Thomas Fleming Day

“ With the canvas in the brails a-tremble to the rolls;
And the ocean is so still
That you wonder if it will
Give back to her who bore them those legions of lost souls.
Sing the sea, sing the ships,
Sing the sea and its ships,
With the forming and the storming
Of the wave athwart their bows;
Sing them when you clear them,
Sing them when you steer them,
For the strength that they have given
And the courage they arouse.
For the nation that forgets them,
For the nation that regrets them,
Is a nation that is dying as the nations all must die ”

“ SPECIAL REMARKS The first question before you start to learn to sail is: Do you know how to swim? If you don’t, you have no business in a sailing boat—in fact you have no business on the water. No parent should allow his boy or girl to have a sailboat until they have learned to swim. It is not difficult to learn to swim; any child can be taught that art in ten days, and it should be a compulsory course in all our schools. If people knew how to swim, nine-tenths of the drowning accidents that do happen would not. ”

“ Men often ask when it is time to reef? It is always time to reef when you think it is. The moment you would feel easier and your boat handle better by having less sail spread, is the time to shorten down. Never mind what anybody else is doing or what anybody else tells you. It is your boat, not some other boat that is worrying, and yourself, and not some other person, who is in charge. Never carry sail for the sake of carrying it; the ignorant may praise your recklessness and pluck, but the experienced man will call you either a lubber or a fool. ”

“ I go aft to my cheese and my beer.
MISSING. A cloudless sky, a sleeping sea,
A cold gray reach of shore,
A gleam of sail upon the lee—
And nothing more.
My eyes saw that, my heart saw more:
A woman whose quivering lip
Moulded this sentence o'er and o'er,
"God keep that ship!"
God keep that ship! Her prayer, not mine,
Goes out across the sea
To where beyond the misty line
A face is turned from me. ”

“ The fact that you leave port with a certainty of getting to your destination on time, barring accidents, makes somewhat monotonous an event that otherwise containing a large element of chance induces a corresponding degree of excitement. There is probably no pastime so tiresome to an active man as steam yachting, especially if it be in familiar waters. A steam yacht is a lazy man's palace and an active man's prison. Except when there is a race or a difficult bit of navigation, I would as soon run a trolley car as a power boat. ”

“ Have heard the crying of the spar, the moaning of the sail;
Who never see the ocean but that they feel its hand
Clutch like a siren at the heart to drag it from the land;
I see him in the running when seas would overwhelm
Lay breathing hard along the yard and sweating at the helm.
I see him at the earing light out the stubborn bands
When every foot of canvas is screeved with bloody hands.
I see him freezing, starving—I see him scurvy curst,
Alone, and slowly dying, locked in that hell of thirst. ”

“ TAKING CARE OF THE BOAT You must not only learn to sail, but you must learn to take care of your boat, to keep her neat and clean, and have everything above and below decks in shipshape order. Nothing looks worse than a slovenly kept and dirty yacht; a boat with fag ends of rope hanging about, loose and tangled messes of gear, sails not properly stowed, and a general air of untidiness apparent everywhere. The first attribute of good seamanship is order. Therefore, if you want to be considered a skillful sailor, keep your boat both above and below decks in shipshape fashion. ”

“ You cannot teach a man to sail—he may learn. In order to do so he must have the sailor instinct. Unless he has that he will never become a seaman. That is why some men can never learn to handle a boat, and why others will pick up the knowledge in a few months.
Again, there are many men who learn to sail a boat; that is, become possessed of so much knowledge as will permit of their working a vessel from place to place, but yet never succeed in mastering the nicer or more difficult points of seamanship. These are the parrots of the profession—men who simply repeat what they see other men do. ”

“ Sail over sail they offered
Their canvas to the wind,
That mimicked in its whiteness
The wake they swept behind.
No wonder kingly seamen
Were bred in ships like those;
No wonder that they made them
A terror to their foes.
For in the grace and beauty
They shed upon the sea
Man found the inspiration
That kept him brave and free.
And man and ship together
Played well that noble part,
Until their oaken sides became
[Pg 37]
A symbol for his heart.
But look! where black and formless
Those modern monsters ride
A blot upon the seascape,
A load upon the tide. ”

“ If when trimmed to sail on the wind a boat shows herself to be hard on the helm it may be the result of her form, of the position of her ballast, or centerboard, or through having too much after sail. If she gripes—that is, tries to go up in the wind—slack off a little mainsheet, and if she has a jib trim it flatter. If she tries to do the other thing run off to leeward; ease the jib sheets. The worst fault a boat can have is that of carrying a lee helm. Never buy a slack-headed boat; they are an abomination. ”

