Man-of-War Life

By Charles Nordhoff

Like many a restless teenager before him, Charles Nordhoff craved excitement and in 1844, when barely 14, he managed to talk his way into the US Navy. A bookish lad who had been apprenticed to a printer, Nordhoff was better educated than most of his fellow seamen, and was well equipped to describe what became a three-year round-the-world adventure. He was lucky in his ship, USS Columbus, a large 74-gun ship of the line that had been chosen to undertake a diplomatic mission to China, and then to Japan, in an abortive attempt to open the latter to American trade. In the course of this voyage, Nordhoff was to see many countries of south-east Asia and the Far East, before crossing the Pacific, visiting South America, rounding Cape Horn, and finally returning to Norfolk, Virginia, having crossed the Equator six times. Apart from its descriptions of exotic climes, much of the interest in the book lies in a boys view of naval life and how the ship was run. The US Navy was small and followed very conservative principles, with an emphasis on discipline, routine and training that would have been familiar a century earlier. However, it was also subtly different: more humane in its treatment of the crew, less draconian in punishment, and a promoter of what would be considered Victorian moral values. The book offers a valuable and entertaining account of life in the last days of the sailing warship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473822504

Book preview

Introduction

A trained seaman is a respectable person. He is a good deal of a boy ashore; he probably gets drunk when liquor comes in his way; he may even come aboard drunk; but he is brave; has a strong sense of duty; and so great a pride in his profession that he is usually something of a pedant, for he is apt to think that the man who can ‘hand, reef, steer, and heave the lead’, is the best of created beings. But as he has travelled he is sure to have some intelligence, and a good knowledge of men, which gives him tact.¹

CHARLES NORDHOFF wrote what is possibly the most detailed account of daily life on board an American man-of-war in the mid nineteenth century. In 1845 he signed as a ‘First-Class Boy’ in the USS Columbus, a large 74-gun ship of the line that had been chosen to undertake a diplomatic mission to China and establish relations with Japan. He paid off in the same capacity almost three years later having circumnavigated the world, and the resulting book, Man-of-War Life, is an extraordinarily vivid account of the daily life of the ordinary seaman. As he wrote in the Preface of the first edition: ‘To give a sailor’s impression of a sailor’s life, nothing extenuating, nor aught setting down in malice, has been the aim. Neither exaggerating its hardships – they do not need it – nor highly colouring its delights, whatever they may be, the very plainest truth has been thought sufficient for the purpose in view.’² And indeed it is the lack of any romanticism that adds such value to the work as a record of sailors’ lives in the last days of sailing navies. The memoir is a masterpiece of unvarnished description that perhaps tells better than any other the real nature of life below decks in a man-of-war.

Charles Nordhoff was born in Erwitte in Prussia in 1830, and emigrated to the United States with his parents in 1835. He was educated in Cincinnati: ‘being a regular book-worm I went to school until I was thirteen. Then, by my own choice, I became apprenticed to a printer’. Printing, and the conditions under which it was then practised, began to affect Nordhoff’s health. Looking for a remedy, and his reading having covered many volumes of travel, he decided that going to sea would effect a cure. This was a solution to bodily and mental ills that was chosen by many young men, often middle-class, who envisaged the beneficial effects of warmer climates, the stimulation of changes of scene, and the curative benefits of hard manual work. R H Dana in Two Years Before The Mast wrote that ‘I determined to undertake the voyage to cure, if possible, by absence from books and study, a weakness …’³ James Johnston Abraham, in The Surgeon’s Log, leaves a memorable picture of waiting to join his first ship. Abraham, verging on a complete nervous breakdown from overwork in London hospitals, signed with Blue Funnel, and was recommended a Birkenhead sailors’ hotel while waiting for the Clytemnestra.

I walked into a room I thought was public to find I had invaded a den of retired sea captains. … Curious shells and carvings … faded photographs … A painting of a fully rigged ship on carefully regulated waves. … Although all were friendly, my pale student complexion and washed-out appearance excited little comment … For here they were well used to wrecks of men returning from the fever-zones of the Amazon, West Coast of Africa, the Malay Archipelago.⁴

Nordhoff, at thirteen, and with twenty-five dollars, left home and headed for Baltimore to try for a vessel. Constanly rebuffed, and with only two-and-a-half dollars left, he made for Philadelphia ‘having read of the kindness of the Quakers’. Again unsuccessful, he returned to printing, gaining a post on the Philadelphia Daily Sun as ‘boy of all work’, thanks to its editor, Levin, who also found him lodgings.

