_HIS FIRST DAY ON BOARD SHIP._
“Well, Tommy,” said my father, “as the ship will soon be leaving I
had better be off, as I do not want to go to Australia with you. God
bless thee, my son. Be a good lad; do not forget your prayers; remember
to write to us as often as you can send a letter”—and here his voice
breaking, he ceased and stooped to kiss me; but I drew away. I did not
like to be kissed by my father in the presence of the little bunch of
midshipmen who were viewing us from near the wheel. I feared they would
regard it as an unmanly act, and sneer at me afterwards as being girlish.
My father, with a sad smile, squeezed my hand and left me. Little boys
are often very sensitive on points of what they consider manliness. They
will laugh at this weakness when they grow older, but I think it is wise
to humour them. I afterwards heard—but I did not then know—that my
father when he stepped ashore walked straight to the building that was
then called the Brunswick Hotel, and posting himself at a window where I
could not see him, sat watching me with the tears in his eyes, until the
ship had hauled through the lock gates and I was no longer visible.
No one who has stood on board a large sailing ship for the first time,
and witnessed the proceeding of getting her under way, will wonder at the
confusion my mind was in as the _Lady Violet_ hauled out into the river,
and at my inability therefore to recollect all that passed, I took very
little heed of my father’s leaving the vessel. I stood lost in amazement,
staring about me like a fool, my mouth wide open. I remember noticing the
pier heads gliding past the ship as we warped out stern first; people
standing on the quayside shouting to us, waving hats and handkerchiefs,
some of them weeping; whilst our passengers in groups along the line
of bulwarks responded to these farewells with kissing of hands, broken
cries of “God bless you!” “Good-bye!” and the like. I remember the sharp
shouts of the mate on the forecastle repeating the pilot’s orders, the
half-tipsy chorusing of seamen heaving at the capstan, the figure of a
fellow at the helm revolving the spokes, first one way, then another, the
manœuvring of a little snorting tug to receive the line for the hawser
by which our great ship was to be towed down the river. Nobody took any
notice of me. I stood at the head of one of the poop ladders leaning
against the rail, wondering at the swiftness with which the people on the
pier heads, who continued to gesticulate towards us, were diminished into
dwarf-like proportions.
Four or five midshipmen hung about the poop, but they seemed too
busy with their thoughts, now that we were in the actual throes of
leave-taking, and had started in earnest upon our long voyage, to favour
me with their glances and grins.
The river was full of life—of barges and wherries, of dark-winged
colliers, swarming along under full breasts of sail; of Thames steamers
cutting through the sparkling grey waters with knife-like stems; of ships
in tow like ourselves, bound up or down; of huge majestic metal fabrics,
gliding to their homes in the docks after days of thunderous passage
through the great oceans, or floating regally past us on the way to the
distant west or far more distant east.
I know not how long I had thus stood staring, when a big,
broad-shouldered young fellow, with a face like a prize-fighter’s, yet
of a kindly expression, stepped up to me, and said, in a gruff, deep-sea
note—
“Well, youngster, and who are you?”
“I am Master Rockafellar, sir,” I answered.
“That’s our livery you’ve got on,” said he; “you’re one of the
midshipmen, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir,” said I; “and are you a midshipman, please?”
“No,” he answered; “I’m third mate. What’s your name, again?”
“Master Rockafellar,” said I.
“Ha!” he exclaimed; “the right sort of name to go to sea with. Every
‘wave,’ as one’s grandmother calls it, would speak of itself as a
‘rock-a-fellow.’” He burst into a mighty laugh, and then said kindly,
“Well, well; I’ve heard of even queerer names than ‘Rockafellar.’ Been
below yet?”
“No, sir,” said I.
“Haven’t you seen your bedroom?”
“No, sir,” I answered again.
“Well, take my advice,” said he, “and jump below at once, and secure
a bunk, and see that your chest is all right—I suppose you’ve brought
one—or some of those ’tween-deck passengers down there will be borrowing
your mattress and forgetting to return it, and rigging themselves out in
your clothes.”
“My chest is locked, sir,” said I.
“And what of that?” he roared. “D’ye think there never was a handspike
aboard a ship since the days of Nelson? Jump below, jump below, I tell
ye!”
“Please, sir, which is the way?” said I, trembling.
“Go down those steps,” said he, pointing to the poop ladder, “and just
over against the cuddy front there’s a black hole. Drop down it, for
_that’s_ the way.”
