the surface of the ocean smoked, and we couldn’t see the jib-boom for
the spume, which flew through the air like steam; yet in the very eye
of the storm the gay little Cape pigeons darted about like sparrows
in a summer shower. They seemed to find a deal to eat on the surface,
and their method of feeding was this: At the instant that an unusually
heavy sea passed they would swoop down into the hollow where it was
almost calm, snatch a few mouthfuls of whatever they found, and as
the next huge sea rushed at them, at the very second before they were
buried in the hissing crest, they extended their wings to the utmost,
the wind struck beneath them, and without any perceptible effort they
rose against the gale, only to drop again in a few moments, and repeat
the operation. It was really very pretty manœuvering, and compelled
admiration at the ease and certainty with which the little creatures
handled themselves even in the heaviest gusts.
Alas, the poor sailors! They have been continuously wet now for more
than ten days. It is true that from 8 +A.M.+ till eight in the
evening there is a fire burning in a small stove in the forecastle;
but the atmosphere is so extremely humid that the heat doesn’t seem to
affect the forecastle or the men’s clothes. Indeed, it is a grewsome
sight to look into that apartment as I did the other night at seven
o’clock. The port watch were below lying in their bunks with faces
toward the stove, which was all but concealed by dripping, steaming
garments swinging madly in the heavy rolls, water was splashing high up
on the grimy walls from the floor, while a dense, rank vapor pervaded
the place, through which the stove glowed dully, like a headlight
in a fog. Many of the men are now afflicted with the most grievous
perhaps of all the ills with which sailors are cursed in cold, bad
weather,--the dreaded sea-boils. These harassing sores are due to the
friction of oil-skins and other clothes upon the wrists and neck,
continually drenched with salt-water, though the bad condition of
sailors’ blood generally is doubtless responsible for the dreadful
state of the wrists of the sufferers. It is singular that mere friction
combined with cold sea-water should produce such results. Sea-boils or
salt-water-boils, as they are sometimes called, are exquisitely painful
and very sensitive to any rubbing, and they must be bandaged and
poulticed until it is time for the lancing, upon which a sort of core,
like a short, thick piece of sinew, is laid bare, which must be seized
and plucked out. Two of these boils as large as plums will lay a man
up; and any attempt to work him hard generally results in a high fever
and his bunk for several days. Imagine what the suffering of sailors
must be off Cape Horn when these boils are added to fatigue, cold, loss
of sleep from frequent calls of all hands, and to the lethargy that
comes from exposure. I repeat again, why do men ship before the mast?
There are other things to do, and even breaking stones on a highway is
to my mind infinitely preferable. Notwithstanding everything said to
the contrary, the life of a Cape Horn foremast hand is the life of a
beast. It is hard, wearing, and bitter beyond words; and when are added
the kicks and the blows from belaying-pins and knuckle-dusters that the
men are usually served with on American ships by way of dessert, it
is difficult to believe that human beings can survive such privations
and sufferings. Poor fellows! They stumble about the decks with drawn,
haggard faces and two or three with staring eyes. We watched one this
forenoon (it was Louis Eckers) trying to put a watch-tackle strop on
the lee lower maintop-sail-brace; the job amounted to nothing more than
standing on the bitts and twisting a bit of rope around the brace; but
so weak and stiffened was he that another man had to be called in his
stead. Some of the younger fellows are still in pretty good condition,
such as Broadhead, Charley, and Olsen; but most of the older men are
practically half dead. I think the most remarkable of all of a sailor’s
characteristics is the rapidity with which they forget their hardships;
for let Jack get up into the balmy Trades again and all of his misery
and pain vanish, the memory of what he has but just endured fades
away, and when he has been ashore for a week at the end of the voyage,
he is quite ready again to face the snow-thickened gales of Cape Horn.
All hopes of a rapid passage have now been abandoned, for we have been
ten weeks at sea to-day and are not yet around Cape Horn. It will be
recalled that we were in the longitude of the Cape a few days ago, but
heaven only knows when we can make up what we have lost since then.
