Chapter XIV: Part 14

The apathy and ignorance of people ashore is more remarkable than anything else in connection with this subject of brutality to sailors. I even know a young man who owns shares in some of our largest square-riggers who was utterly amazed when I told him of the record of one of his own captains. In justice to him, though, I must say that he took no personal interest in the ships other than that they should pay good dividends, and he really was in total ignorance of the _modus operandi_ of American captains. But it is not so with the vast majority of our sailing-ship-owners, who are fully aware of the manner in which their vessels are run, and who go bail to the extent of many hundreds of dollars for their inhuman captains when the latter are occasionally held to answer for some particularly atrocious deed, and who in many cases connive at the disappearance of blackguard mates when they are seeking to escape ashore from infuriated sailors whom these mates have half killed at sea. Cannot something be done to compel decent treatment of our long-voyage seamen? Sailors must be ruled with a hand of iron, for there are desperate characters among them; but, in heaven’s name, let him who wields the power be compelled to administer justice in his punishment of the men under him, that the disgrace and shame which now rest upon our long-voyage sailing ships may be removed, and that the offensive name of “Yankee hell-ship,” by which our deep-water vessels are known to foreign sailors, may be forever obliterated. Latitude, 13° 43′ north; longitude, 127° west.

+September 1+

Now in truth hath Disappointment come upon us and doth hover sullenly o’erhead on sable pinions. The Trades, the lovely northeast Trades, which we fondly imagined had reached us, did not materialize! For, having blown fitfully for two days, driving us two degrees farther west, they vanished, and in their stead a fresh westerly wind has arisen, and the weather is once more sticky and showery and the heavens are piled high-with huge wool-packs and glistening thunder-heads. But this is not all. We are plunging into a steep, heavy swell, that is surging down from the north in great, long, blue heaves; and it is a grand thing to look forward and see the jib-boom now rearing up higher and higher towards the zenith, now diving down, down into the deep quiet hollows, as the ship tumbles heavily to the catheads into the creamy waters.

We had quite a lively time at dinner to-day, for the westerly wind had smoothed the kinks out of the old man’s temper and he commenced a jocose argument with the mate about American politics. It will be remembered that Mr. Goggins is by birth an Englishman, but his papers give him the right to talk about “hour constitootion,” of which he takes advantage at every opportunity. I laughed at everything they said to egg them on, and at length they both began to wax wroth, the mate in a few minutes being quite wet with perspiration, so that at last all he could say was, “Be gar’s sake, sir,” which he repeated indefinitely like a hungry parrot asking for a cracker. Finally, though, the skipper spoiled the fun by getting really angry, and, gazing with piercing eye at Goggins for the space of half a minute, he utterly extinguished him with, “Well, I guess you’d better shut up; you don’t seem to know much about it.” Latitude, 15° north; longitude, 126° west.

+September 2+

Very strong winds from west shifting to southeast; high, northerly sea; excessive humidity and incessant rain-squalls. These have been the weather conditions for twelve hours, to which must be added a fall of thirty one-hundredths of an inch in the aneroid. Yesterday afternoon at four o’clock there were plenty of cyclonic indications round about us: a heavy swell, suffocating humidity, a wild, ferocious look in the enormous cumulus clouds, and a curious hot wind that at times strangely increased to strong gusts that hummed with a dreary drone in the rigging and then instantly subsided. Towards five o’clock the windward horizon grew to a uniform gray, oily, and dull as lead, with an indescribably menacing aspect in the low, greasy scud that hurried in tattered wisps just over the mast-heads. The captain was very uneasy, and admitted the proximity (if not of a cyclone) of one of those furious summer northers that often sweep across the North Pacific; and it must be remembered that we are close to the cyclonic belt which extends out into the ocean from the Central American seaboard.

At dusk both wind and sea had increased, and by eight o’clock we were charging into a swell large enough to merit the term majestic, the bowsprit rising and falling fully fifty feet, for the sea was from dead ahead, and there was wind enough to drive the ship rapidly up the slope of a billow and then far out into space, so that she fell full upon the breast of the next sea with a crushing force that must have wrenched every timber in her hull.

At 9.30, as the captain and I were on the poop discussing the second mate, there came a report from aloft, and there was the mizzen-royal in ribbons, snapping and popping merrily away in the darkness. Then the skipper cast loose his deep-sea voice so that it must surely have reached force 12 in Beaufort’s scale, and the sail was secured in short order. Throughout the night we labored heavily, while the seas thundered over the bows and dashed against the forward house with alarming fury, and then washed aft, where the water in the waist was to be measured in feet, not in inches. Broadhead said that at times, in the middle watch, the ship buried herself to the light-houses, and that he hadn’t seen much more water aboard off Cape Horn. At three this morning came another discharge from aloft, and away went four whole cloths out of the lee side of the upper foretop-sail, and when daylight came we had to send up a new sail.

