THE HOSPITAL IN A MAN-OF-WAR.
After running with a fine steady breeze up to the Line, it fell calm,
and there we lay, three days enchanted on the sea. We were a most
puissant man-of-war, no doubt, with our five hundred men, Commodore and
Captain, backed by our long batteries of thirty-two and twenty-four
pounders; yet, for all that, there we lay rocking, helpless as an
infant in the cradle. Had it only been a gale instead of a calm, gladly
would we have charged upon it with our gallant bowsprit, as with a
stout lance in rest; but, as with man-kind, this serene, passive
foe—unresisting and irresistible—lived it out, unconquered to the last.
All these three days the heat was excessive; the sun drew the tar from
the seams of the ship; the awnings were spread fore and aft; the decks
were kept constantly sprinkled with water. It was during this period
that a sad event occurred, though not an unusual one on shipboard. But
in order to prepare for its narration, some account of a part of the
ship called the “_sick-bay_” must needs be presented.
The “_sick-bay_” is that part of a man-of-war where the invalid seamen
are placed; in many respects it answers to a public hospital ashore. As
with most frigates, the sick-bay of the Neversink was on the
berth-deck—the third deck from above. It was in the extreme forward
part of that deck, embracing the triangular area in the bows of the
ship. It was, therefore, a subterranean vault, into which scarce a ray
of heaven’s glad light ever penetrated, even at noon.
In a sea-going frigate that has all her armament and stores on board,
the floor of the berth-deck is partly below the surface of the water.
But in a smooth harbour, some circulation of air is maintained by
opening large auger-holes in the upper portion of the sides, called
“air-ports,” not much above the water level. Before going to sea,
however, these air-ports must be closed, caulked, and the seams
hermetically sealed with pitch. These places for ventilation being
shut, the sick-bay is entirely barred against the free, natural
admission of fresh air. In the Neversink a few lungsful were forced
down by artificial means. But as the ordinary _wind-sail_ was the only
method adopted, the quantity of fresh air sent down was regulated by
the force of the wind. In a calm there was none to be had, while in a
severe gale the wind-sail had to be hauled up, on account of the
violent draught flowing full upon the cots of the sick. An open-work
partition divided our sick-bay from the rest of the deck, where the
hammocks of the watch were slung; it, therefore, was exposed to all the
uproar that ensued upon the watches being relieved.
An official, called the surgeon’s steward, assisted by subordinates,
presided over the place. He was the same individual alluded to as
officiating at the amputation of the top-man. He was always to be found
at his post, by night and by day.
This surgeon’s steward deserves a description. He was a small, pale,
hollow-eyed young man, with that peculiar Lazarus-like expression so
often noticed in hospital attendants. Seldom or never did you see him
on deck, and when he _did_ emerge into the light of the sun, it was
with an abashed look, and an uneasy, winking eye. The sun was not made
for _him_. His nervous organization was confounded by the sight of the
robust old sea-dogs on the forecastle and the general tumult of the
spar-deck, and he mostly buried himself below in an atmosphere which
long habit had made congenial.
This young man never indulged in frivolous conversation; he only talked
of the surgeon’s prescriptions; his every word was a bolus. He never
was known to smile; nor did he even look sober in the ordinary way; but
his countenance ever wore an aspect of cadaverous resignation to his
fate. Strange! that so many of those who would fain minister to our own
health should look so much like invalids themselves.
Connected with the sick-bay, over which the surgeon’s steward
presided—but removed from it in place, being next door to the
counting-room of the purser’s steward—was a regular apothecary’s shop,
of which he kept the key. It was fitted up precisely like an
apothecary’s on shore, displaying tiers of shelves on all four sides
filled with green bottles and gallipots; beneath were multitudinous
drawers bearing incomprehensible gilded inscriptions in abbreviated
Latin.
He generally opened his shop for an hour or two every morning and
evening. There was a Venetian blind in the upper part of the door,
which he threw up when inside so as to admit a little air. And there
you would see him, with a green shade over his eyes, seated on a stool,
and pounding his pestle in a great iron mortar that looked like a
howitzer, mixing some jallapy compound. A smoky lamp shed a flickering,
yellow-fever tinge upon his pallid face and the closely-packed
regiments of gallipots.
