Felix Riesenberg

“ On deck chanties had ceased to enliven us, and we went through the hard watches in a dogged spirit of endurance. We felt like martyrs, a state of mind not altogether without its compensations. In the watch below, in a steaming atmosphere of gloom, lighted by a single oil lamp set into a hole in the partition bulkhead between the two sides [101] of the fo'c'sle, we slept as much as possible, which was not half enough, ate our rude meals, and had our dreams of happier days to come. Each man respected the rights of his neighbors and each bunk was a sort of damp narrow castle. ”

“ Being wholly human and with all the weaknesses that sailor flesh abounds in, it is not to be wondered at if the ambitions of that voyage never fully materialized; judging by my own, I can say they did not. I wanted to command another such ship as the Fuller, to stump to windward and set the course, to have all night in, and eat delicious viands at the cabin table. Stranger fate was to await me before I cast my anchor in the fair cove called home, with kids to crawl upon my knee and call me "Dadda," and a wife to remind me now and then that I am not captain here. ”

“ I was delighted to pick up a vast amount of interesting and useful knowledge about the different knots and hitches used at sea. How many sailors today can properly cast a carrick bend, turn in a mariner's splice, or a Flemish eye, or work a cringle into a Bolt rope? Hitchen, of the starboard watch, taught us how to make the English bag knot, an intricate and beautiful formation cast in the bight of a line. ”

“ This is particularly so when they have to live in such intimate and trying proximity as that in the fo'c'sle of a sailing ship. On a deepwaterman, months at sea without even a smell of land, let alone a sight of it, the community life is bound to wear thin the edges of daily intercourse. Every small incident is magnified far beyond its worth, and only a trifle is needed to start a racket of some kind. ”

“ Honolulu harbor in 1898 retained more than a trace of its old time flavor of romance. In later years, when I again visited the port, the improvements had entirely eliminated many old landmarks that spoke so clearly of the historic past. At the time we were there in the Fuller, the remains of the hulk that once was the famous, or perhaps I should say infamous, Hawaiian man o' war, Kaimiloa, lay bedded in the mud flats at the delta of the Nuuanu River, a shallow part of the harbor between the railroad wharf and the waterfront of the city. ”

“ One day there was a commotion as Brenden and I worked away on a plank slung beneath the mizzen channels. The water under us surged up and a great black object rose beneath our feet, for all the world like a submarine boat coming to [157] the surface. Outcries brought all hands to the ship's side. A huge whale had come up in the shadow of the ship. Some hands ran forward, and presently big Scouse came aft on the run carrying a harpoon from the bosun's locker and a coil of heaving line. ”

“ The serving board and the serving mallet used by Noah; the fid, the marling spike, the sewing palm, and the caulking iron, are the ultimate tools of the most ancient handicraft; the art of building and rigging ships. We used all of these implements with industry as the blustery weather sent us up from the Horn to Honolulu. We saw how able sailors fit a cringle to the tough four-stranded hempen bolt ropes on the storm canvas; we learned the proper way to strop a block, with the splice where it belongs, as every sailor knows, and the throat seizing frapped and hitched in sailor fashion. ”

“ We were then in about five degrees of North Latitude, the trades had failed us, and the doldrums claimed their share of bracing and hauling, giving us little time for any other work. Every ripple on the brazen sea called for a different angle of the yards, and in dead calm we lay with our head yards braced sharp up and the after yards square, the courses guyed out from the masts by slap lines and bowlines. During the day a vertical sun beat down on our bare deck in unmerciful fashion, lifting the scorching pitch from the seams and all but addling our senses with the heat. ”

“ And the wonderful part of it was that they left the ship at the end of the voyage as coldly distant as the day they stepped aboard; that is all but the second mate, which is again running me ahead of the lawful progress of this yarn.
However, to get back to the deck and to the lives of our particular little sea community, plowing their painful way over the cruel surface of the many wrinkled ocean, we resented the underhanded flavor of the affair between the mates and Tony. With all the excuses for hazing granted and allowed for, there is nothing to be said in favor of lying about a fight. ”

