As eight o’clock struck, turning out of the ship the motley crowd of negroes and mulattoes who had come off to trade with the sailors, we tripped our anchor, and turning the ship’s head again to the eastward, gave her the steam. The day was fine, and the sea smooth, and we had a picturesque run along the Haytian coast, for the rest of the day. The coast is generally clean, what few dangers there are being all visible. The only sails sighted were fishing-boats and small coasters laden with farm produce, running down to St. Domingo for a market. At times a number of these were in sight, and the effect was very pleasing. The coasts of Hayti abound in fish, and as there is a succession of fruits all the year round, it is the paradise of the negro. A canoe and a fishing-line, or cast-net, and a few plantain and mango-trees supply his table; and two or three times a year, he cuts a mahogany log, and floats it down the little mountain streams, to the coast, where he sells it for paper money enough to buy him a few yards of cotton cloth, or calico. Voila tout!
We entered the Mona Passage at half-past eight P. M. It was unguarded as before. During the night, we let our steam go down, to give the engineer an opportunity of screwing up the cylinder-head. Under way again before daylight. The weather continued fine, and we began again to fall in with sails. They were all neutral, however. We spoke a Spanish schooner, among the rest, and gave her the longitude. As soon as we had well cleared the passage, we banked fires, and lowering the propeller, put the ship under sail. On Sunday, February 1st, we had our first muster since leaving Jamaica. We had been out now a week, and in that time I had gotten my crew straightened up again. The rum had been pretty well worked out of them; most of the black rings around the eyes had disappeared, and beards had been trimmed, and heads combed. The court-martial which had been trying the few culprits, that had been retained for trial, had gotten through its labors, and been dissolved, and Jack, as he answered to his name, and walked around the capstan, was “himself again,” in all the glory of white “ducks,” polished shoes, straw hats, and streaming ribbons. No more than two or three desertions had occurred, out of the whole crew, and this was very gratifying.
The next day, we had an alarm of fire on board. It was near twelve o’clock. I happened to be standing on the horse-block, at the time, observing the sun for latitude, when suddenly I heard a confusion of voices below, and simultaneously the officer of the deck, with evident alarm depicted in his countenance, came running to me, and said, “The ship is on fire, sir!” This is an alarm that always startles the seaman. The “fire-bell in the night” is sufficiently alarming to the landsman, but the cry of fire at sea imports a matter of life and death—especially in a ship of war, whose boats are always insufficient to carry off her crew, and whose magazine and shell-rooms are filled with powder, and the loaded missiles of death. The fire-bell on board a ship of war, whose crew is always organized as a fire company, points out the duty of every officer and man in such an emergency. The first thing to be done is to “beat to quarters,” and accordingly I gave this order to the officer; but before the drummer could brace his drum for the operation, it was announced that all danger had disappeared. When we had a little leisure to look into the facts, it appeared, that the alarm had arisen from the carelessness of the “captain of the hold,” who, in violation of the orders of the ship, had taken a naked light below with him, into the spirit-room, to pump off the grog by. The candle had ignited some of the escaping gas, but the flame was suppressed almost immediately. The captain of the hold, who is a petty officer, paid the penalty of his disobedience, by being dismissed from his office; and in half an hour, the thing was forgotten.
Since leaving the Mona Passage, we had been steering about N. N. W., or as near north as the trade-wind would permit us. We expected, as a matter of course, to meet with the usual calms, as we came up with the Tropic of Cancer, but the north-east trade, instead of dying away, as we had expected, hauled to the south-east, and shot us across the calm-belt, with a fine breeze all the way. We carried this wind to the twenty-seventh parallel, when we took, with scarcely any intermission, a fresh north-wester. This does not often happen in the experience of the navigator, as the reader has seen, when he has before been crossing the calm-belts with us.
