The White Squall: A Story of the Sargasso Sea

by John C. Hutcheson

“That’s your sort,” said Moggridge, who followed me up closely, in order that he might catch me should I tumble back. He also helped me into the entry port and on to the deck of the Josephine, where I found Captain Miles waiting to receive me.

“Ha, here you are at last, youngster!” he cried out in welcome. “I thought you were never coming out, and that we would have to start without you. Wind and tide, you know, wait for neither man or boy! Hoist in his traps, boatswain,” he added to Moggridge, “and be as sharp as you can about it too, for the breeze is just beginning to come off the land.”

I may here mention a meteorological fact that Captain Miles subsequently explained to me. He said that this regular alternation of the sea and land breeze in warm latitudes, as in the tropics generally, when the wind blows for so many hours in the day on and off-shore, is owing to the different powers for the radiation and absorption of heat possessed by land and water, so that when the day temperature is highest on the land the alternating breezes will be stronger, and vice versa. During the day, to illustrate this fact, the radiation of the sun’s heat on the land causes the air to expand and so rise from the surface, which, creating a vacuum, the air from the sea rushes in to fill the void. At night this process is reversed, for, while the surface of the soil will frequently show in the West Indies during the daytime a temperature of a hundred and twenty degrees and more under the meridian sun, the thermometer will sink down in the evening to fifty or sixty degrees; whereas, the sea, being a bad radiator and its temperature rarely exceeding eighty degrees, even at the hottest period of the day, it is alternately colder and warmer than the land, and the direction of the wind accordingly oscillates between the two. The minimum temperature being at a little before sunrise in the early morning and the maximum somewhere about two o’clock in the afternoon, the change of these breezes usually occurs at some little time after these hours, the one lulling and the other setting in in due rotation—that is, of course, near the coast, for out in the open sea their effect is not so apparent.

In August, which is one of the “hurricane months” of the tropics, when the Josephine left Grenada on her voyage to England, the winds are more variable, blowing at odd and uncertain times; so, there was every reason for Captain Miles’ taking advantage of the first cat’s-paw of air off the land now, as otherwise, perhaps, he might not have been able to make an offing before morning, when he would lose the advantage of the current amongst the islands towards Saint Vincent, where he had to call in for some puncheons of rum and coffee to complete his cargo.

Under the direction of Moggridge, the crew made short work of hoisting in my traps and innumerable boxes, including the cocoa-nuts Doctor Martin had sent down for me, all of which Captain Miles ordered to be taken into the cabin he allotted to me on the starboard side of the ship near his own; and then, the boat itself was hauled on board by the derrick amidships which had been used for getting in the cargo, there being no davits at the side as in a man-of-war.

After seeing this operation satisfactorily accomplished, I went up the poop-ladder and walked aft to the side of Captain Miles, who was now busy about getting the vessel under weigh.

“Hands up anchor!” he roared out with a stentorian shout, and immediately there was a bustle forward of the men with much thumping of their feet on the planks and a clanking of the chain as the windlass went round under their sturdy hands. Mr Marline, the first mate, I noticed, had charge of the crew engaged in heaving, while Moggridge went on the forecastle to see that everything was clear for catting and fishing the anchor as soon as it was run up out of the water and the stock showed itself above the bows.

“Clink, clank! clink, clank!” came the measured rattle as the slack of the cable was wound round the windlass and carried along the deck to the chain locker; and then, after another spell of hard heaving, Moggridge sang out, “Swings clear, sir!”

“All right,” responded Captain Miles, jumping up on a hen-coop by the taffrail so as to make his voice go further, as well as to command a clear view of all that was going on, “Hands, make sail!”

On hearing this order those of the crew who were not engaged at the windlass swarmed up the rigging and threw off the gaskets of the foresail and mainsail, while a couple of hands ran out on the bowsprit and unloosed the lashings of the jib, the topsails having been dropped before I came on board.