THE SHIP'S COMPANY.
To fit out and store a vessel for a lengthy expedition may be a
somewhat arduous task, but it is an interesting and pleasant one,
which is more than can be said with regard to that equally important
work, the choice of one's companions. One cannot make any very serious
mistake in the selection of one's provisions, but to take the wrong
man with one on a voyage that involves a complete severance from all
the influences of civilisation for months at a time may bring
exceedingly unpleasant consequences.
I determined to ship as few paid hands as possible, and to outnumber
them with a chosen body of what, in the parlance of the old
privateering days, may be termed gentlemen-adventurers, volunteers who
would contribute to the cost of the expedition, would work as sailors
on board and as navvies on the island, and who would each be entitled
to receive a considerable share of the proceeds of the venture, should
anything be discovered. The officers of the vessel would be selected
from this body, and I myself would act as captain. In this way the
causes which led to the failure of some of the previous expeditions
would be wanting. The professional sailors would be unable--in their
disinclination to face the difficulties of the island--to insist on
the adventurers abandoning the project. There would be no paid captain
to lay down the law to his employers.
I knew that by the time we should reach Trinidad even those gentlemen
who had never been to sea before would have learnt a good deal, so
that in the case of our paid hands proving mutinous we could dispense
with them altogether. I was well aware that if I undertook such an
expedition with a paid crew of the ordinary type, far outnumbering the
gentlemen aft, the value of the treasure, if discovered, would not
improbably tempt them to murder their officers and employers and seize
it for themselves. With a majority of volunteers on board, each
entitled to a large share in the find, all risk of this description
would be avoided.
I decided that our complement should be thirteen all told, consisting
of nine gentlemen-adventurers, myself included, and four paid hands.
The following are extracts from some of the clauses of the agreement
which was entered into between myself and the volunteers:--
'Mr. E. F. Knight undertakes to provide a vessel, stores, etc.,
suitable for the expedition, and to provide at least sufficient
provisions for the voyage out and home and six months besides.
'Each member of the expedition will pay in advance to Mr. Knight
100_l._, and undertake to work both on board and on shore under
Mr. Knight's directions. This 100_l._ will be the extent of each
member's liability.
'During the first six months from the time of landing on the island,
the enterprise can only be abandoned with the consent of Mr. Knight,
and on decision by vote of three-quarters of the members. After six
months have elapsed, a majority of three-quarters of the members will
determine whether the enterprise is to be continued or abandoned.
'Each member, or, if he die in the course of the expedition, his legal
representative, will receive one-twentieth of the gross proceeds of
the venture.
'If any member of the expedition mutiny or incite to mutiny, he shall
be tried by a court-martial of the other members of the expedition,
and, if it be decided by a majority of three-quarters that the offence
be sufficiently grave, he shall forfeit all share in the proceeds of
the expedition, subject to an appeal to the English Courts on his
return.
'None of these rules apply to the paid hands on the vessel.'
* * * * *
The paid hands received good wages and were entitled to no share of
the treasure, though they, of course, knew well that, should our
search prove successful and their conduct have been satisfactory, they
would receive a substantial present.
It would, of course, have been very pleasant for me to have selected
my volunteers from among my own friends, especially those who had been
at sea with me before; but this I found to be impossible, at any rate
at such short notice. I knew dozens of men who would have liked
nothing better than to have joined me, but all were engaged in some
profession or other which it would have been folly to have neglected
for so problematic a gain. The type of man who is willing to toil
hard, endure discomfort and peril, and abandon every luxury for nine
months on the remote chance of discovering treasure, and is, moreover,
willing to pay 100_l._ for the privileges of doing so, is not to be
found easily, either in the professional or wealthy classes.
There are, doubtless, thousands of Englishmen willing to embark on a
venture of this description, but it is obvious that there is a
likelihood of a fair percentage of these volunteers being adventurers
in the unfavourable sense of the term--men anxious to get away from
England for reasons not creditable to themselves, men, too, of the
rolling-stone description and more or less worthless in a variety of
ways, and who would be more likely than the paid sailors to wax
discontented and foment mutiny. I realised that the selection of my
men should be made with great care.
Of volunteers I had no lack. An article in the _St. James's
Gazette_ describing my project brought me applications to join from
something like 150 men.
Some of the letters I received were great curiosities in their way,
and would cause much amusement could I publish them. I interviewed
some sixty of the applicants, and this was certainly far the most
arduous and difficult work connected with the undertaking, so far as I
was concerned. I shall never forget how weary I became of the
repetition to each fresh visitor of the conditions and object of the
voyage, and with what dread I looked forward to my visits to the
little club at which these interviews were held.
All manner of men made appointments to meet me--the sanguine young
spirits eager for adventure, the cautious and suspicious who would not
risk their 100_l._ unless they were guaranteed a return of 50,000_l._
or so. There were also those who wasted my time out of mere curiosity,
never having entertained any intention of joining me, and others who
hoped to pump enough information out of me to enable them to earn a
few guineas by writing an article for the newspapers.
But the majority of my applicants were in earnest, and I will here
take the opportunity of expressing my regret if, in the midst of all
the hurry and worry of that time, I omitted to reply to some of my
correspondents. All the preparations for the voyage had to be carried
out in a very limited space of time, in order that we should get away
from England before the autumnal equinox; I was fitting out the vessel
and selecting gentlemen-adventurers simultaneously, constantly
travelling backwards and forwards between London and Southampton, and
by the time we were ready for sea I was pretty well worn out with
anxious work.
