Part 18

In all naval history I can find nothing more remarkable than the immense courage and wonderful persistency of those old freebooters. Follow Dampier as he traverses the deep and outlives a terrible gale in a small canoe; and Shelvocke as he launches his wretched boat, which he called the _Recovery_, and sails away in her, loaded with seamen, who had scarce the space to lie down in, and victualled with nothing better than smoked conger eels, a cask of beef, and four live hogs. “We were upwards of forty of us crowded together, and lying upon the bundles of eels, and being in no method of keeping ourselves clean, all our senses were as much offended as possible. There was not a drop of water to be had without sucking it out of the cask with the barrel of a musquet, which was used by everybody promiscuously, and the little unsavoury morsels we daily ate created perpetual quarrels among us, every one contending for the frying pan.” Yet despite their miserable condition, these stout hearts attacked the first Spaniard that came in their way, took her, and used her in their subsequent marauding adventures. The voyage had a dismal issue, yet they managed to pick up a little booty here and there. Some curious old Spanish stratagems are exhibited. In one prize they found a quantity of sweetmeats, which were divided among the messes. One day a seaman complained that he had a box of “malmalade,” which he could not stick his knife into, and asked that it might be changed. Shelvocke opened it, and found inside a cake of virgin silver, moulded on purpose to fit such boxes; and, says he, “being very porous, it was of near the same weight of so much malmalade.” They overhauled the rest, and found five more of the boxes. “We doubtless,” exclaims the old buccaneer in a grieving way, “left a great many of these boxes behind us, so that this deceit served them in a double capacity—to defraud their king’s officers and blind their enemies.”[72]

Footnote 72:

Lord Byron would have us believe that the Corsair’s life was a dainty one; but of all the seafaring classes, none “roughed it” more thoroughly than the pirate and privateersman. Dampier says grimly, “’Tis usual with seamen in those parts to sleep on deck, especially for privateers; among whom I made these observations. In privateers, especially when we are at anchor, the deck is spread with mats, to lie on each night. Every man has one, some two; and this, with a pillow for the head, and a rug for a covering, is all the bedding that is necessary for men of that employ.” (Dampier’s “Voyages,” vol. ii., 1699.) Some curious descriptions of the habits and appearance of the typical pirate of the last century will be found in “A New Account of Guinea and the Slave Trade,” written by Captain William Snelgrave, and published in 1754. This man was taken by pirates during a voyage to the coast of Guinea in 1718. “There was not in the cabbin,” says he, “either chair or anything else to sit upon; for they always keep a clear ship ready for an engagement; so a carpet was spread on the deck, upon which we sat down cross-legg’d.” When night came the captain was asked to provide Snelgrave with a hammock, “for it seems every one lay rough, as they called it, that is, on the deck, the captain himself not being allowed a bed.” He gives us a taste of their manners. “I got into the hammock, though I could not sleep in my melancholy circumstances. Moreover, the execrable oaths and blasphemies I heard among the ship’s company, shocked me to such a degree, that in Hell itself I thought there could not be worse; for though many seafaring men are given to swearing and taking God’s name in vain, yet I could not have imagined human nature could ever so far degenerate as to talk in the manner those abandoned wretches did.” I find a formidable figure in this portrait. “As soon as I had done answering the captain’s questions, a tall man, with four pistols in his girdle and a broadsword in his hand came to me on the quarter-deck!”

It always seems to be the haughty Don who, in the old stories, yields Jack the rich booties. Here, for example, is a passage from the “Annual Register” of 1762: “The _Hermione_, a Spanish register ship, which left Lima the 6th of January, bound for Cadiz, was taken the 21st of May off Cape St. Vincent, by three English frigates, and carried into Gibraltar. Her cargo is said to consist of near twelve millions of money, registered, and the unregistered to be likewise very considerable, besides two thousand serons of cocoa, and a great deal of other valuable merchandize.” Take these items from her papers: One thousand one hundred and ninety-three quintals of tin—a quintal, I may say, is one hundred pounds—two millions two hundred and seventy-six thousand seven hundred and fifteen dollars in silver and gold, coined; twenty-five arobes of alpaca wool, and five thousand two hundred and forty-three arobes of cocoa. A man did not need more than one capture after this pattern to settle him as a fine old English gentleman, and to qualify him to start a noble family. The mere rumour of such a haul as this would suffice, in those fighting days, to cover the seas with privateers.

