Crown and Anchor / Under the Pen'ant

by John C. Hutcheson

But, luckily, we were blessed with favouring winds and made a good passage, picking up the North-East Trades shortly after we said “good-bye” to Funchal, with its pretty white villas nestling on the hillside amid a background of greenery; and then, meeting with strong westerly breezes instead of calms, on getting further south into the Tropics, we crossed the Line on Christmas Day, when all the good people at home, I thought at the time, would be shivering with cold and saying, as they snuggled up to the fire, gazing perhaps on a snow-covered landscape without, “What seasonable weather we are having!” while we were sweltering in the heat under a copper sky, with the thermometer up to 98 degrees in the shade of the awnings!

From the Equator, we had a splendid run to the Cape, taking altogether exactly sixty-five days clear for our passage from England.

During this interval I and my brother cadets had to attend “school” every morning from half-past 9 o’clock to 11:30 in the captain’s outer cabin under the poop, where the chaplain, who also filled the post of naval instructor, officiated as schoolmaster-in-chief, teaching us mathematics and the theory of navigation, as well as seeing that we kept up our logs, which Captain Farmer himself inspected once a week, to make certain that the chaplain, on his part, attended to his duty.

We got on very well with the Reverend Mr Smythe, who had all his longshore starchiness knocked out of him by his long bout of sea-sickness, the poor man having been confined to his bunk and completely prostrate with the fell malady from the hour that we weighed anchor at Plymouth until we “brought up” at Madeira. I should not, perhaps, have made use of this term, as it savours of tautology, the unfortunate chaplain having been industriously occupied in doing little else save “bringing up” all the time; especially when we were pitching and rolling in the Bay of Biscay!

Every day, too, at a quarter of an hour before noon, we had to muster on the poop, where, under the tutelage of the master, Mr Quadrant, we watched for the dip of the sun; and, as soon as the master reported that it was twelve o’clock to the captain, who told him “to make it so,” and Eight Bells was struck on the ship’s bell forwards, we would adjourn to the gunroom below.

There we all worked out the reckoning, showing our respective calculations or “fudgings” as the case might be, to Mr Quadrant; when if these “passed muster,” we entered the result in our log-books, along with other observations and facts connected with the daily routine of the ship and her progress towards her destination.

To ascertain this, in addition to taking the sun at noon and noting the attitude of certain stars at night, the log was hove every hour; and each of us learnt in turn to fix the pin in the “dead man,” as the log-ship is styled—the triangular piece of wood, with a long line attached, by which the speed of the ship is ascertained.

The first piece of this cord is termed the “stray line,” and is generally of the same length as the ship, so as to allow for the eddy and wash of the wake astern; and, at the end of this stray line, a piece of bunting is inserted in the coil, from which a length of forty-seven feet three inches is measured off and a disc of leather put on the line to mark the termination of the first knot, or nautical mile. Two knots are put at the end of another length of forty-seven feet three inches; three knots at a third, and so on, until as much of the line has been thus measured and marked off at equal distances as will test the utmost sailing capacity of the ship—a single knot being placed midway, also, between each of these divisions, to denote the half knots.

Two sand-glasses are used in connection with the log-line, as the old quartermaster, who was our instructor in this branch of our nautical education, explained, the one called “the long glass,” which runs out in twenty-eight seconds, while the other is a fourteen-second glass, which is generally adopted at sea when the ship is going over five knots with a fair wind.

The first mentioned is only used in light breezes; and, as Bob Ricketts showed us by careful manipulation, reeling off bights of the line and keeping the slack loosely in his hands, the thing to be particular about is to heave the log-ship over the side clear of the ship, and see the glass turned as soon as the bunting mark is reached, denoting that all the “waste” has run out.