Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1885-07-23
A BOYS LIFE AT SEA.
As TOLD BY ONE WHO HAS HAD
EXPERIENCE.
The joys Of Washing Down Decks.
Dun DAYS" ~ PecuIiarities Of
"Old salts" How second
Mates Anuse Themselves

Original
When we, the seven green boys on our
ship, had recovered from our seasickness we
\ commenced deTouring the cakes and pre-
serves given u as parting gifts from par
ents and friends at home, along with tracts
I ond books Of poems The tracts and poems
lasted much longer than the plum cakes
4 placed in those juvenile sea chests Long
I ere the first month at sea had passed. the
cakes AMI preserves were all gone. and there
renamed only the volumes Of poems and
some dry devotional works about ten years
1 beyond our comprehension.
/ Up every other morning at o'clock
10 stand four hours watch. Jobs" com
menced at q a. m. That meant principally
washing down decks The amount of scru-
tiny, profanity, insanity, work and water
thai second o. fourth mate will place upon
a gill Of dust lodged in crack on a ships
deck ranks with me a one Of the wonderful
and incomprehensible things in nature. The
mates swore at the boys. the bows externally
swore at the decks and internally back al the
mates Meantime the swishing and swaSh-
ing, scrubbng and squilgeeing, pumping
forward and drawing water in buckets AT
the mizzen chains aft went ON steadily from
q O'Clock till :
At o'clock breakfast for the watch who
had thus been on duty. A quart OF black
fluid called coffee sweetened with moiasses
and tasting like a mild decoction Of SIENNA.
For solids, salt junk hard bread or lob
scouse." "Lobscouse" means a hash o: hard
bread and salt meat, the bread being largely
excess OF the meat. You will learn TO
like ''lOhscouse' very much after being
week or two at sea. IL cannot take the
place Of griddle-cakes or hot biscuit. You
eat il out Of tin pan with a tin spoon.
We do not in the fonecastle set breakfast
table or any other table al sea. You st on
the lid of your chest and make a table Of
that. II the ship l. rolling heavily you may
not long sit ON anything, or you may sit in
everything at intervals. / remember one
morning how, immelIa tely after an un-
usually heavy lurch, Jed Coles sat down IN
INV pan Of "lobscouse' When Mr.. Coles
arose the pan arose with him and clung to
him We had fight over it. | went with
out my breakfast, and lobscouse was promi-
house" as well a. ON the rear Of Mr.. Coles
pantaloons. One gets - regard with less
particularly many Of the conventionalities
Of shore life at sea. but there Is a happy
medium in al things. and line must be
drawn somewhere.
We BOYS were eating our dinner one day,
when about one ton Of greenish-bluish
sea water came pouring into the
s.house" Ii was a duff day duff
dayn is noted day at sea, because it
is the day for pudding. Duff pudding means
boiled -four pudding with molasses, very
common molas>es, for sauce. After you
have been at sea "A month you will like duff
very much. though in your fathers house
you would consign 1t to the pigs, you pam
pered son If luxury
For three minutes after the entrance Of
that ton Of ocean there was a confused com
mingling of boys, duff, salt water, bread,
meat and molasses. The entire dinner was
swept awev-far away-under our bunka,
where hours afterward we crawled and
fished out relics of saltwater soaked meat.
bread and duff. We had shipped a sea-
A boy learning his trick at the helm had got
the vessel of her course, and being under
heavy pressure Of sail at the time, had
caused this influx of water where u was not
needed The boy and a ropes end in the
mates hands were in close association for
some minutes afterward, and both watches
for the remainder of the afternoon were en-
gagged in cleaning the deck Of smashed tur-
pentine bsrrels thereon slowed. When the
sea sends such a card on board il makes its
weight felt and known
A boy must not think of home when steer
ing a big ship, booming along under cloud
of canvas, possibly with studsiing-sails set on
both sides: for if he does not attend very
closely to his work he may manage TO get
the wind on the wrong side Of several hum
dred square wards of canvas, and If he does
there may be involved a terrible uplifting
and tearing OF canvas, Stating Of booms and
poking Of studding- sail boom ends through
other sails.
Our second mate was a savage. He was
Scotch by birth, but he would have answered
inst as xell for Pawnee Indian. His
knuckles were as hard as iron, and his heart
was harder. His chief amusement consisted
in knocking down those men and boys ne
dared to knock down, in jumping ON their
faces when they were down, or in emphasiz-
ing orders by hurting iron marline spikes or
Delaying pins a. the ordered
shall never forget the thrill OF horror
winch came over me ut seeing ON the third
day out young man beaten savagely over
the head and shoulders by this man for not
having spread in sufficient thickness the tar
on piece Of ''parceling.n Parceling Is the
term applied TO strips Of canvas used 10
wrap about the stays or other rigging where
1. has been chafed and worn. Before so
wrapping them coating of tar Is smeared
on the under side .'Dye think your spread
in, poultices for hospitalf' was the remark
of our commanding brute, a be raIned blow
after blow on the poor fellow WIN tne emu
~ n heavy brace / had never beiore
heard n grown man cry out in fear ana pam
II Was 70 me a fearful sound. The snip
saamed 10 me for the remainder OF that day
a. a he'll afioat--and one full ot gloomy
silent foreboding. None Of Us boys knew on
whom tie blows were to fall next but we
did know how they might at any moment
chine. actuated only by the humor OF "ilini
Of that mate.
OF course, going aloft was a terror 70 u
at first. and this gentleman used al times y