this, our sufferings began the moment we tumbled into the boat. In the
lowest latitudes that ever I was in I never felt such cold. Had the
water been fresh our clothes would have froze into coverings of ice. The
air was full of spray, and squalls of sleet came rolling up. We sat in
the bottom of the boat in a lump, to keep her steady, and for the
shelter of one another’s bodies, and those who were to windward--that
is, in the fore part--would shift from time to time, and others take
their place. We had no mast nor sail, nothing but the two oars we rode
to. It was a Monday, and all through the daylight we sat lifting our
eyes above the gunwales, and trying to pierce the haze for a vessel. It
was blowing about half a gale of wind, and it kept steady. Now and then
we’d ship a dose of water, and bale it out with our caps; but it kept
our feet soaking, and I reckon it was worse than being without boots at
all. The boat did well, and the oars were a kind of breakwater, and
helped her. After four in the afternoon the night drew on. We never
could get used to the darkness. The daytime was bad enough, but the
night made our sufferings maddening. The wind, when the sea was black,
would take the feel of solid ice; we couldn’t see one another, and that
made talking a kind of foolishness, and so we never spoke, which caused
every one to feel himself a lonely man upon the sea. Likewise the noise
of the water would sound stronger. In the daytime I took no notice, but
at night I’d find myself listening to the crying of the wind up in the
dark, and the hissing that rose all over the ocean from the breaking of
the waves.
“I don’t know what my mates did; but that first night I never closed my
eyes, never tried to shut them, never thought of sleep. I saw the dawn
come, but the haze was too thick to let the light show on the horizon;
it was overhead as well as around, when the morning broke; there was no
darkness that you’ll find hanging in the west at daybreak. Indeed, I
believe the sun was up above the sea before any light came, so thick it
was. All the men were awake, and dreadful they looked, as of course I
did. One of them was named Burke. I noticed him at once, and thought he
was dying. He lay athwartships with his back against the starboard side
of the boat, and there was a strange working in his fingers, like the
movement of a woman’s hands opening a skein of thread.
“The captain said, ‘For God’s sake look around, lads, and see if there’s
anything in sight.’
“The sea ran high, and made it dangerous for any of us to stand up, for
fear of capsizing the boat; so we hung over the gunwale with our chins
on a level with it, and stared into the driving smother with all our
might: but there was nothing to be seen but the breaking seas when we
were hove up, and the water standing like walls on either hand when we
dropped into the troughs. All at once Burke sat up and began to sing out
for a drink of water. He talked as if he believed we had it and wouldn’t
give it, which was the first sign of his insanity. The captain tried to
pacify him, speaking very kindly, and seeking to cheer him.
“‘We have outlived a day and a night,’ said he. ‘Keep up your heart,
mate; we may have a thousand-ton ship under us before it comes dark
again.’
“But Burke kept on crying for water, saying that he was dying for it,
and pointing to his throat; and then, falling on all fours, he puts his
face to the salt water washing about in the bottom of the boat and
sucked up several mouthfuls. Well, it seemed to do him no hurt, and he
lay quiet. Soon after this I spied something knocking about in the sea a
few fathoms astern, and called the skipper’s attention to it. He said it
was one of some kegs of butter that had been aboard the schooner, so we
pulled the oars in and dropped down to it and picked it up. We broke it
open and ate the butter in fistfuls, being mad with hunger; but it was
as salt as brine, and the effect of it was to make our thirst raging.
The knife we had used to open the keg lay in the bottom of the boat, and
Burke, on a sudden turning over, seized hold of it, jumped up, and fell
upon the captain. He hit him once, but the knife didn’t pierce through
the thick jacket the skipper had on, and, before he could raise his hand
again, we dragged him down and kneeled upon him.
“There was no worse part in all that dreadful time than this. The
madman’s face was a terrible sight; almost black it was. He snapped
about him with his teeth, and his cries and curses were things it brings
the sweat upon my face to talk about. Think of our situation, mad with
thirst ourselves and struggling with a madman, a killing north-easter
blowing like knives through our frozen bodies, the sea leaping and
roaring around us, and nothing between us and the bottom but the little
old boat we were in. We were too weak, and in too much suffering
ourselves, to remain holding the madman down, and finding him quiet we
let go, and squatted one close to another for warmth; but scarcely had
we hauled off from the poor wretch when he jumps up and throws himself
overboard. ‘Mind!’ shouted the skipper, ‘one’s enough!’ fearing that if
we all got to the side Burke had leaped from we should upset the boat. I
was the nearest, and as he came up close I leaned over, and got him by
the hair, and dragged him into the boat. He was pretty nigh dead, and
gave us no more trouble.
