A DOUBLE-REEF-TOP-SAIL BREEZE--SCURVY--A FRIEND IN NEED--PREPARING FOR
PORT--THE GULF STREAM
From the latitude of the West Indies, until we got inside the Bermudas,
where we took the westerly and south-westerly winds, which blow
steadily off the coast of the United States early in the autumn, we had
every variety of weather, and two or three moderate gales, or, as
sailors call them, double-reef-topsail breezes, which came on in the
usual manner, and of which one is a specimen of all.--A fine afternoon;
all hands at work, some in the rigging, and others on deck; a stiff
breeze, and ship close upon the wind, and skysails brailed
down.--Latter part of the afternoon, breeze increases, ship lies over
to it, and clouds look windy. Spray begins to fly over the forecastle,
and wets the yarns the boys are knotting;--ball them up and put them
below.--Mate knocks off work and clears up decks earlier than usual,
and orders a man who has been employed aloft to send the royal halyards
over to windward, as he comes down. Breast backstays hauled taut,
and tackle got upon the martingale back-rope.--One of the boys furls
the mizen royal.--Cook thinks there is going to be "nasty work," and
has supper ready early.--Mate gives orders to get supper by the watch,
instead of all hands, as usual.--While eating supper, hear the watch on
deck taking in the royals.--Coming on deck, find it is blowing harder,
and an ugly head sea is running.--Instead of having all hands on the
forecastle in the dog watch, smoking, singing, and telling yarns, one
watch goes below and turns-in, saying that it's going to be an ugly
night, and two hours' sleep is not to be lost.
Clouds look black and wild; wind rising, and ship working hard against
a heavy sea, which breaks over the forecastle, and washes aft through
the scuppers. Still, no more sail is taken in, for the captain is a
driver, and, like all drivers, very partial to his top-gallant sails.
A top-gallant sail, too, makes the difference between a breeze and a
gale. When a top-gallant sail is on a ship, it is only a breeze,
though I have seen ours set over a reefed topsail, when half the
bowsprit was under water, and it was up to a man's knees in the
scuppers. At eight bells, nothing is said about reefing the topsails,
and the watch go below, with orders to "stand by for a call." We
turn-in, growling at the "old man" for not reefing the topsails when
the watch was changed, but putting it off so as to call all hands, and
break up a whole watch below. Turn-in "all standing," and keep
ourselves awake, saying there is no use in going asleep to be waked up
again.--Wind whistles on deck, and ship works hard, groaning and
creaking, and pitching into a heavy head sea, which strikes against the
bows, with a noise like knocking upon a rock.--The dim lamp in the
forecastle swings to and fro, and things "fetch away" and go over to
leeward.--"Doesn't that booby of a second mate ever mean to take in his
top-gallant sails?--He'll have the sticks out of her soon," says old
Bill, who was always growling, and, like most old sailors, did not like
to see a ship abused.--By-and-by an order is given--"Aye, aye, sir!"
from the forecastle;--rigging is heaved down on deck;--the noise of a
sail is heard fluttering aloft, and the short, quick cry which sailors
make when hauling upon clewlines.--"Here comes his fore-top-gallant
sail in!"--We are wide awake, and know all that's going on as well as
if we were on deck.--A well-known voice is heard from the mast-head
singing out the officer of the watch to haul taut the weather
brace.--"Hallo! There's S---- aloft to furl the sail!"--Next thing,
rigging is heaved down directly over our heads, and a long-drawn cry
and a rattling of hanks announce that the flying-jib has come in.--The
second mate holds on to the main top-gallant sail until a heavy sea is
shipped, and washes over the forecastle as though the whole ocean had
come aboard; when a noise further aft shows that that sail, too, is
taking in. After this, the ship is more easy for a time; two bells are
struck, and we try to get a little sleep. By-and-by, bang, bang, bang,
on the scuttle--"All ha-a-ands, a ho-o-y!"--We spring out of our
berths, clap on a monkey-jacket and southwester, and tumble up the
ladder.--Mate up before us, and on the forecastle, singing out like a
roaring bull; the captain singing out on the quarter-deck, and the
second mate yelling, like a hyena, in the waist. The ship is lying
over half upon her beam-ends; lee scuppers under water, and forecastle
all in a smother of foam.--Rigging all let go, and washing about decks;
topsail yards down upon the caps, and sails flapping and beating
against the masts; and starboard watch hauling out the reef-tackles of
the main topsail. Our watch haul out the fore, and lay aloft and put
two reefs into it, and reef the foresail, and race with the starboard
watch, to see which will mast-head its topsail first. All hands
tally-on to the main tack, and while some are furling the jib, and
hoisting the staysail, we mizen-topmen double-reef the mizen topsail
and hoist it up. All being made fast--"Go below, the watch!" and we
turn-in to sleep out the rest of the time, which is perhaps an hour and
a half. During all the middle, and for the first part of the morning
watch, it blows as hard as ever, but toward daybreak it moderates
considerably, and we shake a reef out of each topsail, and set the
top-gallant sails over them and when the watch come up, at seven bells,
for breakfast, shake the other reefs out, turn all hands to upon the
halyards, get the watch-tackle upon the top-gallant sheets and
halyards, set the flying-jib, and crack on to her again.
