Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

57 страница из 418

Of course, at all periods the boys, and others who entered to serve before the mast, received some training, and picked up the rest if they were reasonably clever. The brochure of “an old salt,”35 which has recently appeared, gives a fair account of his own treatment and reception. Running away from London, as many another boy has done, with a few coppers in his pocket, he tramped to Sheerness, taking by the way a hearty supper of turnips with a family of sheep in a field. Arrived at his destination, he found a handsome flag-ship, surrounded by a number of large and small vessels. Selecting the very smallest—as best adapted to his own size—he went on board, and asked the first officer he met—one who wore but a single epaulet—whether his ship was “manned with boys?” He was answered, “No, I want men; and pray what may you want?” “I want to go to sea, sir, please.” “You had better go home to your mother,” was the answer. With the next officer—“a real captain, wearing grey hair, and as straight as a line”—he fared better, and was eventually entered as a third-class boy, and sent on board a guard-ship. Here he was rather fortunate in being taken in charge by a petty officer, who had, as was often the case then, his wife living on board. The lady ruled supreme in the mess. She served out the grog, too, and, to prevent intoxication among the men, used to keep one finger inside the measure! This enabled her to the better take care of her husband. She is described as the best “man” in the mess, and irresistibly reminds us of Mrs. Trotter in “Peter Simple,” who had such a horror of rum that she could not be induced to take it except when the water was bad. The water, however, always was bad! But the former lady took good care of the new-comer, while, as we know, Mrs. Trotter fleeced poor Peter out of three pounds sterling and twelve pairs of stockings before he had been an hour on board. Mr. Mindry tells the usual stories of the practical jokes he had to endure—about being sent to the doctor’s mate for mustard, for which he received a peppering; of the constant thrashings he received—in one case, with a number of others, receiving two dozen for losing his dinner. He was cook of the mess for the time, and having mixed his dough, had taken it to the galley-oven, from the door of which a sudden lurch of the ship had ejected it on the main deck, “the contents making a very good representation of the White Sea.” The crime for which he and his companions suffered was for endeavouring to scrape it up again! But the gradual steps by which he was educated upwards, till he became a gunner of the first class, prove that, all in all, he had cheerily taken the bull by the horns, determined to rise as far and fast as he might in an honourable profession. He was after a year or so transferred to a vessel fitting for the West Indies, and soon got a taste of active life. This was in 1837. Forty or fifty years before, the guard-ships were generally little better than floating pandemoniums. They were used partly for breaking in raw hands, and were also the intermediate stopping-places for men waiting to join other ships. In a guard-ship of the period described, a most heterogeneous mass of humanity was assembled. Human invention could not scheme work for the whole, while skulking, impracticable in other vessels of the Royal Navy, was deemed highly meritorious there. A great body of men were thus very often assembled together, who resolved themselves into hostile classes, separated as any two castes of the Hindoos. A clever writer in Blackwood’s Magazine, more than fifty years ago, describes them first as “sea-goers,”—i.e., sailors separated from their vessels by illness, or temporary causes, or ordered to other vessels, who looked on the guard-ship as a floating hotel, and, having what they were pleased to call ships of their own, were the aristocrats of the occasion, who would do no more work than they were obliged. The second, and by far the most numerous class, were termed “waisters,” and were the simple, the unfortunate, or the utterly abandoned, a body held on board in the utmost contempt, and most of whom, in regard to clothing, were wretched in the extreme. The “waister” had to do everything on board that was menial—swabbing, sweeping, and drudging generally. At night, in defiance of his hard and unceasing labour, he too often became a bandit, prowling about seeking what he might devour or appropriate. What a contrast to the clean orderly training-ships of to-day! Some little information on this subject, but imperfectly understood by the public, may perhaps be permitted here.