PERILS OF THE SEA.
“Daughter, the night was made for sleep;
Why dost thou moan, why dost thou weep?
Wherefore thy mournful vigil keep?
Daughter, daughter, my daughter!”
“Mother, to me the night wind cries.
Cold on the sands thy lover lies,
With none to close his glazed eyes;
Nello, Nello, my Nello!”
The Storm at Sea! From the days of David to the present, the poet and
the novelist have taxed their energies to portray the perils of those
who go down into the deep in ships. The ravages of the hurricane on
shore are confined largely to those portions of the world unknown to the
ancients; but the treacherous deep has been sung in every age. We may
hardly choose which of the myriad wrecks to describe. St. Paul’s
perilous voyage to Rome is familiar wherever the gospel is preached;
Jonah has furnished a comparison for the unlucky for centuries; Virgil
has sung of the perils of exiled Æneas in his search for a foreign home.
The sea has dangers peculiarly its own, and likewise charms possessed by
nothing else in nature. Every one may have heard of the little earnest
woman who at her first sight of the ocean sighed: “Ah--at last here is
something there is enough of!” The sailor knows the ocean’s every mood,
and may sing with Barry Cornwall:
[Illustration:
“HE SINKS INTO THY DEPTHS, WITH BUBBLING GROAN,
WITHOUT A GRAVE, UNKNELLED, UNCOFFINED, AND UNKNOWN.”
]
“I love, oh, how I love to ride,
On the fierce, foaming, bursting
When every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the sou’west blasts do blow!”
Or if his mind be better adapted for homelier ditties, he may hum:
“The wind it blew a hurricane, the sea was mountains rollin’,
When Barney Buntlin’ turned his quid, and said to Billy Bowlin’:
‘A strong sou’wester’s blowin’, Billy; don’t you hear it roar now?
How I pity all unhappy folks as lives upon the shore now!’”
Or if becalmed, and forced for days to lie beneath a scorching tropical
sun,
“As idly as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean,”
the inevitable dreariness of the wide waste of scarcely heaving water
will oppress the mind till the sailor may murmur:
“So lonely ’twas that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.”
It is beyond dispute that the sea has been one of the most important
factors in civilizations ancient and modern. Greece was no longer
supreme in power when her naval supremacy was gone; Rome was not
mistress of the world till she became mistress of the Mediterranean. Not
a single great system of civilization has originated in districts far
inland. The great centers--Greece, Rome, Asia Minor, Egypt, Spain,
England--all that have wielded unusual power--are sea-coasts, peninsulas
or islands. The Jew became prominent as a trader from the day Jewish
vessels sailed from Tarshish. To some extent, these facts must be
considered as results of position only, however powerful the tendencies
or traits of any particular stock.
It is not merely as a highway for commerce and ready intercommunication
that the seas have enriched mankind. The submarine world presents views
as strange and weirdly beautiful as the ancient myths of nymphs and
naiads.
“Deep in the wave lies a coral grove,
Where the purple mullet and goldfish rove;
Where the seaflower spreads its leaves of blue,
That never were wet with falling dew;
But in bright and changeful beauty, shine
Far down in the green and glassy brine.”
And thousands of the human race depend entirely upon the products of the
sea for a livelihood. The fish taken as food would be an enormous item
in any year: but the billows that surge over the deep conceal far more
treasure than these.
“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.”
All our pearls, nearly all our amber, sponges, and as beautiful and
delicate as spun glass, corals of infinite number and variety--all
these, and more, we must obtain from the depths of the sea. Yet, while
eagerness for gain leads men to brave countless perils to obtain these
treasures, thousands of sad hearts will deem them dearly bought, and
recall the more precious treasures of the deep.
“Yet more! the billows and the depths have more!
High hearts and brave are gathered to thy breast!
They hear not now the booming waters roar;
The battle thunders will not break their rest.
Keep thy red gold and gems, thou stormy grave!
Give back the true and brave!
