Life Carrier

“ And so these famous old ships sailed upon their long voyages year after year. Each was a little community complete in itself; the pleasure of the voyage depending largely upon the character of the captain, and the ability and willingness of the passengers to make themselves agreeable to each other; for, like larger communities, they had the same old problems to deal with; births, marriages, deaths, love, devotion, friendship, intrigue, meanness, gossip, and scandal; indeed, all the phases of human nature, which make and have always made the happiness or the misery of life. ”

“ Sailors are we and look to Thee, O Captain of Life's crew, for guidance kind, though strong the wind, for guidance safe and true. Then without fear; with right good cheer, although the skies be dark, harbour in sight, towards the light, we'll steer Life's sea-tossed bark. ”

“ If the ship is to be kept afloat, and our lives saved, it will be by all working together with a will; you soldiers, by labouring at the pumps, and the sailors by taking care of the ship. If all do their duty there’s he fear, boys. I only wish people could learn the same in the everyday concerns of life—the world would get on much more happily than it does.”
While the sea continued rolling and the ship tumbling about, there were no hopes of getting up jury-masts. ”

“ But we will hope that the principal cause, to which we may ascribe the good conduct of our sailors in the trying hour, when there seems to be a span only between life and death, is the religious feeling which they bring with them to their ship from their homes, whether from the cabin on the sea-shore, or the cottage on the hill-side. ”

“ I had volunteered to serve as the captain’s aide-de-camp, to carry messages for him to any part of the ship, or to assist the surgeons in the cockpit.
“You would do good service on deck, and I respect your feeling in offering to be there,” he answered; “but you are a non-combatant. You have nothing to gain by exposing your life. ”

“ On the score of bodily healthfulness, life as lived in the Grand Fleet has more favouring conditions, and fewer unfavouring ones, than that possible at any other point at which a considerable fleet has ever had its base. ”

“ The object of such ships as these—ships which cannot be mistaken for any others—is to woo back to life, until their suffering humanity can be tenderly placed in the care of loving hands and hearts at home. Here we are waiting for them, and here we have a right to expect them, that, nursed back to health in the hospitals of our land, they may, by and by, greet wife, and mother, and child, and sweetheart in their own homes once more. ”

“ How important, men there and elsewhere now know. How affected by, and affecting the main features of the enterprise, we at the Farm knew full well after their return, as the old Captain, in the fullness of his overflowing, saddened heart, detailed point after point of interest. God bless the old veteran, who could and did chase a thousand in life, and defied more than ten thousand by the moral sublimity of his death! ”

“ We, like those sailors, sorrowful, and helpless, and thirsty, are longing to get to port, that we may be satisfied and lose our misery; and there, all the while, is the life-giving water close to us, only waiting for us to let down the bucket of our faith, and drink, and find that He satisfies every need. ”

“ Sailors, whom thirst and famine have made their prey during a long voyage, are half cured by the steersman’s cry of “Land!” and he would certainly greatly err who ascribed the whole result to a prospect of fresh food. The sight of a dear one, whom the sufferer has long desired to see, sustains the life that was about to go, and imparts strength and health. ”

“ In the course of my journey through life I have been in many strange places, and have met many strange people. I have seen many strange sights—some grave, some gay. For many years I was on passenger-carrying ships, and have carried many travellers, amongst whom some strong and enduring attachments have been made. ”

“ Heaven only knows, and Heaven’s will be done. I have vowed, and my vow is registered, that I will devote my life to the release of my unfortunate father—but does that prevent my loving Amine?—No, no; the sailor on the Indian seas must pass months and months on shore before he can return to his duty. ”

“ An oversight that may take thirty seconds to commit—and a hundred deaths, a wrecked ship, and a shattered reputation reward thirty years of constant and unblemished devotion to duty. To face a life and responsibilities like these calls for more than great mental and physical skill, though nowhere will you find these in a higher degree or more widely diffused than in the Fleet. ”

“ At last the life line is adjusted and secured between the two ships, the life buoy comes speeding over the water to the doomed vessel, and as it rushed back toward the waiting Fearless, with its load of women and children, a great cheer goes up. ”

“ We need [xxi] not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather challenge for it the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would for the good ship to which he entrusts his own life, and the lives of those who are most dear to him. ”

“ No sooner, however, has the young sailor begun his new life in earnest, than all this fine drapery falls off, and he learns that it is but work and hardship, after all. This is the true light in which a sailor’s life is to be viewed ”

“ In those times of frail sailing ships and uncharted oceans, when so many voyages were ventures into the unknown, sailors were the most religious workers on land or sea. Their life in the immensity of sky and water kept them close to God, and they were unafraid because they had faith in divine protection. ”

“ After all, you know, you are by no means well, as yet; your strength is no doubt equal to a leisurely walk of two or three miles about the neighbourhood; but do you really think that you are strong enough to return at once to the hardship and exposure of a sailor’s life? ”

“ Though we had fifty-three carriers in excess of loads, sickness, wounds, and death would naturally, from the nature of the country and the present physical condition of the rear column, decrease the number greatly, and the time would arrive no doubt when the carriers would{15} only be equal to the loads, and the head men would have to relieve the sick porters. But meantime a very fair chance of life was offered to the sick. For something like sixty days they would be carried in canoes, and fed on plantain flour and garden herbs. ”

“ It is surely permitted us to hope, that amidst the retirement and dreariness of these frozen regions, these hardy sailors found opportunities for serious reflection and prayer to the God of heaven, and that their minds, with eternity so near to them, were sufficiently acquainted with the one way of salvation to yield themselves to Him who is able to preserve his servants unto life eternal. ”