Our captain had been married only a few weeks before he left Boston;
and, after an absence of over two years, it may be supposed he was not
slow in carrying sail. The mate, too, was not to be beaten by anybody;
and the second mate, though he was afraid to press sail, was afraid as
death of the captain, and being between two fears, sometimes carried on
longer than any of them. We snapped off three flying-jib booms in
twenty-four hours, as fast as they could be fitted and rigged out;
sprung the spritsail yard; and made nothing of studding-sail booms.
Beside the natural desire to get home, we had another reason for urging
the ship on. The scurvy had begun to show itself on board. One man
had it so badly as to be disabled and off duty, and the English lad,
Ben, was in a dreadful state, and was daily growing worse. His legs
swelled and pained him so that he could not walk; his flesh lost its
elasticity, so that if it was pressed in, it would not return to its
shape; and his gums swelled until he could not open his mouth. His
breath, too, became very offensive; he lost all strength and spirit;
could eat nothing; grew worse every day; and, in fact, unless something
was done for him, would be a dead man in a week, at the rate at which
he was sinking. The medicines were all, or nearly all, gone; and if we
had had a chest-full, they would have been of no use; for nothing but
fresh provisions and terra firma has any effect upon the scurvy. This
disease is not so common now as formerly; and is attributed generally
to salt provisions, want of cleanliness, the free use of grease and fat
(which is the reason of its prevalence among whalemen,) and, last of
all, to laziness. It never could have been from the latter cause on
board our ship; nor from the second, for we were a very cleanly crew,
kept our forecastle in neat order, and were more particular about
washing and changing clothes than many better-dressed people on shore.
It was probably from having none but salt provisions, and possibly from
our having run very rapidly into hot weather, after having been so long
in the extremest cold.
Depending upon the westerly winds, which prevail off the coast in the
autumn, the captain stood well to the westward, to run inside of the
Bermudas, and in the hope of falling in with some vessel bound to the
West Indies or the Southern States. The scurvy had spread no farther
among the crew, but there was danger that it might; and these cases
were bad ones.
Sunday, Sept. 11th. Lat. 30° 04' N., long. 63° 23' W.; the Bermudas
bearing north-north-west, distant one hundred and fifty miles. The next
morning, about ten o'clock, "Sail ho!" was cried on deck; and all hands
turned up to see the stranger. As she drew nearer, she proved to be an
ordinary-looking hermaphrodite brig, standing south-south-east; and
probably bound out, from the Northern States, to the West Indies; and
was just the thing we wished to see. She hove-to for us, seeing that we
wished to speak her; and we ran down to her; boom-ended our
studding-sails; backed our main topsail, and hailed her--"Brig,
ahoy!"--"Hallo!"--"Where are you from, pray?"--"From New York, bound to
Curaçoa."--"Have you any fresh provisions to spare?"--"Aye, aye! plenty
of them!" We lowered away the quarter-boat, instantly; and the captain
and four hands sprang in, and were soon dancing over the water, and
alongside the brig. In about half an hour, they returned with half a
boat-load of potatoes and onions, and each vessel filled away, and kept
on her course. She proved to be the brig Solon, of Plymouth, from the
Connecticut river, and last from New York, bound to the Spanish Main,
with a cargo of fresh provisions, mules, tin bake-pans, and other
notions. The onions were genuine and fresh; and the mate of the brig
told the men in the boat, as he passed the bunches over the side, that
the girls had strung them on purpose for us the day he sailed. We had
supposed, on board, that a new president had been chosen, the last
winter, and, just as we filled away, the captain hailed and asked who
was president of the United States. They answered, Andrew Jackson; but
thinking that the old General could not have been elected for a third
time, we hailed again, and they answered--Jack Downing; and left us to
correct the mistake at our leisure.
