exhibition of what is called “discipline” on American ships, but
what is elsewhere known as brutality. These are the facts: After
dinner a man was sent down into the lazarette to bring up a barrel
of split pease; it was the luckless Swede, Brün. This man, who is
not particularly strong at best, and is now in very bad shape, found
great difficulty in shoving the barrel, which seemed to weigh about
one hundred and fifty pounds, up the lazarette hatch-way; and care
must then be exercised never to allow the chimes of a barrel to touch
the deck, as it would leave a scar. Brün finally got the barrel clear
of the hatch and was rolling it flat along the poop, when the mate,
looking as sour as lime-juice, came hobbling along the alley-way and,
pointing to some old marks in the deck, said, “What d’you do that
for?” Now, I am perfectly sure that Brün had not made those marks, and
so was the mate; but Goggins was in one of his snarling moods, and
without further ado he applied his boot to Brün’s person with such
severity that he fell sprawling over the barrel, which then rolled over
to leeward and struck the rail with a loud crack. Without a word, or
even a look, the man gathered himself up, and, grasping the barrel,
continued on his way, only remarking, “I’m doing the best I can,
sair,” in the weak, precise tones of a foreigner speaking English.
“What! answerin’ back?” yelled Goggins. “Who learned yer that, eh?”
and running up to Brün, he seized him fiercely by the throat with his
left hand and then drove his right fist with full force into the man’s
face. The latter staggered and fell backward half over the rail into
the lanyards of the mizzen-shrouds, where he remained some moments
before he came to; and then, well knowing that he would have been
pounded almost to death with any handy weapon if he so much as opened
his mouth again, he once more started forward with the barrel. This is
a nice state of affairs when men in the merchant service of the United
States are suffered to be beaten and kicked into insensibility, and
in some cases actually killed at the hands of brutal, savage mates.
Before we sailed in this ship I had often heard that sailors under the
stars and stripes underwent the most cruel punishments, in many cases
of so unusual and low a description as to preclude mention in these
pages, but I hardly believed it. Now, however, after knowing how Yankee
ships are run and that such brutes as Goggins sail as mates in them,
it is my opinion, and that of my wife also, who understands sailors,
that the published accounts of seamen’s cruelties and sufferings at
the hands of the officers of our sailing ships are, in nearly every
instance, true and straightforward descriptions of what took place at
sea. And what is the usual result? The justice dismisses the case with
the remark, “Justifiable discipline.” This is the way that the marine
law is generally administered in our lower courts. There appears to
be but little attempt at justice for the sailor, though I think that
their chances of obtaining their rights in the future are considerably
brighter than they used to be. Does any one of the other three great
maritime nations--Great Britain, France, and Germany--permit such
acts in their merchantmen as the beating of sailors? Decidedly not.
In those countries’ ships sailors are treated as such and not as
anthropophagical savages. Yet our marine laws are practically the
same as theirs. Their laws are enforced, ours are not, by reason of
petty briberies and deceits. It is a different story on our steamers,
where the officers would not dare to maltreat the men. Discipline,
far better than we have here, can be maintained without recourse to
violence, which is proved by the vessels of other nations. Contrary to
the statements of captains and mates, who make them to shield their bad
deeds, foremast hands are _not_ continually trying to create a
disturbance. I will leave this question to be answered by two American
ship-masters, who run their vessels as deep-water ships ought to be,
and who never have any trouble with their crews. These two men, I do
not say that there are no others (though there are lementably few
of them), are Captain Gates of the “S. P. Hitchcock,” and Captain
Banfield of the “St. James”; these skippers believe in decent treatment
and they see that their men get it. Among twenty or thirty men there
are sure to be two or three hard cases; these should be dealt with
according to their deserts; yet on this ship the black legs have,
in every instance that we have seen, escaped punishment, while such
inoffensive and well-meaning men as Brün, Karl, and others, have been
made the mark for the violent tempers of both mates. The reason for
brutality on Yankee ships is traceable in every instance to one man,
the captain; for, if he did not countenance it, such acts could not
be committed. It is passing strange that American captains, who have
almost invariably risen from before the mast, should have so little
sympathy for sailors, in view of the fact that only a few years ago
they suffered from the tempers of mates just as now the men do who are
under them. Latitude, 57° 22′ south; longitude, 68° 55′ west.
