Part 11 (2/2)
And they loved him for his very crustiness, for they knew that back of it all was a man.
These youthful heroes were not the only ones. Young Farragut, an infant of twelve years, with an old ”Shoot-if-you're-lucky,” quelled a promising mutiny. At eighteen Bainbridge did the same. Farragut, at thirteen, was recommended for promotion to a lieutenancy he was too young to take. Perry was about thirty when he won the victory of Erie.
A youngster's character bears a certain definite relation to the times he lives in. Skies blue and breezes light, he shapes his life's course with no cares but the betterment of his mental condition. Baffling winds create the sailor, and storm and stress bring out his greater capabilities.
The Spanish war has proved that heroes only slumber, and that the young gentleman with the finely-tempered mind of an Annapolis training is capable of the great things his father did.
The blue-jacket of to-day has plenty of hard work to do, but he is as comfortable as good food and sleeping accommodations, regular habits, and good government can make him. As a cla.s.s, the United States Jacky is more contented, perhaps, than any other man of similar conditions. Unlike the soldier, he does not even have to rough it very much, for wherever he goes he takes his house with him.
Jacky sleeps in a hammock strung upon hooks to the beams of the deck above him. When he turns out, he lashes his hammock with its las.h.i.+ng, and stores it in the nettings,--the troughs for the purpose at the sides of the s.h.i.+p,--where it must stay until night. If Jack wants to sleep in the meanwhile, he chooses the softest spot he can find on a steel-clad deck; and he can sleep there, too, in the broad glare of daylight, a hundred feet pa.s.sing him, and the usual run of s.h.i.+p's calls and noises droning in his ears.
Jacky's food is provided by the government, while his superior of the wardroom has to pay his own mess-bill. He is allowed, in addition to his pay, the sum of nine dollars per month, and this must purchase everything, except such luxuries as he may choose to buy from his pay. The s.h.i.+p's paymaster is allowed a certain amount of money to furnish the supplies, and between him and the s.h.i.+p's cook the problem is settled. At the end of the month, if the amount served out is in excess of the computation for rations, the brunt falls upon the ”Jack-of-the-Dust,”--the a.s.sistant to the paymaster's yeoman,--who has the work of accurately measuring the rations which are given to the cook of the s.h.i.+p.
The s.h.i.+p's cook receives from the government from twenty-five to thirty-five dollars a month, according to the size of the s.h.i.+p, and, in addition, certain money perquisites from the different messes, which gives him a fair average. He has complete charge of the s.h.i.+p's galley and the cooks of the messes, and must be able to concoct a dainty French dish for the wardroom as well as the usual ”salt horse” or ”dog” for the Jacky.
”Salt horse” is the sea-name for pork. ”Dog” is soaked hardtack, mixed with mola.s.ses and fried; and, though it is not pleasant twenty-nine days out of the month, it is healthful, and tastes good to a hard-working sailor with the salt of the sea producing a splendid appet.i.te.
The mess-tables hang by iron supports to the beams of the deck above, and when the mess has been served and eaten,--as only Jack knows how to eat,--they are triced up into their places, and all is cleaned and made s.h.i.+p-shape in the twinkling of an eye. A half-hour is allowed for dinner, and this time is kept sacred for Jack's use. A red pennant flies from the yard-arm, that all may know that the sailor-man is eating and must not be disturbed by any importunate or curious callers.
In the dog-watches of the evening, after supper, from six to eight P.M., the blue-jacket is given his leisure. It is then that pipes are smoked, vigilance relaxed, boxing and wrestling bouts are in order, and Jacky settles down for his rest after the day of labor. From somewhere down on the gun-deck comes the tinkle of a guitar or banjo, and a tuneful, manly voice sings the songs of France or Spain, and, better still, of beloved America, for the s.h.i.+pmates.
The sailor of to-day is also a soldier. Back in the days of Henry the Eighth, when England first had a navy, the sailors only worked the s.h.i.+ps.
The fighting was done by the soldiers. Later, when the s.h.i.+ps were armed with many guns and carried a greater spread of canvas, there was no s.p.a.ce for great companies of soldiers, and the sailors became gunners as well.
A few soldiers there were, but these did only sentry duty and performed the duties of the s.h.i.+ps's police. As such they were cordially hated by the jackies.
This antipathy has come down through the ages to the present day, and marines are still looked on by the sailor-men as land-lubbers and Johnnies--sea-people who have no mission upon the earth save to do all the eating and very little of the rough work.
