One does not need to be a rabid Imperialist or a raving Jingo to feel in every fibre of his frame the debt that we Britons owe to our navy. These brave, stalwart men, the very pick and flower of the British race, stand continually on sentry on all the shores of all the world--stand to guard our freedom, and, so far as one nation may do, strive to secure freedom for all other peoples. We see but little of them, for their parades are not held amid shouting crowds, but on the lonely waters, under an Admiral’s eye, keen to discover defects where all seems to an untrained observer perfection of power and movement; their greatest deeds, done by steady presentation of an unmistakable object-lesson to our enemies--that is to say, to a full half of the world, bursting with envy at our comfort and prosperity--are hidden from most of us.
In God’s name, then, let us see that we do not forget, amid the security and plenty that we enjoy, the labours of those who are watching, far out of our sight, to see that these blessings are not filched from us. Let the officers and men of the Royal Navy see that they are ever in our thoughts, that out of sight out of mind is not true in their case, but that stay-at-home Britons are fully conscious that the outposts of our Empire, the piquets of our power, are in very truth to be found on board the ships of the Royal Navy, the Watchmen of the World.
One of the oldest, truest, and most often quoted of all sea-sayings is that “God sends meat, but the devil sends cooks.” The first part of this saw is really a concession on the sailor’s part, for few of them truly believe that the Deity has much to do with the strange stuff usually served out as meat on board ship. The latter half of the proverb is taken for granted, and while admitting to the full the thanklessness of the task of endeavouring to dish up tasteful meals with such unpromising materials as are usually given to sea-cooks to work upon, it certainly does seem truer than the majority of such sayings are apt to be.
But in justice even to sea-cooks let it be said that they have but a hard life of it. Cooking is a hobby of my own, and I feel a positive delight in the preparation of an appetizing dinner, which culminates when those for whom it is dressed partake of it with manifest enjoyment. Between the calm, unhindered task of shore-cooking and the series of hair-breadth escapes from scalding, burning, or spoiling one’s produce that characterizes sea-cooking there is, however, a great gulf fixed, and with a full consciousness of the unromantic character of his trials, I must confess a deep sympathy with the sea-cook in his painful profession. Even in the well-ordered kitchens of a great liner, where every modern appliance known to the art is at hand, and where the chief cook is a highly paid professional, each recurring meal brings with it much anxiety, and, when the weather is bad, much painful work also. There is no allowance made. Whatever happens, passengers and crew must be fed, although the roasting joints may be playing “soccer” in the ovens, the stew-pans toboganning over the stove-tops, and the huge coppers leaping out of their glowing sockets. Let all who have ever gone down to the sea as passengers remember how faithfully the cooks have justified the confidence reposed in them, and how punctually the varied courses have appeared on the fiddle-hampered tables without even a hint as to the series of miracles that have produced them. Still, in large passenger steamers there is a fairly large staff of cooks, unto each of whom is given his allotted task, so that the labour, though severe, is not so complicated as it must necessarily be in vessels where one unfortunate man must needs be a host in himself. In sailing-ships on long voyages the cook’s berth is perhaps the worst on board, for he has to hear the continual growling of the men at the brutal monotony of the food (which he cannot help), and he must, if he would not be badgered to death, perform the difficult task of keeping on good terms with both ends and the middle of the ship. Under the blistering sun of the tropics, or amid the fearful buffeting of the Southern seas, he must perform his duties within a space about six feet square, of which his red-hot stove occupies nearly half. And, as a pleasant change, he is liable to have the weather door of his galley burst in by a tremendous sea, and himself in a devil’s dance of seething pots, and all the impedimenta of his business hurled out to leeward.