Ordinary seaman

“ In taking in and making sail, and in all things connected with the working of the vessel, there is no duty which may not be required of an able seaman; yet there are certain things requiring more skill and strength, to which he is always put, and others which are as invariably assigned to ordinary seamen and boys. [425] In reefing, [Pg 529] the able seamen go out to the yard-arms, and the light hands stand in toward the slings; while in furling, the bunt and quarters belong to the able seamen, and the yard-arms to the boys. ”

“ Then he must secure all the gear to the sail properly, sheets, clew-lines, and bunt-lines, loose the sail, sing out "Sheet home the royal," "light up" the gear, and, when the [Pg 291] sail is set, "stop" it loosely with one turn of roping-twine, so that it will not chafe the sail by being stretched tightly over it, and come down. If he can do all that smartly and well, in spite of the ship's uneasy motion, he is superior to two-thirds of the so-called able seamen of to-day.
In the absence of a boy, the ordinary seaman is also the lackey of the watch in an English ship. ”

“ Cabin-boy at twelve, ship’s boy at fourteen, ordinary seamen at sixteen, able seaman at seventeen, and cock of the fo’c’sle, infinite ambition and infinite loneliness, receiving neither help nor sympathy, I did it all for myself—navigation, mathematics, science, literature, and what not. ”

“ Of all sensations, the first glimpse of the land towards which a ship has been steering for weeks and weeks, with seldom even so much as a passing sail to relieve the monotony of the ocean, is the most thrilling. The oldest seaman will desert his bunk or hammock to make for the forecastle and have a look at the dim cloud. The pale-faced steward, seldom seen on deck, sneaks from his berth in the steerage redolent of lukewarm soup and resonant with the ceaseless clattering of crockery, to peer over the bulwarks at the far-off coast. ”

“ Though there may be shades among them, yet the grand distinction between men of the sea and men of the land endures,—it is impossible to confound them together. A seaman is ever so easily amused, so reckless of consequences, so cheerful amid difficulties, so patient under privations. ”

“ Long is the track ploughed up by the keel where dolphins are sporting,
⁠Following fast in its rear, while it seems flying pursuit.
All forebodes a prosperous voyage; the sailor with calmness
⁠Leans 'gainst the sail, which alone all that is needed performs.
Forward presses the heart of each seaman, like colours and streamers;
⁠Backward one only is seen, mournfully fixed near the mast,
While on the blue-tinged mountains, which fast are receding, he gazeth,
⁠And as they sink in the sea, joy from his bosom departs. ”

“ A good SEAMAN is able to make all the various knots, splices, and other arrangements in hempen or wire rope, without which a ship cannot be rigged; he can make a sail, send up or down yards and masts, and do many other things, the sum total of which need several years of steady application to learn, although a good seaman is ever learning. ”

“ Still, the point may be raised that only in our actual seafaring are we recognized. We are poor citizens, nomads, who have little part with settled grooves and communal life on shore. The naval seaman is a known figure on the streets. His trim uniform, the cut of his hair, the swing of a muscular figure, his high spirits, are all in part with a stereotyped conception. ”

“ I was once on a large American ship where for a whole night we were standing off the Delaware Capes in an easterly gale, and were forced to use deep-sea lead. At considerable peril and much loss of rest for the crew, the ship was rounded to the wind in the face of a dangerous sea, so as to check her speed. Twice during that night we had to haul up the mainsail and lay the mainyard back. At such a time every man is expected to know his duty. Should the night be as dark as pitch, an able seaman must take the lead, weighing twenty-eight pounds, on the forecastle head. ”

“ I have written that little sketch to show you that knowing how to hand, reef and steer is not all that is needed to make a seaman. The knowledge of the methods of working sails and ship are only a part of the seaman's craft. His head as well as his hand must be trained. He must not only know his vessel thoroughly, but he must as thoroughly know himself. ”

