among the many interesting features of life at sea, few afford studies more fruitful in valuable thought than the internal economy of that latest development of human ingenuity—a modern battleship. it is not by any means easy for a visitor from the shore, upon coming alongside one of these gigantic vessels, to realise its bulk; the first effect is one of disappointment. everything on board is upon a scale so massive, while the limpid space whereon she floats is so capacious that the mind refuses to take in her majestic proportions. and a hurried scamper around the various points of chief interest on board leaves the mind like a palimpsest where one impression is superimposed upon another so swiftly that the general effect is but a blur and no detail is clear. besides, in such a flying visit the guide naturally makes the most of those wonders with which he himself is associated in his official capacity, and thus the visitor is apt to get a very one-sided view of things. again, in the course of a hurried visit in harbour the mind gets so clogged with wonders of machinery and design, that the human side, always apt to keep itself in the background, receives no portion of that attention which is its due. from all of which causes it naturally follows that the only way in which to obtain anything[277] like a comprehensive notion of the polity of a battleship is to spend at least a month on board, both at sea and in harbour, and waste no opportunity of observation of every part of the ship’s daily life that may be presented. such opportunities, naturally, fall to the lot of but few outside the service, and from the well-known modesty of sailors, it is next to hopeless to expect them to enlighten the public upon the most interesting details of their daily lives.
the mere statement of the figures which belong to a modern battleship like the mars, for instance, is apt to have a benumbing effect upon the mind. she displaces 14,900 tons at load draught, is 391 ft. long, 75 ft. wide, and nearly 50 ft. deep from the upper deck to the bottom. she is divided into 232 compartments by means of water-tight bulkheads, is protected by 1802 tons of armour, is lit by 900 electric lights, steams 16½ knots, carries 82 independent sets of engines, mounts 54 different cannon and 5 torpedo tubes, and is manned by 759 men.
now it is only fair to say that such a hurried recapitulation of statistics like these gives no real hint as to the magnitude of the ship as she reveals herself to one after a few days’ intimate acquaintance. and that being so, what is to be said of the men, the population of this floating cosmos, the 759 british entities ruled over by the captain with a completeness of knowledge and a freedom from difficulty that an emperor might well envy? as in a town, we have here men of all sorts and[278] professions, we find all manner of human interests cropping up here in times of leisure, and yet the whole company have one feeling, one interest in common—their ship, and through her their navy.
first of all, of course, comes the captain, who, in spite of the dignity and grandeur of his position, must at times feel very lonely. he lives in awful state, a sentry (of marines) continually guarding his door, and although he does unbend at stated times as far as inviting a few officers to dine with him, or accepting the officers’ invitation to dine in the ward-room, this relaxation must not come too often. the commander, who is the chief executive officer, is in a far better position as regards comfort. he comes between the captain and the actual direction of affairs, he has a spacious cabin to himself, but he takes his meals at the ward-room table among all the officers above the rank of sub-lieutenant, and shares their merriment; the only subtle distinction made between him and everybody else at such times being in the little word “sir,” which is dropped adroitly in when he is being addressed. for the rest, naval nous is so keen that amidst the wildest fun when off duty no officer can feel that his dignity is tampered with, and they pass from sociability to cast-iron discipline and back again with an ease that is amazing to a landsman. the ward-room of a battleship is a pleasant place. it is a spacious apartment, taking in the whole width of the ship, handsomely decorated, and lit by electricity. there is usually a piano, a good library, and some handsome plate for the table. it is[279] available not only for meals, but as a drawing-room, a common meeting-ground for lieutenants, marine officers, surgeons, chaplain, and senior engineers, where they may unbend and exchange views, as well as enjoy one another’s society free from the grip of the collar. a little lower down in the scale of authority, as well as actually in the hull of the ship, comes the gun-room, the affix being a survival, and having no actual significance now. in this respect both ward-room and gun-room have the advantage over the captain’s cabin, in which there are a couple of quick-firing guns, causing those sacred precincts to be invaded by a small host of men at “general quarters,” who manipulate those guns as if they were on deck. the gun-room is the ward-room over again, only more so—that is, more wildly hilarious, more given to outbursts of melody and rough play. here meet the sub-lieutenants, the assistant-engineers and other junior officers, and the midshipmen. with these latter admirals in embryo we find a state of things existing that is of the highest service to them in after life. taking their meals as gentlemen, with a senior at the head of the table, meeting round that same table at other times for social enjoyment, once they are outside of the gun-room door they have no more privacy than the humblest bluejacket. they sleep and dress and bathe—live, in fact—coram publico, which is one of the healthiest things, when you come to think of it, for a youngster of any class. although they are now officers in h.m. navy, they are still schoolboys,[280] and their education goes steadily on at stated hours in a well-appointed schoolroom, keeping pace with that sterner training they are receiving on deck. the most grizzled old seaman on board must “sir” them, but there are plenty of correctives all around to hinder the growth in them of any false pride.
