Part 24
It may be that the curious would like to know how we passed those dreary weeks off Cape Horn, and here was our scheme, though, in truth, our habits then were about the same as they are now. I rose at seven, breakfasted at quarter to eight, and walked the poop alone till nearly eleven. On days that were very rough, it was a continual source of pleasure to chock myself off between the stern-bitts and speculate, when a particular wave was still several hundred yards off, whether it was going to break on board or whether we would clear it. It is a fascinating spectacle, this, and an hour often passed like five minutes as I gazed with ever-increasing awe at the resistless power of the huge, crested breakers.
Then down to our room, where we read “Farthest North” aloud till noon, when my wife made her first appearance. Dinner then occupied us till nearly one, when we went on deck to walk for half an hour, if not too rough. Down again to write up our journals, plot off the course on our own chart, and note down in the government book the meteorological observations made at Greenwich noon. This brought us to four o’clock, when we again went on deck to remain till dark, and then a book claimed us until supper, a little after five o’clock. Deck once more from six till seven, in spite of any weather; then books again until nine, when we went up for a breath of air again before turning in.
Exciting? No, truth compels me to admit that it was not, although no doubt some of the days would have been lively enough for almost anybody. Those who are sustained by excitement must never by any chance allow themselves to be persuaded to try a deep-water voyage, no matter how completely they may have convinced themselves of their fondness for the sea. A true and abiding love for the sea is a very rare attribute in any man. I mean that fondness for the ocean which enables him to live contentedly and happily upon it for half a year at a time, and to accept uncomplainingly whatever chance may provide. The monotony of a twenty weeks’ voyage to ninety-nine per cent. of civilized humanity would be nearly incalculable; and in the case of one sent to sea for health’s sake, it is entirely conceivable that the depression consequent upon such a voyage would, in some degree, counteract the beneficial effects of sea-air. It is owing to a peculiar temperament that a few people can stay at sea for an indefinite number of months without in any way tiring of the life. To these few the state of the weather and the direction of the wind are absolutely immaterial. A calm of a fortnight or a month of head-winds, either in the Tropics or the Southern Ocean, are regarded by them merely as events which they expected to encounter when they sailed.
In spite of everything said and written to the contrary, I believe that in every sailor, from seaman to master, his love for the sea is never extinguished. Let them assert, times innumerable, that they hate the life, and yet see how they all return to it after a little while ashore. It is of no avail to argue that because a man is bred to the sea he is incapacitated for duties ashore; I have known of several ship-masters who, through influence, obtained lucrative positions in various firms, but who resigned them, unable to further withstand the magic influence which the deep sea exerts over those who have once fallen under her resistless enchantment. Nor does the case of the common sailor differ. I once knew a respectable foremast hand who obtained the position of driver of a laundry-wagon in Boston. This was a nice job, but I awaited developments; and, sure enough, in three or four months he signed as bosun of a Japan-bound oil-ship. Even the most shiftless of sailors could surely use a pick or shovel dirt ashore, yet they prefer the less profitable and inconceivably more arduous duties of the life before the mast, simply because they cannot overcome the wondrous allurements of Old Ocean. Latitude, 28° 52′ south; longitude, 83° 12′ west.
+August 8+
We have almost every reason to believe that we have taken the southeast Trades. I say almost every reason, for the only cause for doubting is that we are so far south yet, and the wind, after all, may not amount to anything. In any event, we are all astonished at such an outburst of luck, except the skipper, who testily replies to interrogations, “This _may_ go into the Trades; it certainly is _not_ them _yet_.” At 4.30 yesterday afternoon, just as we had composed ourselves for the hazy, yellow calm that lay upon the sea, a light air from astern overhauled us, and backing into the southeast in a few minutes, breezed up from that desirable quarter in a most refreshing manner, so that ever since we have averaged seven knots. This, if it lasts, is a most remarkable stroke of fortune, as ships often lie idle for a week or more between the westerly and the southeasterly winds; and to run from one into the other, with only an hour’s calm, is as unusual as it is welcome. We are inclined to believe that, after all, we will make the voyage in one hundred and thirty days,--that is, in six weeks more. On this subject the old man is, of course, as dumb as a lobster, and resents any such suggestions by obstinately staring in the opposite direction; while Mr. Rarx, a man of great experience in the North Pacific, which is now probably the only _bête-noir_ left to us, even goes so far as to say that five additional weeks will anchor us in San Francisco Bay.
