We were woken up by a burly stallion who barely fit in his sailors uniform. He showed us to the dining area where we had a breakfast of biscuits and stew. That is apparently where his duty ended, because after we finished eating, we sat there for a good half hour with no idea what to do. Our awkward silence was broken when a black stallion, with a milky off-white mane, in a deep blue uniform came in and called all us shipscolts out on deck.

“I am Midships-Stallion Wilhelm Ink,” He introduced himself “I have been assigned to get you colts up to navy standards. If you do what I say, when I say it, and to the letter, then we will get along fine. Disobey, and I will see to it that the only time you spend above deck will be cleaning the head and picking off the barnacles. Understand” I snapped my sharpest salute and lead the colts in our heartiest, Sir, yes sir! Again it was received with a light chuckle, I was going to find out why.

“What’s your name colt?” Ink asked.

“Peanut Toffee, Sir.” I replied

“Well, Shipscolt Toffee you have demonstrated to me exactly how little you all know about Navy etiquette.” I thought that was slightly unnecessary, but I didn’t say anything. “But don’t worry, I’ll have you all ship shape by weeks end.” Ink declared with a smile. It almost looked like was was going to break into a song like all the plays me and the gang used to sneak in to watch, thankfully he didn’t.

“To begin, show me that salute of yours again. All of you.” He ordered. We all raised our fore hoof up to our eyebrows, and snapped them out a half inch or so from our heads before dropping them down to the deck again. Ink chuckled to himself again, that was getting really annoying. “Try again, this time hold your hoofs up until the officer you are saluting acknowledges with either a salute of his own or by nodding.” We all did as he instructed, waiting for his signal to drop our salutes. “Now, before you drop your salutes, tell me what Toffee here is doing wrong?” I almost jumped in surprise, I was the one who told the others to mimic the stallions and the first to try it myself. What could I be doing that was so off? Keeping my hoof in the air, I turned my head to look at the other shipscolts, it was then that I noticed all the other colts had their right fore hoofs raised and I had my left raised, I had not even noticed it just felt natural. I quickly shifted to my right fore hoof, eliciting another chuckle from Ink. I frowned at him, he responded by laughing at loud. “No no no no colt. You have the right hoof now, but you are still doing it wrong.” I was getting frustrated now, why not just tell me? I looked again at the other colts, frowning at Slip who was stifling his own laughter. It felt awkward standing on my left fore hoof and the shifting to look at the other colts made me lose my balance and fall on my right side, crashing into Midnight Sky, knocking him into Hitch who fell into a pile of supplies not yet packed away, sending nails, brushes, and bars of soap rolling down the dock.

“Come now, stand up!” Ink ordered with a smile. “I guess you found out the hard way that you were leaning to your right by at least seventy points. Now all of you pick up the mess, then fall back into ranks here.”

It only took us five minutes to pick up all the supplies, and as we walked back over to Ink we soon found out once again that we knew next to nothing about navy protocol. We could not “Fall into ranks”, or stand “At ease”. We did not know the difference between port and the crows nest, masts and rigging were as clear as night watches were warm. That’s something we found out that night, always sign up for day watches.

We had been going over everything, Inky (as I had started calling him in my head) pointed out everything there was to know about the ship, and by early afternoon we had learned enough to pass his “Quiz of Sailor-hood”, as he so enthusiastically called it. Having become full fledged sailors, we were given a break for lunch and to review everything we had learned. We had been so wrapped up in learning the ways of the seas that we did not notice that we had cast off from shore and were well on our way into the open sea, with the harbor fading away in the late sunlight. I could barely make out the old warehouse that had been my home for the past two years.

Latter that night, when we were out on the high seas, we had been “volunteered” to take shifts on the night watch. And each of us learned the hard way that the ship was still getting used to us, or visa-versa. All six of us were awake all night giving our dinner back to the sea. When the morning came, all of us were cold, green, tired, and surly. Much to Inks amusement.

Over the next four days we got used to the rocking of the waves, learned more and more from Inky, and got official duties from the Lieutenant, (The captain's second in command). Slip and Hitch were assigned to help with the sails; trimming, opening, repairing, anything that had them up on the masts, in the rigging laughing away. Cloudy was assigned to help the cook, Midnight Sky and Mossy were on cannon duty, maintaining the cannons, making sure the tracks were greased and ready to be used at a moment notice. As for me, I was assigned to the main watch. I got to go up in the crows-nest and look out onto the vast ocean, I was supposed to watch for ships but I always had some other stallion up there with me, and they got the spy glass so I spent most of my time watching the ocean, the birds, the crew way down on deck. They looked like ants down there. Every day I had a different watch horse, and one was a lazy, good for nothing earth pony named Sea Salt, that only came up there to sleep. At those times Slip would come up to the crows-nest if he had nothing better to do, which was most of the time apparently. We would sit up there for hours on end; talking, watching for sea animals that might be following the ship, once Slip had found himself some charcoal and we drew a mustache on Sea Salt. Our laughter woke him up, and Slip barely got out of the nest before he was caught. Life was going fine, then three weeks into the voyage we hit our first storm....

Author's Note

I know this does not continue right off of the last chapter, I am having writers block on the back stories. Once they are written I will add them as extra chapters here, or something else...Ideas?