This grand ocean exploit was celebrated in San Francisco with rejoicing, as every American in the town felt, now that the voyage round Cape Horn had been made in three months, that he was nearer to his old home in the East; while in the Atlantic seaports the news was received with enthusiasm, and was regarded by the press not only as a personal victory for the owners, builder, and captain of the Flying Cloud, but as a triumph of the United States upon the sea. One of the New York papers[6] in the course of an editorial remarked: “Such a passage as this is more than a local triumph, and inures to the reputation not alone of the builder of the ship and her enterprising owners, but of the United States. It is truly a national triumph, and points clearly and unmistakably to the pre-eminence upon the ocean which awaits the United States of America. The log of the Flying Cloud is now before us. It is the most wonderful record that pen ever indited, for rapid as was the passage, it was performed under circumstances by no means the most favorable.�
The Challenge arrived October 29th, 108 days from New York—a fine passage, certainly, but not what her friends had hoped or expected. She had on this voyage a large but very poor crew—incompetent and mutinous—indeed, some of them were among the most desperate characters that ever sailed out of the port of New York. It was only after the ship had passed Sandy Hook and the pilot had been discharged that Captain Waterman began fully to realize what a gang of ruffians he had to deal with. He seriously considered taking the ship back to New York for another crew, and a less resolute man probably would have done so; but he realized that it would mean a heavy expense to the owners, as each of the crew had received three month’s advance wages, which would have to be paid over again to another crew, besides other expenses and loss of time and disappointment to the shippers of cargo, so he decided to protect every one but himself and kept the ship on her course.
The crew of the Challenge consisted of 56 men before the mast, supposed to be able seamen, and 8 boys. Of the men in the forecastle only two were Americans, the remainder representing most of the maritime countries of Europe. So soon as Captain Waterman decided to continue the voyage, he made his plans quickly. After giving some orders to Mr. Douglas, his chief officer, he called all hands aft and manufactured a speech in which, among other things he said that the men would find that they were on board of a good comfortable ship, with plenty to eat and very little work to do; but when the officers gave them orders they must obey willingly and quickly; that he hoped none of them had brought spirits or weapons on board, as such things were apt to make trouble at sea. This camp-meeting discourse occupied perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, during which the mates, carpenter, sailmaker, and boatswain were employed in the forecastle breaking open chests and boxes, emptying bags, and gathering up bottles of rum, knuckle-dusters, slingshots, bowie-knives, and pistols which they threw over the side. After the watches were chosen, each man was made to lay his knife on the main hatch, where the carpenter broke the point of the blade off square.
It was found that only six men among the crew could steer the ship properly; these were made quartermasters and did nothing else during the passage except to lend a hand making and taking in sail, Fully one half of the crew who had shipped as able seamen were not sailormen at all, but blacklegs of the vilest type, who had taken this means of getting to the California gold mines. It also developed that many of the men had contracted a loathsome disease, most difficult to cure at sea, and at one time seventeen of the crew were laid up and off duty. Captain Waterman had the sailroom turned into a sick bay, but although these men received every care, five of them died, and eight were still in their berths when the Challenge arrived at San Francisco.
For some time after sailing from New York, Captain Waterman and his officers were always armed when they came on deck, but after a while the crew appeared to be in such good shape that this precaution gradually became neglected, until, one morning off Rio Janeiro, while Captain Waterman was taking his sights, he heard shouts for help from the main deck. He at once laid down his sextant and hurried forward to find the mate, Mr. Douglas, with his back to the port bulwark just abaft the main rigging, defending himself with bare fists from four of the crew armed with knives, who were attacking him. As Captain Waterman ran along the main deck he pulled a heavy iron belaying pin out of the rail, and using this with both hands as a club, he dealt a terrific blow on the skull of each of the would-be assassins, which laid them out on deck—two of them dead. Mr. Douglas had received no less than twelve wounds, some of them of a serious nature; indeed, he barely escaped with his life. From that time the officers always carried arms, and there was no further trouble with the crew.
Off Cape Horn three men fell from aloft, one of whom was drowned while two struck the deck and were killed. The bodies of the men who died were sewn up in canvas with holystones at their feet, and were buried in the sea. Captain Waterman read the funeral service over their remains, but the ship was not hove to as the braces were never allowed to be started except when absolutely necessary, owing to the difficulty and danger of handling the yards with such an inferior crew. The bodies of the two men who attempted to murder the chief officer were taken from where they fell and lowered into the sea. Many years afterward Captain Waterman told me that he could not bring himself to read the Christian burial service over these corpses, but that he gave the crew permission to take the bodies forward, and offered them canvas, holystones, and a prayer-book with which to hold their own service, but none of the crew would volunteer to bury these men.
The Challenge had moderate winds the whole passage, excepting a succession of westerly gales off Cape Horn, and with her wretched crew besides, there was really no opportunity properly to test her speed. Her best day’s run was only 336 miles, with the wind abeam and skysails set. She was 55 days from Sandy Hook to Cape Horn, thence 34 days to the equator in the Pacific, and 19 days from the equator to San Francisco. The great wonder is, not that Captain Waterman made such a fine passage, but that he succeeded in getting his ship to San Francisco at all.
Soon after the Challenge rounded to and let go anchor, in San Francisco Bay, she was boarded by a throng of crimps and runners who at once took the crew and their dunnage ashore. There was nothing unusual in this, for it happened nearly every day, captains and mates being powerless to prevent it. A gang of longshoremen would then be sent aboard at wages of from $3 to $5 an hour each, to heave up anchor, put the ship alongside the wharf, stow sails and clear up the decks. As these prosperous sons of toil were never in much of a hurry, it usually required from four to five hours to finish up these jobs, and meant a heavy expense to the ship-owner for work that should have been done by the crew.
When the crew of the Challenge got on shore, some of them had terrible tales to tell about their hardships and privations during the voyage; how they had been nearly starved to death; how some of the crew had starved to death or been murdered, and their bodies hove overboard like dead rats, and how six men had been shot from the mizzentopsail yard in a gale of wind off Cape Horn. According to these blatant imposters, no such floating hell as the Challenge had ever before set sail upon the ocean, and as for Captain Waterman, he was a blood-thirsty, inhuman navigator, the like of whom had never been seen or heard of, since the days when Noah put his ship ashore among the mountains of Ararat. All this was, of course, profitable material for journalists, one impetuous knight of the pen actually proposing that Captain Waterman should be burned alive, until finally the publisher of this attack became frightened for his own safety, as he had incited the most dangerous set of men, perhaps, that ever existed in any seaport—ticket-of-leave from Australia, cut-throats from New Mexico, and drainings from the social gutters and cesspools of European ports.
At this moment San Francisco happened to be in one of the numerous stages of reform through which that amazing city has passed. It had recently emerged from a reign of lawlessness and mob rule under the guidance of a Vigilance Committee, and while this admirable body of citizens was not yet disbanded, it had in a measure relaxed its grasp upon public affairs. Now, a number of the newly-converted thugs, murderers, and outlaws of the town, whose necks had narrowly escaped the hangman’s noose, formed themselves into a new “Vigilance Committee,� to deal with Captain Waterman and the officers of the Challenge. These outcasts, crafty and unscrupulous as they were, possessed neither the courage nor the mental capacity to carry out their own plans. They accordingly called a public meeting, held somewhere among the sandhills, at which it was decided to “execute� Captain Waterman and his officers “on sight,� and then burn or scuttle the vessel at her wharf. Naturally, the real Vigilance Committee were the first to learn of these proceedings, and at once took the captain and officers under their protection, holding themselves in readiness to scatter the mob should this measure become necessary.