Part 29
In the fury of its rotary motion and upward suction a tornado is the most appalling of all natural phenomena save, perhaps, the earthquake, and the passing of one causes the most incredible and seemingly impossible freaks. Chickens are stripped of their feathers, straws are driven firmly into planks, and locomotives weighing fifty tons have been over-turned without effort, the latter being possible by the formation of a partial vacuum. Straws, however, have been driven an eighth of an inch into a plank by an artificial blast of air moving at the rate of one hundred and sixty miles per hour. The presence of a vacuum is proved by the violent bursting outward of the closed windows and shutters of a house in or near the track of a tornado.
Many people will remember the dire results of the famous St. Louis tornado of May, 1896, which resulted in the death of two hundred and twenty-five persons and the loss of twelve million dollars in property destroyed; yet there is no reason to suppose that this storm was an unusually severe one; it simply happened to pass over a more or less densely populated region. As usual, this tornado left behind some remarkable mementos, the strangest of all being that a piece of pine plank was driven by the wind head-on through the five-sixteenths inch web of an iron girder in the approach to the St. Louis bridge! This is a performance well known to the government Weather Bureau. Immense blocks of sandstone set in cement were dislodged and thrown down (in all, five hundred and eighty tons of it), together with two hundred and eighty tons of flooring and girders, some of the latter weighing thirteen thousand pounds each. In Lafayette Park, St. Louis, another example of tornadic vagaries was shown by the fact that, right in the path of the storm, surrounded closely by forest-trees which had been wrenched bodily from the earth, stood unharmed a flimsy, straw-thatched structure upon six light posts!
Unfortunately, from the very violence of the wind, no accurate estimate of the velocity of the gyratory movement of a tornado can be made, as an anemometer would be useless, even if it were not destroyed. Experts calculate, however, that the speed of the wind approximates five hundred or six hundred miles per hour. At any rate, the destructive force of a tornado is ten or perhaps twenty times that of a cyclone; and if cyclones blew with the violence of tornadoes, the earth would be devastated in a short while.
At sea the tornado with its terrible cloud-funnel has its counterpart in the water-spout; though in the latter the wind does not seem to attain the same fury, as many vessels have passed through a water-spout without very great damage. Two curious instances, however, are on record of atmospheric freaks at sea; one of them was reported by the American ship “Reaper.” She was proceeding toward Cape Horn in the equatorial North Pacific, the day being perfectly fine and clear, save for a few small, detached clouds, and the wind a light breeze, when she suddenly lost all of her light sails in a blast that came apparently out of a clear sky, while at the moment there was nothing but the light wind on deck. Again, the ship “Sintram,” Captain Woodside, was almost totally dismasted off the West Indies, homeward bound from the East; the weather was fine and a four-knot breeze was blowing on deck when the upper spars seemed to melt away, she having been struck by a similar blast from a clear sky. Subsequently I wrote to the forecast official at New York asking whether any such accidents ever happened ashore; he answered that in Nebraska and Kansas similar strong whirlwinds have been known, in perfectly clear weather, to tear the upper portions of forest-trees completely off, including large branches, while the leaves and twigs nearer the ground were untouched. This indisputably proves that only a few feet mark the boundary-line between atmosphere in a state of rest and wind of inconceivable violence. As has been shown, such instances occur also in tornadoes, which, of course, are nothing but immense whirlwinds.
It is my earnest hope that the reader has not been worried by this long meteorological dissertation, which has nothing to do with the voyage; but as the forecasting of the weather has lately been of increasing interest to the public, perhaps I may be pardoned for my digression. Latitude, 17° 55′ north; longitude, 125° 30′ west.
