The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sea Rovers, by Rufus Rockwell Wilson
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
Title: The Sea Rovers
Author: Rufus Rockwell Wilson
Illustrator: May Fratz
Release Date: December 12, 2013 [EBook #44413]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEA ROVERS ***
Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
THE SEA ROVERS
[Illustration: A GLOUCESTER FISHERMAN]
THE SEA ROVERS
_By_ RUFUS ROCKWELL WILSON
Author of "Rambles in Colonial Byways," etc.
_ILLUSTRATED BY MAY FRATZ_
NEW YORK
B. W. DODGE AND COMPANY
1906
COPYRIGHT, 1906
BY
B. W. DODGE AND COMPANY
New York
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. GLOUCESTER FISHER FOLK 1
II. AN OCEAN FLYER'S CREW 28
III. THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 61
IV. SOLDIERS WHO SERVE AFLOAT 94
V. THE POLICE OF THE COAST 121
VI. THE OCEAN PILOT 149
VII. THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 169
VIII. THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 198
IX. LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHORE 231
X. WHALERS OF THE ARCTIC SEA 254
ILLUSTRATIONS.
FACING PAGE
A GLOUCESTER FISHERMAN--_Frontispiece_
THE CAPTAIN OF AN OCEAN LINER 42
A MAN-OF-WARSMAN 76
AN OFFICER IN THE REVENUE CUTTER SERVICE 128
PILOT SIGNALING A VESSEL 156
A DIVER READY TO DESCEND 180
A LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 214
A LIFE-SAVER ON PATROL 242
THE SEA ROVERS
CHAPTER I
GLOUCESTER FISHER FOLK
A glorious vision is Gloucester harbor, whether seen under the radiant
sun of a clear June morning or through the haze and smoke of a mellow
October afternoon. Gloucester town lies on a range of hills around the
harbor, and fortunate is the man who chances to see it as the background
to a stirring marine picture when on a still summer's morning a fleet of
two or three hundred schooners is putting to sea after a storm,
spreading their white duck against the blue sky and fanning gently
hither and thither, singly or in picturesque groups, before the catspaws
or idly drifting to eastward, stretching in a long line beyond
Thatcher's Island and catching the fresh breeze that darkens the
distant offing. Here the green of their graceful hulls, the gilt
scrollwork on the bows and the canvas on the tall, tapering masts are
reflected as in a mirror on the calm surface; or beyond they are seen
heeling over to the first breath of the incoming sea wind that ruffles
the glinting steel of the sheeny swell, forming as a whole a scene of
inexhaustible variety and beauty.
Such a spectacle gives the stranger fitting introduction to Gloucester,
for from earliest times the men of the gray old town have been followers
of the sea. It was three years after the landing of the Pilgrims at
Plymouth that the first Englishman settled on Cape Ann, at the place now
called Gloucester, which took its name from the old English cathedral
city whence many of its settlers had come. America's Gloucester
doubtless seems young to the mother town, which is of British origin and
was built before the Romans crossed from Gaul; but, despite the great
cathedral in the English town and the importance in the clerical world
of the prelates and church dignitaries who found livings there, the
Yankee town was for many years a place of more consequence in the world
of trade and profit than the English Gloucester has ever been.
Founded as a rendezvous where fishermen could cure their fish and fit
out for their trips, in the old days Gloucester in Massachusetts had
fishing and whaling fleets, and her boats not only went out on the Banks
in search of cod, but to the far limits of the North and South Seas they
sailed to bring back rich cargoes of whale oil. Her fleets ventured into
every sea from which profit could be brought, and boys born in the town
or its neighbors three or four generations agone all looked forward to a
half dozen cruises as a matter of course, just as the modern boy knows
that he must go to school and learn to read and write. It was a rough
school to which the youth of Gloucester and Cape Ann went, but it was a
good one. They learned there to be brave and manly, and seafaring
broadened the minds of men who had they stayed at home would have been
sadly provincial and narrow.
Thus the history of Gloucester centers in the fisheries. The yarns most
often told at her firesides are of hairbreadth escapes at sea; her
legends and romances have a flavor of the salt waves about them; her
rugged granite shore is marked with the scenes of memorable shipwrecks
and storms; her town records are the records of fleets that have gone
down on the Banks, of pinks and schooners that have foundered on the
Georges, of heroes that have toiled for their families and fought the
grim battle of life with the fogs, the lightning and the swooping
billows of the sou'wester, and with the ice, the hail and the short,
savage cross seas and terrible blast of the raging nor'wester, while
their children have cried for their absent fathers and their wives have
lain awake through long, dreary nights, burning the light in the window
and straining their eyes to see through the gloom of the storm the long
expected vessel and the beloved forms that perhaps have already gone
down at sea.
The discovery of petroleum struck the Gloucester whaling industry a blow
from which it has never recovered, but the town's fisheries are still in
thriving condition. Four hundred fishing vessels of sufficient
consequence to be registered hail at the present time from Gloucester.
The number of men employed in these vessels, the majority of which are
as speedy and well built as pleasure yachts, is upward of 5,000. Many of
the fishermen are from the British provinces and make excellent skippers
and sailors, while Sweden, Norway and the Azore Islands contribute a
large number, who are, as a rule, orderly, capable and industrious. They
fare well as compared with the fishermen of other days or with men now
before the mast of the merchant service, and fresh pies, biscuits,
fowls, eggs and like delicacies are frequently seen in the forecastle of
a Gloucester banker.
The mackerel fishermen bound for the Georges Banks usually leave
Gloucester as early as the last of February, but those bound to other
waters with the cod, halibut and haddock fishermen do not start until
later. The cod are caught chiefly on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland,
where the watch lights of the Gloucester men twinkle in the midnight
gloom in company with those of the French fishers of Miquelon and St.
Pierre. Mackerel are also caught in the Bay of St. Lawrence, off Cape
North, Sidney and the Magdalen Islands, where the fishermen often linger
until late in the fall and are sometimes assailed by heavy gales among
those inhospitable shores, without sea room, on a lee shore and no safe
port to run to. The haddock and halibut are oftener caught on Brown's
Bank and within the waters of New England. There are several modes of
fitting out for the fisheries, but the one most often followed is for
the owner of a vessel to charter her to ten or fifteen men on shares, he
finding the stores and the nets and the men paying for the provisions,
hooks and lines and for the salt necessary to cure their proportion of
the fish.
The crew of a banker is usually composed of a dozen to eighteen men,
including the skipper, or captain, who exercises no direct control over
the others, but is recognized by them as the principal personage on
board. The average Gloucester fisherman is a splendid though rough
specimen of an American. You may know him by his free-and-easy manner
and his swinging gait. His costume when at work is a red or blue flannel
shirt of the thickest material, admirably adapted to absorb and exclude
the chilling fogs in which he passes so much of his time, a heavy
tarpaulin or sou'wester, generally his own handiwork, pilot-cloth
trousers and heavy cowhide boots completing his attire. His face
bespeaks a serious but cheerful and contented spirit, the result of a
philosophical, half careless dependence upon luck.
Generous and fearless in his address, he is of simple and economical
habits and, like most men of large stature, almost peculiar in a placid
good humor which seldom leaves him. Always ready for any fortune, the
fisherman tries to look upon the bright side of life and draw whatever
there may be of pleasure from his hazardous calling. But among the
bankers are occasional roystering, devil-may-care fellows, whose never
ending practical jokes and offhand manner serve to enliven the little
vessel and dispel the tedium of the voyage to the Banks.
The Grand Bank extends north and south about six hundred miles and east
and west some two hundred, lying to the southeast of Newfoundland. Its
shape cannot be easily defined, but the form denoted by the soundings
give it somewhat the resemblance of New Holland. To the southward it
narrows to a point, presenting abrupt edges, which in some places drop
into almost fathomless water. This, as well as the adjacent banks of St.
Pierre, Bank Querau and the Flemish Cap, abound with fish of various
kinds, which at stated seasons adopt this as a shoaling place or grand
rendezvous. The most numerous of these are the cod, which thrive here so
amazingly that the unceasing industry of many hundreds of vessels
through two centuries has in no way diminished their numbers. The
fishery is not confined to the Banks, but extends to the shores and
harbors of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton. The fish affect
sandy bottom. In winter they retire into deep water, but in March and
April reappear and fatten rapidly from the time of their arrival on the
Banks.
Fishing begins as soon as the smacks reach the Banks. In other years all
cod were caught by means of handlines, and some fish are still taken
that way. The most, however, are now taken by trawls, which were
introduced about 1860 and were first used by the French. A trawl
consists of a line some 3,000 feet in length, to which are attached
short ones about a yard long, on each of which is a hook. The short
lines are placed about six feet apart, so that each trawl has about 500
hooks. Attached to each end of the line by a rope is a buoy, sometimes
only an empty powder keg or a mackerel kit. In the head of the buoy is a
pole three feet long, upon which is a small flag to attract the
attention of the owner when in search of it. To each end of the line is
fastened a small anchor.
The hooks are baited with squid, herring or other small fish, if they
can be secured. To bait a trawl requires from an hour and a half to two
hours. When it is ready it is placed in a tub made of a half barrel. The
long line is coiled up in the center and the bait lies next to the sides
of the tub. One man uses from two to six trawls, which are usually
visited in a dory very early each morning and once or twice during the
day. When one buoy is reached the end of the trawl to which it is
attached is drawn up, the hooks examined and the fish taken off. By
means of trawls a man may catch more in a single night than by a week's
hard work with hand lines.
Each man keeps tally of his fish as he hauls them in to the dory by
cutting out the tongues--the number of tongues giving the account of the
fish taken. As soon as the day's catch has been taken aboard the
schooner the crew divide themselves into throaters, headers, splitters,
salters and packers, and the operation known as splitting and salting
begins. The business of the throater is to cut with a sharp pointed
knife across the throat of the fish to the bone and rip open the bowels.
He then passes it quickly to the header, who with a sudden wrench pulls
off the head and tears out the entrails, passing the fish instantly to
the splitter. At the same time separating the liver, he throws the
entrails overboard. The splitter with one cut lays the fish open from
head to tail and with another cut takes out the backbone. After
separating the sounds, which are placed with the tongues and packed in
barrels as a great delicacy, the backbone follows the entrails
overboard. Such is the amazing quickness of the operations of heading
and splitting that a good workman will often decapitate and take out the
entrails and backbone of six fish in a minute. After the catch has been
washed off with buckets of pure water from the ocean the fish are passed
to the salters and thence to the packers in the hold. The task of the
salters is a most important one, as the value of the voyage depends
upon their care and judgment. They take the fish one by one, spread
them, back uppermost, in layers, distributing a proper quantity of salt
between each. Packing in bulk, or "kench," as the fishermen term it, is
intrusted only to the most experienced hands.
When the day's catch has been cared for in the manner just described the
watch is set and all but two men turn in. These watches are regulated in
such a manner that every man is on deck his part of the night hours.
Breakfast is served at 3 o'clock in the morning, and off the men go
again to their trawls. If it is foggy dinner is announced by the report
of a ten-pound gun from the schooner. It is then about 10 o'clock. After
dinner the fishers are away again and back about 4, when the fish which
have been caught are split and salted as on the previous day. The only
thing that relieves the monotony on board a Gloucester fishing smack is
stormy weather or the coming of Sunday. This day is kept holy.
Leaving the Grand Banks, let us cross over to the Georges Banks, where
in the months of spring and summer we shall find Gloucester hand-liners,
with crews of from eight to ten men fishing for mackerel. Every man is
at the rail, as he fishes from the deck of the vessel. The tide runs so
strong that nine-pound leads are necessary. Attached to each lead is a
horse, a slingding, or spreader, and a pair of large hooks. Sometimes
when fishing in thirty fathoms of water the great strength of the tide
forces the men to pay out from sixty to ninety fathoms of line before
the lead touches bottom. In front of each man, driven into the rail, is
a wooden pin. This is termed the soldier, and it has an important duty.
Every inch of the line is hauled across it. Were it not for these rail
pins the lines would continually be fouled with one another.
When a smack's crew chance upon a fresh school of mackerel their hooks
have only to touch the water to be seized and swallowed. No time is lost
in unhooking, but each fisherman hauls as fast as his hands can move
until the fish appears in sight, when with one motion he is swung
quickly over the rail into a barrel or heap and so dexterously that the
hook disengages itself. When the fish continue plentiful the scene is a
most exciting one. The long, lithe bodies of the fishermen eagerly
bending over their work, the quick, nervous twitching at the line,
followed by the steady strain, the rapid hand-over-hand haul that brings
the prize to the surface, the easy swing with which he describes a
circle in the air as the victor slaps him into his barrel and the
flapping of the captives about deck, mingling with the merry laughter of
the excited crew, make it a sport to which the efforts of the trout
angler or the fowler with his double-barreled shotgun are but puny and
insignificant in comparison.
Time was when the use of the hook and line made mackerel catching the
very poetry of fishing, but in recent years the purse seine has come
into general use. Mackerel seining, however, is an interesting process.
A large seine is two hundred and fifty fathoms in length and about
fifteen or twenty fathoms deep. The school is sighted from the masthead
and the direction in which the fish are swimming is noted. A boat is
manned and sets out to head off the school. Two men in a dory hold one
end of the purse line which runs through rings at the bottom of the
seine. A circle is described by the boat, the seine being thrown out at
the same time. When the boat meets the dory the other end of the line is
taken into the boat. Then the seines are drawn together, forming a large
bag. The fish are inside and it is necessary to gather as much of the
net into the boat as possible. The fish are then in what is termed the
bunt. This is the strongest part of the seine. The vessel sails up close
to the boat, picks up the outside corks and the bailing begins, a dip
net that will hold a barrel being used for this purpose, after which the
fish are cleaned, salted and stowed in the hold. Vessels have been known
to take 300 barrels in one haul, but the average catch nowadays is about
twenty-five barrels.
When the mackerel fleet fished with hand lines the pursuit of this
industry was exciting in the extreme. Often when massed together in
great fleets the vessels carried away their mainbooms, bowsprits,
jibbooms and sails by collision in what was really a hand-to-hand
encounter and when the maneuver of lee-bowing was the order of the day.
A fleet of sixty odd sail descry a schooner whose crew are heaving and
pulling their lines. The glistening scales of the fish sparkle in the
sunlight. The fleet as one vessel turns quickly on its heel and there is
a neck-and-neck race for the school. The first that arrives rounds to
under the lee of the fortunate craft, the crew heaving the toll bait
with lavish hands.
The new arrival now shakes up into the wind close under the lee bow of
the fish-catching vessel. The fish forsake the latter and fly at the
lines of the newcomer. Now comes up the balance of the fleet, and each
vessel on its arrival performs the same maneuver and lee-bows its
predecessor. Those to windward, forsaken by the fish, push their way
through their neighbors, fill away and round to under the bows of those
to leeward. The hoarse bawling of the skippers to their crews, the
imprecations of those who have been run down and left disabled, rend the
air, while the crews, setting and lowering sail and hauling fish, freely
exchange with each other language not to be found in any current
religious work. In these latter days, however, seines, as before stated,
have taken the place of line, and lee-bowing, with its attendant
excitement and danger, has passed to the limbo of forgotten things.
Fishing smacks bound for the Georges, the Western, or Banks of
Newfoundland may be gone three or four weeks, bringing their fish to
market on ice, or they may be absent from four to six months, dressing
and salting their fish on board. But, be the voyage long or short, it is
a joyous and moving spectacle to see a schooner come into Gloucester
from the Banks loaded to the scuppers and packed to the beams with
codfish. The wharf is lined with eager spectators as she glides up to
her dock with a leading wind. The foresail comes in and the mainsail is
lowered and handed by a crew weatherbeaten and clumsily limber in heavy
Cape Cod seaboots, sou'westers and oiljackets. Then the jib downhaul is
manned and a number of boys, longing for the day when they can go to the
Banks, catch the hawsers and make her fast to the pier fore and aft.
Amidst a storm of questions asked and answered on both sides, the crew
range themselves on board and on shore with one-tined pitchforks and
proceed to unload with the rapidity and regularity of machinery. The men
in the hold heave the fish on deck, whence they are tossed to the wharf.
Another turn of the pitchfork lands them under the knife, their heads
and tails come off and they are split open in a second and are then
salted and spread upon flakes to dry. These flakes are frames covered
with triangular slats and are about seven feet wide and raised three
feet above the ground. At Gloucester they may be seen not only upon the
wharves, but also in all vacant places between the houses and even in
the front dooryards, so that at every turn the smell of codfish regales
the passerby.
But there is a sadder, sterner side to the life of the Gloucester
fishermen than which I have been describing. Danger is their constant,
death their familiar, companion, and each season has its sorrowful story
of storm, wreck and disaster. Truth to tell, the perils of the trawler
are even greater than those of the soldier in battle. He is often four
or five miles from his vessel, when suddenly the thick fog closes in
upon him and he is lost, perhaps to row for days in hopeless search,
without food, drink or compass. He may die of exhaustion or perhaps be
picked up at length by a passing vessel and taken to some distant port.
More than thirty lives were lost in this way in the summer of 1894.
Although horns are blown in warning, a whole crew is sometimes sunk in
an instant by some steamer on its way across the ocean. Of all the men
lost on the Banks during the last twenty years more than two-thirds have
been out in dories attending trawls.
Fierce, too, are the storms which sweep the Banks in winter. Then the
wind is bitter cold, deck and mast and sails are clad in ice, and many a
crew are never heard of more. The Georges in fair weather is not
dangerous fishing ground, but in a gale it defies both skill and
strength. The shallow water is churned into rolling mountain waves which
almost sweep the ocean bed. At such times the 125-ton fishing vessels,
which usually anchor close together when fishing, are at the mercy of
the elements. It is impossible for the anchors to get a firm grip and
they are sometimes dragged for miles. This, in fact, is the greatest
danger of the business. Not infrequently in a heavy gale two or three
vessels will drift together, their cables become tangled until they are
unmanageable and in short order vessels and crew will be engulfed. Some
years ago thirty schooners, with 150 sailors aboard, were lost in this
manner in a single gale on the Georges.
Since 1830 nearly 700 fishing vessels sailing from Gloucester have been
lost and upward of 2,700 men have perished. The winter of 1882 was one
long to be remembered in Gloucester, for in less than two months more
than a hundred fishermen were lost on the Banks. One of these was Angus
McCloud, than whom no braver man ever found a grave at the ocean's
bottom. Three years before he had been on the Banks in the same vessel
with his brothers, Malcolm and John McCloud. Among their shipmates were
the McDonalds--William, Donald, John and Neal. Their vessel was in the
gale of 1879 on the Banks--a gale the like of which had rarely before
been experienced by the fleet. Thrown over on its beam ends, the little
bark still held to its anchor and finally rode out the gale with her
crew lashed in the rigging. Nearby was another vessel in the same
position, and others were being tossed about to windward and to leeward.
Two poor fellows, washed from one of the former, were swept between the
two vessels that had been knocked down and were not one hundred feet
from either. The crews of these vessels, clinging to the icy rigging,
looked anxiously from one to another to see if any one was bold enough
to attempt a rescue. Angus McCloud cast off the lashings which bound
him, seized a lanyard, made it fast about his waist and stood for a
moment poised on the shroud lashings. Then he sprang boldly into an
advancing wave and was carried toward one of the struggling men. Soon he
had him by his oilskin coat and soon the crew were hauling them in.
Angus assisted in the rescue of another comrade before the gale was
spent and his vessel righted.
Time and again other members of the Gloucester fishing fleet have proved
themselves worthy comrades of Angus McCloud. Several years ago Captain
Mark Lane, now dead, but then skipper of the schooner Edwin, while
homeward bound from the Banks discovered two shipwrecked men on a
half-submerged rock near the Fox Islands, on the Maine coast. It was
midwinter and a heavy gale was blowing, but Captain Lane put his wheel
hard down, brought his vessel up into the wind, hove to under a
close-reefed foresail and told his men they must rescue the sailors on
the rock. It was a perilous undertaking and, as there appeared to be no
chance of a boat living in the sea then running, the crew protested.
"Then I'll go myself," said the skipper. "Stand by, there, lads, to
lower away a boat from the davits!" But the crew relented when they saw
that their captain was determined and two stout fellows drove a dory
over the huge waves to the rock. The men were saved, and a certificate
of the Humane Society of Massachusetts, still treasured by Captain
Lane's family, attests that a careful examination into his conduct had
proved him worthy the recognition of that admirable body.
The experience of the Gloucester fishermen in the winter of 1882 was by
no means an unusual one. In the last twenty years over a thousand of
them have laid their bones on the drifting sands of the fishing banks.
During a hurricane in 1876 on the Banks almost an entire fleet was
disabled or lost and 200 men were drowned. The wind, which had been
blowing a gale from the southeast, veered suddenly to west-northwest.
Skipper Collins of the schooner Howard, one of the vessels that escaped,
had a remarkable experience. His vessel was "hawsed" up by the current,
which set strongly to the southward and nearly at right angles to the
hurricane. He had just time to tie up the clew of his riding sail--a
sort of storm trysail--and lash the bottom hoops together, thus making a
"bag reef," when the hurricane burst with terrific force upon the little
vessel. A heavy sea boarded the schooner and carried off one of the
sailors. Later on, while standing on the bit head of the fife rail and
grasping the riding-sail halyards ready to let it run if necessary, a
ball of lightning burst between the masts and knocked the captain
insensible to the deck, whence he was dragged below by his crew. The
lightning severely burned his right arm and leg and disappeared through
his boots.
During the same storm the schooner Burnham was struck so suddenly and
with such violence by a sea as to turn her bottom up and throw her
skipper, James Nickerson, and his crew, who were below, upon the
ceiling, where they lay sprawling for a moment until the vessel righted
herself. There was one man on deck when she was struck, Hector McIsaac.
He saw the wave coming and leapt into the shrouds. With his legs locked
in the ratlines he went down into the foaming sea, and when the crew
came on deck there was Hector McIsaac still clinging to the shrouds.
Captain Nickerson was subsequently lost in a dory from the Bellerophon
on the Banks, and Hector McIsaac went down in the Nathaniel Webster in
1881, together with his brother.
Everybody who lives in Gloucester is interested in the fishing industry,
and so it falls out that the city's life is about equally made up of
intervals of joy and sorrow. When summer opens the general tone of
public feeling is bright and hopeful, but at the end of the season, as
the fishers come in, some with flags at half-mast, others bearing
fateful news, the whole town is depressed. All the residents show a
concern in the sailors who are lost and in the welfare of their
families. Even citizens of fortune who suffer no personal bereavement
have been brought closely into touch with the poor fishing families
through repeated tragedies at sea. The scenes in the fishing quarters
during the late fall and winter months when news of death is brought by
almost every returning boat are most pathetic. Sometimes the news comes
with a shock, at others wives and children wait for weeks in anxiety and
never know the details of the fate of their loved ones.
The immediate wants of the families of lost sailors are looked after by
the Gloucester Relief Association. Almost everybody in the town
subscribes to this, rich and poor alike, as well as the sailors living
along the shore and in Nova Scotia, all of whom sail in the Gloucester
vessels. When there is a disaster the nearest relatives of the men lost
receive a sum proportionate to the amount which the subscribers have
paid into the association. In addition, voluntary subscriptions are made
by churches and societies in Gloucester and Boston once a year and
distributed at the time of the annual memorial service in February.
This service held in the city hall of Gloucester is unique in its way.
Everybody in the city takes an interest in it and, with shops closed and
business suspended, the day is one of general mourning. But neither
death nor its solemn reminders can rob the boy born and bred in
Gloucester of hunger for the time when he, too, may hazard life and
fortune on the distant fishing grounds; and gray Mother Ocean, kindly
and cruel by turns, claims him for her own, singing to-day of his
hardihood and to-morrow--chanting his requiem.
CHAPTER II
AN OCEAN FLYER'S CREW
Work on an ocean steamship never ends, for no sooner does she reach her
moorings in New York, Liverpool or Hamburg than preparations begin for
the next voyage. Her decks are holystoned, sprinkled with sand and made
beautifully clean; the outside of her hull, from deck to water line, is
repainted and, if it be the end of a round trip or voyage, all the
exterior paint work receives a new coat, while her sanitary and plumbing
arrangements, her smokestacks, woodwork, spars and rigging are all
carefully examined and overhauled. All this is done by the sailors under
the direction of the boatswain, who reports each day to the officer on
duty and receives instruction as to the work to be performed.
Meanwhile an overhauling equally minute and thorough is going on in the
engineer's department, which includes not only the engines and boilers,
but also the electric-lighting plant of the ship. The work of this
department, however, is so arduous while at sea that officers and men
receive liberty for the entire time the ship remains in port, their
places being taken by a special shore force which remains aboard until
sailing day. One boiler is left untouched to supply power for the
engines that work the electric and refrigerating apparatus, the pumps
and the machinery used in shipping cargo, but all the others as soon as
they have cooled are entered, examined and, if need be, repaired. Each
tube, combustion chamber and furnace receives careful attention;
cylinders, pistons, crankpins and crossheads are gone over one by one,
while the engines are generally overhauled and all the arrangements of
the fireroom inspected. Nor is the steward's department less busy while
in port. All the bed and table linen used during the voyage, many
thousands of pieces, is collected and sent to the company's laundry,
after which all the staterooms are cleaned and put in order and the
fresh supply of linen made ready for the coming voyage.
During a steamship's stay in port the three chief divisions, sailing,
engineer's and steward's, are under the jurisdiction of shore officials
whose officers are on the deck. The sailing department is responsible to
the marine superintendent, the engineer's to the superintending engineer
and the steward's to the port steward. Thus the vessel while in port has
no direct communication with the company's office, the dock
superintendents acting as intermediaries. When stores are sent to the
ship they are addressed to the department for which they are intended.
The port steward controls the direct purchasing of provisions and is
supposed to buy in the cheapest and best market. The marine
superintendent and superintending engineer furnish the other materials
required. Should provisions be found unsatisfactory when received the
chief steward sends them back, and in such action is always upheld by
the port steward. The cargo is in charge of the sailing department and
is received and stowed under the direction of a boss stevedore selected
by the dock superintendent.
Even the fleetest ocean steamships carry considerable cargoes, and to
those unfamiliar with it the process of loading a vessel is a sight full
of interest. On the wharf assorted merchandise by the carload is being
lifted from vans and piled near the ship, and teams by the score are
adding their quota to the immense mass, while on the water side lighters
laden with more merchandise are either fastened to the vessel's side or
anchored close at hand waiting to hoist their contents aboard. Engines
are puffing, ropes are tugging and derricks lifting heavy freight of
every kind to the ship's deck, the orders of the stevedore and the
answers of his men mingling with the general din. Large vessels have
four or five holds and much skill is required to properly stow the cargo
in them, grain, from its compact and dead weight, being mostly reserved
for the center of the vessel, while cured provisions are packed as far
forward and aft as possible for their better preservation from the heat
of the ship's fires. In many vessels carrying passengers as well as
freight the heaviest weight is stowed in the lowest hold; this is to
steady the ship and is called in the argot of the stevedore "stiffening"
the ship. It requires about 1,500 tons to "stiffen" an ocean steamship
of the largest size, and when this is done the hold is battened down and
work begun on the next.
An important feature in the loading of a steamship is her coal. It is
customary to take as high as 200 tons of a surplus over the actual needs
of the voyage, and the bunkers of the vessel are in charge of a special
gang of men. Some vessels load their coal over all, but a majority
receive it through openings at the sides. Large V-shaped pockets,
running direct to the bunkers, are let down on each side and around them
are built stagings on which a couple of men are stationed to dump the
coal from huge buckets hoisted by engines from lighters. On the wharf
side the coal is wheeled in barrows up a shelving gangway and turned
into the bunkers direct. To load a great vessel requires the services
for several days of 125 men, including a boss stevedore and a couple of
foremen and with all the appliances of steam and gearing to assist their
operations. The force is divided into half a dozen or more gangs, each
having its head, who is in communication with the boss stevedore. As the
work is intermittent the men are paid by the hour, and there is a keeper
who does nothing else but take down the time each one is employed.
Certain gangs of longshoremen stick to certain lines, and many of them
have worked nearly all their lives for the same company. When the
loading of a ship is completed a detailed inspection of cargo is made by
one of the officers, and for this reason the boss stevedore is always
careful to prevent slovenly methods on the part of his men, being aware
that in the end he will be the one held responsible for haste or error.
