The Wind-Jammers

by T. Jenkins Hains

THE average man knows as little of the region where the backbone of the American continent disappears beneath the ocean as he does of the heart of Africa. The mighty chain of mountains that raise their peaks miles above the surrounding country at the equator sink gradually until only a single cone-shaped hump—the last vertebra—raises itself above the sea in latitude 55° 50’ south. This is the desolate and uninhabited end of the southern continent, commonly known as Cape Horn, and no man gets any nearer to it than he can help. Past it flows the deep ocean stream known as the Pacific Antarctic Drift, and over it whirl fierce hurricanes in almost uninterrupted succession.

To the southward and westward rise the jagged rocks of the Ramirez, but these do not break in any manner the force of the high, rolling sea which sweeps down from the Pacific. There is but little life on any of these tussock-covered peaks, and they offer no shelter, save to the white albatross and the wingless penguin.

It is past this dreaded cape, in a region of almost continual storm and with a rapidly shifting needle, the navigator of the sailing vessel has to drive his way. The Straits of Magellan offer no passage to the handler of square canvas, and the furious, whirling current of the Le Maire is usually avoided, as when navigated it only saves a few miles of westing. The floating ice is always a dreaded menace, for with the spume-drift flying before a freezing gale and surrounded by the gloom of the high latitude in winter, it is difficult to distinguish an object fifty fathoms ahead of a ship’s cut-water.

Rough, hard men were the “wind-jammers” as they were called, who earned a right to live by driving overloaded ships around this cape, from 50° south latitude on one side to 50° south latitude on the other. With the yards “jammed” hard on the backstays, they would take advantage of every slant in the wind, until at last it would swing fair, and then away they would go, running off for the other side of the world with every rag the vessel would stand tugging away at clew and earring, sending her along ten or twelve knots an hour towards the latitude of the trade-wind.

Men of iron nerve, used to suffering and hardship, they were, for they had to stand by for a call to shorten sail at any hour of the day or night. Their food consisted of salt-junk and hardtack, with roasted wheat boiled for coffee, and a taste of sugar to sweeten it. Beans and salt pork were the only other articles to vary the monotonous and unhealthful diet. As for lime-juice, it existed only in the imagination of the shipping commissioner who signed-on the men.

The Silver Sea was manned and officered by a set of men who had been longer in the trade around the Cape than any others of the deep-water fleet. She crossed the 50th parallel on the morning of June 20, and not being certain of her exact longitude, Captain Enoch Moss headed her a trifle to the eastwards to clear Staten Land. The second day afterwards land was looked for, the first to be seen in eighty days out of New York.

Enoch Moss was said to be a hard man among hard men. His second mate was a man named Garnett, a fellow who had been so smashed, shot, and stove up, in the innumerable fracases in which he had taken part, that to an unnautical eye he appeared an almost helpless old man. His twisted bow-legs, set wide apart, gave him a peculiar lurching motion when he walked, and suggested the idea that he was continually trying to right himself into equilibrium upon the moving world beneath his feet.

A large, red-headed Irishman, with a freckled, hairless face, named O’Toole, was the first officer on board. It was his watch on deck, and he stood, quadrant in hand, calling off time sights to the skipper, who sat below checking up his reckoning.

Garnett sat on the main-hatch and smoked, waiting and resting, for he seldom turned in during his day watches below. A man sat in the maintop, and, as O’Toole took his last sight, hailed the deck.

“Land ho!” he bawled. “Little for’ard o’ the beam!” And he pointed to the ragged peaks of Staten Land showing dimly through the haze to the westward. It was very close reckoning after all, and O’Toole was well pleased as he bawled the news down the companion-way to the skipper. Then he turned to Garnett, who had come on the poop.