everything being secured, the ship returns to its normal condition. But
not to rest, for there is no rest fore and aft when a voyage is begun.
Cargo and stores have to be hoisted out of the lighters, holds have to
be stowed, gear secured. All day long the cargo winches rattle, and
the tackles rise and fall complainingly. Alongside a double bank of
lighters cling, and through cargo-ports and over the rails the freight
pours ceaselessly. The twilight deepens with stars; ashore the roar and
traffic of the busy town are hushed; the river banks are deserted. But
under the dazzling arc-lights on shipboard, and far into the night,
toiling men and swaying bales and boxes cast fantastic shadows on the
breezy water, and about the decks, and in the cavernous holds gaping
unsatisfied for the fruits of trade and barter.
* * * * *
The next day the passengers come on board, and the company’s servants
in the tenders and lighters gleefully escape, after banging about
and muddling the baggage so mercilessly that state-room trunks yawn
bruisedly in the holds, and huge chests, bursting with useless
trophies of travel, lumber up your narrow quarters below—this, to the
despair and tears of forlorn women who pursue the hapless purser with
unrelenting fury when they learn that nothing can be unearthed until
after the ship has left Queenstown, and that until then they must
hopelessly shift for themselves. Steam is spluttering and flickering in
little curls at the escape-pipes, the officers—every button of their
best coats on duty—are at their stations, the pilot is looking wiser
than ever pilot could be, and on the bridge with the impatient captain
lingers a representative of the company. By and by, after the final
instructions are given, this person departs, and as he goes over the
side the captain waves his hand in salute and then gives a quiet order
to the chief officer.
The wheel is shifted, the capstan reels noisily, and link by link the
chain comes home. At last, after a vicious tug or two on the cable,
the ground is broken, and, smothered and sputtering with cleansing
water from the hose, the anchor, ring and stock, appears above the
foam-streams rippling at the bow. When the cat-fall is hooked the
ship’s head swings around with graceful sheer, the engines slightly
increase their speed, the wake straightens its curves, the ensign dips
in answer to salutes, and a long blast from the whistle sonorously
claims the right of channel. Slowly, carefully, the gallant ship
threads her way among the fleet of inward and outward bound shipping;
the shores darken with moist shadows and gleam in broad bands of fading
sundrift; the lights of Birkenhead and Liverpool glisten, blaze,
twinkle, fade; the breeze blows with spice of salt and briny coolness;
the stars blink from silvery steel into points of golden fire; and in
the west, where the splendor and warmth deepen seaward, the rolling
mists, as yet resplendent in borrowed radiance, close, broodingly, as a
pall. Sails burn in the heart of the sunset, and long trails of smoke
show where other ships have sunk below the verge. Finally the bar is
crossed, the lanterns on board the Northwest Light-ship flame in the
star-gemmed dusk, and with a swinging grip of the wheel the ship is
headed, at half speed, just as night is falling, to clear the lights of
Holyhead.
[Illustration: Down the Channel in a Fog—A Narrow Escape.]
Upon the bridge the pilot and the officer of the watch peer “ahead
and astern, look to windward and to lee;” the ship slips and slides,
now to port and now to starboard, dodging the fleet inter-shooting
this marvellous waterway with a wealth of craft no other waters know;
and the lookouts glue their eyes to their quadrants of observation,
reporting lights and sails till the confusion would be inextricable,
save to these steady nerves finding the pathway safely. Down the coast
the vessel runs in the darkness, fearing naught while the stars shine
and the horizon circles clean cut above the foam-capped waters. But
as the night grows the air loses its briskness, a light haze shrouds
the sea, and the Channel fog rolls, ghostlike, landward. Soon only
the upper stars glimmer, the moisture drips from the rigging, the iron
rails and deck-houses are damp and clammy, and the lights are aureoled
with a dull cloud of gray and yellowish mist.
[Illustration: The Skipper.]
