; fell in—as
all sailors must—with dashing adventures. But, though not a few good
chapters might be written on this head, I must again forbear; for in
this book I have nothing to do with the shore further than to glance at
it, now and then, from the water; my man-of-war world alone must supply
me with the staple of my matter; I have taken an oath to keep afloat to
the last letter of my narrative.
Had they all been as punctual as Jack Chase’s party, the whole
quarter-watch of liberty-men had been safe on board the frigate at the
expiration of the twenty-four hours. But this was not the case; and
during the entire day succeeding, the midshipmen and others were
engaged in ferreting them out of their hiding-places on shore, and
bringing them off in scattered detachments to the ship.
They came in all imaginable stages of intoxication; some with blackened
eyes and broken heads; some still more severely injured, having been
stabbed in frays with the Portuguese soldiers. Others, unharmed, were
immediately dropped on the gun-deck, between the guns, where they lay
snoring for the rest of the day. As a considerable degree of license is
invariably permitted to man-of-war’s-men just “off liberty,” and as
man-of-war’s-men well know this to be the case, they occasionally avail
themselves of the privilege to talk very frankly to the officers when
they first cross the gangway, taking care, meanwhile, to reel about
very industriously, so that there shall be no doubt about their being
seriously intoxicated, and altogether _non compos_ for the time. And
though but few of them have cause to feign intoxication, yet some
individuals may be suspected of enacting a studied part upon these
occasions. Indeed—judging by certain symptoms—even when really
inebriated, some of the sailors must have previously determined upon
their conduct; just as some persons who, before taking the exhilarating
gas, secretly make up their minds to perform certain mad feats while
under its influence, which feats consequently come to pass precisely as
if the actors were not accountable for them.
For several days, while the other quarter-watches were given liberty,
the Neversink presented a sad scene. She was more like a madhouse than
a frigate; the gun-deck resounded with frantic fights, shouts, and
songs. All visitors from shore were kept at a cable’s length.
These scenes, however, are nothing to those which have repeatedly been
enacted in American men-of-war upon other stations. But the custom of
introducing women on board, in harbour, is now pretty much
discontinued, both in the English and American Navy, unless a ship,
commanded by some dissolute Captain, happens to lie in some far away,
outlandish port, in the Pacific or Indian Ocean.
The British line-of-battle ship, Royal George, which in 1782 sunk at
her anchors at Spithead, carried down three hundred English women among
the one thousand souls that were drowned on that memorable morning.
When, at last, after all the mad tumult and contention of “Liberty,”
the reaction came, our frigate presented a very different scene. The
men looked jaded and wan, lethargic and lazy; and many an old mariner,
with hand upon abdomen, called upon the Flag-staff to witness that
there were more _hot coppers_ in the Neversink than those in the ship’s
galley.
Such are the lamentable effects of suddenly and completely releasing
“_the people_” of a man-of-war from arbitrary discipline. It shows
that, to such, “liberty,” at first, must be administered in small and
moderate quantities, increasing with the patient’s capacity to make
good use of it.
Of course while we lay in Rio, our officers frequently went ashore for
pleasure, and, as a general thing, conducted themselves with propriety.
But it is a sad thing to say, that, as for Lieutenant Mad Jack, he
enjoyed himself so delightfully for three consecutive days in the town,
that, upon returning to the ship, he sent his card to the Surgeon, with
his compliments, begging him to drop into his state-room the first time
he happened to pass that way in the ward-room.
But one of our Surgeon’s mates, a young medico of fine family but
slender fortune, must have created by far the strongest impression
among the hidalgoes of Rio. He had read Don Quixote, and, instead of
curing him of his Quixotism, as it ought to have done, it only made him
still more Quixotic. Indeed, there are some natures concerning whose
moral maladies the grand maxim of Mr. Similia Similibus Curantur
Hahneman does not hold true, since, with them, _like cures_ not _like_,
but only aggravates _like_. Though, on the other hand, so incurable are
the moral maladies of such persons, that the antagonist maxim,
_contraria contrariis curantar_, often proves equally false.
Of a warm tropical day, this Surgeon’s mate must needs go ashore in his
blue cloth boat-cloak, wearing it, with a gallant Spanish toss, over
his cavalier shoulder. By noon, he perspired very freely; but then his
cloak attracted all eyes, and that was huge satisfaction. Nevertheless,
his being knock-kneed, and spavined of one leg, sorely impaired the
effect of this hidalgo cloak, which, by-the-way, was some-what rusty in
front, where his chin rubbed against it, and a good deal bedraggled all
over, from his having used it as a counterpane off Cape Horn.
As for the midshipmen, there is no knowing what their mammas would have
said to their conduct in Rio. Three of them drank a good deal too much;
and when they came on board, the Captain ordered them to be sewed up in
their hammocks, to cut short their obstreperous capers till sober.
This shows how unwise it is to allow children yet in their teens to
wander so far from home. It more especially illustrates the folly of
giving them long holidays in a foreign land, full of seductive
dissipation. Port for men, claret for boys, cried Dr. Johnson. Even so,
men only should drink the strong drink of travel; boys should still be
kept on milk and water at home. Middies! you may despise your mother’s
leading-strings, but they are the _man-ropes_ my lads, by which many
youngsters have steadied the giddiness of youth, and saved themselves
from lamentable falls. And middies! know this, that as infants, being
too early put on their feet, grow up bandy-legged, and curtailed of
their fair proportions, even so, my dear middies, does it morally prove
with some of you, who prematurely are sent off to sea.
These admonitions are solely addressed to the more diminutive class of
midshipmen—those under five feet high, and under seven stone in weight.
Truly, the records of the steerages of men-of-war are full of most
melancholy examples of early dissipation, disease, disgrace, and death.
Answer, ye shades of fine boys, who in the soils of all climes, the
round world over, far away sleep from your homes.
Mothers of men! If your hearts have been cast down when your boys have
fallen in the way of temptations ashore, how much more bursting your
grief, did you know that those boys were far from your arms, cabined
and cribbed in by all manner of iniquities. But this some of you cannot
believe. It is, perhaps, well that it is so.
But hold them fast—all those who have not yet weighed their anchors for
the Navy-round and round, hitch over hitch, bind your leading-strings
on them, and clinching a ring-bolt into your chimmey-jam, moor your
boys fast to that best of harbours, the hearth-stone.
But if youth be giddy, old age is staid; even as young saplings, in the
litheness of their limbs, toss to their roots in the fresh morning air;
but, stiff and unyielding with age, mossy trunks never bend. With pride
and pleasure be it said, that, as for our old Commodore, though he
might treat himself to as many “_liberty days_” as he pleased, yet
throughout our stay in Rio he conducted himself with the utmost
discretion.
But he was an old, old man; physically, a very small man; his spine was
as an unloaded musket-barrel—not only attenuated, but destitute of a
solitary cartridge, and his ribs were as the ribs of a weasel.
Besides, he was Commodore of the fleet, supreme lord of the Commons in
Blue. It beseemed him, therefore, to erect himself into an ensample of
virtue, and show the gun-deck what virtue was. But alas! when Virtue
sits high aloft on a frigate’s poop, when Virtue is crowned in the
cabin a Commodore, when Virtue rules by compulsion, and domineers over
Vice as a slave, then Virtue, though her mandates be outwardly
observed, bears little interior sway. To be efficacious, Virtue must
come down from aloft, even as our blessed Redeemer came down to redeem
our whole man-of-war world; to that end, mixing with its sailors and
sinners as equals.