We have all heard of pouring oil on the waters, but most of us have
supposed that the phrase meant only the soothing of angry people by
gentle words, and that it was what the grammars call a figurative
expression.
But sailors and fishermen have often tried the experiment of sprinkling
oil upon stormy waves with great success. The oil when dropped upon the
billows spreads over their surfaces, forming a fine film, and smoothing
a safe path for ships that would otherwise be in danger.
Many curious instances of this are given by the captains of whalers and
merchant ships. The master of the _Gem_, a British brigantine, bound
from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Bristol, encountered a hurricane,
which blew frightfully for thirty-six hours. The vessel was in the
utmost peril, when the captain remembered to have read an article on the
use of oil at sea. He at once poured a quantity into a canvas bag, and
fastened it to a rope six fathoms long, trailed it to windward of the
ship, and the oil leaked out, and made smooth water around the vessel.
In September, 1846, a terrific gale of wind lashed the Atlantic to fury,
and a little fishing-boat was seen tearing her way through the white
waves to the coast of Sable Island. Watchers on the shore saw two men on
board throwing something at intervals into the air.
When the boat arrived on shore, as she did in safety, with all her crew,
it was found that the captain had stationed two men near the
fore-shrouds, where he had lashed two casks of oil. Each man was armed
with a wooden ladle two feet long, with which he dipped up the blubber
and oil, and threw it as high as he could into the sea. The wind carried
it to leeward, and as it spread far over the water, though the waves
rose very high, they did not break. The little _Arno_ rode into Sable
Island, leaving a shining path in her wake.
The way in which the oil is used by those who wish to preserve their
boats from wreck is very simple.
The _King Cenric_, for instance, a sailing ship bound from Bombay to
Liverpool, with coal, was caught in a heavy gale, which lasted five
days. Her officers filled two canvas clothes-bags with oil, and made two
or three small holes in each. The bags were then towed along by the
ship.
Our own Dr. Franklin, who always used his eyes, tried the experiment of
calming rough water by oil in the harbors of Newport and Portsmouth. He
had observed the serenity of the waves around the whaling ships, and he
said that even a tea-spoonful of oil produced a wonderful effect.
Mr. John Shields, of Perth, Scotland, has been trying the experiment on
a grand scale in Peterhead North Harbor. His apparatus carries twelve
hundred feet of piping into deep water two hundred yards seaward of the
bar. There are three conical valves, fixed seventy-five feet apart, at
the sea end of the pipe, and when the pipes are charged with oil, by
means of a force-pump in a hut on shore, the oil escapes so rapidly that
the wildest waves become gentle ripples.
Mr. Shields has been improving and testing his invention for two years,
and expects by means of it to make the dangerous harbor of Peterhead
entirely safe, however furious the weather.
[Illustration: IN THE HALLS OF HIS ANCESTORS.]