of vessels. The middle kind between the knife-like racer and the
motherly, lubberly tub, is the best for those who go down to the sea in
pleasure vessels, not to do business, but to enjoy the freshness and
wonder and beauty of the ocean. There are scores of them afloat,
superbly modelled craft, whose lines would have made the old Baltimore
clipper-builders green with envy. I will name no names, but will think
of a yacht I have seen--a schooner, near about 150 tons by yacht
measurement, with magnificent spars exquisitely stayed, a bow bold about
the figurehead, but fining away with delicate keenness at the forefoot,
with such a swell of the side as promises stability in a gale of wind,
but arching thence to the keel in a conformation so tenderly sinuous and
beautifully clean that a sailor would want to know no more to enter her
in his mind as one of the fastest vessels of her class. This she is, but
she gives you a beam as well as speed. There is plenty of room to walk
about her decks; there is no fear of falling down the forehatch for want
of a gangway to get into the eyes of her; the coils of her running-gear
are never in the road. Is there anything more tenderly beautiful than a
vessel of this kind slightly leaning under her cotton-white cloths, her
polished and swelling heights of canvas softly shaded at the leeches,
the brass-work on her deck full of blinding crimson stars which wink
like bursts of fire from the mouths of cannon watched from a distance,
as the lift of the swell veers the brilliant metal in and out of the
sphere of the sun, whilst a line of froth streams past her like a shower
of silver dust upon the sea, and the gentle moaning of water at the stem
mingles with the vibratory humming of the wind in the vessel. This is
the sort of vessel in which a man can take his ease and enjoy all that
the sea has to offer. And this, too, is your ship for Channel cruising.
She would carry you round the world if you had the mind to try her.
She’ll creep into the wind’s eye with the luff of her foresail blowing
to windward, not shivering, but standing out full of wind that way,
whilst the after half is drawing and doing its work. I know her to be a
typical boat, and that is why I describe her. Whilst such craft as she
remain afloat, the grace of the sailing vessel in its most beauteous
form survives, and steam may be defied to demolish a lingering but most
noble marine ideal realized.
Owners of yachts do not all take the same view of the delightful
pastime. Between the yachtsman who never seems so happy as when he is
out of soundings, and those sailors who creep from port to port, and
take a three weeks’ spell of rest in every harbour they succeed in
making, there is a prodigious stretch, filled up by a surprising variety
of tastes. But the harbour-haunting yachtsman grows rare. His excursions
to sea, even out of sight of land, are every year more frequent. He
learns to hear a music in the wind that’s piping merrily, and the threat
of lightning in the horned moon ceases to scare him. This is as it
should be. Yachting is surely but a sorry entertainment when warps hold
your vessel against a stone or wooden pier, and no livelier recreation
offers than bobbing for flounders in the mud at the bottom of the water
alongside. Our English summers are not very long, and there is much to
be seen, much to inspirit the mind, much to invigorate the body. The
warm and brightly-coloured sea, for many a league enriched with verdant
and dazzling and tender stretches of coast scenery, courts the fortunate
yachtsman with promises which it never breaks. It is not racing only, it
is not sailing only; it is the calm day sleeping under the rich azure
heaven; the water a breathless surface of molten glass, shadowed here
and there where the shallow soundings are; the horizon streaked with
floating wreaths of vapour or darkened by the blueish smoke of a
long-vanished steamer; the coastline some miles away swimming in the
haze of heat, and the water in the south blending with the flood of
light which the sun flashes into it. Here and there is a motionless
smack, with her reddish sail reflected without a tremor under her; or a
distant ship whose white canvas seems to be melting upon the faint light
blue over the horizon. Or it is the summer night, with a flood of
moonlight shivering the ripples, whilst on either hand the sea stretches
away in solemn darkness touched faintly in places by the lustre of the
glorious planets unpaled by the moonshine. A soft breeze murmurs over
the water, and keeps the spectral canvas on high sleeping, and a narrow
wake goes away astern into the darkness, with fitful flashes of
phosphorus in the circling eddies, in the run of the ripples as they
break near the silent hull.
Small wonder, indeed, that the sea should court men as it does, and
fascinate them too. Happy the man who can take the pleasure it yields as
a yachtsman, and in his own beautiful vessel can traverse its glorious
waters as idly, and freely, and gaily as the wind that impels him.
