I was sorry to lose my job. I was twenty years old, without a trade or
special knowledge of any kind, and beyond the outfitting of fishing
vessels, knowing nothing of any business, and with no more than a high
school education--and that two years behind me--and I knew of no place
in Gloucester where I could begin all over and right away get as much
pay as I had left behind me. I might go to Boston, of course, and try
for something there--I was not ten minutes out of Withrow's before I
thought of doing that. But a little further thought and I knew there
were more capable men than I walking the streets of Boston looking for
work. However, a lot could happen before I would have to worry, and so
I decided to take the air and think it over.
I might go fishing certainly--I had had a little experience in my
school vacations--if my mother would only stand for it. As to that I
did not know. If it came to fishing or starving--one or the
other--then of course she would have to let me go fishing. But my
father had been lost on the Grand Banks with his vessel and all
hands--and then one brother was already fishing. So I hardly thought
she would allow me, and anyway I knew she would never have a good
night's rest while I was out.
However, I kept thinking it over. To get away by myself I took a ride
over to Essex. There I knew I would find half a dozen vessels on the
stocks, and there they were--the latest vessel for the Duncan firm and
three more for other firms. I knew one of the ship-carpenters in
Elwell's yard, Levi Woodbury, and he was telling me about some of the
vessels that had been launched lately. "Of course," he said, "you saw
the one launched a few days ago from here--that one built for Mr.
Withrow?"
I said I had, and that she was a wonder to look at and that I wished
Maurice Blake, and not Sam Hollis, was to have her.
"Yes," said Levi, "and a pity. Maurice Blake could have sailed her
right, though for that matter Sam Hollis is a clever hand to sail a
vessel, too. And she ought to sail some, that vessel. But look
here at this one for the Duncans and to be launched to-morrow.
Designed by Will Somers--know him? Yes? A nice young fellow. Ain't she
able-looking?"
She certainly was, and handsome, and Levi went on to tell me about
her. He showed me where she was like and where she differed from the
Lucy Foster, the Fred Withrow, the Nannie O, the Colleen Bawn, and the
others which were then causing trouble in Gloucester with crews
fighting over their good qualities. I did not know a whole lot about
vessels, but having been born in Gloucester and having soaked in the
atmosphere all my life and loving vessels besides, I had a lot of
notions about them. And I liked this last Duncan vessel. By the wind
and in a sea-way, it struck me she would be a wonder. There was
something more than just the fine lines of her. There is that about
vessels. You can take two vessels, model them alike, rig them alike,
handle them alike, and still one will sail rings around the other. And
why is it? I've heard a hundred fishermen at different times say that
and then ask, Why is it? This one was awfully sharp forward, too sharp
some might have said, with little more forefoot than most of the
late-built flyers; but she was deep and had a quarter that I knew
would stand up under her sail. I liked the after-part of her. Racing
machines are all right for a few months or a year or two and in smooth
water, but give me a vessel that can stand up under sail. I thought I
could see where, if they gave her sail enough, especially aft, and a
skipper that would drive her, she might do great things. And
certainly she ought to be a comfort in a blow and bring a fellow
home--and there's a whole lot in that--being in a vessel that you feel
will bring you home again.
I looked over the others, but none of them held me like the Duncan
vessel, and I soon came back to Gloucester and took a walk along the
waterfront.
It was well into March at this time--the third week in March, I
remember--and there was a great business doing along the docks. The
salt bankers were almost ready to leave--twenty-eight or thirty sail
fitting out for the Grand Banks. And then there were the seiners--the
mackerel catchers--seventy or eighty sail of them making ready for the
Southern cruise. All that meant that things would be humming for a
while. So I took a walk along the docks to see it.
Most of the vessels that had been fishing during the winter had been
stripped of their winter sails, and now aboard these they were bending
on the summer suits and slinging up what top spars had not already
been sent up. For the vessels that had been laid up all winter and
stripped of everything, they were getting out the gear from the lofts.
