Chapter 17

This system of villainy was openly carried on long after I first went to sea, and although the London purveyor had passed to another place he must have left behind him a set of imitators who acquired an equally charming aptitude for murder by supplying vessels with deadly food of one kind and another. The tradition went on to say that ultimately he died, and having sold himself to "Jimmy Square Foot," his spirit was transferred from Ratcliffe Highway to a volcanic island in the Mediterranean called Stromboli. There he frequently appeared in his professional garb, standing by the edge of the crater along with his satanic friend who was reputed to have secured an eternal lease of this rock in order to provide a suitable abode for some of those to whom he had been closely attached during their earthly pilgrimage. Whenever the volcano was unusually active, the sailors who were in the vicinity would say, "Ah, Jimmy is taking it out of the old Baker to-night."

The first time I visited this part of the world, the vessel I served in was creeping close past Stromboli with a light wind. Some of the forecastle hands became reminiscent. They spoke of how they had been fed on biscuits made by the gentleman whom they had seen standing by the molten fire gesticulating to be taken from it. Strange tales were related as to the reality of this notorious person's existence. I listened with feverish greed to the yarns until my vision became confused and I fancied him not only close by me but imagined I heard his sombre cry of despair beseeching our compassion. The sailor's delight in hyperbole led one of our comrades to relate most charmingly the story of the baker's first appearance in Stromboli. An English barque some years ago lay becalmed within a mile from the Stromboli shore. The captain and officers knew the biscuit manufacturer well. The chief officer whose watch it was walked the quarter deck in deep meditation. A sailor who was at the wheel suddenly became aware of two figures close to the crater. One was stoking and the other was vehemently urging him to greater effort. He called out excitedly:

"Look! Who's that standing by the glare of the fire? My God, if we were not safe on salt water I would say we were near enough to hell!"

"What do you mean?" asked the flurried chief officer.

"I mean," said the sailor, pointing towards the shore, "the flames and the figures yonder. May heaven send a breeze so that we may get away from the sight of it."

The mate was over-awed; he steadied his nerves, took up the telescope and looked towards the crest of the hill for a few seconds. The glass dropped suddenly from his hands on to the deck, and he exclaimed:

"The Lord save us! It is the London baker with Jimmy Square Foot. Jump down and call the captain while I say a few words of prayer."

The hand who aroused the commander told him that they were too near the nether regions. The captain rushed on deck, and in a nervous tone asked what was the matter.

"The matter?" responded the officer, "_there_ is what's the matter. Look at them, and if you are not satisfied that we're as near hell as ever we will be until we get into it, I am."

The captain was agitated and tremulously stuttered:

"Why it's the baker! How piteously he pleads to be rescued, but we can do nothing for him."

The day, hour and minute of the appearance were entered in the log-book, and when the vessel arrived home, the tale was told and paraphrased in a way that attracted national attention. The comparing of notes disclosed that the entry in the log-book corresponded chronologically with the date and time of the baker's death.

Contemporary with this traditional gentleman was a well known shipowner, who was notoriously mean and wicked towards the sailors who manned his ships. Prayers of a highly peculiar character were continuously made that he should be transported to the same region of warmth as the Baker. Of course all shipowners are relegated to these parts when they do anything to excite the anger of Jack. But the owner of whom I am writing had put himself beyond all forgiveness; he was an unspeakable wretch who would stoop to the most revolting methods of sensuality. The sanctity of homes was invaded by the fiend who carried on a double game of starving his men and destroying all that was dear to them. The curses that were continuously poured forth upon him from all parts of the world cannot be spoken; they may only be imagined. Ultimately he died amid a storm of rejoicing, and when the hearse came to take him to the graveyard the horses are said to have refused to carry the body. It was no sooner placed in the hearse than they went wild and smashed the conveyance; other horses were brought up, but they were equally obdurate and violent, and it became necessary to employ men to carry the coffin, but only the lowest roughs could be found for the service. The community, especially the seafaring part of it, were convinced that his wickedness had been so great that even the devil refused to have anything to do with him in a respectable country. He was forthwith passed on to Stromboli to assist the Baker in his arduous task of keeping the fires going, and for the purpose of confirming the sailors' belief in the law of retribution. This traditional person was a butcher--if it be safe or lawful to use such a phrase as "tradition" in connection with one of the mariner's solemn planks of faith. He left a large fortune behind, which has been a curse to his descendants, and it would have been a great disappointment to the contemporary seamen if it hadn't, as much of their time was used in the imprecation of ghastly forms of punishment and in imagining modes of disposing of what they vehemently avowed was ill-gotten wealth.

