wind after the ship is secured, I wonder how many of my readers will
have seen the following ancient song. I guard myself from implying the
full acquiescence of seamen in what is, of course, a caricature; few
seamen, few who have tried, really enjoy bad weather. Yet there are
exceptions. That there is no accounting for tastes is extraordinarily
true. I once met a man, journeying, who told me he liked living in a
sleeping-car; than which to me a dozen gales, with their abounding
fresh air, would be preferable. Yet this ditty does grotesquely
reproduce the lazy satisfaction and security of the old-timers under
the conditions:
"One night came on a hurricane,
The sea was mountains rolling,
When Barney Buntline turned his quid
And said to Billy Bowline,
'A strong nor'wester's blowing, Bill:
Hark! don't you hear it roar now?
Lord help them! how I pities all
Unlucky folks on shore now.
"'Foolhardy chaps, that live in towns,
What dangers they are all in!
And now lie shaking in their beds,
For fear the roof should fall in!
Poor creatures, how they envies us,
And wishes, I've a notion,
For our good luck, in such a storm,
To be upon the ocean.
"'And often, Bill, I have been told
How folks are killed, and undone,
By overturns of carriages,
By fogs and fires in London.
We know what risks all landsmen run,
From noblemen to tailors:
Then, Bill, let us thank Providence
That you and I are sailors.'"
Tastes differ as to which of the three night watches is preferable.
Perhaps some one who has tried will reply they are all alike
detestable, and, if he be Irish, will add that the only decent watch
on deck is the watch below--an "all night in." But I also have tried;
and while prepared to admit that perhaps the pleasantest moment of any
particular watch is that in which your successor touches his cap and
says, "I'll relieve you," I still maintain there are abundant and
large compensations. Particularly for a midshipman, for he had no
responsibilities. The lieutenant of the watch had always before him
the possibilities of a mischance; and one very good officer said to me
he did not believe any lieutenant in the navy felt perfectly
comfortable in charge of the deck in a heavy gale. Freedom from
anxiety, however, is a matter of temperament; not by any means
necessarily of courage, although it adds to courage the invaluable
quality of not wasting nerve force on difficulties of the imagination.
A weather-brace may go unexpectedly; a topsail-sheet part; an awkward
wave come on board. Very true; but what is the use of worrying,
unless you are constitutionally disposed to worry. If you are
constitutionally so disposed, I admit there is not much use in
talking. Illustrative of this, the following story has come down of
two British admirals, both men of proved merit and gallantry. "When
Howe was in command of the Channel Fleet, after a dark and boisterous
night, in which the ships had been in some danger of running foul of
each other, Lord Gardner, then the third in command, the next day went
on board the _Queen Charlotte_ and inquired of Lord Howe how he had
slept, for that he himself had not been able to get any rest from
anxiety of mind. Lord Howe said he had slept perfectly well, for, as
he had taken every possible precaution he could before dark, he laid
himself down with a conscious feeling that everything had been done
which it was in his power to do for the safety of the ships and of the
lives intrusted to his care, and this conviction set his mind at
ease." The apprehensiveness with which Gardner was afflicted "is
further exemplified by an anecdote told by Admiral Sir James Whitshed,
who commanded the _Alligator_, next him in the line. Such was his
anxiety, even in ordinary weather, that, though each ship carried
three poop lanterns, he always kept one burning in his cabin, and when
he thought the _Alligator_ was approaching too near, he used to run
out into the stern gallery with the lantern in his hand, waving it so
as to be noticed." My friend above quoted had only recently quitted a
brig-of-war, on board which he had passed several night watches with a
man standing by the lee topsail-sheet, axe in hand, to cut if she went
over too far, lest she might not come back; and the circumstance had
left an impression. I do not think he was much troubled in this way on
board our frigate; yet the _Savannah_, but little smaller than the
_Congress_, had been laid nearly on her beam-ends by a sudden squall,
and had to cut, when entering Rio two years before.
Being even at nineteen of a meditative turn, fond of building castles
in the air, or recalling old acquaintance and _auld lang syne_,--the
retrospect of youth, though short, seems longer than that of age,--I
preferred in ordinary weather the mid-watch, from midnight to four.
