The Blue Star Navigation Company's big steam schooner Amelia Ricks,
northbound to load lumber at Aberdeen in command of a skipper who
revered his berth to such an extent that he thought only of pleasing Mr.
Skinner by making fast time, thus failing to take into consideration a
two-mile current setting shoreward, had come to grief. Her skipper had
cut a corner once too often and started overland with her right across
the toe of Point Gorda. Her wireless brought two tugs hastening up from
San Francisco; but, before they could haul her off at high tide, the
jagged reef had chewed her bottom to rags, and in a submerged condition
she was towed back to port and kicked into the dry dock at Hunters
Point.
Cappy Ricks, feverishly excited over the affair, was very anxious to
get a report on the condition of the vessel as soon as possible. He had
planned to hire a launch and proceed to Hunters Point for a personal
appraisal of the damage to the Amelia Ricks, but the northwest trades
were blowing half a gale that day and had kicked up just sufficient sea
to warn Cappy that seasickness would be his portion if he essayed to
brave it in a launch. It occurred to him, therefore, to stay in the
office and send somebody in whose knowledge of ships he had profound
confidence. He got Matt Peasley on the phone at once.
“Matt,” he said plaintively. “I want you to do the old man a favor, if
you will. You heard about our Amelia Ricks, didn't you? Well, she's in
dry dock at Hunters Point now, and they'll have the dock pumped out in
two hours so we can see what her bottom looks like. I know she's ripped
out clear up to the garboards and probably hogged, and I can hardly wait
to make sure. The marine surveyor for the Underwriters will go down this
afternoon to look her over, and then he'll take a day to present his
long, typewritten report--and I can't wait that long. Will you skip down
to Crowley's boathouse, hire a launch and charge it to us, and go down
to see the Amelia? She'll be shored up by the time you get down there.
Make a good quick examination of the damage and hurry back so I can talk
it over with you. I go a heap on your judgment, Matt.”
“I'll start right away, sir,” Matt promised, glad of any opportunity to
favor Cappy.
Two hours later, on his way back to the Mission Street bulkhead, he
passed, in Mission Bay, a huge, rusty red box of a steel freighter,
swinging at anchor. Under ordinary weather conditions Matt would have
paid no attention to her; but, as has already been stated, the northwest
trades were blowing a gale and had kicked up a sea; hence the steamer
was rolling freely at her anchorage, and as the launch bobbed by to
windward of her she rolled far over to leeward--and Matt saw something
that challenged his immediate attention and provoked his profound
disgust. The sides of the vessel below the water line were incrusted
with barnacles and eelgrass fully six inches thick!
No skipper that ever set foot on a bridge could pass that scaly hulk
unmoved. Matt Peasley said uncomplimentary things about the owners of
the vessel and directed the launchman to pass in under her stern, in
order that he might read her name. She proved to be the Narcissus, of
London.
He stood in the stern of the launch, staring thoughtfully after
the Narcissus, and before his mind there floated that vision of the
barnacles and eelgrass, infallible evidence that the years had been long
since the Narcissus had been hauled out.
“Do you know how long that steamer has lain there?” he queried of the
launchman.
“I been runnin' launches to and from Hunters Point for seven years an'
she was there when I come on the job,” the latter answered.
“It's no place for a good ship,” Matt Peasley murmured musingly. “She
ought to be out on the dark blue, loaded and earning good money for her
owners. I must find out why she isn't doing it.”
Having rendered a meticulous report to Cappy on the condition of the
Amelia Ricks, Matt, his brain still filled with thoughts of that lonely
big steamer swinging neglected in Mission Bay among the rotting oyster
boats and old clipper ships waiting to be converted into coal hulks,
proceeded to the Merchants' Exchange where Lloyds' Register soon put him
in possession of the following information:
The steamer Narcissus had been built in Glasgow in 1894 by Sutherland
& Sons, Limited. She was four hundred and fifty-five feet
long, fifty-eight feet beam and thirty-one feet draft. She had
triple-expansion engines of two thousand indicated horse power, two
Scotch boilers, and was of seventy-five hundred tons net register.
“Huh!” Matt murmured. “She'll carry forty per cent. more than her
registered tonnage; if I had the loading of her she'd carry fifty per
cent. more, at certain seasons of the year. I wonder why her owners
have let her lie idle for eight years? I'll have to ask Jerry Dooley. He
knows everything about ships that a landsman can possibly know.”
