weather, Mr. Rarx said, “Oh, those are great sails! Wait till it’s
blowin’ and she under that and the topsails! They’ll stand a power
o’ wind, but I’ve seen ’em blown away. I was second mate of a Nova
Scotia ship, the ‘Mary L. Burrill,’ a few years ago, and we were bound
across this time from Greenock to St. John in February, which it isn’t
necessary for me to say anything more about the weather. We’d be’n
lyin’ to for twenty hours under a goose-winged maintop-sail and spencer
when the wind all at once rose to a perfect hurricane and hove us down
to the hatches. And then the maintop-sail and that there spencer,
sir, nearly as hard and thick as a plank, flew away like a muslin
handkercheef; and though we had double gaskets on all the sails, four
of ’em was blown loose and ripped off the yards like paper. Now, it’s
blowin’ pretty hard when a lower maintop-sail goes, but nothin’ short
of a hurricane can budge a new spencer. But no canvas ever made will
stand a North Atlantic midwinter gale, and you hear me. We sighted a
big White Star freighter this day, and she afterward reported the wind
eighty miles an hour _between_ the squalls; not in ’em, mind. And
if you want to see somethin’ to put joy in your heart, you ought to see
these big White Star steamers in a heavy gale! I saw the ‘Cufic’ once
comin’ across in another cyclone in the ‘J. B. Walker,’ and the way she
kept clear of the seas was a caution. I’m a good enough American, but
you can’t beat Harland and Wolff very much.”
Mr. Rarx is an infinitely more agreeable man to talk to than the mate,
who is the longest-winded and most tiresome old porpoise who ever
spun a yarn. His only recommendations are his hideousness, which is
positively attractive, and his strange, absurd facial contortions when
he doesn’t intend to be funny. Sometimes during the first watch, when
it is very dark, with the exception of the binnacle lamp which casts
its rays upon him as he crosses its path, he is actually weird-looking.
His voice, too, is as husky as a rusty hinge now, owing to a severe
cold, and last night he vented some curious statements. Neither of us
had said a word for maybe five minutes, I watching the compass card, he
grinning and mouthing to himself in the moonlight. Presently he wormed
himself over to where I stood, looked earnestly at me a few seconds and
croaked,--
“You’ll see plenty of people in California with no teeth.”
“How is that?” said I.
“Dunno,” he replied; “they do say it’s the climate; anyhow, you’ll see
lots with nothin’ but gums.”
Then he crawled back to the other side, performed some further silent,
facial acrobatics, returned, and wheezed out mysteriously, “You’ll be
bothered with fleas there; they’re that plenty I always has a regular
quadrille with ’em.”
A remarkable habit the captain has at table of asking the mate if he
won’t have some of everything in sight; no matter how many dishes
there may be on the board, the skipper always gazes fiercely at him
for a moment, and then says rapidly and severely, “Have some of the
salt meat, Mr. Goggins? Have some beans? Have some potatoes? Have some
bread? Have some sparrow-grass?” All this in one breath, to which the
mate answers, “A leetle, if you please, sir;” or if it’s a second
asking, which is merely form, he replies with his droning, “No-o-o,
sir, I thank you, sir; I’ve ’ad sufficient, sir, I thank you, sir,” as
though to show how he is depriving himself, for he insists that it is
vulgar to enjoy eating!
Sometimes the old creature corners my wife and me and entertains
us with anecdotes of his acquaintances in San Francisco and how
excessively numerous his influential friends are there. He will tell
us that ’Arry Dolan is now getting seventy-five dollars a month at
the Union Iron Works; and when we venture the opinion that he must be
a rising young man, he answers, “Oh, ’Arry’s all right. Why, I knew
him w’en he was gettin’ only three dollars a week at the Works.” Here
generally follows a genealogical history of the Dolans for several
generations, while their individual characteristics become the subject
of minute discussion.
Well, we’re beating slowly, slowly, down the inhospitable shores of
Patagonia, and our luck doesn’t seem to be much better than it was in
the southeast Trades. Latitude, 44° 49′ south; longitude, 60° 5′ west.
