CHAPTER VIII
A BREEZY SHIP, A BREEZY CAPTAIN, AND A BREEZY CREW
A sailor is quite within his rights in boasting about his ship. So is an author. Well I modestly advance that I have some little claim to be called sailor and author both. You must forgive me, then, if I do brag a little about my ship--the Breezy, and presently I will tell you how she came to be known by that name. Even a landsman would naturally conclude that a craft with such a name must be an airy and brisk little bit of steel. A naval officer might possibly think twice before coming to any such conclusion, for I myself have known tubs of things with pretty high-sounding "tallies," built let us say for coast defence, that went snorting and snoring round our shores, with the water gurgling up their "nostrils," as a boy once called the hawse-holes, and out of which no commander ever yet succeeded in knocking eight knots an hour.
But on the other hand our British Navy ships are generally well-named. The small craft have wicked wee names, and many are called after insects and birds. In my own earlier days in the service there was a Wasp, and she was a wasp too, and made it hot many and many a time for gentlemen Arab slave dhows.
Well, there is a Hornet to-day, a 240-ton torpedo destroyer. And a twin-screw gunboat yclept the Kite. A bigger one is the Landrail, and of course there is a Locust and a Lively and a Lizard. You get to something higher when you find the Orion, higher and heavier is the Hawke. But such names as the Implacable 15,000 tons, the Irresistible, the Majestic, or Bulwark thrill you to the marrow if it be a soul you have at all and not a gizzard.
I love that name Bulwark. It is grand. It is ringing, and brings to your memory the most splendid sea poem that has ever been written,
Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep.
Her march is o'er the mountain waves,
Her home is on the deep.
Well, Britannia has one Bulwark, and woe betide the first enemy's ship she talks to in anger.
But about the Breezy. You won't find her in the present Navy List because you are supposed to be reading a story of 1907. Yet, for all that, I have to use the past sense.
Well, Jack the ordinary seaman, or Able seaman, I mean--doesn't like a long name. So when this war-vessel was nearly all ready to slip off into the water a name had to be sought for her, and somebody suggested Briareus.