bestowing a sea-blessing on the stranger, and then turned-to to sound
the well, and, if the schooner was leaking fast, get the boats over. But
Mr. John Whitear was made of the old, and, as some people might think,
the right kind of stuff.
“Bill,” says he to William Dart, A.B., who was at the wheel, “keep your
eye upon that old catermerang while me and the mate overhauls the
schooner. Follow her without a wink, William; for if there’s a creak
left in this old bucket, we’ll stick to her skirts and have her name,
though she should go all on sailing till we comes to Australey.”
Forthwith he and the mate went to work, sounded the well, looked over
the side, peered at the damage done aloft; and then, coming aft again,
“She’s tight and she’s right, boys,” said Mr. Whitear. “Now, bullies,
here’s a mess that’s to cost some one pounds and pounds. That some one’s
not to be John Whitear; so, William, starboard your helm, my lad; and
the rest of ye all turn to and make sail forrard, every stitch ye can
find, and then we’ll repair the main rigging, and get a new mainsail
bent;” for he had discovered that the barque’s jibboom had cut through
the centre cloths of the mainsail, ripping it open from the head to the
second reef-band as neatly as if a sailmaker’s knife had done the job.
They all went to work with a will, putting uncommon agility into their
limbs and spirits by calling the shadow ahead many hard salt names, and
swearing they would catch her if she carried them into the Polar
regions. The labour was severe, for there were not many of them to
“turn-to;” nevertheless, they managed, in a time less by three-quarters
than they would have occupied on any other occasion, to repair the
damaged shrouds, set up preventer backstays, bend a new mainsail, and
cover the little vessel with canvas. The barque was close-hauled, three
or four miles ahead, on the port tack, lying over, as a light vessel
will in such a merry breeze as was then blowing, under both royals and
gaff topsail; she was trusting to her heels and running away, like a big
bully from a little man whom he has accidentally hurt, and is afraid of.
Her people would probably ridicule the idea of the deep-freighted
schooner chasing them; indeed, they had left her apparently helpless,
her port main rigging hanging in bights over the side, her mainsail in
halves, and the whole fabric looking wrecked and stunned from the shock
of the collision.
Meanwhile, Mr. John Whitear stumped the quarter-deck of his little
craft, often pausing to point an old leather-covered telescope at the
leaning shadow out away under the low-shining stars just the merest
trifle to leeward of the lee knighthead, and then cocking the glass
under his arm afresh, and swinging round with a sharp, obstinate stamp
of the foot to resume his walk.
“Boys,” he sung out, “there’s no occasion for the Watch below to remain
on deck.”
“No, no,” was the gruff answer; “there’s no going below till we’ve found
out that wessel’s name.”
The wind came along with a fresh, strong sweep, and a deep moan in the
gusts as they blew over the bulwark rail into the hollow glimmer of the
great mainsail; there was a kind of flashful light in the breaking heads
of the little black surges, and a regular rise and fall of fountain-like
sound from forward, where the stem of the driven schooner was hissing
through the dark water, and the wake ran away astern like a snow-covered
road, until, looking at it, you seemed to see the dark water on either
side stand up as if the white vein were the frothing stream of a
cataract rushing into darkness betwixt the shadows of hills.
“Why, smother me, if she’s not got the scent of us!” suddenly cried Mr.
Whitear with the glass at his eye; “she’s off three points, and there’s
no luff left in her! Boys, did any of you take notice if she had her
stun-sail booms aloft?”
“No,” answered William Dart; “her foreyards were just up yonder”
(pointing into the air), “an’ I’ll take my oath she’d got no booms on
’em.”
“Then we’ll run her down yet: we’ll have her!” cried Mr. Whitear,
fetching his knee a slap that sounded like the report of a pistol. “Keep
her away a bit; ease off the sheets fore and aft. Hurrah, my lads! the
_Jehu_ knows the road! We’ll weather the sneak, boys!” And so he rattled
on, sometimes talking to his men, sometimes to the schooner, and
sometimes addressing the barque ahead.
