A captain of sense and feeling, therefore, makes it his business, in the first place, to find out what is right and proper, consistently with the rules of the service, and then to ascertain how far the peculiar nature of the employment upon which the ship is engaged will admit of indulgences. Having settled with himself what is possible to be done with propriety, he should grant it not as a matter of personal favour, but simply because it is fitting in itself.
It is not possible, at sea, to comply to the letter with the fourth commandment; but we have no right on that account to dispense with its spirit, which is at all times and in all places within every man's reach. The absolute necessity, however, of performing some work, appears a sufficient reason with many people for doing away with the ordinance of Sunday altogether, and converting it into a day of hard and irksome toil, instead of a season of at least comparative rest. On the other hand, some officers either allow essential public interests to be neglected which ought to be attended to, or they harass their people by exacting more attention to religious observances than the poor sailors can bestow with any chance of profit. Which of these courses is the worst, I really cannot say. If Sunday be made a working day, and no attention is paid to its appropriate duties, the crew are by no means satisfied, and but too readily contract, by degrees, the habit of neglecting their obligations both to God and man. On the contrary, if the day be entirely taken up with devotional exercises, to the fatigue of their minds and bodies, they are exceedingly apt, after a time, to vote the "whole concern," as they call it, a bore, and to make up for this forced attention by the most scandalous indecencies, when out of sight of their "psalm-singing captain."
I would accordingly recommend every officer in command of a ship to bring as many of the arrangements of his Sunday as possible into a jog-trot order, not to be departed from unless there should arise an absolute necessity for such deviation. Nineteen Sundays might, indeed, pass over without any apparent advantage being gained from this uniformity, but on the twentieth some opportunity might occur, of infinite value to all concerned, which opportunity might, in all probability, prove unavailing but for the previous preparation. To borrow a professional illustration of the most familiar kind; it may be asked, how many hundred times do we exercise the great guns and small arms, for once that we fire them in real action? And why should it be supposed that, for the useful application of our mental energies to the most important of all warfare, habitual training is less necessary?
Without going needlessly deep into these speculations, I may observe that, even in the least regularly disciplined ships, there is now a marked difference between Sunday and any other day in the week. Although the grand object seems to be to have everything as clean as possible, and in its most apple-pie order, great part of the labour employed to produce this result is over before Sunday arrives. The decks, for instance, receive such a thorough allowance of holy-stoning and scrubbing on Saturday, that a mere washing, with perhaps a slight touch of the brushes and sand, brings them into the milk-white condition which is the delight of every genuine first lieutenant's heart. All this is got over early in the morning, in order that the decks may be swabbed up and the ropes nicely flemished down before seven bells, at which time it is generally thought expedient to go to breakfast, though half-an-hour sooner than usual, in order to make the forenoon as long as possible. I should have mentioned that the hammocks are always piped up at seven o'clock. If they have been slung overnight, they are as white as any laundress could have made them; and, of course, the hammock-stowers take more than ordinary care to place them neatly in the nettings, with their bright numbers turned inwards, all nicely lashed up with the regulated proportion of turns, each hammock being of a uniform size from end to end.
While the people are at breakfast, the word is passed to "clean for muster," in any dress the commanding officer may think most suitable to the climate or weather. Between the tropics, the order for rigging in frocks and trousers is generally delivered in these words:—
"Do you hear, there! fore and aft! Clean for muster at five bells—duck frocks and white trousers!"
In colder regions, it is "Blue jackets and trousers;" and in rainy, cold, or blowing weather, the following order is sung out along the lower deck, first by the husky-throated boatswain, and then in a still rougher enunciation by his gruff satellites, the boatswain's mates:—
"D'ye hear, there! Clean shirt and a shave for muster at five bells!"
Twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays, the operation of shaving is held to be necessary. These are called "clean-shirt days." Mondays and Fridays are the days appointed for washing the clothes.
It is usual to give the men three quarters, instead of half-an-hour to breakfast on Sundays, that they may have time to rig themselves in proper trim before coming on deck. The watch, therefore, is called at a quarter-past eight, or it may be one bell, which is half-past. The forenoon watch bring their clothes-bags up with them, in order that they may not be again required to leave the deck before muster. The bags are piled in neat pyramids, or in other forms, sometimes on the booms before the boats, and sometimes in a square mass on the after part of the quarter-deck of a frigate. It strikes my recollection that in most ships there is a sort of difficulty in finding a good place on which to stow the bags.