David W. Bone

“ The evidence is there for all to judge. The seaway is foul with wrecks, foundered on beach and sandbar—the tide vexed by under-water obstructions. Topmast spars with whitened cordage whipping in the wind stand out above the swirl of the tides; a shattered bow-section or gaunt listed shell of a wrecked vessel sets the turn to a new shoal drift; crazy funnels, twisted and arake by the broken hulls below, stud the angles of the buoyage that marks the fairway. Disaster to our shipping is plainly shewn, grouped in a way that no figures or statistics could rival. ”

“ We should be able to shove along at better speed when daylight comes. The mist or the haze or whatever combination it may be, is puzzling. From the outlook it is not easy to gauge the range of our vision. Near us the wash from our bows is sharply defined by phosphorescence in the broken water, a white scum churns and curls alongside, brightening suddenly in patches as though our passage had set spark to the fringe. Outboard the open sea merges away into the gloomy sky with no horizon, no ruling of a division. We seem to be steaming into a vertical face of vapour. ”

“ On deck there is an inclination to move quietly, to preserve a silence in keeping with the weird spell that seems to environ us. There is no longer chatter and small talk among the duty troops; they sit about, huddled in glistening ponchos, peering out at the ghostly glow on the water. From far down in the bowels of the ship the rattle of a stoker's shovel on the plates rings out in startling clamour, and rouses an instant desire to suppress the jarring note. It seems impossible that there can be ships in our company—vessels moving with us through mystic seas. ”

“ The clearing of our outlook produces a curious confusion to the eye. We have become accustomed to a limited range in sight, and the sudden change to distant vision, in which there is no standard of position, no mark to judge by, effects an illusion as of a photographer's plate developing. Fragments, wisps, and sections of the sea-rim appear, breaking through as the fog lifts, and seeming strangely high and foreign in position. Topmasts and a funnel-wreath of black smoke loom up almost in mid-air; the water-line of a ship's hull grows to sight, low in the plane as though dangerously close. ”

“ With some fathoms to spare we sheer over the thrash of her propellers, the horizon runs a line across our stem, we have clear yielding blue water under the bows!
The illusion of our sole movement is reversed as the mass of the other vessel bears away from us. The unbroken sea-line offers no further mark to judge our swing; we seem to have become suddenly as immobile as a pier-head, while our neighbour starts from our forefoot in an apparent outrush, closing and opening the line of her masts and funnels like shutting and throwing wide the panels of a door. ”

“ THE broad surface of the Hudson is scored by passage of craft of all trades and industries. Tugs and barges crowd the waterway in unending succession, threading their courses in a maze of harbour traffic; high-sided ferry-boats surge out from their slips and angle across the tide—crab-wise—towards the New Jersey shore; laden ocean steamers hold to the deeps of the fairway on their passage to the sea. Up stream and down, back and across, sheering in to the piers and wharves, the harbour traffic seems constantly to be scourged and hurried by the lash of an unseen taskmaster. ”

“ Every man of the busy group of mechanics and riggers has 'a brick for the wall,' and the wriggling lengths of armoured hose are coupled and launched over the coamings as quickly as the massive motors are lowered. Foundering with splash and gurgle, like uncouth sea-monsters in their appanage of tortuous rubber tentacles, the sheen of their polished bulk looms through the green translucent flood of solid seawater, the grave and surely augmented tide that they are trimmed to master. Again, the seeming hopelessness of the task, the handicap of man against element, presents a doubt to one's mind. ”

“ Ahead, the dark bulk of our column leader sways and thrashes through the spiteful easterly sea, throwing the wash broad out and taking the spray high over bow and funnel. In turn, we lurch and drive at the same sea that has stirred her, and find it with strength enough to lash over and fill the fore-deck abrim. Weighed down forward, we throw our stern high, and the mad propeller thrashes in air, jarring every bolt and rivet in her. We cant to windward, joggling in an uneasy lurch, then throw swiftly on a sudden list that frees the decks of the encumbering water. ”

“ Sunlight, in slanting rays, shines through the rents and fissures of the upper deck, and plays on the free flood that washes in and out of the exposed after hold; seaweed and flotsam surges on the tide, clinging to the jagged, shattered edges of the plating, and breaking away to lap in the dark recesses. To eyes that only know the lines and mould of sightly, seaworthy vessels, she seems a hopeless and distorted mass of standing iron—a sheer hulk, indeed, fit only for a lone sea-perch to gull and gannet and cormorant. ”

“ He reports a submarine in sight—broad on the port bow. The circle of our telescope shows the clean-cut horizon ruling a thread on the monotint of sea and sky. Sweeping the round, a grey pinnacle leaps into the field of view. It is over-distant for ready recognition. Only by close scrutiny, observing a hair-line that rises and falls on either side of the grey upstanding point, are we able to recognize our enemy. He is pressing on at full speed, trusting to our casual look-out, that he may secure a favourable position to submerge and attack. ”

“ If our ways had become peaceful in the long years of unchallenged trading, our habits were never less than combatant throughout a life of struggle with storm and tide. Not while we had a ship and a man to the helm would we be driven from the sea; our hard-won heritage was not to be delivered under threat or operation of even the most surpassing frightfulness. Jealousy for our seafaring, for our name as sailors, forbade that we should skulk in harbour or linger behind the nets and booms. ”

