formidable French privateers, which in the old wars used to sneak about
the Channel in search of our sugar-boxes and tea-waggons. But there is
something in the sight of the French lug-rigged smack, with her two or
three masts and decks crowded with men, that always recalls the old St.
Malo, Ste. Brieux, Havre, Dieppe, and Boulogne picaroons—those pests of
the sturdy old British merchantmen of other days. To see her pulling
away out of harbour on a moonlit night, her long sweeps rising and
falling like the fibrine limbs of some gigantic marine insect, is to
bring up recollections of many a furious conflict under the very shadow
of the white heights of this perfidious island. There is the stout
high-pooped merchantman at rest, after a voyage of five months from the
East Indies, under the lee of the towering North Foreland. At regular
intervals the sound of her bell floats down upon the light air, blowing
so softly that the shadows of the clouds upon the hazy stretch of
moonlit water seem to be at rest. And now creeping round the huge point
of land, urged by her sweeps and her dark sails goose-winged or boomed
out on either side, comes a fac-simile of that French smack we have
watched leaving the harbour. She is alongside the slumbering ship in a
trice, lights flash, pistols explode, and in a few minutes behold! the
cable is cut, and the ship, with her sails loosed, is standing
south-by-west for Boulogne or the forts that way, the sneaking lugger
ahead of her, black as ink against the silver splendour of the water in
the south, and all hands keeping a breathless look-out for British
cruisers.
But though there may be a deal of the poetry, or at least the romance,
of history in the suggestions to be got from the form and rig of the
French smack, there goes to the making of her every-day life as many
hard, stern facts as ever a Gradgrind could desire. She sees as much
weather of all kinds as our own fishermen experience; and suffers,
having regard to proportion of numbers, as many disasters. The shipping
reports are constantly mentioning her. One day she is stranded, and her
crew burning flares and owing their lives to the lifeboat. Another day
she is found abandoned, and towed into harbour with nothing standing
save three or four feet of her mainmast. Or else a steamer plumps into
her and drowns the whole of her company but two. As bad a wreck as ever
I heard was that of _La Reine des Agnes_. The story was told by Adolphe
Derevières, one of the crew, and it is worth repeating as a sample of
the various misfortunes which follow in the wake of the French
smacksman. Adolphe’s English was exceedingly good. He had learnt it, he
told me, from intercourse with the English at Boulogne, and by constant
visits and long detentions in harbour in this country.
“I sall hope,” he began, “to make you comprehend. I most speak slow, for
dere is no language more difficult nor de Angleesh. De boat vas vhat you
call a dandy—not a loggaire: you know vhat dandy means, hein? her name
vas _La Reine des Agnes_; she vas forty-five torns; and ven ve left ze
Nort Sea ve had vhat de Angleesh fishermen call twenty-tree last of
herring in barrels, and loose in de bottaum. De veddaire had been very
bad in de Nort Sea—mosh rain, heavee wind, and roff vaves. Ve had von
boat only, and von day we lose her. She vas dragging behind ven soddenly
a vave make de rope go and she go too. Dere vas too mosh vind to stop,
so ve continue sailing for Boulogne. Eighteen men did form our companee.
It vas four o’clock on de morning of de tirteenth of Septembre. Ve vas
in a nasty part of de sea, off Yarmout, vid de Crosby and de Cross sands
as we tink vell to de nor’, and ve to de souse, so as to bring de
Newvarp light on our righthand. I say, dis vas as ve suppose. It vas
veree dark, still mosh vind, and heavee vaves. Ve vas sailing fast, ven
soddenly de vessel stop. Many of us tumble and cry out. Dere vas noting
to be seen. Dem as tumble got up, and ve all ran about. De confusion was
terrib. Eighteen men, you see, sare, de ship small, and her deck full of
de herring barrels. Ve first take de barrels and trow dem overboard; ve
had to feel, ve could not see, and all de time de vessel keep bomp,
bomp, making us fall. Dere vas no telling de place vere ve vas
wrecked—one say dis, anoder say dat, and everybody keep crying out. Dat
is de worst of us Franchmen, sare. You Angleesh in dangaire are quiet;
ve are as brave as you, but ve make too mosh noise, dere is not de
ordaire, each man tink he know best, and, besides, de sea is not our
province like it is yours. Some got pieces of vhat you call oakum and
dipped dem in oil and made fires, and de rest, knowing dere vas no
boats, made a raft composed of two spar and a lot of barrels. It vas a
fearful sight—de red flame, de vataire vashing over, de sea all black
around. Vell, juste vhen de raft vas ready, de vessel left de sand and
began to sink. Mon Dieu! dat vas a horrib moment. Ve got pieces of rope,
and tied ourselves to de raft, and put it into de sea, and den de vessel
sank. It vas fearfullee cold. Ve vent op and down, op and down, and I
feel de sea trying to tear me avay. It vas like an animal vid its claws
dragging. Ve vere all on de raft ven de daylight came. Oh sare, tink of
dat sight! eighteen men clinging to de barrels. Few could speak; ve vas
all full of salt vataire, and I could not open my teeth—dey vas hard set
vid de cold. De capitaine say it vas de Meedle Cross Sand de vessel
strike. But it did not mattaire; she vas sunk: von sand vas as bad as
anoder; and dere vas ve going op and down, op and down, noting in sight,
no help coming—and all of us so seek, so veak, so miserable!
