of the _Wanderer_, was the _Sea Gem_, in which I had an extended
experience. Under an old sea-dog of a captain who commanded her the
first part of the voyage, she played more pranks than a jibbing
mule with a new driver. None of the ordinary manœuvres necessary to
a sailing-ship would she perform without the strangest antics and
refusals. She seemed possessed of a stubborn demon of contrariness.
Sometimes at night, when, at the change of the watch, all hands
were kept on deck to tack ship, more than an hour would be wasted
in futile attempts to get her about in a seamanlike way. She would
prance up into the wind gaily enough, as if about to turn in her own
length, and then at the crucial moment fall off again against the
hard-down helm, while all hands cursed her vigorously for the most
obstinate, clumsy vessel ever calked. Or she would come up far enough
for the order of “mainsail haul,” and there she would stick, like
a wall-eyed sow in a muddy lane, hard and fast in irons. With her
mainyards braced a-port and her foreyards a-starboard, she reminded
all hands of nothing so much as the old sea-yarn of the Yankee
schooner-skipper who for the first time found himself in command of a
bark. Quite scared of those big square sails, he lay in port until,
by some lucky chance, he got hold of a mate who had long sailed in
square-rigged vessels. Then he boldly put to sea. But by some evil
hap the poor mate fell overboard and was drowned when they had been
several days out; and one morning a homeward-bounder spied a bark
in irons making rapid signals of distress, although the weather was
fine, and the vessel appeared staunch and seaworthy enough. Rounding
to under the sufferer’s stern, the homeward-bound skipper hailed,
“What’s the matter?” “Oh!” roared the almost frantic Yankee, “for
God’s sake send somebody aboard that knows somethin’ about this kind
er ship. I’ve lost my square-rigged mate overboard, an’ I cain’t git
a move on her nohow!” He’d been trying to sail her “winged out,”
schooner fashion. So disgusted was our skipper with the _Sea Gem_
that he left her in Mobile, saying that he was going to retire from
the sea altogether. But we all believed he was scared to death that
she would run away with him some fine day. Another skipper took
command, a Yankee Welshman by the name of Jones. The first day out I
heard the second mate say to him deferentially, “She’s rather ugly
in stays, sir.” “_Is_ she?” queried the old man, with an astonished
air. “Wall, I should hev surmised she was ez nimble ez a kitten. Yew
don’t say!” Shortly after it became necessary to tack, and, to our
utter amazement, the _Sea Gem_ came about in almost her own length,
with never a suggestion that she had ever been otherwise than as
handy as a St. Ives smack. Nor did she ever after betray any signs of
unwillingness to behave with the same cheerful alacrity. Had her trim
been different we could have understood it, because some ships handy
in ballast are veritable cows when loaded, and _vice versâ_. But that
reasoning had here no weight, since her draft was essentially the
same.
Not without a groan do I recall a passage in one of the handsomest
composite barks I ever saw. Her name I shall not give, as she was
owned in London, and may be running still, for all I know. My eye
lingered lovingly over her graceful lines as she lay in dock, and
I thought gleefully that a passage to New Zealand in her would be
like a yachting-trip. An additional satisfaction was some patent
steering-gear which I had always longed to handle, having been told
that it was a dream of delight to take a trick with it. I admit
that she was right down to her Plimsoll, and I will put it to her
credit that she was only some dozen miles to leeward of the ill-fated
_Eurydice_ when that terrible disaster occurred that extinguished
so many bright young lives. But the water was smooth, and we had no
long row of lower-deck ports open for the sea to rush in when the
vessel heeled to a sudden squall. It is only her Majesty’s ships
that are exposed to such dangers as that. In fact, for the first
fortnight out she was on her extra-special behaviour, although none
of us fellows for’ard liked a dirty habit she had of lifting heavy
sprays over fore and aft in a whole-sail breeze. Presently along came
a snifter from the south-west, and every man of us awoke to the fact
that we were aboard of a hooker saturated with every vicious habit
known to ships. There was no dryness in her. You never knew where or
when she would bow down to a harmless-looking sea and allow it to
lollop on board, or else, with a perversity almost incredible, fall
up against it so clumsily that it would send a blinding sheet of
spray as high as the clues of the upper topsails. Words fail me to
tell of the patent atrocity with which we were condemned to steer.
