12 - The Good or Bad Temper of Men-of-War's Men, In a Great Degree, Attributable to Their Particular Stations and Duties Aboard Ship

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Episode Transcript

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Chapter twelve of White Jacket or theWorld in a Man of War. This
is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVoxrecordings are in the public domain. For
more information or to volunteer, pleasevisit LibriVox dot org. Recording by James
K. White, White Jacket orThe World in a Man of War by

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Hermann Melville, Chapter twelve. Thegood or bad temper of men of War's
men in a great degree attributable totheir particular stations and duties aboard ship.
Quinn, the quarter gunner, wasthe representative of a class on board than
never sink, altogether too remarkable tobe left astern without further notice in the

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rapid wake of these chapters. Ashas been seen, Quinn was full of
unaccountable whimsies. He was withal avery cross, bitter, ill natured,
inflammable old man. So too wereall the members of the gunner's gang,
including the two gunners mates, andall the quarter gunners. Every one of

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them had the same dark brown complexion. All their faces looked like smoked hams.
They were continually grumbling and growling aboutthe batteries running in and out among
the guns, driving the sailors awayfrom them, and cursing and swearing,
as if all their conscience had beenpowder singed, and made callous by their

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calling. Indeed, they were amost unpleasant set of men, especially priming
the nasal voiced gunner's mate with thehair lip and cylinder, his stuttering coadjutor
with the club foot. But youwill always observe that the gunner's gang of
every man of war are invariably illtempered, ugly featured, and quarrelsome.

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Once, when I visited an Englishline of battleship, the gunner's gang were
fore and aft, polishing up thebatteries, which according to the admiral's fancy,
had been painted white as snow,fidgeting round the great thirty two pounders
and making stinging remarks at the sailorsand each other. They reminded one of

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a swarm of black wasps buzzing aboutrows of white headstones in a churchyard.
Now there can be little doubt thatthere being so much among the guns,
is the very thing that makes agunner's gang so cross and quarrelsome. Indeed,
this was once proved to the satisfactionof our whole company of main topmen.

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A fine top mate of ours,a most merry and companionable fellow,
chanced to be promoted to a quartergunner's berth. A few days afterward,
some of us main topmen, hisold comrades, went to pay him a
visit while he was going his regularsthrough the division of guns allotted to his
care. But instead of greeting uswith his usual heartiness and cracking his pleasant

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jokes to our amazement, he didlittle else but scowl, And at last,
when we rallied him upon his illtemper, he seized a long black
rammar from overhead and drove us ondeck, threatening to report us if we
ever dared to be familiar with himagain. My top mates thought that this

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remarkable metamorphose was the effect produced upona weak, vain character suddenly elevated from
the level of a mere seaman tothe dignified position of a petty officer.
But though in similar cases I hadseen such effects produced upon some of the
crew, yet in the present instanceI knew better than that it was solely

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brought about by his consorting with thosevillainous, irritable, illnes tempered cannon,
more especially from his being subject tothe orders of those deformed blunderbusses, priming,
and cylinder. The truth seems tobe indeed, that all people should
be very careful in selecting their callingsand vocations, very careful in seeing to

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it that they surround themselves by goodhumored, pleasant looking objects, and agreeable
temper, soothing sounds. Many anangelic disposition has had its even edge turned
and hacked like a saw, andmany a sweet draft of piety has soured
on the heart from people's choosing illnatured employments and omitting to gather round them

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good natured landscapes. Gardeners are almostalways pleasant, affable people to converse with,
but beware of quarter gunners, keepersof arsenals, and lonely lighthousemen.
It would be advisable for any manwho, from an unlucky choice of a
profession which it is too late tochange for another, should find his temper

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souring, to endeavor to counteract thatmisfortune by filling his private chamber with amiable,
pleasurable sights and sounds. In summertime, an Eolian harp can be placed
in your window at a very triflingexpense. A conk shell might stand on
your mantle to be taken up andheld to the ear, that you may

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be soothed by its continual lulling soundwhen you feel the blue fit stealing over
you. For sights, a gaypainted punch bowl or Dutch tankard, never
mind about filling it might be recommendedit should be placed on a bracket in
the pier. Nor is an oldfashioned silver ladle, nor a chased dinner

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caster, nor a fine portly demijohn, nor anything indeed that savors of eating
and drinking bad to drive off thespleen. But perhaps the best of all
is a shelf of merrily bound bookscontaining comedies, farces, songs, and
humorous novels. You need never openthem, only have the titles in plain

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sight for this purpose. Peregrine pickleis a good book, So is gil
Blass, so is Goldsmith. Butof all chamber furniture in the world,
best calculated to cure a bad temperand breed a pleasant one is the sight
of a lovely wife. If youhave children, however, that are teething,

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the nursery should be a good wayupstairs at sea. It ought to
be in the mizzen top. Indeed, teething children play the very deuce with
a husband's temper. I have knownthree promising young husbands completely spoil on their
wives hands by reason of a teethingchild, whose worrisomeness happened to be aggravated
at the time by the summer complaint. With a breaking heart and my handkerchief

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to my eyes, I followed thosethree hapless young husbands, one after them,
the other to their premature graves.Gossiping scenes breed gossips who so chatty
as hotel clerks, market women,auctioneers, bar keepers, apothecaries, newspaper
reporters, monthly nurses, and allthose who live in bustling crowds or are

