Sea life in Nelson's time

by John Masefield

The mess cook, who acted as carver and parter of the food, was at all times most equitable in his duty. While he cut up the meat, or divided the allowance, whatever it was, he ordered one of the mess to turn his back, and shut his eyes. When a whack or portion had been cut or placed on a plate he called out: “Who shall have this?” The blindfolded man then pronounced the name of one of the messmates, and the portion, whether too big or too small, was at once allotted to the man thus named. The system was as fair as any that could be devised.

The pea-soup, which was issued on salt pork days, was “somehow always good.” It was generally eaten hot, but some preferred to save it till the evening, when they took it cold, as a relish to the grog and biscuit. The “burgoo,” “skillagolee,” or oatmeal gruel, issued to the men for breakfast, was invariably bad. The greatest proportion of it went to the pigstys, as uneatable by mortal man. It was issued by the Government at the instance of some medical adviser, who thought that it would act as a “corrective” to “acid and costive humours.” The oatmeal was of a pretty bad quality to begin with, but by the time the cook had wreaked his wicked will upon it, by boiling it in his coppers with the unspeakable ship’s water, the mess had become disgusting beyond words. Few of the sailors could eat it in its penetrating, undisguised nastiness, and, according to a naval surgeon, it was “cruel to expect them to do so.” In later years, after Trafalgar, a small proportion of molasses, or butter, was issued with the oatmeal, to be eaten with it, to render it less nauseous. Without the butter and molasses it was fitter for the pigstys than for men. Many messes would not draw the ration, but preferred to have the money for it at the end of the cruise. Another favourite breakfast dish was Scotch coffee, or burnt ship’s biscuit boiled in water, to a thick blackish paste, and sweetened with sugar. There was also a ration of very villainous cocoa, with which the sailors received a little brown sugar. On one of these dishes the jolly sailor had to make his breakfast. He seldom received anything else at that meal, save the biscuit in the mess’s bread barge, unless he had deprived himself of dinner and supper the day before in order to have a bite of meat. At the beginning of each cruise in home waters he received a very small allowance of ship’s butter. This was kept in a mess tin, and equally shared. It was of poor quality, as butter, and grew a great deal worse as the days passed. After a month or two at sea it was at its very worst. It was then solemnly routed out and inspected, condemned as putrid, and given to the boatswain for the anointment of shrouds and running rigging. For dinner the men received their salt beef and pork, their pea-soup, and their occasional duffs. On two days a week (if not more frequently) they held a fast, receiving no meat. These days were known as “banyan” days—a “banyan” being a thin kind of duck frock, suitable for the tropics, but uncomfortable elsewhere. For supper they sometimes received a ration of strong ship’s cheese, the most abominable stuff imaginable. It would not keep at sea. It smelt very horribly, and, what was worse, it bred long, thin, red worms before it had been a month in the ship’s hold.

Though the solids were not very choice the liquids were sometimes really good. The water was bad—so bad that few could drink it without disgust—but one drank no water aboard ship so long as the beer held out. The water was generally river water. We note that the river water “about London” was reckoned especially good. It was carried to sea, not in iron tanks, as it is carried nowadays, but in wooden casks, not over clean. Sometimes the casks were found to be old oil casks. The water invariably became putrid after standing in cask for a few days. It then grew sweet again, and fit to drink, but after standing and working for several weeks in the hold it became thick and slimy, full of “green grassy things,” besides being stagnant and flat. At this stage in its development it was generally tapped for the ship’s company. At the beginning of a voyage the company drank beer—small beer, of poor quality, not at all the sort of stuff to put the souls of three butchers into one weaver. It was bad beer, but it was perhaps better than the water. At anyrate it gave a new taste to the mouths of the poor seamen, who got very tired of the perpetual salt food and biscuit. The beer generally lasted for a month, during which time no wine or spirits was issued. In port the sailors used to fortify the ship’s beer with rum or brandy, making a very potent drench called flip, which was popular among their lady friends, who used to smuggle aboard the necessary spirits. If the sailors wanted a drink at any time during the night-watch they used to go to a small cask called a scuttle butt, in which fresh water was kept. A tin cup was secured to the cask, so that the men might drink in comfort. No one was allowed to draw fresh water from this cask for the purpose of washing his clothes.