Men would stand at the wheel for their two hours’ trick, and imagine
tortures for the inventor thereof, coming for’ard at four or eight
bells, speechlessly congested with the volume of their imprecations
upon him. Yet I have no doubt he, poor man, considered himself a
benefactor to the genus seafarer. In any weather you could spin the
wheel round from hard up to hard down without feeling the slightest
pressure of the sea against the rudder. And as, to gain power, speed
must be lost, two turns of the wheel were equal to only one with the
old-fashioned gear. The result of these differences was to a sailor
simply maddening. For all seamen steer as much by the _feel_ of the
wheel as by anything else (I speak of sailing-ships throughout),
a gentle increase of pressure warning you when she wants a little
bit to meet her in her sidelong swing. Not only so, but there is a
subtle sympathy (to a good helmsman) conveyed in those alterations
of pressure which, while utterly unexplainable in words, make all
the difference between good and bad steering. Then, none of us could
get used to the doubling of the amount of helm necessary. We were
always giving her too much or too little. As she was by no means an
easy-steering ship, even had her gear been all right, the consequence
of this diabolical impediment to her guidance was that the man who
kept her within two points and a half, in anything like a breeze,
felt that he deserved high praise.
Still, with all these unpleasantnesses, we worried along in fairly
comfortable style, for we had a fresh mess and railway-duff (a plum
at every station) every Sunday. Every upper bunk in the fo’c’s’le
was leaky, and always remained so; but we rigged up water-sheds that
kept us fairly dry during our slumbers. So we fared southward through
the fine weather, forgetting, with the lax memory of the sailor
for miserable weather, the sloppy days that had passed, and giving
no thought to the coming struggle. Gradually we stole out of the
trade area, until the paling blue of the sky and the accumulation
of torn and feathery cloud-fields warned us of our approach to that
stern region where the wild western wind reigns supreme. The trades
wavered, fell, and died away. Out from the west, with a rush and a
roar, came the cloud-compeller, and eastward we fled before it. An
end now to all comfort fore and aft. For she wallowed and grovelled,
allowing every sea, however kindly disposed, to leap on board, until
the incessant roar of the water from port to starboard dominated our
senses even in sleep. A massive breakwater of two-inch kauri planks
was fitted across the deck in front of the saloon for the protection
of the afterguard, who dwelt behind it as in a stockaded fort. As the
weather grew worse, and the sea got into its gigantic stride, our
condition became deplorable; for it was a task of great danger to
get from the fo’c’s’le to the wheel, impossible to perform without
a drenching, and always invested with the risk of being dashed to
pieces. We “carried on” recklessly in order to keep her at least
ahead of the sea; but at night, when no stars were to be seen, and
the compass swung madly through all its thirty-two points, steering
was mental and physical torture. In fact, it was only possible to
steer at all by the feel of the wind at one’s back, and even then the
best helmsman among us could not keep her within two points on each
side of her course. We lived in hourly expectation of a catastrophe,
and for weeks none of us forward ever left off oilskins and sea-boots
even to sleep in. At last, on Easter Sunday, three seas swept on
board simultaneously. One launched itself like a Niagara over the
stern, and one rose on each side in the waist, until the two black
hills of water towered above us for fully twenty feet. Then they
leaned toward each other and fell, their enormous weight threatening
to crush our decks in as if they had been paper. Nothing could be
seen of the hull for a smother of white, except the forecastle-head.
When, after what seemed an age, she slowly lifted out of that
boiling, yeasty whirl, the breakwater was gone, and so was all the
planking of the bulwarks on both sides from poop to forecastle break.
Nothing was left but to heave to, and I, for one, firmly believed
that we should never get her up into the wind. However, we were bound
to try; and watching the smooth (between two sets of seas), the helm
was put hard down and the mizen hauled out. Round she came swiftly
enough, but just as she presented her broadside to the sea, up rose
a monstrous wave. Over, over she went--over until the third ratline
of the lee rigging was under water; that is to say, the lee rail
was full six feet under the sea. One hideous tumult prevailed, one
dazzling glare of foaming water surrounded us; but I doubt whether
any of us thought of anything but how long we could hold our breath.