While the cargo is being received and loaded stores for the coming
voyage are also being taken aboard. The supplies for the physical
comfort and necessities of 1,500 persons on a ship can be measured only
by the ton, 30,000 pounds of beef, for instance, being often used on a
single voyage. About 150 tons of water are required for cooking and
drinking, an additional fifty tons being made daily on board by the
evaporators from sea water and used for cleaning purposes. When it comes
to food and drink the ingenuity of the port and ship's stewards is put
fairly to the test. A day or two before the ship leaves port the number
of passengers who will probably sail on it is figured up and the ship's
steward makes up and hands to the port steward a tabulated list of the
supplies needed for the trip, nearly 1,000 articles being named in the
requisition, which includes food and drink in every conceivable form.
The port steward sends his orders to the firms that supply the line and
arranges for the delivery of the goods at certain hours, care being
taken that they shall arrive when the pier is not blocked with wagons
unloading freight. The meats come at a certain hour, the groceries at
another and the spices and so on at another, everything being weighed on
scales at the pier and counted as it goes on board.
The variety of the food supplies required for one of these huge floating
hotels is bewildering. For example, no less than fifteen kinds of cheese
are used, while fish in fully a hundred grades and forms is stowed away.
In the list of fruits, fresh, dried and canned, there are at least 125
varieties, and the same is true of vegetables. The list of supplies,
moreover, must be scanned by the steward again and again, for it will
not do to overlook a single article that may be needed. Here is part of
what is required in the way of supplies when a ship like the Carmania is
crowded: 25,000 to 30,000 pounds of beef, 5,000 pounds of mutton, 2,600
pounds of veal, pork and corned beef; 8,000 pounds of sausage, tripe,
calves' head, calves' feet, sweetbreads and kidneys; 2,000 pounds of
fresh fish, 10,000 clams and oysters, 250 tins of preserved fruit, 200
tins of jam and marmalade, 100 large bottles of pickles and sauces, 500
pounds of coffee, 250 pounds of tea, 250 pounds of potted fish, 300
fresh lobsters, 3,000 pounds of moist sugar, 600 pounds of lump sugar,
500 quarts of ice cream, 3,000 pounds of butter of various grades, 16
tons of potatoes, 5 tons of other vegetables, 15,000 eggs, 1,000
chickens and ducks, and 2,000 birds of different kinds. Lard by the ton
is used and often as many as 140 barrels of flour are consumed.
The departure of an ocean liner from port is a critical moment for each
member of the ship's company. All leaves of absence expire twenty-four
hours before the time for sailing, and this precaution makes it certain
that every man shall be at his post. At 8 o'clock on the morning of
leaving the sea-watches are formally set. The lower fires in the
many-lunged furnaces have been started at 10 o'clock on the previous
night; six hours later the top fires are lighted, and at 6 A. M. the
operation of getting up steam begins, it being always necessary to have
a full pressure of steam at least one hour before sailing time. As the
moment of departure draws nearer, an air of suppressed excitement
pervades the waiting throng, but there is no confusion among those
charged with the ship's conduct and safety. Each officer is at his post,
and knows his duty. The chief officer is stationed on the forward deck
in full view of the captain on the bridge, where the latter with a wave
of his hand indicates just what he wants done. The senior and junior
second officers are on the after deck; the extra second with the captain
on the bridge, and the third and fourth officers at the forward and
after gangways.
Meanwhile, as the minutes wax and wane, winches chatter noisily;
windlasses clink musically; capstans rattle with slacking cables; and
the shrill chanty songs of the docking gang working the warps, answer
the cheery "Yo-heave-oho" of the sailors on the deck. On the bridge with
the silent yet impatient captain lingers a representative of the
company. By and by, after the final instructions have been given, this
person departs, and as he goes over the side the captain, saluting him
with a wave of the hand, gives a quiet order to the first officer. The
wheel is shifted, the capstan reels noisily, and link by link the chain
comes home. At last, after a vicious tug or two on the cable, the ground
is broken, and, dripping with cleansing water from the hose, the anchor,
ring and stock, appears above the foam-streams rippling at the bow. When
the catfall is hooked, the ship swings easily around the jutting pier,
the engines increase their speed, the ensign dips in answer to salutes,
and a long blast from the whistle claims the right of the channel.
Slowly and carefully she picks her way through the shipping that crowds
the harbor, drops her pilot and heads for the open. The voyage has
begun.
With the dropping of the pilot, sea routine is promptly taken up, and
thereafter on the shoulders of the commander rests the preservation of
the ship and the safety of the passengers and crew. Every captain of an
Atlantic liner embodies in his person a shining example of the law of
the survival of the fittest, for there is no short cut to the bridge,
and none but a master seaman ever reaches it. The man who would be
captain cannot crawl through the cabin window. He must fight his way
over the bows, and struggle out of the ruck and smother of the
forecastle, by sturdy buffeting and hard knocks, by the persistent
edging of stout shoulders backed by a strong heart and an active brain.
There is probably not a commander of an ocean liner who has not been
around the world as a common sailor, a mate, and finally a master of a
ship. In fact, it would be difficult if not impossible to get the
command of a transatlantic ship without having first been the captain of
a large sailing vessel. Some of the companies like the Cunard, have a
rule requiring that a candidate for a captaincy shall have served as a
captain somewhere; and only a few years ago a sailor on one of the
largest steamships plying between New York and Liverpool, who had
climbed from the bottom to the high rank of first officer, left the
company with which he had made his progress solely that he might take a
place as captain on a smaller and less important vessel. If he succeeds
in his new berth--and his old employers will watch his course--it is
more than likely that he will be called back in a few years and have a
command given him.
It is the man who knows his business who makes his way to the bridge. No
matter how gruff or unpopular he may be, or what are any of his personal
peculiarities, if he understands his business and knows how to get
smoothly over the sea, he is pretty sure of promotion. A captain,
however, does not obtain on shipboard all the education which makes him
capable of commanding a Lucania or a Paris. There must be much study of
books as well. He must know something of the art of shipbuilding, of
engineering; he must be familiar with the science of meteorology; he
must be a master of the moods of the ocean, the currents and lanes as
discovery has set them forth; he must have the mathematics of navigation
completely under control, and he must have a general knowledge of the
politics and laws of the high seas. Most important of all, he must be a
man of courage and good judgment, for he must govern his crew more
wisely, shrewdly and sternly than a general controls his army, and be
prepared to withstand the attacks of nature's forces with as much skill
and alertness as the leader of an army must show against a surrounding
enemy. His responsibility never ends, not even when he is asleep.
Sometimes the dangers which beset him forbid any attempt at sleep, and
hour after hour the captain must stand upon his high bridge, exposed to
all manner of storms. Often does a commander come into port from a
perilous voyage, during which for two days and nights he has not left
his bridge, except four or five times, and then only for a few minutes
at a time.
There was a time when the captain was a prominent social figure on all
ocean steamships, but this is no longer the case. He may be seen at his
table in the saloon, when the weather is fine, or may be met on deck
occasionally when he is looking over the ship, but at other times he is
generally out of sight, except when he may appear on the bridge. The
chief officer is seen most of all by the passengers. His principal duty
is to look after the daily work of the crew, and he is about the deck
constantly when not inspecting various parts of the ship. He takes an
observation on the bridge with the other officers every day at twenty
minutes before noon, but with that exception is seldom seen there. The
other officers are in sight only when one looks up at the bridge.
Indeed, on some of the newer ships they sleep and mess in quarters of
their own on the shade deck, and, thus are rarely if ever brought in
contact with the passengers.
[Illustration: THE CAPTAIN OF AN OCEAN LINER]
On all the largest steamships there are besides a captain and chief
officer, three second officers, one third and one fourth officer. The
second officers are known as senior second, junior second and extra
second, and each, like the chief officer, is a duly qualified master,
capable of taking the ship around the world if need be. The general duty
of the second officer is the navigation of the ship under the captain's
directions. Each of these officers stands a four hours' watch on the
bridge, and each during his tour of duty has, as the captain's
representative, direct charge of the ship. The third and fourth officers
stand a watch of six hours, alternating with each other, and, there are,
therefore, always a second and third or fourth officer on watch at the
same time. Although in rough weather it is work that tests the strength
and tries the nerves of the strongest man, no officer can leave the
bridge while on watch, and should he violate this rule, he would be
dismissed at once. In addition to his watch the third officer has charge
of all the flags and signals by night and day, and he also keeps the
compass book, while the fourth officer, besides his work on the bridge,
has charge of the condition of the boats.
Observations are taken every two hours, as on an ocean greyhound,
rushing over the course between America and Europe at the rate of twenty
miles an hour, it is of the first importance that the ship's position
should be known at all times. Fog may come down at any moment, and
observations not to be obtainable for several hours. The positions of
more than one hundred stars are known, and by observing any of these the
ship's whereabouts can be ascertained in a few minutes. Of course, the
"road" becomes more or less familiar to a man who crosses the ocean
along the same route year after year, yet this familiarity never breeds
contempt or carelessness, for no man knows all the influences that
affect the currents of the ocean, and while you will find the current in
a given place the same forty times in succession, on the forty-first
trip it may be entirely changed. Now and then a big storm that has ended
four or five hours before a liner passes a certain point may give the
surface current a strong set in one direction, and there is no means of
telling when these influences may have been at work save by taking the
ship's position at frequent intervals.
The ship's crew stand watch and watch, and in each watch there are three
quartermasters who have charge of the wheel. Steering in the old days
before the introduction of steam gear, was an arduous and too often
perilous duty, but to-day, even in the roughest weather, a lad of twelve
can easily manage the wheel, which is merely the purchasing end of a
mechanical system that opens and shuts the valve governing the steam
admitted to the steering cylinders. First-class ships number from twelve
to fifteen men in each watch. A certain number of these must be able
seamen, and none are allowed many idle moments. In the middle watches
the decks are scrubbed; in the morning watches the paint work is
overhauled and cleaned; and finally, when the weather permits, the brass
work is polished until it is made as radiant as the midday sun. This
scrubbing, burnishing and cleansing runs through every department, and
in no perfunctory way, for each day the ship is inspected thoroughly,
and upon the result hangs the possible promotion of the subordinates.
Once in every twenty-four hours the captain receives a written report
from the first officer, the chief engineer and the chief steward, and at
eleven o'clock in the forenoon of each day, accompanied by the doctor,
he inspects all parts of the ship. Let us follow him, if he is gracious
enough to give permission, in this daily visit to the underground realm
ruled over by the chief engineer and steward. In the fleetest of the
liners the engineer force numbers nearly two hundred men, divided, as a
rule, into three crews, with a double allowance of officers for duty. An
engineer keeps watch in each fire-room, and two are stationed on each
engine-room platform. Watches depend upon the weather. In most cases,
the force, officers and men, serve four out of twelve hours, but in
foggy or stormy weather officers stand at the throttles with peremptory
orders to do no other work. In relieving each other great care is taken;
those going on the platforms feeling the warmth of the bearings,
examining the condition of the pins and shafting, testing the valves,
locating the position of the throttle, counting the revolutions, and by
every technical trial satisfying themselves before assuming charge that
all is right.
Distressing at all times is the lot of the poor fellows who man the
stoke hole. On the Fürst Bismarck, for instance, there are twenty-four
furnaces, manned by thirty-six brawny and half-naked stokers. Suddenly
from somewhere in the darkness comes three shrill calls upon a whistle,
and instantly each furnace door flies open, and out dart hungry tongues
of fire. With averted heads and steaming bodies, four stokers begin to
shovel furiously, while two others thrust their slice-bars through each
door and into the mass of fire and flame. Burying their lances deep in
the coals, they throw their weights full upon the ends as levers, and
lift the whole bank of fire several inches. Then they draw out the
lances, leaving a black hole through the fire into which the draft is
sucked with an increasing roar. Three times they thrust and withdraw the
lances, pausing after each charge to plunge their heads in buckets of
water, and take deep draughts from bottles of red wine. But this cooling
respite lasts only a moment at best, for their taskmasters watch and
drive them, and each furnace must do its stint. It is fair, however, to
say that everything that can be done to lessen the hardships of the
stoke-hole has been done by the steamship companies. The best quality of
food is given the stokers, and they are allowed double rations of wine
and kummel four times a day, practically all they care to drink.
The chief engineer of an ocean steamship is fairly well paid, and he
deserves to be, for fidelity and merit lead to the engine-room as they
do to the bridge, and mastery of the former presupposes long years of
exacting service in subordinate positions. Indeed, many of these
officers have given their best years to one employ, and, like the hardy
McAndrews sung by Kipling, deserve much of it in every way. Some of the
old chiefs are the greatest travelers in the world, so far as miles may
count. One of whom I was told has traversed in the service of one
company more than 900,000 shore miles, a distance four times that
between the earth and the moon; and still higher is the record of
another, who completed before his retirement 154 round trips, making in
distance over 1,000,000 statute miles.
The captain in his daily tour scrutinizes every nook and corner of the
engineer's department, and not less scrupulous is his inspection of the
domain in which the chief steward holds sway. There is good reason for
this, since, as far as the comfort of the passengers is concerned, the
chief steward is the most important person on board a liner, having
charge of the staterooms, dining-room, storerooms and kitchen. Like the
engine-room the ship's kitchen, located amidships, is an unknown world
to most of the passengers. There are, as a matter of fact, three
kitchens, besides a serving-room. The soups, fish, meats and vegetables
are prepared and cooked in one room and the bread and pastry in another,
while the steerage has a kitchen to itself in which all the cooking is
done by steam. Space being valuable, all these rooms are small, and
meals for 500 or 1,000 people are cooked in an apartment no larger than
the kitchen in a low-priced flat, or the pantry in a country house. This
makes it necessary to keep everything in its place, and it amazes one to
see how compactly the ship's supplies can be arranged. Nothing is left
down on shelves or in drawers which may be hung on hooks, and even the
platters and serving dishes are made to hang, there being a loophole at
one end for this purpose.
Moreover, what the ship's kitchen loses in size is made up in the number
of storerooms. Far aft is the main storeroom, which, with its bins
reaching from floor to ceiling, and its racks overhead, looks like a
wholesale grocery store.
Close at hand is the wine locker, a long place, lined with narrow
shelves, which have an upward tilt and are crowded with all sorts and
kinds of bottled liquors. Down deeper, most often where the stern rolls
in from the counter, is a big compartment, where are stored barrels of
flour, potatoes, vinegar and beer, which when needed are hoisted up
under the direction of the storekeeper. Pretty well forward is the
refrigerating plant, a zinc-lined chamber, where the choicest sides of
beef, joints of mutton, chickens and turkeys are kept frozen. All the
liners, it may be noted in passing, carry a butcher, whose duty it is to
cut the steaks and chops, and to see that no good material goes to waste
through unskillful hacking.
Adjoining the kitchen is the serving-room or pantry, frescoed with
silver coffee-pots and cream-mugs and lined with shelves filled with
crockery, while the hook-dotted ceiling glitters with an hundred other
pieces of silverware which swing and scintillate with every motion of
the ship. The shelves are really wooden pockets, faced with strips of
wood, which keep the dishes from rolling out, and stowed away there are
cups and plates by the hundred. Along the side of the room is a big hot
press, having on its top all manner of indentations for the trenchers,
saucepans and soup pots which are sent in from the kitchen laden with
food at mealtime. This is flanked by a line of glistening tea and coffee
urns, while in a convenient corner is a roomy icebox for the cold meats
and butter.
To the kitchen and the pantry the storeroom is always sending tribute,
and they send it to the glass-doored dining-room which, with its long
tables, its dazzling white cloths, and its glittering array of silver
and glass, looks at night like an enchanted realm. Seats at table are
assigned by the steward or the purser, who gives out the seats to those
who ask for them first. Each seat is numbered and the passenger receives
a billet with his seat number on it when he goes to his first meal on
board. Formerly there was a struggle for seats at the captain's table,
but now the wise and wary ones rally about the purser and the doctor,
for the commander's duties seldom permit him to go below save at
dinnertime. Still, wherever his place at table may be fixed, the cabin
passenger finds that no opportunity is neglected to serve his comfort
and lighten the tedium of the voyage. On the German lines a band
accompanies every vessel, and plays through the long first-cabin dinner,
and again on deck in the evening. All German and American holidays are
observed on these boats, and when Christmas comes to the travelers at
sea, they find themselves in the midst of a Fatherland festival, the
chief feature of which is a brightly adorned and illuminated tree. Nor
are the steerage passengers forgotten on these occasions, amusements,
and a special feast being provided for them.
On the boats of the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique French festivals
and American holidays are celebrated by concerts, balls, dinner parties
and extra luxuries at the regular meals. Entertainment is provided for
the steerage passengers and a special menu is furnished for the festal
days. On such occasions, too, the ships are gayly decorated with bunting
from stem to stern. The "captain's dinner" is another pleasant feature
of the voyage on a French liner. This takes place just before the end of
the voyage and is regarded as a token of good will between the
passengers and the ship's company. Champagne is furnished without extra
charge at this dinner and toasts and speechmaking follow. On a British
liner on Sunday morning the captain, in full uniform, supported by his
officers, reads the Church of England service, to which all are invited,
while American and British holidays are observed in a fitting manner,
the ship being always "dressed" for the occasion. The boats of the
British lines have also a concert for the exploitation of the talent on
board and a parting dinner given an evening or two before arrival in
port.
Meantime how do the steerage folk get on when voyaging over the western
ocean? Here there is another and different story to tell. In a ship like
the Britannic of the White Star line, picture to yourself a barn-like
apartment some seventy feet long and thirty feet wide, but tapering
almost to a point at the forward end. It is dimly lighted and badly
ventilated by means of a shaft, through which the mainmast enters, and
by portholes which are too near the water ever to be opened except in
harbor and are well nigh submerged when the vessel lies over or rolls.
Lined along the three sides of this rude triangle are large skeleton
frames, each upholding two tiers of coffin-like bunks, one above the
other, the beds being placed side to side in rows of eight and end to
end two deep. Thus each of these structures holds thirty-two bunks,
whose sides and bottoms are of rough boards. A narrow passageway runs
across ship between the pens, of which there are seven in all, making a
total of 224 souls who are crowded into these sordid quarters. Picture
this to yourself and you have before you the men's cabin of the
steerage of the Britannic. The room being lighted at night by gasoline
lamps, smoking is forbidden, while all relaxation must be taken on that
small portion of the lower deck beyond which no steerage passenger is
allowed to roam, for there is no means of amusement or recreation in the
cabin.
Still there is a brighter side to the picture. All the companies provide
ample and wholesome fare for their steerage passengers. No captain ever
fails to include in his daily tour a personal and painstaking inspection
of this department and he is always approachable in the event of
complaints arising on the part of the humblest and poorest traveler. It
is related of one old-time commander, Captain John Mirehouse, that in
order to assure himself of the proper quality and preparation of the
steerage food he invariably had his lunch served from the steerage
galley at the dinner hour; and he used to declare that his lunches were
as wholesome and palatable as he could desire. Nor is it to be supposed
that steerage passengers are all immigrants, for, odd as it may seem,
there are many world wanderers who cross and recross in the steerage,
who travel over great parts of the world and who in their class are as
independent as the men and women lodged in the first cabin. Besides
these curious characters there are Scottish carpenters and other
mechanics who come to America for a few months at a time to take
advantage of higher wages and who return as they came when the Christmas
holidays draw nigh. Often a liner leaving New York in the early days of
December carries more than I,000 passengers in the steerage.
Whether you travel in the cabin or the steerage, the closing days of a
voyage are always sure to be the shortest and the pleasantest ones. The
routine of marine life ceases to be a burden, and with the disappearance
of the last lingering cases of sea sickness life on the fleet greyhound
of the waters becomes a source of joy. Newly found friends and glimpses
of passing vessels cheer and break the solitude, while the tonic of the
sea air courses like an elixir in the blood. Young couples flirt
demurely in shady corners of the deck, whence issue now and again sudden
bursts of rippling laughter; nor is there lack of jollity in the smoking
room, whence eddy the flotsam and jetsam of the ship and cards rule the
hour from early forenoon until the lights are turned out at night. If it
be summer and the passage a westward one you may count, as a rule, upon
skirting the Grand Banks without mishap and upon rounding the Georges in
the same lucky manner. Then, after long and eager waiting, comes the
happy hour when there is a cry of "Sail, ho," and a few minutes later a
yawl emerges from the gathering darkness and a bluff, black-garbed pilot
climbs to the ship's deck, bringing news from the outer world and the
glad assurance that land and home are just beyond the horizon line.
Soon comes the welcome cry, "There she is, Fire Island light, right over
the starboard bow." The watcher in the lighthouse telegraphs the
steamer's arrival to the quarantine station and the ship news office,
and long before noon the vessel reaches quarantine. Here the health
officer boards her, and if it is found that she has no case of
contagious disease on board she is permitted to proceed to her dock,
which she reaches in about one hour and a half, including the time of
examination. Meanwhile she has been met down the bay by a revenue cutter
having a squad of customs officers on board and declarations have been
made and signed by the cabin passengers as to the contents of their
trunks, which are searched as soon as the vessel arrives at her dock.
Here, also, an officer of the Immigration Bureau takes charge of the
steerage passengers and has folk and baggage conveyed to the Barge
Office for the examination which will impel their return to the place
from which they came or end in the granting of permission for them to
enter the land of mystery and promise.
Within the hour in which the liner reaches her moorings on the New York
or Jersey shore the last passenger has taken his departure, shore leave
has been granted to the majority of the ship's company and waiting hands
have promptly taken in hand the task of making ready for the leviathan's
next ocean pilgrimage, since, as I said at the outset, one voyage is no
sooner ended than preparations for another are begun.
CHAPTER III
THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN
It is by no means an easy task to secure admission to the United States
Navy, and of those who present themselves for enlistment in ordinary
times about one man in a dozen is accepted. Landsmen furnish a great
majority of recruits, and of these more come, it is said, from New York
than any other city in the country. The candidate who presents himself
on board of any one of the receiving ships constantly in commission for
enlistment purposes is first put through a rigid oral examination
designed to prove his mental and moral makeup. If he passes this test
the recruiting officer turns him over to the examining surgeon, by whom
the discovery of the slightest physical defect is counted as sufficient
ground for the candidate's rejection. If, however, he passes the doctor
he is vaccinated and sent back to the recruiting officer, who swears him
in for a three years' cruise, after which he is turned over to the
paymaster's clerk to draw his uniforms and small stores.
A month of preliminary training on the receiving ship follows. Here he
is put through the well-known "setting-up drill," which is designed to
give the full use of the muscles and feet and to develop the agility and
endurance necessary to the performance of ship duty. This exercise is of
daily occurrence while the recruit is in the early stage of his
enlistment and is practiced frequently during the entire period of
service, being part of the drill of every ship's company. The recruit is
also given practice in what is known as "the boat drill," and when
opportunity offers in the manning and manipulation of the guns.
At the end of his first month comes the newly enlisted man's assignment
to a vessel in active cruising service. Here, with a goodly batch of
other landsmen, he is taken in hand by the master-at-arms, gets a
ship's number and a mess kit, learns where to stow his clothing and
hammock, and is part and parcel of the life on a man-of-war.
The recruit's first days on shipboard are apt to put his nerves and
temper to the test, for the old-timers among the ship's company are sure
to let pass no opportunity to bedevil and confound him. Calking mat is
the name given to the piece of matting which the bluejacket spreads upon
the deck when he wants to take a nap and which protects his uniform from
being soiled. He buys it himself, but never a landsman went aboard his
first ship that he was not told to go to the master-at-arms for a
calking mat. Now, the average master-at-arms on a man-of-war is a man
who, having been in the navy for half a lifetime, has ceased to find
amusement in the calking-mat request preferred to him by several
thousand recruits, and as a consequence the reception the newcomer gets
when he approaches Jimmy Legs on this matter is liable to be a badly
mixed affair of boots and language. Again, recruits are often sent to
the officer of the deck to prefer absurd questions or questions on
matters in which they have no concern. When one of these recruits walks
up to the officer of the deck and, after a bow, innocently asks when the
ship is to sail he is in for a speedy if disgraceful scramble forward.
Or on his first day aboard a man-of-war the recruit is often told that
in order to go below to his locker he must first get permission from the
officer of the deck. "To my locker below, sir, may I go, sir?" he is
told to say when he goes to the mast to ask for the desired permission.
If the officer of the deck happens to be in good humor he will turn away
to preserve his dignity by not smiling, but if his temper is on edge the
recruit is in for a lesson in directness of language that will make him
wish he had not thrown over his job ashore. Trials of this sort,
however, soon have an ending. The average recruit quickly masters the
marine ropes, and instances are not uncommon of clever landsmen who have
finished their first three years' cruise as chief petty officers,
drawing from $50 to $75 a month.
Besides the receiving ships regularly devoted to the enlistment of naval
recruits on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts American warships are
constantly shipping men, both in home and foreign ports, to fill gaps in
crews. In this way many peculiar geniuses, men of really remarkable
attainments along certain lines, gain admission into the navy as
enlisted men. At Bangkok a few years ago an American man-of-war shipped
a German as a messroom attendant. He was a fine-looking man of thirty
and had little to say to his mates. One morning at sea soon after the
German's enlistment a knot of officers gathered in the wardroom were
discussing a difficult point in ordnance. The messroom attendant, who
was watching out for the officers' needs, ventured to enter into the
discussion. He did it, however, so quietly and respectfully and at once
showed such perfect knowledge of the topic in hand that the officers
found themselves listening to him with much interest. In five minutes
the German had shown that there was no detail of the armament of the
world's navies with which he was not familiar and that he was a past
master in all matters pertaining to modern great guns. His proficiency
in this respect being reported to the commanding officer, he was made a
chief gunner's mate and was about to be a gunner when his time expired
and he went to Germany, where he was employed by the Krupps as an
ordnance expert. It came out that he had spent his life in the ordnance
branch of the Krupp works and that he had been compelled to leave
Germany suddenly on account of some trouble in which he had become
involved. He had gone to Siam in the hope of getting an opportunity to
rearrange the Siamese fortifications. Failing in this, and discouraged
and penniless, he had shipped in the American navy.
"Once a sailor always a sailor" is not strictly true of men-of-warsmen
of the American navy. Less than one-half of the men who complete one
enlistment ship for a second three years' cruise, but a majority of the
men who put in two cruises settle down to a lifelong continuance in the
service, for when a bluejacket has passed one or two summers in the
latitude of the North Cape and a couple of winters among the West Indies
or in the South Pacific he is pretty sure to acquire a dislike for the
climate of the United States that keeps him in the navy for good and
all. Moreover, after a few years in the navy a bluejacket becomes
possessed of the idea that he is really doing nothing aboard ship to
earn his $16 a month and board.
Herein, however, he unconsciously proves himself a humorist, for the
routine of life on a man-of-war is in reality a hard and laborious one.
Reveille is sounded at daybreak, and the men who have not been on watch
during the night turn out of their hammocks, lash and stow their bedding
and get early coffee and biscuit. Then clothes are scrubbed, decks
washed down and dried and the ship's side and boats cleaned, so that
when the breakfast call is sounded at 7:30 o'clock most of her morning
toilet has been made.
Breakfast over, the men light their pipes and loll at ease until the
uniform of the day is announced, whereupon they array themselves in the
garb prescribed and when the "turn-to" call has been sounded proceed to
their several tasks. The days and even the hours and minutes of
men-of-warsmen are allotted to special duties. Every day they are put
through drill, sometimes with great guns, sometimes with cutlasses,
sometimes with small boats and in many other ways. Moreover, arms and
accoutrements have to be cleaned daily, the ordnance freed from rust and
stain and the brasswork kept polished. While this is going on the bugle
sounds the sick call and all who feel the need of the surgeon's care
repair to the sick bay, after which a list of those unfit for service is
furnished the officer of the deck, so that their duties can be attended
to by their mates.
The morning is still young when the order comes, "Clear up the decks for
inspection." Cleaning rags are put away, hands washed, an extra hitch
given to the trousers, and then the call to quarters is sounded. The
men go to their stations at the various guns, their officers appear and
a swift inspection of their appearance is made, after which the several
divisional officers report to the executive officer. The last named is
armed with a list of those who are legitimately absent and checks off
the absentees reported by the division officers. When this task is
finished the executive reports to the captain, who is standing near and
who then makes a tour of the ship, inspecting battery and crew.
