In addition to the officers already mentioned must be given two more.
These were first the ship’s chaplain, who celebrated the Holy Communion
on Sundays, read prayers two or three times on week-days, preached, and
visited the sick and wounded. And secondly a trumpeter, who blew on his
silver instrument when the ship went into action, at the changing of
the watches, and at the coming and going of a distinguished guest. His
place was on the poop, and it was customary for “himself and his noise
to have banners of silk of the admiral’s colours.” The watch was set at
eight, and so on through the night and day. When on these occasions the
trumpeter sounded his blast he was to “have a can of beer allowed for
the same.”
And now that we have got some idea in our minds of the details of the
seaman’s life on board an Elizabethan ship, let us be rowed off from
the shore in one of her three boats which is bringing water and wood
and provisions. The good ship is lying to her anchor in the roadstead
about to get underway. Transport yourself, then, in imagination to that
epoch when England’s seamen made such wonderful history, and endeavour
to believe that the cock-boat actually bumps up alongside the English
galleon. You clamber up the ship’s side and find yourself on her deck,
where the crew are standing about ready to hear the commands of the
master. And now let us watch them get under way. I shall quote not from
fiction of to-day, but from an account written by an Elizabethan, this
same Captain John Smith, as he wrote it for the edification of young
seamen.
“Bend your passerado to the mayne-sayle, git the sailes to the yeards,
about your geare on all hands, hoyse your sayles halfe mast high,
make ready to set sayle, crosse your yeards, bring your Cable to the
Capsterne. Boatswaine, heave a head, men into the tops, men upon the
yeards. Come, is the anchor a pike? Heave out your topsayles, hawle
your sheates. What’s the Anchor away? Yea, yea. Let fall your fore
sayle. Who’s at the helme there? Coyle your cable in small slakes.
Hawle the cat, a bitter, belay, loufe (= luff), fast your Anchor with
your shanke painter, stow the boate. Let falle your maine saile, on
with your bonnets and drablers, steare study before the wind.
“The wind veares, git your star-boord tacks aboord, hawle off your ley
sheats ouerhawle the ley bowlin, ease your mayne brases, out with your
spret-saile, flat the fore sheat, pike up the misen or brade (= brail)
it. The ship will not wayer, loure the maine top saile, veare a fadome
of your sheat. A flown sheate, a faire winde and a boune voyage! The
wind shrinks. Get your tacks close aboord, make ready your loufe howks
(= luff hooks) and lay fagnes, to take off your bonnets and drablers,
hawle close your maine bowline.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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