Prairie schooner

“ The boat, rocking past, left a wake of ripples and a smell of fish stealing over the pale, hot surface of the harbor; the fisherman, bellowing to the empty street ahead, shot his offal-smeared craft under the Rapscallion's bowsprit, and made fast beside a rickety stair that mounted from the water into a patch of dusty burdocks. The men on the schooner left their host, the captain, and dispersed slowly, each one rising, stretching, clambering to the foot of the shrouds for a clumsy leap to the broken string-piece of the pier. ”

“ Southeastward, between him and Belle Isle Island, wrapped ghost-like in Atlantic fog, yawed the freighter Hughie Hay had sighted, not an ocean-going cargo steamer but a sixty-ton schooner carrying Labrador stationers to their Summer fishing-stations. ”

“ Aided by my wife, he succeeded in putting the schooner before the wind and letting her drive to the N.N.W., feeling sure that she would be giving the land a wide berth. Unfortunately he did not count upon a four-knot current setting to the eastward, and just as daylight was breaking we tore clean over the reef at high water into a little bay two miles from here. The water was so deep, and the place so sheltered, that the schooner drifted in among the branches of the trees lining the beach, and lay there as quiet as if she were moored to a wharf. ”

“ Rolling easily on the green ocean swell, at some three cables' length from the shore, lay a small schooner at anchor; her crew—a half-naked, bronzed, and savage-looking lot—were engaged in stowing her mainsail. She was evidently the same schooner we had seen outside. While we had been coasting round the east side of the island, she had followed the west side, and here we had met again. But she was not the only surprise in store for us. There were no sandy dunes in this bay ”

“ It isn't the twenty or thirty or fifty dollar bonus a head in the seal hunt that lures them to death, in darkness and storm. It is the call, the dare, the risk, the romance of the sea born in their own blood. Or else watch the fishing fleets up off the North Shore, down on the Grand Banks! The schooner rocks to the silver swell of the sea with bare mast poles. A furtive woman comes up the hatchway and gazes with shaded eyes at passing steamers; but the men are out in the clumsy black dories that rock like a cradle to the swell of the sea, drawing in—drawing in—the line ”

“ Sometimes a stranger schooner from New England, secure in a safe distance from shore, drops down in six or seven fathom. Then, suddenly, the ebb sweeps off from the intruder, and leaves his two-master keeled over, with useless anchor and cable exposed, "to point a moral and adorn a tale." Sometimes a party will take boat for a row upon the placid bosom of this bay; but woe unto them if they consult not the almanac! A mistake may leave them high and dry on the beach, miles from the dykes, and as the tide comes in with a bore, a sudden influx, wave above wave, the risk is imminent. ”

“ A schooner lies at anchor in the calm water off the settlement; she does not move, for the lagoon is very still. A boat is putting off for shore, and in the stern sits a dear friend of the white man—a slender man, who gazes eagerly toward the shore with dark eyes like the eyes of our people. A crowd is gathered on the beach; the girls carry gifts of necklaces and wreaths; and in the village the old women are preparing a feast. ”

“ All this time there was not a breath of wind save what was created by the schooner as she rolled heavily on the gathering swell; not a sound save those which arose within her as the bulkheads and timbers creaked and groaned dismally, the cabin-doors rattled, the rudder kicked as the water swirled and gurgled about it and under her counter with the heave of her, and the jerk of the spars aloft, or the slatting of the braces as she swayed, pendulum-like, from side to side. ”

“ We could see it tossing and whirling half way out to the schooner. The whole inlet boiled like a pot, and roared like a mill-race. Huge eddies as large as a ten-pail kettle came whirling in under the cliffs. The whole bay was filling up. The waters crept rapidly up the rocks. But our eyes were riveted on the schooner. She rocked; she wriggled like a weather-cock; then swung clean round her anchor.
"If it will only hold her!" groaned Capt. Mazard. "But, if it drags, she'll strike!"
Old Trull, Weymouth, and Bonney were at the windlass, easing out the cable as the vessel rose on the tide. ”

