MY FRIEND THE DOCTOR.
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My friend the doctor is a negro by birth, Englishman by education, and nautical—strictly nautical—by inclination. Leave him ashore for more than a month at a spell, and the doctor would run to seed like an overgrown cucumber, or wither like a caterpillar-blighted cabbage. Only let him skim up the side of a vessel again, be she large or small, steamer or sailor, and he revives immediately. Climate or exposure have no influence upon his iron constitution, and he lives always under the happy conviction that without his valuable services the captain and crew and passengers, to any amount, must inevitably perish. Yet my friend the doctor possesses no diploma—no licence to practise medicine or surgery; no knowledge of physic or drugs (thanks to his good constitution), excepting that Epsom salts are exceedingly abominable of flavour, and apt in the course of an hour or two to produce spasmodic cramps where the doctor would sooner stow away a pint or so of pea-soup. And my friend the doctor is—the ship’s cook!
The origin of this appellation it is hard to discover, nor do I presume that by a perusal of James’s “Naval History” any one would be a bit the wiser: perhaps it is because he is a general benefactor. In India they call the sea-breeze the doctor, and gasp and look out for its approach with all the anxiety that a suffering patient evinces for the arrival of some skilful physician. The cook has been the doctor with sailors beyond even the memory of that gifted individual, the oldest nautical inhabitant, and doctor he will remain so long as England has a plank to float upon the waters, and a flag to brave the battle and the breeze.
My friend the doctor is one of a very extensive class or genus; but to study him to perfection we must see him established on board of some small collier brig, or little trading schooner, whose voyages seldom extend further than the Mediterranean or the Brazils. It is here where his genius and skill are put to the utmost stretch, the culinary means at his command being limited to salt beef to-day, salt pork to-morrow; pease-pudding, pea-soup, lobscouse, and, at dreary intervals, a sea pie. Now and then a hapless shark or a shoal of bonnettas afford him an opportunity of rivalling a Soyer in his dishes, and the liver of a porpoise causes him to be elevated as high as the “sweet little cherub that sits up aloft” in the estimation of captain, mates, and crew—so dainty and savoury to the poor hungry sailors is the mess he produces. The doctor’s mainstay at sea is the dark, dampish pantry, or store-room, a box about ten feet square beneath the cabin or cuddy, and to dive into which gloomy recess he has to furnish himself with a glimmering horn lantern, and remove a hatch just under the cabin dining-table. Herein, in casks, in boxes, in bags, piled up and screwed together as only sailors can stow them, are invaluable treasures, items without which the doctor would feel like a stranded camel in an African desert. Butter and onions, currants and raisins, treacle and sugar; potatoes, flour, spice, split peas, and, curiously intermingled with them, paint kegs, tallow candles, blocks, odds and ends of ropes, a slush bucket, herrings, and a bale of salt fish. This region is sacred to the doctor and the second mate. The latter descends once a week to serve out the crew’s weekly allowance of groceries—the doctor daily, in search of indispensable culinary articles. And what with the horrible stench and the legions of rats scampering in all directions, his visits are usually as brief as he can possibly contrive to make them. The doctor’s only assistant is “Jimmy Ducks,” the hapless