But it needed a tempest to show her “way” in its perfection. Like the Wanderer, but in a grand and gracious fashion, she seemed to claim affinity with the waves, and they in their wildest tumult met her as if they too knew and loved her. She was the only ship I ever knew or heard of that would “stay” under storm-staysails, reefed topsails, and a reefed foresail in a gale of wind. In fact, I never saw anything that she would not do that a ship should do. She was so truly a child of the ocean that even a bungler could hardly mishandle her; she would work well in spite of him. And, lastly, she would steer when you could hardly detect an air out of the heavens, with a sea like a mirror, and the sails hanging apparently motionless. The men used to say she would go a knot with only the quartermaster whistling at the wheel for a wind.
Then for my sins I shipped before the mast in an equally large iron ship bound for Calcutta. She was everything that the Harbinger was not—an ugly abortion that the sea hated. When I first saw her (after I had shipped), I asked the cook whether she wasn’t a razeed steamboat—I had almost said an adapted loco-boiler. When he told me that this was only her second voyage I had to get proof before I could believe him. And as her hull was, so were her sails. They looked like a job lot scared up at ship-chandlers’ sales, and hung upon the yards like rags drying. Our contempt for her was too great for words. Of course she was under water while there was any wind to speak of, and her motions were as strange as those of a seasick pig. A dredger would have beaten her at sailing; a Medway barge, with her Plimsoll mark in the main-rigging, would have been ten times as comfortable. Somehow we buttocked her out in 190 days with 2500 tons of salt in her hold, and again my fortunate star intervened to get me out of her and into a better ship as second mate.
Of steamers I have no authority to speak, although they, too, have their ways, quite as non-understandable as sailing-ships, and complicated, too, by the additional entity of the engines within. But everything that floats and is built by man, from the three-log catamaran of the Malabar coast, or the balsa of Brazil, up to the latest leviathan, has a way of its own, and that way is certainly, in all its variations, past finding out.
SEA ETIQUETTE
Nothing is more loudly regretted by the praisers of old times than the gradual disappearance of etiquette under the stress and burden of these bustling days, and nowhere is the decay of etiquette more pronounced than at sea. Romance persists because until machinery can run itself humanity must do so, and where men and women live romance cannot die. But were it not for the Royal Navy, with its perfect discipline and unbroken traditions, etiquette at sea must without doubt perish entirely, and that soon. Such fragments of it as still survive in the Merchant Service are confined to sailing-ships, those beautiful visions that are slowly disappearing one by one from off the face of the deep. Take, for instance, the grand old custom so full of meaning of “saluting the deck.” The poop or raised after-deck of a ship over which floated the national flag was considered to be always pervaded by the presence of the Sovereign, and, as the worshipper of whatever rank removes his hat upon entering a church, so from the Admiral to the powder-monkey every member of the ship’s company as he set foot upon the poop “saluted the deck”—the invisible presence. As the division between men-of-war and merchantmen widened so the practice weakened in the latter, and only now survives in the rigidly enforced practice of every person below the rank of Captain or mate coming up on to the poop by the lee side. And among the officers the practice is also observed according to rank, for with the Captain on deck the chief mate takes the lee side. But since in steamers there is often no lee side, the custom in them has completely died out. To etiquette also belongs the strict observance of the rule in all vessels of tacking “Sir” on to every reply to an officer, or the accepted synonym for his position to a tradesman who is a petty officer, as “Boss” for boatswain, “Chips” for carpenter, “Sails” for sailmaker, and “Doctor” for cook. A woeful breach of etiquette is committed by the Captain who, coming on deck while one of his mates is carrying out some manœuvre, takes upon himself to give orders direct to the men. It is seldom resented by junior officers for obvious reasons, but the chief mate would probably retire to another part of the vessel at once with the remark that it was “only one man’s work.”
In many cases etiquette and discipline are so closely interwoven that it is hard to know where one leaves off and the other begins, but in all such cases observance is strictly enforced as being one of the few remaining means whereby even a simulacrum of discipline is maintained in undermanned and oversparred sailing-ships—such as the repetition of every order given by the hearer, the careful avoidance of any interference by one man with another’s work in the presence of an officer, and the preservation of each officer’s rightful attitude toward those under his charge and his superiors. Thus during the secular work of the day, work, that is, apart from handling the ship, the mate gives his orders to the boatswain, who sees them carried out. Serious friction always arises when during any operation the mate comes between the boatswain and his gang, unless, as sometimes happens, the boatswain be hopelessly incompetent.
In the private life of the ship every officer’s berth is his house, sacred, inviolable, wherein none may enter without his invitation. And in a case of serious dereliction of duty or disqualification it becomes his prison. “Go to your room, sir,” is a sentence generally equivalent to professional ruin, since a young officer’s future lies in the hollow of his Commander’s hand. The saloon is free to officers only at meal-times, not a common parlour wherein they may meet for chat and recreation, except in port with the Captain ashore. And as it is “aft” so in its degree is it “forrard.” In some ships the carpenter has a berth to himself and a workshop besides, into which none may enter under pain of instant wrath—and “Chips” is not a man to be lightly offended. But in most cases all the petty officers berth together in an apartment called by courtesy the “half-deck,” although it seldom resembles in a remote degree the dingy, fœtid hole that originally bore that name. Very dignified are the petty officers, gravely conscious of their dignity, and sternly set upon the due maintenance of their rightful status as the backbone of the ship’s company. Such a grave breach of etiquette as an “A.B.” entering their quarters, with or without invitation, is seldom heard of, and quite as infrequent are the occasions when an officer does so. In large ships, where six or seven apprentices are carried, an apartment in a house on deck is set apart for their sole occupation, and the general characteristic of such an abode is chaos—unless, indeed, there should be a senior apprentice of sufficient stability to preserve order, which there seldom is. These “boys’ houses” are bad places for a youngster fresh from school, unless a conscientious Captain or chief mate should happen to be at the head of affairs and make it his business to give an eye to the youngsters’ proceedings when off duty. Of course etiquette may be looked for in vain here, unless it be the etiquette of “fagging” in its worst sense.
The men’s quarters, always called the forecastle, even when a more humane shipowner than usual has relegated the forecastle proper to its rightful use as lockers for non-perishable stores and housed his men in a building on deck, is always divided longitudinally in half. The port or mate’s watch live on the port side, the starboard or second mate’s watch on the starboard side. To this rule there is no exception. And here we have etiquette in excelsis. Although the barrier between the two sides is usually of the flimsiest and often quite imaginary in effect, it is a wall of separation with gates guarded and barred. The visitor from one side to the other, whatever his excuse, approaches humbly, feeling ill at ease until made welcome. And from dock to dock it is an unheard-of thing for any officer save the Captain to so much as look into the forecastle. Of course, exceptional circumstances do arise, such as a general outbreak of recalcitrancy, but the occasion must be abnormal for such a breach of etiquette to be made. Some Captains very wisely make it their duty to go the round of the ship each morning, seeing that everything is as it should be, and these enter the forecastle as a part of their examination. But this is quite the exception to the general rule, and is always felt to be more or less of an infringement of immemorial right.