Under Sail

by Lincoln Colcord

We had on board quantities of second-hand burlap and old sails, rolls and rolls of them, to be put down under the cargo of wheat, enough to line the whole inside of the ship when she was loaded; these were rolled up in the 'tween-decks after we discharged at Liverpool, to be overhauled and repaired on the passage across to New York, before being stowed away for use again in San Francisco. They were just what we needed for beds and coverings. In the two narrow rooms in the forward house, spread plenty thick on the floors, they made the finest possible knock-downs; although they were packed in pretty tight, the men couldn't have been more comfortable in their own berths.

Captain Potter wanted me to put them below the hatches. We were ballasted with salt in the lower hold, but the 'tween-decks were clean and empty; she was in splendid trim for sailing, dry as a bone in heavy weather. Undoubtedly, the 'tween-decks would have made a comfortable place for the men, with plenty of room all around. But my objection was a perfectly practical one. Every one of these men had saved his pipe; in many cases it seemed to be about all that he had saved. Pipes had been going in every mouth since they'd come aboard. And the sight of that burning steamer was seared into my eyes. It gave me the shivers merely to think of sending all those pipes to sit on a bed of sail-cloth below the hatches. Some kind of a fire was only to be expected; but a fire in the forward house would be the lesser of two evils.

With all my care, I made a serious mistake in these arrangements; a mistake due to my ignorance of steamship etiquette. I assigned the chief engineer to a place forward with the engine-room crowd, and paid him no further attention. The status of engineers wasn't in my category; I thought of them, when I thought of them at all, as belonging to some indefinite lower region, and lumped them all together. But I was careful to make the proper distinction with the deck officers, for this was a matter within my own province.

Captain Potter gave me a broad hint that afternoon. "My chief engineer is a fine man, sir" he said "There has never been friction between us. He is highly thought of by the office"

I received the news as something in the way of conversation; wasn't much interested just then in the affairs of his vessel. What did I know of steamers? I'd been brought up under sail; and a steamer to me was nothing but a new-fangled usurper of the ocean, a thing to be sneered at, and to be outsailed when possible. It wasn't till some years afterwards, I remember, that I learned by accident that the chief engineer of a steamer was next in position to her master, above all of the deck officers. The knowledge was a shock to me; I recalled Captain Potter's remark, realized what I'd done, and saw how nice they had been about it. Even to-day, it annoys me to think of the mistake, and of the comment it must have caused.

We lived like kings; I gave free access to the provisions, fore and aft. The first steward of the steamer said "I'll wait at table" Our forward cabin table, hauled out to its full length, would seat fourteen people; he had to set it up three times for each meal, for all the passengers ate aft. The second steward said "I'll wash dishes" So he stood all day in the pantry, digging away at an endless job; for of course there weren't dishes enough to go around three whacks. The cook joined my cook and steward in the galley forward; among them they kept us fed. Made up a barrel of flour into bread every day, for one item. By chance, I overheard the steamer's first officer say one evening after supper, that her fare at its best hadn't equalled ours.

They were frank in admiration of the ship; of her equipment, her sailing qualities, her cleverness, dryness, and general seaworthiness; I could see that they were a little envious, too, of the way we handled her. We had a crew of Liverpool toughs, hard men, but experienced sailors, bred to American ships and their ways. They had caught the spirit of the game, filled the steamer's crew full of tall yarns in the dog-watch, and performed feats of seamanship for them on deck whenever the opportunity offered. Once the excitement of that first day was over, old Ridley's superb knowledge of his position emerged again. My second officer was one of your tall, fiery down-east youths, twenty-one years old, smart as a steel trap and able as a whirlwind.

We put the Pactolus through her paces, I can assure you; carried sail till all was blue. Luck sent us strong and favourable winds. In the dead of night I would often see the steamer's officers, dressed and wandering around the decks, or gathered in a group and holding low conversation; the ship would be scuppers under, the deck at a dangerous angle, masts and yards buckling and groaning, a spread of motionless canvas rising aloft as hard as a board; the whole hull humming like a top, as she raced through the water at a fourteen-knot clip. It made them nervous; they wanted to give me their advice, but being young and proud, they wouldn't do it. I suppose they called me a reckless Yankee. But I knew my ship and trusted in my gear, knew exactly what I could do with them; and didn't carry away so much as a rope-yarn throughout the passage.

Only once did I have to call on our visitors for help. Closing in with Nantucket, we had run full-tilt into another southerly wind. It wasn't more than half a gale, and I had kept her running under a heavy press of canvas. After twelve hours had gone by, I knew that soon the wind would jump into the westward in a flurry, as all southeasters do in the end. Feeling secure, with extra men to draw on in case I got caught aback, I held my sail and course till the last gun was fired. We were running with the wind on the port beam, under three whole topsails, whole mainsail and foresail, spanker, mizzen, main and foretopmast staysails, and inner jib.

And before I knew it, I had really got caught. The wind jumped without warning, jumped quick and hard; one minute it was our old half-gale from the southward, the next minute it was a howling westerly squall. Before we could possibly pay off to the northward, the ship was flat aback. Then it was "All hands on deck to shorten sail!" with a vengeance, the vessel lying down to port, the masts cracking, the shrouds slackening with an ominous sag, and things in general looking badly for a while. The officers of the steamer ran on deck feather white, feeling the ship go over to windward; her first mate ranged up close beside me, and kept glancing backward and forward from my face to the masts, as if he expected them to go over the side any minute and wanted to watch me when they fell.