Our cruiser was about to refit at some Dockyard or other in a few days, and I gathered that it would be no fault of the Captain, the Ward-room or the warrant officers if she did not arrive with a list of alterations and improvements as long as her mainmast. So it is with every new ship. The dear boys take her out to see what she can do, and in that process discover what she cannot do. If by any arrangement or rearrangement of stay, stanchion, davit, steam-pipe, bridge, boat-chocks, or hatchway she can, in their judgment, be improved, rest assured that the dockyard will know it by letter and voice. She never gets more than half what she wants, and so is careful to apply for thrice her needs.
DISCONTENTED AND IMPENITENT THIEVES
To her just and picturesque demands the Yard opposes the suspicion of Centuries, saying, unofficially: ‘You are all a set of discontented and impenitent thieves. Go away.’ The ship, considering her own comfort and well-being for the rest of the commission, replies, also unofficially: ‘Ah, you’re thinking of the So-and-so. She a nest of pirates if you like: but we’re good. We’re the most upright ship you ever clapped eyes on, and you’re the finest Yard in the Kingdom. You’re up to all the ropes. There’s no getting round you, and you’ll pass our indents. We won’t give you any trouble. Just a few minor repairs, and our own people will carry them out. Don’t disturb yourself in the least. Send the stuff alongside and we’ll attend to it.’
And when the stuff comes alongside in charge of a slow-minded understrapper they do attend to it. They talk the man blind and dumb, sack his cargoes, and turn him adrift to study vouchers at his leisure. Then the First Lieutenant grins like a Cheshire cat; the carpenter, so called because he very rarely deals with wood, the armourer and the first-class artificers sweat with joy, and the workshop lathes buzz and hum. But the understrapper gets particular beans because a great part of his stuff was meant for another ship, and she is very angry about it.
STOLEN PAINT
Late in the afternoon the defrauded vessel sends over a boat to the Early and wants to know if she has seen or heard anything of some oak baulks, a new gangway grating, some brass-work, and a few drums of white paint.
‘Why, was that yours?’ says the First Lieutenant. ‘We thought it was ours.’
‘Well, it isn’t. It’s ours. Where is it?’
‘I’m awfully sorry, but—I say, won’t you come and have a drink?’
They come—just in time to see the brass rods in position, the oak baulks converted into some sort of boat-furniture; the gangway platform receives their weary feet, and a fine flavour of paint from a flat forward tells them all they will ever know of the missing drums.