DERELICT.
A TALE OF THE WAYWARD SEA.
I.
On the 25th of May, 1887, I sat alone upon the deck of the Sparhawk, a three-masted schooner, built, according to a description in the cabin, at Sackport, Me. I was not only alone on the deck, but I was alone on the ship. The Sparhawk was a "derelict"; that is, if a vessel with a man on board of her can be said to be totally abandoned.
I had now been on board the schooner for eight days. How long before that she had been drifting about at the mercy of the winds and currents I did not then know, but I discovered afterward that during a cyclone early in April she had been abandoned by her entire crew, and had since been reported five times to the hydrographic office of the Navy Department in Washington, and her positions and probable courses duly marked on the pilot chart.
She had now become one of that little fleet abandoned at sea for one cause or another, and floating about this way and that, as the wild winds blew or the ocean currents ran. Voyaging without purpose, as if manned by the spirits of ignorant landsmen, sometimes backward and forward over comparatively small ocean spaces, and sometimes drifting for many months and over thousands of miles, these derelicts form, at night and in fog, one of the dangers most to be feared by those who sail upon the sea.
As I said before, I came on board the abandoned Sparhawk on the 17th of May, and very glad indeed was I to get my feet again on solid planking. Three days previously the small steamer Thespia, from Havana to New York, on which I had been a passenger, had been burned at sea, and all on board had left her in the boats.
What became of the other boats I do not know, but the one in which I found myself in company with five other men, all Cuban cigarmakers, was nearly upset by a heavy wave during the second night we were out, and we were all thrown into the sea. As none of the Cubans could swim, they were all lost, but I succeeded in reaching the boat, which had righted itself, though half full of water.
There was nothing in the boat but two oars which had not slipped out of their rowlocks, a leather scoop which had been tied to a thwart, and the aforementioned water.
Before morning I had nearly baled out the boat, and fortunate it was for me that up to the time of the upset we had had enough to eat and drink, for otherwise I should not have had strength for that work and for what followed.