Part 14

Sailors often speak of an “ugly” sea, but the adjective has quite another meaning to that usually attached to it. They do not mean that it is ugly in appearance, for they well know that the beauty of a wave is as much a part of it as is the water--it cannot be otherwise than beautiful, as it cannot cease to be wet. What they mean is a dangerous sea. And by “sea” they always mean wave. A sailor never speaks of a “high wave,” “cross waves,” “heavy waves”; in fact, on board ship, except when passengers are getting information from officers, you will not hear the word “wave” mentioned at all. It is necessary to mention this purely nautical detail to save constant explanation and digression. To return, then, to the sailor’s “ugly” sea. Its ugliness may be due to many different causes, but in the result the waves do not run truly with the wind; they rise unexpectedly and confusedly, changing the natural motion of the ship into a bewildered stagger, such as one will sometimes see in a horse when a brutal, foolish driver is beating him over the head and wrenching first at one rein and then the other without knowing himself what he wants the poor brute to do. It is very pitiful, too, to watch a gallant ship being pressed through an ugly, untrue sea--such, for instance, as may be met with in the North Atlantic with a south-west gale blowing, and the vessel in the midst of the Gulf Stream. The conflict between wind and current, all the more terrible for its invisibility, is deep-reaching, so deep that every excuse must be found for those who have spoken of seas running mountains high. As the steady, implacable thrust of the storm booms forth, the black breadths of water rise rebellious; they would fain flow in the face of the wind, but that cannot be. So they rise, sullenly rise, peak-like, against their persecutor, until his might compels them forward against the mighty stream beneath, and their shattered crags and pinnacles tumble in ruinous heaps around.

Even this, however, is less dangerous than that time--to be spoken of by those who have seen it, and live, with bated breath--when, rotating like some wheel of the gods, the tropical cyclone whirls across the Indian seas. Round and round blow the incredibly furious winds, having a centrifugal direction withal, and yet the whole mighty system progresses in some given direction, until towards its centre there is a Maelstrom indeed--a space where the wind hath left, as it were, a funnel of calm in the world-tumult. And there the waves hold high revel. Heap upon heap the waters rise, without direction, without shape, save that of fortuitous blocks hurled skyward and falling again in ruin. The fountains of the great deep appear to be broken up, and woe to man’s handiwork found straying there in that black hour.

All those who have ever “run the Easting down” will remember, but not all pleasurably, the great true sea of the roaring “forties” or “fifties.” How, unhindered in its world-encircling sweep, the premier wind of all comes joyously, unwaveringly, for many a day without a pause, while the good ship flies before it with every wing bearing its utmost strain. In keeping with the wind, the wave--the long, true wave of the Southern Seas, spreading to infinity on either hand, a gorgeous concave of blue, with its direction as straightly at right angles to the ship’s track as if laid by line, and its ridge all glistening like a wreath of new-fallen snow under silver moon or golden sun. It pursues, it overtakes, rises astern with majestic sound as of all the war-chariots of Neptune; then, easily passing beneath the buoyant keel, it is gone on ahead, has joined its fellows in their stately progress to the East. Adown its far-spreading shoulders stream pennons of white; in the broad valley between it and the next wave the same bright foam creams and hisses until wherever the eye can rest is no longer blue but white--a wilderness of curdling snow just bepatched with azure.

The strong, exultant ship may rejoice in such a scene as this, but it is far otherwise with the weakling. Caught up in this irresistible march of wind and wave, she feels that her place is otherwhere; it is not hers to strive with giants, but to abide by the stuff. Then do the hapless mariners in charge watch carefully for a time when they may lay her to, watch the waves’ sequence, knowing that every third wave is greater, and leaves a broader valley of smooth behind it than its fellows; while some say that with the third sequence of three--the ninth wave--these differences are at their maximum. Why? Who knows? Certain it is that some waves are heavier than others, and equally certain it is that in the case of a truly running sea these heavier seas appear at regularly recurrent intervals of three. And that is all sailors know. Sufficient too, perhaps, as with their weak and overladen ship they watch the smooth, to swing her up between two rolling ranges of water, and without shipping more than thirty or forty tons or so, heave her to, her head just quartering the oncoming waves, and all danger of being overwhelmed by them removed.

Curious indeed are the waves to be found over uneven bottoms with strong undercurrents--as, for instance, on the coast of Nova Scotia--and known as “overfalls.” Sufficiently annoying to vessels of large size that get among them, they are most dangerous to small craft. The water rises in masses perpendicularly, and falls a dead weight without apparent forward motion--a puzzling, deadly sea to meet when a howling gale is driving your small vessel across those angry waters. But the overfall character is common to nearly all waves raised in shallow seas and tidal streams. It adds to the dangers of navigation immensely, and although the eye must be charmed when from the lofty cliff we see the green-bosomed, hoary-shouldered wave come thundering shoreward, we need not expect those to greet him lovingly who must do so in weakness and undefended.