Jerry Dooley had presided over the desk at the Merchants' Exchange for
so many years that there was a rumor current to the effect that he had
been there in the days when the water used to come up to Montgomery
Street. Before Jerry's desk the skippers of all nations came and went;
to him there drifted inevitably all of the little, intimate gossip of
the shipping world. If somebody built a ship and she had trouble with
her oil burners on the trial trip, Jerry Dooley would know all about it
before that vessel got back to her dock again. If somebody else's ship
was a wet boat, Jerry knew of it, and could, moreover, give one the name
of the naval architect responsible; if a vessel had been hogged on a
reef, Jerry could tell you the name of the reef, the date of the wreck,
the location of the hog, and all about the trouble they had keeping her
cargo dry as a result. To this human encyclopedia, therefore, did Matt
Peasley come in his still-hunt for information touching the steamer
Narcissus.
He opened negotiations by handing Jerry Dooley a good cigar. Jerry
examined it, saw that it was a good cigar, and said: “I don't smoke
myself, but I have a brother that does.” He fixed Matt Peasley with an
alert, inquisitive eye and said: “Well, what do you know, Captain?”
“Nothing much. What do you know about the steamer Narcissus?”
Jerry Dooley scratched his red head.
“Narcissus!” he murmured. “Narcissus! By George, it's a long time
since I heard of her. Has she just come into port?” And he glanced
apprehensively at the register of arrivals and departures, wondering if
he hadn't overlooked the Narcissus.
“She's been in port eight years at least,” Matt answered; “tucked away
down in Mission Bay, with a watchman aboard.”
“Oh, I remember now,” Jerry replied. “She belongs to the Oriental
Steamship Company. Old man Webb, of the Oriental Company, got all worked
up about the possibilities of the Oriental trade right after the Spanish
War. He had a lot of old bottoms running in the combined freight and
passenger trade and not making expenses when the war came along, and the
Government grabbed all his boats for transports to rush troops over
to the Philippines. That was fine business for quite a while and the
Oriental got out of the hole and made a lot of money besides. About that
time Old Webb saw a vision of huge Oriental trade for the man who would
go after it, and in his excitement he purchased the Narcissus. She
carried horses down to the Philippines, and to China during the Boxer
uprising; and when that business was over, and while old Webb was
waiting for the expected boom in trade to the Orient, he got a lumber
charter for her from Puget Sound to Australia. But she was never built
for a lumber boat, though she carried six million five hundred thousand
feet; she was so big and it took so long to load and discharge her that
she lost twenty-five thousand dollars on the voyage. Run her in the
lumber trade and the demurrage would break a national bank.
“Well, sir, after that lumber charter, old man Webb had a fit. He tried
her out on a few grain charters, but she didn't make any money to speak
of; and about that time the P. & S. W., with a view to grabbing some
Oriental freight for their road, got the control of the steamship
company away from Webb. The Oriental trade boom never developed, and the
regular steamers, carrying freight and passengers, were ample to cope
with what business the company was offered; so they didn't need the
Narcissus.
“As I remember it, she was expensive to operate. She had a punk pair of
boilers or she needed another boiler--or something; at any rate, she was
a hog on coal, and they laid her up until such time as they could find
use for her. I suppose after she was laid up a few years the thought of
all the money it would cost to put her in commission again discouraged
them--and she's been down in Mission Bay ever since.”
“But the Canal will soon be open,” Matt suggested. “One would suppose
they'd put her in commission and find business for her between Pacific
and Atlantic coast ports.”
“You forget she's a foreign-built vessel and hence cannot run between
American ports.”
“She can run between North and South American ports,” Matt replied
doggedly. “I bet if I owned her I'd dig up enough business in Brazil
and the Argentine to keep her busy. I'd be dodging backward and forward
through the Canal.”
“You would, of course,” Jerry answered placidly; “but the Oriental
Steamship Company cannot.”
“Why?”
“Fifty-one per cent. of their stock is owned by a railroad--and under
the law no railroad-owned ship may use the Canal.”
Matt's eyebrows arched.
“Ah!” he murmured. “Then that's one of the reasons why she's a white
elephant on their hands.”
“Got a customer for her?” Jerry queried shrewdly. “A fellow ought to be
able to pick the Narcissus up rather cheap.”
Matt shook his head negatively.
“Happened to pass her in a launch a couple of hours ago, and the sight
of the barnacles on her bottom just naturally graveled me and roused my
curiosity. Much obliged for your information.” And Matt excused himself
and strolled over to the counter of the Hydro-graphic Office to look
over the recent bulletins to masters.