“ No; the seamen of three hundred years hence will probably be neither touched nor moved to derision, affection, or admiration. They will glance at the photogravures of our nearly defunct sailing-ships with a cold, inquisitive and indifferent eye. Our ships of yesterday will stand to their ships as no lineal ancestors, but as mere predecessors whose course will have been run and the race extinct. Whatever craft he handles with skill, the seaman of the future shall be, not our descendant, but only our successor. ”

“ At all events, he now found himself in comparatively deep water, from eight to ten fathoms, without any visible means of retreat from his coral trap. All hands crowded into the rigging to see the whale floundering about; till at length some one proposed—rashly enough, certainly,—to pay him a visit in one of the ship’s boats, with no better implements, offensive or defensive, than the ordinary boat-hooks. ”

“ He may ask advice, but he must act upon his own account, and is equally answerable for what he does himself, and what he permits to be done on board his vessel by others. The seaman is entitled to be dealt with by his own captain, under whom he shipped, and whom he may hold responsible at the end of the voyage ”

“ This, too, must be said of the flying-fish, one of the most wonderful of all the inhabitants of the deep seas, yet not so important to the seaman from a utilitarian point of view, since the occasional stragglers that do fly on board ship in their blind haste to escape from their countless foes beneath, usually fall to the lot of the ship’s cat. ”

“ Even before crossing the line, we had been on the look-out for whales, and all the boats and gear were in readiness to be lowered, and to go in chase at a moment’s notice. Everybody on board a whaler must be wide-awake, and prepared for all emergencies, or the ship may chance to return home with an empty hold. In no position in which a seaman can be placed is it so necessary to belong to the try fraternity. If whales are not to be found on one fishing-ground, the ship must move to another; and if not seen there, she must sail on till she chases them round the globe. ”

“ No other sea-folk combine so completely all the qualities that go to make up the perfect seaman. Many of them may be met with who can build a vessel, make her spars, her sails, and her rigging, do the blacksmith work and all the manifold varieties of odd workmanship that go to complete a ship’s equipment, take her to sea, and navigate her on soundest mathematical principles, and do all these strange acts and deeds with the poorest, most primitive tools, and under the most miserable,190 poverty-stricken conditions. ”

“ A sailor considering himself at home in every clime; well-knowing that however little employment there may be for other professions, the ways of commerce will always supply him with a berth sufficient to provide for all his wants. The better the seaman, generally, the more wild and reckless are his frolics; never learning wisdom, or staying his rollicking career, until the blue waves of old ocean close over his sinking form, [Pg 213] or he is hove down in some foreign hospital, a prey to disease brought on by his own imprudence. ”

“ If good seamen are to be formed anywhere, it is in the whaling-service of this country. Here it is, on a three or four years’ voyage, that a [Pg xi] man becomes acquainted with the minutiæ of a seaman’s duty; and from the great proportion of the time spent at sea in vessels cruising for whales, the crew become perfectly familiar with, and wholly at home upon, the sea.
The class of men, too, who sail from home in our whaling-vessels, being generally well-informed men, and having home-connections, understand and appreciate our free institutions ”

“ When I was fifteen I was captain and owner of an oyster-pirate sloop. By the time I was sixteen I was sailing in scow-schooners, fishing salmon with the Greeks up the Sacramento River, and serving as sailor on the Fish Patrol. And I was a good sailor, too, though all my cruising had been on San Francisco Bay and the rivers tributary to it. I had never been on the ocean in my life.
Then, the month I was seventeen, I signed before the mast as an able seaman on a three-top-mast schooner bound on a seven-months’ cruise across the Pacific and back again. ”

“ Though the old salt may sneer at the freshwater sailor who scarcely need know how to box the compass, to whom the art of navigation is in the main the simple practise of steering from port to port guided by headlands and lights, who is seldom long out of sight of land, and never far from aid, yet the perils of the lakes are quite as real as those which confront the ocean seaman, and the skill and courage necessary for withstanding them quite as great as his. The sailor's greatest safeguard in time of tempest is plenty of searoom. ”