We have now left behind us that most solitary and vast portion of the South Pacific almost entirely devoid of the smallest fragments of land, and we are entering that part thickly spattered with rocks and islets that most people never heard of, not to mention the thousands of islands to the westward that form the great clusters of the Society, Friendly, Samoan, Gilbert, Ellice, Marquesas, Caroline, New Hebrides, Ladrone, and Marshall groups. For instance, in our neighborhood at present are the islets of San Felix, San Ambrosio, Podesta, Sala-y-Gomez, and the Emily and Minnehaha rocks; doubtless there are dozens of others besides, too insignificant to appear on a chart of the world, such as I work with. These few, however, will serve to show how thickly sown the Pacific is with insular obstructions; and it is for this reason that this ocean, bar that part south of 30° south, has never seemed to me as desolate or lonely as the Atlantic, north or south. Behold how fittingly Nature has cleared the North Atlantic of nearly every indication of land and has left an abundance of clear, open water, through which rush the great steamers which connect Europe and America, safe in the knowledge that even if they drifted about for months with disabled machinery there would be practically nothing to interrupt their wanderings. The most remarkable proof of this was the case of the large schooner “Fannie E. Woolston,” timber-laden, which drifted about for thirty months, covering six thousand miles in that time, an average of over three knots per hour, without approaching land. This was ascertained by means of the reports of many different vessels which passed close to the “Woolston” during her perigrinations. Indeed, the only island that lies at all near the track of steamers bound from the more northerly European ports to those north of Baltimore is the terrible Sable Island, the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” in 44° north, 60° west, about two hundred miles east of Halifax. More vessels are lost here than at any other spot in open water, and its number of casualties are probably only exceeded by such shoals as the Goodwin Sands.
Turn, then, to the North Pacific, and it will be seen that, with the exception of the higher northerly latitudes, through which lies the great circle track between San Francisco or Vancouver and Japan, that immense body of water is literally dusted with coral reefs and islands; though it is necessary to examine a large chart to appreciate this, as no geography will answer.
There are recognized among men several great classes or divisions of bores, such as those who magnify their own greatness, those who can remember how much colder the winters used to be in their boyhood, or, if in New York, those whose memory recalls the period when milch cows lowed where the City Hall now stands, and swine rooted in the dirt upon the site of the Post Office. But there remains yet a genus of bores so infinitely surpassing those mentioned that they may be said to form an entirely different family. Fortunately for mankind, comparatively few persons are victimized by them, by reason of their profession; but in those parts where they do congregate, they are as deadly as Mark Twain’s brain-fever bird. Allusion is made to those venerable and crusty master-mariners who extemporize by the hour upon that grand race of sailors who used to man the wind-jammers in days of yore. Start them once on this subject, and woe to the anguished wretch snared in their toils. One would think, in listening to them, that they were talking about an extinct race who inhabited the seas about the middle of the nineteenth century, and, like the apteryx and platypus, had been suddenly and mysteriously exterminated; and when one ventures to suggest that surely there must be some resemblance to those exalted beings in the men who now sail before the mast, these aged sea-hedgehogs bristle up and fly in a passion as they descant upon the puny breed who now defile the honorable name of sailor with their pampered notions and blubber-head stupidity. These persons ought to be confined in some retreat for the rest of their lives; the disease is incurable and terribly infectious, for every sea-captain over fifty years of age suffers more or less from the unhappy malady.
It is true that the steamer has cut huge swaths in the sailing-ship trade, but there are still a vast number of square-riggers left which pay good dividends. It seems to be the prevalent opinion that steam has spoiled seamen for sailing-ship work, but in reality the men who ship for long voyages never do anything else, and let steamers severely alone. Many good men, no doubt, begin their careers as lamp-trimmers, etc., in steamers, and usually remain in them, and in this way sailing ships, no doubt, lose a number of fine men; but it is well to bear in mind that deep-water and steamship foremast hands are very different beings in many respects.
As noted in an earlier page, some people are crying now that as soon as the Central American canal is cut through it will be the instantaneous death-knell of the long-voyage sailing vessel, but those who really understand the business of transportation by water do not agree to this by any means. Here are the words of Arthur Sewall, than whom few, if any, are more competent to speak on the matter: “As long as the wind blows and water flows there will be sailing ships built and business to keep them busy. There will always be a chance for them to compete against steam in traffic where time is not a factor, or where delay is actually a good thing. For instance, there is the wheat crop. In July or August it begins to be ready for delivery, and in a short time the whole year’s supply is ready for shipment. But the consumption of a crop stretches over a whole year. Shipping wheat in sailing vessels consumes several months’ time, which would otherwise require the storing of the wheat. Sailing freights are actually less than steam freights, plus storage charges. So, you see, here is business which sailing ships can hold. Then, again, take railroad materials, especially rails, which are manufactured faster than they can be used, and where the delay of sail over steam is better than storage. Of course, as in any other business, it is a case of the survival of the fittest, and as smaller ships are relatively more expensive than large ones, small ships cannot make money, and will have to make way for large ones.”
