Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1891 — SCENES IN THE WARDROOM. [ARTICLE]

SCENES IN THE WARDROOM.

—! How Naval Officers Spend Their Spare Time on a Leaner Cruise. The wardroom is an odd little world, where the rigors of red tape and officialism are tempered by good fellowship or rendered well nigh unendurable by petty tyranny. Each ship has from ten to twenty officers in the wardroom. Here, often, within smaller space than is accorded to a? many convicts in a well-regulated prison, these men eat, drink and sleep. Opening off the wardroom saloon are the officers’ private room—in most ships tiny apartments, barldyhigh enough for a tali man to stand up in and just about long enough for him to lie down in. Sitting at the wardroom table you may shake hands with a man in the nearest bunk. Some of the new ships have larger wardrooms, and, again, some of them haven’t. A voyage of three months in these cramped quarters is a crucial test of a man's social qualities. Ir me executive officer, who is in effect the captain of the wardroom, be a ’THarlinet dr a black'"""' guard, which latter he seldom is, the ship is a floating hades. Two or three evil spirits among subordinate officers may make a dozen brother officers uncomfortable. Sometimes the ship goes half around the world with the wardroom’s occupants in a state of mutual hatred. Perhaps the executive officer is unpopular, and three-fourths of his subordinates never address him except in the course of duty. Perhaps the perennial war of line and staff is such that the right side of the dinner table finds it eifflcult to be civil to the left side. These conditions, however, seem to be comparatively rare, and now amM then the wardroom is the scone o|»-' absolute peace and good will. .Oi • course nearly every wardroom has its bore. Perhaps he makes bad puns, perhaps he tells long stories, perhaps he talks about himself, perhaps he rides a hobby. He is soon found out. Indeed he is often known beforehand, for there are bores who have a fame throughout the navy. They have marred a whole generation of wards rooms in the China Seas, going down the Mediterranean, on the home station, in the frozen north, in the tropics. Brother officers study the legister and rejoice to discover that some old familiar bore will be retired before another cruise. What of wardroom talk? First, and v . always, chaff. The doctor’s flirtations at Cape Town, the lieutenant’s little go at Zanzibar, one man’s luck at cards in an English garrison, another' s coming examination for the next grade? The little vanities, the personal habits, the' ' petty likes and dislikes of each are known and hinted at. Then there are stories to be told. One may tell the. same story twice in a cruise without incurring serious penalty, but if the cruise be long every man is likely to have spun his yarns until they are known by heart. One man on an arctic cruise, maddened by the “flamn-i able iteration” of long days in a so lid ice-pack, actually started to walk south “OVer the frozeh OCcan. He however, was a civilian, undisciplined by other voyages. Wardroom talk is seldom learned. A dozen clever, wcll-educateS, goodnatured men together find it impossible to keep themselves up to a general discussion of literary, social or political topics. The magazines, from one to three months old, are on board, and the ship can muster some hundreds of readable books. These are a resource when a shipmate is ill-tempered or tiresome. You shake for everything. Smith shakes Jones for a bottle of beer? and Robinson begs to be let in for a cigar. Everybody looks on with interest, and all eagerly comment on combinations of dice that have come up a hundred times before. Monotonous, isn’t it? What is the compensation? Moderate pay so» life; slow, but sure promotion; unquestioned social standing; the sight of strange lands the world over, and whatever moral reward comes of faithful service to the Stars and Stripes!—New York Star. .*