“Sailors’ days involved a patchwork of short periods of work interspersed with rest creating a schedule that seems entirely bizarre to modern observers.”

By John Danielski

THE BRITISH frigate HMS Amphion rode peacefully at anchor in Plymouth Harbour on Sept 22, 1796. She was in the process of completing repairs and would soon be ready for active operations. Suddenly, there was an ear-splitting boom and a blinding flash of light as an explosion engulfed the vessel. In the blink of an eye Amphion had vanished, replaced by a fireball, clouds of splinters, floating pieces of oak and 300 corpses. Amazingly, the captain, Israel Pellew, brother of the naval hero Sir Edward Pellew, survived after being blown out the rear window of his cabin. The explosion was later attributed to the careless handling of powder. It’s possible that an exhausted hand was the culprit. When considering the sleep schedule for sailors of the era, such a hypothesis is hardly far-fetched.

The Royal Navy has long divided each 24-hour period into five watches of four hours plus two watches of two hours. Sailors’ days involved a patchwork of short periods of work interspersed with rest creating a schedule that seems entirely bizarre to modern observers. 

In the 17th century, when the watch system began, Europeans and North Americans had much different sleeping habits – few enjoyed the eight hours of uninterrupted slumber that’s recommended today.

Centuries ago, sleep was segmented, carried out in two distinct shifts. Before the advent of gas and then electric lighting in towns and homes, human circadian rhythms were synchronized to a world without artificial light pollution. Normally, people would turn in shortly after dusk, wake in the middle of the night for a brief period to eat, pray, sew, read, have sex, etc. and then sleep again for a few hours before dawn. 

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries growing urbanization and industrialization changed that.  Increasingly well-lit towns eventually prevented city dwellers from seeing 90 per cent of the night’s stars, but it also had other effects.

“Every time we turn on a light,” writes Harvard chronobiologist Charles Czeisler, “we are taking a drug that inadvertently affects how we will sleep.”

Bright lights effectively throw switches in brain neural systems, signalling the termination of some processes, the awakening of others. (This is true for animals and plants as well.)

According to the historian Dr. A. Roger Ekirch, from late Medieval times until around 1840, night was divided into “first sleep” usually early evening to midnight, then “second sleep” from either 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. until dawn.

While doctors of the time recommended six to eight hours sleep, as do modern physicians, it was not expected to be all at once. During the short nights and long days of summer, abbreviated night sleep would be supplemented with catnaps during the day.

It’s no surprise that the 18th Century Royal Navy based its watch schedule to reflect the wider sleep habits of the era.

Though he never slept more than four hours at a time, the average Royal Navy seaman during the era of blades and broadsides likely got a better and more restorative rest than his civilian counterparts. Yet when unforeseen circumstances like storms, a pursuit or battle or some other emergency disrupted, sleep deprivation could lead to mistakes, accidents and even disasters — such as the explosion of HMS Amphion. So just what were the factors that shaped and affected sailors’ scheduled sleep?

When the Lords of the Admiralty formalized naval practices during the reign of Charles II, they designated noon as the start of the nautical day. This was when the sun was at its zenith, when the sextant was deployed to calculate the ship’s position on the wide, featureless expanse of ocean. Yet the time from noon to 4 p.m. was called the “afternoon watch” not “first watch.”

Interestingly, what was known as “first watch” was reserved for the time from 8 p.m. to midnight, because it corresponded most closely to “first sleep” on land. The Admiralty used four-hour increments to partition most of the rest of the day, thereby giving those off duty at least one watch of (theoretically) undisturbed sleep.

The two-hour “dog watches,” covering the time from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., owe their names to “dog sleep”: 17th century slang for a light, wary nap. Dog watches were instituted to ensure that each sailor was awake for supper with his mess.

There was also the expectation that a judicious captain would shuffle the schedules to ensure no sailor stood the same watch from day to day. These changing duty cycles likely disrupted sleep patterns, giving an effect that resembled modern jet lag — a phenomenon that may be all too recognizable to anyone who has ever worked swing shifts. 