on the same deck is to be found the common room of the warrant officers, such as bo’sun, carpenter, gunner; those sages who have worked their difficult way up from the bottom of the sailor’s ladder through all the grades, and are, with the petty officers, the mainstay of the service. each of them has a cabin of his own, as is only fitting; but here they meet as do their superiors overhead, and air their opinions freely. but, like the ward-room officers, they mostly talk “shop,” for they have only one great object in life, the efficiency of their charge, and it leaves them little room for any other topics. around this, the after part of the ship, cluster also another little body of men and lads, the domestics, as they are termed, who do their duty of attendance upon officers and waiting at table under all circumstances with that neatness and celerity that is inseparable from all work performed in a ship-of-war. body-servants of officers are usually marines, but the domestics are a class apart, strictly non-combatant, yet under naval law and discipline. going “forrard,” the chief petty officers will be found to make some attempt at shutting themselves apart from the general, by arrangements of curtains, &c., all liable and ready to be flung into oblivion at the first[281] note of a bugle. for the rest, their lives are absolutely public. no one has a corner that he may call his own, unless perhaps it is his “ditty box,” that little case of needles, thread, and etceteras that he needs so often, and is therefore allowed to keep on a shelf near the spot where he eats. each man’s clothes are kept in a bag, which has its allotted place in a rack, far away from the spot where his hammock and bed are spirited off to every morning at 5 a.m., to lie concealed until the pipe “down hammocks” at night. and yet by the arrangement of “messes” each man has, in common with a few others, a settled spot where they meet at a common table, even though it be not shut in, and is liable to sudden disappearance during an evolution. so that a man’s mess becomes his rallying-point; it is there that the young bluejacket or marine learns worldly wisdom, and many other things. the practice of keeping all bedding on the move as it were, having no permanent sleeping-places, requires getting used to, but it is a most healthy one, and even if it were not it is difficult to see how, within the limited space of a warship, any other arrangement would be possible. order among belongings is kept by a carefully graduated system of fines payable in soap—any article found astray by the ever-watchful naval police being immediately impounded and held to ransom. and as every man’s kit is subject to a periodical overhaul by officers any deficiency cannot escape notice.
every man’s time is at the disposal of the service whenever it is wanted, but in practice much leisure is allowed for rest, recreation, and mental improvement.[282] physical development is fully looked after by the rules of the service, but all are encouraged to make the best of themselves, and no efforts on the part of any man to better his position are made in vain. nowhere, perhaps, is vice punished or virtue rewarded with greater promptitude, and since all punishments and rewards are fully public, the lessons they convey are never lost. but apart from the service routine, the civil life of this little world is a curious and most interesting study. the industrious man who, having bought a sewing-machine, earns substantial addition to his pay by making every item of his less energetic messmates’ clothes (except boots) for a consideration, the far-seeing man who makes his leisure fit him for the time when he shall have left the navy, the active temperance man who seeks to bring one after the other of his shipmates into line with the ever-growing body of teetotalers that are fast altering completely the moral condition of our sailors, the religious man who gets permission to hold his prayer-meeting in some torpedo-flat or casemate surrounded by lethal weapons—all these go to make up the multifarious life of a big battleship.
and not the least strange to an outsider is the way in which all these various private pursuits and varied industries are carried on in complete independence of each other, often in complete ignorance of what is going on in other parts of the ship. news flies quickly, of course, but since every man has his part in the ship’s economy allotted to him, it naturally follows that he declines to bother his head about[283] what the other fellows are doing. sufficient for him that his particular item is to hand when required, and that he does it as well and as swiftly as he is able. if he be slack or uninterested in what concerns himself many influences are brought to bear upon him. first his messmates, then his petty officer, and so on right up to the captain. and through all he is made to feel that his laches affects first the smartness of his ship, then the reputation of the great british navy. so the naval spirit is fostered, so the glorious traditions are kept up, and it continues to be the fact that the slackest mobilised ship we can send to sea is able to show any foreign vessel-of-war a lesson in smartness that they none of them are able to learn. and in the naval battle of the future it will be the few minutes quicker that will win.
