was small. The duty of keeping the pump going at regular intervals grew
exhausting, but it was absolutely necessary that the quantity of water
should be kept under the depth found in the brig when she was boarded,
and every hour throughout the day the harsh clank of the pump might be
heard, ceasing after an interval when the men, pale with fatigue, and
with the sweat streaming from their faces, flung themselves upon the
deck breathless and spent. The breeze freshened at sunset, and the
topgallant-sails were taken in. The night came down very dark, with a
few misty stars here and there, and a flavour in the swing of the wind
as it blew in gusts over the bulwarks that was a promise of bad weather.
The weight of the water in the little vessel, coupled with the cargo,
that came flush with the main hatch, sunk her deep, and as the sea rose
her behaviour grew wild. The billows tumbled against her weather-bow,
and such was her inelasticity that at times she would not rise to them,
but let them roll over her forecastle, burying herself pretty nearly as
far aft as her foremast, and flooding her decks to the wheel.
Fortunately her upper works were staunch, or she must have been drowned
again and again by the seas which tumbled in tons’ weight over her head.
The men made shift to stow the upper topsails before it came on hard,
but they could do nothing with the lower canvas, which must blow away if
it would not stand. This the fore-topsail did shortly after ten o’clock
in a squall of wind; the weather sheet parted, and in a few moments the
sail was in rags, increasing the roaring noise of the gale and the
crashing sound of the sea by the fierce whipping of the tattered cloths.
Amidst all this confusion and wild scene of the black heavens and
glimmering heights of water, the men betook themselves again and again
to the pumps, and the metallic ring of the working brake flung a dismal
note of shipwreck into the harsh uproar of the warring elements. It is
difficult to realize a sterner picture of struggle, a more furious array
of perils. Here were three men as crew of a vessel which wanted a good
nine hands to work her, exhausted by pumping, and yet obliged regularly
to apply themselves to the pump to keep the vessel afloat--forced by
this work, or by having to tend the helm, to remain unsheltered upon the
decks over which the seas were bursting in whole oceans; wet through to
the skin, without the means of obtaining a warm drink, and without the
chance of preserving a dry stitch even were an opportunity afforded them
to change their clothes; a black and howling void overhead, and below a
huge broken sea, in whose thunderous hollows the little vessel laboured
like a drowning thing, one moment upright and becalmed by the towering
coil of a rushing surge, the next on her beam-ends on the summit of the
liquid height, with the full force of the gale howling through her
rigging, and the spray from the breaking heads of the near combers
sweeping over her decks upon the breath of the black and ringing wind
like a furious snow-storm.
In the limits assigned here it is impossible to do justice to this
struggle. To make it a conceivable thing to the landsman’s intelligence
something of photographic minuteness is wanted in the reproduction; the
picture of the men leaving the pumps and crawling along the deck to the
wheel, their talk, their postures as they sat crouching and listening to
the infernal din in the ebony void on high--a hundred such matters,
indeed--together with the outline of the vessel, revealed for a
breathless space, as she swooped into a trough with a headlong shearing
of the bows that made the water boil in whiteness which flung a kind of
twilight round about, in which the ink-like configuration of the
straining and beaten fabric was thrown up as though a gleam of pallid
moonshine had broken through the dense vapours of the storm and fallen
for an instant into the swirling and creaming hollow in which the brig
lay weltering. That the deeply-laden and half-drowned vessel should have
outlived that night was a real miracle. Fierce as had been the preceding
storm encountered by the ship, this gale had at times an edge in it that
the other wanted. Happily, like its predecessor, it was short-lived, and
blew itself out soon after daybreak, though it left such a tremendous
sea behind that for several hours after the wind had sobered down into a
topgallant breeze the brig was in the utmost jeopardy. The rolling was
so frightful that the men could do nothing aloft. The mate refused to
allow them to leave the deck, expecting every instant to see the mast go
over the side. It was almost impossible to stand at the pumps; sometimes
the little vessel would literally _dish_ a sea over her rail that swept
the two seamen off their legs, and forced the mate, who grasped the
wheel, to hold on to the spokes for dear life; and it was as much as
their necks were worth to let go for a moment. By noon, however, the
swell had greatly subsided, and the men made shift to set the main and
upper fore-topsails and topgallant-sails, and to board the foretack.