“ Beaten to the knees, the gear and tackle swaying perilously in breaking seas, the lifting-barges thundering at their curbs, the pumps groaning and protesting their inability to overcome the lap of blue water, there is no alternative but to abandon the work and return to harbour. From the beach the salvage officer may watch his labour of weeks—or months—savagely undone in an hour or two of storm and fury of the sea! ”

“ We back out into the river, bring up, then come ahead, canting to a rudder pressure that sheers us into the fairway. The river is thronged by vessels at anchor or under way, docking and undocking on the top of the tide, and their manœuvres make work for our pilot. At easy speed we work a traverse through the press at the dock entrances and head out to seaward.
Evening is drawing on as we enter the sea-channels—a quiet close to a fine summer day. Out on the estuary it is hard to think of war at sea. ”

“ He has failed, despite the sinister sea-marks that litter the fairway. Down the river estuaries and out from the sea-harbour and roadstead, the coasters still join in company through the channels. An unending procession; the grey seascape is never free of their whirling smoke-wreaths. Passing and turning in the deeps, they steam close to the red-rusted, shattered hulls of their sister ships. The gaunt masses of tortured steel stand out as monuments to an indomitable spirit—or to an influence that calls their sea-mates out to steer by the loom of their wreckage. ”

“ A lightship is as peaceful and immobile as the granite blockstones of a lighthouse. She requires an even greater protection, exposed as she is to dangers on the sea that do not threaten the landward structure. She is incapable of offence or defence. Unarmed, save for the signal-gun that is only used to warn a vessel from the sands or to summon assistance to a ship in distress, she can offer no resistance to a show of force. She is moored to withstand the strongest gales, and cannot readily disengage her heavy ground-tackle. ”

“ Astern of us, a medley of sound and steering-signals marks the gateway of the harbour where our followers are striving to drop their pilots and join in convoy; one loud trumpeter is drawing up at speed and showing, by the frequency of her whistle-blasts, anxiety to sight our wake. The lighthouse syren roars a warning of shoal-water out on the landward beam, a raucous discord of two weird notes. ”

“ It lies in the bight of a bay, where rarely steamers closed the land. Sailing ships, close-hauled and working a tack inshore, or fisher craft on their grounds, had long been the only keels to sheer water in the deeps, but war practice has renewed our acquaintance with many old sea-routes and by-paths, and we are back now to charts and courses that have long been out of our reckoning.
The tide is at low-water slack, and whirls and eddies mark the run over shallows. At easy speed and handing the lead, we approach the wreck. ”

“ The challenge to our seafaring we met by skill and hardihood—keener and more polished arms than the weapons of our sea-fathers. The coming of competitors spurred us to sea-deeds in the handling of our ships and cargoes, dispatch in the ports, and activity in the yards, that brought acknowledged victory to our flag. Every sense and thought that was in us was used to further our supremacy. The craft and workmanship of the builders and enterprise of the merchants provided us with the most beautiful of man's creations on the sea—the square-rigged sailing ship of the nineteenth century. ”

“ If, under new and treacherous blows, our hearts beat the faster, there was little pause, no stoppage, in the steady coursing of our sea-arteries. We fought the menace with the same spirit our old sea-fathers knew. Undeterred by the ghastly handicap against us—the galling fetters of a policy that kept us unarmed, we pitted our brains and seamanship against the murderous mechanics of the enemy. ”

“ Our eyes, now limited in range by the fog, seem to focus readily on trifles; for want of major objects, roving glances take in driftwood and ship-litter, and turn on minute patches of seaweed with an interest that a wider range would dissipate. Spurring, black-crested puffins come at us from under the misty pall, floating still, as if set in glass, till our bow wash plays out and sets them, squawking in distress, to an ungainly splutter on the surface, or dipping swiftly to show white under-feathers and the widening rings of their dive. ”

“ British Standard is to lead the line, and her anchor comes to the hawse and she backs, then comes ahead again, swinging slowly under helm towards the sound of 'gateships'' hand-horns. High on the stern emplacement her men are uncovering her gun and clearing the ranges, and the long grey barrel is trained out to what will be the sun-glare side of the first tangent of her sea-course. Close astern of her comes War Ordnance, her pushful young captain having taken heed of the sounds of Standard's weighing. ”

“ They are ill content with the vile weather and their job in the open, where the rain lashes down pitilessly, soaking their working clothes. Doubtless they envy the dry divers their suits of proofed rubber, when they are called on to manhandle the heavy timber shores from the mud and litter of the dockside and launch them out towards the steel sides of the settling vessels. There the tide-workers on deck secure them by lanyards, and the spars hang in even order, sighted on doublings of the plates, ready to pin the ships on a steady keel when the water drains away. ”

“ Bounteous harvests had set a tide of prosperity to all parts of the world. Trade had reached the summit of a register in volume and account. The transport of the world's goods was busied as never before. With every outward stern wash went a full lading of our manufactures—a bulk of coal, a mass of wrought steel; foam at the bows—returning, brought exchange in food and raw materials, grist to the mills of our toiling artisans—a further provision for continuation of our trading. There were no idle keels swinging the tides in harbour for want of profitable employment ”

“ And our highway was no primrose path, swept and garnished and safeguarded; it had perils enough in gale and tempest, fog, ice, blinding snow, dark moonless nights, rock and shoal and sandbar. Remote from ordered assistance in our necessity, we relied on favour of a chance passer-by, on a fallible sea-wanderer like ourselves. So, for our needs, we formed a sea-bond, an International Alliance against our common hazards of wind and sea and fire, an assurance of succour and support in emergency and distress. ”