gree of intelligence, keen alertness, and and a thorough practical knowledge of the rogueries practised afloat, are essential requisites in a master-at-arms. Whatever this official's personal character may be, the nature of his duties are such that he is pretty sure to be hated and dreaded by those of the crew whose reckless propensities render them liable to arrest and punishment, and he is generally disliked, even by the sober, steady men, who, although they well know, and are ready to acknowledge, that a master-at-arms is a personage really necessary in a man-o'-war, yet they cannot regard the man himself with any friendly feeling. Mr. Blowhard-for he has a "handle" to his name, and every sailor must address him as "sir"-the boatswain of our liner, is a marked character in his way, and sufficiently a "representative-man" to merit a brief sketch here. We need hardly say that, when his naval career commenced, he came on board through the hawse-holes, and bravely worked his way up to his present respectable and responsible rating. He was literally born at sea, his father being a petty officer in a frigate at a period when the wives of such men were permitted to accompany their husbands on a cruise. His father was killed in battle shortly afterwards, and the officers of the ship kindly made up a subscription that enabled the poor widow to settle down at Portsmouth, and earn a decent livelihood by keeping a little shop. She never married again, and creditably exerted herself to give a good education to her oceanborn, her only child, intending to apprentice him to some respectable trade on shore, for the fate of his father had inspired her with a perfect horror of the sea, and she fondly, but weakly, thought to instil an equal distaste for a "life on the ocean wave" in the mind of her boy, by continually narrating to him dismal stories of the dangers and hardships of a seaman's life. Mistaken mother and how many parents err like her?-she could not possibly have pursued a line of conduct more certain to send her son to sea. And, accordingly, to sea he did go, when in his fourteenth year-running away from his comfortable home, and shipping as a cabin-boy in a West Indiaman. It was years ere his almost heart-broken mother saw him again; but he proved, in the long-run, a good son, for he rendered her latter days comfortable, by allotting her one-half of his pay, Ere he was twenty, he bade adieu to the merchant-service, and entered the navy, which he never afterwards quit ted. He has always borne a good cha racter, and for above a dozen years has held a boatswain's warrant. He is married, and is the father of a large grown-up family. No less than five of his sons are now serving in different i men-o'-war, and often does he exclaim "If I had twenty sons, every one should enter the navy !" We once per sonally knew an old retired sergeant, who had two or more sons soldiers, and he uttered a precisely similar patristi expression in favour of the army, whit he held in enthusiastic esteem. Mr. Blowhard is a fine-looking cimen of the boatswain genusa tig burly fellow, with a richly-mottled face, a particularly thick, red Bardol phian nose, and a voice that can out roar a hurricane or a twenty-four pounder, if necessary. He prides himself on his capability of using his "call," or silver whistle, so as to produce a longer-drawn and shriller "pipe" than any other boatswain afloat; and he can follow up his pip ing, by sending a "cry," or summons, down the hatchway, that penetrates to the remotest cranny of the ship, and reverberates like muttering thunder. Nature, doubtless, gifted him with lungs of great capacity and power; but their capabilities have been wonderfully enlarged by the practice of "piping" and "crying" down the hatchways of divers of her Majesty's "ships and vessels of war." It is not every stout seaman who can whistle and cry as a boatswain ought, and must, if he would do credit to his rating. Mr. Blowhard is now quite an elderly man, yet the tough old tar evinces not the least sign of any failure in his physical powers. He is, we doubt not, a happy and contented man on the whole, for he has long reached the summit of his professional ambition; he has brought up his sons to tread worthily in his footsteps, he is respected by his officers, and he bas the certainty of receiving a very good retiring pension, should he live to need it. Like most boatswains, his charac ter is extremely dogmatic; and in his mess (which comprises his brother warrant-officers, the gunner, carpenter, and sailmaker) he almost daily gets H involved in temporary controversy on professional or political subjects for he is a red-hot Tory of the old school, and so intensely conservative, that he growls savagely, and bellows his indignation at the mere allusion to any projected innovation, professional, social, or national. His chief antagonist is Mr. Wadding, the gunner, a little, wizened, gunpowder-smoked-and-dried Northumbrian, who is a crabbed, illtempered, morose carle-and, we may add, we are assured that it is a singu. lar and suggestive fact, that nearly all gunners are of a similarly unpleasant and unamiable disposition, owing, it is presumed, to their peculiar duties on board. One other trait of our boatswain's character may be noted. He never in his life was intoxicated-that is to say, unequivocally drunk; but he has ever been a steady-going imbiber of generous fluids, amber rum being the favourite. He drinks at regularly-recurring hours, as though it were his