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To THE WISE MAN ALL THE WORLD'S A SOIL--BEN JONSON
LONDON: PUBLISHED by J. M. DENT & SONS Ltd. AND IN NEW YORK BY E. P. DUTTON & CO
INTRODUCTION
The men-of-war in which Anson went to sea were built mostly of oak. They were painted externally yellow, with a blue stripe round the upper works. Internally, they were painted red. They carried cannon on one, two, or three decks according to their size. The biggest ships carried a hundred cannon and nearly a thousand men. The ship in which this famous voyage was made was of the middle size, then called the fourth-rate. She carried sixty cannon, and a crew of four hundred men. Her lower gun deck, a little above the level of the water, was about 140 feet long. She was of about a thousand tons burthen.
The cannon were arranged in rows along her decks. On the lower gun deck, a little above the level of the water, she carried twenty-six twenty-four-pounders, thirteen on a side. These guns were muzzle-loading cannon which flung twenty-four-pound balls for a distance of about a mile. On the deck above this chief battery, she carried a lighter battery of twenty-six nine- or twelve-pounder guns, thirteen on a side. These guns were also muzzle-loading. They flung their balls for a distance of a little more than a mile.
On the quarter-deck, the poop, the forecastle, and aloft in the tops , were lighter guns, throwing balls of from a half to six pounds' weight. Some of the lightest guns were mounted on swivels, so that they could be easily pointed in any direction. All the guns were clumsy weapons. They could not be aimed with any nicety. The iron round shot fired from them did not fit the bores of the pieces. The gun-carriages were clumsy, and difficult to move. Even when the carriage had been so moved that the gun was accurately trained, and when the gun itself had been raised or depressed till it was accurately pointed, the gunner could not tell how much the ball would wobble in the bore before it left the muzzle. For these reasons all the effective sea-fights were fought at close range, from within a quarter of a mile of the target to close alongside. At a close range, the muskets and small-arms could be used with effect.
The broadside cannon pointed through square portholes cut in the ship's sides. The ports were fitted with heavy wooden lids which could be tightly closed when necessary. In bad weather, the lower-deck gun ports could not be opened without danger of swamping the ship. Sometimes, when the lower-deck guns were fought in a gale, the men stood knee deep in water.
In action the guns were "run out" till their muzzles were well outside the port, so that the flashes might not set the ship's side on fire. The shock of the discharge made them recoil into a position in which they could be reloaded. The guns were run out by means of side tackles. They were kept from recoiling too far by strong ropes called breechings. When not in use, and not likely to be used, they were "housed," or so arranged that their muzzles could be lashed firmly to the ship's side. In a sea way, when the ship rolled very badly, there was danger of the guns breaking loose and rolling this way and that till they had knocked the ship's side out. To prevent this happening, clamps of wood were screwed behind the wheels of the gun-carriages, and extra breechings were rove, whenever bad weather threatened.
The great weight of the rows of cannon put a severe strain upon the upper works of the ship. In bad weather, during excessive rolling, this strain was often great enough to open the seams in the ship's sides. To prevent this, and other costly damage, it was the custom to keep the big men-of-war in harbour from October until the Spring. In the smaller vessels the strain was made less by striking down some of the guns into the hold.
The guns were fired by the application of a slow-match to the priming powder in the touch-holes. The slow-matches were twisted round wooden forks called linstocks. After firing, when the guns had recoiled, their bores were scraped with scrapers called "worms" to remove scraps of burning wad or cartridge. They were then sponged out with a wet sponge, and charged by the ramming home of fresh cartridges, wads, and balls. A gun's crew numbered from four to twelve men, according to the size of the piece. When a gun was trained aft or forward, to bear on an object before or abaft the beam, the gun's crew hove it about with crows and handspikes.
As this, and the other exercise of sponging, loading, and running out the guns in the heat, stench, and fury of a sea-fight was excessively hard labour, the men went into action stripped to the waist. The decks on those occasions were thickly sanded, lest the blood upon them should make them too slippery for the survivors' feet. Tubs of water were placed between the guns for the wetting of the sponges and the extinguishing of chance fires. The ship's boys carried the cartridges to the guns from the magazines below the water-line. The round-shot were placed close to hand in rope rings called garlands. Nets were spread under the masts to catch wreck from aloft. The decks were "cleared for action." All loose articles about the decks, and all movable wooden articles such as bulkheads , mess-tables, chests, casks, etc., were flung into the hold or overboard, lest shot striking them should splinter them. Splinters were far more dangerous than shot. In this book it may be noticed that the officers hoped to have no fighting while the gun decks of the ships in the squadron were cumbered with provision casks.
The hundreds of men in the ship's crew lived below decks. Most of them lived on the lower gun deck in the narrow spaces between the guns. Here they kept their chests, mess-tables, crockery, and other gear. Here they ate and drank, made merry, danced, got drunk, and, in port, entertained their female acquaintance. Many more, including the midshipmen, surgeon, and gunner, lived below the lower gun deck, in the orlop or cable tier, where sunlight could never come and fresh air never came willingly. At night the men slept in hammocks, which they slung from the beams. They were packed together very tightly, man to man, hammock touching hammock. In the morning, the hammocks were lashed up and stowed in racks till the evening.
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