University of Virginia Library

74. CHAPTER LXXIV.

The whole of our run from Rio to the Line was one delightful
yachting, so far as fine weather and the ship's sailing were
concerned. It was especially pleasant when our quarter-watch
lounged in the main-top, diverting ourselves in many agreeable
ways. Removed from the immediate presence of the
officers, we there harmlessly enjoyed ourselves, more than in
any other part of the ship. By day, many of us were very
industrious, making hats or mending our clothes. But by
night we became more romantically inclined.

Often Jack Chase, an enthusiastic admirer of sea-scenery,
would direct our attention to the moonlight on the waves, by
fine snatches from his catalogue of poets. I shall never forget
the lyric air with which, one morning, at dawn of day,
when all the East was flushed with red and gold, he stood
leaning against the top-mast shrouds, and, stretching his bold
hand over the sea, exclaimed, “Here comes Aurora: top-mates,
see!” And, in a liquid, long-lingering tone, he recited
the lines,

“Commodore Camoens, White-Jacket.—But bear a hand
there; we must rig out that stun'-sail boom—the wind is
shifting.”

From our lofty perch, of a moonlight night, the frigate itself
was a glorious sight. She was going large before the
wind, her stun'-sails set on both sides, so that the canvass on
the main-mast and fore-mast presented the appearance of two
majestic, tapering pyramids, more than a hundred feet broad

at the base, and terminating in the clouds with the light cope-stone
of the royals. That immense area of snow-white canvass
sliding along the sea was indeed a magnificent spectacle.
The three shrouded masts looked like the apparitions of three
gigantic Turkish Emirs striding over the ocean.

Nor, at times, was the sound of music wanting, to augment
the poetry of the scene. The whole band would be assembled
on the poop, regaling the officers, and incidentally ourselves,
with their fine old airs. To these, some of us would occasionally
dance in the top, which was almost as large as an ordinary-sized
parlor. When the instrumental melody of the
band was not to be had, our nightingales mustered their voices,
and gave us a song.

Upon these occasions Jack Chase was often called out, and
regaled us, in his own free and noble style, with the “Spanish
Ladies”—a favorite thing with British man-of-war's-men—
and many other salt-sea ballads and ditties, including,

Also,

These songs would be varied by sundry yarns and twisters
of the top-men. And it was at these times that I always endeavored
to draw out the oldest Tritons into narratives of the
war-service they had seen. There were but few of them, it
is true, who had been in action; but that only made their
narratives the more valuable.

There was an old negro, who went by the name of Tawney,
a sheet-anchor-man, whom we often invited into our top
of tranquil nights, to hear him discourse. He was a staid and
sober seaman, very intelligent, with a fine, frank bearing, one

of the best men in the ship, and held in high estimation by
every one.

It seems that, during the last war between England and
America, he had, with several others, been “impressed” upon
the high seas, out of a New England merchantman. The
ship that impressed him was an English frigate, the Macedonian,
afterward taken by the Neversink, the ship in which
we were sailing.

It was the holy Sabbath, according to Tawney, and, as the
Briton bore down on the American—her men at their quarters—Tawney
and his countrymen, who happened to be stationed
at the quarter-deck battery, respectfully accosted the
captain—an old man by the name of Cardan—as he passed
them, in his rapid promenade, his spy-glass under his arm.
Again they assured him that they were not Englishmen, and
that it was a most bitter thing to lift their hands against the
flag of that country which harbored the mothers that bore
them. They conjured him to release them from their guns,
and allow them to remain neutral during the conflict. But
when a ship of any nation is running into action, it is no time
for argument, small time for justice, and not much time for
humanity. Snatching a pistol from the belt of a boarder
standing by, the Captain leveled it at the heads of the three
sailors, and commanded them instantly to their quarters, under
penalty of being shot on the spot. So, side by side with
his country's foes, Tawney and his companions toiled at the
guns, and fought out the fight to the last; with the exception
of one of them, who was killed at his post by one of his own
country's balls.

At length, having lost her fore and main-top-masts, and
her mizzen-mast having been shot away to the deck, and her
fore-yard lying in two pieces on her shattered forecastle, and
in a hundred places having been hulled with round shot, the
English frigate was reduced to the last extremity. Captain
Cardan ordered his signal quarter-master to strike the flag.

Tawney was one of those who, at last, helped pull him on

board the Neversink. As he touched the deck, Cardan saluted
Decatur, the hostile commander, and offered his sword;
but it was courteously declined. Perhaps the victor remembered
the dinner parties that he and the Englishman had enjoyed
together in Norfolk, just previous to the breaking out
of hostilities—and while both were in command of the very
frigates now crippled on the sea. The Macedonian, it seems,
had gone into Norfolk with dispatches. Then they had
laughed and joked over their wine, and a wager of a beaver
hat was said to have been made between them upon the
event of the hostile meeting of their ships.

