Collier (ship)

“ The ship being coaled takes the collier in tow, steaming at the rate of 4 to 8 knots; it has been found that a speed of five knots in moderately rough water will keep the cableway taut and maintain a sufficient distance between the crafts. The collier is fitted with an engine having double cylinders and double friction drums, which is placed just abaft the foremast. A steel rope 3⁄4 in. in diameter is led from one drum over a pulley at the mast head and thence to a pulley at the head of shear-poles on the vessel being coaled, and brought back to the other drum. ”

“ Captain Collier’s next appointment was, Sept. 1818, to the Mersey 26, in which ship he served the usual period of three years, on the Halifax station, and afterwards formed part of his Majesty’s escort from Calais. The Mersey was paid off at Portsmouth, Nov. 30, 1821.
Agents.– Messrs. Maude & Co. ”

“ But the modern collier—the kind of ship which is expressly built for the coal trade—is fitted with numbers of steam winches in keeping with the modern feverish haste and hurry, so that no sooner has she come alongside than she may instantly begin to unload. ”

“ All of the principal navies of the world have given the matter much study and experiment, but down to this day no practicable contrivance has been evolved which will go far toward eliminating the variable human element in coaling. Something can be done with mechanical carriers where a ship can berth alongside high bunkers, but nothing of the kind appears to have been devised that is not too bulky to carry about in either a warship or a collier. The construction of a warship makes it impracticable to have large openings into which coal might be hoisted in bulk from a collier. ”

“ None of them could understand how it was that so fine a ship could possibly have taken the time, especially as another ship, belonging to the same owners, and admittedly a much slower vessel, had been in port a fortnight, having left London one month after us. Captain Collier told the reporters a terrible tale of the severity of our passage, which did great credit to his imagination, [261] but left his veracity derelict. ”

“ We purposely pass over the horror, the incredulity, and the despair that followed one another in poor Bessie’s mind when the facts broke with full force upon her. The feelings of the bereaved wife must be sacred.
Meanwhile the partners set every engine at work to discover the truth. Detective officers came to and fro, examined and cross-examined with ceaseless activity, following up the scent like hounds. The facts by degrees unfolded themselves, and it became evident that Richardson must have been drowned that night of the fog on his way to the ship. ”

“ The silence of night lay heavy upon the breast of the placid deep, and seemed to be emphasised rather than broken by the faint sigh of the breeze through the maze of spars and rigging that towered aloft, the soft seething and plash of water along the bends, the light creak or cheep of some parral or sheave up in the velvet darkness, and the occasional clank of the tiller chains as the watchful helmsman, with his eye upon some star peering past the weather leach of the main-royal, found it necessary to give the ship a spoke of the wheel one way or the other. ”

“ I hurried on deck, highly gratified at the very handsome compliment paid me by the skipper, and found that the hands were aloft, casting loose the canvas. Presently, without a word having been spoken above a whisper, or a shout uttered, they came down again; the topsail halliards were manned, the yards mast-headed, the jib run up, the cable slipped, and we were under weigh; the fog all the time being as thick as a hedge, so thick indeed that it was impossible to see the jib-boom end from the quarter-deck. Old Mildmay, the master, was conning the ship ”

“ And if that threatened squall should burst its bonds and come shrieking and howling in fury across the surface of the sea, scourging it into a mad turmoil of foaming, leaping water and blinding spindrift, while the burnt-out crew of the schooner were making their passage across to the Mercury, it might be very bad for them; for even should they be fortunate enough to avoid capsizal, it might be exceedingly difficult, if not altogether impossible, for the ship, smitten and bowed down by the might of the tempest, to pause and pick them up. ”

“ The Flying Fish darted forward like a swallow in full flight; and the professor, leaving the baronet in charge of the engines and the steering-gear, summoned Mildmay and the colonel to follow him. The trio hastened to the after part of the deck, and, raising a trap-door which the professor indicated, withdrew therefrom a thin pliant wire hawser—made, like almost everything else in the ship, of aethereum—which, having secured one end of it to a ring-bolt in the after extremity of the deck, they coiled down in readiness for use as a tow-line. ”

“ The main deck was lively with the coming and going of the steerage passengers as they went to the galley to fetch their breakfast; and there must have been between twenty and thirty children chasing each other fore and aft, and dodging round their elders in their play, filling the rich, sweet, morning air with the music of their voices. There was a soft, seething sound over the side as the ship slid gently along, accompanied by a constant iridescent gleam and flash of the tiny bubbles that slipped along the bends and vanished at last in the smooth, oil-like wake with its tiny whirlpools ”

“ The air, still full of spindrift, was, despite our position only a few degrees north of the Line, chill enough to set one shuddering; the maindeck was all awash with the water that flew incessantly over the weather-bow and poured aft with the heaving of the ship, breaking into miniature cascades among the booms lashed in the waist, and over the lengths of cable stretched along the decks from the windlass to the chain-locker, swirling round the pumps and the foot of the mainmast, and gurgling and sobbing in the lee scuppers; the weather bulwarks were streaming with water ”

“ The news that the stranger in sight was flying a signal of distress soon spread among the passengers, and in a few minutes every telescope in the cuddy was upon the poop and being eagerly focused upon the approaching vessel, which had by this time revealed herself as a full-rigged ship of some 800 tons measurement, of wholesome, motherly build, but certainly not a whaler, as could be seen by the model of the boats which she carried, and by the absence of certain characteristics which proclaim the whaler, and are apparent almost from the moment when she heaves into full view. ”

“ All right,” he added, hailing the man aloft; “you can come down.”
Shortly afterward we made out the stranger’s upper spars from the deck; and from the rapidity with which we raised them it soon became apparent that, if she had really been hove-to when first seen, she had soon filled away, and was now standing in our direction. By five bells she was hull-up; and while the skipper and mate were standing together eyeing her from the break of the poop—the latter with the ship’s telescope at his eye - I saw the ensign of the stranger float out over her rail and go creeping up to her gaff-end. ”

