Under Sail 13

Under Sail 13

CHAPTER VIII

 

ROUNDING THE HORN

 

 

No matter how miserable one may be, action of some kind always comes

as a relief. Our hard lot on the _Fuller_ was positively made more

bearable by the added hardships of the storm, and when the night was

past we were glad to force our chilled limbs and hungry bellies to some

sort of effort. Anything was better than to hang to the mizzen rigging

and slowly freeze to death. The torn hatch tarpaulin was a serious

matter. The merchant service holds no higher duty, where passengers are

not carried, than the duty toward cargo. This is often forgotten by men

who lack the true traditions of the sea. But our officers were well

alive to the importance, not only of bringing our ship around the Horn,

but of bringing her cargo through in good condition.

 

The mate, followed by Axel, Brenden, Frenchy, and Mike, a husky,

well-set-up sailor of the starboard watch, went into the waist and

worked their way along the deck at great peril. After much trouble

they managed to wedge down the flapping canvas, which was under a

constant deluge of blue water, whole seas coming aboard in quick

succession.

 

By noon the weather abated somewhat, and we got the ship under fore

and mizzen lower tops'ls, and close reefed main upper tops'l. Before

nightfall we had sent down what remained of the main lower tops'l, and

bent a new sail. That afternoon we experienced an adventure fraught

with much excitement to us of the port watch. The jib having worked

loose from the gaskets, by constant dipping into the sea, as the ragged

crests of blue water buried the bowsprit and jibboom, six of us were

ordered out to secure the sail by passing a three-inch manila line

around the sail and boom.

 

Brenden, Scouse, Frenchy and I were on the weather side, and Joe and

Martin went out on the boom to leeward. The job was almost finished,

two seas had already drenched us, and we were chilled with the dip in

the cold water, when the ship rose to a heavy roller, her bow lifted

high into the eye of the wind, and then plunged down into the deep

trough between two seas. The momentum was so great that she failed to

rise quickly enough, and her jibboom stabbed right into the heart of

the onrushing wall of cold blue water, regardless of the half dozen

luckless wretches clinging to the furled canvas with all their might.

The great sea went on over us, thundering down on the fo'c'sle head,

and rushing aft along the deck in a noisy white cataract of foam. When

she shook free we were left clinging to the jibboom like drowned rats,

that is, all of us but Joe.

 

Aft on the poop, the mate heard our cries, and, springing to the lee

rail, he yanked a bight of line from a pin and hove it overboard,

catching Joe just in time as he rose close along side. When she heeled

to leeward, ready hands hauled the half-drowned Joe on board. Captain

Nichols had come up on the first cry, and taking Joe into the cabin,

he poured out a liberal hooker of whiskey from the medicine chest. The

funny part of the whole thing was that Joe was more thankful for the

drink than for his escape from certain death, for we never could have

lowered a boat in that sea.

 

We got a watch below that night, and the cook managed to heat some

coffee, but cold salt beef and hard tack were all that the kids

contained when we went below for supper. Wrapped in our damp clothes

we managed to peg in a few hours of necessary sleep. Life, for a week

afterward, was not worth living, unless one held some latent strain of

the old berserker flowing through his veins. It was a fight, and the

elements charged us and flanked us in midnight fury, increasingly cold

as we edged farther to the south in our attempt to round the meridian

of Cape Horn.

 

In latitude 56° 29' S. and longitude 68° 42' W. from Greenwich, about

sixty sea miles S. W. by W. from Cape Horn, lies the island of Diego

Ramirez, a weather-worn rock jutting from the black waters of the

sub-antarctic. Ten days after fetching away from the Cape, we beat

south and sighted this grim sentinel, the outpost of the tempest and

the gale--ten days of such seagoing as seldom falls to the men who

nowadays go down to the sea in steamers.

 

Under conditions of the kind we experienced, every man was put to

the test, and his worth as a member of the crew clearly established.

Fortunately for us, and for the races representative in our small

company--of which we boasted quite a few--no strain of yellow fear

developed during the days and nights when the work aloft called for

the performance of duty dangerous in the extreme. Not one of us but

had been shipmates with men lost overboard, or maimed for life in

accidents to sail or spars. Never was there a moment's hesitation to

lay aloft, or out on a swaying bucking yard in the black cover of

night, to grapple with canvas hard and unruly. No work was too trying,

and no hours of labor too long. We thought nothing of the eternal

injustice of a fate that sent us out to sea to fight for our very lives

on a ship far too big for so small a crew to handle safely, if indeed

any crew of mere men could ever _safely_ handle so large a ship.

 

Never was there a suspicion of holding back, and through it all,

the discipline of the disgruntled warmer latitudes was dropped and

orders were quickly obeyed as a matter of course; yes, as a matter of

self-preservation. The disgusting profanity of warmer climes was laid

in the discard for a while, and we were men doing men's work.

 

Wet and hunger were the rule; to be chilled with the cold was normal,

and our salvation was the constant struggle with the working of the

ship. Accidents occurred, and old Jimmy lay in his bunk with his right

arm in a bandage from a dislocation due to a fall on the slippery deck.