Following inspection comes some of the drills already referred to,
dinner at noon, an hour for its discussion and smoking, and more drills
during the afternoon, ending with the setting-up drill just before the
bugle sounds for supper.
After that meal the men are at liberty to do very much as they please
unless a searchlight or night signal drill happens to be scheduled for
the evening. With 9 o'clock comes taps and the cry of the
master-at-arms, "Turn in your hammocks and keep silence"--an order that
must be obeyed, for on a man-of-war the sleep of the crew when the hour
comes is a sacred thing and not to be disturbed.
The modern battleship is first of all a fighting machine, and that being
the chief purpose for which it is created it is natural that the drill
of "clearing ship for action" is one to which particular attention
should be given. Following it always is a mimic encounter with an
imaginary foe. Not the slightest detail in preparation is ever neglected
and only blood and shrieks and wounds are lacking to make the imaginary
battle as realistic as an actual one would be.
As soon as the cry of the boatswain's mate echoes from the main deck the
bugle sounds the "assembly" on the gun and berth decks and the officers
and men at once hurry to their allotted stations. Quiet is insisted
upon; there is little confusion, and the swirling tide set in motion by
the boatswain's call has no conflicting currents. So far as is possible
each of the squads into which the ship's company is divided is berthed
and messed in that section of the ship in which its duties will lie in
the hour of battle. Thus on a battleship like the Virginia a portion of
the first division improvises as soon as the call is sounded a
breastwork for sharpshooters, using hammocks and awnings.
Meanwhile others of the same division rig collision mats, unship the
railing around the forecastle, lower anchor davits in cradles and carry
below and secure levers and tackles. At the same time other divisions
lower and unship awning stanchions and railing in wake of the guns,
close water-tight compartments, rig in and secure danger booms, unship
ladders and supply fresh water for drinking purposes. Magazines are
opened and lanterns trimmed, battle bucklers are fitted to air ports,
and those detailed to attend speaking tubes in the wake of torpedo tubes
go to their stations and receive and respond to the signals sent out
from the central station. Nor is the surgeon's division less busy at
this critical hour; its members convert the wardroom into a temporary
operating room, remove rugs and curtains and see that the adjoining
staterooms are made ready for the reception of the wounded. There is an
enormous amount of work to be done before a ship can be got in
readiness, but in little more than a half hour after the order is given
the captain hears from his executive officer the report, "Ship is ready
for action, sir." The gun crews, stripped to the waist, with their
knotty muscles standing out in high relief, wait for the order to begin
the fighting; and when it comes the great guns are elevated, depressed,
concentrated and put through all the maneuvers possible in an actual
battle. After this there is a moment's rest, and then, last of all, the
order is given to repel boarders. The enemy is alongside and swarming
over the bulwarks. The men in the tops pour down a murderous fire with
rifles and Maxim and Gatling guns; headed by their officers, the men on
deck, cutlass in one hand and revolver in the other, slash and hew,
shoot and hack until the enemy turn tail and flee as fast as their
imaginary legs can carry them. The ship is saved.
When at sea half of the crew of a man-of-war is always on duty and the
other half taking a rest. The latter court their ease in many ways. Some
stretch out on the hard deck and take a nap, others play checkers, spin
yarns, write letters or read novels. Some are lost in reverie; all of
them look careless and happy and nearly all of them smoke or chew
tobacco. Music often claims a group of them at any hour of the day, and
at night dancing is sometimes indulged in, always with wild delight. A
stranger who strays into the forecastle observes that a few of its
inhabitants wear double-breasted coats and linen collars. These are the
men of rank before the mast and they are known as petty officers. The
master-at-arms, the machinists and the yeoman are among the chief of
these, and other petty officers are the boatswain's mates, gunner's
mates and carpenter's mates. They are, comparatively speaking, high in
rank above the rest of the crew and are treated accordingly by the
latter. They have a mess table by themselves, presided over by the
master-at-arms and adorned by glassware, crockery and napkins. All mess
tables on a ship are large enough for ten or fifteen men to sit at and
one of the company is selected by his mates to act as caterer. Meals are
always well-behaved affairs, particularly at the tables of the petty
officers, for the sense of rank is as keen before the mast as it is
abaft among the commissioned officers. Every officer and man on a ship
is subordinate or superior to somebody else and he cannot forget that
his official relations even with his bosom companions are among the laws
of the land. Nor do the exigencies of confined space interfere with this
sense of rank. A bluejacket may have to dodge around an admiral and give
orders under his nose, but there is still a gulf between them not to be
bridged by any man.
In a visit to the forecastle among all the crowd there the youngest
sailors and the apprentice boys are those that attract one the most.
Their alert, intelligent faces give one a pleasant idea of the coming
American man-of-warsman and attest the efficacy of the method employed
to fit them for their future career. The present naval apprentice system
of the United States has been in force since 1875. The candidate for an
apprenticeship must be from fourteen to eighteen years of age, of robust
frame, intelligent, of sound and healthy constitution and able to read
and write. The boy who is found to be qualified signs an agreement to
serve continuously until he is twenty-one years of age and is sent to
the training station at Coaster's Harbor Island, near Newport, where is
anchored a receiving ship capable of comfortably accommodating 500
apprentices. The boys sleep in hammocks, assist in keeping the ship
clean and in various ways are gradually accustomed to a nautical life.
The daily routine begins at 5:30, when reveille is sounded and all
hammocks are lashed and stowed. After an early breakfast the boys wash
their clothes, scrub decks and bathe, and then for about six hours are
daily occupied with drills and studies, the course of instruction
including gunnery, seamanship and English. The hours after supper until
9 o'clock, when all must be in their hammocks, and Saturday afternoons
are given up to recreation. Many kinds of games are furnished the boys,
and they have also free access to a good library.
Each apprentice on leaving Coaster's Harbor Island spends a year on a
training ship and is then transferred to a regular man-of-war. Here his
education is still continued, and the end of his enlistment generally
finds him thoroughly acquainted with a modern ship and her armament and
fitted to take the billet of a petty officer. Many of the apprentices
who re-enlist are sent to the Washington Navy Yard for a six months'
course of instruction in gunnery, a limited number being afterward
detailed to the Naval War College at Newport for an equal length of time
to be given a practical knowledge of electricity and torpedoes. They
then graduate into the service with the rank and pay of seamen-gunners,
and that the training they have received warrants its cost is proved by
the assertion of experts that American gunners have not their superior
in any navy of the world. The making of an American man-of-warsman is a
process worth while.
[Illustration: A MAN-OF-WARSMAN]
In peaceful times one day is very much like another on an American
man-of-war, but there are four days of special importance in the
calendar of the bluejacket serving thereon. These are general muster
day, general inspection day and Thanksgiving and Christmas days. The
first-named marks the observance of a ceremony of great importance to
the participants--the reading of the articles of war or rules which have
been framed for the government of the navy. Unlike other musters and
routine drills which take place day after day with the utmost
regularity, this function is observed not oftener than once a month. On
most ships the first Sunday of each month is reserved for this purpose,
but it frequently happens that two or three months elapse between one
general muster and the next. Shortly before 10 o'clock in the morning of
the day selected the chief boatswain's mate passes the order through the
ship of "All hands to muster." At once every soul on the vessel except
the sick and, if at sea, half a dozen others who cannot be spared from
the wheel and engine room repairs aft to the quarterdeck, where the
members of the crew range themselves in long ranks on the port side of
the deck, facing the officers, who stand in a line on the starboard
side, where they are placed according to rank, with the senior officer
aft. All the officers are in full dress, with cocked hat and epaulettes
and gold lace on coats and trousers, while the men must appear in their
best, with shoes polished and clothes well brushed.
When the last straggler has taken his place the senior lieutenant,
raising a white-gloved hand to his cocked hat, salutes the captain and
informs him that all his officers and men are "up and aft." After this,
by order of the officer of the deck, silence reigns. At a word from the
commander the senior lieutenant begins to read the articles of war, and
as he does so all heads are uncovered. Simple yet eloquent is this
expression of the faith in which every naval officer must live. "The
commanders of all fleets, squadrons, naval stations and vessels
belonging to the navy," runs the wording of the first article, "are
required to show in themselves a good example of virtue, honor,
patriotism and subordination." The second article earnestly recommends
all officers and seamen in the naval service diligently to attend on
every performance of the worship of Almighty God. Further on is another
article which informs every listener--and every one of the hundreds
assembled is an intent listener--that "the punishment of death or such
other punishment as a court-martial may adjudge may be inflicted on any
person in the naval service who enters into a mutiny or who disobeys the
lawful orders of his superior officer or who strikes the flag to an
enemy or rebel." The same penalty awaits any one who in time of war
deserts or who sleeps upon his watch, or who when in battle "displays
cowardice, negligence or disaffection or keeps out of danger to which he
should expose himself." These offenses are only a few of the many which
all wearers of the uniform are enjoined not to commit. Some of the
others are "profane swearing, falsehood, drunkenness, gambling, fraud,
theft or any other scandalous conduct tending to the destruction of good
morals;" and it also is forbidden to any one to be guilty of cruelty
toward any person subject to his orders. Other parts of the articles
contain similar injunctions to all in the navy to maintain the honor of
the flag and the integrity of their lives.
As a fructifier of patriotism the importance of this ceremony cannot be
easily overestimated. Lukewarmness has no place in its presence, and any
one who witnesses it cannot fail to be impressed by its disclosure of a
faith that one feels sure could remove mountains. In remote lands it is
a rite which borrows added seriousness from its foreign surroundings.
Its words have often echoed against the walls of foreign forts while a
Sabbath calm has brooded over the latter and robbed them of their
threatening aspect, and many a time during its performance American
sailors have been able to look up from their quarter-decks to the
cottages and fields of some other land where a different creed is held
and with just as strong a faith as their own. No one can doubt that
while this ceremony lives the country is stronger and safer than it
would be without it.
The reading of the articles of war consumes a scant quarter hour. When
it is finished the order is given and repeated by the boatswain's mate
for all petty officers to muster in the starboard gangway. They form in
two long ranks. At the end nearest the quarter-deck stands the
master-at-arms and then come yeoman, writers, machinists, the
apothecary, printer, painter, electrician, bandmaster, boatswain's mate,
gunner's mates, quartermasters, oilers, water tenders and ship's
corporals. The paymaster or his clerk starts to muster the crew, calling
out each man's full name, and the latter answers with his rating. When
the petty officers are all mustered they are allowed to leave and go
forward--always being cautioned to keep quiet. Then follows a scene
that reminds one of the early days of the navy--a custom more than a
century old and borrowed originally from the English. It is called
"going around the mast." When each man's name is called he answers with
his rating, removes his cap, walks around the mast to the starboard side
and goes forward. This is kept up until all seamen, ordinary seamen,
landsmen, coal heavers, firemen and bandsmen have passed under the
inspection of the captain, who stands near the mainmast intently
watching and forming an opinion of each man as he passes before him.
When all have gone forward the order is given by the executive officer
to "pipe down," the shrill whistles sound and general muster is over.
General inspection day on a man-of-war usually follows close upon the
termination of a foreign cruise and involves no end of labor on the part
of officers and crew. In the early morning of the day appointed the last
touches are given to the ship's bright metal work, the last rubs to its
great brown guns. The decks are scrubbed and holystoned, so that the
keen eye of the executive officer cannot find a spot. The bluejackets
give a last turn to their hammocks and a last pat to their kits, for not
a thing will escape the scrutiny of the board of inspection and survey.
When the members of that body appear they find waiting for them on the
main deck the whole crew, spick and span, with their kits, long canvas
bags containing their white and blue clothing done up in neat rolls.
While a part of the board examines these to see if any of the men have
failed to roll them properly the other members go below to inspect the
ship. They visit the wardroom, staterooms and forecastle; examine the
water-tight compartments, the boilers, engines, bunkers and magazines
and the wood and metal work, passing over no dark corner in gallery or
pantry in which may lurk dirt or other signs of neglect.
All this, however, is preliminary to the real labors of the day, for
when the members of the board of inspection have again assembled on deck
comes the eagerly expected order, "Clear the ship for action!"
Instantly the long roll is beaten, the boatswain's whistle sounds, and
from the bowels of the ship the members of the crew come tumbling out,
swarming over the deck in what seems the wildest confusion, but is in
reality perfect order. Every man has certain duties and much drilling
has taught him how to perform them in the simplest, readiest and easiest
manner. The whole deck crew is organized into divisions and each
division has its separate and particular work. One division lashes fast
the big anchors and makes them as secure as possible. Another takes care
of the boats. The spare spars are got out and lashed together. The boats
are lashed into a nest, plugs pulled out so that they will fill with
water and float with gunwales awash. The nest is lashed to the spars
that will serve as a drag and a buoy to mark their location, and then
spars and boats are put over the side and left to drift as they will.
While this is going on other divisions are at work with the rail and
awning stanchions. Every thing comes down. The pegs are knocked out of
the davit hinges and the big iron bars are folded over to the deck.
Everything movable that can be put out of the way is stowed in its
proper pace swiftly and silently. The battle gratings are brought out
and fitted over the hatches. Any thing that might be knocked to pieces
by a shell or shot to splinters by small fire is carried below, and when
the work is finished not a superfluous bar or beam, not an extra rod,
box, implement or article of any sort stands on the deck to cumber the
desperate work of the ship in her life and death struggle.
At the same time the powder magazines are opened and the great guns
swing around for action, shot and shell piled up about them. The tops
are manned; every small gun is ready with its crew to hurl a deluge of
missiles of all shapes and sizes; rifles, pistols and cutlasses are
served out to the men, and in the space of time it costs to write these
lines the ship lies at anchor ready to blow an adversary off the face
of the water or to be blown off herself.
With the ship cleared for action, there is drill at the great guns and
execution of the order to repel boarders. After this the ship is again
put in condition and the bugle sounds to quarters. The ship's bell has
struck the alarm for fire. In a trice long lines of hose are laid and
men hurry around with their extinguishers on their backs. The
"smotherers," with their hammocks, are ready for work, axmen are
stationed to cut away woodwork and sentinels are posted prepared to
flood the magazines. There is neither hitch nor break in the drill, and
at its conclusion the men go to their well-earned noonday meal.
After dinner the marines are ordered to land and attack a distant fort.
The boats are lowered away and provisioned for several days. Water,
beef, beans, cartridges, rifles, guns and boxes of tools are stowed away
in them, and then the men pile into them until it seems as if they must
sink under their load. Many colored flags flutter from the mainyard of
the big ship, the launches take the boats in tow and off they start.
They do not go far, however, for soon a signal from the ship
countermands the order to attack and they return and are hauled on
board. Then comes a drill that is looked upon with regretful pride by
the old tars who still love the shapely ships of the past and cannot
overcome their dislike for the modern "teakettles;" it is a sail drill.
The sailors scamper aloft, lay out on the big yards and soon the ship,
with all sails set, is tugging at her anchors. Again the boatswain's
whistle sounds. The executive officer, trumpet in hand, shouts his
orders and the yards gradually come down until the ship is under
close-reefed topsails. Then the sails are furled, the yards squared and
the men wait for the next command. They do not have to wait long. A
luckless man--imaginary, of course--falls overboard. There is another
hurry and scurry, a life buoy is thrown to the drowning man, the cutter
is lowered away and under the powerful strokes of six oars sweeps past
the ship to the rescue. The man is saved and the cutter again hoisted on
board. This ends the work of the day and all hands are piped to supper.
Soon the sunset gun booms, once more the bugle sounds and the great
striped flag at the stern comes down. General inspection day is over.
The crew of an American warship celebrate Thanksgiving day in the good
old-fashioned style, which means that the dinner is made the chief
incident. About this all the interest of the holiday gathers, and the
feast is enjoyed in anticipation, in realization and in reminiscence.
The expense of the extras which supplement the ordinary rations on that
occasion is borne entirely by the men. Ordinarily Jack is a most
improvident creature who sees no reason for worrying himself about what
he is to eat to-morrow so long as he has enough for to-day, but for
Thanksgiving and Christmas he makes unusual effort to save something to
put into the common fund for the occasion. His comrades are generous,
however, and if, as often happens, his pockets are light when the
contributions are being taken up he is not allowed to miss the feast,
but may have his share charged up against him, to be paid at a more
convenient season.
One way in which the men save their money is by commuting their rations.
The amount of food furnished by the government is extremely liberal, so
that the daily ration provided for each sailor is more than he can eat
under ordinary circumstances. The value of a daily ration is put at 30
cents. A common practice is for ten men to draw rations for only seven.
If the mess consists of thirty men the value of the commuted rations
would thus amount to $2.70 a day. This is multiplied by the time pay day
comes around to a considerable sum and is paid back to the men with
their wages. Part of it at a time like Thanksgiving is devoted to buying
the luxuries of the dinner.
The fund kept or raised for this purpose has always been known as the
"slush fund." The term dates back to the early days of the navy when
the men were allowed to save the pork drippings and other grease, odd
ends of rope and all kinds of waste about the ship and sell them to junk
dealers for whatever they could get. "Slush" was the general name given
to the waste stuff and the money which it brought in was the "slush
fund." This disposition of the refuse is now taken out of the mens'
hands, but they still continue to call their dinner fund by its ancient
title.
A Thanksgiving dinner among the men-of-warsmen is a festivity well worth
seeing. Nothing is done by halves, and the messroom decorations and the
table furnishings would do credit to many a more pretentious assembly.
The messrooms are brightly lighted up and their usually bare walls are
gayly draped with American flags. Instead of the every-day enamel cloth
the tables are covered with spotless white linen. If the ship is in port
the celebration can be much more elaborate, because the men are then
able to buy, beg or borrow from their friends on shore any number of
ornamental articles with which to beautify the tables. Vases of flowers
are artistically arranged about, and a great cake with a fanciful
superstructure of icing is a favorite adornment. Enormous turkeys stand
watch at each end of the tables at the beginning of the feast, but they
disappear early in the action and their places are taken later by relays
of mince and pumpkin pies. "Spuds," as all sailors call potatoes, are
plentiful, affording ample proof of Jack's traditional fondness for this
vegetable. Besides tea and coffee the only drink is beer. The men are
allowed to have this not only on special occasions, by the way, but at
any time when they have money to pay for it at the general canteen. At
dinner time on almost any day a few of the men may be seen with open
bottles of beer before their places at the table.
However, after all is said and done, Christmas is the rarest day in the
naval calendar, the celebration in American fashion being never
neglected on a United States man-of-war in port or at sea. The ship is
dressed fore and aft with banners, and in port her decks are piled with
green stuff. In any of the ports in low latitudes, like Callao or
Montevideo, the mass of palms and ferns distributed on Christmas on the
spar deck of a warship gives the vessel a lovely holiday appearance.
Bluejackets always hang up their socks on Christmas eve. Each takes a
new pair out of his ditty bag and strings it to the foot last of his
hammock. Examined in the morning, they are commonly found filled with
fine, dusty coal, lumps of salt-water soap or pieces of broken candle,
but their owners hang them up from year to year, willing to sacrifice a
pair of socks to the perpetuation of the custom. On Christmas day there
are all manner of games on the spar deck. They are for the most part
humorous games and are devised chiefly for the amusement of the men who
through misconduct are not permitted to spend the day ashore. In the
evening there is always some good music in the forecastle or on the
berth deck. On some ships the bluejackets essay the most ambitious airs,
and if the bandmaster takes care to put the singers of the crew on the
right path one of their Christmas night concerts is worth going a long
way to hear.
CHAPTER IV
SOLDIERS WHO SERVE AFLOAT
Soldiers who serve afloat--such are the men composing the United States
Marine Corps. Lack of military qualities in the sailor led to the corps'
formation in the first days of the navy, nor has the passing of the
years wrought any material change in the character of Jack Tar.
Formidable in impetuous assaults, he lacks the steadiness and discipline
necessary in sustained conflicts and in the effective use of the rifle,
and so with the navy's growth the Marine Corps has come to constitute
one of its most important branches.
The marines are useful in times of peace for police duty in the navy
yards and on shipboard, but it is when the country is engaged in war
that they most fully justify their existence. Then it is their duty to
man the rapid-firing guns of our warships, fill vacancies at the other
guns, with their rifles scour the decks of the enemy from the tops, the
poop and the forecastle, cover boarding parties with their fire and
repel boarders with fixed bayonets. Should the enemy gain a foothold
they must gather at the mainmast, so as to command the deck. They must
make the small arms effective and disable the enemy's men while the
great guns, with which the marines have nothing to do save in case of
emergency, play havoc with his ship.
However, all naval fighting, as recent events have proved, is not done
on the decks of men-of-war; the surprise of camps or posts and the
escalade of forts frequently render shore operations necessary, and at
such times picked men are sent with the attacking sailors, known as
pioneers, while the rest of the marines form a supporting column to
cover the retreat and embarkation of the sailors in case the undertaking
fails. In times of fire on shipboard the marines guard the boats' falls
and officers' quarters, prevent panic or pillage, compel compliance with
orders of officers and allow no one to throw overboard any property or
fitting or abandon the ship until duly authorized. Finally a frequent
duty of the marines abroad is to guard the American legations and
consulates and the interests of American citizens in times of revolution
or public disorder.
With duties so varied and exacting ahead of him, the making of a marine
is a process well worth studying. Recruits for the corps come from all
stations of life. In its ranks may be found well-educated men, now and
then a college graduate among them, who have become reduced by
misfortune or bibulous habits, country boys who have left the farm for
the city to seek their fortunes and found want instead, and men who have
lost their occupations. All find a refuge in the corps, provided they
are physically and mentally sound, at least five feet six inches in
height, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, unmarried and of
good habits.
The recruit as an essential part of his training must learn how to do
well many different things. He begins, if a stranger to military
science, by mastering the drills and manual of arms and every evolution
possible to a body of men on foot, since he must leave the ship when
there is work to be done and be able to move quickly and with precision
under the most galling fire. The ax, the shovel and the pick must also
become familiar tools in his hands, and that he may fight to the best
possible advantage he is taught to delve and heap until a breastwork is
built. After that he must accustom himself to the dragging straps of a
light artillery piece and learn how to haul it at a breakneck pace down
into the ditch he has dug and up on the other side to the crown of the
intrenchment. Then, as no one else comes up to load, aim and fire it for
him, he must learn all that a field artilleryman knows and become
skillful in the handling and quick and sure in the aim of his howitzer.
When so much of his apprenticeship has been accomplished the marine
climbs the ship's side and makes acquaintance with his duties as a
marine policeman. The end of the first month afloat finds him on guard
at every post in the ship. He knows each compartment and gangway; has
been instructed in the working of the guns from the heavy turret pieces
to the six-pounders; has watched the magazines and carried messages to
the officers, and has even gone down to the coal bunkers, if the ship
happens to be coaling in a hurry, and taken his turn at passing coal.
However, he is still only a marine in the making, and this fact is
brought home to him when the ship goes out for target practice and, with
a bluejacket for a teacher, he learns to handle and supply ammunition to
the lifts in the magazines and to work the lifts themselves, so that
when the need comes he can take Jack's place and do his work. In the old
days of sailing ships the marines had to know how to splice a rope or
furl a sail; nowadays he does not need to, but he must learn to make his
way quickly and nimbly to the fighting tops. In doing so he does not
have to climb to a ratline, one minute almost in the sea and the next
at the very top of the heavens, but he gets painfully dizzy when for the
first time he feels the ship sinking away from under him as he looks
down. In the end he masters that also and, with practice, is soon able
to make the little guns in the fighting tops talk as fast as the best of
the jackies. When he has learned to descend from his aerial nest to the
deck at a dignified pace and to land safely upon his feet, his education
is practically completed, and it has taken him from six months to a year
to get it.
Every navy yard in the country has its detachment of marines, but the
barracks at the Brooklyn yard are the most popular, and as the marines
have their choice of stations when they return from a cruise, the
largest number, seldom less than three hundred, are usually quartered
there. In the part of the yard set aside for the marines is a long and
narrow building of gray brick, with a piazza running its entire length,
shaded by a line of trees. This is the barracks, the living quarters of
the men. A roomy parade ground stretches out in front, and in a group
of trees to the left, with a garden behind, is the house of the
commandant of marines, while at about the same distance to the right are
the quarters of the other officers, each approached by a stone walk
canopied and shaded by rows of pear trees.
Visit the Brooklyn barracks of a summer morning and you will find the
marine there in every condition known to the corps and in every stage of
his development. Out on the parade ground is a squad of raw recruits
being commanded and marched about in the effort to trim off their
individuality of motion, and here comes Private Dougherty, with his
wheelbarrow and sickle, a bronze-faced old man who was retired awhile
back because his thirty years of service had been completed. There is
hardly a seaport in the world that Dougherty is not familiar with, and
he will tell you, when in the mood, how he killed the Corean general.
The Colorado, flagship of Rear Admiral Rodgers, steamed up the Salee
river, in Corea, for the purpose of effecting a treaty with the Coreans
for the protection of shipwrecked American sailors and to make surveys
and soundings. Her survey boats were treacherously fired upon by the
forts in the river and a fight began. After one of the forts had been
captured and its former occupants driven out, Dougherty jumped over the
parapet, ran down to where the Corean leader was rallying his forces and
shot him dead. For this service to his country Congress voted Dougherty
a medal of honor. And well he had earned it.
Ashore or afloat, the daily life of the marine is one of hard work and
plenty of it. At 6:30 in the morning, when in barracks, the men must be
out of bed and ready fifteen minutes later for the "setting-up" drill,
which is gymnastic exercise without apparatus. Then the mess call is
sounded and they file into the long messroom, furnished with two tables
extending the whole length, and breakfast on hash, pork and beans or
beef stew, according to the day in the week, and bread and coffee.
After breakfast the order is given, "To the colors!" and the flag is
raised on the pole in front of the guardhouse. Then the guards take
their posts and the routine of the day begins, reaching a climax at
10:30 o'clock, the hour of dress parade, when the marines are out in
full force.
Each remaining hour of the day has its allotted duty, but every marine
with a clean record has twenty hours out of every forty-eight to
himself. Many of the marines stationed at the Brooklyn yard spend their
idle hours in the library, a light, airy room on the second floor of the
barracks, furnished with a goodly collection of books and with a number
of the weekly and monthly magazines. But as to the books, some of the
most assiduous readers know the contents of them all, and long for more.
Nor need the private of marines end his life in the ranks unless he be
so minded. A school is provided for him where, if he elects to do so, he
may conquer fractions and cube root, and in time, after his studies have
raised him to the grade of sergeant-major in the ranks, should there
chance to come a war the line is open to him, and once his ivory-hilted
officer's sword and gold lace are worn he has the entree to any
officers' mess and a place that no man but one of his own line can fill.
That the men in the ranks who choose to employ their leisure hours in
study get their reward was proven in the war with Spain, which raised no
less than thirty sergeant-majors to the dignity of shoulder straps.
The dominant desire of the ambitious young marine is, of course, to get
to sea. The work there is harder than in the barracks, but he does not
consider that when he thinks of life afloat and the foreign ports to
which it will take him. During his five years' enlistment in the corps
each capable marine makes two sea voyages, extending over a period of
three years. On shipboard the shore drills are continued as far as
practicable and to them, as already hinted, is added target practice.
His time off duty the marine spends in the forecastle and amidships
reading, sleeping, writing up his diary or twanging the strings of his
favorite instrument, the guitar.
The things which chiefly occupy his thoughts, however, are rations and
going ashore. As to the former, they are considerably better than he
gets at the barracks and may be augmented from the bumboats--a genuine
boon to the luxury-loving marines. These bumboats approach the
men-of-war at every port with articles of utility and food in great
profusion, and the American marine has a worldwide reputation among
their proprietors for his generosity. Ah Sam, of the port of Hong Kong,
the greatest man in the world in his line, whose boats are fifty and
sixty ton junks, is said to have made his fortune from sales to American
men-of-war. At any rate, when one enters or leaves the harbor he fires a
salute of twenty-one guns.