In my youthful days I listened to these tales and drank them in with juvenile credulity. How often have boys remained on deck during their watch below to get a glimpse of these personalities, and sometimes I imagined I could see all that others had told me they had seen. Incidents of this kind varied the monotony of a long passage, as the talk about it went on until some other thing equally sensational developed. To make any attempt at ridiculing the reality of such things was to offer a gross insult to the seamen's susceptibilities.

To say that shipowning, even in the early part or middle of the last century, was synonymous with a system of heartless starvation would be too sweeping an assertion to make. There always have been men who strove to act generously towards the people serving in their vessels, though these, I am persuaded, were in the minority, and it is to the credit of that minority that they had to struggle against precedent, example, and it may be the habitual conviction that it was part of the sailor's business to take whatever food was put aboard for him. Running short of provisions was to them only an incident natural to the sailor's calling. This view had been handed down by successive generations of avaricious stoats, not the least prominent and contemptible of whom was Elizabeth, with her chilly heart, at one time receiving from Drake the spoils of his voyage in the _Pelican_; at another walking through the parks publicly with him, and listening with eager fascination to his stories of "amazing adventure," adventures that some of her Catholic subjects maintained to be "shocking piracy." We all remember the story of his sailing off with bullion from Tarapaca worth half a million ducats; also of the chase and capture of the _Cacafuego_, which had aboard the whole of the produce of the Lima mines for the season, consisting of silver, gold, emeralds and rubies. The hanging of Mr Doughty Philips, the spy, was talked of; the cutting off from the Church of God for cowardice of the chaplain, Mr Fletcher, and the chaining of his leg to a ringbolt in the deck until he repented of his sin. And she is so much interested in all these things that a royal banquet is held aboard the _Pelican_. Her Majesty attends and knights Drake. Mendoza demands for his master the stolen treasure. Leicester wants to share it with his friends; but Elizabeth puts her foot down and maintains it to be a legal capture which must be held. She conceives this to be a part of the game. Subsequent events cause Drake to plead with her to grant supplies, and she rebukes him for his extravagance. The Armada is close at our shores. Lord Howard reminds her that food is exhausted and that her sailors are having to catch fish to make up their mess, and yet they are praying for the quick arrival of the enemy. Their commander says English sailors will do what they can to vanquish the invaders, but they cannot fight with famine. "Awake, Madam," writes the poor distracted Lord admiral; "awake, for the love of Christ, and realize the danger that confronts the nation." He managed this time to squeeze one month's rations out of her, but when asked if any more should be provided, this lovely virgin monarch replied peremptorily, "No!" And when the great Armada came in sight there was but two days' food remaining. "Let tyrants fear," she says; "I have always so behaved myself that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects"!! She knows that she has the body of a weak and feeble woman, but she is assured she has the heart of a king, and rather than any dishonour should grow by her, "I myself will take up arms and be your general, judge and rewarder of all your virtues." That is all very pretty, and sounds pre-Napoleonic, but we cannot all swallow sweet, cantish little nothings in place of food and wages. Better would it have been had Elizabeth shown some practical evidence of "devotion" to her "people" by granting supplies and food to her starving sailors who fought and won in the most deadly naval encounter that the world has ever known. Their stomachs were empty but their hearts were big, though many of them went under with sickness brought on by famine, while she held tight that seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds which Drake brought home for her. It is amazing that a historian should be found to regard that speech of hers as being "free from affectation." But one historian not only says this, he adds: "She was the protector of her country, and the prudent executor of its will." She was nothing of the sort; on the contrary, she was a cold, greedy, heartless termagant, who risked the loss of her country by her parsimony, and it was only saved by the dauntless courage of the famishing seamen. I think that is one of the most gruesome and humiliating pieces of British history: for the monarch of a great empire to exhibit herself in the light of a sailor's boarding-housekeeper; squeezing his life's blood out, and herself handing down to posterity a character for meanness that would put to the blush the owner of a collier brig whose main idea of economy may be starving his crew. When I hear her spoken of as the Good Queen Bess, I think of how she ordered the Puritan lawyer, John Stubbs, and the printer of his pamphlet to be led to the scaffold and have their right hands driven off by the wrist with a butcher's knife and mallet, and how in God's name she commits many other unspeakable acts of devilishness, the most dastardly of which was her refusal to provide food for the thousands of brave men who saved her and her kingdom. What a contrast between this woman and the great Queen Victoria, whose long career is free from a single act of cruelty, and whose whole life teems with good deeds, while Elizabeth's reeks with an odour so bad that no student of history can peruse the account without wondering why she was allowed to live; for truly she was as bad a shrew as ever wore a skirt!

