Part 19

Alas, the poor sailors! They have been continuously wet now for more than ten days. It is true that from 8 +A.M.+ till eight in the evening there is a fire burning in a small stove in the forecastle; but the atmosphere is so extremely humid that the heat doesn’t seem to affect the forecastle or the men’s clothes. Indeed, it is a grewsome sight to look into that apartment as I did the other night at seven o’clock. The port watch were below lying in their bunks with faces toward the stove, which was all but concealed by dripping, steaming garments swinging madly in the heavy rolls, water was splashing high up on the grimy walls from the floor, while a dense, rank vapor pervaded the place, through which the stove glowed dully, like a headlight in a fog. Many of the men are now afflicted with the most grievous perhaps of all the ills with which sailors are cursed in cold, bad weather,--the dreaded sea-boils. These harassing sores are due to the friction of oil-skins and other clothes upon the wrists and neck, continually drenched with salt-water, though the bad condition of sailors’ blood generally is doubtless responsible for the dreadful state of the wrists of the sufferers. It is singular that mere friction combined with cold sea-water should produce such results. Sea-boils or salt-water-boils, as they are sometimes called, are exquisitely painful and very sensitive to any rubbing, and they must be bandaged and poulticed until it is time for the lancing, upon which a sort of core, like a short, thick piece of sinew, is laid bare, which must be seized and plucked out. Two of these boils as large as plums will lay a man up; and any attempt to work him hard generally results in a high fever and his bunk for several days. Imagine what the suffering of sailors must be off Cape Horn when these boils are added to fatigue, cold, loss of sleep from frequent calls of all hands, and to the lethargy that comes from exposure. I repeat again, why do men ship before the mast? There are other things to do, and even breaking stones on a highway is to my mind infinitely preferable. Notwithstanding everything said to the contrary, the life of a Cape Horn foremast hand is the life of a beast. It is hard, wearing, and bitter beyond words; and when are added the kicks and the blows from belaying-pins and knuckle-dusters that the men are usually served with on American ships by way of dessert, it is difficult to believe that human beings can survive such privations and sufferings. Poor fellows! They stumble about the decks with drawn, haggard faces and two or three with staring eyes. We watched one this forenoon (it was Louis Eckers) trying to put a watch-tackle strop on the lee lower maintop-sail-brace; the job amounted to nothing more than standing on the bitts and twisting a bit of rope around the brace; but so weak and stiffened was he that another man had to be called in his stead. Some of the younger fellows are still in pretty good condition, such as Broadhead, Charley, and Olsen; but most of the older men are practically half dead. I think the most remarkable of all of a sailor’s characteristics is the rapidity with which they forget their hardships; for let Jack get up into the balmy Trades again and all of his misery and pain vanish, the memory of what he has but just endured fades away, and when he has been ashore for a week at the end of the voyage, he is quite ready again to face the snow-thickened gales of Cape Horn.

All hopes of a rapid passage have now been abandoned, for we have been ten weeks at sea to-day and are not yet around Cape Horn. It will be recalled that we were in the longitude of the Cape a few days ago, but heaven only knows when we can make up what we have lost since then. Our distance east of the Horn now is not more than seventy-five miles, and it does seem remarkable that we cannot make those few miles of westing; and we see now why all the sailing directions say, “Whatever you do, _make westing! make westing!_” Even though the wind is at southwest, as we have had it almost constantly, one would think that by standing well to the southward a ship could get a lay up past the Cape; but what with a two-knot easterly current, two points of leeway, and 22° of easterly variation, not to mention her being seven points off the wind under such short canvas, it is actually impossible. A yacht might do it, for she could go to windward under a storm-try-sail to an appreciable extent; but if a square-rigger holds her own and makes no easting on the _port_ tack with the wind blowing hard from the southwest off Cape Horn, she is doing very well.

At five this morning the wind backed to south and hope glowed warm in the hearts of the men; but it didn’t take it long to shift back again to its old quarter, between southwest and west-southwest, and the old man now makes no bones about our being real _bona fide_ Jonahs. It is growing colder, too, the noon temperature being 31°, though no lower at night, but the wind is as cutting and clammy and dank as the breath of an iceberg. Some ship-masters, on account of the prolonged head gales and seas of Cape Horn, prefer the Good Hope voyage when bound from North Atlantic ports to California or British Columbia; but while the winds are fair in the Southern Ocean on this course, the distance is so much greater that it is doubtful whether or not there is any advantage in it. The latest example is the case of the British ship “Wasdale,” which reached San Francisco not very long ago, one hundred and sixty-five days from London _via_ Good Hope, having sailed the enormous distance of twenty-four thousand five hundred and twenty-six miles; the Horn voyage averages three weeks less in time than the above and six thousand miles less in distance. The “Wasdale” must be a smart ship to cover nearly twenty-five thousand miles in that time.