_A DRUNKEN SHIP._
In one of Edgar Poe’s stories there is an account of a crew clinging to
the bottom of their capsized vessel, and watching a ship approach them.
She comes yawing and steering very wildly, but there are people aboard,
and the poor sailors are full of hope; until on a sudden an insufferable
smell is borne to them by the wind, and they discover that the figures
lolling upon the ship’s sides are putrifying corpses.
This tale of horror as well as of imagination came into my head some
time ago, when I read the evidence that had been tendered in St.
George’s Hall, Liverpool, by a certain pier-manager and coxswain of the
lifeboat belonging to a north-western town. He said that at about
half-past five in the morning he was roused out by a man who told him
that there was a vessel drifting ashore. He hurried down to the beach,
and saw a barque of between 300 and 400 tons a short distance off under
lower topsails. There was a fresh breeze from the westward. He watched
the vessel a few minutes, and perceived that she would sometimes fall
off so as to bring the breeze on her quarter, and then round close to
the wind, like Poe’s dreadful ship, and that she was coming ashore as
fast as ever she could drive. The lifeboat was launched when this
strangely-behaved barque was within a hundred and fifty fathoms of the
beach, and on the boat getting alongside, a strong smell of rum and
water was found to pervade the atmosphere. A man got on to the rail and
dropped into the boat, and the coxswain said “he seemed stupefied, took
no notice of anything, and did not speak.” This was the skipper. The
rest of the crew tumbled into the lifeboat and were conveyed ashore,
while the barque took the ground and became a total wreck, nothing being
saved but some sails and a few stores.
Such a very unusual circumstance as that of a well-found barque sailing
ashore, as one might put it, of her own will, was sure to have a queer
story behind it. And assuredly the story is a queer one, making one of
the most disgraceful narratives to be found in the modern marine annals.
It shall be told by a specimen of one of those plain, honest, English
seamen who captains say are no longer to be found, and whose extinction,
they declare, obliges them to ship “Dutchmen.” I will not give this
excellent man his name, glad as I should be to do so, for the punishment
inflicted on the captain and mate by the court that inquired into their
conduct would render a large public identification a needless
supplementary penalty. The certificate of competency held by the captain
has been cancelled, but to the mate there has been granted a twelve
months’ chance of reformation, and this alone should explain the reason
for suppressing all names.
“The barque was a vessel of 340 tons, and we had a crew of ten men, not
counting the captain and mate. We were bound for Quebec, which, I
reckon, should make a ship’s course about west by south; but on this, as
you’ll take note presently, all mariners don’t seem to be agreed. The
whole of the crew, saving me and another whose name shall be Bill, were
drunk when the barque left Liverpool. Speaking of the fo’ksle, I don’t
mean to say there’s anything unusual in this. Drink’s grown with
legislation. In old times, when there was less law, there was less lush.
It’s a teetotal age, this; nothing but water going in vessels, and the
consequence is that men newly shipped, knowing that there’ll be no grog
betwixt this and the next port, go in for a bout of drinking to serve
them, as it might be, for the whole voyage. See ’em come aboard,
sprawling and roaring, too sick to stand, rolling below, and leaving the
ship to sail away with no one but the idlers--and them drunk, too,
maybe--to do her work for twenty-four hours or longer. If I was an owner
my ship shouldn’t be a teetotaler. Every day, at noon, there should be a
can of rum on the capstan for the men--a tot apiece; but I’d make this
rule, that any man as came aboard in liquor should have no grog served
out to him for the rest of the voyage. That would stop the drunkenness
ships carry away from the ports, and all the dangers which a drunken
crew brings on a vessel that’s got to grope her way down rivers and
along channels full of peril.