“ The large schooner Onrust was in the canal at Richmond loaded with cement for Fort Taylor at Key West and the fort on the Dry Tortugas Island. My late shipmates and myself shipped on her by the month, she being a coasting vessel. It was a novel experience for us all to be on a schooner. Everything was so different from a square-rigged ship. The captain was also the owner. Economy was his motto. Instead of eating in the forecastle, we had our meals in the cabin, the captain acting as host. None of the crew felt as comfortable as if feeding in sailor style and all etiquette dispensed with. ”

“ When the fish are running, the work is mercilessly hard; it is kept up night and day; there is no sleep for man or child, save, it may be, an hour’s slumber where they toil, just before dawn. The schooner lies at anchor in the harbour, safe enough from wind and sea; the rocks, surrounding the basin in which she lies, keep the harbour water placid forever. ”

“ Before the captain had descended from the summit of the northern barrier, the vessel came in under her jib, the wind being nearly aft, and she dropped two anchors in suitable spots, making another flying moor of it.
General joy now illuminated every face. It was, in itself, a great point gained to get the schooner into a perfectly safe haven, where her people could take their natural rest at night, or during their watches below, without feeling any apprehension of being crushed in the ice ”

“ I felt pretty easy about the schooner. She can only be attacked by boat, and I searched the coast pretty narrowly on our way down without sighting one. If these men possess a boat, she probably lies somewhere on the eastern side, not far from their camp fire. If she lies nearer, it must be somewhere under the cliffs to the south, in which case her owners would have a long journey to reach her, and that journey must take them around the head of the creek here. But (say you) there may be two parties on the island—one by the camp fire northward, and another under the south shore. ”

“ The New England shipyards began building them, almost to the exclusion of other types. Before their advance brigs, barks, and even the magnificent full-rigged ship itself gave way, until now a square-rigged ship is an unusual spectacle on the ocean. The vitality of the schooner is such that it bids fair to survive both of the crushing blows dealt to old-fashioned marine architecture—the substitution of metal for wood, and of steam for sails. ”

“ It was difficult to realize one was not in fairyland—and an unworthy task at that. But again, even here, there entered the tragic touch of the South Seas. A thin spiral of blue smoke rose from the smallest of the islets across the lagoon, and I asked who lived there. A brother and sister, I was told, lepers.
"We're going to have shell in the lagoon as soon as we can get some by the schooner," "Mister Masters himself" told me on the veranda one evening. "Ought to do well enough. And we could run a few cattle here, too. But a schooner a year isn't much good to a man, is it?" ”

“ The alteration in the Agra's course produced no movement on the part of the mysterious schooner. She lay-to under the land still, and with only a few hands on deck, while the Agra edged away from her and entered the Straits between Long Island and Point Leat, leaving the schooner about two miles and a half distant to the N.W.
Ah! The stranger's deck swarms black with men. ”

“ For many years the three-masted schooner was the most popular kind of American merchant vessel. They clustered in every Atlantic port and were built in the yards of New England, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia--built by the mile, as the saying was, and sawed off in lengths to suit the owners' pleasure. They carried the coal, ice, lumber of the whole sea-board and were so economical of man-power that they earned dividends where steamers or square-rigged ships would not have paid for themselves. ”

“ If they would only go off a little way, we could make a dash for the boats and row to Floridy."
"Begging your pardon, sir, you forget the schooner, sir," said the Bo's'n.
"Seem to have a good many men for the size of the schooner." The Skipper remarked this as the boats were pushing into the stream. "I don't believe they are all crew." And one could see that they were not. The crew were well-fed-looking ruffians, dressed in picturesque fashion after the manner somewhat of their masters, but there were six or eight of the men in the boats who had little clothing, and that of the simplest sort. ”

“ We've caught six men red-handed right on the rookery, with dead seals, most of them females. The launch ought to intercept the boat. There's not wind enough for a schooner to get far away by the time the revenue cutter arrives. Besides, the schooner will be short-handed since we have six of the crew here. ”

