Two Years Before the Mast
water, leaving the Catalina, which could not spread so much canvas as
we, gradually astern, and, by daylight, were off St. Buenaventura, and
our antagonist nearly out of sight. The sea-breeze, however, favored
her again, while we were becalmed under the headland, and laboring
slowly along, she was abreast of us by noon. Thus we continued, ahead,
astern, and abreast of one another, alternately; now, far out at sea,
and again, close in under the shore. On the third morning, we came
into the great bay of Santa Barbara, two hours behind the brig, and
thus lost the bet; though, if the race had been to the point, we should
have beaten her by five or six hours. This, however, settled the
relative sailing of the vessels, for it was admitted that although she,
being small and light, could gain upon us in very light winds, yet
whenever there was breeze enough to set us agoing, we walked away from
her like hauling in a line; and in beating to windward, which is the
best trial of a vessel, we had much the advantage of her.
Sunday, Oct. 4th. This was the day of our arrival; and somehow or
other, our captain always managed not only to sail, but to come into
port, on a Sunday. The main reason for sailing on the Sabbath is not,
as many people suppose, because Sunday is thought a lucky day, but
because it is a leisure day. During the six days, the crew are
employed upon the cargo and other ship's works, and the Sabbath, being
their only day of rest, whatever additional work can be thrown into
Sunday, is so much gain to the owners. This is the reason of our
coasters, packets, etc, sailing on the Sabbath. They get six good
days' work out of the crew, and then throw all the labor of sailing
into the Sabbath. Thus it was with us, nearly all the time we were on
the coast, and many of our Sabbaths were lost entirely to us. The
Catholics on shore have no trading and make no journeys on Sunday, but
the American has no national religion, and likes to show his
independence of priestcraft by doing as he chooses on the Lord's day.
Santa Barbara looked very much as it did when I left it five months
before: the long sand beach, with the heavy rollers, breaking upon it
in a continual roar, and the little town, imbedded on the plain, girt
by its amphitheatre of mountains. Day after day, the sun shone clear
and bright upon the wide bay and the red roofs of the houses;
everything being as still as death, the people really hardly seeming to
earn their sun-light. Daylight actually seemed thrown away upon them.
We had a few visitors, and collected about a hundred hides, and every
night, at sundown, the gig was sent ashore, to wait for the captain,
who spent his evenings in the town. We always took our monkey-jackets
with us, and flint and steel, and made a fire on the beach with the
driftwood and the bushes we pulled from the neighboring thickets, and
lay down by it, on the sand. Sometimes we would stray up to the town,
if the captain was likely to stay late, and pass the time at some of
the houses, in which we were almost always well received by the
inhabitants. Sometimes earlier and sometimes later, the captain came
down; when, after a good drenching in the surf, we went aboard, changed
our clothes, and turned in for the night--yet not for all the night,
for there was the anchor watch to stand.
This leads me to speak of my watchmate for nine months--and, taking him
all in all, the most remarkable man I have ever seen--Tom Harris. An
hour, every night, while lying in port, Harris and myself had the deck
to ourselves, and walking fore and aft, night after night, for months,
I learned his whole character and history, and more about foreign
nations, the habits of different people, and especially the secrets of
sailors' lives and hardships, and also of practical seamanship, (in
which he was abundantly capable of instructing me,) than I could ever
have learned elsewhere. But the most remarkable thing about him, was
the power of his mind. His memory was perfect; seeming to form a
regular chain, reaching from his earliest childhood up to the time I
knew him, without one link wanting. His power of calculation, too, was
remarkable. I called myself pretty quick at figures, and had been
through a course of mathematical studies; but, working by my head, I
was unable to keep within sight of this man, who had never been beyond
his arithmetic: so rapid was his calculation. He carried in his head
not only a log-book of the whole voyage, in which everything was
complete and accurate, and from which no one ever thought of appealing,
but also an accurate registry of all the cargo; knowing, precisely,
where each thing was, and how many hides we took in at every port.
