Frank Brown, Sea Apprentice

by Frank Thomas Bullen

The days now sped rapidly on as the ship, with every stitch set and drawing, made splendid progress across the Trades, with the wind steadily strengthening as she made northing. But she was barely clear of the tropics when the weight of the wind increased so much that they were fain to reduce sail, much to Captain Jenkins’ disgust, the wind being nearly due east, and consequently allowing him to make his course good going free. He hung on as long as he could, but was gradually compelled to shorten down until the Sealark was tumbling about in a most tremendous sea, hove to under a patch of tarpaulin in the mizzen rigging; and Frank, vivid as were his recollections of the cyclone, felt as if he had never till now realised the deep, steadfast malignity of wind at the height of its power. For it was not squally, its force was persistent, massive, terrible, having in its roar a note of doom.

But yet there was an amelioration of the conditions as compared with the lurid horrors of the cyclone. It was light, and often the sky was quite clear until, with a speed that was appalling to witness, a mass of cumulous cloud would hurtle across the ether, torn into a thousand fantastic shapes in its passage. And rage the gale never so furiously, rise the sea never so high, the tiny pretty petrels, Mother Carey’s chickens, still flitted unconcernedly over the mighty corrugations of the deep, even nestling to all appearance in the most perfect confidence under the over-curling head of some awful billow as if it were a shelter from the fury of the storm. And though I suppose he should by this time have lost such a boyish illusion (alas that we should ever lose them), he could not help feeling a renewed confidence in the successful issue of the great fight between ship and sea on witnessing the easeful security manifested by those wee birds.

Three days that gale blew, then died away to a gentle series of “cat’s paws,” which failed to steady the ship in the still gigantic upheavals of the so lately tormented deep. One other vessel was in company with them some five miles distant, and as she was behaving strangely to a seaman’s eye, backing and filling and manifesting all the motions of an unmanageable vessel, Captain Jenkins used all his endeavours to get nearer to her. But owing to the lightness and variableness of the wind he was only able to approach sufficiently close by nightfall to make sure that from some cause or another she was really at the mercy of wind and wave. Her masts were intact, and so were the yards, but from them there dangled long streamers as of sails blown away and running gear flying adrift. She was a barque of apparently the same size as themselves, and setting fairly deep in the water, in great contrast to the Sealark, which being loaded with hemp was in excellent trim, not down to her marks by a long way.

A very careful watch was kept on her all night, during which the weather was almost perfectly calm. But now and then a light air would come along, which was utilised immediately to get nearer to this mysterious ship, and with such good effect that about two hours before daylight they were almost within hailing distance of her. She showed no sign of life in response to repeated shoutings through a speaking-trumpet, nor was there a light visible anywhere on board of her. Intense curiosity was manifested by all hands in the mystery, so much so that the watch going below at 4 A.M. could not sleep, but sat anxiously awaiting the dawn.

This, however, must not be put down to any philanthropic desire to save life or to assist distressed fellow-seamen, ready as they all would have been to do their utmost in such a cause, but because every man on board was imbued with the idea that she was a derelict, or an abandoned vessel, still manageable and likely to afford her salvors a rich reward. Such golden prizes are, of course, far more usually the prey of the steamboat man, for obvious reasons, but still the sailing-ship men do occasionally get a look in, and the present encounter promised well at any rate.

At last the glorious dawn flushed the whole sky with rosy light, the great sun leaped into the firmament, and the lonely barque was fully revealed in all her pathos of abandonment only about five hundred yards away. There is no inanimate object in the world that seems to demand our sympathy so imperatively as a deserted ship at sea. She is so helpless, all her powers are so utterly unavailable, she is a gigantic, unburied corpse, terrible, obstructive, dangerous, yet full of deprecation, as if she would implore the crowning mercy of destruction before she has become potent for harm to her still man-energised sisters passing by. And this ship was of the saddest class, for she had obviously been abandoned so short a time ago, most probably in the very last gale; everything about her except the shreds of her destroyed, wind-riven sails dangled from yards and stays, and entangled in the rigging seemed to ask piteously why she had thus been left to encounter the ocean unaided, unguided, alone.

No sooner had she become fully visible in all her pathetic helplessness than the captain gave orders to get the boat out, an order which was obeyed with the utmost alacrity, so much so that one might have imagined it to be a matter of life and death. As soon as she was in the water, the skipper and four hands went off to the derelict, passing under her stern and noting her name, the Woden of Stavanger. She was manifestly an English-built vessel of the best type, composite, that is, with an iron frame and hardwood skin, with wonderfully good-looking rigging, not at all neglected-looking; indeed she appeared to have only recently changed hands, as the word “London” was plainly visible under Stavanger, and she had not yet shipped a windmill pump, the distinguishing mark of all Norwegian and Swedish sailing vessels.

The derelict.

The skipper climbed briskly on board by the aid of one of the loose ends which trailed over the side, and looking about him was struck with the small amount of damage which appeared to have been done to her. True, several panels of the house on deck were smashed in, the front of the full poop was also damaged, and she looked as if her decks had been swept continuously by heavy seas for a long time, but she was very far from presenting the appearance of the usual derelict ship. Finally, and presenting the most puzzling problem of all, her three boats, obviously all she carried, were in their places on the skids, the biggest of them having her bottom stove completely in as if by a gigantic sea.