Shortly after two o’clock in the morning, however, four or five
sailing-vessels hove in sight and bothered Mr. Whitear exceedingly, for
there was a chance mistaking the chase among them and pursuing the wrong
vessel. All hands were implored to keep a bright look-out, and the glass
was now much more often at the skipper’s eye than under his arm. It is
strange enough to think of a little collier with 230 tons of coal in her
bottom pursuing a vessel three times her size. It might really pass as a
most satirical travestie of the old maritime business, were it not for
the very strong commercial instincts at work in it. The purse was always
as great a power on sea as on land, and the flight of the big barque
from the little coalman was only another illustration of its supremacy.
To the great satisfaction of Mr. Whitear, the schooner turned out to be
more than a match for the cowardly runaway. It was quite clear that the
barque had no more sail to set; as it was, she was bowling along under a
press of canvas that must have made her decks mighty uncomfortable, to
judge from the sharp angle of her inclination. Had she chosen to put her
helm up and bring the wind well aft, she would no doubt have walked away
from the schooner, whose fore-and-aft canvas then would not have much
helped her. But the barque could not forget that she had to work her way
to windward, and that her port lay N.E. and not S.W.: and though she
might slacken away her lee-braces in the hope of making the obstinate
little schooner give up, it would not answer her purpose to do more
than that.
Inch by inch the _Jehu_ crawled up to her. Just before daybreak the wind
breezed up like a squall, though the sky was clear, and Mr. Whitear, who
all through the night had watched the chase with the intentness of an
old British commodore following a squadron of flying Frenchmen, shouted
out that she had taken in her royals and gaff topsail, and that, as it
was, she was nearly out of water to windward. But not so much as a
rope-yarn was touched aboard the _Jehu_; she had never been so pressed
since the hour that she was launched. She hove up the foam as high as
the head-boards; every bone of her trembled; the wind boomed away from
under the foot of her sails in a thunder-note, and the sheets and
weather standing rigging stood like bars of iron. There seemed as much
eagerness in her shivering, rushing frame as in her skipper, whose
excitement deepened as the square and leaning shadow ahead loomed bigger
and bigger. Earnestly was it to be hoped that the port main rigging
would stand all this straining; and yet such was the temper of the
captain and the men of the brave little _Jehu_, that, I believe, had the
mainmast gone overboard, they would have held on after the barque with a
single spar, just as I once saw a man with one arm and a wooden leg give
chase to a rogue who had sneered at his misfortunes.
The faint grey of the dawn was in the sky when the barque was brought to
the wind again, and, after holding on for a short while with a close
luff, went about. Before she had her foreyards braced round, the
schooner had stayed and was on the starboard tack, savagely breaking the
quick seas which were rolling in the wake of the wind, and finding all
the advantage she needed in the weathering she had made upon the
barque, who, with the rising of the sun, appeared to lose all heart, for
no more sail was made, and when she was braced up she was kept so close
that the weather half of her fore topgallant-sail was aback. The white
sunshine that had flung a deep blue over the stars, and transformed the
ocean into a tumbling green surface full of sparkles and white lines,
and a horizon so clear that it was like the sweep of a brush dipped in
bright green paint along the enfolding azure of the morning sky, gave
stout-hearted Mr. John Whitear a good sight of the tall vessel he had
been chasing all through the middle and morning watches. She was what he
called “a lump of a barque,” so light that half her metal sheathing was
out of water, with very square yards and a main skysail mast, and she
tumbled with such unwieldly motions upon the running seas that it seemed
no longer wonderful that the _Jehu_ should have been able to weather and
forereach upon her. Her way was almost stopped by the gripe of her luff,
and within an hour of the time of her going about the schooner was on
her weather quarter.
Mr. Whitear had already deciphered her name upon her stern, but he had
some questions to ask; so, jumping on to the rail and clawing a backstay
with one hand, whilst he put the other hand to his mouth, he bawled out,
“Barque ahoy!”
