I know we have some Sailors on the site that can provide more detail, I was just an embarked Marine.
The ceremony used to get mean and nasty, it would start at 00:01 in the berthing spaces and continue throughout the day. Pollywogs (uninitiated) had to crawl everywhere while getting beatdown with fire hoses. I remember that it was bad for me because I had had a couple run-ins with a few Navy Master at Arms guys and they wanted to make me pay. We had to crawl through a lot of spoiled food and who knows what, to finally get the cherry from Davy Jones. I had red slashes on my ass for two weeks after the ceremony.