University of Virginia Library

90. CHAPTER XC.

“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 expecially, at all
blind to a true sense of these things. “Purser rigged and
varish 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 harbor
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 of 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 individualized 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 can not 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 can not 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's-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 un-heard-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
every where 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.[1]

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, &c., 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 can not 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—besides,
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.

I do not unite with a high critical authority in considering
Dibbin'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 any thing 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 favorite song was “Dibdin's True English Sailor,”
beginning,

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:

During the many idle hours when our frigate was lying
in harbor, 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,
Landless 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 turns out at last all ready
for your grog.”

This Landless was a favorite 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 demeanor 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 Christianized
crews. The peculiar usages of such vessels insensibly
softens the tyrannical rigor of the Articles of War; in them,
scourging is unknown. To sail in such ships is hardly to realize
that you live under the martial law, or that the evils
above mentioned can any where 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.