- end_line
- 14989
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.278Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 14956
- text
- yourselves not again; swear not at all hereafter.
Ay, these very tars—the foremost in denouncing the Navy; who had bound
themselves by the most tremendous oaths—these very men, not three days
after getting ashore, were rolling round the streets in penniless
drunkenness; and next day many of them were to be found on board of the
_guardo_ or receiving-ship. Thus, in part, is the Navy manned.
But what was still more surprising, and tended to impart a new and
strange insight into the character of sailors, and overthrow some
long-established ideas concerning them as a class, was this: numbers of
men who, during the cruise, had passed for exceedingly prudent, nay,
parsimonious persons, who would even refuse you a patch, or a needleful
of thread, and, from their stinginess, procured the name of
_Ravelings_—no sooner were these men fairly adrift in harbour, and
under the influence of frequent quaffings, than their
three-years’-earned wages flew right and left; they summoned whole
boarding-houses of sailors to the bar, and treated them over and over
again. Fine fellows! generous-hearted tars! Seeing this sight, I
thought to myself, Well, these generous-hearted tars on shore were the
greatest curmudgeons afloat! it’s the bottle that’s generous, not they!
Yet the popular conceit concerning a sailor is derived from his
behaviour ashore; whereas, ashore he is no longer a sailor, but a
landsman for the time. A man-of-war’s-man is only a man-of-war’s-man at
sea; and the sea is the place to learn what he is. But we have seen
that a man-of-war is but this old-fashioned world of ours afloat, full
of all manner of characters—full of strange contradictions; and though
boasting some fine fellows here and there, yet, upon the whole, charged
to the combings of her hatchways with the spirit of Belial and all
unrighteousness.
- title
- Chunk 6