Part 3
Yesterday afternoon at two o’clock we rose the upper canvas of a bark on the port bow, bound in the same direction as ourselves; at 4.30 she was abeam, and at seven in the evening, her trucks had vanished below the horizon astern! In truth this ship is a flyer on a wind, for, in order to pass the other vessel in so short a time, we must have sailed almost, if not quite, two miles to her one. Again, this morning at daylight, we made out the sails of a ship hull down to leeward; she was then abeam, steering about southeast, but during the afternoon we ran her out of sight, too. For the past twenty-four hours we have certainly done splendidly, logging one hundred and ninety-eight miles, hauled as close to the wind as possible. Captain Scruggs even went so far as to say that he thought that there were only two other American ships afloat that could have made more than two hundred miles to-day by the wind,--the “Henry B. Hyde” and the “A. G. Ropes.” Later I asked the skipper which he considered was the finest all-round wooden ship under the flag to-day; his answer instantly was, “the ’Hyde’ by all odds; and not only that, but she’s one of the finest ships that ever came out of a Maine ship-yard.” She was built about ten years ago in Bath, by John McDonald, a Nova Scotian and a pupil of the famous Donald Mackay of Boston, who turned out so many celebrated clippers thirty or forty years ago. The “Hyde” is a large ship, registering twenty-five hundred tons; but in spite of her size she is a three-master, being, I believe, the second largest ship of this rig at the present time, the British ship “Ditton” heading the roll of three-masters with a net tonnage of about twenty-eight hundred. Almost all sailing vessels of over two thousand tons register are now built with four masts.
Last night I was talking with the mate about sea-birds, and he was giving me considerable information of the birds on the Pacific coast, when he said, suddenly, “I see a ’awk at sea once, sir.” “Indeed,” said I, “that is very interesting, for the bird is almost extinct; it must have been a long time ago, for even the eggs now are quite valuable.” He looked very hard at me then for a few moments, when the captain called him away; and for some time I wondered why he had stared at me so fixedly; when all at once I realized that he meant hawk, not auk! Latitude, 34° 4′ north; longitude, 47° 15′ west.
+May 20+
Light showers prevailed this morning early, but at ten the clouds disappeared, leaving a sky of deep cobalt and a glorious, sparkling sea. Fresh winds from east-northeast blew all day, giving us frequently ten knots, the ship driving along with the even, modulated swing of a pendulum. The mate says that Captain Scruggs is so lucky in making fast passages that in New York they say that he carries a fair wind in his pocket and spills it out when necessary. However true this may be, the direction of the wind could be easily improved at the present time, by hauling more to the northward, so that we could come up a little; our position, too, would be a far better one if we were five or six degrees more to the eastward, as it is a little too soon to make so much southing. _Nolens volens_, though, southeast has been our course for some time, and the skipper jocosely remarks that he expects to see San Roque this time.
We are now in the approximate position of the American iron ship “May Flint” (late steamer “Persian Monarch”), one of the largest sailing vessels under our flag, when she was hove down and dismasted about a year ago in a cyclone. Captain Nickels subsequently accomplished so fine a piece of seamanship that a short account of the whole affair might not prove uninteresting. The vessel left Philadelphia bound to Hiogo with a cargo of case-oil on August 21, and on September 8, about four hundred miles from the Azores, she encountered a gale which gradually increased to a tremendous hurricane, in the centre of which she became involved; and shortly afterward she was hove on her beam ends and the fore and maintop-masts and mizzentop-gallant-masts, together with all standing gear above the lower mast-heads went by the board. Her condition was really terrible, as all hands were in momentary expectation of seeing some of the broken spars alongside stave in the hull, as the wreckage was battering and thumping furiously against the ship. A steamer was sighted later on,--the “Craftsman,”--which stood by the “Flint” till the weather moderated, and then offered to tow her to New York. This offer Captain Nickels refused, though at their request he transshipped his two passengers, one a Boston and the other a Chicago man, and they returned to New York on the “Craftsman.” It is reasonable to presume that neither of these individuals will ever step over the side of another sailing ship.
