Shakspeare--Suicide or a 'fowl' deed--A conscientious fable
--Fishing smacks--A pretty boy--Old Skipper, Skipper junior,
and little Skipper--A young Caliban--An alliterate Man--
Fishermen--Nurseries--Navy--The Way to train up a Child--
Gulf Stream--Humboldt--Crossing the Gulf--Ice-ships--Yellow
fields--Flying fish--A game at bowls--Bermuda--A post of
observation--Men, dwellings, and women of Bermuda--St.
George--English society--Washing decks--Mornings at sea--
Evenings at sea--A Moonlight scene--The ocean on fire--Its
phosphorescence--Hypotheses.
"Let's whip these stragglers o'er the seas again," was the gentle
oratory of the aspiring Richard, in allusion to the invading
Bretagnes.--
"Lash hence these overweening rags of France."
The interpreter of the heart's natural language--Shakspeare, above all
men, was endowed with human inspiration. His words come ripe to our lips
like the fruit of our own thoughts. We speak them naturally and
unconsciously. They drop from us like the unpremeditated language of
children--spring forth unbidden--the richest melody of the mind. Strong
passion, whether of grief or joy while seeking in the wild excitement of
the moment her own words for utterance, unconsciously enunciates _his_,
with a natural and irresistible energy. There is scarcely a human
thought, great or simple, which Shakspeare has not spoken for his
fellow-men, as never man, uninspired, spake; which he has not embodied
and clothed with a drapery of language, unsurpassable. So--
"Let's whip _this_ straggler o'er the seas again,"
I have very good reason to fear, will flow all unconsciously from your
lips, as most applicable to my barren letter; in penning which I shall
be driven to extremity for any thing of an interesting character. If it
must be so, I am, of all epistlers, the most innocent.
Ship, air, and ocean equally refuse to furnish me with a solitary
incident. My wretched "log" now and then records an event: such as for
instance, how one of "the Doctor's" plumpest and most deliriously
_embonpoint_ pullets, very rashly and unadvisedly perpetrated a
summerset over-board, after she had been decapitated by that sable
gentleman, in certainly the most approved and scientific style. None but
a very silly chicken could have been dissatisfied with the
unexceptionable manner in which the operation was performed. But, both
feathered and plucked bipeds, it seems, it is equally hard to please.
For the last fourteen days we have been foot-balls for the winds and
waves. Their game may last as many more; therefore, as we have as little
free agency in our movements as foot-balls themselves, we have made up
our minds to yield our fretted bodies as philosophically as may be, to
their farther pastime. The sick have recovered, and bask the hours away
on deck in the beams of the warm south sun, like so many luxurious
crocodiles.
To their good appetites let our table bear witness. Should it be blessed
with a conscience, it is doubly blessed by having it cleared thrice
daily by the most rapacious father-confessors that ever shrived
penitent; of which "gentlemen of the _cloth_" it boasts no less than
eight.
The first day we passed through a widely dispersed fleet of those short,
stump-masted _non-descripts_, with swallow-tailed sterns, snubbed bows,
and black hulls, sometimes denominated fishing smacks, but oftener and
more euphoniously, "Chebacco boats," which, from May to October, are
scattered over our northern seas.
While we dashed by them, one after another, in our lofty vessel, as,
close-hauled on the wind, or "wing and wing," they flew over the foaming
sea, I could not help smiling at the ludicrous scenes which some of
their decks exhibited.
One of them ran so close to us, that we could have tossed a potato into
the "skipper's" dinner-pot, which was boiling on a rude hearth of bricks
placed upon the open deck, under the _surveillance_ of, I think, the
veriest mop-headed, snub-nosed bit of an urchin that I ever saw.
"Keep away a little, or you'll run that fellow down," suddenly shouted
the captain to the helmsman; and the next moment the little fishing
vessel shot swiftly under our stern, just barely clearing the spanker
boom, whirling and bouncing about in the wild swirl of the ship's wake
like a "Massallah boat" in the surf of Madras.
There were on board of her four persons, including the steersman--a
tall, gaunt old man, whose uncovered gray locks streamed in the wind as
he stooped to his little rudder to luff up across our wake. The lower
extremities of a loose pair of tar-coated duck trowsers, which he wore,
were incased, including the best part of his legs, in a pair of
fisherman's boots, made of leather which would flatten a rifle ball. His
red flannel shirt left his hairy breast exposed to the icy winds, and a
huge pea-jacket, thrown, Spanish fashion, over his shoulders, was
fastened at the throat by a single button. His tarpaulin--a little
narrow-brimmed hat of the pot-lid tribe, secured by a ropeyarn--had
probably been thrown off in the moment of danger, and now hung swinging
by a lanyard from the lower button-hole of his jacket.
