Rattlin the Reefer

by Edward Howard

And so, filling our cabins with invalided officers, we sailed for England. We took home with us a convoy; and a miserable voyage we made of it.

In taking my soi-disant schoolfellow on board the Eos, I had shipped with me my Mephistophiles. The former servant to the midshipmen’s berth was promoted to the mizzen-top, and Joshua Daunton inducted, with due solemnities, to all the honours of waiting upon about half a dozen fierce, unruly midshipmen, and as many sick supernumeraries; and he formally took charge of all the mess-plate and munitions de bouche of this submarine establishment. There was no temptation to embezzlement. Our little society was a commonwealth of the most democratic description—and, as usually happens in these sort of experiments, there was a community of goods that were good for nothing to the community.

I will give an inventory of all the movables of this republic, for the edification of the curious. Among these, I must first of all enumerate the salle à manger itself, a hot little hole in the cock-pit, of about eight feet by six, which was never clean. This dining-room and breakfast-room also contained our cellars which contained nothing, on which cellars we lay down when there was room—your true midshipman is a recumbent animal—and sat when we could not lie. For the same reason that the Romans called a grove lucus, these cellerets were called lockers, because there was nothing to lock in them, and no locks to lock in that nothing withal. In the midst stood an oak table, carved with more names than ever Rosalind accused Orlando of spoiling good trees with, besides the outline of a ship, and a number of squares, which served for an immovable draught-board. One battered, spoutless, handless, japanned-tin jug, that did not contain water, for it leaked; some tin mugs; seven, or perhaps eight, pewter plates; an excellent old iron tureen, the best friend we had, and which had stood by us, through storm and calm, and the spiteful kick of Reefer, and the contemptuous “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” in the galley; which tureen contained our cocoa in the morning, our pea-soup at noon, and, after these multiplied duties, performed the character of wash-hand basin, whenever the midshipman’s fag condescended to cleanse his hands. It is a fact that, when we sailed for England, of crockeryware we had not a single article. There was a calabash or so, and two or three sections of cocoa-nut shells.

We had no other provisions than barely the ship’s allowance, and even these were of the worst description. Bread, it is well remarked, is the staff of life; but it is not quite pleasant to find it life itself, and to have the power of locomotion. Every other description of food was in the same state of transition into vivification. There is no exaggeration in all this. From the continual coming and going, and the state of constant disunion in which we lived, it was every man for himself, and God, I am sorry to say, seemed to have very little to do with any of us. So complete was our disorganisation, and so great our destitution as a mess, that, after the first week, the supernumerary sick young gentlemen were relieved from this candlelight den of starvation and of dirt, and distributed among the warrant officers.

It was to wait upon our persons, to administer to our wants, and to take care of our culinary comforts, that Joshua Daunton was duly installed. It was very ludicrous to see our late servant giving up his charge to our present one—the solemnity with which the iron tureen, and the one knife, and the three forks, that were not furcated, seeing that they had but one prong each, were surrendered: Joshua’s contempt at the sordid poverty of the republic to which he was to administer, was quite as undisguised as his surprise. I again and again requested him to do his duty in some other capacity in the ship, but he steadily refused.

The silky, soft-spoken, cockney-dialected Josh got me into continual hot water. At first he seemed to consider himself as my servant only; consequently, he was continually thrashed, and I, on his appeal, taking his part, had to endeavour to thrash the thrasher. Now, this could not always be conveniently done. The more I suffered for this Daunton, the more ardently he seemed to attach himself to me. But there appeared to be much more malice than affection in his fidelity. Nothing prospered either with me or my messmates. He contrived, in the most plausible manner possible, to spoil our almost unspoilable meals. He always managed to draw for us the very worst rations, and to lay the blame on the purser’s steward. In bringing aft our miserable dinners, his foot would slip, or a man would run against him—or somebody had taken it off the galley-fire, and thrown it in the manger. Salt-water would miraculously intrude into my messmates’ rum-bottle, and my daily pint of wine was either sour or muddy, or sandy, or afflicted with something that made it undrinkable. In one word, under the care of the good Joshua, Messieurs the midshipmen ran a most eminent risk of being actually starved.

Many a time, after we had gone through the motions of dining, without eating, and as we sat in our dark, hot hole, over our undrinkable potations and our inedible eatables, each of us resting his hungry head upon his aching elbows, watching the progress of some animated piece of biscuit, would Master Daunton, the slave of our lamp, which, by-the-by, was a bottle bearing a miserably consumptive purser’s dip, beside which a farthing rushlight would look quite aldermanic—I say, this slave of our lamp would perch himself down on the combings of the cable-tier hatchway, in the midst of the flood of Heaven’s blessed daylight, that came pouring from aloft into this abyss, and very deliberately take out his private store of viands, and there insultingly wag his jaws, with the most complacent satisfaction, in the faces of his masters. The contrast was too bad—the malice of it too tormenting. Whilst he was masticating his beautiful white American crackers, and smacking his lips over his savoury German sausage, we were grumbling over putrid bones and weavilly biscuit, that we could not swallow, and yet hunger would not permit us to desert. It was a floating repetition of the horrors of Tantalus.

Well, to myself, this rascal was most submissive—most eager in forcing upon me his services. He relieved my hammock-man of his duty; but, somehow, nothing prospered to which he put his hand. The third night, the nails of the cleat that fastened my head-clews up to the deck above me, drew, and I came down by the run, head foremost; and immediately where my head ought to have alighted on the deck was found the carpenter’s pitch kettle, with the blade of an axe in the centre of it, and the edge uppermost. No one knew how it came there, and, had I shot out as young gentlemen usually do on such occasions, I should, if I had not been quite decapitated, at least have died by the axe. Not being asleep when the descent took place, I grappled with my neighbour, the old fat assistant-surgeon, and he with the next, and the three came down on deck with a lunge that actually started the marine officer—who, everybody knows, is the best sleeper on board. Happily for myself, I fell from my hammock sideways. Next, the accommodating Joshua got the sole charge of my chest, and, though nothing was missed, in a short time everything was ruined. The cockroaches ate the most unaccountable holes in my best uniforms, my shoes burst in putting them on, my boots cracked all across the upper leathers, and the feet of my stockings came off when I attempted to draw them on.

The obsequious Joshua was equally assiduous with his other six masters, and even more successful; so that, in addition to being starved, there was every possibility of our being reduced to nakedness. This was no pleasant prospect, running out of tropical latitudes towards England, in the month of January. In the course of six weeks, such a ragged, woebegone, gaunt, and famished gang of reefers was never before huddled together in one of his Majesty’s vessels of war. The shifts we were obliged to have recourse to were quite amusing, to all but the shiftmakers. The only good hat, and wearable uniform coat, went round and round; it was a happy thing for this disconsolate seven that we were all nearly of a size. To aggravate our misfortunes, we could no longer get an occasional dinner, either in the captain’s cabin or the ward-room, for our clothes were all in rags.

In the meanwhile, Joshua Daunton grew more and more sleek, and pale, and fat. He throve upon our miseries. He played his part at length so well, as to avoid thrashings. He possessed, in perfection, that which, in classic cockpit, is called “the gift of the gab.” He was never in the wrong. Indeed, he began to get a favourite with each of the individuals over whom he was so mercilessly tyrannising, while each thought himself the tyrant. All this may seem improbable to well-nurtured, shore-bred young gentlemen and ladies; but midshipmen were always reckless and idle—that is, personally. On actual service, they have ever been equally reckless, but commensurably active. This kindness of Joshua, in taking all trouble off our hands, soon left us almost nothing wherewith to trouble ourselves.