+September 3+
It seems to be tolerably safe to say now that at last we have picked up the northeast Trades. During yesterday afternoon the wind hauled constantly to the northward, and at ten last night it was northeast by north, blowing a fresh breeze; indeed, by this morning it had increased so that we have not been able to carry the sky-sails since, and we did another three degrees of latitude; imagine three hundred and fifty miles of latitude here in forty-eight hours. It is very refreshing, and even the skipper has recovered his equanimity. Up to noon to-day, though, the weather was very showery, the fine rain blowing in level clouds across the ship, as dense as fog. The greatest change, however, is in the temperature, for the air has fallen 15° and the sea 10°, so that we begin to appreciate that in thirty-six hours, if this wind holds, we will have emerged from the torrid zone. It is quite impossible for us to realize that in another fortnight this voyage will probably be an event of the past. No one who has not made a long voyage can imagine the excitement, actually the excitement, occasioned by the speculation as to how much longer the passage will last, when only ten days or so remain. There is continuously present such an element of luck when solely dependent upon the wind, that you are constantly estimating and calculating how far the Trades will extend, how the winds will be afterward, the chances of fogs and calms on the coast, and other equally important questions. This doesn’t mean necessarily that you want to get ashore; it is the involuntary and irresistible anticipation of an impending change, though my wife will probably not regret the moment when the tow-boat gives us her line outside the Heads. Latitude, 20° 52′ north; longitude, 126° 40′ west.
+September 4+
This was a perfectly ideal day, with brisk northeast winds, smooth sea, cloudless sky, and a noon temperature of 72°, and 68° at midnight. This is a very lucky chance that we are having here; we are going well, about eight knots, and our course has been to the northward of northwest by north, showing that the Trades are well to the eastward.
I wonder how many people have ever seen the scale of provisions as laid down by the United States government for the vitualling of long-voyage ships? As I have said, the curious part of it is, though, that no attention is ever paid to it on our ships, except under unusual conditions. Yet it is not so very curious that no attempt is made to observe the scale, for almost everything in connection with our sailors and ships is performed in an irregular manner. Behold the scale.
+------+-----+-----+------+------+-----+-------+------+------ |BREAD.|BEEF.|PORK.|FLOUR.|PEASE.|TEA. |COFFEE.|SUGAR.|WATER. ---------+------+-----+-----+------+------+-----+-------+------+------ |Lb. |Lbs. |Lbs. | Lb. | Pt. |Oz. | Oz. | Ozs. | Qts. Sunday | 1 |1-1/2| | 1/2 | |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 Monday | 1 | |1-1/4| | 1/8 |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 Tuesday | 1 |1-1/2| | 1/2 | |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 Wednesday| 1 | |1-1/4| | 1/8 |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 Thursday | 1 |1-1/2| | 1/2 | |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 Friday | 1 | |1-1/4| | 1/8 |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 Saturday | 1 |1-1/2| | | |1/8 | 1/2 | 2 | 3 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Then comes a list of substitutes, such as molasses for sugar, potatoes for pease, etc. Other nations also have provision scales, but they are adhered to; foreign schemes add oatmeal, but all sailors get too much meat; both captains and seamen say that. Our blue-water ships have a great name for fine “grub,” which they deserved forty years ago, but which most of them certainly do not now. A Yankee captain has the privilege from the owners to lay in whatever sort of stores he thinks fit (of course neither he nor the owner ever thinks of the law); if he is a generous man, the crew are lucky; if not, it’s a case of hunger and hustle for four or five months. As a sample of the manner in which the food has been given out here, the men consumed an entire barrel of molasses during the first seventeen days that we were at sea; since then they have had none. Other articles were scattered around in the same reckless manner, with the natural result that the “dainties” which ought to have lasted the whole voyage had vanished at the latitude of the Falklands; so that ever since the men have been on pretty hard rations, and Broadhead told me that when the old man made the show of putting all hands on government allowance it didn’t mean anything at all. Since the stabbing, though, all the food has been weighed out by the mate each day in full view of the sailors, eighteen pounds of bread (_i.e._, hard-tack), so many pounds of beef, etc., and the men themselves carry it to the cook, so that there can be no fault-finding. As to the water, three quarts per day amounts in all to fifty-four quarts, which is measured into a cask in the forecastle, and the men are at liberty to give any portion of it they choose to the cook in which to boil their beef and pork, or tea and coffee. These three quarts, by the way, are for all purposes, drinking, cooking, and washing, though most foremast hands are not much troubled with the latter, except when it rains hard. Each man probably does not have more than a quart and a half of drinking water a day, which is a truly scanty allowance for men who are painting on a blistering deck several hours out of the twenty-four.
