The captain of a ship, being in supreme command, exercises a general supervision over his ship and all that it contains, and is, of course, directly responsible to the admiral under whom he is serving and to the Admiralty for its condition both as to material and personnel. But the second in command--the "commander"--addressed by the courtesy title of "captain" also--may be regarded as the managing man. He lives, or rather has his meals, in the ward-room. As to where he actually _lives_, it may be said to be everywhere on board except in his own cabin. He is perhaps the hardest-worked man in the ship. Up at daylight, he is engaged in running the whole show till he goes the rounds at 9 p.m. to see that everything and everybody is properly settled down for the night. He draws up a regular daily and weekly routine, which he personally sees is regularly carried out. He "tells off" the "hands" for this, that, and the other duties, and sees that everyone is at his proper station at "general quarters" for action, fire quarters, collision stations, and many another "evolution". He holds a daily court of justice, and either deals with the defaulters who have been "shoved in the rattle", i.e. put in his report, himself, or in more serious cases passes them on to the higher court--the captain. In most ships there is yet a minor court, held by the senior officer of marines on his own men. His powers are yet more limited, and if after investigation he finds that they will not admit a sufficient punishment for an offence, he takes the offender before the commander. In some ships he is empowered by the captain to bring such cases directly to him. In spite of the commander's hard work, he has little to grumble at, nor, I believe, does he ever do so, except in the ordinary conversational way we all do at times, when we "let off steam". For he knows that, unless he is very unfortunate in his "skipper", he has his promotion in his own hands. He is showing what he is made of, and once he succeeds in negotiating the big jump to captain's rank he is assured of going right on to admiral, even if he is not fortunate enough to "hoist his flag" in command of a squadron or fleet. He has the relative rank of a lieutenant-colonel in the army, and is almost invariably a much younger man, probably from thirty to thirty-five years of age, and can take and bear the strain of his position.