As for food, we were the envy of our British cousins. Our menu was: Sunday, a pound and a half of beef and half a pint of rice; Monday, a pound of pork, half a pint of peas and four ounces of cheese; Tuesday, a pound and a half of beef, and a pound of potatoes; Wednesday, half a pint of rice, two ounces of butter, and six ounces of molasses; Thursday, a pound of pork and half a pint of peas; Friday, a pound of potatoes, a pound of salt fish, and two ounces of butter or one gill of oil; Saturday, a pound of pork, half a pint of peas, and four ounces of cheese. In addition, one pound of bread and half a pint of spirits, or one quart of beer, were served every day.
Sundays were usually holidays. After muster on the spar deck, we would have church service, and then the rest of the day was ours to spend as we pleased. We wore our best uniforms, but we could never tell from one Sunday to another just what kind of dress we were to appear in. The captain had a way of ordering us to wear one day blue jackets and white trousers, and on the next Sunday to change to blue jackets and blue trousers. When he wanted us to look particularly smart he would command that we wear in addition our scarlet vests. When, on top of all this, we donned our shiny black hats, we felt fine indeed.
In fair weather we slept in hammocks, swung on the berth deck. We were trained to roll up and stow our hammocks swiftly, so that when a call to action sounded, our beds disappeared from sight in the bulwark nettings as if by magic. These hammocks, in battle, were placed against the bulwarks as shields to prevent splinters from hitting us when the vessel was hit.
Our ship kept a merit roll, upon which were entered the names of every member of the crew. If a man did his work well, he was given a good standing on this roll; the sheet, on the other hand, also showed who were the lazy and inefficient members of the crew. The system of handling men was modeled after that of the older navies, where each man of the ship's company was assigned a certain duty.
When a sailor died, we sewed up our mate's body in his hammock and placed it on a grating in a bow port. Then an officer read the burial service. At the words, "We commit the body of our brother to the deep," we raised the grating and allowed the body to drop into the sea. There would be a heavy splash—then a deep silence rested on both the water and the ship for several minutes.
Our greatest enjoyment came from our band, which we had formed out of members of the crew who had more or less talent for music. I wondered afterwards how our efforts would have sounded in competition with a professional band of musicians that in later years played aboard one of our sister ships. These musicians had found their way into the American navy in a strange manner. They had enlisted on board a French warship under the condition that they would not be called on to fight, but were to be stowed away in the cable tier until "the clouds blew over." It was also stipulated that they were not to be flogged—a custom of which many captains were far too fond. The French ship upon which they played was captured by a Portuguese cruiser. They were permitted by the Portuguese to enlist in a British vessel, and when the latter was captured by an American frigate, the band was enrolled in our navy.
EVERY-DAY HAZARDS
In sailing from a cold to a warm climate, we were unknowingly weakening our rigging, which had been fitted in cold weather. The masts were subject to expansion and contraction by heat and cold, and so was our cordage. When we entered the Mediterranean our shrouds and stays slackened under the hot sun. The ship was in this condition when we were caught in a heavy gale. The ocean had grown rough. We were at dinner when a tremendous wave broke over our bow. It poured down the open hatchway, swept from the galley all the food that was on the table, washed our table clean of eatables, and poured through all of the apartments on the berth deck in a terrifying flood. The huge waves beating upon our ship from the outside, the tossing of the vessel, and the sloshing water we had shipped racked the vessel so that it seemed that it must founder. We were a white-faced group, for Davy Jones' locker seemed to be yawning for us below, but we kept our upper lips stiff and sprang nimbly to obey orders. The officers commanded the crew to man the chain pumps and cut holes in the berth deck to permit the water to pour into the hold, and in this way we emerged from our dangerous situation.
Another peril, however, beset us on deck. One of our lieutenants, watching the rigging, discovered that it had become so slack that the masts and bowsprit were in danger of being carried away. He summoned all available hands to help tighten the ropes. We managed at last to secure purchases on every other shroud, and to sway them all together, which restored the firmness.
One night we had shown to us what a terrifying experience it is to have a fire break out aboard ship. As we were climbing into our hammocks a shower of sparks flew up from a corner of the cockpit.