During the morning watch the wind shifted suddenly to southeast, and when we went on deck it was blowing half a gale from that desirable quarter, and the ship, with braces well rounded in, was fairly skipping from sea to sea, save when her speed was momentarily checked by an extra heavy one that smote her rudely full in the face and then fell in glorious showers over the forecastle. Another fine spectacle was afforded whenever one of the short seas, occasioned by the shift of wind, struck the big, clumsy main-channels, when the spray shot far into the air and was swept across the deck in snowy clouds. Altogether, it was a scene of wonderful beauty, and we rejoiced to observe that the dun, threatening look of the heavens had given place to dense masses of trade-clouds and promises of plenty of clear sunshine; and if the night was a boisterous one and the port watch had to pass the whole of the forenoon at the pumps, our run of two hundred miles wreathed every one’s face in jolly smiles, and “’Frisco” was heard repeatedly in the men’s conversation.

Writing of hurricanes awhile ago, reminds me of the pertinacity with which the great majority of the people in our Western States allude to their terrible tornadoes as cyclones. It would be reasonable to presume that the inhabitants of a district subject to any peculiar atmospheric disturbance would know and make use of the proper term for such a phenomenon, but it seems not. Hurricane and cyclone are synonymous, and are applied to circular storms having a diameter of from three hundred to one thousand miles, in which the wind seldom attains a velocity of over one hundred miles per hour, a pressure of about fifty pounds per square foot. They have also a progressive motion varying in speed from twenty-eight miles per hour in the United States to only eight or nine miles in the Bay of Bengal.

Tornadoes are also gyratory storms that progress in a straight line at a mean speed of thirty miles an hour, but their path is almost infinitesimal compared with the cyclone’s, for it is generally between one thousand and six thousand feet in width and about forty miles long, each individual storm completely dissolving and vanishing like a thunder-squall in less than an hour. A cyclone may blow for days.

In the fury of its rotary motion and upward suction a tornado is the most appalling of all natural phenomena save, perhaps, the earthquake, and the passing of one causes the most incredible and seemingly impossible freaks. Chickens are stripped of their feathers, straws are driven firmly into planks, and locomotives weighing fifty tons have been over-turned without effort, the latter being possible by the formation of a partial vacuum. Straws, however, have been driven an eighth of an inch into a plank by an artificial blast of air moving at the rate of one hundred and sixty miles per hour. The presence of a vacuum is proved by the violent bursting outward of the closed windows and shutters of a house in or near the track of a tornado.

Many people will remember the dire results of the famous St. Louis tornado of May, 1896, which resulted in the death of two hundred and twenty-five persons and the loss of twelve million dollars in property destroyed; yet there is no reason to suppose that this storm was an unusually severe one; it simply happened to pass over a more or less densely populated region. As usual, this tornado left behind some remarkable mementos, the strangest of all being that a piece of pine plank was driven by the wind head-on through the five-sixteenths inch web of an iron girder in the approach to the St. Louis bridge! This is a performance well known to the government Weather Bureau. Immense blocks of sandstone set in cement were dislodged and thrown down (in all, five hundred and eighty tons of it), together with two hundred and eighty tons of flooring and girders, some of the latter weighing thirteen thousand pounds each. In Lafayette Park, St. Louis, another example of tornadic vagaries was shown by the fact that, right in the path of the storm, surrounded closely by forest-trees which had been wrenched bodily from the earth, stood unharmed a flimsy, straw-thatched structure upon six light posts!

Unfortunately, from the very violence of the wind, no accurate estimate of the velocity of the gyratory movement of a tornado can be made, as an anemometer would be useless, even if it were not destroyed. Experts calculate, however, that the speed of the wind approximates five hundred or six hundred miles per hour. At any rate, the destructive force of a tornado is ten or perhaps twenty times that of a cyclone; and if cyclones blew with the violence of tornadoes, the earth would be devastated in a short while.

At sea the tornado with its terrible cloud-funnel has its counterpart in the water-spout; though in the latter the wind does not seem to attain the same fury, as many vessels have passed through a water-spout without very great damage. Two curious instances, however, are on record of atmospheric freaks at sea; one of them was reported by the American ship “Reaper.” She was proceeding toward Cape Horn in the equatorial North Pacific, the day being perfectly fine and clear, save for a few small, detached clouds, and the wind a light breeze, when she suddenly lost all of her light sails in a blast that came apparently out of a clear sky, while at the moment there was nothing but the light wind on deck. Again, the ship “Sintram,” Captain Woodside, was almost totally dismasted off the West Indies, homeward bound from the East; the weather was fine and a four-knot breeze was blowing on deck when the upper spars seemed to melt away, she having been struck by a similar blast from a clear sky. Subsequently I wrote to the forecast official at New York asking whether any such accidents ever happened ashore; he answered that in Nebraska and Kansas similar strong whirlwinds have been known, in perfectly clear weather, to tear the upper portions of forest-trees completely off, including large branches, while the leaves and twigs nearer the ground were untouched. This indisputably proves that only a few feet mark the boundary-line between atmosphere in a state of rest and wind of inconceivable violence. As has been shown, such instances occur also in tornadoes, which, of course, are nothing but immense whirlwinds.

It is my earnest hope that the reader has not been worried by this long meteorological dissertation, which has nothing to do with the voyage; but as the forecasting of the weather has lately been of increasing interest to the public, perhaps I may be pardoned for my digression. Latitude, 17° 55′ north; longitude, 125° 30′ west.

