Also, in tacking ship, reefing top-sails, or "coming to," every man of a frigate's five-hundred-strong, knows his own special place, and is infallibly found there.

He sees nothing else, attends to nothing else, and will stay there till grim death or an epaulette orders him away.

Yet there are times when, through the negligence of the officers, some exceptions are found to this rule.

A rather serious circumstance growing out of such a case will be related in some future chapter.
Were it not for these regulations a man-of-war's crew would be nothing but a mob, more ungovernable stripping the canvas in a gale than Lord George Gordon's tearing down the lofty house of Lord Mansfield.
But this is not all.

Besides White-Jacket's office as looser of the main-royal, when all hands were called to make sail; and besides his special offices, in tacking ship, coming to anchor, etc.; he permanently belonged to the Starboard Watch, one of the two primary, grand divisions of the ship's company.