An excellent precedent in favor of the continuance of sailing vessels is that subject in connection with the Suez Canal. When this was a thing accomplished it was said that no more square-riggers would go out around Good Hope; yet consider the enormous amount of sail tonnage that is despatched every year to India, China, Australia, and Japan, for it is computed that eight hundred sailing vessels double Agulhas every year in both directions, and as but few of the ships in the Eastern trade have a carrying capacity of less than thirty-five hundred tons, the amount of merchandise that passes the southern extremity of Africa per annum foots up the imposing total of at least seven million tons.
Mr. Goggins appeared at dinner to-day in a frock-coat! Can one conceive the effect produced upon the mind by the contiguity of a frock-coat and a red-flannel shirt. Certainly not. No one could unless he had seen it. Goggins was monstrously proud of it, too, in spite of its being several sizes too small for him, and ostentatiously got up during the soup and officiated at the drawing of a pitcher of root-beer from the “kag” in the corner, during which evolution he suddenly became embarrassed at the unwonted attention centered upon himself, and in some way managed to upset the pitcher all over the floor; and when he sat down he was in such a state of excitement that his nasal whistlings and obligatos were more piercing than ever before. And just think of this creature’s name, Leander! Oh, heavens, it is too much! Latitude, 26° 54′ south; longitude, 84° 50′ west.
+August 9+
Ninety days at sea, and another month cannot take us in, nor do we desire it, in spite of our surroundings. The wind has freshened constantly, and, being to the eastward of southeast, it has sent us along at an eight-knot clip, steady and true, and we have done one hundred and ninety miles in the twenty-four hours by the log, for we have had no sights for three or four days. The temperature is almost perfect, about 65° day and night, and as there is no sun to dazzle one, reading on deck has once more become a joy.
Yesterday afternoon MacFoy returned Nansen’s “First Crossing of Greenland,” which he borrowed a few days ago; he is an intelligent man and knows all of Nordenskjold’s works pretty thoroughly. There is a notion, though, to which he clings with characteristic Scotch tenacity; in spite of everything, he insists that Nansen started upon his last great voyage in a steam whaler from San Francisco.
But if this fellow is well read, what can be said of old Kelly, in the mate’s watch. We pumped together yesterday afternoon and had much conversation, during which he said that he hailed from Charleston, but that his family had moved north to Troy when the war broke out, and that his parents had brought him up strictly and decently. He volunteered no reason for having turned sailor, but branched off into literature, beginning with a pertinent quotation from Burns and another from Moore. These led him on, and he expressed great admiration for ancient history, concluding with a well-turned eulogy on Gibbon’s “Rome,” with illustrations for preferring it to any other account of that great empire. At first it seems extraordinary to find so intelligent a man before the mast, living a beast’s life, and surrounded by men with whom he has but little in common. Yet such fellows are by no means uncommon at sea, for one often happens upon a man in a Cape Horner’s forecastle whom Nature did not intend should be there.
How different is old Kelly’s conversation from that of the mate, especially at dinner and supper, when he shouts out his witless jokes! To-day he burst in with the following silly story, and it was totally irrelevant to what we were talking about: “There was a hold feller I knoo onct that lived in the country, and when ’e saw the telegrapht wires put hup past ’is farm, ’e ’ung a pair ’o boots on ’em to send ’em to ’is son.” At the conclusion of such pleasantries his sense of humor is so agitated that he seems upon the brink of spasms, and his temporal arteries swell out as big as lead-pencils, while he chortles and wheezes and gasps like an old tattered bellows.
What quaint expressions sailors have, too! Mr. Rarx was talking about athletics last night, and incidentally asked who was now the greatest “hammer-heaver”; it must be remembered that objects at sea are never thrown, they are always hove.
