Jack Tar

by Roy Adkins

  As an officer, Lieutenant William Dillon was accustomed to shaving himself daily, and so when he was marooned on a boat he complained that after dirty clothing, ‘My next annoyance was the length of my beard. Pat tried shaving me, but the razor was so blunt that I could not endure the pain.’111 Marine Captain Wybourn was luckier – when on shore in May 1813 attacking the American town of Havre de Grace, they went into some hotels, whose guests had fled: ‘A most welcome prize fell to my lot – a gentleman’s portmanteau stood open, in which clean white shirts were exhibited and a case of razors, neither of which I had seen since I left the ship, and when we embarked I instantly began my toilette in the boat. There were 5 shirts, those razors, a pair of nankeen pantaloons and waistcoats and neck handkerchiefs. I shared everything out, except two shirts and my razors: these were too great a luxury to part with.’112

  Teeth were inevitably neglected, resulting in gum disease, which for many seamen would have meant losing many or most of their teeth. When describing Davy Reed, master of the Edgar in 1787, James Gardner said that he

  had the misfortune, like many others, to lose his teeth. I was at dinner in the wardroom when a small parcel was handed in directed for Mr. Reed. ‘What the hell can this be?’ says Davy (who did not like to have sixpence to pay the waterman), ‘and who gave it to you?’ continued he. ‘Sir,’ says the waterman, ‘it was a young lady who sent it off from Common Hard [at Portsmouth].’ As several tricks had been played with Davy before, he was afraid to open the parcel, and begged of one of the officers at the table to do so for him, but when opened, what was his amazement to find a set of sheep’s teeth for David Reed, Esq., with directions for fixing, and a box of tooth powder that, by the smell, appeared to be a mixture of everything abominable. Poor Davy was in a dreadful rage.113

  Toothbrushes and tooth powder were used by officers, such as the product advertised as a new Asiatic tooth powder by one London chemist on the front page of The Times newspaper in 1785: ‘This Tooth Powder derives its Name from being prepared of a soft earthy Substance, the Produce of Borneo and Sumatra, in the East Indies … The Preparation of it as a Tooth-Powder has hitherto been kept a Secret from the Europeans.’114 The same chemist was also selling ‘India Tooth Brushes, 1s. each. English ditto, 6d. each’.115 During the blockade of Ferrol on board the Ganges in May 1804, Captain Thomas Fremantle wrote to his wife: ‘If there is one thing that I feel distressed about, it is the want of tooth powder and brushes for my teeth. I beg you will promise me a pretty large assortment well packed up, and send them directed for me at Mr. Glencross’s Plymouth Dock.’116 When Midshipman Robert James was a prisoner-of-war at Sarrelibre in France, he was horrified at having to share accommodation with ordinary merchant seamen: ‘Judge of manners when I caught one of them using my tooth brush. I broke it and threw it out of the window – he said I was vary fulish to fling it away as he would have returned it to my drawer nicely rinsed – but however it would serve. He went and picked it up and used it on Sundays.’117

  Sanitary arrangements were as sparse as washing facilities. The toilets were called heads and were located right up in the bow of the ship in an area called the beakhead, on either side of the bowsprit. The toilets consisted of adjacent seats with holes (‘seats of ease’) over a clear drop to the sea, completely exposed to the weather and at times dangerous. The name ‘head’ was probably taken from the beakhead, the figurehead beneath and the nearby catheads,* and ‘going to the heads’ meant going to the toilet. It was burdensome for the men to have to make their way to the bows of the ship, and George King related that in port one Christmas Day, the ‘yeoman had drank too much grog and whisky that on his coming up from the cockpit to go to the head as was supposed, he crawled out of one of the main deck ports and fell overboard … when he was hoisted on board he was quite dead’.118

  There were very few seats, only six in the Victory for hundreds of men, though to some extent this reflected the constipation caused by the diet. Nor did everyone at the heads sit down on toilets to defecate, but some crouched over the side of the ship supported by ropes. Even so, there were complaints about the poor facilities, and a petition from the seamen of the Nereide at Bombay in 1808 declared bitterly that ‘we are more like a prison ship, than a man of war. From gunfire in the morning until sunset the gangway is attended by the Master at Arms to prevent more than two [men] at a time going to the privy, so that the pains we labour under is insupportable, some discommode their trowsers thro’ a griping.’119

