To know the hour at sea by the bell remember the following: At half an hour past noon there is a single stroke of the bell, and at one o'clock there are two strokes. At half-past one we have three strokes, and at two o'clock four strokes. Thus it goes on, adding a single stroke every half-hour till four o'clock, when "eight bells" are struck. As before explained, the time from four to eight is divided into two short watches, and at eight o'clock a full watch begins, in which the hours are sounded the same as from noon to 4 P.M. This watch ends at midnight and is followed by another till 4 A.M.; from 4 to 8 A.M. is another, and from 8 A.M. till noon is another. If you happen to wake in the night and hear five bells you may know that it is half-past two, unless you have gone to bed very early, and slept briefly, in which case it may be half-past ten. But as the lights are not put out till 11 P.M., and on some ships at 11.30, you are not very liable to mistake the time of one watch for another.
And while we are talking about watches we will consider the one you have in your pocket. The change of longitude in a transatlantic voyage implies a corresponding change of time. There is a difference of four hours and fifty-six minutes between New York and London, i.e., when it is noon in New York it is fifty-six minutes past four in the afternoon at London. This variation of time is spread over the transatlantic voyage and amounts to not far from half an hour daily with the majority of steamers. When going to the east a ship's day is actually only twenty-three and a half hours long, while it is twenty-four and a half when she is on her westward course. This may account for the fact that steamers make their best daily runs when their prows are pointed towards the setting sun.
If you have a costly watch it is not well to change it daily to correspond with the ship's time. Let it run without alteration till you are at the end of the journey, and depend on the bells or the cabin clock for the actual hours. The writer has found that a cheap watch—such as can be bought for five or ten dollars—is an excellent adjunct to a valuable gold one when traveling. It can be altered daily to correspond with the change of longitude, and if it is left around carelessly there is little danger that any intelligent thief will care to steal it. In a journey around the world he changed the hour of his pocket-chronometer only five times—at San Francisco, Tokio, Calcutta, Naples, and Paris—and depended upon his "brass" watch for daily service.
So much for keeping time on shipboard; let us see how we can spend it. Carry enough books to give you ten or twelve hours reading every day, and if you get through a quarter of them you will be lucky. You will find an unaccountable disinclination to read, especially if you have been very active just previous to departure, and will develop a decided tendency for sleep. What with sleeping, and eating, and associating with other passengers, you find no great amount of time for literature, and unless you devote yourself to a blood-curdling novel, in which you are constantly on the strain to know how the plot ended, and whether she married him or the other man, you can only get through a few pages at a time. If you are going abroad for the first time it is advisable to confine the reading to descriptions of the countries you are about to visit, rather than to light literature, but, if you are determined to stick to fiction, you will find sea-stories more interesting than land ones, for the reason that you are on the great deep, and the pictures of the novel will be more vivid than if the book were read on shore.
A ship is a world, and the ocean is the measureless azure in which it floats. Sea and sky are your boundaries, and the horizon-line is ever the same. The weaknesses of human nature, as well as its noble qualities, are developed here, and sometimes they are limned in sharper outlines than on land. Persons whom you have known for years will develop on shipboard qualities that you never suspected them of possessing. You had always thought your neighbor on the right was a selfish mortal, but you now find that he is self-sacrificing to the extreme; on the other hand, the man whom you believed a model of politeness turns out to be quite the reverse. Never in your life have you heard as much gossip in a month as you now hear in a single week; the occupation, character, peculiarities, hopes, desires, and frailties of everybody are canvassed by a goodly proportion of busy tongues, and the ship will very likely impress you as a school for scandal which Sheridan might envy.
Don't take a share in the gossip, and don't concern yourself about the private affairs of anyone else. Be polite to everybody, but don't be in a hurry to make acquaintances; by so doing you will stand higher in their estimation, and will have time to find out those whom you would like the best. A shipful of passengers is generally broken into several parties of persons congenial to each other; sometimes the groups and parties are on the best of terms, and at other times there is considerable hostility, generally caused by a few turbulent spirits, not always of the sterner sex. The weather has much to do with the formation of cliques on an ocean steamer. When the sea is smooth for a day or two at the start the passengers become generally acquainted and are agreeable all around. But if the steamer puts her prow into a rough sea immediately on leaving port those of tender stomachs disappear before they have had time to exchange a word with a stranger. The unruffled ones get together, the men in the smoking-room, and the ladies in the cabin, and companionship begins. By the time the sea is level again, and the sea-sick ones appear, the circles have been formed, and some of them closed completely; then the new-comers form rings of their own, and out of these primary and secondary formations jealousies often grow.
