When nature called, Constitution’s sailors had few facilities at their disposal. For the common seamen and Marines, the primitive toilet facilities of the head beckoned. Consisting of four or six holes cut in a plank overhanging the water in the bows of the ship, the heads provided little in the way of privacy or comfort. In cold weather or rough seas, a trip forward must have been an unpleasant, if not downright dangerous, undertaking.
The ship’s officers and the sick confined to sick bay used the best facilities in the ship. The captain had the cushiest arrangements. His private privy was located in one of the quarter galleries, the lavishly decorated projections overhanging the ship’s stern quarters to port and starboard. Some British ships of the period had flushing water closets rigged in the quarter galleries, and it is possible Constitution did too. [1]
A 1798 list of captain’s “cabin furniture” includes two pewter chamber pots- a handy provision for dinner parties and midnight rituals.
The wardroom officers likely kept chamber pots in their cabins as well, but they also had recourse to slightly better toilet facilities than the rest of the crew. Frigates typically carried two “round houses” forward on the gundeck. These structures, consisting of wooden half cylindrical screens erected against the ship’s side provided a sheltered place to do one’s business. Though more comfortable than the head, using them could still be dangerous, as suggested by an incident on board HMS Lapwing in 1798:
The Purser went into the weather round House, about this time which is fixed in the Galley, on the Ships Bows. While he was on the Seat, a mass of wind was forced by a wave up the Galley of the round House. that its violence breaking against the naked Posterior of the Purser, it so lacerated his parts & Aunus, that he was oblidged to get medical assistance, as a quantity of wind had forced a passage into his Belly. [2] READ THE FULL STORY ON LOG LINES