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present at scenes of chatty interest.Solitude breeds taciturnity that everybody knows who so
taciturn as authors taken as a race. A forced interior quietude in the midst
of great outward commotion breeds moody peoplewho so moody as railroad brakemen, steamboat

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engineers, helmsmen, and tenders ofpower looms in cotton factories. For all
these must hold their peace while employedand let the machinery do the chatting.
They cannot even edge in a singlesyllable Now, this theory about the wandrous
influence of habitual sights and sounds uponthe human temper was suggested by my experiences

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on board our frigate. And althoughI regard the example furnished by our quarter
gunners, especially him who had oncebeen our top mate, as by far
the strongest argument in favor of thegeneral theory, yet the entire ship abounded
with illustrations of its truth. Whowere more liberal hearted, lofty minded,
gayer, more jockuned, elastic,adventurous, given to fun and frolic than

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the top men of the four mainand mizzen masts. The reason of their
liberal heartedness was that they were dailycalled upon to expatiate themselves all over the
rigging. The reason of their loftymindedness was that they were high lifted above
the petty tumults, carping cares,and paltrinesses of the decks below. And

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I feel persuaded in my inmost soulthat it is to the fact of my
having been a main topman, andas especially my particular post being on the
loftiest yard of the frigate, themain royal yard, that I am now
enabled to give such a free broadoffhand bird's eye, and more than all
impartial account of our man of warworld, withholding nothing, inventing nothing nor

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flattering nor scandalizing any but meeting outto all commodore and messenger boy alike their
precise descriptions and desserts. The reasonof the mirthfulness of these topmen was that
they always looked out upon the blue, boundless, dimpled, laughing, sunny

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sea. Nor do I hold thatit militates against this theory, that of
a stormy day, when the faceof the ocean was black and overcast,
that some of them would grow moodyand choose to sit apart. On the
contrary, it only proves the thingwhich I maintain, For even on shore
there are many people naturally gay andlight hearted, who, whenever the autumnal

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wind begins to bluster around the cornersand roar along the chimney stacks straight,
becomes cross, petulant and irritable.What is more mellow than fine old ale,
Yet thunder will sour the best nutbrown ever brewed. The holders of
our frigate, the troglodytes, wholived down in the tarry cellars and caves

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below the birth deck, were nearlyall of them men of gloomy dispositions,
taking sour views of everything. Oneof them was a blue light Calvinist.
Whereas the old sheet anchormen, whospent their time in the bracing sea air
and broadcast sunshine of the forecastle,were free, generous, hearted, charitable,

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and full of goodwill to all hands, though some of them, to
tell the truth, proved sad exceptions, But exceptions only prove the rule.
The steady cooks on the birth deck, the steady sweepers, and steady spit
box musters in all divisions of thefrigate fore and aft, were a narrow

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minded set, with contracted souls,imputable no doubt to their groveling duties.
More especially was this evinced in thecase of those odious ditchers and night scavengers,
the ignoble wasters. The members ofthe band, some ten or twelve
in number, who had nothing todo but keep their instruments polished and play

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a lively air now and then tostir the stagnant current in our poor old
commodore's torpid veins, were the mostgleeful set of fellows you ever saw.
They were Portuguese who had been shippedat the Cape de Verd Islands. On
the passage out, they messed bythemselves, forming a dinner party not to

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be exceeded ire mirthfulness by a clubof young bridegrooms three months after marriage.
Completely satisfied with their bargains after testingthem. But what made them now so
full of fun? What, indeed, but their merry martial mellow calling,
who could be a churl and playa flageolette? Who mean and spiritless?

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Bringing forth the souls of thousand heroesfrom his brazen trump? But still more
efficacious, perhaps in ministering to thelight spirits of the band, was the
consoling thought that should the ship evergo into action, they would be exempted
from the perils of battle. Inships of war, the members of the

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music, as the band is called, are generally non combatants and mostly ship
with the express understanding that as soonas the vessel comes within long gunshot of
an enemy, they shall have theprivilege of burrowing down in the cable tears
or sea coal holes, which showsthat they are inglorious but uncommonly sensible things.

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Look at the barons of the gunroom, lieutenants, purser, marine
officers, sailing master, all ofthem gentlemen with stiff upper lips and aristocratic
cut noses. Why was this?Will anyone deny that, from their living
so long in high military life,served by a crowd of menial stewards and

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cot boys, and always accustomed tocommand right and left? Will anyone deny?
I say that by reason of thistheir very noses had become thin,
peaked, aquiline, and aristocratically cartilaginous. Even old cuticle the surgeon had a
Roman nose. But I never couldaccount how it came to be that our

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gray headed first lieutenant was a littlelopsided, that is, one of his
shoulders disproportionately dropped. And when Iobserved that nearly all the first lieutenants I
saw in other minimalm war, besidesmany second and third lieutenants, were similarly
lopsided, I knew that there mustbe some general law which induced the phenomenon,

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and I put myself to studying itout as an interesting problem. At
last I came to the conclusion towhich I still adhere, that their so
long wearing only one epaulet, forto only one does their rank entitle them,
was the infallible clue to this mystery, and when anyone reflects upon so

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well known a fact that many sealieutenants grow decrepit from age without attaining a
captaincy, and wearing two uplets whichwould strike the balance between their shoulders,
the above reason assigned will not appearunwarrantable. End of Chapter twelve. Recording
by James K. White, ChulaVista at