The partings between the robuster sailors and their ladies were not marked by any great flow of sentiment. The women smuggled off a last bladder of red-eye for the brewing of a good-bye flip. The sailors bought onions and turnips, the latter as a symbol of subsequent unfaithfulness, the former to induce tears in “eyes unus’d to flow.” With a good deal of merry, blackguardly banter, a good deal of drunken squabble, and a very energetic wrangle over the sailors’ money, the last day aboard came to an end. Before sunset of the day before sailing the strangers were driven out of the ship, and bundled down into the shore boats. The drunken men were lashed into their hammocks till morning, when discipline again took hold and reduced them to order.
After a spell in port a ship was nearly always dirty and evil-smelling. The men were diseased, and in poor condition. It generally took a month to bring them back to their old standard of smartness. Very few of them came to sea with any money. The little left to them after they had cashed their tickets, or swept the heaps of coins into their hats, had gone to their women, or to the Jews. After the wars our roads were thronged with sturdy beggars, who had been in the King’s ships, and had wasted their substance in the home ports. It is said that the number of loose women in Portsmouth decreased at that time from 20,000 to about a fifth of that number.
The custom of admitting women to the ships was not abolished for many years—barely more than sixty years ago. In the early forties, the captain of a frigate in the West Indies sent ashore for 300 women, so that every man and boy aboard might have a black mistress during their stay in the port. A white planter supplied the women from his plantations. The lieutenants were not allowed to keep women on board, but until the beginning of the nineteenth century the midshipmen, and some of the junior ward-room officers, indulged as licentiously, with as little authoritative restraint, as their inferiors. An old naval surgeon, writing in 1826, tell us that he knew of several fine lads who died miserably from perseverance “in their debauched habits.” After the first decade of the nineteenth century the captains were more careful of the manners of the young gentlemen. Their vices, if practised at all, were then practised ashore, out of the captain’s jurisdiction. After 1814 the service was purged of some of its vicious officers by the examination known as “passing for a gentleman,” to which we have alluded elsewhere.
The songs most popular among the sailors were not always those purporting to deal with life afloat. Their most popular song was a song very popular ashore. It is still well known, though the old name for it, “Drops of Brandy,” is now nearly forgotten. The tune is an old country dance tune. The words the sailors sang to it are the familiar:
“And Johnny shall have a new bonnet
And Johnny shall go to the fair,
And Johnny shall have a blue ribbon
To tie up his bonny brown hair.
And why should I not love Johnny
And why should not Johnny love me,