But the note of roughness and blackguardism was not always sounded on American ships.  We find, in looking over old memoirs, that more than one vessel was known as a “religious ship”—­though, indeed, the very fact that few were thus noted speaks volumes for the paganism of the mass.  But the shipowners of Puritan New England not infrequently laid stress on the moral character of the men shipped.  Nathaniel Ames, a Harvard graduate who shipped before the mast, records that on his first vessel men seeking berths even in the forecastle were ordered to bring certificates of good character from the clergyman whose church they had last attended.  Beyond doubt, however, this was a most unusual requirement.  More often the majority of the crew were rough, illiterate fellows, often enticed into shipping while under the influence of liquor, and almost always coming aboard at the last moment, much the worse for long debauches.  The men of a better sort who occasionally found themselves unluckily shipped with such a crew, have left on record many curious stories of the way in which sailors, utterly unable to walk on shore or on deck for intoxication, would, at the word of command, spring into the rigging, clamber up the shrouds, shake out reefs, and perform the most difficult duties aloft.

[Illustration:  THE BUG-EYE]

Most of the things which go to make the sailor’s lot at least tolerable nowadays, were at that time unknown.  A smoky lamp swung on gimbals half-lighted the forecastle—­an apartment which, in a craft of scant 400 tons, did not afford commodious quarters for a crew of perhaps a score, with their sea chests and bags.  The condition of the fetid hole at the beginning of the voyage, with four or five apprentices or green hands deathly sick, the hardened seamen puffing out clouds of tobacco smoke, and perhaps all redolent of rum, was enough to disenchant the most ardent lover of the sea.  The food, bad enough in all ages of seafaring, was, in the early days of our merchant marine, too often barely fit to keep life in men’s bodies.  The unceasing round of salt pork, stale beef, “duff,” “lobscouse,” doubtful coffee sweetened with molasses, and water, stale, lukewarm, and tasting vilely of the hogshead in which it had been stored, required sturdy appetites to make it even tolerable.  Even in later days Frank T. Bullen was able to write:  “I have often seen the men break up a couple of biscuits into a pot of coffee for their breakfast, and after letting it stand a minute or two, skim off the accumulated scum of vermin from the top—­maggots, weevils, etc—­to the extent of a couple of tablespoonsful, before they could shovel the mess into their craving stomachs.”