One night, he made a rough calculation of the number of hides that
could be stowed in the lower hold, between the fore and main masts,
taking the depth of hold and breadth of beam, (for he always knew the
dimension of every part of the ship, before he had been a month on
board,) and the average area and thickness of a hide; he came
surprisingly near the number, as it afterwards turned out. The mate
frequently came to him to know the capacity of different parts of the
vessel, so he could tell the sailmaker very nearly the amount of canvas
he would want for each sail in the ship; for he knew the hoist of every
mast, and spread of every sail, on the head and foot, in feet and
inches. When we were at sea, he kept a running account, in his head,
of the ship's way--the number of knots and the courses; and if the
courses did not vary much during the twenty-four hours, by taking the
whole progress, and allowing so many eighths southing or northing, to
so many easting or westing; he would make up his reckoning just before
the captain took the sun at noon, and often came wonderfully near the
mark. Calculation of all kinds was his delight. He had, in his chest,
several volumes giving accounts of inventions in mechanics, which he
read with great pleasure, and made himself master of. I doubt if he
ever forgot anything that he read. The only thing in the way of poetry
that he ever read was Falconer's Shipwreck, which he was delighted
with, and whole pages of which he could repeat. He knew the name of
every sailor that had ever been his shipmate, and also, of every
vessel, captain, and officer, and the principal dates of each voyage;
and a sailor whom he afterwards fell in with, who had been in a ship
with Harris nearly twelve years before, was very much surprised at
having Harris tell him things about himself which he had entirely
forgotten. His facts, whether dates or events, no one thought of
disputing; and his opinions, few of the sailors dared to oppose; for,
right or wrong, he always had the best of the argument with them. His
reasoning powers were remarkable. I have had harder work maintaining
an argument with him in a watch, even when I knew myself to be right,
and he was only doubting, than I ever had before; not from his
obstinacy, but from his acuteness. Give him only a little knowledge of
his subject, and, certainly among all the young men of my acquaintance
and standing at college, there was not one whom I had not rather meet,
than this man. I never answered a question from him, or advanced an
opinion to him, without thinking more than once. With an iron memory,
he seemed to have your whole past conversation at command, and if you
said a thing now which ill agreed with something said months before, he
was sure to have you on the hip. In fact, I always felt, when with
him, that I was with no common man. I had a positive respect for his
powers of mind, and felt often that if half the pains had been spent
upon his education which are thrown away, yearly, in our colleges, he
would have been a man of great weight in society. Like most
self-taught men, he over-estimated the value of an education; and this,
I often told him, though I profited by it myself; for he always treated
me with respect, and often unnecessarily gave way to me, from an
over-estimate of my knowledge. For the intellectual capacities of all
the rest of the crew, captain and all, he had the most sovereign
contempt. He was a far better sailor, and probably a better navigator,
than the captain, and had more brains than all the after part of the
ship put together. The sailors said, "Tom's got a head as long as the
bowsprit," and if any one got into an argument with him, they would
call out--"Ah, Jack! you'd better drop that, as you would a hot potato,
for Tom will turn you inside out before you know it."
I recollect his posing me once on the subject of the Corn Laws. I was
called to stand my watch, and, coming on deck, found him there before
me; and we began, as usual, to walk fore and aft, in the waist. He
talked about the Corn Laws; asked me my opinion about them, which I
gave him; and my reasons; my small stock of which I set forth to the
best advantage, supposing his knowledge on the subject must be less
than mine, if, indeed, he had any at all. When I had got through, he
took the liberty of differing from me, and, to my surprise, brought
arguments and facts connected with the subject which were new to me, to
which I was entirely unable to reply. I confessed that I knew almost
nothing of the subject, and expressed my surprise at the extent of his
information. He said that, a number of years before, while at a
boarding-house in Liverpool, he had fallen in with a pamphlet on the
subject, and, as it contained calculations, had read it very carefully,
and had ever since wished to find some one who could add to his stock
of knowledge on the question. Although it was many years since he had
seen the book, and it was a subject with which he had no previous
acquaintance, yet he had the chain of reasoning, founded upon
principles of political economy, perfect in his memory; and his facts,
so far as I could judge, were correct; at least, he stated them with
great precision. The principles of the steam engine, too, he was very
familiar with, having been several months on board of a steamboat, and
made himself master of its secrets. He knew every lunar star in both
hemispheres, and was a perfect master of his quadrant and sextant.
Such was the man, who, at forty, was still a dog before the mast, at
twelve dollars a month. The reason of this was to be found in his
whole past life, as I had it, at different times, from himself.
He was an Englishman, by birth, a native of Ilfracomb, in Devonshire.
His father was skipper of a small coaster, from Bristol, and dying,
left him, when quite young, to the care of his mother, by whose
exertions he received a common-school education, passing his winters at
school and his summers in the coasting trade, until his seventeenth
year, when he left home to go upon foreign voyages. Of his mother, he
often spoke with the greatest respect, and said that she was a
strong-minded woman, and had the best system of education he had ever
known; a system which had made respectable men of his three brothers,
and failed only in him, from his own indomitable obstinacy. One thing
he often mentioned, in which he said his mother differed from all other
mothers that he had ever seen disciplining their children; that was,
that when he was out of humor and refused to eat, instead of putting
his plate away, as most mothers would, and saying that his hunger would
bring him to it, in time, she would stand over him and oblige him to
eat it--every mouthful of it. It was no fault of hers that he was what
I saw him; and so great was his sense of gratitude for her efforts,
though unsuccessful, that he determined, at the close of the voyage, to
embark for home with all the wages he should get, to spend with and for
his mother, if perchance he should find her alive.