up in a clinch, and never a knife to cut the seasing;' so I makes up my mind for the worst, and bad was the best, for I'm blow'd but the frigate was more like a methody chapel afloat nor one of his Majesty's ships. There was the captain, would puzzle the devil himself to know what he was; he was sometimes a sanctificator, and sometimes one o' your smart-un's; a chap that could sarve out a sarment a Sunday, and four or five dozen a Monday; and then, perhaps, for a couple of months, when a freak of the skipper went off, and fit of the parsen com'd on, there was a spell with the cat for the cruce. Well, howsomever, you know, he makes, as they call it, a parcel of convicts1 aboard-ay, as good as one-third of the crew, 'sides the second leaftennant, his coxen, and clerk. There was these psalm-singing beggars, with their hair as straight as a die, and their ways, aye, as crooked as a "snake on a stay," going from mess to mess on the 'twixt-decks, sarving out tracks as they tarm 'em-your die-away speeches, you know-your Repentance made easy,' and the like of such lubberly trash. Watch or no watch, a fellow'd never no rest for his body or soul, these jarneymen parsons so bothered them both. I remember, one day, as I was taking a caulk on my chest in the berth, who should come forward, you know, but the captain's coxen. 'Well,' says he, giving me a shake o' the shoulder,Sem,' says he, 'rise, my man, 'tis time afore this you'd a call.'Why d-n it,' says I, 'it's my watch below!' Watch below!' says he, turning up his eyes like a lady in love, ah, Sam! 'tis time you should think of your watch above.' Well, I'm blow'd if I knew what the fellow was at, so I lets him go on for awhile. When, Sam,' says he, looking me straight in the face, 'you're sure to be damn'd for your sins.'- The devil I am, who told you?' says I.-'I tells you,' says he, unless you gets (let's see, what was the word), unless you gets-you gets -I have him-you gets-Re-Re-jenny-rated,' says he.-'What ship's that? get rated what?" says I.-' Born'd all over again,' says he. What, tarn a fellow into Twicelaid?' says I. Aye, and tarn from your sins,' says he.-So, 3 to shorten the matter, says I, 'I tell you what it is, Mr Coxen, every man to his station-" the cook to the fore-sheet;" you may be a very good hand at the helm -but a precious poor pilot for heaven. You're out of your latitude now; keep within soundings,' says I, ' and talk like a sensible man; when its comfort I wants, 'tis not to the likes of such fellows as you that I'll seek; I'll look to the log-book aloft; so " brace up and haul aft," and no more of your preaching,' says I. Well, I silenced his fire, for he never came near me again. 5 "But this was a trifle to some of their tricks. Why, bless your hearts, they used to practise the psalms in the store-rooms, and join reg'lar coal-box * as they sung 'em aloud on a Sunday. It's as true as I'm here; but this wasn't the worst of it neither, for all the work fell on the Good men' aboard; and the topmasts might go over the side, afore one of those methody chaps would clap on a clewline. Then, as for coming to box, I'm sartain one-half of 'em would have thought it a sin to have stuck to their guns. They were even too lazy to go for their grub. Why, the whole o' the ship's company went without breakfast one morn, 'kase a parcel of these straight-haired, double-faced fellows (the ship's cook as bad as the best on 'em) thought proper to 'pound' the gospel instead of the cocoa. 6 Howsomever, it didn't happen again, though these hippercrodile 7 rigs, as they call 'em, flew through the frigate like wild-fire, till at last she was no better nor a reg'lar-built hell afloat. There was the first leaftennant and skipper for ever a snarling; for Billy was blue to the bone, and too much of a man to bear-up for a parson. the skipper and second leaftennant was as thick as three in a bed: what one would say, t'other would swear to the queerest notions would come into their heads, for they were a pair of the most suspiciousest men as ever was born'd. : But "I shall never forget one day, when the second leaftennant had charge o' the watch; I goes aft, just to ax for a pot o' water to make a mess o' Ge-ografy afore I went to relieve the weatherwheel, when he takes it into 's head I 9 8 1 Convicts-converts. 2 Caulk-to sleep upon deck, or lie down with their clothes on, is called a caulk. 4 Twicelaid: Old rope re-manufactured anew. 5 A nautical designation for hard-working willing seamen. 3 Coal-box-chorus. 