“Our old vessel had a splendid figure head. It was a woman painted white, holding a wand in her hand. The heavy seas broke it away from its fastenings and jammed it erect between the jib-boom guys while the pitching of the vessel made the wand seem as though someone was beckoning. It was a difficult matter even then for the old skipper to make some of his men believe the apparition they saw was the figure head jammed between the guys.”
It is a known fact that men have refused to sail in ships because the rats were leaving. When a youngster, suffering privation in New York City, I saw four apprentices and the steward desert from an English full rigger because they claimed the ship would be lost at sea, for the rats were jumping into the river they were so anxious to leave the vessel. I do not know if she reached another port but I know that I felt grateful to the rats. One of the boys having more clothes than he cared to carry, gave me an old coat which was a God-send to me at that time. I needed it badly.
There are many other superstitions of which I could write. Every sailor has at some time whistled for a breeze. Most of us have objected to having a parson on board, believing he would prove a Jonah. We have seen sharks persistently follow the ship when there has been a dead body on board in anticipation of a great feast.
Are you superstitious, dear reader? Then know that your great-great-grandfather or some other relative was an old salt.
THE LUCKY BAG
The Lucky Bag
IT always seemed to me that the lucky bag on a man-of-war was wrongly named. To the few it was a lucky bag, but to the large majority of seamen it was the unlucky bag.
What is the lucky bag? It is the place where the young recruit is taught that there is a place for everything, and everything must be in its place at certain times.
While serving on the U. S. S. Alliance, we shipped a landsman in Cape Town. He had passed the doctor’s examination and was served with an outfit of clothing from the paymaster’s stores. He was a strong young fellow, clean and neat in appearance, but his one great trouble was his carelessness in leaving his clothes, ditty box and other things around the decks when they should have been put in their proper places.
The very next day after his enlistment he went below on the berth deck after the forenoon’s exercises, to find his clothes bag. He searched and overhauled all the bags hanging on the jackstay near the mess chest belonging to his part of the ship, but could not find a bag with his number on it. The cook was a short, wiry cockney, who had just come below from infantry drill on the spar deck. He had not much time to waste, as in an hour all hands would be piped to dinner, and he must hasten and put his potatoes in the ship’s cook’s coppers and be ready to draw his boiling water when the ship’s cook shouted, “Get your coffee water.” He also had two coal passers who were going on watch at twelve o’clock. At seven bells (11.30) they would be making their appearance for dinner so that they could relieve their mates below, on time.