Medical Life in the Navy

Chapter Six.

Afloat. A Storm in Biscay Bay. A Word on Bass’s Beer

For the space of six weeks I lived in clover at Haslar, and at the end of that time my appointment to a sea-going ship came. It was the pleasure of their Lordships the Commissioners, that I should take my passage to the Cape of Good Hope in a frigate, which had lately been put in commission and was soon about to sail. Arrived there, I was to be handed over to the flag-ship on that station for disposal, like so many stones of salt pork. On first entering the service every medical officer is sent for one commission (three to five years) to a foreign station; and it is certainly very proper too that the youngest and strongest men, rather than the oldest, should do the rough work of the service, and go to the most unhealthy stations.

The frigate in which I was ordered passage was to sail from Plymouth. To that town I was accordingly sent by train, and found the good ship in such a state of internal chaos – painters, carpenters, sail-makers, and sailors; armourers, blacksmiths, gunners, and tailors; every one engaged at his own trade, with such an utter disregard of order or regularity, while the decks were in such confusion, littered with tools, nails, shavings, ropes, and spars, among which I scrambled, and over which I tumbled, getting into everybody’s way, and finding so little rest for the sole of my foot, that I was fain to beg a week’s leave, and glad when I obtained it. On going on board again at the end of that time, a very different appearance presented itself; everything was in its proper place, order and regularity were everywhere. The decks were white and clean, the binnacles, the brass and mahogany work polished, the gear all taut, the ropes coiled, and the vessel herself sitting on the water saucy as the queen of ducks, with her pennant flying and her beautiful ensign floating gracefully astern. The gallant ship was ready for sea, had been unmoored, had made her trial trips, and was now anchored in the Sound. From early morning to busy noon, and from noon till night, boats glided backwards and forwards between the ship and the shore, filled with the friends of those on board, or laden with wardroom and gunroom stores. Among these might have been seen a shore-boat, rowed by two sturdy watermen, and having on board a large sea-chest, with a naval officer on top of it, grasping firmly a Cremona in one hand and holding a hat-box in the other. The boat was filled with any number of smaller packages, among which were two black portmanteaus, warranted to be the best of leather, and containing the gentleman’s dress and undress uniforms; these, however, turned out to be mere painted pasteboard, and in a very few months the cockroaches – careless, merry-hearted creatures – after eating up every morsel of them, turned their attention to the contents, on which they dined and supped for many days, till the officer’s dress-coat was like a meal-sieve, and his pantaloons might have been conveniently need for a landing-net. This, however, was a matter of small consequence, for, contrary to the reiterated assurance of his feline friend, no one portion of this officer’s uniform held out for a longer period than six months, the introduction of any part of his person into the corresponding portion of his raiment having become a matter of matutinal anxiety and distress, lest a solution of continuity in the garment might be the unfortunate result.

About six o’clock on a beautiful Wednesday evening, early in the month of May, our gallant and saucy frigate turned her bows seaward and slowly steamed away from amidst the fleet of little boats that – crowded with the unhappy wives and sweethearts of the sailors – had hung around us all the afternoon. Puffing and blowing a great deal, and apparently panting to be out and away at sea, the good ship nevertheless left her anchorage but slowly, and withal reluctantly, her tears falling thick and fast on the quarter-deck as she went.

The band was playing a slow and mournful air, by way of keeping up our spirits.

I had no friends to say farewell to, there was no tear-bedimmed eye to gaze after me until I faded in distance; so I stood on the poop, leaning over the bulwarks, after the fashion of Vanderdecken, captain of the Flying Dutchman, and equally sad and sorrowful-looking. And what did I see from my elevated situation? A moving picture, a living panorama; a bright sky sprinkled with a few fleecy cloudlets, over a blue sea all in motion before a fresh breeze of wind; a fleet of little boats astern, filled with picturesquely dressed seamen and women waving handkerchiefs; the long breakwater lined with a dense crowd of sorrowing friends, each anxious to gain one last look of the dear face he may never see more. Yonder is the grey-haired father, yonder the widowed mother, the affectionate brother, the loving sister, the fond wife, the beloved sweetheart, – all are there; and not a sigh that is sighed, not a tear that is shed, not a prayer that is breathed, but finds a response in the bosom of some loved one on board. To the right are green hills, people-clad likewise, while away in the distance the steeple of many a church “points the way to happier spheres,” and on the flagstaff at the port-admiral’s house is floating the signal “Fare thee well.”

The band has ceased to play, the sailors have given their last ringing cheer, even the echoes of which have died away, and faintly down the wind comes the sound of the evening bells. The men are gathered in little groups on deck, and there is a tenderness in their landward gaze, and a pathos in their rough voices, that one would hardly expect to find.