The information that the whistling buoy off Duxbury Reef had gone adrift
and that Blunt's Reef Lightship would be withdrawn for fifteen days for
repairs and docking interested him but little, however. In his mind's
eye there loomed the picture of that great red freighter, with her foul
bottom, rusty funnel and unpainted, weather-beaten upper works.
“Her bridge is pretty well exposed to the weather,” he murmured. “I'd
build it up so the man on watch could just look over it. I noticed
they'd had the good sense to house over her winches, so I dare say
they're in good shape; her paint will have prevented rust below the
water line, and I'll bet she's as sound as the day she was built. I
think I'd paint her dead black, with red underbody and terra-cotta upper
works.” He pondered. “Yes, and I'd paint her funnel dead black, too,
with a broad red band; and on both sides of the funnel, in the center of
this red band, I'd have a white diamond with a black P in the center
of it. By George, they'd know the Peasley Line as far as they could see
it!”
He would have dreamed on had he not bethought himself suddenly of his
modest capital--fifty thousand-odd dollars, out of which he owed Cappy
Ricks a considerable sum on a promissory note due in one year. On such
a meager bank balance it would not do to dream of buying a vessel worth
nearly four hundred thousand dollars. Why, it would require twenty
thousand dollars to put her in commission after all these years of
idleness, and she had to have another boiler because she was a hog on
coal; and, in addition, her operating cost would be between nine and ten
thousand dollars a month.
Matt shook his head and looked round the great room as though in search
of inspiration. He found it. His wandering glance finally came to rest
on Jerry Dooley's alert countenance. Jerry crooked a finger at him and
Matt strolled over to the desk.
“I've been watching you milling the idea round in your head,” said
Jerry. “I saw you reject it. You're crazy! It can be done.”
“How?” Matt queried eagerly.
“Go get an option on her for the lowest price you can get--then form a
syndicate and sell her to them at a higher price; or, if you don't want
to do that, form your syndicate to buy her at the option price, and if
you work it right you can get the job of managing owner. I want to tell
you that two and one-half per cent. commission on her freight earnings
would make a nice income.”
“I wonder whom I could get into the syndicate?” Matt queried.
Jerry scratched his head.
“Well,” he suggested, “you're mighty close to old Cappy Ricks. If you
could hook him for a piece of her, the rest would be easy. Any shipping
man on the Street will follow where Cappy Ricks leads. I'd try Pollard
& Reilly; Redell, of the West Coast Trading Company; Jack Haviland,
the ship chandler; Charley Beyers, the ship's grocer and butcher; A. B.
Cahill & Co., the coal dealers; Pete Hansen, of the Bulkhead Hotel down
on the Embarcadero--he's always got a couple of thousand dollars to
put into a clean-cut shipping enterprise. Then there's Rickey, the
ship-builder, and--yes, even Alcott, the crimp, will take a piece of
her. I'd look in on Louis Wiley, the chronometer man, and Cox, the
coppersmith--why I'd take in every firm and individual who might hope
to get business out of the ship; and, you bet, I'd sell 'em all a little
block of stock in the S. S. Narcissus Company.”
“It might be done,” Matt answered evasively. “I'll think it over.”
He did think it over very seriously the greater portion of that night.
As a result, instead of going to his office next morning he went to
Mission Street bulkhead and engaged a launch, and forty minutes later,
in response to his hail, the aged watchman aboard the Narcissus came to
the rail and asked him what he wanted.
“I want to come aboard!” Matt shouted.
“Got a permit from the office?”
“No.”
“Orders are to allow nobody aboard without a permit.”
“How do you like the color of this permit?” Matt called back, and waved
a greenback.
The answer came in the shape of a Jacob's ladder promptly tossed
overside and Matt Peasley mounted the towering hulk of the Narcissus.
“What do you want?” the watchman again demanded as he pouched the bill
Matt handed him.
“I want to examine this vessel from bilge to truck,” Matt answered.
“I'll begin with a look at the winches.”
As he had surmised, the winches had been housed over and fairly buried
in grease when the ship laid up; hence they were in absolutely perfect
condition. The engines, too, had received the best of care, as nearly
as Matt could judge from a cursory view. Her cargo space was littered
up with a number of grain chutes, which would have to come out; and
her boats, which had been stored in the empty hold aft, away from the
weather, were in tiptop shape. She had a spare anchor, plenty of chain,
wire cable and Manila lines, though these latter would doubtless have to
be renewed in their entirety, owing to deterioration from age.
Her crew quarters were commodious and ample, and the officers' quarters
all that could be desired; her galley equipment was complete, even to
a small auxiliary ice plant. What she needed was cleaning, painting and
scraping, and lots of it, also the riggers would be a few days on her
standing rigging; but, so far as Matt could discern, that was all. From
the watchman he learned that one Terence Reardon had been her chief
engineer in the days when the Oriental Steamship Company first owned
her.
