We did not know, though, until we had reached the eastern entrance to Sunda Straits again, on the passage home, how excellent his seamanship really was. In company with a dozen other ships, most of which had gained upon us, we were becalmed in that dangerous vicinity when night fell. Darkness shut down upon us, such a darkness as makes it necessary for the sailor to know the running gear intuitively—to develop some other sense to serve him in lieu of sight. Amidst a guttural growling of thunder which was almost continuous, and a flickering glare of lightning that was bewildering, it began to rain—not steadily, but as if high overhead were passing a series of nimbus clouds that were letting fall their contents in intermittent lumps. And from all quarters successively came light puffs of wind, never steady for more than ten minutes at a time. We had all the lighter sails made fast in case of a sudden heavy squall and for greater facility of working the ship.
Then for the whole of that Egyptian night, making a bewildering tangle of courses that was enough to whiten a mathematician's hair to ravel out, we toiled at the braces under the master's direct orders. We had watch and watch, but he was on duty all night. Standing by the compass, watchful and alert in spite of his seventy years, he utilized every favourable cats-paw, manœuvred against the unfavourable ones, remembering the possibilities of the unknowable currents beneath, and keeping before his mental vision a picture of the contour of that rugged coast.
When morning dawned he had his reward; for we were almost through the Straits, with the first kiss of the south-east trade wind saluting us, and the broad bosom of the Indian Ocean lying invitingly before us under a canopy of stainless blue. And of our comrades of the previous day only one could be seen, just discerned so far astern that she was only a speck on the horizon. To grasp the significance of such a piece of seamanship, it is necessary to remember that in a square-rigged ship the swinging of the great yards is not a momentary affair, like the slipping over of a schooner's fore and aft sails. Time and much labour are required. Moreover, the closest attention is necessary in order to utilize intermittent wind-breaths, as these were; for a big ship with little motion obeys her helm but slowly, and soon loses, if she be caught aback, that is, gets the wind on the wrong side of her sails, what little "way" or forward motion she has—a loss that she is loth to make good.
Again, in a sailing ship native courage in the master counts immensely. No amount of experience will atone for a want of this quality. Some men are so prudent, in other words, so lacking in courage, that they will shorten sail at the first premonition of bad weather, instead of reducing canvas as the weight of wind makes it impossible for the ship to carry it with safety. Of course there are circumstances where such prudence is absolutely necessary, as in the case of ships who do not carry sufficient men, or whose crews are of such poor quality that they are hardly competent to handle the sails in fine weather; also when the equipment of a ship has been so shamefully starved that the carrying of sail in anything like a breeze is bound to end in wholesale loss. And this matter of prudence in carrying sail has its dangerous side also. Many a dreadful storm has been endured by a ship that she would have escaped altogether had she kept up her speed; many a ship has been overtaken by a following sea and left almost derelict by its onslaught that would have gallantly outraced it had she not been made helpless by the clipping of her broad wings.
Of course, when it is remembered how great is a ship's individuality, how immensely circumstances vary, even the least knowing of us will have small difficulty in understanding the impossibility of laying down hard and fast lines. Every master must needs work out his own salvation in these matters, learn by experience and keep on learning; happy if he can find a ship whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and who has not either been built with or acquired some devilish habit of sea-spite that makes her an abode of misery to her crew, and the command of her a martyrdom to her master. Such ships abound, possessed by every vice known to seafarers, yet presenting in dock, when newly "got up," an appearance of smartness and seaworthiness that is deceitful to the last degree. Such a ship it was my evil hap to light upon once in London, bound for New Zealand. Every one of my shipmates were ecstatic in their praises of her beauty; none doubted that she would be as comfortable as she was lovely. But oh, the awakening from our pleasant dream! Barely had we cleared the Channel, when, meeting the full vigour of the Atlantic swell, she began her antics. There was no dry place on board of her anywhere, except under the hatches among the cargo. For she had not all the vices of a ship; she was well and staunchly built, and did not leak. But in finest weather, almost in calm, she invited the sea on board; while in bad weather she was like a half-tide rock, continually awash.
