Basil Lubbock

“ Right up the Channel the kites were carried, and when morning broke off the Isle of Wight a sail was discerned ahead, which daylight proved to be a big barquentine rigged steamer under all sail. We had evidently crept up on her unobserved in the darkness, for when the discovery was made that a windjammer was showing her paces astern, volumes of black smoke belched in sooty clouds from her two funnels, as if entering a protest against such a seeming indignity. But, in vain, she fell away in our wake as the fruit schooners had done a couple of days before. ”

“ However, on the discovery of gold in 1851, the Colonial trade leapt out of its stagnation and squalor and at one bound became one of the most important in all the world’s Mercantile Marine. And when the gold fever drew a stream of ignorant English, Scotch and Irish peasants to Australia, men, women and children, most of whom had never seen a ship before they embarked and who were as helpless and shiftless as babes aboard, it was seen that something must be done to improve the conditions on the emigrant ships. ”

“ When she first arrived in Liverpool a well-known Liverpool shipowner wrote to a Boston paper:—“You want to know what professional men say about the ship James Baines? Her unrivalled passage, of course, brought her prominently before the public and she has already been visited by many of the most eminent mechanics in the country. She is so strongly built, so finely finished and is of so beautiful a model that even envy cannot prompt a fault against her. On all hands she has been praised as the most perfect sailing ship that ever entered the river Mersey.” ”

“ Many an old Black Baller ended her days as a coal hulk. Even the winter North Atlantic could not down the Red Jacket and Donald Mackay, and eventually Red Jacket went to Cape Verde and Donald Mackay to Madeira as coal hulks. How many of the Union-Castle passengers knew, when they cast their eyes pityingly or perhaps disdainfully on the grimy looking hulk floating a cable’s length or so away from their spotless liner, that they were looking upon a crack passenger ship of their grandfather’s day. ”

“ Hundreds of tons of water swept over the ship in a solid mass from stem to stern, thundering inboard on the port side of the foc’s’le and racing away over the main deck and over the poop, where most of the crew were standing. Every man on the poop was thrown down, and when they regained their feet they perceived that the foremast and mainmast were over the side, and the mizen topmast above their heads had disappeared. Not a man on board actually saw the spars go or even heard the crash of the breaking rigging so violent was the shock and so fierce the howling of the hurricane. ”

“ Then too, though an iron ship can be driven into a head sea in a way no dare-devil of a Yankee driver would have dared to attempt with his soft-wood clipper, iron has not the buoyancy of wood, and the sight of a modern four-poster’s main deck when running before the westerlies would have made a Black Ball skipper rub his eyes with astonishment. ”

“ Iron killed the competition of our American cousins, who, as long as wood was the chief factor, were able to give us a hard fight as to which should lead the world in shipbuilding. Yes, it was the advent of iron, more than the North and South War, more than the sinkings of the Alabama, more than any slump in freights or foolish shipping legislation on the part of the United States, and more even than our adoption of Free Trade, which made the British nation the carriers of the world. ”

“ And the Black Ball Line would never have become the great concern that it was in its palmy days if it had not been for this man’s foresight and enterprise. He, it was, who realised the genius of the great American shipbuilder, Donald Mackay, and gave him an order for four ships, the like of which the world had never seen before—ships which knowing men in the business pronounced to be too big and likely to prove mere white elephants once the first rush of gold seekers was over. ”

“ It was the deterioration of the man before the mast which the advent of steam brought about, and the cutting of freights induced by coal, the cry for bigger ships and more luxury, and also, that soulless modern institution, the company manager, which drove sailing ships down and down in the trade of the world; these and the growing desire for mechanical speed, which have invaded almost every department of life, killed the windjammer. ”

“ A fine S.S.W. breeze was blowing and Wild Deer was romping along under all plain sail and starboard fore topmast stunsail, when the American schooner yacht, Henrietta, the winner of the first ocean yacht race, hauled out from the land and, closing on the clipper, hoisted her colours and asked her name. The late Gordon Bennett, her owner, was on board the yacht, and evidently wished to try her paces against the tea ship, as the Henrietta held on in company with Wild Deer for an hour or two, then bore away for the Needles. ”

“ Kipling has sung the song of the pioneer and has laid stress on the pioneer spirit, but he has not touched on that great magnet which has ever drawn the pioneer on and dragged civilisation in his wake—the magnet of gold. Gold and its glamour has been the cause, one can almost say, of all the tragedy and all the evil in this world, but also of nearly all its good and all its progress. ”

“ In more ways than one we owed America thanks for shortening the passage to Australia—and not least to the sailing directions advocated by her great wind expert Maury. In the days before the gold discovery vessels followed the route laid down by the Admiralty; they kept as much to the eastward as possible on their way south in order to avoid the dreaded Cape San Roque and its leeward currents; they rounded the Cape of Good Hope close to, indeed often touched there, then kept well to the north of the forties running their easting down. ”

“ At 3 p.m. we were abreast of Tuskar. The ship is gliding along under an astonishing cloud of canvas, with stunsails alow and aloft. In the evening the band played several tunes; many of the passengers ventured on a polka and other dances with spirit.
Friday, 7th September.—The light breeze of past two days died away at 4 this morning, leaving us becalmed. Happily the weather is delightful with clear sky and brilliant sun. The sea has the appearance 397 of an immense sheet of glass. All parties are on deck so that the promenades are inconveniently crowded. ”