THE LEE ROLL

When all the beer had been expended, the captains allowed the issue of wines or spirits. A pint of wine, or half-a-pint of rum or brandy, was considered the just equivalent of a gallon of beer. The wine in use was of very ordinary vintage. It was often purchased abroad, and varied with the port of purchase. The sailors seem to have preferred white wine. They disliked the red wines issued to them in the Mediterranean. They called them “Black Strap.” To be stationed in the Mediterranean was “to be black-strapped.” Their favourite wines were two cheap Spanish wines: “rosolio” and “mistela,” the latter a fiery white wine, affectionately known as “Miss Taylor.” But when the beer had gone, and the wine had been drunken, there was yet “the sailor’s sheet anchor”—grog. At noon each day, when spirits were being served, “the fifer was called to play ‘Nancy Dawson,’ or some other lively tune,” to give notice that the tub was ready. The cook of each mess attended with a flagon, in which to fetch the precious fluid to his mates. The noon allowance was one gill of pure navy rum mixed with three gills of water, a little lemon acid, as an anti-scorbutic, and a dash of sugar. The supper allowance was issued in the same proportions, though without the sugar and lemon juice. Grog time was the pleasantest part of the day. With a gill of good spirits beside, or inside, him a sailor thought foul scorn of the boatswain’s mate, and looked upon the world with charity. He was not allowed to drink, or to receive, his beloved liquid in a dram (i.e. neat), but by the exercise of a little patience he was able to obtain a most decided feeling from its imbibition. A gill was not enough to turn an old seaman’s head, but by saving up the gill till supper, and adding to it the second gill, with any third gill purchased or acquired from a shipmate, the oldest sailor found it possible to believe himself an admiral. Often enough at this stage he found it difficult to lie on the deck without holding on. It is not wonderful that so many men got drunk aboard the King’s ships at this time. For about a month before Christmas day, which was always held as a general holiday and feast of Bacchus, the sailors saved up their grog, half-a-gill a day, till they had enough to paralyse every sentient thing below-decks. The officers kept clear on Christmas day, for “a wet Christmas” was a very lively experience. Nearly every man aboard got into “a state of beastly intoxication.” Drunken men lay in heaps under the hatches, where they had fallen. The lower-deck became a picture of hell. It was no unusual thing to find two or three men dead when the decks were cleared the next morning. The allowance of grog was certainly too large. The sailors were ashamed to allow any of the ration to remain undrunken. They preferred to be flogged at the gangway rather than to waste the good liquor. “In hot climates,” says Captain Hall, “I really do not think it an exaggeration to say that one-third of every ship’s company were more or less intoxicated, or at least muddled and half stupefied, every evening.” It seems curiously hard that men so eager to get drunk should have been so urgently encouraged to drink, and so brutally punished for drinking the drink allowed to them.

The sailors who did not care for grog were generally able to purchase tea or cocoa from those who were less squeamish. Tea and cocoa were not regular rations, but most ships carried them, to issue to the sailors in lieu of the bad cheese sometimes given for supper. A tea drinker could count on getting a quarter of a pound of tea a week when the cheese had become uneatable. All sailors received a weekly half-pint of vinegar, and the temperance man used to buy up the allowance of the mess, and brew a cool drink for himself by mixing the vinegar with water. This brew, tea, and cocoa, were the usual temperance drinks. Few men cared to drink the ship’s water undisguised.