Another paragraph, one year later: “Five waggon loads of money, escorted by a party of soldiers, were lately brought to the Bank from Portsmouth, by the _Rippon_, man-of-war, from the Havannah.” In these piping times of peace one is apt to forget how very well the mariner did in the years when his cutlass was never out of his hand. The value of the prize-goods taken at the Havannah in 1763 amounted to £154,855 10_s._ 11_d._, of which the admiral took nearly £90,000, the commodore £17,206, captains £1125 each, and the lieutenants £86 1_s._ each. And the privateerman fared as well as the naval officer. Not long after the _Centurion_ took the Manila ship, two privateers, the _Ranger_, of Bristol, and the _Amazon_, of Liverpool, captured the _Sancte Ineas_, a Spanish man-of-war, bound from Manila to Cadiz, laden with gold, silver, silk, coffee, china, cochineal, and indigo, and declared to be the richest prize taken since the galleon by Admiral Anson. All through the story, from Elizabeth to the beginning of this century, you hear of the privateers arriving with rich prizes. “Letters from Fowey state the arrival there of the _Lord Middleton_, richly laden with cocoa, indigo, coffee, quicksilver, valued at £45,000, taken by the _Maria_ privateer, of this port.” “Came in the _Earl St. Vincent_, fourteen guns, Captain Richards, privateer, of this port, with the _New Harmony_ of Altona, from Smyrna to Amsterdam, with cargo valued at £80,000.” And so on by scores.

There were Customs’ seizures, too, such as we never hear the like of now. You read of an officer of Excise at Falmouth seizing on board a ship twenty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty-nine pounds of tea, and nine thousand gallons of brandy! “The officer by this gets £3000. It is the greatest seizure of tea ever known.” Or, “Arrived, the _Providence_, smuggling lugger, of Palferro, with nine hundred and seventy ankers of brandy and thirteen tons of tobacco, sent in by _l’Oiseau_, of thirty-six guns, Captain Linzee.” The old reports teem with examples of this kind.

Yet, spite of rich prizes, smuggling captures, and the like, Jack was always hard up, and by impecuniosity in a chronic state of being “forced from home and all its pleasures.” There was alive in 1790 an old man, one John Holmes, the only survivor of the crew who accompanied Anson round the world. He was in the most distressing poverty. He would tell the story of the fight between the _Centurion_ and the galleon, and of the prize-money that fell to the men’s shares; but when asked what he had done with the substantial sum which had come to him, his answer was, “Alas! sir, I was a sailor.” Sir George Rooke put it more nobly, if less pathetically. When he was making his will, some friends who were present expressed their surprise that he had not more to bequeath. “I do not leave much,” answered the old heart of oak, “but what I do leave was honestly acquired; it never cost a sailor a tear or my country a farthing.”

