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Updated: June 13, 2025
Many wore long coats of duffle or sheepskin provided by a maternal Admiralty in view of the severe weather conditions in the far North. The British bluejacket is accustomed to wear what he is told to wear, and further, to continue wearing it until he is told to put on something else.
So sharp had been the brief encounter between these hereditary enemies, that as they sullenly withdrew their clutch from each other's throats a British sailor remained on the floor striving to staunch the blood that spurted from a bullet wound in his leg, while near at hand lay a French bluejacket, as white and motionless as though dead.
Also it may have put out its light all of a sudden, and so we may have lost it in the darkness. That simple explanation sounds probable enough, doesn't it, when you come to think of it? Nevertheless in the following week, a more romantic explanation was tendered to me it concerned a gramophone. 'That was the last tune before the light was seen, a bluejacket told me solemnly.
He is a credit to our public schools, a fruit of our system of universal education. And he belongs to a service in which are reconciled, paradoxically, democracy and discipline. One moment you may hear a bluejacket talking to an officer as man to man, and the next you will see him salute and obey an order implicitly.
At noon the cooks and stewards were hustling, giving food to men who, I supposed, would only require toast and beef-tea. But it takes a lot to make a bluejacket lose his hunger. "They're all 'Oliver Twists," declared the train surgeon. Now, there is nothing that a sailor of His Majesty's Navy likes so much to look at as a pretty girl.
Soon there was a cluster at boats round the ship, which had conveyed from the shore all manner of commercial men Jews with watches for sale, and tailors with their patterns for no bluejacket would be without his private suit and others with articles of food. Only a limited number, however, were allowed on board. My uncle, who resided at Kingsand, had noticed our early arrival in the Sound.
"I have worked right through from Hebron to Klipdrift, Pniel, Cawood's Hope, Waldeck's Plant, Neukirk's Hope, Winterrush, and Bluejacket. To-morrow I push on to Delparte's Hope and Larkin's Flat. I am well received wherever I go, except by the dealers, who are mostly German Jews. They hear that I am a London capitalist, and fear that I may send up the prices. They little know!
Of course the lord mayor called upon him for a speech, but Commander Sims insisted that a bluejacket should make the address. "What, a bluejacket!" exclaimed the lord mayor in astonishment. "Do bluejackets make speeches in your country?" "Certainly they do," said Sims. "Now there's a fine-looking man over there, a quartermaster on my ship. Let's call on him and see what he has to say."
A regiment would have had no paint or gold-leaf; the sailors always have everything. They carry their home with them, self-subsisting, self-relying. Even as the constant bluejacket says, "Right Gun Hill up, sir," there floats from below ting-ting, ting-ting, ting. Five bells! The rock-rending double bang floats over you unheard; the hot iron hills swim away.
"We'll hev a splindid toime of it entoirely. Faith, Oi'll go and git me hair cut, to look like a jintlemin, afore I says yer sisther an' yer fayther and moother!" "I think I'll do the same, Mick," said I. "They haven't seen me in my bluejacket rig yet, and I want to look as smart as I can too!"
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