for pease, etc. Other nations also have provision scales, but they
are adhered to; foreign schemes add oatmeal, but all sailors get too
much meat; both captains and seamen say that. Our blue-water ships
have a great name for fine “grub,” which they deserved forty years
ago, but which most of them certainly do not now. A Yankee captain
has the privilege from the owners to lay in whatever sort of stores
he thinks fit (of course neither he nor the owner ever thinks of the
law); if he is a generous man, the crew are lucky; if not, it’s a
case of hunger and hustle for four or five months. As a sample of the
manner in which the food has been given out here, the men consumed an
entire barrel of molasses during the first seventeen days that we were
at sea; since then they have had none. Other articles were scattered
around in the same reckless manner, with the natural result that the
“dainties” which ought to have lasted the whole voyage had vanished at
the latitude of the Falklands; so that ever since the men have been on
pretty hard rations, and Broadhead told me that when the old man made
the show of putting all hands on government allowance it didn’t mean
anything at all. Since the stabbing, though, all the food has been
weighed out by the mate each day in full view of the sailors, eighteen
pounds of bread (_i.e._, hard-tack), so many pounds of beef, etc.,
and the men themselves carry it to the cook, so that there can be no
fault-finding. As to the water, three quarts per day amounts in all to
fifty-four quarts, which is measured into a cask in the forecastle, and
the men are at liberty to give any portion of it they choose to the
cook in which to boil their beef and pork, or tea and coffee. These
three quarts, by the way, are for all purposes, drinking, cooking, and
washing, though most foremast hands are not much troubled with the
latter, except when it rains hard. Each man probably does not have more
than a quart and a half of drinking water a day, which is a truly
scanty allowance for men who are painting on a blistering deck several
hours out of the twenty-four.
American captains profess to think that weighing out food to sailors
is very degrading, and they always add, “It’s too much like them
Britishers.” Personally I have never been able to perceive where
the indignity comes in. Food is weighed out in the navy, so why not
in the merchant service? I had it on my mind to-day to ask Captain
Scruggs which he really considered the more debasing, giving a man a
stipulated quantity of food, or knocking his teeth out with wooden or
iron implements and then kicking him into the scuppers; but I thought
it best to preserve peace rather than advance so hazardous a question.
Latitude, 23° 18′ north; longitude, 128° 40′ west.
+September 5+
Oh, what magnificent weather this is! It is just like those grand days
in the southeast Trades. Our everlasting recollections of the Pacific
Ocean, both north and south, will be of weeks of a matchless climate;
deep cobalt sky, sprinkled with little pink, cirrus clouds; a calm sea
over which shoot thousands of flying-fish in glittering flight, and
soft, enchanting breezes. “What about those two or three disagreeable
days not long ago?” says the pessimist. True, they were not ideal days;
but they only serve to show off these lovely ones in all their glorious
perfection. We have, unhappily, passed the limits of the tropics,
however, having crossed the circle of Cancer yesterday at four o’clock.
A few minutes ago, at the pumps, Broadhead asked me, “Would you mind
telling me why you came out here in an American ship?” I told him
why,--that, having made one voyage in an Englishman, we wanted to
compare the vessels; and I also reminded him that foreign ships are
not allowed to trade between American ports. “Well, you and the lady
must have lots of courage,” said he. “Now there’s the Loch Line of
ships to Australia out of London; you ought to have gone in one o’
them.” “Yes; MacFoy told me about them,” said I. “Well, they’re worth
all you can say in favor of ’em,” continued this American; “they’re
dandies; carry lots o’ passengers, first- and second-class and
steerage. Each ship has what they call a double crew; say a ship had
fourteen men before the mast, one o’ these would have twenty-eight,
so the whole of an ordinary ship’s crew is on deck at one time, and
not a stroke o’ work is ever done aloft after eight in the morning,
so that nothing can drop on passengers’ heads.” This may seem like
getting things down to too fine a point; but any one who has voyaged
in a sailing vessel will remember how many articles drop from men
working aloft. We have seen at least a dozen objects fall during the
voyage,--knives, paint-brushes, and serving-mallets, any one of which
dropping on a man’s head from a height of at least a hundred feet would
be very painful, not to say dangerous.
