University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.

It was about the period of the Cologne-water excitement
that my self-conceit was not a little wounded, and my sense
of delicacy altogether shocked, by a polite hint received from
the cook of the mess to which I happened to belong. To understand
the matter, it is needful to enter into preliminaries.

The common seamen in a large frigate are divided into
some thirty or forty messes, put down on the purser's books as
Mess No. 1, Mess No. 2, Mess No. 3, &c. The members of
each mess club their rations of provisions, and breakfast, dine,
and sup together in allotted intervals between the guns on the
main-deck. In undeviating rotation, the members of each
mess (excepting the petty-officers) take their turn in performing
the functions of cook and steward. And for the time being,
all the affairs of the club are subject to their inspection
and control.

It is the cook's business, also, to have an eye to the general
interests of his mess; to see that, when the aggregated allowances
of beef, bread, &c., are served out by one of the master's
mates, the mess over which he presides receives its full share,
without stint or subtraction. Upon the berth-deck he has a
chest, in which to keep his pots, pans, spoons, and small stores
of sugar, molasses, tea, and flour.

But though entitled a cook, strictly speaking, the head of
the mess is no cook at all; for the cooking for the crew is all
done by a high and mighty functionary, officially called the
“ship's cook,” assisted by several deputies. In our frigate,
this personage was a dignified colored gentleman, whom the
men dubbed “Old Coffee;” and his assistants, negroes also,

went by the poetical appellations of “Sunshine,” “Rose-water,”
and “May-day.”

Now the ship's cooking required very little science, though
old Coffee often assured us that he had graduated at the New
York Astor House, under the immediate eye of the celebrated
Coleman and Stetson. All he had to do was, in the first
place, to keep bright and clean the three huge coppers, or
caldrons, in which many hundred pounds of beef were daily
boiled. To this end, Rose-water, Sunshine, and May-day
every morning sprang into their respective apartments, stripped
to the waist, and well provided with bits of soap-stone
and sand. By exercising these in a very vigorous manner,
they threw themselves into a violent perspiration, and put a
fine polish upon the interior of the coppers.

Sunshine was the bard of the trio; and while all three
would be busily employed clattering their soap-stones against
the metal, he would exhilarate them with some remarkable
St. Domingo melodies; one of which was the following:

When I listened to these jolly Africans, thus making gleeful
their toil by their cheering songs, I could not help murmuring
against that immemorial rule of men-of-war, which
forbids the sailors to sing out, as in merchant-vessels, when
pulling ropes, or occupied at any other ship's duty. Your
only music, at such times, is the shrill pipe of the boatswain's
mate, which is almost worse than no music at all. And if
the boatswain's mate is not by, you must pull the ropes, like
convicts, in profound silence; or else endeavor to impart unity
to the exertions of all hands, by singing out mechanically, one,
two, three, and then pulling all together.

Now, when Sunshine, Rose-water, and May-day have so

polished the ship's coppers, that a white kid glove might be
drawn along the inside and show no stain, they leap out of
their holes, and the water is poured in for the coffee. And
the coffee being boiled, and decanted off in buckets' full, the
cooks of the messes march up with their salt beef for dinner,
strung upon strings and tallied with labels; all of which are
plunged together into the self-same coppers, and there boiled.
When, upon the beef being fished out with a huge pitch-fork,
the water for the evening's tea is poured in; which, consequently,
possesses a flavor not unlike that of shank-soup.

From this it will be seen, that, so far as cooking is concerned,
a “cook of the mess” has very little to do; merely
carrying his provisions to and from the grand democratic
cookery. Still, in some things, his office involves many annoyances.
Twice a week butter and cheese are served out—
so much to each man—and the mess-cook has the sole charge
of these delicacies. The great difficulty consists in so catering
for the mess, touching these luxuries, as to satisfy all.
Some guzzlers are for devouring the butter at a meal, and
finishing off with the cheese the same day; others contend
for saving it up against Banyan Day, when there is nothing
but beef and bread; and others, again, are for taking a very
small bit of butter and cheese, by way of dessert, to each and
every meal through the week. All this gives rise to endless
disputes, debates, and altercations.

Sometimes, with his mess-cloth—a square of painted canvas—set
out on deck between the guns, garnished with pots,
and pans, and kids, you see the mess-cook seated on a match-tub
at its head, his trowser legs rolled up and arms bared,
presiding over the convivial party.

“Now, men, you can't have any butter to-day. I'm saving
it up for to-morrow. You don't know the value of butter,
men. You, Jim, take your hoof off the cloth! Devil
take me, if some of you chaps haven't no more manners than
so many swines! Quick, men, quick; bear a hand, and
`scoff' (eat) away.—I've got my to-morrow's duff to make

yet, and some of you fellows keep scoffing as if I had nothing
to do but sit still here on this here tub here, and look on.
There, there, men, you've all had enough; so sail away out
of this, and let me clear up the wreck.”