bounden duty to do so, the omission of performing which duty would be highly criminal and unprofessional; but the instant he has had just enough, he, in his own impressive, figurative language, "knocks off, and cries tally!" We think it must have been our worthy old friend who, when once asked by a lady whether he would prefer to take wine or grog, gravely and in perfect sincerity replied "I thank you, ma'am, I'll just drink the wine whilst the grog is a-mixing, if you please!" and doubtless he did so. In his social hours of relaxation, he appears to the greatest advantage when singing that graphic, albeit, coarse old sea-ditty, the Old Commodore" (a song that only boatswains and " Fighting Charlie" should attempt to sing), for there is not a warrant-officer afloat who can so admirably troll "Hearts! what a time for a seaman to skulk In fine, we would sum up the character of honest old Tom Blowhard, boatswain of H.M.S. Terrific, by say ing that his virtues are his own, and his faults and his failings are saltwater ones, common to his profession. If we turn to the lowest class of men in our liner-the ignoble Waisters -we shall discover among them not a few living examples of that "romance of reality" abounding in a man-o'war's crew. These waisters are a set of fellows who are worthless in a professional sense, comprising men who, from ignorance, stupidity, or physical disability, are fit for little or nothing but to perform the most paltry duties. Almost the only thing they do at sta tion-for-working-ship, is to haul at certain of the sheets, and their chief occupation is to perform menial duties. If ever a man, who has any claim to be rated a seaman, is ordered to join the gang of waisters, it is as a punishment-a degradation certain to be severely felt. Even the "holders," the sturdy, dirty fellows habitually em ployed in the depths of the ship, labouring among the different storerooms, &c., look down on the luckless waisters as an inferior class. Some of these pariahs of a man-o'war have, doubtless, been miserable creatures, buffeted about the world from their infancy, and have sought refuge in the navy by a not unwise instinct; for, however hard and mean their lot may there prove, they at least have ample food, and a floating home. Others, however, are outcasts of a very different grade-men who have reduced themselves to their present wretched lot by their own reckless misconduct, or who have been driven to it by relentless destiny. In a large ship, it is truly astonishing what a variety of social classes contribute their generally unworthy representatives to the body of waisters. Take half-a-dozen of them hap-hazard, and it is at least possible that one proves to be a raw countryman, who has had a serious misunderstanding with the legal authorities of his native village; a second was originally an artisan, a clever workman, but a worthless scamp; a third was a merchant's clerk, who lost his character through some mysterious error of figures in the ledger; a fourth was from his youth upwards a low London blackguard, who lived by his wits as a "picker up of unconsidered trifles;" a fifth was once a respectable tradesman, who eventually fell into habits of incorrigible dissipation; the sixth, by birth and education, was quite a gentleman, but gambling and vice reduced him, years ago, to the condition of a despicable outcast. Yes, and unless we are misinformed, disgraced members of the legal and medical professions, ay, and of the pulpit even, occasionally recruit the waisters of the navy! Of course, it must be understood that the majority of the waisters are men who have always been members of the lower classes of town and country; but there is really a considerable sprinkling of ruined men, who have once flourished in higher ranks of life. Some of them have, at least, sufficient discretion and self-respect left to maintain a guarded silence as to their former condition and prospects; but others are so lost to all manly feeling, so insensible to shame, so reckless and hopeless of the future, that they boast of the positions they once filled, and recount, without a blush, the follies and the crimes which, step by step, reduced them to their present wretched lot. Such men lead a dog's life, and will die a dog's death, and we regard them with more contempt and disgust than pity. We would willingly sketch many others of the prominent characters of the crew of our liner-men whose lives have been so strange and romantic as to forcibly illustrate the saying, that truth is stranger than fiction-were it not that we fear to weary the reader by devoting further space to the subject. In fact, so many men in the crew of a man-o'-war are original characters, whose life-histories are full of striking events, that a large volume and we make bold to say, a very interesting one-might be filled with brief sketches of them and their past careers. Would that some literary Hogarth, familiar enough with men-o'-war and their crews, to qualify him to do justice to this peculiar and by no means very easy task, would undertake it con amore! In some few cases he would, it is true, have little more to do than to note down and throw into form the seamen's vivâ vocè reminiscences; but, in most instances, he would find men-o'-war'smen by no means disposed to be overcommunicative as to their past lives and actions. We know, indeed, one tolerably sure and effectual way to render the most reticent of them un reserved and truthful-but that is a secret we will not here