Frank Brown, Sea Apprentice

by Frank Thomas Bullen

The retiring skipper and the mate collected their belongings, and left the ship without a word of farewell, consistently sullen and ugly until the last. Thank heaven we know them no more either, but we must not forget that there are more of the breed about, both afloat and ashore, who conceive that their mission in life is to make other people miserable, and who never cease their efforts for that fell end until death has mercy upon their victims and removes their oppressors.

That was indeed a momentous day for the crew of the Thurifer. For the new captain even improved upon closer acquaintance, and by the end of the first week not a man on board had any other opinion of him than that he must be about the best man in the world. I draw him from the life, gratefully, but not one touch of exaggeration is there about my description of him. He was a man of about forty-five years of age, with a handsome sunburnt face, a big fair beard, and a roguish blue eye. A prime seaman and navigator, he had yet been slow in getting up the ladder, more I think from native modesty and want of hardness in pushing himself forward, no matter who was pushed aside to make room for him, a trait only too characteristic of many successful men. But his chief charm was his innate kindliness and goodness of heart, breeding an intense desire within him to see everybody around him happy. Indeed a miserable face made him feel a sense of guilt, as if he were in some measure responsible for the unhappiness. Wilson and Frank literally adored him, and felt that they could cheerfully die for such a man.

One of his first acts was to institute a regular course of lessons in navigation and seamanship for the apprentices in the saloon, coupled with a standing invitation to a certain number of them each day to have dinner with him and his officers, no selection being made, but all enjoying his hospitality in rotation. Also he made great improvements in their dietary and accommodation, and visited their quarters every day, so as to keep them up to the mark of decent living, knowing full well that without such supervision boys on board ship invariably get slack and often lose all the habits of neatness and cleanliness instilled into them at home and at school. And all this he did not only from a sense of duty to his young charges, but from inclination, for he loved to act thus, and obeyed this the highest incentive to well-doing that man can have.

The loading of the Thurifer with jute for Dundee proceeded apace. It was a time of high freights and plentiful cargo, and all hands began to look forward with joy to the homeward passage. Mr. Wilson, of course, was busy in the hold supervising the stowing of the cargo, while Frank, now regarded as an officer indeed, was busy from dawn till dark with the bo’sun in attending to all the hundred and one details of the rigging and equipment which are necessary in order to prepare a great sailing-ship for her homeward passage, work which can nowhere be so well and expeditiously performed as in harbour. And in the evenings the captain would often remain on board, busy with some of his boys, while Wilson and Frank were able to go and visit friends ashore, whose acquaintance they would never have made under the old system.

Liberty day came and went without any disturbance whatever, the men all feeling so contented with the change that they voluntarily did what they could not have been driven to do, in fact they had all sworn not to go home in the ship with the other man. And I must interpolate one remark here, although it is slightly out of its turn; instead of being charged 2s. 4d. to the rupee, whose exchange value was then 1s. 5d., as they would have been under Captain Forrest, they were charged 1s. 6d., for Captain Sharpe disdained to rob his men even in strictly orthodox fashion, nor would he permit others to do so. There was only one cloud in the blue sky of content which enveloped the ship, and that was the uncertainty attendant upon the coming of the new mate. Everybody wondered much what manner of man he would be, knowing well how much of the comfort of a ship depends upon the character and ability of the first executive officer.

The day before she sailed the new officer came on board, and looked curiously about him as if he sought a sympathetic face. He would have had my sympathy had I been there, for I know of few situations more trying than his was. And it was well for him that he happened to strike a little community of really good fellows who wished to put him at his ease. They, that is, the captain and second and third mates, treated him exactly as they would have treated a man who had been in the ship for a long time. But he, poor fellow, actually mistook their kindly attitude for a tribute to his personality, a mistake he was never able to rectify afterwards. Because his personality was a kind to excite derision, not sympathy or respect. He was not able to take the smallest manœuvre without the stimulus of liquor, and he had brought on board with him a few bottles, of necessity few since his means were extremely limited, and before he had been in the saddle forty-eight hours everybody on board knew his weakness.

In this matter sailors are the keenest observers in the world. And when, in getting under weigh the next day, he stood on the forecastle-head and endeavoured to make up for his lack of ability by making a noise, the men under his command quietly ignored him and did the work they had been trained to do just as if he had not been there. Poor chap, his bemused brain took it all in but was unable to deal with it, and from thenceforth his position in the ship was a nominal one. I cannot here explain how such men come to the position of chief officer and sometimes captain, I only know that it is so, they do, and the fall they make is painful to witness.

But nothing now could affect the happiness of the Thurifer’s crowd. The captain was such a real live man, so genuinely anxious for the welfare and happiness of everybody on board and so indefatigable in his attention to what he conceived his duty, that the fact of an incompetent chief officer having joined the ship was but a small detail in the general scheme of things.

No sooner had the ship got to sea than the skipper arranged a three-watch system, whereby Frank had the first watch from 8 P.M. till midnight, Mr. Wilson the middle watch, and the mate from 4 A.M. to 8 A.M., thus giving each of the officers a long spell of rest and recreation, as well as a chance to feel their power of independent command. And as the captain invariably rose about 4 A.M., he was able to keep his eye upon the mate and see that he did nothing wrong, but he never actively interfered. What he said to the mate in the privacy of his cabin no one but themselves ever knew, but it was doubtless something very stern and searching. Yet it had no effect whatever.

The man was hopelessly incompetent and growing worse, not better, every day. So that when at noon all the officers were grouped on the poop with their sextants getting the sun’s meridian altitude, he was always the one to be out at even this, the simplest of all marine operations. For when you have, by moving the vernier on the arc of the instrument, brought the sun’s lower limb in contact with the horizon and clamped it, you have only to turn the tangent screw gently as the sun rises until it rises no more, a sign that it is at its highest point or meridian for the day—it is noon at that particular spot. It is so simple, so easy, that any schoolboy could perform the operation with just a few minutes’ tuition; but this poor bungler seldom if ever got a correct meridian altitude. And at the working up of the ship’s noon position, while the agreement between the captain and Mr. Wilson and Frank was scarcely ever out more than a mile, it was the rarest thing for Mr. Carter to be within five miles of the correct position.