Hawthorne Daniel

“ A steamer passes us, her running lights and range lights clear green and red and white, and then we are alone, bound outward to the heaving bosom of the great Atlantic. The light on Cape May fades from sight, and only the fading ray from the Fourteen-Foot-Bank Lighthouse is left to bind us to the busy world of North America—and finally that, too, is gone, and we are alone upon the dark and pathless sea beneath a clouded sky, dependent for our directions upon a swaying compass card lighted by a dim lamp mounted in the side of the brass binnacle. ”

“ She journeys, it is true, on no set route, and never knows—or seldom—for what port she is likely next to steer. But she works! Every possible moment of her workaday life she works. From the day she has passed her builders’ tests and is turned over to her owners she labours as no man or no man’s beasts of burden were ever worked. Day and night she sails the lonely seas—from Liverpool to Shanghai—from Shanghai to Capetown—from Capetown to Sydney—from Sydney to New York—from New York, perhaps, to Liverpool again—but not for rest. ”

“ Surge after surge pounds savagely on the great rocks of the reef, and finally a mighty wave that seems to be a giant effort of the madly tortured sea lifts a raging crest high up, and drops it in the roaring surf. A great rock splits beneath the blow, the wave runs up the tall thin shaft and dashes high above its top, and then drops swiftly down, while there, unharmed amid the vastness and the terror of the storm still stands the tower that puny man has built to warn ships from the dangers that surround it. ”

“ THE DEVELOPMENT OF SHIPS Imagine the world without ships. Mighty empires that now exist and have existed in the past would never have developed. Every continent—every island—would be a world alone. Europe, Asia, and Africa could have known each other, it is true, in time. North and South America might ultimately have become acquainted by means of the narrow isthmus that joins them. But without ships, Australia and all the islands of all the seas would still remain unknown to others, each supporting peoples whose limited opportunities for development would have prevented advanced civilization. ”

“ Yet in these days of steam and coal, of grimy stokers and machines called ships, there still remains, to gladden the eye of the white-haired men who sailed the clipper ships a half a century and more ago, a type of sailing ship that has proved to be so handy, so capable and efficient, that all the machines of a machine-mad world have not been able to drive them from the sea. ”

“ It is interesting to watch the labours of a crew of workmen in a dry dock. If a ship looks large in the water, it looks startlingly gigantic in a dry dock, especially if one walks down to the dock floor and views the high bow or the overhanging stern from the level of the keel. Propellers from a distance look small, but with half-a-dozen men realigning their blades or working about them, they look huge indeed. ”

“ But ere five score years had passed, the wheels of factories whirred in deafening array, electric motors whined with endless energy, and huge propellers, spiralling through the deep green sea, drove great ocean-going palaces from continent to continent, careless of winter’s winds or summer’s sultry calms, all but thoughtless of the powers of nature which, since the dawn of history, had been the ruling thought of all of those who have ventured on the surface of the deep. ”

“ Whether it be the citizen of New York or of San Francisco, of the mountain states or of the prairies—whether it be the clerk, the farmer, the manufacturer, or the ranchman—whether it be the millionaire or the day labourer, the teacher or the business man, still should he interest himself in ships, for only upon a wide appreciation of their value can wise legislation be built, and only with the support of the people can great fleets be maintained to carry the nation’s products to other lands and return with those vital cargoes upon which the nation’s comfort and happiness are so largely built. ”

“ Regardless of comfort, regardless of danger, regardless of life itself, the light must burn. No other duty or desire compares with that determination. And so in calm or gale, in summer fog or storm-torn winter night, the men who sail the sea have come to depend with simple and abiding faith upon the lights, the foghorns, and the courage of the lighthousemen. Whether the Atlantic pounds with mountainous seas the slender shaft on Bishop’s Rock, or the Pacific piles its crashing surges high at Tillamook ”