“ Captain Collyer then stepped forward and said that though they might deserve hanging, as they had fought their ship bravely, and as no lives had been lost, he should overlook their fault, but he warned them that if they made a similar attempt they would be severely dealt with. The Frenchmen retired, looking considerably ashamed of themselves. The French captain then took off his hat, and making the most polite bow to Captain Collyer, thanked him for his humanity, observing that the truly brave were always humane. ”

“ Then, a minute later, when the ship had lost her way, followed the order: “Let go your anchor!” succeeded by a yell from the carpenter of “Stand clear of the cable!” a few clinking strokes of a hammer, the sudden plunging splash of the anchor into the placid waters of the lagoon, and the rattling roar of the cable through the hawse-pipe. Chips snubbed her with the twenty-five fathom shackle just inside the hawse-pipe, the depth of water alongside being a deep five fathoms, and then the men sprang into the rigging and laid out on the bowsprit to furl the topsails and fore topmast staysail. ”

“ At length, as we rose to the crest of one mountainous sea, which had completely hidden the French ship from us, up to her very royal-mast-heads, we saw her surging madly forward upon the breast of the one which followed it, the hissing foam-crest which pursued her rearing itself high and threateningly above her taffrail, while the ship herself, with her port gunwale deep buried in the water, was taking a desperate and uncontrollable sheer to starboard which we saw in a moment would hurl her crashing into the little “Vigilant” somewhere about the mainmast. ”

“ In another couple of minutes a man was stationed in the weather fore chains with the line coiled in his hand and the lead weight, its foot duly “armed” with tallow, sweeping in long swings close over the surface of the water, preparatory to being cast. Presently the weight shot forward and plunged into the sea a fathom or two ahead of the ship, the coils of thin line leapt from the leadsman’s hand, and, as the ship surged slowly ahead, the line slackened, showing that the lead had reached bottom, and the leadsman, bringing the sounding line up and down, proclaimed the depth—eighteen fathoms! ”

“ And strong!—just look at her copper—not a wrinkle in it; and yet I tell you, sir, that I have habitually driven this little ship so hard that she has made faster passages than any other ship in the trade. Why, we made the run from these same docks to Natal in fifty-five days, on one trip; and we have never taken longer than seventy days to do it. And a prettier sea-boat you never set eyes on. And weatherly—why, she’ll weather on craft twice her size. As to speed, I have never yet seen anything beat her. The fact is, sir, she is much too good to be a cargo-carrier ”

“ The men, who saw what was coming, and had been expecting the call, sprang at once to their stations, let go the halliards, and then helped the revolving yards down by manning the topsail-clewlines, by which means the three topsails were snugly close-reefed by the moment that the squall burst upon them. There was no time to do more or Captain Blyth would have taken the courses off the ship. As it was she had to bear them; and so heavy was the squall that during its height the vessel was compelled to run dead before it. ”

“ If we could but hold out long enough to attract the attention of those blind bats yonder, all might yet be well; but when at length our desperate race had carried us to within about two and a half miles of the ship, and an occasional glimpse of the whole of her hull could be caught when we were both at the same instant hove up on the ridge of a sea, there was no perceptible indication whatever that we had been seen by anybody aboard her. There was no truck, and no flag-halliard fitted to the mast of the gig, and we consequently had no means of hoisting a signal ”

“ Haul aft your lee-jib and fore-sheets, there, my lads; we must not present the appearance of lying in wait for her. Luff all you can without shaking,” to the man at the wheel; “I do not want the schooner to move fast through the water. We must let yonder ship pass near enough to us, if possible, to be able to read the name on her stern.”
“I do not think there is much doubt about her being the Indiaman, sir,” said I; “for if you will look out here, broad on our weather quarter, you will see what I take to be the lugger that has captured her.” ”

“ The boatswain of the Mercury—for such the newcomer proved to be—passed through our gangway, pulled off the knitted woollen cap which decorated his head, and at once addressed himself to the skipper.
“Mornin’, sir,” he remarked. “My name’s Polson—James Polson, and I’m bo’sun of the Mercury, which ship you see hove-to yonder,”—with a flourish of his hand in the direction of the vessel named.
“Yes?” said the skipper enquiringly, as the man paused, apparently waiting to be questioned after this introduction of himself. “I see you have a signal of distress flying. What’s wrong with you?” ”

“ With a great sigh of intense relief, echoed by each of his companions, Sir Reginald swiftly backed the Flying Fish astern, causing her at the same time, by a movement of the tiller, to swerve with her bow directly toward the body, now some five or six feet above the level of the deck. Then, quick as thought, the ship was sent ahead until her deck was immediately beneath the body, when, the valves of the air and water chambers being simultaneously thrown open, she rushed upward to the surface, overtaking the drowning woman and carrying her upward also. ”

“ When we first ran into this belt of calm our horizon was bare, neither land nor ship being in sight—indeed we had not sighted so much as one solitary sail since leaving the island; but at dawn on the sixth morning of the calm we sighted the mastheads of a small craft far away down in the southern board, which, upon being inspected from aloft, proved to be a schooner of, possibly, a hundred or one hundred and twenty tons measurement. ”

“ But another look at the barometer showed that the mercury was still falling, and now at a more rapid rate. Fully convinced, therefore, that something rather more serious than a mere thunder-squall was brewing, we now went to work with a will, and, having first furled the mizzen, hauled up the courses and stowed them, leaving the ship with nothing showing but her two topsails and the fore-topmast staysail, which—as our topsails were patent-reefing—left us practically prepared for almost anything that might happen. ”