of the sea. A barren land of weird outline, of almost unimaginable
complexity of contour, but without any beauty such as is bestowed
upon the dry earth by the kindly sun. For its beauty depends upon
the sea, whose prolific waters are peopled with life so abundantly
that even the teeming earth is barren as compared with the ocean.
But at its greatest depths all the researches that man has been able
to prosecute go to prove that there is little life. The most that
goes on there is a steady accumulation of the dead husks of once
living organisms settling slowly down to form who knows what new
granites, marbles, porphyries, against the time when another race on
a reorganised earth shall need them. Here there is nothing fanciful,
for if we know anything at all of prehistoric times, it is that what
is now high land, not to say merely dry land, was once lying cold
and dormant at the bottom of the sea being prepared throughout who
can say what unrealisable periods of time for the use and enjoyment
of its present lords. Not until we leave the rayless gloom, the
incalculable pressures and universal cold of those tremendous
depths, do we find the sea-floor beginning to abound with life. It
may even be doubted whether anything of man’s handiwork, such as
there is about a ship foundering in mid-ocean, would ever reach in
a recognisable form the bottom of the sea at a depth of more than
2000 fathoms. There is an idea, popularly current among seafarers,
that sunken ships in the deep sea only go down a certain distance, no
matter what their build or how ponderous their cargo. Having reached
a certain stratum, they then drift about, slowly disintegrating,
derelicts of the depths, swarming with strange denizens, the shadowy
fleets of the lost and loved and mourned. In time, of course, as
the great solvent gets in its work they disappear, becoming part of
their surroundings, but not for hundreds of years, during which they
pass and repass at the will of the under-currents that everywhere
keep the whole body of water in the ocean from becoming stagnant and
death-dealing to adjacent shores. A weird fancy truly, but surely not
more strange than the silent depths about which it is formulated.
In his marvellously penetrative way, Kipling has touched this theme
while singing the “Song of the English”:--
“The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar--
Down to the dark, the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes
are.
There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep,
On the great grey level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables
creep.
Here in the womb of the world--here on the tie-ribs of earth,
Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat--
Warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth--
For a Power troubles the Still that has neither voice nor feet.”
Surely the imagination must be dead indeed that does not throb
responsive to the thought of that latter-day workmanship of wire
and rubber descending at the will of man into the vast void, and
running its direct course over mountain ranges, across sudden abysses
of lower depth, through the turbulence of up-bursting submarine
torrents where long-pent-up rivers compel the superincumbent ocean
to admit their saltless waters; until from continent to continent
the connection is made, and man holds converse with man at his
ease as though distance were not. Recent investigations go to prove
that chief among the causes that make for destruction of those
communicating cables are the upheavals of lost rivers. In spite
of the protection that scientific invention has provided for the
central core of conducting wire, these irresistible outbursts of
undersea torrents rend and destroy it, causing endless labour of
replacement by the never-resting cable-ships. But this is only one
of the many deeply interesting features of oceanography, a science
of comparatively recent growth, but full of gigantic possibilities
for the future knowledge of this planet. The researches of the
_Challenger_ expedition, embodied in fifty portly volumes, afford
a vast mass of material for discussion, and yet it is evident that
what they reveal is but the merest tentative dipping into the great
mysterious land that lies hidden far below the level surface of the
inscrutable sea.