Everywhere it was topmasts being sent up, sails being dragged out,
stays swayed taut, halyards and sheets rove--an overhauling
generally. On the railways--Burnham's, Parkhurst's, and Tarr's--were
vessels having their bottoms scrubbed and painted and their topsides
lined out. And they all looked so handsome and smelt so fine with
their riggings being tarred, not with the smoky tar that people ashore
put on house-roofs, but the fine rich-smelling tar that goes into
vessels' rigging; and there was the black and dark sea-green paint for
the sides, with the gold or yellow or sometimes red stripe to mark the
run, and main and quarter rails being varnished.
And the seine-boats! If there is anything afloat that sets more
easily on the water than a seine-boat I never saw it, unless it
might be a birch-bark canoe--and who'd want to be caught out in a
blow in a canoe? The seine-boats all looked as natural as so many
sea-gulls--thirty-six or thirty-eight feet long, green or blue
bottoms to just above the waterline so that it would show, and above
that all clear white except for the blue or red or yellow or green
decorations that some skippers liked. And the seines that went
with them were coming in wagons from the net and twine factory,
tanned brown or tarred black and all ready to be hauled on to the
vessels' decks or stowed in the holds below, until the fleet
should be in among the mackerel to the south'ard--off Hatteras or
Cape May or somewhere down that way.
To feel all that and the rest of it--to walk to the tops of your shoes
in pine chips in the spar yards, to measure the lengths of booms and
gaffs for yourself if you weren't sure who were going to spread the
big mainsails, to go up in the sail-lofts and see the sailmakers,
bench after bench of them, making their needles and the long waxed
threads fly through the canvas that it seemed a pity wasn't to stay so
white forever--to see them spread the canvas out along the chalk lines
on the varnished floor, fixing leach and luff ropes to them and
putting the leather-bound cringles in, and putting them in too so
they'd stay, for by and by men's lives would depend on the way they
hung on--all that, railways, sail-lofts, vessels, boats, docks alive
with men jumping to their work--skippers, crews, carpenters, riggers,
lumpers, all thinking, talking, and, I suppose, dreaming of the
season's work ahead--m-m--there was life for a man! Who'd want to work
in a store after that?
I stopped at Duncan's wharf and looked at Wesley Marrs's vessel, the
Lucy Foster, and then the Colleen Bawn.
And O'Donnell drove the Colleen like a ghost through all that
gale,
And around 'twas roaring mountains and above 'twas blinding hail,
and so on. And the Nannie O, another vessel that fishermen sang songs
about.
Oh, the lovely Nannie O,
The able Nannie O,
The Nannie O a-drivin' through the gale.
They were lying there, tied to the docks. They were all dreams, so
long and clean, with the beautiful sheer fore and aft, and the
overhang of the racers they were meant to be--the gold run, with the
grain of the varnished oak rails shining above the night-black of
their topsides, and varnished spars. They had the look of vessels that
could sail--and they could, and live out a gale--nothing like them
afloat I'd heard people say that ought to know.
I walked along another stretch and at Withrow's dock I saw again the
new one that had been built for Maurice Blake but given to Sam Hollis,
who was a boon companion of Withrow's ashore, as I may have said
already. Hollis's gang were bragging even now that she'd trim anything
that ever sailed--the Lucy Foster, the Nannie O, the Colleen Bawn, and
all the rest of them. And there were some old sharks, too, upon the
docks who said they didn't know but she looked as if she could. But a
lot of other people didn't think it--she was all right as a vessel,
but Sam Hollis wasn't a Wesley Marrs, nor a Tom O'Donnell, nor a
Tommie Ohlsen, nor even a Maurice Blake, who was a much younger man
and a less experienced fisherman than any of the others.
All that, with the vessels anchored in the stream and the little
dories running up and down and in and out--it all brought back again
the trips I'd made with my father, clear back to the time when I was a
little boy, so small that in heavy weather he wouldn't trust me to go
forward or aft myself, but would carry me in his arms himself--it all
made me so long for the sea that my head went round and I found myself
staggering like a drunken man as I tried to walk away from it.