Our distance east of the Horn now is not more than seventy-five miles,
and it does seem remarkable that we cannot make those few miles of
westing; and we see now why all the sailing directions say, “Whatever
you do, _make westing! make westing!_” Even though the wind is at
southwest, as we have had it almost constantly, one would think that by
standing well to the southward a ship could get a lay up past the Cape;
but what with a two-knot easterly current, two points of leeway, and
22° of easterly variation, not to mention her being seven points off
the wind under such short canvas, it is actually impossible. A yacht
might do it, for she could go to windward under a storm-try-sail to an
appreciable extent; but if a square-rigger holds her own and makes no
easting on the _port_ tack with the wind blowing hard from the
southwest off Cape Horn, she is doing very well.
At five this morning the wind backed to south and hope glowed warm in
the hearts of the men; but it didn’t take it long to shift back again
to its old quarter, between southwest and west-southwest, and the old
man now makes no bones about our being real _bona fide_ Jonahs.
It is growing colder, too, the noon temperature being 31°, though no
lower at night, but the wind is as cutting and clammy and dank as the
breath of an iceberg. Some ship-masters, on account of the prolonged
head gales and seas of Cape Horn, prefer the Good Hope voyage when
bound from North Atlantic ports to California or British Columbia;
but while the winds are fair in the Southern Ocean on this course, the
distance is so much greater that it is doubtful whether or not there is
any advantage in it. The latest example is the case of the British ship
“Wasdale,” which reached San Francisco not very long ago, one hundred
and sixty-five days from London _via_ Good Hope, having sailed the
enormous distance of twenty-four thousand five hundred and twenty-six
miles; the Horn voyage averages three weeks less in time than the above
and six thousand miles less in distance. The “Wasdale” must be a smart
ship to cover nearly twenty-five thousand miles in that time.
It seems very odd that we have as yet met no homeward-bounders, as
we have been several times right in their track; the skipper says,
however, that there are doubtless a dozen vessels within a radius
of fifty miles, all bound to the westward. Latitude, 57° 25′ south;
longitude, 60° 5′ west.
+July 21+
“Land close aboard on the lee-quarter, sir,” was the startling
information that the mate called down the companion-way about daylight,
as we sat down to breakfast this morning. It didn’t take the captain
more than three or four seconds to reach the deck, and we heard him
cry savagely, “All hands wear ship; lively now, lively.” And none
too soon, for there on the lee beam lay Hermite Island only three
or four miles away. This is one of a cluster known as the Hermite
Islands, being seven in number altogether; they form the culminating
group of the Tierra del Fuegian archipelago, of which Cape Horn is
the southernmost. We must have made more westing than the captain had
estimated, for he had just remarked that we ought to see the Horn
again at nine o’clock. Of course we wore as quickly as the stiffened
arms of the men would permit, and for quite a long while, in a dismal
rain, we ran down parallel with these dreary shores, on which we would
have struck had daylight been a couple of hours later. If our position
of yesterday wasn’t a false one, we did phenomenally well during the
past twenty-four hours, for the land that we first saw this morning,
and which the skipper recognized at once, is eighty miles west of
yesterday’s position. But, good gracious! we were at noon to-day
within eight miles of where we were last Friday in the heavy gale! The
latitude was exactly the same and we were eight miles farther west.
Eight miles in five days. How does that sound? And every day of it
fight, fight, fight against head-winds varying from a moderate to a
whole gale. In truth, the famous Cape weather is being administered in
heroic doses. Personally, I don’t mind it in the least; weeks or even
months of it, if necessary, would be quite immaterial to me; but the
interior of the cabin is so abominably uncomfortable for my wife, bar
our own room, that for this reason I want to get out of it as quickly
as possible. This gloomy weather, too, is dreadfully trying for her, as
it is too dark to read below without a lamp at even the brightest part
of the day.
At ten we opened out Cape Spencer, a magnificent headland at the
southern end of Hermite Island, and an hour later sighted Horn Island
for the second time, bearing northeast true, distant eighteen miles.
It was the first really good look we had had at the Horn, and the
world-famous rock presented quite a formidable appearance, being five
hundred feet in height, though lacking the majestic dignity of Cape
Spencer, which lies twenty-five miles west-northwest of it. Indeed,
there is no particular landmark about it to cause Horn Island to stand
forth from the surrounding crags. Many people imagine that the Cape
was so called from its resemblance to a horn, but this is a mistake.