I at once stepped on to the main-deck, and saw a square aperture, which I
was afterwards informed was called the “booby hatch.” There was a little
crowd of third-class passengers standing round it, looking very wretched
and melancholy, two or three of the women holding babies, who cried
incessantly.
I looked into the hatch; it seemed very dark beneath, and a close, most
unpleasant, but quite indescribable smell rose up through it—a sort of
atmosphere of onions, yellow soap, fumes of lamp-oil, the whole tinctured
with a peculiar flavour of shipboard. A short flight of perpendicular
steps fell to the bottom. I was too manly to ask my way of the women; so,
perceiving a sailor coiling away a rope upon a pin near the main-shrouds,
I went up to him, and said, “I want my bedroom; d’ye know where it is?”
He turned his eyes slowly on me, took a somewhat sneering survey of my
buttons, spat a mouthful of tobacco-juice into a scupper-hole, and then
said, whilst he proceeded with his work, “Better ask the capt’n.”
The sailor was too grumpy and surly a man for a little boy like me to
address a second time; so I made my way to the hatch, and put my leg
over into it, concluding that I should find somebody to tell me where my
bedroom was when I had descended. The ladder was perpendicular, and I was
very slow in stepping down it.
[Illustration: “HE TURNED HIS EYES SLOWLY UPON ME.”]
“Now then!” bawled a powerful voice: “up or down; one ways or t’other.
There ain’t too much light here; and who’s bin and made _you_ think
you’re made o’ sheet glass?”
This remark, I found, was uttered by a seafaring man, one of the sailors
of the ship, I afterwards came to know, who had been told off to help
our handful of emigrants to secure their boxes. I think he was slightly
in liquor; at all events, I grew sensible of a distinct taste of
rum-and-water on the air as I jumped backwards on to the lower deck close
beside him.
“Where is my bedroom?” said I.
“No bedrooms at sea, young ’un,” he answered. “What callin’s yourn? Are
’ee a sailor man? My precious eyes! there’s buttons! See here, my lively:
when the shanks of them buttons is worn off, I’ll give ye the value of a
fardenswuth of silver spoons for the whole boiling of ’em.”
“I promised my father not to sell my clothes,” I answered, with dignity.
“Where’s my bedroom, I say?”
“Why, _there_,” said he, pointing with a tar-stained stump of forefinger
into the dusk. “Shut your eyes and walk straight, and your nose’ll steer
ye the right course, I lay.”
I spied a door to the right some little distance abaft the part of the
deck that was pierced by the great mainmast, and making for it, entered,
and found myself in a long narrow cabin fitted on either hand with a
double row of bunks, or sleeping-shelves, and lighted by three little
round portholes, called “scuttles.” Bright as the day was outside, in
this cabin it was no better than twilight, and I hung for some moments in
the doorway, scarcely able to distinguish objects.
When presently I could fairly use my sight I took notice of a thin slip
of a table, penetrated by stanchions, up or down which it could be made
to travel as space happened to be wanted. At the aftermost extremity
athwart this interior were two or three shelves containing tin dishes,
pannikins, coarse black-handled knives and forks, jars of pickles, red
tins of preserved potatoes, and other such commodities: the produce, as I
afterwards heard, of the amount which each midshipman had to subscribe in
a sum of ten guineas to what was called “the mess”—and a mess it was!
Under these shelves stood a cask of flour, and another of exceedingly
moist sugar, and an immense jar of vinegar. Here and there against the
bulkhead partitions between the bunks hung a sou’wester or a coat of
oilskin; whilst under the lower tier of bunks you caught a glimpse of the
soles and heels of sea boots and shoes, with a thin canvas bag, perhaps,
like a man’s leg. In most of the bunks lay a heap of rude bedding,
roughly-made mattresses, and stout blankets.
Immediately facing the door there was stretched, in one of the upper
sleeping-shelves, a young red-faced youth. He was in his shirt and
trousers, and was smoking a short sooty clay pipe. He eyed me out of a
pair of little black eyes, which winked drowsily on either side of his
immense nose, the polished point of which caught the ruddy glow of his
pipe-bowl as he sucked at it, and shone over the edge of his bunk as
though it were a glowworm. There was nobody else in the cabin but this
youth.
[Illustration: “‘IS THIS A BEDROOM?’ SAID I.”]
“Is this a bedroom?” said I.
He expelled several mouthfuls of smoke before answering, and then
exclaimed, “Yeth.”
“Am I to sleep here, do you know?” said I.