Join in all the innocent sports that while away the time. By day, in fine weather, there are quoits, shuffle-board, and other games, for which the ship furnishes the material, and in the evening there are impromptu entertainments of a mixed character in the cabin. Contribute whatever you can to the general fund of amusement, and if you can neither sing, recite, tell stories, play on an instrument, or do anything else to please your fellow passengers, try and be a good integral part of the audience. You can look on and listen at any rate, and with a little practice you can do it well. Perhaps you can find diversion by investing in the daily pool on the run of the ship, and, when coming westward, there is the inevitable speculation as to the number of the boat from which you take the pilot. But this pool business is sometimes expensive, and if your purse is thinly lined you will do well to stay out of it. The smoking-room affords opportunities for dropping your spare cash to gentlemen of a playful turn of mind, and there are usually adepts at cards who will accommodate you with any game you like. The Atlantic is crossed every year by men who boast that they are always able to cover their expenses, and very often the boast is far below the reality. The fashionable steamers are sometimes the scenes of very high play, and gambling at sea seems to be on the increase in the last few years. They can never be made the field of operations similar to those of the river and railway gamblers of America, for the reason that there is no station or landing-place where a performer on the cards can disappear when he has fleeced his victim, but, at present, there is good reason to believe that the business of occasional passengers is less while ashore than when afloat.
If you have any complaints to make address them to the purser; it is his business to look after the welfare of the passengers, and he nearly always does it. Where you desire to make a first-class row you can appeal from the purser to the captain, and if they are not on the best of terms, and you lay your schemes carefully, a great deal of bad blood will be engendered. As a last resort, you can carry the affair up to the general management of the company, where complaints are investigated with more or less care, and satisfaction is given or refused. The great competition between the various lines causes them to be particularly attentive to the wants of passengers, and it is very rarely that one hears of a well-founded complaint against the captain or purser of a transatlantic steamer. If they err at all it is in paying too much attention to passengers who are often quite willing to be let alone after they have been comfortably settled on board.
Never attempt to go on the "bridge" which is exclusively reserved for the officers of the ship, and do not be anxious to penetrate the mysteries of the engine-room or handle the steering apparatus. On some of the ships notices are posted requesting passengers not to speak to the officers when on duty; it is well to heed these, and also well not to get too near the ropes when sails are being hoisted or taken in. When the ship is pitching violently in a head sea, avoid going forward on deck, as you may get a drenching unexpectedly, and possibly may be washed overboard. Be cautious about leaning over the taffrail or stern at any time, and especially in rough weather, as the ship may "jump from under you" without the least warning, and drop you in the sea. Old sailors as well as landsmen have been lost in this way.
The hours for meals vary on the different lines, but whatever the arrangement, there is no danger of starvation. Most of the English lines give you breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper, four meals altogether, and all of them pretty "square" ones. The breakfast consists of fish, ham and eggs, steaks, chops, Irish stew, hot rolls, and a half dozen, or perhaps a dozen, other things, with all the tea or coffee you choose to drink. Lunch consists of cold meats and biscuits, and is not a very heavy affair, but the dinner is of that solid character which is one of the boasts of British liberty. You can eat yourself into dyspepsia without making any apparent impression on the abundance set before you, and if you try to go through the bill of fare without missing anything, you will wish you hadn't. Of soups, fish, roasts, boils, stews, and fries, there is apparently no end; the cooking is generally good, and leads the thoughtful passenger into a profound admiration of the culinary artists of the sea. And it also leads him to wonder why so much is prepared when comparatively little is eaten, especially in the first touch of rough weather, when half the passengers and more are confined to their rooms, and a goodly number of the other half display microscopic appetites. This matter has been discussed by the managers of the lines; it has been proposed to make the experiment of serving meals on the "European plan," and ultimately to abandon the old system, if the new one is found acceptable. Under this scheme the price of passage would be reduced, and include only the room and transportation; meals would be served as in a restaurant, and the traveler could spend much money or little, according to the dictates of his purse and appetite. The cost of feeding the passengers would be much less than at present, and all the waste would be borne by the public, instead of the company.