The captain takes his place upon the bridge, the engines are eased
until, to the worried landsman’s ears, their labored throbbing
seems a devil’s tattoo answering the grumbling and rumbling of the
fog-whistle. Below, brawny, silent men stand at the levers, ready at
an instant to stop and back, or go ahead, just as the emergency may
direct. Outside the pilot-house the quarter-master strains his ears and
peers nervously into the gloom, yet alert to pass any command given
to the junior officer and to his messmate at the wheel. Signals from
fog-whistles drift into them from other groping ships, and, at times,
spectral hulls and ghostly sails loom close aboard, creeping out of the
curtained night or slipping landward or seaward in search of hidden
port or roadway. At regular intervals the lead is cast and the depth of
water read from the scale by the unhooded glare of a lantern, and on
the chart the positions given by the soundings are pricked, to guard
against the tricks of treacherous currents.
And so the cheerless night drifts sadly into a wan morning, and the
ship creeps warily down Channel, the weary vigil taxing the brains and
bodies of those who must seek no rest because of the lives entrusted to
their care.
* * * * *
After the pilot has been discharged and the mails received at
Queenstown, and the ship has taken her departure from the Roche Point
Light-ship everybody settles into the routine of life at sea. From
the beginning watches have been kept rigorously, and the interior
discipline and rules are so well-jointed that the ship seems to run
herself. You hear no jarring of the cogs, feel on rough edges in the
mosaic, though the government is, as it must always be, the hand of
steel in the glove of velvet. The care of the ship is unremitting,
even in details which if set down here would seem trivial and finicky,
and every hour of the day has duties which are performed heartily
and thoroughly to the foot of the letter by the officers. The number
of these may vary on each line, even in different ships of the same
employ, but in the largest steamers there are, besides the captain,
three seniors and two juniors. The three seniors keep the watches, and
each during his tour of duty has, as the captain’s representative,
the direct charge of the ship. The two juniors stand watch and watch,
that is, four hours on duty and four hours off, with a swing at the
dog-watches, and carry on, under the direction of the senior officers,
the routine of the ship. Normally the officer of the watch takes his
station on the forward bridge, and the junior officer sticks by the
wheel-house, where, after collecting the data he writes the log-slate
hourly, and sees that the quartermaster steers the given course to a
nicety. The first night at sea the starboard watch (the captain’s in
marine law) has the eight hours out, that is, from 8 P.M. to midnight
and from 4 to 8 A.M.; and on the home voyage the mate’s watch (the
port) enjoys the same sweet privilege, thus sanctifying the ancient
saw, which insists, under penalties dire, that the captain must take
her out and the mate must take her home again.
The officers vary in their methods of keeping watch, new ships having
new rules, as Simple Simon is supposed to have said when he was hustled
aft to stow the jib. But to my mind, those favored in the larger
steamers of the White Star Company are the best. Here the chief officer
stands the watches from six to eight and from twelve to two o’clock,
night and day respectively; the second officer keeps the watches from
eight to ten and two to four o’clock; and the third officer those from
ten to twelve and from four to six o’clock. This watch-keeping seems
easy enough, even interesting and exciting, at least so I have heard
not only from the casual gentleman who worries about critically in fine
weather, but from that uneasy-minded shuttler who skips across the
Western Ocean half a dozen times a year for no reason any sane man has
yet discovered. But, dearly beloved idlers, do not deceive yourselves,
getting out of bed and walking on a roof is anything but gay, even in
fine weather. In stormy seasons it is such wretched work that then be
mine rather to woo my bucolics, my farms and gardens, my forest glades.
[Illustration: The Deck Lookout—“Danger Ahead.”]
[Illustration: On the Bridge in a Gale.]
Leaving out of question the responsibility, try and measure the
physical misery when gales are howling, and spray is flying, and icy
seas are shooting over the weather bulwarks, and the ship is slamming
along, wallowing in the hollows or wriggling on zenith-seeking
billows. It may be at night, when you cannot see a ship’s length
ahead, and around you, threatening disaster and death, are a dozen
vessels; it may be when the ice is moving and the towering bergs lie
in your pathway. Then those dreadful middle watches, when, after
a hard tour of duty, you are roused out of a comfortable bed, and
jumped, half awakened, into the chill and misery of the gale-blown
night with every nerve and muscle strained to the breaking-point.
No, it is, believe me, the hardest kind of hard work, and it so saps
the body, and warps the temper, and makes the best old before their
day, that no self-respecting mother will let her daughter marry a
man who knows an oar from a fence-rail, if he has learned their
differences—watch-keeping.
