Life for us rats onboard ship is mostly good.

And, sometimes, not so good.

There’s plenty of room for rats on their own as there is for those with families. Many, many places to make our homes away from the sight of the two-legs. We live where they don’t usually go. Those dark, smelly or unwholesome places. Unwholesome to them but not to us. A cable tier or way below near the bilges. Where we really like to make our nests is where we cannot be seen and yet can find our way to sources of food with comparative ease. (Not that we’re lazy you understand but why make things difficult for ourselves when there are easier ways to get what we want.) 

Storerooms are our favourite places. Those two-legs like to keep their supplies stacked in an orderly fashion; be it barrels of meat or sacks of flour. If it needs to be stored then it’ll be done neatly. Being curved as barrels and casks are by their very nature means that when they are all neatly stacked there are perfect spaces for us to nest in. The more being stored the longer it will take before they realise that we, living behind them, have been eating our fill in absolute  safety.

I have to say that we rats are by no means fussy eaters. We do like fresh bread but if that’s not available then we are not averse to its ingredients and especially flour. Flour is easy to get to. It comes in sacks which are simple to tear open. Meat is good but it does mean we have to gnaw our way through the staves to reach it and sometimes we find the wood is better than the meat. I’m rather partial to cheese and that’s always my first target but then so are the two-legs and supplies can run low after a few months at sea.

As I said, we rats are not fussy eaters. When our regular supplies become more difficult find there is always the paper from their books or the cartridges for their guns. If all else fails then there is the very fabric of the ship itself. I’m always a bit wary of this as a last resort. I’ve heard tales of rats who have bitten their way through the ship’s timbers and drowned as a result. It’s only a story but I wouldn’t risk it, not that I have anything against feeding off wood, but how would I tell how close I was to biting my way to the sea?

My whole point about ships being mostly good as a home for us rats is proven by the fact that there are no thin rats on a wooden ship

There are lots of creatures that just scuttle about, scavenging whatever they can to feed themselves and their kin. Even we don’t have a great fondness for the cockroaches. They have this knack of turning up all over the place and they don’t care who they walk over neither to get to any scrap of food. The other thing about them is that they don’t seem to be afraid of anything either. They parade around both day and night, often in full view of the two-legs who brush them off their things and try to hit them with whatever comes to hand. Other rats have told me tales of them being hit with carpenters’ mallets and even having cannon balls dropped on them only to see them scuttle off through gaps in the planks. They seem to be indestructible. I think we can all agree that it is hard to find a kind word to say about cockroaches. 

Yes, apart from the cockroaches, life for us rats onboard one of His Majesty’s ships is mostly good.

So, when do times become not so good?

That is when rat the eater becomes rat the eaten.

We are hunted by the two-legs. We are hunted, captured, killed and then skinned and prepared by the ship’s cook for eating. Grilled or roasted. It is hard for me to say for many reasons but primarily because we don’t usually eat each other, but I have heard tell that a cooked ship’s rat is considered a delicacy by some two-legs and especially the Midshipmen or “young gentlemen” as they are referred to.

Fortunately for us we breed far quicker than they can catch us.

There is only one type of two-legs we really fear.

The ratcatcher.

He hunts us not for food but to rid the ship of “vermin”.

That is the worst of times.