There was then less doing; more time and scope to enjoy. The canvas
had long before been arranged for the night. If the wind shifted, or
necessity for tacking arose, of course it was done; but otherwise a
considerate officer would let the men sleep, only rousing them for
imperative reasons. The hum of the ship, the loitering "idlers,"--men
who do not keep watch,--last well on to ten, or after, in the
preceding watch; and the officers of the deck in sailing-ships had not
the reserve--or preserve--which the isolation of the modern bridge
affords its occupants. Although the weather side of the quarter-deck
was kept clear for him and the captain, there was continued going and
coming, and talking near by. He was on the edge of things, if not in
the midst; while the midshipman of the forecastle had scarce a foot he
could call his very own. But when the mid-watch had been mustered, the
lookouts stationed, and the rest of them had settled themselves down
for sleep between the guns, out of the way of passing feet, the
forecastle of the _Congress_ offered a very decent promenade,
magnificent compared to that proverbial of the poops of small
vessels--"two steps and overboard." Then began the steady pace to and
fro, which to me was natural and inherited, easily maintained and
consistent with thought--indeed, productive of it. Not every officer
has this habit, but most acquire it. I have been told that, however
weakly otherwise, the calf muscles of watch-officers were generally
well developed. There were exceptions. A lieutenant who was something
of a wag on one occasion handed the midshipman of his watch a small
instrument, in which the latter did not recognize a pedometer. "Will
you kindly keep this in your trousers-pocket for me till the watch is
over?" At eight bells he asked for it, and, after examining, said,
quizzically, "Mr. ----, I see you have walked just half a mile in the
last four hours." Of course, walking is not imperative, one may watch
standing; but movement tends to wakefulness--you can drowse upon your
feet--while to sit down, besides being forbidden by unwritten law, is
a treacherous snare to young eyelids.
How much a watch afforded to an eye that loved nature! I have been
bored so often by descriptions of scenery, that I am warned to put
here a sharp check on my memory, lest it run away with me, and my
readers seek escape by jumping off. I will forbear, therefore, any
attempt at portraiture, and merely mention the superb aurora borealis
which illuminated several nights of the autumn of 1859, perceptibly
affecting the brightness of the atmosphere, while we lay becalmed a
little north of the tropics. But other things I shall have some excuse
for telling; because what my eyes used to see then few mortal eyes
will see again. Travel will not reach it; for though here and there a
rare sailing-ship is kept in a navy, for occasional instruction,
otherwise they have passed away forever; and the exceptions are but
curiosities--reality has disappeared. They no longer have life, and
are now but the specimens of the museum. The beauties of a brilliant
night at sea, whether starlit or moonlit, the solemn, awe-inspiring
gloom and silence of a clouded, threatening sky, as the steamer with
dull thud moves at midnight over the waste of waters, these I need not
describe; many there are that see them in these rambling days. These
eternities of the heavens and the deep abide as before, are common to
the steamer as to the sailing-ship; but what weary strain of words can
restore to imagination the beautiful living creature which leaped
under our feet and spread her wings above us? For a sailing-ship was
more inspiring from within than from without, especially a ship of
war, which, as usually ordered, permitted no slovenliness; abounded in
the perpetual seemliness that enhances beauty yet takes naught from
grace. Viewed from without, undeniably a ship under sail possesses
attraction; but it is from within that you feel the "very pulse of the
machine." No canvas looks so lofty, speaks so eloquently, as that seen
from its own deck, and this chiefly has invested the sailing-vessel
with its poetry. This the steamer, with its vulgar appeal to physical
comfort, cannot give. Does any one know any verse of real poetry, any
strong, thrilling idea, suitably voiced, concerning a steamer? I
do--one--by Clough, depicting the wrench from home, the stern
inspiration following the wail of him who goeth away to return no
more:
"Come back! come back!
Back flies the foam; the hoisted flag streams back;
The long smoke wavers on the homeward track.
Back fly with winds things which the winds obey,
_The strong ship follows its appointed way_."