+September 3+

It seems to be tolerably safe to say now that at last we have picked up the northeast Trades. During yesterday afternoon the wind hauled constantly to the northward, and at ten last night it was northeast by north, blowing a fresh breeze; indeed, by this morning it had increased so that we have not been able to carry the sky-sails since, and we did another three degrees of latitude; imagine three hundred and fifty miles of latitude here in forty-eight hours. It is very refreshing, and even the skipper has recovered his equanimity. Up to noon to-day, though, the weather was very showery, the fine rain blowing in level clouds across the ship, as dense as fog. The greatest change, however, is in the temperature, for the air has fallen 15° and the sea 10°, so that we begin to appreciate that in thirty-six hours, if this wind holds, we will have emerged from the torrid zone. It is quite impossible for us to realize that in another fortnight this voyage will probably be an event of the past. No one who has not made a long voyage can imagine the excitement, actually the excitement, occasioned by the speculation as to how much longer the passage will last, when only ten days or so remain. There is continuously present such an element of luck when solely dependent upon the wind, that you are constantly estimating and calculating how far the Trades will extend, how the winds will be afterward, the chances of fogs and calms on the coast, and other equally important questions. This doesn’t mean necessarily that you want to get ashore; it is the involuntary and irresistible anticipation of an impending change, though my wife will probably not regret the moment when the tow-boat gives us her line outside the Heads. Latitude, 20° 52′ north; longitude, 126° 40′ west.

+September 4+

This was a perfectly ideal day, with brisk northeast winds, smooth sea, cloudless sky, and a noon temperature of 72°, and 68° at midnight. This is a very lucky chance that we are having here; we are going well, about eight knots, and our course has been to the northward of northwest by north, showing that the Trades are well to the eastward.

I wonder how many people have ever seen the scale of provisions as laid down by the United States government for the vitualling of long-voyage ships? As I have said, the curious part of it is, though, that no attention is ever paid to it on our ships, except under unusual conditions. Yet it is not so very curious that no attempt is made to observe the scale, for almost everything in connection with our sailors and ships is performed in an irregular manner. Behold the scale.

---------+------+-----+-----+------+------+-----+-------+------+------ |BREAD.|BEEF.|PORK.|FLOUR.|PEASE.|TEA. |COFFEE.|SUGAR.|WATER. ---------+------+-----+-----+------+------+-----+-------+------+------ |Lb. |Lbs. |Lbs. | Lb. | Pt. |Oz. | Oz. | Ozs. | Qts. Sunday | 1 |1-1/2| | 1/2 | |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 Monday | 1 | |1-1/4| | 1/8 |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 Tuesday | 1 |1-1/2| | 1/2 | |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 Wednesday| 1 | |1-1/4| | 1/8 |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 Thursday | 1 |1-1/2| | 1/2 | |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 Friday | 1 | |1-1/4| | 1/8 |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 Saturday | 1 |1-1/2| | | |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Then comes a list of substitutes, such as molasses for sugar, potatoes for pease, etc. Other nations also have provision scales, but they are adhered to; foreign schemes add oatmeal, but all sailors get too much meat; both captains and seamen say that. Our blue-water ships have a great name for fine “grub,” which they deserved forty years ago, but which most of them certainly do not now. A Yankee captain has the privilege from the owners to lay in whatever sort of stores he thinks fit (of course neither he nor the owner ever thinks of the law); if he is a generous man, the crew are lucky; if not, it’s a case of hunger and hustle for four or five months. As a sample of the manner in which the food has been given out here, the men consumed an entire barrel of molasses during the first seventeen days that we were at sea; since then they have had none. Other articles were scattered around in the same reckless manner, with the natural result that the “dainties” which ought to have lasted the whole voyage had vanished at the latitude of the Falklands; so that ever since the men have been on pretty hard rations, and Broadhead told me that when the old man made the show of putting all hands on government allowance it didn’t mean anything at all. Since the stabbing, though, all the food has been weighed out by the mate each day in full view of the sailors, eighteen pounds of bread (_i.e._, hard-tack), so many pounds of beef, etc., and the men themselves carry it to the cook, so that there can be no fault-finding. As to the water, three quarts per day amounts in all to fifty-four quarts, which is measured into a cask in the forecastle, and the men are at liberty to give any portion of it they choose to the cook in which to boil their beef and pork, or tea and coffee. These three quarts, by the way, are for all purposes, drinking, cooking, and washing, though most foremast hands are not much troubled with the latter, except when it rains hard. Each man probably does not have more than a quart and a half of drinking water a day, which is a truly scanty allowance for men who are painting on a blistering deck several hours out of the twenty-four.

American captains profess to think that weighing out food to sailors is very degrading, and they always add, “It’s too much like them Britishers.” Personally I have never been able to perceive where the indignity comes in. Food is weighed out in the navy, so why not in the merchant service? I had it on my mind to-day to ask Captain Scruggs which he really considered the more debasing, giving a man a stipulated quantity of food, or knocking his teeth out with wooden or iron implements and then kicking him into the scuppers; but I thought it best to preserve peace rather than advance so hazardous a question. Latitude, 23° 18′ north; longitude, 128° 40′ west.

+September 5+

Oh, what magnificent weather this is! It is just like those grand days in the southeast Trades. Our everlasting recollections of the Pacific Ocean, both north and south, will be of weeks of a matchless climate; deep cobalt sky, sprinkled with little pink, cirrus clouds; a calm sea over which shoot thousands of flying-fish in glittering flight, and soft, enchanting breezes. “What about those two or three disagreeable days not long ago?” says the pessimist. True, they were not ideal days; but they only serve to show off these lovely ones in all their glorious perfection. We have, unhappily, passed the limits of the tropics, however, having crossed the circle of Cancer yesterday at four o’clock.