“Yonder’s my Poll, Jack,” says one. “Look, see! the poor lass is crying; blowed if I think I’ll ever see her more.”

“There,” says another, “is my old girl on the breakwater, beside the old cove in the red nightcap.”

“That’s my father, Bill,” answers a third. “God bless the dear old chap?”

“Good-bye, Jean; good-bye, lass. Ah! she won’t hear me. Blessed if I don’t feel as if I could make a big baby of myself and cry outright.”

“Oh! Dick, Dick,” exclaims an honest-looking tar; “I see’d my poor wife tumble down; she had wee Johnnie in her arms, and – and what will I do?”

“Keep up your heart, to be sure,” answers a tall, rough son of a gun. “There, she has righted again, only a bit of a swoon ye see. I’ve got neither sister, wife, nor mother, so surely it’s me that ought to be making a noodle of myself; but where’s the use?”

An hour or two later we were steaming across channel, with nothing visible but the blue sea all before us, and the chalky cliffs of Cornwall far behind, with the rosy blush of the setting sun lingering on their summits.

Then the light faded from the sky, the gloaming star shone out in the east, big waves began to tumble in, and the night breeze blew cold and chill from off the broad Atlantic Ocean.

Tired and dull, weary and sad, I went below to the wardroom and seated myself on a rocking chair. It was now that I began to feel the discomfort of not having a cabin. Being merely a supernumerary or passenger, such a luxury was of course out of the question, even had I been an admiral. I was to have a screen berth, or what a landsman would call a canvas tent, on the main or fighting deck, but as yet it was not rigged. Had I never been to sea before, I would have now felt very wretched indeed; but having roughed it in Greenland and Davis Straits in small whaling brigs, I had got over the weakness of sea-sickness; yet notwithstanding I felt all the thorough prostration both of mind and body, which the first twenty-four hours at sea often produces in the oldest and best of sailors, so that I was only too happy when I at last found myself within canvas.

By next morning the wind had freshened, and when I turned out I found that the steam had been turned off, and that we were bowling along before a ten-knot breeze. All that day the wind blew strongly from the N.N.E., and increased as night came on to a regular gale of wind. I had seen some wild weather in the Greenland Ocean, but never anything before, nor since, to equal the violence of the storm on that dreadful night, in the Bay of Biscay. We were running dead before the wind at twelve o’clock, when the gale was at its worst, and when the order to light fires and get up steam had been given. Just then we were making fourteen knots, with only a foresail, a fore-topsail, and main-topsail, the latter two close-reefed. I was awakened by a terrific noise on deck, and I shall not soon forget that awakening. The ship was leaking badly both at the ports and scupper-holes; so that the maindeck all around was flooded with water, which lifted my big chest every time the roll of the vessel allowed it to flow towards it. To say the ship was rolling would express but poorly the indescribably disagreeable wallowing motion of the frigate, while men were staggering with anxious faces from gun to gun, seeing that the lashings were all secure; so great was the strain on the cable-like ropes that kept them in their places. The shot had got loose from the racks, and were having a small cannonade on their own account, to the no small consternation of the men whose duty it was to re-secure them. It was literally sea without and sea within, for the green waves were pouring down the main hatchway, adding to the amount of water already below, where the chairs and other articles of domestic utility were all afloat and making voyages of discovery from one officer’s cabin to another.

On the upper deck all was darkness, confusion, and danger, for both the fore and main-topsails had been carried away at the same time, reducing us to one sail – the foresail. The noise and crackling of the riven canvas, mingling with the continuous roar of the storm, were at times increased by the rattle of thunder and the rush of rain-drops, while the lightning played continually around the slippery masts and cordage. About one o’clock, a large ship, apparently unmanageable, was dimly seen for one moment close aboard of us – had we come into collision the consequences must have been dreadful; – and thus for two long hours, till steam was got up, did we fly before the gale, after which the danger was comparatively small.

Having spent its fury, having in fact blown itself out of breath, the wind next day retired to its cave, and the waves got smaller and beautifully less, till peace and quietness once more reigned around us.

Going on deck one morning I found we were anchored under the very shadow of a steep rock, and not far from a pretty little town at the foot of a high mountain, which was itself covered to the top with trees and verdure, with the white walls of many a quaint-looking edifice peeping through the green – boats, laden with fruit and fish and turtle, surrounded the ship. The island of Madeira and town, of Funchal. As there was no pier, we had to land among the stones. The principal amusement of English residents here seems to be lounging about, cheroot in mouth, beneath the rows of trees that droop over the pavements, getting carried about in portable hammocks, and walking or riding (I rode, and, not being able to get my horse to move at a suitable pace, I looked behind, and found the boy from whom I had hired him sticking like a leech to my animal’s tail, nor would he be shaken off – nor could the horse be induced to kick him off; this is the custom of the Funchalites, and a funny one it is) to the top of the mountain, for the pleasure of coming down in a sleigh, a distance of two miles, in twice as many minutes, while the least deviation from the path would result in a terrible smash against the wall of either side, but I never heard of any such accident occurring.

