Chapter 22 - Page 2

disagreeable decks.

Now, against this invariable daily flooding of the three decks of a
frigate, as a man-of-war's-man, White-Jacket most earnestly protests.
In sunless weather it keeps the sailors' quarters perpetually damp;
so much so, that you can scarce sit down without running the risk of
getting the lumbago. One rheumatic old sheet-anchor-man among us was
driven to the extremity of sewing a piece of tarred canvas on the seat
of his trowsers.

Let those neat and tidy officers who so love to see a ship kept spick
and span clean; who institute vigorous search after the man who chances
to drop the crumb of a biscuit on deck, when the ship is rolling in a
sea-way; let all such swing their hammocks with the sailors; and they
would soon get sick of this daily damping of the decks.

Is a ship a wooden platter, that is to be scrubbed out every morning
before breakfast, even if the thermometer be at zero, and every sailor
goes barefooted through the flood with the chilblains? And all the
while the ship carries a doctor, well aware of Boerhaave's great maxim
"_keep the feet dry_." He has plenty of pills to give you when you are
down with a fever, the consequence of these things; but enters no
protest at the outset--as it is his duty to do--against the cause that
induces the fever.

During the pleasant night watches, the promenading officers, mounted on
their high-heeled boots, pass dry-shod, like the Israelites, over the
decks; but by daybreak the roaring tide sets back, and the poor sailors
are almost overwhelmed in it, like the Egyptians in the Red Sea.

Oh! the chills, colds, and agues that are caught. No snug stove,
grate, or fireplace to go to; no, your only way to keep warm is
to keep in a blazing passion, and anathematise the custom that
every morning makes a wash-house of a man-of-war.

Look at it. Say you go on board a line-of-battle-ship: you see
everything scrupulously neat; you see all the decks clear and
unobstructed as the sidewalks of Wall Street of a Sunday morning; you
see no trace of a sailor's dormitory; you marvel by what magic all
this is brought about. And well you may. For consider, that in this
unobstructed fabric nearly one thousand mortal men have to sleep,
eat, wash, dress, cook, and perform all the ordinary functions of
humanity. The same number of men ashore would expand themselves into a
township. Is it credible, then, that this extraordinary neatness, and
especially this _unobstructedness_ of a man-of-war, can be brought
about, except by the most rigorous edicts, and a very serious sacrifice,
with respect to the sailors, of the domestic comforts of life? To be
sure, sailors themselves do not often complain of these things; they
are