“Well, sir, the night came down a second time, finding us living, but
without the looks of live men. I made sure I should never see another
daybreak. My thirst was not so sharp as it had been; but I don’t know
whether the dull throbbing in my throat, the kind of lockjaw feeling in
my mouth, the burning in my tongue as though it were a lump of hot iron,
was not more torturing than when the craving was fiercer. All night long
it blew a strong wind, with now and then a squall of sleet and rain, and
hour after hour two of the men, Parsons and Daly, were groaning in the
bottom of the boat. When the light came, I looked to see who was alive,
and my eyes falling on Burke, I called out, ‘Dead!’ The captain leaned
down and felt him, and said, ‘Yes, he’s gone. He’s the first. God have
mercy upon us!’ and catching hold of my shoulder he stood up to search
the sea, but the haze was as thick as it had been all the time, and he
threw himself down with his hands over his face. Presently, looking at
the body, he said, ‘We must bury him; but first, my lads, let us say a
prayer for him and for ourselves.’ We all knelt while the captain
prayed, and when he had done we lifted the body and let it go overboard.
“The madness that thirst creates broke out strong in Daly and Parsons
when the body was gone, and down they dropped as Burke had, and lapped
up the salt water in the bottom of the boat like dogs would. The captain
implored them not to drink, but they never heeded him nor me, who
likewise entreated them. However, no harm seemed to come of it. Well,
sir, there’s no need for me to describe that Wednesday nor our third
night in that open boat. Thursday morning came, making the fourth day,
and to our joy the weather cleared, the wind shifted and moderated, and
the sea went down. We got the oars in, rigged up one as a mast, and two
of us having oilskin coats on, we joined them so as to form a sail, made
a yard of the other oar, and putting the boat before the wind, which was
blowing a light breeze from the south’ard, headed, as the captain
judged, for the Irish coast. All the day long we kept a wild look-out,
as you may reckon, for any passing ship; but never once, not in the
furthest distance, did such an object heave in sight. We might have been
sailing in the middle of the Pacific. Nature in us was almost numbed. We
had come to such a pass that we were too faint and exhausted to feel the
craving of hunger and thirst. At least I can speak for myself, and it’s
in that way I account for my suffering less at the end than I did at
the beginning of the dreadful time we went through. It was still cold,
but nothing like the bitter cold of the gale and the heavy seas and
squalls. We reckoned by the sun that the wind hung steady, and we let
the boat slip before it; that was all that could be done. If we were to
sail at all we were bound to keep the breeze over our starn, seeing
there was nothing to draw but a couple of oilskins secured to the oar.
“But the coming on of Thursday night was like the bitterness of death
itself, sir. Indeed it was. All day long we had reckoned upon sighting
something before the sun went. Every hour we had hoped and prayed and
believed would heave up some sort of vessel to come to our rescue; and
therefore, when it drew up black, only a few stars among the slow
clouds, and we were brought face to face with another long winter’s
night, my heart failed me altogether; I felt that there was a curse upon
us, and that we were doomed men, singled out to die of famine, the most
cruel of deaths, because the longest. Think of ninety-six hours in an
open boat, in January, in the Chops, a north-east gale blowing most of
the time, with never a morsel of food except the salt butter, and no
drink but the salt water washing in the boat! And yet when the Friday
morning came we were still alive, the captain steering, doubled up with
faintness and the cold, his knees against his mouth, and his head
lolling for want of strength in his neck; Daly and Parsons lying still
as dead men under the thwarts, and me in the bows, too weak and
broken-hearted even to cast my eyes around the sea to notice if there
was a vessel in sight.
“The morning passed; the afternoon passed. Were we to go through another
night? The sun was within half of an hour of his setting when Parsons,
who was leaning his breast on the gunwale, stood upright and pointed.
His mouth was full of froth, and as he tried to speak the foam flew out
of his lips, but no words he spoke; it was naught but a kind of
death-rattle in his throat. We all looked in the direction he pointed
to, and saw a large sailing-vessel heading right down for us. How we
watched her! all of us standing up, never speaking, and only moving with
the roll and toss of the boat. It took her an hour to approach us, and
then she hove us a line; but her people had to sling us aboard. None of
us could move. Nothing but the excitement of seeing her had allowed us
to stand. The moment the line was in the boat and we were alongside, we
all became as helpless as babies.
