this morning at dawn she was in plain view, five miles astern, and
overhauled us so rapidly that when we went on the other tack she had
neared us to three miles. No sooner had she observed us in the act of
wearing than up went her main-sail and cross-jack, and she followed
suit; there is no gainsaying the fact that the “Dowes” is the faster
ship on a wind, though free things are reversed. By standing so long on
the starboard tack through Wednesday’s gale and some heavy winds since
we found, when braced up on the port tack last night, that the cargo
had shifted slightly, and that on this leg the ship had a tendency
to roll to windward. The captain said that the cargo hadn’t actually
shifted, but had listed, as sailors call it, the effect on the ship
being perceptible to no one but a seaman.
Mr. Rarx told me the other day that he spent two years on the West
African coast, between Sierra Leone and Lagos, aboard of an English
supply steamer; and that while there he saw what, in his estimation,
was the loftiest-rigged vessel that ever floated. “You can talk about
your talkabouts,” said he, “but that English man-o’-war had four yards
above her main-royal. I’m tellin’ you a fact,” he added.
Well, we are dawdling away day after day up here in about 35° south
instead of clipping down past the Plate the other side of 40°. The
captain says that after we have passed that parallel until we reach
50° south we will probably have a number of fine days, clear and
exhilarating, with magnificent sunsets. We have had some good views
of the Magellan Clouds lately, as the sky at night in the south has
been quite clear. They are strange-looking things, with somewhat
the appearance of the nebula in Andromeda. Latitude, 34° 39′ south;
longitude, 46° 26′ west.
+June 27+
Very strong west to west-southwest winds, and the vessel laboring
in a broken sea in corkscrew dives under single-reefed fore- and
maintop-sail. It was fine up to midnight, when it clouded over and
commenced to blow, so that we had to shorten sail; and at eight this
morning, the ship diving deeply, the upper mizzentop-sail was stowed
altogether. The “Dowes” made a valiant attempt to hold on to us; but I
think that we can carry on better in heavy winds, for when day broke
she had vanished astern.
Last evening at the pumps Olsen and I talked together for the first
time. He is a very decent fellow and the quietest man in the ship. “I
never did see anythin’ like the shoutin’ here,” he observed, the first
thing. “Oh, blow that,” quoth Murphy; “it goes in one ear and out the
other.” “That’s all right,” answered Olsen, “but I ain’t used to it;
and every time the old man hollers me heart’s in me mouth. If I ever
sign in an American ship again it’ll be the ‘S. P. Hitchcock.’ When me
and Coleman come round from Honolulu in her little while ago, we did
more work in one watch there than we do here all day, and there wasn’t
any yellin’ at all. You never saw Cap’n Gates on the main-deck neither;
he knew his business. On the whole, I like British vessels about the
best of any, except the way they carry on is fearful, and bein’ iron
ships they can stand it. I sailed in the British ship ‘Dominion’ once
from Barry to San Francisco, and I never did see such sail-carryin’.
As for the main-deck, you couldn’t put your foot on it in bad weather
without fear of goin’ overboard. One night in the Pacific, about 45°
south, in a southerly gale, there came a crack, and away went all three
t’-gallant-masts overboard, all from carryin’ on.”
Olsen’s remark about Captain Gates’s knowing his business was a cut at
Captain Scruggs for prowling around the deck forward at all hours of
the day and night. Sailors hate this; and while a ship-master has the
right to scour his vessel fore and aft if he sees fit, he is generally
never seen forward of the galley, unless something special has happened.
After dinner to-day, when we went up on the poop, we found that
both wind and sea had increased, but there was nothing to warn us of
what was to happen. We had arranged the folding-chairs against the
wheel-house, sheltered from the violence of the wind by the bulwarks,
and I was in the act of arranging a rug around my wife, when the
skipper cried out, “Now, then, mind yourself!” We felt the ship rising
higher and higher on an unusually heavy sea, and, looking forward, were
just in time to see a great, white cataract roar over the weather-side
abaft the main-rigging. Half of it tumbled into the waist, while the
other half broke with a stunning crash full against the forward end of
the poop-deck-house. It wrenched away a heavy wooden shutter, built to
repel just such an attack as this, snapping a thick brass hook as if
it had been of glass, washed away a short, massive ladder leading to
the top of the deck-house, and then bore down upon us like a freshet.