It seems very odd that we have as yet met no homeward-bounders, as we have been several times right in their track; the skipper says, however, that there are doubtless a dozen vessels within a radius of fifty miles, all bound to the westward. Latitude, 57° 25′ south; longitude, 60° 5′ west.

+July 21+

“Land close aboard on the lee-quarter, sir,” was the startling information that the mate called down the companion-way about daylight, as we sat down to breakfast this morning. It didn’t take the captain more than three or four seconds to reach the deck, and we heard him cry savagely, “All hands wear ship; lively now, lively.” And none too soon, for there on the lee beam lay Hermite Island only three or four miles away. This is one of a cluster known as the Hermite Islands, being seven in number altogether; they form the culminating group of the Tierra del Fuegian archipelago, of which Cape Horn is the southernmost. We must have made more westing than the captain had estimated, for he had just remarked that we ought to see the Horn again at nine o’clock. Of course we wore as quickly as the stiffened arms of the men would permit, and for quite a long while, in a dismal rain, we ran down parallel with these dreary shores, on which we would have struck had daylight been a couple of hours later. If our position of yesterday wasn’t a false one, we did phenomenally well during the past twenty-four hours, for the land that we first saw this morning, and which the skipper recognized at once, is eighty miles west of yesterday’s position. But, good gracious! we were at noon to-day within eight miles of where we were last Friday in the heavy gale! The latitude was exactly the same and we were eight miles farther west. Eight miles in five days. How does that sound? And every day of it fight, fight, fight against head-winds varying from a moderate to a whole gale. In truth, the famous Cape weather is being administered in heroic doses. Personally, I don’t mind it in the least; weeks or even months of it, if necessary, would be quite immaterial to me; but the interior of the cabin is so abominably uncomfortable for my wife, bar our own room, that for this reason I want to get out of it as quickly as possible. This gloomy weather, too, is dreadfully trying for her, as it is too dark to read below without a lamp at even the brightest part of the day.

At ten we opened out Cape Spencer, a magnificent headland at the southern end of Hermite Island, and an hour later sighted Horn Island for the second time, bearing northeast true, distant eighteen miles. It was the first really good look we had had at the Horn, and the world-famous rock presented quite a formidable appearance, being five hundred feet in height, though lacking the majestic dignity of Cape Spencer, which lies twenty-five miles west-northwest of it. Indeed, there is no particular landmark about it to cause Horn Island to stand forth from the surrounding crags. Many people imagine that the Cape was so called from its resemblance to a horn, but this is a mistake. The proper name is Cape Hoorn, which was given it in 1616 by the Dutch navigator Schouten, in honor of his native town in Flanders. On the other hand, False Cape Horn, about fifty miles northwest of the true cape, at the extremity of Hardy Peninsula, bears a remarkable likeness to an inverted curved cornucopia, and also a resemblance to the fantastic Cape Split in the Bay of Fundy, at the entrance to the Minas Basin. It was our cherished desire to photograph Horn Island, but we were prevented by the disadvantageous conditions; so far as known, it has been photographed but once, and that by Captain Rivers of the American ship “A. G. Ropes,” who, a short time since, when bound to the westward, sailed boldly in to within a few miles and, during a bright spell of weather, was enabled to obtain a photograph of the great Cape.

This is the second time that we have been west of the Horn, if only a few miles, and here we go back again to the eastward on the starboard tack, with the wind a strong breeze from southwest by south. We are steering about south-southeast and the variation makes it south, which would be passable were it not for the leeway and current, so that, in spite of the variation, south-southeast is our actual course. Good-by for a few days, friend Horn; perhaps we’ll pay you another visit in a week or so. Indeed, the most satisfactory manner of ascertaining one’s exact position down here after a week or two of gales and dark weather is to set out and look for Cape Horn, which will no doubt be found in two or three days, take a fresh departure from it, and then away south again. This is actually what we have been doing, only we missed the Cape this last time, but found an equally satisfactory landmark in Spencer; if a ship-master can calculate his longitude to within a degree (about thirty-five miles) in the midst of all these currents, he is a shrewd navigator. By the way, what appropriate names have been given to various portions of wild and comfortless Tierra del Fuego; on the chart now before me appear such appellations peculiarly distinctive of this region: Last Hope Inlet, Desolation Island, Dislocation Harbor, Obstruction Sound, Famine Reach, Deceit Rocks.

