Owners of yachts do not all take the same view of the delightful pastime. Between the yachtsman who never seems so happy as when he is out of soundings, and those sailors who creep from port to port, and take a three weeks’ spell of rest in every harbour they succeed in making, there is a prodigious stretch, filled up by a surprising variety of tastes. But the harbour-haunting yachtsman grows rare. His excursions to sea, even out of sight of land, are every year more frequent. He learns to hear a music in the wind that’s piping merrily, and the threat of lightning in the horned moon ceases to scare him. This is as it should be. Yachting is surely but a sorry entertainment when warps hold your vessel against a stone or wooden pier, and no livelier recreation offers than bobbing for flounders in the mud at the bottom of the water alongside. Our English summers are not very long, and there is much to be seen, much to inspirit the mind, much to invigorate the body. The warm and brightly-coloured sea, for many a league enriched with verdant and dazzling and tender stretches of coast scenery, courts the fortunate yachtsman with promises which it never breaks. It is not racing only, it is not sailing only; it is the calm day sleeping under the rich azure heaven; the water a breathless surface of molten glass, shadowed here and there where the shallow soundings are; the horizon streaked with floating wreaths of vapour or darkened by the blueish smoke of a long-vanished steamer; the coastline some miles away swimming in the haze of heat, and the water in the south blending with the flood of light which the sun flashes into it. Here and there is a motionless smack, with her reddish sail reflected without a tremor under her; or a distant ship whose white canvas seems to be melting upon the faint light blue over the horizon. Or it is the summer night, with a flood of moonlight shivering the ripples, whilst on either hand the sea stretches away in solemn darkness touched faintly in places by the lustre of the glorious planets unpaled by the moonshine. A soft breeze murmurs over the water, and keeps the spectral canvas on high sleeping, and a narrow wake goes away astern into the darkness, with fitful flashes of phosphorus in the circling eddies, in the run of the ripples as they break near the silent hull.
Small wonder, indeed, that the sea should court men as it does, and fascinate them too. Happy the man who can take the pleasure it yields as a yachtsman, and in his own beautiful vessel can traverse its glorious waters as idly, and freely, and gaily as the wind that impels him.
A DRUNKEN SHIP.
In one of Edgar Poe’s stories there is an account of a crew clinging to the bottom of their capsized vessel, and watching a ship approach them. She comes yawing and steering very wildly, but there are people aboard, and the poor sailors are full of hope; until on a sudden an insufferable smell is borne to them by the wind, and they discover that the figures lolling upon the ship’s sides are putrifying corpses.
This tale of horror as well as of imagination came into my head some time ago, when I read the evidence that had been tendered in St. George’s Hall, Liverpool, by a certain pier-manager and coxswain of the lifeboat belonging to a north-western town. He said that at about half-past five in the morning he was roused out by a man who told him that there was a vessel drifting ashore. He hurried down to the beach, and saw a barque of between 300 and 400 tons a short distance off under lower topsails. There was a fresh breeze from the westward. He watched the vessel a few minutes, and perceived that she would sometimes fall off so as to bring the breeze on her quarter, and then round close to the wind, like Poe’s dreadful ship, and that she was coming ashore as fast as ever she could drive. The lifeboat was launched when this strangely-behaved barque was within a hundred and fifty fathoms of the beach, and on the boat getting alongside, a strong smell of rum and water was found to pervade the atmosphere. A man got on to the rail and dropped into the boat, and the coxswain said “he seemed stupefied, took no notice of anything, and did not speak.” This was the skipper. The rest of the crew tumbled into the lifeboat and were conveyed ashore, while the barque took the ground and became a total wreck, nothing being saved but some sails and a few stores.
Such a very unusual circumstance as that of a well-found barque sailing ashore, as one might put it, of her own will, was sure to have a queer story behind it. And assuredly the story is a queer one, making one of the most disgraceful narratives to be found in the modern marine annals. It shall be told by a specimen of one of those plain, honest, English seamen who captains say are no longer to be found, and whose extinction, they declare, obliges them to ship “Dutchmen.” I will not give this excellent man his name, glad as I should be to do so, for the punishment inflicted on the captain and mate by the court that inquired into their conduct would render a large public identification a needless supplementary penalty. The certificate of competency held by the captain has been cancelled, but to the mate there has been granted a twelve months’ chance of reformation, and this alone should explain the reason for suppressing all names.
“The barque was a vessel of 340 tons, and we had a crew of ten men, not counting the captain and mate. We were bound for Quebec, which, I reckon, should make a ship’s course about west by south; but on this, as you’ll take note presently, all mariners don’t seem to be agreed. The whole of the crew, saving me and another whose name shall be Bill, were drunk when the barque left Liverpool. Speaking of the fo’ksle, I don’t mean to say there’s anything unusual in this. Drink’s grown with legislation. In old times, when there was less law, there was less lush. It’s a teetotal age, this; nothing but water going in vessels, and the consequence is that men newly shipped, knowing that there’ll be no grog betwixt this and the next port, go in for a bout of drinking to serve them, as it might be, for the whole voyage. See ’em come aboard, sprawling and roaring, too sick to stand, rolling below, and leaving the ship to sail away with no one but the idlers—and them drunk, too, maybe—to do her work for twenty-four hours or longer. If I was an owner my ship shouldn’t be a teetotaler. Every day, at noon, there should be a can of rum on the capstan for the men—a tot apiece; but I’d make this rule, that any man as came aboard in liquor should have no grog served out to him for the rest of the voyage. That would stop the drunkenness ships carry away from the ports, and all the dangers which a drunken crew brings on a vessel that’s got to grope her way down rivers and along channels full of peril.
“Well, there was ten of us, and eight were drunk. I’m speaking of forrards; I’ll come aft presently. I never saw men worse in liquor. You remember them Scotchmen that used to stand at tobacconists’ doors, taking a pinch of snuff?—dummies they were, you’ll recall. Well, think of giving one of ’em a shove, and seeing him fall. If ye can fix such an object in your imagination you’ll comprehend the sort of helplessness of my eight shipmates. They lay in the fo’ksle as lifeless as bits of timber; and this being the condition of the barque, we were towed out with a pilot aboard, and then, when abreast of the Nor’-west Lightship, were left to shift for ourselves. The mate was aft, me at the wheel, and Bill forward. There was not an inch of canvas on our vessel, and no one on deck excepting those I’ve mentioned. Whilst we were towing, the mate came up to have a look at the compass now and again, and then I noticed that if he wasn’t downright slewed he didn’t want very many more nips to settle his business. He goes lurching along till he comes abreast of the main rigging, and here he lays hold and sings out, ‘All hands make sail. Tumble up, my lively hearties! Bear a hand with your hair oil and your silk stockings, my sweet and noble fellows!’
“But nobody took any notice except Bill, who sings out, ‘There’s no tumbling up aboard this galliant vessel, sir—leastways, forrards; there’s naught but tumbling down.’ At which the mate bursts into a loud laugh, swaying upon the rope he had hold of as though he meant to swig off on it. Then, looking up and around, he sings out—
“‘This ain’t a steamer. The sails must be loosed and the yards hoisted, bully, if the Liverpool gells are ever to clap eyes on us brave mariners again; so jump below among them dreadful drunkards and rout ’em out. Rout ’em out, do you hear?’