Pranks of the Period!

Dropping contents of chamber pots from windows on the unsuspecting.
Ropes raised to trip passers by.

Please, computer, work this time...
Cutting down someone's hammock while they're in it. It definitely happened in the Royal Navy 100 years later...

Nautical lunacy abounds!

• Greasing a ships' ropes could be fun.
• half-sawing through ladder rungs below deck
• changing the order of belay'd sheets (making the sail move in unexpected ways when someone pulls the wrong sheet)
• opening a cask of musket balls on deck

Dusty, that's hilarious. I'd watch that (being too nice to do it myself, but not nice enough to stop someone else from doing it).

putting that black shoe polish stuff on the eyepiece of the telescope!

I'm trying to think of stories from my dad's time in the navy--the one that comes to mind is poo in the coffee. yeah, not sophisticated. if the little kernel of corn hadn't floated to the top, the prankee would've actually taken a sip

-take wood planks and lower the doorways belowdecks by like 3 inches and people will crack their heads repeatedly, because they are used to ducking exactly the right amount.

-convince a fellow sailor that some sort of crisis is taking place, so he runs to his superior officer all frantic-like and ends up embarrassing himself?

-get someone really drunk, carry him up the mast and tie him to the royal yard (top spar on the mast). waking up sick, hungover, and flying a hundred feet above the deck would be not awesome at all.

-steal their uniform at night

-tie someone down to their hammock/bunk

-sew the arms and legs of the uniform shut, and then wake them up with an emergency so they try to get dressed quick

Oiling the wood planks in areas an unsuspecting person might walk through