Had she been less deeply loaded she must have capsized. As it was,
she righted again, and came up into the wind still afloat. But never
before or since have I seen a vessel behave like that hove to. We
were black and blue with being banged about, our arms strained almost
to uselessness by holding on. Beast as she was, the strength of her
hull was amazing, or she would have been racked to splinters: for in
that awful sea she rolled clean to windward until she filled herself,
then canted back again until she lay nearly on her beam-ends; and
this she did continually for three days and nights. At the first
of the trouble the cabin had been gutted so that neither officers
nor passengers had a dry thread, and of course all cooking was
impossible. I saw the skipper chasing his sextant (in its box) around
the saloon-table, which was just level with the water which was
making havoc with everything. And not a man of us for’ard but had
some pity to spare for the one woman passenger (going out with her
little boy to join her husband), who, we knew, was crouching in the
corner of an upper bunk in her cabin, hugging her child to her bosom,
and watching with fascinated eyes the sullen wash of the dark water
that plunged back and forth across the sodden strip of carpet.
In spite of all these defects in the ship, she reached Lyttelton in
safety at last; and I, with more thankfulness than I knew how to
express, was released from her, and took my place as an officer on
board a grand old ship three times her size. Unfortunately for me,
my sea experience of her extended only over one short passage to
Adelaide, where she was laid up for sale; and of my next ship I have
spoken at length elsewhere, so I may not enlarge upon her behaviour
here. After that I had the good fortune to get a berth as second
mate of the _Harbinger_, to my mind one of the noblest specimens of
modern shipbuilding that ever floated. She was lofty--210 feet from
water-line to skysail truck--and with all her white wings spread,
thirty-one mighty sails, she looked like a mountain of snow. She was
built of steel, and in every detail was as perfect as any sailor
could wish. For all her huge bulk she was as easy to handle as any
ten-ton yacht--far easier than some--and in any kind of weather her
docility was amazing. No love-sick youth was ever more enamoured of
his sweetheart than I of that splendid ship. For hours of my watch
below I have sat perched upon the martingale guys under the jib-boom,
watching with all a lover’s complacency the stately sheer of her stem
through the sparkling sea, and dreamily noting the delicate play of
rainbow tints through and through the long feather of spray that ran
unceasingly up the stem, and, curling outward, fell in a diamond
shower upon the blue surface below. She was so clean in the entrance
that you never saw a foaming spread of broken water ahead, driven in
front by the vast onset of the hull. She parted the waves before her
pleasantly, as an arrow the air; graciously, as if loath to disturb
their widespread solitude.
But it needed a tempest to show her “way” in its perfection. Like
the _Wanderer_, but in a grand and gracious fashion, she seemed to
claim affinity with the waves, and they in their wildest tumult met
her as if they too knew and loved her. She was the only ship I ever
knew or heard of that would “stay” under storm-staysails, reefed
topsails, and a reefed foresail in a gale of wind. In fact, I never
saw anything that she would not do that a ship should do. She was so
truly a child of the ocean that even a bungler could hardly mishandle
her; she _would_ work well in spite of him. And, lastly, she would
_steer_ when you could hardly detect an air out of the heavens, with
a sea like a mirror, and the sails hanging apparently motionless.
The men used to say she would go a knot with only the quartermaster
whistling at the wheel for a wind.
Then for my sins I shipped before the mast in an equally large iron
ship bound for Calcutta. She was everything that the _Harbinger_
was not--an ugly abortion that the sea hated. When I first saw her
(after I had shipped), I asked the cook whether she wasn’t a razeed
steamboat--I had almost said an adapted loco-boiler. When he told
me that this was only her second voyage I had to get proof before
I could believe him. And as her hull was, so were her sails. They
looked like a job lot scared up at ship-chandlers’ sales, and hung
upon the yards like rags drying. Our contempt for her was too great
for words. Of course she was under water while there was any wind
to speak of, and her motions were as strange as those of a seasick
pig. A dredger would have beaten her at sailing; a Medway barge, with
her Plimsoll mark in the main-rigging, would have been ten times as
comfortable. Somehow we buttocked her out in 190 days with 2500 tons
of salt in her hold, and again my fortunate star intervened to get me
out of her and into a better ship as second mate.
Of steamers I have no authority to speak, although they, too, have
their ways, quite as non-understandable as sailing-ships, and
complicated, too, by the additional entity of the engines within.