A few minutes ago, at the pumps, Broadhead asked me, “Would you mind telling me why you came out here in an American ship?” I told him why,--that, having made one voyage in an Englishman, we wanted to compare the vessels; and I also reminded him that foreign ships are not allowed to trade between American ports. “Well, you and the lady must have lots of courage,” said he. “Now there’s the Loch Line of ships to Australia out of London; you ought to have gone in one o’ them.” “Yes; MacFoy told me about them,” said I. “Well, they’re worth all you can say in favor of ’em,” continued this American; “they’re dandies; carry lots o’ passengers, first- and second-class and steerage. Each ship has what they call a double crew; say a ship had fourteen men before the mast, one o’ these would have twenty-eight, so the whole of an ordinary ship’s crew is on deck at one time, and not a stroke o’ work is ever done aloft after eight in the morning, so that nothing can drop on passengers’ heads.” This may seem like getting things down to too fine a point; but any one who has voyaged in a sailing vessel will remember how many articles drop from men working aloft. We have seen at least a dozen objects fall during the voyage,--knives, paint-brushes, and serving-mallets, any one of which dropping on a man’s head from a height of at least a hundred feet would be very painful, not to say dangerous.

Perhaps the most remarkable and unusual device to enable the captain of a vessel to pocket the wages of a crew appears in a copy of a maritime paper, which I found to-day in a bundle of the skipper’s magazines. It was perpetrated by the master of the British ship “S----,” and consisted in his taking a quantity of liquors of divers sorts to sea and retailing them to the men at immense profit. An investigation at Liverpool showed that this enterprising man had bought twenty cases of whiskey at three dollars and a half a dozen, which he sold to the crew at one dollar per bottle. He also had large stores of gin and beer on board, and the amount of money that the captain must have cleared by the various transactions may be imagined when it is mentioned that the carpenter’s bill for liquors for one voyage footed up a total of sixty-seven dollars, and the men testified that some of them averaged a bottle a day. It seemed to me that the captain’s punishment was rather light, as it consisted in suspending his certificate for three months. Of course, this is a penalty which could not be inflicted upon an American captain, because none of our sailing-ship-masters has a government certificate. Our law-givers do not think that any is necessary, though they require a stiff examination in the case of a steam-ship-master, another sparkling example of the perfection of the United States shipping laws. Latitude, 25° 47′ north; longitude, 130° 46′ west.

+September 6+

After breakfast this morning we trembled when we found the wind letting go, for everything indicated a cessation in the Trades; but at ten o’clock they freshened again, and since then we have swung handsomely along over a light swell at seven knots. This is very gratifying, and every day sees us a hundred and seventy-five miles nearer port. My wife is beginning to rejoice at the prospect of fresh vegetables and fruit, though I think I could live very comfortably on the present diet for at least a year. I had to tell the captain to-day, though, not to have any more stews for my sake, for I couldn’t possibly eat another one. This is not astonishing, because, when a week out from New York, I happened to express a desire for a stew, and on every single day since then I have eaten some of this concoction at least once and at times twice. Four solid, uninterrupted months of stews are apt to produce a surfeit thereof. What was worse than anything else, though, was that the steward, desiring to enrich the gravy, at length became addicted to the disagreeable habit of thrusting large pieces of aged, canned butter into each stew, after turning it out of the sauce-pan, so that when the dish reached the table the surface of the stew glittered with little iridescent, golden globules, that danced upon it like drops of yellow quicksilver. Thus decorated, it was a very pleasing dish to contemplate, though familiarity with it bred contempt.

Every day now, particularly at supper, we enter the dining-room with distended eyes, trying to discover some surprise in the culinary department. Usually, however, when the covers are removed, there lie disclosed the same old standbys,--stewed beef or mutton, cold beef and ham, biscuits, and boiled potatoes the size of hot-house grapes, though none the worse for that. Indeed, we went to sea with several barrels of new Bermuda potatoes at ten dollars the barrel; this will show the unstinted manner in which this ship was stored aft.

Sometimes, though, we are stunned by some fantastic creation of the Chinaman’s. Last night, for instance, when the steward whipped off the huge pewter covers, each almost as big as an umbrella, we were entranced by the appearance of something entirely new. In a deep vegetable dish lay four enormous Welsh rarebits? Oh, the gladness of that moment! What mattered it that the bread was a blood relative of india-rubber, that the rarebits were clammy and inflexible, or that the rind of a pineapple cheese had contributed to their manufacture? Were they not a change, and as such to be venerated and exalted beyond price? Therefore we helped ourselves reverently, as became so momentous an occasion; and if the compound did produce an incalculable amount of subsequent distress, we extended meek thanks and congratulations to the little Cantonite in the galley. In truth, though, there is no fault of any sort to be found with the cabin food; it is every bit as good as when we started.