The proper name is Cape Hoorn, which was given it in 1616 by the
Dutch navigator Schouten, in honor of his native town in Flanders. On
the other hand, False Cape Horn, about fifty miles northwest of the
true cape, at the extremity of Hardy Peninsula, bears a remarkable
likeness to an inverted curved cornucopia, and also a resemblance to
the fantastic Cape Split in the Bay of Fundy, at the entrance to the
Minas Basin. It was our cherished desire to photograph Horn Island, but
we were prevented by the disadvantageous conditions; so far as known,
it has been photographed but once, and that by Captain Rivers of the
American ship “A. G. Ropes,” who, a short time since, when bound to the
westward, sailed boldly in to within a few miles and, during a bright
spell of weather, was enabled to obtain a photograph of the great Cape.
This is the second time that we have been west of the Horn, if only a
few miles, and here we go back again to the eastward on the starboard
tack, with the wind a strong breeze from southwest by south. We are
steering about south-southeast and the variation makes it south, which
would be passable were it not for the leeway and current, so that, in
spite of the variation, south-southeast is our actual course. Good-by
for a few days, friend Horn; perhaps we’ll pay you another visit in a
week or so. Indeed, the most satisfactory manner of ascertaining one’s
exact position down here after a week or two of gales and dark weather
is to set out and look for Cape Horn, which will no doubt be found
in two or three days, take a fresh departure from it, and then away
south again. This is actually what we have been doing, only we missed
the Cape this last time, but found an equally satisfactory landmark
in Spencer; if a ship-master can calculate his longitude to within a
degree (about thirty-five miles) in the midst of all these currents,
he is a shrewd navigator. By the way, what appropriate names have been
given to various portions of wild and comfortless Tierra del Fuego; on
the chart now before me appear such appellations peculiarly distinctive
of this region: Last Hope Inlet, Desolation Island, Dislocation Harbor,
Obstruction Sound, Famine Reach, Deceit Rocks.
Rain, rain; snow, snow; hail, hail. No end of it in sight. The aneroid
has risen to 30 inches, which, with an increase of nine degrees in
the temperature, would indicate a northerly wind; but we have long
since given up hoping for such good luck. At 1.30 this afternoon we
saw the pale sun at an altitude of about seven degrees for a moment,
but he quickly drew over his face the cowl of nimbus cloud, as though
terrified at the sight of Cape Horn. However, like the Ancient Mariner,
“we hailed it in God’s name,” and were comforted at knowing that the
orb is still in existence.
Captain Scruggs and the mate often now have very turbulent and
passionate arguments, not to say quarrels, at meals. It is apparently
impossible for the mate to get his reckoning right or anywhere near
right, and to-day when the dinner-bell had clanged through the cabin,
the skipper asked him suddenly and angrily what his longitude was. Mr.
Goggins, after emptying his grimy vest-pockets of bits of tobacco,
twine, and infinitesimal pencils, quakingly produced a morsel of
ragged, dirty brown paper, upon which appeared a variety of rare
and hitherto unknown characters, which he twisted and turned at
inconceivable angles, with horrible facial contortions. There was a
dead, portentous silence, “Well, sir?” rapped out the skipper “I--I--I,
er--er, about 71° 22′, sir.”
“About 71° 22′, eh? That’s your idea of the ship’s position, is it?
Just let me tell you that this has gone far enough. Do you understand?
How in the devil’s name can you make it 71° with Cape Spencer right
under your nose? Don’t you know enough yet to take a new departure
from a landmark? I did think you had enough sense for that, but I see I
was wrong,” etc., etc.
They argue, too, about the most trivial affairs, during which the
skipper all but blows the skylights off with his hurricane voice. Later
on, at dinner to-day, they quarrelled about the position of a certain
San Francisco restaurant. The old man swore that it wasn’t on Polk
Street. Then they went at each other quite savagely, but gradually
calmed down, and we thought it was all over, when suddenly the skipper
hammered on the table with his fist, and shouted, “That restaurant’s
no more on Polk Street than this huckleberry pie’s a blueberry; I mean
raspberry.” And he was so vexed at his simple little mistake that he
thundered at the boy Sammie, who stands shuddering in the pantry during
meals, “You, Sam, get some buckets of salt-water and wrench out that
bath-tub; and if you’re longer than ten minutes, damme if I don’t break
you all to +PIECES+.” Sammie has a woful time of it on board;
for, besides doing all conceivable sorts of dirty work, he is the butt
of the ship’s company, teased beyond endurance by the men, and kicked
and pounded mercilessly by both mates. Probably his most disagreeable
and anxious moments are passed in the pantry while we are at meals.