He continued to haunt the docks, but became convinced that he would never find a ship in the merchant service ‘unaided by outside influence’ as merchant ships carry ‘no more cats than can catch mice’, and if a ‘boy’ is needed the captain will opt for a runaway English apprentice, because ‘although in general far less intelligent than American lads, they are inured to labor and hardship, and, consequently, much more useful.’

It is then that Nordhoff learns of the USS Columbus (74 guns) being commissioned for a voyage to China and Japan, with hands being shipped at the Naval Rendezvous, but he is told that having no parent or guardian, he can only be shipped by a ‘special order from Commodore Elliott’ (Commandant of the Navy Yard). Levin, a friend of Elliott, intervenes on his behalf and eventually Elliott writes the chit that provides his entry into the United States Navy that same day, Nordhoff signing as a ‘First-Class Boy’ at wages of eight dollars per month.

USS Columbus had been launched in March 1819 and after an unsuccessful period on duty in the Mediterranean, during which her poor sailing qualities became evident, she was laid up until 1842.⁵ After a refit in 1844 she was ready for the voyage to China that Nordhoff was to join. At nearly 200ft Columbus was a big ship, and on coming onboard Nordhoff was struck dumb at the ‘vastness of structure’, its hundreds of shouting men and officers, the towering masts with their wilderness of ropes, tiers of decks, the guns, and all the life of a small city. At that time, an American man-of-war, about to be commissioned for a three-year ‘cruise’, was supposed to carry six months’ supply of provisions and water, and sufficient powder and shot, sails, and rigging, to last the length of the whole commission. Stowing all this meant working from 4am to 6pm, and being unused to the stresses of such a life Nordhoff contracted ‘violent pleurisy’. He was cupped, blistered, mustard-plastered, and eventually given up for dead, but by the time Columbus sailed, Nordhoff was able to walk about the decks a little despite the horrors of the sick bay, ‘badly ventilated … reeking of odors … dull moans of pain … hollow coughs … feverish gasping … the invalid lying day after day, thinking and thinking … in bad weather the port-holes closed and the last remnants of fresh air excluded.’

Early in his narrative Nordhoff gives a wonderfully clear description of a man-of-war, its decks and masts, sails and rigging, and he explains the manner in which the crew is divided and subdivided. He enumerates the officers and crew that, all told, comprised nearly eight hundred men, and he details their tasks and their daily working lives, what they do, and how, and where they do it. His unassuming manner and style, which are such noticeable characteristics of the memoir, are well matched to the subject and his clear descriptions also give a hint of the skills of the journalist that he was to become. Written to make clear to the landlubber the intricate workings of a sailing warship, there are few other passages in the literature of voyaging that so skilfully paint an impression of the great complexity of a ship, its equipment and its men.

Nordhoff stood his first watch at midnight after escaping the sick bay and is delighted to find that he is not prone to seasickness, though, ‘twenty poor fellows were groaning as they cast up their accounts’. He finds there is little to do except ‘yarn and sing’, and at 4am falls asleep thinking that ‘being seated in the half-light afforded by the bright stars, protected by high bulwarks from the wind, while listening to a group of bearded, rough-looking fellows, recounting past adventures, was the realization of all sea romances with which I had so often been enchanted.’

Throughout the book Nordhoff depicts his fellow sailors with a sympathetic pen. While not blind to their faults, he perceived them as individuals and suggested that many of their misdemeanours were driven by the manner of their treatment by officers who, and this was common for the period, saw them as a villainous mob that had to be contained. His fellow ‘boys’ were of special interest. On the Columbus there were forty. Eight were stationed in each top, four on the foc’s’le, and twelve ‘messenger boys’, of which Nordhoff was one. ‘Boys’ were under the master-at-arms, who was responsible to the first lieutenant for their appearance and behaviour and, in port, saw them into their hammocks by 8pm every night. They mustered every morning at seven and were inspected for neatness and cleanliness both in clothing and self. Punishment consisted of strokes with a rattan cane. The commander of the Columbus had a particular hatred for ‘tobacco chewing’ and inspected the boys for this himself. Those suspected were forced to breathe into the face of the master-at-arms and then have their mouths filled with a lather of soapsuds and sand, and their ‘lips and teeth scoured till they bleed.’ There was the usual bullying of weaker boys by the stronger, and there could, of course, ‘be no appeal to the authorities. Any boy (or man) threatening to report another was considered on a par with a thief and handled without mercy’

The arrival of Columbus at Rio to replenish water gave Nordhoff his first experiences of a markedly different world to the one from which he had sailed. Though not allowed ashore, the sights and sounds of a tropical port appeared to him as an exotic vision. Bumboats, from which the men were allowed to buy fruits, foodstuffs, and various specimens of wildlife, came alongside; Nordhoff tasted his first banana and commented that ‘once one had melted away in my mouth, I knew its equal is scarcely to be found among all the luscious fruits of the tropics.’