“Hallo!” was the answer.
“What’s the name of your vessel?” sang out Mr. “Whitear.
“Have you forgotten how to read, skipper? It’s under your nose,” came
the reply.
“You’re the barque _Juno_, of Maitland, N.S.--that’s clear enough on
your starn,” shouted Mr. Whitear, whose temper, inflamed by the long
pursuit, was not improved, as may be supposed, by this reception; “and
you’re the vessel that ran into us last night, and carried away our
shrouds, braces, and running gear, the mainrail, topgallant bulwarks,
and split our mainsail.”
“No, we ain’t,” was the reply. “We know nothing of the job you’re
talking about; so sheer off, will ye, and take care to spot the right
party afore letting fly.”
Without answering, Mr. Whitear shifted his helm so as to bring his
vessel to leeward of the barque; and then, running forward when the
schooner had forged abreast of the other vessel, he shouted to the man
who had answered his hail to look over the port bow of the barque and
there he would see the marks of the schooner’s chain-plate bolts, whilst
farther evidence of the barque being the culprit lay in particles of her
planking adhering to the _Jehu’s_ chain-plates. This was too decisive to
admit of farther denial; and Mr. John Whitear having obtained all the
information he required, walked aft again, once more shifted his helm,
saluted the barque with a farewell flourish of his fist, and then gave
orders to his men to trim sail and head for the port to which they were
bound.
_A SALVAGE JOB._
Among the most picturesque and lively incidents of the sea are those of
the encountering of abandoned vessels, and the struggles of the people
who board them to carry them into port. Were it not for the imperative
injunctions of owners, and the various obligations imposed upon
shipmasters by the terms of charter-parties, policies, and the like,
there is no doubt that we should hear very much oftener than we now do
of the preservation of derelicts and their cargoes. The mariner often
stumbles upon some substantial prize in this way. A ship is sighted, low
in the water, with nothing standing perhaps but the stump of her
foremast. A spell at the pumps eases her, she is overhauled, and her
hold seen to be full of valuable cargo. She is taken in tow, and after
several days, or perhaps weeks, of manœuvring, she is carried into port
and found to be worth some thousands of pounds, a goodly portion of
which goes to the men who navigated her into a place of safety. There is
a touch of romance in such findings that never fails to render them
amusing and even exciting reading; and as stories they are often rich in
a high kind of marine characteristics.
One of these yarns, I remember, impressed me greatly at the time. The
master of a vessel, called the _Fides_, sighted a Dutch barque
water-logged. On approaching her, only one man was to be seen on board.
He proved to be the skipper, who said that his crew had refused to
remain by the vessel, and had left him alone in her. He was brought
aboard the _Fides_, but had not been there ten minutes when he begged to
be sent to his water-logged barque again. His entreaties were so moving
that the captain of the _Fides_ yielded, and he was once more put in
possession of his wreck and left there. Next day a vessel, called the
_Ballater_, took him off, and the wonder was that the poor fellow had
ever managed to keep his life on the deck of the wave-swept hulk. Here,
in the most obscure form in the world, is an exhibition of the sailor’s
loyalty to his ship so great as to make a truly heroical figure of that
Dutch captain. Narratives which recount the meeting with derelicts and
their conveyance to port often reveal some of the best qualities of the
sailor--I mean his indifference to peril, his capacity of determined
labour, his triumph over forces whose antagonism would leave most
landsmen helpless and hopeless. Such was the story of the _Caledonia_, a
prize crew from which took charge of the brig _Emily_, and, after ten
days of fierce battling with violent gales of wind in a vessel
jury-rigged and half full of water, were eventually forced to abandon
her. Such was the voyage of five men in the derelict barque _Thor_ of
Tvedestrand, laden with scrap-iron and oil-casks; they had to rig a
jury-rudder to get her to sail, and for nearly a fortnight struggled
with heavy weather and baffling winds, eventually being shipwrecked near
Youghal, and narrowly escaping with their lives only to witness the
craft they had desperately laboured to save go to pieces among the
rocks.