What of the tidal wave; that mysterious indispensable swelling of the waters that, following the “pull” of the moon, rolls round this globe of ours twice in each twenty-four hours, stemming the outflow of mighty rivers, penetrating far inland wherever access is available, and doing within its short lease of life an amount of beneficent work freely that would beggar the wealthiest Monarchy of the world to undertake if it must needs be paid for? Mysterious it may well be called, since, though its passage from zone to zone be so swift, it is, like all other waves, but an undulatory movement of that portion of the sea momentarily influenced by the suasion of the planet--not, as is vulgarly supposed, the same mass of water vehemently carried onward for thousands of miles. No; just as a tightly stretched sheet of calico shows an undulation if the point of a stick be passed along beneath its surface and pressed upward against it, an undulation which leaves every fibre where it was originally, so does the whole surface remain in its place while the long, long wave rolls round the world carrying up to their moorings the homeward-bound ships, sweetening mud-befouled tidal harbours, and giving to forlorn breadths of deserted shallows all the glory and vitality of the youthful sea.

To meet a tidal wave at sea is in some parts of the watery world a grim and unforgettable experience. Floating upon the shining blue plain, with an indolent swelling of the surface just giving a cosy roll to your ship now and then, you suddenly see in the distance a ridge, a knoll of water that advances vast, silent, menacing. Nearer and nearer it comes, rearing its apparently endless curve higher and higher. There is no place to flee from before its face. Neither is there much suspense. For its pace is swift, although it appears so deliberate, from the illimitable grandeur of its extent. It is upon the ship. She behaves in accordance with the way she has been caught and her innate peculiarities. In any case, whatever her bulk, she is hurled forward, upward, backward, downward, as if never again could she regain an even keel, while her crew cling desperately to whatever holding-place they may have reached, lest they should be dashed into dead pieces.

Some will have it that these marvellous upliftings of the sea-bosom are not tidal waves at all--that they do not belong to that normal ebb and flow of the ocean that owns the sway of the moon. If so, they would be met with more frequently than they are at sea, and far more disasters would be placed to their account. This contention seems reasonable, because it is well known that lonely islets such as St. Helena, Tristan d’Acunha, and Ascension are visited at irregular intervals by a succession of appalling waves (rollers) that deal havoc among the smaller shipping, and look as if they would overwhelm the land. The suggestion is that these stupendous waves are due to cosmic disturbance, to submarine earthquakes upheaving the ocean-bed and causing so vast a displacement of the ocean that its undulations extend for several thousands of miles.

As to the speed of waves, judging from all experience, they would seem never to exceed sixteen to eighteen knots an hour in their hugest forms. And yet it is well known that they will often outstrip the gale that gave them birth, let it rage never so furiously. Lying peacefully rolling upon the smoothest of summer seas, you shall presently find, without any alteration in the weather, the vessel’s motion change from its soothing roll to a sharp, irritable, and irritating movement. And, looking overside, there may be seen the forerunners of the storm that is raging hundreds of miles away, the hurrying waves that it has driven in its path. So likewise, long hours after a gale is over, the waves it has raised roll on, still reluctant to resume their levelled peace, and should a new gale arise in some contrary direction, the “old” sea, as the sailor calls it, will persist, making the striving ship’s progress full of weariness and unease to those on board. Of the energy of waves, of the lessons they teach, their immutable mutability, and other things concerning them that leap to the mind, no word can now be spoken, for space is spent.