“ There is a continual clashing of shield and sword, a slatting of canvas and a splashing of oars, as the long-ships leap over the cold, silvery seas. The air is full of the deep-throated shouts of the sea-kings; the horizon is bright with the coloured sails and the gilded prows. Every man is a picked fighter and seaman; every craft a thing of beauty and of strength. ”

“ One of the crew, however, who belonged to the fishing-station (he was a smart lad of fourteen) , was amusing them all the time with all manner of pranks and tomfoolery. He now caught up a heavy stone, and pitched it with all his might right into the stern of the boat. Then, suddenly and plainly visible to them all, out of the boat rushed a Draug in seaman's clothes, but with a heavy crop of seaweed instead of a head. ”

“ It is not difficult to see, therefore, why most of the captains anchored their ships well out beyond the harbour, so as to prevent desertions after the novice seaman had glanced at his sleeping quarters. There have been cases of sailors jumping overboard on the chance of reaching land, and it is on record that the greater part of a whaleship’s crew once floated to shore on the cover of the try-works. ”

“ It is not in books or at the library table that the art of the seaman can be acquired. Quickness of eye, nerve, promptitude of judgment, are the indispensable gifts, which must be gained by long and varied experience at sea. The seamanship required in a gale of wind on the open ocean, the seamanship displayed in sailing matches in over-sparred yachts, sailed mainly in smooth waters, and the seamanship called for in pilotage waters not previously visited, and especially at night, are different branches of a wide profession. ”

“ The seaman's eyesight is no better; he looks, and for him the land is so plainly in view that he cannot understand your failure to see it. He is secretly pleased, though,—and may pretend impatience in order to conceal his pleasure. I have sailed in all, perhaps, a distance equal to that around the earth, a good proportion of it along-shore; and I see as far as most men. ”

“ Great transatlantic greyhounds whose names evoke so many memories of holiday jaunts across the great ocean slip out of port and are seen no more of men. Vessels arrive at the ports of the seven seas with tales of wanton murder, of hairbreadth escapes. Boat crews drift for days at the mercy of the seas and are finally rescued or perish man by man. The square-rigged ship once more rears its towering masts and yards above the funnels of merchant shipping ”

“ Steamer sailors are not used to small-boat sailing in a heavy sea, and it takes them some time to wear down the novelty of it. By a providence, [136] there was the second mate in one, an old North Sea smacksman, to take the tiller, and an able seaman from the same school in the other boat, who was also competent to manage her. ”

“ And add a bubble to the clipper's track.
He had signed his name, there was no turning back,
No pardon for default-this must be done.
One iron rule at sea binds everyone.
Till now he had been treated with contempt
As neither man nor thing, a creature borne
On the ship's articles, but left exempt
From all the seamen's life except their scorn.
But he would rank as seaman off the Horn,
Work as a seaman, and be kept or cast
By standards set for men before the mast. ”

“ I have spoken of her as a ship, but she was barque-rigged, as almost all whalers are, barques being more easily handled than ship-rigged craft. The Intrepid was upwards of three hundred tons burden, with a crew of thirty hands all told, and stored, I found, for a cruise of two years or more. She carried six whale-boats, and materials for building others should any of them be lost. There were three mates, a carpenter and cooper and their mates; an armourer, a steward, and cook; four boat-steerers, four able seamen, six ordinary seamen, the doctor, two apprentices, Jim, and me. ”

“ Coasters, fishermen, or small vessels on short voyages, do not preserve the same rule; but no seaman who has been accustomed to first class ships will object to a strictness as to conversations and laughing, while at day's work, very nearly as great as is observed in a school. ”

“ It is at such times that the seaman feels his own nothingness, and realizes his dependence on the mercy of Heaven. The whaleman, in particular, has frequent cause to feel how narrowly he has escaped such dangers. Even other mariners have little idea of the risks encountered by this class of men; for whalemen form the only branch of the profession who may be truly said to make their home on the ocean ”