Last evening, in the second dog-watch, the Scotch bosun came up to me on the main-deck and asked how we were getting on. I told him, very well indeed; and then he said, “Before we left I heard that a gentleman and his wife were going out in the ship, and be gob I felt sorry for them.” Good old MacFoy! He is continuously solicitous for our welfare; and a day or two ago he came aft with a copy of Dickens’s “Christmas Stories” which he had found in the forecastle library furnished by the Seamen’s Friend Society, and said that he had found a fine sea story for me to read in the book, called “The Wreck of the Golden Mary.” It is a fact worthy of note that this rough sailor-man is the only individual whom I have ever met who has read this delightful account of a shipwreck off Cape Horn. The best-read man whom I ever knew said that he had never even heard of it. In every art, though, there seem to be one or two jewels that exist unknown even to the connoisseur. How many musicians are there, thorough musicians though they may be, who know the gorgeous, glorious chorus in A, _andante sostenuto_, from Schubert’s Lazarus? Gorgeous in its tone colors, glorious in its fire and rhythm, it is an almost unknown fragment from that transcendent mind. Latitude, 27° 58′ north; longitude, 132° 20′ west.

+September 7+

Nothing but a faint breeze remains of the northeast Trades. In the Pacific at this season they are generally a failure, and they carried us through only twelve degrees of latitude. We are beginning to appreciate how hard it is going to be to get into the land in the latitude of San Francisco, unless we soon take the westerly winds that are supposed to blow out here. We are now well to the westward of ’Frisco, ten degrees in fact, and it is impossible to calculate how much farther we will have to go; old Goggins, a year ago, bound up to Nanaimo from Acapulco, fetched over to 160° west before he got a slant north. To-day is a great deal warmer than yesterday, with at times a nearly glassy sea and one hundred and ten miles of the two degrees of latitude that we made were done in the first sixteen hours.

Last evening I had another session with the garrulous Scot. “I’ll tell ye somethin’ about the ‘H. D. MacGregor’; she’s the toughest ship I ever was in, though there’s one still worse. Cap’n Summers is a corker; he’s a little man, but very broad and strong, with a fearful temper; he’s all bruk up, though.”

“What broke him up?” said I.

“Jumpin’ after the men,” answered David; “he’s hardly got a sound bone in his body; they do say his back’s broke, but I never thought it. But I did see him smash one of his legs. He had that temper that if he wanted to reach a man he just jumped down on top of him where he stood. I mind one afternoon, just before we got into ’Frisco two or three years ago, when I was bosun with him, one of the men was doin’ somethin’ aft on the main-deck. Summers said a few words to him, and the feller didn’t say ‘yes, sir,’ soon enough to suit him, so th’ old man jumped right off the poop down on the main-deck, full eight feet. He meant to lep on top o’ the sailor; but just as he jumped the ship give a roll, and he fell into a water-barrel near by. His left leg brought up sharp ag’in’ the chimes o’ the cask, and crack! went his thigh-bone. Lucky for him we were only two days from port, and we fixed him up pretty well till we got in.”

Yesterday afternoon the top of the deck-house was painted a beautiful, lustrous, pearly gray, and very fine it looked, glistening in the bright sunshine. Not a drop of rain had fallen all day until fifteen minutes after it was finished, when a light shower passed over us, extending not five hundred yards in any direction. It lasted not one minute, but it completely ruined the wet paint; and it was then that we heard the gentle voice of the mate raised in blasphemous remonstrance. Latitude, 29° 48′ north; longitude, 134° 6′ west.

+September 8+

Just as we had finished writing up our journals yesterday afternoon there came a loud patter of rain overhead and a heavy puff from the eastward that laid the ship well over. Still, we didn’t pay much attention to it for some time; but, finding that we moved steadily along without righting, I went on deck to find the ocean covered with white-caps to the horizon, which was thick with dense, gray, very windy-looking clouds. We were flying through the water at ten knots, and heading up north by west true, which was very fine; but, even as we looked, there came a slight but portentous heave from ahead that foretold a northerly swell. And so it proved, for by 8 +P.M.+ our progress had dwindled to six knots, as we went pitching and diving into an ugly head-sea. It is astonishing how even a moderately heavy swell from ahead will check the speed of a ship, even with a strong wind blowing. A steamer will cleave right through a tall swell without any perceptible difference in her speed, a fact proved to us once when, in crossing the Atlantic in the “Etruria,” we encountered a head-sea that buried the entire bows at every plunge; yet the speed was lowered by only a quarter of a knot. Even a sailing yacht will overcome a head-swell in a very creditable manner; but when a massive, clumsy square-rigger runs into one, farewell to even a moderate run. She stops at every sea for an appreciable time, till the impetus of so ponderous a mass asserts itself and she tumbles into the next valley. So it was with us all through the night, though we made good a fine course north-northwest.

A fact little known generally is that in former years there existed in our ships what was known as a hospital tax. It was finally abandoned, not more than fifteen years ago, and consisted in each man’s paying forty cents a month as long as he was on board a given vessel toward a common fund, the total sum being handed to the proper persons on the ship’s arrival for the maintenance of the marine hospital at the port to which she was bound, provided that such a port was of sufficient importance to warrant an institution of this sort. I think this was a pretty good idea, and cannot think why it was abolished. On a ship like this one, for instance, the amount at the end of a four-months’ voyage would be nearly forty dollars. Yet no one on board would feel the loss of the dollar and a half that he had contributed. Latitude, 32° 7′ north; longitude, 135° 6′ west.

