THE MANNING OF NAVIES.
“The gallows and the sea refuse nothing,” is a very old sea saying;
and, among all the wondrous prints of Hogarth, there is none remaining
more true at the present day than that dramatic boat-scene, where after
consorting with harlots and gambling on tomb-stones, the Idle
Apprentice, with the villainous low forehead, is at last represented as
being pushed off to sea, with a ship and a gallows in the distance. But
Hogarth should have converted the ship’s masts themselves into
Tyburn-trees, and thus, with the ocean for a background, closed the
career of his hero. It would then have had all the dramatic force of
the opera of Don Juan, who, after running his impious courses, is swept
from our sight in a tornado of devils.
For the sea is the true Tophet and bottomless pit of many workers of
iniquity; and, as the German mystics feign Gehennas within Gehennas,
even so are men-of-war familiarly known among sailors as “Floating
Hells.” And as the sea, according to old Fuller, is the stable of brute
monsters, gliding hither and thither in unspeakable swarms, even so is
it the home of many moral monsters, who fitly divide its empire with
the snake, the shark, and the worm.
Nor are sailors, and man-of-war’s-men especially, at all blind to a
true sense of these things. “_Purser rigged and parish damned_,” is the
sailor saying in the American Navy, when the tyro first mounts the
lined frock and blue jacket, aptly manufactured for him in a State
Prison ashore.
No wonder, that lured by some _crimp_ into a service so galling, and,
perhaps, persecuted by a vindictive lieutenant, some repentant sailors
have actually jumped into the sea to escape from their fate, or set
themselves adrift on the wide ocean on the gratings without compass or
rudder.
In one case, a young man, after being nearly cut into dog’s meat at the
gangway, loaded his pockets with shot and walked overboard.
Some years ago, I was in a whaling ship lying in a harbour of the
Pacific, with three French men-of-war alongside. One dark, moody night,
a suppressed cry was heard from the face of the waters, and, thinking
it was some one drowning, a boat was lowered, when two French sailors
were picked up, half dead from exhaustion, and nearly throttled by a
bundle of their clothes tied fast to their shoulders. In this manner
they had attempted their escape from their vessel. When the French
officers came in pursuit, these sailors, rallying from their
exhaustion, fought like tigers to resist being captured. Though this
story concerns a French armed ship, it is not the less applicable, in
degree, to those of other nations.
Mix with the men in an American armed ship, mark how many foreigners
there are, though it is against the law to enlist them. Nearly one
third of the petty officers of the Neversink were born east of the
Atlantic. Why is this? Because the same principle that operates in
hindering Americans from hiring themselves out as menial domestics also
restrains them, in a great measure, from voluntarily assuming a far
worse servitude in the Navy. “_Sailors wanted for the Navy_” is a
common announcement along the wharves of our sea-ports. They are always
“_wanted_.” It may have been, in part, owing to this scarcity
man-of-war’s men, that not many years ago, black slaves were frequently
to be found regularly enlisted with the crew of an American frigate,
their masters receiving their pay. This was in the teeth of a law of
Congress expressly prohibiting slaves in the Navy. This law,
indirectly, means black slaves, nothing being said concerning white
ones. But in view of what John Randolph of Roanoke said about the
frigate that carried him to Russia, and in view of what most armed
vessels actually are at present, the American Navy is not altogether an
inappropriate place for hereditary bondmen. Still, the circumstance of
their being found in it is of such a nature, that to some it may hardly
appear credible. The incredulity of such persons, nevertheless, must
yield to the fact, that on board of the United States ship Neversink,
during the present cruise, there was a Virginian slave regularly
shipped as a seaman, his owner receiving his wages. Guinea—such was his
name among the crew—belonged to the Purser, who was a Southern
gentleman; he was employed as his body servant. Never did I feel my
condition as a man-of-war’s-man so keenly as when seeing this Guinea
freely circulating about the decks in citizen’s clothes, and through
the influence of his master, almost entirely exempted from the
disciplinary degradation of the Caucasian crew. Faring sumptuously in
the ward-room; sleek and round, his ebon face fairly polished with
content: ever gay and hilarious; ever ready to laugh and joke, that
African slave was actually envied by many of the seamen. There were
times when I almost envied him myself. Lemsford once envied him
outright, “Ah, Guinea!” he sighed, “you have peaceful times; you never
opened the book I read in.”