6 The cocoa, on board a man-of-war, is pounded the previous day to its being boiled for breakfast, by one of the messes, each mess taking this duty in turn. 7 Hypocritical. 8 Ge-ografy-a sort of beverage made by seamen out of burnt biscuit boiled in water, 9 The man who steers the ship, and who stands at the weather-side of the wheel. VOL. XIX. ЗА was drunk-there he was for all the world like one o' your figures on the rudder-head of a Dutchman's dogger, stuck on a carronade-slide, with a track in one hand, and a trumpet in t'other. "Well, howsomever, says I, taking off my hat at the time, as I nears him, 'Pot o' water, i' you please, sir,' says I: well, there never was no answer till I axes him louder and louder three or four times; when all of a sudden, lifting his eyes what were staring clean out of his head, from the book he was reading, and grinning his teeth like a laughing Ienah, he shies the trumpet slap in my face, singing out like a new-one,- Wiper, away! wiper, away! the wicked spirit's within you!'-May I never see light if I tasted a drop o' my grog that day, for I gave the whole o' my allowance to one of the topmen for making me a duck-pair of mustering trowsers: no, not all I could say could make him believe I was sober; so he sings out, you know, for the master-'t-arms, and orders me both legs in limbo, for contempt, as he calls it. Well, there I was, hard-and-fast, for a fortnight, ground-tackle down, with a cable each way; though 'twas hard, to be sure, an innocent fellow should be shov'd into irons just for the freaks of a sanctificator. Howsomever, as there was eight or ten more of us lock'd by the legs, the duty looked shy in the ship; for, as Pat says, all the best hands aboard were fast by the feet. Well, 'twas all very well till we comes into port, and the day was fixed for sarving out slops. The hands at seven-bells was turned up as usual, when, just as Pill-garlic, with the rest o' the prisoneers, was ready for 'preachy or floggy,' and the captain about to muster my name, the second leaftennant all on a sudden starts for'ard,and says to the captain-' Now do you hear 'em, the d'ciples of Satin? Now do you hear 'em?' though there wasn't as much as a whisper to be heard at the time fore and aft. Well, you know, the captain sees there was some'at amiss, so the hands were piped down, and punishment put off, for the man was as mad as any chap 1 in St Luke's. Well, about two or three morns after this, just as the decks were dried up, and hammocks all stowed in the netting, up he comes, rigg'd out to the nines in white silk stockings, breeks, and buckles in his shoes, all ready to go ashore to a ball, as he said: but 'twas a ball of a different mould what he meant ; for, just as the hands were turned up, up top-gallant-yards, and every one on deck as would go; down he flies to the gunroom, seizes a pistol, and blows out his brains; and though, when alive, he'd never a laugh on his phiz, would you believe it, when dead, there was a grin on his face, as much as to say he'd been mocking us all, as well as his Maker. There's a precious end for a sanctificator!' "This acount of the fanatical pranks, which, we regret to say, were played on board of one of our men-of-war, though related in the droll language of Jack, is, nevertheless, faithful as to facts. Perhaps as good a moral may be collected from his yurn,' as might be conveyed in a strain more serious or didactic." We never willingly give offence to any one sole single individual, Christian or Whig, but now and then 'tis impossible to help it. Hitherto we have seldom spoken of the British naVy, except in general terms of admiration of its glorious and unconquerable spirit; for we number among our friends but few naval officers; and they are fighting rather than writing men. But we intend to make a venture, and give articles about the Fleet. They may show ignorance of many things familiar to the British seaman, but they shall show no ignorance of his humanity, his courage, and his patriotism? We even now put forth, in a conclusion too long perhaps delayed, a few words concerning that discipline, which the sons of the ocean have chosen for themselves, and under which they fought and triumphedwe shall not say how much farther back-but from Blake to Broke. A hundred questions relative to the navy crowd upon us for discussion, and we are grieved to the heart to be informed that we are now positively enditing an additional half sheet to Maga; so we must, however unwillingly, approach to Finis. The systouch upon-and discipline in all its tem of impressment we would fain