A BATTLESHIP OF TO-DAY

Last year it was my pleasant privilege to lay before the readers of the _Spectator_ a few details upon the polity of a battleship, and from the amount of interest shown in that subject, it would seem acceptable to supplement it by a few more details upon the mechanical side. First, then, as to the ship herself. Complaints are often heard of the loss of beauty and ship-like appearance consequent upon the gain of combative strength in these floating monsters. And it cannot be denied that up till a few years ago in our own Navy, and at the present date among the _cuirassés_ of France, the appearance of the vessels made such a complaint well founded--such ships as the _Hoche_ and _Charlemagne_, for instance, from which it may truly be said that all likeness to a ship has been removed. But in our own Navy there has been witnessed of late years a decided return to the handsome contour of vessels built, not for war, but for the peaceful pursuits of the merchant service. And this has so far been attended by the happiest results. These mighty ships of the _Majestic_ class, on board of one of which I am now writing, have won the unstinted praise of all connected with them. This means a great deal, for there are no more severe critics of the efforts of naval architects than naval officers, as would be naturally expected. In these ships the eye is arrested at once by their beautiful lines, and the absence of any appearance of top-heaviness so painfully evident in ships like the _Thunderer_, the _Dreadnought_, and the _Admirals_. Their spacious freeboard, or height from the water-line to the edge of the upper deck, catches a seaman’s eye at once, for a good freeboard means not only a fairly dry ship, but also plenty of fresh air below, as well as a sense of security in heavy weather. It is not, however, until their testing time comes, in a heavy gale of wind on the wide Atlantic, that their other virtues appear. Then one is never weary of wondering at their splendid stability and freedom from rolling, which makes them unique fighting platforms under the worst weather conditions. They steer perfectly, a range of over three and a half degrees on either side of their course being sufficient to bring down heavy censure upon the quartermaster. They have not Belleville boilers, and so enjoy almost complete immunity from breakdowns, maintaining their speed in a manner that is not approached by any other men-of-war afloat. In addition to great economy of coal usage they have, for a ship of war, very large coal bunkerage. In fact, in this respect their qualifications are so high that there is danger of being disbelieved in giving the plain facts. On a coal consumption of 50 tons per day for _all_ purposes a speed of eight knots per hour can be maintained for forty days. Of course, with each extra knot of speed the coal consumption increases enormously, reaching a maximum of 220 tons a day for a speed of fifteen knots with forced draught. It is necessary to italicise _all_ purposes, for it must always be remembered that there is quite a host of auxiliary engines always at work in these ships for the supply of electric light, ventilation, steering, distilling, &c. And this brings me to a most important detail of the economy of modern ships of war--their utter dependence for efficient working upon modern inventions, all highly complicated, and liable to get out of order. As, for instance, the lighting. It is quite true that the work of the ship can be carried on without electric light, but when one considers the bewildering ramifications of utterly dark passages in the bowels of these huge ships, and remembers how accustomed the workers become to the flood of light given by a host of electric lamps, it needs no active exercise of the imagination to picture the condition of things when that great illumination is replaced by the feeble glimmer of candles or colomb lights. Truly they only punctuate the darkness, they do not dispel it, and work is carried on at great risk because of its necessary haste. Then there is the steering. Under ordinary circumstances one man stands at a baby wheel upon a lofty bridge, whence he has a view from beam to beam of all that is going on, of the surrounding sea. At a touch of his hand the obedient monster of 150 horse-power, far down in the tiller-room aft, responds by exerting its great force upon the rudder, and the ship is handled with ridiculous ease. Use accustoms one to the marvel, and no wonder is ever evinced at the way in which one man can keep that giant of 15,000 tons so steady on her course. But of late we have had an object-lesson upon the difference there is between steering by hand without the intervention of machinery and steering with its aid. In the next water-tight compartment forward of the tiller-room, there are four wheels, each 5 feet in diameter, and of great strength of construction. Some distance in front of these there is an indicator--a brass pointer moving along a horizontal scale marked in degrees. Forward of this again, but about 2 feet to port of it, there is a compass, and how any compass, however buttressed by compensators, can keep its polarity in the midst of such an immense assemblage of iron and steel furniture is almost miraculous. By the side of the compass is a voice-tube communicating with the pilot-bridge forward. To each of the wheels four men are allotted, sixteen in all. A quartermaster watches, with eyes that never remove their gaze, the indicator, which, actuated from the pilot-bridge 300 feet away, tells him how many degrees of helm are needed, and he immediately gives his orders accordingly. One man watches the compass, another attends the voice-tube, listening intently for orders that may come in that way from the officer responsible for the handling of the ship. Two men also watch in the tiller-room for possible complications arising there. Total, twenty-one men for the purpose of steering the ship alone, or a crew equal to that of a sailing-ship of 2000 tons, or the deck hands of a steamship of 6000 tons. Yet this steering crew is only for one watch. Of course, this steering by hand is a last resource. The engines which move the rudder are in duplicate, and there are seven other stations from which they can be worked--viz., one on the upper bridge, one in each of the conning-towers, one at each steering-engine, and two others on different decks in the lower fore-part of the ship. It is certainly true that some of these wheels actuate the same connection, so that one break may disable two, or even three, wheels; but even granting that, there still remains a considerable margin of chances against the possibility of ever being compelled to use the hand steering-gear. Those awful weapons of war, the barbette guns, may also be handled by manual labour, but it is instructive to compare the swift ease with which they, their containing barbettes (each weighing complete 250 tons), their huge cartridges of cordite and 850 lb. shells, are handled by hydraulic power, and the same processes carried out by hand. And so with all other serious operations, such as weighing anchor, hoisting steamboats, &c. The masses of weight to be dealt with are so great that the veriest novice may see at one glance that to be compelled to use hand labour for their manipulation in actual warfare would be equivalent to leaving the ship helpless, at the mercy of another ship of any enemy’s not so situated. Yes, these ships are good, so good that it is a pity they are not better. In the opinion of those best qualified to know, they have still a great deal too much useless top-hamper--nay, worse than useless, because in action its destruction by shell-fire and consequent mass of débris would not only mean the needless loss of many lives, but would pile up a mountain of obstacles in the way of the ship’s efficient working. Also, the amount of unnecessary woodwork with which these vessels are cumbered is very great, constituting a danger so serious that on going into action it would be imperative to put a tremendous strain upon the crew in tearing it from its positions and flinging it overboard. Upper works of course there must be, but they should be reduced to their simplest and most easily removable expression, and on no account should there be, as there now is, any battery that in action would be unworkable, and consequently only so much lumber in the way. Remembering the enormous cost of the flotilla of boats carried by these ships, three of them being steamers of high speed, it comes as somewhat of a shock to learn that upon going into action one of the first things necessary would be to launch them all overboard and let them go secured together so that they might possibly be picked up again, although not easily by the ship to which they belonged. It is only another lurid glimpse of the prospective horror of modern naval warfare. There will be no means of escape in case of defeat and sinking, for nothing will be left to float. Finally, after all criticisms have been made it remains to be said that it is much to be regretted that we have not double the number of these splendid battleships furnished with boilers that can be relied upon as the present boilers can. Other ships of their stamp are being built, but with Belleville boilers, of which the best that can be said is that our most dangerous prospective foe is using them exclusively also. But she, again, is rushing blindly upon certain disaster in the direction of accumulating enormous superstructures which are certain to be destroyed early in any engagement, and being destroyed will leave the ship a helpless wreck. We have shown our wisdom by reducing these dreadfully disabling erections, and shall yet reduce them more. Why not go a step farther, and refuse longer to load our engineers with the horrible incubus of boilers that have not a single workable virtue but that of raising steam quickly, and have every vice that a vehicle for generating steam can possibly possess?