Gazing upon the heavy batteries before him, Cardan said
to Decatur, “This is a seventy-four, not a frigate; no wonder
the day is yours!”

This remark was founded upon the Neversink's superiority
in guns. The Neversink's main-deck-batteries then consisted,
as now, of twenty-four-pounders; the Macedonian's of only
eighteens. In all, the Neversink numbered fifty-four guns
and four hundred and fifty men; the Macedonian, forty-nine
guns and three hundred men; a very great disparity, which,
united to the other circumstances of this action, deprives the
victory of all claims to glory beyond those that might be set
up by a river-horse getting the better of a seal.

But if Tawney spoke truth—and he was a truth-telling man
—this fact seemed counterbalanced by a circumstance he related.
When the guns of the Englishman were examined,
after the engagement, in more than one instance the wad was
found rammed against the cartridge, without intercepting the
ball. And though, in a frantic sea-fight, such a thing might
be imputed to hurry and remissness, yet Tawney, a stickler
for his tribe, always ascribed it to quite a different and less
honorable cause. But, even granting the cause he assigned
to have been the true one, it does not involve any thing inimical
to the general valor displayed by the British crew. Yet,
from all that may be learned from candid persons who have
been in sea-fights, there can be but little doubt that on board

of all ships, of whatever nation, in time of action, no very
small number of the men are exceedingly nervous, to say the
least, at the guns; ramming and sponging at a venture. And
what special patriotic interest could an impressed man, for
instance, take in a fight, into which he had been dragged from
the arms of his wife? Or is it to be wondered at that impressed
English seamen have not scrupled, in time of war, to
cripple the arm that has enslaved them?

During the same general war which prevailed at and previous
to the period of the frigate-action here spoken of, a British
flag-officer, in writing to the Admiralty, said, “Every
thing appears to be quiet in the fleet; but, in preparing for
battle last week, several of the guns in the after part of the
ship were found to be spiked;” that is to say, rendered useless.
Who had spiked them? The dissatisfied seamen. Is
it altogether improbable, then, that the guns to which Tawney
referred were manned by men who purposely refrained from
making them tell on the foe; that, in this one action, the victory
America gained was partly won for her by the sulky insubordination
of the enemy himself?

During this same period of general war, it was frequently
the case that the guns of English armed ships were found in
the mornings with their breechings cut over night. This
maiming of the guns, and for the time incapacitating them,
was only to be imputed to that secret spirit of hatred to the
service which induced the spiking above referred to. But
even in cases where no deep-seated dissatisfaction was presumed
to prevail among the crew, and where a seaman, in
time of action, impelled by pure fear, “shirked from his gun;”
it seems but flying in the face of Him who made such a seaman
what he constitutionally was, to sew coward upon his
back, and degrade and agonize the already trembling wretch
in numberless other ways. Nor seems it a practice warranted
by the Sermon on the Mount, for the officer of a battery,
in time of battle, to stand over the men with his drawn sword
(as was done in the Macedonian), and run through on the

spot the first seaman who showed a semblance of fear. Tawney
told me that he distinctly heard this order given by the
English Captain to his officers of divisions. Were the secret
history of all sea-fights written, the laurels of sea-heroes would
turn to ashes on their brows.

And how nationally disgraceful, in every conceivable point
of view, is the IV. of our American Articles of War: “If any
person in the Navy shall pusillanimously cry for quarter, he
shall suffer death.” Thus, with death before his face from
the foe, and death behind his back from his countrymen, the
best valor of a man-of-war's-man can never assume the merit
of a noble spontaneousness. In this, as in every other case,
the Articles of War hold out no reward for good conduct, but
only compel the sailor to fight, like a hired murderer, for his
pay, by digging his grave before his eyes if he hesitates.

But this Article IV. is open to still graver objections.
Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues; the
only one shared with us by the beasts of the field; the one
most apt, by excess, to run into viciousness. And since Nature
generally takes away with one hand to counterbalance
her gifts with the other, excessive animal courage, in many
cases, only finds room in a character vacated of loftier things.
But in a naval officer, animal courage is exalted to the loftiest
merit, and often procures him a distinguished command.