From the Narcissus, Matt Peasley returned to the city and went at
once to the office of the Marine Engineers' Association, where he made
inquiry for Terence Reardon. It appeared that Terence was chief of the
Arab, loading grain at Port Costa; so to Port Costa Matt Peasley went
to interview him. He found Reardon on deck, enjoying a short pipe and a
breath of cool air, and introduced himself.
“I understand you were the chief of the Narcissus at one time, Mr.
Reardon,” Matt began abruptly. “I understand, also, that under your
coaxing you used to get ten miles out of her loaded.”
Parenthetically it may be stated that Matt Peasley had never heard
anything of the sort; but he knew the weaknesses of chief engineers and
decided to try a shot in the dark, hoping, by the grace of the devil and
the luck of a sailor, to score a bull's-eye. He succeeded at least in
ringing the bell.
“Coax, is it?” murmured Terence Reardon in his deep Kerry brogue.
“Faith, thin, the Narcissus niver laid eye on the day she could do nine
an' a half wit' the kindliest av treatment. Wirrah, but 'tis herself was
the glutton for coal. Sure, whin I'd hand in me report to ould Webb, and
he'd see where she'd averaged forty ton a day, the big tears'd come into
the two eyes av him--the Lord ha' mercy on his sowl!”
“You never had any trouble with her engines,” Matt suggested.
“I had throuble keepin' shteam enough in the b'ilers to run thim; but
I'll say this for her ingines: Give them a chancet an' they'd run like a
chronometer.”
“Would you consider an offer to leave the Arab and be chief of the
Narcissus?” Matt queried. “I'm thinking of buying her, and if I do
I'll give you twenty-five dollars a month above the regular Association
scale.”
“I'll go ye,” murmured Reardon, “on wan condition: Ye'll shpend some
money in her ingine room, else 'tis no matther av use for ye to talk
to me. I'll not be afther breakin' me poor heart for the sake av
twenty-five dollars a month. Sure, 'twould be wort' that alone to see
the face av ye, young man, afther wan look at the coal bill.”
“What repairs would you suggest? Do you think she needs another boiler?
I noticed she has two. We could move those two over and make room for
another.”
“Do nothing av the sort, sir. Before ould Webb got her she'd been usin'
bad wather down on the East African Coast, I'm thinkin', and it raised
hell wit' her. 'Tis the expinse av retubin' her condensers that always
frightened ould Webb, and whin he lost conthrol the blatherskite booby
av a port ingineer the new owners app'inted come down to the ship,
looked her over, wit' niver a question to me that knew the very sowl
av her, and reported to the owners that what she needed was another
b'iler.” And Terence Reardon laughed the short, mirthless chuckle of the
man who knows.
“Then,” Matt continued, “the money should be spent--”
“In retubing her condensers,” declared the engineer emphatically. “Do
that an' do a good job on her, an' she'll have shteam enough for thim
fine big ingines av hers on thirty-two ton a day, an' less. An' have a
care would ye buy her until she ships a new crank shaft. She's a crack
in the web av the afther crank shaft ye could shtick a knife blade into.
She may run for years, but sooner or later some wan'll have a salvage
claim agin ye if ye neglect it now. An', for the love av heaven, have
nothin' to do wit' her big motor. 'Twas bur-rnt out by him that had
her ahead av me--bad cess to him, whereiver he is! An' they did a poor,
cheap job av windin' the armature agin. Ye'll be in hot wather wit' the
electric-light system until ye put in a new motor.
“The rheostat on the searchlight niver was any good; and she may or may
not need a new whistle--I dunno. Sure, the skipper niver blew it good
an' long but the wanst; an', so help me, young man, I was lookin' at the
shteam gauge whin he shtarted that prolonged blast--an' whin he finished
the gauge had dhropped tin pounds! So up I go on the bridge to the ould
man, an' says I to him, says I: 'Clear weather or thick fog, I'm tellin'
ye to lave that whistle alone if ye expect to finish the voyage. Wan
toot out av it means a ton av coal gone to hell an' a dhrop av blood out
av the owner's heart! An' from that time on the best I iver hearrd out
av that whistle was a sick sort av a sob.”
Matt laughed as Terence Reardon's natural propensity for romancing
came to the front. He thanked the chief for the latter's invaluable
information, and, with a mental resolve to have Terence Reardon
presiding over the engines of the Narcissus at no distant date, he
returned to the city.