“ A hundred years after the Charlotte Dundas had churned the waters of the Forth and Clyde Canal and the Clermont had splashed with her paddle-wheels the waters of the Hudson, sailing ships had become rare, romantic links to connect the modern world with that adventurous period that lay before the era of invention and machinery. ”

“ Without ships the world at large would still be a backward, savage place, brightened here and there with tiny civilizations, perhaps, but limited in knowledge, limited in development and in opportunity. Without ships white men could never have found America. Without ships the British Empire could never have existed. Holland, Spain, Rome, Carthage, Greece, Phœnicia—none of them could ever have filled their places in world history without ships. ”

“ Again, typhoons drive ships upon dark rocks, or overladen ships capsize because of storm. But consider the thousands that sail the sea—consider the fact that not a storm can blow across the great stretches of the unfrozen seas without engulfing many ships within its mighty grasp. Yet with all this one rarely reads of shipwreck—there are few ships that find their ends in storm.
And this is because men build ships sturdily and handle them adeptly. Their art is seamanship, and after all, they are artists. ”

“ One has merely to go below, put on a bathing suit in the privacy of a perfectly appointed dressing room, and plunge into the crystal water of a pool that would have been the envy of any luxury-loving Roman—a pool so great that in it the smallest of Columbus’s ships could comfortably ride at anchor. Does one wish to entertain one’s friends at dinner? ”

“ Perhaps the coast of France is the best lighted in the world. Certainly it would be difficult to imagine one with a more perfect system. I have sailed the coast of Brittany at night, fearful of the currents and the storms that often blow on the stormy Bay of Biscay. But always, to minimize the dangers of the rocky coast and hidden reefs, the lighthouses blinked, and the task is simple to determine one’s position any time, except in fogs. For the French have placed their lighthouses so that as a ship sails along the coast there are always at least two lights in sight at once. ”

“ With competition the transatlantic voyage has been cut from forty days to little more than four. Giant ships plough every sea and offer their magnificence to every passenger who cares to pay the passage money. No longer do silks and spices fill the holds of the argosies of the deep. Iron ore or polished motor cars, bales of cotton or crates of textiles, toys or machinery, hides or shoes, lumber or furniture—it matters not. ”

“ Each fire-room attendant (they can hardly be called stokers) has three boilers, or fifteen burners, and the steam pressure in the boilers can be carried at 240 pounds pressure per square inch.
In ships burning coal the stokehold is a grimy place, with yawning openings in the sides leading to the black bunkers where the coal is stored. A few dust-covered electric lights glow dimly in the murky dusk, and when a furnace door is opened the glare of the fiercely burning fires lights up the begrimed and sweating stokers, who seem almost like unearthly creatures toiling in an over-heated Inferno. ”

“ Imagine a rich country, producing goods in large quantities which are salable in foreign lands, and anxious and willing to buy, in equal quantities, the goods of these foreign lands. Imagine such a country without a single harbour—with, perhaps, a long unbroken coast of sandy beach on which relentless surges pound the whole year through. ”

“ The ship has made her way slowly into the little harbour, and finally her engines are stopped, her anchor is let go, and with the roar of the cable through the hawse pipe the voyage is ended.
Such a voyage as this is not unique. Thousands of ships on thousands of routes go through similar experiences. Whole voyages are often taken without a hint of storm. Whole voyages, again, are taken through continuous and unending storm. Ships sometimes come into Halifax or Boston caked with ice—their rigging inches thick with it, their bulwarks buried. ”

“ In the same way, old books, old engravings, and crude old lithographs and woodcuts relating to almost every form of ships and shipping have been sought out and prized by an ever-growing circle of enthusiasts. This is not a passing fancy; there is something more solid behind it. I hope I am right in believing that the people of the United States are again turning their faces to the sea. Over the sea our ancestors or we ourselves have all come. We have filled the vacant spaces from the original colonies on the Atlantic Coast to the new and splendid civilization of the Pacific. ”