divulge! The reader will bear in mind that, in the above personal sketches, we have confined ourselves to individuals whom we deemed fair representatives of their respective classes in the navy, and that we have not attempted to give an impersonation of the British man-o'-war's-man-our glorious Jack! Everybody knows the traditional reputation of OUR JACK-everybody takes a certain interest in his doings. His character is a solidly-established one the growth of centuries, it may be said, for he is the legitimate descend ant of the race of gallant Jacks fra the time of Drake to Napier: he herits their accumulated fame, the valour, their skill, their daring, ther hardihood, their endurance, and their peculiar characteristics. We are tempted to conclude this article by briefly reviewing Our Jack's conduct in the Black Sea and Crimea, in or der that we may judge whether he shows any symptoms of degeneracy or otherwise. Scores of intelligent eye-witnesses supply us with superabundant materials. When that magnificent, that unparalleled fleet of transports and ships-of-war, conveyed the allied army from Varna to Eupatoria, and the disembarkation of the troops took place, Our Jack, according to an observant spectator, helped each soldier tenderly down into the boats, and then stowed away his musket and knapsack, patted him on the back, bidding him not to fear the water, and "treated the 'sojer,' in fact, in a very kind and tender way, as though he were a large -but not very sagacious-pet, who was not to be frightened, or lost sight of, on any account; and did it all so quickly, that the large paddle-box boats, containing one hundred men, were filled in five minutes." And when the boats reached the beach, Our Jack stood up to his arm-pits in the surf, and handed the soldiers down the long plank from the bows to the shore, as carefully as though they were ladies landing for a pleasant pic-nic excursion! Yet more valuable were the services of Our Jack in landing the horses, artillery, &c., and but for him they could scarcely have been landed at all. Our Jack, on this momentous occasion, underwent, in the 1 The battle of Alma quickly followed. Our Jack, close along shore, had a capital view of it, and we may be sure he dearly longed to "bear a hand" in aid of his friends, the redcoated "sojers." In fact, he did help them appreciably by "shelling" the Russians. And when the battle was won by his gallant pipeclayed pets, he immediately landed, and all night through, and far into the next morning, did he labour in carrying down the wounded from the gory field to the beach. His services were such as to elicit the warm thanks of the Commander-in-Chief of the British army, who, in his official despatch, declared that Our Jack rendered "invaluable assistance"-and so we implicitly believe. Our Jack's favourite maxim is, that a little help is worth a deal of pity, and well did he practically exemplify it on this occasion. When he had thus done his duty towards the suffering heroes of Alma, Our Jack had a little time to look about him on the field, and attend to his own private interests, which he is said to have done in a very cool business-like fashion. and what for no?" as Meg Dods said. The slain Russians wore long boots of excellent leather, and Our Jack is reported to have sate down, and placing the soles of his feet against those of a dead Russian, he quickly decided if the boots of the latter would suit him as to size; in which case he forthwith unbooted the Muscovite, and appropriated the prize to his own especial use. Such is the uncontradicted story; but we really have some hesitation in giving credence to it, for two reasons:-firstly, men-o'-war'smen never wear boots (on shipboard), and even if they did, Russian leather will not "stand" salt-water; and secondly, well do we know that Our Jack has ever had a special abhorrence of wearing "dead men's shoes," or apparel at any rate those of his messmates or shipmates; but, possibly, he has no superstitious objection to wear those of a dead enemy, fairly killed in open fight. The Russian boots, too, would undoubtedly be useful to him on shore, so that, after all, the story may be true. Next, we find Our Jack at Balaklava, where he laboured again most manfully at landing heavy guns and mortars, and dragging them towards the lines for bombarding Sebastopol. "Never," says one witness, speaking of this duty as performed by Our Jack, "were seen men doing the work more merrily. It reminded one of school-boys during play-time. They appeared to be elated by the idea that they would have something to do with the taking of Sebastopol." Our Own Jack, every inch! The Times correspondent, under date, Oct. 13th, 1854, gives us a further description of the sayings, and doings, and behaviour of Our Jack, when performing a similar duty. It would seem that he proved only too powerful, too willing, and too merry a fellow. He broke tow-ropes like rotten yarns, and he treated baggage and ammunition carts as though they were children's toysand broke them as easily; for, after hauling them to the top of a hill, he sent them down full speed, and slyly enjoyed, we have not the slightest doubt, the inevitable smash that ensued. "It is most cheering," says the correspondent, "to meet a set of these jolly fellows working up a gun to the camp. From a distance you hear some rough, hearty English chorus, borne on the breeze over the hillside. As you approach, the strains of an unmistakable Gosport fiddle, mingled with the squeaks of a