OUR FIRST RUN AND A COZY HARBOUR
Daylight came while Gadabout was lumbering down the Elizabeth, and in
the glory of the early morning she followed its waters out into Hampton
Roads, the yawning estuarial mouth of the James emptying into
Chesapeake Bay.
She would probably have started in upon her cruise up the historic
river without more ado if we had not bethought ourselves that she was
carrying us into the undertaking breakfastless. The wheel was put over
hard to port (we got that out of the books) and the craft was run in
behind Craney Island and anchored.
While our breakfast was preparing, we all gathered in the forward
cockpit to enjoy the scene and the life about us. The houseboat was
lying in a quiet lagoon bordered on the mainland side by a bit of
Virginia's great truck garden. Here and there glimpses of chimneys and
roof lines told of truckers' homes, while cultivated fields stretched
far inland.
The height of the trucking season was past, yet crates and barrels of
vegetables were being hauled to the water's edge for shipment. The
negroes sang as they drove, but often punctuated the melody with strong
language designed to encourage the mules. One wailing voice came to our
ears with the set refrain, "O feed me, white folks! White folks, feed
me!" The crates and barrels were loaded on lighters and floated out to
little sailing boats that went tacking past our bows on their way to
Norfolk.
It was a pretty scene, but there was one drawback to it all. Everything
showed the season so far advanced, and served to remind us of the
lateness of our start. We had intended to take our little voyage on the
James in the springtime. It had been a good deal a matter of sentiment;
but sentiment will have its way in houseboating. We had wished to begin
in that gentle season when the history of the river itself began, and
when the history of this country of ours began with it.
For, whatever may have gone before, the real story of the James and of
America too commences with the bloom of the dogwood some three hundred
years ago, when from the wild waste of the Atlantic three puny,
storm-worn vessels (scarcely more seaworthy than our tub of a
houseboat) beat their way into the sheltering mouth of this unknown
river.
That was in the days when the nations of Europe were greedily
contending for what Columbus had found on the other side of the world.
In that struggle England was slow to get a foothold. Neglect,
difficulty, and misfortune made her colonies few and short-lived. By the
opening of the seventeenth century Spain and France, or perhaps Spain
alone, seemed destined to possess the entire new hemisphere. In all the
extent of the Americas, England was not then in possession of so much
as a log fort. Apparently the struggle was ended and England defeated.
No one then could have imagined what we now behold--English-speaking
people possessing most and dominating all of that newfound Western
World.
This miracle was wrought by the coming of those three little old-time
ships, the Sarah Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery.
It was in the year 1607 that the quaint, high-sterned caravels,
representing the forlorn hope of England, crossed the ocean to found a
colony on Roanoke Island. Storm-tossed and driven out of their
reckoning, they turned for refuge one April day into a yawning break in
the coast-line that we now call Chesapeake Bay. Following the
sheltering, inviting waters inland, they took their way up a "Greate
River," bringing to it practically the first touch of civilization and
establishing upon its shore the first permanent English settlement in
the New World--the birthplace of our country.
The civilizers began their work promptly. Even as they sailed up the
river looking for a place to found their colony, they robbed the stream
of its Indian name, Powhatan, that so befitted the bold, tawny flow,
bestowing instead the name of the puerile King of England. That was the
first step toward writing in English the story of the James River, the
"Greate River," the "King's River."
It was later by three hundred years lacking one when our houseboat came
along to gather up that story. But to our regret it was not springtime.
The dogwood blossoms had come and gone when Gadabout lay behind Craney
Island; and she would start upon her cruise up the James in the heart
of the summertime.
In some way that only those who know the laze of houseboating can
understand, the hours slipped by in that tiny, tucked-away haven, and
it was the middle of the afternoon when Gadabout slowly felt her way
out from behind the island and started up the James in the wake of the
Sarah Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery. That historic wake we
were to follow for the first thirty miles of our journey, when it would
bring us to the spot on the bank of the river where those first
colonists landed and built their little settlement which (still
honouring an unworthy king) they called James Towne.
