River Fleet

“ Grey, tumbling waters are their winter portion, decks continually awash, frozen gear, intolerable motion. Watch that short bluff little vessel 100 miles from any port and a gale rising, with her high bows staggering up from the hollow of the wave that hid her from sight, streaming from rail to rail, to plunge headlong into the next hollow, climb up the approaching mountain to encounter the smothering crest, shake herself and disappear again into the turbid water between the bigger seas. ”

“ The fleet was returning like a frightened herd in stampede, each boat plunging in the combers with the bellow of the tempest upon its heels. Would they make the lee of the Breakwater? The wind in devilish playfulness would here tear off a shred of canvas, there a yard, and there a mast or a tiller, till a rudderless craft, caught abeam by a mountain of greenish water, would seem surely to be swallowed up. ”

“ Arriving off the "Stormy Capes," the flotilla is separated, one division holding its way for the Pacific, the other hauling up for the Atlantic, each bound on its high and secret mission. They build, equip, and repair as they go; the fleet is imperishable, but individual life in it is ephemeral. They die, these tiny "men o' war," one after another, but the same watchful Providence that cared for them while living, now provides for their burial being dead. The inanimate shell, drawn to distant seas by under currents, descends like autumnal leaves from depth to depth by an insensible fall. ”

“ The placid bay, the luxuriant shores, the ocean showing across the low-lying ridge of white sand, the forts frowning from the steep headland, the fleet of majestic frigates mustered for the attack, and in the distance the flotilla of defenceless (p. 801) transports, safely out of range, their decks and rigging crowded with fifteen thousand men—all this presented a panorama of life and beauty which few eyes have ever beheld. ”

“ In no part of the journey was the presence of the officers more requisite to animate and encourage the crews, because the river itself, beside being obstructed by three impassable rapids, is usually so shallow, through its whole course of forty miles, as scarcely to admit of a flat-bottomed bateau floating with half its cargo, much less our boats, which drew, when loaded, from eighteen to twenty inches. ”

“ You can always tell a dockyard boat by the heavy way in which the “maties” row, giving their elbows a curious lift with each stroke. At intervals, also, ships’ launches and wherries go past, and lighters carrying cables or anchors, spars and sailcloth, or gangs of shipwrights from the yard on their way to Spithead to attend to pressing repairs to some Channel Fleet ship or frigate just come in and impatient to be off again.
PORTSMOUTH IN THE YEAR THAT THE VICTORY JOINED THE FLEET
From a Contemporary Print. ”

“ A handsome little man-o'-war of the cruiser type floated the tri-color flag of Chili above her quarter deck. And besides these a whole fleet—a score or more of schooners, sloops, and catboats, the trading and prospecting fleet of the region—bobbed about and tugged at their cables under the impulse of a smart wind from westward, while lighters and small boats were passing to and fro among the vessels at anchor. ”

“ The water is generally deep enough everywhere, too deep in most places for anchorage, and, the winds shifting hither and thither or dying away altogether, the ships, getting no direction from their helms, are carried back and forth or are caught in some eddy where two currents meet and whirled round and round to the dismay of the sailors, like a chip in a river whirlpool. ”

“ It is very sad, but this is war time, and the fleet must be manned.
All day long duty-boats keep going up and down. Now it is an admiral’s twelve-oared barge with the flag at the bows; now a captain’s gig, or a pinnace, pulling between ship and shore; now a midshipman’s boat scurrying off to answer the flagship’s signal. Ships’ long-boats with water-casks and pursers’ stores for various men-of-war in harbour, pass and repass, and beer hoys and yard craft of all kinds. ”

“ Her new sails marked my promotion to beefsteak, her brass rails and awnings my first independent excursion up and down the corridor outside my door, and, incidentally, my return to a collar and tie.
The river shipping appealed to me, to my imagination, clean washed by my illness and ready as a child’s for new impressions: liners gliding down to the bay and the open sea; shrewish, scolding tugs; dirty but picturesque tramps. ”