+September 9+

Yesterday afternoon a sail was sighted from the fore-sky-sail-yard, and at once threw everybody into tumult of excitement. Truly, a long time had passed since we had beheld a vessel of any sort, for the last time that we saw anything fashioned by man’s hand was seven weeks ago, off the Horn. We beat this record on our first voyage, however, when sixty-five days passed without our sighting a vessel. The ship “I. F. Chapman,” however, arrived at New York from Manila shortly before we sailed, having been at sea one hundred and twenty-five days, and during all that time not a single craft of any description sailed into her ken!

At five o’clock the upper sails of our new friend were in sight from the deck, and I walked to the break of the poop, where the mate was, to ask his opinion of her. He was extremely pompous, and talked with such assurance that you would suppose he had just come off the stranger. She had not risen to her upper topsails when Mr. Goggins said, “Ho! I know ’er; she’s a barkentine that trades between San Francisco and the Hawaiian Islands!” (I have never met a captain or mate who said Sandwich Islands.) This was to exhibit his infinite knowledge of the Pacific coast. Now, when hull down, I make it a rule never to contradict a sailor when he gives an opinion as to how a square-rigger is sailing, whether on or off the wind, or what her precise rig is; few objects are more puzzling, even to an experienced eye. But on this occasion I had a pair of very excellent glasses on the vessel, and suggested that she was either a bark or a ship steering by the wind. “Naw, naw,” shouted the mate, with a backward sweep of his arm; “she’s a barkentine, a-runnin’ free.” An hour later it proved to be a British ship close-hauled on the port tack, standing to the eastward. The mate was overwhelmed with chagrin, but his cup of misery was not yet full, for when the old man went on deck last night at ten, the moon being very bright, he asked him whether the ship was still in sight, to which the mate answered, “She’s not, sir.” “Then what’s that?” asked the skipper, pointing under the spanker. There, on the quarter, dim, but in plain view, was the handsome stranger, and she had gone around on our tack.

Last evening we witnessed a sunset that was the most impressive of the whole voyage. An hour before the sun disappeared we noticed great cumulo-nimbus clouds marshalling themselves in the west, the horizon then being veiled in a curious, diaphanous mist. When we came up from supper, though, the sun had nearly reached the sea-rim, and for ten minutes we were the enchanted spectators of most exquisite cloud scenery. High up toward the zenith two ranges of heavy, gloomy cloud mountains were reared, peak on peak, forming in themselves a scene of remarkable grandeur, and right between these purple ramparts, and just then touching the horizon, lay the great, blazing globe of fire, edging the immense vapory masses with a fringe as of living flame and transmuting the clouds into glowing pictures of the Delectable Mountains, more beautiful than artist ever conceived, with a suggestion of the Celestial City itself in the surpassing glory of the moment. As Handel said when composing the “Messiah,” “I did think that I did see all heaven before me, and the great God Himself.” The entire spectacle was visible through the thin mist, now changed into a veil of radiant bronze, putting a finishing touch upon a scene which, for magnificence of coloring and stately splendor, we have never seen equalled.

No sooner had the orb of day vanished than out soared the moon from behind a sable cloud and a night of ineffable peace and purity followed, with now and then a weird effect produced by a guny floating slowly across the moon’s face, with the appearance of a gigantic, prehistoric bat. Oh, how superb Nature is when viewed thus from the deck of a sailing ship! How can a man deny God at such moments as these? How can he say that he is lonely when he is surrounded by such wonderful memorials of His earthly magnificence? Latitude, 34° 5′ north; longitude, 137° 14′ west.

+September 10+

We can stand but very little more of this northerly wind, for we are getting very anxious to go on the other tack. Last night and this morning the wind was very unsteady, and we alternately broke off to west-northwest and came up to northwest by north. It would be useless to tack ship at long as we can hold as good a course as the former, for we would have to make a little southing on the other leg. By to-morrow we will probably be in the latitude of our destination, though a thousand miles west of it, and the skipper intimates that he will then let her come round whether or no.

This morning, it being the first occasion for a long while, we had a brace of fresh eggs for breakfast, which when poached were so indescribably delicious that the memory of them lingered long and sweetly in the palate. It is only about once in three weeks that our barren, emaciated hens honor us in this fashion, and when they do, our gratitude is boundless. Ordinarily, my wife’s breakfast consists of fresh, crisp soda biscuit, a boiled potato, and a cup of cocoa; my own comprising soda biscuit, potatoes, jam, and tepid water. It is a matter of surprise to every one who has experienced a lack of ice how readily one becomes accustomed to being without it; by the seventh or eighth day the desire for iced water has passed entirely away and doesn’t return except in case of illness. People generally regard a man who refuses any of the customary matutinal beverages with the most extreme astonishment; when he declines coffee, they open their eyes; when he refuses tea, they begin to murmur; and when he also denies cocoa, they drop everything and look intently at him, as though they expected to discover some visible proof of his abstinence. “Why, but your health,” these people cry; “every one needs something hot in the morning.” This is quite false, even in winter weather, as anyone can prove to one’s own satisfaction by shunning so strong a stimulant as coffee for a fortnight and taking only water at breakfast; nearly everybody would feel great benefit from such a course in less than a week.