Oddly enough, two of the most striking sea scenes that I remember,
very different in character, associate themselves with my favorite
mid-watch. The first was the night on which we struck the northeast
trade-winds, outward bound. We had been becalmed for nearly, if not
quite, two weeks in the "horse latitudes;" which take their name,
tradition asserts, from the days when the West India sugar islands
depended for live-stock, and much besides, on the British continental
colonies. If too long becalmed, and water gave out, the unhappy
creatures had to be thrown overboard to save human lives. On the other
side of the northeast trades, between them and the southeast, towards
the equator, lies another zone of calms, the doldrums, from which also
the _Congress_ this time suffered. We were sixty seven or eight days
from the Capes of the Delaware to Bahia, a distance, direct, of little
more than four thousand miles. Of course, there was some beating
against head wind, but we could not have averaged a hundred miles to
the twenty-four hours. During much of this passage the allowance of
fresh water was reduced to two quarts per man, except sick, for all
purposes of consumption--drinking and cooking. Under such conditions,
washing had to be done with salt water.
We had worried our weary way through the horse latitudes, embracing
every flaw of wind, often accompanied by rain, to get a mile ahead
here, half a dozen miles there; and, as these spurts come from every
quarter, this involves a lot of bracing--changing the position of the
yards; continuous work, very different from the placid restfulness of
a "whole gale" of wind, with everything snug aloft and no chance of
let-up during the watch. Between these occasional puffs would come
long pauses of dead calm, in which the midshipman of the watch would
enter in the log: "1 A.M., 0 knots; 2 A.M., 6 fathoms (3/4 knot); 3
A.M., 0 knots; 4 A.M., 1 knot, 2 fathoms;" the last representing
usually a guess of the officer of the deck as to what would make the
aggregate for the four hours nearly right. It did not matter, for we
were hundreds of miles from land and the sky always clear for
observations. Few of the watch got much sleep, because of the
perpetual bracing; and all the while the ship rolling and sending, in
the long, glassy ocean swell, unsteadied by the empty sails, which
swung out with one lurch as though full, and then slapped back all
together against the masts, with a swing and a jerk and a thud that
made every spar tremble, and the vessel herself quiver in unison. Nor
were we alone. Frequently two or three American clippers would be
hull-up at the same moment within our horizon, bound the same way; and
it was singular how, despite the apparently unbroken calm, we got away
from one another and disappeared. Ships lying with their heads "all
around the compass" flapped themselves along in the direction of their
bows, the line of least resistance.
I do not know at what hour under such circumstances we had struck the
trades, but when I came on deck at midnight we had got them steady and
strong. As there was still a good-deal of casting to make, the ship
had been brought close to the wind on the port tack; the bowlines
steadied out, but not dragged, every sail a good rap full, "fast
asleep," without the tremor of an eyelid, if I may so style a weather
leach, or of any inch of the canvas, from the royals down to the
courses. Every condition was as if arranged for a special occasion, or
to recompense us for the tedium of the horse latitudes. The moon was
big, and there was a clear sky, save for the narrow band of tiny
clouds, massed like a flock of sheep, which ever fringes the horizon
of the trades; always on the horizon, as you progress, yet never
visible above when the horizon of this hour has become the zenith of
the next. After the watch was mustered and the lookouts stationed,
there came perfect silence, save for the slight, but not ominous,
singing of the wind through the rigging, and the dash of the water
against the bows, audible forward though not aft. The seamen, not
romantically inclined, for the most part heeded neither moon nor sky
nor canvas. The vivid, delicate tracery of the shrouds and ruining
gear, the broader image of the sails, shadowed on the moonlit deck,
appealed not to them. Recognizing only that we had a steady wind, no
more bracing to-night, and that the most that could happen would be to
furl the royals should it freshen, they hastened to stow themselves
away for a full due between the cannon, out of the way of passing
feet, sure that this watch on deck would be little less good than one
below. Perhaps there were also visions of "beans to-morrow." I trust
so.