“ Scouse had points, and I have no doubt after all the hazing afloat and skinning ashore, he learned and digested lessons of the utmost value.
Peter, of whom so much has been said and so little told, was in a way the most interesting character on board. He was, and no doubt still is, one of the most generous souls alive. If he is rich, it is certainly for no lack of a wild desire to share his last cent with any unfortunate that might cross his path. Peter started to sea in deep water sail for reasons that do him credit. ”

“ Life was not always so pleasant on board the Fuller. Hard words were the common run of things and the most frightful and artistic profanity often punctuated the working of the ship. Given a ship's company barely strong enough to handle a two thousand five hundred ton three-skysail yarder, even had they all been seasoned able seamen, our officers had to contend with a crew over half of which rated below that of the "ordinary" classification of seamanship, thick skinned clodhoppers, all thumbs on a dark night, and for many weeks after leaving port, as useless as so much living ballast. ”

“ Mary's, and now of the Newport, that ancient mariner of many, many voyages, filled with the accumulated wisdom of the seven seas, stood me in good stead. "When at the wheel, work the ship in your mind as if you had charge of the watch," was his advice. Doing this aboard the Fuller with such a consummate sailor as Mr. Zerk in charge was an instructive exercise. During daytime tricks I could see where sails needed trimming, or where a shift of canvas would help her, and would often have everything settled in my mind before the mate would notice things. ”

“ In watch below, choking with the heat, we lay tossing sleeplessly in our bunks while the sickly smell of the bilges came up from the fore peak through the wind sails let down to ventilate the hold. Cockroaches throve in added millions, and we were treated to our first rations of weevily tack. The little white worms seemed to be everywhere. The cracker hash was riddled with them as Chow selected the rottenest bread for this purpose. Most of us developed boils, and the dark brown taste, left by the vile food, resulted in a general loss of appetite. ”

“ Zerk grabbed him by the leg, and, swinging him like a bag of meal, he yanked Peter clear through the fo'c'sle door, landing him on the deck with a thud, amid a shower of curses and the startled cry of the victim.
This type of brutality was calculated to "put [36] the fear of God into us," as they say, and to strengthen discipline, and add snap and vigor to our movements. It certainly had the effect of showing us how important it was to be in the waist when the watch was mustered.
At the morning washdown the black slops that went by the name of coffee tasted like the very nectar of the gods. ”

“ A gentle sea was rolling in on our quarter and Joe entered the fo'c'sle door, the kid of cracker hash under his arm, the bread bag full of hard tack in one hand, and a large can of steaming hot tea in the other, the Fuller gave one of her corkscrew twists, and Joe stumbled over the sill, dousing Scouse with about half of the hot tea.
Scouse was furious, and at the same time half of our whack of tea was running in the scuppers.
Little things assume monstrous proportions after a group of men have been in close quarters for a long time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I had an idea that I would settle down somewhere with my money and be a gentleman planter, or something like that. At any rate, I cashed in and, with more money in my pocket than was good for me, put to sea in the fo'c'sle of a ship out of London bound for Melbourne. I'll call her the Iverclyde, that's near enough. They shipped me 'ordinary,' and when I handed the mate a five-quid note, as I asked for the job, he was sure he had hooked a fool, or a lunatic. The rest of my fortune I carried in a wallet in the bottom of my chest, a place no one would ever think of searching for money. ”

“ For a man to be ostracized by the crowd forward is a living hell, as has been proven on other voyages.
Aggravated as the situation was by the hedging discipline of the ship, the preparations for the battle were as secret as though we were an illegal boxing club operating in some blue-stocking community. Jimmy Marshall decided all the details, jumping around as busy as a field louse at harvest time. He elected himself referee and told off Australia and Brenden to look after Scouse, while Martin and myself were detailed to take care of Joe. ”