“ Their eyes are all but blinded by the sweat from their grimy brows. Their hands are calloused, their bodies misshapen from long toil on the rowers’ benches. Above them, on the wind-swept deck, they hear the clank of armed men, the slap of sandalled feet. A lookout calls to the officer in command—hurried steps—momentary silence—shouts and the sound of feet. A messenger appears in the stifling space below. The sharp clap of the mallet on the block increases its cadence. Faster and faster swing the oars. Furious and more furious is the pace. ”

“ A person driving an automobile is not only in command of the steering of the machine, but is also in direct charge of the engine, the gears, and the brakes. Not so the captain of a ship. Neither he, nor any of the men with him on the bridge, has any means of starting or stopping the engines. There is a man at the steering wheel, of course, but the men who start and stop and reverse the engines are far below the bridge and far aft, hidden away beyond where any shouted orders could possibly reach them. ”

“ Also the hull is heavier than and not so sharp as in the earlier Viking ships.
To us who live in a world so supercivilized that the Norseman’s wildest dreams could not have approached the commonplaces of modern life, it is difficult to imagine a crew of these stern and brawny men, fifty or sixty strong, perhaps, with their barbaric helmets temporarily laid aside, with their shields hung along the gunwales, and with their great backs bending in unison to the oars. ”

“ Would such a country long remain without a port? Not so. No matter how difficult and costly the task might be, a port would be built upon that very coast. A harbour would be dredged. Great sea walls would be erected. Vast warehouses, great quays and docks, busy railroad terminals would soon be in operation, and where Nature had made no harbour, man would have one.
But Nature is seldom so unkind. All around the world [Pg 173] are natural harbours which need only the clever hand of man to become busy with the transfer of goods. Some, of course, have more natural advantages than others. ”

“ These are the ships that are the perfection of the type that have all but driven sails from the seas—that have, in the carrying of passengers, entirely eliminated sails. Yet hardly had they reached the point where they might comfortably settle down to profit from the elimination of their ancient rivals, when an upstart ship—a ship whose lineage is so limited that its entire development lies in the 20th Century—put in its appearance and already has gained such a foothold among steam-driven vessels that it seems not unlikely that the days of steam upon the sea are numbered. ”

“ Of what use is the ability to reef a sail to a sailor on a ship where there is nothing made of canvas save tarpaulins and awnings? Why know the intricacies of a sailing ship’s complicated rigging when one comes in contact only with ships on which [Pg 196] the rigging is limited to steel masts and cargo booms? Why should one develop an eye for changes in the weather when a barometer can foretell it for one? Some of the old ways still leave their mark, but mechanics are of more service on the ships of to-day than sailors. ”

“ He had to know his ship from bow to stern, from truck to keel, and must ever have been ready to turn his hand to whatever task might momentarily have required him. It is no wonder that it took years to make a sailor. The wonder is that men were found to risk their lives in storm, to eat the disgusting food that such ships too often fed their [Pg 195] crews, to toil for months—for years—for trifling pay, beaten by their officers for minor as well as major breaches of discipline, yet willing, once a voyage was done, to spend their little savings in one wild fling and ship once more. ”

“ These hulls are huge and are tremendously strong, yet so great are the dimensions of the ship, so great her weight, that should her giant hull touch a rock the heavy steel plates would curl up like paper, the frames would bend like tin, and driven head on against a cliff or an iceberg the great structure would crumple its bow, twist its great frames, and might become a total wreck.
Modern ships that are propelled by machinery use two principal methods of propulsion, paddle-wheels and screw propellers. Paddle-wheels bear a very close resemblance to mill-wheels. ”

“ There are water barges, which supply ships with fresh water. There are dredges, seemingly for ever at work. There are glistening yachts and frowning warships. There is everything that floats rubbing elbows with everything else that floats, and yet despite the seeming confusion, the whole port is orderly, and seldom indeed are there collisions or accidents to mar the smoothness of the flow of commerce. ”