The wonder is that ships went so richly laden in those war times. If it was thought proper to convoy vessels of comparatively small value, it was surely desirable to guard against the cruisers and the privateers the vast accumulations of money and plate which were to be met with in Spanish, French, and Dutch bottoms in the corsair-infested Narrow Seas, in Biscayan parallels, and in the wide Pacific Ocean. Anson’s galleon was, indeed, a powerful ship for those times, yet she proved no match for the slender and crippled company of men who attacked her. Had she been convoyed, had she been in company with other vessels of her nation, the British commodore must have languished in vain for the immense treasure in her. The need of a guard, an auxiliary, of some protection to supplement her own powder and shot seems to us, gazing backwards with clear perception of the issues which followed, essential to the safety of the plate or treasure ship in times when it would appear that the stoutest-hearted of Spanish or French captains were unable to rally their men when the English colours at the masthead acquainted them with the nationality of the foe. For example: On November 6, 1799, there arrived at Dartmouth a Spanish ship, of six hundred tons burden, named the _N.S. de Piedat_, prize to a privateer called the _Dart_. She mounted sixteen carriage guns, carried seventy men, and was fitted up for close quarters, that is to say, she was furnished with “barricadoes” as a refuge for her crew in case of being boarded. She struck to the privateer, however, after firing only two guns, though the Englishmen mounted but fourteen four-pounders. Nevertheless, seventy seamen—Spanish sailors—in a ship of six hundred tons seem a feeble company to send along with such wealth as lay in the _N.S. de Piedat’s_ hold. Here is her value: one hundred and forty-two thousand one hundred and seventeen silver dollars, thirty-eight thousand nine hundred and forty-nine dollars in gold doubloons, thirty-one ingots of gold, five ingots of silver, forty-two bales of fine beaver, twenty-one thousand and sixty-one hides in the hair, three bales of fine wool, one bale of fine fur. The rest of the cargo, exclusive of the gold and silver, was valued at £80,000. The _Dart_ carried sixty seamen. What conceivable chance would seventy Spaniards have against such a crew as the _Dart_ could oppose to them—fellows whose living depended upon plunder, and who could almost count upon the enemy’s striking after the first hail or after the first two shots? It was a very cosy haul for the _Dart’s_ people. Small wonder that the privateer should have formed an abounding ocean element, when the character of the prey and the quality of the baggings are considered. “Eight ships long expected from New Spain, and another from Buenos Ayres, arrived at Cadiz the 21st of this month. The cargoes of these ships are valued at eleven millions of dollars, of which the registered gold and silver amount to near nine millions.” Such paragraphs are again and again to be met with in the news sheets of old times.

And depend upon it, if the privateersman’s mouth watered over such items of intelligence, they were also read with a swelling heart by the King’s Navy man. Prize-money is sweet, and it ought to be sweet, for no reward is more gloriously and heroically earned. What is there in cash—be it prompt or otherwise—to compensate a man for a leg or an eye? “Went down into the Sound, _La Nymphe_, of thirty-six guns, Captain Douglas. She received this afternoon nearly £30,000 prize-money, and sailed directly on a cruise.” How agreeable this is to read, though it is all over, years and years ago! In fancy I behold the jolly red faces of those lively salts, pigtails on back, and quids standing high under their cheekbones, sheeting home the _Nymphe’s_ topsails, their hearts full of the Sukes and Sals who have faded out with the receding shore, and their minds busy with dreams of the dollars this new cruise shall tassel their pocket-handkerchiefs with. “The great sales for prize-goods captured in different vessels of the enemy by our cruisers and sent in here (Plymouth) began this day. The prize-vessels and goods of different kinds fetched great prices, and were bought up with avidity by purchasers from London, Liverpool, Bristol, Falmouth, Exeter, etc., much to the satisfaction of the captors.” Much to the satisfaction of the captors! The fancy leaps to the sound of these century-old words. Hamoaze is full of prizes—the brilliant victor with the proud St. George’s Cross at her peak strains lightly at her hempen cable in the Sound, her yards braced to a hair, the white line of hammock cloths crowning her defences, her tompioned guns grinning like muzzled mastiffs through her ports, the red-coats of marines dotting her almond-white decks, an epaulet or two flashing aft, and the sale proceeding ashore “much to the satisfaction of the captors.” Ay, Jack’s grin, though one, two, or three centuries old, is a living thing yet. The trophies of an amazing naval history are wreathed around his purple smile. What, after all, was Britannia’s true Archimedean lever but the mariner’s pigtail; and what the fulcrum but the mountain of treasure from which the sailor gathered his little pocketful under the name of Prize Money?