It was just dinner-time when we filled away; and the steward, taking a
few bunches of onions for the cabin, gave the rest to us, with a bottle
of vinegar. We carried them forward, stowed them away in the
forecastle, refusing to have them cooked, and ate them raw, with our
beef and bread. And a glorious treat they were. The freshness and
crispness of the raw onion, with the earthy taste, give it a great
relish to one who has been a long time on salt provisions.
We were perfectly ravenous after them. It was like a scent of blood to
a hound. We ate them at every meal, by the dozen; and filled our
pockets with them, to eat in our watch on deck; and the bunches, rising
in the form of a cone, from the largest at the bottom, to the smallest,
no larger than a strawberry, at the top, soon disappeared.
The chief use, however, of the fresh provisions, was for the men with
the scurvy. One of them was able to eat, and he soon brought himself
to, by gnawing upon raw potatoes; but the other, by this time, was
hardly able to open his mouth; and the cook took the potatoes raw,
pounded them in a mortar, and gave him the juice to drink. This he
swallowed, by the tea-spoonful at a time, and rinsed it about his gums
and throat. The strong earthy taste and smell of this extract of the
raw potato at first produced a shuddering through his whole frame, and
after drinking it, an acute pain, which ran through all parts of his
body; but knowing, by this, that it was taking strong hold, he
persevered, drinking a spoonful every hour or so, and holding it a long
time in his mouth; until, by the effect of this drink, and of his own
restored hope, (for he had nearly given up, in despair) he became so
well as to be able to move about, and open his mouth enough to eat the
raw potatoes and onions pounded into a soft pulp. This course soon
restored his appetite and strength; and in ten days after we spoke the
Solon, so rapid was his recovery, that, from lying helpless and almost
hopeless in his berth, he was at the mast-head, furling a royal.
With a fine south-west wind, we passed inside of the Bermudas; and
notwithstanding the old couplet, which was quoted again and again by
those who thought we should have one more touch of a storm before our
voyage was up,--
"If the Bermudas let you pass,
You must beware of Hatteras--"
we were to the northward of Hatteras, with good weather, and beginning
to count, not the days, but the hours, to the time when we should be at
anchor in Boston harbor.
Our ship was in fine order, all hands having been hard at work upon her
from daylight to dark, every day but Sunday, from the time we got into
warm weather on this side the Cape.
It is a common notion with landsmen that a ship is in her finest
condition when she leaves port to enter upon her voyage; and that she
comes home, after a long absence,
"With over-weathered ribs and ragged sails; Lean, rent and beggared by
the strumpet wind."
But so far from that, unless a ship meets with some accident, or comes
upon the coast in the dead of winter, when work cannot be done upon the
rigging, she is in her finest order at the end of the voyage. When she
sails from port, her rigging is generally slack; the masts need
staying; the decks and sides are black and dirty from taking in cargo;
riggers' seizings and overhand knots in place of nice seamanlike work;
and everything, to a sailor's eye, adrift.
But on the passage home, the fine weather between the tropics is spent
in putting the ship into the neatest order. No merchant vessel looks
better than an Indiaman, or a Cape Horn-er, after a long voyage; and
many captains and mates will stake their reputation for seamanship upon
the appearance of their ship when she hauls into the dock. All our
standing rigging, fore and aft, was set up and tarred; the masts
stayed; the lower and top-mast rigging rattled down, (or up, as the
fashion now is;) and so careful were our officers to keep the rattlins
taut and straight, that we were obliged to go aloft upon the ropes
and shearpoles with which the rigging was swifted in; and these were
used as jury rattlins until we got close upon the coast. After this,
the ship was scraped, inside and out, decks, masts, booms and all; a
stage being rigged outside, upon which we scraped her down to the
water-line; pounding the rust off the chains, bolts and fastenings.