Three days at Madeira, and up anchor again; our next place of call being Saint Helena. Every one has heard of the gentleman who wanted to conquer the world but couldn’t, who tried to beat the British but didn’t, who staked his last crown at a game of loo, and losing fled, and fleeing was chased, and being chased was caught and chained by the leg, like an obstreperous game-cock, to a rock somewhere in the middle of the sea, on which he stood night and day for years, with his arms folded across his chest, and his cocked hat wrong on, a warning to the unco-ambitious. The rock was Saint Helena, and a very beautiful rock it is too, hill and dell and thriving town, its mountain-sides tilled and its straths and glens containing many a fertile little farm. It is the duty of every one who touches the shores of this far-famed island to make a pilgrimage to Longwood, the burial-place of the “great man.” I have no intention of describing this pilgrimage, for this has been done by dozens before my time, or, if not, it ought to have been: I shall merely add a very noticeable fact, which others may not perchance have observed —both sides of the road all the way to the tomb are strewn with Bass’s beer-bottles, empty of course, and at the grave itself there are hogsheads of them; and the same is the case at every place which John Bull has visited, or where English foot has ever trodden. The rule holds good all over the world; and in the Indian Ocean, whenever I found an uninhabited island, or even reef which at some future day would be an island, if I did not likewise find an empty beer-bottle, I at once took possession in the name of Queen Victoria, giving three hips! and one hurrah! thrice, and singing “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” without any very distinct notion as to who was the jolly fellow; also adding more decidedly “which nobody can deny” – there being no one on the island to deny it.

England has in this way acquired much additional territory at my hands, without my having as yet received any very substantial recompense for my services.

Chapter Seven.

The Modern Roderick Random. Half a Servant. A Pretty Picture

The duties of the assistant-surgeon – the modern Roderick Random – on board a line-of-battle ship are seldom very onerous in time of peace, and often not worth mentioning. Suppose, for example, the reader is that officer. At five bells – half-past six – in the morning, if you happen to be a light sleeper, you will be sensible of some one gliding silently into your cabin, rifling your pockets, and extracting your watch, your money, and other your trinkets; but do not jump out of bed, pray, with the intention of collaring him; it is no thief – only your servant. Formerly this official used to be a marine, with whom on joining your ship you bargained in the following manner.

The marine walked up to you and touched his front hair, saying at the same time, —

“I don’t mind looking arter you, sir,” or “I’ll do for you, sir.” On which you would reply, —

“All right! what’s your name?” and he would answer “Cheeks,” or whatever his name might be. (Cheeks, that is the real Cheeks, being a sort of visionary soldier – a phantom marine – and very useful at times, answering in fact to the Nobody of higher quarters, who is to blame for so many things, – “Nobody is to blame,” and “Cheeks is to blame,” being synonymous sentences.)

Now-a-days Government kindly allows each commissioned officer one half of a servant, or one whole one between two officers, which, at times, is found to be rather an awkward arrangement; as, for instance, you and, say, the lieutenant of marines, have each the half of the same servant, and you wish your half to go on shore with a message, and the lieutenant requires his half to remain on board: the question then comes to be one which only the wisdom of Solomon could solve, in the same way that Alexander the Great loosed the Gordian knot.

Your servant, then, on entering your cabin in the morning, carefully and quietly deposits the contents of your pockets on your table, and, taking all your clothes and your boots in his arms, silently flits from view, and shortly after re-enters, having in the interval neatly folded and brushed them. You are just turning round to go to sleep again, when —

“Six bells, sir, please,” remarks your man, laying his hand on your elbow, and giving you a gentle shake to insure your resuscitation, and which will generally have the effect of causing you to spring at once from your cot, perhaps in your hurry nearly upsetting the cup of delicious ship’s cocoa which he has kindly saved to you from his own breakfast – a no small sacrifice either, if you bear in mind that his own allowance is by no means very large, and that his breakfast consists of cocoa and biscuits alone – these last too often containing more weevils than flour. As you hurry into your bath, your servant coolly informs you —

“Plenty of time, sir. Doctor himself hain’t turned out yet.”

“Then,” you inquire, “it isn’t six bells?”

“Not a bit on it, sir,” he replies; “wants the quarter.”

The rogue has lied to get you up.

