A Captain in the Navy

I

SHE was not the biggest transport in the service, but as I went over the side for the first time she looked as big as the Leviathan to me. I had been a sail-boat man during the war, and transports, commanded by sure-enough regular navy captains with four stripes, were out of my ken. So when the officer of the deck told me to go to the executive office ‘in the passageway under the bridge,’ to give my orders to the ship’s writer, I went in a condition of most painful modesty. I had always known that an ensign did n’t amount to much, but I had never realized before how extremely little it was.

There were two doors in ‘the passageway under the bridge,’ both open. No one was in sight. I hesitated, and went in the one to the right.

As I entered, a tall officer in his shirt-sleeves sprang from an armchair and transfixed me with a leveled forefinger.

‘When I want to see you, sir,’ he barked, ‘I’ll send for you! Good-day!’

‘Who,’ I asked one of my fellow insects, ‘is the skipper of this wagon?’

‘ Why? ’ said he. ‘Have you met him already?’

‘You might say I had had — dealings with him.’

‘Is n’t he a tamer?’ my friend remarked. ‘Do you know, I think they started calling ensigns insects on this ship.’

During the first two months of my service on board I saw the captain very little. I was doing duty as junior officer of the deck. His duties, according to the Naval Regulations, are ‘to assist the officer of the deck in his duties . . . and to inspect the ship at least twice in each watch.’ Since the Armistice, in a ship not cruising in convoy or formation, he spends most of his time helping the officer of the deck to look, and that section about inspecting the ship is very helpful. I found it so. For when the Old Man came up the bridge by one ladder, somehow I always had an inspection to make, and down I went by the other. The officer of the deck used to call this deserting a post of duty in the presence of the enemy. Poor fellow, he had to stay on the bridge, and the Old Man was quite impartial. He would call down a lieutenant commander as readily, as pointedly, and in very much the same terms that he would use to the humblest ensign of us all.

The trouble with the Old Man from our point of view was that he was entirely too efficient. He saw things a captain has no business to see — little things which are always in disorder about a ship, and of which the officer of the deck took no notice — until afterward.

I have reason to know, for one morning the Executive sent for me.

‘Beginning to-morrow,’ said he, ‘you will go on watch every morning from eight to twelve o’clock as officer of the deck. The captain decided to give you that watch so he could keep an eye on you; and if you do all right and keep on the job and keep your eyes open, he says he will put you on regular watch duty. If you don’t,’ he continued (and was there a shadow of a smile in his eyes?), ‘you are liable to spend ten days in your room. Don’t be worried. The captain is n’t so terrible if you’re up to your work.’

Now the eight-to-twelve in the morning was the watch we dreaded most. The Old Man was liable to spend most of it on the bridge, and to run up unexpectedly at the most inopportune times. It was fine for the Exec. to tell me it would be all right, but I couldn ’t help feeling he was very cheerful about my troubles. For even in as simple a matter as routine watch-duty, it is one thing to stand by and see it done, and another thing to take the initiative and issue the orders yourself. I was taking no chances. The rest of the day I spent with the junior officer’s friends — Knight and the Watch Officer’s Manual. Both these books have full notes on ‘Hints to the junior officer doing line duty ’ — only it takes nearly five pages to itemize all the things the O.O.D. is expected to carry out in the eight-totwelve watch, and con the list as I would, I was afraid I should leave something out.

I went on watch in fear and trembling, and got along swimmingly until seven bells. The Old Man had come on deck, passed the time of day very pleasantly, and gone below without a comment. I thought he was giving me a day of grace, and with only a halfhour more before I was relieved, I figured that, my dangers were over.

These meditations were interrupted by the captain’s orderly. We called him the Stormy Petrel.

‘Sir,’ said he, ‘the captain would like to know why t he ship’s bell has n’t been cleaned for the last two days.

I said to myself, So would I. Long as I had been on the ship, I knew of no one giving an order to clean it. I looked over the bridge-dodger at the bell. It was green, right enough.

‘Quartermaster,’ I snapped, ‘why did n’t you clean the ship’s bell this morning? ’

The quartermaster was deeply concerned. We were apt to be deeply concerned when the captain’s orderly was about.

‘Why, sir,’he replied, ‘the bridge gang never has cleaned that bell.

‘Certain of that, are you?’

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Who does do it, then?’

‘I never saw anybody do it, sir.’

There was evidently no hope here.

‘Send for the messenger, the bugler, and the bo’sun’s mate,’ I ordered.

These, let me add in explanation, are all the men who have anything to do about the bridge. They came.

‘The ship’s bell was n’t cleaned this morning,’ I began.

The bo’sun’s mate looked at the messenger, the messenger looked at the bugler, and all three looked at the quartermaster.

‘It’s not my job, sir,’they said in unison.

I turned to the orderly. Time was passing. ‘Tell the captain we re cleaning it right away,’I said. ‘And in the future, messenger, you are the man who cleans that bell. Every morning. In the morning watch —'

The orderly was back on the bridge.

‘Sir, the captain says that was n’t what he asked. He wanted to know why the bell had n’t been cleaned for two days.’

