No Romance In It

1895

NO MUSIC OR HORNPIPE IN THE LIFE OF THE MODERN SEAMAN.

Bitter Disappointment Followed an Investigation — Sailors Who Work, Eat and Sleep and Are Devoid of All Ambition. A Hard and Hopeless Life.

My earliest and strongest impressions of seafaring life were gained by watching the evolutions of her majesty's ship Pinafore while she lay in the dry dock in Philadelphia, and although my ideals have been somewhat shaken by seeing the deck-hands of the transatlantic steamers I retained the notion that the counterpart of my old friends would be found aboard sailing vessels. But that dream is over. The first shock came soon after leaving port, when I told the captain that he was to teach me how to dance the hornpipe. He said that he didn't know how, and, moreover, had never seen any one who did. I replied that I was not from the country, but he solemnly assured me that he was telling the truth and called upon the second mate to bear him witness. The latter, after much reflection, recollected that he had once known a sailor who could dance a hornpipe, but couldn't remember whether it was on a voyage to the East Indies or while he was "in steam" on the Mississippi. Further inquiry proved that no one else had over witnessed such a performance.

This was not the most bitter disappointment, however. I am not a great lover of music, but it seemed to me to be a necessary part of a sailor's existence that he should scamper merrily about and pour forth the gladness of his heart in song. To be sure, they do make a noise when they pull on the ropes and occasionally burst into a dirge while at pumps, but to both of these performances the cry of the penguin is cheerful by comparison.

Indeed I have come to the melancholy conclusion that the flavor of romance evaporated with the first generation of seamen. There is none of that picturesque idleness which I was led to believe was as essential as the song and dance. Were one of them to write his daily life it would be expressive of more energy than Mark Twain's famous diary, but would partake of the same simplicity. It would read, "Worked, ate and slept." Work begins when they are driven aboard by their respective keepers and ceases when the vessel arrives at her destination, so that the time occupied in eating and sleeping is their only respite. In heavy and squally weather there is also constant pulling of sails. It is then that their abilities in that monkeylike accomplishment of climbing the riggings are tested. As you stand on deck in a heavy gale and watch all hands upon one of the yardarms furling a sail you begin to put some faith in Darwin's theory concerning the origin of mankind. In fine weather their duties are of a different sort. They then turn painters, carpenters and jacks of all trades. "Holy stoning," scraping, painting and varnishing go on until the ship looks as if she were just off the drydock.

Sometimes in an idle moment or in a fit of temporary insanity a sailor decides to wash a shirt or a red bandanna. One day during a heavy rain this madness became epidemic, and after closing the "scuppers" all hands got upon the deck and proceeded to wash their clothes with a small piece of soap with a large question mark.

Were they as well treated on all vessels as they were on The Standard they might possibly learn to take care of themselves when ashore. It is indeed a case of out of the frying pan into the fire, for when they escape from the rule of more or less severe shipmasters they have not the sense to keep out of the way of boarding house runners and the like. If they would only keep their wits about them and make up their minds to defend themselves in an honest way, they could not fail to better their condition. They sometimes entertain themselves by shirking work at the latter part of the passage and by damaging the rigging just before saying farewell.

They never lose the sheeplike appearance with which they come aboard, going about in a flock at the beck and call of the officers. The watch may be forward pulling at some ropes when they hear, "Come aft, two o' yer!" and immediately replying, "Come aft, two o' yer!" they shuffle in a body in that direction. In nothing are sailors more obliging than in regard to their names. It matters not what they are called — Tom, Dick, Harry — all are the same to them as long as each has a separate one. When two happen to claim the same name on their arrival, each trios to outdo the other in nobly sacrificing it to his companion. Truly they are believers in the poetical theory concerning the rose and can see nothing in a name.

