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Comment by russellbeattie | Hacker News Reader

I read Michael Palin's book on HMS Erebus last year and in addition to being quite interesting all around, it went into great detail about the every day lives of sailors during that era based on the detailed logs kept by the ships.

The short answer: They were all expected to chip in and help entertain their fellow shipmates and keep up morale. In addition to music and songs, they'd write and perform skits, tell stories, have holiday contests between ships (usually they sailed in a group of at least two) and more.

Here's the man himself: https://youtu.be/KhsxTSbsVeo

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From my readings, this was cultural to the Royal Navy of the time, probably since the looooong blockades and cruises of the earlier wars with the French. Ships would spend weeks or months sailing back and forth off of Brest or Toulon with little to no contact with shore except for the occasional resupply ship bringing letters and newspapers.

So, sailors would organize plays and skits as you said, concerts, athletic competitions, etc.

Even so, if you read the resources and the ship's logs they reference, there was a LOT of petty crime, crimes of passion like assaults, murders, etc during those blockades.

Enough so that it was notable even in the height of the unwilling drafts of any man with a pulse that strayed close enough to the water.

>Even so, if you read the resources and the ship's logs they reference, there was a LOT of petty crime, crimes of passion like assaults, murders, etc during those blockades.

Hardly surprising given a lot of the men before the mast were impressed (ie effectively kidnapped) merchant sailors and sometimes criminals offloaded out of prisons so that counties could fill their quota of seamen the government demanded. Having said that, apparently there were lots of volunteers despite the harsh conditions as the Navy was still better than some of their lives on land!

Right, I think for the most part the 'harshness' of life in the Royal navy during the age of sail is overblown, as all the things that are brutal or harsh to us (the discipline, the poor food, etc) was not much different than life for that same set of people on land, and as you say, in a lot of ways even better - your food for the most part was at least certain as the clock.

Yeah the harshness is definitely relative, I'd rather have been an ordinary seaman in the Royal Navy than say a miner of that era for example.

It's why I have low hopes for space - especially Mars.

Getting there and living there will produce even more extreme psychological and emotional pressures. But the people at the sharp end of them will be more used to 24/7 access to memes, selfies, and virtual dramas.

Even the most stable are likely to have limited experience of entertaining and supporting each other in person in a low-drama way without easy access to external support.

Presumably the memes would flow, they'd just be a bit delayed :)

They'd have the freshest "All Your Base" memes though.

Imagine being stranded for years with only disco music and a steady diet of potatoes.

And eventually the ketchup is going to run out.

Lovely book, great writing, highly recommended.

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