French Ensor Chadwick

“ The whistle may be going every twenty or thirty seconds, and the quartermaster posted to the leeward with the little canvas bag and the thermometer with which the sea is tested for temperature; all due precaution may be taken, and yet no warning come of the ice that is ahead. On a clear night a berg rising above the horizon will have the effulgence of a star; on a clear day it will notch the horizon with its dazzling whiteness; in a fog it looms up in the gray like a shadow upon a shadow, and is invisible till the ship is close upon it. ”

“ When the storm breaks it is tremendous; in no other part of the world do winds blow harder or seas rise higher; lofty ships carry low sails hereabouts, and steamers frequently have to lie to.
The mad ocean is left astern when the ship enters the inside passage leading along the coast of Patagonia and the Straits of Magellan. Here the scene is one of unparalleled magnificence. High bare walls of stone, towering barren cliffs, lofty snow-capped peaks, weather-scarred mountains down whose furrowed sides extend steel-blue glaciers—all reveal nature in her most majestic and awe-inspiring form. ”

“ The next day the passengers come on board, and the company’s servants in the tenders and lighters gleefully escape, after banging about and muddling the baggage so mercilessly that state-room trunks yawn bruisedly in the holds, and huge chests, bursting with useless trophies of travel, lumber up your narrow quarters below—this, to the despair and tears of forlorn women who pursue the hapless purser with unrelenting fury when they learn that nothing can be unearthed until after the ship has left Queenstown, and that until then they must hopelessly shift for themselves. ”

“ The iron tools blister their hands, the roaring furnaces sear their bodies; their chests heave like those of spent swimmers, their eyes tingle in parched sockets—but work they must, there is no escape, no holiday in this maddening limbo. Steam must be kept up, or perhaps a173 cruel record must be lowered. Facing the furnaces, the hollow up-scooping of the stoker’s shovel echoes stridently on the iron floor, and these speed-makers pile coal on coal until the fire fairly riots, and, half blinded, they stagger backward for a cooling respite. ”

“ The Clyde is, in fact, like one of those heroic personages who triumph over natural disadvantages which to the common mind are insuperable, and its inferiority in depth and breadth has been counterbalanced by excellences in other directions. In the first place Glasgow is the natural outlet of a great mineral field, so that after iron and steel became the principal materials of the ship-builder, he could find them on the banks of the little river unburdened by the increased price asked for them when it has been necessary to carry them long distances. ”

“ Still, a new delight possesses everybody, and it grows as the hours fly, until at last, it may be at night, perhaps, some one bursts breathlessly into the crowded smoking-room or bar, and cries exultingly: “There she is, Fire Island Light, right over the starboard bow.” Joyous faces gather near the crowded bulwarks, and eager eyes hail with gladness the shining petals of that rose of flame which blossoms unfailingly above the shoaling waters; for the voyage is nearly over, and the morrow means to some the marvels of an unknown land, to others, luckiest and happiest of all, home and dear ones. ”

“ The escaping steam roars out of the copper-pipes riveted to the funnel; louder and shriller the whistle drives its warning through the obscurity which surrounds us. Then we move “Ahead!” once more, and at midnight all hope of seeing Queenstown is abandoned. The passengers retreat to their cabins, and the decks are left to the sailors and the officers, who come in and out of the ghostly atmosphere—their oil-skins dripping with moisture and shining momentarily in the lamp-light. Never for an instant does the captain leave the bridge; his cigar feeds its bluish wreaths to the fog ”

“ Below, brawny, silent men stand at the levers, ready at an instant to stop and back, or go ahead, just as the emergency may direct. Outside the pilot-house the quarter-master strains his ears and peers nervously into the gloom, yet alert to pass any command given to the junior officer and to his messmate at the wheel. Signals from fog-whistles drift into them from other groping ships, and, at times, spectral hulls and ghostly sails loom close aboard, creeping out of the curtained night or slipping landward or seaward in search of hidden port or roadway. ”

“ If the traveller has stayed in the same ship all the way from London, he has, by the time he arrives at Colombo, been 30 days en voyage and navigated a distance of 6,700 miles. By whatever line he has come, he should have enjoyed his life on board ship, for after the first day or two out from port acquaintances are made that rapidly ripen into good fellowship. Deck cricket, quoits, and cock-fighting enliven the forenoons; a novel and a nap wear away the afternoons; an innocent rubber with the ladies brightens the evenings ”