+July 6+
If our nautical instruments had not assured us that we were at noon in
about 45° south, distant one hundred and twenty-five miles from Cape
Dos Bahios, we might easily have imagined the ship to be lying off
Staten Island in New York Harbor. We never but once before saw the sea
so free from swell, and that was in the Indian Ocean, thirty-four miles
south of the equator; which position we not only held for twenty-four
hours, but during that entire period no one perceived the least
motion in the ship. It is true that to-day we made nearly one hundred
miles; but from eight till eleven this forenoon we were motionless
on the water, while a stage was slung over the stern a foot from the
surface, on which the mate and the carpenter worked for two hours on
the rudder-head; it is only once or twice during an entire voyage that
a vessel for hours at a time will not rise and fall twelve inches. To
us it is really a remarkable experience to thus float silently along
within three hundred and fifty miles of the Falklands, though the
skipper says, “Well, I told you we’d have light weather north of 50°.”
At noon to-day, however, the western sky indicated a breeze, and
presently a little breath stole ever so gently over the quiet ocean,
scarcely curling the smooth, level plane of the sea; and, gradually
freshening, the ship gathered steerage way in five minutes or so and
began to lazily move ahead through a large flock of Cape pigeons which
had settled to feed in great numbers during the calm, though we could
perceive nothing edible in the water. The birds seemed to delight in
the breeze as much as we did, for in light weather they seldom rise
higher than a few feet above the surface, lacking the force of wind
which enables them to rise easily; as in a strong breeze they make no
further effort than to guide themselves, rising and falling without
movement of wing. A huge, hoary albatross, a perfect old patriarch, has
been with us all day, skimming over the water so closely as to touch it
occasionally with his breast, and seldom more than a foot from it. It
is wonderful that they can maintain so close and uniform a flight to
the surface, without movement and in a calm.
The day before yesterday, being more exasperated than ever before at
the skipper’s continuous grumbling at the weather, I told him that I
thought that he asked altogether too much in demanding a fair wind all
the time, and that when a man began a voyage he ought to expect more or
less head-winds throughout the passage, for they were to be expected
anywhere and at any minute at sea during a whole voyage, even in the
Trades. Since then he hasn’t said a word against the weather, and is,
for him, extremely agreeable. Heavens, how hairy he is! So thickly
covered is his whole face that the only visible bare spots are his nose
and eyes; for his beard grows right up over his cheek-bones, and his
eyebrows seem to be spreading all over his forehead. So dense are his
whiskers that when he comes on deck after a session with his Dutch pipe
the smoke can still be seen eddying and seething in his beard.
Last evening as we were reading some of Kipling’s delightful sea-poems
the skipper called down and asked whether we wouldn’t like to see a
lunar rainbow. We went on deck at once, and there, sure enough, was a
perfect specimen of this strange phenomenon, and so clearly defined
that the brighter colors were distinctly visible. We had seen but one
lunar rainbow before, and that was a very faint one in the Bay of
Bengal, about one hundred miles from the Sandheads.
It is a curious fact that, like captains, there are comparatively few
foremast hands who remain perfectly strong and well throughout a long
passage. At least eight of ours are looking quite seedy, some with bad
colds, others with various disorders of liver and stomach, so that they
have to be doctored and fixed up with an assortment of medicines. The
way that five-grain blue-mass pills fly around on a deep-water ship is
a caution; one would think they were peppermint drops. Latitude 45° 20′
south; longitude 62° 10′ west.
+July 7+
What a change can be wrought at sea in a few hours! At eleven yesterday
morning we were motionless upon a glassy sea; eight hours later we were
rushing southward under the topsails before a moderate gale!
“And now the storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong;
He struck with his o’ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.”
Throughout yesterday afternoon the breeze steadily freshened, and
by four o’clock the sky-sails had been stowed, followed at five by
the royals, while after supper the gaskets were put on the three
top-gallant-sails and the cross-jack was hauled up; the ship logging
exactly twelve knots between six and seven o’clock, the best which we
have done yet, the wind being true and steady from west-northwest,
a little abaft the beam. I have seldom seen a finer sight than that
presented by the ship as she went bounding away south by west before
this grand breeze blowing straight off the pampas of Patagonia; the
moon, now at first quarter, casting a broad wake of silver radiance
over the short, steep, foaming seas which had arisen as though by
magic, and were already snarling and showing their teeth up above the
weather-quarter. By ten o’clock the spray had begun to bury the waist
of the ship once more, while at intervals during the night a deep,
heavy boom told us that something beside mere spray was tumbling over
the weather-side.
