From Sea to Sea; Or, Clint Webb's Cruise on the Windjammer

by W. Bert Foster

On the Gypsey Girl “souse” was served in a bucket, set down in the middle of the long fo’castle table, and every man scooped his cup into the mess, broke in his hardtack, and inhaled it a good deal after the style of a pig at a trough. But for breakfast on this ship there was more good coffee, tack that was not mouldy and scraps of meat and potatoes fried together—a hearty, satisfying meal.

Each man washed and put away his own cup, plate and knife and fork. Some used their gulleys, or sheath-knives; but Thank and I had brought aboard proper table tools in our dunnage bags. After the breakfast was cleared away, and the fo’castle itself tidied up, the watch below busied itself in mending, sock darning, and such like odd jobs. A sailor has got to be his own tailor, seamstress and housewife; and even such a horny-handed and tar-fingered giant as Tom Thornton was mighty handy with his needle and “sailor’s palm.”

Some of the men shaved at this time, one cut another’s hair and trimmed his beard. The crew of the Gullwing respected themselves; the deck of the fo’castle was kept as well scrubbed as the deck above. Nobody came to the table without having scrubbed his face and hands clean; nor was the men’s clothing foul with tar or the grease of the running gear. They may all have been “sword-swallowers” when it came to “stowing their cargo ’tween hatches,” but cleanliness was the order, and the ordinary decencies of life were not ignored. These men may not have been particularly strong on etiquette, and were not “parlor broke,” as the saying is; but they were neat, accommodating, cheerful, and if they skylarked some, it was fun of a good-natured kind and was not objectionable.

I liked old Tom Thornton, for despite the cast in his eye, and his gorilla-like appearance, he was good hearted. He was just about covered with tattooing, I reckon. As he said, if he’d wanted to take any more indigo into his system he’d have to swallow it! Most of the work had been done on him by a South Sea Islander who had sailed in whaling ships and the like and made a little “on the side” by tattooing pictures on foolish sailors.

“’Taint done now, no more,” old Tom said, shaking his head. “But when I was a youngster it was the fashion. Poor Jack can’t afford to buy picters and have a family portrait gallery, or the like. But he used to be strong for art,” and the old man grinned.

“I was wrecked with this here nigger-man I tell you about. About all he saved from the wreck was his colors and bone needles, and the patterns he outlined his figgers from. We was held prisoner on that blamed reef, living on stuff from the wreck, for three months. There wasn’t nothing else to do. His tattooing me kept him from going crazy, and the smart of the thing kept me alive. So there you have it—tit for tat! He never charged me nothing for his work, neither, and I allus was a great lad for gittin’ a good deal for my money.”

Tom’s legs were mural paintings of serpents and sea monsters. He had anklets and bracelets worked in red and blue. On his back was a picture of three gallows with a man hanging in chains from the middle one. I believe that it was the ignorant South Sea native’s idea of the story of Calvary, for there was the typical cross and crown worked above it at the back of Tom’s neck. The mermaid on Tom’s chest could have won a job as fat woman with a traveling circus; but then, Tom had an enormous chest which had given the tattooer plenty of space to work on. Around his waist was tattooed a belt like a lattice-work fence. When he stripped to “sluice down,” as he called his daily bath, he looked as gay as a billboard.

At ten o’clock (six bells) of the forenoon watch most of the watch below turned in for a nap, and at half past eleven we answered the call to dinner. At noon we were on duty again until four o’clock. In pleasant weather this afternoon watch is a mighty easy one. Besides the man at the wheel and the two on lookout, the others haven’t much to do but tell stories, play checkers, or read. As long as everything was neat and shipshape the old man did not hound us to work at odd jobs as some masters do.

From four to eight p. m. the time is divided into two dog-watches, although the second half of that spell is the actual dog-watch. “Dog” is a corruption of “dodge,” the object of this division being to make an even number of watches to the twenty-four hours so that there will be a daily changing or shifting, thus dodging the routine. For example, the watch that goes below one day at noon will the next day come on deck at that hour.

At five-thirty our watch had supper and at six we took the deck once more until eight o’clock. Then we could sleep until midnight and from thence had the watch until four in the morning. It is a monotonous round—especially in fair weather. We were like to welcome a bit of a blow now and then, although the Gullwing was such a big ship, and her crew was so small, that all hands had to turn out to shorten or make sail. On some ships this fact would have made the crew ugly but these boys had even a good word for the cook or “doctor,” and usually Jack looks upon that functionary as his natural enemy.