Medical Life in the Navy

For the benefit of those happy individuals who never saw, or had to eat, weevils, I may here state that they are small beetles of the exact size and shape of the common woodlouse, and that the taste is rather insipid, with a slight flavour of boiled beans. Never have tasted the woodlouse, but should think the flavour would be quite similar.

“Gangway there, lads,” which causes at least a dozen of these worthies to pass such ironical remarks to their companions as —

“Out of the doctor’s way there, Tom.”

“Let the gentleman pass, can’t you, Jack?”

“Port your helm, Mat; the doctor wants you to.”

“Round with your stern, Bill; the surgeon’s mate is a passing.”

“Kick that donkey Jones out of the doctor’s road,” – while at the same time it is always the speaker himself who is in the way.

At last, however, you reach the sick-bay in safety, and retire within the screen. Here, if a strict service man, you will find the surgeon already seated; and presently the other assistant enters, and the work is begun. There is a sick-bay man, or dispenser, and a sick-bay cook, attached to the medical department. The surgeon generally does the brain-work, and the assistants the finger-work; and, to their shame be it spoken, there are some surgeons too proud to consult their younger brethren, whom they treat as assistant-drudges, not assistant-surgeons.

At eight o’clock – before or after, – the work is over, and you are off to breakfast.

At nine o’clock the drum beats, when every one, not otherwise engaged, is required to muster on the quarter-deck, every officer as he comes up lifting his cap, not to the captain, but to the Queen. After inspection the parson reads prayers; you are then free to write, or read, or anything else in reason you choose; and, if in harbour, you may go on shore – boats leaving the ship at regular hours for the convenience of the officers – always premising that one medical man be left on board, in case of accident. In most foreign ports where a ship may be lying, there is no want of both pleasure and excitement on shore. Take for example the little town of Simon’s, about twenty miles from Cape Town, with a population of not less than four thousand of Englishmen, Dutch, Malays, Caffres, and Hottentots. The bay is large, and almost landlocked. The little white town is built along the foot of a lofty mountain. Beautiful walks can be had in every direction, along the hard sandy sea-beach, over the mountains and on to extensive table-lands, or away up into dark rocky dingles and heath-clad glens. Nothing can surpass the beauty of the scenery, or the gorgeous loveliness of the wild heaths and geraniums everywhere abounding. There is a good hotel and billiard-room; and you can shoot where, when, and what you please – monkeys, pigeons, rock rabbits, wild ducks, or cobra-di-capellas. If you long for more society, or want to see life, get a day or two days’ leave. Rise at five o’clock; the morning will be lovely and clear, with the mist rising from its flowery bed on the mountain’s brow, and the sun, large and red, entering on a sky to which nor pen nor pencil could do justice. The cart is waiting for you at the hotel, with an awning spread above. Jump in: crack goes the long Caffre whip; away with a plunge and a jerk go the three pairs of Caffre horses, and along the sea-shore you dash, with the cool sea-breeze in your face, and the water, green and clear, rippling up over the horses’ feet; then, amid such scenery, with such exhilarating weather, in such a life-giving climate, if you don’t feel a glow of pleasure that will send the blood tingling through your veins, from the points of your ten toes to the extreme end of your eyelashes, there must be something radically and constitutionally wrong with you, and the sooner you go on board and dose yourself with calomel and jalap the better.

Arrived at Cape Town, a few introductions will simply throw the whole city at your command, and all it contains.

I do not intend this as a complete sketch of your trip, or I would have mentioned some of the many beautiful spots and places of interest you pass on the road – Rathfeldas for example, a hotel halfway, a house buried in sweetness; and the country round about, with its dark waving forests, its fruitful fields and wide-spreading vineyards, where the grape seems to grow almost without cultivation; its comfortable farm-houses; and above all its people, kind, generous, and hospitable as the country is prolific.

So you see, dear reader, a navy surgeon’s life hath its pleasures. Ah, indeed, it hath! and sorry I am to add, its sufferings too; for a few pages farther on the picture must change: if we get the lights we must needs take the shadows also.

Chapter Eight.

A Good Dinner. Enemy on the Port Bow. Man the Life-Boat

We will suppose that the reader still occupies the position of assistant-surgeon in a crack frigate or saucy line-of-battle ship. If you go on shore for a walk in the forenoon you may return to lunch at twelve; or if you have extended your ramble far into the country, or gone to visit a friend or lady-love – though for the latter the gloaming hour is to be preferred – you will in all probability have succeeded in establishing an appetite by half-past five, when the officers’ dinner-boat leaves the pier.

