A MAN-OF-WAR COLLEGE.
In our man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway and Death goes
overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war scourge, curses mix with
tears; and the sigh and the sob furnish the bass to the shrill octave
of those who laugh to drown buried griefs of their own. Checkers were
played in the waist at the time of Shenly’s burial; and as the body
plunged, a player swept the board. The bubbles had hardly burst, when
all hands were _piped down_ by the Boatswain, and the old jests were
heard again, as if Shenly himself were there to hear.
This man-of-war life has not left me unhardened. I cannot stop to weep
over Shenly now; that would be false to the life I depict; wearing no
mourning weeds, I resume the task of portraying our man-of-war world.
Among the various other vocations, all driven abreast on board of the
Neversink, was that of the schoolmaster. There were two academies in
the frigate. One comprised the apprentice boys, who, upon certain days
of the week, were indoctrinated in the mysteries of the primer by an
invalid corporal of marines, a slender, wizzen-cheeked man, who had
received a liberal infant-school education.
The other school was a far more pretentious affair—a sort of army and
navy seminary combined, where mystical mathematical problems were
solved by the midshipmen, and great ships-of-the-line were navigated
over imaginary shoals by unimaginable observations of the moon and the
stars, and learned lectures were delivered upon great guns, small arms,
and the curvilinear lines described by bombs in the air.
“_The Professor_” was the title bestowed upon the erudite gentleman who
conducted this seminary, and by that title alone was he known
throughout the ship. He was domiciled in the Ward-room, and circulated
there on a social par with the Purser, Surgeon, and other
_non-combatants_ and Quakers. By being advanced to the dignity of a
peerage in the Ward-room, Science and Learning were ennobled in the
person of this Professor, even as divinity was honoured in the Chaplain
enjoying the rank of a spiritual peer.
Every other afternoon, while at sea, the Professor assembled his pupils
on the half-deck, near the long twenty-four pounders. A bass drum-head
was his desk, his pupils forming a semicircle around him, seated on
shot-boxes and match-tubs.
They were in the jelly of youth, and this learned Professor poured into
their susceptible hearts all the gentle gunpowder maxims of war.
Presidents of Peace Societies and Superintendents of Sabbath-schools,
must it not have been a most interesting sight?
But the Professor himself was a noteworthy person. A tall, thin,
spectacled man, about forty years old, with a student’s stoop in his
shoulders, and wearing uncommonly scanty pantaloons, exhibiting an
undue proportion of his boots. In early life he had been a cadet in the
military academy of West Point; but, becoming very weak-sighted, and
thereby in a good manner disqualified for active service in the field,
he had declined entering the army, and accepted the office of Professor
in the Navy.
His studies at West Point had thoroughly grounded him in a knowledge of
gunnery; and, as he was not a little of a pedant, it was sometimes
amusing, when the sailors were at quarters, to hear him criticise their
evolutions at the batteries. He would quote Dr. Hutton’s Tracts on the
subject, also, in the original, “_The French Bombardier_,” and wind up
by Italian passages from the “_Prattica Manuale dell’ Artiglieria_.”
Though not required by the Navy regulations to instruct his scholars in
aught but the application of mathematics to navigation, yet besides
this, and besides instructing them in the theory of gunnery, he also
sought to root them in the theory of frigate and fleet tactics. To be
sure, he himself did not know how to splice a rope or furl a sail; and,
owing to his partiality for strong coffee, he was apt to be nervous
when we fired salutes; yet all this did not prevent him from delivering
lectures on cannonading and “breaking the enemy’s line.”
He had arrived at his knowledge of tactics by silent, solitary study,
and earnest meditation in the sequestered retreat of his state-room.
His case was somewhat parallel to the Scotchman’s—John Clerk, Esq., of
Eldin—who, though he had never been to sea, composed a quarto treatise
on fleet-fighting, which to this day remains a text-book; and he also
originated a nautical manoeuvre, which has given to England many a
victory over her foes.
Now there was a large black-board, something like a great-gun
target—only it was square—which during the professor’s lectures was
placed upright on the gun-deck, supported behind by three
boarding-pikes. And here he would chalk out diagrams of great fleet
engagements; making marks, like the soles of shoes, for the ships, and
drawing a dog-vane in one corner to denote the assumed direction of the
wind. This done, with a cutlass he would point out every spot of
interest.
“Now, young gentlemen, the board before you exhibits the disposition of
the British West Indian squadron under Rodney, when, early on the
morning of the 9th of April, in the year of our blessed Lord 1782, he
discovered part of the French fleet, commanded by the Count de Grasse,
lying under the north end of the Island of Dominica. It was at this
juncture that the Admiral gave the signal for the British line to
prepare for battle, and stand on. D’ye understand, young gentlemen?