+July 24+
Our light winds didn’t last long, for the cross-jack had to be hauled
up, the three top-gallant-sails furled, and the main-sail reefed during
last night. We made excellent headway, though, doing five miles more
than three degrees of longitude, though we were driven off to the
southward too much, being at noon to-day one hundred and sixty miles
south of Cape Horn and well below the northern limit of drift-ice,
though the temperature is not low, 39° at noon. Thus far this has been
a slightly warmer winter passage than the average, though it will
surprise many people to know that the thermometer rarely falls below
30° north of 60° south; the lowest that Captain Scruggs ever saw it was
28°, though a Dutch ship, of which I have forgotten the name, reported
the mercury as low as 20° on one occasion some seventy-five years ago.
Fogs form a very disagreeable feature of the Southern Ocean after the
meridian of the Horn is passed, and the dampness likewise generally
increases. A pretty good idea of the excessive moisture in this part
of the world may be obtained by reading the report of the surveying
steamer “Sylvia,” which was stationed in the Magellan Straits for
fourteen months. Throughout that period rain fell on an average for
eleven hours out of every twenty-four, the amount per day being half an
inch.
As for fogs, we have been in one for twenty-four hours now, and a
lookout is stationed on the forecastle-head by day as well as by
night. Indeed, it is probable that the hardest and most tedious part
of the passage still remains; usually it is not very difficult to
reach the seventieth meridian, the heaviest westerly gales generally
being experienced between that point and 50° south, which vessels aim
to cross in 90° west. We should very much like to see the wind come
out of the southwest again, by which it will be perceived how hard we
are to please, for the first ten days off Cape Horn we had nothing
but southwesterly gales, and we rebuked them and would be satisfied
with naught but northerly breezes; now a southerly blow would be most
welcome.
This morning at eleven the skipper shouted down the companion-way
that there was a vessel on our weather beam, steering east, and that
she would pass close aboard. So we went on deck at once, and there,
looming high out of the fog, under a heavy press of sail, was a large,
three-masted bark. She was the first homeward-bounder that we had seen,
was probably from Australian or New Zealand ports, and she presented
a noble appearance as she swept rapidly by, distant not more than a
third of a mile. She was an old-style vessel, although built of iron,
with no sheer and a phenomenally long jib-boom, the practice in these
days being to rig sailing vessels of both iron and wood with short,
thick, pole bowsprits. We thought she was going to ask us for her
position, for she was two degrees south of the homeward-bound track; so
we chalked “59°” and “72°” in large figures on a slate, ready to hold
up, for she was near enough to make them out with the glasses. She flew
onward, though, without a sign; and as it was none of our business what
she was doing a hundred and twenty miles out of her course, we didn’t
offer any suggestions. This vessel was a good illustration of the
difference in carrying sail between close-hauled and running free, for
we had nothing set above the topsails, while she was under all three
royals.
Yesterday was a grand rest-day for the men,--that is, a cessation from
being continually drenched with salt-water, and a few days of this sort
would go far toward healing their sea-boils. As Paddy put it, “To-day’s
worth tin dollars to any one of us, sor.” It was, in truth, an unusual
sight to see the men going about without their oil-skins once more,
for fully two whole weeks have passed since they could work on the
main-deck without these yellow garments. Oil-skins really do not do
very much good in heavy weather, though, as has been mentioned before.
Nothing but a suit of diving armor would keep a man dry on deck off
Cape Horn; still, oil-skins keep a great deal of water out, and also
protect a man against the cold. So much bad weather lately has deprived
me of my customary exercise at the pumps, for it is dangerous to go
knocking about the decks in a heavy sea; but yesterday I had nearly
an hour of hard work, doing forty strokes to the minute. Both watches
pumped together, as a rope was passed over one of the handles; two
thousand strokes at a ship’s pumps is exceedingly lusty exercise if a
man doesn’t shirk his work, and, I should think, would satisfy Sandow
himself.
