On the last day of December we experienced the initiation of a gale, which lasted, in incessant violence, until the 6th of January, ’58, but doing no injury to us, further than shipping a heavy sea that cleared away our gangway, and deluged our decks, fore and aft, without so much as saying, “By your leave.” We kept on one tack, heading constantly to the north and westward.
On the 10th we sighted Baldhead but a short distance off. We stood in for it; and in the evening the captain lowered away, and proceeded, through Frenchman’s Bay and the Sound, to the town of Albany: the ship standing off and on, with the cable bent on to the larboard anchor, so us to be ready to let go in case of emergency. In the bay we found at anchor the barque Margaret, of Liverpool, from Adelaide for Mauritius. She had sprung her mizzenmast in the recent severe westerly gale, and, the wind being directly in her teeth, she put in here for shelter. On getting into the sound they found that the Prince of Wales had sailed for Callao, and therefore her crew were at liberty. Most of the hangers-on that had composed part of the population, when we last were here, had departed in the American ship Kensington. This ship had as passengers three hundred Chinamen, who intended landing at some port in these colonies; but, on account of a legislative enactment forbidding the ingress of these people into the country, she had already met with great difficulty in getting rid of them.
A day or two before our arrival, the natives came into the town, with portions of cotton canvass, and numbers of spermaceti candles. They reported that fragments of casks and barrels were strewed around the beach in every direction. The fact of her carrying cotton canvass augurs that the wreck must have been an American vessel, as those of other nations carry hemp almost exclusively. These evidences of shipwreck were found on a part of the coast contiguous to the White Top Rocks, which is justly accounted a most dangerous locality, and has in more than one instance been the theater of similar disasters.
And now I shall touch on another subject, which reflects but little credit on the parties concerned, either as Americans, or as honest men. It is simply this:—At the sound our captain found a letter from the consular agent at Freemantle, directed to the captain of any American whaler who might first touch at the port. The purport of the missive formed a caution to the barque Pamelia’s master not to enter any port in the Australian colonies, as her smuggling tobacco on her last visit to Vasse had been divulged, and vessel and cargo thereby forfeited to the crown. The other party concerned, to whom the tobacco had been delivered, and placed aboard the brig Champion, had had his brig seized, and was heavily mulcted beside, for his part in the nefarious transaction. He is a man well to do, and at the time of the smuggling was fulfilling heavy contracts with the English government; supplying them with timber for the construction of the railroad from Adelaide to Melbourne.
This is no unusual method of turning a penny, amongst those who visit this coast; and I have seen more than one instance of it. In some cases, the authorities wink at the fraud committed against the government; and, as the party who is fortunate enough to escape conviction trebles or quadruples the amount of his outlay, the temptation is strong to engage in the illicit traffic.
Beside this budget of shipping news, it was said by the inhabitants of Albany, that gold in considerable quantities had been discovered by shepherds, about one hundred and fifty miles distant in the interior, and that a party was preparing to visit this El Dorado.
At 2 o’clock in the afternoon of the 11th the boat returned; and, bracing forward, we stood to the westward, in hopes of seeing the Pamelia before she went into port; for we knew that it was the intention of her captain to touch at Vasse about the middle of the present month. On our passage we fell in with the barque Eagle, of New Bedford. She was employed in cutting a whale she had taken the day previous, and, as the weather was anything but good, she was having a dirty time. We afterwards learned that she had lost the greater part of the head in the operation. After a short time spent in company with her, and learning that the Pamelia had been seen a few days before, we resumed our course, and the day succeeding spoke her, and communicated the intelligence we had received at Albany. It was timely, too, as they were now bound in, and twenty-four hours’ delay might have been productive of serious consequences. On the 18th, her captain, knowing full well that to enter a port in the vicinity would be madness, made himself dependent upon the various ships on the ground to contribute a quota in the supply of water, &c., to enable him to take a short cruise, and reach the Mauritius. In pursuance of this idea, on the same day a raft of casks, in tow of one of the Pamelia’s boats, was brought alongside of our vessel, and made fast; then, according to orders, they were hoisted in. Our crew had an inkling of the affair, but said nothing, until they were ordered by the first officer to fill these casks, belonging to another ship, with the water from our own casks, which it had caused us so much labor and trouble to procure, and which would have to be replaced from one of the wells on the coast, under a burning sun, and through scorching sand. Under these circumstances, a flat refusal was accorded to the order; because we did not deem that our engagement obliged us to supply another ship with water, unless she was in absolute distress. All hands aboard, except the first and second officers, united in this view of the case. The mate expostulated, but found it useless. A messenger or spokesman was then dispatched to the captain, who acted with moderation; and the whole matter was amicably adjusted by the captain of the Pamelia complying with our terms; which were, that we should be paid for the trouble we would have in replacing the water. As soon as this was understood, all hands turned to. The casks were filled, rafted, and towed aboard the Pamelia in double-quick time; and our boat returned with money and several boxes of soap as a compensation.
It may seem, to a disinterested reader, that our thus refusing to supply the wants of a countryman, in this far off sea, was niggardly in the extreme. But the master of the Pamelia was unpopular over the whole ocean, and our men were affected with the general opinion respecting him. They alleged that he had came aboard our ship some months before, and remonstrated with our captain against the quantity of provisions he allowed to his crew; stating, at the same time, that he (meaning himself) did not give his men all they wanted: which assertion one would indeed find no difficulty to believe on hearing his crew talk, who represented their fare to be extremely meagre.
This was the nearest approach to insubordination that had thus far occurred amongst us; and which, if our captain and officers had been bullying, threatening men, might have been lashed into a mutiny, that in the eyes of justice they would have been held responsible for: because it was certainly due to every man aboard, that the captain should have stated his intention of furnishing another ship with water, and his reasons for so doing—appealing at the same time to what would be the sense of our own necessities, if placed in such a situation; and then not a man aboard would have raised a dissenting voice, or spoken of remuneration. It is, however, a mistake too often committed by shipowners, shipmasters, and ship’s officers, to think that the sailor has neither part nor parcel in the concerns of the ship or voyage, and that the disposal of his time is altogether at the pleasure of his superiors; and thus they conduct themselves toward him, treating him with no more deference than they would accord to a dog aboard the ship; and in this way are sown the first seeds of mutiny, which spring up, bear fruit that come to maturity, and destroy the original causes of their production.
On the 19th we gammoned with a barque belonging to Fairhaven. This circumstance is only worthy of notice from its being the first opportunity we had, since leaving home, of seeing that peculiar creature known amongst seafaring men as the spread eagle; which consists in a human being lashed to the rigging by his wrists, when, as the case may be, he is punished with the lash, made to stand for an immoderate length of time on one leg, or his arms seized at such a height that he can but just rest on the tips of his toes. In the present case the culprit was forced to stand on one leg, shifting at periodical times; and was thus punished for thirty-six hours. He was quite a lad, and his offence was said to be the participating in a fracas in the forecastle. Whether just or unjust, the application of this harsh and cruel punishment recoiled upon the captain, as a few weeks afterward, when several of her crew deserted from her in Bunbury, he could not replace them: notice of this circumstance having got ashore—whether from our crew or hers, I cannot say; but it was all-sufficient to deter any of the men ashore from engaging with her captain, as they answered his proposals to them for that purpose with scorn and insult.