In this strain would one of the periodical cooks of mess
No. 15 talk to us. He was a tall, resolute fellow, who had
once been a breakman on a rail-road, and he kept us all
pretty straight; from his fiat there was no appeal.

But it was not thus when the turn came to others among
us. Then it was, look out for squalls. The business of
dining became a bore, and digestion was seriously impaired
by the unamiable discourse we had over our salt horse.

I sometimes thought that the junks of lean pork—which
were boiled in their own bristles, and looked gaunt and grim,
like pickled chins of half-famished, unwashed Cossacks—had
something to do with creating the bristling bitterness at times
prevailing in our mess. The men tore off the tough hide from
their pork, as if they were Indians scalping Christians.

Some cursed the cook for a rogue, who kept from us our
butter and cheese, in order to make away with it himself in
an underhand manner; selling it at a premium to other
messes, and thus accumulating a princely fortune at our
expense. Others anathematized him for his slovenliness,
casting hypercritical glances into their pots and pans, and
scraping them with their knives. Then he would be railed
at for his miserable “duffs,” and other short-coming preparations.

Marking all this from the beginning. I, White-Jacket, was
sorely troubled with the idea, that, in the course of time, my
own turn would come round to undergo the same objurgations.
How to escape, I knew not. However, when the
dreaded period arrived, I received the keys of office (the keys
of the mess-chest) with a resigned temper, and offered up a
devout ejaculation for fortitude under the trial. I resolved,
please Heaven, to approve myself an unexceptionable caterer,
and the most impartial of stewards.

The first day there was “duff” to make—a business
which devolved upon the mess-cooks, though the boiling of it
pertained to Old Coffee and his deputies. I made up my
mind to lay myself out on that duff; to centre all my energies
upon it; to put the very soul of art into it, and achieve
an unrivaled duff—a duff that should put out of conceit all
other duffs, and forever make my administration memorable.

From the proper functionary the flour was obtained, and
the raisins; the beef-fat, or “slush,” from Old Coffee; and
the requisite supply of water from the scuttle-butt. I then
went among the various cooks, to compare their receipts for
making “duffs;” and having well weighed them all, and
gathered from each a choice item to make an original receipt
of my own, with due deliberation and solemnity I proceeded
to business. Placing the component parts in a tin pan, I
kneaded them together for an hour, entirely reckless as to
pulmonary considerations, touching the ruinous expenditure
of breath; and having decanted the semi-liquid dough into a
canvas-bag, secured the muzzle, tied on the talley, and delivered
it to Rose-water, who dropped the precious bag into the
coppers, along with a score or two of others.

Eight bells had struck. The boatswain and his mates
had piped the hands to dinner; my mess-cloth was set out,
and my messmates were assembled, knife in hand, all ready
to precipitate themselves upon the devoted duff. Waiting
at the grand cookery till my turn came, I received the bag
of pudding, and gallanting it into the mess, proceeded to loosen
the string.

It was an anxious, I may say, a fearful moment. My hands
trembled; every eye was upon me; my reputation and credit
were at stake. Slowly I undressed the duff, dandling it upon
my knee, much as a nurse does a baby about bed-time. The
excitement increased, as I curled down the bag from the pudding;
it became intense, when at last I plumped it into the
pan, held up to receive it by an eager hand. Bim! it fell
like a man shot down in a riot. Distraction! It was harder

than a sinner's heart; yea, tough as the cock that crowed on
the morn that Peter told a lie.

“Gentlemen of the mess, for heaven's sake! permit me one
word. I have done my duty by that duff—I have—”

But they beat down my excuses with a storm of criminations.
One present proposed that the fatal pudding should be
tied round my neck, like a mill-stone, and myself pushed overboard.
No use, no use; I had failed; ever after, that dufflay
heavy at my stomach and my heart.

After this, I grew desperate; despised popularity; returned
scorn for scorn; till at length my week expired, and in the
duff-bag I transferred the keys of office to the next man on
the roll.

Somehow, there had never been a very cordial feeling between
this mess and me; all along they had nourished a prejudice
against my white jacket. They must have harbored
the silly fancy that in it I gave myself airs, and wore it in order
to look consequential; perhaps, as a cloak to cover pilferings
of tit-bits from the mess. But to out with the plain truth,
they themselves were not a very irreproachable set. Considering
the sequel I am coming to, this avowal may be deemed
sheer malice; but for all that, I can not avoid speaking my
mind.

