92 (U522.929) While he was in the act of getting his bearings

Cast 92. Page 522, line 929.

While he was in the act of getting his bearings Mr Bloom who noticed when he stood up that he had two flasks of presumably ship’s rum sticking one out of each pocket for the private consumption of his burning interior, saw him produce a bottle and uncork it or unscrew and, applying its nozzle to his lips, take a good old delectable swig out of it with a gurgling noise.

Episode 16. It is after midnight. Having left the brothel, Mr Bloom has come to the cabman’s shelter in order to look after Stephen. There he is listening to the talk of the sailor who calls himself Murphy. This is the moment when the sailor slowly gets up from his seat.

Episode 16 is written in bad prose, and this too is an astonishingly hard passage to read. One wonders whether there is any other novel quite like it.

It is full of forced clichés and awkward foreign expressions. It multiplies conjunctions and relative clauses until the syntax becomes needlessly tangled, and the insertion of clause after clause makes it difficult to tell where the subject and verb properly join. For all the piling up of words, the actual picture remains vague and blurred.

The phrase “ship’s rum” presumably refers to the rum carried aboard British naval vessels and issued to the crew. A rough summary of the history of rum in the Royal Navy, based on the Wikipedia article, would be as follows.

• Originally, British warships carried water, but water was difficult to preserve on long voyages.
• For that reason, beer and wine came to be carried in place of water.
• Later still, distilled spirits such as brandy were preferred from the standpoint of preservation and supply.
• After Britain captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655, Jamaican rum began to be loaded aboard and issued to sailors.
• In 1740 it was decided that half a pint of rum should be diluted with water in a ratio of one to four and issued twice daily. This drink was called grog.
• The dilution ratio and the amount issued later changed over time.
• In the Royal Navy, grog continued to be issued until 1970 (though officers received the rum undiluted).

The sailor says that he came in this morning at eleven o’clock on the Rosevean, bringing bricks from Bridgwater in England. Of course, that may itself be a lie.

　—We come up this morning eleven o’clock. The threemaster Rosevean from Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this afternoon. There’s my discharge. See? D. B. Murphy. A. B. S.

（U511.450-）

But he was not serving on a naval ship. Whether rum was also issued on ordinary vessels, or whether he simply had some naval liquor by less official means, I have not been able to determine.

The woman whom Bloom thinks the sailor has gone after is probably the streetwalker in the straw hat who peered into the cabman’s shelter a little earlier.

The face of a streetwalker glazed and haggard under a black straw hat peered askew round the door of the shelter palpably reconnoitring on her own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill.

（U517.704-）

“Manœuvre” is a word of French origin, and as a military term it means something like a tactical movement or strategic deployment of troops or fleets. Since the man is a sailor, the narration describes his movement in language associated with ships and military action.

The “Loop Line” that the sailor looks up at is the railway viaduct running above the cabman’s shelter: the Loop Line Bridge.

In the photograph below, the cabman’s shelter stood beneath the bridge on the far bank. At the right-hand edge is the Custom House.

File:Loop line (Liffey) viaduct, Dublin - geograph.org.uk - 1754871.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

The Loop Line Bridge was built between 1889 and 1891, when the line connecting Westland Row Station (now Pearse Railway Station) on the south bank of the River Liffey with Amiens Street Station (now Connolly Station) on the north bank was elevated.

In the map published in 1908 (Eason’s New Plan of Dublin and Suburbs / Eason & Son, Ltd.), the Loop Line can be seen connecting the stations on the north and south sides. The cabman’s shelter stood at the point marked with a star.

In the map published in 1883 (Plan of the City of Dublin. Letts’s Popular Atlas. Letts, Son & Co. Limited, London.), the stations are not yet connected.

So the last time he was here must have been before 1891, when the bridge did not yet exist, and that is presumably why he is so astonished. He says he has been away at sea for seven years and has not seen his wife in all that time (U510.421). Since the present time of the novel is 1904, the chronology does not quite fit.

From the time it was under construction, the bridge was criticized for spoiling the magnificent view of the Custom House from the city centre.

View of the Custom House through the Loop Line Bridge in the 1930s

The “piers” the sailor looks up at are the bridge supports, and the “girders” are the main horizontal beams spanning the sides of the structure. 

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