The time when these men really had to work, was on the sailing day of a California clipper. A busy scene it was, as they put the crew and their dunnage on board, one or two lots at a time, accompanied by a boarding-house runner, the sailormen being in various stages of exalted inebriation. The helpless in body and mind are hauled over the side in bowlines and stowed away in their berths to regain the use of their limbs and senses. These men have been drugged and robbed of their three months’ advance wages and most of their clothing. In a few hours they will come to, and find themselves at sea on board of a ship whose name they never heard, with no idea to what part of the globe they are bound. A receipt is given for each man by the mate, who considers himself fortunate if he can muster two thirds of his crew able to stand up and heave on a capstan bar or pull on a rope. The probable condition of the crew is so well known and expected that a gang of longshoremen is on board to lend a hand in getting the ship under way. The more provident of the seamen bring well-stocked sea chests; the less thoughtful find moderate-sized canvas bags quite large enough to hold their possessions; one mariner carries his outfit for the Cape Horn voyage tied up in a nice bandanna handkerchief, the parting gift of a Cherry Street damsel—who keeps the change. Jack is in a jovial, tipsy humor, and appears to be well satisfied with his investment.
This is an anxious day for the mate, for, while he receives his instructions from the captain in a general way, yet every detail of getting the ship to sea is in his hands; and though he seems careless and unconcerned, his nerves are on edge and every sense alert; his eyes are all over the ship. He is sizing up each man in his crew and getting his gauge; when he strikes a chord of sympathy, he strikes hard, and when his keen instinct detects a note of discord, he strikes still harder, lifting his men along with a curse here, a joke there, and ever tightening his firm but not unkindly grasp of authority. The mate is not hunting for trouble—all that he wants is for his men to do their work and show him enough respect so that it will not become his unpleasant duty to hammer them into shape. He knows that this is his day, and that it is the decisive day of the voyage, for before the ship passes out by Sandy Hook his moral victory will be lost or won, with no appeal to Admiralty Boards or Courts of Justice. He knows, too, that a score of other mates and their captains are looking on with keen interest to see how he handles his crew, and their opinion is of far greater value to him than the decrees of Senates; so he intends to lay himself out and give them something worth looking at.
There is a crisp northeasterly breeze, and the blue waters of the bay dance and frolic in the sweet June sunshine. The crew are all on board, with the captain and pilot in consultation on the quarter-deck; it is nearly high water, and the tide will soon run ebb. The mate takes charge of the topgallant forecastle, with the third mate and the boatswain
Clipper-Ship Captains
Robert H. Waterman N. B. Palmer
to assist him, while the second mate, with the fourth mate and boatswain’s mate work the main deck and stand by to look after the chain as it comes in over the windlass.
As the crew muster on the forecastle they appear to be a motley gang, mostly British and Scandinavian, with a sprinkling of Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians, and one or two Americans. Some wear thick, coarse, red, blue, or gray flannel shirts, others blue dungaree jumpers, or cotton shirts of various colors; their trousers are in a variety of drabs, blues, grays, and browns, supported by leather belts or braces; they wear stiff or soft felt hats or woollen caps of many colors. But no clothes that were ever invented could disguise these men; their bronzed, weather-beaten faces and sun-baked, tattooed arms, with every swing of their bodies, betray them as sailormen, and good ones too, above the average even in those days. They would no more submit to being put into uniforms or to the cut-and-dried discipline of a man-of-war, than they would think of eating their food at a table with knives and forks.
They are all pretty full of alcohol, but the sailor instinct is so strong in them that they do their work as well, some of them perhaps better, than if they were sober. There is no romance about them or about any part of their lives; they are simply common, every-day sailors, and will never be anything else, unless they happen to encounter some inspired writer of fiction; then it is difficult to say what may become of them. Some of them have much good in their natures, others are saturated with evil, and all need to be handled with tact and judgment, for too much severity, or on the other hand any want of firmness, may lead to trouble, which means the free use of knives, belaying pins, and knuckle-dusters.