It is a strong N.E. gale, but “Muckle word pass ower,” as the children
were taught by a certain dominie in the north to repeat when they came to
a word beyond his knowledge, so “Muckle gale and pass ower,” we say, and
try not to think of it. Why dwell on the unpleasing side of the sea. It
is beastly all the same, and trying to one’s nerve.
We have no canvas on her now, just tumble along before the wind, with
bare poles, through the grey seas, the wind passing through to our bones,
wet with spray, weary with the motion. Henriksen says: “To-morrow ve vill
be into the feene vedder.” I don’t know which is best, to be alongside an
optimist or a pessimist in a gale at sea. An old skipper used to murmur
to me in evil, dangerous times: “Hoot-toots, we’ll be oot o’ this intil a
waur” and I begin to think this grim pessimism was really more comforting
than Henriksen’s sanguine forecast of fine weather and blue seas which, I
think, are far off.
All the same I notice to-day that as we bury our stem and the water roars
over our deck, the little light which comes through the seas into our
round bowley aft has a watery tint of blue instead of the green it had
yesterday. That is, I take it, because we are out into the deep sounding
beyond eighty and two hundred fathoms that encircle our shores past
the great Sole bank, on the S.W. of England and Ireland, and now have
somewhere about two thousand fathoms beneath us. We thought of heaving to
last night and had a trysail ready for the aftermast. It was very black
and awesome, but we managed to hold on our course. It is rather risky
heaving round head to wind after you have run till the sea is dangerous.
If you do not put down the wheel at the right moment you have a chance of
getting one of these black seas and their huge white crests full on your
beam or bridge and perhaps becoming a wreck in a second. It was as if
the lights of cities at night showed every instant round the low horizon
every now and then, to be blotted out by black hills, the light of the
phosphorescent white ridges of foam.
Seizing what we think is a lull between big waves we scramble across
the wet deck forward to our small mess-room, pause as we hang on and
swing, till the iron door is almost upright and dive in. The door shuts
with a clang.... How the wind whistles as the new-comer opens the little
round-topped iron door! But once inside there is peace and warmth and
lamplight and steamy air from the cooking stove, and we have sardines
and bread and margarine for dinner, for it’s too rough for cooking more
than tea. Then out into the black, wet, slippery deck again. Phew! How
it blows, and how difficult it is to see now! Then to the bridge again
and the St Ebba beneath us, a patch of black with two lights like eyes
shining aft from the galley, a mass of dark against the wicked white of
the surf which we tear in the dark sea—a black cat on a white bearskin,
in a half-lit room. I suggest to the styrman (Norse for first mate) and
captain as we shiver (I do at least) on the bridge that a Rolls Royce
motor-car on a hard, dry road isn’t so bad, and they shout with derision.
“No! No!” the St Ebba for them, driving before a gale. I wonder if they
really mean it! Anyway I must pretend that I like it too.
A chunk of green sea came over our poop and bridge last night, banged
on our iron cabin door which faces astern with a thunderous shock and
swept over the bows. Some went over the bridge, and a lot came down to
the cabin, enough to be unpleasant. Out came styrman like a rabbit from
his bunk, and I’m pretty sure both the writer and captain’s colour was
not suggestive of pure joy. In a brace of shakes, after this big wave
broke over us last night, Henriksen was at the wheel and the engine going
again—the engineer had stopped it for some reason, perhaps to let our
decks clear off the sea. Then sacks with waste and oil were rigged out
on either bow, and we continued, the seas breaking angrily but out of
reach of us. So we drove through the night and are satisfied, and won’t
do it again. We did ninety miles in the night with practically only two
seas aboard, and we do not believe there’s a boat floating of our size
or bigger that would do the same, and we forecast our style of stern and
lines under water becoming the fashion.
This morning we have a bit of foresail up again and an experimental jib
as storm trysail on our mainmast, and it seems just to be right.[9]
[Illustration]
I thought I had missed sport by writing these notes and not turning out
early, for when I did put up my head into the wind and spray, the mate
was silhouetted on the bow, harpoon in hand, with figures grouped round
him, holding lines, in attitudes of intense expectancy, and there were
dolphins springing alongside. But it was too rough. Several lunges were
made by various members of the crew with our little hand harpoon and its
long spruce shaft, but they were misses all. The sun shone about midday,
a small incident, but after three days’ storm and heavy seas it was a
cheering sight, and the sea became blue, but always too rough to get a
harpoon into the dolphins. They appeared again at night. The sea was full
of phosphorus, so we could see their brilliant tracks shooting round
backwards and forwards like the trail of rockets. Though I have been
amongst hundreds of whales at different times and seasons I have never
had the luck to see one going through a phosphorescent sea; but Henriksen
tells me a year or two ago, off Korea, he tried to harpoon one in the
dark, aiming at the glare as it passed alongside. He could scarcely see
the gun and fired a bit too far back, I think at the light, instead of
ahead of it, and missed and saw the yellow blaze of light under water as
the shell on the point of the harpoon exploded. “Ask me if that whale
went fast,” he said.
