MAN-OF-WAR BARBERS.
The allusion to one of the ship’s barbers in a previous chapter,
together with the recollection of how conspicuous a part they enacted
in a tragical drama soon to be related, leads me now to introduce them
to the reader.
Among the numerous artists and professors of polite trades in the Navy,
none are held in higher estimation or drive a more profitable business
than these barbers. And it may well be imagined that the five hundred
heads of hair and five hundred beards of a frigate should furnish no
small employment for those to whose faithful care they may be
intrusted. As everything connected with the domestic affairs of a
man-of-war comes under the supervision of the martial executive, so
certain barbers are formally licensed by the First Lieutenant. The
better to attend to the profitable duties of their calling, they are
exempted from all ship’s duty except that of standing night-watches at
sea, mustering at quarters, and coming on deck when all hands are
called. They are rated as _able seamen_ or _ordinary seamen_, and
receive their wages as such; but in addition to this, they are
liberally recompensed for their professional services. Herein their
rate of pay is fixed for every sailor manipulated—so much per quarter,
which is charged to the sailor, and credited to his barber on the books
of the Purser.
It has been seen that while a man-of-war barber is shaving his
customers at so much per chin, his wages as a seaman are still running
on, which makes him a sort of _sleeping partner_ of a sailor; nor are
the sailor wages he receives altogether to be reckoned as earnings.
Considering the circumstances, however, not much objection can be made
to the barbers on this score. But there were instances of men in the
Neversink receiving government money in part pay for work done for
private individuals. Among these were several accomplished tailors, who
nearly the whole cruise sat cross-legged on the half deck, making
coats, pantaloons, and vests for the quarter-deck officers. Some of
these men, though knowing little or nothing about sailor duties, and
seldom or never performing them, stood upon the ship’s books as
ordinary seamen, entitled to ten dollars a month. Why was this?
Previous to shipping they had divulged the fact of their being tailors.
True, the officers who employed them upon their wardrobes paid them for
their work, but some of them in such a way as to elicit much grumbling
from the tailors. At any rate, these makers and menders of clothes did
not receive from some of these officers an amount equal to what they
could have fairly earned ashore by doing the same work. It was a
considerable saving to the officers to have their clothes made on
board.
The men belonging to the carpenter’s gang furnished another case in
point. There were some six or eight allotted to this department. All
the cruise they were hard at work. At what? Mostly making chests of
drawers, canes, little ships and schooners, swifts, and other
elaborated trifles, chiefly for the Captain. What did the Captain pay
them for their trouble? Nothing. But the United States government paid
them; two of them (the mates) at nineteen dollars a month, and the rest
receiving the pay of able seamen, twelve dollars.
To return.
The regular days upon which the barbers shall exercise their vocation
are set down on the ship’s calendar, and known as _shaving days_. On
board of the Neversink these days are Wednesdays and Saturdays; when,
immediately after breakfast, the barbers’ shops were opened to
customers. They were in different parts of the gun-deck, between the
long twenty-four pounders. Their furniture, however, was not very
elaborate, hardly equal to the sumptuous appointments of metropolitan
barbers. Indeed, it merely consisted of a match-tub, elevated upon a
shot-box, as a barber’s chair for the patient. No Psyche glasses; no
hand-mirror; no ewer and basin; no comfortable padded footstool;
nothing, in short, that makes a shore “_shave_” such a luxury.
Nor are the implements of these man-of-war barbers out of keeping with
the rude appearance of their shops. Their razors are of the simplest
patterns, and, from their jagged-ness, would seem better fitted for the
preparing and harrowing of the soil than for the ultimate reaping of
the crop. But this is no matter for wonder, since so many chins are to
be shaven, and a razor-case holds but two razors. For only two razors
does a man-of-war barber have, and, like the marine sentries at the
gangway in port, these razors go off and on duty in rotation. One
brush, too, brushes every chin, and one lather lathers them all. No
private brushes and boxes; no reservations whatever.
As it would be altogether too much trouble for a man-of-war’s-man to
keep his own shaving-tools and shave himself at sea, and since,
therefore, nearly the whole ship’s company patronise the ship’s
barbers, and as the seamen must be shaven by evening quarters of the
days appointed for the business, it may be readily imagined what a
scene of bustle and confusion there is when the razors are being
applied. First come, first served, is the motto; and often you have to
wait for hours together, sticking to your position (like one of an
Indian file of merchants’ clerks getting letters out of the
post-office), ere you have a chance to occupy the pedestal of the
match-tub. Often the crowd of quarrelsome candidates wrangle and fight
for precedency, while at all times the interval is employed by the
garrulous in every variety of ship-gossip.
