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2005-10-04 - 11:41 p.m.

We just saw an outtake of �Da Ali G. Show� (which is hilarious by the way; you can get the first two seasons on DVD) in which he visited some restored Civil War-era naval ship and it reminded me of what I learned on my own visit years ago to the U.S.S. Constitution. The Constitution, �Old Ironsides�, was commissioned in 1797 and is still a part of the Navy, except now it serves as a museum floating in Boston�s Charlestown Navy Yard. I took a tour probably in spring 1997 and found out some things that reminded me to never get complacent about how horrible our government can be.

I went there with a touring punk band. They had played at my radio station and I was showing them around town in exchange for a ride to New York, where they were going next. I thought the bassist was really cute and she wanted to see the ship because she fondly remembered a model her dad had built of it in a bottle when she was little back in Florida. (They were apparently from the same town as Marilyn Manson � n�e Brian Warner � and recalled his teen self hanging around the mall trying to act scary around people. They don�t remember him being very successful.)

When we went to see the Constitution there were very few other visitors, so we got our own tour guide (I don�t know how sailors get assigned to this ship, but it seems like a safer detail than, say, loading torpedoes in the Gulf). He showed us around explaining things in great detail. After we saw the cannon gallery and some of the other things below deck, he noted the �fighting tops�, platforms at the tops of the main masts. The first Marines were stationed there as snipers. They would try to pick off the important personnel on opposing ships � the officers, the young boys, you know.

Wait, what? We asked him to go back to the part about the young boys. He told us that combustible gunpowder for the cannons was stored in crawlspace below the waterline. Such an area was most easily accessed by the small and lithe. So fighting ships usually had several young boys on board whose duty in combat was to fetch new powder for the cannon. If they were taken out, the ship might be unable to fire its guns and become a sitting duck.

Oh. I thought of a small, lithe young boy�s daily fate at sea on a ship full of sailors. What did they do when they weren�t in combat? Our guide said that it wasn�t really recorded, but he presumed they swabbed the decks and scraped barnacles from the hull and other work no one else wanted to do and they were physically better-suited for. Uhm, did they fill other roles no one else wanted to fill and they were maybe physically better-suited for? He caught my drift but said that too wasn�t recorded. But it was pretty clear from his amused tone that he wouldn�t put it past anyone.

We went back below deck in the aft part of the ship. Our guide showed us the capstan, a winch for raising the anchor. This was a gigantic spool-type thing with holes around the circumference where posts could be quickly rammed in to turn it. When the ship needed to take off in a hurry, rum would be doled out with the theory that drunken sailors would work harder. Then poles would be jammed into the holes surrounding the winch and they�d push them around and raise the anchor.

The only potential problem with this was for the young boys. They would sometimes keep a pigeon or other bird as a pet (I assume to comfort them after being raped and shot at all day). If other sailors found out about the bird, they might want to take it themselves and eat it. So the young boys had to hide their pets. If they were below decks, they might secret it away in a hole in the winch where it would be out of open view but unable to fly away (perhaps this is the origin of the term �pigeonhole�; I don�t know). Of course if the ship had to pull away suddenly, a pole would be rammed in this hole, crushing their bird. Squawk.

Wow. Young boys who had to scurry around fetching gunpowder in battle being shot at, presumably got buggered in their off hours, and sometimes had their pet birds smashed in their hiding spots. Why would anyone ever volunteer for such a position, I asked. Our guide reminded me that back then, military service was not voluntary. Many sailors were pressed into service, simply knocked unconscious after a drunken bender and put on a ship. But the navy did not get the young boys this way. No.

The government bought them.

Poor families would be given $20 for an alleged seven years of service from their young sons. The guide tried to be cheerful as he told us this, but there was really no getting around the horror. The kids would be taken away from their homes and everything they knew and sent to sea in the role described. My jaw hit the deck. I was imagining a line item in the 1798 military budget: �$2000 � purchase of young boys for naval ships�. Your tax dollars at work (did they have income tax back then?).

Whenever I find myself starting to feel that the government isn�t so bad after all, I remind myself that at one time official policy was to buy children to be shot at and raped. (Of course other historic official policies include massacring the entire indigenous population of the continent, facilitating human enslavement, and denying women the vote.) Now, nothing so horrific could possibly go on today, thank goodness.

Uhm. I mean probably nothing like that�s happening now. Maybe. I think. Well, why don�t we keep our eyes open? Y�know, just on the off chance.

� 2005 Geoff Gladstone

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