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A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK
WORKS BY W. CLARK RUSSELL.
Croxcn Svo, cloth extra. 6s. each ; post 8vo, illustrated boards,
2s. each.
ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE.
ON THE FO'K'SLE HEAD: A Collection of Yarns
ami Sea Descriptions.
IN THE MIDDLE WATCH.
Croicn 8ro, cloth extra, 6s. each.
A VOYAGE TO THE CAPE.
A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
THE FROZEN PIRATE, the New Serial Novel by
W. Claijk Kusskll, Author of "The Wreck of the
Grosvenor," be^jan in " Belgravia " for July, 1887, and will
be continued till January, 1888. One Shilling, Monthly.
Illustrated bj' P. Macnab.
LONDON: CHATTO AND W INDUS, TICCADILLY.
A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK
BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
AUTHOR OF "a VOYAGE TO THE CAPE," " ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE,
"in the MIDDLE WATCH," ETC.
Hontion
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1887
{The right of translation is reserved]
PREFACE.
The reader will please regard these papers as the mere
whiskings of a petrel's pinions skimming the blue surge
of deep waters. The utmost hope of the author goes
no further* than that here and there something may
be found to pleasantly lighten the tedium of a sleepless
half-hour in the bunk or hammock, or relieve the
dulness of a spell of quarter-deck lounging. The articles
are reprinted from llie Daily Telegraph, The Gentleman's
Magazine, The Contemporary Revieiv, and Longman's
Magazine, It would have been troublesome to disturb
the original text, and some new matter, therefore, has
been included in the form of notes.
653
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A Nautical Lament ... ... ... ... ... 1
SUPEESTITIONS OF THE SeA ... ... ... ... 24
Old Sea Ordnance ... ... ... ... ... 53
The Honour of the Flag ... ... ... ... 63
The Naval Officer's Spirit ... ... ... ... 79
Women as Sailors ... ... ... ... 91
Fighting Smugglers ... ... ... ... ... 104
Sea Phrases ... ... ... ... ... 115
Then and Now ... ... ... ... ... 135
Costly Shipwrecks ... ... ... ... 146
Curiosities of Disasters at Sea ... ... ... 157
Infernal Machines ... ... ... 168
Queer Fish ... ... ... ... ... ... 179
Strange Craft ... ... •... ... ... 190
Mysterious Disappearances ... ... ... ... 200
EiCH Captures ... ... ... ... ... 219
Peculiarities of Eig ... .,. ... ... ... 230
How the Old Navigators managed ... ... 243
Plates and Rivets ... ... ... ... ... 254
French Smacksmen ... ... ... ... 273
Old Sea Customs ... ... ... ... ... 284
Who is Vanderdecken ? .. ... ... ... 294
A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
A NAUTICAL LAMENT.
I ASKED myself the question one day whilst standing
on the bridge of one of the handsomest and stoutest of
the Union Company's steamboats, outward bound to the
Cape of Good Hope, What has become of the old romance
of the sea ?
" Whither is fled the visionary gleam ?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?"
It was a brilliant afternoon. The sunshine in the water
seemed to hover there like some llashful veil of silver,
paling the azure so that it showed through it in a most
delicate dye of cerulean faintness. The light breeze was
abeam ; yet the ship made a gale of her own that stormed
past my ears in a continuous shrill hooting, and the
wake roared away astern like the huddle of foaming
waters at the foot of a high cataract. On the confines
of the airy cincture that marked the junction of sea and
sky gleamed the white pinions of a little barque. The
fabric, made fairy-like by distance, shone with a most
exquisite dainty distinctness in the lenses of the telescope
I levelled at it. The vessel showed every cloth she had
spars and booms for, and leaned very lightly from the
wind, and hung like a star in the sky. But our tem-
' ^ B
2 A BOOK FOR THE UAMMOCK.
pestuous passage of thirteen knots an hour speedily slided
that effulgent elfin structure on to our quarter, where
she glanced a minute or two like a wreath of mist, a
shred of light vapour, and then dissolved. What has
become, thought I, of the old romance of the sea ? The
vanished barque and the resistless power underneath my
feet, shaking to the heart the vast metal mass that it
was impelling, symbolized one of the most startling
realities of modern progress. In sober truth, the pro-
peller has sent the poetry of the deep swirling astern.
It is out of sight. Nay, the demon of steam has possessed
with its spirit the iron interior of the sailing ship, and
from the eyes of the nautical occu2)ants of that combina-
tion of ore and wire "the glory and the dream," that
ocean visionary life which was the substance and the
soul of the sea-calling of other days, has faded as utterly
as it has from the confined gaze of the sudorific fiends of
the engine-room.
To know the sea you must lie long upon its bosom ;
your ear must be at its heart ; you must catch and inter-
pret its inarticulate speech ; you must make its moods
your own, rise to the majesty of its wrath, taste to the
very inmost reaches of your vitality the sweetness of its
reposeful humour, bring to its astonishments the wonder
of a child, and to its power and might the love and
reverence of a man. '' Enough ! " cries Rasselas to
Iralac, ''thou hast convinced me that no human being
can ever be a poet." And I have convinced myself that
the conditions of the sea-life in these times prohibit the
most ardent of imaginative sailors from the exercise of
that sort of divination which is to be found in perfection
in the old narratives. The vocation is too tedious, the
stress of it too harassing, the despatch insisted upon too
exacting, to furnish opportunity for more than the most
A NAUTICAL LAMENT. 3
mechanical motions of the mind. A man is hnrried from
port to port with railway punctuality. He is swept
headlong through calms and storms, and if there come
a pause it will be found perilous ; and consternation
takes the place of observation. Nothing new is left.
The monsters of the deep have sunk into the ooze and
blackness of time and lie foundered, waiting for the
resurrection that will not come until civilization has run
its course and man begins afresh. All seaboards are
known ; nothing less than an earthquake can submit the
unfamiliar in island or coast scenery. The mermaid
hugging her merman has shrunk, affrighted by the wild,
fierce light of science, and by the pitiless dredging of the
deep-water inquirer, into the dark vaults beneath her
coral pavilions. Her songs are heard no more, and her
comb lies broken upon the sands. Old Ocean itself,
soured by man's triumphant domination of its forces, by
his more than Duke of Marlborough-like capacity of
riding the whirlwind and directing the storm, has silenced
its teachings, sleeps or roars blindly, an eyeless lion, and
avenges its neglect and submission by forcing the nautical
mind to associate with the noblest, the most romantic
vocation in the world no higher ideas than tonnage,
freeboard, scantlings, well-decks, length of stroke, number
of revolutions, the managing owner, and the Board of
Trade '
The early mariner w^as like the growing Boy whom
Wordsworth sings of in that divine ode from which I
have already quoted —
" But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy ;
The Youth, who daily farther from the East
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on liis way attended."
4 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
Were I asked to deliver my sense of the highest
poetical interpretation of the deep, I should point into
distant times, to some new and silent ocean on whose
surface, furrowed for the first time by a fabric of man's
handiwork, floats some little bark with a deck-load of
pensive, wondering, reverential men. Yes ! you would
find the noblest and most glorious divination of the true
spirit of the deep in the thoughts which fill the breasts
of that company of quaintly apparelled souls. The very
ship herself fits the revelation of the sea to those simple
hearts who have hardily sailed down the gleaming slope
behind the familiar horizon, and penetrated the liquid
fastnesses of the marine gods and demons. Mark the
singular structure swinging pendulum-like to the respira-
tions of the blue and foamless swell. Her yellow sides
throw a golden lustre under her. Little ordnance of
brass and black iron sparkle on her bulwarks and grin
along her sides. Her poop and top-lanthorns flash and
fade with the swaying of her masts. Her pennons enrich
the white sails with their dyes, and how long those
banners may be let us conceive from that ancient account
of the Armada in which it is written : " For the memory
of this exploit, the foresayd Captain Banderdness caused
the banner of one of these shippes to be set up in the
great Church of Leiden in Holland, which is of so great
a length, that being fastened to the very roofe, it reached
down to the groundc." Her men are children, albeit
bearded, and not yet upon them have the shades of the
prison-house begun to close. Are we not to be pitied
that all the glories which enraptured them, the wonders
which held them marvelling, the terrors which sent them
to their devotions, should have disappeared for ever from
our siglit ? We have still indeed the magnificence of the
sunset, the splendour of the heavens by night, the Andean
A NAUTICAL LAMENT. 5
seas of the tempest, the tenderness of the moonlighted
calm; but these things are not to us as they were to
them ; for a magic was in them that is gone ; the
mystery and fear and awe begotten of intrusion into the
obscure and unknown principalities of the sea-king have
vanished; our interpretation gathers nothing of those
qualities which rendered theirs as romantic and lovely
as a Shakesperean dream ; and though we have the sun-
set and the stars and the towering surge — what have we
not ? what is our loss ? what our perceptions (staled and
pointed to commonplace issues by familiarity) compared
with their costly endowment of marine disclosure ? You
see, the world of old ocean was before them ; they had
everything to enjoy. It was a virgin realm, also, for
them to furnish with the creations of their imagination.
The flying-fish ! what object so familiar now ? The
house-sparrow wins as much attention, to the full, in the
street as does this fish from the sailor or the passenger
as it sparks out from the seething yeast of the blue wave
and vanishes like a little shaft of mother-o'-pearl. But
in those old times they found a wonder here ; and prettify
declared that they quitted the sea in summer and became
birds. Hear how an old voyager discourses of these
be-scaled fowls :
" There is another kind of fish as bigge almost as a
herring, which hath wings and flieth, and they are
together in great number. These have two enemies, the
one in the sea, the other in the aire. In the sea the fish
which is called Albocore, as big as a salmon, followeth
them with great swiftnesse to take them. This poore
fish not being able to swimme fast, for he hath no finnes,
but swimmeth with mooving of his taile, shutting his
wings, lifteth himselfe above the water, and flieth not
very hie ; the Albocore seeing that, although he have no
(5 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
wiiigs, yet he giveth a great leajie out of the water and
sometimes catcheth the lish being weary of the aire."
It is wonderhind to this man. He writes as of a
thing never before behekl and with a curious ambition
of accuracy, clearly making little doubt that in any case
his story will not be credited, and that therefore since
the truth is astonishing enough, he may as well carefully
stick to it. And the barnacle ? Does the barnacle hold
any poetry to us ? One would as soon seek for the seed
of romance m the periwinkle or the crab. Taking up
the first dictionary at hand, I find barnacle described as
a " shell-fish, commonly found on the bottom of ships,
rocks, and timber." But those wonderful ancient
mariners made a goose of it ; as may be observed in Mr.
John Lok's account of his ship which arrived home
' ' marvellously overgrowne with certaine shells ' ' in which
he solemnly afiirms " there groweth a certain slimie
substance, which at the length slipping out of the shell
and falling in the sea, becometh those foules which we
call Barnacles." Were not those high times for Jack?
A barnacle, whether by the sea-side brim or anywhere
else, is to us, alas ! in this exhaustive age, a barnacle,
and nothing more. Or take the maelstrom — a gyration
not quite so formidable as the imagination of Edgar
Allan Poe would have us believe, but by report exactly
one of those features of the ocean to alarm the primitive
fancy with frightful ideas : *' Note," says Mr. Anthonie
Jenkinson in his voyage to Bussia, 1557, '^ that there is
between the said Bost islands and Lofoot a whirlepoole
called Malestrand which . . . maketh such a terrible
noise, that it shaketh the rings in the doores of the
inhabitants' houses of the sayd islands tenne miles off.
Also if there cometh any wliale within the current of the
same, they make a pitiful crie." And so on. How fine
A NAUTICAL LAMENT. 7
as an artistic touch should we deem this introduction of
the whale by the hand of an imaginative writer ! The
detail to the contemporary readers of Mr. Jenkinson's
yarn would make an enormous horror of that "whirle-
poole," for what should be able to swallow leviathan
short of some such stupendous commotion as would be
caused by the breaking up of the fountains of the waters
of the earth ? Let it be remembered that w^hales were
fine specimens in that age of poetry. They were then
big enough to gorge a squadron of men-of-war, ay, and
to digest the vessels. We have had nothing like them
since — the nearest approach to such monsters being the
shark in which, on its being ripped open, there was found
one full-rigged ship only, with the captain and the mate
quarrelling in the cabin over the reckoning.
The age of marine romance supplied the mariner
w^ith many extraordinary privileges. We cannot control
the winds as those old people did. There are no longer
gale-makers from whom Jack can buy a favourable blast.
The very saints have deserted us, since it is certain that
— at sea — we now pray to them in vain. Observe that
in fifty directions, despite our propellers, donkey-engines,
steam-windlasses, and the like, the ancient marmer was
out and away better off than we are. Did he want
wind ? Then he had nothing to do but apply to a Finn,
who, for a few shillings, would sell to him in the shape
of a knotted handkerchief three sorts of gale, all pros-
perous, but one harder than another, by which he could
be blown to his port without anxiety or delay. Did a
whirlwind threaten him ? Then read in the Voyage of
Pirard in Harris' Collection how he managed : " We
frequently saw great Whirl-winds rising at a Distance,
called by the Seamen Dragons, which shatter and over-
turn any Ship that falls in their way. When these
8 A BOOK FOR THE UAMMOCK.
appear tbe Sailors have a Custom of repairing to the
Prow or the Side that Hes next the storm, and beating
naked swords against one another crosswise." Purchas,
in his ''Pilgrims," repeats this, and adds that this easy
remedy of the sword hinders the storm from coming
over their ship, " and turneth it aside." Did human
skill and judgment fail him ? There were the Saints.
"Before the days of insurance offices and political
economy," writes the author of " Lusitanian Sketches,"
" merchants frequently insured their ships at the highly
esteemed shrine of Mantozimbo, by presenting a sum
equal to the pay of captain or mate, and that, too, with-
out stipulating for any equivalent should thevessel.be
wrecked." Wag it not his custom to carry the image of
his patron saint to sea with him, to pray to it, to make
it responsible for the winds, and, if it j)roved obstinate,
to force it into an obliging posture of mind by flogging
it ? Consider what a powerful marine battery of these
saints he could bring to bear upon the vexed, re-
fractory ocean and the capricious storming of winds.
St. Anthony, St. Nicholas, whose consecrated loaves of
bread quelled many a furious gale, St. Roland, St.
Cyric, St. Mark, St. George, St. Michael, St. Benedict,
St. Clement — the list is as long as my arm, the number
great enough to swell out a big ship's comj)any. Did
pirates threaten him ? There was no occasion to see all
clear for action. He had but to invoke St. Hilarion —
who once on a time by prayer arrested the progress of a
picaroon whilst chasing — and away would scuttle the
black flag. Was smooth water required for safely
making a port ? Then no matter how high the sea ran,
all that was needful was first to find a pious man on
board, light tapers (where they would burn), bring up
the incense, erect a crucifix, read prayers (this being
A NAUTICAL LAMENT, 9
done by the pious man), sprinkle the decks with holy
water, and straightway the sea under the vessel's fore-
foot would flatten into a level lane, smooth as oil, albeit
the surges on either hand continued to leap to the height
of the maintop. Who now regards, save with mild
curiosity, the corposant — the St. Elmo's fire — the dimly
burning meteoric exhalation at the yard-arm ? It is no
more to modern and current imagination than the phos-
phoric flashes in black intertropic waters. But the
ancient mariner made an omen of it — a saint — a joy to
be blessed ; he wrought it into a beneficent symbol, and
endowed it with such powers of salvation as comforted
him exceedingly whilst he kneeled on quivering knees in
the pale illumination of that mystic • marine corpse-
candle. Who now scratches the mast for a breeze ?
Who fears the dead body as a storm-maker ? What
has become of the damnatory qualities of the cat, and
who now hears the dimmest echo of comminatory power
in her loudest mew ? And most galling of all reflections,
into what ocean unknown to man has sailed the Flying
Dutchman ?
Let it not be supposed, however, that the elimination
of poetry from the sea-life by the pounding steam engine
and the swift voyage is deplorable on no further grounds
than these which I have named. The utilitarian aspect
is not the only one. There was romance and lustre out-
side those mere conditions of poetic seamanship which
enabled the mariner to direct the wind by a knot, to
control the tempest by a candle, to put the pirate to
flight by an invocation. Emerge with me from the
darkness of remote times into the light of the last — yes,
and of the beginning of the present — century. Ladies
were then going to sea, as they had in remoter times,
dressed as men. They do so no longer. Who ever
10 A BOOK FOR THE EAMMOCK.
hears now of some youthful mariner with hlooming
cheeks and long eyelashes exciting the suspicions of his
mahogany-cheeked mates by the shortness of his steps,
or the smallness of his hands and feet, or a certain un-
hoyish luxuriance of cropped hair? No, the blushing
Follies and Susans of the East End, resolved by love,
by betrayal, or by the press-gang, into the shipping of
breeks have had their day. No longer do we read of
pretty ship-boys standing confessed as girls. I mourn
this departed romantic forecastle feature. Even in
fiction how the imagination is captivated by the clever
insinuations of the author in his treatment of the youth
whose sex he springs upon us presently to our glad sur-
prise ! The Edwins whom the Angelinas followed were
not indeed very engaging people ; but even attentive
consideration of their rascalities wdll not neutralize the
pleasant poetic bouquet that haunts the old tales of fine-
eyed women going to sea for love or vengeance, living
among the sailors, eating the bitter bad provisions of
the forecastle, fighting the guns, doing the seamen's
\vork, and remaining for months undetected.
Again, whither has vanished a feature of the old sea-
life even yet more romantically interesting than the
nautical masquerading of black-e^'ed Susans and yellow-
haired Molls — the flirtation of the long ocean passage ?
What we call flirtation now at sea is a mere shadow of a
shadow as compared with the robust and solid reality of
a period when it took a ship four months to sail to
Bombay or Calcutta. There is no time allowed in this
age for love-making. Before you can fairly consider
yourself acquainted with a girl some \vretch on the fore-
castle is singing out " land-ho ! " I took particular
notice of this matter on board the Union steamer in
which I made the passage home from Cape Town. It
I
A NAUTICAL LAMENT. 11
must certainly have ended in a proposal in the case of
one couple had the propeller dropped off or a boiler burst
and the ship been delayed. They only wanted another
week. But the steamer was impertinently punctual,
about eight hours before her time : the people went
ashore at Plymouth, and, for all I can tell, the young
man, in the excitement of landing and meeting his
friends and seeing plenty of pretty women about, may
have abandoned his intention and ended for the girl a
chance that would have been a certainty in the old
romantic poetical sea- days. Why, we all know how the
British matron used to ship her darlings off in the East
Indiamen for husbands in the country with which those
vessels trafficked, and how scores and scores of these un-
sophisticated young ladies would land engaged, having
affianced themselves to gentlemen on board in calms on
the Equator or in the tail of the south-east Trades, or in
a small swell with a moderate breeze off Agulhas, some
possibly hesitating as far as the Madagascar parallels.
How many marriages originate at sea in these times of
thirteen knots an hour, I wonder? Out of the several
millions of passengers who are annually sea-borne, how
many pledge their vows on board ship, how many fall in
love there, how many become husband and wife in con-
sequence of meeting on ship board? But a few, I'll
warrant. But only think of the old East Indiamau ; four
months for Captain Thunder and Miss Spooner to be to-
gether to start with ; four months, and perhaps longer,
with possibly Lieutenant Griffin to give a swift maturity
to emotion by importing a neat and useful element of
jealousy. Oh, if moonlight and music and feeling are
one ashore, what are they at sea, on the deck of a sleep-
ing fabric lifting visionary wings to the lovely stars, when
the sea-fire flashes like sheet lightning to the soft surge
12 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
of the ship's bows or counter upon the h'ght fold of the
invisible swell, when the westering moon, crimsoning as
she sinks, wastes her heart's blood in the deep for love
of what she is painfully and ruefully leaving, when the
dew upon the bulwarks sparkles like some diamond
encrustations to the starlight, when the peace of the
richly clad night presses like a sensible benediction
upon the breathless, enchanted, listening ship, subduing
all sounds of gear-creaking in blocks, of chains clanking
to the stirring of the rudder, to a tender music in sweetest
harmony with the fountain-like murmur at the bows as
the vessel quietly lifts to the long-drawn heave there —
think of it ! was there ever a bower by Bendemeer's
stream comparable as a corner for the delicate whispers
of passion, for the coy reception of kisses, with some
quiet nook on the white quarter-deck, shadowed from
the stars and protected from the dew by the awning ?
If you thrill now it is because the whole ship shakes
with the whirling and thrashing of those mighty beams
of steel below. Emotion must be blatant or it cannot
be heard. Not yet has a generation that knows I am
speaking the truth in all this passed away. Confirm
me, ye scores of elderly master-mariners enjoying your
well-earned repose in spots hard by that ocean ye loved
and sailed for years ! Confirm me too, ye many sur-
vivors of a sea-going time, when the most blissful hours
of your long and respectable lives were passed under the
shadow of the cross-jack-yard !
I lament the decay of the old nautical costumes.
There was a poetry in the dress of the people who had
the handling of the big Indian ships which you will not
get out of the brass buttons and twopenny cuff-rings of
the contemporary^ Bkipi)er and mate. Nowadays it is
almost impossible to tell the difference between the rigs
A NAUTICAL LAMENT. 13
of the mercantile captain, the clock master, the Customs
man, and the harbour master. But what do you say to
a blue coat, black velvet lappels, cuffs and collar with a
bright gold embroidery, waistcoat and breeches of deep
buff, the buttons of yellow gilt, cocked hats, side arms,
and so forth ? What dress has done for romance ashore
we know. Pull off the feathered hats and high boots,
the magnificent doublets and diamond buckles of many
of those gentlemen of olden times, who show very stately
in history, and button them up in the plain frock-coat of
to-day, and who knows but that you might not be
diverted with a procession of rather insignificant objects ?
In the poetical days of the sea-profession the ships very
honestly deserved the dignity they got from the gilded
and velveted figures that sparkled on their quarter-
decks. Over no nobler fabrics of wood did the red
ensign ever fly. They went manned like a line-of-battle
ship. Observe this resolution arrived at by the Court of
Directors (Hon. E.I.C.) held the 19th of October, 1791 :
—"That a ship of 900 tons do carry 110 men; 1000
ditto, 120 ; 1100 ditto, 125 ; 1200 ditto, 130."
Were not those fine times for Jack ? How many of
a crew goes to the manning of a 1200-ton ship nowa-
days ? And it is proper to note that of these 130 men
there were only ten servants, i.e. a captain's steward,
ship's steward, and men to attend to the mate, surgeon,
boatswain, gunner, and carpenter. Contrast these with
the number of waiters who swell the ship's company of
our 5000-ton mail boats. Those vessels went armed too,
as befitted the majesty of the bunting under which old
Dance had gloriously licked Johnny Crapeau.* The
bigger among them carried thirty- eight eighteen
* It is interesting to know that Sir John Franklin was in that parti-
cular fight, and worked tlie signals for the Commodore
14 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
pounders ; they were all furnished witli boarding-nettings
half-mast high and close round the quarters. The chaps
in the tops were armed with swivels, musquetoons, and
pole-axes. In those romantic times the merchantman
saw to himself. There were no laminated plates formed
of iron one remove only from the ore betwixt him and
the bottom of the ocean ; he sailed in hearts-of-oak, and
the naval page of his day resounds with his thunder.
The spirit of that romantic period penetrated the ladies
who- were passengers. Eelations of this kind in the
contemporary annals are common enough :
" Mrs. Macdowall and Miss Mary Harley, who lately
distinguished themselves so much in the gallant defence
of the ship Planter, of Liverpool, against an enemy of
very superior force off Dover, are now at Whitehaven.
These ladies were remarkable, not only for their solici-
tude and tenderness for the wounded, but also for their
contempt of personal danger, serving the seamen with
ammunition, and encouraging them by their presence."
Again: "I cannot omit mentioning that a lady (a
sister of Captain Skinner), who, with her maid, were the
only female passengers, were both employed in the bread-
room during the action making up papers for cartridges ;
for we had not a single four-pound, cartridge remaining
when the action ceased." *
The glory and the dream are gone. No doubt there
are plenty of ladies living who would manufacture cart-
ridges during a sea-fight with pleasure, and animate the
crew by their example and presence. But the heroine's
chance in this direction is dead and over. As dead and
over as the armed passenger ship, the privateer, the
pirate, and the plate-galleon. Would it interest anybody
* Many similar noticos may l)o found iti tlio Annual Register, the
Naval Chronicle, and otlier publications of the kind.
A NAUTICAL LAMENT. 15
to know that the Acapulco ship was once more on her
way from Manila with a full hold ? Dampier and Shel-
vocke are dead, Anson's tome is rarely looked into, the
cutlass is sheathed, the last of the slugs was fired out of
yonder crazy old blunderbuss ages ago ; how should it
concern us then to hear that the castellated galleon,
loaded with precious ore minted and in ingots, with
silk, tea, and gems of prodigious value, is under weigh
again? Candish took her in 1587, Eogers in 1709,
Anson in 1742. Supposing her something more sub-
stantial than a phantom, where lives the corsair that
should take her now ? The extinction of that ship dealt
a heavy wound to marine romance. She was a vessel of
about two thousand tons burden, and was despatched
every year from the port of Manila. She sailed in July
and the voyage lasted six months — six months of golden
opportunity to the gentlemen who styled themselves
buccaneers ! The long passage, says the Abbe Eaynal,
" was due to the vessel being overstocked with men and
merchandise, and to all those on board being a set of
timid navigators, who never make but little way during
the night time, and often, though without necessity,
make none at all." x\nson took 1,313,843 pieces of
eight and 35,682 oz. of virgin silver out of his galleon,
raising the value of his cruise to about £400,000 inde-
pendent of the ships and merchandise. They knew how
to fillibuster in those daj^s. How is it now? It has
been attempted of late and found a glorious termination
in a police court.
The buccaneer has made his exit and so has his fierce
brother, the pirate. That dreadful flag has long been
hauled down and stowed away by Davy Jones in one of
his lockers. " The pirates," says Commodore Eoggewein
in 1721, " observing this disposition, immediately put
16 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
themselves in a fighting posture ; and began by striking
their red, and hoisting a black flag, with a Death's Head
in the centre, a powder-horn over it, and two bones
across underneath." Alas ! even the sentiment of Exe-
cution Dock has vanished with the disappearance of this
romantic flag, and there are no more skeletons of pirates
slowly revolving in the midnight breeze and emitting a
dismal chinking sound to the stirring of the damp black
gusts from which to borrow a highly moving and fasci-
nating sort of marine poetry.
Again, though to be sure it is not a little comforting
when in the middle of a thousand leagues of ocean to
feel that your ship is navigated by men furnished with
the exquisite sextant, the costly chronometer, the won-
derful appliances for an exact determination of position,
yet there is surely less poetry and romance in the nautical
scientific precision of the age, reconciling as it undoubtedly
is — particularly when you are afloat — than in the old
shrewd half-blind snifting and smelling out of the right
liquid path by those ancient mariners who stumbled into
unknown waters, and floundered against unconjecturable
continents with nothing better to ogle the sun with than
a kind of small gallows called a fore-staff.
"If," writes Sir Thomas Browne to his sailor son in
1664, " you have a globe, you may easily learne the
starres as also by bookes. Waggoner * you will not be
without, well will teach the particular coasts, depths of
roades, and how the land riseth upon several poynts of
the compasse. ... If they have quadrants, crosse-
staffes, and other instruments, learn the practicall use
thereof; the names of all parts and roupes about the
shippe, what proportion the masts must hold to the
length and depth of a shippe, and also the sayles."
♦ Wageuar's " Speculum Nauticuin," Euglislied in 1588.
A NAUTICAL LAMENT. 17
Here we have pretty well the extent of a naval
officer's education in navigation and seamanship in those
rosy times. The longitude was as good as an unknown
quantity to them. How quaint and picturesque was the
old Dutch method of navigating a ship ! They steered
by the true compass, or endeavoured to do so by means
of a small central movable card, which they adjusted to
the meridian, and whenever they discovered that the
variation had altered to the extent of 22 degrees, they
again corrected the central card. In this manner they
contrived to steer within a quarter of a point, and were
perfectly satisfied with this kind of accuracy. They
never used the log, though it was known to them. The
officer of the watch corrected the leeway by his own
judgment before marking it down. J. S. Stavorinus,
writing so late as 1768-78, says, " Their manner of
computing their run is by means of a measured distance
of forty feet along the ship's side. They take notice of
any remarkable patch of froth when it is abreast of the
foremost end of the measured distance, and count half
seconds till the mark of froth is a^;reast of the after end.
With the number of half seconds tlius obtained they divide
the number forty-eight, taking th 3 product for the rate of
sailing in geographical miles in one hour, or the number
of Dutch miles in four hours. It is not difficult," he
adds, "to conceive the reason why the Dutch are fre-
quently above ten degrees out in their reckoning." Here
we have such a form of Arcadian simplicity, if anything
maritime can borrow that pastoral word, as cannot fail
to excite the enthusiasm of the romancist. A like
delightful and fascinating primitiveness of sea-procedure
you find in Mr, Thomas Stevens' black-letter account of
his voyage ; wherein he so clearly sets forth the manner
of the navigation of the ancient mariner, that I hope this
c
18 A BOOK FOR THE nAMMOCK.
further extract from other people's writings will be for-
given on the score of its curiousness, and the information
it suj)plies : —
gau huob) tijat it is Ijarti to sailc from lEast to 2!t!!Xrst or rontrarg,
brraiisf tijcrr is no (irrli point in all tlic skir, bjl)fvrbu tljry man tiirrct tijcit
roursf, tol)frfforf C si)aU trll uou bjijat l)clps Ciot) proljiticti for tijrsc mm.*
2ri)frf is not a foiulr tljat apprrrtl), or signr in tl)c airf, or \n tijc sra, bljicfj
tijru hatof not torittrn, toljirl) ija^c matir tl)r bouagrs ijrrrtoforc. SlSlfjcrcforc,
partlu bu tijfir oijjn ciprrirncr, anti pontifrintj toitljal tofjat space tfje sljip
tuas ablr to makr toiti) suri) a 'wintit, anti surl) tiircctton, anti partlg bg
tl)f fxpfrifiiff of otljrrs, toI)osc books anti nabigations tljcg fjafac, tfjco gcssf
toljfrrabouts tfjco br, toucijincj tirgrcfs of longituljc, for of latitutiE tfjcg be
altoairs sure.
^'Gesse whereabouts they he ! " The true signification
of this sentence is the revelation of the fairy world of the
deep. It was this " gessing," this groping, this staring,
the wondering expectation, that filled the liquid realm
with the amazements you read of in the early chronicles.
It would not be delightful to have to '' gess " now. It
could hardly mean much more than an unromantic job
of stranding, a bald prosaic shipwreck, with some marine
court of inquiry at the end of it, to dej)ress the whole
business deeper yet in the quagmire of the commonplace.
But attached to the guesswork of old times was the
delightful condition of the happening of the unexpected.
The fairy island inhabited by faultless shapes of women ;
fish as terrible as Milton's Satan ; volcanic lands crim-
soning a hundred leagues of sky with the glare of the
central fires of the earth, against whose hellish effulgent
})ackground moved Titanic figures dark as the storm-
cloud — of such were the diversions which attended the
one-eyed navigation of the romantic days. Who envies
not the Jack of that period ? Why should the poetic
* Tliut is, for the raariuers with whom he sailed.
A NAUTICAL LAMENT. 19
glories of the ocean have died out with those long-
bearded, hawk-ej^ed men ? I can go now to the Cape of
Good Hope — in a peculiar degree the haunt of the right
kind of marvels, and the headland abhorred by Yander-
decken — I can steam there in twenty days, and not find
so much as the ghost of a poetical idea in about six
thousand miles of ocean. Everything is too comfortable,
too safe, too smooth. There is the same difference
between my mail-boat and the jolly old carrack as there
is between a brand-new hotel making up eight hundred
beds and an ancient castle with a moated grange. What
fine sights used to be witnessed through the windows of
that ancient castle ! Ghosts in armour on coal-black
steeds, lunatic Scalds bursting into dirges, an ogre who
came out of the adjacent wood, dwarfs after the manner
of George Cruikshank's fancies — in short, Enchantment
that was substantial enough too. Bat the brand-new
hotel ! Why, yes, certainly, I would rather dine there,
and most assuredly would rather sleep there, than in the
moated-grange arrangement. What I mean is : I wish
all the wonders were not gone, so that old ocean
should not bare such a very naked breast.
Observe again how elegant and splendid those
ancients were in their sea notions. When they built
a ship they embellished her with a more than oriental
splendour of gold and fancy work. Read old Stowe's
description of the Prince Royal : how she was sump-
tuously adorned, within and without, with all manner
of curious carving, painting, and rich gilding. They
had great minds ; when they lighted a candle it was a
tall one. How nobly they brought home the body of
Sir Philip Sydney, " slaine with a musket-shot in his
thigh, and deceased at Arnim, beyond seas ! " The
sails, masts, and yards of his "barke " were black, with
20 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
black ancient streamers of black silk, and tbe ship " was
hann;od all with black bayes, and scorcbions thereon on
pastboard (with his and his wyfes in pale, helm and
crest) ; in the cabin where he lay was the corpse covered
with a pall of black velvet, escochions thereon, his
helmet, armes, sword, and gauntlette on the corpse."
In the regality of the names they gave their ships there
is a fine aroma of poetry: Henri-Grace-a-Dieu, the
Soveray)ie-of -the -Seas, the FAizaheth-Jonah, the Jesus-of-
Lubeck, the Constant-Warwick/ The genius of Shake-
speare might be thought to have presided over these
christenings if it were not for the circumstance of
numberless squadrons of sweetly or royally named ships
having been launched before the birth of the immortal
bard ; and a list of them harmonised into blank verse
would have the organ-sounds delivered by his own
great muse.
The visionary gleam has fled ; the glory and the
dream are over. Yes, and the prosaics of the sea have
entered into the sailor's nature and made a somewhat
dull and steady follow of him, though he will shovel you
on coals as well as another, and pull and haul as
heartily as his forefathers. For where be his old caper-
cutting qualities ? Where be the old high jinks, the
Saturday night's carouse, the j^retty forecastle figment
of wives and sweethearts, the grinning salts of the
theatre-gallery, the sky-larking of liberty days, the
masquerading humours, such, for example, as Anson's
men indulged themselves in after the sacking of Paita,
when the sailors took the clothes which the Spaniards in
their flight had left behind them, and put them on — a
motley crew ! — wearing the glittering habits, covered
with yellow embroidery and silver lace, over their own
dirty trousers and jackets, clapping tie and bagwigs and
A NAUTICAL LAMENT. 21
laced hats on their heads ; going to the length, indeed,
of equipping themselves in women's gowns and petti-
coats ; so that, we read, when a party of them thus
metamorphosed first appeared before their lieutenant,
" he was extremely surprised at the grotesque sight, and
could not immediately be satisfied they were his own
people." They were a jolly, fearless, humorous, hearty
lot, those old mariners, and their like is not amongst us
to-day. The sentiment that prevailed amongst them
was in the highest degree respectable.
" Yes, seamen, v^e know, are inured to liard gales ;
Determined to stand by each other ;
And the boast of the tar, wheresoever he sails,
Is the heart that can feel for another I "
And has not the passenger degenerated too ? Is he
as fine and enduring a man as his grandfather ? is she
as stout-hearted as her grandmother ? The life of a
voyager in the old days of the sailing-ship — I do not
include John Company's Indiamen — was almost as hard
as that of the mariner. He had very often to fight, to
lend a hand aloft, at the pumps, at the running rigging.
His fare was an unpleasant kind of preserved fresh meat
— I am speaking of fifty years ago — and such salt pork
and beef as the sailors ate. His pudding was a dark and
heavy compound of coarse flour and briny fat, and in
the diary of a passenger at sea in 1820 it is told how the
puddings were cooked: ''July 16. As a particular
favour obtained a piece of old canvas to make a pudding-
bag, for all the nightcaps had disappeared. The
pudding being finished, away it went to the coppers,
and at two bells came to table smoking-hot. But a
small difficulty presented itself; for then, and not till
then, did we discover that the bag was smaller at top
than at bottom, so that, in spite of our various attempts
22 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
to dislodge it, there it stuck like a cork in a bottle, till
every one in the moss had burnt his fingers, and then
we thought of cutting away the canvas and liberating
the pudding." Such experiences as this made a hardy
man of the passenger. There was no coddling. Every-
thing was rough and rude ; yet read the typical pas-
senger's writings and you will see he found such poetry
and romance in the ocean and the voyage as must be
utterly undiscoverable by the spoilt and languid traveller
of to-day, sulkily j^erspiring over nap or whist in the
luxurious smoking-room, or reading the magazine — that
outruns its currency by a week only in a voyage to
New Zealand — propped up by soft cushions in a ladies'
saloon radiant with sunshine and full of flowers. Like
the early Jack, the early passenger came comparatively
new to the sea and enj,oyed its wonders and revelled in
its freedom and drank in its inspirations. He was not
to be daunted by food, by wet, by delay, by sea- sickness,
by coarse rough captains. Why, here before me, in the
same passenger's diary in which the above extract
occurs, I find the writer distinctly noting the picturesque
in that most hideous of maritime calamities, want of
water! "July 2. All hands employed catching rain
water, the fresh water having given out. 'Twas interest-
ing and romantic to see them running fore and aft with
buckets, pitchers, jars, bottles, pots, pans, and kegs, or
anything that would hold water. I was quietly enjoying
the scene, when the clew of the mainsail above me gave
way from the weight of water that had collected there,
and I received the whole contents on my devoted head."
Quietly enjoying the scene ! Is not this a very sublima-
tion of the heroic capacity of extracting the Beautiful — -
not in the Bulwerian sense — out of the Dreadful !
But enough ! Just as you seek for the romance and
A NAUTICAL LAMENT. 23
poetry of the ocean in the old hooks, so must you look
there for the jovial tar, the jigging fellow, with his hat
on nine hairs and a nose like a carbuncle; for the
resolved and manly passenger, for the unaffected heroine,
for the pretty masquerading lass, and for a hundred
lovely gilded dreams of a delighted imagination roving
wild in mid-ocean. The volume is closed ; we now
carry our helm amidships ; it is no longer the captain
but the head engineer that we think of and address
ourselves to when, disordered by some inward perturba-
tion, we sing : —
" O, pilot, 'tis a fearful night,
Tliere's danger on the deep."
But Philosophia stemma non inspicit ; and we must
take it that in these days she knows what she is about.
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SEA.
There is a story told of some English sailors who,
passing by the French Ambassador's house, that was
illuminated in celebration of a treaty of peace between
France and Great Britain, observed the word " Concord "
flaming in the midst of several devices. The men read
it " Conquer'd," and one of them exclaiming, " They
conquer us ! they be," etc., they knocked at the door
and demanded to know why such a word was put up.
The reason was explained, but to no purpose, and the
French Ambassador, in order to get rid of these jolly
tars, ordered " Concord " to be taken down and replaced
by the word " Amity."
It is to illiteracy of this kind that we are indebted for
much of the romantic superstitions of the sea. In olden
days the forecastle was certainly very unlettered, and
the wonderful imaginings of the early navigators, whose
imperfect gaze and enormous credulity coined marvels
and miracles out of things we now deem in the
highest degree prosaic and commonplace, descended
without obstruction of learning or scepticism through
the marine generations. It is easily seen on reading
the old sea-chronicles how most of the superstitions had
their birth, and it needs but a very superficial acquaint-
ance with the nautical character to understand why
I
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SEA. 25
they should have been perpetuated into comparatively
enlightened times. Two capital instances occur to me,
and they are both to be found in the narrative of Cowley's
voyage round the world in the years 1683, '84, '85, and
'86. The first relates to the old practice of choosing
valentines.
" We came abreast with Cape Horn," says the author,
" on Feb. 14, 1684, where we chusing of valentines,
and discoursing of the intrigues of women, there arose
a prodigious storm, w^hich did continue to the last day
of the month, driving us into the latitude of 60 deg. and
30 min. south, which is further than any ship hath sailed
before south ; so that we concluded the discoursing of
women at sea very unlucky, and occasioned the storm."
That such a superstition as this ever obtained a footing
among mariners I will not declare. Yet it is easily
seen that the conclusion the author arrived at, that the
"discoursing of women at sea" is very unlucky, might
engender a superstition strong enough to live through
centuries. In the same book is recounted another
strange matter, of a true hair-stirring pattern. On June
29, 1686, there had been great feasting on board
Cowley's ship, and when the commanders of the other
vessels departed they were saluted with some guns,
which, on arriving on board their ships, they returned.
" But," says the author, "it is strangely observable
that whilst they were loading their guns they heard a
voice in the sea crying out, ' Come, help ! come, help !
A man overboard ! ' which made them forthwith bring
their ships to, thinking to take him up ; but heard no
more of him." The captains were so puzzled that they
returned to Cowley's ship to see if he had lost a man ;
but " we nor the other ship had not a man wanting, for
upon strict examination we found that in all the three
26 A BOOK FOR TUE HAMMOCK.
ships we had our complement of men, which made them
all to conjecture that it was the spirit of some man that
had hecn drowned in that latitude by accident." Thus
they resolved their perplexity, braced up their yards,
and pursued their course in a composed postm-e of
mind ; and in this easy way I think was a large number
of the superstitions, which fluttered the forecastle and
perturbed the lonely look-out man, generated.
So of the corposant, that ghostly meteoric exhalation,
which in gales of wind or in dead calms blazes at the
end of yards, or hovers in bulbous shinings upon the
mastheads. One readily sympathizes with the old
superstitions here. To the ancient mariner it could be
nothing else than some spirit hand issuing out of the
dusk that kindled those magic lamps. What should
they portend to the startled hearts of the Columbian
and Magellanic sailors lost in the deepest solitudes of
oceans whose wastes their keels were the first to furrow ?
Happily they were found propitious, and superstition
devised a saintly origin for them. "On Saturday," we
read in the second voyage of Columbus, " at night, the
body of St. Elmo was seen, with seven lighted candles
in the round top, and there followed mighty rain and
frightful thunder. I mean the lights were seen which
the seamen affirm to be the body of St. Elmo, and they
sang litanies and prayers to him, looking upon it as
most certain that in these storms, when he appears,
there can be no danger." * The sign that admits of an
* Erasmus in liis Dialogues, tells of a certain Englislmiau who, in a
Btorra, promised mountains of gold to our Lady of Walsingham if he touched
land again 1 Another fellow promised St. Ciiristopher a wax candle as
hig a« himself. When lie had bawled out this offer, a man standing near
Baid, " Have a care what you promise, though you make an auction of all
your goods you'll not be able to pay." " Hold your tongue," whispered
the other, " you fool ! do you thiuk I speak from my heart ? If once I
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SEA. 27
auspicious interpretation is always useful. The most
literal-minded of men even in these days of hard facts is
pleased when something befalls him which people say is
a sign of good luck. There is a famous instance of a
ship having been saved by allowing a Lascar to dis-
charge a superstitious obligation by securing a bag of
rice and a few rupees in the rigging as a votive offering
to some hobgoblin. His black companions, worn out
with pumping, had tumbled down into the scuppers,
saying that the ship was doomed, and heaven must
have its way; but when the Lascar descended the
rigging and pointed to the bag swinging up there, they
cried out for joy, fell to the pumps till they sucked, and
enabled the master to carry his ship home. That stout
old buccaneer, Dampier, tells of a tempest in the midst of
which a corposant flamed out from the masthead.
" The sight rejoiced our men exceedingly," says he ;
" for the height of the storm is commonly over when the
Corpos Sant is seen aloft, but when they are seen lying
on the deck, it is generally accounted a bad sign." Any-
thing that heartens men in extremity is good ; and in
olden times there were superstitions aboard ship which
did more for the salvation and deliverance of mariners
than all the rum punch that was ever swallowed out of
capacious jacks.
One might go even further, and commit an apparent
indiscretion by declaring that — so far as the sea goes —
there may even be a virtue in lies. A vast amount of
early marine enthusiasm is due to fibbing. The amazing
yarns the old voyagers spun on their return sent others
off in hot haste ; and they took care not to come back
touch land I'll not give him a tallow candle!" Cardinal de Ketz in
describing a storm says, " A Sicilian Observantine monk was preaching at
the foc't of the great mast, that St. Francis had appeared to him and had
assured hira that we should not perish."
2S A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
^vitllOut a plentiful stock of more exciting tales yet.
Distinct impulse ^vas given to Arctic exploration by an
old Dutchman's grave, schnapps-smelling twister. The
story is told by Mr. Joseph Moxon,* who, in the seven-
teenth century, was member of the Royal Society.
"Being about twenty-two years ago in Amsterdam,"
sa5's he, '*I went into a publichouse to drink a cup of
beer for my thirst, and sitting by the public fire among
several people, there happened a seaman to come in,
who, seeing a friend of his there who he knew went in
the Greenland voyage, wondered to see him, for it was
not yet time for the Greenland fleet to come home ; and
asked him what accident brought him home so soon."
This question the other answered by saying "the ship
went not out to fish as usual, but only to take in the
lading of the whole fleet," and that "before the fleet
had caught fish enough to lade us, we, by order of the
Greenland Company, sailed unto the North Pole and
came back again." This greatly amazed Mr. Joseph
Moxon, of the Eoyal Society, and he earnestly questioned
the man, who declared that he had sailed two degrees
beyond the pole, and could produce the w4iole body of
sailors belonging to the ship to prove it. "I believe
this story," says the Eoyal Society man, and he delivers it
to the world as a fact, disproving all that has been re-
corded by the Frobishers, the Willoughbys, the Davises,
and the rest of those w4io had steered north. One
Dutchman may give rise to many superstitions — does
not the world owe the legend of the Phantom Ship to
the Batavian genius ? — and who shall tell the extent of
the impulse contained in the fable of an old Dutch
whaleman yarning over a cup of beer in an Amsterdam
ale-house ?
* lu lliirris'.s Cullectiun.
SUPERSTITIOXS OF THE SEA. 29
It is not clear, however, that auy possible good can
result from such marine credulity as that to which that
notable prodigy, for instance, called the sea-serpent
owes what life it has. It is interesting indeed to find
one of the most amazing of the ancient myths vital in
forecastles some thousands of years younger than the
legend; but it is not evident that the Kraken, the
Leviathan, the Titanic worm that dietli not, the mon-
strous snake of the deep, ever led the way into a whole-
some and worthy issue, such as the discovery of lands
or of fishermen's hunting-fields.* How often the sea-
serpent has been seen it would be hard to say. If there
be weight in human testimony there are surely witnesses
enough to its existence. Dr. Samuel Johnson could not
have pointed to a larger cloud of testifiers in favour
of those shadowy beings which he believed in. "All
seamen," says Olaus Magnus in his "History of the
Goths," " say there is a sea-serpent two hundred feet
long and twenty feet thick, who comes out at night to
devour cattle. It has long black hair hanging down
from its head, and flaming eyes, with sharp scales on its
body." Other early writers describe its body as resem-
bling a string of hogsheads, and affirm it to be at least
six hundred feet long. Sir Walter Scott, who found the
tradition he speaks of among the Shetland and Orkney
fishermen, speaks of the sea-snake as a monster that
rises out of the depth of the ocean, stretches to the skies
his enormous neck covered with a mane like that of a
war-horse, and "with his broad glittering eyes raised
* " The steward relates," I find in a book of travels, " that in a vessel
he once sailed in, a hand aloft asserted that he saw land ahead. The
captain knew this to be a mistake; and on nearing it the land turned
out to be the carcase of a huge whale left by the fishery, with a number
of albatrosses preying on it."
30 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
mast high, looks out as it seems for plunder or for
victims."
A writer in the British Merchant Service Journal in
1879 seems to have satisfactorily solved this perplexing
ocean enigma. He saw the sea-serpent three times.
First in 1851, during a vo3^age to Tasmania. The
terrifying wonder lay right in the ship's path, but the
captain would not shift his helm, with the result that
he sailed close past a long log of wood covered with
barnacles of great length — '* so long that, being attached
to the logs, they necessarily took all the undulations of
the waves, which gave it the appearance of a sinuous
motion." Again, in 1853, bound for the Cape of Good
Hope; the monster lay on the weather bow with his
capacious jaws open; but for the second time the
creature proved no more than the trunk of an old tree,
a branch of which nicely expressed the beast's jaw.
Once again in 18G9, this time in seven degrees north of
the ec^uator ; on this occasion the serpent exhibited long,
sleek, variegated sides as the sun shone upon him.
''He turned out the veriest old buck of a sea-serpent
I have met with in my long career at sea. There he
lay alongside from eleven a.m. until nine p.m., unable
to leave such good company (we had many passengers
from New Zealand) ; but ho left with us, in token of his
great regard, 18G line large rock cod, averaging at least
five pounds each. We hoped to meet him again,
although he was only an old log of timber."
Many curious sea superstitions can be traced to noises
which, when heard by tlie old navigators, were found
unusual and terrifying. There is a curious passage
bearing on this in the voyage of J. S. Stavorinus to the
East Indies in 1768. He heard a sound just like the
groaning of a man out of the sea, near the ship's side
i
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SEA. 31
It was repeated a dozen times over, but seemed to recede
proportionally as the ship advanced until it died away
at the stern. An hour afterwards the gunner came to
the author and said that on one of his Indian voyages
he had met with the same occurrence, and that a dread-
ful storm had succeeded, which forced them to hand all
their sails and drive at the mercy of the wind for twenty-
four hours. The author adds that when the gunner
told him this there was no sign of bad w^eather, yet
before four o'clock in the afternoon they were scudding
under bare poles before a violent tempest. Upon so
singular an experience the sufferers might claim a
right to base a superstition; and from that time any
sound resembling that of a man bawling in the water
over a ship's side must take a barometrical character,
and prove an exhortation to the mariner to see all
snug.
The nervous system need be suffering from no debili-
tation of superstition to find in the approaching and
bursting of the cyclone much that is too terrific to leave
room for the display of the qualities of sublimity, though
than these revolving tempests few passionate outbreaks
of nature yield more. First there is the alarming in-
dication of the barometer, with the slow and sullen
glooming over of the heavens, the wan and beamless
aspect of the sun or moon, the light of all the stars
— even to the most piercing of the planets — being
shrouded, along with the sulky heaving of the sea,
whose oppressed breathing, as it comes in clogged and
thickish draughts of air from the slope of each sullen
fold will often be charged with a weedy, fish-like, and
decaying odour. Then there is the noise of the approach-
ing storm, that has been described as a rising and falling
sound, of a moaning and complaining nature, as though
32 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
the nearer deep were something sentient and crying to
be hidden from the coming furious tormentor. Some
have it that this melancholy and mali.Gjnant echo may
be heard as far off as two hundred miles, that it is
caused by the actual raging of the hurricane at that
distance, and that it is not directly borne to the ear by
the wind, but obliquely reverberated by the clouds. A
single sentence written by a sailor taking his notes from
nature will have in it a suggestion of the ominousness
of storm-imports beyond the reach of the finest imagi-
native description, as, for instance, when the captain of
the ship Ida, quoted by Eeid, in his interesting work,
says: "Fresh gales and squally weather; at four,
handed the foretopsail and foresail; at intervals the
wind came in gusts, then suddenly dying away, and
continued so for four hours." Here, in a sentence, is
fully described the advent of the cyclone, leaving to the
fancy to make out for itself all that is comprised of
expectation, watchfulness, and even fear in the dull and
sudden dying away of the gusts and the silence of the
four hours following. Then enter, very often, other
formidable conditions, features of livid magnificence,
and oppressive because of the confusion they import
into aspects of nature familiar to the eye. Of such are
the red skies, not the strong westerly glowings following
the sinking of the sun, but spaces of blood red witnessed
in the midnight zenith, sheets of purple splendour in
the east and the like. One testimony speaks of a
crimson sky beheld late at night both east and west, for
three days before the gale came down ; another of the
sky catching a red light at sunset, and continuing to
glow all over, as though incandescent till past midnight,
the smooth breast of the sea refiecting the frightful and
wondrous irradiation, so that the ship seemed to rest
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SEA. 33
upon a floor of fire with a red-hot dome above. "When
finally the storm bursts, it comes in the manner faithfully
described in " Purchas," in the passage referring to the
tempest that wrecked one hundred Spanish ships at
Tercera : '* This storme continued not onely a day or
two with one winde, but seven or eight days continually,
the winde turninge round about in all places of the
compasse at the least twice or thrice during that time,
and all alike with a continuall storme and tempest most
terrible to beholde, even to us that were on shore much
more then to such as were at sea." In weather-aspects
of the cyclonic kind we may safely seek for the origin
of many a wild superstition of the ship and the sailor.
Amongst the most enduring of salt superstitions are
those connected with the wind. In a dead calm to
whistle for a breeze is but one illustration of an ever-
abiding faith. " Scratch the foremast with a nail: you
will get a good breeze," is among forecastle saws and
instances. You may raise the wind, too, by sticking a
knife into the mizzen-mast, taking care that the haft
points to the quarter whence you desire the breeze to
blow. The cat, as we all know, is a sort of wind-broker.
It is believed that pussy carries a gale in her tail. To
throw a cat overboard is a storm-prescription never
known to fail. In some parts of the north of England it
is said it was a custom for sailors' wives to keep a black
cat in the house as a guarantee of their husband's safety
whilst away. At the same time it is a cherished article
of Jack's creed that if you have a cat on board and a
heavy storm arises you may appease the wrath of the
Fiend of the Weather by throwing the cat into the sea.
Wonderful stories are related of people who sold
winds. Baxter, in his *' W^orld of Spirits," gravely tells
of an old parson, who, before being hanged, confessed
34 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
that be bad two imps, one of wbicb "was always
putting bim on doing mischief, and (being near the
sea) as be saw a ship mider sail it moved bim to send
bim to sink the ship, and be consented and saw the
ship sink before bim." This imp w^ould have done
better bad be advised the parson to sell the winds.
The mariner was a credulous creature then, and a
prosperous gale to the Spice Islands Avas surely worth
more ducats than a cure of souls w^as likely to yield.
Of all the wind-brokers mentioned in history the Eussian
Finn has ever been accounted the most famous. In a
narrative of a voyage to the north, included in Harris's
voluminous collection, it is excellently told bow^ the
master of the ship in which the author of the narrative
sailed, finding himself beset with calms and baffling airs
on the coast of Finland, agreed to buy a prosperous
wind from a wizard. The price was ten Kronen, about
one pound sixteen shillings, and a pound of tobacco.
The wizard presented the skipper with a woollen rag
containing three knots, the rag to be attached to the
foremast. Each knot held a gale of wind, the third
rising to a tempest " so furious that we thought the
heavens would fall down upon us ; and that God would
justly punish us with destruction for dealing with
infernal wizards, and not trusting to his providence."
So recently as 1857 a sailor was tried for the murder of
a mulatto, the man's defence being tbat he thought the
coloured fellow a Finn, and so put bim out of the way
of doing barm. In ** Two Years Before the Mast"
L)ana has stated the case of the Finn delightfully, by
representing a sea-cook and an old ignorant sailor
talking of a wizard tliey knew ; how be raised an un-
favourable wind until the captain starved him into
shifting the breeze by locking biui up in the forepeak ;
SUPERSTITIONS OF TEE SEA. 35
how he got drunk every night on a bottle of rum, which,
nevertheless, remained full throughout the voyage ; and
so forth. The capriciousness of the wind renders it a
very suitable agency for diabolic influence. The causes
which stagnate or fix it in an unfavourable quarter are
wonderfully numerous. Holcroft, the comedian, tells
us in his memoirs that during a trip to Sunderland the
sailors, knowing him to be an actor, concluded that he
must therefore be a Jonah. Happening on an Easter
Sunday to be walking the deck with a book in his hand,
he was approached by some seamen, who advised him
to read a prayer-book, instead of a book of plays. " By
the Holy Father ! " cried one of them ; "1 know you are
the Jonas ; and by Jasus the ship will never see land
till you are tossed overboard — you and your inlays wid
ye." The origin of Jack's notorious objection to sailing
with a parson on board probably lies in the old super-
stition that the devil, who is the greatest of storm
raisers, hates priests, and whenever he can catch one at
sea will send a storm to destroy him.
It is not very long ago (1886) that the people on
board a ship which was then off the Horn, running before
a small westerly gale, noticed an immense albatross
following in the vessel's wake. This bird clung so
obstinately to the skirts of the running ship that its
identity became, in a day or two, a distinguishable thing
amongst the other sea-fowl of a like kind that pursued the
vessel. One day, as this huge bird was hovering at
a short elevation above the taifrail, it was noticed that
an object about the size of a dollar was suspended from
its neck. Glasses were brought to bear, but nothing
could be made of the great bird's embellishment. There-
upon everybody grew eager to catch the creature, and a
hook was forthwith baited with a piece of pork and
3 5 A BOOK FOR TUB HAMMOCK.
towed astern. Some of the other alhatrosses were
caught, but the desired one was not to be entrapped.
It would sail with a sweep to over the bait that hissed
through the water, poise itself on a magnificent length
of tremulous pinion, whilst its eyes, glowing like Cairn-
gorm stones, inspected the greasy dainty, and then, with
a scream that might have passed very well for an expres-
sion of scorn, slide away athwart the path of the wind,
and fall to its old gyrations, narrowing down at last
into steady pursuit.
But on the third day the noble fowl took the hook,
and was triumphantly dragged on board, straining and
flapping like a huge Chinese kite in a squall. It was
then found that the object hanging at its neck was a
brass pocket-compass case, secured to the bird by three
stout strands of copper wire. Two of these wires had
been severed by wear, and the box itself was thickly
coated with verdigris. On opening it a piece of paper
was discovered on which was written in faded ink,
" Caught May 3, 1848, in lat. 38 deg. S. 40 deg. 14 min.
