Battling with waves and lawyers

by Unknown

The real hardened wicked,

Wha hae nae check but human law,

Are to a few restricted;

But, Oh! mankind are unco weak,

And little to be trusted;

If self the wavering balance shake,

It’s rarely right adjusted.—Burns.

Kilpatrick v. Huddart, Parker and Co. being the first trial of its sort that ever took place in Victoria, much more than ordinary interest was taken in the proceedings. Each day during its progress the court was crowded by people, principally nautical, who apparently gave the case their closest attention. Considering that the eminent Counsel engaged on each side were called upon to use and listen to technical phrases, which they could not possibly know much about, they got on remarkably well, and talked glibly of “port and starboard,” “weather and lee bulwarks,” “scupper holes,” “garboard streaks,” etc. Personally, I spent a good many hours listening to the different opinions given by the various witnesses as they passed through the water of examination and the fire of cross-examination. Being myself an “old salt” I was amused, if not enlightened, at the familiar jargon, and it did not require a very great stretch of imagination for me to fancy that I was for the nonce back once more amongst the “toilers of the sea.”

At the same time I must confess that I was a good deal astonished at many of the opinions given out from the witness box. These opinions—while strictly upholding the truth of the old adage, “Many men, many minds”—were no doubt well meant, and even if some of them were a little ridiculous, I daresay the various witnesses spoke “according to their lights.” If not considered audacity on my part, I would like to draw attention to a number of these “notions.” For instance, one witness on being asked how he would have blocked the pantry window during the time the water was pouring through it, replied that he would have got “a hammer and chisel and cut a few holes in the iron bulks-head, through which, by means of bolts, he would have fastened an iron plate, making all secure in half an hour.” To have done a job like that when the ship was lying alongside the wharf would have been, in my estimation, a very smart half hour’s work, but to do it when the ship was wallowing in the sea, now rolling to windward, and now on her beam ends, and the decks full of raging water, was simply an utter impossibility. Admitting, which I do not, that the plate could have been put on in half an hour, the ship would have been down before the job was finished! Ergo. It is much easier to do a perilous job in a witness box than have nerve enough to do it on a sinking ship!

Another witness for the defendants said he would have fastened a piece of canvas over the window; while a third, fourth, and fifth stated they would have stopped the water from getting in by means of “a cushion” “a pillow,” or “a bit of anything.” Just so; and this is how these men of imaginary fertile resources throw slush on the memory of Captain Mathieson—as able and tried a seaman as ever walked a plank—as if he, and those with him, had not done all that men could do under the circumstances. Again, two of the defendants’ witnesses—neither of them a sailor by the way—were of opinion that “by the wind getting underneath the wooden awning when the ship was lying over, it would have a lifting tendency, and, like a sail, would buoy the vessel up.” For the benefit of landsmen, or of those whose knowledge of nautical affairs is only superficial, I may here state that if a main trysail had been set on the ship, it would have had a lifting tendency, because the wind, after striking flatly against the sail, must escape somewhere, and there being considerably more room for escape at the upper part of the sail than at the lower, the wind consequently goes upward, i. e. Above the gaff the wind has boundless space to fly to; while beneath the boom the exit space is confined to the small area between the boom and the ship’s deck. Anyone who has ever been half way out on a ship’s gaff—as I have been many a time—when a trysail was set could not fail to feel the wind blowing him up from below, and pretty strongly too. On the other hand, a ship lying over with a big wooden awning on her poop, the wind, being abeam, would enter on the upper or weather side, and must rush through to leeward or downward, thus having a powerfully depressing effect upon the ship. Further, if the awning happened to be choked to leeward by the sea, the depressing tendency would thereby be rendered all the more acute, by reason of the wind not being able to get out. Even a schoolboy, if he gave the subject the slightest reflection, would be convinced that in this case, as in every other, the wind must follow the dictates of nature, instead of being guided by the theories of non-practical men. Another witness for the defence—who also is not a sailor—averred that “the amount of freeboard a ship has is no proof of her sea-worthiness.” This is true in a sense, for different ships require to be loaded, or trimmed, in different ways. I have been in ships that were at their best when trimmed a few inches by the head, but I never saw, or heard of, a long, small ship—except, of course, the Alert—that was considered in good trim to go to sea with a freeboard aft of only a few inches, and nearly the whole of her out of the water foreward! I don’t say that it is impossible for a vessel in the last named condition to be sea-worthy, but I do say that I would have to be out at sea with her a few times in a breeze of wind before I believed it. While dealing with weather, I may as well point out that Captain Barrett of the ship Hesperus—although his vessel was not within a hundred miles of where the Alert was—said in his evidence that “it was so bad that he did not think it just to take a pilot for his ship on account of the danger to which he (the pilot) would be exposed in boarding on the afternoon of the Alert’s wreck.” Good, kind, considerate man! he is just the sort of captain I should like to sail with. Then Pilot Mitchell also stated that “the weather was so bad between three and five on the afternoon of 28th December, 1893, that he did not think he would have boarded any ship at that time.” However, just as there are different ways of trimming ships, so there are different ways of getting a pilot on board. As a case in point, I remember on one voyage we were bound to Queenstown (Cork) for orders. While we were still out of sight of land—it being at least a hundred miles off—a pilot boat bore down on us one morning in answer to our signal. A gale of wind was blowing, and a very heavy sea running at the time, so much so that if the “hooker” (a name given to Queenstown pilot boats) had come alongside of us she would have been instantly swamped. To have attempted to lower a small boat, either from our ship or the “hooker,” would have been utter madness, as no boat could have lived in such a sea. After bringing the “hooker” near enough to make a bargain, by word of mouth, as to the cost of taking us into port, one of the pilots sung out for us to heave a deep sea leadline on board of the “hooker.” Our best leadsman threw, after three or four attempts, the line amongst the pilots, and then one of them made the line fast around his waist and jumped overboard, his mates at the same time calling out to us, “Haul away boys!” Whilst the process of hauling in was going on, we would catch a glimpse of our pilot now on the crest of a wave, floating “like a cork,” and then he would disappear altogether in the trough of the sea. A few minutes sufficed to drag him on board, and his first exclamation as he jumped upon our deck was, “It’s hurdy weather, me boys.” Within a quarter of an hour after coming on board, behold our pilot—with a stiff glass of grog in him and a dry suit of the skipper’s clothes on him—walking the poop and conning the ship as if he had been on board of her for a month! We were safe in the “Cove of Cork” next day, and the entire cost of the job was, as per agreement, £10.