Bringing up the rear in the ship's company came the animals. Besides a pig we left port with an army of chickens, cats and rats, of which the latter were by far the most numerous. The chickens went all too soon, the cats departed save two, but the rats remained faithful to us. The surviving cats were natives of Boston and showed a great fondness for baked beans and brown bread. It was just as well that their comrades did not live, for they were all possessed with hearty appetites and doubtless would have proved a very severe tax upon our supply of provisions. When the bell sounded, these creatures appeared from their various nooks and corners to demand a meal in as many different keys. — Edward Porter in Philadelphia Times.

Cockroach Derby Excites "Rookies"

1916

HERB ROTH'S "ATTABOY" IS EASY WINNER.

Runs the Two-yard Course in Two fifths of a Second — A Classy Brute.

BOSTON, Massachusetts, (Aboard the U. S. S. Kentucky). — "Attaboy," the pride of Herb Roth's string of racing cockroaches, won the two-yard championship on a recent afternoon from a field composed of Dal Dawkins' "Hammock King," J. W. Bailey's "Ditty Box Bill," Herbert Reed's "Mess Jumper," Albert Schedy's "Scamperer" and a half dozen others. Practically all of the civilian volunteers and many of the regular crew witnessed the speed contests and the bookmakers did a thriving business.

It was thinness which finally resulted in victory for the Roth string. Hawkins had starved his roaches for two days in preparation for the big race, but some miscreant broke into the stables and fed them, so that they were a bit leggy at the start and not much interested in the mince pie which awaited them at the finish, while Roth's "Attaboy," ravenous, covered the two yards in two-fifths of a second.

The overfed condition of Hawkins' string resulted in all his entries running last, while Bailey's "Ditty Box Bill" and Reed's "Mess Jumper" were a bad second and third to the winner.

"Attaboy" is a magnificent brute, standing nearly three-quarters of an inch high at the withers and weighing not less than ten milligrams.

These cockroach races have proved so interesting a divertissement that it is proposed to arrange intership contests.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 7.

Jack's Account of It

1901

One of Uncle Sam's able seamen, who was in an "Owl" train that was wrecked, thus described his experience:

"It was a little after two bells this morning and I was smoking my pipe in the 'Owl's' stern galley. The first thing I knew of any happening was when I was thrown violently from my seat. After the pitching and jumping had stopped, I crawled out and saw that the steering gear of the 'Owl' had been carried away, causing her to part amidships. The after end listed badly to starboard and went aground, throwing all hands in a heap to the listed side. No lives were lost, however, though all were badly shaken up and somewhat damaged. One unlucky passenger bunted the glass out of a porthole, cutting her head and face quite badly. After wigwagging the craft coming up behind to change her course, the forward end of our craft picked up the passengers and crew and continued her voyage. As for me, I will be glad when I am safe aboard the Albatross again. This cruising overland is too rough and choppy for me." — Argonaut.

Ship Rigger Braves Death

1905

His Vocation Is One of the Most Perilous There Is

Men who delve deep into the bowels of the earth and those who rear buildings to great heights in the skies represent the extreme in perilous endeavor. The men who work downward, according to statistics, face far greater danger than those who toil slowly skyward. Yet here is an altitudinous calling fraught with peril every minute, says the Detroit Free Press. It is the ship rigger's job, and, compared with steeple climbing, it is much the more onerous.

The men engaged in it are as well trained as circus athletes, though in the rigging of a ship the performers are carefully safeguarded. The ship rigger, however, does not know at what minute a rotten bit of timber or a worn rope may give way and precipitate him to death. With a wider use of steam vessels the decline of sailing ships is a natural result, so that now the rigger does not find as much work to do as in the palmy days of the fast clipper when American commerce whitened every sea.


Test Weldless Chain

There have been sent to the navy yard, Boston, for testing, several samples of a new kind of chain, in which the links are made of thin steel and molded without welding. It is believed that this weldless chain is stronger than the other chains now in use in the navy, and if the tests prove this it will probably be generally adopted for use by the bureau of equipment.

The Great Sargasso Sea

1896

Sailors have always been superstitious fellows. No wonder, then, that the ignorant sailors of Columbus, anxious for some excuse to turn back to Spain, believed the "sargasso sea" — that tangled mass of seaweeds in mid-Atlantic — was a trap set by Providence to catch them. Science to-day analyzes and explains all such natural phenomena once deemed supernatural. What is it that causes that mysterious sargasso sea?