W., by Ambrose Cocharn, of American ship Columbus."
A fresh label, with the old and new dates of capture,
was fastened round the bird's neck, and the great sea-
gull was then released. Before the men let the bird
fly they measured its wings, and found them to be 12 ft.
2 in. between the tips. It is perfectly reasonable to
assume, with the captors, that this albatross, when
taken and hibelk'd by the people of the American ship
Columbus, was four or Ave years old, and the story,
therefore conclusively proves that the natural life of
these birds is at least fifty years, though how much
longer they may go on living after that period is attained
has yet to be determined. For thirty-eiglit years this
bird had been flying about with a brass pocket-compass
SUPERSTITIONS OF TEE SEA. 37
case dangling at ^ its throat! A writer once calculated
the distance traversed by a little pilot-fish that accom-
panied the vessel he was in. It joined the ship off the
Cape de Verd Islands, and it followed her right away
round Cape Horn to as far as Callao ; the whole distance
accomplished having been about 14,000 miles, the time
122 days, showing a daily average of 115 miles.* But
what should be thought of the leagues covered by that
winged postman of the old Yankee ship Columbus in a
flight extending over a period of thirty-eight years ?
It is somewhat strange that Cornelius Vanderdecken,
the well-known if not popular commander of the Flying
Dutchman, should never have used the seabird as a
messenger to his wife and children in old Amsterdam.
It is part and parcel of his unhappy destiny that he
shall not be able to persuade sailors to carry a letter
home for him. Jack very well knowing that, airy as may
be one of these phantom missives, it has weight enough
of fatality in it to sink his ship. It was an old custom
among seamen on catching an albatross to secure a
bundle of letters for wives and sweethearts under his
wing and despatch him with a loud hurrah. Not im-
possibly his usefulness in this direction may have
suggested that his presence signified good luck.
" At lengtli did cross an albatross.
Thorough the fog it came,
As if it had been a Christian soul
We hailed it in God's name."
So sings the Ancient Mariner, with this result :
" And a good south wind sprung up behind.
The albatross did follow."
The famous old buccaneering skipper Shelvocke writes.
* Davis, in the " Nimrod of the Seas," a finely-told whaling story.
:^« A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
in bis voyages, "We had not the sight of one fish of
any kind since we were come to the south-west of the
Straits of Le Maire, nor one sea-bird, except a discon-
solate bhick albatross w^ho accompanied us several days,
hovering about us as if he had lost himself, until Sam
Huntley, my second officer, observed in one of his
melancholy tits that the bird was always hovering near
us, and imagined from its colour that it might be an ill-
omen, and, being encouraged in his impression by the
continued season of contrary weather which had opposed
us ever since we had got into these seas, he, after some
fruitless attempts, shot the albatross."
Who will question that in those olden times of marine
superstitions the mariners of Shelvocke attributed the
failure of their expedition to the shooting of that dis-
consolate fowl ? But these birds do not appear to have
inspired maritime fancy to any marked degree. The
belief of old sailors that if an albatross be slaughtered it
at once becomes necessary to keep one's " weather eye
lifting " for squalls, but that no harm follows if the bird
be caught with a piece of fat pork, and is allowed to die
a "natural" death on deck, about sums up the tradi-
tionary apprehensions in respect of the bird. Yet this
meagreness of forecastle imagination is strange, for
assuredly the albatross is the pinioned monarch of the
deep, the majestic and beautiful eagle of the liquid,
foam-cai)ped crags and steeps of the ocean, and will for
days so haunt the wakes of ships as to impart just that
element of the familiar into the wild and desolate free-
dom of the cold grey skies and snow-swept billows of
dominion w4iich especially fertilizes the fancy of the
mariner, who needs something of the prosaic to hold on
by just in the same way that he swings by a rope high
aloft in the middle air.
SUPERSTITIONS OF TEE SEA. 39
Nevertheless it is true that there are scores of com-
paratively insignificant sea and land birds whose feathers
are supposed to cover larger powers for good or evil than
even the spacious-winged albatross.
The common house-sparrow : here surely is a strange
little fowl of the air to parallel, nay to surpass the wizard
powers of the shrieking monarch of the Horn and the
Southern Ocean; and yet it is gravely asserted that
should sparrows be blown away to sea and alight
upon a ship they are not to be taken or even chased, for
in proportion as the birds are molested must sail be
shortened to provide against the storm that will certainly
come. In the interests of humanity nothing could be
better than such superstitions. The harmless and
beautiful gull, whose lovely sweepings and curvings
through the air, whose exquisite self-balancing capacity
in the teeth of a living gale, whose bright eyes, salt,
shrewd voice, and webbed feet folded in bosom of ermine,
it is impossible to sufficiently admire, though there be
unhappily no lack of sea-side Nathaniel Winkles who
regard this pretty creature as a mark set up by Nature
for cockneys to shoot at, has a commercial virtue that
sets it high in the long shoreman's catalogue of things
to be approved; for when this bird appears in great
numbers then is its presence accepted as an infallible
sign of the neighbourhood of herring shoals.
Herman Melville has somewhere said that in his time
it was reckoned a bad omen for ravens to perch on the
mast of a ship, at the Cape of Good Hope. We know
that the raven himself was hoarse that croaked the fatal
entrance of Duncan, and there is no reason, no fore-
castle reason at least, why the Storm-Fiend should not
have ravens harnessed to his chariot after the manner
of the doves of Venus, though why these plumed steeds
40 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
are peculiarl}^ obnoxious to mariners at or off the Cape
of Good Hope is not certainly known.
It was an old superstition that the rotten timbers of
foundered ships generated birds.* " When," says a
very Early English naturalist, " this old wrack of ships
falls in the sea, it is rotted and corrupted by the sea,
and from this decay breeds birds, hanging by the beaks
to the wood ; and when they are all covered with plumage
and are large and fat, then they fall into the sea ; and
then God, in his grace, restores them to their natural life."
It will thus be seen how intimate is the association be-
tween sailors and birds, particularly the kind of bird
produced by rotten and sunken timber, and styled by the
above very Early English naturalist " crabans," or
** cravans," though ''barnacles," perhaps, is the term to
best fit the prodigy. Even a dead bird may prove a
soothsayer, according to Jack, for, says he, if a king-
fisher be suspended to the mast by its beak it will swing
its breast in the direction of the coming wind. Easier
even than whistling for a breeze, and as a weathercock
worth the lordliest and more flashing of ecclesiastical
vanes, which will only tell how the wind is actually
blowing. This is a vulgar error in Sir Thomas Browne's
list, but not exploded by that eloquent worthy. Nay,
he rather exj^jlains it by remarking " that a kingfisher
hanged by the bill showeth what quarter the wind is by
an occult and secret property converting the breast to
that part of the horizon from whence the wind doth
blow. This is a received opinion, and very strange,
introducing natural weathercocks and extending mag-
netical positions as far as animal natures — a conceit
supported chiefly by present practice, yet not made
* I advert to this singular article of marine superitition in another
chapter.
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SEA. 41
out by reason nor experience." But neither reason nor
experience is desirable in superstition — that is to say if
superstition is to flourish. It was long believed that
gulls were never to be seen bleeding, and that the shoot-
ing stars were the half-digested food of these birds.*
Why fancy should ever trouble itself with the blood of
gulls is not clear ; as to shooting stars it was reasonable
that the method by which they were produced should be
accurately stated and settled once for all. Some of the
superstitions in connection with birds and their influence
over things maritime are very curious and romantic.
Anciently, swallows were deemed unlucky at sea, and we
read that Cleopatra abandoned a voyage on observing
a swallow at the masthead of the shij).
" Swallows have built
In Cleopatra's sails their nests ; the aui^urers
Say they know not, they cannot tell, look grimly.
And dare not speak their knowledge."
On the other hand, it was agreed that if a kite
perched on a mast the omen was a favourable one. A
crow lighting on a ship is accepted by the Chinese as a
sure sign of prosperous gales, and they feed the bird with
crumbs of bread by way of coaxing it to remain. The
magpie is another evil bird. A sailor said to Sir Walter
Scott, ''All the world agrees that one magpie bodes ill-
luck, two are not bad, but three are the very devil itself.
I never saw three magpies but twice, and once I nearly
lost my vessel, and afterwards I fell off my horse and
was hurt."
It is said that fishermen in the English Channel
attribute the east wind to the flight of curlew on dark
* Both the Eev. John Ray and Dr. Edward Browne (son of the
famous Norwich Knight) speak of this queer belief in their " Travels."
42 A HOOK FOB TEE HAMMOCK.
nights. It is possible that such a superstition may
exist, nor could a far wilder fancy be held ill-founded by
one who, in midnight darkness upon the sea-shore, has
heard the dismal wailings and cryings of invisible birds
speeding through the blackness in detachments, and
making their weird noises sound as though they were
uttered by one set of fowl wheeling round and round
again. But, spite of Coleridge's marvellous poem, the
stately albatross, taking all the sea birds round, stands
lowest in the catalogue of the feathered tribe, accredited
with special necromancy in good or bad directions.*
The little Mother Carey's chicken, the stormy petrel,
the tiny swallow of the deep, is distinctly ahead of the
huge creature with its span of thirteen feet, and a
score of superstitions crowd about it, such as its power
of evoking storms, its being the soul of a dead sailor,
and so forth. The albatross is beaten out of the field,
too, by the common seagull, whose familiar presence
is no doubt the cause of its rich legendary and tra-
ditional endowment. But for all that the albatross
remains the sovereign of the seas, and unless the average
duration of its life is already positively known, the dis-
covery made in 1886 of the bird with the compass at its
neck having been alive so long ago as 1848, will be
received with interest by all admirers of the lovely and
noble creature.f
* " About this time a l)eautiful white bird, web-footed, and not unlike
a dove in size and plumage, hovered over the masthead of the cutter, and,
notwithstanding the pitciiing of tlie boat, frequently attempted to perch
on it, and continued to flutter there till dark. Trifling as this circum-
Btance may appear, it was considered by us all as a propitious omen."
This passage occurs in the account of the loss of the Lady Uobart in tlio
Mariner's Chronicle. "What sort of bird this was, unless a gull, I cannot
imagine.
t An old legend states these birds to be the disembodied spirits of
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SEA. 43
A boatman told me that once whilst fishing off the
coast in forty feet of water, the tide a quarter ebb, and
the sea a dark clear green, he and his mate were hanging
over the boat's side with lines in their hands when they
saw a mermaid floating past under the surface by about
the dei^th a man's arm would penetrate. I asked him
what the mermaid was like, and he replied that she was
of a chocolate colour, with short black hair and very
large intensely black eyes. Her figure to the waist was
that of a woman; the rest of her was fish-shaped.
Altogether he reckoned her to have been of the size of a
thirty-pound salmon, only that she was longer than a
fish of that weight would be. Her face and figure — as
much of it as was human — were as small as those of a
child two years old. She was an unmistakable mermaid
— he'd warrant that. Might he never airn another
shilling in this world if he wor telling a lie. She floated
by at an oar's length ; had the sight of her left him and
his mate their wits they would have secured her; but
some minutes passed before they recovered from their
amazement, and though they got their anchor and pulled
in the direction of the creature they saw no more of her.
I was glad to hear that there was, at all events, one
mermaid still in existence, for I had been given to under-
stand that the last of these ocean Mohicans had been
gorged by the sea-serpent a little before the date on
which her Majesty's ship Bacchante sighted the Flying
Dutchman.
captains who have been wrecked off the Cape, and who are condemned to
wear the feathers for seven years by order of the demon of the deep. An
author writes fifty years ago : " Caught a splendid albatross ; measured
nineteen feet from the tip of each wing. He had been following the ship
for many hours ; but I was surprised to see what an insignificant figure
he cut when dissected. He turned out all feathers." He was no doubt
a captain !
44 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
It is customary to look into antiquity for the origin
of mermaids, to trace these daugliters of the deep to the
Nereids and Naiads, with some reference to the Syrens
and to Circe and to Hylas and the Argonautic voyages.
Would it not be easier to take Jack's word for it ? There
is the sea-serpent ; nobody would care to say positively
that the mighty snake is a myth. It is like a ghost ;
one would rather reserve one's opinion on the matter.
So, in spite of the Barnumisms of the aquarium, who
has courage enough in the face of the testimonies of
many scores of mahogany-cheeked eye-witnesses to assert
with all cocksureness that there is not and never was
such a thing as a mermaid ?
At all events, Simon Wilkin, F.L.S., who edited an
edition of the works of Sir Thomas Browne, has stated
such a case for the mermaid as merits something better
than a smile. It is the business of the learned Norwich
Knight to explode the sea-nymph as a vulgar error,
and he certainly bears hard upon popular faith by
denying the syren to be the mermaid's original, as
*' containing no fish}^ composure," and, by tracing her
to Dagon, of whose stump "the fishy part only re-
mained when the hands and upper part fell before the
ark." But what writes Mr. Simon Wilkin in a note
to this passage ? He takes the same view that Johnson
took of disembodied spirits, and says that he cannot
admit the probability of a belief in mermaids having
lasted from remote antiquity without some foundation
in truth. He examines Sir Humphrj^ Davy's argu-
ments against the likelihood of the existence of such
an object as a mermaid, and agrees with that distin-
guished philosopher's view that a human head, human
hands, and human mamma) are wholly inconsistent with
a fish's tail, because — and the logic is good — the head,
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SEA. 45
hands, and mammae of any creature furnished also with
a tail could not be human ; and so, conversely, adds he,
*'the tail of such a creature could not be a fish's tail."
The philosopher was personally interested in the subject,
for if Mr. Simon Wilkin is to be credited. Sir Humphry,
whilst swimming, was himself mistaken by some ladies
of Caithness for a mermaid. Surely no scientific gentle-
man ever received a higher compliment. Mr. Wilkin
quotes from the Evangelical Magazine of September,
18'22. In that publication was printed a letter from the
Eev. Dr. Philip, dated at Cape Town. The doctor said
he had just seen a mermaid that was then being exhi-
bited. The head was the size of a baboon's, thinly
covered with black hair, and there were a few hairs on
the upper lip. The ears, nose, lips, chin, breasts, fingers,
and nails resembled the human subject. Of the teeth
there were eight incisors, four canine, and eight molars.
This creature was about three feet long, and covered
with scales. It was caught by a Chinese fisherman, and
sold to one Captain Eades, at Batavia. Sir Humphry
pronounced this mermaid to be the head and bust from
two apes, fastened to the tail of the kipper salmon ; but
this Mr. Simon Wilkin would not hear of. Sir Thomas
Browne's editor is well backed. Has not Alexandre
Dumas described the mermaid of the Koyal Museum at
the Hague ? It was not a thing to be disputed about.
" If after all this," says the author of Monte Cristo, ''there
shall be found those who disbelieve the existence of such
creatures as mermaids, let them please themselves.
I shall give myself no more trouble about them."
If Sir Humphry Davy were the mermaid that was
seen at Caithness in January, 1809, it would be interest-
ing to know what he thought of the description of him
that was sent to the public journals of that date by two
46 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
witnesses, one of "whom was Miss Mackay, daughter of
the Eev. David Mackay, minister of Reay. That Sir
Humphry should have been bathing in the sea in
the month of January will seem strange to persons
whose blood flows languidly. But there is more to
wonder at in the following particulars : Whilst Miss
Mackay and another lady were walking by the shore
they perceived three people who were on a rock at some
distance showing signs of astonishment and terror. On
approaching the ladies saw that the object of their
wonder was a face resembling the human countenance,
floating on the waves. The sea ran high, and as the
waves advanced the mermaid gentl}^ sank under them,
and afterwards reappeared. The face was plump and
round, the nose small, the eyes a light grey, the head
long, the hair thick, the throat slender, smooth and
white. The hands and fingers were not webbed. " It
sometimes laid its right hand under its cheek, and in
this position floated for some time." Other witnesses
declared that it disappeared on a boy crying out. It
reappeared at a distance : the spectators followed it by
walking along the shore, until it vanished for good.*
Could this have been Sir Humphry Davy ? The
narrative was supplemented by a tale copied from an
old History of the Netherlands. There was an inunda-
tion in 1403, and when the water retired a mermaid was
found in the Dormet Mere, near Campear. A number
of boats surrounded her ; she tried to dive undc'r them,
and finding her way stopped, made a hideous deafening
noise, and with her hands and tail sunk a boat or two.
On being cleaned of the sea-moss and shells which
covered her she was found a somewhat comely being,
hair long and black, face human, figure — so far as it
* Aunual Regiistcr, 1809.
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SEA. 47
went — very good indeed. The rest was " a strong fish
tail." She was sent to the Haerlem magistrates, who
ordered her to be taught to pray and to spin, but she
never could be brought to speak; possibly she did not
like the Dutch tongue. She also declined to wear any
kind of clothing in summer. Part of her hair was
plaited in the Dutch style, and the remainder hung
down her. " She would leave her tail in the water, and
accordingly had a tub of water under her chair, made
on purpose for her ; she eat milk, water, bread, butter,
and fish. She lived thus out of her element (excej)t her
tail) fifteen or sixteen years." That posterity might not
doubt this prodigy ever flourished, her picture was
painted and hung in the Town House of Haerlem, and
her story written under it in letters of gold.
But we must accept the existence of the mermaid on
the mariner's assurance. A fig for the dugong, and
manatee, and sea-horse ! Let them in certain postures
look as human as they will, the ape is not more the
brother of man than are those fish the originals of
the wild-eyed, sweet-voiced, silver- shining, golden-haired
beauties of the azure main, rising out of their palaces of
pearl to ravish Jack's gaze with a picture of girlish
loveliness.
" Though all the splendour of the sea,
Around thy faultless beauty shine,
The heart that riots wild and free
Can hold no sympathy with mine."
So the love-sick Tarpaulin may sigh; but though
the foam-white form slide into the glassy profound with
virginal fear of his pursuing eyes, let us not vulgarly
call the delicate shining shape dugong, or sea-horse !
Does not John of Hesse, in his travels, tell us of a
land where he saw a stony and smoking mountain,
48 A BOOK FOR THE UAMMOCK.
and heard mermaids singing — sirens who draw ships
into danger hy their songs? And how, if not by the
witchery of their eyes and the clear melodies of their
voices? And listen to the navigator, Hudson, "One
of our men, looking overboard, saw a mermaid, and,
calling up some of the company to see her, one more
came up, and by that time she was come closely to
the ship's side, looking earnestly at the men. A little
after, a sea came and overturned her. Her back and
breasts were like a woman's, as they said that saw her ;
her body as big as one of us, her skin very white, and
long hair hanging down behind, of colour black. Seeing
her go down, they saw her tail, which was like that of a
porpoise, speckled like a mackerel."
The mermaids must be left alone. They are Jack's
sweethearts, and no sacrilegious hand should be suffered
to rob old ocean of those seductive spirits which sparkle
in its depths or whiten with their forms and gild with
their hair the weedy and shelley embroidery of the coast.
If an ill-word must be said of these creatures, let it
be directed at the merman. He is no beauty, and I
believe has no claim to be considered even respectable.
They are said to be drunkards, and have green hair, red
eyes, and noses distinguished for a peculiar kind of
growth termed in ships' forecastles " grog-blossoms."
Francis Pyrard says, in the account he gives of his
shipwreck, that he saw a merman, when at anchor in
St. Augustine's Bay, in the Island of Madagascar. He
calls it a strange phenomenon, and describes it as a
monstrous fish with a head of a man and a long beard.
" It plunged into the water on our approach, and we
could only see part of its back, which was scaly." I can
well understand the alarm confessedly felt by persons at
the sight of a merman. The mermaid is an engaging
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SEA. 49
and often adorable creature, and fills the mind with the
softest emotions ; but the merman is so disgracefully
ugly, and so depravedly and ironically human-like
withal, that no spectacle is more shocking. The old
Bishop of Norway tells of three sailors who saw^ some-
thing floating off the Danish coast. It proved to be an
old merman. He had broad shoulders, a small head, a
thin face of an abandoned and malignant cast of ex-
pression, and the usual fish-like termination. The
bishop does not positively say that this merman was
drunk, but he describes his postures as very uneasy- — his
attitudes being such as perhaps might be expected in a
fish that was in liquor and that tried to balance itself on
its tail — so that there is reason to suppose the worst.
The same bishop tells of a parson who found a dead
merman in his parish. The corpse was six feet long.
It had a man's face and arms, not unlike a human
being's, only that they were connected to its body by
membranes. It is not impossible but that this apparent
corpse was a merman overtaken in liquor.
I do not gather — at least from my studies in this
direction —that these mermen are related to the mer-
maids. A literal-minded Swede has indeed feigned that
the merman is the mermaid's husband, but on no better
ground than the circumstance of having seen a male
and a female amicably swimming about together. I do
not mean to say that the merman, being always found
alone, is a proof that he is a bachelor, but it is hard to
reconcile the terrestrial and even marine customs of
Nature with the pairing of such a divinity as the mer-
maid with such a horrid, drunken object as the merman.
No ; if the mermen wive at all they go for their spouses
to the dugongs. The mermaids seek elsewhere for lovers
than amid the ranks of fishes' tails merging into drunken
E
50 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
old men. The sailors know her as a dainty creature
that floats upwards to the surface like a beam of golden
light.
*' Upstarted the mermaid by the ship,
Wi' a glass and a kame in her hand,
Says, ' Reek about, reek about, my merry men ;
Ye are not very far from land.' "
If the mermen were the pretty creatures' husbands
they would be driven wild with jealousy ; for it is certain
that in olden times — it may yet be the artless charmers'
practice — to make love to human men, to princes as to
peasants, very properly choosing the best-looking.
Sometimes, it is true, their amorous emotions were in-
spired by motives extremely sinister. There are many
stories told of these marine Becky Sharps ogling and
leering at dashing and handsome and fragrant young
men of quality ashore, whilst possibly some old Lord
Ste^^ne, in the shape of a hideous merman in the depths,
watched the wicked comedy with sardonic sneers and
laughter. A mermaid nearly drowned a certain young
laird of Lorntie. The youthful nobleman saw the
beautiful girl apparently struggling for life in the water ;
but his henchman, bawling out a hearty " God sauf
us ! " said that the lady was a mermaid ; whereupon
they galloped off whilst the marine Becky piped up —
" Lorntie, Lorntie, were it na for your man
I had gart your hairt's blood, skirl in ray pan I "
Some are also charged with embracing their sweet-
hearts from no other motive than to suffocate them, as
in the story of the Manx shepherd, who was so much
hurt by being squeezed that he pushed the mermaid
away, for which she wounded him to death by flinging a
stone at him. Of this deceitful and dangerous kind are
those Swedish sea-nymphs who pass their days upon
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SEA. 51
the rocks combing their hair and viewing their per-
fections in hand-mirrors. They are also said to amuse
themselves by spreading out linen to dry, but this fancy
clearly springs from the mistakes of seamen who suppose
the white foam crawling about the finny maidens to be
the contents of the wash-tub. If a fisherman sees one
of these mermaids, he is on no account to mention it to
his mates, or bad luck will follow. But other kinds of
these girls of the ocean are tender, and extremely
affectionate and lovable. The melancholy, melodious
sounds sometimes heard breathing amid the stillness
upon the deep at night are the sighs of mermaids who
have loved and lost, and who rise from their coral beds,
their grottoes of pearl, their pavilions and palaces of
shells, to make their moan to the stars. Mermaids are
great lovers of music. They have been known to sacrifice
their sw^eethearts for a tune. A fisherman was induced
to give his handsome son to a mermaid on her offering
in exchange a brave reward in the shape of luck. But
the boy's mother, who sang very sw^eetly, so charmed
the mermaid's heart, that she undertook to return her
adored if his mamma would favour her wdth another air.
It is gratifying to find old Bailey in his " Dictionarium
Britannicum " (1730), defining the word mermaid with a
very sober and sturdy leaning in favour of the real
existence of these ladies. " Whereas," says he, " it has
been thought they have been only the product of the
painter's invention, it is confidently reported that there
is in the following lake fishes which differ in nothing
from mankind but in the want of speech and reason.
Father Francis de Pavia, a missionary, being in the
kingdom of Congo in Africa, who w^ould not believe that
there w^ere such creatures, affirms that the Queen of
Singa did see in a river coming out of the lake Zaire
52 A BOOK FOR TUB nAMMOCK.
man^' mermaids, something resembling a woman in the
breasts, hands, and arms ; but the lower part is perfect
fish, the head romid, the face like a calf, a large mouth,
little ears, and round, full eyes. Which creatures
Father Merula often saw and eat of them." Which, I
may add, does not say much for Father Merula' s
manners and tastes, unless it is meant figuratively, as
in the sense of the saying in the comedy, " Six w^eeks
before I married her I could have eaten her, and six
weeks after I was sorry I didn't." As to the face like
the calf, the large mouth, and so forth, let it be re-
membered that the place Father de Pavia wrote of w^as
the kingdom of Congo, where, to be sure, we should not
expect to find even mermaids beautiful. But that these
sea-nymphs, with their golden hair, their shining shapes,
their teeth of pearl, there eyes of the liquid blue of their
own glorious element, full of ocean mystery and the
spirit of the unfathomable starless w^orld in which they
live — that they are as beautiful as dreams among
shores from whose silent rocks neither the voice of
a De Pavia nor a Merula has ever fetched an echo,
who can doul)t ?
The mermaid is the sailor's love. Let us leave her
to him.
OLD SEA ORDNANCE.
Not very long since a French smack fished up an old
cannon a league or so to the eastward of the North head
of the Goodwin Sands. It was believed to be a gun of
the time of De Kuyter and " Trump," but so eaten,
rusted, and defaced by time and the action of salt water
that its paternity was scarcely a determinable thing.
There is no lack of reminders ashore of the sort of
weapons with which our grandsires fought the battles of
their country ; but somehow an interest that no museum
could impart attaches to an object dragged from the
tomb of the deep, hauled out of the twilight of its oozy
bed, and set up for all eyes to gaze at in the staring
light of day. In marine collections there are still to be
found tomahawks of the pattern which Nelson's men
handled; but figure one of these death-dealing con-
trivances fished up in Cadiz Bay ! strangely hooked off
a tract of the sand there, over which the keels of the
flaming and thunderous ships of that Titanic struggle
surged in their throes of conflict !
Of all the changes which the sea-vocation has wit-
nessed none is so complete as the battle-ship's arma-
ments. The process has indeed been gradual ; great
sharpness of transition has only been visible within the
last twenty-five years ; yet it is not necessary to talk of
hundred-ton guns to emphasize the growth of ordnance.
.n A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
There was a Dii<:;lity difference betwixt the batteries of
the old Duke of Wellington, for exami^le, and those of
the shijis to which the cannon lately trawled up in the
Channel belonged. But it is instructive, and certainly
amusing, to go much further back still. In an ancient
treatise, called " Speculum Eegale," a description is
given of the method of attack and defence as practised
in the navy in the twelfth century. Here the mariner is
told to provide himself with two spears, which he must
be careful not to lose in throwing. One of them is to
be long enough to reach out of one vessel into another.
In addition to these spears, the sailor was to be fur-
nished with scythes fixed to long poles, axes, boat-hooks,
slings fitted to staffs,* barbed darts, stones for heaving,
and bows for shooting. How terrible these primitive
weapons were in the hands of the early mariners may be
read in the old accounts of sea-fights. Describing the
great naval battle between the English and French in
Edward III.'s reign, Daniel in his " Collection," p. 227,
writes : '* Most of the French, rather than endure the
arrows and sharp swords of the English or be taken,
desperately leap into the sea, whereupon the French
king's jester, set on to give him notice of this overthrow
(which being so ill news, none else willingly would im-
part on the sudden) said, and oftentimes reiterated the
same : Cowardly Englishmen^ Dastardly Englishmen,
Faint-licarted Englishmen, The king at length asked
him Why .^ For that, said he, Tliey durst not leap out of
their ships into the sea, as our brave Frenchmen did. By
which speech the King apprehended a notion of this
* It was asserted tliat tlie bullet of a sling "in the course, hath con-
tinue«l a fiery heat in the air, yea, soinetinies melted, tliat it killeth at one
blow, that it pierccth helmet and shield, that it reacheth further, that it
nmdonetli less" than gun shot ! See Camden's " Kemaines,"
OLD SEA ORDNANCE. o5
overthrow." There were also contrivances called gal-
traps, beaks for the vessels like boars' heads armed
with iron tusks, towers for the bowmen to let fly their
arrows from, breastplates of linen very thick, and
helmets of steel. The old Jacks fought stoutly with
these barbarous weapons, but their real qualities had to
lie in wait for gunpowder.
When it came, it brought with it some extraordinary
engines. There is extant an account of a ship called
the Great Michael, built by James IV. of Scotland, and
her artillery was composed of the following : " She bare
many cannons, six on every side, with three great bassils,
two behind in her deck and one before ; with 300 shot
of small artillery, that is to say, myand and batterd
falcon, and quarter falcon, slings, pestilent serpetens,
and double dogs, with hagtor and culvering, corsbows
and handbows." Our ancestors, in their choosing of
names for their guns, appear to have been influenced by
a hope of terrifying the enemy by dreadful terms, as the
Chinese try to affright their foes by painting monstrous
pictures upon their shields. Batterd falcons, double
dogs, hagtors, and pestilent serpetens ! There is de-
struction in the mere names, and a stouter than Falstaff
should easily run from such sounds. In Eymer's
'' Foedera " appear some queer appellations for sailor's
weapons. They occur in an order to the Keeper of the
Private Wardrobe in the Tower to deliver to the Treasurer
of Queen Philippa the following stores: Eleven guns,
forty lihras pulveris pro guns, forty petras pro guns, forty
tampons, four touches, one mallet, two firepans, forty
pavys, twenty-four bows, forty sheaves of arrows, and
other matters.
They did well who in their generation used the word
gun or cannon generically, and confined their definitions
5G A BOOK FOR TUE HAMMOCK.
to calibres as we do to bores and tons. One needs a
close acquaintance with old books to understand the
writers when the}^ come to talk of shii)s and how they
went armed. Even to the learned the uses of certain
old pieces are quite unintelligible. James, the historian,
for instance, could not understand what was signified by
'' murdering pieces." These were cannon mounted upon
the after-part of the forecastle, and the muzzles of them
raised so as to point to the main topmast head. It is
certainly difficult to gather the purpose to be served by
such guns, unless, indeed, they were designed as a
remedy against the invasion of the foe by the yards and
rigging. But why were their muzzles pointed at one
mast only ? and was it possible that those ancient
mariners fully understood what must follow if with their
own powder and ball they succeeded in clearing their
spars of the enemy by dismasting themselves ?
The calibre and character of other old guns are fully
understood. There was the " whole cannon," which,
carried a 60 lb. ball ; there was the demi-cannon, with a
31 lb. ball ; also the cannon petro, 31 lb. ; whole cul-
veriae, 11 lb. ; and demi-culverine, 9 lb. The cannon
royal rose sometimes to a 63 lb. ball. Then there was
a gun called the French cannon, 43 lb. ; the Saker, 5 lb. ;
the Minion, 41b.; and the Faulcon, or Falcon, 21b.*
* Some of these terms seem to have been supplied by the language of
the falconer. Among the names mentioned by Strutt as given to different
species of hawks, I lind, tha faulcon, the hastanJ, tiie sacre, and the musht.
To this may be added the fallowing from Camden's " Remaines," p. 208 :
"This being begun by him" (i.e. Berthold Swartc, whom he considers the
inventor of gunpowder and cannons) "by skill and time is now come to
that i)erfection, not onely in gr.at yritn and hrass pieces, but also in small,
that all admire it; having names given them, some from serpents or
ravenous birds, as Culvorines, or Colul)rines, Serpentines, Basiliqucs,
Faulcons, Saores ; otliers in other respects, as Canons, Demicanons,
Chambers, Slinges, Arquebuze, Calivor, Handgun, Muokets, Petrouils,
OLD SEA ORDNANCE. 57
These pieces were in use in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, but by degrees other names were given,
so that the titles appKed to cannon from, let me say,
the days of Henry VIII. down to the close of the last
century, should furnish out an inventory long enough
to fill many pages.
To the above list, given by Ealph Willett in a paper
on British naval architecture, other examples may be
added from the researches of James. He speaks of the
cannon -serpentine and bastard- cannon as corresponding
with the 42-pounder. The carronade dates as late as
1779, and takes its name from the Scotch town where it
was invented. Another comparatively recent gun he
speaks of as Gover's, or Congreve's, the Americans
naming a similar weapon a Columbiad. Other guns are
not mentioned by the historian, though of all our marine
artillery they played, as small weapons, the largest part
in our wars last century. The swivel cannon carried a
shot of half a pound ; it was fixed in a socket on the
ship's side, or stern, or bow, and in her tops. The
socket that supported it was bored in a piece of oak,
hooped with iron, to enable it to sustain the recoil. It
was, indeed, a modernized form of the old jpettararoe,
and was turned about at will by an iron handle affixed
to its cascabel ; when worked in the tops it was charged
with musket-balls, and fired down at the enemy's decks.
The coehorn was a small mortar, also fixed on a swivel,
and chiefly used for firing grenadoes, as they were called,
or bullets from merchantmen' s close quarters when they
were boarded. For yard-arm fighting there was the
" powder-flask " — a flask charged with gunpowder, and
fitted with a fuse ; it was hurled into the enemy's deck
Pistoll, Dagge, etc., and Petarras of the same brood lately invented." From
the edition of 1657.
58 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
immediately before the assault. Another device was the
'* stink-pot," still in vogue with John Chinaman, an
earthen shell suspended from the yard-arm or end of the
bowsprit. This machine was charged with powder
mixed with materials which threw up a disgusting, suffo-
cating smoke and smell. The notion of these apparatuses
was to create confusion, in the midst of which and under
cover of the thick vapour the detachment rushed aboard,
cutlass, and sword, and pistol in hand. Another con-
trivance was the " organ," the grandfather of the Mitrail-
leuse — a machine formed of six or seven musket-barrels
fixed upon one stock so as to be fired at once. There
was also the fire-arrow, a small iron dart, furnished
with springs and bars, and a match saturated with
powder and sulphur, wound round the shaft. It was
usually fired from a swivel, at the enemy's sails. The
match was ignited by the explosion, and the dart, pene-
trating the sail, set the cloths on fire. The springs and
bars prevented the arrow from passing through the
canvas. The musquetoon was a sort of carbine, with a
barrel spirally rifled from the breech ; the explosion
lengthened the ball to about the breadth of a finger.
The old fire-pike possessed something of the character
of the fire-arrow. Another weapon of the fusil pattern
is indicated in Sir William Monson's "Building of
Ships: " "As I have said, such a ship that has neither
forecastle, copperidge head, nor any other manner of
defence, but with her men only ; that hath no fowlers,
which are pieces of great importance, after a ship is
boarded and entred, or lieth board and board ; for the
ordnance stands her in. little stead, and is as apt to
endanger themselves as their enem}^ ; for in giving fire,
it may take hold of pitch, tar, oakum, or powder, and
burn them both for company ; but a murderer or fowler,
OLD SEA ORDNANCE. 59
being shot out of their own ship, laden with dice shot,
will scour the deck of the enemy, and not suffer the head
of a man to appear." It is evident that the " murderer "
or " fowler " was a sort of fusil.*
There are some curious features of sixteenth and
seventeenth century maritime warfare preserved in this
fine old captain's Naval Tracts. He tells us that the
French used to conceal half their soldiers in the hold
and to call them up as they were required, the others
who had been fighting going below. The Dunkirkers,
like the Spanish whom Anson fought,! flung themselves
flat on the deck before the enemy, so that the shot,
great and small, should fly over them. The Hollanders
he charges with Dutch courage. "Instead of cables,
planks, and other devices to preserve their men,
the Hollanders, wanting natural valour of themselves,
used to line their company in the head, by giving them
gunpowder to drink, and other kind of liquor to make
them sooner drunk ; which, besides it is a barbarous
and unchristianlike act, when they are in danger of
death to make them ready for the devil, it often proves
more perilous than prosperous to them by firing their
own ships or making a confusedness in the fight, their
wits being taken from them." It will be supposed that
the seamen of Blake had a higher notion of Dutch
courage than Monson.
It is two centuries ago since the Sovereign was
launched, a vessel of 1657 tons. There is a curious
account of her in Heywood. f She was a big ship for
* I find this word " murderer " frequently occurring in Hakluyt.
t See the description of the fight with the galleon in Anion's "Voyage
Round the World." This book, that bears the name of Walters, Chaplain
to the Centurion, was in reality written by Benjamin Robins. Naval
Chronicle, vol. viii. 267.
X Quoted by Ralph Willett in his " Disquisition on Shipbuilding," 1800.
60 A BOOK FOR TUE HAMMOCK.
those times, and is about as good an example as I know
to illustrate the mighty change that has been worked in
two hundred years. Her dimensions were — Length of
keel, 128 ft.; beam, 48 ft.; length over all (that is,
from the fore-end of her ''beak" to the stern), 232 ft.,
making a difference of 104 ft. as between the length of
her keel and that of her upper deck and head ! She was
76 ft. high from the bottom of her keel to the top of
her lantern, of which kind of furniture she carried five,
in the biggest of which ten persons could comfortably
stand upright. Her decorations were extraordinarily
gorgeous. "All sides," we read, "were carved with
trophies of artillery and types of honour, as well belong-
ing to sea as land, wdth symbols appertaining to naviga-
tion ; also their two sacred Majesties' badges of honour ;
arms with several angels holding their letters in com-
partiments, all which works are guild ed over, and no
other colour but gold and black." Her figure-head was
a Cupid, or a child bridling a lion ; her bows were also
apparently ornamented wdth six figures ; on the stern
was carved Victory " in the midst of a frontispiece ;
upon the beak-head sitteth King Edgar on horseback,
trampling on seven kings." * It would have seemed
like a violation of the choicest canons of old romance
to furnish such a pageant as this with the plain
guns grimly generalized with which the vessels of suc-
ceeding days fought for king, commonwealth, home and
beauty. We look in the description of her for culverin
and cannon royal, for the chace ordnance and small
* "The prime workman," says Ileywood, •' is Captain riiiueus Tett,
overseer ot the work,wliose aucostors — father, grandfather, and gr^at grand-
father — for, the space of two liimdred years, have continued in the same
name, oflBcers and architects in the Royal Navy." This, as Willctt i)oints
out, indicates a re^jular establishment as far back as 1437, the reign of
Henry VI.
OLD SEA ORDNANCE. 61
artillery of those gilt, plumed, and glowing times, and
find them sm*e enough. It must have been heartrending
to the curled and booted captain of those days to
have offered so gay and brilliant a fabric to the iron
bullets and fiery arrows of the foe. Think of the Cupid
being knocked on the head, and King Edgar violently
hammered off his horse !
It is interesting to observe how such a ship entered
into action. First, the vessel's company were divided
into three parts — one to tack the ship, the second to ply
the small shot, the third to attend the great guns. Sail
was to be shortened to foresail, main and fore-top sail.
A " valiant and sufficient man " was sent to the helm.
Of course every officer was expected to do his duty ; the
boatswain to sling the yards, to " put forth " the flag,
ancient and streamers, to arm the top and waist cloths,
to spread the netting, provide tubs for w^ater, and the
like. Then the gunner was to see that his mates had
care of their " files, budge barrels, and cartridges, to
have his shot in a locker for every piece, and the yeoman
of the powder to keep his room and to be watchful of it."
A hundred years later found some enlargement of these
plain prescriptions.* The boatswain and his mates see
to the rigging and sails ; the carpenter and his crew
prepare shot-plugs and mauls and provide against injury
to the pumps ; the master and his mates attend the
braces ; the lieutenants visit the different decks ; crows,
" handspecs," rammers, sponges, powder-horns, matches,
and train tackles are placed by the side of every cannon ;
the hatches are closed to prevent the men from deserting
their posts by skulking below. The marines are drawn
up in rank and file; the gun-lashings are cast adrift
and the tompions withdrawn ; after which the enemy is
* See Falconer's " Dictionary."
62 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
to be beaten ! This is the routine of a hundred years
ago. What is it now? Not less widely different from
the discipline of the times of forty-two pounders, of round,
grape, and canister, of chain, bar, star, and other dis-
manthng missiles, than was the routine of the epoch of
double dogs and pestilent serpetens from the days of the
spears of the Picts and the coracle of the nude Briton.
Yet what did those little minions and sakers do for us ?
We shall have reason to be well satisfied if the hundred-
ton gun of to-day obtain for us one-half the triumphs
which were achieved for our country by those little
cannon-royal and brass swivels of the times of Raleigh,
Blake, and Shovel.
THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG,
Whatever may have been the other causes of our wars
with the Hollanders, one was unquestionably the herring.
No doubt the insinuations of Eichelieu greatly perturbed
the phlegmatic Batavian, and helped him into a fighting
posture ; but the bloater was at the bottom of it. We
took that fish for a text whereon to discourse concerning
our title to dominion over the sea ; and though in these
days it is as much the mackerel as the herring, as much
the cod as the mackerel, as much the turbot as the cod
over vdiich the dispute continues, the old battles in the
heart of which Blake curled his whiskers and Tromp
flourished his broomstick are still fought, though, to be
sure, without Ruyter's fire-ships or the eloquent thunder
of Monk's cannon-royal.
The conflict now is shorn of its old glory. It is
waged, indeed, close into the Thames, though not so
high as the Hope ; nor, in the direction of the Medway,
does it approach Sheerness ; and upon the eastern coast
the struggle is often within view of Scarborough and the
Norfolk clifls. But there is no more smoke of battle. It
is the Dutchman sneaking across the Englishman's
trawling gear with " the devil " ; it is the Frenchman
shearing under cover of the blackness through the league
long drift-nets of the Shoreham or Penzance smack.
Years have brought to this nation the philosophic mind.
64 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
Instead of declaring war we station a gunboat, put on a
concerned face wiien we bear of tbe Dover and Brixbam
men assaulting tbe crews of tbe Boulogne and Calais
craft, and read witbout emotion of tbe capture of a belli-
cose Hans Butter-box by a small steamer witb a wbip at
ber mastbead. Yet tbe bonour of our flag is so inextri-
cably woven witb tbe literature and traditions of tbese
fisbing squabbles tbat, spite of tbe insignificance to wbicb
tbe easy indifference of " my lords " would reduce tbem
in our day, tbe reflection of a great and piercing ligbt in
our bistory is upon tbem, from tbe lustre of wbicb tbey
gatber a complexion tbat is not wbolly sentimental.
In 1609 Hugo Grotius wrote a book, wbicb be called
" Mare Liberum." It is beavy reading in tbese times of
Wilkie Collins and Miss Braddon, and tbe beavier, per-
baps, for being in Latin. But it was deemed a treatise
of very great eloquence, especially by tbe Dutcb, to wbose
ocean-rigbts it specially referred. In sbort, tbe object of
Grotius was to prove tbe weakness of our title to tbe
sovereignty of tbe seas, tbe deep, in bis opinion, being a
gift from God and common to all nations. Tbis was
answered by Jobn Selden, tbe mostamazingscbolar tbat
any age or country ever produced, of so candid and great-
hearted a nature, as is particularly exhibited in bis Table
Talk, tbat it is difticult to read bis astonishing answer to
Grotius without wishing that his patriotism bad dealt
witb a subject more answerable to his convictions than
this question of sea rights. But his " Mare Clausam " is
a volume tbat one would think must be of abounding and
enduring interest toEuf^dishmcn. It was translated into
English by special command by Marchmont Nedham (as
he spells his name), and imblisbed in tbat form in 1652.
It probably has few readers now. Yet such was the
opinion of its potency as a sustained argument tbat it
THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG. 65
was believed, to use the language of Nedham, ''had he
(i.e. Selden) persisted with the same firm resolution in
this honourable business of the sea, as he did in other
things that were destructive to the nation's interest, the
Netherlanders had been prevented from spinning out
their long opportuuitie to an imaginarie claim of pre-
scription ; so that they would have had less pretence to
act those insolencies now which in former times never
durst enter the thoughts of their predecessors. "
The book pre-eminently concerns the honour of our
flag, of our dominion over the seas, more particularly in
regard to the right of our kings and queens to grant
licences to foreigners to fish in the sea, and of the obliga-
tion on all ships of what denomination soever to strike
their topsails to our flag, or in other words to salute the
symbol of Britannia's sovereignty wherever they shall
encounter it. For how many centuries this act of
courtesy has been exacted as a right by the monarchs of
England you must read Selden's book to discover. Writ-
ing in James I.'s reign, he shows how he traces it back
for above four hundred years by this : That at Hastings
it was decreed by King John, in the second year of his
reign, with the assent of the peers, "if the governor or
commander of the King's navie, in his naval expeditions
(which were all in that age upon the Southern Sea) shall
meet any ship whatsoever by sea, either laden or empty,
that shall refuse to strike their sails at the command of
the King's Governor or admiral or his lieutenant, but
make resistance against them which belong to his fleet ;
That then they are to bee reputed enemies if they may
bee taken, yea, and their ships and goods be confiscated
as the goods of enemies." He points out that it was
accounted treason in any man who omitted to acknow-
ledge the King of England in his own sea by striking
66 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
sail ; nor would the circumstance of his country being
friendly with that of the transgressor protect him.
Another illustration of the antiquity of this custom, or
exaction rather, Selden finds in a gold rose-noble,* that
was coined in the reign of Edward III. The stamp on
one side of it represented a ship floating on the sea, and
a king, armed with sword and shield, sitting on the ship
as on a throne, the device being obviously intended to
represent the maritime dominion of the ocean. All that
Selden has to say about fishing in the sea is full of
interest. He points out that Henry VI. gave leave to the
French, and other foreigners, to fish, sometimes for six
months, sometimes for a year ; but this leave " was
granted under the name even of a passport or safe
conduct ; yea, and a size or proportion was prescribed to
their fishing boats or busses that they should not be
above thirty tons." The French had to obtain leave
from the English admiral to fish for soles for the table
of their own king (Henri Quatre), and such boats as were
caught fishing without a licence were seized as tres-
passers. In the Eastern waters the Hollanders and
Zealanders were forced to seek permission to fish from
the Governor of Scarborough Castle, and Selden quotes
Camden's expression of wonder at the vast sum of money
the Hollanders made by this fishing upon our coast and
at the apathy of the English, "who have ever granted
them leave to fish, reserving alwaies the honour and
privilege to themselves, but through a kindle of negli-
gence resigning the profit to strangers." It is on the
* The value of this coin was Gs. 8d. as money then was. The Alchy-
miBta pretended that it was made by their arts ; interpreting the inscription
on the reverse, Jesus autem transiens per medium corumibat, to signify that
gold was made by secret art amid the ignorant. Four ro.sc-nobles weighed
an ounce.
THE EONOUB 0£ THE FLAG. . 67
mass of evidence as to the antiquity of the British claim
to the sovereignty of the seas that Dr. Campbell, the
historian, bases his opinion respecting the naval power
of the Early Britons, who are generally considered as a
race of painted wild men, who speared fish or crossed
their rivers and creeks in wicker boats covered with
hides.
The question of this dominion became a vital one to
this country with the growth and the aggressions of
Holland. Was she or England to be sovereign of the
sea ? And was an English ship, figuratively speaking,
to bow to a Dutch one when she met her ? Selden offered
the world precedents enough on our behalf. That King
John should have claimed a universal striking to the
Pioyal flag was surely proof that what might impress the
foreigner as an extraordinary pretension was founded on
the unquestioned rights of our predecessors. Edward
III., in his commissions to his admirals, repeatedly styled
himself sovereign of the English seas, affirming, with
perfect justice, that he derived the title from his pro-
genitors. In Hakluyt there is preserved a curious metri-
cal admonition, j)resumably written in or about the sixth
year of the reign of Edward IV., entitled " De politia
conservatira Maris," with a heading to the general intro-
duction that runs thus : " Here beginneth the prologue
of the processe of the libel of the English policie, exhort-
ing all England to keep the sea, and namely the narrow
sea; shewing what profite commeth thereof, and also
what worship and salvation to England, and to all
Englishmen." It will be owned that the anonymous
author's appeal was not addressed to deaf ears. An
immortal proof of British resolution in this direction
occurs in the reign of Queen Mary. Lord William
Howard, created Baron of Effingham, was sent with a
68 A BOOK FOB THE HAMMOCK.
fleet of twenty-eight sail presumably to guard the coast,
but in reality to escort Philip of Spain, whose own fleet,
however, consisted of one hundred and sixty vessels.
His admiral came sailing along with the Spanish flag
flying at his mast-head, which so offended Lord William
Howard that he fired a shot at him and forced him to
strike or haul down his colours before he would make his
compliments to the prince.* This was followed by
another lively example of a like kind. When the Spanish
fleet went to fetch Anne of Austria, who was in Flanders,
Sir John Hawkins, with a small squadron of her Majesty's
ships, was riding in Cattewater. The Spanish admiral
endeavoured to pass without saluting. Sir John sent a
shot at the Admiral's rigging, but no notice was taken of
it. A second shot fired went clean through the Spaniard's
hull. On this the Don sent an officer of distinction with
compliments and complaints to Sir John Hawkins, who
refused to admit the officer or hear what he had to say ;
but simply required him to tell his admiral that, having
neglected to pay the respect due to the Queen of England,
in her seas and port, he must not expect to lie there but
to be off within twelve hours. Sir John's flag was fl^dng
on the Jesus of Luheck ; to this ship came the Spaniard
full of remonstrance, declaring he knew not what to make
of the treatment he had received, seeing that there was
peace between the two Crowns. " Put the case, sir,"
said Sir John, " that an English fleet came into any of
the King, your master's, ports, his Majesty's ships being
there, and those English ships should carry their flags
in their tops, would not you shoot them down and beat
the ships out of your port?" The Spaniard confessed
* To strike is to lower. The old salutation was the striking or
lowering of the topsail. Tlie introduction of the top-gallant sail must
have rendered this courtesy extremely inconvenient.
TEE EONOUR OF TEE FLAG. 69
himself in the wrong, and submitted to the penalty the
Enghsh Admiral imi^osed.
It was the Hollander, however, who gave the English
most trouble in regard to the honour of the flag. In or
about 1604 Sir William Monson was cruising with a fleet
with instructions to assert the superiority in the British
seas which came to James I. from his ancestors. Sir
William has told the story himself in his '' Naval Tracts."
On his return to Calais in July, 1605, he found an
addition of six ships to the Dutch squadron he had left
off Dover three days before. One of them was the
Admiral's. " Their object," he says, *' in coming in shew
was to beleaguer the Spaniards who were then at Dover."
As Sir William approached, the Dutch Admiral struck
his flag thrice, meaning that the Spaniards as well as
others should conclude that, by continuing to " wear "
his flag, he represented a sovereignty of the sea as com-
plete as that of the English. Sir William requested him
to take in his flag; he refused, alleging that he had
struck it three times, which he held was acknowledgment
enough. There was some discussion, after which he was
told that if he did not salute, the British Admiral would
weigh anchor and fall down to him, and then the force
of the ships should determine the question ; "for rather
than I would suffer his flag to be worn in view of so
many nations as were to behold it, I resolved to bury
myself in the sea." " The Admiral, it seems, on better
advice," adds Sir William, " took in his flag and stood
immediately off to sea, firing a gun for the rest of the
fleet to follow him. And thus I lost my guest the next
day at dinner as he had promised." Amongst others
who witnessed this was Sciriago, the Spanish General,
who told Sir William that if the Hollanders had worn
their flag, times had strangely altered in England, for he
70 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
remembered his old master King Philip the Second being
shot at by the Lord Admiral of England for wearing his
flag in the narrow seas when he came to marry Queen
Mary.
In spite of treaties of peace between England and
Holland, the trouble about the fishing continued. Dis-
putes arose over the payment of the assize-herring in
Scotland, and the Dutch sent ships of war to protect
their herring-boats against the penalties which must
attend the refusal to pay the licence money. In 1609
King James issued a proclamation concerning fishing, in
which it was stated that commissioners had been author-
ized " at London for our realms of England and Ireland,
and at Edinburgh for our realm of Scotland," to issue
licences to such foreign vessels as intend to fish for the
whole or any part of the year, and that the licences were
to be taken out " upon pain of such chastisements as
shall be fit to be inflicted upon such as are wilful offend-
ers." The fishing quarrel rose to a height again in 1618,
but it does not appear that the honour of the flag was
involved in these trawling politics until 1652. In that
year Commodore Young encountered a Dutch man-of-war
whose captain refused to salute the English colours.
The commodore sent a boat with a polite request that
the Dutchman would strike ; but mynheer answered very
honestly that the States had threatened to take off his
head if he struck ; whereupon a fight began, with the
result that the Dutchman had to haul down his colours.
This was on May 14 ; on the 19th Van Tromp bore down
upon Blake, who was lying off Dover. Dlake sent three
shots at the Dutch flag as a hint ; which Tromp answered
with a broadside, and then followed an action that lasted
till nine at night, when, Blake being reinforced, the
Dutch made off. Peace was made in 1654. In that
TEE EONOUR OF TEE FLAG. 71
treaty nothing was said as to our sovereignty in respect
to the fisheries, but amongst other articles was the
acknowledgment of the dominion of the English at sea
and the agreement to strike to the meteor bunting. But
the prowess of Admiral Blake may have provided for this
without any obligation of specification ; for in this year,
coming to an anchor off Cadiz, a Dutch Admiral who was
there would not hoist his flag whilst Blake was present.
Indeed, such was the awe in which Blake was held, that
the Algerines, merely with the idea of obtaining his
favour, made a point of overhauling the Sallee rovers for
English prisoners and sending all they found to him.
The honour of the flag seems a noticeable element in
the origin of the war of 1665. Sir John Lawson, in
command of a squadron of ships, was in the Mediter-
ranean with De Ruyter. The Dutch admiral saluted
the English flag, a compliment which Lawson refused
to return, alleging that his orders did not allow him to
strike to the subjects of any king or State whatever. It
may be supposed that such treatment pretty liberally
envenomed the soul of the fine old Dutchman, who,
when he was shortly afterwards sent to commit hos-
tilities against us, made sail on that adventure with a
hot heart. In 1674 we find the Dutch in the treaty of
peace professing to understand a point that in spite of
previous treaties they had refused to admit. In the
treaty with Cromwell they had agreed that their ships
should salute the English, and in subsequent treaties
the same undertaking appears. But their usual apology
for failure was that striking was a mere matter of civility,
and that if they declined to pull off their hat there was
no obligation upon them to do so. But by 1674 the
political atmosphere had been cleared by British cannons,
and the Dutch were now able to distinguish. The treaty
72 A BOOK FOR TUB HAMMOCK.
ended the doubt ; what was before styled courtesy was
here confessed a right. Not only was the extent of the
British sovereignty clearly defined ; the State undertook
that whole fleets, as well as separate ships, "should
strike their sails to any fleet or single ship carrying the
King's flag, as the custom was in the days of his ances-
tors." It was said by Secretary Coke in a letter ad-
dressed by order of Charles I. to Sir William Boswell,
Ambassador at the Hague, " This cannot be doubted,
that whosoever will encroach upon him (the King) by
sea, will do it by land also, when they see their time.
To such presumption ' Mare Liberum ' gave the first
warning piece, which must be answered with a defence
of ' Mare Clausum,' not so much by discourses, as by
the louder language of a powerful navy, to be better
understood when overstrained patience seeth no hope of
preserving her right by other means."
" The spirits of your fathers,
Shall start from every wave,"
sings Campbell, and in Coke's words one finds a noble
example of the sort of message those spirits knew how
to deliver. What has been done for the honour of the
flag by a language louder than discourses may be easily
traced through the Eookes, the Shovels, the Mansels,
the Howes, the Rodneys, Keppels, Nelsons.
How has that honour broadened since the days
of striking top-sails ! Colonial men-of-war are now en-
titled to fly the flag of the British Navy. There was
obviously much deliberation before the resolution was
arrived at in respect of the Gayundah, a vessel that has
the honour to signally advance that great scheme of
federation which is occupying the minds of all English-
speaking men. Indeed, it is perfectly obvious that no
flag could be so fitly flown at the mast-head or peak of
TEE BONOWE OF THE FLAG. 73
our Colonial men-of-war as those same colours which
the heroism of the grandsires of our distant kinsmen
rendered emblematic of power, justice, and freedom.
The British national flag is the Union Jack. This
consists of the blended crosses of St. George, red; of
St. Andrew, white ; of St. Patrick, red, marginating
Scotland's cross so as to admit of a portion of the white
being shown. These several crosses combined upon a
blue ground form that meteor flag of which the poet
writes, though not certainly that noble piece of bunting
which, we are reminded by the same poet in the same
song —
"Has braved a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze."
The wishes of the Colonials were eminently honour-
able and loyal, and the gratification of their desires in
respect of a flag whose glory and traditions are certainly
not less theirs than they are ours should prove a source
of sincere satisfaction to the people of this country.
For the honour of the flag ! We know what that inspi-
ration has done for us of old, and how it must influence
in the future the w^orld-wide English-speaking races
whose artillery shall thunder under the shadow of
Britain's blood-red cross.* Without his flag what would
* In the last century the Union flag, as it was called, bore these
words : —
" For the Protestant Keligion and for the Liberty of England."
The flags of that time are thus described :
The Jack. — Blue, charged with a saltire argent and a cross gules,
bordered argent.
Mercantile Flag: Ked, with a franc-quarter argent, charged with
a cross gules.
There seems to have been two royal standards, the colour unsettled,
some saying that it ought to be yellow, others white. One was charged
with a quartered escutcheon of England, Scotland, France and Ireland.