“The vessel’s name, sir? She was the Austrian barque _Grad Karlovak_,
commanded by so humane a man that I feel fit to cry when I think of him
and his kindness to us poor miserable shipwrecked English sailors.
That’s the story, sir, or as much of it as there is any call to relate.
Five days and four nights in the month of January, in an open boat, most
of the time blowing heavily! The tale’s known at Plymouth--it’s known at
Runcorn--it’s known to Mr. Hopkins, the agent of the Shipwrecked
Mariner’s Society at Plymouth. And I’ll tell you somebody else it’s
known to, sir--some one as’ll swear to every word of it; and that’s
me.”
_WAITING FOR A SHIP._
The Shipping Office in Tower Hill is a place where seamen, firemen,
stokers, and others assemble in the hope that captains in want of crews
will come and pick out the best men among them to “sign on,” as it is
called. I was induced to visit it the other day by hearing a sailor
complain bitterly of the filthy state of it. “Neglect,” said he, “is our
lot; but the condition of that shipping office beats my time. It’s all
dirt and Dutchmen, and if ye want to see something to make you
reflective, just trot down the steps and take a turn round the yard the
next time you’re passing that way.” When finally I did trot down the
steps I found myself in a kind of courtyard, flanked on the one hand by
the shipping offices--grimy doors, leading into gloomy interiors--and on
the other hand by a species of shed, partitioned into stone rooms, with
hard and painful seats against the walls, and unwholesome draughts of
dampish wind eddying about them. It was a gloomy day--rain had fallen,
and pools of muddy water gleamed here and there in the yard; the brown
and stooping London sky threatened more wet, and flung a shadow that
made the shipping office and its yard and its condemned-cell-like rooms
under the shed an unspeakably cheerless, depressing, and miserable
picture. Some sixty or seventy men stood or moved about in groups in
the yard, or were seated in the cells under the shed. I was hardly
prepared to witness so large an assembly, and remained near the steps
for a little while surveying them. A few of them were decently
attired--one or two respectably and comfortably dressed in good clothes
and clean linen; but a large proportion of them were, so far as their
costume went, little better than scarecrows. Some were clad merely in
shirt and trousers, with their naked feet thrust into old shoes or
boots; here and there was a red or blue shirt, or a figure buttoned up
in such a manner as to suggest that under the ragged old coat there was
no shirt at all. “And is this,” thought I, “the British sailor of the
nineteenth century?--is this the original of those rubicund features,
those flowing breeches, that tarpaulin hat on nine hairs, those
well-polished shoes twinkling in the light-hearted measures of the
hornpipe, which are offered by novelists, dramatists, and theatre
lessees as accurate representations of the jolly tar we are so fond of
joining in choruses about, and whom we gaze at with such patriotic
enthusiasm as he hitches up his breeches, turns his quid, and smites his
timbers?” Every crowd of human faces is full of variety, but no crowd
that ever I looked at had the variety submitted by the countenances of
these sixty or seventy men who were “waiting for a ship.” The negro’s
face--flat, bland, and open-mouthed--was, of course, not wanting. Square
cheeks, hollow cheeks, high cheeks; complexions black, brown, and
yellow; eyes of every pattern and shade--from the small, twinkling blue
of the North-country to the filmy and red-webbed optics of the
gin-soaked Cockney--combined, with the different build and shapes of the
men, the appearance of their clothes, the various head-coverings, to
make up a truly singular scene. I stepped forward and got among a
little bunch of men, of whom, addressing myself to one, I asked what
sort of shelter that dirty and wretched shed and those bleak and stony
cells offered in the winter, when the wind blew with an edge and the
sleet and rain fell. No notice had been taken of me before, but on my
making this inquiry the eyes of the whole group were fixed upon me, and
half a dozen voices answered at once. The meaning of the replies was
lost in the confusion, but the noise was like a signal; for I can truly
say that within a few seconds of my having asked that question every man
in that yard and every man that had been lounging in the cells had
gathered about me, so that before I very well knew what was happening I
found myself--pretty tightly squeezed--in the centre of a mass of men,
the outer portions of whom pressed eagerly upon the inner to hear and
see what was going forward. It was like a mutiny on a large scale, and
when I looked around at the mass of faces, and tasted the tobacco-laden
breath of the near people blowing hot against my cheeks, I felt that
nothing was wanted to complete the suggestion of revolt but the gleam of
a score of sheath-knives flourished in the air. “Give me a little room,
my lads,” said I, working with my elbows; and, having freed myself
somewhat, I said, “There seems no lack of men here; captains ought to
find no difficulty in manning their ships.”