One would think that long-voyage ship-masters would grow to detest salt and dried meats and tinned vegetables, but they do not; and Captain Scruggs affirms that after one or two good “feeds” of fresh meat ashore after every voyage he wants to return to his salt beef; and I have yet to see the captain or mate who preferred the finest pressed tongue and canned corned beef to ordinary salt junk; they cling to it with a truly wonderful pertinacity.

The captain detailed to us last evening the ingenious method of loading coal at Newcastle, Australia. A ship there hauls in close to the pier, along the edge of which extends a railway track. A train of coal-cars is then backed down on the wharf, each car holding five tons. They are then uncoupled, a hydraulic crane lifts each one silently from the track, swings it over a given hatch, the bottom drops automatically, precipitating the coal into the hold, and the car is then swung back again and placed on the rails, and another takes its place. The same method is now or was once employed at Newport, Wales.

In the United States chutes are in general favor for loading colliers, especially in the coastwise trade, which is conducted by means of fore-and-aft schooners, some of which are as large as many ships. The “W. B. Palmer,” for instance, registers about two thousand tons, with a carrying capacity of thirty-five hundred, equal to that of the “Hosea Higgins,” while several range well over fifteen hundred registered tons. In spite of the encroachments of steam, these mammoth schooners seem to more than hold their own, as the fleet is constantly being increased. Ten years ago a vessel like the “Governor Ames,” or any of the Randalls, paid from twenty to twenty-five per cent., though the profits are now probably somewhat reduced. The “Ames” has loaded twenty-five hundred tons of coal at Norfolk in nine hours, which is the best work on record, as this included trimming, and everything else, all ready for sea. This phenomenal speed was attained by simultaneously working the four hatches, rivers of coal continuously sliding into the hold through the chutes. At Aden and Port Said the steamers are coaled entirely by hand in quite an interesting manner: A lighter of coal is secured alongside a steamer, aboard of which is a swarm of black men, mostly Kroumen, each with a shallow, wicker basket as large as a dish-pan. As soon as the lighter is made fast two cargo ports are opened in the steamer’s hull, one forward and one abaft the bunkers. The men then fill their baskets, which they carry upon their heads, and march in single file through the forward port, empty their baskets as they pass the bunkers without pausing, and issue from the after-opening into the lighter, where a freshly-filled basket awaits each. So great is the number of men that a solid black stream passes through the steamer; and though each basket holds but twenty pounds of coal, it is loaded into the bunkers at the rate of one hundred tons per hour. On our return from India in a P. and O. steamer through the Red Sea we coaled thus at Aden, by electric light; the weather was drizzly (itself a curiosity), and when the moisture condensed on the naked, sooty backs of the Kroumen, they appeared as though clad in a mail of sparkling jet; and as they maintained a dismal chant throughout the process, the whole scene resembled a picture from the land of gnomes and pixies. Latitude, 35° 50′ north; longitude, 139° 20′ west.

+September 11+

The winter of our discontent is now at its height. Vainly do we endeavor to make easting; we cannot, for the wind for a long time has been at northeast instead of between north and west, as it should be. At four this morning, exasperated beyond endurance, I heard the skipper growl to the mate, “We’ll let her go round, anyway; maybe we’ll fetch Cape San Lucas.” We did make good an easterly course for a while, but at five we broke off to east-southeast, which, with the variation, was southeast three-quarters east, a preposterous course; so we went around again at eight, and are still pegging away on the starboard tack, making good north by west, and only twenty miles south of ’Frisco.

Every opportunity the dour Scot has for conversation now he embraces. At seven last evening, sitting on the main-hatch, he said, “I’ll bet you never heard what ‘Long John’ (Pettersen) said to the mate one night off Cape Horn; ’twas that night when we had the worst snow-squalls. I dunno what the row was about, but Mr. Goggins called John up on the poop and began to blackguard him; then he let him have it once or twice in the face about as hard as I ever saw, and was just goin’ to kick him down the poop-ladder, when down jumps Long John on the main-deck, turns around and yells, ‘You come down here and I’ll break yer ---- ---- neck!’ and he’d ’a done it, too. What did Mr. Goggins do? Walked aft and looked into the binnacle. ‘That settles you in my mind, me buck,’ says I to meself. I don’t believe he had a right to hit John, for, if I do say so, he’s the willingest sailor I ever had to do with; but when John dared him to come down off the poop---- Well, that’s the sort o’ stuff the mate’s made of; he hasn’t got the sand of a worm. But look, sir, I want to tell ye somethin’ more about the Australian packets. The best and finest voyage I ever had in all me life was in one o’ those ships, the ‘Loch Rannoch.’” (I love to hear MacFoy roll out his sonorous Scottish names.) “We had a hundred and eighteen passengers, most o’ them, of course, in the ’tween-decks, which was fitted up wi’ bunks for ’em. Oh! but we had the fun that passage, though the rules are strict, just like in the navy, and well they need be. The emigrants can’t go either forrad or aft o’ certain limits, all lights are out at eight in the evenin’, no smokin’ after that hour, and in heavy weather none o’ them are allowed on deck. In the Southern Ocean, runnin’ our eastin’ down, the hatches were battened for two weeks, and all the air the people got was thro’ the ventilators. When such emigrants get to Melbourne they have to report at Government House, and things are fixed so they can pay their passage-money in instalments. The men are generally a pretty decent, well-conducted lot; but the women,--oh, Lord! the women! Some o’ them’s amazons, and that’s a fact. I remember one that we had on board had the whole ship in a hurrah till one day Cap’n Skene ordered her aft to talk to her. I mind the time well: the cap’n, a fat, short, little man in blue and brass buttons wi’ podges on his shoulders, as vain as a turkey, but a good seaman, was talkin’ to a couple o’ first-class passengers when this lassie was led aft, and he turned with a frown to size her up like. ‘Well, mutton-face, who’re ye lookin’ at?’ says she; and then, without givin’ him time for a word, she bawled at him, ‘D’ye know what I think o’ you? You’re no more good than a hoot down a dumb-waiter shaft.’ She said she was no bloomin’ sailor, and she’d have the run o’ the ship if she liked; and, will you believe it, they had to put the irons on her, she got that bad. We used to have great singin’ in the dog-watches. Man, ’twould ha’ done yer heart good to see us sailors a-sittin’ on the forecastle-head, thirty of us, and pretty soon we’d start a chanty and keep it up for ten minutes; and no sooner would we stop than a score of emigrants amidships would take it up, the women’s and men’s voices soundin’ fine together, till it was most as good as a concert. You’d better believe it, though, that it takes strict discipline to keep a hundred and fifty people in order for three months.”