American captains profess to think that weighing out food to sailors is very degrading, and they always add, “It’s too much like them Britishers.” Personally I have never been able to perceive where the indignity comes in. Food is weighed out in the navy, so why not in the merchant service? I had it on my mind to-day to ask Captain Scruggs which he really considered the more debasing, giving a man a stipulated quantity of food, or knocking his teeth out with wooden or iron implements and then kicking him into the scuppers; but I thought it best to preserve peace rather than advance so hazardous a question. Latitude, 23° 18′ north; longitude, 128° 40′ west.
+September 5+
Oh, what magnificent weather this is! It is just like those grand days in the southeast Trades. Our everlasting recollections of the Pacific Ocean, both north and south, will be of weeks of a matchless climate; deep cobalt sky, sprinkled with little pink, cirrus clouds; a calm sea over which shoot thousands of flying-fish in glittering flight, and soft, enchanting breezes. “What about those two or three disagreeable days not long ago?” says the pessimist. True, they were not ideal days; but they only serve to show off these lovely ones in all their glorious perfection. We have, unhappily, passed the limits of the tropics, however, having crossed the circle of Cancer yesterday at four o’clock.
A few minutes ago, at the pumps, Broadhead asked me, “Would you mind telling me why you came out here in an American ship?” I told him why,--that, having made one voyage in an Englishman, we wanted to compare the vessels; and I also reminded him that foreign ships are not allowed to trade between American ports. “Well, you and the lady must have lots of courage,” said he. “Now there’s the Loch Line of ships to Australia out of London; you ought to have gone in one o’ them.” “Yes; MacFoy told me about them,” said I. “Well, they’re worth all you can say in favor of ’em,” continued this American; “they’re dandies; carry lots o’ passengers, first- and second-class and steerage. Each ship has what they call a double crew; say a ship had fourteen men before the mast, one o’ these would have twenty-eight, so the whole of an ordinary ship’s crew is on deck at one time, and not a stroke o’ work is ever done aloft after eight in the morning, so that nothing can drop on passengers’ heads.” This may seem like getting things down to too fine a point; but any one who has voyaged in a sailing vessel will remember how many articles drop from men working aloft. We have seen at least a dozen objects fall during the voyage,--knives, paint-brushes, and serving-mallets, any one of which dropping on a man’s head from a height of at least a hundred feet would be very painful, not to say dangerous.
Perhaps the most remarkable and unusual device to enable the captain of a vessel to pocket the wages of a crew appears in a copy of a maritime paper, which I found to-day in a bundle of the skipper’s magazines. It was perpetrated by the master of the British ship “S----,” and consisted in his taking a quantity of liquors of divers sorts to sea and retailing them to the men at immense profit. An investigation at Liverpool showed that this enterprising man had bought twenty cases of whiskey at three dollars and a half a dozen, which he sold to the crew at one dollar per bottle. He also had large stores of gin and beer on board, and the amount of money that the captain must have cleared by the various transactions may be imagined when it is mentioned that the carpenter’s bill for liquors for one voyage footed up a total of sixty-seven dollars, and the men testified that some of them averaged a bottle a day. It seemed to me that the captain’s punishment was rather light, as it consisted in suspending his certificate for three months. Of course, this is a penalty which could not be inflicted upon an American captain, because none of our sailing-ship-masters has a government certificate. Our law-givers do not think that any is necessary, though they require a stiff examination in the case of a steam-ship-master, another sparkling example of the perfection of the United States shipping laws. Latitude, 25° 47′ north; longitude, 130° 46′ west.
