The Adventures of Roderick Random

Midshipman Abuses and Imprisons Narrator

On the middle deck, the narrator encounters the same midshipman who had mistreated him on the tender. When the midshipman demands to know who released the narrator from his chains, the narrator replies with barely concealed resentment. The midshipman beats him severely with a supple jack, then reports him to the commanding officer, resulting in the narrator’s immediate imprisonment in irons.

Narrator Exonerated, Midshipman Punished

Honest Jack Rattlin alerts the surgeon to the narrator’s situation, and Thompson is sent to dress his wounds. The narrator is brought before the first lieutenant for examination, where he recounts his abuse in detail. Jack Rattlin and others testify on his behalf, and the midshipman is proved guilty and punished with confinement in the bilboes.

Narrator Appointed Surgeon’s Assistant

Through Thompson’s favorable representation, the surgeon requests the narrator from the lieutenant to fill the vacancy left by the third mate’s death. The narrator is thus exempted from regular duties and assigned to assist in preparing and administering medicines to the sick.

Thompson’s Surgeon’s Mate Backstory

Thompson, the surgeon’s mate, reveals his history to the narrator over food and drink in the cockpit. After failing to borrow money in London, he had signed on as mate aboard a Guinea slave trader. Unexpectedly, he received a Navy warrant for second mate of a third-rate warship, though he had only qualified as third mate at Surgeons’ Hall. He rushed to the Navy Office and was confirmed in his position just hours before another William Thompson arrived to claim the warrant. Thompson describes his current shipmates: the surgeon is kind but indolent, the first mate is proud and quick-tempered (as Welshmen go), and the captain is too much of a gentleman to even notice the surgeon’s mates.

CHAPTER XXV

The chapter depicts a contentious scene aboard the ship when the irascible first mate, Mr. Morgan, returns from the hospital only to find that all the pork has been consumed by the newly arrived narrator, whom Mr. Thompson had admitted to the mess without consulting Morgan. Despite their initial dispute about proper etiquette, Morgan’s sympathy for a fellow sailor in distress moves him to accept the arrangement, and he proves generous in sharing provisions and even presenting the narrator with two ruffled shirts, while also relating his own downfall in Glamorganshire. The narrative then shifts to the grim realities of shipboard life, as Thomson acquaints the narrator with the ship’s economy and discipline, culminating in a disturbing visit to the sick berth, where approximately fifty patients lie in squalid conditions, separated by mere inches of space, breathing fetid air and surrounded by filth, prompting the narrator to observe that it is more surprising for someone to recover in such an environment than for patients to die there.

First Mate Morgan’s Argument with a Sailor

Before Mr. Thompson finishes explaining his situation, a heated dispute erupts on the cockpit ladder. A sailor, speaking in a broad dialect, declares he will not visit the sick until he has eaten something in his belly, regardless of how sick his messmate may be. Someone retorts that the dying man must “part his cable” for want of assistance, and that the doctor ordered the sailor to tend to him. The defiant sailor protests that he has “birth, and education, and… abilities” equal to any gentleman, and refuses to be treated like a horse or goat at the doctor’s “will and pleasure.” He demands the doctor examine the “tying man” and provide medicine, but insists on satisfying his own “craving stomach” first.

Introduction to First Mate Morgan

Mr. Thompson reveals the argumentative sailor is Mr. Morgan, the first mate, who has just returned from accompanying sick patients to the hospital. When Morgan enters the berth, he is described as a short, thick man with a face full of pimples, a snub nose turned upward, an excessively wide mouth, and small fiery eyes surrounded by countless wrinkles. Thompson immediately informs Morgan of the narrator’s situation.