NAT’S MONKEY

When Nathaniel D. Troop (of Jersey City, U.S.A.), presently A.B. on board the British ship _Belle_, solemnly announced his intention of investing in a monkey the next time old Daddy the Bumboatman came alongside, there was a breathless hush, something like consternation, amongst his shipmates. It was in Bombay and eventide, and all we of the foremast hands were quietly engaged upon our supper (tea is the name for the corresponding meal ashore), with great content resting upon us, for bananas, rooties, duck-eggs and similar bumboat-bought luxuries abounded among us. So that the chunk of indurated buffalo that had resisted all assaults upon it at dinner-time lay unmolested at the bottom of the beef-kid, no one feeling sufficiently interested to bestow a swear on it.

For some time after Nat’s pronouncement nobody spoke. The cool breeze whispered under the fo’c’s’le awning, the Bramley-kites wheeled around whistling hungrily and casting their envious watchful eyes upon our plates, and somewhere in the distance a dinghy-wallah intoned an interminable legend to his fellow-sufferers that sounded like the high-pitched drone of bees on a sultry afternoon among the flowers. Then up and spake John de Baptiss: “Waffor, Nat? Wah we ben dween t’yo. Foh de Lawd sake, sah, ef yew gwain bring Macaque ’bord dis sheep you’se stockin trubble’ nough ter fill er mighty long hole.” “’Sides,” argued Cockney Jem, “’taint ’sif we ain’t got a monkey. ’Few wornt any monkey tricks played on us wot price th’ kid ’ere,” and he pointed to _me_.

“Naow jess yew hole on half a minnit,” drawled Nat, “’relse yew’ll lose your place. Djer ever know me ter make trubble sense I ben abord thishyer limejuice dog-basket? Naw, I’ve a learnt manners, _I_ hev, ’n don’t never go stickin’ my gibbie in another man’s hash I don’t. But in kase this kermunity sh’d feel anyways hurt at my perposal, lemme ’splain. I s’pose I ain’t singler in bein’ ruther tired er these blame hogs forrad here. Hogs is all right, ez hogs, but they don’t make parler pets wuth a cent. N’wen I finds one biggern a porpuss a wallerin’ round in my bunk ’n rootin’ ’mong the clean straw my bed’s stuffed with, its kiender bore in erpon me that fresh pork fer dinner’s wut I ben pinin’ fer a long time. Naow I know thet I kin teach a monkey in about tew days ’nough ter make him scare the very chidlins er them hogs inter sossidge meat if they kum investigatin’ where he’s on dooty. ’N so I calkerlate to be a sorter bennyfactor ter my shipmates, though it seems ’sif yew ain’t overnabove grateful.”