“Soon after it vas light a large vave came and covered us all; I did
tink it had tore de raft to pieces; dere vas several dreadful cries, and
vhen de vataire vas passed I look and see dat five of my comrades vas
vashed avay. Sare, I envied dem. Oh, better to be drown, to know noting,
to feel noting, dan to be on dat terrib raft vaiting each von his turn,
and looking at von’s grave. Presentlee von of de men let go vid his
hands, and de sea break his rope and vash him avay. Den anoder give op
vid a fearful groan, and de sea take him too. Dis go on until five men
vas perished, making ten, so dat dare vas only eight left. Ah, vhat a
frightful time did follow! All day long ve did drift here and dere, here
and dere upon dat raft. De land vas near—ve knew dat; dere vas Yarmout
and dere vas Lowestoff vidin six mile, but had dey been Boulogne, had
dey been Finisterre, dey could not have been farder off for us.
“Vell, sare, I do not know enough of your language to tell you all dat
vas in my torts, de appearance of my companions, de cries and groans dat
break from dem, de roff vaves, de cold, all de horrib pain and misery of
dat incredib time. Vhen de evening came ve see a large steamboat. Ve all
cry and cry to her vid our hands to our mouts, and she heard us, and
came to vere ve vas. Oh, sare, vhat is dare in Angleesh, vhat is dare in
Fransh, in any language dat is spoke by human creature, to express our
joy ven de steamer lowered a boat, and ve did see it coming to us? I
could have cried like a leetel girl, sare, but I vas too veak—all de
tears vas vashed avay. Some of us tried to embrace de brave Angleeshmen
dat saved us, but our legs at de joints gave vay—ve could not stan’.
Vell, after ve had been in de steamboat a letell vile, a lifeboat come
near, and dey told us dey had seen de flames ve made in de morning and
gone to us, but dat ve had disappear, and dat dey had been looking and
looking for us op to dis time! Ah, vhat a noble service—how estimable,
how brave is de Angleesh lifeboat! Your countree, sare, has von a
hundred battles on de ocean; but not von of dem for glory comes op to de
solitary victoire of a lifeboat dat fights vid de terrib vaves and saves
de poor sailor, no matter vedder he is Fransh, or Italian, or German. De
steamer put us into de lifeboat, and ve vas taken to Yarmout, vere seven
of us did go to de Sailors’ Home. But one—poor François Libert—vas so
ill dat he vas carried to de hospital.”
