I had hardly stepped from the ladder, when close by me, this master's mate knocked a man down for not touching his hat as he passed him. Everything was in the utmost disorder; men were drunk and roaring about the deck, and away forward, in a hole which they called a sick bay, were some ten or a dozen miserable creatures. One was raving in a paroxysm of delirium tremens; there were ten in the last stage of consumption, and could not live many hours, and several with fever and diarrhoea. And such a smell! I had now a fixed determination to harden myself to everything that came along, even to death itself, and in any shape.
There were about two hundred men and boys on board this ship, who had been recruited for the Flying Squadron. The weather was very cold and stormy, and many of these poor fellows had sold every article of clothing except what they stood in, for rum. Hence they were unprotected from the weather. The ration of a half pint of raw whiskey, was served to each man at seven and a half o'clock in the 'morning, and scarcely a dozen out of the whole crew that had a blanket or a bed. The government furnished them with a hammock, and many kept themselves too drunk to hang them up, and would lie down and sleep upon the wet deck; then followed severe colds, which often terminated in consumption, fever and death.
But the half pint of raw whiskey in the morning gave them new life for a short time, and then they were down again. There was one young man of very fine appearance, who had been thoroughly educated and had studied for the ministry, and who, through the influence of bad company and dissipation, had been "induced to enter as a landsman, at the naval rendezvous, for the sake of the miserable pittance of advanced wages which he would receive, and with which he might, while°it lasted, feed that insatiable appetite for rum, winch was soon to terminate his unhappy career. After he had taken his deadly potation, and during its exhilarating influence, he would mount an empty cask, and preach a fragment of a sermon, condemnatory of the very course which he was pursuing.
And I must say, that in point of language and enunciation, there were few ministers then or even at the present day, that could excel him. But he died, and was put into a drunkard's hole. One morning a dead man was found on the berth deck, near the main hatch. The poor fellow had died during the night, probably from exposure, as he possessed neither bed nor clothing. It appeared that there was no one on whom the duty of taking proper care of the corpse devolved, so it lie there all that day, frozen stiff. I ate but little, for my stomach fairly loathed everything I saw in the shape of food. As the weather continued very stormy, we were kept on board, and I had as much as I could do to watch my clothes bag.
We spent about a week in this miserable manner, when the weather became clear, and all that were able were sent on shore, and to be employed on board the several vessels of the squadron. The commodore's flag was hoisted on board the brig Firefly, of four hundred and seventy tons burthen. She was a beautiful vessel, having been built for a privateer; but she needed much alteration to fit her for the armament intended for her, which was fourteen guns in the waist, and two long eighteens on pivots amidships. Lieut. Edw. Barnwell, my friend, of whom I have previously spoken, was 1st Lieutenant, and through him I was ordered to her as chief carpenter's mate. Com. Porter had committed the fitting of this brig to Mr.
Barnwell. I had charge of several jobs, and I soon perceived that lie put great confidence in me, and often gave his orders to me instead of the master- workman. One morning, I had passed the sentinel at the gangway, on my way ashore from the Alert, an officer standing near to pass the men out. Just as I had got upon the wharf, it occurred to me that I had forgotten a list of spars which had been made out on the previous evening. I immediately returned on board, and as I passed the sentinel, said to him, that I had forgotten a paper, and should pass out again in half a minute, and in about that time was at the gangway again, and as I was passing out, he, quicker than a Hash, put his bayonet at my breast and ordered me to stop, threatening that if I moved an inch he would put it through my body.