“See here, MacFoy,” said I, when he had finished. “I want you to answer me a straight question; is this a hard ship on the men?”

“Why, no, of course it’s not,” he answered.

“Well, Mr. Rarx told me that once, but I didn’t know whether to believe him or not,” said I.

“I can just tell you, she’s the quietest Yankee ship _I_ ever sailed in,” observed David; “why, there’s been no blood flyin’ at all to amount to much. The men can’t make it out; there hasn’t one o’ them been clouted now goin’ on three weeks. But I can tell you why it is; it’s all on account o’ you and your wife. The old man won’t let out before ye, but I’ve often seen him hold on tight to himself and just swear instead o’ knockin’ the feller end-wise. Yes, Mr. Rarx was right when he told ye this was an easy ship.” Latitude, 37° 18′ north; longitude, 139° 50′ west.

+September 12+

Hurrah for California! Hurrah for the north wind! Our bowsprit is at last pointing towards the brown crags of the Golden Gate. At the change of the watch at midnight we heard the captain sing out, “All hands on deck; tack ship.” A few moments later came “Put your hellum down”; and a moment afterward he called out “Hellum’s a-lee”; yet another minute or two and “Maintop-sail haul” split the air. A dead silence followed as the men cast off the braces, and then the heavy yards clattered noisily around, followed by the agreeable sound of ropes running over patent sheaves (always pronounced shivs); and finally, “Let go and haul” went ringing forward, the head-yards swung round, and in ten minutes more the ship was braced up on the port tack, heading somewhat to the northward of east. All continued to go well, and we are now doing seven knots.

At 10.30 this +A.M.+, as we were watching the mate reeve a new log-line on the “cherub,” I heard Kelly at the wheel say “Sst, sst,” and looking where he pointed, lo! a sail appeared well above the horizon on the lee bow. The glasses resolved her into a three-masted fore-and-aft schooner on the starboard tack; and we presently perceived that she was rigged with pole-masts and a spike bowsprit, being the first vessel of the sort I ever saw. It makes a very serviceable rig, not so picturesque as fidded topmasts and slender jib-boom, but powerful and able looking, which count for more in a seaman’s eye than æsthetic beauty.

Before long it became apparent that if neither of us shifted the helm there would be a collision; and as we were on the port tack, we should be the one to alter our course; but then the other vessel was only a schooner, so this would never enter the mind of a square-rigger skipper. Sure enough, although the other had the right of way, she shifted her wheel and we passed across her bows, not more than a cable’s length away. She was the “Sequoia,” of San Francisco, three hundred and twenty-five tons, and was probably bound up to Puget Sound from a southern Californian port. Observe how hard it is to make northing as well as easting here at this season, when vessels are obliged to stand off shore twenty degrees in order to reach up, and the “Sequoia” hadn’t tacked ship yet to fetch in. I never before saw a fore-and-aft schooner a thousand miles off shore, though there are small two-masters that trade between Newfoundland and Spain, and between Boston and the Bight of Benin.

As we passed the “Sequoia,” all hands aboard of her crowded to the side to see us; and we probably made a splendid picture as we swept by, only two or three hundred yards away, under all possible canvas. The captain and mate declared that her name was pronounced “Sequina”; ship-masters often have the most remarkable pronunciations even for well-known ports and landmarks, and they cling to them with dogged tenacity.

Last night we had another new dish for supper,--cream toast. This sounds odd, I expect, but it was simply delicious; it is true that, as in the case of the rarebits the other evening, the bread was not all that could be desired; but by using _unsweetened_ condensed Swiss cream, thinned a little with water, it proved to be a most savory dish, though an expensive one for the ship, as an entire can has to be used each time. In truth, if made thus, it tastes far better than if fresh milk is used, as the great fault with ordinary milk toast lies in its flatness and insipidity; but the Swiss cream, being very rich and perfectly pure, is eminently adapted to this purpose. It sticks in my mind that this ought to be a hint for housewives.