Man overboard

“ The ship was running under easy sail when I heard a shout of 'Man overboard!' The lifebuoy was thrown, and, looking astern, I saw the man had caught it. But it was a raging sea—I saw and felt that to try and lower a boat to save the poor wretch must expose the men who manned it to the greatest danger. The crew read in my face the fearful struggle going on within me, and twenty, thirty, perhaps forty volunteers, headed by officers and midshipmen, crowded round me, beseeching me almost on their knees: 'Let us save our comrade, sir! ”

“ But what is this that happens just as the enemy has got round the Nore? There is a cry of "Man overboard!" The spinnaker boom has caught the careless skipper and pitched him clean into the plashing waters, where he floats about, not as yet certain, probably, what course his vessel will take. She at once brings her head up to wind and puts about; but meanwhile a small boat from the lightship has picked up the unhappy skipper, and is now pulling hard to strike the course of the yacht on her new tack. ”

“ On looking over the ship’s side, and seeing a large body just sinking below the surface, the sailor supposed it to be some one of the crew who had gone over, and instantly raised the cry of “A man overboard!” ”

“ At 8 p.m. the ship was thrown into instant confusion by the cry of “man overboard.” The ship was quickly rounded to, the two quarter boats lowered away and after 10 minutes of intense anxiety a hearty cheer announced that they had found him. The man, who was a second intermediate passenger, could not swim but was kept up by a life-buoy.
1st February.—Lat. 5° 45′ N., long. 21° 50′ W. Wind N.E. Distance 180 miles. Ship running 12 knots before a fresh gale with light sails in. At noon the ship was again thrown into a state of alarm by the cry of “man overboard.” ”

“ Briefly, then, at about ten minutes before the dining hour, whilst all the passengers, myself included, were below, dressing, a faint cry arose from somewhere aft on the upper deck—a cry which was swiftly taken up by other voices, so that presently a deck-steward echoed it immediately outside my own stateroom:
"Man overboard! Man overboard!" ”

“ A man overboard—the funeral of a stoker on board the Hector, which was impressive, the court-martial of an offender on the Defence, and a sudden dense fog that came on suddenly when the ships were manœuvring and crossing one another. ”

“ I hadn't any spare time myself, for I was becketing the rest of the trysail to the mast. We were on the starboard tack, and the throat-halliard came down to port as usual, and I suppose there were at least three men at it, hoisting away, while I was at the beckets.
Now I am going to tell you something. You have known me, man and boy, several voyages; and you are older than I am; and you have always been a good friend to me. Now, do you think I am the sort of man to think I hear things where there isn't anything to hear, or to think I see things when there is nothing to see? No, you don't. ”

“ Women sank on their knees, and hugged their children, and a sudden peace and stillness possessed every soul on board. Tearing a life-preserver from the man nearest him and throwing it overboard, he backed the coward ahead of him through the swaying mob, ordering the people to stand clear, and forcing the whole mass to the starboard side. ”

“ The whole ship's company grew silent, until one hardly ever heard a voice, except giving an order and the answer. The men didn't sit over their meals when their watch was below, but either turned in at once or sat about on the forecastle smoking their pipes without saying a word. We were all thinking of the same thing. We all felt as if there were a hand on board, sometimes below, sometimes about decks, sometimes aloft, sometimes on the boom end; taking his full share of what the others got, but doing no work for it. ”

“ To fall overboard generally meant death, because rescue by any other ship was forbidden, and no derelict was allowed to take such an unfortunate on board. If the wretched man could not regain his own ship he submitted quietly to the inevitable end. ”

“ Still, however, I am so strong an advocate for the principle of tacking, instead of merely lying-to, when a man is overboard, that, even under the circumstances above described, as soon as the boat is lowered down and sent off, and the extra sail gathered in, I would fill, stand on till the ship had gained head-way enough to render the evolution certain, and then go about, so as to bring her head towards the boat. ”

“ The man who continues neutral, though only a passenger, when hands are wanted to preserve the vessel from sinking, deserves to be thrown overboard, to be swallowed up by the waves and to perish the first. ”

“ They go mad with the heat, and they slip up on deck and are gone before anybody can stop them, often without being seen or heard. Now and then a passenger will do it, but he [Pg 8] generally has what he thinks a pretty good reason. I have seen a man empty his revolver into a crowd of emigrants forward, and then go over like a rocket. Of course, any officer who respects himself will do what he can to pick a man up, if the weather is not so heavy that he would have to risk his ship ”

“ That he may be fully and perfectly accomplished vocationally he must know what it is to have been cast away, to have barely come off with his life out of a ship on fire, to have been overboard on many occasions in heavy seas, to have chewed pieces of lead in open boats to assuage his thirst—to have encountered, in short, most of the stock horrors of the oceanic calling. ”

“ Those persons, whose exclusive duty is to discover the man who is overboard, should be directed to look out, some in the ship's wake, some on either side of it, and to be particularly careful to mark the spot near which the ship must have been when he fell, in order that when she comes about, and drifts near the place, they may know where to direct their attention, and also to take care that the ship does not forge directly upon the object they are seeking for. ”

“ The men didn't want to hurt anybody; but they wanted to get away out of that ship, if they had to swim for it; to get away from that whistling, [Pg 64] from that dead shipmate who had come back, and who filled the ship with his unseen self. I know that if the old man and I hadn't kept a sharp lookout the men would have put a boat over quietly on one of those calm nights, and pulled away, leaving the captain and me and the mad cook to work the schooner into harbour. We should have done it somehow, of course, for we hadn't far to run if we could get a breeze ”

“ There are more men lost in that way than passengers on ocean steamers ever learn of. I have stood looking over the rail on a dark night, when there was a step beside me, and something flew past my head like a big black bat—and then there was a splash! ”