“They don’t want Englishmen; it’s Dutchmen they take,” shouted two or
three voices.
“Here’s a man,” called out some one, pointing into the left of the
crowd, “who’s been walking this yard for five months.”
“Five months, as true as the words I use is English,” bawled a hoarse
voice. “But they won’t have me because my name’s Johnson. If it was
Unks von Dunks I’d ha’ been woyaging o’er and o’er again in the time
I’ve been kicking my heels about starving here.”
“Scoffen von Romp would do as well,” said a man near me. “Don’t matter
what the name is so long as it sounds Dutch.”
“By Dutch I suppose you mean foreigners of all kinds?” said I.
“Ay, they’re all Dutchmen!” was the shout.
“But why is it that Dutchmen are preferred to Englishmen?” I asked.
The hubbub raised by this obliged me to hold up my hand and entreat
silence; but it would not do. Every man’s mind was full of the
grievance, and, amid the chorus of replies, I barely succeeded in
catching such answers as--“Dutchmen’ll ship for two pound a month!”
“Dutchmen’ll eat anything!” “Englishmen won’t put up with the messes
Dutchmen’ll swallow!” “Skippers can rope’s-end Dutchmen, but they
durs’n’t serve Englishmen so!” “It’s the Dutch crimps as does it!” and
so forth.
It was difficult to hear these cries and watch the sea of surging heads
and faces around me with unmoved gravity. There was something to touch
the very dullest capacity of appreciating the ridiculous in the
astonishing contrasts of physiognomies, and in the multifarious
expressions which adorned the poor fellows’ countenances; but I am not
sure that the appeal made to my laughter did not owe much of its force
to the sorrowful element in it--to a quality of pathos lying close to
humour. Many of these faces had a pinched look, that was painfully
expressive of want, if not of positive starvation; and sad indeed, it
seemed to me, was the sight of it in men who carried the manners of real
seamen, and who appeared to me to be fit for any forecastle afloat, and
for any duty that a sailor is expected to understand.
“I suppose you all come here with certificates of conduct in your
pockets?” said I, when the hubbub had ceased.
Instantly a crowd of fists were thrust under my nose, filled with
documents, and “Here’s mine!” and “Here’s mine!” “V. G. every one of
’em!” was roared out in twenty or thirty voices. I looked at some of
these certificates, and found the letters “V. G.” (very good) endorsed
on the backs of all that I examined.
“D’ye want to ship, sir?” sung out a fellow whilst I was glancing over
these papers. “I’ve got two V. G. certificates in my pocket, and as I’ve
not had anything to eat to-day you shall have ’em both for a couple of
shillings.”
“Are certificates often sold in this fashion?” said I, of a
quiet-looking man standing alongside of me.
“Sold!” he exclaimed indignantly; “what’s to hinder ’em? If a man sticks
to the name that’s on the certificate, who’s to know? and so ye get men
shipping themselves with false characters, no more fit for sailors’ work
than if they wos greengrocers.”
“Perhaps that’s one reason why skippers and owners prefer Dutchmen to
Englishmen,” said I. But this raised another storm; they shouted that
more rascality went on in that way among Dutchmen than British sailors;
that the reason was not that, but because, as I had heard, Dutchmen
shipped for wages no Englishman would look at, and put up with food,
accommodation, and treatment which no Englishman would endure, and
likewise because there was a deal of underhand crimping work going on
between the foreign boarding-house runners and mates and captains, and
so on.
Here the emotions of these sixty or seventy men brought them pressing
so heavily around me, that my anxiety to hear their statements was
swamped in the labour of breathing and the struggle to liberate myself.
