Two Years Before the Mast
warm weather on this side the Cape.
It is a common notion with landsmen that a ship is in her finest
condition when she leaves port to enter upon her voyage; and that she
comes home, after a long absence,
"With over-weathered ribs and ragged sails; Lean, rent and beggared by
the strumpet wind."
But so far from that, unless a ship meets with some accident, or comes
upon the coast in the dead of winter, when work cannot be done upon the
rigging, she is in her finest order at the end of the voyage. When she
sails from port, her rigging is generally slack; the masts need
staying; the decks and sides are black and dirty from taking in cargo;
riggers' seizings and overhand knots in place of nice seamanlike work;
and everything, to a sailor's eye, adrift.
But on the passage home, the fine weather between the tropics is spent
in putting the ship into the neatest order. No merchant vessel looks
better than an Indiaman, or a Cape Horn-er, after a long voyage; and
many captains and mates will stake their reputation for seamanship upon
the appearance of their ship when she hauls into the dock. All our
standing rigging, fore and aft, was set up and tarred; the masts
stayed; the lower and top-mast rigging rattled down, (or up, as the
fashion now is;) and so careful were our officers to keep the rattlins
taut and straight, that we were obliged to go aloft upon the ropes
and shearpoles with which the rigging was swifted in; and these were
used as jury rattlins until we got close upon the coast. After this,
the ship was scraped, inside and out, decks, masts, booms and all; a
stage being rigged outside, upon which we scraped her down to the
water-line; pounding the rust off the chains, bolts and fastenings.
Then, taking two days of calm under the line, we painted her on the
outside, giving her open ports in her streak, and finishing off the
nice work upon the stern, where sat Neptune in his car, holding his
trident, drawn by sea-horses; and re-touched the gilding and coloring
of the cornucopia which ornamented her billet-head. The inside was
then painted, from the skysail truck to the waterways--the yards black;
mast-heads and tops, white; monkey-rail, black, white, and yellow;
bulwarks, green; plank-shear, white; waterways, lead color, etc., etc.
The anchors and ring-bolts, and other iron work, were blackened with
coal-tar; and the steward kept at work, polishing the brass of the
wheel, bell, capstan, etc. The cabin, too, was scraped, varnished, and
painted; and the forecastle scraped and scrubbed; there being no need
of paint and varnish for Jack's quarters. The decks were then scraped
and varnished, and everything useless thrown overboard; among which the
empty tar barrels were set on fire and thrown overboard, on a dark
night, and left blazing astern, lighting up the ocean for miles. Add
to all this labor, the neat work upon the rigging;--the knots,
flemish-eyes, splices, seizings, coverings, pointings, and graftings,
which show a ship in crack order. The last preparation, and which
looked still more like coming into port, was getting the anchors over
the bows, bending the cables, rowsing the hawsers up from between
decks, and overhauling the deep-sea-lead-line.
Thursday, September 15th. This morning the temperature and peculiar
appearance of the water, the quantities of gulf-weed floating about,
and a bank of clouds lying directly before us, showed that we were on
the border of the Gulf Stream. This remarkable current, running
north-east, nearly across the ocean, is almost constantly shrouded in
clouds, and is the region of storms and heavy seas. Vessels often run
from a clear sky and light wind, with all sail, at once into a heavy
sea and cloudy sky, with double-reefed topsails. A sailor told me that
on a passage from Gibraltar to Boston, his vessel neared the Gulf
Stream with a light breeze, clear sky, and studding-sails out, alow and
aloft; while, before it, was a long line of heavy, black clouds, lying
like a bank upon the water, and a vessel coming out of it, under
double-reefed topsails, and with royal yards sent down. As they drew
near, they began to take in sail after sail, until they were reduced to
the same condition; and, after twelve or fourteen hours of rolling and
pitching in a heavy sea, before a smart gale, they ran out of the bank
on the other side, and were in fine weather again, and under their
royals and skysails. As we drew into it, the sky became cloudy, the
sea high, and everything had the appearance of the going off, or the
coming on, of a storm. It was blowing no more than a stiff breeze; yet
the wind, being north-east, which is directly against the course of the
current, made an ugly, chopping sea, which heaved and pitched the
vessel about, so that we were obliged to send down the royal yards, and
to take in our light sails. At noon, the thermometer, which had been
repeatedly lowered into the water, showed the temperature to be
seventy; which was considerably above that of the air,--as is always
the case in the centre of the Stream. A lad who had been at work at
the royal mast-head, came down upon the deck, and took a turn round the
long-boat; and looking very pale, said he was so sick that he could
stay aloft no longer, but was ashamed to acknowledge it to the officer.
He went up again, but soon gave out and came down, and leaned over the
rail, "as sick as a lady passenger."
He had been to sea several years, and had, he said, never been sick
before. He was made so by the irregular, pitching motion of the
vessel, increased by the height to which he had been above the hull,
which is like the fulcrum of the lever. An old sailor, who was at work
on the top-gallant yard, said he felt disagreeably all the time, and
was glad, when his job was done, to get down into the top, or upon the
deck. Another hand was sent to the royal mast-head, who staid nearly
an hour, but gave up. The work must be done, and the mate sent me. I
did very well for some time, but began at length to feel very
unpleasantly, though I had never been sick since the first two days
from Boston, and had been in all sorts of weather and situations.
