But then ... a man can’t swim ... in heavy boots....
THE UNLUCKY “ALTISIDORA”
I
WHEN first the legend of the Unlucky “Altisidora” began to take its place in the great unwritten book of the folk-lore of the sea, old shellbacks (nodding weather-beaten heads over mugs and glasses in a thousand sailortown taverns from Paradise Street to Argyle Cut) were wont to put forward a variety of theories accounting for her character, according to the particular taste, creed, or nationality of the theorizer for the time being.
Her keel was laid on a Friday.... Someone going to work on her had met a red-haired wumman, or a wumman as skenned (this if the speaker were a Northumbrian) and hadn’t turned back.... Someone had chalked “To Hell with the Pope” (this if he were a Roman Catholic) or, conversely, “To Hell with King William” (in the case of a Belfast Orangeman) on one of her deck beams.... There was a stiff ’un hid away somewheres inside her, same as caused all the trouble with the “Great Eastern.”... And so on, and so forth, usually finishing up with the finely illogical assertion that you couldn’t expect nothink better, not with a jaw-crackin’ name like that!
Anyhow, unlucky she was, you couldn’t get away from it! Didn’t she drownd her first skipper, when he was going on board one night in ’Frisco Bay? Didn’t her second break his neck in Vallipo, along of tumbling down an open hatch in the dark? Come to that, didn’t she kill a coupler chaps a week when she was buildin’ over in Wilson’s Yard, Rotherhithe? Didn’t she smash up a lumper or two every blessed trip she made? Hadn’t she got a way of slipping fellers overboard that sneaky and sly-like no one knowed they was gone until it come coffee time and they wasn’t there?... Say the skipper was drunk—well, ain’t skippers gone on board canned up afore now and not been drownded?... Say it was somebody’s business to see that there hatch was covered or else a light left alongside of it—well, ain’t hatches been left open in other ships without folks walkin’ into ’em into the dark?... Say it was only two fellers as was killed workin’ on her—well, ain’t there been plenty o’ ships built what nobody got killed workin’ on? Answer me that!...