“Well, there was ten of us, and eight were drunk. I’m speaking of
forrards; I’ll come aft presently. I never saw men worse in liquor. You
remember them Scotchmen that used to stand at tobacconists’ doors,
taking a pinch of snuff?--dummies they were, you’ll recall. Well, think
of giving one of ’em a shove, and seeing him fall. If ye can fix such an
object in your imagination you’ll comprehend the sort of helplessness of
my eight shipmates. They lay in the fo’ksle as lifeless as bits of
timber; and this being the condition of the barque, we were towed out
with a pilot aboard, and then, when abreast of the Nor’-west Lightship,
were left to shift for ourselves. The mate was aft, me at the wheel,
and Bill forward. There was not an inch of canvas on our vessel, and no
one on deck excepting those I’ve mentioned. Whilst we were towing, the
mate came up to have a look at the compass now and again, and then I
noticed that if he wasn’t downright slewed he didn’t want very many more
nips to settle his business. He goes lurching along till he comes
abreast of the main rigging, and here he lays hold and sings out, ‘All
hands make sail. Tumble up, my lively hearties! Bear a hand with your
hair oil and your silk stockings, my sweet and noble fellows!’
“But nobody took any notice except Bill, who sings out, ‘There’s no
tumbling up aboard this galliant vessel, sir--leastways, forrards;
there’s naught but tumbling down.’ At which the mate bursts into a loud
laugh, swaying upon the rope he had hold of as though he meant to swig
off on it. Then, looking up and around, he sings out--
“‘This ain’t a steamer. The sails must be loosed and the yards hoisted,
bully, if the Liverpool gells are ever to clap eyes on us brave mariners
again; so jump below among them dreadful drunkards and rout ’em out.
Rout ’em out, do you hear?’
“Well, Bill did as he was told, and after a bit he managed to shove two
or three of the crew through the scuttle on to the deck. They stood
blinkin’ in the light like owls, rolling up against one another with
their hair over their faces, and their clothes looking as if they had
been put on upside down.
“‘Now, then! now, then!’ sings out the mate, who couldn’t keep his legs
without holding on; ‘what’s the meaning of this here dissipation?
There’s no drink allowed aboard this tidy little ship. There’s nothing
but the teetotal lay to be found in this handsome hooker. Milk and
water, my bully sailor lads! that’s the tap if ever ye want to end as
philosophers. Loose the fore-topmast staysail. Loose the spanker. Get
the main-topmast staysail on her. Lay out, some one, and loose the inner
jib.’ And he rattled order after order as though he’d got a ship’s
company of fifty men to do his bidding.
“How the drunken fellows scraped through the job I’m sure I don’t know.
It was a bad look-out for us two sober men, but for the life of me I
couldn’t help laughing to watch the sailors Bill had managed to shove on
deck go aloft. Talk of hanging on with your eyelids! Again and again I
expected to see ’em all drop overboard; but I suppose their instincts
for holding on were there, though their senses were gone, and the same
mental henergy it was, no doubt, as enabled them to get the gaskets
adrift and loose the lower topsails. When those sails were sheeted
home--the jib, staysails, and spanker being already set--the drunken men
refused to do any more work; they rolled over to the scuttle and
disappeared, the mate looking on, but too intoxicated to act. The
skipper all this while never showed himself. I asked the mate what
course I was to steer.
“‘Course?’ said he; ‘why, keep the vessel’s head followin’ the jibboom,
can’t ye?’
“‘Easy enough,’ says I; ‘but where’s the jibboom a-going?’
“‘No impudence!’ he cries out. ‘Smother me if I know what the British
sailor’s a-coming to. It’s all drink and jaw nowadays. What’s become of
all the old, ’spectable, sober seamen?--tell me that, you terrapin.’
“There was no use arguing with a man who couldn’t stand without holding
on. I says, ‘I’m not going to steer this barque all day--’specially as
we seem bound to nowheres. My trick was up and out a long spell since.’
“‘And d’ye think,’ says he, ‘the vessel don’t know her way without you?
Hook it forrard, afore I skin yer.’
“I let go the wheel and walked forward. I looked behind me as I went,
making sure that he’d take my place. But the deuce a bit. He was leaning
against the rail, and shook his fist at me when I turned my head, and
there was the barque without any one steering her, her fore and aft
canvas full, but her topsails aback, and her whole company, saving two,
so drunk as to be incapable. It was a good job that old Drainings was
not so drunk as the others, otherwise we should have been obliged to
light the galley fire and get ourselves supper. We were not disposed to
take this job upon ourselves, so we hauled him on deck and gave him
several buckets of water, which appeared to wash some of the fumes out
of his intellects, and he then turned to--in a very staggering fashion,
sartinly--and got us some tea, being scared by our threats to drown him
out of hand if he didn’t tend to our wants.