When we went on deck this morning there was no diminution in the wind,
though it had shifted into the west; but as the captain had kept off
to south, it was still on the beam. The maintop-mast-stay-sail had
been set, and we found the watch in the act of hauling out the spencer
on the gaff, and we presently had an opportunity of seeing this piece
of canvas in actual use for the first time. Its cut was excellent,
and, together with the stay-sail, steadied the ship wonderfully. The
main-sail was reefed, so that the arch of this great sail, which
curved over the ship like the crescent of the moon, was fully thirty
feet above the deck. Although still carrying the six topsails and the
foresail, we were not taking anything but huge volumes of spray aboard,
in spite of the fact that the surface of the ocean to windward showed
long, parallel streaks of foam, like the cross-section of a rasher of
bacon,--an appearance observed only when it is really blowing hard.
When one has been accustomed to the heavy, rigid main-sails of yachts,
a ship’s canvas in comparison (bar the spencer) appears to be, and
really is, singularly thin and limp. Even a brand-new foresail or
main-sail of a square-rigger cannot at all approach in thickness or
rigidity a yacht’s canvas; and it could not for a moment withstand
the strain to which the latter’s main-sail is subjected while being
stretched on the boom and gaff, not to mention the “sweating” up of
the sails with the jigs. As for a ship’s upper canvas, it has always
seemed to me too light, and I shall never forget my first acquaintance
with square-sails at close quarters. It was at Nassau. Walking one day
through a sponge-yard, I saw stretched on the ground great squares
of smoky, hempen canvas; and on feeling the various pieces, which
were the topsails of a vessel that had struck and gone to pieces on
Memory Rock, one hundred and fifty miles northwest of New Providence,
I remember thinking that it wasn’t at all surprising that the sails
of ships blew away if this was what they were made of. At any rate,
I put this vessel down as an old worn-out lumberman, fit for nothing
but carrying railway ties from Brunswick or Pensacola to New York. As
a matter of truth, these sails belonged to a fine British ship, the
“Blair Drummond”; and experience has since shown that her canvas was
neither better nor worse than the average, though hempen sails never
feel as thick or stout as those made of cotton-duck, which our ships
use. The advantages claimed for hemp are that it lasts longer, and that
sails made thereof are easier to handle than if made of cotton-duck,
but they do not present nearly so fine an appearance even when new. If
a ship’s canvas were made entirely of No. 0, or even of No. 1, duck,
it would be next to impossible to furl them in a hard blow. As it is,
with the soft, pliable duck and hemp, the blood often starts from the
men’s finger-ends from trying to gather in the bunt of the sail, which
bellies out like sheet-iron when the halliards have been let go. It was
only this morning that the mate told me that once, about thirty years
ago, when a foremast hand in the North Atlantic trade, he was one of
thirty men on the maintop-sail-yard (single) of the ship “Southampton,”
trying to put the third reef in the sail during a January gale. “And,
sir,” said he, “we could _not_ have tied the reef in that sail
if the ship had been sinkin’ under us, and that with a man for every
reef-point.” It is also surprising how neatly and compactly this thin
canvas can be furled on a yard. From the deck hardly anything at all
can be seen on the royal- and sky-sail-yards; while even the upper
topsails when in the gaskets are not anything like as bulky or hummocky
as the most fastidiously furled yacht’s main-sail.
I forgot to say that I gave David, the Scot, a drink on July Fourth. He
had been throwing out clumsy hints for one on that day, so I filled a
four-ounce bottle with Glenlivet and took it to him while he was eating
his dinner in his tiny, water-logged cavern forward of the galley. The
radiance reflected from his countenance upon the walls as he sighted
the grog fairly lit up the gloomy den, and when he had downed the
fiery liquid perfectly raw, he put down the bottle and delivered the
following oration, his superb figure raised to its supreme height:
“Wherever ye may go in this world, sir, may good luck go with ye, hand
in hand; may it not be many years till ye get command of a ship and
the finest one under the flag; I thank ye for the best drink that ever
passed me lips.” I was quite taken aback by his earnestness and the
depth of feeling with which he uttered these words in the broadest of
brogue so pleasant to the ear; and when he hoped that I would soon
command a ship, he was wishing me to hold the most exalted position
which the mind of a seaman can conceive.