But everything that floats and is built by man, from the three-log
catamaran of the Malabar coast, or the balsa of Brazil, up to the
latest leviathan, has a way of its own, and that way is certainly, in
all its variations, past finding out.
SEA ETIQUETTE
Nothing is more loudly regretted by the praisers of old times than
the gradual disappearance of etiquette under the stress and burden
of these bustling days, and nowhere is the decay of etiquette more
pronounced than at sea. Romance persists because until machinery
can run itself humanity must do so, and where men and women live
romance cannot die. But were it not for the Royal Navy, with its
perfect discipline and unbroken traditions, etiquette at sea must
without doubt perish entirely, and that soon. Such fragments of it as
still survive in the Merchant Service are confined to sailing-ships,
those beautiful visions that are slowly disappearing one by one
from off the face of the deep. Take, for instance, the grand old
custom so full of meaning of “saluting the deck.” The poop or raised
after-deck of a ship over which floated the national flag was
considered to be always pervaded by the presence of the Sovereign,
and, as the worshipper of whatever rank removes his hat upon entering
a church, so from the Admiral to the powder-monkey every member
of the ship’s company as he set foot upon the poop “saluted the
deck”--the invisible presence. As the division between men-of-war
and merchantmen widened so the practice weakened in the latter, and
only now survives in the rigidly enforced practice of every person
below the rank of Captain or mate coming up on to the poop by the lee
side. And among the officers the practice is also observed according
to rank, for with the Captain on deck the chief mate takes the lee
side. But since in steamers there is often no lee side, the custom in
them has completely died out. To etiquette also belongs the strict
observance of the rule in all vessels of tacking “Sir” on to every
reply to an officer, or the accepted synonym for his position to a
tradesman who is a petty officer, as “Boss” for boatswain, “Chips”
for carpenter, “Sails” for sailmaker, and “Doctor” for cook. A
woeful breach of etiquette is committed by the Captain who, coming
on deck while one of his mates is carrying out some manœuvre, takes
upon himself to give orders direct to the men. It is seldom resented
by junior officers for obvious reasons, but the chief mate would
probably retire to another part of the vessel at once with the remark
that it was “only one man’s work.”
In many cases etiquette and discipline are so closely interwoven that
it is hard to know where one leaves off and the other begins, but
in all such cases observance is strictly enforced as being one of
the few remaining means whereby even a simulacrum of discipline is
maintained in undermanned and oversparred sailing-ships--such as the
repetition of every order given by the hearer, the careful avoidance
of any interference by one man with another’s work in the presence of
an officer, and the preservation of each officer’s rightful attitude
toward those under his charge and his superiors. Thus during the
secular work of the day, work, that is, apart from handling the ship,
the mate gives his orders to the boatswain, who sees them carried
out. Serious friction always arises when during any operation the
mate comes between the boatswain and his gang, unless, as sometimes
happens, the boatswain be hopelessly incompetent.
In the private life of the ship every officer’s berth is his house,
sacred, inviolable, wherein none may enter without his invitation.
And in a case of serious dereliction of duty or disqualification it
becomes his prison. “Go to your room, sir,” is a sentence generally
equivalent to professional ruin, since a young officer’s future lies
in the hollow of his Commander’s hand. The saloon is free to officers
only at meal-times, not a common parlour wherein they may meet for
chat and recreation, except in port with the Captain ashore. And
as it is “aft” so in its degree is it “forrard.” In some ships the
carpenter has a berth to himself and a workshop besides, into which
none may enter under pain of instant wrath--and “Chips” is not a man
to be lightly offended. But in most cases all the petty officers
berth together in an apartment called by courtesy the “half-deck,”
although it seldom resembles in a remote degree the dingy, fœtid
hole that originally bore that name. Very dignified are the petty
officers, gravely conscious of their dignity, and sternly set upon
the due maintenance of their rightful status as the backbone of
the ship’s company. Such a grave breach of etiquette as an “A.B.”
entering their quarters, with or without invitation, is seldom heard
of, and quite as infrequent are the occasions when an officer does
so. In large ships, where six or seven apprentices are carried, an
apartment in a house on deck is set apart for their sole occupation,
and the general characteristic of such an abode is chaos--unless,
indeed, there should be a senior apprentice of sufficient stability
to preserve order, which there seldom is. These “boys’ houses” are
bad places for a youngster fresh from school, unless a conscientious
Captain or chief mate should happen to be at the head of affairs and
make it his business to give an eye to the youngsters’ proceedings
when off duty. Of course etiquette may be looked for in vain here,
unless it be the etiquette of “fagging” in its worst sense.