“Can’t thay,” said he, lazily. “If you’re a midthipman, you do; if
you aint, you’ll be kicked out.” Saying which, he closed his eyes, and
refused to answer other questions, though, by his continuing to smoke, I
knew he had not fallen asleep.
I entered the cabin, and after peering a bit into the bunks, saw my
bedding in one of the two sleeping-places which ran athwartships. At
this point my memory grows misty again. I have some dim recollection
of attempting to make my bed, of hunting about for the sheets—not then
knowing that sailors do not use sheets at sea—of moodily getting into the
bunk, and wishing that I was at home again; of stretching myself, after a
little, and falling asleep; of being awakened by a hubbub of voices, and
discovering that the berth was full of midshipmen—nine “young gentlemen”
in all, including myself—who were sitting round the table, using the edge
of their bunks for chairs, and drinking tea out of pannikins, and hacking
at a lump of cold roast meat.
This, I say, I recollect; also that I was invited by the third mate, who
sat on a cask at the head of the table, to arise and join the others,
and drink tea with them, which I did; that the handsome young fellow
whom my father had spoken to on the poop began with a grave face to ask
me questions intended to raise a laugh at my expense, and that he was
abruptly silenced by the third mate (whose name was Cock), who said to
him, “See here, my lad: this is your second voyage, and you are giving
yourself airs on the strength of it. Now, what are your talents as a
sailor? Could you put a ship about? Could you send a yard down? Could you
take a star? D’ye know anything about stowing a hold? See here, my heart
of oak!—until you’ve got some knowledge of your calling, don’t you go
and try and make a fool of a lad who comes fresh to it. Everybody’s got
to begin, and so I tell you; and if before six months of shipboard this
young Master Rockafellar hasn’t more seamanship in any one of his fingers
than you’ve got in all your body, though this _is_ your second year at
sea, then you shall call me a Chinaman, without risk of earning a kick
for the compliment.”
The lad blushed to the roots of his hair, and looked subdued. He was a
great powerful man was this third mate, and I seemed to feel with the
instincts of a boy that no sort of bullying or mean sneaking tyranny was
likely to be attempted so long as he made one of our company.
The tea was very strong, and the bottom of my pannikin was full of black
leaves. The liquor had a flavour of old twigs and stale molasses; the
beef was so hard that I could scarcely make my teeth meet in it, yet it
was fresh, and it was not long before the salt food upon which we had to
live made me think yearningly of it as a delicacy—as something for even a
bite of which I would have gladly “swapped” a shirt.
All this while the ship was being towed down the river. I was still in
the midshipman’s cabin when there was a great noise on deck—voices of men
shouting, sounds of feet running hastily—and on looking through one of
the portholes I saw the houses of a town just abreast, and noticed that
they moved slowly, and yet more slowly, until they came to a dead halt.
We had come to a mooring-buoy, for the night, off Gravesend; but one of
the midshipmen told me that we should be underway again long before this
side of the world was awake; by which he meant that the tug would take us
in tow at daybreak.
It was dark by this time. A boy who acted as our servant lighted a lamp
that was shaped like a coffee-pot, with the end of the wick coming out of
the spout. By this weak and fitful light the scene of the berth looked
very strange to my young, inexperienced eyes. All the midshipmen were
below, some smoking, some cutting up pipefuls from squares of black
tobacco, jabbering loudly about the pleasures they had taken during
three months ashore. The language was not of the choicest, and my young
ears were frequently startled by terms and expressions which I had never
before heard. The third mate sat with his legs over the edge of his bunk
listening grimly.
“Well, young gentlemen,” he presently roared out, “three of you are
new to this ship this voyage, but there are six of you who sailed in
her last year, and when those six went ashore they were a deal more
gentlemanly and careful in their language than I now find ’em. Where,
pray, did you pick up these fine words? Not in your homes, I’ll warrant.
Now hearken to me, mates; you’re not going to make the better sailors for
employing language which you wouldn’t tolerate in the mouth of any man,
speaking in the presence of your mothers and sisters. You’re in my charge
understand, and since you come to me as young gentlemen, young gentlemen
you shall be; so stand by and mind your words!” saying which he looked
at them one after the other, directing an emphatic nod at each of the
lads as he stared. After this I heard no more bad words, and if I except
a slip or two, I may truthfully say that when the voyage had fairly
commenced, and the lads had come well under the influence of Mr. Cock,
there never was afloat a better spoken body of youths than those which
occupied the midshipmen’s berth aboard the _Lady Violet_.