By the look of the aneroid we are close to some dirt, as sailors say,
for now at 3 +P. M.+ the glass stands at 29.08, a fall of an
inch in twenty hours; the sky, too, has a hard look, the sun at noon
being unable to pierce the gloom, but shining hazy and dim, like a
gas-jet behind frosted glass. The altitude at noon now is only 20°, and
the sun’s rays are devoid of heat and almost of cheer. Last evening,
though, we witnessed another one of those rare and radiant Patagonian
sunsets. Every one who has looked at the illustrations in Nansen’s
“Farthest North” will call to mind some strange, impossible-looking
purple and crimson stratus clouds of the most violent hues. Well,
we have actually seen one of these singular and extremely gorgeous
skies, unnatural almost in its transcendent beauty. Nansen has caught
perfectly the more delicate tints as well as the most flaming colors.
We did fine work to-day, and in the twenty-four hours logged two
hundred and forty miles. Latitude, 48° 45′ south; longitude, 65° 5′
west.
+July 8+
At some time during the morning watch we crossed the fiftieth parallel
of south latitude, and have, therefore, now commenced the passage of
Cape Horn, the stormiest headland in the world, at the worst possible
season,--in the heart of the Antarctic winter. When a vessel is between
50° south in the Atlantic and 50° south in the Pacific she is said to
be making the passage of the Horn, and is off the Cape when she is
anywhere between those parallels; it matters not how far south she may
be blown, she is “off” Cape Horn from 50° to 50°. I think that I have
somewhere before said that an average passage would be about twenty
days, though the bad luck of some men is astonishing. On her last
westward voyage, for instance, the American ship “M. P. Grace” was more
than six weeks off the Cape,--forty-five days, to be precise.
Late yesterday afternoon the westerly winds which we have carried for
two days began to weaken, and at seven last evening had eased down to
a gentle breeze. Still, a wind which will drive a vessel three hundred
miles in thirty hours in this part of the world and allow her to lay
her course at the same time is not to be lightly spoken of, and we are
all in a happy frame of mind.
When the wind had almost let go, however, it began to edge stealthily
to the southward, and at 8.30 was at southwest, the dreaded point,
blowing in unsteady jerks. We had nothing above the topsails on the
ship, though she could easily have carried the royals, but there was
no use in piling on the canvas with the look that there was in the
southern sky. When the glass stands at 29.00 bad weather must be
expected; and when the captain left the deck at 8.45, the moon was
peering dimly through a gray, thin squall, bleared and sickly; the sea
was coming up from various points in short, convulsive, oily heaves and
a frowning rampart of dark cloud was rising in the south. “I’m going
below now for a wink,” said the skipper to Mr. Rarx, on watch; “keep
your eye open, for when it comes it’ll be sharp work.”
He had been down half an hour when, as the second mate and I stood
watching the cloud approach nearer, an angry, white glare now below
it, suddenly, without a second’s warning, like a blast from a cannon,
the wind fell upon us, laying the ship far over, although the spars
were almost naked. In a few moments Captain Scruggs rose out of the
companion-way and stood for an instant, considering the best move; I
have never yet seen him act without thinking, and it doesn’t take him
long to decide. “Shall we double-reef ’em, sir?” said Mr. Rarx, meaning
the upper topsails. “No, sir,” replied the captain; “let the yards run
down and then tie up the sails; call the port watch, sir; all hands
shorten sail.” “Ay, ay, sir,” heartily; and the next moment the second
mate swung himself down the weather-poop-ladder, stopped for a second
to rap on the mate’s door, and then disappeared forward in the wet and
gloom, while we could hear his clear, strong voice crying out above the
howling wind, “All h-a-n-d-s, shorten s-a-i-l.”
And now what an inspiring scene is enacted as the big ship plunges
forward, now on an upright keel, now heeled far down to leeward by the
fierce puffs which shriek through the rigging with a din which is
absolutely infernal. Standing by the weather-quarter-bitts looms up the
burly form of Captain Scruggs, whose keen, vigilant eye takes in every
detail of the ship and the weather; while the gaunt, motionless face of
the helmsman can be seen through the wheel-house windows, illumined by
the glow from the binnacle light. In another moment a dull, rumbling
sound is heard forward: it is the upper foretop-sail-yard running down,
and then the dim figures of fifteen or sixteen yellow-clad sailors can
be perceived as they jump into the rigging and claw out along the yard
to windward and to leeward, utterly unmindful of the pelting rain which
stings their faces, or the quick, tremendous rolls which one would
think must whip them off into the sea. Oh, bold and valiant seamen,
toiling so well and so silently up there in the gale and darkness,
truly, ye are the bravest and the least rewarded of men!