When the cyclone had passed and the ship had come up on an even keel, Captain Nickels surveyed the wreck aloft and then decided on his course, which was as follows: a part of the spars and rigging having been saved, a foretop-mast was made from a spare spar, and the stump of an old mizzentop-gallant-mast was used for a foretop-gallant-mast. The ship carried a spare fore-yard, the lower foretop-sail-yard was intact, and the upper maintop-sail-yard was utilized for an upper fore; the foretop-gallant- and royal-yards were saved, thus square-rigging the vessel forward. A portion of the main-yard, which was broken, was used for a maintop-mast, leaving the mainmast fore-and-aft rigged. The mizzentop-gallant-mast, which was apparently hopelessly damaged, was fished and repaired together with all the yards below it, so that the vessel was square-rigged forward and aft, but schooner-rigged amidships, presenting a most extraordinary appearance. She looked at a distance somewhat like two hermaphrodite brigs, yet after the repairs had been made, which occupied fifteen days, she was successfully navigated into New York harbor, a distance of two thousand two hundred miles, and on one day logged the extremely good run of two hundred and forty knots. For this fine performance the underwriters presented the gallant captain with a superb gold watch, and well he deserved it, for it was an act of seamanship so bold and unusual as to command the applause of Captain Nickels’s fellow ship-masters, a class of men who, as a rule, are extremely reserved in their expressions of approbation. Latitude, 31° 34′ north; longitude, 42° 10′ west.
+May 21+
Last night was windy, with a severe squall at one o’clock in the morning, with much rain, and we haven’t seen the sky-sails since six last evening.
As I was leaning against the rail yesterday afternoon, looking at the mizzen-stay being set up by the starboard watch, the captain came up and said, “I’ve found out we’ve got another cap’n aboard, a fellow called Murphy, I believe. I’m going to send him aft to run the ship, and I’m going forrad to sleep in the fo’c’sle.” The skipper has a curious way of saying such things, and we never know whether to smile or not. Presently, though, he cast joking aside and began to blackguard Murphy in the language of the deep sea, saying that when he (the captain) had gone forward to see that the regular weekly washing out of the forecastle was properly done, some of the men did not seem to relish the process, and he heard Murphy grumble. Now, when a foremast hand has been somewhat disagreeable for a few days, and at length finds audible fault with various things, it is almost certain that some one hour in the succeeding twenty-four will be unpleasant for him. Thus with Murphy. After supper we were sitting on the deck-house, when Captain Scruggs came up and said that at eight bells the decision would be reached, whether or not there were two captains aboard. He was very nervous and couldn’t sit still; which reminds me that I have never yet seen a long-voyage skipper who wasn’t nervous at even the mildest encounter with the men.
The evening shades fell early, by reason of heavy clouds, and at eight o’clock it was dark. Word was passed forward that both watches were to muster aft, and when eight bells had been struck, the eighteen seamen (including the bosuns) came trooping down from forward and grouped themselves at the after hatch. Here I sent my wife below, fearing scenes which she ought not to witness; while the captain at the same moment passed out of the cabin to the main deck and faced the men.
It was an impressive, rugged scene. The wind was puffy and uncertain and the decks were wet; and though it was too dark to see the men’s expressions, their forms stood out clearly enough as they rolled from side to side with the heave of the ship, two broad beams of light shooting out from the cabin doors and illuminating the showers of spray that flew incessantly over the weather side; the great main-sail bridging over the scene with its huge curve, till lost in the gloom of the upper sails.
As soon as the captain appeared, he began to pace athwartships between the hatch and the poop, keeping it up for several minutes in a dead silence. How well he knows how to handle a crew! Nothing is more effective than such a silence, for it shows the men that the skipper is about to act with deliberation. Suddenly he unexpectedly rapped out, “Go forrad, the port watch”; and the nine men quickly disappeared, wondrous glad to escape, no doubt. Now what the captain said to the rest I could not hear, for the wind cut his words off short; but he walked up among the men, shouldering his way roughly through them, until he stood directly in front of Murphy, who, though putting on some “side,” shrunk back from the glare that I knew shot from the old man’s eye. He spoke to him in the fierce, intense tones of a thoroughly angry man; and, after a considerable harangue, he seized Murphy by his nasal extremity, the size of which afforded him excellent holding ground, and led the recalcitrant youth around in a small circle, every few seconds tweaking and twisting his nose, till I was surprised that it did not part company with the rest of his face. This done, he sent the men forward, entered the cabin, sat down, and joined us in a game of casino.
At first this seemed a very puerile manner of administering punishment, but it is considered wonderfully effective, and, in truth, it is humiliating to be hauled about by the nose in the presence of one’s companions. I had expected that Murphy would have been floored with a belaying-pin, that handy instrument of correction which most American masters and mates know so well how to wield. But Captain Scruggs seems to be restraining himself, owing in part, no doubt, to our presence on board, though chiefly to the space which the newspapers have been devoting lately to aggravated cases of cruelty at sea. Indeed, the skipper himself said the other day, “What’s a ship-master to do nowadays, when the press jumps on him when he gets ashore?” He forgets that if the said ship-master conducted himself at sea like the captain of a ship ought to, the press would have no cause for writing him up.
