Russian lamp—Breakfast—Store rooms—Mast-light—Run down—Rule of the
road—Signal thoughts—Sinking sands—Pilot caution—French coast.
After a wash and morning prayers the crew are piped to breakfast, so we
must now turn to the kitchen, which after constant use some hundred times
I cannot but feel is the most successful “hit” in the whole equipment.
Much thought and many experiments were bestowed on this subject, because,
first, it was well known that the hard and uneven strain of bone, muscle,
and energy in a voyage of this sort needs to be maintained by generous
diet, that cold feeding is a delusion after a few days of it, and that
the whole affairs would fail, or at any rate, enjoyment of the trip would
cease, unless the Rob Roy had a caboose, easy to work, speedy in result,
and capable of being used in rain, wind, and rough weather, and by night
as well as by day.
Of course, all stoves with coal or coke, or similar fuel were out of the
question, being hard to light, dusty when lighted, and dirty to clean.
Various spirit lamps, Etnas, Magic stoves, Soyers, and others, were
examined and tried, and all were defective in grand points.
The wickless lamp used by the Alpine climber who occupies the responsible
post of “Cook of the Canoe Club,” and modified (after consulting
Professor Tyndall), is less than three inches each way, and it acts after
the manner of a blow-pipe. It was also adopted in the Abyssinian
expedition. In two minutes after lighting it pours forth a vehement
flame about a foot in height, which with a warming heat boils two large
cups full in my flat copper kettle in five minutes, or a can of preserved
meat in six minutes. {44}
While the kettle is boiling we bring forward the box marked “Eating,”
take the loaf of bread out of its macintosh swathing, prepare the egg pan
with two eggs, the teapot, and put sugar into the tea-cup, and a spoonful
of preserved milk (Amey’s is most convenient, being in powder; but
Borden’s, in a kind of paste, is most agreeable); lastly, we overhaul the
butter tin, a pot of marmalade or anchovies.
The healthful relish with which a plain hot breakfast of this sort is
consumed with the fresh air all round, and the sun athwart the east, and
the waves dancing while the boat sails merrily all the time, is enhanced
by the pleasure of steering and buttering bread, and holding a hot egg
and a tea-cup, all at once.
Then, again, there is the satisfaction of doing all this without giving
needless trouble in cleaning up, for every whit of that work, too, is to
be yours. A crumb must not fall in the boat, because you will have to
stoop down afterwards and pick it up, seeing that whatever happens, one
thing is insisted on—“the Rob Roy shall be always smart and clean.”
All the breakfast things are cleared away and put by, each into its
proper place, and a general “mop up,” has effaced the scene from our
deck, but we can still take a look below and notice what is to be seen.
Some of the articles chiefly important in the well of our boat have been
already described, but only those on the left of the steersman sitting.
Now, turning to the right we find a water-tight door, like that on the
opposite side, to be opened by folding down, and it reveals to us, first
the “Bread store,” a fourpenny loaf wrapped in macintosh, which makes the
best of table cloths, as it may be laid on a wet deck, and can be washed
and dried again speedily; next there is a butter keg (as in the coolest
place), and a box of biscuits, and a flask of rum—the “Storm supply”—only
to be drawn upon when things of air and sea are in such a state that to
open the main hatch would be questionable prudence.
Here are, also, ropes, blocks, and purchases, as well as a “fender,” not
to keep coals on the hearth, but to keep the mahogany sides of the Rob
Roy safe from the rude jostlings of other craft coming alongside. Above
these odds and ends is the “Spirit room,” a strong reservoir made of
zinc, with a tap and screw plug and internal division not to be rendered
intelligible by mere description here, but of important use, as from
hence there is served out, two or three times daily, the fuel which is to
cook for the whole crew. One gallon of the methylated spirits, costing
four shillings and sixpence, will suffice for this during six weeks.
Above the spirit room will be found a blue light to be used in case of
distress, and a box of candles, so that we may be enabled to rig up the
mast-light if darkness comes, when it will not do to open the cabin.
This ship-light is therefore carried here. It is an article of some
importance, having to be strong and substantial, easily suspended and
taken down, and one that can be trusted to show a good steady light for
at least eight hours, however roughly it may be tossed about when you are
fast asleep below, in the full confidence that nobody who sees your
mast-light will run his great iron bows over your little mahogany
bed-room. Yet I fear it does not do to examine into the grounds for any
such confidence. Many vessels sail about in the dark without any lights
whatever to warn one of their approach, and not a few boats, even with
proper lights in them, are “accidentally” run over and sunk in the river
Thames; while out at sea, and in dark drizzly rain or fog, it is more
than can be expected of human nature that a “look-out man” should peer
into the thick blackness for an hour together, with the rain blinding
him, and the spray splash smarting his eyes, and when already he has
looked for fifty-nine minutes without anything whatever to see. It is in
that last minute, perhaps, that the poor little hatch-boat has come near,
with the old man and a boy, its scanty crew, both of them nodding asleep
after long watches, and their boat-light swinging in the swell. There is
a splash, a crash, and a spluttering, and the affair is over, and the
dark is only the dark again. Nobody on the steamer knows that anything
has occurred, and only the fishermen to-morrow on some neighbouring bank
will see a broken hull floating sideways, near some tangled nets.