On the 3d of February, we made our first capture since leaving St. Domingo. It was the schooner Palmetto, bound from New York to St. John’s, in the island of Porto Rico. We gave chase to her, soon after breakfast, and came up with her about half-past one P. M. It was a fair trial of heels, with a fine breeze and a smooth sea; both vessels being on a wind; and it was beautiful to see how the Alabama performed her task, working up into the wind’s eye, and overhauling her enemy, with the ease of a trained courser coming up with a saddle-nag. There was no attempt to cover the cargo of the Palmetto. The enemy merchants seemed to have come to the conclusion, that it was no longer of any use to prepare bogus certificates, and that they might as well let their cargoes run the chances of war, without them. Upon examination of the papers of the schooner, it appeared that the cargo was shipped by the Spanish house of Harques & Maseras, domiciled, and doing business in New York, to Vincent Brothers, in San Juan, Porto Rico, on joint account; the shippers owning one third, and the consignee two thirds. The case came, therefore, under the rule applied in a former case, viz., that when partners reside, some in a belligerent, and some in a neutral country, the property of all of them, which has any connection with the house in the belligerent country, is liable to confiscation. (3 Phillimore, 605, and 1 Robinson, 1, 14, 19. Also, The Susa, ib. 255.) Getting on board from the Palmetto, such articles of provisions—and she was chiefly provision-laden—as we needed, we applied the torch to her about sunset, and filled away, and made sail.
The next afternoon we sighted a sail on our weather-bow, close hauled, like ourselves, and continued to gain upon her, until night shut her out from view, when we discontinued the chase. We were satisfied from her appearance, that she was neutral, or we should, probably, have expended a little steam upon her. At night the weather set in thick, and the wind blew so fresh from the north-east, that we took a single reef in the topsails. This bad weather continued for the next two or three days, reducing us, a part of the time, to close reefs. The reader is probably aware, that a ship bound from the West Indies to the coast of Brazil, is compelled to run up into the “variables,” and make sufficient easting, to enable her to weather Cape St. Roque. This is what the Alabama is now doing—working her way to the eastward, on the parallel of about 30°. We observed on the 20th of February, in latitude 28° 32′; the longitude being 45° 05′.
The next day, the weather being very fine, with the wind light from the southward and eastward, a sail was descried from aloft, and soon afterward another, and another, until four were seen. We gave chase to the first sail announced; standing to the eastward, in pursuit of her, for an hour or two, but she being a long distance ahead, and to windward, and the chase being likely, in consequence, to be long, and to draw us away from the other three sail, besides, we abandoned it, and gave chase to two of the latter. These were fine, tall ships, under a cloud of canvas, steering, one to the eastward, and the other to the westward. Being quite sure that they were Americans, and the wind falling light, we got up steam for the chase. Coming up with the eastward-bound ship, we hove her to, but not until we had thrown a couple of shot at her, in succession—the latter whizzing over the master’s head on the quarter-deck. She was evidently endeavoring to draw us after her, as far to the eastward as possible, to give her consort, with whom she had spoken, and who was running, as the reader has seen, to the westward, an opportunity to escape. Throwing a boat’s crew hastily on board of her, and directing the prize-master to follow us, we now wheeled in pursuit of the other fugitive. The latter was, by this time, fifteen miles distant—being hull down—and was running before the wind with studding sails, “alow and aloft.” Fortunately for the Alabama, as before remarked, the wind was light, or the chase might have put darkness between us, before we came up with her. As it was, it was three P. M. before we overhauled her, and we had run our other prize nearly out of sight. She was less obstinate than her consort, and shortened sail, and hove to, at the first gun, hoisting the United States colors at her peak. She proved to be the bark Olive Jane, of New York, from Bordeaux, bound to New York, with an assorted cargo of French wines, and brandies, canned meats, fruits, and other delicacies. There was no attempt to cover the cargo. There were a great many shippers. Some few of these had consigned their goods to their own order, but most of the consignments were to New York houses. It is possible that some of the consignments, “to order,” really belonged to French owners, but if so, I was relieved from the necessity of making the investigation, by the carelessness of the owners themselves, who had taken no pains to protect their property, by proper documentary evidence of its neutral character. In the absence of sworn proof, as before remarked, the rule of law is imperative, that all property found on board of an enemy’s ship, is presumed to belong to the enemy. I acted upon this presumption, and set fire to the Olive Jane. What a splendid libation was here to old Neptune! I did not permit so much as a bottle of brandy, or a basket of champagne to be brought on board the Alabama, though, I doubt not, the throats of some of my vagabonds, who had so recently cooled off, from the big frolic they had had in Jamaica, were as dry as powder-horns. There were the richest of olives, and patés de fois gras, going to tickle the palates of the New York shoddyites, and other nouveau-riche plebeians, destroyed in that terrible conflagration. I should have permitted Bartelli, and the other stewards to have a short run among these delicacies, but for the wine and the brandy. A Fouché could not have prevented the boats’ crews from smuggling some of it on board, and then I might have had another Martinique grog-watering on my hands.