[Illustration: Forty to the minute]
As far as the atmosphere here is concerned, to-day is typical Southern
Ocean weather: drizzly, foggy, clammy, and dismal to an incredible
degree. There is hardly any light at all below at noon, and everything
is dim and obscure, in spite of the fact that the sun commenced his
southern journey more than a month ago. The cabin bill of fare,
however, has not shown the least symptoms of debility; on the contrary,
when we got down past the Falklands the diversity and excellence of the
edibles seemed to increase. The immense variety of tinned goods put
up in these days is astonishing; for to the old list, which comprised
meats, pease, and beans, are added such things as spinach, cabbage, and
pumpkin for pies, all of which seem to be nearly, if not quite, as good
as fresh vegetables. The only article of food on board that is really
bad is the pie-crust; there are not adjectives enough in any language
to describe this atrocious stuff. So surprisingly good is the eating
now that I have copied down what we had at each meal for one week, in
the very worst weather. Here it is, with the hope that the reader will
not be bored in the perusal thereof.
+Sunday+
_Breakfast._--Salt mackerel, smoked sausage, boiled hominy, and
potatoes.
_Dinner._--Pea soup, pressed corned beef, boiled potatoes,
spinach, tapioca pudding, _demi-tasse_!
_Supper._--Pressed corned beef, fried potatoes, jam, and cheese.
+Monday+
_Breakfast._--Oatmeal, ham and eggs, corn bread.
_Dinner._--Vermicelli soup, beef stew, boned turkey, asparagus,
boiled potatoes, deep apple pie.
_Supper._--Boned turkey, corned-beef hash, baked potatoes, canned
strawberries, “Hamburg process.”
+Tuesday+
_Breakfast._--Fried tripe, scrambled eggs (questionable),
griddle-cakes.
_Dinner._--Vegetable soup, Hamburg steak of fresh pork, Boston
baked beans, pumpkin pie.
_Supper._--Mutton stew, baked beans, stewed corn, marmalade.
+Wednesday+
_Breakfast._--Oatmeal, salt herring, bacon, potatoes, rolls.
_Dinner._--Oyster soup, prawn curry and rice, boned turkey and
string-beans, blackberry pie.
_Supper._--Salt beef stew, baked potatoes, stewed apples, canned
pears.
+Thursday+
_Breakfast._--Hominy, bacon and eggs, muffins.
_Dinner._--Beef broth, roast fresh pork, asparagus, tinned plum
pudding.
_Supper._--Boned chicken, corned-beef hash, rolls, fig preserves.
+Friday+
_Breakfast._--Smoked salmon, omelette (questionable), rice
pan-cakes.
_Dinner._--Clam chowder, picked-up codfish, meat pie, pease,
huckleberry pie.
_Supper._--Fish-balls, cold tongue, marmalade.
+Saturday+
_Breakfast._--Lobster curry and rice, bacon rolls.
_Dinner._--Vegetable soup, roast fresh pork, Boston beans,
macaroni, quince pie.
_Supper._--Cold pork, baked potatoes, baked beans, stewed prunes.
To this excellent bill of fare I must add that every single item is
of the very best, and when it is mentioned that the ship was stored
by Morris & Co., who include the White Star Line among their patrons,
further comment is hardly necessary. All the pickles and preserves are
in glass jars and put up by Crosse & Blackwell, Worcestershire sauce
by Lea & Perrin, while olives, Edam cheese, and several varieties of
biscuits are always on the table. With such eating, we can exclaim with
Nansen, “Are we to be pitied when such cheer for the inner man is
provided?” Coffee that is actually delicious washes down all these good
things. Would that sailors fared as well in proportion.
But oh, the surroundings! The captain in his table manners really
isn’t so very much out of the way, but the mate and the table-cloth
are utterly beyond language. The crust of dirt upon every visible
portion of old Goggins’s anatomy is rapidly increasing, and mire of
various sorts is crystallized in the folds of his corrugated skin. It
is true that the second mate of the “Mandalore” was no better, but then
he didn’t eat with us, while this creature does, instead of with his
pachydermatous relatives in the sty.
The table-cloth is a marvellous piece of work at the end of the third
day, with islands of gravy, continents of soup, lakes of coffee,
and dollops of all kinds of grease, so that it looks like a sort of
hideous crazy quilt. All this could be avoided by using a piece of
white oil-cloth instead of the soiled cotton cloth, and it could be
wiped clean after each meal. But no deep-water skipper who ever lived
could be induced to abandon his table-cloth, which he cherishes with an
extravagant affection. To him it is one of the boundaries between the
cabin and the forecastle, and anything reminding him of those evil days
when he himself lived in that odious den is too monstrous for thought.
