Eleven years ago the Americans gave an indication of spirit and pluck in the conception and fulfilment of a very bold enterprise. Mr Hudson, the owner of a small craft named the Red White and Blue, fitted it up for an ocean-trip to England. It was a life-boat, built of galvanised iron, only twenty-six feet in length, six feet in breadth of beam, and three feet deep from deck to hold. Small as it was, the Red White and Blue carried what sailors call a very cloud of canvas; it had mainsail, spritsails, staysails, courses, topsails, royals, top-gallants, sternsails, trysails, three masts, bowsprit, booms, yards, gaffs, jib-boom, yard-tops, cross jack yards, spankers, and all the rest of it—an enormous amount of furniture, one would think, for so small a house. The boat was sharp at both ends, had water-tight compartments lengthwise and transverse, and safety-valves which would enable her to right herself in a few minutes if flooded. There was a tiny cockpit for the steersman near the mizzen-mast, in which he sat somewhat in the same position as Mr Macgregor in his Rob Roy canoe. The air-cylinders at each end of the boat and along the sides, customary in life-boats, assisted in maintaining the buoyancy and upright position. It is amusing to read of a mainmast only seven feet high and a bowsprit of two feet in length; but the juvenile ship was proportionate in all these matters, and bravely she looked, a plucky handsome little craft.
The crew of the Red White and Blue was as exceptional as the boat itself. The owner, Captain John M. Hudson, took the command; Mr Frank E. Fitch acted as mate; while in lieu of petty officers, able seamen, and ordinary seamen was a dog named 'Fanny.' On the 9th of July 1866 the pigmy ship took farewell of Sandy Hook, near New York, on a voyage of unknown duration and uncertain vicissitude. At midnight on the 18th the boat struck against something hard and solid, but fortunately without receiving much damage. They sailed on till the 5th of August, when they fell in with the brig Princess Royal, hailing from Yarmouth, and obtained a bottle of rum, two newspapers (very precious to the wayfarers), and a signal-lamp. Narrowly escaping a complete overturn on the 8th, they spoke with the barque Welle Merryman, from which they obtained two bottles of brandy. After another peril of capsizing, they at length sighted English land, the Bill of Portland, on the 14th. Beating up the Channel, the boat entered Margate Harbour on the 16th, after being thirty-seven days at sea. The little craft created no small astonishment at Margate. As there was no chronometer on board, the calculations of distance, direction, &c. had to be made by compass, line, and dead-reckoning. So little opportunity had there been of obtaining a fire, that the food (mostly preserved in air-tight tins) had to be eaten cold. The original store of a hundred and twenty gallons of water supplied their wants with this essential requisite. Poor Fanny the dog did not at all relish the voyage; constant exposure to the weather so weakened her that she died soon after reaching Margate. When the Red White and Blue was afterwards exhibited at the Crystal Palace, a little incredulity was expressed as to the reality of the voyage; but as the names of the vessels spoken with were given and the dates of meeting, there seems no reason to doubt the faithfulness of the narrative. The two navigators, however, did not return to America in the same way; they had 'had enough of it.'
A still bolder achievement, in so far as the number of the crew was concerned, was that of Alfred Johnson, who in June 1876 started from America in a small boat manned only by himself. Quitting the port of Gloucester, Massachusetts, on the 15th, he had fine weather for a time, but then experienced some of the peril of Atlantic voyaging under exceptional circumstances. Fogs and head winds compelled him to put into Shake Harbour, where he had his compass corrected. Starting again on the 25th, he experienced tolerably fair weather until the 7th of July, when a heavy gale set in from the south-west. The combings of the hatchway were started, and the water, finding entrance, damaged some of his provisions. The gale subsiding, he was favoured with fine weather and fair wind until the 16th; and a strong breeze in the right direction coming on, he made good progress till the 2d of August. When about three hundred miles from the Irish coast, the wind increased to a hurricane; he hove to, but in unshipping his mast for this purpose, the boat got broadside on a large wave and was upset. Johnson clambered on the upturned bottom, where he remained for about twenty minutes. By dexterous management he succeeded in righting the boat, got in, and pumped it dry; everything, however, was wetted by the upset, and he lost his square-sail and kerosene lamp.