Rain, rain; snow, snow; hail, hail. No end of it in sight. The aneroid has risen to 30 inches, which, with an increase of nine degrees in the temperature, would indicate a northerly wind; but we have long since given up hoping for such good luck. At 1.30 this afternoon we saw the pale sun at an altitude of about seven degrees for a moment, but he quickly drew over his face the cowl of nimbus cloud, as though terrified at the sight of Cape Horn. However, like the Ancient Mariner, “we hailed it in God’s name,” and were comforted at knowing that the orb is still in existence.

Captain Scruggs and the mate often now have very turbulent and passionate arguments, not to say quarrels, at meals. It is apparently impossible for the mate to get his reckoning right or anywhere near right, and to-day when the dinner-bell had clanged through the cabin, the skipper asked him suddenly and angrily what his longitude was. Mr. Goggins, after emptying his grimy vest-pockets of bits of tobacco, twine, and infinitesimal pencils, quakingly produced a morsel of ragged, dirty brown paper, upon which appeared a variety of rare and hitherto unknown characters, which he twisted and turned at inconceivable angles, with horrible facial contortions. There was a dead, portentous silence, “Well, sir?” rapped out the skipper “I--I--I, er--er, about 71° 22′, sir.”

“About 71° 22′, eh? That’s your idea of the ship’s position, is it? Just let me tell you that this has gone far enough. Do you understand? How in the devil’s name can you make it 71° with Cape Spencer right under your nose? Don’t you know enough yet to take a new departure from a landmark? I did think you had enough sense for that, but I see I was wrong,” etc., etc.

They argue, too, about the most trivial affairs, during which the skipper all but blows the skylights off with his hurricane voice. Later on, at dinner to-day, they quarrelled about the position of a certain San Francisco restaurant. The old man swore that it wasn’t on Polk Street. Then they went at each other quite savagely, but gradually calmed down, and we thought it was all over, when suddenly the skipper hammered on the table with his fist, and shouted, “That restaurant’s no more on Polk Street than this huckleberry pie’s a blueberry; I mean raspberry.” And he was so vexed at his simple little mistake that he thundered at the boy Sammie, who stands shuddering in the pantry during meals, “You, Sam, get some buckets of salt-water and wrench out that bath-tub; and if you’re longer than ten minutes, damme if I don’t break you all to +PIECES+.” Sammie has a woful time of it on board; for, besides doing all conceivable sorts of dirty work, he is the butt of the ship’s company, teased beyond endurance by the men, and kicked and pounded mercilessly by both mates. Probably his most disagreeable and anxious moments are passed in the pantry while we are at meals. His dread of the old man is so intense that in his awful presence he is little better than a lunatic. While he is in the pantry he dwells in terror of a summons to the table; and when “You, Sam!” finally does come crashing forth, and he reaches the captain’s side in a single bound, it irritates this singular man excessively. Then, of course, the mate must needs rake up some fancied grievance against the unhappy lad, who is immensely relieved when he is ordered in disgrace from the dining-room. The other day the skipper told him, in my wife’s presence, that he was not fit to carry guts to a bear. It seemed to us that that was exactly what he was doing, especially as he had a dish of tongues and sounds in his hand at the moment, which to me is the most objectionable of all sea-food; it’s worse than burgoo and ham-fat. Latitude, 56° 12′ south; longitude, 67° 32′ west.

+July 22+

Wore round at eight this morning, and stood north and west once more on the port tack, as the wind backed into the southward and allowed us to come up to west-northwest by compass, or northwest by west true, which is not bad. We made so little to the good, though, in the twenty-four hours that it cannot be said that we are doing anything more than waltzing up and down the sixty-seventh meridian. We have gone through the water fast enough, but not in the right direction; for forty-eight hours now we have been under single-reefed topsails, and if a ship can carry that canvas she will do five or six knots an hour even in a heavy sea. A single reef in the topsails means generally whole main-sail and foresail, which is enough to send a vessel ahead at a good rate. When the main-sail is reefed or hauled up, though, a ship goes to leeward nearly as fast as she goes ahead.

