Round the Galley Fire

by William Clark Russell

The captain, Mr. Thomas Peabody, had left the deck about three-quarters of an hour. He was asleep in his cabin, when, shortly after ten o’clock, he was awakened by a feeling of suffocation, and perceived that the cabin was full of smoke. Moreover, the atmosphere was charged with a deadly, nauseating, gaseous smell that gave an iron tightness to his throat and filled his body with an unendurable prickly sensation, as though strong mustard had been rubbed into his skin. He rushed on deck, where the fresh air at once revived him, and not immediately perceiving anybody about, shouted for the officer of the watch. The chief mate came running out of the darkness forward, and before Captain Peabody could address him, cried out that the ship was on fire. The news spread as if by magic, and in a few moments the decks were alive with the crew hurrying out of the forecastle.

Of all cries, none thrills through the heart of a sailor like that of fire. Human helplessness is never so felt as at such a time. The ship is a burning volcano, from whose cabin the red flames may soar presently, making a wide circumference of air scorching hot with a furious play of withering flame. The mate said that he believed the fire was in the hold under the cabin. Forthwith there was a rush to the hatches, which were immediately closed; calking-irons were fetched, and the air was busy with the hammering of mallets. It was a sight to see the men. There was no lack of determined courage among them, but the cry of “Fire!” was ringing in their ears; they toiled in quick impulsive rushes, with feverish haste, glancing to right and left, knowing not in what part of the ship the fire would first show itself in flame. Every ventilator was closed, and the cabin shut up, in the hope of stifling the fire, and the crew then gathered in a group in the waist to watch and wait and see what their work would do for them.

Presently somebody called out that the smoke was still breaking through.

“Look there—and there, sir!”

It was hard to guess how it could escape; the hatches were closed and calked, every aperture securely blocked, and yet there was the smoke breaking out from all parts of the vessel as steam rises from the compact earth. On this the carpenter’s chest was overhauled, and by order of the captain the men fell to work to bore holes in the deck. As the solid planks were pierced the smoke belched forth in puffs, mingled with a pestilential exhalation of gas that forced the seamen to work with averted faces. The pumps were then manned, the hose got along, buckets dropped over the side, and all hands turned-to to drown the fire by discharging water into the glowing cargo. Clouds of steam came up through the holes, regularly followed, as the white vapour thinned, by spiral columns of black smoke which wound round and round to the height of the maintop, where the light breeze caught and arched them over. No flames were as yet visible, but the men knew that the ship was full of fire, that at any instant the hatches might be riven and shrivelled up by a discharge of flame, and therefore when the captain gave orders to lower the boats there was a rush to the davits.

When the boats were in the water alongside, the captain, desiring to save certain articles, called the mate and four seamen to accompany him to the cabin; but they had not been there a minute when they suddenly ran out, some of them vomiting blood, and all of them complaining that their heads were swelled so that they were like to burst. Indeed, but for their speedy flight, they must have dropped dead in an atmosphere that was rendered virulently poisonous by the combined gas and smoke. A short spell of rest and fresh air recovered the poor men, and the crew then proceeded to victual the boats with such provisions as they could come at. The mainyards were braced aback, and the men entered the boats and rowed to a distance of about half a mile from the vessel, where they remained.

It was a fine night, very calm, and the ship, with her mainyards aback, lay steady. Hour after hour went by, but no flame showed itself, though there was a gradual thickening of the smoke from the deck, and the seamen could observe it hanging in a shadow over the mastheads of the vessel and to leeward of her. Gazing at her as she stood like a marble carving upon the dark sea, it was difficult for the men to realize that her hold was a concealed furnace; that by taking off one of the hatches and looking down they could have beheld an incandescent interior, a red-hot surface like a lake of fire, with blue and green flames crawling over it, and masses of smoke, repelled or consumed by the intense heat of the central spaces. But for the shadow overhanging her glimmering heights, there were no signs that anything was amiss with the ship. Surveyed from the low level of the boats, she looked a majestic fabric out there, a brave sight in the faint, fine starlight. It was a long, weary, and bitter vigil for the poor fellows to keep. They would not leave the neighbourhood of the vessel while she remained afloat. They could not tell what might happen. If she burst into flames the light she made might bring them help. Or the fire might die out and so give them their home to return to. Whilst she was there, she was, in a manner, something to hold on to; for it was a fearful thing to look away from her into the mystery of the darkness around, and to think of being left to struggle amid that black and fathomless desert of water in open boats, which brought the mighty deep within reach of their hands.

Slowly the long hours went by, and then the dawn came, and the sun uprose. With the first of the grey light every eye was turned upon the ship. They could see the shroud of smoke that overhung her, yet not a spark of fire had been visible throughout the night, and this, now that the sunshine was on the sea, begot a hope in the men that, though to be sure the smoke crawled thickly from the ship, the fire was not so bad as they had feared, and that a long and resolute struggle might enable them to conquer it. Accordingly the oars were thrown over, and the boats headed for the vessel. The boat occupied by the captain was the first to get alongside. He jumped on board, and was followed by others; but the heat of the decks striking through his boots made him put his hand to the planks. It was like touching hot iron. He walked to the cabin, but on feeling the door he withdrew his fingers with a groan. The whole fabric was full of fiery heat; whatever touched the flesh gave it pain; the very ropes which lay coiled over the belaying pins were too hot to handle; the pitch was bubbling in the seams; the air between the bulwarks resembled the atmosphere of a furnace; in the haze of the heat every object seemed to revolve like a corkscrew; and the men in the boats said that feeling her side, even to the level of the water-line, was as bad as putting the hand upon a boiler full of steam.

A cry from one of the seamen who had come over the side in bare feet, raised a kind of panic among those already aboard. “Over with you,” was the shout, “before she bursts into a blaze!” and in mad haste the poor fellows dropped over the bulwarks, seized their oars, and resumed the same distance from the ship that they had occupied all night.

Soon after this a small breeze of wind arose. It seemed to penetrate the vessel, for with the draught there soared up a thick body of smoke. Her passage to leeward was perceptible in the short, oil-smooth wake to windward of her; but the drift of the boats was the same as hers, so that the men had no need to use their oars to maintain their distance. There was now weight enough in the wind to blow the smoke clear of the decks before it rose a foot above the bulwarks, so that the picture of that full-rigged ship remained there in its completeness. As the time passed the men would see a fountain of sparks hove up occasionally in the smoke. It was dismal work sitting and watching that fine ship smouldering. All that the men possessed was left aboard of her; they had come away, most of them, in their shirts and trousers, many without shoes, and there in those three boats they sat looking at the burning vessel, silent in the main, often glancing around them on the look-out for a sail, and holding on to the thwarts or gunwales as the boats jerked and toppled sharply about on the bit of a sea that the wind had raised. A little before noon those who had their eyes on the ship perceived the mizzenmast to sway to and fro a moment; then suddenly it fell with a crash; a rush of smoke, like a monstrous balloon, hovered over the quarter-deck and concealed the ruin; but it soared into the air, and sailed away on the wind under a sudden furious discharge of sparks, which resembled the explosion of a mass of rockets, and when the vapour had settled down it was seen that the mizzenmast was over the side, the vessel a wreck aft, whilst forward the sails were dusky and red, as though iron-stained, with the blowing of the sooty coils and the fire of the glowing sparks.