That veteran man of science, Sir John Murray, has in a recent paper
(_Royal Geographical Society’s Journal_, October 1899) published
his presidential address to the geographical section of the British
Association at Dover, and even to the ordinary non-scientific reader
his wonderful _résumé_ of what has been done in the way of exploring
the ocean’s depths must be as entrancing as a fairy tale. The mere
mention of such a chasm as that existing in the South Pacific
between the Kermadecs and the Friendly Islands, where a depth of
5155 fathoms, or 530 feet more than five geographical miles, has
been found, strikes the lay mind with awe. Mount Everest, that
stupendous Himalayan peak whose summit soars far above the utmost
efforts of even the most devoted mountaineers, a virgin fastness
mocking man’s soaring ambition, if sunk in the ocean at the spot
just mentioned would disappear until its highest point was 2000 feet
below the surface. Yet out of that abyss rises the volcanic mass of
Sunday Island in the Kermadecs, whose crater is probably 2000 feet
above the sea-level. But in no less than forty-three areas visited by
the _Challenger_, depths of over 3000 fathoms have been found, and
their total area is estimated at 7,152,000 square miles, or about
7 per cent. of the total water-surface of the globe. Within these
deeps are found many lower deeps, strangely enough generally in
comparatively close proximity to land, such as the Tuscarora Deep,
near Japan, one in the Banda Sea, that is to say, in the heart of the
East India Archipelago, &c. Down, down into these mysterious waters
the ingenious sounding-machine runs, taking out its four miles and
upwards of pianoforte wire until the sudden stoppage of the swift
descent marks the dial on deck with the exact number of fathoms
reached. And yet so vast is the ocean bed that none can say with any
certainty that far greater depths may not yet be found than any that
have hitherto been recorded, amazing as they are.
The character of the ocean floor at all these vast depths as
revealed by the sounding-tube bringing specimens to the surface
is identical--red clay--which strikes the fancy queerly as being
according to most ancient legends the substance out of which our
first ancestor was builded, and from whence he derived his name.
Mingled with this primordial ooze is found the débris of once living
forms, many of them of extinct species, or species at any rate that
have never come under modern man’s observation except as fossils.
The whole story, however, demands far more space than can here be
allowed, but one more instance must be given of the wonders of the
sea-bed in conclusion. Let a violent storm displace any considerable
body of warm surface water, and lo! to take its place up rises an
equal volume of cold under layers that have been resting far below
the influence of the sun. Like a pestilential miasma these chill
waves seize upon the myriads of the sea-folk and they die. The tale
of death is incalculable, but one example is mentioned by Sir John
Murray of a case of this kind off the eastern coast of North America
in the spring of 1882, when a layer of dead fish and other marine
animals six feet in thickness was believed to cover the ocean floor
for many miles.
SHAKESPEARE AND THE SEA
Quite recently it was suggested by the writer of an article in the
_Spectator_ that Shakespeare was now but little read,--that while
his works were quoted from as much as ever, the quotations were
obtained at second hand, and that it would be hard to find to-day
any reader who had waded through all that wonderful collection of
plays and poems. This is surely not a carefully made statement. If
there were any amount of truth in it, we might well regard such a
state of things as only one degree less deplorable than that people
should have ceased to read the Bible. For next to the Bible there
can be no such collection of writings available wherein may be
found food for every mind. Even the sailor, critical as he always
is of allusions to the technicalities of his calling that appear in
literature, is arrested by the truth of Shakespeare’s references
to the sea and seafaring, while he cannot but wonder at their
copiousness in the work of a thorough landsman. Of course, in this
respect it is necessary to remember that Elizabethan England spoke a
language which was far more frequently studded with sea-terms than
that which we speak ashore to-day. With all our vast commerce and our
utter dependence upon the sea for our very life; its romance, its
expressions take little hold of the immense majority of the people.
Therein we differ widely from Americans. In every walk of life, from
Maine to Mexico, from Philadelphia to San Francisco, the American
people salt their speech with terms borrowed from the sailor, as they
do also with other terms used by Shakespeare, and often considered
by Shakespeare’s countrymen of the present day, quite wrongly, to be
slang.