And it is only fair that the marine should have a salute fired on his
own account now and then, for he is a leading and important figure in
all the pomp and ceremony of man-of-war life. Indeed, it is an
interesting and pretty sight to watch the ceremonies which take place
on board ship on the arrival of a high official, such as an ambassador,
an admiral, a general or a consul. As the cutter dashes up to the side
with spray flying from the oars the ship's bugle sounds "Attention." The
side boys offer the man ropes as the official steps on the gangway and
the captain receives him as he steps on the quarterdeck. As the two walk
aft the marine officer, in quick, sharp tones, commands, "Present arms,"
and the whole marine guard, drawn up in line on the port side of the
quarterdeck, bring their rifles up in salute, while the bugle sounds a
flourish and the drum a roll, two for an admiral, three for an
ambassador and four for the President. The marines on a ship are
collectively called the guard; the ceremony is called parading the
guard. It takes place on the arrival or departure of any official of
rank. If the official does not visit the ship it takes place when his
flag passes by, and it also takes place when two ships of war pass each
other.
The landsman visiting an American warship finds the marine everywhere
in evidence. At the door of the captain's cabin stands a marine, doing
duty as an orderly, and no one can enter that officer's presence until
he has first taken in the name. Down below a marine guards the storage
rooms, and up on the berth deck another stands sentry over the
torpedoes, while still farther along on the same deck is the "sentry
over the brig," for the brig, be it known, is the ship's prison, where,
in complete solitude and on a bread and water diet, an offender can
meditate and see the error of his ways. Finally in the crowded
forecastle the marine keeps order among the crew and an occasional eye
on that fishing boat floating down with the tide, for Jack sometimes
goes fishing and makes queer hauls. With a coin as a bait, he drops over
his line, gets a nibble, hauls in a little brown bottle--and does not
show his catch to the sentry.
The marines, in a word, do the sentry duty of the ship, but this does
not prevent these sea soldiers and the sailors from getting on well
together. Occasionally, a marine recruit, just assigned to a ship, will
develop symptoms of a disease known as "duty struck," and blindly lay
the foundation for years of unpopularity for himself by taking advantage
of his authority to make it as warm as he can for the blue jackets, but
such a recruit is quickly called to order by the older men of the guard.
As a rule, the marines and blue jackets are on the most friendly terms,
and there are few liberty parties of blue jackets bound for a good time
ashore that are not accompanied by a favorite marine or two, invited
along to help the sailormen dispose of their money, for, out of his $13
a month, the marine does not have a deal for shore use.
The guard duty performed by marines on American ships is of an arduous
and exacting kind. On some vessels, usually the smaller gunboats, the
marine guard soldier is on post for two hours, and then gets only two
hours off before buckling on his belt again, month in and month out.
This sort of thing involves a breaking up of sleep that tells severely
on marines serving on small ships, and it is for this reason that sea
soldiers are so partial to flagships, and exhaust all the means in their
power to be assigned to such large vessels of war. However, on every
warship, no matter what its size, there is at least one first-rate
billet for the private marine; that is the mail orderly's job. The mail
orderly is the messenger between the ship and the shore, attends to all
sorts of errands for officers and men, and is a general buyer of
trinkets for all hands. A good deal of money passes through his hands,
and his commissions are good, not to speak of the tips which are given
to him for performing little diplomatic tasks ashore for the men
forward. A marine mail orderly usually leaves the service at the
expiration of a cruise with a snug sum tucked away.
The first sergeant of a marine guard on a ship too small to rate one or
more marine officers fills a responsible and exacting place, and is
treated with great consideration by the officers, since, to all intents
and purposes, he is an officer himself. He may go ashore when he
chooses without putting his name down on the liberty list, and when he
comes back to the ship from shore leave, he is not searched for liquor,
an immunity which he enjoys in common only with the ship's chief
master-at-arms. The first sergeant is responsible for the conduct of his
men, and, if they do wrong, he is reproved much as if he were an
officer. For the preservation of discipline, he is required to hold
himself aloof from the members of his guard as much as possible, and he
associates and frequently messes with the ship's chief petty officers.
Semper fidelis--always faithful--is the legend worn upon the flags,
guidons and insignia of the Marine Corps, and, in its hundred years of
existence, it has never been false to its motto. It was one of the
orderlies of the corps, Corporal Anthony, who, when the Maine was
sinking, and nearly all who could do so were hastily leaving, made his
way toward Captain Sigsbee's cabin, and, on meeting him, calmly gave the
report the duty of the occasion required of him. And this quiet
performance of duty in the face of impending death, has had a hundred
parallels in the history of the Marine Corps.
During the bombardment of Tripoli, in 1803, and the desperate
hand-to-hand fighting which occurred between the vessels on both sides,
Decatur boarded one of the Tripolitan gunboats and engaged the captain
in a duel with swords. One of the enemy coming up from behind was about
to cleave Decatur's skull with his sword, when a marine interposed his
arm. The arm saved Decatur, but it was severed to the skin. In the same
battle, Lieutenant Trippe, of the Vixen, boarded a Tripolitan gunboat
and singled out the commander for a personal combat. A Turk aimed a blow
at the lieutenant, but before he could strike, Sergeant Meredith, of the
marines, ran him through the body with his bayonet. It was also an
officer of marines, Lieutenant O'Bannon, who, with Midshipman Mann,
hauled down the Tripolitan ensign, after having stormed the principal
defense of Derne, and planted the flag of the Republic on that ancient
fortress.
The marines participated gallantly in the War of 1812, and in the
expedition against Quallah Battoo, a few years later, formed the van of
the attacking party, and were in the thickest of the fight with the
Malays. This Quallah Battoo expedition furnished a stirring passage for
our naval history that is well worth recalling. In February, 1831, the
American ship Friendship was loading on the coast of Sumatra. While the
captain, two officers and four of the crew were on shore the Friendship
was attacked by the crew of a Malay pepper boat, who, after killing the
first officer and several of the seamen, succeeded in cutting off the
ship and plundering her of every article of value on board. The attack
was clearly concerted, and the Achense rajah, Chute Dulah, received the
spoils, refusing the restoration even of the ship.
Time moved with leisure steps in those days, but as soon as news of this
wanton outrage reached the United States, prompt measures were taken to
punish its authors. On February 5, 1832, the frigate Potomac, commanded
by Commodore John Downes, anchored off Quallah Battoo and landed a force
of 250 men to attack the town. The assaulting party, composed mainly of
marines, did its work in a thorough and practical manner. The town and
the four forts defending it were captured and destroyed, and several
hundred Malays killed, including the rajah chiefly concerned in the
plunder of the Friendship and the massacre of its crew. The surviving
rajahs begged for peace, and this was finally granted by Commodore
Downes, but the lesson taught at the cannon's mouth is still remembered
on the Sumatran coast.
The Marine Corps participated with brilliant results in the Florida
Indian War, and in the siege of Vera Cruz and the march to the City of
Mexico their services were of the first order. In fact, General Scott is
authority for the statement that at all times during the Mexican War
they were placed where the hardest work was to be done. At the storming
of Chapultepec, Major Levi Twiggs, of the marines, led the assaulting
party and was killed. This fortress having been captured, the marines in
General Quitman's division moved directly on the City of Mexico, and
were accorded the honor of first entering the palace and hoisting the
American flag.
The marines who accompanied Commodore Perry to Japan, in 1852, took an
important part in that expedition. A force of a hundred marines was
landed, and, together with a like number of soldiers and two brass
bands, marched through Yeddo to the palace of the Mikado, creating a
most favorable impression on the foreign officials. A similar display
was made by Perry when he returned to Japan in 1854, to receive the
answer of the Japanese Government to his representations previously made
regarding the advantages of foreign trade.
It was a force of marines who captured John Brown at Harper's Ferry, in
1859. While the militia of Virginia was assembling by the thousand to
attack the little band of abolitionists, a force of one hundred marines
was sent from Washington, and a squad of eight of them battered down the
door of John Brown's fort, and captured his party, to the chagrin of the
hundreds of other military men near by who hoped to have a hand in the
affair.
Again and again during the Civil War the marines proved themselves brave
and stubborn fighters. In the encounter between the Merrimac and the
Cumberland, the marine division was under Lieutenant Charles Heywood,
later commander of the corps. The first shot from the Merrimac killed
nine marines, yet the division was so little demoralized by the loss
that it not only continued fighting, but actually fired the last shot
discharged from the Cumberland at the Merrimac. For services rendered
between 1861 and 1865, thirty-seven officers and men of the Marine Corps
received the thanks of Congress, medals or swords, and twenty-eight were
brevetted for gallantry.
In the brush with Corea in 1871, the marines, as before stated, were in
the assault on the Salee forts, and Lieutenant McKee, in carrying the
works, fell, as his father fell in Mexico, at the head of his men, and
first inside the stormed works.
Commander, afterward Admiral, Kimberly stated in his report that to the
marines belonged the honor of "first landing and last leaving the shore.
Chosen as the advance guard on account of their steadiness and
discipline, their whole behavior on the march and in the assault proved
that the confidence in them had not been misplaced."
The marines again distinguished themselves in 1885, when an insurrection
in Panama compelled the landing there of a force, which stayed until all
danger was over, and several times, in more recent years, the officers
and men of the corps have plucked a fresh branch for their laurels. When
the big railroad strike in California was in progress in the summer of
1894 the marine guard stationed at the Mare Island Navy Yard was called
out to serve with the regular troops at Sacramento, Truckee, Stockton
and other towns. In alertness, activity and general soldierliness they
showed themselves quite the equals of the army troops, and the colonel
of artillery who commanded the entire brigade, did not fail to dwell
upon this fact in his report to the War Department. One of the marines
at Truckee bent the stock of his rifle in clubbing a violent rioter, who
afterward was convicted as an accessory in ditching a train and causing
the deaths of four soldiers. The marine was reproved by his company
commander, and narrowly escaped a court-martial, on the charge of
destroying government property. "Bullets," said the commander, "are
cheaper than rifles."
The American marine has never been known to show the white feather, no
matter what the odds against him. When, some years ago, Antonio Ezeta,
the Central American agitator, was being chased by the government
authorities of the Republic of Salvador, he took refuge in the residence
of the American consul at La Libertad. The populace raged around the
consulate, and word was sent to the garrison on the outskirts of La
Libertad of Ezeta's hiding-place. An American gunboat was lying in the
harbor, and the marine guard of twenty men, under command of a sergeant,
was sent ashore by the commanding officer at the request of the consul,
to protect the latter's residence and the refugee within it, for Ezeta
was a citizen of the United States. The marine guard reached the
consulate at the same moment with a battalion of 250 Salvadorean
soldiers. The marines, not a whit dismayed, surrounded the consulate,
and for eight hours stood off the swarthy Salvadoreans. Then, by a ruse,
Ezeta, in disguise, was slipped to the beach and taken to the warship,
which carried him to San Francisco to stand trial in the United States
courts for violation of the neutrality laws. He would have been torn
limb from limb by the citizens and soldiers of La Libertad, had it not
been for the score of marines. The captain of one of the Salvadorean
companies was an American free-lance from Western New York. He raved
over the cowardice of the dark skinned soldiers he commanded, and
profanely declared that, with half a dozen marines of the United States
at his back, he would undertake to whip the entire Salvadorean army. His
men, it may be stated in passing, did not understand English.
Finally, in the war with Spain and the more recent operations in China,
the Marine Corps added another moving and glorious chapter to its
history. At Guantanamo the marine battalion, commanded by Colonel R. W.
Huntingdon, fought the first serious land engagement of United States
forces on foreign soil since the Mexican War. The fact that this
battalion was attacked by the enemy in overwhelming numbers, and for
over three days and nights was under constant fire, and that on the
fourth day a portion of the battalion attacked and repulsed a superior
force of Spaniards, shows, to quote the words of their chief, "that
Colonel Huntingdon and his officers and men displayed great gallantry,
and that all were well drilled and under the most effective
discipline." One of the men under Huntingdon's command was Sergeant
Thomas Quick, a lithe and fearless native of the mountains of West
Virginia. At a critical stage of the operations, while the marines were
engaged with the enemy firing from ambush, it became necessary to
dislodge them, and it was desired that the Dolphin should shell the
woods in which they were concealed. Quick volunteered to signal her, and
standing on a hill wigwagged her, while bullets backed the dust about
him. For his action, described as "beautiful" by his commander, he, in
due time, received a medal of honor and a lieutenant's commission.
The headquarters of the Marine Corps are at the barracks in the City of
Washington, where are located the commandant and his staff. Besides
those previously mentioned, there are marine barracks at Portsmouth,
Boston, League Island, Norfolk and Annapolis. But the fouled anchor
running through a hemisphere traced with the outlines of the two
American continents, which adorns the front of the marine's fatigue cap,
tells that he is at home both on sea and land, and when on either,
shrewd, sharp blows are to be struck he is ready for them. Nowhere in
the world, size taken into account, is there a more efficient
organization than this corps of 6,000 brave fighting men.
CHAPTER V
THE POLICE OF THE COAST
The revenue cutter, though perhaps the least known, is one of the most
useful branches of the Federal service. Its creation antedates by
several years that of the navy, and it boasts a glorious history. It
polices the coast as the navy polices the ocean, and its duties are as
varied as they are weighty and important. It cruises constantly from the
fever infected regions of the Gulf to the icebound shores of the Arctic
Sea. It is the terror and constant menace of the smuggler and poacher.
It sees to it that the quarantine is strictly maintained, and that the
neutrality laws are not violated by the greedy and lawless of our own
and other lands. It is prompt in the prevention of piracy, and
suppresses mutiny with a heavy hand. It looks after emigrant ships and
enforces the license and registry statutes. Last, but not least, it
gives timely succor to the shipwrecked and annually preserves hundreds
of lives and millions of dollars' worth of property. And so, wherever
one familiar with its history falls in with its trim white cutters,
whether in the sunny courses of the Gulf, or on the borders of the great
Atlantic highway, off the bleak New England coast, in the crowded
harbors of our lake ports, or in the still waters of the Pacific, he is
sure to give them glad, respectful greeting, as modest, graceful emblems
not alone of our country's greatness, but better still, of duty bravely
and nobly done.
The Revenue Cutter Service celebrated the centennial anniversary of its
existence sixteen years ago, having been organized in 1790. The credit
for its creation belongs to Alexander Hamilton, that great first
Secretary of the Treasury, to whom we owe so much, and whose memory in
these days of self-vaunting mediocrity we too often neglect to honor.
His was a vision that saw clearly all the needs of the future, and as
early as 1789 he earnestly advised the employment of "boats for the
security of the revenue against contraband." A little later he submitted
to Congress a bill providing for a fleet of ten boats, to be thus
distributed along the seaboard: Two for the Massachusetts and New
Hampshire coast, one for Long Island Sound, one for New York, one for
the waters of the Delaware Bay, two for the Chesapeake and its environs
and one each for North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Congress
accepted the Secretary's recommendations, and in a few months ten swift
cutters were built, armed and equipped, each vessel being manned by a
crew of ten men.
Thus was born the Revenue Cutter Service, a modest fleet of small,
speedy vessels only a little larger than the yawls of the present time.
In addition to their pay, the officers and crews received a part of the
amounts derived from fines, penalties and forfeitures collected in case
of seizures and for breaches of the navigation and customs laws, but
later the officers were given larger salaries and the payment of prize
money abolished. At first only a small force was required to adequately
protect the commerce of an extensive yet thinly populated coast, but our
foreign trade grew so rapidly, and the importance of our shipping
interests increased so steadily, that it soon became clear that a strong
cordon of well equipped and speedy cruisers would be necessary for their
effective protection. For this reason, Congress, in 1799, gave the
President authority to equip and maintain as many revenue cutters as he
should deem necessary for the proper policing of our coast-line.
And thus the Revenue Cutter Service grew in size and became more
efficient with each passing year. During the first quarter century of
its existence, it was almost constantly in the eyes of the public, and
its daring deeds frequently afforded welcome material to the novelists
of the period. Among its duties it was charged with the suppression of
piracy, even so late as the opening of the last century, a serious
menace to commerce; and it also waged a constant and relentless war
against smugglers and smuggling. Those were the palmy days of the
smuggler, who often made reckless hazard of his life in the illegal race
for gain. Steam vessels had not yet come into use, and speed and safety
then lay in trim lines and mighty spreads of canvas. Smugglers'
schooners, sharp built, light of draught, and with enormous sails, were
constantly hovering in the offing, biding some favorable opportunity to
discharge cargoes upon which no duty had been paid.
It was the business of the Revenue Cutter Service to keep watch upon
these vultures of the sea, spoiling them of their quarry, and in this
way sprang up hand-to-hand encounters both by sea and land, sudden,
sharp and terrible, in which many a gallant life was lost and fame and
honor won. Now, however, the pirate and the smuggler, at least of the
bold life-risking sort, have passed to the limbo of forgotten things,
and the officers and men of the Revenue Cutter Service no longer win
glory and a reputation for bullet-chasing courage in their suppression.
The new field which they have built up for themselves, is daring and
full of danger, but it has not the same interest for the general public,
and so their deeds of heroism are now performed in out-of-the-way
corners, with no herald present to trumpet them to the world, and with
the pleasant consciousness of duty well done as their only reward.
The Revenue Cutter Service in time of war has always co-operated
promptly and effectively with the navy against the foe. Indeed, the
cutters belonging to the Revenue Cutter Service have taken a gallant and
active part in all the wars of the United States save one. In 1797, when
war with France threatened, the Revenue Cutter Service was placed on a
war footing, and by its promptness and vigilance, did much to uphold the
dignity and prestige of the Federal Government. In the following year a
number of cutters cruised with diligence and daring in West Indian
waters, and the record of the Revenue Cutter Service in guarding the
seaboard and preventing the departure of unauthorized merchant ships,
while the embargo act of 1807 was in force, was also a fine one.
Its services during the War of 1812 were as varied as they were
brilliant. Not only did its vessels successfully essay perilous
missions, but they also took a gallant part in many of the most hotly
contested naval actions of the war. In fact, to the cutter Jefferson and
its gallant crew belong the credit for the first marine capture of that
contest, for within a week of the proclamation of war the Jefferson fell
in with and captured the British schooner Patriot, with a valuable
cargo, while on her way from Guadeloupe to Halifax. And this proved only
a fitting prelude to a hundred illustrious deeds performed by the
officers and crews of the Revenue Cutter Service during the following
three years. In the second year of the war the revenue cutter Vigilance
overhauled and after a sharp engagement captured the British privateer
Dart, off Newport, while the cutters Madison and Gallatin carried many
rich prizes into the ports of Charleston and Savannah.
When in 1832 South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union, several
cutters cruised off the Carolina coast, ready to assert by force the
supremacy of the Federal Government. During the Seminole War revenue
cutters were not only actively engaged in transporting troops and
munitions, but were also of great service in protecting the settlements
along the Florida coast. During the Mexican War eight revenue cutters
formed a part of the naval squadron operating against the southern
republic and participated gallantly in the assault on Alvarado and
Tobasco, while the revenue cutters McLane and Forward contributed
materially to the success of Commodore Perry's expedition against
Tobasco and Frontera in October, 1846.
[Illustration: AN OFFICER IN THE REVENUE CUTTER SERVICE]
Finally, a volume would be required to adequately record the work of the
Revenue Cutter Service during the Civil War. Its cutters were employed
as despatch boats, joined in the pursuit of blockade runners, did guard
and scouting duty, and often shared in engagements with Confederate
batteries and vessels. In truth, it was a revenue cutter, the Harriet
Lane, which, in Charleston Harbor, in April, 1861, fired on the Union
side, the first shot of the Civil War. The Harriet Lane was long the
pride of the Revenue Cutter Service, and had a notable career. Named
after the beautiful and gracious niece of President Buchanan, she
participated in the naval expedition to Paraguay, and during the Civil
War was often under fire. Again, during the war with Spain, the Revenue
Cutter Service achieved an enviable and heroic record.
The proper patrol of our long coast line requires a large number of
vessels, and the Revenue Cutter Service at the present time has a
complement of thirty-seven vessels, all splendidly adapted to the work
in hand. During the last sixty years steamers have slowly but steadily
replaced the top-sail schooners of the old days, and the vessels now
employed by the Revenue Cutter Service are, with one or two exceptions,
small, compact, well-built steamers, which, save for the guns they
carry, might easily be mistaken for swift steam yachts. In size they
range from 130 to 500 tons burden. The majority of them have been built
under the direct supervision of officers of the service and are
perfectly adapted to the varying wants of the several stations. Nearly
all of them are armed with from two to four breech-loading rifled cannon
and carry small arms for the use of their crews. Most of the vessels
bear the names of former secretaries and assistant secretaries of the
Treasury, but the Andrew Johnson, the William H. Seward and U. S. Grant
are also among the names to be found on the list. The U. S. Grant, which
does duty at Port Townsend, is a bark-rigged steam propeller, and a
model of its size and type. Strange to say, it is the only ship of the
United States that bears the name of the greatest captain of his age.
The vessels of the Revenue Cutter Service are always ready for instant
duty in the most distant quarters. When, in 1867, Alaska became a part
of the United States, within a week after the ratification of the
treaty, the revenue cutter Lincoln was steaming northward, and was the
first to obtain accurate information regarding the geography, resources
and climate of our new possession. Three or more revenue cutters now
cruise every year in Alaskan waters, guarding the seal fisheries and
often giving much needed relief to the whaling fleet that yearly sails
from San Francisco for a cruise in the waters above the Behring Sea.
Officers and crews of the cutters doing service in the waters of Alaska
have remarkable stories to tell, and the log-books of the cutters Corwin
and Bear have been filled during the last twenty-five years with a
record all too brief, of many thrilling adventures in the frozen North.
The Corwin left San Francisco for the Polar Sea in May, 1881, charged
with ascertaining, if possible, the fate of two missing whalers, and to
establish communication with the exploring steamer Jeanette. Five times
during the previous year the Corwin had attempted to reach Herald
Island, and failed each time. On this voyage better success attended,
and after braving the perils of the drift ice, a landing was made, while
at the same time the bleak coast of Wrangel Land was sighted to the
westward. On August 12, 1881, the Corwin having pushed its way through
great masses of floating and grounded ice, into an open space near the
island, effected a landing on Wrangel Land, this being the first time
that white men had ever succeeded in reaching that remote corner of the
Arctic waste.
The cruises of the Corwin in 1880 and 1881 covered over 12,000 miles,
and the officers and crew, while carefully preventing illegal raids upon
the sealing interests, also found time to prosecute important surveys
and soundings, to make a careful study of the natives of Alaska, and to
collect a great mass of important data relative to the natural features
and mineral wealth of the country. The cruises of the Corwin in the
succeeding years of 1882, 1883, 1884 and 1885, were of scarcely less
importance. One of these cruises was to St. Lawrence Bay, Siberia, where
timely succor was given to the officers and crew of the burned naval
relief steamer Rogers, which had gone north in the spring of 1881 in
search of the Jeanette. During the Corwin's cruise in 1883 a
considerable portion of the interior of Alaska was carefully explored
and an outbreak among the natives on the mainland promptly quelled.
During its two succeeding cruises the Corwin saved from death nearly 100
shipwrecked whalers and destitute miners.
Since 1885 the cutter Bear has patrolled the Alaskan waters, making a
record equal to that of its predecessor. Its work in protecting the
sealing fisheries is well known, and it has also suppressed in large
measure the illegal sale to the natives of firearms and spirits. Its
record as a life saver is also a long one, and some of its experiences
have been more thrilling than those to be found in the pages of any
romance.
When the Bear reached Alaskan waters in 1887 the captain of the whaling
ship Hunter handed its commander a most remarkable message, which had
been delivered to him a few days before by the natives of Cape Behring.
This message consisted of a piece of wood, on one side of which was
rudely carved: "1887 J. B. V. Bk. Nap. Tobacco give," and on the other
"S. W. C. Nav. M 10 help come."
The riddle offered by the message was speedily solved by the officers of
the Bear. The bark Napoleon had been wrecked in 1885 off Cape Navarin,
and only fourteen of the crew of thirty-six men had been rescued. Of the
unlucky twenty-two a few reached the Siberian shore, but nothing had
been heard of their subsequent fate. The officers of the Bear reasoned
that the sender of the message was a member of the Napoleon's crew who
had found refuge with the natives to the southwest of Cape Navarin and
was now anxiously awaiting rescue. This reasoning proved correct, and a
few weeks later the weary two years' exile of James B. Vincent, of
Edgartown, Mass., boatswain of the Napoleon, had a happy termination.
The story Vincent told his rescuers, was of tragic and absorbing
interest. The Napoleon, caught in a storm, had been wedged in the ice
and its crew compelled to take to the boats. The boats, four in number,
were soon separated, and thirty-six days of fearful suffering passed
before the one containing Vincent and his companions reached shore. In
the meantime nine of the eighteen men in the boat had died and several
others had been driven insane by their sufferings. Vincent was the only
one who could walk when they reached land. Five more soon died and three
of the survivors were helpless from frost bites and exhaustion when they
fell in with a party of natives. A portion of the latter lived inland,
and these took Vincent with them when they returned to their homes. The
following Spring when the natives visited the shore to fish, Vincent
found his three shipmates barely alive, and they died soon after.
When the fishing was over Vincent went back to the mountains with his
new-found friends, and during the following winter carved and entrusted
to wandering natives from Cape Behring the message which later brought
about his rescue. When spring of the second year opened Vincent, with
the natives, again started for the seashore to fish. Great was his joy a
few weeks later when he was attracted by the shouting of the natives and
looked up to see a white man and to find himself rescued at last. The
Bear conveyed him to San Francisco, whence he made his way to his home
in Massachusetts.
While among the Eskimo, Vincent was kindly cared for by an old native,
whose wife received him as her son. After a year the husband died, but
his last instructions to his wife were to care for and keep their guest
until he was rescued. When relief at last came the old woman with tears
in her eyes, said that she was ready to die, for she had done as her
husband wished. Warm and tender hearts can be found even in Siberian
wastes.
The Revenue Cutter Service is part of the Treasury Department, and comes
under the direct jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Treasury.
Subordinate to him are a chief and assistant chief of division. Each
vessel of the service patrols the district to which it is assigned, and
forms a picket line at the outer edge of government jurisdiction, which
extends four leagues from the coast. Every vessel arriving in United
States waters is boarded and examined, and its papers certified. If a
vessel liable to seizure or examination does not bring to when requested
to do so, the commander of a cutter, after discharging a warning gun,
has authority to fire into such a vessel, and all acting under his
orders are indemnified from any penalties or action from damages. On
each cutter there are a captain, three lieutenants, a cadet, an engineer
and two assistants, and a crew of a dozen or more men.
The service includes in its several grades about one thousand men.
Strict discipline is maintained, and its crews receive constant
instruction and exercise in the use of great guns, rifles, carbines,
pistols, cutlasses and the like. An officer of the Revenue Cutter
Service must not only possess considerable executive ability, but must
also be a man of varied and accurate information, having a knowledge of
gunnery and military drills, and be thoroughly familiar with the customs
and navigation laws of the country.
Rank is obtained by promotion, the latter being governed by written
competitive examinations, from three to five of the senior officers of a
lower grade being selected for any vacancy occurring in the higher
grade. A young man wishing to join the service as an officer undergoes a
rigid examination held annually at Washington, and then serves for
several years aboard the revenue schoolship, where he learns sea
mathematics, sea law and seamanship. His period of apprenticeship ended,
he joins a regular cutter as a junior officer and waits for promotion
at a salary of $85 per month.
Life on board a revenue cutter during the months of summer is usually an
easy and pleasant one, but in the winter there is another and different
story to tell. From December to April of each year the cutters cruise
constantly on their stations to give aid to vessels in distress, and
are, in most cases, forbidden to put into port unless under stress of
weather or other unforeseen conditions arise.
Few stormy winter days pass without the revenue cutter seeing a signal
from some vessel in distress, and aid is never sought in vain. The
cutter steers straight for the signal as soon as it is sighted, and when
a quarter of a mile distant lowers a boat. Often a boat is launched into
a sea where death seems certain, but officers and men never shrink from
their duty. When the boat gains the side of the vessel seeking aid, the
master whom misfortune has overtaken, requests, as a rule, to be towed
into port. When such a request is made, a line must be got to the
distressed vessel and from the boat to the cutter, a task often
performed with infinite difficulty and at the risk of life and limb.