74 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
be fi<jjhting or even mercantile Jack ? We all know how
old Commodore Dance, at the head of his little squadron
of tea ships, put to flight the formidable Frenchman
bristling with tiers of cannon. Even under the red flag,
symbol of peaceful trade, there have been performed
many noble and valorous exploits, and it is no doubt the
memory of scores of brilliant deeds performed by the
British merchant sailor that excites the regret very
widely felt that in these times, when the water is smooth,
and the political barometer fairly high, the foreigners in
their hundreds should be driving the English mariner
out of his legitimate home — the British forecastle.
But it is to naval story that we must turn for nearly
all of what pertains to the honour of the flag. The con-
tests have been tough and sharp touching the " dofling "
question. Whether it was our duty to bow first to the
haughty Spaniard at sea, as he maintained, or whether
it was for him to '' make a leg " at the sight of good
Queen Bess's flag, was a question for Drake and Pialeigh,
for Hawkins and that noble gentleman Charles How^ard,
Baron of Effingham, to settle, just as Blake and Monk
and Ascue and Commodore Young, as has been shown,
decided the same matter with reference to the broomstick
of the brave and desperate Dutchman. It was the sailor
of Queen Elizabeth's day, however, that made the flag
the emblem which the world has ever since recognized it
The otlier royal flag is dcscribtd as " quarterly, the first and fourth
quarter counter-quartered, in wliicli the first and fourth azure, three
fleurs-de-lis or tlie royal arms of France, quartered with the imperial
ensigns of England, whidi are in the sccoml and third gules, eight lions
passant; gardant in pale." The rest of this discription, so far as lean
make out the heraldic jargon, seems to represent the lioyal Standard of
to-day.
Formerly, if a council of war was to bo held at sea, the Admiral hung
his flag in the main-shrouds, that is, in the lower rigging; the vice-
admiral in the foru-shrouds ; and the rear-admiral in the mizzon-shrouds.
THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG. 75
to be. The story of Sir Eobert Man sell, Admiral of
the " narrow seas," as the English Channel was then
termed, is typical of our naval history from the first
chapter of it. He went to Gravelines to receive the
Spanish Ambassador, whilst Sir Jerome Turner, his
Vice-Admiral, attended at Calais for the French Am-
bassador. "But," says the quaint historian, "the
Frenchman coming first and hearing the Yice-Admiral
was to attend him, the Admiral the other, in a scorn
put himself in a passage boat in Calais and came forth
with flag in top. Instantly Sir Jerome Turner sent to
know of the Admiral what he should do. Sir Eobert
Mansell sent him word to shoot and strike him if he
would not take in the flag. This, as it made the flag be
pulled in, caused a great complaint, and it was believed
it would have undone Sir Eobert Mansell, the French
faction put it so home ; but he maintained the act and
was the better beloved of his Sovereign ever after to his
death."
Even the old pirates talked of the honour of their
flag ! a very dismal piece of bunting, indeed, consisting
of a skull, cross-bones, and hour-glass on a black ground.
Yet let such records as " Tom Cringle's Log," which are
very true history, though disguised with the mask of
fiction, bear witness to the furious heroism with whicli
those murderous savages, in earrings and sashes, in
ringlets and jack-boots, fought for the abhorred flag at
their masthead, swaying in masses half-naked at their
cannons, and occasionally blowing themselves to pieces
in their efforts to sink the enemy, just as ancient
mariners tell of mutilated sharks twisting round to get
at their own wounds in their dreadfully gluttonous desire
to eat themselves up. Nelson stormed in among the
Frenchmen and the Spaniards with six flags flying in
76 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
different parts of his rigging, because lie could not
endure to think of the possibility of a stray shot making
him look, even for a breathless moment, to have struck.
There is very little change between the flags of his time
and those of ours. Of course this regards the colours as
shown by men-of-war ; in signalling Marryatt's Code
— as all other codes which existed prior to the clever
combinations of the author of " Peter Simple " — has
made way for the International Code. In the British
Navy flags are either red, white, or blue, and are hoisted
at one or another of the royal mastheads, according to
the rank of the Admiral. This has been the custom for
centuries. Previous to 1801 the Union flag, as it was
called, bore only the Crosses of St. George and St.
Andrew ; but it was then, as after, appropriated to the
Admiral of the Fleet, who was regarded as the first mili-
tary officer under the Lord High Admiral.
Indeed, the history of our flags is the history of our
Navy. Much of the interest one finds in reading the old
accounts of naval battles lies in waiting to see who was
the first to strike. Just as a ship looks glorified when
" dressed " — that is to say, when she has hung out all
her colours from peak end to mastheads, and from mast-
heads to the end of the flying-jibboom, and thence to the
water — so is our national marine story radiant with the
flags, pennons, and " ancients," which flutter through
it, sometimes blowing saucily, sometimes riven and
seared with flame and bullet, sometimes a mangled rag
valiantly hanging by a nail at the top of the mast, or
" seized " in the rigging, whilst below it the battle rages
like a thunderstorm. It is, indeed, in these days, almost
inconceivable that mortal men should ever have been
able to achieve for the honour of their flag the triumphs
which rendered the British colours the terror they became.
THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG. 77
Campbell, Brenton, James, Naval Chronicles, Annual
Eegisters, Maritime Eecords of all sorts and descriptions
teem with illustrations of dauntless bravery, of headlong
fearlessness such as might make one believe that the
Jacks of those days not only bore a charmed life, but
were giants as mighty in stature as the early Irish are
supposed to have been, to judge from the colossal
remains that are occasionally dug up in various parts
of that ''kingdom." It is impossible to read the voyage
of Anson or the accounts of the early explorers of the
South Seas without a feeling of pity for the miserable
terror aroused in the Spaniards, the half-castes, and
blacks by the sight of the English flag or by the sound
of an English voice. The way the story usually runs
is — the vessel is seen to approach, is recognized as
an English South Seaman ; whereupon the Governor
collects all his plate and treasure, piles it into waggons
drawn b}^ mules, which he sends up country, and then
hastily follows, occasionally^ in his fright, leaving his
wife behind him. A wretched priest is sent off in a
boat pulled b}^ shivering blacks, and, with teeth
chattering, suggests a compromise, which the English
regard as a stratagem to furnish the Governor with
time enough to make good his escape. So they send
the priest ashore with a polite intimation that if, by a
certain hour, so many thousands of ducats and dollars,
not to mention silver candlesticks and golden cruci-
fixes, are not brought off and safely stowed away in
their hold, they will sack and burn the town. If the
Governor fails to comply, then w^e are admitted to a
humiliating spectacle. The English row ashore, and
find the coast lined with troops ; but as the boats
approach the troops retire, and by the time the keels
have grounded upon the beach, the Governor's army,
78 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
along with a baud of music and several hundreds of
horsemen, arc to be observed watching the proceedings
of the English from the top of a very lofty hill. Such
was the honour of the flag ! Such is it still, and such
is it sure to remain in the hands of those distant children
of Old England who w^ill grasp the halliards by w4nch it
is hoisted.
But let the humble *' driver," the obscure trawler,
have his merit too. Were the herring woven into the
symbolism of the Eoyal Standard it would not be amiss.
AVhen you hear the pensive cry of " fine bloaters," or
the melodious rattle of '* Caller herrin," think how much
the honour of the flag owes to that kind of fish. The
sovereignty of the sea is still ours, bat to justify our
inheritance we ought really to suffer our souls to be
tinged with the old Parliamentary spirit in our response
to the cries of our fishermen calling upon the country to
help them against the Flemish " devil " in the North
Sea, and the drift-net-cutting weapon of the Calais
smacksmen in our ''narrow^ waters."
THE NAVAL OFFICERS SPIRIT.
In Admiral Hobart Pasha's sketches are many well told
stories, all of them delivered with the rough simplicity
of the seamen. The most striking is a slaving yarn.
Some boats were in pm-suit of a vessel, full to the
hatches with negroes. One of them, swept forward by
desperate rowers, succeeded in getting close under her
bows, and a man in her sprang aboard, " like a chamois."
The slaver was going through it at six knots, and the
boat, from which the man had leapt, do what the oars-
men would, dropped astern. In a few moments was
heard the report of a pistol, and the vessel suddenly
swept round into the wind, all aback, and her way
stopped. The boats thereupon dashed alongside, and
after a short struggle took possession of the brig.
" There we found our lieutenant standing calmly at the
helm, which was a long wooden tiller. He it was who
had jumped on board alone, shot the man at the helm,
put the said helm down with his leg, while in his hand
he held his other pistol, with which he threatened to
shoot any one who dared to touch him."
The date of this is not given, but it falls well within
living, indeed, within comparatively recent memory,
and, like much else that is told in this autobiography,
serves as an example of the survival of a spirit which
makes our naval history as lively as if the annals were
80 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
due to the imagination of the Scotts, Marryats, and
Coopers of romance, and certainly far more inspiring and
stirring than the choicest novels could prove.
It has always seemed to me as if the whole philo-
sophy and spirit of British naval history lay in that
memorahle remark of Blake.: " It is not for us to mind
State affairs. We are to prevent foreigners from fooling
us." It is the hroad humorous simplicity of the old
salt, his shrewd perception and unadorned habit of
going to w^ork, that make all about him fascinating
reading. Lord Anson said to Captain Campbell, after
the defeat of Conflans, '' The king will knight you if you
think proper." *' Troth, my lord," responded the cap-
tain, " I ken nae use that wdll be to me." *' But your
lady may like it," said Anson. '' Weel, then," replied
Campbell, ''His majesty may knight her if he pleases."
One finds the same curious sturdiness in demanding
rights as in rejecting honours. There is nothing in this
way to beat Admiral Vernon's letter, dated June 30,
1774, to the Secretary to the Admiralty. During his
retirement he had been passed over in a promotion of
flag-officers. *' That I might not," he wrote, '' by any
be thought to be one that w^ould decline the public
service, I have thought proper to remind their lordships
I am living, and have, I thank God, the same honest
zeal reigning in my breast that has animated me on all
occasions to approve myself a faithful and zealous
subject and servant to my Royal master ; and if the first
Lord Commissioner has represented me in any other
light to my Pioyal master, he has acted with a degene-
racy unbecoming the descendant from a noble father,
whose memory I reverence and esteem, though I have
no compliments to make to the judgment or conduct of
the son."
THE NAVAL OFFICERS SPIRIT. 81
The first lord was Daniel, Earl of Winchelsea. Long
service at the cannon had taught the old sea-dogs the
virtue of thunder.
In the account of the loss of the Earl of Abergavenny,
it is stated that a midshipman was appointed to guard
the spirit-room. The sailors pressed eagerly upon him.
" Give us some grog ! " they cried ; *' it will be all one
an hour hence." " I know we must die," rej)lied the
gallant young officer, coolly, *' hut let us die like men .'"
Armed with a brace of pistols, he kept his place even
while the ship was sinking. Byron has employed this
incident in " Don Juan." The captain of the Earl of
Ahergavenny was John Wordsworth, brother of the poet.
There is an extraordinary instance of naval spirit
preserved in " Burnaby's Travels in North America,"
l^ublished in 1775. Captain St. Loe, commander of an
English man-of-war lying in Boston harbour, being
ashore on a Sunday, was taken into custody for walking
on the Lord's Day. On Monday he was carried before a
justice and fined. Refusing to pay^ he was sentenced to
sit in the stocks one hour during the time of change.
The sentence was executed. Whilst the captain sat in
durance, the magistrates gravely admonished him to
respect in future the wholesome laws of the province,
and he was further exhorted for ever after to reverence
and keep holy the Sabbath Day. At the expiration of
the hour he was liberated. On regaining the use of his
legs he stood up, expressed himself as greatly edified by
the lesson he had learned, and declared himself so
thoroughly converted as to rejoice the hearts of the
Boston saints. He acted his part so well that he
became extremely popular among the godly folks, who,
on the day fixed for the sailing of the ship, accepted
his invitation to dine with him on board. He gave
G
82 A BOOK FOR THE nAMMOCK,
them a capital dinner, plied them with bowls and
bottles, and in a short time the whole ship resounded
with their roaring merriment. On a sudden a body of
sailors burst into the cabin, laid h(jld of the saints and
pinioned them, then dragged them on deck, where they
were stripped and tied up. How many lashes the boat-
swain and his mates dealt them is not stated ; but the
story goes that ''when they had suffered the whole of
the discipline, which had flayed them from the nape of
the neck to the hams, the captain took a polite leave,
earnestly begging them to remember him in their
prayers. They were then let down into the boat that
was waiting for them, the crew saluted them with three
cheers, and Captain St. Loe made sail."
This fairly comes under the heading of what Words-
worth calls the "good old plan." And who can tell
how much blood would have remained unshed had the
nations left the settlement of personal affronts to ingeni-
ous individual retaliation ? There is a most engaging
and delightful history of England's navy yet to be written
on the plan of Granger's entertaining story by bio-
graphy. James is accurate, but dry ; Brenton is always
readable ; but James and he are not both wanted. Dr.
Campbell is dull. Tediousness, however, is inevitable in
a narrative that does but tell the same story, somewhat
varied, over and over again. One sea battle is very
much like another, and the mind is quickly oppressed
with details of starboard and larboard tacks, of falling
top-masts, of broadsides and lowered colours. But let
some diligent collector go to work on an anecdotal history
of the navy, and I should say he can scarcely miss of a
great audience. How lively, for example, would prove
such a chapter as this of the S2)irit of the naval officer
suggested to me by Admiral Hobart's book ! Let a few
THE NAVAL OFFICER'S SPIRIT. 83
plums, picked up here and there from old records and
chronicles, suffice as an example of the sort of pudding
that awaits a cook.
On July 25, 1776, Sir Thomas Eich, in her Majesty's
ship Enterprise, met with a French fleet of two ships of
the line and several frigates, commanded by the Due de
Chartres. The French admiral hailed the Enterprise,
and desired the captain to come on board immediately,
to which Sir Thomas replied that if the Duke had any-
thing to communicate he must come on board the
Enterprise, as he should not go out of his ship. The
Duke insisted that he should, or he would sink him.
*' You can do as you please," exclaimed Sir Thomas
Eich, " but the only orders I receive are from my own
admiral." On this the Duke begged him as a favour to
come on board, as he wished much to make his acquaint-
ance. Sir Thomas at once went, and was received with
the utmost respect.
Here is another plum from the memoirs of Sir Thomas
Graves, Eear-Admiral at the Battle of Copenhagen. The
scene was Noddle's Island, off Boston. An American,
more daring than the rest, advanced nearly half-way
between his own people and the Marines of the squadron.
Graves, who was then captain, was not a little irritated
by the sight of this one Yankee insolently and contemptu-
ously defiant of the whole of the British seamen and
marines, and, borrowing a musket and bayonet from a
brother officer, went out to meet the American champion
in single combat. The Y'ankee allowed Graves to come
within fifty yards of him. " The eyes of our respective
parties are on us," shouted Graves, and, after assuring
the other that he had no intention to fire "before he
could feel him with the point of his bayonet," added that
if the battle ended in his favour he should carry the
84 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
Yankee's scalp away with him as a trophy. Just as he
said this he kicked against a stone and fell headlong,
whereupon the American discharged his musket at him,
threw it down, and took to his heels. The shot narrowly
missed Graves, who fired in his turn without hitting his
man, and then retreated, receiving as he went the fire of
a score or two of persons who had concealed themselves
in order to assist their American champion. A ludicrous
forecast of the fight between the Shannon and the Chesa-
peake sixty or seventy j^ears later !
There is wonderful spirit in that saying of old Benbow
during the engagement with Du Casse. His right leg
was broken to pieces by a chain shot. He was carried
below to be dressed, and whilst the surgeon was at work,
a lieutenant expressed great sorrow for the loss of the
Admiral's leg. Benbow replied, " I am sorry for it too,
but I had rather have lost them both than seen this
dishonour brought upon the English nation. But, do ye
hear, if another shot should take me off, behave like
brave men and fight it out." That a man should talk
composedly during the agonies of amputation by such
surgical skill as w^as then to be found in the cockpit, is,
I think, an extraordinary illustration of the fortitude and
self-devotion of the sea-braves of those times.
" The spirit of your fathers " shows in many direc-
tions. It is related in the life of Rodney that when that
fine old Admiral's poverty became a subject of public
notoriety, Be Sartine suggested to the Buke de Biron
that the command of the French fleet in the West Indies
should be offered him. On this the Buke invited Eodney
to spend some weeks with him, and one morning, whilst
strolling about the grounds, sounded the Admiral on the
subject. Rodney, not catching the Buke's drift, thought
him deranged, and began to eye him with some alarm.
TEE NAVAL OFFICER'S SPIRIT. 85
Eventually de Biron came out boldly with the proposal.
" Those," says the biographer, *' who remember the
worthy Admiral, and can recollect the countenance he
would assume when anything unexpectedly broke upon
him, may imagine his aspect and demeanour. He
answered thus : ' My distresses, it is true, have driven
me from my country, but no temptation whatever can
estrange me from her service. Had this offer been a
voluntary one of your own, I should have deemed it an
insult ; but I am glad to learn that it proceeds from a
source that ca7i do no icrong / ' "
It is in action, perhaps, that one finds the naval spirit,
the wit, the heroism, the tenderness, the patriotism of
the service best illustrated. I am fond of that anecdote
of old Captain Killigrew (related by Campbell) whilst on
a cruise with six frigates in 1695. He met with a couple
of French men-of-war. When KilUgrew came up with
one of them, named the Content, "the whole French
crew," says Campbell, "were at prayers, and he might
have poured in his broadside with great advantage ;
which, however, he refused to do, adding this remarkable
expression : ' It is beneath the courage of the English
nation to surprise their enemies in such a posture.' "
This sort of humanity sometimes finds form in a kind of
ironical politeness. In Howe's memoirs it is related that
whilst the British fleet lay off Cape Race two large French
men-of-war were discovered. Howe, with a press of sail,
arrived just alongside the sternmost Frenchman, the
Alcide, the captain of which hailed to know whether it
was peace or war. Howe answered, " Prepare for the
worst, as I expect every moment a signal from the flag-
ship to fire upon you for not bringing to." And then,
observing a number of officers, soldiers, and ladies on
deck, he pulled off his hat, and, speaking in French,
86 A BOOK FOR THE IIAM.VOCK.
begged they would go below, as they had no personal
concern in the contest, and he would rather that they
retired before he began the action. The French captain
was again requested to go under the English admiral's
stern ; he refused, and then Howe told him that the
signal was out to engage — a red flag hoisted at the fore-
topgallant-masthead. The French commander called
out, ''Commencez, s'il vous plait!" to which Howe
replied, " S'il vous plait, monsieur, de commencer ! "
The two ships delivered their broadsides almost simul-
taneously. The Alcide struck in half an hour. ''My
lads," cried Howe, to his crew, " they have behaved like
men, treat them like men." *
There is a good illustration of spirit in a quaint story
told of Admiral Gayton. He was making his way home
to England when a large man-of-war was sighted. The
Admiral's vessel, the Antelope, was a crazy old craft,
undermanned, and half-armed. Every preparation, how-
ever, was made to receive the stranger, and Gayton,
himself crawling on deck, exhorted bis people to behave
like Englishmen. " I can't stand by you," he said, " but
I'll sit and see you fight as long as you please." The
stranger turned out to be an English man-of-war. Gay-
ton's resolution was based on something more than spirit
only. In fact, he had several chests of dollars belonging
to himself in the ship, proceeds of the sale of American
prizes. His friends pointed out the inconvenience of
transporting specie, and advised him to remit his property
in bills. " No," said the old sailor, " I know nothing so
valuable as money itself, and should be a fool to part
with it for paper." His friends then urged him to send
his money home in a frigate, as the Antelope was old
and might founder on the way. " No," answered Gayton,
* She carried fewer seamen than Howe's ship.
THE NAVAL OFFICER'S SPIRIT. 87
"my money and myself will take our passage in the
same bottom, and if we are lost there will be an end of
two bad things at once." *
Naval literature is like the ocean ; many a gem of
purest ray serene lies hidden in the depths of it. It is
always the great conquerors one talks and thinks of ; the
Admiral on his quarter-deck, not Jack, half naked and
mutilated, still heroically surging at his hot cannon
below. It is a great many years since that an orphan,
belonging to Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, was apprenticed
by the parish to a tailor. As he was one day sitting
alone on the shopboard — the ninth part of a man — he
spied a squadron of men-of-war coming round Dunnose.
Possessed by an unconquerable impulse, he ran down to
the beach, cast off the painter from the first boat he
saw, jumped into her, and plied the oars so well that he
quickly reached the Admiral's ship. He was received
as a volunteer, and the boat sent adrift. Nest morning
the English fell in with a French squadron, and a hot
action began. The young tailor fought with great cheer-
fulness and alacrity, but, growing impatient after awhile,
he inquired of the sailors what was the object for which
they were contending. He was answered that the fight
would continue till the white rag at the enemy's mast-
head was struck. " Oh, if that's all," he exclaimed,
* The best humour of the marine annals must be sought in anecdotes
of dry old sea-dogs of the pattern of Gayton. There should be some lively
stories of American naval officers. This given by Nathaniel Hawthorne
in his "Note Books" is good. They are dining aboard a revenue cutter.
" The waiter tells the captain of the cutter that Captain Percival (com-
mander of the navy yard) is sitting on the deck of the anchor buoy (which
lies inside of the cutter) smoking his cigar. The captain sends him a
glass of champagne and inquires of the waiter what Percival says to it.
He said, sir, ' What does he send me this damned stuff for ? ' but drinks
nevertheless."
88 A BOOK FOR THE UAMMOCK.
'' I'll see -svliat I can do." The vessels were engaged
yard-arm and yard-arm, and enveloped in powder-smoke.
The young tailor jumped aloft, gained the main-yard
of the French Admiral, mounted to the mast-head, and
hrought away the French flag. The English sailors,
believing the enemy had hauled his flag down, shouted
Victory ! The French, perceiving their colours gone, ran
from their guns, on which the English boarded and took
the vessel. The young tailor's name was Hopson. For
this heroic action he was appointed to the quarter-deck,
and progressing rapidly through the several ranks of the
service became Admiral, with command of a squadron.*
The politeness of Howe as an example of spirit is not
quite so common in the annals as illustrations of heroic
bluntness. I find a specimen in the narrative of the
action with the squadrons under Jonquierre and St.
George off Finisterre, when the Bristol, Captain Montagu,
began to engage V Invincible. Captain Fincher, in the
Pembroke, tried to get in between her and the enemy, but
not finding room, he hailed the Bristol, and requested
Montagu to put his helm a starboard, or the Pembroke
would run foul of his ship. Montagu answered, " Eun
foul of me and be, etc. ; neither you nor any man in the
world shall come between me and my enemy." Similar
l)luntness is exhibited in a story told of Admiral Sir
Pdchard King. During an action a shot struck the head
of his captain and blew his brains over King, then com-
modore, who never flinched. f On being told by the
* This told in the Naval Chronicle.
t " Captain Scott of the cutter told me a singular story of what occurred
during the action between tlic ComWutinn and Macedonian— \\g being
powder-monkey aboard the former ship. A cannon shot came through the
bhip's side, and a man's head was struck oft', probably by a splinter, for it
was done witliout bruising the head or body, as clean as by a razor.
Well, the man was walking pretty briskly at the time of the accident ;
TEE NAVAL OFFICERS SPIRIT. 89
master, towards the close of the fight, that two more of
the enemy's ships appeared to he coming up, and asked
what he would do with the ship, "Do with her!" he
exclaimed contemptuously, ''Fight her, sir! fight her
till she sinks." This is as good as Howe's memorable
answer to the lieutenant who told him that the fire was
extinguished and that he need no longer be afraid.
" Afraid ! " exclaimed Howe ; then, fixing his eyes on the
lieutenant, " Pray, sir, how does a man feel when he is
afraid ? I need not ask how he looks."
The charm of British naval biography lies in its
modesty and accuracy. A pity as much cannot be said
for the marine records of other countries. There is an
excellent example of impudent and deliberate lying in the
Memoirs of M. du Gue-Trouin, chief of a squadron in the
French navy, in the time of Louis XIV. The book is
scarce. It was translated in 1732, by "A Sea Officer," who
in his dedication writes, after commenting on the French-
man's account of an action with the English, " But this
is scarce anything to the w^onders you will find wrought
by Du Gue, his people, and his consorts. For my part,
I had scarce gone through his book before I expected to
hear he had attempted to run away with the Land's
End of England. ... No 'tis in France, and France
alone, where you must meet with these men who can do
anything, no matter what stands in the way, no matter
for the difficulties ; nay, no matter whether they know
what it is they are to do, they'll do it." But the Spanish
and Dutch annals are too full of lies also to suffer us to
and Scott seriously afifirmed that he kept walking onward at the same
pace, with two jets of blood gushing from his headless trunk, till, after
going twenty feet without a head, he sunk down at once, with his legs
under him." Hawthorne Note Books. One seems to hear Mr. Burchell's
" fudge ! " here.
90 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
consider the French singular in tins Wcay. As to the
Yankees, one should read James' ''Naval Occurrences"
to appreciate their amazing capacity as romancers.
Lord Bacon amused his leisure by collecting the witty
sayings of others ; Horace Walpole delighted in ana ;
there is no choicer reading than the Menagiana, Selden's
table-talk, and Spence's anecdotes. In the face of such
precursors no apology can be felt needful from any one
who should think proper to attempt an anecdotal history
of the British Navy.
WOMEN AS SAILORS.
A YOUNG lady of Plj^mouth, having illustrated her
able-seamanlike capacity by diving from the masthead
of a vessel at anchor in the Sound, proceeded some time
afterwards to justify her marine enthusiasm by swimming
from the Breakwater to the Hoe in a tumbling sea, the
distance being three miles and the time occupied within
an hour and a quarter. Now, if this young lady took it
into her head to start away to sea, for what aforemast
capacity, from boatswain down to boy, would she not be
fit ? Even as a skipper might she not excel after a proper
course of ogling the sun through a sextant and a well-
digested commitment of Norie or Kaper to heart ? A
girl capable of measuring three miles of turbulent surges
in seventy odd minutes ought to be equal to a weather
top-sail ear-ring in a whole gale ; whilst the lungs that
could defy a league of flying spume should be able to
wake some dancing silver pipings out of a boatswain's
whistle.
A good many ladies have gone to sea as sailors since
the first chapters of the world's maritime history were
written, and the majority of them not only made excel-
lent seamen, but fought their countries' enemies with
pike, cutlass, and pistol with a courage and determina-
tion equal to any exhibition of the same qualities in the
bravest of their pigtailed shipmates. And yet women are
92 A BOOK FOE THE UAMMOCK.
deemed unliick}' at sea ! A French tradition affirms that
the ocean near Cape Fmisterre swells at the sight of a
woman. Possibly the old fear originated with the witches.
Hideous crones who wrecked ships for lucre and drowned
mariners to gratif}' their own spleen or that of others
would necessarily taint Jack's view of " the sex " in their
maritime relations. An American writer * quotes from
Sandy's Ovid : *' I have heard of seafaring men, and
some of Bristol, how a quartermaster in a Bristol ship,
then trading in the Streights, going down into the hold
saw a sort of women, his own neighbours, making merry
together, and taking their cups liberally ; who having
espied him, and threatening that he should report their
discovery, vanished suddenly out of sight ; who there-
upon was lame for ever after. The ship having made
her voyage, now^e homeward bound, and neere her
harbour, stuck fast in the deep sea before a fresh gaile,
to their no small amazement, nor for all they could doe,
together with the help that came from the shore, could
they get her loose, until one (as Cynothea, the Trojan
ship) shoved her off with his shoulder." For bewitching
the ship the ladies w^ho had been seen taking their cups
liberally in the hold were convicted and executed.
But, undeterred by forecastle superstitions, the girls,
whenever they had a mind to go to sea, went. In Von
Archenholtz' '* History of the Pirates " you read of Ann
Bonny and Mary Eead, two English women, as may
be judged from the names, joining the buccaneers, " not
from licentious motives to gratify their pleasures, but
solely by a thirst of plunder, and as co-partners in their
dangers as well as in their prolits." To appreciate the
* Mr. Bassett, of the United States Navy, who has collected much
interesting information in this and the like superetitions in liis work,
"Legcuda of the Sea," New York, 1880.
WOMEN AS SAILORS. 03
courage of Mary Eead and Ann Bonny it is necessary to
understand the kind of lives the buccaneers led — moral,
physical, and intellectual. The typical pirate of the
Antilles — in those times — was a bruised and battered
rogue, dressed in a shirt and a pair of pantaloons, both
made of coarse linen cloth, dyed with the blood of animals
he had killed. His unstockinged feet were protected
by boots formed from hogskins, and his head was covered
with a round cap. He tied a raw hide girdle round him,
hung a sabre upon it and filled it with knives. He also
carried a firelock that shot two balls, each weighing an
ounce.*
Such was the dainty figure whom Ann Bonny and
Mary Eead made a comrade of, themselves retaining the
apparel of their sex, to which they added long sailors'
trousers. With hair dishevelled, hangers at their waists,
pistols on their breasts, and hatchets in their hands,
they must have been objects nicely calculated to excite
whatever of romantic enthusiasm there yet lingered in
the bosoms of the cut-throats whose troop they had
joined for love of blood and gold.
A more heroic female sailor, despite a fierceness that,
though warrantable enough, makes an historical tigress
of her, offers in the famous Jean de Belville, who vowing
vengeance for the murder of her husband, De Clisson,
at Paris, in 1343, fitted out a squadron of ships and
swooped down upon the coast of Normandy, firing every
castle that a torch could be put to, and reddening the
seaboard with burning villages. She is represented to
* Bailey says the word Bucanier is said to be derived from the
inhabitants of the Caribee Islands who used to cut their prisoners to
pieces " and laid them on hurdles of Brazil wood erected on sticks, with
fire underneath, and when so broiled or roasted to eat them, and this
manner of dressing was called hucaning. Hence our Buccaneers took
their name, in that they, hunting, dressed their meat after their manner."
94 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
have been one of the finest women in Europe, and a
sense of her beauty joining with perception of her wrongs
and the brilHant loyalty of her very scheme of revenge,
does unquestionably gi^e a high quahty of majesty to
that posture of ferocity in which she is pictured by the
historian.
In one of the old Dutch books of voyages — whether
De Weert's, Van Noort's, or Schouten's I cannot be sure
— mention is made of a discovery, when the ship was off
the Horn, of one of the crew as a woman. Even in
these days of science, of canned meats, condensing
apparatus, ice-houses, steam-winches, double-topsail
yards, clipper keels, and short voyages, a woman would
find seafaring a calling bitter enough. But think of one
of the sex a member of the crew of the Dutch ship of the
seventeenth century, on a voyage of discovery, struggling
against the western sleet-laden tempests of the bleak,
iron melancholy Horn ! Ships were butter-boxes in
those times,* sawed-off old wagons, as broad as they
* Few features of those chronicles of adventure which are included
in the collections of Hackluyt, Purchas, Churchill, Harris, and others are
more interesting than the descriptions given of the tonnage, arms, and
crews of the vessels which discovered the Indies, penetrated the great
South Sea, gave names to capes and headlands of the vast but still
sliadowy continent of New Holland; coasted the bleak shores of New-
foundland, and searched the ice of the Frozen Ocean for the North-west
Passage. Of course, t.ie measurements of those days are not the measure-
ments of these. A tun might signify a capacity for different kinds of
freight without reference to cubical dimensions. The capacity of some
vessels in those days was measured by the number of pipes of wine which
could be stowed in them. Even in recent times there is a considerable
difference between old and new measurements, the old representing less
than the new. Nevertheless it is impossible to read about the shij)s in
which the early navigators sailed — it is impossible to think of their tub-
like forms, their enormous toi)-hamper, the astonishing clumsiness of their
yards and gear, their castellated pooi)8 and rampart-like quarters, with-
out wondering how on earth such structures managed to roll in safety
over the stormy oceau, and to push their way, however slowly, against
WOMEN AS SAILORS. 95
were long, with running gear that worked like drawing
teeth, and a discipline composed of keel-hauling, fixing to
opposing winds and adverse tides. Certain expressions have changed
their meaning, and on reading the old voyages one is often puzzled with
names given to craft which, to modern experience, do not in the least
degree correspond with their titles. For instance, the galley in our times
is known as a long rowing boat, mounting so many oars. But in former
days by the term galley was meant a vessel whose complement of men
was one thousand or twelve hundred. She mounted a good show of
ordnance, had three masts and thirty-two banks of oars, every bank con-
taining two oars, and every oar being handled by five or six men.
Equally perplexing are those names of shallops, skiffs, pinnaces, lighters,
and so forth, which are met in abundance in the old stories, and which
express fabrics very different indeed from the kinds of craft they now
designate. For Drake's glorious voyage five ships were equipped. The
Hind was one hundred tons, the Elizabeth eighty tons, the Marigold thirty
tons, the Swan fifty tons, and the Christopher fifteen tons. The captain
of this fifteen-ton pinnace was Thomas Moon, and we hear of her dis-
appearing in great storms and reappearing in fine weather, to the general
joy of the rest of the fleet. Such an old skipper as this must have made
noble company over a mug of strong beer, and would have been able to
tell of things even more wonderful than trees with oysters growing upon
them. Schouten, who discovered and named Cape Horn, put to sea in
vessels which in these days would class amongst small, inferior coasters ;
yet the Unity managed to carry nineteen pieces of cannon and twelve
swivels and a company of sixty-five men. How those ancient mariners
contrived to stow themselves away in their dark 'tweendecks and black
forecastles, how in their little holds they could find room for sufficient
provisions and water to last them for months, not to mention the gun-
powder and cannon balls which they carried, surpasses modern marine
comprehension. Among the ships William Funnell writes about, in a
narrative that is commonly taken to be William Dampier's, was the
Cinque Ports galley, for ever memorable as the craft in which Alexander
Selkirk sailed. This vessel, that was equipped for a buccaneering cruise
in little known waters against towering and powerful galleons, was ninety
tons, a burthen which in these days would about fit a pleasure yacht
intended for the blue skies and summer seas of the holiday period. Or
take Sir Humphrey Gilbert's expedition, which included the Golden
Jlind of forty tons, the Swallow of forty tons, and the Squirrel of ten tons.
"The resolution of the' proprietors was that the fleet should begin its
course northerly, and follow as directly as they could the trade-way to
Newfoundland." Think of a ten-ton boat starting on such an expedi-
tion as this ! Yet Sir Humphrey took command of her when her master
0'^, A BOOK FOR THE UAMMOCK.
the mast by driving a knife through the hand, and
marooning, or, in other words, setting the culprit ashore
on an uninhabited island, with a day's provisions, and
without the means of obtaining more if more was to be
had. That men died by the scores in those days of
scurvy, months of bitter bad meat and foul water, pesti-
ferous 'tween-deck atmosphere, supplemented by the
barbarous ignorance of the chirurgeons, is readily intel-
ligible ; but that a woman should have managed to exist
under such conditions all the way from the Texel to the
Straits Le Maire, doing the sailors' work, and eating the
sailors' food, and living in the sailors' quarters, is little
short of a miracle and an amazing instance of female
endurance.
In the cases of women who have put on men's clothes
and shipped as sailors many were incited by love or
jealousy. The old ballad of Billy Taylor is representa-
tive. The best known instance is that of Hannah Snell,
whose story has been often told.* This distinguished
deserted, with this sequel : that when off Cape Race homeward bound,
" the storms and swellings of the seas increasing, he (namely, Sir
Humphrey) was again pressed to leave the frigate (that is, the Squirrel),
but his answer was, ' We are as near to Heaven by sea as by land.' About
midnight, the Squirrel being ahead of the Golden Hind, her lights were
at once extinguished, which those in tlie Hind seeing cried out ' Our
general is lost ! * and it is supposed she sank that instant, for she was
never more heard of." Lord Byron exclaims :
" Cohimbus found a new world in a cutter.
Or brigantine, or pink, of no great tonnage,
While yet America was in her non-age."
The conjecture — it' seems no more — of Washington Irving that
Columbus' ships were undecked boats " not 8uperit)r to river and coasting
craft of more modern days," is disproved by Lindsay in his " History of
Shipping."
* A very full account of this extraordinary woman is printed in a
little volume entitled " Eccentric Bif»gruphy," 1S03.
WOMEN AS SAILORS. 97
female was born in 1723, and married, at Wapping, one
James Summs, a Dutch sailor, who spent her money
and abandoned her. Thereupon Hannah made up her
mind to go in quest of her faithless spouse. She dressed
herself as a man, and started. Her adventures would fill
three volumes. Eomance and farce, tragedy and comedy
are happily combined. She first went a soldiering,
and, of course, a young woman fell in love with her.
She deserted, re-enlisted as a marine, and saw a great
deal of active service. How many men she killed is not
stated, but it is conceivable that her love for the sex was
not keen, and that she never discharged a musket with-
out an emotion of joy mingled with hope that James
Summs was not far otf. She was wounded on several
occasions, but contrived to conceal her sex until the news
reached her that her Jim, whilst a prisoner at Geneva,
had committed a murder, for which he was stitched up
in a bag and thrown into the sea, when, without further
ado, she resumed the petticoat and returned to London.
From a grateful country she obtained an annuity of
£50, which with her earnings as an actress — it seems
she achieved a great popularity as Bill Bobstay, a sailor
— enabled her to cut a genteel figure. Growing weary
of the stage, she opened a public-house in Wapping that
was very handsomely supported down to the time of her
death by the numerous jolly tars of that marine district.
A less known, but to the full as remarkable a case
of a woman masquerading as a sailor occurs in the life
of Mary Anne Talbot, " otherwise John Taylor." Her
story was written and published by herself at the
beginning of the present century, and may be accepted
as certainly not less accurate than the memoirs of
George Ann Bellamy, whose sweet face crowned with
feathers still looks laughingly over the mask in her
H
98 .1 BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
hand from the plate after Eamberg in the old collections.
Miss Talbot, otlierwise John Taylor, was born in 1778,
and was induced by an officer in an infantry regiment
to assume male attire and accompany him as his foot-
boy to the West Indies. Afterwards she acted in the
capacity of a drummer at the siege of Valenciennes, and
was twice wounded. It is observable that this young
lady, who claimed to be the natural daughter of Lord
WilHam Talbot, Baron of Hensol, began her amazing
career, like Hannah Snell, as a soldier. The infantry
officer having been killed. Miss Talbot threw off her
drummer's dress, assumed that of a sailor, and, having
made her way to Luxembourg, engaged with the captain
of a French lugger, and sailed with him, in the belief
that the vessel was a peaceful trader. After cruising
about awhile the lugger fell in with the British fleet
under the command of Lord Howe. Mary Ann refused
to fight. The French captain swore at her and beat
her, but she was not to be manhandled into firing upon
her countrymen. The lugger hauled down her flag, and
her captain and crew were taken on board the Queen
Charlotte to be examined by Lord Howe. On being
questioned Mary Anne replied that she was an English
boy, and had shipped in the lugger in order to escape
from France, and with the intention of deserting when
the chance occurred. Fortunately Lord Howe's ques-
tions were not very minute. She was dismissed, and
stationed on board the Brunswick, Captain Harvey. In
the great sea fight that followed Mary Anne was des-
perately wounded, and conveyed to the cockpit, and on
the arrival of her ship at Spithead was sent to Haslav
Hospital, from which, after four months' attendance as
an out-patient, she was discharged, partially cured.
She then entered the Vesuvius bomb; the vessel was
WOMEN AS SAILORS. 99
carried by privateers, and Mary Anne was taken to
Dunkirk and lodged in the prison of St. Clair. On the
prisoners being exchanged she met with an American
captain, engaged with him and sailed to America as
ship's steward. She resided with the captain's family
at New York, and declares that she was subjected to
much embarrassment on account of an attachment
conceived for her by the captain's niece, who actually
proposed marriage, and obtained a miniature of her
beloved in the full uniform of an American officer, for
which Mary Anne paid eighteen dollars. Shortly after
her return to England, the press being hot, she was
seized by a gang, and in the scrimmage received a
severe cutlass-wound on the head. She was carried on
board the tender, but having probably had enough of
the sea, she revealed her sex and recovered her liberty.
How much truth there is in this narrative it would now
be idle to conjecture. It is certain, however, that she
obtained a pension of £20 a year, and that she received
her money from the Navy Office as John Taylor, the
name she had assumed when she followed the officer
in the walking regiment to the West Indies.
In October, 1759, a person named Samuel Bundy,
twenty years old, married a girl named Mary Parlour.
He said he was ill, and his bride j^atiently waited until
the following March, hoping meanwhile that he would
be cured. Her friends growing tired, insisted upon
searching him, and to the general amazement the bride-
groom proved a female. Her story was that seven years
previously she had been betrayed by a sweetheart and
taken away from her mother, and that to prevent her
from being discovered he dressed her as a boy. They
separated after a year, and she went to sea as a sailor.
This life she quitted after twelve months of rough work,
100 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
and apprenticed herself to a Mr. Angel who lived at the
King's Head, Gravel Lane, Southwark. A young woman,
Mary Parlour, fell in love with Mr. Angel's brisk and
saucy-looking apprentice, and they were married. The
*' husband" declared that his ''wife" speedily found
out the mistake she had made, but determined not to
expose the matter. After her marriage " Samuel
Bundy," as she called herself, entered on board a man-
of-war, but deserted for fear of detection. She then
tried a merchantman, but left her also to return to the
**wife" whom, says the account, *'she says she dearly
loves."
In 17G1, as a sergeant was drilling some soldiers
aboard a transport, he was struck with the prominent
breast of one of them named Paul Daniel. When the
drill was over he sent for him to the cabin, where, after
taxing " him " she confessed her sex. Her story was that
she had a husband whom she dearly loved, and who had
been reduced to beggary ; he enlisted in a marching
regiment and was in Germany for two years, as she
believed. She had not heard of or from him in all that
time, and she finally decided to hunt for him the world
over. On learning that troops were being despatched to
Germany she enlisted. This, to be sure, is a tale of a
female soldier, but I introduce it here for its strangeness
and likewise for the scene of it being on board ship.
In 1771, a man named Charles Waddall, on board
the O.rfonl man-of-war, was sentenced to receive two
dozen lashes for desertion ; but when tied up the sailor
was discovered to be a woman. She said that she had
travelled from Hull to London after a man with whom
she was in love, and hearing that he was a sailor on
the Oxford she entered for that ship. When she arrived
on board she learnt that her sweetheart had deserted,
WOMEN AS SAILORS. 101
on which she resolved to run away too. The admiral
gave the poor creature half a guinea, and others con-
nected with Chatham dockyard made up a purse for her.
The following is illustrative of the power of the
passion that inspires the lass who loves a sailor : In
1808, the relatives of a girl who had given her heart to
a sailor, hoped to end the attachment by procuring his
impressment ; but she resolved nevertheless to marry
him, and he was accordingly brought ashore and escorted
by the press-gang to the church, whence, after the
marriage ceremony, he was again conveyed to the
tender. I think I see the commiserating expression on
the mahogany faces of those old Jacks, as they witness
the impressed man saying good-bye to his Poll.
In 1807, a woman, dressed in sailor's clothes, was
brought before the Lord Mayor of London. She said
that she had been apprenticed by her step-father at
Whitby to a collier called the Mayflower ; that she had
served four years out of the seven without her sex being
discovered ; that she was bound when she was thirteen
years old, and that her step-father had likewise bound
her mother to the sea — this lady being killed, whilst
serving as a sailor, at the battle of Copenhagen ! She
said that her ship was at Woolwich, and that she had
run away because the mate had rope's-ended her for not
getting up. She was provided with female attire and
sent to her parish.
In 1792, the Marchioness de Bouille and Madame
de Noialles arrived at Brighton from, Dieppe. The
marchioness crossed the channel in an open boat, and
was disguised as a sailor ! The other, who was in mean
male attire, crossed in one of the packets, the master of
the vessel having pitied her and taken her under his
protection.
102 A BOOK FOR TEE HAMMOCK.
Another romantic instance may bo quoted : it is
given in the X(ir<il Chronicle (1802), and seems authentic
enough. A gentleman, towards the end of the last
centur}-, became bankrupt. He went to Bradford with
two daughters, and there died of a broken heart. The
girls were left absolutely without provision. Eather
than starve — or beg, which was worse than starving
to these high-spirited women — they resolved to assume
the character and dress of men and enter the navy.
They went to Portsmouth and obtained a situation on
the quarterdeck — as the term then was — of a troopship
bound to the West Indies. They were engaged, we are
told, in the reduction of Curayoa, " and served with
credit in two or three actions in those seas, till one of
them was wounded by a splinter in her side, when her
sex being discovered, she w^as discharged, and came to
England about six weeks since," making the date about
May, 1802. Meanwhile, the other sister was ill with
fever, having been put ashore at Dominica. Believing
herself to be dying, she sent for one of the officers of the
ship, disclosed her sex to him, and related her story,
" The discovery gave tenderness to the esteem he had
before entertained for his young friend ; his attentions
contributed to her convalescence. In short, she
recovered, they were married, and are now returned
to England in possession of the means to render happy
the remainder of their days."
It is a common saying at sea on a line bright day,
'*That if it were always such weather, ships would go
manned with ladies." Possibly if the romance of
women sailors terminated with handsome lovers and
well-to-do husbands, there might, even in these practical
days, arise the same necessity for overhauling the fore-
castle for masquerading girls that is now found for
WOMEN AS SAILORS. 103
overhauling the hold for stowaways. But the tirue for
Hannah Snells, for Mary Anne Talbots, otherwise John
Taylors, for Ann Bonnys and Mary Beads is dead and
gone. Those heroines belonged to a seafaring age of
which old salts are ridiculed for deploring the extinction.
And in sober truth old salts must not grumble if they
are laughed at for thus lamenting, for surely better six
days to New York in a steamer wholly free of Hannah
Snells than four months to the same port in a ship
entirely worked by Mary Anne Talbots.
FIGHTING SMUGGLERS.
I HAVE noticed of late (1886) an exceptional degree of
spasmodic vigour in the direction of the suppression of
smuggling. It is not, indeed, that the Customs' people
have afforded proofs more astonishing than usual of
their peculiar power of discovering tohacco, spirits, eau-
de-Cologne, cigars, and the like in inconceivable and
apparently impracticable shipboard nooks and holes; the
special display tqjves the comparatively unaccustomed
form of small men-of-war chasing smack-rigged craft
Hying Dutch colours, and bearing the strange name of
'* coopers " or *' copers." It is not known, I think, that
there is any British or other law which renders illegal
the act of sailing the high seas with a hold freighted
with spirits, tobacco, and perfumes. That this is so
may be gathered from the case of a Dutch cooper which,
after an *' exciting chase," was brought to and boarded
by a small cruiser and carried into an English port.
But she had not been long detained before orders arrived
for her release. One sees in a thing of this kind how
hard it is to squeeze the least drop of romance from
marine events in these days. Chases may be ** ex-
citing : " but they are of the rocket pattern — fire going
up and stick coming down. Where is now the burly
smuggling salt with a face as big and as full of colour
as a topside of beef, great fearnought trousers, and
FIGHTING SMUGGLERS. 105
boots ; a stout jacket, plentifully garnished with buttons ;
a striped shirt and a large silk neckerchief, and a belt
broken by the shafts of knives, the hilt of a cutlass, the
butt-ends and gleaming barrels of a brace or more of
big pistols ? " Old Stormy he is dead and gone ! " is
the burden of a sea-chorus that is very applicable to
those heavy villains of the long-shore theatre. Dirk
Hatterick and bold Will Watch. The issue of a chase
in these times is strictly in correspondence with the
decidedly sneaking way in which smuggling — such as
it is — is carried on. The concealment of a few watches
in the heels of a pair of shoes ; yards of pigtail snugly
coiled away in cheeses ; cigars marvellously well j)acked
in the hollow hearts of balks of timber ; how dull, mean,
twopenny are such devices in the face of the defiant
heroism of those historic braves who, waiting for moon-
less nights, mastheaded their lug-sails in death-like
silence, and stole out into the wide w^aters of the
English, the Irish, the Bristol Channels, a mere blot of
ink upon the dusk, crossing the hawse of cruisers like
shadows of vaporous wings, and melting into the sullen
gloom of some secret bay flanked by cliffs liberally
honeycombed with caves and echoing corridors ! *
* Nevertheless instances abound of extraordinary ingenuity even in
the faint-hearted directions. " When," says a writer whose book now
dates back many years, " I arrived the first voyage from Bombay, I had
a few rows of Cornelian beads which I had purchased there for some
friends at home. For some time they lay snug enough in the toe of an
old shoe, at the bottom of my chest, until we got in the river, when I
gave them to the second mate to place in greater security. Nest day, as
the men were receiving rations, the word was passed that tlie searchers
were alongside. At the instant the second mate came running to me with
my beads. He had not been able to discover a good place to conceal them.
I ran to the steward; he took them, and lifting up one of his lockers,
where lay a large snake coiled up like a top-sail sheet, he lifted up its
terrific head and threw my beads under its straw. The searchers came,
106 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
Long antecedent to the days in which the Dutch cooper
coquets with her Majesty's customs, and seduces Revenue
cruisers into issueless pursuits, the smuggler gave the
naval officer as much to do as the Frenchman or the
Batavian. Tlie fights were desperate ; there was scarce
an anker of run hrandy that did not represent a life.
It is not pleasant, perhaps, in the old pictures and book
*' emhi'llishments " to see a smart frigate in hot pm*suit
of a top-sail lugger, and to know that yon puff of smoke
at the bow of the chaser represents a cannon ball fired
by an Englishman at his own countrymen. When-
ever that sort of thunder is raised under the British
Jack, you feel that the destination of the levin-brand
which preceded it ought not at all events to be an
English hull or an English breast. Nevertheless the
blood will tingle to those early cuts and whole-page
illustrations. How grandly the cruiser looms up astern !
The spray breaks as far aft as the gangway, and the
silver glitter sweeps in sparkling smoke over the sprit-sail
yard that has been got "fore and aft" in readiness.
Her royals soar cloud-like among the clouds, and her
flag, as big as the main-topgallant sail, streams its milky
splendour of white bunting, crimson-crossed and nobly
jacked in the corner, from the signal halliards at the end
of the spanker gaff. But the eye, and, perhaps, the
heart, is with that nimble shape in the foreground. She
is a three-masted lugger, with yards long enough to give
as much head to the canvas as would serve to blow a
Royal George along. What a spring she has of bow !
How elegant is tlie sweep of the line of her lee rail, lying
dark amid the wash of cream there ! Not so much as
overhauled the steward's traps and lifted up tlic lid of the locker. The
snake put forth its forked tongue — tlie lid dio])ped from the searcher's
hand ! "
FIGHTING SMUGGLERS. 107
a puff from a musket-barrel answers that fore-chaser,
blazing away at her astern. If the Eevenue were not
the abstraction that, with Charles Lamb, one somehow
regards it, one would wish that saucy smuggler speedily
overhauled. As it is, the sympathetic artist, by intro-
ducing a touch of thickness away to windward there,
hints at the approach of a fog, and at the possibility^,
even yet, of that crouching whiskered crew successfully
landing their tobacco, spirits, silk, and tea.
The old smuggling laws v/ere somewhat stiff. Com-
pared to them how mild are the penalties which the
modern collector of Customs can press for ! In the
good old times, in the days of the fine old English
gentleman — on whose account, by the w^ay, it is no-
where recorded that any human being ever went into
mourning — a penalty of £'300 was imposed upon any
master of a ship coming from abroad having more than
one hundi'ed pounds of tea on board or more than one
hundred gallons of foreign spirits in casks under sixty
gallous (besides two gallons for each seaman). Foreign
spirits imported from any part of Europe, in a vessel
containing less than sixty gallons, were forfeited along
with the ship and her furniture. If any goods, such as
tea or coffee, liable to forfeiture were found on board a
ship bound from foreign ports, lying at anchor or
" hovering" within two leagues of the coast, the ship, if
not above two hundred tons, was forfeited. Any person
selling coffee, tea, cocoa-nuts, or chocolate was forced to
write ''Dealer in coffee, etc.," over his door under a
penalty of £200. Illustrations of this kind make one
see the sort of risks the smuggler ran in those days.
Not but that the public should have held themselves
very much obliged for all these penalties and punish-
ments. It is on record that, information having been
108 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
laid ap:ainst some persons living in Dorsetshire for har-
bouring smuggled tea, their houses were searched, and
there were found about thirty pounds of tea, mixed with
leaves, and one thousand and thirty pounds weight of
ash, elder, and sloe leaves, dried and prepared, ready for
mixing with the tea ! This was about the time when
the poet Cowper in his nightcap was celebrating the
merits of the cup that cheers. But did it not inebriate ?
Think of the proportion of a thousand and thirty pounds
of ash, elder, and sloe leaves, to thirty pounds of the
Hong merchant's sample ! All these leaves were got
in the summer, and I read that the poor of the district
were so well paid for collecting them, that the farmers
could not obtain labourers for their harvests.
The war waged by the State against the smuggler
was as vengeful as the hottest against a foreign foe. As
an example : in 1784 the severity of the winter had
obliged the smugglers to lay up a great number of their
vessels. It was suggested to Mr. Pitt that a fine oppor-
tunity offered for destrojdng these boats, if sufficient
force could be procured to prevent the smugglers from
attempting a rescue. Pitt sent word to the war office
for a regiment of soldiers to be at Deal on a certain day.
The officer in command of the soldiers found on his arrival
that the people of the town having got scent of what was
to happen, had advised the publicans to pull down their
signs that the soldiers should not be aljle to get quarters.
They consented and no quarters were to be had. Event-
ually the men obtained shelter in a barn, but the officer
had the utmost difficulty to procure provisions for them.
Next day some cutters were seen lying off the beach and
the soldiers marched down to the water. The inhabitants
thouglit the troops would embark in the cutters. Then
it was that the order was given to burn the boats, and
FIGHTING SMUGGLERS. 109
the force being great, the people were obliged to stand
idly looking on, not daring a rescue.
Those were days when a cruise against the smugglers
promised some excellent pickings. One of the most
successful of the cruising ships was the Atalanta, of
eighteen guns, that was hardly paid off and her crew
discharged when, such was her popularity, on being
almost immediately re-commissioned men entered with
extraordinary eagerness. In one short cruise alone she
captured eight sail and nearly two thousand ankers of
spirits, besides bale goods ; and every man's share of the
prize money amounted to twice the value of his wages.
The old reports run thus: "Came in the Atalanta, eighteen
guns. Captain Mansfield, with a fine smuggling cutter of
eighty tons, called the Admiral Pole, of Exeter, with one
hundred and seventy ankers of spirits, taken after a long
chase. She was seized some months since at Weymouth
for having an over quantity of spirits on board, and was
liberated on bond being given to the Board of Customs
and Excise." Or, '' Came in, the Eagle, Excise cutter,
Captain Ward, with a fine smuggling cutter, called the
Swift (formerly the Bonaparte, French privateer), with
five hundred tubs of brandy, after a long chase within the
limits of the Dochnan.'' Or, " Sailed on a cruise against
the smugglers, the Ranger, cutter. Captain A. Eraser."
Or, '' Came in from a cruise against the smugglers, the
Galatea, of thirty-six guns. Captain Wolfe."
It will be judged that if bold Will Watch or belted
Joe Marline succeeded in running his goods it was cer-
tainly not through lack of attention to him on the part
of the King's navy. And, as may be sujjposed, many
black deeds of violence and - murder are on record. The
story of an assassination eminently characteristic of the
old smuggling times is. preserved in the Old Bailey
no A BOOK FOR THE nAMMOCK.
annals. On the night of December 2G, 1798, a Custom
House officer went in a boat to look after smugglers near
Cawsand Bay on the coast of Cornwall. He saw a sloop
lying at anchor, the people of which hailed him, and
asked him whose boat it was. He answered that it was
a King's boat. They warned him not to approach ; if
he did, they would fire on him ; he was then some eight
or ten fathoms distant from the sloop. His men,
nothing daunted, continued to row, whilst he held the
Revenue colours in his hand. The smugglers fired a
volley from their muskets, slipped their cable, and made
off. One of the men in the boat was killed. The
smugglers were apprehended on the evidence of one of
their own people. This man, named Tom Eogers, said
that he was a sailor on board the vessel (named the
Lottcn/) on the night referred to. They had just arrived
from Guernsey with a cargo of smuggled spirits, and, at
the moment of the aj^proach of the Customs' boat, they
were discharging the tubs into boats alongside. The
witness declared that after they had made sail, one of
the crew named Potter said it was he who had fired,
that he had taken good aim, and had seen a man drop
in the boat. On this evidence Potter was found guilt}^
and hanged at Execution Dock.
But whatever may be thought of the morality of the
smuggler, it is indisputable that his cutter or lugger was
a magnificent nursery for seamen. The exploits of some
of these fellows in respect of recaptures alone would fill
a stout volume with wonderful instances of intrepidity
and seamanship. Take the case of the EcJio, of Poole,
that was boarded by a French privateer, and retaken by
the mate and a boy of twelve, who seized the helmsman,
forced him below with two French seamen, battened
them down, and brought them to Plymouth.
FIGHTING SMUGGLEES. Ill
Of the Marquis of Granhy, that was captured off the
Goodwins by a French lugger ; the captain and two men
were put into the Frenchman's boat, in order to be con-
veyed on board the privateer, that was giving chase to
another vessel, and that, by carrying a press of sail, in
a short time left the boat nearly five miles astern. On
observing this the smuggling skipper wrested a sword
out of the hands of the officer of the boat, and compelled
the French sailors to row him back to his own ship.
This done, he gallantly boarded her, sword in hand, and
speedily cleared the deck of the Frenchmen, who, to
save then' lives, jumped overboard, and were picked up
by their own boat. The smuggler then proceeded on
his voyage ; but what became of the French sailors was
never known.
