This digression springs from and returns to the main argument; because the Yankee excellence is so little understood and sometimes so grudgingly acknowledged by British and foreign landsmen, and because Bluenose and Yankee circumstances and practice were so much alike. Britishers were different in nearly all their natural circumstances, while, to increase the difference, their practice became greatly modified by a deal of good but sometimes rather lubberly legislation. And yet all three—Britisher, Bluenose, and Yankee—are so inextricably connected with each other that it is quite impossible to understand any one of them without some reference to the other two.
Bluenose discipline was good, very good indeed. When the whole ship's company was Bluenose discipline was partly instinctive and mostly went well, as it generally did when Yankees and Bluenoses sailed together. The whole population of the little home port—men, women, and children—knew every vessel's crew and all about them. The men were farmers, fishermen, lumbermen, shipbuilders, and 'deepwatermen,' often all in one. Among other peoples, only Scandinavians ever had such an all-round lot as this. Even in the present century, with its increasing multiformity of occupation, books full of nauticalities can be read and understood in these countries by everybody, though such books cannot be read elsewhere except by the seafaring few. Business meant ships or shipping; so did politics, peace and war, adventure and ambition.
But there is a different tale to tell when the tonnage outran the Bluenose ability to man it, and Dutchmen, Dagos, miscellaneous wharf-rats, and 'low-down' Britishers had to be taken on instead. If the crew was mixed and the officers Bluenose there was sure to be trouble of graduated kinds, all the way up from simple knock-downs to the fiercest gun-play of a real hell ship. The food was inferior to that aboard the Yankees. But in discipline there was nothing to choose. An all-Bluenose or all-Yankee sometimes came as near the perfection of seamanship and discipline as anything human possibly can. But aboard a mixed Bluenose the rule of bend or break was enforced without the slightest reference to what was regarded as landlubber's law. The Britisher's Board of Trade regulations were regarded with contempt; and not without reason; for, excellent as they were, they struck the Bluenose seamen as being an interference made solely in the supposed interests of the men against the officers.
The mistake was that the old injustices were repeated in a new way. Formerly the law either sided with the officers and owners or left them alone; now it either sided with the men or left the officers and owners in the lurch. The true balance was not restored. Here is a thoroughly typical instance of the difference between a Britisher and a Bluenose under the new dispensation. The second mate of a Britisher asked for his discharge at Bombay because he could not manage the men, who had shirked disgracefully the whole way out. The skipper got a good Bluenose for his new second mate. The first day the Bluenose came aboard one of the worst shirkers slung a bucket carelessly, cut the deck, and then proceeded to curse the ship and all who sailed in her, as he had been accustomed to do under the Britisher. The Bluenose mate simply said, 'See here, just shut your head or I'll shut it for you,' on which the skulker answered by threatening to 'cut his chicken liver out.' In a flash the Bluenose had him naped, slung, and flying across the rail. A second man rushed in, only to be landed neatly on the chin and knocked limp against the scuppers. The rest of the watch, roused by this unwonted assertion of authority, came on, but stopped short, snarling, when the Bluenose swung an iron bar from the windlass in a way that showed he knew how to handle it effectively. The skipper and mate now appeared, and, seeing a clear case of actual fight, at once ranged themselves beside the capable Bluenose. The watch, a mixed lot, then slunk off; and, from that day out, the whole tone of the ship was changed, very much for the better.
It is pleasanter, however, to take our last look at a Bluenose vessel, under sail, with Bluenose skipper, mates, and crew, and a Bluenose cargo, all complete. But a word must first be said about other parts and other craft, lest the Maritime-Province Bluenose might be thought the only kind of any consequence. There were, and still are, swarms of small craft in Canada and Newfoundland which belong mostly or entirely to the fisheries, and which, therefore, will be noticed in another chapter. The schooners along the different coasts, up the lower St Lawrence, and round the Lakes; the modern French-Canadian sailing bateaux; the transatlantic English brigs that still come out to Labrador; the many Britishers and Yankees that used to come to Bluenose harbours and to Quebec; the foreigners that come there still; and the host of various miscellaneous little vessels everywhere—all these are by no means forgotten. But only one main thread of the whole historic yarn can be followed here.