IX

MISCELLANEOUS

Fifty or sixty years ago the N.E. coast ports were all tidal; no harbours of refuge; no twenty-four feet on any of the bars at low water as there is now; no piers or breakwaters projecting as they do to-day far into the German Ocean. It therefore frequently happened that during neap tides there was not sufficient water over the bars for even the shallowest drafted vessels. In that case, if the weather was fine, i.e., wind off the land, and smooth water, the vessels were taken outside, and the balance of their cargoes sent to them by a peculiar type of lighter known in that part of England by the name of keels. These craft were skilfully managed by two men called keelmen, who worked them up and down the stream with the tide and manipulated them with long oars. One of these lighters was being rushed out of the river by a heavy westerly wind and a current of abnormal velocity. The two men were doing their best to control their little vessel towards its destination, when the skipper spontaneously observed that they were going to drift out to sea unless aid came to them, or some means of stopping her progress were not adopted. He naturally bethought himself of the anchor, and shouted out to his mate:

"By gox, Jimmy, w'or gan to drift into the German Ocean! Let go the b--y anchor!"

The mate shouted back:

"What the devil's the use of lettin' go the anchor when there's ne chain fast te'ed?"

"Never mind a d--n about that," shouted the skipper at the top of his voice and with feverish excitement. "Chuck the b--y thing ower and trust to Providence for'd hangin' her. We better de that, ye' fool as drive to Norraway or some other place o' worship!"

The anchor was thrown over, but Providence did not yield to Geordie's persuasive ingenuity, thereupon his faith gave way and he switched his mind and utterance on to a singular form of petition to "Had her, Lord, had her" (hold her). History tells us that Geordie believed this latter appeal to have been answered, as it fell calm, and the sea became still.

Some sailors were rowing off to their vessel in a jolly-boat on the same occasion, and when the wind went down a dense fog came on, with the result that they missed their ship. They were all night in the fog, and in the morning as there was no indication of it clearing up they were filled with anxiety. At last one of their number said there was nothing else for it but to pray, and called upon a companion to do so, but he said that he had never prayed in his life.

"I don't know what to ask."

"Divvent ask," promptly replied his shipmate, "until you've made all kinds of promises"; whereupon all kinds of specific pledges of an extraordinary character were prompted, and the praying commenced and was continued with great facility and becoming earnestness, when all at once the sailor who had suggested prayer called out:

"Stop, stop! Don't commit yourself too far. I think I see the land," and the man who was in the act of praying opened his eyes, beheld the land himself, and called out:

"Why the devil didn't you tell me sooner, before I made all them promises?"

"I cautioned you as soon as I saw it myself," said his friend; "why didn't you keep your own eyes open?"

"Eyes open, d'ye say? How d'ye think a man can pray with his eyes open, you fool?"

* * * * * *

These men belonged to an old-fashioned race, sailed in old-fashioned ships, at a time when the old-fashioned winters, as they are sometimes called, were a terror to underwriters, owners and seamen alike; for the easterly gales always left in their wake along the whole seaboard relics of devastation. Wrecks used to be strewn all over the coast, and sombre tokens of bereavement were everywhere visible. When the White Sea, Baltic and St Lawrence were closed to navigation, the class of vessels that were employed in these trades were either sent to the Bay of Biscay or the coast of Portugal with coal in order that they might bring from that country to this cork or salt, or both; and from the French ports in the Bay of Biscay cargoes of sugar were frequently obtained as return cargo; but the coal freights were generally so good at that time that vessels could be brought back in ballast and _then_ leave a big profit.

Owners, however, always aimed at getting employment over the winter months in the coasting trade to France or London, and when freights were depressed beyond paying point they did not hesitate to lay them up until the White Sea and Baltic season came round again. It frequently happened that this course had to be adopted, and the ports all along the coast became blocked with idle tonnage, and the little towns overcrowded with seamen, who, as a rule, stuck to their ships and did odd jobs, without pay, until the time came for them to be again engaged in active service. It was customary for the captain and mate to specially look after the vessels when laid up so that no harm came to them, and they were expected to do so without remuneration. The honour and pride in those earlier days of having command or being mate of even a leaky old craft was very pronounced. Each brig, brigantine, or schooner, carried three or four apprentices. These lads were allowed 10s. per week, which was called board money. The owners, it may be presumed, found it cheaper to make this arrangement rather than have cooking aboard while the vessel was laid up; but though an allowance was made for food, it was a standing instruction that at least two out of the four boys should sleep aboard the ship, and as soon as she was put into commission none but the oldest apprentice could have the privilege of sleeping ashore. This personage, by the way, was looked up to as a kind of Mogul even by his commander, but especially by the younger apprentices. He claimed the right indeed to chastise a wayward youth with the rope's end, and when very bad offences occurred, a double punishment was inflicted by keeping the little delinquent on deck in the cold at night, until his superior thought fit to pardon him. On the other hand, I have seen a mate soundly thrashed by this same person for striking a young boy during the process of a voyage. Such were the peculiar ethics of this class of seamen that, while they conceived it to be their duty to uphold the dignity of discipline when they were in supreme control of the little colony of apprentices during the time the vessel was laid up in port, they would not brook undue physical interference with their co-apprentices on the part of the chief officer when in active commission. Sometimes the stay in port would last three months. The master and mate were in attendance every day, and in order that their berths might be retained, the sailors came aboard on fine days, repaired sails, running gear, standing rigging, scraped and tarred the holds out, scraped masts, painted yards, scrubbed bottom, tarred and blackleaded it, and, in fact, when the time came to fit out for the spring voyage to the Baltic, the little vessels looked as trim and as neat as it was possible to make them, and there was little left to do except bend sails and take stores aboard.