Wending his way as winds permitted, he reached within a hundred miles of the Irish coast by the 7th, spoke a ship, and obtained some bread and fresh water—both of which had become very scanty with him. On the following day he got soundings, but fog prevented him from seeing land. On the 10th he sighted Milford, near the south-west extremity of Wales. He landed at Abercastle in Pembrokeshire on the 11th, after being fifty-seven days at sea; starting again, he put into Holyhead, and finally arrived at Liverpool on the 21st. The little Centennial, which measured only twenty feet in length over all, had run about seventy miles a day on an average. Johnson maintained his general health excellently well, though suffering from want of sleep.
The little boat that has recently crossed the Atlantic differed from Johnson's in this among other particulars, that it had a crew of two persons, one of whom was a woman. Certainly this woman will have something to talk about for the rest of her life: seeing that we may safely assign to her a position such as her sex has never before occupied—that of having managed half the navigation of a little ocean-craft for some three thousand miles. The New Bedford, so designated after the town of the same name in Massachusetts (the state from which Johnson also hailed), is only twenty feet long, with a burden of a little over a ton and a half; built of cedar, and rigged as (in sailor-phrase) a 'leg-of-mutton schooner;' with two masts and one anchor. Anything less ocean-like we can hardly conceive. Captain Thomas Crapo, the owner of this little affair, is an active man in the prime of life; and his better-half proves herself worthy to be the helpmate of such a man. On the 28th of May in the present year, Captain and Mrs Crapo embarked in their tiny ocean-boat, provided with such provisions and stores as they could stow away under the deck. The steersman (or steerswoman) sat in a sunken recess near the stern, with head and bust above the level of the deck; the other took any standing-place that he could get for managing the sails, rope, anchor, &c. The boat had no chronometer; and the progress had to be measured as best it could by dead-reckoning.
The boat, soon after leaving New Bedford, was forced by stress of weather to seek a few days' shelter at Chatham, a small port in the same state. Hoisting sail again on the 2d of June, the boat set off with a fair wind; and all went well for three days. An adverse wind then sprang up, a fog overspread the sky, and for ten days the voyage continued under these unfavourable circumstances. Whilst near the shoal known as the Great Banks, a keg was seen floating; this was secured, and the iron hoops utilised (with the aid of canvas) in making a drogue—one which was included among the outfit of the boat being found too light for its purpose. The boat, after lying to for three or four days in a gale of wind, started again, and sailed on till the 21st of June, when another gale necessitated another stoppage. The New Bedford sighted the steamer Batavia, which offered to take the lonely pair of navigators on board: an offer kindly appreciated, but courteously declined. After this meeting, a succession of gales was encountered, and the rudder broke; a spare oar was made to act as a substitute. The sea ran so very high that even when lying down to rest, husband and wife had to lie on wet clothes, everything on board being sloppy and half saturated. At one portion of this trying period Captain Crapo had to steer for seventy hours uninterruptedly, his wife being incapacitated from rendering the aid which was her wont; and on another occasion he had to pay eighteen hours' close attention to the drogue. The voyage terminated on the 21st of July, after a duration of fifty-four days. The average sleep of the captain did not exceed four hours a day; and he had no sleep at all during the last seventy hours of the run. He had intended to make Falmouth his port of arrival, but was glad to make for Penzance instead.
The surname of Crapo, we were informed by the captain, is not uncommon at New Bedford. The good wife is Swedish by descent, Scotch by birth, American by marriage—a citizen of the world. In examining the boat closely (which we have done), it becomes more than ever a marvel how it could have formed the home of a married couple for seven weeks. Descending through a small hatchway, the feet rest on the floor of (let us say) the state-cabin, an apartment three feet high; consequently the head and body project above the hatchway. By spreading blankets and rugs, and crouching down by degrees, a would-be sleeper can lie down under the deck, or two sleepers close to the two sides of the boat. The wife of course acted as stewardess, cook, parlour-maid, scullery-maid, &c., leaving her husband to manage most of the navigation. The sperm-oil lamp for the compass-binnacle; the kerosene or petroleum lamp for the cooking-stove; the receptacles for biscuit and preserved meats and vegetables; the butler's pantry for a few bottles of spirits; the vessels for containing water—all were packed into a marvellously small space. The drogue (already mentioned) is a kind of floating anchor which, dragged after the vessel by means of a long rope, helps to steady it in certain states of the wind. Five hundred pounds weight of stores and six hundred of iron ballast, kept the boat sufficiently low in the water.
Such were the interior arrangements of one of those strange small vessels which adventurously attempt to cross the Atlantic.
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