Several times when I felt in need of a little medicine, but was not ill
enough to report myself to the surgeon at his levees, I would call of a
morning upon his steward at the Sign of the Mortar, and beg him to give
me what I wanted; when, without speaking a word, this cadaverous young
man would mix me my potion in a tin cup, and hand it out through the
little opening in his door, like the boxed-up treasurer giving you your
change at the ticket-office of a theatre.
But there was a little shelf against the wall of the door, and upon
this I would set the tin cup for a while, and survey it; for I never
was a Julius Caesar at taking medicine; and to take it in this way,
without a single attempt at disguising it; with no counteracting little
morsel to hurry down after it; in short to go to the very apothecary’s
in person, and there, at the counter, swallow down your dose, as if it
were a nice mint-julep taken at the bar of a hotel—_this_ was a bitter
bolus indeed. But, then, this pallid young apothecary charged nothing
for it, and _that_ was no small satisfaction; for is it not remarkable,
to say the least, that a shore apothecary should actually charge you
money—round dollars and cents—for giving you a horrible nausea?
My tin cup would wait a long time on that little shelf; yet “Pills,” as
the sailors called him, never heeded my lingering, but in sober, silent
sadness continued pounding his mortar or folding up his powders; until
at last some other customer would appear, and then in a sudden frenzy
of resolution, I would gulp down my sherry-cobbler, and carry its
unspeakable flavour with me far up into the frigate’s main-top. I do
not know whether it was the wide roll of the ship, as felt in that
giddy perch, that occasioned it, but I always got sea-sick after taking
medicine and going aloft with it. Seldom or never did it do me any
lasting good.
Now the Surgeon’s steward was only a subordinate of Surgeon Cuticle
himself, who lived in the ward-room among the Lieutenants,
Sailing-master, Chaplain, and Purser.
The Surgeon is, by law, charged with the business of overlooking the
general sanitary affairs of the ship. If anything is going on in any of
its departments which he judges to be detrimental to the healthfulness
of the crew, he has a right to protest against it formally to the
Captain. When a man is being scourged at the gangway, the Surgeon
stands by; and if he thinks that the punishment is becoming more than
the culprit’s constitution can well bear, he has a right to interfere
and demand its cessation for the time.
But though the Navy regulations nominally vest him with this high
discretionary authority over the very Commodore himself, how seldom
does he exercise it in cases where humanity demands it? Three years is
a long time to spend in one ship, and to be at swords’ points with its
Captain and Lieutenants during such a period, must be very unsocial and
every way irksome. No otherwise than thus, at least, can the remissness
of some surgeons in remonstrating against cruelty be accounted for.
Not to speak again of the continual dampness of the decks consequent
upon flooding them with salt water, when we were driving near to Cape
Horn, it needs only to be mentioned that, on board of the Neversink,
men known to be in consumptions gasped under the scourge of the
boatswain’s mate, when the Surgeon and his two attendants stood by and
never interposed. But where the unscrupulousness of martial discipline
is maintained, it is in vain to attempt softening its rigour by the
ordaining of humanitarian laws. Sooner might you tame the grizzly bear
of Missouri than humanise a thing so essentially cruel and heartless.
But the Surgeon has yet other duties to perform. Not a seaman enters
the Navy without undergoing a corporal examination, to test his
soundness in wind and limb.
One of the first places into which I was introduced when I first
entered on board the Neversink was the sick-bay, where I found one of
the Assistant Surgeons seated at a green-baize table. It was his turn
for visiting the apartment. Having been commanded by the deck officer
to report my business to the functionary before me, I accordingly
hemmed, to attract his attention, and then catching his eye, politely
intimated that I called upon him for the purpose of being accurately
laid out and surveyed.
“Strip!” was the answer, and, rolling up his gold-laced cuff, he
proceeded to manipulate me. He punched me in the ribs, smote me across
the chest, commanded me to stand on one leg and hold out the other
horizontally. He asked me whether any of my family were consumptive;
whether I ever felt a tendency to a rush of blood to the head; whether
I was gouty; how often I had been bled during my life; how long I had
been ashore; how long I had been afloat; with several other questions
which have altogether slipped my memory. He concluded his
interrogatories with this extraordinary and unwarranted one—“Are you
pious?”
It was a leading question which somewhat staggered me, but I said not a
word; when, feeling of my calves, he looked up and incomprehensibly
said, “I am afraid you are not.”
At length he declared me a sound animal, and wrote a certificate to
that effect, with which I returned to the deck.