Not very long since a ship-rigged vessel of nine hundred tons was
proceeding on her voyage to one of the West India Islands. The weather
had been calm and thick through the night, with a long swell rolling up
from the westwards, and the morning broke with a fiery sun, red as that
luminary is at his setting, and a mountainous heave of the sea that in
the wake of the orb rolled in billows of molten gold, giving a kind of
dreadful splendour to the hazy morning, with its faint and tarnished sky
and the sickly green of the swelling and foamless deep, and the stubborn
belt of haze that hung like the greyish shadow of rain upon the horizon,
save where the sun loomed like a blood-red shield as he floated heavily
out of the deep. There were a hundred signs to betoken a gale at hand,
and preparatory measures were accordingly taken aboard the ship. All the
light canvas and the mainsail were furled, and single reefs tied in the
topsails. Never was such rolling. The draught of air had no weight to
steady the vessel; she fell into the hollow of the swell, and from side
to side she swayed as each ponderous liquid fold caught and hove her
over, the water bursting inboard in smoke through her scupper-holes, the
shrouds creaking with the tension of the strain as though they would
draw the chain-plates like pliant wire, and every beam, strong
fastening, and bulkhead added their groaning notes to the general
clamour of the labouring hull and the beating canvas. By nine o’clock
the sun had vanished under an expanse of slate-coloured cloud that hung
over the whole surface of the deep; but yet another hour elapsed before
the gale burst, and then it came along in a voice of thunder and over a
surface of milk-white waters. With the upper topsail halliards let go
and hands by the lower topsail sheets, the ship leaned down to it until
the foam was up to a man’s shoulders in the lee scuppers; but they
managed to get her to pay off, and presently she was speeding like an
arrow on the wings of the tempest, piling the foam as high as her
figure-head, her main-topsail blown in rags out of the bolt-ropes, and
sheets of spray fogging her decks like bursts of vapour from a boiler.
The next thing to do was to bring her to the wind before the sea rose;
the crew went aloft to stow the topsails and frap what remained of the
main-topsail upon the yard; and after a little there was the ship with
nothing on her but a small storm trysail, bowing and shearing at the
huge surges which the storm had lifted in cones and pyramids, and which
were now pouring and breaking with a terrible roaring noise. All day and
far into the night the storm blew without intermission, but it broke in
the middle watch, and then fined down so rapidly that at eight o’clock
in the morning the ship was pursuing her course under whole topsails and
topgallant-sails, and curtsying over the long heave of the sea, whose
green seemed to sparkle after the purification of the tempest, and whose
beautiful arching coils were brilliant with the diamond-like flashing of
the foam chipped out of the emerald acclivities by the keen teeth of the
clear, fresh north-east wind.
Shortly after noon the watch on deck had come out of the forecastle
after eating their dinner, when a small brig was made out right ahead,
apparently standing athwart the ship’s hawse. On approaching her it was
seen that she was drifting, and that though there might be people
aboard, she was not under control. Aloft she was in a state of great
confusion, her foreyards squared, and her after-yards braced as wildly
as the leeches of the canvas would allow. The davit falls were
overhauled to the water’s edge, and all the boats were gone. Here and
there ends of her running rigging trailed overboard, and as she rolled
heavily in the trough of the sea, the sound of her flapping canvas threw
a wild and melancholy echo athwart the breeze. The master of the ship
loudly hailed her, and all eyes were eagerly fastened upon the brig to
observe if there were any indications of life in her. Possibly nothing
so heightens the mournful and tragical suggestions of an abandoned
vessel as the loud hail of a passing ship and the deathlike stillness
following, unbroken save by the hollow beating of canvas, the drowning
sob of swelling water, and the creak of straining timbers.
It was very evident that nothing alive was in the brig, and the master
of the ship, after consulting with his mate, decided on sending a boat.