Captain Scruggs again came to the rescue, and, picking my wife up,
chair and all, held her clear of the flood; while the only thing for
me to do, seeing that my wife was safe, was to fall across one of the
stern-bitts hard by and lift my legs out of the water as I best could;
and here I remained for two minutes, floundering and wallowing about
as though on a pivot, and this just after an especially hearty dinner.
When most of the water had run off, the skipper placed my wife’s chair
on the deck again with such dexterous cunning as to disengage the
supporting-bar in the rear, letting the whole contrivance down flat,
so that my wife lay prone upon the deck in the chill sea-water, which
still swirled about our feet. It didn’t seem to disturb him much, and
he only remarked, as he stamped on the deck, squirting little jets of
water out of his Cape Horn slippers, “There, that’s more water than
I’ve seen on this ship’s poop since I’ve had her.” It was really a
grand spectacle as the sea broke on board, and would have made a superb
subject for a camera.
We are now in the very heart of the violent river Plate region, being
at noon to-day abreast of that vast estuary, whose mouth is three
degrees in width. The Rio de la Plata, or River of Silver, is, like
Cape Hatteras, the dividing line between two climates: that of the
torrid Brazils and of the cold, bleak pampas of the Argentine and
Patagonia, just as Hatteras is the turning-point, so to speak, in
the climates of our Southern and Middle Atlantic States. They are,
too, about equidistant from the equator. A rather noteworthy fact is
that, bar Cape Horn, the three stormiest localities in the Southern
Hemisphere are almost exactly in the same latitude, though thousands
of miles apart: the river Plate, Cape Agulhas, and Cape Leewin, at the
southwestern end of Australia. Latitude, 36° 55′ south; longitude, 47°
20′ west.
+June 28+
By way of variety, light winds were vouchsafed to us for the
twenty-four hours, varying from southwest to northeast, and we made not
fifty miles of southing in that time. Very suddenly last night at nine
o’clock the wind let go at southwest, and instantly came out of the
southeast, backing gradually to northeast, where it is now; but though
a fair wind we are not doing three knots an hour. However, the glass
is falling and a change is no doubt at hand, and the sea has gone down
till nothing remains but a sullen, greasy roll from south-southeast.
We earnestly hope for a strong, fair wind which will give us at least
eight knots, for the skipper’s temper is failing rapidly, and he is
beginning to rage at the weather. Generally, by the fiftieth day from
New York he has crossed the parallel of 50° south, so that in round
numbers we are about seven hundred miles north of his average, this
being our forty-eighth day at sea. It has been noted previously, I
think, that he has never been more than one hundred and thirty days on
a voyage, and has made eight voyages between New York and San Francisco
in less than one hundred days; his longest passage of the Horn--that
is, from 50° to 50°--was nineteen days; the shortest, eleven. Fine
work, all this, which few ship-masters can equal.
My wife asked the skipper last evening if he had ever lost a ship. He
said no, but that he had had one or two narrow calls. “One of the worst
cases of smash-up I ever saw,” he continued, “happened to me when I
had the ‘Judas Dawes’ about six years ago. We were well down in the
southeast Trades in the Pacific, bound from ’Frisco to New York; the
weather had been squally, and on this particular day, in about 14°
south, I had specially told the mate not to loose the jib-topsail,
but when I went below after dinner for a nap the beggar did it. When
I went on deck again at four there was a squall makin’ ahead, and I
ordered some hands to stand by the sky-sail-halliards, for I didn’t
know the jib-topsail had been loosed. Well, sir, the squall hit us (it
was a corker) and snapped off the jib-boom; and, as I ran forrad, crack
went the foretop-mast, then the maint’-gallant-mast, and at last over
went the mizzen-t’-gallant-mast. In all my goin’ to sea I never saw
the like of it; ’twas as bad nearly as the ‘May Flint,’ only we had
smooth water. Forrad we were a wreck, with nothing at all above the
foreyard, while alongside was a fearful mass o’ gear slammin’ against
the ship, and you know those Trades in the Pacific blow fresh. Well, we
cleared up the wreck after hard work, sent up a few of the old yards
that weren’t too far gone to fish, made sail, and crossed Sandy Hook
Bar, ninety-eight days from ’Frisco, under a jury-rig.” Captain Scruggs
has as great a reputation for fast passages as any living American
ship-master in the California trade, but we’ll have to have better luck
if we are to reach port in less than one hundred and thirty days from
New York.