One morning, when all hands were called to witness punishment, the
Purser’s slave, as usual, was observed to be hurrying down the ladders
toward the ward-room, his face wearing that peculiar, pinched blueness,
which, in the negro, answers to the paleness caused by nervous
agitation in the white. “Where are you going, Guinea?” cried the
deck-officer, a humorous gentleman, who sometimes diverted himself with
the Purser’s slave, and well knew what answer he would now receive from
him. “Where are you going, Guinea?” said this officer; “turn about;
don’t you hear the call, sir?” “’_Scuse_ me, massa!” said the slave,
with a low salutation; “I can’t ’tand it; I can’t, indeed, massa!” and,
so saying, he disappeared beyond the hatchway. He was the only person
on board, except the hospital-steward and the invalids of the sick-bay,
who was exempted from being present at the administering of the
scourge. Accustomed to light and easy duties from his birth, and so
fortunate as to meet with none but gentle masters, Guinea, though a
bondman, liable to be saddled with a mortgage, like a horse—Guinea, in
India-rubber manacles, enjoyed the liberties of the world.
Though his body-and-soul proprietor, the Purser, never in any way
individualised me while I served on board the frigate, and never did me
a good office of any kind (it was hardly in his power), yet, from his
pleasant, kind, indulgent manner toward his slave, I always imputed to
him a generous heart, and cherished an involuntary friendliness toward
him. Upon our arrival home, his treatment of Guinea, under
circumstances peculiarly calculated to stir up the resentment of a
slave-owner, still more augmented my estimation of the Purser’s good
heart.
Mention has been made of the number of foreigners in the American Navy;
but it is not in the American Navy alone that foreigners bear so large
a proportion to the rest of the crew, though in no navy, perhaps, have
they ever borne so large a proportion as in our own. According to an
English estimate, the foreigners serving in the King’s ships at one
time amounted to one eighth of the entire body of seamen. How it is in
the French Navy, I cannot with certainty say; but I have repeatedly
sailed with English seamen who have served in it.
One of the effects of the free introduction of foreigners into any Navy
cannot be sufficiently deplored. During the period I lived in the
Neversink, I was repeatedly struck by the lack of patriotism in many of
my shipmates. True, they were mostly foreigners who unblushingly
avowed, that were it not for the difference of pay, they would as lief
man the guns of an English ship as those of an American or Frenchman.
Nevertheless, it was evident, that as for any high-toned patriotic
feeling, there was comparatively very little—hardly any of it—evinced
by our sailors as a body. Upon reflection, this was not to be wondered
at. From their roving career, and the sundering of all domestic ties,
many sailors, all the world over, are like the “Free Companions,” who
some centuries ago wandered over Europe, ready to fight the battles of
any prince who could purchase their swords. The only patriotism is born
and nurtured in a stationary home, and upon an immovable hearth-stone;
but the man-of-war’s-man, though in his voyagings he weds the two Poles
and brings both Indies together, yet, let him wander where he will, he
carries his one only home along with him: that home is his hammock.
“_Born under a gun, and educated on the bowsprit_,” according to a
phrase of his own, the man-of-war-man rolls round the world like a
billow, ready to mix with any sea, or be sucked down to death in the
maelstrom of any war.
Yet more. The dread of the general discipline of a man-of-war; the
special obnoxiousness of the gangway; the protracted confinement on
board ship, with so few “liberty days;” and the pittance of pay (much
less than what can always be had in the Merchant Service), these things
contrive to deter from the navies of all countries by far the majority
of their best seamen. This will be obvious, when the following
statistical facts, taken from Macpherson’s Annals of Commerce, are
considered. At one period, upon the Peace Establishment, the number of
men employed in the English Navy was 25,000; at the same time, the
English Merchant Service was employing 118,952. But while the
necessities of a merchantman render it indispensable that the greater
part of her crew be able seamen, the circumstances of a man-of-war
admit of her mustering a crowd of landsmen, soldiers, and boys in her
service. By a statement of Captain Marryat’s, in his pamphlet (A. D.
1822) “On the Abolition of Impressment,” it appears that, at the close
of the Bonaparte wars, a full third of all the crews of his Majesty’s
fleets consisted of landsmen and boys.
Far from entering with enthusiasm into the king’s ships when their
country were menaced, the great body of English seamen, appalled at the
discipline of the Navy, adopted unheard-of devices to escape its
press-gangs. Some even hid themselves in caves, and lonely places
inland, fearing to run the risk of seeking a berth in an outward-bound
merchantman, that might have carried them beyond sea. In the true
narrative of “John Nichol, Mariner,” published in 1822 by Blackwood in
Edinburgh, and Cadell in London, and which everywhere bears the
spontaneous impress of truth, the old sailor, in the most artless,
touching, and almost uncomplaining manner, tells of his “skulking like
a thief” for whole years in the country round about Edinburgh, to avoid
the press-gangs, prowling through the land like bandits and Burkers. At
this time (Bonaparte’s wars), according to “Steel’s List,” there were
forty-five regular press-gang stations in Great Britain.[6]
[6] Besides this domestic kidnapping, British frigates, in friendly or
neutral harbours, in some instances pressed into their service foreign
sailors of all nations from the public wharves. In certain cases,
where Americans were concerned, when “_protections_” were found upon
their persons, these were destroyed; and to prevent the American
consul from claiming his sailor countrymen, the press-gang generally
went on shore the night previous to the sailing of the frigate, so
that the kidnapped seamen were far out to sea before they could be
missed by their friends. These things should be known; for in case the
English government again goes to war with its fleets, and should again
resort to indiscriminate impressment to man them, it is well that both
Englishmen and Americans, that all the world be prepared to put down
an iniquity outrageous and insulting to God and man.
