On shipping in the Boxer, I received three months’ advance, which, excepting a small sum expended for clothing, fell into the hands of my rapacious landlord. How much this gentleman contrived to filch from me, it is not in my power to say; but that he was well paid, I have no doubt. He had my hundred dollars, my advance, all I earned for working on the wharves, and nine dollars beside, which I obtained from the purser. All this, according to his account, I spent in a few weeks, with the exception of a very small sum laid out for clothing. As I had no means of proving his statements false, there was no alternative but submission, and a return to a life of toil and danger, to earn a fresh supply.
As the method by which I obtained the nine dollars, above mentioned, from the purser, will exhibit one of the modes in which seamen are sometimes cheated, I will relate it. While in the Siren I drew but half my allowance of grog. By the rules of the service, I could claim the balance in money. This I overlooked when we were paid off, but, when my funds got low, it came into my mind. I proposed to some of the boys, who had a similar claim, to visit the purser. They only laughed at me, and said it would be of no use, for he would not pay it now we were discharged. Finding they would not join me, I went alone to the City Hotel, where the purser boarded, and inquired for him of the bar-tender. He came down stairs, and I spread out my complaint before him. He blustered and said I had no such claim allowed; I insisted, and told him it was my right, and he must pay it. Hoping to get rid of me, he told me to call again the next day. This I did, when he paid me nine dollars. This will show the reader one of the ways in which poor Jack is plundered, and that too by gentlemen!
The Boxer lay at the navy yard, whither we were conducted. The vacillation of a seaman’s character was illustrated before we got on board, by one of our hands running away: another went a little beyond the first. He went on board, where he pretended to lose his hat overboard. Begging permission to recover it, he seized the rope which fastened the boat to the shore, dropped over the stern into the boat, and pushing up to the wharf, leaped ashore and made off. Such fickle-mindedness is not uncommon among sailors.
We lost another of our crew in a more melancholy manner; he was in my mess, an Englishman by birth, who had just left a British vessel to enter the American service. He was at work on the main yard, and by some means or other, losing his foothold, he fell. Unfortunately, he struck a carronade screw in his descent, which inflicted a terrible wound. The poor man suffered excruciating agonies for a short time, and died. We buried him on shore, in a plain coffin, without form or ceremony. Such are the contingencies which wait to hurry seamen to the grave!
We were kept busily at work upon the brig for some time; after which our commander, Captain Porter, came on board. We soon found him to belong rather to the race of Fitzroys and Cardens, than to that of Decaturs, Parkers or Nicholsons. He was inclined to tyranny and severe discipline.
He soon gave us a specimen of his character in a most illegal act of punishment. We lay alongside the Hornet or Peacock, I forget which. It happened that her captain and most of her officers were gone ashore one day. Our captain accidentally saw one of her men engaged in some act of misconduct: instead of entering a complaint against the man to his own officers, he ordered him to be seized up and severely flogged, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties of the offender for pardon. Why the captain of that vessel did not call Captain Porter to an account for this manifest invasion of his prerogatives, I never knew, for we put to sea shortly afterwards. An officer who would thus gratuitously volunteer his services to punish a man, must be a tyrant at heart. So at least we thought; while many misgivings, concerning the future, troubled our minds.
As I was now rated an ordinary seaman, and not a boy, as heretofore, I had a station assigned me in the fore-top, instead of being a servant to any of the officers. I was also appointed to be one of the crew of the captain’s gig. This made my lot one of more fatigue and exposure than in any former voyage; a proof of which, I very soon experienced. It being now late in the fall, the weather became very cold. One afternoon, the pennant having got foul of the royal mast, an officer ordered me to go up and clear it. I had no mittens on; it took me some time to perform my task, and before I came down one of my fingers was frozen. Thus it is, however, with the poor tar; and he thinks himself happy to escape his dangers with injuries so slight as this.
The disposition of our commanding officer was still further revealed to my discomfort one day, while we were at work on the cables. Something I did, not happening to suit him, he gave me a severe blow on the head with his fist, not far from the place where I had been previously injured by the malice of the Malay boy. This unmanly blow occasioned me violent pains for several days.
Since that time, I have felt a peculiar hostility to a practice, which is lamentably common in some schools and families; I mean that of rapping children on the head with a thimble, or with the knuckles, or anything else. The practice is the result of irrational passion, it is dangerous, and cannot therefore be too severely reprobated. If it is pleaded as necessary to enforce obedience and ensure respect, I know it will fail of such effects; it will only excite feelings of revenge, ill-will and malice.
