Fragments of voyages and travels, including anecdotes of a naval life

by Basil Hall

We were not particularly fortunate in making many captures on the Halifax station, in our early cruises, after the war broke out. But the change which the renewal of hostilities made in our habits was great. Instead of idly rotting in harbour, our ship was now always at sea, on the look-out,—a degree of vigilance, which, as will be seen, had its reward in due season. In the meantime, we discovered that a midshipman’s life was full of interest and curiosity, especially to those who thirsted to see new countries and new climates. Of this matter of climate, I find a characteristic enough touch in one of my early letters.

“We have been on a cruise for many months; but we did not take a single prize, although all the rest of the ships of the station have been making captures. I hope we shall be more fortunate next time, as we intend to go to a better place. Our last cruise carried us a long way to the southward, where the weather was so very hot, that it became impossible to do any thing in comfort, night or day. In the night time we could hardly sleep, and in the day we were scorched by the sun. When our candles were lighted, they melted away by degrees, and often tumbled on the table by their own weight, or, perhaps, fell plump into the victuals!”

Even at this distance of time, I have a most painfully distinct recollection of these dirty tallow candles in the midshipmen’s birth—dips, I think, they were called—smelling of mutton fat, and throwing up a column of smoke like that from a steamboat’s chimney. These ‘glims’ yielded but little light, by reason, possibly, of a huge wick occupying more than half the area of the flame, and demanding the incessant application of our big-bellied snuffers to make the darkness visible.

This, in its turn, reminds me of a piece of cock-pit manners, which truth obliges me to divulge, although, certainly, not very much to our credit. It was the duty of the unfortunate wight who sat nearest the candle—grievously misnamed the ‘light’—to snuff off its monstrous cauliflower of a head from time to time; and certainly his office was no sinecure. Sometimes, however, either from being too much absorbed in his book, or from his hand being tired, he might forget to ‘top the glim,’ as it was called—glim being, I suppose, a contraction of the too obvious word glimmer. On these occasions of neglect, when things were returning fast to their primeval darkness, any one of the company was entitled to call out “Top!” upon which all the rest were bound to vociferate the same word, and he who was the last to call out “Top!” was exposed to one of the following disagreeable alternatives—either to get up and snuff the candle, at whatever distance he might be seated, or to have the burning snuff thrown in his face by any one who was within reach, and chose to pinch it off with his finger and thumb. It is true there was always some trouble in this operation, and some little risk of burning the fingers, to say nothing of the danger to His Majesty’s ship; but the delightful task of teaching a messmate good breeding, by tossing a handful of burning tallow-candle snuff in his eyes, was, of course, a happiness too great to be resisted.

In speaking thus of the midshipmen’s birth, and of their occasional ruggedness of manners, I should be doing wrong to leave an impression that they were a mere lawless set of harumscarum scamps. Quite the contrary; for we had a code of laws for our government, which, for precision and distinctness of purpose, might have rivalled many of those promulgated by the newest-born states of the world, in these days of political parturition. I observe, that young countries, like young people, whether in a midshipman’s mess, or any where else, delight in the indulgence of the fond and false idea, that it is easy to regulate the fluctuations of human nature exactly as they please, by the mere force of written constitutions. They always ‘remember to forget,’ that institutions, to be in the smallest degree effective in practice, must be made to fit the existing state of society, and that society cannot possibly be made to fit them. They almost all run away, however, with the vainest of vain notions, that established habits, old prejudices, with all the other fixed and peculiar circumstances of the time and place in which they find themselves, have become, of a sudden, so pliable, that they can be essentially and speedily modified by artificial legislation alone! On this fallacious principle we framed a set of regulations for our mess, of which I recollect only one, giving, I admit, rather a queer idea of the state of things in our maritime world. It ran thus:—“If any member of the larboard mess shall so far forget the manners of a gentleman as to give the lie direct to one of his messmates, he shall be fined one dollar.”

This fine, it must be observed, was intended purely as a propitiation to the offended dignity of the mess, and was quite independent of the personal arrangements which, on such occasions, generally took place in the cock-pit outside. These battles royal were fought across a chest,—I don’t mean with pistols, but with good honest fisty-cuffs. The only difficulty attending this method of settling such matters consisted in the shifts to which the parties were compelled to resort, to conceal the black eyes which, in most cases, were the result of these single combats. It would, of course, have been quite incorrect in the commanding officer to have overlooked such proceedings—even supposing the parties to retain a sufficiency of optics to do their duty. The usual resource was to trust to the good-nature of the surgeon, who put the high contending parties on the sick list, and wrote against their names “Contusion;” an entry he might certainly make with a safe conscience!

This innocent way of settling disputes was all very well, so long as the mids were really and truly boys; but there came, in process of time, a plaguy awkward age, when they began to fancy themselves men, and when they were very apt to take it into their heads that, on such occasions as that just alluded to, their dignity, as officers and gentlemen, would be compromised by beating one another about the face and eyes across a chest, and otherwise contusing one another, according to the most approved fashion of the cock-pit. Youths, at this intermediate age, are called Hobbledehoys, that is, neither man nor boy. And as powder and ball act with equal efficacy against these high-spirited fellows as against men of more experience, fatal duels do sometimes take place even amongst midshipmen. I was once present at a very foolish affair of this kind, which, though it happily ended in smoke, was so exceedingly irregular in all its parts, that, had any one fallen, the whole party concerned would most probably have been hanged!

A dispute arose between three of these young men, in the course of which, terms were bandied about, leaving a reproach such that only the ordeal of a duel, it was thought, could wipe out. It was late in the day when this quarrel took place; but as there was still light enough left to fire a shot, the party went on deck, and quietly asked leave to go on shore for a walk. I happened to be the only person in the birth at the time who was not engaged in the squabble, and so was pressed into the service of the disputants to act as second. There would have been nothing very absurd in all this, had there been another second besides me, or had there existed only one quarrel to settle—but between the three youths there were two distinct disputes!

One of these lads, whom we shall call Mr. A, had first to fight with Mr. B, while Mr. C was second to Mr. B; and then Mr. A, having disposed of Mr. B, either by putting him out of the world, or by adjusting the matter by apologies, was to commence a fresh battle with Mr. C, who, it will be observed, had been second to his former antagonist, Mr. B! The contingency of Mr. A himself being put hors de combat appears not to have been contemplated; but the strong personal interest which Mr. C (the second to Mr. A’s first antagonist) had in giving the affair a fatal turn, would have been the ticklish point for our poor necks, in a court of justice, had Mr. A fallen. Poor fellow! he was afterwards killed in action.

More by good luck than good management, neither of the first shots took effect. At this stage of the affair, I began to perceive the excessive absurdity of the whole transaction, and the danger of the gallows, to which we were all exposing ourselves. I therefore vehemently urged upon the parties the propriety of staying further proceedings. These suggestions were fortunately strengthened by the arrival of a corporal’s guard of armed marines from the ship, under the orders of an officer, who was directed to arrest the whole party. There was at first a ludicrous shew of actual resistance to this detachment; but, after some words, the affair terminated, and the disputants walked off the field arm in arm, the best friends in the world!