It was understood in those days that any women on board a ship would keep to their quarters after Service of a Sunday, so that the men might strip to the buff and, having washed every stitch they owned, romp naked in the sunshine. Peter and I strolled through the throng, exchanging genial and cheery words with the men. Some of these had their own little business concerns: one resourceful fellow, for instance, known to all as “Lousy”, had a charcoal-filled tailor’s ironing-goose which, for a trifling sum in coin or grog, he would run along the seams of any shirt or pair of drawers suspected by its owner of harbouring lice. Only this treatment, Peter assured me, would extirpate these small and pestilent inquilines.
Another, humbler practitioner had for his stock-in-trade only a piece of “pusser’s green”, which is a coarse yellow soap sold by purser. His practice was, having exacted a modest fee, to scrutinise his client from the soles to the scalp, dabbing deftly at fleas and other small deer. Each time he caught one he would carry the soap to his mouth, kill the flea or bed-bug with his teeth and, at the same time, re-moisten the soap with a flick of his tongue. The men did not much despise him, for it was a useful art and he was skilful at it. Orace was in the thick of things, scrubbing away with the best of them and from time to time fending off the clumsy advances of a sexual pervert. The pervert would not, in fact, be allowed to corrupt him, Peter assured me, because Orace was liked by the crew for his sunny nature.
The sexual society of a ship’s company was, you see, a delicate and tolerant arrangement because all experienced seamen knew that to live together in a forecastle for perhaps three long years calls for a spirit of live-and-let-live, so long as the eccentric’s private habits do not interfere with those of his mates, with the safe working of the ship and, above all, with their right to sleep undisturbed. Thus, the few sodomites and catamites aboard were soon recognised and tolerated so long as they kept within their own circle, did not offend others and did not shirk their work. Onanism was as necessary as going to “the head” and had only to be conducted silently if others were trying to sleep. (“When I’m at home, my wife is my right hand,” Bully Lubbock once said to me in his coarse fashion; “when I’m at sea my right hand is my wife.”) Then, during a long spell between ports, a full-blooded fellow of normal tastes might well exchange a sodomitic practice with a chum, rather than go out of his mind. This has given rise to the British saying “any port in a storm, matey”.
None of this, however, is to be taken as suggesting that ships — the John Coram in particular — were seething with animal lust. On the contrary, a good taut ship kept the men so cheerfully busy that there was neither the time nor the vitality to spare upon such trivia. It was the practice to see that the crew went to their hammocks so drugged with out-of-doors work and indigestible food that all they craved was sleep. A truly tired man, his muscles twitching with toil, his mind relaxing from perilous hours spent fighting sail-cloth in the dark, higher than a house on an icy yard and, now, his belly distended with hot burgoo or lobscouse, why, such a man wants no silken bosom to caress, he aches only for the ineffable delight of his coarse pillow and no other orgasm than that of blessed unconsciousness.
The effect is much the same with compulsory games in the English public schools, which is why they are famous for their lack of sodomy.
“Now then, my lads!” cried Peter suddenly, “all hands to skylark! Who’ll be King Arthur?”
“King Arthur”, it seemed, was a game much relished by these simple tarry-breeks. The one named to be King was soused and drenched with laundry-water by his fellows until he could contrive to make one of his persecutors laugh, whereupon he who had laughed became King in turn, and was, in turn, soused. The first to be picked was a toothless old wag who entered merrily into the sport, capering about the deck in the drollest way as he evaded the buckets of water. Cornered against the hen-coops lashed to the rail, he reached in and plucked a rooster’s feather, which he stuck between the cheeks of his bottom. He then strutted about, his neck jerking back and forth in the very manner of a cockerel, crowing shrilly until one of the lads was forced to guffaw and was duly made King. This new king, who was possessed of an inordinately long, thin member, performed so many antics with it that he soon “got his laugh” and gave place to another. So the sport went on. I believe I have said before that I shall never understand the English, they are a race apart, a race apart.
Wonderfully savoury smells were drifting from the galley and after a dangerous romp through the rigging — which seemed to delight them although they took the same risks for pay every day and night of their lives — they put on clothes and soon the duty-man of each mess reported to the cook with a great mess-kid. That day’s dinner was the Doctor’s famous Kentucky Burgoo, invented by a Colonel in Kentucky long ago, made of unimaginable things. I tried a tin platter of it and found it very good indeed. It became my favourite and I still treasure the recipe, which I shall write out at the end of this book if I live so long.
While the men ate their dinner we officers took tea with Blanche. We were but a small company for Lubbock scorned such “poodle-faking”, the Second had the watch and the Captain was “busy with his charts” — we could hear him snoring in the inner sleeping-cabin. Peter left the room for a moment to fetch a book of verses which Blanche pretended to want.
“Blanche,” I said.
“You are to call me ‘Mrs Knatchbull’.”
“Blanche, you were watching the sailormen romping naked a little while ago, were you not?”
“How dare you?” she whispered furiously.
I merely smiled.
“How do you know?” she asked.
I continued to smile.
“Well,” she murmured, “if you had been me and they were girls, would you not have watched?”
I nodded vehemently.
“Well, then. But I asked you how you knew.”
“I did not know, but I know you, Blanche.” She blushed, furious again, or pretending to be so.
“Oh no you do not, Sir! Nor shall you, if that is what you think!”
“Yes I do — and shall,” I said laconically. She marched up so close to me that her breasts nearly touched my shirt; glared at me for a moment, then kicked me very hard just above the ankle. I smiled.
“What is the name of the coarse seaman with the long, absurd, ah, thing?” she asked.
“I do not know. Let us ask Lord Stevenage when he returns.”
“I hate you.”
Dinner for us officers, later that day, was sea pie. It is quite delicious. The proper sort, such as we had, was known as a “three-decker” because it was made of layers of salt junk (pork or beef), vegetables and fish, each separated by its own pie-crust. Thus one could deal with it seriatim as a primitive meal of three courses or, if one was a connoisseur and the pie made by a reliable cook, one could cut through all the strata and have all three things delightfully mingled upon one’s plate and palate. Each of the crusts, too, had its own peculiar flavour; the pungency of that which separated the fish from the meat was particularly prized although it tasted a little rank on first acquaintance.