The lieutenant of the watch, Smith, and I had it all to ourselves;
unbroken, save for the half-hourly call of the lookouts: "Starboard
cathead!" "Port cathead!" "Starboard gangway!" "Port gangway!" "Life
buoy!" He came forward from time to time to take it all in, and to
see how the light spars were standing, for the ship was heeling eight
or ten degrees, and racing along, however quietly; but the strain was
steady, no whipping about from uneasy movement of the vessel, and we
carried on to the end. Each hour I hove the log and reported: one
o'clock, eleven knots; two o'clock, eleven; three o'clock,
eleven--famous going for an old sailing-ship close-hauled. Splendid!
we rubbed our hands; what a record! But, alas! at four o'clock, ten!
Commonly, ten used to be a kind of standard of excellence; Nelson once
wrote, as expressive of an utmost of hopefulness, "If we all went ten
knots, I should not think it fast enough;" but, puffed up as we had
been, it was now a sad come-down. Smith looked at me. "Are you _sure_,
Mr. Mahan?" With the old hand-log, its line running out while the sand
sped its way through the fourteen-seconds glass, the log-beaver might
sometimes, by judicious "feeding"--hurrying the line under the plea of
not dragging the log-chip--squeeze a little more record out of the
log-line than the facts warranted; and Smith seemed to feel I might
have done a little better for the watch and for the ship. But in
truth, when a cord is rushing through your hand at the rate of ten
miles an hour--fifteen feet a second--you cannot get hold enough to
hasten the pace. He passed through a struggle of conscience. "Well, I
suppose I must; log her ten-four." A poor tail to our beautiful kite.
Ten-four meant ten and a half; for in those primitive days knots were
divided into eight fathoms. Now they are reckoned by tenths; a small
triumph of the decimal system, which may also carry cheer to the
constant hearts of the spelling reformers.
A year later, at like dead of night, I witnessed quite another scene.
We were then off the mouth of the river La Plata, perhaps two hundred
miles from shore. We had been a fortnight at sea, cruising; and I have
always thought that the captain, who was interested in meteorology
and knew the region, kept us out till we should catch a _pampero_. We
caught it, and quite up to sample. I had been on deck at 9 P.M., and
the scene then, save for the force of the wind, was nearly the same as
that I have just described. The same sail, the same cloudless sky and
large moon; but we were going only five knots, with a quiet, rippling
sea, on which the moonbeams danced. Such a scene as Byron doubtless
had in memory:
"The midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o'er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving
Like an infant's asleep."
Having to turn out at twelve, I soon started below; but before
swinging into my hammock I heard the order to furl the royals and send
the yards on deck. This startled me, for I had not been watching the
barometer, as the captain had; and I remember, by the same token, that
I was then enlarging on the beauties of the outlook above, accompanied
by some disparaging remarks about what steamers could show, whereupon
one of our senior officers, over-hearing, called me in, and told me
quite affably, and in delicate terms, not to make a fool of myself.
But "Linden saw another sight," when I returned to the deck at
midnight; sharp, I am sure, for I held to the somewhat priggish
saying, first devised, I imagine, by some wag tired of waiting for his
successor, "A prompt relief is the pride of a young officer." The
quartermaster, who called me and left the lantern dimly burning, had
conveyed the comforting assurance that it looked very bad on deck, and
the second reef was just taking in the topsails. When I got to my
station, the former watch was still aloft, tying their last
reef-points, from which they soon straggled down, morosely conscious
that they had lost ten minutes of their one watch below, and would
have to be on deck again at four. The moon was still up, but, as it
were, only to emphasize the darkness of the huge cloud masses which
scudded across the sky, with a rapid but steady gait, showing that the
wind meant business. The new watch was given no more time than to wake
up and shake themselves. They were soon on the yards, taking the third
and fourth-last--reefs in the fore and main topsails, furling the
mizzen, and seeing that the lower sails and topgallant-sails were
securely rolled up against the burst that was to be expected. Before
1.30 A.M. all things were as ready as care could make them, and not
too soon. The moon was sinking, or had sunk; the sky darkened
steadily, though not beyond that natural to a starless night. In the
southwest faint glimmerings of lightning gave warning of what might be
looked for; but we had used light well while we had it, and could now
bear what was to come. At 2 P.M. it came with a roar and a rush,
"butt-end foremost," as the saying is, preceded by a few huge drops of
scurrying rain.
"When the rain before the wind,
Topsail sheets and halyards mind;"
but that was for other conditions than ours.