The navigator had come out on the bridge.

‘ What on earth shall I tell him, sir I asked.

He snatched up his sextant and headed back for the chart-house.

‘You leave me out of this,’ he shot back over his shoulder.

So I thought hard. Why had n’t the bell been cleaned? How had it ever been cleaned? Apparently it had been accustomed to clean itself, and had gone on strike. And two days! I’d only been O.O.D. one.

‘You tell the captain,’ I said to the orderly, ‘that I don’t know why the bell has n’t been cleaned. Put that I intend to know hereafter.’

If I should go back into the service and take a deck watch again, I know the first thing I shall do — I shall look to see if the bell is clean. But I wonder who does clean it? For after I came off watch I wanted to find out who was prescribed by the customs of the sea to clean the ship’s bell. Perhaps I’d been unjust to the messenger. So I hunted up our old boatswain, twenty years in the navy. If any man in the ship was as seagoing as the captain, it would be he.

‘Boats, who cleans the ship’s bell?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ he reflected, ‘according to Regulations, and in the old navy, the ship’s cook is supposed to clean the bell. But he don’t do it no more.’

‘But who does do it? The captain asked me this morning.’

‘Well, son, to tell you the truth, I don’t know. But I know the bo’sun’s mate don’t.’

It must have been a month afterward that the captain came on the bridge while I had the deck. He was feeling very genial that day, and we were talking. I took my courage in both hands.

‘Captain,’ I asked, ‘would you mind telling me who does clean the ship’s bell ? ’

He put his head on one side. ‘Humph!' said he, and went below.

II

My next watch was on Sunday, and the four hours passed without any collision with the captain, although there were a few minutes when I expected to see his orderly coming with another poser. Part of the Sunday routine is to make church call. To do this, you find where the chaplain wants to hold services and have the boatswain’s mate prepare the compartment for him, and then, at the appointed time, you sound church call, hoist the church pennant over the ensign, pass the word to put out the smoking lamp, and toll the bell. Now, I do not see anything obscure in an order to toll the bell. I believed it was generally understood that, if you wished to call people to a church, you rang a bell slowly; if to a fire, you rang it fast, at sea or anywhere else. But the messenger tolled that bell as if he were on a tanker loaded with gasoline and TNT on fire fore and aft. I did n’t hear from the Old Man; probably he had gone aft.; but the first: division who came to answer the fire-alarm were quite bitter about it.

Idle incident should have warned me that, messengers were not to be trusted; and yet the next day, when it was time to set the ship’s clocks to local time, which is done every day at eleven, I had no foreboding of disaster.

‘Messenger,’ I ordered, ‘report to the captain the deck clock has been set ahead twenty-three minutes.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he acknowledged, and vanished.

Almost immediately the Stormy Petrel came up on the run. He looked like a stockbroker who has been caught short on the market. At the time there was an orderly in the brig for reporting ‘Eight o’clock and barometers wound.’ This orderly seemed to have visions of the adjoining cell.

‘Please, sir, what did you tell the messenger?’ he panted.

‘That the deck clocks had been set ahead twenty-three minutes.’

‘Well, he told me that the chronometers had been set ahead twenty-three minutes, and that’s what, I reported to the captain. And when I reported it, the captain, he says, “What’s that?” And I told him again, and he started acting up outrageous. He’s working on the messenger now, sir, and the messenger he’s trying to say that’s just what you told him; but the Old Man don’t give him much chance to talk. By the way, sir, the captain wants to see you when you come off watch.’

I spent the rest of the watch wondering whether I would be relieved from duty for ten days or only for five, except when a very meek messenger crept up the bridge-ladder. I fell, like ‘working on him’ myself; but after what the captain must have said to him, I knew my best effort would be only balm. So I just said, ‘Well?’

‘Mr. Perry,’ he asked faintly, ‘is there any difference between a clock and a chronometer?’

When I reported to the cabin, the captain seemed to be in very good humor, but he always had perfect control over his emotions. He began instantly in the voice of one who has just, recovered from anger.

‘The messenger came down this morning with a ridiculous report. It’s your fault. I know you did n’t tell him any such thing,’ — he must have seen the amazement in my face, — ‘but did you make him repeat that message back to you?’

‘No, sir, I —’

‘Never mind that! Is n’t there an order to that effect in the captain’s order-book? '

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then why did n’t you execute it? Thought it was a routine report and it would n’t be necessary, did n’t you? Sec what happened, don’t you? Who’s captain on this ship?’

I did n’t answer. As to that, there was never doubt or discussion.

‘So!’ he went on. ‘I’m the judge of the necessity for orders. You execute them. I’m tired of issuing orders and having you watch officers initial them and go right on doing what you think best! ’

He dropped his voice. ‘And another thing. Remember there’s no such thing as a trivial matter in the navy. You ’ve got to run a ship one hundred per cent right. Good-day, sir!'

As I relieved t he deck the next morning, I found a new messenger on watch.

