Ch 4 Calls of Nature
After just one full day working on the deck, Elizabeth realized just how little she had actually contributed to the previous voyage, despite her belief that she had pulled her own weight the whole time. Her back and knees ached constantly. Her face, neck and arms were sunburned and wind burned. Her skin stung and felt uncomfortably tight. The fickle winds that crisscrossed the deck kept taking her floppy tri-corn hat, which was too big and sat too loosely on her head. After chasing the hat across the deck several times, she finally threw it into her cubby to keep from losing it overboard. But the wind played havoc with her long hair, which was now unfettered. She could not keep it out of her face. The long hair lashing against her sunburned cheeks made them even more painfully sore, and her eyes began to burn from her hair whipping into them constantly. Jack passed by where she was working, and heard her spitting her hair out of her mouth with a mild curse. He returned to his cabin and came back with a ragged old scarf. He handed it to her. "Tie up your hair" he said, and then he was gone before she could thank him. She bound the scarf around her head, tucked her long hair up underneath it and tied the ends at the base of her neck. Appearance be hanged, her hair was a liability onboard a ship.
Elizabeth soon discovered that there was very little privacy aboard the vessel. The male crew members were not shy about answering nature when it called. If the "call" involved something time consuming, the men used the forward head, which was a series of holes cut into seats in a section of the forecastle deck. Waste dropped straight into the ocean. But if one of them simply needed to unburden his bladder, rather than leave the deck he just unbuttoned and let fly through the ship's rails. The first time Elizabeth rounded a corner and came upon a crewman urinating, she was so embarrassed she dropped the deck mop and bucket she was carrying and fled back around the corner, cheeks burning bright red. Of course word spread quickly through the crew that pissing got the girl's goat. Soon many of the crew members took to loitering near the rails if Elizabeth was working nearby. If she turned toward them, as one they would open their flies and aim at the ocean, with loud commentary on what a great relief it was to be able to piss wherever they wished. At first it bothered Elizabeth and she would turn away embarrassed. Once men at both rails at once had her turning in circles, near to tears from embarrassment but unable to escape the spectacle without fleeing and encouraging them further. But after a while she became tired of the trick and it became more annoying than embarrassing. She would roll her eyes skyward and continue with her work, looking anywhere but at the rail where the men were busy relieving themselves. She could put up with it, but she wished she could find a way to make them stop.
One afternoon she felt a familiar cramping pain in her lower belly. It reminded her that her monthlies were going to be arriving very soon if they hadn't already. She had been so wrapped up in her new life that she totally forgotten about that particular inconvenience. She realized that she had nothing with which to stem the flow. At home in Port Royal, she had maids who sewed soft flannel pads for her to wear. Fresh ones were supplied by the maids, and the dirty ones were taken away to be washed and dried. She was sure there was no soft flannel lying about on board the ship, and most certainly no laundresses. She went to her cubby and examined the faded black sailcloth curtains. When Gibbs had ordered them to be put up, the curtains were not cut to fit the opening, so there was quite a bit of extra material. Elizabeth tore a strip of it off the edge of one of the curtains. It wasn't as soft as flannel, but since it was old and had spent a lot of time flapping in the wind, at least it was softer than new canvas. She tore it again into shorter pieces and folded them into pads. The fabric was almost as absorbent as cotton flannel. It was ugly and dirty, but it served the purpose.
The issue of what to do with the dirty pads was a problem. Gibbs had told her not to waste fresh water by washing anything, but these absolutely had to be washed. Not only did she need to use them again, but they started to smell pretty bad after a day in her cubby. It got rather warm in there during the day with the sun beating down on the black stairs above it.
Early one morning Elizabeth used a coil of rope and one of the deck swabbing buckets to pull up some seawater. She kneeled down near the rail to begin rinsing out the rags. Almost immediately two of the crewmen showed up, intent on having a little fun at her expense. Standing only a few feet away, they began the ritual of unbuttoning their trousers and loudly exclaiming how badly they needed to piss. Without looking up, Elizabeth asked them "Why must you do that here?" They looked at each other—she had never spoken up to anyone who had done this before. One of them grinned and replied "It's got to come out somewhere, don't it?"
Elizabeth pulled the bloody grayish-black rags out of her pocket, laid them out on the deck, and immersed them one by one in the bucket of sea water. The dried blood reddened the water immediately as it began to dissolve. The two men stared at Elizabeth, frozen to the spot. Both of them were familiar enough with women to realize what she had in her hands. This wasn't something men should be privy to! Elizabeth noticed that both men were blushing She pulled the rags from the bucket, wrung them out, stood up and slowly poured the red water over the rail and back into the sea with a flourish. She commented "It's got to come out somewhere, doesn't it?" and nonchalantly pulled up another bucket of water. The men buttoned up hastily and fled. Elizabeth was quietly pleased to note how quickly the number of urinary performances by the crew soon dropped to zero.
