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Updated: May 8, 2025
An open door in the armoured bulkhead gave a glimpse forward of a gun battery and a teeming mess-deck intent on its mid-day meal, where men jostled each other so thickly round the crowded mess tables that it seemed incredible that anyone could live for years in such surroundings and retain an individuality. They turned away and passed aft down an electric-lit alley-way.
But it is little use to think of the sad day when it will fail; for the present I must confess that we always take an extra walk to make quite sure of our appetites on Sunday. On June 23 the festival of mid-winter was celebrated, and the mess-deck was decorated with designs in coloured papers and festooned with chains and ropes of the same materials.
As for the men, they simply screened off a portion of the mess-deck near the main hatchway, and slung their hammocks there, the wounded being accommodated in that portion of the mess-deck forward of the screen.
At one time those who lived within the circle were threatened with the necessity of shaving with brass razors; and when the ship was on her way home from New Zealand a parrot fell into dire disgrace, not because it was too talkative, but because it had been hanging on the mess-deck during a whole set of observations, and the wires of its cage were made of iron.
The ship had no hold, in the usual acceptation of the term; that is to say, there was no space for the stowage of cargo, she having been built as a fighting ship pure and simple, the space below the mess-deck being only comfortably sufficient to accommodate the ballast, water-tanks, provisions, and stores generally; thus, although so heavily manned, there was ample room aboard her for the whole of her crew.
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