Of the William, that was captured by a privateer off
Bridlington ; all the crew, except three, were taken out
and five Frenchmen put on board. The three English-
men found means to choke the pumps with ashes, and
made the Frenchmen believe the vessel was sinking.
Sooner than go to the bottom they agreed to make for
the nearest port, and eventually they carried the William
to Sunderland. The Frenchmen, I read, were landed
the same evening, " and have since been sent to Durham
gaol."
Of the Beaver, that was captured by a French
privateer, named La Braave, of eighteen guns and
seventy men. They put a prize-master and four sea-
men in the prize, leaving only the captain and a boy on
board. The skipper contrived to secure the French
prize-master by seizing him in the cabin and fastening
his hands behind him ; he then ran on deck with a
crow-bar and a pistol, and in the scuffle the steersman
fell overboard, and was drowned. The other three were
J12 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
aloft. The English captain, taking the helm, ordered
them to remain aloft, or he would shoot them. In this
manner he steered the vessel all night, and next morn-
ing sighting an Enghsh frigate, signalled and was
brought safely to port by her. There is something not
a little humorous in the thought of those three French-
men hanging on aloft all night, the smuggling Britisher
at the helm, steering with one hand and with the other
covering them with a pistol.
These are but a plum or two from a pudding very
rich with such fruit. Somehow the British mariner of
that period never could be taught to respect the French
seaman as an adversar3^ Again and again you read of
a man and a boy out-manceuvring and subduing a fair
ship's company of wooden-shoes. I sometimes fancy
that Napoleon Bonaparte heli)ed to confirm the English-
man's indifference to the French mariner — the in-
tellectual heritage of years of conquest — by his coddling
policy of dress and treatment. The uniform he himself
designed for his nautical braves consisted of a blue
jacket in the manner and of the cut of those of dragoons ;
red waistcoat with gilt buttons, and blue cloth panta-
loons ; red stockings, pointed shoes with round buckles,
cropped hair " without powder ! " They were ordered to
change their shirts three times a week, and when on
shore to wear small cocked hats. They were also jn'o-
vided with red nightcaps, ordered to be washed once a
week. Every man had two nightcaps and two neckcloths.
They were obliged to comb their hair throe times in the
seven days, and to be shaved twice a week. Their
captains called them " mes enfans." It was impossible
for Jack to have a high opinion of marine masqueraders
after this pattern, and when it came to fighting, the
more the merrier, as you notice in the actions of
smuggUng men and boys.
FIGHTING SMUGGLERS. 113
The smugglers often turned out some fine useful sea-
men. There was Mr. Harry Paulet, who happened to
be sneaking home with a cargo of brandy one morning
when the French fleet, under Conflans, had stolen out of
Brest, while Admiral Hawke lay concealed behind
Ushant to watch the motions of the enemy. Paulet,
loving his country better than his cargo, ran up to the
British admiral, and, asking leave to speak to him, was
allowed to go aboard. On his telling what he knew of
the enemy, Hawke said if he was right he would make
his fortune; but that if he lied he would hang him
at the yard-arm. The fleet was instantly under weigh,
and by Paulet's directions was presently brought between
the enemy and the French coast. The admiral then
ordered Paulet into his own vessel ; but the bold
smuggler begged leave to remain, that he might assist
in beating the enemy. This favour was granted, a
station was assigned to Paulet, who fought like a game-
cock, and when the battle was over he was sent home
with a pocket full of letters of commendation, and sub-
sequently rewarded in such a manner as to enable him
to live in ease during the rest of his life. The famous
comedian, Parsons, used to say that ''he would rather
spend a crown to hear Harry Paulet relate one of
Hawke's battles than sit gratis by the most celebrated
orator of the day. There was," said Parsons, ''a
manner in his heart-felt narrations that was certain to
bring his auditors into the very scene of action ; and
when describing the moments of victory I have seen a
dozen labouring men, at the Crown publichouse, rise to-
gether and, moved by an instantaneous impulse, give
three cheers while Harry took breath to recite more of
his exploits,"
Johnson, a smuggler, achieved amazing reputation as
I
114 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
a pilot and seaman. He was several times locked up,
laid in irons, as for instance in the New Jail in the
Borough, and the Fleet, but always managed to break
out, and at this work was a complete Jack Sheppard.
He went to Holland, and his fame as a seafarer having
spread, the French Government offered to make a settle-
ment of £600 a year upon his family if he would engage
in the attempt to invade England ; but the bold smuggler
was a patriot, and said no. His life was then threatened,
but the skill that was equal to a Borough jail was
superior to a French prison. Johnson got away, came
home, and received King George's pardon in considera-
tion of " qualities which would do honour to a more
elevated state." But smugglers after the pattern of
Paulet and Johnson have long ceased to flourish. Well
may the old tar sing :
Farewell to every sea-delight !
The cruise, with eager watchful days,
The skilful chace by glimmering night
The well- worked ship, the gallant fight,
The lov'd commander's praise !
Will Watch has flung down his hanger and pistols,
and appears in the more amiable and less hazardous
part of a ship's steward, a lascar, a foremast seaman,
with a few pounds of cigars in his shirt or a cube of
honeydew under his bunk boards. The coastguard, it is
true, still keeps a look-out; but if it were not for the
gardens and lawn-tennis grounds which his superior
officer sets him to work upon, he would hud his calling
very dull and uneventful.
SEA PHRASES.
"The sea-language," says Sir William Mouson in his
''Naval Tracts," "is not soon learned, and much less
understood, being only proper to him that has served
his apprenticeship ; besides that, a boisterous sea and
stormy weather will make a man not bred to it so sick
that it bereaves him of legs, stomach, and courage so
much as to fight with his meat ; and in such weather,
when he hears the seamen cry starboard or port, or to
bide aloof,* or flat a sheet, or haul home a clew-line, he
thinks he hears a barbarous speech, which he conceives
not the meaning of." This is as true now as then.
But the landsman is not to blame. There is no dialect
peculiar to a calling so crowded with strange words as
the language of the sea. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who is
never more diverting than when he thunders forth his
abhorrence of naval life and of sailors as a community
of persons, has in some cases perpetuated, and in some
cases created, the most ludicrous errors regarding ships,
their furniture and crews. If, as Macaulay declares,
the Doctor was at the mercy of Junius and Skinner in
many of his shore-going derivatives, he was equally at
the mercy of Bailey and Harris when he came to the
ocean. A few samples will suffice.
* " Keep your luff! "
116 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
" Toppallant, the highest sail." ** Topsail, the
highest sail." The word topgallant, as Johnson prints
it, is not a sail at all. Had Johnson defined the " top-
gallant-sail " as the highest sail, he would have been
right ; for in his day there was no canvas set above the
topgallant yard. But it is manifest that if the "top-
gallant-sail " was the highest sail, the top-sail could not
be the highest too. " Tiller, the rudder of a boat."
The proverbial schoolboy knows better than that.
" Shrouds, the sail-ropes. It seems to be taken some-
times for the sails." It is hardly necessary to say that
the shrouds have nothing whatever to do with the sails.
They are ropes — in Johnson's day of hemp, in our
time of wire — for the support of lower, top, and top-
gallant masts. "Sheets." This word he correctly
defines, borrowing his definition from a dictionary. But
he adds, " Dryden seems to understand it otherwise; "
and quotes —
" Fierce Boreas drove against his flying sails,
And rent the sheets.'*
It is very evident that Dryden perfectly understood the
term as signifying the ropes at the clews or corners of
sails. " Quarter-deck, the short upper deck." This is
as incorrect as '* Poop, the hindmost part of the ship."
The poop lies aft, to be sure, but it is no more the hind-
most part of the ship than the mizzen-mast is — any
more than the quarter-deck need necessarily be " short "
or '' upper " — in the sense clearly intended by Johnson,
" Overhalo, to spread over." Ovcrhale then signified
what is now meant by overhaul. To overhaul a rope is
to drag it through a block ; to overhaul a ship ,is to
search her. It certainly does not mean "to spread
over," nor, in my judgment, does Spenser emj^loy it in
that sense in the triplet that Johnson appends, "hoofed,
SEA PHRASES, 117
gone to a distance." Loofed in Johnson's day denoted
a ship that had luffed — i.e. put her helm down to come
closer to the wind. " Keel, the bottom of the ship."
No doubt the keel is at the bottom of the ship, but
sailors would no more understand it as a ship's bottom
than they would accept the word " beam " as a definition
of the word ''deck." Johnson gives "helm'' as "the
steerage, the rudder." It is plain that he is here under
the impression that " steerage " is pretty much the
same as " steering." In reality the helm is no more
the rudder than it is the tiller, the wheel, the wheel-
chains, or ropes and the relieving-tackles. It is a
generic term, and means the whole apparatus by which
a ship is steered. " Belay, to belay a rope ; to splice ;
to mend a rope by laying one end over another." To
belay a rope is to make it fast.*
These examples could be multiplied; but it is not
my purpose to criticize Samuel Johnson's Dictionary.
Yet, as it is admittedly the basis of most of the diction-
aries in use, it is worth while calling attention to errors
which have survived without question or correction into
the later compilations.
These and the like blunders merely indicate the
extreme difficulty that confronts, not indeed the ety-
mologist—for I nowhere discover any signs of research
in the direction of marine originals — but the plain
definer of nautical words. The truth is, before a man
undertakes to explain the language of sailors he should
go to sea. It is only by mixing with sailors, by hear-
ing and executing orders, that one can distinguish the
* Bailey correctly defines this word : " to fasten any running rope so
that when it is lialed it cannot run out again." Either Johnson doubted
Bailey (whom he quotes nevertheless) as an authority, or consulted him
for his sea-words at capricious intervals.
118 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
shades of meaning amidst the scores of suhtleties of the
mariner's speech. It is, of course, hard to explain what
the sailor himself could not define save by the word he
himself employs. Take, for example, " inboard " and
" aboard." You say of a man entering a ship that he
has gone '' aboard her ; " of a boat hanging at the davits
that it must be swung '' inboard." There is a nicety
here difficult of discrimination, but it is fixed neverthe-
less. You would not say of a man in a ship that he is
*' inboard," nor of davits that they must be slewed
"aboard." So of ''aft" and ''abaft." They both
mean the same thing, but they are not applied in the
same way. A man is " aft " when he is on the quarter-
deck or poop; you could not say he is "abaft." But
suppose him to be beyond the mizzen-mast, you would
say " he is standing abaft the mizzen-mast," not "he
is standing aft it."
Peculiarities of expression abound in sea-language to
a degree not to be paralleled by the eccentricities of
other vocational dialects. A man who sleeps in his
bunk or hammock all night, or through his watch on
deck, "lies in" or "sleeps in." But neither term is
applicable if he sleeps through his watch below.
"Idlers," as they are called, such as the cook, steward,
butcher, and the like, are said to have " all night in " —
that is, " all night in their bunks or hammocks." To
"lay" is a word plentifully employed in directions
which to a landsman should render its signification
hopelessly bewildering. "This word 'lay,'" says
Richard Dana, in a note to "Two Years Before the
Mast," " which is in such general use on board ship,
being used in giving orders instead of 'go,' as ' Tmj/ for-
ward ! ' 'Lay aft ! ' ' Lay aloft ! ' etc., I do not under-
stand to be the neuter verb lie mis -pronounced, but to
SEA PEBASES. 119
be the active verb ' lay ' with the objective case under-
stood, as ' Lay yourselves forward ! ' ' Lay yourselves
aft ! ' etc. At all events, lay is an active verb at sea
and means go." It is, however, used in other senses,
as to "lay up a rope," ''the ship lay along," the old
expression for a vessel pressed down by the force of the
wind. Other terms strike the land-going ear as singular
contradictions, such as ''to make land," to ''fetch such
and such a place " — i.e. to reach it by sailing, but
properly to arrive at it by means of beating or tacking ;
''jump aloft," run aloft; "tumble up," come up from
below ; " bear a hand," look sharp, make haste ; " hand-
somely," as in the expression, " Lower away hand-
somely ! " meaning, lower away with judgment, but
promptly ; " bully," a term of kindly greeting, as
" Bully for you !" *
The difficulties of the lexicographer desiring the
inclusion of nautical terms in his list are not a little
increased by the sailor's love of contractions, or his per-
versities of pronunciation. Let me cite a few examples.
The word "treenail," for instance — a wooden spike — in
Jack's mouth becomes " trunnel." " To reach " is to
sail along close-hauled; but the sailor calls it " ratch."
"Gunwale," as everybody knows, is "gunnel," and so
spelt by the old marine writers. " Crossjack," a sail
that sets ujoon a yard called the " crossjack yard," on
the mizzen-mast, is pronounced " crojjeck." The
"strap" of a block is always termed "strop;"
" streak," a single range of planks running from one
* This and other terms must now be called Americanisms. But they
are Americanisms only as are other old words which the people of the
United States have preserved from the language of their English fore-
fathers, but which on this side of the water are obsolete, or employed
with a different meaning.
120 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
end of the ship or boat to the other, is " strake ; " "to
serve," that is, to wind sraall stuff, such as spun-yarn,
round a rope, is ''to sarve." The numerous contrac-
tions, however, are pre-eminently illustrative of the two
distinctive qualities of the English sailor — nimbleness
and alertness. Everything must be done quickly at sea :
there is no time for sesquipedalianism. If there be a
long word it must be shortened somehow. To spring,
to jump, to leap, to tumble, to keep his eyes skinned, to
hammer his fingers into fish-hooks : these are the things
required of Jack. He dances, he sings, he drinks, he is
in all senses a lively hearty ; but underlying his intel-
lectual and physical caper-cutting is deep perception of
the sea as a mighty force, a remorseless foe. The
matter seems trifling, yet the national character is in it.
A great number of words are used by sailors which
are extremely disconcerting to landsmen, as apparently
sheer violations of familiar sounds and the images they
convey. To lash : ashore, this is to beat with a whip,
to thrash ; at sea it means to make anything fast by
securing it with a rope. To foul : when a sailor speaks
of one thing fouling another, he does not intend to say
that one thing soils or dirties another, but that it has
got mixed in a manner to make separation a difficulty.
" Our ship drove and fouled a vessel astern." A line
is foul when it is twisted, when it jams in a block.
"Seize" is to attach: it does not mean, "to grasp."
" Seizing " is the line or laniard or small stu£f by which
anything is made fast. " Whip : " this word naturally
conveys the idea of the implement for flogging, for
driving; in reality, it signifies a line rove through a
single block. "Whip it up! " hoist it up by means of
the tackle called a whip. " Get it whipped ! " get it
hoisted by a whip. " Sweep " looks like a fellow who
SEA PHRASES. 121
cleans a chimney ; at sea it is a long oar. ''Board " is
not a plank, but the distance measured by a ship or
vessel sailing on either tack, and beating against the
wind before she puts her helm down for the next
" ratch." " Guy " has nothing to do with the fifth of
November, nor with a person absurdly dressed, but is a
rope used for steadying a boom. " Kibands " are pieces
of timber nailed outside the ribs of a wooden ship.
" Ear-rings " are ropes for reefing or for securing the
upper corners of a sail to the yard-arms.
The bewilderment increases when Jack goes to zo-
ology for terms. "Fox" is a lashing made by twisting
rope-yarns together. '' Spanish fox " is a single yarn
untwisted and '" laid up " the contrary way. " Monkey "
is a heavy weight of iron used in shipbuilding for di'iving
in long bolts. "Cat" is a tackle used for hoisting up
the anchor. "Mouse "or "mousing" was formerly a
ball of yarns fitted to the collars of stays. " To mouse "
is to put turns of rope-yarn round the hook of a block
to prevent it from slipping. " Spider " is an iron out-
rigger. " Lizard " is a piece of rope with a " thimble "
spliced into it. "Whelps" are pieces of wood or iron
bolted on the main-piece of a windlass, or on a [winch.
"Leech"* is the side-edge of a sail. "Sheepshank"
is the name given to a manner of shortening a rope by
hitches over a bight of its own part.
Of such terms as these, how is the etymology to be
come at ? The name of the animal might have been
suggested in a few cases, as in "lizard," perhaps, by
some dim or fanciful resemblance to it in the object that
* Sometimes spelt "leach," and perhaps correctly. "To leach"
formerly signified to " cut up." In a sense the "leach," or "leech," may
be taken as meaning the cut sides of the sail. Leach also meant " hard
work."
122 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
wanted a title. But "monkey," "fox," "cat," and
other sucli appellations, must have an origin referable
to any other cause than that of their likeness to the
creatures they are called after. It is possible that these
names may be corruptions from Saxon and other terms
expressive of totally different meanings. It will be
supposed that " Spanish fox" comes from the Spaniards'
habit of using "foxes" formed of single yarns. We
have, for example, " Spanish windlass," as we have
"French fake," "French sennit," etc. The derivatives
of some words are suggested by their sounds. " Bowse,"
pronounced "Bowce," is a familiar call at sea.
" Bowse it taut, lads ! " " Take and bowse upon those
halliards ! " The men pull of upon the rope and bow it
by their action. It is therefore conceivable that " bowse "
may have come from "bow" "bows."* "Dowse,"
pronounced "dowce," signifies to lower, to haul down
suddenly. Also to extinguish, as "dowse the glim,"
"put out the light." The French word *' douce'' is
probably the godfather here. But "rouse," pronounced
"rouce"? " Piouse it aft, boys!" It means, to drag
smartly. Does it really signify what it looks to express
— to " rouse up " the object that is to be handled ? It is
wonderful to note how, on the whole, the language of the
sea has preserved its substance and sentiment through
the many generations of seafarers down to the present
period of iron plates and steel masts, of the j)ropeller
and the steam engine. The reason is that, great as has
been the apparent change wrought in the body and
fabric of ships since the days of the Great Jlarnj of the
sixteenth century, and the Uoyal Geonje of the eighteenth
century, the nomenclature of remote times still perfectly
* Old dictionaries give "to l)f)WHc" as meaning "to drink hard."
The correct etymology might lie in thia direction.
SEA PEEASES. 123
answers to a mass of nautical essentials, more especially
as regards the masts, yards, rigging, and sails of a vessel.
And another reason lies in the strong conservative spirit
of the sailor. There was a loud outcry when the
Admiralty many years ago condemned the term ''lar-
board," and ordered the word " port" to be substituted.
The name was not to be abandoned without a violent
struggle, and many throes of prejudice, on the part of
the old salts. What was good enough for Hawkins,
Duncan, Howe, Eodney, Nelson, was sm-ely good enough
for their successors.
Not in many directions do I find new readings of old
terms. As a rule, where the feature has disappeared
the term has gone with it. Where the expression is
retained the meaning is more or less identical with the
original words. A few exceptions may be quoted :
" Bittacle " was anciently the name of the binnacle;
obviously derived from the French hahitacle (a small
habitation). " Caboose " was formerly the name of the
galley or kitchen of small merchantmen. Falconer
spells it '' coboose," and describes it as a sort of box or
house to cover the chimney of some merchant ships.
Previous to the introduction of the caboose, the furnaces
for cooking were, in three-deckers, placed on the middle
deck ; in two-decked ships in the forecastle ; and, adds
my authority (the anonymous author of a treatise on
shipbuilding, wTitten in 1701), ''also in all ships which
have forecastles the provisions are there dressed."
" Cuddy " is a forcible, old-fashioned word that has been
replaced by the mincing, affected term " saloon." In
the last century it signified "a sort of cabin or cook-
room in the fore-part or near the stern of a lighter or
barge of burden." It is curious to note the humble
origin of a term subsequently taken to designate the
124 A BOOK FOR TUB HAMMOCK.
gilded and sumptuous first-class cabin accommodation of
the great Indian, American, and Australian ships.
** Forecastle," again, I find defined by old writers as
*' a place fitted for a close fight on the upper deck
forward." The term was retained to denote the place
in which the crew live.
The exploded expressions are numerous. A short
list may prove of interest. "Hulling" and "trying"
were the words which answer to what we now call
"hove-to." "Sailing large," having the wind free or
quartering ; this expression is dead. " Plying " was the
old term for " beating " — " we plyed to windward " — i.e.
" we beat to windward." The word is obsolete, as is
" spooning," replaced by " scudding." For *' veering "
we have substituted " wearing." Some good strong,
expressive phrases have vanished. Nobody nowadays
talks of " clawing-off," though the expression is perfect
as representing a vessel clutching and grabbing at the
wind in her efforts to haul off from a lee shore. For
"shivering" we now say "shaking." "The top-sail
shivers in the wind ! " In these days it " shakes." We
no longer speak of the " top-sail atrip," but of the top-sail
hoisted or the yard mast-headed. " Hank for hank,"
signifying two ships beating together and always going
about at the same moment, so that one cannot get to
windward of the other, is now " tack for tack." We
have ceased to " heave out stay-sails : " they are now
loosed and hoisted. The old " horse " has made way
for the " foot-rope," though we still retain the term
" Flemish horse " for the short foot-rope at the top- sail
yard-arms. The word " horse " readily suggests the
origin of the term " stirrup," a rope fitted to the foot-
rope that it may not be weighed down too deep by the
men standing on it. It is plain that " horse " is owing
SEA PHEASES. 125
to the seamen ''riding" the yard by it. Anything
traversed was called a "horse." The term is still used.
The "round-house" or "coach" yielded to ''cuddy,"
as " cuddy " has to " saloon." The poop remains ; but
the "poop-royal" of the French and the Spaniards, or
the " topgallant poop " of our own shipwrights — a
short deck over the aftermost part of the poop — has
utterly disappeared.
"Whoever were the inventors," writes Sir Walter
Ealeigh in "A Discourse of Shij^ping," included in his
Genuine Remains, " we find that every age hath added
somewhat to ships, and to all things else ; and in mine
own time the shape of our English ships hath been
greatly bettered. It is not long since the striking of the
Top-mast (a wonderful ease to great Ships both at Sea
and in Harbour) hath been devised, together with the
Chain Pump, which takes up twice as much water as
the ordinary did. We have lately added the Bonnet and
the Drabler. To the Courses, we have devised Stud-
ding Sails, Top-gallant Sails, Sprit-sails, Topsails. The
Weighing of Anchors by the Capstone is also new. W^e
have fallen into consideration of the length of Cables,
and by it we resist the malice of the greatest Winds that
can blow."
Although this passage has reference to improvements
made in the fabrics of ships during the closing years of
the reign of Queen Elizabeth and of the opening of that
of James L, it is cui'ious, as illustrative of the conser-
vatism of the sailor, that by omitting the " sprit-sail "
these words of Ealeigh might stand for the ships of to-
day. No sailor unacquainted with the archaeology of
his own calling would believe that the studding-sail, the
bonnet, the drabbler, the chain-pump, the topgallant-
sail, and even the si^rit-sail (a sail that was in use down
126 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
to SO late a period as the close of the first quarter of the
present century) ^Yere as old as Ealeigh's hey-day.
Certainly the terms given hy Sir Walter would furnish
us with a clue to the paternity of these cloths. *' Stud-
ding-sail," for example. Falconer derives it from scud,
stead, or steady. I am inclined to think it is derived
from the verb " to stud " — to adorn, to cover, but not
necessarily, as Johnson says, '' with studs or shining
knobs." It is quite conceivable to think of a forked-
beard lifted over a ruff in admiration of canvas that
raises the cry, " By'r Lady, but she is now studded with
sail ! " Assuredly we moderns would not regard a
studding-sail as a steadying sail in any sense of the word.
The " bonnet " mentioned by Ealeigh is an additional
piece of canvas made to lace on to the foot of a sail.
The term bonnet applied to a thing worn at the foot
advises us of an ironical derivative. But of '' drabbler "
the etymology is obvious. To drabble is to wet, to
befoul. Now the drabbler is an additional piece of
canvas laced to the bonnet, and necessarily coming very
low, unquestionably takes its name from '^ drabbling "
— getting wet. The sprit-sail and sprit-topsail are
among the vanished details ; so indeed is the S23rit-sail-
yard, which may be said to have been conquered, like a
cold young virgin, by the invention of '' whiskers " —
small booms or irons, one on each side the bowsprit,
and formerly projecting from the cat-heads, whence
possibly the term. Of many sea-expressions the origin
is sufficiently transparent. I offer a few examples.
" Bilge " is the part of a vessel's bottom which begins
to round upwards. The word is corrupted from the
old ''bulge, the outermost and lowest part of a ship,
that which she bears upon when she lies on the ground."
"Butt" is the joining of two planks endways. *' To
SEA PHRASES. 127
start a butt " is to loosen the end of a plank where it
unites with another. This word is got from " abut."
"Chock-a-block," said when anything is hoisted by a
tackle as high as the block will let it go. Chock here
means choke, and in that sense Jis implied in such ex-
pressions as " chock-aft," " chock-home," etc. Formerly
"jib " was spelt " gyb." A vessel in running is said to
"gybe" or "jibe" when the wind gets on the lee side
of her fore and aft sails and blows them over. As this
in the old days of square rigs and " mizon yards " would
be peculiar to the "gyb" or "jib," the expression is
sufficiently accounted for. "To stay" is to tack; a
ship " in stays " is a ship in the act of tacking. I inter-
pret "to stay" by the verb "to stop;" "she is stay-
ing" — she is stopping; "in stays" — in the act of
stopping.* "Tack" is the weather lower corner of a
square-course when set. " To tack " may be accepted
as metaphorically expressing the action of rounding into
the wind in the direction of the tacks. " Toj^-gallant,"
says Johnson, " is proverbially applied to anything
elevated or splendid," and quotes from L'Estrange: "I
dare appeal to the consciences of top-gallant sparks."
Prior to the introduction of topgallant-sails, there was
nothing higher than the top-sails. Taking " top-gallant "
as of proverbial a^Dplication to whatever is elevated, if
not splendid, one easily sees how the top-gallant fabric
of a ship — its sail, mast, and gear — obtained the name
it is known by. " To luff" is to put the helm down, so
as to bring the vessel closer to the w^ind. This word is
manifestly taken from "loof," which in olden times was
the term applied to the after-part of the bows of a ship.
* This may seem too obvious ; but meanings may often be sought a
great deal too deep. " To bring a ship upon the stays " formerly signified
to luff till the vessel lost all way.
128 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
''Quick-work" was the name given to that part of a
ship's sides which is ahove the channel-wales. *' 'Tis
commonly perform'd with Firdeal," says an old writer,
" which don't require the fastening nor the Time to work
it, as the other parts, hut is Quicker done." The ancient
spelling gives us " halyards " for " halliards " — ropes
and tackles for hoisting sails and yards. To hale is to
haul ; so that " halyards," '* halliards," is ben trovato.*
In old marine narratives and novels the term " lady's
hole " frequently occurs. I was long bothered by this
expression, which I indirectly gathered to signify a sort
of cabin ; but in what part of the ship situated, and why
so called, I could not imagine, until in the course of my
reading I lighted upon a description of a man-of-war of
1712, in which it is stated that ''the lady's hole " is a
place for the gunner's small stores, built between the
partners of the main-mast, and looked after by a man
named " a lady," '* who is put in by turns to keep the
gun-room clean." Terms of this kind are revelations in
their way, as showing for the most part the sort of road
the marine philologist must take in his search after
originals and derivatives. A vessel is said to be
" hogged " when the middle part of her bottom is so
strained as to curve upwards. To the shape of a hog's
back, therefore, is this expression owing. But the ety-
mology of the word " sagged," which expresses the
situation of a vessel when her bottom curves downwards
through being strained, I am unable to trace. f " Gang-
* "Dead-eyes" were oriijfinally called "dead men's eyes." They are
blocks with holes in them for setting up the rigging with.
t To sag used to mean " to liang as a bag on one side." I cannot find
anything in this definition to correspond witli the sea-term. It suggests
the etymology, however, of tiie phrase "to sag to leeward," api)licable to
a ship trending leewanlly through tiic action of waves and wind whilst
sailing.
SEA PHRASES. 129
way" means the going-way— the place by which you
enter or quit a ship. "Gudgeons" — braces or eyes
fixed to the stern-post to receive the pintles of a rudder,
I find the meaning of in the old spelling for the same
thing, *'gougings " — the eye being gouged by the pintle.
"Lumpers " is a name given to dock-labourers who load
or discharge vessels ; it was their custom to contract to
do the work by the lump, and hence the word. " Steve-
dore " (one whose occupation is to stow cargoes) ori-
ginates with the Spanish stibador, likewise a stower of
cargoes. The etymology of certain peculiarly nautical
expressions in common use on shipboard must be entirely
conjectural. Take "swig off" — i.e. to pull upon a per-
pendicular rope, the end of which is led under a belaying-
pin. The old readings give it as " swag off," " swagging
off." The motion of this sort of pulling is of a swagger-
ing kind, and I have little doubt that the expression of
"swig," or "swag," comes from "swaggering."*
" Tail on, tally on ! " the order for more men to haul
upon a rope, possibly expresses its origination with
some clearness. "Tail on!" — lengthen the tail of
pullers ; " Tally on ! " — add men in a countable way.
It is usual to speak of a ship as being " under way." It
should, I think, be "under weigh." The expression is
wholly referable to the situation of a ship in the act of
moving after her anchor has been lifted or " weighed."
Similarly should it be, " the anchor is aweigh," not the
anchor is " away " — the mate's cry from the forecastle
when the anchor is atrip or off the ground.
Blocks, a very distinctive feature in the equipment of
a vessel, get their names in numerous cases from their
♦ Since this was written I find in Bailey, " To swag : to force or bear
downwards as a weight does to hang on." This settles the paternity of
" swig."
K
130 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
shape or conveniency. A cant-h\ock is so called because
in whalers it is used for the tackles which cant or turn
the whale over when it is being stripped of its blubber ;
a fi(J(Uc-h\ock, because it has the shape of that instru-
ment ; a Jly-hlock, because it shifts its position when
the tackle it forms a part of is hauled upon ; leading-
blocks, because they are used for guiding the direction
of any purchase ; /ioo/f-blocks, because they have a hook
at one end; sister-blocks, because they are two blocks
formed out of one piece of wood, and suggest a sentimental
character by intimate association ; snatch-\Aock^, because
a rope can be snatched or whipped through the sheave
without the trouble of reeving; ^a?7-blocks, because they
are fitted with a short length or tail of rope by which
they are lashed to the gear; slioulder-hlook^, because
their shape hints at a shoulder, there being a projection
left on one side of the shell to prevent the falls from
jamming. In this direction the marine philologist will
find his work all plain sailing. The sources whence the
sails, or most of them, take their appellations are readily
grasped wlien the leading features of the apparently com-
plicated fabric on high are understood. The stay-sails
obtain their names from the stays on which they travel.
" Top-sail " was so entitled when it was literally the top
or uppermost sail. The origin of the word " royal " *
for the sail above the topgallant-sail we must seek in
the fancy that found the noble superstructure of white
cloths crowned by that heaven-seeking space of canvas.
The etymology of '' hitches " is not far to seek. But
first of the '' hitch " itself. ** To hitch, to catch, to move
by jerks. I know not where it is used but in the follow-
ing passage— nor here know well what it means :
* Whoe'er olTundHi, at some unlucky iiino
Slides in a verse, or hilrhcn in a rhyme.' — Pope."
* T])i8 Hail was, on its introiluction, called " tijpgallaut-royal."
SEA PHBASES, 131
So writes Dr. Johnson. Had he looked into the old
" Voyages," he would have found '' hitch " repeated very
often indeed.* From the nautical standpoint, he defines
it accurately enough as *'to catch." Pope's use of the
term puzzled the Doctor, and he blundered into "to
move by jerks." But Pope employs it as a sailor would ;
he hitches the culprit in a line — that is, takes an in-
tellectual "turn" with his verse about him, or, as the
poet puts it, suffers the person to " hitch " himself. To
hitch is to fasten, to secure a rope so that it can run out
no further. From " hitch " proceed a number of terms
whose paternity is very easily distinguished. The
"Blackwall hitch" takes its name from the famous point
of departure of the vanished procession of Indiamen and
Australian liners; f the " harness hitch," from its form,
which suggests a bit and reins; " midshipman's hitch,"
from the facility with which it may be made ; " rolling
hitch," because it is formed of a series of rolling turns
round the object it is intended to secure, and other rolling
turns yet over its own part ; a "timber hitch," because
of its usefulness in hoisting spars and the like through
the ease of its fashioning and the security of its jamming.
The etymology of knots, again, is largely found in their
forms. " The figure-of-eight knot " is of the shape of
the figure eight ; the diamond readily suggests the knots
which bear its name (single and double diamond-knots) ;
the " Turk's-head knot " excellently imitates a turban.
To some knots and splices the inventors have given their
names, such as " EUiot's splice " and " Matthew Walker "
knot. The origin of this knot is thus related by a con-
tributor to the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle : —
" Over sixty years ago an old sailor, then drawing
* Indeed, any old Dictionary would have supplied the meaning.
t As does the " Blackwall lead," signifying a rope taken under a pin.
132 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
near to eighty years of age, said that when he was a
sailor-boy there wvas an old rigger, named Matthew
Walker, who, with his wife, lived on board an old
covered hulk, moored near the Folly End, Monkwear-
mouth Shore ; that new ships w^hen launched were laid
alongside of this hulk to be rigged by Walker and his
gang of riggers ; that also old ships had their rigging
refitted at the same place ; and that Matthw Walker was
the inventor of the lanyard knot, now known by the in-
ventor's name wherever a ship floats."
It has been suggested that *'knot," the sailor's word
for the nautical mile, springs from the small pieces of
knotted stuff, called knots, inserted in the log-line for
marking the progress of a ship through the water. It is
worth noting, however, that in the old " Voyages " the
word kjiot, as signif^dng a mile, never occurs. It seems
reasonable to suppose that it is a word not much older
than the close of the last century.
Amongst puzzling changes in the sea-language must
be classed the names of vessels. ''Yacht" has been
variously defined : as "a small ship for carrying pas-
sengers ; " as *'a vessel of state." The term is now
understood to mean a pleasure craft. " Yawl " was
formerly a small ship's boat or a wherry : it has become
the exclusive title of yachts rigged as cutters, but carry-
ing also a small sail at the stern, called a mizzen. The
" barge " was a vessel of state, furnished with sumptuous
cabins, and canopies and cushions, decorated with flags
and streamers, and propelled by a band of rowers. This
hardly answers to the top-sail barges and dumb-barges
of to-day ! The word " bark " has been Gallicized into
'' barque," possibly as a marine protest against the mis-
application as shown in these lines of Byron —
" My boat is on the slioro,
And my bark is on the sea ; '*
SEA PHRASES. 133
Or the—
" My bark is my bride ! "
of the sea-song. By bark the poets intend any kind of
ship you please : but to Jack it implies a particular rig.
The Americans write '' bark " for " barque," and rightly;
for though Falconer says that "bark is a general name
given to small ships," he also adds : '' It is, however,
peculiarly appropriated by seamen to those which carry
three masts without a mizzen top-sail." The " pink " is
another craft that has " gone over." Her very narrow
stern supplied the name, pink having been used in the
sense of small, as by Shakespeare, who speaks of " pink-
eyne," small e3^e. "The "tartan," likewise, belongs to
the past as a rig : a single mast, lateen yard and bow-
sprit. The growth of our ancestors' " frigott," too, into
the fire-eating Saucy Arethusas of comparatively recent
times, is a story full of interest.
I have but skimmed a surface whose depths should
honestly repay careful and laborious dredging. The
language of the sea has entered so largely into common
and familiar speech ashore,* that the philologist who
neglects the mariner's talk will struggle in vain in his
search after a mass of paternities, derivatives, and the
originals, and even the sense, of many every-day expres-
sions. It is inevitable that a maritime nation should
enlarge its shore vocabulary by sea terms. The elo-
quence of the forecastle is of no mean order, and in a
hundred directions Jack's expressions are matchless for
brevity, sentiment and suggestion. But the origin and
rise of the marine tongue is also the origin and rise of
* Take as a single example the expression " The devil to pay." To
" pay " is to pour melted pitch into a seam for the purposes of caulking.
The " devil " is a name given by caulkers to a particular seam hard to
get at. Hence, " There is the devil to pay, and no pitch hot."
134 A BOOK FOE TUE HAMMOCK.
the British navy, and of the fleets which sail under the
red ensign. The story of the British ship may be fol-
lowed in the maritime glossaries, and perception of the
delicate shades and lights, of the subtleties, niceties and
discriminations of the ocean dialect is a revelation of
the mysteries of the art of the shipwright, and the pro-
fession of the seaman.
THEN AND NOW,
The occasional stranding of an ocean steamer, and the
consequent transhipment or landing of the passengers,
furnishes about the best illustration to be found of the
extraordinary inconvenience that delay, in these days of
swift and sure despatch, carries with it. The immense
discomfort experienced is really a tribute to the manage-
ment of the people who undertake to convey passengers.
We are so habituated to precision, we are so used to con-
fidently count not only on the hour but on the moment
even of our arrival and departure, that a single failure
is as much felt as though something had gone wrong in
nature ; and a small shock of earthquake is not more
startling than detention for a day in a voyage round the
world.
I was in the neighbourhood of the Downs not long
since ; it w^as blowing a fresh breeze from the westward,
and I believe there could not have been less than three
hundred vessels at anchor : ships of all kinds, from the
large three-masted vessel down to the billy-boy, from the
high, light, slate-coloured steamer, down to the little
schooner loaded to her ways with salt. There they lay,
and there a goodly number of them had lain for some
days. When they should start for their three hundred
destinations depended entirely upon the wind. It was
like a picture out of an ancient sea-book, an old-world
136 A BOOK FOR TUE HAMMOCK.
pageant, with something of irony in wliat you could not
but regard as its affected correspondence with times
whose true spirit found interpretation in a large steamer
of the National line majestically stemming at ten knots
into the wind's eye. Taking the first volume that comes
to hand from a row of maritime records, and opening it
at hazard, my eye lights on this : " Jan. 6, 1771. — The
wind having shifted to the East, upwards of four hundred
and fifty sail of ships, outward bound, which had been
detained by the westerly winds many weeks, sailed from
the Downs." 1771, and I, writing this in the close of
1886, am fresh from beholding just such another spec-
tacle ! How eloquent are time's comments ! how every-
where, throughout all things, is old human nature
breaking out ! No need to wade through history to
remark the character of survivals and recurrences, to
note where the echoes die or where the reverberations
gather fresh volume. Study the mighty page of the sea.
The years, to be sure, write no wrinkles on its azure brow,
but every ripple is a library, and there are more meanings
in it than herrings. But to be windbound ! The
traveller scarcely knows the meaning of the word in this
age. To lie off Deal for a space of time longer than a
New Zealand steamer occupies in measuring the distance
betwixt Tilbury and Wellington ! Why, in these days
you may be stranded thrice, thrice transhipped, and yet
reach your destination in the time a ship took in the age
of the fine old English gentleman to drop down to
Gravesend and let go her anchor in the Downs.
Henry Fielding, when he started on his voyage to
Lisbon, left his house on Wednesday, June 26, 1754.
He arrived at Rotherhithe in two hours, and immediately
went on board, expecting to sail next morning. On
Sunday, June 30, the ship "fell down" to Gravesend.
TEEN AND NOW. 137
Next day she got as far as the Nore, and brought up.
Tuesday, July 2, they again set sail, and anchored off
Deal ; weighed on the 4th, and after a short struggle
anchored again off Deal. Started on the 6th, and on
the 11th " came to an anchor at a place called Eyde."
On the 22nd they fell down to St. Helen's, and on the
25th were off the island of Portland, " so famous for the
smallness and sweetness of its mutton," and anchored in
Torbay. Started again August 1. On the 3rd the
captain took an observation, and discovered that Ushant
bore some leagues northward from him. So that it took
Fielding thirty-eight days to sail from Eotherhithe to
Ushant ! The voyage to New Zealand is now performed
in two days less.*
But the singular slowness of this journey down the
Channel is by no means the strangest feature of Fielding's
voyage, in respect, I mean, of the contrasts established
by the great master's narrative. A man proposing a
trij) to Lisbon nowadays, can, if he likes, choose as a
ship a fabric of above three thousand tons, with a spacious
and richly decorated saloon illuminated by electric lights,
* It does not seem that the Lisbon Tacket forty-eight years later was
much superior to the vessel described by Fielding, to judge from Byron's
verses written in 1809.
" Hey day ! call you that a cabin ?
Why 'tis hardly three feet square !
Not enough to stow Queen Mab in :
Who the deuce can harbour there ?
' Who, sir ? plenty —
Nobles twenty
Did at once my vessel fill ' —
Did they ? Jesus,
How you squeeze us !
Would to God they did so still !
Then I'd 'scape the heat and racket
Of the good ship Lisbon Facket."
138 A BOOK FOE THE HAMMOCK.
a table as elegantly and hospitably furnished as that of
any first-rate hotel ashore, numerous waiters to fly at
his bidding, a comfortable bedroom fitted with a wire-
wove mattrass and a hair bed. He may quench his
thirst with choice of twenty refreshing drinks at a bar.
The captain and officers are as much distinguished for
their courtesy as for their seafaring qualities. The ship
is despatched with the punctuality of a mail train ; there
is nothing in head winds or boisterous weather to detain
her, and she commonly arrives at her destination before
she is due. Fielding's ship was a vessel not at all unlike
one of the scores of sailing colliers which to this day go
on staggering down the North Sea, laden with coals from
Newcastle or Sunderland. Her master was so great a
ruffian that Fielding has drawn the figure of no com-
pleter character of that kind in any of his novels, not
excepting " Jonathan Wild." When the novelist ventured
mildly to complain of the long detention at Eotherhithe,
this brutal skipper, in whose mouth every other word
was an oath, declared that had he known Mr. and Mrs.
Fielding were not to be pleased he would not have carried
them for five hundred pounds. "He added," says
Fielding, " many asseverations that he was a gentleman,
and despised money, not forgetting several hints of the
presents which had been made him for his cabin, of
twenty, thirty, and forty guineas, by several gentlemen,
over and above the sum for which the.y had contracted."
The size and comfort of the accommodation may be con-
jectured from what Fielding says of the captain's snoring :
*' he loved to indulge himself in morning slumbers, which
were attended with a wind-music much more agreeable
to the performer than to the hearers, especially such as
have, as I had, the privilege of sitting in the orchestra."
The passage money was five pounds a head, and it was
THEN AND NOW. 139
expected that passengers fed themselves. Fielding pro-
vided tea and wine, hams and tongues, and a number of
live chickens and sheep ; in truth, says he, "treble the
quantity of provisions which could have supported the
persons I took with me." A sample is given of the cap-
tain's politeness. I omit the wicked words. Fielding
had objected to his cabin being littered with bottles.
" Your cabin ! " repeated he many times ; " no, 'tis my
cabin ! Your cabin ! I have brought my hogs to a fair
market. I suppose, indeed, you think it your cabin and
your ship, by your commanding in it ! but 1 will com-
mand in it ! I will show the world I am the commander,
and nobody but I ! Did you think I sold you the com-
mand of the ship for that pitiful thu'ty pounds ? I wish
I had not seen you nor your thirty pounds aboard of
her." To appreciate all this it is necessary the reader
should imagine himself dying of dropsy as Fielding was,
seeking in poverty a brief prolongation of life in a more
genial climate than that of England, his wife prostrated
with sea-sickness and the agonies of tooth-ache ! It is
well that those days are dead and gone. Hundreds of
us are every year going abroad for health ; — think of
embarking on that painful quest as the invalid of a
century ago did — in a ship of probably a hundred tons
burden, commanded by a pitiless, foul-mouthed bully,
and worked by men who, to use Fielding's own expres-
sion, seemed ''to glory in the language and behaviour of
savages ! "
It is fair to admit, however, that much of the misery
endured by the sea-borne passenger was, in those and
later times, limited to the short service ships. It is true
that on the American route the vessels continued small
and wretched down to the present century. For in-
stance, you read of two hundred Highland emigrants
140 A BOOK FOR TEE BAMMOCK.
embarking for Boston in a snow — a kind of brig — of one
hundred and forty tons. A few years ago I was in com-
pany with an old gentleman who, pointing to a small
barque lying moored alongside a wharf, told me that he
sailed to New York in her in 1836, and that she was
esteemed a high-class commodious passenger-vessel
even in those days.* But it must be admitted that at
the period of Fielding's voyage there were ships trading
to the East and West Indies of a bulk and beauty which
might justly entitle them still to admiration. The craft
of both the Dutch and East India Companies were as
capacious and sea-worthy as ships of the State : their
forecastle companies were abundantly and highly dis-
ciplined ; their commanders of the roughly polite type,
excellently represented by the heroic old Commodore
Dance. Their round-houses, or great cabins, were ex-
ceedingly handsome apartments, plentifully embellished
with carpets, mirrors, flowers, hand -painted panels, and
in other ways richly decorated. Such were the ships
* The following lines, published in 1832, and therefore referring to
shipboard life of a date comparatively recent, illustrate the sufferings of
passengers in the direction of the accommodation supplied :
" Soon as the twilight closed and I was able,
I left the cuddy and the folks at table
Reading the news; and heard not what they read,
For all I wanted was to find my bed :
Which, after searching 'tween decks all around,
Under a pile of hammocks tliere I found
All my clean sheets were scattered 'mongst the boxes,
My blankets, too, that I had bought at Cox's,
Laid in a corner where a dog had lain,
And, curse the dogs 1 tliey'd stole my counterpane.
I managed to obtain a berth that night
To sleep in, but they woke me ere 'twas light ;
A noise above, and from below a groan,
I heard a voice say, ' Haag that holy-stone ! ' "
THEN AND NOW. 141
which carried CKve and Hastings, and such they remained
down to the time of the fine old Earl of Balcarres.
It was reserved apparently for the days of the
application of steam to ships for owners of vessels to
discover that passengers embarking on a short voyage
stood in as much need of comfort and security as pas-
sengers embarking on a long voyage ; and that more
misery could be packed into the run between Dover and
Calais than could be found in a journey of three years
round the globe.* How much of sufi'ering went to such
a trip as that from Rotherhithe to Lisbon may be read,
very much at large, in Fielding's wonderful narrative —
the more wonderful w^hen we reflect that the hand that
penned it was a dying man's. Nor is it hard to collect
similar experiences of the old passages to Ireland, to
Scotland, or to near ports, such as from London to
Yarmouth or from Southampton to Plymouth. The
risks, the horrors, were increased by the character of the
people who had charge of the vessels. There were no
Board of Trade examinations in those days ; no stand-
ards of excellence ; no special qualifications insisted
upon. That the British mariner was always a good
seaman I should be the last to deny ; but he swore, he
drank, he was rude, tempestuous, ruffianly, and little
* The duration of the Channel passage depended of course upon the
wind. Prince Charles and Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, sailed at six
in the morning and arrived at two in the afternoon. Sometimes the
passage occupied twelve hours, sometimes twenty-fuur. A fresh favour-
able breeze made the journey a comparatively rapid one. Tnere is a
quaint entry touching this passage in Dr. Ed. Browne's Journal (16ti3-4).
" April 6. Betimes in the morning, wee set sayle for Calais in the
packet boat; wee gave five shillings a piece for our pnssage and having
a fair winde, wee got in four houres' time, into Calais made, from whence
a shallop fetch'd us to shoare. At our entryng of the port wee pay'd
threepence a piece for our heads ; they searched my portmantle at the gate
and the custom house, for which I was to pay 5 sols."
142 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
fitted — I am speaking of the coasting trade — to do the
honours of the cabin table, or to provide by his attention
and courtesy for the needs of ladies and children.
Henry Taylor, writing in 1811, says, ''The ship in
which I engaged belonged to Hull. The captain was
one who indulged himself in bed during night, in every
situation; the mate — a middle-aged man — was much
addicted to strong liquor. In the middle of the night,
when the ship was in a perilous place, the master went
to bed, and the chief mate invited the crew into the
cabin to drink. In a short time he fell stupidly drunk
down into the steerage. The sailors dared not arouse
the master, and so took their chance of letting the
ship run on until the watch was out." On another
occasion Taylor was seaman in a ship in stormy weather.
The captain went below to his cabin and " turned in; "
the mate, standing on the windlass end, fell asleep ; a
young man at the helm suddenly cried out, " We are
running too far in ! " Taylor seized the lead, found
little more than three fathoms, and sung out to the
other to put the helm hard down. " So stupidly drunk
and asleep was the mate that we were hauling the head
yards about before he awoke." Such mariners must
stand as representatives, and how passengers suffered
when they took passage in vessels commanded by men
of this pattern is only too painfully told in the relations
of shipwrecks.
Take a single incident of a gale a century ago. A
vessel was proceeding on her voyage from Chester to
Dublin. Her provisions, which at the start had been
all too scanty for " the vast number of souls she took out
with her " — as the record describes them — had been
stowed on deck, to make room below for the passengers.
In a very short while the sea washed them overboard.
THEN AND NOW. 143
" What followed may be better imagined than expressed.
The wretches were crammed into the hold, without
light or air, and all on board the ship without bread or
water, with scarce any other prospect of seeing an end
to their sufferings but by the ship's foundering." After
forty-eight hours of misery the captain made shift to
enter a small Welsh port, but the distress of the passen-
gers continued, for the village or hamlet was too small
to afford them either provisions or accommodation.
What became of them is not told.
Contrast such an experience with the cabins and
food of a Holyhead boat — the swift journey, be the
weather what it will, the brilliant, hospitable, comfort-
able hotels on either side the water ! Or read the
account of the loss of the Union, the regular packet
between Dover and Calais, in 1792, side by side with
the description of the last steamer built for the Chatham
and Dover Kailway Company : how, through unneces-
sary delays, she had suffered the time of high tide to
slip past ; how, in endeavouring to turn to windward,
she had missed stays, fouled the south pier, and lay
beating there ; how, by a miracle, the crew and pas-
sengers were rescued, but after embarking next morning
in the Pitt, Captain Sharp, were wrecked afresh, " being
driven on shore at the north head, in a violent gale,
but fortunately no person was lost." One finds in such
narratives as this the reason why Frenchmen for ages
lived in ignorance of the true character of the English,
and wrote fancifully of boule-dogs, ros-bif, Smeetfield,
and Goddam. The fact is, they durst not cross.
Take another wreck of a Dublin boat — the Charle-
mont packet — a memorable item in the catalogue of
maritime disasters. She sailed on a Wednesday, and
managed to reach Dublin Bay, but was driven back by
144 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
the 'weather. She started afresh on Friday, with the
numher of her passengers increased to one hundred and
twenty, and was again forced to put back. The people
implored the master to make for Holyhead, hut he said
he was ignorant of the coast. After a while, however,
he yielded ; the mate, deceived by some lights, mistook
his course, the vessel struck and went to pieces. Of
the passengers, sixteen only escaped, one of them being
Captain Jones, a son of Lord Eanelagh. Think of an
Irish **mimber" in these days, thirsting to be in his
place at Westminster at a given hour, forced to take
ship after the manner of his ancestors ! A gale of wind
would make a large difference in the number of votes,
and at times might prove superior to the closure.
War-time also communicated a degree of discomfort
to voj^agers beyond all capacity of realization in this age.
It was common enough for an Indiaman to be engaged
by an enemy's ship or a privateer which, if she did not
carry and seize the vessel, repeatedly succeeded in killing
and maiming the passengers amongst others. " Two
gentlemen," you may read in an Annual Eegister of the
beginning of this century, " passengers from Holland,
landed at Margate. They affirm they were in the
evening boarded in sight of the North Foreland by an
English privateer cutter, whose crew, in disguise, con-
fined the captain and crew of the vessel in the cabin,
and then plundered it of goods to the value of ^£2000,
demanded the captain's money, and took what the pas-
sengers had." * This sort of thing furnishes engaging
* A striking example of tliis occurs in the narrative of the capture of
the A'ew<, East Indiaman, in 1801, by a French privateer off the Sand
Heads. A number of the passengers who were fighting on the quarter-
deck and poop were killed by the hand grenades of the corsair. The
Frenchmen boarded and a desperate fight ensued; but the enemy was
greatly superior in number and arms. "A dreadful carnage followed,
THEN AND NOW. 145
reading to boys when told in story-books ; but how
about the reality ? To be tossed for days and days in
sight of land; to be horribly sea-sick and barbarously
used by captains and mates : to be battened down in
foul weather in loathsome interiors, there to expire after
a little of suffocation ; to be coarsely fed and often
starved ; to be boarded and massacred and mutilated ;
to be plundered of the very coat on one's back — such
were the pleasures of the short-voyage passengers in
the good old times, of the people who went to France,
or sailed to the kingdom of Ireland, or to the Scotch
ports, or those of Flanders.
It is not pleasant, to be sure, to be delayed four and
twenty hours by the stranding of a steamer of 5000
tons. But all the same, I think we have a good deal to
be thankful for.
they showing no quarter to any one who came in their way, whether with
or without arms ; and such was their savage cruelty that they even stabbed
some of the sick in bed."
COSTLY SHIPWRECKS.
In 1808, a shrewd and evidently a *' highly-calculating "
Yankee took the trouble to express the loss suffered by
the United States in consequence of the then embargo,
in a form very nicely designed to go straight home to
the businesses and bosoms of his compatriots. The sum
amounted to forty-eight millions of dollars, which, said
the ingenious arithmetician, at seventeen dollars to the
pound weight, would weigh two millions eight hundred
and twenty-three pounds avoirdupois ; and it would
require to carry it one thousand two hundred and sixty
waggons, allowing each waggon to carry one ton ; and
the distance the waggons would occupy, allowing each
waggon seventy-two feet, would be seventeen miles.
Forty-eight millions of dollars, placed edge to edge in a
straight line, would extend over a space of one thousand
one hundred and thirty-four miles. " The above sum,"
added the computator, *' would be sufficient to furnish
one hundred and twenty-one sail of the line, completely
equipped for a twelve months' cruise." So much for
the length, weight, and worth of an embargo in 1808.
Now, what sort of result, I wonder, would come of a
calculation of the weight, and the length, and the
waggon-filling capacity of all the money — in hard cash,
in bars, and ingots — which will have been carried into
COSTLY SHIPWRECKS. 147
and out of this kingdom by ships flying the mercantile
ensign between January 1 and December 31 of this pre-
sent year ? I sometimes fancy that it needs a ship-
wreck and a great foundering of specie to make the
"average" public realize the prodigious treasure which
is at all hours of the day and night, year after year, and
year after year growing vaster in bulk and in value,
afloat under the colours flown by the ships of the British
merchant service. Let any one, during any six con-
secutive days, take note of the published records of the
bullion movements, and he would be astounded by the
results. " The Bokhara has arrived at Plymouth, from
China, with £4?2,450 in gold." " The Khedive has taken
£81,598 in specie for the East, and the Peshaivur
£65,600." " The Pekin has brought £50,012 in specie."
"The Sutlej, £16,110 from Bombay." "The Galicia,
from Valparaiso, £80,000 in silver." " The Iberia, from
Australia, £58,000 in gold." " The Elbe, from the Eiver
Plate, £93,379 in specie." "The Kaisar-i-Hind,
£46,000 in bar silver, and £15,000 in bar gold." " The
Eider, from New York, with £5920 in specie." " The
Trave, from New York, £7941." " The Carthage, with
50,000 sovereigns from Melbourne." " The Riiapehu,
from Wellington (N.Z.), with £10,000." And so on,
and so on, day after day, month after month. Think of
a year of figures to which the contribution of a single
day may mean as much as half a million ! But supple-
ment this huge floating pile of gold and silver with the
value of the cargoes, with the produce of the east and
west and south, the tea, the silks, the cotton, the
tobacco — the hundreds and thousands of packages for
which the despairing cataloguist can find no better name
than " sundries." Where be the old galleons, the old
l)late-ships, the monstrous castellated egg-shells, with
148 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
their millions of pieces of eight,* alongside the Aladdin-
like metal holds, stored with the mintage of the four
corners of the earth, which, in these days, the propeller
is steadily threshing through the billows of all the
world's seas ?
Yet my veneration for the past would make me very
earnestly distinguish. It is the number in our time
that makes the wonder ; the thought of several hundreds
of great ocean steamers — English, French, Italian,
Dutch — all afloat at once, heading along the thirty-two
points, every one of them carrying a fortune, small or
great— £10,000 or £100,000— in money, among the
other commodities which form her freight ; it is the
fancy of this aggregate wealth as compared with the
cargoes of the treasure ships of other times which gives
to the sea-borne specie of this age its prodigious nume-
rical significance. But, ship for ship, our grandsires
beat us. You never hear in our time of a single steamer
carrying the load of gold, silver, plate, and treasure
that was heaped into the hold of the butter-box of the
last and earlier centuries. Let me cite an instance or
two.
On February 28, 1769, there arrived at Lisbon a
ship-of-war, named the Mother of God, from Eio Janeiro,
having made the voyage in one hundred and twenty days.
She had on board nine millions of crusades in gold, two
millions and a half of crusades in diamonds, and about
* A strange use was made of this coin by Sir Joliu Kompthorne. He
was attacked hy a large Spunisli sliip of war, and fouglit till all his
ammunition was spent : " Then," says Camjibell in his " Lives," " re-
membering that he had several large bags of pieces of ei^dit on board, he
thought tli<!y might better serve to annoy than enrich the enemy, and,
therefore, ordered liis men to load their gnus with silver, wliich did such
execution on the Spanish rigging, tliat, if liis own ship liad not been dis-
abled by a lucky shot, he hud in all probability got clear."
COSTLY SHIPWRECKS. 149
a hundred thousand ''crowns tournois " in piastres,
making in the whole twenty-nine millions and fifty
thousand livres tournois. So much for a single ship.