Before starting we might perhaps remember what a sailing vessel cannot do, as well as what she can, when the proper men are there and circumstances suit her. She is helpless in a calm. She needs a tow in crowded modern harbours or canals. She can only work against the wind in a laborious zigzag, and a very bad gale generally puts her considerably off her course. But, on the other hand, she could beat all her best records under perfect modern conditions of canvas, scientific metal hull, and crew; and the historic records she actually has made are quite as surprising as they are little known. Few people realize that 'ocean records' are a very old affair, even in Canada, where they begin with Champlain's voyage of eighteen days from Honfleur to Tadoussac and end with King George V's sixty-seven hours from land to land, when he speeded home in H.M.S. Indomitable from Champlain's tercentenary at Quebec in 1908, handling his shovel in the stokehole by the way.
Here are some purely sailing records worth remembering. A Newfoundland schooner, the Grace Carter, has sailed across to Portugal, sold her fish there, gone to Cadiz for all the salt that she could carry, and then reported back in Newfoundland within the month. A Canadian schooner yacht, the Lasca, has crossed easterly, the harder way, in twelve days from the St Lawrence. In 1860 the Yankee Dreadnought made the Atlantic record by going from Sandy Hook to Liverpool in nine days and seventeen hours, most of the time on the rim of a hurricane. Six years later the most wonderful sea race in history was run when five famous clippers started, almost together, from the Pagoda Anchorage at Fu-chau for the East India Docks in London. This race was an all-British one, as the civil war, the progress of steam everywhere except in the China trade, and the stimulus of competition, had now given Britishers the lead in the East, while putting them on an even footing with Yankees in the West. The course was sixteen thousand miles; the prize was the world's championship in clipper-racing. Three ships dropped considerably astern. But the Ariel and Taeping raced up the Channel side by side, took in their pilots at the same time, and arrived within eight minutes of each other. The Ariel arrived first; but the Taeping won, as she had left twenty minutes later. The total time was ninety-nine days. A very different, but still more striking, record is the longest daily run ever made entirely under sail. This was, in one sense at least, an Anglo-American record; for the ship, appropriately called the Lightning, was built by that master craftsman, Donald M'Kay of Boston, and sailed by a British crew. She made no less than 436 sea miles, or 502 statute miles, within the twenty-four hours.
There are no individual Bluenose rivals of these mighty champions. But the Bluenoses more than held their own, all round, in any company and on any sea. So it is well worth our while to end this story of a thousand years—from the Vikings till to-day—by going aboard a Bluenose vessel with a Bluenose crew when both were at their prime.
The Victoria is manned by the husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers of the place where she was built. Her owners are the leaders of the little neighbourhood, and her cargo is home-grown. She carries no special carpenter and sailmaker, like a Britisher, because a Bluenose has an all-round crew, every man of which is smart enough, either with the tools or with the fid and palm and needle, for ordinary work, while some are sure to be equal to any special job. She of course carries two suits of canvas, her new best and older second best. Each sail has required more skill than tailors need to make a perfect fit in clothes, because there is a constant strain on sails, exceeding, if possible, the strains on every other part. But before sail is made her anchor is hove short, that is, the ship is drawn along by her cable till her bows are over it. 'Heave and she comes!' 'Heave and she must!' 'Heave and bust her!' are grunted from the men straining at the longbars of the capstan, which winds the tightening cable in. 'Click, click, clickety, click' go the pawls, which drop every few inches into cavities that, keeping them from slipping back, prevent the capstan from turning the wrong way when the men pause to take breath. 'Break out the mud-hook!' and a tremendous combined effort ensues. Presently a sudden welcome slack shows that the flukes have broken clear. The anchor is then hove up, catted, and fished.
'All hands make sail!' sings out the mate. The wind is nicely on the starboard quarter, that is, abaft the beam and forward of the stern, which gives the best chance to every sail. A wind dead aft, blanketing more than half the canvas, is called a lubber's wind. A soldier's wind is one which comes square on the beam, and so makes equally plain sailing out and back again. What sail a full-rigged ship can carry! The Yankee Great Republic could spread nearly one whole acre of canvas to the breeze. Another Yankee, the R. C. Rickmers, the largest sailing vessel in the world to-day, exceeds this. But her tonnage is much greater, more than eleven thousand gross, and her rig is entirely different. A full-rigged clipper ship might have twenty-two square sails, though it was rare to see so many. In addition she would have studding-sails to wing her square sails farther out. Then, there were the triangular jibs forward and the triangular staysails between the masts, with the quadrangular spanker like an aerial rudder on the lower mizzenmast. All the nine staysails would have the loose lower corner made fast to a handy place on deck by a sheet (or rope) and the fore and aft points connected by the stays to the masts, the fore point low and the aft high. This is not the nautical way of saying it. But 'points' and 'corners' and other homely land terms sometimes save many explanations which, in their turn, lead on to other explanations.