Amid the crackling of flames, the bursting of brandy casks, the shrivelling of sails, as they were touched by the fire, and the tumbling of the lighter spars of the Olive Jane from aloft, we turned our head to the eastward again, and rejoined our first prize, coming up with her just as the shades of evening were closing in. I had now a little leisure to look into her character. She, like the Olive Jane, had shown me the “old flag,” and that, of course, had set at rest all doubts as to the nationality of the ship. There was as little doubt, as soon appeared, about the cargo. The ship was the Golden Eagle, and I had overhauled her near the termination of a long voyage. She had sailed from San Francisco, in ballast, for Howland’s Island, in the Pacific; a guano island of which some adventurous Yankees had taken possession. There she had taken in a cargo of guano, for Cork and a market; the guano being owned by, and consigned to the order of the American Guano Company. This ship had buffeted the gales of the frozen latitudes of Cape Horn, threaded her pathway among its icebergs, been parched with the heats of the tropic, and drenched with the rains of the equator, to fall into the hands of her enemy, only a few hundred miles from her port. But such is the fortune of war. It seemed a pity, too, to destroy so large a cargo of a fertilizer, that would else have made fields stagger under a wealth of grain. But those fields would be the fields of the enemy; or if it did not fertilize his fields, its sale would pour a stream of gold into his coffers; and it was my business upon the high seas, to cut off, or dry up this stream of gold. The torch followed the examination of the papers. The reader may, perhaps, by this time have remarked, how fond the Yankees had become of the qualifying adjective, “golden,” as a prefix to the names of their ships. I had burned the Golden Rocket, the Golden Rule, and the Golden Eagle.
We were now in latitude 30°, and longitude 40°, and if the curious reader will refer to a map, or chart of the North Atlantic Ocean, he will see that we are on the charmed “crossing,” leading to the coast of Brazil. By “crossing” is meant the point at which the ship’s course crosses a given parallel of latitude. We must not, for instance, cross the thirtieth parallel, going southward, until we have reached a certain meridian—say that of 40° W. If we do, the north-east trade-wind will pinch us, and perhaps prevent us from weathering Cape St. Roque.
And when we reach the equator, there is another crossing recommended to the mariner, as being most appropriate to his purpose. Thus it is, that the roads upon the sea have been blazed out, as it were—the blazes not being exactly cut upon the forest-trees, but upon parallels and meridians. The chief blazer of these roads, is an American, of whom all Americans should be proud—Captain Maury, before mentioned in these pages. He has so effectually performed his task, in his “Wind and Current Charts,” that there is little left to be desired. The most unscientific and practical navigator, may, by the aid of these charts, find the road he is in quest of. Maury has been, in an eminent degree, the benefactor of the very men who became most abusive of him, when they found that he, like other Southern statesmen—for he is a statesman as well as sailor—was obliged to preserve his self-respect, by spitting upon the “old flag.” He has saved every Yankee ship, by shortening her route, on every distant voyage she makes, thousands of dollars. The greedy ship-owners pocket the dollars, and abuse the philosopher.[2]