In 1774 two Spanish ships from Vera Cruz and the
Havannah arrived with twenty-two millions of crowns,
exclusive of merchandize valued roundly at twenty-
seven millions of crowns. Such examples could be mul-
tiplied. Of the cargo of an English Indiaman in 1771,
one item alone — a diamond in the rough — was valued
at ^6100,000, *' coming to be manufactured here on
account of one of the Asiatic Nabobs," and on the private
freight of this vessel I read that policies of insurance
were opened at Lloyd's Coffee House at a high premium,
so costly were her contents and so doubtful her safe
arrival.*
In those early days of extraordinary long voyages,
clumsy ships, and of a navigation rendered not a little
insecure by the blunders or the conjectures of the chart-
makers, we should expect to meet with a great number
of costly disasters, the more since it was the custom to
commit to a single hold the treasure that would in this
day be distributed among eight or ten great and powerful
steamers. Yet this sort of shipwreck is not nearly so
frequently occurring in marine annals as one would
suppose. When it happens it takes an historical sig-
nificance much more profound than that which attaches
to loss of life. The memory of the foundering of
^6200,000 of silver and gold will survive the drowning
of a thousand souls in a coup. The muse of history has
much in her of the philosophy of the cynic who declared
that a man will forget his wife, his children, yea, and
his country ; but he will never forget the person who
* In estimating the expressed worth of the early cargoes the relative
value of money must be borne in mind.
J50 A BOOK FOR TEE HAMMOCK.
borrowed £5 from him and forgot to repay it. There
was La Lutinc, for instance. When some time ago
there was talk of a proposal to recover the money that
went down in her, everybody, somehow or other, seemed
to remember the loss of such a ship, though it happened
above eighty years ago. But suppose it had been the
Buckinghamshire or the Windsor Castle f
Yet, as a costly shipwreck. La Lutine deserves a
reference. She was a thirty-two gun vessel, commanded
by Captain Skynner, and ^she went ashore on the bank
of the Fly Island Passage on the night of October 9,
1799. At first she was reputed to have had £G00,000
sterling in specie on board. This was afterwards con-
tradicted by a statement that "the return from the
Bullion Ofiice makes the whole amount about £140,000
sterling." "If," I find in a contemporary account,
" the wreck of the unfortunate Lutine should be dis-
covered, there may be reason to hope for the recovery of
the bullion on board of her. In the reign of James II.
some English adventurers fitted out a vessel to search
for and weigh up the cargo of a rich Spanish ship
which had been lost on the coast of South America.
They succeeded, and brought home £300,000, which
had been forty-four years at the bottom of the sea.
Captain Phipps, who commanded, had £20,000 for his
share, and the Duke of Albemarle £90,000. A medal
was struck in honour of this event in 1687." *
* The story is told at length in Beckmann's " History of Inventions
and Discoveries." The autlior speaks of William Phipps as the son of a
blacksmith, born in America. He was bred as a shipwright at Boston,
and formed a project for searching and unloading a rich Spanish ship
sunk on the coast of Ilispaniola. Charles II. gave him a fhip ; he sailed
in 1G8:^, hut to no purpose. The Duke of Alhernuirle afterwards backed
him, and he started again in 10S7, with the result as told above. Much
about this time several coiupauies were formed and obtained exclusive pi ivi-
COSTLY SHIPWRECKS. 151
There was a very costly wreck in 1767. She was a
Dutch East Indiaman, and foundered in a storm within
three leagues of the Texel, taking down all hands but
six, and ^500,000. But it was not necessary that a
vessel should have so much as an ounce of precious
metal in her to be a rich ship. One of the costliest
cargoes ever carried was found in 1764 in the galleon
Santissima Trinidad ; for she had on board the vast
collection of foreign curiosities formed by Governor
Pigot and shipped at Madras, consisting of wild beasts,
serpents, and so forth. There was a great loss in 1773.
The Dons again ! You would say that the price of four
such Armadas as that of 1588 went down in the last
century alone in the shape of gold, silver, and plate.
She was the annual register-ship, as the term then
was, and had in her five hundred thousand piastres and
ten thousand ounces of gold on account of the king,
and twice that sum on the merchants' account, making
her a very rich ship. She foundered during the pas-
sage, and no man escaped to tell how and when. In
the same year the Dutch lost the Antonietta, an India-
man, and with her sank ^0700,000 sterling, besides jewels
of great value.
In 1871 a Scotchman, named Johnston, patented a
treasure safe for ships. His proposal was that the safe
should be suspended at the ship's davits, ready at an
instant's notice to be lowered into the sea. He contrived
that the safe should detach itself in the event of a sudden
calamity, and float off to be picked up by some passing
leges for fishing up goods on certain coasts by means of divers. At the
head of one of these was the Earl of Argyle. The divers of this company
worked off the Isle of Mull, and descending to a depth of sixty feet,
remained there sometimes a whole hour, and then brought up gold
chains, money, etc. But the returns were trifling.
152 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
ship, or washed ashore. The idea was mgenious ; but
it is not every captain who would relish the thought of
an unsinkable chest full of gold and jewels hanging at
his davits ready to the hand of the first daring Jack who
should depend upon a black night and the navigable
qualities of the chest to come safely off with a few
hundreds of thousands of pounds. Yet what pickings
the deep would have offered — would still offer — if the
money and jewels carried by ships were stowed in con-
trivances which floated after the vessel was gone ! The
mind is oppressed by the splendid possibilities the fancy
suggests. Here we have something beyond the dreams
of avarice. Where might not such chests be sought
with large promise of dazzling discovery ? The ocean is
a miser. Like some old woman found dead of starvation,
with guineas and bank-notes stitched away in her rags,
is the sea in her beggarly art of concealing treasure
among the squalid weediness of her shores. " Some
time ago," says an old report, " on the arrival of the
Two Sisters, Captain O'Neale, of Bristol, at Dominica, a
chest containing upwards of £40,000 in Portugal gold
fell overboard as they were putting it into a boat, and
was lost in ten fathoms of water." They had nothing
but Dr. Halley's diving-bell in those times, and the
money lies at this hour where it sank, only deeper per-
haps, and very much out of sight. How such a disaster
would be dealt with now may be known by reference to
the comparatively recent recovery of some hundi-ed
thousand pounds off the Grand Canary from the hold of
a steamer sunk, if my memory is correct, in about thirty
fathoms of water.
There was a curious kind of smuggling practised
aboard the old ships, and there is reason to believe that
in many instances the actual value of the treasure in
COSTLY SEIPWRECKS. 1.^3
foundered vessels was never declared. An example is
given of a Spanish register ship falling into the hands of
the British. Certain discbveries determined the captors
not to sell her, but to break her up themselves, believing
that by so doing they might find valuables artfully con-
cealed. The duty on gold was high, and to evade it
many of the bars of that metal had been thinly coated
with pewter and denominated "fine pewter" in the
invoice, by order of the Spanish merchants. The par-
ticulars of the freight are worth giving, as illustrative of
the cargoes of that age (1793) and of the great value
entrusted to a single ship. There were six hundred and
ninety-four cases of silver, each containing three thousand
dollars; thirty-three cases of gold, besides plate and
jewels of the value of £500,000 ; seventy-two hundred of
redwood ; sixteen cases of silver in bars ; two thousand
two hundred and sixty-two quintals of bark of different
weights ; two thousand two hundred and forty quintals
of cocoa ; four thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven
cases of pepper ; a great number of cases of lead, wool,
sugar, medical roots, gum of cocoa, together with hides,
skins, barrels of honey, and eleven cases of the various
productions of Peru. *' This cargo," says the account,
" has been two years in collecting from different parts of
the coast, and is without exception the richest that ever
was trusted on board of any single ship. It is impossible
to form a just estimate of its value, but it is certainly
not overrated when it is stated as twelve or thirteen
hundred thousand pounds. Think of the costly wreck
such a vessel as this would have made ! and certainly, so
far as her freighters were concerned, she was as good as
foundered when she was captured.
The following illustration of the old methods of con-
cealing treasure I find in a little sea-book published
154 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
anonymously in 1834 : " I once went, with others, on
board a prize we had taken to make the usual search.
After rummaging the sail-room, I got into the store-room,
where I saw a case filled with bran, and thrusting my
hand among it, for I thought it might prove a hiding-
place, I found something hard wrapped up in a piece
of blue cloth. Not having leisure to examine it at the
moment, I slipped it into the pocket of my jacket, and
was coming away, when I trod upon something, and
looking down at the place, saw a potatoe that I had
crushed with an English guinea peeping from its hiding
place. I picked up all I could and jumped into the boat.
. . . The murphies yielded me about thirty guineas ; and
when I undid the parcel there came from its swaddling
clothes a most beautiful gold watch set round with
diamonds."
Great in its way was that treasure of seven million
five hundred thousand dollars and the value of a million
and a half in cochineal and other effects which five men-
of-war, under the command of Bear- Admiral Don Adrian
Caudron Cantin, brought to Cadiz in 1775, and the one
thousand five hundred octaves of gold, two hundred
thousand crusades of silver, and the eighty serons of
cochineal which, in the same year, were brought by a
ship to Lisbon from the Brazils. In more modern times
the costliness of shipwreck is to be found in the destruc-
tion of the fabric and her cargo rather than in the loss
of the treasure on board. Whatever may have been the
worth of a galleon, as a shij), there need be no scruple
in concluding that when brand-new her value would be
but that of a toy in comparison with such ocean mail
boats as now convey specie and *' valuables." The sink-
ing of an Atlantic, Indian, or Australian liner — even
with a clean hold — would represent an immense treasure
COSTLY SHIPWRECKS. 155
if told in dollars, ducats, or piastres ; and when you add
the cargo of such a craft along with the passengers'
luggage, which must often include a quantity of jewellery
expressing many thousands of pounds alone, some
astonishing figures would be the result. As a matter of
fact, our later shipwrecks do not point to the same heavy
losses in specie and articles manufactured out of the
precious metals as were sustained in former times. The
destruction or capture of a single ship in the last and in
preceding centuries would frequently signify the sink-
ing of a million to a million and a half of pounds sterling
in chests of pieces of eight, in ingots and bars, and in
religious decorations, and this without reference to the
cargo, the value of which may be inferred when we hear
of tea selling at two guineas a pound.*
The Royal Charter is the most notable modern instance
of the wreck of a " treasure " ship that I can just now
call to mind. She left Australia with £350,000 in her.
Of this sum, says Charles Dickens in his chapter on this
dreadful shipwreck in the " Uncommercial Traveller,"
£300,000 worth were recovered. At the time of the
novelist's visit to the spot where she had driven ashore,
"the great bulk of the remainder," writes he, ** was
surely and steadily coming up. Some loss of sovereigns
there would be, of course ; indeed, at first sovereigns
had drifted in with the sand, and been scattered
far and wide over the beach like sea shells, but most
other golden treasure would be found. So tremendous
had the force of the sea been when it broke the ship
* " Tea was first imported from Holland by the Earls of Arlington and
Ossory in 1666 ; from their ladies the women of quality learned its use.
Its price was then £3 a pound, and continued the same to 1707. In 1715
we began to use green tea, and the practice of drinking it descended to
the lower class of the people." "Johnson's Works," vol. 11. p. 335. At
the beginning of this century tea was 25s, a pound.
156 A BOOK FOR TEE EAMMOCK.
that it had hoaten one great ingot of gold deep into a
strong and heavy piece of her soHd iron work, in which
also several loose sovereigns, that the ingot had swept
in before it, had been found as firmly embedded as though
the iron had been liquid when they had been forced
there." This is a curiosity of disaster, but mightily
suggestive of the sea's miserly trick of concealing her
plunder. Meanwhile, how much gold and silver, minted
and otherwise, is annually afloat ? How many millions
are yearly borne over the deep to and from India,
America, Australia, China, and South Africa, by English
steamers alone ? There should be no difficulty in making
the calculation, which, when arrived at, must surely
yield a fine idea of the treasure over which the red flag
flies, and an excellent notion of the trust that is reposed
in the British shipmaster, and of the high and sterling
qualities which go to the fulfilment of it.
CURIOSITIES OF DISASTERS AT SEA.
An old sailor once said to me, *'If I were to write down
one quarter of w^hat I've seen, heard, and gone through,
the reader would throw away the book, calling me all
the evil names he could put his tongue to, afore he had
read half of what I'd writ." I remember an ingenious
reviewer of a nautical romance affirming that it was
impossible the author could be correct in representing
such a sea as he described as running off Agulhas in
a gale from the north-west, because, said the critic,
" we have repeatedly crossed the Channel between
Folkestone and Boulogne, in all sorts of weather, with-
out ever having witnessed such waves as we are here
told about." Yes, sailors see and do strange things ;
they spend their lives on a wild and wonderful element,
and are a community who generate gnats at which the
landsman is prone to strain. We hear of amazing
escapes on shore, but, surely, they cannot be so astonish-
ing as the perils which men encounter at sea, or we
should hearken with less incredulous souls when Jack
coils his legs up under him and relates his experiences.
Some time ago I read what the newspapers called
*' a terrible story of shipwreck." An American schooner
came across six men washing about on the top of a deck-
house. They were the survivors of a crew of Spaniards
whose barque had foundered six days before. When the
158 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
captain of her found that his vessel was hound to sink
he set his men to work to make a raft. They were thus
employed when the harque all on a sudden turned over
and sank. Seven of the poor fellows were sucked down
with the hull ; the rest, finding the deck-house afloat,
crawled on to it. For five days and nights they were
beaten here and there by the seas, without drink and
without food. Ashore the dangers a man confronts and
escapes may be terrible ; but the ground he treads is
what he is born to : peril is localized or limited. He
is imprisoned in a mine ; he is menaced by suffocation
or starvation. He loses his way on a mountain ; he is
threatened by death from exhaustion or by stumbling
over the edge of a height. He is in the heart of a i)anic-
stricken crowd ; he stands to have his ribs crushed in
and his lungs choked. He is in a house on fire ; he
must be burnt if he cannot escape. To be sure, danger
on shore is as little agreeable as it would be in the air
or under the waters ; but a man may commonly say of
peril on land what he cannot say of peril at sea, that he
knows the form of it and what shape his destruction will
take if he cannot elude it.
But at sea you have a combination of forces working
against a creature who when on the ocean is as much
out of his element as the shark that ogles him would be
if lifted high and dry on to a ship's deck. Take those
six Spaniards washing about on top of a deck-house.
What was to be their fate ? Were they to be drowned,
or frozen, or starved, or be picked up raving mad with
thirst and other sufferings ? Think of the cruelty of the
sea — fiendish in spirit as any torturer of the good old
days of the Inquisition — tossing that deck-house with a
horrible human-like dehglit in the sport that kept those
white-lipped soaking rags of men holding on for their
CURIOSITIES OF DISASTERS AT SEA. 159
lives ! Consider a little the malignant confederacy of
billows wasting their giant weight, one after another,
ceaselessly, restlessly, one after another, upon those
miserable men made mere mocking tumblers of by the
play of the waters, and looking up to God out of the
supreme agony of their ocean struggles ! If the surge
could not tear them from their desperate hold it left
them drenched to the marrow, and fit for the freezing
part that it was the business of the wind to play. Or, if
the wind left their hearts warm enough for life it was
only that hunger should not be balked in the lodgment
of its own particular anguish.
For my part I can well understand why landsmen are
incredulous when sailors who have suffered begin to talk.
There is internal evidence to suggest that when the
Wedding Guest left the Ancient Mariner, unpleasantly
fascinated as he had been by his eye, he went to the
people who had been making merry, and informed them
that he had been detained by a yarn that was fit only
for the marines. Why, even in the year 1800, Sir
Samuel Standidge was apologizing for writing to say
that he had met ice in the month of May in the Atlantic
forty-five degrees north ; his excuse being that it was
true. The Wedding Guest flourished in an earlier reign
when not very much was known about bergs, and one
thinks of him as sneering when he told his friends that
the Ancient Mariner said the roar of the ice breaking
up was like "noises in a swound."
In the "Pacha of Many Tales," Captain Marryat
exaggerates the proverbial "twister" of the marine.
But how many experiences have sailors suffered incom-
parably more surprising than the most ingenious of the
fictions in Marryat's book ; and more miraculous in the
machinery of fortuitous escape than could ever occur to
IGO A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
the most daring among the old Arabian inventors ? There
are instances of disasters so compHcated by misfortune
as to become sheer eccentricities of peril. I remember
being much struck with a paragraph I came across in
a newspaper of the last century : " Captain Lamire,
commander of the Heureux, on April 26, being in the
lat. of one deg. 2 min., and 21 deg. 28 min. long. W.,
reckoning from Teneriff, several of his crew, and a great
number of negros on board, were seized with a disorder
of their eyes, many of whom were blind for ten or twelve
days ; nine lost their sight entirely, and seven or eight
the sight of one eye. Accidents of this kind, it is said,
are not unprecedented in latitudes so near the line, but
the great number affected at the same time exceeds
anything that was ever heard of before." Had that old
ship carried such slender companies as vessels now go
manned with, who shall say, in the face of the numbers
who were blinded, that all hands would not have lost
their sight ? What object could the imagination fasten
upon more dreadful and tragical than a ship in charge
of a blind crew? What possibilities of harrowing de-
scription would such a subject offer to the romancer !
There is preserved a curious account of the Hon.
John O'Brien, a brother or near relative to the Earl of
Inchiquin. He was so incessantly in jeopardy from one
cause or another that his career expresses in perfection
the eccentricity of disaster. A few examples will hint at
his story. He was a lieutenant in the Navy in 1747, and
his first mishap befel him off the coast of India, where
his ship was wrecked, all hands perishing with the
exception of O'Brien and four sailors. He embarked in
a vessel to return to Europe, but was cast away near the
Cape of Good Hope, and was the only one of a great
number who contrived to escape with his life. The
CURIOSITIES OF DISASTERS AT SEA. 161
Dutch Governor, discovering . him to be a " person of
honour," suppHed him with every necessary for continu-
ing the voyage, and gave him a cabin in one of the
homeward bound East Indiamen. The Governor of
another settlement, who was going home in the same
ship, finding himself rather straitened for room on
account of the number of his own family, begged for the
exclusive use of the vessel for his suite and baggage. The
Governor of the Cape complied, and procured accom-
modation for O'Brien in another vessel that was to sail
on the same day. Shortly afterwards the ships put to sea,
and it is recorded as an absolute and well assured fact
that, within twenty-four hours of their leaving the Cape,
O'Brien saw the ship he had quitted founder in a gale of
wind, taking down with her every creature on board !
A few years later this fortune-hunted gentleman was
stationed on board the Dartmouth of fifty guns. She fell
in with the Glorioso, a Spanish man-of-war, and
engaged her for some hours. O'Brien was at his station
between decks, when the gunner ran up to him, and,
with wildness and despair in his look, cried out, "Oh,
sir ! the powder-room ! " Lieutenant O'Brien heard no
more, for the ship instantly blew up ! Such a catastrophe
as this, you would conjecture, must effectually put an
end to O'Brien. In fact, if I were to write his life I
should skip this little disaster for fear that it should
destroy the reader's faith in the other parts of the story.
It is true, nevertheless, that O'Brien, instead of perishing,
was found floating about on the carriage of a gun. It
was supposed that he had been blown through a port-
hole with one of the guns. He was picked up by a
privateer named the Duke, and as a proof that the
natural sprightliness and gaiety of his character was
superior to so slight an accident as that of being blown
M
162 A HOOK FOB THE UAMMOCK.
up in a man-of-war, he is recorded to have said to the
captain of the Duke, speaking with great gravity, "You
will excuse me, sir, for appearing before you in such a
dress ; but the reason is I left my ship so hurriedly that
1 had no time to put on better clothes." But enough
of the Hon. John O'Brien.
Though it might not be wise in a romancer to repre-
sent his hero as being blown up in a ship without injury,
there are, for all that, several instances in the old
accounts — and one or two, I think, in more recent annals
— of mariners and others who have gone up like rockets
and come down all alive, perfectly sound, if not in high
spirits. Monsieur de Montauban, who underwent this
experience off the coast of Guinea, wrote a very thrilling
account of it. In his case there were two ships, both of
which exploded simultaneously. " The reader," says he,
*' must figure to himself our horror at two ships blowing
up above two hundred fathoms into the air, where there
was formed, as it were, a mountain of fire, water, and
wreck; the awfulness of the explosion below, and the
cannons going off in the air ; the rending of masts and
planks, the tearing of the sails and cordage, added to the
cries of the men." He was on the forecastle giving
orders when the ship took fire, and attributes his pre-
servation to his being blown so high as to go clear of the
volcanic wreckage. In truth, he seems to have topped
the whole blazing mass, and then fallen into clear water,
under whose surface he remained so long that he was
nearly spent before he rose.
The Moskito Indian and Alexander Selkirk are re-
presentative names for preservation from marooning — a
situation idealized by Defoe. The *' eight-and-twenty
years all alone in an uninhabited island on the coast of
America, near the mouth of the great river of Oroonotjue,"
CURIOSITIES OF DISASTERS AT SEA. 163
is very well for poor old Eobinson Crusoe, whose life and
strange, surprising adventures are, perhaps, chiefly
imaginary in this span of time allotted to them by the
great master of English fiction. The longest period of
" all-aloneness " I have encountered in my reading may
be found in the memoirs of Captain Edward Thompson,
who was ''born at Hull, in Yorkshire, of a respectable
family." But on the whole we must count him a more
real person than that other gentleman of York, mariner.
Thompson was the author of "A Sailor's Letters," and
in a communication in which he proposes to write his
life, he says, " I shall begin like Daniel Defoe, with
"I, E. T., was born of respectable parents in Kingston-
upon-Hull, from whence I sailed in the Love and Unity,
(whom God preserve), anno 1750, on a voyage to Green-
land." Whether his discovery was inspired by his ad-
miration of Defoe, or whether he states a fact in what he
records, I cannot say. He was an officer in her Majesty's
ship Stirling Castle, and being at Tobago, he wandered
into the woods in search of wild oranges. Whilst roam-
ing here and there he discovered a hut, the inhabitant of
which, a venerable looking man, addressed him in
French, and, to his astonishment, declared that he had
resided twenty-one years in that solitary situation, having
scarcely an}^ communication with a human being ! He
told Thompson that the Indians occasionally called at
his hermitage whilst hunting, gave him part of their
game, and shaved his beard off with a knife, but he never
paid enough attention to their language to converse in
it. He had been a priest at Martinique, but having in
some way given offence, he was seized in the night and
transported to Tobago. He declined all offers to convey
him to Europe, declaring that he was reconciled to his
all-alone life and happier than he could be in any other.
164 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
In this, as in other respects, this singular person cannot
be said to have resembled Crusoe.
I find the seeds of a romance of the true old pattern
combined ^Yith what may justly be termed a curiosity of
disaster in this century-old report: *'A vessel coming
lately from Newcastle to London at sea, within five miles
of the Port of Shields, took up a wooden cradle with a
child in it. The child was alive and well." The old is
for ever echoing into the new. Only the other day I
read of a boy a few years old going adrift in a boat. He
was hunted after in all directions, but to no purpose.
The parents were said to be inconsolable. The issue of
this thing I know not ; but who does not pray that the
little fellow was found and restored ? When you think
of that old collier jogging along, picking up the cradle
w^ith the bairn in it, the past re-shapes itself ; you see
the quaint wooden cradle, the wondering eyes of the
child staring into the amazed faces of the rough Jacks,
whose touched hearts give a new impetus to the working
of the jaws upon their quids. *' The cradle," says the
account, " is supposed to have been carried to sea by an
inundation in one of the places adjacent." There should
have been found a good subject for a poet, I think, even
in those bewigged days of heroic measures and Johnsonian
periods, in the meeting of the mother and the babe
delivered back to her love by that old ocean whose
tenderness is sometimes as marvellous as its cruelty is
terrible and inexpressible.
Another curiosity of disaster, hardly credible, though
it has been often enough related, may be found in the
story of the brig Nerina,
She sailed from Dunkirk on Saturday, October 31,
1840, in charge of Pierre Everaert, with a cargo of oil
^nd canvas for Marseilles, having on board a crew of
CURIOSITIES OF DISASTERS AT SEA. 165
seven persons, including the captain and his nephew, a
boy fourteen years of age. At seven o'clock in the even-
ing of Monday, November 16, she was lying to in a gale
of wind, when she was struck by a heavy sea and turned
bottom up. There was one man on deck at the time ;
he was instantly di'owned. There were three seamen in
the forecastle, two of whom, by seizing hold of the wind-
lass bitts, succeeded in getting up close to the kelson,
and so kept their heads above water. The third, letting
go his hold, was drowned, and his body was never again
seen. The other two, discovering that the bulkhead
between the forecastle and the hold was started and that
the cargo had fallen down on the deck, drew themselves
towards the stern of the ship, with their faces close to
the kelson. When the vessel capsized, the captain,
mate, and boy were in the cabin. The mate wrenched
open the trap hatch in the deck, cleared a vacant space
there, and then scrambling up into it, he took the boy
from the hands of the captain, whom he assisted to
follow them. In about an hour they were joined by the
two men from forward, who managed to scrape along
the kelson to where they were. They are now described
as five individuals, closely cooped together, so that as
they sat they were obliged to bend their bodies for want
of height above them, whilst the water reached as high
as their waists. The only relief they could obtain was
by one of them at a time stretching at full length on the
barrels in the hold, taking care, however, to keep close
to the kelson, where the air was. The 17th and 18th
passed. They were without food and without water,
and, as might be supposed from their situation, as
certainly doomed as if they already lay dead at the
bottom of the sea. They could distinguish between day
and night by the Hght in the sea that was reflected up
166 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
from the cabin skyliglit and thence into the space where
thej^ hiy through the hatch in the cabin floor. In the
middle of Wednesday night, the 18th, the vessel struck.
At the third blow the stern dropj^ed to such an extent
that the men were forced forward towards the bows.
Whilst making their way one of them fell down through
the cabin floor and skylight, and was drowned. They
noticed presently that the water was ebbing ; on which
the mate dropped into the cabin to seek for a hatchet
that they might cut their way out, but, the water suddenly-
rising, he had to fly again to his former shelter. At last
the day dawned, and then, perceiving a point of rock
sticking into the vessel, they knew that she was hard and
fast ashore. The quarter of the ship being stove, the
captain looked through the rent there and cried out in
French, " Thank God, my children, we are saved ! I see
a man on the beach." Shortly afterwards the man
approached and put in his hand, which the captain
seized, to the terror of the fellow, who nearly died of
fright. Several persons arrived, the side of the vessel
was opened, and the four men were liberated, after having
been entombed for three days and three nights.
Any reference to such a subject as the curiosities of
marine disaster must include this amazing narrative,
thrice told as it may be. As an escape there is nothing
to be compared to it in the maritime annals, though to
be sure there is no lack of examples of miraculous salva-
tion from capsizals. The spot where the Neriua struck
is Porthellick, in St. Mary's, Scilly. Two incidents in
connection with this wreck increase the wonder of it.
First, the want of fresh air threatening the men with
death by suffocation, the mate worked with the despera-
tion of a dying man almost incessantly for two days and
one night to cut a hole with his knife through the hull.
CURIOSITIES OF DISASTEES AT SEA. 167
The knife broke ; but for this the hole would have been
made, with the result that the vessel must have instantly
foundered owing to the liberation of the air that alone
kept her buoyant. Second, it was afterwards shown that
during the afternoon of Wednesday, the 18th, the wreck
had been fallen in with, at about five miles from the island,
by two pilot boats which towed her for an hour, but the
ropes parting, the night approaching, and the weather
looking dirty, they abandoned her, little conceiving that
there were human beings alive in her hold. Had the
vessel not been towed, the set of the current would have
carried the wreck clear of the islands into the Atlantic !
The relater of this remarkable story states in a note
that the account was furnished to him by Mr. Eichard
Pearce, Consular Agent for France. ''As this gentle^
man," he adds, ''took great care in his examination of
the case, there cannot be a doubt of its correctness
throushout."
INFERNAL MACHINES.
The invention of a small fabric that sinks under water
and rises to the surface at the will of her occupants
should indicate a large approach towards the perfecting
of the whole theory and practice of submarine warfare.
Such a deadl}^ dangerous engine of destruction has been
tried and not found wanting. Unhappily, I think ; for
unless the murderous inventions of our times are ulti-
mately to render warfare impossible, by occasioning
a common dread because of the swiftness and magnitude
of the butchery — a probability not to be contemplated —
one cannot but wish that the patentee would suffer some
of the old elements of manhood to dignify and animate
the conflicts of fleets and armies, by a succession of
failures in the direction of a hidden and annihilating
machinery. " So violent it is," writes honest old
Camden, of the cannon, "in breaking, tearing, bruising,
renting, razing, and ruinating walles, towers, castles,
ramparts, and all that it encountereth ; that it might
seem to have been invented by practice of the Devill to
the destruction of mankinde as the onely enemy of true
valour and manfull couragiousness, by murthering afar
off." Murthering afar off! very different, indeed, as a
means of exemplifying courage from the hand-to-hand
conflict of the sword and the spear. So Camden implies,
speaking of the cannon of his time, a weapon that even
INfEBNAL MACHINES. 169
the long-tailed guardians of the Taku forts twenty-five
years ago would have disdained for their own jingalls.
But what would that mostly learned Clarenceux, King of
Arms, have found to say on the subject of "true valour
and manfull couragiousness " had his theme, instead of
the primitive engine whereof the effects as he himself
describes were " destruction, violence, fury, and roaring
crack," been an electric boat in which men could go about
their duties whilst under water, in which they could
softly and hiddenly sneak under the keel of an ironclad
of twelve thousand tons, containing a compan}^ of perhaps
a thousand souls, and attach to her a machine that —
after they had withdrawn, still under water, to a safe
distance-^ would blow her and her people into fragments ?
This craft is no mere fancy ; she is an accomplished fact,
as the French say. It is not long since that the inventors
tested her in the West India Docks. She is a cigar-
shaped boat, sixty feet long, and displaces about fifty
tons. They sank and raised her readily, kept her under
water for some time, and then propelled her. I read
that a supply of air — of fresh air — large enough to last
for three days, may be stored in this terrible boat, so that
the Jonahs who man her will be perhaps better off in the
matter of oxygen or ozone than are the occupants of the
common above-sea forecastle, even when their hatch is
open.
Of course the electric feature is the novelty in this
latest invented diving boat. But as a fabric that can be
made to float or sink, as those who are inside her may
choose, this screw-craft is by no means the first of her
kind. In 1801 Fulton experimented with what he called
a Bateau- Poisson, or fish-boat at Eouen. The first
account of this invention says that the boat sank and
rose seven or eight times. The longest period during
170 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
"wliicli it remained under water was eight minutes. The
machine was entered by means of an opening shaped
like a tunnel. '' When those who conducted the ex-
periment wished to descend into the river, and disappear,
they let down this opening and lost all communication
with the external air. The inventors of this ingenious
machine are Americans, the principal of whom is called
Fulton. Three of them went into the boat, and remained
during the experiment. The Prefect and a vast con-
course of spectators were present." * A fuller account,
written by St. Aubin, was printed in 1802. The boat he
inspected was in some respects similar to the one that
had been exhibited at Eouen, Havre, and Brest. He
speaks of it as a nautilus, or diving boat, invented by
Mr. Fulton. It could carry eight men, and hold pro-
visions enough for this number of persons to last twenty
days. The inventor had contrived a reservoir for air
large enough to enable the crew to live under water for
eight hours. The boat was of sufficient strength to
plunge one hundred feet deep, and to bear the pressure
of water at that depth. She was furnished with two
sails, and when above water presented the appearance
of an ordinary boat. Fulton, in making his experiments
at Havre, not only remained an hour under water with
his companions, but held his boat parallel to the horizon
at any given depth. He proved the compass-points as
correctly under water as on the surface, and while under
water "the boat made way at half a league an hour, by
means contrived for that purpose." At this point M. St.
Aubin indulges in the following prophetical exclamation :
" It is not twenty years since all Europe was astonished
at the first ascension of men in balloons ; perhaps in a
few years they will not be less surprised to see a flotilla
♦ Naval Chronicle, 1805.
INFERNAL MACHINES. 171
of diving boats, which, ou a given signal, shall, to avoid
the pursuit of an enemy, plunge under water, and rise
again several leagues from the place where they de-
scended. The invention of balloons has hitherto been
of no advantage, because no means have been found to
direct their course. But if such means could be dis-
covered what would become of camps, cannon, fortresses,
and the whole art of war ? " He then proceeds to point
out that Fulton's craft has the advantage of sailing like
a common boat, and also of diving when it is pursued.
It was therefore fit for carrying secret orders to succour
a blockaded port and to examine the force and position
of an enemy in their own harbours. He further tells us
that Fulton had already added to his boat a machine by
means of which he blew up a large craft in the port of
Brest. He concludes : " What will become of maritime
wars, and where will sailors be found to man ships of
war, when it is a physical certainty that they may every
moment be blown into the air by means of a diving-boat
against which no human foresight could guard them ? "
St. Aubin does not say how the boat was sunk and raised,
and how it was propelled, when sunk, at the rate of
a mile and a half in an hour. But that Fulton invented
such a boat as the Frenchman describes is indisputable,
and it is equally certain that, although its merit as an
invention was remarkable, nothing came of it.
Fulton, however, was not the first. In 1774 a man
named Day, who had for years been thinking over a
method of sinking a vessel under water with a man in
it, who should live for a certain time, and then, by his
own agency, rise to the surface, fancied he had hit upon
the right way at last. The story is worth telling, for it
involves a singular tragedy. Day was so sanguine that
he determined to test his invention at the Broads, near
172 A BOOK FOR THE UAMMOCK.
Yarmouth. He fitted a Norwich market boat, and sank
himself thirty feet under water, where he remained for
twenty-four hours. His success so elated him that he
at once went to work to see how he could get money by
it. He accordingly wrote the following letter to a Mr.
Blake, a well-known sporting man : '* Sir, I have found
out an affair by which many thousands may be won. It
is of a paradoxical nature, but can be performed with
ease. Therefore, sir, if you chuse to be informed of it,
and give me one hundred pounds of every thousand you
shall win by it, I will very readily wait upon you and
inform you of it. I am, myself, but a poor mechanic,
and not able to make anything by it without your assist-
ance. — Yours, etc., J. Day." Blake WTote to Day to call
upon him. They met, and Day said that he could sink
a ship one hundred yards deep in the sea with himself in
it, and remain therein for the space of twenty-four hours
without communication with anything above, and at the
expiration of the time rise up again in the vessel. Blake
asked for a model, which in the course of a month was
sent to him. He was struck with the invention, and
supplied Day with money enough to enable him to carry
out his scheme. The vessel is described as having a
false bottom, standing on feet '*like a butcher's block,"
which contained the ballast, and by the person unscrew-
ing some pins she was to rise to the surface, leaving the
false bottom behind. Plymouth was selected as the scene
of the experiment. On the appointed day the vessel was
towed to the place agreed upon, the inventor provided
himself with whatever he deemed necessary, entered the
vessel, retired to the cabin, and shut up the valve. The
craft settled slowly down in twenty-two feet of water^
The hour was two o'clock in the afternoon of Tuesday,
June 28, and she was to rise again at two o'clock on the
INFERNAL MACHINES. 173
following morning. Day had furnisliGd himself with
some buoys or messengers, which he had arranged to
send to the surface to announce his situation below ; but
none appearing, his patron, Blake, suspected an acci-
dent, and applied to the captain of a frigate at anchor
close by for assistance. But to no purpose ; every eifort
was made in vain to weigh the vessel, and Day perished.
The comments on the account of which I have given
the substance are curious when read side by side with
the recent newspaper narratives of the experiment at
the West India Docks. " That any man should be able,
after having sunk a vessel to so great a depth, to make
that vessel at pleasure so much more specifically lighter
than water as thereby to enable it to force its way to the
surface, through the depressure of so great a weight, is
a matter not hastily to be credited."
But even Day was not first. Cornelius Drebelle, by
order of James I. (so says Eobert Boyle), built a vessel to
be rowed under water. She was furnished with a kind of
chemical liquor that served to purify and renew the air.
She carried twelve oarsmen besides passengers, and was
tried in the river Thames, and Mr. Eobert Boyle, the
" Father of Modern Chemistry and the Brother of the
Earl of Cork," got his account of her from a person
who was in her during her submarine navigation of the
river.
And who was before Cornelius Drebelle ? " Novelty
is only in request," says Shakespeare, " and it is dan-
gerous to be aged in any kind of course." But what is
novelty ? *
What value the diving vessel of to-day has she owes
* Bacon, in his " New Atlantis," makes the father of Solomon's House
say, " We have ships and boats for going under water, and brooking of seas ;
also swimming gii-dles and supporters."
174 A BOOK FOR TUE HAMMOCK.
to conditions which are scarcely much older than the
date of the application of electricity to purposes of
marine locomotion and to naval warfare. And even if
you gave her an electric engine, but provided her with
no better apparatuses of destruction than those which
preceded dynamite, gun-cotton, and the like she could
scarcely, for "all her twin screws, her forty-five horse
power, her glow lamps, condensed air, and her plates of
steel prove more useful than such a boat as that of
Fulton, or as that of Cornelius Drebelle, which, urged
by twelve rowers, swept under the surface of what was
then the silver Thames. Our enormous ordnance and
the tremendous destructive forces which we have received
from the laboratory of the chemist entitle us to smile,
perhaps, at the sheet-lightning and faint thunders of our
grandsires' conflicts. Yet, on the whole, every one must
admit that they made a fine show with what they had.
Individually the sixty-four-pounder would be but a mean
weapon, as weapons now go ; yet the flames of a triple
row of them caused a mighty blaze, and could one even
now hear the explosion of the broadside batteries of any
wooden liner you may name the aggregate uproar might
suggest the detonation of some greater engine of war
than was ever cast at Elswick or at Woolwich.
In submarine machinery the old folks never got further
than the Fenians manage to go ; a clock in a barrel of
gunpowder defined the extent of their genius as mur-
derers. On the surface of the water their most formidable
arrangements were the fire-ship and the bomb-vessel,
the latter a ketch very strongly built and equipped with
mortars. An example of what may be termed explosion-
machinery dates as far back as 1585. It was used to
destroy the bridge of boats at the siege of Antwerp, and
consisted of a ship in which was built a vault of stone
INFERNAL MACHINES. 175
filled with two hundred barrels of powder, over which
were placed stones of all sizes, together with shot, iron
chains, spikes, and so forth. This mine was exploded
by a secret fuse, and was so contrived that the vessel
did not take fire till it bumped against the bridge, which
it shivered. There is extant the description of a fire-
ship, called The Infernal, that was used at the bombard-
ment of St. Maloes in 1693. She was a new galliot of
about three hundred tons. The bottom of her hold was
lined with one hundred barrels of gunpowder, covered
with pitch, tar, brimstone, resin, tow, straw, and faggots.
Over these things was a perforated platform, upon which
were three hundred and forty chests or mortars filled
with grenades, cannon-balls, iron chains, loaded fire-
arms, and large pieces of metal wrapped in tarpaulins.
This abominable contrivance proved a failure, for after
it had sailed fairly enough to the foot of the wall to
which it was to be fastened a blast of off-shore wind sent
it on to a rock, where the people in charge were forced to
fire her and hastily withdraw. The chests or mortars
were wet, and did not blow up ; but the explosion of
what was dry was furious enough to level a part of the
town wall and destroy the roofs and a portion of the
walls of about three hundred houses.
In 1804, the English attempted to blow up some
vessels off Boulogne by casks or coffers furnished with
clock-work explosives. A naval officer, describing the
eff'ect of these machines, says : ''Each cask was primed
and set, so as to go off at any desired time after drawing
out a pin. A reward depended upon bringing away this
pin. We came within pistol shot of a corvette before we
let go our coffers, under a fire of shot and shells from the
shore. The first explosion, which took place in a few
minutes, was very great, and seemed to strike the enemy
176 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
with general consternation." * Others were sunk, but
would not go off. These coffers were made of thick plank
lined with lead. When filled they were tarred, covered
with canvas, and *' jDayed " with hot pitch. They are
described as exactly resembling a large coffin. They
each weighed as much as two tons. To one end a line
was secured to which was affixed a sort of anchor. Line
and anchor were floated with pieces of cork, the idea
being that the anchor would catch the cable of the ship
that was to be destroyed, and cause the coffer to swing
alongside. They were weighted with shot, so that they
should only just float, partly that they might come along
unnoticed, and partly that, if seen, they would be diffi-
cult to hit.
These primitive and, as a rule, inoperative " dodges "
find another illustration in an experiment made in the
Downs in 1805. A large brig was anchored abreast of
Walmer Castle, about three-quarters of a mile from the
shore. Two or three boats then rowed off and placed
the machine across the cable of the brig. The tide in a
few moments carried it under the brig, where it affixed
itself. Presently the clock-work exploded the contents,
a small cloud of smoke was seen to rise, and the brig is
declared to have gone to pieces "without any noise or
appearance of fire." In less than the third of a
minute not a vestige of her could be seen from the shore.
" General Don, with a number of military and naval
officers, went with Sir Sydney Smith to Mr. Pitt's, at
Walmer Castle, to witness the experiment, and expressed
the utmost astonishment at the destructive powers of
the invention." This was evidently much such a con-
trivance as the coffers which had been used in the
previous year off Boulogne, with some improvement, as
* " Naval Hist, of the Recent War, 1804."
INFERNAL MACHINES. Ill
perhaps in its power of sliding with the tide under
instead of alongside a vessel and attaching itself to the
keel.
I find the Americans using clock-work as a means of
exploding gunpowder some time before the period of its
adoption by the English. In 1774, Captain Vandeput,
in the Asia, of sixty-four guns, whilst stationed off New
York, was nearly blown up by a plan to which, un-
happily, we in these more civilized times are no strangers.
A quantity of powder was put on board a small vessel.
In one of the barrels was an alarum or piece of clock-
work, that was wound up before it was placed in the
barrel and attached to a musket lock that fired the
powder around it. The powder was for the use of the
Asia, and the barrels would have been received on board
together, of course, with that which contained the clock-
work arrangement, but for the terror of one of the
American j^i'isoners who was in the secret and com-
municated the plot to Yandeput. There seems a horrible
meanness in this manner of waging war. Yet there is
nothing more despicable in blowing up a foe by putting
a barrel of powder with clock-worl: in it inside his ship
than in annihilating him by means of a coffin load of
combustibles fired by clock-work under his ship.
It has been reserved for this age, however, to carry
these theories of hidden and deadly warfare to a height
assuredly never dreamt of by the most visionary of the
old exploders. I call them theories, for so they must
remain till a war shall determine them into facts. And,
indeed, I think it need not be doubted that many of
what in peace-time and on paper we think will be
desperately terrible features of all future naval struggles
will prove mere impediments and clumsy, fallible, and
misleading devices when the time to test them comes.
178 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
Mr. Pitt and the military officers at Walmer Castle
might justly be astonished at the sight of a stout brig
crumbling away under a puff of smoke, but it was Jack's
old-fashioned pike that was then doing the real work ;
that had begun it, and that had to complete it.
QUEER FISH.
I WAS lately reading an account of two queer fish which
had been sent to the South Kensington Aquarium. One
was a trout, three years old, that was forced to carry its
tail hard a starboard — that is, the tail stands out at right
angles with the fish's body. Whether this deformity is
due to gout, or whether the fish is in the case of the
drunken Irishman who, on becoming sober and dis-
covering that the surgeon at a hospital had been trying,
without result, to put his hip right, cried out, " I was
born so ! " I do not know. That a trout should be able
to steer a straight course through the water, however
slowly, with his helm hard over, proves that this kind of
fish must have a trick of navigation above the reach of
mortal mariners. The second marine ^ oddity was a
stickleback of the length of a young rat, and extremely
like an old mouse. I think I see these two strokes of
nature swimming in company and consoling each other.
We do not require either the fables of iEsop or the
maxims of Eochefoucauld to assure us that there is
something in the misfortunes of our best friends that
does not secretly displease us. Possibly the stickleback
in his heart thinks that, on the whole, he would rather
look like a mouse than carry his tail through life athwart
ships. On the other hand, the trout may consider that,
though the obligation of having on all occasions to
180 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
struggle against a weather helm must weigh heavy on a
life whose essential condition is one of fins, yet, being a
fish, it is better to be distorted as a fish than to carry
the emotions of a fish in the caricature of a mouse.
Presuming these to be their confidential opinions, it
may be supposed that their efforts to console each other
would not be entirely wanting in unconscious humour.
When absurd natural touches of this kind are brought
under one's attention, one gets to see how it hapjDens
that in the old voyages the relaters of the wonders they
viewed sometimes wrote as if their hair stood on end.
Suppose the stickleback to be a denizen of the deep ;
then conceive it, wearing the shape of a mouse, to rise
beside some becalmed vessel filled with a company of
" pilgrimes " of the kind w4iose narratives are preserved
in " Pm'chas " and " Hackluyt." The object is observed
by some old mariner who carries a child's eye for wonders
and marvels amid the knobs and warts of his walnutr
shell of a face. Before he can sing out the mouse
vanishes. But the ancient mariner has beheld it, and
he straightway goes and reports the astonishing spectacle
to two or three other ancient mariners, representing the
strange fish possibly as of the size of a cat. The tale is
bandied from one long-since venerable nautical mouth
to another till by the time it reaches the captain's cabin
the sea-mouse has grown as big as a porpoise, collecting,
fn the course of its enlargement, a very pretty apparel
of flaming eyes, " ears which itt did cocke, nostrils
whence proceeded a sort of white smoak, a skin whereof
ye furre was exceeding riclie, and did shine as though
covered with manye gemmes of brighte and piercynge
lighte." *
♦ Take Captain E'lwfinl TIaies' desoription of a sea-lion in his nar-
rative of S;ir llumphrcy Gilbert's Voyage: "So upon Saturday in the
QUEER FISH. 181
Few of the queer fish one reads of in the old travels
but were evolved in some such fashion as this, no doubt.
It was in a sort of stealthy, peering way, crossing them-
selves often and chanting their litanies, that the early
navigators entered the deep solitudes of the great oceans.
Whatever befel them was startling or affrighting, or of
wild and amazing beauty. Their meteors were not the
waterspouts of to-day ; the eclipse provoked their miser-
icordias and Salve Reginas and rendered ashen the
chocolate cheeks of the darkest-burnt on board; the
glittering exhalations, known to us as corposants, which
danced in the gale or burnt in the calm at the yard-arms
or on the bowsprit end, were prayed to as the spirit or
presence of a saint ; the very thunder, though its roar
was no louder than that which broke the repose of the
Portugal or Andalusian hills of the seamen, snatched a
note of horror, reverberated an echo of terror, from the
solemn immensity of the liquid plain into whose horizon
over the ships' bows the mariners stared under the
shelter of their hands, gaping for the auriferous shores
which day after day for weeks their admirals, their
afternoon, August 31, we changed our course, and returned back for
England ; at which very instant, even in winding about, there passed
along between us and toward the land, which we now forsook, a very-
lion, to our seeming in shape, hair, and colour ; not swimming after the
manner of a beast, by moving of his feet, but rather sliding upon the
water with his whole body. Thus he passed along, turning his head to
and fro, yawning and gaping wide, with ugly demonstration of long teeth
and glaring eyes, and to bid us a farewell (coming right against the
Hinde) he sent forth a horrible voice, roaring and bellowing as doth a
lion, which spectacle we all beheld, so far as we were able to discern the
same, as men prone to wonder at every strange thing, as this doubtless
was, to see a lion in the ocean sea, or fish in shape of a lion ; what opinion
others had thereof, and chiefly the General himself, I forbear to deliver,
but he took it for bonum omen, rejoicing that he was to war against such
an enemy, if it were the devil." — Hackluyt's " Voyages," vol. iii. p. 154.
182 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
captain-generals, had told tliem they should have in
view anon.
" The pilot smote his breast ; the watchman cried,
" Laud ! " and his voice in faltering accents died.
At once the fury of the prow was quelled ;
And (whence or why from many an ago withheld)
Shrieks, not of men, were mingling in the blast,
And armed shapes of God-like stature passed !
Slowly along the evening sky they went, ,
As on the edge of some vast battlement ;
Helmet and shield and spear and gonfalon
Streaming a baleful light that was not of the sun ! *
I am not surprised, then, that many kinds of queer
fish — of fish queerer than the trout with its rheuma-
tically-warped tail, or the stickleback with the aspect of
a mouse — should figure among the astonishments which
the mariners of those prying and creeping, but most
bold-hearted, times, set down for the edification of pos-
terity. You particularly notice in these records how
exquisitely in keeping with the whole picture of those
old ships and oddly- clad sailors, as one loves to imagine
them, and with the spirit of the mystery of those un-
attempted seas as breathed by the salt and ancient
chronicler, are the terms in which the writers convey
their discoveries. As, for instance, in this passage from
the first voyage of Columbus: "A Wagtail flew very
near the Ship, and they perceived that the Currents ran
not so strong as before, but turned back with the Tides,
and there were fewer Weeds ; and the Day following
they took many gilt Fishes." The word may not strike
others as it strikes me ; but there is something in the
expression "(jilt fishes" that is like a revelation of the
* *• The Voyage of Columbus." There arc several fine passages in
this neglected poem. Rogers, in some places, has caught the spirit of the
old chronicles very happily.
QUEER FISH. 183
intertropical situation of the mariners. You think of
the long bald gleaming heave of the darkly pure blue
swell of the sea, the fragrance of the yet hidden islands
of the Spanish main blowing sweet in the warm wind
coming from the west, the liquid light of the moon
showering its splendour upon the pallid fabric and her
bearded men, and gemming the quaint old structure
with diamonds in the dew along her rails and on her
yards, lunar brilliants that shine with the glory of the
stars which softly crowd the velvet deeps of the sky of
the Columbian Antilles. To whom but to mariners
exploring for the first time the wonderland of ocean
hidden, for how many centuries ? from all Europe
behind the Atlantic sea line, could such a queer fish as
this exhibit itself? '* They saw a great Fish, like a
middling Whale, and it had on the Neck a large Shell,
like that of a Tortoise, little less than a Target ; the
Head it held above water was like a Pipe or But, the
Tail like that of a Tunny Fish, very large, and two vast
Fins on the side." * Yet, queer as this marine man-in-
armour seems to have been, with its target and its head
like a butt, Columbus appears to have known enough of
it to enable him to witness in it a barometrical signi-
fication ; for "by this Fish and other observations in
the sky" — the "other" here is a very fine — "the
xidmiral perceived there was like to be a change of
Weather."
One might justly count that fish queer which was
believed to breed birds. How mean as an illustration
of Nature's capacity as a humourist would be the gnarled
and rounded trout or the stickleback like a mouse side
by side with a turtle, capable of producing, say, wrens
or canaries ! The reverend and learned Mr. John Bay,
* " The First Voyage of Columbus " in Harris's collection.
184 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
whilst travelling some two centuries ago through the
Low Countries, took some trouble to inquire into this
matter of bird-breeding by turtles and tortoises, and
l)ronounced it — humbug ! He had to oppose a very
profound reasoner, no less a personage, indeed, than
Michael Meyerus — of whom, of course, every schoolboy
has heard — a gentleman who has devoted a Avhole big
book to the subject. But though he terms the state-
ment false and frivolous, there is so much of possibly
designed ambiguity in his " explanation " that I confess
I cannot understand what he means. The " bernacles,"
he says, which are said to be bred in the tortoise, are
''hatch'd of eggs of their own laying, like other birds."
Like other birds ! Did the learned Mr. Kay conceive a
tortoise to be a bird ? * The Hollanders, he goes on, in
their third voyage to discover the North-East Passage,
found two islands, " in one of which they observed a
great number of these Geese," he is talking of tortoises !
"sitting on their Eggs." He sums up: "All the
Ground of this fancy, as I conceive, is because this fish
hath a bunch of cirri somewhat resembling a tuft of
feathers, or the tail of a bird, which it sometimes puts
out into the water, and draws back again." Here to be
sure is a very great muddle of good meaning. One
may take it that the sailors who believed that turtle and
tortoise " engendered fowlys " were not going to suffer
their solemn affirmations to be discredited by such
reasoning as the Kev. John Ray's. f
* By "bernaclc" I suspect be means the barnacle goose.
t Sinbad the sailor saw " a Inrd tliat cometh forth from a sea-shell
and layeth its e{rj,'s and batclicth them n[)on the surface of the water and
never cometh forth upon the sea nimn the face; of the earth." If the
tortoise breeds birds time enough is voudisafed it for that work. Grose
speaks of the shells of two tortoises : one in the library at Lambeth
Taluce that was ,brought there alive in 1G33, and died of the frost in
QUEER FISH. 185
So far as the superstitious emotions they excited are
concerned, it may be truly said of queer fish that even
in their ashes live the wonted fires. As an example :
the quantity of petrified fish-bones found at Malta fired
the ingenious Monkish imagination with the idea of a
curious fable. It was said that St. Patil when at Malta,
on being bitten in the hand by a viper, did by his prayers
obtain of God that all the serpents in Malta should be
turned into stones. That all the petrified bones upon
which this fancy was based belonged to queer fish is not
to be supposed; but that many queer fish did deposit
their bones on the Maltese shore in the course of ages
need not be questioned, and such is my faith in the
distorted trouts and mouse-formed sticklebacks of the
deep that I do not scruple to count the above fable con-
cerning St. Paul and the vipers due to the inspirations
of the fossilized remains of the '' queer fish " only. Was
not the sea-unicorn a queer fish in the judgment of our
great grandsires ? If not, it is strange that they should
have endowed its horn or sword with quite magical pro-
perties. It was even believed of the little cheval marin, or
cavaletto, that if roasted and partly devoured, the re-
mainder being applied to the wound, after some prepar-
ing of it with honey and vinegar, would cure the bite of
a mad dog. There is no doubt it got this reputation
from its fancied resemblance to the unicorn. An old
Danish traveller thought to explode this superstition of
medicinal and magical virtues in the horn of the sea-
unicorn : " Supposing that what has been pretended to
be the true horn was really such, I will venture to affirm
there is no more virtue in it than in that of a stag, a
1753 ; the other that was brought to Fulham in 1628, and died in
the same year as the other. "What were the ages of these tortoises
at the time they were placed in the above gardens is not known."—
Olio. 288.
186 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
goat, or elephant's tooth, which is made use of to stop
the spitting of blood, which is done by the astringent
quality of these horns, and that cannot so properly be
called a virtue as a malignity." Yet this writer was one
of a trading party who presented the King of Denmark
with two of these horns, as though they were extra-
ordinary rareties and possessed of a score of curative
qualities ; and his Majesty took them to be real unicorn
horns — the horns of a fabled beast — and valued them
accordingly. A queer fish indeed in those old times, but
common enough in these, and universally known as the
" sword fish." Dr. Edward Browne when at Utrecht,
two hundred years ago, saw three of such horns, one of
which, tipped with silver, was used as a drinking cup ;
and he enters them in his notes as wonders. Possibly
he was impressed by the sight of a drinking cup five feet
long. But he was in the land of Mynheer van Dunk,
who was probably living at that time. He tells of a
Danish king that had one hundred horns of the sea-
unicorn " for the making of a magnificent throne." And
what finer throne should an old sea king desire to sit
upon ?
It is not hard to conceive that fish undergo consti-
tutional and organic changes in the course of centuries,
and that, say, about the period of the Deluge the sea was
full of objects which would strike us as extremely queer
specimens now, though to Noah, Ham, and Shem they
would be as familiar as the whiting or the dab is to us.
But I cannot imagine that very remarkable transforma-
tions or developments could take place in three or four,
or even five or six centuries. Who shall tell, for example,
how many hundreds of years have gone to the making of
the unhappy stickleback tliat was sent to the Aquarium ?
The changes would be gradual. Taking the evolvments
QUEER FISH. 187
in their gradations, you would possibly find the family
mouse-like expression growing less and less marked as
you worked your way back through this stickleback's
pedigree. But the extreme circumstantiality of the old
voyagers' descriptions of queer fish should almost really
persuade one to suppose that what they beheld died
shortly after having been viewed, so that the like has
never been seen since. Here is an example of my mean-
ing, taken from Commodore Beaulieu's voyage :
"While the calm and the excessive heat continued
we saw a certain white thing about the bigness of an
ostrich-egg floating upon the water, which sunk when the
ship came within fifty or sixty paces of it. It resembled
a man's head without hair, and some say they observed
two black eyes and a mouth upon it."
It is the " some say " of these tales which makes
them so bewildering. Did this remarkable sea-face with
its two black eyes wink ? Did it sneer as it sank ?
Why did not ''others say" that ere sinking it raised its
thumb to its nose and extended its fingers in the form
of a fan, " thereby designing an ironical salutation of
farewell"?
But a mere bald head with black eyes and a mouth
floating about the sea is but a twopenny queer fish com-
pared with the marine curiosities which ancient mariners
have beheld and even given j)ortraits of. Figure a hairy
whale, four acres big, with eye-sockets so capacious that
fifteen men could sit in each of them, as in a public-house
parlour, and pass jacks of whiskey about ; the eyes them-
selves of ten cubits in circumference ! or hear Pere
Fournier tell of the monster that " in the reign of Philip
II. of Spain " — the epoch of marine chimeras dire ! —
" appeared in the ocean with two great wings, and sailing
like a ship. A vessel saw it, and breaking one of its
188 A BOOK FOR TUE UAMMOCK.
wings with a cannon ball, the monster swiftly entered
the Straits of Gibraltar with horrible cries, and finally
came ashore at Valentia, where it was found dead."
