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Updated: June 27, 2025
I was fairly beginning to lose countenance, when up jumped Sneezer to my relief out of the boat, with an old cocked hat lashed on his head, a marine's jacket buttoned round his body, and his coalblack muzzle bedaubed with pipe clay, regularly monkeyfied, the momentary handiwork of some wicked little reefers, while a small pipe sung out quietly, as if not intended to reach the quarterdeck, although it did do so, "And here comes the last joint of Mr Cringle's Tail."
In this part of the category now come the "reefers," otherwise "middies" or midshipmen. These boys are sent to sea, for the purpose of making commodores; and in order to become commodores, many of them deem it indispensable forthwith to commence chewing tobacco, drinking brandy and water, and swearing at the sailors.
You seldom came aboard the frigate but we had him in the steerage among us reefers, to hear his long yarns, and share our cheer. We all loved him, Mr. Barnstable; but love cannot bring the dead to life again." "I know it, I know it," said Barnstable, with a huskiness in his voice that betrayed the depth of his emotion.
"It would hardly interest you to tell what a clever set of lieutenants and ward-room officers we had, and how the twenty-three reefers in the two steerage messes kept up a racket and a row all the time, in spite of the taut rein which the first lieutenant, Mr. Bispham, kept over us.
It would have been hard to picture a prettier sight than the skaters presented that afternoon, the boys in their heavy reefers and woolen watch-caps; the girls in toboggan caps and sweaters. Over in the west the sky was a rich rosy glow, for the sun sinks behind the hills by four-thirty during the short winter afternoons.
"If I were not on duty, and too much of a gentleman to soil my hands with a schooner's loblolly boy, I would give you a sound thrashing with my belt." "Would you?" said Rodd coolly. "That's the worst of you reefers. You are nearly all of you like that when you come ashore at Plymouth. It's your uniform and the wearing of a skewer that makes you all so cocky.
I mean those jackanapes of midshipmen and sub-lieutenants, as they call mates now, with their dandified airs. In my time, the reefers weren't half so conceited and didn't try to turn themselves into land swabs as they do now-a-days," said the Captain grimly, he being, like most sailors of the old school, a thorough believer in the times gone by. "But, go back now, and take that rascal of a dog in.
The Prospectors' Arms became quite the go, and all the swell miners and quartz reefers began to meet there as a matter of course. There was Dandy Green, the Lincolnshire man from Beevor, that used to wear no end of boots and spend pounds and pounds in blacking. He used to turn out with everything clean on every morning, fit to go to a ball, as he walked on to the brace.
In the course of six weeks, such a ragged, woebegone, gaunt, and famished gang of reefers was never before huddled together in one of his Majesty's vessels of war. The shifts we were obliged to have recourse to were quite amusing, to all but the shiftmakers.
The men were mustered to receive him, and all the officers were on the quarter-deck "You've a fine set of marines here, Captain Falcon," observed he; "those I left on board of the Minerve were only fit to be hung; and you have a good show of reefers too those I left in the Minerve were not worth hanging. If you please, I'll read my commission if you'll order the men aft."
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