{"id":"01KG8AMFYD1N2ZPQ2NQMBJVMNE","cid":"bafkreibome5xlo3b7fdqotwaznfc2yyjnaepgldqpqr2milwiqovbmibfq","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3372,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:36.270Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J19NC56FFGBCM2SWEZZY","start_line":3305,"text":"CHAPTER XXII.\r\nWASH-DAY AND HOUSE-CLEANING IN A MAN-OF-WAR.\r\n\r\n\r\nBesides the other tribulations connected with your hammock, you must\r\nkeep it snow-white and clean; who has not observed the long rows of\r\nspotless hammocks exposed in a frigate’s nettings, where, through the\r\nday, their outsides, at least, are kept airing?\r\n\r\nHence it comes that there are regular mornings appointed for the\r\nscrubbing of hammocks; and such mornings are called\r\n_scrub-hammock-mornings;_ and desperate is the scrubbing that ensues.\r\n\r\nBefore daylight the operation begins. All hands are called, and at it\r\nthey go. Every deck is spread with hammocks, fore and aft; and lucky\r\nare you if you can get sufficient superfices to spread your own hammock\r\nin. Down on their knees are five hundred men, scrubbing away with\r\nbrushes and brooms; jostling, and crowding, and quarrelling about using\r\neach other’s suds; when all their Purser’s soap goes to create one\r\nindiscriminate yeast.\r\n\r\nSometimes you discover that, in the dark, you have been all the while\r\nscrubbing your next neighbour’s hammock instead of your own. But it is\r\ntoo late to begin over again; for now the word is passed for every man\r\nto advance with his hammock, that it may be tied to a net-like\r\nframe-work of clothes-lines, and hoisted aloft to dry.\r\n\r\nThat done, without delay you get together your frocks and trowsers, and\r\non the already flooded deck embark in the laundry business. You have no\r\nspecial bucket or basin to yourself—the ship being one vast wash-tub,\r\nwhere all hands wash and rinse out, and rinse out and wash, till at\r\nlast the word is passed again, to make fast your clothes, that they,\r\nalso, may be elevated to dry.\r\n\r\nThen on all three decks the operation of holy-stoning begins, so called\r\nfrom the queer name bestowed upon the principal instruments employed.\r\nThese are ponderous flat stones with long ropes at each end, by which\r\nthe stones are slidden about, to and fro, over the wet and sanded\r\ndecks; a most wearisome, dog-like, galley-slave employment. For the\r\nbyways and corners about the masts and guns, smaller stones are used,\r\ncalled _prayer-books;_ inasmuch as the devout operator has to down with\r\nthem on his knees.\r\n\r\nFinally, a grand flooding takes place, and the decks are remorselessly\r\nthrashed with dry swabs. After which an extraordinary implement—a sort\r\nof leathern hoe called a “_squilgee_”—is used to scrape and squeeze the\r\nlast dribblings of water from the planks. Concerning this “squilgee,” I\r\nthink something of drawing up a memoir, and reading it before the\r\nAcademy of Arts and Sciences. It is a most curious affair.\r\n\r\nBy the time all these operations are concluded it is _eight bell’s_,\r\nand all hands are piped to breakfast upon the damp and every-way\r\ndisagreeable decks.\r\n\r\nNow, against this invariable daily flooding of the three decks of a\r\nfrigate, as a man-of-war’s-man, White-Jacket most earnestly protests.\r\nIn sunless weather it keeps the sailors’ quarters perpetually damp; so\r\nmuch so, that you can scarce sit down without running the risk of\r\ngetting the lumbago. One rheumatic old sheet-anchor-man among us was\r\ndriven to the extremity of sewing a piece of tarred canvas on the seat\r\nof his trowsers.\r\n\r\nLet those neat and tidy officers who so love to see a ship kept spick\r\nand span clean; who institute vigorous search after the man who chances\r\nto drop the crumb of a biscuit on deck, when the ship is rolling in a\r\nsea-way; let all such swing their hammocks with the sailors; and they\r\nwould soon get sick of this daily damping of the decks.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJQSQQZXV8JE55Y1C2VK6","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J19NC56FFGBCM2SWEZZY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AMFYDX3NWVSZZGQV68MG2","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:38.861Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:45.170Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}