AT DINNER IN THE FIRST-CLASS DINING SALOON OF AN ATLANTIC STEAMSHIP DURING A STORM.
Almost every reader will remember Martin Chuzzlewit and Mark Tapley on board the wretched Screw. How, for example, “the latter awoke with a dim idea that he was dreaming of having gone to sleep in a four-post bedstead which had turned bottom upwards in the course of the night,” for which there seemed some reason, as “the first objects he recognised when he opened his eyes were his own heels looking down at him, as he afterwards observed, from a nearly perpendicular elevation.” “This is the first time as ever I stood on my head all night,” observed Mark.
The lesson taught by Dickens regarding the necessity of keeping up one’s spirits on board ship, and better, of helping to keep up those of others, as exemplified by poor Tapley, is a very important one. If anything will test character, life on board a crowded ship will do it. Who that has read can ever forget Mark, when he calls to the poor woman to “hand over one of them young ’uns, according to custom.” “ ‘I wish you’d get breakfast, Mark, instead of worrying with people who don’t belong to you,’ observed Martin, petulantly.” “ ‘All right,’ said Mark; ‘she’ll do that. It’s a fair division of labour, sir. I wash her [pg 12]boys and she makes our tea. I never could make tea, but any one can wash a boy.’ The woman, who was delicate and ill, felt and understood his kindness—as well she might, for she had been covered every night with his great coat, while he had for his own bed the bare boards and a rug.” “If a gleam of sun shone out of the dark sky,” continues Dickens, “down Mark tumbled into the cabin, and presently up he came again with a woman in his arms, or half-a-dozen children, or a man, or a bed, or a saucepan, or a basket, or something animate or inanimate that he thought would be the better for the air. If an hour or two of fine weather in the middle of the day tempted those who seldom or never came on deck at other times to crawl into the long-boat, or lie down upon the spare spars and try to eat, there in the centre of the group was Mr. Tapley, handing about salt beef and biscuit, or dispensing tastes of grog, or cutting up the children’s provisions with his pocket-knife for their greater ease and comfort, or reading aloud from a venerable newspaper, or singing some roaring old song to a select party, or writing the beginnings of letters to their friends at home for people who couldn’t write, or cracking jokes with the crew, or nearly getting blown over the side, or emerging half-drowned from a shower of spray, or lending a hand somewhere or other: but always doing something for the general entertainment.”
NEW YORK BAY, LOOKING ACROSS TO STATEN ISLAND.
Dickens drew his picture from life, and although an extreme case, there are many Mark Tapleys yet to be met. And indeed, unless the emigrant can remain happy and jovial amid the unmistakable hardships of even the best regulated steerage, he had better have stopped at home. If he can stand them well, he is of the stuff that will make a good colonist or settler, ready to “rough it” at any time. Before leaving the subject of steerage passengers and emigrants, it may be well to note that the United States Government does all in its power on their arrival in New York to protect them from imposition and furnish them with trustworthy information. At the depôt at Castle Gardens, where third-class passengers land, there are interpreters, money-changers, railway-ticket offices, and rooms for their accommodation; and it is very much their own fault if they slide into the pitfalls of New York—for New York has pitfalls, like every other great city.
The risks of the voyage across the Atlantic are not really as great as those of ships passing southwards through the Bay of Biscay, which is the terror of passengers to Australia, India, China, and other points in the Orient. At the beginning of 1880 the fine S.S. Chimborazo returned with difficulty to Plymouth, three persons having been washed overboard, and one killed from injuries received on board. Off Ushant a formidable gale arose, and the vessel began to roll heavily, while on the following morning the storm had become a hurricane, and the water was taken on board and below in volumes, threatening a fate similar to that experienced by the London. Just before 9 A.M. an enormous sea broke over the ship, heeling her over and washing the deck with resistless force. The steam launch, six heavy boats, the smoking room, saloon companion, and everything on the spar deck, were in three seconds carried overboard among the breakers as though they were mere children’s toys, while, in addition to the losses of life already mentioned, seventeen other passengers were more or less injured. Just before the ship was struck the smoking-room was full of passengers, who were requested by the captain to leave it to give place to some helpless sheep who were floundering about, and to this fact they owed their lives. “As,” said a leading journal, “the stricken ship entered Plymouth Harbour on Tuesday morning, her shattered stanchions and skylights, her damaged steering apparatus, and the heap of wreckage lying upon her deck, proclaimed the fury of the tremendous ordeal through which she had passed, and awakened many a heartfelt and silent prayer of gratitude among her rescued passengers, as they contemplated the evidences of the peril from which they had so narrowly escaped.” It is in moments such as these that the poverty of human words is keenly felt. There can be no doubt that, but for the excellent seamanship displayed by Captain Trench and his officers there would have been a sadder story to relate.