Simple enough. The rotation of the earth, the rush of the tides, the steady winds unite to cause a vast surface current in tropical waters, moving at about ten miles an hour from east to west, known as the equatorial current. This, in the Atlantic Ocean, feeds the Gulf Stream, which then is shifted by the contour of the North American continent out across the Atlantic to warm the outlying shores of Northern Europe and only spend itself away on the frozen borders of Franz Josef Land. What results? An eddy. Put a few bits of wood in a basin of water and stir the water till it acquires a circular motion. The bits of wood will all collect in the center of the whirling mass.

So the Atlantic Ocean is one great eddy, and the sargasso sea is only the center of it. A "marine meadow," the Spaniards first called this stagnant water. Later it came to be called the sargasso or sargassoa sea, from the Spanish word sargazo, meaning seaweed. Here the seaweed detached from the bottom of the ocean collects, buoyed up by peculiar little air-cells.

Woe to the ship that wanders into the meshes of this great net, six times as big as all France. The same conditions that produce the great sargasso sea of the Atlantic make similar eddy-spots in various regions of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, though much smaller. The Chinese, always ready to utilize whatever is at hand, use the sargasum weed as a food, and as such it is both palatable and nutritious. — Pathfinder.

Puss Sailed Away

1900

Went Aboard a Steamship and Made Herself Quite at Home

If there is anything in the popular superstition among sailors that "a cat brings good luck," the voyage of the British steamship Thalia will be a pleasant one, says the Savannah News.

A fine, large Maltese cat went aboard the day before she sailed, and composedly curled herself up on the heavily upholstered crimson sofa in the officers' saloon, and when the vessel sailed she was a contented passenger. "She is an old traveler," said the steward, as he stroked her soft fur "and this is not her first voyage. Cats like a change, and they will visit one vessel and then another in port until they find one that suits them; and they are knowing animals, and seem to have some intuition when a vessel is going to sail.

"Do I think a cat brings luck? Oh, yes. It's good luck to have a cat come to you. Why, that's not a superstition of sailors alone. Did you ever see a landlubber that didn't believe it? That cat will have the best treatment on board; besides, there's no end to the rats on board, and the cat will be useful as well as lucky for us."


Friends Are Discovered

Friends are discovered rather than made; there are people who are in their own nature friends, only they do not know each other; but certain things, like poetry, music and painting, are like the Freemasons' signs — they reveal the initiated to each other. — Mrs. Stowe.

The Instinct of Birds — A Storm Coming

1901

While a British brig was gliding smoothly along before a good breeze in the South Pacific, a flock of small birds about the size, shape and color of paroquets, settled down in the rigging, and passed an hour or more resting.

The second mate was so anxious to find out the species to which the visiting strangers belonged that he tried to entrap a specimen, but the birds were too shy to be thus caught, and too spry to be seized by the quick hands of the sailors. At the end of about an hour the birds took the brig's course, and disappeared, but toward nightfall they came back and passed the night in the maintop.

The next morning the birds flew off again, and when they returned at noon the sailors scattered some food about the decks. By this time the birds had become so tame that they hopped about the decks picking up the crumbs.

That afternoon an astonishing thing happened. The flock came flying swiftly toward the brig. Every bird seemed to be piping as if pursued by some invisible enemy on wings, and they at once huddled down behind a deck house. The superstitious sailors at once called the captain of the brig, who rubbed his eyes and looked at the barometer. A glance showed that something was wrong with the elements, and the brig was put in shape to outride a storm.

The storm came about 20 minutes after the birds had reached the vessel. For a few minutes the sky was like the waterless bottom of a lake — a vast arch of yellowish mud — and torrents of rain fell. Why it did not blow very hard no one knows; but on reaching port, two days later, they learned that a great tornado had swept across that part of the sea. — Our Dumb Animals.