“ The love of record-breaking is universal. The performance of the Majestic on August 5, 1891, thrilled the people of every nation. Her triumph of crossing the Atlantic in 5 days, 18 hours, and 8 minutes was echoed round the world. Hardly had the echoes died out when her sister-ship—twin in size and type—the Teutonic, came into New York Harbor with a better record still. ”

“ The Firth itself is like a great Fjord, a land-locked bay hollowed between hills and crags, among which vapory clouds are always shifting, and its deep salt waters are ploughed by fleets of vessels of every class, and especially by yachts, sea-going steamers, and the most rakish-looking excursion boats in the world; it is not unlike the Hudson above Peekskill, though much wider; the rounded hills have the same soft and civilized outlines, and the same appearance of reclamation for man’s use and delectation; modern villas crown their heights and watering-places cluster at their feet. ”

“ A bird’s-eye view reveals great stacks of timber, iron, and steel; a net-work of rails which connect the works with all the principal lines converging at Glasgow; long brick sheds, and edging the water-front the launching-slips, where as many as fifteen vessels have been in course of construction at the same time. There the great hulls of many of the most famous Atlantic liners have been put together; this was the birthplace of all the new ships of the North German Lloyd line; of the Arizona, the Alaska, the Oregon, the Umbria, and the Etruria. ”

“ Down the coast the vessel runs in the darkness, fearing naught while the stars shine and the horizon circles clean cut above the foam-capped waters. But as the night grows the air loses its briskness, a light haze shrouds the sea, and the Channel fog rolls, ghostlike,158 landward. Soon only the upper stars glimmer, the moisture drips from the rigging, the iron rails and deck-houses are damp and clammy, and the lights are aureoled with a dull cloud of gray and yellowish mist. ”

“ What the task of hauling out is, you may best judge by noting the bulk to be moved, for you can never measure properly the enormous dimensions of these great steamers until you see them looming in their true proportions above the walls, and undwarfed, as they are in the open, by the frame of sea and sky. The bulwarks tower like the walls of a fortress; the enormous decks sweep with a sheer knowing no broken curve; the wheel-house lifts its windows above the life-boats, swarming sternward like a school of pilot-fish ”

“ For if the voyage be now half over, the novelty of sea life is at low ebb, and the passengers, save a few irrepressible spirits, have lapsed into a gentle melancholy induced by the monotony of water, water, water everywhere. They are tired of the sea, of the ship, of the cooking, of each other, in short, of everything, and are anxious only to arrive. ”

“ INTERESTING as the ocean fleet is from the point of view of the passenger who crosses the seas on business or pleasure bent, the part that steamships play in the commerce of the world is even more worthy of consideration. There is a vast region between decks and down in the lower hold of which the ordinary traveller knows little. And yet the ship’s cargo brings to the owners a large portion of their revenue, and makes possible the magnificent steamships of to-day. ”

“ How patronizing and sympathetic they look, what a lot they seem to know, what beautiful guernseys they wear, and with what ease they guide the mighty vessel! Before the introduction of steam steering-gear two men were always required at the wheel, and in bad weather there were four, and sometimes six, with frequent reliefs; and yet, with all this beef, many a poor fellow has been maimed for life by being tossed over the wheel-barrel or jammed by the spokes when the ship swung off with sudden lurch or broached to before the fury of the gale. ”

“ Now, ship-building is not an exact science, and the closest calculations are often upset in the result by unforeseen and inexplicable causes. It can never be said with absolute certainty just what speed a ship will attain, or exactly what quantity of cargo she will carry. The most ingenious and patient of experiments have not yet succeeded in eliminating the mysterious variability of result which the ship-builder finds, however closely he repeats his well-defined formulas. ”

“ It may be at night, when you cannot see a ship’s length ahead, and around you, threatening disaster and death, are a dozen vessels; it may be when the ice is moving and the towering bergs lie in your pathway. Then those dreadful middle watches, when, after a hard tour of duty, you are roused out of a comfortable bed, and jumped, half awakened, into the chill and misery of the gale-blown night with every nerve and muscle strained to the breaking-point. ”