Now, I believe there are few people in the world to whom a good dinner does not prove an attraction, and this is what in a large ship one is always pretty sure of, more especially on guest-nights, which are evenings set apart – one every week – for the entertainment of the officers’ friends, one or more of whom any officer may invite, by previously letting the mess-caterer know of his intention. The mess-caterer is the officer who has been elected to superintend the victualling, as the wine-caterer does the liquor department, and a by-no-means-enviable position it is, and consequently it is for ever changing hands. Sailors are proverbial growlers, and, indeed, a certain amount of growling is, and ought to be, permitted in every mess; but it is scarcely fair for an officer, because his breakfast does not please him, or if he can’t get butter to his cheese after dinner, to launch forth his indignation at the poor mess-caterer, who most likely is doing all he can to please. These growlers too never speak right out or directly to the point. It is all under-the-table stabbing.

“Such and such a ship that I was in,” says growler first, “and such and such a mess – ”

“Oh, by George!” says growler second, “I knew that ship; that was a mess, and no mistake?”

“Why, yes,” replies number one, “the lunch we got there was better than the dinner we have in this old clothes-basket.”

On guest-nights your friend sits beside yourself, of course, and you attend to his corporeal wants. One of the nicest things about the service, in my opinion, is the having the band every day at dinner; then too everything is so orderly; with our president and vice-president, it is quite like a pleasure party every evening; so that altogether the dinner, while in harbour, comes to be the great event of the day. And after the cloth has been removed, and the president, with a preliminary rap on the table to draw attention, has given the only toast of the evening, the Queen, and due honour has been paid thereto, and the bandmaster, who has been keeking in at the door every minute for the last ten, that he might not make a mistake in the time, has played “God save the Queen,” and returned again to waltzes, quadrilles, or selections from operas, – then it is very pleasant and delightful to loll over our walnuts and wine, and half-dream away the half-hour till coffee is served. Then, to be sure, that little cigar in our canvas smoking-room outside the wardroom door, though the last, is by no means the least pleasant part of the déjeuner. For my own part, I enjoy the succeeding hour or so as much as any: when, reclining in an easy chair, in a quiet corner, I can sip my tea, and enjoy my favourite author to my heart’s content. You must spare half an hour, however, to pay your last visit to the sick; but this will only tend to make you appreciate your ease all the more when you have done. So the evening wears away, and by ten o’clock you will probably just be sufficiently tired to enjoy thoroughly your little swing-cot and your cool white sheets.

At sea, luncheon, or tiffin, is dispensed with, and you dine at half-past two. Not much difference in the quality of viands after all, for now-a-days everything worth eating can be procured, in hermetically sealed tins, capable of remaining fresh for any length of time.

There is one little bit of the routine of the service, which at first one may consider a hardship.

You are probably enjoying your deepest, sweetest sleep, rocked in the cradle of the deep, and gently swaying to and fro in your little cot; you had turned in with the delicious consciousness of safety, for well you knew that the ship was far away at sea, far from rock or reef or deadly shoal, and that the night was clear and collision very improbable, so you are slumbering like a babe on its mother’s breast – as you are for that matter – for the second night-watch is half spent; when, mingling confusedly with your dreams, comes the roll of the drum; you start and listen. There is a moment’s pause, when birr-r-r-r it goes again, and as you spring from your couch you hear it the third time. And now you can distinguish the shouts of officers and petty officers, high over the din of the trampling of many feet, of the battening down of hatches, of the unmooring of great guns, and of heavy ropes and bars falling on the deck: then succeeds a dead silence, soon broken by the voice of the commander thundering, “Enemy on the port bow;” and then, and not till then, do you know it is no real engagement, but the monthly night-quarters. And you can’t help feeling sorry there isn’t a real enemy on the port bow, or either bow, as you hurry away to the cockpit, with the guns rattling all the while overhead, as if a real live thunderstorm were being taken on board, and was objecting to be stowed away. So you lay out your instruments, your sponges, your bottles of wine, and your buckets of water, and, seating yourself in the midst, begin to read ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ ready at a moment’s notice to amputate the leg of any man on board, whether captain, cook, or cabin-boy.

Another nice little amusement the officer of the watch may give himself on fine clear nights is to set fire to and let go the lifebuoy, at the same time singing out at the top of his voice, “Man overboard.”

A boatswain’s mate at once repeats the call, and vociferates down the main hatchway, “Life-boat’s crew a-ho-oy!”

In our navy a few short but expressive moments of silence ever precede the battle, that both officers and men may hold communion with their God.

The men belonging to this boat, who have been lying here and there asleep but dressed, quickly tumble up the ladder pell-mell; there is a rattling of oars heard, and the creaking of pulleys, then a splash in the water alongside, the boat darts away from the ship like an arrow from a bow, and the crew, rowing towards the blazing buoy, save the life of the unhappy man, Cheeks the marine.

And thus do British sailors rule the waves and keep old Neptune in his own place.

Chapter Nine.