“Give back the lost and lovely! those for whom
The place was kept at board and hearth so long,
The prayer went up through midnight’s breathless gloom,
And the vain yearning woke ’midst festive song!
Hold fast thy buried isles, thy towers or throne--
But all is not thine own.
“To thee the love of woman hath gone down;
Dark flow the tides o’er manhood’s noble head,
Or youth’s bright locks, and beauty’s flowery crown;
Yet must thou hear a voice--Restore the dead!
Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee!
Restore the dead, thou sea!”
[Illustration: CAST ASHORE.]
Like the atmosphere, the ocean has its great constant currents, which
play an important part in the economy of nature. These flow steadily on,
one beneath another, and are little affected by atmospheric
disturbances. The presence of submarine currents is often shown by
icebergs moving steadily onward against a surface current and moderate
wind. But there is nothing in the sea, so far as known, that corresponds
to the variable winds or local currents of the atmosphere: for as water
is so much heavier than air, its equilibrium is not so easily disturbed
by unusual heating: and moreover, it does not expand under the influence
of heat to an extent in the least approaching the expansion of the air.
Hence, its currents are steady and slow-moving, and, however much they
affect climate and winds by the heating or cooling of the air above
them, they offer no obstacle worthy of note to the sailor. The latter
must then fear only the power of the storm: and were submarine vessels
readily constructed and navigated, the storm would lose its terrors: for
“When the wrathful spirit of storms,
Has made the top of the wave his own,
And when the ship from his fury flies,
When the myriad voices of ocean roar,
When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies,
And demons are waiting the wreck on shore,
Then far below in the peaceful sea,
The purple mullet and goldfish rove,
Where the waters murmur tranquilly,
Through the bending twigs of the coral grove.”
It should be said, however, that the sea and storm are not responsible
for all the disasters at sea. For years the greatest losses of life and
property were due to the greed of conscienceless owners, who sent rotten
tubs to sea, fearfully overloaded and heavily insured, certain to make a
good profit whether they perished or no. As for the sailors, they were
not worth considering: there were plenty to be obtained. Human life is
the cheapest commodity in any market. By a liberal spending of this
currency men become Alexanders or Cæsars, or Sullas, or Marii:
henceforth they are “Great.”
These abuses were especially prevalent in England, the greatest of
maritime powers; nor were they corrected till Mr. Samuel Plimsoll, in
1870, began a series of earnest efforts to have a systematic inspection
organized. He made a startling arraignment of the atrocious methods of
the land-sharks. He wrote, in 1873, “No means are neglected by
Parliament to provide for the safety of life ashore; and yet, as I said
before, you may build a ship in any way you please, you may use timber
utterly unfit, you may use it in quantity utterly inadequate, but no one
has any authority to interfere with you.
“You may even buy an old ship two hundred and fifty tons burden by
auction for £50, sold to be broken up, because extremely old and rotten;
she had a narrow escape on her last voyage, and had suffered so severely
that she was quite unfit to go to sea again without more being spent in
repairs upon her than she would be worth when done. Instead of breaking
up this old ship, bought for 4s. per ton (the cost of a new ship being
from £10 to £14 per ton), as was expected, you may give her a coat of
paint--she is too rotten for caulking--and to the dismay of her late
owners, you may prepare to send her to sea. You may be remonstrated
with, in the strongest terms, against doing so, even to being told that
if you persist, and the men are lost, you deserve to be tried for
manslaughter.
“You may engage men in another port, and they, having signed articles
without seeing the ship, you may send them to the port where the ship
lies in the custody of a mariner. You may then (after re-christening the
ship, which ought not to be allowed), if you have managed to insure her
heavily, load her until the main deck is within two feet of the water
amidships, and send her to sea. Nobody can prevent you. Nay, more, if
the men become riotous, you may arrest them without a magistrate’s
warrant, and take them to prison, and the magistrates, who have no
choice (they have not to make, but only to administer the law), will
commit them to prison for twelve weeks with hard labor; or better still
for you, you may send a policeman on board to overawe the mutineers, and
induce them to do their duty! And then, if the ship is lost with all
hands, you will gain a large sum of money and you will be asked no
questions, as no inquiry will ever be held over those unfortunate men,
unless (which has only happened once, I think), some member of the House
asks for inquiry.