  Near the seats of ease were two semicylindrical cubicles called roundhouses with similar facilities, one for the midshipmen and warrant officers, and one reserved for men in the sick-bay. These roundhouses gave a degree of privacy and were sheltered from the weather. The surgeon of the Pompee, Guy Acheson, ordered that each day the attendant of the sick-bay was ‘to throw a bucket of salt water down the round house’.120 In larger ships the captain had his own private toilet in a small cubicle at one end of the stern gallery that ran across the width of the stern, with a row of windows giving light into the captain’s cabin. This cubicle was known as a quarter gallery, and on the decks below similar quarter galleries were provided for the officers. Although private, these toilets still only consisted of a seat with a hole over a vertical waste pipe or over an open drop to the sea. In smaller ships, with no room for such facilities at the stern, the officers probably used chamber pots or buckets, which their servants emptied. On board the Malta warship off Cartagena in Spain in 1813, during the Peninsular War, the officers entertained some Spanish women, and Lieutenant Abraham Crawford was amused by the reaction to their quarter galleries:

  Every part of the ship was then shown to them … when the elderly ladies, in their desire to examine everything within view, peeped into certain little boudoirs fitted on the quarters, their ecstasy and delight at the discovery knew no bounds. They actually shouted with admiration, calling to each other … ‘Johanna! Maria! Come here, come here, for the love of God! Look what cleanliness! What convenience! In my life I never saw anything so pretty, so elegant! Certainly the English are the neatest and cleverest people in the world.’121

  Toilet paper was not invented in Britain until the later nineteenth century, but newspapers and other scrap paper were utilised by the officers, as exemplified in one contemporary novel: ‘Here some person knocked at the [captain’s] cabin-door, and the steward going to it, returned to the table with a bundle of papers. “The gentlemen [midshipmen], sir,” said he, have sent you their day’s work.” “Very well,” replied the captain; “put them in the quarter-gallery.”’122 The seamen made use of scrap fibrous materials such as tow (unwashed, uncombed wool or flax that was a general-purpose cleaning and packing material), oakum (rope fibres) or a natural sponge that they shared and rinsed in a bucket of sea water.

  Men would often not have bothered using the heads simply to urinate. One method was to urinate while hanging from the shrouds at the points where they were secured to the sides of the ship. In these places, wooden ledges known as the chain-wales, channels or, more commonly, chains provided footholds, and the lee (downwind) side of the ship was chosen, because the wind tilted the ship over in this direction, giving a clear drop to the sea. Depending on the discipline in the ship, this practice was often not tolerated on board warships. Tubs for urine were strategically placed, even in the galley, as Richard Cunningham, a boatswain’s mate from the Prince Frederick, described: ‘The galley was wet; the people go into the galley to piss, where tubs are placed for them’.123 Elsewhere in the ship – on the decks well above the water-line – were a number of pissdales (‘dale’ being an old word for ‘drain’). These were simple basins or trough-like urinals made of lead, copper or sometimes wood, mounted on a bulkhead (an internal wooden partition), with lead drainage pipes that took the waste water to the side of the ship and emptied out through openings known as scuppers.

  Perennial problems occurred with the men and officers relieving themselves in inappropriate places, but there
were few complaints about the smell, implying that it was all-pervasive. Aaron Thomas related numerous stories on board the Lapwing frigate, which must have been mirrored on board many other ships. Men obviously urinated against the inside of the ship and into the scuppers at night, and the Lapwing’s captain, Thomas Harvey, ‘ordered, that for the future, two men should keep watch, during the night, in the waist, to keep people from watering against the ship’s sides’.124 Two months later Aaron Thomas reported that ‘Last night Mr Tripe [Midshipman William Dunning Tripe] sent for 5 bottles of porter and drank it all himself; by it, he got very tipsy, and in the night he shit upon the skylight which overlooks the captain’s cabin.’125 Soon after, another incident occurred: ‘One of our surgeon’s mates eased himself in a tank, where the men get fresh water from’126 – this was Mr Craer, who had been drunk the night before. Thomas also heard about one unnamed lieutenant’s method: ‘[I] asked the cause of the speaking trumpet smelling so strong, said [was told] it was caused by reason that Lieutenant —— had been using it as a pissing machine to carry his urine from his body, off the quarter deck, through one of the ports, into the sea.’127

