Kyril Bonfiglioli - All the Tea in China

Meanwhile, the weather became more and more intent to please and light airs wafted us southward towards the fabled Grand Canary. Soon the sailor-folk had cast off their coarse weather-proof attire and had donned duck trowsers and straw hats, whilst we officers had our servants press our linen unmentionables and soon we revelled in the coolness of sea-island cotton shirts. Life became delicious except for those wretches who lusted after women.

Again it was Sunday — how far apart the Sundays seem to those of us in peril on the sea — and the Captain conducted Divine Service as though he were chewing something unpleasant. His own, private religious notions comprised some sort of hysterical mysticism but I never quite understood what they were, although he made it clear that there was no place in them for the Established Church of England, which he called “a shabby, money-grubbing conspiracy against the layman”. He had some personal agreement with God which was not clear to me. Blanche was constrained by him to attend Service, always in a light and seductive dress, “so as to give,” the Captain said, “a bad example and to keep the ship’s people’s minds off the damned, blasphemous mummery.”

After the service he read, in a high, clear voice, the Ship’s Articles and then — strangely — the Articles of War, as though he were still in command of a Queen’s Ship. This was one of his little eccentricities, I thought, but I learned later that every before-the-mast sailor had gladly signed a chit stating that he would be bound by man-o’war’s rules — which included flogging for breaches of discipline — and that this was not uncommon in East Indiamen and crack China clippers. At that time, however, my blood ran cold as he read out these Articles, for they listed countless offences and the condign punishments attached to them: each paragraph seemed to end with the words “… death or such lesser punishment …”but the men appeared to be asleep on their feet in the drugging sunshine, their half-closed eyes furtively fixed on the charming effect of the sunbeams piercing through Blanche’s clothes. She was not in the habit of standing demurely, her feet together.

When the ritual was finished and Blanche had disappeared into her cabin, the men ran back to the forecastle laughing and chattering like children released from school. One man from each mess was soon at the galley door to fill a bucket with the boiling water which the Doctor had readied; piggins were streamed overside on lines to raise sea-water and soon the ratlines were gay with the men’s laundry-work, for sailors are cleanly folk when given the opportunity: a dirty seaman soon becomes infested with vermin and will be much persecuted by his mates. At sea, moreover, there is no telling when the next chance to wash — still less to dry — one’s clothes will arrive, and a seasoned sailor loses no opportunity to fill his chest with clean, dry slops. Only those who have lived and worked and slept in sea-soaked clothes for ten days at a time can know what exquisite pleasure there is to be had from a clean, dry shirt and drawers. Later in the voyage, when the weather had been unremittingly foul and there was not a dry clout in the forecastle, the ever-kindly Doctor would often contrive to find room in his crowded galley to dry at least a strip of old cotton-goods for those who were courteous or generous towards him: these strips they would wrap about their private parts before going on watch so that at least those sensitive organs escaped, for a little while, the almost unendurable chill and chafing.

It was understood in those days that any women on board a ship would keep to their quarters after Service of a Sunday, so that the men might strip to the buff and, having washed every stitch they owned, romp naked in the sunshine. Peter and I strolled through the throng, exchanging genial and cheery words with the men. Some of these had their own little business concerns: one resourceful fellow, for instance, known to all as “Lousy”, had a charcoal-filled tailor’s ironing-goose which, for a trifling sum in coin or grog, he would run along the seams of any shirt or pair of drawers suspected by its owner of harbouring lice. Only this treatment, Peter assured me, would extirpate these small and pestilent inquilines.

Another, humbler practitioner had for his stock-in-trade only a piece of “pusser’s green”, which is a coarse yellow soap sold by purser. His practice was, having exacted a modest fee, to scrutinise his client from the soles to the scalp, dabbing deftly at fleas and other small deer. Each time he caught one he would carry the soap to his mouth, kill the flea or bed-bug with his teeth and, at the same time, re-moisten the soap with a flick of his tongue. The men did not much despise him, for it was a useful art and he was skilful at it. Orace was in the thick of things, scrubbing away with the best of them and from time to time fending off the clumsy advances of a sexual pervert. The pervert would not, in fact, be allowed to corrupt him, Peter assured me, because Orace was liked by the crew for his sunny nature.

The sexual society of a ship’s company was, you see, a delicate and tolerant arrangement because all experienced seamen knew that to live together in a forecastle for perhaps three long years calls for a spirit of live-and-let-live, so long as the eccentric’s private habits do not interfere with those of his mates, with the safe working of the ship and, above all, with their right to sleep undisturbed. Thus, the few sodomites and catamites aboard were soon recognised and tolerated so long as they kept within their own circle, did not offend others and did not shirk their work. Onanism was as necessary as going to “the head” and had only to be conducted silently if others were trying to sleep. (“When I’m at home, my wife is my right hand,” Bully Lubbock once said to me in his coarse fashion; “when I’m at sea my right hand is my wife.”) Then, during a long spell between ports, a full-blooded fellow of normal tastes might well exchange a sodomitic practice with a chum, rather than go out of his mind. This has given rise to the British saying “any port in a storm, matey”.

None of this, however, is to be taken as suggesting that ships — the John Coram in particular — were seething with animal lust. On the contrary, a good taut ship kept the men so cheerfully busy that there was neither the time nor the vitality to spare upon such trivia. It was the practice to see that the crew went to their hammocks so drugged with out-of-doors work and indigestible food that all they craved was sleep. A truly tired man, his muscles twitching with toil, his mind relaxing from perilous hours spent fighting sail-cloth in the dark, higher than a house on an icy yard and, now, his belly distended with hot burgoo or lobscouse, why, such a man wants no silken bosom to caress, he aches only for the ineffable delight of his coarse pillow and no other orgasm than that of blessed unconsciousness.

The effect is much the same with compulsory games in the English public schools, which is why they are famous for their lack of sodomy.

“Now then, my lads!” cried Peter suddenly, “all hands to skylark! Who’ll be King Arthur?”

“King Arthur”, it seemed, was a game much relished by these simple tarry-breeks. The one named to be King was soused and drenched with laundry-water by his fellows until he could contrive to make one of his persecutors laugh, whereupon he who had laughed became King in turn, and was, in turn, soused. The first to be picked was a toothless old wag who entered merrily into the sport, capering about the deck in the drollest way as he evaded the buckets of water. Cornered against the hen-coops lashed to the rail, he reached in and plucked a rooster’s feather, which he stuck between the cheeks of his bottom. He then strutted about, his neck jerking back and forth in the very manner of a cockerel, crowing shrilly until one of the lads was forced to guffaw and was duly made King. This new king, who was possessed of an inordinately long, thin member, performed so many antics with it that he soon “got his laugh” and gave place to another. So the sport went on. I believe I have said before that I shall never understand the English, they are a race apart, a race apart.