Then, taking two days of calm under the line, we painted her on the
outside, giving her open ports in her streak, and finishing off the
nice work upon the stern, where sat Neptune in his car, holding his
trident, drawn by sea-horses; and re-touched the gilding and coloring
of the cornucopia which ornamented her billet-head. The inside was
then painted, from the skysail truck to the waterways--the yards black;
mast-heads and tops, white; monkey-rail, black, white, and yellow;
bulwarks, green; plank-shear, white; waterways, lead color, etc., etc.
The anchors and ring-bolts, and other iron work, were blackened with
coal-tar; and the steward kept at work, polishing the brass of the
wheel, bell, capstan, etc. The cabin, too, was scraped, varnished, and
painted; and the forecastle scraped and scrubbed; there being no need
of paint and varnish for Jack's quarters. The decks were then scraped
and varnished, and everything useless thrown overboard; among which the
empty tar barrels were set on fire and thrown overboard, on a dark
night, and left blazing astern, lighting up the ocean for miles. Add
to all this labor, the neat work upon the rigging;--the knots,
flemish-eyes, splices, seizings, coverings, pointings, and graftings,
which show a ship in crack order. The last preparation, and which
looked still more like coming into port, was getting the anchors over
the bows, bending the cables, rowsing the hawsers up from between
decks, and overhauling the deep-sea-lead-line.
Thursday, September 15th. This morning the temperature and peculiar
appearance of the water, the quantities of gulf-weed floating about,
and a bank of clouds lying directly before us, showed that we were on
the border of the Gulf Stream. This remarkable current, running
north-east, nearly across the ocean, is almost constantly shrouded in
clouds, and is the region of storms and heavy seas. Vessels often run
from a clear sky and light wind, with all sail, at once into a heavy
sea and cloudy sky, with double-reefed topsails. A sailor told me that
on a passage from Gibraltar to Boston, his vessel neared the Gulf
Stream with a light breeze, clear sky, and studding-sails out, alow and
aloft; while, before it, was a long line of heavy, black clouds, lying
like a bank upon the water, and a vessel coming out of it, under
double-reefed topsails, and with royal yards sent down. As they drew
near, they began to take in sail after sail, until they were reduced to
the same condition; and, after twelve or fourteen hours of rolling and
pitching in a heavy sea, before a smart gale, they ran out of the bank
on the other side, and were in fine weather again, and under their
royals and skysails. As we drew into it, the sky became cloudy, the
sea high, and everything had the appearance of the going off, or the
coming on, of a storm. It was blowing no more than a stiff breeze; yet
the wind, being north-east, which is directly against the course of the
current, made an ugly, chopping sea, which heaved and pitched the
vessel about, so that we were obliged to send down the royal yards, and
to take in our light sails. At noon, the thermometer, which had been
repeatedly lowered into the water, showed the temperature to be
seventy; which was considerably above that of the air,--as is always
the case in the centre of the Stream. A lad who had been at work at
the royal mast-head, came down upon the deck, and took a turn round the
long-boat; and looking very pale, said he was so sick that he could
stay aloft no longer, but was ashamed to acknowledge it to the officer.
He went up again, but soon gave out and came down, and leaned over the
rail, "as sick as a lady passenger."
He had been to sea several years, and had, he said, never been sick
before. He was made so by the irregular, pitching motion of the
vessel, increased by the height to which he had been above the hull,
which is like the fulcrum of the lever. An old sailor, who was at work
on the top-gallant yard, said he felt disagreeably all the time, and
was glad, when his job was done, to get down into the top, or upon the
deck. Another hand was sent to the royal mast-head, who staid nearly
an hour, but gave up. The work must be done, and the mate sent me. I
did very well for some time, but began at length to feel very
unpleasantly, though I had never been sick since the first two days
from Boston, and had been in all sorts of weather and situations.
Still, I kept my place, and did not come down, until I had got through
my work, which was more than two hours. The ship certainly never acted
so badly before. She was pitched and jerked about in all manner of
ways; the sails seeming to have no steadying power over her. The
tapering points of the masts made various curves and angles against the
sky overhead, and sometimes, in one sweep of an instant, described an
arc of more than forty-five degrees, bringing up with a sudden jerk
which made it necessary to hold on with both hands, and then sweeping
off, in another long, irregular curve. I was not positively sick, and
came down with a look of indifference, yet was not unwilling to get
upon the comparative terra firma of the deck. A few hours more carried
us through, and when we saw the sun go down, upon our larboard beam, in
the direction of the continent of North America, we had left the bank
of dark, stormy clouds astern, in the twilight.