One by one I selected my men, and those who saw them congratulated me
on having got together a most promising-looking crew. Some, it is
true, proved themselves to be quite unsuitable for the purpose; but at
the end of the expedition, when we were at Port of Spain, I had on
board seven men at least who were ready to go anywhere and do anything
with me, all of them more cheerful, fit, and capable in every respect
than they were on leaving Southampton.
References were brought to me by each volunteer for the expedition. I
know how worthless references generally are, but never before did I so
strongly realize this fact. The most undesirable person can often
produce excellent testimonials from undoubtedly worthy people, who
have met him in London society, for instance, but who know absolutely
nothing of the true nature of the man, least of all of how he would
prove himself in such an undertaking as this was, when traits are
revealed that do not generally declare themselves in a drawing-room.
The volunteer whom I made first mate turned out very badly. He was
afraid himself, and he did his best to scare the other gentlemen and
the paid hands. He came to the conclusion that the 'Alerte' was a bad
sea-boat, cranky, too heavily sparred, and generally too small and
unsafe to be entrusted with his valuable life. I found out afterwards
that a little conspiracy was hatching to compel me to sell the
'Alerte' in the Cape Verde Islands for what she would fetch, and
charter a large Yankee schooner. He endeavoured to disseminate
discontent behind my back and to undermine my authority, with the sole
result that he made himself detestable to his companions fore and aft,
and ultimately, having made the vessel too warm to hold him, packed up
his traps and deserted her at Bahia, without giving me any reason for
so doing.
Not content to desert himself, he did his best to persuade others to
do likewise. He succeeded with one timid individual, who also went off
at Bahia--luckily for us, as we did not want him. There was yet a
third who had half a mind to desert with them, but who remained with
us, a discontented young man to the end. Being the one man of the sort
left on board, his opinions were a matter of indifference to us; but
he was the sole cause of those 'disagreements' of which he has since
complained in print, and I have no doubt made his own life
'disagreeable' enough. To do him justice, he was the ablest swimmer
and the best judge of blue china on board.
I should not have alluded to our squabbles in this book had not the
men who caused them spread all manner of false reports on their
return, which have appeared in the newspapers and magazines.
Therefore, instead of treating the whole matter with the contempt it
deserves, I am justified, I think, in entering into this explanation
on behalf of myself and of my loyal companions who stuck to the
expedition to the end.
Only one other of my companions aft voluntarily left me, a very good
fellow, who had undertaken a job the nature of which he had not fully
realised; for the sea, at any rate as viewed from a yacht, had such
terrors for him, and his health suffered to such an extent, that,
under our doctor's advice, he left us at St. Vincent. I believe that a
good deal of his nervousness was due to the insinuations of the first
mate's evil tongue.
Having rid ourselves of these two people at Bahia, everything went on
much better, all work was done more promptly and smoothly, the old
friction disappeared, a cloud seemed to have been lifted from the
vessel, cheerfulness prevailed, and when we sailed to Trinidad and the
real business and difficulties commenced all was got through in a most
satisfactory fashion.
Grumbling is the Englishman's privilege on land, still more so at sea,
where some growling is absolutely necessary to relieve the monotony of
ship-life; after leaving Bahia an unusually small amount of this
privilege was enjoyed on the 'Alerte.'
As I was taking a fair number of paid hands with me, I did not
consider it necessary that all the gentlemen-adventurers should have a
knowledge of seamanship. Indeed, I believe that only the first mate
and the doctor had ever before handled a fore-and-after. However, most
of the others were willing, and soon learnt to take a trick at the
tiller and haul at a rope in a satisfactory manner.
Some of the volunteers did not treat me quite fairly, for, after
deciding to join me and so causing me to refuse other eligible
candidates, they discovered at the very last moment that something
prevented them from going. This naturally put me to great
inconvenience, and obliged me to take others, to replace them, at the
shortest notice. Thus I had to ship my last two men the day before we
sailed.
Remembering how interesting was the scenery of Trinidad, I had
intended to acquire some knowledge of photography and carry an
apparatus with me. But one of my volunteers professed to be an
excellent amateur photographer, and as he promised to take upon
himself that part of the work I relied upon him to do so and left it
to him. He was one of those who failed to turn up on the day of
sailing, and we had to put to sea, to my great regret afterwards,
without a camera.
We were equally unfortunate with our taxidermist. One of the
volunteers had undertaken to take lessons in bird-skinning at my
suggestion; for I knew that Trinidad was the principal breeding place
for sea-birds in the South Atlantic, and that very rare specimens can
be collected there. He, too, never reached the desert island--more, I
must allow, on account of illness than through any fault of his own.
But it was very disappointing, for all that.
For such a voyage as the one contemplated the presence of a surgeon
was advisable. A young doctor was therefore included among the
gentlemen-adventurers--Mr. Cloete-Smith, who also occupied the post of
mate after the desertion of the officers at Bahia.
Of the four paid hands one, the boatswain, only accompanied us as far
as Teneriffe.
Our cook, John Wright, had been with me on three previous voyages as
sole hand. One of our A.B.'s was Arthur Cotton, who, as a boy nine
years before, had been the only paid hand on the 'Falcon' when we
sailed from Southampton to South America. In the course of that voyage
he had visited Trinidad with me, and was now able to spin to his
shipmates long and more or less fantastic yarns concerning the place
we were bound to. The strange island had evidently made a great
impression on his imagination. Our other A.B. was Ted Milner, a lad
from the North Sea fishing-smacks.