We are entering that region most celebrated in the world for its
sunsets; it would be interesting to know whether there is anything in
this, or whether it is imagination on the part of captains. At any
rate, we witnessed one this evening finer than any which we have ever
seen before; the sun sinking into the core of a huge, crimson cavern
in the centre of an inky cloud, from behind which shot up scores of
slender, golden arrows toward the zenith, presenting a scene of such
lurid magnificence as to fill the heart with reverence and wonder. And
by that same token, the sun is getting low in the northern sky, his
altitude at meridian being only a little above 30°, or about the same
as at New York towards the end of December.
The day being chill and raw, with a noon temperature of 52°, a fire was
lighted in the cabin stove for the first time; and as the thermometer
below has stood for a long while at 55° and a dismal drizzle prevailed
all day, the heat and glow of the fire were grateful beyond expression.
Latitude, 37° 42′ south; longitude, 47° 40′ west.
+June 29+
From six o’clock yesterday evening till noon to-day we had a breeze
so light that at times the sky-sails flapped idly against the masts,
and for several hours we were becalmed on a motionless sea,--a sea so
wonderfully smooth that, but for the temperature, we might readily
have fancied ourselves in the equatorial Doldrums again. At four
yesterday afternoon a crisp little breeze came whipping along out
of the south (although it lasted only two hours) driving away the
squalls and muggy air, a bright, rosy atmosphere taking their place
at sundown, with a horizon as sharply cut as the edge of a razor. As
for the night which followed, it was as brittle and sparkling as any
evening in Nova Scotia, wanting only the flashing pennons of the Aurora
Borealis to complete the picture. The firmament glittered with splendid
constellations, the stars dancing and scintillating with the glance
of steel, as though electric sparks, while the Milky Way seemed firm
and solid enough to walk upon. A magnificent sunrise succeeded this
matchless night, and we stood entranced by the glory of the scene for
half an hour, watching the lovely colors shift every few seconds like
the revolutions of a kaleidoscope, changing the tiny, pink, shell-like
clouds into glowing, golden embers as the great orb touched the horizon
and threw a path of crimson fire even to the vessel’s side. Where are
the gales of wind which are supposed to scream incessantly over the
Southern Ocean? Where are the giant seas which sweep the South Atlantic
with their foaming crests? It is not difficult to answer the latter
question, for we will not meet with any of those tremendous rollers
which have made Cape Horn the hobgoblin of navigators till we have
cleared Staten Land and receive the full fury of the thousands of miles
of tempestuous ocean which lie to the south and west of the Horn. It is
true that on our first voyage we experienced very heavy weather when in
this latitude; but then we were bound the other way and were near the
forty-third eastern meridian (about four hundred miles the other side
of Good Hope) at this parallel; the weather, as a general rule, is far
worse farther to the eastward at 40° south than in here near the land,
where bright skies and much smoother seas are the rule rather than the
exception. We are not more than three hundred and fifty miles from
South America now, so that even if we did have a heavy westerly gale
(westerly winds are almost constant south of 30° south) the sea could
not rise to such heights as it does off Agulhas and Cape Horn.
But these gentle winds we cannot understand; at dinner-time to-day,
though, a nice little breeze came along from the westward, and we are
humming along under the sky-sails, doing well except that we are not
making much westing, as we can’t do better than south by west.
