I have said that some of these small vessels were in the St Lawrence trade carrying timber from Quebec, and grain or timber from Montreal. They usually went out in ballast in order to make two voyages during the season, and there were very few that did not succeed in doing it, provided they kept free from accident. The spring voyage was fraught with great danger owing to large fields of ice and icebergs drifting out of the St Lawrence across the Banks of Newfoundland. Sometimes the spring fleet would be fast for days, and many of them got badly damaged in the effort to force a channel through the ice-field, while some got so badly crushed and damaged that they foundered. That was a real danger at the beginning of the season, but it did not compare with the danger of encountering the terrific westerly hurricanes that swept over the Atlantic in the fall of the year. We speak sympathetically about the six and seven thousand ton steamers that tramp across during the winter months at the present time, and yet it is less than fifty years since the whole of that trade was done by tiny brigs and barques who leaked and worked like Russian prams, but were handled with an ability that saved both them and their crews many times from destruction. Every autumn some of them became waterlogged, and not a few were never heard of after leaving the port of loading. The owner of an old brig which I knew very well was induced by the high rate of freights from Montreal to fix her to load a cargo of heavy grain from that port. Some of the owner's friends expostulated with him on the danger of sending so old and small a vessel to the St Lawrence so late in the season. "Old?" said the owner, "hasn't she had new decks? And you call her small! What about Drake's ships that he sailed to the Pacific Ocean and all over India with? Why, the largest wasn't half the size of mine! No, gentlemen, ships were built to go to sea, not to lie and rot at the quays." So to sea she went, and arrived at Montreal none too soon to assure the completion of her loading and sailing before the winter set in. She was, however, quickly loaded, and sailed on her homeward voyage. A quick run was made to Cape Breton, and thence through scores of "Codbangers" right away to the edge of the Banks of Newfoundland. Anchors, boats, hatches and everything else were made secure in anticipation of a wild passage. The studding-sail booms and other spars or planks were lashed at each side of the hatchways in order to break the weight or fire of the sea before it tumbled on to them. This was the old-fashioned plan of protection, and I hope it is still practised. I have often had recourse to it myself both in sailing vessels and steamers. There was no Plimsoll mark in those days, and this cockle-shell of a vessel was literally loaded down to the scuppers. A westerly hurricane struck her just after crossing the Banks, and she was run so long before it that to attempt to heave to meant certain destruction.
The whole length of two hawsers were put out at each side of the taffrail, and as the mountains came roaring along, towering far above the stern of the little ship and threatening her with extinction, these hawsers broke the wrath of the rollers, and made them spread into masses of prancing foam. The captain and crew said they would never have been able to scud before the hurricane but for their influence. She arrived at Queenstown a complete wreck having been literally under water or covered by it from leaving the Banks until they passed the Fastnet; bulwarks were gone fore and aft; boats were smashed, but the hatches were intact. The captain had been so long without sleep and proper rest that he had lost the power of sleep. His nerves were so badly shattered, and his physical endurance so completely exhausted, a new captain had to be sent to relieve him, and the poor fellow never really regained his normal state afterwards. I have often heard him say "it was death or glory; scud, pump, or sink," which was one of the common phrases used by seamen in describing circumstances of this nature.
Stories more or less sensational are written from time to time of the terrors of a passage from Liverpool to New York aboard one of the White Star or Cunard liners, or even a passage on an ordinary ocean tramp, and although I would not under-estimate either the danger or the discomforts of either the crew or the passengers aboard one of these, I am bound to say they can only form a meagre conception of what it must have been like on one of the diminutive frail sailing crafts that built up the supremacy of the British mercantile marine. No one can really imagine the awfulness of the work these vessels and their crews had to do except those who sailed in them. This vessel, like many others of her class and size, did useful work in her time in building up our trade with other parts of the world. Distance and danger were no obstacles to the crews who heroically manned them. They feared nothing and dared everything. Their pride of race was inherent. They aimed at upholding the fine traditions of their nautical forbears, and contemptuously ignored the right of other nations to a place on the high seas. It was their dominion, and their prerogative therefore to monopolize them. Uneasy, ill-informed, political propagandists and commercial theorists would do well to ponder over what it has cost in courage, in vital force, in genius and in wealth to build up an edifice that represents half the world's tonnage. This structure of national strength has been erected without the aid of subsidies or bounties, and it may be not only maintained without them, but grow still greater if it is left alone to pursue its natural course under a system that brought us out of commercial bondage into a freer air over fifty years ago. That system has been the secret of much of our success, and once we embark on the retrograde course of protection then that will be the beginning of our mercantile decadence. Is the heritage not too magnificent, too sacred, to have pranks played with it?
THE END
THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD., NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
"WINDJAMMERS AND SEA-TRAMPS."
With Six Full-page Illustrations by Thomas Runciman.
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