The course has been poor, with the wind at times to the southward of east, and, horrible to relate, we made a degree of westing in the twenty-four hours. If we don’t have a better chance than this, we’ll be jammed on San Roque in earnest. Latitude 28° 30′ north; longitude, 43° west.
+May 22+
It is necessary here to make an announcement of a very painful nature, an announcement of a fact so lamentable and unfortunate that for a long while we tried to believe that it could not be. Captain Scruggs has several times in the last week been very much under the influence of strong liquor! More than once we have noticed that he exhibited a strange uncertainty in his gait, and for two days he has been unusually aggressive and sometimes silly in his arguments. Still, neither of us would acknowledge to the other that which we knew in our hearts was true, until last evening at supper his conduct compelled us to admit the shocking fact that the master of the ship in which we have but just commenced one of the longest and stormiest of voyages was plainly drunk. He had to steady himself against the mizzen-mast at the end of the dining-room before he could sit down, and during the meal he was for a time a drooling idiot. His chief amusement seemed to lie in spilling small quantities of maple syrup over the table-cloth, in which he then dabbled with his fingers, like a boy with his feet in a puddle. The syrup appeared to revive memories of his childhood, for he told us stories of his passion for this fluid when a youth. Said he: “Why, I used to go out in the woods, tap a maple-tree, and let two gallons of surrup run into me.” No one said a word. “Two gallons!” glaring fiercely at the mate, who, of course, didn’t offer any objection. Then he caught sight of a small wash-tub, and, turning on the mate again, cried out violently, “When I was a boy, I used to could drink that right down full er maple surrup. This ’ere hain’t surrup; h’its mucilage.” Here we excused ourselves and went on deck.
Now, what is all this going to lead to? Pleasant thought, that of knocking about in a gale of wind off Cape Horn with a groggy skipper in charge! Indeed, when we first discovered his bibulous inclination, my wife was in despair, and the only consolation we have is to be found in the hope that the case of whiskey that we have seen is the only one on board. We can account now, too, for the innumerable times that the captain has popped into his little room, only to emerge in a few seconds, smelling furiously of Florida-water. Well, we’ll probably have fine, light weather through the northeast Trades, which we are now sure that we have taken; and at the rate at which the grog is vanishing at present, it will be gone before we reach the squally Doldrums, provided that the skipper has but one case.
In a copy of a nautical magazine on board, I saw an account of a singular fact that occurred a short while ago. The British ship “Crompton” was homeward bound a few months since, from Calcutta to Dundee, when one morning Captain Lloyd sighted something ahead which seemed to be either a capsized vessel or the back of a whale. As the vessel approached, however, the captain saw that it was neither, but a rock, about sixty feet long, eight feet high, and the same broad. He could scarcely believe his senses, for the position of the rock was 47° north and 37° 20′ west! Imagine a rock’s existing in the most crowded ocean on the globe, almost every square mile of which it was reasonable that at least one vessel had traversed, which had never been seen or reported before! For some time Captain Lloyd could not believe that it really was a rock, and so to verify it he sailed as close to it as possible; and as the morning was a perfectly clear one, and the hour twenty minutes to eight, he was at last compelled to believe the evidence of his eyes, that here was a large rock, extremely dangerous to navigation, lying five hundred miles north-northwest of the Azores!
Speaking of those balmy isles reminds one of that ardent, skilful yachtsman, the Prince of Monaco. About two years ago, while prosecuting some deep-sea soundings in the vicinity of the Azores on his steam yacht, he found a bank or ledge which rose from a depth of about two thousand fathoms to one of something like fifty fathoms, which, like the aforementioned rock, had never been charted or reported. So extremely zealous is the prince in his pursuit of knowledge concerning the floor of the Atlantic, that he shortly afterward gave an order for a twelve-hundred-ton steam yacht (he can well afford it!) fitted with the most recent inventions in connection with deep-sea sounding apparatus. I wonder whether he will use the machine for this purpose invented by Captain Sigsbee, who commanded the battleship “Maine” at the time of her destruction. It is said that Lord Kelvin, who, when Sir William Thompson, invented the famous sounding machine which bears his name, has stated that Captain Sigsbee has adopted an idea in his apparatus which he (Lord Kelvin) had vainly sought for years to utilize in his mechanism. If this be true, Captain Sigsbee has reason to be a very proud man, for Lord Kelvin is, perhaps, the most learned individual now living on hydro-dynamics and kindred sciences.