The captain is like one demented. As MacFoy whispered to me this
afternoon when the jib-topsail-sheet parted, throwing him into a
paroxysm, “If he doesn’t get a fair wind soon he’ll go mad.” In truth,
he has been in a passion all day, chassezing up and down the main-deck
as though he had a devil. Just before the sheet went he had a spasm
of tautening things up, and went braying about with a voice of brass,
driving the men like animals before him; he had just ordered the above
sheet flattened in when crack it went, and in a few seconds the clew of
the sail was in fluttering ribbons, for the wind, though not strong,
whipped away the old canvas as though it were a cobweb. The mate caught
it too when he came out of his cavern at quarter to twelve to take
the sun, and by the time that we sat down to dinner the old man had
worked him into a speechless state, so that throughout the meal he sat
crushed and silent, with a face like a cigar Indian. These repasts on
such occasions are pregnant with gloomy thoughts, stillness reigning
as the skipper fiercely gnaws at his dinner, clicking his teeth, while
the whole top of his head seems to move as he chews, his temples
particularly rotating like the eccentrics of a steam-engine. His head
is quite bald, and his face is embellished with such enormous whiskers
that his whole head looks like an inverted sea-anemone; and when he is
angry, as he was to-day, his black eyes so glitter and snap under such
shaggy brows that they seem about to jump out and annihilate you. After
dinner, which appeared to increase his ill-humor, being a dyspeptic, he
went up to put some new panes of glass into the skylight which the sea
had broken. He fussed and fumed around with putty, diamond, and chisel
for half an hour, at the end of which time he had one pane nicely
adjusted, when it cracked across one corner. This almost prostrated
him, and when two other cracks appeared in rapid succession, each
calling forth a low, intense “d----,” he simply got up and ran away.
Then this amiable man commenced on the mate again, who, of course,
began to “bullyrag” the men, and finally brought down young Louis
Eckers to his knees with a hard blow in the face with his fist. This
was due solely to temper, because he had to repeat an order which Louis
didn’t understand on account of his ignorance of English.
Our first albatross presented himself to view this morning. When you
are making your first long voyage there is generally some confusion at
first, resulting in the more or less similarity between an albatross
and a molly-hawk. The latter are large birds and really look a good
deal like the former; but when you have seen an albatross half a dozen
times, you will never forget his appearance. There is no mistaking that
great beak or the odd hunchback-look of those shoulders, much less the
majestic flight of the stately bird as he skims along close to the
surface of the sea and then rises in a splendid circle on those great
wings of his. Our friend of this morning, however, did not long abide
with us, but, after looking us over, wheeled about and vanished in the
south. A Cape pigeon struck the taffrail this morning and fell on the
poop by the wheel-house. He was a beautiful little creature, with a
snow-white breast, dark-brown wings splashed with white, and a glossy
black head and neck, with a sheen as of satin on the feathers. After
sufficiently admiring the little fellow and showing him to the cat, who
wouldn’t approach within ten feet of him, we hove it overboard, and it
whizzed screaming away to rejoin its companions, who now follow us in
scores. Latitude, 38° 12′ south; longitude, 49° 35′ west.
+June 30+
The bright happy weather of yesterday has given place to a chill,
gloomy day with half a gale from the westward, while the ship under
reefed topsails has been digging into a strong head-sea in quite a
violent manner. How tender and delicate, so to speak, even the best
and largest of wooden vessels really are! For instance, at nine last
evening the second mate said that he thought he would put the gaskets
on the royals, the sky-sails having come in before supper.
“What on earth do you want to stow the royals for?” said I; “there
certainly is not wind enough for that.”
“No, it’s not the wind,” he answered, “but this sea’s makin’ ahead, and
she’ll strain goin’ into it with the royals on her.”
There certainly was a southerly sea running, but the ship was diving
easily, without wrenching or pounding; and it surely was very
surprising that a powerful ship like this would have to shorten sail
for such a swell. “And that’s just the great point in favor of an iron
ship,” said Mr. Rarx; “you can drive her through most anything and not
give her a thought. You know the ‘William J. Rotch’? We opened her all
up forrad a-drivin’ of her into a head-sea beatin’ up the Sea of Japan
trying to find Willywoodstock in a fog.”
“Where’s that place? It’s new to me,” said I.
