Between Noah’s time and the time of Columbus naval architecture
underwent some changes, and from being unspeakably bad was improved to a
point which may be described as less unspeakably bad. I have read
somewhere, some time or other, that one of Columbus’s ships was a
ninety-ton vessel. By comparing that ship with the ocean greyhounds of
our time one is able to get down to a comprehension of how small that
Spanish bark was, and how little fitted she would be to run opposition
in the Atlantic passenger trade to-day. It would take seventy-four of
her to match the tonnage of the ‘Havel’ and carry the ‘Havel’s’ trip. If
I remember rightly, it took her ten weeks to make the passage. With our
ideas this would now be considered an objectionable gait. She probably
had a captain, a mate, and a crew consisting of four seamen and a boy.
The crew of a modern greyhound numbers two hundred and fifty persons.
Columbus’s ship being small and very old, we know that we may draw from
these two facts several absolute certainties in the way of minor details
which history has left unrecorded. For instance, being small, we know
that she rolled and pitched and tumbled in any ordinary sea, and stood
on her head or her tail, or lay down with her ear in the water, when
storm-seas ran high; also, that she was used to having billows plunge
aboard and wash her decks from stem to stern; also, that the storm-racks
were on the table all the way over, and that, nevertheless, a man’s soup
was oftener landed in his lap than in his stomach; also, that the
dining-saloon was about ten feet by seven, dark, airless, and
suffocating with oil-stench; also, that there was only about one
state-room—the size of a grave—with a tier of two or three berths in it,
of the dimensions and comfortableness of coffins, and that when the
light was out, the darkness in there was so thick and real that you
could bite into it and chew it like gum; also, that the only promenade
was on the lofty poop-deck astern (for the ship was shaped like a
high-quarter shoe)—a streak sixteen feet long by three feet wide, all
the rest of the vessel being littered with ropes and flooded by the
seas.
We know all these things to be true, from the mere fact that we know the
vessel was small. As the vessel was old, certain other truths follow as
matters of course. For instance, she was full of rats, she was full of
cockroaches, the heavy seas made her seams open and shut like your
fingers, and she leaked like a basket; where leakage is, there also, of
necessity, is bilgewater; and where bilgewater is, only the dead can
enjoy life. This is on account of the smell. In the presence of
bilgewater, Limburger cheese becomes odourless and ashamed.
From these absolutely sure data we can competently picture the daily
life of the great discoverer. In the early morning he paid his devotions
at the shrine of the Virgin. At eight bells he appeared on the poop-deck
promenade. If the weather was chilly, he came up clad from plumed helmet
to spurred heel in magnificent plate armour inlaid with arabesques of
gold, having previously warmed it at the galley fire. If the weather was
warm, he came up in the ordinary sailor toggery of the time: great
slouch hat of blue velvet, with a flowing brush of snowy ostrich plumes,
fastened on with a flashing cluster of diamonds and emeralds;
gold-embroidered doublet of green velvet, with slashed sleeves exposing
under-sleeves of crimson satin; deep collar and cuff-ruffles of rich
limp lace; trunk hose of pink velvet, with big knee knots of brocaded
yellow ribbon; pearl-tinted silk stockings, clocked and daintily
embroidered; lemon-coloured buskins of unborn kid, funnel-topped, and
drooping low to expose the pretty stockings; deep gauntlets of finest
white heretic skin, from the factory of the Holy Inquisition, formerly
part of the person of a lady of rank; rapier with sheath crusted with
jewels, and hanging from a broad baldric upholstered with rubies and
sapphires.
He walked the promenade thoughtfully; he noted the aspects of the sky
and the course of the wind; he kept an eye out for drifting vegetation
and other signs of land; he jawed the man at the wheel for pastime; he
got out an imitation egg and kept himself in practice on his old trick
of making it stand on its end; now and then he hove a life-line below
and fished up a sailor who was drowning on the quarter-deck; the rest of
his watch he gaped and yawned and stretched and said he wouldn’t make
the trip again to discover six Americas. For that was the kind of
natural human person Columbus was when not posing for posterity.
At noon he took the sun and ascertained that the good ship had made
three hundred yards in twenty-four hours, and this enabled him to win
the pool. Anybody can win the pool when nobody but himself has the
privilege of straightening out the ship’s run and getting it right.
The Admiral has breakfasted alone, in state: bacon, beans, and gin; at
noon he dines alone in state: bacon, beans, and gin; at six he sups
alone in state: bacon, beans, and gin; at 11 P.M. he takes a night
relish, alone, in state: bacon, beans, and gin. At none of these orgies
is there any music; the ship-orchestra is modern. After his final meal
he returned thanks for his many blessings, a little over-rating their
value, perhaps, and then he laid off his silken splendours or his gilded
hardware, and turned in, in his little coffin-bunk, and blew out his
flickering stencher, and began to refresh his lungs with inverted sighs
freighted with the rich odours of rancid oil and bilgewater. The sighs
returned as snores, and then the rats and the cockroaches swarmed out in
brigades and divisions and army corps and had a circus all over him.
Such was the daily life of the great discoverer in his marine basket
during several historic weeks; and the difference between his ship and
his comforts and ours is visible almost at a glance.
When he returned, the King of Spain, marvelling, said—as history
records:
‘This ship seems to be leaky. Did she leak badly?’
‘You shall judge for yourself, sire. I pumped the Atlantic Ocean through
her sixteen times on the passage.’
This is General Horace Porter’s account. Other authorities say fifteen.
It can be shown that the differences between that ship and the one I am
writing these historical contributions in, are in several respects
remarkable. Take the matter of decoration, for instance. I have been
looking around again, yesterday and to-day, and have noted several
details which I conceive to have been absent from Columbus’s ship, or at
least slurred over and not elaborated and perfected. I observe
state-room doors three inches thick, of solid oak, and polished. I note
companionway vestibules with walls, doors, and ceilings panelled in
polished hard-woods, some light, some dark, all dainty and delicate
joiner-work, and yet every joint compact and tight; with beautiful
pictures inserted, composed of blue tiles—some of the pictures
containing as many as sixty tiles—and the joinings of those tiles
perfect. These are daring experiments. One would have said that the
first time the ship went straining and labouring through a storm-tumbled
sea those tiles would gape apart and drop out. That they have not done
so is evidence that the joiner’s art has advanced a good deal since the
days when ships were so shackly that when a giant sea gave them a wrench
the doors came unbolted. I find the walls of the dining-saloon
upholstered with mellow pictures wrought in tapestry, and the ceiling
aglow with pictures done in oil. In other places of assembly I find
great panels filled with embossed Spanish leather, the figures rich with
gilding and bronze. Everywhere I find sumptuous masses of colour—colour,
colour, colour—colour all about, colour of every shade and tint and
variety; and as a result, the ship is bright and cheery to the eye, and
this cheeriness invades one’s spirit and contents it. To fully
appreciate the force and spiritual value of this radiant and opulent
dream of colour, one must stand outside at night in the pitch dark and
the rain, and look in through a port, and observe it in the lavish
splendour of the electric lights. The old-time ships were dull, plain,
graceless, gloomy, and horribly depressing. They compelled the blues;
one could not escape the blues in them. The modern idea is right: to
surround the passenger with conveniences, luxuries, and abundance of
inspiriting colour. As a result, the ship is the pleasantest place one
can be in, except, perhaps, one’s home.