William Clark Russell

“ You cannot make a drawing-room of a smack; there will be always hard work and hard words where there is hard weather; and there is not much hope of polished airs and genteel behaviour amongst a race of men who sleep in holes at which a blackbeetle might stand aghast, and who are boxed up for many months together in the year in a bit of a fabric whose forecastle is full of raffle, and whose hold is full of dead fish. But ashore no doubt something may be done for the lads to advance them morally, and make real men of them when they come to be men. ”

“ The eye struggles with the darkness in vain. Every instinct sympathizes with the blindness that has fallen upon you; but the strained ear catches no more than the sob and fret of passing water and the chafing of gear as the vessel sways upon the indistinguishable folds of the swell. A man coming up out of the cabin of that steamer might have reckoned the vessel deserted and left to her own guidance. The wheel was amidships, and there was no familiar binnacle-lamp to relieve with its soft mist of light the eye that strove to pierce the darkness aft. ”

“ No wonder that in olden times the man who had passed these tempestuous and inclement seas should have considered himself an object of importance. Stand, in fancy, upon the deck of that labouring brig, and survey one of the countless aspects of marine life. The seas are breaking heavily over the port bow of the vessel, deluging her forward and racing aft in a foaming torrent as she sinks her stern to mount the huge surge that almost lays her yardarms level. The bitter, raw, flaying cold of the wind there is nothing in language to express. ”

“ The moon is low in the west, and has changed her silver into copper, and will be gone soon. The calm is wonderfully expressed by the reflection she drops; the mirrored radiance streams towards you like a river of pallid gold, narrow at the horizon and broadening, fan-shaped, until it seems within a biscuit’s throw of the ship, where it vanishes in a fine haze; but on either hand of it the water is as black as ink, while the lustre of the moon has quenched the stars all about her, and left the sky in which she hangs as dark as the ocean. ”

“ They are a fine sight to watch. I know nothing more exciting to witness than a great narrow-waisted yawl, almost on her beam ends, hurling through an ocean of foam, jumping the seas until half her keel is out of water, then burying her bows in the storm of froth as if she were about to dive out of sight, her metal to windward looking like a sheet of polished gold, with the sunshine sparkling in the wet of it. But to be aboard! Decks that one can walk on may be an unsailorly prejudice, yet they are comfortable ”

“ A yacht is a man’s home. He need never be in a hurry. Like Jefferson in “Rip Van Winkle,” he lives about in spots. He may leave a good deal to his skipper, but he is always master; he owns the craft which others steer, and never a humour can come into his head which he may not indulge without having anybody to argue with him. It is a fine thing to be lord of the sea in this fashion. A captain of a big ship is a great man, but he is a sort of a slave also. His business is to make haste, and obstacles vex his soul. The patent log that he tows astern typifies the condition of his mind. ”

“ You can barely see the weather shrouds, though to leeward their black lines are plain enough against the washing heights of foam which swell up as high as the rail of the bulwarks. You do not feel the force of the gale until you are in the rigging, and then for a spell the iron-hard pressure of it pins you against the shrouds as if you had been made a spread-eagle. The rain drives along in slashing horizontal lines, and you see the sparkle of the deluge over the skylight where the light of the cabin lamp is shining ”

“ The mate runs along the deck bawling out orders to flatten in the head-sheets and square the after yards, and so forth; the men come out of a dozen corners, coils of rigging are flung down, songs are raised, sheaves squeal as the yards are swung, topsail sheets rattle, and all is bustle and hurry. Meanwhile the wind freshens with a moan in the gathering gust, and the ship leans under it as her headsails fill, and she pays off. Presently the yards are braced round, the vessel brought to her course, and the wind is found to be a point free. ”

“ There is no wind, but a drenching drizzle drops unseen, save in the haze of the cabin skylight, from a black heaven that seems to rest its ponderous burden on the slender mastheads of the creeping steamer. It is the English Channel, the great maritime highway that leads to all parts of the world, and now as ever it is crowded with shipping; and through this mighty shadow, full of hidden life and hidden danger, those captains I am writing of must bring their vessels, day after day, week after week. They must not lag, for time is precious to their owners. ”

“ Again and again as you sail past you see forking up out of them some black gibbet-like relic of a wreck a week, a fortnight, a month old. Something of the kind is always visible, as though even on the tenderest of summer days, when the blue water sleeps around, and the heavens are a violet hollow, with a rayless sun making gold of the sea in the west, the deadly suggestiveness of that long sweep of yellow sand should be as plain as when its presence is denoted amid the black tempestuous night by the ghastly gleam of boiling white waters. ”

