The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). Frederick Whymper
wife, was so inordinately fond of pork that he turned his ship into a floating pig-sty. At his dinner there appeared mock-turtle soup (of pig’s head); boiled pork and pease pudding; roast spare rib; sausages and pettitoes; and, last of all, sucking-pig. He will doubtless remember how he was eventually frightened off the ship, then about to proceed to the West Indies, by the doctor telling him that with his habit of living he would not give much for his life on that station. But although Marryat’s characters were true to the life of his time, you would go far to find a similar example to-day. Captains still have their idiosyncrasies, but not of such a marked nature. There may be indolent captains, like he who was nicknamed “The Sloth;” or, less likely, prying captains, like he in “Peter Simple,” who made himself so unpopular that he lost all the good sailors on board, and had to put up with a “scratch crew;” or (a comparatively harmless variety) captains who amuse their officers with the most outrageous yarns, but who are in all else the souls of honour. Who can help laughing over that Captain Kearney, who tells the tale of the Atta of Roses ship? He relates how she had a puncheon of the precious essence on board; it could be smelt three miles off at sea, and the odour was so strong on board that the men fainted when they ventured near the hold. The timbers of the ship became so impregnated with the smell that they could never make any use of her afterwards, till they broke her up and sold her to the shopkeepers of Brighton and Tunbridge-wells, who turned her into scented boxes and fancy articles, and then into money. The absolutely vulgar captain is a thing of the past, for the possibilities of entering “by the hawse-hole,” the technical expression applied to the man who was occasionally in the old times promoted from the fo’castle to the quarter-deck, are very rare indeed nowadays. Still, there are gentlemen—and there are gentlemen. The perfect example is a rara avis everywhere.
ON DECK OF A MAN-OF-WAR, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
The true reason why a captain may make his officers and men constitute an agreeable happy family, or a perfect pandemonium of discontent and misery, consists in the abuse of his absolute power. That power is necessarily bestowed on him; there must be a head; without good discipline, no vessel can be properly handled, or the emergencies of seamanship and warfare met. But as he can in minor matters have it all his own way, and even in many more important ones can determine absolutely, without the fear of anything or anybody short of a court-martial, he may, and often does, become a martinet, if not a very tyrant.
The subordinate officer’s life may be rendered a burden by a cantankerous and exacting captain. Every trifling omission may be magnified into a grave offence. Some captains seem to go on the principle of the Irishman who asked, “Who’ll tread on my coat tails?” or of the other, “Did you blow your nose at me, sir?” And again, that which in the captain is no offence is a very serious one on the part of the officer or seaman. He may exhaust the vocabulary of abuse and bad language, but not a retort may be made. In the Royal Navy of to-day, though by no means in the merchant service, this is, however, nearly obsolete. However tyrannically disposed, the language of commanders and officers is nearly sure to be free from disgraceful epithets, blasphemies, and scurrilous abuse, cursing and swearing. Officers should be, and generally are, gentlemen.
A commanding lieutenant of the old school—a type of officer not to be found in the Royal Navy nowadays—is well described by Admiral Cochrane.121 “My kind uncle,” writes he, “the Hon. John Cochrane, accompanied me on board the Iliad for the purpose of introducing me to my future superior officer, Lieutenant Larmour, or, as he was more familiarly known in the service, Jack Larmour—a specimen of the old British seaman, little calculated to inspire exalted ideas of the gentility of the naval profession, though presenting at a glance a personification of its efficiency. Jack was, in fact, one of a not very numerous class, whom, for their superior seamanship, the Admiralty was glad to promote from the forecastle to the quarter-deck, in order that they might mould into ship-shape the questionable materials supplied by parliamentary influence, even then paramount in the navy to a degree which might otherwise have led to disaster. Lucky was the commander who could secure such an officer for his quarter-deck.
“On my introduction, Jack was dressed in the garb of a seaman, with marlinspike slung round his neck, and a lump of grease in his hand, and was busily employed in setting up the rigging. His reception of me was anything but gracious. Indeed, a tall fellow, over six feet high, the nephew of his captain, and a lord to boot, were not very promising recommendations for a midshipman. It is not impossible he might have learned from my uncle something about a military commission of several years’ standing; and this, coupled with my age and stature, might easily have impressed him with the idea that he had caught a scapegrace with whom the family did not know what to do, and that he was hence to be saddled with a ‘hard bargain.’
“After a little constrained civility on the part of the first lieutenant, who was evidently not very well pleased with the interruption to his avocation, he ordered me to ‘get my traps below.’ Scarcely was the order complied with, and myself introduced to the midshipman’s berth, than I overheard Jack grumbling at the magnitude of my equipments. ‘This Lord Cochrane’s chest? Does Lord Cochrane think he is going to bring a cabin aboard? Get it up on the main-deck!’
BETWEEN DECKS OF A MAN-OF-WAR, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
“This order being promptly obeyed, amidst a running fire of similar objurgations, the key of the chest was sent for, and shortly afterwards the sound of sawing became audible. It was now high time to follow my property, which, to my astonishment, had been turned out on the deck—Jack superintending the sawing off one end of the chest just beyond the keyhole, and accompanying the operation by sundry uncomplimentary observations on midshipmen in general, and on myself in particular.
“The metamorphosis being completed to the lieutenant’s satisfaction—though not at all to mine, for my neat chest had become an unshapely piece of lumber—he pointed out the ‘lubberliness of shore-going people in not making keyholes where they could most easily be got at,’ viz., at the end of a chest instead of the middle!” Lord Cochrane took it easily, and acknowledges warmly the service Jack Larmour rendered him in teaching him his profession.
Later, Lord Cochrane, when promoted to a lieutenancy, was dining with Admiral Vandepat, and being seated near him, was asked what dish was before him. “Mentioning its nature,” says he, “I asked whether he would permit me to help him. The uncourteous reply was—that whenever he wished for anything he was in the habit of asking for it. Not knowing what to make of a rebuff of this nature, it was met with an inquiry if he would allow me the honour of taking wine with him. ‘I never take wine with any man, my lord,’ was the unexpected reply, from which it struck me that my lot was cast among Goths, if no worse.” Subsequently he found that this apparently gruff old admiral assumed some of this roughness purposely, and that he was one of the kindest commanders living.
In 1798, when with the Mediterranean fleet, ludicrous examples, both of the not very occasional corruption of the period, and the rigid etiquette required by one’s superior officer, occurred to Lord Cochrane, and got him into trouble. The first officer, Lieutenant Beaver, was one who carried the latter almost to the verge of despotism. He looked after all that was visible to the eye of the admiral, but permitted “an honest penny to be turned elsewhere.” At Tetuan they had purchased and killed bullocks on board the flagship, for the use of the whole squadron. The reason for this was that the hides, being valuable, could be stowed away in her hold or empty beef-casks, as especial perquisites to certain persons on board. The fleshy fragments on the hides soon decomposed, and rendered the hold of the vessel so intolerable that she acquired the name of the “Stinking Scotch ship.” Lord Cochrane, as junior lieutenant, had much to do with these arrangements, and his unfavourable remarks on these raw-hide speculations did not render those interested very friendly towards him. One day, when at Tetuan, he was allowed to go wild-fowl shooting ashore, and became covered with mud. On arriving rather late at the ship, he thought it more respectful to don a clean uniform before reporting himself on the quarter-deck. He had scarcely made the change, when the first lieutenant came into