This Assistant Surgeon turned out to be a very singular character, and
when I became more acquainted with him, I ceased to marvel at the
curious question with which he had concluded his examination of my
person.
He was a thin, knock-kneed man, with a sour, saturnine expression,
rendered the more peculiar from his shaving his beard so remorselessly,
that his chin and cheeks always looked blue, as if pinched with cold.
His long familiarity with nautical invalids seemed to have filled him
full of theological hypoes concerning the state of their souls. He was
at once the physician and priest of the sick, washing down his boluses
with ghostly consolation, and among the sailors went by the name of The
Pelican, a fowl whose hanging pouch imparts to it a most chop-fallen,
lugubrious expression.
The privilege of going off duty and lying by when you are sick, is one
of the few points in which a man-of-war is far better for the sailor
than a merchantman. But, as with every other matter in the Navy, the
whole thing is subject to the general discipline of the vessel, and is
conducted with a severe, unyielding method and regularity, making no
allowances for exceptions to rules.
During the half-hour preceding morning quarters, the Surgeon of a
frigate is to be found in the sick-bay, where, after going his rounds
among the invalids, he holds a levee for the benefit of all new
candidates for the sick-list. If, after looking at your tongue, and
feeling of your pulse, he pronounces you a proper candidate, his
secretary puts you down on his books, and you are thenceforth relieved
from all duty, and have abundant leisure in which to recover your
health. Let the boatswain blow; let the deck officer bellow; let the
captain of your gun hunt you up; yet, if it can be answered by your
mess-mates that you are “_down on the list_,” you ride it all out with
impunity. The Commodore himself has then no authority over you. But you
must not be too much elated, for your immunities are only secure while
you are immured in the dark hospital below. Should you venture to get a
mouthful of fresh air on the spar-deck, and be there discovered by an
officer, you will in vain plead your illness; for it is quite
impossible, it seems, that any true man-of-war invalid can be hearty
enough to crawl up the ladders. Besides, the raw sea air, as they will
tell you, is not good for the sick.
But, notwithstanding all this, notwithstanding the darkness and
closeness of the sick-bay, in which an alleged invalid must be content
to shut himself up till the Surgeon pronounces him cured, many
instances occur, especially in protracted bad weather, where pretended
invalids will submit to this dismal hospital durance, in order to
escape hard work and wet jackets.
There is a story told somewhere of the Devil taking down the
confessions of a woman on a strip of parchment, and being obliged to
stretch it longer and longer with his teeth, in order to find room for
all the lady had to say. Much thus was it with our Purser’s steward,
who had to lengthen out his manuscript sick-list, in order to
accommodate all the names which were presented to him while we were off
the pitch of Cape Horn. What sailors call the “_Cape Horn fever_,”
alarmingly prevailed; though it disappeared altogether when we got into
the weather, which, as with many other invalids, was solely to be
imputed to the wonder-working effects of an entire change of climate.
It seems very strange, but it is really true, that off Cape Horn some
“_sogers_” of sailors will stand cupping, and bleeding, and blistering,
before they will budge. On the other hand, there are cases where a man
actually sick and in need of medicine will refuse to go on the
sick-list, because in that case his allowance of _grog_ must be
stopped.
On board of every American man-of-war, bound for sea, there is a goodly
supply of wines and various delicacies put on board—according to
law—for the benefit of the sick, whether officers or sailors. And one
of the chicken-coops is always reserved for the Government chickens,
destined for a similar purpose. But, on board of the Neversink, the
only delicacies given to invalid sailors was a little sago or
arrow-root, and they did not get _that_ unless severely ill; but, so
far as I could learn, no wine, in any quantity, was ever prescribed for
them, though the Government bottles often went into the ward-room, for
the benefit of indisposed officers.
And though the Government chicken-coop was replenished at every port,
yet not four pair of drum-sticks were ever boiled into broth for sick
sailors. Where the chickens went, some one must have known; but, as I
cannot vouch for it myself, I will not here back the hardy assertion of
the men, which was that the pious Pelican—true to his name—was
extremely fond of poultry. I am the still less disposed to believe this
scandal, from the continued leanness of the Pelican, which could hardly
have been the case did he nourish himself by so nutritious a dish as
the drum-sticks of fowls, a diet prescribed to pugilists in training.
But who can avoid being suspicious of a very suspicious person?
Pelican! I rather suspect you still.