Then follow^ these circumstantial strokes : "Its skull
was so large that seven men could enter into it. A man
on horseback could enter its throat. The jaw-bone,
seventeen feet long, is still in the Escurial." Most
readers would feel inclined to say of this monster, "Very
like a whale ! "
Unhappily conjecture is blinded by imaginative
touches, such as those of the eyes and mouth of the
bald-headed fungus of Beaulieu's voyage. Queer fish as
big as islands are constantly occurring in the old
accounts. The whale was Job's Leviathan in those
days, and the goggling sailor was easily persuaded by
his terrors to multiply the mountain of blubber by two
or three hundred. A man saw a whale in the sea of
Zendi that was nearly forty-five thousand cubits long —
about a mile, if the cubit be eighteen inches. Sinbad
wrote in perfect correspondence with the spirit of the
Ancient Mariner when he describes his landing on an
island which suddenly trembled and proved the back of
a prodigious fish. Others tell of fish like cows and
camels ; of fish dressed like monks and bishops, cowled
and mitred, and gazing up at the ship with austere and
lenten countenances. Others arrived home with the
news of the kraken, that " hugest of living things " as
Sir Walter Scott describes it, whose horns would be seen
"welking" and waving over the heights of a fog-bank,
to the horror and consternation of even the hardiest
fishermen, who made haste to bear away under all press
of oar and sail. Others, again, would tell of cuttle fish,
or squid, so vast in size and titanic in power that they
easily coiled their serpentine membranes round about the
QUEETt FISH. 189
masts of ships of a thousand tons and quietly capsized
them.
Where have all these queer fish gone ? Why did
they exhibit themselves only in the middle ages and down
to about old Sir Thomas Browne's time ? No account
of any prodigies such as ravished or affrighted the ancient
seaman is to be met in the records of the Beagle or the
Challenger. Yet let us take heart. The stickleback
like a mouse is indeed a meagre substitute for the
kraken ; and the hard-alee trout looks mean alongside a
whale a mile long. But their existence serves to assure
us that the age is not wholly barren in wonders, and that
there are still some queer fish about.
STRANGE CRAFT,
In the beginning of the seventeenth century one Peter
Jansen, a Dutch merchant, ordered a ship to be built for
him on the lines of Noah's ark. Of course, as this
vessel was designed to contain only a few animals, and
those chiefly men, her size was not that of her famous
prototype. The Dutchman's orders were that the vessel
should exactly answer proportionally to the dimensions
of the fabric that was stranded on Ararat. Jansen
flourished in pre-scientific times ; but this notion of his
went so far beyond the most extravagant credulities of
the period that the scheme was viewed as a mere
fanatical whim of a Mennonite, to which sect our friend
belonged. He persevered, however, in spite of being
heartily jeered at, more particularly by the seafaring
folk who assembled to view the shipwrights at work ;
but when the vessel was eventually launched it was dis-
covered that ships built in this manner were, in times of
peace, commodious above all others, because they would
convey one-third more cargo than other holds, and yet
be navigated by the same number of hands which other
forecastles carried. Those who would hear more of this
ark may consult — if they can find it — the '' Bibliotheca
Biblia," vol. i.*
* Tlie Btory is there related: "Peter Jansen, a Dutch mercliaut,
caused a ship to be built for him, auswerinjj iu its respective proportions
STRANGE CRAFT, 191
That Jansen erred, according to the light of his times,
who shall declare ? Sir Thomas Browne, who lived
much about that period, would prove — I do not say
he does — that Noah's ark was the swiftest vessel that
ever drove a keel through a surge — nimbler than the
Baltimore clippers, the Mediterranean fruiters, the
slavers of the Spanish main ; in fact, very nearly as fast
as the Atlantic expresses which storm through the ocean
between the Mersey and New York. I find in the
" Extracts from Commonplace Books " in Browne's
works this passage : " Whether Noah might not be the
first man that compassed the globe ? Since, if the flood
covered the whole earth, and no lands appeared to hinder
the current, he must be carried with the wind and
current according to the sun, and so in the space of the
deluge might near make the tour of the globe. And
since if there were no continent of America, and all that
tract a sea, a ship setting out from Africa without other
help would at last fall upon some part of India or
China." This is as much as to say that Noah sailed
round the world in forty days ! Smart work when you
consider that it takes a twelve-knot mail-boat thirty-
seven days to steam to New Zealand.
It cannot, however, be concluded from her dim^sions
that, even though blown along by a gale of wind right
over her stern, the ark equalled the speed of a Union
or Eoyal Mail steamer. Sir Walter Ealeigh, in his
" History of the World," a mine of exquisite thought and
of sweet and noble expression, devotes a page or two to
consideration of the size and form of Noah's ship ; and
to those of Noah's ark. At first this ark was looked upon as no better than
a fanatical vision of this Jansen ; but afterwards it was discovered that
ships built in this manner were, in times of peace, beyond all others most
commodious," etc.
192 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
what a man who was as great a sailor as he was poet,
philosopher, and soldier, and who lived near to Jansen's
time, has to say of her must be worth hearing in this
particular connection. He is unable to point to the
place where the ark was ** framed," but suspects it was
near the Caucasus where grew " goodly cedars." " It
w^as thought to have a flat bottom, and a crested roof,
and the wood gopher of which it was made was very
probably cedar, being light, easy to cut, sweet, and
lasting." The pitch he thinks was bitumen. Her length
was six hundred feet, the breadth one hundred feet, and
the depth sixty feet. He calculates her internal capacity
in cubical cubits, four hundred and fifty thousand,
*' which is sufficient for an hundred kind of beasts and
their meat in the lower and second stories, and two
hundred and eighty fowls, with Noah and his family,
in the third." So far as beam and length go she was
considerably narrower than the ships in Jansen's day,
which were commonly about three and • a half times as
long as they were broad. But what of her bows ? Had
she a run ? Had she the flat bottom- of a barge or the
moulded depth of the clipper ? But it matters not ;
Jansen's inspiration found no copyists ; his fabric has
floated solitarily down to us as a strange shij) ; and now
that we have viewed her she may brace round her top-
sail yard again and proceed on her phantom course.
I do not think, however, that we can find much title
in our own marine performances to justify laughter at
the old folks' ships. Is it conceivable that ugly as
Jansen's Noah's ark must have been she would not have
looked comely alongside some of the metal horrors of
recent and contemporary invention ? Something of the
indefinable charm you find in the simpering shepherds
and shexDherdesses of the crockery age of literature, in
STRANGE CRAFT. 193
Meliboeus piping to the skipping lambkins on an oaten
pipe and Daphne toying with a lover's true-knot under
some spreading shade, enters into those vanished ships
with their black or yellow sides, their rows of little
guns, their gay and fluttering finery of masthead
streamers, ancients, pennons, and the like. I know
more than one war ship now afloat that you might
" dress " from stem to pole-masthead and overboard aft,
turn her into a rainbow of bunting, without achieving
more than the accentuation of her ugliness. No ! it is
not for us, forsooth, to talk of taste, smile as we may
at the illustrations of our grandsires' sturdy struggles
towards that imperial fruition in which we, their in-
heritors, find our most reasonable and sovereign boast.
I find a pretty fancy, and an audacious one, too, in
an account of a strange ship in 1769. In that year there
arrived at Naples from Palermo a small vessel, whose
length of keel was twelve feet. She was ship-rigged —
that is to say, she had three masts, with all the yards
that ships then carried across, and her ship's company
was composed of one man only. She is described as
being the model of a man-of-war of sixty guns. Her
builder, who navigated her, was a carpenter ; he had
worked in an Italian arsenal, then went to Trieste, where
he built his ship, embarked in her with two men for
Messina, then proceeded alone to Palermo and Naples to
present his wonderful model to the King. She is pro-
bably the only full-rigged model of a shi^D actually sailed
by a man in her from one port to another on record.
Figure the blue Italian waters and this lovely toy, with
the sunshine flashing up its canvas into satin, blandly
leaning over from the fragrant breeze, and slipping
through the liquid sapphire with a little curl of silver at
her stem !
194 A BOOK FOR THE UAMMOCK.
The model craft exercises a fascination that is felt
beyond bo^^iood. Many a long hour have I spent on
the shores of the Eound Pond in Kensington Gardens,
watching the tiny fleets there till imagination has been
transported by the charming miniature imagery into the
heart of a horizon capacious enough to hold some scores
of Londons with their metropolitan suburbs. This
diversion seems to have delighted the fastidious and
elegant taste of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, in his
" American Note-Books," speaks of frequent visits to
the " Frog Pond " merely to see the boys sail their ships.
" There is a full-rigged man-of-war," he says, " with, I
believe, every spar, rope, and sail, that sometimes makes
its appearance ; and when on a voyage across the pond
it so identically resembles a great ship, except in size,
that it has the effect of a picture. All its motions — its
tossing up and down on the small waves, and its sinking
and rising in a calm swell, its heeling to the breeze — the
whole effect, in short, is that of a real ship at sea ;
while, moreover, there is something that kindles the
imagination more than the reality would do." I have a
note of another beautiful model constructed so long ago
as 1767. It was a little ship of sixty-four guns, com-
pletely rigged — four inches long ! The materials of
which it was composed were gold, silver, steel, brass,
copper, ivory, ebony, and hair. The hull, masts, yards,
and booms were of ivory ; the guns, blocks, anchors, and
dead-eyes silver ; the colours — the Eoyal Standard, the
Admiralty and union flags, the jack and ensign — were of
ivory. The sixty-four guns weighed fift}^ grains. The
scale was forty feet to one inch. His Royal Highness the
Duke of York was so delighted with its singular minute-
ness and the exquisite delicacy of its workmanship, that
he recommended it to the attention of his Majesty, who
STRANGE CEAFT. 195
was graciously pleased to place it in his cabinet of curi-
osities. The artist was an officer in the navy, and I
hope the royal admiration was accompanied by recogni-
tion of the sailor's genius.
Herman Melville, in '^ Eedburn," speaks of an old-
fashioned glass ship, about eighteen inches long, of
French manufacture. "Every bit of it was glass, and
that was a great wonder of itself; because the masts,
yards, and ropes were made to exactly resemble the
corresponding parts of a real vessel that could go to sea.
She carried two tiers of black guns all along her two
decks ; and often I used to try to peep in at the port-holes
to see what else was inside. . . . Not to speak of the
tall masts and yards and rigging of this famous ship,
among whose mazes of spun glass I used to rove in
imagination till I grew dizzy at the main truck, I will
only make mention of the people on board of her. They,
too, were all of glass, as beautiful little glass sailors as
anybody ever saw, with hats and shoes on, just like
living men, and curious blue jackets with a sort of ruffle
round the bottom. Four or five of these sailors were
very nimble little chaps, and were mounting up the
rigging with very long strides ; but for all that, they
never gained a single inch in the year, as I can take my
oath. Another sailor was sitting astride of the spanker-
boom, with his arms over his head, but I never could find
out what that was for ; a second was in the foretop with
a coil of glass rigging over his shoulder ; the cook with
a glass axe was splitting wood near the fore hatch ; the
steward in a glass apron was hurrying towards the cabin
with a plate of glass pudding ; and a glass dog with a
red mouth was barking at him ; whilst the captain in a
glass cap was smoking a glass cigar on the quarter-
deck."
19G A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
Among strange vessels may be classed fabrics — no
matter of what size — of copper, leather, canvas, cloth,
and (for the age) iron. The ancient Briton's coracle
was the leather boat. This is Rees' presumption, in his
''Beauties of South Wales," from the circumstance of
the fishermen in certain Welsh rivers using a corwg, or
coracle, " which," says he, "is probably coeval with the
earliest population of the island." The form of the
coracle was nearly oval, its length five feet, and its
breadth four. The frame w^as formed of split rods,
plaited like basket-work and covered wath raw hide. It
was a portable boat, and its owner carried it on his back
when he wished to convey it to or from his home. How
far iron, as a material for the construction of ships, can
be traced back I do not know\ Grantham, a sound
authority, gets no further than 1787. I can beat that
record by ten years. In the " Annual Register " for 1777,
under the month of June, I find, "A new jDleasure-boat,
constructed of sheet-iron, was lately launched into the
river Foss, in Yorkshire. She is twelve feet long, sailed
with fifteen persons, and is so light that two men may
carry her." Clearly a strange ship to those who beheld
her ! Twelve years later another strange craft was sent
afloat: ''A very curious experiment was tried — that of
proving how far an entire copper vessel would answ^er
the purpose of sailing. Mr. Williams, a joint projDrietor
of the great copper mines, was the projector, and a
very numerous party attended the experiment. It was
launched at Deptford, and promises to answer every
purpose for which it was designed. Should it do so
entirely it will prove a very singular advantage to the
British navy." The joint proprietor's patriotic scheme
apparently bore no fruit. What would the ship-builder
of this day think of copper vessels ?
STRANGE CRAFT. 197
A cheaper experiment in strange craft was adventured
in the direction of cloth. What particular merit this
boat had is not stated. It was the invention of a French-
man named Desquinemara. The fabric was said to be
impermeable to air and water. All that I can learn of
this boat is, the experiments proved so successful that an
account of them was sent to the class of the Physical
and Mathematical Sciences of the Institute, in order that
a decision should be come at as to the useful purposes to
wdiich this novel invention was applicable. After which
this cloth boat, sliding past on Time's current, slips into
blackness and disappears. Of a strange vessel made of
canvas I find a tolerably full account. She w^as the
invention of a certain Colonel Brown, whose brother, a
lieutenant in the Eoyal Navy, accompanied by thirty
persons, crossed the Thames in her, and passed through
one of the arches of Westminster Bridge, in the view of
many thousands of spectators. She is described as a
military batteau made of prepared canvas, so as to be
impervious to water. Her length was seventeen feet,
width five feet, and depth three feet, and when loaded
with thirty people she drew only three inches. She w^as
capable of carrying one hundred soldiers with arms,
accoutrements, and baggage, fifty of them sitting and
fifty \jing. She w^eighed sixty pounds, and could be
taken to pieces and put together again in three minutes.
I do not learn that this strange vessel was ever employed.*
Another account of a strange craft I find in 1793.
This was a vessel intended to " sail" against wind and
* In " Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea," vol. i. (1812), there is pre-
served a singular narrative of an escape of some men from captivity by-
means of a canvas boat. The title is quaint: "A small monument of
great mercy, in the miraculous deliverance of five persons from slavery at
Algiers, in a canvas boat; with an account of the great distress and
extremities which they endured at sea." By William Okeley, 1644.
198 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
tide, and on trial she managed to do it at the rate of
four knots an hour. She was fitted with a pump of a
diameter of two feet, worked by a steam engine, by means
of which a stream of water was driven through the keel.
The impetus of the water forced through the square
channel against the exterior water acted as an impelling
power. This idea has been again and again revived,
possibly by some who considered their scheme as sur-
prisingly novel and revolutionary.
One of the strangest vessels which ever floated
was the paddle-wheel boat of 1472. A sketch of one
form of this boat * exhibits a periagua-shaped vessel,
sharp at both ends, and fitted with five sets of paddles
fitted to beams, which w^ork in orifices like tholes.
A somewhat similar boat is heard of in 1681, in
W'hich year a vessel, fitted w4th revolving oars or
paddles, distanced the King's barge, leaving her far
astern, though she was manned by sixteen rowers. An
ingenious gentleman, in the Middle Ages, invented a
mode of propulsion by erecting an immense bellows in
the stern of a vessel. He thought that, when the wind
dropped, there was nothing to do but fill his sails with
the bellows, and so blow himself along his course. He
hardly foresaw that the bellows and the sails would act
against each other, and leave the ship motionless ; or
worse yet, in a calm, give her a small sternway. Jona-
than Hull's ship of 1736 would also be reckoned by his
contemporaries a strange vessel. She was, indeed, the
first steamer that ever blackened the surface of water
with the reflection of the smoke of coal. His patent was
for "a machine for carrying ships and vessels out of or
into any harbour or river against wind and tide, or in a
calm." Hull's was a stern-wheel boat, and adaptation
* LindKuy's " Iliatory of Sliippiug."
STRANGE CRAFT. 199
of his invention of late years has familiarized to us an
object that would have been viewed with wonder even a
quarter of a century since.
An illustrated history of ship -building would furnish
the student with a series of plates of objects quite as
astonishing for variety of shapes and freaks of taste as
anything to be found in pictures in books of zoology and
the physiology of fishes. The summit of perfection in
form, beauty, in an almost spirit-like interpretation of
the poetry of the sea, moulded and embodied by the hand
of the shipwright and the rigger, was reached in some of
the frigates afloat at the period of the introduction of
iron. Grace and loveliness are now perpetuated by the
yacht builder. Some of the iron sailing ships are, it
must be admitted, framed with much elegance of judg-
ment. But the vicious obligations of economy, supple-
mented by the severe conditions which now enter into
naval arming, have forced us into many hideous forms,
and render this age in the matter of marine taste the
heaviest sinner of all the centuries. The uncouthness of
the junk, the clumsiness of the galliot, the absurd free-
board, crowning poops, square bows, and tower-like rigs
of the ships of olden times are admitted features ; but
all staring qualities were sobered by an atmosphere of
quaintness, a complexion of romance, by elements of
colour and furniture and apparel, which did somehow
greatly help the imagination into ideal surveys and con-
siderations. But is there anything to idealize in the
leviathan mass of twelve-inch plates that floats past like
a gasworks gone adrift ? And what of poetry may we
find in a metal tube that shows nothing above water but
a short polemast and a conning-tower ?
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES.
" Land in your eye ! " said tlie mate, who was looking through the
telescope. — Two Years Before the Mast.
Something of humour goes to the fancy of a shipmaster
homeward-bound with a mind oppressed by the discovery
of land that is hterally " all in his eye." The emotions
excited by Samuel Weller's lantern in the soul of the
scientific gentleman would be trifling compared with the
fine triumph of a man who is the first to discover land.
Though it be but a rock — nay, a reef or shoal — is it not
a surer hand than that of the greatest j)oet for the
carrying of one's name down to the remotest posterity ?
What as a memorial so excellent and enduring as a
piece of mother-earth ? Every new chart enlarges the
bounds of the discoverer's fame. Take such a man as
Bugsby. In what old black-letter book the life of him
lies pierced through and through by worms I know not.
I might search Limehouse and Poplar and find no oldest
inhabitant able to tell me a word about Bugsby, whether
he was a great merchant or a haggard water-thief,
whether he fetched his last breath in Execution Dock,
or died very honestly in a four-poster. Yet so long as
the silver Thames continues to flow, so long (I am afraid)
will its translucent tide — particuhirly in the neighbour-
hood of the East India Docks and the aromatic Isle of
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARAXCES. 201
Dogs — go on murmuring the elegant name of Bugsby.
Bugsby's Eeach ! Think of the enormous fame of
Bugsby ! Then should not a master-mariner, sailing
home with an entry concerning a discovery of land in
his log-book, feel extremely boastful and happy? Sup-
posing it to be, as it almost always is in this age of
an exhausted world, an island or a rock entirely " in his
eye : " it will be the same to him ; he will go to his
grave as cocksure about it as if he had landed, hoisted
the Union Jack, taken possession of it in the Queen's
name, and called it by his own. Several nations may
send forth ships to examine the spot : all w4iose com-
manders shall return and say there is nothing to be
seen. But the first discoverer of land is a being not to
be easily cheated out of his convictions. " Land-ho ? "
" Whereaway ? " " Dead abeam ! " And there it must
stand, a piece of holy ground in our skipper's faith, lati-
tude unquestionable, longitude exact, though a shift
of wind or a new complexion of light would attenuate
the solid object into a texture considerably thinner than
the most difficult of the difficult airs of the mountain-
tops.
Some islands have been unaffected dreams. Such
was that shore which at the dawning of the day proved
to be " a land flat to our sight, and full of boscage,
which made it show the more dark," called by its dis-
coverer New Atlantis. Such was that happy republic
whose " figure is not imlike a crescent ; between its
horns the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads
itself into a great bay." Such, too, are the queer coun-
tries of Swift and Piabelais, and of several philosophers
and poets, both of ancient and modern times. But, on
the other hand, many of the old sea-girt demon-haunted
rocks, the sunny and spice- sweetened and flower-coloured
202 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
dominions of tlie ocean fairies, the little surf-washed
principalities of dead seamen's souls, were as real
as immoderate private conviction could render them.
The}^ had been seen ! the ancient mariner, with a beard
as long as his whom Henrie Lane writes of in '^Hack-
luyt " — "At their rising, the prince called them to his
table, to receive each one a cup from his hand to drinke,
and tooke into his hand Master George Killingworth's
beard, which reached over the table, and pleasantly
delivered it to the Metropolitane, who seeming to blesse
it, sayd in Eusse, this is God's gift. As, indeede, at that
time it was not onely thicke, broad, and yellow-coloured,
but in length five foot and two inches of assize " — the
ancient mariner, I say, staring under the sharp of his
hand, with eyes on fire with alarm and amazement, his
mighty beard blowing like smoke upon his breast ; this
ancient mariner, standing on his tall jDOop near to the
great lanthorn, with pennons many ells in length
streaming from the topmast heads, the bonaventure
mast sloping well aft, the sprit-topsail glancing under
the yawn of the forecourse like a sheet of silk, beheld the
magic islands with his own fiery eyes under his own
shaggy white brows, and on his return did depose to
them with awful solemnity, calling upon many saints to
bear witness to his veracity, and expressing himself as
being perfectly willing to be boiled, fried, burnt, or in
any other way " dressed," if his statement could be
proved a lie.
His voyages furnished him with queer relations to
deliver. The ocean was a huge mystery ; and things
which familiarity has long ago rendered mean were
instinct with the terror, the splendour, the power, the
majesty of the ocean, marvellous with the spirit of
the measureless surface and the unfathomed depths, in
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES. 203
the midst of which the early mariner found them. The
enchanted island was real enough then. The sea-life
was in its beginning : it was credulous as a man's
childhood is ; and, childlike, it took wonders and
astonishments and impossibilities for the truth, and
by sheer stress of prodigious faith made them so.
It must have been a noble time to go to sea in. A
boy starts now as a sailor for India or China, and his
head is full of fancies of elephants, ivory, gleaming
towers, wild beasts, coloured men, and strange coins.
His imagination reaches no further than his reading, or
what has been told him. He pretty well knows what
he is to see, and of course, what he sees falls infinitely
short of his expectations. But the ocean to the ancient
mariner was pure Wonderland. Kead what he has to
say of the whale, the albatross, the iceberg. Coleridge
catches the infantile awe and astonishment of the early
voyagers in that exquisite "rime" of his, in which the
commonplaces of the deep show mighty and fearful, as
a sort of prodigies indeed, in the organ-utterance of the
aged seaman of lean and Ember-week-like aspect. In
these days if a man arrives home with a yarn of an
uncharted rock his tale is to the last degree prosaic.
The primitive navigator, on the other hand, would have
found it a heap of extraordinary sights, a mass of
miracles. Of course he had this advantage over us
moderns : he could hint at its situation with such happy
ambiguity as would defy discovery of it, even if the
astrolabe and the cross-staff had been as precise as the
sextant and the chronometer. But then he credited his
own detections. His tales rendered his charts as queer
to the eye as a star-map outlined with the zodiacal
symbolism ; and the ocean was like Spenser's poem for
witcheries, marvels, necromancies, monstrous shapes,
204 A BOOK FOR TUB HAMMOCK.
dreadful sounds, and mysterious islands. A romantic
marine age, indeed, when Cape Fly-away was to be
doubled, and No Man's Land made !
Of the unparalleled isles of the ancient mariner
many descriptions are extant. We hear of floating
islands, verdant with tropic vegetation, suddenly rising
to the surface of the sea, then foundering ; of islands,
covered with medicinal herbs of greater efficacy even
than the most largely advertised of modern pills, ap-
proaching the coast once in every seven ^^ears ; of
islands inhabited by women 'only ; of islands merely
enchanted, such as the old New England voyager's :
" very thick foggie weather, we sailed by an inchanted
island, saw a great deal of filth and rubbish floating by
the ship ; " of islands formed of green meadows, which,
Guys Mr. Wirt Sikes, *'were supposed to be the abode of
the souls of certain Druids who, not holy enough to
enter the heaven of the Christians, were still not wicked
enough to be condemned to the tortures of Annwn, and
so were accorded a place in this romantic sort of purga-
torial paradise." — "British Goblins." Here is one of
Mandeville's twisters : —
" In an isle clept Crues, ben schippes withouten
nayles of iren, or bonds, for the rockes of the adamandes ;
for they ben alle fuUe there aboute in that see, that it is
marveyle to spaken of. And gif a schippe passed by the
marches, and hadde either iren bands or iren nayles,
anon he sholde ben perishet. For the adamande of this
kinde draws the iren to him ; and so wolde it draw to
him the schippe, because of the iren ; that he sholde
never departen fro it, ne never go thens." *
How must the apprehension of encountering such
* Quoted by Simon Wilkin in his edition of Sir Thomas Browne's
Works.
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEABANCES. 205
islands as this, capable of wrecking a stout ship by
magnetically extracting her iron bolts and so dissolving
her, have set the knees of the sturdiest old sailors
knocking one against another ! Or figure the emotions
with which they would view the prospect of going ashore
upon such an island as we have here : " There came a
southe winde, and drof the shyppe northward, whereas
they saw an ylonde full dirke and full of stench and
smoke ; and then they herde grete blowinge and blasting
of belowes, but they might see noothj'nge, but herde
grete thunderyng." *
But these wonderful isles of the sea differed widely,
some being very horrible and some being delightful.
''Oh," sings Thomas Moore —
" Oh, for some fair Formosa, such as he,
The young Jew fabled of in the Indian sea,
By nothing but its name of Beauty known,
And which Queen Fancy might make all her own,
Her fairy kingdom — take its peoples, lands,
And tenements into her own bright hands,
And make at least one earthly corner fit
For love to live in, pure and exquisite ! "
Such an island as this was discovered and duly
reported. First by a monk, who after sailing three days
due east beheld a dark cloud, which when it cleared,
revealed an island where "was joy and mirthe enough."
This monk had apparently been induced to put to sea by
the assurance of a mariner that he had met Judas float-
ing on a rock ! It was reserved for St. Brandau, how-
ever, to christen this delectable spot, and he called it the
Blessed Island. Though its existence was fully believed
in, its reputation faded as the years rolled by and nobody
came home to say he had seen it. Then, all on a sudden,
a Lisbon pilot stumbled upon it in a gale of wind, and so
* The Golden Legend.
20G A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
excited the appetite of a Spanish nobleman for its felici-
ties that his lordship fitted out an expedition for no
other purpose than to find it. Happier for him had it
remained a secret of the deep ! he was wrecked upon
it, fell into a trance that lasted some years, woke up
mad, and returned to Spain with a long story of its being
populated and ruled by a descendant of the last King
of the Goths. The Spanish nobleman's experiences of
its blessedness did not weaken the general faith in this
ocean paradise ; search was made for it so late as 1721,
after which it disappears. Possibly it was the account
of some such an island as this that addled the brains of
King Gavran and sent him seeking for the enchanted
fair}^ meadows which floated upon the sea. He took his
family with him, and he and they were never heard of
more. But does not one see in all this how real those
islands were, how seductive or repellant, and how delight-
fully different from the plain discoveries of the modern
mariner, whether fancied or real ?
"There are traditions," says Mr. Wirt Sikes, "of
sailors who in the early part of the present century
actually went ashore on the fairy islands, not knowing that
they were such until they returned to their boats, when
they were filled with awe at seeing the islands disappear
from their sight, neither sinking in the sea nor floating
away upon the waters, but simply vanishing suddenly."
There is pleasantness and softness in the fancy of
men in olden days putting forth to sea in search of
islands of bliss, of insulated paradises as visionary as
the poet's dream-like shore dimly resounding the wash
of fairy breakers.* The mariner must have spun his
yarn to some purpose to awaken that thirsty desire
* " INIaj^io casements, openinp: on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lauds fc rloru."— Keats.
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES. 207
of emigration. Many wonders, which might have
remained hidden for ever in the dark ocean solitude,
were lighted on by elderly gentlemen with long hair
and in costumes like bed-gowns, who were abroad
searching for spots which the Jacks of that age had
declared to be out and away superior to Eden. Maildun,
a Celtic hero, one of these searchers, came across several
islands filled with demons and monsters. He also
encountered a Circe, and eventually the terrestrial
paradise. But nothing particular seems to have come
of these discoveries, and it is to be suspected that he did
not take the trouble to verify their position. Another
person, a saint, after a long search, found a holy island
inhabited by twenty-four monks. How these monks
managed to get there, in what condition the saint found
them, whether they were spontaneous growths or a kind
of melancholic survival of a state of society whose origin
is hopelessly indeterminable, we are not told. The same
saint also met with an island whose inhabitants were
fallen angels, and an island populated by fiends, who
fell upon him and forced him to fly. In fact, if this
saint is to be believed, he was quite the Captain Cook
of his day. Yet his search after the Australia Incognita
of bliss must, I think, be pronounced distinctly unsatis-
factory, though one cannot but respect a theory of life
that could impart the animation of adventure to a
monastic bosom.
But much of what old ocean has of romance in its
history lies in the ancient reports of its wonders, and
in the interpretation of its legible characters by the
child-like vision of the vanished shipmen. Eemove
those Fortunate Islands, those Blessed Islands, those
islands haunted by " demon women wailing for their
lovers : " strike out from the annals those fables, faint
208 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
with a strange light, of venturesome marine saints,
of marvehing, hright-eyecl, hook-nosed *' marineeres ; "
and I am afraid that what else of human poetry remains
must he sought in the ship's forecastle. The very fish
they saw, sporting in the yeast over the side, were as
astonishing as the islands they passed. " Along all that
coast," wrote Mr. Thomas Stevens, " we often times saw
thing swimming upon the water like a cock's combe
(which they call a ship at Guinea), but the colour much
fairer ; which combe standeth upon a thing almost like
the swimmer of a fish in colour and bignesse, and beareth
underneath in the water, strings, which save it from
turning over."* " Od's fish! " would seem an appro-
priate expression in the mouths of such navigators.
What sort of thing is this cockscomb with strings ?
They wrapt up what they saw in quaint dark w^ords ;
and their imagination operating on what they beheld
set life a-teeming with marvels. Or mark them sailing
past a headland : " At this Cape lieth a great stone, to
the which the barkes that passed thereby, were wont
to make ofi'erings of butter, meale and other victuals,
thinking that unlesse they did so, their barkes or vessels
should there perish, as it hath been oftentimes seene ;
and there it is very darke and mistie."t Thus these
poor old fellows, crossing themselves and singing a litany
the while, propitiate the demon of the place with offerings
of wet and dry stores, and you see them in fancy grouped
in a body upon the deck, watching with bowed heads and
level, alarmed gaze the sullen and dismal loom of the
coast slowly veering away upon the quarter, as though
the rugged, fog-swollen mass might at any moment
shape itself into the titanic proportions of the fiend-king
of the cold and barren land.
* JIackliiyt.
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES. 209
To those early eyes such monsters revealed them-
selves, that the like was never heard of before or since.
A crew would come home and say that they had met
with an extraordinary animal that had a horse's body
and a pig's head ; another, that they had seen a similar
wonder, only in this case it was a stag's body with horns ;
a third, that one day, the sea being calm, there rose
close to the ship an animal that had the head and snout
of a boar, and that spurted water through a tube at the
top of its head. Those were the halcyon days of the mer-
maid and the merman ; leviathan then sported in twenty
different terrible shapes, with mouth most hideously
garnished with quadruple rows of teeth, gaping moon-
wards ; the sea-serpent wrapped the spinning globe
about with a million leagues of scales ; strange voices
whispered in mysterious accents under the still inter-
tropic starlight, and shapes like the shadows of pinions
moved upon the midnight air ; spectral lanthorns were
hung up by spirit-hands at the yard-arms and on the
bowsprit-end, and, by their dull, graveyard illumination,
cast a dismal complexion of death upon the upwards-
staring faces of the mariners. I find those early seamen
always sailing along as if possessed with an uncon-
trollable awe and reverence ; they are punctual in their
prayers ; the whole story of their navigation is but a
single-hearted reference to the majesty and mercy of the
Most High ; the atmosphere about them trembles to their
devout muttering ofAves and the low chanting of psalms.
The ocean was a mystery, the home and the haunt of
creatures and objects not to be conceived by the under-
standing of men. The spirit and influence of the liquid
solitude beyond the familiar line, over whose edge the
sun rose or sank every day, you will find expressed with
artless, most impressive power in the narrative of the
p
210 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
first voyage of Columbus in Harris's Collection, briefly
recited as the great admiral's adventures there are.
For such and for earlier mariners — as indeed for later,
down even to the times of Dampier, Shelvocke, Cowley,
and the Dutch and French explorers of the early years
of the last century — the sea could not but hold islands of
enchantment, green places deep in its heart, on whose
sands the water-nymphs fresh from their coral pavilions,
sat combing their yellow hair ; paradisaical abodes whose
soil was brilliant with gold dust, over whose trees,
radiant with fruit, flew birds of a plumage of dazzling
splendour, in whose central valley girls of startling
beauty might be seen in the moonlight threading with
languid eyes the mazes of some amorous dance. Did
not even Herman Melville, so recently as 1830 or 1840,
find some such enchanted island as this in the Marquesas
group ?
The sudden emergence or subsidence of land would
also help to confirm the ancient mariner in his belief
in magic isles, and in their controlment by spells
of necromancy. In an old nautical magazine, dated
1802, I find the following : "On the seventh of June,
1790, the Seahorse, Captain Mayo, of Boston, from the
coast of Africa, saw (in lat. 73 south) a large point of land
sink in one moment into the unfathomable deep ! As
soon as the crew recovered from the inexpressible horror
which so tremendous a spectacle must have impressed
on their minds, they steered to some ships catching
whales, and found that their men had been spectators
of the same awful scene. The seamen involuntarily
dropped down upon their knees and thanked God for their
escape, having been on the same point of land a short
time before its sudden disai)pcarance."
They saw the land disappear ; but suppose no other
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES. 211
vessels had been in company, and it had chanced that
none of the crew had seen the land sink, you have then
the seeds of an amazing relation. Figure a dead calm,
all hands below at dinner, and nobody on deck but the
man at the wheel nodding drowsily over the spokes. The
land was plain enough in sight, a mile distant, perhaps,
when the crew left the deck ; when they return it has
vanished. Had it been a ship they would, of course,
suppose that she had foundered. But land ! is it possible
that a tall, substantial mass of land shall vanish on a
sudden like a wreath of tobacco smoke ? Had the vessel
been whirled away out of sight of it by a fierce current ?
Had she been insensibly blown some leagues along by a
stout breeze of wind ? No. The man at the wheel is
questioned ; he rubs his eyes, stares ; it is the same
marvel to him as to the others. Knowing something of
the sailor's character, I will venture to say that had not
those men of the Seahorse actually seen the land go down,
two-thirds of them would have gone to their graves per-
suaded that there had been witchcraft in the business.
But put the date back three centuries, into the period of
the real Ancient Mariner. He shall behold the cliff
founder, if you please, and yet land at Plymouth or Erith
with an imagination charged to bursting point with this
obvious Satanic engorgement. I think I see him tellhig
the story. Can his hearers, gazing upon his mahogany
face, doubt that there are islands which rise and sink ?
and how can they rise or sink without magical possession,
without being under the government of something to
direct them ? The ancient mariner may, indeed, be
beforehand with a solution by importing, let me say, one
jaw of a monstrous fish that did " suck ye londe down to
ye admiration of ye beholders." But failing some such
explanation, the reason must be sought for devil- wards.
212 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
The island or cliff easily becomes the abode of demons or
of ocean-spirits, who use their dominions as a sort of ship,
and who, ^Yhen they desire a change of air or scene, alter
their latitude and longitude by the easy expedient of a
submarine excursion. Such a solution could not long
miss of confirmation. For presently arrives some
Elizahcth- Jonah, or some Ascension, of London, or Jesus,
of Hull, with an extraordinary and incredible report : to
wit, that being about fifty leagues to the westwards of
the island of Madeira, there did happen a mighty com-
motion in the sea ; the water boiled furiously, and out of
the midst of it there arose a great flame that was followed
by a thick black coil of smoke which emitted a most
detestable stench. This, rising, did overspread the
heavens with a sable canopy, through which the sun, that
had before been ardent, glowed ruefully with a most
affrighting face. When the atmosphere had somewhat
cleared, and the sea fallen flat again, they observed a
great heap of black land floating just where the flame
had been; but now, to their great joy, a small gale
happening, they hastily trimmed their sails to it and
departed, with hearty thanksgiving for their merciful
deliverance from a hideous and diabolic spot. There
would be to the full as much truth in this as in the
account of the subsidence. In every century there have
been submarine volcanic disturbances which have dis-
lodged or uphove points of land, rocks, little and even big
islands. Suppose what these cheery old mariners beheld
was, instead of land, a body of compacted weed ; or, not
impossibly, a dead whale. No matter ! home with the
thrilling story ; and let any man bo pilloried who shall
dare to doubt that the rock that came up is not the very
identical rock that went down !
I find a singular example of the credulity that gives
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES. 213
to the sea the choicest flavour of romance in a note to
the life of Sir William Gascoigne, Lord Chief Justice of
the King's Bench in the reign of King Henry IV., in the
first edition (1750) of the " Biographia Britannica " : —
" When the said Sir Bernard Gascoign " (the writer is
referring to a descendant of Sir William) '^ returned from
his embassy into England, he took shipping at Dunkirk,
and one of the passengers who came over with him was
Mrs. Aphra Behn, the ingenious poetess. It is asserted by
the writer of her life that in the course of their voyage they
all saw a surprising Pluenomenon, whether formed by any
rising exhalations or descending vapours shaped by the
winds and irradiated by refracted lights, is not explained ;
but it appeared through Sir Bernard's telescopes, in a
clear day at a great distance, to be or to resemble a fine,
gay, floating fabrick, adorned with figures, festoons, etc.
At first they suspected some art in his glasses, till at last,
as it approached, they could see it plainly without them ;
and the relater is so particular in the description as to
assert that it appeared to be a four-squared floor of
various coloured marble, having rows of fluted and twisted
pillars ascending, with cupids on the top circled with
vines and flowers, and streamers waving in the air. 'Tis
added of this strange visionary, if not romantic or
poetical, pageant — for fancy is an architect that can
build castles in the clouds as well by sea as land — that
it floated almost near enough for them to step out upon
it ; as if it would invite them to a safer landing than they
sought by sailing ; or pretended that the one should be
as dangerous and deceitful as the other ; for soon after
the calm which ensued there arose such a violent storm
that they were all shipwreckt, but happily in sight of
land, to which by timely assistance they all got safe."
Here, to be sure, we have a very circumstantial
2H A BOOK FOR THE UAMMOCK.
account of a very astonishing apparition. This would
seem to have been the Blessed Island for which the saints
and a noble Spanish lord made search in earlier times.
It is a pity that the story comes to us in the life of so
lively a romancer as Mrs. Aphra Behn ; one would
rather have had the grave and wary Sir Bernard's
version. Certain points suggest the legend of Vander-
decken, as for example the circumstance of the storm
rising and shipwreck following the approach of the
island-pavilion. This fabric of tinted pillars and radiant
banners must count among the mysterious disappear-
ances. Why, when these phenomenal glories of the deep
rioated into full view of the mariner — why had not he the
heart to straightway launch his shallop, row with anchor
and cable to the magic strand, and "fix" the j)lace, as
the Yankees would say, for the satisfaction and diversion
of posterity ? Why should all those wonders have been
in vain ? If the modern seaman lack the poetic vision
of the early navigator, he is more generous in his detec-
tions ; he desires the world to share in his own satisfac-
tion, and goes very painfully and exactly to his relation,
though it does but concern an iceberg or a body of
vapour. The gallant Kodney, when Commodore (1752),
was sent cruising in search of an island which one
Captain W. Otton, of the snow* St. Paul, of London,
discovered in his passage from South Carolina, about
three hundred leagues west of Scilly. The record in
Otton's journal was extremely minute. He gave the
date and hour — March 4, 1748-9, two in the afternoon —
on which he made the land. He related how it bore,
how he tacked, how the wind was, and what the latitude
and longitude : —
" This island stretches N.W. and S.E., about five
♦ A snow is a brig.
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES. 215
leagues long and about nine miles wide. On the south
side five valleys and a great number of birds. This day
a ship's masts came alongside. On the south point of
said island is a small marshy island."
As though all this should not be deemed confirmatory
enough of his discovery, the Captain added that he
thought he saw a tent on the island, and would have gone
ashore, " but had unfortunately stove his boat." Eodney,
in company with Captain Mackenzie, a distinguished
mathematician, cruised for many days, but to no pur-
pose. The island was entirely in the eye of the captain
of the snow St. Paul, An old saint or ancient Spanish
nobleman would not have let us off so easily. The com-
paratively modern skipper tells of an ordinary island,
prosaically but generously invites all mariners to partici-
pation in his discovery, but humanely leaves land-going
imagination and curiosity unvexed. The saint or the
nobleman would probably have heard the sound of viols,
perhaps an organ ; the hymning of a collection of monks
would have been a distinguishable music ; the more
erotic vision of the nobleman might have witnessed
lovely forms and the seductive beckoning of foam-white
hands. We should have had gilded dolphins gambolling
among the breakers, and been tickled by a hundred tales
more startling than Marryat's Pasha was regaled with.
Of what material are these fantastic fabrics, real to
the beholders, manufactured ? Imagination is the loom,
but whence comes the stuff ? Yet there are many s]3ec-
tacles at sea which the meditative, artless fancy may
easily work into creations of beauty, or fear, or brilliance,
melancholy, and horror. You must go back — put your-
self in the place of the mariner newly arrived in an
ocean- waste whose surface his keel is the first to furrow.
Then think how the iceberg in the heart of the black
216 A BOOK FOE THE HAMMOCK.
gale will strike you : the pallid mountain-mass flashing
out to the wild violet lightning dart, the vision or phan-
tasm of a city of pinnacles, spires, minarets, with the
crystal smoke of the storm whirling in clouds about its
towering heights, whose ravines and scars thunder back in
echoes the cannonading of the rushing surges hurling
their madness upon the side of that mass of rocky faint-
ness. Or consider the magnificence and splendour of the
Northern sunset — different, indeed, from the bald glory
of the sinking of the rayless tropic orb — viewed by one
who, having for days stemmed towards the Pole, pene-
trates for the first time the wide white silence of the
Greenland parallels. From those dyes of the luminary,
or the more amazing coruscations of the aurora borealis,
what shadows of realities might not the wondering eye
of the mariner evoke, observing rainbow islands to repose
on seas of gold, lands of delicate effulgence and of tints
too exquisitely beautiful to serve for less than the home
of a race of beings whose idea and raiment must be
sought in those classic poems in which the gods of the
Greeks and the Komans are described ! From the texture
of the shoulders of rising clouds, from shifting veins of
moonlight in the lace-like drapery of white mist, from the
luminous shadow of the waterspout with its wing-shaped
peak and boiling base, the new imagination, far out upon
the bosom of nameless waters, would readily snatch
material enough for half those wonders of magic spaces
of shore which in those times dotted the oceans of the
world from the latitude of Schouten's iron headland to
the height of Nova Zcmbla. Or, to descend to homelier
stuff, omitting the mirage — perhaps the fancy's noblest
opportunity on the deep — there is the ship bottom up ;
the inverted hulk that for months may have been washing
about until she has gathered to her sodden timbers a
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES. 217
large estate of sea-weed and marine fungi. The Telmaque
rock had undoubtedly no better foundation than this.
The passengers — it was in 1786 — saw green grass and
moss on the rock. This settled the matter; the new
island was duly logged and then charted; yet what
could it prove but a caiDsized hull ? So of the famous
Ariel Eocks, which, in my humble opinion, must be put
down to a dead whale or two.
" Captain T. Dickson, of the Arid, when on a voyage
from Liverpool to Valparaiso, December, 1827, saw
something of a reddish appearance about a quarter of a
mile from the vessel; sounded in forty-seven fathoms,
fine grey sand. Approaching the object it seemed about
six feet above water, when another appeared about three
feet below the surface ; the sea broke on both ; much
sea-weed and many birds around ; the position was
determined by good mer. alt. of sun, and by lunar and
chronometric observations." *
H.M.S. Beagle, with the late Dr. Darwin on board,
passed several times over the position assigned to these
rocks, but found nothing — yes, her people found this :
*' A heavy swell arose on the quarter which struck our
weather- quarter boat, and turned her in upon the deck.
... I thought we had indeed found the rocks, and the
huge black hack of a dead ichale ivhich just then showed
itself very near the vessel, much increased the sensation."
In more ways than one may the mysterious disap-
pearance of islands be accounted for. The sternly
prosaic mariner will desire nothing in this direction that
is not real, and of this as little as possible. But happily
for the poetic student these disappearances stop short at
the precincts of ocean literature. Enter, and the magic
* " South Atlantic Directory," 1870. A long list of apocryphal islands
rocks, and shoals is given in this volume.
218 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
is all before you, perennial in its gorgeousness or terror,
its sweetness or extravagance of horror. Who would
wish one of those enchanted islands away ? No prow
built by human hands need fear them as a danger ; they
lie in a daylight or a midnight of their own, washed by
the elfin surf of faery-land, lashed by the storms of high
imagination, phantoms under phantom suns and stars,
dreams of the young-eyed mariner. They are uncharted ;
but love has their bearings, and memory holds them
fondly to their moorings. Of the sea they form the
daintiest romance, and they give a colouring of poetry
even to the dry and austere perpetuation of such things
in these days of scientific exactness and the occasional
blunders of the triumphant discoverer.
RICH CAPTURES.
On October 4, 1799, despatches were received at the
Admiralty from Captain Young, of the Ethalion frigate,
announcing the capture of a Spanish vessel named the
Thetis, from the Havannah, with one million and a half
of dollars on board, besides a quantity of merchandise.
Shortly after this came news of the capture of another
Spanish galleon, the Santa Brigida, with treasure esti-
mated at between two and three millions of dollars, in
addition to a valuable cargo of cochineal, sugar, coffee,
and the like. A few days later it was rumoured that
Lord Bridport's share alone of the prize-money amounted
to ^125,000. But the excitement caused by this great
capture had led to much exaggerated gossip, and it was
shown that if the prizes yielded £'800,000, then Lord
Bridport, who, as commander-in-chief, shared one-third
of an eighth, would get about £33,000. The other two-
thirds of an eighth went to subordinate flag officers, who
reckoned on £10,000 apiece, whilst the four captains of
the frigates divided £50,000.
On the 29th of the same month a singular procession
in honour of this great capture passed through Stone-
house and Plymouth to the dungeons of the Citadel.
First went a trumpeter of the Surrey dragoons, sounding
a charge ; then followed two artillery conductors, an
officer of the Surrey dragoons, an officer of artillery,
220 A BOOK FOR TUB HAMMOCK.
Surrey dragoons, two and two, with drawn sabres ; a
band of drums and fifes, playing " Eule Britannia " and
*' God save the King ; " then sixty -three ivafjgons full of
dollars, in nine divisions of seven waggons. On the first
waggon a seaman, carrying the British over the Spanish
jack, and two officers of marines, armed. On the centre
waggon a seaman carrying the British ensign over the
Spanish ensign, midshipmen armed with cutlasses. On
the last waggon a seaman with the British pendant flying
over the Spanish pendant ; armed mariners and seamen,
two and two ; a band of drums and fifes pla3'ing " Britons,
strike home ! " armed seamen with cutlasses ; an artillery
officer ; two officers of marines, armed ; Surrey dragoons,
two and two, wdth drawn sabres, and two trumpeters
sounding a charge closed the procession. Both to lar-
board and starboard of this procession -walked a number
of armed sailors and midshipmen.
It is eighty-seven years since this remarkable parade
took place. Long ago death wrested the bugle from the
trumpeter in the van and sounded his charge. Those
dollars lying piled in sixty-three waggons have been spent
a hundred times over. The ringing cheers of the thou-
sands of spectators " who testified their satisfaction by
repeated huzzas at seeing so much treasure, once the
property of the enemy of old England, soon to be in the
pockets of her jolly tars and marines," have been silenced
ages agone by that same choking dust, out of which
Spaniards, equally with Englishmen, are manufactured.
The Don and the Briton are now excellent friends, and
one need not be a holder in Spanish securities to heartily
hope that the Spaniard's shadow may never be less. But
one cannot help one's instincts. In this pacific age it
must be wrong to feel elated over old triumphs ; yet I
confess, somehow or other, I cannot listen to the cheers
RICH CAPTURES. 221
— how infinitely dim and distant soever — of the spec-
tators of that procession of soldiers and sailors, marching
with conquering hanners, without an unsounding, yet
distinct, lifting up of the voice within me in a huzza of
my own. '' Our echoes roll from soul to soul," says
Tennyson ; and I defy a true-born Englishman to watch
those waggons of dollars, those rolling seamen, those brave
soldiers and valiant marines, those little cocked-hatted
middies, passing along over the fairy-like soil of history
to the elf-like strains of " Eule, Britannia " and " Britons,
strike home ! " without joining in the procession and
cheering wdth all his might the thin phantasm of a
once brilliantly real pageant.
'Twas a fine haul for Jack. Sixty-three waggons of
dollars ! How many jorums of grog lay in those piles ?
How much fiddling, jigging, caper-cutting ? But those
waggons only represented a part. It was not until the last
day of the month that the remaining chests of the Spanish
treasure were lodged in the dungeons of the Citadel, and
then the record runs : From El Thetis four hundred and
twenty-seven boxes of dollars ; from Santa Brigida five
hundred and eight boxes of dollars, containing nearly
three million dollars, besides very valuable cargoes of
cocoa, indigo, cochineal, and sugar, " all safely landed
and warehoused in Plymouth, under the Excise and
Custom House locks." Booty of this kind makes one
think of the old South Seaman, of the big caracks of
the spice islands and Western American seaboard, of
Dampier, Shelvocke, Clipperton, and Betagh, and of the
grand old Commodore Anson. His was possibly as big
a bag as ever fell to the mariner's lot. The galleon he
captured had in her one million three hundred and
thirteen thousand eight hundred and forty-three pieces
of eight, and nearly thirty- six thousand ounces of silver,
222 A BOOK FOB THE HAMMOCK.
which, with the treasure ah-eady taken hy the Centurion,
amounted to about ^400,000, "independent," says the
writer of the voyage, "of the ships and merchandize
which she either burnt or destroyed, and which, by the
most reasonable estimation, could not amount to so little
as .£600,000 more ; so that the whole damage done the
enem}^ by our squadron did doubtless exceed a million
sterling."
The Acapulco galleons had long inspired the dreams
of the English freebooters. All the wonder and romance
of the great South Sea, with its coasts and islands gilded
by an imagination of more than Oriental ardency, had
entered into those vast floating castellated fabrics, and
the magnificence of the New Jerusalem as beheld by the
holy seer, was faint in comparison with the substantial
splendours which the English sailor with his mind's
vision viewed in the holds of the tall Manila ships.
Diamonds of incomparable glory, rubies, sapphires, and
other gems of a beauty inexpressible ; sacks full of rix
dollars, ducatoons, ducats, and Batavian rupees ; chests
loaded with massy plate, gold and silver, with flagons,
goblets, crucifixes, and candles — here, to be sure, were
temptations to court Jack from places more distant than
Wapping and Gravesend, and to invite him to a contest
with seas more ferocious than those which shattered the
squadron of Pizarro.
In all naval history I can find nothing more remark-
able than the immense courage and wonderful persistency
of those old freebooters. Follow Dampier as he traverses
the deep and outlives a terrible gale in a small canoe ;
and Shelvocke as he launches his wretched boat, which
he called the Recover}/, and sails away in her, loaded
with seamen, who had scarce the space to lie down in,
and victualled with nothing better than smoked conger
EICR CAPTURES. 223
eels, a cask of beef, and four live hogs. " We were
upwards of forty of us crowded together, and lying upon
the bundles of eels, and being in no method of keeping
ourselves clean, all our senses were as much offended as
possible. There was not a drop of water to be had
without sucking it out of the cask with the barrel of a
musquet, which was used by everybody promiscuously,
and the little unsavoury morsels we daily ate created
perpetual quarrels among us, every one contending for
the frying pan." Yet despite their miserable condition,
these stout hearts attacked the first Spaniard that came
in their way, took her, and used her in their subsequent
marauding adventures. The voyage had a dismal issue,
yet they managed to pick up a little booty here and there.
Some curious old Spanish stratagems are exhibited. In
one prize they found a quantity of sweetmeats, which
were divided among the messes. One day a seaman
complained that he had a box of " malmalade," which
he could not stick his knife into, and asked that it might
be changed. Shelvocke opened it, and found inside a
cake of virgin silver, moulded on purpose to fit such
boxes ; and, says he, *' being very porous, it was of near
the same weight of so much malmalade." They over-
hauled the rest, and found five more of the boxes. " We
doubtless," exclaims the old buccaneer in a grieving
way, "left a great many of these boxes behind us, so
that this deceit served them in a double capacity — to
defraud their king's officers and blind their enemies." *
* Lord Byron would have us believe that the Corsair's life was a dainty
one; but of all the seafaring classes, none " roughed it" more thoroughly
than the pirate and prlvateersman. Dampier says grimly, " 'Tis usual with
seamen in those parts to sleep on deck, especially for privateers ; among
whom I made these observations. In privateers, especially when we are
at anchor, the deck is spread with mats, to lie on each night. Every man
has one, some two ; and this, with a pillow for the head, and a rug for a
224 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
It alwaj^s seems to be the haughty Don who, in the
old stories, yields Jack the rich booties. Here, for
example, is a passage from the "Annual Register" of
1762 : *' The Jlcrmione, a Spanish register ship, which
left Lima the Gth of January, bound for Cadiz, was taken
the 21st of May off Cape St. Vincent, by three English
frigates, and carried into Gibralta. Her cargo is said to
consist of near twelve millions of money, registered, and
the unregistered to be likewise very considerable, besides
two thousand serons of cocoa, and a great deal of other
valuable merchandize." Take these items from her
papers : One thousand one hundred and ninety-three
quintals of tin — a quintal, I may say, is one hundred
pounds — two millions two hundred and seventy-six thou-
sand seven hundred and fifteeen dollars in silver and
gold, coined; twenty-five arobes of alpaca wool, and
covering, is all the bedding that is necessary for men of that eml^lo^^"
(Dampier's " Voyages," vol. ii., 1699.) Some curious descriptions of tlie
hiibits and appearance of the typical pirate of the last century will be found
in "A New Account of Guinea and the Slave Trade," written by Captain
William Snelgrave, and published in 1754. This man was taken by pirates
during a voyage to the coast of Guinea in 1718. " There was not in the
cabbin," says he, " either chair or anything else to sit upon ; for they always
keep a clear ship ready for an engagement ; so a carpet was spread on the
deck, upon which we sat down cross-lcgg'd." When night came the
captain was asked to provide Snelgrave with a hammock, "for it seems
every one lay rough, as they called it, that is, on tlie deck, the captain
himself not being allowed a bed." He gives us a taste of their manners.
'• I got into the hammock, though I could not sleej) in my melancholy
circumstances. Moreover, the execrable oaths and blasphemies I heard
among the ship's company, shocked me to such a degree, thut in Hell
itself I thought there could not be worse ; lor though many seafaring men
are given to swearing and taking God's name in vain, yet I could not have
imagined human nature could ever so far degenerate as to talk in the
manner those abandoned wretches did." I find a formidable figure in this
portrait. " As soon as I had done answering the captain's questions, a
tall man, with four pistols in his giidle and a broadsword in his hand
came to me on the quarter-deck 1 "
RICH CAPTURES. 225
five thousand two hundred and forty-three arobes of
cocoa. A man did not need more than one capture after
this pattern to settle him as a fine old English gentle-
man, and to qualify him to start a noble family. The
mere rumour of such a haul as this would sufiice, in those
fighting days, to cover the seas with privateers.
Another paragraph, one year later : " Five waggon
loads of money, escorted by a party of soldiers, were
lately brought to the Bank from Portsmouth, by the
Rippon, man-of-war, from the Havannah." In these
piping times of peace one is apt to forget how very well
the mariner did in the years when his cutlass was never
out of his hand. The value of the prize-goods taken at
the Havannah in 1763 amounted to £154,855 10s. lid.,
of which the admiral took nearly £90,00.0, the commo-
dore £17,206, captains £1125 each, and the lieutenants
£86 Is. each. And the privateerman fared as well as
the naval officer. Not long after the Centurion took the
Manila ship, two privateers, the Ranger, of Bristol, and
the Amazon, of Liverpool, captured the Sancte Ineas, a
Spanish man-of-war, bound from Manila to Cadiz, laden
with gold, silver, silk, coffee, china, cochineal, and indigo,
and declared to be the richest prize taken since the galleon
by Admiral Anson. All through the story, from Eliza-
beth to the beginning of this century, you hear of the
privateers arriving with rich prizes. "Letters from
Fowey state the arrival there of the Lord Middleton,
richly laden with cocoa, indigo, coffee, quicksilver, valued
at £45,000, taken by the Maria privateer, of this port."
" Came in the Earl St. Vincent, fourteen guns. Captain
Richards, privateer, of this port, with the New Harmony
of Altona, from Smyrna to Amsterdam, with cargo valued
at £80,000." And so on by scores.
There were Customs' seizures, too, such as we never
Q
226 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
hear the hke of now. You read of an officer of Excise
at Falmouth seizmg on hoard a ship twenty-seven thou-
sand five hundred and twenty-nine pounds of tea, and
nine thousand gallons of hrandy ! " The officer hy this
gets £'3000. It is the greatest seizure of tea ever known."
Or, " Arrived, the Providence, smuggling lugger, of Pal-
ferro, with nine hundred and seventy ankers of brandy
and thirteen tons of tobacco, sent in by VOiscau, of thirty-
six guns, Captain Linzee." The old reports teem with
examples of this kind.