  Particular problems with sanitary arrangements arose during prolonged bad weather, when the hatches were battened down for days at a time. Buckets (‘necessary buckets’) were used as toilets, but could not be emptied until conditions improved, and the situation was exacerbated by increased seasickness in such weather. Talking particularly of those ill with dysentery, the surgeon Robert Robertson on board the Rainbow in the West Indies in 1777 gave a graphic idea of what happened in storms:

  They [the poor conditions] are undoubtedly much increased when the weather is so bad as not to admit the lower deck ports to be up in large ships, or the hatchways in small ships to be unlayed. The foul air then being much more confined around the sick, and where the well people lie, is consequently drawn into the lungs again and again by respiration, and soon becomes more foul and noxious, which renders it unfit for the salutary purposes of both the sick and the healthy. This circumstance is perhaps a much more powerful agent in enfeebling the seamen; in depressing their spirits during bad weather; and in rendering the dysentery epidemic in the ship, than the inclemency of the weather to which they are exposed upon deck in their watches. It is very pleasing to observe the immediate alteration which appears in the countenances of the men, when the ship is well washed and aired, and when they have cleaned themselves after bad weather.128

  It was not uncommon for a marine to be posted at the gratings above the hold to prevent the sailors relieving themselves there. Any waste water eventually got into the lowest part of the ship, the bilge, and the smell of this bilge water could be overpowering, as it seeped into the ballast in the hold where all the stores were kept. The physician Gilbert Blane thought that life was more healthy on board a frigate than a larger ship: ‘a small ship is more easily ventilated, and the mass of foul air issuing from the hold, from the victuals, water, and other stores, as well as the effluvia exhaling from the men’s bodies, is less than in a large ship’.129

  As there was no heating, the men were frequently cold and wet, and they tended to congregate round the galley stove. The officers had small portable stoves, but the surgeon Barry O’Meara thought these were useless when compared with the galley stove. In the Dardanelles in March 1807 Marine Captain Wybourn wrote to his sisters of the terrible weather, saying that ‘we are perished with cold and wet, the climate here is as bad as in England’.130 In mid-November 1805, after returning to England after the Battle of Trafalgar, Lieutenant John Yule grumbled to his wife that ‘It is dreadfully cold to us who have been so long in warm climates. I can hardly hold my pen.’131 When O’Meara was Napoleon’s surgeon in exile on St Helena, he talked to him about being on board Royal Navy warships in winter: ‘I remarked, that the seamen were better off in point of being able to warm themselves at a fire than the officers. “Why so?” said Napoleon. I replied, “Because they have the advantage of the galley fire, where they can warm and dry themselves.” “And why not the officers?” I said, that it would not be exactly decorous for the officers to mix in that familiar way with the men.’132

  Much of the time the men were unable to keep dry and warm, and Dr Trotter urged that ‘When their watches expire in rainy weather, they should be obliged to take off their wet shirts before they get into their hammocks, which, from laziness as well as fatigue, they will not do but by compulsion. Nothing can be more pernicious than going to sleep wrapped up in wet linen, and it causes also their bedding to be damp and unwholesome for some time afterwards.’133 Writing in 1801, he observed that ‘The practice which has lately been adopted of having stoves with fires placed occasionally in those parts of the ship where the men reside, and in others subject to humidity, is of the utmost importance to the health of the people and should never be omitted in damp weather.’134

  Keeping dry was certainly not just a problem of winter weather, as Major-General Cockburn on board the Lively discovered when they encountered very high humidity in the Mediterranean off the North African coast:

  The damp, considering the latitude we are in, and the season of the year [ July], is extraordinary; there is a constant thorough air in the cabin; ports and doors open all day, and yet, leave a pair of boots three days in a corner, and they will be quite damp and mouldy. We have also had frequent fogs, and though the weather is so hot, our clothes and every thing in the ship feels clammy, and our linen is as damp as in Ireland during winter … many complain of slight rheumatism.135

