White Jacket or, The World on a Man-of-War

by Herman Melville

  In men-of-war, night and day, week in and week out, two life- buoys are kept depending from the stern; and two men, with hatchets in their hands, pace up and down, ready at the first cry to cut the cord and drop the buoys overboard. Every two hours they are regularly relieved, like sentinels on guard. No similar precautions are adopted in the merchant or whaling service.

  Thus deeply solicitous to preserve human life are the regulations of men-of-war; and seldom has there been a better illustration of this solicitude than at the battle of Trafalgar, when, after "several thousand" French seamen had been destroyed, according to Lord Collingwood, and, by the official returns, sixteen hundred and ninety Englishmen were killed or wounded, the Captains of the surviving ships ordered the life-buoy sentries from their death-dealing guns to their vigilant posts, as officers of the Humane Society.

  "There, Bungs!" cried Scrimmage, a sheet-anchor-man,[2] "there's a good pattern for you; make us a brace of life-buoys like that; something that will save a man, and not fill and sink under him, as those leaky quarter-casks of yours will the first time there's occasion to drop 'ern. I came near pitching off the bowsprit the other day; and, when I scrambled inboard again, I went aft to get a squint at 'em. Why, Bungs, they are all open between the staves. Shame on you! Suppose you yourself should fall over- board, and find yourself going down with buoys under you of your own making-what then?"

  - [FOOTNOTE-2] In addition to the _Bower-anchors_ carried on her bows, a frigate carries large anchors in her fore-chains, called _Sheet-anchors_. Hence, the old seamen stationed in that part of a man-of-war are called _sheet-anchor-man_. -

  "I never go aloft, and don't intend to fall overboard," replied Bungs.

  "Don't believe it!" cried the sheet-anchor-man; "you lopers that live about the decks here are nearer the bottom of the sea than the light hand that looses the main-royal. Mind your eye, Bungs-mind your eye!"

  "I will," retorted Bungs; "and you mind yours!"

  Next day, just at dawn, I was startled from my hammock by the cry of "_All hands about ship and shorten sail_!" Springing up the ladders, I found that an unknown man had fallen overboard from the chains; and darting a glance toward the poop, perceived, from their gestures, that the life-sentries there had cut away the buoys.

  It was blowing a fresh breeze; the frigate was going fast through the water. But the one thousand arms of five hundred men soon tossed her about on the other tack, and checked her further headway.

  "Do you see him?" shouted the officer of the watch through his trumpet, hailing the main-mast-head. "Man or _buoy_, do you see either?"

  "See nothing, sir," was the reply.

  "Clear away the cutters!" was the next order. "Bugler! call away the second, third, and fourth cutters' crews. Hands by the tackles!"

  In less than three minutes the three boats were down; More hands were wanted in one of them, and, among others, I jumped in to make up the deficiency.

  "Now, men, give way! and each man look out along his oar, and look sharp!" cried the officer of our boat. For a time, in perfect silence, we slid up and down the great seething swells of the sea, but saw nothing.

  "There, it's no use," cried the officer; "he's gone, whoever he is. Pull away, men-pull away! they'll be recalling us soon."

  "Let him drown!" cried the strokesman; "he's spoiled my watch below for me."

  "Who the devil is he?" cried another.

  "He's one who'll never have a coffin!" replied a third.

  "No, no! they'll never sing out, '_All hands bury the dead!_' for him, my hearties!" cried a fourth.

  "Silence," said the officer, "and look along your oars." But the sixteen oarsmen still continued their talk; and, after pulling about for two or three hours, we spied the recall-signal at the frigate's fore-t'-gallant-mast-head, and returned on board, having seen no sign even of the life-buoys.

  The boats were hoisted up, the yards braced forward, and away we bowled-one man less.

  "Muster all hands!" was now the order; when, upon calling the roll, the cooper was the only man missing.

  "I told you so, men," cried the Captain of the Head; "I said we would lose a man before long."

  "Bungs, is it?" cried Scrimmage, the sheet-anchor-man; "I told him his buoys wouldn't save a drowning man; and now he has proved it!"

