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CHAPTER XV.
A SALT-JUNK CLUB IN A MAN-OF-WAR, WITH A NOTICE TO QUIT.
It was about the period of the Cologne-water excitement that my
self-conceit was not a little wounded, and my sense of delicacy
altogether shocked, by a polite hint received from the cook of the mess
to which I happened to belong. To understand the matter, it is needful
to enter into preliminaries.
The common seamen in a large frigate are divided into some thirty or
forty messes, put down on the purser’s books as _Mess_ No. 1, _Mess_
No. 2, _Mess_ No. 3, etc. The members of each mess club, their rations
of provisions, and breakfast, dine, and sup together in allotted
intervals between the guns on the main-deck. In undeviating rotation,
the members of each mess (excepting the petty-officers) take their turn
in performing the functions of cook and steward. And for the time
being, all the affairs of the club are subject to their inspection and
control.
It is the cook’s business, also, to have an eye to the general
interests of his mess; to see that, when the aggregated allowances of
beef, bread, etc., are served out by one of the master’s mates, the
mess over which he presides receives its full share, without stint or
subtraction. Upon the berth-deck he has a chest, in which to keep his
pots, pans, spoons, and small stores of sugar, molasses, tea, and
flour.
But though entitled a cook, strictly speaking, the head of the mess is
no cook at all; for the cooking for the crew is all done by a high and
mighty functionary, officially called the “_ship’s cook_,” assisted by
several deputies. In our frigate, this personage was a dignified
coloured gentleman, whom the men dubbed “_Old Coffee;_” and his
assistants, negroes also, went by the poetical appellations of
“_Sunshine_,” “_Rose-water_,” and “_May-day_.”
Now the _ship’s cooking_ required very little science, though old
Coffee often assured us that he had graduated at the New York Astor
House, under the immediate eye of the celebrated Coleman and Stetson.
All he had to do was, in the first place, to keep bright and clean the
three huge coppers, or caldrons, in which many hundred pounds of beef
were daily boiled. To this end, Rose-water, Sunshine, and May-day every
morning sprang into their respective apartments, stripped to the waist,
and well provided with bits of soap-stone and sand. By exercising these
in a very vigorous manner, they threw themselves into a violent
perspiration, and put a fine polish upon the interior of the coppers.
Sunshine was the bard of the trio; and while all three would be busily
employed clattering their soap-stones against the metal, he would
exhilarate them with some remarkable St. Domingo melodies; one of which
was the following:
“Oh! I los’ my shoe in an old canoe,
Johnio! come Winum so!
Oh! I los’ my boot in a pilot-boat,
Johnio! come Winum so!
Den rub-a-dub de copper, oh!
Oh! copper rub-a-dub-a-oh!”
When I listened to these jolly Africans, thus making gleeful their toil
by their cheering songs, I could not help murmuring against that
immemorial rule of men-of-war, which forbids the sailors to sing out,
as in merchant-vessels, when pulling ropes, or occupied at any other
ship’s duty. Your only music, at such times, is the shrill pipe of the
boatswain’s mate, which is almost worse than no music at all. And if
the boatswain’s mate is not by, you must pull the ropes, like convicts,
in profound silence; or else endeavour to impart unity to the exertions
of all hands, by singing out mechanically, _one_, _two_, _three_, and
then pulling all together.
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