Well, the British van having nearly fetched up with the centre of the
enemy—who, be it remembered, were then on the starboard tack—and
Rodney’s centre and rear being yet becalmed under the lee of the
land—the question I ask you is, What should Rodney now do?”
“Blaze away, by all means!” responded a rather confident reefer, who
had zealously been observing the diagram.
“But, sir, his centre and rear are still becalmed, and his van has not
yet closed with the enemy.”
“Wait till he _does_ come in range, and _then_ blaze away,” said the
reefer.
“Permit me to remark, Mr. Pert, that ‘_blaze away_’ is not a strictly
technical term; and also permit me to hint, Mr. Pert, that you should
consider the subject rather more deeply before you hurry forward your
opinion.”
This rebuke not only abashed Mr. Pert, but for a time intimidated the
rest; and the professor was obliged to proceed, and extricate the
British fleet by himself. He concluded by awarding Admiral Rodney the
victory, which must have been exceedingly gratifying to the family
pride of the surviving relatives and connections of that distinguished
hero.
“Shall I clean the board, sir?” now asked Mr. Pert, brightening up.
“No, sir; not till you have saved that crippled French ship in the
corner. That ship, young gentlemen, is the Glorieuse: you perceive she
is cut off from her consorts, and the whole British fleet is giving
chase to her. Her bowsprit is gone; her rudder is torn away; she has
one hundred round shot in her hull, and two thirds of her men are dead
or dying. What’s to be done? the wind being at northeast by north?”
“Well, sir,” said Mr. Dash, a chivalric young gentleman from Virginia,
“I wouldn’t strike yet; I’d nail my colours to the main-royal-mast! I
would, by Jove!”
“That would not save your ship, sir; besides, your main-mast has gone
by the board.”
“I think, sir,” said Mr. Slim, a diffident youth, “I think, sir, I
would haul back the fore-top-sail.”
“And why so? of what service would _that_ be, I should like to know,
Mr. Slim?”
“I can’t tell exactly; but I think it would help her a little,” was the
timid reply.
“Not a whit, sir—not one particle; besides, you can’t haul back your
fore-top-sail—your fore-mast is lying across your forecastle.”
“Haul back the main-top-sail, then,” suggested another.
“Can’t be done; your main-mast, also, has gone by the board!”
“Mizzen-top-sail?” meekly suggested little Boat-Plug.
“Your mizzen-top-mast, let me inform you, sir, was shot down in the
first of the fight!”
“Well, sir,” cried Mr. Dash, “I’d tack ship, anyway; bid ’em good-by
with a broadside; nail my flag to the keel, if there was no other
place; and blow my brains out on the poop!”
“Idle, idle, sir! worse than idle! you are carried away, Mr. Dash, by
your ardent Southern temperament! Let me inform you, young gentlemen,
that this ship,” touching it with his cutlass, “_cannot_ be saved.”
Then, throwing down his cutlass, “Mr. Pert, have the goodness to hand
me one of those cannon-balls from the rack.”
Balancing the iron sphere in one hand, the learned professor began
fingering it with the other, like Columbus illustrating the rotundity
of the globe before the Royal Commission of Castilian Ecclesiastics.
“Young gentlemen, I resume my remarks on the passage of a shot _in
vacuo_, which remarks were interrupted yesterday by general quarters.
After quoting that admirable passage in ‘Spearman’s British Gunner,’ I
then laid it down, you remember, that the path of a shot _in vacuo_
describes a parabolic curve. I now add that, agreeably to the method
pursued by the illustrious Newton in treating the subject of
curvilinear motion, I consider the _trajectory_ or curve described by a
moving body in space as consisting of a series of right lines,
described in successive intervals of time, and constituting the
diagonals of parallelograms formed in a vertical plane between the
vertical deflections caused by gravity and the production of the line
of motion which has been described in each preceding interval of time.
This must be obvious; for, if you say that the passage _in vacuo_ of
this cannon-ball, now held in my hand, would describe otherwise than a
series of right lines, etc., then you are brought to the _Reductio ad
Absurdum_, that the diagonals of parallelograms are——”
“All hands reef top-sail!” was now thundered forth by the boatswain’s
mates. The shot fell from the professor’s palm; his spectacles dropped
on his nose, and the school tumultuously broke up, the pupils
scrambling up the ladders with the sailors, who had been overhearing
the lecture.