Each steamship company was formerly required to pay to the United States Treasury a head tax of $2.50 for each alien steerage passenger; this fee was reduced to $1.00, and some years ago it was still further reduced to fifty cents, the present rate. This tax goes to what is known as the Immigrant Fund.
In conclusion I might truly say that the modern ocean steamship of the great lines I have mentioned is the embodiment of the latest achievements of science and art of this enlightened age. So recent are many of the inventions that such a ship as the City of Paris or the Majestic could not have been built ten years ago at any price. The practical effect of all this to the traveller is to bring him very much nearer to the Old World than his father was, and to make the time spent in crossing the once dreaded ocean a delightful series of summer holidays.
THE SHIP’s COMPANY.
By LIEUTENANT J. D. JERROLD KELLEY, U. S. NAVY.
Has Steam Ruined the Genuine Sailors of Story and Song?—Hauling a Liner out of the Liverpool Docks—The Traits of Master-mariners—Education of Junior Officers—A Fire Drill—Stowing the Cargo—Down the Channel in a Fog—The Routine Life at Sea—The Trials of Keeping Watch—A Bo’s’n’s Right to Bluster—Steering by Steam—Scrubbing the Decks in the Middle Watches—Formalities of Inspection—The Magic Domain of the Engine-room—Picturesqueness of the Stoke-hole—Messes of the Crew—The Noon Observation—Life among the Cabin Passengers—Boat Drill—Pleasures toward the End of the Voyage—The Concert—Scenes in the Smoking-room—Wagers on the Pilot-boat Number—Fire Island Light, and the End of the Voyage.
WHEN the breeze is piping free and the tide is running strong none but a master-seaman may be trusted to haul out of the Liverpool docks a great Atlantic liner. Should it be a leeward ebb, with the Mersey spinning under a flurry of squalls and snarling in angry eddies, a quick eye must mate a clear wit to make the trick a deft one. The manœuvre is always a delight to the mariner, let bo’s’ns, hopelessly spliced to such traditions as topsails reefed in stays bawl what they may about the dead days of seamanship. For here are unfolded the mysteries of the art, and here are exercised all the higher qualities of the sailor, and just as much, believe me, as in the old times when the gray piers and oozy quays were crowded to cheer our famous clippers warping in and out to the music of barbaric “chanties.”
Beach-combers, shore-huggers—mere Abraham’s men—will tell you the poetry is gone out of it all, and will, with much damning of their eyes, and shifting of their quids, and hitching of their tarry trousers, try to persuade you that steam has ruined the genuine sailors of story and of song. But this is mere transpontine nonsense, for above and beyond everything he who commands a ship, smoker or sailer, as it may chance, must first of all be a seaman. The demands of modern sea life have increased the responsibilities of the mariner, and in like measure the professional attainments required are deeper, broader, and higher than ever before.
What the task of hauling out is, you may best judge by noting the bulk to be moved, for you can never measure properly the enormous dimensions of these great steamers until you see them looming in their true proportions above the walls, and undwarfed, as they are in the open, by the frame of sea and sky. The bulwarks tower like the walls of a fortress; the enormous decks sweep with a sheer knowing no broken curve; the wheel-house lifts its windows above the life-boats, swarming sternward like a school of pilot-fish; still higher the bridges, often double-tiered, span and grip the sturdy stanchions; and dominating all, the elliptical funnels rake jauntily, and the yardless spars taper till they fine away at their shining trucks into graceful coach-whips.
Shipshape and Bristol fashion, point-device in paint and polish, the massive hull glides over the quiet waters of the basin; you catch the sheen of gleaming brasses, of glistening air-ports, of glazed white, and lacquered black. Obedient as a broken colt to the touch of the helm, quick in response as a high-bred dog in a leash to the guiding hawsers, she moves calmly—fit exemplar of strength rightly tempered by even will—toward the sharp turn where the gateway opens to the river. Winches chatter noisily; windlasses clink, clink musically; capstans rattle with slacking cables; jets of steam dart viciously; ripples stream sternward to the bubbles of the foamless wake; the tremulous minor, more a wail than a song, of the docking gangs working the warps, answer the cheery “Yo heave-ohs” of the people on shipboard; and the quick, sharp orders from the bridge are echoed by high-pitched answers from the mates, watching with wary eyes everywhere. One screw turns clumsily ahead, the other circles astern, and then the ship swings easily, rounding the jagged corner in the hedge of stone with a gentleness leaving feet to spare. The bow and stern enter fairly, straight as a mason’s level, the open gateway; a strain is taken on the line leading from the quarter to the pier end; a moment of rest, of expectation, succeeded by one of doubt, follows, and then the hail rings out blithely from the after-whaleback, “All clear, sir.”