With regard to the training of apprentices, many a good officer owes his present position to the late Captain Pattman. The Loch Torridon apprentices went to the wheel on their first voyage. At first they took the lee wheel, but as soon as they showed their ability they were allowed to stand their regular trick. In other matters Captain Pattman was a strong advocate of the system carried out on board the German training ships, notably the North German Lloyd.
Captain Pattman took command of Loch Torridon on her second voyage. Her maiden voyage was a very tragic one. She went out to Hobson’s Bay from Glasgow under Captain Pinder, arriving on 27th April, 1882, 105 days out. This gave no indication of her sailing capabilities, so she was not taken up to load wool but was sent across to Calcutta to load jute. She left Calcutta on 22nd August. On 9th October, when off the Cape, she ran into a heavy gale from W.N.W. Captain Pinder hove her to on the starboard tack under close-reefed main topsail. After a bit Captain Pinder wore her round on to the port tack, but with the squalls increasing she lay down to it, dipping her starboard rail. Thereupon Captain Pinder decided to wear her back on to the starboard tack. The mate besought him not to do this without setting the foresail, but unfortunately, having been lucky once, the captain insisted, with the result that when she got off before the wind she had not enough way on her and a tremendous sea came roaring over the stern and carried overboard the master, second mate, man at the wheel, sailmaker and a boy, all being drowned. The mate also was swept away but was saved by a hitch of the main brace getting round his leg. On the following day the weather moderated, and the mate brought the ship home to Plymouth, from whence she was towed up to London.
| CAPTAIN PATTMAN’S EARLY CAREER. | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Ship served in | Rig | Tons | Capacity | Remarks |
| 1864 | Woodland Lass | Schooner | 120 | Boy | Southwold to Shields and back. |
| „ | Hearts of Oak | Billy boy | 105 | Boy | Southwold to Hartlepool. |
| „ | Advice | Barque | 397 | Apprentice | Hartlepool to Cronstad—Cronstad to London. |
| 1866 | Hearts of Oak | Billy boy | 105 | Boy | Southwold to Sunderland. |
| „ | Hubertus | Brig | 190 | O.S. | Seaham to Boulogne, London, Hamburg, Dieppe and London. |
| 1867 | Kingdom of Italy | Barque | 427 | O.S. | Sunderland to Aden, Tuticorin, and back to London. |
| 1868 | Callisto | Barque | 598 | O.S. | London to Adelaide, Newcastle, N.S.W. and Shanghai. |
| „ | Maggie | Brigantine | 230 | A.B. | Shanghai, Yokohama, Hongkong, put back to Yokohama disabled. |
| 1869 | Lauderdale | Ship | 1174 | A.B. | Shanghai to Foochow and back with Chinese passengers. Shanghai to London, 153 days, put into St. Helena short of provisions, put into Spithead, Captain ill and no food. |
| 1870 | Christiana Thompson | Ship | 1066 | A.B. | London to Sydney and back. |
| „ | Kingdom of Belgium | Barque | 672 | 2nd Mate | London to Madras, wrecked in cyclone 1st May in Madras Roads. |
| „ | Kingdom of Fife | Barque | 497 | 2nd Mate | Madras to London. |
| 1871 | Ocean Beauty | Barque | 597 | 2nd Mate | London to Adelaide, Newcastle, N.S.W., Hongkong, Saigon and Sourabaya. |
| 1872 | County of Forfar | Ship | 999 | 1st Mate | Sourabaya, Rotterdam and Glasgow. |
| „ | „ | „ | „ | „ | Glasgow to Batavia, Sourabaya and Rotterdam. |
| 1873-4 | „ | „ | „ | „ | Glasgow to Samarang, Sourabaya and Niewe Dieppe. |
| 1874-5 | „ | „ | „ | „ | Glasgow to Samarang, Sourabaya, Bombay, Akyab and Antwerp. |
| 1875-6 | „ | „ | „ | „ | Glasgow to Sourabaya, Bombay and London. |
| 1878 | Countyof Cromarty | 4-mast ship | 1673 | „ | Glasgow to Rio Janeiro, wrecked in ballast S. Rio Grande del Sul. Captain and second mate died of smallpox. |
| 1879 | Countyof Selkirk | 4-mast ship | 1865 | „ | Glasgow to Calcutta and London. |
| „ | County of Bute | Ship | 789 | Master | Cardiff to Batavia, 80 days Akyab to Antwerp. |
| 1880 | County of Selkirk | 4-mast ship | 1865 | „ | Cardiff, Bombay, Rangoon and Liverpool. |
| 1881 | „ | „ | „ | „ | Liverpool to Colombo, Bombay to London. |
Captain Pattman took charge of Loch Torridon in December, 1882, giving up the command of the four-mast ship County of Selkirk in order to take the Loch liner. As a sailing ship commander of the first rank, it may perhaps be of interest to give a short outline of Captain Pattman’s previous career.
From this record it will be seen that Captain Pattman had won his way to command by the time-honoured means of the hawse-hole.
In the barque Advice he had an experience which would have sickened most boys of the sea, and he bore the scars to his dying day. The officers of the ship were actually prosecuted by his father for their brutality, the result being that Pattman’s indentures were cancelled, the captain had his certificate cancelled and was sentenced to 18 months’ hard labour, whilst the mate was given three years’ hard labour. Both were hard drinkers and uneducated men.
The brig Hubertus, which Pattman joined as an ordinary seaman, was a real old-fashioned Geordie collier brig. Her skipper could neither read nor write, and Pattman acted as his clerk and did all his correspondence. But the old man knew his way about the North Sea by smell: he only had to sniff the arming of the lead and was never wrong in naming the ship’s position. These old collier skippers always wore sleeved vests and stove-pipe hats at sea, and in the summer the Thames was often a wonderful sight when these colliers sailed up to London before a fair wind. There were often a hundred and more, brigs, schooners, and barques, all crowding up the river so closely, that these old Geordie skippers, all smoking long church-wardens, would be leaning over their respective taffrails exchanging greetings and gossip. Truly 60 years have changed the London River. Yet many a man living to-day can remember the year 1866, when Pattman sailed up to London in his Geordie brig. It was the year in which the three famous tea clippers Ariel, Taeping, and Serica arrived in the river on the same tide. Seafaring then was far more like that of the days of Drake and the Elizabethans than it is like the seafaring of the present day.
CAPTAIN PATTMAN.