[19] We believe that this was not always properly done. We read of the wounded in one ship being operated upon by a saw from the carpenter’s stock. A stiff upper lip was very necessary aboard a ship of that kind.
[20] Money was advanced to the purser for the purchase of wine. He generally bought weak, or adulterated wine, at a low price, and pocketed the money saved.
[21] Half of all the slush went to the cook. The other half went to the ship, for the greasing of the bottom and running rigging.
CHAPTER V
The people—The boys—Manning—The divisions—The messes— The dress—The King’s allowance—Grog—Marines
There were various ways of entering the Royal Navy, “through the hawse-holes.” The greater number of our seamen were pressed into the fleets from merchant-ships, or sent aboard by my Lord Mayor, or by the sheriffs of the different counties. A large number volunteered in order to get the bounty. But a certain percentage joined the fleet as boys, either through the Marine Society, or from love of adventure. The Marine Society sent a number of lads to sea in each year. Their boys were generally between thirteen and fifteen years of age. Some of them were “recommended” by magistrates for petty crime or vagrancy. Some were beggars, or street Arabs, snatching their living from the gutters. Some were errand-boys, horse-holders, shop-lads, etc. Most of them were poor children, whose parents could not clothe nor feed them. Some were apprentices, or charity boys, who were more “inclined to hazard their necks than to live a sedentary life.” The Marine Society gave these lads a brief preliminary training aboard a ship in the Thames, under a boatswain and boatswain’s mate. They then sent them to sea, in men-of-war, as ship’s boys or volunteers of the second and third classes. As ship’s boys, they received £7 or £8 a year, which kept them in clothing till they were strong enough to rank as seamen. A ship’s boy was generally put to all the dirty and trivial work of the ship, such as cleansing the pigstys, hen-coops, head, etc. A number of them were rated as servants to the midshipmen, boatswains, warrant, gun-room and ward-room officers. These wretched creatures lived the lives of dogs, particularly those allotted to the midshipmen. Those who were not made servants were hunted about and bullied by the sailors, who loved “to find the opportunity to act the superior over someone.” Those who survived the brutality of their shipmates, and failed to desert from the service, in time became ordinary seamen, drawing 25s. a month.
TWO OF NELSON’S SAILORS
A boy was allowed half the usual ship’s allowance of rum and wine. He received pay for the half he did not draw. With the ration allowed to him—half-a-gill of rum, and a quarter of a pint of wine a day—he was able to get blind drunk, or to purchase little luxuries, just as he pleased. If he got drunk, or in any other way transgressed the rules of the navy, he was flogged, but with the boatswain’s cane instead of with the cat. In action, he was stationed at a gun, with orders to supply that gun with cartridges from the magazine. He was not allowed to supply more than one gun with powder until the boys of some of the guns were killed or wounded. In a hot engagement he was kept running to and fro, over the bloody and splinter-scattered deck, carrying the cartridges from the magazine. He was warned to carry his cartridges under his coat, so as to avoid the flying sparks from the touch-holes. If he tried to bolt away from the magazine into the shelter of the orlop-deck the midshipman stationed at the hatchway promptly shot him, or beat him back with the pistol butt. The boys (with good reason) were generally berthed apart from the men. They seem to have slung their hammocks in the sheet-anchor cable-tiers, or on one of the upper gun-decks, according to the size of the ship in which they sailed.