The fourth and fifth officers, being young and hardy, and presumably
with much to learn and suffer—for suffering somehow is considered
an essential in sea-training—are not supposed to need adequate rest
or sleep, and if that is not wearing on shipboard, go find me a
ballad-monger to weave a rhyme for their comfort. The crew stand watch
and watch; but as they can always steal a comforting nap, and have
no responsibility, they know little of the mental wear and tear. The
bo’s’n and his mate look out for the pulling and hauling, and for the
dreary singing which the “chanty” man weds to them. Their tempers are
always on edge, and it is their part to buffet and bluster. These are
the gentlemen you usually hear, in season and out, bellowing about
decks a highly garnished sea _argot_ which no one attempts to translate
or deems of serious meaning. Occasionally, too, you may detect them
to leeward of the houses, skylarking gloomily, in moments of forced
gayety, with skulkers and sea-lawyers, “fetching them,” as they
describe the pastime, “a belt under the jaw,” or airily promising to
“knock” their “blooming ’eds off.” These, of course, are the vagaries
of delegated authority, and should not lessen your regard for them, as
they are generally good sailor-men after the heavy insular fashion.
You must remember, also, they enjoy a prescriptive privilege of being
most noisy, of wearing tremendous boots and very shabby clothes, and of
trilling, like sea-larks, upon little silvery whistles, which are known
indiscriminately as “pipes” or “calls.”
[Illustration: The Boatswain’s Whistle.]
In each watch there are three quartermasters, generally fine specimens
of the British tar, a joy to the eye and a comfort to the soul,
notably in bad weather, when they cheer you with a smile that soothes
as the words they may not utter; for by a maritime fiction they are
always supposed to be at the wheel, and you must not, under fear of
keelhauling, talk to them. How patronizing and sympathetic they look,
what a lot they seem to know, what beautiful guernseys they wear, and
with what ease they guide the mighty vessel! Before the introduction
of steam steering-gear two men were always required at the wheel,
and in bad weather there were four, and sometimes six, with frequent
reliefs; and yet, with all this beef, many a poor fellow has been
maimed for life by being tossed over the wheel-barrel or jammed by
the spokes when the ship swung off with sudden lurch or broached to
before the fury of the gale. To-day it requires hardly the strength of
a boy to “restrain the rudder’s ardent thrill,” even in the heaviest
blows, for the wheel in evidence is merely the purchasing end of a
mechanical system that opens and shuts the valve governing the steam
admitted to the steering cylinders. But be it lever or not, the sailor
grasps it still with the old familiar pose, swaying it, “for the good
ship’s woe and the good ship’s weal,” with curved arm and gripping
fingers as he pores over his compass and keeps its lubber’s point,
in fair weather or in foul, plumb on a course marked to a degree of
the circle. He stands a two-hours’ trick and then changes places with
his relief, whose station has been outside the wheel-house door. The
third quartermaster keeps his watch under the after-whaleback, ready
to throw into action the hand steering-wheel when the signal is given,
and as this happens seldom, his watch is apt to be a dreary one. The
pump-wells are sounded regularly by a carpenter, so that possible leaks
are sure of rapid detection; and hourly every light and every corner of
the ship is inspected by one of the two masters-at-arms, who constitute
the police force of the ship. They have under their special care the
steerages, and a part of their duty is—as their phrase goes—“to chase”
the steerage female passengers off the upper deck at dusk, and to see
that they remain in their own apartments until sunrise.
[Illustration: The Cook.]
First-class ships muster from twelve to fifteen men in each watch,
and all of these are shipped as seamen. Of course the majority are
such only in name, though there is always a definite number of sailors
among them. Indeed, to fly the blue flag at least ten of the crew, in
addition to the captain, must be enrolled in the Naval Reserve, and
to be an A B there, one must hand, reef, and steer deftly. These are
the people who in port stand by the ship; that is, those who take, as
required by law, their discharges in Liverpool on the return voyage
and continue to work on board at fixed wages per day while the ship
refits and loads. All hands, from the skipper to the scullion’s mate,
must ship at the beginning of each run—must “sign articles” as it is
called—before a Board of Trade shipping-master. As the law has always
regarded Jack as “particularly in need of its protection, because he is
particularly exposed to the wiles of sharpers,” great stress is laid in
these articles upon his treatment, and therefore they exhibit in detail
the character of the voyage, the wages, the quantity and quality of
the food, and a dozen other particulars which evidence the safeguards
thrown about these “wards of the Admiralty” by a quasi-paternal
government. Jack knows all this, and be sure he stands up most boldly
and assertively, at times with a great deal of unnecessary swagger and
bounce, for all the articles—“his articles”—allow him.
