Deck and port /

by Walter Colton

The truth is, man was never intended for a nautical being. He was made perfect, but he has sought out many inventions; and this going to sea is one of them. His pathway on the deep is hedged about with storms, icebergs, water-spouts, and breakers. But, in the strange perversity of his nature, he perseveres through the whole of them. He knows and feels that he is a fool in his nautical obstinacy, and yet he clings to it, as the inebriate to the cup that consumes his vitals. He seems to court hardship for its own sake, and to court peril for the excitement which it bestows. But for the indecency of the thing he would toll, in advance, his own funeral-bell, that its fearful monotone might tremble on his heart before it should be cold. And he would almost dig his own grave, that he might hear his coffin rumbling down to its rest.

Sunday, Nov. 23. Another Sabbath morn has poured its holy light on land and sea. On land, the stir of the village and the tumult of the great city have ceased. Men walk softly in the prelude of that rest which remains to the good. Sacred truth melts on their hearts like dew. No community in a Christian land can be utterly bereft of moral influence. If it has none from within, there is a pressure from without. The moral as well as physical atmosphere tends to an equilibrium. Righteous Lot may have fled from Sodom, but his warning voice rolled back upon the wind to the doomed city.

But a ship is cut off by its position from all extraneous influences. It is like a ball suspended in the centre of a hollow sphere. This isolation has placed it beyond the reach, and seemingly beyond the sympathies, of those who dwell on the land. They have regarded it as a thing apart from themselves, a thing with which they had no common bond of brotherhood, and they have abandoned it to its calamities and its crimes. When guilt and misery have done their worst, when the pirate-flag has been unfurled where the insignia of commerce streamed before, instead of accusing their own apathy and negligence, they have seemed to regard the terrible spectacle as some singular exemplification of divine justice—as some malignant star accursed and made

“A wandering hell in the eternal space.”

Monday, Nov. 24. Yesterday morning, as the men left their hammocks, the ominous whisper went round—“Spillier is dead!” He had died during the night, while storm and darkness rested on the face of the deep. Last evening, as the sun was going down, we consigned him to his floating grave. The deep-toned call, “All hands to bury the dead!” went like a knell through the ship. The body, wrapped in that hammock in which the deceased had swung to the force of the wind, was borne by his messmates, preceded by the chaplain of the ship, from the gun-deck up the forward hatch, and round the capstan to the lee-side; the band, with muffled drums, playing the “dead-march,” and the marine guard presenting arms. The commodore, the captain, and officers of the ship, took their position near the main-mast; the crew were stationed forward.

Then commenced the burial-service: “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall he live; and whosoever believeth in me shall never die.” When the solemn sentence was uttered, “We commit this body to the deep,” the inner end of the plank was lifted, and down its steep plane moved the hammocked dead, and a hoarse hollow sound followed the heavy plunge. The waters closed over the disappearing form—the ship glided on as before. Then, with impressive effect, came in the words, “Looking for the general resurrection in the last day, and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose second coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the earth and sea shall give up their dead, and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in Him shall be changed, and made like unto His own glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself.” The benediction followed, and the crew returned in silence to their stations.

Reader, when you die, it will be, I trust, in the sabbath calm of your hushed chamber; but the poor sailor dies at sea between the narrow decks of his rolling vessel. The last accents that will reach your ears will be those of kindness and affection, such as flow from a mother’s care, and a sister’s solicitude; the last sounds that reach the ears of the dying sailor are the hoarse murmurs of that wave which seems to complain at the delay of its victim. You will be buried beneath the green tree, where love and grief may go to plant their flowers and cherish your virtues; but the poor sailor is hearsed in the dark depths of the ocean, there to drift about, in its under-currents, to the great judgment-day. Alas, for the poor sailor! the child of misfortune, impulse, and error: his brief life filled with privation, hardship, and peril; his grave in the foaming deep! Though man pity him not, may God remember his weaknesses and trials in the day of his last account.

Tuesday, Nov. 25th. We have had for two days past a steady breeze from the southeast, and have run an average of seven knots the hour. We are now in the hope of making Rio in twenty days from this time. This will make our whole passage forty-six days,—not a bad run. The Columbia was ninety-three days making the same passage; but it was at the most unfavorable season of the year. To take this as a specimen of her sailing would be doing great injustice to that noble frigate.

Wednesda, Nov. 26th. We are to-day in lat. 18° 49′ N., long. 33° 46′ W., with a light steady breeze from the southeast. We are knocked off to the west of our course. We ought to head east of south, even with the variation in our favor. We are anxious to cross the line at twenty-seven or eight, to avoid the head winds of Cape St. Roque. We are where we ought to have the northeast trades, but we have not yet had a puff of wind from that quarter. Unless our present breeze hauls or dies we shall be obliged to tack, which will be about as agreeable as running back in a railroad-car to make way for a locomotive ahead, when you are in haste to get on. But we have one thing to console us, it is all in the cruise, so let the winds blow as they list.

The hammers of our blacksmiths are heard this morning, the first time for some days. They have been silenced on account of the sick; but they are now going as if determined to make up lost time. Iron takes almost every shape under their blows. A ship’s blacksmith has no such word as can’t in his vocabulary. He takes his order, and tries to shape his iron accordingly, though he may know it to be utterly impracticable. We had on board the Natchez an old time-piece which had broken its main-spring. The first lieutenant, for fun, told the blacksmith to take it to the anvil and put a new main-spring in it. Hearing the puff of the bellows and the click of the hammer, I went forward, where I found the old watch taken to pieces, and the worthy representative of Vulcan, beating with his full force a piece of iron. “What are you doing with this time-piece?” I inquired. “Making a kinked-up sort of a thing, sir, to make it go,” was the sardonic reply.