Three Sailor Boys; or, Adrift in the Pacific

by Verney Lovett Cameron

By the time this was finished, the ship was hidden from our sight by the storm; and soon the freshness of the rain turned to salt from the spray driven by the wind, and the full force and fury of the storm fell on us.

Fortunately the sea did not get up rapidly, being kept down by the strength of the wind, and Tom managed to keep us bows on, and our hastily-extemporized sea-anchor prevented it from breaking over us; but Bill and I had all our work cut out to bail out the water, which we did with a bailer and bucket that were by good-luck in the boat.

After about two hours, as it must have been, though to us it seemed much longer, the storm abated, leaving a nasty, confused sea; but we were able to keep the boat afloat and fairly dry, though the long, dark night was most dreary.

At last the day began to dawn, and when the sun rose the clouds dispersed and the sea got calmer by degrees. Our first anxiety was to look for the Golden Fleece, and we eagerly scanned the horizon for some signs of her; but not a sail was to be seen, and we three lads were alone in an open boat on the wide ocean.

Before going any farther I may as well describe the three occupants of the boat, and say who we were. Tom Arbor, as the eldest, should stand first. He was about seventeen years of age, and was strong built and active. Like Seaman and myself, he was an orphan and the son of a sailor drowned at sea. His mother had brought him up to the best of her ability, and would have kept him with her, and opposed his following in his father’s footsteps and going to sea with her utmost power; but she could no more prevail with him than a hen who has sat upon ducks’ eggs can stop her brood from taking to the nearest water by clucking. Accordingly, when but twelve years of age, he had stowed himself away on board a ship bound round the Horn to California; and, not being found till long after the pilot had left, had made the voyage, and, the skipper being a kindly man, had been well treated. When he came home he had found his mother married again to a small shopkeeper, and she no longer said a word against his being a sailor; and he had made a voyage to China and back before shipping on board the Golden Fleece, about six months before. He was a cheerful, good-natured lad, with dark-brown hair and eyes, and was certainly for his years a good sailor, and could hand, reef, and steer, splice a rope, and pull an oar as well as many who were longer at sea and older in years.

Bill Seaman had been picked up on the sea-shore when about two years old, and was supposed to be the only survivor from the wreck of a large ship, in which it was thought his father had been lost; but no means had come to hand to establish who his father was, and he had, by the interest of some of the gentry living near where he was found, been brought up in an establishment for the orphans of sailors till it was closed, and he was sent to a workhouse. He was a clever, bright boy, but small for his age.

My mother had died when I was born, and when the ship in which my father was an A.B. came home, the news was given to an aunt of my mother’s who had taken charge of me that he had fallen off the fore-topsail yard off Cape Horn in a winter gale and been drowned; so my old relative, the only one I ever knew, had obtained admission for me into the same asylum as Seaman; and as she died soon after, I was as destitute of friends or relations as he was. In this asylum we continued till about the age of seven, when from one cause or another it was closed, and Seaman and myself were sent to a workhouse.

Here our life was by no means a happy one, and two or three times we ran away and tried to get taken as boys on board ships sailing from the sea-port near which the workhouse was; but no one would take us, as we were too small and young, and we were always caught and taken back to the workhouse, where we were flogged and severely punished for our attempts to escape.

As may be imagined, our repeated attempts to escape did not cause our treatment to be any better; so, after the last time we were brought back, when we had undergone our punishment, Bill and I consulted together and agreed—we were only twelve at the time—that we should wait until we were two years older, when we hoped to be big and strong enough to be accepted by some captain, and then to make another try for freedom.

During these two years we did all in our power to be considered good boys, and with some success, and applied ourselves to learning the trades which were taught us, Bill being taught shoemaking, while I was instructed in carpentering; and at the end of these two years we had both made some progress.