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

by Basil Hall

“Indeed!” exclaims the youth. “I never knew any thing of it. I never was called.”

“Oh yes, you were, sir. The man I relieved said you asked him what sort of weather it was, and whether we should have to take in a reef.”

“I ask about the weather? That’s only one of the lies he always tells, to get me into a scrape.”

While they are speaking, the bell strikes one, indicating that half an hour has elapsed since the first conversation took place, touching the weather; and presently, before Mr. Doughead has got his second foot over the side of his hammock, the mid who is to be relieved by him comes rattling down the cock-pit ladder, as wet as a shag, cold, angry, and more than half asleep.

“I say, Master Doughy, do you mean to relieve the deck to-night? Here it’s almost two bells, and you have hardly shewn a leg yet. I’ll be hanged if it is not too bad! You are the worst relief in the whole ship. I am obliged to keep all my own watch, and generally half of yours. I’ll not stand it any more; but go to the first lieutenant to-morrow morning, and see whether he cannot find ways and means of making you move a little faster. It’s a disgrace to the service!” To all this Duffy has only one pettish, dogged reply—

“I tell you again, I was not called.”

The appeal to the first lieutenant, however, is seldom made; for all the parties concerned are pretty much alike. But the midshipmen are not slow at times to take the law of these cases into their own hands, and to execute summary justice, according to their own fashion, on any particularly incorrigibly ‘bad relief,’ as these tardy gentlemen are aptly termed.

One of the most common punishments, on these occasions, is called ‘cutting down’—a process not quite so fatal as might be imagined from the term. Most people, I presume, know what sort of a thing a hammock is. It consists of a piece of canvass, five feet long by two wide, suspended to the deck overhead by means of two sets of small lines, called clews, made fast to grummets, or rings of rope, which, again, are attached by a lanyard to the battens stretching along the beams. In this sacking are placed a small mattress, a pillow, and a couple of blankets, to which a pair of sheets may or may not be added. The degree of nocturnal room and comfort enjoyed by these young gentlemen may be understood, when it is mentioned that the whole of the apparatus just described occupies less than a foot and a half in width, and that the hammocks touch one another. Nevertheless, I can honestly say, that the soundest sleep, by far, that I have ever known, has been found in these apparently uncomfortable places of repose; and though the recollection of many a slumber broken up, and the bitter pang experienced on making the first move to exchange so cozy a nest, for the snarling of a piercing north-west gale on the coast of America, will never leave my memory, yet I look back to those days and nights with a sort of evergreen freshness of interest, which only increases with years.

The wicked operation of ‘cutting down’ may be managed in three ways. The mildest form is to take a knife and divide the foremost lanyard or suspending cord. Of course, that end of the hammock instantly falls, and the sleepy-headed youth is pitched out, feet foremost, on the deck. The other plan, which directs the after lanyard to be cut, is not quite so gentle, nor so safe, as it brings down the sleeper’s head with a sharp bang on the deck, while his heels are jerked into the air. The third is to cut away both ends at once, which has the effect of bringing the round stern of the young officer in contact with the edge of any of the chests, which may be placed so as to receive it. The startled victim is then rolled out of bed with his nose on the deck; or, if he happen to be sleeping in the tier, he tumbles on the hard bends of the cable coiled under him. This flooring is much more rugged, and not much softer than the planks, so that his fall is but a choice of miserable bumps.

The malice of this horse-play is sometimes augmented by placing a line round the middle part of the hammock, and fastening it to the beams overhead, in such a way that, when the lanyards at the ends are cut, the head and tail of the youth shall descend freely; but the nobler part of him being secured by the belly-band, as it is called, the future hero of some future Trafalgar remains suspended ingloriously, in mid air, like the golden fleece over a woollen-draper’s shop.