“ Now the great vessel, followed by the fleet, moves swiftly through the ample passage, while from overhead as well as from below cheers upon cheers rend the air and from the Transports, which keep pace with the fleet, showers of blooms in glowing beauty rain down upon the heads of the people crowding the upper decks, and now the flag ship has plunged onto the lake as though purposing to pass straight across to the further side, but no, it turns to the right, leading the fleet in a triumphal procession around the lake. ”

“ Some do not even fish, but sit with their legs dangling over the water, and watch the swift tugs, or the lagging sloops that pass, with now and then a larger sail, or a towering passenger steamboat. Far down the stream they can see the forests of masts, fringing either shore, and following the point of the island round and up into the great channel called the East River. ”

“ The unofficial welcome was everywhere. It began as soon as the ships entered Callao Bay. There are no headlands or hills surrounding the harbor, which is practically an open roadstead. The fleet had to anchor two miles out. The harbor was crowded with all sorts of little craft laden to the danger point. Every tug, every launch, all the sailboats that could be found, rowing barges, dories, two large ocean-going steamers, came out to say howdy and bearing cheering people by the thousand. Some of the little craft fired national salutes with toy cannon. ”

“ Of these perhaps four hundred of the slower and more ancient craft, the lame ducks of the flotillas, some of them of outlandish type and antiquated gear, manned by boys and men past service in the wars, still drag their trawls or lie to their nets to keep the markets supplied. Since eighty per cent of our spoils of the sea go abroad in normal times, the home supplies can be maintained by the reduced fleet. ”

“ In the evening of the second day, we saw two schooners standing down the bay, and sailing close on the wind, so as to pass between the fleet and the Eastern Shore. As it was dangerous for large ships to approach much nearer the Eastern Shore than where we lay, several of the tenders of the fleet, amounting in all to more than a dozen, were ordered, by signal, to intercept the strange sails, and bring them to the fleet. ”

“ The anchors of the fleet were immediately raised, and great exertions made to get it out of the harbor, which was difficult, as the [Pg 228] wind at the time was blowing directly in. The squadron got out at last, as night was coming on. The next morning the armada hove in sight, advancing from the westward up the Channel, in a vast crescent, which extended for seven miles from north to south, and seemed to sweep the whole sea. ”

“ In the great Bay, many ships lay anchored, head to wind, at straining cables. Laden ships with trim spars and rigging, red-rusty of hull, and lifting at every scend to the rough sea, the foul green underbody of long voyaging; tall clippers, clean and freshly painted without, but showing, in disorder of gear and rigging, the mark of the hastily equipped outward bound coasters, steam and sail, plunging and fretting at short anchor or riding to the swell in sheltered creeks; lumbermen, with high deck loads bleached and whitened by wind and salt-spume of a winter passage ”

“ As the lines of steamers dwindle the river widens; and when we come to the bend of a long reach, it opens into a metal-coloured surface of gleaming water trembling with the speeding of its own rushing, though it retains polish enough to serve as a mirror, and to hold under each vessel the dark, inverted shadow of a phantom ship. ”

“ Why not marry shallop to stream? Why not yield to the enticement of this current, fleet and clear, and gain a few beautiful miles before nightfall? All the world was before us where to choose our bivouac. We dismounted our birch from the truck, and laid its lightness upon the stream. Then we became stevedores, stowing cargo. Sheets of birch-bark served for dunnage. Cancut, in flamboyant shirt, ballasted the after-part of the craft. For the present, I, in flamboyant shirt, paddled in the bow, while Iglesias, similarly glowing, sat à la Turque midships among the traps. ”

“ We see the high, steel cable strung across the river, with the running block and gang ropes connecting it with the side-railed flat barge or ferry. These floats are often propelled across stream by the force of the current. Just as a ship makes headway by the side wind running off her sails obliquely, so does a boat cross a stream by the action of the tide, if care is taken to have the boat’s head turned partly against the current. ”

