inhabitants live in seaports, that the sea is within at hour or two of
the metropolis, that there is always an abundance of sailors “knocking
about” ashore, and that pretty nearly all our wealth as a nation is
owing to our seamen and our shipping, it must be owned that many of
those notions of Jack and his life ashore and at sea which may be found
among the greatest maritime people on the face of the earth, are in the
highest degree extraordinary. Is it possible that the sailor is still
supposed to have nothing to do at sea but to sit down with a pipe in his
mouth and let the wind blow him along? Are there people yet living who
imagine that on Saturday nights at sea cans of grog are handed about,
roaring nautical songs sung, and wives and sweethearts toasted? Is it
even in this day of steamboats believed that a sailor cannot express
himself without loading his language with marine terms; that he cannot
speak of “walking,” but of “steering;” that the right-hand side ashore
is the “starboard;” and that he cannot step backwards without making
“sternway”?
Where do these highly nautical fellows live when they are at home? I
never have the luck to come across them. In some seaports you may still
see here and there, over a public-house, the sign of the Jolly Tar: a
figure in flowing breeches, tarpaulin hat on “nine hairs,” a bottle of
grog in one hand, and a great red nose, set in the midst of a shining
face. Who was the original of that fellow? He is not a man-of-war’s man,
and most certainly he is not a merchantman. I take it that he is nothing
more nor less than the embodiment of the landsman’s notion of the sailor
obtained to a large extent from marine novels, but mainly from the
English sea songs. You might walk the whole of Great Britain over
without meeting with the counterpart of that effigy, unless it lay in
some turnpike impostor who gets a living by swearing he has been
shipwrecked. If the merchant seaman is to be typified, he must not be
dressed in loose breeches and an open-breasted shirt. If his language is
to be imitated, it must not altogether consist of “hard-a-lee” and “haul
the bowline.” And if his life at sea is to be pictured, one must drop
all reference to cans of grog, and have nothing whatever to say about
Saturday nights and sweethearts and wives.
But how can landsmen be ridiculed for their absurd ideas of the sailor
when for years and years writers who profess to know all about him have
persisted in reproducing the same stereotyped likeness--the same
drunken, singing, good-humoured, sprawling mountebank, shouting out for
more grog, bawling inane verses about his Poll and his Sue, clamouring
the purest “slush” about the Union Jack, and talking inconceivable
nonsense about topgallants and handspikes? Of course the likeness is
accepted by those who know no better, and songs are sung about Jack
which no sailor can listen to without astonishment that ignorance so
profound should be also so widespread. I remember a man who was much
applauded in his day as a singer of nautical ballads, saying to me,
“To-morrow I have to sing ‘Tom Tough,’ by desire. Can you tell me, sir,
what attitude I ought to adopt when I come to--
‘So I seiz’d the capstan bar,
Like a true, honest tar,
And in spite of tears and sighs,
Sung yo, heave ho’?
Do I pull or do I push, sir?”
What did it matter? Whether he pulled or whether he pushed would have
been all the same to his audience. Who but a sailor at a concert would
notice that a vocalist thought it all right when he roared out--
“And at the bosun’s call,
We man the poop downhaul,
And furl the main jibboom, lads,
So, boys, so”?
Apparently, let the words employed be as nonsensical as they will, so
long as there is plenty of “yohing” and “heaving” and “so-hoing,” the
song is accepted as extremely nautical and peculiarly expressive of the
free and open character of the sailor.
I was once in a house much frequented by seamen, when there entered the
room in which I was sitting an elderly man of a somewhat sour cast of
countenance, dressed--not, believe me, in that flowing rig in which all
kinds of sailors are popularly supposed to go clad--but in plain black
cloth and an unstarched, striped cotton shirt, with a cravat round a
stand-up collar. He had the look of a man who had been at sea all his
life, and consequently no marine exterior could be less suggestive than
his of “So-ho’s” and “Heave ho’s,” and “Pull aways.” He called for half
a pint of ale, and filled his pipe, and sat smoking and listening to
a conversation between two men relative to a collision in which the
vessel they had recently left was concerned. By-and-by he began to
grope in his pockets, and presently produced some sheets of songs,
which he held out at arm’s length the better to inspect the highly
marine figure who, in sailor’s shirt and jacket, with straddled legs,
immense belt, and lifted hand, embellished the titlepage of the cheap
collection. He took a long look at this striking figure, frequently
removing his pipe to expectorate, and then very leisurely began to
examine the songs.