In a later instance, a large body of British seamen solemnly assembled
upon the eve of an anticipated war, and together determined, that in
case of its breaking out, they would at once flee to America, to avoid
being pressed into the service of their country—a service which
degraded her own guardians at the gangway.
At another time, long previous to this, according to an English Navy
officer, Lieutenant Tomlinson, three thousand seamen, impelled by the
same motive, fled ashore in a panic from the colliers between Yarmouth
Roads and the Nore. Elsewhere, he says, in speaking of some of the men
on board the king’s ships, that “they were most miserable objects.”
This remark is perfectly corroborated by other testimony referring to
another period. In alluding to the lamented scarcity of good English
seamen during the wars of 1808, etc., the author of a pamphlet on
“Naval Subjects” says, that all the best seamen, the steadiest and
best-behaved men, generally succeeded in avoiding the impress. This
writer was, or had been, himself a Captain in the British fleet.
Now it may be easily imagined who are the men, and of what moral
character they are, who, even at the present day, are willing to enlist
as full-grown adults in a service so galling to all shore-manhood as
the Navy. Hence it comes that the skulkers and scoundrels of all sorts
in a man-of-war are chiefly composed not of regular seamen, but of
these “dock-lopers” of landsmen, men who enter the Navy to draw their
grog and murder their time in the notorious idleness of a frigate. But
if so idle, why not reduce the number of a man-of-war’s crew, and
reasonably keep employed the rest? It cannot be done. In the first
place, the magnitude of most of these ships requires a large number of
hands to brace the heavy yards, hoist the enormous top-sails, and weigh
the ponderous anchor. And though the occasion for the employment of so
many men comes but seldom, it is true, yet when that occasion _does_
come—and come it may at any moment—this multitude of men are
indispensable.
But besides this, and to crown all, the batteries must be manned. There
must be enough men to work all the guns at one time. And thus, in order
to have a sufficiency of mortals at hand to “sink, burn and destroy;” a
man-of-war, through her vices, hopelessly depraving the volunteer
landsmen and ordinary seamen of good habits, who occasionally
enlist—must feed at the public cost a multitude of persons, who, if
they did not find a home in the Navy, would probably fall on the
parish, or linger out their days in a prison.
Among others, these are the men into whose mouths Dibdin puts his
patriotic verses, full of sea-chivalry and romance. With an exception
in the last line, they might be sung with equal propriety by both
English and American man-of-war’s-men.
“As for me, in all weathers, all times, tides, and ends,
Naught’s a trouble from duty that springs;
For my heart is my Poll’s, and my rhino’s my friends,
And as for my life, it’s the king’s.
To rancour unknown, to no passion a slave,
Nor unmanly, nor mean, nor a railer,” etc.
I do not unite with a high critical authority in considering Dibdin’s
ditties as “slang songs,” for most of them breathe the very poetry of
the ocean. But it is remarkable that those songs—which would lead one
to think that man-of-war’s-men are the most care-free, contented,
virtuous, and patriotic of mankind—were composed at a time when the
English Navy was principally manned by felons and paupers, as mentioned
in a former chapter. Still more, these songs are pervaded by a true
Mohammedan sensualism; a reckless acquiescence in fate, and an
implicit, unquestioning, dog-like devotion to whoever may be lord and
master. Dibdin was a man of genius; but no wonder Dibdin was a
government pensioner at £200 per annum.
But notwithstanding the iniquities of a man-of-war, men are to be found
in them, at times, so used to a hard life; so drilled and disciplined
to servitude, that, with an incomprehensible philosophy, they seem
cheerfully to resign themselves to their fate. They have plenty to eat;
spirits to drink; clothing to keep them warm; a hammock to sleep in;
tobacco to chew; a doctor to medicine them; a parson to pray for them;
and, to a penniless castaway, must not all this seem as a luxurious
Bill of Fare?