We now received sailing orders, and were very soon under weigh, bound to the Balize at the mouth of the Mississippi. On this passage we had further opportunities of learning the character of our officers. Although Captain Porter was stern and severe, yet he never used bad language. He always spoke with the utmost deliberation, but with such obvious indications of feeling, that we often trembled to hear his voice. Most of the other officers were by no means novitiates in the art of swearing; but our sailing-master exceeded all the rest in this diabolical habit. Whenever it was his watch on deck, he exercised his voice, and practised the use of his choice and varied vocabulary of oaths, by hallooing and threatening the men continually. Whenever we had to set on sail, or to reef, he was especially diligent in these matters; mingling with his curses, threats of the lash to those who were tardy, or whose movements did not exactly suit his taste. If such officers could only apprehend the profound contempt and bitter hatred with which they are regarded by their maddened crew, they would both tremble for safety, and despise their own littleness of soul. No really great man would enact the childish vagaries of a petty tyrant.
There was one respect in which we were more annoyed in the Boxer than I had been in the Macedonian. In this latter ship, none but the captain could order a man to be flogged; in the Boxer, the lieutenant or the officer of the watch could send a man to the gangway, and order the boatswain to lay on with a rope’s-end. This is a liberty which the laws of the navy should prohibit. A man should be secured the rights of a citizen, as well on the planks as on the soil of his country. True, it may be said, severity of discipline is necessary to good order in a ship. Not severity, but strictness, is what is wanted. Let a strict discipline be enforced, with pleasant looks, and a “Hurrah my lads, bear a hand!” and obedience will be more prompt and more perfect than when every order is accompanied with a “Damn you,” and with an exhibition of the rope’s-end or cat-o’-nine-tails. Common sense, as well as experience, will sustain this opinion.
While these matters were passing on board, our little brig was dashing through the waves in fine style. We arrived at the Balize, from whence we dropped down to Ship Island, where we took in water. A share of this severe task fell to my lot, for I was here taken out of the gig, and placed in the jolly-boat, to make way for a smaller and lighter lad in the former. We obtained our water by digging large holes in the sand, into which we placed our casks; the salt water, by passing through so much sand, would be so thoroughly filtrated, that by the time it reached our casks it was fit for use. We then emptied it into ten-gallon kegs, called breakers, which we carried on our shoulders to the boat. This of itself was hard work, but we had certain tormentors on this island, which made it a task of much suffering. These were hosts of hungry, gigantic moschetos, which assailed our persons, and especially our naked feet, in flying squadrons, with a ferocity that indicated an uncontrollable thirst for blood. But even these were not our worst persecutors. They were attended by armies of large, yellow horseflies, which our men called gallinippers. These merciless insect savages were always sure to attack the very spot we had rubbed sore, after the bite of a moscheto. Their bite felt like the thrust of a small sword; I still retain scars on my feet occasioned by these fierce gallinippers.
This island bore marks of the battle of New Orleans; for we found various articles bearing the broad arrow and stamped G. R. We also remarked several mounds, which had the appearance of being large graves. We afterwards learned that this was the place where the British brought their dead, after their unsuccessful attack on the city of New Orleans.
From Ship Island, we proceeded to New Orleans. This was a laborious passage; the current ran down the river with amazing force, bearing huge logs on its bosom, which, if suffered to strike either our bows or cables, were capable of doing much damage: to avoid them required no trifling exertions. Sometimes we endeavored to track her, or draw her along with ropes, as canal-boats are drawn by horses. But, as this brought us into shallow water, it was abandoned.
The banks of the river displayed large numbers of alligators, luxuriating on the numerous logs that were fast in the mud. We made many attempts to get near enough to these scaly monsters to pierce them with a boat-hook; but they kept too sharp a look-out for us; invariably diving into the stream before our boat got near enough for us to strike them. But, if we failed in capturing alligators, we obtained an abundance of palm-leaf, from the shore, with which we furnished ourselves with hats.