As his little vessel struggled like a drowning man in the yawning
concave made by the ship, he stood with one hand firmly grasping his
low, crooked rudder, and with the other held the main sheet, which alone
he tended. A short pipe protruded from his mouth, at which he puffed
away incessantly; one eye was tightly closed, and the other was so
contracted within a network of wrinkles, that I could just discern the
twinkle of a gray pupil, as he cocked it up at our quarter-deck, and
took in with it the noble size, bearing, and apparel of our fine ship.
A duplicate of the old helmsman, though less battered by storms and
time, wearing upon his chalky locks a red, woollen, conical cap, was
"easing off" the foresheet as the little boat passed; and a third was
stretching his neck up the companion ladder, to stare at the "big ship,"
while the little carroty-headed imp, who was just the old skipper
_razeed_, was performing the culinary operations of his little kitchen
under cover of the heavens.
Our long pale faces tickled the young fellow's fancy extremely.
"Dad," squalled the youthful reprobate, in the softest, hinge-squeaking
soprano--"Dad, I guess as how them ar' chaps up thar, ha'nt lived on
salt grub long."--The rascal--we could have minced him with his own fish
and potatoes.
"Hold your yaup, you youngster you," roared the old man in reply.--The
rest of the beautiful alliteration was lost in the distance, as his
smack bounded from us, carrying the young _sans-culotte_ out of reach of
the consequences of his temerity. To mention _salt grub_ to men of our
stomachs' capacity, at that moment! He merited impaling upon one of his
own cod-hooks. In ten minutes after, we could just discern the glimmer
of the little vessel's white sails on the verge of the distant horizon,
in whose hazy hue the whole fleet soon disappeared.
These vessels were on a tardy return from their Newfoundland harvests,
which, amid fogs and squalls, are gathered with great toil and privation
between the months of May and October. The fishermen constitute a
distinct and peculiar class--not of society, but of men. To you I need
not describe them. They are to be seen at any time, and in great
numbers, about the wharves of New-England sea-ports in the winter
season--weather-browned, long-haired, coarsely garbed men, with honesty
and good nature stamped upon their furrowed and strongly marked
features. They are neither "seamen" nor "countrymen," in the usual
signification of these words, but a compound of both; combining the
careless, free-and-easy air of the one, with the awkwardness and
simplicity of the other. Free from the grosser vices which characterize
the foreign-voyaged _sailor_, they seldom possess, however, that
religious tone of feeling which distinguishes the ruder _countryman_.
Marblehead and Cape Cod are the parent nurseries of these hardy men.
Portland has, however, begun to foster them, thereby adding a new and
vigorous sinew to her commercial strength. In conjunction with the whale
fisheries, to which the cod are a sort of introductory school, these
fisheries are the principal nurseries of American seamen. I have met
with many American ships' crews, one-half or two-thirds of which were
composed of men who had served their apprenticeship in the "fisheries."
The youth and men whom they send forth are the bone and muscle of our
navy. They have an instinctive love for salt water. Every one who is a
parent, takes his sons, one after another, as they doff their
petticoats, if the freedom of their limbs was ever restrained by such
unnecessary appendages, and places them on the deck of his fishing
smack; teaches them to call the ropes by their names, bait, fling, and
patiently watch the deceptive hook, and dart the harpoon, or plunge the
grains--just as the Indian is accustomed to lead his warrior-boys forth
to the hunting grounds, and teach them to track the light-footed game,
or heavier-heeled foe--wing, with unerring aim, the fatal arrow, or
launch the deadly spear.
The three succeeding days we were delayed by calms, or contending with
gales and head winds. On the morning of the seventh day "out," there was
a general exclamation of surprise from the passengers as they came on
deck.
"How warm!" "What a suffocating air!" "We must have sailed well last
night to be so far south!" They might well have been surprised if this
change in the temperature had been gained by regular "southing." But,
alas, we had barely lessened our latitude twenty miles during the night.