We sped over the water then at quite a respectable gait, and, in trying to make a little westing, if the skipper is driving the ship for all she’s worth, for both wind and sea are heavy, no man can blame him. The men continue to grow worse and worse, and there are not six in the forecastle who do not show the effects of exposure, chilblains and sea-boils. The latter have increased shockingly; three more men are down with them, Coleman, Pettersen, and Eckers. Coleman this morning showed me two dreadful-looking wrists; the left one was particularly bad, with a deep rent or cavity in the flesh itself that a silver dollar would not cover; not bleeding, but mortifying and sloughing terribly, presenting a sickening spectacle. Coleman says that some of the others are a good deal worse than he is. Hapless creatures! how they manage to do any work at all with these wounds is difficult to understand. Let them be bandaged ever so tightly and what will it avail in the rough work? The bandages soon work loose, and there is the bare, raw flesh exposed to the salt-water and the rubbing of their sleeves. If Job had sea-boils, it would be safe betting that they were the worst afflictions that he had. Why will not sailors take care of themselves ashore and obviate to a certain extent such suffering as they undergo off Cape Horn? The youngest and healthiest of our men, those with clear skins, do not seem to suffer much with these boils; and they say that another safeguard to a certain degree against them is to dry the wrists as much as possible before turning in. Bad food, though, with a preponderance of salt meat, will soon play havoc with the blood of the stoutest man; and while there seems to be a fairly good variety of food on the “Higgins” for the crew, yet the majority of sailors on Yankee ships are fed chiefly on wretched, scurvy-breeding food. The name that American ships used to bear thirty and forty years ago for the superlatively good rations that the men got, is by no means deserved at the present day by the majority of our own deep-water ships. Many are the tales of starvation told by men arriving on Yankee ships at San Francisco in these days; I mention San Francisco particularly, as that port has until very lately sustained the reputation of withholding justice from sailors to a remarkable extent. As to the stories of foremast hands lying on the witness-stands in court when defending themselves, I am convinced it is generally not so. We have seen several acts committed by the mates aboard this vessel against the sailors which would be regarded as entirely untrue by a justice if told by a seaman. In the great majority of cases the word of a bucko mate is taken in court in preference to the sailor’s, and in this way there is an inconceivable amount of injustice done to the latter. For instance, there are here at least a dozen men in the forecastle the word of any one of whom I would unhesitatingly believe rather than that of either of the mates. Captain Scruggs appears to be, and I believe he is, an entirely truthful man; but as for Goggins, he would lie for a worn-out chew of tobacco (he often tells monstrous falsehoods to the skipper concerning the men); and even Mr. Rarx must come under the same ban.

It seems to me that this ship makes a great deal of water. Twice in every watch, night and day, since we have been south of 50°, the ship has had to be pumped out; and in twelve hours yesterday, when the wretched pumps broke down again, we made twenty-eight inches of water. It is all very fine to say that wooden ships are lighter in bad weather than iron ones, and to allude to the latter as diving-bells, but this ship is wetter than the iron “Mandalore” was running before a heavy sea, and the latter possessed the inestimable advantage of never leaking even when driven into a high head-sea.

Captain Scruggs was in a state of mind when, after wearing round on the port tack this morning, he found that we couldn’t head up much better than north true. Of course, we had the customary eruption during the manœuvre, and he raged quite furiously at the helmsmen, who, unfortunately, were the two dullest men in the ship--Pettersen and Eckers. As I say, the captain wrought himself into wild gusts of passion, and when he found the ship off to north-northwest he had apparently exhausted all methods for easing his mind. But we reckoned without our skipper, being a man of much resource, and he conceived a brilliant plan. After standing motionless and speechless for a full minute he strode to the weather wheel-house door, tore it open, and crash! slammed it to. Again, another bang, worse than the first. Once more a great crashing rent the air that shook the structure, while the old man ground his teeth and worked his brush-like eyebrows as though they were on a string, as he stamped over to leeward, muttering to himself and shaking all over. It was a mirth-compelling scene.

A little anecdote will show him in yet another phase: we asked him, a day or two ago, who was the best helmsman in the ship, and he replied, waspishly, “There hain’t no best among ’em; they’re all d---- bad; fed like kings, and this is what you get.” Latitude, 57° 30′ south; longitude, 67° west.

+July 23+