Chapter 15

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.

Now, when Sunshine, Rose-water, and May-day have so polished the ship’s coppers, that a white kid glove might be drawn along the inside and show no stain, they leap out of their holes, and the water is poured in for the coffee. And the coffee being boiled, and decanted off in bucketfuls, the cooks of the messes march up with their salt beef for dinner, strung upon strings and tallied with labels; all of which are plunged together into the self-same coppers, and there boiled. When, upon the beef being fished out with a huge pitch-fork, the water for the evening’s tea is poured in; which, consequently possesses a flavour not unlike that of shank-soup.

From this it will be seen, that, so far as cooking is concerned, a “cook of the mess” has very little to do; merely carrying his provisions to and from the grand democratic cookery. Still, in some things, his office involves many annoyances. Twice a week butter and cheese are served out—so much to each man—and the mess-cook has the sole charge of these delicacies. The great difficulty consists in so catering for the mess, touching these luxuries, as to satisfy all. Some guzzlers are for devouring the butter at a meal, and finishing off with the cheese the same day; others contend for saving it up against Banyan Day, when there is nothing but beef and bread; and others, again, are for taking a very small bit of butter and cheese, by way of dessert, to each and every meal through the week. All this gives rise to endless disputes, debates, and altercations.

Sometimes, with his mess-cloth—a square of painted canvas—set out on deck between the guns, garnished with pots, and pans, and kids, you see the mess-cook seated on a matchtub at its head, his trowser legs rolled up and arms bared, presiding over the convivial party.

“Now, men, you can’t have any butter to-day. I’m saving it up for to-morrow. You don’t know the value of butter, men. You, Jim, take your hoof off the cloth! Devil take me, if some of you chaps haven’t no more manners than so many swines! Quick, men, quick; bear a hand, and ‘scoff’ (eat) away.—I’ve got my to-morrow’s duff to make yet, and some of you fellows keep scoffing as if I had nothing to do but sit still here on this here tub here, and look on. There, there, men, you’ve all had enough: so sail away out of this, and let me clear up the wreck.”

In this strain would one of the periodical cooks of mess No. 15 talk to us. He was a tall, resolute fellow, who had once been a brakeman on a railroad, and he kept us all pretty straight; from his fiat there was no appeal.

But it was not thus when the turn came to others among us. Then it was look out for squalls. The business of dining became a bore, and digestion was seriously impaired by the unamiable discourse we had over our salt horse.

I sometimes thought that the junks of lean pork—which were boiled in their own bristles, and looked gaunt and grim, like pickled chins of half-famished, unwashed Cossacks—had something to do with creating the bristling bitterness at times prevailing in our mess. The men tore off the tough hide from their pork, as if they were Indians scalping Christians.

Some cursed the cook for a rogue, who kept from us our butter and cheese, in order to make away with it himself in an underhand manner; selling it at a premium to other messes, and thus accumulating a princely fortune at our expense. Others anthematised him for his slovenliness, casting hypercritical glances into their pots and pans, and scraping them with their knives. Then he would be railed at for his miserable “duffs,” and other shortcoming preparations.

Marking all this from the beginning, I, White-Jacket, was sorely troubled with the idea, that, in the course of time, my own turn would come round to undergo the same objurgations. How to escape, I knew not. However, when the dreaded period arrived, I received the keys of office (the keys of the mess-chest) with a resigned temper, and offered up a devout ejaculation for fortitude under the trial. I resolved, please Heaven, to approve myself an unexceptionable caterer, and the most impartial of stewards.

The first day there was “duff” to make—a business which devolved upon the mess-cooks, though the boiling of it pertained to Old Coffee and his deputies. I made up my mind to lay myself out on that duff; to centre all my energies upon it; to put the very soul of art into it, and achieve an unrivalled duff—a duff that should put out of conceit all other duffs, and for ever make my administration memorable.