We had entered the Gulf Stream! that extraordinary natural phenomenon of
the Atlantic Ocean. This immense circle of tepid water which revolves in
the Atlantic, enclosing within its periphery, the West India and Western
Islands, is supposed by Humboldt to be occasioned "by the current of
rotation (trade winds) which strikes against the coasts of Veraguas and
Honduras, and ascending toward the Gulf of Mexico, between Cape Caloche
and Cape St. Antoine, issues between the Bahamas and Florida." From this
point of projection, where it is but a few miles wide, it spreads away
to the northeast in the shape of an elongated slightly curved fan,
passing at the distance of about eighty miles from the coast of the
southern states, with a velocity, opposite Havana, of about four miles
an hour, which decreases in proportion to its distance from this point.
Opposite Nantucket, where it takes a broad, sweeping curve toward
Newfoundland, it moves generally only about two miles an hour. Bending
from Newfoundland through the Western Islands, it loses much of its
velocity at this distance from its radiating point, and in the eastern
Atlantic its motion is scarcely perceptible, except by a slight ripple
upon the surface.
This body of water is easily distinguishable from that of the
surrounding blue ocean by its leaden hue--the vast quantity of
pale-yellow gulf-weed, immense fields of which it wafts from clime to
clime upon its ever-rolling bosom, and by the absence of that
phosphorescence, which is peculiar to the waters of the ocean. The water
of this singular stream is many degrees warmer than the sea through
which it flows. Near Cuba the heat has been ascertained to be as great
as 81 deg., and in its course northward from Cuba, it loses 2 deg. of
temperature for every 3 deg. of latitude. Its warmth is easily accounted for
as the production of very simple causes. It receives its original
impulse in the warm tropical seas, which, pressed toward the South
American shore by the wind, meet with resistance and are deflected along
the coast northward, as stated above by Humboldt, and injected into the
Northern Atlantic Ocean--the vast column of water having parted with
very little of its original caloric in its rapid progress.
We crossed the north-western verge of "The Gulf" near the latitude of
Baltimore, where its breadth is about eighty miles. The atmosphere was
sensibly warmer here than that of the ocean proper, and the water which
we drew up in the ship's bucket raised the mercury a little more than
8 deg.. Not knowing how the mercury stood before entering the Gulf, I could
not determine accurately the change in the atmosphere; but it must have
been very nearly as great as that in the denser fluid. Veins of cool air
circled through its atmosphere every few minutes, as welcome and
refreshing to our bared foreheads as the sprinkling of the coolest
water.
When vessels in their winter voyages along our frigid coasts become
coated with ice, so as to resemble almost precisely, though of a
gigantic size, those miniature glass ships so often seen preserved in
transparent cases, they seek the genial warmth of this region to "thaw
out," as this dissolving process is termed by the sailors. We were
nearly three days in crossing the Gulf, at a very acute angle with its
current, which period of time we passed very pleasantly, for voyagers;
as we had no cold weather to complain of, and a variety of objects to
entertain us. Sea, or Gulf-weed, constantly passed us in acres,
resembling immense meadows of harvest wheat, waving and undulating with
the breeze, tempting us to walk upon it. But for the ceaseless roll and
pitching of our ship, reminding us of our where-about, we might, without
much trouble, have been cheated into the conviction that it was real
_terra firma_.
Flocks of flying fish suddenly breaking from a smooth, swelling billow,
to escape the jaws of some voracious pursuer, whose dorsal fin would be
seen protruding for an instant afterward from the surface, flitted
swiftly, with a skimming motion, over the sea, glittering in the sun
like a flight of silver-winged birds; and then as suddenly, with dried
wings, dropped into the sea again. One morning we found the decks
sprinkled with these finned aerial adventurers, which had flown on board
during the night.
Spars, covered with barnacles--an empty barrel marked on the head N. E.
Rum, which we slightly altered our course _to speak_--a hotly contested
_affaire d'honneur_, between two bantam-cocks in the weather-coop--a few
lessons in splicing and braiding sennet, taken from a good-natured old
sailor--a few more in the art of manufacturing "Turks' Heads," not,
however, _a la Grec_--and other matters and things equally important,
also afforded subjects of speculation and chit-chat, and means of
passing away the time with a tolerable degree of comfort, and, during
the intervals of eating and sleeping, to keep us from the blues.
A gallant ship--a limitless sea rolled out like a vast sheet of mottled
silver--"goodlie companie"--a warm, reviving sun--a flowing sheet, and a
courteous breeze, so gently breathing upon our sails, that surly Boreas,
in a gentler than his wonted mood, must have sent a bevy of Zephyrs to
waft us along--are combinations which both nautical amateurs and
ignoramuses know duly how to appreciate.
