Whenever Cappy Ricks made up his mind that his Blue Star Navigation
Company ought to add another vessel to its rapidly growing fleet, he
preferred to build her; for a few bitter experiences early in life
had convinced him that the man who buys the other fellow's ship
quite frequently is given a bonus in the shape of the other fellow's
troubles--troubles which have the unhappy faculty of tilting the
profit-and-loss account over into the red-ink figures. In order to avoid
these troubles, therefore, Cappy would summon his naval architect, whom
he would practically drive to distraction by fussing over the plans
submitted before giving a final grudging acceptance. The blue prints
approved, Cappy would spend a week picking holes in the specifications,
and when there was no more fault to find Mr. Skinner, his general
manager and the president of the Ricks Lumber & Logging Company, would
send a list of the timbers, planking, and so on required, to one of
Cappy's sawmills in Washington; for Cappy had a theory--the good
Lord knows why or where acquired--that Douglas fir from the state of
Washington was better for shipbuilding purposes than Douglas fir grown
in Oregon. Perhaps he figured that the Columbia River, which separates
the two states, made a difference in grade.
The woods boss would then be adjured to select his trees with great
care. No tree would do that sprouted a limb within eighty feet of the
butt, and the butt had to be at least six feet in diameter, in order
that it might produce fine, clear, long-length planks that would not
contain “heart” timber--the heart of a log having a tendency to check
or split when seasoned. When the material was sawed a Blue Star steam
schooner would transport it to San Francisco Bay, and it would be stored
in Cappy's retail lumber yard in Oakland, to be seasoned and air-dried;
following which Cappy Ricks would let the contract for the building of
the vessel to a shipyard on Oakland Estuary, and sell the builder this
seasoned stock at the price of rough green material, even though it was
worth two dollars a thousand extra--not to mention the additional value
for the extra-long lengths furnished specially. Cappy's ancestors, back
in Maine, had built too many ships to have failed to impress upon
him the wisdom of this course; for, on this point at least, initial
extravagance inevitably develops into ultimate economy.
Following the laying of the keel, Cappy would come out of retirement and
become an extremely busy man. He had the vessel's engines to consider;
and for two weeks his private office would resound with the arguments
and recriminations of Cappy and his port engineer. There would be
much talk of pistons, displacement of cylinders, stroke, reciprocating
engines, steeple compound and triple-expansion engines, Scotch boilers,
winches, compressors, dynamos, composition and iron propellers and the
latest developments in crude-oil burners. And on the day when the port
engineer, grown desperate because of the old man's opposition to some
detail, would fly into a rage and resign, Cappy would know that, at
last, everything was all right; whereupon he would scornfully reject
the resignation and take his port engineer to luncheon at the Commercial
Club, just to show he wasn't harboring a grudge.
In the meantime the port captain would be making daily visits to the
shipyard to make certain that the builder was holding rigidly to the
specifications and not trying to skimp here and there; and on Saturdays
Cappy would accompany him and satisfy himself that the port captain
wasn't being imposed upon. Finally the ship would be launched; and as
she slid down the ways Cappy Ricks would be standing on her forecastle
head, his old heart fluttering in his thirty-six-inch chest and his
coat-tails fluttering in the breeze, one arm round the port captain and
the other round the port engineer. As the hull slipped into the drink he
would say:
“Boys, this is the life! I love it! By the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet,
there's more romance in ships than you'll find in most married lives!”
Then he would wave an arm up Oakland Estuary, which prior to the great
war was the graveyard of Pacific Coast shipping, and say with great
pride: “Well, we've done a good job on this craft, boys; she'll never
end in Rotten Row! Every sliver in her is air-dried and seasoned. That's
the stuff! Build 'em of unseasoned material and dry rot develops the
first year; in five years they're punk inside, and then--some fine day
they're posted as missing at Lloyd's. Did you ever see a Blue Star ship
lying in Rotten Row? No; you bet you didn't--and you never will! I never
built a cheap boat and I never ran 'em cheap. By gravy, the Blue Star
ships are like the Blue Nose that owns 'em! They'll be found dead on the
job!”
Quite early in 1915 the Blue Star Navigation Company had found ample
opportunity, due to a world scarcity of tonnage, to dispose of several
of their oldest and smallest steam schooners at unbelievably fine
prices.
“Get rid of them, Matt,” Cappy advised his son-in-law, Captain Matt
Peasley, whom he had made president of the company. “You have the
permission of the president emeritus to go as far as you like. Big boats
for us from now on, boy. Slip the little ones while the slipping is
good. These high prices will not prevail very long--only while the
war continues; and at the rate they're slaughtering each other over
in France the war will be over in six months; then prices will fall
kerflump! Then we'll build a couple of real steamers.”
So Matt Peasley promptly sold five steam schooners, following which he
made up his mind that the world still had two years of war ahead of
it. Accordingly he urged the letting of contracts for two
seven-thousand-five-hundred-ton steel freighters immediately.
“Nothing doing!” Cappy declared. “Why, it's rank nonsense to think of
building now at wartime prices. If our recent sales have pinched us for
tonnage we'll have to charter from our neighbors and worry along as best
we can until the war is over.”
“You're making a mistake, Cappy Ricks,” his son-in-law warned him.
“Ask Skinner if I am. Skinner, let's have your opinion.”
Mr. Skinner, always cautious and ultra-conservative promptly advised
against Matt Peasley's course; but Matt would not be downed without a
fight.
“I know prices for ship construction are fearfully high just now,” he
admitted; “but--mark my words!--they're going to double; and if we
place our contracts now, while we have an opportunity to do so, we'll
be getting in on the ground floor. I tell you that war hasn't really
started yet; and the longer it continues the higher will prices on all
commodities soar--but principally on ship construction. Father-in-law, I
beg of you to let me get busy and build. Suppose the boats do cost us a
quarter of a million dollars more each than we could have built them
for in 1914. What of it? We have the money--and if we didn't have it we
could borrow it. I don't care what a ship costs me when freight rates
are soaring to meet the advance in construction costs.”
Nevertheless, Cappy and Mr. Skinner hooted him down. Three months later,
however, when Cappy Ricks had changed his mind, and Mr. Skinner was too
heartbroken to curse himself for a purblind idiot, it was too late to
place the contracts. Every shipyard in the United States and abroad was
loaded up with building orders for three years in advance, and the Blue
Star Navigation Company was left to twiddle its corporate thumbs. Matt
Peasley was so angry that he almost speculated on the delight of being
at sea again, in command of a square rigger, with Cappy Ricks and Mr.
Skinner signed on as A.B.'s; in which condition of servitude he might
dare to call them aft and knock their heads together. However, he
managed to have his revenge. Every time nitrate freights went up a
dollar a ton he told them about it with great gusto, and the day he
chartered the _Tillicum_ for Vladivostok, with steel for the Russian
Government at seventy-five dollars a ton, he had poor Cappy moaning in
his wretchedness.
“Just think how nice it would be,” he taunted his aged relative, “if
we had only placed contracts for two big boats when I urged it. By the
middle of summer I'd have them both on the Vladivostok run--perhaps at a
hundred dollars a ton; and long before the war is over you could do what
you've been trying to do for the past ten years.”
“Do what?” Cappy queried.
“Retire!” Matt retorted meaningly.
“In-fernal young scoundrel!” Cappy was angry enough to commit murder.
“Out of my office!” he shrilled, and pointed to the door.