marine fife, rise up through the unaccustomed vales of the Crimea. A cloud of dust on the ascent marks their coming and tugging up the monster gun in its cradle, with a stamp and go,' and strange cries, and oaths sworn by some thirty tars, all flushed with honest exercise; while the officer in charge tries to moderate their excessive energies, and to induce the two or three hairy Herculeses who are sitting astride on the gun, or on the few horses in front, with vine-leaves in their hats, or flowers in their hair, to dismount and leave off the music. The astonishment of the stupid, fur-capped Crim Tartars, as they stare at this wondrous apparition on its way, is ludicrous to a degree; but Turk, Crim, Russian, or Greek, are all the same to Jack, and he is certain to salute every foreigner who goes by, while in this state, with the universal shibboleth of Bono! Bowno Johnny !'" was A few days subsequently, Our Jack was overjoyed by the whispered rumour that he was to be indulged in a sea attack on the northern forts of Sebastopol. All authorities agree that he could hardly contain his grim exultation when this intelligence proved authentic. On Oct. 17th the attack took place, and warmly was it urged, but that terrible Fort Constantine, and its satellites, were rather more than a match for the Wooden Walls manned even by Our Jack. Gloriously, however, did he maintain his ancient reputation." When the first shot," says a writer who was present, fired from the fort, it was as if an electric spark ran through the crews. There was a perfect fury for firing, and the greatest difficulty was to make the men cease "—when necessary. And another observer mentions some interesting samples of Our Jack's imperturbable valour when the fire of the forts was hottest. "Eight or nine blue-jackets were swept away at a forecastle gun on board the Sanspareil by the explosion of a shell. The two remaining men coolly went on loading, with their sponge and rammer, as though nothing had happened." We note no sign of degeneracy here: the Hearts of Oak who fought under Drake, or Blake, or Howe, or Nelson, could have done no more. A month later, Our Jack was called upon to evince his skill and indomitable bravery in another, and, to him, more familiar fashion, and never did he exhibit his noblest qualities in a more consummate degree than on that awful occasion. We of course allude to the gale which raged in the Black Sea, from the 13th to the 16th of November. Who has not read the story of that terrific gale? Who has not thrilled with awe at the mere description of the tremendous elemental warfare it evoked? And who has not glowed with admiration and proud sympathy when he read how Our Jack, all undaunted by the horrors of the scene when the storm-wind blew fiercest, when not a star shone through the black vault overhead, when the wild waves raged and roared like lions hungering for their prey, when the crashing of masts and spars mingled with the howling of the hurricane, and wretched dismasted transports loomed past, rolling heavily and helplessly towards the enemy's iron lee-shore, where swift and certain destruction awaited them and their hapless crews-when all this was occurring, Our Jack grim. ly battled with the tempest, and never blenched, nor paused, nor faltered in the desperate emergency; and Providence blessed his heroic efforts, for not a ship-of-war was lost. Our Jack so unmistakably manifested his intense longing to join in the "fun" going on ashore, and to have a comfortable "slap at them 'ere beg garly tallow-eating Rooshians," for his private recreation, that after he had got up the heavy guns for the artillery, he was indulged with batteries of his own, and hugely did they delight him. A camp of his own; batteries of own; full permission to blaze awy, ship-shape and man-o'-war fashion! Well might he feel exhilarated. He mounted his batteries, pitched his tents, and inscribed on them such gently-suggestive names as "Tiger's Revenge," "Albion's Pets," "Rule Britannia," &c., for Our Jack is incorrigibly facetious, and will have his joke even in the act of firing a double-shotted broad. side, or when the ship is sinking. In the same spirit did he treat every annoyance and danger. The terrible thirteen-inch shells of the enemy be nicknamed "Whistling Dicks," in allusion to their shrill whistling passage through the air. When he fired at the enemy with effect, he cheered with might and main; and if they hastily dispersed in consequence, he chuckled at the idea, that he had compelled them to make sail with the wind right aft. Here is a picture of his life in camp worth qnoting: "The native jollity of the tars soon broke out, and uproarious singing is kept up in their different tents until near midnight. A plain ordnance tent without decorations, to distinguish it from those of the 'sojers,' is far too unassuming an abode for them under their present altered circumstances. Accordingly, the decorative abilities of Jack have been called into requisition, and the canvas is covered with rather bold attempts at ornamentation, placed round sundry sentences written over the doors, expressive of the amiable intentions of the occupants towards the Russians in general. A little lower down you come upon 150 hairy, muscular, strapping fellows, who, if you believe their own inscription, are the Trafalgar's Lambs,' or the 'Bellerophon's Doves,' or some other part of the ship's company, equally mild and inoffensive. The way these fellows have got up the ships' guns is per |