Much Canvas and Few Men
Many intelligent people are possessed by the idea that steam is rapidly driving the sailing-ship from the sea. If they would only take a stroll round the docks they would alter their views. For certain trades and some kinds of cargo the steamer, let her be built, found, and manned as cheaply as the ’cutest single-ship manager can contrive, cannot possibly compete with the sailing-ship. And of late years it has been found possible to add enormously to the size of sailing-ships without increasing the cost of their working to any extent. Four-masted ships have become plentiful, carrying an area of canvas which would have seemed incredible to the seamen of fifty years ago, accustomed as they were to the flying clippers of Britain and America. These vessels are as handsome as the tramp steamer is hideous, their graceful lines, taut spars, and spidery rigging all lending themselves to beauty. But in these, as in the tramps, the foreigner is paramount. The ghastly farce (to a sailor) of labour-saving appliances has enabled the owners to reduce the crew lists to such an extent that in the majority of these ships all hands are barely enough for an efficient watch. The only change which has been found workable in the management of the larger sails above the courses is an American invention. It consists of splitting a sail in half horizontally, and was long applied to the topsails only, their unwieldy depth having always made them exceedingly difficult to handle. With the growth in size of ships and sails the top-gallant-sails have been also halved, and this alteration is now very general. But the comparative ease with which these sails can be handled, as compared with what used to be the case, has naturally tempted officers anxious to make a passage to “hang on,” longer than they used to, depending upon their ability to get sail in quickly at the last moment. That was all very well when a crew was carried sufficient in numbers to do what was required of them. But when eight such struggling monsters as a 3000-ton ship’s to’gallant-s’ls are have to be furled at once in a gale of wind by eighteen men (supposing all hands are called), it is quite another matter. Few experiences are more awful than those gained by being on a yard with a handful of men trying to master two or three thousand yards of No. 1 canvas in what sailors call a “breeze of wind,”—off the Horn, for instance, in a blinding snowstorm, with the canvas like a plank for stiffness, and rising far above your head in a solid round of white, into which you vainly try to force your half-frozen fingers.