“ About this time Peter came in for a lot of joshing by the men of his watch. He had an old long-tailed oilskin coat given him by Chips. Such a garment is never worn by sailor-men who have to go aloft, it being the sole prerogative of officers and idlers who never venture above the sheer pole. However, with Second Mate Tom on deck, many strange things happened in the starboard watch, and Peter, the stiff tails of his long coat sticking out in the wind, would go up the rigging as unconcerned as if it was the recognized and proper thing for a sailor-man to wear. ”

“ Bad grub is Act of Parliament rations of so much, or I should say, so little, meat, either salt pork or beef taken from the pickle in the harness casks and weighed on a rusty scales by the second greaser each day, and given out to the crew. So much flour, so much pease, and so much hard tack. All rationed out with the whack of water, and carried to a filthy galley where the unappetizing slops is cooked up in some tropic region, and served to the British merchant sailor [385] with a regulation dram of lime juice, just calculated to keep the scurvy out of his knuckle joints. That is bad grub. ”

“ Talk had been rather reminiscent in one of the last dog watches, the weather was fine and we were sailing along before a gentle quartering breeze without having started a sheet or brace for several days—calm of spirit prevailed on board for a time, there was little hazing and, except for the growing rottenness of the tucker, we were content. The mind must therefore cast about for something new to seize upon. The name of Jimmy Marshall had been mentioned a great deal during the watch referred to, Axel having told of meeting Jimmy on his last night ashore, while returning to the ship. ”

“ Then followed another general washing down and cleaning over the side, and the ship A. J. Fuller looked herself again. Loaded to her deep sea trim, with yards squared to a hair and canvas furled with a harbor stow, we were as flash a ship as ever hailed from the port of New York—clean, and seamanlike in every detail. Fancy manropes were got out for the gangways, the galley smoke stack was given a coat of black paint, making "Charlie Noble," as this piece of humble but necessary sea [274] furniture is called, as sporty as any part of the old girl. ”

“ Unlike sailors on shorter runs, and that hybrid animal, the deckhand in steam, the sailor on board a deepwater ship has a sense of home. He occupies the same bunk for a year or more at a time, and in spite of the way he is robbed, or perhaps I should say, was robbed, he carried a small accumulation of household goods, things that the crimps and boarding masters did not consider worth while stealing. Every bunk in a measure reflected the personal taste of the owner.
Australia was one of the few men on board the Fuller who owned a mirror. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The mate grabbed Tony by the shirt, as he was on top, and yanked him over. The fact that the Dago had Mr. Stoddard down seemed to rile the mate beyond all reason. He ripped off the shirt of the Dago, and as he threw him across the deck a knife flashed and the mate kicked it into the scuppers, at the same time digging his heavy sea boots into the side of the Italian. The second mate staggered to his feet, a jagged streak of blood on his face where Tony had landed, and his jacket covered with gore. ”

“ Following our dose of weather we entered upon a spell of work that carried us well up to the latitude of Cape Frio. The gear had to be overhauled in all of its details; whips of braces shifted end for end, new chafing mats and battens seized on to the stays taking the place of [368] those worn through, and the slack standing rigging set up.
Our own gear, the clothing of the crew, was sadly in need of attention and every dog watch found the fo'c'sle busy with thread and needle. Frenchy was our top notch sailor man at sewing. ”

“ The scenes of wild fury that only those who have run before it in the latitudes of Cape Horn can understand, spread about us in a fitting panorama to the tragedy of suffering on our half-drowned deck. Surely the angels must have wondered at the vast ambition of men who dared such dangers and lived such hardships; all of which vast ambition could [333] be summed up in one sentence—the pay of an able seaman out of the port of New York—eighteen dollars per month, minus "advance" and the deduction for "slops," leaving the net earning in the neighborhood of ten or eleven dollars. ”

“ Chips cornered one man after another and in a deliberate fashion got his ideas as to who was willing to go aft. We were all of one opinion as to who was most fitted for the billet; Old Smith of course was the man. Although he was known as Old Smith, it was more a matter of respect, his age being only about forty or forty-five. He had sailed before the mast since boyhood, most of this time deepwater, back and forth around the Horn, sailing as second mate many times but always going back to the fo'c'sle as his choice. ”