Hence, if some brainless bravo be Captain of a frigate in
action, he may fight her against invincible odds, and seek to
crown himself with the glory of the shambles, by permitting
his hopeless crew to be butchered before his eyes, while at the
same time that crew must consent to be slaughtered by the
foe, under penalty of being murdered by the law. Look at
the engagement between the American frigate Essex with
the two English cruisers, the Phœbe and Cherub, off the Bay
of Valparaiso, during the late war. It is admitted on all
hands that the American Captain continued to fight his crippled
ship against a greatly superior force; and when, at last,
it became physically impossible that he could ever be otherwise

than vanquished in the end; and when, from peculiarly
unfortunate circumstances, his men merely stood up to their
nearly useless batteries to be dismembered and blown to pieces
by the incessant fire of the enemy's long guns. Nor, by thus
continuing to fight, did this American frigate, one iota, promote
the true interests of her country. I seek not to underrate
any reputation which the American Captain may have
gained by this battle. He was a brave man; that no sailor
will deny. But the whole world is made up of brave men.
Yet I would not be at all understood as impugning his special
good name. Nevertheless, it is not to be doubted, that if
there were any common-sense sailors at the guns of the Essex,
however valiant they may have been, those common-sense
sailors must have greatly preferred to strike their flag, when
they saw the day was fairly lost, than postpone that inevitable
act till there were few American arms left to assist in
hauling it down. Yet had these men, under these circumstances,
“pusillanimously cried for quarter,” by the IV. Article
of War they might have been legally hung.

According to the negro, Tawney, when the Captain of the
Macedonian—seeing that the Neversink had his vessel completely
in her power—gave the word to strike the flag, one
of his officers, a man hated by the seamen for his tyranny,
howled out the most terrific remonstrances, swearing that,
for his part, he would not give up, but was for sinking the
Macedonian alongside the enemy. Had he been Captain,
doubtless he would have done so; thereby gaining the name
of a hero in this world;—but what would they have called
him in the next?

But as the whole matter of war is a thing that smites common
sense and Christianity in the face; so every thing connected
with it is utterly foolish, unchristian, barbarous, brutal,
and savoring of the Feejee Islands, cannibalism, saltpetre, and
the devil.

It is generally the case in a man-of-war when she strikes
her flag that all discipline is at an end, and the men for a

time are ungovernable. This was so on board of the English
frigate. The spirit-room was broken open, and buckets of
grog were passed along the decks, where many of the wounded
were lying between the guns. These mariners seized the
buckets, and, spite of all remonstrances, gulped down the
burning spirits, till, as Tawney said, the blood suddenly spirted
out of their wounds, and they fell dead to the deck.

The negro had many more stories to tell of this fight; and
frequently he would escort me along our main-deck batteries
—still mounting the same guns used in the battle—pointing
out their ineffaceable indentations and scars. Coated over
with the accumulated paint of more than thirty years, they
were almost invisible to a casual eye; but Tawney knew them
all by heart; for he had returned home in the Neversink, and
had beheld these scars shortly after the engagement.

One afternoon, I was walking with him along the gun-deck,
when he paused abreast of the main-mast. “This part
of the ship,” said he, “we called the slaughter-house on board
the Macedonian. Here the men fell, five and six at a time.
An enemy always directs its shot here, in order to hurl over
the mast, if possible. The beams and carlines overhead in
the Macedonian slaughter-house were spattered with blood
and brains. About the hatchways it looked like a butcher's
stall; bits of human flesh sticking in the ring-bolts. A pig
that ran about the decks escaped unharmed, but his hide was
so clotted with blood, from rooting among the pools of gore,
that when the ship struck the sailors hove the animal overboard,
swearing that it would be rank cannibalism to eat
him.”

Another quadruped, a goat, lost its fore legs in this fight.

The sailors who were killed—according to the usual custom—were
ordered to be thrown overboard as soon as they
fell; no doubt, as the negro said, that the sight of so many
corpses lying around might not appall the survivors at the
guns. Among other instances, he related the following. A
shot entering one of the port-holes, dashed dead two thirds of

a gun's crew. The captain of the next gun, dropping his
lock-string, which he had just pulled, turned over the heap of
bodies to see who they were; when, perceiving an old messmate,
who had sailed with him in many cruises, he burst into
tears, and, taking the corpse up in his arms, and going with
it to the side, held it over the water a moment, and eying it,
cried, “Oh God! Tom!”—“D—n your prayers over that
thing! overboard with it, and down to your gun!” roared a
wounded Lieutenant. The order was obeyed, and the heart-stricken
sailor returned to his post.

Tawney's recitals were enough to snap this man-of-war
world's sword in its scabbard. And thinking of all the cruel
carnal glory wrought out by naval heroes in scenes like these,
I asked myself whether, indeed, that was a glorious coffin in
which Lord Nelson was entombed—a coffin presented to him,
during life, by Captain Hallowell; it had been dug out of the
main-mast of the French line-of-battle ship L'Orient, which,
burning up with British fire, destroyed hundreds of Frenchmen
at the battle of the Nile.

Peace to Lord Nelson where he sleeps in his moldering
mast! but rather would I be urned in the trunk of some green
tree, and even in death have the vital sap circulating round
me, giving of my dead body to the living foliage that shaded
my peaceful tomb.