The mate also got an observation which enabled him to set his course.
But the night that was passed had almost done for them; they could
scarcely stand, and crawled about like sick men; and such was their pass
that when the mate, laying hold of the pump, sung out to one of his
companions to come and lend him a hand, the reply was that if the
pumping was to depend upon _him_, the blooming hooker might as well sink
at once, as there was not strength enough left in him to kill a flea;
and it was not until the mate and the other man who stood at the wheel
had consumed twenty minutes in entreaties, curses, and other marine
rhetoric, that the exhausted creature was induced to “tail on.”
Fortunately for the poor fellows the wind had shifted into a quarter
favourable for their voyage; they dried their clothes, cooked some beef,
and managed to snatch sufficient rest between the intervals of pumping
to give them back something of their strength. Everything went on well
until they were about forty miles distant from Fayal, when the wind
backed and blew a fresh breeze right ahead. This was maddening enough.
They braced the yards hard up, packed all that they could hoist upon the
vessel, and swore that, come what might, they would not slacken a
halliard nor touch a sheet though it should blow fit to prize the old
butter-box out of the water. It was not long after this that a steamer
hove in sight, and, probably suspecting a case of distress by the look
of the brig aloft--for the rags of the lower fore-topsail still
fluttered upon the yard--slowed her engines to speak the little vessel.
“What ship is that?” was asked. The name was given and the circumstances
related. The steamer then offered to give the brig a drag towards Fayal,
but when it was understood that a share in the salvage would be
expected, the second mate sung out no, they wanted no help, they had
scraped through it all right so far, and were willing to venture the
remaining risks. Thereupon the steamer proceeded, but had not sunk her
hull when the wind again shifted, and enabled the brig to look up for
her port with the breeze full abeam; and within nine hours from the time
of having been spoken by the steamer, a pilot had boarded her, and she
was safely moored at the west end of Fayal Bay. The value of the brig
and cargo proved to be sixteen hundred pounds, and when the award came
to be made, four hundred pounds were given to the owners of the ship
that had boarded the brig, one hundred pounds to the master and crew of
the ship, and a substantial sum to the second mate and his two men.
_A CHANNEL INCIDENT._
The captains of the steamers which ply as passenger and cargo vessels
between London and the French ports are a class of men familiar in a
more or less degree to most of us, and it is probably this familiarity
that prevents us from dwelling, with the emphasis that is deserved, upon
the singular skill they exhibit, day after day, and year after year, in
carrying their ships through what may be fairly called the most
dangerous waters in the world, with scarcely a misadventure to vary the
chronicles of their little voyages. By night and by day they are
threading the intricacies of the crowded river Thames, groping through
white mists so thick that a buoy must be alongside before it can be
seen; struggling against sudden bursts of furious Channel weather, which
bring up the most abominable kind of sea that a sailor can tumble about
in--short, roaring cross surges which seem to knock the very breath out
of the paddle steamer, sloping her funnel like the _bâton_ in the hand
of a band conductor, submerging one paddle-wheel to let the other
revolve like a windmill out of water, and blowing up in storms of snow
from the sponsons, whilst the worried vessel pitches savagely into the
narrow hollows, flinging up her stern like the hind legs of a colt that
takes fright at a passing train, her tarpaulins streaming with wet, the
escape-pipe blowing as she reels, a few sea-sick passengers wet through
aft, two or three seamen in oilskins dodging the seas forward, and the
skipper on the bridge holding on to the rail with both hands, and
wondering what that confounded old “Geordie” right ahead is up to,
coming along with square yards and his patched boom-foresail bellying
out like a sailor’s shirt drying in the forestay, as if the whole of the
Channel were his private property, and it was his duty to run over
anything that got in his road.