branches. On these subjects our author speaks most sensibly; and we are sorry that we cannot quote entire the first chapter of his second volume. He is no thin-skinned sentimentalist, sighing forth a code of lenient laws for those delicate and consumptive creatures, the mariners of England. Let 1 Jack's familiar phrase for punishment. him open his mouth at a Whig meeting on the subject, and the blues will cough him down with hisses as a perfect barbarian. Yet we believe him to be as brave and humane a man as ever leapt overboard to save a powder-monkey; ay, the Captain would dash over the gunwale,we warrant him, to save the life of the most despicable devil in the ship, when many a saint would content himself with ejaculating a long-winded prayer. Sensibility is a word we hold in especial abhorrence, for it characterizes the souls of passive slaves. Nothing so cherishes base sensibility as prayer. There is indeed a kind of prayer which brings down from heaven power and glory to the souls of our feeble race. But whatwe now speak of is the base desertion of a man's mind from this earth and its dangers to heaven in ejaculations --when all laws, human and divine, that is to say, all impulses of an undebased nature, and all commands from God, should drive him in silence, and without more than a look upwards, to devote himself, if so it must be, for the salvation of any one wretch framed in the same image, dressed in the same rig, pressed by the same gang, swinging in the same hammock, intoxicated with the same grog, dancing at the same hopping shop, flogged by the tails of the same cat, destined to be pensioned by the same government, to get grey and glorious in the same Greenwich, and if not to rot in the same grave, yet what matters it, and where is the difference to lie cheek-byjowl, although a few roods apart, alike forgotten in the same burial-ground! One of the most judicious chapters in these volumes is, as we have said, on the subject of Discipline. It does not enter much into details, but contains the essence of the experience of one who, we have no doubt, is a gallant, humane, firm, and intelligent officer. With respect to punishments, in general, we see no reason why landsmen,like ourselves, should be unable to form a rational judgment. It is the fashion of the day to represent fear, in all its shapes, as ineffectual to repress disorder, insubordination, vice, or crime. All knowledge, all observation, lead to a totally different conclusion. Wickedness is, in the nature of things, inseparable from suffering; and pain and privation, as they are terrible in endurance, so are they terrible in forethought. All sensitive beings, who are also endowed with reason, will be anxious to avoid misery; and if they know, as certainly as that they have backs, that these backs will be scarified if they conduct themselves in a certain way, most assuredly that knowledge will generally deter them from acting in that way, and place them almost in a necessity of acting according to required rules. Corporal punishment is far from being dignified; it is always degrading. But the disgrace is not necessarily, and in all circumstances, a deep, festering, or incurable wound. Some spirits there doubtless are, who are insensible to the shame of sin, and yet all alive to the shame of punishment; so that, now and then, a flogged mutineer may wish to blow up the ship, or leap into a drowning death. That is a species of sullen or ferocious pride, with which we have, we confess, little sympathy; and, instead of the cat o' nine tails, such a culprit should be run up to the yard-arm. But the generality of mankind are not heroes of that class; and although they may not flinch during a flogging, will flinch at the bare idea of one. They would rather not-they would beg to be excused-and that peculiar breed of cats that live on shipboard, and that have not only nine lives, like their feline brethren on shore, but likewise nine tails, are, except in a gale of wind, fully more useful than the chaplain. It is quite a mistake to suppose, that the tails of a cat leave an indelible stigma, like that of the branding-iron. You cannot see it through the clothes, and Polly don't mind it. Many a good seaman is tattooed in that style, and not a whit the worse either for show or service. But admitting that the cat may cut occasionally too near the heart of an honest fellow-consider how rarely that happens; and that, in a thousand cases out of a thousand and five, Felis whips the offending Adam out of an unconscionable sinner. Punishment