Stories like these are what the pilots tell in their idle hours. Searching for them at such a time, one is most likely to find them at the Pilots' Club, a flourishing social organization, which has roomy quarters just under the roof of a big office building within hailing distance of the Battery. Here at all hours of the day a score or more of pilots are sure to be sitting about spinning yarns, playing cards and checkers and reading the newspapers and magazines. Their well-furnished clubrooms contain a great number of precious curios—relics from all quarters of the globe. There are firearms of curious antique pattern; autograph letters by such famous sea-dogs as Macdonough and Porter; a tiny chest of drawers carved from one of the timbers of John Paul Jones' ship, the Bon Homme Richard; a portrait of Washington by Stuart, surrounded by two large American flags, and a model of the pilot-boat Stingaree, which was built in 1810, and was one of the most famous crafts of her day.
This model shows that the years have wrought great changes in the building and rigging of pilot-boats. In old times the boats simply carried mainsail, foresail, and forestaysail and jib. They had no foretopmast, and on their maintopmast carried a flying gaff-topsail, which was hoisted from the deck. Now the boats have both fore and maintopmasts, and each carries a mainsail, foresail, forestaysail, jib, jib-topsail, maintopsail and staysail and fore and main standing-gaff topsails, which give them an immense spread of sail, compared with that used by the boats of earlier times. A schooner-rigged pilot-boat costs from $15,000 to $16,000. That was about the cost of the Caldwell H. Colt, a good example of the typical pilot-boat. She is eighty-five feet long with twenty-one feet beam, 61.43 tons, custom-house register, and a rig as trim and jaunty as that of an ordinary yacht. The pride, however, at present writing, of the New York Sandy Hook fleet is the New York, built of steel, propelled by steam, and able to stand as much buffeting in cyclonic seas as the stanchest of the liners. She was built on the Delaware from designs by A. Cary Smith, is 155 feet long, 28 feet beam, 19 feet 7 inches deep, and is driven by a compound surface-condensing engine of 100 horse-power. Her pole masts are of steel, and she spreads on them enough canvas to steady her. The New York has accommodations for twenty-four pilots, who fare more luxuriously than they ever did on any of the old sailing craft. They have a smoking-room in a separate steel deckhouse, aft of the engine-room, fitted up like a similar room on an ocean steamship, while the lifeboats in which they leave the New York to board incoming vessels are hoisted and lowered by a steam derrick in less than a minute. It is intended that in a few years the entire fleet shall be made up of vessels equal if not superior to the New York.
CHAPTER VII THE DEEP-SEA DIVER
There is something about the occupation of the diver that strongly appeals to the imagination, and with reason, for working fathoms below the surface of the water, in semi-darkness, dependent upon a rickety pump for the breath of life, his trade is at best a perilous and precarious one. Perhaps, that is why divers as a class are opposed to taking apprentices, and that a majority of the men who drift into the calling do so by accident. Most divers, if you question them, will tell you that the best, if not the only way to acquire their art is to put on a diving suit, go down into the depths, and learn the business for yourself.
That was what a diver who was preparing for work in the East River said to me, and, fitting the action to the word, I asked him to loan me his suit, and permit me to try my 'prentice hand at the business. He protested goodnaturedly, but finally yielding, brought out his suit, and helped me to put it on. The outfit in which I speedily found myself accoutred, consists of two suits, one within the other, and both of india-rubber. The stockings, trousers and shirt are all made together as one garment, which the wearer enters at the neck, feet first. The hands are left bare, the wristbands of the rubber shirtsleeves tightly compressing the wrists. There is a copper breastplate, bearing upon its outer convex surface small screws adjusted to holes in the neck of the shirt, which by means of nuts fastened upon the screws, is held so securely in place as to render the entire dress from the neck downward absolutely air and water-tight. Fitting with equal closeness to the breastplate is a helmet, completely inclosing the head and supplied with three glasses, one in front and one on each side, to enable the diver to look in any direction. Finally, for his feet there is a pair of very thick leather shoes, made to lace up the front, and supplied with heavy leaden soles to prevent him from turning feet uppermost in the water.
When, with my friend's aid, I had donned this curious-looking dress, he placed across my shoulders ropes sustaining two leaden weights, one hanging at my breast and the other at my back. Sometimes in very strong currents it is necessary to make the weights which the diver carries extraordinarily heavy. Such was the case with those hanging over my shoulders on the occasion of my first dive. While the diving dress I wore weighed of itself nearly two hundred pounds, yet, much to my surprise, when once below the surface, I did not find the burden I sustained in wearing it any more than I did that of my ordinary clothing when out of the water. It also seemed marvelous to me, after daylight had swiftly merged into the twilight of the depths, that though I was several fathoms under water my breathing was free and unconstrained, for an air-pump worked by two men supplies the diver with air, which passes into his helmet through a hose at the back. Near the place of its entrance is a spring valve for its escape. This can be controlled by the diver, but he usually sets it before going into the water and seldom disturbs it afterward, since the pressure of the air being greater than that of the water a surplus of the former readily escapes.
When the valve proves insufficient to permit the escape of all the dead air the diver can open in his breast-plate a similar spring valve intended only for such an emergency. He can also regulate the amount of air pumped to him by signals on the air-hose to the men engaged in pumping, one pull meaning more and two pulls less air. These signals by means of the air-hose are generally used by all divers, but each diver has also his own private code of signals upon the life-line, which is always fastened to his waist, and by which he is drawn up out of the water. These signals each diver writes down very carefully and gives to the man in charge of the life-line. By means of these he can, without coming to the surface, send for tools, material or anything needed for the work he has in hand. When a lengthy communication is to be made the diver often sends up for a slate and writes what he wishes to say. Old divers declare that it is just as easy to read and write under the water as it is out of it, all objects being greatly magnified.
The only unpleasant sensation of my stay below was a slight drumming in the ears—walking under the water I found an easy matter—and when hauled to the surface I declared my first attempt at diving a wholly successful one. However, the man whose suit I had borrowed, smiled at my enthusiasm, and declared with something akin to contempt that there was a good deal of difference between deep-sea diving and grubbing about the East River for a lost anchor. I learned before we parted that he was a deep-sea diver forced for the moment to accept whatever task came to hand, but there was truth in what he said; and I am also convinced, after talks with a dozen members of his fraternity, that neither a single descent nor even many descents into the depths, can give one an adequate idea of the weird strangeness of a diver's life. That can come only from the cumulative experience of a lifetime.