While the quality of sleep aboard a ship-of-the-line would distress a modern-day visitor, by the standards of the time, it was reasonably restful. The average sailor came from a humble rural background or from the poorer districts of the large cities. Growing up, that sailor probably lived in a single room or multiple family dwelling that was noisy and cramped; hot in the summer and cold in the winter, the room’s temperature would rarely have been in the 60 to 67 degrees Fahrenheit range that modern experts consider optimal for nocturnal rest. On the coldest winter days, activity ground to an almost complete halt as people stayed in bed simply to conserve heat. The idea of a specially designated sleep chamber did not exist. 

If a poor countryman slept in a bed at all, it might be with two or three siblings, perhaps his entire family. The cheap straw mattress might be infested with bedbugs, and his humble lodging would have had harvest mites and lice as uninvited guests. He was even more likely to have slept on an old flour sack on a dirt floor covered with rushes, straw, or heather. The family’s cow and pig might have shared the cottage, since their body heat was useful on cold winter nights, and inside they were safe from predators and thieves. But their urine and dung contributed to the already poor hygienic conditions.

If the cottage was heated with a peat fire, common in Ireland and Scotland, the air would be thick and smoky. The windows would be shuttered, since most believed noxious airs were abroad during the night. Chronic dampness, mold, and mildew added to the panoply of odours, as well as furnishing incubators for illness. 

Segmented sleep is the norm among animals in the wild who must be on guard against predators. Similarly, if the sailor hailed from an urban area, tumult, squalor, and rampant violence would have presented problems that made getting a solid night’s rest problematic. British urban tenements were ramshackle, poorly lit warrens fronting on cramped, winding alleys; or thin-timbered structures built around a courtyard whose walls acted as an echo chamber for discordant noises.

These mass hovels were among the most densely crowded places on earth, one Liverpool tenement housing 1,200 people per square acre. Barking dogs, crying babies, drunken singing, brawling, roving bands of roistering youths, and legions of thieves made night an unquiet, unsafe time. It was wise to sleep with one eye open, not just because of marauding rats and mice, but because murder rates were at least as bad as modern-day Chicago.

And then there was the stench. A heavy rain would turn a courtyard into a sea of mud and roil the massive cesspool beneath that was the repository for the tenements’ public latrines. These community catchments often went undrained for years at a time.

Because structures were made of wood and all internal lighting and cooking was by firelight, fires were endemic in urban areas, where many buildings were little better than piles of kindling waiting to be ignited. Shakespeare’s home of Stratford on Avon suffered four devastating blazes between 1594 and 1641. Most of Glasgow was erased by fire in 1652, and the Great Fire of London in 1666 consumed four-fifths of that city in four days. While rural areas were less susceptible to fire, poorly maintained thatched roofs were highly combustible, and cottages were sufficiently close that an airborne spark could cause fatal damage to multiple homes.

In contrast to his landlubber contemporaries, a sailor in the Royal Navy slept in an environment that was relatively clean and safe. A sailor’s canvas hammock was free of dirt and kept in good repair. Though the hammock was slung on a gundeck crowded with cannon, a sailor had 28 inches of space all to himself; his sleeping comrades were much less closely packed than what he knew back home. The deck below the hammocks was scrubbed frequently, and the systematic laundering of clothing limited the effects of lice, mold, and mildew. Ship’s cats kept rats and mice under control, while the domesticated animals on board were confined to a manger. 

Other than snoring, the ambient noise level was relatively low. While the ship’s bell was wrung every half hour to signal the passage of time, to most sailors, that was the reassuring equivalent of a town crier announcing, “Four o’clock and all’s well!”

The sounds of ropes and sails pulling in the wind, creaking hulls and waves slapping against the side of the ship likely constituted a sort of “white noise.” Indeed, the swoosh swoosh of waves, the rocking of the hammock, and the groaning of the ship’s timbers might have acted as soporifics to some.

Natural light was scarce on the gundecks, but if the gun ports were opened in daylight, illumination was reasonably good. With lanterns lit, there was considerably more light than was found in the average country cottage. Fire was greatly feared at sea, and so it was far more tightly policed than on land. Gundecks could get cold in the winter, but heated cannon balls in buckets placed at regular intervals gave off safer heat than banked fires in a rural cottage or city tenement.