without pain and without disgrace is not even a bugbear,―but an animal to be dandled on the knee, hugged to the bosom, and taken at night into the hammock. We trust, therefore, that the cat o nine tails will never be so rare as a male cyprus; but will curve her back, purr, and be playful, on the decks of every ship in the British navy. The British navy is of pretty long 5 floating. "For a thousand years its flag has braved the battle and the breeze." And was there flogging through all those glorious centuries Somewhat too much of it, we verily believe; for the less the better. But did it break the naval spirit of England? Did it deaden it? No. It kept it alive and kicking. It was a privilege of our seamen ; for although flogging has never been unknown to our land-forces, it flourished in its native vigour at sea. Among all their other grievances, some of them too well-founded, our tars never included the cat. It is not too much to say, that it has always been with them rather a favourite animal. To be sure, they abuse it, and have lavished upon it a thousand endearing terms of desecration. But, depend upon it, they like it in their hearts, and consider it a sine qua non to a prosperous voyage or victorious battle. They always swear at it with a certain degree of respect; and were it out of the ship, what would become of the one half of their jokes, and the seasoning of the other? Such bodily inflictions, as crucifying, impaling, breaking on the wheel, slitting of the nose, et cetera, et cetera, are at once hideous and inefficacious. Ruffians rise against the laws, and there is not one sinecure place in the whole executive. But what exaggerating and dishonest idiots are they who confound the dreadful agonies of tortured nature with a little smarting between the shoulders, and down even to the rump? Jack is himself again before Saturday night, and roaring out Tom Bowling. It is delightful to hear young ladies eloquent against flogging, or even old women. Nay, it is not unpretty in the Miss-Mollyish members of a Seaman's Friend's Society: but pipe all hands on board the Dreadnought, and not a voice will be against grimalkin. Sailors are unquestionably an extra ordinary race. Look on that fellow with his glazed hat in a position that not the most ingenious man of the eleven millions now ashore all over England could reduce into practice, were he to rehearse till doomsday, only lose yourself for a few minutes in a hopeless speculation on the name of the colour of his hair,-mark, by the external sign on the absurd expression on one side of his face, the internal revolution of the quid,-what a tail! to which your arm would be a bad joke, if it were not so much shorter,-shoulders shrugging up, not at all in French fashion, but saying, in a forcible deaf-and-dumb language, you be d-d,"-a rolling motion, as if Jack were uncertain whether or not he had yet weighed anchor,-broad back, long arms, narrow loins, somewhat light in the timbers, and positively no posteriors,-and say gravely if ever you clapt eyes on such a hypothec. What does he care about flogging? Just enough to prefer keeping his back warm without it, and no more. Take him aside, and ask him to sign a petition to Parliament against the cat, and he will forthwith squirt you all over with liquid tobacco, pull up his tarry trowsers, and be off with a grin to the tune of Moll of Wapping. Had flogging been a grievance in the British navy, we should oftener have seen the black flag. There would have been more Admiral Parkers. Pay Jack his wages regularly-give him good junk, and proper allowance of grogand, above all things, little as it may be, let him see his prize-money in shiners, with his king's face smiling on him, and he will let his back take care of itself, and smile at a round dozen. He will die at his gun-he will laugh in mutilation in the cockpit-his cutlass will sweep the enemy's deck among the blast of boarders-he will nail the colours to the mast-but strike them never. At such an order only would Jack be a mutineer; and, if it must be so, then down with the " Barky' to Davy's locker, for it is a capacious one, and will take in, with room to spare, Goliath and all her crew, covered with canvass to her very skyscrapers. Are admirals, commanders, captains, lieutenants, all brute-beasts? Nogentlemen all, or nearly all-if not gentlemen born, gentlemen bred by Neptune and the Nereids. Their humanity may not be that of a Wilberforce or a Fry; but what sort of a sea-captain would Mr Wilberforce make, or Mrs Fry either? When Jack's legs