Hammock Storage

[wefalck]

Could be a reading error on the side of Mr. O'Brian, as in some (type)script a 'long s' is used, which looks like an 'f'. However, the rules were not uniform and whether a long or a round s was used depended on the surroundings of the letter. Normally, however, a 'long s' is confused with an 'f', rather than the other way around.

 

[Kenchington]

Coming late to this discussion, I'll offer a few generalities.

 

First, what was done when preparing a ship for action and what artists showed (or even textbooks described) could be very different things. Faced with the reality of combat, men did (and do) what they must to achieve their ends.

 

Second, attitudes change through time. The concept that causes lead to effects, which underlies so much of the thought of our own era, was not exactly a product of the Enlightenment but was much enhanced through that transformation. The consequences of that shift in thinking can be seen well enough in warship design: The elegant, sweeping rails and carved hances of 17th Century ships were replaced, circa 1800, by blocky, built-up bulwarks that effectively protected the gun crews on quarterdeck and fo'c'sle. Soon after, lovely but fragile sterns were replaced by Seppings' far more robust (but ugly) round sterns. In short: By the 1790s, men were thinking of what we would now regard as practicalities -- like providing protection for sharpshooters stationed in the tops.

 

Then there was technological change: A battalion of Foot, armed with muskets, could do much harm to a line of enemy by volley firing (if they did not miss entirely, which too many did). But one musketeer firing at a single individual was almost certain to miss, unless at the closest range. By the 1790s, however, slower-firing but far more accurate rifles were available and it was possible to pick off individuals at a distance. (Think Nelson at Trafalgar.) That gave value to stationing sharpshooters in the tops but also made them vulnerable to counter-fire. Whether a rifleman or the gunnery officer of a Dreadnought, nothing disturbs a man's careful aim so much as being on the receiving end of someone else's projectiles, so there was good reason to provide protection for your own sharpshooters, sufficient that they could remain calm and confident. USN officers would have been well aware of that: Who, in their time, could forget Bunker Hill, where the doomed Redcoats had advanced over their own dead but been repeatedly beaten back by a bunch of civilian marksmen, firing from cover?

 

Put all that together and, if a Midshipman who was there reported that hammocks were sent aloft to the tops, I would take him at his word. I see no reason to doubt that that was done, at least at that one time and on that one ship.

 

Trevor

[Marcus.K.]

"Don´t shoot until you see the white of their eyes!"  

 

But on the other hand: we should be aware that the expression "in the tops" may have been misunderstood by our author´s here too .. because they may have done the same misinterpretation - if it is a misinterpretation!

 

That tread started, because we were thinking about "what is meant by "in the tops"?" And many of us think about the f(s)ighting tops - as this is the most common known expression with "tops", right?

 

But maybe O´Brian did the same thinking? He for sure was very good informed about the age of sail. He may have read about "hammock stations in the tops" - and concluded: that must be in the "fighting tops" .. But maybe sometimes the hammock stanchions on top of the rigid bulwarks in quarterdecks and forecastles were also called "tops"??? And by that a myth may have started .. and by repeating it, it seems more plausible...  

 

Pls. don´t get me wrong: I don´t say it IS wrong. 

 

I just want to hint on the fact that I never seen any hammock stanchions in a fighting top so far. And I admit: I never looked for them up to last week - but .. I don´t recall any. ... we need more evidence to be sure.

 

It would be good to find visual evidence by old models done in those days. Models showing hammock nettings and stanchions along the bulwarks - AND in their fighting tops. Up to now I do not recall any. Does someone?

Edited 5 hours ago by Marcus.K.

[Kenchington]

If this was only something O'Brien put in one of his books, I wouldn't give it ten seconds' consideration. As an artist weaving words, he did a great job of inserting technicalities to provide background colour ... except that he was so loose with the details that his works swiftly degenerate into being unreadable. However, the thread started with a quotation from the journal of Midshipman James Pity -- an eye witness who can be expected to have known what a "top" was. (I don't know whether he was quoted correctly but I assume so.)

 

And I'd not suggest that anyone fitted hammock stanchions and nettings in a top. Those would be semi-permanent fixtures and, as such, would appear somewhere in contemporary models, artworks or the documentary record. My interpretation of the Midshipman's words (without seeing more of their context) is that this was an expedient used when clearing for action. Thus, the rolled, lashed hammocks would have been laid like sandbags around a foxhole (ashore, and a century or more later), though the men who fired from that cover would perhaps have called the arrangement a "barricado".

 

[wefalck]

As I said in an early post, it may just a question of lack of commas or use of 'and' instead of a comma:

 

31 Aug 1798 - "Beat to Quarters and Stow'd our hammocks in the Nettings and in the Tops and fill'd our Lockers with Shot..."

 

If I put it like this:

 

31 Aug 1798 - "Beat to Quarters, Stow'd our hammocks in the Nettings, in the Tops, and fill'd our Lockers with Shot..."

 

it just becomes a list of consecutive, but unrelated activities and doesn't lead to the (mis)interpretation that hammocks were stowed in the Tops, he then just states, that he has been up in the rigging for an unrecorded purpose.

[popeye2sea]

If it is to be taken as a list of actions it doesn't work grammatically.  Beat to Quarters, Stow'd our hammocks, ________? in the tops, fill'd our Lockers.  There is a verb missing. What happened in the tops?

 

Regards,

Henry