Chapter XII

THE MATE'S WORK (IN A SAILING SHIP)--_continued_.

Finding that this log-book business takes me farther than I anticipated, I judged it best to break off the last chapter somewhat abruptly, since I find that the average reader is not partial to long chapters, and I have rigidly limited mine to eight pages of manuscript.

A log-book is popularly supposed to be (and certainly should be) an absolutely truthful record of day-to-day happenings, of the ship's progress, and of the weather conditions. And while there is no room for literary ability, there is no doubt that ideal log-book keeping is a fine art. In the small space at disposal, to state succinctly what has occurred, rigidly excluding the irrelevant, but carefully noting everything that is of importance for owners, underwriters, or lawyers to know--this is an accomplishment by no means general, and one that might be more carefully cultivated than it is. For it is only stating the baldest fact to declare that no day passes at sea wherein there is nothing worthy of record. The loss to literature and science, through the lamentable habit of scamping log-book remarks, has been incalculable, while the loss to the individuals themselves is equally incapable of assessment. Remembering how splendid a training it is for any one to record, as he roams about the world, all that he possibly can that he sees of interest, one must be filled with regret that this practice is so seldom carried on. If it were, the mate's log-book would be a mine wherein might be found much fine gold--there is no room for dross. And the habit, growing by what it fed upon, would soon compel an ardent observer to keep a private log-book, where he could enter those things for which the ship's log-book afforded no room, and the result would be educational and refining in the highest degree.

I have seen log-books like this. One I remember even now, with the keenest delight, kept by the third mate of a large ship in which I made a voyage before the mast from London to China and back. This gentleman, besides writing a very neat hand, was an artist, and wherever it was possible he decorated his book with little sketches. Landscapes especially attracted him, of course; but passing ships, birds, porpoises, fish, deck scenes, fronds of fucus or gulf-weed, were all utilized, and the result was a book beyond price. As he did a little every day, there was no sense of labour attached to it; yet the finished work gave the impression of a stupendous amount of work having been spent upon the result. I do not know what became of that young man, but I am prepared to hear that, if he lived, he rose to the top of his profession in a very short time. For, as might have been expected, he was no less keen about his duties than he was in his observations and in his efforts to record them. He loved the sea and all that belonged to it, and, in return for that love, the sea was to him an untiring teacher as well as a faithful friend.

Another gentleman I know always carried a camera with him, and ornamented his log-book with well-developed snapshot photographs, in this way interpreting his keen remarks upon things in a wonderful way, although his book lacked the artistic grace and finish of the other. Perhaps it may be said that, looking at this matter from a literary point of view, as well as from that of the sailor who has forsaken the sea, I am laying too much stress upon it, and that, after all, it is the sailor-man that is wanted in a mate, and not a bookworm. Such a way of putting the matter is, I maintain, manifestly unfair. I admit that a man may be super-excellent in all that pertains to the working of his ship, and yet be unable to keep a log as it should be kept; but, on the other hand, I am sure that it will be seldom found that a mate who keeps a good log is a bad sailor-man. The efficient officer will not be less but more efficient, if to his capacity for work he brings the seeing eye and the imaginative brain. And, like all other mental or physical faculties, this faculty of observation will improve continually by being exercised, and add to the stature of the inner man, making him more complete. Besides, how immensely it will add to his enjoyment of life. His ideas will be enlarged, his capacity for enjoyment will widen; and instead of being, as so many otherwise good seamen are, discontented with his lot, and looking forward anxiously to the time when he shall look his last upon the solemn wideness of the sea, he will find his days all too short for the full appreciation of the pleasures that will crowd into them.

