Twenty years at sea: Leaves from my old log-books

by Frederic Stanhope Hill

I was always a delicate lad, and had never been very strong, after I recovered from a fever that brought me well-nigh to death’s door several years before, and I had never cared much for the usual out-door sports of boyhood. Then I had an untiring passion for reading; and when I could curl myself up in a big arm-chair with dear old “Robinson Crusoe” or “Midshipman Easy,” I was perfectly happy, and forgot all the world in the adventures of one hero and the frolics of the other.

I have no doubt that my favorite books had something to do with it; for by the time I reached the age of thirteen and had been in the High School a couple of years, I had firmly decided in my own mind that I would be a sailor and nothing else. I had not lived in a seaport, and knew nothing of ships or sailors except what I had gathered from reading, and there seemed to be no very good reason for this decision. But it was just possible that my old grandfather, who was a famous sea captain in his day, had transmitted to me a strain of his sailor blood, rather than my poet father; so instead of fitting for college or going into a counting-room, my parents at last consented that I should go to sea.

My seafaring books had prepared me to expect hardships in the merchant service that I would not find in the navy, and I was boy enough to be thoroughly alive to the attractions of a middy’s uniform and dirk, for they wore dirks in those days; so when it appeared that a midshipman’s warrant might possibly be obtained for me by family influence, I was very anxious to enter the navy. This was before the establishment of the Naval Academy in 1843, and when midshipmen were appointed and sent at once to sea.

But my father wisely said: “No; let Robert try one year in the merchant service, and then if he finds a sea life distasteful he can easily abandon it, without any breach of good faith. But if he enters the navy, he will not feel the same liberty to resign, nor indeed have the opportunity of doing so, until after the expiration of a three years’ cruise.”

So it was settled that I should enter as a boy on board the ship Bombay, Leonard Gay, master, bound from New York to Rio Janeiro with a cargo of naval stores for the Brazil squadron. The ship was owned by a relative of ours.

How well I remember one fine summer day, fifty years ago, going down on Commercial Street in Boston with my father to order my outfit. I never pass along there now and inhale the mingled odors of tarred rigging, salt fish and New England rum, that seem perennial in that locality, that this important visit to the outfitter is not recalled. The mist of half a century of years rolls back, and I, a grave, gray-haired, somewhat rheumatic old man, seem for a moment a light-hearted boy again.

My father had been directed to the establishment of an old sailor turned tradesman, quite an original character in his way, and very well known in those days for his good wares and honest dealing. He was instructed to provide me with everything necessary for a voyage to the tropics and a winter on the English coast; and while my father was discussing the requisites for such a cruise with the proprietor, I was taking in the strange surroundings of the shop, so novel to a boy just down from Vermont.

It was a small, irregular shaped store, very low studded, which had enabled the old fellow to avail himself of the beams, from which hung specimens of his wares, all of them new to me. Upon one hook was a complete suit of oil clothing, southwester (as the head covering is called) and all, dangling and swaying about in the summer breeze and looking very much indeed like some mutinous tar or heavy weather pirate expiating his nautical crimes upon a gallows. Brilliant red flannel shirts were stacked up in great piles upon the shelves, and formidable sea boots overflowed from boxes ranged beneath the counter; gay bandanna handkerchiefs and glossy black silk neckerchiefs were temptingly displayed in the showcase; while on one side was a miscellaneous assortment of ironmongery utterly strange to me at that time, that I afterward came to know better as marline-spikes, prickers, fids, palms and sail needles, and sheath knives and belts.

Jack’s lass had not been forgotten; for in the window were hung, as a special attraction, certain printed handkerchiefs with pictorial representations of the “Sailor’s Farewell,” the “Jolly Tar’s True Love,” and other subjects of a sentimental character. In the rear of the store was an old-fashioned desk, with a fly-blown calendar hanging above it, and a ship’s chronometer ticking away in its case on one side; while above it, hung a spy-glass in brackets, and upon the shelf were an odd looking mahogany case and a ponderous leather-bound volume. These I came to know better, subsequently, as a sextant and the sailors’ vade mecum, “Bowditch’s Epitome of Navigation.”

This collection interested me amazingly, but I was soon called upon to select my “chist,” as the dealer called the gayly painted box he exhibited for my inspection. It was dark blue with vermilion trimmings, and had green-covered “beckets,” as the handles are called. This one, he said, “was neat and not gaudy, and had a secret till where a feller could stow away his tobacco and his ditty box,” which he seemed to think a very important consideration. This ditty box, by the way, is not, as one might well suppose, a special receptacle for ballads, but is for the thread, needles, buttons, etc., which are such necessaries on a long voyage, where every man is perforce his own tailor.