  CHAPTER XVIII

  A MAN-OF-WAR FULL AS A NUT

  It was necessary to supply the lost cooper's place; accordingly, word was passed for all who belonged to that calling to muster at the main-mast, in order that one of them might be selected. Thirteen men obeyed the summons-a circumstance illustrative of the fact that many good handicrafts-men are lost to their trades and the world by serving in men-of-war. Indeed, from a frigate's crew might he culled out men of all callings and vocations, from a backslidden parson to a broken-down comedian. The Navy is the asylum for the perverse, the home of the unfortunate. Here the sons of adversity meet the children of calamity, and here the children of calamity meet the offspring of sin. Bankrupt brokers, boot-blacks, blacklegs, and blacksmiths here assemble together; and cast-away tinkers, watch-makers, quill-drivers, cobblers, doctors, farmers, and lawyers compare past experiences and talk of old times. Wrecked on a desert shore, a man-of-war's crew could quickly found an Alexandria by themselves, and fill it with all the things which go to make up a capital.

  Frequently, at one and the same time, you see every trade in operation on the gun-deck-coopering, carpentering, tailoring, tinkering, blacksmithing, rope-making, preaching, gambling, and fortune-telling.

  In truth, a man-of-war is a city afloat, with long avenues set out with guns instead of trees, and numerous shady lanes, courts, and by-ways. The quarter-deck is a grand square, park, or parade ground, with a great Pittsfield elm, in the shape of the main- mast, at one end, and fronted at the other by the palace of the Commodore's cabin.

  Or, rather, a man-of-war is a lofty, walled, and garrisoned town, like Quebec, where the thoroughfares and mostly ramparts, and peaceable citizens meet armed sentries at every corner.

  Or it is like the lodging-houses in Paris, turned upside down; the first floor, or deck, being rented by a lord; the second, by a select club of gentlemen; the third, by crowds of artisans; and the fourth, by a whole rabble of common people.

  For even thus is it in a frigate, where the commander has a whole cabin to himself and the spar-deck, the lieutenants their ward- room underneath, and the mass of sailors swing their hammocks under all.

  And with its long rows of port-hole casements, each revealing the muzzle of a cannon, a man-of-war resembles a three-story house in a suspicions part of the town, with a basement of indefinite depth, and ugly-looking fellows gazing out at the windows.

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE JACKET ALOFT

  Again must I call attention to my white jacket, which, about this time came near being the death of me.

  I am of a meditative humour, and at sea used often to mount aloft at night, and seating myself on one of the upper yards, tuck my jacket about me and give loose to reflection. In some ships in which. I have done this, the sailors used to fancy that I must be studying astronomy-which, indeed, to some extent, was the case- and that my object in mounting aloft was to get a nearer view of the stars, supposing me, of course, to be short-sighted. A very silly conceit of theirs, some may say, but not so silly after all; for surely the advantage of getting nearer an object by two hundred feet is not to be underrated. Then, to study the stars upon the wide, boundless sea, is divine as it was to the Chaldean Magi, who observed their revolutions from the plains.

  And it is a very fine feeling, and one that fuses us into the universe of things, and mates us a part of the All, to think that, wherever we ocean-wanderers rove, we have still the same glorious old stars to keep us company; that they still shine onward and on, forever beautiful and bright, and luring us, by every ray, to die and be glorified with them.

  Ay, ay! we sailors sail not in vain, We expatriate ourselves to nationalise with the universe; and
in all our voyages round the world, we are still accompanied by those old circumnavigators, the stars, who are shipmates and fellow-sailors of ours-sailing in heaven's blue, as we on the azure main. Let genteel generations scoff at our hardened hands, and finger-nails tipped with tar-did they ever clasp truer palms than ours? Let them feel of our sturdy hearts beating like sledge-hammers in those hot smithies, our bosoms; with their amber-headed canes, let them feel of our generous pulses, and swear that they go off like thirty-two-pounders.

  Oh, give me again the rover's life-the joy, the thrill, the whirl! Let me feel thee again, old sea! let me leap into thy saddle once more. I am sick of these terra firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and reek of towns. Let me hear the clatter of hailstones on icebergs, and not the dull tramp of these plodders, plodding their dull way from their cradles to their graves. Let me snuff thee up, sea-breeze! and whinny in thy spray. Forbid it, sea-gods! intercede for me with Neptune, O sweet Amphitrite, that no dull clod may fall on my coffin! Be mine the tomb that swallowed up Pharaoh and all his hosts; let me lie down with Drake, where he sleeps in the sea.

