Frank Brown, Sea Apprentice

by Frank Thomas Bullen

As soon as Johnson had finished he pitched his plate into a corner, and his knife and spoon (he had used no fork) into his bunk, and lighting his pipe began to put on his oilskins and sea-boots, grimly warning Frank that he had better do the same. Frank obeyed, not without a sense of its uselessness, as he was already fairly drenched, but in the topsy-turvy world into which he had been plunged he did not feel at all sure that it was not the right thing to put waterproof clothes over wet ones. He had hardly dressed himself thus and begun to realise how utterly helpless and clumsy he felt, much worse than he had before, when he heard a shout, “Eight bells! all hands shorten sail.”

He tumbled out on deck and looked helplessly around. But Johnson, brushing past him, said, “Come along, you can haul aft the slack anyhow.”

To a novice the scene was appalling. As the ship rolled, the seas rising high above her threatened to overwhelm her; the wind roared and howled as if full of rage and desire to destroy, great sails being clewed up, slatted, and banged and crashed, making the vessel quiver as if in pain, and the weird wailing cries of the sailors hauling on the ropes added to the truly infernal din. Without the least idea of what he was doing, or why he was doing it, Frank staggered hither and thither, pulling at ropes and getting pushed about, trodden on and sworn at, until at last there was a general rush of the men aloft, and he, left alone, began mechanically to do the only thing he understood, coil up the straggling ropes upon the belaying-pins.

He was suddenly startled by a yell from the skipper, who from the break of the poop demanded to know why the something or other he wasn’t “up lending a hand with that main tawpsle.” He might just as well have asked him why he wasn’t leading the House of Commons. Frank gasped at him uncomprehendingly, as the mate approaching the skipper made some remark, at which the skipper gave a sarcastic laugh and turned away.

The mate suggested that it was not wise to send so obviously helpless a lad up where he could not possibly do any good, and whence it was more than likely that he might fall and be killed; which proves that the mate’s bark was worse than his bite, for I have personally known brutes who would have insisted upon a lad like that going aloft under similar conditions to almost certain death.

Now Frank’s plight was bad enough, but his native pluck began to get the better of his physical misery and his mental confusion, and he actually began to think of what a fine story of adventure he would have to tell when he got home again. He had of course not the slightest idea what an ordinary everyday sea-experience he was sharing. He could, however, and did, feel some admiration and envy for the sailors, who, clinging like bats to the yards high above him, were struggling to secure the great thrashing sails, even wished that he could do what they were doing, for he dimly felt that their deeds were heroic, more so than all his reading had prepared him for.

The gale increased in violence very fast, and it was well on to four bells before she was snugged down—that is, reduced to such sail as she could carry with safety—and the wearied men who had been on watch since eight in the morning were able to crawl below and get something to eat. The watch on deck had plenty to do securing spars and other movables about the decks, and Frank watching them wondered why they did not take more notice of the threatening waves and of the great masses of water that were continually tumbling upon the deck of the deeply laden ship. But by this time he had begun to learn the sailor’s first lesson, to endure and keep doing what there is to be done with an utter disregard of the body’s claims to attention, and had he known it, he had made a long stride in his knowledge.

Bad weather having thus set in, lasted without intermission for several days and nights, during the whole of which our hero never changed his clothes, never washed, and grew not to care a bit about it, although, had he looked at himself in a glass, which he never did, he would have been horrified to find how begrimed and unwholesome-looking he had become. Of course he had the example of the elder boys, who seemed quite lost to all sense of decency both in behaviour and conversation, from lack of any kind of supervision.

The poor little wretch Harry, from want of food and from bad air as well as sea-sickness, was just a shadow, becoming at last so bad that the second mate, who alone of the afterguard seemed to think at all of the boy’s plight, taking pity on him, induced the steward to give him a little attention, and a cup or two of beef tea and some cabin biscuits, which revived him and probably saved his life.

It was the second mate too, who, as soon as the weather changed, so far interested himself in the boys as to make them wash and change their clothes and scrub their house out. But if he had been like the mate and captain, goodness knows how they would have fared. It needs no argument, I think, to convince most people that boys at sea should never be left to themselves, even when they have had some previous training, unless there are ample facilities for cleanliness and room to stow their belongings away.