‘Come here, lad,’said I. ‘What’s a barometer? What’s a psychometer? What’s a chronometer? Good! What’s the only thing you ever do to a chronometer? Don’t know that? Wind it. Wind it at twelve o’clock. Understand? And messenger! If I give you any order, even if it’s only to call my relief, you repeat what I say loud enough for me to hear you.'

My record for the first three days was too lively to continue, and as the weeks passed I began to know my watch and the captain better. His moods varied a great deal. One day he would say, ‘Good-morning!’ very cheerfully, and spend an hour pacing the bridge, talking on any subject under the sun and dropping many a hint on the proper way of performing watch-duty in the course of an anecdote. The next morning, perhaps, he would nod in answer to my salute, without saying a word, and stand with his head on one side near the rail, leaning forward now and then to bite the bridge screen. These were the mornings the junior officer had an inspection to make, and the quartermaster found something to do on the signal bridge. Everyone disappeared except the officer of the deck, and he did not stay from choice. The Old Man would stand silent, biting the rail, his eyes roving over the decks and the rigging. Then he would twist his lips and speak.

‘How long are you going to stand there looking at that windsail before you trim it?’

If he said nothing, you might be sure that there was nothing wrong to be seen. His eyesight was uncanny. For example, during the trip west we hung a large number of signs on the liferafts and in the passageways to guide the troops. We had been in the habit of securing these with rope-yarns, which are not very neat, and the day before, the captain had issued an order that all the rope-yarn was to removed, and the signs secured with tarred marline. This job had been done the previous afternoon. I had an idea that trouble might arise through some oversight, so as soon as I went on watch, I looked carefully at the signs in view from the bridge. In every case, so far as I could see, marline was used. The captain bit the rail that morning. Suddenly he wheeled to me.

‘ Has all the rope-yarn been replaced by marline?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Nonsense! There’s rope-yarn there on the second life-raft nest! Why don’t you use your eyes?’

I could n’t see it even then, but I sent the messenger on the run. A rope-yarn had been used, sure enough. In tying up that particular sign the sailor had run out of marline, and tied a six-inch rope-yarn to the end of the cord, to give him enough slack to make the knot. The captain picked that sign out of some forty in sight, and noticed that little six-inch patch a hundred and fifty feet away.

No one ever forgot a calling down from the captain. It was blasting, yet it never left you angry because it was so definite. An ensign does n’t mind being called down, at least, not after a while. He seems to exist for that purpose, and as long as he is brought on the carpet for some distinct oversight, he can charge the incident to experience. But it makes a man’s blood boil, junior officer or not, to be rated in round terms for nothing in particular, without being able to reply; to be told he is neglecting’his duty, without having the duty he is neglecting specified. He feels that the man talking got up out of sorts, and is working off his bad temper on him because it can be done with impunity. I have been scolded for half an hour — it could not be called anything but a scolding — because the bridge was dirty; and this ten minutes after we had dried down the deck, when there was not a spot visible. But never by the captain.

Only once did he ever take me to task without cause. We were coming out of St. Nazaire. I was not on duty, but the last time my room-mate had stood a watch at the engine-room telegraphs he had received a tongue-lashing from the captain which gave him a lively dread of the job, and I consented to take his watch. I did n’t know anything about the conditions under which we were leaving port, and was n’t expected to. As I stepped on the bridge on the port side, the captain appeared on the starboard.

‘What’s the draft of the ship?’ he asked.

That was a matter for the officer of the deck. I did n’t know, and said so.

‘I wish you’d understand this is a ship, not a roof-garden!’ he retorted.

It was at t he engine-room telegraphs that we learned another aspect of the Old Man’s temperament. At sea in calm weather he was critical, acid, and exacting. In a blow or a fog he would humanize. The more critical the situation of the ship, the quieter, the more courteous, the less excitable he became. He used to delight, in docking the vessel without a tug or a pilot, and occasionally he got into some narrow corners. His seamanship was a beautiful thing to watch.

It happened while making a dock at Newport News under particularly nasty conditions, that a very green ensign was at the telegraphs. The Old Man was turning into the dock and balancing the ship against the current with the engines, starboard engine against the tide. He got her steadied.

‘ Both engines, ahead one third! ’ he ordered, intending to shoot in to the pier.

The ensign swung both levers, not to ‘Stop,’ not to ‘One Third Ahead,’ but to the space between, — ‘Fire,’ — and stepped back proudly. The engineroom began jangling the telegraph bell, trying to find out what on earth the bridge wanted. Not that, they knew.

The captain was standing on the starboard rail of the bridge, holding on to an awning stanchion. As the gong kept ringing, he turned to look at the engine-telegraphs. His eye fastened on the signal indicated — ‘Fire.’ The ship’s head was swinging toward the bank, but the captain seemed to forget about the ship. He jumped down from the rail, walked over to the ensign, and laid his hand lightly on his shoulder.

‘You may go below, sir,’ he said kindly. ‘You’ve done everything for us you can! ’

My seafaring days are over now. But if it ever happens that I must don uniform and put to sea again, which God forbid, I know the captain I want to sail under.