Round the Galley Fire

by William Clark Russell

“That poor old fellow,” said he, pointing to the bed, “begged to be allowed to attend the funeral of a man who died in the institution a short time since; he was so much affected that he was struck with paralysis, and had to be carried back here. He was for years a shipmaster, had command of several fine ships, and is a man of excellent education. He has been in this institution some years.” And then, addressing him, “Well, and how do you feel yourself now?”

“Mending, sir, mending,” answered the old man. “It’s death to me to be lying here. Why, for seventy-nine years I never had a day’s illness, never took a ha’porth of physic.”

“You must have patience,” said the governor; “you’ll be up and doing presently.”

“Ay, the power of forereaching is not taken out of me yet,” he answered, breaking into a laugh, the heartiness of which somehow pained me more to hear than had he burst into sobs.

There were more “cabins” upstairs, and in one of them we found an old Irishman standing, lost in thought, looking out of the window. I addressed him, and he answered me in a rich brogue. I never remember meeting a more winning old face, nor being won by a voice more cordial and pleasant to hear. He told me he had been in the Kent, East Indiaman, when she was burnt. This was so long ago as 1825, and he was then a hearty, able-bodied man. It was like turning back the pages of the history of England to hear him talk of that famous and dreadful disaster.

“There’s another man in the institution who was along with me in the Kent,” said he.

I thought of the description given of the Kent by the master of the Caroline as I looked at this ancient man. “Her appearance was that of an immense cauldron or cage of buoyant basketwork, formed of the charred and blackened ribs, naked, and stripped of every plank, encircling an uninterrupted mass of flame.” Again and again had I read the story of that terrible fire at sea, thinking of it always as something deep-buried in history, and infinitely remote; and now here was a man who had been an actor in it, talking of it as if it had been but of yesterday, quavering out his “says I’s” and “says he’s,” and eager to let me know that if he liked he could tell me something about the behaviour of certain responsible persons on board that would not redound to their credit. It was pantaloon with harlequin’s wand in his hand; the faded old picture was touched, and became a live thing, the seas rolling, the ship burning, the terror and anguish of nearly sixty years since growing quick again under the magic of this ancient man’s memory, and in the presence of a living witness of that long-decayed night of horror.

Of such a charity as this of the Royal Alfred Aged Merchant Seamen’s Institution how can any man who honours the English sailor and values his calling hope to speak in such terms of praise as shall not seem hyperbolical? Not for one instant will I say that as a charity it is superior to others which deal with the sick, with the destitute, with the infirm, with little children. “There is misery enough in every corner of the world as well as within our convent,” Sterne’s monk is made to imply by his cordial wave of the hand. But I do claim for this institution the possession of a peculiar element of pathos such as no man who has not beheld the aged, the stricken, the helpless, the broken-down men congregated within its walls can form any idea of. As you survey them their past arises; you think of the black and stormy night, the frost and snow, the famine and the shipwreck—all the perils which sailors encounter in their quest or carriage of that which makes us great and prosperous as a nation; and then reflections on the dire ending which must have befallen these tempest-beaten, time-laden men but for the charity that provides them with a refuge break in upon you, and you feel that no words of praise can be too high for such an institution, and that no money dedicated by generous hearts to the alleviation of human suffering can be better directed than to the exchequer of this aged seamen’s home. Ninety-three old sailors are at present lodged in the institution. The house is big enough to accommodate two hundred, but the funds of the charity are already stretched to their last limits, and many an old and broken-down seaman whom this home would otherwise receive, and whose closing days would be rendered happy by all that tender ministration, by all that pious kindness can effect, must die in the cold and cheerless silence of the Union unless the charity that is prayerfully entreated for him is given.

ON THE GOODWINS.

On a fine, calm day from the height of the cliffs betwixt Ramsgate and Broadstairs you may spy at low-water time a yellow vein, like a thin winding of pale gold, a hand’s breath this side of the horizon—the famous and fatal Goodwin Sands. I suppose there is no shoal in the whole world that a man whose sympathies are with sailors can view with more interest. Starting from the North Sand Head, which is almost abreast of Ramsgate, and looking east, the eye follows the south-westerly sweep of the Goodwins until the Downs are embraced with all their dim tracery of spars and rigging and faint sinuous lines of steamers’ smoke beyond, whilst the giant South Foreland acclivity stares down upon the lightship abreast of St. Margaret’s Bay, marking the extreme limits in the south and west of the deadliest stretch of sands upon the face of the globe.