As the shaving days are unalterable, they often fall upon days of high
seas and tempestuous winds, when the vessel pitches and rolls in a
frightful manner. In consequence, many valuable lives are jeopardised
from the razor being plied under such untoward circumstances. But these
sea-barbers pride themselves upon their sea-legs, and often you will
see them standing over their patients with their feet wide apart, and
scientifically swaying their bodies to the motion of the ship, as they
flourish their edge-tools about the lips, nostrils, and jugular.
As I looked upon the practitioner and patient at such times, I could
not help thinking that, if the sailor had any insurance on his life, it
would certainly be deemed forfeited should the president of the company
chance to lounge by and behold him in that imminent peril. For myself,
I accounted it an excellent preparation for going into a sea-fight,
where fortitude in standing up to your gun and running the risk of all
splinters, comprise part of the practical qualities that make up an
efficient man-of-war’s man.
It remains to be related, that these barbers of ours had their labours
considerably abridged by a fashion prevailing among many of the crew,
of wearing very large whiskers; so that, in most cases, the only parts
needing a shave were the upper lip and suburbs of the chin. This had
been more or less the custom during the whole three years’ cruise; but
for some time previous to our weathering Cape Horn, very many of the
seamen had redoubled their assiduity in cultivating their beards
preparatory to their return to America. There they anticipated creating
no small impression by their immense and magnificent
_homeward-bounders_—so they called the long fly-brushes at their chins.
In particular, the more aged sailors, embracing the Old Guard of sea
grenadiers on the forecastle, and the begrimed gunner’s mates and
quarter-gunners, sported most venerable beards of an exceeding length
and hoariness, like long, trailing moss hanging from the bough of some
aged oak. Above all, the Captain of the Forecastle, old Ushant—a fine
specimen of a sea sexagenarian—wore a wide, spreading beard, gizzled
and grey, that flowed over his breast and often became tangled and
knotted with tar. This Ushant, in all weathers, was ever alert at his
duty; intrepidly mounting the fore-yard in a gale, his long beard
streaming like Neptune’s. Off Cape Horn it looked like a miller’s,
being all over powdered with frost; sometimes it glittered with minute
icicles in the pale, cold, moonlit Patagonian nights. But though he was
so active in time of tempest, yet when his duty did not call for
exertion, he was a remarkably staid, reserved, silent, and majestic old
man, holding himself aloof from noisy revelry, and never participating
in the boisterous sports of the crew. He resolutely set his beard
against their boyish frolickings, and often held forth like an oracle
concerning the vanity thereof. Indeed, at times he was wont to talk
philosophy to his ancient companions—the old sheet-anchor-men around
him—as well as to the hare-brained tenants of the fore-top, and the
giddy lads in the mizzen.
Nor was his philosophy to be despised; it abounded in wisdom. For this
Ushant was an old man, of strong natural sense, who had seen nearly the
whole terraqueous globe, and could reason of civilized and savage, of
Gentile and Jew, of Christian and Moslem. The long night-watches of the
sailor are eminently adapted to draw out the reflective faculties of
any serious-minded man, however humble or uneducated. Judge, then, what
half a century of battling out watches on the ocean must have done for
this fine old tar. He was a sort of a sea-Socrates, in his old age
“pouring out his last philosophy and life,” as sweet Spenser has it;
and I never could look at him, and survey his right reverend beard,
without bestowing upon him that title which, in one of his satires,
Persius gives to the immortal quaffer of the hemlock—_Magister
Barbatus_—the bearded master.
Not a few of the ship’s company had also bestowed great pains upon
their hair, which some of them—especially the genteel young sailor
bucks of the After-guard—wore over their shoulders like the ringleted
Cavaliers. Many sailors, with naturally tendril locks, prided
themselves upon what they call _love curls_, worn at the side of the
head, just before the ear—a custom peculiar to tars, and which seems to
have filled the vacated place of the old-fashioned Lord Rodney cue,
which they used to wear some fifty years ago.
But there were others of the crew labouring under the misfortune of
long, lank, Winnebago locks, carroty bunches of hair, or rebellious
bristles of a sandy hue. Ambitious of redundant mops, these still
suffered their carrots to grow, spite of all ridicule. They looked like
Huns and Scandinavians; and one of them, a young Down Easter, the
unenvied proprietor of a thick crop of inflexible yellow bamboos, went
by the name of _Peter the Wild Boy_; for, like Peter the Wild Boy in
France, it was supposed that he must have been caught like a catamount
in the pine woods of Maine. But there were many fine, flowing heads of
hair to counter-balance such sorry exhibitions as Peter’s.
What with long whiskers and venerable beards, then, of every variety of
cut—Charles the Fifth’s and Aurelian’s—and endless _goatees_ and
_imperials;_ and what with abounding locks, our crew seemed a company
of Merovingians or Long-haired kings, mixed with savage Lombards or
Longobardi, so called from their lengthy beards.