In what is perhaps the most splendidly picturesque effort of
Shakespeare’s genius, “The Tempest,” he hurls us at the outset into
the hurly-burly of a storm at sea with all the terror-striking
details attendant upon the embaying of a ship in such weather. She is
a passenger ship, too, and the passengers behave as landsmen might
be expected to do in such a situation. The Master (not Captain be
it noted, for there are no Captains in the merchant-service) calls
the boatswain. Here arises a difficulty for a modern sailor. Where
was the mate? We cannot say that the office was not known, although
Shakespeare nowhere alludes to such an officer; but this much is
certain, that for one person who would understand who was meant
by the mate ten would appreciate the mention of the boatswain’s
name, and that alone would justify its use in poetry. In this short
colloquy between the Master and boatswain we have the very spirit of
sea service. An immediate reply to the Master’s hail, and an inquiry
in a phrase now only used by the vulgar, bring the assurance “Good”;
but it is at once followed by “Speak to the mariners, fall to’t
yarely, or we run ourselves aground; bestir, bestir.” Having given
his orders the Master goes--he has other matters to attend to--and
the boatswain heartens up his crew in true nautical fashion, his
language being almost identical with that used to-day. His “aside”
is true sailor,--“Blow till thou burst thy wind, if [we have] room
enough.” This essentially nautical feeling, that given a good ship
and plenty of sea-room there is nothing to fear, is alluded to again
and again in Shakespeare. He has the very spirit of it. Then come
the meddlesome passengers, hampering the hard-pressed officer with
their questioning and advice!--until, exasperated beyond courtesy, he
bursts out: “You mar our labour. Keep your cabins. You do assist the
storm.” Bidden to remember whom he has on board, he gives them more
of his mind, winding up by again addressing his crew with “cheerly
good hearts,” and as a parting shot to his hinderers, “Out of our
way, I say.”
But the weather grows worse; they must needs strike the topmast and
heave-to under the main-course (mainsail), a manœuvre which, usual
enough with Elizabethan ships, would never be attempted now. Under
the same circumstances the lower main-topsail would be used, the
mainsail having been furled long before because of its unwieldy
size. Still the passengers annoy, now with abuse, which is answered
by an appeal to their reason and an invitation to them to take hold
and work. For the need presses. She is on a lee shore, and in spite
of the fury of the gale sail must be made. “Set her two courses
[mainsail and foresail], off to sea again, lay her off.” And now the
sailors despair and speak of prayer, their cries met scornfully by
the valiant boatswain with “What, must our mouths be cold?” Then
follows that wonderful sea-picture beginning Scene 2, which remains
unapproachable for vigour and truth. A little further on comes the
old sea-superstition of the rats quitting a foredoomed ship, and in
Ariel’s report a spirited account of what must have been suggested
to Shakespeare by stories of the appearance of “corposants” or St.
Elmo’s fire, usually accompanying a storm of this kind. And in
answer to Prospero’s question, “Who was so firm?” &c., Ariel bears
incidental tribute to the mariners,--“All, but mariners, plunged in
the foaming brine and quit the vessel,” those same mariners who are
afterwards found, their vessel safely anchored, asleep under hatches,
their dangerous toil at an end.
In the “Twelfth Night” there are many salt-water allusions no less
happy, beginning with the bright picture of Antonio presented by the
Captain (of a war-ship?) breasting the sea upon a floating mast.
Again in Act I., Scene 6, Viola answers Malvolio’s uncalled-for
rudeness, “Will you hoist sail, sir?” with the ready idiom, “No, good
_swabber_, I am to hull [to heave-to] here a little longer.” In Act
V., Scene 1, the Duke speaks of Antonio as Captain of a “bawbling
vessel--for shallow draught, and bulk, unprizable”; in modern terms,
a small privateer that played such havoc with the enemy’s fleet that
“very envy and the tongue of loss cried fame and honour on him.”
Surely Shakespeare must have had Drake in his mind when he wrote this.
Who does not remember Shylock’s contemptuous summing-up of Antonio’s
means and their probable loss?--“Ships are but boards, sailors but
men, there be land rats and water rats, water thieves and land
thieves--I mean, pirates; and then there is the peril of waters,
winds, and rocks” (Act I., Scene 3). In this same play, too, we
have those terrible quicksands, the Goodwins, sketched for us in
half-a-dozen lines: “Where the carcases of many a tall ship lie
buried” (Act III., Scene 1); and in the last scene of the last act
Antonio says his “ships are safely come to _road_,” an expression
briny as the sea itself.
In the “Comedy of Errors,” Act I., Scene 1, we have a phrase that
should have been coined by an ancient Greek sailor-poet: “The
always-wind-obeying deep”; and a little lower down the page a touch
of sea-lore that would of itself suffice to stamp the writer as a man
of intimate knowledge of nautical ways: “A small spare mast, such as
seafaring men provide for storms.” Who told Shakespeare of the custom
of sailors to carry spare spars for jury-masts?
