II
In sailing days the Americans were a maritime people, first among nations as naval architects. Their ships were magnificently found, handled with headlong daring, and broke sea records; indeed, the young skippers of that time have never been rivaled in seamanship. The bucko mates aspiring to succeed them were man stealers and slave drivers well armed, able to cow the boldest seamen in the world. They did not stick at murder. So the American ship might be puritanically Sabbatarian of a Sunday, and even moderately well fed in rare examples, but, on the whole, she had the reputation of a hell afloat. There were cases of the ship's company being driven to desert, and replaced by shanghaied men at every port, so that for a three-years' voyage the captain paid no wages.
By comparison the Canadian, and especially the Bluenose or Nova Scotian shipping, was even more hard-bitten, with man-killing mates as a speciality. The British merchant service, like the North American, was undermanned, and had a reputation also for being hungry, but it was rather more humane, and the death rate of ships and men least among maritime nations. The Norwegian death rate was highest, the ships being second-hand coffins, ill-found, but handled with gallant seamanship. French ships were well designed, beautifully built, admirably found, but double-manned to make amends for poor seamanship, and their people liable to sudden panic. Prussian or "Square-head" seamanship was fairly good, Russian a joke, the Mediterranean shipping classified as "dago," and the rest as "nigger."
The pen runs away with the writer. Blame the pen. As one descended from a race of mariners, brought up among retired shellbacks, serving before the mast just at the end of that great Golden Age of Seamanship, I cannot but look back. The life was bitter hard, the men grim humorists, the ships most gloriously beautiful. They thronged the straits of Dover, outward, taut on a fine bowline, or homeward running free, while purple shadows of the racing clouds swept green sea pastures, and England faded into silver haze. The Channel widened under golden sunshine the gateway of Adventure, and beyond lay enchanted seas where there were pirates still, dangerous tribes of savages, lone desert isles, Empires in the making through remote, obscure campaigns, stampedes to new-found gold fields, and hardy pioneering of wild lands. Aye, but there is heartache when memory lights the corridors of Time, when pictures come to life of scene and incident in the days when one was young and cared, took the long odds and lost, fought on, and tried, and won.
According to the Norsemen, who are sea-wise beyond the common run of mariners, the fore-and-aft sails of schooner, smack, or cutter were masculine of gender, while the ship's rig with square yards was rated feminine. So, the world over, a vessel square-rigged on the foremast, but schooner rigged on the mainmast, partook in its nature of both sexes, and was called hermaphrodite. Such was the brigantine Beaver, but having a cross jack and a topgallant sail on the main, her conduct as a whole was that of a perfect lady.
When the seamen were thrown into their two divisions, the mate and the second chose alternately, each trying to pick the best team. So the mate chose the larboard watch, and picked out Bill Fright in preference to the apprentices.
At actual work in making or shortening sail, each man had his proper station, the stronger seamen on the large sails of the foremast, the weaker on the smaller canvas aft. So Bill found his way aft, and barge-trained as he was, proved from the start the best man on the trysail and the staysails. Yet though he would break his heart with overanxiety to please the mate and prove his manhood, it took him many weeks to learn the crossjack and topgallant sails, and longer still to win the leadership, to be first aloft, first at the weather earning or the bunt, taking the posts of honor on the high swaying yards.
The builders had left a deal of rubbish in the 'tween decks, which the crew saved for fuel in the forecastle bogey. On that first evening at sea, while the Beaver was threading her way through the Downs and the Straits of Dover, the larboard watch rested from six P.M. to eight. They had firelight and leisure in their dogwatch below to get the place in order, the bedding in their bunks, and kit sorted out for use. Then they sat on the sea chests, and Auld Jock, the forecastle oracle, delivered a homily to instruct the young.
"Ye'll ken," he said, as he kindled his clay pipe with a coal from the fire, "that wi' the Scots Ahm Scotch, but when Ahm shipmates wi' the vulgar, as in the present circumstances, Ah speaks the vulgar tongue, which is the English, and that withoot a tr-r-ace o' Scottish accent."
"You bet your sweet socks," observed a Yankee, Silas by name, from Salem.