_PECULIARITIES OF RIG._

I had been talking with an old seaman about the races between an English and an American yacht. My companion was a man who had spent the greater part of his life at sea, and was a sailor in the sense that includes not only smartness, alertness, and skill in those duties expected of seamen, but thorough knowledge of all that concerns ships, both in the fabrics of their hulls, and in their masts, yards, rigging, and canvas. He said to me that he was not sorry the Yankee had beaten the Englishman, because it might cause yachtsmen to see that beam must still be regarded as a condition of speed, and that the notion that swiftness was to be obtained by a shape that answered to Euclid’s definition of a line had been carried considerably too far. One thing leading to another, he spoke of schooner yachts, and said that, so far as racing was concerned, he fancied that the schooner rig was gradually sliding out of date.

“And yet,” said he, “I’m certain that if the prejudices of yachting skippers and yachting crews could be overcome, and owners induced to see the thing in its right light, the schooner yacht could be rendered a faster craft than the most splashing and frothing of the yawls or cutters which now seem capable of sailing round them. It was only the other day I was looking at a yacht race. There was a middling breeze blowing. I turned the glass upon a schooner that was in the race; she was ratching through it with spars almost erect, whilst the yawls lay down till their rail looked to be under. Why was that? Would not you say because the schooner hadn’t canvas enough? She was showing all she had; but she wanted more, and if more had been given her she would have been leading instead of hanging in the wake of the toys that were swirling ahead of her. What other canvas would I give her? Why, of course, I’d give her a fore-yard and a top-sail and a topgallant yard. Consider what a square sail would have done for that schooner. I’ve been sailing in a vessel of that rig when we’ve taken the square top-sail off her, and the moment that bit of canvas was clewed up you might have felt the way deadened in her as if she’d lost her life—as if all impulse was gone. The yachting skippers have got a prejudice against square canvas. It comes, in my opinion, in a good many cases, from the feeling that if they were shipmates with a top-sail-yard they wouldn’t quite know what to do with it. I’ve spoken to a good many of them upon the subject, and asked how it is that they don’t recommend their gents to rig their vessels with square yards forward; but their regular answer is, ‘Pooh! we don’t want no square sails. Who’s going to be bothered with bracing yards about and mucking up aloft after shipshape bunts when gaffs and booms ’ll blow us along as fast as we need to go?’ That’s what it comes to. ‘Who’s going to be bothered?’ A skipper said to me: ‘Take a vessel in stays. You’ve got your top-sail aback, and instead of shooting ahead as a fore-and-after will, she stops dead while she slowly comes round.’ That shows his ignorance. I’ve been ratching down the Mersey in a clipper schooner, and such way did she get from her square canvas, and such little notice did she take of her top-sail coming aback, that I’ve seen the skipper head her for the shore with a slow putting down of his helm to let her edge along, and I’ve watched her run for a good spell parallel with the shore before she came round on the other tack. The increased way the square canvas gives a schooner counterbalances whatever loss of way an aback top-sail is supposed to cause her. My own opinion of the advantage of that canvas is such that I’d undertake to fit a schooner yacht with a square rig forward on these terms: That I was allowed to sail her first; that if she beat I was to receive double pay for my services, and if she lost what I’d done should be at my own expense, and I’d restore her to her old rig free. Only fancy in ratching the pulling power you’d be giving to a schooner. Your foreyard is suspended by a truss, and if you choose you could sweat it fore and aft if you liked. There’s nothing in square canvas to prevent a schooner from lying up as close as if she was fore-and-aft rigged. Naturally schooners ’ll go to leeward and be lost sight of as racers if the canvas they compete under is out of all proportion with the canvas that yawls and cutters spread. This is my notion, anyway, and such is my faith in my own opinion that I’m willing to stand or fall by it on the terms I’ve given you, if so be any owner of a schooner yacht is agreeable to give me the chance.”

