Young Tom Bowling / The Boys of the British Navy

by John C. Hutcheson

I had seen already in my trips in the Martin up and down Channel what I fancied at the time to be rough weather; but, never in my life previously had I ever seen such a scene of grandeur as the ocean presented that stormy afternoon!

Far and wide, it seethed and boiled like a huge cauldron, its surface covered with foam as white as snow, which the dark setting of inky clouds along the horizon brought out in whiter relief.

Above, masses of ragged wrack scudded aimlessly across the sky, whose leaden hue was cheerless and grim, save where, in the west, the sun went down suddenly in a wrath of crimson majesty, the darkness of night descending on the scene as if a curtain of crêpe, had been let down the moment after he vanished beneath the waste of angry waters, unlightened by a single ray of his customary after-glow.

Apparently the tempest-loving demons of the deep were only waiting for the shades of night in order to carry on their revels with the greater ‘go’ at our expense; for no sooner had the evening closed in than the gale increased in force, and the sea waxed even angrier, so that by Four Bells in the first watch, that is at ten o’clock, in landsman’s parlance, the ship had to lie-to under storm staysails—pitching and plunging bows under, and taking in some of the huge rollers occasionally over her forecastle, that swept down into the waist to such an extent that it was as much as the scuppers could do to get rid of the water as she rolled.

Fortunately, we did not get any of this below, the hatches having been battened down early in the afternoon, subsequently to our mishap with the ‘gashing-tub’; but, although this saved us some wet, it was far from pleasant on our mess-deck, the steam from the wet clothes of the fellows belonging to the watch just relieved, and the smell of the bilge from the place being shut up, making it resemble towards morning something like what I have read of an African slaver’s hold being in the middle latitudes.

When day broke, I found, on turning out of my hammock, our ship riding a little easier, the rolling having abated considerably; and, on going on deck shortly afterwards, though there was no order as usual to ‘lash up and stow,’ the weather being too rough for that, the reason for this change for the better, so far as the uneasy motion was concerned, became apparent enough.

The commodore had ordered a storm jib to be set, as well as the after-trysail, which was about the size of a good old-fashioned pocket-handkerchief; and, instead of laying-to as we had been when I turned in close on midnight, the ship was now running before the south-easter and making good progress, too, out of the neighbourhood of the treacherous Bay.

By breakfast-time we were making so much better weather of it that we were able to open the hatches, and the windsails were rigged up to let down some fresh air below, which enabled us to have a better meal than we expected; so our hot cocoa and bread possessed an additional relish, not only from this circumstance, but also from the fact of our not having enjoyed anything hot since the previous day at dinner, the galley fires having been swamped out just before tea-time, thus forcing us to turn in supperless.

Later on, as the gale slackened, we set our topsails close-reefed, and more ‘fore-and-aft’ sail; and, when the sun had got above our foreyard, the commodore ordered the topgallant-masts to be sent up, these having been housed when it came on to blow heavily. Our topgallants were consequently set above our close-reefed topsails, which some of the young seamen on board appeared to think a most extraordinary proceeding; but one of the quarter-masters, who was an old hand, said he had often seen it done when sailing “under old Fitzroy on the Pacific station,” when their ship would be bowling along under this sail before a stiff nor’-easter, in the run down from Vancouver to Callao, past the inhospitable Californian coast.

At noon that day, the navigating officer, who took the sun on the poop, surrounded by a lot of the young midshipmen we had on board for instruction during the training cruise, like us boys on the lower deck each in our respective billet, gave out that we were in latitude 44 degrees 10 minutes north, and longitude 10 degrees 15 minutes west, thus showing that we were well to the westward of the ill-omened Cape Finisterre and now safely out of the Bay of Biscay!