With a jerk and a yerk, we broke ground; and up to our bows came several thousand pounds of old iron, in the shape of our ponderous anchor.
Where was White-Jacket then?
White-Jacket was where he belonged. It was White-Jacket that loosed that main-royal, so far up aloft there, it looks like a white albatross’ wing. It was White-Jacket that was taken for an albatross himself, as he flew out on the giddy yard-arm!
CHAPTER III.
A GLANCE AT THE PRINCIPAL DIVISIONS,
INTO WHICH A MAN-OF-WAR’S CREW IS DIVIDED.
Having just designated the place where White-Jacket belonged, it must needs be related how White-Jacket came to belong there.
Every one knows that in merchantmen the seamen are divided into watches—starboard and larboard—taking their turn at the ship’s duty by night. This plan is followed in all men-of-war. But in all men-of-war, besides this division, there are others, rendered indispensable from the great number of men, and the necessity of precision and discipline. Not only are particular bands assigned to the three tops, but in getting under weigh, or any other proceeding requiring all hands, particular men of these bands are assigned to each yard of the tops. Thus, when the order is given to loose the main-royal, White-Jacket flies to obey it; and no one but him.
And not only are particular bands stationed on the three decks of the ship at such times, but particular men of those bands are also assigned to particular duties. Also, in tacking ship, reefing top-sails, or “coming to,” every man of a frigate’s five-hundred-strong, knows his own special place, and is infallibly found there. He sees nothing else, attends to nothing else, and will stay there till grim death or an epaulette orders him away. Yet there are times when, through the negligence of the officers, some exceptions are found to this rule. A rather serious circumstance growing out of such a case will be related in some future chapter.
Were it not for these regulations a man-of-war’s crew would be nothing but a mob, more ungovernable stripping the canvas in a gale than Lord George Gordon’s tearing down the lofty house of Lord Mansfield.
But this is not all. Besides White-Jacket’s office as looser of the main-royal, when all hands were called to make sail; and besides his special offices, in tacking ship, coming to anchor, etc.; he permanently belonged to the Starboard Watch, one of the two primary, grand divisions of the ship’s company. And in this watch he was a maintop-man; that is, was stationed in the main-top, with a number of other seamen, always in readiness to execute any orders pertaining to the main-mast, from above the main-yard. For, including the main-yard, and below it to the deck, the main-mast belongs to another detachment.
Now the fore, main, and mizen-top-men of each watch—Starboard and Larboard—are at sea respectively subdivided into Quarter Watches; which regularly relieve each other in the tops to which they may belong; while, collectively, they relieve the whole Larboard Watch of top-men.