With the Battle Fleet Part 29

January 4, 1908.

There is always a good deal of serious conversation, especially as to naval matters. There was the everlasting discussion of the pay bill and its chances before Congress. Always there was talk of naval history, incidents of old cruises. Naval Academy reminiscences, and not a day pa.s.sed without earnest shop talk, how to improve this or that thing, how to add to the fighting efficiency of the ship. All this talk is from a lofty and patriotic standpoint and the one thing that impresses the outsider is the intense loyalty to the flag.

By way of other diversion there is always harmless card playing of one kind or another after dinner and the day's work is over. Chess and checkers are played also. It is a mistake to think that there is gambling on warships as a rule. Bridge has its devotees. Many people believe that naval officers are inveterate poker players. They may have been in the past, but if the cruise of the Louisiana is a criterion it has disappeared. The Sun correspondent has been in a position to know the facts and he a.s.serts with the utmost positiveness that there has not been a single game of poker played by the officers of this ship on the present cruise. Heaven knows naval officers, just like other folks, have enough of human frailties to answer for, but they rise superior to many folks in that they have not the sin of poker playing to explain away, at least not in the modern conditions of naval life at sea. This form of gambling may exist on some ships but if what the officers of the Louisiana say is true it is rarely nowadays that it is practised in the navy.

Social amenities are observed most carefully by these men. Every mess has its social secretary, who looks after social correspondence. The mess has its social card. When a ship reaches port where there are other ships of the navy or where there are foreign warships the niceties of calling and entertaining etiquette are observed. A naval officer would no more neglect observing all social proprieties than he would appear without his proper uniform on the quarter deck.

Many officers spend a large part of their time in reading. They are an unusually well-informed set of men. Their wide travel conduces to this.

Some of them are musically inclined and many an evening is spent in the steerage where there is a piano. It takes only a few minutes to get up an improvised orchestra of a couple of violins, a guitar, a mandolin and a horn or two. Songs soon begin to be heard and the music fest often develops into a story telling contest and all hands turn in late after a jovial meeting.

Officers' club life on warships is run on good, wholesome lines. It is manly, free, entertaining, fruitful of self-control and always in keeping with the responsible station of men who have sworn to defend with their lives the honor and integrity of their country.

There are those who lament that in these days of steel ships and electrical appliances all the picturesque side of a sailorman's life on a warship has disappeared. They talk of the old days of romance and poetry and sentiment aboard ship. Well, things have changed for the sailorman, but those who know how much his creature comforts have been improved, how his health is safeguarded, how his mental necessities are looked after, are glad with him that there has been a change. A warship is not intended to be a poetry factory. It's a fighting machine and with the best guns that you can get you need the best men available to shoot them.

No longer is the navy the last refuge of the sc.u.m of town and country, the receptacle of jailbirds temporarily at large, the resort of men not fit for any decent toil on land. The navy needs men of intelligence and good character, the bright boys from the farm; young lads from the city, who otherwise would have to spend their lives in factories. The navy needs these men, and it is getting them all the time. Why? Because largely there have been many changes from the old methods, because no workingmen in the world have better food, more comfortable clothes, more sanitary housing, more opportunities for mental improvement, more wholesome recreations.

It is true that Jack no longer has to do duty as a captain of a top, no more does he receive orders to c.o.c.kbill spars, square yards, man the main clew garnets and buntlines, as in the old days. The old horse block, as the platform where the officer of the deck formerly stood to give his orders at sea was called, can be found no more on warships. The old sports of head b.u.mping, hammer and anvil and sparring, old style, have gone. Here is what sparring used to be:

"Sparring consists of playing single stick with bone poles instead of wooden ones. Two men stand apart and pummel each other with their fists (a hard bunch of knuckles permanently attached to the arms and made globular or extended into a palm at the pleasure of the proprietor) till one of them, finding himself sufficiently thrashed, cries enough."

Pretty good swatting, that.

No more are Wednesdays and Sat.u.r.days the regular shaving days with every man restricted to two shaves a week. No more are the sick bays the most cramped and worst ventilated places in the ship. A lot of these things have disappeared, just as flogging has disappeared, and if the romance of the sea has gone with the pa.s.sing of sailing ships and the development of steel ships into great factories and a.r.s.enals the general condition of Jack has improved in inverse proportion and the country can say good-by to the old ways with no regrets.

When the general mess of the crew was formed in recent years there were those who said it would never do. Croakers and obstructors of new things abound in all walks of life and at all times. The result has been that one wonders how a warship ever managed to get along without the mess.

One man now has charge of the feeding of all the men. There are no longer thirty or forty messes with varying grades of food. The navy regulations declare that so much material shall be fed to the crew for each man. He gets that allowance, and it is as wholesome food as any person can eat.

The Sun correspondent knows, for he has eaten with these men. Many a time has he seen members of the wardroom mess send out for some of the food the sailormen were eating at that moment, the officers preferring it to the food of their own mess. Every man on a warship has his pound and three-quarters of meat a day. He must be provided with it, the regulations, say, no matter what the cost. He must have a certain allowance of this and that, and a general steward sees that it is made up into attractive dishes.

The sailorman no longer eats his meals sitting on a deck with the food spread out before him on a piece of canvas. He has tables and benches and plated knives and forks. His dishes are washed by machinery, his tables scrubbed until they are as clean as any housewife could make them. And when he is through his meal all are triced up out of the way, in what a landsman would call the rafters, practically out of sight.

Gone are the days of scouse, lob scouse, skillagalee, burgoo, lob dominion. Gone are the days when the men divided themselves up into societies for the destruction of salt beef and pork. Slush, as the duff made from large quant.i.ties of beef fat was called, is one of the absent morsels of food. You don't hear anything more of dunderfunk. What was dunderfunk? Well, it has been defined by sea sharks in this way: "As cruel nice a dish as man ever put into him." It was made of hardtack hashed and pounded, mixed with beef fat, mola.s.ses and water, and it was baked in a pan. No, the men nowadays have cottage pudding, tapioca pudding, ice cream, if you please. Their meats are of the finest. Every article of food is the best that can be bought. It's plain food, true, but no food was ever better than the best of plain food. Here is a menu of one week picked at random from the collection:

SUNDAY.

_Breakfast._

Baked Pork and Beans.

Tomato Catsup.

Bread and b.u.t.ter.

Coffee.

_Dinner._

Roast Pork.

Apple Sauce.

Brown Gravy.

Potatoes.

String Beans.

Bread and b.u.t.ter.

Coffee.

_Supper._

Cold Corned Beef.

Tinned Fruit.

Cake.

Bread and b.u.t.ter.

Coffee.

MONDAY.

_Breakfast._

Corn Meal Mush.

Milk.

Fried Pork Sausage.

Bread and b.u.t.ter.

Coffee.

_Dinner._

Vegetable Soup.

Roast Beef.

Gravy and Potatoes.

Bread and b.u.t.ter.

Coffee.

_Supper._

Beef Pot Pie.

Jelly.

Bread and b.u.t.ter.

Tea.

TUESDAY.

_Breakfast._

Ham Hash.

Tomato Catsup.

Bread and b.u.t.ter.

Coffee.

_Dinner._

Frica.s.see of Veal.

Green Peas.

Potatoes.