At seven o’clock exactly you make your way forward to the sick-bay, on the lower deck at the ship’s bows. Now, this making your way forward isn’t by any means such an easy task as one might imagine; for at that hour the deck is swarming with the men at their toilet, stripped to the waist, every man at his tub, lathering, splashing, scrubbing and rubbing, talking, laughing, joking, singing, sweating, and swearing. Finding your way obstructed, you venture to touch one mildly on the bare back, as a hint to move aside and let you pass; the man immediately damns your eyes, then begs pardon, and says he thought it was Bill “at his lark again.” Another who is bending down over his tub you touch more firmly on the os innominatum, and ask him in a free and easy sort of tone to “slue round there.” He “slues round,” very quickly too, but unfortunately in the wrong direction, and ten to one capsizes you in a tub of dirty soapsuds. Having picked yourself up, you pursue your journey, and sing out as a general sort of warning —

For the benefit of those happy individuals who never saw, or had to eat, weevils, I may here state that they are small beetles of the exact size and shape of the common woodlouse, and that the taste is rather insipid, with a slight flavour of boiled beans. Never have tasted the woodlouse, but should think the flavour would be quite similar.

“Gangway there, lads,” which causes at least a dozen of these worthies to pass such ironical remarks to their companions as —

“Out of the doctor’s way there, Tom.”

“Let the gentleman pass, can’t you, Jack?”

“Port your helm, Mat; the doctor wants you to.”

“Round with your stern, Bill; the surgeon’s mate is a passing.”

“Kick that donkey Jones out of the doctor’s road,” – while at the same time it is always the speaker himself who is in the way.

At last, however, you reach the sick-bay in safety, and retire within the screen. Here, if a strict service man, you will find the surgeon already seated; and presently the other assistant enters, and the work is begun. There is a sick-bay man, or dispenser, and a sick-bay cook, attached to the medical department. The surgeon generally does the brain-work, and the assistants the finger-work; and, to their shame be it spoken, there are some surgeons too proud to consult their younger brethren, whom they treat as assistant-drudges, not assistant-surgeons.

At eight o’clock – before or after, – the work is over, and you are off to breakfast.

At nine o’clock the drum beats, when every one, not otherwise engaged, is required to muster on the quarter-deck, every officer as he comes up lifting his cap, not to the captain, but to the Queen. After inspection the parson reads prayers; you are then free to write, or read, or anything else in reason you choose; and, if in harbour, you may go on shore – boats leaving the ship at regular hours for the convenience of the officers – always premising that one medical man be left on board, in case of accident. In most foreign ports where a ship may be lying, there is no want of both pleasure and excitement on shore. Take for example the little town of Simon’s, about twenty miles from Cape Town, with a population of not less than four thousand of Englishmen, Dutch, Malays, Caffres, and Hottentots. The bay is large, and almost landlocked. The little white town is built along the foot of a lofty mountain. Beautiful walks can be had in every direction, along the hard sandy sea-beach, over the mountains and on to extensive table-lands, or away up into dark rocky dingles and heath-clad glens. Nothing can surpass the beauty of the scenery, or the gorgeous loveliness of the wild heaths and geraniums everywhere abounding. There is a good hotel and billiard-room; and you can shoot where, when, and what you please – monkeys, pigeons, rock rabbits, wild ducks, or cobra-di-capellas. If you long for more society, or want to see life, get a day or two days’ leave. Rise at five o’clock; the morning will be lovely and clear, with the mist rising from its flowery bed on the mountain’s brow, and the sun, large and red, entering on a sky to which nor pen nor pencil could do justice. The cart is waiting for you at the hotel, with an awning spread above. Jump in: crack goes the long Caffre whip; away with a plunge and a jerk go the three pairs of Caffre horses, and along the sea-shore you dash, with the cool sea-breeze in your face, and the water, green and clear, rippling up over the horses’ feet; then, amid such scenery, with such exhilarating weather, in such a life-giving climate, if you don’t feel a glow of pleasure that will send the blood tingling through your veins, from the points of your ten toes to the extreme end of your eyelashes, there must be something radically and constitutionally wrong with you, and the sooner you go on board and dose yourself with calomel and jalap the better.

Arrived at Cape Town, a few introductions will simply throw the whole city at your command, and all it contains.

I do not intend this as a complete sketch of your trip, or I would have mentioned some of the many beautiful spots and places of interest you pass on the road – Rathfeldas for example, a hotel halfway, a house buried in sweetness; and the country round about, with its dark waving forests, its fruitful fields and wide-spreading vineyards, where the grape seems to grow almost without cultivation; its comfortable farm-houses; and above all its people, kind, generous, and hospitable as the country is prolific.