“That brigantine will come to grief. She's overmasted, and the fellow
who has her ought not to be trusted with her. He's going to make a mess
of things.”
Then in his slow, drawling manner, he told us that the command of
the _Tuitoga_ had been given to an ex-lieutenant of the navy, whose
knowledge of sailing vessels was confined to his youthful experiences on
one of the service training brigs; but King George of Tonga was anxious
to secure an English naval officer to command the new ship, and out of
some hundreds of eager applicants, Lieutenant Raye had been selected.
By sundown the brigantine was hull down ahead of us, though the barque
was a very smart vessel, and we were then making eleven knots. At
midnight, I heard the mate give orders to take in royals and topgallant
sails, and going on deck, found the wind had almost died away.
Rosser was on deck, and told me that we were “going to get it hot from
the N.E. before long;” and by four in the morning we were under topsails
and lower courses only, the ship flying before a most unpleasant sea. I
turned in again, and slept till daylight, when the second mate gave me a
call.
“Come on deck and see something pretty.”
The “something pretty” was the brigantine, which was in sight about a
mile away on our lee bow. She was in a terrible mess. Her fore and main
royal masts and topgallant masts and jibboom had apparently all been
carried away together, and she was almost lying on her beam ends. We ran
down to her, and saw that her crew were busy in cutting away the spars
and sails alongside. All her boats were gone, and her for'ard deck house
had started, and was working to and fro with every sea.
In less than half an hour the mate and six hands from the barque were
on board, assisting the crew, cutting away the wire rigging and trimming
the cargo, the shifting of which had nearly sent her to the bottom. I
went with the boat to lend a hand, and the second mate of the brigantine
told me that the young captain had refused to listen to the mate's
suggestion to shorten sail, when the officer told him that the wind
would certainly come away suddenly from the N.E. The consequence was
that a furious squall took her aback, and had not the jibboom--and then
the upper spars--carried away under the terrific strain, she would have
gone to the bottom. The worst part of the business was that two poor
seamen had been lost overboard.
“He's a pretty kind of man for a skipper if you like,” said the
second officer bitterly. “He ought to be hanged for pretending he's
a sailorman. It's sheer murder to put such a jackass in command of a
deep-water sailing ship.”
After rendering all possible assistance to the brigantine, we left her
about mid-day; and had been lying at anchor for two weeks in Nukualofa
Harbour before she put in an appearance outside the reef. A native pilot
went out in a canoe, but the captain haughtily declined his services,
and would not even let him come on board--he wanted to show people that
although he had never seen Naknalofa Harbour before, he could bring
his ship in without a pilot. In less than half an hour, a swirling eddy
caught the vessel, and earned her broadside on to the reef, where she
would have been battered to pieces, had not our two boats gone to her
assistance, and with great difficulty got her off again. Captain Rosser
several times countermanded orders given by his chief officer--an
experienced seaman--and bullied and “jawed” his crew in the most pompous
and irritating manner, and finally when we succeeded in getting the
vessel off the reef with the loss of her false keel and rudder, and
were towing her into smooth water inside the reef, he came for'ard, and
abruptly desired our chief mate to cease towing, as he meant to anchor.
“Anchor, and be hanged to you,” replied our officer with angry contempt;
“the kind of ship you ought to command is one that is towed by a horse
along a path in the old country.”
We cast off and left him to his own conceit and devices. He let go in
less than five fathoms, paid out too much cable, and went stern first
on to a coral patch, where he stuck for a couple of days, much to our
delight.
Within six months this gentleman succeeded in getting the brigantine
ashore on four occasions, and she had to return to Sydney to be repaired
at a cost of £1,700.
*****
My next two experiences were with the pig-headed type. I had made an
agreement with the master of a Fiji-owned vessel--also a brigantine--to
convey myself and my stock of trade goods from an island in the Tokelau
or Union Group (South Pacific) to Yap, in the Caroline Islands in the
North-west, where I intended starting a trading business. This captain
was as good a seaman as ever trod a deck, and had had a rather long
experience of the island trade, but a mule could not surpass him in
obstinacy, as I was soon to learn, to my sorrow.
A week after leaving the Tokelaus, we dropped anchor on the edge of the
reef of one of the Gilbert Group, to land supplies for a trader living
there. The coast was very exposed to all but an easterly wind, and
neither the mate nor myself liked the idea of anchoring at all. The
skipper, however, brought his vessel close in to the roaring breakers
on the reef, let go his anchor in six fathoms, and then neatly backed
astern into blue water sixty fathoms deep. Here we lay apparently safe
enough, for the time, the wind being easterly and steady.
By sunset we had finished landing stores and shipping cargo, and when
the captain came off in the last boat, we naturally expected him to
heave up and get out of such a dangerous place, but to our surprise he
remarked carelessly that as the men were very tired, he would hold on
until daylight.
“I wouldn't risk it if I were you,” said the trader, who had come aboard
in his own boat to “square up.” “You can't depend on this easterly
breeze holding all night, and it may come on squally from the west or
south-west in a few hours, and take you unawares.”
“Bosh!” was the reply. “Hoist the boats up, Mr. Laird, and tell the men
to get supper.”
“Very well, sir,” replied the mate, none too cheerfully.
Just as the trader was going ashore, he said to me aside, quietly, “This
little monkey-faced skipper is a blazing idiot” (our captain was a very,
very little man). “I told him again just now, that if the wind comes
away from west or south-west, or even if it falls calm, he'll find he's
caught, to a dead certainty. But he as good as told me to mind my own
business.”
Naturally enough I was anxious. I had on board trade goods which had
cost £1,100, and of course had not one penny of insurance on them. The
brigantine, however, was well insured, though I do not impute this fact
as being the cause of the captain's neglect of a sensible warning.
After supper, the captain turned in, while the mate and I, both feeling
very uneasy, paced the deck till about nine o'clock, at which hour the
wind had become perceptibly lighter, and the captain was called. He came
on deck, trotted up and down in his pyjamas for a few minutes, sat on
the rail, like a monkey on a fence, and then asked the mate snappishly
what he was “scared about?”
The mate made no reply, and the captain was just going below again, when
two fishing canoes, with four natives in each, came quite near us, both
heading for the shore; and the skipper asked me to hail them and see if
they had any fish to sell. I did so.
“No,” was the reply; “we are going back again, because much rain and
wind is coming from the westward, and we want to get over the reef
before the surf becomes too great.” Then one of them stood up and
added--
“Why does not the ship go away quickly. This is a very bad place here
when the wind and the sea come from the west. Your ship will be broken
to pieces.”
“What do they say?” inquired the little man.