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Updated: August 31, 2025
"Take your hand away, White-Jacket," he cried; "there's no law up aloft here. I say, you Emperor you greenhorn in the green coat, there look you, you can't raise a pair of whiskers yet; and see what a pair of homeward-bounders I have on my jowls! Don Pedro, eh? What's that, after all, but plain Peter reckoned a shabby name in my country. Damn me, White-Jacket, I wouldn't call my dog Peter!"
"With gentle hand, as seeming oft to pause, The purple curtains of the morn she draws." "Commodore Camoens, White-Jacket. But bear a hand there; we must rig out that stun'-sail boom the wind is shifting." From our lofty perch, of a moonlight night, the frigate itself was a glorious sight.
That night we scoured all the prairies of reading; dived into the bosoms of authors, and tore out their hearts; and that night White-Jacket learned more than he has ever done in any single night since. The man was a marvel. He amazed me, as much as Coleridge did the troopers among whom he enlisted. What could have induced such a man to enter a man-of-war, all my sapience cannot fathom.
White-Jacket; the very cannon-balls are deemed an ornament around you, serving to embellish the hatchways; and should you come to die at sea, White-Jacket, still two cannon-balls would bear you company when you would be committed to the deep. Yea, by all methods, and devices, and inventions, you are momentarily admonished of the fact that you live under the Articles of War.
But never mind, my boy: no printer could do the business for you better. That's the way to publish, White-Jacket," turning to me "fire it right into 'em; every canto a twenty-four-pound shot; hull the blockheads, whether they will or no. And mind you, Lemsford, when your shot does the most execution, your hear the least from the foe. A killed man cannot even lisp."
Why, sir, that boy of yours will, one of these days, be sending your grandson to the salubrious city of Jeddo to spend his summer vacations. While now running rapidly away from the bitter coast of Patagonia, battling with the night-watches still cold as best we may; come under the lee of my white-jacket, reader, while I tell of the less painful sights to be seen in a frigate.
My top-mate's contrivance was this he ought to have got out a patent for it each of his mittens was provided with two thumbs, one on each side; the convenience of which needs no comment. But though for clumsy seamen, whose fingers are all thumbs, this description of mitten might do very well, White-Jacket did not so much fancy it.
What happened to those three sailors on board an American armed vessel a few years ago, quite within your memory, White-Jacket; yea, while you yourself were yet serving on board this very frigate, the Neversink? What happened to those three Americans, White-Jacket those three sailors, even as you, who once were alive, but now are dead?
And Mickle, White-Jacket, did you ever read of him? William Julius Mickle? Camoens's Translator? A disappointed man though, White-Jacket. Besides his version of the Lusiad, he wrote many forgotten things. Did you ever see his ballad of Cumnor Hall? No? Why, it gave Sir Walter Scott the hint of Kenilworth. My father knew Mickle when he went to sea on board the old Romney man-of-war.
It is a most curious affair. By the time all these operations are concluded it is eight bell's, and all hands are piped to breakfast upon the damp and every-way disagreeable decks. Now, against this invariable daily flooding of the three decks of a frigate, as a man-of-war's-man, White-Jacket most earnestly protests.
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