Perhaps the most remarkable and unusual device to enable the captain of
a vessel to pocket the wages of a crew appears in a copy of a maritime
paper, which I found to-day in a bundle of the skipper’s magazines.
It was perpetrated by the master of the British ship “S----,” and
consisted in his taking a quantity of liquors of divers sorts to sea
and retailing them to the men at immense profit. An investigation at
Liverpool showed that this enterprising man had bought twenty cases
of whiskey at three dollars and a half a dozen, which he sold to the
crew at one dollar per bottle. He also had large stores of gin and beer
on board, and the amount of money that the captain must have cleared
by the various transactions may be imagined when it is mentioned that
the carpenter’s bill for liquors for one voyage footed up a total of
sixty-seven dollars, and the men testified that some of them averaged
a bottle a day. It seemed to me that the captain’s punishment was
rather light, as it consisted in suspending his certificate for three
months. Of course, this is a penalty which could not be inflicted
upon an American captain, because none of our sailing-ship-masters
has a government certificate. Our law-givers do not think that any is
necessary, though they require a stiff examination in the case of a
steam-ship-master, another sparkling example of the perfection of the
United States shipping laws. Latitude, 25° 47′ north; longitude, 130°
46′ west.
+September 6+
After breakfast this morning we trembled when we found the wind letting
go, for everything indicated a cessation in the Trades; but at ten
o’clock they freshened again, and since then we have swung handsomely
along over a light swell at seven knots. This is very gratifying, and
every day sees us a hundred and seventy-five miles nearer port. My wife
is beginning to rejoice at the prospect of fresh vegetables and fruit,
though I think I could live very comfortably on the present diet for
at least a year. I had to tell the captain to-day, though, not to have
any more stews for my sake, for I couldn’t possibly eat another one.
This is not astonishing, because, when a week out from New York, I
happened to express a desire for a stew, and on every single day since
then I have eaten some of this concoction at least once and at times
twice. Four solid, uninterrupted months of stews are apt to produce a
surfeit thereof. What was worse than anything else, though, was that
the steward, desiring to enrich the gravy, at length became addicted
to the disagreeable habit of thrusting large pieces of aged, canned
butter into each stew, after turning it out of the sauce-pan, so that
when the dish reached the table the surface of the stew glittered with
little iridescent, golden globules, that danced upon it like drops of
yellow quicksilver. Thus decorated, it was a very pleasing dish to
contemplate, though familiarity with it bred contempt.
Every day now, particularly at supper, we enter the dining-room with
distended eyes, trying to discover some surprise in the culinary
department. Usually, however, when the covers are removed, there lie
disclosed the same old standbys,--stewed beef or mutton, cold beef and
ham, biscuits, and boiled potatoes the size of hot-house grapes, though
none the worse for that. Indeed, we went to sea with several barrels
of new Bermuda potatoes at ten dollars the barrel; this will show the
unstinted manner in which this ship was stored aft.
Sometimes, though, we are stunned by some fantastic creation of the
Chinaman’s. Last night, for instance, when the steward whipped off
the huge pewter covers, each almost as big as an umbrella, we were
entranced by the appearance of something entirely new. In a deep
vegetable dish lay four enormous Welsh rarebits? Oh, the gladness of
that moment! What mattered it that the bread was a blood relative of
india-rubber, that the rarebits were clammy and inflexible, or that
the rind of a pineapple cheese had contributed to their manufacture?
Were they not a change, and as such to be venerated and exalted beyond
price? Therefore we helped ourselves reverently, as became so momentous
an occasion; and if the compound did produce an incalculable amount of
subsequent distress, we extended meek thanks and congratulations to the
little Cantonite in the galley. In truth, though, there is no fault of
any sort to be found with the cabin food; it is every bit as good as
when we started.