Nor were the apprentices allowed to be idle. Each day they had to wash decks when the tide was up, and although it may seem a very small matter to refer to, it is worthy of note that the drawing of water by the youngest boy was the occasion of much interest to the onlookers, who always congregated in large numbers on the quays when anything of this sort was being done. The bucket which supplied the water was stropped with rope so that it did not injure the side of the vessel; great care was observed that no harm came to the planking, no matter how old the craft might be. The boy was expected to draw with such rapidity that the person who was throwing the water along the deck should not have to wait. It was considered quite an art to throw the water properly, and also to supply it, and it taxed both the strength and the deftness of the youngster; many a wigging he would get in the process of training even in this small matter.

The two youngest boys took week and week about in keeping the forecastle clean. It was insisted that the floor should be spotless. This was enforced by the oldest apprentice, and he had to account to the master if it were not as he wished it to be. They of course assisted the men during the period of inactivity, but on those days when no work was being done by the sailors it was usual for the mate to give them so many _nettles_ to plait: that is, five or seven rope yarns plaited into seizings for _bends_ in hawsers, mooring chains, and ropes. Sometimes the mate was a person of artistic taste, and in that case they would be given bucket strops or man ropes to _graft_, or turkheads and _grafting_ to work on to some deck arrangement or yardarm, and bunt gaskets to work with marline. Indeed, the course of training was so systematic and so perfect that these young fellows long before their time had expired could do anything that a sailor might be called upon to do. To be taunted with laziness was a grievous indictment. The average lad of that period would do himself physical injury in the effort to avoid such a stigma. They prided themselves on being the pupils and under-studies of the finest sailors in the world; and so they were. When the time came round for the spring fleet to fit out, there was great commotion amongst the little community. The crews emulated each other in the effort to make their vessels look smart, and the distinction of being first ready for sea claimed a prominent share of their ambition. They knew also that they would be subjected to the stern criticism of the female population, the limitations of which would not necessarily be confined to wives and sweethearts, or even relations.

Neither men nor women found companionship in books. If the women read anything, it was what the newspapers said about shipping movements, and it is safe to say very few concerned themselves about that. So their mental energy found an outlet in the gossip of things nautical. They knew by instinct almost when a vessel was thoroughly cared for, and although they might not be able to call things by their proper names, they never liked their husbands or sweethearts to have any hand in, or association with, an untidy vessel. Hence, to secure approval from their women critics, these sailor men and apprentice lads would strain every faculty to have sails stowed in a cloth, that is, stowed so that not a wrinkle could be seen anywhere. The youngest apprentice furled the royals and staysails, two other boys the topgallant sails, and all the crew, except the master, the larger square sails. The yards were squared by the braces. The lower yards were made to correspond with the topsail yards by means of the lifts, every rope was hauled taut, and every coil round the belaying pin was made strictly uniform. Every end of a rope had to have what is called a cross-whipping to prevent the end from becoming a tassel. A well-worn, though authentic story, which bears on this, did service many times in those days of nautical rectitude. A gentleman was brought from another district to our little port to serve as chief mate aboard a hitherto well-kept brig, and his chief characteristic was in neglecting to conform to one of the great essential nautical principles by allowing everything to get into disorder; warps and rope ends were allowed to go without whippings until it became an eyesore and a subject of strong condemnation. His wife, who did not conform to the orthodox faith, began to draw comparisons, and vigorously proclaimed that her husband's taste was a thing to be emulated. "Look," said this incensed lady, "at the fringes and tassels. Do they not look better than having things tied up like whipcords?" But her æsthetic opinions did not prevent her husband's services being dispensed with.