are both carried away by the board,-that is the time to be tender with him,-and there he sits waiting, in blood, for his turn with the surgeon, side by side with that beau tiful young midshipman, whose mother, the daughter and wife of a duke, sent him away, but a week ago, from the palace of his ancestors, with weeping and with prayers, that her boy might do his duty. And if the young lord die in his glory, and the old seaman survive, the one will be interred to the sound of his country's thunder, and the other stump into a berth in Greenwich, the noblest palace that flings its shadows over the Thames. schemes will be covered with horrid ridicule, and nurse a deeper pollution. As to religion, that is a still more awful subject; and it is difficult to say with what lamentable ignorance and superstition it may not be combined, and (still be religion. That sailors are, as a body, irreligious, we shall never believe; for danger opens the heart before God. Perhaps more might be done-than has ever yet been done by the government of this country for religion in the navy-both at sea and on shore. It would be impossible to do too much, and the noblest faculties of thought, feeling, and eloquence, that ever graced a Christian divine, would "find ample room and verge enough," "the characters of heaven to trace" on the ground of the nautical character. Psalm-singing in floating-chapels, and such preaching as we have ever chanced to hear therein, seem not to us likely to enlighten or purify-and would to heaven, Lord Gambier, brave man as he is, had been but Archbishop of Canterbury. An old spirit-the spirit of the sea, broods over our navy. The usages of the race of men that belong to that dominion, should be preserved to them till they themselves solicit their abrogation. Their march is o'er the mountain wave, their home is on the deep -and let those legislators whose walk is on the turnpike-road, their homes upon the shore, beware of baffling the lives of the sons of the ocean. They have many incomprehensible customs, but there is a meaning in them all. What is odious or shameful-or distressing in their lot, will fall off, as it has been falling off for many years, in natural and unforced decay. Our naval officers, in knowledge, in intellect, in science, in humanity, stand on a level with the best men on earth; it is false to say that they are tyrantsbut the milk of human kindness in their heart is not diluted-the only water they use is in their grog-and there is more pity in the calm eye of him who has stood, fifty times, on a deck drenched with blood and brains, than in all the maudlin ogles of all the saints that ever sweated in a taber--but say that he is rather upwards of nacle. But saint and sinner shall from us have equal justice. The morals of seamen we must never expect to be immaculate, while the sea roars around Britain. From sensual vices they never can be free. Yet, after all, perhaps their vices are rather gross and glaring, than very wicked. We know with what sort of women they associate-but scamen are not seducers. The dreadful evil that shocks us in all the streets of all great cities, comes not from the wooden-walls. This, however, is a subject not to be discussed at present by us-only deplored. Let every man-every society of men-do their best to save their fellow-christians from vice. But let them know what they are about-else all their Far be it from us to say what may be the demands of conscience in the bosom of any man; and that Lord Gambier, and others like him, are sincere, is our honest conviction. But we have no hesitation whatever in saying, that he is a man of very weak judgment. He ought certainly to mount a shovel-hat; nay, in proposing to him that he should even now go into orders, we are perfectly serious. We do not know precisely his Lordship's age threescore. There can be no doubt that any one of all the bishops would ordain him without any very strict classical examination. They would never be so insensible to the services of the navy as to pluck an Admiral ; and being once in Deacon's orders, Lord Gambier would meet with speedy promotion. We are glad to know that he is already very rich; and, of course, he would give all his tithes to the poor. A brilliant preacher we scarcely think it would be reasonable to hope for in such a veteran-yet there is no saying, and he might blow Mr Irving out of the water. We beg the reverend Admiral's pardon, but these nautical expressions, however unbecoming this sacred theme, stick to us like burrs. It would be curious to mark |