The lower deck is next examined.  The bags have been carried on deck, so that, as I mentioned before, nothing remains but the people’s mess-tables and mess things, their kids, and crockery.  As Jack is mighty fond of a bit of show in his way, many of the berths or mess-places exhibit goodly ranges of tea-cups and regiments of plates worthy of the celebrated Blue Posts Tavern, occasionally flanked by a huge tea-pot, famously emblazoned with yellow dragons and imitation Chinese.  The intervals between the shelves are generally ornamented with a set of pictures of rural innocence, where shepherds are seen wooing shepherdesses, balanced by representations of not quite such innocent Didos weeping at the Sally Port, and waving their lily hands to departing sailor-boys.  On the topmost-shelf stands, or is tied to the side, a triangular piece of a mirror, three inches perhaps by three, extremely useful in adjusting the curls of our nautical coxcombs, of whom one at least is to be found in every berth.

The mess-tables, which are kept so bright you would suppose them whitewashed, are hooked to the ship’s side at one end, while the other is suspended by small ropes covered with white canvas.  Against these lines rest the soup and grog kids, shining in a double row along the deck, which is lighted up, fore and aft, for the captain’s visit, by a candle in each berth.  In frigates it is usual, I believe, to let the people have a certain number of chests, besides their bags.  These not only form convenient seats for the men at meals, and couches on which to stretch their worn-out limbs during the watch below, but they afford a place in which the sailors may stow away some part of their best attire, deposit their little knick-knacks, and here and there a book, or mayhap a love-letter, or some cherished love-token.  A chest, in short, or the share of a chest, even though it be only a quarter, or a sixth part, is always so great a comfort that this indulgence ought to be granted when it can possibly be allowed.  In single-decked ships, I conceive it may generally be permitted:  in a line-of-battle ship hardly ever.  In a frigate, as there are no guns on the lower deck, where the people mess and sleep, there is nothing to clear away on coming into action; but in a ship of the line the men pass their whole lives amongst the guns, by night as well as by day, and as it is absolutely necessary to keep every part ready for action at an instant’s warning, nothing can be allowed to remain between the guns but such articles as may be carried out of the way in a moment.  It is sometimes nonsensical, and even cruel, to carry this system into a frigate, where the same necessity for keeping the space unencumbered does not exist.  Doubtless the mate of the lower deck, and often enough the first lieutenant, and sometimes even the captain, will be anxious to break up all the men’s chests, in order to have a clear-looking, open, airy, between-decks, to make a show of; but with proper care it may be kept almost as clear and quite as clean with a couple of chests in each berth as without.  Even were it otherwise, we ought, I think, rather to give up a little appearance to secure so great a share of comfort to those who, at best, are not overburdened with luxuries.