Latitude, 58° 40′ south; longitude, 72° west.
+July 25+
And still to the southward we go. A little more of this will be more
than sufficient; but the northwesterly winds continue, and we cannot
choose but steer whither they will permit us. Already we are nearly
four degrees south of the Horn, and we will no doubt cross the sixtieth
parallel in a short time. Many captains prefer going even as far
as 64° south, and make their westing down there where the degrees
of longitude are less than thirty miles, and then steer north on a
meridian, if they can. _If they can._ Ah! that’s the point; for
often, after penetrating far into the high latitudes, they cannot get
north again when they want to, and these vessels then make very long
passages. For instance, about three years ago several ships were in
sight of each other, all bound to the westward. Some of them, including
the “Reuce,” a Yankee ship, of which Mr. Rarx was then second mate,
knocked about near the land, waiting for a slant; the others dove into
the southward immediately, including the “St. Paul.” All of the latter
made very long passages, the “Reuce” having discharged her cargo in
San Francisco and commenced reloading before the “St. Paul” arrived.
Captain Scruggs is one of those who do not advocate the southern
passage, and he has no chart that reaches below 58° south, so that my
track chart of the world is the only one that can be used just now.
This doesn’t seem right, for ships in the Cape Horn trade ought to be
provided with charts to the South Polar Circle. Suppose a ship were
blown down among the South Shetlands without a chart? Such a thing is
quite possible, and once in that archipelago without a knowledge of the
land or any of the courses, a ship would stand mighty little chance of
getting out again in bad weather.
This wind is just exactly in the wrong place; of course, we could go
round on the other tack, but we couldn’t do better than north-northeast
by compass, which would be an absurd course, so we have to go pegging
away at it and trust to luck. We are now almost exactly south of
New York, and can imagine the people eating and sleeping there at
the same time that we do ourselves, though under somewhat different
conditions. Steady rain has commenced again; the aneroid stands at 29,
and the melancholy, doleful appearance of the heavens and the sea has
apparently increased. Latitude, 59° 40′ south; longitude, 75° 20′ west.
+July 26+
At last we are steering our course, west-northwest true. A very light
breeze has just now (4 +P.M.+) begun to breathe softly out of
the southeast, so faint that we are not doing a mile an hour against
a head-sea; but even such a progression is most welcome, being in the
right direction.
We had all the wind that we wanted yesterday afternoon, though from
the westward. It began to blow hard at three o’clock, and at 4.30 the
upper fore- and mizzen-top-sails were clewed up; the main-topsail was
double-reefed at five; the main-sail was furled at six; at seven the
foresail was hauled up, and it was blowing a furious gale. So violent
was the wind that all hands were more than an hour and a half making
fast the foresail alone. At midnight there wasn’t a breath of wind,
and we have ever since floundered about in a heavy swell from several
simultaneous directions, and we presented the singular appearance
of a ship becalmed under a double-reefed maintop-sail. Of such is
the weather in the heart of the Southern Ocean. We have crossed the
sixtieth parallel, and at noon we were two hundred and forty miles
farther south than Cape Horn; and so silent and desolate is this vast
ocean that, like Nansen in the “Fram,” we pursue our journey in deepest
solitude, a molecule in this, the largest body of water on the globe.
There is no alteration in the dark weather, save that at one this
afternoon the sun showed himself for a moment, and I tried to get an
ex-meridian, but failed because of the poor horizon. It has now been
almost a fortnight since we have had either a chronometer or a meridian
sight, and our reckoning is probably far from true. There is always
something adverse in taking sights down here; for, if the sun isn’t
obscured, a bad horizon makes the correct altitude impossible; and if
the sea-rim is well marked, there is sure to be a gale of wind blowing
to drench the sextant with spray. Happy is the mariner who can get an
accurate observation once every ten days south of Cape Horn, and ships
often reach 30° south in the Pacific without a glimpse of the sun.
At four yesterday afternoon the heaviness and the oppressiveness and
foreboding look of the atmosphere were almost terrible; while the disk
of the sun, weak and pale through the mist-squalls, glared down upon
the wild scene with sickly eye. Hope has arisen within our breasts,
though, with the present southeasterly airs, and perhaps it will not
be long now until we are in bright sunshine again, which will dry out
everything below. The stove seems powerless to reduce the humidity
of the cabin, and the condition of the dining-room is absolutely
outrageous.