+September 6+
After breakfast this morning we trembled when we found the wind letting go, for everything indicated a cessation in the Trades; but at ten o’clock they freshened again, and since then we have swung handsomely along over a light swell at seven knots. This is very gratifying, and every day sees us a hundred and seventy-five miles nearer port. My wife is beginning to rejoice at the prospect of fresh vegetables and fruit, though I think I could live very comfortably on the present diet for at least a year. I had to tell the captain to-day, though, not to have any more stews for my sake, for I couldn’t possibly eat another one. This is not astonishing, because, when a week out from New York, I happened to express a desire for a stew, and on every single day since then I have eaten some of this concoction at least once and at times twice. Four solid, uninterrupted months of stews are apt to produce a surfeit thereof. What was worse than anything else, though, was that the steward, desiring to enrich the gravy, at length became addicted to the disagreeable habit of thrusting large pieces of aged, canned butter into each stew, after turning it out of the sauce-pan, so that when the dish reached the table the surface of the stew glittered with little iridescent, golden globules, that danced upon it like drops of yellow quicksilver. Thus decorated, it was a very pleasing dish to contemplate, though familiarity with it bred contempt.
Every day now, particularly at supper, we enter the dining-room with distended eyes, trying to discover some surprise in the culinary department. Usually, however, when the covers are removed, there lie disclosed the same old standbys,--stewed beef or mutton, cold beef and ham, biscuits, and boiled potatoes the size of hot-house grapes, though none the worse for that. Indeed, we went to sea with several barrels of new Bermuda potatoes at ten dollars the barrel; this will show the unstinted manner in which this ship was stored aft.
Sometimes, though, we are stunned by some fantastic creation of the Chinaman’s. Last night, for instance, when the steward whipped off the huge pewter covers, each almost as big as an umbrella, we were entranced by the appearance of something entirely new. In a deep vegetable dish lay four enormous Welsh rarebits? Oh, the gladness of that moment! What mattered it that the bread was a blood relative of india-rubber, that the rarebits were clammy and inflexible, or that the rind of a pineapple cheese had contributed to their manufacture? Were they not a change, and as such to be venerated and exalted beyond price? Therefore we helped ourselves reverently, as became so momentous an occasion; and if the compound did produce an incalculable amount of subsequent distress, we extended meek thanks and congratulations to the little Cantonite in the galley. In truth, though, there is no fault of any sort to be found with the cabin food; it is every bit as good as when we started.
Last evening, in the second dog-watch, the Scotch bosun came up to me on the main-deck and asked how we were getting on. I told him, very well indeed; and then he said, “Before we left I heard that a gentleman and his wife were going out in the ship, and be gob I felt sorry for them.” Good old MacFoy! He is continuously solicitous for our welfare; and a day or two ago he came aft with a copy of Dickens’s “Christmas Stories” which he had found in the forecastle library furnished by the Seamen’s Friend Society, and said that he had found a fine sea story for me to read in the book, called “The Wreck of the Golden Mary.” It is a fact worthy of note that this rough sailor-man is the only individual whom I have ever met who has read this delightful account of a shipwreck off Cape Horn. The best-read man whom I ever knew said that he had never even heard of it. In every art, though, there seem to be one or two jewels that exist unknown even to the connoisseur. How many musicians are there, thorough musicians though they may be, who know the gorgeous, glorious chorus in A, _andante sostenuto_, from Schubert’s Lazarus? Gorgeous in its tone colors, glorious in its fire and rhythm, it is an almost unknown fragment from that transcendent mind. Latitude, 27° 58′ north; longitude, 132° 20′ west.
+September 7+
Nothing but a faint breeze remains of the northeast Trades. In the Pacific at this season they are generally a failure, and they carried us through only twelve degrees of latitude. We are beginning to appreciate how hard it is going to be to get into the land in the latitude of San Francisco, unless we soon take the westerly winds that are supposed to blow out here. We are now well to the westward of ’Frisco, ten degrees in fact, and it is impossible to calculate how much farther we will have to go; old Goggins, a year ago, bound up to Nanaimo from Acapulco, fetched over to 160° west before he got a slant north. To-day is a great deal warmer than yesterday, with at times a nearly glassy sea and one hundred and ten miles of the two degrees of latitude that we made were done in the first sixteen hours.