I saw by the movements of his lips that he read little bits here and
there, and now and again I would catch him stealing a glance at me, as
though he had something on his mind, but was too shy to address me.
“What have you there?” said I.
“Why,” he answered, reverting to the titlepage, “something I paid a
penny for just now--bought it from a chap who stood alongside a row
of ’em fixed against a wall. They call it the ‘Sea Songs of Great
Britain.’ It’s full of queer spelling, and it’s all about Jack,
whoever _he_ may be, if this be’n’t him,” and he pointed to the absurd
straddling woodcut.
He went on reading for a short time, his pipe in his hand, and his
mouth opening wider and wider, until, coming to the end of the song, he
looked at me and said, “Well, I’m jiggered!”
“What’s the matter?” I inquired.
“Dibdin--Dibdin!” said he, “d’ye know anything of that gent, sir?”
“Only as the greatest nautical song-writer this country ever produced,”
I replied.
“Yes,” said he, casting his eyes upon the page, “I see he is a
nautical song-writer; but was he ever at sea?”
“Not as a sailor, I believe.”
“Mates,” he called out to the others, who had stopped talking and were
listening to his questions, “what d’ye think of this for a nautical
job? It’s called ‘My Poll and my Partner Joe;’” and he read slowly and
hoarsely--
“I did my duty manfully while on the billows rolling;
And night or day could find the way,
Blindfold, to the maintop-bowling.”
He paused and looked around him.
“‘Blindfold to the maintop-bowling!’” he ejaculated. “Which end of it,
d’ye reckon, mates? Would he come down the bolt-rope to the bridle? That
must have been it, otherwise what manfulness would he have had occasion
to talk about? But listen to this, boys--evidently the work of another
nautical man. It’s called ‘The Storm.’
‘Now it freshens, set the braces;
Quick, the topsail sheets let go!
Luff, boys, luff; don’t make wry faces!
Up your topsails nimbly clew!’
‘Set the braces!’ How’s that job done, d’ye know? And when they was told
to ‘Luff, boys, luff,’ did they let go of the wheel to ‘Up their
topsails nimbly clew’? It must have been a bad storm, that. I wonder
they didn’t ship a capstan bar in a lee scupper-hole to keep the ship
upright.”
“You mustn’t be too critical,” said I; “it’s the music of those old
songs that makes them beautiful.”
“I’ve got nothen to do with the music,” he said warmly. “It’s the words
I’m looking at. What’s the music got to do with the sense? See here!” he
cried. “What’s the name of it? oh! ‘The Boatswain Calls,’” and he
read--
“Come, my boys, your handspikes poise,
And give one general huzza,
Yet sighing as you pull away
For the tears ashore that flow,
To the windlass let us go,
With yo, heave ho!”
He let fall the paper on his knee and stared at me.
“Well, that is certainly very poor stuff,” said I.
“Poor stuff!” he exclaimed. “Why, it ain’t even that. Ne’er an omnibus
driver but could do better. How can they pull away if they’ve got their
handspikes poised? and what’s the windlass got to do with pulling away?
And hear this--
‘If ’tis storm, why we bustle; if calm, why we booze,
All taut from the stem to the stern.’
Booze in a calm! Why, there’s naught going but liquor in these blooming
rhymes. And ‘All taut from the stem to the stern’--did the chap who
wrote that have the least glimmerin’ shadder of a notion of what he
meant? But stop a bit; here’s a song called ‘Poor Jack’--
‘Though the tempests topgallant-masts smack-smooth should smite,
And shiver each splinter of wood,
Clear the decks, stow the yards, and house everything tight,
And under the foresail we scud.’
What d’ye think of that, boys?” said he, addressing the others, who were
on the broad grin. “Did ye ever hear of a topgallant-mast going
smack-smooth? One lives and larns. I always thought that was a job for
the lower masts. And, I say, how d’ye relish stowing the yards? He can’t
mean atop of the booms, for he keeps the foresail on her to scud with;
but perhaps the foreyard’s stowed too, and the reefed course is set on
the flying jib-stay. But follow this--
‘For,’ says he, ‘d’ye mind ye, let ...’
--something; here’s a word left out--
‘...’ere so oft,
Take the toplifts of sailors aback!’