From the frequency of "squalls" and "blows" off Hatteras, it were easy
to imagine a telegraphic communication existing between that head-land
and Bermuda, carried on by flashes of lightning and tornadoes; or a game
at bowls between Neptune and Boreas, stationed one on either spot, and
hurling thunderbolts over the sea. This region, and that included
between 25 deg. and 23 deg. north latitude termed by sailors the "horse
latitudes," are two of the most unpleasant localities a voyager has to
encounter on his passage from a New-England sea-port to New-Orleans or
Havana. In one he is wearied by frequent calms, in the other, exposed to
sea sickness, and terrified by almost continual storms.
On the eighth day out, we passed Bermuda--that island-sentinel and spy
of Britain upon our shores. The position of this post with regard to
America, forcibly reminds me--I speak it with all due reverence for the
"Lion" of England--of a lap-dog sitting at a secure distance and keeping
guard over an eagle _volant_. How like proud England thus to come and
set herself down before America, and like a still beautiful mother,
watch with a jealous eye the unfolding loveliness of her rival
daughter--build up a battery d'espionage against her shores, and seek to
hold the very key of her seas.
The Bermudas or "Summer islands" so called from Sir George Summer, who
was wrecked here two centuries since--are a cluster of small coral reefs
lying nearly in the form of a crescent, and walled round and defended
from the sea by craggy rocks, which rear their fronts on every side like
battlements:--They are situated about two hundred and twenty leagues
from the coast of South Carolina, and nearly in the latitude of the city
of Charleston.
The houses are constructed of porous limestone, not unlike lava in
appearance. This material was probably ejected by some unseen and
unhistoried volcanic eruption, by which the islands themselves were in
all probability heaved up from the depths of the ocean. White-washed to
resist the rain, their houses contrast beautifully with the
green-mantled cedars and emerald carpets of the islands. The native
Bermudians follow the sea for a livelihood. They make good sailors while
at sea; but are dissipated and indolent when they return to their native
islands, indulging in drinking, gaming, and every species of
extravagance.
The females are rather pretty than otherwise; with good features and
uncommonly fine eyes. Like all their sex, they are addicted to dress, in
which they display more finery than taste. Dancing is the pastime of
which they are most passionately fond. In affection and obedience to
their "lords," and in tenderness to their children, it is said that they
are patterns to all fair ones who may have taken those, seldom
_audibly-spoken_, vows, "to love, honour, and obey"--oft times
unuttered, I verily believe, from pure intention.
St. George, the principal town in the islands, has become a fashionable
military residence. The society, which is English and extremely
agreeable, is varied by the constant arrival and departure of ships of
war, whose officers, with those of the army, a sprinkling of
distinguished civilians, and clusters of fair beings who have winged it
over the sea, compose the most spirited and pleasant society in the
world. Enjoying a remarkably pure air, and climate similar to that of
South Carolina, with handsomely revenued clergymen of the Church of
England, and rich in various tropical luxuries, it is a desirable
foreign residence and a convenient and pleasant haven for British
vessels sailing in these seas.
This morning we were all in a state of feverish excitement, impatient to
place our eyes once more upon land. Visions of green fields and swelling
hills, pleasantly waving trees and cool fountains--groves, meadows, and
rural cottages, had floated through our waking thoughts and mingled with
our dreams.
"Is the land in sight, Captain?" was the only question heard from the
lips of one and another of the expectant passengers as they rubbed their
sleepy eyes, poked their heads from their half-opened state-room doors,
or peeped from their curtained berths. Ascending to the deck, we beheld
the sun just rising from the sea in the splendor of his oriental pomp,
flinging his beams far along the sky and over the waters, enriching the
ocean with his radiance till it resembled a sea of molten gold, gilding
the dew-hung spars, and spreading a delicate blush of crimson over the
white sails. It was a morning of unrivalled beauty. But thanks to
nautical housewifery, its richness could not be enjoyed from the decks.
At sea, the moment the sun rises, and when one feels in the humor of
quitting his hot state-room and going on deck, the officer of the watch
sings out in a voice that goes directly to the heart--"Forard
there--wash decks!" Then commences an elemental war rivalling Noah's
deluge. _That_ was caused by the pouring down of rain in drops--_thie_
by the out-pouring of full buckets. From the moment this flood commences
one may draw back into his narrow shell, like an affrighted snail, and
take a morning's nap:--the deck, for an hour to come, is no place for
animals that are not web-footed.