Containing – If not the Whole – Nothing but the Truth

If the disposing, in the service, of even a ship-load of assistant-surgeons, is considered a matter of small moment, my disposal, after reaching the Cape of Good Hope, needs but small comment. I was very soon appointed to take charge of a gunboat, in lieu of a gentleman who was sent to the Naval Hospital of Simon’s Town, to fill a death vacancy – for the navy as well as nature abhors a vacuum. I had seen the bright side of the service, I was now to have my turn of the dark; I had enjoyed life on board a crack frigate, I was now to rough it in a gunboat.

The east coast of Africa was to be our cruising ground, and our ship a pigmy steamer, with plenty fore-and-aft about her, but nothing else; in fact, she was Euclid’s definition of a line to a t, length without breadth, and small enough to have done “excellently well” as a Gravesend tug-boat. Her teeth were five: namely, one gigantic cannon, a 65-pounder, as front tooth; on each side a brass howitzer; and flanking these, two canine tusks in shape of a couple of 12-pounder Armstrongs. With this armament we were to lord it with a high hand over the Indian Ocean; carry fire and sword, or, failing sword, the cutlass, into the very heart of slavery’s dominions; the Arabs should tremble at the roar of our guns and the thunder of our bursting shells, while the slaves should clank their chains in joyful anticipation of our coming; and best of all, we – the officers – should fill our pockets with prize-money to spend when we again reached the shores of merry England. Unfortunately, this last premeditation was the only one which sustained disappointment, for, our little craft being tender to the flag-ship of the station, all our hard-earned prize-money had to be equally shared with her officers and crew, which reduced the shares to fewer pence each than they otherwise would have been pounds, and which was a burning shame.

It was the Cape winter when I joined the gunboat. The hills were covered with purple and green, the air was deliciously cool, and the far-away mountain-tops were clad in virgin snow. It was twelve o’clock noon when I took my traps on board, and found my new messmates seated around the table at tiffin. The gunroom, called the wardroom by courtesy – for the after cabin was occupied by the lieutenant commanding – was a little morsel of an apartment, which the table and five cane-bottomed chairs entirely filled. The officers were five – namely, a little round-faced, dimple-cheeked, good-natured fellow, who was our second-master; a tall and rather awkward-looking young gentleman, our midshipman; a lean, pert, and withal diminutive youth, brimful of his own importance, our assistant-paymaster; a fair-haired, bright-eyed, laughing boy from Cornwall, our sub-lieutenant; and a “wee wee man,” dapper, clean, and tidy, our engineer, admitted to this mess because he was so thorough an exception to his class, which is celebrated more for the unctuosity of its outer than for the smoothness of its inner man.

“Come along, old fellow,” said our navigator, addressing me as I entered the messroom, bobbing and bowing to evade fracture of the cranium by coming into collision with the transverse beams of the deck above – “come along and join us, we don’t dine till four.”

“And precious little to dine upon,” said the officer on his right.

“Steward, let us have the rum,”[2 - Officers, as well as men, are allowed one half-gill of rum daily, with this difference, – the former pay for theirs, while the latter do not.] cried the first speaker.

And thus addressed, the steward shuffled in, bearing in his hand a black bottle, and apparently in imminent danger of choking himself on a large mouthful of bread and butter. This functionary’s dress was remarkable rather for its simplicity than its purity, consisting merely of a pair of dirty canvas pants, a pair of purser’s shoes – innocent as yet of blacking – and a greasy flannel shirt. But, indeed, uniform seemed to be the exception, and not the rule, of the mess, for, while one wore a blue serge jacket, another was arrayed in white linen, and the rest had neither jacket nor vest.

The table was guiltless of a cloth, and littered with beer-bottles, biscuits, onions, sardines, and pats of butter.

“Look out there, Waddles!” exclaimed the sub-lieutenant; “that beggar Dawson is having his own whack o’ grog and everybody else’s.”

“Dang it! I’ll have my tot to-day, I know,” said the assistant-paymaster, snatching the bottle from Dawson, and helping himself to a very liberal allowance of the ruby fluid.

“What a cheek the fellow’s got!” cried the midshipman, snatching the glass from the table and bolting the contents at a gulp, adding, with a gasp of satisfaction as he put down the empty tumbler, “The chap thinks nobody’s got a soul to be saved but himself.”

“Soul or no soul,” replied the youthful man of money as he gazed disconsolately at the empty glass, “my spirit’s gone.”

“Blessed,” said the engineer, shaking the black bottle, “if you devils have left me a drain! see if I don’t look out for A1 to-morrow.”

“Where’s the doctor’s grog?” cried the sub-lieutenant.

“Ay, where’s the doctor’s?” said another.

“Where is the doctor’s?” said a third.

And they all said “Where is the doctor’s?” and echo answered “Where?”

“Steward!” said the middy.

“Ay, ay, sir.”