It is Sunday, the 8th October, an idyllic Sunday; there’s a grand,
blue, rippling swell, and enough air to keep our sails spread, so we
roll gently along, a block creaking occasionally and our little engine
throbbing beautifully. But there is a slight feeling of annoyance aft,
and it’s easily understood. Our skipper has his idea of what Sunday at
sea should be when there’s no whaling or hard sailing to attend to, and
I agree with him. He thinks all clothes-washing and drying blankets and
mattresses should be done on Saturday, Sunday should show clear decks,
shaved chins and, if possible, a change of clothes and mind. But most of
our crew apparently have been brought up to the common idea of Sunday as
washing-day and have hung up shirts and clothes of all kinds everywhere.
Henriksen endures the un-Sundaylike display but vows “never again.” Next
Sunday we will be neat and clear, or all hands will be working double
tide at flensing or hunting whales—we shall see!
Meantime we have had days of quiet ship work, the sea getting more
blue each day, and winter clothes shedding. On this account we held a
_shoppie_ on Friday—got out the captain’s slop chest from the hold. This
is an old sailing-ship custom. Six of us carried it aft to quarter-deck,
unlocked it and took all the contents into the little cabin, and wasn’t
it a well-stocked shop—jerseys, trousers, boots in cardboard boxes, caps,
shirts, woollen gloves for the cold northern seas, and white and blue
dungaree suits for tropics, and scented soap! It was new for me to see
scented soap on such a business. Henriksen and the first mate have a busy
afternoon with their coats off and pipes going, looking up prices and
calculating the ten per cent. profit—a small profit to cover risks—and
good articles. I’ve seen fifty per cent. made off very inferior goods.
And the crew come down one by one and buy what they need or can afford,
and “ask me” if the atmosphere doesn’t get thick towards lamplight time.
There was not much sale in the way of winter kit. The heaps of mits and
thick woollen socks will not be appreciated till St Ebba gets far south
towards the ice edge.
With our present crew of Norsemen it is not so easy to get interested in
them, individually, as with sailors of our own race; still the few words
we have of each other’s language, eked out with signs and drawings, go
far—drawings especially; indeed, from the captain downwards, painting
excites far more intelligent interest among our crowd than they would
with my own countrymen. Our old Dundonian whalers were neither very
musical nor artistic. Here the skipper plays Grieg, and has a lively
interest in every æsthetic aspect and every change of form and colour in
waves and sky, and has actually taken up water-colours and playing on my
bagpipe practice chanter, but I fear that for neither of these will he be
able to spare time, for a skipper is, or should be, practically on duty
all the time. But his first attempt at water-colours—a blue sea and white
breakers under a blue sky—was not half bad. The blue sea was there all
right, but the rhythm of the waves and the half tints, who can do them
justice?—Wyllie, to a certain extent, but I cannot remember anyone else,
unless Colin Hunter, and he is dead.
It is a real day of rest, contemplation and dreaming. Our greatest effort
has been to rig a line for dolphins. Both the trolling tackles we had out
were carried away last night, so I unearthed a tunny hook I had fastened
to a wire rope with a strip of aluminium to act as spoon bait. Now that
is trolling astern for the benefit of any wandering albicore, tunny,
bonita dolphin or such-like. I expect the crack of the breaking fir stem
boom, from which the line trails, will wake us from our dreams.
You may dream on board a whaler! dream at the wheel on such a day as
this, or in the crow’s nest, or sitting on one of the boats, for you are
so cut off from the world of people who stop dreams—nurses, mothers,
policemen and preachers. Alas, when you think of it, what genius has
perhaps been nipped in the bud by the reprehensible habit of such
well-meaning people. Where would art, science and literature be to-day,
we reflect, had dreaming not been discouraged by those who took charge
of our tender days. Mercifully, with the advance of years, some of us
learn to dodge these interruptions by going to sea, perhaps—where one
may dream or follow out a train of thought, as it were, on the sly. For
dreaming is following out a train of thought. Newton dreamed when he saw
the apple fall. Mercifully he had got beyond the nursery governess stage,
or his line of thought would have been nipped with: “Johnny, do wake up
and come along now, don’t dawdle there, what are you dreaming about?”
Watt managed, on one occasion, to dream on the sly and watched a boiling
kettle, and was it not either an Angle or a Saxon chief who dreamed and
let cakes burn and so united the tribes of Southern Britain? Moral, when
a small boy dreams over dessert you may morally rap him over the knuckles
and he will eat his dessert, but you may have spoiled the greatest
mathematical genius of our age.