“Siberia,” was his reply; and it was not until some hours afterward
that I grasped his meaning; he intended to say Vladivostok.
As the night wore on it grew squally, and at three in the morning
the fore- and maintop-sails were reefed, while at four o’clock the
massive iron hook on the cross-jack-tack carried away, and the sail
was saved only by the prompt and good work of both watches. I awoke in
the midst of the operation, and above the boom of the seas we could
hear the skipper’s hurricane voice shouting, “Haul away on those
buntlines; _haul away on those buntlines_; +HAUL AWAY ON THOSE
BUNTLINES+.”
At five yesterday afternoon, just before we clewed up the sky-sails,
we sailed through a whole fleet of albatrosses, feeding quietly on
the water. It was the first time that we had seen so many of the big
birds at rest at one time, and they looked very large and dignified as
they rose and sunk upon the swell. To say that we sailed through them
is not strictly correct, though, for when we had approached to within
two hundred yards or so they rose from the surface and went sailing
away into the southwest. It is always interesting to watch them rise
from the water, flapping their immense wings, each two yards long,
and rapidly paddling with feet as large as cabbage leaves to gain an
impetus; when, the wind striking beneath their pinions, they stow their
great feet somewhere in their stern feathers, and with a couple of
powerful strokes of wing away they soar up to windward; and you can
watch an albatross for half an hour at a time thereafter, and not a
single alar movement can be discerned.
The Scottish bosun entertained me last night for some time in drawing
comparisons between various sailing ships. I asked him how the men
liked it here. “Why, can’t you tell?” said he. “They don’t like it at
all; and I can tell you it’s no child’s play aboard here. Most of the
men, you see, have come out of British ships, where they don’t break
men’s bones with clubs or their hearts with drivin’.”
“If you like British ships better than ours, what did you sign in this
one for?” I asked.
“Why did I?” he replied. “Why, for the same reason that lots of others
do,--for the sake o’ the Snug Harbor. Ye see, if any man serves five
years in American ships and can prove it, he can end his days in peace
and comfort in the Sailors’ Snug Harbor on Staten Island, where they
take care of him. But, say, I never see a skipper like this one before.
Has he slept at all since we came to sea? I’m hanged if I think so, for
at all times o’ the night the first thing you know there’s th’ old man
standin’ within two foot of you on the main-deck, like a black spook.
Lord knows how he gets around, _I_ don’t.”
To-day we attained the highest southern latitude which my wife and I
ever reached, as on our first voyage around the other cape 39° 5′ was
the southernmost point. Having crossed the fortieth parallel, we have
also probably passed without the influence of the river Plate region;
but it is too bad that we are not two hundred miles farther to the
westward. Latitude, 40° 31′ south; longitude, 51° 10′ west.
+July 1+
Strong winds from the westward, shifting in the morning watch to
southeast, and a rough sea prevailed up to noon to-day, when it cleared
up, a persistent rain having added its portion to the dreariness of the
weather. At five this morning, when the wind shifted to the southeast,
we wore and stood in shore on the port tack, heeling well over to a
strong breeze. Both wind and sea increased as the morning advanced,
and at nine we had to take some of the sails off the ship. And here
mark the skipper’s perversity: at this particular moment we were in
quite a severe squall, and I shouted to him, “It’s breezing all the
time.” “No, it ain’t,” he replied, harshly; “the wind’s lettin’ go.”
Ten minutes later he ordered the maintop-gallant-sail to be clewed up,
and in another five minutes he ordered in the spanker. Anything to
differ from me and express an opinion of his own, even if he has to act
against it.
After these two sails had come in the ship was easier, but the sea
was making very rapidly, and in another hour we were taking large
quantities of water aboard. It was a wild sight then: an immense
squall overhanging us and darkening the heavens and the sea; the ship
enveloped in clouds of whirling spray; the driving rain, whipping us
with the sting of a lash; the crash of a sea now and then against the
forward house; and the flock of sea-birds astern wheeling and diving
through the squall, with a brace of gaunt, gray albatrosses sailing
calmly along, as though this were a tropic zephyr.