The air below decks got stuffy, sometimes so much so that sailors often woke up with headaches — the result of mild carbon dioxide poisoning — that would clear when they went above deck and got fresh air. To be sure, a ship’s bilges often reeked of nauseating smells. But opening the gun ports periodically, as well as occasionally using a large sail to funnel fresh air below decks, made ventilation better than in most rural cottages. Sea air was also far more salubrious than that from the soot-laden skies that darkened London. Dumping garbage overboard, rather than burning it, also contributed to more breathable air.

Masters-at-arms and their assistants, patrolling the decks, kept crime to a minimum, and were far more effective than the average town watch. This allowed sailors to sleep deeply, not staying half-awake for self-protection, or guarding their few valuables. It was far safer to walk a dark deck than a narrow London alley after nightfall. While gales at sea were hazardous, many dwellings on land fared worse than the stout oak timbers of a warship. You were far less likely to have a deck beam collapse on you than an old, thatched roof.

A full stomach is a great aid to sleep, and sailors in the Royal Navy received enough food that most never went to bed with the empty bellies that were common for many landsmen and soldiers in the field. Historian Dr. Edward Coss estimates that maintaining a fighting man of the Napoleonic era, averaging five feet, six-and-a-half inches tall and weighing 136 pounds, required 3,040 daily calories. Though Navy fare was often of questionable quality, the average sailor received roughly 5,000 calories per day, compared to the 2,400 for a soldier. And while some farm workers throve on the food they grew, others faced starvation if heavy taxes, crop failure, or disaster reduced them to short rations. 

Shakespeare wrote, “sleep knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,” and it appears sailors had their sleeves better mended than civilians and soldiers. Yet from a modern perspective, many seamen probably suffered from a severe sleep deficit. The rigours of life at sea meant sleep was always in short supply.

Dr. Johnson once observed that “life on a warship is like being in jail, with the added hazard of drowning.” Emergencies requiring all hands-on deck for extended periods were hugely disruptive to sleep. Post-traumatic stress disorder gave Royal Navy sailors nightmares landsmen would never have.

Alcohol in large quantities over an extended period is a significant disrupter of sleep patterns, as well as a promoter of chronic dehydration. Strong rum was an integral part of the Royal Navy, and by today’s standards, many sailors were functional alcoholics. Their daily allowance of grog consisted of half a pint of 151 proof rum to which four parts water was added. Stopping a man’s grog was feared just as much as flogging.

The Royal Navy suffered 100,000 deaths during the Napoleonic Wars, but fewer than 6,000 were incurred as a direct result of combat. Other than illness, the greatest causes of death were accidents and misadventures. Repeated head-on collisions with deck beams — probably caused by sleep deprivation and alcohol — were frequently cited as reasons why sailors performed dangerously stupid actions or bungled very simple ones. Many sailors probably suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain malady that plagues the American National Football League.

Historians have just begun to explore the role played by sleep in times past. Sleep patterns began to change after 1840 with the widespread introduction of gas lighting in streets and in homes. The vast increase in light transformed night into an occasion for widespread socializing and caused people to stay up later and later, finally condensing two installments of sleep into one. The explosion of artificial light and accompanying industrialization has given rise to hectic schedules that often render a good night’s sleep more an ideal than a reality. “The city that never sleeps,” is a descriptor of many municipalities, not just New York and Las Vegas. 

Sleep-deprived people make dangerous mistakes, as the nuclear disasters of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl demonstrated. Both happened in the middle of the night, during the watch of people too short on sleep to perform their jobs competently. 

In exchange for all her gifts of restoration, sleep is a harsh mistress who exacts a stern penalty when she is denied overlong. Studying history with an awareness of the role played by sleep, and by sleep deprivation, sheds light on more than one mystery of the past that prompts modern readers to wonder, “why did he do that?!?” In at least some instances, part of the answer may be, “the poor sod was exhausted.”

John Danielski is the author of seven books chronicling the adventures of Royal Marine Thomas Pennywhistle during the Napoleonic Wars. The newest title in the series is Attaché Extraordinaire. It is available from Amazon.com. He is a frequent contributor to MilitaryHistoryNow.com.