Atlantic seaboard

“ It is perhaps not generally known that adventurous persons occasionally cross the Atlantic from the American coast to England in small boats. The undertaking is dangerous, but is accomplished. Twenty-four years ago, when on board a Cunard steamer, our vessel passed an open sailing-boat containing two men on a voyage from America to Europe. ”

“ It is, perhaps, only in a small boat that one appreciates the magnitude of an Atlantic wave, even when the ocean seems comparatively still. Sometimes on a steamer's deck, when there is heavy wind and the sea is driven before it, you may watch a huge roller sweeping the great vessel as a pond wave will sweep a match; but at any time from a boat, which is, as it were, right down upon the water, you cannot fail to be impressed by the onward flow of those mighty translucent billows, which rush forward in their course and thunder at last upon the granite rocks of the western face of Europe. ”

“ Perhaps the change which has been brought about in our feeling with regard to the ocean is shown more in the yachting of modern times than in anything else. The idea of making a trip across the Atlantic is no longer considered an almost foolhardy undertaking, but even our yachts have made it a field for their races, and a match across the Atlantic has become not an unusual thing. ”

“ With much hearty good-will our crew jettisoned fish enough into our own vessel to float the craft. Fearing that so late in the year we might fail to tow her safely so far, and remembering the outcome of our losing the launch, we opened the stores on the island, and finding both block and sails, neatly labelled and stowed away, we soon had our prize not only refitted for sea, but also stocked with food, water, chart, and compass and all essentials for a voyage across the Atlantic, if she were to break loose and we to lose her. ”

“ Such cruising might suit a man who is easily sea-sick, and who is never so comfortable as when his tow-rope is aboard a tug. But the yachtsman who has the instincts of a seaman will choose the wide waters of the English Channel, pushing away to the westward until the Atlantic swell is under his forefoot and his white sails mirrored in water as blue as the heavens. ”

“ Their navigations, steering by the land on a short passage of a tide or two, have not the compelling emphasis of long voyaging on distant seas. Chroniclers of our deeds and fates have set out the drawn agony of the raft and the open boat in mid-Atlantic; they are less insistent on the tragedies (as bitter and prolonged) of inshore waters. Perhaps they are influenced by a common misconception that succour is ever ready at hand in the narrow sea. There are the lifeboats on the coast, patrols on keen look-out in the channels, vessels are ever passing up and down the fairways ”

“ Most of the boats are of wood, according to the official United States Government record of inspection. The records show that a considerable proportion of the entire number of so-called “life-boats” carried by Atlantic Ocean liners are not actually life-boats at all, but simply open boats, without air tanks or other special equipment or construction. ”

“ The sun comes out once more, hotter than ever, dries up the decks and the sailors' clothes; the hatches are taken off; the sail got up and spread on the quarter-deck; spun-yarn winch set a whirling again; rigging coiled up; captain goes below; and every sign of an interruption disappears.
These scenes, with occasional dead calms, lasting for hours, and sometimes for days, are fair specimens of the Atlantic tropics. The nights were fine; and as we had all hands all day, the watch were allowed to sleep on deck at night, except the man at the wheel, and one lookout on the forecastle. ”

“ Few steamers of less than five or six hundred tons make voyages across the Atlantic, for instance. Time was, and not so long ago, when a five-hundred-ton clipper sailed halfway round the world, but steam and steel have made deep-sea cargo ships much larger than they were, and the smaller fry are kept in the coasting trades or busy themselves in the Mediterranean or other more or less landlocked waters. These “coasters” seem to be as diverse in design as naval architects are capable of producing. ”

“ All day and all night boats are coming in and going out: The English steamers with their peculiar, dull, penetrating whistle that one hears at a great distance—steam tugs that take passengers and luggage out to the Atlantic liners, lying just outside the digue—yachts, pilot boats, easily distinguished by a broad white line around their hulls, and a number very conspicuously printed in large black letters on their white sails, "baliseurs," smart-looking little craft that take buoys out to the various points where they must be laid. ”

“ We will not dwell on the pleasures or annoyances of the cruise across the Atlantic, beyond stating the fact that our bluff-bowed worse-halfs, the sailing ships, nigh broke our hearts, as well as our hawsers, in dragging their breakwater frames along in the calms; and that we of the screws found our steam vessels all we could wish, somewhat o'er lively, mayhap,—a frisky tendency to break every breakable article on board. ”

“ The navigation of the Atlantic by means of the immense sea-going steamers of the present day, with all its superiority in most respects, is attended with one very serious disadvantage, at least for all romantic people, and those who particularly enjoy what is grand and sublime. To passengers on board an Atlantic steamer, a storm at sea—that spectacle which has, in former times, been so often described as the most grand and sublime of all the exhibitions which the course of nature presents to man—is divested almost entirely of that imposing magnificence for which it was formerly so renowned. ”

“ A voyage across the Atlantic must ever be attended with greater peril than almost any other ocean service of similar length and duration; arising, as this does, from the boisterous character and uncertainty of the weather, from the icebergs which float in huge masses during spring along the northern line of passage, from the dense fogs frequently prevailing, and from the many vessels of every kind to be met with, either as employed in the Newfoundland fisheries, or in the vast and daily increasing intercourse between Europe and America. ”

“ While the prevalence of certain winds, and the form of the coast of South-America, are favorable to a direct trade with the continent of North-America, they are such as to compel the commerce with Europe to pass along our shores, and thus constitute our Atlantic seaports so many stopping places at which the ships of the old world may touch in their voyages to and fro. ”

