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To be sure , a studding-sail with reefed topsails was rather a new thing ; yet there was some reason in it , for if we carried that away , we should lose only a sail and a boom ; but a whole topsail might have carried away the mast and all . Some blamed the captain for loading his ship so deep , when he knew what he must expect ; while others said that the wind was always southwest , off the Cape , in the winter ; and that , running before it , we should not mind the seas so much . She had been acting in this way all of our forenoon watch below ; as we could tell by the washing of the water over our heads , and the heavy breaking of the seas against her bows , ( with a sound as though she were striking against a rock , ) only the thickness of the plank from our heads , as we lay in our berths , which are directly against the bows . A little fresh water , which we had saved from our allowance , was put in buckets , and with soap and towels , we had what sailors call a fresh-water wash . To be sure , we were mere animals and had this life lasted a year instead of a month we should have been little better than the ropes in the ship . This , to be sure , was no place to keep the fourth of July . We were in rather a bad situation : an open boat , a heavy rain , and a long night ; for in winter , in this latitude , it was dark nearly fifteen hours . Being so deep and heavy , she wanted the buoyancy which should have carried her over the seas , and she dropped heavily into them , the water washing over the decks ; and every now and then , when an unusually large sea met her fairly upon the bows , she struck it with a sound as dead and heavy as that with which a sledge-hammer falls upon the pile , and took the whole of it in upon the forecastle , and rising , carried it aft in the scuppers , washing the rigging off the pins , and carrying along with it everything which was loose on deck . The heavy chain cables to be hauled and pulled about the decks with bare hands ; wet hawsers , slip-ropes , and buoyropes to be hauled aboard , dripping in water , which is running up your sleeves , and freezing ; clearing hawse under the bows ; getting under weigh and coming-to , at all hours of the night and day , and a constant look-out for rocks and sands and turns of tides ; - these are some of the disagreeables of such a navigation to a common sailor . The galley , the pig-sty , the hen-coop , and a large sheep-pen which had been built upon the forehatch , were all gone , in the twinkling of an eye - leaving the deck as clean as a chin new-reaped - and not a stick left , to show where they had stood . During all this times , - which would have startled Dr. Graham - we lived upon almost nothing but fresh beef ; fried beefsteaks , three times a day , - morning , noon , and night . " We turned-in early , knowing that we might expect an early call ; and sure enough , before the stars had quite faded , " All hands ahoy ! To be sure , all power is in the captain , and the officers hold their authority only during his will ; and the men are liable to be called upon for any service ; yet , by breaking in upon these usages , many difficulties have occurred on board ship , and even come into courts of justice , which are perfectly unintelligible to any one not acquainted with the universal nature and force of these customs . Not a razor , nor a brush , nor a drop of water , except the rain and the spray , had come near us all the time ; for we were on an allowance of fresh water ; and who would strip and wash himself in salt water on deck , in the snow and ice , with the thermometer at zero ? We were not mistaken in the coldness of the weather , for a white frost was on the ground , a thing we had never seen before in California , and one or two little puddles of fresh water were skimmed over with a thin coat of ice . The days became shorter and shorter ; the sun running lower in its course each day , and giving less and less heat ; and the nights so cold as to prevent our sleeping on deck ; the Magellan Clouds in sight , of a clear night ; the skies looking cold and angry ; and , at times , a long , heavy , ugly sea , setting in from the southward , told us what we were coming to .