On Sunday, the captain always dines with the officers in the ward-room; and although ‘shore-going people’ sometimes take upon themselves to quiz these periodical, and, Heaven knows! often formal, dinner parties, there can be no doubt that they do contribute, and that in a most essential degree, to the maintenance of strict discipline on board ship. Indeed, I believe it is now generally admitted, that it would be next to impossible to preserve good order in a man-of-war, for any length of time, without this weekly ceremonial, coupled, of course, with that of the officers’ dining, in turn, with their captain.
We know that too much familiarity breeds contempt; but, in situations where there is of necessity much intercourse, too little familiarity will as inevitably breed ill-will, distrust, apprehension, and mutual jealousy. The difficulty lies in regulating with due caution this delicate sort of intimacy, and in hitting the exact mean between too much freedom and too much reserve of manner. The proverb points out the evil clearly enough, but leaves us to find the remedy. In the Navy, long experience seems to have shewn, that this important purpose can be best accomplished by the captain and his officers occasionally meeting one another at table—not capriciously, at irregular intervals, or by fits and starts of favour, as the humour suits, but in as fixed an order, as if the whole of this social intercourse were determined by Admiralty regulation.
It will readily be understood by any one who has attended much to the subject of discipline, and will be felt, I should think, more or less, by all persons who have been engaged personally in the management of a house, a regiment, a ship, a shop, or any other establishment in which distinctions of rank and subdivisions of labour prevail, that nothing ever does, or can go on well, unless, over and above the mere legal authority possessed by the head, he shall carry with him a certain amount of the good-will and confidence of those under him. For it is very material, in order to balance, as it were, the technical power with which the chief of such establishment is armed, that there should be some heartiness—some real cheerfulness, between him and those he commands. Accordingly, the obedience which they yield to him should not be entirely the result either of mere habit, or of the still more frigid motive of fear, but should be made to spring, if possible, out of sincere good-will, as an essential, if not the principal ingredient in the stimulus. In ordinary times, it is true, the duty goes on pretty well in a ship-of-war, by the sheer momentum of an established routine.
It may be added, that things often proceed with a degree of success almost as miraculous, in the apprehension of the ignorant, as the movements of a watch appear to the eyes of a savage. But in times of danger, when doubts and difficulties beset an officer, or protracted labours fatigue his crew, and untried resources and exertions are called for every moment, it is discovered that mere routine, (though, even at such periods, it does a great deal,) will not accomplish all that is required. The captain then finds out, often when it is too late, that unless motives of a more generous and stirring nature come into play, to give fresh vigour to the formalities of his discipline, not only his own reputation, but some of the great ends of the public service, may be lost.
The nature of our profession is so complicated, and the occasions are so frequent in which these well known principles are brought into action, that, I believe, it almost invariably happens, when the captain and his officers are not on terms, or do not pull together, that the ship falls, more or less, out of discipline. This occurs even when the officers and their captain are sufficiently public-spirited, to desire sincerely not to allow private differences to interfere in any degree with the course of official duty. For the sailors are exceedingly quick-sighted to such matters, and both they and the midshipmen, not only discover immediately when there is any coolness between the captain and his officers, but are naturally prone to exaggerate the cause and consequences of such differences. If, however, as generally happens, the crew know nothing of the real points in dispute, they fall into a worse error by inventing the most preposterous stories to account for those misunderstandings which they see exist between the higher powers. Advantage, also, is very soon taken of these disagreements, by such persons amongst the crew as are always ready to escape from the restraints of good order, and who imagine, too often with reason, that the officer who is not on pleasant terms with his captain will not be duly supported by him. In a word, when the officers and captain cease to respect one another, or, what comes exactly to the same thing, appear to have lost that mutual respect for one another, of which an easy sociability of intercourse is one of the most obvious proofs, they speedily lose the respect of the people under their command. I can compare the harsh and grating state of affairs on board ship, when, unhappily, there exists bad blood between the captain and officers, to nothing so well as to an engine amongst the machinery of which a handful of gravel has been cast.
It may be asked, how can the simple operation of dining together once or twice a week stave off so great an evil? But the answer is easy; for every one must be aware, that it is by small beginnings and slight causes of imaginary offence—by trivial misunderstandings unexplained—or by real but small causes of just indignation not apologised for, that the bitterest heart-burnings of life too often arise. If, however, these seeds of dissension can only be weeded out before they begin to germinate, their evil growth may not only be checked, but actual good, in most instances, be made to spring up in their place.
In order to make the practical operation of these things quite clear, I shall state two cases, both of which I have seen occur on board ship a hundred times, and of which I can speak with some confidence, as I have myself often acted a part on different sides, and therefore know their bearings from actual trial.
Suppose, in the first place, that the captain comes upon deck just before noon, and, on seeing something wrong—the main-yard not braced up enough, the lee foretop-gallant sheet not home, or the jib not quite hoisted up; and suppose that, as these are points upon which, whether whimsically or not, he is very particular, he express himself to the officer in terms rather too strong for the occasion. Without reflecting upon the injustice he is guilty of, the captain may perhaps, in this way, be punishing a zealous and hard-working man, for a mere trifle, almost as severely as if he had been found sleeping on his watch, or was guilty of some offence caused by wilful neglect.
The officer, however, who can say nothing, bows and submits. In a few minutes, the sun comes to the meridian, and it is made twelve o’clock. The boatswain pipes to dinner, the deck is relieved, and the lieutenant of the forenoon watch goes down below, in a high state of irritation with his captain at what he conceives the undue severity of the reprimand. The first thing he does, on entering the ward-room door, is to fling his hat the whole length of the apartment; so that, unless it be adroitly caught by the marine officer, who is generally playing the flute on the lockers abaft, it would stand a chance of going out of the stern windows. The soldier, of course, thus called upon to look up, stops in the middle of the second bar of ‘God save the King,’ or ‘Robin Adair,’ at which he has been hammering, in company with the master of the band, for the last three months, and says,
“Holla! man—what’s the matter?”