Father Taylor had little to say about the treatment of sailors on shipboard, for he knew that they were treated with humanity and according to their deserts, but he did have a great deal to say about their life and vile associations on shore; he once prayed with unconscious humor, “that Bacchus and Venus might be driven to the ends of the earth and off it.� He possessed a marvellous power of description, and perhaps no poet or painter has more vividly portrayed the ever-changing moods of the ocean. He used these superb sea pictures as metaphors and illustrations. I have a clear remembrance of some of them and recall them with gratitude, but no words of mine can convey an adequate impression of their beauty and grandeur; his was a genius that eludes description.
It was once said of Father Taylor that he hated the devil more than he loved God, but I think whoever said this could not have understood him, for the affection, tenderness, and substantial help which Father Taylor lavished upon God’s children, afflicted in body and mind, knew no bounds. At the same time he knew the men whom it was his mission to rescue, and often when denouncing their follies and vices his words fell hot as burning coals. He detested shams in any form, and was swift to detect them in sailors as well as in others.
In those days there was far too much ignorant sentimentality bestowed upon seamen and their affairs, too much
“Poor child of danger, nursling of the storm,
Sad are the woes that wreck thy manly form.�
Sad enough, no doubt, to the captain of a clipper ship bound round Cape Horn, compelled to stand by and see his canvas slatting to pieces in the first bit of a blow outside Sandy Hook, because he was cursed with a crew unable or unwilling to handle it. But this seldom happened more than once aboard of an American clipper in the fifties, for such a crew was taken in hand and soon knocked into shape by the mates, carpenter, sailmaker, cook, steward, and boatswain. Belaying pins, capstan-bars, and heavers began to fly about the deck, and when the next gale came along the crew found that they could get aloft and make some kind of show at stowing sails, and by the time the ship got down to the line, they were usually pretty smart at handling canvas. As the clipper winged her way southward, and the days grew shorter, and the nights colder, belaying pins, capstan bars, and heavers were all back in their places, for system, order, and discipline had been established. When the snow-squalls began to gather on the horizon, and the old-time clipper lifted her forefoot to the first long, gray Cape Horn roller, with albatross and Cape pigeons wheeling and screaming in her wake, the mate, as he stood at the break of the quarter-deck in his long pilot-cloth watch-coat, woollen mittens, sea boots, and sou’wester, and sung out to the boatswain to get his men along for a pull on the weather braces, felt with pride that he had something under him that the “old manâ€� could handle in almost any kind of weather—a well-manned ship.
In those days of carrying canvas as long and sometimes longer than spars and rigging would stand, with only brawn, capstans and watch tackles to handle it, the crew was a far more important factor on board a sailing ship than in the present era of steel spars, wire rigging, double topsail, and topgallant yards, donkey engines and steam winches. Indeed, all the conditions were quite different from anything known at the present time and required a type of men, both forward and aft, that do not sail upon the ocean to-day.
CHAPTER IX
CALIFORNIA CLIPPERS OF 1850 AND THEIR COMMANDERS—MAURY’S WIND AND CURRENT CHARTS
AT the time of the discovery of gold in California, American ship-builders were well prepared for the work that lay before them. The clippers already built furnished valuable experience, for they had attracted much attention, and their models and construction were almost as well known to ship-builders throughout the country as to those from whose yards they had been launched. It was found that the clippers were much easier in a sea-way than the old type of vessel; they labored and strained less, and in consequence delivered their cargoes in better condition. When driven into a heavy head sea, they would bury their long, sharp bows in a smother of foam and drench the decks fore and aft with flying spray; but at a speed that would have swamped the full-bodied, wall-sided ships and made them groan in every knee, timber, and beam.
The superiority of the clippers in speed was even more marked in the average length and regularity of their voyages than in their record passages; they could be depended on not to make long passages; with their sharp lines and lofty canvas they were able to cross belts of calm and light winds much more quickly than the low rigged, full-bodied ships, while in strong head winds there was no comparison, as the sharper ships would work out to windward in weather that held the old type of vessels like a barrier, until the wind hauled fair or moderated. In a word, the clippers could go and find strong or favorable winds while the full-bodied ships were compelled to wait for them.