A HORSE MARINE

The sailor’s kit was a very simple affair. He had a hammock, with or without a “donkey’s breakfast,” or straw mattress, covered by two thick blankets. Pillow and hammock stretcher were merely matters of personal taste. Sheets were unknown, save in some of the sick-bays. For foul weather he had a short wrap-rascal coat of “rug” or frieze, and a leathern or thick felt or tarred canvas apron, reaching below the knee. Sea boots, coming to the knee or thigh, were never worn by the seamen. In foul weather they wore their ordinary low shoes, with extra thick woollen stockings and knee-breeches, a rig no more uncomfortable than the sea boot, and fully as effective in keeping the legs dry. In fine weather, when ashore, the sailor usually wore a short, round, very smart blue jacket, with a row of flat gold or bright brass buttons down the right side and on the cuffs. His trousers were either of blue cloth, or of white duck, cut extremely loose, and a shade too long, so that they nearly covered the feet. These garments were kept in position by a sheath-knife belt, or by a black silk handkerchief knotted round the waist. The stockings were frequently of good white silk, for a sailor loved to have fine silk stockings. The shoes were not unlike our modern black dancing pumps, save that big silver buckles took the place of silk bows. The shirt was the least stereotyped article of dress. A shirt or jersey of blue and white horizontal stripes was popular. A white shirt with large red or blue spots had many admirers. Some wore plain red or plain blue, and some may even have worn white. The throat of the shirt had a loose, unstarched collar, which was worn open, in the Byronic manner. Round the throat, very loosely knotted, was a fine black silk handkerchief, the ends of which dangled over the lapels of the waistcoat. The waistcoat was generally of scarlet kerseymere, cut very low and very long. Canary-yellow waistcoats were common, and some wore spotted or striped ones. It depended mostly on the stock committed to the purser for his slop-room. The sailors were very fond of decorating both jacket and waistcoat with coloured ribbons, which they sewed down the seams, to give a more gay effect. For the ordinary work about decks they wore white duck or blue cloth trousers, and blue, green or red serge, duck, or flannel frocks. A jacket of a coarse yellow stuff appears in some pictures, in conjunction with striped trousers (blue and white). For hat, the usual wear ashore was a little low tarpaulin hat, kept black and glossy with tar and oil, and cut in a shape dimly resembling the top-hats worn by our bishops and busmen, but with a more knowing rake. This hat had often a broad black ribbon dangling from it, bearing the name of the ship in white letters. When at work aboard the sailor sometimes wore a painted straw hat, with black silk ribbons flung rakishly “over the left eye.” More often he wore a fur cap, or a battered, soft, shore beaver, or a low-crowned felt hat, with the brim curled up. Woollen tam-o’-shanters were sometimes worn, but the fur cap was the most popular headgear during working hours. The fur cap had flaps, which could be unbuttoned and let down so as to protect the ears. Some sailors wore a sort of turban, made of a red or yellow handkerchief, twisted about the head. Others wore a sort of woollen nightcap or jacobin cap. The headgear, whatever it was, was nearly always worn well to the back of the head, as though it balanced “on three hairs.” The narrow-minded have judged that this fashion sprang from the natural levity and savagery of the mariners. As a matter of fact, a sailor found it difficult to wear his hat in any other way. He was continually looking aloft or running aloft or working aloft, and it would have been impossible for him to wear his headgear in any other position. One cannot run up rigging with a hat jammed down over one’s eyes.

A FRIGATE IN CHASE, BEFORE THE WIND

It must be remembered that this outfit varied with the individual. Only those who bought from the slop chest wore “uniform.” Those who brought decent shore-going clothes aboard were generally free to wear them, though some captains insisted that their men should all wear frocks or shirts of the same colours. The shore-going dress we have indicated was certainly worn by the smartest of our sailors, for Captain Brenton describes some poor fellows coming up for trial, as “tall and athletic, well dressed, in blue jackets, red waistcoats, and trousers white as driven snow,” with “their hair like the tail of a lion,” hanging “in a cue down their back ... the distinguishing mark of a thoroughbred seaman.”

The days of which we write were the days of clean-shaving. Officers and men alike shaved their cheeks and upper lips. A hairy man was not to be tolerated. But though the men shaved themselves daily they liked to wear their hair long, either falling down the shoulders in a mass, or braided into a queue, with some grease and black silk ribbon. It is not known when the use of the pigtail became general, it seems to have been borrowed from the French. It may possibly have been borrowed from the marines, who wore pomatum-stiffened pigtails, or pigtails stiff with grease and flour, during this period. From 1800 to 1815 the pigtail seems to have been popular, after that time it gradually fell into disuse. The sailors dressed each other’s queues, turn and turn about. It took an hour “to dress and be dressed.” It is not known whether the sailors ever used flour to whiten the queues when plaited, but probably they wore them plain. Those who had but little hair made false queues of teased-out oakum, which was a sufficiently good imitation to pass muster. Many sailors, who did not care for pigtails, wore most ravishing curls or love-locks over their ears, like the ladies in a book of beauty. A number of them wore earrings, “of the most pure gold,” which they bought from the Jews at Portsmouth. They wore them less for decoration than for a belief they held that their use improved the sight. Some captains forbade the use of earrings on the ground that they were un-English.