  But when White-Jacket speaks of the rover's life, he means not life in a man-of-war, which, with its martial formalities and thousand vices, stabs to the heart the soul of all free-and-easy honourable rovers.

  I have said that I was wont to mount up aloft and muse; and thus was it with me the night following the loss of the cooper. Ere my watch in the top had expired, high up on the main-royal-yard I reclined, the white jacket folded around me like Sir John Moore in his frosted cloak.

  Eight bells had struck, and my watchmates had hied to their hammocks, and the other watch had gone to their stations, and the _top_ below me was full of strangers, and still one hundred feet above even _them_ I lay entranced; now dozing, now dreaming; now thinking of things past, and anon of the life to come. Well-timed was the latter thought, for the life to come was much nearer overtaking me than I then could imagine. Perhaps I was half conscious at last of a tremulous voice hailing the main-royal- yard from the _top_. But if so, the consciousness glided away from me, and left me in Lethe. But when, like lightning, the yard dropped under me, and instinctively I clung with both hands to the "_tie_," then I came to myself with a rush, and felt something like a choking hand at my throat. For an instant I thought the Gulf Stream in my head was whirling me away to eternity; but the next moment I found myself standing; the yard had descended to the _cup_; and shaking myself in my jacket, I felt that I was unharmed and alive.

  Who had done this? who had made this attempt on my life? thought I, as I ran down the rigging.

  "Here it comes! — Lord! Lord! here it comes! See, see! it is white as a hammock."

  "Who's coming?" I shouted, springing down into the top; "who's white as a hammock?"

  "Bless my soul, Bill it's only White-Jacket-that infernal White- Jacket again!"

  It seems they had spied a moving white spot there aloft, and, sailor-like, had taken me for the ghost of the cooper; and after hailing me, and bidding me descend, to test my corporeality, and getting no answer, they had lowered the halyards in affright.

  In a rage I tore off the jacket, and threw it on the deck.

  "Jacket," cried I, "you must change your complexion! you must hie to the dyers and be dyed, that I may live. I have but one poor life, White-Jacket, and that life I cannot spare. I cannot consent to die for _you_, but be dyed you must for me. You can dye many times without injury; but I cannot die without irreparable loss, and running the eternal risk."

  So in the morning, jacket in hand, I repaired to the First Lieutenant, and related the narrow escape I had had during the night. I enlarged upon the general perils I ran in being taken for a ghost, and earnestly besought him to relax his commands for once, and give me an order on Brush, the captain of the paint- room, for some black paint, that my jacket might be painted of that colour.

  "Just look at it, sir," I added, holding it lip; "did you ever see anything whiter? Consider how it shines of a night, like a bit of the Milky Way. A little paint, sir, you cannot refuse."

  "The ship has no paint to spare," he said; "you must get along without it."

  "Sir, every rain gives me a soaking; Cape Horn is at hand-six brushes-full would make it waterproof; and no longer would I be in peril of my life!"

  "Can't help it, sir; depart!"

  I fear it will not be well with me in the end; for if my own sins are to be forgiven only as I forgive that hard-hearted and unimpressible First Lieutenant, then pardon there is none for me.

  What! when but one dab of paint would make a man of a ghost, and it Mackintosh of a herring-net-to refuse it I am full. I can say no more.

  CHAPTER XX

  HOW THEY SLEEP IN A MAN-OF-WAR

  No more of my luckless jacket for a while; let me speak of my hammock, and the tribulations I endured therefrom.

  Give me plenty of room to swing it in; let me swing it between two date-trees on an Arabian plain; or extend it diagonally from Moorish pillar to pillar, in the open marble Court of the Lions in Granada's Alhambra: let me swing it on a high bluff of the Mississippi-one swing in the pure ether for every swing over the green grass; or let me oscillate in it beneath the cool dome of St. Peter's; or drop me in it, as in a balloon, from the zenith, with the whole firmament to rock and expatiate in; and I would not exchange my coarse canvas hammock for the grand state-bed, like a stately coach-and-four, in which they tuck in a king when he passes a night at Blenheim Castle.

  When you have the requisite room, you always have «spreaders» in your hammock; that is, two horizontal sticks, one at each end, which serve to keep the sides apart, and create a wide vacancy between, wherein you can turn over and over-lay on this side or that; on your back, if you please; stretch out your legs; in short, take your ease in your hammock; for of all inns, your bed is the best.

