Chapter XXIV: THE COOK (SAILING SHIPS)--continued

Having got the duff off his mind--and allow me to assure you that a sailing-ship cook's reputation hangs principally upon his ability to turn out a satisfactory duff--there is the beef. It has been soaking in sea water since the previous evening, to mollify in some measure its terrible salinity, and now the cook removes it therefrom, unless, as often happens in small ships, the steep-tub is the wash-deck tub also, in which case the meat must be taken out at 6 a.m. in order to allow the tub in which it has been soaking to play its part in the cleansing of the ship. But that is only a detail. If the cook be a clean man he will now wash the meat carefully (it needs washing badly) before putting it in the copper. But he may, and often does, think that process not at all necessary; it will be clean enough by the time it is cooked. With the duff bubbling fiercely, and the beef on the other side of the stove keeping in tune with it, the men's dinner needs no more thought on his part except to keep the fire going; so that he will be able to do a bit of cleaning up, if he has a weakness in that direction, or he may sit and smoke and meditate. The steward is preparing the cabin dinner aft in his pantry: a fruit pie, some tasty combination of tinned meat and potatoes, or even a fowl, if they are carried. In any case, as a rule the cook has only to see the food for the cabin through the actual cooking.

At seven bells (twenty minutes past eleven, the ten minutes to the half-hour being allowed for the men to turn out) some one, usually an ordinary seaman, or boy where they are carried, in other cases the "cook of the mess," comes to the galley for the dinner. It must be ready, and is, almost invariably. Any delay is unpardonable, for there is only the "chunk" of beef and the "phallus" of duff. Since they have probably been fasting since the previous supper time, except for such few morsels as they have been able to get down at breakfast or "coffee-time," the arising watch are usually very sharp set, and the duff disappears like magic. The beef, too, although there be nothing to eat with it but the flinty biscuit, receives considerable attention, but is generally spared for supper, as it is better cold--if "better" can be used in connection with it at all.

But the watch that have been working all the forenoon on an empty stomach are ravenous. At eight bells (noon) they come below, and eat like starving men. If it were not for the filling "whack" of duff, though, their hunger would soon be destroyed, not satisfied. In some ships the cook is not allowed to make duff, for the same reason that he is not allowed to cook cracker-hash; and then the men's principal meal on flour days is a sad business. A roll of just-made bread, seldom palatable, and a chunk of salt beef, is not a fair meal for a hard-worked man under such conditions; and in these days of cheap, good, and tasteful food ashore, it is not to be wondered at that seamen before the mast embrace the earliest opportunity available of quitting such positions and getting work ashore, where even the convicts in our prisons are far better fed. This is the more to be deplored because it is so totally unnecessary. The difference between a good-living ship and a bad one to the sailor may be expressed in the simplest terms. It is not true that the sailor is never satisfied. Men will speak for years afterwards of a ship in the most grateful terms where, instead of the incessant salt meat, they had a fresh mess three times a week, where potatoes and onions were served out occasionally, and where butter and pickles were given. And these things make a mighty small difference to the total expenses of the voyage--nay, by slightly reducing the quantity of salt meat, the expenditure might be kept almost, if not quite, at the same level. And then good cooks would become the rule.

American ships have earned their reputation for good living solely on the strength of their bountiful supply of potatoes and onions and flour, their lavishness in the matter of dried apples and cranberries, and their high standard in the matter of cooks. And Americans are not extravagant in business matters, either. They know how to run a ship economically as well as any seafarers in the world, and they think it is the most wasteful thing imaginable to starve a ship's company for the sake of a little attention to detail. This is a vital principle with them. They will work their crew to the last ounce, often in what cannot by any stretch of courtesy be called necessary tasks. I have been with men who have actually known what it is to be slung aloft scraping yards in a gale of wind at night; but they said that when they got below there was always a tasty meal ready for them, and any neglect on the part of the cook would have resulted immediately in his feeling the burden of severe suffering.

Once the dinner is over and the gear washed up, the cook's work is practically done for the day. He may find a few minutes' relaxation in "burning coffee," as the sailors call it--that is, roasting it in the oven. But that is about all. He has nothing to prepare for the men's supper. He may have a little dry hash to get ready for the cabin, but in many cases the steward will do even that; so that there is really no excuse for his being dirty. Yet, unless the skipper is a man who rigorously practises that most essential part of a shipmaster's daily round, _i.e._ goes all over the ship every day, a cook will often get so dirty that it is a wonder the men are not poisoned. And I am sorry to say that this is by no means confined to negroes and Asiatics, who have the worst reputation. I can remember three cooks, each of whom was my countryman, and I do not believe it would have been possible to find dirtier men.