There was on board of the Neversink a fore-top-man by the name of
Landless, who, though his back was cross-barred, and plaided with the
ineffaceable scars of all the floggings accumulated by a reckless tar
during a ten years’ service in the Navy, yet he perpetually wore a
hilarious face, and at joke and repartee was a very Joe Miller.
That man, though a sea-vagabond, was not created in vain. He enjoyed
life with the zest of everlasting adolescence; and, though cribbed in
an oaken prison, with the turnkey sentries all round him, yet he paced
the gun-deck as if it were broad as a prairie, and diversified in
landscape as the hills and valleys of the Tyrol. Nothing ever
disconcerted him; nothing could transmute his laugh into anything like
a sigh. Those glandular secretions, which in other captives sometimes
go to the formation of tears, in _him_ were expectorated from the
mouth, tinged with the golden juice of a weed, wherewith he solaced and
comforted his ignominious days.
“Rum and tobacco!” said Landless, “what more does a sailor want?”
His favourite song was “_Dibdin’s True English Sailor_,” beginning,
“Jack dances and sings, and is always content,
In his vows to his lass he’ll ne’er fail her;
His anchor’s atrip when his money’s all spent,
And this is the life of a sailor.”
But poor Landless danced quite as often at the gangway, under the lash,
as in the sailor dance-houses ashore.
Another of his songs, also set to the significant tune of _The King,
God bless him!_ mustered the following lines among many similar ones:
“Oh, when safely landed in Boston or ’York,
Oh how I will tipple and jig it;
And toss off my glass while my rhino holds out,
In drinking success to our frigate!”
During the many idle hours when our frigate was lying in harbour, this
man was either merrily playing at checkers, or mending his clothes, or
snoring like a trumpeter under the lee of the booms. When fast asleep,
a national salute from our batteries could hardly move him. Whether
ordered to the main-truck in a gale; or rolled by the drum to the
grog-tub; or commanded to walk up to the gratings and be lashed,
Landess always obeyed with the same invincible indifference.
His advice to a young lad, who shipped with us at Valparaiso, embodies
the pith and marrow of that philosophy which enables some
man-of-war’s-men to wax jolly in the service.
“_Shippy!_” said Landless, taking the pale lad by his neckerchief, as
if he had him by the halter; “Shippy, I’ve seen sarvice with Uncle
Sam—I’ve sailed in many _Andrew Millers_. Now take my advice, and steer
clear of all trouble. D’ye see, touch your tile whenever a swob
(officer) speaks to you. And never mind how much they rope’s-end you,
keep your red-rag belayed; for you must know as how they don’t fancy
sea-lawyers; and when the sarving out of slops comes round, stand up to
it stiffly; it’s only an oh Lord! Or two, and a few oh my Gods!—that’s
all. And what then? Why, you sleeps it off in a few nights, and turn
out at last all ready for your grog.”
This Landless was a favourite with the officers, among whom he went by
the name of “_Happy Jack_.” And it is just such Happy Jacks as Landless
that most sea-officers profess to admire; a fellow without shame,
without a soul, so dead to the least dignity of manhood that he could
hardly be called a man. Whereas, a seaman who exhibits traits of moral
sensitiveness, whose demeanour shows some dignity within; this is the
man they, in many cases, instinctively dislike. The reason is, they
feel such a man to be a continual reproach to them, as being mentally
superior to their power. He has no business in a man-of-war; they do
not want such men. To them there is an insolence in his manly freedom,
contempt in his very carriage. He is unendurable, as an erect,
lofty-minded African would be to some slave-driving planter.
Let it not be supposed, however, that the remarks in this and the
preceding chapter apply to _all_ men-of-war. There are some vessels
blessed with patriarchal, intellectual Captains, gentlemanly and
brotherly officers, and docile and Christianised crews. The peculiar
usages of such vessels insensibly softens the tyrannical rigour of the
Articles of War; in them, scourging is unknown. To sail in such ships
is hardly to realise that you live under the martial law, or that the
evils above mentioned can anywhere exist.
And Jack Chase, old Ushant, and several more fine tars that might be
added, sufficiently attest, that in the Neversink at least, there was
more than one noble man-of-war’s-man who almost redeemed all the rest.
Wherever, throughout this narrative, the American Navy, in any of its
bearings, has formed the theme of a general discussion, hardly one
syllable of admiration for what is accounted illustrious in its
achievements has been permitted to escape me. The reason is this: I
consider, that so far as what is called military renown is concerned,
the American Navy needs no eulogist but History. It were superfluous
for White-Jacket to tell the world what it knows already. The office
imposed upon me is of another cast; and, though I foresee and feel that
it may subject me to the pillory in the hard thoughts of some men, yet,
supported by what God has given me, I tranquilly abide the event,
whatever it may prove.