“ But by and by, things being so quiet, I began to wonder why nobody moved on deck; just that sort of restless wanting to know where every man is that one sometimes feels in a gale of wind on a dark night. So when I had finished my pipe I began to move about. I went aft, and there was a man leaning over the wheel, with his legs apart and both hands hanging down in the light [Pg 28] from the binnacle, and his sou'wester over his eyes. Then I went forward, and there was a man at the lookout, with his back against the foremast, getting what shelter he could from the staysail. ”

“ The still surface of the waters was only broken by the movement of the great ship, from whose quarter the long, slanting undulations struck out like the feathers from an arrow shaft, and in whose wake the froth and air bubbles churned up by the propeller trailed in a narrowing line to the darkness of the horizon. ”

“ Sailors are never pushed for a bedstead: anything and everything serves. The only part of the job that will be rather difficult is the drowning him. I don't know anything that will make a louder splash and sink quickly too, than a box of nails. The121 trouble is to heave it overboard without the man at the wheel seeing me do it; and I must contrive to let him think that the boatswain is aft, before I raise the splash, because if this matter is not ship-shape and carried out cleverly, the man, whoever he may be that takes the wheel, will be set thinking and then get on to talking. ”

“ On that passage home I lost overboard my boatswain, and to the best of my recollection he was the only man that parted company with me in that manner during my career at sea. I have known one or two instances of people disappearing on board ship, when the inference was they had gone overboard, but he was the only case of a man falling overboard, and not being picked up218 It happened this way. We were half way across the Bay and the ship was rolling, with the promise of bad weather coming, when I gave the orders to get the anchors inboard, for they had been left at the bows on leaving Madeira. ”

“ But it is against orders in these seas to go overboard, unless with a sail underfoot; so I sha'n't run the risk of being tatooed by the boatswain's mate, like some one I could tell of."
"Coward," muttered the little wasp, "you are afraid, sir;" and the other boys abetting the mischief-maker, the lad was goaded to leave his hold of the cable, and strike out for the buoy. He reached it, and then turned, and pulled towards the ship again, when he caught my eye.
"Who is that overboard? How dare you, sir, disobey the standing order of the ship? Come in, boy; come in." ”

“ Still, we must pause to admire the excellence of the model of this work of God, as much the highest of all this lower creation, as a ship is superior to every other work of human art. Nor can any words sufficiently deplore that misfortune by which, on its first being launched upon the ocean of life, this noble vessel was dashed [Pg 134] on the rocks of presumption, and thus, in an unlucky moment, condemned and cast away utterly unfit for service.
How poor a pilot is man, even with his highest knowledge and ability, and how unfit to take his soul into his own keeping. ”

“ And, lastly, to have a sufficient number of the sharpest-sighted men in the ship stationed aloft in such a manner as to give them the best chance, not only of discovering the person who is overboard, but of pointing him out to the people in the boat, who may not otherwise know in what direction to pull. ”

“ He couldn't trim the sheet to save himself, he nearly capsized several times in squalls, and, once again, by blunderingly jibing over; he didn't know what a centre-board was for, nor did he know that in running a boat before the wind one must sit in the middle instead of on the side; and finally, when we came back to the wharf, he ran the skiff in full tilt, shattering her nose and carrying away the mast-step. And yet he was a really truly sailor fresh from the vasty deep.
Which points my moral. A man can sail in the forecastles of big ships all his life and never know what real sailing is. ”

“ And they were the same for each day: the same sand-bars, the same hulk of unwieldy steamer wedged into the same curves, like a corpulent dame in a jammed throng. So, at each moment, the good man had to stop, to back up, to go forward at half speed, sending—now to port, now to starboard—the five sailors equipped with long bamboo poles to give force to the turn the rudder had suggested. He was like a veteran who, after leading men through hazardous campaigns, had in his age become the tutor of a capricious, disobedient, and lazy boy. ”

“ Somebody started the chorus of 'Tipperary' to cheer the flagging spirits of his shipmates, but the gallant effort met with little response. Numbers of men, trying to nerve themselves for the ordeal of leaping overboard and of saving themselves by swimming, shrank back at the sight of the raging sea. ”

“ She kept her lips closed tight. She looked at no one, she shivered constantly. The howling blast swept its brine up the wharf—“Washed overboard at sea.” The cruel breakers lifted and struck with thunder-crash—“Washed overboard at sea.” Bitter cold, the salt surf leaped and writhed and reached out with demoniac fury—“Washed overboard at sea.” Giant waves opened and shut with a grinding wrath their hungry jaws. Relentless, appalling, the mighty waters filled earth and sky with the terror of their strength.
74And Tom, poor Tom, had been washed overboard at sea! ”

“ Some, rather than endure the horrible suspense, trusted themselves to the mercy of the waves, and by plunging overboard, ended their lives and sufferings in a watery grave. Many, in their agony, fell on their knees, imploring God for that help which they despaired of receiving from mortal agency. ”

“ For, first, it proves that whosoever is not going to turn ‘pirate,’ our calm and charitable friend Captain Parker is; ‘for my part, by the permission of God, I will either make a voyage or bury myself in the sea.’ Now, what making a voyage meant there is no doubt; and the sum total of the letter is, that a man intending to turn rover himself accuses, under the influence of violent passion, his comrades of doing the like. We may believe him about himself: about others, we shall wait for testimony a little less interested. ”

“ Then, sir, I felt very certain you would not let me drown without an attempt to pick me up, and that there were plenty of fine fellows on board who would be anxious to man a boat to come to my assistance, if you thought a boat could swim. Then, thinks I to myself, a man can die but once, and if it’s my turn to-day, why, there’s no help for it. ”