In “Macbeth,” the first witch sings of the winds and the compass
card, and promises that her enemy’s husband shall suffer all the
torments of the tempest-tossed sailor without actual shipwreck. She
also shows a pilot’s thumb “wrack’d, as homeward he did come.” Who in
these days of universal reading needs reminding of the allusion to
the ship-boy’s sleep in Act III., Scene 1, of “Henry IV.,” a contrast
of the most powerful and convincing kind, powerful alike in its
poetry and its truth to the facts of Nature? Especially noticeable
is the line where Shakespeare speaks of the spindrift: “And in the
visitation of the winds who take the ruffian billows by the top,
curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them with deaf’ning
clamours in the slippery clouds.”
“King Henry VI.,” Act V., Scene 1, has this line full of knowledge
of sea usage: “Than bear so low a sail, to strike to thee.” Here
is a plain allusion to the ancient custom whereby all ships of any
other nation, as well as all merchant ships, were compelled to lower
their sails in courtesy to British ships of war. The picture given in
“Richard III.,” Act I., Scene 4, of the sea-bed does not call for so
much wonder, for the condition of that secret place of the sea must
have had peculiar fascination for such a mind as Shakespeare’s. Set
in those few lines he has given us a vision of the deeps of the sea
that is final.
A wonderful passage is to be found in “Cymbeline,” Act III., Scene 1,
that seems to have been strangely neglected, where the Queen tells
Cymbeline to remember--
“The natural bravery of your isle; which stands
As Neptune’s park, ribbed and palèd in
With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters;
With sands that will not bear your enemies’ boats,
But suck them up to the top-mast.”
And again, in the same scene, Cloten speaks of the Romans finding us
in our “salt-water girdle.”
But no play of Shakespeare’s, except “The Tempest,” smacks so smartly
of the brine as “Pericles,” the story of that much enduring Prince
of Tyre whose nautical mishaps are made to have such a miraculously
happy ending. In Act II., Scene 1, enter Pericles, wet, invoking
Heaven that the sea having manifested its sovereignty over man,
may grant him one last boon,--a peaceful death. To him appear three
fishermen characteristically engaged in handling their nets, bullying
one another, and discussing the latest wreck. And here we get a bit
of sea-lore that all sailors deeply appreciate. “_3rd Fish._ Nay,
master, said not I as much, when I saw the porpus how he bounced and
tumbled? they say, they are half fish, half flesh; a plague on them!
they ne’er come but I look to be wash’d.” Few indeed are the sailors
even in these steamship days who have not heard that the excited
leaping of porpoises presages a storm. The whole scene well deserves
quotation, especially the true description of the whale (rorqual)
“driving the poor fry before him and at last devours them all at
a mouthful.” Space presses, however, and it will be much better
for those interested to read for themselves. Act III., Scene 1,
brings before us a companion picture to that in the opening of “The
Tempest,” perhaps even more vivid; where the terrible travail of the
elements is agonisingly contrasted with the birth-wail of an infant,
and the passing of the hapless Princess. Beautiful indeed is the
rough but honest heartening offered by the labouring sailors, broken
off by the sea-command to--
“_1st Sailor._ Slack the bolins there; thou wilt not, wilt thou?
Blow and split thyself.
_2nd Sailor._ But sea-room, an’ the brine and cloudy billow kiss
the moon, I care not.”
Bolins, modern “bowlines,” were anciently used much more than now.
At present they are slight ropes which lead from forward to keep
the weather edges (leaches) of the courses rigid in light winds
when steering full and bye. But in olden days even topgallant sails
had their bolins, and they were among the most important ropes in
the ship. Then we have the sea-superstition creating the deepest
prejudice against carrying a corpse. And, sympathetic as the mariners
are, the dead woman must “overboard straight.” Reluctantly we must
leave this all too brief sketch of Shakespeare’s true British
sea-sympathies, in the hope that it may lead to a deeper appreciation
of the sea-lore of our mightiest poet.
THE SKIPPER OF THE “AMULET”
It has been my lot, in the course of a fairly comprehensive
experience of sea-life in most capacities between lamp-trimmer and
chief officer, to serve under some queer commanders, but of all
that I ever endured, the worthy of whom I am about to tell was,
without doubt, the most amazing specimen. I have been told, on good
authority, that the tag about fact being stranger than fiction is all
bosh, but for once I am going to disregard that statement. No fiction
that I have ever read has told me anything half so strange, in my
poor judgment, as the career of Captain Jones during the time that I
was unfortunate enough to be his mate, and therefore I shall stick
to fact, at least as much of it as I can tell that will be fit for
publication.