“Me and my mate hung about the deck forrard watching to see if the
skipper showed himself, but he never appeared, which, taken along with
the condition of the mate, made us suppose he was drunk too; but we
couldn’t have swore to this without getting a sight of him first. I says
to Bill, ‘Here’s a pretty look-out. What’s to be done? No one at the
wheel; no one in charge; everybody drunk, and the night coming along.’
“‘There’s nothing to be done,’ answers Bill, ‘except to turn in and take
our chance. It won’t do for us to take command of the barque. If there’s
to be a mess, let it find the skipper boss, not us. I don’t want no
magistrate’s job, for one. We’re but common sailors, and common sailors
have but a poor chance now when it comes to law, and the fight’s between
them and the captain.’
“This was a middlin’ sensible view; but still, life’s life, and I
couldn’t quite see my way to turn in aboard a drifting ship, and take
our chance of all going well throughout the night. So, calling old
Drainings, who was getting his senses and beginning to understand the
muddle we was all in, we lighted our pipes and had a long confab, the
end of it being an agreement that the three of us should keep a
look-out, turn and turn about. There was to be no steering--nothing but
looking. Well, I kept the first look-out, and in all them hours I never
see either the captain or the mate on deck. The breeze was small, and
the ship lay steady enough, her topsails aback and her staysails
drawing. Two or three steamers drove past, and I’m pretty sartin they’d
have been into us if I hadn’t taken the precaution to get the side
lights over. Bill relieved me at six bells, we having settled for his
turn to follow mine, so as to give Drainings time to sleep off the rest
of the rum that worked in his system. When I went below the fo’ksle was
as hot as an oven, such a smell of liquor about as would have made you
think yourself in a public-house, and all hands snoring so loud that you
might have reckoned the barque was sailing ten miles an hour, and that
noise the sound of the water rolling away from her stem. I turned in all
standing, ready for whatever might happen, and fell asleep, and when I
woke it was to the tune of a desperate hammering on deck. It was broad
daylight, and, when I tumbled up, I found the mate beating the deck and
bawling at the top of his voice, ‘Up with ye, you drunken swine! up
naked, every mother’s son of you, and don’t stop to dress!’ he was
roaring, filling up his meaning with more oaths than he had fingers and
toes. He was just in the same condition he had been in all along,
rolling and sprawling here and there, and fogging the air all about him
with the smell o’ spirits.
“Old Drainings was at the wheel, and I spied the captain aft, holding on
to a backstay with one hand and shaking his other hand at Drainings, who
grinned in his face. Though pretty near the whole ship’s length was
betwixt us, I easily saw that the captain was as drunk as his mate.
By-and-by he turns his head and sings out for the mate to lay aft. The
mate goes, and the skipper, fetching him a thumping whack on the
back--meant for love and good fellowship--casts his arm round the
other’s neck, and down they tumble below, for another reviver, no doubt.
Drainings left the wheel and came forrard.
“‘I can’t help laughing at the old man,’ says he. ‘Never heerd such
nonsense as he talks. But, all the same, what’s to do?’ says he. ‘We
shall be driving ashore if we don’t mind. Have any of the men
recovered?’
“‘I’ve not had time to see,’ I answers, and I dropped down the fo’ksle
hatch to have a look. I stirred them as was on the deck with my foot and
made some of them talk to me; but there was not one man among them as
was of any use. They had not only come aboard steeped to the eyes in
drink, but had brought a quantity of lush along with them, and two or
three empty black bottles knocking about ’splained how it was that
sleeping in all night hadn’t made these scowbanks fit for duty.
“Well, I don’t want to make an endless job of this yarn, or I’d give you
the particulars of that day and the night as followed. By that time most
of the men had recovered their senses, and me and Bill took care, as
fast as ever we could get ’em to sit up and listen, to ’splain the
quandary the vessel was in, and our danger. This sobered ’em quicker
than water would have done. They came on deck and took a look around,
saw nobody at the wheel, no one in charge, and nothing on the barque but
what we had made shift to hoist after the tug had left us.