Tuesday's work is like Monday's, except that instead of bread or duff, pea-soup is the staple; and since board-ship pea-soup is simply peas boiled in water, with a piece of pork allowed to simmer with it for about half an hour to give it flavour, one would think that on pea-soup days, at any rate, the poor sailor would be sure of getting his meal properly prepared. But if you ask a foremast hand bow often he gets good pea-soup, please look out for strong language. He will most probably tell you, although that would be an exaggeration, that the only time the pea-soup is good is when there's a heavy sea on, so that the tumbling about of the ship renders stirring unnecessary--otherwise it is almost sure to be burned, because the cook is too lazy to stir it. And therefore it is often burnt. Now, burned pea-soup is perhaps one degree worse than burned oatmeal porridge, which, it is said, a pig will refuse. Or it may be that the cook cannot learn the secret of getting the peas to mash, so that the soup is like yellowish water with a collection of yellow shot at the bottom, a food that would disarrange the digestion of an ostrich.

Another thing that always seemed radically wrong to me was the making of tea and coffee in the same pot used for soup, and making these infusions as if they were soups; serving them out, too, like soup, by ladlefuls, stirring up the leaves or grounds, as if afraid of defrauding some critical sailor of his due allowance. Surely it should not be so difficult to utilize a kettle for making tea and coffee. But these observances grow into the most conservative of customs, and it is like suggesting mutiny if some enterprising individual dares to hint at a change. One cook that I was shipmates with, a Maltese, perpetrated a piece of cookery that I am never able to forget. Some one had caught a dolphin, and, instead of frying it (in the oven) as usual, the cook boiled it, and indeed it was very palatable. But the next morning at coffee-time the coffee was too funny for anything. We were not at all dainty, but that mixture would _not_ go down. So one of our number, a sarcastic old Yankee, went to the galley and said, "Hyar, cook, what in thunder hey ye ben improvin' th' coffee fur? It may be all right, but I'll be doggoned ef I kaint do better with it ez before. I've gut used t' it." So saying, he held out his pannikin invitingly. The cook took it, smelt it, tasted it, looked puzzled for a second or two, and then said triumphantly, "Oah, yez, I know. I boil him in de same pot I boil de fish las' night, 'n' I don' wash her out, see!" He was quite struck with his ingenuity in finding it out. And he wasn't punched either.

I mentioned the cook of the mess just now--but that is a term applied solely to a man who takes his turn with the others, where there are no boys or ordinary seamen in the fo'c'sle, to carry in the food, wash up the plates, or clean the fo'c'sle out, and trim the lamp. Now, in an American ship the crew's plates are washed by the cook, who also keeps the tin dishes in which their food is served to them as bright as silver. That, again, is a point where an American ship's cook differs widely from his British _confrère_. Indeed, it is not too much to say that a cook who would be called a very clean man in a British ship would be looked upon as dirty on board of a Yank, so high is the standard maintained there in matters of cleanliness.

Really I am half afraid to say what I have seen done by cooks on board British ships, it seems so incredible to landsmen. But the subject is so important in its bearing upon the well-being of the men, that one hardly likes to leave it without telling all the truth. I have seen a cook who did not know how to open a tin of meat, who tried to chop it in half with an axe; who was too lazy and filthy to wash the saucepans out, but _wiped_ them out instead; another, who made duff without yeast, and boiled it in salt water without a bag--a lump of dough that was like a piece of grey india-rubber when it was served up; another, who did not use a frying-pan for steaks in harbour, but flung the chunks of meat upon the top of the red-hot stove, and unblushingly sent the charred flesh into the fo'c'sle for the men to eat.

But the strangest thing of all, a thing that puzzles me to this day, was the action of a crew in one vessel where we were cursed with the queerest specimen of an incapable for cook. We shipped a man in Rangoon as A.B. who was really a good cook as ship-cooks go; and as soon as he found out how things were, he volunteered to teach that wretched food-spoiler his duties in his (the seaman's) own time. Then, wonderful to relate, the very men who were suffering from the vile messes the pseudo-cook was making, turned round upon that volunteer, saying that if _they_ were the cook they wouldn't allow no ---- interloper to meddle with their work, so they wouldn't. Of course this discouraged the reformer, and he desisted from his laudable efforts, with the result that we were in a state of semi-starvation all the way home. Truly a sailor is a strange being.

There is a lower depth still, impossible as it may seem--in small vessels where the galley dwindles to a "caboose," a sort of sooty cupboard on deck, too small for the miserable youth who is both cook and steward to get into. So he stands on deck, often swathed in oilskins, his head in the grimy hole, with the smoke from the stove nearly stifling him, doing his "cooking." Does this state of things need any comment? Fancy cooking under such conditions, if you can. In bad weather, of course, the fire cannot be kept alight, so that the crew must go without any other comfort for their craving stomachs than biscuit and cold water. A short meditation upon such conditions of living should bring to many of us a sense of shame for our complainings at food which, were it ten times as bad, would be an unheard-of luxury to the sailors on board some of our ships.

Let me conclude with one more reminiscence. In a brig of which I was mate, on the East African coast, we shipped two Zanzibar Arabs as cook and steward. The skipper had his wife on board, and she, poor woman, on the passage home, was in danger of being starved to death. So the bo'sun and myself took it in turns to oversee those savages, cannily, too, for they valued not their life one jot, and would as soon have murdered us as look. Oh, how we suffered! At last we reached St. Helena, and got some fresh beef and vegetables. I cooked a dinner of these luxuries, and when it was brought into the cabin, the lady actually wept with delight at the prospect of one decent meal.