It must be remembered that the scale of provisions was often modified by substitutes. Once a week, at least, the beef ration was reduced to one pound, and an equal weight of flour issued with it, to enable the men to make a duff, doughboy, or pudding. Sometimes raisins and currants were given with the flour, but more often the flour was merely mixed with fat, and boiled till it looked like pipeclay, when it was considered cooked. Beans were sometimes given instead of pease. Rice was often given instead of oatmeal, cheese, pease, or ship’s biscuit. Sugar was sometimes given instead of butter; barley instead of oatmeal, and oil instead of cheese. In port, fresh beef, mutton, and vegetables were always given to the company, if such articles were readily obtainable. A captain generally tried to vary the provisions issued, as far as he could, for the monotony of alternating pork and beef, both salt and dry, is very unpleasant. The sailors get to crave for a fresh taste, a violent taste, strong enough to clear the mouth of the unpleasant taste with which one wakes in one’s hammock. A landsman can hardly imagine the pleasure of sucking a lump of sugar after a month on salt victuals. It was, perhaps, as much the sameness of the ship’s provisions as the emptiness of the life which sent the sailors to the grog jack for solace. In port they turned at once to the most strongly-flavoured articles their money could buy. They bought red herrings and onions, good honest stuff, which one could really taste. They drank any villainous compound they could find, from Riga balsam and eau de Cologne to mixed vitriol and cider. Perhaps it was to obtain a fresh taste that they chewed so much strong plug tobacco. They would sometimes chew oakum when the supply of tobacco failed. Some of the sailors had a craving for slush, the melted salt fat from the beef and pork. When a ship’s copper was tallowed, or when the topmen were greasing down the rigging, the men had to be watched, and prevented from swallowing the stuff, which was very deleterious, and highly productive of scurvy.

The mess cooks, who did the cooking and carving, also did the washing-up. On Sundays they cleaned the mess tables, and laid out the crockery for inspection. If a mess cook spoiled the duff, or failed to keep the gear clean, he was tried by a jury of mess cooks, gathered “by hoisting a mess swab, or beating a tin dish between-decks forward.” The punishments these juries inflicted were of the usual brutal kind.

In addition to the complements of sailors, all ships of war carried a proportion of marines, under their proper officers. The sea regiment was founded at the end of the seventeenth century, not as a permanent force, but as a force in which the King’s seamen could be trained. In the first years of the marines they were really young sailors, who went aloft, did the musketry exercise, and joined in the working of the ship. Gradually they lost their sailor craft, and became more and more a military body. They came to be employed less as sailors than as ship’s police, a sort of armed guard, ready to repress any mutiny among the tarry-breeks. They were then messed and berthed apart from the sailors, who began to despise them, as an inferior and useless race. In the war years of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the marines were employed as checks upon the seamen. All ships of war carried them, the proportion varying from about 170 officers and men, in a first-rate, to 140 or 130, in a third-rate, and a dozen, in command of a sergeant, in a 10-gun brig. The proportion of marines was therefore about one to every four sailors and idlers. They were usually on friendly terms with the sailors, in spite of the sailors’ contempt for pipeclay. Many marines were so eager to learn the sailors’ duty that they were allowed to go aloft. In some ships they were allowed to furl the main-sail. When at sea they helped the after-guard in various light duties. They stood sentry-go outside the captain’s cabin, magazine hatchways, and in various other parts of the ship, such as the galley door while dinner was cooking. In action they fell in with their muskets on the poop, quarter-deck, and gangways, to gall the enemy’s sail-trimmers and topmen, and to give a hand at the braces, if occasion arose. A marine private was dressed in the scarlet tunic of a soldier, with white tight breeches and black Hessian boots. His hat was a sort of top-hat, made of black felt, with gold lace round the brim, a narrow gold band round the crown, and a smart cockade on the left side. A black japanned cartridge box was slung behind him, on two pipeclayed, crossed shoulder-straps. The marine officer wore a smart scarlet tail-coat, with elaborate cuffs and lapels, tight white breeches, low shoes, and silk stockings. In peace time, when not attached to a ship, the marines were not disbanded, but sent to barracks. They were a standing force. When a ship was commissioned they were usually the first part of the crew to come aboard. It was generally their fortune to do all the dirty work connected with the fitting out of the ship. They were at all times subject to the same discipline as the sailors. If they transgressed the rules of the service they were flogged at the gangway like the sailors. They stood no watch at sea, save the occasional sentry-go at the magazines and cabins. They were always berthed far aft on the berth-deck,[24] where they would not be disturbed by the changing watches. Their officers messed in the ward-room, and had little cabins on the lower or orlop deck.