The new navy has done much to change this feeling. The mission of the marine is now a definite one. Always used as a sharpshooter, he now mans the rapid-fire batteries, and even guns of a larger caliber. He has done his work well, and the affair at Guantanamo has caused the sneer to fade from the lip of the American sailor-man. Two of the ablest captains of our navy, always the deadliest opponents of the marine corps, upon a.s.suming their latest commands, applied immediately for the largest complement of marines that they could get.
Any s.h.i.+p, old or new, is as frail as the crew that mans it. The strength of any vessel varies directly with its discipline and personnel. Hull, Jones, Decatur, Bainbridge, and Stewart, in the old days, knew with some accuracy the forces they had to reckon with. Their guns were of simple contrivance, and their men knew them as well as they knew how to reef a topsail or smartly pa.s.s a weather-earing. They feared nothing so long as they were confident of their captain. New and mysterious contrivances for death-dealing were unknown to them, and hence the morale of the old sea-battles was the morale only of strength and discipline. There were no uncertain factors to reckon with, save the weight of metal and the comparative training of the gun-crews.
To-day the unknown plays a large part in warfare. Intricate appliances, mysterious inventions, new types of torpedo-boats, and submarine vessels form a new element to contend against and have a personal moral influence upon the discipline of crews. To combat this new element of the unknown and uncertain has required sailors and men of a different stripe from the old. Where, in the old days, ignorance and all its accompanying evils held sway over the mind of poor Jack, and made him a prey to superst.i.tion and imagination, to-day, by dint of careful training of brain as well as body, he has become a thinking creature of power and force of mind. He knows in a general way the working of the great mechanical contrivances; and in the fights that are to come, as well as those that have been, he will show that the metal the American Jacky is made of rings true and stands well the trial by fire.
THE OLD s.h.i.+PS AND THE NEW
With much hitching of trousers and s.h.i.+fting of quid, the old longsh.o.r.eman will tell you that sea-life isn't at all what it once was.
He will gaze out to sea, where the great iron machines are plying back and forth, and a reminiscent sparkle will come into his eyes as he turns to his lobster-pots and tells you how it was in the good days of clippers and sailing-frigates, when sailor-men were sailor-men and not boiler-room swabs, machine-made and steam-soaked. He will also yarn, with much d--ning of his eyes (and yours), of how fair it was in the deck-watches of the ”Saucy Sally” barque, with everything drawing alow and aloft, grog and 'baccy a-plenty, and never a care but the hurry to spend the voyage-money.
And not till he's mumbled all his discontent will he haul his sheets and give you right-of-way.
He forgets, sheer hulk that he is, that he's been in dry-dock a generation or more and that swift-moving Time has loosed his gear and dimmed his binnacle-lights. Despite his ancient croaking, tricks at the wheel are to-day as ably kept, eyes as sharp as his still peer into the dimness over the forecastle, and the sea-lead takes as long a heave as in the early sixties, when he hauled up to New York with a thousand dollars in prize-money and a heart full for the business of spending it. It has always been so. There has never been an age that has not had its carper to tell you of the wonders that once were.
Yet it was truly beautiful. With the tide on the ebb and the wind a-piping free, never was a fairer sight than the Atlantic clipper as she picked her speedy way through the s.h.i.+pping to the harbor's mouth; and nothing so stately as the gallant frigate in her wake, with all sail set to ga'n's'ls, her topsails bellying grandly to the quartering breeze, which whipped the filmy wave-tops against her broad bows, under which the yellow curl lapped merrily its greeting. The harbor clear and the capes abeam, aloft flew the nimble sail-loosers. The royals and the stu'n-sails flapped to the freshening wind, sheets went home with a run, and the yards flew to their blocks.
Then, her departure taken, like a gull she sped blithely on her course.
The rays of the afternoon sun gilded her snowy canvases until she looked a thing of air and fairyland, not of reality. On she flew, her tall spars dipping grandly to the swells--a stately farewell courtesy to the clipper, hull down to leeward. On the decks the boatswain piped his cheerful note, and everything came s.h.i.+p-shape and Bristol-fas.h.i.+on for the cruise. The running-gear was neatly coiled for running, the guns secured for sea, and the watches told off. The officer of the deck walked to and fro, singing softly to himself, casting now and then a careful eye aloft to the weather-leeches, which quivered like an aspen as the helmsman, leaning to the slant of the deck, kept her well up to her work.
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