A pampero at its ordinary level is no joke; but this was the charge of
a wild elephant, which would exhaust itself soon, but for the nonce
was terrific. Pitch darkness settled down upon the ship. Except in the
frequent flashes of lightning, literally blue, I could not see the
forecastle boatswain's mate of the watch, who stood close by my elbow,
ready pipe in hand. The rain came down in buckets, and in the midst of
all the wind suddenly shifted, taking the sails flat aback. The
shrillness of the boatswain's pipes is then their great merit. They
pierce through the roar of the tempest, by sheer difference of pitch,
an effect one sometimes hears in an opera; and the officer of the
deck, our second lieutenant, who bore the name of Andrew Jackson, and
was said to have received his appointment from him--which shows how
far back he went--had a voice of somewhat the same quality. I had
often heard it assert itself, winding in and out through the uproar of
an ordinary gale, but on this occasion it went clean away--whistled
down the wind. "I always think bad of it," said Boatswain Chucks,
"when the elements won't allow my whistle to be heard; and I consider
it hardly fair play." Such advantage the elements took of us on this
occasion, but the captain came to the rescue. He had the throat of a
bull of Bashan, which went the elements one better on their own hand.
Under his stentorian shouts the weather head-braces were led along
(probably already had been, as part of the preparation, but that was
quarter-deck work, outside my knowledge) and manned. All other gear
being coiled out of the way, on the pins, there was nothing to confuse
or entangle; the fore topsail was swung round on the opposite tack
from the main, a-box, to pay the ship's head off and leave her side to
the wind, steadied by the close-reefed fore and main topsails, which
would then be filled. She was now, of course, going astern fast; but
this mattered nothing, for the sea had not yet got up. The evolution,
common enough itself, an almost invariable accompaniment of getting
under way, was now exciting even to grandeur, for we could see only
when the benevolent lightning kindled in the sky a momentary glare of
noonday. "Now that's a clever old man," said the boatswain's mate next
day to me, approvingly, of the captain; "boxing her off that way, with
all that wind and blackness, was handsomely done." After this we
settled down to a two days' pampero, with a huge but regular sea.
Whether the _Congress's_ helm on this interesting occasion was shifted
for sternboard I never inquired. Marryat tells us it was a moot point
in his young days. Our captain was an excellent seaman, but had
'doxies of his own. Of these, one which ran contrary to current
standards was in favor of clewing up a course or topsail to leeward,
in blowing weather. Among the lieutenants was a strong champion of the
opposite and accepted dogma, and a messmate of mine, in his division
and shining by reflected light, was always prompt to enforce closure
of debate by declaiming:
"He who seeks the tempest to disarm
Will never first embrail the lee yard-arm."
Whether Falconer, besides being a poet, was also an expert in
seamanship, or whether he simply registered the views of his day, may
be questioned. The two alternatives, I fancy, were the chance of
splitting the sail, and that of springing the yard; and any one who
has ever watched a big bag of wind whipping a weather yard-arm up and
down in its bellying struggles, after clewing up to windward, will
have experienced as eager a desire to call it down as he has ever felt
to suppress its congener in an after-dinner oration. Both are much out
of place and time.
Days of the past! Certainly a watch spent reefing topsails in the rain
was less tedious than that everlasting bridge of to-day: Tramp! Tramp!
or stand still, facing the wind blowing the teeth down your throat.
Nothing to do requiring effort; the engine does all that; but still a
perpetual strain of attention due to the rapid motion of vessels under
steam. The very slowness of sailing-ships lightened anxiety. In such a
gale you might as well be anxious in a wheel-chair. And then, when you
went below, you went, not bored, but healthfully tired with active
exertion of mind and body. Yes; the sound was sweet then, at eight
bells, the pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe of the boatswain's mates, followed
by their gruff voices drawling out, in loud sing-song: "A-a-a-all the
starboard watch! Come! turn out there! Tumble out! Tumble out! Show a
leg! Show a leg! On deck there! all the starboard watch!" When I went
below that morning with the port watch, at four o'clock, I turned over
to my relief a forecastle on which he would have nothing to do but
drink his coffee at daylight.