Last evening, in the second dog-watch, the Scotch bosun came up to me
on the main-deck and asked how we were getting on. I told him, very
well indeed; and then he said, “Before we left I heard that a gentleman
and his wife were going out in the ship, and be gob I felt sorry for
them.” Good old MacFoy! He is continuously solicitous for our welfare;
and a day or two ago he came aft with a copy of Dickens’s “Christmas
Stories” which he had found in the forecastle library furnished by the
Seamen’s Friend Society, and said that he had found a fine sea story
for me to read in the book, called “The Wreck of the Golden Mary.”
It is a fact worthy of note that this rough sailor-man is the only
individual whom I have ever met who has read this delightful account
of a shipwreck off Cape Horn. The best-read man whom I ever knew said
that he had never even heard of it. In every art, though, there seem to
be one or two jewels that exist unknown even to the connoisseur. How
many musicians are there, thorough musicians though they may be, who
know the gorgeous, glorious chorus in A, _andante sostenuto_, from
Schubert’s Lazarus? Gorgeous in its tone colors, glorious in its fire
and rhythm, it is an almost unknown fragment from that transcendent
mind. Latitude, 27° 58′ north; longitude, 132° 20′ west.
+September 7+
Nothing but a faint breeze remains of the northeast Trades. In the
Pacific at this season they are generally a failure, and they carried
us through only twelve degrees of latitude. We are beginning to
appreciate how hard it is going to be to get into the land in the
latitude of San Francisco, unless we soon take the westerly winds that
are supposed to blow out here. We are now well to the westward of
’Frisco, ten degrees in fact, and it is impossible to calculate how
much farther we will have to go; old Goggins, a year ago, bound up to
Nanaimo from Acapulco, fetched over to 160° west before he got a slant
north. To-day is a great deal warmer than yesterday, with at times a
nearly glassy sea and one hundred and ten miles of the two degrees of
latitude that we made were done in the first sixteen hours.
Last evening I had another session with the garrulous Scot. “I’ll tell
ye somethin’ about the ‘H. D. MacGregor’; she’s the toughest ship I
ever was in, though there’s one still worse. Cap’n Summers is a corker;
he’s a little man, but very broad and strong, with a fearful temper;
he’s all bruk up, though.”
“What broke him up?” said I.
“Jumpin’ after the men,” answered David; “he’s hardly got a sound bone
in his body; they do say his back’s broke, but I never thought it.
But I did see him smash one of his legs. He had that temper that if
he wanted to reach a man he just jumped down on top of him where he
stood. I mind one afternoon, just before we got into ’Frisco two or
three years ago, when I was bosun with him, one of the men was doin’
somethin’ aft on the main-deck. Summers said a few words to him, and
the feller didn’t say ‘yes, sir,’ soon enough to suit him, so th’ old
man jumped right off the poop down on the main-deck, full eight feet.
He meant to lep on top o’ the sailor; but just as he jumped the ship
give a roll, and he fell into a water-barrel near by. His left leg
brought up sharp ag’in’ the chimes o’ the cask, and crack! went his
thigh-bone. Lucky for him we were only two days from port, and we fixed
him up pretty well till we got in.”
Yesterday afternoon the top of the deck-house was painted a beautiful,
lustrous, pearly gray, and very fine it looked, glistening in the
bright sunshine. Not a drop of rain had fallen all day until fifteen
minutes after it was finished, when a light shower passed over us,
extending not five hundred yards in any direction. It lasted not one
minute, but it completely ruined the wet paint; and it was then that we
heard the gentle voice of the mate raised in blasphemous remonstrance.
Latitude, 29° 48′ north; longitude, 134° 6′ west.
