The Reminiscences of an Astronomer

by Simon Newcomb

We had a rather rough passage, from which Father Perry was the greatest sufferer. One day he heard a laugh from the only lady on board, who was in the adjoining stateroom. "Who can laugh at such a time as this!" he exclaimed. He made a vow that he would never go on the ocean again, even if the sun and moon fought for a month. But the vows of a seasick passenger are forgotten sooner than any others I know of; and it was only four years later that Father Perry made a voyage to Kerguelen Island, in the stormiest ocean on the globe, to observe a transit of Venus.

Off the coast of Spain, the leading chains of the rudder got loose, during a gale in the middle of the night, and the steering apparatus had to be disconnected in order to tighten them. The ship veered round into the trough of the sea, and rolled so heavily that a table, twenty or thirty feet long, in the saloon, broke from its fastenings, and began to dance around the cabin with such a racket that some of the passengers feared for the safety of the ship.

Just how much of a storm there was I cannot say, believing that it is never worth while for a passenger to leave his berth, if there is any danger of a ship foundering in a gale. But in Professor Tyndall's opinion we had a narrow escape. On arriving at Gibraltar, he wrote a glowing account of the storm to the London Times, in which he described the feelings of a philosopher while standing on the stern of a rolling ship in an ocean storm, without quite knowing whether she was going to sink or swim. The letter was anonymous, which gave Admiral Ommaney an excellent opportunity to write as caustic a reply as he chose, under the signature of "A Naval Officer." He said that sailor was fortunate who could arrange with the clerk of the weather never to have a worse storm in crossing the Bay of Biscay than the one we had experienced.

We touched at Cadiz, and anchored for a few hours, but did not go ashore. The Brooklyn, an American man-of-war, was in the harbor, but there was no opportunity to communicate with her, though I knew a friend of mine was on board.

Gibraltar is the greatest babel in the world, or, at least, the greatest I know. I wrote home: "The principal languages spoken at this hotel are English, Spanish, Moorish, French, Italian, German, and Danish. I do not know what languages they speak at the other hotels." Moorish and Spanish are the local tongues, and of course English is the official one; but the traders and commercial travelers speak nearly every language one ever heard.

I hired a Moor—who bore some title which indicated that he was a descendant of the Caliphs, and by which he had to be addressed—to do chores and act as general assistant. One of the first things I did, the morning after my arrival, was to choose a convenient point on one of the stone parapets for "taking the sun," in order to test the running of my chronometer. I had some suspicion as to the result, but was willing to be amused. A sentinel speedily informed me that no sights were allowed to be taken on the fortification. I told him I was taking sights on the sun, not on the fortification. But he was inexorable; the rule was that no sights of any sort could be taken without a permit. I soon learned from Mr. Sprague, the American consul, who the proper officer was to issue the permit, which I was assured would be granted without the slightest difficulty. The consul presented me to the military governor of the place, General Sir Fenwick Williams of Kars. I did not know till long afterward that he was born very near where I was. He was a man whom it was very interesting to meet. His heroic defense of the town whose name was added to his own as a part of his title was still fresh in men's minds. It had won him the order of the Bath in England, the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor and a sword from Napoleon III., and the usual number of lesser distinctions. The military governor, the sole authority and viceroy of the Queen in the fortress, is treated with the deference due to an exalted personage; but this deference so strengthens the dignity of the position that the holder may be frank and hearty at his own pleasure, without danger of impairing it. Certainly, we found Sir Fenwick a most genial and charming gentleman. The Alabama claims were then in their acute stage, and he expressed the earnest hope that the two nations would not proceed to cutting each other's throats over them.

There was no need of troubling the governor with such a detail as that of a permit to take sights; but the consul ventured to relate my experience of the morning. He took the information in a way which showed that England, in making him a general, had lost a good diplomatist. Instead of treating the matter seriously, which would have implied that we did not fully understand the situation, he professed to be greatly amused, and said it reminded him of the case of an old lady in "Punch" who had to pass a surveyor in the street, behind a theodolite. "Please, sir, don't shoot till I get past," she begged.

Before leaving England, I had made very elaborate arrangements, both with the Astronomer Royal and with the telegraph companies, to determine the longitude of Gibraltar by telegraphic signals. The most difficult part of the operation was the transfer of the signals from the end of the land line into the cable, which had to be done by hand, because the cable companies were not willing to trust to an automatic action of any sort between the land line and the cable. It was therefore necessary to show the operator at the point of junction how signals were to be transmitted. This required a journey to Port Curno, at the very end of the Land's End, several miles beyond the terminus of the railway. It was the most old-time place I ever saw; one might have imagined himself thrown back into the days of the Lancasters. The thatched inn had a hard stone floor, with a layer of loose sand scattered over it as a carpet in the bedroom. My linguistic qualities were put to a severe test in talking with the landlady. But the cable operators were pleasing and intelligent young gentlemen, and I had no difficulty in making them understand how the work was to be done.

The manager of the cable was Sir James Anderson, who had formerly commanded a Cunard steamship from Boston, and was well known to the Harvard professors, with whom he was a favorite. I had met him, or at least seen him, at a meeting of the American Academy ten years before, where he was introduced by one of his Harvard friends. After commanding the ship that laid the first Atlantic cable, he was made manager of the cable line from England to Gibraltar. He gave me a letter to the head operator at Gibraltar, the celebrated de Sauty.

I say "the celebrated," but may it not be that this appellation can only suggest the vanity of all human greatness? It just occurs to me that many of the present generation may not even have heard of the—