  But when, with five hundred other hammocks, yours is crowded and jammed on all sides, on a frigate berth-deck; the third from above, when «_spreaders_» are prohibited by an express edict from the Captain's cabin; and every man about you is jealously watchful of the rights and privileges of his own proper hammock, as settled by law and usage; _then_ your hammock is your Bastile and canvas jug; into which, or out of which, it is very hard to get; and where sleep is but a mockery and a name.

  Eighteen inches a man is all they allow you; eighteen inches in width; in _that_ you must swing. Dreadful! they give you more swing than that at the gallows.

  During warm nights in the Tropics, your hammock is as a stew-pan; where you stew and stew, till you can almost hear yourself hiss. Vain are all stratagems to widen your accommodations. Let them catch you insinuating your boots or other articles in the head of your hammock, by way of a "spreader." Near and far, the whole rank and file of the row to which you belong feel the encroachment in an instant, and are clamorous till the guilty one is found out, and his pallet brought back to its bearings.

  In platoons and squadrons, they all lie on a level; their hammock _clews_ crossing and recrossing in all directions, so as to present one vast field-bed, midway between the ceiling and the floor; which are about five feet asunder.

  One extremely warm night, during a calm, when it was so hot that only a skeleton could keep cool (from the free current of air through its bones), after being drenched in my own perspiration, I managed to wedge myself out of my hammock; and with what little strength I had left, lowered myself gently to the deck. Let me see now, thought I, whether my ingenuity cannot devise some method whereby I can have room to breathe and sleep at the same time. I have it. I will lower my hammock underneath all these others; and then-upon that separate and independent level, at least-I shall have the whole berth-deck to myself. Accordingly, I lowered away my pallet to the desired point-about three inches from the floor-and crawled into it again.

  But, alas! this arrangement made such a sweeping semi-circle of my hammock, that, while my head and feet were at par, the small of my back was settling down indefinitely; I felt as
if some gigantic archer had hold of me for a bow.

  But there was another plan left. I triced up my hammock with all my strength, so as to bring it wholly _above_ the tiers of pallets around me. This done, by a last effort, I hoisted myself into it; but, alas! it was much worse than before. My luckless hammock was stiff and straight as a board; and there I was-laid out in it, with my nose against the ceiling, like a dead man's against the lid of his coffin.

  So at last I was fain to return to my old level, and moralise upon the folly, in all arbitrary governments, of striving to get either _below_ or _above_ those whom legislation has placed upon an equality with yourself.

  Speaking of hammocks, recalls a circumstance that happened one night in the Neversink. It was three or four times repeated, with various but not fatal results.

  The watch below was fast asleep on the berth-deck, where perfect silence was reigning, when a sudden shock and a groan roused up all hands; and the hem of a pair of white trowsers vanished up one of the ladders at the fore-hatchway.

  We ran toward the groan, and found a man lying on the deck; one end of his hammock having given way, pitching his head close to three twenty- four pound cannon shot, which must have been purposely placed in that position. When it was discovered that this man had long been suspected of being an _informer_ among the crew, little surprise and less pleasure were evinced at his narrow escape.

  CHAPTER XXI

  ONE REASON WHY MEN-OF-WAR'S MEN ARE, GENERALLY, SHORT-LIVED

  I cannot quit this matter of the hammocks without making mention of a grievance among the sailors that ought to be redressed.

  In a man-of-war at sea, the sailors have _watch and watch;_ that is, through every twenty-four hours, they are on and off duty every four hours. Now, the hammocks are piped down from the nettings (the open space for stowing them, running round the top of the bulwarks) a little after sunset, and piped up again when the forenoon watch is called, at eight o'clock in the morning; so that during the daytime they are inaccessible as pallets. This would be all well enough, did the sailors have a complete night's rest; but every other night at sea, one watch have only four hours in their hammocks. Indeed, deducting the time allowed for the other watch to turn out; for yourself to arrange your hammock, get into it, and fairly get asleep; it maybe said that, every other night, you have but three hours' sleep in your hammock. Having then been on deck for twice four hours, at eight o'clock in the morning your _watch-below_ comes round, and you are not liable to duty until noon. Under like circumstances, a merchant seaman goes to his _bunk_, and has the benefit of a good long sleep. But in a man-of-war you can do no such thing; your hammock is very neatly stowed in the nettings, and there it must remain till nightfall.