Tuesday Trivia returns from hiatus to talk about SLEEP!
Next week: Dealing with Failure
During his Western sojourn, Samuel Clemens spent nearly two years - 1862-1864 - in Virginia City where he worked as a journalist and took the name Mark Twain. He spent much of that time sharing an apartment with fellow reporter William Wright, aka Dan DeQuille. They shared a double bed, which was common enough for the period because that's just what people did and it kept them warm during the cold winter nights of Northern Nevada. When famed humorist Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne) visited Virginia City during Christmas of 1863, he immediately took to Twain and DeQuille, recognizing them as kindred spirits, writers and jokesters. DeQuille and Twain invited him to stay in their apartment during his visit, which lasted over a week. Having only the one bed, all three piled in. But it was the Yule season and icy cold, so a third person provided that much more warmth. Besides that - according to accounts of the visit - they only retired late at night and very drunk, so it probably was easy enough to get some sleep no matter how crowded the accommodations.
Later writers have looked at Ward and suspected he may have been a homosexual. It is impossible to prove that since there is only indirect evidence, but some have taken that suspect conclusion a step further, maintaining that Twain also must have had a homosexual encounter in that Christmas of '63. It is an absurd conclusion (Twain's gay encounter) built upon a suspect conclusion (Ward's gay nature) that depends on a misunderstanding of normal sleeping accommodations of the period. It simply wasn't unusual for people to share a bed like that even if modern Americans might find that sort of arrangement objectionable.
The case of Twain and DeQuille - and then adding Ward - provides a lesson regarding why one should not project modern standards onto the past.
After a considerable hiatus of shoehorning hockey-related themes into these posts, I'll add a short one here.
Back in the "Original Six" days of the NHL (1942-1967; and no, they were not actually the original six teams, but that's irrelevant here) teams used trains for road trips. Sleeping berths were assigned based on the players uniform number, which was largely based on position (goaltenders wore 1, defencemen 2-9, forwards up to 30).
Anyways, in 1947 a young forward on the Detroit Red Wings was unhappy with his sleeping arraignments, and wanted a better spot than his #17 offered. So he managed to switch to a lower number, #9, and in the process became arguably the most famous player in NHL history to wear that number (with apologies to Rocket Richard). That 19-year-old second year player was none other than the future "Mr. Hockey" himself, Gordie Howe. And the fact that he was given such a nickname is testament to his legend, and he did it wearing his familiar #9 for the next 31 seasons of professional hockey, 24 of which would be with the Red Wings.
Just proof that one really can turn any topic here into something related to hockey, if one tries hard enough.
For much of the period I'm interested in, the sleeping conditions for the average sailor would have resembled those familiar to Nelson. Rather than sleeping in bunks, the sailors of both world wars slept in hammocks, with the same allotment of 14 inches per man on the mess-decks (though they slept in less cramped conditions thanks to the watch system). The messes were designed and equipped based on this. However, as technology progressed, and ships received new radar and anti-aircraft equipment, more men needed to be squeezed in to these tight spaces available. This meant many men had to sleep anywhere they could find space - on lockers or in passageways. Ian Nethercott, a young recruit in 1939, described the situation when he joined HMS Keith:
When I eventually got aboard HMS Keith, humping my gear down to the forward mess deck, I was so slow that I had to grab the last kit locker in my mess, which was next to the cable locker and practically impossible to get at. The only place left for me to sleep was on the wooden cover of the cable engine which permanently leaked steam and was known as 'The Fish & Chip Shop'.
Most of the officers had bunks. The captain, and on larger ships the commander (officer in charge of the crew), had roomy cabins with adjoining living space. The rest of the officers had their own, individual (albeit cramped) cabins. However, the midshipmen, as befitting officer trainees, slept in hammocks in what was, copying the Nelsonic tradition, called the gunroom, despite containing no guns.
Even if they had a comfortable place to sleep, this was no guarantee of a good night's sleep. Ships operated on either the two-watch or three-watch system, and whichever one their ship operated on determined how much uninterrupted sleep they got. On a two-watch ship, the crew was divided into two parts or watches, which alternated four-hour periods of duty (with two two-hour 'dog watches' each day). On a three-watch ship, there were three watches, which alternated eight-hour watches, again with dog watches. The big capital ships, as well smaller ones that manned at Chatham and Portsmouth, typically used the two-watch system, while those that manned at Plymouth used the three-watch system. This meant that on a two-watch ship, none of the crew would never get more than four hours of sleep at a time.
Another frequent cause for sleeplessness was the weather. RN ships were not air-conditioned, and in tropical weather were often far too warm for the men to sleep belowdecks. Instead, in climates like the Indian Ocean, they were permitted to sleep on deck. In colder climates, problems arose from storms. Many found it difficult to sleep on storm-tossed escorts, and with the two-watch system making it impossible to get a full night's sleep, things quickly became unpleasant, as Nicholas Monsarrat recounted
You do, say, an hour's intricate ciphering, thereafter snatch a few hours' sleep between wet blankets, with the inflated life-belt in your ribs reminding you all the time that things happen quickly.; and then, every night for seventeen nights on end, you're woken at ten to four by the bosun's mate, and you stare at the deckhead and think: My God, I can't go up there again in the dark and filthy rain, and stand another four hours of it. But you can, of course: it becomes automatic in the end.
It's no wonder that many men became heavily fatigued at sea. For many, returning to port was a joyous occasion, simply because it meant they could get some sleep. Donald Macintyre, captain of the destroyer Hesperus, would write:
It was almost a tangible joy, therefore, to be snug in harbour in a secure berth, with a westerly gale moaning through the rigging, and knowing that an undisturbed night in one's bunk and between sheets lay ahead.
The other night I started eliminating the Yellow Peril with a butcher knife and in the conflict bounded out of bed and on account of the cord on my foot, did a neat nose-dive onto the floor which skinned my face somewhat. I’ll remember that if I ever get the drop on a Japanese.
Texas pulp writer Robert E. Howard had a tendency toward sleepwalking, and for some years to check this, he had the habit of tying a cord from his foot to the bedpost.
Is the "underwear" that medieval peasants wore similar to what we wear today, or are they just some undergarment that bears no resemblance to modern day underwear?
Did English peasants change underwear once a week? I thought it was far less than that .