The boatswain selects the ship’s company, and the sea-birds flutter
on board usually a few hours before the vessel hauls into the stream.
They fly light, these Western Ocean sailors, and their kits are such as
beggars would laugh at even in Ratcliffe Highway. Generally they are
in debt to the Sailor’s Home—they pay seventeen bob a week for their
grub and lodging—and many of them just touch their advance money, as
a guarantee of receipt, and then see most of it disappear, for goods
fairly furnished, into the superintendent’s monk-bag. But they are
philosophers in their sad way, and are apt, if they find themselves
safely on board with a couple of shillings in their ’baccy pouches,
with a pan, an extra shirt, a pannikin, a box of matches, and a bar
of soap, to feel that the anchor cannot be tripped too soon, as they
are equipped for an adventure anywhere, even to the “Hinjies, heast or
west,” as their doleful ditty announces.
Under way or at anchor they do not have many idle moments. In the
middle watches the decks are scrubbed with sand and brooms and brushes,
for the old, heroic days of holy-stones are over, and a hundred pounds
of effort are no longer expended for an ounce of result.
[Illustration: “Muster, all hands.”] [Illustration: Washing Down the
Decks.]
It might interest the passengers—especially those who look upon a
sailor as so much unthinking brawn—to hear the archaic vocabulary and
the emphatic dialects in which many of them are sworn at by these same
mariners. Indeed, passengers are a careless, slovenly, and untidy lot,
and there is scarcely a sin in the maritime decalogue of cleanliness
they do not commit unthinkingly. The particularly offensive ones
are soon singled out and labelled with briny, offensive names; and
though they know it not, the forecastle is at times lurid with the
blood-curdling anathemas launched upon them. In the morning watch the
paint-work is scrubbed, and a deft cleaner is Jackie; and finally,
when the weather permits, the brass work—bane of every true sailor—is
polished till it blinks like the rising sun in the tropics. This
scrubbing and burnishing and cleansing runs in appointed grooves
through every department, and in no perfunctory way, for each day the
ship is inspected thoroughly, and upon the result depend the reputation
and the advancement of the subordinates.
Very formal indeed is the inspection, when, at eleven o’clock in
the forenoon, the captain, accompanied by the doctor, begins his
royal progress. At the borders of each province he is received by
its governor, who conducts him through its highways and its byways,
through its lanes and shaded groves. The purser and the chief steward
are answerable for all concerning the passengers, and scrupulous and
minute is the examination given to the saloons, store-rooms, pantries,
kitchens, bakeries, closets, bath-rooms, and to such cabins and
state-rooms as may be visited. Then follow the steerages and the “glory
hole”—this last a den sacred to the discomfort of the perennially
nimble, of the tip-extracting, uncannily cheerful, and sorely tried
stewards. The chief officer is responsible for the boatswain’s locker,
the forecastles, the upper decks, the boats, the whalebacks; in short,
above and below, wherever dirt might breed disease, no nook nor corner
is omitted, not even that seething cauldron where the lungs of the ship
breathe steam and her ponderous muscles drive the mighty screws.
* * * * *
The engine-rooms and stoke-holes of a great steamer are forbidden
ground, are lands _taboo_, save to those specially asked to visit them.
