Still the only answer to the anxiously repeated morning question of “How is her head,” was, when most favourable, “half a point southward of west,—think we shall weather the Naze, please God.”
Torgensen was always in high spirits, and was as proud of his new command, the Captain said, as a peacock with two tails; and she really had qualities of which a commander might well be proud, as a sea-boat,—but these did not comprehend either beauty, or comfort, or speed.
There is no between decks in a Norwegian timber brig, the whole space being occupied with its bulky cargo, much of which lumbers up the waist, and forecastle besides; the crew inhabited a small hurricane-house just abaft the mainmast; a very small slip of this was bulk-headed off for the mate,—while the remainder—and a very small remainder it was—served the crew for parlour, and kitchen and all, for there was no other cookery place in the ship; in one sense this was an advantage, for they could cook in the worst of weathers, and this is not always practicable in a merchant ship; but if they did get this advantage over the wind and rain, it was, as the Captain remarked, a very dirty advantage indeed. All that there was of cover below the deck, was a very small sail-room aft, also used as a bread-room; before this was the Captain’s cabin, measuring exactly eight feet by six, which served for Torgensen and his two passengers, and for a purser’s store-room into the bargain, with all its indescribable stinks. After a very little practice, the Captain declared he could always tell the tack they were on, by the particular description of stink that was uppermost, and used to say that they had got their starboard or port stinks on board, as the case might be.
The bread alone of the ship’s provisions was under cover; the beef and pork was stored in harness casks, lashed to the bulwarks, thus diminishing still more the very diminutive quarter-deck. In fact, a quarter-deck walk was what none of them ever thought of.
Hurrah!—the Naze bearing N.N.E., and all dangers of a lee-shore past: a lee-shore in timber ships is no joke; they never sink—they cannot, for the Norwegian deals and baulks being of less specific gravity than water, the ship that carries them would be buoyed up even if water-logged, but their very want of specific gravity is the cause of their danger on a lee-shore; besides being full below, the whole deck is lumbered up for six feet or more, and the centre of gravity is so high that they are all crank to the most ticklish degree; and, though invariably carrying very low sail, require every attention to keep them on their legs; for this reason, if caught on a lee-shore in anything like a breeze, they can never claw off, for they can carry nothing without tumbling over on their beam ends. For this reason, every Norwegian is very careful of an offing, it is the only thing he seems to care much about. When the wind changed, every ship that the fair breeze had tempted out of Christiansand that day had put back, and Torgensen only had held on, partly because he knew the comparatively weatherly qualities of his brig, but principally because he was young and foolish.
Toward evening the wind drew round to the northward, and the brig was able, first to lie her course, then to shake out the reefs from her topsails, and lastly, having brailed up her fore and aft mainsail, to display a very ragged suit of studding-sails, which together got a fathom or two over six knots out of her—the very top of her speed,—and the Naze slowly sank below the horizon, fading into blue as it sank.
But this good luck was not to hold; fine weather returned, but with it calm and light baffling breezes, with the ship’s head looking every way except that which she was wanted to go. Singular as anything of cleanliness seems among people who personally rejoice in dirt, there was more fuss in cleaning decks than is to be seen in many a man-of-war; the very cabin-deck was holy-stoned every morning, as well as the quarter-deck; though so far as the latter was concerned, this was rendered absolutely useless by the abominable habit of spitting, for which the Norwegians deserve as much notice as the Americans themselves, and which they do not yet only “quia carent vate sacro,” because they have not a Mrs. Trollope to write about them. In the present instance this was the more inexcusable, because the northern style of ship-building pinches in their ships so much aft, that a man with strong lungs might set on the weather bulwark, and with ease spit over the lee-quarter.
As for seamanship, there are no smarter seamen in the world than the Norwegians when there is need, or more slovenly when there is not; but how they contrive to navigate their ships is a mystery which none but a Norwegian can solve. The whole of it is done by dead reckoning, with, in the North Sea at least, a pretty liberal use of the lead: besides the deep-sea lead, their only nautical instruments are the log, and what they call the “pein-compassen.” This last is a compass-card made of wood, and marked with thirty-two lines corresponding to the points, and drawn from the centre to the circumference, on which centre revolves freely a brass needle of equal length with the lines.
On starting, the true bearing of the destined port, or of some remarkable point or headland which must be sighted during their voyage, is taken, and the “pein-compassen” is fixed to the binnacle, with that part set towards the head of the vessel. This, for that particular voyage, is called “the steering line;” and so long as the true compass tallies with its wooden brother—that is to say, so long as the ship looks up for her port,—the whole run is given her at the end of each watch; but, in traverse sailing, the two compasses must of course point different ways. In this case, at the end of the watch if the wind has been steady, or whenever the ship, from tacking, or any other cause, alters her course or her rate of sailing, the brass needle on the “pein-compassen” is turned to that point of the compass to which the ship’s head has actually been lying, and a line is drawn from that point with chalk, intersecting the “steering line” at right angles. The part cut off between the centre of the compass and the point of intersection gives the actual gain in distance to the port towards which she is bound, and answers to the cosine of our more scientific nomenclature. This, with some corrections for lee-way, is given to her, while the chalk line drawn from the point of the moveable needle to the point of intersection, which answers to our sine, gives the number of miles which the adverse wind has compelled her to diverge from her course, and which must be compensated for by a corresponding deviation on the other tack.
Thus it is that, day after day, the ship’s reckoning is kept, not by calculation, but by actual measurement, performed by a pair of compasses on a graduated scale; and, clumsy as this contrivance may seem, they do navigate their ships with an accuracy that might put some of our merchant skippers to shame,—to say nothing of the masters in Her Majesty’s Navy.[64]