When a vessel is found drifting helplessly and about to dash itself upon
rocks, the peril is even greater. Then the cutter must stand further
away, and its boat is in constant danger of being dashed upon the rocks.
But, thanks to the skill, experience and coolness of the officers and
crew of the cutter, a line is generally got into the boat and to the
steamer, and the imperilled vessel hauled away to safety.
One of the finest feats of life-saving ever performed by the Revenue
Cutter Service was that credited to the cutter Dexter, some years ago.
On January 17, 1884, the iron-built steamer City of Columbus left Boston
for the port of Savannah, carrying eighty-one passengers and a ship's
company of forty-five persons. Her commander was a capable and
experienced seaman, and though by nightfall the wind, which had been
blowing all day, had increased to a hurricane, and a heavy sea was
running, he had no serious apprehension of danger. The vessel, following
her usual course through Vineyard Sound, had left behind nearly all the
dangerous points which thickly bestrew those waters, and would soon be
safely in the open ocean. It was at that luckless moment that the
captain left the bridge and went below, first directing the helmsman how
to steer.
Within an hour the steamer struck on Devil's Bridge, and an awful fate
was upon the hapless passengers and crew, who were sleeping soundly, all
unconscious of danger. The weather was bitter cold, the darkness
intense, the wind blowing a hurricane and the waves rolling mountain
high. In the twinkling of an eye a hundred poor creatures were swept to
their death in the icy waters. A few of the stronger ones took refuge in
the rigging, but many of these, benumbed by the cold, dropped one by one
from their supports and disappeared in the sea, while such boats as
were cleared away were either dashed to pieces or instantly swamped.
The wreck occurred about four o'clock in the morning, and soon after
daylight the Dexter reached the scene of the disaster. Her commander at
once dispatched two boats to the rescue of those still clinging to the
rigging of the Columbus, and thirteen men, jumping from their refuge
into the sea, were picked up as they came to the surface, and conveyed
to the Dexter. To reach the wreck in small boats through an angry sea
was an undertaking so perilous as to make even the boldest pause, and
called for courage of the highest order. However, the Dexter's crew
proved equal to the test, and Lieutenant John U. Rhodes made himself
famous by an act of the noblest heroism. Two men, rendered helpless by
cold and exposure, still clung to the rigging of the Columbus after all
their companions had been taken off. To board the ill-fated vessel was
impossible; Rhodes essayed to reach it by swimming. He gained the side
of the vessel after a gallant battle with the waves, but was struck by
a piece of floating timber, and had to abandon the attempt. Bruised and
half fainting, he insisted upon making another trial, reached the vessel
and brought away the two men, both of whom died a few hours later. The
Legislature of Connecticut, Rhodes' native State, passed a resolution
thanking him for his gallant conduct, and he received many medals and
testimonials.
Rhodes has since died, but the Revenue Cutter Service still numbers
among its officers scores of men endowed with the flawless bravery of
which he gave such shining proof at the wreck of the City of Columbus.
One of these is Lieutenant James H. Scott. This brilliant young
officer--I cite his case as a typical one--was born in Pennsylvania
thirty-seven years ago, and while still in his teens shipped as a boy on
a merchant vessel in commerce between Philadelphia and Antwerp. Tiring
of this trade, he sailed as an able seaman from New York to Bombay and
other East Indian ports, making the last voyage as boatswain of the
good ship Ridgeway, after which, declining proffer of a second mate's
berth, he entered the Revenue Cutter Service as a cadet.
Graduated in 1890, and made acting third lieutenant on the cutter
Woodbury, it was then that young Scott, who while attached to the
revenue schoolship had jumped overboard in Lisbon harbor and rescued the
quartermaster of his vessel, again gave proof of the sterling stuff that
was in him. On a cold, clear day in January, 1891, the Woodbury, which
is stationed at Portland, Me., was cruising to the eastward of that
port, the thermometer below zero, and the rigging covered with ice. The
Woodbury was about half-way over her cruising ground when the officer of
the deck discovered a large three-masted schooner hard aground on a
ledge of rocks which stood well out from the shore. A high sea was
running at the time, though the cutter rose and fell to every wave with
apparent unconcern, and breaking clean over the schooner, the crew of
which had taken refuge on the rocks and were now frantically signalling
for help. It was clear that unless help reached them they would quickly
perish from the cold.
Captain Fengar, commanding the Woodbury, ran in as close as he could
without peril to his vessel, and carefully surveyed the ground before
giving an order. His practiced eye told him in a moment that to send in
a boat of the cutter type would mean its certain destruction against the
rocks, even if it could live in the sea then running. However, the
captain suddenly recalled that a fisherman's village was only a few
miles distant, and that there he could obtain a couple of dories
admirably adapted to the task in hand. Shouting to the men on the rocks
to hold on and not lose hope, the cutter, at a word from its commander,
headed about, and went plunging and rolling at top speed in the
direction of the village. Two hours later the Woodbury was again on the
scene, with a good-sized dory on one of her davits.
Closing in on the wreck, Captain Fengar called for volunteers. Almost
to a man the crew responded, but among the foremost were Cadets Scott
and W. S. Van Cott. Captain Fengar allowed the two young men to go, but
not without some misgivings. Both insisted on pulling oars, the dory
being in charge of Lieutenant W. L. Howland, an experienced and capable
officer. As the dory left the ship it was observed that a life-saving
crew from a station well down the coast was approaching. It would never
do to let the Woodbury be beaten, and her dory crew pulled with all the
vim they could command. The race was to be a close one, but at the
outset the Woodbury's boat gained the lead, and such a run, in such a
sea, was never perhaps pulled by opposing boats.
Lieutenant Howland in getting close in, dared not run up too close to
the rocks, and after a couple of ineffectual attempts to heave a line
was about to despair of success, when suddenly Cadet (now Lieutenant)
Scott, securing the line around his waist, sprang overboard, before any
one in the boat knew what he was about. Shouting to Lieutenant Howland
to pay the line out, young Scott was dashed upon the rocks and seized by
the imprisoned sailors. The brave young fellow was badly stunned, but he
had gained his point by getting the line to the rocks. Communication was
now effected with the dory, which all this time was riding the seas at a
safe distance. Another line was hauled up from the boat, and one by one
the sailors jumped clear of the rocks and were hauled to the dory,
whence they were conveyed without delay to the deck of the cutter. When
rescued they had been fourteen hours on the rock. Since the incident
just related, Lieutenant Scott, though still one of its youngest
officers, has held every position in the Revenue Cutter Service.
The present chief of the Revenue Cutter Service is Captain C. F.
Shoemaker. He has climbed to this position from the lowest rung of the
ladder, and is a man whose success would have been notable in almost any
calling. Many of the other captains of the service are men of mark and
achievement, for the Government has no nobler, better, braver servants
than those who officer and man its revenue cutters.
CHAPTER VI
THE OCEAN PILOT
The ocean pilots and deep sea divers of New York have one thing in
common; both object to taking apprentices, and in the case of the
former, at least, there is good reason for this, since they have been,
for generations, the aristocrats of their calling. The pilots who sail
out of Sandy Hook are no hardier than their rugged and fearless fellows
of the North Sea, but they subject themselves to greater dangers by
their long cruises, and rough, indeed, must be the weather that can keep
them in port. They cruise night and day, in search of incoming craft;
their torches' flare lights up the snow and sleet of winter storms and
contends with the darkness of summer fogs; and they speak and board in
all sorts of weather and at all seasons the fleet liners that cross the
western ocean in less than a week. And these pilots of the New York and
New Jersey shores are a revelation to the tourist, who, having never
heard of them, sees them for the first time. The latter, in most cases,
expects to watch a rough-and-ready sort of fellow in homespun, with a
swaggering air and a boisterous manner, climb from the pilot's yawl up
the black hull's towering side. Instead, he sees a man of modest and
pleasing address, about whom there is little to indicate his calling,
and much that bespeaks the merchant or clerk one meets of a morning on
lower Broadway. There was a time when our pilots indulged in the luxury
of a high silk hat when boarding vessels in sunny weather, but they are
not so fastidious nowadays, and use derbies instead.
Prosperous as a class, the pilots of New York pay dearly for their
prosperity by the most arduous sea labor. Since 1853 more than
thirty-five boats have been sunk and wrecked in various ways, and twice
that number of pilots have lost their lives. There are at the present
time upward of 160 pilots cruising from the port of New York. They are
subject to the supervision of a pilots' commission of five members,
named by the Governor of New York, and each pilot is appointed after a
long and severe apprenticeship. He must first serve, boy and man, before
the mast until he masters every problem in the management of every form
of rig. Then he must contrive to obtain the position of boat-keeper or
pilot's mate. In that capacity he must serve three full years before he
can be admitted for his examination for a license. After this he must
pass a most rigid examination on all points of seamanship and navigation
before the Board of Pilot Commissioners, and show complete and exact
knowledge of the tides, rips and sands and all other phenomena for many
miles out from the piers of the East and North Rivers.
But even after the candidate has received his license, he is sometimes
forced to wait years, until some pilot happens to die and leave a
vacancy for him. The first year of pilotage he is granted a license to
pilot vessels drawing less than sixteen feet. If he gives satisfaction,
the following year he is permitted to take charge of vessels drawing
eighteen feet. If he passes a satisfactory examination the third year,
he then receives a full license, entitling him to pilot vessels of any
draught, and is then first called a branch or full pilot. On receiving
his license, the pilot must give bonds for the proper discharge of his
duty, and he is liable to heavy fines if he declines to fill a vacancy
or board a vessel making signals for a pilot. Pilots are paid for their
work by the foot, the charges varying according to the draught. For a
ship drawing from twenty-one to twenty-eight feet they receive $4.88 a
foot, and for one drawing six to thirteen and one-half feet $2.78 a
foot, these rates being slightly increased in winter.
A cruise on a New York pilot-boat, however brief, is an experience sure
to be remembered. When a pilot-boat starts out on a hunt for ships, it
is decided in what order its half-dozen pilots shall take the prizes,
and the man who is to board the first one is placed in command. The
other pilots, meanwhile, take their ease as best suits their taste, the
seaman's work being done by a crew of sailors hired for the purpose. One
pilot, however, is always on the lookout for sails, and a landsman is
compelled to marvel at the certainty with which these ocean scouts
discharge the task of sighting vessels, for often they are able to tell
the name of a steamship before unaccustomed eyes can discern aught but a
waste of waters and a wide expanse of sky. Still, a part of this skill
may be due to the fact that pilots are always posted before going out as
to what vessels are expected, and from what direction they are coming,
the watch being made all the keener by the fact that the bigger the ship
the bigger is the pilot's pay. A ship, moreover, must take a pilot going
out from the same boat that furnishes the pilot going into port, while
if a captain refuses a pilot he must pay full pilotage, and thus
contribute his tithe to the support of the system. This latter rule
seems, at first glance, a curious provision, but it is defended on the
ground that without it the business would not be remunerative enough for
really competent men to engage in it, and that with unskilled pilots the
annual losses would be greatly in excess of what they are at present.
When a ship is sighted by daylight, a long blue burgee is hoisted to the
peak of the pilot-boat, which means, "Do you want a pilot?" If there is
no responsive signal, it is taken for granted that the answer is "Yes,"
but if a jack is hoisted the watchers know that the vessel has already
been boarded by a pilot from some boat that has sailed farther away from
port in the hunt for a ship. When a ship is sighted at night she is
signalled by means of a torch charged with benzine and giving forth an
intense light. Seen from the other vessel the effect is startling, the
white light illuminating every sail and spar of the pilot-boat, so that
it stands out, its number clearly visible upon the mainsail, a gray
specter against the night's background.
Should the answering signal be favorable, there follows a scene of great
excitement on the deck of the pilot-boat. At first sight of the ship,
the pilot due to take the prize dives down to the cabin, sheds his
working clothes and dons a suit of sober black, and by the time it is
known he is wanted, he is ready to be transferred to his charge. Taking
on a pilot is not without its perils. The yawl nearly always pitches and
tumbles in most uncomfortable fashion, while the ship is rarely if ever
brought to a full stop, and the pilot, watching his chance, must grasp
the rope ladder let down its side, and scramble aboard as best he can.
Sometimes he gets a ducking, and if the weather is tempestuous he is
pretty certain to be drenched, but for that he cares not a jot, and he
is sure to show a smiling face to captain and passengers when finally he
sets foot on deck. Dropping a pilot from an outgoing vessel is often
more hazardous, especially in stormy weather, than his transfer the
other way. Then he must descend the rope ladder and jump for the boat in
the nick of time, for to miscalculate in the least the position of the
little shell means a ducking almost certainly, and possibly a watery
grave.
[Illustration: PILOT SIGNALING A VESSEL]
A peril, however, more feared by pilots than the one I have been
describing, is the dreaded lee shore; and with reason, as a story told
by a veteran ocean pathfinder will show. On a still afternoon in
midsummer the crew of a pilot-boat sighted a ship off Fire Island, some
five miles away. In the dead calm prevailing the only way to board her
was to row over the distance. There would be little danger in doing this
if the wind did not spring up and the ship sail away, so the yawl was
lowered and headed for the distant merchantman. But as night was closing
in, and ere the yawl had come within hailing distance of the ship, of a
sudden the breeze sprang up, and the vessel making sail, glided slowly
over the horizon line. The breeze grew into a gale, and in the gathering
storm and gloom the men could no longer discern the whereabouts of the
pilot-boat. Nor, there being no compass on board the yawl, could they
determine the direction in which they were being blown. The nearest land
was miles away and the only thing that could be done was to keep the
boat's head to the wind and wait. Thus the minutes lengthened into
hours. Toward dawn, when the night was darkest, they heard the thunder
of surf on the reefs, and a little later felt the yawl lifted up on the
crest of a mighty breaker rushing swiftly toward the land. There was a
deafening roar, a crash, a whirl, and a torrent of foam. In a twinkling
the boat was capsized and the poor fellows were struggling in the surf.
One struck a rock and was killed. The others, freed from the receding
wave, ran up the beach, and by digging their hands into the sand to
escape the deadly undertow, finally got ashore, drenched and exhausted.
In the main, however, the system I have been describing has now become a
thing of the past. Potent causes have contributed to this result.
Formerly pilot-boats had no particular stations assigned to them, and
boats have been known to cruise as far north as Sable Island, a distance
of six hundred miles, in order to get steamers taking the northern
courses. In the same way pilot-boats cruised long distances to the
southward and straight out to sea to meet the incoming steamers and
sailing vessels. Thus, unrestrained in its movements and left to seek
out its own salvation, each boat sought to outdo the other in securing
work, and all sorts of strategic devices were brought into play in order
to first gain the side of an incoming vessel. Pilots took advantage of
fog and night in order to slip by a rival, while jockeying for winds and
position was indulged in to an extent that would be counted
extraordinary in a yacht race.
Competition, however, cut down earnings to such an extent that there
came a time when many of the boats were no longer able to pay expenses.
Then it was that some of the long-headed among the pilots, casting about
for a remedy for this evil, came to the conclusion that one steam
pilot-boat would be able to do the work of three or four sailboats. It
was accordingly decided some years ago that steamboats should gradually
replace the existing fleet of sail. With this innovation came
restrictions regulating the cruising grounds of the boats. Instead of
cruising about indiscriminately as formerly, each boat is now assigned a
certain beat. An imaginary arc has been described extending from
Barnegat to Fire Island, a distance of seventy-five miles, and all pilot
boats are expected to confine themselves within this line. Four
pilot-boats patrol this line, each covering a beat of about nineteen
miles. Inside of the circle are stationed two more pilot-boats, while
still further in is a boat known as the inner pilot-boat. Just off the
bar another boat is stationed to receive the pilots dropped by
outward-bound vessels. When a boat in the outer circle becomes unmanned
or disabled, a boat from the inner circle takes its place, while a
reserve boat occupies the beat left vacant on the inner circle. In this
way all the beats are constantly patrolled in an efficient and
economical way. Each pilot takes his turn at the service, and is on
board a boat cruising on the stations three days in seven, a moving
contrast to the offshore service of other years, when a boat and crew
were frequently compelled to remain at sea for weeks at a time.
Indeed, under the new system of pilotage, battles with cross-seas and
gales and exposures to snow, cold and sleet, while cruising for vessels
hundreds of miles off coast, are fast becoming things of the past, and
for stories of collisions, wrecks, narrow escapes and strange mishaps,
one must now hark back to the records of former days. Here, however, he
is sure to encounter many a tale that quickens the pulse and stirs the
blood. Take the case of the Columbia, run down by the steamship Alaska,
off Fire Island. When the Alaska was sighted, the pilot-boat was
head-reaching to the north on the port tack. The wind was blowing a gale
from the northwest, and an ugly sea was running, with the weather
clear, but cold. She plunged deeply into the heavy sea, and heeled to
the force of the wind until her lee rail was awash. The wind whipped off
the top of the waves and filled the air with spray. When the steamship
sighted the boat off Fire Island, her course was changed to make a lee
for the boat's yawl. She seemed to stop when the yawl was launched and
two men and a pilot went over the side of the boat and dropped into her,
but ere the yawl had fairly started on her way the liner, of a sudden,
and without warning, forged ahead. The surge from the port bow of the
Alaska, as she pitched into a big wave, capsized the boat, and threw the
men into the water. Before anything could be done to save them the bows
of the steamship rose and fell again, and, hitting the pilot-boat, cut
it in two and crushed the decks and beams to bits, the broken timbers
being swept under the bows and along the sides as the steamship again
forged ahead and passed over the spot. Not a man on the Columbia was
saved.
The Sandy Hook pilot, however, never quails in the face of danger or
even death, as was proved at the stranding of the packet boat, John
Minturn, almost within a stone's throw of the New Jersey beach during a
frightful hurricane in February, 1846. There were fifty-one souls on
board the Minturn, and of that number only thirteen escaped to tell the
story of that fearful night. Its hero, according to the evidences of
all, was Pilot Thomas Freeborn, who to the very last struggled manfully
to succor the hapless women and children who clung to the deck around
him. It was bitter cold, and every wave that washed over the stranded
ship left its coating of ice on deck, rigging, passengers and crew.
Freeborn and brave Captain Stark, who was forced to see his wife and
children freeze to death without being able to render them assistance,
gave up their own clothing in a vain attempt to protect the weaker
sufferers, and when days afterward the pilot's body was found washed up
on the beach it was almost naked, while that of a woman, which lay
near-by, was carefully wrapped in his pea-jacket.
It has been three-score years since the wreck of the Minturn, but in
every year since then there has been numbered among the members of the
Sandy Hook Pilot's Association scores of hardy men, who, should need
come to them, stood ready to risk their lives and die as bravely as did
Thomas Freeborn. Pilot Henry Devere proved that he had the same heroic
fiber in his makeup when he sailed in the James Funck, before the Civil
War. A brig under shortened sails was sighted one day, and when the yawl
of the pilot-boat drew alongside, Devere hailed a boy at the wheel. The
boy seemed to be stupefied, and the pilot was obliged to hail him
several times before he started up, leaned forward into the
companionway, and called feebly to somebody below. Then a gaunt man came
on deck and said that the crew had been stricken by fever. Most people
in the face of a menace of this sort would have turned back, but Devere
was not that kind of man. Instead, he went on board, and, with the help
of the mate, headed the vessel toward Sandy Hook. The captain was ill in
his stateroom. The body of a dead sailor found on deck was tied in
mosquito netting and dropped overboard. The boy died in the lower bay,
and the captain off the Battery, leaving the mate as the sole survivor
of the crew. The pilot helped to furl the sails and make the lines fast,
and only left the stricken vessel when she had reached her moorings.
The stranding of the Jesse Carll in 1889, illustrates another of the
dangers with which pilots sometimes have to contend. The boat, having
discharged one of her five pilots, was standing off shore near Fire
Island, when she began to feel the force of an advancing southern
cyclone, and early in the evening was in what sailors call "nasty
weather." At midnight a violent thunder-storm burst overhead, and the
increasing wind raised a furious sea, but Pilot Gideon Mapes, in charge
of the vessel, had her under double-reefed sails, and standing up
against the wind and waves in fine shape. Then came a deluge of rain,
and the wind increased to hurricane force. Soon a thick mist covered the
water and shut out everything in sight. The boat reached off and on,
expecting to keep out of shoal water, but all efforts failed. Her
signals of distress were seen by the life-saving crew on the beach, and
before daylight the ten men on board were taken ashore in boats. When
morning came an effort was made to pull the boat off, but as she shifted
into deeper water she filled, a hole having been made in her bottom.
Then the pilots abandoned her, but she was raised and repaired a few
weeks later.
Stories like these are what the pilots tell in their idle hours.
Searching for them at such a time, one is most likely to find them at
the Pilots' Club, a flourishing social organization, which has roomy
quarters just under the roof of a big office building within hailing
distance of the Battery. Here at all hours of the day a score or more of
pilots are sure to be sitting about spinning yarns, playing cards and
checkers and reading the newspapers and magazines. Their well-furnished
clubrooms contain a great number of precious curios--relics from all
quarters of the globe. There are firearms of curious antique pattern;
autograph letters by such famous sea-dogs as Macdonough and Porter; a
tiny chest of drawers carved from one of the timbers of John Paul Jones'
ship, the Bon Homme Richard; a portrait of Washington by Stuart,
surrounded by two large American flags, and a model of the pilot-boat
Stingaree, which was built in 1810, and was one of the most famous
crafts of her day.
This model shows that the years have wrought great changes in the
building and rigging of pilot-boats. In old times the boats simply
carried mainsail, foresail, and forestaysail and jib. They had no
foretopmast, and on their maintopmast carried a flying gaff-topsail,
which was hoisted from the deck. Now the boats have both fore and
maintopmasts, and each carries a mainsail, foresail, forestaysail, jib,
jib-topsail, maintopsail and staysail and fore and main standing-gaff
topsails, which give them an immense spread of sail, compared with that
used by the boats of earlier times. A schooner-rigged pilot-boat costs
from $15,000 to $16,000. That was about the cost of the Caldwell H.
Colt, a good example of the typical pilot-boat. She is eighty-five feet
long with twenty-one feet beam, 61.43 tons, custom-house register, and a
rig as trim and jaunty as that of an ordinary yacht. The pride, however,
at present writing, of the New York Sandy Hook fleet is the New York,
built of steel, propelled by steam, and able to stand as much buffeting
in cyclonic seas as the stanchest of the liners. She was built on the
Delaware from designs by A. Cary Smith, is 155 feet long, 28 feet beam,
19 feet 7 inches deep, and is driven by a compound surface-condensing
engine of 100 horse-power. Her pole masts are of steel, and she spreads
on them enough canvas to steady her. The New York has accommodations for
twenty-four pilots, who fare more luxuriously than they ever did on any
of the old sailing craft. They have a smoking-room in a separate steel
deckhouse, aft of the engine-room, fitted up like a similar room on an
ocean steamship, while the lifeboats in which they leave the New York to
board incoming vessels are hoisted and lowered by a steam derrick in
less than a minute. It is intended that in a few years the entire fleet
shall be made up of vessels equal if not superior to the New York.
CHAPTER VII
THE DEEP-SEA DIVER
There is something about the occupation of the diver that strongly
appeals to the imagination, and with reason, for working fathoms below
the surface of the water, in semi-darkness, dependent upon a rickety
pump for the breath of life, his trade is at best a perilous and
precarious one. Perhaps, that is why divers as a class are opposed to
taking apprentices, and that a majority of the men who drift into the
calling do so by accident. Most divers, if you question them, will tell
you that the best, if not the only way to acquire their art is to put on
a diving suit, go down into the depths, and learn the business for
yourself.
That was what a diver who was preparing for work in the East River said
to me, and, fitting the action to the word, I asked him to loan me his
suit, and permit me to try my 'prentice hand at the business. He
protested goodnaturedly, but finally yielding, brought out his suit, and
helped me to put it on. The outfit in which I speedily found myself
accoutred, consists of two suits, one within the other, and both of
india-rubber. The stockings, trousers and shirt are all made together as
one garment, which the wearer enters at the neck, feet first. The hands
are left bare, the wristbands of the rubber shirtsleeves tightly
compressing the wrists. There is a copper breastplate, bearing upon its
outer convex surface small screws adjusted to holes in the neck of the
shirt, which by means of nuts fastened upon the screws, is held so
securely in place as to render the entire dress from the neck downward
absolutely air and water-tight. Fitting with equal closeness to the
breastplate is a helmet, completely inclosing the head and supplied with
three glasses, one in front and one on each side, to enable the diver
to look in any direction. Finally, for his feet there is a pair of very
thick leather shoes, made to lace up the front, and supplied with heavy
leaden soles to prevent him from turning feet uppermost in the water.
When, with my friend's aid, I had donned this curious-looking dress, he
placed across my shoulders ropes sustaining two leaden weights, one
hanging at my breast and the other at my back. Sometimes in very strong
currents it is necessary to make the weights which the diver carries
extraordinarily heavy. Such was the case with those hanging over my
shoulders on the occasion of my first dive. While the diving dress I
wore weighed of itself nearly two hundred pounds, yet, much to my
surprise, when once below the surface, I did not find the burden I
sustained in wearing it any more than I did that of my ordinary clothing
when out of the water. It also seemed marvelous to me, after daylight
had swiftly merged into the twilight of the depths, that though I was
several fathoms under water my breathing was free and unconstrained,
for an air-pump worked by two men supplies the diver with air, which
passes into his helmet through a hose at the back. Near the place of its
entrance is a spring valve for its escape. This can be controlled by the
diver, but he usually sets it before going into the water and seldom
disturbs it afterward, since the pressure of the air being greater than
that of the water a surplus of the former readily escapes.
When the valve proves insufficient to permit the escape of all the dead
air the diver can open in his breast-plate a similar spring valve
intended only for such an emergency. He can also regulate the amount of
air pumped to him by signals on the air-hose to the men engaged in
pumping, one pull meaning more and two pulls less air. These signals by
means of the air-hose are generally used by all divers, but each diver
has also his own private code of signals upon the life-line, which is
always fastened to his waist, and by which he is drawn up out of the
water. These signals each diver writes down very carefully and gives to
the man in charge of the life-line. By means of these he can, without
coming to the surface, send for tools, material or anything needed for
the work he has in hand. When a lengthy communication is to be made the
diver often sends up for a slate and writes what he wishes to say. Old
divers declare that it is just as easy to read and write under the water
as it is out of it, all objects being greatly magnified.
The only unpleasant sensation of my stay below was a slight drumming in
the ears--walking under the water I found an easy matter--and when
hauled to the surface I declared my first attempt at diving a wholly
successful one. However, the man whose suit I had borrowed, smiled at my
enthusiasm, and declared with something akin to contempt that there was
a good deal of difference between deep-sea diving and grubbing about the
East River for a lost anchor. I learned before we parted that he was a
deep-sea diver forced for the moment to accept whatever task came to
hand, but there was truth in what he said; and I am also convinced,
after talks with a dozen members of his fraternity, that neither a
single descent nor even many descents into the depths, can give one an
adequate idea of the weird strangeness of a diver's life. That can come
only from the cumulative experience of a lifetime.
Almost all the submarine work on the Atlantic coast is done by divers
living in New York or Boston. There are about as many skilled divers in
Boston as New York--perhaps twenty in each city. The pay of a skilled
diver is five dollars a day of four hours or less. In that time a man
may descend half a dozen times, or he may descend once and stay four
hours, but be his period of labor long or short, it counts as a day. If
at the end of four hours he descends again that descent counts as
another day's labor. The diver's assistant receives three dollars. He is
a skilled man, whose business it is to manage the life-line and the
hose, and who sometimes becomes a diver. The pumpers, who run the pump
that keeps the diver supplied with air, are each paid two dollars a day.
They are not skilled workmen and seldom develop into divers.
Probably a third of the New York divers do not work for wages. These are
men who own their outfits and prefer to work by the job. Some of the
self-employing divers enjoy good incomes from their labors. As a rule, a
diver of this class goes down, looks at a sunken vessel, and then states
what he will charge to raise her. Diver Victor Hinston was paid $150 a
day for locating the sunken steamship City of Chester, and Captain
Anthony Williams, having raised the schooner Dauntless in two days,
received $750 for his time and trouble. The same diver, having repaired
with iron plates and raised in four days the steamer Meredith, ashore
near Jeremie, in Hayti, demanded and was paid $7,500 for his work. The
divers of New York live much as other citizens of the metropolis. A
majority of them are native Americans, with homes, wives and children.