“ For first class passengers the splendid Blackwall frigates of Green, Money Wigram and Duncan Dunbar, and the beautiful little clippers of the Aberdeen White Star Line, provided excellent accommodation and a comfortable and safe, if not a particularly fast, passage. But the ordinary steerage passenger had to content himself as a rule with a ship that was little better than a hermetically sealed box: one as deep as it was long, with clumsy square bows and stern, with ill-cut ill-set sails—its standing rigging of hemp a mass of long splices ”

“ The ill-fated Royal Charter’s passage home in the summer of 1856 presents an example of a badly run and disciplined ship. The food was bad, everyone had a growl about something, drunken riots occurred constantly, fighting in which even the crew and stewards took a part was of almost daily occurrence, and excessive gambling ruined scores of returning diggers on the lower deck. I am glad to say that I can find no such instance of disorder and lack of discipline amongst the ships which relied upon sail power alone. ”

“ But their London rivals, the beautiful British-built hard-wood ships of half their size, having no heavy repair bills, being splendidly built of that imperishable wood teak, and being able to fill up their small holds quickly, continued to carry passengers outward and wool homeward until supplanted in their turn by the magnificent iron clippers of the Clyde, Liverpool and Aberdeen. ”

“ In 1851 a dirty-looking ship with stumpy masts and apple-cheeked bows lay in the Queen’s Dock, Liverpool, with a broom at her masthead, thus indicating that she was for sale. This ship, which seafaring men contemptuously compared to a barrel of pork, had been cheaply built at Miramichi, and was evidently going for a song. James Baines scraped together what little money he had and bought her, sent her out to the Colonies and made a good profit on her; and this was the humble beginning of the great Black Ball Line, which in 1860 possessed 86 ships and employed 300 officers and 3000 seamen. ”

“ Truly running down the easting in a little 1000-ton clipper with a hard driving skipper and big fisted, stony-hearted mates was a fine bracer for the emigrant, who had perhaps never seen salt water up to the date of sailing and who was bound to a country which could only be wooed and won by a clear brain, stout heart and strong arm.
At first the ships in the New Zealand trade were not even 1000 tons in burthen, being mainly little 400 and 500-ton ships and barques, which mostly flew the flag of Shaw, Savill & Co. ”

“ Down in the roaring forties she made three consecutive runs of 340, 345 and 338 miles by observation, a performance which I do not think any iron ship has ever beaten.
Her best homeward passage was 79 days to the Channel in 1888, but her wool passages were so regular that she was rarely allowed more than 85 days to catch the sales.
Brilliant was a specially handsome ship; painted black with a white under-body, and with a brass rail along the whole length of her topgallant bulwarks, she was always the acme of smartness, being known in Sydney as “Duthie’s yacht.” ”

“ If a man at the wheel had brought the ship a point or two nearer the wind, the probability is that Forbes would have been flung into the sea as the boom lifted or perhaps the boom itself would have carried away, as that was the usual way in which lower stunsail booms were smashed up.
Every man is supposed to have a lucky day, and Bully Forbes’ lucky day was a Sunday. On his record voyage in Marco Polo, he left Liverpool on a Sunday, sighted the Cape on a Sunday, crossed the line on a Sunday, recrossed the line homeward bound on a Sunday, and arrived back on Liverpool on a Sunday. ”

“ Enright was a very religious man, a Puritan of the old type yet no bigot: a stern disciplinarian, the men before the mast knew that he was sure to give them a square deal, impartial and just, and fair treatment for good service, and for that reason never gave him trouble, whilst in controlling his passengers and keeping a happy ship in spite of the trials of such long passages and crowded quarters, he showed the most wonderful tact and gift for ruling men. ”

“ Captain Richards, the well-known commander of the Donald Mackay, superintended her building and fitting out and eventually left the Donald Mackay to command her.
The Thomas Stephens soon proved herself one of the fastest iron ships afloat, and a very successful ship financially. She was beautifully sparred, crossing three skysail yards, and was a very lofty ship—one of the tallest ships, indeed, that ever sailed either from the Mersey or the Thames; and she carried all her stunsails well into the eighties. ”

“ The Champion of the Seas had her greatest beam at the centre of the load displacement line, and, like the Lightning, she was fuller aft than forward. Her deck houses and cabin arrangements were also on the same plan as those of the Lightning, viz., a topgallant foc’s’le for the crew; a house, 50 feet long, abaft the foremast, for petty officers, galleys and second class passengers; a small house, 16 feet square, contained the chief mate’s quarters and sheltered the first class companion, whilst a large wheel-house astern had a smoking-room on one side and the captain’s cabin on the other. ”

“ Their spars dwarfed with their loftiness the corrugated iron sheds, their jibbooms extended far over the shore, their white and gold figure-heads, almost dazzling in their purity, overhung the straight, long quay above the mud and dirt of the wharfside, with the busy figures of groups and single men moving to and fro, restless and grimy under their soaring immobility. ”