As Gadabout sturdily headed her stubby bow up the wide, majestic
waterway, we looked about us. After all, what had three centuries done
to this gateway of American civilization? Surely not very much. Keeping
one's eyes in the right direction it was easy to blot out three hundred
years, and to feel that we were looking upon about the same scene that
those first colonists beheld--just the primeval waste of rolling
waters, lonely marsh, and wooded shore.
But eyes are unruly things; and, to be sure, there were other
directions in which to look. Glances northward took in a scene
different enough from the one that met the eyes of those early
voyagers.
Upon the low point of land along which they at last found a channel
into the James and which (in their relief) they named Point Comfort,
now stood a huge modern hostelry.
To the left of this, the ancient shore-line was now broken by a dull,
square structure that reared its ugly bulk against the sky--a strangely
grim marker of the progress of three centuries. For this was the grain
elevator at Newport News, spouting its endless stream to feed the Old
World, and standing almost on the spot where those first settlers in
the New World, sick and starving, once begged and then fought the
Indians for corn. Lying in the offing were great ships from overseas
that had come to this land of the starving colonists for grain.
Beyond all these could be seen something of the town of Newport News
itself. Towers and spires and home smoke-wreaths we saw, where those
beginners of our country saw only the spires of the lonely pines and
the smoke from hostile fires.
As our houseboat skirted the southern shore of the James in the sunny
afternoon, our engines chugging merrily, our flags flying, and our two
trailing rowboats dancing on the boiling surge kicked up astern, we
felt that our cruise was well begun. Not that we were misled for a
moment by that boiling surge astern into the belief that we were making
much progress. We had early perceived that Gadabout made a great stir
over small things, and that she went faster at the stern than anywhere
else.
Yet all that was well enough. So long as the sun shines and the water
lies good and flat, dawdling along in such a craft is an ideal way to
travel. If the houseboat is built with the accent on the first
syllable, as it ought to be, the homey feeling comes quickly to the
family group aboard. Day after day brings new scenes and places, yet
the family life goes on unbroken. It is as though Aladdin had rubbed
the wonderful lamp, and the old home had magically drifted away and
started out to see what the world was like.
Now, just ahead of us where the chart had a little asterisk, the river
had a little lighthouse perched high over the water on its long
spindling legs. Gadabout ran just inside the light and quite close to
it. It is an old and a pretty custom by which a passing vessel "speaks"
a lighthouse. In this instance perhaps we were a trifle tardy, for the
kindly keeper greeted us first with three strokes of his deep-toned
bell. Gadabout responded with three of her bravest blasts.
It was not long before the sun got low, and with the late afternoon
something of a wind whipped up from the bay, and the wide, low-shored
river rolled dark and unfriendly. We found our thoughts outstripping
Gadabout in the run toward a harbour for the night.
That word "harbour" comes to mean a good deal to the houseboater who
attempts to make a cruiser of his unseaworthy, lubberly craft. A little
experience on even inland waters in their less friendly moods develops
in him a remarkable aptitude for finding holes in the bank to stick his
boat in.
Sometimes the vessel is seaworthy enough to lie out and take whatever
wind and waves may inflict; but that is usually where much of the charm
and comfort of the houseboat has been sacrificed to make her so. Then
too the houseboater is usually quite a landlubber after all; so that
even if the boat is strong enough to meet an angry sea, the owner's
stomach is not. And, over and above all this, is the fact that
miserably pitching and rolling about in grim battle with the elements
is not houseboating.
It is easy then to see that snug harbours count for much when cruising
in the true spirit of houseboating, and in the charming, awkward tubs
that make the best and the most lovable of houseboats.
So, as Gadabout was passing Barrel Point and the wind was freshening
and the waves were slapping her square bow, we were thinking not
unpleasantly of a small tributary stream that the chart indicated just
ahead, and in which we should find quiet anchorage. There seemed
something snug and cozy about the very name of the stream, Chuckatuck.
In this case the pale-face has left undisturbed the red man's
picturesque appellation; and we knew that we should like--Chuckatuck.
