Peter the Whaler

by William Henry Giles Kingston

We lay out in the stream for another whole day, with the Blue Peter flying, to show that we were ready for sea, and to summon any passengers who might yet remain on shore. Silas Flint was one of the last to come on board, before we left the dock. He appeared following a porter, who wheeled down his chest, containing all his property. He did not even give me a look of recognition as he passed me; but he at once plunged below with his chest, and he studiously avoided coming near me. This I thought odd and unkind, nor could I comprehend the cause of this behaviour.

I was sitting very disconsolate by myself among the emigrants, and wondering when the captain would come on board, and when I should begin to learn to be a seaman, when I felt the no pleasing sensation of a rope’s end laid smartly across my shoulders. I turned quickly round to resent the indignity, when I encountered the stern glance of the first mate, Mr Stovin, fixed on me, while the “colt” in his hand showed that he was the aggressor. “And so you are the youngster who wanted to make himself useful, are you?” he exclaimed in a sneering voice.

“I am,” I replied; “and I’ll thank you in future not to take such liberties with my back.”

He burst into a loud laugh. “O my young cock-a-hoop, you show fight, do you?” he exclaimed. “Well, we’ll see what you are made of before long.”

“I’m ready to do my duty when you show me the way,” I answered in as calm a voice as I could command; and I believe this reply, and the having kept my temper, gave him a more favourable opinion of me than he was before inclined to form, and somewhat softened his savage nature.

“A willing hand will have no want of masters,” he observed. “And mind, what I tell you to do you’ll do as well as you can, and we shan’t fall foul of each other.”

I will now describe the Black Swan. She measured nearly eight hundred tons, was ship-rigged, and had been built many years. She carried eighteen hands forward, with two cooks and a steward, besides the captain, four mates, and a doctor.

There were about four hundred and forty steerage passengers, who, I may explain, are the poorer classes; and I think there were ten cabin passengers, who berthed in the cabin and messed with the captain. The steerage passengers brought their own provisions, but the captain was obliged to provide them with water and biscuit, just to keep life in them; indeed, without it many of them would have died. It was, I felt, like severing the last link which bound us to our native shores, when the pilot left us at the mouth of the Mersey, and with a fair wind we stood down the Irish Channel.

I cannot say that before I quitted home I had any very definite idea of the life of a sailor; but I had some notion that his chief occupation was sitting with his messmates round a can of grog, and singing songs about his sweetheart: the reality I found was very different.

The first time I had any practical experience of this was when, the pilot having left us, and the wind having veered round to the north-east, the captain ordered the ship to be kept away before it. His eye happened to fall upon me for the first time, dressed in my sea toggery, and seated, with my hands in my pockets, on the booms.