Landsman Hay - The Memoirs of Robert Hay provides not only a rare view into the lower decks, but an entertaining one as well. Hay served in the Royal Navy from 1803 – 1811. A short glimpse into this volume reveals the gem that it is. Early in his career he is assigned to learn the ropes from AB Jack Gillies and described the beginning of his experience thus:
It was my lot to fall into the hands of Jack Gillies than whom a handier fellow never left the Emerald Isle.
"Let us have the necessaries first, Robert," said he, "and we will attend to other matters afterwards." Accordingly the cutting out and making of jackets, shirts and trousers, the washing of them when soiled, and the mending of them neatly when they began to fail, took precedence. The making of straw hats and canvas pumps came next in order. Then followed various operations in seamanship, according as opportunities occurred for displaying them, or according to the importance they bore in Jack's eye. Jack had been at sea ever since he was the height of a marlinspike, and a better practical sailor was not to be found from stem to stern. From the knotting of a rope yarn to the steering of a ship under bare poles in a tiffoon, Jack excelled in all. No one could surpass him at the manoeuvring of a thirty-two pounder, and he could hit a mark with it as well as any fellow that ever took a match or the lanyard of a lock in hand. He was an excellent sail-maker too, and there was not a sail aboard, from the windsail to the spanker, but what he could shape and make. He had in his youth been taken by a privateer and was two years in a French prison. There he had learned a great many ingenious things; and from the making of a minor three-decker, with all her sails and rigging complete, to the pricking of a mermaid on the arm of his messmate, or carving a dolphin on the handle of his knife, nothing came amiss to him. He had learned, besides, to play on the German flute and to talk French with a tolerable degree of volubility. All these acquisitions and more than these were at my service; and if I did not hoist them aboard the fault lay, not with Jack, but with myself. Jack, moreover, could play at all-fours, at whist, at loo, at cribbage and at least a dozen of other games on the cards; he could play at fox and goose, at chequers, at backgammon, and I know not what all besides; but as we knew well that the Admiral's anticipated examination would not touch on these topics, we agreed to postpone them sine die. What may seem strange, Jack, with all his acquirements, did not know the alphabet! "I have frequently begun," said he, "with that fellow at the stem head (meaning A.) but 1 never could get so far aft as that crooked gentleman (Z) that is at the helm." I cheerfully volunteered my service to help him along in this matter, but he could never muster up the courage to make a determined effort. "I have reached the latitude of two score and ten," said he, "and have had no aid from them hitherto;-Greenwich, you know, is only a degree and a half more, and I think I will reach my anchorage there without any of their assistance. (Hay 71-72)
The book is readily available and is a recommended read.
Hay, M. D.
1953 Landsman Hay. Rupert Hart-Davis. London.
