Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/517

 see it properly cleaned, whitewashed, or painted, and furnished with every reasonable convenience for the crew. consisted of twenty-one persons all told, comprising the master, or "captain," first and second mates, and steward, all of whom lived in the cabin. Besides these there were the carpenter, cooper, and cook—who with the steward were expected to assist in seaman's duties—ten seamen, and four apprentices. One of the latter lived with the carpenter and cooper in a place called the "steerage," that is, a small space temporarily separated by some rough stauncheons and boards from the cargo in the square of the after-*hatch. Here their tools, with various rope and sail stores, were also kept. The cook, ten seamen, and three apprentices had their abode in the forecastle. This place, which was in the "'tween decks" at the extremity of the bow, may have been about twenty-one feet in width at the after or widest part, tapering gradually away to a narrow point at the stem. The length in midships was somewhere about twenty feet, but much less as the sides of the vessel were approached. The height was five feet from deck to beam, or about five feet nine inches from deck to deck at the greatest elevation between the beams; the only approach to it being through a scuttle or hole in the main deck, about two and a half feet square. Beyond this hole there were no means of obtaining either light or ventilation, and in bad weather, when the sea washed over the deck, the crew had to do as best they could without either, or receive the air mixed with spray, and sometimes accompanied by the almost unbroken crest of a wave, which, in defiance of all the]*