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Chapter VIII
Chapter VIII
"Tarring Down" - Daily Life - "Going Aft" - California
As we saw neither land nor sail from the time of leaving Juan Fernandez
until our arrival in California, nothing of interest occurred except our own
doings on board. We caught the southeast trades, and ran before them for
nearly three weeks, without so much as altering a sail or bracing a yard. The
captain took advantage of this fine weather to get the vessel in order for
coming upon the coast. The carpenter was employed in fitting up a part of the
steerage into a trade-room; for our cargo, we now learned, was not be landed,
but to be sold by retail from on board; and this trade-room was built for the
samples and the lighter goods to be kept in, and as a place for the general
business. In the mean time we were employed in working upon the rigging.
Everything was set up taut, the lower rigging rattled down, or rather rattled
up, (according to the modern fashion,) an abundance of spun-yarn and
seizing-stuff made, and finally, the whole standing rigging, fore and aft, was
tarred down. This was my first essay at this latter business, and I had enough
of it; for nearly all of it came upon my friend S___ and myself. The men were
needed at the other work, and M___, the other young man who came out with us,
was laid up with the rheumatism in his feet, and the boy Sam was rather too
young and small for the business; and as the winds were light and regular, he
was kept during most of the daytime at the helm; so that nearly all the
tarring came upon us. We put on short duck frocks, and taking a small bucket
of tar and a bunch of oakum in our hands, went aloft, one at the main
royal-mast-head and the other at the fore, and began tarring down. This is an
important operation, and is usually done about once in six months in vessels
upon a long voyage. It was done in our vessel several times afterwards, but by
the whole crew at once, and finished off in a day; but at this time, as most
of it came upon two of us, and we were new at the business, it took us several
days. In this operation they always begin at the mast-head and work down,
tarring the shrouds, back-stays, standing parts of the lifts, the ties,
runners, etc., and go out to the yard-arms, and come in, tarring, as they
come, the lifts and footropes. Tarring the stays is more difficult, and is
done by an operation which the sailors call "riding down". A long piece of
rope - top-gallant-studding-sail halyards, or something of the kind - is taken
up to the masthead from which the stay leads, and rove through a block for a
girt-line, or, as the sailors usually call it, a gant-line; with the end of
this a bowline is taken round the stay, into which the man gets with his
bucket of tar and a bunch of oakum, and the other end being fast on deck, with
some one to tend it, he is lowered down gradually, and tars the stay carefully
as he goes. There he "swings aloft `twixt heaven and earth," and if the rope
slips, breaks, or is let go, or if the bowline slips, he falls overboard or
breaks his neck. This, however, a thing which never enters into a sailor`s
calculation. He only thinks of leaving no holydays, (places not tarred,) for
in case he should, he would have to go over the whole again; or of dropping no
tar upon the deck, for then there would be a soft word in his ear from the
mate. In this manner I tarred down all the headstays, but found the rigging
about the jib-booms, martingale, and spritsail yard, upon which I was
afterwards put, the hardest. Here you have to hang on with your eyelids and
tar with your hands.
This dirty work could not last forever, and on Saturday night we finished
it, scraped all the spots from the deck and rails, and, what was of more
importance to us, cleaned ourselves thoroughly, rolled up our tarry frocks and
trowsers and laid them away for the next occasion, and put on our clean duck
clothes, and had a good comfortable sailor`s Saturday night. The next day was
pleasant, and indeed we had but one unpleasant Sunday during the whole voyage,
and that was off Cape Horn, where we could expect nothing better. On Monday we
commenced painting, and getting the vessel ready for port. This work, too, is
done by the crew, and every sailor who has been on long voyages is a little of
a painter, in addition to his other accomplishments. We painted her, both
inside and out, from the truck to the water`s edge. The outside is painted by
lowering stages over the side by ropes, and on those we sat, with our brushes
and paint-pots by us, and our feet half the time in the water. This must be
done, of course, on a smooth day when the vessel does not roll much. I
remember very well being over the side painting in this way, one fine
afternoon, our vessel going quietly along at the rate of four or five knots,
and a pilot-fish, the sure precursor of a shark, swimming alongside of us.
The captain was leaning over the rail watching him, and we went quietly on
with our work. In the midst of our painting, on -
Friday, Dec. 19th, we crossed the equator for the second time. I had the
feeling which all have when, for the first time, they find themselves living
under an entire change of seasons; as, crossing the line under a burning sun
in the midst of December, and, as I afterwards was, beating about among ice
and snow on the Fourth of July.
Thursday, Dec. 25th. This day was Christmas, but it brought us no
holiday. The only change was that we had a "plum duff" for dinner, and the
crew quarrelled with the steward because he did not give us our usual
allowance of molasses to eat with it. He thought the plums would be a
substitute for the molasses, but we were not to be cheated out of our rights
in this way.
Such are the trifles which produce quarrels on shipboard. In fact, we had
been too long from port. We were getting tired of one another, and were in an
irritable state, both forward and aft. Our fresh provisions were, of course,
gone, and the captain had stopped our rice, so that we had nothing but salt
beef and salt pork throughout the week, with the exception of a very small
duff on Sunday. This added to the discontent; and a thousand little things,
daily and almost hourly occurring, which no one who has not himself been on a
long and tedious voyage can conceive of or properly appreciate - little wars
and rumors of wars, - reports of things said in the cabin, - misunderstanding
of words and looks - apparent abuses, - brought us into a state in which
everything seemed to go wrong. Every encroachment upon the time allowed for
rest, appeared unnecessary. Every shifting of the studding-sails was only to
"haze"^1 the crew.