I have no comment to offer on this sailor’s observations. My knowledge of racing yachts, their qualities and requirements, does not carry me nearly far enough to form any approach to a judgment upon the use that might be made amongst competing schooners of square sails and square topsails. I may say, in the language of the old sea-song, “I served my time in the Blackwall Line.” I went to sea at the age of thirteen and a half in Duncan Dunbar’s service, and kept to the life until I was nearly two and twenty. Few sailors combine a knowledge of fore-and-aft with square-rig seamanship. There is as great a difference between them as there is between steam and sail. For my own part, I must confess to knowing very little about yachts and yachting. The point that struck me most in this man’s conversation was the vast amount of experience that must obviously be embodied in the innumerable rigs which are found afloat in all parts of the world. A single sail will make all the difference between two vessels; nay, even the shape of a sail will as completely distinguish one craft from another as the uniform of a soldier distinguishes him from a policeman. Think of the years of weather, of violent seas, of smooth waters lightly fanned, of strong head breezes, and soft airs blowing over the stern, which have entered into the creation of those hundred different types of canvas—square, oblong, pyramidal, angular, jib-headed, long-headed, and the rest of it, which pass and repass our shores. Here is an old sailor declaring that schooner yachts ought to be square-rigged forward, and he says that nearly all the yacht captains he has talked to upon this subject are opposed to his ideas. One can perceive in this the difficulty there must have been in the beginning to settle the question of canvas, a question only to be dealt with by experience, but an experience so varied and immense that it is impossible for any man, capable of rightly compassing the character of it, not to find something absolutely impressive in its way in every cloth that gleams upon the sea.

I remember once being in the smoking-room of a large hotel, and hearing two men, in the presence of several companions of theirs, arguing about what a billyboy was. One man said it was a kind of barge, the other maintained that it was a sloop-rigged vessel similar to the old hoy. Much nonsense was talked, yet the people sitting about them listened with attention, emptied their glasses, and looked as though they thought that no matter which of the disputants was wrong—and one must be wrong—both of them evidently knew a very great deal about rigs. At last an elderly man, with a velvet collar to his black cloth coat, coming out of his chair in a corner, said, “I beg pardon for intruding, but I happen to know something about billyboys; in fact, I own a couple. What sort of a billyboy do you gentlemen mean? Is it a sloop-billyboy, or a schooner-billyboy, or a ketch-billyboy?” The company looked hard at him, for it was plain a general misgiving as to his seriousness seized them when he spoke of a ketch-billyboy. “The sort of billyboy we are arguing about,” was the answer, “is just simply—a billyboy.” “Well,” said the other, “as I told you gents, I own two. One’s ketch-rigged, and t’other’s cutter-rigged. The billyboy,” he added, “is a round starned vessel with standing bowsprit and jib-stay, and mostly she’s all hatchways.” That was his definition, and it was accepted, the man who argued that the billyboy was rigged like a sloop looking particularly pleased.

Now one would wish to know whether a billyboy, no matter how many masts she carried, would still be called a billyboy if she had a running instead of a standing bowsprit? This is one of those delicate points over which I will venture to say many a hoarse argument has been roared out amidst clouds of tobacco smoke and the fumes of old Jamaica.

“There,” said I one day, pointing to a very smart schooner that was passing, “goes a pretty little vessel.”

“Aye,” answered the ’longshoreman whom I had addressed, “a butterman.”

“Freighted with butter, eh?” said I, not doubting that that was what he meant.

“Butter!” he ejaculated, “No. What I mean is she’s butter-rigged.”

“And pray what is butter-rigged?” said I, for I protest I had never heard the expression before.

“Why,” he said, “a butter-rigged schooner’s a vessel that sets her t’gall’nt sail flying. The yard comes down on the taw’sa’l yard, and the sails is furled together.”

And this is a butter-rigged schooner! A well-defined distinction as rigs go, and all because the topgallant yard has no lifts! A long while after I asked an old sailor if he knew how it was that the term “butter-rigged” came to be applied to vessels furnished with this kind of topgallant yard, and he answered that he believed the name was given in consequence of numbers of this kind of craft trading to Holland for butter.