“ The schooner drifts under the steamer's stern, takes in the yawl, and again sails to the eastward in search of another liner.
The entrance to the port of New York is patrolled night and day by a pilot-fleet of thirty boats, which cost from $10,000 to $20,000 each. They are staunch and seaworthy, the fastest schooners afloat. Often, knocked down by heavy seas, for a moment they tremble, like a frightened bird, then shaking the water off their decks, they rise, heave to, perhaps under double reefed foresail, and with everything made snug, outride the storm, and are at their work again. ”

“ Captain Hunt perused the statement with lively interest and without doubt kept a weather eye out for a rakish black schooner with a white streak, as he laid his course to the southward. He touched at the island of St. Thomas and while at anchor in the harbor saw a topsail schooner come in from seaward. ”

“ One man, the captain of the ill-fated schooner, dejectedly explained between huge mouthfuls that they had been making for Santario, to get provisions for a voyage to Key West. The schooner’s rudder had broken on a reef, and they had drifted for thirty-four hours without food, each man filling “the aching void” with nothing more substantial than water. ”

“ It was in Gloucester, Massachusetts, that port now famous for the ablest schooners that sail the seas, that the schooner originated. In 1713 an ingenious builder built a boat and placed in her two masts bearing fore-and-aft sails. For a head sail he spread that triangular canvas now so common, but this was the first time that these sails, all long familiar, had been arranged according to the now common plan. ”

“ He had been a month on the island, and the sea had not been vexed by another storm since his arrival. The schooner was still wedged in the sand and on the rocks, and he made several more trips to her, taking off many more articles, which, however, he left in a heap well back of the beach covered with a tarpaulin and the remains of sails. He felt that they could lie there awaiting his need. Perhaps he would never need them at all.
His later visits to the schooner were more from curiosity than from any other motive. He had a strong desire to learn more about the captain and his ship. ”

“ The schooner was loaded with lumber, much of which was on deck, lashed down to ring bolts with raw-hide thongs. The captain was steering, and I was reclining on the lumber, looking at the familiar shore, as we approached Fort Point, when I heard a sort of cry, and felt the schooner going over. As we got into the throat of the "Heads," the force of the wind, meeting a strong ebb-tide, drove the nose of the schooner under water ”

“ The Lunenburg fleet comprises one hundred and nineteen schooners with a total tonnage of eleven thousand. A new vessel costs $7000 to $8000. Crews varying from seventeen to twenty-two men are carried aboard each boat at the spring and summer fishing. [6] Bait is secured off Newfoundland before going to the feeding-banks where the fish are caught by anchored trawls, each one over a mile in length, and baited by means of hooks which are set by men in dories. As the cod are brought in to the schooner, they are cleaned and thrown into salt. ”

“ The life of our own fishermen and pilots remains active, in its way, all winter; and coasting vessels come and go in the open harbor every day. The only schooner that is not so employed is, to my eye, more attractive than any of them; it is our sole winter guest, this year, of all the graceful flotilla of yachts that helped to make our summer moonlights so charming. ”

“ The posture of the little berg pointed the schooner's head seawards, about west; the ice-terraces of the island lay with the wild strange gleam of their own snow radiance upon them upon the larboard quarter; around the schooner was the whiteness of her frozen seat, and her outline was an inky, exquisitely defined configuration upon it; above the crystal wall on the larboard bow rose the spume of the breaking surge in pallid bodies, glancing for an instant, and sometimes shaking a thunder into the ship when a portion of the seething water was flung by the wind upon the forecastle deck ”

“ The schooner rocked on the big rollers for half an hour; a small boat put off from her, with some dark objects seated in it; out on the great rollers the little shallop rocked, sometimes hidden from view by an intervening wave, sometimes thrown partly out of the water as it balanced for a moment on the crest of a breaker, but gradually drawing in toward a bit of beach, where there was a possible chance of landing, in some shape or other. A few rods from shore, three dusky creatures deliberately plunged overboard and swam toward us. ”