[Footnote 1: Haze is a word of frequent use on board ship, and never, I
believe, used elsewhere. It is very expressive to a sailor, and means to
punish by hard work. Let an officer once say, "I`ll haze you," and your fate
is fixed. You will be "worked up," if you are not a better man than he is.]
It the midst of this state of things, my messmate S___ and myself
petitioned the captain for leave to shift our berths from the steerage, where
we had previously lived, into the forecastle. This, to our delight, was
granted, and we turned in to bunk and mess with the crew forward. We now began
to feel like sailors, which we never fully did when we were in the steerage.
While there, however useful and active you may be, you are but a mongrel, - a
sort of after-guard and "ship`s cousin." You are immediately under the eye
of the officers, cannot dance, sing, play, smoke, make a noise, or growl,
(i.e. complain,) or take any other sailor`s pleasure; and you live with the
steward, who is usually a go-between; and the crew never feel as though you
were one of them. But if you live in the forecastle, you are `as independent
as a wood-sawyer`s clerk," (nautice,) and are a sailor. You hear sailors`
talk, learn their ways, their peculiarities of feeling as well as speaking and
acting; and moreover pick up a great deal of curious and useful information in
seamanship, ship`s customs, foreign countries, etc., from their long yarns and
equally long disputes. No man can be a sailor, or know what sailors are,
unless he has lived in the forecastle with them - turned in and out with them,
eaten of their dish and drank of their cup. After I had been a week there
nothing would have tempted me to go back to my old berth, and never
afterwards, even in the worst of weather,when in a close and leaking
forecastle off Cape Horn, did I for a moment wish myself in the steerage.
Another thing which you learn better in the forecastle than you can anywhere
else, is to make and mend clothes, and this is indispensable to sailors. A
large part of their watches below they spend at this work, and here I learned
that art which stood me in so good stead afterwards.
But to return to the state of the crew. Upon our coming into the
forecastle, there was some difficulty about the uniting of the allowances of
bread, by which we thought we were to lose a few pounds. This set us into a
ferment. The captain would not condescend to explain, and we went aft in a
body, with a Swede, the oldest and best sailor of the crew, for spokesman. The
recollection of the scene that followed always brings up a smile, especially
the quarter-deck dignity and eloquence of the captain. He was walking the
weather side of the quarter-deck, and seeing us coming aft, stopped short in
his walk, and with a voice and look intended to annihilate us, called out,
"Well, what the d___l do you want now?" Whereupon we stated our grievances as
respectfully as we could, but he broke in upon us, saying that we were getting
fat and lazy, didn`t have enough to do, and that made us find fault. This
provoked us, and we began to give word for word. This would never answer. He
clenched his fist, stamped and swore, and sent us all forward, saying, with
oaths enough interspersed to send the words home, - "Away with you! go forward
every one of you! I`ll haze you! I`ll work you up! You don`t have enough to
do! If you a`n`t careful I`ll make a hell of the ship!. . . . You`ve mistaken
your man! I`m F___ T___, all the way from `down east.` I`ve been through the
mill, ground, and bolted, and come out a regular-built down-east johnny-cake,
good when it`s hot, but when it`s cold, sour and indigestible; - and you`ll
find me so! The latter part of this harangue I remember well, for it made a
strong impression, and the "down-east johnny-cake" became a by word for the
rest of the voyage. So much for our petition for the redress of grievances.
The matter was however set right, for the mate, after allowing the captain due
time to cool off, explained it to him, and at night we were all called aft to
hear another harangue, in which, of course, the whole blame of the
misunderstanding was thrown upon us. We ventured to hint that he would not
give us time to explain; but it wouldn`t do. We were driven back discomfited.
Thus the affair blew over, but the irritation caused by it remained; and we
never had peace or a good understanding again so long as the captain and crew
remained together.
We continued sailing along in the beautiful temperate climate of the
Pacific. The Pacific well deserves its name, for except in the southern part,
at Cape Horn, and in the western parts, near the China and Indian oceans, it
has few storms, and is never either extremely hot or cold. Between the tropics
there is a sight haziness, like a thin gauze, drawn over the sun, which,
without obstructing or obscuring the light, tempers the heat which comes down
with perpendicular fierceness in the Atlantic and Indian tropics. We sailed
well to the westward to have the full advantage of the northeast trades, and
when we had reached the latitude of Point Conception, where it is usual to
make the land, we were several hundred miles to the westward of it. We
immediately changed our course due east, and sailed in that direction for a
number of days. At length we began to heave-to after dark, for fear of
making the land at night on a coast where there are no light houses and but
indifferent charts, and at daybreak on the morning of
Tuesday, Jan. 13th, 1835, we made the land at Point Conception, lat. 34
degrees 32` N., long. 120 degrees 06` W. The port of Santa Barbara, to which
we were bound, lying about fifty miles to the southward of this point, we
continued sailing down the coast during the day and following night, and on
the next morning.
Jan. 14th, 1835, we came to anchor in the spacious bay of Santa Barbara,
after a voyage of one hundred and fifty days from Boston.
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