At supper last evening we had a pleasant little diversion. An
unexpectedly heavy sea had come up from the northwest, which, catching
the ship on the quarter, would heave her over to leeward in tremendous
rolls. The supper-bell had rung, and my wife and I had seated ourselves
at the table on the weather-side, the cat perching itself between us
upon the bench; the skipper and mate had not yet come in.
At that moment these were the contents of the table: four
dinner-plates, four saucers, two plates of bread and biscuit, a large
dish of baked potatoes, a platter of corned-beef hash, a pressed
tongue, a dish of butter, a glass jar of marmalade, a basin of stewed
apples, and innumerable knives, forks, and spoons. All at once there
came that peculiar motion that always precedes an unusually heavy roll
in a sailing ship. We grasped the long bench with the grip of death.
One short roll to windward, and then began the deep, ponderous,
resistless lurch to leeward. Over she went, leisurely and quietly, and
still farther, till she must have been rail under. At this moment a
dusky object shot by us with incredible speed; it was the steward, who
vanished backward into the open store-room opposite, and we saw him not
again for several minutes. The last part of him to fade out of sight
was his ghastly smile disappearing through the doorway. Then various
objects began to fetch away in the pantry,--tin cans, cups and saucers,
gradually increasing to an _allegro furioso_; and, finally, with
a frightful clash, like the climax of a full orchestra, the entire
contents of the table swept grandly across to leeward, and fell like
an avalanche against the opposite wall. For the moment we were stunned
by the appalling crash, and then there smote upon our ears a shriek
whose equal cannot be conceived. It swelled now from a low murmur to a
perfectly infernal scream, like the screech of a fog siren, and anon
sank down again, like the moaning wail of the Irish death-cry. It was
the cat. At first we thought that it was buried under the hurricane of
dishes, and looked to see it lying in slithers upon the floor. But no;
his tail had been nipped in the movable back with which the benches are
provided, and the harder we pushed back against it to prevent ourselves
from being projected across the table the fiercer was the grip on
the tail. We could not release the unhappy animal without unpleasant
results, not to say injury, to ourselves, and we could but sit and
hearken to its dreadful voice.
Solemnly and slowly the ship righted, and a scene of remarkable
devastation confronted us. On the table two articles remained, a
saucer and a shallow, empty, wooden box, used to chock things off
in. Everything else had crashed against the opposite wall with such
terrific energy that the plates and dishes were reduced to the
minutest fragments. Before it finally found a resting-place the
cylindrical roll of tongue had carromed separately on each baked
potato; a large, unbroken platter slid back and forth on the floor like
a toboggan upon a slick, gleaming path of apple-sauce; the butter was
face down in the extreme corner of the store-room; and the elliptical
wad of corned-beef hash loomed up brown and moist upon the opposite
panel, where it had stuck like a wet snow-ball.
When the final clatter had calmed down like the distant mumblings of a
thunder-storm, the steward protruded his scared face around the angle
of the doorway, and, urged by the saw-like voice of the skipper, who
had now flown into a passion, and was standing at the threshold, began
to slowly gather up the fragments of our once succulent repast. We
contrived to fare pretty well, though, by scraping off the tongue and
opening a tin of pease and tomatoes; and we would have treated the
whole affair as a joke had it not been for the old man’s temper. He was
thoroughly angry, and when I observed that on the “Mandalore” we had
racks four inches high instead of two, and that we broke not a dish or
a cup during the passage, he almost suffocated, and after glaring at us
a moment, leaning against the mizzen-mast at the head of the table, he
snarled, “I druther set right down and eat offen the floor than have
sech things on the table.”
Indeed, he has been in a violent mood all day at the light weather, and
a growl is all that he has vouchsafed by way of an answer. After dinner
he went prowling about forward looking for a row, and when he couldn’t
find one, he came back and threw half a plank down the lazarette hatch
at the poor, mewing, deserted alley-cat which he keeps shuts up in the
gloom of that dusky cavern. Latitude, 60° 10′ south; longitude, 76° 20′
west.
+July 27+