Take the trip to Boulogne alone. In fine, clear weather it is all plain
sailing, no doubt. But if a passenger wants to appraise the merits of
these captains rightly, let him quit the pitch-dark deck, and a night so
black and thick that it is a positive relief to the eye when a shower of
sparks breaks out of the funnel and blows away into the ebony gloom to
leeward, and go below into the bright, warm cabin, and overhaul a chart
of the mouth of the Thames and the adjacent waters as far as the South
Sands Head Light. Why, the sight is bewildered by the mere look of that
chart. It is as though a spider had got foul of an ink bottle, and had
been cleaning its legs on a large sheet of white paper. West and East
Girdlers, Margate Sands, Long Sands, Sunk Sands, Goodwin Sands--it seems
to be all sand; whilst the soundings are more alarming still--eleven
fathoms here, and close against it, one fathom--the English of which is
blue lights, rockets, hovellers, lifeboats, and Board-of-Trade
inquiries. Jones, asleep in his little state cabin, knows nothing of the
maze of perils through which he is being steered; he will rise in the
morning and take his seat at the breakfast-table, and in the composed
features of the brown-faced, hearty-looking captain who sits modestly
eating a rasher of bacon, he will find no trace or hint of a vigil
which began at London Bridge and which will not terminate until Boulogne
is reached, though perhaps--the Goodwins being astern, and neither the
Varne nor the Ridge being very much in the road--the hardest part of it
may be said to be over.
But the dangers of the English Channel are by no means limited to shoals
and foul weather. If those were all, the captains who safely carry
hundreds upon hundreds of passengers to and fro in the course of the
year, would have to abate something of the praise to which their
excellent skill and remarkable vigilance entitle them. In truth, a
danger more to be feared than shallow water and tempestuous weather is
collision. I am not speaking of the daytime and fine weather; though
even in the daytime and in fine weather collisions at sea will happen
through a dozen circumstances more absolutely unavoidable than the most
apparently unavoidable railway collision ever attributed by a coroner’s
jury to pure accident. It is the thick and silent night that is most
haunted by this deadly peril. There is no wind, but a drenching drizzle
drops unseen, save in the haze of the cabin skylight, from a black
heaven that seems to rest its ponderous burden on the slender mastheads
of the creeping steamer. It is the English Channel, the great maritime
highway that leads to all parts of the world, and now as ever it is
crowded with shipping; and through this mighty shadow, full of hidden
life and hidden danger, those captains I am writing of must bring their
vessels, day after day, week after week. They must not lag, for time is
precious to their owners. Their unscathed emergence year after year must
surely savour of the miraculous to any man who will but give his mind to
the character of the dangers through which these sailors steer their
vessels in safety. As a sample of this particular peril of collision,
let me give an instance--a recent one. It may remove reference from all
risk of misapprehension if I say at once that the steamer was from
Bilbao, bound to a North country port.
She was abreast of Beachy Head when the night fell, and the fresh
southerly wind, suddenly shifting to the westward in a little squall,
dropped. During the latter portion of the afternoon the weather had been
slowly thickening, but when the wind went the haze rolled up all round
like smoke, blackening the moonless night until the very foam breaking
away from under the counter was a scarcely perceptible glimmer upon the
inky surface that melted into the midnight void within a biscuit’s throw
from the vessel’s side. There were a few passengers, who vanished with
the daylight and might be seen, by peering through the cloudy skylight
glass, seated at the cabin table, the lamplight bright upon them, and
making the picture of the irradiated interior, by contrast with the
breathless blackness on deck, like a magic-lantern show. There was no
gleam of phosphorus, no pallid streak of foam, to define the presence of
the deep; but the soft seething of the passing froth, resembling the
escape of steam heard thinly and at a long distance, filled the ear with
a permanent note, and the dull vibration of the engines could be lightly
felt. The haze was as wetting as rain; and the bullseyes over the
lighted interior glimmered like emeralds in the decks upon which the
mist was crawling as the vessel carried it along. There is a mystery in
the hushed blackness of a night like this at sea which may be enjoyed in
the open ocean, where the imagination lets itself loose upon the hidden
leagues of waters, and finds a kind of life in death in the mere
capacity of sentience amidst such a universe of shadow; but it comes
with an element of fear in a narrow sea studded with quicksands and
alive with vessels. The eye struggles with the darkness in vain. Every
instinct sympathizes with the blindness that has fallen upon you; but
the strained ear catches no more than the sob and fret of passing water
and the chafing of gear as the vessel sways upon the indistinguishable
folds of the swell. A man coming up out of the cabin of that steamer
might have reckoned the vessel deserted and left to her own guidance.