Having arrived at this point poor Adolphe burst into French, and,
regardless of my assurance that my knowledge of that useful tongue was
growing every month more and more imperfect, he rattled himself into a
violent fit of emotion, praising the English, lamenting his comrades,
grieving over his past sufferings in the dialect any man may hear who
will take a turn through the fish market at Boulogne, or linger on the
quay there when a fleet of smacks is coming into the harbour. I was
truly sorry not to get his story in his own tongue. How could he do
justice to his terrible shipwreck in any other language than his? All
his gesticulations went for little alongside his “dats” and “deys,”
otherwise not a posture but would have helped the wild hoarse flow of
recollection poured forth in French—the panic of the men rushing and
stumbling upon the barrel-crowded deck; the horrible illumination of the
oakum torches with the fires of the flaming paraffin oil streaming from
them; the unspeakable anguish of the long twelve hours spent upon that
raft, the land in sight, and the rough seas for ever trampling upon
them. Is it because they go so heavily manned that disasters to French
smacks rise to a height of tragedy that needs the loss of an English
vessel of seven or eight hundred tons to parallel? Here was a vessel of
forty-five tons furnished with a crew of eighteen souls. Why, a
Blackwall liner would hardly need more seamen to work her, if, in
calling over the muster-roll, you omit the “idlers.” And another feature
that often makes disasters to French smacks peculiarly dreadful is their
fashion of taking a number of women to sea with them. I cannot say
whether or not they carry the ladies with them into the North Sea, but
seldom a French fishing boat puts into an English harbour but half a
dozen women and girls may be seen among the crowd of red and blue
nightcap-shaped headgear worn by the men. One really cannot be surprised
at the old British notion that one Englishman is equal to six Frenchmen
when one compares a large Ramsgate, Grimsby, or Yarmouth dandy of fifty
or sixty tons going for a six weeks’ cruise in the North Sea in winter
manned by four or five men, with the lubbersome, apple-bowed,
black-sided, heavily-timbered French three-masted lugger of forty tons,
with her decks so crowded with fishermen and women that it seems
impossible they can move without getting into one another’s road.
Meanwhile, it is to be hoped that the long conference held at the Hague,
the correspondence relative to which makes a volume of alarming
dimensions, may be accepted as a preliminary to something like a good
understanding subsisting among the smacks of various nationalities which
drag their nets in the North Sea. Unquestionably the English fisherman
has had a very great deal to complain of in the rough and cowardly
treatment he has experienced at the hands of French, Dutch, and Belgian
smacksmen. It is not only that his costly fishing gear has been
irreparably ruined again and again by that mean and treacherous
contrivance known as “the devil;” he has even been fired into, and his
temper taxed so repeatedly by the basest professional treatment and the
most studied insults, that the time was when those interested in the
English fishermen expected day after day to hear of desperate battles at
sea—small Trafalgars, Niles, and Copenhagens—between the fleets of
Yarmouth, Grimsby, and the North and the allied squadrons of Belgium,
France, and Holland.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_OLD SEA CUSTOMS._
The changes which have taken place in the sea-life cannot be wholly
restricted to the transformations of the shipbuilding yard. There is a
mighty difference indeed between the line-of-battle ship of fifty years
ago and the armour-clad of to-day—between the Atlantic passenger
clippers of which Fenimore Cooper wrote and the iron mail steamers which
have succeeded them; but there are changes in other maritime directions
fully as remarkable, though perhaps not so deeply accentuated to the
shore gaze. Where are the old customs of the ocean? Whither has fled the
traditionary character of the sailor? His canvas remains. He still has
his topsails (albeit halved) to hoist, his topgallant sails to sheet
home, his royals to set; spite of steam, there are still scores of the
old-fashioned windlasses for him to bawl his hurricane songs over; still
scores of the old-fashioned capstans for him to wind round, “drunk,
monotonous, and melodious,” davits at which he may cat his anchor, as
did his forefathers, forecastles as clammy as the most reeking of the
holes in which the Jacks of other days lay snoring, with purple faces,
in clouds of cockroaches.
But, for all that, it will not do to pretend that the sailor is what he
was. I do not speak of the caricatures of the fictionist; the monstrous
pig-tailed figures with lanthorn jaws, broken teeth, wooden legs, and
bloodshot eyes, the race of Hatchways, Trunnions, and Pipses, who
stagger, full of drink and oaths, in clamorous procession through the
pages of the sea novelists, losing, to be sure, something of their
inexpressible garnishings as they enter the truer oceanic atmosphere of
the Coopers and the Marryats of the present century. I refer simply to
the old sailor, to the plain man-o’-warsman and merchantman of bygone
years, not to the Frankenstein in flowing breeches and hat on nine hairs
who trod the stage and procured his circulation in one, two, and three
volumes, in the respectable name of Jack, prior even to the days when
Sir Launcelot Greaves found the irresponsible anatomy willing to ship
“The broad habergeon,
Vant brace and greves and gauntlet.”
