[sillyquiet]

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.

[BoxOfRain]

>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!

[sillyquiet]

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.

[BoxOfRain]

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.