His dread of the old man is so intense that in his awful presence he
is little better than a lunatic. While he is in the pantry he dwells
in terror of a summons to the table; and when “You, Sam!” finally does
come crashing forth, and he reaches the captain’s side in a single
bound, it irritates this singular man excessively. Then, of course,
the mate must needs rake up some fancied grievance against the unhappy
lad, who is immensely relieved when he is ordered in disgrace from
the dining-room. The other day the skipper told him, in my wife’s
presence, that he was not fit to carry guts to a bear. It seemed to us
that that was exactly what he was doing, especially as he had a dish
of tongues and sounds in his hand at the moment, which to me is the
most objectionable of all sea-food; it’s worse than burgoo and ham-fat.
Latitude, 56° 12′ south; longitude, 67° 32′ west.
+July 22+
Wore round at eight this morning, and stood north and west once more on
the port tack, as the wind backed into the southward and allowed us to
come up to west-northwest by compass, or northwest by west true, which
is not bad. We made so little to the good, though, in the twenty-four
hours that it cannot be said that we are doing anything more than
waltzing up and down the sixty-seventh meridian. We have gone through
the water fast enough, but not in the right direction; for forty-eight
hours now we have been under single-reefed topsails, and if a ship can
carry that canvas she will do five or six knots an hour even in a heavy
sea. A single reef in the topsails means generally whole main-sail and
foresail, which is enough to send a vessel ahead at a good rate. When
the main-sail is reefed or hauled up, though, a ship goes to leeward
nearly as fast as she goes ahead.
We sped over the water then at quite a respectable gait, and, in trying
to make a little westing, if the skipper is driving the ship for all
she’s worth, for both wind and sea are heavy, no man can blame him.
The men continue to grow worse and worse, and there are not six in the
forecastle who do not show the effects of exposure, chilblains and
sea-boils. The latter have increased shockingly; three more men are
down with them, Coleman, Pettersen, and Eckers. Coleman this morning
showed me two dreadful-looking wrists; the left one was particularly
bad, with a deep rent or cavity in the flesh itself that a silver
dollar would not cover; not bleeding, but mortifying and sloughing
terribly, presenting a sickening spectacle. Coleman says that some of
the others are a good deal worse than he is. Hapless creatures! how
they manage to do any work at all with these wounds is difficult to
understand. Let them be bandaged ever so tightly and what will it avail
in the rough work? The bandages soon work loose, and there is the bare,
raw flesh exposed to the salt-water and the rubbing of their sleeves.
If Job had sea-boils, it would be safe betting that they were the worst
afflictions that he had. Why will not sailors take care of themselves
ashore and obviate to a certain extent such suffering as they undergo
off Cape Horn? The youngest and healthiest of our men, those with
clear skins, do not seem to suffer much with these boils; and they say
that another safeguard to a certain degree against them is to dry the
wrists as much as possible before turning in. Bad food, though, with a
preponderance of salt meat, will soon play havoc with the blood of the
stoutest man; and while there seems to be a fairly good variety of food
on the “Higgins” for the crew, yet the majority of sailors on Yankee
ships are fed chiefly on wretched, scurvy-breeding food. The name
that American ships used to bear thirty and forty years ago for the
superlatively good rations that the men got, is by no means deserved
at the present day by the majority of our own deep-water ships. Many
are the tales of starvation told by men arriving on Yankee ships at
San Francisco in these days; I mention San Francisco particularly, as
that port has until very lately sustained the reputation of withholding
justice from sailors to a remarkable extent. As to the stories of
foremast hands lying on the witness-stands in court when defending
themselves, I am convinced it is generally not so. We have seen several
acts committed by the mates aboard this vessel against the sailors
which would be regarded as entirely untrue by a justice if told by a
seaman. In the great majority of cases the word of a bucko mate is
taken in court in preference to the sailor’s, and in this way there is
an inconceivable amount of injustice done to the latter. For instance,
there are here at least a dozen men in the forecastle the word of any
one of whom I would unhesitatingly believe rather than that of either
of the mates. Captain Scruggs appears to be, and I believe he is, an
entirely truthful man; but as for Goggins, he would lie for a worn-out
chew of tobacco (he often tells monstrous falsehoods to the skipper
concerning the men); and even Mr. Rarx must come under the same ban.
