Life on the Cruiser Alabama.

Woodville Examiner, Volume 3, Issue 284, 17 September 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

Life on the Cruiser Alabama.

From a series of brief and pithy papers in the April Century on the Alabama and Kearsarge, by P. D. Haywood, who was a seaman on the Alabama, the following is taken “ After we had swept the ocean of prizes we had no excitement, and we cast about in every way to amuse onrsslves. The ruffianly portion of the crew found their pleasure in hazing and ill-treating their duller and less resolute shipmates, and there were some fearful examples of this kind of work. We had sparring matches and single-stick playing, in both of which I excelled. Spinning yarns and singing songs were resources that never failed. The starboard watch made every man sing in turn under penalty of a pannikin of saltwater, and our poets were kept busy in composing new ditties. One man had a splendid tenor voice ; he was well educated, and had been, he said, an officer in the Royal Navy, and was, like all disrated men that I have ever met, a 1 vicious and irreclaimable blackguard.’ How strange to bear him sing, ‘ The Lament of the Irish Emigrant, 1 and ‘ My Mary in Heaven,’ with taste and feeling, and the next moment disgust even his rude associates by a burst of obscene blasphemy. One sailor, a wonderful storyteller, who generally prefaced his yarns with ‘ When 1 sailed in the Taprobane, East Ingyman,’ was known as Toprobbin.’ His imagination was prolific of horrors, and his grim and sepulchral visage added in producing an effect on his hearers. His tales were of phantom ships, that sailed in the teeth of wind and current, and of ghastly women that came aboard in the height of storms, etc., and so realistic and impressive was his delivery that some of the worst ruffians in the watch sought their hammocks in fear and trembling. But the poor fellow came to grief in this wise : It was remarked that he had always missed his ‘ tip’ in the singing, and had rather avoided the tuneful choir. He was on this particular night ordered to ‘ pipe up’ and no more temporizing about it. He put on a look of intense misery, and commenced : How Jerry Lee was hung at sea For stabbing of his messmate true, And his body did swing, a terrible thing, At the sport of the wild sea-mew. “ What a voice ! —it was at once a squeaky treble and a hoarse bass. With one accord the men yelled to him to stop. He was assured : “IE you ever sing again in this 'ere watch while we’re off soundings, we’ll fire you through a lee port. Such a voice as that would raise a harrycane.’ Poor Toprobbin seemed glad to quit, remarking that he didn’t sing for his own ‘divarsion,’ and we agreed with him. “ Most of the songs would not look well in print, but they were nearly all squibs on the ‘ Captain and his officers, 5 and were bawled out without mitigation of voice, and no doubt heard in the mess-room aft. The belief that Captain Semmes had been a parson inspired many of these ditties, one of which ran as follows: Oh, our captain said, ‘ When my [fortune’s made, I’ll buy a church to preach in, And fill it full of toots and horns, And have a jolly Methodee sceechin’. ‘ And I’l pray the Lord from night to morn To weather old Yankee Doodle— And I’ll run a hinfant Sunday school With part of the Yankees’ boodle.’ “ The following was the last effort of the muse, and was sung the Saturday night before we left Cherbourg : We’re homeward bound, we’re homeward bound, And soon shall land on English ground ; But ere that English land we see, We first must lick the Kersar-gee, But wc didn’t lick the Kersar-gee, and the poor poet realised the alternative, for I saw him crushed and mangled under a gun, just before I went over the side,”