Be this as it may, I, for my own part, certainly took great delight in keeping watch, and even rejoiced, now and then, in catching a good sound ducking, as it tended to assure me that there was no play, but real earnest, in what I was about. During these early times, my chief apprehension seems to have been that I should be considered useless.
In some other respects, likewise, keeping watch possesses its advantages. Nothing else produces such punctual habits, or contributes more directly, to cast both mind and body, into those trains of thought and of action which lead to certainty of purpose, by teaching us how much we may accomplish when we set about things regularly. The practice, also, of early trust is extremely salutary; and although the youngster of a watch has but a small charge, what little he has soon makes him acquainted with the meaning of the word responsibility, and he is thus gradually brought up to court, rather than to shrink from, the exercise of high duties. He learns that the first object of his professional life is to perform what is required by the rules of the service in a proper manner, careless of the consequences. He is likewise taught the wholesome lesson, that any praise for so doing is not only quite a secondary affair, but that such commendation essentially belongs only to those grand efforts of exertion, when an officer of enterprise and resource, in the midst of difficulties, adopts that particular line of conduct which the result proves to be best calculated to accomplish some high purpose.
At the same time, although praise is not an article much used in naval discipline, I know few things which tend more directly to stimulate exertion, and confirm the best resolutions of a young officer, as some mark, no matter how small, of well-timed approbation. There is hardly any man so dull or so wicked, so old or so young, who is not keenly alive to the influence of such commendation at the right moment. It is both interesting and practically important, also, to observe, that praise, like charity—of which it may be called a branch—can be dispensed by every man. There is no person so low in station, who, if he be inclined, may not do works of kindness to some of his shipmates. In fact, a ship’s crew are so isolated from the rest of the world, and thrown so constantly together, that they can influence one another’s happiness even more effectually than neighbours on shore have it in their power to do. Accordingly, there is no officer, man, or boy, in a ship of war, so circumstanced, who, in the exercise of his ordinary duties, and without departing from strict truth, may not give much pleasure to those under him or about him, and thus essentially tend to advance the best interests of the service, by making the motives to action spring from a desire to do well. This, after all, is the great secret of discipline.
In large ships especially, if they be destined, as the Leander was, to bear an admiral’s flag, there are always many more midshipmen on board than are absolutely necessary for performing the duty. These young gentlemen, therefore, are divided into three watches, and the individuals of each set are stationed on different parts of the deck. The mate of the watch, who is the principal person amongst them, with two or three youngsters, walk on the quarter-deck, always, of course, on the lee side. Another midshipman, generally the second in seniority, has the honour of being posted on the forecastle; while a third, stationed abaft, walks on the poop. To these is added, sometimes, a signal-mid, whose business, as will be understood without minute explanation, is to watch the communications made by other ships in company, or to convey orders to them, by means of flags, which are generally hoisted from the poop.
After a certain probation, I was promoted from youngster on the quarter-deck to have charge of the poop; and in the hope of being advanced, in due time, to the dignity of forecastle-midshipman, became extremely assiduous—rather too much so, as it would appear.
It was a positive order, and a very proper one, that no clothes should be hung up to dry except on the clothes’ lines, or in the weather rigging, and even there only by permission of the officer in charge of that part of the ship. Every one, of course, is aware that nothing is considered so sluttish as hanging clothes below the gunwale, and especially on the davits or guys of the quarter boats. But all poop middies who have tried to keep these ropes clear of shirts and jackets, know that it is not very easy to exact obedience to these orders. In all well-regulated ships, however, these apparently small matters are found to contribute to the maintenance of uniformity and good order. They form the tracery or fringe, as it were—the ornamental parts of discipline—which, if properly attended to, generally imply that the more substantial requisites are not neglected. At all events, our first lieutenant was most particular on this subject; and when any shirt or pair of trousers was detected by his piercing eye, which had escaped the vigilance of the midshipman of the poop, the young gentleman was sure to fall under his biting censure, or, in the slang of the cock-pit, was certain to ‘catch it.’
I had constitutionally from my infancy—and doubly so from the first day I went afloat—a great horror at being reproached, or ‘wigged,’ as we called it; and therefore laboured at all times with prodigious ardour to escape the torture of that direct, cutting, merciless sort of censure, which so many persons consider the only proper vehicle of instruction when reproving the rising generation. Of course, therefore, as soon as I was placed in command of the poop, I waged fierce war against the wet shirts of the sailors, or the still more frequent abomination of the well-pipe-clayed trousers of the marines, who naturally affect that part of the ship, and are seldom seen forward amongst the seamen. All experience shews, however, that there is no due proportion between the difficulty of getting a trifling order obeyed, and that of accomplishing a great affair. People are apt to forget, that the obligation of obedience does not always turn upon the greater or less importance of the measure commanded, but upon the distinctness of the injunction. At all events, the unhappy poop-mids of my day were in hot water, almost every morning, about this petty affair, which the men, to our great plague, were exceedingly slow to take up, without more severe punishments than the first lieutenant was generally disposed to inflict. “It is entirely owing to your negligence, young gentlemen,” said he to us one day, “that these wet things are so continually hung up, to the disgrace of the poop. If you would only contrive to keep your sleepy eyes open, and look about you, during your watch, instead of snoosing in the hammock netting, with the fly of the ensign wrapped about you, the men would never think of hanging up their clothes in such improper places.”
We used to marvel much how he managed to point his sarcastic censure so exactly as to hit the precise fault we had been guilty of, and we resolved in future to keep out of its reach, as far as these eternal wet things went. Yet, in spite of all sorts of attention, the day seldom broke without some provoking article of dress making its fluttering appearance—though how on earth it got there, often baffled conjecture. Upon one occasion, my juvenile bile was fairly capsised, and having given warning, as I declared, for the hundred-and-fiftieth time, and all to no effect, I pulled out my knife, and cut the stops which tied a shirt to the jolly-boat’s tackle-fall. Had I proceeded no further, all would have been right and proper; but, in my zealous rage, I leaped beyond the lines of my duty, and fairly threw the offending garment overboard!
Just as the sun peeped above the horizon, our most systematic of first lieutenants made his periodical appearance. I watched his eye as it glanced towards my department, and I chuckled a good deal, when I saw that my activity had baffled every attempt to detect a square inch of the forbidden drapery.
The decks, however, were hardly swabbed up before I saw a scamp of a mizen-top-man, with his hat in one hand, and smoothing down the hair in front of his head with the other, while he shifted his balance from leg to leg, address himself to the first lieutenant, evidently in the act of lodging a complaint. In the next minute I was called down, and interrogated as to my proceedings. The fact of my having thrown the lad’s shirt overboard being admitted, I was desired to recompense him for his loss, by paying him the value in money—while he, in like manner, was punished for disobedience in hanging it up in so improper a situation.