Yet, spite of rich prizes, smuggling captures, and the
like. Jack was always hard up, and by impecuniosity in
a chronic state of being *' forced from home and all its
pleasures." There was alive in 1790 an old man, one
John Holmes, the only survivor of the crew who accom-
panied Anson round the world. He was in the most
distressing poverty. He would tell the story of the fight
between the Centurion and the galleon, and of the prize-
money that fell to the men's shares ; but when asked
what he had done with the substantial sum which had
come to him, his answer was, " Alas ! sir, I was a sailor."
Sir George Kooke put it more nobly, if less pathetically.
When he was making his will, some friends who were
present expressed their surprise that he had not more to
bequeath. "I do not leave much," answered the old
heart of oak, " but what I do leave was honestly acquired ;
it never cost a sailor a tear or my country a farthing."
The wonder is that ships went so richly laden in those
war times. If it was thought proper to convoy vessels
of comparatively small value, it was surely desirable to
guard against the cruisers and the privateers the vast
accumulations of money and plate which were to be met
with in Spanish, French, and Dutch bottoms in the
corsair-infested Narrow Seas, in Biscayan parallels, and
RICH CAPTURES. 227
in the wide Pacific Ocean. Anson's galleon was, indeed,
a powerful ship for those times, yet she proved no match
for the slender and crippled company of men who attacked
her. Had she heen convoyed, had she been in company
with other vessels of her nation, the British commodore
must have languished in vain for the immense treasure
in her. The need of a guard, an auxiliary, of some pro-
tection to supplement her own powder and shot seems to
us, gazing backwards with clear perception of the issues
which followed, essential to the safety of the plate or
treasure ship in times when it would appear that the
stoutest-hearted of Spanish or French captains were
unable to rally their men when the English colours at
the masthead acquainted them with the nationahty of
the foe. For example : On November 6, 1799, there
arrived at Dartmouth a Spanish ship, of six hundred tons
burden, named the N. S. de Piedat, prize to a privateer
called the Dart. She mounted sixteen carriage guns,
carried seventy men, and was fitted up for close quarters,
that is to say, she was furnished with " barricadoes " as
a refuge for her crew in case of being boarded. She
struck to the privateer, however, after firing only two
guns, though the Englishmen mounted but fourteen
four-pounders. Nevertheless, seventy seamen — Spanish
sailors — in a ship of six hundred tons seem a feeble com-
pany to send along with such wealth as lay in the N. S.
de Piedafs hold. Here is her value : one hundred and
forty-two thousand one hundred and seventeen silver
dollars, thirty-eight thousand nine hundred and forty-
nine dollars in gold doubloons, thirty-one ingots of gold,
five ingots of silver, forty-two bales of fine beaver, twenty-
one thousand and sixty-one hides in the hair, three bales
of fine wool, one bale of fine fur. The rest of the cargo,
exclusive of the gold and silver, was valued at i'80,000.
228 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
The Dart carried sixty seamen. What conceivable chance
would seventy Spaniards have against such a crew as the
Dart could oj^pose to them — fellows whose living de-
pended upon plunder, and who could almost count upon
the enemy's striking after the first hail or after the first
two shots ? It was a very cosy haul for the Dart's people.
Small wonder that the privateer should have formed an
abounding ocean element, when the character of the prey
and the quality of the baggings are considered. " Eight
ships long expected from New Spain, and another from
Buenos Ayres, arrived at Cadiz the 21st of this month.
The cargoes of these ships are valued at eleven millions
of dollars, of which the registered gold and silver amount
to near nine millions." Such paragraphs are again and
again to be met with in the news sheets of old times.
And depend upon it, if the privateersman's mouth
watered over such items of intelligence, they were also
read with a swelling heart by the King's Navy man.
Prize-money is sweet, and it ought to be sweet, for no
reward is more gloriously and heroically earned. What
is there in cash — be it prompt or otherwise — to com-
pensate a man for a leg or an eye ? " Went down into
the Sound, La Nymphe, of thirty-six guns, Caj^tain
Douglas. She received this afternoon nearly £30,000
prize-money, and sailed directly on a cruise." How
agreeable this is to read, though it is all over, years and
years ago ! In fancy I behold the jolly red faces of those
lively salts, pigtails on back, and quids standing high
under their cheekbones, sheeting home the Xiimphes top-
sails, their hearts full of the Sukes and Sals who have
faded out with the receding shore, and their minds busy
with dreams of the dolhirs this new cruise shall tassel
their pocket-handkerchiefs with. *' The great sales for
prize-goods captured in different vessels of the enemy by
EICH CAPTURES. 229
our cruisers and sent in here (Plymouth) began this day.
The prize-vessels and goods of different kinds fetched
great prices, and were bought up with avidity by pur-
chasers from London, Liverpool, Bristol, Falmouth,
Exeter, etc., much to the satisfaction of the captors."
Much to the satisfaction of the captors ! The fancy
leaps to the sound of these century-old words. Hamoaze
is full of prizes — the brilliant victor with the proud St.
George's Cross at her peak strains lightly at her hempen
cable in the Sound, her yards braced to a hair, the white
line of hammock cloths crowning her defences, her tom-
pioned guns grinning like muzzled mastiffs through her
ports, the red-coats of marines dotting her almond-white
decks, an epaulet or two flashing aft, and the sale pro-
ceeding ashore *' much to the satisfaction of the captors."
Ay, Jack's grin, though one, two, or three centuries
old, is a living thing yet. The trophies of an amazing
naval history are wreathed around his purple smile.
What, after all, was Britannia's true Archimedean lever
but the mariner's pigtail ; and what the fulcrum but the
mountain of treasure from which the sailor gathered his
little pocketful under the name of Prize Money ?
PECULIARITIES OF RIG.
I HAD beeu talking \yitli an old seaman about the races
between an English and an American yacht. My com-
panion was a man who had spent the greater part of his
life at sea, and was a sailor in the sense that includes
not only smartness, alertness, and skill in those duties
expected of seamen, but thorough knowledge of all that
concerns ships, both in the fabrics of their hulls, and in
their masts, yards, rigging, and canvas. He said to me
that he was not sorry the Yankee had beaten the
Englishman, because it might cause yachtsmen to see
that beam must still be regarded as a condition of speed,
and that the notion that swiftness was to be obtained by
a shape that answered to Euclid's definition of a line
had been carried considerably too far. One thing lead-
ing to another, he spoke of schooner yachts, and said
that, so far as racing was concerned, he fancied that the
schooner rig was gradually sliding out of date.
"And yet," said he, "I'm certain that if the pre-
judices of yachting skippers and yachting crews could be
overcome, and owners induced to see the thing in its
right light, the schooner yacht could be rendered a
faster craft than the most splashing and frothing of
the yawls or cutters which now seem capable of sailing
round them. It was only the other day I was looking
PECULIAEITIES OF BIG. 231
at a yacht race. There was a middling breeze blowing.
I turned the glass upon a schooner that was in the race ;
she was ratching through it with spars almost erect,
whilst the yawls lay down till their rail looked to be under.
Why was that ? Would not you say because the schooner
hadn't canvas enough ? She was showing all she had ;
but she wanted more, and if more had been given her
she would have been leading instead of hanging in the
wake of the toys that were swirling ahead of her. What
other canvas would I give her? Why, of course, I'd
give her a fore-yard and a top-sail and a top-gallant yard.
Consider what a square sail would have done for that
schooner. I've been sailing in a vessel of that rig when
we've taken the square top-sail off her, and the moment
that bit of canvas was clewed up you might have felt
the way deadened in her as if she'd lost her life — as if all
impulse was gone. The yachting skippers have got a
prejudice against square canvas. It comes, in my
opinion, in a good many cases, from the feeling that
if they were shipmates with a topsail-yard they wouldn't
quite know what to do with it. I've spoken to a good
many of them upon the subject, and asked how it is that
they don't recommend their gents to rig their vessels
with square yards forward ; but their regular answer is,
* Pooh ! we don't want no square sails. Who's going to
be bothered with bracing yards about and mucking up
aloft after shipshape bunts when gaffs and booms '11
blow us along as fast as we need to go ? ' That's what
it comes to. ' Who's going to be bothered ? ' A skipper
said to me : ' Take a vessel in stays. You've got your
top-sail aback, and instead of shooting ahead as a fore-
and-after will, she stops dead while she slowly comes
round.' That shows his ignorance. I've been ratching
down the Mersey in a clipper schooner, and such way
232 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
did she get from her square canvas, and such little
notice did she take of her top-sail coming aback, that
I've seen the skipper head her for the shore with a slow
putting down of his helm to let her edge along, and I've
watched her run for a good spell parallel with the shore
before she came round on the other tack. The increased
way the square canvas gives a schooner counterbalances
whatever loss of way an aback top-sail is supposed to
cause her. My own opinion of the advantage of that
canvas is such that I'd undertake to fit a schooner yacht
with a square rig forward on these terms : That I was
allowed to sail her first ; that if she beat I was to receive
double pay for my services, and if she lost what I'd done
should be at my own expense, and I'd restore her to her
old rig free. Only fancy in ratching the pulling power
you'd be giving to a schooner. Your foreyard is sus-
pended by a truss, and if you choose you could sweat it
fore and aft if you liked. There's nothing in square
canvas to prevent a schooner from lying up as close as
if she was fore-and-aft rigged. Naturally schooners '11
go to leeward and be lost sight of as racers if the canvas
they compete under is out of all proportion with the
canvas that yawls and cutters spread. This is my
notion, anyway, and such is my faith in my own opinion
that I'm willing to stand or fall by it on the terms I've
given you, if so be any owner of a schooner yacht is
agreeable to give me the chance."
I have no comment to offer on this sailor's observa-
tions. My knowledge of racing yachts, their qualities
and requirements, does not carry me nearly far enough
to form any approach to a judgment upon the use that
might be made amongst competing schooners of square
sails and square top-sails. I may say, in the language of
the old sea-song, *'I served my time in the Blackwall
PECULIARITIES OF BIG. 2B3
Line." I went to sea at the age of thirteen and a half
in Duncan Dunbar's service, and kept to the hfe until I
was nearly two and twenty. Few sailors combine a
knowledge of fore-and-aft with square-rig seamanship.
There is as great a difference between them as there is
between steam and sail. For my own part, I must confess
to knowing very little about yachts and yachting. The
point that struck me most in this man's conversation w^as
the vast amount of experience that must obviously be em-
bodied in the innumerable rigs which are found afloat in
all parts of the w^orld. A single sail will make all the
difference between two vessels ; nay, even the shape of
a sail will as completely distinguish one craft from
another as the uniform of a soldier distinguishes him
from a policeman. Think of the years of weather, of
violent seas, of smooth waters lightly fanned, of strong
head breezes, and soft airs blowing over the stern, which
have entered into the creation of those hundred different
types of canvas — square, oblong, pyramidal, angular,
jib-headed, long-headed, and the rest of it, which pass
and repass our shores. Here is an old sailor declaring
that schooner yachts ought to be square rigged forward,
and he says that nearly all the yacht captains he has
talked to upon this subject are opposed to his ideas.
One can perceive in this the difficulty there must have
been in the beginning to settle the question of canvas,
a question only to be dealt with by experience, but an
experience so varied and immense that it is impossible
for any man, capable of rightly compassing the character
of it, not to find something absolutely impressive in its
way in every cloth that gleams upon the sea.
I remember once being in the smoking-room of a
large hotel, and hearing two men, in the presence of
several companions of theirs, arguing about what a billy-
234 A BOOK FOR TUE HAMMOCK.
boy was. One man said it was a kind of barge, the
other maintained that it was a sloop-rigged vessel similar
to the old hoy. Much nonsense was talked, yet the
people sitting about them listened with attention,
emptied their glasses, and looked as though they thought
that no matter which of the disputants was wrong — and
one must be wrong — both of them evidently knew a very
great deal about rigs. At last an elderly man, with a
velvet collar to his black cloth coat, coming out of his
chair in a corner, said, " I beg pardon for intruding, but
I happen to know something about billyboys ; in fact, I
own a couple. What sort of a billyboy do you gentle-
men mean ? Is it a sloop-billyboy, or a schooner-billyboy,
or a ketch-billyboy ?/' The company looked hard at him,
for it was plain a general misgiving as to his seriousness
seized them when he spoke of a ketch-billyboy. " The
sort of billyboy we are arguing about," was the answer,
" is just simply — a billyboy." " Well," said the other, " as
I told you gents, I own two. One's ketch-rigged, and
t'other's cutter-rigged. The billyboy," he added, ''is a
round starned vessel with standing bowsprit and jib-
stay, and mostly she's all hatchways." That was his
definition, and it was accepted, the man who argued that
the billyboy was rigged like a sloop looking particularly
pleased.
Now one would wish to know whether a billyboy, no
matter how many masts she carried, would still be called
a billyboy if she had a running instead of a standing
bowsprit? This is one of those delicate points over
which I will venture to say many a hoarse argument has
been roared out amidst clouds of tobacco smoke and the
fumes of old Jamaica.
" There," said I one day, pointing to a very smart
schooner that was passing, " goes a pretty little vessel."
I
FECULIARITIES OF BIG, 235
''Aye," answered the 'longshoreman whom I had
addressed, " a butterman."
" Freighted with butter, eh ? " said I, not doubting
that that was what he meant.
"Butter!" he ejaculated, ''No. What I mean is
she's butter-rigged."
" And pray what is butter-rigged ? " said I, for I
protest I had never heard the expression before.
" Why," he said, " a butter-rigged schooner's a vessel
that sets her fgaH'nt sail flying. The yard comes down
on the taw'sa'l yard, and the sails is furled together."
And this is a butter-rigged schooner ! A well-defined
distinction as rigs go, and all because the top-gallant
yard has no lifts ! A long while after I asked an old
sailor if he knew how it was that the term " butter-
rigged " came to be applied to vessels furnished with this
kind of top-gallant yard, and he answered that he be-
lieved the name was given in consequence of numbers of
this kind of craft trading to Holland for butter.
Niceties in nomenclature may be found as low down
even as the humble barge. For instance, there. is the
well-known spritsail barge ; a vessel with a mkinsail
that sets on a sprit — that is, a long pole, if I may so
describe it, that stretches the outer head of the sail,
from the foot of the mast. The mainsail of a spritsail
barge is br ailed up when taken in, and one must be
careful that she has brails in talking to sailors about her,
otherwise one's ignorance will be greatly laughed at,
sometimes secretly, and quite as often openly. For the
landsman must know that there is another species of
barge called a boomsail barge, wdiich is a vessel with a
gaff and a boom ; so here you have throat and peak
halliards, and brails are not required. Again, there is
the ketch-barge, a long vessel constructed on modern
236 A BOOK FOR TEE nAMMOCK.
lines, and rigged with a standing bowsprit and jibboom,
a gaff mainsail and a gaff mizzen. Let these fine dis-
tinctions be remembered in speaking of the barge to the
bargee, for here ah-eady we see very nearly as many
types of barges as there are types of yachts.
Take the ketch. To the untutored eye she resembles
a barge, yet she is no more a barge than a barque is a
ship. And why ? Because, says the nautical man, a
ketch is a vessel with a top-sail and small mizzen ;
and that settles it. Nor can the list of barges be
held as complete without reference to the dumb barge,
that is, a barge without rigging or masts. Few ship-
captains who have occasion to navigate the Thames but
execrate the name of this kind of barge as one of the
fruitfuUest sources of their marine troubles and per-
plexities. This wretched, naked, darksome, and grimy
object is incessantly floating under ships' bows, bringing-
up in wrong places, getting cut down round corners,
generally with the destruction of one man, the other
man nearly always holding on to something, and in
many other ways constantly producing much small
vexatious county-court litigation. The dumb barge is
very happily named, and the term smells strongly of the
bridge.
Some of the terms given to certain descriptions of rig
mark a degree of forecastle scorn and illustrate the power
of marine irony. As an example take the ''jackass
barque." Only the eye of a mariner would distinguish
any difference between a vessel so termed and the fully
rigged barque. And what is the distinction ? A jackass
barque has fore and main topmasts and top-gallant masts
in one. This is why, I suppose, sailors call her jackass.
Perhaps the term mule would have been more correct ;
and yet the polacre, that outdoes the jackass barque, in
PECULIARITIES OF RIG. 237
respect of spars, is suffered to pass without a derisive
aiDpellation. Here you have a vessel with masts all in
one to as high as the topmast crosstrees, after which you
come to separate top-gallant masts, fidded.* Commonly,
in consequence of there heing no tops, the sailors climb
aloft by means of a *' Jacob's ladder " that starts from the
eyes of the lower rigging and ascends to the height of the
crosstrees. Thus we find distinctions owing to masts
simply, and not to the number of masts, but the manner
in which they are fashioned. So a sailor speaks of sky-
sail poles, of short royal mast heads, of stump or short
top-gallant masts; the vocabulary is apparently endless.
And yet one w^ord means only one thing, and every
one is totally different from another. As a single example,
when you speak of skysail poles you are talking of a
length of mast continued above the royal mast, upon
which a skysail yard may be crossed. When you speak
of stump top-gallant masts you refer to a mast that is
neither royal mast nor skysail mast, and upon which
only a topgallant sail can be set, thus losing the two sails
which the existence of the skysail pole admits of.
It is noteworthy that the only vessel to which a mast
more or less makes no difference is a ship — that is, a ship
in the sailor's meaning of the word, and not according to
Act of Parliament. For here let me say that the law
defines a ship to be any fabric that is not propelled by
oars, a piece of absurdity forced upon general acceptance
by its conveniency. The proper definition of a ship is a
vessel with three masts, each mast being square-rigged.
She would be a ship, even if she did not carry anything
above her cross-trees, for she is made so by her cross -
* A. fid is a bar of wood or iron passed through the fid-hole to support
au upper mast. A fidded topmast or top-gallant mast, is a mast erected
above its lower mast, and supported by the fid.
238 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
jack and mizzen top-sail yard and mizzen top; * yet, if you
add a fourth mast to a ship she is still a ship, even if it
be what is termed a spanker mast — that is, a mast rigged
like the mizzcn-mast of a barque. Four-masted ships
are now common. They seem comparatively recent ; but
in reality they are as old at least as that noble American
clipper, the Great Rejmhlir, that was afloat some twenty
or thirty years ago. These fourth masts in ships are
supposed to have been introduced on account of the length
of the vessels ; but I have seen ships as small as any
three-masted craft rigged with four masts. They say
that these four-masted concerns are handy in stays, that,
proportionally, they need fewer hands than three-masted
ships, and captains have told me that they have watched
them thrashing to windward in a strong breeze with the
power of an ocean passenger-steamer. I should think
this very likely, if it were not that every vessel of this
type which I have watched sailing or towing away, out-
ward bound, has been so deep as to look amidships as if
there was nothing but the thickness of her covering-board
between her and the water.
Many changes have been made in the rig of ships
which have not altered their character. Double top-
gallant yards leave a ship a ship, though an alteration of
this sort probably in another kind of vessel would cause
sailors to invent a new name for her. Take, for example,
♦ " AH ihe yards of a ship," says Falconer, in his "Marine Dictionary,"
" are square, except that of the mizzen.'' In Falconer's day the mizzen
was set on a lateen yard, long since replaced by the gaff. There was then
a crossjack yard to which the clews of the mizzen top sail were sheeted
home, but no crossjack was carried. There was in the last century (per-
haps in tlie beginning of this) a vessel called liiJander. She was a brig,
but with this pecnliarity, tliat her mainsail was set on a lateen yard. The
tack was secured to a ring-bolt in the middle of the vessel, and the sheet
to another rin<r-bolt in the taftrail.
PECULIARITIES OF RIG. 239
that most familiar craft, the brig. If the trysail of this
vessel sets directly upon her mainmast, then she is a
brig ; but if you affix a little mast abaft her mainmast,
and call it a trysail mast, and then set your trysail upon
this mast, the brig, by this very trifling change, becomes
what is called a " snow." A landsman might be defied
to detect any difference between a snow and a brig, and
even when the distinction was pointed out to him he
would scarcely understand what it consisted of. Never-
theless, the addition or want of a trysail mast creates two
kinds of vessels rigged absolutely alike in all other
respects, and so far from the terms being interchange-
able, as might be imagined of names applied to what
looks to be the same thing, the word " snow " is used in
advertisements of sales by auction in order that it may
be known the vessel offered is not a brig ; and thus you
may see in the shipping papers advertisements announc-
ing that " On Thursday the snow Aunt Sally will be sold,
etc.," and, perhaps under it, "On Tuesday next, the brig
Ann Maria.''
These are queer niceties, and of very little use that I
can see ; but sailors insist upon them, and Jack must
be allowed to have his way.
Take, again, the yawl and the dandy. Both vessels
are cutter-rigged forward, with a mizzen-mast aft, upon
which they set a small sail. To the inexperienced eye
they are exactly alike. What, then, is the difference ?
It lies in the little sail that is set upon the mizzen-mast.
A yawl has a lug-mizzen, the foot of which sets on a
spar that projects over the stern. The dandy's mizzen
has a gaff and boom, though the mizzens of some dan-
dies, I believe, are what is termed jib-headed. The dis-
tinction is minute, and yet the difference when looked
into is found to be decided enough. The yawl is chiefly
the pleasure craft, the dandy the fishing vessel.
2.0 A BOOK FOB THE HAMMOCK.
Amongst fishing craft the varieties of rigs are few.
They consist of the dand}^, the lugger, and the smack.
The smack is a vessel that is rigged like a cutter, and it
is not necessary that a vessel should be a fishing boat in
order to be called a smack.
To people who care about the sea there is much that
is interesting in rigs. The variations are curious as
illustrating experiments, and the resolution to adopt
certain forms useful in particular trades. There is the
barque, a three-masted vessel square-rigged on her fore
and main masts, and with fore-and-aft sails on her
mizzen-mast ; she is varied by the barquentine, a vessel
rigged like a brig, or indeed like a barque or ship on her
fore-mast, but with fore-and-aft sails only on her main
and mizzen-masts.* Then out of the brig you get the
* The nomenclature of the sea has been so varied by successive genera-
tions that it is extremely difficult to arrive at the paternity of sails, to
ascertain whea such and such cauvas was introduced and why the names
it bore were given. In some respects Sir Walter Kaleigh helps us in
a passage in his " Discourse of Shipping." " We have lately," says he,
" added the bonnet and tlie drabler ; to the courses we have devised
studding sails, top-gallant sails, spritsails, and topsails." By "topsails,"
I take it, he means spritsail-topsails, for the topsail was long anterior to
the canvas he specifies. The sails thus named are manifestly then as old
as the closing years of the reign of Elizabeth and the beginning of that
of James I. The staysail I find plentiful in the days of Queen Anne.
In an old volume of shipbuilding, written by an anonymous author who
claims for his work, '' 'Tis the product of thirty-two years study and expe-
rience ; for it is very well known that I have been so long imploy'd in
her Majesty's service, and that of her Eoyal Pretlecessors " — I find the
following : " There arc other sails called stay-sails, usi'd almost on every
stay; as the main stay-sail, main-topmast stuy-sail, fore-topmast stay-sail,
mizon stay-sail, and sometimes on the mizou-top-mast stay and top-
gallant stay. And such sails are very useful, if the ship goes anything
from the wind, that is, when the sails are constantly full and not
shivering. There is another sail call'd a flying-gib, a sail of good
service to draw the ship forward, but very prejutlicial to the wear of
the ship forward." Towards the close of the last Ctutury ships went so
PECULIARITIES OF BIG. 241
snow, and out of the snow the hermaphrodite brig,
which is a vessel with a brig's foremast and a schooner's
mainmast, and out of the hermaphrodite brig comes the
brigantine, that, unhke the hermaphrodite, carries a
square topsail at the main, and, unlike the brig, has no
maintop. In the same way there are different types
of schooners, such as the three-masted schooner, the
fore-and-aft schooner, the topsail schooner, and the two-
topsail schooner. Differences of cut, numbers of masts,
spread of sail, give distinctions to the smallest and
humblest class of boats. Thus a tosher is not a long-
shore driver, though both little vessels are employed in
catching what they can close into the land.
One needs a good memory to bear even a few dis-
tinctions in mind. I remember once standing on the
banks of the Tyne and hearing a man, pointing to a
vessel like a lighter, call her a wherry. To my South-
country notions, of course, a wherry was a small open
boat in which people are rowed by a waterman, or which
they hire for excursions. Close alongside this gigantic
Tyne wherry, which, by the way, if my memory serves
numerously clothed that it really seems as though nothing but their
prodigious beam enabled them to stand up to the press of canvas. There
were two jibs, fore topmast stay-sail, sprit-sail and sprit-topsail, and fore
stay-sail. Here you have six sails for the bowsprit and jibbooms. Eoyals
were by this time used and were called the top-gallant royals. Over the
driver was carried a gaflf topsail, outside which was set another sail bent
to a light yard. Eing-tails and water-sails were common, the latter project-
ing far beyond the stern. There were nine stay-sails, oesides those carried at
the fore. A ship with studding-sails out on either side exposed no less
than forty-two sails. The present century has added little to sails. I
can only think of the skysail. But there have been great changes in
shape. Formerly the mizzen was set on a lateen yard. Stay-sails were
shaped like trysails, the stay on which they were hoisted shaping
them as a gatf does a spanker. Sprit-sails long ago disappeared, and the
tendency of late years has been to diminish canvas, insomuch that studding-
sails are no longer common.
B
242 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
me rightly, was half full of coal, lay a similar-looking
craft that the same man si)oke of as a keel. I asked him
^yhy one should be called a keel and the other a wherry,
when they were both very much alike, and I am under
the imj^ression, though I cannot be sure at this distance
of time, that he said the difference lay in one being
carvel built, that is, w4th the outer planks coming to-
gether and forming a perfectly smooth side, and the
other being clincher-built, a term applied to planks when
they overlay one another. Be this as it may, it is at
least certain that a wherry in the north is different from
a wherry in the south, and really when one comes to
consider the infinite variety of rigs and builds, and the
almost imperceptible subtleties amongst them which
make the same name utterly inapplicable to what looks
exactly like the same thing, nautical gentlemen, indi-
viduals who are not exactly sailors, but who nevertheless
know a very great deal indeed about the sea, insomuch
that they are prepared to instruct, at a moment's notice,
the most ancient mariner they can come across in
his business — such people ought to be a little more
compassionate than they are usually found in dealing
with those errors or oversights in marine technicality
which landsmen are repeatedly guilty of, and which
writers and others who ought to know better are occa-
sionally chargeable with.
HOW THE OLD NAVIGATORS
MANAGED.
It is extremely difficult to understand how the old
navigators contrived to convey their ships from port to
port. I do not mean the ancients, who are supposed
to have kept the land aboard and to have steered by the
stars, though it is certain that they must again and
again have been, blown out to sea and yet made shift
to get home again ; but those early voyagers who
travelled to the Indies by way of the Cape and to the
American seaboard. They had no conception of longi-
tude ; they had no means to determine it ; and their
latitude was extremely vague. An old chart or map is
often a strange sight. The figuration of continents and
islands is as little like the reality as a child's fanciful
drawing of such things would be. The longitude is mere
guesswork, and the "heights" or parallels are leagues
out. Yet these old people managed to reach the places
they started for. Sometimes, to be sure, if the trip were
a long one, they found themselves off the land at a
distance of a hundred miles or so north or south, as it
might be, of their port ; but, when you consider that
even their knowledge of the variation of the compass was
extremely imperfect — that the compass with them was
244 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
a sluggish primitive appliance — that they could be sure
of nothing but their dead-reckoning and the North Star
— it should be amazing to us, who live in the age of the
exquisite sextant, the superb chronometer, Sir AYilliam
Thompson's compass, the patent revolving log and
Admiralty charts, that mariners from the days of Diaz,
Columbus, and Magellan, down to the period of Dr.
Maskelyne, the '' Nautical Almanac," and the establish-
ment of the Board of Longitude in the last century,
should have been able, without hesitation or difficulty,
to push on their hundred different ways through the
ocean, and duly arrive at the parts they weighed for.
A list of the instruments in use at sea two centuries
ago is published as a supplement to Captain James's
*' Strange and Dangerous Voyage in his intended Dis-
covery of the North-West Passage into the South Sea,
in the years 1631 and 1632," contained in "Churchill's
Collection," vol. ii., 1704. The captain took with him a
quadrant, "of old season'd pear-tree wood, artificially
made, and wdth all care possible divided into diagonals,
even to minutes." It was four-foot semi-diameter, adds
the captain. In addition to this he had an equilateral
triangle of the same wood, " whose radius was five foot
at least ; " a second quadrant with a semi-diameter of two
feet ; a staff for taking altitudes and distances seven feet
long, " whose transome was four foot, divided into equal
parts by way of diagonals, that all the figures in a radius
of ten thousand might be taken out actually ; " another
staff six feet long, a cross-staff, three Jacob's staves, and
two of " Mr. Davis's back staves." These huge unwieldy
instruments seem entirely appropriate to the age of folios.
James took with him other appliances which he called
horizontal instruments. Among tbese were two semi-
circles " two foot semi-diameter, of seasoned pear-tree
HOW THE OLD NAVIGATORS MANAGED. 245
wood/' six '^meridian compasses," four needles in square
boxes, *' moreover, four special needles (which my good
friends Mr. Allen and Mr. Marre gave me) of six inches
diameter, and toucht curiously with the best loadstone
in England ; " a loadstone with the poles marked for
fear of a mistake, a watch-clock, ''a table every day
calculated, correspondent to the latitude, according to
Mr. Gunter's directions in his book, the better to keep
our time and our compass and judge of our course,"
log-lines and glasses, "two pair of curious globes, made
purposely," and finally '^ I made a meridian line of
120 yards long, with six plumb lines hanging in it,
some of them being above 30ft. high, and the weights
hung in a hole in the ground, to avoid wind. And this
to take the sun's or moon's coming to the meridian.
This line we verified, by setting it by the pole itself,
and by many other ways." Such was the scientific
equipment of a man bound on a Polar expedition in
the year 1631.
There is an interesting appendix to this voyage
" touching longitude," written by the astronomer Gelli-
brand. "The longitude of a meridian," he says, "is
that which hath, and still wearieth, the greatest masters
of geography." He ridicules the notion that longitude
may be ascertained by watching the variation of the
needle, though it is worth noting that this belief con-
tinued strong for many years later, as may be gathered
from a passage in the introductory essay to " Churchill's
Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca : " " One
thing more we shall observe before we quit this subject,
and it is this, that the several methods for findiag the
longitude before mentioned depend upon astronomical
observations, and those too very nice and exact, which
at sea it is very difficult at any time, and very often
246 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
impracticable, to make ; whence arises the necessity of
finding out some other waj^ of discovering the longitude,
for which hitherto nothing has bid so fair as a perfect
finding out the variation of the magnetic needle,
which being adjusted to a table of longitudes, they would
then reciprocally^ show each other." Gellibrand regards
ecli^^ses, more especially of the moon — " whose leisure,
however," he adds, "we must often wait, and perhaps
go without, if the heavens be not propitious to us " — as
the most satisfactory means of determining the longitude.
But at sea people want something more prompt than an
eclipse to find out where they are.
For generations, then, the mariner was left to depend
upon his dead-reckoning, which, as on-e method of navi-
gating a ship, is still in force, and I do not know that we
have in any way altered this old practice of computing,
save by the introduction of the patent log, whose indica-
tions are still in some directions checked by the log-reel
of our forefathers. Dead-reckoning simply consists of
ascertaining how fast the ship sails by heaving the log,
by entering the courses sailed, by allowing for leeway.
The ship, let us say, steered north-east for one hour,
north-east by north during the following hour, north-
north-east for the third hour, and then during the fourth
hour came up to north-east again. In those four hours
her rate varied : at one o'clock the log showed her sailing
at seven knots ; at two, five-and-a-half knots ; at three,
four-and-three-quarter knots ; at four, six knots ; and her
leeway was sometimes three-quarters of a point, some-
times one point, sometimes more. Her place, then, on
the chart maybe easily set down or "pricked" out of
these entries in the log-slate. In thick weather there is
no other way of computing a ship's progress and position.
The sky may be obscured for days, and all that a man
HOW THE OLD NAVIGATORS MANAGED. 247
can do is to heave his log, watch how the ship heads, and
observe her leeway. It was in this fashion that the
ancient mariner contrived to crawl about the ocean, and
it is worth observing that the log he measured his way
with we still possess and use. No ship, I should think,
goes to sea without the reel, the line, and the glass. The
rotating logs tell you how far you have gone in a given
time with tolerable accuracy ; but the reel-log is the only
appliance that I am acquainted with which will tell you
how fast you are going at the moment.
Seamen have told me that with their eye they can
tell the speed of their ship more accurately than with
the log-line. I do not believe this, and on testing these
cocksure men I have never once found them right within
half a knot. Of course this refers to sailing ships. A
steamer goes along steadily, and it is quite conceivable
that a person accustomed to steamships could tell cor-
rectly the speed of one by looking over the side. But a
sailing vessel varies her rate with every puff. Under
certain conditions the increased sail that seems to be
thrashing her through it with greater velocity has
diminished her speed. I particularly recollect an in-
stance. A dynamometer w^as attached to the taffrail of
a large full-rigged ship ; to it was affixed a line which it
dragged through the water. The pull of the line was
equivalent to a weight of sixty pounds. The vessel was
then sailing with the wind a point before the beam,
under all plain sail, the breeze fresh. The foretopmast
studdingsail was set, and the hand of the dynamometer
went back, showing that the speed had been decreased
to the extent illustrated by this diminution of weight
in the pull of the line by the setting of the studdingsail.
The chief officer, however, was so certain that the ship
had improved her speed, despite the unmistakable indi-
248 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
cations of the dynamometer, that to prove his judgment
he ordered the log to be hove, with the result that the
speed was less by a knot (I think) than it had been
before the studding-sail was set. The fact is, the ship
had sail enough; the additional canvas simply buried, and
so retarded her. Yet this same mate was one of many
seamen who had assured me that they could tell the
speed of a vessel better with the eye than with the
log.
It is true, nevertheless, that the mariners of certain
nations in former times chose the eye in preference to
the knotted line. The Dutch, in particular, though they
always took the reel and glass to sea with them, seldom
used them. There looks to have been something of
laziness in their habit. An account of the Hollander's
slatternly trick of navigation may be found in a note to
"Voyages to the East Indies by the late John Splinter
Stavorinus," in 1768-71-74 and 75. This author tells
us that the Dutchmen of his own and of earlier times
steered by the true compass, or rather endeavoured to
do so, *' by means of a small central movable card,
which they set to the meridian ; and whenever they
discover the variation has altered twenty-two degrees
since the last adjustment, they again correct the central
card. This is steering within a quarter of a point
without aiming at greater exactness." There was the
same guesswork in their dead reckoning. They hove no
log, says Stavorinus. The officer of the watch corrected
the course for leeway by his own judgment before
marking it down on the logboard. They computed their
speed by measuring a distance of forty feet along the
ship's side. " They take notice of any remarkable patch
of froth when it is abreast of the foremost end of the
measured distance, and count half-seconds till the mark
EOW THE OLD NAVIGATORS 3IAXAGED. 249
of froth is abreast of the after end. With the number
of half-seconds thus obtained they divide the number
forty-eight, taking the product for the rate of saihng in
geographical miles in one hour, or the number of Dutch
miles in four hours." One finds the same phlegmatic
indifference in their manner of- taking sights. "It is
not usual to make any allowance in the sun's declina-
tion on account of being on a different meridian from
that for which the tables are calculated. They in general
compute the numbers just as they are found in the
tables. From all this," drily adds Stavorinus, "it is
not difficult to conceive the reason why the Dutch are
frequently above ten degrees out in their reckoning."
The Spaniards and the Portuguese were more wary,
if not more knowing, than the Dutch. Extreme vigilance
in conning ship was apparently a feature of the navigation
of those old and famous races of mariners. Sir Eichard
Hawkins (Purchas, vol. iv.) is express in this. I will let
him deliver himself in his own quaint inimitable
tongue. " In this point of steeridge (steering) the
Spaniards and Portugalls do exceede all that I have
seene, I meane for their care, which is chiefest in navi-
gation. And I wish in this, and in all their workes of
discipline and reformation, we should follow their ex-
amples, as also those of any other nation. In every
shippe of moment, upon the halfe-decke or quarter-decke,
they have a chaire or seate, out of which, whilst they
navigate, the pilot, or his adjutants (which are the same
officers which in our shippes we term the master and
his mates) never depart day nor night from the sight of
the compasse, and have another before them, whereby
they see what they doe, and are ever witnesses of the
good or bad steeridge of all men that take the helme."
A later generation of sailors, "Portugalls" as well as
25a A BOOK FOR TEE HAMMOCK.
others, know better than to suffer men on the look-out,
whether officers of the watch or quarter-masters, to be
seated.
The common contrivance for taking the height of the
sun at sea in order to obtain the latitude was the cross-
staff or fore-staff. It was composed of a wooden staff,
upon which was marked a scale of degrees and parts of
degrees ; it was also fitted with crosspieces for sliding
along it at their middle parts. The smallest crosspieces
were used for observing the least altitudes. The observa-
tion of the sun's height was taken by means of the
shadow which the extremity of the crosspiece cast on
the staff when the instrument was adjusted. Contrast
this humble, uncouth engine with the sextant of to-day !
The back-staff was another implement, the invention of
Davis, the Arctic explorer, by the help of which the
ancient mariner made his way about the ocean. He had
also the astrolabe. Clarke, in his " Progress of Maritime
Discovery," speaks of the sea-astrolabe as deriving its
name from the ''Armillary sphere invented by Hip-
parchus at Alexandria." He finds it first in use among
the Portuguese, perhaps because they claim its intro-
duction into Portugal by Martin de Boerina in 1485.
The introduction of the cross-staff, on the other hand,
is attributed to Warner, who published an account of it
at Nuremberg in 1514. As regards the astrolabe, there
is certainly a mistake in the date, for we find Chaucer
writing a treatise on this instrument in 1391. The
method indicated by the old poet for ascertaining the
latitude may be accepted as the one employed by the
mariners of his own and of much later periods. One
special article in his Treatise is entitled by the i3oet,
"Another conclusion to prove the latitude of a region
that ye ben in," and the whole passage is so quaint and
EOW THE OLD NAVIGATORS MANAGED. 251
interesting withal that every nautical reader of this
volume will, I am sure, thank me for transcribing it. I
quote from the edition of the Treatise published by Mr.
A. E. Brae in 1870.
"If," writes Chaucer, ''thou desire to know this
latitude of the region, take the altitude of the sonne in
the myddle of the daye, when the sonne is in the hed of
Aries or of Libra, for than movethe the sonne in the lyne
equinoctial, and abate the nombre of that same Sonne's
altitude out of 90 degrees, and than is the remnaunt of the
nombre that leveth the altitude of the region ; as thus —
I suppose that the sonne is thilke daye at noon 38
degrees of heyght ; abate, than, 38 degrees out of 90, so
leveth ther 52, than is 52 degrees the latitude. I saye
not this but for ensample, for wel I wot the latitude of
Oxenforde is certain minutes lesse. Nowe, if it so be
that thou thinketh too long a tarrying to abyde til that
the sonne be in the hed of Aries or Libra, than waite
when that the sonne is in any other degree of the
zodiake, and consider if the degree of his declinacion be
Northward from the equinoctial; abate than from the
Sonne's altytude at none the nombre of his declinacion,
and than hast thou the height of the hedes of Aries and
Libra ; as thus — my sonne, peraventure, is in the 10
degree of Leo, almost 56 degrees of height at none, and
his declinacion is almost 18 degrees Northward from the
equinoctial ; abate than thilke 18 degrees of declinacion
out of the altitude at none, than leveth 38 degrees — lo
there the height of the hed of Aries or Libra and thyn
equinoctial in that region."
So, then, all the ancient mariner had to do was to
take the height of the sun, subtract or add the declina-
tion, and accept the remainder as his latitude. An easy
process, that gives us Cape Horn on the fifty-second
252 A BOOK FOB TEE HAMMOCK.
parallel and Valdivia on the forty- third ! * And yet
they managed excellently well, hove their log, turned
their hour-glasses, and arrived in due course, their ships
covered with harnacles and themselves with glory. In
one sense it was the marine age of gold. There were no
Board of Trade examinations, no certificates of com-
petency, no obligation to find the time by equal alti-
tudes, or the longitude by chronometer or by lunar
observations. The whole art of the navigation of our
ancestors is summed up in the account of a voyage sent
by Thomas Steevens to his father in 1579, in which he
tells him that it is hard to sail from east to west, or
contrary, because there is no fixed point in all the sky
whereby to direct a course. *' I shall tell you," says he,
''what helps God provideth for these men." And he
informs his father that not a "fowle" appears, nor a
sign in the air or in the sea which has not been written
about by those who make the voyage — that is, to the
East Indies. "Wherefore, partly by their own expe-
rience, and pondering withal what space the ship was
able to make with such a winde, and such direction, and
partly by the experience of others whose books and navi-
gations the}^ have, they gesse whereabouts they be." f
And accurately enough they " gessed," too. But
then there was no dispatch ; every owner of a bottom
took his own risks, and a few months sooner or later
(chiefly later) was nothing to people w^ho could find a
dry dock on every beach, and a market for trucking
wherever there was a coloured man. Many generations
were born and died before real help came to the mariner,
* That is, accordinj^ to one or two old maps I have seen.
t I liavc clsowhoro quoted tliis and other passages. Many of these
papers were written at lonp; intervals, and I could not charge my memory
with references already made use of.
HOW TEE OLD NAVIGATORS MANAGED. 253
and he was able to sail as securely east or west as north
or south. There was no " Nautical Almanac " till the
year 1769. This invaluable compilation was originally
proposed and then calculated by Dr. Maskelyne, and
published by order of the Commissioners of Longitude.
So conservative, however, is the character of the seaman
that he candidly owned himself but very little obliged to
Dr. Maskelyne and the Admiralty. So long afterwards
as 1794 I find Wilham Hutchinson, mariner, in a very
admirable and voluminous treatise on Naval Architec-
ture, writing in defiant terms touching the "Nautical
Almanac." "The Board of Longitude," he says, "in
order to facilitate the discovery that is expected to be
made by this last-mentioned method," namely, the
"Nautical Almanac," "has ordered that the masters
for the Eoyal Navy must qualify themselves by learning
to pass an examination to show that they understand
the ' Nautical Almanac,' which is a task, in my opinion,
that cannot be expected from man}^ of our most hardy
and expert navigators, w^hose education has been mostly
from early youth through the hard, laborious, busy
scenes of life at sea, and who have never had the oppor-
tunity to get the learning that is necessary to understand
the true principles of this Almanac."
Possibly even in this day it might not be hard to find
sea veterans who would secretly agree with Mr. Hutchin-
son's protest, and lament the extinction of an epoch
w^hen the quadrant and the log-line were thought
"larning" enough. At any rate, I have a lively recol-
lection of reading something closely corresponding to
such views in the British Merchant Service Journal, the
organ of the London Shipmasters' Society, for 1879-80.
PLATES AND EI VETS.''
The great shipping question of the day is the load-
line. Who is to be responsible for Plimsoll's mark ? Is
the shipowner to go on fixing it at his own risk, or will
the Government fix it for him ? and if so, wiiere ? Is the
carrying power of a vessel to be calculated by her
surplus buoyancy, or is her clear side to be taken in
relation to her depth of hold ? — and is it possible to fix
one loading point for all vessels, whether they be well-
decked ships, or flush-decked ships, or hurricane-decked
ships ? All these are scientific conundrums, which will
have to be solved sooner or later. They are certainly of
the gravest possible moment to the shipping interests.
As the law now stands, a shipowner is permitted to
determine at what height on the vessel's side a loadline
shall be fixed ; but, if, in the opinion of the officials, the
loadmark does not furnish sufficient freeboard, the ship
can be stopped, and forced to discharge as much of her
cargo as shall raise her to the height the officials may
consider she requires. The injustice of this is tolerably
obvious. Practically, the Board of Trade have their
preconceived theory of the proper freeboard of every
vessel. They or their representatives say, " Yonder is
a vessel of three thousand tons. She needs so many
feet of clear side. Her owners, in our opinion, are over-
* Written in 1882.
PLATES AND RIVETS. 255
loading her. But let them proceed. When she is full,
her stores, crew, and passengers aboard, and everything
ready for the voyage, we will stop her and force her to
disgorge." Now, if the Board of Trade can decide after,
why can they not decide before ? Why should ship-
owners be obliged to guess at the theories of freeboard
which the Board have in their mind, and be visited with
the penalty of a costly delay if their conjectures should
be wrong ? The Government authorities say. We will
not fix the loadline : you must do that at your own risk.
But practically they do fix the loadline by empowering
their representatives to stop ships which look to be
overloaded. Surely it would be more consistent with
common sense and common justice to determine a load-
line for the shipowner before he fills up his ship than to
keep the determination carefully concealed from him
until his vessel is about to start or actually has com-
menced her voyage.
This, then, as I have said, is the great shipping ques-
tion of the times, and it is the outcome of the wise and
humane consideration how to diminish the perils of the
deep for those who have to seek a living upon it. It is
to be hoped that the numerous scientific controversies
which have grown out of the subject of the loadline may
not overcloud and conceal the object the Plimsoll disc
was intended to effect. That object was to prevent owners
from sending human lives to sea aboard ships so deeply
freighted that the first heavy gale of wind was bound to
sink them. Unhappily departmental timidity has gone
very near to neutralizing a great and beneficent measure
without satisfying the class who were to be appeased and
quieted. Many overladen ships contrive somehow to sneak
off to sea unnoticed by those functionaries whose duty it is
to stop such vessels. If they founder with all hands the
256 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
law considers itself sufficiently avenged by mulcting the
owners and imprisoning them. Unfortunately, this does
not save the sailor's life. It is another illustration of
the truth that every special interest is bound to suffer
from the lack of thoroughness in the measures of those
to whom it looks for protection. One seems to find the
same perfunctoriness in most of the legislation that
deals with sailors. It was a good thing to extinguish
the old floating coffins. And yet it was but a half-
measure, too. It was merely the lopping of a few twigs
from a great rotten branch. A much larger evil than
the despatching of unseaworthy ships was left untouched
— I mean the construction of unseaw^orthy ships. It
was monstrous, indeed, that men should be allowed to
send on a dangerous voyage vessels which had been
afloat for years and years, cobbled-up old fabrics which
leaked like sieves, but whose safety was a matter of
profound indifference to their owners, because of the
insurance that must make whatever happened good luck
to them. But it seems to me much more monstrous
that men should be allowed to build ships — every one
of which carries as large a company of souls as would
equip a whole fleet of the old condemned coasters —
whose iron frames and whose iron plates are fit for
nothing but to be branded with the word ''Murder,"
so that when the metal fragments come ashore the
beholder may know for what purpose they were designed.
Legislation has protected the sailor ; but read the
reports of the marine inquiries held. Take the trouble
to count for yourself the number of missing ships —
missing nobody knows how or why — which are cata-
logued in a short twelvemonth. Glance at the deposi-
tions of the men brought ashore from vessels which have
foundered under their feet. Here are facts speaking
PLATES AND RIVETS. 257
^-itb a trumpet-tongue, sounding a deep and bitter
reproach upon our British ears, and converting our
legislative efforts into mere irony. Will any seaman
pretend that Plimsoll's mark, as we now have it, has
abridged, by so much as one sixty-fourth part of the
whole, the perils he had to face before the question of
freeboard was ever made a subject of discussion ? Will
he assert that the extinction of the '' floating coffin " has
increased the chances of his safety, in the face of the
innumerable iron ships which are, month after month,
slipped along the ways into that ocean whose bottom
they are bound to sound in due course ? I am not
speaking of the great ocean passenger steamship ; she,
no doubt, in point of construction and strength, may
be as perfect as she looks, with the exterior gilt and
paint, and the interior sumptuousness of velvet, and
silk, and polished panelling. I am referring to the class
of vessels which are doing the work of the old condemned
coasters, and more than the work, since we find them
pushing into seas into which the " coffin " never ven-
tui-ed. " The vessel did not arrive at her destination,"
runs the report of a recent inquiry held by Mr. H. C.
Eothery; "it may, therefore, fairly be concluded that she
has gone to the bottom, and the object of the present
inquiry is to ascertain, if possible, how she has been
lost." If possible !
To show the character of that possibility the Anjiex
prints it thus " . . ."
Could anything be more eloquent ? Will the builder
interpret those points to signify his rivet-holes ?
Or take from a late deposition the narrative of a
shipmaster, who relates that " he proceeded; " the wind
was so and so ; such and such a light bore N.W., the land
was three miles distant, the sea smooth, and the vessel
s
258 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
steaming fall speed. On a sudden it was noticed that
the ship was down by the head. The engineer sounded
the forehold, and found nearly four feet of water in it.
Then all hands were called on deck and the steam pumps
set to work. But the water gained on the pumps, and
meanwhile the vessel steadily continued to settle down
by the head. The fore hatches were removed, and nearly
six feet of water found* The pumps continued working,
and the crew baled with might and main with buckets.
But all was of no good, so deponent got the boats ready
for use. He tried to drive his ship shorewards, but she
would not answer her helm, on wdiich he stopped the
engines and lowered the boats. They were picked up
by another vessel, and shortly after they were aboard
tlie ship they had quitted went down head foremost.
This occurred close to the land, w^here there was
plenty of help, and so we get the j)oor ship)master's
deposition. But it might have occurred leagues out at
sea, where there was no succour, and then the ship
would have been missing, "nothing heard of the crew,"
and the formal marine inquiry w^ould have wound ujd
with another handful of dots. And what caused that
steamer to go down head foremost on a fine clear day,
and in smooth w^ater ? There was no collision ; there
were no shoals. Had a butt started ? Had a head-
plate worked loose ? One is inclined to say ex iicde
Ilerculem of such disasters as this. They should save
marine courts a deal of brain-cudgelling over inci-
dents which, in the days of teak, and oak, and tree-
nails, would truly take very solemn rank among the
" unaccountables."
This deposition worked very strongly in my head the
other day when I happened to find myself standing
under the bends of the towering iron skeleton of a ship
PLATES AND BIVETS. 259
that, when completed, would be 100 A 1, and qualified to
carry three thousand tons of merchandize. The ham-
mering all about me was sharp and furious, the sparks
flew wildly, and as the white-hot rivets popped out of
the holes they were cut and hammered by the men as
though they were carrots. There were other ships on a
line with this, one completely plated and painted,
another half-finished, a third a mere outline of frames
and keelson and stern-post and stem-pieces. The scene
was an imposing one, and especially imposing was the
appearance of the completed ship with the polish of her
clean metal run and the gilt tracings about her figure-
head and quarters. And yet when I turned my eyes
from her to the skeleton under which I was standing I
felt a good deal of my admiration leaking away from
me. I called to a man who was hammering close
beside me. " Do you know what clagging is, my friend ? "
"Ay," said he, looking at me with a broad grin,
" ye dorn't need to go very fur to find out the meanin' o'
that word."
" These things," said I, striking a long curve of
metal, " which in a wooden ship would be spoken of as
ribs, are called frames, aren't they ? "
"Ay, those are the frames," he answered.
"I suppose they have a good deal of weight to bear,
a good deal of pressure to resist ? " said I.
"Why," he replied, "they're pretty nigh the ship,
man ! "
" Then what do you make of that flaw there, and
that crack there, and there, and there ? " said I, pointing
to the places as I spoke.
" Pooh ! " said he, " when the plates are on that's ail
covered up."
"Yes," said I, "so I suppose; but do you know I
260 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
don't see a frame that hasn't three or four — and yonder
is one with six — of those cracks and flaws plain to he
viewed upon it. Considering the dimensions of this
vessel, do you think it wise — I'm speaking in the interest
of human lives, my man — to put in such defective iron
as this ? "
He made no answer, and was ahout to resume his
work.
" Here," said I, " there is no thirstier work than
hammering," and I gave him a shilling. " How do you
get the iron plates which cover these ribs to fit ? "
'' They're rolled," he replied, pocketing the shilling
with a look around.
'' The part of the plate that overhangs another," said
I, "is, I think, called the landing ? "
" Ay," said he, " the lannin', that's right."
"Do you see this landing, here?" I asked. "I'm
not sure that I couldn't put my little finger between."
" Oh, the rivets '11 draw that into its place," said the
man.
"True," I exclaimed; "but you wouldn't call it a
fit?"
" No," he answered ; " I wouldn't call it a fit, but
the rivets '11 make it one."
" But, don't you see," said I, " that by prizing these
plates together with the rivets you are putting work on
the rivets for which they are not designed ? If the blow
of a sea springs the rivets, the plates must yawn.
At this rate it seems to me that the rivets not only
keep the plates together, but actually give the hull its
shape."
"What are ye, sir?" said he to me; "a sur-
veyor ? "
" No, my man," I replied ; " if I were, I should be
PLATES AND RIVETS. 261
talking to your master, not to you. Here's another point
that strikes me as worth noticing. Look at these rivet -
holes. They're all punched, I observe."
" Certainly they're punched," he answered.
*' But don't you think they ought to be drilled ? " I
asked. ^'Punching is bound to weaken the rivet-holes,
by cracking and dislocating the fibres of the metal
around them, and rendering them the less fit as a hold
for the rivets."
''Drilling 'ud be much better, of course," said the
man ; '' but it 'ud pretty nigh double the expense, and
that 'ud be going the wrong way to what the shipowners
want."
" But here again I see another curious feature," said
I. " Look through these rivet-holes, one after another,
as many as you choose. There's not a single hole in
the front plates that corresponds with the holes in
the plates at the back. How on earth are you going
to drive a rivet through such a hole as that, for in-
stance?" said I, pointing to a hole so much lower
than the hole behind it that the apertures where the
two plates met resembled a half-moon.
"Oh, we'll rivet 'em somehow," he answered, laugh-
ing, and without even glancing at the holes to which I
sought to direct his attention.
At this juncture somebody who might have been the
manager came sniffing curiously about me ; the man
w^ent on with his work, and I moved off. Before quitting
the yard, however, I walked over to the other vessels —
the incomplete one3, I mean — and had a look at them.
Here I found precisely the same kind of workmanship
and material — the frames fall of cracks and flaws, the
rivet-holes roughly punched, and not a single hole
corresponding with the holes behind; the "landings"
2C2 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
yawning and waiting to be prized and warped and
severely strained into their places by the rivets. I am
not writing learnedly ; I am avoiding all technicalities,
as I w^ish the land -going public who know nothing about
marine terms to understand me. Neither do I assert
that this shipbuilding yard which I inspected is a typical
one. But this much I will say, and as a man who has
some small knowledge of the power and fury of the sea
in a time of tempest — that w^ere I a forecastle-hand and
had to choose between one of these brand-new% A 1 iron
steamships of from two thousand to three thousand tons
gross and one of the old coasters which have long since
been condemned and rendered impossible, I should be
perfectly content to let the toss of a coin decide for me,
satisfied that, so far as security at sea goes, there would
be just as much promise of my speedy dissolution aboard
such a brand-new steamer as aboard the sieve-like old
coffin. It is not hard to understand wdiat a reproach
this kind of vessel is to us as a maritime nation and
how it has come about. The same fierce competition
that covers our tables with butter made of fat, and coffee
made out of old beans, is covering the ocean with the
sort of ships I am writing of. The problem is now how
to build the cheapest steamer to carry a maximum cargo
on a minimum draught of w^ater, and to pass the sur-
veyors as fit to go to sea. The shipbuilders are not to
blame. They will do good work for good money ; but
if good money be not forthcoming, though some kind
of work be expected, then they will give you frames
which are only fit to sell for old iron ; the work-
manship wdll be mere ''clagging," the plates will be
wrenched and warped into any kind of abominable fit
by the rivets ; the whole structure and the lives of the
people who commit themselves to it will be made to
PLATES AND RIVETS. 2P8
depend upon points which no honest shipwright would
dream of reckoning as factors in the binding and holding
powers of the fabric ; and the false and frail contrivance,
doctored up and smothered over with paint, will be
launched with all haste, and the next order proceeded
with at once.
Therefore, in'so far as the loadline is designed for the
protection of the sailor against the rapacity of those
owners who would load their vessels down to their water-
ways, if they could only manage to make them float at
that, there must always be a most unpleasant quality of
insufficiency in the controversies the subject has excited,
so long as they exclude consideration of the kind of
vessels which are launched month after month and
year after year from many shipbuilding yards. The
absurdity of painting or nailing a loading disc upon the
side of a vessel which is to a strong well-constructed ship
w^hat a cheap suburban villa built with nine-inch w^alls
is to a house in Grosvenor or Berkeley-square, struck
me forcibly, as I stood the other day looking at the
flimsy metal skeletons which, when plated with thin
sheets of ii*oa and loaded with the dead weight of coal
and freight and engines, are to confront and give battle
to the terrible sea. I shall be asked if no protection
is afforded the sailor against the deadly risks such
shipbuilding as this involves by those marine sur-
veyors, whose duties as inspectors are very clearly
and precisely laid down for them by the authorities
they represent ? I answer, let those interested in the
subject make a tour of inspection for themselves — slip
in quietly, as I did, into those ship-building yards
where cheap steamers are manufactured, and judge
with their own eyes to what extent I am inaccurate
in affirming that a proportion of the ships which are
264 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
built in this country are renewing with tenfold disgrace
those maritime crimes which were supposed to have
been ground out of our civilization, and reviving with
tenfold horror those peculiar forms of marine disasters
which were hopefully assumed to have been shelved
along with the old wooden craft.
And now let me say here a few words on the subject
of marine surveying.