The wheel was amidships, and there was no familiar binnacle-lamp to
relieve with its soft mist of light the eye that strove to pierce the
darkness aft. To know where the captain was, or whether there were any
hands on the look-out, it would have been necessary to sing out or go
about the decks and upon the bridge groping.
Presently, what looked to be a composant--a small trembling point of
light--hovered in the blackness on the starboard bow, and a moment after
there crept out under it a dull green smudge, as faint and baffling in
the thickness as the wavering flame of spirits of wine. A steamer’s
lights; but all that was visible of her was a deeper darkness in the air
where she loomed, a row of illuminated scuttles like the beach-lamps of
a little town seen afar, and fibres of radiance striking into the foggy
air from the bright light on the fore-mast. A deeper fold of darkness
seemed to overlap the night as the invisible steamship swept by; the
pulsing of her engines thinned down, and the wash of the bow-wave melted
into the vague, haunting undertone of chafing water--a sound coming you
know not from where. On a sudden the decks rang with a loud and fearful
cry, “There’s a vessel right ahead! Hard-a-port! Hard-a-port! mind, or
we shall be into her!” Crash! You could hear the sound of splintering
wood, followed by a whole chorus of shrieks, whilst a dozen orders were
volleyed out in hoarse notes on the steamer’s decks. “What is it?”
“Where is she?” “Get some lights along, in God’s name!” A bright red
flame threw out a wild radiance over the steamer’s side: there was a
rush of men to see what it was, and there, gliding past the steamer,
every outline distorted by the crimson, flickering, streaming fires of a
flare-tin held on high by one of her men, was a French three-masted
smack, her decks apparently full of people, shrieking altogether, and in
every conceivable posture of entreaty and terror--a dreadful picture
indeed, standing out with terrible distinctness in the red light of the
flare against the liquid pitch of the sea and the sky. Their shouts and
cries were in the rudest _patois_; it was impossible to distinguish
their meaning amidst the hubbub on the maimed and broken hull, as it
veered swiftly astern, the mainmast over the side, the wild light
flashing up the crowd of white faces as the flame from the tin broke out
in a blood-red fork of radiance, and the whole fearful picture vanishing
as the light suddenly expired, and the night rolled its inky tide over
it. The steamer’s engines were instantly reversed and the iron fabric
stopped. The passengers came rushing up out of the cabin, increasing the
distraction of the darkness by their eager, terrified inquiries to know
what had happened. The chorus of shrieks astern was silenced, and only
faint, single, most melancholy shouts broke the terrible silence upon
the sea, proving but too conclusively that the vessel had foundered, and
that these cries came from swimmers.
Meanwhile every lamp and lantern aboard the steamer that could be
collected had been brought on deck, and you could see the dark figures
of seamen struggling to get the boats overboard, rushing aft, and
vociferating promises of speedy help into the blackness astern, some
bending on lanterns to ropes’ ends, and letting them drop over the side,
and flinging ends of line overboard for the clutch of such swimmers as
should reach the steamer; whilst the cries of the captain and mates and
the shouts of the crew were made deafening by the pouring and hissing of
steam up in the blackness overhead. It always seems an eternity at times
like this before the boats are overboard; something gets foul; the oars
have been taken forward to be scraped, and cannot be found; a kink in
the fall has jammed in the davit-block; there is no plug, and a dozen
voices are shouting all at once for something to take its place. But two
boats at last were launched, after an interval of about five minutes,
and pulled slowly away for the spot where the smack had foundered, a
hand in each bow holding a lantern and keeping a bright look-out for
those black spots which should denote the heads of swimmers and drowning
men. A silence as of death fell upon the steamship as her boats left
her. A crowd of people stood in the stern watching the two spots of
light upon the water, breathlessly listening for any sound that should
indicate the rescue of even one man. The lanterns over the side flung a
short space of radiance upon the sea, and men were posted along the rail
to watch for any approaching swimmer who should have been missed by the
boats.
“Are you finding any of them?” bawled the captain of the steamer,
sending his voice in a roar through the hollow of his hands.
“Ay, ay, we’re picking them up,” came back the answer in the merest
thread of sound.
