By Biswajit Basu:
It's 95% true. Sailing ships normally had their toilets (usually 2) in the foc'sle. If they had them on the bowsprit, it would be very, very dangerous as the amplitude of pitch is the most there and would be more of a roller coaster ride than stately poop. There usually would be 2 toilets in the foc'sle. This would have to cater to a 100 or so seamen. So you can imagine the rush every morning. So if you had to go or if you had diarrhea, you would simply jump on to a timber beam of the bow and let fly. Everything would collect in the bilges in the bottom of the bow and the smell could easily make a rugged able bodied seaman faint.
However, there usually were a couple of more toilets. And believe it or not they were actually in the poop. They consisted of a small room projecting out of the hull near the stern. There were usually 2 of them. One was attached to the captain's cabin and the other served the mates. They consisted of only a hole on the floor.
Think for a moment of the food. There was no cooking done as the wooden ship might catch fire. So the crew ate only biscuits and dry meat with rum. It is only the later sailing ships that had ovens on gimbals and this was used only in calm weather. Scurvy was rampant till it was discovered that you could forestall it with vitamin C. Believe it or not, when I was sailing, we were still under the antique Merchant Shipping Act of 1858. Under this Act it was compulsory for everyone to drink lime juice. It was dutifully served at 11am and you could be whipped if you refused to drink it. The Act has been amended since.
(PS...some heavy drinkers would pour some vodka and have it during lunch!)
(Blogger note: The detour to the kitchen was brief, and back to the toilet we went)
Once Daddy and I were visiting Jorbagh Mama's house in Konnagar, near Kolkata. I was ushered into a huge room with tubs of water. But there was no toilet! In the darkness, I saw a hole in the floor. I went and looked down the hole and I was wondering whether I have to climb down. Then I saw the pigs one floor below the hole and looking up in anticipation.
All doubts disappeared.
(Blogger note: I cannot believe this is true)
Every word is true.
In the earlier days, even in our army officer's houses, there were usually 3-4 potties with lids and enamel pots suspended from the seat.
These were known as "thunder-boxes". You did your job, closed the lid and went out. In our house at T1, Lorry Road in Delhi Cantt this was also the system. Many of my friends who lived in old houses in Delhi and Bangalore had them.
From Monisha Choudhury:
In Ranikhet, where we went for one month summer vacation every summer, we lived in cottages of the army in the middle of the pine woods. Our toilet was a wooden poop chair with a removable tin pot in the middle with a wooden cover. Every morning the sweeper removed and cleaned them.
I hated them! Specially, I was scared of the dark and the howling hyenas at night. Often, we had forest fires due to the friction amongst the dry pine needle like leaves. There was only a single hotel resturant Moon hotel ....my namesake. I remember going for lunch and early dinner there as we got tired of the bland daily fare of the Army khansamas. I disliked to go for dinner as I did not like the dark and sounds of hyenas. The street lights were lit by firing the lamppost with a long rod every evening which seemed so far away from each other with dark patches in between and scary shadows of trees and not a soul around! There were so many Ghost stories. One of the Captain who came on a horse in the church. This I experienced a few years ago on our trip to Lansdowne. But that’s another story.
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