  In March 1811 the Nisus frigate quitted the harbour of Port Louis in Mauritius (the island having been captured in December), and the surgeon James Prior said that he was not sorry to leave as it had become very unpleasant walking the streets where conditions were excessively humid, yet he found the ship no better: ‘On-board we were scarcely more comfortable; for, in excluding the showers, we were likewise obliged to shut out a large portion of air. This, added to the close atmosphere of a ship, and external moisture, produced an oppressive sultriness that was not merely heat, but the heavy, thick, overpowering sense of being steamed.’136

  Different weather conditions favoured different groups of vermin on board ship, and particularly in hot climates vermin were a problem, causing damage to clothing, provisions and the men themselves. As the fuel for the stoves was both coal and wood, the men were frequently sent on shore to forage for wood, and Jeffrey Raigersfeld described the unwanted wildlife they encountered when he was a servant to Captain Collingwood on board the Mediator in 1783: ‘In the West Indies, the fuel made use of on board a ship is wood, among which varieties of insects are brought, such as scorpions, centipedes, and tarantulas, with now and then a few snakes; these soon begin to crawl all up and down a ship, even into the hammocks, and the men frequently got stung and bit by them.’137 Robert Hay on board the Culloden in Madras in 1804 described the vermin at length. After talking about mosquitoes, he then wrote about other pests:

  The next is the tarantula, an insect resembling a spider, but considerably larger and hairy like a mouse. The centipede, an insect eight or ten inches long, scarcely as thick as the little finger and having about 20 feet on each side. The scorpion, an unsightly reptile 2 or 3 inches long with a tail nearly of the same length. The two former of these bite … These reptiles, as also snakes of a small size generally are brought aboard in the hollow parts of firewood and are very dangerous. Though death has been known to follow their sting, no such fatal instance occurred with us, but I have known their stings and bites prove very painful and often long in healing.138

  The surgeon James Prior graphically portrayed the conditions on board the Nisus off Mauritius:

  At all seasons, at all hours, and in all places, they attacked us in every possible manner. Rats, mice, mosquitoes, locusts, flies, bugs, moths, cockroaches, fleas, scorpions, centipedes, and others, infest the shipping more than the shore, for, having numberless places of concealment in the holds, in the interstices of the b
eams and timbers, and in the provision-casks, it becomes impossible to eject the enemy after his having once made good a lodgement. Besides being pestered in the day, we have been frightened in our beds by the prowling of rats, blistered by mosquitoes, bitten by fleas, driven out of bed by bugs, and in danger of being fairly carried off by thousands of cockroaches.139

  The cockroaches were an especial nuisance:

  They fly about confusedly in the night, continually dart on our faces, sometimes extinguish the candles, and lay eggs in which the young in embryo present the same appearance and numbers as the roes of herrings. My cabin is frequently covered by clouds of these creatures, which give it the semblance of being daubed with animated brown varnish; and my only remedy is a furious assault, right and left, with a weighty towel, which stuns a few of the enemy, and drives the remainder to their covert abodes … raw Europeans make a delicate food, as well as a species of fair game to all of them. Our juices form a perfect living larder to every thing than can either bite or puncture.140

  Two years later, Prior recorded that the rat infestation on board the Nisus was even worse: ‘these animals had so much increased that they ran about the lower deck almost without dread. It likewise became an amusement among the boys to fish for them down the hatchways with hook and line; during the first few days, the bait was no sooner down than it was eagerly seized, and many were thus caught.’141 Rats were a problem on board the Culloden as well, which Robert Hay recounted:

  Rats and bandecouts [the name given to Indian rats], animals nearly alike, are from their surprising numbers very troublesome. I have known them to leave the marks of their teeth in the thick skin of men’s toes when asleep and on one occasion to draw blood. In order to keep down the number of these vermin, it was prescribed as a daily task to each of the boys to produce either a rat, a bandecout, a scorpion, a tarantula, a centipede, 20 cockroaches, or 20 eggs of the last-named fly. Though this doubtless kept down their number considerably, still they abounded greatly and proved very troublesome.142