Here no interruptions may enter, for speed is the price of ceaseless
vigilance, and horse-power spells fame and dividends. When you come
to measure the region fairly, it broadens into a wonder-land; it
shapes itself into a twilight island of mysteries, into a laboratory
where grimy alchemists practise black magic and white. At first all
seems confusion, but when the brain has co-ordinated certain factors,
harmony is wooed from discord and order emerges from chaos. It is
in the beginning all noise and tangled motion, and shining steel
and oily smells; then succeeds a vague sense of bars moving up and
down, and down and up, with pitiless regularity; of jiggering levers,
keeping time rhythmically to any stray patter you may fit to their
chanting; and, at last, the interdependence of rod grasping rod, of
shooting straight lines seizing curved arms, of links limping backward
and wriggling forward upon queer pivots, dawns upon you; and in the
end you marvel at the nicety with which lever, weight, and fulcrum
work, opening and closing hidden mechanisms, and functioning with an
exactness that dignifies the fraction of a second into an appreciable
quantity. Cranks whirl and whirl and whirl incessantly, holding in
moveless grip the long shafting turning the churning screws; pumps
pulsate and throb with muffled beat; gauge-arms vibrate jerkingly about
narrow arcs, setting their standards of performance; and everywhere, if
your ear be trained to this mechanical music, to this symphony in steam
and steel, you see the officers and greasers conducting harmoniously
the smoothly moving parts, as soothed with oil and caressed with waste
they work without jar or friction, and despite the gales tossing the
ship like a jolly-boat, on the angry ocean. It is a magic domain,
and one may well wonder at the genius which, piling precedent upon
precedent, chains these forces and makes them labor, even on an
unstable platform, as their masters will.
In the stoke-hole, however, one leaves behind the formal and
mathematical, and sees the picturesque with all its dirt unvarnished,
with all its din and clangor unsubdued. Under the splintering silver
of the electric lamps cones of light illuminate great spaces garishly
and leave others in unbroken masses of shadow. Through bulkhead doors
the red and gold of the furnaces chequer the reeking floor, and the
tremulous roar of the caged fires dominates the sibilant splutter of
the stream. Figures nearly naked, gritty and black with coal, and pasty
with ashes, and soaked with sweat, come and go in the blazing light
and in the half gloom, and seem like nightmares from fantastic tales of
demonology.
[Illustration: The Stoke Hole.]
When the furnace-doors are opened, thirsty tongues of fire gush out,
blue spirals of gas spin and reel over the bubbling mass of fuel,
and great sheets of flame suck half-burnt carbon over the quivering
fire-wall into the flues. With averted heads and smoking bodies the
stokers shoot their slice-bars through the melting hillocks, and twist
and turn them until they undulate like serpents. The iron tools blister
their hands, the roaring furnaces sear their bodies; their chests heave
like those of spent swimmers, their eyes tingle in parched sockets—but
work they must, there is no escape, no holiday in this maddening limbo.
Steam must be kept up, or perhaps a cruel record must be lowered.
Facing the furnaces, the hollow up-scooping of the stoker’s shovel
echoes stridently on the iron floor, and these speed-makers pile coal
on coal until the fire fairly riots, and, half blinded, they stagger
backward for a cooling respite. But it is only a moment at the best,
for their taskmasters watch and drive them, and the tale of furnaces
must do its stint. The noise and uproar are deafening; coal-trimmers
trundle their barrows unceasingly from bunker to stoke-hole, or, if the
ship’s motion be too great for the wheels, carry it in baskets, and
during the four long hours there is no rest for those who labor here.
In the largest ships the engineer force numbers one hundred and
seventy men, and in vessels with double engines these are divided
into two crews with a double allowance of officers for duty. One
engineer keeps a watch in each fire-room, and two are stationed on each
engine-room platform. Watches depend upon the weather, but, as a rule,
the force, officers and men, serves four out of every twelve hours.
Should, however, the weather be foggy or the navigation hazardous, the
service may be more onerous; for then officers stand at the throttles
with peremptory orders to do no other work. In relieving each other
great care is taken; those going on the platforms feeling the warmth
of the bearings, examining the condition of the pins and shafting,
testing the valves, locating the position of the throttles, counting
the revolutions, and by every technical trial satisfying themselves
before assuming charge that all is right. In the stoke-hole the
same precautions are taken, the sufficiency and saturation of the
water, the temperature of the feed, injection, and discharge, and the
steam-pressure being verified independently by both officers.
The pay of the chief engineer is said to be about £30 per month, in
addition to a commission upon the saving made in a fixed allowance of
coal for a given horse-power and an assumed speed. As some ships are
economical, this reaches at times a handsome bonus. And it is well this
pay should be large, for many of these officers have given their best
days to one employ and deserve much of it in every way. It is said
that some of the old chiefs are the greatest travellers in the world,
so far as miles covered may count. Here, for example, is one who has
made in one line 132 round trips, or traversed 841,000 shore miles—a
distance four times that between the earth and the moon; and still
higher is the record of another, who completed before his retirement
154 round trips, or made in distance over one million of statute miles.
[Illustration: In the Fo’castle.]