Last evening I had another session with the garrulous Scot. “I’ll tell ye somethin’ about the ‘H. D. MacGregor’; she’s the toughest ship I ever was in, though there’s one still worse. Cap’n Summers is a corker; he’s a little man, but very broad and strong, with a fearful temper; he’s all bruk up, though.”
“What broke him up?” said I.
“Jumpin’ after the men,” answered David; “he’s hardly got a sound bone in his body; they do say his back’s broke, but I never thought it. But I did see him smash one of his legs. He had that temper that if he wanted to reach a man he just jumped down on top of him where he stood. I mind one afternoon, just before we got into ’Frisco two or three years ago, when I was bosun with him, one of the men was doin’ somethin’ aft on the main-deck. Summers said a few words to him, and the feller didn’t say ‘yes, sir,’ soon enough to suit him, so th’ old man jumped right off the poop down on the main-deck, full eight feet. He meant to lep on top o’ the sailor; but just as he jumped the ship give a roll, and he fell into a water-barrel near by. His left leg brought up sharp ag’in’ the chimes o’ the cask, and crack! went his thigh-bone. Lucky for him we were only two days from port, and we fixed him up pretty well till we got in.”
Yesterday afternoon the top of the deck-house was painted a beautiful, lustrous, pearly gray, and very fine it looked, glistening in the bright sunshine. Not a drop of rain had fallen all day until fifteen minutes after it was finished, when a light shower passed over us, extending not five hundred yards in any direction. It lasted not one minute, but it completely ruined the wet paint; and it was then that we heard the gentle voice of the mate raised in blasphemous remonstrance. Latitude, 29° 48′ north; longitude, 134° 6′ west.
+September 8+
Just as we had finished writing up our journals yesterday afternoon there came a loud patter of rain overhead and a heavy puff from the eastward that laid the ship well over. Still, we didn’t pay much attention to it for some time; but, finding that we moved steadily along without righting, I went on deck to find the ocean covered with white-caps to the horizon, which was thick with dense, gray, very windy-looking clouds. We were flying through the water at ten knots, and heading up north by west true, which was very fine; but, even as we looked, there came a slight but portentous heave from ahead that foretold a northerly swell. And so it proved, for by 8 +P.M.+ our progress had dwindled to six knots, as we went pitching and diving into an ugly head-sea. It is astonishing how even a moderately heavy swell from ahead will check the speed of a ship, even with a strong wind blowing. A steamer will cleave right through a tall swell without any perceptible difference in her speed, a fact proved to us once when, in crossing the Atlantic in the “Etruria,” we encountered a head-sea that buried the entire bows at every plunge; yet the speed was lowered by only a quarter of a knot. Even a sailing yacht will overcome a head-swell in a very creditable manner; but when a massive, clumsy square-rigger runs into one, farewell to even a moderate run. She stops at every sea for an appreciable time, till the impetus of so ponderous a mass asserts itself and she tumbles into the next valley. So it was with us all through the night, though we made good a fine course north-northwest.
A fact little known generally is that in former years there existed in our ships what was known as a hospital tax. It was finally abandoned, not more than fifteen years ago, and consisted in each man’s paying forty cents a month as long as he was on board a given vessel toward a common fund, the total sum being handed to the proper persons on the ship’s arrival for the maintenance of the marine hospital at the port to which she was bound, provided that such a port was of sufficient importance to warrant an institution of this sort. I think this was a pretty good idea, and cannot think why it was abolished. On a ship like this one, for instance, the amount at the end of a four-months’ voyage would be nearly forty dollars. Yet no one on board would feel the loss of the dollar and a half that he had contributed. Latitude, 32° 7′ north; longitude, 135° 6′ west.
+September 9+