In order to launch my story fairly it is necessary to go back a
little. On my return to London from my last voyage, with a pay-day
of some £20, I had done two important things, though with the easy
confidence of youth, and especially seafaring youth, their gravity
had not impressed me. I got married and “passed” for chief mate.
Neither my wife nor myself had a friend in the world, any certain
employment or a stick of “plenishing.” And after a honeymoon of
a day or two the tiny group of sovereigns nestling at the bottom
of my right-hand trousers pocket dwindled so that I could hardly
jingle them. There were plenty of ships in London at the time, but
although I walked the soles fairly off my boots around the dreary
docks never a one could I find where a second mate even was wanted.
I found a good many where the officers were foreigners; Germans
or Scandinavians; still more “where they didn’t keep the officers
by the ship in dock,” and one day I was offered a _chance_ to go
first mate of a 1500 ton tramp to the Baltic at £5 a month! In
spite of the shameful inadequacy of the salary I rushed off to the
Surrey Commercial Docks after the berth, and arrived on board of
her breathless, only to find that another man had got to windward
of me, having earlier information. Sadly I trudged back again
and recommenced my search, my funds all but gone and no credit
obtainable. But now I couldn’t even get a ship before the mast! Gangs
of ruffianly dock-wallopers fought like tigers at the “chain-locker,”
whenever a skipper seeking a hand or two poked his head out of
one of the doors, flourishing their discharges (?) in the air as
they surged around the half-scared man. Anxious and indeed almost
despairing as I was, I could not compete with that crowd, and I don’t
believe I should ever have got a ship, but that one day a stalwart,
pleasant-faced man opened the door. When the gang began to mob him
he roared, “I don’ want navvies--I want a sailor-man: git t’ hell
out o’ that, and let one o’ them behind ye come here.” Instantly I
flung myself into the crowd and thrust my way up to him. He took my
proffered discharge, but handed it back at once saying, “I don’t
want no steamboat sailors.” He didn’t understand the thing, being a
Nova Scotiaman. I screamed back the truth at him, and pushed my way
past him into the office, my heart fairly thumping with excitement
at the prospect of £3 a month to go to Nova Scotia in the middle
of winter. I winced a little when I found that she was only a
brigantine, but the advance note for £3 was such a godsend that I
could only be thankful.
Of the passage across in the _Wanderer_ I need say nothing here
except that the sea kindliness of the little craft (the smallest I
had ever sailed in) amazed me, while, except for a disaster in the
shape of a cook, the general conditions of life on board were most
comfortable. After twenty days we arrived at Sydney, Cape Breton,
and upon entering the harbour noticed a vessel lying disconsolately
apart from the little fleet at anchor there. She was a brig belonging
to Workington, exactly like an exaggerated barge as to her hull,
and bearing all over unmistakable evidences of utter neglect. In
fact her general appearance suggested nothing so much to me as the
nondescript craft common on the Indian coast, and called by sailors
“country-wallahs.” She provided us with plenty of material for our
evening chat, but in the morning other matters claimed our attention
and we soon forgot all about her. As we had come over in ballast
our stay was to be short, and on the second day after our arrival
news came that we were to proceed to Lingan, a small port down the
coast, in the morning, and there load soft coal for St. John, New
Brunswick. But, much to my surprise, just after supper, as I was
leaning over the rail enjoying my pipe, the mate approached me
mysteriously and beckoned me aft. As soon as we were out of hearing
of the other men, he told me that if I liked to put my dunnage over
into the boat, he would pull me ashore, the skipper having intimated
his willingness to let me go, although unable to discharge me in the
regular way. He had heard that there was a vessel in the harbour in
want of a mate, and hoped that thus I might be able to better myself.
Being quite accustomed to all vicissitudes of fortune I at once
closed with the offer, and presently found myself on the beach of
this strange place without one cent in my pocket, in utter darkness
and a loneliness like that of some desert island.