“ But what sense of solitude can equal that felt by shipwrecked men in a small open boat, surrounded by a universe of waters, with no other chance for their lives than such as a passing ship may bring? It is not the first hour, nor yet the first day; the agony of such a trial lies in the slow maddening of the mind by fruitless expectation; the deception of the white shoulders of clouds, which look like ships as they seem to linger a moment upon the horizon before sailing above it; the straining of the aching sight against the pitiless, vacant sea-line ”

“ It is a responsible thing to carry mails, to be answerable for a mass of specie, and for the lives of a number of gentlemen and ladies; but think of standing on the deck of a steamer on a dark night, and reflecting that under your feet lie sleeping a thousand human beings, not counting your crew, and that the very existence of this vast company of fellow-creatures depends upon your vigilance, judgment, skill as a seaman. ”

“ Or jump aloft to loose, let us say, the mizzen royal after the tropical squall has gone away to leeward, and left the clear moon shining in a purified heaven of indigo, and striking a cone of silver glory in the dark sea whose northern waters are studded with flakes of light from the great stars. It is the middle watch; you have overhauled your clewlines, the yard has been hoisted over your head, you come down the topgallant rigging into the crosstrees, and linger there a few moments. All is silent on deck; the helmsman stands motionless at the wheel ”

“ A man can describe what he has suffered in a railway collision, in a house on fire, down in a mine where there has been an explosion, in a theatre where there has been a panic; but put him aboard a ship and let him clearly understand that he is going to be drowned, and when succoured he can tell you little more than that the waves ran mountains high, that some people were brave, and that some people shrieked, and that what he best remembers is catching hold of something, and hearing the water in his ears, and being dragged into a boat. ”

“ There may be plenty of bustle and loud calls, but there is bound to be a share of sorrow too. It is not long since the skipper took his wife to his heart, and his head is full of her and the youngsters as he paces the quarter-deck, sometimes pausing to peep over the side at the cluster of boats round the gangway ladder, and sometimes singing out to the mate, who has his hands full forward. Indeed, it is impossible to look at an outward-bound ship without sympathy and a kind of respect that comes near to being reverence in some minds. ”

“ Our ships are of iron; they are propelled through the calm sea by an irresistible power faster than a gale of wind would drive them; they are of proportions so colossal that many of them could sling the “tall schippes” of our forefathers over their sides, and stow them on skids as they stow their boats; and yet just the same sort of sufferings are endured now by mariners as were experienced by them in the days when a vessel of thirty tons was reckoned big enough not only to seek the North-West Passage but to hunt the unnavigated oceans after continents. ”

“ He rushed on deck, where the fresh air at once revived him, and not immediately perceiving anybody about, shouted for the officer of the watch. The chief mate came running out of the darkness forward, and before Captain{106} Peabody could address him, cried out that the ship was on fire. The news spread as if by magic, and in a few moments the decks were alive with the crew hurrying out of the forecastle.
Of all cries, none thrills through the heart of a sailor like that of fire. Human helplessness is never so felt as at such a time. ”

“ Whilst such craft as she remain afloat, the grace of the sailing vessel in its most beauteous form survives, and steam may be defied to demolish a lingering but most noble marine ideal realized.
Owners of yachts do not all take the same view of the delightful pastime. Between the yachtsman who never seems so happy as when he is out of soundings, and those sailors who creep from port to port, and take a three weeks’ spell of rest in every harbour they succeed in making, there is a prodigious stretch, filled up by a surprising variety of tastes. ”

“ Nearly all the work of the traditional mariner lies aloft, and to reflect upon Jack without dead-eyes to turn in, chafing gear to look after, reef-points to knot, rigging to tar, masts to stay, studdingsail gear to reeve, and the like, is almost as confounding as to think of him sleeping aft, eating fresh meat throughout the run, and going to the steward for a can of filtered water, instead of to the capstan for his eight bells caulker of fiery black rum. No doubt things are pleasanter as they are. ”

“ His excursions to sea, even out of sight of land, are every year more frequent. He learns to hear a music in the wind that’s piping merrily, and the threat of lightning in the horned moon ceases to scare him. This is as it should be. Yachting is surely but a sorry entertainment when warps hold your vessel against a stone or wooden pier, and no livelier recreation offers than bobbing for flounders in the mud at the bottom of the water alongside. Our English summers are not very long, and there is much to be seen, much to inspirit the mind, much to invigorate the body. ”

“ I have heard of stewards, men who have made a dozen voyages round the world—whose stomachs were as immovable in a gale of wind as the ship’s figurehead;—I have heard of such men, I say, in a heavy breathless swell, tumbling down among their dishes too sick to stand, rolling about among the crockery and echoing with their groans the spasmodic gurgling of the water as it sobbed in the scupper-holes or washed up full, green, and sickening over the glass of the scuttles or the cabin windows. ”