Ten minutes went by, and then suddenly there arose a shout from one of
the men stationed at the port bulwarks.
“Here’s a man swimming here!” and in a breath there was a rush to the
side.
“Get another light over!”
“Fling him this life-buoy!”
“Pitch a coil of rope to him, but mind you don’t hit his head, or you’ll
sink him!”
Half a dozen splashes told that these various orders had been executed.
“He’s got hold of my line!” sang out a voice, and as the rope was gently
hauled in, a seaman, jumping into the bight of a rope, sprang overboard,
and in a few moments both men were dragged over the side.
The half-drowned French smacksman fell down in a heap the instant he
touched the deck. He was dressed in heavy sea-boots and oilskin
leggings, and how he had managed to swim the distance from where his
vessel had foundered to the steamer was a miracle not to be explained by
any known law of specific gravity. He was carried into the forecastle,
unable to articulate; but another quarter of an hour went by before the
boats returned.
“How many have you?” shouted the captain, as they approached.
“We have four, and the other boat has five. There are women among ’em,”
was the answer.
They came alongside, and one by one the poor creatures were handed up.
There were three women, dressed in the picturesque costume of the
Boulogne fishwife, but draggled, streaming, with closed eyes, and a
quick, suffocating breathing, half dead. Most of the others were in the
last stage of exhaustion; but one was able to speak, and as he stood a
moment in the lantern-light answering the captain’s questions, a more
moving object could not be imagined. The water drained from his fingers,
his hat was gone, and his iron-grey hair--for he was an old man--lay in
a tangled mass over his eyes; and there was a most heartrending
expression of horror and despair in his face.
He said his vessel had left Boulogne early that morning. There were four
women and ten men and boys on board. He owned that they had had no
lights burning. He trembled like a freezing man, and was then led below,
with his hands to his face, sobbing as if his heart would break, and
moaning in his rude French that amongst the drowned were his wife and
boy.
“Are you sure there were no others afloat when you came away?” asked the
captain of the mate, who had charge of the boats. “One man swam to us, I
must tell you, and we have him aboard.”
“Sure, sir,” was the answer. “We pulled round and round, but there was
nothing to be seen. The people were saved by the mainmast that was left
afloat when the smack went down. Those who were drowned missed it,
otherwise it was big enough to keep all of them up.”
For another twenty minutes the captain lingered, peering into the
darkness, and keeping one boat overboard ready for the first sound. But
the deep was as silent as the tomb, and nothing disturbed the deathlike
stillness, unless it were the murmur of the men forward talking over the
tragical incident, and the quick, passionate whispers of the passengers,
as one would suddenly say, “Hush! what was that?” and another, “See! is
not that something moving out yonder?” Nothing more could be done. Very
reluctantly the captain quitted the stern of his vessel and gave orders
to get the boat on board, and in a little while the steamer was slowly
moving again through the blackness, her decks wrapped in darkness and
silence, whilst the haze floated like steam round the masthead light,
and the water gurgled like the cry of a drowning man as it eddied round
under the counter and went away in a pale glimmer of froth into the
midnight gloom astern.
This little incident will, I believe, fairly set before the reader one
of the perils against which those particular captains to whom I referred
in the beginning of this article have to contend. Here is a
fishing-smack, lying becalmed, without a light showing, on a night made
pitch dark by a drizzling haze. How could such a collision be averted,
short of the captain of the steamer bringing up?--a remedy which his
owners most assuredly would not think the better of him for adopting. I
repeat that having regard to the difficult navigation of the mouth of
the Thames, as far south as the southern limb of the Goodwins, to the
mass of shipping of all kinds that is always crowding these waters, to
the perilous weather to be found there, and to the negligence,
foolhardiness, and indifference which are characteristic of the
seamanship of scores of the men--English as well as foreigners--who have
charge of small craft navigating that sea, the manner in which the
masters I am speaking of carry their steamers from port to port, year
after year, showing always the same clean bill of health, implies an
amount of skill and vigilance which any one acquainted with the
navigation and dangers of the English Channel from the Nore to the
Bullock Bank will own cannot be too highly praised.
_LOSS OF A SMACK’S CREW._