I bawled to them to make way, as I wanted to have a look at the rooms
under the shed; on which they drew back and let me out, though they
followed at my heels as I passed from one room to another, talking and
arguing hotly, calling marine blessings down on the heads of all
Dutchmen, and wondering what good it was nowadays being born an
Englishman, when even a Finn, whom, in the olden times, no sailor liked
to be shipmates with, was thought a better man? The rooms were
middle-sized, damp, dark, and dirty compartments, and were meant to
serve as waiting-rooms for the unhappy creatures who thronged the bleak
and frowsy yard in the hope of being engaged by captains. It was like
being in the dungeons in the Tower of London--which, by the way, stood
close at hand--to pass through these death-cold apartments and view the
legends, dictated by hopeless waiting, roughly scrawled in pencil upon
the walls. Dirt and soot everywhere!--on the ceilings, on the floors, on
the walls, on the benches, in the very atmosphere that filled the
cheerless haunt. A strip of grating ran through the floors, disclosing
the outline of a hot-water pipe; but it looked, in that grave, the very
corpse of a heating apparatus; and when I asked if ever these stone
rooms were made warm by that old, mouldy, dirt and soot covered
contrivance, the only answer I got was a loud growling laugh, as if,
exquisite as was the joke, it was likewise very offensive. And this,
thought I, as I stood gazing with mingled astonishment and disgust at
the picture of grime, neglect, and dirt, is the great London shipping
office, the medium for the vast and ever-growing port of London for the
transaction of business between the masters and crews of ships! Who are
these men who come here in the hope of obtaining employment by manning
the fleets we are never weary of extolling as the source of Great
Britain’s wealth and power, that they should be used in this
manner--furnished for their long, weary, and often hopeless waiting with
accommodation fouler, unwholesomer, colder, more soul-depressing than
the worst prison that ever excited the horror and provoked the
denunciations of the philanthropist?
“Has this place,” I asked, “been long in this condition?”
“It used to be kept a little more decent,” was the reply; “but it’s been
falling from bad to worse for many a month gone. Considering the fees[A]
we sailors have to pay, it’s a shame that we should have to put up with
a place which no farmer who values the lives of his hogs would stow ’em
in. I’ve been day after day down here, from the opening hour till the
closing at four o’clock, for six weeks, hoping to be engaged; and I tell
you, sir, that a man need be to be born a gutter-snipe, used to sleeping
all his life under railway arches and the likes of them places, not to
feel the effects of such a slum as this upon his spirits, when day after
day goes by and he has to keep on waiting here for a captain to single
him out. You are seeing it now in summer, when the air’s warm; think of
it in winter, sir, with the slush a foot thick, and the wind blowing
into those waiting-rooms fit to turn your marrow into ice.”
The Board of Trade is responsible for the conduct and keeping of this
office. Have the officials of that great department any conception of
the state of the place? Is it ever visited by them? Do they know
anything more about it than that it is situated somewhere in the
neighbourhood of Tower Hill? Nothing more disgraceful is to be found in
London.
By degrees the men left me, to resume their weary trudging up and down
or to draw together in groups; on which, finding that I should be able
to converse without the risk of suffocation, I went up to a
well-looking, decently-dressed sailor-man, on whom I had had my eye for
some time previously, and asked how long he had been waiting for a ship.
“It will be three weeks to-morrow,” he replied.
“What are your certificates?”
“I have four in my pocket,” he answered, producing them; and I found
that he had served in the several capacities of boatswain, sailmaker,
and able seaman aboard sailing-vessels belonging to some of the best
firms in London.
“How long have you been at sea?”
“Thirty years,” he replied.
“And is it possible,” said I, running my eye over his neat suit of pilot
cloth, his clean blue shirt, and silk handkerchief, and admiring his
unmistakably sailorly appearance, and the frank expression in his tanned
face, “that in this age, when one hears so many complaints of the
difficulty of procuring good seamen, that a man who has been thirty
years at sea, filled responsible posts, and holds honest vouchers to his
efficiency and good conduct, cannot get a ship! What countryman are
you?”
“A Scotchman--an Aberdeen man.”
“Wouldn’t the last ship you were in take you again?”
“She discharged at Cardiff, and is now for sale. My wife lives just out
of the Commercial Road, and that’s why I’m in London,” he answered. “I
had only been home a week when I tried to get a ship again, for I’m a
poor man.”
“What are you willing to ship as?”
“As anything; I’m too poor to choose, sir. I’ll go as A. B. if I can get
the berth. But this hanging about is eating up all our little savings.”
“Why can’t you get a berth?” said I.
“Because the captains won’t take Englishmen,” he said.
“What are their objections?”