“The river policeman who in one case threatened a refractory crew with
imprisonment, and urged them to do their duty (!) told me afterwards
(when they were all drowned) that he and his colleagues at the
river-side station had spoken to each other about the ship being
dreadfully overloaded as she passed their station on the river, before
he went on board to urge duty (!) and that he then, when he saw me,
’rued badly that he had not locked ’em up without talk, as then they
wouldn’t have been drowned.’”
He also found that some ship-builders put together mere floating
coffins, using “devils,” or dummy bolts, or bolt-heads without any
shaft, to present the appearance of a staunchly built vessel. The old
shell would founder in the first strong breeze. Hundreds of examples
came in his way of entire crews lost in these hulks. What such losses
meant to the poor dependent families at home we may imagine, but may not
readily portray.
Another prolific source of disaster was the neglect to supply captains
with the proper charts. There are notable instances of great vessels so
lost. One ship and cargo, value $350,000, was lost near Boulogne,
because the captain’s chart had not the lights properly marked on it.
The great steamer _Deutschland_, having a large number
[Illustration: WRECK OF THE MINOTAUR.]
of German emigrants on board, ran on an unmarked shoal near the mouth of
the Thames, December 30, 1875, and was lost. The vessel was fourteen
hours on the shoal in the winter storm, ere her signals of distress were
perceived. Fifty-seven of her passengers had been lost in the heavy sea
ere help reached her.
Ship after ship has left her port, never to be heard of again, whose
crews might have still been in peace and comfort with their families,
had the owners had the least trace of humanity, or regard for simple
justice. A single example will illustrate.
In a hovel, Plimsoll found a young wife, scrubbing for a living, trying
to support herself and three children. “She had a loving husband but
very lately, but the owner of the ship on which he served, the _S----n_,
was a very needy man, who insured her for £3,000 more than she had
cost him. So if she sank he would gain all this. Well, one voyage she
was loaded _under the owner’s personal superintendence_; she was loaded
so deeply that the dockmaster pointed her out to a friend as she left
the dock, and said emphatically, ‘That ship will never reach her
destination.’ She never did, for she was lost with all hands--twenty men
and boys.”
Under the owner’s personal superintendence! Could cool calculating
villany go any further? Yet this is but one out of many scores!
Yet, despite the apparent frequency of complaints from those who
suffered most by these practices, the abuses had grown up so gradually
that the masses of the people had come to accept them as almost a
necessary concomitant of naval matters. While holding out stoutly for
the difference of a penny more or less in wages, there was no effort at
concerted action for better treatment. Men accustomed to risking their
lives daily came to look upon the matter as of no great consequence.
Only the worst possible vessels were very seriously objected to; and
these usually had little difficulty in obtaining crews of men long out
of employment, who would accept any risk rather than remain a burden to
their friends and families, however the latter might object to the
proceeding. So thousands went to a watery grave. Official records of the
period showed that one-half the losses at sea were the result of sending
out rotten hulks. Yet, when reforms were suggested, the promoters were
frequently told that if such things did not properly regulate themselves
as a matter of political economy, there was no use striving for a
change. Cool weighing of human life against gold!
Even in staunch ships the accommodations provided for the sailors were
of the meanest sort. Men might wade to their bunks through water, or be
packed in a filthy forecastle like herrings; they were fed on “salt
horse” and moldy biscuit; they might rot with scurvy--if the ship got to
port with her cargo, it made little difference how the crew fared.
