Evening star., 1895-06-08

ed. Generally well
forward on the gun deck there is the gal
ley. on which all the cooking for the Off
GERS and man is done. This galley Is a
large range fastened down to the deck
with iron straps and from early morning
till sundown it is surrounded by the cooks,
preparing and cooking the food for the
various ''messes,' or different tables aboard
the ship. If it be a flagship, that is, one
bearing an admiral in command of a fleet
or station. the first mess in Importance is
that of the admiral, who has all to himself
steward, cook and boy. He may eat
alone in mis- cabin or have the captain and
members of his staff with him; then comes
the captains mess in his separate cabin,
with the same complement of servants
Next we go down into the ward room,
where the fifteen or twenty watch officers,
engineer officers. paymasters, doctors, chap
lam and marine officer are all together IN
big mess, with a steward a cook and five
or SIN servants or ward room boys as they
are called aboard ship.
In this mess one of the officers is elected
caterer, and has general supervision of
everything pertaining to 1.-THE general di-
rection of the steward and boys and of The
menu, and the grumblings of the discon-
tented members are directed against this
official
Contrary to the general idea Of the civil
ian who visits the ship. the officers are not
furnished everything by the government,
but must pay for all their food from their
monthly pay, and the caterer becomes the
treasurer of these payments from all the
ofhcers. OF course the stewards, cooks
and boys are regularly enlisted in the serv-
ice and all hold minor fighting stations, at
which they regularly drill, but every
mouthful of food is bought by the officers
themselves.
The Steward and His Duties.
-rtI
messes were required to buy their own
kitchen utensils and dishes, glassware and
tableware but these are now furnished by
the napery to buy.
The steward is intrusted with the duty of
buying the daily provisions for the mess
and seeing that the cook prepares them
properly and that the boys serve them well.
His value depends upon his knowledge of
marketing cooking and the discipline he
has among the boys, and last, but far from
least, upon his honesty. for in a large mess
he may handle hundreds of dollars in
month.
The duties of the boys. besides serving
the officers at meals, consist in keeping all
the state rooms in order, as well as the
mess rooms.
The stewards are generally old and tried
men, who have served through the inter
mediate stages of boy and cook, while the
boys are OF every grade of efficiency and
every nationality.
Ships on the China station generally have
Chinese or Japanese boys. as they quick
to learn, generally honest and quite amen
able to strict discipline. Those on the home
station have Japs when they can be pro-
cured, and otherwise, white or colored
servants the former being of an insub-
ordinate tendency in such lowly positions,
while the chief fault of the negroes is lazi-
ness.
A good boy aboard ship is a valuable
rarity. which the officer. separated from
the mendins hands of home. thoroughly ap-
preciates. Such a boy can do anything,
from sewing on buttons and mending shirts
to conveying messages.
These boys often take quite an air of pro-
prietorship over the officers they serve, and
their advice is often ludicrous, even If per-
haps good.
The Japs. with their quick brains and
active hands. are especially interesting and
1 have seen one Jap boy in a junior officers
mess called upon by three or four naval
cadets for different services and still al
ways ready with the required article-from
a collar button for one to the making ready
of a whole full dress uniform for another.
Junior Officers Mess.
Next in Importance after the ward room
officers mess is the junior officers mess,
made up of the junior line ard staff COM
missioned officers and the naval cadets,
and, perhaps. of all the officers aboard snip.
The members of this mess enjoy life the
most; for though often crowded into mar
row quarters, where they must eat, sleep
and live in one room, the buoyant spirits
of youth asserts itself and good humor
reigns.
In the old ravy the Junior officers
quarters was called the .'steerage," and it
was little more than an inciosure the
berth deck, where the crowd of junior offi-
GERS slept in hammocks at night, and ate
and lounGed by day; but in the new ships
of the modern navy there are rooms with
double berths for the junior officers, and
their comfort is vastly increased thereby.
The rexr mess in order of rank is that
of the warrant officers, which like the
junior officers has it's quota of steward,
cook and boys. These warrant officers are
the gunner, carpenter boatswain and sail
maker, who. while they do not carry a
commission, hold important positions
shipboard and are 'warranted'' by the
President to their several positions, on
which they have life tenure, unless dis
missed by sentence of a general court mar
tial for some serious offense against mil
itary OF naval law.
Thus, having finished with the officers
who must buy their own food, and who
accordingly follow their own inclination in
that matter very much as people ashore
do, let us turn to the enlisted men, the
blue jackets ard marines, who live on a
ra ton issued by the government, each
ration being of the average value of thirty
cents per diem.
The Ships Cook.
Among the enlisted men there are also
grades of rank, and the petty officers who
are given more or less authority in the
various departments, generally have mess
by themselves where they live plainly but
neatly and well.
The other enlisted men are divided up
into messes of ten fifteen men each,
and each mess has cook taken from their
own number, who prepares the food with
the ships cook and hts assistant.
This ships cook is an important person.
age among the enlisted men and upon him
rests the responsibility OF preparing the
bean soup and other dishes that are the
same for all, while the mess cooks prepare
the especial dishes for each mess. The
ships provisions of beans, flour, salt and
corned meat and canned goods occupy
space in large storerooms especially de-
signed for the purpose, and the stock is
quite extensive when laid in for a long
cruise The days provisions are served
cut in the morning, and the contracted
space around the galley is crowded until
dinner time, when q signal is piped by the
boatswain, the tables come down from the
deck beams above, whare they are stored
when not in use, the knives, forks and
spoons and agate ware dishes are set out
from the chest in which each mass ICONS