The men’s quarters, always called the forecastle, even when a more
humane shipowner than usual has relegated the forecastle proper to
its rightful use as lockers for non-perishable stores and housed
his men in a building on deck, is always divided longitudinally in
half. The port or mate’s watch live on the port side, the starboard
or second mate’s watch on the starboard side. To this rule there is
no exception. And here we have etiquette _in excelsis_. Although
the barrier between the two sides is usually of the flimsiest and
often quite imaginary in effect, it is a wall of separation with
gates guarded and barred. The visitor from one side to the other,
whatever his excuse, approaches humbly, feeling ill at ease until
made welcome. And from dock to dock it is an unheard-of thing for any
officer save the Captain to so much as _look_ into the forecastle.
Of course, exceptional circumstances do arise, such as a general
outbreak of recalcitrancy, but the occasion must be abnormal for
such a breach of etiquette to be made. Some Captains very wisely
make it their duty to go the round of the ship each morning, seeing
that everything is as it should be, and these enter the forecastle
as a part of their examination. But this is quite the exception
to the general rule, and is always felt to be more or less of an
infringement of immemorial right.
In what must be called the social life of the forecastle, although
it is commonly marked by an utter absence of social observances,
there are several well-defined rules of etiquette which persist in
spite of all other changes. One must not lock his chest at sea. As
soon as the last landsman has left the ship, unlock the “donkey,”
throw the key ostentatiously into the till, and, letting the lid
fall, seat yourself upon it, and light your pipe. It is a Masonic
sign of good-fellowship, known and read of all men, that you are
a “Sou’ Spainer” indeed, at home again. The first time that the
newly assembled crew sit down gipsy fashion to a meal (for tables
are seldom supplied), there may be one, usually a boy, who fails
to remove his cap. Then does the nearest man’s hand seek the
“bread-barge” for a whole biscuit, generally of tile-like texture
and consistency. Grasping it by spreading his fingers all over its
circumference, the mentor brings it down crushingly upon the covered
head of the offender, who is thus initiated, as it were, to the fact
that he must “show respect to his grub,” as the term goes. But often
when the commons have been exceptionally short or bad an old seaman
will deliberately put on his cap again with the remark “’Tain’t wuth
it.” If a man wants to smoke while a meal is in progress let him
go outside, unless he desires deliberately to raise a storm. And
when on the first day of serving out stores a man has been induced
to undertake the onerous duty of dividing to each one his weekly
portion--“whacking out”--gross indeed must be his carelessness or
unfairness before any sufferer will raise a protest. It used to be
the practice to load the boys or ordinary seamen (a grade between
“A.B.” and boy) with all the menial service of the forecastle, such
as food-fetching, washing up utensils, scrubbing, &c. But a juster
and wiser plan has been borrowed from the Navy, whereby each man
takes in rotation a week as “cook of the mess.” He cooks nothing, the
“Doctor” will take care of that, but he is the servant of his house
for that week, responsible for its due order and cleanliness. The
boys are usually kept out of the forecastle altogether, and berthed
with the petty officers, a plan which has with some advantages grave
drawbacks. One curious old custom deserves passing notice. Upon a
vessel’s arrival in ports where it is necessary to anchor, it is
usual to set what is called an “anchor-watch” the first night. All
hands take part in this for one hour each, or should do so, but that
sometimes there are too few and sometimes too many. As soon as the
order is given to “pick for anchor-watch” an old hand draws a rude
circle on the deck, which he subdivides into as many sections as
there are men. Then one man retires while all the rest come forward
and make each man his private mark in a section. When all have
contributed, the excluded one (whose mark has been made for him by
deputy) is called in and solemnly rubs out mark after mark, the first
to be rubbed out giving its owner the first hour’s watch, and so on.
Nothing has been said about etiquette in the Royal Navy, because
there it is hardly ever to be distinguished from disciplinary rule.
Nor has allusion been more than casually made to steamships, whose
routine excludes etiquette, having no more room for it than it has
for seamanship, except upon rare occasions.
WAVES