Our own ships and the Russian and French vessels the investigator found
far superior in treatment of the sailor: and the majority of English
owners did well by their crews; but Plimsoll’s efforts induced great
improvement. Compulsory survey and no overloading were his main remedies
for the prevention of the terrible loss of life in the mercantile
marine. He cites two cases of great firms--the first engaged in the coal
carrying, and the second in the guano trade--who do not permit
overloading, and the first, in fifteen years had not, out of a large
fleet of steamers, lost a single vessel, although they made from fifty
to seventy double trips per year. The second case deserves particular
mention. About the year 1860, the firm of Anthony Gibbs & Co., of
London, took a contract from the Peruvian Government to charter and
load ships from the Chincha Islands with guano, and as many as three or
four hundred ships left those islands annually for different parts of
the world. At first they were allowed to load and proceed to sea without
inspection or surveying, and were permitted to load as deeply as the
masters thought fit. What was the result? Accidents and losses were
reported every few days, and many of their ships foundered at sea, some
with all hands on board. When the head of the house at Lima, Peru,
introduced proper surveying before loading, to discover what repairs
were needed, etc., allowing no overloading, and not permitting the ships
to go to sea without full inspection of her pumps and gear, a sudden and
wonderful change took place, and for years after not one of these ships
foundered at sea.
There is no sadder record than that which has been made of many a
gallant vessel, sailing with the best prospects--“Missing,” or “Never
heard of.” Occasionally the mysterious fate of some of these vessels has
been revealed by the picking up of sealed bottles containing brief
records of the disastrous end of the missing ships. But such cases are
rare in comparison with the vast majority of the disasters; for the
greatest peril to a vessel in a storm is the vicinity of a reef or
shoal. In the open sea there is comparative safety, even in a
considerable gale, for good seamen; but a shoal or rocky coast may be
fatal to the vessel striking, even though the wind be but moderate. So
nearly all disasters occur along shore; and the time is past in which it
is possible for a vessel to be lost on an unknown or uninhabited coast.
Hence, soon or late, the lot of nearly every vessel is known.
Occasionally a vessel has been abandoned as unseaworthy or unmanageable,
and has surprised those abandoning her by drifting around for months in
the path of other vessels and occasionally fouling with some of them, to
their serious injury.
[Illustration: WRECKED ON A ROCK.]
The polar seas present peculiar perils to the navigator. Almost every
one has heard of the ill-fated Franklin expedition, even though others
may not be familiar. The attempts to find a northwest passage have long
ceased, it being indisputable that it is useless though found. The
great expeditions of later years have been equipped purely from a
scientific standpoint. No conceivable benefit to commerce can result
therefrom.
But the vast majority of fatalities in the polar seas have not been
among the great exploring expeditions, any more than the majority of
disasters in warmer climes are among first-class passenger steamers. The
world over, it is the coasting vessels, the fishing smacks, the second
and third-class freighters that swell the lists of losses at sea. And in
the polar seas the most numerous disasters are among the whaling and
sealing vessels, which visit the regions season after season. Many a
vessel has been crushed like an egg-shell amid the enormous masses of
ice. Often a vessel seemingly hopelessly imprisoned has been abandoned
by the crew, only to be freed by some caprice of the winds and picked up
by some other crew. And again there have been instances of vessels seen
resting in masses of ice far above the water, raised by continual
tilting and piling of ice-cakes beneath. Sometimes a vessel has floated
about thus for a considerable period. Comparatively speaking, losses of
life have been small in proportion to the dangers and property losses.
Where so many vessels are in the same region at a time, the crew of a
crushed ship can generally reach another vessel without great
difficulty. But years ago, when the whaling fleet was smaller, and steam
had not been called to the seaman’s aid, the peril of life was greater;
and many is the vessel that sailed away never to be heard of again.
One of the best stories illustrating this class of dangers is that of
the whaleship _Rufus_. A whaling vessel in 1774 found an abandoned ship;
and on boarding her, found the crew scattered about in the postures
assumed when they first yielded to the fatal sleep. The tale, in verse
worth
[Illustration: CASTAWAYS ON A RAFT.]
remembering, but seldom or never seen, was told many years ago by an
unknown author. The distinctness and simplicity of the style render the
poem worth preserving, aside from the interest of the story.
THE SHIP RUFUS.