Let me be understood. The British or American mariner of to-day is as
hearty, nimble, dexterous, determined a fellow as ever he was at any
time during the choicest and most glorious period of his nation’s
history. He needs but opportunity to test him. It is in his
traditions, habits, superstitions, that he differs from his
predecessors. I do not think it is the iron of his latter-day calling
that has entered his soul and changed him. The very distinguishable
difference is owing to a natural decay of marine sentiment. He is no
longer superstitious—possibly because he is not without a tincture of
education. Hard wear has attenuated his prejudices, and custom has
lost its hold upon him. It would be difficult now, I should think, to
find in any forecastle such a superstitious sea-dog as the old salt
who, in Dana’s “Two Years Before the Mast,” agreed with the black cook
as to the malignant and wizard qualities of the Finns. Familiarity
with the grand liquid amphitheatre into which he descends and toils
for his bread may have helped to rob the modern sailor of what I must
call the romantic features of the seaman’s nature. In olden times the
voyage was long, the art of navigation crude and halting; the wonders
of the deep were many, at least they were found so; a man passed so
long a while at sea that he was saturated with the spirit of it.
Superstitions salt as the billow from which they were wrought begot
peculiar forms of thought; customs grew out of the strange fancies and
interpretations, and that they should now be dead means simply that
they flourished for centuries, and that they died very hard at last.
How wide the difference is between the shipboard life of the mariners of
the past and that of the present race of seamen may be collected by
looking into a few of the customs which are now as extinct as the
timbers of Noah’s ark. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it
was a practice on board Italian and Spanish, and possibly Portuguese
ships, for the sailors on crossing the equator to erect a canopy on the
forecastle, under which three seamen, absurdly dressed, seated
themselves. One was called the president, the others judges. They
started first with trying the captain, then the officers, finally the
passengers. A sailor, dressed up as a clerk, read the indictments, after
which the judges pronounced sentence of death. Careri, in his “Voyage
Round the World,” explains the purpose of this tomfoolery. “The sentence
of death,” says he, “was immediately bought off with money, chocolate,
sugar, biscuit, flesh, sweetmeats, wine, and the like. The best of it
was that he who did not pay immediately, or give good security, was laid
on with a rope’s end, at the least sign given by the President
Tarpaulin.” Apparently heavier punishments than rope’s-ending attended
the poverty or contumacy of the convicted, for the same author tells of
a passenger who was drowned on board a galleon through being keel-hauled
for refusing to conform to this singular marine custom. The sport—if
sport it can be called—lasted all day, and then at sundown the fines or
forfeits were divided among the sailors.
It is possible that out of this old sea-joke rose the stupid and
irritating practice of ducking men on their crossing the equator for the
first time. This imbecile piece of horse-play was wonderfully popular
among seamen down to quite recent days. I don’t think Jack ever saw much
humour himself in the mere dressing up as Neptune and acting Jack
Pudding in the waist; what he relished was the privilege, by
prescription, of lording it over the captain and officers for a few
hours, and tarring and soaking people to whom at other times he would
have to pull his forelock, with the whole length of the ship between him
and their nobility.
Another curious custom was to be found on board Dutch vessels. When a
ship entered the 39th parallel “every one,” writes John Nieuhoff (1640),
“of what quality or degree soever, that has not passed there before, is
obliged to be baptized or redeem himself from it. He that is to be
baptized has a rope tied round his middle, wherewith he is drawn up to
the very top of the bowsprit, and from thence three times successively
tumbled into the water.” A man was at liberty to get another to take his
place by paying him. Plenty of money and other good things must have
been earned by sailors out of this custom, for one may conceive that a
nervous passenger would pay handsomely to escape so formidable a ducking
as the tall bowsprits of those days promised, whilst, on the other hand,
a seasoned mariner would look upon such sousings as mere child’s
play—think no more of it than a man in a regatta now thinks of walking
out upon a greasy boom to loose the pig in the sack at the end of it.
The practice, however, eventually led to such riots, broils, and
bloodshed, that it was forbidden by the Dutch Government.
It was long continued, however, in the British navy as a punishment. In
the “Annual Register” for 1797 there is an account of four naval
officers who were soused by a mutinous crew on board his Britannic
Majesty’s ship _Sandwich_. The writer calls it a “curious ceremony.” The
unhappy naval officers must have thought it so! “They tie the
unfortunate victim’s feet together, and their hands together, and put
their bed at their back, making it fast round them, at the same time
adding an eighteen-pounder bar-shot to bring them down. They afterwards
made them fast to a tackle suspended from the yard-arm, and hoisting
them nearly up to the block all at once let go, and drop them souse into
the sea, where they remain a minute, and then are again hoisted and let
down alternately, till there are scarce any signs of life remaining.”