After my week of office, the mess gradually changed their
behavior to me; they cut me to the heart; they became cold
and reserved; seldom or never addressed me at meal-times,
without invidious allusions to my duff, and also to my jacket,
and its dripping in wet weather upon the mess-cloth. However,
I had no idea that any thing serious, on their part, was
brewing; but alas! so it turned out.

We were assembled at supper one evening, when I noticed
certain winks and silent hints tipped to the cook, who presided.
He was a little, oily fellow, who had once kept an oyster-cellar
ashore; he bore me a grudge. Looking down on
the mess-cloth, he observed that some fellows never knew
when their room was better than their company. This being

a maxim of indiscriminate application, of course I silently assented
to it, as any other reasonable man would have done.
But this remark was followed up by another, to the effect that,
not only did some fellows never know when their room was
better than their company, but they persisted in staying when
their company wasn't wanted; and by so doing disturbed the
serenity of society at large. But this, also, was a general observation
that could not be gainsayed. A long and ominous
pause ensued; during which I perceived every eye upon me,
and my white jacket; while the cook went on to enlarge upon
the disagreeableness of a perpetually damp garment in the
mess, especially when that garment was white. This was
coming nearer home.

Yes, they were going to black-ball me; but I resolved to
sit it out a little longer; never dreaming that my moralist
would proceed to extremities, while all hands were present.
But bethinking him that by going this roundabout way he
would never get at his object, he went off on another tack;
apprising me, in substance, that he was instructed by the whole
mess, then and there assembled, to give me warning to seek
out another club, as they did not longer fancy the society either
of myself or my jacket.

I was shocked. Such a want of tact and delicacy! Common
propriety suggested that a point-blank intimation of that
nature should be conveyed in a private interview; or, still
better, by note. I immediately rose, tucked my jacket about
me, bowed, and departed.

And now, to do myself justice, I must add that, the next
day, I was received with open arms by a glorious set of fellows—mess
No. 1!—numbering, among the rest, my noble
Captain Jack Chase.

This mess was principally composed of the headmost men
of the gun-deck; and, out of a pardonable self-conceit, they
called themselves the “Forty-two-pounder Club;” meaning
that they were, one and all, fellows of large intellectual and
corporeal calibre. Their mess-cloth was well located. On

their starboard hand was Mess No. 2, embracing sundry rare
jokers and high livers, who waxed gay and epicurean over
their salt fare, and were known as the “Society for the Destruction
of Beef and Pork.” On the larboard hand was Mess
No. 31, made up entirely of fore-top-men, a dashing, blaze-away
set of men-of-war's-men, who called themselves the
“Cape Horn Snorters and Neversink Invincibles.” Opposite,
was one of the marine messes, mustering the aristocracy
of the marine corps—the two corporals, the drummer and
fifer, and some six or eight rather gentlemanly privates, native-born
Americans, who had served in the Seminole campaigns
of Florida; and they now enlivened their salt fare with stories
of wild ambushes in the everglades; and one of them related
a surprising tale of his hand-to-hand encounter with Osceola,
the Indian chief, whom he fought one morning from daybreak
till breakfast time. This slashing private also boasted that
he could take a chip from between your teeth at twenty paces;
he offered to bet any amount on it; and as he could get no
one to hold the chip, his boast remained forever good.

Besides many other attractions which the Forty-two-pounder
Club furnished, it had this one special advantage, that, owing
to there being so many petty officers in it, all the members of
the mess were exempt from doing duty as cooks and stewards.
A fellow called a steady-cook, attended to that business during
the entire cruise. He was a long, lank, pallid varlet, going
by the name of Shanks. In very warm weather this Shanks
would sit at the foot of the mess-cloth, fanning himself with
the front flap of his frock or shirt, which he inelegantly wore
over his trowsers. Jack Chase, the President of the Club,
frequently remonstrated against this breach of good manners;
but the steady-cook had somehow contracted the habit, and
it proved incurable. For a time, Jack Chase, out of a polite
nervousness touching myself, as a newly-elected member of the
club, would frequently endeavor to excuse to me the vulgarity
of Shanks. One day he wound up his remarks by the philosophic
reflection—“But White-Jacket, my dear fellow, what

can you expect of him? Our real misfortune is, that our noble
club should be obliged to dine with its cook.”

There were several of these steady-cooks on board; men of
no mark or consideration whatever in the ship; lost to all noble
promptings; sighing for no worlds to conquer, and perfectly
contented with mixing their duffs, and spreading their
mess-cloths, and mustering their pots and pans together three
times every day for a three years' cruise. They were very seldom
to be seen on the spar-deck, but kept below out of sight.