More excerpts
From Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea -
On Port Royal:
Many Seamen cruised to Jamaica, the largest and busiest British colony, and in particular to Port Royal, once known as "the wickedest city in the west," a place full of "a most Ungodly debauched people." To Ned Ward, Jamaica was the "Receptacle of Vagabonds, the Sanctuary of Bankrupts, and a Close-Stool for the Purges of our Prisons. As Sickly as an Hospital, as Dangerous as the Plague, as Hot as Hell, and as Wicked as the Devil." As if due to wrathful divine intervention, Port Royal tumbled to the bottom of the sea in an earthquake of 1692, leaving an estimated 2000 dead, whose corpses floated amid the city's crumbled and submerged ruins. The city began to be rebuilt but was destroyed again in 1701, this time by fire. But Port Royal remained a favorite among seamen, and by 1705 the city boasted 400 to 500 houses. It was, according to Francid Rogers, "soon as wicked, I believe, as ever." The unruly reputation of Port Royal drove merchants away. Their largest vessels docked at Chocolate Hole and others went to Kingston, where merchants felt their cargoes were safer. But a great many merchant seamen, naval sailors, privateersmen, an pirates continued to gravitate to Port Royal.
There they converged on the rowdy punch-houses and brothels so full of "Lewd dissolute fellows" that the press gang could not often do its work of body snatching without a fight and at times a bloody defeat. Betty Ware's was a popular spot where a seaman might find anything from fellowship to duels with cutlasses, swords, pistols, or light muskets. Such places were remarkable, at least to some, for the "Swearing, obscene, masculine talk and behaviour" of their women, who sported names like "Unconscionable Nan, Salt Beef Peg, Buttock-de-Clink Jenny, etc." Port Royal seems to have been a favorite place of the seafaring men drawn to Jamaica by sugar.
On Watches:
The watch, another decisive element in the social arrangement of each ship, was perhaps the most basic unit for organizing the steady work of sailing the ship. Half of the crew was assigned to the starboard and half to the larboard watch. The captain supervised one, the mate the other. On the largest ships, the first and second mates took responsibility for a watch. Each watch served four hours on duty, then four hours off, alternating in work shifts (also called "watches") around the clock. The dog watch, between 4 and 8 p.m. was subdivided into two-hour shifts. This produced a total of seven shifts, ensuring that a watch would not work the same hours each day. Each sailor alternately worked a ten- and a fourteen-hour day. The starboard and larboard watches were the essential cycle groups on each ship. Their major responsibility was to guarantee the continuity of keeping the vessel running and true. Everyone made a roughly equivalent contribution by helping to keep the ship on course at the highest possible speed.
On Religion:
The story was told of a priest, a passenger of small sailing experience, who made his way amid a squalling tempest and groaning timbers to the captain's cabin in order to ask about the perils of the surrounding storm. The captain puzzled the priest when he told him to go on deck and listen to the sailors as they worked the masts and sails. The priest complied, only to find that the fury of the seamen's language matched that of the elements. Bursting back into the captain's quarters, he reported that the sailors were cursing and swearing like madmen, to which the captain nonchalantely responded that there was no great danger. Still later, the priest returned with news that the seamen cursed no longer, but now occupied themselves with prayer. The captain gravely replied, "Oh, I am afraid that if they have stopped swearing and started praying, there is no hope for us."
This incident, although taken from a later period, throws a sharp shaft of light upon the nature of religion at sea in the eighteenth century. The ship was an environment where work, activity, and self-help necessarily took precedence over religious meditation or supplication. Religious belief and practice had to be broadly congruent with the imperatives of work and survival. This necessity, reinforced by the ship's isolation and distance from religious institutions, joined with long-standing plebeian traditions of skepticism and anticlericalism to make sailors one of the most notoriously irreligious groups of the early modern period.
On Superstition:
A ring around the sun portended ill for a deep-sea vessel and its crew... A "great Circle about the Sun," explained William Dampier, one of the wisest men of early modern seafaring, meant "storms of Wind or much Rain." A breach in the circle, furthermore, indicated the direction from which the winds would gust.
Sailors also fixed their gaze upon the moon, which influenced the tide and the currents. A ring around the moon, like the sun, suggested a storm. Dampier believed that "if there is any very bad Weather in teh Month, it is about two or three Days before or after the Full or Change of the Moon." A greenish tint to the moon might indicate "some days of fair weather."
Other elements carried their own messages. It was "a Proverb among Seamen, Up Wind, up Sea, Down Wind, down Sea." ... In the tropics, clouds gathered on the horizon were "a great sign or token of Land." ... Porpoises "come in herds on both sides of the ship: a sign of a storm as the seamen say."
Comets and falling stars, for instance, suggested fortunes good or ill. Another omen was St. Elmo's fire, the "corposant"... variously interpreted as the embodiment of Christ, the Holy Spirit, or Castor and Pollux... St. Elmo's fire was also an omen about the weather. The appearance of only one corposant indicated an imminent tempest or perhaps some vague "dismal future." Two corposants - Castor and Pollux - suggested fair weather or good fortune... A corposant on the maintopmast was a good sign, but when "they are seen lying on the Deck" - resembling "a great Glow-worm" - "it is generally accounted a bad Sign."
This chapter emphasized that sailors, whose lives hung in a delicate balance, tended to try to predict the future based on what they saw in the present.