If there be one class of responsible men more than
another who should be wholly above suspicion, who
should be possessed of a moral courage equal, under all
circumstances, to the unbending and unfaltering dis-
charge of the duties accepted by them, they should con-
sist, one would think, of the men employed by Lloyd's
and the Board of Trade to inspect the construction of
ships, and to pronounce upon their fitness as sea-going
fabrics. You have only to consider what is involved in
the duties of marine surveyors to appreciate the high
and extraordinary character of their obligations. Upon
their capacity to distinguish between good and bad work,
and upon their courage as judges to whom their em-
ployers entrust the exercise of the widest possible dis-
cretion, practically depends the life of every human
being who goes to sea as a sailor or as a passenger. Of
course, the difficulties of the vocation, humanly speaking,
are not hard to understand. AVe may appreciate the
embarrassment a surveyor labours under in having to
condemn the work of a shipbuilder with whom he is on
very friendly terms, to say no more. The temptation to
inspect any other part of the fabric than that which
imperatively calls for condemnation must, under certain
circumstances, be very great. But let all this be freely
admitted. Life is more precious than class sensibilities,
and if an evil is to flourish only on the condition that
PLATES AND BIVETS. 265
nothing is said about it, most of us will agree that it is
high time to cultivate candour, in that direction at least.
I have no hesitation in saying that a large propor-
tion of the marine surveying of the day is one of the
most glaring, as it certainly is the cruellest, of the
shams of the period. Samples of work arc passed which,
were there the least sincerity and conscience in the
minds of those who decide upon them, could under no
possibility have left the yards in which they were pro-
duced. Men, women, and children are sent to sea in
structures which never would have been permitted to
quit the only place they are safe on — I mean the dry
land — had the surveyors put any shadow of honesty
into the duties they are appointed to discharge.
" Look," said a gentleman to me the other day in a
shipbuilding yard, " Look at that faulty work there ! is
it possible that Mr. (naming the surveyor) means
to pass it ?"
The surveyor stood at a distance ; the gentleman
called him and pointed out the defective work. The
surveyor seemed surprised, and shook his head. ''Ah,"
said he, " that is too bad. I shan't be able to pass
that." But he did pass it, for the gentleman some
days after wrote to tell me that the faulty points had
not been remedied, and that the ship was to be launched
just as she was.
"What," cries an American writer, in a Yankee
shipping journal, "What of the Ismailia, Bernina,
Bayard, Homer, Stamfordham, Telford, Zanzibar, Tox-
ford, Sylvia, SurUton, Joseph Pease, and the forty
British steamers which foundered last year, and scores
of others which have gone to Davy Jones's Locker ? "
We are constantly boasting of the vastness and sove-
reignty of our mercantile marine ; but we shall have to
206 A HOOK FOR THE nAMMOCK.
acquire a new theory of bragging if we are to reconcile
our self-complacency with such plain-spealdng as this,
which comes to us in our own tongue from across the
seas.
"Far less need of hospitals, did they use us well,
Were this forecastle of ours fit wherein to dwell.
Ships are coffins nowadays, life is but a toy,
' Jerry ' murders millions. Board of Trade ahoy ! "
sings the contemporary sailor ; hut there is very little
use in his shouting " Ahoy," if the only response he
gets is the appointment of men who, filling offices
designed for his protection, deliberately ignore their
most grave and great responsibilities and lure him, by
what are absolutely false representations, into commit-
ting his life to unseaworthy ships. Unhappily in marine
topics public interest is only to be awaked by reitera-
tion. But let it be remembered that it is not only
Jack's life that is jeopardized by our new shipbuilding
departures. The subject is one that concerns every
living being that crosses the ocean or who has friends at
sea. The sailor, we know, is an abstraction. Nautical
as we are as a people, we barely take count of him
unless as a stage show, or as the pig-tailed Jack Pudding
of a romance. But when we think of passengers we
think of our friends and of ourselves. Is the loss of the
Clan Mdcduff still within living memory ? Everybody
was much shocked at the time by that dreadful wreck.
But shore-going people would have been more shocked
had they taken the trouble to master the meaning of the
Wreck Commissioner's finding, when, by absolving the
owner from all responsibility on the grounds that
the vessel had been passed by a Board of Trade surveyor,
he practically decided that the ]3oard of Trade, through
the official who certificated the Clan Macduff, was
PLATES AND RIVETS. 2G7
answerable for the dreadful disaster that befell her. At
this rate what assurance have the travelling public,
leaving sailors out of the question, that their lives are
in any degree cared for ? Apparently the Board of
Trade are not to be reached if one of their servants
passes a ship which goes to pieces as an ill-built, crazy
machine in the first gale of wind she encounters ; whilst
the owner of the sea-coffin becomes an irresponsible
being on the merits of a certificate cunningly courted
and fraudulently given. If the Wreck Commissioner's
law be sound, then the criminality of certificating un-
seaworthy ships is intensified by the fact that it secures
the owners against all penalties. Of course, both the
Board of Trade and Lloyd's act with perfect sincerity.
They appoint the best men they can get for the trifling
wages they give to do certain work, and it is not
their fault that some of these men should prove un-
faithful. But since nothing can be more certain than
that the w4iole system of marine surveyorship, as we
have it, is deceptive, blundering, and in a high degree
obnoxious to human life and property, is it not about
time that we set to work to invent some better method
for guaranteeing, so far as shipbuilding w^orkmanship
and material go, the lives and property of the hundreds
and thousands of people w^ho go to sea as sailors and
passengers ? No society nor Government department
has a right to subject men invested wdth powers made
solemn by their involvement of precious life to the
temptations to faithlessness which surround the marine
surveyor.
" How on earth did the builders manage to get that
cruelly ill-built vessel passed ? " was asked not long
since.
"Why, sir," was the answer, "by taking care that
2G8 A UOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
the surveyor saw her tlirougli no other medium than a
bottle of champagne."
A glass of liquor may cost a hundred lives ; but
the surveyor still keeps his place, and draws his little
salary, and goes on passing bad work, with every ship-
wright in his district sniggering over the man's com-
plaisance. Is it a system proper to denounce ? I think
it is ; and no disinterested person who is in the secret
but must deplore it as deeply dishonouring to the
highest and most opulent and feii:ile branch of British
industry, and as a species of legalized and truly rank
conspiracy against the lives of passengers and sailors.
I have briefly referred to the case of the Clan Mac-
duff,- it will serve my purpose to give a more particular
instance of marine surveying as I found it reported at
length in one of the shipping journals. The brig Scio
w^as a wooden vessel built in 1839, and she was still
afloat in 1881. She was the property of a Mr. Blumer
Bushell, of South Shields, who had purchased her for
£110, probably quite as much as she was worth. She
was docked and repaired at a cost of £336. Her first
start, after leaving the doctor's hands, was unfortunate,
for she went ashore at Kunda and damaged her keel.
This was repaired, £84 being spent upon her. Next
voyage she went to sea with a crew of eight hands, and
a load of four hundred and twenty-nine tons of coal,
her registered tonnage being a trifle over two hundred
and sixty-five. Scarcely was she at sea when she was
found to be making water. The master's attention was
engrossed by the job of pumping, in the midst of which
the wind breezed up hard, the vessel fell off, the main-
])Oom jibed and broke in halves, one piece of which,
falUug upon a boy, struck him down dead. The leak
increased, and the crew compelled the master to run for
PLATES AND RIVETS. 269
Leith Koads. Here the vessel was placed on the mud,
and caulked as high as nine feet of water around her
would let the u'ons go. Thus soldered, she started once
more, and plumped on to Inchkeith. She was towed
off after discharging fifteen tons of cargo, and was
docked with four hundred and fourteen tons of coal
in her bottom. A portion of her crew now refused to
share any more of her fortunes, so they were discharged
and others shipped in their room. Once more this
noble brig proceeded, but had not put fifteen miles
betwixt her and the land when the crew came aft in
a body, swore that the water was coming in fast and
must presently drown the ship, and begged the master
to put back. This he did, in the face of a strong
head wind, which obliged him to beat up the Firth of
Forth in short tacks. By-and-by a squall came along
and blew the lower fore-topsail out of the bolt-ropes.
Soon afterwards the Scio struck on some sands off Buck-
haven, but managed to beat over them. The master
said he now wanted to haul his brig off the land, but
that the men refused to turn to. The crew denied this,
but, let the truth be what it would, not long after the
vessel had beaten over the sands she went ashore some-
where north of Kirkcaldy, on which the crew very sen-
sibly got out. Such is the picturesque history of a brig
which no man will believe could by any possibility have
been found afloat in these days of the stringent Mer-
chant Shipping Act, and of surveyors appointed by the
Board of Trade to stop rotten vessels from proceeding to
sea. It was declared at the re-hearing — for a good deal
of litigation was generated by this dismal old brig — that
two shipwright surveyors, who were officers of the Board
of Trade, inspected the vessel whilst under repairs,
visiting her several times and pointing out what should
270 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
he done. Yet you ^vill have observed that the Scio never
quitted the dock without all hands going to the pumps,
only to knock off in order to come aft and request the
skipper to put back to save their lives. And, as if this
most unimpeachable testimony to the value of Board of
Trade surveying was not of sufficient weight, there
comes a Mr. Turner into court with samples of the
timbers and planks of the w^reck which he had inspected
on the beach, and this gentleman deliberately declares —
pointing to the samples as he speaks — that, from the
survey he made of the wretched old hooker's remains,
she was unseaworthy.
There is no arrogance in pretending to wisdom
after the event has happened. The surveyors might
affirm what they chose, but we, having the end of the
story under our eyes, are at full liberty to say that no
declarations that the brig was seaworthy can make her
seaworthy in the face of the water that ran into her
bottom, and that kept the crew pumping and hurrying
back to land to save their lives. Theories are excellent
things in the absence of facts ; but wdien a fact comes in
the road the biggest theory must make way. The pump-
ing and the putting back are the most satirical commen-
taries wdiich can be imagined on the declarations of the
Board of Trade surveyors. What is their notion of sea-
worthiness ? Is it pumi:)ing morning, noon, and night,
and all hands imploring the skipper to put his helm up
and try back ? If it be not that, if, on the contrary,
they define seaworthiness to consist of a tight, well-
found craft, how are they going to reconcile the results
of their survey of the brig Scio with the results of her
attempted voyages ?
I quote this example of surveying because it is illus-
trative of the worthlessness of the supervision practised
PLATES AND EI VETS. 271
by the Board of Trade under the present system of pro-
tecting life and property, and because it is typical of
much of the work that is done in that way by the men
who are paid to look after the interests they represent.
The land-going justices who sat at a rehearing of the
first investigation absolved the owner on the grounds
that he did all that he could to render his brig sea-
w^orthy — that is to say, "taking into consideration the
precautions taken by the owner, under the surveillance
of the Board of Trade surveyors at Shields and at Leith,
and having all the work executed by practical men of
long standing, the Court could come to no other con-
clusion than that set forth in the judgment."
But what said the assessors, the nautical element in
this investigation ? "We do not concur in this judgment
. . . and will furnish our own report." That report is
the only endurable supplement to the justices' annex that
could be devised. The writers declare that the brig was
not properly and efficiently repaired, and that she was
not in a good and seaworthy condition when she left
Leith; "that, in their opinion, the Scio was in all pro-
bability in a worse state when she left Leith on November
26th than when she left the Tyne on the 2nd." They
deny that the owner used all those reasonable means in
opening the Scio out and ascertaining her exact condition
which, as a practical man, he should have known a
vessel of her age required, "and w^hich he had such
ample and available means of doing in his own dock,
thereby neglecting to ensure her being sent to sea in a
seaworthy condition."
The whole story bears out this decision ; and, the
assessors' judgment being unquestionably correct, what
are we to think of the surveyors w^ho could allow the
brig to go to sea leaking like a sieve and then come into
272 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK,
court and spccak ^vell of the vessel on the grounds that
they had superintended the repairing of her and had
even pointed out what should be done ? In this case,
happily, no lives were lost ; the brig went ashore and
her people left her. But, suppose she had gone down
and drowned her crew out of hand, would not the Board
of Trade, in the person of their representative, have
been morally guilty of the death of the men ? Assuredly
the}^ accepted the responsibility of that brig being in a
fit condition to go to sea, as they accept the responsi-
bility of every vessel which their representatives pass
being seaworthy. This consideration ought surely to
give significance to the system of supervision they now
practise ; and to make them ask themselves whether,
having regard to the w^eight and solemnity of their self-
imposed obligations, they have any right, as servants of
the public, to persist in multiplying the perils of the
deep by a sham and hollow method of inspection. There
is not a shipmaster in the country who is not sensible of
the necessity of a speedy reform in this matter ; and
there is not a passenger who would not eagerly join
in the cry for reformation were even but a very little
bit of the truth published in language which should be
intelligible to the landsman.*
* This was written five years ago. In five years, at the present rate
of living, many changes happen ; yet I do not find a single statement
made in this paper that I can expunge or modify as a fact of to-day, as
it was a fact five years since.
FRENCH SMACKS MEK
I WILL not say that the Chinese junk is a handsomer
and handier ship than the three-masted topsail lug-
rigged French smack that hails from Bologne or Grave-
lines or Calais ; but, viewed from a distance, they are
not at all unlike. In truth, the horizon of these seas
really offers nothing more gaunt, primitive, and cumber-
some than the French lugger-rigged smack with her
immensely round bows, great spring forward, raking
pole-masts crowned with fantastic vanes, brown sails
almost as square at the head as at the foot, and cut with
an inclination towards the bows like those of a junk,
showing more freeboard than many a seven hundred ton
steam collier goes to sea with, her decks full of men
dressed in a queer kind of blouses, huge sprawling boots
and immense earrings, six sweeps or long oars perhaps
over either side, an old man steering, and half a dozen
women in red or blue petticoats and handkerchiefs tied
over their heads, bustling about — the whole of them,
from the ancient chap at the tiller to the small boy
gutting fish on the forecastle, talking at once, and drop-
ping their various jobs of sweeping, repairing nets,
stringing fish, and the like, to gesticulate.
Where do all these people sleej) ? How do they
manage to stow themselves away? I once counted
twenty-three men, women, and boys aboard a French
T
274 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
smack that certainly did not exceed five and twenty
tons. Three or four men — two of whom probably might
be youngsters — would have been thought as many hands
as that smack wanted had she been an English vessel.
And yet, numerous as those French men and women
were — and the ladies lent a hand, pulling and hauling
with the rest — they worked their ship so slowly and
laboriously, and made so much noise, that any one
would have supposed she was under-manned and all
hands abusing the skipper for putting to sea without a
proper complement. The wind was an inshore breeze,
and they had to beat out of harbour. It was enough to
make one split one's sides to see the fellows tumbling
and floundering over one another whenever the helm
was put down. Every man seemed skipper, bawled out
orders in a lingo compared to which the accents of a
Newcastle pitman excited by whisky would be con-
sidered chaste music, and I looked to see half of them
in their frantic hurry topple overboard. It so happened
that at the particular moment when the Frenchman
had rounded on the starboard tack for the purpose of
making another board so as to fetch the oj^en water, a
large passenger steamer was entering the harbour at the
rate of eight or nine miles an hour. The men on the
pier roared to the French smack to get out of the road.
** Yash, yash ! " answered the old fellow at the tiller,
waving his hand, but he never shifted his helm, either
not understanding what was said, or else supposing that
the steamer would go clear of him. What followed
happened in a breath. The steamer could not stop her
way, though her engines were by this time reversed and
the wheels sending a whole surface of foam sluicing
towards her bows ; her sharp stem took the Frenchman
right amidships, there was a crash of splintered wood,
FRENCH SMACKSMEN. 275
and, the vessels immediately going clear, I saw that the
unfortunate smack was cut down to the water's edge.
And her people ? As I live to write it, all hands
were overboard ! They had jumped — men, women, and
boys — over the rail when they saw that the steamer was
bound to come, and the foaming eddies thrown along
by the racing reversed wheels of the steamboat were full
of revolving red caps, and earrings, and white handker-
chiefs. It was wonderful to see them all in the water,
supporting themselves with the utmost ease, half of
them breast high, waiting until they should cease to
rotate that they might "fix" their vessel and observe
whether she meant to float or sink. Before any boat
could put off to them they had made up their minds,
and were swimming towards the smack, over whose
sides they clambered, until her decks were once more
filled with them, and there they stood, with the water
streaming from their clothes, anathematizing the steamer
in one voice, and with every contortion of figure it was
possible for their ungovernable rage to fling them into.
However, nobody was hurt, and the smack, throwing
her sweeps out, was got alongside one of the wharves,
where all hands promptly fell to drying themselves.
These vessels are very common objects in some of
our English harbours ; but, familiar as they are, there
is a deal of amusement to be obtained by standing and
looking down on their decks. If they hailed from a
country ten thousand miles distant the manners, appear-
ance, customs of the crews could not be more totally
different from those of our own smacksmen. It makes
one think of the Spaniards at Trafalgar hanging big
wooden crosses on their spanker-boom ends before going
into action, to see these poor fellows when they leave
Boulogne — and may be the other ports they belong to
27G A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
for all I know — kneel down in their immense boots upon
the deck and offer up a prayer to the cross on the
church on the summit of the rocks. I have watched the
English smacksman leave a good many harbours, but
never observed him in a devotional posture. Perhaps
on these occasions he withdraws into his little cabin,
taking care to assemble the apprentices first. Be this
as it may, the French smack's deck in harbour is a real
study, and one I never tire of watching. The craft is so
crowded that she seems full of business. If it is summer
time five or six braw^ny yellow-skinned lads are taking
the diversion of a bath over the side, while the ladies of
the extensive company go quietly on with their mending
of nets or stockings. The men smoke, argue, grease
their boots, peel potatoes, clean fish, and the gruff
murmur of a wild jnitois floats up, amid which the most
accomplished French scholar can only now and again
hear a word that reminds him of the French language.
They and their ship make somehow — ugly as their
vessel is — a prettier picture than an English smack to
fit a summer day. It is no doubt the numerous crew,
the oddness and wildness of their appearance, the dress
of the women. Some of the boats are extraordinarily^
massive, perfect beds of timber with immensely round
bows and enormously thick scantling. The vanes at
their mastheads are often real marine curiosities ; even
the west country fishermen cannot beat them. You can
always tell a Frenchman by his vane though he should
lie in the middle of a whole forest of Dartmouth, Pen-
zance, Brixham, Shoreham, and other spars. You may
also know him by the smell of the smoke from, his galley
chimney — the little funnel that rises out of his deck,
and discharges a fish-like vapour, made even worse than
ancient to the British nostril by — what shall I say '?
FRENCH SMACKS MEN. 277
what mystery of vegetable, seasoning, stirring, and
peppering ?
I suppose the chasse-maree is the lineal descendant
of those formidable French privateers, which in the old
w^ars used to sneak about the Channel in search of our
sugar-boxes and tea-waggons. But there is something in
the sight of the French lug-rigged smack, with her two
or three masts and decks crowded with men, that always
recalls the old St. Malo, Ste. Brieux, Havre, Dieppe,
and Boulogne picaroons — those pests of the sturdy old
British merchantmen of other days. To see her pulling
away out of harbour on a moonlit night, her long sweeps
rising and falling like the fibrine limbs of some gigantic
marine insect, is to bring up recollections of many a
furious conflict under the very shadow of the white
heights of this perfidious island. There is the stout
high-pooped merchantman at rest, after a voyage of five
months from the East Indies, under the lee of the tower-
ing North Foreland. At regular intervals the sound of
her bell floats down upon the light air, blowing so softly
that the shadows of the clouds upon the hazy stretch of
moonlit water seem to be at rest. And now creeping
round the huge point of land, urged by her sweeps and
her dark sails goose-winged or boomed out on either
side, comes a fac-simile of that French smack we have
watched leaving the harbour. She is alongside the
slumbering ship in a trice, lights flash, pistols explode,
and in a few minutes behold ! the cable is cut, and the
ship, with her sails loosed, is standing south-by-west
for Boulogne or the forts that way, the sneaking lugger
ahead of her, black as ink against the silver splendour
of the water in the south, and all hands keeping a
breathless look-out for British cruisers.
But though there may be a deal of the poetry, or at
278 A BOOK FOll THE HAMMOCK.
least the romance, of history in the suggestions to be got
from the form and rig of the French smack, there goes
to the making of her every-day life as many hard, stern
facts as ever a Gradgrind could desire. She sees as much
weather of all kinds as our own fishermen experience ;
and suffers, having regard to proportion of numbers, as
many disasters. The shipping reports are constantly
mentioning her. One day she is stranded, and her crew
burning flares and owing their lives to the lifeboat.
Another day she is found abandoned, and towed into
harbour with nothing standing save three or four feet of
her mainmast. Or else a steamer plumps into her and
drowns the whole of her comi)any but two. As bad a
wreck as ever I heard was that of La Heine des Agnes.
The story was told by Adolphe Derevieres, one of the
crew, and it is worth repeating as a sample of the various
misfortunes which follow in the wake of the French
smacksman. Adolphe's English was exceedingly good.
He had learnt it, he told me, from intercourse with the
English at Boulogne, and by constant visits and long
detentions in harbour in this country.
" I sail hope," he began, " to make you comprehend.
I most speak slow, for dere is no language more difficult
nor de Angleesh. De boat vas vhat you call a dandy —
not a loggaire : 3^ou know vhat dandy means, hein ? her
name vas La Heine des Agnes ; she vas forty-five torns ;
and ven ve left ze Nort Sea ve had vhat de Angleesh
fishermen call twenty-tree last of herring in barrels, and
loose in de bottaum. De veddaire had been very bad in
de Nort Sea — mosh rain, lieavee wind, and roff vaves.
Ve had von boat only, and von day we lose her. She
vas dragging behind ven soddenl}^ a vave make de
rope go and she go too. Dere vas too mosh vind to
stop, so ve continue sailing for Boulogne. Eighteen
FRENCH SMACKSMEN. 279
men did form our companee. It vas four o'clock on de
morning of de tirteenth of Septembre. Ve vas in a
nasty part of de sea, off Yarmout, vid de Crosby and de
Cross sands as we tink veil to de nor', and ve to de
souse, so as to bring de Newvarp light on our rightband.
I say, dis vas as ve suppose. It vas veree dark, still
mosh vind, and beavee vaves. Ye vas sailing fast, ven
soddenly de vessel stop. Many of us tumble and
cry out. Dere vas noting to be seen. Dem as tumble
got up, and ve all ran about. De confusion was
terrib. Eighteen men, you see, sare, de ship small,
and her deck full of de herring barrels. Ye first take de
barrels and trow dem overboard ; ve had to feel, ve could
not see, and all de time de vessel keep bomp, bomp,
making us fall. Dere vas no telling de place vere ve
vas wrecked — one say dis, anoder say dat, and every-
body keep crying out. Dat is de worst of us Franchmen,
sare. You Angleesh in dangaire are quiet ; ve are as
brave as you, but ve make too mosh noise, dere is not
de ordaire, each man tink he know best, and, besides,
de sea is not our province like it is yours. Some got
pieces of vhat you call oakum and dipped dem in oil and
made fires, and de rest, knowing dere vas no boats, made
a raft composed of two spar and a lot of barrels. It vas
a fearful sight — de red flame, de vataire vashing over, de
sea all black around. Yell, juste vhen de raft vas ready,
de vessel left de sand and began to sink. Mon Dieu !
dat vas a horrib moment. Ye got pieces of rope, and
tied ourselves to de raft, and put it into de sea, and den
de vessel sank. It vas fearfullee cold. Ye vent op and
down, op and down, and I feel de sea trying to tear me
avay. It vas like an animal vid its claws dragging. Ye
vere all on de raft ven de daylight came. Oh sare, tink
of dat sight ! eighteen men clinging to de barrels. Few
280 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
could speak ; ve vas all full of salt vataire, and I could
not oj^en my teeth — dey vas hard set vid de cold. De
capitaine say it vas de Meedle Cross Sand de vessel
strike. But it did not mattaire ; she vas sunk : von
sand vas as bad as anoder ; and dere vas ve going op
and down, op and down, noting in sight, no help coming
— and all of us so seek, so veak, so miserable !
" Soon after it vas light a large vave came and covered
us all ; I did tink it had tore de raft to pieces ; dere vas
several dreadful cries, and vhen de vataire vas passed I
look and see dat five of my comrades vas vashed avay.
Sare, I envied dem. Oh, better to be drown, to know
noting, to feel noting, dan to be on dat terrib raft
vaiting each von his turn, and looking at von's grave.
Presentlee von of de men let go vid his hands, and de
sea break his rope and vash him avay. Den anoder give
op vid a fearful groan, and de sea take him too. Dis go
on until five men vas perished, making ten, so dat dare
vas only eight left. Ah, vhat a frightful time did follow !
All day long ve did drift here and dere, here and dere
upon dat raft. De land vas near — ve knew dat ; dere
vas Yarmout and dere vas Lowestoff vidin six mile, but
had dey been Boulogne, had dey been Finisterre, dey
could not have been farder off for us.
"Veil, sare, I do not know enough of your language
to tell you all dat vas in my torts, de appearance of my
companions, de cries and groans dat break from dem, de
roff vaves, de cold, all de horrib pain and misery of dat
incredib time. Vhen de evening came ve see a large
steamboat. Ve all cry and cry to her vid our hands to
our mouts, and she heard us, and came to vere ve vas.
Oh, sare, vhat is dare in Angleesh, vhat is dare in
Fransh, in any language dat is spoke by human creature,
to express our joy ven de steamer lowered a boat, and ve
FRENCH SMACKSMEN. 2S1
did see it coming to us ? I could have cried like a leetel
girl, sare, but I vas too veak — all de tears yas vashed
avay. Some of us tried to embrace de brave Angleesh-
men dat saved us, but our legs at de joints gave vay —
ve could not stan'. Veil, after ve had been in de steam-
boat a letell vile, a lifeboat come near, and dey told us
dey had seen de flames ve made in de morning and gone
to us, but dat ve had disapjpear, and dat dey had been
looking and looking for us op to dis time ! Ah, vhat a
noble service — how estimable, how brave is de Angleesh
lifeboat ! Your countree, sare, has von a hundred battles
on de ocean ; but not von of dem for glory comes op to
de solitary victoire of a lifeboat dat fights vid de terrib
vaves and saves de poor sailor, no matter vedder he is
Fransh, or ItaliaUy or German. De steamer put us into
de lifeboat, and ve vas taken to Yarmout, vere se^^n of
us did go to de Sailors' Home. But one — poor Francois
Libert — vas so ill dat he vas carried to de hospital."
Having arrived at this point poor Adolphe burst into
French, and, regardless of my assurance that my know-
ledge of that useful tongue was growing every month
more and more imperfect, he rattled himself into a
violent fit of emotion, praising the English, lamenting
his comrades, grieving over his past sufferings in the
dialect any man may hear who will take a turn through
the fish market at Boulogne, or linger on the quay there
when a fleet of smacks is coming into the harbour. I
was truly sorry not to get his story in his own tongue.
How could he do justice to his terrible shipwreck in any
other language than his ? All his gesticulations went
for little alongside his '' dats " and '' deys," otherwise not
a posture but would have helped the wild hoarse flow of
recollection poured forth in French — the panic of the
men rushing and stumbling upon the barrel-crowded
282 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
deck ; the horrible ilhimination of the oakum torches
■with the fires of the flaming paraffin oil streaming from
them ; the mispeakable anguish of the long twelve hours
spent upon that raft, the land in sight, and the rough
seas for ever trampling upon them. Is it because they
go so heavily manned that disasters to French smacks
rise to a height of traged}^ that needs the loss of an
English vessel of seven or eight hundred tons to parallel ?
Here was a vessel of forty-five tons furnished with a crew
of eighteen souls. Why, a Blackwall liner would hardly
need more seamen to work her, if, in calling over the
muster-roll, you omit the " idlers." And another feature
that often makes disasters to French smacks peculiarly
dreadful is their fashion of taking a number of women to
sea with them. I cannot say w^h ether or not they carry
the ladies with them into the North Sea, but seldom a
French fishing boat puts into an English harbour but
half a dozen w^omen and girls may be seen among the
crowd of red and blue nightcap-shaped headgear worn
by the men. One really cannot be surprised at the old
British notion that one Englishman is equal to six
Frenchmen w^hen one compares a large Eamsgate,
Grimsby, or Yarmouth dandy of fifty or sixty tons going
for a six w^eeks' cruise in the North Sea in winter
manned by four or five men, wdth the lubbersome,
apple-bowed, black-sided, heavily-timbered French three-
masted lugger of forty tons, with her decks so crowded
with fishermen and women that it seems impossible they
can move w^ithout getting into one another's road.
Meanwhile, it is to be hoped that the loug conference
held at the Hague, the correspondence relative to
which makes a volume of alarming dimensions, may be
accepted as a preliminary to something like a good
understanding subsisting among the smacks of various
FRENCH SMACESMEN. 283
nationalities which drag their nets in the North Sea.
Unquestionably the English fisherman has had a very
great deal to complain of in the rough and cowardly
treatment he has experienced at the hands of French,
Dutch, and Belgian smacksmen. It is not only that his
costly fishing gear has been irreparably ruined again
and again by that mean and treacherous contrivance
known as " the devil ; " he has even been fired into, and
his temper taxed so repeatedly by the basest professional
treatment and the most studied insults, that the time
was when those interested in the English fishermen
expected day after day to hear of desperate battles at
sea — small Trafalgars, Niles, and Copenhagens — between
the fleets of Yarmouth, Grimsby, and the North and the
allied squadrons of Belgium, France, and Holland.
OLD SEA CUSTOMS.
The changes which have taken pLace in the sea hfe
cannot he wholly restricted to the transformations of the
shipbuilding yard. There is a mighty difference indeed
between the line-of-battle ship of fifty years ago and the
armour-clad of to-day — between the Atlantic passenger
clippers of which Fenimore Cooper wrote and the iron
mail steamers which have succeeded them; but there are
changes in other maritime directions fully as remarkable,
though perhaps not so deeply accentuated to the shore
gaze. Where are the old customs of the ocean ? Whither
has fled the traditionary character of the sailor? His
canvas remains. He still has his topsails (albeit halved)
to hoist, his topgallant sails to sheet home, his royals
to set ; spite of steam, there are still scores of the old-
fashioned windlasses for him to bawl his hurricane
songs over; still scores of the old-fashioned capstans
for him to wind round, " drunk, monotonous, and me-
lodious," davits at which he may cat his anchor, as did
his forefathers, forecastles as clammy as the most reek-
ing of the holes in which the Jacks of other days lay
snoring, with purple faces, in clouds of cockroaches.
But, for all that, it will not do to pretend that the
sailor is what he was. I do not speak of the caricatures
of the fictionist ; the monstrous pig-tailed figures with
lanthorn jaws, broken teeth, wooden legs, and bloodshot
OLD SEA CUSTOMS. 285
eyes, the race of Hatchwaj^s, Trunnions, and Pipses, ^Yllo
stagger, full of drink and oaths, in clamorous procession
through the pages of the sea novelists, losing, to be sure,
something of their inexpressible garnishings as they enter
the truer oceanic atmosphere of the Coopers and the
Marryats of the present century. I refer simply to the
old sailor, to the plain man-o'-warsman and merchant-
man of bygone years, not to the Frankenstein in flowing
breeches and hat on nine hairs who trod the stage and
procured his circulation in one, two, and three volumes,
in the respectable name of Jack, prior even to the days
when Sir Launcelot Greaves found the irresponsible
anatomy willing to ship
" The broad habergeon,
Yant brace and greves and gauntlet."
Let me be understood. The British or American mariner
of to-day is as hearty, nimble, dexterous, determined a
fellow as ever he was at any time during the choicest
and most glorious period of his nation's history. He
needs but opportunity to test him. It is in his tradi-
tions, habits, superstitions, that he differs from his pre-
decessors. I do not think it is the iron of his latter-day
calling that has entered his soul and changed him. The
very distinguishable difference is owing to a natural decay
of marine sentiment. He is no longer superstitious —
possibly because he is not without a tincture of educa-
tion. Hard wear has attenuated his prejudices, and
custom has lost its hold upon him. It would be diffi-
cult now, I should think, to find in any forecastle such
a superstitious sea-dog as the old salt who, in Dana's
'•' Two Years Before the Mast," agreed with the black
cook as to the malignant and wizard qualities of the
Finns. Familiarity with the grand liquid amphitheatre
280 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
into which he descends and toils for his bread may have
helped to rob the modern sailor of what I must call the
romantic features of the seaman's nature. In olden
times the voyage was long, the art of navigation crude
and halting; the wonders of the deep were many, at
least they were found so ; a man passed so long a while
at sea that he was saturated with the spirit of it. Super-
stitions salt as the billow from which they were wrought
begot peculiar forms of thought ; customs grew out of
the strange fancies and interpretations, and that they
should now be dead means simply that they flourished
for centuries, and that they died very hard at last.
How wide the difference is between the shipboard life
of the mariners of the past and that of the present race
of seamen may be collected by looking into a few of the
customs which are now as extinct as the timbers of
Noah's ark. In the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies it was a practice on board Italian and Spanish,
and possibly Portuguese ships, for the sailors on crossing
the equator to erect a canopy on the forecastle, under
which three seamen, absurdly dressed, seated them-
selves. One was called the president, the others judges.
They started first with trying the captain, then the
officers, finally the passengers. A sailor, dressed up as
a clerk, read the indictments, after which the judges
pronounced sentence of death. Careri, in his '' Voyage
Eound the World," explains the purpose of this tom-
foolery. ''The sentence of death," says he, ''was
immediately bought off with money, chocolate, sugar,
biscuit, flesh, sweetmeats, wine, and the like. The best
of it was that he who did not pay immediately, or give
good security, was laid on with a rope's end, at the least
sign given by the President Tarpaulin." Apparently
heavier punishments than rope's-cnding attended the
OLD SEA CUSTOMS. 287
poverty or contumacy of the convicted, for the same
author tells of a passenger who was drowned on board
a galleon through being keel-hauled for refusing to con-
form to this singular marine custom. The sport — if
sport it can be called — lasted all day, and then at sun-
down the fines or forfeits were divided among the sailors.
It is possible that out of this old sea-joke rose the
stupid and irritating practice of ducking men on their
crossing the equator for the first time. This imbecile
piece of horse-play was wonderfully popular among
seamen down to quite recent days. I don't think Jack
ever saw much humoui' himself in the mere dressing up
as Neptune and acting Jack Pudding in the waist ; what
he relished was the privilege, by prescription, of lording
it over the captain and officers for a few hours, and
tarring and soaking people to whom at other times he
would have to pull his forelock, with the whole length
of the ship between him and their nobility.
Another curious custom was to be found on board
Dutch vessels. When a ship entered the 39th parallel
"every one," writes John Nieuhoff (1640), "of what
quality or degree soever, that has not passed there
before, is obliged to be baptized or redeem himself from
it. He that is to be baptized has a rope tied round his
middle, wherewith he is di*awn up to the very top of the
bowsprit, and from thence three times successively
tumbled into the water." A man was at liberty to get
another to take his place by paying him. Plenty of
money and other good things must have been earned by
sailors out of this custom, for one may conceive that a
nervous passenger would pay handsomely to escape so
formidable a ducking as the tall bowsprits of those days
promised, whilst, on the other hand, a seasoned mariner
would look upon such sousings as mere child's play —
2S8 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
think no more of it than a man in a regatta now thinks
of walking out upon a greasy boom to loose the pig
in the sack at the end of it. The practice, however,
eventually led to such riots, broils, and bloodshed, that
it was forbidden by the Dutch Government.
It was long continued, however, in the British navy
as a punishment. In the ''Annual Eegister " for 1797
there is an account of four naval officers who were soused
by a mutinous crew on board his Britannic Majesty's
ship Sandwich. The writer calls it a "curious cere-
mony." The unhappy naval officers must have thought
it so ! '* They tie the unfortunate victim's feet together,
and their hands together, and put their bed at their
back, making it fast round them, at the same time
adding an eighteen-pounder bar- shot to bring them
down. They afterwards made them fast to a tackle
suspended from the yardarm, and hoisting them nearly
up to the block all at once let go, and drop them souse
into the sea, where they remain a minute, and then are
again hoisted and let down alternately, till there are
scarce any signs of life remaining." When the miserable
victims are ducked enough — according to the fancy of
their judges — they are triced up by the heels that the
water may run out of them, and then stowed away in
their hammocks. This kindness was denied to the four
naval officers, who, after having hung head down for
some time, were tumbled into a boat and sent ashore.
The Portuguese had a custom of their own on cross-
ing the Line. It was curiously tinctured with the
superstitions of that age. Those on board who had
never "cut the Equator," were compelled to give the
sailors money, or provisions, or wine. No one was
excused, " not even the Capuchins," says the missionary
Augelo of Gattina, writing in IGGG, " of whom they take
OLD SEA CUSTOMS. 289
beads, agnus Deis, or such-like things ; which being
exposed to sale, what they yield is given to say masses
for the souls in Purgatory." If any one declined to
give he was carried before a forecastle tribunal by
sailors habited as officers. A seaman dressed as a judge,
in a long gown, passed sentence, and the victim was
straightway hoisted to the yardarm and ducked. This
custom was not confined to the Equator. " The same,"
says Angelo, " is practised in passing the Straits of
Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope."
The Italian fashion was somewhat similar. Sailors
apparelled as judges sat at a table, and those who had
never before crossed the Line were brought before them.
The judges reproached them contemptuously for daring
to live so long in the world without passing the Equator,
and fined them according to their condition. Ducking
followed refusal to pay. Merolla, in his "Voyage to
Congo" (1682), says : "From this punishment or a fine
none are exempt, and it is said that with the latter they
maintain a church." A livelier, and certainly a less
cruel custom, I find in Spanish ships, in the form of a
bull-fight. This was contrived by a man dressing him-
self up so as to resemble a bull. He took care to equip
himself with an ugly pair of horns. Another fellow,
mounted upon two men, attacked the bull with a spear.
The humour lay in the two men who formed the horse
being tied back to back with a saddle between them, on
which sat the rider. The bull, it may be supposed,
usually had the best of it. I am reminded here of a
stroke of original humour on the part of some midship-
men. It is illustrative of the reefer's theory of wit.
They got some hencoops and formed them into a cock-
pit, and, making a circle by coiling ropes, they pitted a
couple of cocks. The cocks did their best to fight, but
u
290 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
they staggered so oddly that they could scarce strike
each other. It was at last admitted that they had been
fed with barley soaked in rum. The midshipmen sup-
posed that the spirit would fortify the hearts of the
birds, but they had over-dosed them, and the creatures
were too drunk to fight.
Drinking is a sea custom not yet dead — at least, if it
is dead the fault is not Jack's. But, even though the
economical principles of owners had suffered perpetua-
tion of the practice on shij^board, I question whether the
most bibulous of the present race of sailors could carry
it to the height to which it was formerly raised. I
suppose the very biggest drink on record is that related
by Dampier. He says that there came on board his
ship one Captain Eawlins, the commander of a small
New England vessel, along with a Mr. John Hooker.
They were asked into the cabin to drink, and a bowl was
made containing six quarts, " Mr. Hooker being drunk
to by Captain Eawlins, who pledged Captain Hudswell,
and, having the bowl in his hand, said that he was
under an oath to drink but three draughts of strong
liquor a day, and putting the bowl to his head turned it
off at one draught, and so making himself drunk, dis-
appointed us of our expectations till we made another
bowl." Six quarts at a draught ! Twelve pints at a
swallow, without a sigh between ! But then hard drink-
ing was the custom, not of the privateers only, but of
the whole seafaring races of early times. They were
educated to it by liberal doses of grog. The allowance
sometimes rose to a pint of rum per man a day. In the
French, Spanish, and Portuguese ships, and very often
ill the Dutch, the sailors' courage before an action was
nearly invariably helped with jacks of brandy, and the
doses were repeated whilst the fight proceeded, a bumper
OLD SEA CUSTOMS. 291
being handed between the guns. The men, frenzied by
drink, would mix gunpowder with the spirits, supposing
that, thus prepared, there was no better hquor for
heroes. I think it need not be doubted that more actions
were lost than gained by this custom. How should a
drunken gunner aim his piece ? and what mischief — save
to one another — could a mob of inebriated small-arms
men do in the tops or along the quarter-deck ?
But if privateersmen could be found able to swallow
six quarts at a draught, they had customs besides that
of drinking which must have tended to render them
desperately hard and seasoned men. It was their prac-
tice to keep their ships clear, so that the deck was the
only bed they had to lie upon. No hammocks were
allowed, no chairs or tables ; they took their meals upon
the deck and lay upon it ; preserving, in this direction,
the old tradition of the buccaneers, who denied them-
selves every imaginable comfort and convenience that
they might never be mistaken for anything else than the
savage beasts they were.
It is in the superstitions of the sea that we must
search for the beginning and history of many of the
customs w^hich, in modified forms, lingered down to the
period of a late generation of seafarers. They veined
the life with elements both of humour and romance, and
I do not scruple to say that much of the p»oetry of the
profession of the sea has perished with the extinction of
the simple forecastle credulities of other ages. In the
beginning of European navigation, in the times of Diaz,
Cabot, Columbus,* De Gama, and earlier yet, the
* Washington Irving gives several instances of Columbus' supersti-
tious nature. As an example : " Seeing all human skill bafifled and con-
founded, Columbus endeavoured to propitiate heaven by solemn vows
and acts of penance. By his orders, a number of beans, equal to the
292 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
mariner was a Koman Catholic, devout, iDrofoundly
superstitious, perpetually invoking the protection of the
Blessed Virgin and the Saints of Heaven, finding
miracles in the common operations of Nature, peopling
the deep with wondrous monsters, glorifying its blue
breast with the gleam and colour of the enchanted
island, gazing awe-struck about him as he sailed along,
and willing to believe anything he was told. I could
give you no better illustration of this than the remark of
the Jesuit Anthony Sepp, in his account of a voyage
from Spain to Paraguana : *' Towards the evening," says
he, *'we saw an entire rainbow quite across the sky,
resembling our rainbows." Resembling our rainbows!
As though the worthy father supposed that rainbows in
those unfamiliar seas were very different from the same
radiant arches which span the showers of Italy, Spain,
and Germany! They were prepared for all sorts of
wonders, and their imaginations created what their eyes
could not see. The lightning was not that of Europe;
the thunder was the reverberation of some hellish con-
flict between armies formed of fiends of Satanic stature ;
the very rain was unnatural, being coloured. Eeligion,
or superstition if you will, interposed to mitigate the
horrors of a perfervid fancy, wrought familiar appear-
ances into celestial expressions, and instructed poor Jack
to calm his perturbed soul, to quell the tempest, to
number of persons on board, were put into a, eap, on one of wlnVli was tbe
sign of tbe cross. Each of the crew made a vow tliat, should he draw
forth the marked bean, he would make a pilgrimage to the shrine of
Santa Maria de Guadalupe, bearing a wax taper of five pounds' weight.
The admiral was the first to put in his hand, and the lot fell upon him.
From that moment he considered himself a pilgrim bound to perform the
vow." Other vows were made and solemn jjromibcs fervently addressed
to heaven; but the storm continued to rage, and eventually the saints
were quitted for seamanship and the ship saved.
OLD SEA CUSTOMS. 293
exorcise the mermaid, to smooth the waters, to disperse
the horrid shadows of the electric storm with litanies,
effigies of saints, and spells of many different sorts.
Thus Pirard de Laval (in *' Churchill's Collection of
Voyages," Vol. i. p. 702) says, "We frequently saw great
whirlwinds rising at a distance, called by the seamen
dragons, which shatter and overturn any ship that falls
in their way. When these appear the sailors have a
superstitious custom of repairing to the prow, or the
side that lies next the storm, and beating naked swords
against one another crosswise." This custom long pre-
vailed. Scores of similar practices may be traced to the
primitive superstitions of sailors. They unquestionably
colour the old marine life, and their extinction leaves
the calling uncomfortably bald, I think. The stars in
those aged stories seem to glow the richer for the incense
floating up to them from the little altar on the fore-
castle, and for the tender strains of a hundred voices
rising in some solemn, melodious canticle. The glory
of the setting sun makes cloth of gold of the sails of
those castellated fabrics, and they look to float over
faery seas of purple as we view them through that
atmosphere of superstition, in the midst of which those
young and awe-struck imaginations made their miracu-
lous voyages to the Indies and to the mighty shores of
Columbia.
WHO IS VANDERDECKEN?
A SCIENTIFIC American gentleman has been endeavour-
ing to determine the paternity of the grisly and spectral
commander of the Flying Dutchman. I wish he had
been successful, for ever since I read the " Cruise of the
Bacchante " I have been bewildering my brains with the
same problem. The princely word of the Eoyal mid-
shipmen must be taken, and it is plainly stated that at
four o'clock a.m. on July 11, 1881, "the Flying Dutch-
man crossed our bows." Nothing can be clearer than
that ; and, besides, there is the additional testimony of
the reverend gentleman who accompanied the Princes
and edited their interestmg observations. " A strange
red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of
w^hich light the masts, spars, and sails of a brig two
hundred yards distant stood out in strong relief as she
came up." This appearance is in strict correspondence
with the tradition, but I wish the vessel had not been a
brig. I should not like to put my hand to it that such
a rig as that of the brig was known in Vanderdecken's
days.* You had four-masted craft in plenty, the fourth
mast being called the bonaventure ; also abundance of
* There was a kind of vessel called hrigandines, but they carried the
rig of neither the brig nor the brigantino as we understand the term.
WHO IS VANBERDECKEN? 295
three-masted vessels, the thh'd mast rigged with a lateen
sail ; but no fabric answering to what we term a brig.
That Vanderdecken ever shifts his flag is not to be
supposed. Yet there could be no mistake, for mark
what follows : " Thirteen persons altogether saw her,
but whether it was Van Dieman or the Flying Dutchman y
or who else, must remain unknown." The ships in
company flashed to know if the people of the Bacchante
had seen the strange red light, so that probably no
'' shadowy being " was ever testified to by a greater
number of eyewitnesses. But the thing is placed be-
yond dispute by what followed, ''At 10.45 a.m. the
ordinary seaman who had this morning reported the
Flying Dutchman fell from the fore-topmast-crosstrees,
and was smashed to atoms." And then, '' at the next
port we came to the admiral was also smitten down."
There was nothing less to expect, but indeed a very
great deal more. An old sailor to whom I related this
story said that certainly the appearance looked un-
commonly like the Flying Dutchman, and for his part
he was willing enough to believe it was ; if he ha 1 a
misgiving, it lay in the smallness of the trouble that
followed. " The fallin' of a young seaman from the
masthead and the sarcumstance of a hadmiral being
took wuss wasn't consequences sufficient if that there
wessel wur the genuine Phantom. The Baykant (so he
called her) herself oughter ha' got lost. That's what
would have happened when I was fust goin' to sea ; but
there's bin a good many changes since then, and who's
agoin' to say that that there curse ain't growed weak
like physic wot's kept too long? "
But, be this as it may, there can be no doubt that
Vanderdecken is still afloat, cruising about in a ship
that glows at night, and whose rotten timbers are
20G A BOOK FOR TUE HAMMOCK.
charged with the villainous quality of causing disaster
and misery to vessels within the sphere of the horizon
the ancient Batavian floats in.
This is a scientific age, and it is really time that we
found out who this Dutchman is or was. Is there no
man clever enough to devise a specific for the neutrali-
zation of the evil influence of an endevilled structure ?
Let such a medicine be discovered, and I'll warrant no
lack of able-bodied Jacks willing to embark in quest of
the spectral pest. It would be a venture worth starting
a company to undertake. *' This company is intended
to supply a want that has long been felt." The object
would be twofold : first, to render Britannia's dominion
of the sea more comfortable than it can be whilst Van-
derdecken is suffered to sail aimlessly about with a
freight of curses in his hold, and Death keeping a look-
out at the masthead; and, secondly, to supply the
public with an attraction. Well, it will be admitted
that the Flying Dutchman would prove a lucrative
*' draw." Think of her moored just below London
Bridge, and the charge a shilling a-head to view her,
small boys half-price ! We may take it that Vander-
decken is heartily sick of his hard-up and hard-down life
off Agulhas, and would gladly settle down to an immor-
tality of still water (and Hollands), without expecting an
apology for the quality of the air of the Pool and the
Isle of Dogs.
I think I see the ship in my mind's eye ; a true por-
trait of a craft of the seventeenth century — great round
barricadoed tops, pink-sterned and crowned there with a
poop-royal, of a faded yellow, a green-coated swivel or
two aft, and a few rusty cannon lodged in wooden beds
on her main deck. And what would a chat with Van-
derdecken be worth, over a steaming bowl of punch, in
WHO IS VANDEEDECKEN? 297
his darksome cabin ? Rip Yan Winkle would be a mere
youth — equal to a hornpipe or a waltz — alongside this
Dutch skipper ; and what yarns could he spin of the
Amsterdam of his day, of old Schouten over at Hoorn,
of Yan this and Van that, of the Dutch Admirals, of the
fights in the narrow seas, of their High Mightinesses'
opinion of Cromwell, and of the hydropathic treatment
of the English at Amboyna !
Who is he? Marryat tells us that he was a sea
captain, whose wife lived with her son Philip on the
outskirts of the small but fortified town of Terneuse,
situated on the right bank of the Scheldt. But he starts
as a spectre, and remains undeterminable down to the
last chapter, when he, along with his ship and his son,
falls to pieces weeping tears of joy. I love the yarn, but
doubt the man. If Marryat is right Yanderdecken is
dead and gone. His curse endured long enough only to
enable his son to become an old man — call it fifty years
— for Philip was twenty or thereabouts when his father's
ghost flew through the window. Now, we know only too
well that Yanderdecken is still alive. Besides taking a
strictly nautical view of the question, I am disposed to
question the accuracy of the novelist on such grounds
for example, as these : he represents the Flying Dutch-
man sailing along with royals and flying jib, when this
canvas, as Marryat paints it, was not in use until the
close of the last century ; * also he depicts her as at one
time being so extremely ethereal as to be able to sail
through a ship, as though the phantom was formed of
mist and snow, and at another time as being substantial
enough to support the highly material form of Philip
when he stands upon her deck with his father.
* I do not find tlie " royal " in use much before Howe's and Jervis's
time. The " flying gyb " of the beginning of the eighteenth century (at
which date it first appears), was not tlie sail it now is.
298 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
Literature abounds in spectral ships ; but there is
only one Vanderdecken. And how consistently the old
Dutchman fits in with the roughness and wildness of
typical sea-fancies, one quickly sees when he is matched
in his unearthly integrity with the refined but entirely
faithless interpretations or reconstructions of the legend
by the poet or the romancer. Take, for instance, Thomas
Campbell's ''Spectre Boat," where a certain "false
Ferdinand," having broken a maiden's heart, is visited
by her ghost at sea.
*' 'Twas now the dead watch of the nio;ht, the helm was lashed a lee,
And the ship rode where Mount Etna liglits the deep Levantine sea ;
Wlien beneath its glare a boat came, row'd by a woman in her shroud.
Who, with eyes that made our blood run cold, stood up and spoke aloud."
What the wraith said was to this effect : That Fer-
dinand was a false traitor, for whom his sweetheart's
ghost wanders unforgiven, and that he was to come
down— in other words jump overboard — to appease her
indignation for his having forced her to break her peace
with heaven. As in the case of Coleridge's Mariner,
the spectre has her will ; and the last we hear of her
and Ferdinand and the boat is —
**And round they went, and down they went, as the cock crew from the
land."
How poor is all this 'superfine business of broken
vows and revengeful spectres, side by side with the
rugged, schnapps'-smelling figure of old Vanderdecken
viewing the horny moon with a curse in his eye, or
stumping the weather side of his castellated poop with a
speaking-trumpet under his arm ! Campbell has also
put into swinging, melodious verse an old Scandinavian
legend, which he calls the "Death-boat of Heligoland."
In this poem he represents a boat furiously rowed by
ghosts, whose shrouds were like plaids fiying loose to
WHO IS VANDEBDECKENf 299
the storm. The watchman sings out to know who they
are ; and is answered —
" ' We are dead ; we are hound from our graves in the West,
First to Hecla and then to ' unmeet was the rest
For man's ear,"
says Campbell.
All this is not Vanderdecken, but the poet finely
refers to the old Dutchman when he sings of those
curses which make horror more deep by the semblance
of mirth, and which at '' mid-sea appal the chill'd
mariner's glance." Coleridge also sends a spectral ship
to his Ancient Mariner in the vessel that approaches
him without a breeze or without a tide, and whose sails
glance in the sun, ''like restless gossamers." But,
instead of Vanderdecken, we have Death playing
at dice with a woman. How heartily the Ancient
Mariner must have prayed that the w^oman would win !
Certainly he could be no true sailor who would not so
pray.
This gambling fancy may be found in old German
legends relating to the death-ship. There is no lack of
stories referring to miscreants of all shades who sail
about in phantom- ships in company with Satan, who
plays day and night with them for their souls. But, as
though the artless yarn of Vanderdecken — simple in its
elements as a tale by Defoe, and exquisitely in keeping
with the stormy seas of that part of the world to which
Jack has strictly confined it — were not strong and good
enough, a number of monstrous perversions have been
launched, and the tradition buried under a hill of
absurdities. For example, there is the German notion
of a ship whose portholes grin with skulls instead of
cannons ; she is commanded by a skeleton who holds
an hour-glass, and she is manned by the ghosts of
300 A BOOK FOE THE HAMMOCK.
sinners. But even here the inventor is unahle to
manage without our okl friend Vanderdecken, and so he
affirms that any ship that encounters this horrid craft
is doomed. Another version represents the Flyincf
Dutchman as heing very nearly as big as the world.
The masts are so lofty that when a boy goes up to furl
a sail years elapse before he is again seen, and he
then comes down an old, white-bearded man. The
germ of this may perhaps be found in that wondrous
fabric of which Sir Thomas Browne writes: "It had
been a sight only second unto the Ark to have beheld
the great Sj/mcusia, or mighty ship of Hiero, described
in Athenaeus ; and some have thought it a very large
one, wherein were to be found ten stables for horses,
eight towers, besides fish-ponds, gardens, tricliniums,
and many fair rooms paved with agath and precious
stones." The enormous phantom ship takes seven
years in tacking, whales tumble aboard of her when she
rolls just as flying-fish dart into the portholes or
channels of earthly vessels ; her smallest sail is as big
as Europe, and there is a public house, a "free-and-
easy," in every block.
One has to search elsewhere for Vanderdecken.
That he was a Dutchman and that the story is Dutch
ought to be presumed from the round, plain, bald, and
salt character of the yarn. It is a thorough Dutch-
cheese of a story. Spain may supply versions charged
with spiritual elements and suggesting the Inquisition
with the embellishments of silver flames and death's
heads ; the French may make a purgatorial job of the
fancy and ruin it by an importation of priestly concej)-
tions widely remote from the sea inspirations ; German
imaginations may garnish it with unnecessary horrors ;
but it is in the Holland version that we find the true
WHO IS VANDERDECKEN1 301
ocean tincture, and the only narrative likely to be
accepted by such complete sea-dogs as fill the Dutch,
the English, and the American forecastles.
Yet, who was Yanderdecken ? An American writer,
founding his presumption on a German publication,
says that the master of the Phantom Ship was one
Bernard Fokke, who lived in the seventeenth cen-
tury. He was noted for his recklessness and daring,
and cased his masts with iron to enable him to carry
canvas. Having contrived to sail to the East Indies in
ninety days, he was looked upon as a sorcerer. At last
he and his ship disappeared, and everybody said he had
been carried off by the Devil and forced to confine his
navigation to the ocean between the two Southern
Capes. Of his crew none remain but the boatswain,
cook, and pilot. "He is still to be seen, and always
hails ships and asks questions ; but they should not be
answered — and then his ship will disappear. Sometimes
a boat is seen to approach his bark, but when it reaches
her all vanish suddenly." Others say he was a noble-
man named Falkenberg, who murdered his brother and
his wife and was condemned eternally to sail about the
North Sea. On his arrival at the sea-shore he found a
boat with a man in it awaiting him. The man said in
Latin, "■ I have been expecting thee." On which, accom-
panied by the ghosts of his murdered brother and wife,
Falkenberg embarked, and was rowed over to a Phantom
Ship that lay off the coast. This vessel is described as
painted grey, with coloured sails, and a pale flag. She
has no crew, and may be known at night by flames
which issue from her masthead.
But all this will not do. Yanderdecken is no noble-
man. There was a time when I was disposed to regard
him as the Wandering Jew, who, having grown sick of
302 A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
marching about the world, had taken ship for a cruise
that, though it lasted several centuries, would be short
in comparison with the time his grand tour would
occupy. The idea possessed me on hearing of a book
entitled '' News from Holland," in High Dutch, printed
at Amsterdam in 1G47, in which is unfolded the story of
two contemporaries of Pontius Pilate, one a Jew^ the
other a Gentile, both then alive. But it is not to be
supposed that the Wandering Jew, whose name was Car-
taphilus, and who was keeper of the Judgment Hall in
Jerusalem, would voluntarily accept an obligation so
naturally obnoxious to the hydrophobic soul of the
Asiatic as must be involved in many centuries of trying
to get to windward of the Cape. Yet if he be not the
Wandering Jew, or Falkenberg, or Fokke, or Klabotee-
man, whose ship, according to Longfellow, is called the
Carmilhan, or Captain Eequiem, of the Libera Nos, or
Washington Irving's Eamhout van Dam, who is Yander-
decken ?
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AN;> SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.
[April, 1887.
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Felicia. | Kitty.
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Archie Lovell.
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Fatal Zero.
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Queen CophetusL
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The Capel Girls.
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Under the Greenwood Tree.
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Garth. I Ellice Quentln.
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The Queen of Connaught
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A Drawn Game.
"The Wearing of the Green."
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The World Well Lost.
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The Rebel of the Far-Ily
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Gideon Fleyce.
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