It seems to me that this ship makes a great deal of water. Twice in
every watch, night and day, since we have been south of 50°, the
ship has had to be pumped out; and in twelve hours yesterday, when
the wretched pumps broke down again, we made twenty-eight inches of
water. It is all very fine to say that wooden ships are lighter in bad
weather than iron ones, and to allude to the latter as diving-bells,
but this ship is wetter than the iron “Mandalore” was running before a
heavy sea, and the latter possessed the inestimable advantage of never
leaking even when driven into a high head-sea.
Captain Scruggs was in a state of mind when, after wearing round on
the port tack this morning, he found that we couldn’t head up much
better than north true. Of course, we had the customary eruption
during the manœuvre, and he raged quite furiously at the helmsmen,
who, unfortunately, were the two dullest men in the ship--Pettersen
and Eckers. As I say, the captain wrought himself into wild gusts of
passion, and when he found the ship off to north-northwest he had
apparently exhausted all methods for easing his mind. But we reckoned
without our skipper, being a man of much resource, and he conceived
a brilliant plan. After standing motionless and speechless for a full
minute he strode to the weather wheel-house door, tore it open, and
crash! slammed it to. Again, another bang, worse than the first. Once
more a great crashing rent the air that shook the structure, while the
old man ground his teeth and worked his brush-like eyebrows as though
they were on a string, as he stamped over to leeward, muttering to
himself and shaking all over. It was a mirth-compelling scene.
A little anecdote will show him in yet another phase: we asked him, a
day or two ago, who was the best helmsman in the ship, and he replied,
waspishly, “There hain’t no best among ’em; they’re all d---- bad;
fed like kings, and this is what you get.” Latitude, 57° 30′ south;
longitude, 67° west.
+July 23+
At eleven o’clock last night we heard the rasping voice of old Goggins
sing out, “Land ahead!” The captain turned out at once (he goes to
bed now at seven, and sleeps till midnight if the weather isn’t too
outrageous), and immediately ordered the ship on the other tack;
and, after we had come around, three pinnacles of rock were seen
standing sharply up out of the sea, for the night wasn’t a very dark
one. They were the Diego Ramirez Rocks, which, lying eighteen marine
leagues southwest of Cape Horn, form unquestionably the most dangerous
obstruction in the entire Southern Ocean, rearing their jagged peaks
vertically out of a depth of two hundred fathoms, right in the track
of westward-bound ships. If the weather is thick and dark, there is
nothing to apprise the mariner of their proximity, even if he keeps the
lead going, until the thunder of what is perhaps the most tremendous
surf in the world warns him, too late, that he is within hailing
distance of the dreaded Diego Ramirez. A crash, a great shout, and lo!
a stately ship and her company are effaced in a moment of time, a few
bits of timber cast upon the shore by those vast surges of the South
Pacific being all that remains of what was one of man’s most beautiful
works, a full-rigged ship.
The last vessel to go ashore on these rocks was the American ship
“Arabia”; and, although she went to pieces immediately, all of her crew
miraculously escaped and were taken off by another vessel and landed
at Montevideo. Ship-masters call the rocks ‘Dyeego Rammerreez’, though
they inconsistently pronounce San Diego as it ought to be,--Deeaigo.
Why is it, I wonder, that this land is always spoken of as being
eighteen marine leagues from Cape Horn? Why not say fifty-four miles.
Yet all ocean directories say that they are eighteen marine leagues
from the Horn, though all other distances are given in miles.
We would really have passed several miles to leeward of the rocks if
we had kept on, but no ship-master will ever take any chances with
them; however, we are much elated at finding ourselves an appreciable
distance to the westward of the Cape. Throughout the day we have been
fanning along under a main-royal! But that’s the way of this region.
Yesterday morning under reefed topsails; this morning courtesying
quietly along over an almost smooth sea, bar the southwesterly swell.