“ It is wider and loftier than any chamber at Westminster, and there is more justification for its name in the babble of the sea-birds flitting in and out of it than in its dimensions. From the foot of it to the low, white wall which encircles the light, it is a sheer precipice of dark, exfoliating rock, forbidding and hopeless, without a resting-place for any living thing less secure than the birds, which cluster like beads on a string upon the edges of the shale. ”

“ This watch-keeping seems easy enough, even interesting and exciting, at least so I have heard not only from the casual gentleman who worries about critically in fine weather, but from that uneasy-minded shuttler who skips across the Western Ocean half a dozen times a year for no reason any sane man has yet discovered. But, dearly beloved idlers, do not deceive yourselves, getting out of bed and walking on a roof is anything but gay, even in fine weather. ”

“ All these elder merchant-masters are sailor-men, some so deep and dyed in it that if you scratch them they ooze tar, and this briny saturation has been invariably acquired under sail. After they have had their ships and made many a voyage, deep water and home,153 round both Capes, east and west, wherever winds may blow and freight, the mother of wages, may linger, they shift into steam, but always in a subordinate place. ”

“ The ocean greyhound is simply an exponent of the times. What the limited express trains are on land, the racer is upon the sea—the229 “Atlantic Limited.” Expense is no object. The faster the ship, the greater the rush for passage in her. She is, of course, a floating palace of magnificence, but speed is the main object, and speed is at times as important for certain classes of freight as it is for passengers. The hue and cry that steamship companies are endangering the lives of their passengers by ocean racing is pointed in the wrong direction. ”

“ Two ships, like the Umbria and the Etruria, may be built side by side, of identical materials, lines, and dimensions; engines, boilers, and propellers may be the same, yet one will turn out to be a knot or two faster than the other, and neither the designer nor the builder is able to say why.
It is apparent, then, that in guaranteeing an exceptionally high rate of speed the builder assumes no little risk. The designing of a fast ship is indeed more of an art than a science, and each designer proceeds on a theory more or less his own. ”

“ The farms are alternated by shipyards in which the hulls of ships in various stages of construction loom up, with ant-like specks of humanity swarming upon them. Some of them are nearly twice as long as the river is wide, and it puzzles the stranger to say how they can be launched, until someone, wiser than he is, tells him that they slide into the stream obliquely and thus overcome the difficulty. Nearly all the steamers that have earned fame in the Atlantic trade have been built and engined at one or the other of these ship-yards, from the first Cunarder to the City of Paris ”

“ In each watch there are three quartermasters, generally fine specimens of the British tar, a joy to the eye and a comfort to the soul, notably in bad weather, when they cheer you with a smile that soothes as the words they may not utter; for by a maritime fiction they are always supposed to be at the wheel, and you must not, under fear of keelhauling, talk to them. ”

“ To go by sea passage must be secured on board a Pacific Mail coasting steamer, the only line running to Mexico, Central America, and Panama. Steaming down the beautiful coast of California, stopping at picturesque harbors in Mexico, anchoring off roadsteads of Central America, taking on and off a few passengers, an Englishman, a German, an American, handling cargo—such is the rough log of the cruise of 20 days and 3,200 miles until the splendid Bay of Panama is reached. The eight or ten ports of call are better seen from the ship than from the shore. ”

“ The pumps stop, the hose are uncoupled, under-run, and reeled, and, everything being secured, the ship returns to its normal condition. But not to rest, for there is no rest fore and aft when a voyage is begun. Cargo and stores have to be hoisted out of the lighters, holds have to be stowed, gear secured. All day long the cargo winches rattle, and the tackles rise and fall complainingly. Alongside a double bank of lighters cling, and through cargo-ports and over the rails the freight pours ceaselessly. The twilight deepens with stars; ashore the roar and traffic of the busy town are hushed ”

“ Notwithstanding all the peril from fog and ice, and from the fury of cyclones and hurricanes, the steamers of the transatlantic lines are so staunchly built and so capably handled, that a man is less likely to meet with accidents on board one of them than he would be in walking the streets of a crowded city. Never before have so many passengers been carried as are carried now. ”