There were five passengers, and I warrant that none of them could ever forget that passage of 117 days; because the after part of the ship was even worse than the fore part. A massive structure of timber, like the palisading of a block-house, was built across the front of the cabin for its protection. She, however, thought nothing of sweeping away the whole erection, and flooding the handsome state-rooms with a foaming torrent of salt water. Never shall I forget the sight of the podgy skipper, like some unlively porpoise, gambolling about the saloon, swimming and scrabbling in water up to his waist in chase of his sextant, which, secure in its box, was gleefully careering about at every roll of the ship. That skipper was both smart and plucky, but his command must have aged him at treble the ordinary speed. When he carried on sail until the masts bent like fishing-rods and the stitch-holes in the sails became elongated so that they looked like columns of shining oats placed horizontally, instead of keeping ahead of the sea, she took it over in appalling masses, both sides and astern at once. And when it became suicidal to run her any longer, and we hove her to—that is to say, we reduced sail to a mere speck, and turned her head as near to the wind and sea as it would go—she acted as viciously as any buck-jumping horse. No one on board ever found their sea-legs, as the saying is, for you needed inch-long spikes or huge sucking-discs on your feet to keep on your legs at all.
Then there is the needed acquaintance with the best routes at given times of the year—the ability to direct your course so that you shall find the minimum of calms with the maximum of favourable winds. This is a prime quality in a successful shipmaster, and it cannot be learned from weather-books or weather-charts. I came home once from Australia, second mate of a magnificent ship, whose sailing qualities were of the highest order, her crew ample in quantity, her equipment beyond criticism. The master was a learned man, but his experience of sailing ships was of the slightest. He had all the weather-charts obtainable; he studied them continually, and faithfully followed their guidance. In the result we made a four and a half months' passage home, while a smaller ship, not nearly so smart, sailing from the same port three weeks after our departure, arrived in London nearly four weeks ahead of us. But her master had been sailing ships between England and Australia for many years, all the while accumulating first-hand knowledge of the conditions obtaining over all those seas he traversed, learning by experience the weather-signs and all the grammar of the language that the ocean speaks in to its intimate friends. This knowledge it is that constitutes the fine flower of seamanship as it was (and is still in ships that depend upon sail only), but which will soon be looked upon as a lost art as the sailing ship is gradually pushed aside by that wonderful outcome of engineering science—the steamship.
How great a factor in the making of a successful passage under sail this personal acquaintance with the route pursued is, may be easily assessed from a superficial study of the ways of the Swansea copper-ore traders. These are, or rather, I ought to say, were, smart barquentines which sail, or sailed, from Swansea, bound round Cape Horn from east to west, for the purpose of bringing home ore to the world-renowned smelting-works of Wales. Their masters were not, in any sense of the word, fine gentlemen, their calling hardly admitted of the cultivation of the graces of life; but such was their knowledge of this, the most arduous piece of navigation in the whole world, that their passages were made with almost steamer-like regularity. Only seamen themselves could give to these perfect mariners all the praise that was their due. For all sailors know, either by experience or repute, how cruelly hard are the conditions attached to forcing a passage around that awful promontory that reaches down almost to the Antarctic Circle, deep into the chosen habitation of the fiercest and most persistent gales that rage around the planet. Here, for weeks on end, you shall feel the weight of an unfaltering westerly gale, with all its accompaniments of snow and sleet and darkness. One would say that the attempt to get round the Horn from east to west, in the teeth of such prevalent conditions, was madness, especially when the long record of disaster attendant upon these attempts is known. Many a case is on record where fine ships, after weeks of abortive struggle to get to the westward round Cape Horn, have at last given up the fight, put the helm hard-up, and fled before the inexorable westerly gale, right round the world, to reach such a port as San Francisco, for instance.
Yet these little Swansea men came and went, from year to year, with the utmost regularity; their skippers having learned by experience how to out-manœuvre even the terrible monarch of the southern sea. No doubt it was a hard life; but it was exultant, triumphant. These men knew how good their seamanship was, how exact their weather-lore, and they troubled meteorological charts not at all.