They are, of course, absent from home a great deal and on short notice,
for divers from New York are not only sent all over the eastern coast of
the continent, but even to the Great Lakes and the interior rivers, most
of their work lying beyond the city.
Abram Onderdonk, when he died not long ago, was the oldest deep-sea
diver in this country. During forty of the nearly seventy years of his
life he was continuously engaged in the pursuit of his calling, and it
carried him to nearly every part of the globe. Captain Abe, as his
friends called him, counted the swordfish as the gravest danger members
of his craft have to fear. This fish, which has a short bony sword
almost as strong as steel, protruding from its head, speeds along
through the water, charging dead ahead and never veering from its course
for anything save a rocky ledge or the iron hull of a steamship. If it
strikes a wooden craft, its sword seldom fails to cut clean through the
vessel's side. Should a man be attacked by it certain death awaits him.
Diver Onderdonk himself never encountered but one of these creatures,
and that was a young one whose sword had not yet hardened. He was at
work on the deck of a sunken vessel, when he saw the fish coming from a
distance, and heading straight toward him. He took a tighter grip upon
the ax which he held in his hand, and made ready for attack, but, to his
surprise and relief, the fish, never swerving from its course, glided
past him out of his guard's range, and a moment later disappeared.
Captain Abe often encountered sharks under water, but declared that, as
a rule, there is little to be feared from them. A former mate of his
named March, however, once had an ugly experience with these creatures.
The diver in question was at work in a wreck which had been loaded with
live cattle. When she had been at the bottom for a month or so the
cattle became light and began rising to the surface. The locality was
infested with sharks, which quickly gathered round the hatchway, seizing
the carcasses as they came out and following them to the surface. Some
of the cattle had been tied, and these floating out to their ropes' end,
were torn to pieces by the sharks, which soon began to fight among
themselves, with the diver an unwilling witness to their struggles.
March, hesitating to ascend for fear he might be attacked, and afraid to
remain below lest the snap of a shark's mouth should sever his air hose,
in the end gave the signal to be hauled up, and the next instant was
jerked into and through the school of sharks. He came out of the water
maimed for life, as in his upward passage a shark snapped at him and
took off his right hand, thus rendering him incapable of further service
as a diver.
Another of Captain Abe's old mates, McGavern by name, while at work in
New Zealand waters, had an equally harrowing, although fortunately less
harmful, encounter with that most formidable of all marine monsters, the
devil fish. The diver was laying some wharf-blocks when suddenly
surprised by his uncanny foe. Despite his struggles--and he was a giant
in stature and strength--the monster quickly and completely overpowered
him. He was locked in the tremendous claws of the devil fish, and
fastened helpless against a submerged spile. McGavern realized his
peril, and kept quiet until his assailant, whose arms measured nearly
nine feet, loosened his hold. Then he signalled to be drawn up, and came
to the surface with the writhing creature still clinging to his back.
Captain Abe served before the mast in his youth, and I find that, other
things being equal, sailors make the best divers of all. Their former
experience is apt to render them cool and quick-witted in the presence
of danger, and their knowledge of a ship's rigging and construction
proves of untold value to them in their work. To his training as a
sailor Captain Charles Smith, a well-known Boston diver, probably owed
his truly marvelous escape from death when overtaken by accident while
at work on the sunken hull of the Clara Post, in the harbor of
Bridgeport, Conn., a few years ago. The wreck lay sixteen fathoms deep,
and when Captain Smith descended to examine it, he found that the masts
had gone by the board, and that the deck had been torn off by the waves,
while the cross timbers strewed with the wreckage, hung over the decks
and into the hold. Captain Smith began to cut them away, when suddenly
the tangled mass shifted and fell part way in the hold, catching him
with it and prisoning him as in a vise. The diver could not see far in
the deep water in which he was at work, and finding himself pinned in,
how he could not tell, he pulled the life-line three times--the signal
that his life was in peril. He felt himself rising a few feet; then all
the wreckage fell in upon him, pinning him more securely than before.
Worse still, when he tried to free himself, he found that the air-pipe
had encountered some unseen obstruction, and that to attempt to move
about would shut off his supply of air. The peril was one that made each
moment seem like eternity.
[Illustration: A DIVER READY TO DESCEND]
Meanwhile the diver's assistants were trying to discover what had
happened to him. It seemed to them that the signal to haul up had been
instantly followed by one to lower, and then by one to stop. The men at
the life-line, confused at these apparently contradictory commands,
ordered the derrick to haul on the blocks. Nothing yielded to the
strain, and the men at the pumps labored until they were exhausted, and
had to give way to others, but still no signs of release. A new danger
now threatened the imprisoned man. In catching hold of some iron bolts
he had cut a small hole in the valve of one of his rubber gloves, and
water, filling the glove, was slowly oozing past the clamps at the
wrist, and creeping up the arm. It seemed to the helpless diver, held
fast in the tide-swept mass, that he would soon be strangled or crushed
to death. Confused by the great air pressure in his helmet, he had about
concluded that his end had come, when--unlooked for relief--the wreckage
gave a lurch, and he found that he could climb up to one of the deck
timbers. He grasped his ax, and was hewing desperately for freedom,
when suddenly the whole mass broke away, and began to rise rapidly,
carrying the diver, now head downward, with it. His queer ascent did not
consume more than ten seconds, but it was long enough for him to live
over in memory all the events of a lifetime of two-score years. At first
his comrades failed to discover him in the mass of tangled material, and
their surprise can be imagined when he shot up through the wreckage,
feet first. Captain Smith described this as his closest call to death's
door, "and" he added, "I have peeped through the keyhole pretty often."
Captain Smith's adventure reminded a brother diver, in whose presence it
was told, of a narrow escape of his own. It occurred while he was
putting some copper on the bottom of a steamer in dock. "I took some
plate down with me," he said, "and worked for a while on one side of the
hull, after which I started in to put some plates on the other side. The
vessel was about three feet off the bottom, and I crawled underneath,
dragging the plates behind me. After I had been at work for an hour or
so I noticed that my air was getting short, but when I tried to get
under the keel again to be hauled up, I found the steamer on the bottom
and squeezing my air-hose between its keel and the ground. The tide was
ebbing and the hull had gradually sunk until it was almost aground. I
had forgotten all about the tide, and when I pulled the hose it refused
to move an inch. If the bottom had been soft it would not have mattered
so much, but it was rock, and the hose was gripped like a vise. There
was nothing to do but wait; if she fell any lower the air would be
entirely shut off and I would have to die. Not till my last hour shall I
forget the torture of those few minutes while I waited to see whether it
rose or fell. My head felt as though it was bursting, and my nose and
ears were bleeding. I took heart, however, when the air began to
freshen, for I knew then that the tide had turned, and that the hull was
rising. There was plenty of time for me to recover my nerve before it
was high enough off the bottom for me to crawl under, but I did not get
it back. Instead, I stood there shaking like one stricken with palsy
until I could squeeze under the bottom and give the signal to be hauled
up. I reached the surface in a half-fainting condition, and was sick for
weeks afterward. When I did recover it was with hearing permanently
impaired."
Diving in the Great Lakes is attended with even greater perils than
those I have just been describing. In Lake Huron, opposite the entrance
of Thunder Bay, a large buoy marks the spot where, nearly twenty-five
fathoms deep, lies the wreck of a once famous lake vessel, which sank
while sixty of its passengers were still in their berths, not one of
whom evermore made sign. The steamer took down with it when it sank not
only that precious human freight, but $300,000 in gold coin and five
hundred tons of copper. The sunken steamer was the Pewabic. Bound down
the lakes from Copper Island, then the richest known deposit of pure
copper in the world, it collided with the steamer Meteor, bound up the
lakes, and sank almost instantly.
Diving apparatus was at that time somewhat crude upon the lakes, and the
great depth of water in which the Pewabic went down made it out of the
question to attempt to raise it or to recover any of its valuable cargo.
Twenty-five years after the wreck the sunken vessel was located by means
of grappling irons, and a Toledo diver ventured to go down and inspect
it. He was hauled up dead. In spite of his fate, two other divers,
tempted by the price offered, went down at different times. Neither
survived the venture, and until 1892 nothing further was done toward
recovering the wealth lying in the wrecked Pewabic. Then a noted diver,
Oliver Peliky by name, who had with apparatus of his own devising done
safer work in deeper water than any other diver on the lakes had ever
been able to withstand, announced his willingness to go down to the
wreck. He was taken to the spot, the wreck was located by grapples and
Peliky went down. He was below twenty minutes and then signalled to be
drawn up. When he reached the surface he said he had experienced no
great inconvenience, had gone into the wreck, and was enthusiastic in
his belief that he could do the work that was necessary to recover the
cargo. He went down again, and for a quarter of an hour answered every
signal. Then he failed to respond. The men on the tender pulled on the
life-line. It had plainly caught on some obstruction. The crew,
believing that Peliky was dead, backed the steamer. The jerk loosened
the life-line. They hauled the diver to the surface. His armor was
opened, as if burst by some great force. The diver, of course, was dead.
Since then, though handsome inducements have been held out to various
divers, no further attempt has been made to recover the treasure that
has lain for more than a generation in the Pewabic's hold.
One of the divers with whom I have talked told me that somehow diving
took the life out of a man, and that he had never known a diver who did
much smiling. "I have an impression myself," he added, "that I shall go
down one of these days without coming up again." In truth, before my
wanderings among them were ended, I came to the conclusion that divers,
as a class, are taciturn, grave, sober-faced men, but I also found that
the calling they follow has its humorous as well as its serious side,
although too often the humor has a dash of the grewsome to it, as was
the case with a diver who went down to work on the steamship Viscaya,
sunk in a collision off Barnegat Light. It was a difficult job, so two
divers were sent down--one of them to remain on deck in sixty feet of
water, to act as second tender to the other diver who went below. The
latter had been at work but a few minutes when three jerks came over the
life-line. He was so unnerved when hauled up to the deck that he forgot
that he was still in sixty feet of water, and signalled to have his
helmet removed. When both divers had been hauled to the surface, he said
that while he was working through a gangway, he had seen two huge
objects coming toward him; and nothing could dissuade him from the
belief that he had encountered two submarine ghosts--until the other
diver went down and discovered that there was a mirror at the end of the
gangway, and that the diver had seen the reflection of his own legs,
vastly enlarged, coming toward him.
The veteran from whom I had this story told me also of the amusing
mistake made by a diver, who, much against his will, had been sent down
to recover a body from a wreck. Some divers have an ineradicable dread
of the dead, and never handle them when they can possible avoid it. He
was one of this kind, and the water being very thick, he went groping
gingerly about in the cabin. After a lengthy search he found a body, and
fastening a line around it, gave the signal to haul it up. When he
followed and took off his helmet a large hog lay on the deck. He had
tied the line around it, thinking it was the body he was looking for.
After that he was always called the "pork" diver. His former comrades
have likewise many amusing stories to relate of a diver of other days,
Tom Brintley by name, who, though a competent man and a good fellow, was
a little too fond of stimulants. On one occasion he went down while in
his cups, and the men above not knowing his condition, became seriously
alarmed when several hours passed by without their receiving any signals
from him or any response to those they made to him. Another diver, sent
down to look for him, found him lying on his back at the bottom of the
ocean, sixty feet below the surface, fast asleep!
The bed of the ocean would seem to most people an exceedingly strange
place in which to take a nap, but divers live in a world of their own--a
world of which their fellows know little or nothing, yet abounding at
every turn with curious, beautiful, and indeed, almost incredible
sights. Sometimes, especially in tropical waters, the bottom of the sea
is a lovely spectacle, and divers grow enthusiastic when they describe
its forests of kelp and seaweed gently waving in the tide, which look
like fairyland, in dim light, and the bright-colored fish making them
all the more beautiful. Along the coast of the Island of Margueretta,
and in many parts of the Caribbean Sea, there are submarine scenes of
surpassing beauty. Often the bed of the ocean is as smooth and firm as a
house floor, and the water as transparent as crystal, while the white
sandy bottom acts as a reflector to the bright sunshine above the
surface. In some places there are widespreading pastures of stumpy,
scrubby marine vegetation, a growth not unlike seaweed, and of a bluish
gray tinge. There are also clumps of fan-shaped fungi, of a spongy
consistency, which when dried in the sun are exceedingly beautiful. But
the most wonderful growths in these gardens of Neptune are the long kelp
tubas, resembling our fresh-water pond-lilies, only of much larger size.
Their stems are tough and hollow, and put forth pretty blossoms on the
surface, although their roots are in the bed of the ocean, many fathoms
below.
In the West Indies and the Spanish Main the water is so clear and
transparent that the bottom is visible at a depth of from sixty to a
hundred feet below the surface, and the scope of the diver's vision is
seldom less than an eighth of a mile. In Northern seas, however,
especially in the harbors of towns and cities, the water is so
discolored and murky that nothing can be seen at about twenty feet from
the surface, a disadvantage which calls for the exercise of the gift of
which all divers are most boastful--their delicacy of touch. Indeed,
most frequently the diver must do his work under water by means of touch
only, and when one considers the varied tasks he is called upon to
perform, pipe laying, building, drilling holes in rocks and charging
them with dynamite in darkness, looking for treasure, recovering dead
bodies and sunken cargoes, or inspecting all parts of a wrecked vessel,
buried in water a hundred feet deep, it is not to be wondered at that he
should be proud of any special skill in this direction with which nature
and practice have favored him. With some, this delicacy of touch
becomes in time almost a sixth sense. Diver C. P. Everett, of New York,
is one of these. Four or five years ago, he laid a submarine timber
foundation of twenty-eight feet long 12 x 12 yellow pine, handling it
alone. First, the pieces were weighted to sink; and then Everett went
down and weighted them for handling, for without weights they would, of
course, have immediately risen to the surface.
Only a strong man can become or, at least, long remain a successful
diver. No one is fit for the calling who suffers from headache,
neuralgia, deafness, palpitation of the heart, intemperance, or a
languid circulation. The pressure of the atmosphere increases the lower
one descends, until a point is reached where life could not be
maintained. The greatest depth, perhaps, ever reached, was 201 feet,
with an atmosphere pressure of 87 pounds to the square inch. A diver
named Green worked in 145 feet in Lake Ontario, but he was paralyzed,
and never did a day's work afterward. Most divers do not care to work
much deeper than 120 feet, and even for 30 or 40 feet, a moderate
depth, considerable nerve and practice are requisite. The lower the
depth, the more acute the pains felt in the ears and about the eyes, and
symptoms of paralysis become more pronounced. An asthmatic man, on the
other hand, may be cured by diving, the constant supply of fresh air,
and the pressure which drives the blood so rapidly opening up the lungs.
Divers as a rule cannot stand close rooms, being so accustomed to a
copious supply of fresh air that they must have plenty of it, even when
they are above water. In diving, the supply of air is increased
according to the depth. At thirty feet below the surface fifteen pounds
of air to the square inch is used, at sixty feet thirty pounds, and so
on. Still, much depends on the man, and some divers work in eighty feet
of water with only forty-five pounds.
In the laying of masonry under the water and other work of the kind, the
diving dress is usually replaced by the diving bell. This is a large
vessel full of air, but open at the bottom, fresh air being pumped into
it by air pumps. It is furnished with seats, and a chain passes through
the center, by which weights can be raised or lowered. The diving bell
has this advantage over the dress, that several men can work in company;
on the other hand, should an accident happen, more lives are involved.
Some years ago the chain of a diving bell in use at a pier in Dover,
England, got fouled in some way and its occupants found themselves in a
most alarming predicament. However, a diver named William Wharlow,
donning his suit, descended, crowbar in hand, and after several hours of
hard work, succeeded in freeing the chain, when the diving bell was
hauled up in safety.
It was stated a little while ago that some divers have an ineradicable
dread of the dead; many will not have anything to do with them, when
they come upon them by accident they will be unnerved and useless for
the rest of the day, and those who make a virtue of necessity, when on a
wreck generally insist upon getting the bodies out first. The
temperature of the water always tells the diver where to look for bodies
in a wreck; if it is cold they will be on the floor or lying in the
berths; if warm they rise to the ceiling or against the bottom of the
berth above.
The diver who raised the tugboat Bronx from the East River found the
fireman sitting in a chair in the fire-room, staring into a
wave-quenched furnace, with the weird, lifelike expression often seen in
the wide-open eyes of the drowned, and which those who have encountered
it declare never fails to strain the nerves of the strongest man. Other
divers relate even more grewsome experiences. When the diver, employed
to locate and examine the steamship City of Chester, entered the
steerage, the first object that met his gaze was the figure of a man
standing upright, entangled in a pile of ropes. The face was terribly
distorted and the tongue, protruding, hung from the mouth, while the
body was swollen to twice its natural size. Going a little further aft
he found another victim of the wreck, who had fallen on his knees and
grasped a third man around the waist. The spectacle so affected him that
he signaled to be hauled to the surface, where he reported what he had
seen, and refused to again go below until accompanied by another diver.
Captain Abram Onderdonk, already referred to, once brought up a dozen
bodies from the wreck of the steamer Albatross, sunk in the Caribbean
Sea. Some of these were in their staterooms, and the last corpse was
that of a young woman. He found her in the bed lying on her side, her
eyes wide open and staring straight ahead. One of her arms was thrust
through the bed slats, with the hand clutching the berth frame. As he
loosened her grasp the body turned, then floated to an almost erect
position, and leaned over toward him with a repelling look. The
expression of the face and eyes, as well as the attitude, almost
unmanned him, but in a moment he regained his nerve, clasped her about
the waist and brought her to the surface. The same diver was employed
to bring the dead from the wrecked Sound steamer Stonington. Groping
about one of the staterooms, for he had to feel his way in the darkness,
his hand came in contact with a corpse, which he took and carried to the
surface. It proved to be a woman, and clasped to her bosom so firmly
that no effort could separate them, was a beautiful babe. Perfect peace
and rest were on their faces, and they had evidently died in sleep.
Mother and child were buried as they were found--together.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER
Heroes, also, are the men who build and tend our lighthouses, and there
are few finer stories than that which tells of the erection of Tillamook
Rock lighthouse, probably the most exposed structure in the world.
Tillamook is a basaltic rock, rising abruptly from the deep waters of
the Pacific a mile off the Oregon coast, and eighteen miles south of the
mouth of the Columbia River. Projecting to seaward, it receives the full
force of the stormiest waves of the Pacific, which often break with
appalling violence on its summit, ninety feet above the level of the
sea, boats being able to reach it only when the sea is calm.
Four workmen in October, 1879, were landed on the rock with their tools,
fuel, provisions, a stove, and canvas for a tent. They were in a few
days joined by five others, who brought with them a small derrick. The
foreman of the party lost his life in attempting to land, and the lot of
the survivors was one of great discomfort and constant danger. To
prevent being blown or washed away, they tied the canvas to ring-bolts
driven into holes drilled in the rocks, and then quarried out a nook in
which they built a shanty, which they also bolted to the rocks. Next a
flight of steps was quarried up the steep side of the cliff, and the
work of cutting down and leveling the summit began.
The weather often compelled a suspension of work for days at a time, and
in January came a tornado which lasted for nearly a week. During this
storm the shanty of the workmen was repeatedly flooded with water and
their supplies were swept into the sea. They were able at the end of a
fortnight to make those on the mainland acquainted with their condition,
and fresh supplies were passed to them over a line cast from the rocks
to the deck of a schooner, which had come as near as safety would
permit.
When May, 1880, came, the dome of the rock had been cut down to a height
of eighty-eight feet from the surface of the sea, and a spot leveled for
the lighthouse. A small engine and more derricks were now landed, and
with them came three masons, who in June laid the corner-stone of the
lighthouse. The stones were made ready for laying on the mainland, and a
fresh supply conveyed to the rock whenever the weather would permit.
First, a square, one-story house for the keepers was built, and above
this was raised a tower forty-eight feet high, raising the light 136
feet above the sea level. Sixteen months after work was begun the lamp
was lighted for the first time, and has since prevented scores of
wrecks. Over the beacon raised amid such difficulties, three keepers
stand sentinel, and their lot is an exciting as well as a lonely one. A
few winters ago a terrific storm broke upon the rock, and the water
poured in torrents through the holes cut in the dome of the lighthouse
to give ventilation to the lamps. Stout wire screen shutters protected
the lantern and broke the force of the water hurled against the glass.
But for this it would have been battered in, and the heavy plates might
have killed the man attending the lamps.
Tillamook is known in the service and to mariners as a light of the
first class, since lighthouses are roughly divided into three classes:
First, those on outlying headlands and deep-sea rocks, the
distinguishing features of a country's coastline, and the first to give
the mariner warning of his nearness to land. The second grade of lights
show him his way through the secondary shoals and rocks, and the third
grade, or harbor lights, take him safely into port. There are fifty-two
first-class lights on the coasts of the United States. New Jersey and
Massachusetts have each a double light; and Florida, by reason of the
treacherous reefs which girt its coast, has as many first-class lights
as any other two States put together.
A majority of the lights of the first-class are housed in tall stone or
brick towers, and a number of them stand upon very high ground. The
light on Cape Mendocino glows from an eminence of 423 feet above the
level of the sea, and is visible for twenty-eight miles. There are ten
other lights whose elevation averages from 204 to 360 feet above sea
level, and which are visible from twenty-one to twenty-six miles. The
light at St. Augustine, Fla., is a fine example of its class. The strong
and massive tower of brick rises 150 feet from the ground, and the light
is reached by winding stairs. The apparatus for the light is twelve feet
high and six feet through, and the lenses alone cost thousands of
dollars. A powerful lamp in the centre of the apparatus sends its rays
in all directions, the lenses being arranged at such angles as to gather
the light and to send it out in parallel rays in the course desired. The
cost of the St. Augustine lighthouse was $100,000.
Each lighthouse must have peculiarities of its own, so that both by
night and by day the mariner can distinguish it from its neighbors, and
thus guard against the mistakes that might otherwise prove fatal. The
first result desired is accomplished by the use of fixed, revolving,
blended, flash and intermittent lights, and as the timing of the second
and the two latter classes is capable of great variety, it will be seen
that the elasticity of the system is ample to meet all possible needs.
To secure the second result desired the lighthouses are painted in
different colors, and the application of the colors is varied in each
instance. Some retain their natural colors, while others are painted
black and white, or red and white; here broad horizontal bands
alternating, and there slender spiral ones setting off the background of
a sharply contrasting color. Again, the shape of the houses is varied,
some being circular and others cone-shaped, some tall and others short,
some square and others octagonal, while in many cases the shape and
color of the keeper's dwelling nearby also help to make distinction
easy. Thus the character of the light guides the sailor by night, and
by day the form and color of the lighthouse give him welcome knowledge
of his whereabouts.
The first lighthouses in this country were beacons, made by piling up
stones, from the summit of which "firebales of pitch and ocum" were
burned in iron baskets at night. It is a far cry from that time to this,
and the construction of the lighthouse of the present day is, as has
already been shown, a task demanding mechanical skill and engineering
ability of the first order. A lighthouse on the mainland has few
difficulties involved in its construction, but where the foundation is
an isolated rock, a submerged reef, or a sandy shoal, the best resources
of the engineer and mechanic are called into full play.
The lighthouse most difficult to build is that on the submerged rock or
partly submerged rock. Race Rock Light, in Long Island Sound, belongs to
this class. Portions of Race Rock are three and others thirteen feet
under water. Diving-bells were used to level the foundations for the
lighthouse, and the masonry and concrete under water were laid in the
same way. The United States has two other lighthouses built on submerged
rocks, Minot's Ledge in Boston harbor, and Spectacle Reef, on Lake
Huron. The first lighthouse on Minot's Ledge was built above stout iron
rods driven into the rocks. In April, 1851, there was a severe gale
which lasted five days. On the third night of the storm the house was
blown down and light and keeper went out together. Four years later a
second structure was begun, this time with a foundation of masonry and
concrete. Minot's is barely awash with the lowest tide, and so rare were
the opportunities for work that three years were required to prepare the
rock for the first course of stone, which was laid in 1857. In 1860 the
structure was completed and has ever since stood proof against wind and
storm.
Spectacle Reef lighthouse, near Mackinac, was built with the aid of a
coffer-dam. A large wooden cylinder was constructed by banding long
staves tightly together and towed out to the rock, where it was set up
on the surface and the stones driven down into the uneven places. Then
the crevices were filled with cement and the water pumped out. After
this the rock was leveled and the limestone courses rapidly raised one
above another. Spectacle Reef light stands eleven miles from land, and
its base is seven feet under water.
Where there is a shifting shoal, whose unstable character no degree of
mechanical or engineering skill can overcome, resort is had to the
lightship. The United States has twenty-five of these vessels. Seven of
them are employed off Massachusetts Bay to mark the Vineyard and
Nantucket shoals, and a line of equal number lies along Long Island
Sound stretching from Brenton's Reef to Sandy Hook. Four more are
stationed off the New Jersey and Delaware coasts, one off Cape Charles,
three off North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, and two off
Louisiana and Texas. The life of a lightship crew, as will be told in
another place, is a laborious and often a dangerous one.
The United States is divided into sixteen lighthouse districts, each
one with its inspector and engineer. The former, drawn from the navy,
inspects the lights under his jurisdiction at least every three months;
the latter, a member of the Corps of Engineers, superintends the
building, removal or renovation of the towers. Both are responsible to
the Lighthouse Board, a body appointed by the President and composed of
veteran naval officers of high rank, who are no longer fitted for active
duty at sea.
The station of the third lighthouse district is on Staten Island,
between St. George and Tompkinsville. Here over a hundred men are
constantly employed and half a million dollars annually expended. From
this station one hundred and eighty-nine lighthouses and beacon lights
and seven lightships are maintained and supplied, while thirty-six day
or unlighted beacons, thirteen steam fog signals, six electric light
buoys, and five hundred and seven other buoys are looked after and kept
in repair by the inspector and his assistants.
Fog often obscures the rays of the most powerful light, and it is then
that the fog signal and the whistling buoy come into play. The most
effective fog signal is the American siren, a steam machine worked under
seventy pounds pressure, and from which a series of noises come forth
that can be heard from two to four miles. Certain intervals in the
sounds designate the nearest light and afford a welcome and often
much-needed guide to the mariner enveloped in a cloak of fog. This
system of fog signals extends along the entire seaboard, extra
precautions being taken on the Northern Atlantic coast.
Mineral oil is the principal illuminant used in our lighthouses. It is
selected with the greatest care, and is subjected to three several tests
before being accepted. Gas has been tried as a lighthouse illuminant,
but with inferior success, and there are at the present time only three
lighthouses in which it is used. Experiments with electricity have also
been only fairly successful, its light blinding instead of giving aid
to the pilot. The lighthouse station on Staten Island is a busy place,
and much work is done there, but the wheels of industry are so well
oiled and run so smoothly, that a deep peace seems always to brood over
the establishment. Day after day and year after year the work, moving in
well-marked channels, goes on with quiet and certainty. Everywhere the
neatness and order prevail that mark all departments of the lighthouse
service.
Indeed, in no branch of the government service is stricter discipline
and closer attention to duty insisted upon than is demanded from the
brave and devoted men who tend our lighthouses. The pay of these keepers
ranges from $1,000 to $100, the average, by an Act of Congress passed
some years ago, being $600. The Lighthouse Board, which controls the
service, selects as keepers the best men obtainable, preference being
always given to men who have served for lengthy periods in the army and
navy.
Members of this class know what discipline means, and hard experience
has taught them that orders are to be obeyed to the letter. Many an old
veteran, whose scars tell of valiant service in the Civil War or on the
Western frontier, and many an old shipmaster or mate, whose
weather-beaten face bespeaks long years spent on the quarter-deck, as
lighthouse keepers now do duty on solitary and barren beacon rocks,
where for months at a time, aside from their own voices and those of
their families, the roar and moan of the ocean, as it beats against the
breakers below, are the only sounds that are heard.
