There was always plenty of work for me to do, but nothing for me to play with that I didn’t invent myself. Father always said:
“I don’t have playthings—why should you?”
Left to my own resources I copied my few toys from the things I saw around me—sailors, ships and cargoes. I built a drydock under the ladder leading to the poop. In my drydock I had several types of ships in the making. My prize ship was a full-rigger in a whiskey bottle. The sailors had taught me to make long crochet hooks from bits of wire and to make my own glue from fish heads.
I worked for months making the parts of the ship to rig up. Then came the problem of getting it inside the narrow neck of the whiskey bottle and setting it up inside. That was where the crochet hooks came in. I put all the parts of the full-rigger in the bottle separately and then I put them into place with the use of the glue and hooks. I worked a little every day on my masterpiece for I wanted it to be superior to any bottle boat that could be produced in the fo’c’s’le. Eventually I had built a fleet of little ships. I made them to trade in English ports for candy.
My most spectacular vessel, however, was a boat that sailed on the deck on little wooden wheels. It was about two feet long with a mainsail, squaresail and two jibs. I made the diminutive blocks in its rigging from bits of sandalwood. The mainsail and squaresail were fashioned from an old cotton shirt, while its jibs had once been a pair of underdrawers which the cook cast off.
Stitches made a boat on the same model and on the day both were completed we were to have a race. My boat was called the Neversink. Stitches’ boat was the Sonofabitch.
“I’ll wager you my boat’ll outsail yours, Skipper,” he said. “An’ if I lose you can embroider the name of your winner, the Neversink, in white twine on my pants’ seat, an’ I’ll wear the same for every man aboard to see.”
“That’s a bet, Stitches,” I said, taking his wager. Unfortunately I didn’t stop to consider that if his boat won he would embroider its name, Sonofabitch, on the back of me.
Came the day of the race. It was the rule that we had to man our boats with a crew—the owner having the sole pick of whatever kind of crew he desired. The captain of my boat was a fat cockroach. I tied him to his post aft with a piece of thread. However I never called much attention to him in my father’s hearing for fear Father would think there was something personal about it. You see, I learned early that a girl can’t be too careful with a man’s dignity. My “crew” was a kitten which I tied on just forward of midships to serve the double purpose of crew and ballast to hold the Neversink on deck when the wind blew its sails. As in all well-regulated ships I had trouble with my crew.
We had our boats at the starting line on the main deck. The goal was the water tank abaft the mizzen.