When the miserable victims are ducked enough—according to the fancy of
their judges—they are triced up by the heels that the water may run out
of them, and then stowed away in their hammocks. This kindness was
denied to the four naval officers, who, after having hung head down for
some time, were tumbled into a boat and sent ashore.
The Portuguese had a custom of their own on crossing the Line. It was
curiously tinctured with the superstitions of that age. Those on board
who had never “cut the Equator,” were compelled to give the sailors
money, or provisions, or wine. No one was excused, “not even the
Capuchins,” says the missionary Angelo of Gattina, writing in 1666, “of
whom they take beads, _agnus Deis_, or such-like things; which being
exposed to sale, what they yield is given to say masses for the souls in
Purgatory.” If any one declined to give he was carried before a
forecastle tribunal by sailors habited as officers. A seaman dressed as
a judge, in a long gown, passed sentence, and the victim was straightway
hoisted to the yard-arm and ducked. This custom was not confined to the
Equator. “The same,” says Angelo, “is practised in passing the Straits
of Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope.”
The Italian fashion was somewhat similar. Sailors apparelled as judges
sat at a table, and those who had never before crossed the Line were
brought before them. The judges reproached them contemptuously for
daring to live so long in the world without passing the Equator, and
fined them according to their condition. Ducking followed refusal to
pay. Merolla, in his “Voyage to Congo” (1682), says: “From this
punishment or a fine none are exempt, and it is said that with the
latter they maintain a church.” A livelier, and certainly a less cruel
custom, I find in Spanish ships, in the form of a bull-fight. This was
contrived by a man dressing himself up so as to resemble a bull. He took
care to equip himself with an ugly pair of horns. Another fellow,
mounted upon two men, attacked the bull with a spear. The humour lay in
the two men who formed the horse being tied back to back with a saddle
between them, on which sat the rider. The bull, it may be supposed,
usually had the best of it. I am reminded here of a stroke of original
humour on the part of some midshipmen. It is illustrative of the
reefer’s theory of wit. They got some hencoops and formed them into a
cockpit, and, making a circle by coiling ropes, they pitted a couple of
cocks. The cocks did their best to fight, but they staggered so oddly
that they could scarce strike each other. It was at last admitted that
they had been fed with barley soaked in rum. The midshipmen supposed
that the spirit would fortify the hearts of the birds, but they had
over-dosed them, and the creatures were too drunk to fight.
Drinking is a sea custom not yet dead—at least, if it is dead the fault
is not Jack’s. But, even though the economical principles of owners had
suffered perpetuation of the practice on shipboard, I question whether
the most bibulous of the present race of sailors could carry it to the
height to which it was formerly raised. I suppose the very biggest drink
on record is that related by Dampier. He says that there came on board
his ship one Captain Rawlins, the commander of a small New England
vessel, along with a Mr. John Hooker. They were asked into the cabin to
drink, and a bowl was made containing six quarts, “Mr. Hooker being
drunk to by Captain Rawlins, who pledged Captain Hudswell, and, having
the bowl in his hand, said that he was under an oath to drink but three
draughts of strong liquor a day, and putting the bowl to his head turned
it off at one draught, and so making himself drunk, disappointed us of
our expectations till we made another bowl.” Six quarts at a draught!
Twelve pints at a swallow, without a sigh between! But then hard
drinking was the custom, not of the privateers only, but of the whole
seafaring races of early times. They were educated to it by liberal
doses of grog. The allowance sometimes rose to a pint of rum per man a
day. In the French, Spanish, and Portuguese ships, and very often in the
Dutch, the sailors’ courage before an action was nearly invariably
helped with jacks of brandy, and the doses were repeated whilst the
fight proceeded, a bumper being handed between the guns. The men,
frenzied by drink, would mix gunpowder with the spirits, supposing that,
thus prepared, there was no better liquor for heroes. I think it need
not be doubted that more actions were lost than gained by this custom.
How should a drunken gunner aim his piece? and what mischief—save to one
another—could a mob of inebriated small-arms men do in the tops or along
the quarter-deck?