On Board the "Rocket"

by Robert C. Adams

In the morning the fog lifted and the wind came out dead ahead. Two pilot boats came running down from the Cape Ann shore, and the leading one, being intent on securing both our vessel and a ship to leeward, dropped a pilot in a "canoe" while sailing ten knots an hour, and sped on to the other ship, thus successfully cutting out her rival. The pilot pulled alongside of us, and we took both himself and his boat on board. Many eager questions were asked, one of the first being, if the "F——" had arrived? We were told she had not, and we had the satisfaction of beating her eight days on the passage. All day we were beating up the Bay, and at 10 P.M. took a tow boat off Boston Light which soon brought us alongside Central Wharf, where we made fast early on a Sunday morning after ninety-three days passage from Padang. In the morning I stepped on to the wharf to take a survey from a new point of view of what had been my home for so many months. As I was standing near the stern I noticed some sailors belonging to the Revenue Cutter, sitting down with their backs toward me and their legs hanging over the edge of the wharf. They were discussing the looks of the vessel, and I heard one of them say, "I wouldn't want to go to sea in that bark. She must be a regular workhouse. Everything aboard of her is scraped bright from her trucks to her fenders. Just see how that royal-yard shines!"

I walked up to them and said: "Boys, does she look well?"

"Yes," answered the one that had just spoken; "a neater looking vessel than that never came into this harbor."

"Well," said I, "her crew haven't lost a watch below the whole voyage."

"Oh! that's a different thing then," said he; "if a man has watch and watch he's got no right to complain. Of course he expects to work in his watch on deck."

The next day the crew were paid off, all being sober except Murphy. I handed him his money and said, "Take good care of that and don't throw it away." Murphy was already well past a condition to take care of anything. He had indulged in one good spree the night before, and was now what would be called "ugly drunk." His thick black hair was tossed about in confusion over his head, and his dark eyes fairly snapped with passion. Holding his money in his clenched fist he brandished it aloft and said, "Cap'n, all that's going for rum," and off he went with a waiting land-shark, who no doubt sent him to sea within a week, penniless and ragged. But everybody else was sober, and on the whole the crew made a very creditable appearance, so much so that it excited remarks from many who saw them.

As I went on shore I met the shipping master, old Capt. Harding. "Your crew make a good show for themselves to-day," said he. "I never saw a more orderly set, or heard any crack their ship up quite so much. There was one man standing by me while I was talking to a gentleman, and hearing me say something about the bark he put in his handspike and said he, 'That's the best ship that sails out of this port. The captain of her is a gentleman and a sailor and a Christian. We obeyed him just out of the respect we had for him. There's nothing of the humbug about him. He doesn't go round the decks trying to scare up work just to haze men. The officers were good men, too. They've kept us at work pretty sharp, but we had watch and watch the whole time, south-east trades and all. She's in fine order and we did all the work up except to scrape the belaying pins. We had to let those go. I'm sorry we didn't have time to scrape them.'"

"After he went away the gentleman said, 'That sounds well, doesn't it? That's better than broken heads and curses and lawsuits.' I told him I thought I knew all the ins and outs of a sailor, but it was something new to me to hear one regret he 'didn't have time to scrape the belaying-pins.'"

The crew all went to the Sailors' Home, except Murphy, and behaved well. Old Brown was a well-known character in Boston, and I was told this was the first time he had ever kept sober in port. His friends were quite astonished at such good conduct. He went to San Francisco on his next voyage, and I heard afterwards that the mate of the ship had selected him as a good man to "bully," he being quiet and inoffensive. He beat him and drove him about the decks in a way that completely disheartened him, and on reaching port he took to drinking again and was "beastly drunk" all the time he was on shore.