Brazil and La Plata: The personal record of a cruise

by C. S. Stewart

Light and baffling winds, with alternate calms, have made our progress slow. The tedium of the time has been relieved in part by a first interchange of dinner parties between the wardroom mess and the commodore and captain. The kindest feeling exists among the officers of all grades on board, and these reunions, where the formality of official intercourse gives place for the time to the free interchange of thought and feeling, and of sympathy in intellect and taste, are salutary in their influences on both mind and heart. The Sabbath is the day usually chosen on board a man-of-war for these courtesies; but it has been unanimously decided, by our mess, that the entertainments given in the wardroom shall be on a week day.

During the continuance of moonlight in the evening and early part of the night, the enjoyment of it on deck in quiet musings, after the heat of the day, seemed the prevailing mood of the ship’s company. The band in whole or in part, at times, added music to the sympathies which were sending our thoughts and affections homeward by the way of the moon. But now that she is on the wane, and reserves her beams for the later watches of the night, the sailors cheer themselves in the darkness, by singing on the spar-deck, grouped in their respective limits from the fife-rail to the forecastle. Last evening, even the quarter-deck was invaded, under the sanction of an officer, by a party of negro minstrels: not such mock performers as are heard on shore under the name, but of the genuine type, consisting of the servants of the wardroom. For half an hour or more they sang, in practised harmony and with effect, many of the more sentimental and popular of the negro melodies; while forward and in the gangways there was echoed forth, in varied song, the feats of warrior knights and the love of ladies fair. Others of the crew were, at the same time, listening in groups between the guns along the entire deck, to a rehearsal by their shipmates of tragic stories of shipwreck, piracy and murder; to recitations from tragedies and comedies; to close arguments on various topics—navigation and seamanship, politics, morals and religion—and, at one point, to a lecture on history, of which I overheard enough to learn the subject to be the life and achievements of the brave Wallace, dilated upon in the broad dialect of the “land o’ cakes!”

Light-heartedness and contentment seem every where to prevail, and all manifest by their conduct, as well as by word, that they feel themselves to be on board a favored ship.

Had I time for the record, you would be amused by many things I hourly hear and see, in my walks of leisure. To-day, while on the quarter-deck after the men’s dinner, I overheard one of the messenger boys, who had just come from this meal, say to a companion, “I tell you what, Jim, I couldn’t eat much of that dinner: old mahogany and hard tack, is what I call pretty tough eating. To-morrow too is bean day, and I wouldn’t give a penny for a bushel of them.” A sprightly young sailor who completed an apprenticeship in the service, happening to pass at the time, stopped for a moment, and with an assumed air of indignant reproof, exclaimed, “Why, you ungrateful young cub!—you growling at Uncle Sam’s grub? why you ought to be down upon your knees thanking God that you have so good an uncle to give you any thing!”

Just afterwards, I fell into conversation with an old salt who had been with me, in the Delaware line-of-battle ship, in 1833. After mutual inquiries of various officers and men who were shipmates with us then; what had become of this one and what of that—he said, in all honesty of heart, and with a most lugubrious expression of face, “And there was Lieut. M—— too: they tell me, sir, he stepped out entirely, the other day at the Hospital!”—meaning that he had died there. I never heard the expression in such a connection before, and could not avoid being struck, not only with its oddity, but also with its force.

June 29th.—Just at nightfall, on my last date, we doubled Cape Antonio, the extreme westerly point of Cuba, at a distance of ten or twelve miles. It is long and low, covered with dark woods, and, in general aspect, not unlike the coasts of Long Island and New Jersey, as seen from the sea. As soon as our course was turned northward for Havana, the regular wind became adverse to us, and the next morning we were in the Florida Channel, far from the land and a hundred miles and more from our port. The tediousness of a dead beat to windward was relieved, however, by the greater freshness and elasticity of the air, in comparison with that on the south side of Cuba. For two or three evenings, here, the sunsets were among the most gorgeous I recollect. The whole western hemisphere, filled with fantastic and richly colored clouds, glowed with a brilliancy and glare of crimson light, as if the entire sea beneath were one vast bed of volcanic fire.

After two days we again made the land, with fine views during the afternoon, of two lofty ranges of mountains in the interior of the island—the Sierra del Rosario and the Sierra de los Organos or Organ mountains; but it was not till last night that we reached the parallel of Havana. At 10 o’clock the Moro light, at the entrance of the port, was descried, some fifteen miles distant. Its brilliant flashings, through the darkness of an unsettled sky, came cheerily upon the sight over the troubled water, in the assurance they gave of our true position, amid the changing currents and hazardous navigation of these straits.

Before daybreak this morning we fell in with and spoke the sloop-of-war Germantown, Captain Lowndes, cruising off the harbor. I was early on deck. The morning was fresh and beautiful, but the shores less bold and striking than I had anticipated; and the mountains in view were more remote. Still the landscape was pleasing in its verdure, though neither varied nor picturesque in its outline. Having been lying to for the night, we were still eight or ten miles from the entrance of the harbor; but the Moro Castle and city were in distinct view—the former, surmounted by its pharos towering loftily on a precipitous cliff of rock on the left of the entrance, and the latter stretching beneath it to the right, in a long line of whiteness on a level with the sea.

The scene increased momentarily in interest. A fresh trade-wind, creating a sea which, in the brightness of the sun, tossed up jets of diamonds on every side, hurried us rapidly forward, under topsails and topgallant-sails only: the Germantown, a beautiful craft, followed closely in our wake, fluttering over the water with the lightness and buoyancy of a bird. There were besides some eight or ten square-rigged merchant vessels in sight, under various degrees of sail—some entering and others leaving port. While in the midst of these, the Germantown and Congress interchanged salutes, with pretty effect on the general picture.

The wind had now increased to a half gale; a pilot had boarded us, and we bore away with a rush for the Moro, which immediately overhangs the entrance to the port. This is narrow—very narrow; seemingly a mere creek, a few ships’ length only in width. It runs at right angles with the line of coast along which we were flying. This made it necessary in entering, to haul suddenly, from a free course, closely on the wind. We did so, at the speed of a race-horse, almost grazing the surf-lashed rocks over which tower the frowning battlements of the Moro, and within biscuit throw, as it were, of the batteries of the Punta on the opposite side—the pilot, momentarily alternating the exclamation “Hard a port!” “Hard a starboard!” “Steady—steady!” kept the men at the helm on the full spring in shifting the wheel from side to side; while at the same time the yards were filled with the crew reducing sail to bare poles, as if by magic, under the trumpet orders of the first lieutenant. I thought it one of the most exciting moments, and one of the most beautiful sights, in the navigation of so large a ship, I had ever witnessed.