Saved from the Sea; Or, The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures

by William Henry Giles Kingston

I so far followed his advice as to send for a Spanish grammar and dictionary, which I intended to use as soon as I had leisure. My stay on shore, however, was short; for in a couple of weeks I was appointed to the Viper, a ten-gun brig destined for the coast of Africa. Her commander knew my family, and had offered to take me. And I found Halliday on board, he having been appointed to her by the Admiralty.

She was a very different craft from the fine frigate to which I had before belonged. She was of narrow beam, and carried taunt masts and square yards; indeed, we all saw that she would require careful handling to avoid being capsized. But she was a new, tidy, fast little craft, and no one on board allowed forebodings of evil to trouble his mind. The commander did not express his opinion till we were clear of the Channel, when he addressed the crew.

“You will have to be smart in shortening sail, my lads,” he said, after making some other observations. “The last man off the lower deck when the hands are turned up must look out for the consequences.”

They all knew what that meant,—a “black listing,” “six water grog,” or walking the deck with a shot in each hand during a watch. Still, though they did not like it, they knew it was for the good of all. And besides, we were continually exercised in shortening and making sail, to get the crew into proper discipline.

One day—the commander being on deck—a sudden squall struck the brig and heeled her over till the water rushed through her lee-scuppers. “All hands save ship!” he shouted. The men came springing up from below, some through the fore-hatchway, but a greater number through the main. The commander himself was standing near the companion-hatch—intended only for his own and the gun-room officers’ use. Our tall, thin commander had just turned round to take his spy-glass from the beckets in which it hung, when a petty officer,—a knowing fellow, who had slipped through the gun-room passage in order to take advantage of the other men,—springing on deck, butted right into the pit of his stomach. The blow, doubling him up, sent him sprawling over on his back, with his legs in the air. But, without waiting to apologise, the seaman sprang up the rigging like lightning, and was laying out among the others on the main-topsail-yard before the commander could open his eyes to ascertain who had capsized him. He was, naturally, excessively angry, but probably did not like to shout out, “You fellow, who knocked me over, come down from aloft.” And just then, indeed, all hands were really required for shortening sail. Few of the officers had seen the man upset the commander, and those who had could not say positively who he was. I had my suspicions; having caught sight of an old shipmate—Ben Blewett—running up the main rigging over the heads of several others in a way which showed he had some reason for so doing. All the efforts of the officers to discover the culprit, however, were unavailing; and I thought it wisest to say nothing about the matter. The commander could not justly have punished the man for knocking him down, as it was done unintentionally, though he might have done so for coming up the officers’ passage. And so we enjoyed a hearty laugh in the berth at the whole affair.

I should have said that the caterer for our mess was a steady old mate, Reuben Boxall; a most excellent fellow, for whom I entertained a great regard. He followed the principle my father had advised me to adopt, and never threw away a piece of string—that is to say, when an opportunity occurred of acquiring knowledge he never neglected it. His chief fancy, however, was for doctoring—that is to say, the kindness of his heart made him wish to be able to relieve the sufferings of his fellow-creatures; and he could bleed, and bind up broken limbs, and dress wounds, as well as the surgeon himself, while he had a good knowledge of the use of all the drugs in the medicine-chest. Boxall had indeed a good head on his shoulders, and was respected by all.

Many of us were still laughing at the commander’s capsize, some declaring that it served him right for being in such a hurry.

“Let me tell you youngsters that we must be in a hurry on board this craft,” observed Boxall. “Do you know the name given to ten-gun brigs such as ours? I will tell you: ‘Sea-Coffins.’ And the Viper will prove our coffin, if we do not keep very wide-awake, let me warn you.”

Most of the mess thought that old Boxall was trying to frighten them; but I cannot say that I was comfortable, as we had already discovered that the brig, to say the best of her, was excessively crank. The two lieutenants and the master had served chiefly on board line-of-battle ships and frigates before they got their promotion, and were inclined to sneer at the commander’s caution, and I know that during their watch they carried on much longer than he would have approved of.

We were somewhere in the latitude of Madeira, when we encountered a heavy gale which severely tried the brig. Though we saved our spars by shortening sail in time, two of our boats were lost and the rest damaged, our weather-bulwarks were stove in, and we were in other respects handled very roughly.