Hellships, Hand-to-Hand, & Hard-Up by Mark Hatmaker

Let’s tell a few tales from the fighting days of sail. Our tales will come a bit later than the usual Master & Commander Napoleonic battles and also a wee bit later than the buccaneer days in the Caribbean.

These two periods of nautical mayhem overlapped to some degree and have much to contribute to our modern understanding of war at sea. Another day.

We want to jump forward in our timeline just a bit and have a look at some aspects of violence aboard sailing vessels from approximately 1800 on into the 1920s when we see the last of the windjammers still plying their trade on the seven seas.

We will not be speaking of military vessels or pirate ships. One expects to find tips and tactics in matters of violence in these two cases. Instead we will focus on private ships of commerce. Vessels that were charged to move cargo from destination A to destination B as quickly and efficiently as possible.

We want to have a look at the bit of melee wisdom that spawned on these purportedly peaceful vessels.

First, we must acknowledge that just because these were commercial vessels and not under the threat of military attack [pirate boarding was always a threat] that life was easy-peasy.

Windjammers travelled via acres of sail. Handling canvas that size, dealing with the standing and running rigging [ropes to landlubbers] that must be eased, hauled, tuned to every change in wind is no easy task. Those who have sailed even small boats can attest vigilance and diligence are the watchwords and a well-set sail has a beguiling power to propel both the boat and the spirit.

An inattentive helmsman or a mistake in adjusting sail for conditions, that same beguiling power can become big big trouble.

We add to the fact that early wooden vessels at sea were always leaky. Always deteriorating. Always in need of maintenance. A poorly maintained boat in the middle of the ocean with no hardware store to send out for supplies soon becomes a sinking ship.

At sea, there is no safe harbor. A boat must survive gale winds via skill and cooperation. 

Words seldom [if ever] paint a proper picture of actualities, but this description of wind in rigging while at sea by W.L.A. Derby, comes as close as it gets.

“The tautness and power of a steel and wire top-hamper will combine, in bad weather, to produce a diapason such as nowhere can be heard except aboard a big, heavy-laden sailer. She becomes, as it were, a giant organ played by the heavy hands of wind and sea. Powerful gusts pluck at the tensed shrouds and straining backstays like fingers at harp strings. Where some stays give forth a deep booming note, others hum wildly, like telegraph wires, under stress. Halliards twang like banjo gut, and a continuous and plaintive moaning comes from the rigging-screws. The gale roars through the slacker running-rigging, whose heavy blocks beat a mad tattoo against the steel spars. As she rolls, scuppers under, the steel wash ports clang to-and-fro, and all the while the great seas break alongside or crash aboard to swirl from poop to fo’c’sle, battering at the deckhouse doors and striving to wrench off the hatch tarpaulins. Every strake and frame of the laboring hull groans with her travail: while the thunder of wet storm canvas, and the staccato patter of squalls of driven hail add to that almost indescribable cacophony, the song of driven sail.”

Men climbed rigging in pitching, heaving, rolling seas, in heavy wind to fight with acres of canvas. They stood on precariously swaying top-ropes observing the wise sailing axiom “One hand for you, one hand for the boat” meaning always keep your grip on something where you can.

But, oft times, conditions were so wicked, you had to trust to balance and the fates, particularly with wind-pressed sails or sails encrusted with ice, to grab canvas with two hands from this perch and do what had to be done.

A mere breeze of 12 MPH of true wind becomes multiplied when you sail.

True wind is what you experience on land or on a stock-still boat. Apparent wind is what you experience when under sail, it is a magnification of the true wind plus the accelerating forces of the vessel itself and has an unexpected force even at low MPH.

Sailors speak of [and wrote in these early journals] of every climb along the rigging to get aloft was a struggle as they were pressed flat into the rough hemp or cable.

That led to another rule of the boat: “Always climb on the windward side.”

If possible, you always move on the windward side even at deck level. Being pitched off of a heeling boat is easier than one imagines.

We could go on and on about the daily life at sea that created these “non-military” sailors. We do see that this rough and tumble life also fostered a bit of rough and tumble extracurricular activity.

First, another definition, well, two actually.

Hellships and Proud Ships.

Proud Ships, were vessels that were well maintained, skippered by temperate experienced men. If you crewed one of these, you knew you were going to work hard but you knew the vessel was sound and the man on the quarterdeck was knowledgeable.

Hellships. Well, these were the very opposite of Proud ships and there were seemingly more of these than of the former.

Hellships were always in a state of disrepair either due to a bit of laziness in the skipper, the stinginess of the firm that owned the vessel, or mere age. 

Wood in water under stress: Things happen.

The skippers themselves were often the dregs. They could be remarkably inexperienced, perhaps alcoholics, maybe ineffectual men on land who became powerful martinets at sea.

[For a fictional representation of a hellship see Jack London’s The Sea Wolf, based on real experiences or Richard Henry Dana’s memoir titled Two Years Before the Mast. There are many many more, but those are excellent starts.]

Hellships were poorly supplied, rancid beef, mealy flour, and “millers” were often the only fare for journeys.

[“Millers”-Rats found in the hold, that had fattened on the flour supply. They were often whitened in appearance due to moving through the supply bags. They were often a preferred food source as at least they weren’t rancid.]

Hard work under any condition was made well-nigh intolerable under poor conditions, add indifferent or out and out cruel command, well, temperatures often rose.

These temperatures were often “cooled” in fo’c’s’le fights. 

That is, to me and you, Forecastle Fights. The forecastle being the forward part of the ship below decks where the crew quartered. 

Fo’c’s’le fights were also known as “hand-to-hand.” 

Ah, see there? Sailors were known as hands as in “All hands on deck” hence a hand-to-hand fight was one on one.

These fights were at times “boxing” affairs, fisticuffs only, but more often than not, they were rough and tumbles with their own peculiar flavor. These were men used to the pitching, rolling, yawing of ocean travel under sail and observed good seamanship even here. 

Where on land, controlling the ring, or ring generalship, might mean holding the center and/or maneuvering your opponent to a corner, turnbuckle, fence, or parked car. On deck, “holding the high side” or “weather helm” meant you held high ground and had a balance advantage. 

“Pillaring” referred to a combative form of the “One hand for you, one for the boat” rule. A curious form of very practical supported striking. 

Fights may be hand-to-hand but it does not always mean that hands [or feet, or biting, or gouging] were all at the disposal.

More than a few involve weapons. Belaying pins, monkey fists [any form of knotted line with a load], hammers, loggerheads, and, of course, hatchets and or knives.

A man was said to be “hard-up” if you wound up in a fo’c’s’le fight without a weapon and his opponent had surprised him with one.

The vocabulary for mayhem is deep here both in word and tactic. It is one spawned by the peculiar environment indigenous to the combatants. 

It is one with more than a trick or two that can allow we landlubbers “to stand off handsomely.” [To fight well.]

[We will explore some of the mentioned tactics and more in the RAW series.]

[For techniques, tactics, and strategiesof Rough and Tumble Combat, Old-School Boxing, Mean-Ass Wrestling, Street-ReadyFrontier Scrapping & Indigenous Ability culled from the historical recordsee the RAW Subscription Service.]