There is, of course, another side to the question, and it applies almost exclusively to the fine seamen that are reared in America and the British North American colonies. Strangely enough, these splendid men do not profit as they might be expected to do by the facilities for education provided in their go-ahead country. It would seem as if they thought that it was necessary for a man of action to coarsen himself; to become--I say it without any intention of giving offence--more or less of a ruffian. The quiet, firm authority which marks the native-born gentleman does not appeal to them. The ideal Yankee or "Blue-nose" mate is a splendid seaman, with a voice of brass and a fist of iron. When work is afoot he may be heard all over the ship, and it is impossible to conceive of him being a silent, reserved, and thoughtful man. In the practice of seamanship this plan seems to work well. I shall never forget while lying in Hong Kong harbour a fine American ship, the _Colorado_, coming in one evening. We had done work for the day, and were smoking the after-supper pipe on the forecastle head. Therefore we were keenly observant of the doings of the newcomer, and with that minute admiration of smartness possessed by all seamen, even the laziest, we watched her. She came grandly up to her moorings close to us, amidst a very hurricane of roaring orders, and presently was securely moored. Then, instead of furling sails and coiling up ropes, as would have been the case with an English ship, the crew began to strip the yards of the sails and stop up the running-gear. The mate was ubiquitous. His tremendous tones reverberated over the quiet harbour incessantly, weighted by the weird profanity affected by American seamen. The men flew from spar to spar, sails descended magically, were seized, stopped up, and stowed away immediately. Before it was quite dark the ship was in as complete harbour trim as if she had been anchored a week, and even the few sea-marks upon her outside had been carefully removed. Then, and not till then, were the hard-driven crew permitted to seek the forecastle and rest from their labours. And although every one of our crew were loud in their condemnation of the "infernal nigger-drivin'," as they called it, they did not withhold their admiration of the consummate smartness of the whole business, and added in chorus: "Yes, but y' sh'd see th' grub them fellows hev got ter go below ter. When a man gits 'nough t' eat 'ee don' mind workin'." It is conceivable that the splendid officer who thus made things fly could hardly write his own name, since it is the good sailor-man an American skipper looks for, not a gentleman. More than that, I'm afraid the more "bucko" he is the better, from the skipper's point of view. To be quiet and reserved is decidedly against him. I was once in an American ship where the skipper was old--too old to go to sea really, although he had no doubt been a smart man in his day. He shipped a mate in London who was an Englishman, and had commanded some first-rate English ships. As far as I can remember, he was a good seaman, although a little rusty from having been long in command. But he certainly was a gentleman, and he had not been on board a week before the "old man" hated him with an intensity of fervour that was almost comical to see, simply because he could not roar, neither could he kick. I heard the "old man" say to him one day, "See here, Mr. Small, I hain't no use fer a man as mate of my ship that creeps aroun' 's if he wuz dum 'n paralytic. For God's sake, try an' hustle them squarheds some, 'r we shain't get t' Melbun this fall." Yet the ship was well handled; no thanks, I am bound to say, to the mate's quietness, but to the traditions of the American Merchant Service, which have been followed and improved upon by the Blue-nose, and may be summed up in the following words of the Yankee mate to his crew: "W'en I say 'walk,' I want ye t' run; w'en I say 'run,' I want ye t' fly." And also the typical words of the mate of the lumber-carrying ship to his crew: "Here, knock off work and carry deals." To their prayer for a little rest he says, in tones of bitterest scorn, "Rest! Rest when you're dead."

But enough, perhaps, of this ruthless side of smart men's characters. Let us return to the mate's duties again. He is responsible for the due shipment and delivery of the cargo. In a vessel where his whole time may be given up to the duty of tallying (counting) it in, this is all very well; but when, as often happens, he has many other duties to attend to simultaneously, and must therefore trust to others, he often finds himself in difficulties. I speak feelingly, having once loaded government stores in London for Zanzibar, and, being unable to watch both hatches at once, I was obliged to delegate the tallying forward to some one else. When I came to sign the bill of lading, I found a serious discrepancy. My assistant reported having taken in six dozen ash oars, but I found that the bill of lading specified eight dozen. Now, these oars had all been stowed away as they were shipped, so that to get at them again meant much work. The officials stuck to their bill, of course, and I wasn't sure. So I signed the bill "in dispute," and bore about with me all the passage out the dread of being called upon to pay for two dozen oars at about eight shillings apiece, or about two months' wages. As soon as I arrived at Zanzibar, I went to the ship's steward of H.M.S. _London_, to whom the goods were consigned, and asked him to tell me how many oars he wanted from me. He replied, "Six dozen," and I was happy. Yet those bills of lading had been signed and countersigned at Deptford by at least six different officials, each of whom had left it to "the other fellow."

Yes, the care of cargo, often of vast value, is doubtless one of the most responsible of all the duties of a mate. At the same time, it is one which he performs with wonderful accuracy and satisfaction to all concerned, on the whole, especially when it is considered under what varied conditions the work must be done: in open roadsteads, on storm-beaten shores, in foreign harbours, pestered by all the motley crew who, in mysterious ways, make a living out of ships, and must of necessity come to the mate first; in ports where, in addition to keeping an overseeing eye upon the never-ceasing work of the ship, he is worried by his crew continually dodging ashore, getting drunk, and returning abusive. And the lower down the scale of ships his position is, the harder his work must necessarily be, since he can get less help, while his responsibility remains the same.