As we approach the final quarter of the voyage we cannot help wishing that we were going to land at Calcutta as we did before. Oh, the incomparable delight, the unbounded pleasure of those two months in India which followed the termination of our voyage in the “Mandalore”! The memories of those nine weeks in British India carry with them a charm perfectly indescribable; and were it given us to visit but one more country on the globe during our lifetime, we would unhesitatingly choose another stay in the land of the Himalayas. Latitude, 24° 28′ south; longitude, 87° 5′ west.
+August 10+
Moderate southeasterly breezes, a smooth sea, and magnificent weather. He who would not be happy here now must needs be hard to please. At midnight we cut the circle of Capricorn, and have, happily, once more entered the torrid zone, after an absence of fifty days, for it was on June 20 that we passed Capricorn in the Atlantic. Verily, it doesn’t seem as though almost two months have elapsed since we first sighted the “Judas Dowes” that Sunday in the latitude of Rio. How time speeds on at sea! A week does not seem longer than twenty-four hours, and before we realize it they will be making ready the anchor. Our progress is very gratifying, though the perversity of the skipper will not allow him to believe or even to suppose that we have taken the Trades. He has surprised us much in the last few days by going down on the main-deck and assisting in the repair of the old sails. See how inconsistent he is! He considers himself so infinitely above the sailors that mere proximity to them under other circumstances, even for a moment, carries infection with it; yet now, down he stalks to the main-deck, off comes his coat, and down he drops flat, his short fat legs sticking wide out before him like a brownie’s, as he turns to in a cluster of the defiling sailors. For some days he sewed merrily away on top of the deck-house, which was a different affair altogether, and sail-making is a very agreeable pastime. But we were immeasurably astonished at the arrogant Scruggs’s consorting thus with the foe.
As the captain and I were pacing the poop at ten o’clock last evening, the sky at the time being cloudless and the moon almost full, suddenly, as we turned to go aft, we saw, over our shoulders, a dazzling glare of light from forward, like a very bright lightning-flash, and, turning quickly, we observed a ball of fire shoot by at right angles to our course and disappear behind the foretop-gallant-sail. “What was that?” said I. “Oh, that was just a meteor or whatever you call it,” answered the skipper; “you often see ’em hereabouts. Last voyage one bursted near the ship at night at the dark o’ the moon somewhere about 15° south, and most scared all hands to death.” Such exhibitions are met with in all parts of the world, even in cold, high latitudes. I remember the case of the large British ship “Cawdor,” Captain Jardella, during one of her recent voyages from Swansea to San Francisco. She made a very long passage on this occasion of one hundred and eighty-four days. She had a terrible battering in the Southern Ocean, and reported on arrival that off Cape Horn an enormous meteor plunged into the sea with a stunning explosion, so close as to flood the decks.
We learned last evening of a horrid accident that occurred on this ship six weeks before we sailed on the present voyage. The mate spun the yarn in these words: “We had just warped into the docks in Brooklyn to discharge, when a gang o’ stevedores came over the side to rig the gear for unloadin’. ‘Where’s the cargo pendant?’ says the boss stevedore. ‘There it is,’ says I, ‘and there’s a gantline, too,’ I says, pointin’ to a coil o’ brand-noo manila. Well, they began for to rig the falls, while I went into the cabin for dinner. I seen one o’ the fellers on the mainyard as I went in, but I didn’t think no more about it for maybe ten minutes, when I heard a sickenin’ crash, and out I jumped. Did you ever hear a man fall from aloft? Hit’s awful, sir. When I got out on deck there was a lot o’ stevedores standin’ around lookin’ at somethin’ on the main-’atch. I didn’t want to look at what I knew it was, but I had to; so I shoved my way through, and there lay the big, heavy man I’d seen on the mainyard. I didn’t see anythin’ wrong with him first off till I went round on t’other side, and there was his head cracked open just as if you’d dropped a mushmellon on the ground, and the hinsides was spattered all over the ’atch cover. Plenty o’ these here stevedores git hurt, and often it’s the fault o’ rotten gear, and then there’s a case ag’in’ the ship. But I’m too hold a bird to git took in like that, and I always gives ’em brand-noo rope.”
It is strange that more sailors are not killed by falling from aloft, for they not only appear to be, but really are, very careless, and two or three of our men have more than once just saved themselves from tremendous falls. Not long ago that handsome four-masted ship “Puritan” lost two men from the upper foretop-sail-yard, only two hundred miles from Sandy Hook, bound out to Hiogo; and it is a serious matter to start an eighteen-thousand-mile voyage short two hands, when ships are allowed to go to sea in these days with twenty seamen instead of thirty. Latitude 22° 19′ south; longitude, 89° 15′ west.
+August 11+