Still, I kept my place, and did not come down, until I had got through
my work, which was more than two hours. The ship certainly never acted
so badly before. She was pitched and jerked about in all manner of
ways; the sails seeming to have no steadying power over her. The
tapering points of the masts made various curves and angles against the
sky overhead, and sometimes, in one sweep of an instant, described an
arc of more than forty-five degrees, bringing up with a sudden jerk
which made it necessary to hold on with both hands, and then sweeping
off, in another long, irregular curve. I was not positively sick, and
came down with a look of indifference, yet was not unwilling to get
upon the comparative terra firma of the deck. A few hours more carried
us through, and when we saw the sun go down, upon our larboard beam, in
the direction of the continent of North America, we had left the bank
of dark, stormy clouds astern, in the twilight.
CHAPTER XXXVI
SOUNDINGS--SIGHTS FROM HOME--BOSTON HARBOR--LEAVING THE SHIP
Friday, Sept. 16th. Lat. 38° N., long. 69° 00' W. A fine south-west
wind; every hour carrying us nearer in toward land. All hands on deck
at the dog watch, and nothing talked about, but our getting in; where
we should make the land; whether we should arrive before Sunday; going
to church; how Boston would look; friends; wages paid;--and the like.
Every one was in the best of spirits; and, the voyage being nearly at
an end, the strictness of discipline was relaxed; for it was not
necessary to order in a cross tone, what every one was ready to do with
a will.
The little differences and quarrels which a long voyage breeds on board
a ship, were forgotten, and every one was friendly; and two men, who
had been on the eve of a battle half the voyage, were laying out a plan
together for a cruise on shore. When the mate came forward, he talked
to the men, and said we should be on George's Bank before to-morrow
noon; and joked with the boys, promising to go and see them, and to
take them down to Marblehead in a coach.
Saturday, 17th. The wind was light all day, which kept us back
somewhat; but a fine breeze springing up at nightfall, we were running
fast in toward the land. At six o'clock we expected to have the ship
hove-to for soundings, as a thick fog, coming up showed we were near
them; but no order was given, and we kept on our way. Eight o'clock
came, and the watch went below, and, for the whole of the first hour,
the ship was tearing on, with studding-sails out, alow and aloft, and
the night as dark as a pocket. At two bells the captain came on deck,
and said a word to the mate, when the studding sails were hauled into
the tops, or boom-ended, the after yards backed, the deep-sea-lead
carried forward, and everything got ready for sounding. A man on the
spritsail yard with the lead, another on the cathead with a handful of
the line coiled up, another in the fore chains, another in the waist,
and another in the main chains, each with a quantity of the line coiled
away in his hand. "All ready there, forward?"--"Aye, aye,
sir!"--"He-e-e-ave!"--"Watch! ho! watch!" sings out the man on the
spritsail yard, and the heavy lead drops into the water. "Watch! ho!
watch!" bawls the man on the cat-head, as the last fake of the coil
drops from his hand, and "Watch! ho! watch!" is shouted by each one as
the line falls from his hold; until it comes to the mate, who tends the
lead, and has the line in coils on the quarter-deck. Eighty fathoms,
and no bottom! A depth as great as the height of St. Peter's! The
line is snatched in a block upon the swifter, and three or four men
haul it in and coil it away. The after yards are braced full, the
studding-sails hauled out again, and in a few minutes more the ship had
her whole way upon her. At four bells, backed again, hove the lead,
and--soundings! at sixty fathoms! Hurrah for Yankee land! Hand over
hand, we hauled the lead in, and the captain, taking it to the light,
found black mud on the bottom.
Studding-sails taken in; after yards filled, and ship kept on under
easy sail all night; the wind dying away.
The soundings on the American coast are so regular that a navigator
knows as well where he has made land, by the soundings, as he would by
seeing the land. Black mud is the soundings of Block Island. As you
go toward Nantucket, it changes to a dark sand; then, sand and white
shells; and on George's Banks, white sand; and so on. Being off Block
Island, our course was due east, to Nantucket Shoals, and the South
Channel; but the wind died away and left us becalmed in a thick fog, in
which we lay the whole of Sunday. At noon of
Sunday, 18th, Block Island bore, by calculation, N. W. 1/4 W. fifteen
miles; but the fog was so thick all day that we could see nothing.
Having got through the ship's duty, and washed and shaved, we went
below, and had a fine time overhauling our chests, laying aside the
clothes we meant to go ashore in and throwing overboard all that were
worn out and good for nothing. Away went the woollen caps in which we
had carried hides upon our heads, for sixteen months, on the coast of
California; the duck frocks, for tarring down rigging; and the worn-out
and darned mittens and patched woollen trowsers which had stood the tug
of Cape Horn.
We hove them overboard with a good will; for there is nothing like
being quit of the very last appendages and remnants of our evil
fortune. We got our chests all ready for going ashore, ate the last
"duff" we expected to have on board the ship Alert; and talked as