“ In case the steamer sinks at sea, there would be a thousand persons who could not possibly find places in the boats! There is not a ship carrying emigrants that has boat room enough for half her passengers on a westward trip, and I doubt if any of them could even carry away a fourth of their complement. When your ship goes down at sea you may consider yourself fortunate if you do not go down with her.
It is a burning shame that nearly all the steam lines crossing the Atlantic, are in the hands of other nationalities than ours. ”

“ In the ’thirties steam navigation went ahead by leaps and bounds, and before the ’forties came, a steam-driven vessel—the Great Western—had crossed the Atlantic in 15 days, which was well under the fastest time for sailing ships of her day, and only 2 days over the fastest crossing ever made by a sailing ship. The Red Jacket, a clipper, crossed in 1854 from Sandy Hook to Rock Light in 13 days, 1 hour. ”

“ In spite of our exertions the skiff was filled with water when we trod the deck of the schooner. Mr. Campbell relieved himself of his superfluous garments, and we went busily to work rigging purchases, with which to hoist in the boat we had received in exchange for our own. We then proceeded on our way.
Any person who has sailed on the Atlantic must have noticed the luminous appearance of the water of the ocean, especially at night and in tempestuous weather. ”

“ No transoceanic navigational undertaking has been conducted with more ability, no business dealings have been crowned with greater success. In twenty-six years Cunard ships have made 2,000 Atlantic crossings without so much as a voyage canceled, a delay recorded, a man, a craft, or even a letter lost. ”

“ It is the most tremendously lonesome thing you can think of. Not a sail or a boat do you see unless it be some motor yacht streaking it for harbor. We saw just two of them. Now and then little local trading boats with motors sneak quickly from one inlet to another like a mouse from [Pg 110C] hole to hole, and sometimes a fisherman launches his skiff from the beach, but for the most part you are alone, entirely alone. To the east, the big Atlantic lies with its constant heaving swell ”

“ Under the best possible conditions a boat run of 150 miles in the North Atlantic and in Winter weather would have been a feat of no mean merit, but in the circumstances it required a man of uncommon nerve and skill to make such a proposal. With an oar for a mast and the boat cover cut down for a sail, they started on their dangerous journey, with the boat compass and the stars for their guide. ”

“ To be sure there is the hope to be indulged that we may fall in with a passing vessel, but as the part of the Atlantic into which we have been driven is intermediate between the tracks of the French and English Transatlantic steamers either from the Antilles or the Brazils, we cannot reckon at all upon such a contingency happening in our favour ”

“ The seaboard was lined with dusky clouds; the ocean heaved in gentle undulations; and a light breeze murmured by, with a low soft music in its tone, like the whisper of a young girl to her lover. As the twilight deepened, the shadowy outlines of the distant land became more and more indistinct, until at length they were merged in the obscurity of the whole western firmament. No sound was heard over the vast expanse as we resumed our course, and silently stretched up towards the island.
It was nearly midnight when we reached the mouth of the harbor. All within was still. ”

“ The huge bulk of the Atlantic was more perceptible by contrast with the steamer—none of the smallest—that was now alongside; for though the latter was large enough to accommodate about four hundred people on deck, yet its funnel scarcely reached as high as the bulwarks of the Atlantic. The diameter of the paddle-wheels is 36 feet; and the floats, many of which, split and broken, were lying about in the water, are nearly 15 feet long. ”

“ The day, as has been said, was calm, but the Atlantic is never an absolutely passive object. Every now and then a slow sleepy swell would come and lift the boat upon its shoulders, up one long green watery slope and down another, setting the heap of stones rolling and grinding one against the{v.1-8} other. Whenever this happened the little figure upon the ballast would get temporarily dislodged from its perch, and sent rolling, now to one side, now to the other, according as the boat moved, or the loose freight shifted its position. ”

“ She is too light foreward and we have no sail aft to help her round. Everything is against her at present as it happens. There is that upper deck and the foreward boat, all on the starboard side. What with the big funnel and bridge, the life-boat on the engine-room skylights, the awning of wood instead of canvas and too little cargo, she’s all top and no bottom.” The ship now began to lie down almost steadily on her beam ends, the big seas dashing over her as if she were a half tide rock, and pouring down into the engine-room and stoke-hole. ”

“ Hardly can one distinguish between a starboard and a port broom. Is the life of a yacht to depend on such negligent devices? The skipper is worried. And the spectacle of a ship aground in mid-sea does not tranquilize. Sometimes the hail wipes out for a few seconds the whole prospect. The eyes of everybody are strained with looking for distant brooms.
Then we are free of the archipelago, and also the sky clears. The sun, turning orange, is behind us, and the wind in our teeth. Ahead is a schooner, beating. And she is the schooner of the morning. Our engine now has the better of her. ”

“ For the coast trade is so trifling, and the ocean trade from round the Horn so large, that the smaller ships are swallowed up, and can do nothing to confuse the majestic order of these merchant princes. In an age when the ship-of-the-line is already a thing of the past, and we can never again hope to go coasting in a cock-boat between the “wooden walls” of a squadron at anchor, there is perhaps no place on earth where the power and beauty of sea architecture can be so perfectly enjoyed as in this bay. ”

“ Pulling with the sea is very easy work, if the boat be long enough to keep from broaching to,—that is, swinging sideways and rolling over, a performance which dories are apt to indulge in. There are on the shoal several reefs, whose black ridges are just awash at high tide ”

“ Work on an ocean steamship never ends, for no sooner does she reach her moorings in New York, Liverpool or Hamburg than preparations begin for the next voyage. Her decks are holystoned, sprinkled with sand and made beautifully clean; the outside of her hull, from deck to water line, is repainted and, if it be the end of a round trip or voyage, all the exterior paint work receives a new coat, while her sanitary and plumbing arrangements, her smokestacks, woodwork, spars and rigging are all carefully examined and overhauled. ”