Accordingly, the second mate and a couple of seamen went over the side,
and, after some hard rowing and careful dodging of the seas, they gained
the brig, and scrambled upon her deck. They found that she was damaged
to an extent that could not be imagined by inspection of her from the
ship. Her galley and cabin skylights were smashed in, bulwark stanchions
were started, and, in addition to various other injuries, there were
three feet of water in the hold. Whether she had drained this water into
her from the deck or whether it was due to a leak could not at once be
ascertained; it was certain at least that her hold was full of cargo,
and that it was of a nature that would not enable her to float should
the water gain upon her. These facts were reported by the second mate,
who added that he could find no papers belonging to the vessel, and that
she had been stripped of all her provisions.
“It seems a pity to leave her knocking about here,” shouted the
captain. “It’ll be another man’s job if we don’t tackle it. Do you see
your way to carry her to Fayal?” then distant about four hundred miles.
The second mate conversed with the two men who were with him, and, after
a little while, called out, “Ay, we’ll risk it.”
On this the two seamen were ordered to come alongside, when some
provisions, water, a sextant, chart, and other needful articles were
lowered into the boat. With these they put off, receiving a loud
encouraging cheer from the rest of the ship’s crew; and, reaching the
brig’s side, hoisted out the provisions, and hooked on the boat and
dragged her up to the davits. The ship stood by for awhile, watching the
plucky fellows, and perhaps suspecting that they might repent their
undertaking, for even with a dry bottom the brig might have been
reckoned a big navigating job for three men. She rolled heavily and
continuously, her canvas striking the masts with loud reports, and
making the light spars buckle, and as she lifted her shining sides out
of the bright green seas the water was seen to gush from her bulwarks in
a manner to prove the wrenching they had undergone from the recent
tempest. There was no show of misgiving or repentance, however, on the
part of the men. Having hoisted their boat they turned to and trimmed
the yards, clapping the jigger on to the topsail halliards, and giving
everything a good spread. The little vessel took the wind, slightly
heeled, and came round to her course for the Western Islands, and the
last thing the ship, as she filled and stood on her voyage, saw of the
brig was the second mate at the wheel, the two men toiling at the
break-pump amidships, and the little vessel under fore and main
topgallant sail heavily swinging over the long ocean swell, throwing the
foam from her deep round bows, and looking but the merest toy amid the
vast surface of undulating waters which leaned away into the furthest
reaches of the sky.
A crew of three men leaves, with one at the wheel, only two to do the
ship’s work. Four or five seamen would not have been too many to hand
that brig’s main sail alone, and a gale of wind might therefore oblige
the second mate and his two companions to put their helm up and run for
it, and leave the canvas to blow away with a blessing upon it before
they could bring the vessel to. Four hundred miles seem but a short
voyage nowadays; but a head wind might enlarge the period of such a
journey into weeks, in which case, unless these men met with
help--which, though very likely, was by no means certain--they were
bound to perish of starvation, as the quantity of provisions supplied to
them by the ship could not, however economically used, outlast four or
five days. It is just because a sailor would keenly understand all the
heavy risks and difficulties comprised in such an adventure as these
three men had engaged in, that the courage implied in this and many
other attempts of the same kind to save property found at sea deserves a
good place in the annals of naval heroism. A half-hour’s spell at the
pumps satisfied them that by regular application the water might be kept
under, though there could be no longer any doubt that the vessel was
leaking either from a started butt or some puncture below the
water-line. A tarpaulin was found and secured over the broken skylight,
as a provision against dirty weather; the galley fire was lighted, and
the decks cleared up, and there being an old reel-log near the wheel,
along with a sand-glass, they managed among them to heave it--the second
mate at the helm holding the glass--and discovered that the brig was
making a little less than four knots. But the weather kept fine, and
this supported the men’s courage, as did also their assurance one to
another that they were bound to be well rewarded for the risks they were
running. They had another spell at the pump, and then fetched a bit of
the ship’s beef that had been put to cook in the galley-copper, and
bringing it aft with some biscuit, made out a tolerable meal, the mate
steering with one hand and eating with the other.