Does he mean topping-lift? If so, that’s a queer sort of thing to be
taken aback. Why, if he goes on in this fashion he’ll be reefing the
mainsheet next.”
All this was exceedingly amusing to me. It was too good, indeed, not to
encourage.
“Nautical blunders seem uncommonly cheap,” I said. “You appear to have
got a wonderful lot for one penny.”
“Look here!” he cried, bursting into a laugh as his eye lighted on
another ballad:
“‘’Twas in the good ship _Rover_’--
that’s the name of it--
‘That time bound straight to Portugal.
Right fore and aft we bore;
But when we made Cape Ortugal,
A gae blew off the shore.
‘She lay, it did so shock her,
A log upon the main,
Till, sav’d from Davy’s locker,
We put to sea again.’”
Only a Harley or a Robson could do justice to the seaman’s face as he
looked at me after putting down the paper--there is nothing in words to
convey the sour astonishment and contempt in his expression.
“‘Right fore and aft we bore!’” he presently exclaimed. “Did any man
ever hear the like of that? What sort of course is it? How’s her head
when she’s bearing right fore and aft? And then think, arter lying like
a log upon the main, of putting to sea again without going into harbour
first!”
“I doubt if ye can beat that,” said one of the other sailors.
“Think not?” answered the old fellow quickly, “then what d’ye say to
this out of a song here wrote down as ‘Spanking Jack’?--
‘One night, as we drove with two reefs in the mainsail,
And the scud came on lowering upon a lee shore,
Jack went up aloft to hand the topgallant-sail,
A spray washed him off, and we ne’er saw him more.’”
“What is wrong there?” I asked.
“Wrong!” he shouted. “Did ye ever hear of a square mainsail with two
reefs in it? and a square one’s meant if anything is meant at all, by
the hallusion in the verse to the topgallant-sail. And what’s intended
by the scud coming on louring upon a lee shore? Scud comes from
windward, don’t it? And what’s a spray?”
“Quite enough water to wash off such a sailor as Spanking Jack, I dare
say,” I remarked.
“Ay, you’re right,” said he, with a grin. “But I’m not done yet. Here’s
something in the ferocious line, called ‘The Demon of the Sea’--
‘With equal rage both ships engage,
And dreadful slaughter’s seen;
The die is cast--a ball at last
Has struck his magazine.
‘And now appall’d, his men they all
Stand mute in deep despair;
The pirate, too, and all his crew
Were blown up in the air.’
What d’ye think of that for a nautical bust-up? Think of standing in
mute despair after the ball had struck the magazine! How long did the
chap as wrote this wash reckon it takes powder to hexplode arter it’s
fired? Instead of being appalled and standing in mute despair, they
should have taken to the boats; for, ye see, that convenient magazine
was bound to give ’em plenty of time. And they calls this,” said he,
turning the pages backwards and forwards, “‘Sea Songs.’ It’s the likes
of this that is offered to shore-going folk as correct representations
of the mariner’s calling, hey? Ain’t it true to life? Here’s a bit for
ye--
‘William, who high upon the yard,
Rock’d with the billows to and fro,
Soon as her well-known voice he heard,
He sigh’d and cast his eyes below.
The cords glide swiftly through his glowing hands,
And quick as lightning on the deck he stands.’
What sort of cords did he come down by--the signal halliards? And isn’t
it quite conceivable that, being on a man-o’-war, and aloft on duty, he
should drop his job to come down to his Susan without leave of the
officer in charge? Wonderfully true to life, sir, ain’t it, ispecially
them bits about the sailor boy capering ashore, and jolly tars drinking
and dancing at sea, as if cargoes consisted of nothing but casks of rum
which sailors are allowed to broach whenever they want to be merry?”
He turned to the rude woodcut, and had another long look at it; then,
suddenly twisting the sheets up in his hand, he thrust one end into the
fire, singing out as he looked around him:
“Anybody want a light?”