+September 8+
Just as we had finished writing up our journals yesterday afternoon
there came a loud patter of rain overhead and a heavy puff from the
eastward that laid the ship well over. Still, we didn’t pay much
attention to it for some time; but, finding that we moved steadily
along without righting, I went on deck to find the ocean covered with
white-caps to the horizon, which was thick with dense, gray, very
windy-looking clouds. We were flying through the water at ten knots,
and heading up north by west true, which was very fine; but, even as
we looked, there came a slight but portentous heave from ahead that
foretold a northerly swell. And so it proved, for by 8 +P.M.+
our progress had dwindled to six knots, as we went pitching and diving
into an ugly head-sea. It is astonishing how even a moderately heavy
swell from ahead will check the speed of a ship, even with a strong
wind blowing. A steamer will cleave right through a tall swell without
any perceptible difference in her speed, a fact proved to us once
when, in crossing the Atlantic in the “Etruria,” we encountered a
head-sea that buried the entire bows at every plunge; yet the speed
was lowered by only a quarter of a knot. Even a sailing yacht will
overcome a head-swell in a very creditable manner; but when a massive,
clumsy square-rigger runs into one, farewell to even a moderate run.
She stops at every sea for an appreciable time, till the impetus of so
ponderous a mass asserts itself and she tumbles into the next valley.
So it was with us all through the night, though we made good a fine
course north-northwest.
A fact little known generally is that in former years there existed in
our ships what was known as a hospital tax. It was finally abandoned,
not more than fifteen years ago, and consisted in each man’s paying
forty cents a month as long as he was on board a given vessel toward a
common fund, the total sum being handed to the proper persons on the
ship’s arrival for the maintenance of the marine hospital at the port
to which she was bound, provided that such a port was of sufficient
importance to warrant an institution of this sort. I think this was a
pretty good idea, and cannot think why it was abolished. On a ship like
this one, for instance, the amount at the end of a four-months’ voyage
would be nearly forty dollars. Yet no one on board would feel the loss
of the dollar and a half that he had contributed. Latitude, 32° 7′
north; longitude, 135° 6′ west.
+September 9+
Yesterday afternoon a sail was sighted from the fore-sky-sail-yard,
and at once threw everybody into tumult of excitement. Truly, a long
time had passed since we had beheld a vessel of any sort, for the last
time that we saw anything fashioned by man’s hand was seven weeks ago,
off the Horn. We beat this record on our first voyage, however, when
sixty-five days passed without our sighting a vessel. The ship “I. F.
Chapman,” however, arrived at New York from Manila shortly before we
sailed, having been at sea one hundred and twenty-five days, and during
all that time not a single craft of any description sailed into her
ken!
At five o’clock the upper sails of our new friend were in sight from
the deck, and I walked to the break of the poop, where the mate was, to
ask his opinion of her. He was extremely pompous, and talked with such
assurance that you would suppose he had just come off the stranger.
She had not risen to her upper topsails when Mr. Goggins said, “Ho!
I know ’er; she’s a barkentine that trades between San Francisco
and the Hawaiian Islands!” (I have never met a captain or mate who
said Sandwich Islands.) This was to exhibit his infinite knowledge
of the Pacific coast. Now, when hull down, I make it a rule never to
contradict a sailor when he gives an opinion as to how a square-rigger
is sailing, whether on or off the wind, or what her precise rig is;
few objects are more puzzling, even to an experienced eye. But on this
occasion I had a pair of very excellent glasses on the vessel, and
suggested that she was either a bark or a ship steering by the wind.
“Naw, naw,” shouted the mate, with a backward sweep of his arm; “she’s
a barkentine, a-runnin’ free.” An hour later it proved to be a British
ship close-hauled on the port tack, standing to the eastward. The mate
was overwhelmed with chagrin, but his cup of misery was not yet full,
for when the old man went on deck last night at ten, the moon being
very bright, he asked him whether the ship was still in sight, to which
the mate answered, “She’s not, sir.” “Then what’s that?” asked the
skipper, pointing under the spanker. There, on the quarter, dim, but in
plain view, was the handsome stranger, and she had gone around on our
tack.