In another hour the ship was under the shortest canvas thus far,--lower
topsail, foresail, reefed main-sail, and spencer,--bending over to the
blast, the wind now rushing through the shrouds with that grand, deep
hum like the whirr of powerful machinery.
Throughout the night we kept ploughing ahead through an ever-increasing
sea, with showers of buckshot hail rattling overhead like storms of
bullets, varied now and then with heavy dashes of spray against the
cabin-house.
At eight this morning, though, the wind had so moderated that we
set the upper topsails, the ship wallowing continuously in a big
head-sea which had made during the night. At noon, though, it began
to breeze up once more, and at one o’clock the cry rang through the
ship, “All hands, reef the maintop-sail.” Again the men trotted up
the weather-rigging and turned in a double reef in less than twenty
minutes; not bad for a merchantman. It is curious to see the delight
with which an order to shorten sail is invariably received by a ship’s
company on the approach of heavy weather. No matter what their humor at
the moment may be, they always seem actually pleased when the expected
order comes from the after-guard; and, with eager glances over their
shoulders at the approaching squall, they leap into the shrouds and
race aloft to see who shall be the first over the rim of the top.
For the first time we, to-day, had stocking-leg duff for dinner. It
consists usually of a quantity of stewed dried apples wrapped up in
a roll of dough and boiled in a piece of cheese-cloth. It is by no
means a bad substitute for apple-dumpling, and with good sauce is
always hailed at sea with extravagant joy. The name originated in the
forecastle, where the duff is always boiled in the leg of a stocking.
Latitude, 50° 48′ south; longitude, 64° 34′ west.
+July 9+
At twelve o’clock last night it began to blow hard from west-northwest,
and we went on deck this morning to find a fresh gale from that
quarter, with a surprisingly heavy sea, considering the proximity of
the land, for the weather-shore was not more than sixty or seventy
miles away. The ship was under the lower topsails, foresail, reefed
main-sail, and spencer, going well and easily, a couple of points free,
heading into the land for smoother water. Gracious, how the wind yelled
around us this forenoon, drenching the ship fore and aft with the tops
of the foaming seas, which the gale whipped like the blowing of froth
from a vat of beer! In the severest puffs the wind certainly rose to
force 10; and on one occasion, when sliding down the weather-side of a
sea, being simultaneously struck by a heavy blast, we dipped the lee
poop-rail into the sea. At breakfast the skipper said, “There was sharp
lightning in the sou’west this morning, early, and when you see this
off Cape Horn, look out for bad weather and snug her down.” I should
think so, with the barometer at 28.98.
A new bird has made its appearance. It is of a light slate color, looks
and flies like a Mother Carey’s chicken, and is familiarly called by
sailors the Ice Bird, being supposed to exist chiefly in the vicinity
of ice. They are very cheerful little creatures, though, and being
small and light, were whisked about by the gale like scraps of paper.
We are just abreast now of the damp, dreary Falkland Islands, which,
if I mistake not, form the southernmost of all of Great Britain’s
colonies; she may possess islands which are farther south than these,
but they are not strictly colonies. The group comprises some two
hundred islands, though there are only two of any importance,--East
and West Falkland. The area of the former is three thousand square
miles, being considerably larger than Rhode Island, and contains the
most important settlement, Stanley, a town of one thousand inhabitants.
The climate of the Falklands is extremely healthy and equable, the
average temperature for the two midwinter months being 37°, that of
the two midsummer ones 47°; and although in the corresponding latitude
and the precise longitude of the southern part of Labrador, ice seldom
forms of sufficient thickness to allow skating. The weather, however,
is excessively damp. But, though there are generally two hundred and
fifty wet days in the year, the total annual precipitation is but
twenty inches, or one-half that of New York; the greater portion of the
moisture descending in the form of fogs and dense drizzles. More than
fifty vessels a year call at Stanley Harbor, and being so close to Cape
Horn, in the vicinity of which more ships are damaged by the elements
than in any other region in the world, it is natural that a ship-yard
and chandlery for the repair of sailing ships should pay extremely
well. But, say the deep-water skippers, woe to the vessel which falls
into the clutches of Stanley Harbor; it is almost impossible to escape
in less than six months, and the most exorbitant prices are asked for
absolutely necessary things. The last vessel of any size which put into
Stanley for extensive repairs was the British ship “Pass of Balmaha,”
which was detained there for nearly a year. It is stated that the
ship-yard, etc., pays forty per cent. on the investment.