THE SOCIAL STATE IN A MAN-OF-WAR.
Bur the floggings at the gangway and the floggings through the fleet,
the stealings, highway robberies, swearings, gamblings, blasphemings,
thimble-riggings, smugglings, and tipplings of a man-of-war, which
throughout this narrative have been here and there sketched from the
life, by no means comprise the whole catalogue of evil. One single
feature is full of significance.
All large ships of war carry soldiers, called marines. In the Neversink
there was something less than fifty, two thirds of whom were Irishmen.
They were officered by a Lieutenant, an Orderly Sergeant, two
Sergeants, and two Corporals, with a drummer and fifer. The custom,
generally, is to have a marine to each gun; which rule usually
furnishes the scale for distributing the soldiers in vessels of
different force.
Our marines had no other than martial duty to perform; excepting that,
at sea, they stood watches like the sailors, and now and then lazily
assisted in pulling the ropes. But they never put foot in rigging or
hand in tar-bucket.
On the quarter-bills, these men were stationed at none of the great
guns; on the station-bills, they had no posts at the ropes. What, then,
were they for? To serve their country in time of battle? Let us see.
When a ship is running into action, her marines generally lie flat on
their faces behind the bulwarks (the sailors are sometimes ordered to
do the same), and when the vessel is fairly engaged, they are usually
drawn up in the ship’s waist—like a company reviewing in the Park. At
close quarters, their muskets may pick off a seaman or two in the
rigging, but at long-gun distance they must passively stand in their
ranks and be decimated at the enemy’s leisure. Only in one case in
ten—that is, when their vessel is attempted to be boarded by a large
party, are these marines of any essential service as fighting men; with
their bayonets they are then called upon to “repel!”
If comparatively so useless as soldiers, why have marines at all in the
Navy? Know, then, that what standing armies are to nations, what
turnkeys are to jails, these marines are to the seamen in all large
men-of-war. Their muskets are their keys. With those muskets they stand
guard over the fresh water; over the grog, when doled; over the
provisions, when being served out by the Master’s mate; over the “brig”
or jail; at the Commodore’s and Captain’s cabin doors; and, in port, at
both gangways and forecastle.
Surely, the crowd of sailors, who besides having so many sea-officers
over them, are thus additionally guarded by soldiers, even when they
quench their thirst—surely these man-of-war’s-men must be desperadoes
indeed; or else the naval service must be so tyrannical that the worst
is feared from their possible insubordination. Either reason holds
good, or both, according to the character of the officers and crew.
It must be evident that the man-of-war’s-man casts but an evil eye on a
marine. To call a man a “horse-marine,” is, among seamen, one of the
greatest terms of contempt.
But the mutual contempt, and even hatred, subsisting between these two
bodies of men—both clinging to one keel, both lodged in one
household—is held by most Navy officers as the height of the perfection
of Navy discipline. It is regarded as the button that caps the
uttermost point on their main-mast.
Thus they reason: Secure of this antagonism between the marine and the
sailor, we can always rely upon it, that if the sailor mutinies, it
needs no great incitement for the marine to thrust his bayonet through
his heart; if the marine revolts, the pike of the sailor is impatient
to charge. Checks and balances, blood against blood, _that_ is the cry
and the argument.
What applies to the relation in which the marine and sailor stand
toward each other—the mutual repulsion implied by a system of
checks—will, in degree, apply to nearly the entire interior of a
man-of-war’s discipline. The whole body of this discipline is
emphatically a system of cruel cogs and wheels, systematically grinding
up in one common hopper all that might minister to the moral well-being
of the crew.
It is the same with both officers and men. If a Captain have a grudge
against a Lieutenant, or a Lieutenant against a midshipman, how easy to
torture him by official treatment, which shall not lay open the
superior officer to legal rebuke. And if a midshipman bears a grudge
against a sailor, how easy for him, by cunning practices, born of a
boyish spite, to have him degraded at the gangway. Through all the
endless ramifications of rank and station, in most men-of-war there
runs a sinister vein of bitterness, not exceeded by the fireside
hatreds in a family of stepsons ashore. It were sickening to detail all
the paltry irritabilities, jealousies, and cabals, the spiteful
detractions and animosities, that lurk far down, and cling to the very
kelson of the ship. It is unmanning to think of. The immutable
ceremonies and iron etiquette of a man-of-war; the spiked barriers
separating the various grades of rank; the delegated absolutism of
authority on all hands; the impossibility, on the part of the common
seaman, of appeal from incidental abuses, and many more things that
might be enumerated, all tend to beget in most armed ships a general
social condition which is the precise reverse of what any Christian
could desire. And though there are vessels, that in some measure
furnish exceptions to this; and though, in other ships, the thing may
be glazed over by a guarded, punctilious exterior, almost completely
hiding the truth from casual visitors, while the worst facts touching
the common sailor are systematically kept in the background, yet it is
certain that what has here been said of the domestic interior of a
man-of-war will, in a greater or less degree, apply to most vessels in
the Navy. It is not that the officers are so malevolent, nor,
altogether, that the man-of-war’s-man is so vicious. Some of these
evils are unavoidably generated through the operation of the Naval
code; others are absolutely organic to a Navy establishment, and, like
other organic evils, are incurable, except when they dissolve with the
body they live in.