The life of the keeper--though many who follow it seem wholly contented
with it, and doubtless would not leave it for any other calling--is thus
a lonely and arduous one. Two breaches of the rules which govern the
keeper's conduct bring as a penalty immediate dismissal from the
service. The absence of a light for a single moment may bring disaster
to life and property on the seas, and neither excuse nor previous good
conduct can save from instant dismissal the keeper who allows his light
to go out. He may plead that his wife or child was dying, but he is told
that he must subordinate his light to nothing. And he must not only keep
his light burning, but stay by it so long as the lighthouse stands. Some
years ago an ice pack lifted from its foundations, overturned and
carried away the Sharp's Island lighthouse in Chesapeake Bay. The two
keepers had a staunch boat and could have made their way to shore.
Instead, they bravely chose to remain at their post of duty, and for
sixteen hours, without food or fire, drifted with the wreck at the mercy
of the ice cakes. When the wreck finally grounded the keepers carried
ashore all the movable portions of the light, the oil, and everything
else they could take with them.
At the same time the keepers of another light, fearing danger, left
their post and went ashore. They pleaded that the ice had rendered the
light useless for the time being, but this excuse had no weight with
their superiors. They had proven recreant to their trust and were
dismissed from the service, the places they had filled being given to
the two keepers who had refused to leave their post of duty, even when
to remain seemed certain death. Drunkenness, when detected, also leads
to removal from the service. That and allowing one's light to go out are
the two unpardonable sins in the eyes of the lighthouse inspector.
Aside from his duties at night, the keeper finds plenty of work to do.
Promptly at a given hour in the morning the lights must be extinguished;
and during the day all put in order for the coming night. In the lantern
room the lenses must be kept free from speck or tarnish, and the
reflectors, the brass railings and the gun metal carefully burnished and
polished to the last degree of brightness. The oil tanks must also be
filled and the wick trimmed. Carelessness or negligence in any of these
particulars is dangerous, for the visits of the inspectors are always
unannounced, and may occur at any moment.
Most important of all, the lamp must be lighted on time, for a delay of
even a few minutes will not escape notice. Each keeper is required to
record the time the lights appear in the stations within his range, and
tardiness in this particular is noted by watchful eyes, and at once
reported. At inaccessible stations, as a rule, from three to four
keepers are employed. In stormy months, when communication with the
mainland is impossible, one or more of the keepers may die or be
disabled, and experience has taught that, to insure safety, three men at
least must be posted at every dangerous station.
No keeper is allowed to engage in any business which may interfere with
his presence at the lighthouse. However, there are some keepers who work
at tailoring, shoemaking, and similar trades; and there are others who
are preachers, school-teachers and justices of the peace. The keeper
whose lighthouse is located on land is encouraged to keep a garden, and
a barn is provided for his horses and cattle. Until a few years ago many
keepers greatly increased their incomes by taking boarders in the
summer--life in a lighthouse has a strong attraction for those fond of
the romantic--but the Lighthouse Board finally prohibited the renting of
quarters to outsiders in buildings owned and constructed by the
Government, and this pleasant and convenient source of revenue was cut
off.
Whenever keepers are located at stations where the cost of carriage
exceeds the cost of fuel and rations, they are furnished at the expense
of the Government. This applies to the keeper of the lighthouse on a big
rock near Cape Ann. No sea-going vessel can come within a quarter of a
mile of his home, and it is impossible for a loaded boat to reach his
abiding-place in safety. The coal he uses is shipped in bags from Boston
to as near the lighthouse as the vessel can approach. The bags are then
loaded into small boats and taken to the edge of the shoal water, inside
of which it is dangerous to enter. From the boats the bags are carried
ashore on the backs of the crew, who wade through the shoals, clamber up
the rocks with their burdens and empty the coal in the lighthouse bin.
Coal is worth thirty dollars a ton at Cape Ann lighthouse. The keeper's
other bulky supplies are delivered in the same manner as his coal.
[Illustration: A LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER]
At all the lighthouses built on rocks and ledges the keepers have to be
supplied with fresh water from the mainland, that collected from rains
in cisterns and tanks being generally insufficient for their needs. Each
lighthouse keeper is supplied by the Government with a well-selected
library of fifty volumes. There are five hundred and fifty of these
libraries, and they are continually kept moving from station to station,
the inspector, when he makes his quarterly visit, bringing a fresh
library, and taking the old one with him, to his next stopping-place.
Captain Oliver Brooks, now living in honored and well-earned retirement,
besides being for thirty years keeper of the great light on Faulkner's
Island, five miles off the Connecticut coast in Long Island Sound, was
also one of the most remarkable men ever connected with the lighthouse
service. He had been a sea captain before he became a lighthouse keeper
and was a man of signal mechanical skill and marked inventive genius.
His knowledge of electricity, and of light and sound was thorough and
exact, and the results of many of his experiments, adopted by the
Lighthouse Board, have contributed greatly to the improvement of the
service. All the apparatus with which he conducted his experiments was
constructed by him in a little workshop he had fitted up in the
lighthouse tower.
But his fondness for the theoretical never caused him to neglect in the
slightest detail the practical side of his work, and he was, indeed, a
model keeper. Faulkner's Island lies directly in the path of all vessels
passing either in or out of the Sound, and its light is one of the most
important ones on our coasts, but there has not been a night in more
than a hundred years that it has not flashed out its warning to sailors.
The island was a barren and desolate spot when Captain Brooks settled
there, but he and his family turned it into a paradise. All of his large
family of boys and girls were born there, and there grew up to sturdy
manhood and splendid womanhood. One daughter was an authority on
ornithology; another, a gifted water-color artist, and every one of the
children was a skilled musician, their family concerts, in which not
less than five different instruments were brought into play, being
treats to hear. All of the children had noble records as life-savers,
and many were the men, women and children they saved from death in the
treacherous waters surrounding their island home. It was not until his
youngest child had left the island that the captain gave up his place as
keeper to spend his last days on shore.
Even better known than Captain Brooks is the keeper of Lime Rock light
in Newport harbor. Should you chance to be in Newport on some pleasant
summer afternoon, walk out on the long wharf that runs from the mainland
into the west side of the harbor, and when you have reached its end,
wave your handkerchief toward the lighthouse opposite. Soon a woman will
appear in the door of the tall gray tower, and running down to the boat
moored to the stone wall, step into it, take the oars, and with graceful
yet powerful strokes, pull rapidly toward the wharf. As she approaches
her erect back and evident strength give the impression of youth, but as
she turns the boat about to receive you for a visit to the lighthouse
you discover to your surprise that she is a woman of middle age.
Your hostess is Ida Lewis, keeper of Lime Rock light and famous as the
American Grace Darling, a modest and kindly hearted heroine, whose skill
and daring have saved nearly as many lives as there are years in her
own. In fact, it was due in part to her record as a life-saver, that she
was given the place she now fills. Besides attending to her duties as
keeper, there are other cares that keep her busy; she is a careful
housewife, keeps abreast of current literature; and is a devoted
churchwoman, spending her Sundays on shore whenever possible. To her
credit, no light in her district is as regularly or perfectly attended
to, nor does any other gain from the inspector so high a report as Lime
Rock light.
There are several other women light-keepers, but none of them has ever
had to face an experience as trying as that which a few years ago befell
the wife of Angus Campbell, keeper of the light on Great Bird Rock, a
lonely islet in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the farthest beacon to the
harbors of Nova Scotia. When the late fall comes and the tardy fishermen
hasten away to the mainland, the gulf turns to ice and hems the rock in
with a clutch that only the returning summer can loosen. There, in the
autumn of 1896, Angus Campbell took his newly wedded wife to share his
loneliness. During the winter James Duncan and George Bryson, two of
Campbell's friends, journeyed to Great Bird Rock to remain until spring.
They were professional seal hunters, and a great many seals play around
on the ice and rocks at the foot of the big cliff.
The men landed on the rock early in February. At that time there was no
open water within five or six miles of the lighthouse in any direction.
The men were landed on the ice and made their way up to where Campbell
was waiting for them. On February 27, Campbell and his visitors left the
rock to go in pursuit of the seals they had noticed on the ice the day
before. His wife saw them start across the ice and then returned to her
household duties. They had not been gone more than four hours, when the
wind, which had been growing colder and blowing steadily from the
eastward, shifted to the southwest. The southwest wind is the agency
that dashes the ice fields against the cliff and breaks them up. She
thought that the men, being so much lower, might not have noticed the
wind, and she hoisted the danger signal. They must have seen it, for she
soon caught sight of them hurrying over the ice toward the rock.
They were within gunshot of the lighthouse, when the ice cracked with a
sound like thunder, and a long, blue line appeared, running east and
west, parallel with the lighthouse rock and with North Bird Rock, about
five miles to the westward. The big crack was followed by a general
splitting up of the ice floe. She saw the men standing just the other
side of the open water. She saw her husband wave his hands at her and
she waved back. Then the darkness came, like a great blanket dropped
from the wintry skies, and men and ice were blotted from her vision. But
even in her sore distress she did not forget the duty incumbent on the
lighthouse keeper. She clambered up into the lantern and lighted the
great oil lamp, saw that it was filled, and attended to the other duties
she had seen her husband perform.
Morning, when it came, gave no glimpse of her husband and his
companions, nor did the third or the fourth day bring them back to her.
After that the days grew into weeks, and the worse than widowed woman
found herself confined to lonely and racking imprisonment on the
ice-locked rock. But not for a single night did she fail to fill and
light the lamp that had been her hapless husband's charge. When the
Government steamer touched at Great Bird Bock, on May 5, 1897, the
captain looked long and earnestly at the lighthouse perched far above
him, and wondered why there was not the customary greeting. He saw no
sign of life. There was the derrick rope swinging in the wind, but no
moving figures at the top of the cliff, as there were wont to be.
Closely scanning the rock, he saw at last a white, gaunt face at the
window. In a little while a thin, tottering figure crept to the brow of
the ledge, but it was some minutes before the tender's captain could
recognize in that wasted being the comely woman whom he had known as
Angus Campbell's wife.
"Where is your husband?" he shouted.
"Angus is dead," came the answer, in a faint, palsied voice, "and so are
Jim Duncan and George Bryson."
An instant later the captain had swung himself into the derrick ropes
and was making his way up the rocks. When he reached the woman she burst
into tears and fell at his feet. Calmed at last, she told her story.
"How did you stand it?" asked the captain when she had finished.
"God knows," was the reply. "I knew I had to keep that light burning,
and that I think kept me alive. That was all I had to do, except watch
the sea through my husband's glass. I got up night after night, and I do
not think I ever slept two hours at a time. There were plenty of
provisions, but I could not eat more than one meal a day, and sometimes
I did not eat that. I had some hope on the morning after the boys were
carried out on the ice floe, that they might be in sight and might be
saved some way. But that morning there was nothing to be seen but water
and ice. Then hope was gone. I knew there was nothing to do but wait for
the spring. And I have done it. Every day I have swept the horizon with
the aid of the glasses. It was merely a formality, after a while, but I
kept on doing it. I do not know why. At last life got to be like being
buried alive. I had no interest in living. I had no appetite, no thought
of sleep. In all the time I do not suppose I have slept two hours in
succession, nor at any time eaten more than one scanty meal a day. I was
going crazy, and should have killed myself or died of starvation in
another week."
A few days later Mrs. Campbell was removed from the rock to her former
home in Prince Edward Island.
Many of the most picturesque lighthouses in the United States
establishment are on the rocks and islands off the coast of Maine.
Notable for its beauty is the one on Matinicus Rock. The first
lighthouse thereon, erected in 1827, was a cobblestone dwelling with a
wooden tower at each end. Twenty years later this was replaced by a
granite dwelling with semicircular towers, which has since developed
into an establishment requiring the services of a keeper and three
assistants. Matinicus Rock rises fifty feet above the sea, and presents
what seems a precipitous front to the ocean, but there is no more
rugged, dangerous coast along the seaboard of Maine than here, and when
a gale rages the waves pound the rock as if bent upon washing it away,
the thunder of the green-gray wall that beats against it, sounding, at
such times, like the cannonade of a hundred heavy guns. Life on
Matinicus for years past has been a never ending struggle between man
and the elements, and this lends peculiar interest to the history of the
light and its watchers, bound up with which is a love story at once
tender, wholesome, and true. Captain Burgess, keeper of the rock from
1853 to 1861, had a daughter Abby, a maiden as comely as she was brave,
whom he often left in charge of the lights while he crossed to Matinicus
Island. On one occasion rough weather for three weeks barred his return
to the rock, and during all that time, Abby, then a girl of seventeen,
not only tended the lights, but cared for her invalid mother and her
younger brothers and sisters.
In 1861 Captain Grant succeeded Captain Burgess on Matinicus, taking
his son with him as assistant. The old keeper left Abby on the rock to
instruct the newcomers in their duties, and she performed the task so
well that young Grant fell in love with her, and asked her to become his
wife. Soon after their marriage she was appointed an assistant keeper. A
few years later the husband was made keeper and the wife assistant
keeper of White Head, another light on the Maine coast. There they
remained until the spring of 1890, when they removed to Middleborough,
Mass., intending to pass the balance of their days beyond sight and
hearing of the rocks and the waves. But the hunger which the sea breeds
in its adopted children was still strong within them, and the fall of
1892 found them again on the coast of Maine, this time at Portland,
where the husband again entered the lighthouse establishment, working in
the engineers' department of the first lighthouse district. With them
until his death lived Captain Grant, who in the closing months of 1890,
being then aged eighty-five, retired from the position of keeper of
Matinicus light, which he had held for nearly thirty years.
Not less lonely, but far more perilous than the life of the keepers of a
light like that on Matinicus is the lot of the crew of the South Shoal
lightship, whose position twenty-six miles off Sankaty Head, Nantucket
Island, makes it the most exposed light-station in the world. Anchored
so far out at sea, it is only during the months of summer and autumn
that the lighthouse tender ventures to visit it, and its crew from
December to May of each year are wholly cut off from communication with
the land. It is this, however, that makes the South Shoal lightship a
veritable protecting angel of the deep, for it stands guard not only
over the treacherous New South Shoal, near which it is anchored, but
over twenty-six miles of rips and reefs between it and the Nantucket
shore--a wide-reaching ocean graveyard, where bleach the bones of more
than a half thousand wrecked and forgotten vessels.
The lightship is a stanchly built two-hulled schooner of 275 tons
burden, 103 feet long over all, equipped with fore-and-aft lantern masts
71 feet high, and with two masts for sails, each 42 feet high. The
lanterns are octagons of glass in copper frames, so arranged that they
can be lowered into houses built around the masts. In the forward part
of the ship is a huge fog bell, swung ten feet above the deck, which,
when foggy weather prevails, as it frequently does for weeks at a time,
is kept tolling day and night. A two-inch chain fastened to a "mushroom"
anchor weighing upward of three tons holds the vessel in eighteen
fathoms of water, but this, so fiercely do the waves beat against it in
winter, has not prevented her from going adrift many times. She was two
weeks at sea on one of these occasions, and on another she came to
anchor in New York Harbor. Life on the South Shoal lightship is at all
times a hard and trying one, and, as a matter of fact, the crew are
instructed not to expose themselves to danger outside their special line
of duty. This, however, does not deter them from frequently risking
their lives in rescuing others, and when, several years ago, the City of
Newcastle went ashore on one of the shoals near the lightship, all
hands, twenty-seven in number, were saved by the South Shoal crew and
kept aboard of her over two weeks, until the story of the wreck was
signalled to a passing vessel.
Nor are the South Shoal crew alone among lighthouse keepers in displays
of heroism outside the duties required of them. Isaac H. Grant holds a
silver medal given him by the Government for rescuing two men from
drowning while he was keeper at White Head; and Keeper Marcus Hanna, of
the Cape Elizabeth station, Maine, received a gold medal for the daring
rescue of two sailors from a wreck during a severe storm, while
Frederick Hatch, keeper of the Breakwater station at Cleveland was
awarded the gold bar. The last mentioned badge of honor is granted only
to one who has twice distinguished himself by a special act of bravery.
It was given Hatch in the winter of 1898. A wreck occurred at night,
just outside the breakwater. The eight people aboard made their way to
the breakwater pier, but the heavy seas swept several of them back, and
one lost his life. Pulling to the pier in a small boat, Keeper Hatch
took off the captain's wife; but she was hardly in the boat before it
was swamped and capsized. The woman was utterly exhausted and almost a
dead weight; but though nearly overcome himself, Hatch, at the risk of
his life, maintained his hold upon her until he could reach a line
thrown from the light-station, with which he and his helpless burden
were drawn to the lighthouse steps. Before that, and while a member of
the life-saving crew at Cleveland, Hatch had helped to rescue
twenty-nine persons from two vessels on two successive days during a
terrific gale.
CHAPTER IX
LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHORE
With each recurring autumn at nearly 300 points on our 8,000 miles of
seacoast, careful preparations begin for the winter campaign of the
life-saving service. Conducted in the face of constant peril and
hardship, this annual battle with disaster, storm and death is a
peaceful, yet always glorious one. During the year 1905 alone it
resulted in the saving of more than 4,000 lives and the rescue of nearly
$8,000,000 worth of property, imperilled by wreck and storm, all of
which would otherwise have been lost. The United States Life-saving
Service is now the most complete and effective organization of its kind
in the world, furnishing a model and pattern for those of other
countries. The story of its rapid development during the last
thirty-five years is also the inspiring record of the life work of one
of our most sagacious and devoted public servants, Sumner I. Kimball, a
modest, blue-eyed, kindly-faced man of middle age, whose untiring labors
in this field long since gave him a foremost place among the great
benefactors of his time.
When in 1871, Mr. Kimball was made Chief of the Revenue Marine Bureau of
the Treasury Department, the life-saving service had slender existence,
save on paper. He found the station-houses sadly neglected and
dilapidated, the apparatus rusty or broken, and many of the salaried
keepers disabled by age or incompetent and neglectful of their duties.
The outlook would have discouraged a man less resolute and determined
than the new chief, but he had conceived the splendid idea of guarding
the entire coast of the nation with a chain of fortresses garrisoned by
disciplined conquerors of the sea, and he set about the accomplishment
of his self-imposed task with patience, sagacity and skill.
He reorganized the service and prepared a code of regulations for its
control, in which the duties of every member were carefully defined.
Politics, the bane of the service in former years, was rigidly
eliminated. Lazy, careless and incompetent employees were promptly
dismissed, and their places filled with capable and faithful surfmen.
The station-houses were repaired and increased, and equipped with the
best life-saving devices human skill and ingenuity had thus far brought
forth. Last and most important of all, a thorough and effective system
of inspection and patrol was inaugurated, and so successful did it prove
that during the first year's operation of the new system every person
imperilled by shipwreck was saved. The service has been wisely extended
from year to year, until now it has 270 stations, three-fourths of which
are along the Atlantic coast, while others are on the lakes; a board of
life-saving appliances; telephone lines for prompt operations and a
splendid corps of assistant superintendents, experts, inspectors,
station-keepers and mariners. The yearly cost of the service at the
present time is slightly less than $1,800,000, a sum ridiculously small
when the saving of life and property is taken into consideration.
Life at a life-saving station is never an idle one. The routine followed
at the Avalon, New Jersey station, as I have observed it, in essential
details, is the same as that practiced at all of the stations of the
service. Four days of every week are devoted to drill. On Tuesdays the
keeper orders out the surfboat and drills the crew in riding breakers
and landing through heavy surf. On Wednesday he gives the men practical
instruction in the working of the international signal code. On Thursday
the Lyle gun is ordered out, and one of the crew, taking up a position
some distance down the shore near a post stuck in the sand, personates a
seaman on a stranded vessel. The other members of the crew plant the gun
and fire a line which the watcher pulls in and rigs to the post. Then
the men at the other end of the line dispatch the breeches-buoy and
gallantly effect the rescue of their comrade. On Friday the recovery
drill is carefully gone through. One of the crew assumes the role of a
half-drowned sailor, and his comrades resuscitate him by rolling him on
the sand and producing artificial breathing, according to the rules laid
down for the purpose. Saturday is general cleaning day. The discipline
of the crew is never relaxed and none of its members can go out of sight
of the station save by special permission or when off duty.
The night hours at a life-saving station afford a much more thrilling
story than the one I have just been relating. Each crew is divided into
three night watches. The first watch goes on duty at sundown and patrols
the beach until eight o'clock, at which hour the second watch relieves
it and patrols until midnight, when the third watch sallies out and does
duty until four o'clock in the morning. Then the first watch again goes
on patrol and keeps watch until sunrise. During the day a surfman is
constantly on the lookout in the watch-tower of the station. If the
weather be clear, this precaution suffices, but if it is cloudy and
storms threaten, the beach patrols are continued through the day. Each
watch consists of two men, who, upon leaving the station, separate and
follow their beats to the right and left until they meet the patrolmen
from the neighboring stations on either side, with whom they exchange
checks--this to show the keeper they have covered their respective
beats. On the Atlantic seaboard, stations are now within an average
distance of five miles of each other, but often the beats of the surfmen
are six and seven miles long. It is a part of the surfman's duties to
keep a constant watch of the sea and to note the vessels by the lights
displayed, and, if they approach too close to the shore or outlying
sandbars, give them timely warning. For this purpose he always carries a
Coston signal, which, when exploded by percussion, emits a red flame
that flashes far out over the water and warns the unwary ship of its
peril. Last year more than two hundred vessels, warned in this way, at
once changed course and ran out of danger. If the surfman observes a
vessel that is stationary, he must determine whether she is at anchor or
in distress, and if the latter proves to be the case, he displays his
Coston signal, to assure the shipwrecked that aid is close at hand, and
then hastens to the station to give the alarm to the keeper.
The work of the patrolmen involves frequent danger and almost constant
hardship. Imagine, if you can, and that is impossible, the lot of a
surfman on the Jersey coast during one of the great storms sure to occur
once or twice in every winter. A fearful night has followed a stormy and
lowering day. Inky darkness shrouds sea and land, and the wind, blowing
at the rate of fifty miles an hour, pipes and roars defiance to the
patrolmen as they struggle along their lonely beats. The driving snow
freezes on their cheeks and chins; wet sand is flung into their faces
and cuts with the keenness of a razor, while great masses of icy foam
beat fiercely on the head and face and body at every dozen steps. Huge
waves break at the foot of the sand dunes along which they painfully
labor, and drench them again and again, often felling them to the
ground. Every twenty or thirty yards they pause, and, baring their faces
to the pelting snow and foam, search the ocean for lights. In this way
hours pass before the prescribed beat is traversed, and the surfmen,
wet, half-frozen, bruised and exhausted, seek for a brief season the
warmth and shelter of the station-house. Sometimes weakness overcomes
them and they are unable to reach this refuge.
When the patrolman descries a vessel among the breakers, he displays his
Coston signal, to give assurance that aid is at hand, and then hurries
to the station and arouses his comrades. From the report of the
patrolman the keeper makes quick decision as to the best methods to be
employed in effecting a rescue. If the surfboat is to be used, the doors
of the boat-room are instantly thrown open and the boat-carriage drawn
out and hauled by the crew to a point opposite the wreck. Then the boat
is launched and the surfmen depart upon their errand of mercy. The
surfboat is usually of cedar, with white oak frame, without keel, and
provided with air cases, which render it insubmergible. Comparatively
light, it can be hauled long distances, and is the only boat that has
been found suitable for launching from flat beaches through the shoaling
waters of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Handled by expert oarsmen, its
action is often marvelous, and, although easily capsized, there are few
recorded instances of its having been upset with fatal results while
passing through the surf. Often repeated attempts have to be made before
a wreck can be reached, and even then the greatest care must be
exercised to avoid collision with the plunging hull or injury from
floating wreckage and falling spars. When the benumbed and exhausted
crew and passengers, who have usually sought refuge in the rigging from
the overwhelming seas, have been taken off, the difficult return to
shore yet remains. Sometimes the boat is run in behind a roller, and by
quick and clever work kept out of the way of the following one, and the
shore is gained in safety. At other times the boat is backed in, the
oars being used now and then to keep it upon its course, and again, when
the sea is unusually high, a drag is employed to check the force of the
incoming breakers and prevent the boat from being capsized. In the
manner described, boat and crew make repeated trips through the breakers
until all have been taken off the stranded vessel, and the work of
rescue is at last completed.
When the condition of the sea prevents the use of the surfboat the
mortar cart, equipped with a small bronze, smooth-bore gun, named for
the inventor, Captain Lyle, of the army, is ordered out. Its destination
reached, the gun is placed in position and loaded by members of the crew
trained to the work, while others adjust the shot-line box, arrange the
hauling lines and hawser, connect the breeches-buoy, prepare the tackles
for hauling, and with pick and spade dig a trench for the sand-anchor.
With these preparations completed, comes the firing of the gun. The shot
speeds over the wreck and into the sea beyond, while the crew of the
imperilled vessel seize and make fast the line attached. The surfmen
next attach to the short-line the whip (an endless line), the tail-block
and tallyboard, and these are in turn hauled in by the sailors. And then
by means of the whip, the surfmen dispatch the hawser and a second
tallyboard, which directs how and where the end of the hawser shall be
fastened to the wreck. When the tackle connecting the sand anchor and
the shore end of the hawser is straight and taut, it is lifted several
feet in the air and further tightened by the erection of a wooden
crotch, which does duty as a temporary pier, while the wreck answers for
another. Finally the breeches-buoy is drawn back and forth on the
hawser, and the shipwrecked brought safely to shore. On this occasion
there have been no delays, but at other times there are numerous
obstacles to be overcome. The ropes may snarl or tangle or be snapped
asunder by the rolling of the vessel, and again, the imperilled crew may
perform their share of the work in a bungling manner, or unexpected
accidents befall, which tax to the utmost the patience, resources and
courage of the surfmen. In many cases people held suspended in the
breakers or ensnarled in the floating cordage and debris of the vessel,
have only been rescued by the most daring exploits of the surfmen, who,
at the greatest risk of life and limb, have worked their way through the
surf, released the helpless victims of the wreck, and brought them to
shore.
[Illustration: A LIFE-SAVER ON PATROL]
The breeches-buoy, to which reference has been made, is a circular
life-preserver of cork, to which short canvas breeches are attached, and
will hold two persons. But when a large number of people are to be
rescued, the life-car, invented by Joseph Francis and connected with the
hawser by a simple device to prevent it from drifting, is used. This is
a water-tight, covered boat of galvanized sheet iron and will carry five
or six adults at a time. At its first trial more than two hundred
persons were rescued from the wreck of the Ayrshire on the New Jersey
coast, when no other means could have availed. Silks, jewels and other
valuables have often been saved by its use and from one vessel the car
took ashore a large sum of gold bullion belonging to the United States,
together with the mails. On the lake and Pacific coasts, where the
shores are steep and the water deep, the self-righting and self-bailing
lifeboat is in general use. This, the best lifeboat yet devised, is the
result of more than a century of study and experiment, following the
first model designed in 1780 by an English coachman, Lionel Lukin. It
possesses great stability, is rarely upset, and when this happens
instantly rights itself, while when full of water it empties itself in
from fifteen to twenty seconds.
The work of the life-savers seldom ends with the rescue. After all have
been brought ashore from a wreck, the benumbed and helpless sufferers
are quickly conveyed to the station-house, transferred for the moment
into a hospital, where an abundance of dry clothing is instantly
applied; the prostrated ones put to bed; lint, plasters and bandages
supplied to the bruised and wounded, and stimulants from the medicine
chest, never absent from any station, given to those who need them. At
the same time the mess-cook prepares and serves out hot coffee alike to
rescued and rescuers. When this has been partaken of, the keeper assigns
a portion of the crew to look after the needs of the strangers and the
others retire to rest until called to relieve the patrol.
After what has been written one would expect to find rich material for
true stories of peril, adventure and heroism; and for romances in real
life among the records of the life-saving service--stories that never
fail to stir the blood and quicken the pulse of those to whom they are
told. And such is the case. The annals of the service are replete with
splendid deeds of daring, and each month's record adds to the roll of
honor. Often the surfmen know they are going forth to almost certain
death,' and yet never a moment do they falter. A year or so ago a crew
that rescued four sailors from a stranded vessel under the most trying
conditions, before launching their boat, left their slender effects in
the charge of a comrade for the benefit of their families--not one of
them believing that they would return alive! And when the life-savers
went off through the violent sea to rescue those on board the German
ship Elizabeth, stranded on the Virginia coast, in January, 1887, all
but two of the crew perished, together with the entire ship's company.
The brave fellows' doom was sealed from the first, but this did not
swerve them from their duty.