Last evening we witnessed a sunset that was the most impressive of
the whole voyage. An hour before the sun disappeared we noticed great
cumulo-nimbus clouds marshalling themselves in the west, the horizon
then being veiled in a curious, diaphanous mist. When we came up
from supper, though, the sun had nearly reached the sea-rim, and for
ten minutes we were the enchanted spectators of most exquisite cloud
scenery. High up toward the zenith two ranges of heavy, gloomy cloud
mountains were reared, peak on peak, forming in themselves a scene
of remarkable grandeur, and right between these purple ramparts, and
just then touching the horizon, lay the great, blazing globe of fire,
edging the immense vapory masses with a fringe as of living flame
and transmuting the clouds into glowing pictures of the Delectable
Mountains, more beautiful than artist ever conceived, with a suggestion
of the Celestial City itself in the surpassing glory of the moment. As
Handel said when composing the “Messiah,” “I did think that I did see
all heaven before me, and the great God Himself.” The entire spectacle
was visible through the thin mist, now changed into a veil of radiant
bronze, putting a finishing touch upon a scene which, for magnificence
of coloring and stately splendor, we have never seen equalled.
No sooner had the orb of day vanished than out soared the moon from
behind a sable cloud and a night of ineffable peace and purity
followed, with now and then a weird effect produced by a guny floating
slowly across the moon’s face, with the appearance of a gigantic,
prehistoric bat. Oh, how superb Nature is when viewed thus from the
deck of a sailing ship! How can a man deny God at such moments as
these? How can he say that he is lonely when he is surrounded by such
wonderful memorials of His earthly magnificence? Latitude, 34° 5′
north; longitude, 137° 14′ west.
+September 10+
We can stand but very little more of this northerly wind, for we are
getting very anxious to go on the other tack. Last night and this
morning the wind was very unsteady, and we alternately broke off to
west-northwest and came up to northwest by north. It would be useless
to tack ship at long as we can hold as good a course as the former, for
we would have to make a little southing on the other leg. By to-morrow
we will probably be in the latitude of our destination, though a
thousand miles west of it, and the skipper intimates that he will then
let her come round whether or no.
This morning, it being the first occasion for a long while, we had
a brace of fresh eggs for breakfast, which when poached were so
indescribably delicious that the memory of them lingered long and
sweetly in the palate. It is only about once in three weeks that our
barren, emaciated hens honor us in this fashion, and when they do, our
gratitude is boundless. Ordinarily, my wife’s breakfast consists of
fresh, crisp soda biscuit, a boiled potato, and a cup of cocoa; my own
comprising soda biscuit, potatoes, jam, and tepid water. It is a matter
of surprise to every one who has experienced a lack of ice how readily
one becomes accustomed to being without it; by the seventh or eighth
day the desire for iced water has passed entirely away and doesn’t
return except in case of illness. People generally regard a man who
refuses any of the customary matutinal beverages with the most extreme
astonishment; when he declines coffee, they open their eyes; when he
refuses tea, they begin to murmur; and when he also denies cocoa, they
drop everything and look intently at him, as though they expected to
discover some visible proof of his abstinence. “Why, but your health,”
these people cry; “every one needs something hot in the morning.” This
is quite false, even in winter weather, as anyone can prove to one’s
own satisfaction by shunning so strong a stimulant as coffee for a
fortnight and taking only water at breakfast; nearly everybody would
feel great benefit from such a course in less than a week.
One would think that long-voyage ship-masters would grow to detest salt
and dried meats and tinned vegetables, but they do not; and Captain
Scruggs affirms that after one or two good “feeds” of fresh meat ashore
after every voyage he wants to return to his salt beef; and I have yet
to see the captain or mate who preferred the finest pressed tongue and
canned corned beef to ordinary salt junk; they cling to it with a truly
wonderful pertinacity.
The captain detailed to us last evening the ingenious method of loading
coal at Newcastle, Australia. A ship there hauls in close to the pier,
along the edge of which extends a railway track. A train of coal-cars
is then backed down on the wharf, each car holding five tons. They are
then uncoupled, a hydraulic crane lifts each one silently from the
track, swings it over a given hatch, the bottom drops automatically,
precipitating the coal into the hold, and the car is then swung back
again and placed on the rails, and another takes its place. The same
method is now or was once employed at Newport, Wales.