I fully believe that more care is taken for the lives of others by
sailors at sea than in most cases on land where equal risks are run; but
there are dangers on the waves, as well as on the hills, the roads, and
even in the streets, which no foresight can anticipate, and no precaution
can avert.
The principal danger of a coasting voyage, sailing alone, is that of
being run down, especially on the thickly traversed English coast, and at
night.
As for the important question concerning the “rule of the road” at sea,
which is every now and then raised, discussed and then forgotten again
after some collision on a crowded river in open day has frightened us
into a proper desire to prevent such catastrophes, it appears to me that
no rule whatever could possibly be laid down for even general obedience
under such circumstances, without causing in its very observance more
collisions than it would avert, unless the traffic in the river were to
be virtually arrested.
On land the “rule of the road” is well enough on a _road_, where vehicles
are moving in one of two directions, but how would it do if it were to be
insisted upon at the place where two streets cross? Now the Thames and
other populous rivers are at times as much blocked and crowded by the
craft that sail and steam on the water as the crossing at Ludgate Hill is
by vehicles at three o’clock, that is, considering fairly the relative
sizes of the objects in motion, and the width of the path they must take,
their means of stopping or steering, and, above all, the great additional
forces on the water which cannot be arrested—_wind_ and _tide_—moreover,
at this London crossing the traffic has to be regulated by policemen, not
by a rule for the drivers, but by an external arbitrary director.
The wonderful dexterity of the cabmen, carmen, and coachmen of London is
less wonderful than that of the men who guide the barges, brigs, and
steamers on the Thames, and it is perfectly amazing that huge masses
weighing thousands of tons, and bristling with masts and spars, and
rugged wheels projecting, should be every day led over miles of water in
dense crowds, round crooked points, along narrow guts, and over hidden
shoals while gusts from above, and whirling eddies below are all
conspiring to confuse the clearest head, to baffle the strongest arm and
to huddle up the whole mass into a general wreck.
Consider what would be the result in the Strand if no pedestrian could
stop his progress within three yards, but by anchoring to a lamp-post,
and even then swinging round with force. Why, there would be scarcely a
coal-heaver who would not be whitened by collision with some baker’s boy.
Ladies in full sail would be run down, and dandies would be sunk by the
dozen.
The fact is, that vessels on the wide sea are like travellers on a broad
plain and not on a road at all, and the two cases do not admit of being
dealt with by the same rule, and it is not wonderful that there should be
many collisions in the open sea while there are so few in the Thames, the
water street of the world. We may learn some lessons from land for safe
traffic on water. The cabman who “pulls up” is sure to signal first with
his whip to the omnibus astern of him, and the coachman who means to
cross to the “wrong side” never does so without a warning to those he is
bearing down upon. What is most wanted, then, on the open water, is some
ready, sure, and costless signal, to say, “I am going _that_ way” (right
or left); for nearly all collisions at sea are caused by one ship not
being able to know what the other is going to do. {50}
This is my thought on the matter after many thoughts and some experience:
meantime while we have ate, and talked and thought, our yawl has slipped
over six miles of sea, and we must rouse up from a reverie to scan the
changing picture.
Glance at the barometer—note the time. Trim the sails, and bear away to
that pretty fleet of fishing boats bobbing up and down as they trail
their nets, or the men gather in the glittering fish, and munch their
rude breakfasts, tediously heated by smoky stoves, while they gaze on the
white-sailed stranger, and mumble among themselves as to what in the
world _he_ can be. The sun mounts and the breeze presses till we are at
the bay of the Somme with its shifting sands, its incomprehensible
currents, and its low and treacherous coast, buoyed and beaconed enough
to puzzle you right into the shoals. The yacht, with my friend S--- in
her, bound for Paris, has just been wrecked on that bank near
Cayeux—unpleasant news now—and there is St. Valery, from whence King
William the Conqueror sailed with his fleet for England, as may be seen
on the curious tapestry at Bayeux worked by his Queen’s hands, and still
almost as fresh as then. I never saw a place appear so differently from
sea and from land as this strange port, so I ran in just to reconnoitre,
and spent some hours with chart, compass, lead-line, and Pilot-book,
trying my best, to make out the currents, but all to no purpose except to
conclude that a voyage along this coast in bad weather would be madness,
unless with a man to help.
But nearly all this part of the French coast is awkward ground to be
caught in, especially where there are shifting or sinking sands, for if
the vessel touches these, the tide stream instantly sucks the sand from
under one side, while it piles it up on the other, and thus the hull is
gradually worked in with a ridge on such side, and cannot be slewed off,
but is liable to be wrecked forthwith. It was interesting to read here
the account of this coast given by my Pilot-book, which had at last been
dug out of its hiding-place. The reader need not peruse this official
statement, but to justify my remarks on the dangers it is given below in
a note. {52}