“ The enormous triangular sail stretches the length of the yard and its point is hauled down to the deck. When it is shifted, the rope is let go, leaving the sail flapping, the end of the yard is carried round the mast and the sail is hauled round in the opposite direction, with an amount of pulling, roaring, jabbering, and chorusing, more than would be necessary to change the-course of an American fleet of war. The flat, open forward deck is capable of accommodating six rowers on a side. ”

“ Ships have always required shelter from the stress of sea, where repairs could be made, where cargoes could be loaded and unloaded, where crews and passengers could be taken on board or put ashore. In ancient times a river’s mouth might have been sufficient, or a natural indentation in the coast line where a small protected body of water lay in the lee of a jutting headland. Sometimes a small bay, almost completely surrounded by land, and still deep enough for ships to ride at anchor, served as a harbour of refuge. ”

“ The motive power is a gaff-mainsail and jib, and a couple of sweeps for calms. They are painted a light blue, as nearly approaching the hue of the sea as may be, and every care is taken to make them noiseless.
The fleet leaves the “canash” (harbour) before136 daybreak, each skipper taking his own bearings, and making for the spot which he thinks will furnish the best results. As the gorgeous tropical dawn awakes, the boats’ peaks are drooped, luffs of sails are hauled up, and the fishermen get to business. The tackle used is of the simplest kind. ”

“ Nothing can surpass the beauty of these waters and their safety. Not a shoal exists within the Sound, the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Bay, Hood's Canal, or the Straits of Georgia, that would in any way interrupt their navigation by a seventy-four-gun ship. There is no country in the world that possesses waters equal to these. The shores of all the inlets and bays are remarkably bold, so much so that a ship's side would touch the shore before her keel would touch the ground. ”

“ I was thus lulled into an undue degree of security, and permitted the tide to drift the brig silently and imperceptibly towards the eastern bank of this immense river. While I was standing on the poop, endeavouring, if possible, to catch some object on the monotonous flat shore, by which the vessel’s progress might be indicated, a small Chinese boat glided slowly up under the quarter, as if to watch our motions. ”

“ The sea is high, the gale fresh, the sky dirty, and threatening a continuance of what our transatlantic descendants would term a pretty-considerable-tarnation-strong blast of wind. The top-gallant-yards are on deck, the masts are struck, the guns double-breeched, and the bulwarks creaking and grinding in most detestable regularity of dissonance as the vessel scuds and lurches through a cross and heavy sea. The main-deck is afloat: and, from the careless fitting of the half-ports at the dockyard, and neglect of caulking in the cants, my fore-cabin is in the same predicament. ”

“ Vessels of twenty-two feet draught, with careful pilotage and an efficiently marked channel, could probably reach as far as Klong Kumaonyie, but no further. From this point the river is shoal, full of obstructions, and navigable only for trading boats. ”

“ The tell-tale number on the side of the conning tower, U-96, was sufficient to inform the crews of the passing vessels that another of the dreaded boats was out of action.
[Pg 127] Once within the lane, as the path between the two lines of buoyed nets is called, they turned and steamed north. Vessels were passing and repassing; transport and hospital ships; immense freight carriers, and saucy little tugs drawing barge-like flat-boats; innumerable fast launches and large war vessels, going to and fro between the shores of England and France. ”

“ As the upper country wears away, and the heavy load of earth is carried down towards the mouth of the river, the head of the stream is deepening, and being constantly cut down towards a level with the bottom, which is filling up at its mouth. This will be best explained by the sounding-line, cast from a vessel entering the mouth of a river, The pilot is taken on board to carry the ship safely over the bar, or that bank of earth which has been carried down from the head of the streams and deposited at the river’s mouth. ”

“ Yet it is also remarkable that, among so many ships which have annually visited the river, none should have been found whose commanders were led by curiosity, or stimulated by the tiresome sameness of an everyday life during the dull season, to explore in open boats some of those large and tempting passages, the openings of which could be seen. Had not the war stimulated our exertions, or awakened our curiosity, we should, without doubt, have remained as ignorant as ever of the capabilities of the river, the extent of which was scarcely even surmised. ”