Back at sea, bound for Java via the Cape of Good Hope, Nordhoff discusses rations on Columbus. He explains how each individual, from the commodore to the messenger boy, is allowed rations to the value of six dollars a month. He details thoroughly what is provided and how much, then adds that although there is no difference by rank as to ration there is the distinction that officers are allowed to take the value in money instead. ‘With this, plus private funds, they supply their larders – while Jack is obliged to take what is furnished by government.’ Those sailors who managed to smuggle liquor aboard in Rio are brought from the ‘brig’ for flogging, and the crew are ‘driven’ on deck to observe the punishment. Articles of war are read out and the men, twenty of them, are each given a dozen with the cat and Nordhoff’s account is vicious and searing; he relates how he found the floggings so horrifying that he always closed his eyes, so that though he heard the sound of the cat, never did he see a man flogged. Flogging was frequent and, during the early part of the voyage, almost routine.

The Columbus, after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, then watered at Batavia and finally sailed for China, entering the China Sea on 27 December 1846. There they picked up a Chinese pilot, ‘looking just as we boys expected. Diminutive pig-like eyes; high cheekbones; loose petticoat trousers; tasselled cap – a queue of hair descending to his middle.’ For the next three months the Columbus swings round its anchors, the tedium only being relieved by the passing of the daily Canton to Macao packets, or the passing of some great Chinese junk with:

great goggle eyes painted on her bluff bows. I inquired of our Chinese compradore (the individual who furnishes the ship with all the provisions, etc) the object of these eyes. He answered, with a shrug of contempt at my ignorance: ‘Ayah! John, no hab eyes, how can see?’ A proposition so logical as to be unanswerable. Certainly, if Chinese sailors are no smarter than they look, their junks have need of all the eyes they can obtain to get along safely.

Nordhoff tells us little of the principal reason for the voyage of the Columbus, which was to finalise diplomatic relations with China after years of negotiation. To that extent, the significance of the voyage is barely addressed throughout the book, the focus always being on the men and on the their lives at sea. Commodore James Biddle, commander of the Columbus and a veteran of the War of 1812, was given the task of delivering the ratification documents of the Treaty of Wangia and in this he was successful. A secondary objective of the voyage was to open up trading links with Japan and in this he experienced disappointment.

Biddle was to deliver a letter from the American president to the emperor of Japan expressing a desire for trade, but he was be the fifth in a long line to be denied trading rights with Japan, which would only come with the advent of Commodore Matthew Perry in 1852 in his steam frigate, plus the four other warships which accompanied him, vessels later designated as the ‘Black Ships’ by the Japanese to signify the imposing of Western technology and colonialism.

The Columbus reached the Bay of Yeddo and was soon overrun by the curious Japanese. ‘They pulled alongside and boarded without ceremony; scrambling through open ports, climbing channels, crawling over the bows by the head rigging.’

Through a Dutch sailor verbal contact was established (the Dutch had long been trading with Japan) and in the days that followed ‘our decks were soon filled by as curious a crowd as ever lived … Many carrying little note-books in which they made many memorandums.’ As for the Japanese people, Nordhoff feels, ‘The higher classes I thought resembled the better grades of mountain Swiss.’ While the Columbus was at anchor she was guarded by ‘an immense number of boats which, night and day, were constantly on the alert to prevent any communication from us with the shore’.

And then the Japanese emperor sent a reply that ‘no trade could be allowed, and that our speedy departure was judged highly desirable.’ The Japanese watered and provisioned the ship at no cost, ‘The only thing asked in return was for us

Reviews for Man-of-War Life

[usnmm2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Charles Nordhoff ran away from home to join the US Navy in 1845. This book is about his around the world voyage while serving as a "ships boy" or apprentice. the book is a good source of day to day living in the forecastle or below decks. There are not many first hand accounts of the enlisted mans life from these days. Although this is a good book the author did write it about 10 years after and included abservations that he could not have been privy to at that time. in all a very worth while read and highly recomended.This Charles Nordhoff was the grandfather of the co-author Charles Nordhoff of the book "Mutiny On The Bounty"