An instance of our commander’s tyranny occurred while we were ascending the river. He had requested a seaman, named Daily, who was somewhat acquainted with the river, to act as pilot. By accident or negligence, he suffered the brig to strike the bottom, though without the least injury. The captain flew into a passion, ordered him to the gangway, and commanded the boatswain’s mate to lay on with his rope’s-end. I did not witness this flogging, for the hands were not called up to witness punishment, unless administered by the cat-o’-nine-tails, but one of my messmates said that he received at least one hundred lashes. I saw him several days afterwards, with his back looking as if it had been roasted, and he unable to stand upright. He wore the same shirt in which he was flogged for some time afterwards. It was torn to rags, and showed the state of his back beneath. His object in wearing it was to mortify and shame the captain for his brutality.
The severity of flogging with the rope’s end is justly described in Mr. Dana’s excellent book, called “Two Years before the Mast.” Though not so cruel as the cat, it is nevertheless a harsh, degrading punishment. Our men used to say that “they would as lief be cut up on the bare back with the cat, as have back and shirt cut up together,” as was poor Daily’s. In truth, that flogging was both unjust and illegal. The articles of war provide, that not more than twelve lashes shall be given for a crime; but here one hundred were inflicted for no crime—for an accident, which might have happened to the best pilot who ever ascended the Mississippi. But though the captain was thus rendered amenable to the law, who would believe a poor sailor? Had he complained, it would doubtless have been to his own injury; for law, and especially naval law, is always on the side of the strong. This was not the only case of illegal flogging; but the justification of these excessive whippings, was found in the pretended existence of several crimes in the helpless offenders.
On one occasion we were at our quarters, exercising in the various evolutions of war; now at our guns, and then going through the forms of boarding an enemy; now running aloft, as if in the act of cutting down our enemy’s rigging, and then rushing below, as if to board her, firing our pistols, stabbing with our boarding-pikes, and cutting on all sides with our cutlasses. In the midst of this excitement, the movements of one of the men not happening to please the captain, he seized a cutlass and struck him a tremendous blow with its flat side; heated with passion, he let it glance as he struck, and the edge, entering the man’s back, made a deep flesh wound, which was very sore a long time. Some of our men swore that if they had been the sufferer, they would have shot the captain dead on the spot! Are men of such brutal tempers fit to command a man of war? Is it not wonderful that mutiny is so rare under such a discipline? Such an officer might do to command a crew of pirates, but not of freemen, such as Americans feel proud to entrust with the keeping of their national honor on the deep.
On reaching New Orleans, our ship was overhauled and repaired. We were sent on board the Louisiana, an old guard-ship, but had to cross the river every morning to assist in working on the brig. Several of our men, and myself among them, were quite sick here, owing to the free use of river water. The Louisiana had a number of men confined on board, for some crime; they wore chains round their legs, which were fastened to a large ball: the nature of their offence I did not ascertain.
The effects of Captain Porter’s severity were seen here in the loss of two of the crew. They belonged to the gig, and ran away while he was on shore. He made a strict, but unsuccessful, search after them. To deter others from a like attempt, or because he wanted an object on which to wreak his vengeance, he gave one poor fellow a cruel flogging for what, in sober fact, was no offence at all. The man was on shore, with some others, fixing the rigging, and, for some purpose or other, had walked a short distance from the rest, without the slightest intention to run away. But the captain wanted a victim, and this served for an excuse.
Our brig being finished, we returned on board, and were soon back at our old station off Ship Island, where we found several other small naval craft. While here I saw a man flogged through the fleet, or, as this might more properly be called, the squadron. His was the only instance of the kind I saw while in the American navy, and, although his back was most brutally mangled, yet I do not think he suffered equal to those who are flogged through an English fleet. Still, the indignity and brutality are the same in kind, though differing in degree: a man should never be made to endure it.
Not far from our station, at a place called St. Lewis’ Bay, our captain purchased some land, and actually sent some of our men to make a clearing upon it, and to erect a log house. Whether this was a legal employment of the strength and skill of his men or not, I cannot decide; but it struck me as being a perversion of the national resources to his own private benefit. Why should a captain of a ship of war be permitted to employ the time and energies of his men for private uses, while an officer of the government, who should employ its funds for his own advantage, would be charged with embezzlement and fraud? The cases are precisely alike, except that one uses the public money, the other what costs that money. It is a fraud on the country, and an imposition on the men.
A tragic event occurred at Lewis’ Bay on the 4th of July, which occasioned a fearful sensation throughout the ship. I was sent thither that day in the launch. Feeling fatigued, I remained with another in the boat, which was an............