Just before we reached the creek, two row-boats put out from the river
shore filled with boys and curiosity. A cheery salute was given us as
the houseboat passed close by the skiffs, and we thought no more of
them. But after a while footsteps were heard overhead and we found that
we had a full cargo of boys. They had made their boats fast to
Gadabout's stern as she passed, and were now grouped in some
uncertainty on the upper deck. A nod from Nautica put them at ease, and
in a moment they were scattered all over the outside of the boat,
calling to one another, peering into windows, and asking no end of
questions.
The boys proved helpful too. They were fisher-lads, well acquainted
with those waters, and were better than the chart in guiding us among
the shoals and into the channel of the creek.
[Illustration: ALONG THE SHORE OF CHUCKATUCK CREEK.]
A low headland prevented our getting a good view up the stream until
Gadabout swung into the middle of it. We seemed to be entering a little
lake bordered by tree-covered hills. At the far end of the blue basin
was a break and a gleam of lighter water to show that this was not
really a lake but a stream. There it made the last of its many turnings
and spread its waters in this beautiful harbour before losing them in
the James.
On the hills to our right, houses showed among the trees, some with the
ever-pleasing white-pillared porticoes; and on the hills to our left
was a village that straggled down the slope to the wharf as if coming
to greet the strangers. In this little harbour was quite a fleet,
mostly fishing craft, and all bowing politely on the swell of the tide.
There was such diversity of opinion among our self-constituted pilots
as to the best place for us to drop anchor, that the Commodore turned a
deaf ear to them all and attempted to run alongside a schooner to make
inquiries. She was a good sized craft, and it did not seem as if he
could miss her. He claimed that he did not. He explained that when we
got up there, our ropes fell short and we drifted helplessly past
because the blundering captain of the schooner had anchored her too far
away from us.
Kindly overlooking this error of a fellow navigator, the Commodore
patiently spent considerable of the beautiful summer evening in getting
Gadabout turned around; and then again bore down upon the schooner.
This time her being in the wrong place did not seem to matter; for we
reached her all right, and there probably was no place along that side
where we did not remove more or less paint. The captain of the schooner
gave us the needed information about the harbour; our lines were cast
off, and the houseboat was soon anchored in a snug berth for the night.
Then, sitting upon our canopied upper deck, enjoying the last of our
city melons cooled with the last of our city ice, we looked out over
what we supposed was but the first of many such beautiful creek-harbour
scenes to be found along the river. We did not know that there was to
be no other like Chuckatuck.
After a while, a small steamer came in from the James, a boat plying
regularly between Norfolk and landings along this creek.
It was just the kind of steamer, any one would say, to be running on
the Chuckatuck--a fat, wheezy side-wheeler that came up to its landing
near us with three hearty whistles and such a jovial puffing as seemed
to say, "Now, I'm certainly mighty glad to get back again to you all."
Just the sort of steamer that wouldn't mind a bit if the pretty girls
were "a right smart time" kissing goodbye; or if the Colonel had to
finish his best story; or if old Maria had to "study a spell" because
she had "done forgot" what Miss Clarissa wanted the steward to bring
from the city next day.
As the sun sank behind the hills (or rather some time after, for we
never could be nautically prompt), our flags were run down and the
anchor-light was hoisted on the forward flagstaff.
The summer night closed in softly; the blue waters grew dark, and
caught from the sky the rich lights that the setting sun had left
behind. We could see figures sitting upon the white porticoes looking
out over the miniature harbour. Somewhere were the music of a
merry-go-round and the calls and laughter of children. In from the
wider waters came more boats, their white sails folding down as they
neared their haven. All the beautiful mystery of the deepening twilight
touched water and masts, and shadowed the circling shore.
Then came the long hours of darkness when, with all aboard asleep,
Gadabout lay quietly at anchor, the riding-light upon her flagstaff
gently swaying throughout the night. Silently, with none to heed and
none to know, was enacted again in the gloom the play that is as old as
the first ship upon tideway. With bow turned up-stream, Gadabout sank
slowly lower and lower, as even little Chuckatuck heard the voice of
the far-away ocean calling its waters home. Then, crossing slowly over
her anchor and turning to head the other way, Gadabout rose once more
higher and higher, as the night wore on and as the great recurring
swell rolled landward again the waters of the sea.