The smell of rotting copra, putrid pearl oysters drying, sandalwood in little bundles piled high on our deck, the fumes from a cargo of guano, and sacks of ivory nuts—these things, the places they came from and the people who brought them to us were the commonplaces of my life. The legends of the sea told me by the sailors on our ship were my fairy tales; the freak storms, the bewildering doldrums in the tropics, and the companionship of old shellback sailors, the foundation of my experience.
My father’s ship, the Minnie A. Caine, was a four-masted, windjammer rigged schooner, engaged in the copra and sandalwood trade between the islands of the South Seas and Australia. I couldn’t remember when I wasn’t on a ship. Born in Berkeley, California—known in the maritime world as “the sea Captain’s bedroom”—I was the eleventh child in our family. Four of my brothers and sisters had died in two years. They called me the lick of the pan because I was last and not much of me. No one expected me to grow up, but Father said:
“This is the last one and I’m going to save it. I’ll take it away from the land and let the sea make it the pick of the puppies.” So he took me when I was less than a year old and I lived on shipboard until I was seventeen, and if the sea didn’t make me the pick of the puppies, at least it made me the huskiest.
Father brought me up with no creed except fear and respect for the gods that brew the storms and calms.
As to God Himself, I can say only that in my early life He and I were on most intimate terms. I had not half the fear of Him that I had of Father. I felt much closer to Him because I could discuss many things with Him that I wouldn’t have dared mention to Father. He was my friend, confidant, and counselor and I always felt that He approved of everything I did, and if I felt He disapproved I would argue until I convinced Him—in my own mind! Our arguments and discussions took place at the masthead far above the deck where no one could hear our private conversations.
Many a time I climbed to the crosstrees of the foremast and had it out with Him. If things had gone well with me I thanked Him—as for instance, if I managed to steal an extra hunk of brown sugar from the storeroom for my oatmeal, without being caught, I thought He was a good sport and told Him so. But I gave Him hell if He let us get caught in a sudden storm that ripped our sails or if we were becalmed in the deadly doldrums.
Father was very different—much more concrete, harder to twist around my finger—more to be feared than God, in my estimation. I could say anything to God—praise Him, gossip with Him or tell Him to go to the devil, and I did. But in all my years on the ship I heard few ever tell Father to go to the devil and none ever did it twice!
It was from my father that I inherited my love of the sea, the understanding of it, and the courage to face it. The sea was his life and he never wanted any other. How could a boy, born on an old clipper ship lying in far-off Geelong Bay, Australia, expect to do anything but follow the sea, and, if the Wanderlust ruled his blood, certainly he came by it naturally.
My grandfather, Louis Lazzarrevich, was a Montenegrin land owner and my grandmother a beautiful girl of Turkish blood whom Louis Lazzarrevich had married in spite of the Montenegrin hatred of the Turks. Life in Montenegro with a Turkish wife was not so pleasant. Consequently, after the birth of their first child, the young couple, to get away, planned a trip around the world in a sailing ship. In Geelong Bay, Australia, where the ship had put in, my father was born. My grandmother was so ill that her husband took her ashore and told the captain of the clipper ship that they would stay in Australia, and he could pick them up on his return voyage in two years.
Within a week of the time of their landing, my grandfather was accidentally drowned in Geelong Bay. That left my grandmother stranded with two children, my father and his older sister.