One of the saddest chapters in the annals of the service deals with the
death of the keeper and two of the surfmen of the Peaked Hill Bar
Station, on the Massachusetts coast. In the waning hours of a stormy
November night, fifteen years ago, the sloop Trumbull was descried by
the patrol on the inner bar, and a few moments later the lifeboat,
manned by Keeper Atkins and Surfmen Mayo, Taylor, Kelly, Young and
Fisher, was on the way to the rescue. The crew, save two who, refusing
assistance, remained on board the vessel, were speedily brought to land.
The gale was now increasing and the sea running mountain high, but
Keeper Atkins and his crew again essayed the rescue of the two men, who
still remained on the Trumbull. It was very dark, and the lifeboat in
approaching the ship was struck by a swinging boom and capsized. After
clinging for a time to the upturned boat, the surfmen released their
hold and attempted to swim to shore. Surfmen Kelly, Young and Fisher
reached the beach barely alive, and were picked up and tenderly cared
for by a comrade, but Keeper Atkins and Surfmen Mayo and Taylor,
although strong swimmers, were finally overcome and vanished in the
storm and darkness. The sea gave up their bodies many hours later, and
there were few dry eyes among the hundreds who followed to their graves
three heroes as dauntless as ever were sung in song or story.
One of the most gallant rescues performed within the scope of the
service stands to the credit of the Dam Neck Mills crew, on the coast of
Virginia. The schooner Jennie Hall, bound from Trinidad to Baltimore,
sailing in a dense fog, struck bottom a few miles south of Cape Henry. A
tempest was blowing, and a deluge of sleet blinded and benumbed the crew
as they clung to the mizzenmast, on which they had taken refuge. The
captain had been swept away while attempting to cross the deck, and it
seemed certain that the almost helpless sailors must soon follow him.
Blind desperation alone gave them strength to endure until the morning.
Then, in the dawning of the day, through the lifting curtain of mist,
they saw the life-savers preparing to attempt their rescue. The sea was
still too high to warrant the launching of the lifeboat. What must be
done was to get a hawser to the schooner, and then, by means of the
breeches-buoy, haul off the wrecked men.
The gun was, therefore, placed in position, and the shot-line coiled
properly, so as to follow without fouling. The ship was about three
hundred yards off shore. The shot was fired, and the line carried just
over the rigging at the necessary spot. All would have gone well had not
the block of the whip-line become fouled. The men on the mast were too
exhausted to extricate it, so the whip-line was hauled to shore, and the
shot-line cut away. Another shot was fired. This time it landed out of
the reach of the wrecked men, now almost insensible from cold and
exhaustion. Still another shot was fired, this time fairly in the hands
of the unfortunates. The whip-line was painfully drawn to the mast and
properly made fast. Then the hawser was drawn slowly from shore, and
also properly fixed around the mast. Just as the breeches-buoy was being
sent out to make the rescue at last, just as safety and warmth and life
were within their grasp, two of the six fell to the deck, struck like
lead, and were washed overboard, never more to be seen. The
breeches-buoy had now reached the mast. Two of the men managed to get
in, and were hauled ashore, unconscious, very nearly dead. Again the
buoy went on its errand of mercy, and the mate was brought to safety.
There was still one man left on the mast. The buoy was sent back for
him. But he made no sign of life.
Somebody must go out for him. A surfman by the name of O'Neal put
himself in the buoy and was hauled to the wreck. He found that the man,
now unconscious, had so firmly lashed himself to the crosstrees that it
was not in his power to extricate him without help. So he returned to
the shore for an assistant. An ex-surfman, Drinkwater by name,
volunteered to go back with him. The sea having gone down a trifle, the
keeper decided to place them on board the wreck by the lifeboat. A crew
was called, and the rescuers rowed out through a still tremendous sea to
the Jennie Hall. The two men skilfully got aboard, and climbed the
mast, the lifeboat in the meanwhile, after nearly a fatal accident,
returning to the beach. Even with help, O'Neal had great difficulty in
getting the remaining sailor out of the rigging. But it was finally
done, and the well-nigh frozen man sent ashore. Then the two life-savers
returned in the buoy.
The records of the live-saving crews of the Great Lakes also abound with
thrilling and heroic incidents. These vast inland seas, with 2,500 miles
of American coast-line, are subject to sudden and violent gales, in
which anchored vessels are swept fore and aft, often causing their total
destruction, while others seeking shelter in harbors are driven
helplessly upon jutting piers or the still more dangerous beach; and
frequently just before winter suspends navigation on the lakes, a single
life-saving crew is employed upon several wrecks at a time. Again, the
lifeboats often go under sail and oar many miles from their station to
aid vessels in distress. When the steamer Bestchey was wrecked near
Grindstone City, seven miles from the Point aux Barques station, on
Lake Huron, a few years ago, the crew hurried to the rescue, and found
several hundred people watching the breaking up of the wreck, but
powerless to aid the passengers and crew, who, for ten hours, had been
face to face with suffering and death. When the lifeboat had been
launched and the ship's side gained, two of the surfmen leaped into the
water, and by the aid of ropes, after a desperate struggle gained the
steamer's deck and directed the difficult and dangerous task of
transferring those on board to the boat. Eleven women and a small boy
were lowered over the bulwarks, and the boat, shoving off, gained the
pier in safety. Four trips were made within an hour, and all on board,
more than forty persons, brought ashore. A few months later the Point
aux Barques crew responded to signals of distress displayed by a vessel
three miles away, and in the fearful storm that was raging, their boat
was capsized. The men tried to cling to it, but the cold overcame them,
and one after another perished until six were gone. Only the keeper,
bruised and insensible, was washed ashore, and he was so badly injured
that he was forced to resign his position. Thus in one day, the service
lost all the members of one of its most skilful and gallant crews.
During the same year the men at the Point aux Barques Station had been
the means of saving more than a hundred lives.
Still the life of the surfmen has its merry, as well as its serious
moods. Each station is provided with a small but well selected library,
and the men find it a constant source of instruction and delight. Then
there is always in every crew one or two who can play a violin, flute or
accordion, and often when the weather is fine and the wind off shore,
the surfmen gather in the messroom and listen to the music of their
companions or sing songs and spin yarns, the latter couched in a quaint
and awkward vernacular, yet full of life and spirit, and redolent of the
sea and the waves. Often on clear, moonlit nights there are "surprise
parties" at the station, made up of the wives, sisters' and sweethearts
of the crew, who always bring with them a generous store of household
dainties for those they love, sure to prove a welcome addition to the
surfmen's plain, but substantial fare. On such occasions the boat-room
is quickly cleared for the dance, and joy and merriment hold unfettered
sway. And, yet, never is the patrol relaxed, nor do the surfmen forget
the stern call to duty that may come to them at any moment. "When I see
a man clinging to a wreck," said a sturdy surf man, not long ago, "I see
nothing else in the world, nor think of family and friends until I have
saved him." And it is but simple truth to say that this heroic spirit
animates every member of the life-saving service.
CHAPTER X
WHALERS OF THE ARCTIC SEA
In the streets and hotels, or more often the smoking-room of the
custom-house of the beautiful old town of New Bedford, Massachusetts,
one meets in these latter times certain quiet, elderly men who, save for
their weather-beaten faces, an occasional scar, the deference shown
them, and the title of "captain," give no sign of the stormy and
adventurous lives they have led. These men belong to a most interesting
class, and one which promises to soon become extinct. They are the
whaling captains of the old days, when, with whaling still one of the
most prosperous and important of our national industries, the New
Bedford whalers carried the American flag to the most distant parts of
the globe, and yearly poured a golden stream into the strong-boxes of
their shrewd and venturesome owners. Cabin-boys at twelve, captains
before they were twenty-five, at fifty, stranded hulks--having often
made and lost great fortunes, made them for others, lost them for
themselves--in such quiet havens as chance or fortune affords, they now
peacefully and with perfect contentment await the end that sooner or
later comes to us all.
For more than a century, New Bedford has been the centre in this country
of the industry of which these old captains are pathetic reminders; but
in recent years it has made San Francisco the headquarters of its ships.
They all carry the name of New Bedford on their sterns, and are owned
and commanded by New Bedford men; but, as whaling is now mainly carried
on in Alaskan waters, San Francisco has become the principal point of
arrival and departure. Only the Atlantic whalers, dwindled now to less
than a dozen, still headquarter in the old capital of the trade. The
ships engaged in the whale trade are clumsy in appearance, and much
smaller than most people would imagine, being rarely as large as the
three-masted schooners used in the coasting trade. They are strongly
built, wide amidships, and as broad as Dutch galleons at the bow. They
are so treated with pitch and tar as to last for generations, and are
constantly repaired, a part at a time. Some of the stanchest vessels in
the trade are more than half a century old, and promise to do duty for
many years to come.
The fleet sailing from San Francisco numbers between forty and fifty
vessels. Some of the captains sail in November, and spend the winter in
sperm whaling, putting into Honolulu for fresh supplies at the approach
of spring, but the majority leave in March. The whales are fast being
driven from the Pacific, and every year the whalers are forced to go
farther and farther north for them. Only a few years ago, whales were
plentiful in the Northern Pacific and Behring and Okhotsk Seas, but now
the whalers have to push far into the Arctic to find their game. To
make a voyage profitable, a ship must often spend several seasons in the
north, and last year the San Francisco fleet sailed prepared for a three
years' cruise. Many of the captains took their wives and children with
them. They reached Herschel Island late in August, spending last winter
as they will the next two, in comfortable quarters at Pauline Cove,
returning to the United States in the fall of 1909. Pianos and pool and
billiard tables were taken along to help while away the long winters,
and the members of the fleet, when they return, are sure to have many an
interesting and stirring story to tell.
In order to complete the preparations for its Arctic work, each whaler,
after leaving San Francisco, cruises for a few weeks in the central
Pacific. During this cruise the crow's nest, or lookout, is put in
place, the boats are scrubbed, painted and fitted with sails,
steering-gear and oars and the whaling apparatus thoroughly overhauled.
Then the ship's rigging receives careful attention, weak spots being
made strong, and old sails patched or replaced, and finally, the hold is
restowed and put in shape for the long voyage. The crew of a whaler
includes, besides the captain, four mates, one boat-leader, four
boat-steerers, a steward, cook, carpenter, cooper, steerage and cabin
boys, and from twelve to twenty able seamen. The men instead of being
paid regular wages, receive a portion of the profits of the cruise. The
captain receives a twelfth, the first mate a twentieth, the second mate
and boat-leader each a twenty-fifth, the third mate a thirtieth, the
carpenter, cooper and steward each a fiftieth, and the sailors each a
hundred and seventy-fifth. The captain's portion ranges from nothing to
$7,000 or $8,000, according to the number of whales taken during a
cruise. If a ship secures twelve whales during a cruise, the captain
will receive about $3,000 and a sailor $200. The sailors usually receive
an advance of $60 each, and during a cruise are allowed to draw tobacco,
clothing and the like, from the ship's supplies, to the amount of $60 or
$80. Both officers and men keenly appreciate this co-operative system,
and toil with great zeal in the hope of extra reward. Formerly whales
were valued chiefly for the oil, but the discovery of petroleum worked a
change, and the whalebone is now the main thing sought. This product is
worth from $4 to $5 a pound, and the average whale contains a little
less than a ton of bone.
The officers of an Arctic whaler are generally Yankees, but all
countries are represented in the forecastle. Americans, Britons, Swedes,
Portuguese, Germans, Spaniards, Kanakas, a few stray cowboys, and three
or four 'Frisco hoodlums are often found in the same crew. Now and then
desperate criminals seek an Arctic cruise to escape punishment for their
misdeeds, and sometimes induce a crew to mutiny. Such an experience
befell Captain Edmund Kelly, now living in retirement in New Bedford,
when he was master of the Lucretia. His crew, prompted by three
ruffians, who had crept in among them, refused duty soon after the ship
entered Behring Sea, and retreated to the forecastle, but not before
the captain had emptied it of such food as it contained. When asked to
state their grievances they demanded the release of one of their
shipmates who had been put in irons for disobedience. This demand Kelly
refused to grant, and locked them in the forecastle, determined, if
possible, to starve them into submission.
On the third morning the crew, who were all armed with knives and
revolvers, broke out of this improvised prison and demanded "bread or
blood." The captain appealed to them to return to duty, but the three
ring-leaders threatened to shoot the first man who wavered, and none
responded. It was a critical moment, but Kelly, sprung from a race of
fighting men, proved equal to it. Picking up a rifle, he walked in among
the mutineers, and singling out the leader, ordered him to surrender.
The man refused, and the captain raised his rifle to his shoulder, but
before he could fire, the mutineer snapped a revolver twice in his face,
and then took refuge among his companions. Kelly tried to follow him,
but his progress was impeded by the crew, and the rascal he was seeking
now stole up behind him, took careful aim, and fired. The officers, who
were standing aft in a group, thinking their captain had been killed,
fired upon the mutineer, wounding him in the leg. Happily, however,
Kelly had only received a slight scalp wound. He regained his feet in an
instant, and facing the mutineer, who was now crawling towards him with
cocked revolver in hand, took aim and fired, whereat the man fell back
dead with a bullet in his heart. The others, begging for mercy, threw
down their arms, and the mutiny was at an end. During the rest of the
voyage they proved a most obedient and tractable crew. When Captain
Kelly returned to San Francisco, he reported the affair to the federal
courts. The judge who heard the evidence discharged him, and at the same
time reproved him for failing to shoot the other leaders of the mutiny.
When all is in readiness for the Arctic cruise, the captain of a whaler
changes the southwesterly course he has followed since leaving port,
and heads for the north. The passage through Behring Sea, on account of
the great fields of floating ice which fill that body at all seasons, is
always a trying and often a dangerous one, and the whaling masters must
of necessity be most skilful navigators. Pushing a ship in safety from
lead to lead, and among the threatening cakes of an ice-floe, calls for
the most consummate skill, and it is a lesson mastered by sailors only
after a long and hard experience. In addition to the highest skill, the
captain--or disaster surely awaits him--must possess a resolute will
that falters not, even in the face of death. For weeks his ship is
seldom out of peril, and he must be ready at all times to make his
escape from a threatening pack or an approaching floe.
Some years ago, the ship Hunter, Captain Cogan, when off St. Lawrence
Island, was caught in a whirlpool and seriously disabled. He patched up
his ship as best he could and made a fresh start. Off Icy Cape, bottom
ice was struck, causing a serious leak, and the captain was forced to
seek refuge in the nearest haven. Here every movable object was taken
out of the ship and carried on shore. Then the spars were unshipped and
converted into a raft, which was anchored at both ends and steadied with
water casks. Using the raft as a wharf, and in the face of a blinding
storm, the ship was hove down, the keel raised above the surface of the
water, and the leak repaired. Captain Cogan's cruise up to that time had
been a fruitless one, but three months later he sailed safely into port
with a valuable cargo. Similar experiences befall the whalers every
year.
During the long and toilsome passage through Behring Sea, a sharp
lookout is kept for whales, but few are now caught south of Cape
Navarin, and whaling does not commence in earnest until the ships are
well out into the Arctic. Each ship has five whaleboats, and when the
lookout in the crow's nest reports a whale in sight, the crews spring
into them and are off in an instant. The captain, however, remains on
the ship, and from the crow's nest directs the boats by a code of
signals.
The boats always approach their prey under sail, as the use of paddle or
oar would startle the whale and cause it to beat a hasty retreat. The
old method of whaling with harpoons and lances thrown by hand has been
superseded during the last twenty years by the whale-gun, and as a
consequence what was once a royal sport has now sadly degenerated. The
new weapon is a heavy metallic shoulder-gun fastened to a pole about six
feet long. As the boat nears its intended victim, a harpoon attached to
several hundred fathoms of line is shot from the gun, and having been
"made fast," a bomb, filled with an explosive equal to about ten pounds
of giant powder, is fired into the huge body near the head. The missile,
exploding as it buries itself in the flesh, blows a great hole almost in
the vitals of the monster, and death quickly follows. When the bomb
fails to cause instant death or inflict a mortal wound, a second harpoon
with a dynamite attachment is thrown, the needle point of the spear, as
it sinks into the flesh, exploding the bomb. The second wound nearly
always causes instant death; but if not, the harpoons cling to the
whale, and with lines attached, the whalers quietly await the
reappearance of the whale--which seeks relief by plunging beneath the
surface--for another shot at it from the gun, which has in the meantime
been reloaded. There is small chance for escape, and another bomb or
harpoon from the gun speedily ends the most desperate struggle for life.
The sperm whale, the favorite game of the old-time whalers, always puts
up a stout battle, but the bow-head whale, found in polar waters, is
timid, and dies meekly.
When the whale, its struggles ended, rolls over dead, the vessel gets up
sail and makes its way to the body, taking it on the starboard side, in
front of the gangway. A stage is rigged over the side and just above the
floating carcass, which is secured fore and aft by chains. Then the
process of taking the bone and blubber from the body commences. First a
cut is made through the deep layer of fat beginning at the nose, and, if
all the blubber is to be taken off, running back to the flukes or tail.
Next cross-incisions are made every four or five feet, and strips of the
fat encircling the whale are marked out. After this, tackle is attached
to one end of these strips, and men on the stage sever the strip of
blubber from the body, as it is then being hoisted on board. Each strip,
as it is taken off, rolls the whale around in the water.
The most difficult part of the operation I am describing is cutting off
the head, which contains all the whalebone. A single false move may
destroy hundreds of dollars' worth of bone, or perhaps entail the loss
of the entire head. Axes are used, and it takes a great deal of hard and
skilful chopping to pierce the mountain of flesh. When the backbone has
been chopped nearly through, a jerk of the tackle breaks the remainder,
and the head is then hauled on deck. As a large whale's head frequently
contains several thousand dollars worth of bone, the suspense and
anxiety of the whaler while it is being taken off can be readily
understood. When the head has been secured, the work of taking off the
remainder of the blubber is resumed. Some vessels save only the bone,
and cast the body adrift after the head has been cut off, but these are
usually ships without the needed apparatus for trying out the oil. When
the blubber has all been stripped from the carcass, it is cut up into
small pieces, and for several days thereafter the crew is briskly
employed "trying out" the oil and stowing it away in casks. A large cube
of bricks amidships contains two great iron kettles with fireplaces
beneath, and in these the oil is boiled from the blubber. Black smoke
and foul smell attend this operation, and only an old whaler will go to
the leeward of the great pots when it is in progress.
There is little to break the monotony of the whaler's life while at
work. Day after day the same routine is repeated, broken only by an
occasional storm, or visits in leisure hours to neighboring vessels. But
about the whaler there is always the glamor of the Arctic, which those
who have once felt its spell say can never be forgotten--by day its
marvellous mirages, weirdly reflecting distant ships, or the ice piled
in huge, fantastic masses; at night the sombre glory of the aurora
borealis, and always the cold, serene purity of ice and water and sky.
When winter approaches, if one or more ships are to spend a second
season in polar waters, quarters are built in some sheltered spot on
land, and there, early in October, all the vessels rendezvous. On each
ship the space between-decks is cleared, stoves set up, and bunks
arranged along the middle, away from the sides, so that the cold will
not so quickly reach the men through the vessel's timbers. When the ice
forms around the ship, high banks of snow are piled about it to break
the force of the piercing winds, and snow is also piled upon the roof
built over the decks. This snow soon freezes and will not drift with the
fiercest of gales. Thus prepared for, a winter in the Arctic has lost
many of its former terrors.
The whaler's homeward passage through Behring Sea is often more
difficult and dangerous than the outward voyage. With sudden gales,
treacherous currents, blinding snowstorms, and long, dark nights, each
master must literally feel his way with the lead, getting such aid as he
can from log and lookout. Every captain breathes a sigh of relief when
he has passed the Straits and is once more in the Pacific, southward
bound. There is plenty of work on the return passage. The crow's nest
must be taken down and stowed away for another cruise; the masts scraped
and varnished; the ship scoured and cleaned above and below; and
finally, if it is a steam vessel, the sails unbent and stowed away. Just
before entering port, the crew discard their skin clothing. A few hours
later the voyage is at an end, and the men are tasting, perhaps for the
first time in years, the delights and comforts of life on shore, and
spending with open hand the money they have worked so long and so hard
to earn.
Whaling in the Arctic saw its best days in 1852, when the fleet
numbered 250 vessels and the value of the catch exceeded $14,000,000.
Its gradual decline began a little later, but it received its first
serious set-back in June, 1865, when the Confederate cruiser Shenandoah,
making its way without warning into the Arctic, burned thirty and
captured four other whalers. New Bedford's loss alone was twenty-three
vessels, which, with their outfits, were valued at more than a million
dollars. Since then, wind and ice, the ever-present perils of the
whaler, have caused two appalling disasters, and further hastened the
decline of the trade. The first of these disasters occurred in 1871.
Between August 11th and 29th of that year, the ice closed in upon the
whaling fleet at work near Wainright Inlet, and at the end of the month
thirty-three vessels were helpless prisoners. During the next week three
vessels were crushed or carried off by the ice, the crew in each
instance narrowly escaping with their lives. Each day the ice packed
closer and it became apparent to the captains, who held daily meetings
to discuss the situation, that for their ships at least, escape was
hopeless. There was not the time nor material to build winter quarters
on land, and even had this been possible, the scanty stock of provisions
could only postpone certain starvation, or death by scurvy and disease,
during the eleven months that must elapse before they could hope for
relief to reach them from the outer world. And so it became clear that
the crews must be got away before winter came or all would perish.
Captain David Frazer, who, with two whaleboats, had been sent to the
south to see what could be done, returned on September 12th and reported
that he had found the rest of the fleet, seven ships, off Icy Cape,
ninety miles to the south. They were also, he said, fast in the ice, but
would be able to work their way out and would lie by to aid their
distressed companions. On the receipt of this news, the captains, some
of whom were accompanied by their wives and children, met to decide upon
a final course of action. Three million dollars' worth of property and
1,200 lives were at stake, and to save the latter all else must be
sacrificed. It was then resolved, unless the weather moderated, to
abandon the fleet next day. Morning brought no change and the most
daring were convinced that nothing but flight remained. The 200
whaleboats of the fleet were manned by their crews and the southward
journey begun. There was a narrow strip of water between the ice and
shore, and through this the sad procession made its way.
At night a camp was made on shore, and on the second day the boats
reached Blossom Shoals, and came in sight of the refuge vessels. They
were lying five miles out from shore and behind a tongue of ice which
stretched ten miles farther down the coast. Around this obstruction the
crews were forced to make their way before they could get on board. On
the outer side of this icy peninsula a fearful gale was encountered and
the boats were tossed about like corks; but by four in the afternoon all
dangers were safely passed and the 1,200 refugees distributed among the
several vessels of the fleet. Sail was made at once, and on October 24th
the first of the ships reached Honolulu, the others following speedily.
Of the splendid fleet of forty vessels that had sailed northward less
than a year before, only these seven returned; but not a life was lost.
When in the following year some of the captains visited the locality
where the ships were lost, they found that with one or two exceptions
they had all been carried away by the ice, ground to pieces, or burned
by the people of a near-by Eskimo village. The value of the wrecked
vessels sailing from New Bedford exceeded, with their cargoes, a million
dollars. Some of the city's wealthiest whaling-masters were ruined and
many more badly crippled by the disaster.
Compared with the disaster of 1871, that of 1876 was much less
destructive to property, but vastly more appalling by reason of the
great loss of life with which it was attended. The whaling fleet reached
Point Barrow early in August, 1876, and began whaling. Strong currents
and constantly moving ice made work difficult from the first, and in the
end the pack suddenly closed in upon the fleet. Four vessels made their
escape, but the rest were carried slowly away towards the northward,
great jams at the same time choking up every avenue leading to the
south. With cold weather fast approaching, it was plainly impossible to
release the ships from their icy prison. A majority of the masters
resolved to take to the boats as the only chance for escape, but five of
the captains, with their crews, hoping against hope, refused to leave
their ships. Progress over the ice was slow and painful. With infinite
labor the boats would be hauled for a mile or so over the ice and then
the men would return for the provisions and clothing they had taken from
the ships. At night they crawled under the upturned boats and slept as
best they could on the ice. Late in the evening of the third day land
was reached, and after resting and drying their clothes the captains
decided to push on at once to the ships lying below Point Barrow.
At the end of a week, exhausted, half-frozen and starving, they reached
this refuge, and were kindly received by their fellow captains. The men
were divided among the several ships, and as soon as the wind opened the
ice the return voyage began. When the Golden Gate was reached, the last
piece of meat was in the copper and the last loaf of bread in the oven.
Out of a fleet of twenty vessels, twelve had been sunk or abandoned,
with a loss of over $800,000. On the southward journey over the ice, two
of the captains bethought them of some valuable furs they had left
behind, and decided to return for them. They made the trip in safety and
had a warm welcome from those who had remained on the ships, but the
latter turned a deaf ear to their earnest appeals to return with them,
and the two captains again pushed southward alone. Since that hour
nothing has been seen or heard of the ships or of the 150 men who
refused to leave them. In the silence and darkness of the long Arctic
winter they perished and gave no sign. How passed their final hours? A
grisly and gruesome story which all whalers tell offers a partial answer
to this question. Many years ago Captain Warrens, of the whaler
Greenland, while lying becalmed among icebergs, sighted a dismantled and
apparently deserted vessel. The boat's crew sent off to the stranger
found the deck deserted; but seated at a table in the cabin was the
corpse of a man covered with green, damp mould. A pen was still clutched
in the stiffened hand, and on the table lay a log-book containing this
last entry:
"We have now been enclosed in the ice seventeen days. The fire went out
yesterday and our master has been trying ever since to kindle it again,
without success. His wife died this morning. There is no relief."
The corpse of another man was found on the floor, and in one of the
cabin berths lay the dead body of a woman. The corpse of the cabin-boy
crouched at the foot of the gangway. Scattered about the forecastle lay
the dead bodies of the crew. The ship was barren of fuel or food. It had
been frozen in the ice thirteen years. Perhaps in similar manner this
later Arctic mystery may yet find startling solution.
There have been few whalers lost during the last twenty years. This has
been due to the gradual introduction, since 1880, of steam-whalers,
which act as tugs to the sailing ships when in danger, and to the
constant presence in the Arctic of one or more revenue cutters, which
render efficient aid every season, and convey to San Francisco the crews
of such vessels as are lost--the Corwin on one of its cruises saving an
entire fleet from destruction. With these extra safeguards, the trade
would doubtless have speedily recovered from the disasters I have
described, but for the gradual disappearance of the whale itself. Each
year, the whales, to escape pursuit, push still farther into the polar
ice-caps, and each year the number caught decreases. The annual product
of bone and oil has now fallen to less than a million and a half of
dollars, and new whaling grounds must soon be found or a great industry
abandoned. Already the British whalers are turning their attention to
the south polar region. Should whales prove plentiful there, the Yankees
will be sure to follow in the footsteps of the English, and the energy
and capital long expended in the far north will be diverted, for a term
of years at least, to the other end of the world.
THE END
ADVERTISEMENT
A NOBLE COMPANY
OF
ADVENTURERS
_BY RUFUS ROCKWELL WILSON_
UNDER THE ABOVE TITLE IS BEING
PREPARED A COMPANION VOLUME TO
"THE SEA ROVERS." THE OPENING
CHAPTER HAS TO DO WITH THE ANCIENT
AND PICTURESQUE HUDSON BAY
FUR COMPANY, AND OTHER ROMANTIC
AND PERILOUS PURSUITS DEALT WITH
IN SUBSEQUENT CHAPTERS ARE THOSE
OF THE GOLD HUNTER, THE COWBOY,
THE OILMAN, THE LUMBERMAN, THE
MAKER OF STEEL, THE COAL MINER,
THE RAILROAD BUILDER, THE CANADIAN
MOUNTED POLICE, AND THE TEXAS
RANGER. THE NEW VOLUME PROMISES,
LIKE ITS COMPANION, TO GIVE
DELIGHT TO BOYS OF ALL AGES. IT
WILL BE ISSUED IN THE FALL OF 1907, BY
B. W. DODGE & CO.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sea Rovers, by Rufus Rockwell Wilson
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEA ROVERS ***
***** This file should be named 44413-8.txt or 44413-8.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/4/1/44413/
Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at http://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
http://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
