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- CHAPTER VII.
BREAKFAST, DINNER, AND SUPPER.
Not only is the dinner-table a criterion of rank on board a man-of-war,
but also the dinner hour. He who dines latest is the greatest man; and
he who dines earliest is accounted the least. In a flag-ship, the
Commodore generally dines about four or five o’clock; the Captain about
three; the Lieutenants about two; while _the people_ (by which phrase
the common seamen are specially designated in the nomenclature of the
quarter-deck) sit down to their salt beef exactly at noon.
Thus it will be seen, that while the two estates of sea-kings and
sea-lords dine at rather patrician hours—and thereby, in the long run,
impair their digestive functions—the sea-commoners, or _the people_,
keep up their constitutions, by keeping up the good old-fashioned,
Elizabethan, Franklin-warranted dinner hour of twelve.
Twelve o’clock! It is the natural centre, key-stone, and very heart of
the day. At that hour, the sun has arrived at the top of his hill; and
as he seems to hang poised there a while, before coming down on the
other side, it is but reasonable to suppose that he is then stopping to
dine; setting an eminent example to all mankind. The rest of the day is
called _afternoon_; the very sound of which fine old Saxon word conveys
a feeling of the lee bulwarks and a nap; a summer sea—soft breezes
creeping over it; dreamy dolphins gliding in the distance. _Afternoon!_
the word implies, that it is an after-piece, coming after the grand
drama of the day; something to be taken leisurely and lazily. But how
can this be, if you dine at five? For, after all, though Paradise Lost
be a noble poem, and we men-of-war’s men, no doubt, largely partake in
the immortality of the immortals yet, let us candidly confess it,
shipmates, that, upon the whole, our dinners are the most momentous
attains of these lives we lead beneath the moon. What were a day
without a dinner? a dinnerless day! such a day had better be a night.
Again: twelve o’clock is the natural hour for us men-of-war’s men to
dine, because at that hour the very time-pieces we have invented arrive
at their terminus; they can get no further than twelve; when
straightway they continue their old rounds again. Doubtless, Adam and
Eve dined at twelve; and the Patriarch Abraham in the midst of his
cattle; and old Job with his noon mowers and reapers, in that grand
plantation of Uz; and old Noah himself, in the Ark, must have gone to
dinner at precisely _eight bells_ (noon), with all his floating
families and farm-yards.
But though this antediluvian dinner hour is rejected by modern
Commodores and Captains, it still lingers among “_the people_” under
their command. Many sensible things banished from high life find an
asylum among the mob.
Some Commodores are very particular in seeing to it, that no man on
board the ship dare to dine after his (the Commodore’s,) own dessert is
cleared away.—Not even the Captain. It is said, on good authority, that
a Captain once ventured to dine at five, when the Commodore’s hour was
four. Next day, as the story goes, that Captain received a private
note, and in consequence of that note, dined for the future at
half-past three.
Though in respect of the dinner hour on board a man-of-war, _the
people_ have no reason to complain; yet they have just cause, almost
for mutiny, in the outrageous hours assigned for their breakfast and
supper.
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