One theory was that their proximity to the enemy coast was such that standing to in the light of dawn was a precautionary measure. It gained ground among the more experienced, but it swiftly withered when the second overwhelmed it. They had been called to account, it was asserted, for the cutting adrift of the cannon. The absence of punishment at the time had been commented upon. Neither Huke's reputation nor Drinkwater's lack of it seemed to square with inaction on the part of authority, and therefore this postponed corporate muster seemed a logical consequence. Nor did anything that happened in the next few extraordinary moments persuade the ship's company of His Britannic Majesty's frigate Andromeda that they were wrong.
Flanked by Huke and Walsh, Drinkwater stalked the groups of men, taking a sinister interest in several, moving close to them so that the more perceptive and less terrified said afterwards that the captain had 'sniffed them like a dog at a bitch's arse'.
This indelicacy was not so very far from the truth and some of those subject to this personal attention were sent sheepishly aft to a waiting Kennedy, watched by the others. From time to time a muttering rose with a mutinous undertone of protest which either Huke or the divisional officer swiftly silenced. When Drinkwater's curious, shifty inspection was complete he returned to the quarterdeck.
'Very well, Mr Huke. The duty watch is to rig the washdeck pumps and the Hales's ventilators. The gunner's party is to prepare powder for burning 'tween decks. The carpenter is to take three hundredweight of sand to the galley and the cook is to have it heated. The purser is to issue one bar of soap to every mess. The watch below is to turn up and be hosed down. After every man has been washed, he is to shift his linen and put on clean clothes. If a single man has on an item he is wearing now, I shall cover him with my cloak and flog him!'
Drinkwater gave his bizarre orders in a loud voice, and those mustered below in the gun deck who failed to hear him soon learned of his intentions. Nor was a single man under the impression that a shred of solicitude attached to Drinkwater's offer of his 'cloak'. All knew the term a euphemism for the ration of lashes permitted a post-captain under the Thirty-Sixth Article of War which he might give without reference to any higher authority. By the time Drinkwater had finished, every man jack knew that what the watch below had to endure, the duty watch would also submit to, that the ship would be scrubbed from orlop to main deck, that the ports would be opened, that a mechanically induced draught via Dr Stephen Hales's patent ventilator would join the natural air flowing reluctantly through the ship, and that hot sand and burning gunpowder would dry and purify the air between decks.
In the ensuing period the deck of the Andromeda assumed the grotesque appearance of a bacchanalia. Had an enemy chanced upon them at that time, it was afterwards remarked, they would have caught the Andromeda's company with more than their defences down. The spurting jets of water plashed upon the naked limbs and bodies of each mess in turn, and the initial misery and humiliation of those first chosen gave way to a whooping glee as group succeeded group and the naked increased and soon outnumbered the clothed.
As each division underwent this strange, humiliating metamorphosis, their officers came aft, grinning at the men's discomfiture, grouping on the quarterdeck to be driven, as their own reserved participation in this spree, to comments of impropriety.
'My word,' rattled a red-faced Walsh, 'young Hughes is rigged like a donkey!'
An acutely embarrassed Midshipman Fisher stared wide-eyed at a small, deformed and excessively hairy man who giggled insanely and was commonly thought to be mad.
'And look at Taylor ...'
'Good God, what a scar...'
Having been stripped and drenched, the ship's fiddler was set upon a forecastle carronade breech to strike up a lively jig, which prompted the most excitable to dance and skylark with even more vigour than the cold sea-water.
When the greater proportion of the watch below cavorted in damp nudity, Drinkwater sprang a second and greater surprise upon the ship.
'Frampton!' he called, and the steward, stark naked, his hands held in front of his chill-shrivelled genitals, approached the officers. Drinkwater turned to the crescent of watching officers.
'Well, gentlemen, rank has its obligations as well as its privileges. I do not know whether it was Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius who claimed the essence of command to be example, but if this performance is to be of any benefit, then we must take part...'
Drinkwater stared round at the officers on whom the light of comprehension broke somewhat slowly. He began to take off his coat and held it out to the dripping and shivering Frampton who reluctantly relinquished his protective stance. Several of the officers began to move away, while the midshipmen continued to stare goggle-eyed at their commander. Drinkwater removed his neck linen, stock and shirt, kicked off his shoes and, putting his right foot on a quarterdeck carronade truck, rolled down a stocking.
'Not here, surely, sir?' queried an incredulous Walsh.
'Why not, Mr Walsh, here is as good a place as any, for we must not only take part, but be seen to take part.' Drinkwater unbuttoned his breeches.
'What is the point, sir?'
'The point, Walsh,' offered Kennedy, fast following the Captain's example, 'is prophylaxis, the prevention of disease.'
'What disease?'
'Don't bandy it about, Walsh, but ship fever, camp fever, low, slow, putrid and petechial fever, call it what you will, but do not lay yourself open to its infection...'
Walsh was open-mouthed, but the surgeon's words were drowned as the ship's company realized that the captain was naked and that, incredulously, the other officers were following suit, slowly at first but then faster as they were egged on by whoops of rankly insubordinate derision. Drinkwater gasped as an eager party of men turned a hose upon him, the men at the levers of the portable pumps jerking up and down, one wet with tears at the hilarity of the scene and the joy of deluging his captain with icy water.
Within moments even the sluggards were under the pumps and the tide had turned, the entire waist was filled with pink flesh and cascades of water. Buckets were cast overboard and retrieved with lanyards, their contents emptied indiscriminately.
Chaos, it seemed, reigned for a quarter of an hour, until Drinkwater, still naked, leapt up on the rail and roared for silence. Those occupants of the wardroom who afterwards deplored the anarchy were swiftly silenced by others who argued that the immediacy of the response to Drinkwater's summons to order proved them wrong.
'Very well, my lads, we are all more or less alike, I see ...' A laugh greeted this joke, and Drinkwater, while he awaited their attention, remembered inconsequentially how, long before aboard Patrician, he had discovered a woman dressed and thought of for months as a man. The laughter and mutual chaffing subsided.
'Now do you pay attention. It's a change of clothing for every man jack of you, d'you hear? Then the ship is to be stummed before we break our fast. After that, you are all to wash every stitch you have just removed. It looks like a drying day and you will scrub hammocks by watches. If you clear the ship by noon, we'll exercise the guns...'
This news raised a cheer which, half-hearted at first, soon grew in modulation, a madcap disorganized noise accompanied by grins and laughter and multiple shiverings.