This sour seaman was, of course, a very hard and exacting critic,
belonging to a class of sailors who, when reading about the sea, should
they come across the least oversight on the part of a writer, will
fling his book or poem or song out of window, and vote the author a
lubber and utterly ignorant of all that concerns the calling. I
remember, when I wrote an account of the wreck of the _Indian Chief_, a
sailor gravely told me he was cocksure the whole yarn was an out-and-out
lie, because I had made the chief mate escape from the mizzenmast by
getting into the maintop by the mizzen-topmast stay. No doubt I should
have done better by sending the mate to make his way into the top from
the topgallant masthead; but just because my sailor was sure that the
mizzen-topmast stay of the _Indian Chief_ set up half-way down the
mainmast, he refused to believe the story of the wreck. Yet it is quite
possible to read many of our English sea songs with wonder and ridicule
without necessarily bringing to them the sourness and severity of
judgment I found in the old seaman. The present generation of writers
are not worse sinners in respect of accuracy than the past; but I am
bound to say that their blunders are to the full as numerous. The
production of a sea song is by no means conditional on a man’s having
been to sea. The finest marine lyric in this or any other language, “Ye
Mariners of England,” was written by a man who had no knowledge whatever
of the sailor’s calling. There is nothing false in that glorious poem,
no absurd references to bowlines and topsail sheets, and other words of
which few landsmen have the least idea of the meaning. But can as much
be said of Allan Cunningham’s popular poem, “A Wet Sheet and a Flowing
Sea”? It is just possible that the poet may have used the word “sheet”
rightly, and meant the song to refer to a small fore-and-aft vessel that
when heavily pressed down might wet her sheets; but Jack, when he hears
that ballad, is strongly disposed to believe that the writer thought
that a “sheet” was a sail, and this being his suspicion, he could never
sing the song with the least relish or enjoyment of even the beautiful
air with which the words are associated. By all means let landsmen
continue to write sea songs; but if they desire a larger audience than
shore-goers for their compositions, if they wish to hear of their verses
in the forecastle and learn that they are popular among sailors, let
them rigorously avoid all technicalities, all the stupid old clap-trap
about cans of grog and “Yeo, heave ho,” and “So ho!” and the like. For a
song may be as salt as the sea itself, and yet be as free from the
stereotyped nauticalisms as a page of “Hamlet.” Indeed, the real English
sailor is not one-third as nautical as he is supposed to be; and the
numerous inanities dedicated to his rollicking enjoyments when at sea,
his Sues and Nans ashore, are about as true to his real character as the
public-house effigy of him, on one leg, in shoes, and round hat at the
back of his head, is like the original.
_AN HOUR’S ROW._
There is not a more painfully diverting sight in the whole world than
that of a cockney with a face as yellow as a London fog, a tall hat at
the back of his head, his coloured shirt-sleeves rolled above his
elbows, tugging upon the sea at a small pair of oars in a rather heavy
wherry. He has no idea of tides, of waves, of winds, or weather. He
looks to leeward for squalls, and over the stern for any other news of
the sea. The current that dangerously and helplessly sweeps him away
from the land delights him by a sense of velocity. The waves which rise
and threaten to fill the boat gladden him with the sensation of going
“up and down.” I once took the trouble to watch a cockney get into a
wherry and row himself out to sea. I kept a very powerful glass bearing
upon him, and had his face within reach of my hand, so to speak, when he
was two miles off. There was a strong tide setting to the eastward, in
which direction lay the North Sea. He went away very fast, and with my
eye to the telescope I found myself smiling in sympathy with his radiant
enjoyment of the speed at which his boat was going. He did not feather
his oars, but rowed with prodigious contortions of his body, carrying
his nose aft until I thought he would tumble upon it in the stern
sheets, and then lying back at an angle so acute that I was constantly
watching for his heels, whilst his oars flourished themselves in the air
like a pair of tongs in the hands of a clown. I was sure, by the
expression in his face, that he believed it was his fine rowing that
made the boat go so fast. He did not know that the tide was helping him
at the rate of very nearly three and a half land miles an hour.
At last he thought it was time to turn back. He let go one oar to pull
at the other with both hands, and so he got his boat’s head round. He
still smiled and looked confident, and rowed unintermittently for about
ten minutes, in which time he had gone astern about the sixteenth of a
mile. Then he stopped and took a look over the bows. His face was no
longer radiant, but, on the contrary, very much puzzled, and even
slightly distressed. He rowed hard again, and then stopped and took
another look. This time he seemed horribly frightened. Indeed, examined
through the telescope, his yellow face was a curious study. The emotions
of his soul were finely expressed, and every time he stopped rowing to
turn his head and gaze at the land, a fresh passion was depictured on
his fog-coloured lineaments. Eventually a couple of boatmen went to
succour him, and with much difficulty towed him home. He stepped on
shore very defiantly, and, instead of rewarding the boatmen for their
services, expressed his gratitude by offering to row either of them for
a pound.