All the ship's stores are also under his charge, and it is his duty to so husband them that they shall last the voyage, yet see that their expenditure is conducted on such lines as to produce the best effects. And if he succeeds in this onerous duty, he may have the supreme satisfaction of hearing the ship's husband say, when he comes on board upon the ship's arrival home, "Good day, Mr. Brown; your ship looks very well," which naturally makes him feel that his labour has not been all in vain, especially if, as has been my own experience, he himself has not only contributed mind, but muscle, to the desired result.

He has many temptations. Interested touts will come aboard, veiling their real intentions under a mask of _bonhomie_, and invite him to dissipations ashore; will offer him money out of pure affection for him, of course, but with a suggestion that he shall hold their axes to the grindstone. And if he be strictly honest, he will often find that his honesty must be not only its own reward, but in many cases it will be a serious loss to him.

I have never been able to get over an experience I had in Rotterdam. I came home mate of a barque from Mexico with a cargo of mahogany. Unfortunately, I had joined the ship in Barbadoes, finding that the skipper and the bo'sun (we carried no second mate) were on exceedingly intimate terms. Anxious to please, and looking forward to passing for master, I said nothing about this queer state of things, not even when the skipper and bo'sun went off day after day shooting, leaving me to get the cargo in, keep things going generally, and between whiles hunt along the beaches for derelict logs, saw them up, and bring the pieces on board for broken stowage. Owing to my placable disposition, and partly, I suppose, to my cowardly fears of a "row," there was peace on board throughout the voyage. We duly arrived in Rotterdam, and were boarded by a gang of touts after "shakings," tailors' orders, etc. One Jewish gentleman was specially attentive to me, knowing that we carried an enormous number of pieces of mahogany, which were the perquisites of the officers. He wanted to buy them, and while he did not wish to bias me in any way, he was anxious to give me a five-pound note as a proof of his regard. I refused it, from what I now feel to have been a mistaken sense of duty. The cargo was discharged; my importunate Jewish friend bought the broken stowage at his own price, and then came to me exultant, saying, "You vas fery foolish mans. If you haf dake my vife pounts you vas do nodings wrong. Now _I_ haf my vife pounts, unt you haf nodings." He said more truly than he knew. For my skipper divided the proceeds with the bo'sun, and gave me "nodings," although I had toiled early and late to procure the wood. I have often tried since to console myself with the thought that I did the right thing, but I cannot help an uneasy feeling stealing over me that, after all, I was somewhat of a fool.

Upon another occasion, when mate of a brig that had been fitted with wire rigging in Santos, Brazil, shortly before I joined her, I was much pestered in St. John, N.B., by junkmen coming on board wishing to buy the old rope rigging. It was a mystery to me how they got to know of its presence there, but they certainly came swarming around like sea-birds to a dead whale. One man was especially persistent, and at last, in a sort of desperation, said, "Look-a-heah, Mr. Mate, I'll give a hundred dollars for that junk, an' ef ye k'n get the skipper t' take that I'll give you another thutty fur y'rself." I refused with some roughness, and ordered the fellow ashore. My feelings may be imagined when the next day my gentleman appeared triumphantly flourishing an order from the skipper to let him have the rigging, which he had purchased for seventy-five dollars. Knowing my commander's unquenchable thirst, he had laid his plans accordingly; and, after a carouse at the groggery where the skipper was putting up, had induced him to sell the stuff for what was certainly no more than half its value. And even that poor yield never reached the owner's pocket, nor any part thereof.

But the great temptation is drink. It assails the mate in every harbour; and by not yielding to it, while he is taking the only really safe course, he cuts himself off effectually from any society at all. Some fortunate mates find friends in port who can and do invite them to spend their scanty leisure in the midst of pleasant family life ashore. But they are few. The majority of mates must for a season learn to rely upon themselves for society, to be happy although alone, and to find companionship in books and self-culture. It will be remembered that I am now speaking of sailing ships. In steamers the case is very different. The mate can associate with the engineers, and does so, in cargo ships; in passenger vessels he gets rather more company than he wants or is good for him.

And now I must part company with the mate, reluctantly, and with many a backward glance over the long line of fine fellows under whom it has been my privilege to serve. Of all the different positions on board ship that I know of, none is so favourable to the formation of fine characters, none that a man can hold with greater dignity and benefit to himself. He has a scope for his energies that is practically denied to the master; and where he has the good fortune to serve under a man who has not forgotten the days when he himself was mate, and treats his immediate coadjutor as his _mate_, there is no reason why he should not be perfectly happy. I know that it was the happiest time of my own sea life.