This was roughly set by the captain with the help of the mate and the

carpenter. The galley fire had hardly been lighted an hour at a time as

the seas flooded everything forward. Cold salt junk--from the harness

casks to the kids--comprised the mainstay of our ration, not to mention

the daily whack of mouldy, weevily hard tack. Had it not been for an

occasional steaming hot can of slops called tea and coffee, we should

have surely perished.

 

Our oilskins were in shreds, boots leaked, and every stitch of clothing

in the ship was damp, except when dried by the heat of our bodies.

Had I been told of this before starting out--well, I suppose I would

not have believed it--and, when I say that during it all we had a

fairly good time and managed to crack jokes and act like a lot of

irresponsible asses, it goes to prove that man was born to be kicked;

be he on a sailing ship around the Horn, on the hard edge of the Arctic

littoral, or in the bloody trenches; fate is always there to step in

and deliver the necessary bumping.

 

When south of Diego Ramirez, we passed the American ship _Shenandoah_,

Captain "Shotgun" Murphy, bound from 'Frisco to Liverpool, with a cargo

of grain. She was racing two English four-masted barks, and we were

told that she dropped her hook in the Mersey a month ahead of them.

 

When sighting the _Shenandoah_ we were close to the wind on the

starboard tack, standing about due west; the _Shenandoah_ was running

free, with the wind two points abaft her port beam, carrying everything

to t'gans'ls, stays'ls, and jigger, a truly magnificent sight and the

first sail we had seen close aboard since leaving the _Tam O'Shanter_

off Sandy Hook.

 

When abeam we exchanged the courtesies of the sea, dipping our ensign

from the monkey gaff, and running aloft our "number," the gay string

of lively colored flags, pennant, and burgee--J. V. G. B. of the

International Code--the universal language of the sea.

 

The _Shenandoah_ also ran up her number, a spot of color in the

beautiful spread of white cotton canvas on her yards. The sky was dull,

but the clear air set her off with cameo like distinctness against the

grey background of the horizon. The deep blue of the sea smothered

white under her bow and, as she rolled gracefully, the yellow gleam of

her copper flashed along under her sleek black side, or else we caught

a glimpse of her white decks over the line of her bulwarks, as she

dipped to leeward.

 

We had sighted the sail ahead, and, having our starboard tacks aboard,

were accorded the right of way. Hitchen, of the other watch, gathered

with a group of us on the fo'c'sle head to watch the stranger drive

past us. Being somewhat of a scholar, the little Englishman delivered

himself of the following verse:

 

"If close hauled on the starboard tack,

No other ship can cross your track;

If on the port tack you appear,

Ships going free must all keep clear;

While you must yield when going free,

To sail close hauled or on your lee.

And, if you have the wind right aft,

Keep clear of every sailing craft."

 

In obedience to this Law of the Sea, the four-masted ship _Shenandoah_

starboarded a point, passing the _Fuller_ well to windward, and some

five miles south of the Island of Diego Ramirez.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IX

 

INTO THE PACIFIC

 

 

After close to two and a half months at sea we had reached the turning

point on the long course to Honolulu. The Atlantic with its trials lay

behind us, and just in our wake the sullen waters of the Horn lashed

themselves against the coast of Terra Del Fuego. Ahead stretched the

broad Pacific, greatest of oceans, and fraught with every angle of

adventure that comes to the men who sail. Indeed the sailing of a great

ship like the _Fuller_ is the rarest kind of sport from the standpoint

of seamanship, where every stitch of canvas is made to draw to its full

capacity in every wind that blows. From the cold latitudes of the Cape

up to abreast of Valparaiso, we had good lively sailing. Great rollers

followed us, for the winds were mostly fair, and, as the seas overtook

us and expended themselves to the north, we drove onward, cutting down

the latitude in record time; the cape pigeons were left behind, but

several albatross formed a convoy almost to the edge of Capricorn.

 

During these weeks of strenuous weather a favored few of us were told

off to lay up sennet for use in making chafing mats, and as "service"

on the backstays, where subject to the wear of gear. We would perch

ourselves on the coils of rope stowed on the fore hatch tarpaulin under

the fo'c'sle head, where we were sheltered from the weather and at the

same time within easy call from aft.

 

Frenchy was the leading sailor in these arts and taught us to lay up

_round_, _flat_, and _French sennet_. The less skilled men busied

themselves in making _nettles_ and _foxes_, using the primitive

"spinning jinney," and rubbing down the small stuff with canvas to

"smooth" it before balling. Here, too, we were initiated into the fine

points of marling spike work, Frenchy, Brenden, and Jimmy Marshall

showing the less knowing ones how to turn in many a splice and knot.

Turk's heads of three, five, and seven strands were made, and the

more difficult series of four, six and eight strands were mastered by

some of us. Jimmy worked a wonderful set of manropes for the after

companion, crosspointing them in red, white and blue, and topping them with rose knots.