It is plain that hardy and dexterous landsmen of this kind must
occasionally meet with exciting adventures on the deep. An experience
not so commonplace but that another touch or two would have raised it
into tragical dignity was encountered not very many days ago by a plain,
honest, decently-educated Londoner, a City clerk, aged forty-four, who,
being afflicted with the delusion that he could row, put forth in a
wherry along with his wife and child. He told me the story, begging me
to print it as a warning to others, but at the same time on no account
to mention his name nor the port at which he embarked on his disastrous
voyage. As nearly as I can remember, this is how his story went.
“I don’t know,” he began, “whether I shall ever live to keep a servant,
but it would be more sensible for me to hope I may never live to feel
the want of one. Any way, when a man can’t afford to keep a servant,
then, if he has a baby it must always go along with the wife; and this
being so, when I offered to take my wife out for an hour’s row we were
bound to carry the baby with us. The baby was weaned six weeks ago. It’s
a small thing to say, but worth taking notice of, as it made our
troubles harder, as you’ll hear. I never professed to be an oarsman. I
had in my time pulled a pair of sculls on the Thames, and got along
middling well--well enough to enable me to say to my wife on this
occasion, ‘Look here, Sarah, there’s no need to take a man. A man will
be a shilling extra. I don’t say I can feather; and I don’t know, if I
were to row with other men, whether I should be able to keep time. But
I’m quite competent to pull in a boat by myself.’
“‘Very well, William,’ said she; ‘if you think there’s no danger, an
hour on the water will be very enjoyable. But we don’t want more than an
hour.’
“‘Certainly not,’ I answered; ‘an hour is eighteenpence.’
“The baby was dressed and fed, my wife put on her hat, and we left our
lodgings for the place where the wherries lay. As we went along my wife
suggested that we should carry a few buns with us.
“‘What for?’ said I: ‘we shall be back for tea. We’re sure to eat the
buns, and they’ll destroy our appetite for the shrimps.’ That was my
reasoning. It was very shortsighted; but what should a man who is cooped
up in the City of London for eleven months in every year know about the
sea and how to provide against its dangers?
“We were pursued by four or five boatmen to the landing-stage, where I
selected what looked to me a nice light wherry. It was five o’clock in
the afternoon. We meant to be home by six. The sun was still very hot;
but the boatman who helped us to get into the wherry said we should find
a cool air on the sea. I removed my coat and waistcoat, and turned up my
arm-sleeves and set my hat securely on my head. My wife sat upon a
cushion in the hinder part of the boat, and the boatman put on the
rudder and told my wife to lay hold of the strings--I don’t know what
sailors call them. But she said she would rather not touch them, as she
had no idea of steering, and besides, the baby kept her hands employed.
“‘I can steer,’ said I, ‘with my oars.’
“On this, an old man with a long stick with a hook at the end of it,
pushed the boat off. There was quite a crowd of other boats--empty
boats--in the way, and I was a good deal confused by the shouts of the
boatmen telling me what to do. We ran into several of these boats, and
twice I let one of the oars fall overboard, which gave me a great deal
of trouble to recover. We got clear of these boats, and I was rowing
pretty steadily when, to my surprise, I found the boat’s head turning
and aiming for the pier. I endeavoured to remedy this by rowing more
strongly with one oar than with the other, but the wherry would insist
upon going the wrong way, and I had come to the conclusion that there
was something seriously amiss with the boat, and was about to put back
and exchange it for another that would go straight, when I perceived
that the rudder was inclined, in consequence of my wife sitting on one
of the strings connected with it.
“When this was freed the boat went straight, and I pulled vigorously for
the open sea. We had several alarms, however, before reaching the open
water. First, there were three boats full of schoolboys, splashing about
with their oars, who kept on screeching to me to mind where I was going.
Then a man on the pier roared to me to keep clear of the tug. Then,
again, we were nearly run down by a smack.
“‘I certainly don’t call this enjoyment,’ said my wife faintly, striving
to soothe the baby, who had been awakened by the boys, and was crying at
the top of her voice.
“I made no answer, but continued rowing with great resolution, and, as I
flattered myself, with a dash of science, too, all things considered,
earnestly looking over my shoulders to see where I was going, until my
neck was as stiff as an office-ruler. At last we got out of harbour into
the open sea.