Sing not, my Muse, of brightening fields
Of ether, fair displayed,
Of whispering bowers, where Zephyr yields
His fragrance to the glade
But haste thee to the frozen throne,
The starry blue domain
Where Winter, monarch dread and lone,
Asserts his iron reign.
Now Europe’s northern cape recedes,
And Iceland’s utmost shore;
The sailor turns his face and heeds
Those viewless forms no more.
For mountains, distant yet, but bright,
Edging the arctic tide,
’Neath spiry flames of dancing light,
At masthead are descried.
For see! in glittering points, the coast
Divides; the mountain chain,
On waves afar in silence tossed,
Trembles athwart the main.
Anon, the mariner looks forth,
And scans with cheerless brow,--
Borne onward by the angry North,
An arctic navy now.
“How shall the good ship Rufus speed?
How live?” the master cried;--
“God send us help in time of need,"--
“Amen!” the crew replied.
Each ice-built crag and snowy cliff
Chases the foaming spray;
And, ’mid those moving Alps, the skiff
Must find her destined way.
Her destined way?--Her destined fate!
Now drops the needful gale;
The waves become a glassy plate;
The bark forbears to sail.
Prisoned of God; by mountains pent,--
Fuel and food consumed;--
Ask not of me the dire event,
Nor why they thus were doomed.
* * * * *
Again, borne forth by waves and wind,
Men spread a venturous sail,
’Mid rocks of massy ice to find
The scarce less massy whale.
The optic tube now aids the eye,
And scans the distant sea:
A distant speck they now descry;
A speck--what can it be?
“What can it be?” inquire the men--
“An iceberg, or a sail?”
As yet the crew inquire in vain,
And doubt must yet prevail.
Yes, doubt prevails, and strengthens still,
Though fast the object nears.
“Sure ’tis no sail which at the will
Of winds and billows steers!”
Fancy still limns out forms uncouth,
Yet scarce herself persuades;
But fancy now gives place to truth
More startling than her shades.
A dreary hull, with shattered mast,
And sails of strangest guise,
And cordage fluttering in the blast,
Now meets their wondering eyes.
The bark they hail;--in many a groan
The bellowing shrouds reply;
But bellowing shrouds respond alone;--
No voice returns the cry.
Strange!--for, as near with curious haste
They ply, and glance within,
Lo! at the cabin window placed,
A form is dimly seen.
They mount the floating ruin now--
Her deck is overlaid
Man’s height in crusted ice and snow,
Which shows no human tread.
To find the hatch beneath the drift,
They all their efforts lend,--
Its frozen planks at length they lift,
And fearfully descend.
Now pause they at the cabin door;--
Now enter, as they will;--
Its quiet inmate, as before,
Sits unconcerned and still.
With pen in hand, and half reclined,
Like those in thoughtful moods;
To noises deaf, to visions blind,
He cares not who intrudes.
No!--for a filmy mold invests
His long untroubled brow;--
His eyeballs green sought not his guests,
Nor can he turn them now.
[Illustration: SINKING OF THE LONDON.]
A crumbling page before him lay,
Which told the unspoken woe;--
“Our cabin fire went out to-day--
Food spent five days ago;--
“Locked in the ice three weeks,--our crew
All dead,--all hope is o’er;--
Ship Rufus--1762--
One hour, and I’m no more!”
Now horror on the souls sunk down--
On all who viewed the scene;
Twelve arctic winters then had flown,
Since this a corpse had been!
Twelve years on polar surges tossed,
By northern blasts conveyed--
Destroyed--preserved, by iron frost,
Her crew were statues made.
Perchance this fate-directed prow
Had crossed ’neath cloudless skies
The pole, which jealous Nature now
Shuts out from human eyes.
Perchance the dreamed of Northern Way
This guileless keel had plowed,
While billows with the helm did play,
And wild winds trimmed the shroud.
Say when, Stern Spirits of the North,
They found their watery grave?
Or do ye still in awful mirth,
Toss them from wave to wave?