On Port Royal:
Many Seamen cruised to Jamaica, the largest and busiest British colony, and in particular to Port Royal, once known as "the wickedest city in the west," a place full of "a most Ungodly debauched people." To Ned Ward, Jamaica was the "Receptacle of Vagabonds, the Sanctuary of Bankrupts, and a Close-Stool for the Purges of our Prisons. As Sickly as an Hospital, as Dangerous as the Plague, as Hot as Hell, and as Wicked as the Devil." As if due to wrathful divine intervention, Port Royal tumbled to the bottom of the sea in an earthquake of 1692, leaving an estimated 2000 dead, whose corpses floated amid the city's crumbled and submerged ruins. The city began to be rebuilt but was destroyed again in 1701, this time by fire. But Port Royal remained a favorite among seamen, and by 1705 the city boasted 400 to 500 houses. It was, according to Francid Rogers, "soon as wicked, I believe, as ever." The unruly reputation of Port Royal drove merchants away. Their largest vessels docked at Chocolate Hole and others went to Kingston, where merchants felt their cargoes were safer. But a great many merchant seamen, naval sailors, privateersmen, an pirates continued to gravitate to Port Royal.
There they converged on the rowdy punch-houses and brothels so full of "Lewd dissolute fellows" that the press gang could not often do its work of body snatching without a fight and at times a bloody defeat. Betty Ware's was a popular spot where a seaman might find anything from fellowship to duels with cutlasses, swords, pistols, or light muskets. Such places were remarkable, at least to some, for the "Swearing, obscene, masculine talk and behaviour" of their women, who sported names like "Unconscionable Nan, Salt Beef Peg, Buttock-de-Clink Jenny, etc." Port Royal seems to have been a favorite place of the seafaring men drawn to Jamaica by sugar.
On Watches:
The watch, another decisive element in the social arrangement of each ship, was perhaps the most basic unit for organizing the steady work of sailing the ship. Half of the crew was assigned to the starboard and half to the larboard watch. The captain supervised one, the mate the other. On the largest ships, the first and second mates took responsibility for a watch. Each watch served four hours on duty, then four hours off, alternating in work shifts (also called "watches") around the clock. The dog watch, between 4 and 8 p.m. was subdivided into two-hour shifts. This produced a total of seven shifts, ensuring that a watch would not work the same hours each day. Each sailor alternately worked a ten- and a fourteen-hour day. The starboard and larboard watches were the essential cycle groups on each ship. Their major responsibility was to guarantee the continuity of keeping the vessel running and true. Everyone made a roughly equivalent contribution by helping to keep the ship on course at the highest possible speed.
On Religion:
The story was told of a priest, a passenger of small sailing experience, who made his way amid a squalling tempest and groaning timbers to the captain's cabin in order to ask about the perils of the surrounding storm. The captain puzzled the priest when he told him to go on deck and listen to the sailors as they worked the masts and sails. The priest complied, only to find that the fury of the seamen's language matched that of the elements. Bursting back into the captain's quarters, he reported that the sailors were cursing and swearing like madmen, to which the captain nonchalantely responded that there was no great danger. Still later, the priest returned with news that the seamen cursed no longer, but now occupied themselves with prayer. The captain gravely replied, "Oh, I am afraid that if they have stopped swearing and started praying, there is no hope for us."
This incident, although taken from a later period, throws a sharp shaft of light upon the nature of religion at sea in the eighteenth century. The ship was an environment where work, activity, and self-help necessarily took precedence over religious meditation or supplication. Religious belief and practice had to be broadly congruent with the imperatives of work and survival. This necessity, reinforced by the ship's isolation and distance from religious institutions, joined with long-standing plebeian traditions of skepticism and anticlericalism to make sailors one of the most notoriously irreligious groups of the early modern period.
On Superstition:
A ring around the sun portended ill for a deep-sea vessel and its crew... A "great Circle about the Sun," explained William Dampier, one of the wisest men of early modern seafaring, meant "storms of Wind or much Rain." A breach in the circle, furthermore, indicated the direction from which the winds would gust.
Sailors also fixed their gaze upon the moon, which influenced the tide and the currents. A ring around the moon, like the sun, suggested a storm. Dampier believed that "if there is any very bad Weather in teh Month, it is about two or three Days before or after the Full or Change of the Moon." A greenish tint to the moon might indicate "some days of fair weather."
Other elements carried their own messages. It was "a Proverb among Seamen, Up Wind, up Sea, Down Wind, down Sea." ... In the tropics, clouds gathered on the horizon were "a great sign or token of Land." ... Porpoises "come in herds on both sides of the ship: a sign of a storm as the seamen say."
Comets and falling stars, for instance, suggested fortunes good or ill. Another omen was St. Elmo's fire, the "corposant"... variously interpreted as the embodiment of Christ, the Holy Spirit, or Castor and Pollux... St. Elmo's fire was also an omen about the weather. The appearance of only one corposant indicated an imminent tempest or perhaps some vague "dismal future." Two corposants - Castor and Pollux - suggested fair weather or good fortune... A corposant on the maintopmast was a good sign, but when "they are seen lying on the Deck" - resembling "a great Glow-worm" - "it is generally accounted a bad Sign."
This chapter emphasized that sailors, whose lives hung in a delicate balance, tended to try to predict the future based on what they saw in the present.