Last voyage it took us exactly a month in which to reach this spot where we are now, which illustrates how uncertain and erratic long voyages are. All fear of being “stuck” in this region, as we were before, has disappeared, for the Trades have come now without question; and while they are quite fresh enough to suit us, we would like to see the wind back two points to the northward. Latitude, 26° 18′ north; longitude, 41° 9′ west.
+May 23+
Last night was a windy one, and in the middle watch we split the mizzen-royal in a severe squall; so we took in the fore- and main-royals, the sea being choppy and the vessel plunging a good deal. It is customary to cut the light sails in such a manner that a fore-sky-sail will answer for a mizzen-royal; therefore, toward the end of the morning watch the fore-sky-sail was unbent and stretched on the mizzen-royal-yard, the royals having been set again an hour or so previously. It didn’t fit particularly well, but it will do until to-morrow, when the royal will be repaired, as such work is not done on Sunday unless in case of urgent need. Sometimes there is necessity for hard work on the Sabbath aboard ship, such an instance having occurred on the “Hosea Higgins” on her last homeward voyage from San Francisco. It might be first observed that, though it is the custom to give the men a holiday on Sunday, still if the captain orders anything done, he must be obeyed without murmur. On this particular occasion, Captain Scruggs saw fit to order one of the bosuns to do some work aloft, which he refused. The skipper went down on the main deck then and spoke to the man, a lusty young German, asking him why he refused to turn to.
“Because it’s Soonday, zur,” he replied.
“Sunday? Never heard of it. What is Sunday? Who told you anything about it?” quizzed the old man.
“I say, a man’s not supposed to turn to on Soonday, zur,” repeated the bosun.
“Oh, he’s not,” quoth the skipper; “then we always put him where he’ll have plenty of leisure. Mr. Goggins, the irons.”
(This same mate came around from California in the “Higgins.”)
The irons were brought, and the man, quietly enough, but with angry eye and sneering lip, put his hands behind him; the irons were locked on, and he was led down into the lazarette, where he sat calmly down, and the key was turned. Six hours afterward the mate went to him with some food and found that the man had in some way contrived to shift his hands around in front and was disposed to be ugly. Therefore he was taken up into the after part of the wheel-house (these structures on American ships are divided into equal portions, one containing the wheel and binnacle, the other the rudder-head, tiller, flag-locker, etc.), where a staple was driven into a carling, to which the man’s hands, still ironed, were secured, leaving him so that he could not sit down, his wrists being about six inches above his head. Now, this posture for twelve hours is enough to break the heart of a wild beast; yet this bosun stood there without a word for thirty hours, refusing food or drink during that time! At the end of every six hours or so the mate went to him and asked if he had had enough, to which the Teuton would answer “Naw.” His endurance yielded at the thirtieth hour and he implored to be released, which he was six hours later, and for the rest of the passage he was a model sailor.
At this time we are on or near a favorite whaling ground, great numbers of these leviathans being taken in this vicinity every year by schooners. In the old days a first-class whaling bark cost about thirty-five thousand dollars, and was manned by perhaps thirty Western Islanders, or natives of the Azores. They were owned by companies who supplied the vessels with provisions, clothes, and outfits, and also advanced certain sums of money to captain and crew (which did not go to crimps as it does now) while they were away on a three years’ cruise. No wages were ever paid to any one, but all hands received a percentage when the ship returned, the bulk, which remained, being divided among the stockholders. The most lucrative whaling voyage of which there is any record was made by the “Onward” of New Bedford, which, after a forty-one months’ voyage, stocked two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, the captain’s share alone amounting to thirty-three thousand. More startling even than that is the fact that during the fifty-two years which formed the golden era of Massachusetts’s whaling industry the total value of whale products landed in New Bedford alone amounted to one hundred and forty-five million dollars!
We had quite an agreeable shock this morning when the carpenter walked aft to breakfast with a clean, new, checked shirt on, it being Sunday. He had combed the sawdust and other little inconveniences out of his unctuous locks, and he made quite a respectable appearance as he wabbled into the cabin.
Fresh Trades blew all day, and we have made good a course about south-southeast. Latitude, 23° 28′ north; longitude, 40° 15′ west.
+May 24+
This day broke with a strong breeze and a cloudy sky; but, as usual, the vapor cleared away at ten o’clock and a superb afternoon followed.
Nearly all wooden ships have to be pumped out twice every day, once in the morning watch and again at six in the evening. It is almost impossible to build a tight wooden vessel of any size, and the rougher the sea the more water she will make, on account of laboring. Of course, the leakage varies greatly, but I suppose that our own is an average one, about one thousand strokes of the pumps being necessary to free the ship at each session of thirty minutes, and the aperture through which the water escapes is about as large as a fire-hose.