The food issued to the sailors was nearly always bad, and sometimes villainous. The following table gives the scale of provisions generally issued:—

Biscuit lbs. avoir.Beer gallonsBeef lbs.Pork lbs.Pease pintsOatmeal pintsSugar oz.Butter oz.Cheese oz.
Sunday11..1½............
Monday11........½224
Tuesday112..................
Wednesday11.....½½224
Thursday11..1½............
Friday11.....½½224
Saturday112..................
774221½6612

The provisions were nearly always issued on a reduced scale. It was the general custom to mess the men “six upon four,” an arrangement by which six men received, and lived upon, the allowance of four men. The sailors were allowed certain moneys for the food withheld from them; this allowance was called “savings money.” The food was of bad quality, and by no means liberally given. The sailor’s chief standby was the sea air, which somehow never fails, even aboard modern merchant-men. The biscuit was the most liberal ration, for few sailors ate the whole of the allowance, even on the reduced proportion. That which they could not eat they either returned to the purser, in exchange for savings money, or held as an asset, to exchange for fruit and the like when the ship arrived in a foreign port. The biscuit was cooked in the royal bakeries, attached to the dockyards—70 biscuits, weighing 4 oz. apiece, were made each minute in these works. They were round, thick, well-browned biscuits, stamped with a perforator in the centre, so that the centre was much more compressed, and therefore tougher, than the remainder. The centre was generally the last piece eaten. It was known as a “reefer’s nut.” Often enough it was hove overboard. Most biscuits were made of mixed wheat and pea-flour, with sometimes a base addition of bone-dust. The pea-flour generally worked itself into yellow lumps and veins, of an incredible hardness, which could not be bitten through until the biscuit had become soft through long keeping. When the biscuit did become soft, it took to itself an unpleasant, musty, sourish taste, and began to attract, or to breed, weevils. On a long passage, in a hot climate, the “bread” became unspeakably bad, and as full of maggots as it could hold. Re-baking, in the ship’s ovens, sometimes remedied the evil, but the most common custom was to leave the creatures to their quiet, and to eat the biscuit at night, when the eye saw not, and the tender heart was spared. Now and then the mess cooks made savoury dishes out of the ship’s biscuit, by soaking it in water, and frying it with little strips, or gobbets, of pork fat. Or they enclosed it in a canvas bag, and pounded it, with crows or marline-spikes, till it was as fine as coarse flour. They then mixed it with chopped-up meat, and bribed the cook to bake it. Sometimes they mixed the pounded biscuit with pork-fat and sugar, and made a delectable cake. The cook would always consent to bake these little delicacies, for some small consideration, such as a little grog from the mess he obliged, or a little piece of the dainty.

The badness of the meat may be guessed from the fact that the sailors spoke of it as junk, or old condemned hemp rope. It may not have been bad when cut up and put in cask, but there was an invariable rule in the navy that “the old meat should be eaten first.” A ship’s company had to start a cruise upon the old meat returned from various ships and routed out from the obscure cellars of the victualling yards. Frequently it had been several years in salt before it came to the cook, by which time it needed rather a magician than a cook to make it eatable. It was of a stony hardness, fibrous, shrunken, dark, gristly, and glistening with salt crystals. It was “believed to be salt horse, resembling very much a piece of mahogany, and often quite as sapless.” It looked as unwholesome as meat could look. Strange tales were told about it. Old pigtailed seamen would tell of horseshoes found in the meat casks; of curious barkings and neighings heard in the slaughterhouses; and of negroes who disappeared near the victualling yards, to be seen no more. Whatever meat it may have been, the salt beef was certainly abominable. It could, perhaps, have been made eatable by long soaking in the steep tub, but no meat for the messes was ever soaked for more than twenty-four hours. The salt pork was generally rather better than the beef, but the sailors could carve fancy articles, such as boxes, out of either meat. The flesh is said to have taken a good polish, like some close-grained wood. The beef was sometimes chopped up fine, and used for the flavouring in “sea pies,” or “dry hashes”—two dishes the sailors sometimes made for themselves, and persuaded the cook to dress. The meat ration was not only bad, but extremely small. The 4-lb. pieces with which the casks were filled were not by any means pure meat. They were mostly bone, fat, and gristle. The pound of flesh, as issued to the sailor, was often seven-tenths uneatable. The fat was dirty, and provocative of scurvy. The bone and the gristle could only be thrown overboard. At best, a sailor could but hope to find a few salt fibres of meat, hidden away snugly—like good deeds in a naughty world—under layers of evil-looking fat. They were not enough to give the poor mariner a feeling that he had had meat for dinner. But if he wished to have meat for supper, “to make him taste his wine well,” he had to save some from his midday meal. Some were even so provident as to remember the starvation breakfast, and to stint themselves at tea and dinner in order to have a feast the next morning. Those who did not care for grog were the lucky ones, for these had always half-a-pint of rum with which to buy the meat of the drinkers. Many were the little bargains made about the mess tables, at the blessed supper time, when the roll of the drum had sent aft the mess cooks to the tub. “Bill, I’ll swop my whack of beef to-morrow for half yours.” “Joe, I’ll give you my pea-soup for your grog.” “Tom, I’ll mix your duff for you if you’ll give me just a nip,” etc. etc.