So we muse or dream on ocean’s bosom, and read a little of monastic
times, since we are on the St Ebba, and disagree languidly with Froude’s
conclusions on Erasmus and Luther, and occasionally we cast an eye
round the empty horizon. When suddenly, from starboard, come leaping
dolphins, breaking the smooth monotony of the blue water. They sweep to
our bows, we dive from bridge to bow, seize the hand harpoon, and all
our little community wakens up and collects on our bows. Here they come
to starboard! and we get all clear for a lunge at one—no easy matter
as our sails are down, and we are doing eight knots by motor and roll
heavily. Swish, swish—two leap near our bows and the writer nearly goes
overboard in an effort to drive the young pine-tree and harpoon home, but
it misses by an inch and the frightened dolphins dash astern and come up
to port bow as if we were stationary, and so we pass the harpoon over to
Henriksen. He waits his chance and drives home a very clever thrust and
away goes the line and Henriksen very nearly after it, and all hands get
on to the rope, spring at it like ferrets at a rabbit, active as cats, a
heap of them tumbling aft along bulwarks till amidships somehow or other
the kicking dolphin is lugged over the side amongst the struggling young
sailors, and one with an axe chops its tail quiet, and in a second or two
our first cetacean, the destroyer of lovely flying-fish, breathes no more.
I should think it must weigh about two hundred pounds. Henriksen takes
the opportunity to demonstrate on a small scale the process of flensing
the blubber according to precedent, and his own plan, so that some of
our hands, new to whaling, may know what is wanted when we get hold of
sperm or the large finner whales. It is rather like a demonstration by a
surgeon to students, so rapid, but more of this method anon.
Yes, we find remains of exquisite flying-fish inside the mammal, and yet
none of us have seen flying-fish about here; are there then flying-fish
here, but deep in the sea, or has the dolphin brought these from farther
south?
Alas! that the deck of the St Ebba should be stained with gore. The
best of the meat we have cut off, two long strips down the back,
perhaps thirty pounds each, and into vinegar and water they go, enough
fresh meat for all hands for several days, and the oil of the spec or
blubber will probably amount to a gallon—one gallon clear profit for
our shareholder—one little drop of the vast ocean of whale oil we hope
to collect some day for the furtherance of British industries, and the
manufacture of margarine and olive oil in Paris, and the hundred and one
other purposes for which whale oil is used.
We have not exactly broken the Sabbath, for though we are a British ship
the crew is Norse and the Norwegian Sunday begins on Saturday afternoon
and ends at two on Sunday.
Henriksen is rather pleased that we have a young crew for our new kind of
ship and methods, as older men would be more difficult to train to our
special needs.
We see a large steamer, French, Italian or Spanish, in tow of a Liverpool
tug, grey-black funnel—white ship. We have seen only four craft since we
left Belfast.
_P.S._—All hands have dolphin steak with fried onions for supper. It is
not nearly so good as whale meat, but better than cormorant by miles—in
fact, is quite palatable.
Who said that the romance of the sea has gone, that steam has driven it
away? But that is not true; it is just as blue and full of fresh life and
romance for all of us as it ever was. The new land or new port is just as
new to me as it was to Romans or Carthaginians.
With every new type of vessel there comes a fresh aspect of the romance
of the sea.
Our new type will revive or open a new chapter of sea life. No more black
coal and smoke, but a clean, silent engine, petroleum plus sails; sails
must come back; look at our run down here, half sails, half motor; the
modern steam-whaler could not have done it, even the old sailing flyers
could not either.
I think we could have converted any disbeliever in the romance of the
sea if they’d have come aboard last night, when Henriksen and I had our
southern charts out, studying the lonely islands away down there.
Visiting the islands of the world alone would fill books of sea romance;
think of them, the thousands there are, some of them never visited.
Those in the south of the Antarctic edge are described in the Admiralty
books we have in such terse, dry words as these: “Of no interest
geographically”; “Dangerous”; “Only of interest to sealers”! “Provisions
for ship-wrecked crews were deposited by H.M. (? ship) in the year ⸺”
before the Flood! And they say: “There are only kergulen cabbages—a red
root like a carrot” on one, and wild pigs on another; and on another the
beach is covered with innumerable sea-elephants and penguins. Ghost of
Robinson Crusoe, what else can a man want? Why, even these islands, the
Azores, so close to home, how the prospect of seeing them fills us with
eagerness! What will the hills be like, and the people, and the fruit,
and the wine, and birds, and flowers, and fish! We long to see them with
the utmost impatience now that only a narrow strip of rough blue sea lies
between us and them, to-night we may fetch its lights—to-morrow we will
see the land in full sun for a certainty.