“And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward.”—Byron.
SHAKING A REEF OUT
The late Clark Russell and I were at one time great cronies, and consumed a good deal of midnight oil, and other things, discussing the sea and its varied incidents. He was a seaman more by instinct than by experience. He had, of course, served at sea, but for some few years only, and yet he seemed to be the embodiment of sea lore for all time. Trifles that would be passed without notice by the ordinary observer, were absorbed by him and fitted into their proper place in his conception of the grandeur of the sea and all that appertained to it. No one man in his experience ever saw one half of the incidents Clark Russell has related, but his instinct was unerring, and as to his power of description there can be no question. Let me instance one example. “A slip of a moon westering fast” may not appeal to the uninitiate, but to a nautical mind it is most eloquent and expresses exactly the meaning it was intended to convey in the fewest possible words. To my mind this phrase is only equalled by Kipling in “as foot by foot we creep o’er the viewless, hueless deep, to the sob of the questing lead.” Both these quotations stand out as unique in compression of vast matter.
There was one point on which Clark Russell and I did not agree. He maintained that it was possible to have at the same time a dense fog and a gale of wind. I maintained the contrary, for at that time I had never seen the combination, and believed, like most people, that wind was the enemy of fog and soon dispersed it. As it happened I was wrong, for on my very next voyage I had a most convincing proof of my error, which I duly acknowledged. We were running our easting down on the parallel of 46° S., and from Lon. 62° E. to 140° E. we got no observation of sun, moon or stars. I find the distance between observations is logged as 3,216 miles for ten days; during a great part of which period it was blowing a hard gale and a thick fog. To make matters better we also shed a propeller blade, but that was only an incident which slightly lengthened the passage. The really interesting point about this experience was the demonstration of the invaluable qualities of Lord Kelvin’s compass.
In a paper I had read at the Royal United Service Institution I made mention of its value to navigation, and some little time after this I was asked by the inventor, then Sir William Thomson, if I would testify to this in a case that he was bringing before the law courts to stop the infringement of his patent right. I was able to state the following—
Between the longitudes I have mentioned the variation of the compass or magnetic variation changes from about 30° W. to 10° E., for the locality is in the vicinity of the centre from which the variation lines radiate. It was consequently necessary to alter the compass course at stated times to maintain the due east tract we wished to take, and at certain times the alteration of a degree was made every two, three, or four hours. My last observation showed Lat. 45° 58’, the next one 45° 53’, so that in the ten days, run without sights, we were only five miles out in our latitude.
To be called as an expert witness in such an interesting case as this one was, is not a disagreeable experience. It was then that I first met Sir John Fisher, now Lord Fisher, who with Admiral Hotham and two staff-captains were subpœnaed to represent the Navy. I fancy that Sir Charles Hotham was then one of the Sea Lords, and Lord Fisher was then a Captain. Captain Squire Lecky, the author of Wrinkles in Navigation, and myself stood for the merchant service. It was the time of the Parnell trial, and the present Lord Chief Justice, who represented the Crown in that inquiry, was secured by Sir William Thomson to take charge of his case. I must confess that all we sailors were looking forward with a kind of amused interest to see what the lawyers would do when dealing with the magnetism of iron ships, and as it happened I had one of the treats of my life. Sir Richard Webster, as he then was, coming in fresh from the Parnell case, proceeded to explain, in words that were to be understood by all, the theory of the deviation of the compass in iron or steel ships, the defects of compasses prior to Sir Wm. Thomson’s, and the advantages to which his invention had given birth—all this in the clearest possible language and with the most convincing mastery. He spoke one whole day and part of the next, and, so far as I personally was concerned, taught me more about what I considered was a special subject of my own than I ever knew before. Sitting near Lord Alverstone at dinner some little time since, I reminded him of the case, and he said it was an agreeable change, at the time, to the other case he was engaged on. Sir William Thomson won his case and wrote me a letter of cordial thanks for the help I had given him in the matter. The most humorous thing in that trial was the spectacle of Captain John Fisher in the witness-box in the dusk of an autumn afternoon, looking like a school-boy, and suggesting by his demeanour that so far as he knew anything, green grass was his colour. But he recalled a youthful episode of a piece of string tied to a compass to keep it lively by jerking it. He also recalled how at the bombardment of Alexandria, he had been standing looking at one of the Thomson compasses to see how it was affected by the Inflexible’s gunfire, when a big gun being fired lifted his cap off but did not seriously affect the compass. Those days spent in Court were of extreme interest, for it was a ding-dong fight between scientific men of the first rank.
While on the subject of accurate navigation I should like to say that an invaluable adjunct to a successful navigator is a reliable “instinct.” In some men this is developed very strongly. I first saw it in Craigie of the Lord of the Isles. He was also a splendid navigator, and on more than one occasion I heard him say when leaning over the chart: “Our reckoning puts us here” (pointing with his finger), “but I ken she’s here,” pointing to quite another place. He was always right too. I had the sense to a certain extent, and it kept me out of trouble more than once.