Fore and aft the unhappy passenger finds no way of escaping the
infliction of this purifying ceremony. Should he be driven aloft, there
"to banquet on the morning," he were better reposing on a gridiron or
sitting astride a handsaw. If below, there the steward has possession,
sweeping, laying the breakfast table and making-up berths, and the air,
a hundred times breathed over, rushes from the opening state-rooms
threatening to suffocate him--he were better engulfed in the bosom of a
stew-pan.
To stand, cold, wet, and uncomfortable upon the damp decks till the sun
has dried both them and him is the only alternative. If after all the
"holy stone" should come in play, he may then quietly jump over-board.
The evenings, however, amply compensate for the loss of the fine
mornings. The air, free from the dust, floating particles and
exhalations of the land, is perfectly transparent, and the sky of a
richer blue. The stars seem nearer to you there; and the round moon
pours her unclouded flood of light, down upon the sea, with an opulence
and mellowness, of which those who have only seen moonlight, sleeping
upon green hills, cities and forests, know nothing. On such nights,
there cannot be a nobler, or prouder spectacle, as one stands upon the
bows, than the lofty, shining pyramid of snow-white canvass which,
rising majestically from the deck, lessens away, sail after sail, far
into the sky--each sheet distended like a drum-head, yet finely rounded,
and its towering summit, as the ship rises and falls upon the billows,
waving like a tall poplar, swaying in the wind. In these hours of
moonlit enchantment, while reclining at full length upon the deck, and
gazing at the diminished point of the flag-staff, tracing devious
labyrinths among the stars, the blood has danced quicker through my
veins as I could feel the ship springing away beneath me like a fleet
courser, and leaping from wave to wave over the sea. At such moments the
mind cannot divest itself of the idea that the bounding ship is instinct
with life--an animated creature, careering forward by its own volition.
To this are united the musical sighing of the winds through the sails
and rigging--the dashing of the sea and the sound of the rushing vessel
through the water, which sparkles with phosphorescent light, as though
sprinkled with silver dust.
A dark night also affords a scene to gratify curiosity and charm the
eye. A few nights since, an exclamation of surprise from one of the
passengers called me from my writing to the deck. As, on emerging from
the cabin, I mechanically cast my eyes over the sea, I observed that at
first it had the appearance of reflecting the stars from its bosom in
the most dazzling splendour, but on looking upward to gaze upon the
original founts of this apparently reflected light, my eyes met only a
gloomy vault of clouds unillumined by a solitary star. The "scud" flew
wildly over its face and the heavens were growing black with a gathering
tempest. Yet beneath, the sea glittered like a "lake of fire." The
crests of the vast billows as they burst high in the air, descended in
showers of scintillations. The ship scattered broken light from her
bows, as though a pavement of mirrors had been shivered in her pathway.
Her track was marked by a long luminous train, not unlike the tail of a
comet, while gleams of light like lighted lamps floating upon the water,
whirled and flashed here and there in the wild eddies of her wake. The
spray which was flung over the bows glittered like a sprinkling of
diamonds as it fell upon the decks, where, as it flowed around the feet,
it sparkled for some seconds with innumerable shining specks. And so
intense was the light shining from the sea that I was enabled to read
with ease the fine print of a newspaper. A bucket plunged into the sea,
which whitened like shivered ice, on its striking it, was drawn up full
of glittering sea-water that sparkled for more than a minute, after
being poured over the deck, and then gradually losing its lustre,
finally disappeared in total darkness.
Many hypotheses have been suggested by scientific men to account for
this natural phenomenon. "Some have regarded it," says Dr. Coates, "as
the effect of electricity, produced by the friction of the waves; others
as the product of a species of fermentation in the water, occurring
accidentally in certain places. Many have attributed it to the
well-known phosphorescence of putrid fish, or to the decomposition of
their slime and exuviae, and a few only to the real cause, the voluntary
illumination of many distinct species of marine animals.
"The purpose for which this phosphorescence is designed is lost in
conjecture; but when we recollect that fish are attracted to the net by
the lights of the fisherman, and that many of the marine shellfish are
said to leave their native element to crawl around a fire built upon the
beach, are we not warranted in supposing that the animals of which we
have been speaking, are provided with these luminous properties, in
order to entice their prey within their grasp?"