“ The inventor of the sail, the user of the elements, the discoverer, the trader, the protector, the world's benefactor—the seaman.
A noble art makes noble men, and there is no nobler art than seamanship. As free and changeful in its measures as are the elements it employs and combats, it is prolific of resource, fertile in expedient, and a prompter of mental activity. It promotes skill of hand and tenacity of muscle. Courage is bred in its duties, and the mind broadens in its services. ”

“ A heart-born cry
Of anguish and despair,
Of hope lost in despair.
In speechful grief the old town stands
And beckons with its outstretched hands
As the ships go sailing by.
Long years ago its port was thronged
With many a busy sail,
With rustling sail.
And many a heart has sighed and longed
For that old town's cheery hail—
Has sighed and longed for that old town's welcome hail.
Oh, where are they who left thy port
In strength of youth, in pride of love? ”

“ One of my favorite tricks is when the green hand is approaching the shore on a tack to leave him and go below, pretending to pay no attention to his actions. If he is good for anything, he will when the right time arrives go about. Once he has done this by himself he is confident, and will not hesitate to do it again. This is the principal thing to make a beginner understand, [18] that he must depend upon his own judgment and not rely upon yours.
Some persons can never be taught to sail. They can learn to steer perhaps, but never can learn to handle a sailing boat. ”

“ If, instead of racing, you just want a boat to knock round in during the day, your craft is far more easily chosen and secured. You won't have to read up several volumes of restrictions and rules, you won't have to nose through half a dozen classes to find the one in which the easiest-to-beat crowd harbor, before making up your mind and giving out your order. You can just suit yourself as to how long, how wide and how deep your craft is to be. ”

“ SAILING OFF THE WIND Sailing off the wind, or going free, is a different action from that of sailing on the wind. Sailing free is purely a natural movement, complicated by the fact that a vessel, owing to her weight obliging her to rest in the water, cannot move as freely as a fabric wholly sustained by the air. The fact that friction of the water retards her so that she moves at a less speed than the wind that presses her onward permits of her being steered. ”

“ Of the cheers and the bells to welcome them in—
For the cheers and the bells to welcome them in?
Do their dead hearts know hopes and fears?
Do they dream of the wives they've not seen for years?—
The wives and the sweethearts who watched them thro' tears
Sail away, sail away, when the wind was south
And the bar was blue at the harbor's mouth,
And the gulls flew low like flakes of snow,
And the summer wind bore the heave-yo-ho
Of the sailors brown
[Pg 22]
Into the town?
Are they here, the ones so dear?
Alas! the lips that their lips have known,
Alas! ”

“ Properly arranged and stored, experience is the mother of what is called "presence of mind," the most necessary mental part for a seaman to possess. Without it he will be a menace to his own safety and a threat of danger to others. Presence of mind is simply applied forethought. You do in an emergency without apparent reflection the right thing, and save your boat, your life, or somebody else's life. People who see the act, exclaim, "What wonderful presence of mind!" but would be more correct, if they exclaimed, "What perfect presence of plan!" ”

“ Will be rent and blown away,
For the weak will never pay
Their earnings to a people who have stamped themselves afraid.
Pull down the selfish wall!
We are not cowards all!
There are some who dare to struggle with the traders of the world.
Cast off the nation's chain,
And give us back the main,
And the flag that's never absent and the sail that's never furled. ”

“ In rough-water sailing a boat going to windward wants her sheet eased. Do not trim the sails dead flat, nor try to sail the boat very close to the wind; give her what is called a good full, and keep her moving all the time. Remember, that every wave is a hill that the boat has to climb over, and she needs all the drive possible in order to do it. You must learn how to help her with the helm to take these seas easily, first by luffing and then by bearing away.
[41]
A man can only become a good windward helmsman by constant practice and by paying attention to every detail. ”

“ You cannot expect a sail to sit properly and hold its draught on buckling spars. The lead of the sheet is such that the boom cannot be kept rigid, and just as soon as it blows its end turns up like a pugdog's tail, throwing the canvas all out of shape. Then the back-wind from the mainsail makes it impossible to keep the mizzen full unless it is sheeted very flat. ”

“ Hurrah for a breeze astern!
And here's to the port we love the best—
The port where the twin-lights burn!
There's many a maid of fashion rare
In warm and palmy lands,
With sea-deep eyes and night-black hair
And brown and shapely hands;
With lips as red as ever led
The heart of a man to roam,
But never one we'd take instead
Of the girl that waits at home. ”