“ A sailor before the mast, as well as the inmates of the cabin, has many hours on every voyage, which may be and should be, devoted to reading and study. When a resident of the forecastle, I have by my example, and by urgent appeals to the pride, the ambition, and good sense of my shipmates, induced them to cultivate a taste for reading, and awakened in their minds a thirst for information. ”

“ Will throw out the Life-Line, his peril to share?
⁠Refrain
⁠Throw out the Life-Line! Throw out the Life-Line!
⁠Someone is drifting away;
⁠Throw out the Life-Line! Throw out the Life-Line!
⁠Someone is sinking today.
Throw out the Life-Line with hand quick and strong:
Why do you tarry, why linger so long?
See! he is sinking; O hasten today
And out with the Life-Boat! away, then, away!
Refrain
Throw out the Life-Line to danger-fraught men,
Sinking in anguish where you've never been ”

“ And whose was the hand that bid them burn.
Of the rough hard life the sailor leads,
The pay he gets and the sharks ashore,
And what are the laws our shipping needs,
And the way things went in days of yore.
Of the sailing ship as she yet survives,
Of rigs we never shall see again,
Of inventions that save our seamen's lives
And murder the breed of sailor men.
We talk of these and of many a bout
When a crew came aft for a nasty row—
When loud comes a cry from the fore look-out ”

“ Every seafaring man recognises that it may at any moment be a matter of life and death to him and all on board a ship that some one of the crew should have had, or should not have had, this training, and so every man on board is ever ready to help and aid in the training. ”

“ As a well-known writer has already pointed out, life with a band of native carriers might for a few days be a diverting experience if the climate were good and if there was no immediate necessity for hurry. ”

“ Every one that has noticed the sturdy arms and slender legs of most sailors, has had the practical proof, that a man may work all his life at pulling the seine and drag-net, hauling the ropes of a vessel, and tugging at the oar, without being thereby, in the slightest degree, fitted for labors of a different character. ”

“ If we further inquire whether the owners of the ship had done their duty in providing their passengers with all available means of safety, we find that she had an ample and competent crew, had eight boats, six of them being life-boats, and that life-belts more than sufficient for every one on board were provided, and were to a large extent used, since all, or nearly all, the bodies that were picked up had life-belts on them. ”

“ Bear in mind the fact that He who holds the ocean in the hollow of His hand is also the Guide, the Helper, and the defender of ‘those who go down into the sea in ships;’ and make it an unfailing practice to seek His help and protection every day of your life. ”

“ You may ask me at once whether I believe a carrier will be a better carrier for understanding the laws of motion, and whether our clothing and our dwellings will one day be superior to what they are now, because we shall then have learned to understand their functions better. ”

“ Each time that the men on board the steamer and life-boat look at the vessel, count the crew still in the rigging, and find that not any are missing, they think it indeed a wondrous mercy that all should still be safe, and get each moment more impressed with feelings of deep sympathy for the poor fellows, and with the greater eagerness to dare all to save them. ”

“ The Captain was made a prisoner, and confined during the greater part of the voyage to his cabin by his brutal sons, while many of her passengers died of small-pox and want of food.
How kind, then, was the Providence that watched over our poor emigrants; although, like the rest of the world, they were tempted to murmur at the provoking delay, nor could discover the beam in the dark cloud, until the danger was past, and they had leisure to reflect upon the great perils they had escaped, and the mercies they had received from the Almighty Disposer of all human destinies. ”

“ That we, whose names are undermentioned, since the misfortune of losing the cutter, have consider'd the ill conveniences and difficulties to be attended, where so great a number of people are to be carried off, therefore we have requested and desired the officers and company remaining of the same vessel to put us on shore, with such necessaries of life as can be conveniently spared out of the vessel. ”

“ In other words, sailors, being in a situation extremely unfavorable to spiritual life, ought not merely to yield to the lowering influence of the forecastle, but add to it one more benumbing circumstance. ”

“ The safety of life and property at sea depends upon the competency of the crew, and if we are to have efficient men, and an adequate merchant marine, and men of intelligence and skill, we must offer some inducements to secure such men and not the riff raff of the world. ”

“ The first thing that happens on a voyage nowadays is a life-boat drill. A typewritten list is posted prominently, giving each passenger’s life-boat assignment. At the designated hour, shortly after sailing, the passengers all put on life preservers and report at the life-boat station to which they have been directed. A ship’s company just now is overwhelmingly masculine, and when all passengers are assembled the women find that there are about two of them to each life-boat, and [223] that their boats are generally filled with responsible men and commanded by an officer. ”

“ The reform in the Sailor’s condition began many years before we took the lot of the soldier to heart. There can hardly be any one now living who could speak from observation of the penalties of a long voyage in the shape of vile smells in the ship, scurvy among the men, and mortality from ship-fever. ”

“ The transporting-carriage continues to be a most important part of the equipment of life-boats, generally of the self-righting type, and is indispensable where it is necessary to launch the boats at any point not in the immediate vicinity of the boat-house. ”

“ The hardships of a life at sea thirty-five years ago are told in true sailor fashion, and the author’s varied experiences have been turned to good account for the production of a narrative which includes the life of a middy in the Merchant Service, active service in the Royal Indian Marine and the suppression of dacoity. ”

“ We find some very interesting persons among the emigrants, with whom we converse freely; we find them engaged to serve their God with diligence and love.
First day. A most charming morning. At eleven o'clock we sat down in our little meeting. We have felt a very painful exercise since being on board this ship. Our souls have been lifted up to God alone, that He would order our service for Him among the inmates of the ship, and the time, not daring to move (whatever we may suffer with the burden upon our spirits) until the command is given: for this we wait in watchfulness and prayer. ”