“This was the afternoon of the third day. The weather looked dirty in
the south-west, and shortly before five o’clock the wind breezed up
hard. Luckily we was under small canvas. I says to the men, ‘The best
thing we can do is to haul down the staysails and heave her to. There’s
no telling where she’s been drifting to all these days. No sights have
been taken, the log never hove, no reckoning of any kind kept. Whether
we’re off England, Hireland, or Scotland I’m not going to calculate; but
one thing I’m certain sure of, we shall be having one of them kingdoms
close aboard of us before long; and so I reckon our business is to slow
down this here drift as fur as we can, whilst we see if the captain
means to take charge and sail the vessel to Quebec, or keep drunk and
send us all to the bottom.’
“Everybody being agreeable, we hauled down the staysails and backed the
foretopsail. There was no watches, the crew hadn’t been divided;
however, we formed ourselves into two gangs, and agreed to keep watch
and watch till the morning; then, if things remained as they was, we
arranged for some of us to go aft to the captain, and, if he refused to
do his duty, to hoist a distress signal, and ’splain our situation to
the first ship as came along. The deuce of it was, ye see, there was
ne’er a man forrards as knew anything of navigation. Had we turned to
and seized the skipper’s instruments and charts they’d have been of no
use to us. Well, next morning arrived, and found the barque still
drifting and the weather as thick as mud in a wine-glass. All hands
assembled, and we held a sort o’ parliament, and then it was agreed that
I and another should go aft and inquire of the captain what he meant by
this conduct. ’Cordingly we lay aft, and going into the cabin found the
mate lying there drunk, though not incapable. He asked us what we
wanted; but we took no notice, pushing on to the captain’s berth. We
hammered on the door, but getting no answer opened it, and saw him lying
sound asleep and kinder stupefied in his bunk. We laid hold of him and
hauled till we’d roused him up.
“‘Captain,’ says I, ‘we’ve come aft to ask what you mean to do with the
barque. She’s drifting anyhow, and all hands feel their lives to be in
danger.’
“‘Pooh, pooh!’ says he, stretching his arms and gaping, ‘it’s all right.
Have a glass of grog?’
“‘No,’ I says firmly; ‘we don’t want no grog. What we require is to know
what you mean to do?’
“Instead of answering, he lay back, turned over and shut his eyes; so,
seeing that there was no satisfaction to be got, we came away and went
forrards again. The men were now thoroughly scared. They said they
warn’t going to stand skylarking of this kind, and if the captain didn’t
turn to and take charge and sail the ship back to Liverpool, they’d
knock off work. I went aft once more with this message, but though I
nearly dragged the captain out of his bed, I couldn’t make him
understand, nor even rouse him up. So I walked up to the mate and told
him of the men’s resolution.
“‘I don’t care,’ says he; ‘it’s no business of mine. I’m not going to do
anything without the captain’s orders.’
“We was in a regular fix. The weather was so thick that it would need a
ship to come very close to make out any signal we might hoist; we none
of us knew where we were, in what direction to steer, what to do with
the barque if we took charge of her. Whilst we were debating, the mate
came out, and orders us to square the yards.
“‘What for?’ says the crew.
“‘Why, for Liverpool,’ he answers.
“We turned to with a will, the mate standing at the cabin door looking
at us. We held on E.S.E. till about midnight, when we spied a light on
the port quarter, and the mate said it was the Chickens off the Calf o’
Man. It proved to be nothing of the kind, but Morecambe Bay light. At
daybreak the land was plain to be seen about four miles distant, and the
captain, who was now on deck, gave orders for the helm to be put up to
let her drive ashore, which she did, the lifeboat coming out when we was
close on to the beach, and taking us all off. The first to drop into the
boat was the skipper; he wasn’t too drunk to do that.
“What d’ye say to this tale of the sea, sir? What’ll the public think of
merchant sailors after hearing it? Should you think proper to print it,
I’ll allow that there’ll not be a landsman as won’t reckon it an
out-and-out twister, spun from the winch o’ your own invention. But,
that there may be no doubt about it, just add what the finding of the
Court was as inquired into this business: ‘Neither the master nor the
mate attended properly to his duties in navigating the vessel. They were
both under the influence of drink during the voyage. The vessel was not
navigated with proper and seaman-like care. She was stranded owing to
the utter neglect from drunkenness of both master and mate. The Court
considered that this was about as gross a case as ever came before a
court of inquiry, and found both master and mate grievously and
wrongfully in default.’
“Mild enough, sir. Had the Court been aboard, you may take your oath
they’d have drawed it considerably stronger.”
_A SAILOR’S CLUB._